LIBRARY 
 
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 WWJTORW* 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 '
 
 STUDIES IN THEOLOGY
 
 All rights reter-vcd
 
 STUDIES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 J. ESTLIN CARPENTER 
 
 AND 
 
 P. H. WICKSTEED 
 
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 Ka.ra.fia.lvov diro roO irarpos rHv <f>ii}T(t}i> 
 Trap' (j5 OVK Zvi irapa\\ayij r) 
 
 TOV yap Kal yivos lai>.tv. 
 
 1903 
 
 LONDON 
 J. M. DENT & CO. 
 
 29 AND 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 Go 
 OTTO PFLEIDERER 
 
 AND 
 
 HENRICUS OORT
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i. THE RELIGION OF TIME AND THE RELIGION 
 
 OF ETERNITY. . . . . P. H. W. i 
 
 ii. THE EDUCATION OF THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION. J. E.G. 51 
 
 in. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF UNITARIANISM AS A 
 
 THEOLOGY. . . . . . P. H. W. 91 
 
 iv. THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY IN RELIGIOUS 
 
 BELIEF. . . ,*va aj . J. E. C. 105 
 
 v. THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE SENSE OF SIN. . P. H. W. 149 
 
 vi. THE PLACE OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN 
 
 THEOLOGICAL STUDY. . . . J. E. C. 169 
 
 vn. THREE WAYS OF SALVATION. . . J. E. C. 201 
 
 viu. THE LIBERAL FAITH. . . . J. E. C. 225 
 
 ix. THE RELATION OF JESUS TO His AGE AND 
 
 OUR OWN. . . . . J. E. C. 239 
 
 x. THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY. . . P. H. W. 273 
 
 xi. SOCIOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. . . . P. H. W. 283 
 
 xii. THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY AND THE SERVICE 
 
 OF MAN. . . . . J. E. C. 301 
 
 XHI. RELIGION AND SOCIETY. . . . P. H. W. 325
 
 THE essays gathered in this volume have all 
 appeared before, either as separate publica- 
 tions or in periodicals or collections. A few 
 verbal alterations and corrections have been 
 made in this re-issue. The authors have to 
 thank the Committee of the British and 
 Foreign Unitarian Association for allowing 
 them to include a number of essays originally 
 published under their direction.
 
 I 
 
 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 AND 
 
 THE RELIGION OF ETERNITY 
 
 Being a Study of Certain Relations between Mediaeval 
 
 and Modern Thought 
 Essex Hall Lecture for 1899 
 
 P. H. W. 1899
 
 Yet it is not easy to combat these conceptions because of the love I bear 
 to the men who put them forward."
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THOUGH the purpose of this essay is entirely constructive, 
 the writer is aware that he has occasionally fallen into a 
 controversial tone ; and though his aim has been to deal with 
 spiritual realities, he is conscious of having put forward many 
 historical judgments which may be open to legitimate challenge. 
 
 There may be readers who will detect his ignorance of 
 periods of human thought, a knowledge of which might have 
 corrected one-sided views and shown him that the thing he 
 goes over the sea of centuries to fetch lies near at hand in the 
 very regions where he says that it is not. Others may smile at 
 his insistence on what has always been very nigh unto them in 
 their mouth and in their heart, and seems to need no enforcing. 
 And yet others may see neither vital power in the ideals he sets 
 forth nor defect in those he attacks. 
 
 Indeed, it may well be that he has really given nothing but 
 a chapter of his own spiritual autobiography, while believing 
 himself to be tracing movements in the world's thought. Yet 
 even so, if any one has been able in maturity to reach what he 
 believes to be clearer thought and higher vitality than his 
 youthful period of storm and stress brought to him, the record 
 of the path he has trodden may be of help or of interest to 
 others. Defects of knowledge and distortions of view will 
 be corrected by the better informed or the more thoughtful ; 
 but a certain human interest will still attach to a human 
 experience. The gates of life are many, but life is one. 
 
 P. H. W. 
 
 ^yd May 1899.
 
 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 THE RELIGION OF ETERNITY 
 
 RECENT developments of the High Church movement in 
 England have filled many minds with wonder, some with 
 exultation, some almost with despair. It seems as though 
 nothing were ever settled, as though history were going back 
 upon herself, as though national characteristics and tendencies 
 which we thought had once for all declared themselves, may 
 still veer round ; as though, in the current phrase of contempt 
 and reprobation, we were liable at any moment to find ourselves 
 " back again in the Middle Ages." 
 
 Yet it is difficult for the reflective mind to acquiesce in a 
 theory of mere reaction or retrogression with respect even to a 
 side current of the life of nations ; and the question naturally 
 occurs whether this anomalous appearance of retrogression is in 
 any way connected with other movements or tendencies with 
 which we can more easily reconcile ourselves. And in truth, 
 as soon as we examine our surroundings a little more closely, 
 we find that this modern ecclesiasticism, with its elaborate 
 pomp of ceremonial, with its lofty claims for the supremacy of 
 the Church, with its jealous attempt to control education, and 
 to lay its guiding hand upon the inmost thoughts and volitions 
 of the individual soul, is but one out of many evidences that the 
 ideals of the Middle Ages, and more specifically of the twelfth, 
 the thirteenth, and the fourteenth centuries, are reasserting 
 their attractive force. And when we consider what these cen- 
 turies produced (the great cathedrals of France, for example), a re- 
 newed interest in them can by no means be put down off-hand as 
 purely reactionary and regrettable, except by the narrowest and 
 least spiritually-minded of the sons of the nineteenth century.
 
 THE RELIGION OF TIME 5 
 
 Let us examine, then, a little more in detail some of these 
 other witnesses to a changed attitude of the modern mind with 
 respect to the period of the great days of the Papacy. 
 
 Perhaps the recovered sense for the greatness of mediaeval 
 architecture, which was condemned not so long ago as bar- 
 barous, was the first indication of the coming change ; and 
 more recently a similar change has come over our estimate of 
 early painting, so that now once again " the cry is Giotto's." l 
 
 Again, the revived interest in Dante, to which the printing 
 presses of Italy, France, Germany, England, and America bear 
 unceasing testimony, is universally and properly greeted as a 
 sign of enlarging and deepening spiritual perception as well as 
 literary appreciation. 
 
 Renan once said, " To me alone in my century has it been 
 granted to appreciate Jesus and Francis of Assisi." 2 Before 
 he died a great host of lovers of the Seraphic Father surrounded 
 and outvied him. "A little spark kindles a mighty flame." 3 
 We do not grudge Renan the credit of having been a few years 
 in advance of his fellows, but he found the world already ripe 
 to understand alike the intimate beauty of the life of the saint 
 of Assisi, and the amazing light which the development of the 
 Franciscan literature will ultimately throw upon the composition 
 of the Gospels. 
 
 Once again, when the present Pope, early in his reign, 
 prescribed the study of Thomas Aquinas as the antidote to the 
 intellectual aberrations of our day, 4 I can well remember the 
 amused contempt with which the receipt was greeted in 
 Protestant England. For, with the notable exception of 
 Auguste Comte, thinkers of the nineteenth century had been, 
 for the most part, in the habit of regarding mediaeval philosophy 
 as a negligible quantity. But this too has changed. No doubt 
 it may still be maintained that between Greek and modern 
 thought, between Aristotle and Hobbes, perhaps even between 
 Aristotle and Kant, there has been no essential advance of the 
 first importance in speculative philosophy; but the developed 
 scholasticism for which Aquinas stands is now felt to represent an 
 august system of thought which the historian of civilisation and 
 
 1 Cf. Dante, Purg. xi. 95. Giotto's date is 1276-1336. 
 
 2 " J'ai pu seul en mon siecle comprendre Jesus et Francois d'Assise." Souvenirt 
 tfcnfance et de jeunesse, 8me ed. 1883, p. 148. 
 
 3 Cf. Dante, Parad. i. 34. 4 In his Encyclical " Etarni Patris" 1879.
 
 6 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 the student of human nature cannot neglect or treat as effete 
 and inoperative any more than he can ignore the analogous 
 attempt to combine the highest thought with the poetry and 
 passion of life, which is embodied in the works of Plato. 1 
 
 These are but a few of the many evidences of a reawaken- 
 ing to the significance of mediaeval character and ideals. 
 But it is needless to multiply examples. If we think of the 
 cathedrals, of the fourteenth-century frescoes, and of these 
 three men Francis, Aquinas, and Dante, it will be enough 
 to make us realise the renewed hold which the later Middle 
 Ages have gained upon modern Europe. The mediaeval ideals 
 in poetry, thought, and life are no longer relegated to the 
 rubbish-bins of history, or even to the museums of curiosities. 
 They are recognised not only as august, but as inspiring. 
 And surely few men will be prepared to say that all this is 
 sheer reaction and loss. 
 
 What is the meaning, then, of this renewed vitality in 
 mediaeval ideals, good and bad, reactionary and progressive ? 
 To answer the question we must go back to the times of the 
 Renaissance (especially Humanism), and the Reformation. 
 The two great movements so designated run parallel ; allegi- 
 ance to them is often combined, as in the case of Melanchthon, 
 in a single individual ; and a more or less developed sense of a 
 practical community of interest between the two covers a far 
 wider area than that of their actual spiritual coincidence. 
 Hence it is customary in modern histories, at any rate in 
 Germany and England, to treat them as the two related sides 
 of a single movement. Yet on a closer inspection they 
 appear to be not only distinct, but to a great extent mutually 
 hostile and destructive. What could be less like than the 
 stern Puritan and scriptural ideals of the Reformers, with their 
 intense moral earnestness and passionate religious conviction, 
 and the genial culture, toleration, and sense of humour, or the 
 pedantic devotion to "letters," or the frank paganism, that 
 characterise the various manifestations of Humanism ? 2 Why 
 then are they regarded as allies ? Because both alike, though 
 for very different reasons, and in very different directions, 
 represent a reaction, contemptuous or impassioned as the case 
 may be, against the ideals of the Middle Ages. Both alike 
 regarded the whole period from the fall of the Western Empire, 
 
 1 See Appendix A, p. 28. 2 See Appendix B, p. 29.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 7 
 
 up to their own time, as a regrettable parenthesis in the history 
 .of humanity. The formula of life they found in overleaping 
 this middle period and going back, in the one case to the 
 Greco -Roman civilisation, in the other case to primitive 
 Christianity. It is true that primitive Christianity and the 
 Greco -Roman civilisation stood in sharp contrast to each 
 other ; and hence the Humanist and the Reforming ideals of 
 life were really opposed to each other in principle. But their 
 common antipathy to the Middle Ages inspired them mutually 
 to ignore their own fundamental hostility and to combine in 
 their attack upon that long stretch of ages during which the 
 elements of earlier civilisations had reacted upon each other, 
 and had been welded into an august ideal system of govern- 
 ment, of religion, and of life. 1 
 
 It is strange how successful the combined movement has 
 been in imposing its theory of history upon posterity. The 
 man in the street still devoutly believes that the Middle Ages 
 are a waste period of human history. He not only knows 
 nothing about them, but does not so much as desire to increase 
 his stock of knowledge. For him the scholastic philosophy 
 means attempts to decide how many angels can dance on the 
 point of a needle. Mediaeval history is merely a storehouse of 
 " properties " for picturesque masking and charading, and if he 
 chance to know or to have been told that Dante was a great 
 poet, or Francis a great saint, he thinks it was amazingly to 
 their credit, "considering the times in which they lived." 
 We consider that we ought to know something of general 
 European history from about as far back as the middle of the 
 fifteenth century, and then we make a great bound and concern 
 ourselves with nothing more till we get back to classical or 
 Christian antiquity, to which we imagine our religion and our 
 culture directly attach themselves. 2 
 
 But the current version of history is quite a different thing 
 from history itself; and a very little examination will convince 
 us of a fact which general principles would lead us to antici- 
 pate, viz., that no generation of men can by any possibility 
 sever themselves from the beliefs and ideals of the generations 
 that immediately precede them. " Nature makes no leaps " ; 3 
 and whether you glance at so early a work as Petrarch's 
 
 1 See Appendix C, p. 29. a See Appendix D, p. 30. 
 
 3 See Appendix E, p. 30.
 
 8 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 ^ or so late a one as Bacon's Organon^ you are quite as 
 likely to be impressed by its mediaeval tone as by its affinity to 
 modern conceptions. An attempt to make a violent breach 
 with the past may appear successful to itself far beyond the 
 warrant of facts, partly because of our profound unconscious- 
 ness of the most fundamental obligations we are under to our 
 education and to the atmosphere of thought in which our 
 minds have been formed, and partly because when we have 
 crushed down the expression of any special mode of thought 
 we usually think that we have dried up its sources. We can 
 only trace the origin of that portion of our beliefs which we have 
 consciously adopted. We do not recognise the origin of those 
 far deeper beliefs which we have unconsciously absorbed. 
 Thus Luther and his followers might know that the monastic 
 and papal systems had been forced upon Europe by visible and 
 palpable agencies against which they could rebel ; but (to say 
 nothing of the development of the Pauline teaching, and the 
 perversion of the teaching of the Gospels into the elaborated 
 "scheme of salvation," or of the beliefs as to heaven and hell) 
 such articles of faith as the doctrine of the Trinity, and the 
 fearful systems of demonology, 1 had sunk into the tissues of 
 their minds. They knew not that they owed them to the 
 Church and to other mediaeval agencies. They were content 
 to attach them here and there by a slender thread to some 
 hook or nail of Scripture, and they mistook these ornamental 
 connections for the supports and binding girders of their 
 edifice. And in like manner the fundamental doctrine of a 
 church divinely appointed to supplement and interpret Scrip- 
 ture was far more suppressed in expression than superseded in 
 fact. 2 
 
 Again, in those periods of human history in which actual 
 changes in the currents of thought and newly acquired aspects 
 of truth assume exceptional magnitude and prominence, the 
 limitation of the human mind seems to involve the realisation 
 of the new truth being gained at the sacrifice of some aspects 
 or portions of the truth realised and recognised of old. To 
 say, therefore, that the classical and scriptural reaction of the 
 fifteenth and following centuries, so far as it was valuable and 
 successful, was bought for a price, and involved a certain blind- 
 ness to the beauty of mediaeval literary and spiritual ideals, is 
 1 See Appendix F, p. 31. 2 See Appendix G, p. 32.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 9 
 
 not to depreciate the gain it brought, but merely to say that 
 that gain was acquired under conditions which human nature 
 cannot escape. 
 
 These considerations, which are of an entirely general 
 character, are sufficient to suggest a point of view from which 
 the reassertion in our day of the potency of mediaeval ideals 
 may be regarded as in no way anomalous. Where the Renais- 
 sance and the Reformation were right as against the Middle 
 Ages, they gained an appearance of victory largely in excess 
 of the reality, and it is only natural that we should have to 
 fight the battle again, and yet again for in such matters there 
 is hardly such a thing as conclusive victory. And where the 
 Renaissance and the Reformation were relatively wrong, that 
 is to say, where the combative stress they laid upon one side 
 of truth amounted to neglect and depreciation of another, the 
 neglected aspects of the truth are sure to avenge themselves. 
 So that even the true children of the Reformation find in the 
 study of the Middle Ages much to explain what was obscure, 
 and much to supplement what was defective, in their spiritual 
 life and ideals, and are amazed to discover exaltation, beauty, 
 and earnestness where they had been led to expect nothing but 
 sordidness, grotesqueness, chicanery, and frivolity. 
 
 It is no wonder, then, that we are called upon once more 
 to take arms against dangers which we supposed ourselves 
 conclusively to have overcome, and are at the same time invited 
 to garner life-giving thought, aspiration, and example from 
 literatures and from ages which we supposed had nothing to 
 teach us. And happily these two claims may draw us in the 
 same direction, for we can most wisely combat the errors of 
 any system when we most profoundly and sympathetically 
 appreciate its truth. A true understanding of the permanent 
 place in the human mind of the mediaeval ideals, and the spon- 
 taneous or deliberate combining of them with the best elements 
 of modern life, a combining which will itself constitute a 
 transformation, perhaps a transfiguration of both the factors 
 is the surest way of disarming all reactionary attempts and of 
 carrying forward the true spirit of those reforming movements 
 which once again demand our active championship. 
 
 It is to this task of making some contribution towards a 
 better appreciation of the permanent religious significance of 
 certain great mediaeval conceptions that I would address myself.
 
 io THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 When we think of mediaeval religion, probably most of us 
 think of it under its gross and material aspects. We think of 
 a religion of outward observances and of formal regulations of 
 conduct ; of remission of sins on a fixed scale of penance, if 
 not a fixed scale of payment ; of relations between God and 
 man conceived on the principles of a court of justice, and a 
 theology constructed out of legal quibbles. It is easy to gather 
 historic and philosophical justification and illustration of these 
 conceptions in any quantity that may be desired ; but it is to 
 a far different aspect of mediaeval religion that I wish to call 
 your attention. For there is a sense in which mediaeval theo- 
 logy is contrasted with current conceptions of the Deity 
 precisely because it is so profoundly philosophical, so exalted 
 in its dignity and worthiness, and so far removed from those 
 anthropomorphic conceptions which are for ever seeking for 
 easier terms of sympathy between God and man, not by 
 striving to raise man to "think the thoughts of God," but by 
 degrading the conception of God to conformity with the 
 limitations of human experience. 
 
 The group of mediaeval religious ideas which I have in 
 mind gathers round the conception of Eternity, as elaborated 
 in the Greek schools of philosophy, as adopted into the 
 Christian thought by such as Augustine, as formulated by 
 Boethius, and as inspiring the deepest thought and the most 
 glowing piety of the Christian centuries down to Aquinas and 
 Dante. 
 
 To the mediaeval thinker Eternity is not endless time, but 
 a state in which perfection is found in the co-existence^ not in 
 the succession^ of the parts that make the whole. Time, in its 
 thin succession, drops one thing to grasp another, and ever 
 conscious of the incompleteness of the present experience, 
 reaches ever on and on, and so " imitates by going that fulness 
 of life which it cannot grasp by abiding." When Augustine 
 speaks of God's eternal " now," to which all our past and 
 future are present, when Dante speaks of God as him in 
 whom " every where and every when are focussed in a point," x 
 that is to whom every season is now and every place is here^ 
 they are not using mere vague phrases, but struggling to 
 express their sense of the inevitable limitations which the 
 conceptions of time and space set upon human thought, and 
 
 1 Parad. xxix. 12.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY n 
 
 the belief that the absolute life of God transcends such limita- 
 tions, and " by abiding grasps " that which we " strive after 
 by going." l 
 
 And connected with this conception of Eternity is the 
 kindred conception of Fruition ; that is to say the belief that 
 truth is not only worth the winning but worth the having, the 
 belief that the bliss of communion with God is not something 
 in the encouragement and refreshment of which we can go 
 along with our active life, but is the absolute goal in which 
 that active life itself finds its meaning and in which at last it 
 shall be swallowed up. For the mediaeval saint believed that to 
 see God is to see as God sees, and that just in so far as we rise 
 into true communion with him and do in truth see God, so far 
 shall we see things not in their fragmentary imperfection, but 
 in their combined perfectness. Bonaventura 2 says that no one 
 can share the life of God supremely in the absolute sense, but 
 each one may share that life supremely relatively to himself; 
 that is to say, granted that each human soul is something less 
 than God himself, and therefore has certain limitations which 
 it can never transcend, within those limitations it may rise to 
 perfect and unclouded communion with God, and seeing as he 
 sees, may rejoice with him in the universe wherein he rejoices 
 and in his own eternal being. 3 Thus when the supreme vision 
 is granted to Dante, and he lifts his mortal eyes to look into the 
 light of God, he sees all things, and sees them in all their rela- 
 tions, not as fragmentary imperfections, but as a single perfect 
 whole ; yet what he sees is but one simple flame, the flame 
 of love ; for therein " all the scattered leaves of the universe are 
 bound by love into a single volume." 4 Thus to see the universe 
 is to see it in God, and to see it as God sees it ; for the soul 
 that has reached this highest life of knowing and of loving is 
 altogether emptied of itself and poured out into God. This is 
 fruition ; this is the life eternal, the self-realising in self-losing 
 of true love. This is the life worthy to be lived, not for what 
 it leads on to, but for what it is. It is the life eternal. 
 
 This loss of self and finding of self in God differs from what 
 we are told of some of the Oriental attempts to cure the disease 
 of existence by emptying the soul of all thought and all passion, 
 
 1 See Appendix H, p. 39. 
 
 2 Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. iv. Dist. 49, Part 2, Question 6. 
 1 See Appendix I, p. 45. 4 Parad. xxxiii. 82-90.
 
 12 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 in that the latter aims at the loss of self-consciousness in un- 
 consciousness, the former at the transfiguration of self-conscious- 
 ness into God-consciousness ; the self is not lost, neither does 
 it rejoice in the fulfilment of its own will, but rejoices that the 
 will of God has now so transmuted it into itself, that it flows 
 without hindrance or friction through it. "His will is our 
 peace " ; we live the life, we think the thoughts, we love the 
 love of God. 1 
 
 Such is the religion of Eternity as we find it in Augustine, 
 in Scotus Erigena, in Bernard, in Aquinas, and in Dante, but 
 which seems to vanish from the main stream of religious thought 
 and of sacred poetry with the Renaissance and the Reformation ; 2 
 to reappear, in its germinal conception at least, in Wordsworth 
 when he feels 
 
 Incumbencies more awful, visitings 
 Of the upholder of the tranquil soul, 
 That tolerates the indignities of Time, 
 And, from the centre of Eternity 
 All finite motions overruling, lives 
 In glory immutable. 
 
 Or where he recognises in mathematical truth 
 
 A type, for finite natures, of the one 
 Supreme Existence, the surpassing life, 
 Which to the boundaries of space and time, 
 Of melancholy space and doleful time, 
 Superior and incapable of change, 
 Nor touched by welterings of passion is, 
 And hath the name of God. 8 
 
 But for reasons not hard to understand it is the religion of 
 Time rather than the religion of Eternity which has charac- 
 terised our modern civilisation. To the mediaeval thinker 
 the outlook upon time was short. Dante tells us that the 
 
 1 Bernard, De diligendo Deo, cap. x. Dante, Parad. iii. 85. 
 
 2 See Appendix J, p. 45. 
 
 8 Prelude, Bk. iii. 119-124; Bk. vi. 133-139. N.B. In the last line I have 
 omitted a comma before " God," which is in all the editions I have seen, but which 
 appears to ruin the sense. A similar misleading or distracting insertion of a comma 
 appears in the Excursion, Bk. v. line 330, and doubtless elsewhere in Wordsworth : 
 
 Better far 
 
 Than this, to graze the turf in thoughtless peace, 
 By foresight or remembrance, undisturbed I
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 13 
 
 proper motion of the starry sphere carries it through one 
 degree only in a hundred years, and adds that it will never 
 complete its first revolution, since the end of the world will 
 anticipate by many ages the fulfilment of its first period. 1 
 Moreover, Time itself was regarded as a creation, and its suc- 
 cession as recording nothing that was essential to the glory or 
 the bliss of the Creator. To the mediaeval thinker there was 
 really no progressive development of the world as we conceive 
 it. History was rather a history of corruption and of falling 
 away than a history of progress. At the creation when man 
 came straight from the hand of God, human life on earth 
 already realised its utmost perfection. After that came the 
 fall of man ; and sacred history itself was but a long drawn 
 promise of restoration, together with a foreshadowing of the 
 higher glories to which man would have been almost instan- 
 taneously uplifted had he persevered in innocence. And after 
 the Redemption, the one central event of history, came a 
 long period of degeneracy in which the race of men crowded 
 the portals of hell, while (at any rate after the " first love " of 
 the early centuries) only here and there a soul was rescued to 
 fill one of the empty seats in heaven yet left ere the tale of 
 saints should be complete and Time should be done away. 
 Hence the mediaeval saint sought refuge from the world and 
 from all temporal things. He looked through the flux and 
 reflux to something abiding, changeless, eternal, to the God 
 to whom the past and the future alike are "now." 
 
 But all this is changed. The world has not come to an 
 end. It is not Time, but hell, with its vaunted eternity, that 
 has been done away. Not that we must exaggerate the sig- 
 nificance of this change of thought ; it were the shallowest of 
 shallow mistakes to think that with the vanishing of the belief 
 in an eternal hell we have got rid of the terrible problem of 
 evil, and may now, with an easy theistic optimism, excuse 
 ourselves from all attempt to reconcile the existence of evil 
 with the goodness of God. But, nevertheless, the conditions 
 of the problem are essentially altered to us. To the mediaeval 
 thinker, what he called (and what we still call) evil was a 
 permanent thing. The deep notes of anguish from the abyss 
 were as abiding as the triumph of heaven. Their discord had 
 a place in the ultimate harmony. It was the business of the 
 
 1 Convivio, ii. 15: 102-118.
 
 i 4 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 saint to struggle against evil ; but the struggle was his per- 
 sonal probation, his choosing of the better part. He did not 
 fight with a hope of conclusive victory in any such sense as 
 would involve the extermination of the foe against which he 
 fought. The only way in which he could ultimately deal 
 with evil within the circle of his beliefs was to regard it as in 
 some way so transfigured in the sight of God that the cries of 
 the damned form a part of the divine harmony, and darkness is 
 solved in light. 1 
 
 To the mediaeval thinker, then, there was no great outlook 
 upon time ; no essential message of love was borne upon its 
 stream, save that very message which it had itself retarded and 
 was still obscuring. The evil in the world must be fought 
 against, but would never be exterminated ; it would, in some 
 inconceivable manner, be transfigured to God and to his saints, 
 but would never be annihilated to itself. Meanwhile, Eternity 
 was very nigh at hand, very real and instant in its presence. 
 Already men could believe in it ; very shortly they might 
 experience it. When man should see as God sees, then Time, 
 with its flux and reflux, fleeting and changing, would be no 
 more, and the divine All-at-once would make harmony out of 
 seeming discord. 
 
 How widely has all this changed in modern times ! It is 
 true that till quite within our own day professed theologians 
 have held and have insisted upon the doctrine of an eternal hell, 
 keeping the worst, while losing the best, of mediaeval theology. 
 But the vital currents of the world's life, the formative pro- 
 cesses which have moulded it, have long ceased to flow through 
 the channels of official theology. 
 
 With the revival of learning came an outburst of intellectual 
 activity. The new-found treasures of Greek literature opened 
 up fresh sources of delight, and seemed to multiply the possi- 
 bilities of the human mind. The earth herself expanded by 
 the discovery of the New World to match man's growing 
 powers and possibilities. The conquests of science threw back 
 the walls of the universe and carried the triumph of human 
 thought and the discovery of natural law into the boundless 
 regions of space. All tended to throw men's thoughts forward 
 to unmeasured possibilities ; and the development of the wealth 
 
 1 See Appendix K, p. 46,
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 15 
 
 of earthly life, material, intellectual, and aesthetic, seemed the 
 worthiest object of human effort. This earth 
 
 Where, in the end, 
 We find our happiness, or not at all, 1 
 
 became the centre of human interest at the very time when it 
 ceased to be physically the centre of the universe. New 
 prospects were opened up to enterprise, and life was full of 
 eager hopes. Men's eyes looked forward into the future, 
 where they could see vast and unmeasured changes looming, 
 and undefined possibilities beckoning them on. 
 
 Meanwhile, social discontent was spreading through the 
 disinherited ranks of society. Poverty was no more a thing 
 in which mankind was to acquiesce, or a condition favourable 
 to every spiritual grace, but an exclusion from that ample 
 heritage of earthly blessing to which all men had a right. 
 Fiercely as uprisings prompted by this spirit were repressed by 
 the temporal, and bitterly as they were resented by the spiritual 
 leaders of the nations, they were, nevertheless, the half-articulate 
 contribution of the masses to the formulating of the new spirit 
 which the Renaissance and the Reformation had themselves 
 unchained. 2 
 
 And at last the French Revolution stirred throughout 
 Europe the thought that the peoples may be freed ; that a 
 finer national character may be developed ; that man's lot on 
 earth may be brightened and dignified. So men's eyes looked 
 forward to a future of material and moral amelioration. The 
 greatest testimony that history can bear to the splendour of 
 this gift from France is that the gratitude of humanity survived 
 the bloody horrors with which she accompanied her gift, and 
 will survive the prolonged agony and shame over which at this 
 moment Europe weeps. 8 
 
 And this sense of growth in knowledge and in power has 
 reacted upon our anticipations and hopes for the moral nature 
 as well as the social state of man. The lost prophetic ideal of 
 the kingdom of heaven upon earth, of the golden age in the 
 future, not the past, has been recovered ; and the thought has 
 grown that evil can be not only struggled with but overcome. 
 
 1 Prelude, Bk. xi. 143, 144. 2 See Appendix L, p. 47. 
 
 3 Written in the midst of L'affaire Dreyfus. Europe is still weeping or indignant, 
 but not over France. Pianger ne con-vlen per altra sfada, 1903.
 
 16 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 And thus, in the material and the spiritual worlds alike, the 
 expression of our deepest life has been gathered into the word 
 Progress. 
 
 Progress ! Men's eyes turn to the future, but no goal is 
 in sight, for the pathway stretches too far for any eye to pierce 
 the distance. On and on, with ever brightening hope ! The 
 prospect of the world's life, which seemed so short to the medi- 
 aeval saint, is indefinitely lengthened. The conception of the 
 life of man on earth has taken an altogether new colouring ; 
 and modern religion, too, has become the religion of progress 
 and of the future. 
 
 The attitude of men's minds towards the problem of evil 
 has changed altogether. Evil can no longer be regarded as a 
 permanent thing ; or if our optimism cannot rise to so bold an 
 assertion, at any rate we will prescribe no limit to the possible 
 amelioration of the lot of man by material advance, by intel- 
 lectual achievement, and by the resultant improvement in 
 methods of education and of social organisation. If we are forced 
 to admit that in some mysterious sense it is the will of God 
 that evil should be, we proclaim with deepest conviction that 
 it is also his will that evil should cease to be, and cease to be 
 through our own effort. 
 
 It is this general change of attitude toward the future that 
 has destroyed the belief in an eternal hell. The modern mind 
 rejects the acquiescent faith that in the ultimate harmony the 
 keynotes will be struck in tones of joy at one end and of 
 despair at the other. It rests in the belief that those deep, 
 discordant notes shall not be eternal, shall not be prolonged as 
 elements of a future harmony, but shall be annihilated. 
 
 We cry with Bryant to the " unrelenting past " : 
 
 All that of good and fair 
 Has gone into thy womb from earliest time 
 
 Shall then come forth to wear 
 The glory and the beauty of its prime. 
 
 All shall come back ; each tie 
 Of pure affection shall be knit again : 
 
 Alone shall evil die, 
 And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 
 
 Evil shall die. Not only shall it die to us by ceasing to be
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 17 
 
 evil to us, but it shall die to itself likewise. There is for us no 
 eternal hell. And against the hell of cruelty and wickedness 
 that now is, we fight to win. 
 
 Who will not rejoice in the vital gain which this changed 
 attitude of mind represents ? A gain of which it would be 
 difficult to overestimate the scope and the significance ! But 
 it has not been made without some loss, temporary, let us hope, 
 but grave enough. And this loss, strange as it may seem, is 
 to the religious life. The inspiring conception of progress, the 
 sense of unknown and unimagined things which the future 
 holds in store for us, the feeling that all we know and love 
 awaits its fulfilment and even its interpretation from things as 
 yet not seen even by the eye of faith, has not only given a 
 certain vagueness to our higher life, but has even reduced it to 
 a kind of inherent self-contradiction. Like the apostle, we do 
 not " count that we have attained," and we cannot accept as 
 adequate anything that lies within even the furthest stretch of 
 definite anticipation ; and so the very idea of attainment has 
 become cramping and repellent to us. 
 
 And thus we are in danger of losing the very sense of a 
 truth which is worth enjoying as well as worth seeking, of a 
 life that is worth living as well as worth gaining. In our 
 intellectual and, in a certain sense, in our moral life, we are in 
 danger of degenerating into sportsmen who hunt for the sake 
 of hunting, not for the sake of the quarry. Lessing's motto 
 has become ours. If God offered us truth in the one hand, 
 and in the other hand the eternal search for truth coupled with 
 eternal error, we should choose to woo in vain rather than to 
 win and to enjoy our love. Yet surely this blights with a 
 certain insincerity our deepest life. We seek, not with the 
 hope of finding, but on the understood condition that we shall 
 not find. 1 
 
 The contradiction becomes more glaring when we turn to 
 the moral life, and the efforts for social amelioration which 
 happily form so large a part of our conception of the moral life 
 to-day. We are told, on the one hand, that moral effort is the 
 noblest element in our personal life, and that self- sacrifice is the 
 most beautiful of all things ; and on the other hand, that we must 
 never be content so long as there are evil or selfish impulses in 
 
 1 See Appendix M, p. 47. 
 S
 
 1 8 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 our hearts. We must not only act as though we loved our 
 neighbour as ourselves, but must actually so love him ; we 
 must not only restrain our evil passions, but must so overcome 
 them that we love only what is sound and true, and are no 
 longer tempted by evil. And in like manner we must never 
 rest content with palliating social evils, or endeavouring to make 
 compensation for social wrongs, but must strive for the 
 establishment of an order of things in which there shall be no 
 social wrongs to right. But if so, then from both sides, by the 
 quenching of the cravings of selfishness, and by removing the 
 occasions for self-sacrifice, we are striving to do away with 
 every need for the moral effort and self-sacrifice which we say 
 are our highest life ; so that if the kingdom of heaven should 
 really come the life most worth living could be lived no more. 
 Thus the moral life is involved in an inherent contradiction. 
 The very characteristic of modern, as distinguished from 
 mediaeval thought, on which I have laid stress as such an 
 unmeasured gain the fact, namely, that we fight against evil 
 with the determination to exterminate it involves us in a self- 
 contradiction ; for we fight and pray for a state of things 
 which, if it came, would put an end to all that we profess most 
 to value. Having lost our conception of a goal, of a life 
 supremely worth living for itself, we lose also the meaning of 
 progress ; and when we face the fundamental question, "What 
 shall be done with the victory ? " we can only answer, " The 
 battle will last my time ; there is enough evil to give reality, at 
 any rate, to my struggles." 
 
 But surely no thinking man can acquiesce in this. We may 
 believe that complete success in the moral welfare cannot be 
 thought of as even an abstract possibility for indefinite genera- 
 tions or centuries to come ; but, none the less, the man who 
 fights to win, however far off the victory may be, must have in 
 his mind a conception of something to be won that is worth 
 having, or he fights for he knows not what, and obeys, after 
 all, a mere blind impulse. 1 
 
 It is just such a conception of the absolute life, the life in 
 itself worthy, which seems to me to be so largely wanting in 
 our day. Seeley 2 says that most English parents, if asked what 
 their ideals for their children were, would find it extremely hard 
 to say, except that they are to take a proper position in society, 
 
 1 See Appendix N, p. 48. 2 Natural Religion, p. 135.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 19 
 
 that they are to make or to have a suitable income, and that it 
 is hard if they cannot have plenty of amusement meanwhile. 
 And comparatively few of us can give any more intelligent 
 answer to the question, " What is the ultimate purpose of 
 life ? " unless, indeed, there lurk in some corner of our memory 
 the answer supplied by the dying echo of mediaeval theology 
 caught by the opening declaration of the Shorter Catechism^ 
 " Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for 
 ever." 
 
 Do we realise the meaning of that word enjoy? "To 
 enjoy God for ever." The mediaeval thinkers say that we 
 " use " that which we desire for the sake of what it leads to, 
 and " enjoy " that which we desire for its own sake. To " use," 
 therefore, is lower than to " enjoy," and since all good things 
 lead up to the supreme source of good, however much and how- 
 ever rightly we may " enjoy " them we yet in some sort " use " 
 them. God only may we altogether " enjoy," and " enjoy him 
 for ever." Augustine l declares that " all human perversity, or 
 vice, consists in wishing to enjoy what we ought to use, and to 
 use what we ought to enjoy." It is a deep saying, for when 
 we reverse the true order of things, making the higher life 
 subservient to the lower, finding our end in what ought to be 
 our means, and our means in what ought to be our end, we are 
 enjoying what we ought to use, and using what we ought to 
 enjoy. 
 
 But, in our day, we have strangely reversed our estimate 
 of the useful and the enjoyable. When we speak of " enjoy- 
 ment " we usually mean pardonable relaxation and amusement, 
 justified only in so far as it enables us to be more " useful " 
 afterwards. We have lost the higher meaning of the word 
 "enjoy" largely because we have persistently turned our minds 
 away from the conception to which it corresponds. 
 
 But unless we recover this sense of the higher " enjoy- 
 ment " enjoyment of God and of human love and of truth 
 and of beauty unless we recover this sense of a life in- 
 trinsically worthy, then the very kingdom of God on earth 
 will itself become to us a thing merely " useful " in anticipa- 
 tion, because it stirs us to effort, but which would bring no 
 "enjoyment" with it did it really come. For if God's will 
 
 1 In the thirtieth of the eighty-three " Questions," vol. vi. in the Benedictine 
 edition. See also Aquinas, Prim. Sec. Question 71, Art. vi. 3.
 
 20 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 were actually done on earth as it is in heaven, what more, we 
 ask, would there be to live for ? Clouds of stagnation and 
 ennui settle down upon our imagination, or we escape by 
 saying that there will be " room for progress yet " ; that is to 
 say, that the deadly effects of getting what we profess to want 
 will be counteracted by our still wanting something that we 
 have not got ! 
 
 Surely we should value progress, not as mere change and 
 movement, but for the abiding treasures which it brings 
 treasures of knowledge and of love, the possession of which is at 
 once the most exalted activity and the deepest peace. If by 
 saying that in the most ideal state of life which we can 
 imagine there will be room for progress, we mean that no con- 
 ception we can now form of life can exhaust the possibilities 
 of blessedness which will unfold themselves as we become 
 wiser and more worthy ; and further, that progressive advance 
 is the law of our attainment of the highest life open to us ; 
 then we speak truly and well. But if we mean that life has 
 brought and brings to us nothing of intrinsic and abiding 
 worth, nothing that is good to keep and to live with, only 
 things good enough to go on to something else from ; if we 
 mean that attainment is disillusion, and that we ought to 
 desire never really to reach the absolutely highest point 
 accessible to us, beause life consists in moving towards what 
 we have not, rather than in "enjoying" what we have, then 
 surely our aspirations are self-contradictory, and we have lost 
 the true note of life. 
 
 " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we pray. 
 But if we shrink from the heavenly conception of the attained 
 " enjoyment " of God we practically invade heaven with our 
 earthy ideal, and, reversing our prayer, think of God's will 
 being done in heaven as it is done on earth. The conception 
 of the divine vision, of true oneness with God, having all but 
 faded away from our modern theology, and the heaven of the 
 landscape gardener, the upholsterer and the lapidary being 
 naturally found inadequate (whether presented in Milton's elabo- 
 rate unreality or in the more naive splendours of Bunyan), we 
 have begun to conceive of the life of heaven as "endless progress." 
 Endless progress to what ? To something which only remains 
 interesting so long as we get perpetually nearer to it, but 
 never reach it. Were we there, the illusion would be over.
 
 AND OF' ETERNITY 21 
 
 Stagnation and ennui are once more upon us. The endless 
 progress to perfection turns out to be only another expression 
 for the endless deferring of perfection, which indeed is only 
 perfect so long as we do not enjoy it. 1 
 
 But this is not all. Triumphant progress has not only 
 absorbed into itself the earthly and the heavenly life of man, 
 but has invaded the conception of Deity itself. Men want a 
 progressive Deity, capable of having his life enriched by suc- 
 cessive experiences, and without that terrible finality and 
 attainment which strike a chill to their hearts. A Christ of 
 limited (though it be self-limited) knowledge, a Christ who is 
 an actual participator in the struggles of life and has not won, 
 but is yet winning, his victories, is the God demanded by 
 our age. 
 
 We Unitarians might be expected to escape from this 
 anthropolatry, this worship of a man. But it is not so. The 
 idea of the eternal life seems in danger of being banished from 
 our conception of God himself. God has become to us a being 
 who lives the life of Time, who watches to see what Time 
 shall bring forth, and how his creatures shall exercise the gifts 
 he has given them. We hear of a God who cries pathetically 
 to us for our help in his struggle against evil, much as we cry 
 to him for his help. If we so conceive of God, he indeed is 
 not eternal ; but Eternity itself is not so easily exorcised. If 
 we banish it from our conception of God, it takes its awful 
 stand behind him. God himself we have entangled in the 
 flux and succession of Time, but above him now stands an iron 
 fate which holds both him and us in its grip, dictating the con- 
 ditions under which he shall strive to gain his ends, holding 
 him to laws and to necessities, which are not modes of his being 
 nor forms of his self- utterance, but necessities to which he 
 must submit. And this awful background of fate, not God, is 
 then the Eternal. 
 
 Thank God, such a creed, though it seems to me hard to 
 define it as anything but philosophical atheism, is not in fact 
 incompatible with deep devoutness and an awed sense of fellow- 
 ship with the Eternal. This whole matter of formulating 
 largely concerns the intellect, and most happily those whose 
 philosophical creeds are to each other anathema may kneel side 
 by side in prayer, and fight shoulder to shoulder in the battle 
 
 1 Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 508.
 
 22 
 
 of life, conscious only of brotherhood and of unity. But, 
 nevertheless, it is no wonder that, when such formulae of 
 religion are current, the minds even of those who accept them, 
 and far more the minds of those who utterly reject them, 
 should turn with a sense of relief and of escape to the thought 
 of the timeless unconditioned being of God and the absolute 
 fruition of life in him. God is eternal. To him every 
 where, is here, and every when is now. He 
 
 Triumphs in conclusive bliss, 
 And that supreme result of all. 
 
 He grasps all the plenitude of unmeasured life at once. He 
 "seeth the end from the beginning." To him, in his time- 
 less Eternity, the future hath nought to give ; from him the 
 past hath taken nought away. To his "now," all times are 
 present ; and as we lift our souls to him we taste something of 
 the life wherein not the progress of Time but the fruition of 
 Eternity makes us the sharers of his being. 
 
 But do these phrases really represent any positive concep- 
 tions ? Or are they mere grandiose verbiage ? Formulae are 
 dangerous things. It is easy to talk about Eternity as the 
 abiding reality which lies behind fluctuating time, and is itself 
 timeless. It is not very difficult to acquire a kind of knack of 
 using such phrases and working them into a juggling solution 
 of problems which are in truth insoluble. 1 There may be a 
 cant in speaking of timeless and spaceless existence, as there 
 may be in all other things. Let us ask ourselves then, in all 
 seriousness, whether we mean anything, and if so what, by 
 timeless existence. 
 
 Do what we will, we cannot think time or space out of an 
 objective existence. Earnest attempts by thinkers, ancient and 
 modern, have been made to accomplish this impossibility ; but 
 they have failed, and they must fail ; and if we talk of Time 
 itself being swallowed up in Eternity, we are speaking of some- 
 thing which we cannot by any possibility conceive. We may 
 indeed think of ourselves or of God as in a state of existence 
 which has no relations with time, to which time, therefore, has 
 no significance and on which it has no hold. But in the back 
 of our minds we always find a reservation that time is going on 
 all the same, even though there be nothing material nor any 
 
 1 See Appendix O, p. 48.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 23 
 
 changing succession of mental experiences to mark its progress. 
 This reservation may be, and I believe is, unphilosophical ; but 
 it is human, and it is ineradicable. We cannot then think 
 Time away ; but many of our experiences seem to indicate that 
 in proportion as we touch our highest realisation, we tend to 
 escape from the dominion of time ; so that we must needs con- 
 ceive of the existence of the Supreme Being as timeless, and 
 our own life, so far as it is divine, as sharing in such existence. 
 
 We know that when one emotion of perfect uniformity and 
 simplicity dominates our whole being, the sense of succession 
 is lost and we know not whether it is after minutes or after 
 hours that we re-enter into relations with time. We cannot 
 think away time ; but we can think of ourselves as passing out 
 of relation to it. 
 
 And many of our more ordinary experiences seem to tell us 
 that the essential difference in the significance to us between 
 things past, present, and future, is dependent upon the bodily 
 organisation through which our mental experience comes to 
 us. A greater vividness generally belongs to the experiences 
 attached to a present nerve impression than to the memory of 
 a former one. But this is not always so. Often our past is 
 more vivid to us than our present life, and more vivid than it 
 was itself when present. It is a commonplace, too, that ex- 
 periences when anticipated are sometimes more keen and vivid 
 than when they come, even though they bring no disillusion or 
 disappointment. In such cases past and present, or past and 
 future, seem to reverse their usual significance to us. 
 
 But we may go much further than this. Mozart tells us 1 
 how one of his own musical compositions would sometimes 
 assert itself to him, not as a succession of notes and chords, but 
 as a co-existent whole. " All the inventing and making goes 
 on in me as in a beautiful strong dream. But the best of all 
 is the hearing of it all at once." And is there not a sense in 
 which the like is true of all of us up to the limit of our 
 musical capacity ? When we hear the second bar of a piece of 
 music, has the first bar gone ? If it were so, there would be 
 no such thing as continuous music at all. It is because all of 
 the piece that we have already heard is still, in some limited 
 
 1 Quoted by Prof. William James, Principles of Psychology, i. 255. See also 
 the citation on p. 128 of this volume, to which I owe my first knowledge of the 
 passage.
 
 24 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 sense, present with us, that we can follow it with intelligent 
 emotion. And when we know it well, it is not only what we 
 have heard and what we are hearing, but what we are yet to 
 hear, that combines to produce the present effect. And so 
 with literature. Contrast the feverish excitement with which 
 we follow a play or a story because we do not know what is 
 coming, and our feeling as we read The Agamemnon, The 
 Divine Comedy, or King Lear, when we do know what is 
 coming. How crude, how shallow and immature, seems the 
 successional excitement in the one case compared with the 
 awful or beautiful sense of co-existing completeness in the 
 other. 
 
 And so too with life. Though we know not what is com- 
 ing, we know what has come, and our deepest and richest 
 experiences gather into themselves the past, and at the same 
 time transform it. So that even that seeming irrevoc- 
 ability which we think of as the great characteristic of the 
 past turns out to be an illusion. The past is not, in any 
 effective sense, irrevocable. We may yet make it, in large 
 measure, what we will. For detached experiences are in them- 
 selves mere unintelligible fragments. It is when they are taken 
 as parts of a whole that they have their meaning. And what 
 is the whole of which our past is a part ? Is that irrevocably 
 fixed beyond our control ? Nay, our past as well as our future 
 shall be what we shall make it. It is a fragment that awaits 
 its interpretation, nay, awaits its full being, its true creation, 
 from the whole. 1 
 
 Thus past, present, and future proclaim themselves even to 
 our own experience as varying modes that draw their signifi- 
 cance from conditions relative to our organisation, not essential 
 to themselves. The sharp distinctions between them seem to 
 yield to the fusing power of our higher and intenser experiences ; 
 and already we may know something of the life eternal. 
 
 Can we seriously believe, then, that time has the same signi- 
 ficance to God which it has to us in our ordinary moments ? 
 Can we suppose that it really matters to him whether this 
 thing took place yesterday, takes place to-day, or shall take 
 place to-morrow ? Are not the things that shall be as real a 
 part of his infinite life as the things that have been ? 2 Does 
 
 1 Compare a well-known passage in the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ii. 
 2 See Appendix P, p. 49.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 25 
 
 consciousness of one thing need to go in order that the con- 
 sciousness of another may come ? Or is there anything 
 corresponding to the pressure of instant nerve and sense experi- 
 ence which alone distinguishes present from future and past for 
 us, in his august and all-embracing being ? Does time in its 
 progress really add to his experiences and progressively fill in 
 his being ? Fill it whence ? And with what ? Are there 
 then sources outside the Infinite, whence he can draw, and so 
 add to his growing treasures ? And does he need the solace 
 of the thought that these sources at least are inexhaustible, so 
 that he too may for ever " imitate by going, the life which he 
 may not grasp by abiding " ? 
 
 Nay, God is eternal, and in some measure man may share his 
 eternal life. Creatures of time as we are, we may rise more 
 and more as our life strengthens and deepens into a life to which 
 succession does not indeed cease to matter, but to which it 
 matters less and less, while coexistence matters ever more and 
 more. We too, in our measure, seeing God, may see as God 
 sees. The wild exhilaration of searching and struggling may 
 give place to the deep joy of having found and vanquished. 
 The life of knowing and of loving may be found supremely 
 worthy. We may taste a life not worth the wooing only, but 
 worth the winning and enjoying. 
 
 It were indeed a vain and presumptuous thing to say that 
 any one of us can establish himself in a life which shall be 
 independent of all that Time can give or take away ; but, none 
 the less, just those things that Time cannot touch constitute our 
 dearest wealth. Just in so far as we have love which shall survive, 
 though that to which it clings be taken away from us, in so 
 far as we have wisdom which shall abide, though the knowledge 
 from which it was gathered fade away, in so far as our fruition 
 has brought us to a sense of the worth of life which will 
 triumph over any downfall or wretchedness that may be in 
 store for us, in so far as our sorrow has brought us into the 
 wide fellowship of human suffering and anguish, and given us 
 a tenderness that shall endure though years of placid comfort 
 should flow over us, in so far as we have reached a life not 
 subject to change or the workings of Time, so far we have 
 some sense of eternal realities, so far we may feel that we 
 see God, and may, though with awe -struck humility, ask 
 whether haply in some measure we are seeing as God sees.
 
 26 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 Infinitesimal as our attainment may be vast as the inex- 
 haustible, even unrealisable possibilities relentless as the call 
 to service, and the demand that we should make our efforts 
 " useful " to ourselves and others, and cheerful as our response 
 to it may be deep as the passion, and penetrating as the need 
 for progress, we shall nevertheless know what it is to 
 " enjoy " ; and shall not only strive after, but shall in some 
 measure have^ the life eternal. 
 
 Thus to conceive of a life in and with God, worth living, 
 not for what it leads to, but for what it is ; thus to think of life 
 as a whole, thus to conceive of love and knowledge as eternal 
 fruition, will surely throw us back into our life of progress and 
 of action with a quickened realisation of its significance, with 
 the sense of its inherent contradiction banished, with its daily 
 fragments of intercourse with God, with nature, and with man, 
 deepened into communion. 
 
 Progress has a meaning if there is a goal. Fighting against 
 the foes of life, gathering and spreading the means of life has a 
 meaning, if we know how to live. The thin-drawn succes- 
 sions of Time have received the transfiguring touch of Eternity, 
 and we can live in the present and wear the yoke of time with 
 deepened faith, with brightened hope, with more glowing love, 
 because we fight not as those that beat the air, but as those 
 who know what it is to live, and who would fain throw open 
 the gates of life that they and their brethren may go in thereat 
 and live the life of God.
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 MANIFOLD signs of renewed interest in the later Middle Ages (4-6). 
 We are awakening from the misconceptions inherited from the 
 polemics of the Renaissance and the Reformation, realising that the 
 breach between mediaeval and modern times was not so absolute as 
 we supposed, and recognising in the weakness of the Middle Ages 
 dangers not yet vanquished, in their strength sources of life not yet 
 exhausted, and in both an unsuspected kinship with the forces that 
 move our own lives (6-9). Hence the interest and the import- 
 ance of a sympathetic study of the Middle Ages (9). 
 
 The group of religious ideas selected for study gathers round the 
 conceptions of Eternity, Fruition, the vision of God (10-12). 
 Reasons for prominence of the thought of Eternity in the Middle 
 Ages (12-14). The m dern conception of Progress (14-17) has so 
 averted our minds from the ideas of Eternity and Fruition as to 
 involve our spiritual life in a self-contradiction (17, 1 8). Necessity 
 of recovering the sense of the higher " enjoyment " if we are to 
 rescue our thought from this tangle (18, 19). The true significance 
 of Progress as the means of realisation, and the false habit of mind 
 engendered by the misconception that dwells on Progress to the 
 exclusion of Fruition in man's life here and hereafter, and in the 
 being of God (19-21). The inevitableness of the conception of 
 Eternity, which this misconception banishes from the being of God, 
 but cannot remove from the constitution of things ; and the relief 
 of turning to a religious ideal which finds Eternity in the being of 
 God, not behind and above it (21, 22). How our own experience 
 leads us to the conception of the Eternal life (22-24), anc * teaches 
 us to believe that God is eternal and that we may share in his 
 eternal fruition (24-26). Quickening and clarifying effect of this 
 belief and this experience upon our active life, and upon our 
 devotion to the cause of progress (26).
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A (TO p. 6). 
 
 HEGEL (1770-1831), in his Geschichte der Philosophic, iii. 99, declared 
 his intention of traversing the Middle Ages with seven-league boots, 
 and carried out his design by dealing, for instance, with Albertus 
 Magnus in two pages and with Roger Bacon in exactly two lines. 
 Prantl (1820-88), as quoted by Professor Seth in his article on 
 " Scholasticism " in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, declared that there 
 was no such thing as philosophy in the Middle Ages, there were 
 only logic and theology. G. H. Lewes, in his Biographical History 
 of Philosophy (1845-46), gave us "Series I., Ancient Philosophy," 
 and " Series II., Bacon to the Present Day." But between Proclus 
 (412-485) and Bacon (1561-1629) he gave us nothing at all. 
 When he elaborated this work into a more systematic History of 
 Philosophy from Thales to Comte, he remedied this defect ; but even 
 in the fifth and latest edition, of 1880, he quotes with approval the 
 remark of Hegel given above (see vol. ii. p. 2), and devotes about 
 loo pages to the Middle Ages, having given about 400 to ancient 
 philosophy. On the other hand, Erdmann, who, I suppose, is the 
 most recent and the most authoritative historian of philosophy, 
 gives about 200 pages to ancient and more than 400 to mediaeval 
 (pre-Baconian) philosophy. (Grundriss der Gesch. der Philosophic, 
 J. E. Erdmann, 4th ed. 1896. English translation, History of 
 Philosophy, 1893.) It is equally instructive to compare the article 
 in Rees's Encyclopaedia (vol. xxxi. 1819) on "Scholastic Philo- 
 sophy " with Professor Seth's article, above alluded to, in the 
 Encyclopedia Britannica (vol. xxi. 1886). 
 
 Every intelligent student must feel the deepest admiration for 
 the sympathetic sagacity which enabled Auguste Comte to under- 
 stand, or at least divine, the significance of mediaeval thought at a 
 time and amid surroundings which were as unfavourable as could 
 possibly be imagined to any such appreciation. Amongst the many 
 claims of this great man to respect and gratitude we ought to give a 
 
 28
 
 2 9 
 
 high place to his persistent protest against shallow and chaotic mis- 
 conception with respect to the Middle Ages. 
 
 B (TO P. 6). 
 
 The essential difference between the spirit of Humanism and 
 the spirit of the Reformation is too obvious to be overlooked in 
 Italyy'the birthplace of Humanism. It is impossible for any one to 
 confound the movement that centred round Lorenzo di Medici 
 and Leo X. with the spirit which uttered itself in Savonarola. In 
 Germany, Holland, and England the alliance between the two 
 movements was close and widespread, yet after all the attempts of 
 the historians to treat them as belonging to each other the ineradic- 
 able impression remains that Luther and Erasmus stood for two 
 completely different things. The strength and the weakness of 
 Luther and Calvin, the good and the evil that came of their work, 
 are alike alien in nature and in principle from the purposes and 
 ideals of Erasmus. 
 
 C (TO P. 7). 
 
 I lay stress on the word ideal. There could hardly be a more 
 serious mistake than to suppose that the study of the history of the 
 Popes and the Papal Court gives an adequate idea of the historical 
 significance of the Papacy. For example, we constantly come upon 
 the influence of the ideal Papacy in Bede's ecclesiastical history, in 
 the organisation of Alfred's kingdom, or in such a poem as the 
 wonderful elegy by Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans (born 1075), 
 given at the close of Bryce's Holy Roman Empire. The idea of the 
 Papacy was a living and forming influence upon Europe of the first 
 importance, and it seems as though the great Popes had power to 
 confirm and deepen it, but the unworthy and insignificant ones had 
 no power to degrade or destroy it. In like manner Dante hurls his 
 terrible invective against one after another of the contemporary 
 Popes, but retains his passionate devotion to the Papacy. He 
 denounces Boniface VIII. as the "prince of the new Pharisees," but 
 declares that when Philip the Fair persecuted him "Christ was 
 crucified again" in his person. (Inferno, xxvii. 85; Purgatorio, 
 xx. 85-90.) The power exercised over the faithful by Rome and 
 by the ideal Papacy was as independent of the actual Popes as the 
 power exercised by Jerusalem was of its Saracen conquerors. 
 Boccaccio (Giorn. i. nov. 2), by a random shot, indicated one of 
 the most fascinating and difficult of the problems of history when 
 he sarcastically told the story of a Jew who was converted to 
 Christianity by visiting Rome, for there he saw the abominable
 
 30 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 lives the clergy were leading, saw the whole place made into a 
 "devil's smithy," saw the Pope and all his court toiling to destroy 
 Christianity and toiling in vain. Truly the religion that could 
 live under such tutelage must be divine ! 
 
 D (TO P. 7). 
 
 The history of our own island is a little perplexing to us. It is 
 so continuous, so interesting, and so unmistakably significant, that it 
 does not the least fit in with our general conception of the Middle 
 Ages ; and except that we vaguely date our historical romances by 
 reference to some one of our kings by preference, Richard I. I 
 fancy that most of us do not locate the " Middle Ages " in England 
 at all, but in some other place, with respect to which our notions 
 are vaguer probably Germany or France. 
 
 E (TO P. 7). 
 
 Natura non facit saltuf. It is worth while pausing for a moment 
 to examine this saying, as the process will throw a good deal of 
 indirect light on the subject of the first portion of the essay. We 
 are accustomed to regard this maxim, usually ascribed to Linnaeus, 
 as embodying one of the great principles that differentiate modern 
 from mediaeval and ancient science. Harbottle's Dictionary of 
 Quotations will enable the reader to look up the reference in the 
 Philosophia Botanica, Upsala, 1750, where he will find the phrase 
 both at the beginning and at the end of 77, used with admirable 
 point (see below). But Harbottle will also enable him to trace 
 the maxim in a slightly different form back to a work by Jacques 
 Tissot, published at Lyons in 1613, and reprinted by Edward 
 Fournier in vol. ix. of his Variet'es Historiques et Litt'eraires^ 1859, 
 p. 248. The treatise in question is an essay on some bones which 
 were supposed to be those of a giant Theutobocus, but which 
 modern science pronounces to belong to a mastodon. The treatise 
 is written in French, but the maxim, " Natura enim in suis opera- 
 tionibus non facit saltum" is quoted in Latin. Evidently, therefore, 
 it was current in the early seventeenth century. I have not been 
 able to trace it further back in the form of an aphorism, but the 
 principle is taken for granted by Dante as holding good in the 
 physical universe, and is applied by him to the intellectual order. 
 "And since in the intellectual order of the universe we rise and 
 descend by almost continuous steps from the lowest form to the 
 highest, and from the highest to the lowest (just as we observe to be 
 the case in the material order), and between the angelic nature,
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 31 
 
 which is an intellectual form of existence, and the human soul, there 
 is no intermediate step, but the one is, so to speak, continuous with 
 the other in the order of gradations ; and between the human life 
 and the most developed life of the brute animals, again, there is no 
 intermediate step ; and we see many men so vile, and of so low 
 condition, that they seem scarce to. be other than beasts ; so also we 
 are to suppose and firmly believe that there be some so noble and of 
 such high condition that they are, as it were, nought other than 
 angels. Otherwise, the human species would not be continued in 
 both directions, which may not be." (Convivio, iii. 7 : 69-88.) It is 
 particularly interesting to compare this passage in Dante with the 
 passage in Linnaeus. He declares that "All plants have affinity on 
 every side, like the territories marked on a geographical map." And 
 again, " The absence of specimens not yet discovered is the cause 
 of the Natural Method being defective, and the discovery of more 
 specimens will complete it. Natura enim non facit sa/tus." The 
 treatise being written in Latin there is nothing in the language to 
 indicate that this phrase is quoted as a current aphorism, but its 
 repetition and the way in which it is used give the impression that 
 it is so. 
 
 Setting these two passages together will certainly not make us 
 think little of the progress of science between Dante and Linnaeus ; 
 but it will help us to regard that progress as a development rather 
 than a revolution, and to find the stress of the change rather in 
 the altered directions than in the altered methods and principles 
 of human thought. 
 
 The same lesson may be taught by Dante's insistence on the 
 principle (popularly regarded as Bacon's specific contribution to 
 thought), that " Experiment is the fountain whence science flows." 
 See Paradise, ii. 95, 96. 
 
 F (TO P. 8). 
 
 The most terrible development of the demonology of the Middle 
 Ages is not itself mediaeval. The trials for witchcraft, says Leclcy 
 (History of Rationalism, 4th edition, 1870, vol. i. p. 55), reached 
 their climax in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Malleus 
 Maleficarum was written in 1487. The persecutions raged through- 
 out the sixteenth century, there was scarcely any sensible abatement 
 in the seventeenth century (Matthias Hopkins was appointed witch- 
 finder in 1642), and all through the eighteenth century official 
 executions occasionally took place. See Roskoff, Geschichte des 
 Teufels, vol. ii. 293-314. It was therefore not the " Dark Ages," 
 but the ages of supposed enlightenment and re-birth that brought 
 this darkest and most terrible blood-guiltiness upon us.
 
 32 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 G (TO P. 8). 
 
 Naturally the Humanists and the Reformers, as well as the 
 philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were by 
 no means so free from the influences of the Middle Ages as they 
 supposed themselves to be, and arc usually represented as being. 
 Dr. Stallo well observes : l " But, although the founders of modern 
 physical science at the outset of their labours were animated by a 
 spirit of declared hostility to the teachings of medieval scholasticism 
 a fact which is nowhere more conspicuous than in the writings 
 of Descartes [1596-1650] nevertheless, when they entered upon 
 the theoretical discussion of the results of their experiments and 
 observations, they unconsciously proceeded upon the old assumptions 
 of the very ontology which they openly repudiated." 
 
 My own (very imperfect) acquaintance with Bacon (1561-1629) 
 began with his Wisdom of the Ancients, which (though he wrote it 
 in Latin) was one of the English subjects which I had to prepare 
 for my degree. I shall never forget the bewilderment and scorn 
 with which I read what seemed its utterly fantastic and futile 
 allegories. Bacon's way of looking at things was equally remote 
 from anything classical or modern which I had ever encountered. 
 I have since found the key to it in the elaborate allegorisings of 
 the Middle Ages, and their dim sense that the mythology and 
 devotion of pagan times must have some intelligible place and 
 meaning in the scheme of things. It is interesting to note that 
 Erdmann includes Bacon in the transitional period of Mediaeval 
 Philosophy. 
 
 As for the Reformers, Selden (1584-1654) boldy declares: 
 " Popish books teach and inform ; what we know, we know much 
 out of them. The Fathers, Church Story, School-men, all may 
 pass for Popish books ; and if you take away them, what learning 
 will you leave ? . . . These Puritan Preachers, if they have any- 
 thing good, they have it out of Popish books, though they will not 
 acknowledge it, for fear of displeasing the people." (Table Talk, 
 ix. 4.) We Unitarians are certainly not likely to fall into the 
 error of supposing that the Reformers had completely emancipated 
 themselves from mediaeval and scholastic traditions. 
 
 The combination of conscious revolt against scholasticism with 
 unconscious bondage to it gives curious results, even in so late a 
 writer as Milton (1608-1674). Many readers must have been per- 
 plexed by his insistence upon the bona fides of the angelic appetite 
 and digestion. Raphael eats not in appearance only : 
 
 1 Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (vol. xlii. of Regan Paul's International 
 Scientific Series), jrd edition, 1890, p. iv., introduction to the 2nd edition.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 33 
 
 But with keen dispatch 
 Of real hunger, and concoctive heat, 
 To transubstantiate. 
 
 (Paradise Lost, v. 436 sqq.). It is true he entertained "No fear 
 lest dinner cool " (line 396), but that was only because the dinner 
 was never hot, not because the angel was indifferent to Eve's 
 housewifely care as to the proper preparation of his food. What 
 in the world, we ask, is the meaning of it all ? The answer is to be 
 found in the fact that Milton, in spite of his esteeming Spenser 
 above the Schoolmen, 1 has inherited from Aquinas and his pre- 
 decessors a developed system of angelology which he vainly attempts 
 to reduce within scriptural limits. The Schoolmen had declared 
 that angels, being pure "form," had no material bodies whatever. 
 But this is unscriptural. Did not angels eat meat with Abraham ? 
 These ascetic and unauthorised refinements of the Schoolmen, 
 then, must be denounced, and wholesome scriptural doctrine sub- 
 stituted for them. So Milton misses both the naivete of the early 
 Hebrew narratives and the elaborate spirituality of the Schoolmen, 
 and the result is strangely gross and incongruous. It may further 
 be noted that whereas Milton apparently intends to throw a slight 
 upon scholastic philosophy by making the devils occupy themselves 
 in philosophical discussions (Paradise Lost, ii. 555-569) ; yet when 
 he comes actually to "justify the ways of God to men" himself, 
 and to place his apology on the lips of the Deity (Paradise Lost, iii. 
 80-1 34), he has nothing to give us but a jejune summary of scholastic 
 argumentation stripped of the religious awe and reverential sense of 
 mystery, and stripped of the sublime metaphysics which give it 
 dignity when dealt with by the mediaeval teachers, from Boethius 
 down to Dante. 
 
 Lastly, as to the Humanists. The service they rendered to 
 culture and general enlightenment, by vindicating and recovering 
 the classical heritage which had been so largely abandoned and 
 neglected in the Middle Ages, is of course inestimable ; but looked 
 at from another point of view, their efforts during three centuries 
 constitute one huge pathetic blunder. For at the very time when 
 they were scoffing at the Middle Ages they were prolonging a 
 mediaeval tradition that had lost its justification. For three centuries 
 they strove to make literature in a dead language, and to throw 
 discredit upon the real literature which the modern languages were 
 producing ! In the fourteenth century there existed, in the first 
 place, the almost effete tradition of a Latin literature proper ; in 
 the second place, the Latinity of the theologians, historians, and 
 
 1 " Our sage and serious poet, Spenser (whom I dare be known to think a better 
 teacher than Scotus or Aquinas) ' ' (Artopagltica). 
 
 C
 
 34 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 so forth, which, within its own limits, was by no means a dead 
 language. It had the power of adapting and developing itself to 
 changing needs, and it had grown up in direct contact with the 
 ideas and purposes it was required to meet. In the third place, 
 there were the vernacular languages which had already been 
 developed into splendid literary instruments. The idea that Latin 
 was the only language in which a scholar and a gentleman could 
 express himself had received a rude shock at the hands of Dante 
 (1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-1374), and Boccaccio (1313-1375), 
 to mention no others. But Petrarch himself, the first of the 
 Humanists, reinforced this obsolescent tradition by the direction 
 which he gave to the classical revival of which he was the apostle. 
 His own Italian poems, alone of all his voluminous productions, 
 now rank as literature ; but he himself treated them as wholly 
 insignificant, and threw the full weight of his unique influence, 
 with extraordinary success, into the attempt to make a more classical 
 Latinity the vehicle of literary activity. It is impossible to conceive 
 a more radical misconception of the actual facts and forces of the 
 time. Instead of seeing that the vernacular languages were now 
 ripe for the highest literature, he considered that the requirement 
 of the age was to reassert the universal claim of Latin ; and at the 
 same time he lowered its vitality by reducing it to an artificial 
 imitation of the classics, and robbing it of its power of free 
 development to meet contemporary requirements. Thus the 
 revival of Letters threatened for more than a century to be the 
 death of Literature ; and when, at the end of the fifteenth and 
 beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the vernacular poets again 
 rose into significance, they had to contend against the pedantic 
 prejudices of their contemporaries, from which their own minds 
 were not yet liberated. Politian (1454-1494) succumbed ; Ariosto 
 (1474-1533) long wavered; and while a Nicodemus Frischlinus 
 (sixteenth century) pathetically bewails his hard fate in having to 
 assure himself that historical precedent exists before he can use a 
 word in his poetry, whereas Virgil could use or make whatever 
 words he chose; a Lilius Gyraldus (1478-1552) enumerates, 
 literally by the hundred, the forgotten Latin "poets" of his times, 
 and then expresses his pained surprise that there are men (and 
 learned men too) who prefer the Italian to the Latin literature of 
 the day ! And this when Ariosto (not to mention any others) had 
 lived and written. During this same period, Melanchthon (1497- 
 1560) in his declamation " De Corrigendis Studiis" identifies, almost 
 in terms, the history of Latinity with the history of theology and 
 of civilisation. He has some words of respect for Gregory the 
 Great, Bede and Alquin, who struggled against the barbarism that
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 35 
 
 surrounded them. The Victorines (Hugh, Richard, and others) 
 were " not utterly bad writers " (non pessimi scriptores) ; but after 
 that, "whether prompted by intellectual wantonness or by sheer 
 contentiousness of spirit, men hit upon Aristotle," and then the 
 game was up. " Hence issued the Thomases, the Scotuses, the 
 Duranduses, the Seraphics, Cherubics, and the rest of them." 1 
 It is amusing to note how the same writer, in his declamation 
 Eloquently Encomium, two hundred years after Dante had written 
 the Divine Comedy, and at the very time when Luther was flooding 
 Germany with his tracts, urges his students in all sincerity not to 
 grudge the time that must be devoted to the cultivation of a 
 polished Latin style, because if they do not acquire it, they will 
 not be able to make themselves understood. Scotus and the rest 
 he declares are unintelligible because of their bad Latinity. But 
 time brings its revenges. Probably most modern students will find 
 the Humanists, as a rule, beset with difficulties, in spite of their 
 flowing and choice Latinity, partly because they constantly assume 
 that the reader will recognise the context and understand the 
 meaning of every classical phrase and reference, and partly owing 
 to the forced and artificial union between the classical vehicle and 
 the modern thought it is to convey ; whereas the language of 
 Aquinas and Scotus, whatever else it may be, is at least of admir- 
 able lucidity. 2 
 
 The ecclesiasticism which is the most prominent, though perhaps 
 not the most significant, of the present manifestations of medias- 
 valism, serves admirably to illustrate the twofold point that the 
 Reformers did not really do all that they thought they were doing, 
 and could not give permanency to all that they actually did. They 
 thought they were abolishing the Church as an officially organised 
 and authoritative body of persons who should interpret and develop 
 revealed truth, and were only preserving the Church in the sense 
 
 1 Melanchthon declares (truly enough) that Aristotle, difficult at best, is practi- 
 cally unintelligible in the Latin translations used by the Schoolmen ; but he entirely 
 fails to recognise the stupendous sagacity, learning and patience which enabled such 
 writers as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, by the aid of old commentators 
 and such other helps as they could command, to decipher and expound their unin- 
 telligible text. They did so with such good effect, that the student of the less 
 known works of Aristotle will, at this day, have great difficulty in finding anything 
 more helpful and satisfactory than the commentaries of Thomas Aquinas j and the 
 latest editors of the Metaphysics still quote Albertus Magnus. 
 
 2 The passages in Frischlinus, Lilius Gyraldus and Melanchthon (together with 
 an indefinite number of further illustrative passages) may be found respectively in 
 No. 7, 10, and 4 of the extremely useful series of Latelnischc Litteratwdenkmaler del 
 x-v. u. x-vi. Jahrhunderts brought out under the general editorship of Max Hermann, 
 Berlin, 1891, etc. See specificallv Deutsche Lyriker des Sechszehnten Jahrhunderti, 
 p. 5Z sq. Lilius G. Gyraldus De foetis nostrorum temforum, p. 85. Philippug 
 Melanchthon Declamations, pp. 15 sqq. and p. 29.
 
 36 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 of the fellowship of faithful souls. But in point of fact, not only 
 did they carry over with them bodily from the Church inheritances 
 such as the substitution of the Sunday for the Sabbath, or the canon 
 of the New Testament ; but each sect, within the limits of its own 
 power, established by symbols and assemblies a church in miniature 
 which was ready to back its decisions by such penalties and persecu- 
 tions as it could command. Milton found that 
 
 New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large ; l 
 
 and the creeds which were to bind men's consciences were still 
 drawn up in accordance with the vote of the " odd man " and 
 promulgated on the authority of the " Holy Ghost." 2 
 
 Gradually the untenable nature of the Protestant position has 
 become clear. On the one hand the authority claimed for the 
 Scriptures themselves is seen to rest on a basis no sounder in 
 principle than that claimed by the Church, so that if the authority 
 of the Church is indeed to be annulled, the authority of the Scrip- 
 tures must be annulled with it ; and on the other hand the hopeless 
 impossibility of regulating faith and morals by a miscellaneous 
 collection of writings, the composition of which stretches over some 
 thousand years, has become patent, so that only an authoritative 
 interpreter can possibly make such a code effective. Thus the 
 Reformers went either too far or not far enough in assailing the 
 authority of the Church and maintaining that of the Scriptures. 
 
 Moreover, the antisocial implications of the exaggerated religious 
 individualism of the Reformers, always obvious to the Catholics, are 
 beginning to make themselves dimly felt by Protestants also. The 
 alliance between social enthusiasm and the High Church movement 
 which characterises our great cities is not fortuitous, and the felt 
 need of spiritual fellowship is a part of the felt need of fellowship 
 in general. Wiser and less sterile ways of meeting the need will be 
 found ; but it is well, not ill, that the need should be felt. 
 
 A curious minor current of this movement may be perceived 
 amongst ourselves. As long as the orthodox Dissenters preached 
 doctrines revolting to our reason and our conscience they exercised 
 little influence upon us save by repulsion. It seemed as though the 
 action were all the other way ; and we perpetually and reasonably 
 congratulated ourselves on the growth amongst other Churches of 
 the views we advocated. Now the reaction has set in. The repel- 
 ling features of their theology having to a great extent disappeared, 
 
 1 See his poem On the New Fore en of Conscience under the Long Parliament. 
 
 2 "They talk (but blasphemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is President of 
 their General Councils, when the truth is, the odd man is still the Holy Ghost." 
 Selden's Table Talk, xxx.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 37 
 
 their mere bulk and mass begins to exercise a natural attractive 
 influence upon us, and we are in great danger of being drawn out 
 of our own orbit into a hazy and nondescript theological and christo- 
 logical position which finds its relative justification in their traditions 
 and antecedents, not in ours. Here again the sensitiveness to the 
 wider streams of spiritual life around us is good, but its manifesta- 
 tions may none the less be wanting in depth and consistency. If it 
 develops our own traditions and makes us dig deeper, it is well. 
 If it substitutes other traditions and makes us abandon our own 
 place in the truth-mine, then the world will be the poorer. We 
 may note, in this connection, that the doctrine of the authority of 
 the Church is being revived amongst us in a vague but very 
 real manner. We no longer discuss how far down in ecclesiastical 
 history the Councils of the Church are to be regarded as authorita- 
 tive, yet many of us practically accept the utterances of the early 
 Church if only it is early enough as authoritative sources of 
 information as to the significance of the personality of Jesus. There 
 is a type of Christology amongst us that seems to amount to this : 
 " It is true that, critically speaking, the synoptic Gospels are our 
 only source of information as to what Jesus said and did, but they 
 are not our only source of information as to what he was and is ; 
 for in truth Jesus himself appears never really to have preached his 
 own Gospel, except in the most inadequate and shrivelled form. 
 Paul (who does not seem to have heard or known him, and who 
 was warmly opposed by those who had), and the writer of the fourth 
 Gospel (who is not a historian), really knew what Christ was ; and 
 the Christian consciousness recognises the truth of what they said. 
 The real Gospel, then, is not to be fonnd, in any effective sense, on 
 the lips of Jesus, but must be looked for in the teachings of the 
 early Church, tested and confirmed by the Christian consciousness." 
 
 It is a curious indication of how little logic goes for in the 
 formation, or even the formulating, of opinions, that Mr. Carpenter's 
 challenge of the validity of this " Christian consciousness " as a 
 witness to the identity of a historical personage with the source of 
 a spiritual experience has (so far as I know) remained without 
 answer and without effect (see pp. 241 sqq. of this volume). 
 
 There is another aspect of the revolt against ecclesiastical 
 authority, with respect to which we seem in danger of misconceiving 
 the nature, if not of exaggerating the magnitude, of the great change 
 that has taken place since the close of the Middle Ages. I refer to 
 the whole theory of compulsion and persecution. Happily there 
 can be no doubt of the enormous advance in humanity which has 
 characterised the Western nations in recent centuries. The frightful 
 recrudescence of cruelty and barbarism into which we relapse when
 
 38 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 races on different levels of power or civilisation come into close 
 contact, as in the Southern States of America, and, in a lesser 
 degree, in some of our own colonies, should indeed warn us that 
 the hideous passions habitually supressed in civilised communities, 
 lie nearer the surface than we should like to think (just as scientific 
 and industrial callousness to the suffering of animals may be only 
 too easily developed in the midst of a tender-hearted community) ; 
 but when all abatements have been made, the gain remains real and 
 stupendous. Subject, however, to the limitations imposed by this 
 growing sense of humanity, our ideas of compulsion, not to say 
 persecution, have rather changed their direction than their funda- 
 mental theory. We do not (and it is difficult to see why we 
 should) hesitate to apply compulsion wherever we are quite 
 satisfied that a body of persons exists that can pronounce authorita- 
 tively as to what is good for humanity at large ; but we have 
 changed our minds very considerably with respect to the class of 
 persons and the class of opinions to which we think authority can 
 rightly attach. We compel parents to have their children taught 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic, because, in spite of Ruskin, we are 
 most of us convinced of the extreme importance of these accomplish- 
 ments. We persecute the " Peculiar People," because they do not 
 call in, on critical occasions, members of an official class, who we 
 believe are in a position to pronounce with authority on matters of 
 grave consequence to them. And it is only within the last few 
 months that we have allowed parents to choose for their children 
 between what they hold to be the risks of vaccination and what 
 others hold to be the risks of smallpox. But in none of these 
 matters are we prepared to carry compulsion or persecution to any- 
 thing approaching the lengths which seemed justifiable to our 
 ancestors. The anti-vaccinationists have already won their victory. 
 If the " Peculiar People " persevere, they will surely soon win 
 theirs. And if Ruskin's views on the relative importance of reading 
 and writing amongst the arts of life were to gain anything like the 
 volume of conscientious support to which their intrinsic merits seem 
 to entitle them, we should have no more cases of little girls 
 relegated from home tuition to the charge of the School Board for 
 not being able to spell conceive in the conventional fashion. 
 
 There is, however, another and more dangerous aspect of this 
 question. Without going into any abstract speculations on the 
 philosophy of ethics, we may say that morality as conceived by the 
 community consists in those principles of conduct and habits of 
 mind which the general sense pronounces to be of supreme 
 significance. Now every body of experts is apt to believe, and to 
 persuade those who accept its authority to believe, that the general
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 39 
 
 opinion of what is most significant in life must yield to its own 
 knowledge of the real significance of things. And so the expert 
 Church declares itself superior to the communal morality. This is 
 the heaviest charge that has ever been brought against the Church 
 of the Middle Ages ; and this charge is still brought against our 
 governors and diplomatists, against our police and against our 
 doctors. But the most terrible forms of this evil occur when it is 
 not the statesmen, the police, or the doctors, but the soldiers that 
 thus override the communal morality in the name of the supreme 
 interests of the national life. Our national action, especially our 
 foreign policy and intercourse with the weaker races, is almost 
 avowedly carried on upon principles which the responsible ministers 
 and administrators know are necessary and therefore right ; but 
 which would outrage the public conscience if nakedly avowed. 
 The relations in which the police stand, for instance, to receivers 
 of stolen goods or keepers of disorderly houses or of opium dens are 
 deemed necessary and therefore right, but would be extremely 
 startling to the general moral sense of the community if they were 
 realised. For half a generation the moral sense of the community 
 had to fight against the deeply immoral and futile system of the 
 Contagious Diseases Acts ; which were championed by the military, 
 backed by the police and the doctors ; and the practices of vivisec- 
 tion and artificial virus culture would not be able to stand for a day 
 against the indignant revolt of the public conscience, were not that 
 conscience still dominated by the idea that a body of experts who 
 really know what is important for the welfare of humanity may 
 override and abrogate the laws of morality. 
 
 But, in England at least, there is room to hope that we are more 
 and more coming to understand that the function of experts is to 
 give evidence, not to pronounce judgment, and that experts do not 
 know what is supremely important, just because they are specialists. 
 Specialist morality always gets warped unless it has to justify itself 
 to communal morality ; and as there are exceptionally devout men 
 but no experts in religion, so there are exceptionally good men but 
 no experts in morality. Where this is clearly realised, the work of 
 the Reformation with respect to an authoritative Church will have 
 been carried a mighty step further and the Kingdom of God on 
 earth will be visibly nearer. 
 
 H (TO P. 1 1 ). 
 
 The conception of Eternity is due to Plato, and its genesis may 
 be traced with great distinctness. 1 
 
 1 The account of Greek speculations before Plato is partly based upon Mr. 
 Archer Hind's introduction to the Timtftts, 1888.
 
