UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 TMT 7TM 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Class 
 
1 
 
 / 
 
THE 
 
 GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
THE GOSPEL AND 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED LOISY 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CHRISTOPHER HOME 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1904 
 
^■i Da 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 I. The Sources op the Gospels 
 
 II. The Kingdom op Heaven 
 
 III. The Son op God . 
 
 IV. The Church 
 V. The Christian Dogma 
 
 VI. The Catholic Worship 
 
 1 
 23 
 53 
 
 88 
 139 
 180 
 22G 
 
\ r^f PA/? 
 
 or -HE 
 
 UNiVtKSITY 
 
 or 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE 
 CHURCH 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The lectures of Herr A. Harnack on the essence 
 of Christianity ^ have made considerable stir in 
 the Protestant world, particularly in Germany. 
 Embodying the profession of a personal faith in 
 the form of a historical review, they answered 
 without doubt to the needs of many minds, and 
 summarized a whole group of ideas in such a way 
 as to make a satisfactory meeting-ground for 
 several forms of belief. But the votes of the 
 theologians have been divided. Some have 
 formulated reservations, others have criticized 
 sharply a definition of Christianity which elimi- 
 nates from its essence almost everything that is 
 regarded ordinarily as Cliristian belief. 
 
 No doubt this work would have attracted more 
 * " Das Wosen des Christentums." Leipzig, 1900. 
 
 B 
 
2 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 attention in France and even among Catholics, 
 had it not followed the " Esquisse d'une philo- 
 sophic de la religion " of M. A. Sabatier, a book 
 strongly resembling it in point of view and in 
 conclusions. However, a French translation has 
 recently been published, and already some of the 
 Catholic reviews have drawn the attention of 
 their readers to it, giving analyses of its contents 
 while insisting on the need of certain amend- 
 ments. The originality of such a theologico- 
 historical synthesis strikes the intelligence, at a 
 time when science is becoming erudite and dis- 
 trustful of generalizing theories, when religious 
 problems are discussed from a point of view that 
 may be called purely phenomenal, when many 
 think theology a vain thing, whilst others, on the 
 contrary, regard it still as too divine to be con- 
 cerned with all that rash investigators relate of 
 its past. It may possibly be of some use to 
 examine this work attentively, not so much with 
 the object of refuting it, as of determining its 
 exact historical position. 
 
 The aim of the work, as a matter of fact, is 
 just to catch the point of view of history. In no 
 sense is it an attempt to write an apologia for 
 Catholicism or traditional dogma. Had it been 
 so intended, it must have been regarded as very 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 defective and incomplete, especially as far as 
 concerns the divinity of Christ, and the authority 
 of the Church. It is not designed to demonstrate 
 the truth either of the gospel or of Catholic 
 Christianity, but simply to analyze and define 
 the bonds that unite the two in history. He who 
 reads in good faith will not be misled. 
 
 Since the learned professor announces his work 
 as historical, it shall be discussed solely according 
 to the data of history. M. Sabatier sets down 
 psychology, side by side with history, as the 
 source of his religious philosophy. Herr Harnack 
 appeals, above all, to facts ; he sets forth less a 
 religious philosophy, than a religion, or rather 
 ilic religion, in the sole and unchangeable principle 
 he deems to constitute it; this principle he 
 extracts from the gospel, and uses as a touch- 
 stone to test the whole Christian development, 
 which is held of worth only in so far as this 
 precious essence has been preserved in it. The 
 whole doctrine of the book is based on tliis 
 fundamental point ; that the essence of the gospel 
 consists solely in faith in God the Father, as 
 revealed by Jesus Christ. On the validity or 
 insufficiency of this principle depends tlie value of 
 the judgments delivered on the Evolution of the 
 Church, of Her dogmas, and of Her worship, from 
 
4 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the beginning, and in all the different forms of 
 creed that are founded on the gospel and the 
 name of Jesus. It is not surprising therefore, 
 that from the first a certain anxiety should be 
 felt, to see a movement as far reaching as 
 Christianity, based on a single idea or a solitary 
 sentiment. Is this really the definition of a 
 historical reality, or merely a systematic method 
 of consideration ? Can a religion that has filled 
 such a place in history, and renewed, so to speak, 
 the conscience of humanity, take its origin and 
 derive its whole value from a sino^le thouo^ht ? 
 Can this great force be made up of one element ? 
 Can such a fact be other than complex ? Is the 
 definition of Christianity, put forward by Herr 
 Harnack, that of a historian or merely that of a 
 theologian who takes from history as much as 
 suits his theology ? The theory set forth in the 
 lectures on the essence of Christianity, is the same 
 theory that dominates the author's learned history 
 of dogma.^ But is the theory actually deduced 
 from history ? Is not history rather interpreted by 
 the light of the theory ? 
 
 It will be remembered that Eenan,^ with some 
 lack of reverence, compared the liberal theologian 
 
 1 "Lehrbuch derDogmengeschichte,"i.-ii.,1894; iii.,1897. 
 
 2 '* Vie de Jesus," 13, ix.-x 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 to a bird whose wings have been clipped ; as long 
 as it remains at rest, its attitude is natural, but 
 when it attempts to fly, its movements are 
 hampered. This comparison of the author of 
 "Origines du Christianisme," was directed not 
 against Catholic theologians, who, like orthodox 
 Protestants, resemble caged birds, but against 
 certain rationalist professors, who unite the most 
 absolute and daring theories to a criticism so 
 minute, that one would expect thek general con- 
 clusions to be founded on experience. The remark 
 of Eenan is not an axiom beyond discussion. There 
 is no fundamental incompatibility between the 
 professions of theologian and historian. Possibly, 
 there have already existed theologians who could 
 be also liistorians, that is, could deal with facts as 
 they appear from evidence intelligently investi- 
 gated, without introducing their own conceptions 
 into the texts they explored, and able to take 
 account of the change that the ideas of past times 
 inevitably undergo when adapted to modern 
 thought. But it must be admitted that there 
 have been, and always will be, a far greater 
 number, who, starting from a general system, 
 furnished by tradition, or elaborated by them- 
 selves under the influence of tradition, uncon- 
 sciously, or perhaps sometimes consciously, bend 
 
6 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the texts and the facts to the needs of their doctrine 
 though often honestly believing they avoid the 
 danger. It must be added that the adversaries 
 of the theologians have often brought to the 
 discussion of these matters of religious history, 
 prejudices acquired before the examination of the 
 facts, prejudices that can interfere with calm and 
 just investigation, fully as much as any theological 
 bias. 
 
 At bottom, M. Sabatier and Herr Harnack have 
 wished to reconcile Christian faith with the claims 
 of science and of the scientific spirit of our time. 
 The claims must indeed have become great, or be 
 believed to be great, for the faith has become very 
 small and modest. What would Luther have 
 thought of his doctrine of salvation by faith, had 
 it been presented to him with the amendment, 
 "independently of creeds," or with this other — 
 " Faith in a merciful Father, for faith in the Son 
 is no part of the gospel of Jesus " ? Eeligion is 
 thus reconciled with science, because it no longer 
 encounters it. This trust in the goodness of God 
 either exists in a man or it does not; but it 
 seems impossible for a sentiment to contradict 
 any conclusion of biblical or philosophical criti- 
 cism. 
 
 However, this negative reconciliation is perhaps 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 less solid than it seems. Every absolute assertion 
 that defies the control of the intelligence can 
 become, at one moment or another, an obstacle 
 to the free and legitimate course of thought. 
 Although this minimum of faith, extracted from 
 the Bible, seems to authorize a complete and 
 unlimited liberty in biblical criticism, it would 
 nevertheless prove an obstacle to the exercise of 
 that liberty, and an obstacle the more serious just 
 where the exercise is most indispensable, namely, 
 in regard to the gospel, if by chance this mini- 
 mum were not to be found in the gospel, or not 
 in the sense in which the gospel is understood. 
 Those who would compel themselves to see it 
 there, would be forced no longer to take the 
 gospel as it stands. It has been said for a long 
 time, and with reason, that the dogma of biblical 
 inspiration, in so far as it presented the Bible as 
 a book whose truth knew no limit, nor imperfec- 
 tion, nor shades of meaning, and as a book full of 
 the absolute science of God, prevented the per- 
 ception of the real and historical sense of the 
 Scriptures; but as much might be said of the 
 conviction, arrived at before examination of 
 the facts, or from motives other than historical, 
 that a certain religious system, that is believed 
 to be true, must have been the gospel of Christ. 
 
8 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The gospel has au existence independent of us ; 
 let us try to understand it in itself, before we 
 interpret it in the light of our preferences and 
 our needs. 
 
 In seeking to determine historically the essence 
 of the gospel, the rules of a healthy criticism 
 forbid the resolution to regard as non-essential all 
 that to-day must be judged uncertain or unaccept- 
 able. That which has been essential in the 
 gospel of Jesus, is all that holds the first and 
 most considerable place in His authentic teaching, 
 the ideas for which He strove and for which He 
 died, not only such part of them as is held to be 
 vital to-day. In the same way, to define the 
 essence of primitive Christianity, we must seek 
 the dominant preoccupation of the early Chris- 
 tians, and all that theii* religion lived by. After 
 applying the same analytical procedure to all 
 epochs successively, and comparing the results, 
 we can determine if Christianity has remained 
 faithful to the law of its origin; if the basis of 
 Catholicism to-day is that which supported the 
 Church of the Middle Ages, or the early centuries, 
 and if that basis is substantially identical with 
 the gospel of Jesus ; or if, on the other hand, 
 the clear light of the gospel was soon obscured, 
 to be freed from the darkness in the sixteenth 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 century, or only in our own time. If any common 
 features have been preserved or developed in the 
 Church from its origin till to-day, these features 
 constitute the essence of Christianity. At least, 
 the historian can take account of no others ; he 
 has no right to apply to Christianity a method 
 that he would not apply to any other religion 
 whatsoever. To decide the essence of Maho- 
 metanism, we should take from the teaching of 
 Mahomet and the Mussulman tradition not what 
 we judge to be true and fruitful, but all that 
 seemed most important to the prophet and his 
 followers in matters of faith, morality, and 
 worship. Otherwise, with a little good will, 
 the essence of the Koran could readily be dis- 
 covered to be identical with the essence of the 
 gospel — faith in a benign and merciful God. 
 
 Further, there would be little logic in taking 
 for the whole essence of one religion the points 
 that differentiate it from another. The monothe- 
 istic faith is common to Judaism, Christianity, and 
 Mahometanism ; but we are not therefore to con- 
 clude that the essential features of these three 
 religions must be sought apart from the mono- 
 theistic conception. No Jew, no Christian, no 
 Mussulman will admit that his faith in one God 
 is other than the first and principal article of his 
 
lo THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 belief. Each will criticize the particular form 
 that the idea receives in the creed of his neighbour, 
 but none will deny that monotheism is an element 
 of his own religion on the ground that it belongs 
 also to the religion of others. The essential dis- 
 tinction between religions lies in their differences, 
 but it is not solely of their differences that they 
 are constituted. 
 
 It is, therefore, in the highest degree arbitrary 
 to decide that Christianity in its essence must be 
 all that the gospel has not borrowed of Judaism, 
 as if all that the gospel has retained of the Jewish 
 tradition must be necessarily of secondary value. 
 Herr Harnack finds it quite natural to place the 
 essence of Christianity in the faith in God the 
 Father, because he supposes, somewhat hastily by 
 the way, that this element of the gospel is foreign 
 to the Old Testament. Even if the hypothesis 
 were well founded the conclusion drawn from it 
 would not be legitimate. It might present itself 
 to the mind of a Protestant theologian, for whom 
 the word " tradition " is synonymous with " Catho- 
 licism " and " error," and who rejoices to think 
 that the gospel was the protestantism of the law. 
 But the historian can see in it only an assertion, 
 whose proof is still to seek. Jesus has claimed 
 not to destroy the law, but to fulfil. We should, 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 therefore, expect to find in Judaism and in 
 Christianity elements common to both, equally- 
 essential to both, the difference between the two 
 religions lying in that " fulfilment " which is the 
 special feature of the gospel, and should form 
 with the common elements the whole essence of 
 Christianity. The importance of these elements 
 depends neither on their antiquity nor on their 
 novelty, but on the place they fill in the teaching 
 of Jesus, and on the value Jesus himself attached 
 to them. 
 
 The essence of the gospel can only be deter- 
 mined by a critical discussion of the gospel texts, 
 the most sure and most clearly expressed texts, 
 and not those whose authenticity or whose mean- 
 ing may be doubtful. To build a general theory 
 of Christianity on a small number of texts of 
 moderate authority, neglecting the mass of incon- 
 testable texts of clear significance, would be to 
 sin against the most elementary principles of 
 criticism. Following such a method, a more or 
 less specious doctrinal synthesis might be offered 
 to the public, but not the essence of Christianity 
 according to the gospel. Herr Harnack has not 
 avoided this danger, for his definition of the 
 essence of Christianity is not based on the totality 
 of authentic texts, but rests, when analyzed, on a 
 
12 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 very small number of texts, practically indeed on 
 two passages : — " No man knoweth the Son, but 
 the Father : neither knoweth any man tlie Father, 
 save the Son,"^ and "The kingdom of God is 
 within you," ^ both of them passages that might 
 well have been influenced, if not produced, by 
 the theology of the early times. This critical pre- 
 possession might thus have exposed the author 
 to the misfortune, supreme for a Protestant theo- 
 logian, of having founded the essence of Chris- 
 tianity upon data supplied by Christian tradition. 
 No great harm would be done, from the point 
 of view of history, if it were not that these texts 
 are isolated by having preference given to them 
 over the others. It must be admitted that it is 
 often difficult to distinguish between the personal 
 religion of Jesus and the way in which His dis- 
 ciples have understood it, between the thought of 
 the Master and the interpretations of apostolic 
 tradition. If Christ had Himself drawn up a 
 statement of His doctrine, and a summary of His 
 prophecy, a detailed treatise on His work. His 
 mission. His hopes, the historian would submit it 
 to a most attentive examination, and would deter- 
 mine the essence of the gospel, according to 
 irrefutable testimony. But no such treatise has 
 » Matt. xi. 27. « Luke xvii. 21. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 ever existed, and nothing can take its place. In 
 the Gospels there remains but an echo, necessarily 
 weakened and a little confused, of the words of 
 Jesus, the general impression He produced upon 
 hearers well disposed towards Him, with some of 
 the more striking of His sentences, as they were 
 understood and interpreted ; and finally there 
 remains the movement which He initiated. 
 
 Whatever we think, theologically, of tradition, 
 whether we trust it or regard it with suspicion, 
 we know Christ only by the tradition, across the 
 tradition, and in the tradition of the primitive 
 Christians. This is as much as to say that Christ 
 is inseparable from His work, and that the 
 attempt to define the essence of Christianity 
 according to the pure gospel of Jesus, apart from 
 tradition, cannot succeed, for the mere idea of the 
 gospel without tradition is in flagrant contra- 
 diction with the facts submitted to criticism. 
 This state of affairs, being natural in the highest 
 degree, has nothing in it disconcerting for the 
 historian : for the essence of Christianity must 
 be in the work of Jesus, or nowhere, and would 
 be vainly sought in scattered fragments of His 
 discourse. If a faith, a hope, a feeling, an im- 
 pulse of will, dominates the gospel and is per- 
 petuated in the Church of the earliest times, there 
 
V 
 
 14 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 will be the essence of Christianity, subject to 
 such reservations as must be made on the literal 
 authenticity of certain words, and on such more 
 or less notable modifications that the thought of 
 Jesus must of necessity have endured in trans- 
 mission from generation to generation.^ 
 
 "The essences of things are unchangeable," 
 said the ancient philosophy, when considering the 
 eternal types of contingent realities. To deter- 
 mine such an essence in Christianity, it must be 
 transformed into a metaphysical entity, into a 
 logical quintessence, into something resembling 
 the scholastic notion of species, that certain theo- 
 logians still fear to corrupt by admitting the idea 
 of evolution. Herr Harnack seems also to fear 
 that his essence of Christianity might be spoiled 
 if he introduced into it any idea of life, of move- 
 ment and development. On the other hand, he 
 distrusts abstract essences, and has taken care not 
 to give any theoretical definition of religion, 
 which should be at the same time a definition of 
 Christianity, although he maintains the Hegelian 
 proposition that Christianity is the one absolute 
 religion. He finds the essence of Christianity 
 in a sentiment — filial confidence in God, the 
 
 1 Of. E. Caird, " Christianity and the Historical Christ," 
 The New World, vi. 21 (March, 1897), pp. 7, 8. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 merciful Father. Therein is to lie all religion 
 and all Christianity. The identity of this senti- 
 ment in Jesus and in all Christians, is to consti- 
 tute the continuity of the religion and the 
 unchangeableness of its essence. 
 
 But is this essence, even in these reduced pro- 
 portions, actually unchangeable, and why should 
 it be ? Has the Divine mercy been understood 
 in absolutely the same way by the apostles and 
 by Herr Harnack ? The apostles had a concep- 
 tion of the world, and even of God the merciful, 
 somewhat different from the idea that is suggested 
 in the peroration of '' The Essence of Christianity." 
 Now, sentiment is not independent of thought; 
 if the idea change, the form of the sentiment 
 will also change, though the sentiment retains its 
 first direction, because of the spirit that sustains 
 it ; and if on this point (the Divine merciful 
 Fatherhood) the attitude of Christianity is held 
 to be unchanged, because it retains the direction 
 and the impulse of Christ, why should not its 
 attitude towards other points be held unchanged 
 for the same reason ? What, for instance, of the 
 hope of an eternal kingdom, constantly preached 
 by Christ, and never allowed to perish by the 
 Christian Church ? What of the mission of the 
 apostles charged to propagate this hope ? What 
 
i6 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 of Christ Himself, Whose place as Messiah 
 belongs to the Primitive Church, and has never 
 ceased to occupy the thought of the Church from 
 the beginning ? What of all the different themes 
 of evangelical teaching, of which not one has 
 been regarded during the Christian centuries as 
 accessory ? All these elements of Christianity, 
 in all the forms in which they have been pre- 
 served, why should they not be the essence of 
 Christianity ? Why not find the essence of Chris- 
 tianity in the fulness and totality of its life, 
 which shows movement and variety just because 
 it is life, but inasmuch as it is life proceeding 
 from an obviously powerful principle, has grown 
 in accordance with a law which affirms at every 
 step the initial force that may be called its physi- 
 cal essence revealed in all its manifestations ? 
 Why should the essence of a tree be held to be 
 but a particle of the seed from which it has 
 sprung, and why should it not be recognized as 
 truly and fully in the complete tree as in the 
 germ ? Are the processes of assimilation by 
 which it grows to be regarded as an alteration of 
 the essence present potentially in the seed, and 
 are they not rather the indispensable conditions 
 of its being, its preservation, its progress in a life 
 always the same and incessantly renewed ? 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 The historian cannot but refuse to recrard as 
 the essence of living Christianity a germ that 
 multiplies without growing. Eather he should 
 return to the parable of the mustard seed, com- 
 paring the new-born Christianity to a little grain 
 The grain was small, for the new religion was 
 without the prestige of antiquity enjoyed by the 
 ancient religions, still surviving, of Egypt and 
 Chaldea; it was less, in external power, than 
 Greco- Roman paganism : it was even less, appa- 
 rently, than Judaism, of which it must have 
 seemed a variety, with no future, since Judaism 
 rejected it. This grain, nevertheless, enclosed the 
 germ of the tree that we now see; charity was 
 its sap: its life impulse was in the hope of its 
 triumph ; its expanding force was in its apostle- 
 ship, its pledge of success in sacrifice : for its 
 general form this budding religion had its faith in 
 the unity and absolute Sovereignty of God, and for 
 its particular and distinctive feature that faith in 
 the Divine mission of Jesus, which earned it its 
 name of Christianity. All tlus was in the little 
 seed, and all this was the real essence of the 
 Christian religion, needing only space to grow to 
 reach its present point, still living after all its 
 crrowth. 
 
 To understand the essence of Christianity we 
 
 
 
 
i8 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 must look to those vital manifestations which 
 contain its reality, its permanent quintessence, 
 recognizable in them, as the principal features of 
 primitive Christianity are recognizable throughout 
 their development. The particular and varied forms 
 of the development, in so far as they are varied, are 
 not of the essence of Christianity, but they follow 
 one another, as it were, in a framework whose 
 general proportions, though not absolutely constant, 
 never cease to be balanced, so that if the figure 
 change, its type does not vary, nor the law that 
 governs its evolution. The essence of Christianity 
 is constituted by the general features of this figure, 
 the elements of this life and their characteristic 
 properties ; and this essence is unchangeable, like 
 that of a living being, which remains the same 
 while it lives, and to the extent to which it lives. 
 The historian will find that the essence of Chris- 
 tianity has been more or less preserved in the 
 different Christian communions : he will not 
 believe it to be compromised by the development 
 of institutions, of creeds, and of worship, so long 
 as this development has been ruled by the prin- 
 ciples verified in the first commencement. He 
 will not expect this essence to have been abso- 
 lutely and definitely realized at any point of past 
 centuries ; he will believe that it has been realized 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 more or less perfectly from the beginning, and 
 that it will continue to be realized thus more 
 and more, so long as Christianity shall endure. 
 
 Herr Harnack does not conceive Christianity 
 as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a 
 real plant, identical from the beginning of its 
 evolution to the final limit and from the root 
 to the summit of the stem, but as a fruit, ripe, 
 or rather overripe, that must be peeled, to reach 
 the incorruptible kernel; and Herr Harnack 
 peels his fruit with such perseverance, that the 
 question arises if anything will remain at the end. 
 This method of dismembering a subject does not 
 belong to history, which is a science of observa- 
 tion of the living, not of dissection of the dead. 
 Historical analysis notices and distinguishes, it 
 does not destroy what it touches, nor think all 
 movement digression, and all growth deformity. It 
 is not by stripping Christianity leaf by leaf that 
 the law of its life will be found. Such a dissec- 
 tion leads of necessity to a special theory, of 
 philosophical value doubtless, but of little account 
 from the positive standpoint of history. It is 
 not for the theologian (unless in quite a personal 
 exercise of his intelligence), and still less is it for 
 the critic, to seize religion on the wing, dismember 
 it, extract a something and declare it unique, by 
 
20 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 saying, "This is the essence of Christianity." 
 Let us regard the Christian religion in its life, 
 observing by what means it has lived from the 
 beginning and is still sustained ; let us note the 
 principal features of this venerable existence, con- 
 vinced that they lose nothing in reality or im- 
 portance, because to-day they are presented to 
 us under colours that are not those of a former 
 time. 
 
 To reduce Christianity to a single point, a 
 solitary truth that the conscience of Jesus has 
 perceived and revealed, is to protect religion 
 against all attacks far less than might be 
 expected, because it is thus almost put out of 
 touch with reality, and deprived of historical 
 support, and of every defence against the reason- 
 ing faculty. Christ is presented as a man who 
 had but one true thought among many false ones, 
 and those that are now held erroneous and value- 
 less are not those that occupied His attention the 
 least. If the sole truth that He revealed fails to 
 make its appeal, there is nothing else to look for 
 from Him ; and to feel this incomparable truth, 
 to find it more true than the rest of His concep- 
 tions, the only truth in fact among them, to see 
 in it absolute religion, it is not enough merely to 
 contemplate it, but a kind of intellectual and moral 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 enthusiasm is also demanded, prepared to see only 
 this and be content. 
 
 It might be said that the God of Herr Harnack, 
 driven from the domain of Nature, driven also 
 from history, in so far as history is made of facts 
 and play of thoughts, has taken refuge on the 
 heights of human conscience, and is now only to 
 be seen there by those who have keen perception. 
 Is it so certain that He cannot be seen elsewhere, 
 or that if not seen elsewhere. He will be infallibly 
 found there ? Is it not possible, if no effort is 
 made to keep Him, that He will be driven also 
 from this last retreat, and identified as one of 
 " the category of the Ideal," or as " Imperfect 
 activity aspiring to Perfection," pliantoms of 
 divinity with which the reason plays when 
 wandering to find the explanation of itself, 
 phantoms of no account for religion ? Can the I 
 conscience keep for long a God that science \ 
 ignores, and will science respect for ever a God 
 that it does not know ? Can God be goodness if 
 He is not first — Life and Truth ? Is it not as easy 
 and as necessary to conceive Him as the Source 
 of Life and Truth as of indulgent goodness ? Shall 
 we have need of Him to reassure the conscience, 
 if we have no need of Him to strengthen the in- 
 telligence ? Is it not with all his soul and all 
 
22 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 his might, that man should search after God to 
 find him ? Must not God live in Nature and in 
 man, and must not the integral formula of true 
 religious philosophy be " God everywhere," as 
 the integral formula of Christianity is " Christ in 
 the Church, and God in Christ." 
 
 But this is not the place to examine Herr 
 Harnack's theology. Our aim is only to de- 
 termine if his " Essence of Christianity," instead 
 of being absolute religion, absolute Christianity, 
 entities that have little chance of taking a place 
 in history, does not rather mark a stage in 
 Protestant development, or form merely a basic 
 formula of Protestantism. 
 
SECTION I 
 
 THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 
 
 INTEODUCTIOlSr 
 
 Practically all our knowledge of the life and 
 preaching of Jesus is contained in the Gospels. 
 The testimony of Paul confirms rather than com- 
 pletes that of the evangelists, and the scanty 
 indications found in the pagan historians are 
 hardly worth consideration. But the Gospels are 
 not strictly historical documents, and before using 
 them for his definition of the essence of Christianity 
 Herr Harnack was bound to express an opinion 
 upon their general character and value. It was 
 known beforehand that his opinion was com- 
 paratively temperate, but not necessarily there 
 fore impervious to criticism. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 It is beyond question that the synoptic Gospels 
 "supply first a clear image of the teaching of 
 Jesus, both in its principle and its detailed 
 application ; that they then relate the end of His 
 life, sacrificed to His work, and that they show 
 us the impression made by Him upon His 
 disciples, and communicated to the world by 
 them." ^ But one would rather see more clearly 
 the motive of these conclusions, and form a 
 more definite idea of their object. In the present 
 case, it is not sufficient to treat the origin of 
 the Gospels simply as a literary problem. The 
 question concerns the tradition itself, and the 
 nature of the tradition must be analyzed and 
 its progress outlined. 
 