 40 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 No sooner had the Greek thinkers issued from the aphoristic 
 stage of wisdom than they attacked the central problem of all 
 philosophy, viz., the relation of unity to multiplicity of the one 
 to the many. It is obvious that science and philosophy alike are 
 concerned with the problem of finding that which abides under that 
 which changes, that which is one behind or in that which is 
 manifold. The law of gravitation, for instance, enables us to think 
 of all the bodies that constitute the solar system as a single whole 
 with an unchanging centre of gravity, and so forth. 
 
 The Greeks, then, boldly attacked this problem of unity in 
 multiplicity ; but the Ionian philosophy, culminating in the teaching 
 of Heraclitus, insisted on the perpetual change and flux of all things 
 in such a way as to reduce our knowledge of the one element which 
 underlay all material transformations to absolute nescience. Since 
 we can only know that which abides and since nothing except the 
 inaccessible first element abides, we can know nothing. 
 
 Parmenides, on the other hand, with the characteristic audacity 
 of Greek speculation, appears to have deduced from the axiom 
 "nothing can come out of nothing," the conclusion that there is 
 not really any change at all. If nothing can come out of nothing, 
 then nothing can come out of anything in which it does not 
 already exist, for that would be equivalent to coming out of 
 nothing ; but if it already exists it does not come into existence at 
 all, but // in existence ; therefore there can be no change of any 
 sort, and all that we think of as change is non-existent and illusory. 
 And here again, though by another road, we are brought to nescience. 
 
 Plato and Aristotle in their different ways combined these two 
 conceptions into systems which attempted to establish the law of 
 relation between the permanent and the changing the one and 
 the many. Plato, with whom alone we are here concerned, 
 conceived all objects of sense as, to some extent, illusory and 
 unreal, but as deriving a certain measure of reality from their 
 affinity to abiding realities accessible to the intellect though not to 
 the senses. These realities that lie behind the things of sense are 
 the only objects of true knowledge, and they are unchanging. 
 This is the significance of Plato's celebrated doctrine of Ideas, , 
 which, however, he worked out with such wide divergences in his 
 different Dialogues, that no interpreter has been able to give a 
 consistent account of his system embracing all his writings, or to 
 escape the charge, at the hands of other experts, of misunderstand- 
 ing and misrepresenting him in some respect. But in spite of these 
 differences of interpretation it seems very safe to connect Plato's 
 doctrine of Eternity with this conception of an abiding reality lying 
 behind every changing appearance.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 41 
 
 For if everything that changes corresponds to something that 
 abides, then time itself, which is but a name for successional and 
 changing existence, must have behind it some abiding form of co- 
 existence, in which there is no change or succession. And this is 
 exactly the account of Eternity which we find in the Timtetu. After 
 describing the creation of the sensible universe after the pattern of 
 eternal things, Plato goes on to say that the Creator attempted to 
 make the creation as nearly like its living pattern as possible. 
 " Since, then, that pattern is an eternal living existence, he went 
 about to bring out this Universe as far as might be like unto it. 
 Now the being of this living existence was eternal ; and it was not 
 possible to accommodate this altogether to that which had been 
 brought into being ; he therefore designed a certain moving image 
 of Eternity, and as he ordained the Universe he made an eternal 
 image of the Eternity which abides in unity, which image itself 
 advances by measure ; and to this existence we have given the name 
 of Time. As for days and nights and months and years, which were 
 not before the Universe was, he fashioned their genesis at the same 
 time that the Universe was brought into existence ; and all these 
 are parts of Time, and was and shall be are forms of Time which 
 have come into being ; and when we apply them to the external 
 existence we fall unawares into error, for we say that it was, is, and 
 shall be, whereas in real truth is alone applies to it, for was and shall 
 be are only properly applied to that coming into being which pro- 
 ceeds in time, for they are movements. But that which abides 
 without change or movement behoves not to become older or 
 younger by the passage of time ; nor ever did it come into being, 
 nor has it now come into being, nor again will it hereafter come 
 into being ; and, in general, we cannot apply to it any of those con- 
 ceptions which the coming into being attaches to the things that 
 appeal to the senses, all which conceptions are forms of Time, which 
 imitates Eternity and circles by measure. And, moreover, such 
 expressions as that that which has come into being /'/ that which has 
 come into being, and that that which shall come into being is that 
 which shall come into being, and the non-existent is the non-existent 
 are none of them accurate expressions. 1 . . . Time then came into 
 being along with the Universe (so that having been generated 
 together, they may be dissolved together, if there ever be such a 
 dissolution of them), and after the pattern of the Eternal existence, 
 in order that it may be as like it as is possible to its capacity ; for 
 the pattern M, as existence, for all Eternity ; but Time has been, 
 and is, and shall be continuously for all time " (Tim<eui x. and xi.). 
 
 In the periphrastic translation or commentary on the Timatis 
 
 1 Because being can only be properly attributed to the Eternal.
 
 42 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 by Chalcidius, 1 which was the .principal vehicle through which Plato 
 was known in the Middle Ages, we read in chap. xxv. : " Where- 
 fore the pattern, that is the intelligible world, is eternal. But that 
 which is constituted after the pattern, to wit the sensible world, is 
 temporal. And the characteristic of time is to proceed. The 
 characteristic of eternity is to abide and always persevere identical. 
 The parts of time are days, nights, months, and years. Eternity has 
 no parts. The modes of time, also, are past, present, and future. 
 The being of eternity is uniform in a sole and perpetual present. 
 The intelligible world, therefore, always is. This world, which is 
 the image of the other, always was, is, and shall be" 
 
 To Christian students of this philosophy, in the early centuries, 
 such Scriptural phrases as " He inhabiteth Eternity," would acquire 
 a wondrous significance. Thus Augustine cries : " Thou art most 
 high and changest not, nor in thee is to-day transacted ; yet in thee 
 it is transacted, for in thee are all these things also. For they would 
 have no ways on which to pass, did'st thou not contain them. And 
 since thy years fail not, thy years are one to-day. And how many 
 already of our days and of our fathers' days have passed through thy 
 to-day, and have received from it their measures, and such being as 
 they had ! And how many others yet shall pass through and shall 
 receive their measures and such existence as they shall have ! But 
 thou thyself art the same, and all to-morrow's things, and the things 
 beyond, and all of yesterday's, and the things behind, to-day thou 
 wilt do, to-day thou hast done. What is it to me if any understand 
 not ? Let him too, rejoice, even though he say : ' What thing is 
 this ?' Let him rejoice even so, and let him love in finding not, to 
 find, rather than in finding, not to find thee" (Confessions I. 6). 
 And again in his conversation with Monica : " And still we were 
 inwardly ascending in thought and speech, and in contemplation of 
 thy works ; and we came to our own minds, and passed through 
 them that we might gain the region of unfailing abundance, where 
 thou feedest Israel eternally with the pasture of truth, and where 
 life consists in that Wisdom by which all things that have been 
 made, and that shall be made, are made ; and she herself is not 
 made, but is as she was and shall ever be ; nay, rather to have been 
 and be about to be are not in her, but only to be, seeing that she is 
 eternal ; for to have been and to be about to be are not eternal. And 
 as we spoke and yearned towards her we touched her for a moment 
 with the whole stroke of our heart, and then we sighed, and left 
 there bound the first fruits of the spirit, and came back to the din 
 of our speech, wherein a word has a beginning and an end. And 
 what is like unto thy Word, O our Lord, which abideth in itself 
 1 Edited by Wrobel, Leipsic, 1876.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 43 
 
 and groweth not old, while it reneweth all things ? We said, then : 
 If for any one the tumult of the flesh should be stilled, stilled the 
 phantasms of earth and water and air, stilled, too, the poles, and 
 stilled within itself the very soul, and should pass through itself by 
 not heeding itself; and dreams and imagined revelations should be 
 stilled, and every tongue and every symbol, and whatsoever cometh 
 into being by passing ; if for any one all these should be utterly 
 stilled (as in truth, if any have ears to hear these things, all say, 
 ' We made not ourselves, but he who abideth eternally, made us '), 
 if then, so soon as they have said this, they be stilled, since they 
 have turned our ear to him who made them, and were he himself 
 to speak alone, not through them, but through himself, that we 
 might hear his word, not by tongue of flesh, nor by voice of angel, 
 nor by roar of thundercloud, nor by enigma of similitude, but him- 
 self, whom we love in all these things, himself we were to hear, 
 without their ministry, even as now we stretched ourselves upward, 
 and with rapid thought touched the eternal wisdom that abideth 
 above all things, were this made continuous, and were other 
 visions of fashion far unlike withdrawn, and should this vision carry 
 away and drink in and plunge into inward joys him who beheld it, 
 so that the eternal life should be such as that moment of insight 
 for which we sighed, were not this: 'Enter into the joy of the 
 Lord'?" (Bk. ix. chap. x.). 
 
 In such passages as this, the religious significance of the doctrine 
 of Eternity, and its close association with the conception of fruition, 
 reach their highest point ; but the most elaborate and lucid ex- 
 position of the doctrine itself is to be found in the Consolation of 
 Philosophy of Boethius. It is interesting to observe that Boethius 
 introduces the discourse in connection with the problem of the 
 reconciliation of free will with the foreknowledge of God (see 
 p. 49). " Since, then, as we have shown just now, whatever is 
 known is known not by its own nature, but by the nature of those 
 who comprehend it, let us now consider, so far as we reverently 
 may, what may be the condition of the Divine Being, that we may 
 at the same time learn what his knowledge may be. That God, 
 then, is eternal, is the common judgment of all who enjoy reason. 
 Let us consider, then, what eternity may be. For this will reveal 
 to us the divine nature and the divine knowledge at the same time. 
 Eternity, then, is the complete and perfect possession of unlimited 
 life all at once j 1 and this becomes clearer by the comparison of 
 the things of time ; for whatever lives in time, itself present, pro- 
 ceeds from past to future ; and there is nothing which is established 
 
 1 This phrase became the classical definition of " Eternity" amongst the School- 
 men.
 
 44 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 in time, which can embrace the whole space of its life at once ; 
 but what pertains to to-morrow, it has not yet laid hold of, what 
 pertains to yesterday it has already lost ; and even in the life of 
 to-day, ye live only in the fluctuating and transitory moment. 
 Whatsoever, then, endures the conditions of time, although, as 
 Aristotle thought of the universe, it should never have begun, and 
 should never cease to be, and its life should be stretched out in 
 infinity of time, would not yet deserve on that account to be re- 
 garded as eternal ; for it does not comprehend and embrace the 
 whole space of its life, infinite though that life may be, at once ; 
 but the future it hath not yet ; the past it hath no longer. That, 
 then, which embraces and possesses the whole plenitude of un- 
 limited life at once, from which nought of the future is absent, 
 from which nought of the past has flowed away, that is rightly 
 deemed eternal ; and that of necessity, in possession of itself, must 
 ever be present to itself, and must grasp the infinity of moving time 
 as present. Wherefore not rightly do certain who, when they hear 
 that Plato 1 thought this universe had neither had a beginning of 
 time, nor would have an end, deem that, at that rate, the created 
 universe becomes co-eternal with the Creator. No, for it is one 
 thing to be drawn on through an interminable life, which Plato 1 
 attributed to the universe ; it is another thing for the whole of that 
 interminable life to be embraced all at once as a present, which is 
 manifestly the prerogative of the Divine mind. Nor should God 
 be deemed more venerable than created things because of the 
 quantity of his time, but rather because of that which is proper to 
 his single being. For this unmoving present state of life is imitated 
 by that infinite movement of the things of time ; which, since it 
 cannot express and equal the other, lapses from immobility into 
 motion, and from the simplicity of the present, tails off into an 
 infinite quantity of future and of past ; and since it cannot possess 
 the whole plenitude of its life at once, from the mere fact of, in a 
 sort of sense, never ceasing to be, seems in a way to rival that which 
 it cannot fill out and express ; binding itself to the presentness, such 
 as it is, of this thin and fleeting moment, which presentness, since it 
 bears a certain image of that abiding presentness, gives a semblance 
 of being to such things as it attaches itself to. Since, then, it could 
 not abide, it set out upon the infinite path of time, and so it came 
 about that it stretched out by going that life the plenitude of which 
 it could not grasp by staying. And so, if we would give the right 
 names to things, we should follow Plato and say that God is eternal, 
 and the universe perpetual " (Bk. v. Prosa vi.). 
 
 1 Plato. So all the editions that I have seen j but the context and the fact alike 
 seem to demand "Aristotle."
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 45 
 
 I (TO P. n). 
 
 The germ of this conception, as of so much else in the religion 
 as well as in the philosophy of the Middle Ages, is found in 
 Aristotle. He speaks (Metaphysics, I, 2 : 14) of philosophy as the 
 "divinest" and most august kind of knowledge, and proceeds to say 
 that divine may be taken in two senses, which, however, coincide. 
 It may mean such knowledge as we may have of the things of God, 
 or such knowledge as God himself may be supposed to have. 
 Thus he suggests the mediaeval identification of seeing God with 
 seeing as God sees. 
 
 This conception is perhaps as fundamental as any to the de- 
 veloped religion of the Middle Ages. It is in virtue of it that 
 Dante perpetually speaks of God as " the mirror." It should be 
 noted that this metaphor may be read in two ways. If it suggests 
 to us that God is the reflector from whom all things are thrown 
 upon our minds in their true relations, it seems to have a Pan- 
 theistic tinge which is in truth not foreign to the mediaeval thought, 
 though it is far from exhausting it. But we may read it the other 
 way and may conceive of our sight reaching God and then being 
 turned upon the Universe so as to see it with transfigured sight, 
 becoming ourselves, in our measure, as God, and seeing as he sees. 
 
 If one may push the metaphor of the mirror, the difference 
 would be that, reading it the first way, things would take their 
 transfigured place along the continued line of vision that looks 
 towards God, and we should see them through him and in him 
 as we see things behind and in the mirror. In the other, we our- 
 selves take our position deeper in the being of God than our eyes 
 at first can reach, and no longer look into him, but look out with 
 him ; the divine life and knowledge streaming through us, and 
 making us live his life. 
 
 For the rest, the metaphor of the mirror is used in many ways 
 by Dante : the angels are spoken of as mirrors because they throw 
 the light of God upon creation, and in this sense all created beings 
 are in their measure mirrors of God, as is implied in the opening 
 lines of the Paradiso, where the word "risplende" (i. 2) strictly 
 means is reflected. 
 
 J (TO P. 12). 
 
 It is not a little strange that the revival of classical studies should 
 give the signal for the disappearance from the most accredited reli- 
 gious utterances of just those features in Christian theology which 
 rose out of a combination of Greek and Hebrew conceptions. No 
 doubt the note of Eternity, and all that is connected with it, sur-
 
 46 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 vives more or less distinctly in many currents of Christian thought, 
 especially amongst the mystics ; but from the great religious poems, 
 for example, that have been taken as typical of their respective ages, 
 it seems to vanish. Petrarch, who still lived under the full glow 
 of the greatest period of mediaeval theology, writes elegantly enough 
 in his Trionfi of the triumph of Eternity over Time, and has all 
 the proper phrases quite at command j but there is no feeling for 
 the subject in him. And this in spite of his admiration for Augus- 
 tine. It is significant that in the title of this last of the Trionfi, 
 namely, the "Trionfo dell' eternita," "divinita" was substituted even 
 in some of the earliest MSS. for " eternita," and so appears in almost 
 all the editions, in flagrant violation of the contents of the poem. 
 " Eternita," apparently, had already ceased to be a word which 
 asserted itself as significant to the copyists, and they substituted 
 something that appealed more readily to themselves and to their 
 readers. 
 
 Coming down to later times we find in the religious poems alike 
 of the southern Catholic Tasso (Gerusalemme, 1581), the northern 
 Catholic Vondel '(Lucifer, 1654), and the northern Protestant Milton 
 (Paradise Lost, 1667) a marked absence of the note of Eternity and 
 the Beatific Vision, amounting to a practical negation ; and this is 
 the more noteworthy because the echoes of the old phraseology still 
 survive, for instance in Vondel's most celebrated chorus, and in 
 Milton's fine Hymn to Time. 
 
 Some aspects, at least, of this sense of the Eternal reappear in 
 great beauty in Wordsworth. They answer to the whole trend of 
 Wordsworth's own spiritual nature ; but it would be interesting to 
 know whether they had taken form under the influence of Cole- 
 ridge, who tells us that while still a schoolboy he read the works of 
 Plotinus (A.D. 205-270), where he would find the Platonic, or rather 
 the Neo-Platonic, conception of Eternity conspicuous enough. It is 
 true that the most striking passages on Eternity in the Prelude refer 
 to a period before Wordsworth had met Coleridge ; but this is by 
 no means conclusive (cf. Prelude, Bk. vi. 237-239). 
 
 K (TO P. 14). 
 
 Probably those who are unacquainted with mediaeval theology 
 have an exaggerated conception of the prominence of the thought 
 of hell in the mind of the great theologians. But sometimes, in 
 the midst of passages of the utmost religious beauty, some reference 
 to hell sends a shudder through the reader's soul. We may instance 
 a passage in the Paradisus Animi, usually ascribed to Albertus 
 Magnus. This treatise contains a magnificent passage, in which
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 47 
 
 we arc told how the true believer may share in the joy of God, 
 rejoicing with him in all the blessedness and perfection which is 
 eternally inherent in his being ; rejoicing with him that he is in 
 need of nought, but sufficeth for himself and for all his creatures ; 
 rejoicing with him in the order of heaven and earth and of all 
 things that are therein, in all his works from the beginning of the 
 world to the end of the ages, in his incarnation, in his revealed 
 and hidden judgments; rejoicing with him "with respect to the 
 devils, to the souls in hell, in Limbus, in Purgatory ; with respect to 
 the wicked men upon earth. For whatsoever God Omnipotent 
 hath inherently of perfection, of goodness and of blessedness in 
 himself, whatsoever of glory the angels and the saints have in 
 heaven, whatsoever of grace and virtue there abideth in the Church 
 and the faithful have in her ; all of this becometh each man's own 
 in that he shareth in God's joy." The passage will be found 
 under the heading Congratulatio. The italics are, of course, my 
 own. 
 
 L (TO p. 15). " 
 
 The feelings with which Luther and Melanchthon witnessed the 
 Peasant War are well known. They are acknowledged and de- 
 plored by their warmest admirers. Another striking example may 
 be found in the Pammachius of Thomas Kirchmeyer (or Naogeorgus, 
 as he called himself), published in 1538. In this gloomy and 
 powerful drama (No. 3 in the Lateinische Litteraturdenkm'dler referred 
 to above), Satan's three chief aides-de-camp are Planus (Error), 
 Stasiades (Mutiny), and Chremius (Greed). Stasiades, in reporting 
 his day's work, rehearses a fine socialistic harangue which he de- 
 livered in a certain great city, thereby producing a riot suppressed 
 with terrible slaughter. Satan thereon expresses his satisfaction 
 (lines 1236-1300). 
 
 M (TO P. 17). 
 
 The passage occurs near the beginning of Eine Duplik, published 
 in 1778, one of Lessing's controversial writings which sprang out of 
 his publication of the " Wolfenbiittel fragments." 
 
 It runs : " It is not the truth which a man possesses or supposes 
 himself to possess, but the honest pains which he has taken to come 
 at the truth that constitutes his significance. For it is not by the 
 possession, but by the search for truth that he develops the powers 
 wherein his ever growing perfection consists. Possession brings 
 quiet, indolence, pride. 
 
 "If God held all truth clasped in his right hand, and in|his 
 left hand nothing but the ever active impulse towards truth, though
 
 48 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 coupled with the condition that I must for ever wander in error, 
 and were to say to me, ' Choose,' I should throw myself humbly 
 upon his left, and should say, ' Father, give ! The pure truth is 
 for thee alone.' " 
 
 But what about the "honesty" of the pains taken to get at the 
 truth by the man who would deliberately and by choice renounce 
 it for ever sooner than have it ? 
 
 N (TO P. 1 8). 
 
 The fifth chapter of John Stuart Mill's autobiography (1873) 
 produced a profound impression on the public mind, chiefly because 
 it gave a powerful presentation of an experience usually connected 
 with religious doubt or misgiving, but in this instance manifesting 
 itself in the mind of one who had never had any theological con- 
 victions at all. Mill had been brought up to regard certain social 
 reforms as the supreme object of endeavour, and suddenly he asked 
 himself what life would be worth when all these objects were 
 gained ; and the answer he was forced to give himself was : Nothing. 
 He did not escape from the consequent depression until his study of 
 Wordsworth revealed to him a life which was not only worth the 
 getting, but worth the having. 
 
 " What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of 
 mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states 
 of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement 
 of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings 
 which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source 
 of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could 
 be shared in by all human beings ; which had no connection with 
 struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every im- 
 provement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From 
 them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial source of 
 happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. 
 And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their 
 influence" (p. 148). 
 
 I hold that, in some shape or form, every man must thus find his 
 Beatific Vision, unless his effort is to remain on the level of an 
 unconscious impulse, or to be refined into an organised hypocrisy. 
 
 O (TO P. 22). 
 
 Instances will readily occur to the reader. The conception (or 
 rather the want of accurate conception) of "Infinity" as used by 
 mathematicians is a perennial source of the juggling use of formulae.
 
 AND OF ETERNITY 49 
 
 More recently the Fourth Dimension has assumed the chief r&le. 
 Abbott's " Flatland " is a monumental instance of this abuse of 
 mathematical conceptions, or no conceptions. Much talk about 
 "other planes of existence," and so forth, comes under the same 
 category. 
 
 P (TO P. 24). 
 
 I cannot say that I am disturbed by the problem of the recon- 
 ciliation of man's free will with that Divine foreknowledge which 
 is involved in the conception of God seeing as a coexistent whole 
 what we see as a succession. That I can choose whichever I like 
 of two courses is to me a fact of experience and consciousness ; and 
 moreover I seem to observe that the most convinced determinist, by 
 an inherent necessity of his nature, practically, though not of course 
 theoretically, exempts himself from the universal law, and is con- 
 scious, as he speaks and as he plans his future action, of being not a 
 channel only but an independent source of determining influences. 
 Determinism seems to fail in giving any account of the phenomena 
 of consciousness, which constitute the very matter under examina- 
 tion. If, then, the assertion of the doctrine of the free will means 
 a negative declaration that no system of determinism is satisfactory, 
 I give it my hearty assent. But if, in its turn, it professes to have 
 given an intelligible and positive explanation, or even statement, of 
 the phenomena of volition, I cannot say that it wins my adhesion. 
 I know that "I " can at this moment choose which " I " like out of 
 a number of alternatives. But who "I" am, how "I" came to be 
 what I am, why " I " chose this course in preference to another, 
 are to me matters so profoundly inscrutable, that I am utterly un- 
 prepared to declare what are the intellectual implications involved 
 in the fact of my free choice. Nor have I ever been able to get 
 away from the thought that when the choice comes, I shall do one 
 of the things which will then be possible for me to do, so that there 
 now is something that I then shall do. Whether God knows what 
 I shall do or not, I shall, as a matter of fact, do the one that I 
 shall do and not the other. Whatever perplexity is involved in 
 this consideration is not escaped by carrying up into heaven the 
 policy of the ostrich, and conceiving a Deity who does not know 
 the future. Again, when I consider the difference between an 
 oyster and a dog, and the smaller but still considerable difference 
 between a dog and a Shakespere or a Newton, I confess to being 
 filled with amazement at the certainty with which so many philo- 
 sophers and theologians define the nature of the knowledge of God. 
 There seems to me to be profound truth in the remark of Boethius 
 (op. fit.), that we begin at the wrong end if we strive to determine 
 
 D
 
 50 THE RELIGION OF TIME 
 
 the relations between God's /0/v-knowledge and human freedom J 
 because the nature of knowledge depends more upon the nature of 
 the knower than upon the nature of the thing known. The idea 
 which a shell-fish and a man entertain of the ocean may be presumed 
 to differ more than the notions which a man entertains of the ocean 
 and of the land. If, then, we may reverently enter into such 
 enquiries at all, it must be by striving to form some more adequate 
 conception of the nature of the divine knowledge, resting assured 
 that God's knowledge of the future must be less like our knowledge 
 of the future than it is like his knowledge of the past. 1 
 
 Since, then, I can form no adequate conception of what free 
 will on the one hand and what God's foreknowledge on the other 
 hand really imply, even from the human point of view, I am far 
 indeed from daring to pronounce on the compatibilities and the 
 incompatibilities of the divine conceptions, or to limit the know- 
 ledge of God so as to make it fit with any deductions from my own 
 experiences. 
 
 Nor have I ever been able to find satisfaction in that other 
 common conception connected with the free will, in virtue of which 
 we are taught that the possibility of evil was the necessary price 
 which God had to pay for the free will of man. We are ourselves 
 perpetually engaged in attempting to exterminate evil, not by ex- 
 terminating, but by developing and enlightening the free will of 
 man. It is clear, then, that we ourselves do not believe that de- 
 pravity and wickedness are inherently and eternally involved in 
 freedom of choice ; and it is strange that we should declare that 
 God could not guard against evils against which we ourselves cheer- 
 fully attempt to guard. My own reflections on this awful problem 
 (which, however, do not amount even to an attempted solution) will 
 be found on pp. 93-103 of this volume. 
 
 1 Nor is this renunciation of any human capacity to measure the Divine know- 
 ledge or the Divine modes of being tantamount to Agnosticism. Analogies, I know, 
 are not arguments, and they may repel one while they attract another ; but I cannot 
 help thinking that there may be comfort and suggestion to many a humble soul in 
 the thought that a dog or horse has a knowledge of a man that is perfectly real and 
 true, however inadequate ; and that for the very reason that the man has taught the 
 animal something about himself, which something constitutes the creature's highest 
 life. Surely, though we may be in a much higher degree incapable of gauging the 
 life of our Creator, yet we may humbly trust that what he has taught us of himself 
 is true.
 
 II 
 
 THE EDUCATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 
 
 Address delivered in Manchester College, Oxford, \%th October 1898, 
 as the introduction to a course of lectures on Ideas of Revelation 
 
 J. E. C. 1898
 
 By words 
 
 Which speak of nothing more than what we are, 
 Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep 
 Of death, and win the vacant and the vain 
 To noble raptures 5 while my voice proclaims 
 How exquisitely the individual Mind 
 (And the progressive powers perhaps no less 
 Of the whole species) to the external World 
 Is fitted ; and how exquisitely, too 
 Theme this but little heard of among men 
 The external World is fitted to the Mind ; 
 And the creation (by no lower name 
 Can it be called) which they with blended might 
 Accomplish : this is our high argument. 
 
 WORDSWORTH, The Recluse.
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE RELIGIOUS 
 IMAGINATION 
 
 GENTLEMEN, The College which formally opens its doors 
 to you to-day, at the beginning of another Academic year, is 
 founded on the assumption that there is a branch of knowledge 
 which may be properly designated "theological." Its purpose 
 is to expound that knowledge, to define its limits, determine 
 its characteristics, and set forth its contents. Such an aim may 
 properly be regarded as an end in itself. It is concerned with 
 the most sublime of all inquiries. It is inexhaustible in its 
 scope, as it is likewise boundless in its interest. There is no 
 one to whom it can be unimportant, for it seeks to set the 
 world and life, the majesty of the universe, the vicissitudes of 
 history, the needs and destiny of each single soul, in their true 
 theoretical relations with the infinite Being to whom we give 
 the name that is above every name GOD. To pursue this 
 august way of learning along its various paths, to interrogate 
 its mysteries, can never fail to awaken the passionate en- 
 thusiasm of the student ; and to re-shape its results in con- 
 nection with the advance of knowledge in other fields may 
 well be the life-long occupation of a continuous succession of 
 faithful labourers who humbly seek this way of service to their 
 time. 
 
 But you have chosen another form of ministry, that of 
 Religion. That is concerned do you need the warning ? 
 not with the forms of our thought, but with the life of the 
 spirit, its endeavours after righteousness, its relation to the 
 unseen. In that ministry the pursuit of ideal truth can never 
 be treated with indifference. New aspects of reality offer 
 themselves continually to the open and reverent mind ; and 
 
 53
 
 54 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the teacher who has ceased to learn soon finds that his scanty 
 stock of lore is all expended ; he can no longer feed others, 
 for he has not replenished himself. The studies that you 
 begin here, therefore, you must never relax. You will, of 
 course, frequently change their special direction. But you 
 must not abandon their ultimate object. You will stand here- 
 after on the deepest of all facts, the communion of the soul of 
 man with God. To apprehend it yourself with such vividness 
 that you can quicken it in others, to draw out its implications 
 and make it the groundwork of noble conduct, is to be your 
 task. There is more here than theoretical knowledge. There 
 are practical arts of effective utterance of the spoken word, 
 and of effective expression of the inner thought and feeling. 
 There is the sympathetic appreciation of the joys and sorrows 
 of others, their aspirations and their perplexities, their suffer- 
 ings and their sins. There is the understanding of men as well 
 as the comprehension of Man. You will have to deal not 
 with the abstractions of the lecture-room, but with the con- 
 crete forms of temptation and achievement as they will meet 
 you in all the manifold groups of human action. As you 
 enter into these you will be powerfully affected by them. It 
 may seem incredible to you now in the dawn of fresh con- 
 fidence, in the entrancing beauty and the kindling joy of the 
 vision which has thus far led you on, that faith should fail or 
 love grow cold. But you must prepare yourselves to meet 
 difficulty, to face hours of despondency, to bear weariness, 
 exhaustion, disappointment. You may be baffled in the realm 
 of pure intellect, or overwhelmed with tragedies of moral 
 despair, till you are ready to cry with Tennyson, " It is very 
 hard to believe in God " : well will it be for you if you can 
 add as he added, " but it is harder still not to believe in him." 
 
 With this outlook what help can you gain in college 
 learning ? I answer " much, every way " ; but you must 
 suffer me to remind you at the outset that the profit of your 
 student-years will arise not only from what is offered to you, 
 but from what you in your turn contribute. It is, perhaps, 
 needless to renew the assurance that the liberty which this 
 College professes is no illusory liberty. Ours is in truth no
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 55 
 
 recently adopted foundation. It was an ancient maxim that 
 the way of philosophy must be free ekevdepov tTvai Set ry 
 yv<a/j.y rbv /zeAAovro. ^tAwcxfciv, 1 though only few may as yet be 
 ready to apply the saying to theology, eAev&pov eTvat Set TQ 
 yv<afj.y TOV /ieAAorra 0eoAoyeiv. Significant, indeed, were the 
 words of Jowett to Stanley forty years ago : " I entirely agree 
 with you that no greater good could be accomplished for 
 religion and morality than the abolition of all subscription ; 
 but how will this ever be promoted in the least degree, or how 
 will it be possible for any one in high station ever to propose 
 it, if we only talk it over in private ? " 2 To this conviction 
 this College has sought for more than a hundred years to give 
 public, if modest, expression ; and its presence at the gates of 
 the University of Oxford is a declaration that it will jealously 
 guard its high trust. 
 
 But you know that the removal of ecclesiastical restraint 
 cannot ensure openness of mind. You are asked to sign no 
 orthodox formula : have you purged yourselves of the intoler- 
 ance, the prejudice, the antagonism, which are apt to rise 
 among the sufferers by exclusion, or of the ignoble com- 
 placency that we are not as those that are bound ? And, if so, 
 are you prepared to concede that each teacher, as well as each 
 student, should have his own ideal alike of the whole field of 
 research and of his special department in it ? Will you 
 loyally recognise that he must follow his own methods, and 
 express through them his own personality ? In truth the 
 freedom which is only used as a ground for self-assertion is 
 d^titute of any saving grace ; it only becomes sweet and 
 helpful when it is wedded with humility. Before the immense 
 vistas of our study, where almost every avenue of inquiry 
 passes out beyond our reach, and the wise and noble have 
 again and again trodden different ways, the frequent con- 
 fidence of ignorance may well be abashed. No Pythagorean 
 discipline of silence and submission will be laid upon you ; 
 but I would commend to you the searching words of one of 
 the most eminent of the children of light in modern Oxford, 
 the late Richard Lewis Nettleship : " I am sure that the 
 principles of all methods for acquiring the mastery over 
 anything are substantially the same. One has got to begin 
 with the alphabet, to become a little child. Instead of which, 
 
 1 Quoted by John Smith, Select Discourses, i. i. 2 Life, i. 275.
 
 56 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 it seems to me, one is perpetually beginning with the hardest 
 things, solving the existence of God before one has ever 
 seen what it means to exist at all. If I had to begin over 
 again, I should like to try to master the elements of a few big 
 things." l Amid the varieties of intellectual solicitation, must 
 I add, also, of social distraction ? with which Oxford abounds, 
 the homely excellences of concentration, persistence, faith- 
 fulness, are easily thrust out of sight. Yet they are the 
 conditions, I do not say of distinction to that you are not 
 summoned but of attainment such as is within the reach of 
 all. When Zoroaster's scholars (to quote the apologue of 
 John Smith 2 ) asked him what they should do to get winged 
 souls, such as might soar aloft in the bright beams of divine 
 truth, he bids them bathe themselves in the waters of life ; 
 they asking what these were, he tells them the four cardinal 
 virtues, which are the four rivers of Paradise. To be simply 
 steadfast, to have a wise method of living, to produce ap- 
 pointed work by appointed times, to maintain a vigilant 
 self-control over habits, and guard against excesses of labour 
 which must be balanced by excesses of idleness, these are 
 not counsels of perfection. They may not be needed by the 
 prophet, but they cannot be safely disregarded by the scholar. 
 For there is a " foolishness of the body," to use the words of 
 the dying Socrates to Simmias, 3 "of which we must be rid 
 before we can be pure and hold converse with the pure, and 
 know of ourselves the clear light everywhere which is no 
 other than the light of truth." Over the gate of the temple 
 of Epidaurus, says Clement of Alexandria, 4 was the solemn 
 warning, "he that would enter the fragrant shrine must be 
 pure," and purity, he adds, "is to think holy things." If, 
 then, you can call to mind the freshness of your first self- 
 dedication to your high calling, if there still lives with you 
 the remembrance of some morning hour when " bond un- 
 known" to you was given that you should be, according to 
 your measure, "a dedicated spirit," cherish its "thankful 
 blessedness." Let no decline of faith cloud your fair visions ; 
 no languor lay its chill on noble purpose ; no weariness of 
 drudgery, no disappointment in your course of study, no want 
 of sympathy with your guides, vex you with disillusion. Enter 
 
 1 Remains, i. 97. 2 Select Discourses, i. I. 
 
 8 Phaedo, 67 ; Jowett's Plato 3 , ii. 206. 4 Strom, v. l, 13.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 57 
 
 the sanctuary ; seek once more the things which are above : 
 and remember that the way of search is prayer. 
 
 II 
 
 If these be the gifts of character and self-devotion which the 
 College expects from you, what has it in its turn to give ? It 
 offers you "theological knowledge." I am not here now to 
 justify this offer to an indifferent and thoughtless world, or to 
 the interested but suspicious critic who disputes the reality of 
 that which we profess to impart. But I am to ask for a 
 moment how our conception of theological knowledge differs 
 from that which you may find elsewhere, what bearing this 
 difference has upon our common studies, and how these are 
 related to your future aim. 
 
 The condition to which I have already adverted as the 
 basis of all teaching and learning in this place, is itself an 
 implicit answer to the first of these inquiries. For it involves 
 the belief that in our thought of God there can be no finality. 
 Each age must ask its own questions, and frame its own 
 answers. The questions, indeed, may be identical in sub- 
 stance, if not in form, with those which have arisen out of the 
 human heart from immemorial antiquity. The answers may 
 be no clearer, or no nearer the reality, than those of past 
 generations. But they have a special meaning for us, because 
 they deal with our problems and are concerned with our per- 
 plexities. They include some elements of experience which 
 enter the field for the first time, or at least present themselves 
 in a shape and with an emphasis unknown before. This con- 
 viction I do not pause now to ask how it has been gained 
 is incompatible with the claims that have been raised on behalf 
 either of a special church or of a special book to sole inspiration 
 by the Spirit of God ; and it leads to a complete transformation 
 of the method and scope of f theological inquiry. So long as 
 religions were divided into two categories, one of which con- 
 tained the only true, and the other all the multitudinous false, 1 
 
 1 " The first general division of Religion is into True and False. True Religion 
 must ever be the same and invariable, and therefore there can be but ONE TRUE 
 RELIGION. That infinite variety, therefore, in the doctrines and modes of worship 
 which have prevailed in the world (one only scheme excepted) are but so many 
 deviations from the truth, so many FALSE RELIGIONS. This is a very copious sub- 
 ject ; and, indeed, the chapter of False Religion is by much the longest in the History
 
 58 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the student had only to satisfy himself in whose keeping was 
 the deposit of the saving faith, to reject at once all other 
 avenues of knowledge. Their teachings were either similar, 
 in which case they were superfluous, or divergent, in which 
 case they were wrong. The task of the theologian, then, was 
 simple. When once he had justified his authority, he could 
 proceed to set forth its dogmas, and deduce their results. 
 Differences of method might, indeed, arise in the process of 
 ascertaining the contents and implications of the divine oracle. 
 A single text of Scripture might suffice for one investigator, 
 while another would endeavour to reach the mind of the Holy 
 Spirit through a comparison of his varied, if not actually con- 
 flicting, utterances. But the result in any case was final. 
 There lay behind it no further court of appeal. Whatever 
 could be proved to be legitimately derived from its decrees, 
 shared the same character of absolute knowledge, irrefragable 
 certainty, and saving truth. 
 
 For this conception the complex forces vaguely known as 
 " modern thought " have substituted another. It is, indeed, 
 less clear and definite, though it need not on that account be 
 less true and real. It does not formulate itself in creeds, but 
 it offers itself as the ultimate justification of all belief. It 
 refuses to be limited in its expression to a single book, it claims 
 the higher literature of the race as its own field. It denies the 
 exclusive pretensions of any single institution to its possession, 
 and affirms that it may be found on every altar where honest 
 sacrifice is offered, nay, in every heart which makes the daily 
 oblation of love and duty. It approaches the whole question 
 of the divine nature, of the purposes of God, and the destiny 
 of man, no longer by way of deduction from certain super- 
 natural data, but by way of apprehension from the manifold 
 forms of human experience. It appeals for its Bible from a 
 chosen race to history at large ; for its Church to the consensus 
 of holy souls who in all ages have been " friends of God and 
 prophets." It sees its sacred ark in the shrine of our inner 
 thoughts ; its solemn law in the reason and the conscience ; 
 its Shechinah or Real Presence in the aspirations and affections 
 
 of the religious opinions and practices of mankind." Preface to Broughton's Dic- 
 tionary of all Religions, 1745. Many echoes of this have been heard in our own day, 
 as when a distinguished Oxford professor spoke of the "three chief false religions," 
 Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, 
 ed. 3, 1876, p. xxxvi.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 59 
 
 which rise unceasingly towards the Eternal. Theological 
 knowledge thus becomes wide as the universe around us. It 
 draws within its scope the majestic order of nature so far as 
 it is the expression of God's ideas, the method by which his 
 thought and will are wrought into the sequences of visible 
 things ; and on this side of its domain it seeks to assimilate 
 the ascertained and even the tentative conceptions of science, 
 and declares itself not its antagonist but its partner in the 
 perpetual endeavour to understand the world. Does it turn to 
 the past to survey the progress of mankind ? From the dim 
 vistas of prehistoric time, up to the latest conflicts of our day, 
 it discerns the nexus of enlarging deepening raith ; till it 
 asserts religion to be a practically universal power, finding 
 provision for her own maintenance in the structure of the 
 human mind, and its permanent connection with the great 
 Whole in which it lives. 
 
 This is not, indeed, to affirm that all experience is equally 
 valuable, any more than to say that if you know the multipli- 
 cation table you can dispense with the differential calculus. 
 There are differences of worth in the several products of the 
 vanished years ; nor do the manifold forms of contemporary 
 religion rise into one monotony of excellence. The application 
 of intellectual and moral tests to the various types in which 
 religion has been presented, at once marks them off, more or 
 less clearly, into groups, and assigns them places of precedence 
 or inferiority among the influences which have contributed to 
 the education of the race. Foremost among these, whether 
 by intrinsic eminence of nobility, by its historic importance, 
 or by its extraordinary power of sustaining innumerable trans- 
 formations in doctrine and polity and yet living on, stands, by 
 general consent, the religion of Jesus. No single creed can 
 be said to exhaust it. It cannot be regarded as complete in 
 any one of its manifestations. Whatever foreign elements it 
 has taken up into itself it has either rapidly cast out and left 
 behind, or it has so absorbed that they became new sources of 
 strength, while they sometimes profoundly changed its essential 
 character. It is admitted, on all hands, that the Christianity 
 which greets us in the churches to-day is the result of age-long 
 developments. The claims of these developments to be the 
 legitimate heirs of the teachings of Christ must be examined. 
 You must learn to appreciate the varied forms of religious life
 
 60 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 which they have produced upon the way ; you must enter with 
 sympathy into the struggles by which their principles have 
 alike been inly moulded and outwardly expressed, and their 
 types of character and devotion shaped. But, above all, I need 
 not say that you must be familiar with their sources in the 
 New Testament ; you must endeavour to understand the 
 reasonings of Paul and the insights of John ; you must sit at 
 the feet of Jesus, learn of him to say "Our Father," and enter 
 into the open secret of the " kingdom of heaven within you." 
 Nor can you do this without tracing the roots of his trust in 
 the older history of his race, and watching the growth of that 
 national religion which uttered itself in prophecy and law and 
 psalm, till the hour and the man appeared and the faith of 
 Israel was ready to set forth and win the world. 
 
 The special studies which I have thus barely described in 
 two minutes, are, of course, sufficient to occupy a lifetime. 
 They involve much patient toil ; their successful pursuit 
 continually demands laborious application, minute mastery of 
 detail, acquaintance with obscure languages, the sympathetic 
 reconstruction of social and intellectual conditions, which have 
 otherwise little interest or importance. Be not forgetful of 
 them ; the peaks of higher insight rise over the fields of 
 homely culture which clothe their lower slopes ; the disciples 
 who followed Jesus on the mount of transfiguration could not 
 escape a long and tiring climb. 
 
 I would invite you, however, to range more superficially, 
 indeed, yet, I hope, not altogether without profit over an 
 area that is wider still. Not only the evolution of Christianity, 
 or of Judaism, must engage your thought ; around these there 
 lies that of religion itself. It has been my duty, on a previous 
 occasion, to offer to the students of this College some con- 
 siderations on "The Place of the History of Religion in 
 Theological Study." It is only needful now to remind you 
 that it is by this time frankly conceded that all questions of 
 doctrine and institution, of creed and ritual, must be studied in 
 the light of their progressive development ; and that, while 
 there are many kinds of voices in the world, no kind is without 
 signification. Yet the importance of each can only be judged 
 in its relation to all, and the meaning and connections of the 
 parts must be determined by their harmony in the whole. 
 And of that whole, so far as we know it, what conception can
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 61 
 
 we form ? The record may be interpreted in different ways, 
 according to the term from which we start. Do we fix our 
 thoughts on the slow steps by which, from rude beginnings, 
 man has advanced to clearer thought and purer faith ; do we 
 look at his toil-worn efforts, his painful strivings, his frequent 
 lapses, his heroic struggles upon the upward way ? We shall 
 conceive the process as the slow discovery of God by man. 
 Do we concentrate our attention on the unexpectedness with 
 which new insight has visited him, on the lofty minds which 
 have been the channels of fresh ideas, on the great souls from 
 which have issued the creative impulses of holiness and love ? 
 We shall discern a divine initiative breaking through the veil 
 at point after point, and we shall envisage the mighty move- 
 ment as the gradual revelation of God to man. A recent 
 writer has described the career of Jesus of Nazareth as " the 
 human life of God." l In the light of the conception which I 
 have tried briefly to set forth, that life cannot be limited to a 
 single historical person ; it is manifested, not through an 
 individual exclusively, but through the race. There is a life 
 of God in man ; there is a life of man in God. How can we 
 recognise it, how share it when we have beheld it ? The 
 answer to this question lies, not in the methodised investiga- 
 tions of the class-room, but in the experience of practical 
 religion. Yet so far as this depends on intellectual processes 
 which are capable of being pursued in common, some guid- 
 ance may. be suggested here by way of anticipation for your 
 future work. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The way of the knowledge of God (it is now generally 
 conceded) no longer lies through the passive reception of a 
 positive divine teaching. The declaration in the thunder-peals 
 of Horeb, which still stands in so many of our parish churches, 
 " God spake these words, saying, I am the Lord your God," 
 belongs no more to the sphere of actual fact. It has been 
 dislodged from the history to find its place in the great epic 
 of Israel's youth ; for the sublime " Words " first became 
 articulate centuries later among the hills of Canaan. The 
 books of law and prophecy which they heralded are now 
 acknowledged to have gradually assumed their present form 
 
 1 Van Dyke, The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, p. izf.
 
 62 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 through the labours of many generations. Their authors are 
 for the most part unknown, and the literary conditions of their 
 production are such as to render for ever impossible the 
 older and traditional conceptions of their supernatural origin. 
 Wisely, therefore, does one of the latest apologists, the learned 
 and genial Dr. Bruce, drop from his scheme the related themes 
 of revelation, of miracles, and inspiration. 1 Will you turn, 
 then, to the court of philosophy for the assurance which ex- 
 ternal testimony can no longer afford ? I admit to the full its 
 right to question, but forget not the diversities of its reply. 
 It is its aim to interpret for us our experience, to explain to us 
 how we can know ourselves, the world, and God : in Europe 
 alone it has been engaged upon its problem more than two 
 thousand years ; yet its different schools are for ever divided 
 as to what we are, what the world is, and whether there is a 
 God. The uncertainties of speculation were early contrasted 
 with the assurances of revelation, and Augustine could make 
 merry over Varro's enumeration of 288 possible systems. 
 The complaint was not new. Nearly a millennium before, 
 Gotama the Buddha had justified his contempt for the Brah- 
 manical scholasticism of his day by exhibiting sixty-two ways 
 of error concerning the world conceived as finite or infinite in 
 extension, limited or eternal in duration, and concerning the 
 various modes of the future existence of the soul. 2 The 
 number might be indefinitely expanded now, when it is almost 
 true to say hiot Philosophi tot sententiae. Are we, then, to 
 give up the quest in despair ? Newton might warn the 
 physicist to beware of metaphysics ; would he have addressed 
 the same caution to the theologian ? Are we to rest con- 
 tented in the assumption that between our faculties and the 
 world without us there is so little correspondence, that we can 
 never know reality ? The answer depends upon the signifi- 
 cance which you attach to the act of knowledge, and the 
 amount and character of the reality which you believe your- 
 self to know. Be prepared to find these change. The great 
 teacher, the " marble index " of whose mind was unveiled for 
 us this afternoon, 3 has described to us the revolution in his 
 own self-comprehension which converted him from a disciple 
 
 1 Apologetics : or Christianity defensively stated (International Theological Library). 
 2 Brahmajala Sutta, in the Dlgha Nikaya, i. i, 30 ; 3, 72. 
 8 A statue of Dr. Martineau, placed in the College library.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 63 
 
 of the necessarianism of Priestley and Hartley into a successor 
 of Butler and Kant. In the same manner you may, in your 
 turn, emerge from what have been wittily designated the 
 " ontological reveries " of Hegel, even when they are presented 
 to us in the persuasive utterance, vivified by the spiritual life, 
 and fired by the noble moral enthusiasm, of the Master of 
 Balliol. The warning of Dr. Martineau " Religion that is 
 mere metaphysics offers us but a pale and icy reality : religion 
 without metaphysics offers us but a painted dream," l will 
 remain true for the abstract thinker. You cannot even banish 
 metaphysic without in some form admitting its claim. You 
 must get a formula, even if you discard it next week. You 
 must frame your hypothesis, though it should break in your 
 hands in the face of facts too big for it to embrace. You must 
 try to build your system, even if only to convince yourself 
 that the infinite will still escape out of some back-door. But if 
 you want to use philosophy as a method of discovery, I speak, 
 of course, not as a philosopher, still less as a prophet, but " as a 
 fool," you must remember that what it will chiefly disclose 
 to you is the limit and inconsistency of your own thought. 
 
 The worshipper, however, is not perpetually seeking a 
 rational justification of his religion. It is there. It is 
 wrought into his life by manifold experiences. He cannot 
 question its validity, he has been too often in the Presence- 
 chamber. What he desires is that the vision which he has 
 beheld occasionally may be more constant ; that the exalted 
 sense of communion with the Eternal which he has sometimes 
 enjoyed, may be renewed within him more frequently; that he 
 may discern, as Socrates said, "the clear light everywhere, 
 which is no other than the light of truth," and feel the flame 
 of devotion burn with steadier glow. And in this respect, I 
 think, the function of the teacher of religion (which you are 
 hereafter to assume) is not so much to convince the reason as 
 to aid in training and enlightening the spiritual insight. Let 
 me call it, for I have my formula also, " the Education of the 
 Religious Imagination." 
 
 It is true that this great power is sometimes disparaged as 
 if it were concerned only with such stuff as dreams are made 
 of. We regard its creations as unreal, like centaurs or men 
 " whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." We conceive 
 
 1 "Ideal Substitutes for God," Essays, etc., iv. 289.
 
 64 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 it to operate apart from things as they are, and we view it 
 therefore with suspicion rather than with trust. The fact is 
 that we are continually employing it as the instrument of our 
 thought ; for it is its constant task to present to our inner eye 
 the objects that lie beyond the things of sense. For many 
 minds, thinking is conducted by a succession of pictures. We 
 apprehend the meaning of the undulatory theory of sound or 
 light by the help of the memory of the dvqptOfj.ov yeAao-^a of 
 the ocean wave. The dizzy heights of abstraction, the severe 
 and thorny paths of logic, are only possible in so far as they 
 reveal themselves to vision ; we can only reason where we first 
 can see. So it is by the aid of imagination that we unlock the 
 secrets of the world around. " The life of the imagination," says 
 Ruskin in his paradoxical way, " is the discovery of truth." Lay 
 it to rest, and you would still recognise the succession of dawn 
 and eve, of ebb and flow, of seed, blade, ear, and ripened grain, 
 acorn and oak, but " the soul of force would be dislodged from 
 your universe " ; l you would no longer bind its manifold 
 happenings into one whole ; you would know neither cause 
 nor effect ; you would confess no law. What but imagination 
 constructs the mental pictures which flash upon the discoverer's 
 inward eye, and slowly yield themselves afterwards to the 
 verifications of reason ? When Oken picked up a skull upon 
 the open heath and exclaimed, " It is a vertebral column," 
 when Harvey conceived the circulation of the blood, when 
 Newton " passed from a falling apple to a falling moon," the 
 transition was effected by a leap of the imagination. The 
 experimentalist who seeks to account for the behaviour of 
 matter in its various forms, solid or gaseous, by different 
 hypotheses of the shapes and sizes, the movements, the 
 velocities, of constituent molecules, is in like manner con- 
 structing pictures which other minds may visualise. They 
 are applied to successive groups of facts, they are modified and 
 reconstructed to accommodate new conditions, but they do not 
 cease to appeal to our mental gaze. It is by a similar process 
 that we learn to understand each other. Outwardly we should 
 be no more than little heaps of colour, form, bulk, weight, of 
 tall or short, of dark or fair, but for the imagination which 
 informs the whole with spirit, and knows that speech proceeds 
 from thought and act from will, and thought and will do but 
 
 1 Tyndall, on the Scientific Use of the Imagination,
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 65 
 
 show forth* a soul. The gift of sympathetic imagination 
 varies, indeed, largely from mind to mind. It is the key to 
 the appreciation of character, which often acts so rapidly that 
 we describe it as "inly glancing," or intuitive. A few 
 moments of intercourse leave one man still blind, while 
 another has gained an insight into a fresh nature and com- 
 prehends a whole life. If there be steps of reason which can 
 afterwards be set forth by processes of analytic judgment, they 
 are traversed so swiftly that we are unconscious of them. By 
 this means, also, do we reconstruct the past, detect the operation 
 of the intellectual or moral forces which have left their impress 
 on any given age, realise the personality of hero or prophet, or 
 trace the gradual phases and complex issues of social change. 
 To the significance of these operations language bears constant, 
 if unintentional, testimony. Our final reply to an argument 
 which we reject is to say, " I cannot see it." Our " theories " 
 are only visions or contemplations ; we designate our beliefs as 
 "views," sights which we have beheld. They are framed, 
 perhaps, on the memory of hours when, " with an eye made 
 quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we 
 saw into the life of things." To Wordsworth, indeed, worship 
 was not possible without love, and love could neither act nor 
 exist 
 
 Without imagination, which in truth 
 Is but another name for absolute power, 
 And clearest insight, amplitude of mind 
 And reason in her most exalted mood. 
 
 And from its progress he drew 
 
 Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought 
 Of human Being, eternity, and God. l 
 
 IV 
 
 The connection of this faculty with what we call " theo- 
 logical knowledge " is as intimate as it is with our knowledge 
 of the external world or of each other. The process by which 
 we conceive of God has its analogies, if it is not identical, with 
 the process by which we discern the unity of the scene around 
 us, or the corresponding unities which we call "ourselves." 
 And these conceptions are for ever being revised, as experience 
 
 1 Prelude,. 1 88 ff. 
 E
 
 66 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 widens, and fresh facts claim inclusion. It is always necessary 
 that we should, as far as possible, get our beliefs into form, and 
 give them definite contents : and that which seems to me 
 ultimately to determine these forms is our perception of the 
 congruity which subsists between the parts. If the new 
 elements cannot enter into peaceful relations with the older 
 fabric, it must be broken up and cast away. How many 
 theories of consciousness will need revision if the principle of 
 telepathy comes into general acceptance ? What new views of 
 the interaction of minds will be suggested, or how soon will 
 science demand an elastic ether capable of transmitting the 
 waves of thought and feeling! 1 On the other hand, just as 
 the ultimate proof of equality that is sometimes offered in plane 
 geometry is that you should put one triangle in the mind's eye 
 upon another and see if they fit, so the truth of our higher 
 views is established for us by the number and importance of 
 the ideas which they will combine in concord ; we try to get 
 them into a sort of visual correspondence ; and our final test is 
 the satisfaction of our persistent demand for harmony. The 
 passage of polytheism into monotheism exemplifies the mode 
 in which monotheism resolves the plurality of conflicting wills 
 into one energy operating everywhere and always, in response 
 to the imperious claim that thought shall take the line of 
 least resistance, shall mate with the growing consciousness of 
 the interconnection of all the powers and objects of the 
 universe, and blend all partial fragments into a perfect whole. 
 
 But even the monotheistic conception itself may assume 
 very different aspects under this influence. Contrast the 
 various phases of Yahweh in the Old Testament with the Zeus 
 of Xenophanes or Cleanthes. Tennyson accused his country- 
 men (with a figure only one degree less startling than that of 
 his brother poet Matthew Arnold) of thinking of God as "an 
 immeasurable English clergyman " ; and between that clear- 
 cut figure and the Absolute dimly looming out of the vast 
 obscure, is almost every conceivable diversity of representation. 
 Among these different types what are the features that invite 
 our choice ? They are composed of many elements of specu- 
 lative interest and of moral experience ; and faith reposes in 
 the form which most effectively binds together those which 
 
 1 Since this was written, Sir Wm. Crookes's address as President of the British 
 Association at Bristol has supplied a curious confirmation.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 67 
 
 have for us the highest value. This act of union is completed 
 by the religious imagination. 
 
 Thus, in the controversy which will always divide the 
 theistic schools between what is called " Monism " on the one 
 hand and " Pluralism " on the other, the issue really turns on 
 how far the imaginative presentation which embraces the entire 
 circle of existence within God can also accommodate the con- 
 ditions of the moral life as we know them ; or how far in the 
 striving after unity the diversities of our personal experience 
 can be submerged in the ocean " whereunto all things flow." l 
 There is the sublime apprehension of God, infinite, eternal, 
 one. He is pure Being, in whom inhere all knowledge, will, 
 and love. All conceivable creations, all possible universes, are 
 simultaneously displayed before his thought, but he is not 
 himself extended among any of them. The successions of 
 duration pass by, but he shares them not. In his timelessness 
 there is neither past nor future. The divine repose which is 
 yet in itself boundless self-moving and harmonious energy, 
 cannot be broken by the incidents of change, for change must 
 imply incompleteness. But the everlasting perfection is con- 
 stantly the same, and no mutation can either enhance or impair 
 its glory. Follow this conception in your imagination as you 
 seek to link it with the world you know, and you will find 
 that it carries with it, in some shape or other, the implications 
 that all pain and suffering and loss are either fictions of our 
 finite experience, or are part of the eternal experience, as well 
 as love, joy, peace. Nay, more, the whole contents of our 
 personality are lost in God. The rise of our little life is but 
 as the wave in the everlasting sea. The forms of our thought 
 give us an appearance of self-hood, but in reality we are only 
 fragments of the mighty consciousness which includes us and 
 all that we have or seem to be, our strivings and our failures, 
 our heroisms and our crimes. The world of change, limitation, 
 and conflict, therefore, has only an illusory appearance, and is 
 lost in the unity and immensity of God. 
 
 Over against this conception may be set another which 
 affirms that the world ;V, as it stems, extended in space, and 
 successive in time. These are the necessary conditions of all 
 activity, divine as well as human. The years of the world, the 
 years of the life of God, are indeed beyond our count ; but 
 
 1 There are, of course, many form* of Monism, Indian, Greek, mediaeval, modern.
 
 68 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 they are real years. What is past to us is also past to him ; 
 the events of aeons may live in his memory, but they are 
 actually gone beyond recall. Within this world God sets up 
 from age to age, in accordance with his purposes of wisdom 
 and good, fresh centres of power differentiated from himself. 
 They are endowed with separate individualities, in such a 
 manner that, though the contents of their consciousness are 
 known to his, they yet have an independent existence. The 
 struggles of temptation within them are real struggles ; the 
 decisions which they take in the crisis of moral strife are real 
 decisions. So absolutely are these left within our control, that 
 even God himself cannot foresee them. Only within certain 
 general limits, therefore, do the courses of events fall within 
 his prevision. They are so arranged with reference to our 
 freedom as to tend towards certain ends ; but the unexpected- 
 ness of the details is needed to engage the attention of Heaven, 
 and provide the Supreme, as is quaintly said, with a continuous 
 interest in life. Such a world is conceived (to use a homely 
 image) as a great joint-stock company, in which Deity is the 
 predominant partner. 
 
 Two universes are thus offered to us. If we start from our 
 common experience, God is in some sense presented as physi- 
 cally diffused, like an impalpable ether, sustaining, energising 
 everywhere. But he is limited by his own creations, and 
 has to that extent voluntarily renounced some of his own 
 infinitude ; it must even be conceded that the separate wills 
 which he has made may defy him for ever. If we start from 
 the ultimate principles of being and thought, he is not com- 
 prised within the forms of created things at all. The relation 
 of the world of our knowledge to his is incapable of explana- 
 tion except on terms which make all our inner life unreal. 
 But, on the other hand, an absolute unity of essence is main- 
 tained ; one plan, one will, pervade the whole ; the goal is for 
 ever secure, because the beginnings lead inevitably to the end, 
 and all their courses are compassed in the ever-present thought. 
 The choice between such conceptions is not a choice of reason, 
 for both pass beyond its scope. It is an option of imagination. 1 
 
 " 1 In the view of imagination that is here offered, the activity of reason supplies, 
 of course, some of the data which imagination selects or rejects. In this selective 
 and combining process, other influences are also at work, e.g. aesthetic appreciation. 
 "The indeterminism I defend," says Prof. Wm. James, "gives us a pluralistic,
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 69 
 
 The result for our religion depends on the considerations which 
 we have learned to regard as essential to our thought of God 
 and man. Are you overwhelmed with the contrast between 
 the poverty and littleness of our humanity and the majesty of 
 the infinite and everlasting ? Are you lost in adoration of the 
 fulness of his beauty, the marvel of his all-embracing might ? 
 Do you apprehend him as the One in All, the All in One ? 
 Then you will contemplate him as the Eternal, in whom for 
 ever inhere all truth and loveliness and good, before whose 
 gaze time has no secrets, and in whose light all issues are 
 foreseen for ever : and you will humbly lay at his feet the 
 isolation and self-dependence claimed for human souls, a willing 
 offering to his transcendent glory. Or are you persuaded that 
 there is no knowledge if our faculties are not veracious, and no 
 righteousness where there is not a higher and a lower ? Do 
 you find in the reasonableness of the world and in the judg- 
 ments of conscience the bed-rock of faith? Do they provide 
 for you the " TTOV CTTW " whence you will teach humanity to lift 
 itself to God ? Then you will select concordant attributes for 
 your conception of him. You will recognise him, who can- 
 not himself be supposed to be for ever exercising preferential 
 judgments and electing to be God instead of devil, as at least 
 manifesting his moral life by entering into your experience 
 and strengthening you to choose the good and to reject the 
 evil. But you will confess him to be physically conditioned 
 by time and space, perhaps also by matter. 1 You will be 
 unable to regard these as, in some mysterious way, forms of 
 his own devising for the constitution of our world. They 
 are independent in nature, yet perpetually concurrent with 
 him. Where God wills and acts, there, too, are they. You 
 will behold them, therefore, determining the modes of his 
 action, instead of his determining them.: His throne will 
 appear to you flanked with awful powers, from which even 
 
 restless universe, in which no single point of view can ever take in the whole scene ; 
 and to a mind possessed with the love ot unity at any cost, it will, no doubt, remain 
 for ever unacceptable. A friend with such a mind once told me that the thought 
 of my universe made him sick, like the sight of the horrible motion of a mass of 
 maggots in their carrion bed." The Will to Believe, and other Essays, p. 177. 
 
 1 " Waiving the question of the absolute beginning, we can intelligently take the 
 position that God and material substance are eternal, coexistent entities, neither of 
 them originated by or dependent upon the other " (Charles E. St. John, New 
 World, June 1898, p. 268). . . . "Without God there would have been nothing in 
 space but an all-pervading, blank expanse of ether " (ibid. p. 247).
 
 70 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 omnipotence cannot escape, and to which omniscience must 
 continually submit. Before such alternatives reason succumbs. 
 Imagination alone can make the daring flight, and seek by 
 sympathetic selection to harmonise the incongruous, and pre- 
 sent to itself some far-ofF glimpses of the mind of God. 
 
 If this be for many minds the mode of apprehension of 
 spiritual things, it would seem that the teacher of religion must 
 aim at clearing away the obstacles to vision, and quickening 
 the timid to walk along the path of insight. In all ages this 
 has been the language of the seer ; it is employed more spar- 
 ingly under the conditions of modern philosophy ; yet the 
 processes remain essentially the same. The perception that 
 the ideals of conduct within us are not all of equal value, that 
 some are worthy, others base, may be described as a moral 
 intuition. It does not depend on reasoning, any more than 
 the discrimination of the series of colours in the rainbow. We 
 actually present it to ourselves under the space -form of an 
 ascending scale, wherein this is lower, that is higher ; and if 
 there be one who declares that he knows not, for instance, 
 what reverence means, 1 we do not try to convince him by 
 argument ; we call him unawakened j the light of the glory 
 and wonder of the world in which he lives has not yet dawned 
 upon him. The early preaching of Buddhism, which appears 
 to me remarkable for the delicacy and distinction of its moral 
 psychology, is founded on this conception. Its primary object 
 was to impart a view of life, as steeped in suffering which had 
 its root in selfishness. Cast out the self with its vain cravings, 
 or rather, recognise that the notion of an abiding centre of 
 consciousness was an illusion, enter the noble eight-fold path 
 of right conduct, right thought, right aspiration, and deliverance 
 from the burden of evil was at hand. The recognition of these 
 contrasted conditions of misery and salvation went by the name 
 of the Dhammacakkhu, " the eye of the truth." Of the con- 
 verted it is said that " there arose within them the eye of the 
 
 i Reverence,' an able and intelligent gentleman from one of the British colonies 
 once said to me, ' is a thing I cannot understand.' " Bosanquet, Civilisation of 
 Christendom, p. 61.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 71 
 
 truth"; 1 they had got the insight; and the oft -repeated 
 formula of the grateful disciple praises the Buddha as the 
 great enlightener : " Most excellent, Lord, are the words of 
 thy mouth, most excellent ! Just as if a man were to reveal 
 that which has been hidden away, or were to point out the 
 right road to him who had gone astray, or were to 
 bring a lamp into the darkness so that those who have eyes 
 can see external forms, even so, Lord, has the truth been made 
 known to us in many a figure by the Blessed One." 2 It has 
 always been the prophet's function to open blind eyes ; and, 
 from this point of view, the significance of Jesus is summed up 
 in the Fourth Gospel alike in the healing act and in the 
 tremendous saying, " I am the light of the world." 
 
 But of this insight there are many degrees, and it depends on 
 conditions of which little is known. The power of visualising 
 our spiritual impressions (if I may be allowed the term) is very 
 unequal in different minds ; it is not constant, it may be only 
 in the highest degree occasional, even in the same mind. Isaiah 
 " sees " Yahweh enthroned in the heavenly sanctuary, and the 
 vision sends him forth to a life-long ministry, but there is no 
 record of its repetition. Paul can only recall one sublime 
 ascension into the third heaven. Yet George Fox seems some- 
 times to live in a panorama of wonders veiled from common 
 eyes " I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, 
 but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the 
 ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, 
 and I had great openings." 3 Even the modern man of the 
 world, poet, critic, and humorist together, must needs use the 
 same speech. " I was at Mary's," wrote James Russell Lowell 
 to his friend G. B. Loring in 1842,* "and happening to say 
 something of the presence of spirits (of whom I said I was 
 often dimly aware), Mr. Putnam entered into an argument 
 with me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the whole 
 system rose up before me like a vague destiny looming from 
 the abyss. I never before so clearly felt the spirit of God in 
 me and around me. The whole room seemed to me full of 
 God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with the presence 
 
 1 So of Kondanna after the Buddha's first sermon, Maha-vagga, i. 6, 29 j the 
 Brahman Pokltharasadi, Dlgha Nikaya, iii. 2, 21, etc. 
 
 2 "Buddhist Suttas," in Sacred Bocks of the East, xi. 203. 
 
 3 Journal, in 1647. * Letters, i. 75.
 
 72 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 of something, I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness 
 and clearness of a prophet." Sometimes, indeed, these profound 
 experiences take no external shape, however indistinctly vast. 
 When the outspread world, bathed in the sunrise-glory, dis- 
 solved into God before the eyes of Wordsworth's Wanderer, he 
 ceased to be conscious of outward form : 
 
 In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 Thought was not, in enjoyment it expired. 
 No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ; 
 Rapt into still communion that transcends 
 The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
 His mind was a thanksgiving to the power 
 That made him ; it was blessedness and love ! 
 
 These, however, it will be said, are rare and exceptional 
 insights. Be it so. But we only understand them at all 
 because they give articulate utterance to the cloudier appre- 
 hensions of our own souls. The speech of seer and poet must 
 ever remain a sealed book to us unless we can imaginatively 
 interpret it by the remembrance of hours when we, too, have 
 been lifted above the level of our common life. It is the 
 function of the higher mind to disclose to the lower the mean- 
 ing of its dim struggles and the worth of its obscure experi- 
 ences. I am well aware that I tread on perilous ground. The 
 path of self-deception is always easy ; and the history of religion 
 is darkened with the outbreaks of hysterical folly. I will not 
 even inquire now as to the cause or the inner validity of these 
 transcendent moments. But it is important to point out that 
 their imaginative form, so far as we can distinguish it from 
 their spiritual content, is plainly related to the general scenic 
 presentations (if I may so designate them) of divine things. 
 The seers of Israel apprehended their God, in accordance with 
 a mode of thought not unknown elsewhere, through the help 
 of ideal types, as occupying a palace-temple on high, which was 
 the celestial counterpart of the sacred house on Zion's hill. 
 To the later Jew one heaven was inadequate to the grandeur 
 of the world. Under influences, probably connected with the 
 Mesopotamian scheme of the planets, the number, superposed 
 one above another, had risen to seven. 1 Each had its appro- 
 
 1 Cp. R. H. Charles, Expository Times, vii. 57.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 73 
 
 priate sphere and meaning ; and Paul believed himself to have 
 visited the third. To the Catholic the revealing medium is 
 the Eucharist, the suffering Redeemer on the crucifix, or a 
 vision of the Virgin or a saint. The Quaker finds it in the 
 conquest of temptation and the victory of Christ over the 
 devil, as the darkness everywhere recedes before the light ; the 
 poet in the sunrise and the heart which has been prepared to 
 " receive deeply " Nature's " lesson deep of love." Now some 
 of these elements depend on present or historic fact. If it be 
 not true that at the priestly words of consecration the substance 
 of the wafer is converted into the substance of the body and 
 blood of Jesus Christ, the apprehension of the Unseen, which 
 has so often allied itself with this supreme faith, is not neces- 
 sarily invalidated, but it will require a new imaginative form. 
 The disbeliever in the Incarnation will never see the Virgin j 
 he will envisage the reality of Providence under a different 
 shape. It will be the same hereafter, if I mistake not, with 
 that sense of forgiveness which is often associated especially 
 with the immediate agency of Christ. It will become more 
 and more difficult to identify the objective spiritual reality with 
 a historical person ; and the soul, conscious of the appeal of 
 infinite Love, will not seek to limit its channel to the human 
 life through which Christianity first recognised it. In this 
 respect, indeed, it may be said that significant changes are 
 already on the way. The action of imagination on the con- 
 ception of the person of Jesus is already producing marked 
 theological results. Beginning with the common -places of 
 historical inquiry, it has sought to reconstruct the scene of his 
 ministry. It has surveyed his country ; it has reproduced city 
 and village, synagogue and temple. It has followed the fisher- 
 man on the lake, and the husbandman in the fields ; it has 
 listened to the discussions of the Rabbis, and mingled in the 
 conflict of the sects. And in the centre of all, as it has traced 
 the footsteps of the Teacher in home or school, at the work- 
 man's bench, by the lakeside, upon the mount, in the judgment- 
 hall or on the cross, everywhere and always it has at last 
 discovered a Man, a man with a man's wants, a man's 
 ignorance, a man's infirmity. But how is this compatible 
 with the dogma that as the Eternal Word he was at the same 
 time perfect God, wielding in wisdom and might the energy 
 that upheld the universe ? In what sense when he was a boy
 
 74 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 at Nazareth could he be also enlightening every man coming 
 into the world ? How in that dying hour of darkness and 
 abandonment could he fill all space, produce the eclipse of light 
 which publicly attested creation's horror at his fate, or main- 
 tain the stars upon the Milky Way ? ] Imagination is now 
 frankly relinquishing the attempt to unite these incompati- 
 bilities, they can no longer be harmonised, and the inquiry 
 into the cosmic action of the Word during the life of Jesus 
 is silenced in impenetrable reserve. A re-interpretation of the 
 person of Christ thus becomes inevitable, though it may be 
 doubted whether the latest form will continue to satisfy the 
 thinkers who now find it adequate. It depends on the con- 
 ception that the attributes of infinity can be voluntarily 
 resigned ; that the divine Son could lay aside his omniscience, 
 divest himself of his almighty power, and still enter as " per- 
 fect God " within the limits of a human soul. Fixing upon 
 the term kenosis^ imagination is at present content with this 
 singular symbol of an infinite Person who empties himself of 
 his infinity yet remains divine. But this contentment cannot 
 long endure. It is inevitable that the attempt to realise the 
 process should disclose further incongruities incapable of finding 
 shelter in one view. What is the nature of a knowledge that 
 can be thus poured forth from a boundless consciousness ? 
 What thought is there in what we call an infinite Mind which 
 can be separated from his thinking ? How are thinking and 
 being, which are but two aspects of a common reality, to be 
 severed by a voluntary act ? Are not cogitare and esse in God 
 one and the same ? If God ceased to know himself, would 
 he not also cease to be God ? And yet we are told that the 
 Eternal Word became an infant at the breast, and only arrived 
 at self-consciousness when the Father revealed to him in the 
 Baptismal hour who he was. 2 Fidelity to the Gospel record 
 may take refuge for a time among these contradictions, but it 
 cannot permanently retain them in its grasp ; and the spiritual 
 apprehension of God in and through Jesus Christ will again 
 need a fresh investiture, and will weave for itself a new shape. 
 
 1 " Whilst He hung upon the cross, He was also in Athens, and ruled omni- 
 presently the world " : so the Swabian theologians Brenz and Andreae, in opposition 
 to Bullinger and Beza. Dorner, Hut. of Prot. Theol. i. 365 ; cp. Van Dyke, Gospel 
 for an Age cf Doubt, pp. 136-140, and 378. 
 
 2 So Godet, Comm. on John i. 14 (vol. i. p. 367, cp. 397, 400), and The Thinker, 
 May 1895, p. 391.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 75 
 
 VI 
 
 That our general conceptions of God are framed under a 
 variety of influences is, in a certain sense, generally admitted. 
 That they should change during a period of unusual intellectual 
 activity, or moral excitement, or social advance, is therefore 
 inevitable. And that such changes have largely taken place 
 during the present century few will deny. They have operated 
 deeply on that religious imagination whose varied activity I 
 have endeavoured to suggest to your thought. On the one 
 hand philosophy by its inquiry into the processes of mind and 
 the ultimate grounds of reality, on the other hand science by 
 its investigations into the history and constitution of the 
 material world, have enforced the ideas of unity and uniformity, 
 of continuity, of universality, as they have never been realised 
 before. Along every avenue of research the demands on space 
 and time have been enlarged. The processes of nature have 
 been discovered to be infinitely more complex and wonderful 
 than had been dreamed : the field is indefinitely vaster, and 
 the play of myriad forces more constant and subtle. If man is 
 exalted by his astonishing successes, he is also dwarfed in the 
 presence of immensity. And this immensity is one. The 
 throne of the universe admits of no rival. The Adversary has 
 been for ever expelled, though the victory over death seems as 
 far off as ever ; and the mighty mass of the whole world's 
 pain falls, almost unrelieved, within the agency of God. It is 
 little short of a revolution, and belief still staggers from the 
 shock. The contradiction which seems to be thus introduced 
 into the divine nature is solved in various ways ; and the 
 known area of sentiency upon our globe is small, indeed, com- 
 pared with the majesty of the universe. Faith is still strong 
 enough to overcome the conflict which it can neither terminate 
 nor explain ; for the perception of an intellectual order around 
 us is reinforced by other elements which powerfully appeal to 
 our sympathetic imagination, such as the discernment of 
 beauty and the consciousness of good. The geometric pre- 
 sentation of God as thinking out the relations of systems by 
 processes of deduction from his first principles gives way to 
 that of the artist in whose mind there rises spontaneously the 
 image of the whole, so that God appears to us as " the perfect 
 poet," who alone can perfectly live out his own creations. In
 
 76 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the loveliness of the outward scene the insight of affection 
 encounters the appeal of love to the soul within ; while the 
 elements of beauty in symmetry, proportion, harmony, reveal a 
 close affinity with the ethical aspects of character in justice 
 and right. The prominence of these attributes in our imagi- 
 native apprehension of the Deity at the present day, suffices 
 to bear the new strain involved in the ascription of physical 
 evil to the direct action of an immediate Will, in which all 
 causality resides, while it has driven the cruder forms of other 
 doctrine off the field. It has banished for ever the theories of 
 election and substitutionary atonement, once taught on the 
 basis of a few scattered texts, combined by the methods of 
 mediaeval jurisprudence j and it will ere long completely 
 harmonise the conception of King with that of Father, so that 
 (as far as human destiny is concerned) sovereignty will realise 
 its purposes through education, and the discipline of our exist- 
 ence is justified as all souls are joined in common adoration of 
 the Eternal. The influence of ethical development on the 
 religious imagination is not, indeed, at present exhausted, for 
 the simple reason that the ethical development itself is still in 
 process. Concerning the personal contents of the idea of 
 good, it may, indeed, be doubted whether future generations 
 are likely to advance beyond the preacher of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. But there is a social idea, the very existence of 
 which we are only dimly beginning to realise. It declares 
 that the individual is not, and never can be, complete in 
 himself. It points to possibilities of more intricate conscious- 
 ness than can ever be fulfilled by a single mind. It seeks to 
 discover the mysterious links of internal connection which 
 bind the members of communities to one another, and link 
 the separate groups into one great chain of spiritual develop- 
 ment, so that the whole of humanity may be conceived as one 
 mighty growth, with new ethical implications among its parts, 
 and, as a consequence, new ethical ideals. 
 
 Among these may, perhaps, be noticed, as a single and more 
 obvious instance, the influence of the principles of democracy 
 upon our view of the administration of the world. The 
 aspiration of the prophet for the diffusion of the knowledge 
 of the Lord among the least as among the greatest, so that 
 teaching should be needed no more, is essentially a democratic 
 aspiration. It is founded on the abolition of privilege, on the
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 77 
 
 recognition (for purposes of government) of the equal worth of 
 all. When that conception is applied to the diversities of 
 religion, its immediate effect is to suppress their rivalries, abate 
 their separate pretensions to supremacy, and secure the corre- 
 sponding recognition of similar values relatively in each. -If 
 all altars be thus legitimated, the claims of any church to the 
 exclusive possession of the way of salvation fade into silence ; 
 the prerogative of the keys is broken, and history, at least, 
 must testify to some kind of equality of opportunity. So the 
 Jew, who meditated on the sole deposit of the law with Israel, 
 combined it with the universality of providential purpose and 
 revealing grace by the legend that, in the thunders of Sinai, 
 God addressed his commands in seventy languages l to all the 
 nations, but Israel only then had ears to hear ; while the 
 Alexandrian, following a similar instinct, affirmed that, if Israel 
 had found its training for Christ through the law, philosophy 
 had rendered the same service to the Greeks. 2 The counter- 
 part of this is the perception that God is no respecter of 
 persons, but that in every nation he that feareth him and 
 worketh righteousness is acceptable to him. It remains only 
 to take the further step, for which the religion of insight has 
 been always ready, and identify the object of worship through 
 every diversity of rite. The poet of the Masnavi, Muham- 
 med of Balk, who died in the year before Thomas Aquinas, 
 1273, tnus esca P es from the limits of Islam : 
 
 In the adorations and benedictions of righteous men 
 The praises of all the prophets are kneaded together. 
 Because he that is praised is in fact only one, 
 In this respect all religions are only one religion. 
 
 Moses, he relates, once heard a shepherd praying, " O God, 
 show me where thou art, that I may become thy servant. I 
 will clean thy shoes, and comb thy hair, and sew thy 
 clothes, and fetch thee milk." And Moses rebuked him as 
 an infidel, and the shepherd rent his garment and fled. But 
 a voice from heaven was heard saying, " Wherefore hast thou 
 driven away my servant ? Thy office is to reconcile my people 
 with me, not to drive them from me. I have given to each 
 race different usages and forms of praising and adoring me. I 
 
 1 Such was the interpretation of the qoloth of Ex. xx. 18 ; see Midrash on Ex. 
 tr. Wiinsche, p. 56. 2 Clem. Alex., Strtm. vi. 5.
 