 It will be readily conceded that the Fourth 
 Gospel shall be set aside and the synoptic texts 
 regarded as " the books of the gospel teaching." ^ 
 
 » " Wesen des Christentums," p. 20. 2 ibj^i,^ p, 14, 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 25 
 
 It is as well to add that " they are not partisan 
 pamphlets," and that it was an error of former 
 times to attribute to them certain general 
 tendencies which would have made them actual 
 manifestoes on behalf of Peter or Paul, or of the 
 reconciliation between the two apostles. But it is 
 a very summary and inexact statement concerning 
 the composition of the Gospels, to represent that of 
 Mark as a work at first hand ; those of Matthew and 
 Luke as having been composed later than Mark's 
 and from another source ; ^ and that of John, as 
 founded on a special tradition, though one very 
 difficult to recognize.^ Is the primitive character 
 of Mark established beyond discussion ? Must 
 not at least a third source be admitted for the 
 Gospel of Luke ? And does not the special 
 tradition of the Fourth Gospel gradually disap- 
 pear, as the sense of this mysterious book is better 
 comprehended ? 
 
 When the texts and their relations to one 
 another are examined, without attention or regard 
 to the life of ideas, or the development of beliefs 
 and institutions, there is a temptation to restrain 
 history within the limits that literary analysis 
 imposes on documentary criticism. As the 
 
 * " Wesen des Christentums," p. 15. 
 2 Ibid., p. 13. 
 
26 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 second Gospel has passed almost in its entirety 
 into the other two synoptic Gospels, it is there- 
 fore concluded that Mark is the primitive text. 
 It is, certainly, in regard to the Gospels known to 
 us, but no one can say that it is absolutely. 
 Beyond the fact that its relation to Matthew and 
 to Luke is not clearly defined on all points, 
 there is little difficulty in seeing that it is not 
 a book of simple growth and homogeneous editing. 
 It is held to be both, because it cannot be collated 
 with an edition or a document more ancient 
 than the traditional text we possess. 
 
 The existence of a source other than Mark's 
 Gospel is deduced from such portions of Christ's 
 discourses as are common to Matthew and Luke, 
 but not present in Mark, and hypothetically this 
 source is identified with the Hebrew Gospel by 
 Matthew and the " Logia " spoken of by Papias 
 of Hierapolis. It begins now to be evident that 
 Matthew and Luke must have worked from dif- 
 ferent revisions of these " Logia." The collection 
 of discourses, therefore, underwent certain modi- 
 fications before assuming the forms made per- 
 manent in our Evangelists. Why should not 
 similar changes have happened to the Gospel 
 according to Mark ? 
 
 As Luke declares that he knows of several 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 27 
 
 Gospels, and the critics can verify only two, 
 Mark and the " Logia," they readily suppose that 
 a part at least of the matter that is special to 
 the third Gospel comes from another source. 
 There is nothing to show that it does not come 
 from two sources or more, or from special 
 revisions of the two principal ones. Criticism 
 prefers the minimum number of hypotheses 
 and rightly; but it must at least be said that 
 the reality appears to have been much more com- 
 plex than these suppositions. As for John, the 
 existence of a special tradition is an expedient 
 as convenient as it is popular, to explain the 
 divergences between the Fourth Gospel and the 
 synoptic versions. 
 
 These results of critical labours may be thought 
 meagre enough, unless they are looked on as 
 indispensable preliminaries to a deeper considera- 
 tion, which shall pass upwards from words to 
 things, and explain the history of the gospel 
 literature, by that of the religious movement of 
 which this literature was the partial expression. 
 The old school of Tiibingen was right in its wish 
 to realize the Christian books by the aid of the 
 evolution of Christianity, only it should have 
 been more circumspect and less artless in its 
 conjectures, and have discussed its texts, ideas, 
 
28 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 and facts more minutely, before formulating its 
 conclusions. 
 
 Were the criticism of Mark followed out accord- 
 ing to the purely literary method employed hither- 
 to, a method somewhat superficial and mechanical, 
 it would not be difficult to discover the same 
 phenomena of combinations, superpositions and 
 union of different materials in the second Gospel, 
 as are recognized in Matthew and in Luke. The 
 discussion with the Pharisees concerning Beelze- 
 bub,^ is as it were interpolated into the narrative 
 of the attempt of the kinsmen of Jesus to per- 
 suade Him to return home.^ In the chapter of 
 the parables, three stages can be distinguished of 
 tradition and revision : the parables themselves,^ 
 quite straightforward, needing no explanation; 
 the interpretation^ desired by the disciples after 
 the first parable ; the general reflections ^ on the 
 object of teaching by parable, which come as an 
 addition to the explanation of the allegory of the 
 Sower. It is hardly credible that both descrip- 
 tions ^ of the miracle of feeding the multitude 
 should be due to one tradition : one must have 
 been added by a reviser — who had come across a 
 
 1 Mark iii. 22, 30. 2 Mark iii. 21, 31-.S5. 
 
 3 Mark iv. 2-9, 21-;32. ^ Mark iv. 10, 13-20. 
 
 6 Mark iv. 11, 12. • Mark vi. 30, 44; viii. 1-9. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 29 
 
 second version of the miracle. The prediction of 
 the suffering and death of the Son of man ' 
 appears to be intercalated between the confession 
 of Peter ^ and the promise of the early coming of 
 the Kingdom of God.^ In the same way, a phrase 
 concerning the sufferings of the Son of man^ 
 divides what is said of the coming of Elias in the 
 person of John tlie Baptist. The parable of the 
 wicked husbandmen •'* has been introduced between 
 the reply made by Jesus in the temple to the 
 chief priests, who questioned him as to the 
 authority he claimed,^ and the retreat of the 
 questioners discomfited by the demand addressed 
 by Jesus to them.'' The prophecy of the appear- 
 ance of Christ in Galilee after His resurrec- 
 tion,^ comes with little fitness between the saying 
 of Jesus as to the confusion His Passion will 
 cause among His disciples,^ and Peter's reply 
 protesting his fidelity.^^ It appears, therefore, 
 incontestable that the second Gospel has been 
 composed by the same means as the first and 
 third ; though one of the sources of them, it is 
 
 » Mark viii. 31-38. 2 Mark viii. 27-30. 
 
 3 Mark ix. 1. « Mark ix. 12. 
 
 « Mark xii. 1-12. « ^\,^^\^ ^i. 27-33. 
 
 7 Mark xii. 12. « Mark xiv. 28. 
 
 • Mark xiv. 27. »« Mark xiv. 29. 
 
30 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 none the less itself derived from more than one 
 source, and did not acquire its final form in one 
 effort. 
 
 Would not a critical examination demonstrate 
 further, with equal facility, that the greater part 
 of ihose elements of the Fourth Gospel, that are 
 held to show a special tradition, happen to be 
 symbolic, and represent not the memories, but the 
 personal conceptions of the author ? The illusion 
 springs from the precision of some of the infor- 
 mation, notably the chronological indications, 
 which do not agree with those of the first Gospels, 
 and could not apparently have been derived from 
 them, nor imagined by the evaugelist. Thus it 
 is to be noted, first, that the ministry of Jesus 
 includes three,^ or more probably four ^ Easters — 
 that is to say, a duration of three years and some 
 months, with a stay at Jerusalem on several occa- 
 sions; while a study of the chronology of the 
 synoptic Gospels would suggest that the preach- 
 ing in Galilee lasted some months, and the 
 preaching in Jerusalem, at the end, merely a few 
 days. 
 
 The arguments derived from the first Gospel to 
 confirm the chronology of the fourth are very 
 
 1 John ii. 13; vi. 4; xiii. 1. ^ John v. 1. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 31 
 
 weak/ and the indications of this chronology 
 seem subordinated to the didactic and polemical 
 purpose of the book. If the author had wished 
 to give a historical account of the life of Jesus, he 
 would not have put the Galilean ministry in the 
 background, and he would probably have described 
 the preaching at Jerusalem differently. It is 
 universally admitted that his aim was to show 
 Christ upon the theatre assigned by prophetic 
 tradition to the Messiah, and to give the impres- 
 sion that Christ's evengelical manifestations took 
 place, not in an obscure corner of Palestine, but 
 in the capital of Judaism. Viewed as history, 
 the point of view of the Gospel of John is in- 
 compatible with that of the other Gospels, and 
 a choice has to be made. The apparent precision 
 of John does not alone authorize a preference, 
 seeing that the question lies not only between two 
 systems of chronology, but between two present- 
 ments of the Saviour, two accounts of Christ and 
 His work. The account that is most faithful in 
 regard to the discourses and historical appearance 
 of° Jesus, is probably also the most to be trusted 
 in point of chronology. 
 
 It seems inconceivable that Jesus should have 
 
 I Matt.xxiii. 37 (Luke xiii. 34) is generally cit^d ; but 
 the passage is possibly a quotation. Cf. infra, p. 9G. 
 
32 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 preached at Jerusalem, declaring Himself the 
 Messiah, on several occasions, during several 
 years, without being arrested. He can but have 
 done so once, and paid the forfeit with His life. 
 The enormous gaps in the narration make the 
 reality of its framework a matter of suspicion. 
 It is clear they have not been left to be filled 
 from the contents of the other three gospels. 
 The discourses conceal the gaps in the narrative. 
 In the process of exhausting his doctrinal thesis, 
 and fulfilling the intention of his " Apologia," 
 the author of the Gospel of John has found it 
 sutficient to bring Christ to Jerusalem for the 
 two first Easters,^ to connect the miracle of the 
 feeding of the multitude with the third,^ and 
 to bring the Saviour to the feast of Tabernacles ^ 
 and the feast of the Dedication,* while awaiting 
 the last.^ If the last year includes three 
 journeys and three sojourns at Jerusalem, while 
 the previous period of more than two years 
 includes only two journeys and two sojourns, 
 the reason is that it was more suitable to reserve 
 to the last months and the last days the greater 
 part of the teaching. 
 
 * John ii. 13 ; v. 1, * John vi. 4. 
 8 John vii. 2-10. ^ John x. 22. 
 
 ^ John xii. 1 ; xiii. 1. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 33 
 
 It is useless to object that the evangelist 
 would not have so far enlarged the framework 
 of the synoptic Gospels, unless he had material 
 to fill the space thus gained. Another considera- 
 tion, equally important for the didactic purpose 
 of the book, intervened to determine its chrono- 
 logical schema. Three years and a half, make 
 half of a week of years, the Messianic number 
 far excellence, and a number which plays a great 
 part in the prophecies of Daniel^ and in the 
 Apocalypse.^ The schema would conform to 
 that needed by those passages of Scripture that 
 suggest that the temple, which was forty-six years 
 in building, was a type of the body of Jesus,^ 
 and that Jesus Himself was not yet fifty years 
 old in the year that preceded His Passion.* It 
 is known tliat St. Iren^eus bears witness to this 
 tradition, and maintains that he found it in the 
 Fourth Gospel. The terrestrial life of the Saviour 
 would be thus held to correspond to a perfect 
 number, seven weeks of years,^ a half week at 
 the end being reserved for the manifestation of 
 Christ, the Word made flesh. Jesus would have 
 
 1 Dan. xii. 7-11. * Eev. xii. 6-14; xi. 2, 3; xiii. 5. 
 
 3 John ii. 20, 21. The alhision is quite inadmissible to the 
 Herodian buildings, though received by many comraet)tator8. 
 * John viii. 57. * Dan. ix. 25-27 
 
34 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 lived presumably forty-six years when He drove 
 the money-changers from the temple ; and the 
 fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee, would coincide 
 with His entry into Eternal Glory after His 
 Eesurrection. 
 
 This allegorical chronology then, conforming 
 to the spirit of the book, in all likelihood is not 
 founded on a genuine traditional memory ; it 
 may well be no more actual than the Davidic 
 genealogies of the Saviour in Matthew and in 
 Luke, and have the same signification, to wit, 
 that Jesus is The Christ. Similar comments 
 might be made on the date assigned by John to 
 the death of Jesus ; the coincidence of His death 
 with the immolation of the Paschal Lamb,^ 
 which, according to the synoptic Gospels, was 
 eaten the day before,^ is probably part of that 
 system of symbolic adaptations that governs 
 all this particular narrative of the Passion. 
 