 78 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 have no need of their praises, and I regard not the words that 
 are spoken, but the heart that offers them." l 
 
 VII 
 
 The conception is thus reached of the fundamental 
 sympathy of religions, which corresponds to the view of 
 revelation already indicated at an earlier stage of this discourse. 
 To the history and phases of that idea I shall invite your 
 attention in the ensuing academic year. It must be enough to 
 observe now a singular illustration of this sympathy, in the fact 
 that the ideas which I have already contrasted tend to reappear 
 in one after another of the higher faiths. If the prophets of 
 Israel were regarded as the oracles of a heavenly voice, the 
 sages of India were supposed to have seen the self-subsistent 
 archetypes of their ancient hymns. If the Bible was defended 
 as from end to end the Word of God, divinely inerrant, the 
 Veda was, in like manner, supernaturally infallible. 2 It was, 
 indeed, only the reproduction upon earth of a heavenly pattern, 
 ideally pre-existent, like the pattern of the tabernacle shown to 
 Moses on the mount. So it belonged to the realm of the 
 deathless, incapable of change or decay : and having no bounds, 
 it was infinite. It was, therefore, eternal and immutable, and 
 shone for ever as a source of light. By a similar conception 
 was the law, revealed to Zoroaster, invested with supreme 
 authority. Daena, the name of the specific precepts in the 
 sacred books, became also (like the Hebrew torah] a designation 
 of the religion which they enforced. She, too, existed in the 
 heavenly world. Homage is paid her, the sixteenth of the 
 Yashts or acts of worship being consecrated to her j and from 
 her dwelling in heaven, the Garothman or "home of song," 
 does Zoroaster summon her, beseeching her fellowship and 
 praying for righteousness of thought and speech and deed. 3 
 This law, as it emanates from Ahura Mazda, the omniscient 
 Lord, is his manthra spenta^ or holy word. It issues from his 
 mouth, as a strong weapon for those who can wield it. 4 By a 
 similar process did later Israel figure to itself the ideal of its 
 law as the first thing that proceeded from Omnipotence before 
 
 1 Mainavi I Ma'na-vi, tr. Whinfield, p. 139. 
 
 2 Cp. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, III. ii. 7-12. 
 
 3 S.B.E. xxiii. 264. 4 Ibid. iv. 207.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 79 
 
 the world. It bore within it the types of all creation, so that 
 when God would call the universe into being, he first looked 
 into the Torah, and found there the great design of earth and 
 heaven. 1 It might even be called by Yahweh his " son," 2 and 
 the Rabbis discussed whether it was not made before his 
 throne. Strangest of all strange developments of the religious 
 imagination is the picture of Deity presiding over a heavenly 
 Sanhedrin, discussing the details of interpretation and issuing 
 new rules for future guidance. In this atmosphere of im- 
 palpable ideals even Islam worked out a similar doctrine. The 
 Qoran was the utterance of the word of God : it must itself, 
 therefore, partake of the existence of that word from everlasting 
 to everlasting. Little more than a century after the death of 
 Mohammed the doctrine of the uncreated character of the 
 Qoran was formulated, based on the idea of the eternity of its 
 origin in Allah's mind. 3 There is, perhaps, no more singular 
 episode in the history of sacred books than the record of the 
 debates at Bagdad which sprang out of this conception the 
 popular clamour on its behalf, the protests of rationalism de- 
 claring that that which consisted in letters and sounds could 
 not be self-subsistent and everlasting, the mosques crowded 
 with thousands of eager listeners while the theologians disputed 
 whether God's word could be conceived distinct from his 
 absolute being, and the Caliphs on opposite sides trying to stop 
 discussion with the sword. The issue could not be doubtful. 
 The Qoran as it lies between the two covers is AllrVs own 
 word, which he imparted by way of inspiration to the prophet. 4 
 In due time the person of the revealer grew more and more 
 important in comparison with the person whom he revealed ; 
 and the Arabian shepherd could be designated as the inerrant, 
 the sinless, the uncreated light, and invoked more frequently 
 even than God himself. 5 
 
 But over against these limitations, the history of religion 
 presents other types embodying the conception that Revelation 
 is a perpetual process, so that the world and life, the starry 
 heavens and the moral law, are alike its organs and make their 
 common appeal to the soul of man. Here is, in truth, the 
 
 1 Midrash on Gen. i. I, tr. Wimsche, p. I. 
 
 2 Midraih on Lev., tr. Wimsche, p. 137. 
 
 3 Von Kremer, Die Herrschenden Ideen da Is/ami, 233 ff. 
 
 4 So the Qady 'lyad in the thirteenth century (Von Kremer, Ideen, 249). 
 
 5 In 3 widely used prayer-book of the fourteenth century (ibid. 162).
 
 8o THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 answer of the wisdom of the race to the deepest of all doubts 
 Is there anything in the constitution of the universe which 
 corresponds with the order of my thought, the commands of 
 my conscience, the aspirations of my love ? I have affirmed 
 my belief that for many minds the answer to this question is 
 not to be reached by way of proof so much as by vision. We 
 do not attain it by the processes of reasoning, we discern it by 
 the penetration of insight. The power of discernment de- 
 pends on the discipline of thought and character, and (in- 
 tellectually speaking) rests largely on the completeness with 
 which we can picture to ourselves the myriad diversities of 
 things as knit into one whole, so that physics and ethics shall 
 be different sides of the same reality. When Emerson 
 declared l that he looked for the teacher who should " see the 
 identity of gravitation with purity of heart," he did not expect 
 the demonstration to be offered in a university laboratory. In 
 seeking to bind his days into the same order as that of the 
 most ancient skies, Wordsworth relied on something beside the 
 tables of an astronomical almanac. Once more, then, "theo- 
 logical knowledge " founds itself on the imaginative appre- 
 hension of the ultimate unity. 
 
 Enter an Egyptian temple, or unseal the rock-cut tomb, 
 and you will probably see the figure of a woman wearing upon 
 her head an ostrich plume, the symbol of truth. Her name is 
 Maat, from the root ma, "stretch out." 2 She is the symbol of 
 rule, of rectitude, of right. She represents the ideas of truth, 
 which is the harmony of the thought within and the world 
 without, and justice, which is the harmony of the individual 
 and social life alike among men and gods, the living and the 
 dead. She appears among the most antique forms, and con- 
 stitutes the very principle of the existence of Deity, for it is 
 the mark of a divine being to " live " or " exist " " by " or 
 " upon " Maat. She is the eye of Ra, the solar disc ; she is 
 "lady of heaven " and queen on the earth, lady likewise of the 
 land of the west where the sun takes his nightly course and the 
 souls of the departed follow him, so that all parts of the universe 
 own her sway. So, too, in the sphere of government, which 
 should reflect the majestic order of the skies, she is the 
 
 1 Address to the Divinity School at Cambridge (1838). 
 
 2 Cp. Renouf, Hibb. Lectures, p. 119 ; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der Alten 
 Aevypttr, ? 477 j Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 142 ; Budge, 
 Papyrus of Ant, cxix. ; St. Clair, Creation Records, p. 201.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 81 
 
 principle of polity which binds together sovereign and subjects, 
 and as such she is the most precious offering which a monarch 
 can make to the powers above, the most precious gift which 
 the gods can bestow upon the king. Again and again upon 
 the temple-walls is her image figured on a dish which the royal 
 celebrant holds out before the altar, saying, " I offer to thee 
 the goddess Maat, I lift her up before thy face " : and the 
 deity replies, " I lay the truth in thine heart to manifest her 
 everlastingly before the gods, I cause truth to find an abiding 
 dwelling on the earth, and I separate the lie from thy palace : I 
 give thee truth, live in her ; remain united with her, and let 
 thy heart rejoice in her." 
 
 Consult the ancient wisdom of China, and you will find it 
 resting upon a somewhat similar conception. The foundation 
 of morals alike for the person and the state is the sublime co- 
 ordination of the heavens and earth which form the visible 
 manifestation of the " grand unity." l According to a well- 
 known mythological symbol they are the parents of all things. 
 The courses of the sun and moon, the faithful seasons which 
 pace their yearly round, follow the road or " path " which has 
 been indicated to them from above. From the same source 
 are derived the "lessons transmitted to men and called its 
 orders," " the law and authority of them is in heaven." There 
 is thus a " way " of heaven, and a " way " of earth, and a 
 " way " of man to correspond, Heaven being in fact a venerable 
 equivalent for God, based on the original worship of the living 
 sky. The poet could affirm that " Heaven, in giving birth to 
 the multitude of the peoples, to every faculty and relationship 
 affixed its law." 2 "Ah," said Confucius approvingly, "the 
 author of this ode knew the constitution of our nature." 3 
 The counsellor of kings founds his exhortation on the same 
 conception : " The sovereign must remember that the work is 
 Heaven's ; it is for men to act upon it. From Heaven are 
 the social arrangements with their several duties. . . . When 
 the sovereign and minister show a common respect for these, 
 do they not harmonise the moral nature of the people ? 
 Heaven hears and sees as our people see. Such connection is 
 there between the upper and the lower worlds. How reverent 
 ought the masters of the world to be." 4 The interaction of 
 
 1 In the "Li Ki," S.B.E. xxvii. 387. 
 
 2 SA i King (tr. Legge), III. pt. iii. vi. i. 
 
 8 Menciut (tr. Legge), VI. pt. i. vi. 8. 4 Shu King (tr. Legge), II. iii. 5, 6, 
 
 F
 
 82 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 heaven and earth, their mutual relations, their impartial love 
 for all, the equilibrium which they maintain, are the roots of 
 Chinese ethics, and suggested the famous Confucian doctrine 
 of Reciprocity. The true sage, it is said, enters into the 
 moral relations which unite earth and heaven in one vast and 
 beneficent order, and he " forms a Ternion with them " : l 
 or, as it is phrased more briefly, "Perfection of nature is 
 characteristic of Heaven ; to attain to that perfection belongs 
 to man." 2 " Be ye perfect," said Jesus, " as your heavenly 
 Father is perfect." 
 
 Among the elder thoughts of the Aryan race, also, is this 
 perception of the ultimate unity of the physical and moral 
 worlds. The Vedic hymns are conspicuous for the prominence 
 which they give to the idea of law, and the variety of the 
 terms by which they designate it. 3 One only, the Rita, 
 acquires an abiding place in the higher imagination, and serves 
 as the medium for combining in a single form the solemn order 
 of creation, of worship, and morally of truth and right. 
 Whether with Roth and Grassmann and Bergaigne its root or 
 be connected with that of the Greek dpapurKO), so that it 
 denotes that which is fitted, joined, or fixed ; or whether with 
 Max Miiller 4 and Ludwig it be regarded as that which is gone, 
 and hence the path which is traversed in the going does not 
 affect its significance as the lofty symbol of the coherence of all 
 visible things. 5 Day after day the dawn, which is its guardian, 
 faithfully obeys its behest. According to its law are her horses 
 harnessed ; from it as their home does she start upon the way ; 
 by it she guides the reins, and, when the night comes, r/ta 
 springs forth anew. It is by r/ta also that the rivers flow ; of 
 r/ta even the storm-gods are the offspring. The wide expanse 
 of heaven is her domain. In r/ta do the gods rejoice, and the 
 lofty Varu;za and the boundless Aditi count it among their high 
 functions to protect it. Nay, the gods themselves are born 
 from it, as they are also born in it, or according to it. But it 
 has another aspect as it presides over sacrifice, which ultimately 
 acquired a peculiar significance as the mystic counterpart of the 
 processes of creation : and it is also the secret principle of 
 
 1 "Li Ki," S.B.E. xxviii. 319. 2 Ibid. 317. 
 
 3 Thus dAaman, dharman, <vrata. 4 Hibb. Lect. 237. 
 
 6 A long list of passages from the Rig Veda will be found in Grassmann's Lexicon, 
 s.v. Other material in Ludwig, Rig Veda, iii. 284 ; Bergaigne, La Religion Ve'dique; 
 Wallis, Cosmology of the R.f, etc, iv.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 83 
 
 morality. As such it is the correlate of satya, " that which is," 
 the existent, true, and good. Heaven and earth are satya, 
 " veracious " ; they can be trusted ; they are r/tavan, " faithful 
 to the law," steadfast and unperturbed with tranquil course. 
 And so, likewise, is the devout worshipper who follows the 
 r/ta. For him the pasturage of Aditi is broad ; and he, too, 
 bears the same epithet, given alike to the world and to the gods, 
 he is r/tavan, " faithful to right," pious or godly. It is the 
 imaginative form of the same sublime conception, according to 
 which God, nature, man, answer each other in unseen harmony. 
 The successions of visible things are but the veil of an ideal 
 principle which is likewise the secret of worship, and the moral 
 strength of common life. The same principle inheres in the 
 heavenly powers, so that at the heart of all existence are the 
 good and true. 
 
 Do you turn to the other branch of our Aryan forefathers, 
 who chanted the ancient hymns of which fragments still 
 survive in the Zend Avesta ? There, too, you may discover 
 the same idea, designated by the same name, yet with a different 
 emphasis, and perhaps a more theological content. For there, 
 too, Asha^ the philological equivalent of the Indian r/ta, 1 is the 
 principle of order, whether in nature, in ritual, or morality, and 
 her home is the bosom of God. In poems of various origins 
 and dates the lines of portraiture are not altogether consistent, 
 yet the total impression is singularly harmonious. In that 
 awful hour when the spirits of good and evil had finished each 
 his part in the creation, they chose their separate realms ; and 
 the bounteous spirit chose Asha, putting on as a vesture the 
 firm stones of heaven, 2 so that the vault of sky elsewhere 
 presented as the garment or robe of the All-Righteous is the 
 fabric wrought by Asha. Or again, Asha was created by 
 Ahura when his all-glorious conceptions clothed themselves in 
 the stars, the ordering of the nightly host being its work : 
 through Asha did the sun arise and set, and the moon wax and 
 wane. Asha sustains the earth beneath and the clouds above, 
 yokes the winds to the storm-clouds, and inspires the good 
 thoughts within our souls. Asha, too, hath made the light and 
 the darkness, sleep and the zest of waking hours : and Asha 
 
 1 Darmesteter, Qrma-zd et Ahriman, i. ; Max Miiller, Hlbb. Lect. 249. A useful 
 collection of passages is given by Justi, Handbuch der Zendsprache, 39. 
 
 2 S.B.E, xxxi. 30.
 
 84 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 spread the auroras, noontide and midnight, monitors to discern- 
 ing man, duty's true guides. 1 But it has a ritual as well as a 
 cosmic aspect. It signifies the due performance of the sacrifice, 
 and as Agni, the fire on the sacred hearth, the dear house-priest 
 in the Indian home, was r/'ta-born, so Asha was connected with 
 sacrificial purity, and came specially to denote the cleansing 
 flame. In its character of holy ritual, also, it gives its name to 
 the most sacred of all prayers, the ashem vohu, which opens with 
 the declaration, " holiness is the best of all good ; well is it with 
 that holiness which is the perfection of holiness." 2 And so it 
 passes into the supreme symbol of the Moral Order by which 
 the power of evil will be finally subdued. When the Omniscient 
 created the inspired word of reason, Asha was with him con- 
 senting in his deed. 3 It is to Ahura, with Asha by his side, 
 that Zoroaster appeals to grant gladness to his disciples, and the 
 " sovereignty " or kingdom (the angel of the kingdom of God) : 
 " when shall Asha," cries the prophet, " and the good Mind, 
 and the Kingdom come hastening to me to give me strength 
 for my task and mission ? " 4 So it is Asha that the pious man 
 (called ashavan^ parallel with the Vedic r/tavan) follows in word 
 and deed, and it is in the fulness of Asha that Ahura Mazda 
 will bestow Universal Weal and Immortality, and will likewise 
 give the Good Mind's vigorous might to him who in spirit and 
 in action is his friend. In its highest aspect Asha Vahista, the 
 most excellent Asha, is the second in the group of the Holy 
 Immortals who surround Ahura's throne, the first being Vohu 
 Mano, a kind of holy spirit or Good Mind. 5 To Asha thus 
 conceived there belonged especially (as to its Indian counterpart) 
 the character of truth, for in the Greek explanation it is 
 identified with dA?7#eia. 6 And to Asha in this exalted character 
 the devout disciple paid his homage : " the most excellent Asha 
 do we worship, the bountiful Immortal, that which is endowed 
 with light and all things good." 7 Once more, the Righteous 
 Order is not only Heaven's first law, it is itself a divine power. 
 It is the revelation of a holy will in the world of material 
 existence, in the struggle of good and evil in nature, and in the 
 similar conflict in man. It is discerned not so much by 
 intellectual insight as by moral sympathy. It has for its 
 
 1 S.B.E. xxii. 113, 114. 2 Ibid, xxiii. 22. 
 
 3 Ibid. xxxi. 10. 4 Ibid. xxxi. 12. 5 Ibid, xxiii. 31. 
 
 6 Dt hide (commonly assigned to Plutarch), 46, 47. 7 S.B.E. xxxi. 286.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 85 
 
 comrades in Ahura's service the noble impersonations of the 
 Good Mind and the Kingdom of Righteousness. It is the 
 very form under which the Supreme displays himself, for fourth 
 upon the list of Ahura's wondrous names is the declaration, 
 "My name is Asha Vahista," the most excellent Order. 1 
 Well might the " way of perfection," the advance to the " great 
 Renovation," the sublime climax of the frashokeretl^ "making 
 the world move onwards," point to their high goal through 
 " union with Asha," 2 the Righteous Order of creation, 
 conscience, God. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The general resemblance of these conceptions, in spite of 
 many differences, to the Wisdom of the Israelites and the 
 Reason, Logos, or Word of the Greeks, I hope to point out 
 to you hereafter. I have sketched these solemn figures for you 
 this evening to indicate the answers of the higher faiths of 
 antiquity to the questions which still beset us to-day. They, 
 at least, support that view of the sympathy of religions to 
 which modern discovery has so strikingly guided us ; do they 
 not also confirm the belief that the revelation of God is rather 
 to be found in the stable and continuous elements of life than 
 in the exceptional or unique ? And this belief, in fine, provides 
 the answer to that chill care which sometimes arises on the 
 decline of the older conception of revelation, as the positive 
 communication of definite truths about the destiny of man or 
 the inner constitution of the Godhead. That conception pos- 
 sessed one feature of immense importance ; it testified to the 
 interest which God felt in the world. It emphasised the 
 sublime intent which rose higher and higher through patriarch, 
 and law-giver, and prophet, and shone with its fullest glory in 
 the incarnate Son. It laid stress on the Father's purpose that 
 somewhere, at least, upon this globe the real truth should be 
 known. It provided that God had never left himself without 
 a witness ; and though it might, indeed, be strange that this 
 revelation should have come to earth in Judea, amid the despised 
 of the peoples, the choice did but lay upon the infant church 
 the more imperative duty to carry forth among all nations 
 the only name whereby man might be saved. But now the 
 
 1 S.B.E. xxiii. 25. a Ibid. xxxi. 34.
 
 86 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 religion of the Bible is known but as one of many. The 
 temple and the tomb have yielded up the secrets of an incalcul- 
 able past. The voices of seers, the teachings of sages, are 
 heard from land to land ; a golden chain of praise knits together 
 all members of the race ; and no sooner has one philosophy 
 offered its interpretation of the universe, than its counterpart 
 arises from some distant century, or makes its appearance on 
 the other side of the earth. So many opinions, so many vain 
 guesses, does it not seem as if God were indifferent to our 
 thought of him. He does not protect us from error on the 
 most significant of all themes : he does not shield us from 
 mistaking falsehood for fact ; nay, subtler apprehension still, 
 does not this silence imply that he is indifferent also to the 
 Truth ? Is not the value of our homage to the supreme 
 reality belittled when God himself apparently sets by it so 
 small a store ? Or why should he suffer such diversity, why 
 should he not at least make certain, beyond all possibility of 
 illusion, that he is ? I think that many minds are conscious 
 of a strange shiver as they look out on the vast spaces of 
 immensity and feel that the Creator who fills them has left 
 not only his character, but his very being, open to discussion. 
 In this remoteness man loses his grandeur he is not sufficiently 
 important in the divine eyes to be the object of revelation ; 
 and truth its solemnity it is not precious enough for God 
 to put it out of reach of vague denial. It has not been guarded, 
 because it is held too cheap. God keeps aloof from us, so that 
 our mistakes about him give him no concern, though they be 
 matters of life and death to us. Our boasted freedom means 
 only unlimited permission to go astray j the price of liberty is 
 perpetual doubt. 
 
 ^ There are many answers to this pathetic plea, which rings 
 with so many variations through the higher literature of our 
 time. I will not anticipate the arguments of the philosophical 
 class-room ; I will only point out that the difficulty which 
 besets our " theological knowledge " is not peculiar to it. 
 The Author of our being has simply placed the knowledge of 
 himself on the same footing with all other knowledge of the 
 world and life. Consider those elementary beginnings when 
 primitive man stood face to face with nature, and contrast the 
 mind of the savage who has no name for number above three 
 with that of Newton binding the heavens and the earth within
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 87 
 
 the scope of one imperial law ; and then realise that the faculties 
 by which God invites us along the path of science are the same 
 as those which he bids us use within the sphere of faith. The 
 range of facts upon which they are exercised may be different, 
 but the processes of reasoning, the activities of discovery, the 
 insight which brings unity and harmony, these do not change. 
 By the same lines of experience, judgment, apprehension, which 
 guide us to belief in one another, do we discern the presence 
 of mind and will in the scene around. The scale is expanded 
 as you range from man through the universe to God, but the 
 method is essentially the same. God thus deigns to put the 
 truth about himself on an identical basis with all other truth. 
 Is this to lower the significance of religion ? On the contrary, 
 it is to enhance the value of our common thought, and bring 
 the whole realm of knowledge into relation with the only 
 True. The modes by which the Divine Mind offers itself 
 to our comprehension in the world are found to have their 
 correspondences within ourselves. That world can only be 
 interpreted by our reason because God's reason has first made 
 it rational ; and we discover the connections of events, the 
 sequences of causes and effects, inasmuch as God has rendered 
 them intelligible, by arranging our minds to match his own. 
 In other words, God thinks in us and we in him, and the 
 essence of all mind is one. We are but as the single rays, that 
 start from anywhere in the diffusive centre of his infinitude, 
 and he the boundless sphere which includes them all j yet 
 along each line flash messages of mystery which convey to the 
 understanding heart "authentic tidings of invisible things," 
 and reveal an immensity that is full of light. The higher 
 affections thus all ascend by varying paths to a common goal. 
 The apprehensions of truth, of beauty, of righteousness, are 
 each directed towards the same infinite reality ; and wonder, 
 reverence, and love are as the angels which pass and repass 
 upon the heavenly stair. Whether the facts with which we 
 deal be what we call external made known to us through 
 the physical world, or internal, namely, the impulses, desires, 
 passions, sentiments, aspirations, awakened within us by our 
 contact with each other or our reflection on ourselves, all alike 
 are brought to the same inner tribunal, all are interpreted by 
 the same mind, judged by the same thought, combined and 
 unified by the same insight. So, the ideals which visit us are
 
 88 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 the continuous appeal of the infinite Spirit to our own ; and 
 the preacher who speaks of them must preach that which he 
 has seen and known. His speech will be declaratory, not 
 demonstrative, the Xdyos aTro^avriKos of the old philosophy, 
 rather than diroSetKTiKos, and his exhortation to inquirers will 
 take the form intra te quaere Deum. 
 
 And yet that, after all, is not the final word. The goal of 
 Hebrew prophecy was to " know the Lord." At the entrance 
 of the most sacred shrine of the deity who was pre-eminently 
 for Greece the god of revelation, on the temple of Apollo at 
 Delphi, Hellenic wisdom inscribed the striking exhortation 
 " know thyself." l I have tried to show that in one aspect 
 these are but the obverse and reverse of the coin of faith. But 
 there is another in which it seems impossible thus to ally them. 
 What if our self-knowledge convince us only of the dulness of 
 our insight, the poverty of our endeavours, the little worth of 
 our daily achievement, the negative insignificance or the posi- 
 tive selfishness that is stamped across our life ? The discovery 
 may, indeed, be full of pain, yet it is impossible to the eye that 
 is not at least partially open. We cannot tell that our sight is 
 dim, unless we can already perceive the same forms as clearer 
 seers, though their radiant hues be shrouded in obscurity and 
 their outlines hazy and confused. But the distincter discern- 
 ment of the pure in heart teaches us first to trust and then to 
 purify our own. We gain new confidence when we learn 
 that our vague yearnings, our faint aspirations, are at once 
 articulate and satisfied in them. This is for us the value of 
 the prophet and the saint ; through the summit minds we look 
 out into the infinite without terror, for they bid us see as they 
 saw, and know as they have known. This may be described 
 as revelation through persons. It is the human channel for 
 us of the highest knowledge which gives assurance to our own 
 feebler apprehension, and teaches us to remove the veils of fear 
 and care. That God is, may be said to be the perpetual dis- 
 covery of the whole race. What God is, we know by his 
 self- disclosure in the holiest souls, in proportion as we can 
 repeat afar off their experience through its quickening power 
 upon our own. To be the medium of this vivifying influence 
 
 1 " That word, if I am not mistaken, is put there as a sort of salutation which 
 the god addresses to those who enter the temple" (Plato, Charmides, 164 ; Jowctt 3 , i. 
 23). On the position of the inscription cp. Frazer, Paman:as, v. 348.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 89 
 
 is the calling of the teacher of religion. If you undertake it 
 you must strive to be loyal to its conditions ; you must arm 
 yourselves against its difficulties and dangers, as well as look 
 forward to its privileges and joys. Gravest of difficulties, most 
 subtle of dangers, is the secret mistrust of the worth of the 
 divine vision within you. It will seem so strange that others 
 cannot recognise what you behold, or are indifferent to what 
 kindles you with hope and love. The hour may come when 
 you may have to stand alone. There is a Calvary, or some- 
 thing like it, once at least in most men's lives, when the 
 oppositions of evil are too strong for us, and purposes are 
 broken, and resolution falters and dies. The glory that has 
 lighted other days may set in gloom. Take refuge, then, in 
 the faith of Jesus, and the vast multitude whom that faith has 
 upheld, and you will know in God's good time that he is sure. 
 Through them he will tenderly quicken your souls afresh ; the 
 might of trust will rise in new unconquerable life ; and you 
 will front what seems like moral chaos, and not quail. 
 
 Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest 
 Cannot confound nor doubt him, nor deny : 
 
 Yea with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, 
 Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF UNITARIANISM 
 AS A THEOLOGY 
 
 Sermon preached at the Annual Meeting of the British and Foreign 
 Unitarian Association, %th June 1892 
 
 P. H. W. 1892
 
 Maxime enim ens maxime est unum, et maxime unum est maximc bonum. 
 DANTI, De Moxarchia, I. 15.
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF UNITARIANISM 
 AS A THEOLOGY 
 
 " The Word was made flesh, and d-welt among us, . . . full oj grace and truth." 
 John i. 14. 
 
 THE preacher at the Annual Meeting of the British and 
 Foreign Unitarian Association speaks for himself. His words 
 carry no official or representative authority. The responsibility 
 of the Association ends with the selection of the preacher, and 
 does not even indirectly extend to anything he may say. There 
 is a special reason for insisting on this to-day ; for, generally 
 speaking, the utterances from the pulpit on these occasions 
 may be rightly regarded as partaking of the nature of a 
 manifesto to the interested public outside our ranks, as well 
 as a word of exhortation or encouragement to those within. 
 They are clothed, indeed, with no official authority, but they 
 serve to show the position which, in the mind of the preacher 
 at least, some, if not all, of the Unitarians desire to take up 
 over-against the positions occupied by their brethren of other 
 faiths. But to-day I wish to suggest certain points to the 
 consideration of Unitarians themselves rather than to challenge 
 the attention of those who are not Unitarians to points on 
 which we are agreed. 
 
 We meet here as Unitarians. The embarrassments which 
 arise when we endeavour to define the ecclesiastical position of 
 the churches to which most of us belong do not affect us here. 
 We meet as individual members, not of a church, but of an 
 association founded and maintained to defend and develop 
 the principles of Unitarian Christianity. But even in this 
 individual acceptation the word Unitarian has come to cover 
 a very wide area, and to stand rather for a loosely -defined 
 
 93
 
 94 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 set of principles and methods and an attitude of mind in 
 approaching religious problems than for adhesion to a dogma 
 of theology. I shall not be suspected of wishing to go back 
 upon the course of history and reimpose upon the term its 
 narrower signification if I ask your attention this morning to 
 some aspects of Unitarianism in the stricter sense indicated by 
 the etymology of the word, and inquire whether, so understood, 
 it still stands not only for a crusade against the superstitions of 
 popular theology, but for an idea the content of which has a 
 positive significance for the higher theology and religion. 
 Historically, the Unitarian controversy, so far as it has con- 
 cerned itself with the dogma of the Trinity, has hinged on 
 the questions of the Incarnation, and of the deity of Jesus Christ. 
 I am far from saying that in this respect our work is done ; but 
 assuredly there lies behind these questions one of far deeper, 
 more universal, and more permanent import, and I cannot but 
 think that it is partly this underlying idea that gives vitality to 
 many Trinitarian dogmas. When defending their creed against 
 the charge of tri-theism, Trinitarians occasionally reduce the 
 dogma of the Trinity to something which it is hard to distin- 
 guish from a mere assertion that the one God reveals himself 
 to us under three aspects ; and though I cannot accept this as 
 an adequate account of the doctrine on which the scheme of 
 Christian dogmatics actually rests, it is nevertheless to the 
 significance of this thought that I wish to call attention. It 
 is perfectly true that there are three main aspects under which 
 Christian men have thought and may think of God. When I 
 say Christian men I mean to indicate less an historical belief 
 or a dogmatic creed than an attitude of mind, one which I 
 cannot here even attempt to define more closely, but which is 
 characterised in principle by a belief in the redeeming power of 
 love, and the immeasurable worth of every human soul, by a 
 sense of the personal pollution of sin, and a belief that peace 
 and joy are to be found only in the personal consecration of the 
 life, alike in aspiration and in effort, to God. And in describing 
 this as Christian, I do not mean either to assert or to imply 
 that it is peculiar to Christians, only that it characterises them. 
 I say, then, that Christian men have regarded and may regard 
 God mainly under three aspects. They may think of him 
 as the unknown and unfathomable source of all things, the 
 " Bythos," out of which comes, or rather in which is, the
 
 UNITARIANISM AS A THEOLOGY 95 
 
 whole sum of Being. Even to speak of him as the Creator 
 is in some sense qualifying this conception, for creation seems 
 to suggest conditions and limitations subject to which the 
 Creator works, whereas we say, not so much that God made 
 time and space and the primal laws that control and are revealed 
 by thought, as that he expresses himself in, and /V, all this, 
 and "remains in infinite excess." To speak of the "moral 
 attributes " of God, so conceived, appears at once as strange 
 presumption and as wilful blindness. It is to carry up into the 
 Deity the local and limited distinctions of humanity, and to 
 treat as absolute the relative conceptions of man. It is to 
 impose conditions upon the unconditioned, and to place our- 
 selves behind and before the abysmal source of our being. In the 
 simple-minded it is a naive provincialism at which we smile ; 
 to the thinker it is an impossibility. God, so conceived, is 
 Power. And so the mediaeval theologians conceived of God 
 the Father. 
 
 But if this be all, it needs no saying that the specific notes 
 of Christian religion are not heard ; and Christian men have 
 not only yearned for, but have believed they found, another 
 aspect of the Deity. It has been well pointed out that the 
 phrase "God the Father" has misled many inquirers by its 
 similarity to the phrase, " the Fatherhood of God." In truth, 
 it has nothing whatever to do with it ; the two doctrines stand 
 at the opposite poles of theological speculation, and it is the 
 doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, with its sense of a personal 
 relationship, even implying some kind of intelligible resem- 
 blance between the divine and the human nature, for which 
 men have always longed. " God," says the Hebrew cosmogony, 
 " made man in his image," and man has never rested till he 
 has either made or found a God after his image. Hence the 
 thought of God as a loving and protecting Father, yearning to 
 bless his children, waiting in divine patience for their return 
 from their wanderings, silently pleading against their rebellion 
 and ingratitude, wisely and tenderly rebuking that he may 
 redeem, and judging that he may save. To the Trinitarian 
 there has seemed nothing grotesque or blasphemous in the 
 thought that God, so considered, once actually was a man, 
 bore our infirmities, wept in our griefs, and suffered our 
 anguish even to the death. It is, then, in the second Person 
 of the Trinity that we recognise the attributes we are accus-
 
 tomed to associate with the idea of the Fatherhood of God. 
 The moral categories of humanity are now freely applied, and 
 men speak of the love, the grief, the patience of God, with no 
 sense of incongruity. 1 
 
 Yet again, we may think of God as within rather than above 
 us ; revealed not so much in a fatherly and protecting care as 
 in an inward impulse and inspiration which mingles with our 
 very being. This is the Trinitarian doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit, which always seems so helpless and gratuitous when 
 examined from the historical point of view, and which has for 
 the most part remained in the quiet backwaters, ofF the stream 
 of theological controversy. But it corresponds, from the point 
 of view which we are now taking, to a deep and permanent 
 need, a deep and permanent reality. 
 
 Now the Trinitarian's creed I will not say teaches him 
 though, perhaps, I might but at least easily encourages him 
 to think of God separately under any one of these aspects 
 which meets his devotional mood or temperament, without 
 allowing it to be qualified by the others. He need not really 
 and truly reconcile them, provided he does not deny any of 
 them. Each is "God," without qualification and without 
 reserve. If none of them be denied, in set terms, it is enough 
 that some one of them be recognised. 
 
 And now let us turn to the Unitarian. If he believes in 
 three aspects of the Deity, he is forced to bind them into a far 
 more penetratjng union than finds a place in the creed of 
 popular Trinitarianism. But does he always or generally 
 recognise them ? Very often his doctrine of the Fatherhood 
 of God practically excludes the first and ignores the third of 
 the conceptions on which I have dwelt. "Our Heavenly 
 Father" to him works practically under fixed conditions, 
 determined not by himself, under the laws of time and space, 
 subject to the conditions of intrinsic possibility and impossibility, 
 with tools analogous to our own, though with powers unutter- 
 ably in excess of ours, and subject not indeed to our passions, 
 but to the impulses of our higher emotions ; loving, providing, 
 dispensing. He is, after all, our fellow -subject under the 
 eternal and immutable order of things which is not himself. 
 Evil is not part of his will, but a necessary by-product of what 
 
 1 Compare Dr. Martineau's " A way out of the Trinitarian Controversy," in 
 vol. ii. of his Essays.
 
 UNITARIANISM AS A THEOLOGY 97 
 
 he wills under the eternal laws which he himself, omnipotent 
 though we call him, cannot escape. 
 
 And in protest against these limitations of the divine nature 
 and the divine power, other Unitarians have fallen back more 
 and more closely upon the conception of God as the universal 
 and unqualified Being, of whom we can predicate nothing save 
 that " He Is." Their theism becomes, to many minds, in- 
 distinguishable from Agnosticism. The Unknown and the 
 Unknowable is their God, and those aspects of the Deity 
 expressed in the Trinitarian's doctrine of the second and third 
 persons are swallowed up in the unfathomable mystery of 
 absolute Being. 
 
 Yet again there are other Unitarians who know God only 
 as the moral impulse within them. Perhaps this doctrine has 
 been brought to clearer self-consciousness amongst some of our 
 brethren on the Continent than amongst ourselves ; l but it 
 assuredly exists, formulated or unformulated, in our midst. 
 Those to whom it appeals shrink from the anthropomorphic 
 limitations of the one Unitarianism and from the cold sublimity 
 of the other. They dare not speak of God in terms of human 
 psychology ; and yet their minds reel back from the attempt 
 to grasp and worship the unconditioned and unqualified Being, 
 or their hearts rebel against the thought of entering into self- 
 surrendering communion with the source of all things, in whose 
 name the Prophet dared to cry " I create evil." They give up 
 the problem of the universe as insoluble. They cannot believe 
 in or cannot rest in a God after their own image, however 
 exalted or glorified. But they hear in their own hearts the 
 "categorical imperative" of duty ; they feel the throbbings of 
 love ; and in the promptings of the Holy Spirit within them 
 they find, what they could not find in the universe, the God 
 that is not themselves, but to whom they owe themselves. 
 
 Now, as inspiring a protest against superstition or idolatry, 
 any one of these forms of Unitarianism may have its value. 
 Moreover, if to any man any one of them approves itself as 
 true, there for him the matter ends ; and it is beside the mark 
 to tell him that it is inadequate. He cannot help that. He 
 cannot change his creed in order that it may be more effective, 
 if thereby he makes it less true. Nevertheless, the Unitarianism 
 
 1 I referred especially to the " Ethical Modern* " in Holland, of whom Hooykaai 
 was the beat known spokesman. 1903. 
 
 G
 
 98 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 which has a veritable theology of its own, and which supplies 
 a religious form of permanent significance and grandeur, will 
 be a Unitarianism which does not, like these, select, but which 
 truly and intimately combines the scattered elements of the 
 Trinitarian's faith. Its unity must not be purchased by lop- 
 ping away, but must be won by welding together ; modifying, 
 indeed, may be transforming, but never losing any of the 
 essential moments which interlace in the triple strand of the 
 Trinitarian's creed, but unite only in the true Unitarian's. 
 
 God, as the inspirer of our lives, is no other than God as 
 the primal source and the eternal essence of all Being. It is 
 out of the clash of those inevitable conditions of life in which 
 God utters himself that we and our consciousness are struck 
 like sparks. The power that speaks in our hearts is the power 
 that speaks in all things that are. The sum of things without 
 us is an utterance of his will, the voice within is the revelation 
 of his command. The outward revelation is full of mystery, 
 and sometimes appears chaotic to us ; but the voice within is 
 a wave from the same ocean, a voice from the same depth, a 
 part of the same whole, and it brings to us a whispered hint of 
 the formula of the cosmos. God bids us strive in his name, 
 and with his inward support, against the things that are^ that 
 is to say, against what is his work ; and if we obey, from the 
 depth of the mystery and chaos without us conies back an echo, 
 nay, not an echo but an answer to the voice within. That 
 same moral law which alone harmonises us with ourselves and 
 with each other, and arranges the chaos of our conflicting 
 desires arid purposes into a cosmos, at the very same time con- 
 firms our dominion over nature, or rather brings us into closer 
 and more fruitful relations with her, and makes the very earth 
 more beauteous. There is a power in the not-ourselves that 
 " makes for righteousness," and answers to love with glad 
 response, and the more fully we obey God as he speaks in us, 
 the more fully do we experience his support as he speaks to 
 us. The mystery does not vanish. The mystery of suffering 
 and the darker mystery of sin remain. We must yet shrink in 
 horror from many of the facts of life which are no other than 
 the will of God. We must yet fight with heart and soul 
 against things which we hate and which God bids us hate, and 
 which none the less are his work. We cannot measure his 
 purpose nor bring his creative plan within the compass of our
 
 UNITARIANISM AS A THEOLOGY 99 
 
 minds, but we see clearly that if he has willed evil to be, he 
 has likewise willed that it shall cease to be ; and as we advance 
 to fulfil his mandates to us, a deeper and deeper assurance 
 takes possession of our souls, that the word he has spoken 
 direct to us, is to us the key-word of his eternal purpose, and 
 that in the light it gives, we see, though darkly as through a 
 medium our eyes can but dimly pierce, that " far off divine 
 event to which the whole creation moves." And with this 
 belief comes at last a wondrous strength and faith. As we 
 realise more and more fully God's purpose with us, the pas- 
 sionate intensity of our love of good and hate of evil ever 
 deepens, and yet as honour contends against unscrupulousness, 
 self-sacrifice against self-seeking, mercy and chivalry against 
 cruelty, love against lust, in a word, goodness against wicked- 
 ness, each virtue feels mysteriously that its foe is not a devilish 
 and devil-born horror, against which it plunges in blind fury 
 and terror, but a something at the very heart of which, could 
 it but get there, is that which is akin to itself, that which will 
 respond to it, that which must not be destroyed but freed and 
 developed. 
 
 The Trinitarian's creed gives him a ready means of escaping 
 from this effort of the soul, and losing the prize of this victory. 
 For it enables him to think of the world and the conditions 
 under which we live and work as lying under the blight of 
 God's avenging justice, or, indeed, as handed over to the 
 malign power of the devil. The Unitarian theologian, on the 
 other hand, cannot rest until, with the nobler souls of every 
 age in their nobler moments, he has risen to the sense of unity 
 between the inspiration and the conditions of his life, and has 
 felt the love within supported, not crushed, by the power 
 without him. 
 
 But is there any room in a theology built upon these lines 
 for the conception of the Fatherhood of God, his tenderness, 
 his forgiveness, his goodness, his love ? I answer yes and 
 no. I believe, with the profounder theologians of every age 
 and creed, that whenever we use human language (and what 
 other language can we use ?) in speaking of God, our words 
 cannot be taken to mean the same thing as they do when they 
 are applied to man. When we speak of the goodness of God 
 we surely mean something other than kindliness and good- 
 nature. This is one of the lower meanings of the word, even
 
 ioo THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 when we speak of a man as good. Its higher meaning, when 
 applied to human beings, leads us into the field of moral war- 
 fare, and has reference to the struggle with temptations of sloth 
 or base desire. The moral life, we often say, is the highest 
 we know, and by goodness we mean the determination to live 
 the moral life in the teeth of all obstacles and trials. How can 
 we call God good in such a sense ? If God " cannot be 
 tempted," how can goodness in this human sense be his ? 
 When we speak of " love " we come nearest to using a term 
 of human experience which seems intrinsically not unworthy 
 of God : and yet human love not only finds its expression in 
 self-sacrifice, in efforts made, and in privations endured for the 
 loved one, but is at its highest when he who loves loses himself 
 in another. When we speak of God taking thought for us 
 and providing for us as though it cost him something, and 
 was, therefore, a pledge not only of his goodwill but his love, 
 we know that we are speaking in words which can have 
 but a symbolic and imperfect truth ; and how can we think or 
 wish that God should lose himself in us ? Our deepest prayer, 
 the prayer in which all prayers are included, is that we should 
 lose ourselves in him. And if goodness and love in God are 
 not what they are in man, what shall we say of our love to 
 God ? Even as we repeat the words that " perfect love casts 
 out fear," we must not forget that twin-truth, " The fear of 
 the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." We must have the 
 beginning of wisdom before we can make wisdom perfect. 
 The thought which expresses itself, however imperfectly, in 
 belief in the Fatherhood of God, the belief in his love of men, 
 and the sense of man's answering love to him is the very heart 
 and soul of true religion ; but love of God must not be an easy- 
 going theistic optimism which ignores half the facts of life. 
 When we have realised that God has disposed the world far 
 otherwise than we should have disposed it, far otherwise than 
 a wise and loving human parent would have disposed it, when 
 we have stood face to face with this thought, unveiled and 
 undisguised, when we have heard and felt the word " I create 
 evil," and have wrestled with it till we have extorted the 
 blessing, then we are fit to love God. 
 
 I do not mean that chronologically the terror must come 
 before the love ; but I do mean that the love is not made 
 perfect till the terror has been known.
 
 UNITARIANISM AS A THEOLOGY 101 
 
 You are wandering alone on a great mountain. If your 
 map misleads you, if you lose your compass, if your foot slips, 
 what pity have you to expect from the night-frosts, from the 
 rain and snow-storms, from the hard rock, from the blazing 
 noonday sun as you lie there in helpless anguish ? Have you 
 faced this thought and made your peace with it ? Then you 
 have a right to the joy which comes like a pang in its intensity, 
 as you look upon the distant snow-field against the blue sky, 
 like the face of death in its awful purity and stillness, as you 
 see the distant cataract leap over the cliff and plunge you know 
 not whither, as you turn to the birch and fir-girt lake stretching 
 at your feet, till the whole glory and wonder enter your soul, 
 making it larger, as you listen to the soliloquy of God till you 
 yourself become a part of it. Have you faced not only sorrow 
 but sin, and, obeying the mysterious mandate within, have you 
 stood face to face with it and recognised that it is your mortal 
 foe, and yet that it was sent to meet you by the very power 
 that bids you grapple with it and slay it, or be slain by it ? 
 Has the fear of the Lord who compasses you round about, 
 whose laws lie in wait for you, stretching their ghostly hands 
 from the dead past and laying upon you the penalty and horror 
 of dead sins that are not your own, or lurking snake-like in the 
 green grass at your feet to betray your life where you thought 
 it safest, have the fear and the terror of the Lord entered and 
 struck your soul ? Then you have the right to love him and 
 to bless. And you will love and bless him, and trust him 
 though he slay you, if you have learnt not to ask him to lose 
 himself in you, but only to strive to lose yourself in him. For 
 it is by yielding yourself to his guidance from within that you 
 find his support without, and it is this correspondence, however 
 imperfectly grasped, between his creative plan as revealed in the 
 sum of things and the stamp of his spirit in the mandate he 
 prints on our hearts, that gives us the assurance that we are in 
 truth his children, that there is a mysterious affinity between 
 our spirits and the universal soul. 
 
 Goodness and love are the key to Life, the appointed means 
 to external and internal harmony. In them God at once 
 reveals the means by which his purpose shall be accomplished, 
 and summons us to be his conscious instruments in accomplish- 
 ing it. Goodness and Love spring from him, he is their 
 source. Goodness and Love make us his fellow- workers and
 
 102 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 call us into communion with him. He is their goal. Well may 
 we call him good and loving who draws us through the efforts 
 of goodness and love into his eternal peace, where, beyond and 
 above the toil and strife, there gleams the unimagined fruition 
 of effortless communion, to which the moral life and struggle 
 are but as the gate of entrance. 
 
 Thus in the spiritual world we learn a truth analogous to 
 that which the old astronomers taught with respect to the 
 physical world, namely, that God himself, uncontrolled by 
 time and space, in his timeless and spaceless rest, is yet the 
 source of all motion. God in his ineffable peace is the deep 
 source of our moral and spiritual restlessness, and through our 
 divinely inspired impatience of sin and striving against evil and 
 hatred of cruelty and deep resentment of tyranny, he draws us 
 and all men towards his eternal peace, in which is no im- 
 patience, no strife, no hatred. The source and goal of all 
 spiritual movement and struggle, himself the absolute rest. In 
 this sense God is good and loving, nay is very goodness and 
 love. Thus we may draw together into full unity the three 
 conceptions that are scattered in the Trinitarian's creed, and 
 having found that the impulse within our life and the con- 
 ditions without it spring from one source, we may learn to 
 adore that source as goodness and love. 
 
 But we must not base our theology upon the analogies of 
 human goodness and love. Our proneness to do so, and to 
 argue that God never does what a good man would shrink from 
 doing, has sometimes blinded us to the truth contained, or 
 rather suggested, in however perverted a form, by some of the 
 main doctrines of the theology against which we have raised a 
 much-needed protest. We have spoken of the doctrines of 
 vicarious suffering and vicarious sin as derogatory to the justice 
 and love of God ; but can we dare, on the strength of an 
 analogy, pushed up from man to God, to deny that one man 
 suffers for, nay, sometimes feels his soul polluted by, another's 
 sin ? The error lies not in inventing the idea of vicarious 
 suffering and pollution, but in localising, so to speak, the 
 universal truth. To say that we all suffer because Adam 
 sinned, and may all be saved because Jesus died, is true only if 
 we put ourselves and all men in the place alike of Adam and of 
 Jesus. Our very souls are not our own. They are darkened 
 by the sins of others, they are washed in their atoning tears,
 
 UNITARIANISM AS A THEOLOGY 103 
 
 and the struggle against evil by which we enter into com- 
 munion with God is a struggle in which we cannot be wholly 
 victorious till all mankind triumph with us. 
 
 And so, too, the twin-doctrine of the Incarnation, which 
 will take us back to our starting-point, is false when uttered of 
 Jesus only, but is true when uttered of us all. The whole 
 drift and meaning of every word I would speak to-day is 
 focussed in the conception that in each one of our lives some 
 word of God must be made flesh. What is the inward 
 revelation to each one of us must become a part of the answer- 
 ing outward revelation to others. That individual, that 
 church, that association, that institution, that nation has lived^ 
 in which some word of God is so made flesh that it stands 
 forth bearing as the legend stamped upon its banner and its 
 brow " what it was God meant when he made it." 1 
 
 With this conception of the word of God struggling for 
 utterance in each one of us, waking its answer and finding its 
 support in the fixed conditions under which we are placed, and 
 leading us upward to that peace of God above and beyond the 
 battle, in the fruition of which is eternal life, may we not find 
 the inspiration which shall teach us to look to God, not as a 
 refuge from the world, but as the soul of the world itself, which 
 shall throw a consecration over every worthy task, which shall 
 bind us one to another and lift us all into the larger life of God, 
 teaching us to find him, alike in the work and the movements 
 that lie close at our hand, and in the vision that transcends 
 time and space, making us understand that social reform with- 
 out personal consecration is as the apples of Sodom, while the 
 attempt to work out our own salvation without uplifting the 
 life of man, and striving visibly to found the kingdom of God 
 upon earth, is a thought as vain as it is selfish and unworthy ? 
 When we feel the absolute oneness of the personal and collec- 
 tive, of the inward and outward, voice of God, then we are 
 already in the midst of a new Messianic movement, and if we 
 dare not say that the kingdom of God in all its fulness is at 
 hand, yet we feel that some great new word of God is seeking 
 even now to make itself flesh, and to dwell amongst us full of 
 grace and peace. 
 
 1 Compare Ibsen's Peer Gynt throughout.
 
 ANALYTICAL SUMMARY 
 
 THE doctrine of the Trinity not to be equated with the doctrines of 
 the Incarnation and the Deity of Christ. Dismissing the latter 
 from consideration, the doctrine of the Trinity may be regarded as 
 resting on the threefold conception of God : (l) as the un- 
 conditioned source of Being ; (2) as the loving, forgiving, and 
 redeeming One, whose nature is reflected in ideal manhood ; (3) as 
 the impulse within us that makes for righteousness and love. 
 
 The Trinitarian may recognise each of these aspects of Deity, 
 taken separately, as " God " absolutely ; but the Unitarian must 
 either unite them in a single conception, or believe in one of them 
 only. 
 
 Some Unitarians believe only in God as conceived in the type of 
 idealised humanity (2), some believe in him only as the unknown 
 source of all things (i), and some believe in him only as the ethical 
 principle within us (3). 
 
 But, to be a theology, Unitarianism must not select from, but 
 must unite, these three conceptions. Recognising the correspond- 
 ence between the ethical principle within us and the nature of 
 things without us, we learn the identity of God as Power or 
 absolute Being (i), and as Inspirer (3). With this key in our hands, 
 we may learn to know God as the source and goal of goodness and 
 love ; and human goodness and love as bringing man into direct 
 communion with God, and vindicating his (man's) divine sonship. 
 Thus the conception of God as goodness and love (2) unites 
 indissolubly with the other two ; but not so as to justify inferences 
 drawn from human morality and applied to the Deity. 
 
 Progressive self- revelation of God and incarnation of his 
 Word. 
 
 104
 
 IV 
 
 t 
 
 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 
 
 Address to the National Conference of Non-subscribing Churches, 
 at Sheffield, April 1897 
 
 J. E. C. 1898 
 
 I. The Argument from Historical Religion. 
 
 II. Causes of Disbelief. 
 
 III. The Doctrine of Evolution. 
 
 IV. The Self and the Eternal. 
 
 V. The Education of the "sons of God." 
 
 VI. The Demand for Retribution. 
 
 VII. The Demand for Recompense. 
 
 VIII. The Victory of Good. 
 
 105
 
 The Voices of the day 
 Are heard across the Voices of the dark. 
 No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, 
 But through the Will of One who knows and rules 
 And utter knowledge is but utter love 
 yEonian Evolution, swift or slow, 
 Through all the spheres an ever opening height, 
 An ever lessening earth. TENNYSON.
 
 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY IN 
 RELIGIOUS BELIEF 
 
 " IF a man die, shall he live again ? " The question is as old 
 as Job, nay, in some form or other, probably as old as humanity 
 itself. We have but to open the tombs of prehistoric times 
 to discover the traces of the food, the weapons, the clothes, 
 ornaments, and utensils, with which piety and affection lightened 
 the darkness and solitude of the grave. The question is abroad 
 again in our day with an insistence begotten of a thousand 
 eager movements of the mind, and it opens up a vast series of 
 problems far beyond the scope of ancient thought. Whatever 
 be the date of the book of Job, whether, with an older genera- 
 tion of scholars, it be ascribed to the age of the Patriarchs, or, 
 with the newer criticism, to that of Plato, the seers and the 
 sceptics of Israel and the philosophers of Greece were alike un- 
 troubled by the crowd of difficulties which beset our imagina- 
 tions. The relations of body and soul through the physical 
 organism, the meaning and the worth or life conceived on the 
 colossal scale of modern knowledge, the place of the earth in 
 the whole system of the universe these questions were remote 
 from their ken, and laid no special embarrassments on the 
 freedom of their hope. If, then, I undertake to deal in a single 
 discourse with this great theme, it is not without a full sense 
 of the magnitude of the task. Nor do I forget the limitations 
 which must beset my answer. "I think," said Emerson, "that 
 one abstains from writing or printing on the immortality of the 
 soul because, when he comes to the end of his statement, the 
 hungry eyes that run through it close disappointed, the listeners 
 say, c That is not here which we desired,' and I shall be as much 
 wronged by their hasty conclusions as they feel themselves 
 
 107
 
 io8 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 wronged by my omissions. ... I mean," he concludes, " that 
 I am a better believer, and all serious souls are better believers 
 in the immortality than we can give grounds for." Who, 
 indeed, can say that he sees life steadily and sees it whole ? Or 
 who, having seen, can find words to declare the vision ? The 
 Divina Commedia of Evolution can never be written. 
 
 I 
 
 The student of history finds it natural to approach this 
 great inquiry through the past. This method has many ad- 
 vantages. For the value which we attach to this belief largely 
 depends upon the general value which we attach to life itself, 
 upon the interpretation which we give to it, upon the 
 significance with which we have learned to invest it. We 
 may have the faith of Lotze that that will be preserved which 
 is worth preserving. The verdict of the ultimate Reality is at 
 present beyond our ken ; what is the judgment in this matter 
 of those who themselves have lived ? The record of this lies 
 deep in the world's religions. In the long story of its relation 
 to the unseen, mankind has enshrined its finest experience. 
 These phases of faith have been wrought out again and again 
 upon a narrower field, a more limited scale, perhaps with a 
 clearer view of moral issues, with a more direct dependence 
 upon certain great ideas, unhampered by perplexities which 
 often rise for us upon the margin of our speculation (such as 
 the destiny of infants or of animals). The problem is conceived 
 more simply because its essential elements are more easily 
 abstracted. I make no apology, then, for asking what are the 
 main elements contributed by the testimony of the race. 
 
 The time is gone by when it was possible to claim eternal 
 life as a universal intuition. The study of anthropology has 
 clearly shown that this belief, like so many others, has passed 
 through various stages. The child whom Mr. Gladstone 
 heard counting "one, two, three, four, a hundred," represents 
 far more nearly the vague and indefinite modes of early thought. 
 The infinite could not enter as an object of intellectual appre- 
 hension into minds for which arithmetic and the science of 
 number were summed up, as for an ancient Greek, in " riving." 
 But that in no way impairs its value for us. The last of the 
 Tasmanians, living in the stone age in our own time, could not
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 109 
 
 have understood the Principia. Does that invalidate the laws 
 of motion ? The process by which a belief has been attained 
 must not be confounded with its final contents or its spiritual 
 implications. The grounds on which it is held, and the form 
 in which it is expressed, may have changed again and again, 
 but our own verdict upon it is determined by the mode in 
 which it is presented to us, and is wholly independent of its 
 origin. If it could be proved that all worship was derived 
 lineally from the cultus of the dead, what soul of prayer would 
 be now impeded in loving self-surrender to the Father of its 
 being ? In the same manner the conviction that there is that 
 within us which will live again, may be traced back historically 
 to the experience of the dream and other associated elements or 
 animism ; but how much it has dropped, and how much it has 
 assimilated, on the way ! What new motives, analogies, expec- 
 tations, have enriched it ! What high exercise of thought has 
 purified it ! What far-reaching hope has expanded and trans- 
 formed it ! For it is not long before the simple prospect of 
 continuance becomes suffused with the lights and shadows of 
 the moral life. The ethical demand is started, it may be, on 
 the crude basis of valour in fight, or on that higher conception 
 of service to the community which gives a separate heaven to 
 mothers who died in childbed, or again (as in Mexico) to 
 merchants who perished on a journey ; or it may take a ritual 
 and ceremonial form in the discharge of the obligations of holy 
 gifts and observances imposed by the gods. It might be 
 interesting to ask whether the punishment of exceptional crime 
 or the reward of superior virtue is the first to secure recognition 
 in these elementary theodicies : I note now only the early 
 appearance of the judicial conception (most splendidly illustrated 
 in the tombs of the New Empire beside the Nile before the 
 Exodus) which places a divine assize at the entrance of the next 
 life, determining the lot of the soul for weal or woe. Two 
 forms of this doctrine of retribution deserve special notice. 
 
 The philosophy of India soon concentrated itself on the 
 significance of conduct. The nai'ver thought of the ancient 
 Aryan immigrants, which sped the departed to the realm of 
 light on wings of flame, was succeeded by an effort at more 
 exact analysis. The human agent, it was reasoned, was 
 perpetually productive. Thoughts, words, acts, flowed in un- 
 ceasing stream out of his personality. They were not detached,
 
 no THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 they were connected, inseparably related both with each other 
 and with him. In other words, they had each a moral value. 
 The physical event might pass, but there was an ideal world 
 where it remained ; and every man was for ever adding to the 
 sum of these invisible relations by the contributions of each 
 day's activity. This conception was formulated, many centuries 
 before Christ, in maxims of which I cite but two : " The deed 
 [Karma] does not perish"; 1 and, with a more far-reaching 
 significance, though at first with but limited application, "A 
 man is born into the world that he has made." 2 Whispered at 
 the outset with bated breath, a mystery reserved for secret dis- 
 cussion, this profound idea was slowly wrought into the whole 
 fabric of religious faith. It became the basis of a complete 
 scheme of existence, and in the vast spaces of the universe 
 found room for the allotment of every gradation of suffering 
 and happiness to match the varying products of human life. 
 For it was soon realised that the sum of a man's doing is not 
 all of one colour. Its texture is shot with hues of beauty, but 
 also marred with dark stains of sin. The one must receive its 
 appropriate felicity, the other could not escape its necessary 
 pain. The constitution of the universe was essentially moral. 
 It was conducted under the unsleeping operation of self-acting 
 law. When the good within a man had exhausted its reward, 
 it would be the turn of the evil to endure its doom ; or when 
 the punishment of crime had been completed, the product of 
 virtue would enter on its inheritance of joy. There could, 
 under this rule, be neither eternal torment nor everlasting bliss. 
 The history of the soul presented itself under the aspect of a 
 succession of existences, in each of which the active subject 
 was at once working out the issues of prior lives, and laying up 
 store of merit or of guilt for coming years ; but every life was 
 precisely adjusted to some moral antecedent, and represented a 
 stage in the discharge of the accumulated mass of all the past. 
 
 By and by this key was naturally applied to the life that 
 now is. The vicissitudes of the earthly lot found here their 
 adequate interpretation. The glory of the prince and the 
 humiliation of the slave, poverty and riches, health and sick- 
 ness, failure and success, all these were grounded in a far- 
 stretching series that ranged into ages almost as remote behind 
 
 1 Sacred Books oftAe.Eait, ii. 271 ; xiv. 116, 310. 
 2 Ibid. xli. 1 8 1.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF in 
 
 as those that imagination saw in front. The illumined eye 
 could read back the story of the lives before birth, as it could 
 predict the first issues of the life after death. An absolute 
 moral continuity knit the whole into one inviolable chain. 
 Each man was at once engaged in the double process of 
 fulfilling his past and creating his future ; and the co-operation 
 of these two factors determined all the changes of his chequered 
 career. No other scheme of thought has held the field 
 through so long a period of time. One great religion after 
 another, Brahmanism, Buddhism, the varied forms of mediaeval 
 and modern Hinduism, have all been reared upon it. It has 
 satisfied one powerful demand, the craving for justice deep 
 seated in the heart. The theory may be wrong, but it cannot 
 be alleged that it is not adequate, or that it does not explain 
 the facts. No storm-tossed soul has ever, under this faith, 
 raised wild cries to heaven, impeaching the fundamental recti- 
 tude of the world. The book of Job could never have been 
 written upon Indian soil. Gods, men and animals, angels 
 above and demons below, the manifold series of heavens and 
 hells, the generations that have been and those that are to 
 come, have all alike been bound together under one everlasting 
 law of right. 
 
 But from the point of view of religion the Hindu scheme 
 had one fatal defect. It led to nothing. It was always in 
 process, it was never complete. If there was a "far-ofF divine 
 event " towards which the whole creation moved, it was only 
 the great world -conflagration which would terminate this 
 given series of material forms, and carry on the inextinguish- 
 able potencies of moral life into a fresh scene of successive 
 evolutions. Fire could not burn nor water drown the deathless 
 germs of good and evil, and in due course, after the cata- 
 strophe, these would emerge in their appropriate shapes to run 
 through a new cycle. The administration of the world was 
 moral, but this did not require the ultimate triumph of the 
 good. The Persian theology worked out a different result 
 during a parallel period, on the same basis of absolute justice, 
 but with the additional postulate of faith that the rule of God 
 must eternally prevail. Ahura Mazda, the omniscient Lord, 
 could not be for ever baffled by his great antagonist, the spirit 
 of the Lie. The kingdom was his, and at last far off indeed, 
 but still at last his will must be done. The souls of the
 
 ii2 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 departed passed after death to the judgment-seat, 1 accompanied 
 by shapes of beauty or of ugliness, the counterparts of the 
 lives they had just finished. There they were allotted, accord- 
 ing to the preponderance of desert or guilt, to the paradises of 
 Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed, culminating in 
 the Home of Song among the praises round Ahura's throne, or 
 to the hells of Evil Thought and Word and Deed, where 
 sufferings of varying intensity wrought out their expiation 
 before the advent of the last great day. Then came the 
 general resurrection, when long-severed kin should meet once 
 more, and prepare for the hour of final reunion in Ahura's 
 realm. It was the solemn era known as the frashokereti^ the 
 Renovation, " the making the world move onward " towards 
 the goal of good. Not yet indeed would the purification of 
 the wicked be quite perfect. That would be accomplished as 
 the old world passed into the new. For the earth should be 
 consumed with fervent heat. Its solid rocks should become 
 for three days like molten metal, through which the righteous 
 should move as a soft bath of milk, while the guilty were 
 purged of the last traces of impurity in the penal fire. And 
 then the powers of evil should be overthrown. Not for them, 
 indeed, was there any hope of deliverance or redemption. The 
 warfare which had been since the beginning would end in the 
 eternal victory of right. The Lie and its hideous progeny 
 should be driven into the heart of the flame ; the stench and 
 pollution arising from the regions of darkness should be con- 
 sumed j the land of hell should be brought back " for the 
 enlargement or prosperity of the world" ; 2 the Renovation arises 
 in the universe by the will of the All-Holy ; the world is immortal 
 for ever and ever ; and a beatified humanity, clothed in eternal 
 forms of beauty and grace, reaches the fulfilment of the be- 
 liever's prayer, and attains to entire fellowship with God. 3 
 
 The moral demand of Indian thought for a righteous 
 award on the mixed results of human life is here reinforced by 
 the religious demand for the actual realisation of the divine 
 will, for the establishment of the kingdom, for the union of 
 
 1 The details of the ancient Persian eschatology are probably of various dates, 
 but their substantial antiquity seems guaranteed by the Greek testimony. The 
 material* for the sketch in the text are derived (i) from the Gathas, S.B.E. xxxi. ; 
 (z) from the Vendidad, ibid. iv. ; and (3) from the latter Bundahish, ibid. v. 
 
 2 S.B.E. v. 129. s Ibid. xxxi. 312.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 113 
 
 all creatures in accomplishing the purpose of the Creator. In 
 spite of many obvious limitations, the Persian theodicy deserves 
 to rank as the most splendid monument of ancient thought on 
 this great theme ; and it probably exercised no little influence 
 on the kindred hopes of Israel at a much later day. But the 
 problem might be approached from another side. The thinkers 
 of India, the seers of the Zend Avesta, could only conceive the 
 action of retributive justice, and the joy of a regenerated earth, 
 under the fashions of physical existence. They did not ask what 
 is the essential nature of the inner life, or by what characteristics 
 the duration of spirit might be inferred beyond the dissolution 
 of the flesh. It was reserved for Plato to essay the unattempted 
 task of proving the immortality of the soul. It is the singular 
 interest of his great endeavour that it marks the transition to a 
 new way of thought. On the one side, indeed, he attaches him- 
 self to the sacred tradition, the " ancient words," which had 
 already, if recent investigation judges truly, caught up the 
 echoes of Indian speculation. The Orphic sages and Pythagoras 
 of Samos had both taught the doctrine of requital in the form of 
 a judgment in the world below, and a series of rebirths con- 
 stituting a cycle of necessity or wheel of fate ; and Plato, like 
 Pindar, flower of sacred song, ranges himself again and again 
 by their side. But those solemn pictures of future retribution 
 are only the imaginative vesture of an ulterior reality. They 
 do not affect the question of the essential activity of our true 
 being. That, he saw, does not lie in the realm of change and 
 time. There is a world for him, as for the philosophers of 
 the East, of the unbegotten and the imperishable. It is the 
 world of pure thought, of the ideas of truth, beauty, goodness, 
 where decay and death cannot enter. The higher intellectual 
 life is closely connected in the Platonic thinking with the 
 higher moral life, and both belong to an order of existence 
 which must not be confounded with the world of sense. The 
 forms of our common experience do not apply to it. Thought 
 takes up no room ; it cannot be conceived as extended in 
 space ; and so the soul, in so far as it can apprehend the ideas 
 which dwell above the shows of outward things, may be said 
 to partake of their eternity. The argument, as Professor 
 Jowett observed, should be translated into its modern equiva- 
 lent, and that is, as the same suggestive interpreter has shown, 
 the argument by which we advance to immortality from the 
 
 H
 
 n 4 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 existence of God. "'If God exists, 1 then the soul exists 
 after death ; and if there is no God, there is no existence of 
 the soul after death.' For the ideas are to Plato's mind the 
 reality, the truth, the principle of permanence, as well as of 
 intelligence and order in the world. When Simmias and Cebes 
 say in the Phtedo that they are more strongly persuaded of the 
 existence of ideas than they are of the immortality of the soul, 
 they represent fairly enough the order of thought in Greek 
 philosophy. We might say in the same way that we are 
 more certain of the existence of God than we are of the 
 immortality of the soul, and are led by the belief in the one to 
 a belief in the other. The parallel, as Socrates would say, is 
 not perfect, but agrees in so far as the mind in either case is 
 regarded as dependent on something above' and beyond herself. 
 The analogy may even be pressed a step further : We are 
 more certain of our ideas of truth and right than we are of the 
 existence of God, and are led on in the order of thought from 
 one to the other.' Or, more correctly, c The existence of 
 truth and right is the existence of God, and can never for a 
 moment be separated from Him.' " 
 
 I have emphasised the attitude of Plato by these words of 
 the late Master of Balliol, for it will be seen directly that our 
 present position sets us rather in the train of Hellenic than of 
 Judeo-Christian thought ; but it ought surely to be possible to 
 learn of philosophy in the spirit of Jesus. The forms of the 
 primitive Gospel (must it not be frankly admitted ?) are no 
 longer our forms, and need to be reconstructed for our time, 
 much as the author of the Fourth Gospel already sought to 
 reconstruct them for his own. The conceptions of the future, 
 as they are presented to us in the Synoptic reports, belong to 
 that cycle of Messianic beliefs which enshrines with so much 
 pathos the passionate longings of Israel for its race. The 
 prophetic doctrine of the great judgment of the world is cap- 
 able of interpretation, as Schiller taught us long ago, through 
 the experience of history. But that is not the mode in which 
 it was apprehended in the early church. Following the lines 
 of Jewish speculation, itself probably (as I have already indi- 
 cated) largely stimulated by Persian ideas, the courses of time 
 were severed into " the age that now is," and " the age which 
 is to come." The passage from the one to the other would 
 
 1 Jowett, Plato, 3rd ed. ii. 186.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 115 
 
 be effected when the Son of Man appeared from the skies to 
 take his seat at the universal assize. That this great con- 
 summation would arrive in the lifetime of some of the Twelve 
 is the unanimous representation of our First Three Gospels. 
 It is set forth by the Apostle Paul with no less distinctness 
 as the essence of the believer's hope in the near future. It 
 embodied itself in the liturgical phrase Maran atha, "Our 
 Lord is coming," and it pervades the whole of the apostolic 
 correspondence in the first age. It was associated with views 
 of the cosmos which have long since become impossible, an 
 under -world, into which the Redeemer could descend to set 
 free the spirits of the departed, and a world above, which he 
 could reach by physical ascension through the sky. Residing 
 there at the right hand of God, he would return thence at the 
 appointed time with angel-retinue and trumpet-blast, when the 
 faithful, whether dead or living, should be caught up to meet 
 him in the air. These details prove beyond a doubt that Paul 
 at one time entertained the most definite and explicit expecta- 
 tions, and he founds them expressly on the " word of the 
 Lord." They suffice to set one side of the Gospel which he 
 preached in close contact with the thoughts of his people. It 
 conceived the future through the images of sleep and resur- 
 rection ; and though the term " sleep " must plainly not be 
 pressed too closely, for Hebrew faith provided realms below as 
 an interim home for the unbodied dead, it neverthless remains 
 true that even for Paul the anticipations of the future were at 
 one period associated with specific incidents of place and time, a 
 sudden summons and a speedy change, as corruption should put 
 on incorruption,and the mortal be clothed upon with immortality. 
 From this cycle of ideas the Church in truth has never 
 extricated itself. It still sings to Christ in its Te Deum, 
 "We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge"; it still 
 associates in its creed " the resurrection of the body " with 
 " the life everlasting." In the disappearance of this order of 
 conceptions, however, from our outlook, it ceases to be need- 
 ful for us to discuss the possible meanings of cuciwos (in the 
 book of Enoch, for example, x. i o, " everlasting life " is 
 deliberately equated with five hundred years). The matter is 
 assuredly not without interest for the history of belief. It is 
 significant for the atmosphere of thought in which Jesus was 
 educated, and which he probably shared. But no finality can
 
 n6 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 attach to a single item in a plexus of ideas which history has 
 rent asunder. We may recognise with reverence the sense of 
 human guilt which thrills through the awful pictures of re- 
 tributive justice in the New Testament, and yet insist that 
 their symbolic forms must be unhesitatingly discarded in 
 reliance on the principles of the teacher who employed them. 
 The moral demand of Israel, from the first of its great prophets 
 to the last, for the vindication of the righteous order of the 
 world, is no less clear than that of India, though the manner 
 in which it was applied to life was different ; while the hints 
 afforded by the apostle Paul, of a final triumph of good when 
 the hostile forces of rule and authority and power shall all have 
 been brought to nought, and death itself is subject to the 
 victorious Son, who in turn submits himself beneath the 
 creative might that God may be all in all, point clearly, 
 though without precise definition, to that ultimate unity of all 
 things in God in which alone our faith and hope can find 
 permanent repose. Thus Christian teaching expresses in 
 Hebrew types the two chief thoughts of Aryan antiquity, and 
 combines the ethical claim for requital with the religious 
 necessity for the unhindered realisation of the perfect will. 
 What further inferences may be derived from its central view 
 of the relation of God to man, we may presently inquire. 
 
 II 
 
 But to-day, I shall be told, these venerable figures speak 
 to us no more. We have discarded the beliefs on which they 
 were founded, and abandoned the hopes which they were in- 
 tended to inspire. No trust, it is plain, can keep lasting hold 
 of religious thought which cannot live in the light of modern 
 knowledge. If we are to retain our faith, it must not be in- 
 volved in a conflict with facts. Is it, then, possible to state it 
 in such a form that reason shall approve, and the conscience 
 and the heart accept ? Are there not at least, some prelimi- 
 nary difficulties which may be cleared away ? 
 
 The causes of doubt are numerous. There are minds 
 which have lived so long under the burden of the terrors of 
 eternal woe that they can discern no practical alternative 
 between an arbitrary despot on the throne of the world and no 
 God at all. The collapse of the ancient authority which spoke
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 117 
 
 through Priesthood or Bible has driven some trembling souls 
 into wastes of indifference or solitudes of despair. The spirit 
 of revolution has prompted a certain class of minds to angry 
 challenge against a government of the universe which does 
 not satisfy their particular demands. To others the offer of a 
 heaven of perpetual worship seems to imply the stagnation of 
 many of our best faculties. It does not excite, it depresses the 
 imagination ; while the division of the future of humanity 
 between continual church and continual gaol is an affront to 
 the first instincts of justice and love. 
 
 Or the spirit of denial cunningly weaves for itself new 
 forms of humility and self-surrender. " Look out," it cries, 
 " at the vastness and the majesty of star-sown space. In the 
 old days, when the fixed earth was its centre, man might more 
 plausibly assume that everything revolved round him. It was 
 the delusion of inflated egoism ; it is possible no more. Your 
 solid vault of sky is dissolved into infinitude ; your moveless 
 ground is but a tiny ball attending on a sun itself inferior 
 among myriads many times mightier than itself. Realise your 
 own significance. Cease to proclaim that all things are for 
 you. Look forward a few aeons, this earth will be cold and 
 dead ; a few aeons more, and the sun itself will be burnt out. 
 In the immensity of this cosmic process, among these endless 
 vicissitudes, who are you that you should lay hold upon eternity 
 and in the vanity of your heart say, ' I shall live for ever ' ? " 
 
 Moreover, it is argued, that claim is rank selfishness. 
 " What have you given to the universe that it should support 
 you for ever ? Why should you seek a higher lot than the 
 beasts which perish ? What worth do you possess which you 
 can boldly assert deserves to continue ? Everything that you 
 have was conferred upon you. You were not, and you were. 
 You have sat at the feast of life among its multitudinous guests ; 
 is not that enough? Why should you claim the * wages of 
 going on,' as though you were indispensable, and the great 
 whole would fall in ruins if you are not there to prop it 
 up ? The virtue that does not find its satisfaction in itself is 
 hollow. The love that is not content to love without return 
 is tainted. The truth that cannot stand alone, facing extinc- 
 tion, is rotten." 
 
 And so, with false ideas of heaven and hell, of God, life, 
 righteousness, the edifice of faith is overthrown.
 
 n8 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 III 
 
 In the midst of this chaos of conflicting cries, there are but 
 two directions in which light can be found. There is the 
 nature and experience of man ; there is the character and 
 purpose of God. Here are the roots of science, philosophy, 
 religion. How far, in the first place, does our organised 
 knowledge admit or suggest possibilities which reason, con- 
 science, and spiritual affection may convert into hope and 
 trust ? 
 
 The conception of evolution has opened so many avenues of 
 thought, and has suggested the method of inquiry in so many 
 departments of our history, that it cannot be surprising that it 
 should be invoked on this field also. If in less than threescore 
 years and ten a germ-cell may grow into a brain that can pro- 
 duce Hamlet or the Sermon on the Mount, what new achieve- 
 ments may not the future have in store ? But the answer is 
 not, indeed, quite so simple. On the one part, certainly, it is 
 now admitted that cerebral investigation puts no veto on the 
 conception of our being after death. The cruder materialism 
 of a past age is exploded. It is no longer affirmed that the 
 brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. The new 
 teaching declares certainly that, during this life, changes of 
 thought and feeling are accompanied by changes in the mole- 
 cular structure of the brain. But that these constitute the 
 successions of our ideas and emotions it cannot prove. A dis- 
 tinguished American evolutionist has denounced the doctrine 
 that the life of the soul ends with the life of the body "as 
 perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that 
 is known to the history of philosophy." l It is obvious that 
 our conceptions of matter and form are slowly undergoing 
 radical reconstruction, and the corporeal difficulty, therefore, 
 may be set aside to trouble us no more. Under no conceivable 
 circumstances could we learn the nature of spirit by any 
 scrutiny of the processes of the flesh. One day we shall all in 
 turn be invited to look into the open secret. Will it be for us 
 the hour of joyous discovery, or of collapse into nonentity ? 
 Neither physics nor physiology says yea or nay. 
 
 Yet the generalisations of science are not without their 
 suggestive analogy. There are aspects of death, after long 
 
 1 Fiske, Destiny of Man, p. no.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 119 
 
 struggle with agonising pain, when the sense of repose absorbs 
 all other feeling. The anguish of days and nights, of weeks 
 and months, is still ; and the heart that has been torn with the 
 spectacle of suffering which it could neither relieve or share, is 
 satisfied to look on rest. But there are other intimations when 
 it falls suddenly on the unweakened frame. Have you ever 
 watched the ebbing life on which accident has laid its un- 
 expected grasp ? Can we conceive that fire can burn, or water 
 drown, thought, love, endeavour, will ? Do the rich contents 
 of a mind that has gathered the lore of centuries, or discovered 
 the materials of stars, simply go out and cease to be ? Has the 
 law of the conservation of energy no meaning here ? What 
 of the moral forces wrought into noble character, expressed 
 and consolidated in spiritual achievement ? Have these no 
 permanence ? Shall a body that is once set in motion proceed 
 through pathless space with a velocity that never tires, so long 
 as no other mass deflects its course ? And shall a soul, in 
 which are lodged powers of aspiration and resolve, be arrested 
 on its line of progress, and stripped of its being, by the onset 
 of what we call death ? Are there no counterparts in the 
 unseen world to the principles that are recognised in the seen ? 
 The argument from analogy is somewhat discredited to-day ; 
 yet it has not wholly lost its force when the grounds of resem- 
 blance are fairly chosen. If it be an accepted doctrine that 
 energy once imparted, though it may be dispersed, can never 
 be destroyed, I see not why we should not believe that our 
 spirits are themselves such centres of potency, and may pass 
 through change after change of external condition without loss 
 of identity or strength. 
 
 That the conception of evolution points to a life beyond, is 
 at least not denied by some of its most earnest advocates. The 
 courses of human history, compared with the animal world, 
 show that in distant ages an unexpected direction was given to 
 the vast process. Its operation upon man's physical frame was 
 diverted to his mind. It ceased to affect his limbs, and gave 
 birth to knowledge, conscience, faith. In this sphere it works 
 for a higher kind of individuality than any of its preceding 
 stages had realised. The centre of interest has been transferred 
 from the outward organism to the inner forces of which it 
 is the vehicle. By this change the whole previous series 
 receives a new value, for it is judged in relation to the product
 
 which conies out at the top ; and it acquires a fresh worth 
 when it is viewed as the indispensable preliminary of our 
 present being. That this state is destined to be indefinitely 
 improved upon this globe is the ardent conviction of some of 
 our most eminent thinkers who confidently assume the prophet's 
 mantle. The brute within us is being gradually mastered. 
 The greed of self-assertion, the ignoble pleasure in the suffer- 
 ings or infirmities of others, the thousand moral ills that arise 
 from defective insight and untamed passion, the violence and 
 injustice of human things as we know them, will slowly pass, 
 and mankind will move upwards to heights of which now we 
 only dimly dream. It is well, though I cannot see that the 
 improvement of the race will in any way compensate for the 
 undeveloped or the degraded forms which are cast out upon 
 the way. 
 
 But there is another side to this prophecy. Behind the 
 lustre of this age of peace there lies the faint vision of a dying 
 sun. Nearer and nearer comes the blight of frost, and, unless 
 the solar fires be unexpectedly replenished, one day the creep- 
 ing pall of ice will enfold our globe, and the earth will be cold 
 and lifeless as the moon. Readers of Darwin's letters will re- 
 member how profoundly this expectation of the dismal close of 
 history affected him. The myriad voices of the children of 
 men silent, the discoveries of knowledge flung away, the fair 
 achievements of art destroyed, the triumphs of moral education 
 annihilated, the rich results of a realised brotherhood of man 
 dispersed, the creations of religion reduced to nought, who 
 can contemplate this without the cry, "To what purpose was 
 this waste ? " Solution for us through science there is none. 
 Nature writes her riddles so that the wise may read, but she 
 leaves the answers in the lap of time. Only faith is bold 
 enough to pluck out the heart of the mystery, and declare 
 that souls are more precious than any number of spinning 
 planets, and can outlast them all. Give her the deathless life, 
 and she is content to endure loss and decay ; for that which 
 has spiritual meaning will abide, and all else is but chaff or 
 dross. But if not, if the sun pales, and the world grows old, 
 what then ? Why, then, let us still say that love is better 
 than selfishness, and truth than falsehood, and purity than lust. 
 In the life that now is, we are still called to open blind eyes 
 and unstop deaf ears, to bring the bound out of the prison-
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 121 
 
 house, to seek and to save the lost. If we cannot live for ever, 
 let us use with the utmost nobleness our span of years. The 
 righteousness for which we strive from day to day is not buried 
 among distant snows ; nor is the knowledge we have gained 
 hid in the blackness of long-future night ; nor does the 
 eternal loneliness beyond make nought the love of wife or child 
 or friend. Whatever be the interpretation of the great enigma, 
 these things are facts now. If the earth should burst to-morrow, 
 and we were all whirled on separate fragments into space, it 
 would still be worth while to live our best to-day ; and he who 
 yields to the pessimist, and pronounces the world-process value- 
 less if there be no immortality, who declares virtue a dream 
 and God a lie, commits treason against the only realities we 
 know, throws all the achievements of the past into confusion, 
 and tramples the accumulations of experience into the dust. 
 
 IV 
 
 The suggestions of evolution, however, are incomplete till 
 we ask not only what is man's place in nature, but also what 
 is the inner meaning of his own thought. On one side of his 
 being he belongs to the world without ; in respect of another 
 he is a world in himself. I know, indeed, that at every step 
 I tread between rival philosophies ; but man's destiny is not 
 only to be inferred from his historical development, it is also 
 implied in what he is now. It is one of the paradoxes of our 
 being, that mind, which is the source and instrument of all our 
 knowledge, should still be in a certain sense unknown. We 
 say, indeed, that we think and feel, plan, hope, aspire, resolve, 
 mourn, and rejoice, but what are we ? It is the most innocent- 
 looking of questions, yet the answer carries with it God and 
 eternity. If we are nothing more than the successions of the 
 sensations and ideas that pass across the field of our conscious- 
 ness, sorted into groups by association, bound into a continuous 
 chain by memory, then, indeed, when the machinery stops, 
 there is nothing more than the machine. The "magnetic 
 mockeries " are still. There is no self, it is only a bundle of 
 impressions. Undo the bond of recollection, and its contents 
 are dissipated. Person there is none behind the shifting 
 phantasmagoria of experience. The combination of conditions 
 falls apart, and the unity which they constituted for a time is
 
 122 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 dissolved for ever. It has no permanence, and, when it breaks 
 up, there is nothing to survive, save for the few who win a 
 place in that remembrance of the race which we call fame. 
 
 Let those who will, however, reduce themselves to a mere 
 sum or series of states of consciousness. The attempt will not 
 satisfy those who have once wrestled with passion, struggled 
 with reluctant affection, mastered the indolent temper, or sub- 
 dued the rebellious self-will. They are well aware that they 
 are something more than mere thinking automata. There is 
 that within them which commands as well as obeys, which 
 enforces as well as yields, which overcomes as well as submits. 
 This is the sign of our independence. In conscience is the 
 charter of our freedom. By action do we enter into liberty. 
 The moral life involves the exercise of that high force which 
 makes each one of us into a self, and sets us over against the 
 world, infinity, the universe of separate souls, and God. 
 Through effort are we born into fuller realisation of our 
 being. Along the path of endeavour do we climb the mount 
 of personality. There most clearly, if not there alone, do we 
 know ourselves as causes, and find that, in spite of the limita- 
 tions which environ us, and the myriad energies which play 
 through us, we are still left in the significant crises of our lot 
 to determine ourselves for good or ill. What is the ultimate 
 nature of this mysterious power, what its relation to the physi- 
 cal frame through which it acts, we do not know. We call 
 it by many names, substance, monad, spirit, soul. We think 
 of it as the central might of all our being. We recognise it 
 as that which gives unity to our changeful moods. We dis- 
 cern in it the agency which organises our experience into a 
 continuous whole. But what it is in itself is beyond our ex- 
 perience. We cannot set it before us in imagination, or invest 
 it with form or colour. How it can be in space at all, it is 
 impossible for us to conceive ; for we cannot suppose thought 
 to be extended, to be spread out over a surface, or to occupy 
 the solid contents of a body. 
 
 Yet there is a wide range of mysterious facts which suggest 
 the possibility that an experimental knowledge of its persist- 
 ence may not always be beyond our reach. The study of 
 them by any careful method has only just commenced. It 
 begins with the influence of mind on mind among the living ; 
 and it is speedily confronted with the question, " Can that
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 123 
 
 influence be traced through death ? " If that can be indeed 
 established, a presumption is certainly instituted that the 
 spiritual forces which have survived one change may survive 
 others. I have no answer to give to this inquiry. No answer 
 is worth anything that is not founded on laborious and self- 
 denying investigation. But I cannot deny that the inquiry 
 is legitimate. It may be, as some have suggested, that this is 
 a vera causa all down the track of history, bursting into light 
 in one single instance, so that the cross became the entrance 
 into glory, and again and again illuminating for the departing 
 the pathway into the unseen. I offer no opinion, for I have 
 none ; but there is I think sufficient evidence to convince us 
 that the sphere of spirit may be as full of X rays as the realm 
 of light. 
 
 Along other lines, moreover, it would seem that to some 
 rare souls there come, ever and anon, intimations of a more 
 enduring being than that of this corporeal frame. Words- 
 worth has told us of his Wanderer, that 
 
 In the mountains did he feel his faith. 
 All things, responsive to the writing, there 
 Breathed immortality, revolving life, 
 And greatness still revolving, infinite. 
 There littleness was not, the least of things 
 Seemed infinite, and there his spirit shaped 
 Her prospects, nor did he believe, he saw. 
 
 Tennyson, in like manner, has recorded, both in 'prose and 
 verse, the characteristics of a similar feeling. Arthur, the 
 embodiment of the soul, can tell of " moments when he knows 
 he cannot die." Sir Galahad, who meets the airs of heaven on 
 his quest of the Grail, finds himself in the midst of "pure 
 spaces clothed in living beams " : 
 
 And, stricken by an angel's hand, 
 
 This mortal armour that I wear, 
 This weight and size, this heart and eyes, 
 
 Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air. 
 
 The Ancient Sage describes the escape from the bodily 
 limitations of the Self : * 
 
 1 This is the poetical version of the following experience (described under date 
 of yth May 1874, cp. Waugh, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 2nd ed. 1893, p. 192). "I 
 have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of waking trance
 
 i2 4 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 For more than once when I 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself, 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
 And past into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 Melts into heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs 
 Were strange, not mine and yet no shade of doubt, 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self 
 The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
 Were sun to spark unshadowable in words, 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. 
 
 The literature of mysticism is full of attempts to convey 
 through the imperfect medium of language the ineffable sense 
 of larger being apprehended by those who, in Pauline phrase, 
 have been caught up into the third heaven ; and all philosophies 
 which have taught that the body should be subjected to secure 
 the unimpeded vision of the soul have testified to its capacity 
 of discerning forms of truth and beauty veiled to duller eyes 
 and intelligible only to the earnest heart and pure. 
 
 These may be but the changing modes of expressing the 
 higher terms of an order of facts which is of universal signi- 
 ficance. It has often been observed that the spiritual nature 
 of man seems to contain within it elements that are enormously 
 in excess of his evolutionary requirements. They do not 
 contribute anything to the maintenance or stability of his 
 physical organism ; that appears to be secured upon other 
 conditions. They have nothing to do with the preservation 
 or development of the species, for which provision is made on 
 different terms. They seem intelligible only in relation to a 
 life conceived upon a loftier scale than the place-limits of our 
 environment of flesh, or the time-limits of our threescore 
 years and ten. You sit within the four walls of your chamber, 
 but they cannot contain your thought. That makes itself at 
 home all round the globe, follows the planets' mazy dance, and 
 
 (this for lack of a better name) I have frequently had quite up from my boyhood, 
 when I have been all alone. This has often come to me through repeating my 
 own name to myself silently, till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of 
 the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to resolve and 
 fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of 
 the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an 
 almost laughable impossibility." Cp. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Memoir, i. 320 ; and 
 Tyndall's Memorandum of a Conversation on 5th April 1858, ibid. ii. 473.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 125 
 
 when it has sped with inconceivable rapidity on the wings of 
 light for whole millenniums, still declares itself no nearer 
 the limits of unbounded space. The discovery of the im- 
 mensity of the universe has produced on some observers, as 
 has been already noticed, the singular effect of dwarfing the 
 importance of man. But it is no less possible to invert the 
 estimate. The mind that can read the story of the heavens is 
 surely not reduced in worth by its own achievement. Only 
 give it access to light, and it will interpret for you the chemistry 
 of the sun, and tell you the constituents of the fixed stars. On 
 the wings of mathematic law even the blind can plant himself 
 anywhere in the abysses round him, and still be confident that 
 the truths of number are valid, and the principles of reasoning 
 are unimpaired. The processes which have revealed the vast- 
 ness of the world have also revealed in man an understanding 
 to match it. The methods have been devised by his intelli- 
 gence, the results have been attained through the workings of 
 his thought. Without leaving his observatory, he has measured 
 the orbit of the earth, determined its rate of movement, and 
 ascertained the progress of the whole solar system through the 
 deeps of space. Such knowledge, it is true, feeds no one. 
 But, instead of diminishing the value of the faculties which 
 win it, it makes them kin with the unseen Reason which 
 informs the whole. The science which we prize so highly is 
 unrelated to our daily wants. It belongs to that sphere in 
 which we can say with Kepler in the overflowing emotion of 
 discovery, " O God, I think thy thoughts after thee." So it 
 creates a fellowship between the spirit of man and the spirit of 
 nature. This does not grow old with the aging frame. The 
 intellectual power that through words and things has gone 
 "sounding on a dim and perilous way" is not worn out. It 
 becomes indeed aware how minute a proportion its knowledge 
 bears to the mighty sphere of the unknown beyond. But how 
 suggestive is this contrast. When we enter this life, we are 
 invited into the temple of creative imagination and taught to 
 spell the first letters of the mystic writing on its walls. Does 
 death, then, bring with it dismissal ? The manifestation of 
 God in the world reveals a community between his mind and 
 ours ; and as that manifestation becomes clearer, shall we not 
 see him more truly as he is ? Who will believe that on this 
 path of our approach the Father of our being will suddenly
 
 126 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 arrest and strike us down ? Will not the education in which 
 we take the first steps here, be carried further when the veil of 
 mortality is done away ? 
 
 The same hope rises out of every department of what may 
 be called the ideal life. The sense of beauty, the authority of 
 conscience, the exquisite delights and the high self-denials of 
 affection, are each felt in turn to possess a certain inexhaustible 
 element, which in the present limits of our existence we can 
 never fully realise. For example, there is a kind of boundless- 
 ness in character. It is, indeed, often overlaid by outward 
 circumstance, or hushed by inward reserve. In the routine 
 of professional engagements, of business tasks, of domestic 
 administration, how many of the real capacities of our nature 
 lie smothered and hid. We are so wrapped up in convention, 
 we have so little trust in our own individuality, or time and 
 affairs press so closely upon us, that the husk of our powers is 
 not broken. A vacillating indolence of will, or a shy timidity, 
 balks our best impulses, and throws a veil over our real desires. 
 But see how some sudden crisis in the family history, some 
 loss of fortune, some unexpected accident, some unlooked-for 
 grief, breaks down the restraint of years. The mask of habit 
 is torn away ; the ice of custom is thawed. Responsibility 
 falls on some silent lad or shrinking girl, and they act with a 
 clear sight, a prompt faculty, a continuous devotion, of which 
 those around had never dreamed. " I feel," cried Napoleon, 
 " I feel within me the infinite," and with a tyrannic energy 
 that tries to trample on all the conditions, political and moral, 
 by which it is environed, he sets Europe in a blaze. There 
 are souls which are sometimes conscious of the infinite, only it 
 is apprehended faintly and far off". Does not obscure longings, 
 inarticulate hopes, arise within us, and impel us we know not 
 whither ? Do they not call out for a freer course and a less 
 impeded way ? Does not the dull mind feel the stir of the 
 love of knowledge, and think, in moments of exceptional 
 vividness, that it, too, could enter the field of vision, and could 
 find a truth ? Does not the wearied spirit crave for the cessa- 
 tion of the endless roar of the world around it, that it might 
 catch and fix the melodies that haunt it in the turmoil, or 
 reproduce the dim forms of loveliness it has seen, but cannot 
 paint ? Nay, do not these capacities sleep among those who 
 know them not ? The miner, at a moment's notice, sends
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 127 
 
 some trembling boy by his side up the shaft first, and remains 
 below to die ; the sailor, when his ship is sinking in mid-ocean, 
 hauls down his signals of distress, that others may not risk their 
 lives in a vain attempt to save ; the stewardess remembers a 
 girl committed to her care, and rushes through the smoke to 
 drag her from the blazing cabin, till, unable to escape, they die 
 hand in hand upon the floor ; are these nobler than their 
 fellows above ground or on shore ? Such deeds spring from 
 the unrealised possibilities that lie hid in all, for which the 
 common circumstance of life gives perchance no scope, and we 
 pass away not knowing ourselves, still less discovering in others 
 what they truly are. And is it not the same at the other end 
 of the scale ? Those whom we loved best, in whom we have 
 seen the broadest judgment, the tenderest sympathy, the firmest 
 grasp of truth and right, do we feel even that these have 
 exhausted all their story, and poured forth the full treasures of 
 their character ? Are we not rather convinced that if they 
 could enter new scenes, fresh graces would be disclosed, that 
 clearer lights would be thrown on secrets of excellence we had 
 not discerned, and whole pages of life which seemed dark and 
 dreary would be flooded with an unexpected glow ? Could 
 Jesus of Nazareth become Jesus of London, would there be no 
 new variety in his message ? Would the lines of spiritual 
 portraiture be quite the same ? I, for one, do not believe it. 
 I do not think he uttered himself wholly on those Syrian hills. 
 There were deeps in that soul which those around him could 
 not fathom, but they were not closed for ever on the cross. In 
 the great Providence of God, may we not think that in new 
 worlds he has won new truth, and realised more love, and still 
 abides Teacher, Revealer, Friend. 
 
 It is, in fact, the measure of the worth of our own experi- 
 ence that it suggests to us so much more beyond. Our place 
 in what we call nature does not use up our faculties, how then 
 can we suppose that it completes our destiny ? It is through 
 such variety in our own range that we dimly lay hold of the 
 conception of perfect Being, of Mind that comprehends within 
 itself all truth ; of creative Imagination that for ever shapes 
 forth all forms of loveliness ; of Will that everlastingly fulfils 
 the obligations it everlastingly imposes on its own activity ; of 
 Love eternally begetting its own objects, and drawing them 
 into indissoluble union with itself; and all the modes of cease-
 
 128 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 less inconceivable variety which the Infinite may need to live 
 out its own infinitude. 
 
 But if it be true, as some have dreamed, that behind the 
 changing shows of time there lies the changeless ground of all 
 our being, is it not possible that the whole question of immor- 
 tality, conceived as continuous duration, may take another 
 form, and pass out of the sphere of quantity into that of quality ? 
 May it not denote rather a measure of participation in a divine 
 life than an indefinite extension of the human ? The meta- 
 physic of time and space will always offer its problems to the 
 speculative reason, and warning is needless concerning the 
 dangers of hasty steps upon these giddy heights. But the 
 history of religion points again and again to an order of experi- 
 ence which, though necessarily rare, yet recurs with sufficient 
 uniformity among different races, in different lands, under 
 different philosophies, and implies a power of intuition capable 
 of combining into a solid unity the details which we must 
 otherwise apprehend successively. In its lower form it has 
 shown itself, for example, in perceptions of the connections of 
 number in minds which lost their peculiar power when trained 
 in the analytic methods of arithmetic. Mozart has left a 
 singular record of his ability to visualise as a whole in his own 
 thought the composition which he had wrought out bar by 
 bar : " If nothing disturbs me, the piece grows larger and 
 brighter, until, however long it is, it is all finished at once in 
 my mind, so that I can see it at a glance, as if it were a pretty 
 picture or a pleasing person. Then I don't hear the notes one 
 after another as they are hereafter to be played, but it is as if in 
 my fancy they were all at once. . . . What I have once so 
 heard I forget not again, and perhaps this is the best gift that 
 God has granted me." l That is the mode in which the 
 musician realises the "central peace subsisting at the heart of 
 endless agitation." 
 
 In the same way we might imagine a mind that could 
 perceive at once the entire tissue of mathematical relations, so 
 that all theorems which we attain by processes of deductive 
 inference should be simultaneously open to its view. Where 
 this conception is associated with religion, as when the Fourth 
 Gospel defines seonian life as knowledge of God and of Jesus 
 Christ whom he has sent, it is plain that we have not to do 
 
 1 Quoted by Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 457.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 129 
 
 with a time-process. In those high states the contemplation 
 of unseen realities takes the place of the successions of events. 
 It was the aim of mediaeval philosophy and religion to rise to 
 such perception of the Godhead that the whole scheme of 
 spiritual relations implied in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the 
 Redemption, would appear .in the character of necessary truth 
 wrought into one abiding harmony, the object of man's ever- 
 lasting worship. But what is apprehended in adoration is not 
 capable of measurement by the clock. The vision of God is 
 not extended over days and years. Those who have attained 
 it can never tell how long it lasts. They only know that, 
 whatever be the conditions of our working life, there is a sphere 
 where insight has nothing to do with the lapse of hours. It is 
 independent of the vicissitudes of outward change. Be time a 
 fact or an illusion, the eternal, in truth, in beauty, in goodness 
 and in love, is the soul's true goal. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of the intimations of another life as 
 they reach us out of the thousand forms of human experience. 
 But religion can never rest its case only on the nature of man. 
 It must boldly take it into the sanctuary, and ask what con- 
 secration it receives in the presence of God. It may, indeed, 
 be urged that this carries us one step farther from the primal 
 certainties of our being. But the heart of trust is always at 
 least as sure of God as of its neighbour or itself. Conviction 
 of his existence is ever as clear as of that of the man in the 
 next street. The testimony of faith in this matter, therefore, 
 is in one sense only the obverse of the witness within. To 
 what do reason, justice, affection, point in our own minds ? To 
 these same things must our belief in God also point, for it is 
 precisely through reason, justice, and affection that we have 
 knowledge of him. Yet, though they are few indeed who have 
 cherished the great hope without God, the aspect of this matter 
 in the light of religion is not quite the same as its place in 
 what may be called the natural history of the soul. It implies 
 that we consider our life and its meaning no longer from the 
 side of its diverse manifestations in man, but beneath our con- 
 ception of the unity of the purpose and providence of God. 
 The disciple who has learned of Jesus to look to God not only 
 
 I
 
 130 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 as the Maker of his being but as the Father of his spirit, feels 
 that in this sublime relation lies the ground of all his hope, for 
 God has formed us to enter into fellowship with himself. Out 
 of this springs that view alike of man's duty and destiny summed 
 up in the saying, " Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is 
 in heaven is perfect." In setting this forth as the aim of the 
 children of the Highest, Jesus implicitly postulated immortality. 
 It might seem needless to go further. But there are other 
 points of view which cannot be altogether ignored. In calling 
 us into existence the Ruler of the universe makes us subject to 
 his justice, as he also encompasses us with his love. By these 
 two principles is our education as " sons of God " conducted. 
 
 Are they, however, really twain, are they not rather one ? 
 The Psalmist, with the incidental ease of insight long trained 
 to pierce to the heart of spiritual realities, boldly identifies them. 
 " Also to thee, O Lord, belongeth loving-kindness (mercy), 
 for thou renderest to every man according to his work." The 
 fundamental grace of the universe, in his view, is that it is 
 always to be trusted. If its steadfastness seems stern, that is 
 but another aspect of its goodwill. In true affection is no place 
 for caprice. Release at the last moment when penalty has you 
 in its grasp, removal and degradation at the top of achievement, 
 these are the follies of tyrants ; the arbitrary or incalculable 
 cannot belong to God. 
 
 It must be confessed that theology has not been able to live 
 habitually at the height of the poet's thought. The teachers 
 of the Synagogue affirmed that on New Year's Day God rose 
 from the throne of his justice, and placed himself on the 
 throne of his mercy, to receive the prayers which the repentant 
 people would offer till the great rite of Atonement ten days 
 later. The conflict thus introduced into the divine nature 
 between the justice and the mercy of God, which could not be 
 accommodated on one seat, passed from the Jewish schools into 
 the Christian Church. The history of Western thought, 
 whether mediaeval or modern, has been full of schemes of 
 reconciliation, by which the divergence should be harmonised. 
 I am not concerned now with theories of atonement, or with 
 those curious scenes known in the mediaeval mystery-plays as 
 the council of the Trinity. Consider only the tremendous 
 words which Dante saw written over the gate of the city of 
 eternal pain :
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 131 
 
 Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore ; 
 
 Fecemi la divina Potestate, 
 
 La somraa Sapienza, e '1 primo Amore. 1 
 
 Love, wisdom, justice, are these the factors of enduring hell ? 
 The symbols of the past have crumbled away in the light of 
 modern ideas, but have they no meaning left ? When the 
 Rabbis declared that the bliss of Paradise and the anguish of 
 Gehenna were created before ever the world was, were they 
 not after all striving to express the same thought ? Do not 
 reward and punishment (as we call them) belong to the consti- 
 tution of life ? Is it not through them that our conception of 
 its moral order seeks expression ? And is not that sublime 
 order an essential unity ? Can we have any other idea of it 
 than that it reflects the mind of God, and can that mind be 
 divided against itself? Are not justice and power, wisdom and 
 love, in him intrinsically one ? Do we not feel that we have 
 not touched the foundations of things till we can say, " Blessed 
 be God for his loving-kindness, in that he renders to every man 
 according to his work." 
 
 VI 
 
 The application of the idea of the divine righteousness to 
 our hereafter has chiefly taken two forms. A future is de- 
 manded, in the first place, in view of the unfulfilled claims of 
 the moral law, that retribution may alight upon the guilty who 
 are unpunished now ; and, in the second place, that the present 
 sufferings of innocence may receive an appropriate compensa- 
 tion by and by. What value lies for us in these pleas ? That 
 the moral order is not completely worked out in this life would 
 seem to be a conviction deep-seated in the heart of the race. 
 Most of the peoples of the lower culture have devised for the 
 wicked some form of chastisement beyond the grave ; and this 
 expectation has ultimately established itself in the eschatology 
 of all the higher religions. In some it has appeared early, in 
 others late, but nowhere has it altogether failed j and it con- 
 stitutes an impressive mass of testimony which is not lightly to 
 
 1 Justice incited my sublime Creator ; 
 Created me divine Omnipotence, 
 The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. 
 
 LONGFELLOW.
 
 132 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 be set aside. From the traditional conceptions of Christendom, 
 however, large numbers of minds are shaking themselves free. 
 The reconciliation offered by the mediaeval seer appears to them 
 compatible neither with justice nor with love. The doctrine 
 that this life is a probation which determines unalterably the 
 condition of the next, cannot be harmonised with the elements 
 of modern hope in which progress plays so prominent a part. 
 Nor can it be adjusted with those ideas of equity which belong 
 to a large view of human affairs, and make it impossible to 
 believe that the issues of endless being can hang on (perhaps) a 
 single opportunity of accepting or rejecting the grace of God. 
 Moreover, philosophy and religion have again and again risen 
 in protest against the degradation of virtue by treating it as an 
 investment for the purpose of securing happiness to come, and 
 against a similar degradation of a true theory of punishment by 
 associating it with the vindictive conception of everlasting 
 woe. Five hundred years before Christ, Gotama the Buddha 
 announced that first among the fetters of worldliness which 
 must be broken by him who would enter on the holy path was 
 the performance of right conduct for the sake of attaining 
 heaven or avoiding hell. "Be not as slaves that minister to 
 the Lord with a view to receive recompense," was the well- 
 known maxim of Antigonus of Socho. Many a devout 
 Christian soul has ranged itself in thought with that strange 
 woman whom St. Louis' envoy Yves met near Acre, carrying 
 a porringer full of fire in one hand, and a vial of water in the 
 other, bent on burning up paradise and extinguishing hell, that 
 God might no longer be sought through fear of pain or in the 
 hope of joy, but only for the surpassing value of his own love. 
 That the notes of retribution and reward are to be heard so 
 frequently in the teachings of Jesus, has been a stumbling-block 
 to some critics of our time, anxious to set the higher life on a 
 pinnacle of exalted disinterestedness. 
 
 But the reaction against ancient symbols may betray us into 
 forgetfulness of the realities which they were designed to 
 express, for the depths of hell were only the pictorial image of 
 the horror of sin. It must be confessed that the escape from 
 the awful shadow of the wrath of God has sometimes generated 
 a kind of easy reliance on what (on a lower plane) might be 
 called his good-nature, or his willingness to make allowances. 
 It is no doubt always possible to conceive a thousand reasons on
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 133 
 
 behalf of others, but the conscience that is truthful with itself 
 will not thus begin to seek excuse. That chastisement of 
 some sort should follow wrong is a recognised principle of all 
 moral order. To apply it wisely may lay a heavy burden on 
 the equity and the tenderness of the parent and teacher, and may 
 be impossible to those in whom affection is rather an animal 
 sentiment than an emotion which has allied itself with reason 
 and self-control. But no one who recognises the authority of 
 conscience can doubt that its defiance must be followed by 
 correction, and that to wilful sin must be attached a correspond- 
 ing penalty. It is sometimes alleged, however, that this world 
 is itself the scene of such discipline, and that there is no need 
 to conjure up the terrors of another. If that be the case, there 
 are but two spheres where we can trace its incidence. It must 
 appeal to us either through the outer or the inner life. It must 
 be exercised, that is to say, through the forces of nature or 
 society on the one part, or through the interior actions and 
 energies of the soul upon the other. 
 
 It is no doubt true that in the sphere of nature there is an 
 exact sequence which we sum up under the name of law. It 
 is true that to violations of her order she has affixed the most 
 dire issues. But their incidence does not follow the lines of 
 our morality, because the conditions with which they corre- 
 spond are in no way identical with our virtue or guilt. 
 Disease is sure to appear in an unsanitary home whether the 
 fault be that of a slovenly housewife or of a grasping and 
 reckless landlord. The captain, in haste to consummate his 
 voyage in fewest hours, takes a dangerous course, and runs his 
 ship upon the rocks ; but the passengers are not sorted into 
 the righteous and the sinners as they drown ; and the fire that 
 plunged Paris in mourning reduced the saintly and the 
 frivolous to a common ash. The action of nature takes no 
 heed of our distinctions, and even where she has attached 
 physical consequences to different forms of excess, they are 
 allotted with the most startling disregard to our moral demands. 
 A single act of self-indulgence may reduce the stalwart frame 
 to life-long wreck ; and a hardened profligate may protect 
 himself while he sinks lower and lower into infamy. The 
 awards of nature follow their own conditions with unswerving 
 steadfastness. They are a part of the vast order of the world 
 on which our moral life securely stands. But they are not
 
 134 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 coincident with that life. They may have a share in its 
 discipline, but they do not constitute it. Not here is the 
 sphere of the spiritual education of the " sons of God." 
 
 Nor can we discover any adequate answer to our expecta- 
 tions in the operations of society around us. Is it affirmed 
 that the bad opinion of a man's comrades is a sufficient censure 
 and a satisfactory deterrent ? You have but to consult the 
 daily press to know how cheap are its condemnations and its 
 praise. It is only the outside that the world can see, and it 
 judges according to the outside. It can applaud success, it 
 can condemn failure. But what if the success be a brilliant 
 sham, reared upon treachery and hollow with fraud ? What 
 if the failure be the sad issue of patient endeavour balked by 
 malignant design, or of an effort renewed again and again, but 
 frustrated by some unexpected circumstance, baffled by in- 
 cidents beyond prevision or control ? The censures and the 
 approval of the world can rarely rest on the knowledge and 
 sympathy which alone can give them moral worth. Even in 
 the case of the greatest, on whom history has passed its 
 verdict, they are (in the first place) beyond our reach for 
 gratitude or execration : and (in the next) how few are secure ! 
 An undiscovered document may besmirch the hero's fair fame ; 
 or the man who has been loaded with infamy may have been 
 plunged in unmerited disgrace. Or will you appeal on a great 
 scale to the field of race, and trust the crude, cold, cruel arbitra- 
 ment of war ? It is true that corrupt and enfeebled states are 
 at last overthrown by the onset of the vigorous and strong. It 
 is true that some of the colossal constructions of ancient pride 
 and power have been rolled in the dust. But the fall of 
 empires has nothing to do with the salvation of souls. The 
 vicissitudes of nations have no relation to the merits of 
 individuals. The successes of superior numbers, of better 
 artillery, or more skilful command, are no proof of a worthier 
 cause. The false and tyrannical can go unscathed, while the 
 champion of the oppressed is hurled to the ground. Only on 
 the broadest scale, and on lines that are not exclusively moral, 
 can it be said of life as we see it, whether in nature or in 
 history, that God "renders to every man according to his work." 
 
 But it may be that the conscience within is the scene where 
 the retributive justice of heaven works out its perpetual award. 
 No one who has faced his temptations manfully, has fought
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 135 
 
 and fallen, has sorrowed and fought again and overcome, will 
 ever think lightly of the dread experience when he sat alone 
 with remembered sin. When you can recall to yourself 
 specific incidents in your past, and say, "There I was false, 
 there insincere, there passionate, there covetous of applause, 
 there inconsiderate and self-absorbed, there meaner than I ever 
 thought that I could be," you will begin to learn by what 
 discipline of pain God reveals to you the way of progress and 
 the path of peace. The keenest pang does not lie in the 
 humiliation of our self-complacency, the uneasiness begotten by 
 the discovery of unpleasant truths about ourselves which we 
 are anxious to veil from the world's eye. There is a deeper 
 shame in the consciousness of our unworthiness in the sight of 
 the All-Pure, the sense of having wounded the love as we 
 have also violated the holiness of the Most High. Be thankful 
 that God has found you out, and left you vision enough to 
 know that it is he. 
 
 But this implies that we have learned to see ourselves with 
 awakened eyes. There is, however, another order of experi- 
 ences, more to be dreaded because more obscure. Its opera- 
 tions are often beyond our power to trace. We only infer 
 their presence in ourselves, because we seem to detect them in 
 others. For in the world around us we are sometimes made 
 aware what terrible retribution awaits men even here. We 
 see the selfish sinking deeper and deeper in their selfishness, 
 the cruel and lustful becoming more embruted, the vain en- 
 snared in their own conceits, the deceitful become so false they 
 partly take themselves for true, the habitually passionate less 
 and less able to achieve self-control. And sometimes, stung 
 with unexpected alarm, or visited with the stirrings of a rare 
 compunction, we turn our gaze inward with the piercing 
 suspicion that the same penal law is slowly extending its grasp 
 over ourselves, that our faltering insight, our listless hours, 
 our indolence of will, our cold affections, are in like manner 
 the working through our own life of the continuous judgment 
 of the Only True. And we shall desire to know " For 
 what " ? The causes may have passed out of our ken. They 
 may be wrought into the fabric of our character beyond our 
 power to bring into clearer light ; we cannot establish the 
 connection between the moral infirmity and its consequent 
 defect. But one day, may we not dare to hope, the Power
 
 136 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 which now acts on us unconsciously, will tell us the meaning 
 of this discipline, and with that poignant summons, "Son, 
 remember," will light up for us the evil past. 
 
 There is, assuredly, a place in religion for the conception 
 of retribution, but it appears to me that the ethical law re- 
 quires that between the sin and its punishment a definite 
 relation shall be discerned. There is a justice in penalty, but 
 it must be penalty that makes for righteousness. The 
 automatic operations of habit do not secure this end. They 
 only increase our moral disability without in any way illu- 
 minating the dulness of our vision, and they call, therefore, for 
 a complementary knowledge by which the significance of the 
 result shall be enforced. For this what more can be required 
 than that the mind shall understand itself, shall apprehend the 
 reality of the righteousness that it has violated, the evil that it 
 has embraced, shall be compelled to tear aside the flimsy 
 disguises of its self-deception, recognise the true meaning of 
 its infirmities of will, and perceive the far-reaching issues of 
 its guilt ? We are not, indeed, without some faint warnings 
 of what such experience may be. For ever and anon, it may 
 be by the death of those we love, or through events which 
 bring with them inevitable changes of scene and engagement, 
 we are confronted again with the images of the past, and in 
 the stress of great emotion the incidents of vanished years 
 long hidden from our view start into life and freshness once 
 again. And who does not know the vain regrets that here 
 self- will forgot its tenderness, and there the love of ease 
 evaded its rightful burdens ; that here the grasp of duty was 
 loose and fitful, and there concern for our own schemes 
 absorbed all our attention, and we lost sight of the trusts 
 the happiness or the welfare of others which God had con- 
 fided to our care. Even so, may it not be, as we pass from 
 life to life. Through the veil of mortality which enwraps us 
 now, we can behold but dimly the real significance of what 
 we are, and even less clearly can we surmise what we 
 may be. The panorama of life is like the vision which you 
 may see among the Alps on some autumn morning. The 
 mists lie thick upon the valleys, and only islets of rock and 
 forest push their heads above the enfolding shroud. Here 
 there are images of beauty, and there you behold only shadows 
 and wastes, and the mind cannot connect the scattered frag-
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 137 
 
 ments into any completed whole. It is the same with the 
 landscape of our past. The levels of commonplace that lie 
 among the heights of endeavour or emotion are hidden from 
 us ; yet it was in them that we were prepared for the strenuous- 
 ness of our occasional ascent, it was also in them that we 
 neglected our most precious opportunities, or suffered our most 
 grievous falls. And one day they, too, will be exposed to our 
 view, as the sun of righteousness arises, and the films of for- 
 getfulness and vanity, of prejudice and illusion, are rolled away. 
 In such vision of ourselves and God will there not lie a 
 purifying pain ? " We needs must love the highest when we 
 see it " ; and to show us the highest, and give us, at whatever 
 cost of moral anguish to ourselves, the power to behold it, 
 must be a part of that severity which is also love. The 
 awakened will desire the suffering which will purge and heal ; 
 and they will pass from life to life with the exact opposite of 
 the ancient petition in one of our liturgies, for they will say, 
 " O Lord, turn not from us those evils which we most justly 
 have deserved." 
 
 But there are spiritual conditions in which this argument 
 is precisely inverted. I do not speak now of the unrealised 
 possibilities of nobleness which lie hid in so many souls, and 
 never encounter here a stimulus of circumstance strong enough 
 to call them forth. Consider rather the lot of the children of 
 depravity whom our self-complacence calls outcast, and coldly 
 assigns to perpetual exclusion. They are born into a lot they 
 did not seek, endowed with natures which they did not choose, 
 trained under conditions of whose shame they understand 
 nothing. What does society do for their redemption ? The 
 embruted man, the degraded woman, in whose flesh there burn 
 unholy fires kindled by generations of indulgence, what do 
 these deserve ? I do not ignore the manifold agencies of 
 reform, but in respect of thousands we leave them to the police- 
 court and the gaol. In departing virtue we are sometimes 
 invited to behold the serene promise of futurity, but what 
 about departing vice ? These are our failures ; are they also 
 God's. Is he partner with us in giving birth to souls fit only 
 to be " cast as rubbish to the void " ? Sooner might we deem 
 that he destroys the righteous than the wicked, for the former 
 have, in part at least, fulfilled the law of their nature : they 
 have responded to his purpose, they have not been all un-
 
 138 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 worthy to live a little while in his presence ere they go out 
 and are no more. But the low-minded for whom there was 
 a hideous preparation of corruption, who were steeped in evil 
 that they could not control, have these no claim for a better 
 opportunity, a freer choice ? Can we reject their half-articulate 
 plea for deliverance from a bondage not of their own making, 
 for help to escape from the thraldom of nature, for release from 
 the overmastering pressure of heredity or social circumstance, 
 that they too may begin to live as " sons of the Highest " ? 
 Is justice satisfied if- they are condemned, or does it not rather 
 cry out not so much for judgment on the guilty as for rescue 
 for the lost ? Shall the boundless resources of God's grace be 
 impotent to seek and save ? Are not the vicious a perpetual 
 appeal to the righteousness of God for a fresh chance ? 
 
 VII 
 
 But the question of future penalty carries with it also the 
 question of future reward. When justice utters its dooms of 
 pain, does it not also hold out its pledges of happiness ? If 
 there be a place for the conception of retribution in our ideas 
 of life to come, is there not also room for the notion of recom- 
 pense ? There is perhaps no subject on which our moral 
 expectation is to-day more sensitive. When Paley propounded 
 his famous definition of virtue, that it consists in doing good 
 according to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting 
 happiness, he contrived, according to a well-known criticism of 
 Dr. Martineau, to compress the maximum of error in the 
 minimum of compass. I am not about to question the severity 
 of this verdict, or even to discuss its grounds. Let it serve as 
 an illustration, to which it would be easy to collect parallels, of 
 the protest natural to lofty minds against the attempt to make 
 righteousness in any way dependent on the sanctions of heaven 
 or hell. It is, indeed, one of the objections which an extra- 
 vagant reaction against any form of utilitarianism in religion 
 feels itself justified in levelling at the gospel, that so many of 
 its exhortations wind up with threats against the wicked, and 
 corresponding promises to the good. Where, it is asked, is 
 the ideal morality when Messiah's followers can only be kept 
 in their allegiance by the expectation of thrones of judgment 
 and crowns of celestial life ? Is not purity of purpose marred
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 139 
 
 rather than made by desire of coming bliss ; and do we not 
 find a prudent self-restraint in evil the most odious of all forms 
 of bargaining with the unseen ? The sages of ancient India, 
 the mystics of Persia, the saints of mediaeval Europe, unite 
 in one great chorus upon this truth of the spirit. " The 
 noblest life," says that high soul who served as Warden of the 
 Teutonic Order in Frankfort, in the fourteenth century, "is 
 not chosen to serve any end, or to get anything by it, but for 
 love of its nobleness, and because God loveth and esteemeth 
 it so greatly. And whoever saith that he hath had enough 
 of it, and may now lay it aside, hath never tasted nor known 
 it, for he who hath truly felt or tasted it can never give it up 
 again. And he who hath put on the life of Christ with the 
 intent to win or deserve ought thereby, hath taken it up as an 
 hireling, and not for love, and is altogether without it. For 
 he who doth not take it up for love, hath none of it at all ; 
 he may dream indeed that he hath put it on, but he is deceived." l 
 Yet we have seen that human experience has again and again 
 called on imagination to justify the moral order by sketching 
 future scenes of penalty and correction. Is there any corre- 
 sponding place for the ideas of requital and satisfaction ? 
 
 The question at once suggests two problems, which spring 
 indeed from a common root, and yet present themselves to us 
 on different spiritual planes. For while one claim is sent up 
 to the equity of heaven on behalf of unrewarded righteousness, 
 another is raised for the consolation of unmerited suffering. 
 The good, it is affirmed, deserve felicity by their excellence ; 
 the unhappy are entitled to enjoyment for their pangs. 
 
 The latter plea appeals with so much force to the compas- 
 sion which rises from the widening knowledge and sympathy 
 of this age, that it cannot be wholly ignored. There must 
 always, however, be an uncertainty in the external calculus of 
 pleasure and pain. The lot that looks pitiable from the outside 
 may be transfigured by graces of self-surrender from within. 
 The same provision may be counted as competence or starva- 
 tion according to our standard of living ; and between nervous 
 organisations lie such varieties that this one can endure blithely 
 what prostrates his neighbour with the mere shock. If justice 
 entitles us to demand equality of comfort all round, how shall 
 we settle, for example, the claims of the Eskimo amid his 
 
 1 Theologia Germanica, chap, xxxviii.
 
 arctic snows, and of the negro beneath an equatorial sun ? 
 What common measure can be established between length of 
 days and high intellectual gifts, between a good digestion and 
 a saintly character ? Are we not caught in a web of imagina- 
 tion, abstracted from the actual facts of life, when we appeal 
 for compensation, as it is sometimes called, for the evils 
 inflicted by nature and man, or call for another existence of 
 ease and pleasure to restore the balance of hardship and labour 
 in this ? 
 
 It is doubtless true that from time to time a formidable list 
 of ills has been compiled by the critics of the universe, who 
 would probably have preferred a world unmarred by strain or 
 sorrow, only they forget that, in trying to keep out the anguish, 
 they keep out the gladness, too ; for the presence of joy is only 
 purchased by the risk of grief. But it is plain that this plea 
 must remain inadequate as an argument for immortality. 
 There can be no more justice in rewarding the privations of 
 threescore years and ten with an eternity of bliss than in 
 punishing the transgressions of the same period with torment 
 that lasts for ever. At most it would point to an adjustment 
 of duration and intensity which should ultimately equalise every 
 lot, alike in quality and quantity, and then . . . when the 
 process is over, I suppose (so far as this claim is concerned), 
 the void would offer a common shelter to them all. I do not 
 forget the long line of tragedies which history records, the 
 ferocities of conquest, the tyrannies of oppression, the orgies of 
 massacre, of which we have been even in our own days the 
 unavailing witnesses. Nor do I omit the nameless souls in 
 inconspicuous places who have carried the burden of the world's 
 struggles, infirmities, and sins, mutilated by accident, wasted 
 by disease, the innumerable multitude of those upon whose 
 toil the fabric of our civilisation has been reared. Their 
 sufferings, though hid from man, are known to God ; and, 
 I will add, according to my faith, he shares them too ; for 
 he in whom we live and move and have our being feels in our 
 nerves and understands our pain, and the long passion of our 
 humanity is borne in all its multitudinous variety by him. I 
 do not say that this conception relieves every difficulty, but it 
 lifts the whole process on to another plane. God is no longer 
 a mere outside spectator ; he is the companion, if he is also 
 (in part at least) the author, of our woe.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 141 
 
 That God is righteous we are assured on exactly the same 
 grounds as that he is, the witness of reason and conscience 
 and soul within. But what righteousness may require upon 
 the scale of the administration of the world we cannot tell. 
 Only, it may be, as we escape the limits of our own personal 
 desires, and enter the larger self in harmony with the abiding 
 order which enfolds our years, can we dimly comprehend its 
 aims, and learn it may be through much tribulation to trust 
 its methods. The alternative that has been so earnestly pressed 
 upon us, "Either man is immortal or God is not just," appears 
 to me to invert the real grounds of our faith. It rests the 
 character of God upon the discovery of the future, not on the 
 experience of the present. Hidden in the vistas of immensity 
 are all the possibilities of endless life j yet not till these are 
 verified may we declare that God is good. We forget that 
 only God can understand God. To us is vouchsafed a know- 
 ledge that is adequate for this life, and a hope that reaches out 
 to the next. Where we cannot comprehend we still adore, for 
 "of him and through him and to him are all things." But 
 I, for one, will not affirm that if my expectations are not 
 fulfilled, if my claims remain unsatisfied, God is the Devil and 
 pessimism is the only creed. Above the discord of our earthly 
 life I still hear the ancient songs, " Bless the Lord, O my soul, 
 and all that is within me, bless his holy name " ; " The Lord is 
 righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works " ; " my 
 flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, 
 and my portion for ever." 
 
 The question of requital has a deeper significance when it is 
 connected, not with the vicissitudes of the outward lot, but 
 with the victories of the soul within. There is, indeed, a 
 similar difficulty in any mechanical equivalence between 
 measures of time or quantity and the struggles and achieve- 
 ments of the spirit. The monotony of older imagination 
 which unified all varieties in one general flood of bliss, has 
 broken up for our thought beneath the sense that each individual 
 has his own history, his own trials, his own successes ; and the 
 obvious fact that men pass out of life at all ages and in every 
 phase of moral development, has made it impossible to conceive 
 the immediate future as a life of eternal attainment, it can only 
 be viewed as the next step in an advance which we trust will 
 be continuous. There is no reason to anticipate that any
 
 1 42 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 sudden transformations of character will accompany the mere 
 act of dying, whatever hindrances to vision or resolve may be 
 withdrawn by liberation from the restraints of our too solid 
 flesh. Nor can we suppose that the moral conditions of the 
 life to come are fundamentally different from those that we 
 know here. The essential elements of goodness must be the 
 same from world to world, however the range of circumstances 
 and the scope of opportunity may change. The idea, therefore, 
 of a sudden passage from effort and probation here to abiding 
 fruition hereafter, violates all our modern perceptions of con- 
 gruity and proportion. 
 
 Moreover the hope of spiritual growth belongs to a different 
 order of ideas compared with recompense. We say of virtue 
 that it is its own reward. In the ideal state we should not 
 offer Shakespeare a special salary to write immortal verse : it 
 would be enough for him that he was Shakespeare, dowered 
 with the eye that could glance from earth to heaven. And so, 
 might we not judge, the beauty of character which is partly an 
 inborn grace and partly an acquired harmony, would be ill- 
 mated with any secular returns, it finds its justification in its 
 own existence. It is well that it should be, but the mere 
 extension of its duration does not confer upon it any greater 
 worth. Yet from another side, its prolongation seems 
 altogether natural and fit. For, on the one hand, it is the 
 symbol to us in outward time that it has entered on that 
 apprehension of the eternal wherein lies its truest being, and, 
 on the other, we cannot regard it as having exhausted in any 
 single career the promise and potency of holiness within itself, 
 or of love and service towards others. If it be the case that all 
 the higher morality contains within it an element which we 
 cannot measure (so that we call it infinite), then the closer the 
 fellowship of the soul with the supreme good, the more varied 
 and persistent must be the endeavour to work out its claims 
 and remould life to meet its ever fresh demands. The gift of 
 new occasion is then the simple form in which the approval of 
 the Father lights upon our past. It is the privilege of faithful- 
 ness to be led forward to weightier responsibilities, and in more 
 strenuous tasks to find the sympathy and support of God. 
 This expansion of its powers is no arbitrary reward, it is the 
 spiritual consequence of the energies and affections of its 
 whole career, and springs from them as the flower from the
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 143 
 
 root. It is the unfolding of the innate capacities of the soul. 
 It blossoms into loveliness as if it opened spontaneously to the 
 Father's smile. It finds its own fulfilment in working out his 
 perfect purposes. From the human side its cry arises, 
 
 " Give us the wages of going on, and not to die : " 
 
 and from the divine side is heard the answering summons, 
 " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
 VIII 
 
 One scene, indeed, there is in history which concentrates the 
 contrasts which have engaged our thought. Jesus is crucified 
 between two thieves. What destinies await them, and why ? 
 The robbers belong to the criminal classes. They may have 
 been begotten in infamy, cradled in violence, reared in deceit ; 
 their hands imbrued in blood from their first years, their life a 
 warfare, their amusements lawlessness and outrage, their 
 end . . . ? Was it for this, then, that they were made ? 
 These men once dwelt only in what we call the mind of God. 
 Or ever he gave them being, they were his thought. Did he 
 think them thus, depraved and outcast, the enemies of society, 
 the revilers of his son ? Are they not his sons too ? Was 
 there not something which he meant them to be, something, 
 indeed, which only they could be ; something, moreover, which 
 he needed for the expression of his purpose, without which 
 the world would be in a sense incomplete ? When he said 
 " Be," and they were, to what word in his eternal speech did 
 they correspond ? Surely not to the malefactor's doom upon 
 the cross. So might we argue in our human fashion, and 
 beyond the darkness discern far ofF the promise, the fulfilment, 
 of the good. For if there be a divine idea representing each 
 soul that God creates, must it not ever tend towards achieve- 
 ment, and can we regard the process of our life here as other 
 than the first stage in an education which shall at last join the 
 idea and the reality in one ? 
 
 From this point of view the doctrine of conditional immor- 
 tality is only one degree less terrible than the conception of an 
 everlasting hell. For both imply that the intention of God 
 may be perpetually frustrated, his purposes continually baffled, 
 his plans resisted, and his will undone. In the one case,
 
 i 4 4 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 weary of opposition, he cuts short the thread of life, 
 withdraws the individuality he has conferred, and shatters 
 resistance by simple annihilation. In the other he dismisses 
 the rebellious beyond the limits of his grace : " You have 
 asserted your independence, you shall have it ; you have defied 
 me, you shall be fixed in your defiance : wherever you may 
 be, you shall long in vain for the messengers of my love ; you 
 would not heed them, they shall come no more." Each of 
 these dooms means a soul cut off from God. But that also 
 means that God is cut off from the soul. The act of extinction 
 or of eternal exclusion has the same consequence for him ; it 
 registers his failure, the exhaustion of his resources, the arrest 
 of his design. Let who will find this other than an impotent 
 conclusion ; there are some who have not so learned of Christ. 
 They see, in the redeeming purpose which his life expressed, 
 the symbol of the great divine intent. They rest in his con- 
 clusion that God is the Father of each. How, then, can he 
 let one soul permanently perish ? He does not eliminate the 
 unmanageable. The universe, if it be a school, has other 
 methods for preserving order besides absolute expulsion. The 
 speculative intellect may be compelled by its conception of moral 
 liberty to maintain the possibility of perpetual self-alienation 
 from the infinite compassion. But the religious aspiration 
 after the ultimate unity will rather see freedom swallowed up 
 in grace than any soul where God is not known and loved. 
 Then the meaning of the long discipline will become plain. 
 " Through these," we shall think, as we look back on our 
 self-will, our insincerities, our indolence, our conceit, 
 " through these God loved me, trained me, drew me towards 
 him, showed me his long-suffering, taught me the perman- 
 ence of his purposes, and brought me into fellowship with 
 himself." The spiritual education of humanity must one day 
 be complete for all, and the justification of the process will be 
 found in its eternal goal. 
 
 Or gaze again at the central figure on the fatal hill. Shall 
 we ask him what compensation he requires for anguish [in 
 Gethsemane, for insults in the judgment -hall, for pierced 
 hands and straining limbs upon the cross ? In the face of 
 that silence does not our profit-and-loss account break down ? 
 Who will even tell him to be of good cheer, for in his 
 strength the martyrs and the saints shall be strong, and the
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 145 
 
 unnumbered multitudes ;who come after him shall toil more 
 steadfastly, endure more bravely, die more trustfully ? Do we 
 not feel that it is better to pay the utmost price for the awful 
 honour of bearing witness to the truth, rather than turn back 
 at the last moment because neither the victory of the cause nor 
 the person of the champion is secure ? That Turkish atheist 
 who preferred death and extinction sooner than sully his name 
 with a lie, those spirits believing nothing, hoping nothing 
 who in times of revolution have asked for no other privilege 
 than to lay down their lives in the worship of France, do they 
 impeach destiny because it gives them nothing more ? They 
 have their reward. They have touched the heights where 
 truth and liberty are dearer than the world ; and to have done 
 so it was worth while to have been and cease to be. 
 
 But there is another side to this great surrender. Can we 
 conceive God as contemplating with indifference the departure 
 of his beloved ? If those who have served him most faith- 
 fully, known him most truly, and realised the fellowship of 
 his spirit most closely, pass away, might we not say, after the 
 logic of our affections, that God must suffer perpetual bereave- 
 ment and bury the unfulfilled promise of his creation in our 
 graves ? And so the long procession of humanity would seem 
 no better than a funeral train where the love of the Eternal is 
 for ever cut short by our mortal years, and the response for 
 which he was preparing us is silent and still. Let it not be 
 said that the race still lives ideally in him, or that those who 
 come after us will be better than we. It is neither his own 
 memory nor his own foresight that he loves, but the separate 
 offspring of his might, the recipients of his multitudinous 
 blessings, the centres of personality in whom he is himself 
 reflected when they enter with joyous recognition into the 
 " liberty of the children of God." Herein lies so far as it is 
 given to us to discern a unique mode for the expression of 
 the infinite life. In man raised in the purpose of God to 
 self-governing independence, there comes into being an object 
 of the divine love, in whom are reproduced some of the charac- 
 teristics of his thought and will. Does God call him into 
 existence, train, discipline, judge, support, guide and inspire, 
 and form him for communion with himself, and then sever 
 the ties he has himself established, forego his own work, and 
 continually begin anew the process which a cooling earth will 
 
 K
 
 146 THE PLACE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 end ? Wisely if boldly has one of our modern prophets pointed 
 his argument : l 
 
 In short, close friendship between the Eternal and the perishing 
 
 Appears unseemly to the nature of the Eternal, 
 
 Whom it befits to keep his beloved, or not to love at all. 
 
 But to say that he loves no man is to make religion vain. 
 
 Hence it is judged that "whatsoever God loveth, liveth with God." 
 
 On this great theme, however, argument after all can be 
 of slight avail. " Faith in God and in our eternal union with 
 him," said Keshub Chunder Sen, " are not two doctrines of our 
 creed, but one." I have addressed only those who stand already 
 within the sphere of religion ; yet to some I shall have seemed 
 to say too much, to others too little. For I have insisted that 
 this belief is not primary, given on the same footing as our 
 experience of God's dealings with us ; it is secondary, it is 
 derived from that experience. It is matter, therefore, not of 
 knowledge, but of faith. But this faith perpetually vindicates 
 itself by the harmony which it establishes amid the jarring 
 and the dissonant cries arising out of the tumult of the world. 
 It introduces a fresh coherence into elements which otherwise 
 we must leave unreconciled. It is the fact that when we 
 look out into immortality the relative importance of pain and 
 suffering, loss and death, is vastly altered. It is the fact that 
 we can then bear to behold the dissolute, the cruel, the depraved ; 
 for we can see in them infinite possibilities which shall emerge 
 one day from the taints of nature and the degradation of 
 circumstance, the sovereignty of false conventions and the 
 blindness of self-will, and blossom into the light and purity 
 of children of the Eternal. Retribution the process of 
 learning the hateful iniquity of the evil we abandon then 
 ceases to be vindictive, it becomes disciplinary ; and our 
 transits through successive spheres of being are but the stages 
 on a path that may sometimes, like the planetary motions, 
 appear retrograde, yet only because it circles higher and higher 
 towards a central holiness and love. In this continuous 
 ascension some fly with soaring wing, some plod with slow 
 and halting step. The moral conditions of the life immediately 
 after death cannot be altogether unlike the present, if there be 
 any truth in that maxim of Indian wisdom which affirms that 
 
 1 F. W. Newman, Theism.
 
 IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 147 
 
 " a man is born into the world which he has made." In any 
 life of spiritual progress there must be inequalities of capacity 
 and achievement, and consequent ministries of helpfulness ; and 
 it may well be our cherished trust that those who have been for 
 us guides, teachers, revealers here parent, or wife, or child, or 
 friend will fulfil the same divine function for us otherwhere. 
 
 But, as we mount, new meanings flash upon our past, and 
 new energies are called forth for the future. The high desire 
 of knowledge that cannot bear to leave its problems unsolved ; 
 the energy of spiritual creation imagining new worlds of beauty 
 with inexhaustible variety ; the passionate longing for the 
 liberation of man from ignorance and error ; the deep desire 
 for a share in his redemption from sin ; the joy in wonder, 
 reverence, humility, as far-off visions of God's thought and 
 love, his glory and righteousness, dawn brighter and clearer 
 on our sight who can be weary of these things ? Who can 
 shrink from their summons to perpetual endeavour, who turn 
 aside from the gracious invitation which they bring from the 
 Father of our spirits ? Who will not pray, if prayer for such 
 a boon be lawful, that the mysterious teacher whom we call 
 Death may whisper to us, like him of old, " I am come that 
 ye may have life, and may have it abundantly " ?
 
 THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE 
 
 SENSE OF SIN 
 
 Address to the National Conference of Non-subscribing Churches, 
 at Leicester, April 1900 
 
 P. H. W. 1900 
 
 '49
 
 O rem mirabilem ! cum servire non possimus nisi praecepta Domini fecerimus, 
 qtiomodo praecepta faciendo servi non erimus ? Si servus non ero praecepta faciendo, 
 et nisi praecepta fecero, servire non potero, ergo serviendo servus non ero. 
 
 AUGUSTINE. 
 
 Et succedit deinde timer castus sive amicabilis, quo timemus ne sponsus tardet, 
 ne discedat, ne offendamus, ne eo careamus. Timor iste de amore venit. 
 
 PETRUS LOMBARDUS.
 
 THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE 
 
 SENSE OF SIN 
 
 OUR conduct, whether impulsive or deliberate, may be re- 
 garded, I suppose, as an attempt to get ourselves into satisfactory 
 relations with our environment. 
 
 A man who resists the importunity of impulses and desires 
 which would urge him to secure a partial and transient adjust- 
 ment of relations between himself and his environment, at the 
 cost of a more serious and far-reaching discord, is, to that 
 extent, a man of personally well-regulated life. And if, in 
 addition to this, he cultivates such sources of satisfaction as are 
 naturally capable of progressive enlargement rather than such 
 as run a short course and yield a more limited satisfaction, we 
 shall say that he shows wisdom in the regulation of his own life. 
 
 But wisdom is not virtue. No doubt we often say that 
 " virtue is the only true wisdom," just as we say that "honesty 
 is the best policy." But what we really mean is that the man 
 who tries to be honest rather than successful often succeeds 
 better than if he had tried to be successful rather than honest ; 
 and that the man who tries to be virtuous will often act more 
 wisely than if he had tried to be wise. We do not mean that 
 trying to be honest is only another name for trying to succeed, 
 nor that trying to be virtuous is only another way of trying to 
 be wise. What, then, is the element in virtue which is not 
 included in wisdom ? Clearly, we think that a virtuous man 
 will form a wise estimate of the relative importance of his own 
 satisfactions amongst themselves. He will not regard the 
 transient satisfactions of ease or material pleasure above the 
 abiding satisfactions of happy personal relations with those 
 amongst whom he lives, or a permanent flow of the streams of
 
 152 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 intellectual or artistic enjoyment. But before we allow that a 
 man is virtuous, we require that he shall look beyond the 
 problem of the adjustment of his own immediate relations with 
 his environment, and shall regard the relations in which other 
 people stand to their surroundings as so far concerning him 
 that he not only shrinks from directly injuring or thwarting 
 another, but cannot be satisfied to arrange his own life and 
 make his own terms with his surroundings on lines which are 
 essentially inconsistent with the well-being of others. The 
 virtuous man, then, regards the solution of his own problem of 
 life as conditioned by the prohibition to break across the lines of 
 the general solution. He feels the necessity of establishing a 
 harmony between his conduct and affections on the one hand, 
 and the general conditions of human well-being on the other. 
 He feels the pressure of his social environment, and cannot be 
 content if he is not in ideal harmony with its demands. If, 
 therefore, we insist that virtue is the only true wisdom, we mean 
 to state our conviction that he who in solving his own problem 
 fails to put himself into harmony with the conditions under 
 which human life in general has to develop itself, will inevitably 
 come, sooner or later, into disturbing conflict with the lives of 
 others, which a wise man would wish to avoid. But his virtue 
 consists in his taking direct and disinterested count of the life- 
 problems of mankind at large ; his wisdom in having avoided 
 a specious line of conduct that would have disturbed the 
 solution of his own private life- problem. Virtue, then, is 
 something more than wisdom. The virtuous man, as such, 
 seeks a larger, a more highly ideal, and a less selfish relation 
 with his environment than does the wise man as such. 
 
 But virtue may be merely negative. Goodness must be 
 positive. We may call a man virtuous if he is resolved to 
 pursue his own ends in such a way as never to violate in 
 principle the conditions of the general solution of the problem 
 of life. But we shall not call him a good man unless, in one 
 way or another, he actively seeks to further others in their 
 attempts to get into satisfactory relations with their environ- 
 ment. The good man will be ready to sacrifice some measure 
 of his own satisfaction, and the pursuit of his own immediate 
 ends, however exalted, in order to relieve others from misery or 
 to help them to attain to wisdom and happiness. He will seek, 
 in his measure, with Wordsworth, " to console the afflicted ;
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 153 
 
 to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier ; to 
 teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, 
 to feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely 
 virtuous." The actively good man, therefore, is sensitive to 
 yet another demand of his environment, beyond those to which 
 the negatively virtuous and the wise man respond. 
 
 But the man who is wise, who is virtuous, and who is 
 actively good, is not necessarily devout. Preserving the same 
 generality that we have hitherto observed, may we not say that 
 the devout man is the man who seeks, not only to bring his 
 life-purpose negatively and positively into relation with the 
 life-purpose of others, but who also seeks to bring his conduct 
 and his aspirations into harmony with the supreme underlying 
 and over-arching Power in whom we live and move and have 
 our being ? l 
 
 If the Divine Being is conceived by us, however vaguely, 
 as holiness or as love, for example, and if, independently of any 
 reward or punishment, and without reference to the conditions 
 under which he has made all other blessings of life, except 
 likeness to himself, accessible to us, we are inspired by love of 
 him, because of his holiness and love, so that our hearts are 
 unquiet within us until they rest in conscious communion with 
 him, then there is within us a devout life distinct from the 
 virtuous life ; for we seek harmonious relations, not only with 
 our material and social environment, and not only with the 
 ideal conditions of general well-being, but also with the 
 supreme spiritual environment, the ultimate Reality. 2 
 
 1 Whenever we come to discuss any religious problem in its general bearings, we 
 are baffled by the fact, that religion exists in extremely low and degraded types of 
 humanity, and yet specifically characterises the highest ranges of human experience ; 
 is, in fact, the highest utterance or experience of the highest minds. If, then, we so 
 define religion as to include all the phenomena that historically and anthropologic- 
 ally we feel compelled to describe as religious, we thereby rob it completely of all 
 the characteristics which give it significance in our own life. For instance, if we 
 think of God, or of the gods, as personalities more or less closely resembling men, 
 who have the power and the will to inflict upon us pains or confer upon us pleas- 
 ures such as we experience from our fellow-men, then it is obvious that the desire to 
 stand well with the gods is a motive of precisely the same order as the desire to 
 stand well with man. And whether these pains or pleasures are to be assigned to us 
 in this world or the next is of no consequence. The devoutness of which we are 
 speaking, therefore, cannot be defined simply as the desire to be in harmonious 
 relations with the deity or deities. The significance and character of such a desire 
 depends upon the nature of the deity as conceived by the worshipper, and the nature 
 of the harmonious relation with him sought. 
 
 2 To avoid misunderstanding, it may be well to note that this devoutness of mind
 
 154 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 We must note, however, that devoutness may exist as an 
 element in a comparatively low religious state. A man may 
 have a very material conception of the Deity, and a distinct 
 idea of concrete material advantages and disadvantages result- 
 ing from standing well or ill with him j and yet may have, 
 parallel with this, a genuine sense of horror at the idea of being 
 emotionally and spiritually alienated from him, independently 
 of all pains and penalties that may accompany such alienation. 
 And again, this sense of harmony with the Supreme may be 
 independent of any definite form of theism. The extremest 
 Pantheist, or any one who goes so far as Auguste Comte in 
 associating the planet on which we live and the space in which 
 we move (regarded as the seat of the abstract laws) with 
 humanity, as the supreme object of reverence and the control- 
 ling source of the emotional life ; or anyone who, with the late 
 Professor Clifford, recognises the reality of "cosmic emotion" 
 as a factor in our highest life, will in principle realise the 
 difference between the moral and the religious life, between 
 goodness and devoutness, between the conditions with which we 
 must comply to secure a satisfactory relation between man and 
 Nature and between man and man, and the direct emotional 
 intercourse between man and the supreme source and goal 
 of life. But the more definitely theistic our creed, the closer 
 and easier to define will this supreme relation appear to be. 
 
 Now, I hold that what we mean by the sense of sin is a 
 consciousness that we have violated this supreme spiritual 
 harmony. It may be closely or loosely connected with any 
 sense of guilt as concerns our fellow-men, or any sense of 
 recklessness or folly as concerns the ordering of our own lives. 
 But it is not this connection which constitutes its essential 
 character. It is rather a sense of having disturbed, or failed to 
 establish, a harmony between our own souls and the Supreme 
 Being. 
 
 In studying the penitential literature of the world, we cannot 
 fail to be impressed with the possibility of the sense of sin 
 entirely apart from anything that we can recognise as personal 
 
 inevitably reacts upon our conceptions of goodness, of virtue, and of wisdom. For 
 if the experience supremely to be desired is the experience of communion with the 
 Deity, then no man is truly wise who orders his life without reference to it 5 and 
 no man is in the highest sense virtuous or good unless he is negatively and positively 
 making way for or developing this supreme experience in the lives of others. But 
 none the less, devoutness is something other than goodness, virtue, or wisdom.
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 155 
 
 or social wickedness or failure of duty. Agonised cries rise 
 from souls conscious of some purely ceremonial omission or 
 commission. The horror of " secret sins," that is to say, not 
 "sins done in secret," but ceremonial pollutions unconsciously 
 incurred, or the thought of having done on the Sabbath day 
 that which, only because it was the Sabbath day, was for the 
 time unlawful, may call forth notes of anguish, the quality of 
 which it is impossible to distinguish from those which rise from 
 the depths of the soul of him who bewails some breach of the 
 moral law, but bewails it under its spiritual aspect. Wherever, 
 then, there is the sense of having put our lives out of tune with 
 the Most High, there is the sense of sin. 
 
 Now, it has been the business of many religions, and of 
 many forms of Christian religion, at once to stimulate and to 
 assuage this sense of sin, and this, too, both in its material and 
 in its ethical or spiritual aspects. Sometimes the whole weight 
 of this terrible sanction has been brought to bear upon breaches 
 of the ceremonial law. Men have been taught to assuage it by 
 offering sacrifices to God or donations to his representatives. 1 
 Or at other times they have believed that their whole lives 
 constitute one continuous breach of the ethical precepts of the 
 Deity, have acknowledged their own impotence to restore the 
 harmony thus violated, and have flung themselves upon the 
 atoning sacrifice of Christ, or the forgiving and redeeming love 
 of God. These and countless intermediate or divergent types 
 and shades of doctrine may be taken as illustrations of how 
 religious systems (or the religious spirit not consciously formu- 
 lated in any system) have attempted at once to stimulate and to 
 assuage this awful sense of sin. 
 
 I think I shall hardly be mistaken in assuming that the 
 majority of my hearers, while recognising a certain spiritual 
 significance in the sense of sin wherever genuine, will be agreed 
 in holding it to be amongst the most pathetic and the most 
 deplorable of human experiences, wherever it is completely 
 dissociated from an ethically significant basis. That men should 
 have suffered extremest anguish of soul in connection with 
 deeds which had only an imagined or conventional significance 
 
 1 It would be entirely beside the purpose of this Essay to attempt to ascertain 
 how far interested motives have actuated priesthoods in deliberately playing upon 
 the sense of sin j for my wish is to treat this sense as a factor in the spiritual life, 
 not in the history of civilisation.
 
 156 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 is a truly terrible reflection. But while we admit that the 
 sense of sin, unless associated with ethical feeling, is a pheno- 
 menon grievous to contemplate, we shall certainly not admit 
 that, even when it is so associated, the sense of sin is identical 
 with the sense of direct or inferential guilt. The sense of sin 
 may, indeed, be roused by a consciousness of moral delinquencies, 
 or the sense of sinfulness by a consciousness of moral imperfec- 
 tions, and they may in their turn goad us to the most strenuous 
 moral endeavour ; but it is not in these things that they have 
 their essence. A violation of truth, for example, or a violation 
 of chastity may lay upon us a burden of moral guilt ; but in 
 addition to the wrong to individuals or to society, and beyond 
 the reach of any act of atonement or compensation, is the sense 
 of having put ourselves out of harmony with the Supreme 
 Being, the sense of an aching wound or burn caused by no 
 wrong done to our fellow-men (inexpressible as would be the 
 relief, in many cases, could we be assured that no objective 
 wrong had resulted), and medicable by no change in our 
 relations to man. 
 
 Now, in my own youth, the deliberate cultivation of this 
 sense of sin, or, in lack of any sense of definite sin, a sense of 
 sinfulness, was a recognised religious duty. 1 
 
 The sense of sin, or of sinfulness, was in itself a spiritual 
 grace. And in the Christian Church there are countless 
 indications that this has been so in many, if not in all, periods. 
 I need only mention the place occupied in the mediaeval devo- 
 tions by tke penitential Psalms, the tone of the additions made 
 by the Reformers to the English Prayer Book, and the pathetic 
 yearning which runs through the ninth and tenth services of 
 the Liturgy best known amongst ourselves. 
 
 Now, those of my generation have been accustomed to 
 associate the deepest impressions of their early religious life, 
 every crisis of their spiritual education, and much of whatsoever 
 moral grit and fibre there may be in their composition, with 
 this sense of sin, or sinfulness, cultivated as a spiritual grace. 
 
 We look about us, and we re-examine our own spiritual 
 
 1 By the sense of sinfulness, as distinct from the sense of sin, I mean the belief 
 that slackness in performance of duty, coldness in spiritual affection, susceptibilities 
 to the attraction of evil, even when resisted, are a proper ground for a feeling of 
 self-humiliation, and constitute a failure to establish a true harmony between our- 
 selves and God, resulting in a condition identical with the state produced by a 
 conscious violation of that harmony.
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 157 
 
 consciousness, and we are aware of a change which seems to 
 amount to a revolution. It has been said, I know not on what 
 authority, that many years before his death, Mr. Gladstone was 
 asked what he thought the greatest change that had taken place 
 in his day in the religious life of England, and answered, " The 
 decay of the sense of sin." What is our attitude towards this 
 change ? I believe that most of us recognise it as a fact, and in our 
 hearts greet it with a deep and sincere thankfulness, but also 
 with a certain misgiving. Who can doubt or deny that in this 
 elaborately cultivated religious depression there was something 
 unwholesome, and that in itself it constituted both a drain upon 
 vitality and a positive misery of dimensions not easily exagger- 
 ated ? No wonder, then, that when we realise that it is 
 disappearing, we are conscious of an acknowledged or possibly 
 a concealed relief. And yet, and yet ! Can we dissociate 
 what is most strenuous nay, even what is most robust and 
 exultant in our own moral and religious life from these terrible 
 experiences ? 
 
 In order to define more closely our attitude of mind in this 
 matter, let us glance at some of the causes that have been at 
 work in effecting the change. 
 
 I shall make no attempt at an exhaustive enumeration. To 
 do so would be to attempt a complete spiritual history of the last 
 fifty years. I can merely touch upon a few of the associated 
 movements of thought which observation and reflection seem to 
 indicate as immediately connected with the change in question. 
 
 To begin with, there is no branch of thought or of life 
 which has not felt the transforming touch of the theory of 
 evolution. How far that theory is really a new one we need 
 not discuss. It has in any case become effective in a new 
 sense within the memory of my generation. Philosophers and 
 poets have said and sung in every system of thought and in every 
 tone of passion and inspiration that evil is not positive but 
 negative, and theologians have attempted to drive their teaching 
 home. Nevertheless, the general consciousness of mankind has 
 been too much for the insight of the philosopher, the inspiration 
 of the poet, and the conviction of the theologian ; and evil has 
 been continuously regarded as a positive thing just as much as 
 good. But the doctrine of evolution has at last effected a 
 practical modification in men's ways of looking at the matter, 
 and we have really come, to an appreciable extent, to regard
 
 158 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 evil as the rearguard at best, and the camp following at worst, 
 of good. Many things that our fathers looked upon with 
 absolute and unqualified horror, wherever and whenever they 
 appeared, we have learned to regard as natural and innocent in 
 certain conditions and at certain stages of human progress, and 
 undesirable rather than monstrous when they survive under 
 conditions to which they are no longer appropriate. When 
 pushed to optimistic extremes this doctrine is shallow and 
 unsatisfactory to the last degree ; but in its truth, as well as in 
 its error, it has unquestionably served to modify, and in a sense 
 to soften, our whole conception of evil, and therefore of sin. 
 Much that we regarded as a flat violation of the divine harmony 
 appeals to us now as a not inharmonious prelude to diviner 
 strains. In all this there is manifest truth and insidious error ; 
 certain gain and not easily measured loss. 
 
 Again, the infusion of Pantheistic conceptions into our 
 theism, though certainly no new thing in the Christian Church 
 (dating back as it does at least from the influence of Greek 
 speculations, or vaguer Oriental tendencies, upon the Hebrew 
 tradition), has found a powerful ally in modern science. Taking 
 a less spiritual tone than that under which it inspired some of 
 the noblest products of mediaeval thought, it has often blunted 
 the sharpness of the sense of a personal relation to the Supreme 
 Being, and has therefore blunted the sense of sin. And in this 
 growing Pantheism, again, we cannot fail to note both gain 
 and loss an expansion of the spiritual horizon which is not 
 only inevitable, but ennobling, together with the danger of a 
 certain vagueness, a hiding under large and generous expressions 
 of a poverty of spiritual concept. 
 
 Reinforcing both these tendencies, and allied with them 
 both, is a keen sense of the fact that religious sanctions 
 are very often superstitious survivals. Conduct which once 
 could find its justification in real or supposed personal or 
 social requirements, but is now no longer prescribed either by 
 reason or by benevolence, is still enforced by the vague and 
 terrible sanction of religion. Thus religion may distort, or 
 positively pervert, the stress we lay upon our actions, making 
 us strain out gnats while we swallow camels, or throwing a 
 gratuitous blight and horror over life. Lucretius represents 
 Epicurus as the greatest of the deliverers of mankind, because 
 he found them cowering under the frowning brow that lowered
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 159 
 
 upon them from the skies, robbing life of all its sweetness, and 
 taught them to trample religion under foot, as it had once 
 trampled them, and by his victory raised them to equal terms 
 with heaven. And religion may not only depress life with its 
 horror, but may positively oppose moral progress. We are all 
 of us familiar with the thought of men whose moral ideals 
 were so pure and high, and so strictly related to the actual 
 requirements of life, that they were regarded as sacrilegious 
 rebels against the Deity by their religious contemporaries. 
 And even in the heart of one and the same individual the 
 growing moral life may be oppressed by religion. In Mark 
 Twain's story, the living human relationship, the ties of grati- 
 tude, affection, and loyalty which bind the white boy to the 
 black man, are vital sources of moral conduct ; and the 
 tradition which makes the surrender of an escaped slave a 
 social duty has all the sanctions of religion. In the terrible 
 struggle that goes on in the boy's mind his morality triumphs, 
 but triumphs at the expense of setting his whole spiritual 
 nature into an attitude of defiant rebellion, and making him 
 really believe that Satan's motto " Evil, be thou my good," has 
 become his own. 
 
 Those who are acutely sensible of this possibility of the 
 religious sanctions being invoked in support of immoral and 
 anti-social traditions, often suspect religion ; and since they 
 regard the sense of sin as rising out of the religious sense, they 
 regard it too with distrust, and think of it rather as a disease 
 to be cured than as a grace to be cultivated. Moreover, they 
 resent the idea of this terrible experience being deliberately 
 exploited by religion. They believe that religion attempts to 
 bring men to a sense of sin, not because it is a right state to 
 be in, but because it is so terrible that by way of refuge from 
 it men will rush into any haven that is offered to them, and 
 so will give religion its chance. 
 
 Very closely connected with the influence we have last 
 examined is the bearing on our problem of the developed 
 social sense which in recent times has modified so many of our 
 ideas. A revolt against the spiritual individualism of many 
 forms of Protestantism, and an indignant feeling that conven- 
 tional respectability has been confounded with virtue, have 
 combined, with a generous social ardour, to divert men's 
 thoughts from the personal aspects of their own conduct, and
 
 160 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 from scrupulosity or severity with respect to offences that the 
 respectable world condemns. " Look out, not in," they say. 
 " Do not trouble about your soul, or about your sins. It 
 draws you from large emotions into petty, self-centred, scrupu- 
 losity." Social enthusiasm and sympathy is to supersede self- 
 discipline and self- accusation alike. On Shelley's lips this 
 gospel reaches its highest and most convincing expression : 
 
 Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself; 
 Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine own. 
 
 It is the dark idolatry of self 
 
 Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone, 
 Demands that man should weep and bleed and groan ; 
 
 Oh vacant expiation ! Be at rest : 
 
 The past is Death's, the future is thine own : 
 And love and joy can make the foulest breast 
 
 A paradise of flowers where peace might build her nest. 
 
 Now, is it not a fact that, as we pass all these tendencies 
 in review, we are conscious of a strange mingling of feelings ? 
 On the one hand we meet the breath of a frank and whole- 
 some life, and rejoice to escape from a morbid and self- 
 conscious tradition j but on the other hand we are aware of 
 the danger of confusion and superficiality ; we know how easy 
 it is to give ourselves enervating dispensations under high- 
 sounding titles j and we more than suspect that some attempt 
 to escape the essential discipline and evade the awful serious- 
 ness of life has been infused into the somewhat light-hearted 
 gospel of our day. 
 
 Can we make any advance towards disentangling these 
 strands in the influences that have been at work in modifying 
 or softening the old sense of sin ? Can we learn to discrim- 
 inate between the elements that we ought to welcome and those 
 that we ought to resist in the new religious tendencies ? 
 
 I believe the line along which we should attack the problem 
 leads to an attempt to define the place that prohibition takes 
 in developing opportunity^ and to discover what place shutting up 
 possibilities occupies in the process of opening possibilities out. 
 
 We have passed (or are passing) through an experience in 
 our management of public affairs that ought, I think, to give 
 us a good deal of light. When, in the earlier part of this 
 century, thinkers and statesmen came to realise how much 
 harm had been done by regulation of industry and other
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 161 
 
 forms of restrictive legislation, some of them came to regard 
 the problems of government and administration as being sus- 
 ceptible of a very easy solution on the principle of simply 
 letting people alone and not regulating or administering at all. 
 At that time they did not carry the principle through, but 
 they did enough to indicate both its strength and its weak- 
 ness. They conferred great benefits upon the world, but they 
 subjected their principles to illogical limitations in some 
 cases, and gave them disastrous application in others. In 
 more recent times the anarchists have advocated more consistent 
 conduct. The political anarchist is not one who desires to 
 abolish all order , but one who regards all government or 
 ordering as the source not of order but of confusion, and who, 
 therefore, wishes to abolish that. Auguste Comte has pointed 
 out that the use of the one word order by the Western nations 
 to signify at the same time " the issuing of a command " and 
 " a state of due arrangement " shows how our consciousness 
 declares the latter to be dependent on the former. This con- 
 nection of the two senses of " order " is exactly what the 
 anarchist denies. He believes that if authoritative orders were 
 no longer issued, order would ensue. 
 
 I shall not attempt to refute the anarchist, but shall simply 
 assume that most of us think that he is wrong ; but that he 
 has got hold of a principle that we must not neglect. We 
 believe that our object must be to secure the greatest amount 
 of freedom possible for men ; but we believe that effective 
 freedom is measured by the range of alternatives effectively 
 open to men, and we believe that if certain courses are for- 
 bidden to certain individuals both they and other people will 
 have a wider range of alternatives effectively open to them 
 than if those courses were not forbidden to them. The pro- 
 tection of person and property to the limited extent to which 
 it at present exists in our own country for instance l we 
 believe increases our liberty, but it does so at the expense of 
 restraining our liberty. Such restraint of liberty we accept, 
 but only for the sake of greater liberty. We seek to minimise 
 restraint and to keep it strictly subordinate to our purpose of 
 enlarging opportunity ; but we cannot eliminate it. Its func- 
 tion is secondary, but essential. 
 
 1 Written at a time when sundry political meetings had recently been violently 
 broken up. 1903. 
 
 L
 
 1 62 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 So, too, in the moral and religious world. Negation and 
 prohibition must be subordinate to fruition ; but they cannot 
 be eliminated. Our moral and spiritual anarchists would have 
 us believe that right conduct and right feeling would spon- 
 taneously assert themselves, if only Moses would break the 
 Tables of the Law once for all, and never go up into the 
 mountain again to have them replaced. " I was alive once 
 without the Law," they say, "and if the Law with its desolat- 
 ing c thou shalt not ' had never been promulgated, sin would 
 not have come to life, and I should not have died ! " The 
 spiritual, like the political and administrative anarchism, has its 
 high value as a protest. The religion of the priests has always 
 had too much of prohibition in it, and the religion of the prophets 
 has always been a Gospel the announcement of glad tidings of 
 great joy, of glorious possibilities and glorious realities. 
 
 It has opened to us a life of which we had not dreamed, and 
 given us a joy we had not conceived. Its prohibitions are 
 incidental, its opportunities are essential. And if I mistake 
 not, the characteristic developments of the religious spirit in 
 our day are entirely in this direction. The primary fact of 
 our religion is not a sense of want, but a sense of opportunity. 
 
 " Let him be rich and weary," George Herbert sang : 
 
 Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 
 If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 
 May toss him to My breast. 
 
 What does this teaching imply ? Surely, that to lie in the 
 bosom of God is better than aught else ; but that man would 
 never see that it was so, unless some bitterness were infused 
 into earthly joy for very purpose of making it unsatisfactory. 
 Is not Tennyson's 
 
 We needs must love the highest when we see it 
 
 at once a nobler Gospel, and in far closer harmony with our 
 own religious consciousness ? We look, I think, more and 
 more to the deep and permanent joy and beauty of life as our 
 normal guides into the higher region of spiritual experience, 
 and as furnishing our normal assurance of the love of God. 
 The sorrow and weariness of life we look upon more and more 
 as testing and sifting out the abiding and the worthy elements 
 of our experience from the transient and ignoble, and therefore
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 163 
 
 as leading us to God, not so much through that which they 
 take away as through that which they leave. He is the most 
 religious man, not who most despises life, but who most sees 
 the grandeur of its opportunities ; not who draws the sharpest 
 contrast between the vanities of earth and the abiding glories 
 of heaven, but to whom the breath of eternity has already 
 transfigured the things of time, and whose guarantee for the 
 future is found, not in the emptiness, but in the fulness, of the 
 present. The Greek legend tells of two ways by which the 
 deadly charm of the Siren's song was escaped. Ulysses stopped 
 the ears of his followers with wax, and had himself bound to 
 the mast of his ship. The Argonauts heard the song of 
 Orpheus, sweeter than the song of the Sirens, and so escaped 
 their witchery. 
 
 But our spiritual anarchists protest against the idea of there 
 being any necessity of escaping the Sirens at all. Do not lay 
 your own nature under the ban, they say j and do not be afraid 
 of the gods, for they are friendly, not hostile powers ; and life 
 consists in growth and in experience, not in self-thwarting and 
 renunciation. Under the very absurd name of " Hellenism," 
 as opposed to " Hebraism," this dream of an escape from 
 discipline, superseding the prohibitions of morality and religion, 
 and making life spontaneously beautiful, has a certain platonic 
 attraction for many souls that are far too robust and wholesome 
 to be in any practical danger from it. 1 
 
 But in point of fact, it comes into direct collision with the 
 most fundamental condition of life ; for life presents itself to 
 us as a series of alternatives, and one alternative can only be 
 realised by the suppression and renunciation of the other ; and 
 suppression and renunciation mean discipline, painful in a 
 greater or smaller degree according to our dispositions and our 
 circumstances, but in any case painful. Unless we are 
 prepared to give up something that we want, we can never 
 have anything that we want ; and unless we are prepared to 
 go without what we want for the minute, we shall lose what 
 we most want for the hour. 
 
 1 I call it absurd, because true Hellenism is even further from ignoring the 
 sterner aspects of self-discipline and self-restraint than Hebraism is from ignoring 
 the element of spontaneous rejoicing in the gift of life. The idea that an ^Eschylus 
 or an Aristotle, for instance, regarded life as mere sunshine and beauty, a pleasure 
 garden with no snakes in the grass, an orchard in which no fruit grew that might 
 not be plucked, is grotesque to the last degree.
 