 All these hypotheses, more or less probable, 
 which could readily be multiplied, have only 
 one result, to raise before the theologians an inter- 
 minable series of difficulties, because criticism, 
 giving most of its attention to the literary facts, 
 too often leaves the history unexplained, not 
 only the history of nascent Christianity, but 
 1 Cf. John xviii. 28. « Cf. Mark xiv. 12 ; Luke xxli. 7-15. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 35 
 
 even the history of the composition of the 
 Gospels. The points on which the synoptic 
 Gospels differ from one another, and the differ- 
 ences between John and the synoptics, have 
 been carefully accumulated, and thus limits 
 have been set to the historical authority of 
 the Gospels that believers cannot fail to find 
 exceedingly narrow. The meaning of all that 
 cannot be taken as literal history with regard 
 to Christ escapes them, because to some extent 
 it has escaped the critics themselves, and they 
 have therefore failed to make it clear to believers. 
 Faith is disquieted by conclusions and scientific 
 conjectures that do not entirely satisfy the 
 intelligence. They would have given rise to 
 less trouble if they could have been understood. 
 
 But to render the development and character 
 of the evangelical literature quite intelligible, 
 the Gospels must not only be studied in them- 
 selves and in their relations as literary works and 
 as simple historical documents, but must also 
 be regarded as a partial expression of the great 
 movement that proceeded from the preaching of 
 Jesus. The literary tradition of the gospel has 
 followed the evolution of primitive Christianity. 
 The two explain one another ; and if the critical 
 analysis of the Gospels necessarily precedes 
 
36 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the reconstitution of evangelical and apostolic 
 history, it is none the less true that, by a sort 
 of reciprocity, it is the primitive history of 
 Christianity that explains the composition of 
 the Gospels, and throws light on those particular 
 points that are most disconcerting for minds 
 unused to criticism. Once understood and 
 presented as a product and a witness of an 
 ancient faith, the Gospels, however critically 
 analyzed, will no longer be a dangerous trial 
 to the faith of our contemporaries. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 At the bottom of all traditions concerning the 
 life of Christ, there is this simple statement, set 
 forth in some of the discourses in the Acts, where 
 are to be found specimens of the earliest Christian 
 preaching : Jesus passed through the world, doing 
 good, healing, because God was with Him, all 
 those held by various maladies in subjection to 
 the devil. Denounced by the priests, and crucified 
 by order of Pontius Pilate, He rose on the third 
 day from the dead, and thus became Christ and 
 Lord.^ Jesus became Christ by His resurrection ; 
 that was the proof of His dignity as Messiah ; 
 and His glory is to shine forth in His approaching 
 Second Advent. Thus His teaching and His works 
 remain still what they actually were, and as they 
 appeared to those who witnessed them, a first 
 introduction to the kingdom of God and works 
 of pity, not a formal attestation of the Heavenly 
 1 Acts ii. 22-30; x. 38-40. 
 
38 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 kingdom, nor a direct argument in favour of 
 Jesus as the Messiah. 
 
 The mission of Christ is not presented in the 
 Gospels in this primitive form. Tradition must 
 follow its natural tendency, and was soon to dis- 
 cover, in the ministry of Jesus, characteristic 
 features and indubitable proofs of His Messianic 
 dignity. The glory of the risen Lord threw new 
 light on the memories of His earthly career. 
 Thence arose a kind of idealization of His dis- 
 courses and His acts, and a tendency to syste- 
 matize them. If the parables, which were really 
 tales concerned in their application only with the 
 economy of the Kingdom of Heaven, are supposed 
 to be full of mysteries, it is because a Divine 
 teaching is now seen in them. If the miracles 
 are held to prove that Jesus is the Christ, it is 
 because they are now regarded as acts of Divine 
 Omnipotence, beyond all comparison with those 
 that God might permit a pious man to do for the 
 succour of his equals. If those possessed of 
 devils hail Jesus as the Son of God, their tes- 
 timony acquires a special value, coming from 
 Satan, who thus salutes his conqueror. If heaven 
 opens above the head of Jesus at His baptism, it 
 is to hallow the Messiah.^ If Jesus is tempted 
 » Mark. i. 9-11. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 39 
 
 in the wilderness, it is that He may triumph from 
 the first over him whose kingdom He comes to 
 destroy.^ If He gives bread to a hungering 
 multitude, it is to signify the salvation of men by 
 faith and in the Christian communion.^ If He is 
 transfigured on the mountain-top, between Moses 
 and Elias, it is to show that the Law and the 
 Prophets bear witness to Him as the Messiah.^ 
 If He predicts His Passion and resurrection, it is 
 because He knows His future with certainty of 
 prevision. If darkness falls over the earth, when 
 He is on the cross, it is because the earth mourns 
 over the expiring Christ.^ If the veil of the 
 temple is rent at the moment of His death,^ it 
 is that the new covenant, now accomplished, 
 destroys the old and reveals its mystery. Thus 
 everything assumes, as it were, a relation to the 
 Messiah, and all contributes to prove that Jesus 
 was the Christ. 
 
 Nevertheless all these arguments are not the 
 simple expression of increasing faith. They are, 
 for the most part, an interpretation of actual facts 
 and occurrences, which assume a new aspect in 
 the full glory of the Messiah, as though they now 
 adapted themselves to the condition of the Eternal 
 
 » Matt iv. 1-11. 2 cf. 1 Mark viii. 14-21. ^ ]\iark ix. 2-8. 
 * Mark xv. 33. ^ Mark xv. 38. 
 
40 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Christ. Jesus did really make Himself known 
 to His disciples as the Messiah, and the general 
 tendency of His doctrine as to the Kingdom of 
 Heaven implied the part that was His by right in 
 the coming reign of God. The miracles of healing 
 are incontestable, however they may be explained ; 
 and if the Saviour did not perform them to 
 demonstrate His Divine mission, none the less 
 they prove it in a sense, since they reveal at 
 once the extent of His power and the goodness of 
 His heart. The unhappy demoniacs did well to 
 salute Jesus as the Son of God, since He came, 
 confident in faith and charity, to bring peace to 
 their troubled spirits. The baptism by John may 
 well have been a decisive moment in the life 
 of the Saviour. The picture of the temptation 
 presents, in a symbolic and abbreviated form, the 
 psychology of Jesus and the manner in which He 
 looked upon His mission. He regarded His 
 position as the narrative of the transfiguration 
 suggests, and understood the relation between His 
 Kingdom of Heaven and the Law in the sense that 
 the incident of the rent veil of the temple indicates. 
 He admitted for Himself, as much as for His 
 followers, the necessity of losing His life to find it.^ 
 If the point of view is new, and differs from 
 » Matt. X. 39. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 41 
 
 that of the immediate witnesses of the teaching 
 and the occurrences of the Gospels, it conforms 
 none the less to the rule in these matters. 
 It is in the nature of human affairs, that the 
 work, the genius, and the character of the 
 greatest of mankind can only be appreciated at 
 a certain distance, and when the actors them- 
 selves have disappeared. Christ, in so far as He 
 belongs to human history, has not escaped this 
 law. His grandeur was not perceived till after 
 His death, and is it not a fact that it is more and 
 more appreciated as the centuries pass by, that 
 the present is ameliorated by the influence of the 
 gospel, and the past illumined by all the ex- 
 periences of humanity as it advances in age ? It 
 need only be added that this inevitable and 
 legitimate idealization of Christ, arising sponta- 
 neously in the Christian consciousness, and not 
 by the aid of rigorous observation and methodical 
 reflection, must have affected, to a certain extent, 
 the form of legendary development, and presents 
 itself at the first glance of criticism as legendary 
 development, although actually it is nothing but 
 an expansion of faith, and an attempt, though an 
 insufficient one, to set Jesus on the height that is 
 His rightful place. 
 
 Looked at from this point of view, the question 
 
42 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 of the gospel miracles, always so confusing for 
 the critic, and bristling with difficulties for the 
 apologist, is cleared up, at any rate in part, and 
 ceases to be a dangerous and alarming theme of 
 controversy. Herr Harnack discusses it a little 
 pedantically,^ and goes so far as to divide the 
 miracles into five categories : those which are 
 exaggerations of natural occurrences, though strik- 
 ing ones : those that are external and material 
 realizations of sayings and parables, or of pheno- 
 mena of intimate religious life : those that have 
 been imagined in order to mark the accomplish- 
 ment of Old Testament prophecies : the miracles 
 of healing performed by the spiritual power of 
 Jesus: and those whose explanation is not 
 obvious. 
 
 It would be difficult to distribute the gospel 
 narratives among these categories. A certain ex- 
 aggeration of fact appears everywhere. It results 
 from the presentation as a miracle of the Christ, 
 of an incident which appeared first as a grace 
 of God, till its miraculous character assumed a 
 special significance in the Messianic perspective. 
 It may be doubted if such a miraculous narrative, 
 for instance, as that of the withered fig tree, or 
 the feeding of the multitude, is really to be 
 
 1 Pages 16-19. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 43 
 
 explained as the materialization of a parable, as has 
 been suggested; but it seems incontestable that 
 the evangelists were always ready to see in the 
 miracles a direct teaching of Christ, as they saw 
 a proof of His omnipotence, and that their 
 account has been influenced by this allegorizing 
 tendency, as it has been in their narratives of the 
 parables. The influence of the Old Testament is 
 felt a little throughout, because of the preoccu- 
 pation with the Messiah, and it would no doubt 
 be more accurate to say that it colours the 
 majority of the narratives, rather than that it 
 has created any one of them. Finally, there is; 
 a mysterious and inexplicable residue in the most 
 solidly guaranteed miracles. It is better not to" 
 follow a rigorous classification, which does not 
 correspond to the reality, and assert simply the 
 substantial truth of the tradition of the beneficent 
 activity of Christ, while recognizing the elabora- 
 tion of early memories, an elaboration more or 
 less considerable, as the case may be, but always 
 governed by the same principle, the faith that 
 seeks and finds the Messiah in all the works and 
 all the wanderings of His earthly pilgrimage. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 At this stage in its development, evangelical 
 tradition is still kept within the limits assigned 
 by the Book of Acts to the testimony of the 
 apostles.^ It includes the time between the 
 Baptism of Jesus by John and the Resurrection 
 of the Saviour, and it still clings to the idea of 
 the Messiah promised to Israel, thuugh already 
 it tends to go beyond this idea in interpretation 
 of the prophecies and their fulfilment. The 
 Gospel according to Mark, which, taken broadly, 
 represents this stage of faith, nevertheless 
 contains traces of a more complicated doctrine, 
 of a spirit of speculation already busy on the 
 life and death of Christ, interpreting them to 
 suit a more learned theology. Already there 
 can be felt a presentiment that the framework 
 of the Christian faith has been enlarged. From 
 henceforward the enlargement will continue, and 
 1 Cf. Acts i. 21, 22. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 45 
 
 the historical framework will extend also to 
 include the whole life of Jesus. 
 
 The first theory of Christ was formulated 
 by St. Paul. This apostle, who had not known 
 Jesus, yet became by the vicissitudes of his 
 career the evangelist of the nations, was the 
 first, or one of the first, to feel the need of form- 
 ins an idea of Christ, a definition of Him as the 
 Saviour, since he was compelled to explain, and 
 could not simply narrate. Starting from his 
 own religious experience, and from the Jewish 
 beliefs, modified by his faith, and interpreted so 
 as to be intelligible to the Gentiles, he affirms the 
 eternal pre-existence of the Messiah, and formu- 
 lates the theory of the Eedemption. In his last 
 epistles he comes to identify Christ, more or less, 
 with Eternal Wisdom, attributing to Him a cos- 
 mological function, as the theory of the Eedemp- 
 tion attributes to Him a function in regard to 
 humanity. The author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews does the same, using slightly different 
 terms and symbols. This double theory of Christ, 
 in His relations to the universe and to humanity, 
 could not fail to enter into the evangelical 
 tradition, and did in fact enter. The doctrine 
 of the Eedemption appears in Mark ; ^ that of the 
 1 Mark x. 45 ; xiv. 24. 
 
46 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Eternal Christ, Wisdom of the Father, agent 
 of all Divine Works, creeps into Matthew and 
 Luke,^ and finds its definite statement in the 
 Gospel of John. 
 
 Thus, little by little, there is formed in the 
 atmosphere of faith, beyond what can be called the 
 historical reality of the gospel, beyond even its 
 idealization to suit the Messiah, the dosrma which 
 aims at determining its providential meaning, its 
 universal scope, its transcendent efficacy. It 
 must be said, however, that the Messianic 
 element, dominant in Mark, is still the element 
 most in evidence in Matthew and in Luke ; the 
 theory of universal salvation, expressed in the 
 synoptics, only enters into and appears beside 
 the traditional matter that the doctrine of the 
 Messiah has influenced more profoundly; and 
 the theory of the Eternal Christ, of Divine 
 Wisdom revealed in Jesus, appears still more 
 discreetly. It is only in the Fourth Gospel that 
 the doctrine of Christ as the intermediate assent 
 of creation and the Saviour of mankind, after 
 being clearly defined in the prologue,^ is freely 
 set forth in the discourses which are substituted 
 for the traditional sentences the gospel desires 
 to interpret, and in the symbolic narratives that 
 » Matt. xi. 27 ; Luke x. 22. 2 JoI^q j^ j.jg^ 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 47 
 
 take the place of the Messianic miracles to 
 signify the illuminating and eternally vivifying 
 action of the Incarnate Word. 
 