 164 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 Until we have definitely and conclusively accepted our 
 limitations, and understood that to attain and to possess means 
 to renounce, we have not learned the beginning of wisdom. 
 Experiences are often mutually exclusive, and can no more 
 occupy the same mind than two bodies can occupy the same 
 space. 
 
 There are moments when the well-regulated and virtuous 
 man, who for years has struggled, in the main successfully, 
 against the besetting sins of those around him, turns with a 
 sort of reproachfulness on himself and on Providence, as though 
 he had been defrauded of those experiences of life which in 
 wise and deliberate scorn he has in fact rejected. What is all 
 this save a rebellion against the fundamental condition of life, 
 which prescribes that it shall be a choice between alternatives 
 in which the taking of the one is the rejecting of the other ? 
 It is by recognising, not by vainly fighting against, this 
 limitation, that we can most truly enlarge our experience of 
 life ; for whether on the ranche, or in the study, or at the bar, 
 or in the counting-house, or at the plough-tail, the man who 
 " what he lives, lives well," by getting to the centre of life, has 
 learned to bring its circumference under symmetrical view ; 
 whereas, he who hurries from point to point on its circum- 
 ference, and fixes himself upon some excrescence, can never 
 reach its centre. A true knowledge of life is to be gained not 
 by bulk, but by intensity of experience j and he who has 
 rejected unworthy alternatives and experiences has a fuller as 
 well as a purer knowledge of what they are than he who has 
 embraced them. Anselm declares that Eve's will to eat the 
 apple and to gain knowledge of good and evil was good in 
 itself, but evil in that it ignored the conditions of its own 
 fulfilment. She wished to be as the gods, but wished to be so 
 at a time when God willed it not. The very knowledge and 
 experience she sought would have come to her as a beautiful 
 and innocent part of a fuller life, in its due place and with its 
 due meaning, had she waited for it. But because she would 
 not renounce she could not obtain. The allegory is as 
 universal as it is obvious. 1 
 
 1 A friend to whom I once mentioned this representation of Anselm's, exclaimed 
 at once that vivisection was the modern equivalent of the sin of the tasting the 
 forbidden fruit. It was the attempt to secure in guilty haste what would come 
 beautifully, and duly supported and interpreted, if we would wait for it.
 
 AND THE SENSE OF SIN 165 
 
 And now we may return to our immediate subject, and 
 draw our conclusions. Our habitual attitude must be that of 
 working upward, not downward ; forward to the light, not 
 back upon the shadow. But to see the higher clearly, and to 
 love it with the whole heart, is to condemn and to reject the 
 lower ; and to have seen the higher, and still to believe in it as 
 the higher, though the appeal of the lower is at this moment 
 more importunately frit, is to hear the command and the 
 prohibition of the law, obedience to which in our hours of 
 darkness is the condition upon which alone we can return to 
 hours of insight. 
 
 We apprehend the religious life, then, as growing and 
 glorious opportunity, privilege, fruition. Our dominant idea 
 is not the fall, but the ascent of man. But if we are found 
 wanting to our opportunity and our privileges, the sense of 
 discord between what we are and what we might be and ought 
 to be is there, though the stress falls on the glory of the life 
 open to us, rather than on the shame of neglected opportunity. 
 
 The sense of sin, then, is no longer cultivated as an inward 
 grace ; but neither must we seek to arm ourselves against its 
 galling sting. Very real and very terrible it still must be, if we 
 retain our spiritual and moral sensitiveness, and do not seek to 
 cheat ourselves ; but it will act as a stimulus to seize and 
 develop the ever-open opportunities, and to enter the ever-open 
 door. The anguish of repentance will speak in the longing, 
 rising sometimes to fierceness in its intensity, to meet not in 
 wanton self-exposure to temptation, but in the outward course 
 of a progressively triumphant life the foes that formerly 
 daunted us or cast us down, so that in our turn we may triumph 
 over them. We shall seek for purification by meeting and 
 bearing the consequences of our failure or our sins, however 
 painful, and shall hope for the final quenching of the fiery sting 
 of their memory by dwelling, not in the realms of accusing 
 self-consciousness, but in those of frank and grateful communion 
 of thought and deed with all that is blest and wholesome. As 
 long as every opportunity that is offered to us means the choice 
 between a wiser and a more foolish, or a nobler and more 
 ignoble alternative, we shall be liable to choose the worse not 
 in blindness, but in weakness or passion and then to recognise 
 our lost opportunity, to feel the actual discord emphasised by 
 the ideal harmony, and to know the anguish of the sense of sin.
 
 1 66 THE FEAR OF GOD 
 
 And when this experience has been ours, we shall know the 
 meaning of the fear of God. Not that fear which drives us in 
 terror to divorce our actions from our affections, and scares us 
 from doing the thing we should still love to do ; not the fear of 
 God as of the Divine policeman who is always ready to bring 
 the terrors of the law upon us ; but the fear of God which is 
 hardly even another aspect of the love of him. We see the 
 beauty of holiness, we see the mark of our high calling in com- 
 munion with him, we see the greatness of the opportunities of 
 life ; and this is the love of God. And we know that if, in 
 yielding to sloth or to passion, we neglect these opportunities, 
 and are content with the lower and the baser part, that harmony 
 which we now feel will have its counterpart in the discord 
 which we shall wake, in the hurt and miserable sense of sin. 
 We know that we cannot escape, though we climb to the top 
 of Carmel, or plunge into the depths of the sea ; and this is the 
 fear of God. It is the love of God which inspires our lives j it 
 is the fear of God which protects us in our moments of weak- 
 ness, when we love the part rather than the whole, and would 
 find a momentary and local harmony at the price of a perma- 
 nent and universal discord. 
 
 Perfect love does, indeed, cast out fear ; for if we loved God 
 perfectly, we should love him always, and sin would never 
 tempt us. And, therefore, it is in the love of God that the 
 formula of harmony must be sought. Even when conscious of 
 our own sin, conscious of our self-alienation from God, and the 
 discord that it has waked in our being, we must seek to feel the 
 harmony above and below ; that the sense of opportunity, of 
 privilege, of glory, of God, may still rise above the sense of 
 failure, of exclusion, of shame, of self ; that fear may be nought 
 but an under-agent of love, the sense of sin nought but an 
 undertone in the sense of salvation.
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 WISDOM, negative virtue, positive goodness, devoutness (151-154). 
 Sin (154, 155). Attitude of the organised religions towards sin 
 (155). Ethical sanctions and the sense of sin (155, 156). Decay 
 of the sense of sin (156, 157). Its causes (157-160). How are 
 we to judge it? (160). Restraint and opportunity (160-163). 
 The discipline of selecting and renouncing (163, 164). The sense 
 of sin and the sense of opportunities ; the fear and the love of God 
 (165, 166). 
 
 167
 
 VI 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE HISTORY 
 
 OF RELIGION 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 
 
 Address delivered at Manchester New College, Oxford 
 \\th October 1890 
 
 J. E. C. 1890 
 
 169
 
 THE PLACE OF THE HISTORY 
 OF RELIGION IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 
 
 WHEN Confucius visited the court of Chow, the seat of the 
 imperial dynasty, he took occasion to make a special examina- 
 tion of all the arrangements for the great sacrifices to heaven 
 and earth ; he surveyed the ancestral temples in which the 
 imperial worship was offered ; he inspected the Hall of Light, 
 whose walls bore paintings of the emperors from the remotest 
 times j and then he turned to his disciples with the remark 
 " As we use a glass to examine the forms of things, so must we 
 study the past to understand the present." 1 
 
 In the midst of the University of Oxford, it may seem un- 
 necessary to give fresh emphasis or illustration to the principle 
 of the Chinese sage. Is not the historical method pursued on 
 every side of us ? Is it not applied in almost all departments 
 of our activity ? Language and literature, philosophy and art, 
 law, government, society itself, have they not all come under 
 its spell ? There is scarcely an institution or an idea whose 
 beginnings have not been investigated, and whose phases of 
 development have not been traced. Is it not plain, then, that 
 the ideas and institutions of religion cannot be exempt ? They 
 are among the most potent products of human thought and 
 aspiration ; they have exerted the widest influence in promot- 
 ing or retarding the progress of nations ; they have contributed 
 above all others to the happiness and to the moral education of 
 the race. 
 
 Within certain limits, indeed, the historical study of religion 
 enters into the training of every one who seeks to enter the 
 Christian ministry by the path of knowledge. The philosopher 
 
 1 Legge, Chinese Classics, \. 66. 
 171
 
 172 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 may be content to examine the roots of belief within his breast, 
 and discover the way to the interpretation of the universe 
 through the processes of his own mind j and the missionary of 
 social reform may find the inspiration of his teaching in the 
 "demonstration of the spirit" made manifest by the victory 
 of purity and righteousness in lives once torn by passion and 
 sunk in infamy. But he who desires a place in one of the 
 religious organisations which he finds around him, is soon 
 aware that he cannot define its aims, or understand its genius, 
 or share its life, without an acquaintance with its rise and 
 growth, and a sympathetic comprehension of its relation to 
 other branches of the great church of God. The history of 
 Christianity, then, must always constitute a part of all theo- 
 logical equipment ; and though it is often related under dog- 
 matic assumptions which treat all departures from a fixed 
 standard of faith as guilty aberrations, yet its true significance 
 is becoming more and more clearly understood, as it is recog- 
 nised that its chief doctrines have emerged into their present 
 form through periods of struggle in which they have incorpor- 
 ated elements diverse and remote. Nay, the great book of our 
 religion challenges us at once to similar study by concentrating 
 within its pages the literature of a thousand years. It insists 
 on carrying you back from the New Testament to the Old ; 
 and you cannot interpret the ideas of the Prophet of Nazareth 
 unless you are familiar with the hopes of his predecessors 
 centuries before. Nor does the range of inquiry stop there, 
 for what were the antecedents of Isaiah or Moses ? There 
 was a fountain at Capernaum, so Josephus tells us, which was 
 popularly supposed to be fed from the waters of the Nile. 1 His 
 geography and his physics may be at fault ; but we may accept 
 his statement as a symbol, if not as a fact ; for the streams of 
 Hebrew thought were fed from many lands, nor are Egypt and 
 Babylonia the only countries whose culture is reflected in the 
 antique documents of our faith. How fully this is recognised 
 by some of the distinguished teachers of this University, I need 
 not say to those of you who have attended their courses on the 
 writings and the theology of the Old Testament. So far, then, 
 we are in accord here with the programmes of study through 
 which all must pass who aspire after the "ministry of the 
 word." Our methods may be sometimes different, our results 
 1 B. J. iii. 10, 8.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 173 
 
 may vary, our estimates of the same facts may traverse accepted 
 judgments, but our aim is still one, the pursuit of religious 
 truth ; and for the comprehension of the religious world around 
 us we employ a common instrument, to understand the present 
 we investigate the past. 
 
 But I invite you to-day to studies of a still wider scope. I 
 propose to you to extend the range of your interest beyond 
 what we are wont to call the Holy Land. Let us examine 
 the history of religion not only along one consecrated line of 
 its development through a particular nationality, language, book, 
 or teacher let us approach it as a general, if not a practically 
 universal fact. What gain may we expect from this enlarge- 
 ment of our view ; what new avenues of knowledge may it 
 open to us ; and under what conditions may such an adventure 
 hope for some measure of success ? I was once present at a 
 conference to consider the advantage of the study of Compara- 
 tive Religion to Christian missionaries. Much was said, and 
 wisely, on the necessity that the modern heralds of the Gospel 
 should put themselves in sympathy with the people whom they 
 desire to convert, and, before attempting to change their ways 
 of thought and worship, should first learn to understand them. 
 To you this plea would be addressed without avail, for the 
 spirit of missionary enterprise in distant lands I will not now 
 ask from what causes, and whether well or ill has never 
 flourished among us. But behind the question which was then 
 discussed really lay one of deeper import. May not the inquirer 
 find that the investigation of the faiths of other races gives him 
 a clearer insight not only into their religions, but also into his 
 own ? Is it not possible that he may thereby learn to dis- 
 tinguish between its permanent truths and its perishable illu- 
 sions, and disengage the essence from the form ? Will it not 
 save him from clinging to beliefs or institutions that have lost 
 their meaning, and confirm his ideas and quicken his emotions 
 by connecting them with the larger thoughts and feelings of 
 mankind ? 
 
 I 
 
 The conception that there are common elements in different 
 religions is the natural result of human intercourse, which 
 discovers that the terms of religious thought can often be traced 
 from language to language, and the objects of religious worship
 
 174 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 can be identified with more or less completeness from land to 
 land, just as men walk the same earth, gaze at the same sun, 
 and repose under the same sky. When the conquests of 
 Alexander carried the science of Europe to the unknown East, 
 the enthusiasm of the Greek humanists was roused by the vast 
 possibilities of inquiry flung open to them, and Alexandria be- 
 came the centre of a passion for research such as the world had 
 never seen. Explorers were despatched to distant countries, 
 and scholars and philosophers were engaged at home in collect- 
 ing, classifying, and summarising the facts which they accumu- 
 lated. India was not forgotten, and a succession of treatises, of 
 which only the titles now remain, testified to the diligence of 
 ambassadors and to travellers' zeal. The great patron of 
 literature in the third century B.C. had the good fortune to be 
 served by a librarian of bold conceptions, for he aimed, says 
 Josephus, at nothing less than a collection of all the books to 
 be found in the world. 1 The well-known story that he sug- 
 gested to the king that he should procure a copy of the Jewish 
 Law did not satisfy the beliefs of a later time, saturated with 
 the peculiar syncretism which marked the first ages of our era. 
 The Christian fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius report that he 
 comprised within his regards the sacred books of the Ethiopians, 
 Indians, Persians, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, 
 Romans, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Greeks. 2 This is obviously 
 a rhetorical enumeration, not a statement of fact j 3 but it is 
 sufficient to note the idea that it represents, viz., that it was 
 possible to embrace in one view the religions of the known 
 world, to set them side by side, to compare their resemblances, 
 and discern the elements of a common truth. For the attitude 
 of early Christianity to other religions was by no means one of 
 exclusiveness and hostility. Its noblest teachers were too con- 
 scious of the debts which they owed to their Greek culture to 
 turn their backs upon it altogether. They were sensible 
 enough of the similarities, not to say the identities, of many of 
 the truths of morals and religion held in the schools as well as 
 in the church. With an eye as yet undimmed by dogmatic pre- 
 possessions, they found no difficulty in admitting that the 
 divine Spirit was in no man's keeping, and moved without as 
 
 1 Antiquities, xii. Z, I. 
 
 2 Bus. Chron., ed. Seal. p. 66, 2 ; Epiphan. De Pond, et Mensura, 9. 
 3 Cp. Matter, Hist, de FEcole d ' Alexandrie, \. 139 sqq.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 175 
 
 well as within the limits of the chosen people ; and they recog- 
 nised with Clement of Alexandria, that " Philosophy had been 
 a tutor to bring the Greeks to Christ." The doctrine of the 
 Aoyos orre/tyiaTiKos enabled them to explain how it was that 
 Sophocles or Cleanthes could teach the unity of God beside 
 prophet and psalmist, and Plato could legislate like a second 
 Moses. Or, if the " seminal word " was not at hand, it was 
 not hard to prove that the sacred books of the Jews were pro- 
 duced long before the rise of Greek thought, and what was 
 clearer than that poet and sage had caught up the accents of the 
 Hebrew seer ? l " Whatever things have been rightly said 
 among all men," affirmed Justin Martyr, " are the property of 
 us Christians." 2 In the great work of Eusebius on the " Pre- 
 paration for the Gospel," with its wide survey of ancient faiths, 
 the fatal doctrine, extra Ecclesiam nulla sa/us, has not yet 
 extinguished all interest in the past, and in his pages philosophers 
 debate concerning creation and providence, and poets sing of 
 the divine wisdom, and the insight of antiquity is vital still. 
 It has been reserved for this university in our own day, under 
 the guidance of the great scholar who has laboured for well- 
 nigh half a century on behalf of the study of Comparative 
 Religion, to realise the project attributed to Demetrius more 
 than two thousand years ago. But three generations since it 
 was possible for Dr. Johnson to say, " There are two objects of 
 curiosity, the Christian world and the Mahommedan world 
 all the rest may be considered as barbarous." 3 How great is 
 now the change ! The immense development of intelligent 
 interest in our fellow-men, through conquest and travel, through 
 trade and religious enterprise, the discovery of sacred literatures 
 ancient as that on which the Christian Church is founded, and 
 even older yet, and the application of philosophical ideas to the 
 study of beliefs and institutions of every rank and kind, have 
 knocked away the barriers which were once so complacently 
 established. The obsolete word, the village usage which has 
 
 1 In De Ci-v. Dei, viii. 1 1, Augustine withdraws an opinion which he had formerly 
 expressed (De Doctr. Christ, ii. 43), that Plato might have been a hearer of Jeremiah, 
 or had studied his writings. A careful calculation of dates has convinced him that 
 Plato lived too late for the Prophet, and too early for the Seventy Translators. But 
 he still thinks that Plato may have gained some knowledge of the Scriptures through 
 an interpreter, for there are echoes of Genesis in the Tim<eus. 
 
 2 Second Apol. 13. 
 
 3 Bos well, Lift of Johnson, ed. Dr. Birkbeck Hill, iv. 199.
 
 1 76 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 lost its pristine meaning and become only the children's sport, 
 may start into life, and find their kinship with obscure customs 
 from remotest lands, while these, in their turn, may stand re- 
 lated to ideas still intertwined with the language of our highest 
 endeavour, our loftiest aspiration. And thus, by common links 
 of thought, a mighty chain of sympathy is spread round the 
 globe. In a new sense we are realising the unity of the race. 
 A fresh light is thrown on its long history : we understand the 
 significance of its struggles, the meaning of the thoughts which 
 it has striven dimly to articulate through symbol and rite, 
 when words proved all too weak to give them form ; the whole 
 scope of our conceptions is widened, the sense of human brother- 
 hood made strong and deep, and the student learns the first 
 article of a world-wide faith 
 
 Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum puto. 
 
 II 
 
 But the culture of sympathy is more a condition than an 
 end of our investigation. It is the indispensable pre-requisite 
 with which we must start, rather than the moral result which 
 we are to attain. All sincere study is a search after truth, and 
 the branch of truth with which our study is concerned is the 
 nature and operation of religious belief. We seek to under- 
 stand its origin, to find its sources, and account for the 
 intellectual forms which it has assumed : we endeavour to 
 trace its influence on thought and life, and gauge its value as 
 a factor in the progress of mankind. What are the methods 
 and conditions of such a study, and how does it stand related 
 to other branches of your training in this place ? 
 
 It is obvious at once that it is, in a certain sense, the com- 
 plement, as it is also the handmaid, of all philosophical inquiry ; 
 and it is indeed from the philosophical movement of the last 
 hundred years that it has derived its greatest stimulus. When 
 Hume published his dissertation on the Natural History of 
 Religion, in 1757, he pointed the way to a new and fruitful 
 field. The disputants in the Deistical controversy had already 
 helped to vindicate for religion a basis in reason apart from the 
 necessity of a written revelation ; and Hume, appealing to such 
 scanty facts as were accessible to him, endeavoured to work 
 out, in a rough and ready way, the problem of its origin and
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 177 
 
 growth. He traced it back to the intellectual impulse which 
 sought for the causes of the phenomena by which man is 
 encompassed and affected, and the emotions of hope and fear 
 arising out of his dependence on them. From these beginnings 
 a series of easy stages led to the deification of the powers of 
 nature, and finally to their generalisation by reason into one 
 supreme Mind, so that the loftiest and simplest conceptions 
 were thus reached upon intellectual principles which were 
 shared in common by the whole human race. The method 
 indicated by Hume was not pursued by his successors ; but, 
 while James Mill was analysing the idea of God into a mere 
 group of associations destitute of intrinsic reality, the philosophy 
 of Germany had penetrated to the character and contents of 
 mind itself, to the facts of its constitution and the validity of 
 its processes, and found there the actual roots of faith. I need 
 not recite now the series of definitions in which successive 
 teachers have answered the question, " What is religion ? " It 
 is sufficient to point out that they all treat it as a universal 
 fact, a common element in human experience, whose sources 
 lie in the soul of man, and his relations to the world around. 
 They may vary in the emphasis which they lay on the intel- 
 lectual apprehension of Deity, on the sense of moral obligation 
 to him, on the emotions of awe or joy with which the soul 
 enters his presence and lies beneath his gaze. They may 
 differ in the hypotheses or the arguments by which they justify 
 the ontological conceptions with which religion cannot, in the 
 long run, dispense. But they have all contributed to one 
 common end, viz., the release of religion from the limits of 
 any particular system, and its establishment on the broadest 
 basis of thought, feeling, and action ; and they have thus 
 gathered into one brotherhood the most diverse forms of idea 
 and expression, calling upon the historian to trace the mutual 
 relations of their actual development, and the philosopher to 
 determine their underlying truth. 
 
 As the student addresses himself to this task, he carries with 
 him at least two assumptions. If religion be recognised as 
 an inalienable possession of the human heart, it is not necessary 
 to seek for its explanation in a complicated theory of primeval 
 revelation. This has often been the resort of generous minds 
 impressed with the similarity of religious beliefs through many 
 ages and in separate lands. Two centuries ago, the English 
 
 M
 
 178 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 Platonists explained the resemblances of classical and Hebrew 
 thought by the theory of an ancient monotheism divinely 
 taught, and supported it by the impossible derivations of a pre- 
 scientific philology. 1 In our own day the most eminent 
 scholar - statesman of this University has argued that the 
 mythologies for so we may not unfairly generalise his treat- 
 ment of the Olympian system are the corruptions of truths 
 supernaturally imparted to our first ancestors, in which the 
 doctrines of the Trinity, of Creation and Redemption, " formed 
 a part of the patrimony of the human race." 2 The study of 
 the ancient Hebrew records in the light of literary criticism, 
 of the early history of mankind, and of comparative religion, 
 has made this position no longer tenable, though echoes of it 
 may yet be heard in current literature. 3 It is a hypothesis 
 which has been tried and found wanting j and the philosophical 
 student replaces it with the assumption that, under similar 
 conditions, the operations of the human mind will resemble 
 each other, for the courses of thought though small causes 
 may soon lead them far apart tend to run in parallel channels 
 when they issue from the same springs in mind and heart, and 
 flow through corresponding scenery of life. Such an assump- 
 tion is the necessary antecedent of all branches of the study of 
 man. The science of anthropology reposes on the belief in 
 the unity of the race ; and as it anticipates that the persons of 
 any new tribe which the explorer may discover will contain 
 the same members and require the same sustenance as other 
 men, so it anticipates that their social organisation will approxi- 
 mate to certain known types of human relations. The philo- 
 logist bases his methods on the assumption of a unity of 
 thought which must express itself in modes of utterance 
 harmonious with it. Present him with a new language, and 
 
 1 Thus Cudworth argues for a Oeoirapadoros 0eo\oyia, " a theology of divine 
 tradition or revelation, or a divine cabala, viz., amongst the Hebrews first, and 
 afterwards communicated to the Egyptians and other nations " (Intellectual System, 
 chap. iv. 36). Saturnus is accordingly derived through Etrurian from the Hebrew 
 tathar, "to hide," as the "hidden " principle of the universe [ibid. 32). 
 
 2 Gladstone, Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. 3, 42 ; cp. jfuventus Mundi, p. 
 207 and p. 361, where the wide extension of the practice of animal sacrifices is 
 explained by the hypothesis of a divine command given before the races recorded 
 in Scripture were multiplied and dispersed. 
 
 8 Thus Canon F. C. Cook, in his learned Origins of Religion and Literature, 1884, 
 pleads, p. 80, that the religious forms of the Rig Veda " bear witness at once to the 
 original acceptance of one primeval truth, and to the tendencies by which that truth 
 was first obscured, then corrupted, and finally superseded."
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 179 
 
 he may be unable to discover its key, but he knows that, when 
 he open? the casket, he will find ideas that match his own. 
 The interpretation of the Hittite inscriptions may still be 
 matter of dispute, but no one doubts that the secret of the 
 unknown characters, and of the words for which they stand, is 
 a secret of form, and not of essence : behind the rock-cut sur- 
 face three thousand years old, and the printed page of to-day's 
 newspaper, lie minds of the same order and intellectual pro- 
 cesses of the same kind. In the same way, the student of 
 religions will, for the purposes of history, investigate them all 
 from the human side. He will explore their several phases, 
 trace their modifications, watch the growth or decline of their 
 vital forces as objective facts. He will not draw at the outset 
 any distinction between natural and revealed, for he will soon 
 be confronted with the fact that the same claims to revelation 
 are raised in diverse places : they may be heard in India as well 
 as Palestine ; they are uttered on behalf of the Veda or the 
 Koran, as well as of the Scriptures of the Old Testament or 
 the New. I do not say that this is an exhaustive or an 
 adequate view of any of them, but it is the only view which 
 history can take. It points at once to the limits of the study, 
 which does not aim at determining the truth of fact which lies 
 behind the world's religions, but only seeks to ascertain the 
 laws of their relation and development. It regards them as the 
 great record of man's ascent to God. It leaves it to the philo- 
 sophy of religion to vindicate an inverse relation, to treat them 
 as the manifestation of the descent of God to man, to adjust 
 their claims to a participation in the guidance of the divine 
 Spirit, and frame a theory of revelation which shall be based 
 upon the total experience of the race. 
 
 And secondly, as our study, under the sanction of philo- 
 sophy, assumes the unity of the origin and growth of religious 
 thought in the human mind, 1 so does it also assume what may, 
 perhaps, be called the unity of religious consciousness. Like 
 all products of our inward activity, religion, even in its rudest 
 state, is an exceedingly complex phenomenon. It involves 
 notions about objective reality ; it involves acts of ancient 
 traditional usage ; and it involves the feelings which are associ- 
 
 1 The meaning of this phrase will be gathered from the preceding paragraph. 
 I do not intend to imply that the first manifestations of religious belief must 
 necessarily always have had the same form : manes-worship, nature-worship, etc.
 
 i8o THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 ated with them, and express themselves through them. The 
 belief and the rite are, in fact, but the vehicle of the emotion, 
 and it is often in the emotion where terror, aspiration, rever- 
 ence, dread, gladness, hope, mingle confusedly together, that 
 the most potent elements of religion lie. Some beliefs are 
 naturally better calculated to excite higher emotions than 
 others ; some rites are better adapted for purifying and sup- 
 porting such emotions. But it is essential to observe that, 
 while on one side religion speaks to the intellect, and frames 
 for itself schemes of doctrine, on another it addresses itself to 
 the conscience, and utters a programme of law, and again it 
 appeals to the feelings, and calls forth institutions of worship. 
 Now the schemes of doctrine may vary, the objects around 
 which they are centred may be differently conceived, yet the 
 will may own the same obligation, and the soul aspire after the 
 same beauty or right. Shall we say that we have here to deal 
 with different religions, or shall we not rather admit that, 
 while theologies may be many, religion is but one ? It was 
 after this truth that the Vedic seers were groping when they 
 cried, "They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuwa, Agni ; sages 
 name variously him who is but one ; " or, again, " the sages in 
 their hymns give many forms to him who is but one." l The 
 identity of religious consciousness, as it reached out to separate 
 deities, revealed the secret of their unity, and demanded an 
 identification of the theologies of rival bards and different 
 sacred families. The same lesson was taught in the temples 
 during the first ages of Christianity, and in the mysteries so 
 popular throughout the empire. The titles and attributes of 
 the deities in the East were blended in strange fashion with the 
 patrons of Rome. When Jupiter stood surrounded by a vast 
 crowd of all the gods, the reflective mind perceived, as Maximus 
 of Madaura wrote to Augustine, 2 that " There is one Supreme 
 God, without beginning, without natural offspring, who is, as 
 it were, the God and Mighty Father of all. The powers of this 
 Deity, diffused through the universe which he has made, we 
 worship under many names, as we are all ignorant of his true 
 name. Thus it happens that, while in diverse supplications we 
 approach separately, as it were, certain parts of the Divine 
 Being, we are seen, in reality, to be the worshippers of him 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texti, \. 353 ; Max Miiller, Hibbert Lectures, 311-313. 
 2 August. Eff. xvi. 48.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 
 
 181 
 
 in whom all these parts are one." 1 If this be so, it will be 
 seen that the historical student cannot classify religions as true 
 and false, any more than as revealed and not revealed. Only 
 on one side can religion express itself in propositions, and fall 
 under categories of judgment. The elements of belief may 
 be formulated ; they may be tested by wider knowledge ; they 
 may be decomposed and recombined under the light of ever- 
 widening truth. But the spirit of religion lives on undis- 
 turbed nay, it is quickened with higher thought, and cleared 
 by the insight of a more penetrating vision and a purer heart. 
 When this is recognised, the history of religion ceases to 
 present the dreary spectacle of corruption and decay. It is 
 no tale of degeneration, in which the divine accents have 
 almost lost all trace of their heavenly origin. It gives back to 
 philosophy much more than the assumptions which it borrowed 
 from her at the outset. It provides her with a mighty con- 
 firmation of the truths which she reaches by such different 
 paths. When the moralist declares that the law of right is 
 written upon the tablets of the heart, the philologist meets 
 him with the phenomena of language, enshrining the idea of 
 obligation in many forms, and the jurist with unwritten 
 customs and principles of law. When the thinker declares 
 that the being of God is involved in the very tissue of our 
 reason, the student of comparative religion points to the 
 universal endeavour to give explicit utterance to the same 
 truth from the rudest recognition of power beyond ourselves 
 to the largest generalisations of a scientific insight : for the 
 belief and worship of mankind are the great records in which 
 our race has displayed the structure of its mind, and uttered 
 the very beatings of its heart. Nay, the witness of experience 
 may be even more cogent than the demonstrations of the 
 class-room ; it is finely said that while " to the philosopher the 
 existence of God may seem to rest on a syllogism, in the 
 eyes of the historian it rests on the whole evolution of human 
 thought." 2 
 
 1 Cp. Apuleius, Metam. xi. 5 : "En adsum tuis commota precibus, rerum 
 naturae parens, elementorum omnium domina, saeculorum progenies initialis, 
 summa numinum, regina Manium, prima caelitum, deorum dearumque fades 
 uniformis . . . cujus nomen unicum multiformi specie ritu vario nomine multijugo 
 totus veneratur orbis. Inde primigenii Phryges Pessinuntiam [nominant] deiim 
 matrem, hinc autochthones Attici Cecropeiam Minervam," etc. 
 
 2 Max Miiller, Natural Religion, 98.
 
 1 82 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 III 
 
 But a subject so vast must be modestly approached, and study 
 can only be truly fruitful when it is carefully planned and wisely 
 limited. The origins of religion have of late years been eagerly 
 debated. A prodigious literature has gathered around them, and 
 within this University you may learn from the most eminent 
 representatives of different schools. So far as the birth-hour of 
 faith comes in the view of the anthropologist, or of the student 
 of language, the best of guidance is opened to you in the 
 lectures of Dr. Tylor and the writings of Prof. Max Miiller. 
 But whatever interest, historical and philosophical, hangs round 
 the problems of the sources and first forms of our religion, they 
 are probably of less import to the inquirer who proposes to 
 devote himself to the service of his fellow -man through the 
 Christian ministry. The questions which beset him are of a 
 different kind. He is concerned with the story at its upper 
 rather than its lower end, and seeks to know what light is 
 thrown on the real meaning of Christianity, on the connection 
 between theology and morals, and on the value of religion as a 
 great social and historic force. I propose, therefore, to approach 
 our subject along two different lines. In the first place, let us 
 take some specific conception and track it through from form 
 to form. Let us examine its rise, and note the early modifica- 
 tions which it undergoes in races exposed to different influences 
 and marked by different mental characters ; let us trace the 
 manner in which it attracts to itself moral distinctions, and 
 becomes a nucleus round which the culture of the conscience 
 grows ; and finally, as it lives on into higher faiths, let us 
 observe how religious ideas and forms once ethnically distinct 
 have influenced each other, so that the pedigree of our belief 
 contains elements from various sources, and the genealogy of 
 our thought reaches out over an ever-widening area of ancestry. 
 For this end, partly because of its intrinsic significance, and 
 partly to carry on the studies which some of you have already 
 begun, I will select for our examination during this academic 
 year the doctrine of a future life, the immense importance of 
 which in connection with the roots of law, society, and religion, 
 will emerge more clearly as we proceed. And, secondly, I 
 invite you to the study of some specific religion, large enough 
 in its moral purport, or its actual career, to be reckoned like
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 183 
 
 Christianity among the spiritual forces of the world. These 
 are, indeed, but few. Apart from the philosophical schools of 
 Greece, they gather, for the most part, around great names, or 
 they are enshrined in mighty literatures. One continent has 
 been pre-eminently their home : China, India, Persia, Palestine, 
 Arabia, from the Pacific to the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, 
 Asia has been the mother of them all. Among these it is not 
 difficult for me to make a choice. I have already indicated that 
 behind Christianity lies the religion of Israel, which claims our 
 special attention, not only because it holds for us the key to the 
 interpretation of the thought of Jesus, but also for its continuous 
 history as a great national faith, still living and potent at this 
 hour. But our inquiry is to extend beyond the special lines of 
 our own descent, and we turn most naturally to India, where 
 speculative thought has enjoyed a freedom and displayed a 
 variety hardly surpassed by Western culture, and where the 
 ancient ties of kinship and race are knit with the modern 
 obligations of government. In the long procession of its re- 
 ligions, one figure takes the eye at once. The origin or 
 Buddhism, unlike that of the Vedic faiths, or the Brahmanism 
 which followed them, lies, like that of Christianity, within 
 historic view. It can be fixed, with less precision, it is true, to 
 a given time ; it can be located in a definite area, it can be 
 attached to a particular person. Its antecedents are, in part at 
 least, well known ; its Scriptures are being published, transla- 
 tions of some of them lie upon your shelves ; and its main ideas 
 are within the reach of all. And through what wondrous 
 phases does it not pass ? In the story of its first preaching and 
 of its missionary enterprise, in the evolution of its beliefs, in the 
 development of its rites and organisation, the wondering student 
 sees, over and over again, the parallel to the ecclesiastical 
 incidents of his own religion ; and, above all, he beholds how 
 a carefully -framed ethical culture and discipline of the con- 
 science, reposing on the unchallenged assumption of the self- 
 acting moral order of the universe, and independent of the gods 
 who live beneath the inevitable law of dissolution, ends by 
 elaborating the conception of a Teacher who devotes himself to 
 the practice of righteousness, through countless lives, for the 
 attainment of the insight which will enable him to deliver men 
 from suffering and sin, and finally identifies him and his prede- 
 cessors as manifestations, under the historic forms of space and
 
 i8 4 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 time, of the self-existent or the absolute, the infinite and ever- 
 lasting God. 
 
 How these studies may touch the history of Christian belief, 
 and even illustrate the Evangelical representations of Jesus 
 himself, may best be shown by one or two brief instances. 
 
 IV 
 
 On the western wall of the church at Chaldon, in Surrey, a 
 painting was discovered twenty years ago which carries us into 
 the heart of the mediaeval conceptions of heaven, of judgment, 
 and of hell. The picture is divided into two parts by a belt of 
 clouds, through which there runs a mighty ladder. At the 
 bottom are the torments of the condemned a bridge of spikes, 
 along which they are driven by hideous demons standing at 
 either end ; flaming cauldrons, where hapless souls are prodded 
 with pitchforks ; devouring monsters, and all forms of ugliness 
 and sin. At the top is the Redeemer, between sun and moon, 
 in the act of blessing. In the intervening tier are two subjects 
 on either side of the ladder. To the right, the Messiah over- 
 throws Satan, and liberates the souls who waited in Hades for 
 his advent. At the left stands the archangel Michael, with a 
 pair of scales in his hand, in the act of weighing souls. Here 
 is the real test of the judgment. By one scale stands a demon, 
 putting his hoofed paw in the pan to drag it down ; by the 
 other, the soul, in an agony of supplication, entreats the arch- 
 angel to incline it on his side. The spirits for whom the award 
 is favourable ascend the ladder to heaven: the doomed are 
 hurled into the pit below, and vainly cling to the lower rungs 
 ere they are wrenched away for punishment. 
 
 Enter now one of the Egyptian tombs of the Theban period 
 in the solemn Valley of the Dead j or open a scroll laid in a 
 coffin of the time of the Exodus. What will you see ? There, 
 too, are the tortures of the wicked in the world below ; there, 
 too, are flames and serpents ; there are figures up to their chins 
 in water, holding out bound hands ; there are the demon- 
 headsmen and the awful block for decapitation at the second 
 death. There, too, are the scenes of happiness for the justified, 
 amid verdant meadows beside the heavenly Nile, or in closer 
 fellowship with the Sun-god as he glides along in his bark. 
 There, too, is the ladder by which the departed soul might
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 185 
 
 climb back to the earth to revisit the body in the tomb, or 
 ascend to the paradise sometimes located in the north-eastern 
 sky. 1 And there, once more, is the judgment. Within the 
 hall of the Twofold Justice (and Truth) sits Osiris, " lord of life 
 and king of eternity." 2 Hither the soul is led for judgment. 
 Egyptian eschatology did not postpone this till a general resur- 
 rection ; 3 it awaited each soul in due course after death. The 
 departed is brought before forty-two assessors, in solemn array, 
 before whom he makes his claim to have fulfilled the command- 
 ment, in such words as these : 
 
 I am not a doer of what is wrong ; I am not a plunderer ; I am 
 not a robber ; I am not a slayer of men ; I am not a niggard ; I do 
 not seize the property of the gods ; I am not a teller of lies ; I am 
 not a monopoliser of food ; I am no extortioner ; I am not unchaste ; 
 I am not the causer of others' tears. . . . 
 
 Then he is introduced, sometimes by the two goddesses of the 
 Double Justice, to the actual trial. Under the presidency of 
 Thoth stands a balance. In one scale is the heart of the 
 deceased, the organ of conscience ; it is weighed against the 
 plume, which typifies righteousness. Anubis, the conductor of 
 souls, examines the indicator of the balance. The Goddess of 
 Destiny is by his side, and the impersonations of Fortune and 
 Birth are close at hand. Beyond stands Thoth, recording the 
 result, with the terrible form of Amemit, the devourer, behind 
 him: 
 
 Here is Thoth, the judge of the cycle of the great gods, in the 
 presence of Osiris. Listen to this judgment in due form. The 
 heart of the Osiris is weighed, and his soul standeth in evidence for 
 it ; his case is straight upon the balance ; there is found no iniquity 
 in him ; he is not one who cut down the bread of temples ; he was 
 not sordid in his actions ; he is not one who set his speech in motion 
 against others as long as he was upon the earth. 4 
 
 1 The ladder is figured even in early Pyramid texts, and mimic ladders were 
 sometimes deposited in coffins. 
 
 2 Sometimes enthroned, as in the sarcophagus of Seti I., or in the tomb 01 
 Rameses V., at the top of a long flight of steps, up which the souls must climb. 
 
 8 On the great western portal of Notre Dame, in Paris (1215 A.D.), the soul- 
 weighing is an incident in the last judgment. It occurs in the middle tier ; beneath, 
 the earth and sea give up their dead at the sound of the archangel's trump. 
 
 4 See the Pafyrut of An:, written at the end of the fourteenth century B.C., 
 recently published by the Trustees of the British Museum, with an introduction 
 by Mr. Le Page Renouf.
 
 1 86 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 How many elements, in spite of all their diversity, have 
 these scenes in common ! The conception of future judgment 
 is one of the earliest forms assumed by the belief that this life 
 does not wholly satisfy the demands of a moral order, and calls 
 for some doom upon the wicked, some recompense for the just. 
 But it was nowhere worked out with such precision as in 
 ancient Egypt ; and nowhere received such splendid literary and 
 monumental expression as is provided in those chapters added 
 to the Book of the Dead which first appear shortly before the 
 fourteenth century B.C., and are inscribed with such copious 
 illustration in the wonderful sculpture-paintings of sarcophagus 
 and tomb. It is especially observable in the two representations 
 which I have described to you, that the soul is being weighed, 
 Is this an accidental coincidence ? Is it simply due to a common 
 metaphor, as when the Psalmist declares 1 
 
 Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high 
 
 degree are a lie : 
 In the balances they will go up ; 
 They are altogether lighter than vanity ; 
 
 or when the hand -writing on the wall yields the terrible 
 meaning " Tekel^ thou art weighed in the balances, and art 
 found wanting " ? 2 I cannot think so, but the links of con- 
 nection are not easy to find. The incident of the soul-weighing 
 does not make its appearance in Christian art till the eleventh 
 century, when it immediately becomes highly popular. It occurs 
 on the portal of a church at St. Trophime, in the south of 
 France, assigned to this date. 3 It is wrought in mosaic in the 
 twelfth century in the cathedral of the Island of Torcello, near 
 Venice ; it is figured in a copy of the Gospels, at Wolfenbiittel, 
 dated 1194; the Chaldon fresco seems to belong to the last 
 decades of the same hundred years ; 4 and it is described in the 
 vision of the Irish Tundale, attributed to the year 1 149. It then 
 takes its place in the representation of the Last Day, which seized 
 hold of the imagination of this age with such extraordinary 
 power. This was a new subject for Western art. The first 
 believers threw all the passion of their hope into the resurrection- 
 
 1 Psalm Ixii. 9 (R.V.). 
 
 2 Dan. v. 27 ; cp. Job xxxi. 6, and 4 Esdr. iii. 34. 
 
 8 Heider, Die Romanische Kirche xu Schongrabcrn, 237. 
 
 4 See Mr. J. G. Waller's pamphlet, On a Painting discovered in Chaldon Church, 
 Surrey, London, 1885. Mr. Waller mentions some other English instances.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 187 
 
 joy, and the life of blessed fellowship with* their Lord. For 
 centuries the sculptures of their sarcophagi, and the pictures of 
 their tombs, are filled with the emblems of the risen glory, and 
 the sojourn in the heavenly fields. In these there are no terrors 
 in the infernal world, no terrible test through Michael and his 
 scales. But the Jewish and the Christian fathers both looked 
 for the weighing of men's actions after death, 1 and it is by no 
 violent transition that the soul itself, or a figure representing the 
 moral sum of its deeds for good or ill, should take its place in the 
 scale. 2 So Rashnu, according to Persian teaching, the angel of 
 justice, in the presence of the mediator Mithra, presided over the 
 weighing of the spirits at the Chinvat bridge, leading from" hell 
 to Paradise. 3 And with an analogous purport Zeus weighed in 
 his golden scales the destinies of the Greeks or Trojans, or of 
 Hector and Achilles, ere the last mortal combat, 4 a theme which 
 ./Eschylus took for his drama of the " Psychostasia," and of 
 which more than one representation has come down to us. 6 
 
 But why should the duty of superintending the scales be 
 assigned to Michael ? Ever since the Book of Daniel he had 
 acquired a more and more prominent part in Jewish angelology 
 in connection with the destinies of the dead. It was he who 
 contended with the devil for the body of Moses. It was he who 
 guided the souls of the righteous to God. He served as the 
 mystic high-priest of the heavenly Jerusalem, where the just 
 
 1 According to the theology of the Synagogue (Weber, Alt-Synag. Theol. p. 271), 
 it was solemnly performed by God. Some Rabbis thought the judgment was held 
 on New Year's Day, and the verdict was sealed on the Day of Atonement. Others 
 regarded it as a daily liability. See Rosh ha-Shana, in Wiinsche, Bab. Talm. i. 327. 
 In a passage attributed to Gregory (" dicit enim Greg, in Dialogo "), which I have 
 been unable to find, in the Sermon on St. Michael (Sermones Dormi Secure, Ivii.), the 
 good and evil angels come on the separation of the soul from the body, and weigh 
 the merits and demerits of the deceased ; cp. Waller, p. 36. The balance is occasion- 
 ally figured in Christian sepulchral inscriptions, e.g. Aringhi, Roma Subterr., ed. 1659, 
 Paris, ii. 12, 59. Prof. Cheetham, art. "Balance" in Diet, of Christian 
 Antiquities, is inclined to believe that it has there no moral significance ; but the 
 question can hardly be decided without a larger basis of comparison. Is the balance 
 ever found on Gentile tombs of the same period with a decided trade-meaning ? 
 See the Testament of Abraham, in Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. ii. No. 2, 
 p. 70. 
 
 2 The imaginative presentment of a man's moral worth in a counterpart of 
 beauty or ugliness is of ancient date cp. the story of Papman, the incarnation of 
 Prajapati's evil deeds, in the Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 3, 33 ; fendldad, Farg. xix. 30, 
 in Sacred Books of the East, iv. 213 ; Tasht, xxii., in S.B.E. xxiii. 314. 
 
 8 Pahlavi Texts, Sacred Books of the East, xxiv. 1 8. 
 
 4 Iliad, ix. 67-74, xxii. 210-214. 
 
 6 Cp. Didron, Christian Iconography, London, 1886, ii. 1 80.
 
 1 88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 were offered in solemn sacrifice to the Most High. 1 The beliefs 
 of the Synagogue passed into the Church, and when Christian 
 faith was confronted with Greek thought, a remarkable assimila- 
 tion took place. The same function of guardian and guide of 
 souls had been discharged since ancient days by Hermes. This 
 can, indeed, be traced back to early mythological ideas, though 
 Diogenes Laertius affirmed that Pythagoras had brought the 
 myth to Greece from Egypt. To him were the souls committed 
 for escort to the judgment-seat below, just as the EgyptianThoth 
 conducted them to the foot of the throne, and presided over their 
 trial. So in the tomb of M. Aurelius, a priest of Mithra, does 
 Mercury stand at the opening of the descent to the under-world 
 through which the soul of the lady Vibia is carried off to the 
 land of the dead. There he introduces her to the tribunal of 
 Dis and Proserpine, and after the judgment the " bonus angelus" 
 escorts her through a gate into flowery fields, where she is seen 
 reclining at the banquet of the righteous in the realm of the 
 blest. 2 Thus the part of Thoth-Hermes-Mercury was passed 
 on to Michael. He is figured on a gem seated on a rock, 
 wearing the winged petasus emblem of the god and hold- 
 ing his caduceus ; and underneath is inscribed the name of 
 the archangel. 3 Churches dedicated to St. Michael arose on 
 the site of ancient temples of Mercury ; and when the theme 
 of judgment became once more prominent in Christian ex- 
 pectation, and acquired pictorial form, Michael took his place 
 in it with the functions which he had inherited from his 
 predecessors in Greece and Egypt, and thus on the walls of 
 sanctuaries in our own land the thoughts of ancient hearts are 
 still revealed. 4 
 
 1 Mr. Schechter kindly refers me to the following passages in the Babylonian 
 Talmud, Chagigah, iz b (Wunsche, i. 271), Menachoth, 10 a (ibid. ii. 4, p. 56), and 
 Sebachim, 62 a (ibid, ii. 4, p. 9). 
 
 2 See Garucci, Storia della Arte Christiana, vi. 493, 494. 
 8 Didron, Christ. Icon. ii. 181. 
 
 4 See Maury's essays on Psychostasis and Psychopompic deities, in the Revue 
 Archeologique, 1844, i. Subsequent writers have not, I think, added anything 
 material to his investigations. Springer, in the Repertorium Jiir Kunst-wisstnscAaft, 
 vii. 1884, p. 396, denies the filiation which Maury seeks to establish, on the ground 
 that it cannot be shown in any older representation than the twelfth century, or 
 traced back to early Christian art traditions ; he believes it is sufficiently 
 accounted for by the Biblical texts. But in view of the fact that the judgment 
 itself is not depicted earlier (save as it is implied in one or two representations of the 
 sheep and the goats), it is not surprising that Michael does not appear with his 
 scales. It is not, however, possible that fresh stimulus may have been given to
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 189 
 
 If from an incident in the Last Judgment you pass to the 
 Judgment itself, the central conception of Christ as Judge, which 
 plays so large a part in mediaeval thought, carries us back at 
 once into the New Testament, and plants us in the very heart of 
 the great cycle of Messianic ideas. And one of the first ques- 
 tions which the student of primitive Christianity is called upon 
 to answer relates to the permanent worth of these ideas. Are 
 they essential and enduring elements of Christianity, or do they 
 simply constitute the outward form through which the religion 
 of Jesus was launched upon the world the husk or shell which 
 its vital power burst asunder and outgrew ? The problem is 
 not an easy one. It demands a patient examination of the 
 conditions under which the Gospel records were compiled, of 
 the words ascribed to Jesus, and the elements of belief from 
 which they sprang. And when all these considerations have 
 been weighed, and the long history of the Messianic hope has 
 been traced to its furthest roots, it will still remain to many 
 minds a mystery how, in the providence of God, a particular and 
 national expectation should have become the vehicle of uni- 
 versal truth, and what seems an illusion should have proved 
 the most potent factor in winning the victory for reality. 
 
 Here lies a difficulty to which the philosophical historian 
 will offer no hasty answer, though he will see at once that even 
 within the records of Christianity it is by no means unique. But 
 the consideration of an analogous case beyond its range may not 
 be without significance. If the inquirer into the origin of the 
 Gospel-story is confronted with the widespread outlook for the 
 coming Messiah, a similar anticipation lies embedded in the 
 origins of Buddhism. The ministry of Jesus is related by the 
 Evangelists under the conviction that he is the predicted Christ, 
 the fulfilment of ancient prophecy, whom seers had beheld afar 
 off, and for whom the nation yearned. In the same way the 
 career of Gotama is described in the Buddhist sacred books, under 
 the conviction that he is the " Great Man," to whom Scripture 
 pointed, and for whose advent of deliverance mankind was wait- 
 ing. Thus, in the introduction to the Amba/Ma Sutta, the 
 
 Western imagination about this time by the new contact with the East, which made 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries so fruitful for the subsequent development of 
 European thought ?
 
 190 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 Brahman Pokkharasadi, having heard the report that a Buddha 
 has arisen in the person of Gotama of the Sakya clan, sends his 
 disciple Amba/Ma to inquire whether Gotama actually satisfies 
 the conditions of this mighty claim. 1 
 
 Now at that time the Brahman Pokkharasadi had a disciple 
 named Amba/^a, a student versed in the ancient Scriptures. He 
 was acquainted with the three Vedas, with vocabularies and 
 etymology, and the traditions of old. He had studied metre, he 
 knew the art of exposition, he was proficient in casuistry and the 
 marks of the " Great Man," and was duly sanctioned and recognised 
 in respect of his own master's teaching of the Three-fold Knowledge, 
 according to the saying, " Whatsoever I know, that thou knowest 
 also ; whatsoever thou knowest, that I know likewise." 
 
 Then the Brahman Pokkharasadi said to the young Amba///>a, 
 " The Samaffa Gotama, dear Ambatt^a, sprung from the Sakya line, 
 who left the Sakya family for the religious life, being on his journey 
 among the Kosalas with five hundred mendicant followers, has arrived 
 at Icchanankala, and is staying there in the forest-grove. Now, 
 concerning the venerable Gotama the report has gone forth that 
 this is a Blessed One, holyj and fully enlightened, abounding in 
 wisdom and goodness, happy, possessing knowledge of the world, 
 without an equal, a guide to erring mortals, teacher of gods and 
 men, a blessed Buddha. He by himself understands and sees as it 
 were face to face this universe, the world of devas, the worlds 
 of Mara and of Brahma, and all creatures Samaras and Brahmans, 
 gods and men, and he makes this knowledge known to others. 
 The truth doth he proclaim both in its letter and in its spirit, 
 lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, lovely in its consum- 
 mation ; the higher life doth he make known in all its purity and 
 perfectness. 2 Good is it to go and see such holy men. Go now, 
 dear Amba//^a, and approach the Samawa Gotama, and when thou 
 comest to him discern whether the venerable Gotama is what the 
 report that has gone forth concerning him affirms, or not ; whether 
 the venerable Gotama is such an one or not such an one. Thus 
 shall we know the venerable Gotama." 
 
 "But," asks Ambatf^a, "how shall I discern whether the 
 venerable Gotama is what the report that has gone forth concerning 
 him affirms, whether the venerable Gotama is such an one or not 
 such an one ? " 
 
 1 Dtgha Nikaya, i. 88. The whole story will now be found translated by Prof. 
 T. W. Rhys Davids, in the Dialogues of the Buddha^ 1899 (Sacred Boots of the 
 Buddhists, ii.), p. 109. 
 
 2 This long formula frequently recurs in the Buddhist texts. For the translation 
 see Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids, " Buddhist Suttas," S.B.E. xi. 187.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 191 
 
 " There have come down to us in the Scriptures," answers the 
 Brahman, " thirty-two marks of the Great Man ; and for the Great 
 Man endowed with these there are two courses open, and no more. 
 If he lives a householder's life, he becomes a king, a universal 
 monarch righteous and reigning in righteousness, lord of the four 
 quarters of the earth, conqueror, protector of his people. . . . 
 After conquering the ocean-girt earth without a rod and without a 
 sword, he sits enthroned. But if he quits his home, and leads a 
 religious life without a home, he becomes a holy Buddha, who 
 removes from the world the veil of ignorance and sin. Now I, 
 dear Ambatf/a, have taught thee the Scriptures, and thou hast 
 received them." 1 
 
 It is not necessary to recite now the sequel of the story, in 
 the course of which first Ambatt/ja and then Pokkharasadi is 
 satisfied that Gotama possesses the marks of the Great Man, 
 and is in fact a blessed Buddha. The chief point now deserv- 
 ing of notice is the representation, that the expectation of the 
 Great Man was founded on the ancient mantras or sacred 
 hymns, as the hope of the Messiah rested on Hebrew pro- 
 phecy, and formed part of the current teaching of the Brahmans, 
 just as the Rabbis discussed the conditions of the manifestation 
 of the Christ. The enumeration of the marks is part of the 
 regular sacred lore transmitted by the preceptor to the pupil, 
 and handed on from one generation to another. Even the 
 double function of the Great Man is apparently anticipated : 
 he is either to be a Universal Monarch ruling without recourse 
 to arms in righteousness, or he is to be a Teacher who will 
 lift from the world the veil of ignorance and sin. The in- 
 fluence of this conception upon the legend of Gotama's in- 
 carnation, his wondrous birth, his infancy, his departure from 
 home, his attainment of Buddhahood, his temptation and his 
 ministry, we may trace in more detail hereafter : it must 
 suffice to point out now that in the earliest story of the 
 infancy so far accessible 2 within the Pifakas themselves, the 
 sage Asita, to whom the babe is presented, is described as 
 "knowing the marks and the mantras" and on their basis 
 predicting his future Buddhahood. When the Teacher actually 
 starts on his career, wherever the report is circulated that the 
 Buddha has appeared in Gotama, there is no doubt or inquiry 
 
 1 Comp. Sella Sutta, in Sutta Nipata, iii. 7 ; S.B.E. x. 99-102. 
 8 In the Nalaka Sutta of the Sutta Nipata, S.B.E. x. 125.
 
 192 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 in Brahmanical circles as to what it means, any more than the 
 Sanhedrin was at a loss to interpret the claim raised by the 
 Apostles on behalf of their Master. The sole question is, 
 " Can the Samara Gotama justify his pretensions " ? " Art 
 thou he that should come, or do we look for another " ? 
 
 Jt is much to be regretted that, though the marks are twice 
 enumerated, the texts do not think it necessary to specify the 
 passages on which they are founded. It is quite possible that 
 the conception of their roots in the ancient hymns may be 
 really of later origin, or may be due to schools of thought or 
 forms of popular expectation unrepresented in the Brahmanical 
 books which have come down to us. Subsequent ages certainly 
 dropped them altogether out of sight, for the statement of the 
 commentator that the science of explaining the marks of the 
 Great Man extended to twelve thousand treatises, wherein the 
 Buddhz-mantras were comprised in sixteen thousand verses, 1 is 
 tantamount to an admission that this part of the Buddhist 
 dogma had been forgotten, and in later days existed only in 
 imagination. There is, therefore, no clue from the Buddhist 
 side to the hymns which were regarded by the Order as pro- 
 phetic of the Teacher. Under diverse political conditions the 
 hope had never assumed the apocalyptic form which clothed so 
 many passionate utterances from Daniel to Revelation, and no 
 work survives (if such ever existed) in which a believer 
 vindicated his Master's Buddhahood against the Brahmans, as 
 Justin the Martyr sought to prove to the Jew Trypho the 
 Messiahship of Jesus. In the absence of such aid, we are driven 
 back upon the literature of the great caste in whose keeping 
 were the sacred hymns. The search is not wholly fruitless, 
 though the results which it yields cannot be called precise. 2 
 It leads back to two great conceptions which make their 
 appearance within the limits of the Rig Veda. One is that of 
 Vishnu, who was lord of the world, which he folded in his 
 beneficence, descending to the earth to allot the inheritances 
 of men, and traversing the mundane regions for Manu when he 
 was oppressed. 3 The second is that of Maha-purusha (literally, 
 the " Great Man "), a mysterious cosmic form, the pervading 
 
 1 Sumangala Filasini, i. 248. 
 
 2 It must be enough to refer here to the brilliant analysis in Senart' Le'gende 
 du Buddha. 
 
 3 Muir, Santkrit Texts, iv. 87, 82.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 193 
 
 spirit of creation, source of the sacred knowledge, so that he 
 was the origin of all wisdom and truth. How these were 
 fused together into the shapes in which we find them in the 
 Buddhist texts we can only dimly guess. But the issue of the 
 process is not equally obscure. If we should be justified in 
 inferring from the Gospels alone, without other evidence, 
 the existence of a belief among the countrymen of Jesus in one 
 " who should come," we are in the same way warranted in 
 affirming the prevalence in the Ganges valley around Benares, 
 in Behar and Oude, of a hope that a mighty Sovereign or an 
 enlightened Teacher would arise, when the Sakya-Son went 
 forth to found his kingdom of righteousness. Taking up a 
 current theory derived, as was supposed, from the religious 
 tradition which the Brahmans regarded as revealed, the 
 disciples of Gotama applied it to their master. How much of 
 it he himself appropriated, it will never be possible to decide 
 with certainty ; but it is clear that it has profoundly influenced 
 the picture of his career. Suffused with the vivid moral 
 enthusiasm which it was the special effect of Gotama's teach- 
 ing to evoke, every part of it immediately acquires an ethical 
 colouring. In the discourse on the Marks, 1 each of the thirty- 
 two signs is traced back to some antecedent excellence. The 
 wheels with their wondrous rays appear on his feet, because in 
 a former birth he had become man for the welfare of the many, 
 dispelling anxiety, terror, and fear. He is taper-fingered, long- 
 heeled, and of noble stature, because he had abstained from 
 taking the life of any creature. His golden hue arose from the 
 days when he had been gentle, abounding in hope, free from 
 anger, wrath, and ill-will; while the protuberance, corre- 
 sponding to a glory on his head, sprang out of his past career 
 as a leader of the multitude through virtuous paths, his 
 eminence in right conduct in word and deed and thought, 
 through distribution of gifts, through the practice of virtue, 
 through Sabbath observance, through cherishing of father and 
 mother, through reverence for teachers, and such other 
 excellent ways. It is in accordance with these conceptions 
 of character and blameless conversation that the picture of 
 Gotama is drawn in the Jatakas as a pious king, who will not 
 suffer his thousand warriors to resist an invading army, but 
 allows himself and them to be taken prisoners and led away to 
 
 1 The Lakkhana Suttanta, Dlgha Nlkaya, xxx. 
 N
 
 1 94 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 execution, exhorting them to cherish goodwill even to their 
 enemies ; l or that other picture of him as the universal 
 monarch of boundless beneficence, who constructs lotus ponds 
 for the use of all the people, and plants them with flowers of 
 every season, and stations bathing-men on the banks, and 
 finally establishes "a perpetual grant to wit, food for the 
 hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, means of 
 conveyance for the infirm, couches for the tired, wives for 
 those who desired wives, and money for those who were in 
 want." 2 These are, no doubt, the peculiar creations of ethical 
 Buddhism, but they were not produced out of nothing they 
 were the result of the moral influences embodied in the 
 Teaching and in the Order, working on antecedent material. 
 The same is the case also with the central conception of the 
 Buddha who passes through a long series of preliminary 
 existences, with unflagging resolve to devote himself to the 
 welfare of the world, by attaining and revealing the truth 
 which will deliver it from ignorance and sin. We may reject 
 the view of life in which Gotama found peace ; it is directly 
 opposed to that which we have learned of Jesus, which we 
 find confirmed by the age-long experience of faithful endeavour, 
 which we have realised with an awful wonder and a trembling 
 joy in moments of vision vouchsafed to our own souls ; but, 
 none the less, the growth of Buddhism, its missionary zeal, its 
 widespread diffusion, demand an explanation. Founded upon 
 essential error, supported on an illusory expectation, turning 
 for proof to prophecies which could not be verified, how should 
 it have conquered empires and drawn hundreds of millions to 
 the Teacher's feet ? The answer is not hard to find. It is, in 
 brief, that it presented a new moral ideal. It spoke with 
 authority, but it was an authority that penetrated at once to 
 the conscience, and called forth fresh aspiration. It began by 
 offering a remedy for the miseries of existence, but it placed 
 it in holiness for its own sake ; and it portrayed this in the 
 sublime figure of the man who gave not one life only, but an 
 immense succession, amid labour and struggle, toil and pain, 
 to the service of his fellows, and opened the way for others to 
 do likewise. And if Buddhism could thus spread through 
 India, China, and Thibet, is it surprising that Christianity 
 should burst the swaddling bands of its infancy, subdue the 
 
 1 Jataka, \. 264, Engl. translation (1895), i. 130. 2 Buddhist Suttas, p. 264.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 195 
 
 Roman Empire, win Europe to its side, and in these last ages 
 travel round the world ? The secret of growth in both cases 
 must be the same ; it must lie in that which satisfies the 
 abiding instincts of humanity. No falsehood can live save by 
 the truth to which it is akin. It is the great end of all history 
 of thought, in philosophy, art, poetry, religion, to reach the 
 reality within the form. The common power of Christianity 
 and Buddhism, so far as they run in parallel courses, and show 
 like results, must lie in their joint appeal, though in different 
 ways, to the same consciousness of evil, the same earnestness of 
 endeavour, the same longing after holiness, the same implicit 
 trust that in the constitution of things there dwells an eternal 
 Right. 1 
 
 VI 
 
 But I need not tell you that Christianity does much more 
 than this. Buddhism and Christianity are both of them 
 religions of redemption, but Christianity is also a religion 
 of universal progress. "Work out your own salvation with 
 diligence," were the dying words of Gotama to his disciples ; 
 but he could not add that which gives the Christian strength, 
 " for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work." 
 The impulse imparted by Jesus embodied itself in the Church, 
 which has now carried round the whole globe the Master's 
 prayer, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it 
 is in heaven." In this great thought is centred all our hope. 
 The Christian minister knows that his highest task is to enter 
 into its secret, and apply it to the enigmas of life. But he who 
 would take up this service must first learn what life is. It is 
 not a sufficient education for the physiologist simply to eat and 
 sleep ; nor is it the sole qualification for understanding the 
 phenomena of society to earn a living, to read a newspaper, 
 and pay your rates. He who aspires to be the interpreter of 
 the kingdom of God, even though it be to a handful of hearers 
 in an obscure congregation, cannot dispense with earnest study 
 of the conditions around him. The vicissitudes of a hundred 
 years have not sufficed to crush the spirit of the Revolution ; 
 
 1 The whole Buddhist scheme depends on the absolute certainty of the un- 
 erring regulation of the succession of existences under the law of moral requital 
 summed up in the term Karma. By what agency this law is enforced is never ex- 
 plained, but its perfect faithfulness is everywhere assumed.
 
 196 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 it is assuming new and vigorous forms ; at every turn the 
 foundations of ancient authority are attacked and its demands 
 contested ; nor is it possible to fling the field of religion open to 
 all inquirers, and over the gates of human institutions to write 
 up " no admittance for unbelievers." It is the object of our 
 faith to make the Church co-extensive with the world, not 
 merely in geographical fact, but in moral and spiritual sig- 
 nificance, to knit the phases of human energy into one whole, 
 to view the modes in which that energy expresses itself in their 
 right relations to each other, and discern the common 
 purpose that runs through them all. But if this faith cannot 
 justify itself either by the outward facts of history, or by the in- 
 ward judgment of conscience, it will be in vain for us to invoke 
 the sanctions of a supernatural revelation. If God does work 
 in us to will or to do, the products of human toil, the laborious 
 achievements of the age-long efforts of our race, expressed in 
 the ideas of the family, of property, law, government, the state, 
 cannot be without significance : and within the philosophy of 
 man, beside a philosophy of history and religion, you must 
 include a philosophy of society. On such a study you will be 
 called to enter : what, finally, is its relation to that to which I 
 have already bidden you ? Only one aspect of it can be 
 noted now. Once more it lies in the maxim of the ancient 
 sage : to understand the present you must investigate the past. 
 And what, you will ask me, will be the gain ? Has it not 
 been said by one of our modern teachers, 1 "We survey the 
 past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless 
 blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty 
 aspiration " ? so that, with a corresponding bitterness, another 
 writer has grimly described history as " the martyrdom of man." 
 There is a point of view, no doubt, from which these indict- 
 ments are easily brought. We all know that there are pages in 
 the record which are red with violence, and others that are dull 
 and dark with ignorance, just as in the daily newspaper you 
 find the reports of the police courts, and the inspectors of schools 
 sometimes make alarming discoveries about the deficiencies of 
 our national education. Yet, who would wish to exchange the 
 Oxford of to-day for the Britain through which the Romans 
 drove Icneild Street, or the unnamed land in which the cave- 
 
 1 Mr. Balfour, Address at the Church Congress, Manchester, 1888 j afterward* 
 embodied in the Foundations of Belief, p. 30.
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 197 
 
 dweller struggled with the tiger and the bear ? This at any 
 rate has not been the opinion of humanity itself; and in this 
 respect, at least, its own pleas ought to be admitted by those 
 who so easily dismiss the whole of its endeavours as futile, and 
 its hopes as vain. And the answer which one generation after 
 another will give as you interrogate its secret trust, is this : 
 " The purpose which inspires us is not our own, it is given us 
 By heaven ; the sanctions which guard us are divine ; the rule 
 of our life comes from on high." All through the mighty 
 story the roots of law and of religion are again and again inter- 
 twined, and you cannot study the simplest rite or the most 
 elementary social usage without the imaginative reconstruction 
 of an entire faith. And in its higher forms it is still the same. 
 One chapter after another in the great statute book of the nations 
 begins, " Thus saith the Lord." The voice may be that of a 
 man, but it still points to an authority above itself. When 
 Zaleucus was chosen by the people of Locri to draw up for 
 them a code of laws, he began, says Diodorus, 1 first of all, 
 concerning the immortal gods. " For at the very outset of 
 his legislation he declared that the dwellers in the cities ought 
 to be convinced that the gods exist, and that the order and 
 beauty of the heavens should teach them that these are not the 
 products of human handiwork or of chance. Therefore, let 
 them reverence the gods as the real causes of all things fair 
 and good in life ; and let them keep their hearts pure from all 
 evil ; inasmuch as the gods do not take pleasure in the sacrifices 
 of the wicked, but in the righteous and fair conduct of the 
 good." Zaleucus, doubtless, never heard of Isaiah. But if 
 these thoughts were really his, they are not unworthy to stand 
 beside the words of the contemporary Hebrew seer who took 
 up the doctrine of his great predecessor " Cease to do evil, 
 learn to do good " ; and affirmed, " He hath showed thee, O 
 man, what is good ; and what doth Yahweh require of thee, 
 but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God ? " I will not ask whether these particular sentiments 
 come under the head of "helpless blundering" or of "empty 
 aspiration." Be it enough to notice that wherever men have 
 reflected on the origin of things, on the forces embodied in 
 their great social traditions, on the real meaning of their 
 customs, arts, institutions, laws, these have always seemed to 
 1 Diod. Sic. xii. zo.
 
 198 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 them stamped with a significance transcending human skill ; 
 they are the revelation of a God. Nowhere is this idea worked 
 out more clearly than in the religion of Israel ; nowhere is it 
 applied with such power to the condition of a people ; nowhere 
 has it so obviously moulded the life of a nation. In the study 
 of the Old Testament you will be confronted again and again 
 with the same kind of social problems which beset us at this 
 day, and you will always find them solved in the name of 
 religion. The scope of the solution may be limited, but the 
 solution itself is derived from the relation of Israel to its God. 
 And as you track the same ideas in other lands you will find 
 that the great social systems which have ruled men's lives for 
 hundreds nay, thousands of years have held their ground 
 because they provided a synthesis of human knowledge and 
 conduct through duty and faith. The attempts to explain the 
 sources of ancient polities in the cunning of the few which 
 imposed on the blindness of the many, have happily been 
 cleared out of the way by the new methods which the con- 
 ception of evolution has placed in the student's hands. He 
 knows now that priesthoods are established on something 
 besides deception on the one part and credulity on the other ; 
 and that government is more than a scramble of the strongest, 
 masking itself under the forms of a transcendent order. In 
 the ancient communities, therefore, in which religion was the 
 vital force of the social organism, we shall discern an evidence 
 not of its impotence or mischievous meddling then, but of the 
 need for its inspiration now. The hope of the Kingdom will 
 become clearer and stronger as we wind our way through the 
 mazes of economic law and industrial development. The 
 desire to labour for it will be converted from a vague wish, a 
 loose idea, a hazy vision, into a distinct perception of some 
 specific evil we can help to set right, some specific good which 
 we could realise in no other way ; and we shall learn that there 
 is a significance of divine teaching in the forms of society 
 beneath which we live, even though it should require us to 
 overthrow the old and to construct the new. 
 
 For it cannot be too often repeated that if there be a 
 Providence, he must provide. The scene of that provision, 
 so far as man is concerned, can lie only in his own history ; 
 and if the sum of human experience is dismissed as without 
 worth, and the highest of human achievements be written
 
 IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY 199 
 
 down as folly, it will be in vain to give us back by supernatural 
 revelation as to the future the truth which you have taken out 
 of our history in the past ; for we shall have no power by which 
 to test it on its reception, or to understand it when it is 
 received. Enter into the temple of the wide world's faith. 
 Pass from the rude shrine of its coarsest homage to the 
 sanctuary of holiest self-sacrifice ; listen to the countless 
 litanies in which the infinite variety of emotion and endeavour 
 has poured itself forth since the world began ; read in chamber 
 after chamber the inscriptions in which believers of all lands 
 have declared their faith ; will you tell me then that they are 
 only tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing, and you must have a fresh revelation protected by 
 independent guarantees ? If the finger of heaven should write 
 a new creed for us upon the walls, where is the prophet that 
 can interpret it, and how shall we know that his interpretation 
 is correct ? In the vast cathedral of man's religion the parts of 
 the mighty pile are not all alike. The earliest remains are 
 clumsy and uncouth. In choir and transept there are in- 
 equalities of style. Buttress and arch sometimes interfere 
 with one another, and meaningless monuments block up the 
 view. Yet, as you climb from crypt to pinnacle and spire, you 
 find that the builders have builded more wisely than they knew. 
 Even the plan that was outgrown pointed the way to a nobler 
 work. The ancient stones often serve new uses, and differences 
 of detail minister to the unity of the whole. When you traverse 
 its aisles and see the throng of worshippers that no man can 
 number, ask them not too curiously in whose name they have 
 come, but remember that in all ages Wisdom entering into 
 holy souls maketh them friends of God and prophets. If the 
 windows seem narrow and gloomy, forget not that, after all, 
 it is one light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world. And should the accents of the preacher sound strange, 
 be not impatient of the sermon : you are, perchance, listening 
 to thoughts wrapt in an antique speech which have served in 
 the life of the race to sustain the trusts 
 
 Which are the master-light of all our seeing, 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the Eternal Silence.
 
 VII 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 Address to the Students of Manchester New College, London, 
 
 ind Octoher 1884, introductory to courses of lectures in Ecclesiastical 
 
 History, and the History of Religion in India 
 
 J. E. C. 1884 
 
 20 1
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 No one, it has been said, truly knows his own language who 
 does not know another also. The observation is equally true 
 of religions. No one truly knows his own religion who does 
 not know another also. For differences of name signify, after 
 all, more than varieties of speech, and go deeper than changes 
 of colour. They correspond to differences of inward experi- 
 ence, to variations of modes of thought, which demand respect- 
 ful sympathy wherever they are sincere ; nay, more, they must 
 be approached, not with the ill-concealed scorn of a critic of 
 superstitions, but with the loving earnestness of a disciple who 
 seeks to learn the secret of the heart living in forms that have 
 neither charm for his sentiment nor reason for his intellect. 
 Only the prophet may stand alone upon the mount of vision, 
 and bid all the world ascend and see. He speaks of eternal things 
 from no inductions of experience, but from the inner perceptions 
 of the soul. What he utters is no comparison of theologies ; it 
 springs from the immediate apprehension of the presence of the 
 living God ; the altar flame is kindled at no lesser source than 
 the everlasting light. I well know, Gentlemen, that only as 
 you stand on the same heights, and possess the same directness 
 and independence of insight, will your words be charged with 
 their fullest power. Only as you yield yourselves the willing 
 servants of a loftier necessity of truth and righteousness and 
 love, will you open the way of divine life to weary and strug- 
 gling hearts. But this capacity it is not ours to bestow. No 
 college can command the gifts of the spirit ; no teacher can do 
 that for which the trusting heart waits on God alone. We 
 can only help you to clear away some of the obstacles that may 
 check the free growth towards a wider life ; we can only try to 
 disclose some sources of thought, unlock some channels of 
 
 203
 
 204 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 impulse, and lay open some springs of devotion, through which 
 the streams of Heaven may well up within. 
 
 For this reason I invite you this session to enter on the 
 study of other phases of thought outside the range of our own 
 immediate history. For us, indeed, I might plead that this 
 discipline is peculiarly needful. The smallness of our numbers, 
 our protest against the doctrinal restraints of the great majority 
 of the Churches, necessarily cut us off in large measure from 
 the various bodies which contribute to the religious life of our 
 fellow-countrymen ; and our rejection of the central article of 
 the Christian faith, as it is commonly interpreted, secludes us 
 still further from their sympathy. Forced unto this unwilling 
 attitude of isolation, we have too readily fallen back on our 
 conviction of our own superiority, hardly caring to inquire 
 what is the inner meaning of doctrines which we have discarded, 
 wherein still lies their power over thought and deed. This 
 arrogant indifference is one of the worst offences in those who 
 seek to be the mediators between the past and the future who 
 aspire to assist, if not positively to guide and direct, the trans- 
 formations of theological conception under the influence of 
 modern ideas. It is in part to guide you against this besetting 
 temptation that I propose for your investigation certain selected 
 types of Christian faith and character. Hitherto our survey of 
 Christianity has led us to view it especially as a great moral 
 power operating upon individual and social life. We have 
 asked what fresh ideas it introduced, what changes these effected, 
 and what modifications they in their turn sustained in the 
 development of new forms of civil and religious order. To 
 detach these phenomena and give them the utmost distinctness 
 in our field of view, we passed by the great doctrinal growths 
 which, from another side, may be treated as the essence of 
 Christian history. We endeavoured to deal with it, not as a 
 scheme of divine truth, but as a principle of inward life. We 
 regarded the central aim of the Church as the warfare with 
 sin ; its fundamental idea we found to be the embodiment of 
 the divine righteousness in human society by the establishment 
 of the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of all men. On this, 
 in the last resort, were reared the vast dogmatic constructions 
 which ever since have claimed the name of orthodox ; and here 
 is the real root of the vitality of all hierarchies. But behind 
 this aspect of Christianity, as the manifestation of the ethical
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 205 
 
 passion in its noblest form, lies the further question of its 
 source whence did it issue, and on what has it been sustained ? 
 To this the reply has always been sure and simple in the per- 
 vading presence of the holy God. There and there only is a 
 power adequate to so great a task. To hear this answer in its 
 clearest tones, we must join once more the band of disciples on 
 the mountain side, and catch the accents of Jesus as he seeks 
 to set men in fellowship with this divine life ; we must fight 
 the good fight with Paul, or enter through the Fourth Gospel 
 the sanctuary of worship in the spirit. But we have to deal 
 also with the solutions which reach us along the lines of later 
 history, and of these I shall lay before you, in some detail, 
 chiefly two. The four great Latin Fathers whom the instinct 
 of the Roman Catholic Church has selected pre-eminently as 
 its representative Doctors Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and 
 Gregory supply us with the view which emerged from the 
 profound moral struggle of Christianity with the expiring 
 philosophy and the corrupt Paganism of the Empire. There 
 we shall find those conceptions of God and the soul, of duty 
 and destiny, which lay at the foundation of the religious life of 
 the Middle Ages, and were renewed at least, in some elements 
 with fresh force at the Reformation. And in the study ot 
 modern Catholicism we shall learn to understand, and perhaps 
 to some extent to respect, the ideas that animate the most 
 extraordinary hierarchy which the world has ever seen. Among 
 the religious phenomena of our own day the increase of sacer- 
 dotalism in this country is certainly not one of the least note- 
 worthy, and its ideal aims can nowhere be so well studied as in 
 the system which gave it birth and has planted its agents in 
 every quarter of the globe. 
 
 Christianity, however, is not the only form of Theism, nor 
 the only vehicle of moral energy, which history presents ; and 
 while we investigate the great spiritual forces which have 
 determined some of its chief developments, it may be not 
 uninstructive to compare with them some other manifestations 
 of the religious life. For this purpose, after a preliminary 
 survey of some lower types, I shall lay before you a sketch of 
 the growth of religious thought in India. Through a subject 
 so vast, and in a field where generations of scholars must follow 
 the steps of the noble pioneers of inquiry ere full assurance is 
 obtained, I can only offer you but imperfect guidance ; and it
 
 2o6 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 may seem a rash presumption to attempt to lead you through 
 so bewildering a maze. But the devoted labours of the last ten 
 years have placed a large amount of new material in the student's 
 hands. The publication and translation of important texts has 
 proceeded with surprising rapidity, and an enthusiastic spirit 
 of enterprise and research has opened the path to those who 
 have patience to wait while the first obscurities are slowly cleared 
 away. And how extraordinary is the panorama which is then 
 revealed ! There is a religious life continuous among the same 
 people on the same soil for more than three thousand years. 
 There is an order of society which had existed for centuries 
 before our English forefathers first set foot upon our shores, and 
 still abides essentially unchanged. There is an ancient literature 
 which, even at the time of Alexander's conquests, exceeded in 
 richness the literature of Greece. There are epics on a far 
 larger scale than Homer ; philosophical systems which may 
 challenge Plato and Aristotle ; there are mystics who speak a 
 language strangely familiar j reformers who fought battles for 
 spiritual freedom like Luther ; above all, the noble form of 
 Gotama the Buddha, whose legend presents such strange 
 affinities with Christian story. In the great procession of 
 religions which passes across the scene, among the multitudin- 
 ous forms of faith and usage which past and present unceasingly 
 exhibit, it may well be difficult to thread our way. One point 
 alone can I single out for our consideration now and this I 
 must propound in the shape of a question to be kept before you 
 in your subsequent studies, rather than to be answered in my 
 allotted hour what light do the great faiths of India throw 
 upon the connection of religion and morals ? Have they sought 
 to act as the transforming powers of personal and social life ? 
 The natural conscience says concerning duty, "You must," 
 and only adds concerning faith, " if you can." The Christian 
 conscience finds in faith the animating and sustaining force of 
 duty. The scientific conscience seeks no other foundation 
 than that which ministers to life and an enlarged view of utility, 
 so as to dispense with religious faith altogether. Can Indian 
 Theism make any contributions to this great discussion ? 
 Here, perhaps, we may indicate some points of contact between 
 the lines of European and of Hindu thought which are here- 
 after to engage our attention.
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 207 
 
 I 
 
 The conquest of Northern India by the Aryan immigrants 
 was followed by a long period of comparative repose. The 
 dispersion of the new settlers in a realm of extraordinary 
 diversity of natural wealth, the influence upon them of a 
 different climate, their contact with the rites and faiths of the 
 tribes whom they subdued these and a hundred other causes 
 contributed to modify profoundly the spirit of the old religion 
 embodied in the Vedic hymns. The Rig Veda itself contains 
 more than one utterance of the nascent speculative philosophy, 
 as it approached the question of the existence of the ancient 
 gods, and applied the solvents of its dialectic to the problems 
 of the world and life. And the next great deposit of sacred 
 literature in the Upanishads reveals the development of fresh 
 modes of thought, out of which finally emerged a complete 
 scheme of salvation, reared upon beliefs and conceptions alto- 
 gether remote from the joyous energy of the race in its youth. 
 Man found himself in a scene of perpetual change. Every- 
 thing arose only to disappear. The splendour of the earth lay 
 beneath the doom of impermanence. The infinite variety of 
 its powers, the complex play of its forces, the manifold beauty, 
 the majestic strength, of its noblest forms all these contained 
 within them the secret of their end, they were involved in one 
 law of decay and dissolution. Nay, the next life, so far as it 
 resembled this, must still be passed under the sovereignty of 
 death ; that, too, must reach its term, only to begin again as 
 the stream of life ebbed and flowed through the great cycle of 
 existence. Bound by this chain of birth, of death, and of 
 re-birth to die once more, the weary spirit looked out upon a 
 world that had caught him in the grasp of its necessity, with 
 passionate longing for escape. In the midst of this endless 
 plurality, was there no principle of unity to be found in which 
 was peace ? Was there no deliverance from the cruel need of 
 continual transit through forms which only came into being 
 that they might cease to be ? Was there no rescue from the 
 sea of transmigration ? no guidance over its restless waves to 
 the further shore ? 
 