 Nevertheless, the theological speculations of 
 Paul and of John do not venture beyond the 
 historical framework of the Primitive Gospel. It 
 would even appear that Paul straitened its 
 limits, since, while he recognized in Jesus the 
 earthly manifestation of the eternal Christ, he 
 invariably considers the Passion and Eesurrection 
 of the Saviour as acts of the Messiah. As for 
 John, he limits the ministry of Jesus to the 
 manifestation of the Word, Whose incarnation 
 seems to be dated from the Baptism, and has no 
 other purpose than the revelation made by the 
 teaching, the miracles, the death and resurrection 
 of Christ. The idea underlying John's Gospel is 
 always a vision of faith, a faith which, in order 
 to appreciate Jesus worthily, makes use of the 
 loftiest elements of contemporary religious philo- 
 sophy, and is expressed in the language of this 
 mystic philosophy. Christ is the actual mani- 
 festation of the Eternal Word, and the Fourth 
 Gospel, being a symbolic description of this 
 truth, is a kind of incarnation, or revelation by 
 allegorical images, of discourses and sayings of 
 Christ, the Life and Light of mankind. 
 
48 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 But then came the desire to know the human 
 antecedents of Jesus, or rather the desire to 
 represent His human origin conformably to the 
 idea already formed of His dignity and Provi- 
 dential office. From the point of view of Paul, 
 and still more from that of Mark and John, 
 the narratives of Jesus' infancy are, so to speak, 
 outside the history of Christ, and seem in the 
 same way to have been foreign to the primitive 
 tradition of the gospel. Herr Harnack writes : ^ 
 "Two of the Gospels, it is true, include a pre- 
 history, the history of the birth of Jesus, but 
 we need not be concerned with this, for even 
 were its contents more credible than they are, 
 this pre-history would be almost without sig- 
 nificance for the end we have in view." As 
 a matter of fact, there is no hint there that the 
 essence of Christianity consists in faith in God 
 the Father, without regard to the Divine Son- 
 ship of Jesus. 
 
 It is true however, that these narratives re- 
 present a normal development of the history of 
 Christ. The very nature of their subject, the 
 critical examination of the two versions taken 
 separately or compared, and an analysis of 
 evangelical tradition, make it impossible to 
 
 > Patie 20. 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 49 
 
 regard them as a defiuite expression of historical 
 memories ; none the less they are put forward as 
 a document of Christian faith, and in this capacity 
 attract the attention of the historian. The idea 
 of the Immaculate Conception by the operation 
 of the Holy Ghost is not merely, as is readily 
 admitted, a physical explanation of the Divine 
 Sonship of Jesus, but also a religious explanation, 
 like that attached to the idea of the Messiah, and 
 a metaphysical explanation like that that belongs 
 to the idea of the Incarnation ; it is of the nature 
 of both, because, if the Immaculate Conception 
 in a sense demonstrates the Fatherhood of God, 
 the operation of the Holy Ghost has not for 
 its immediate end the miraculous formation of a 
 purely human being, but rather the communica- 
 tion of Divine life, which makes Jesus, from the 
 earliest moment of His existence, the elect of 
 God, the Christ anointed by the Spirit, the only 
 Son of the Heavenly Father ; and thus is 
 anticipated that consecration of the Messiah 
 which the most ancient version of the synoptic 
 Gospel referred to the Baptism. The affirmation 
 of faith is addressed to faith, and appeals only to 
 the judgment of faith : from the Catholic point 
 of view, it is for the Church to determine its 
 meaning and extent. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The narratives of the childhood of Christ are 
 for the historian only an expression and an 
 assertion of faith in the Messiah, that faith which 
 is affirmed at the beginning of the Gospel of 
 Mark, and transfigured the memories of the 
 Apostles, which is also affirmed and developed in 
 Paul, and then in the Fourth Gospel. This faith 
 is, as it were, the reply made by the generations 
 of believers in succession to the proposition of 
 the gospel of Jesus ; it increases, yet remains the 
 same, like an echo which, reverberating from 
 mountain to mountain, becomes more sonorous 
 the further it travels from its point of origin. 
 
 The subject of this faith is at no stage of its 
 development presented to the historian as an 
 actual reality. Criticism has not to decide if 
 Jesus is or is not the Word Incarnate, if He 
 existed before His terrestrial manifestation, if 
 He was consecrated Messiah from His conception, 
 or from the day of His baptism, if the idea of the 
 Messiah in its earliest form, and in its successive 
 transformations, is a truth. Considered as belief 
 this idea is addressed to faith, that is to say, to 
 the man, judging with all his soul the worth 
 of the religious doctrine presented to him. The 
 historian as such need not constitute himself 
 either apologist or adversary. He knows it 
 
THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS 51 
 
 simply as a conception or a force whose ante- 
 cedents, central manifestation and indefinite 
 progress, he can analyze up to a point, but whose 
 deep meaning and secret power are not things 
 that can be deduced from simple analysis or 
 critical discussion of texts and facts. 
 
 None the less he will not deny that the 
 idea of Christ is essential to Christianity,— for 
 Christianity, at all times, from its first origin 
 in the gospel of Jesus, will appear to him 
 established on the faith in Christ. He will 
 recognize the substance of this ftiith in the best 
 authenticated words of Jesus, namely, the eternal 
 and unique predestination of the Messiah. His 
 unique office in the work of salvation, and His 
 unique relation with God, a relation not founded 
 merely on a knowledge of His goodness, but on a 
 substantial communication of the Divine Spirit- 
 that is to say, of God Himself— to the predestined 
 Messiah. The Gospels wHl become for the critic 
 the eloquent testimony to this Uving faith, whose 
 source is to be found not elsewhere than in the 
 soul of Jesus Himself. No page of these books 
 will appear negligible on the ground that it 
 does not directly represent the thought of the 
 Saviour. The Gospels are the principal docu- 
 ments of Christian faith, for the first period of 
 
52 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 its history, and none of their indications can be 
 rejected as insignificant, seeing that all, without 
 exception and from the beginning, have been a 
 means of expressing faith and of afi&rming and 
 extending it. 
 
SECTION II 
 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 The general theme of the preaching of Jesus was 
 the reign of God, or the kingdom of Heaven. 
 The greater part of the parables bear either on 
 the coming of this kingdom or on the way of 
 making ready for it. In the Lord's Prayer, Christ 
 makes His disciples say, " Thy Kingdom come ! " 
 All His teaching is given to prepare for the 
 kingdom. However, as the gospel nowhere con- 
 tains any express definition of its nature, there 
 is room for discussion on the actual object of the 
 conception, and discussion still continues. Before 
 Jesus, the idea of the reign of God is above all 
 concerned with the end of the world, and the 
 system that is to take the place of the actual and 
 imperfect order. Daniel, and the authors of 
 
54 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 prophecies and visions, see in it the great mani- 
 festation of Divine power, which is to inaugurate 
 the eternal happiness of the Saints on a re- 
 generated earth, a happiness over which God will 
 rule in the New Jerusalem. Various elements 
 go to make up this conception : cosmology and a 
 transposition of cosmogony, in that the renewal 
 is brought about by the destruction of the present 
 world; national sentiment, which associates the 
 cosmic renovation and general judgment with the 
 restoration of Israel; and religious sentiment of 
 the Divine justice, which rewards the good and 
 punishes the wicked. In the gospel, the national 
 element has disappeared, the nationality of Israelite 
 being no longer in itself a title to the kingdom ; 
 the eschatological element no longer fills the view, 
 and the religious and moral element comes into 
 the foreground. But the relation between these 
 last two elements, which seem co-ordinated, is a 
 point much debated. Several critics maintain 
 that the thought of Jesus was entirely dominated 
 by apocalyptic conceptions of the end of the 
 world. Others think the moral point of view of 
 remission of sins and reconciliation with God is 
 the most important, the sole essential considera- 
 tion. 
 
CHAPTEE I 
 
 This last opinion is that of Herr Harnack, and 
 the eminent lecturer speaks with severity, even a 
 little unfairly/ of those who support the contrary 
 view. Kecognizing that the kingdom that is to 
 come is actually what Jesus understood by the 
 kingdom, they yield to the desire, conscious or 
 unconscious, to bring everything to one level, and 
 lower that which is raised. Jesus, it is said, 
 would share this belief in the kingdom that is 
 to come, but for Him it would not constitute 
 the whole of the reign of God; it would not 
 even be the principal part, because the Saviour 
 taught from the first, and was alone in teachincr 
 that the kingdom of Heaven is not to be known 
 by external signs, but exists already in the man 
 who trusts God. 
 
 A problem of this nature is not to be dismissed 
 by insinuations as to the tendencies of this person 
 or that, who has sustained one or the other 
 
 1 Page 35. 
 
56 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 conclusion. The expositors accused of belittling 
 Christ might easily reply that, to attribute to 
 Him the ideas that seem to one's self to be the 
 nearest to truth is perhaps to honour Him less 
 than might be imagined. The gospel texts are 
 at hand, and it is solely by their testimony that 
 the question should be decided. 
 
 The evangelists have summed up the preach- 
 ing of Jesus at the commencement of His 
 ministry in the words : " Eepent, for the kingdom 
 of Heaven is at hand." ^ These words might also 
 stand for an abridgment of the whole teaching of 
 the Saviour in Galilee and at Jerusalem. They 
 express the necessity of a moral conversion, of an 
 internal change, of the remission of sins, but all 
 in view of the kingdom that is at hand, that is, 
 in view of the end of the world, for the kingdom 
 which is near is the same that John the Baptist 
 had announced before Jesus. The dominant idea 
 is obviously that of the kingdom which is soon 
 to be, and the repentance is significant in relation 
 to the kingdom, as it is the indispensable con- 
 dition of admittance therein. But the entire 
 gospel only develops this warning. The beati- 
 tudes at the commencement of the Sermon on the 
 Mount promise the kingdom to the poor and 
 1 Matt. iv. 17. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 57 
 
 afflicted, to the needy and the persecuted ; it is 
 promised to them as a future recompense, and is 
 not supposed to be realized in them. When the 
 Saviour sends His apostles out to preach, the 
 evangelists represent Him as leaving repentance 
 to be understood, and the message He gives them 
 contains only the formula, "The kingdom of 
 Heaven is at hand," ^ which, without doubt, is 
 the essence of the gospel, the "good news" 
 announced by Christ. When He is asked for a 
 sign, Jesus replies that He will give no other 
 than the sign of Jonas,^ — that is to say. He refers 
 His hearers to the approaching judgment of God. 
 He assures His disciples that some of them shall 
 be still living when the kingdom shall arrive; 
 and when the disciples object that Elias must 
 first come, He replies that the prophecy is ful- 
 filled, and that Elias has come in the person of 
 John the Baptist.^ The parable of the workers 
 in the vineyard ^ shows that the kingdom is assured 
 to all who have worked for God, no matter for 
 how short a time. In the parable of the Wed- 
 ding Feast,^ the kingdom bears the same relation 
 to the gospel as the feast to the invitation that 
 precedes it. Men are warned to be on their 
 
 1 Matt. X. 7. 2 Matt. xvi. 4 ; xii. 39. 
 
 3 Matt. xvii. 12. * Matt. xx. 1-15. ^ Luke xiv. lG-24. 
 
58 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 guard, for the kingdom will come as a thief in 
 the night : ^ it is necessary to await the kingdom 
 as the faithful servant awaits the return of his 
 lord.^ Store of merit must be provided as the 
 wise virgins kept their oil, lest, when the king- 
 dom shall come, the unready shall experience 
 the fate of the five foolish ones who knocked 
 in vain at the bridegroom's door.^ In view of 
 the judgment, the gifts of God must be made 
 fruitful, as the servants, in their master's absence, 
 employed the talents they had received from 
 him : * by a good use of life and its present 
 benefits, a part in the kingdom must be made 
 sure, as the dishonest steward prepared a refuge 
 for himself among his master's debtors : ^ poverty 
 is to be endured with resignation, in the faith 
 that the future life will atone for the miseries 
 of the present, as is seen in the example of 
 Lazarus:^ consolation for the death even of the 
 Saviour is to be found in the remembrance that, 
 at the last supper, when Jesus presented to His 
 disciples the symbolic cup, He bade them look 
 forward to the meeting at the festival of the 
 kingdom of God 7 
 
 1 Matt. xxiv. 43. * Matt. xxiv. 45-51. 
 
 3 Matt. XXV. 1-13. 4 Matt. xxv. 14-29. 
 
 6 Luke xvi. 1-8. ^ Luke xvi. 19-25. 
 
 7 Mark xiv. 25. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 59 
 
 The idea of the celestial kingdom is then nothing 
 but a great hope, and it is in this hope or no- 
 where that the historian should set the essence of 
 the gospel, as no other idea holds so prominent 
 and so large a place in the teaching of Jesus. 
 The qualities of this hope are as easy to determine 
 as its object. It is in the first place collective, 
 the good of the kingdom being destined for all 
 who love God, and of such a nature that all can 
 enjoy it in common, and so well that their happi- 
 ness cannot be compared to anything so fitly as 
 to a great festival. It is objective, and consists 
 not only in the holiness of the believer, nor in the 
 love that unites him to God, but implies all the 
 conditions of a happy life, both the physical and 
 the moral conditions, the external and the internal 
 conditions, so that the coming of the kingdom can 
 be spoken of as a fact that completes history, and 
 is in no way confounded with the conversion of 
 those who are called to it. It regards, and can 
 only regard, the future, as befits its nature of 
 hope ; and this future is not the fate of the 
 individual in this world, but the renewal of the 
 world, the restoration of humanity in eternal 
 justice and happiness. 
 
 If there is an anticipation of the kingdom in 
 the teaching of the gospel and in the fruits it 
 
6o THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 produced, it is because the view of the kingdom 
 is of a thing close at hand ; the gospel is the 
 immediate and direct preparation for the king- 
 dom, and the present looks only to this future 
 and virtually contains it. If the kingdom of 
 Heaven is compared to a feast, the gospel is 
 the invitation of the Father, such as is made 
 when the board is spread to entreat the guests 
 to come.-^ The principal guarantee of safety in 
 the kingdom will be the overthrow of Satan; 
 but already Satan is overwhelmed, he has found 
 One stronger than he, and his house is spoiled.^ 
 Jesus saw in the cures He effected, especially 
 the cures of those possessed by devils, the 
 pledge of His final victory over the powers of 
 evil, and He could say that the kingdom of God 
 was come, since by the Spirit of God He cast out 
 the demons.^ It may be that this assertion, 
 which is made in support of an argument founded 
 on the exorcisms practised by the Jews, and 
 separates rather inappropriately the two com- 
 parisons of the kingdom divided against itself 
 and the strong man, may belong to a later stratum 
 of evangelical tradition.* If it proceeds from 
 
 1 Matt. xxii. 4. 2 Matt. xii. 29. » Matt. xii. 28. 
 
 * Cf. Mark iii. 24-27. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 6i 
 
 Jesus, it would set forth the kingdom as 
 realized in its commencement, and not in its 
 fulness, the power of Satan being not yet entirely- 
 overcome. 
 
 In the same way should be understood the 
 words, " from the days of John the Baptist until 
 now, the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, 
 and the violent take it by force." ^ The kingdom 
 of Heaven was inaugurated after John had 
 finished his ministry, because it was then that 
 Jesus Himself preached the gospel; but it was 
 inaugurated in its preparation, not in its fulfil- 
 ment; and those who seize it, the publicans and 
 sinners who take possession of it, and who seem, 
 as it were, to take it by force, do not enter into 
 the felicity of the kingdom : they have seized it 
 in promise, they have acquired a right to the 
 happiness of the just. 
 
 The kingdom is for those God pardons, and God 
 pardons all, provided they pardon themselves. 
 Thus the kingdom is for those who are good after 
 the example of God, and in organizing the present 
 life on a basis of charity, the gospel realizes 
 already the kingdom, whose full and final coming 
 will only, as it were, assure the happiness and 
 immortality of charitable men. But the kingdom 
 1 Matt. xi. 12. 
 
62 THE GOSPEL AND- THE CHURCH 
 
 is actually this everlasting happiness. Its root 
 is within ; it lies like a precious seed in the soul 
 of each believer; but in this state it is hidden, 
 rudimentary, imperfect, and it awaits its perfec- 
 tion in the future. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 In order to determine wherein consists the 
 essence of the kingdom, of the gospel, and of 
 Christianity, Herr Harnack starts from a principle 
 that is far from self-evident, and is contradicted 
 by the general attitude of Jesus towards the 
 Mosaic religion and Israelite tradition. " Truly," 
 he writes, " it is a difficult task, and a grave 
 responsibility for the historian to distinguish what 
 is traditional from what is personal, the kernel 
 from the husk, in the preaching of Jesus as to the 
 kingdom of God." ^ Here evidently what is 
 traditional is the husk; what is personal, the 
 kernel; and because the eschatological idea of 
 the kingdom belongs to Israelite tradition, Herr 
 Harnack finds it quite natural to consider it as 
 merely the husk of the gospel, while the faith in 
 a merciful God is the kernel, the original element 
 in the teaching of the Saviour. 
 
 Such a conception of the essential and the 
 
 1 Page 3G. 
 
64 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 accessory in matters of evangelical belief is 
 acceptable neither to the philosopher nor to the 
 historian, whose duty is only to examine what 
 importance Jesus Himself attaches to the different 
 points or aspects of His doctrine, without arro- 
 gating to themselves the right to decide that the 
 traditional element in the gospel is either suspect 
 or guaranteed merely by the fact that it is tradi- 
 tional. Now Christ has never said or given it 
 to be understood, that the old revelation was any 
 less authorized than that of which He was the 
 instrument. On the contrary, He had no other 
 pretension than to fulfil the law and the prophets ; 
 without doubt He wished to enlarge and perfect 
 the former revelation, but, while enlarging and 
 perfecting, He meant to retain it ; He is not set 
 before the world as the revealer of a new principle ; 
 if He never gives His definition of the kingdom of 
 God it is because the kingdom of which He is the 
 messenger and the instrument is identified in His 
 thought, as in the minds of His hearers, with that 
 that the prophets have foretold. He holds to the 
 hope of the kingdom as He holds to the precept 
 of the love of God and faith in Him. 
 
 These three elements of His gospel are inter- 
 twined, inseparable, essential, although, or rather 
 because, they are traditional; they are the 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 65 
 
 essence of the gospel because they were the 
 essence of Biblical revelation. If His way of 
 understanding and realizing God, Love and the 
 kingdom, is more pure, more deep, more living 
 than that of the Old Testament, it perfects what 
 has preceded it and does not destroy it. To seek 
 in the gospel an element that shall be entirely 
 new in regard to the religion of Moses and the 
 prophets, is to seek a thing that Jesus had no 
 desire to set there, a thing that on His own 
 statement does not exist there. 
 
 The contradiction that has been discovered 
 between the conception of a kingdom that is to 
 come and that of a kingdom already present 
 does not exist, unless we attribute to the second 
 idea an absolute character it does not possess in 
 the gospel. It would be far from easy to prove 
 by clear and authentic texts that the kingdom (a 
 supernatural gift) is purely a religious benefit, — 
 union with the living God — and the chief experi- 
 ence of a man consisting in the remission of his 
 sins.^ Here again the great importance attached 
 by Protestant theology to the idea of sin and 
 justification accounts for what, from the point of 
 view of historical criticism, is nothing but a pre- 
 conceived determination to find in the gospel 
 
 1 Page 40. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 nothing but the essentials of one's own religion. 
 Christ nowhere confounds the kingdom with the 
 remission of sins, which is only the condition 
 of entrance into the kingdom. Nowhere does 
 He identify the kingdom with God, and God's 
 power acting in the heart of the individual.^ 
 It is only by a very special exposition that this 
 definition of the kingdom can be found in the 
 parables.^ The parable of the Sower only signi- 
 fies that the kingdom is the Word of God: the 
 evangelical word, which is not the kingdom, is 
 compared to the grain the sower sows in his field, 
 and of which only a portion bears fruit. Part of 
 the seed is lost, and that is a thing that cannot 
 be said of the kingdom. The part that takes 
 root corresponds to the useful preaching, that 
 which attracts aspirants for the kingdom, but it 
 is not itself the kingdom ; it bears fruit for the 
 kingdom, which is the end for which the seed 
 of the word is sown. In the same way the 
 parables of the Pearl and the Hidden Treasure 
 do not go to prove that the kingdom is God, in 
 the secret places of the heart, but simply that the 
 bliss of the everlasting kingdom is worth acquu*- 
 ing at the sacrifice of all earthly possessions and 
 advantages, as the Pearl of great price and the 
 1 Page 35. » Page 36. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 67 
 
 treasure hidden in the field were worth buying at 
 the price of all the wealth of those who discovered 
 them. The application of these parables is not 
 doubtful, and is closely related to the eschato- 
 logical conception of the kingdom. The seed which 
 grows without the labourer heeding/ may suggest 
 the idea of a moral progress accomplished within 
 the soul ; but in reality the comparison bears 
 on the kingdom as taught and the kingdom made 
 manifest, the iirst corresponding to the seed, the 
 second to the harvest ; between the two lies the 
 time while the seed germinates and the gospel 
 spreads. The parables of the mustard seed and 
 of the leaven, which emphasize the contrast 
 between an insignificant beginning and a great 
 final result, apply also to the antithesis between 
 the kingdom started by the evangelizing teaching 
 and the kingdom developed to its actual mani- 
 festation. Everywhere the gospel is subordinated 
 to the kingdom. 
 
 Some preparation is needed to find that who- 
 ever recites the Lord's Prayer prays only to pre- 
 serve the strength he already possesses, and to 
 strengthen the union between himself and God.^ 
 The first part of the prayer is concerned witli tlie 
 coming of tlie kingdom, and the Christian who 
 
 » Mark iv. 26-29. « Page 42. 
 
68 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 says, " Thy kingdom come," does not imagine that 
 the kingdom of Heaven is realized within himself. 
 The second part is subordinated to the first, as 
 the gospel is subordinated to the kingdom ; for it 
 is in view of the near approach of the kingdom 
 that men pray for daily bread, to be forgiven their 
 trespasses, and to be delivered from temptation. 
 The Fatherhood of God, the heart's obedience to 
 His will, the certainty of having eternal posses- 
 sions, and of being protected against evil, do not 
 exclude the eschatological conception of the king- 
 dom, and indeed only obtain their full signifi- 
 cance by their relations to that idea. It is evident 
 that the terms of the prayer would be very 
 different, were they not directed to guarantee the 
 union abeady existing of the individual with his 
 Heavenly Father. 
 
 The saying, " What shall it profit a man if he 
 gain the whole world and lose his own soul," ^ 
 does not signify precisely " the infinite value 
 of the human soul,^ an abstraction made of the 
 destiny of man in the future kingdom. Jesus 
 said that life must be lost in time to be gained in 
 eternity, and that he who seeks it or gains it now 
 loses it for the future. Now, the gain of every- 
 thing else cannot compensate for the loss of life : 
 I Mark viii. 36. 2 Page 40. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 69 
 
 he who should gain the whole world would have 
 no advantage of it as soon as he were dead : and 
 that is the position of the man who will not sacri- 
 fice his life for the kingdom, from the wish to 
 keep it for the world : he will lose everything' 
 by his death, the world he loves and has served, 
 and the kingdom to which he has no right. When 
 Jesus said, " Ye are of more value than many 
 sparrows," ^ it was not to exalt the value of the 
 soul, but to encourage His disciples to have faith ; 
 the God that watches over the sparrows watches 
 even more over men. Truly the Saviour cared 
 for every human soul, the souls of the poor man, 
 the sinner, the woman, the child, but he did not 
 consider the value of the soul in itself in order to 
 sum up all religion in the actual union of each 
 soul with God. He made it sufficiently clear, in 
 the Parable of the Talents, that human existence 
 is of value according to the fruits it produces for 
 the Divine Judgment. The soul or the life has 
 no worth save by its destiny, through the 
 kingdom that God offers to it, and it ought to 
 deserve. 
 
 Jesus summed up all duty in the precept of 
 love. But this teaching does not exhaust the 
 moral of the Gospel and does not indicate its 
 ^ Luke xii. 7. 
 
70 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 final sanction. To the man wlio asked what he 
 must do to possess eternal life, that is, to have 
 a place in the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus replied 
 by enumerating those commandments of the 
 Decalogue that relate to the neighbour, then 
 enjoined him to give all he had to the poor and 
 follow Himself.^ Love, therefore, is not at an 
 end in itself; charity leads to the kingdom, 
 sacrificing the temporal to gain the eternal. It 
 is vain to force the opinion that the kingdom 
 is *'only the treasure possessed by the soul in 
 the eternal and merciful God," ^ if by this treasure 
 of actual possession charity is to be understood. 
 Love is demanded now to assure the possession 
 of God later, when the glory of his reign shall 
 appear. 
 