 The answer seems to have come from two sides, and the 
 replies were harmonised and ultimately combined. One issued 
 from the school of higher religious thought, the other from
 
 208 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 the investigations of philosophy. The search for unity through 
 the circles of the gods fixed ultimately on the conception of 
 the Vedic Brahman as the essence that lay behind them all. 
 It had been known first as the elevating and inspiring power 
 of prayer. But prayer was the force that moved the gods to 
 fulfil the suppliant's desires ; was it not, then, in some sense 
 superior to them, might it not be identified with that which 
 lived in them as the creative and sustaining principle of all 
 existence ? So it was seen in all the sources of energy and 
 modes of power around. It lay hid in the food which held the 
 secret of life ; it dwelt in the spoken word which was the 
 medium alike of authority and of devotion j it had a home in 
 the sun in the firmament, or in the priest and the fire at the 
 altar ; it was the force of all forces, the unity of all plurality in 
 the external world. Must not the way of deliverance, then, 
 from the sorrows of diversity and change, lie in the discovery 
 of the Brahman and in union with it ? And the same con- 
 ception was reached by another path. What was it that gave 
 unity to life ? In the confused succession of sensations and 
 ideas, the multiplicity of inward experiences that seemed often 
 in contradiction with each other, was there no stability, no 
 centre of equilibrium and rest ? There was ; behind the 
 images of vision, behind the echoes of sound, behind memory 
 and hope, behind endeavour and resolve, lay that whereon they 
 all appeared and passed away, the Self. For this was not the 
 body with its organs, nor did it consist of the feelings of 
 which they were the instruments, or the ideas which rose as 
 these declined. Deeper than sense, deeper even than thought, 
 is the Self through which they play. He who retires to this 
 sanctuary finds that it is one ; it has no parts, and so is above 
 the sphere of dimension j it has no passions or desires, and thus 
 is beyond the reach of change. Neither time nor space exist 
 for it ; it belongs to a realm in which they are no more. But 
 what is the relation of the principle of unity here discovered 
 within to the principle of unity discerned without ? The 
 answer could not be doubtful ; they are the same. The Self 
 in the heart is truly identical with the Brahman in the world. 
 Brahman is the great Self, wherein all Selfs that seem separate 
 and individual are one. 
 
 Into the twofold doctrine of the Brahman I may not enter 
 here. There is a lower knowledge and a higher. The lower
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 209 
 
 described the nature of the personal Brahman, his relation to 
 the world as its creator, ruler, providential guide, and ultimate 
 destroyer, when its cycle of existence had run out. It was in 
 fact a system of pure Theism ; but it was, after all, only an 
 accommodation to our imperfect apprehension, and it called 
 for no prophets, for it had no saving word. That lay in the 
 higher knowledge, which dealt with the Brahman as raised 
 above all attributes and predications. His true name is " No, 
 no." At this sublime elevation the only reality is pure being. 
 The conceptions which had adhered to him in the lower know- 
 ledge all drop away. He is no longer the all-knowing, the 
 all-joyous, the all-holy. These are the qualities of that which 
 has something external to itself, which is limited, therefore, by 
 personality. In the Brahman, however, all distinctions have 
 disappeared, the still depths of his nature abide in infinite 
 repose. It was to this higher knowledge that speculation 
 loved to ascend, and among its pale abstractions found its most 
 congenial home. It was the quest of this which was pre- 
 scribed as the supreme object, it was by the attainment of this 
 that man found deliverance from the endless round of exist- 
 ences and gained salvation salvation, be it observed, not from 
 sin and its consequences, but from liability to re-birth. The 
 separation of the lower from the higher knowledge provided 
 the Brahmanical order with an easy mode of reconciling the 
 new philosophy with the old ritual of sacrifice, and it allowed 
 a place for morality and a doctrine of good works. But it 
 rested upon one great illusion, viz. the reality of the world. 
 Caught in this net, the Self could not extricate itself till it 
 had recognised its error, owned its mistake, and set itself 
 wholly free from all desire for external things. The lower 
 knowledge bade man practise self-control, give alms, be 
 merciful. But the higher knowledge sought to cut man off 
 from all ethical relations by sinking him in the Self in solitary 
 contemplation. " Give up the world," it cried, " that is one 
 big deception ; surrender every wish, quench every longing, 
 suppress every affection, empty out every thought and feeling 
 that links you to your kind j these are but hindrances to the 
 best and highest ; they are veils that blind the inner vision ; 
 they are fetters that confine you in the realm of phantoms, and 
 hinder your recognition of the only True." And so the 
 believer left his home and went forth into the forest to subdue
 
 the flesh by abstinence, and to learn to divert his gaze from 
 the dark forms of unreality around him to the glowing radiance 
 of the light within. " They who know the life of life," it is 
 said, " the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, the mind of the 
 mind, they have comprehended the ancient primeval Brahman. 
 By the mind alone it is to be perceived ; there is in it no 
 diversity. He who perceives therein any diversity, goes from 
 death to death. This eternal being that can never be moved, 
 is to be perceived in one way only ; it is spotless being, the 
 Ether, the unborn Self, the Eternal. . . . Wishing for that 
 world, for Brahman only, mendicants leave their homes. 
 Knowing this, the people of old did not wish for offspring. 
 What shall we do with offspring, they said, we who have this 
 Self and this world (of Brahman) ? And they, having risen 
 above the desire of sons, wealth, and new worlds, wander about 
 as mendicants. For desire for sons is wealth, and desire for 
 wealth is desire for worlds. But these are desires only. He, 
 the Self, is to be described as 4 No, no.' . . . He, therefore, 
 that knows it, after having become quiet, subdued, satisfied, 
 patient, and collected, sees Self in all, sees all as Self." l 
 
 Was this vision, however, within the reach of every one ? 
 Could all alike tread this way of deliverance? It lay not 
 within the scope of sense, nor could it be attained by the 
 determinations of the will. " He is not apprehended," so runs 
 the ancient word, "by the eye, nor by speech, nor by the 
 other senses, nor by penance or good works. When a man's 
 nature has become purified by the serene light of knowledge, 
 then he sees him, meditating on him as without parts." 2 But 
 the inward eye cannot open itself. No effort can produce the 
 intuition of the One in the many. It does not depend on the 
 study of the Scriptures ; it is the fruit of no investigation ; 
 reasoning and argument cannot demonstrate that which is 
 above proof. The knowledge of the Highest can be imparted 
 only by the Highest. " That Self," it is declared, " cannot be 
 gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by learning ; 
 he whom the Self chooses, by him can the Self be gained. 
 The Self chooses him as his own." 3 And so we are landed in 
 
 J " Br;'hadarayaka Upanishad," IV. iv. 18-23, in Sa cr 'd Books of the Eatt, xv. 
 179 iq. 
 
 2 " Mundaka Up." III. i. 8, ibid. xv. 39. 
 
 3 "KaMa Up." I. ii. 23, ibid. xv. p. n ; " Mund. Up." III. ii. 3, ibid. p. 40 : 
 comp. " He makes him whom he wishes to lead up from these world*, do a good
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 211 
 
 a doctrine of election which forms a strange counterpart to the 
 Augustinian scheme, and was developed ultimately into the 
 regular theological ideas of grace and predestination. 1 But 
 when the Self has chosen, what then ? Does it reveal itself 
 to the object of its choice in all the glory of an infinite 
 Righteousness, in the majestic clearness of absolute Truth, in 
 the tender surprise of abiding Love ? Alas ! it is a blank. It 
 is nothing that mind can apprehend, or soul revere, or heart 
 desire. It is nothing but one huge void. And so the monism 
 of the Brahmanic philosophy ends by plunging the believer 
 into a repose of eternal silence, where all alike, the individual 
 and the universe, science, theology, and morals, are swallowed 
 up in everlasting negation. 
 
 II 
 
 Does the history of Christian thought present any spectacle 
 like this ? Turn to the great creator of Western theology, 
 and you will find that his fundamental cosmic and ontological 
 conceptions are not all unlike those which I have tried to 
 sketch. The Indian doctrine of the world's impermanence 
 has its parallel in Christian philosophy. "Whithersoever the 
 soul of man turns itself unless towards thee," cries Augustine 
 passionately, "it is riveted upon sorrows yea, though it is 
 riveted upon things beautiful. And yet they, out of thee, 
 were not, and out of the soul, were not, unless from thee. 
 They rise and set, and by rising they begin as it were to be : 
 they grow that they may be perfected, and, perfected, they 
 wax old and wither ; and all grow not old, but all wither. 
 So then, when they rise and tend to be, the more quickly 
 they grow that they may be, so much the more they haste not 
 to be. This is the law of them." 2 All external things, then, 
 are subject to this necessity of dissolution. The soul entangled 
 in them can find no true peace ; they can neither be grasped 
 when they are close at hand, nor followed when they disappear. 
 Is there, then, nowhere any certainty ? Turn from the world 
 without, replies Augustine, and look within ; there you will 
 find in your self-consciousness the proof of your existence ; as 
 
 deed ; and the same makes him whom he wishes to lead down from these worlds, 
 do a bad deed." " Kaushitaki Up." III. 8, ibid. \. 299. 
 
 1 Cf. Deussen, System des Vcdanta, p. 90 ; Barth, Religions of India, p, Jiy. 
 
 2 Confeu. iv. 15.
 
 212 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 in words which almost verbally anticipate the famous formula 
 of Descartes, he argues, "I think, therefore I am." 1 This 
 sanctuary of consciousness is without form or parts ; it has no 
 dimensions ; but it is there, and there alone, that we know 
 what being is. Yet it reveals to us something more than our- 
 selves. For it is the home of principles such as are involved in 
 judgments of proportion, equality, beauty, good, which are not 
 arbitrary figments liable to be dissolved as easily as they were 
 combined. They are not self-made ; we cannot undo them 
 or reject them ; though in us, they are not of us ; they are 
 the reflection of the lex immutabilis omnium artium^ whose 
 great name is Truth. 2 And so Augustine ascends to the 
 everlasting ground of all existence, that pure being we call 
 God. There all differences fall away. He is. We cannot 
 affirm of him at any moment that he knows or loves or wills, 
 as though these were separate activities of his nature, excluding 
 the simultaneous operation of the rest. He is one, indivisible, 
 immutable. In the fulness of his energies no one can detach 
 itself or act apart, but all are blent in constant harmony ; the 
 plenitude of the Godhead exists alone in the simplicity of 
 eternal changeless unity. 
 
 Of the daring with which Augustine proceeded to construct 
 the forms of the divine self-consciousness, so as necessarily to 
 evolve a doctrine of Trinity of the difficulties which he 
 experienced in dealing with the term person^ and in connecting 
 the metaphysical Son with the historical Jesus I may not 
 pause to speak. I wish here only to point out how near his 
 ontological conceptions approached on some sides to the doctrine 
 of the Brahman. The world is in perpetual flux ; it has no 
 true existence. It is known to us only in succession and 
 diversity ; but plurality and change can have no place in the 
 unchanging One. Just, therefore, as the Brahmans boldly 
 denied the reality of the world, so likewise did Augustine, 
 though his denial took a different form. For the world is 
 produced out of nihil or nothing, a conception which plays 
 much the same part in Augustine's scheme as the Maya or 
 " illusion " of the Indian schools. Here is the secret of its 
 impermanence ; here the key to its multiplicity. Only to 
 this lower realm do space and time belong. Space is nothing 
 
 1 &///. ii. I, De Civ. Dei xi. 26. 
 2 De Pera Religione, 52-57 ; cf. De Lit, Arbitr. ii. 34.
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 213 
 
 but the relations of created things ; time is merely the order 
 of their sequence. Neither has any true being ; for the 
 Eternal Spirit has no extension, it cannot be conceived as 
 diffused throughout immensity ; it has no change, and, con- 
 sequently, no succession. In his often-repeated formula, semper 
 est ubique totus. It is only to the created mind that the 
 universe presents a geometry and a chronology. The ques- 
 tions, therefore, why the Cosmos regarded of course as a 
 sphere was set in this particular portion of infinitude rather 
 than elsewhere, or what God was doing before he made the 
 world, Augustine brushes aside as meaningless. " I will not 
 make the answer," he says, "which is said to have been jestingly 
 given by one who eluded in his reply the serious difficulties 
 of the question, Alta scrutantibus gehennas parabat" l His 
 solution is more thorough. There was no elsewhere, in which 
 the Cosmos might have been established ; till the first creative 
 word was uttered, there was no before. Only with creation 
 did space and time begin to be. Then, first, was the divine 
 fsse mingled with the nihil^ and a world, which bore a law of 
 dissolution on its front, arose. 2 
 
 The philosophical embarrassments of this scheme it is not 
 my object now to exhibit. The Cosmos as we know it, God 
 does not know. The form in which it appears to us is not 
 that which he beholds. The One cannot properly enter the 
 sphere of the many ; the Unchanging lives outside its great 
 processions of change. Had Augustine developed his philosophy 
 along these lines, it must have led to something not unlike the 
 dim and chilly vacuities of Indian monism. But he was saved 
 from attempting to tread this path of emptiness by the his- 
 torical situation and by his own personal experience. That 
 is the secret of Augustine's view of human nature, and his 
 doctrine of salvation. It was from the vicissitudes of his own 
 career, and from his observation of the great struggle which he 
 beheld approaching a triumphant conclusion, that he drew the 
 materials of his anthropology, his conception of the relations 
 of the soul to God and to the Church. For in him the ethical 
 passion rose to its highest power ; and as its conflicts marked 
 the crises of his own spiritual history, so did he discern them 
 in like manner writ large in the mighty movements of society 
 around, and the whole destiny of the race. He looked back 
 
 1 Conf, xi. 12. 2 De Civ. Dei, xi. xii.
 
 2I 4 
 
 upon his early years, and he saw them stained with the sins of 
 wayward passion, hurrying him hither and thither, mastering 
 his imperfect resolve, and carrying him captive to his base 
 desires. Suddenly a new force appears within his soul. The 
 affections that before were stubborn and reluctant are now 
 joyous and free. The ideal which he previously recognised, 
 but deliberately set aside witness his prayer, "Give me 
 chastity, but not yet" awakens the ardour of his love. 
 Fresh impulses are born within him. They move spontane- 
 ously to what is right. They do not require painful guidance 
 and unwilling control ; they leap forward after the good, 
 embracing it with a strenuous joy, and lifting his whole being 
 on to new heights of aspiration and achievement. A change 
 such as this could not possibly be self-wrought. No effort of 
 his own could have re-created his whole inner man. The new 
 life must have come to him from some loftier source. And 
 this conviction was confirmed by the experience of believers 
 round him, who could look back to a like quickening. For it 
 was a time of more open, if not more real, moral contrasts 
 than our own life for the most part exhibits ; and the working 
 of spiritual impulses was more obvious and palpable. Augustine 
 stood in the midst of a social corruption which the decline of 
 ancient faiths had done nothing to arrest, and had, indeed, 
 rather fostered than checked. He saw Christianity infusing 
 vital energy into disorder and decay. It had not yet been 
 degraded into an instrument of hierarchical oppression ; it 
 was not sunk in intellectual stagnation ; it had not been called 
 to the aid of moral and spiritual tyranny. It was in the full 
 strength of its fresh powers, and the lust and cruelty which 
 heathenism had encouraged, and philosophy had been unable 
 to subdue, were being tamed by the Gospel into innocence 
 and gentleness and goodwill. What power could produce 
 results so unexpected ? Whence came these transformations 
 so sudden and so unforeseen ? What soul that knew its own 
 former impotence could claim to have achieved them ? Who 
 would not see in them the manifestations of the Spirit, the 
 redeeming work of God ? How could he doubt that God 
 unsought had found him out, and in spite of his unworthiness 
 had chosen him for his own ? 
 
 The doctrine of election and predestination thus rooted in 
 his own spiritual life, and supported by the witness of his co-
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 215 
 
 believers, was confirmed on a gigantic scale by the story of the 
 Church. Augustine, the philosopher, might declare time an 
 illusion ; but Augustine, as the interpreter of life, recognised in 
 the demonstrations of history the greatest of practical facts. 
 Religion in India had had no conscious history. It had grown, 
 but it had had no knowledge of its growth ; it had been trans- 
 formed, but it could render no account of its transformations. 
 Augustine, however, found himself in a stream of religious 
 development which could frame a chart of its whole course, 
 and mark each tributary on the way. The philosophy of 
 India, regarding all external forms as alike involved in the 
 same unreality, drew no sharp distinctions between man and 
 beast and tree, nay, even between the realms of living and of 
 inert things. But from this consequence Augustine was saved 
 by the great historical forces which he found behind him. No 
 castes here parted the human race into orders whose barriers 
 none might overleap ; the mighty voice of the whole past 
 declared mankind indissolubly one. Instead of the dreary 
 round of cycles of existence, repeated again and again with 
 endless iteration, Augustine recognised one vast propelling 
 power, guiding the entire destinies of the race. It was the 
 divine design, working out the eruditio, the education of 
 humanity. 1 Here, then, is one of those immense contributions 
 to thought for which we are indebted especially to Christianity 
 the doctrine which science has recently seized for its own 
 purposes and transfigured into a larger scope, till it has ventured 
 to claim it as all its own the doctrine of the gradual evolution 
 of human progress. Naturally in the teachings of Augustine 
 it is concerned with the forces of morals and religion, as he 
 discerns Law and Prophecy and Gospel imparting successively 
 new aspects of God's truth and fresh energies of righteousness 
 to the broadening consciousness of men. And the climax of 
 the whole is attained in the triumphs of the Church. The 
 great plan of Providence was reaching its fulfilment. It had 
 advanced step by step, attracting at first but little notice, yet 
 never receding : it could afford to wait, for in the still depths 
 of the Eternal Being it had from the first been ideally complete. 
 But at length the visions of seers were rendered palpable to all. 
 The Jewish people were torn from their homes and dispersed 
 through every land. The seed of the word had grown into a 
 
 1 De Civ. Dei, x. 14.
 
 216 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 mighty tree, spreading its shelter east and west and north and 
 south ; idols were shattered, temples had fallen ; the powers of 
 this world, which in defence of those idols and temples had 
 hunted the Christians to death, now confessed themselves con- 
 quered, and owned the sway of the unseen King. Why had 
 not Plato wrought what Christ had done ? Why had not 
 philosophy overthrown the polluted altars, and quenched the 
 reeking sacrifices, and turned lust into purity, and bidden 
 contention cease ? Not there was the way of the divine 
 righteousness, not there the path of faith. 1 And so the Church 
 stood forth as the unique channel of truth to men. Her claims 
 were vindicated by her victories. She had set forth, small and 
 despised, to win the world, and she had won it. She had 
 declared her message, she had presented her ideal, and her 
 message was accepted, her ideal prevailed. In this vast moral 
 revolution Augustine found the justification of her authority. 
 This is the meaning of his famous reply to the Manicheans, 
 " I would not believe the Gospel itself did not the Church 
 induce me." 2 This is why he flung the traditional usage of 
 infant baptism in the face of the Pelagians as an argument for 
 original sin. This is why he put out all his force to overcome 
 the schism of the Donatists, for schism rent asunder the agency 
 whose whole strength lay in its unity, and threatened to dis- 
 perse those reserves of moral power which lost their momentum 
 when they ceased to act together, were broken up and scattered 
 abroad. If you would understand the meaning of the doctrine 
 of fellowship with the Church as the way of salvation, you 
 must study it as it emerges from the great conflict with heathen- 
 ism. It was formed in passionate revolt against inconceivable 
 iniquity, in passionate dependence on the divine righteousness ; 
 it inevitably drew to itself all that was noblest in endeavour 
 and holiest in aspiration ; it saved Christianity from dissolution 
 amid a swarm of conflicting sects, and transmitted its moral 
 and spiritual impulses, not indeed fresh as when they issued 
 from the Master's heart, yet still potent enough to achieve vast 
 social transformations, and to live at this hour with an unspent 
 nay, in this land at least with a renewed energy and might. 
 
 1 See among many passages, Ep. ccxxxii., cxxxvii. 15, 16 j De Vera Religione, 
 8 Contra Efist. Man. 6.
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 217 
 III 
 
 The theology of Augustine, then, and through it much of 
 the theology of the West, exhibits the most striking combina- 
 tion of philosophical speculation with the ethical passion and 
 spiritual religion. To this the story of religious thought in 
 India can present no counterpart. Yet it does bring before us 
 one great phenomenon of surpassing interest, inasmuch as it 
 shows us the first two in the closest union, unsustained by the 
 third. I am not now going to draw a parallel between the 
 rise and growth of Christianity and the rise and growth of 
 Buddhism ; I shall hereafter set before you the resemblances 
 between the legend of Buddha and the legend of Christ, and 
 you must draw from them your own conclusions. Nor will 
 I now enumerate in detail the surprising analogies which have 
 been discovered between some later forms of the Buddhist and 
 the Christian ritual. I must content myself with indicating 
 one of the chief points of view for our inquiry that which 
 makes the study of Buddhism so profoundly interesting in 
 connection with several modern controversies what is the 
 secret of this astonishing moral energy, divorced from what 
 appears to us its natural support in religion ? 
 
 I have said that on one side Buddhism is a philosophy. 
 The Buddha is the one who knows. Like the Brahmanism 
 out of which it sprang, it had its theory of life, embodied in a 
 closely-linked " chain of causation " ; for its full appreciation 
 it demanded earnest and patient thought. This had, no doubt, 
 much to do with the peculiar type of character which it tended 
 to produce. Buddhism, like Brahmanism, found men help- 
 lessly drifting in the sea of transmigration. It started from 
 the assumption of the continuous necessity of birth, death, and 
 re-birth. It laid down as the first principle that in a world 
 over which the law of impermanence was absolute entering 
 into heaven as well as hell, and terminating the happy life of 
 the gods as well as the torments of the wicked existence 
 could be nothing other than suffering. The salvation of 
 Buddhism, consequently, like that of Brahmanism, was in its 
 first aspect a deliverance from the sorrow and pain involved 
 in the inevitable transitoriness of everything. " Give up the 
 world," it cried, therefore ; " surrender the lust of life, and you 
 will find the way of peace." This was very nearly the Ian-
 
 218 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 guage of Brahmanism ; but while the older schools had placed 
 the final goal in the union of the self in the heart with the 
 great Self as the Self of the self, Buddhism boldly swept away 
 the doctrine of the Self altogether. There is no Self, it 
 affirmed. The heresy of individuality, the delusion of the 
 existence of a self behind the bodily and mental powers of man, 
 is the first of the ten fetters which the believer must break 
 ere he can tread the way of holiness. With the denial of the 
 self within the heart, the great Self likewise disappeared. The 
 eternal Brahma of the "lower knowledge," the personal God, 
 all-wise creator, and almighty sovereign of the world, came 
 under the doom of dissolution, and the supreme abstraction, 
 the impersonal Brahma of the "higher knowledge," vanished 
 into the abyss of nothingness. 
 
 But while Buddhism had thus shut up the Brahmanic path 
 of salvation, asserting that it only led into the wilderness of 
 delusion, it was bound to open one of its own. Ritual and 
 ceremony had already been declared worthless for the " higher 
 knowledge," and Buddhism also would have none of them ; 
 but penances and austerities had been accepted as the means of 
 subduing the flesh and opening the inward eye. Against these, 
 however, Buddhism entered its emphatic protest. It would rely 
 upon no outward agencies ; what was needed was an inward 
 change. And here, where Brahmanism had been compara- 
 tively cold and calm, Buddhism contrived to infuse a vital moral 
 energy, as it insisted on right views, right feelings, right words, 
 right conduct, as the opening stages of the Eight-fold Noble 
 Path. Whither this path ultimately led we cannot now inquire. 
 The natural consequence of the nihilism of its psychology was 
 a doctrine of annihilation ; but interesting evidence has recently 
 been brought to show that the recognised teaching of the 
 Buddhist schools kept this in the background, and dexterously 
 left it an open question. 1 What is of more importance for my 
 present purpose is to remark that this obscurity concerning 
 the end only throws into stronger relief the intensity of the 
 Buddhist grasp on moral realities for their own sake. To those 
 who remain in the world, indeed, the Buddhist teacher promises 
 heaven as the reward of righteousness, while he threatens 
 sinners with hell, much after the fashion of the coarser preach- 
 ing of the orthodox Christian, though the Buddhist hell has at 
 
 1 Oldenberg, Buddha, pp. 276-284.
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 219 
 
 least this advantage, that it is not eternal. But to the con- 
 verted his language is different. He must choose holiness 
 because it is holy, and as such is intrinsically better than low 
 desires and sordid aims : his heart must be filled with love 
 because love is in itself worthier than contention or ill-will. 
 In this realm of moral idealism the conception of salvation as 
 deliverance from suffering through birth, death, and re-birth 
 passes into the higher view of it as liberation from evil, 
 release from the bondage of sin. And to those, therefore, who 
 find Buddhism arid and sterile because it is a religion without 
 what we understand by God, it may be replied that no faith is 
 barren which finds in virtue its chief good, no philosophy un- 
 productive which culminates in labour for the welfare of man. 
 
 For this is further a distinguishing mark of Buddhism : it 
 is penetrated through and through with the "enthusiasm of 
 humanity." Like Christianity, it abolished within the sacred 
 Order all distinctions of class and race. And, like Christianity, 
 it exhibited the life of its founder as filled with but one aim, 
 the deliverance of his fellow-men. Renunciation, to deny 
 oneself service, to minister to others these words are not the 
 monopoly of Christendom or the secret of Jesus only. In this 
 respect Buddhism awakened far more earnestness of affection 
 and reverence by presenting an exalted personal ideal than was 
 possible for Brahmanism, which had no great historic type. 
 What scene, for instance, can be more pathetic to the discern- 
 ing heart in spite of the tedium of the narrative which relates 
 it than that which tradition places at the outset of the 
 Teacher's career ? a more real temptation than the onset of 
 Mara and his evil hosts. He has attained the fulness of his 
 Buddhahood ; he has mastered the chain of causation and found 
 the way to Nirvana. Why should he not repose in inward 
 calm ? " To beings that are lost in lust and hatred," he re- 
 flected, "this doctrine will not be easy to understand. If I 
 proclaim it, and other men are not able to understand it, there 
 would result but weariness and annoyance to me." And when 
 he pondered over this matter, his mind became inclined to 
 remain in quiet and not to preach the doctrine. Then the 
 Great Brahma, perceiving the reflection in the mind of the 
 Blessed One, thought, " Alas, the world perishes ; alas, the 
 world is destroyed, if the mind of the holy absolute Sambuddha 
 inclines itself to remain in quiet and not to preach the doctrine."
 
 220 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 And so he quits his Brahma heaven and ventures into the 
 august presence of the Buddha, and with respectful daring 
 pleads the cause of those who cannot attain salvation if they 
 hear not the truth. The Blessed One is moved j he looks over 
 the world full of compassion towards all sentient beings ; he 
 sees them of every disposition and capacity, and he at last 
 replies, "Wide open is the door of the Deathless to all who 
 have ears to hear; let them send forth faith to meet it." 1 
 What reformer will not find here an echo of the longings that 
 sometimes rise unbidden in his own breast ? What teacher 
 will not confess, at least to himself, that the Buddha's thoughts 
 have sometimes been thought again ? But when the trial 
 moment was once over, the Teacher passes on his way with a 
 step that never falters and a purpose that never swerves. The 
 legends are full of illustrations of the courage, the self-sacrifice, 
 the devotion, with which the Buddha toiled to win the hearts of 
 men, and they carry the conception back through many lives ; 
 they are sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque, but always 
 penetrated with the same essential aim. May I be permitted 
 to vary the monotony of academic discourse by condensing one 
 of these familiar tales, which I will call the story of the Demon 
 with the Matted Hair ? 2 
 
 "Long ago, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, 
 the Bodhisat (the future Buddha) was re-born as the son of his 
 chief consort, and on his name-day, in consequence of the 
 prognostications of the Brahmans, he was called Prince Five- 
 Weapons. When he was come to years of discretion, and was 
 sixteen, the king called him and said, t You must get learning, 
 my dear ; ' and he sent him to the city of Takkasila. After 
 proper study there, the Prince took the five weapons bestowed 
 on him by his teacher, saluted him, and set out on the road 
 back to Benares. On the way he came to a forest inhabited 
 by a Demon called the Demon of the Matted Hair. 3 At the 
 mouth of the forest some men saw him. 'Young man,' they 
 cried, * don't enter the forest. The Demon of the Matted 
 Hair lives there, and as soon as he sees any one he makes an 
 end of him.' But the future Buddha, relying on himself like 
 
 1 Vinaya Pitaka, Mahavagga, I. v. 2-13, Sacred Boots of the East, xiii. 84-88. 
 
 2 Fausboll, jfataka, I. pt. ii. 272. 
 
 3 In the Cambridge translation issued under the editorship of Prof. Cowell, vol. i. 
 1895, Mr. Chalmers aptly designates him the Ogre Hairy-grip. I have left my 
 version as it was first made.
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 221 
 
 a dauntless lion of mighty mane, entered the forest. When he 
 reached the middle the Demon showed himself. He was as 
 tall as a palm-tree ; his head was the size of an attic ; he had 
 eyes like saucers, and the mouth of a hawk. c Whither are 
 you going ? ' cried he. ' Stop, you are my prey.' The future 
 Buddha warned him off with a poisoned arrow, but it stuck in 
 the Demon's hair. Then he shot another and another, up to 
 fifty, but the Demon brushed them all away, and they fell 
 harmless at his feet. It was the same with his sword and spear 
 and club. But the dauntless Bodhisat cried, l O Demon, you 
 have never heard of me ! I am Prince Five- Weapons. I 
 came into this forest relying not on bows and such like, but on 
 myself. Now I will smite you and grind you to powder.' 
 And with a resolute air he hit him with his right hand ; but 
 his right hand and his left hand, his right foot and his left foot, 
 were all caught in turn in the Demon's hair, and when at last 
 he butted at him with his head, that was caught too. Fixed in 
 five places, there he hung, but he showed no fear or alarm. 
 4 This is a lion-like fellow, of rare breed,' thought the Demon. 
 1 All the time I've been murdering on this road I never saw his 
 like. Why ever is it that he is not afraid ? ' And he did not 
 dare to devour him. l Why ever is it, young man,' he asked, 
 1 that you are not afraid of death ? ' 4 Why should I be, O 
 Demon ? We must die once in each existence, and I have a 
 thunderbolt here in my belly which you will not be able to 
 digest if you eat me. It will dash your inside into little pieces 
 and make an end of you ; and then we shall both perish ! 
 That is why I am not afraid.' But the future Buddha said 
 this concerning the weapon of the Knowledge of the Truth 
 within him. So the terrified Demon released him and bade 
 him go home to his friends. ' O Demon,' said the Bodhisat, 
 4 1 will go. But as for you, it was for your wicked conduct 
 formerly that you have been re-born as a cruel demon ; if you 
 stay here and go on doing wickedly, you will pass from dark- 
 ness to darkness. But now that you have seen me it will not 
 be possible for you to do evil.' By such admonitions did he 
 declare the mischief of unrighteousness and the gain of 
 righteousness, and he expounded the Truth to the Demon and 
 subdued him. Then, converting him to self-denial, he estab- 
 lished him in righteousness, and after earnestly exhorting him 
 departed out of the wood. In due course he succeeded to the
 
 222 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 
 
 kingdom and ruled with righteousness, till he departed accord- 
 ing to his deeds." 
 
 The moral is not far to seek. The Demon with the 
 Matted Hair is the world of greed and sensuality swallowing 
 up the unwary. It must be met with defiance and attacked 
 with unshrinking courage. But the world's weapons of 
 violence make no impression on it ; they only fall impotent at 
 its feet. Truth alone can defeat error, good alone can over- 
 come evil, self-denial alone can tame passion and lust, love alone 
 can drive out hate. The lesson is an old one, but it is not 
 yet wholly learned. If it was one of the lessons of Jesus, it 
 will not impair it, it will strengthen it, to know that it was 
 taught also in another land and a different speech ; for it brings 
 the confirming witness of a fresh experience, and a new insight 
 into the unseen realm of moral relations where so much of our 
 true life is hid. 
 
 In Buddhism, then, we discern an immense ethical force, 
 wholly disjoined from those sources of power which we discover 
 in Christianity. We see it create a community or Union, 
 which for want of a better word is sometimes called a Church ; 
 and it spreads from land to land with boundless missionary zeal, 
 till it brings within its simultaneous influence five hundred 
 millions of men. 1 It does not remain the same in the process 
 any more than Christianity remains the same ; but the trans- 
 formations which Buddhism undergoes are even more radical 
 and surprising, for it ends by verifying in the most unexpected 
 manner the adage of the French philosopher that if there were 
 no God it would be necessary to invent one. In proposing it 
 as an object of your study, I am not afraid of doing any injury 
 to your Christian faith. I shall not attempt to conceal my 
 conviction that a philosophy which rejects the doctrine of a 
 soul does not correctly interpret the facts of our self-conscious- 
 ness j that a religion without the belief in an everlasting God 
 cannot be accepted as offering a true solution of the world's 
 origin and destiny ; that a system which has no conception of 
 
 1 This was a common estimate formerly, both in England and Germany ; see, 
 for instance, Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids' Buddhism (S.P.C.K., Non-Christian Re- 
 ligious Systems), pp. 4-6 j Prof. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Religionsgeschichte (1887), 
 p. 41. But the immense total is reached by including the whole Chinese Empire, 
 whose Buddhism is only one of three religions, the usages of which are extraordi- 
 narily commingled. On the probable number of Buddhists proper in China, see Legge, 
 Travels of Fa-Hien, pp. 6-8.
 
 THREE WAYS OF SALVATION 223 
 
 history, and supplies no hint of progress, cannot provide a right 
 view of human life. If this conviction disqualifies me for im- 
 partial judgment, then I must submit to the charge ; but I 
 shall reply that our object here is to ascertain as far as we can 
 and to teach the truth, and that object is not to be achieved by 
 suppressing any honestly-matured belief. Meanwhile Buddhism, 
 like Christianity, is essentially, in its highest form, the warfare 
 with sin. To this warfare you are consecrating yourselves. 
 In this you are willing to spend and to be spent. Do not 
 refuse, then, whatever help the past can give. " He that is 
 not against us," said the Master, " is on our side." The moral 
 energies that work in us to-day have been fed by the endeavours 
 of countless generations. And when across the ages there come 
 to us fresh words that awakened brotherly love or opened a way 
 of inward peace in myriads of our fellow-men for centuries or 
 ever Christ was born, we learn that the Ganges, no less than 
 the Jordan, might be a sacred stream that India as well as 
 Palestine might be hallowed ; remote ideas and beliefs are 
 invested with a new sanctity ; our faith in Providence becomes 
 deeper and stronger ; and as we decipher the venerable forms 
 of antique speech, still throbbing with human aspiration after 
 righteousness and love, we joyfully recognise that, whatever else 
 may change, truth and right do but grow clearer and clearer. 
 
 One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 This heedless world has never lost.
 
 VIII 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 Address to the International Council of Unitarian and other Liberal 
 Religious Thinkers and Workers, London, ^oth May 1901 
 
 J. E. C. 1901 
 
 225
 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 BRETHREN of the Liberal Faith, the " International Council of 
 Unitarian and other Liberal Thinkers," which holds its first 
 meeting to-day, was called into being a year ago at Boston, 
 Massachusetts. My first duty is to express to its founders my 
 gratitude for the high honour conferred upon me by appoint- 
 ment to this presidential chair ; my next, to offer the sincerest 
 welcome of English friends to the many distinguished repre- 
 sentatives who have gathered from East and West, from North 
 and South, to give us the benefit of their counsel, and to 
 strengthen us by their sympathy. 
 
 We meet in the infancy of a new century, whose untrodden 
 ways lie open before us, asking ourselves towards what goal we 
 shape our course, and taking account of the difficulties and 
 helps that may await us on the road. The movement of the 
 last generations has carried to further issues the work which 
 was but half effected by the Reformation four hundred years 
 ago, and has disengaged into clear contrast the opposing 
 principles sometimes designated as Authority and Reason, or 
 picturesquely embodied as the Church and the Revolution. 
 The most cursory observation at once reveals the variety of 
 influences which have contributed to this end. Science has 
 ranged freely through the universe, declaring its right to 
 challenge every faith in the name of fact, and demanding (I 
 do not stop to inquire how far justly) that all beliefs shall 
 submit themselves to proof. Philosophy has sought to 
 penetrate into the inmost recesses of human thought, and by 
 interpreting man to himself has striven to fix his relation also 
 to the world around him, and to God in whom he lives and 
 moves and has his being. The study of history pursued by the 
 same method of ordered inquiry has disentangled the rise and 
 
 227
 
 228 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 growth of doctrines, tested the claims of sacred institutions, 
 and pushed its way back through great ecclesiastical creations 
 to the birth-hour of churches, and the cradle not only of sects 
 but of religions. Moreover, with constantly widening range, 
 it has travelled round the globe ; it has dug up the buried 
 monuments of vanished millenniums ; it has deciphered the 
 hymns and prayers of civilisations already hoary with antiquity 
 ere the garden was planted in Eden and the first man was 
 moulded from the clod ; it has brought into the light of 
 common day yet older secrets of ethnic affinity and religious 
 faith enshrined in language ; and it has shown that the 
 treasure of Christendom, a sacred book, is no exclusive 
 possession after all, as the vast collections of the East, 
 embracing law, morals, philosophy, and religion, have slowly 
 been unfolded to our view. 
 
 The total effect of discovery along so many different lines 
 must needs take long to realise, and to work out their results 
 will be the abiding task of human thought. But it lies at the 
 foundation of the Liberal Faith to admit that these inquiries 
 are all legitimate, to contemplate their advance without fear, 
 and to insist that they shall have the freest opportunity and an 
 unembarrassed way. The process which I have briefly signal- 
 ised is not confined to any one people, it is not limited to any 
 one church, it is broader even than any one religion. So far, 
 however, its influence has been most conspicuously seen in 
 Christianity, for this has spread itself all round the globe, has 
 commanded the allegiance of the most progressive races, and is 
 the most powerfully organised alike for social and national aims 
 as well as for missionary endeavour. And within its compass 
 is to be found almost every shade of thought and feeling, from 
 repressive distrust (such as would exile a Tolstoy) and unquiet 
 apprehension on the one side to unconditional welcome on the 
 other, as the believer confronts its multitudinous phases, and 
 trembles at their bewildering variety, or exults at the courage 
 of the human spirit which dares to assert such audacious claims 
 and attempt such strenuous tasks. 
 
 But the position of the devout truth-seeker is complicated 
 again and again by conditions which limit his freedom and 
 circumscribe his possibilities of action. The great historic 
 churches of Christendom early found it necessary to protect 
 themselves by various safeguards from deviations which threat-
 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 229 
 
 ened to break up their existence altogether. They have 
 adopted creeds, they have prescribed confessions, they have 
 devised methods of government and forms of worship. They 
 have secured coherence, they have achieved continuity, they 
 have made ritual stately and administration firm ; but (to speak 
 broadly) they have shut the door on truth. They offer a rest 
 to the weary, a shelter to the storm-tossed ; they possess vast 
 resources often most nobly used for the promotion of their 
 own ritual or historic types ; and if they have passed through 
 seasons of apathy or somnolence, they have shared in the great 
 quickening of our age ; they have called forth an enthusiastic 
 devotion and enlisted a triumphal army of workers, as ignorance 
 and want and suffering and wrong have made to them per- 
 petual appeal. By their constitution, however, they can only 
 with difficulty accommodate themselves to progressive change. 
 Some, indeed, present their confessions avowedly only as 
 historic documents, memorials of a venerable past. In other 
 cases a happy accident may have saved them from prohibiting 
 the movement of a later day, as the Anglican Church finds its 
 formularies fortunately silent on the historical origin and 
 authenticity of its Scriptures. Yet the liberty that is thus 
 secured is, after all, but partial. It may be well to curb a too 
 rampant individualism within the bounds of an elaborate 
 church order ; it may be well even for a nation to express 
 through the organisation of centuries its collective adhesion to 
 the forms and offices of religion ; it may be well to preserve 
 the ancient pieties and carry them in the name of the State to 
 every city and village in the land. But this can only be done 
 at a great price. In the last resort when the limits of com- 
 promise have been reached, and the possibilities of divergent 
 interpretation exhausted, it may involve the sacrifice of freedom 
 and truth. And whatever be the gain in other directions, 
 there is an increasing number among every Christian people 
 for whom that price is more than dear, it is impossible. 
 
 Must those, then, who find themselves compelled by the 
 need of veracity in worship to stand outside, or those who 
 accepting the same general presuppositions are yet able to 
 remain undisturbed within their national communions, abide 
 unfriended and alone ? Must they be content with their isola- 
 tion, and cherish in solitude or in small and scattered groups 
 the convictions which have cost so much ? Better so.
 
 230 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 indeed, than palter with their integrity, or be unfaithful to the 
 light that is in them. That position may have been inevitable 
 in the past ; it is happily not necessary now. Among the 
 achievements which make the nineteenth century memorable 
 are those material aids for travel and exchange of thought 
 which have knit the whole earth into a unity undreamed 
 before. It becomes possible, therefore, to gather occasionally 
 for friendly colloquy, for the survey of mutual difficulties, 
 progress, and resource, for the institution of those personal 
 relations which quicken sympathy and sustain lonely effort. 
 Out of such a desire has sprung the Council which meets here 
 to-day. It is first of all a Council of Unitarians, for it owes 
 its inception to them and finds most of its friends within their 
 ranks. But it is in truth of no denomination. It opens its 
 meetings to all who share the Liberal Faith the wide world 
 over, in whatever communion, by whatever name. It offers 
 to them a temporary meeting -place, the opportunity of re- 
 freshment and conference in their common cause, the recogni- 
 tion due from sincere workers to sincere workers for the great 
 aims of truth, of liberty, and of religion. 
 
 For the field is large and the labour stern. Around us are 
 the struggles of empires and the clash of rival interests, and 
 the huge forces of the world against whose deadening material- 
 ism all churches are bound to give untiring battle. Our 
 special share in this great conflict is the promotion of religious 
 truth. To this high goal, indeed, the access has not been 
 made easy, yet the difficulty of the task is the measure of the 
 Father's purpose for us, of his confidence in us, as he calls on 
 us to take our part in the mighty process long ago conceived 
 as the education of humanity into the light, the love, the 
 freedom, of children of God. And the Liberal Faith, if I 
 rightly interpret it, has realised anew the fundamental truth of 
 all religion that " God is spirit." Again and again in the 
 long development of the past has this truth been proclaimed ; 
 and again and again even those who saw it most clearly failed 
 to hold it fast, and suffered some lower condition to obscure or 
 distort it. Ancient Israel, soaring to the topmost height of 
 prophecy and psalm, sounded the call to worship for all nations. 
 But the worship was centralised at Jerusalem, and no single 
 house of prayer, even though it were at the mid-point of the 
 earth, could satisfy the universal need. The author of the
 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 231 
 
 Fourth Gospel makes, by the mouth of Jesus, the imperishable 
 declaration that the only true worship is in spirit and in truth ; 
 it has no local base ; it is an act of mind, and knits the soul 
 and God into immediate relations, to which place is indifferent. 
 Yet even he concentrates the " light that lighteth every man " 
 into a single person, and in his name asserts that "no man 
 cometh unto the Father but by me." I will not now ask whether 
 this is intended as the utterance of the ideal and all-pervading 
 Word or the actual Jesus. The contrast must suffice to point 
 my argument that no single historic religion can in reality 
 become universal. In other words, the Liberal Faith of the 
 future will be no longer dependent on a book, even though 
 that book be the New Testament ; still less on a priesthood, 
 whatever force a temporary revival of sacerdotalism may here 
 or there display. 
 
 The survey of the progress of religions shows clearly 
 enough what part these agencies may play in specific stages of 
 their development. It is a stage which lasts long, and plants 
 deep in the heart of entire races an almost immovable intensity 
 of faith, for it gathers up their holiest experience, and enshrines 
 their most precious hope. Yet the religious condition of 
 Europe, to say nothing of the spiritual lethargy of the East, is 
 a sufficient warning against the dangers of sacerdotal ascend- 
 ancy. We have seen it in our own day range itself on the 
 basis of Vatican decrees as the uncompromising foe of in- 
 dependence of thought, the untiring opponent of human 
 activity beyond the narrow limits which it chooses to prescribe. 
 We have seen it intriguing in politics, hand in hand with 
 falsehood, the brutal instigator of race-hatred, in the selfish 
 pursuit of its own ends. Not all the glories of its past, not 
 the long roll of its martyrs and its saints, not the triumphs of 
 its art, not the fervour and often the purity of its devotion, not 
 the variety of its services to human need, can blind us to the 
 fact that the great Church of Rome, though it send out its 
 priests to every country of the globe, still bears within it a 
 prophecy of doom, as the human spirit claims the freedom 
 which is its inalienable right. But the strife with an organisa- 
 tion so vast, so closely knit, so full of resource, so varied in its 
 power to minister to many of man's deepest yearnings, is full 
 of pain. Those of us who have been nourished in liberties 
 won centuries ago can hardly realise the strain which it imposes.
 
 232 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 on solitary combatants, the difficulty and the weariness of the 
 fight. To all such brave champions, and some of them are 
 among us to-day, from Central and Southern Europe, we offer 
 our respectful sympathy ; and we beg of them to accept the 
 support of our conviction that the first principle of the Liberal 
 Faith is the right of the soul to an open way to God ; no 
 church can limit it to chartered channels ; always and every- 
 where God's grace is freely given ; always and everywhere the 
 Father's welcome is ready for the children who seek him in 
 trust, humility, and love. This is the truth which we have 
 learnt from Jesus. This is the Gospel we have to carry 
 through the world. 
 
 The claims of the religion of the spirit, however, do not 
 encounter their only obstacles in the priesthoods of the great 
 Catholic Churches, whether Greek, Roman, or Anglican. 
 The doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible has been tacitly 
 abandoned by almost all responsible theologians ; yet there are 
 many signs such as the struggle for the control of education 
 in this country, the pressure exerted on teachers, the language 
 of popular hymns, it must even be added the occasional silence 
 and evasion of Biblical commentators that doctrines once 
 based on the literal truth of the Bible still cast a baleful shadow 
 over the thought and life of the masses, and expose those who 
 have abandoned them to social mistrust, amounting sometimes 
 almost to persecution. Confident in the progress of truth, 
 assured of the abiding roots of religion within the mind, the 
 conscience, the heart, we have sometimes smiled at the petty 
 acts of ungenerous superstition. But there are those who 
 carry the flag of freedom almost alone ; they are confronted by 
 influences which are the more difficult to combat because they 
 sometimes decline definite issues and refuse honest intellectual 
 trial. Immense as have been the modifications of the old 
 orthodoxy, those who are best acquainted with the average 
 thought of Protestant Christianity warn us how much of the 
 old leaven of dogmatism and exclusiveness still remains ; and 
 isolated sentinels at distant outposts bid us remember that the 
 field is yet by no means won. Even among the most culti- 
 vated, affection still invests the founder of Christianity with an 
 ideal significance which the record, it is admitted, does not 
 justify ; and claims for his religion some kind of final or 
 " absolute " character. Yet the modern study of the New
 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 233 
 
 Testament has shown us how mingled are its universal ele- 
 ments with the accidents of time and country, of local circum- 
 stance and frustrated expectation. To understand it aright 
 requires, as we know, an education of the historic and religious 
 imagination, which is indeed one of the noblest exercises of 
 the human mind, but which cannot be everywhere demanded 
 or pursued. And for this reason alone it does not seem likely 
 that any single or specific faith can ever absorb all others into 
 one world- wide Church. We are learning slowly how closely 
 dependent is any one generation on those which preceded it, 
 and we cannot divest ourselves of our inheritance. No nation 
 can transfer to another its own past. Contact and sympathy 
 may slowly modify the old instincts or gradually create new 
 social ideals. But the days of religious conquest by authority 
 have gone by. The " people of the book," as Islam calls the 
 Christians, will use it no longer as having dominion over their 
 faith, but, as the Apostle Paul wished to be to his converts, the 
 helper of their joy. 
 
 And yet the aspiration after unity will not be repressed. 
 In divers ways it is already at work, drawing together churches 
 that were once divided, creating larger groups with broader 
 liberties, breaking down barriers of suspicion or reserve by the 
 discovery of common sympathies and the hope of common 
 ends. In such tentative movements let us heartily rejoice, 
 even though they are not yet strong enough to include us all. 
 Beyond their scope, however, lies a great spiritual ideal still 
 wider and more comprehensive. The Christian finds in it 
 what he believes to have been the fundamental conceptions of 
 his Master, disentangled from their temporary envelopments, 
 and translated into the larger knowledge of our time. The 
 clearer perception of this ideal, the endeavour to realise it, the 
 strength and support for action derived from it, are, indeed, 
 among the most hopeful features of our age. The passionate 
 conviction that it pervades the universe and links all history into 
 one mighty whole has received fresh support along many lines 
 of thought, and is the deepest note of poetry, of philosophy, 
 and science. To disengage its great underlying ideas, to give 
 noble form to the emotions it excites, to bring them into re- 
 lation with the loftiest historic ideals, and make them potent 
 in the conduct of life, this must be the task of the preachers 
 of the Liberal Faith. For three mighty objects are always
 
 234 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 before us the world, man, and God. The ordered interpreta- 
 tion of Nature is, indeed, the most significant triumph of an 
 age that has perhaps added more to the content of human 
 knowledge than all the preceding efforts of the race. In 
 different forms, the eager pursuers found themselves challenged 
 by theology, till they in their turn took the offensive, and 
 were not slow to proclaim in the name of Truth a holy war. 
 But the conflict, though echoes of it are still occasionally 
 heard, is practically over. For the closer analysis of the funda- 
 mental conceptions of science has shown that in the last resort 
 they transcend experience as much as do those of religion. 
 The fearless investigator is, after all, a devout believer in the 
 ultimate unity of the physical energies acting through the 
 modes of motion which alone are manifest to sense. He is, 
 moreover, convinced that the further he advances the less and 
 less likely is it that his quest will be put to intellectual con- 
 fusion, the more and more certain is he that the world will 
 respond to his inquiries, and in some form or other will answer 
 to his thought. Mysteries there may be, passing his under- 
 standing ; but mystery is not disorder, and is the home and 
 not the obstacle of faith. The Power which works through 
 the Great Order is intrinsically one and everlasting ; and the 
 whole universe is woven out of a tissue of relations which 
 human reason slowly unravels, so that external things per- 
 petually justify the processes and action of intelligence. Nay, 
 their nnal constituents, which science can reckon up, though 
 it cannot display them to sight or touch, are in a sense the 
 creations of our thought. Yet they did not wait for us to 
 appear upon the scene. The thought which they express was 
 there before us ; and so the world wears the aspect of one 
 phase or manifestation of the Infinite Mind, and science thinks 
 the thoughts of God after him. And the Liberal Faith, as I 
 understand it, adopts this position without reserve. It no 
 longer regards science as something to be reconciled ; still less 
 as something to be dreaded or evaded ; it accepts it with 
 whole-hearted loyalty, and insists on applying its canons 
 through the entire field of Nature and history. It plants life 
 firmly and faithfully on the world's steadfastness. In its joy 
 and beauty, it finds the sympathy of the Eternal touching with 
 its own grace all seasonal vicissitude. And even in its suffer- 
 ing^and grief, it learns to say, "Bless the Lord, O my soul" ;
 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 235 
 
 for it is conscious that it can still rely upon the order and 
 welfare of the whole, and in this faith wounded affection finds 
 healing, and is supported in sacrifice even unto death. For 
 harmony with the Everlasting Will alone is peace. 
 
 But within the world stands man. It might be thought 
 that after the uncounted millenniums since he first appeared 
 upon this planet, it is somewhat late in the day to claim that 
 he is only now beginning to understand himself. Yet the last 
 century has for the first time laid the foundations of a true 
 study in opening up the real story of his past. It has shown 
 us how to trace the origins of his physical frame, to note the 
 rude commencements of his thought, to find in primitive usage 
 the germs of the mighty structures of law and government, of 
 the lofty achievements of art, philosophy, and religion. The 
 newly-founded science of Anthropology is, indeed, conceived at 
 present on a somewhat narrow scale ; but it will gradually 
 become more and more clear that in man, his history and 
 power, his thoughts and aspirations, his conscience, affections, 
 will, lies the clue to the interpretation of his place in the world, 
 and the ultimate source and seat of all religion. And as such, 
 nil humani can be indifferent to us. For this end, however, 
 not all experience is of equal value. From a very early stage 
 in man's progress, faith and morals have stood out in decisive 
 prominence among the forces of his advance, and have lived 
 under some form of close alliance. The investigation of the 
 nature of conscience, and the discovery that from land to land 
 and creed to creed the contents of the moral ideal in its higher 
 developments have shown frequent resemblance, if not positive 
 identity, have undermined the doctrine of man's total depravity. 
 Morality is no longer conceived as dependent on positive 
 commands of Heaven, revealed in supernatural law or by a 
 supernatural person ; it is discerned as a part of the social order, 
 because involved in the constitution of humanity itself. And 
 there the unique character of man's moral judgments has been 
 clearly disengaged as the very centre and essence of his life ; 
 they cannot be reduced into any other terms of quantity or kind ; 
 and that good which he recognises as having authority over 
 him, as claiming his services and demanding the consecration 
 of his will, is seen to be no other than the reflection in his 
 own soul of the infinite purpose which enspheres all our being. 
 The Liberal Faith, therefore, will be above all things ethical ;
 
 236 THE LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 it will demand the highest in personal character ; it will palter 
 with no favourite sins ; and the mighty causes of social justice 
 and international right, of popular welfare, temperance, purity, 
 must ever engage its unfaltering support. It is possible, indeed, 
 that our analysis of the moral life may hereafter go deeper than 
 has hitherto seemed possible. Thus far, the chief subject of 
 examination has been the soul, considered as the seat of 
 individual experience. But new vistas of inquiry are now 
 opening out into the structure of society, the ties that link men 
 each to each, the subtle bonds, but dimly recognised in our 
 common life, which unite the human units into communities, 
 and through the family expand into the State. May it not be, 
 that here we shall ultimately find the moral analogue in the 
 experience of the race to that reason which gives man kinship 
 with the world ? And shall we not thus learn that, in some way 
 beyond our power now to apprehend, each separate historic 
 development has its place in the vast whole, where God's 
 providence perpetually transmutes the lower elements into the 
 higher, and out of primeval struggle brings forth great ideals of 
 righteousness. In the universe there is order, in humanity is 
 life, and that life is something more than the sum of all the 
 individual persons which may at any moment be reckoned by a 
 census embracing the whole globe. It is the sum of all their 
 connections and successions, which are not self-made, but follow 
 hidden laws ; so that the mighty web of conscious thought 
 and feeling and endeavour rests on a deep underlying unity, the 
 mind of God revealing itself through the generations of our 
 experience, and folding all our separate purposes within the 
 scope of his Almighty will. 
 
 The faith which thus reposes on God as the Author and 
 Upholder of the world, the Creator, Sustainer, Guide, Inspirer 
 of man, will draw unfailing guidance from the great historic 
 religions. It will find in them the highest organised ex- 
 pressions, under the forms of race and time and country, of 
 man's enduring relation to the Eternal. It will recognise with 
 undying gratitude its debt to those prophet souls who have 
 flashed light into dark places so that all might see, and given 
 personal shape to the highest spiritual truths. But it will not 
 insist that Christ shall be its centre any more than Plato. 
 Religion can have but one object, the Everlasting God ; one 
 centre on which it rests immovable, the Infinite Spirit in which
 
 THE LIBERAL FAITH 237 
 
 we live and move and have our being. Let us, indeed, join 
 willing hands with those who may firmly maintain their own 
 communion with their risen Lord, but can yet recognise that 
 for other souls there are divers ways within the Father's grace. 
 Must it not, however, be said that the function of Christianity 
 conceived internationally among the races of the world is not 
 to conquer and subdue, but to inspire, to infuse its own ideals 
 and impart some of its own life j and in its turn perhaps to 
 realise with quickening sense of brotherhood the unity of man- 
 kind, in that " God hath made of one every nation of men to 
 dwell on all the face of the earth," and so win new confidence 
 in its central truths ? For this great end may this Council do 
 its modest work. All gifts of thought and love, of faithful 
 labour and lowly worship, can be laid upon this altar without 
 fear or reserve. All service for human welfare finds here its 
 consecration and support. Difficulties there are ; they exist 
 only to be overcome. Hazards there will be ; they call for 
 great ventures of trust. Let us find our sufficiency where 
 prophets and saints have found it before us, a sufficiency that 
 will not fail us, though we be not worthy to unloose the latchet 
 of their shoes, and can do no more than give a cup of cold 
 water to some thirsting brother on the way. Before us is the 
 boundless future, and the vast processions of our race are 
 already marshalling themselves to take their places when we 
 are here no more. What preparation shall we have made for 
 them ? When creeds decay and churches totter, shall they be 
 left without a faith ? Be it ours to open some blind eyes to 
 discern the sanctuary not made with hands, to unstop some 
 deaf ears to the voice of the Spirit heard more and more clearly 
 within the heart of purity and reverence and love. Our stay 
 and strength, our source and goal is God : 
 
 That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 
 To which the whole creation moves.
 
 IX 
 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 TO 
 
 HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 
 
 Essex Hall Lecture for 1895 
 J. E. C. 1895 
 
 239
 
 " Christianity will never probably be the uncontradicted religion of all men. But 
 there will be cause for satisfaction if it win to its side the noble, the truth-loving, 
 the men who have * passion for righteousness. I should not despair of that, if such 
 men only saw Christ truly. The Apologetic of the future must make it its business 
 to communicate the vision to the few, that they in turn may communicate it to the 
 many." DR. A. B. BRUCE, The Kingdom of God, p. 340.
 
 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 TO 
 
 HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 
 
 MORE than eight hundred years ago, in the fifteenth century 
 of the Buddha, a devout disciple, driven from his home by 
 persecution, poured out his soul to his Lord in such terms as 
 these : " Whether I live in heaven or in hell, whether in the 
 city of ghosts or of men, let my mind be fixed on thee ; for 
 there is no other happiness for me. Thou art my father, 
 mother, brother, sister ; thou art my fast friend in danger, O 
 dear one, thou art my lord, my teacher, who imparts to me 
 knowledge sweet as nectar. Thou art my wealth, my enjoy- 
 ment, my pleasure, my affluence, my greatness, my reputation, 
 my knowledge, and my life. Thou art my all, O all-knowing 
 Buddha." And in the fifteenth century of the Christ, the 
 author of the Imitation wrote : " I had rather be poor for thee 
 than rich without thee ; I rather choose to be a pilgrim on 
 earth with thee than without thee to possess heaven. Where 
 thou art, there is heaven, and where thou art not, there is 
 death and hell. . . . O happy souls that have the privilege of 
 receiving thee, their Lord God, with devout affection. O 
 how great a Lord do they entertain, how great a guest do they 
 harbour ; how delightful a companion do they receive ; how 
 faithful a friend do they welcome ; how noble and lofty a 
 spouse do they embrace. O thou, my most sweet, most 
 beloved, let heaven and earth and all their ornaments be silent 
 in thy presence." 
 
 So does the literature of devotion present the apprehension 
 
 of the Eternal, now under the form of a living Buddha, now of 
 
 a living Christ. But the pious Evangelical can hardly tolerate 
 
 a Christ made known in the Real Presence, any more than he 
 
 Q 241
 
 242 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 could recognise a communion with the Buddha attained 
 through the loving study of the sacred word, or patient 
 pilgrimage to a holy place. His experience is cast in another 
 mould j it is inwrought with what has the deepest and most 
 awful significance in his own life, his conviction of sin and his 
 sense of forgiveness. There lies for him the proof of Christ's 
 Deity, there is the justification of his belief, all else has value 
 only in the schools.* So for Christian and Buddhist the ulti- 
 mate test of dogma lies in a personal intuition, a sense of 
 spiritual connection with the object of faith. Yet it must 
 surely be apparent that what is apprehended has lost all the 
 special marks of place and time by which its individuality is 
 recognised. No one supposes himself to sustain direct inward 
 fellowship with Luther or Plato. Wherever these exalted 
 spirits may be, they do not come within the range of any 
 form of our consciousness. Only the universal and the ever- 
 lasting can transcend the limitations of our separateness, and 
 speak at the same moment to a thousand different souls. The 
 particular cannot be at once both in and out of its historic 
 relations ; nor can the personages of the past be known by any 
 testimony of the present. The Gotama of the Ganges valley 
 or the Jesus of the Galilean hills may be identified in faith 
 with the infinite and the absolute, but they cannot be so known 
 now, for when divested of their human forms, and transfigured 
 into Godhead, they have dropped all the marks by which they 
 were once distinguished. You can no more, by gazing on 
 the Infinite Spirit, discern in him the specific lineaments of the 
 teachers of the past, than by staring into space you can behold 
 the Buddha under his Bo-tree, or the Christ upon the cross. 
 
 Our interior experience, then, must needs shape itself 
 according to the moulds which are prepared for us by other 
 agencies both of our outer and our inner life. The circum- 
 stances of our training, our race, our age, contribute to deter- 
 mine these modes for us ; but however flexible or elastic these 
 may be, they can never serve for criteria of the persons or the 
 events of history. To judge of them, we must resort to the 
 evidence of history, nor must we lay on this a greater stress 
 than it can bear. If it be alleged, for instance, that unique 
 results must have been preceded by a unique cause,t we are 
 
 * Forsyth, " Revelation and the Person of Christ," in Faith and Criticism, p. 134. 
 t Illingworth, Personality Human and Divine, p. 200.
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 243 
 
 entitled to demand that the fact to be explained shall be first 
 proved to be entirely exceptional, and secondly that the special 
 cause shall not be vastly more than adequate to the sequel for 
 whose production it is invoked. In other words, the advocates 
 of the supernatural origin of Christianity must face the ques- 
 tion whether the phenomena of Christian history are so diverse 
 in kind from those of other religions as to require the supposi- 
 tion that, while they had an earthly origin, this came down 
 from heaven. It is a problem that can in truth never be 
 answered in the affirmative, for we do not know the limits of 
 the human, and there is no other acknowledged instance by 
 which to judge of the divine. A single occurrence can never 
 establish an inductive argument for the intervention of Deity. 
 The Incarnation cannot be proved by the insufficiency of 
 human causation to account for the foundation of the Church, 
 for that is exactly the assumption in dispute ; nor can we tell 
 that the manifestation of a divine Son would have resulted in 
 precisely these effects ; why should it not have produced 
 indefinitely more ? The intellectual leap from man to God 
 in one solitary crisis of history is not justified by arraying any 
 number of adumbratory cases in which the precise event adum- 
 brated did not occur. It may be a brave venture, but it carries 
 the believer into^ and not across^ a logical void. 
 
 For those, then, who can find no clear reason for believing 
 themselves now in spiritual relation with a living Christ, and 
 who do not perceive in the religious life of Christianity such 
 intrinsic superiority over other great historic faiths as to compel 
 them to have recourse a priori to a wholly different kind of 
 causal force, there remains no way of determining the place of 
 Jesus but by the common processes of historic inquiry. Along 
 this well-worn path who does not tread with a sense of weari- 
 ness, who does not long to escape from the criticism of the 
 study into the contests of life, where principles are established 
 and victories are won, where great thoughts work revolutions, 
 and souls are saved by love ? But the obligations of truth 
 cannot be evaded, and from opposite sides we are still chal- 
 lenged to justify our Christianity. 
 
 To this audience I need not repeat the necessary presupposi- 
 tions of such an inquiry, nor describe the literary method by 
 which the records must be examined and the evidence com-
 
 244 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 pared. It must suffice to remark that modern apologetic 
 admits that the earliest of our gospels, that "according to 
 Mark," did not emerge from the editorial process to which it 
 owes its present shape until well-nigh fifty years after the death 
 of Jesus ; and that whatever theory of the origin of the Fourth 
 Gospel we adopt, it must be conceded that it contains rather 
 an interpretation than a record of the Teacher's life and words ; 
 it is an effort to translate into the more universal and enduring 
 forms of Greek thought conceptions which in the Synoptic 
 narratives are wrapped in the vesture of Hebrew imagery and 
 suffused with the glory of prophetic fire. And this in reality 
 constitutes one of the chief difficulties of our quest. For if on 
 the one hand these narratives bear the stamp of an ineffaceable 
 reality, on the other they are pervaded by an atmosphere of 
 belief and feeling so unlike our own that we only learn with 
 difficulty to find that reality through its shining haze. For 
 we are carried into a world where nature is plastic, and shapes 
 itself obediently beneath superior powers ; where the very rock 
 can roll through the wilderness to yield a draught for thirsty 
 travellers ; where man can walk upon the water and multiply 
 the loaves, and God can fill the sky with portents and com- 
 motions of impending change ; where the possibilities of 
 humanity are unlimited, and common speech assumes that 
 the dead may rise and live and move among their fellows, may 
 cross the centuries and descend from heaven, or reappear out of 
 an unknown grave, to meet and talk beside the Son of God ; 
 where angels band themselves in celestial escort or in legions 
 of defence, or demons that have swarmed from the abyss are 
 constantly seeking fresh abodes in hapless men ; where powers 
 and principalities contend from height to depth ; where the 
 inarticulate utterance of enthusiasm seems to the listener to be 
 the Spirit's speech j where the skies open and the language of 
 heaven is heard ; where, in short, science is not, and imagina- 
 tion reigns supreme, and brings forth from its treasure-house 
 things noble and lovely, but withal things monstrous and 
 grotesque. And through this medley of ignorance and fancy, 
 out of the conflicts of parties and the discussions of the schools, 
 through the smouldering discontent begotten of political 
 oppression, amid the rivalry of nationalities, the claims of estab- 
 lished institutions, and the jealousies of sects, there rises with 
 tones of power that incomparable voice proclaiming the ideas,
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 245 
 
 kindling the emotions, and quickening the endeavours, which 
 are slowly changing the old order into new. 
 
 Among these ideas two are by common consent of the 
 highest importance in the teaching of Jesus, the conception 
 of God as Father, and the expectation of the kingdom of 
 heaven. The terminology of these ideas is not new. There 
 is no hint of novelty in their outward form ; and whatever 
 misunderstandings may have arisen from the attempt to put 
 fresh meaning into ancient speech, it does not appear that 
 Jesus was conscious of employing a different religious idiom, 
 or minting another coinage of devout expression. These two 
 great names, Father and King, represented originally two types 
 of power, and corresponded to two great social institutions, 
 the family and the nation, which were through all antiquity 
 the ruling modes of the moral order of the world and life. 
 For many ages they had supplied the highest imaginative 
 symbols for Deity ; and from many a gentle heart beside the 
 Ganges and the gleaming Nile, or among the vales of Greece 
 as well as in the fold of Israel, the two names had gone up to 
 heaven in song and prayer. In Hebrew thought, however 
 as, indeed, elsewhere the stress had fallen upon the element 
 of sovereignty. It had allied itself especially with the great 
 faith in God's righteous rule, and while the poets and seers 
 sang joyously of the kingdom which embraced all ages, it was 
 only more rarely that they entered into the tenderer relation 
 " Like as a father pitieth his children, so Yahweh pitieth them 
 that fear him." Yet if we may believe that the ancient 
 sources of the modern Jewish liturgy reflect at least in part 
 the type of pious affection in which Jesus himself was trained, 
 the expression, " Our Father which art in heaven," with which 
 he bade his disciples begin to pray, may have been as familiar 
 to him as that other petition, "Thy kingdom come," for 
 without mention of the kingdom, said the Rabbis, "a prayer 
 is not a prayer." The language of Jesus, then, is the accus- 
 tomed language of his age ; he stands on the great inheritance 
 of national ideas. He uses everywhere the modes of religious 
 utterance which the Scripture and the Synagogue set upon his 
 lips. He builds upon the moral life which they have organised. 
 He assumes the existence of what may be called a spiritual 
 atmosphere which he does not need first to create or to diffuse. 
 He takes for granted a sense of personal relationship to God,
 
 246 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 such as the later Psalmists had already realised, and the earnest- 
 ness of ethical endeavour which it had been the work of 
 prophecy and law to quicken and maintain. He is conscious, 
 that is to say, of an essential identity of religious experience 
 between his hearers and himself, however fitful or feeble may 
 be their response to his appeal. In this consciousness of a 
 common base lies one of the secrets of his prophetic power. 
 By this he knows that souls are of one order, and that what- 
 ever is true for himself, is true potentially for all as well. 
 
 This one great truth it was the glory of Jesus to apprehend 
 with a breadth of view and an intensity of grasp which made 
 his experience vitalising for each later generation of believers. 
 By what process it was unfolded in the growth of his own 
 spirit, it does not lie in our power to determine. When we 
 have summed up all the influences that mark the age, there 
 still remains the incalculable behind. Why the divine fire was 
 kindled in Jesus, while his family seemed cold and dead, we 
 cannot tell. Had we heard James and Joses, Judas and Simon, 
 proposing to lay hands on their brother because of his unfortu- 
 nate insanity,* we might indeed have had some clue to their 
 dulness, but we should have had little more insight into the 
 deeps of his own mind ; there are mysteries enfolding even the 
 simplest and the poorest life, " the spirit bloweth, and is still." 
 Yet the essential fact remains unchanged. Jesus boldly made 
 his own sense of sonship to God the norm and type for all. 
 Here was the principle which should rule all our being, this was 
 the truth which should govern all conduct, regulate all passion- 
 ate impulse, sustain all aspiration. It implied a communion of 
 thought and feeling between God and man, which has been 
 ever since the basis of the life of the Church, and it comprised 
 within it issues which succeeding ages, so far from exhausting, 
 have hardly yet begun to acknowledge, still less to fulfil. It is 
 not surprising, therefore, if Jesus did not himself proceed to 
 make the applications which even the next generation of 
 disciples found inevitable concerning the permanent and 
 universal application of the Law ; or that he should himself 
 have continued to observe the institutions of a worship which a 
 later age felt to be out of harmony with God conceived as 
 spirit. But two results of the utmost importance followed 
 straight in his mind, and were formulated as principles of 
 
 * Mark Hi. 21.
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 247 
 
 conduct. " Have we not all one father ? " asked one of the 
 later voices of Hebrew prophecy ; * " hath not one God created 
 us ? " Then " cease all treacherous dealing, and take heed to 
 your spirit." Abstain from violence and unfaithfulness, avoid 
 resentment, cherish self-control. It is a wholesome rule. But 
 how if others will not abstain on their part ? The difficulty 
 does not come within the prophet's view ; he does not rise high 
 enough to see it. The thought of Jesus, however, is prepared ; 
 he has his answer ready for the extremity of trial : " Love ye 
 your enemies and do them good, and ye shall be sons of the 
 Most High, for he is kind to the unthankful and the evil ; be 
 ye merciful even as your Father is merciful." The Fatherhood 
 of God, then, includes the brutal and the base, and demands of 
 us a beneficence untiring as the sunshine, a kindness as fresh 
 and soothing as the summer rain. And these symbols of the 
 goodness of heaven do but speak in outward forms of the 
 reserves of bounty waiting for the loveless whom men find 
 unlovable. To awaken them to a sense of their own needs, to 
 lead them to the Father yearning to bless, must not this be the 
 work of those who have already learned that they are children 
 of the Eternal ? So from the heart of his own sonship did 
 Jesus draw the twofold consequence, that a religion in which 
 God is Father and all men are brethren is a religion of 
 universal charity, and of active energy to seek and save. 
 
 The conception of the Fatherhood of God is the first and 
 most powerful element in the religious consciousness of Jesus, 
 but it forms rather the foundation of his teaching than its 
 actual substance. It is everywhere implied, it is nowhere 
 systematically unfolded, still less philosophically justified. The 
 original message of the new Teacher does not contain it ; 
 he is content to take up the Baptist's cry, " Repent, for the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand." The place of the Baptist 
 among the religious movements of his time, and the share 
 which he had in awakening the spirit of Jesus, can never be 
 determined with certainty ; and speculation may still continue 
 to connect the preacher of the wilderness with the Essenes, 
 and even to link some of the principles of Jesus with the ideas 
 of that community. But these conjectures are of the most 
 uncertain character, and it must also remain doubtful how far 
 
 * Malachi i. 10, cp. 15.
 
 248 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 the cycle of expectations represented, for instance, in the book 
 of Enoch, had really entered widely or deeply into the heart of 
 the time. Evidence there is indeed that the national hope 
 already looked forward to the " end of the age," and waited for 
 the advent of a new era, marked by wonders of divine power 
 and justice. The world -judgment and the resurrection 
 appeared more or less clearly before the popular imagination, 
 and pious hearts yearned for Messiah, at once son of David and 
 son of the Blessed, to bring consolation to Israel. But the 
 conception of the kingdom of God was by no means fixed and 
 definite, and the language of the Rabbis is sufficient to show 
 that in whatever imagery the expectation of the advent might 
 be clothed, there were aspects of it which appealed straight to 
 the inward consciousness of the devout soul. In this respect 
 the analogy of the hymns of the Zend Avesta is not without 
 significance. The Persian theology, with which later Judaism 
 had so many and such interesting connections, also conceived 
 the Lord Omniscient, Ahura Mazda, as King. Among the 
 angelic powers that waited nearest to his throne, one was the 
 impersonation of his sovereignty, and bore the name of 
 Khshathra^ " the kingdom." The righteous rule of Ahura, 
 the " good kingdom," was manifested in the spread of truth 
 and of goodwill. " The kingdom is Ahura's," sang the poets, 
 " we praise the good kingdom." To adopt the true religion 
 was to give the kingdom to Ahura, to acknowledge his supreme 
 government. And the striking phrase in the third line of the 
 most sacred prayer, " He gives the kingdom to Ahura, who 
 gives succour to the poor," * implies that the service of man 
 was already seen to be the most acceptable recognition of the 
 sovereignty of God. In the same way, the Israelite who 
 repeated the Shema " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is 
 one Lord " was said to take upon himself the kingdom, for 
 the worship of the one God excluded all idol service. And he 
 who took upon himself this yoke was bidden to lay aside all 
 entangling elements that would engage his thought, prepare 
 himself in purity, and surrender himself in love with all his 
 heart and soul and strength to the heavenly will. Thus did 
 the dying Akiba in the hands of his torturers take on himself 
 the yoke of the kingdom by reciting the Shema. And when 
 his persecutors asked why he did so, " All my life long," replied 
 
 * Darmesteter, "Baghan Yasht " in Annales du Muse'e Guimet, xxi. 161, 162.
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 249 
 
 the sufferer, " have I recited this verse, and have longed for the 
 hour when I could fulfil it. I loved him with all my heart j I 
 loved him with all my fortunes; now I have the opportunity 
 to love him with my soul." * Such a yoke was not found 
 heavy, to such a spirit the burden was surely light. 
 
 There were, then, elements in the thought of Israel con- 
 cerning the kingdom which would not be out of harmony with 
 the fundamental ideas of Jesus. The conception of the 
 paternity of God summed up a spiritual relation between the 
 soul and its infinite source : the conception of the sovereignty 
 concerned rather the social expression of this relation in the 
 affairs of life. The language of Jesus on this subject, according 
 to our first three evangelists, is, however, by no means con- 
 sistent upon this great theme, and it is difficult to bring the 
 varying views which they suggest into a focus of uniform 
 clearness. In taking up the Baptist's word as the first note of 
 his own message to his countrymen, he seemingly sets himself 
 in line with the hope of some visible and speedy demonstration 
 of God's power. The method of the two preachers is, how- 
 ever, intrinsically different, for the religious consciousness of 
 Jesus soon gave to the interpretation of his gospel a character 
 wholly unlike the mingled threats and warnings of John. The 
 element of apocalyptic wrath dies away from his speech. The 
 sense of the heavenly presence about him and within over- 
 powers all else, " The kingdom of God cometh not with 
 observation, for lo ! the kingdom of God is in your midst." 
 Spiritual relations, that is to say, are always there. They do 
 not arrive from without, they are perceived within, and to him 
 who apprehends them they furnish a continuous impulse of 
 affection and endeavour, which the religion of Israel had long 
 designated as " life." It was the result of the teaching of 
 
 * Jewish Quarterly, vi. 642. The striking note of Lightfoot, Hebrew and 
 Talmudical Exercitations, on Matt. iii. 2, deserves careful consideration in estimating 
 the relation of Jesus to contemporary thought. After citing a number of Rabbinical 
 quotations he continues : " If by the Kingdom of Heaven in these and other such 
 like places, which it would be too much to heap together, they mean the inward 
 love and fear of God, which indeed they seem to do, so far they agree with our 
 Gospel sense, which asserts the inward and spiritual Kingdom of Christ especially. 
 And if the words of our Saviour, Behold the Kingdom of God is -within you, Luke xvii. 
 21, be suited to this sense of the Nation concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, there is 
 nothing sounds hard or rough in them ; for it is as much as if he had said, ' Do you 
 think the Kingdom of Heaven shall come with some remarkable observation or 
 with much show ? Your very Schools teach that the Kingdom of God is within 
 a man,' "
 
 2 5 o THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 Jesus, and it was still more the effect of his character, the 
 stimulus of his being, that they awoke in responsive hearts this 
 vividness of inward energy, and raised it to the highest intensity. 
 What he saw, others learned to see through his eyes ; what he 
 felt, others felt after him. As he moved about in the familiar 
 scenes by the lake-side, or among the villages upon the hills, in 
 boat or market - place or synagogue, he figured himself as 
 Sower of the seed which must grow and blossom and ripen till 
 the age should end, and the great divine dispensation, so 
 mysteriously designated as the coming of the Son of Man, 
 should usher in the new era with a sublime manifestation of 
 the forces of heaven in righteousness and truth and love. This 
 tremendous moral revolution looms again and again before the 
 mind of Jesus, in the near future, after the great turning-point 
 of his ministry, when the resolve has been taken to go to 
 Jerusalem, and the possibility of death is faced. The deeper 
 the sense of opposition, the higher rises his assurance that, 
 whatever fate may overtake himself, the cause of God must 
 triumph. To many readers of the Gospels there appears, 
 indeed, a want of harmony between the hopes of Jesus at the 
 opening, and the predictions at the close of his career. There 
 is an element of dramatic display in the announcement of the 
 great world - event as dated already within that generation, 
 which does not seem to cohere with the natural symbols of the 
 seed, the blade, the full corn in the ear. To minds that are 
 steeped in the modern thought of the uniformities of divine 
 causation, there is a kind of violation of spiritual continuity in 
 the promise of a sudden crisis when the good shall conquer, and 
 the evil shall be trampled under foot. But Hebrew prophecy 
 had never wholly surrendered the anticipation of these divine 
 catastrophes. In the light of history they seem to us irrecon- 
 cilable with the methods of Providence as we have learned 
 them. They appear not less incongruous with the essential 
 thought of Jesus as we read it, which requires that spiritual 
 ends the education of humanity as sons of God shall be 
 achieved by spiritual processes. These do not admit a super- 
 natural passage from an age that now is to an age that is to 
 come j they tolerate as we interpret them in the light of our 
 subsequent experience no change in the divine method from 
 the evolution of an inner life to the establishment of an out- 
 ward glory. The incongruity was already apparent in the
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 251 
 
 Greek schools, from which the Fourth Gospel issued, where the 
 Second Advent has already become transformed into a spiritual 
 communion not to be distinguished from the fellowship of the 
 Father and the Spirit. But in the fragmentary records which 
 alone we possess derived direct from 'the Palestinian tradition, I 
 perceive no sign that the consciousness of Jesus was at all 
 disturbed by any inability to combine these two conceptions. 
 Behind them both there lay the abiding might and holiness of 
 the Eternal. These were not bound to one unchanging course. 
 The future was at any moment open to their entry in new 
 forms. They were free as the Father needed them to realise 
 his purposes and fulfil his will. 1 
 
 To this great idea, then, of the kingdom of God, Jesus 
 gave a new vitality, a deeper and more far-reaching meaning. 
 Whether it were conceived as an unseen spiritual energy in 
 this age, or as a visible reality in the age to come, it would 
 involve a complete transformation of all social relations in the 
 light of the new powers of love and trust which filled the soul. 
 Founded essentially upon the immediate kinship between man 
 and God, it was by its nature intrinsically universal. Already 
 the spirit of later prophecy and psalm had soared again and 
 again over national limitations, and represented the whole earth 
 as bound in one fellowship of devotion to the only True. Yet 
 there are indications that, so far as his own mission was con- 
 cerned, Jesus did not himself work out this issue ; and in the 
 form in which the problem afterwards arose before the Apostle 
 Paul, there was no authority from the Master to decide the 
 question. From one point of view, therefore, he has been 
 criticised for the narrowness which confined his message to 
 his own people. From another he has been blamed for the 
 want of patriotism which recognised the dues of Caesar, and 
 offered no hope to a nation which knew itself in bonds, but yet 
 aspired to rule the world. In a certain sense these charges 
 really cancel each other. The older prophecy had undoubtedly 
 based itself upon existing politics, and an Isaiah might have 
 judged the situation differently. But there was a curious 
 fitness in the common report which identified Jesus with a 
 risen Jeremiah. For it had been the fate of Jeremiah to 
 preach submission to the Chaldean power, and at the same 
 time to declare that the fall of the monarchy and the apparent 
 destruction of its institutions would be the beginning of a new
 
 252 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 and higher faith. The Roman now stood at the temple-gate, 
 and the traffickers within ministered to an unspiritual worship, 
 against which the soul of Jesus protested in the very words of 
 his predecessor. It is sufficiently clear that Jesus foresaw that 
 in some form or other the conflict could not be long delayed ; 
 the prediction of the overthrow of the temple is too well attested, 
 I think, to be doubted. What would be the issue ? Would the 
 nation, with its proud consciousness of an elect destiny, struggle 
 to the last to save itself? Or would it be willing to lose its 
 life for the truth's sake, and through its suffering conquer the 
 world's weapons of hatred and force, so as to find its life anew ? 
 That, at any rate, was the problem which the issue of the 
 ministry of Jesus involved for himself. That ministry, which 
 had begun so buoyantly, had not required him to define his 
 own function even to himself. He moved among his people 
 as a Teacher a Rabbi of a new type his hearers thought 
 carrying forth into the market-place ideas which had hitherto 
 been discussed chiefly in the schools. He had been content to 
 speak from the pure impulse of an unclouded heart ; he had 
 yielded himself to be the instrument of the prophetic word. 
 But the very success which first attended him, followed by the 
 opposition of those whose undoubted religious earnestness might 
 have qualified them most to understand him, compelled him by 
 degrees to determine more clearly the relation in which he 
 stood to the movement which he had initiated. He had 
 sent forth his disciples to announce the advent of the kingdom 
 of God. Around their message gathered many a query con- 
 cerning the Master whose commission they discharged. Such 
 questions could not be confined to the worshippers who poured 
 out of the synagogue, where the Sabbath monotony had been 
 diversified by a strange preacher ; they were more than the 
 gossip of women at the village-well ; they must have arisen 
 in the mind of the disciple ; did they not rise also in the mind 
 of the Teacher himself ? Must not the time arrive when he 
 must explain himself to himself ? What was the meaning of 
 the mysterious power by which he seemed to take the cares 
 and sorrows, the guilt and sufferings, of his countrymen into 
 his own heart ? When the blind saw, and the deaf heard, and 
 the dead in trespasses and sins rose to new life, surely the spirit 
 of the Lord had brought anew the ancient chrism, and the 
 anointed Servant preached good news again in him. So there
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 253 
 
 arose within him the conviction that if Israel was the elect 
 among the nations, to receive first the message of the kingdom, 
 he was the chosen among his people to declare it to them ; and 
 as the inward necessity becomes clear to him that he must 
 make the great venture and proclaim the kingdom at Jerusalem, 
 centre alike of the history and the hopes of his race, there comes 
 also the need of clearness, of definition, of assurance, which 
 prompts the questions at Caesarea Philippi. Even to Jesus the 
 significance of his Messiahship might be increased, when he 
 found that his own conviction was shared by those who knew 
 him best. In the moment of Peter's answer the hopes and 
 impulses, the ideas and emotions, of many a night of solitary 
 prayer, are knit together with a force that can triumph over 
 death. He sees it already in front of him, but without terror, 
 for the way of death is also the path of life. Outwardly he 
 may seem to fall before the oppositions of evil. But inwardly 
 he will rise by vanquishing them, and showing that they cannot 
 sever him from God. In the fate that may await him there 
 will be no element of accident. It is the final test of obedience 
 to the Father's will. In this is not defeat, but victory, for it 
 will be a quickening power for those around. Messiah may 
 have to give his life as a ransom for many, but the Son of Man 
 will come ! 
 
 The cycle of Messianic conceptions has imported into 
 Christianity so many elements which subsequent experience 
 has failed to justify, they are so largely responsible for the false 
 interpretation which has turned the religion of Jesus into a 
 device for attaining salvation hereafter rather than a method of 
 life here, that their presence in his mind in any shape has 
 sometimes seemed to mar the simplicity of his spiritual con- 
 sciousness, and impair the directness of his message to our 
 modern World. To me, indeed, even their most crude and 
 vulgar forms would not be without a pathetic significance, for 
 the wildest dreams of national glory sprang out of a conviction 
 that Israel's history and Israel's religion had a worth for 
 humanity which nothing else on earth possessed. In persecu- 
 tion and distress they kept alive the hope of liberty and the 
 great trust in God. They formed the imaginative expression 
 of that which is the essential core of all religion, the belief in 
 the righteous purpose of the order of the world. In the first
 
 254 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 ages of the Church they supplied the momentum needful to 
 carry forth the Teacher's word, and plant it in the wide fields 
 he could not reach. In doing so it was inevitable that they 
 should react upon the record, and invest the Teacher's person 
 with claims he did not raise, and an authority he never sought. 
 Yet when every allowance has been made for the operation of 
 these causes in the Gospel narratives, there remains a residue of 
 assertiveness in which some have found traces of arrogance 
 and pretension irreconcilable with the limitations of his know- 
 ledge or the general fact of his humanity. The modern 
 believer is in truth too well aware of the frailty of the tenure 
 on which he holds his faith. Trained to consider every 
 question open, and periodically to submit the whole fabric 
 of his thought beneath the solvent of some new philosophy, 
 he forgets that the prophet must prophesy, not with the timid 
 questionings of an inquirer, but with the splendid audacity of 
 one who sees and knows. The closer study of Oriental life 
 partially relieves this difficulty. To any one who, on the one 
 hand, finds stumbling-blocks in some of the hard sayings of 
 Jesus, and, on the other, is unable to realise the necessity which 
 may beset a powerful personality to express itself in some 
 recognised form intelligible to the common thought, I would 
 commend the early records of the Persian Babis.* 
 
 Persia has been for centuries the home of the most rarefied 
 forms of mysticism, and almost every aspect of the interior life 
 of the soul with its Maker has been realised among its teachers 
 and its saints. And there, too, from time to time the expectation 
 has arisen of some new revelation of the being and the will of God 
 more or less in harmony with the well-known Mohammedan 
 anticipation of the Twelfth Imam or Mahdi. So, more than 
 fifty years ago, the Haji Seyyid Kazim at Kerbela spoke in 
 lecture room and pulpit of the approaching advent of the 
 promised Proof, the signs of his appearance and their signi- 
 fication, and foretold that he would be a youth untaught in the 
 learning of men: "I see him," he exclaimed, "as the rising 
 sun." And in fact'in 1844 the young Teacher, who had been 
 a student in the classes of Seyyid Kazim, stepped forth after his 
 master's death, at the age of twenty-four, and began to proclaim 
 a higher faith, destined to replace and supersede all existing 
 
 * The late Master of Balliol once told me that he thought that Babism might 
 prove the most important religious movement since the foundation of Christianity.
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 255 
 
 creeds. With a singularly lofty morality he announced a new 
 creation, wherein there should be no injustice or discord, and 
 God's holy ones should reign on earth. He himself took the 
 title Bab, or " Gate," as the herald of the fresh dispensation, 
 the forerunner of the great manifestation of the heavenly 
 realm. The ethical universalism of some of his precepts may 
 have been in part due to the impalpable influences of general 
 civilisation, and the transfusion of occasional Gospel teaching 
 into Islam ; but there seems no reason to believe that the Bab 
 owed anything directly to the New Testament. He sent forth 
 his followers to preach, and inspired them with the most 
 splendid heroism. The story of his ministry, gathered from 
 the lips of those who knew him, testifies to the presence of an 
 exalted soul, so deeply impressed with the sense of a divine 
 mission that he finally believed himself to be the promised 
 deliverer, the Qa'im, " he who is to arise.' 2 Around his 
 figure there shone such majesty that even unbelievers bowed 
 in lowly awe. He healed the sick, effecting cures even at a 
 distance ; he was transfigured before two of his disciples ; he 
 converted his guards ; and he foretold his own death, saying, 
 " It is as if I heard one crying within my soul, ' The most 
 pleasing of all things is that thou shouldest become a ransom 
 in the way of God.' " After six years of labour and suffering 
 he was executed in 1850, maintaining to the last a lofty and 
 unsullied spirit. But his death could not quench the enthusiasm 
 which he had aroused. Careful travellers have estimated the 
 number of his followers at well-nigh a million. Noble and 
 merchant, scholar and peasant, philosopher and artisan, alike 
 belong to the goodly fellowship of Babi martyrs. Around the 
 Teacher and his successor theories of incarnation flash and 
 gleam, though they are at present wholly undefined. A 
 comparison of the successive narratives betrays precisely those 
 idealising tendencies which the critic believes himself able to 
 discover in the gospels. Here, in fact, is a whole series of 
 phenomena resembling the origin of Christianity, some of 
 them upon a more conspicuous scale. The Babis saw in 
 their master a revelation of the Primal Will. "Were it 
 otherwise," says a believer, "so great a multitude of expert 
 doctors and devout seekers after truth would assuredly not 
 have accepted him as a divine manifestation, nor rapturously 
 laid down their lives for love of his surpassing beauty, and
 
 256 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 longing for union with him." * " Faith in the Incarnation," so 
 the Bampton Lecturer of last year declared, "has been the sole 
 and exclusive source of our historic Christianity. If Christ 
 was merely man, this was the one point on which he or his 
 reporters were profoundly wrong. The case, therefore, is 
 narrowed to a simple issue. Christianity cannot be due to 
 the wisdom of a man, marred by a pardonable element of error, 
 for it is simply and solely on the supposed element of error that 
 it rests, and its missionaries, its martyrs, its humble and holy 
 men of heart . . . will have derived their inspiration either 
 from folly or from fraud." t Which of these alternatives shall 
 we offer to the missionaries and the martyrs of the Bab ? 
 
 With the issue of Babism we are not now concerned. Its 
 place in the history of religion will probably resemble that to 
 which Christianity might have been limited, had it never left 
 its Syrian home. The singular combination of secular and 
 religious conditions which marked the birth of our era has 
 often been the theme of the devout historian seeking to justify 
 the ways of God to man. The sequel proved that the future 
 did not lie with Israel. In the language of the Gospel, the 
 kingdom was taken from them, and given to a nation bringing 
 forth the fruits thereof. In other words, the new principles 
 could not be confined to the Judaism within which they had 
 been first announced ; they must be incorporated into the 
 larger scope of Greek thought j they must be harmonised with 
 the administrative genius of Roman order. The leaders of the 
 first steps of this great transition were, of course, the Apostle 
 Paul, and the wondrous writer whom we know as "John." 
 The limits of this discourse forbid me to offer even the briefest 
 analysis of their teaching, or to exhibit the divergences of 
 thought which mark their presentments of the person of Jesus. 
 But they stand as witnesses to one great fact. The Christi- 
 anity in which they live and move is not confined to a body of 
 truths or a set of rules, it is not summed up in a new com- 
 mandment, it is something more than a high example. It 
 quickens them as a mighty moral and spiritual impulse. It is 
 neither a diviner law, nor a truer philosophy, though it was 
 
 * The Tarikh-i-Jadid or New History, translated by Edward G. Browne, 1893, 
 p. 235. 
 
 t Illingworth, Personality Human and Di-vine, 1894, p. 199.
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 257 
 
 afterwards to be conceived under both these forms, and con- 
 tained the elements of both. It is rather the expression of an 
 intense inward experience which has altered the very character 
 of their whole being. They once were dead, but now they 
 are alive ; they have risen above the old man ; they have been 
 born from above ; and Christianity, not as an abstract system, 
 but as personally realised, is summed up in one word " life." 
 The origin of this life is traced in direct derivation from 
 Messiah. To Paul, indeed, this change seemed to come sud- 
 denly. Though he may have been long in realising its full 
 consequences, and still longer in working out the scheme of 
 the divine government of the world which flowed from them, 
 there was a moment when he first entered consciously into the 
 new relation. That moment on the road to Damascus only 
 precipitated into fresh and striking forms the thoughts and 
 emotions which had long been struggling obscurely within 
 him. The change that swept through his soul now concen- 
 trated his passion not in hate but in devotion upon Christ ; and 
 in the rush of new affection he found in him at once the 
 spring and the object of a spiritual sympathy which recreated 
 his whole nature. The intensity of this sympathy is indicated 
 by the vehemence of the figures in which it utters itself. As 
 he looks back upon the past, it seems to him that he has 
 stepped forth from a tomb. The transition has awakened in 
 him such fellowship with the self-denying love of Christ upon 
 the cross, that he assimilated his own experience to that great 
 act of sacrifice. He, too, had been crucified ; he, too, had 
 entered the sepulchre j there the old man lay buried, and he, 
 too, had risen. The experience of the master becomes the 
 norm for that of the servant, who even fills up what is lacking 
 in the sufferings of his lord. Moreover, the action of this 
 moral quickening is not confined to his own soul alone. 
 Wherever he goes, it alights on some hearts which it makes 
 its own. Race, sex, condition, rank, these matter not ; the 
 wondrous life is begotten in them all, and as many as are led 
 by the spirit of God become sons of God.* The earthly career 
 of Jesus, therefore, was but the manifestation of an unseen 
 force which was now set free for world-wide energy. It was, 
 indeed, identical with that agency which from the first day of 
 creation had displayed God's power and wisdom in the universe ; 
 
 * Gal. ii. 20, vi. 14, iii. 26-28, v. 16-24; Rom. vi. 2-11, viii. 14; Col. i. 24. 
 
 R
 
 258 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 and the bold saying " the Lord is the spirit " at once lifted him 
 above the limitation of place and time in which he had been 
 known after the flesh, and set him in the realm of ideal types 
 transcending the earthly and the visible. There, as the 
 heavenly man, Messiah dwelt at the right hand of the Father, 
 even while, as a kind of diffused spiritual substance, he per- 
 vaded the whole world, making believers everywhere the sharers 
 of a common life. So the Church presented itself to the 
 Apostle's mind as an organic growth where diversity of func- 
 tion was harmonised by identity of aim and fellowship, and 
 this fellowship centred in Christ and rayed out from him. 
 But in the background lies the infinite source, whence world, 
 humanity, and Christ alike proceed, the author of all being, the 
 Father,* " of whom, and through whom, and unto whom are 
 all things." In this absolute unity all things everlastingly 
 subsist, for one creation is founded on one plan, works out one 
 purpose, and looks towards one end, when the last enemy shall 
 be overcome, when all delegated power shall be returned to its 
 eternal fount, that " God may be all in all." f 
 
 The same sense of inward change marks the Fourth Gospel 
 and the First Epistle of John. The object of the Evangelist 
 is to prove that Jesus is Messiah, Son of God j and then to 
 enable believers to have life in his name.! The parable of the 
 Vine portrays the significance of this life. So vivid is the 
 consciousness of its possession that it already divides mankind 
 into two groups vastly unequal, the few who have it, and the 
 many who have it not. It is by the participation of it that 
 Jesus is himself the Son of God ; 3 it is by sharing it with him 
 that others, too, become sons. For even common men, in 
 home and shop, among the market-places and the quays, might 
 enter at any moment into this high relation. Let them but 
 love, and lo, at once they dwell in God and God in them. 
 Let them but love and they knew what love was from him 
 who laid down his life for them and they were begotten of 
 God. With this divine parentage they could not sin. Chil- 
 dren of the Eternal, they must needs also be children of 
 righteousness, and so the tradesman, the labourer, the slave, 
 stand already among the perfected, they walk secure, for they 
 have overcome the world. As the apostle Paul felt that the 
 
 * i Cor. viii. 6 ; Rom. xi. 36. f * Cor. xv. 28. 
 
 John xx. 31. i John iv. 16, iii. 16, iv. 7, iii. 9.
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 259 
 
 first impulse of his own heart proceeded from Christ with such 
 directness that Christ seemed to live again in him, so the 
 Fourth Gospel describes the believer's soul as lighted im- 
 mediately from the central life. Historically the insight is 
 communicated by Jesus, but spiritually it matters not under 
 what form it is described. For light and life have their 
 eternal home with God, and when they enter the believer's 
 mind with quickening might, it is because the Father himself 
 comes there and takes up his abode. They made their great 
 appeal on earth through Christ ; and when the disciple hears 
 that voice of power, and rises from the grave of his old self, it 
 is because the Son has made his dwelling with him, and com- 
 municated that which had first been given to himself. Or 
 once again, inasmuch as these influences are not bound by 
 space and time, they are the gifts of the Spirit, sent by the 
 Father, asked for by the Son. But these three terms do not 
 denote three different realities for the soul within. There are 
 not three Advents of three Persons, whose arrivals separately 
 or in common you can fix by outward date. They are simply 
 so many efforts to express the ultimate unity of the believer 
 with the Father and the Son, made one in the harmony of a 
 common life.* 
 
 Christianity, then, enters the world as an immense religious 
 force, calling forth new activities of life as it passes from land 
 to land and heart to heart. This force is partly derived from 
 its temporary elements, partly from its enduring. It is to 
 those features in it which were full of meaning in its own day 
 that it owed its immediate success j it can have value for ours 
 only through those which abide. In nothing has it more 
 signally proved its power than in its capacity to preside over 
 successive transformations of history, and rule successive epochs 
 of thought j to recreate institutions, and in turn destroy its 
 own constructions, and yet still live on. Tested indeed by 
 the outward marks of adaptation to hitherto existing conditions, 
 the great Church of Rome has proved its fitness to survive j 
 but who that understands the Evangelic idea does not feel 
 assured that, however long be the process, sacerdotalism in 
 every form carries at its heart the seeds of its own decay ? In 
 the same way the vast fabric of doctrine which has gathered 
 round the conception of the Christ will yield, though it may 
 
 * John xiv. 23, 16 j xvii. 21-23.
 
 260 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 be more slowly still, before the scientific demand of this age 
 for a knowledge of things as they were, before the analysis of 
 the various influences out of which the three Creeds and the 
 New Testament writings themselves have sprung, and before 
 the exhibition of similar developments in other faiths. The 
 primitive character of Christianity as a potent transforming 
 influence has been largely modified by the necessity of adjust- 
 ment to the permanent conditions of a stable world. We no 
 longer listen for the far-ofF sound of the angel's trump, nor 
 watch the heavens for the first gleam of the descending glory 
 of the Son of Man. The specific impulse derived from the 
 actual personality of Jesus, as it was felt by the first disciples, 
 and communicated through them to the early Church, faded 
 away, though not before it had been able to lay hold of fresh 
 potencies of thought, and give to them imperishable form. 
 But those of us who do not live in the emotions and ideas of 
 Paul and John must vindicate our Christianity, if we can 
 vindicate it at all, out of the significance of the Teacher for 
 our own religious experience, out of the value of his ideas for 
 our own faith and hope. If then across the centuries the 
 Sower still sows the word, have we ears wherewith to hear ? 
 
 The eternal Gospel must tell us true things about the two 
 beings in whose right relations lies the pledge of our highest 
 progress, God and man. The essence of the message of Jesus 
 is that God is Father and mankind are sons. Always and 
 everywhere he offers free and open access for all his children. 
 Always and everywhere he pours forth the same abundant 
 grace to all who will receive it, unconfined within "chartered 
 channels," unlimited by anything save our own folly or in- 
 dolence, our stubbornness or sin. Forgiveness is ever ready, 
 inasmuch as it is rooted in the very nature of God. But it is 
 not unconditional. The fellowship into which we are called 
 offers high privileges, but it also makes great demands. It 
 cuts off at one stroke all satisfactions of the divine will by 
 outward acts, and throws men back with unswerving deter- 
 mination on the life of inward purity and truth. It claims 
 from all the continuous service of thankfulness and humility. 
 It claims for all the fullest recognition of an ultimate worth in 
 the divine eye, so that to minister to the lowest is the duty of 
 the most exalted. It has its stern and severe side towards the 
 unloving, the self- righteous, the wilfully blind ; but to the
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 261 
 
 suffering and the sorrowful it comes with inexpressible com- 
 fort and peace in the will of God. So the Gospel appeals to 
 us from its human side as the interpretation of the experience 
 of Jesus. Whatever final purport it may have on the divine 
 side as an instrument of revelation in the education of the race, 
 here is the testimony of one who knew the world, and tasted 
 joy and anguish in their utmost strength. Here is the witness 
 of a man who looked into the heart of failure and death, and 
 saw that through them God was for ever realising his purposes 
 of progress, and compassing paths of darkness with everlasting 
 light. The teaching of Jesus is the product of his own inner 
 life, and in its simplest and universal elements it offers a know- 
 ledge which is within reach of all. It implicitly asserts that 
 the way to understand Jesus is to be like him. It bids men 
 purify their hearts, and they shall see with his vision. It 
 summons men to face evil with his trust if they would win his 
 victories. This promise has been fulfilled again and again in 
 the direst struggles of defeat and pain. And so he is still the 
 Master of those who believe and aspire, those who love and 
 hope. 
 
 But we have this treasure, to apply with a difference the 
 words of Paul, in earthen vessels. If the vessels break, is the 
 treasure lost ? The world upon which Jesus looked was the 
 same as ours to sense, but it was not assuredly the same to 
 thought. I am not concerned, indeed, with the enormous 
 expansion in our ideas of its size and history. This may 
 indefinitely increase our imaginative apprehension of the 
 majesty of God, without affecting our conception of his 
 relation to the universe or to ourselves. Nor am I anxious to 
 vindicate a specific philosophy in the name of Christ. But we 
 are at least entitled to ask whether his view of the great order 
 of nature was in harmony with the best we know, and if not, 
 whether the discord impairs the central truth of the sonship 
 of the soul to God. Jesus, then, I conceive, like the later 
 Psalmists, saw in the changes that swept across the scene from 
 dawn to eve the signs of the continuous energy of God's living 
 spirit. The sun arose, and he showed forth through it an equal 
 glory on the unthankful and the good ; the rain descended and 
 brought the message of his impartial grace j the grass wore the 
 raiment of his beauty ; the sparrow fell not to the ground 
 without him, nor was a hair of a disciple's head uncounted.
 
 262 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 Everywhere the Father was immanent in the world which was 
 the product of his will. Yet over against the kingdom of God 
 lay, dark and lowering, the kingdom of Satan. Beneath his 
 sway the ministers of evil passed to and fro upon their tasks of 
 mischief and of guilt. They rose out of the abyss and entered 
 the very persons of their victims, to be dislodged only by 
 strenuous prayer. The single texture of the divine administra- 
 tion was thus rent in twain. The whole fabric of causation, 
 knit together by one will from heaven to hell, was split asunder. 
 Nature became a kingdom divided against itself; and its co- 
 herence was resolved into the clash of hostile forces delaying 
 indefinitely the triumph of the right. The dualism is obviously 
 irreconcilable with either the ancient Hebrew or the modern 
 scientific idea of the unity that lies at the world's heart. If we 
 admit that in holding it Jesus was simply on the intellectual 
 level of his age, we may render impossible the theory that a 
 perfect God has blundered through temporarily resigning his 
 own omniscience,* but do we disqualify him as a teacher of 
 religion ? Surely not. There is no moral obliquity in giving 
 simultaneous shelter to propositions that may afterwards prove 
 to be incompatible ; and the sense of personal relationship to 
 the Father was not impaired because of the Adversary in wait 
 beyond. Those who have realised the elevation of Jesus 
 through the broken record on the gospel page, will not feel that 
 he is less the leader of their souls because science has shattered 
 the throne of heaven and expelled the rival who sought its 
 overthrow. Nor will they feel called upon to surrender their 
 disci pleship, even if he accepted the common Jewish notions of 
 the distribution of the future into endless lots of happiness and 
 pain. They will boldly appeal from the beliefs of Jesus to his 
 principles. They will ask themselves whether the modern 
 conceptions of progressive growth, and the continuous discipline 
 of souls from life to life, are not in fundamental accord with his 
 central thoughts of man and God ; and if they are satisfied on 
 that point, they will feel no disquiet about any other. Plato 
 has not ceased to be the high-priest of philosophic idealism 
 because we have exploded his physics, and flung the spheres and 
 spindle of his cosmos into space. And Jesus will not be turned 
 out of the sanctuary of our religion because he knew nothing 
 of physiology, and misread the mean ing of nervous disease; no, 
 not even if he anticipated an era of irrevocable doom, when the
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 263 
 
 souls that had loved the darkness should be consigned for ever 
 to the darkness of their choice. Jesus does not consciously use 
 the symbols of future retribution with the same half-poetic 
 half-critical sense that they are symbols and nothing more, 
 which marks the language of the higher Greek thought. The 
 attitude of his mind, the characteristics of his feeling, are 
 different. But the sympathetic interpreter will not confound 
 the use of the traditional imagery with a claim to declare for 
 all ages an absolute and everlasting truth. 
 
 Nay, even in what has been regarded as the very stronghold 
 of the Christian religion, its ethical teaching, we shall do well 
 to recognise the horizon of the time. I do not care to ask how 
 much of the Sermon on the Mount was minted fresh in the 
 heart of Jesus, or how much bore already half-effaced the stamp 
 of older wisdom ere he introduced it into the currency of 
 human thought. There is an originality of selection as well as 
 of discovery. To make old truths effective may need a greater 
 force than to enunciate new ; and a fresh emphasis on the gains 
 of the past may be as stimulating to the world's higher life as 
 any actual novelties of faith. But the Gospel ethics appear 
 often to be influenced by the expectation of a coming change 
 for which the centuries have waited in vain. A glow of 
 Apocalyptic hope suffuses many a picture of existing relations 
 which shall soon be reversed, and inspires an attitude towards 
 contemporary institutions which might be possible for a few 
 years and under exceptional circumstances, but cannot be 
 accepted as the abiding condition of human duty. A recent 
 critic has indeed affirmed that there is no one of the great 
 bases on which our morality rests, the family, property, and the 
 state, which the language of Jesus did not condemn.* I will 
 not now discuss the terms of this indictment. That it should 
 be even possible without the most shallow misconception of the 
 Teacher's meaning, calls at least for our careful thought. The 
 morality of the New Testament, it is alleged, is the morality 
 of a sect j it is not a law book for humanity at large. Are 
 these the only alternatives ? It is quite true that as Jesus and 
 his followers confronted the great change for which they 
 looked ere the world should be a generation older, the rules of 
 discipleship shrank within the limits of a community which 
 offered a shelter from the fate impending on a perishing world. 
 
 * Bradley, International Journal of Ethict, October 1894, p. 25.
 
 264 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 There are limitations in the precepts of Jesus as there are round 
 his beliefs. But behind his precepts lie his principles. Of 
 these it is not surprising that he could not see all the applica- 
 tions, for at the end of eighteen centuries we have only begun 
 to conceive their larger scope. And these principles are steeped 
 in a spirit which is the mightiest ethical force that history has 
 seen. We call it love, we speak of it as universal. But it is 
 something impalpable, it escapes definition, and cannot be 
 labelled by any terms of the schools. Of this moving energy 
 of thought, of feeling, of endeavour, Jesus was himself the great 
 impersonation. He threw the high ideas which must regulate 
 all social order into their most vivid imaginative form ; he 
 quickened the undying effort to give them visible reality. He 
 bound the race at once into a family and a polity, in common 
 relation to God as Father and as King. Here are the ultimate 
 truths by which all institutions must be tested, and to which 
 they will in the long-run be conformed j here are the great 
 aspirations which, when they have once entered the heart, 
 kindle an inextinguishable flame. In telling us to seek first 
 the kingdom of God and his righteousness, he set before us an 
 everlasting quest : in bidding men be perfect as the Father in 
 heaven is perfect, he laid the basis of a practical idealism which 
 only eternity can complete. 
 
 The significance of Jesus is not confined to his function as 
 Teacher. The Gospels are more than so many sketches of 
 Utopia. Christianity is imperfectly conceived as a sum of 
 truths upon a printed page. Lay what stress we may upon 
 the historical character of our knowledge of Jesus, most men 
 will feel that his place in religion is not after all identical with 
 the place, for instance, of Newton in mathematics. The 
 difference is that between prophecy and science, between 
 intellect and life, between that which is always and every- 
 where immediately verifiable, and that which is apprehended 
 with varying force and in changing moral and spiritual modes 
 within the limits of any single mind, much more within the 
 process of the centuries. For religion is more complex than 
 the calculus j and the conceptions of the soul and God cannot 
 be packed into formulae like the laws of motion. They are 
 not real to us till they have been felt as more than independent 
 objects of thought ; they must be felt in actual relation. But 
 the sense of this relation varies greatly, and in the variations of
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 265 
 
 its rise and its decline we know that there are clouds which do 
 not obscure the continuous vision of abstract truths like those 
 of space and number. It is this ebb and flow of the forces 
 of the spirit which gives to Jesus as the creator of Christian 
 experience a sustaining power which not even all the formalism 
 of Christendom has been able to extinguish. It is in virtue of 
 this power, manifested in the lives of generations of believers, 
 that the Church has survived long periods of moral languor, 
 and is now showing itself capable of meeting the severest 
 shocks to its belief. The summons which has been issued in 
 this age from so many divisions of the great Protestant camp, 
 " Back to Christ," has many meanings ; it gathers up divers 
 tendencies of thought. It is the first step towards the libera- 
 tion of Christianity from the encumbrances of outworn strife ; 
 it is the necessary condition for enabling it to assert its rightful 
 place among the great powers, ethics, religion, poetry, art, 
 philosophy, which will for ever sway the hearts of men. I 
 will not pause to ask what is its immediate connection with 
 the passion for social justice which is at the core of the 
 immense movement of modern democracy. It is sufficient to 
 say that the Churches on all sides, with Rome at their head, 
 are recognising, as they have never done before, that a religion 
 which has from the first insisted on the worth of souls cannot 
 be indifferent to the moral and industrial conditions under 
 which they live ; and under various names the advent of the 
 kingdom is proclaimed anew. Along this line the return to 
 Jesus is indeed full of inspiring assurance ; but we must not 
 ask of him what he cannot give us. The complications of 
 existing society are not to be solved by a single application of 
 the Golden Rule ; the problems that arise out of the intricacies 
 of political obligation or commercial enterprise all round the 
 globe will not yield to a formula like the Fatherhood of God 
 and the Brotherhood of Man. There is a danger lest we 
 should rely on vague emotion instead of trained knowledge, or 
 take refuge in colossal abstractions when we really need 
 mastery over detail. In the force of our revolt against 
 burdens of suffering or degradation we must not forget that 
 Christianity is helpless without science. To the new order 
 for which men are longing, Jesus does, indeed, point the 
 way j with an absolute faith he affirms that it is there ; 
 but he does not tell us what it will be. He shows us
 
 266 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 on what conceptions of God and man it must be based ; 
 but the pattern of the new Jerusalem is laid up in heaven. 
 For prophecy, if it would be realised, cannot dispense with 
 acquaintance with the facts. It is its present task not to 
 project impalpable ideals into the air, but to inspire the courage 
 needful for slow and difficult investigation ; to supply the 
 patience and love demanded by drudgeries of inquiry and 
 administration ; to maintain the steadfastness of labour and of 
 hope which can toil on untiringly, though there be no goal in 
 sight ; to quicken the vision which can group remote objects 
 under common principles, and to nerve the shrinking will for 
 the sacrifices which alone can carry principles into effect. 
 And it is my faith at least, that foremost among the regener- 
 ating powers of our time Christianity is renewing something of 
 the strength of its youth. It is working among us again with 
 a mighty moral and religious impulse. This impulse, it is 
 true, the modern disciple does not derive so directly from the 
 Master as the first believers. It comes to him through various 
 channels ; it has been enriched, but it has also been distorted, 
 by innumerable influences upon its course. Yet the revival 
 of the great ideas of Jesus is giving fresh force to his spirit. It 
 is the sublimest testimony to the greatness of Jesus that so 
 many generations have not felt it incongruous to worship 
 him as God. The closer study of the records, the sense of 
 historic proportion, the psychological confusions involved in the 
 conception of a consciousness which is at once infinite and 
 eternal and has yet parted with its omniscience and even with 
 its own self-knowledge, 5 will slowly undermine the creeds. 
 Men will cease then to describe Jesus as a perfect revelation of 
 the Father, for not even within the limits of our manhood do 
 we yet know what perfection is. They will not demand an 
 impossible proof of his sinlessness, for what biographies could 
 completely cover the inner history of thirty years ? But they 
 will not feel that by recognising to the full the elements which 
 time and experience have sifted out they are reducing him to 
 the level of the common-place. In the imaginative creations 
 by which he has been surrounded, they will see the expression 
 of a reverence and love which only the highest could have 
 evoked. They will comprehend his immense force in history, 
 where he has stood as the symbol of the noblest courage, the 
 purest aspiration, the severest trials, and the most strenuous
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 267 
 
 achievements of the soul. They will read his life, as has been 
 happily said by my predecessor in this lecture, like one of his 
 own parables " writ large," in which age after age has discerned 
 some new lesson. They will find in him the great type of 
 practical faith, for the Gospel stories have supplied the poetic 
 forms to which our experience can be most effectively assimilated, 
 in the light of which it can be best interpreted. They will 
 derive from him the first principles for the education of the 
 "social conscience," to which wider insight may give new 
 applications as the intricate relations of life are brought more 
 and more within the domain of ordered thought. They 
 will leave to the future the possibilities. of fresh transformations, 
 content with the gifts and opportunities of the present ; and in 
 this, the scene of our duty and our hope, they will yet realise 
 that for personal religion, for the amendment of society, and 
 the progress of the race, the grace of God has communicated to 
 the world no mightier energy than "the spirit of life which 
 was in Jesus Christ."
 
 NOTE I 
 
 THE language ascribed to Jesus in the first three Gospels concerning 
 the end of the age and the coming of the Son of Man continues to 
 excite the active interest of students. In England the subject has 
 been treated with great care by Dr. Charles in his treatise on 
 Eschatology : Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian, \ 899. In Germany 
 Wrede has recently reopened the inquiry whether Jesus himself 
 ever claimed the Messianic character at all. 
 
 NOTE II 
 
 What struggles sometimes preceded the conversion of believers 
 may be gathered from the narrative of Mulla Muhammad Sadiq, 
 " the saint of Khurasan," who finally attained peace through faith. 
 " When I had considered the clear signs and proofs set before me, 
 I could see no possible way of rejecting or denying them. . . . 
 ' O God,' I cried in my heart, ' in face of such ample proofs how 
 is denial possible ? Yet how can I confess and accept this illiterate 
 and uneducated young merchant as Bab and Qa'im ! ' So for a 
 while I subjected myself to a severe discipline, keeping continual 
 vigils during the night, and praying God for help and guidance ; 
 until one night when I had been engaged in prayer and self-abase- 
 ment till near the morning, a little before dawn I came somewhat 
 to myself, and began to reproach myself, saying, ' Wherefore these 
 plaints and prayers, and this tarrying in the world of form ? Why 
 be blinded by the restrictions of the common-place, and kept back 
 by the restrictions of the nominal ? Is God's hand shortened, 
 then, or is he unable to accomplish his will ? Is he not one 
 who "doeth what he pleaseth, and ordaineth what he willeth"?' 
 At this inward communing I was overcome with fear ; but when 
 I came to myself the veil was lifted, and I beheld within myself a 
 state of freedom and peace transcending description." The New 
 History of the Bab, translated by Edward G. Browne, 1893, pp. 
 40-42. 
 
 268
 
 THE RELATION OF JESUS 269 
 
 NOTE III 
 
 The application of the doctrine of the Logos to Jesus is not 
 without analogies elsewhere. The theory of the appearance of 
 Maha Purusha in the human form of Gotama Buddha, which 
 resulted in the belief that he was a manifestation of the Self-Existent 
 and Eternal God, is at present too obscure in its details to be used 
 for anything more than general comparison. But the interpreta- 
 tion of the persons of the Bab and his successor Beha (who died 
 at Acre in 1892) shows how the prophetic consciousness may under 
 special conditions assume similar forms, and how the reverence of 
 disciples may unhesitatingly receive them. 
 
 ** Man cannot know the Eternal Essence of God," says a Babi 
 writer (Mirza Jam, epitomised in the New History, p. 331), "but 
 only the ' Manifestation ' of the Divine Will, which from time to 
 time arises in the spiritual, as the sun in the material, firmament, 
 to dispel the darkness of ignorance and separation. For knowledge 
 implies the establishment of a relation between the knower and the 
 thing known, and for man to attempt to establish such relation 
 between himself and God, as the Sufis do, is sheer presumption, 
 rendering him guilty of the sin of shirk (attributing a partner to 
 God). Wherefore, whenever in the Quran or elsewhere mention 
 is made of ' the meeting with God,' and the like, what is meant is 
 the meeting with one of the 'Manifestations' or embodiments of 
 the Divine Will. This Primal Will, from time to time incarnating 
 itself, now in Abraham, now in Moses, now in Jesus, now in 
 Muhammad, forms as it were an intermediary between man and 
 God. It can be known by man, and It knows God ; indeed it is 
 said in a tradition, ' Whosoever visiteth Huseyn in his tomb is as 
 one who hath visited God on his throne.' So likewise the Bab 
 said, ' O AH [addressing himself], none hath known God save I 
 and thou ; and none hath known me save God and thou ; and 
 none hath known thee save God and I.' 
 
 "Now all these theophanies are identical in essence, just as the 
 sun which shines to-day is the same as that which shone yesterday, or 
 that which will shine to-morrow. We, for the sake of convenience, 
 and having regard only to the accidents of time and place, may 
 speak of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as different 
 persons, but they are in fact not less identical than the sun which 
 shines to-day and the sun which shone yesterday." * 
 
 The successor of the Bab, who bore the name of Beha 'u 'llah, 
 or " Splendour of God," was regarded by his followers as an incar- 
 
 * Cp. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1889, p. 914.
 
 270 THE RELATION OF JESUS 
 
 nation of the Deity, and was actually designated as " God " or " the 
 Truth" (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1889, pp. 518, 519). 
 The doctrine of the "Return" (cp. New History, p. 335) enabled 
 Beha to believe himself to be the Bab alive again, and to speak of 
 the execution of the Bab at Tabriz as one of his own experiences 
 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1889, p. 9$z). 
 
 NOTE IV 
 
 The little volume of Thoughts on Religion, gathered by Canon 
 Gore from the papers of the late Mr. Romanes, contains a suggestive 
 passage to the following effect (p. 181) : "Either the current 
 theory was true or it was not. If you say true, you must suppose 
 that the diseases were due to devils in A.D. 30, and to nervous dis- 
 orders in A.D. 1894. On the other hand, if you choose the other 
 horn, you must accept either the hypothesis of the ignorance or 
 that of the mendacity of Christ." 
 
 So far the objector. The argument in reply assumes without 
 hesitation that the current theory was erroneous, and Romanes is 
 therefore fixed on " the other horn," where he meets the difficulty 
 thus : " The answer is, that either hypothesis [ignorance or 
 mendacity] may be accepted by Christianity. For the sake of 
 argument we may exclude the question whether the acceptance of 
 the devil theory by Christ was really historical, or merely attributed 
 to Him by His biographers after His death. If Christ knew that 
 the facts were not due to devils, He may also have known it was 
 best to fall in with current theory, rather than to puzzle people 
 with a lecture on pathology. If He did not know, why should He, 
 if He had previously * emptied Himself of omniscience ? In either 
 case, if He had denied the current theory, He would have been 
 giving evidence of scientific knowledge or of scientific intuition 
 beyond the culture of His time, and this, as in countless other 
 cases, was not in accordance with His method, which, whether we 
 suppose it divine or human, has nowhere proved His divine mission 
 by foreknowledge of natural science." 
 
 Is it surprising that Canon Gore should feel impelled to express 
 his dissent ? " Romanes' line of argument in this note seems to me 
 impossible to maintain. The emphasis which Jesus Christ lays on 
 diabolic agency is so great that, if it is not a reality, He must be 
 regarded either as seriously misled about realities which concern 
 the spiritual life, or else as seriously misleading others. And in 
 neither case would He be even the perfect Prophet."
 
 TO HIS AGE AND OUR OWN 271 
 
 NOTE V 
 
 The stress which all forms of modern Christology now lay on 
 the real manhood of Jesus involves many difficulties which will 
 ultimately be found irreconcilable with the theory that he was at 
 the same time " perfect God." For instance, Professor Godet, The 
 Thinker^ May 1895, p. 391, affirms that Jesus did not become 
 conscious of his true relation with the Father until his baptism. 
 He only knew himself as " the Word made flesh " when it had 
 been specially revealed to him. But in that case what becomes of 
 the inseparable union of the two natures in one person ? How 
 could the infinite and eternal Word cease to be aware of its own 
 pre-existence ? The difficulty is analogous to that which Canon 
 Gore so candidly recognises (Bampton Lectures, 1891, p. 266) in 
 respect to the cosmic functions of the Son. How could the Word 
 be fully incarnate in Jesus, and at the same time continue to up- 
 hold the universe ? The present dominance of the Kenotic theory, 
 the implication that an infinite Being can divest himself of his 
 infinitude, or an omniscient mind voluntarily lay aside its omni- 
 science, surely involves the most extraordinary confusion in the 
 ideas of the relation of thought, knowledge, or power, to the 
 essential nature of God.
 
 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 
 
 P. H. W. 1887 
 
 273
 
 Duo idem cum dicant non est idem
 
 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 
 
 THERE is a great deal in the Books of the New Testament 
 which makes no direct or powerful appeal to the religious 
 sympathies of the modern theist unless he is also a believer in 
 some form of Christology j and the consequence is that many 
 religious men who have consciously or unconsciously rejected 
 all Christology in whose religion, that is to say, it has no 
 longer any living place find their devotional feelings per- 
 petually checked, as it were, and not unfrequently almost 
 wounded, by its intrusion, as they read the New Testament. 
 The fervid utterances of St. Paul furnish a striking example. 
 Again and again he fails to raise the theists of whom I am 
 speaking to the height of his spiritual exaltation, or, which is 
 worse, he suddenly looses his hold and drops them, because he 
 unexpectedly introduces Christ when the whole flow of their 
 thoughts and emotions has been directed to God. 
 
 And to such readers it is sometimes a relief to turn to the 
 Prophets and Psalmists, where there is indeed much with 
 which they cannot sympathise, but where nevertheless they 
 seem to be restored to the purer devotional atmosphere of an 
 unquestioned and unqualified monotheism. 
 
 In this frame of mind experience shows that it is easy to 
 overlook, or at any rate not to feel, that fundamental differ- 
 ence between the Old and New Testament religions which is 
 expressed in the statement that the one is national and the 
 other universal. 
 
 The appeals of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah of Jerusalem, the Deuter- 
 onomist, Jeremiah, and even the Second Isaiah, are appeals to 
 Israel^ not to man ; and again and again these appeals are rested 
 upon grounds which have no existence at all except as supports 
 of the distinctly and exclusively national religion of Israel. 
 
 275
 
 276 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 
 
 Amos, for example, rebuked the sins of Israel and called 
 upon the Israelites to remember the solemn obligations laid 
 upon them, on the ground that the Almighty God had 
 chosen them alone of all the nations of the earth to be his 
 people. This would have been a strange ground of appeal 
 to the other nations ! And in the same way how could Hosea 
 have called upon the Edomites, for instance, to love Yahveh, 
 on the ground that he (Yahveh), on his side, had loved the 
 helpless and infant Israel^ and, as the later prophet Malachi 
 added, had enhanced the obligation by hating Esau ? The 
 heart-stirring appeals of the Deuteronomist are throughout 
 appeals for grateful love not to God but to " thy god, O 
 Israel," and the claim is urged throughout on the ground 
 that the Almighty had, in deed and in truth, showed himself 
 to be the god of Israel as distinguished from, often as opposed 
 to, the other peoples. 
 
 The two great commandments of love to God and love to 
 man are found in the Old Testament, but the one is a com- 
 mand to Israel to love the god of Israel in return for pre- 
 eminent and exclusive favours conferred upon Israel, and the 
 second is, in the first instance at least, an exhortation to the 
 Israelites to stand by one another. 
 
 So fundamental, so all - pervading, so aggressive is this 
 national exclusiveness that we may well be perplexed to give 
 ourselves a satisfactory account of the ease with which we 
 drop it out of discourses the very tissues of which it impreg- 
 nates, and the facility with which we accept and respond to 
 religious appeals the whole motive of which presupposes the 
 intense consciousness of a (to us alien) nationality. Why 
 should the expression, "the love of God which is in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord " bring with it a certain sense of constraint to 
 the worshipper who is hardly conscious of any interruption to 
 the flow of his devotions when the benediction falls upon his 
 ear, "The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion : and thou shalt 
 see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, thou 
 shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel" ? 
 
 The answer is not really hard to find. It is the New 
 Testament itself that has enabled us to read the most beautiful 
 portions of the Old Testament with unqualified sympathy. 
 The Universalism of the New Testament has taught us to 
 drop the Particularism of the Old Testament so completely,
 
 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 277 
 
 and to substitute spiritual and general for material and special 
 conceptions so naturally and spontaneously, that we are hardly 
 even conscious of the process. The election of Israel, the 
 cleaving of the waters of the Red Sea, the redemption from 
 the land of the Captivity, translate themselves spontaneously 
 into instances or symbols of the providential guidance and the 
 fatherly love with which God has watched over not Israel 
 but mankind; and "Zion," "Egypt," "Jerusalem," "the 
 heritage of Yahweh," are no longer mere geographical, his- 
 torical, or national terms, but have become the symbols of 
 universal and permanent human ideals and experiences. That 
 they were intrinsically capable of such a transformation they 
 owe to their own elements of permanent truth and beauty, but 
 that they were actually so transformed they owe, I believe, 
 to Jesus. 
 
 The intrinsic and permanent religious value of the highest 
 utterances of the Old Testament is found in this : that although 
 the relationship assumed is an exclusive and national one 
 between Israel and Yahweh, and although it is entered through 
 the gate of nationality and made to rest upon national con- 
 siderations, yet within the limited area which it embraces it 
 is that very relation of trust, of love, of grateful homage, which 
 we feel to be the true relation not of Israel to Yahweh, but 
 of man to God. 
 
 Thus the monotheism of the Old Testament is one-sided, 
 but is intrinsically capable of completion. The old tribal 
 relation of Israel and Yahweh parallel to that of Ammon and 
 Chemosh, or of Moab and Milcom has passed away, for the con- 
 ception of Yahweh has expanded into the conception of God j 
 but the corresponding expansion of the other term of the rela- 
 tion has not taken place, and in the Old Testament it is not 
 man but Israel that stands in the true attitude of love and trust 
 to God. 
 
 As soon as this national limitation is dropped, as soon as a 
 close and tender relationship to God is regarded as the birth- 
 right not of Israel alone, but of man, then the conception of 
 that relationship itself will for the first time realise its full 
 power and depth, and the " Gospel " will be preached on earth 
 and will begin to win its way to recognition as the true prin- 
 ciple of life. The Gospel, or glad tidings, that man is the 
 child of God, by nature and by birthright, must bring with it
 
 278 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 
 
 the missionary spirit so conspicuously absent from almost all 
 national religions and mere philosophies. It must bring with 
 it the tenderness and reverence towards even fallen or hostile 
 humanity which has yet to mould our collective action as it is 
 moulding more and more our personal feelings towards the 
 outcast and degraded members or branches of the great human 
 family. It must bring with it the unconquerable faith in the 
 power of overcoming evil with good and the ever-present trust 
 in the divine support, which remain inaccessible to him who 
 shuts out a part of mankind from the love of God or states the 
 conditions upon which they may become what in the eye of a 
 higher faith they already are the sons of God. It must bring 
 with it the perfect love and the perfect trust that rest without 
 fear upon the everlasting arms, and are awed but not terrified 
 by the presence of the everlasting holiness. 
 
 And when the Law and the Prophets have been in this 
 deepest and truest sense " fulfilled " and completed, we are able 
 to read them in the light of their fulfilment, we cease to be 
 conscious of their limitations, we substitute universal for 
 national conceptions, and indeed pour into the very names and 
 symbols of intensest nationality the new spirit of universalism. 
 
 Now it seems to me obvious that this " Gospel " pervades 
 the New Testament and is a new and distinctive feature in it, 1 
 although its reflection back upon the Old Testament some- 
 times blinds us to its originality in the New. 
 
 If any one denies or cannot see the presence of the 
 " Gospel " in the New Testament, or if any one challenges its 
 originality, then my present argument can have no weight 
 with him ; but those who admit that the " glad tidings " are 
 first found in a body of writings that associates itself in almost 
 every line with the mission of Jesus, will probably feel that, 
 apart from the results of any detailed critical investigations, we 
 are justified in assuming it as a high historical probability that 
 Jesus himself was the primal source of this new and all-com- 
 manding factor in the religious movement that sprang out of 
 his work. If a critical investigation confirms this probability, 
 then we have answered our question as to the place of Jesus in 
 history, and answered it in a way which would surely justify 
 
 1 See Dr. Oort's articles on "The Talmud and the New Testament," in The 
 Modern Review for July and October 1883, especially pp. 731-736. I am deeply 
 indebted to these articles as well as to other writings of Dr. Oort's.
 
 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 279 
 
 (but as surely does not need) those fervid outpourings of 
 eulogy and gratitude from which I would studiously abstain 
 in this essay, lest I should seem to rely upon appeals to tradi- 
 tional feeling rather than to an unimpassioned statement of the 
 historical facts. 
 
 Proceeding, then, to inquire on what lines such a critical 
 investigation should move, we are at once met by the fact that 
 while the " Gospel " does indeed pervade the New Testament, 
 it is not by any means always set forth in its full purity there. 
 Nay, we sometimes find limitations reimposed which seem to 
 militate against its very essence. It is often not " the love of 
 God " but " the love of God in Christ " that is taught ; and 
 we are not by nature the children of God's love, but by adop- 
 tion the children of his grace. This brings us back to the 
 point from which we started ; and we have to allow that 
 though the national limits of the Old Testament are removed, 
 yet limits are reimposed by the view of the divine economy, or 
 scheme of salvation, set forth in some parts of the New Testa- 
 ment, and are felt by many devout minds to constitute a far more 
 galling restraint than the one they have escaped, because they 
 can less easily drop it out of their minds, and because it seems 
 to affect not only the means and conditions of access to God, 
 but the very attitude of our souls in his presence. 
 
 The first question we have to ask, therefore, is whether 
 Jesus himself recognised these limitations and conditions in 
 the relationship of man to God ; and whether the " Gospel " 
 as preached by him was thus qualified from the first. 
 
 The answer to this question cannot be doubtful for a 
 moment in the light of the critical and historical investiga- 
 tions of recent times. 
 
 Neither the Epistles of Paul nor the Fourth Gospel can be 
 taken as evidence of what Jesus himself taught, though they 
 are invaluable monuments of what was taught about him ; 
 and when we turn to the Synoptic Gospels we receive the 
 overwhelming impression that Jesus was at heart a Hebrew 
 prophet who might well believe that a richer and fuller word 
 of God came to men through him than had ever come before, 
 but in whose religious thought or experience the conception 
 that men could only come to God through him could by no 
 possibility have found a place. In spite of a few expressions 
 which might be urged to the contrary, it is to me at least
 
 wholly inconceivable that the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels 
 should have claimed for himself, even in germ and potentiality 
 or by remote implication, the place that was afterwards 
 assigned to him by Paul or John, or should have regarded 
 some personal relationship to himself as the permanent and 
 inherent condition, for all time, of entrance into the true rela- 
 tionship to God. 
 
 And if it is clear that Jesus did not impose a new restriction 
 it is equally clear that he did remove the old one. There may 
 be room for differences of opinion as to the point to which 
 Jesus carried his practical and theoretical rejection of the Law, 
 but unless we are to suppose that the Synoptic Gospels are not 
 only uncertain and legendary in their form and details but 
 simply fictitious in their substance, we cannot allow that there 
 is any doubt as to this main fact : Jesus did not regard observ- 
 ance of the Law as the necessary condition of communion with 
 God or as the necessary passport to his love, and he did not 
 regard its absolute neglect even when accompanied by grave 
 moral dereliction as involving the loss of God's love or the 
 obliteration of that inherent sonship which even the prodigal 
 could never lose. 
 
 But if Jesus did not recognise any legal conditions and did 
 not impose any doctrinal conditions by which access to God 
 must be limited, then he preached in all its purity the Gospel 
 that man is the child of God. 
 
 It may indeed be thoughtlessly urged that the prophets of 
 Israel had long ago rejected or at least slighted the ordinances 
 of legal piety, without imposing any corresponding restrictions 
 of their own ; and that if this be equivalent to breaking with 
 the narrowness of a national religion and proclaiming the un- 
 qualified universalism of the Gospel, then that decisive step had 
 already been taken centuries before the birth of Jesus. But 
 we have only to think for a moment what was involved in each 
 case in the rejection of external ordinances, in order to perceive 
 how widely the position of Jesus differed from that of his pre- 
 decessors. In their time Israel was an independent nation with 
 all its national life and institutions standing visibly before men's 
 eyes. To denounce excessive reliance upon external acts of 
 worship was in no sense whatever an attack on the nationality 
 of the religion of Israel. There is no connection between the 
 two ideas ; for the nationality alike of Israel and of its religion
 
 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN HISTORY 281 
 
 was abundantly guaranteed and represented by its whole external 
 and collective life. In the time of Jesus, on the contrary, when 
 the Jews were scattered over every land and had ceased to rule 
 even in Palestine, the one thing that held them together, and 
 that made it possible to attach any meaning to the conception 
 of an exclusive relationship between Israel and God, was the 
 observance of the Law as a divine institution given by God to 
 Israel as the means and the token of his grace. 
 
 This change of circumstance had been marked by a change 
 of teaching on the part of Israel's religious leaders. As it 
 became more and more obvious that the Law was the sole re- 
 maining symbol and instrument of Israel's exclusive nationality, 
 her teachers insisted with ever-growing emphasis upon its 
 superlative importance, and the prophetic protests died away 
 into silence. After the Captivity the neglect of the Law could 
 not be taught except by those who did not care for religion at 
 all, or by one who had risen to the idea of a religious life that was 
 not confined to Israel ; and therefore it was only preached 
 fitfully and spasmodically, if at all, by earnest Israelites, until 
 he came who understood that to fulfil the Law and the Prophets 
 it was needful to break away from their national restrictions, 
 teaching not that Israel was the chosen one of God, but that 
 man is the child of God. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, then, takes his place in history as the 
 first and purest preacher of that Gospel in the practical realisa- 
 tion of which is the healing of the nations and the hope of the 
 Kingdom of God.
 
 XI 
 THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CIRCLE OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 Address to the Students of Manchester New College, London 
 P. H.W. 1888 
 
 283
 
 51 Aids Tracrcu /i^c ay vial 
 TOOXU 8' dvdpdnrui> ay opal ncffri] Si Od\aff<ra, 
 leal \ifj^vet ' irdvTr) 8^ Ai6j Ke 
 roO 7dp Kal ytvos iffft^v 6 d' 
 j/j.atvei. ARATUS.
 
 THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY IN 
 THE CIRCLE OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 GENTLEMEN, The College, the iO2nd Session of which I 
 have the honour of opening to-day, exists for the free teaching 
 and free learning of Theology, and finds its chief practical 
 work in training students for the ministry in a group of 
 churches which stands for an analogous principle of free growth 
 in the religious life. 
 
 The part I am myself to take in the work of the session 
 consists in the delivery of a course of lectures on the " Structure, 
 the Institutions, and the Vital Processes of Human Societies " ; 
 or, in other words, on the " Elements of Sociology." 
 
 Thus, the subject to which I must invite your attention 
 this afternoon is chosen for me. It is the connection between 
 Sociology and Theology, or the place which the study and 
 analysis of Human Society should take in a theological education. 
 
 If we look at the question from the practical side, and 
 think of our College as a training school for the Christian 
 ministry, there can be no question of the propriety, indeed 
 the necessity, of inviting the attention of our students to the 
 problems of Sociology. The task of the Christian minister is 
 twofold ; as there were two tables of the Law, so there are 
 two commandments of the Gospel. The Jewish saying, " that 
 prayer is not a prayer in which is no mention of the kingdom 
 of God," must pass into the inmost consciousness of the 
 Christian minister, as he directs his thoughts, words, and 
 works to the establishment of God's kingdom on earth, a task 
 in which religion and morality must ever go hand in hand ; 
 and if the teaching of morality is as integral a part of the 
 minister's work as the teaching of religion, then how can we 
 
 285
 
 286 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 doubt that his philosophical training should include such 
 knowledge as we can give him of the structure and growth of 
 human societies, and the meaning of the great social institu- 
 tions ? For human conduct the subject of the science of 
 ethics everywhere rests upon and is everywhere conditioned 
 by social relations and institutions. The "categorical im- 
 perative " may derive its form from the ultimate constitution 
 of human nature, but its content is supplied by the relations, 
 and even the conventions of human society ; and if the future 
 teacher and preacher of morality, the future guide and adviser 
 whose task it will be to build up character and give consistency 
 and strength to conduct, the future prophet whose word of 
 might shall hasten the coming of the kingdom of God if he 
 is to know what he is doing, where he is going, and whither 
 he would lead others, then he must have pondered deeply on 
 the nature and meaning of those social institutions upon which 
 the individual human life must ever rest. 
 
 Even the simplest moral precepts those of the Decalogue, 
 for example challenge philosophical reflection on the structure 
 of society ; and if we are not content to send out our students 
 to preach belief in God without having first directed their 
 thoughts to the grounds and springs of religious faith, neither 
 should we be content to bid them preach, "Thou shalt not 
 steal," without first inviting them to consider the origin, the 
 meaning, the scope, and the limitations of the social institution 
 of property ; or to preach, " Honour thy father and thy mother," 
 or " Thou shalt not commit adultery," without having asked 
 them to reflect on the meaning and the goal of the institution of 
 the family, and the nature and scope of family obligations. 
 
 But we cannot stop here. We cannot confine our ethics 
 to those simple and direct personal relations which are the first 
 to present themselves to us as the subject-matter of moral 
 conduct, and which press their moral demands most closely 
 and most persistently upon us. The higher development of 
 our humanity rests upon an industrial machinery and a social 
 system of ever-growing complexity. The problems which 
 force themselves upon us in our great cities compel us to 
 realise that our lives are bound up directly and indirectly with 
 the lives of countless thousands whom we have never so much 
 as seen, and that when conscious of no deed of personal cruelty 
 or wrong, we may yet be complacently bearing our part in acts
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 287 
 
 which, with a collective weight of gathered oppression, fall 
 upon the helpless and the wretched. And even where we 
 cannot believe that we have taken even an infinitesimal part 
 in doing the wrong, we may yet be guilty of having too tamely 
 or listlessly allowed it to be done. 
 
 According to the Law of Deuteronomy, 1 when a man was 
 found slain in the open field, and no means could be devised 
 for detecting the murderer, measurement must be made to dis- 
 cover the city that lay nearest his body, and upon it must lie 
 the duty of expiation or the blight of guilt. In kter days we 
 have heard the teaching that, whenever "one more unfortu- 
 nate, weary of breath," takes or, for that matter, lives on, and 
 does not take the dark plunge, the stain of her sin and shame 
 cannot be washed from the doors of the respectable and 
 Christian folk who shrink from even naming the thing she is. 
 And the commandment in Clough's " Latest Decalogue " 
 
 Thou shalt not kill ; but need'st not strive 
 Officiously to keep alive, 
 
 serves to heighten, by its sarcastic contrast, the growing sense 
 of our collective responsibility for things done and for things 
 not prevented, for which individual responsibility can only be 
 brought home to us indirectly, and in hardly perceptible or 
 recognisable fragments. It would seem, then, that the terms 
 of association in human societies are such that there may issue 
 from all a wrong against which each is powerless to fight, nay, 
 from which he is powerless even to withdraw ; just as there 
 may issue from all a power and a beauty which each is unable 
 to call into being, yet cannot choose but share. And, surely, 
 he who would help to give scope to human ideals, and to guide 
 human conduct, must scrutinise with searching care this great 
 and awe-inspiring social machine, with its living wheels from 
 which drop blood, and sweat, and tears, and from which rises 
 all that is noblest and most glorious in humanity. For we 
 must not forget that it is out of this dread " society," with its 
 weird power of taking a man's deeds away from him, and 
 doing with them he knows not what, that humanity itself 
 arises. It is only in society that man is human ; and it is 
 where society is most concentrated and developed that 
 humanity culminates. For while poets and moralists vie with 
 
 1 Deut. xxi. i sqq.
 
 288 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 each other in extolling a life of rustic simplicity, the collective 
 wisdom and experience of mankind that garners itself in the 
 usages of language, has definitely declared that it is where men 
 throng together that they are most human. He who dwells 
 in a country district is a " pagan." He round whom the heath 
 stretches is a " heathen." The dweller in the forest is a 
 "selvaggio," or "savage." And only he who has learned the 
 art of living with his fellow-men in a city, is a " civilised " 
 man. Even the word "people" has flowed through Latin 
 channels from the same source that gives us our " fill," and the 
 Greeks their "71-0X15," for there can be no "people" until the 
 land is " filled," and the scattered wood-dwellers, or " savages," 
 have gathered into a TroAts and founded a city to dwell in. 
 
 Doubtless the material aggregation of men is humanising 
 only in so for as it is a support to their spiritual proximity and 
 contact, and it will be the final triumph of civilisation to make 
 the fullest industrial co-operation independent of too close 
 physical packing, and to rear the sense of fellowship and of 
 human communion upon a basis which will make it compatible 
 with close and continuous communion with nature likewise. 
 But it remains none the less true that this "society," this 
 linking together of man with man, this organising of men into 
 humanity, which is the organ of the direst tyranny and oppres- 
 sion that is done on the earth, is the organ, also, of the only 
 life that is life indeed. 
 
 When I think of all this, there comes to my mind the vision 
 of that ancient English poet who sang : l "In midnight hour, 
 when speech-framers woned on their couches, methought I saw 
 a wondrous tree lift in the air, light-bewounden, brightest of 
 tree-beams. All that token was o'erpoured with gold ; and 
 gems stood fair on the face of earth. . . . On it gazed the 
 Lord's angels, fair to eternity. . . . Yet, through that gold 
 might I see (old strife of the wretched), that first on its left 
 side it began bleed. All whelmed with sorrow was I, feared for 
 that fair sight. I saw the shimmering wonder shift garb and 
 hue ; whiles was it drenched in tears, soiled by the blood-track, 
 whiles was it wreathed in gold." 
 
 1 The text of this portion of the " Dream of the Rood " is given in Sweet'* 
 Anglo-Saxon Reader, and the whole vision is now to be found in Wiilcker's edition of 
 Grein's Bibliothek der Angchachsischen Pottle, vol. ii. (1894) pp. 111-125. It ia also 
 translated in Stopford Brooke's History of Early English Literature, 1892, vol. ii. 
 pp. 287 sq.
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 289 
 
 So to us, too, does there not come, after many ages, another 
 " vision of the rood," as we gaze upon that " society " which 
 shimmers and changes before our eyes, and becomes at once 
 the cross and the throne on which humanity is martyred and 
 glorified ? 
 
 Can the preacher of righteousness and love neglect this 
 glorious and terrible thing ? Is he not bound to ask himself 
 how far the structure and institutions of this " society " are 
 inflexibly determined by the laws of nature, how far they may 
 be moulded and re-moulded by man ? On every side he will 
 find good men longing for guidance ; fearing their efforts may 
 do more harm than good, yet not daring to sit with folded 
 hands ; longing to know the meaning of their daily acts, and 
 their connection with and reaction upon the social and industrial 
 conditions of our time ; questioning their own right to the 
 comforts and the happiness they enjoy, and asking again the 
 old question, " What shall I do to be saved and to save ? " 
 If the minister of religion has no definite guidance to give such 
 as these, let them at least feel that he, too, has looked their 
 problem full in the face, and is at least a qualified fellow- 
 explorer and seeker with them, if not yet a leader. 
 
 Had it never been recognised before, it would force itself 
 into recognition now, that the religious teacher is concerned, 
 and closely concerned, with the whole machinery of our indus- 
 trial life and the whole structure of our social fabric. 
 
 But, in truth, this is no new thing for which I plead. The 
 historical studies to which so large a part of the attention of our 
 students is rightly directed will suffice at once to show how 
 generally the connection between religion and Sociology has 
 been recognised, and how easy it is to explain the temporary 
 divorce, from time to time, of the corresponding studies. 
 
 There was no branch of trade or politics, no wheel of the 
 governmental or industrial machinery, with which the religious 
 teachers of Israel did not think themselves concerned. The scope 
 of their teaching only shrinks as the limits of the national life 
 are contracted ; and if the purely personal aspects of duty 
 and devotion occupy a larger place in the outpourings of the 
 psalmists than in those of the prophets, it is because, in the 
 later days, the Israelites had ceased to exist as a people, and the 
 personal life was all that remained under their control. And 
 
 T
 
 290 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 this explains why Jesus confined himself to personal relations 
 in the application of his great world-renewing principles. It 
 was his special and immediate task to preach to the poor and 
 powerless the truth that there and then, without waiting for 
 any outward change or revolution, they might live the life of 
 communion with God, which must be the goal of all change 
 and revolution that has any true goal at all. And this priceless 
 and immortal truth we must grapple to our hearts with hooks 
 of steel, must find in it the inspiration of our work amongst the 
 wretched, and the rebuke of our too impatient, " Lord ! how 
 long?" Reverence for the individual, and the never- failing 
 faith that the best and highest good must be given to men 
 from within, by directly touching the springs of action and 
 renovating the elements of character not from without, by 
 changing their surroundings, this is the distinctive mark of 
 Christianity ; and, when we forget this, we cease to be disciples 
 of Jesus. But this doctrine of spiritual possibilities, inde- 
 pendent of outward conditions, which Jesus preached to the 
 oppressed, he never allowed to salve the consciences of the 
 oppressors. Critics may question whether Matthew or Luke 
 has most faithfully recorded the beatitudes uttered by Jesus. 
 But whether or not, he balanced his " Blessed are ye poor " by 
 the cry, " Woe unto you that are rich ! " it is certain, at least, 
 that he launched from the same lips his word of comfort to the 
 spiritually oppressed, and his challenge of defiance to the spiritual 
 oppressors. His principles were big with industrial and political 
 revolutions, such as the abolition of slavery and the establish- 
 ment of a cosmopolitan sense of justice that can rise superior to 
 national prejudice and passion ; and his guiding and controlling 
 thought of the kingdom of God on earth is still the inspiration 
 of all who would baptize Sociology in the spirit of religion. 
 
 After the death of Jesus, the belief in his speedy return to 
 establish his kingdom by might was all but fatal to the 
 development of his own idea of the gradual leavening of society 
 by great conceptions. The Christians looked upon all worldly 
 occupations, and all domestic and social relations, as belonging 
 to an order of things destined speedily to pass away. They 
 had, therefore, no thought of regenerating them in principle, 
 and only sought to withdraw as completely as might be from 
 them. Hence the fatal distinction and breach between the 
 Church and the world, which is the very negation of the
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 291 
 
 central teaching and principle of Jesus, and which has done 
 more than anything else to cramp and thwart the beneficent 
 influence of Christianity. Paul, too, with the other Christians, 
 accepted the belief in the second coming of Jesus, and with it 
 the idea that men were to be saved out of the world, while the 
 world itself was to be renounced rather than redeemed. But 
 his masculine sense checked the more extravagant consequences 
 that might seem to flow from this belief, and the growing 
 complexity of the Church itself enabled his scientific sagacity 
 to grasp the essential idea of a society as an organism, and to 
 sketch an outline of Sociology in his image of the one body and 
 many members a body because, on the one hand, they are 
 diverse, and, on the other hand, are united by a living spirit 
 which must stand for ever as the ideal for which the servants of 
 the kingdom of God must toil. 1 
 
 The Christians endeavoured to withdraw from the world, 
 but, meanwhile, they were conquering the world ; and as 
 persecution and contempt gave place to honour and power, 
 and at last, with the age of Constantine, the Christians found 
 themselves at the helm of the State, they discovered that the 
 world cannot be renounced unless there is some one to hand 
 it over to, and thus were forced to treat as permanent the 
 relations and institutions of public and social life. But to say 
 that Christianity had triumphed is, of course, a relative phrase. 
 Christianity had gained theoretical recognition, but the rulers 
 of the world were almost as far as ever from seriously asking 
 themselves how Christians should act as governors, as soldiers, 
 as slave-owners, as magistrates. Even when Christians deserv- 
 ing the name rose to power, the pernicious distinction between 
 the Church and the world, which had been established in the 
 days of the Church's weakness, smoothed the way towards the 
 ready acceptance of the secular tradition, and the belief that 
 the offices of this world were something apart from, and 
 external to, the Christian life, and something which could not 
 be regulated in strict accordance with its laws. The pious 
 civilian, perhaps, strove rather to compensate for any taint that 
 might cleave to his worldly occupation by fasts, and alms, and 
 penance, than to make that worldly occupation itself the ladder 
 on which to mount to heaven. 
 
 1 i Cor. xii. and xiii. These two chapters should never be thought of apart 
 from each other.
 
 292 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 Nevertheless, the great teachers of the Church understood 
 well enough that the affairs of the world could no longer be set 
 aside as being no concern of theirs. They were called upon to 
 give advice and guidance in all practical matters, and, in spite 
 of their disastrous adhesion to the doctrine of a higher grade of 
 excellence, that consisted in renouncing the world, they were 
 compelled to ask what principles should guide a Christian man 
 in all the affairs of life. Accordingly, it is in the writings of 
 the great theologians of the Middle Ages that we have to search 
 for the mediaeval ideas of social philosophy and political economy. 
 The problems of Sociology presented themselves to them in 
 more or less fragmentary and detached guise ; and it would 
 probably be difficult, or impossible, to elaborate anything like a 
 system out of their writings ; moreover, the radical vice of 
 mediaeval religion, in its contempt of all material things, told 
 heavily against the formation of balanced and broadly-founded 
 conceptions of the industrial and social order ; but, on the other 
 hand, the religious and moral point of view from which all such 
 problems were attacked gave breadth and largeness to their con- 
 ceptions, and it still stands as the type to which we must 
 return when our materialistic aberrations of the last few cen- 
 turies have run their course. Then, when the scales have fallen 
 from our eyes, cured of the mediaeval contempt for the body and 
 material things, but cured, likewise, of that more fell disease of 
 modern times, the worship of the body and of material things, 
 we shall look once more upon the aspirations and speculations of 
 the Middle Ages, and shall be amazed to see how much social 
 wisdom and penetration is often found in connection even with 
 the extremes of economic heresy, such as those of Francis and 
 the mendicant friars ; while, on the other hand, if we examine 
 the beautfully symmetrical and consistent doctrine of the 
 schoolmen, with regard to the lucrum cessans and the damnum 
 emergent^ which alone can justify the acceptance of payment 
 for a loan of money, we shall be struck with its perfect adequacy 
 to the economic and industrial conditions of the times, and 
 shall see in it another proof of the potency of moral principle 
 as an instrument of economic research. 1 And, to take only 
 one more instance, when we read the opening passages of 
 Dante's De Monarchia^ we shall feel that the great theologian 
 grasps the fundamental problems of politics and political economy 
 
 1 See W. Cunningham's Chriaian Opinion on Usury. Macmillan, 1884.
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 293 
 
 as none but a great theologian can, and shall marvel that men 
 should ever have dreamt of severing the studies which are to 
 each other as meat and life. 
 
 The principles of the Protestant Reformation were not 
 favourable to the development of the religious study of Sociology 
 and economics. Nevertheless, the great reformers felt them- 
 selves to be concerned with all political and economic questions 
 that came within their ken ; and Calvin, for instance, is credited 
 by the historians with having been the first man to give a 
 scientific defence and exposition of interest. Banking had been 
 a profession for centuries ; but it was left to a great theologian 
 to expound its first principles. 
 
 Since the Reformation, Protestant theology has been too 
 sterile and narrow, and Catholic theology too stationary, to 
 produce any great results. The reins have dropped from the 
 hands of the theologians. In the Catholic schools, indeed, a 
 tradition of the old breadth has been preserved. The "Moral 
 Theology " which is a branch of the Catholic priest's educa- 
 tion vindicates the necessity of a study of human nature and 
 human relations on a far broader basis than is recognised 
 amongst Protestants ; and it is not without significance that 
 the first explicit attempt on the part of an economist to conquer 
 the " dismal science " in the name of Christianity, and expound 
 a system of political economy as a branch of ethics, should 
 have come from the pen of the Catholic Devas. 
 
 It is no new thing, then, to claim a place for Sociology in 
 the studies of the theologian ; but yet, at no period since the 
 days of the Hebrew prophets has the connection between 
 religion and Sociology been so obviously close and intimate as 
 it is to-day ; for at no period since the great age of prophecy 
 have men believed at once in God and in the world as they 
 believe to-day. Throughout the so-called " ages of faith," men 
 were smitten with a profound disbelief in the world, its con- 
 ditions and its possibilities, and the kingdom of God on earth 
 had dropped out of their belief. This one thought should 
 more than console us when we are disposed to think of our age 
 as lacking in poetry and in loftiness of motive and concep- 
 tion. We believe in God, and believe, with no wavering 
 half-faith, that the world and its fulness are his. We must 
 believe, then, that all the affairs of this world are capable 
 of being moulded into full accordance with his law, and that
 
 294 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 Sociology can only be truly studied when baptized in the spirit 
 of religion. 
 
 But this joyful faith is not given to every man in our day. 
 Is it given to any of us always ? Even if we know no seasons 
 of positive doubt, yet we can hardly be strangers to times of 
 sorely-tried, perplexed, and baffled faith. There is so much 
 that is mysterious in life ; so much that tempts us to believe 
 that the fair vision of the kingdom of God is but a delusive 
 mirage. So often have the hopes of men sickened with delay, 
 so futile for the real good of man has seemed his growing power 
 and knowledge. Tantalus-like, the human race is ever in sight 
 of the blessings it can never grasp. Sisyphus-like, it is ever 
 rolling up with awful toil the burden which shall dash it back 
 in hideous ruin, only to begin once more its endless task. 
 Were not the heathen poets right, after all, in placing the 
 golden age in the distant past, and has not history proved that 
 the Hebrew prophets were wrong in heralding its advent ? 
 
 Some years ago, John Stuart Mill sent a cold shudder 
 through many a heart by his description of nature as a huge 
 slaughter-house, the flat negation of the idea of a beneficent 
 ruler of the universe. 1 There is a colder chill at the heart of 
 many a one to-day who thinks he sees in the very constitution 
 of human society, and the very conditions of human life, pro- 
 vision for the perpetual thwarting and baffling of what is noblest 
 in us, for the oppression of the weak and the exaltation of the 
 strong, for the sacrifice of the many to the few. The doctrine 
 of the struggle for existence seems to bring this phenomenon 
 within the grasp of an all-embracing law. "Devil take the 
 hindmost " becomes the one principle of life, the one condi- 
 tion of progress. " Humanum paucis vivit genus " 2 is the 
 summary of history and philosophy ; and on his shuddering 
 lips who has read it, the prayer to " Our Father " dies away, 
 and the two great commandments are a mockery. 
 
 We discourse of the causes of scepticism in our day, and the 
 declining interest in religion ; and we make it our boast that 
 we invite our students to shirk no problem, however appalling, 
 and to sound and probe every source of scepticism, however 
 deep. Be it so. Then must this source of scepticism be 
 
 1 Three Essays on Religion. Longmans, 1874. 
 2 Lucan, Pharsalia, Bk. v. 1. 343.
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 295 
 
 sounded too ; and the study of Sociology must take its place in 
 our theological course. 
 
 And this brings me to the real heart of my subject. I have 
 sought to vindicate a place for Sociology amongst the studies of 
 the theologian in his capacity of a moral and religious teacher, 
 but I have hardly claimed for it a place as a part of the subject 
 matter of theology itself. But the transition to this from the 
 last point touched upon is easy. I have said that doubt as to 
 the possibility of regenerating society, and making the kingdom 
 of God stretch over the earth, lies at the root of the deepest 
 and most formidable scepticism of our day ; and that he who 
 would be armed to meet that scepticism must have looked the 
 problem fairly in the face. But this is not all. We profess in 
 our College to examine any belief that is submitted to us, not 
 for the sake of showing that it is false, but for the sake of 
 inquiring whether it is true. We must not shrink from the 
 application of our principles here. "The Bible, and the Bible 
 only, the religion of Protestants," has long ceased to be our 
 motto. The Bible-word, "God is love," will not help us if it 
 be contradicted by reason and experience. We have rejected 
 the authority of the Church, and the ecclesiastical doctrine that 
 God revealed his character and purpose when the Word was 
 made flesh in Jesus, will not help us if we cannot find that same 
 character and purpose revealed in nature and in man, made flesh 
 again from day to day. Where, then, are we to seek the 
 authentic revelation of God ? In the utterances and the con- 
 stitution of the human mind, and in the conditions of human 
 life. Do these two revelations agree, or do they give each 
 other the lie ? Gentlemen, if this is not a question of theology, 
 I know not what theology should be. On the answer to this 
 question it depends whether we are to believe in Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman or in our Father in heaven ; whether we are to wor- 
 ship one God with our hearts, and serve another in the forced 
 servitude of our lives ; or whether, with heart and life, we are 
 to worship the one and only God j whether the high tide of 
 religious faith is reached when, with bowed head, we cry, " God 
 is great, and we comprehend him not ; " or whether, with 
 deepening knowledge and experience, we receive, with ever 
 fuller trust, the faith that " God is love." 
 
 The God that is revealed in our hearts is a God of love and
 
 296 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 purity. He bids the strong lay their strength at the foot of the 
 weak, and bids the wise and learned serve the ignorant and 
 foolish. He is the God of chivalry and self-sacrifice, and his 
 name is holy. This is the God of our hearth and our heart. 
 Does he likewise rule in the market-place, the factory, and the 
 council chamber ? Or is he a Lar only, whose power and juris- 
 diction extend no further than from fireplace to threshold ; or 
 the supreme spirit indeed, but a spirit in eternal conflict with the 
 matter which he did not make, which he cannot control, which 
 shares his immortality, and which thwarts his will ? If these 
 are not questions of theology, then what does theology mean ? 
 If they are to be set aside by an indignant appeal to the 
 immediate perceptions of the spiritual sense, against which all 
 evidence beats in vain, then what becomes of our vaunted 
 " scientific theology," and in what does it differ from theosophy ? 
 From scientific theology let the mystic factor never be cast out ; 
 but neither let it cast out all save itself. 
 
 Is it true, then, as they tell us, that human progress is impos- 
 sible, save by means of the fierce struggle for existence in which 
 the weak go to the wall, and the successful march over the bodies 
 of the defeated ? Is it true, as Lecky 1 has it, that the harlot is 
 the " eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the 
 people," and that her ghastly form is the price we must pay for 
 unsullied womanhood in sweet and tranquil homes ? Is it true 
 that self-seeking is the one and only motive power that can drive 
 the social and industrial engine, and that restless and relentless 
 competition is the eternal condition of all advance ? Is it true 
 that, however much wealth Dives heaps up, he will always covet 
 Lazarus's crumbs, and will successfully seek the means of 
 bargaining him out of them ? 
 
 If these things are true, let theology mark them, for they 
 are of vital import to her. If they are true, then the God of love 
 shall still and for ever be the deity of our heart and hearth ; but 
 we can no longer worship him as our creator and preserver. 
 The giver of meat and the giver of life cannot henceforth be 
 worshipped as one God. 
 
 But what if these things are as false as they are foul ? 
 What if the Christian principles of love and mutual self-sacrifice 
 and service alone can give the practical solution of the problems 
 of Sociology ? What if the devotion of the strong to the weak 
 
 1 History of European Mora/s, ii. 300.
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 297 
 
 is the principle of life ? What if redemption, and not elimina- 
 tion, be the principle of progress ? Does not this concern 
 theology ? Is there no revelation of God, no confirmation of 
 Christianity here ? 
 
 I maintain, then, that in the study of the moral and mental 
 constitution of man, which has always received a full recognition 
 in our College, and in the study of the conditions of social life, 
 we must find the two great branches of that mediate revelation 
 of God which is the subject matter of scientific theology. We 
 do well to devote no small portion of our time to historical 
 studies ; but the history of theology is one thing, theology itself 
 another. 
 
 I have spoken of the necessity of Sociology to a complete 
 course of theological studies. But I would also, in conclusion, 
 say one word on the necessity of religion to a fruitful study of 
 Sociology. Auguste Comte saw far and deep when he denounced, 
 as materialistic and immoral, the study of industry apart from 
 the general structure and purpose of society, and the isolation or 
 the selfish and gain-seeking impulses of man, and their erection 
 into a self-contained system. 1 The merely gain-seeking man is 
 a monster, the contemplation of whom is a degradation. To him 
 the means of life are so absorbing that life itself has fallen into 
 forgetfulness ; whereas it should be the constant task of the 
 student of Sociology to correct, instead of aggravating, every 
 tendency to confound the means with the end, and thus to 
 impress and re-impress the truth that the body is more than 
 raiment, and the life more than meat. The ultimate pur- 
 poses of human life are immaterial, and not material. All 
 physical wealth is a means, and not an end. Till this lesson 
 is taught, material advance and progress will fail to make men 
 more human j and it is only by religion that this lesson can be 
 taught. 
 