 To support the idea of a kingdom purely 
 personal and already present, there remains a 
 text of the third Gospel, whose authenticity is 
 not very certain, nor its meaning very clear. 
 When asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom 
 of God should come, Jesus answered them, " The 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation ; 
 neither shall they say, Lo here ! or Lo there ! for 
 behold the kingdom of God is within you." ^ 
 
 1 Mark x. 17-22. 2 p^ge 49. 
 
 3 Luke xvii. 20, 21. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 71 
 
 Tliis statement is only found in Luke, and is 
 part of the preamble that the author has drawn up 
 for an eschatological discourse/ whose substance 
 has been preserved by Matthew.^ It is highly 
 probable that only this discourse belongs to the 
 source common to both Gospels, and that the 
 saying quoted comes from Luke or his particular 
 tradition. The general style of this introduction 
 is that of the evangelist, who readily invents the 
 surroundings of the discourses he repeats ; and 
 the idea of the present kingdom does not accord 
 well with the discourse itself, which concerns 
 the coming of the Son of Man, unless the 
 assertion, " The kingdom of God is within you," 
 is to be understood as a prophecy meaning, 
 ''The kingdom of God is about to become 
 manifest among you." The fact of revision 
 comes out in what is said of the kingdom, " Lo 
 here ! or Lo there ! " a phrase which really 
 applies to the Messiah, and is, as a matter of 
 fact, used of Him a couple of verses later. If 
 the saying was really pronounced by Jesus and 
 addressed to the Pharisees, as the evangelist 
 states, it cannot mean that the kingdom of 
 God is in them, that is, in their souls, for these 
 
 1 Luke xvii. 23-37. 
 « Matt. xxiv. 23, 26-27, 37-39, 17-18, 40-41, 28. 
 
72 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Pharisees do not accept the gospel, and have 
 no share in the kingdom. There would be much 
 subtlety in leaving a restriction to be understood, 
 as though Jesus had meant to say, " The kingdom 
 of God is such that it might be realized in you, 
 if you desired and were worthy of it." Tbe most 
 natural meaning would be, '' the kingdom of God 
 is in the midst of you," and it is perhaps in this 
 way that the writer understands it, unless he has 
 simply wished to say, that the kingdom will 
 come when it is least expected, and before there 
 is time to announce that it has appeared in this 
 place or in that. Before it can be maintained 
 with authority that Jesus understood this saying 
 in another sense than this, other texts are needed 
 of undoubted meaning and authenticity, express- 
 ing the internal and actual character of the 
 kingdom. But it is evident that such texts are 
 wanting, and as to sacrifice the rest of the 
 gospel to the doubtful interpretation of a solitary 
 passage would be to go contrary to the most 
 elementary principles of criticism, under the 
 most favourable view, and taking the authenticity 
 of the saying for granted, Jesus must be held to 
 have spoken of the presence of the kingdom in 
 its commencement and its preparation by the 
 gospel. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The historian must resist the temptation to 
 modernize the conception of the kingdom. If 
 the theologian feels bound to supply an inter- 
 pretation for the needs of the present day, no 
 one will contest his right, provided he does not 
 confuse his commentary with the primitive mean- 
 ing of the gospel texts; and while this is true 
 for the conception of the kingdom, it is also true 
 for the appreciation of the relations of the gospel 
 to the different aspects of human life. Nothing 
 is easier than to determine historically the 
 attitude of Jesus towards the world, towards 
 earthly possessions, towards human law, towards 
 civilization. The vision of the approaching king- 
 dom must have inspired Him with a kind of 
 disdain for all these things, and the texts leave 
 no possible doubt as to His sentiments. But 
 just as means have been found to bring back 
 upon Himself and the present the regard that 
 the Saviour directed towards the future, success 
 
74 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 is equally looked for if not in showing Him as 
 positively interested in present life, social ques- 
 tions, political order, and human progress, at least 
 in attenuating His indifference towards them all. 
 
 We are told,^ that the gospel is not the 
 doctrine of renunciation of the world, but that 
 it merely attacks riches, anxiety for earthly 
 matters, and egoism : the proof that Jesus was 
 no ascetic, is that He ate and drank like all the 
 world, that He permitted His feet to be washed 
 and His head to be anointed ; that He permitted 
 his followers to continue their occupations and 
 their way of life ; that He did not organize the 
 little group of disciples into a monastic order, with 
 a code of laws and definite spiritual exercises ; 
 that later the apostles taught that the labourer 
 is worthy of his hire, and that they did not 
 separate from their wives ; and, finally, that the 
 gospel is opposed to the world only in that its 
 spirit consists in humility and faith in God, the 
 remission of sins, and the love of our neighbour. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it cannot be contested that 
 Jesus preached self-denial, without establishing a 
 discipline of renunciation. But the attempt to 
 draw an absolute distinction between the spirit 
 of detachment from the world, and the effective 
 1 Pages 50-56. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 75 
 
 renunciation of it, however legitimate in itself and 
 useful for present-day application of gospel 
 maxims, does not appear in a historical sense to 
 be founded on the words of the Saviour. The 
 expectation of the great event explains why 
 Jesus put forward no actual disciplinary ordi- 
 nance ; why He submitted neither Himself nor 
 His followers to any special mode of life tliat 
 might have interfered with the preaching of the 
 kingdom ; why He considered the gospel as a 
 message of joy, incompatible with the bodily 
 privations and fasts imposed on themselves by 
 the Pharisees and the disciples of John.^ But 
 it is for the same reason that He exacted from 
 all those who aspii^ed to the kingdom, not a dis- 
 position willing eventually to sacrifice possessions 
 and family affections to the superior interest of 
 salvation, but the immediate relinquishment of 
 all to follow Him. A man must lose his life 
 to save it ; he must hate father, mother, wife, 
 children, brothers, and sisters to devote himself 
 to the work of the kingdom ; he must sell his 
 goods and give unto the poor ; it is not enough 
 to be free from avarice and temporal cares, he 
 must abandon the riches and occupations of this 
 world. The comparison of the disciples to the 
 » Mark ii. 19. 
 
76 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 birds of the air and the flowers of the fields shows 
 that it is not only anxiety for bodily needs, but 
 even work that is forbidden or discouraged, and 
 though God is to be asked for daily bread, it is 
 not in the least intended that the prayer should 
 show anything but confidence in God without 
 personal anxiety ; rather does he who prays thus 
 rely entirely on God for his means of existence. 
 The absolute nature of the hope for the impend- 
 ing establishment of the kingdom of Heaven 
 corresponds to the absolute nature of the renun- 
 ciation demanded for admission therein, and the 
 absolute nature of the confidence in Him Who 
 cares for the birds, and will assuredly come to 
 the aid of men, His children. 
 
 It is in no way astonishing that such a dis- 
 cipline could not be imposed in all its rigour 
 on every one, even during the ministry of Jesus, 
 or that further departures from it should have 
 occurred after Him; but this is no reason for 
 introducing into the thought of the Master the 
 limitations that the nature of things and the 
 actual conditions of existence set to its detailed 
 application. It was equally necessary for the 
 success of the gospel that the discipline should 
 have had in the beginning this simple, unmodified 
 character, and that later all those modifications 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 77 
 
 should have been made in it that the changing 
 circumstances demanded, in order to adapt what 
 had been addressed to a world believed to be near 
 its end, to a world that had proved more enduring. 
 Herr Harnack ^ does not rank himself with 
 those who see in the gospel first and foremost 
 a social doctrine for the relief of the oppressed, 
 either from admiration of such a teaching, or 
 because, on the contrary, they regard it as entirely 
 chimerical and impracticable. Nor is he among 
 those who represent Christ as " conservative," a 
 respecter of the priesthood, and of acquired 
 fortunes. He thinks that Jesus, while regarding 
 the possession of riches as a danger for the soul, 
 did not desire general poverty as the foundation 
 of His heavenly kingdom, and was forced to 
 battle with misery and make it disappear. Christ 
 neither gave nor possessed an economic programme 
 for the conquest of poverty: He did more, by 
 indicating a new social duty in the precept of 
 charity. The gospel is socialistic in so far as it 
 desires " to establish among men a community as 
 comprehensive as human life, and as profound as 
 human misery." Jesus appreciates the common 
 needs of life — shelter, food, decent living; He 
 desired that these essential possessions should be 
 * Pages 5G-65. 
 
78 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 given to all who could not procure them ; He even 
 seems to have had glimpses of a possible society 
 wherein wealth should not exist as private property 
 in the strict sense, but here His conception of the 
 approaching end of the world must be borne in 
 mind, and is it not well to consider it in regard 
 to the rest? If Jesus did not desire general 
 poverty as a condition of the kingdom of God, is 
 it not because He conceived the kingdom inde- 
 pendently of human society ? It is impossible to 
 say that He proposed to banish misery, in the 
 sense that He was constantly preoccupied with 
 remedying it by the regular means of a wise dis- 
 tribution of help, recommended to the possessors 
 of riches. The disappearance of poverty is only 
 foreseen, perhaps only desired, as a consequence 
 of the establishment of the kingdom. The com- 
 plete renunciation exacted from the rich man is 
 rather in his own spiritual interest than for the 
 relief of the poor to whom the kingdom is pro- 
 mised. The conception of a society where riches 
 should be so distributed that none should lack 
 food, clothing, and shelter, is not really present 
 in the gospel, and it needs a certain amount of 
 predisposition to find that when Jesus, the Son 
 of Man, had not " where to lay His head," ^ He 
 1 Matt. viii. 20. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 79 
 
 desired for every one the shelter He Himself did 
 not possess. 
 
 The historical truth is that the idea of a society 
 regularly constituted according to the principles 
 of the gospel does not exist apart from the vision 
 of the approaching kingdom, where there shall be 
 neither rich nor poor, where there shall be no 
 question of private property or collective property, 
 and where Divine happiness is the common posses- 
 sion of all. There remains only for the believer 
 the possibility, the right, the duty to draw from 
 this ideal of the kingdom, as from that of renun- 
 ciation and from the precept of charity, such 
 applications as are suitable to any given state of 
 human society. There is no need to quarrel with 
 the Franciscans on the ground that Jesus, when 
 He bade His Apostles live by the gospel, did not 
 authorize them to beg. 
 
 In His relations with established authority, 
 the Saviour, we are told, attacked the "political 
 Church and the Pharisees," but took up another 
 attitude towards "the real autliority, that which 
 bears the sword." He recognized a definite right 
 in this authority, and never set Himself against 
 it. Even the prohibition against taking an oath 
 should not be extended " to include the oath takeo 
 before the authorities." Caesar has his rights in 
 
8o THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the sphere of his purely temporal power : let his 
 tribute be rendered to him. In itself, this power, 
 resting as it does on force, has no moral authority. 
 The true disciples of the gospel will keep them- 
 selves from the exercise of this power of domina- 
 tion : they are to know that the first among them 
 is the servant of all. Did Jesus reject or sanction 
 *' human law " ? He seems to have had no con- 
 fidence in human justice, and exhorts His disciples 
 not to claim "their rights," to let themselves be 
 robbed and beaten without attempt to exact repara- 
 tion for the wrongs done to them. From this it has 
 been concluded that the gospel is the negation of 
 all codes, of civil law as well as of canonical law. 
 Herr Harnack thinks that Jesus had only indi- 
 vidual cases in His mind, and that He was not 
 thinking of the possibility of attack by external 
 enemies, nor of the public authority interested in 
 the maintenance of order and the safeguarding of 
 the existence and welfare of citizens, nor of a 
 nation attacked unjustly.^ 
 
 Such a gap in the teaching of Christ could not 
 fail to be significant. But the manner in which 
 the learned author interprets his texts lacks 
 exactitude. Jesus bids His disciples, without any 
 restricting phrases, love their enemies and do goo J 
 1 Pages 65-74. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 8i 
 
 to those who persecute them, turn the other 
 cheek to blows, and abandon the coat to him who 
 has wished to take the cloak. The persecutor, 
 the insulter, the robber, does not belong to the 
 society of the disciples, and it is not with any pre- 
 vision of his possible conversion that they are 
 commanded to endure him : it is always by virtue 
 of that supreme indifference to human interests 
 that is, historically, the form taken by the gospel. 
 Why claim a right now, when eternal justice is so 
 close at hand ? The kingdom of heaven is for the 
 persecuted. What matters what one possesses, 
 when nothing is needed to participate in the 
 reign of God ? It is in the same spirit that Jesus 
 deals with constituted authority. He does not 
 contest the legitimacy of the priesthood, but He 
 knows that the reign of the law is about to give 
 place to the era of the Messiah. He is not in 
 revolt against Caesar, but He knows that the 
 power of man is declining to its end. It is not 
 for Him to pronounce opinion on the value of in- 
 stitutions which will have no place in the kin"-- 
 dom of heaven. It is absolutely gratuitous to 
 suppose that He admitted the obligation of the 
 oath before authorities. When He replied to the 
 adjuration of the High Priest, He Himself took 
 no oath. His way of regarding all human and 
 
 o 
 
82 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 temporal order is obviously inspired by the senti- 
 ment of His superior vocation in a totally different 
 scheme of things, to be set in place of this 
 temporary and defective organization, represented 
 by unjust men, who must be endured until the 
 destined hour shall come. 
 
 It follows that the gospel contains no formal 
 declaration for or against the constitution of 
 human society in the world as it is. The necessity 
 of human law cannot be deduced from the gospel, 
 nor can any foundation for it be found there : 
 both exist independently of the gospel, which is 
 not called upon to create them, or to replace 
 them, and can only influence them by its spirit. 
 
 For the rest, it is not evident that the gospel 
 is only addressed " to the inner soul of man that 
 is always the same." The gospel of Jesus is 
 addressed to the whole man, to snatch him from 
 the conditions normal to his present life. This 
 violent effort was indispensable for the foundation 
 of Christianity, and analogous efforts may still be 
 necessary to recall to men's minds that their prin- 
 cipal interest is superior to temporal advantage. 
 It is certain, for the historian, that the gospel 
 has rather regarded human law and political and 
 social economy as abstractions, and that it had 
 no formal intention of regenerating them, unless 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 83 
 
 by the radical transformation implied in the ideal 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 Finally, observes the author/ if the gospel had 
 taken any thought for science, art, or civilization, it 
 would have bound itself to one particular form of 
 human culture, and would have been hampered 
 in its subsequent development, as the Roman 
 Church is to-day through its connection with the 
 philosophy, political organization, and general 
 culture of the Middle Ages. Intellectual progress 
 and civilization do not constitute the whole of 
 man or of humanity. Moral progress is of the 
 first importance, that progress that Jesus was con- 
 scious of preparing and safeguarding when He 
 revealed to mankind the knowledge of the true 
 God. 
 