 Communion with God, with man, and with nature, this is 
 life. All else is but a means of life. It is here, in this true life, 
 that there opens out the infinite prospect for which human 
 nature craves. It is here that that divine discontent and unsatis- 
 fied longing which belongs to us as children of God finds its true 
 mission. The depths of communion with God, with nature, and 
 with man, can never be sounded to the bottom, and humanity 
 
 1 See, for instance, Court de Philosophic Positive, iv. 193-204.
 
 298 SOCIOLOGY IN THE CIRCLE 
 
 will never rest ingloriously in that which is attained, or cease 
 from its Ulysses-yearning for the yet untraversed oceans of life. 
 But let not this divine thirst and yearning towards the infinite 
 be cheated by the vile counterpart of an unsated and insatiable 
 craving after the means of life, to the neglect and destruction of 
 life itself. 
 
 Material progress in itself brings us no nearer any goal, 
 human or divine. Two thousand years ago the true function 
 of machinery was understood, but to this day that function 
 remains unperformed. " Labour-saving " we call our machin- 
 ery, and its function is to strike the shackles from the limbs 
 of the slave, and to give freemen leave to hunger and thirst 
 for more than food and drink. But how much labour has 
 machinery yet saved ? When the first water-wheel was seen 
 in Europe, the Greek poet Antipater 1 sang, "Ye mill-girls, 
 spare the hand that grinds, and sleep your fill, though cock- 
 crow tell the coming of the day. Deo 2 has laid your hand- 
 toil on the nymphs, who, tripping o'er the summit of the 
 wheel, twirl round its axle, which, with twisting spokes, then 
 whirls the hollow weight of mill-stones hewn from Nisuros. 
 We taste the life of old once more, since we have learnt to feast 
 on Deo's gifts all free from toil." 3 
 
 But the golden age came not ; and, after two millenniums, 
 men doubt whether all our "labour-saving" machinery has 
 "lightened the day's toil to a single human being." And if, 
 in the future, our material progress is to bring the relief and 
 elevation it has as yet failed to bring, it must be by dint of 
 close alliance with those influences of religion and humanity 
 to which and not to machinery we owe it that slaves no 
 longer drop dead in mine or quarry, in unpitied hundreds, 
 whenever public works are raised, and that little children are 
 in some sort protected against the fierceness of the competition 
 which ground them, within living memory, between the upper 
 
 1 Contemporary with Cicero. 8 I.e. Ceres. 
 
 3 "lo-xere x e fy> a fJ-vXaiov, dXerpides, eOSere fj.a.Kpd, 
 
 Krjv 6pOpov 
 ATJW yap Ntf; 
 
 at 5 KO.T 
 dova divetiovfff 6 S' dKrivtcrcriv 
 
 ffTpbxpq. Ntffvpluv KoTXa j3d/>7; /j.v\dKuv. 
 yev6fj.ed' o,px.a.Lov J3i6rov ir<i\iv, el 5^x a l*t>-)(dov 
 
 5aivv<r6ai AijoOs Zpya SidatrK6fJ.e6a. Anthology, ix. 418. 
 The poem is cited in Stolberg's translation, by Karl Marx, in Das Kafitai, i. 428.
 
 OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 299 
 
 and nether mill-stone of industrial enterprise and parental want. 
 Protected " in some sort," I say. It is needless for me now to 
 dilate on how much remains to do. 
 
 We must look, then, to those higher motives, those nobler 
 ideals, those broader sympathies, those loftier aspirations, which 
 we sum up in the word " religion," to put a limit to men's 
 desire for the means of life, and to stimulate their joy in living. 
 "What is that good for the sons of men which they should 
 do under the heaven all the days of their life ? " Each man's 
 answer to this question is the summary of his religion. If we 
 have no answer to it, then, because we have no religion, the 
 "science of wealth" is an aimless futility, and industry is a 
 blind and dumb instinct. 
 
 " Be it known," says Dante, nearly at the beginning of his 
 De Monarchia, " that there are certain things on the which, 
 seeing that they lie not at all under our power, we can specu- 
 late, but cannot act. Such are Mathematics, Physics, and 
 Theology. But there are certain on the which, inasmuch as 
 they are within our control, we can not only speculate, but 
 also act. And, in the case of these, action is not entered on 
 for the sake of speculation, but rather this for the sake of that ; 
 for as much as in these things action is the goal. Inasmuch, 
 then, as the matter of the present treatise is political, nay, is, 
 the fountain and norm of right polities ; and since all that 
 concerns polity is subject to our control, it is manifest that our 
 present matter must be disposed with main reference not to 
 speculation, but rather to action. Again, since in things that 
 can be done the source and cause of the whole is found in the 
 final goal (for it is that which sets the agent in motion), it 
 follows that the whole method of the things which contem- 
 plate the goal must be determined by the goal itself; for the 
 method of dressing timber for a house will be one, for a ship, 
 another. That thing, then (and there must be such), which 
 is the final goal of human civilisation, will be the norm by 
 reference to which all that is to be established in this treatise 
 must be made clear." 
 
 Sociology, then, bereft of religion, is without a goal, and 
 the blight of perpetual sterility is upon it. Theology, bereft 
 of Sociology, is remote from the actual life of men, and is 
 smitten with unreality. On the union of these two depends 
 the future of humanity, the coming of the day when "the
 
 300 SOCIOLOGY 
 
 knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover 
 the sea," when there shall be no tyrant and no slave : 
 
 Nor shall any lack his share 
 
 In the toil and the gain of living, in the days when the world 
 grows fair. 
 
 If, with such a conception of the place which Sociology 
 should take, and the function it should perform in your studies, 
 I dare to ask you to listen to any words of mine in the coming 
 Session, it is not that I have any hope of realising even a 
 recognisable reflection of the ideal I have indicated. If, at the 
 close of our studies, I have succeeded in emphasising the want 
 which I cannot supply, I shall be more than content. Myself 
 blind and groping, I offer you no guidance ; but I ask you to 
 band yourselves with me for a nobler search than drew the 
 Argonauts to Colchis, or sent the Knights of the Round 
 Table in quest of the " Holy Grail." It is little likely that 
 any golden treasure of discovery will reward our search. May 
 be no vision will break upon us to strengthen and purify our 
 days. But, even so, God speed our little barque, and send 
 many a mighty keel to cleave the seas on which we toss ! 
 
 A tiny spark may rouse a mighty flame ; 
 And, after me, perchance, in nobler words 
 Shall prayer arise and gain response from heaven.
 
 XII 
 
 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY AND 
 THE SERVICE OF MAN 
 
 Address to the Students of Manchester New College, 
 London, \th October 1887 
 
 J. E. C. 1887 
 
 301
 
 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY AND THE 
 SERVICE OF MAN 
 
 " LONG ago," said Gotama Buddha to the Brahman Kuta- 
 danta, 1 who had asked him about the essentials of a proper 
 sacrifice, " long ago there was a mighty king, Great Victor by 
 name, who had won vast riches and conquered the wide circuit 
 of the earth. As he meditated in solitude there arose in his 
 heart the desire to perform a mighty sacrifice, and he sent for 
 his house-priest and told him his wish. ' In the realm of my 
 lord the king,' said the priest, c are thieves and murderers. 
 Let not my lord seek to get rid of them by death, or bonds, or 
 banishment. Let my lord provide seed and food for them that 
 till the ground and breed cattle ; let him provide goods and 
 capital for them that deal in merchandise. Then will the land 
 be established in prosperity, and men will rejoice and live with 
 open doors.' And the king did so ; and these evil-doers, being 
 intent upon their own affairs, harassed the land no more, and 
 prosperity was established, and men rejoiced and lived with 
 open doors. Then the king took counsel again with his priest, 
 and he bade him consult the nobles and the priests and the 
 householders. And when they consented, the sacrifice took 
 place. They slew no bulls nor rams, they hewed down no 
 trees for the sacrificial posts, they cut no sacrificial grass. The 
 king's servants wrought their work without fear of the rod and 
 without tears. Each served with free service, and with offer- 
 ings of milk and oil and honey was the sacrifice performed." 
 So even in ancient days might the traditional form of the 
 
 1 See the " Kutadanta Sutta," in the Dlgha Nikaya, v. A full translation has 
 been published by Prof. T. W. Rhys' Davids, in the Dialogues of the Buddha, 1899, 
 Sacred Boots of the Buddhists, vol. ii. 
 
 303
 
 304 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 service of God be superseded by the service of man. The 
 teaching of the Indian sage will not appear strange to the 
 student of Hebrew prophecy. "Wherewith shall I come 
 before Yah weh," cries the worshipper, "and bow myself before 
 the high God ? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 
 with calves of a year old ? " "Will Yahweh be pleased with 
 thousands of rams," replies the prophet, " or with ten thousands 
 of rivers of oil ? " " Shall I give my first born for my trans- 
 gression ? " asks the agonised suppliant, offering a still higher 
 price for expiation, " the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
 soul ? " " He hath showed thee, O man, what is good," is 
 the austere reply, "and what doth Yahweh require of thee but 
 to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God ? " 1 Nay, the service of man is identical with true 
 religion. When Jeremiah passed sentence on the unfaithful 
 Shallum for his reckless extravagance and his consequent un- 
 righteous oppressions, he contrasted him with his father Josiah : 
 "Shalt thou reign because thou strivest to excel in cedar ? 
 Did not thy father eat and drink and do judgment and justice ? 
 Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor 
 and needy ; then it was well. Was not this to know me ? 
 saith Yahweh." 2 Even in those days, then, there was a social 
 problem. Even in those days there was a conflict between 
 a ceremonial and an ethical religion. And even in those days 
 there were not wanting voices to declare that the service of 
 man was the true path to the service of God. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, has religion failed to inspire great 
 social ideals. Consult the wisdom of ancient China, and you 
 will learn that the moral order of the living personal Heaven is 
 the established basis of the State. Its constancy and imparti- 
 ality are the symbols of its own righteousness, and the founda- 
 tions of all virtue among men. In the absence of any external 
 code of revealed law, it has made known its requirements 
 through man's moral nature, and through the order of society, 
 which finds in the several ranks, duties, and ceremonies, its 
 appointed and unchangeable expression. "The great Shang 
 Te," said Tang, 3 "has conferred on the inferior people a 
 moral sense, but to cause them to pursue the course which it 
 indicates is the work of the sovereign." " But the sovereign," 
 
 1 Micah vi. 6-8. 2 Jer. xxii. 15, 16. 
 
 8 Shoo King, IV. Hi. 2,
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 305 
 
 said Kaou Yaou, 1 " must remember that the work is Heaven's ; 
 it is men's to act upon it. From Heaven are the social orders 
 with their several duties ; from Heaven are the social distinc- 
 tions with their several ceremonies. When sovereigns and 
 ministers show a common respect for these, do they not har- 
 monise the moral nature of the people ? Heaven graciously 
 distinguishes the virtuous, and punishes the guilty ; Heaven 
 hears and sees as our people see. Such connection is there 
 between the upper and the lower worlds ; how reverent ought the 
 masters of the earth to be ! " So all men may be called " sons 
 of Heaven"; the administrative officers are "shepherds of 
 Heaven " ; the judges are the representatives of Heaven j and 
 at the head of all the Emperor is " Heaven's eldest son." 
 While the "Great Learning," derived from Heaven, in its 
 single exercise produces a "holy sage," in its larger scope it 
 produces a " reformer of the world," a " true king," and stops 
 only at perfection, alike in individuals and in the State. 2 
 Glance at the flower of Greek insight, and you will discern 
 that the ideal society portrayed in the Republic of Plato is 
 conceived throughout as an attempt to realise on earth, amid 
 the powers and passions of man, the principles of a divine order 
 of wisdom and justice. Its several classes correspond to the 
 constituent elements of the universe. Their virtues and duties 
 are assigned to them so as to reproduce within the associations 
 of humanity the lineaments of the transcendent good. To 
 this supreme demand every individual must bow ; he can have 
 no rights against the whole, for that whole expresses the truth 
 and righteousness which abide in God, and claims the submis- 
 sion, the loyalty, the reverent obedience of each. Listen to 
 the utterance of the seers of Israel, as they sing of the time 
 when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh 
 as the waters cover the sea, and you will hear that the re- 
 generation of society is to take place under the immediate 
 influence of the spirit of the Lord. With gifts of wisdom 
 and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and rever- 
 ence, the ruler shall be no more tyrannical, and under the 
 reign of justice the people will find all nature sharing their 
 harmony. A blast of judgment and of burning shall cleanse 
 the guilty city, and a purified nation will know its fellowship 
 with the life of God. Is it a paradox that while pre-Christian 
 
 1 SAoo King, II. iii. 5, 6. ' Edinburgh Review, April 1869, p. 324. 
 
 V
 
 306 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 antiquity should thus attempt to solve the social problem on 
 the basis of religion, one of the greatest of Christian teachers 
 should seek strenuously to keep them apart ? " Two ends," 
 says Dante, " have been laid down by the ineffable providence 
 of God for man to aim at : the blessedness of this life, which 
 consists in the exercise of his natural powers, and which is pre- 
 figured in the earthly paradise j and next, the blessedness of 
 the life eternal, which consists in the fruition of the sight of 
 God's countenance, and to which man by his own natural 
 powers cannot rise, if he be not aided by the divine light, and 
 this blessedness is understood by the heavenly paradise. But 
 to these different kinds of blessedness, as to different con- 
 clusions, we must come by different means. For at the first 
 we arrive by the lessons of philosophy, if only we will follow 
 them, by acting in accordance with the moral and intellectual 
 virtues. But at the second we can only arrive by spiritual 
 lessons transcending human reason, so that we follow them 
 in accordance with the theological virtues, faith, hope, and 
 charity. Therefore man had need of two guides for his life, 
 as he had a twofold end in life ; whereof one is the Supreme 
 Pontiff, to lead mankind to eternal life, according to the things 
 revealed to us ; and the other is the Emperor, to guide man- 
 kind to happiness in this world, in accordance with the teach- 
 ing of philosophy." l 
 
 I 
 
 We need not inquire now what were the historic causes 
 which gave to Dante's view its peculiar form ; its significance 
 for us lies in the sharp distinction which he draws between the 
 scene of social order and the sphere of religion. It must be 
 confessed that this separation has (until recently) been practi- 
 cally accepted by the several branches of the Christian Church. 
 The life that now is and the life which is to come have been 
 too often regarded as de facto under separate governments. 
 Outside the fold of saving grace, humanity has presented only 
 the spectacle of a fallen and ruined nature, which could be 
 redeemed solely by the infusion of a supernatural righteousness. 
 In the struggle which was being perpetually waged between 
 heaven and hell, the issues of eternity seemed to blot out the 
 
 1 De Monarchia, iii. 1 6 (Church). I do not forget that Dante claims a divine 
 sanction even for the Roman Empire ; but it is not, however, as such, religious.
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 307 
 
 needs of time, and to escape from a world which it was not 
 possible to mend appeared the only way to preserve purity and 
 to attain peace. Launched into an empire whose political and 
 social circumstances it could make no immediate attempt to 
 change, Christian teaching underwent transformations which 
 carried it rapidly away from its first author. As it stepped 
 forth from its native hills, as its primitive speech was translated 
 into fresh terms, as new and alien ideas were combined with it, 
 as its hopes and expectations faded, to be replaced by others 
 which had grown up under strange conditions, the stress of 
 its great thoughts was shifted. Its centre of interest passed 
 from the realisation of a divine life here and now, to the awful 
 judgment-scene at the world's end. In view of the subsequent 
 eternities of bliss and woe, the occupations of threescore years 
 and ten fell into insignificance. To prepare for the final hour 
 was inevitably the first interest. The true crisis of the soul 
 lay there. The divine will held itself, as it were, in suspense 
 until then, when it would descend with ultimate award to 
 smite or bless. One great institution, indeed, there was, 
 which was the continuous scene of the divine presence, which 
 linked a part of earth into fellowship with heaven, and set the 
 elected spirit in living communion with the faithful of all 
 times. But the existence of the Church over against the 
 world, with its ordered ranks of service and dignity, as the 
 real abode of heaven's purposes, only threw the idea of the 
 state as a divine society the more into the shade. The 
 sovereign, it is true, might borrow its authority, might claim a 
 superhuman right, and believe himself the representative of the 
 will of God ; and a crude social philosophy might justify the 
 existence of the poor by announcing that their final cause was 
 to enable rich men to get to heaven by giving them alms. 
 Neither of these attempts, however, to exhibit a divine con- 
 stitution in the civil fabric can be said to have held its own ; 
 and it must be confessed that the reproach of worldliness and 
 other- worldliness levelled against the orthodox churches has too 
 frequently been just. 
 
 Our age, we all know, is witnessing a prodigious change. 
 A truer philosophy of human nature has lifted it out of the 
 wreck of its abasement. It has laid stress on its ethical ele- 
 ments, and demanded that they should once more be recognised 
 in religion ; and it has declared that salvation means deliver-
 
 308 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 ance, not from future wrath, but from present sin. The 
 larger view of history has embraced new facts which teach the 
 rise and not the fall of man ; and the assurance of human pro- 
 gress contains within it the assurance of a mighty law, under 
 which his motive powers are guided, and he is borne on to- 
 wards an unseen goal. For the conceptions of science, which 
 have everywhere introduced order into the external world, are 
 entering fast into the seeming confusions of affairs, and plant- 
 ing themselves steadfastly amid the relations of men, of classes, 
 and of nations. And the great democratic movement of our 
 time is profoundly influencing religious ideas, sometimes en- 
 countering them with a clash and collision so violent as to 
 overthrow traditional conceptions altogether, sometimes inspir- 
 ing them with nobler ideals, and filling them with a fresh 
 enthusiasm. Nor have the minor processes of literary in- 
 vestigation been without their fruit. They have helped to cut 
 down ancient prejudices which still cumbered the ground ; 
 they are destined, as their import is more and more understood 
 and trusted, to prepare the way for that reconstruction of 
 theology which history, philosophy, and science alike demand, 
 on behalf of the present hour, in the interests of the humanity 
 of to-day. In this College we endeavour, however humbly, to 
 open the path to such a reconstruction. It is for you, gentle- 
 men, to train yourselves to carry on the work. I will not 
 venture now to anticipate what may be its future forms ; but 
 to you, who vow yourselves to the Christian ministry, it may 
 be not unsuitable to inquire what is the relation between the 
 studies through which we propose to conduct you, and the 
 social problem with which you will hereafter be confronted ? 
 For you will not forget that ministry is simply " service," and 
 when you ask yourselves whose service, you will not long be 
 left in doubt. I know indeed that one of your chief duties 
 will be, in time-honoured phrase, "to conduct divine service." 
 But I need not remind you that the service to which the 
 Master calls us is the service of man : " Whosoever would 
 become great among you shall be your minister ; and whoso- 
 ever would be first among you shall be your servant : even as 
 the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve." That 
 service you will render first as teachers to the little groups of 
 men and women who will look to you to pray, to preach, to 
 cherish and quicken within them, by leading their worship,
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 309 
 
 the springs of a higher life. But this will not exhaust the 
 circle of your duties. You cannot serve one truly without 
 being ready, to the best of your ability, to serve all. Each 
 minister among us (and no man or woman is altogether cut off 
 from the duty and the privilege of service) is confronted with 
 the problem of the whole. Dim or distinct the vision lies 
 before him ; he knows that he cannot isolate himself from the 
 conflicts round him ; and these struggles must be viewed no 
 more sectionally, they must be regarded in relation to each 
 other, and to the entire body within which they occur. Each 
 man, if he would be absolutely faithful, must learn with a new 
 meaning the grand words of Wesley, "My parish is the 
 world." 
 
 I am well aware that the equipment needful for effective 
 aid in the service of man is drawn from a variety of branches 
 of knowledge, of which no notice can be taken in this place. 
 In the studies of Political Economy, for example, or Sociology, 
 we offer you no guidance ; you must find that elsewhere. 1 
 It is hardly too much to say that each day increases our con- 
 sciousness of the complexity ot the problems which must be 
 discussed again and again ere they can be solved ; and no pains 
 can be too great, no labour too stern, to fit you to take part in 
 their solution. And the acquaintance with administrative 
 detail in different departments needful for those who charge 
 themselves with definite posts in the great battle with ignor- 
 ance, and suffering, and sin, must be won through contact with 
 hard facts. It is not accessible through text-books ; you will 
 not gain it from the most comprehensive of manuals. But 
 behind these requisites lie the principles which are to determine 
 your aims and shape your methods. If you have learned to 
 regard life as a trust, you must have some idea of its source 
 and its goal. If you wish to take part in the warfare, you 
 must know something of the plan and the rules of the fight ; 
 you must be sure of your weapons ; you must understand the 
 meaning of the word of command ; you must reverence the 
 sacredness of your flag. This is the side on which the study 
 of theology is directly related to the social problem. 
 
 1 Since the establishment of Manchester College at Oxford a. Dunkin lectureship 
 in Sociology has been founded.
 
 3io THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 II 
 
 In the first place, it is obvious that the service of man 
 requires that we should know what man is. Here lies the real 
 key to all morals and religion. It is upon the interpretations 
 of our own experience and that of those above us and about us 
 that our constructions of the world and life must ultimately 
 repose. One of the noblest of modern apostles of this service, 
 Mazzini, recalling in later years the struggles of his early man- 
 hood, when he was tempted under the pressure of deep griefs to 
 relinquish his cause, has given us a glimpse into the process by 
 which his faith was re-established. " One morning I awoke to 
 find my mind tranquil and my spirit calmed, as one who has 
 passed through a great danger. The first thought that passed 
 across my spirit was, 'Your sufferings are the temptations of 
 egotism, and arise from a misconception of life.' I set myself 
 to re-examine, now that I was able to do so calmly, both myself 
 and surrounding things. I rebuilt my entire edifice of moral 
 philosophy. In fact, the great question of a true or false 
 conception of life is whether recognised or not the primary 
 basis of all philosophy. I came to my better self alone, without 
 aid from others, through the help of a religious conception 
 which I verified through history. From the idea of God I 
 descended to the idea of progress ; from the conception of 
 progress to a true conception of life ; to faith in a mission, and 
 its logical consequence, duty as the supreme rule of life ; and 
 having reached that faith, I swore to myself that nothing in this 
 world should again make me doubt or forsake it. It was, as 
 Dante says, passing through martyrdom to peace." 1 
 
 Yet the most recent preacher of this service has for us quite 
 another word. That conception of duty in which Mazzini, 
 however he may have reached it, found his firmest stay, Mr. 
 Cotter Morrison declares to be a snare and an illusion. 
 " Nothing is more certain," he tells us, " than that no man 
 makes his own character. That is done for him by his parents 
 and ancestors. ... A man inherits his brain as much as he 
 inherits his estate." 2 And if it be urged that this view does 
 away with moral responsibility, our new prophet has the 
 courage of his convictions. " The answer is," he says, " that 
 
 1 Joseph Mazxini: a Memoir, by E. A. V., chap. iii. 
 2 The Service of Man, p. 291 sq.
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 311 
 
 the sooner the idea of moral responsibility is got rid of, the 
 better it will be for society and moral education." With the 
 conception of responsibility vanish likewise those of merit and 
 of guilt, and man is left in the iron grip of the most rigid 
 determinism. Postponing for the present the consideration of 
 some practical issues of this view, it must suffice us for the 
 moment to point out that the overthrow of the belief in moral 
 responsibility really involves also the loss of the belief in God. 
 The doctrine of necessity has often been held, as we all know, 
 to be consistent with religious faith. But then it has been 
 first harmonised in some way with the recognition of moral 
 responsibility ; and that faith did not rest upon it as one of its 
 chief props ; it was supported on an independent revelation, and 
 accommodated itself to the necessarian scheme as best it could. 
 A religious philosophy, however, is not content nowadays with 
 this reconciliation. With the decline of the belief in an 
 authoritative and final revelation, it is thrown back on the 
 constitution of the mind itself for the ultimate justification of 
 its faith, and if there be no answer there, it feels itself cast into 
 outer darkness, to sob away the remnants of its trust. 
 
 I will not anticipate the answer which will be given to these 
 great questions in your class-room. I will only express my own 
 deep conviction, that if God be not known through the con- 
 stitution of the human mind he cannot be known at all. 
 There, and there only, can we learn to understand the meaning 
 of his relation to the scene around us ; there, and there only, 
 can we read the utterance of his righteousness ; there, and there 
 only, can we feel the marvel of his affection. If we cannot 
 discover the witness of God's presence in our own thought and 
 conscience, if truth has for us no penetrating view through 
 outward change to the eternal being, if holiness has for us no 
 authority from heaven, if love has for us no infinite significance, 
 the visions of seers will never be beheld again by our dull eyes ; 
 the voices of prophets will be only empty words ; and the heroes 
 and saints who have walked with God and been at peace can 
 never take us into that divine companionship, for there is 
 nothing in us which can recognise him, though we live for 
 ever in his light. But once discover in your own heart the 
 secret of that union, and you will learn that if it exists for you, 
 why then for all. It may be obscured by ignorance, it may 
 be marred with selfishness, it may be almost unrecognisable
 
 312 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 through sin, the fury of passion may have distorted it, lust and 
 depravity have well-nigh blotted it out, but it is there. To 
 those who can discern it, the majestic march of human progress 
 will appear as the successive realisation of the purposes of God. 
 They will feel that every endeavour of their own after truth and 
 right sets them in fellowship with a mighty power for good, 
 working slowly and surely towards eternal ends. And they 
 will know that in serving man they are serving something 
 higher than man ; in the great order of God's providence they 
 are themselves the agents for manifesting more and more of 
 his righteousness ; through them, in so far as they live in 
 inward harmony, is God continuously revealing himself to the 
 world. 
 
 And if this or something like it I care not for the phrases 
 of a system be the work of our philosophy, is it not clear how 
 immediate and direct is its influence on the problems of life ? 
 For it can take no limited or partial view of human nature. It 
 must eagerly welcome whatever ministers to the whole. In 
 the garden of existence it finds no plot of ground railed off as 
 hallowed, to be cultivated alone while the rest runs to waste ; 
 it claims the wide earth for tillage, for use, for beauty, for joy ; 
 and it will labour till the very wilderness blossom as the rose. 
 It will look askance on no legitimate means. It will learn from 
 natural science the most effective conditions of human welfare, 
 and it will throw as much alacrity and cheerful sacrifice into 
 dull details (for instance) of sanitary drudgery as a soldier into 
 his forced march. From economics it will gather the meaning 
 of the mighty play of social forces ; from politics the high ends 
 of government. But above all it will remember that it has to 
 do with no inert and lifeless mass. The society amid which it 
 bids us strive is a living organism, where part bears on part, so 
 that when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, 
 and when one member rejoices, all the members rejoice with it. 
 Its endeavours, therefore, will always deal with the here and 
 now. It will be convinced that the future can have no promise 
 save in what is laid up by the slow toil of the ever-advancing 
 present. The hopes beyond the grave it will entrust reverently 
 to the great Father of all ; but it will be assured that the only 
 possible preparation for the worthy use of another life is to have 
 made a worthy use of this. Its final aim must be to blend all 
 effort, to fuse all energy, into the peaceful, orderly development
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 313 
 
 of man's parts and powers j to teach humanity to know itself 
 in living relation with the everlasting God. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Are thoughts like these only a dreamer's fancy, or have they 
 ever been realised even in part within the sphere of the world's 
 history ? If these be the products of our philosophy, have 
 they any verification at the hands of the great teachers of our 
 race ? I have already pointed to instances, in China and in 
 Greece, in which the idea of a perfected society reposes on the 
 idea of a divine order displayed in the outward world, and 
 seeking embodiment in the relations of men. But there is one 
 people before whom this problem was kept continuously 
 present, and whose efforts to solve it are even now full of 
 inspiring hope. The records of their endeavours are frag- 
 mentary and incomplete, but the great ideas which prompted 
 them still glow with an unfading light. The history of Israel, 
 as we see it in the Old Testament, is the history of an attempt 
 to work out religion as the basis of a social order. It begins 
 in the rude forms of the worship of a tribal deity, in whose 
 name a band of slaves are slowly converted into free men and 
 conquerors. It tells the story of their growth into a nation ; 
 of their rapid rise into imperial sway ; of the vicissitudes of 
 disruption, decline, and fall. Of the two kingdoms into which 
 the people are parted, one is wiped out from history and is 
 known no more. The other lingers a little longer in its 
 ancient seat, and then succumbs to the same outward fate. 
 But political ruin does not, in this case, bring with it national 
 extinction. The higher organisation of its religion has given 
 it an imperishable personality. A common faith has wrought 
 the social bond into such solidity that exile cannot wholly 
 destroy it j and through dark and dreary days that faith lives 
 on to be the great agent of social reconstruction. The story 
 of these vicissitudes has its own heroic episodes, its wild or 
 stately forms, its savage passions, its noble and supporting 
 trust j and the light which recent investigations have cast upon 
 it invests it with a fresh and unfamiliar charm. In the 
 unique phenomenon of Hebrew prophecy we see the elabora- 
 tion of the mighty thoughts which I have named. We watch 
 the process by which religion finally passes from a mere
 
 3H THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 ritual cultus to be the highest expression of moral aspiration. 
 Two great ideas stand out in constant relation with each other 
 the idea of Israel, and the idea of Israel's God. And the 
 bond between them is one of righteousness. Israel is the 
 people of Yahweh, and as such is bound to reproduce in its 
 own life the sanctity of its awful "Holy One.".;^All govern- 
 ment exists solely for this purpose. This is the aim which 
 must guide its kings. By this principle all questions of 
 foreign policy are to be decided. To this test all home 
 institutions are referred, or, rather, by this high demand the 
 conduct of all classes is judged ; nor is the language of the 
 country prophets, Amos or Micah, beholding the oppression 
 and iniquities of the grandees of the Court, one whit more 
 severe than that of the metropolitan Isaiah. But through all 
 denunciations runs one dominant conception. Israel, as the 
 people of Yahweh, must fulfil the purpose which he has en- 
 trusted to them. Upon its iniquity must follow chastisement. 
 But after retribution comes purification. The cleansing blast 
 of the divine spirit sweeps its iniquities away, and the surviving 
 nation is regenerated as with the quickening of a divine life. 
 To the simple political philosophy of the East there seemed 
 no choice between monarchy and anarchy ; and, until the 
 overthrow of their political independence, the perfected society 
 is always portrayed under the rule of a perfect king. But the 
 key to the solution of the social problem is invariably a religious 
 one. It lies in the universal diffusion of the knowledge of 
 Yahweh ; " they shall teach no more every man his brother, 
 saying, * know Yahweh,' for they shall all know me, from the 
 greatest of them to the least of them, saith Yahweh." And 
 the two great law-codes which embody the prophetic aspira- 
 tions, Deuteronomy and the Levitical Legislation, repose on 
 the same base. It is true that they do not present by any 
 means the same picture. The one delineates a national organisa- 
 tion, the other a religious. The first is a social, the second an 
 ecclesiastical order. But in both, the arrangements of the com- 
 munity, its administration of justice, its land tenure, its regula- 
 tions of slavery, its provision for the poor, are all established 
 upon its faith. And it is worthy of note that the civil polity 
 of Deuteronomy is founded on the love of God ; while it is the 
 Jewish Church, as it is presented in Leviticus, which formulates 
 the social duty, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 315 
 
 The religious history of Israel, however, is incomplete in 
 itself. It deals with a nation ; it is concerned with the pro- 
 blems which beset that nation, but it never permanently 
 succeeds in really rising above the national point of view. 
 Whenever it does so, it fails to maintain itself at so great a 
 height. It may set Yahweh upon the throne of the world. 
 It may depict him as allotting the destinies of peoples, and 
 assigning them each to their protective powers. The sovereign 
 sway may, in the last resort, be his alone. But he "knows" 
 Israel only, and by one race only is he to be " known." In 
 other words, the relation which the prophets exhibit between 
 Israel and Yahweh is not a relation constantly open to humanity 
 at large ; 1 and in its final shape the access to it is closely 
 guarded through the strait gate of the Law. What was 
 the agency which broke down this limitation ? It was 
 Christianity. Open the New Testament, and you hear at 
 once a speech which reminds you at every turn of the voices 
 of the Old, and yet is filled with fresh thoughts, with vast 
 universal conceptions, transcending those of ancient prophecy. 
 Do you inquire to whom these are due ? We answer without 
 hesitation, they are due to Jesus of Nazareth. The purport of 
 Christianity is variously apprehended from age to age, and 
 from contrasted points of view in the same age. So widely has 
 our interpretation of it changed since the apologists of the 
 eighteenth century, that no one now, probably, would be 
 content with Paley's statement that its scope as a revelation 
 was "to influence the conduct of human life by establishing 
 the proof of a future state of rewards and punishments." 
 Whatever may be its import as a disclosure of the hereafter, it 
 is now generally admitted that, in its first proclamation, it was 
 not indifferent to the scene around it. It called for prodigious 
 changes in the relations and conditions of men. These 
 changes flowed immediately from its religious beliefs ; and 
 whoever would address himself to the social problem cannot 
 neglect the searching light thrown upon it by the Gospels. 
 It is obvious that the New Testament ideas must be studied 
 in connection with their time ; that their several forms must 
 be set side by side for mutual comparison ; and that the mass 
 of diverse sayings ascribed to Jesus must be investigated with 
 patient care, if we would attain any clear conception of what 
 
 1 There are, of course, exceptions, especially among the later Psalmists.
 
 316 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 he really taught. Do not imagine that this is a light task. 
 Be prepared for long and laborious toil. The questions which 
 it has taken a century to ask are not to be answered in a 
 day ; they still demand the concentration of a life. But the 
 application of a scientific criticism is slowly winning more 
 assured results ; and from amidst the temporary elements by 
 which it has been too long obscured, the permanent core of the 
 Gospel is being disengaged. That Gospel I do not find to be 
 a teaching by Jesus about himself j it is a teaching about God 
 and about man. The words in which we state it are simple ; 
 they are enshrined in the earliest relationship which we know 
 that of the child to his father ; yet they contain an idea so 
 gigantic that it will take us eternity to work it out. It is the 
 idea that Man, not Israel, is the son of God. To every soul 
 attaches this infinite value, for all spring from this divine 
 parentage. In this lies the secret of life ; in this the meaning 
 of the authority of righteousness ; in this the awfulness of sin ; 
 in this the boundless promise of the future. If this be true, 
 man does not pace his course of years alone. There is ever 
 open to him a fellowship with truth, with goodness, with 
 love, through which he may win an inward peace, and rise 
 into harmony with the mighty law of the whole universe. In 
 this self-surrender to be the organ of a higher will, he lives 
 his fullest life. He enters a divine communion ; he is one 
 with God. 
 
 Can this great thought really enter the world without 
 seeking to transform it ? It is impossible. It is essentially 
 an active spiritual impulse. It seizes hold of men, and 
 changes the whole inner structure of their mind. And hence 
 it immediately calls for a great moral transformation in the 
 name of religion. In the Gospels, that transformation is 
 called the " kingdom of God." The history of that conception, 
 its ancient roots in Hebrew prophecy, the phases through 
 which it passed in succeeding centuries, the final shape given 
 to it by Jesus, these topics are reserved for your future study. 
 I need do no more than point out now that this mighty moral 
 change must express itself through the forms of human society. 
 There is no other mode through which it can take effect. If 
 it be not indefinitely postponed, it must employ the only means 
 available. These are men and women, and the connections 
 and institutions which they have reared and maintained. The
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 317 
 
 conditions under which it seeks to realise itself do not remain 
 the same from age to age ; but the historical or philosophical 
 student will beware of converting the casual applications of it 
 under one set of circumstances into binding rules for all. The 
 language of the New Testament rises above the restriction of 
 nationality ; it deals, as I have remarked, with man, with God. 
 But the England of to-day, where our lot is cast and our work 
 is to be done, is, like Israel of old, a people. The task assigned 
 to us remains the same task which was assigned to them, to 
 establish a community of righteousness. The demands upon 
 us socially are infinitely more complex, but they are morally 
 the same. Under what guidance shall we encounter them ? 
 The answer cannot be doubtful. The problem to be solved, 
 it has been justly said, is the problem of the Old Testament ; 
 but the spirit in which we must solve it is the spirit of the 
 New. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nor in this effort shall we despise the aid which is afforded 
 us by the manifestations of the Christian spirit throughout its 
 history. The great idea which I have attempted in few words to 
 describe could not remain inactive when it was once launched 
 into the world. It underwent, it is true, a profound change. 
 Ere it could attempt to modify existing institutions it had 
 created a new one of its own, and the great moral impulse 
 communicated by Jesus, in the effort to preserve it intact, and 
 save it from dissipation and decay, was fenced round with the 
 dogmatic constructions of the Church. Impatient of this 
 diversion of its rightful course, the student, eager for the 
 advance of human welfare, is too apt to abandon the endeavour 
 to trace the stream of Christian influence. He declares its 
 waters hopelessly polluted ; he finds the artificial limitations of 
 its channel intolerably narrow ; he may even be disposed 
 hastily to charge upon Christianity itself the failures and the 
 crimes which disfigure the records alike of orthodox and heretic. 
 He is shocked to find that the hierarchy has frequently 
 abandoned the service of man for its own aggrandisement. He 
 is disgusted to perceive it the champion of privilege and the 
 prop of tyranny. He observes with horror how the sacred name of 
 liberty has been banished and execrated in the name of religion. 
 He discovers that even in the " ages of faith " the morality of the
 
 3 i 8 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 priesthood was not immaculate, and that the so-called con- 
 solations of the Church were often another name for terrorising 
 and deceit. He is grieved over what seem to him the fruitless 
 sacrifices, the wasted toil, expended in ignorance of modern 
 science, physical or economic, upon the sick or the poor, for whose 
 woes we have such superior remedies to-day ; and he is tempted 
 to abandon a study which seems to promise him so little help. 
 I will not plead now that even the errors which have captivated 
 millions must enshrine some truths must at least correspond to 
 some craving of the human heart ; their simple continuance is 
 their justification till they are replaced by some worthier and 
 more helpful force ; as long as they survive they deserve respect- 
 ful treatment from those who seek to benefit their fellow-men. 
 I will not dwell on the obvious fact, that all who would engage 
 in this high calling must learn to understand forms of thought 
 they do not share, and train themselves to appreciate beliefs 
 which they deem false. It is sufficient to say that whoever 
 would serve man must know not only the world around him, the 
 environment which encompasses him, the forces that act upon 
 him and modify him from without, but he must know man him- 
 self. He must know him by culture of the imagination and 
 sympathy ; he must know him in his misspent endeavours, in 
 the energies that have retarded as well as those that have 
 promoted his advance. In our own hearts love must be made 
 wise, 
 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
 To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 In ill-success ; to sympathise, be proud 
 Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
 Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies, 
 Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts ; 
 All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
 Their error, upward tending all though weak ; 
 Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
 And do their best to climb and get to him. 
 
 Nowhere can we learn this lesson to such effect as in the 
 history of man's religion. For here we are admitted into the 
 inmost sanctuary of his nature ; here we learn that which moves
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 319 
 
 him most deeply and which lifts him highest ; for the secret of 
 his noblest worship is the secret of his strongest love. 
 
 Moreover, if a true theology be, as I have tried to indicate, 
 the broadest and most enduring foundation for the service of man, 
 then whoso would give himself to that service, especially as teacher, 
 must study the causes, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, which 
 have successively changed the forms of theology, the influences 
 which have often diverted its forces from that service, and the 
 means by which its aid may be once more secured. And he 
 must be familiar with the manifold types of Christian philan- 
 thropy, their failures and successes, the varied manifestations of 
 Christian character. He who takes up the Christian ministry 
 cannot expect that his way will be always easy, or his steps always 
 light. He will need to encourage himself in dark and lonely days 
 by the sense of a great companionship. When strength fails and 
 the lamp of enthusiasm burns dim, he will have to feed his 
 soul from the fire of apostles and martyrs, the missionaries, the 
 heroes of every age, from the first days till the last. He should 
 realise the full weight of the recent declaration of one of the 
 most incisive critics of Christianity, that " the Christian doctrine 
 has a power of cultivating and developing saintliness which has 
 no equal in any other creed or philosophy " ; 1 and he will then 
 learn not to try and balance spiritual results and physical gain. 
 Scientific invention and moral achievements are not com- 
 mensurable. He will not ask whether Augustine or Dr. Jenner 
 was the greater benefactor of humanity ; whether it was better 
 to have discovered chloroform or to have written the Imitatio 
 Christ 7, to have described the Pilgrim's Progress or to have first 
 founded Penny Banks. He will know for humanity itself, 
 the author of its own history, will teach him that the things 
 which move the world's heart are not exemption from personal 
 pain, or increase of domestic comfort ; they are truth and self- 
 devotion, they are stainless purity and undying love. 
 
 For the service of man I have said that it is necessary that 
 we should understand man study him ; that we should know 
 the significance of his thoughts and the great stages of his 
 history. I have asserted that the best guarantee for its effective 
 
 1 The Service of Man, p. 97.
 
 320 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 discharge lies in regarding man as the child of God, with 
 a nature capable of rising into communion with him, and 
 destined to grow more and more into his likeness. Does not 
 this conception, in the last place, decide for us the true founda- 
 tion on which all social relations must be laid ? Are they not 
 to be based upon duties, rather than upon rights or powers ? 
 As we look out upon the great conflict upon good and evil, in 
 which the evil often seems to attain so terrible a persistence 
 and intensity, what method shall we choose to secure the 
 triumph of the good ? There are two : there is the method 
 of elimination and the method of redemption. On the one 
 hand, the modern advocate of the service of man assures us 
 that " there is no remedy for a bad heart " ; on the other, across 
 the centuries still peals the word of Jesus, " change your hearts, 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." " The sooner it is 
 perceived that bad men will be bad, do what we will," says the 
 writer whom I have already quoted, 1 " though, of course, they 
 may be made less bad, the sooner shall we come to the con- 
 clusion that the welfare of society demands the suppression or 
 elimination of bad men, and the careful cultivation of the good 
 only." It is the less surprising that this method should be 
 advocated by the Agnostic, when it is seriously supposed by 
 many of our fellow-Christians to be the method of God him- 
 self. For the wicked whom God cannot manage, it is ex- 
 pected that he will annihilate. This may, indeed, be more 
 merciful than to relegate them to endless torment, and less 
 horrible than to keep them in endless sin. Either must be 
 regarded from the point of view of human education as a con- 
 fession of divine failure. But at present I am concerned only 
 with the terrestrial aspects of the problem. For this is a ques- 
 tion of the utmost urgency. It enters into conduct at every 
 turn ; it will confront you again and again in weary hours of 
 disappointment, almost of despair, when the outburst of one 
 day's passion has undone the toil of years, and you are in doubt 
 whether your efforts for redemption have not been made in 
 vain. It is true that this method is already practised in this 
 country. Yes, we must confess it ; every time that the fatal 
 bolt is drawn, and a murderer pays the price which the law 
 exacts for his crime, we proceed by the method of elimination. 
 It is a humbling sign of our weakness ; God forbid that it 
 
 1 The Service of Man, p. 292,
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 321 
 
 should become the habit of our strength. It is a strange result 
 for the service of man to begin with the extinction of men. 
 Nay, though the base-minded be ever so rationally educated 
 in the principles of determinism, though he be so carefully 
 trained in psychological analysis as to confess that there is no 
 hope for him, he is incurable, let society eliminate him if it 
 choose ; we will not accept his own testimony against himself j 
 we will declare it invalid ; he has not yet learned that humanity 
 is the true Immanuel. If once this method were adopted, who 
 should decide on the amount of goodness which entitled a man 
 to cultivation, and the amount of badness which called for his 
 suppression ? That culture of the heart, which is urged upon 
 us as one of the principal needs for the service of man, would 
 not long survive the tremendous strain involved in the exercise 
 of such a power. " Without God," said Mazzini to the Italian 
 working-men forty years ago, " without God you may compel, 
 but not persuade. You may become tyrants in your turn ; 
 you cannot be educators or apostles." 
 
 Even the great religion without God, Buddhism, to the 
 study of which we shall by and by address ourselves, has so 
 deeply felt the force of the unselfish impulse imparted to it by 
 Gotama, that it has elaborated the wonderful figure of the 
 being who makes the " Great Resolve " not to attain deliver- 
 ance alone, but to toil through a vast series of existences in the 
 laborious exercise of the Ten Perfections, that he may fit him- 
 self to bring deliverance to gods and men. Then there arises 
 the distinction between the Great and the Little Vehicle. 
 There is the Pacceka-Buddha, enlightened for himself alone, 
 who mounts a car only for one ; there is the Bodhisat, or 
 Buddha to be, who chooses a car that will embrace all living 
 beings. The later books represent the Buddha as surrounded 
 by hosts of them numerous as sixty Ganges' sands ; J they are 
 ready " to assume countless forms for the salvation of all sen- 
 tient creatures, for the benefit of ages yet to come." 2 And as 
 the system grows, under the perpetual play of the religious 
 imagination, the Chinese Bodhisat, Kwan Yin, engages him- 
 self by a mighty oath to enter into every one of the innumer- 
 able worlds, and bring deliverance to all creatures who inhabit 
 them, while his worshippers address him thus " O great and 
 
 1 Saddharma Pundarika, xiv. ; Sacred Books of the East, xxi. 281. 
 
 2 Beal, Catena of Chinese Buddhist Scriptures, p. 287. 
 
 X
 
 322 THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 compassionate Kwan Yin, may all emerge from the wheel of 
 transmigration, and be saved ! " l When it is remembered that 
 continuance in the wheel of transmigration is due solely to evil, 
 and that deliverance from it can only be attained by overcoming 
 evil with good, the significance of the Bodhisat's vow, and of 
 the devotee's prayer, becomes plain. Universal deliverance can 
 only be achieved by universal holiness. 
 
 By the Christian, this question will be answered on other 
 grounds than the Buddhist impulse of compassion. He will 
 not only pity the man who has been born depraved, with a 
 congenital twist still further perverted by an education in 
 crime ; he will not only ask himself whether it is fair that the 
 guilt of forefathers should be thus visited upon children ; he 
 will not only deny that society to-day is justified in thus 
 extinguishing, without penalty to itself, the vicious products 
 of its own past ; but he will declare that if the service of man 
 rest on the service of the God within man, the right of society 
 to suppress the evil is transformed into the duty of redeeming 
 them. For they, too, are the children of God. The existence 
 of each individual is not a mere matter of the convenience or 
 the discomfort of the rest. It possesses, even for the basest, a 
 wholly incalculable significance ; and the greater the difficulty 
 that besets them in realising the divine purpose for them, the 
 more need have they of our most patient aid. And so the 
 modern preacher who asks himself 
 
 Why do I dare love all mankind ? 
 cannot doubt what is the answer. 
 
 'Tis not because each face, each form 
 
 Is comely, for it is not so ; 
 Nor is it that each soul is warm 
 
 With any Godlike glow. 
 Yet there's no one to whom's not given 
 Some little lineament of heaven, 
 Some partial symbol, at the least, in sign 
 Of what should be, if it is not, within, 
 Reminding of the death of sin 
 
 And life of the Divine. 
 There was a time, full well I know, 
 When I had not yet seen you so ; 
 
 1 Beal, Catena of Chinese Buddhitt Scriptures, pp. 398, 409.
 
 AND THE SERVICE OF MAN 323 
 
 Time was when few seem'd fair ; 
 But now, as through the streets I go, 
 There seems no face so shapeless, so 
 
 Forlorn, but that there's something there 
 
 That, like the heavens, doth declare 
 
 The glory of the great All-fair ; 
 And so mine own each one I call ; 
 And so I dare to love you all. 
 
 To this service, Gentlemen, you dedicate yourselves anew. 
 May the spirit of the Master hallow alike our study and our 
 work !
 
 XIII 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 P. H. W. 1891 
 
 325
 
 Deus fst mortali juvare mortalem. -Pi.iNY TMK Ei.nitR.
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 I 
 
 THE bearing of Religion upon our views of Society and the 
 social relations and duties is in a certain sense indirect. For 
 the primary significance of Religion is to be found in its 
 revelation to us of a personal life which is, in and for itself, 
 supremely worthy. If Religion has revealed no such life to 
 us we cannot fall back upon the well-worn formula, "live for 
 others"; for if A's supreme object in life is to further B's 
 purposes, and B's supreme object in life is to further A's 
 purposes, and neither A nor B has any purpose save to further 
 the other's purpose, then life has no meaning. The formula 
 "live for others " implies that there is a life worth living for 
 ourselves. 
 
 Now, if a man has a real religion, then he conceives of a 
 life supremely worth living both by himself and others. And 
 it will be found that this life consists in some form of communion^ 
 that is to say, a deepened intercourse, with the glow of emotion 
 upon it, with something not ourselves. Lucretius is the noblest 
 exponent of a purely scientific religion. To him it was an 
 ecstatic joy mentally to contemplate the atoms which he con- 
 ceived of as the ultimate elements of all things ; and as they 
 revealed themselves to him, and led his gaze through the long 
 vistas of familiar objects and processes into the inmost and 
 secret recesses of nature's laboratory, he was "seized with a 
 certain godlike joy and shuddering." l Wordsworth is the 
 generally recognised type of such as find this supreme life in 
 communion with nature not " murdered by dissection," or 
 resolved into her component atoms. But in Wordsworth's 
 
 1 De Rcrum Natura, iii. 28 <j. 
 3*7
 
 328 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 is more than a mere organic love of nature, and for my 
 present purpose a better type will be found in Morris's heroine l 
 with her passionate cry, as she leans, with a lover's caress, 
 on the wall of an old building, that seems to be a part of 
 the landscape : " O me ! O me ! how I love the earth, 
 and the seasons, and weather, and all things that deal 
 with it, and all that grows out of it, as this has done. 
 . . . The earth, and the growth of it, and the life of it ! If 
 I could but say or show how I love it ! " Auguste Comte 
 is the type of those who have sought this supreme life in ideal 
 communion with " Humanity," and with certain chosen repre- 
 sentatives of it. But in his later years he was led by a most 
 noteworthy extension of his system to look beyond humanity, 
 and seek communion with the earth and her fulness, and even 
 with the very space through which she floats, and the basal 
 facts of the Universe which we speak of as abstract laws. All 
 these systems profess to offer to man a life which is supremely 
 worth living, a life of loving, or of knowing, or of both, 
 which needs not to justify itself by leading to anything beyond, 
 but is itself a goal. And, therefore, whether we can allow 
 them to be religious or not, they at least profess to do what 
 Religion does, i.e. to save life from barrenness, and to put 
 meaning into the reciprocal helpfulness of men by waking in 
 them a supreme affection, and opening to them a supreme life 
 which they may live themselves, and which they may help 
 others to live. 
 
 But to most of the readers of this essay it will appear that 
 all these are, at best, but imperfect and one-sided substitutes for 
 Religion, and that the only really satisfying answer to the 
 demand "show us a life truly worth living" is given when 
 we are called into communion with the Eternal Spirit, in 
 whom all things live and move and have their being. The 
 supreme work of the religious teacher is to wake men's souls 
 to a consciousness of this life, and to deepen their action, 
 thought, and feeling into communion with God, into the life 
 of knowing and of loving which is life indeed. It is only in 
 so far as they can do this that the prophets and psalmists of the 
 Old Testament are still religious teachers for us ; it is because 
 they did this that Jesus and Paul changed the face of the world. 
 It was this life which all the great teachers of the mediaeval 
 
 1 News from Nowhere, pp. 227, 228,
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 329 
 
 Church, from Augustine to Dante, poured into the mind of 
 humanity. It was the lyric utterance of this life and joy of 
 the heart that rang in the Protestant Reformers' hymns, and 
 afterwards in Charles Wesley's. In many a passage of Coleridge 
 and Wordsworth, in many an utterance alike of Faber or 
 Newman, and of Parker or Martineau, this communion with 
 God is revealed, either through joyous consciousness of what 
 is, or the yearning sense of what might be, as the only true 
 life. And it is the same God-consciousness that stamps, with 
 the look of peaceful fruition, the features of many a humble 
 soldier in the Salvation Army. 
 
 Life was worth living to Francis of Assisi as " possessing all 
 things with intensest love," like Coleridge after him, he joined 
 the great "hymn of the creatures," and with brother sun and 
 sister moon, brother wind and sister water, mother earth and 
 brother fire and sister death of the body, sang the glory and 
 was caught up into the love of God. 
 
 Life was life indeed to Bernard when, having passed through 
 all the lower grades of love, having first loved himself and then 
 loved God for what he might do for him, and then loved God 
 for God's own self, he realised for a moment what it was for a 
 man not to love himself at all save for God's sake, and, as the 
 iron is transmuted into the glow of the furnace, to feel his will 
 transmuted into God's will, so that the very joy of heaven 
 should not be that he at last had his way, but that God's will 
 at last swept uncontrolled through him. 
 
 It is the office of Religion to call men into this life this 
 life which, whether it endure a moment or for ever, is in virtue 
 of its quality, not of its duration, the life eternal. 
 
 And if any man has lived, or has conceived this life eternal, 
 it transfigures all. It transfigures his relations with the material 
 world, and his daily, temporal life. It transfigures his relations 
 to those he loves. Human fellowship is no longer a purely 
 reciprocal intercourse that has no reference to anything beyond 
 itself, for it deepens into the mutual helpfulness and the common 
 joy of those who, as they are drawn nearer to each other, are 
 lifted nearer to God, and it becomes itself a veritable com- 
 munion. The struggle against evil passions becomes less and 
 less a mere clearing away or restraining of obstacles to life, and 
 more and more a positive widening and deepening of life itself. 
 And, above all, the divine pity of the weak and wretched and
 
 330 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 sin-laden, the divine discontent with the sordid and foul con- 
 ditions and surroundings of the life of so many of our fellow- 
 men, is no longer a mere shrinking from the bearing or the 
 contemplation of suffering and pain, but becomes a summons 
 to the children of God to enter upon their heritage of life and 
 love. It is all the difference between striking a light for fear 
 we should add to our other miseries the pain of dashing our 
 limbs against the furniture and spiking our eyes on nails and 
 hooks in the wall, and throwing back the shutters and lifting 
 the sash that the morning air and the golden sunshine may 
 stream in and gladden and quicken our lives, reveal the beauty 
 and the love within our home, and woo us to the wide world of 
 glory that lies beyond. 
 
 The man who has a Religion, and he alone, has life. And 
 though the direct office of Religion is to wake and to sustain 
 that life, yet it follows of necessity that our whole conception 
 of society and of its goal must be affected in its very inmost 
 essence by the presence or absence of Religion in our own 
 heart. 
 
 In merest outline and suggestion, then for no more can be 
 expected I must now attempt to indicate the specific note in 
 the religious man's conception of Society. 
 
 II 
 
 The abiding type of religious Utopias is the family. The 
 P'atherhood of God and the brotherhood of man lie at the very 
 basis of our conception of a regenerated society. When these 
 two great conceptions are not only received into our hearts but 
 incorporated into all our institutions, then the "Word of God " 
 will in very truth have been " made flesh," and the kingdom of 
 God will be in our midst. 
 
 It is true that, when we speak in this way of the family 
 relations, we are speaking of them not as they generally are in 
 actual experience, but as we conceive them ideally. Family 
 life, as we see it, is too often marred by selfishness, tyranny, 
 pride, and narrowness ; but we retain a distinct ideal not too 
 remote from frequent, if not universal, experience of the 
 family life as dominated in its main relations by the law of love. 
 The inmate of a home in which there is a real family life may 
 feel sore, injured, resentful, or rebellious, but he knows all the
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 331 
 
 time that he will have to come round in the end^ because the 
 affection that he now rejects in his wayward self-will is too 
 strong for him, and will wait for him and draw him with its 
 silent, never-ceasing pressure until he is compelled to yield. 
 There is in his home the ever-present symbol of the Love that 
 rules the world ; and, except in his worst and most wilful 
 moments, if he feels neglected, he fights against his own want 
 of faith in a tenderness that he cannot doubt, even while per- 
 plexed by its silence. If in carelessness or selfishness he has 
 sinned against the spirit of brotherhood, the reproof of his 
 conscience is quick and sure, and he is eager to serve rather 
 than to be served in future. In a word, within the precincts 
 of the home, it looks as if the law of love were the law of life ; 
 it is not hard to believe in God ; the door is always open to the 
 better life even if we have turned aside to the worse ; the whole 
 organisation of life is formed upon the lines of mutual affec- 
 tion, and the members have " the same care one for another." 
 
 Let me repeat that I am speaking of the ideal which we 
 consciously have before us in the family life, and which exercises 
 a moulding influence upon its relations, and am indulging in no 
 illusions as to the complete and general realisation of that ideal. 
 
 Now, if our insistence on the " brotherhood of man " as a 
 principle of life means anything, it means that the ideal we 
 reverence in family life must be our ideal in public life also. 
 The sinful, the indolent, the selfish, and the passionate should 
 find in the institutions and organisations of the world, as they 
 find in the institutions and organisations of home, the abiding 
 testimony to a higher law than that by which they live, exercis- 
 ing its silent ceaseless pressure upon them. The mutinous and 
 reckless should feel that the very hand that turns the key of 
 their prison cells is the hand of love. The weak and foolish 
 should know that, though they fall and go astray seventy times 
 in a day, they will yet be lifted up and led into the true way, in 
 tenderness, not in scorn, by the stronger and wiser ones around 
 them. A noble emuktion should take the pkce of a murder- 
 ous competition, and the zest of life should be found in suc- 
 cesses that bring further life to all, instead of successes which 
 are some one else's fa'lure and defeat. 
 
 If I am asked how we are to set about realising this ideal, 
 and am told that the statement as I have made it is a mere 
 barren commonplace, I can only answer that such phrases as
 
 332 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 the " Co-operative Movement," " Unionism," " Paternal Legis- 
 lation," "Reformatories," "Refuges," "The land for the 
 people," and such movements as the Free Libraries, Free 
 Education, Preservation of Open Spaces, and so forth, indicate, 
 often by their very names, the presence and action amongst us 
 of aspirations towards the ideal of which I have spoken. What- 
 ever we may think of the honesty, wisdom, chivalry, or practical 
 beneficence of any or all of the movements or measures 
 enumerated, they all start from the idea of giving such utter- 
 ance to the collective life as to make each individual feel that he 
 is surrounded by friendly forces, anxious for his welfare, sensi- 
 tive to his sorrows, ready to succour his weakness instead of 
 taking advantage of it, seeking to raise him up when fallen, and 
 to restore him when he has gone astray, recognising the 
 foundation truth of Religion that there is a full life for him, 
 worthy to be lived, if he can but get at it. 
 
 These agencies and ideals may seem, even in aspiration, to 
 cover but a part of the practical life of the world, and may even 
 seem to some tacitly to assume a system of stern and un- 
 brotherly competition and "struggle for existence" behind 
 them ; but they are, at least in their avowed intention, attempts 
 to carry the ideal of the family life beyond the family limits, 
 and so to give wider extension and reality to the conception of 
 the " brotherhood of man." My contention is that, whether 
 by these or by other and better agencies, the truly religious 
 man must and will seek to bring the whole of our industrial 
 and social life under the dominion of these same ideals. 
 
 The opposite contention is formulated with singular bold- 
 ness and baldness by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 1 who insists on a 
 sharp contrast between the ethics of the family and the ethics 
 of the State ; and declares that if either of these systems should 
 invade the region properly sacred to the other, the consequences 
 must inevitably be disastrous. Within the family, generosity 
 must be the rule ; that is to say, strength must serve weakness, 
 and inability to contribute largely to the common stock must 
 not exclude any member from his full share of its enjoyment. 
 Here, in fact, the socialist ideal must reign, and each must con- 
 tribute in proportion to his powers, and receive in proportion 
 to his needs. But outside the family all this is to be reversed. 
 Here the supply of life-sustaining appliances must be strictly 
 
 1 See specially his Sociology, i. 740-742.
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 333 
 
 proportioned to the life -sustaining efforts put forth. Or in 
 other words, each member of society is to enjoy what he can 
 secure by the strong arm and the keen brain. Only then, Mr. 
 Spencer assures us, can the higher types of humanity be evolved 
 and preserved in the struggle for existence. Any other rule 
 will perpetuate the unworthier types at the expense of the 
 worthier. 
 
 Here, then, we have two antagonistic ideals of social 
 organisation. According to the one, the family ethics are to 
 furnish the type of all human relations ; according to the other, 
 the weal of society depends upon their being strictly confined 
 to their own narrow circle of influence. 
 
 But why, in the latter case, we may ask, should family 
 ethics be allowed at all ? Because, answers Mr. Spencer, the 
 race would otherwise perish by the death of all its young. 
 Apportion care and attention to life-sustaining powers from 
 the first, and the " useless " and " unmeritorious " infant will 
 get nothing, instead of being the most cared for member of the 
 household. Hence family ethics must be cultivated for the 
 preservation of the young. So far Mr. Spencer. But it is 
 essential to note that this is shifting the ground ; for instead of 
 discriminating between the "worthier" and the "unworthier" 
 individuals at each period of life, we are now discriminating 
 between the immature and helpless stage of existence^ and the 
 mature and productive stage. The State, on the strictest 
 evolutionary principles, might undertake to devote a part of its 
 resources to the maintenance and maturing of the most promis- 
 ing children, leaving the rest to perish, and might thus from 
 the very first apportion sustenance to (relative and prospective) 
 life-sustaining powers. The peculiarity of the family ethics is 
 that they assign not more care to the helpless infant than to the 
 strong man, but more care to the weak and sickly infant than 
 to the strong and healthy one, more care to the crippled and 
 invalided brother or sister than to the successful and sound one 
 Thus, from the first and to the last, the Family ethics and the 
 State ethics, as defined by Mr. Spencer, run counter to each 
 other ; and even in the nursery family affection tends to secure 
 the preservation of inferior types, and is therefore anti-social in 
 its effect. It interferes with the process of evolution of the 
 fittest by means of the struggle for existence ; it substitutes the 
 method of preserving the feeble and redeeming the base, for the
 
 334 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 method of elimination ; and must, so far, be a drag upon the 
 wheels of progress, as understood by the "struggle for exist- 
 ence " evolutionists. It is in vain to attempt to find a place 
 for the family ethics in that scheme of things which regards the 
 preservation of the so-called " unworthy " as a disaster. You 
 cannot hand over the nursery to this spirit of tenderness while 
 jealously excluding it from the haunts of men. If Mr. Spencer 
 is right, then every impulse of private generosity or family affec- 
 tion that prompts the strong to protect the weak from the 
 effect of his own weakness is treason to the State. There may 
 be a compromise between private benevolence and public duty, 
 there may be a compromise between family affection and the 
 claims of the race, but a compromise is not a harmony, and life 
 must lose its unity. 
 
 The question, therefore, is : Are we, with the religious 
 world, to look for the extension of the ideals of family ethics 
 till they embrace all human relations, or are we, with the 
 struggle -for -material -existence evolutionists, to accept ideals 
 which must ultimately supersede the family ethics altogether ? 
 In other words, is the ideal of family life a survival, or a pro- 
 phecy ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 More than would at first sight be supposed may be urged in 
 favour of the contention that the family ideals are a mere sur- 
 vival destined to go down before the advancing tide of civilisa- 
 tion. The essence of the family feeling is that such an one 
 has a natural claim to such and such treatment and affection 
 from us, because he is our child, brother, father, or whatever it 
 may be. In a word, his status confers upon him certain privi- 
 leges and lays upon him certain duties. Now, this conception 
 of status appears once to have been so universal that the whole 
 of human conduct was regulated by its ethics. Not only had 
 the slave his definite status in the family and in the State, but 
 the smith, the soldier, the swineherd, and so forth, had each 
 his status, which determined the acts and the feelings appropriate 
 to him with reference to all other members of the community. 
 And doubtless the feeling of any one of these castes toward 
 any other appeared to those who lived under the system just as 
 much a dictate of " nature " as the family feelings appear to us. 
 Now the history of civilisation, as Sir Henry Maine has taught
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 335 
 
 us, has consisted largely in the progressive transition from the 
 ethics of status to the ethics of contract; and here we find the 
 true basis of the contrast drawn by Mr. Spencer. The family 
 life is the most noticeable survival of a system of ethics based 
 upon status, whereas the " State," as conceived by Mr. Spencer, 
 represents the vast aggregate of the relations based upon con- 
 tract, which have gradually absorbed and superseded the relations 
 of status. And now we can understand the meaning and bear- 
 ing of that tendency to challenge the family institutions and 
 traditions, which is so marked a feature of our times. It is 
 merely the next step forward of the advancing forces of the 
 ethics of contract, which are now attacking the very citadel of the 
 ethics of status. Will the family, as an institution, with its 
 ethics of status, be able to hold out against the rising tide of 
 contractual relations ; will it be able to say, " Hitherto shalt 
 thou go and no further " ? Or will the idea that we owe any- 
 thing particular to our children, parents, brothers and sisters, 
 or have any claim on them, beyond such as are secured by the 
 contracts we may make with or concerning them, go the 
 way of all superstitions, and be numbered with the exploded 
 prejudices of the past ? The central relation of the family 
 that of man and woman is already very largely contractual, 
 but the element of status in it is still of commanding import- 
 ance. Will that, too, disappear ? 
 
 To ask these questions is to ask whether the religious view 
 of society has pledged itself to an obsolescent form of civilisa- 
 tion. If the ethics of the family are the last survival of a 
 vanishing system of ethics of status, and if the future is all for 
 the ethics of contract, then the religious ideal of society is 
 doomed. 
 
 IV 
 
 When we trace the gradual breakdown of the ethics of 
 status we witness something like the emancipation of human 
 activity. The old system laid intolerable restrictions upon the 
 free movement of humanity. The rigid prescriptions of caste 
 and custom made all men slaves ; and we can but rejoice in 
 every step of advance towards a belief that a man's birth has 
 not irrevocably fixed his life and relations irrespective of his 
 powers and his will. The creed which declares that he has 
 neither duties nor claims fixed for him by the position into
 
 336 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 which he is born, but is free to make his own bargain with 
 nature and with man, that he need bow beneath no yoke of 
 status, but need only take upon his neck the self-imposed and 
 freely chosen yoke of contract this creed seems to come like 
 the glad tidings of liberty to them that sit in bondage. And 
 so, for instance, it is one of the great aims of an earnest band 
 of reformers to lift the relations of the country hind to the 
 Squire and Parson out of the domain of status, and bring them 
 under that of contract. The laws of status which exclude a 
 tradesman, however cultivated, from some societies, and a 
 solicitor, however eminent, from certain clubs, are regarded 
 with contempt by the most enlightened amongst us, as relics 
 of barbarism fast degenerating into something worse. 
 
 And yet, on the other hand, all our highest ideals of human 
 relationships insist on being independent of contract, and 
 reverting to some form of status. Friendship is itself a status, 
 though an informal and undefined one. It recognises claims 
 and duties that come under no contract ; and even when rela- 
 tionships are frankly and firmly based upon contract, it is, 
 nevertheless, the " uncovenanted " graces of intercourse that 
 humanise them. Status, then, may clearly be either higher or 
 lower than contract ; and we shall reconcile history with the 
 dictates of our own hearts, and harmonise the " testimony of 
 the Holy Spirit " with the testimony of the external facts, if we 
 say that the mission of the regime of contract has been to break 
 down all the low and unworthy conceptions, and all the hamper- 
 ing restrictions of the regime of status, and then progressively 
 to yield to the very regime it has thus purified, and take its 
 permanent place in Society as the instrument of a principle 
 higher than itself. 
 
 Thus we see that there are two streams of tendency in his- 
 tory, only in appearance running counter to one another. The 
 one abolishes all the manifold conceptions of the status of class 
 inequality^ and proclaims the reign of contract and competition 
 as the reign of freedom. The other maintains the conception 
 of the status of equality and affection^ and proclaims the reign of 
 co-operation and mutual helpfulness as the reign of love. The 
 family ethics are indeed a "survival," but a survival of the 
 fittest, the imperishable type of that status to which all others 
 must at last conform.
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 337 
 
 This transition from status through contract to a purified 
 and exalted status receives an illustration from the history of 
 our religious conceptions so remarkable and so instructive as 
 amply to justify a digression. 
 
 Our ideas of our relations to God have passed, and are pass- 
 ing, precisely through the stages here indicated. 
 
 The early Israelite's relation to Yahweh (Jehovah) was 
 strictly one of status. There was a " natural " connection 
 between Yahweh and his people, behind which it never 
 occurred to any one to look. 
 
 Chemosh, Moloch, the Baal, and Yahweh each had his own 
 people, and the relations of each deity alike to his own subjects, 
 and to those of his rivals, was determined by status. A man 
 who wandered from his own land into the territory of another 
 god had the status of an alien subject, and must serve the god 
 under whose jurisdiction he found himself. 
 
 But as the prophetic conception of the god of Israel became 
 loftier, this primitive conception could no longer satisfy men's 
 minds. The functions of all the other deities were gradually 
 absorbed by Yahweh, till the whole history of the world and 
 the whole framework of created things came to be regarded as 
 his work. The relations of one particular people to the 
 universal God could now no longer be regarded as based on 
 a natural status, and men inquired how it came to pass that 
 the Eternal was the God of Israel. The answer was that he 
 had chosen Israel of his free grace from out of all the peoples of 
 the earth, and had established his covenant with him. The 
 history of the world was rewritten from this point of view, and 
 the covenant between God and Israel became its leading 
 motive. Thus the conception of status was distinctly and 
 definitely superseded by the conception of contract. And the 
 result was an immediate uplifting of the relations between God 
 and man to an indefinitely higher plane. The " covenant " 
 conferred unique privileges, and imposed unique duties, upon 
 Israel ; it was the result of a free act, not the mere expression 
 of an unexplained fact ; it implied liberty of movement, 
 deliberate choice, and moral relations which might be de- 
 veloped or broken off; and hence the domestic symbol that 
 approved itself most fully to the prophetic mind was the rela- 
 
 Y
 
 338 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 tion of husband and wife, in which the " covenant " or " con- 
 tract " is a factor of such commanding importance. 
 
 And sooner or later it was inevitable that this conception 
 should lead to the theoretical breaking down of the walls of 
 tribal and national separation. The "covenant" might be 
 broken and annulled ; it might be renewed ; then surely its 
 area might be extended, and others than the seed of Abraham 
 might be brought within its embrace. It is of the nature of 
 contract that it neglects race and class, and starts on the 
 assumption of some kind of freedom and equality in the state 
 that precedes the contract. 
 
 This is as far as the conception of a covenant can go ; and 
 this is as far as Paul, Augustine, Luther, and the majority of 
 Christians have ever carried their conceptions. They tell us 
 that we all of us have the power to enter into the privileges of 
 the new covenant. All day its gates are open, and there is 
 neither barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free in Christ. This 
 conception of the open covenant to which all men are called 
 stands morally and spiritually whole heavens higher than the 
 narrow nationalism of status which it superseded. 
 
 But in its turn this religion of contract is destined to be 
 superseded, and is being superseded, by a religion of purified 
 and exalted status. When Jesus taught the Divine Sonship of 
 Man, without adoption, without covenant or contract, just in 
 virtue of his humanity, he taught a higher religion of status to 
 which the religion of the covenant was a necessary step, but a 
 step only. In the parable of the prodigal son we have the 
 perfect and immortal expression of this religion of natural 
 relations in which all the lower have been absorbed into the 
 highest, and the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood 
 of man are seen as the great ocean-thought into which every 
 stream of religious progress must flow at last and find its 
 peace. 
 
 VI 
 
 We now return to our proper subject viz., the religious 
 view of society and the social relations. There seems to be 
 nothing abnormal in the transition from a theory of society 
 based on status, through a theory based on contract, back to a 
 theory based on a purified and ennobled conception of status. 
 The family status has approved itself fittest to survive. The
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 339 
 
 solvent power of the conception of contract has eliminated, or 
 is eliminating, the servile status, the class status, the trade 
 status, and is now itself yielding to the softening and supple- 
 menting influence of that type of the relations of status against 
 which it has itself been unable to prevail. 
 
 It remains to deal with one or two misconceptions and 
 difficulties which stand in the way of accepting the ideal 
 family relations as the type of the wider relations of the social 
 and industrial world. 
 
 In the first pkce, we often form a sentimental and unreal 
 idea of the relationships of family life. We speak as if altruism 
 reigned supreme, and egoism were entirely suppressed in an 
 ideal family. This is so grotesquely untrue even to ideal 
 fact that it is hard to conceive how the notion can have 
 arisen. The fact is that egoism and altruism are not 
 necessarily conflicting and rival motive powers. They are 
 capable of perfect harmonising, and the ideal to aim at is 
 neither the suppression and absorption of one by the other, nor 
 yet a mechanical compromise between them, but a due 
 blending and harmonising in which each takes its legitimate 
 and needful place, but which is itself neither one nor the other, 
 but the reconciliation of the two. The member of the family 
 who eliminates himself robs the family of its best wealth, and 
 the member who makes it easy and natural for the rest to 
 ignore him inflicts a moral injury upon them. Egoism in 
 the sense of the impulse to utter, to realise, and even to assert, 
 one's self, to assuage one's natural appetites, and seek one's 
 natural enjoyments, is as essential an ingredient of a strong 
 and healthy character as altruism itself, and it enters as 
 necessarily into every healthy and normal relation of life. 
 
 Take the primary and central relation of the family, the 
 union of the sexes. Whether regarded from its physical or its 
 mental side, this union rests upon an imperious demand for 
 self- realisation and self- utterance. It is as intensely and 
 passionately egoistic as anything in life ; and yet to realise its 
 own possibilities even from the egoistic point of view, it must 
 be blended with a pure and exalted altruism which becomes 
 indistinguishable from itself, the two being lost in something 
 which is neither because it is both. 
 
 The truly wedded pair live in and for each other, we say. 
 It is true, but it is not all the truth. If one of them should
 
 340 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 live wholly for the other, inspired by the tenderest altruistic 
 affection, but finding no added fulness of self-realisation, no 
 completer self-utterance, no deeper consciousness of individual 
 life in the relationship, if egoism should cease to support the 
 common life and should reap no fruit from the union, the 
 spectacle is amongst the most pathetic, nay, even amongst the 
 most tragic, that the world affords. 
 
 And so with the other family relations, the relation of 
 parent to child and of child to parent, the relation of brothers 
 and sisters, and the ties of remoter kinship. They successively 
 occupy a smaller portion of the whole field of vision, and the 
 personal life asserts itself in growing independence of them ; 
 but still the same rule holds good, the ideal is a harmony, not a 
 compromise. 
 
 Again, contract has its legitimate place in these relations of 
 status. " What will it be worth your while to do for me, if I do 
 this for you ? " is a question which may serve as an instrument 
 of investigation and adjustment between two lives united 
 in perfect harmony. Yet this question is the very soul of 
 contract. As the circle widens and immediate perception of 
 the wants and tastes of others becomes less and less possible, 
 this question may progressively rise in importance till it 
 dominates and determines more and more the acts of life ; but 
 it may still be looked upon prevailingly as a means by which 
 we get at each other's wishes, give each other and ourselves 
 the fullest measure of scope and choice, and adjust the family 
 life with the best material and spiritual economy not as an 
 instrument by which each one endeavours to get the most and 
 to give the least in his dealings with his fellows. 
 
 The family then supplies us with the ideals of a harmony 
 between egoism and altruism, and of a system of contract 
 subordinate and instrumental to a spirit of affectionate good- 
 will. Is there any reason why these ideals should not gradu- 
 ally draw to themselves the whole field of human activity ? 
 
 VII 
 
 " Yes," it may be replied, " there is a reason. You have 
 protested against a sentimental view of family life, but you 
 yourself take a hopelessly sentimental view of industrial and 
 social relations. We must look at life and human nature as
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 341 
 
 they are ; and the simple fact is that outside the family and the 
 circle of immediate friendship the average man is frankly and 
 even brutally selfish. At any rate the whole zest of business 
 is found in getting to the front, and whatever benevolences a 
 man may feel disposed to indulge in out of business hours, 
 within those hours he is inspired by the one desire to make 
 his business a success, which means to make it pay. You 
 must not expect him to forego any advantage, or be inspired 
 by any philanthropic motive. You smile at the passionate 
 zeal for the public convenience which he professes in his trade 
 circulars, and only do not call him a hypocrite, because you 
 regard him as a humourist, and know that he does not expect 
 to be taken seriously. Do what you can outside the com- 
 mercial and business world, but never look to make business 
 itself a philanthropic institution. In its origin, and in its 
 temper, it rests wholly upon the self-seeking impulses. Why, 
 even the preacher of the Gospel thinks he has reached the very 
 limits of 'success,' and secured the first 'prize of his profes- 
 sion,' if he has secured an Archbishopric with fifteen thousand 
 a year. Whatever you do, then, clear your mind of cant, 
 and remember that business is one thing and benevolence 
 is another, and that the world does very wisely to keep them 
 distinct." 
 
 Now I have not very much to urge in answer to this. It 
 has been said that no one can " refute a sneer." Neither can 
 any one argue down a temper of mind. But even the com- 
 mercial temper is visibly affected by the spirit of our age, and 
 it is not every commercial man who would care to make him- 
 self responsible for the representation of the spirit of com- 
 merce which I have given above. But, meanwhile, let us 
 turn once more to the family. The history of commercial 
 relations is the repetition of the early history of the family ; 
 may not the maturity of the family relations contain the pro- 
 phecy of the final form of industrial relations ? It is im- 
 possible to conceive any institution more wholly unromantic, 
 more sordidly or basely selfish, more brutally disregardful of the 
 feelings of others, than the institution of primitive and savage 
 marriage. The slave-wife, captured by her lord, is treated with- 
 out the smallest degree of affection, to say nothing of chivalry, 
 and her relative weakness is taken advantage of to the very 
 uttermost. There can hardly be a relationship which in its
 
 342 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 
 
 earlier stages was more brutal, and even to those who have 
 reached a higher stage of civilisation than mere savagery, 
 the European ideal of marriage remains unintelligible. I have 
 been told by a lady and gentleman, who had travelled in the 
 East, that their head guide a very superior and intelligent 
 Arab interviewed them one day as a deputation from the camp 
 servants generally to ask them to explain something that had 
 puzzled them. "Why was it that Monsieur always gave 
 Madame the best of everything ? Was Madame, perhaps, a 
 princess ? " They tried to explain that Madame, being not so 
 strong as Monsieur, needed more care to save her from 
 exhaustion, and that Monsieur would rather undergo any 
 necessary hardship himself than let it fall on one who would 
 feel it more. But it was all in vain. The idea could not 
 find a lodgment in the Arab's brain. It was to him a 
 strange, perhaps a monstrous, inversion of the natural order 
 of things, for which Monsieur and Madame might have 
 reasons of their own, but which they could not, or would not, 
 explain. From such beginnings and by such a path have we 
 reached our present ideal of what the relation between the 
 sexes may be. 
 
 The history of savage and civilised infanticide, and the grim 
 " patria potestas," of ancient times, tells the same story with 
 reference to the parental relations. All along the line the 
 family relations have been frankly, even brutally, egoistic, but 
 have found at last that in the true harmony of egoism and 
 altruism is their true life. So may it be likewise with those 
 wider and more complex relations of which, in their regenerated 
 form, I hold that the family is to be the type. 
 
 VIII 
 
 To sum up. The religious view of society starts from the 
 personal knowledge of the reality of a life supremely worth 
 living, which carries with it the perception of the unmeasured 
 possibilities open to each human soul. To the religious man, 
 therefore, it is impossible to acquiesce in the disinheritance of 
 any child of God ; and the conception of human brotherhood 
 must furnish the norm of his ideals of human society. The 
 institutions of social and industrial life must be so remodelled 
 as to be felt as the utterance of a friendly, a sustaining, and a
 
 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 343 
 
 redeeming power, even by the most selfish, perverse, rebellious, 
 or weak of mankind. Little as we can see at present how this 
 view is to win to itself the whole field of life, and permeate its 
 whole body of practical institutions, yet the history of family 
 relations encourages us to hope where we cannot see, and 
 already in manifold directions experiments are being made, and 
 movements started, which all work one way, and that way the 
 right one. Religious men will not allow their sympathy with 
 the ends in view to bind them to the weak points of schemes 
 for improving the conditions of life of the masses, and changing 
 the temper of commercial life ; but they will watch every 
 movement in the direction of extending the area over which 
 the family ideals hold sway, with the hope that they will 
 succeed, and the determination to go on trying if they fail 
 not with the hope that they will fail, and that when they have 
 failed men will acquiesce in things as they are. They will 
 seek always and everywhere to consecrate strength to the 
 service of weakness, and to strip themselves of privilege if 
 thereby they can secure an equal heritage to all their brethren. 
 But above all and in all they will keep alive in their own 
 hearts, and strive to wake in the hearts of others, that living 
 love of nature, of man, and of God, which if a man have not, 
 it is in vain for him to gain the whole world. 
 
 THE END
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPKARS, 
 EDINBURGH