 How far apart are the truth of history and 
 the theory proposed with such ardour and convic- 
 tion ! The Catholic Church is only bound to the 
 science and political form of the Middle Ages 
 because it does not clioose to detach itself from 
 them. If the gospel was not bound to any form 
 of science and civilization, it was by the nature of 
 things bound to the lack of science and of culture, 
 which was none the less inconvenient. If it has 
 since been the more easily adapted to different 
 » Pages 74-78. 
 
84 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 conditions of knowledge and civilization, there 
 has none the less remained with it, because of 
 its origin, a kind of repugnance and distrust of 
 civilization and science, generally returned with 
 interest. Is Protestant orthodoxy, founded on 
 the gospel, less troubled by the modern movement 
 than the Catholic Church ? It is incontestable 
 that intellectual progress and civilization repre- 
 sent neither the supreme end of life nor the most 
 precious possession of humanity. But does not the 
 gospel entirely ignore their secondary value ? It 
 should be enough to say that the gospel is the 
 factor without which science and progress do not 
 really elevate mankind. Suppose we were asked 
 if the gospel might not have come to an end, had 
 it not come in contact with Greek science ? Is 
 it really certain that this alliance contributed 
 nothing towards the preservation of its moral 
 essence ? However, from the point of view of the 
 gospel, science and civilization were not even 
 accessory advantages : they were nothing, and 
 could be nothing, compared with the vision of 
 the kingdom. 
 
 Science and civilization on their side also have 
 justification for their existence apart from the 
 gospel, which is not destined to promote them, 
 and cannot take their place in so far as they are 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 85 
 
 actually useful and beneficial for humanity. The 
 independence of the gospel with regard to 
 matters of intelligence is only a theoretical hypo- 
 thesis. In historical reality, and among all those 
 who have believed, or who do believe, evangelical 
 faith is coloured by the relative ignorance or 
 knowledge of its adepts. 
 
 As to the moral revolution which it is held 
 Christ wished to bring about in the world, it 
 cannot be too often repeated that Jesus only 
 announced it in the kingdom about to come, and 
 that He did not represent it as a work of slow 
 progress. The Parables of the Workers in the 
 Vineyard and of the Talents, that are quoted to 
 show how the kingdom extends on the earth, 
 have not this allegorical significance; the first 
 means that the kingdom will be given to those 
 who come late to faith and the practice of well- 
 doing, as well as to those who have given all 
 their lives to duty ; the second signifies that the 
 kingdom will only belong to those whose life has 
 been productive of the fruits of virtue; the two 
 complete one another, but both alike presuppose 
 a kingdom that is to come, without assuming its 
 existence in the present life. 
 
 In fine, it is not precisely by the knowledge of 
 God that Christ looks to save mankind; speakin'^ 
 
86 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 to Jews, He supposes God to be already recog- 
 nized, and does not even pretend to make Him 
 known in a new aspect. The message of Jesus is 
 contained in the announcement of the approach- 
 ing kingdom, and the exhortation to penitence as 
 a means of sharing therein. All else, though it 
 is the common preoccupation of humanity, is as 
 though non-existent. 
 
 Whatever may have been the intrinsic worth and 
 moral efficacy of the hope of which Christ was the 
 interpreter, nothing was done, even at the time 
 when this hope was made manifest, to reconcile 
 it with all the realities to which it has since 
 accommodated itself. The work of adaptation 
 still continues, and Herr Harnack, following 
 many others, has set himself to toil at it. But 
 he is too ready to suppose that the agreement was 
 complete from the beginning, or at any rate that 
 he has only to take the gospel just as it is, to 
 apply it to all possible conditions of mankind. 
 As the gospel was appropriate to the very special 
 circumstances under which it saw the light, it has 
 first been necessary to detach it from its earliest 
 connections, which were not in the least with the 
 preoccupations of actual lif^ (the anxiety to 
 ameliorate human conditions in this world, social 
 and political law, and the progress of culture). 
 
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 87 
 
 but with a kind of violent and anarchic state far 
 outside any civilization then existing. The 
 gospel has not entered the world as an uncon- 
 ditioned absolute doctrine, summed up in a unique 
 and steadfast truth, but as a living faith, con- 
 crete and complex, whose evolution proceeds with- 
 out doubt from the internal force which has made 
 it enduring, but none the less has been, in every- 
 thing and from the beginning, influenced by the 
 surroundings wherein the faith was born and has 
 since developed. This faith took shape in the 
 idea of the reign of God. The conception of God 
 the Father is only one element, traditional in its 
 origin, like all the rest, and has its history, like 
 all the rest, in the general development of 
 Christianity. 
 
 ^ 
 
SECTION Til 
 THE SON OF GOD 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 Given a very limited conception of the kingdom 
 of heaven, an equally limited conception of the 
 mission of the Saviour is sure to correspond. The 
 Christ of Herr Harnack ^ not only differs as a 
 matter of fact from the Christ of tradition, but 
 also from any image that the historian can derive 
 from a criticism of the Gospels alone. Jesus, we 
 are told, is the Son of God in so far as He reveals 
 the Father, but the Father alone belongs to the 
 gospel ; Jesus believed Himself the Messiah, but 
 this Jewish conception is not otherwise bound up 
 with that of the Divine Sonship : " it was the 
 condition necessary for the recognition in the his- 
 tory of the Jewish religion of Him Who had 
 received the inward summons ; " ^ the expiatory 
 1 Pages 79-103. 2 Page 89. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 89 
 
 death of Jesus made Him the Lord, and whatever 
 is thought of the narratives of the resurrection, it 
 was in the tomb of Christ that indestructible 
 faith was born in the victory of man over death 
 and in an eternal life. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 " Jesus has explained very clearly in one of His 
 discourses how and why He called Himself the 
 Son of God. It is in Matthew and not in John 
 that the saying occurs — ' None knoweth the Son 
 save the Father, nor the Father save the Son, and 
 he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.' The 
 knowledge of God is the sphere of the Divine 
 Sonship. It is with this knowledge of God that 
 Jesus has learnt to regard the Holy Being Who 
 governs the heaven and the earth, as Father, as 
 His Father. This is why the consciousness He 
 had of being the Son of God is no more than 
 the practical consequence of His knowledge 
 that God was Father and His Father. Properly 
 understood, all that the name of Son implies 
 is a knowledge of God. But two points further 
 must be noted; Jesus is convinced that He 
 knows God as none before Him has known, and 
 He knows that His mission is to communicate 
 to all others, by His words and deeds, this 
 
THE SON OF GOD 91 
 
 knowledge of God, and in the same way His 
 Divine Sonship." ^ 
 
 All this edifice of argument, with its relation to 
 Herr Harnack's conception of the heavenly king- 
 dom which it is superfluous to point out, is 
 founded, in the final analysis, on a solitary text, 
 whose origin is carefully made prominent. It is 
 a passage in the synoptics, not in John, and to 
 be read not only in Matthew,^ but also in Luke.^ 
 But this text alone ought not to serve as the 
 basis for a historical examination of the idea to be 
 formed, from a study of the Gospels, of the mission 
 that Jesus attributed to Himself. It is not put 
 forward as an explanation of the Divine Sonship, 
 but as the expression of a permanent relation 
 between the Father and the Son. To say that 
 this relation constitutes, properly speaking, the 
 Divine Sonship of Jesus, is a deduction of the 
 theologian, not the expression of a doctrine or a 
 sentiment that Jesus Himself formulated. 
 
 More than one passage in the Gospels can be 
 found without difficulty, from which the con- 
 clusion is clear that the title. Son of God, was for 
 the Jews, the disciples, and for the Saviour Him- 
 self the equivalent of the Messiah. It is enough 
 
 1 Page 81. 2 Matt. xi. 25-30. 
 
 3 Luke X. 21-24. 
 
92 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 to recall the different versions of the confession of 
 Peter in the synoptic Gospels, and the question- 
 ing of Jesus by the High Priest. In Mark,^ Peter 
 says to the Saviour, **Thou art the Christ." In 
 Matthew,^ " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God." In Luke,» '' Thou art the Christ of 
 God." In the second Gospel* Caiaphas says to 
 Jesus, " Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the 
 Blessed ? " In the first Gospel,^ " I adjure Thee 
 by the living God to tell us if Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of God." In the third,^ the priests first 
 demand of Jesus if He is the Christ, and because 
 He does not reply clearly, they repeat the ques- 
 tion in the form, " Art Thou then the Son of 
 God ? " to which Jesus replies in the affirmative, 
 as in the other two synoptic Gospels. Whatever 
 mental or moral experience it may have been 
 which produced this consciousness of Divine Son- 
 ship, it is certain that all who heard Jesus, friends 
 or enemies, identified it with the consciousness of 
 being the Messiah, or the pretension to that posi- 
 tion. It is somewhat rash to-day to maintain 
 that the essentia] significance of the title of Son 
 of God was different for Christ Himself, and that 
 
 1 Mark viii. 29. 2 Matt. xvi. 16. 
 
 3 Luke ix. 20. * Mark xiv. 61. ^ Matt. xxvi. 63. 
 
 6 Luke xxii. 67-70. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 93 
 
 its real justification was the consciousness of God 
 as Father. 
 
 The text quoted, taken in its natural sense, has 
 a meaning quite different from that sought to be 
 extracted from it. It follows a prayer that Jesus 
 addresses to God as " Father, Lord of heaven and 
 earth ; " for in the mind of Christ the idea of 
 God the Father is necessarily bound up with 
 that of the sovereign Euler of the universe. The 
 Saviour adds that " all things are delivered unto 
 Him by His Father." Taken strictly, these 
 words only apply to the glorified Christ, and the 
 compiler of the first Gospel presently uses a 
 similar expression of the Saviour risen from the 
 dead.^ It is only by a forced construction that 
 Lhey can be limited to the things that Jesus has 
 learnt from the Father, the revelation that He 
 has been charged to bring to mankind. It is 
 maintained that the principal part of this rcA'ela- 
 tion is the consciousness that the Son has of a 
 good God. But the text was not intended to 
 support such a theory. Could it be said that the 
 Father, Who alone knoweth the Son, as the 
 Son alone knoweth the Father, had also received 
 a revelation from the Son of which He was to 
 be tlie interpreter, and was only the Father 
 1 Cf. Mcatt. xxviii. 18. 
 
94 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 through His knowledge of the Son ? Is there, 
 then, a religion of the Son that the Father must 
 teach, as the Son teaches that of the Father ? 
 Obviously the text indicates a transcendental 
 relationship, whence springs the lofty dignity of 
 Christ, and not a psychological reality, which in 
 regard to God is clearly impossible. Father and 
 Son are not here simply religious terms, but have 
 already become metaphysical theological expres- 
 sions, and dogmatic speculation has been able to 
 take possession of them, without much modifica- 
 tion of their sense. There is but one Father and 
 one Son, constituted in some way by the know- 
 ledge they have of one another, absolute entities 
 whose relationship is also absolute. The intention 
 of the passage is not so much to explain how 
 Jesus is the Son of God, as to give prominence 
 to the Christ, by identifying Him, as the Son, 
 with eternal wisdom that God alone knows 
 in its entirety, although it is revealed to man- 
 kind, while on its side the wisdom alone possesses 
 and represents the full knowledge of God, 
 although it reveals God to His creatures, 
 as far as they are capable of receiving the 
 revelation. The gospel saying, therefore, has 
 a totally different significance to that needed 
 for the theory that the Sonship of Jesus was 
 
THE SON OF GOD 95 
 
 acquired on the earth by His knowledge of the 
 Father. 
 
 On the other hand, for the historian, it proves 
 much less, because it is difficult to see in it the 
 literal and exact expression of a declaration made 
 by Christ to His disciples. It occurs in a kind 
 of psalm, where the influence of the prayer that 
 closes the Book of Ecclesiasticus ^ is evident both 
 in the general scope and in several details. Both 
 passages begin with the praise of God, and there 
 is in both a marked preference for the name of 
 Father : ^ the declaration concernincj the mutual 
 knowledge of the Father and the Son corresponds 
 to the praise of wisdom : the appeal of Christ 
 to the weary and heavy laden seems inspired by 
 the invitation that wisdom addresses to the ignorant 
 in the last part of the prayer of Ben-SiracK These 
 correspondences are not accidental, and seeing 
 that it is difficult to imagine that Jesus should 
 have wished to imitate a passage of Ecclesiasticus 
 in an oration or discourse apparently quite un- 
 premeditated ; seeing that the entire passage 
 possesses a rhythm distinctly analogous to that 
 of the canticles reproduced in the first chapters 
 
 1 Eccl. li. 
 
 2 Cf. Eccl. li. 10. Reading " the Lord my Father," and 
 not " the Lord, Father of my Lord." 
 
96 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 of Luke, and seeing that another passage can 
 be found in Matthew,^ where Christ appears to 
 be identified with Divine wisdom, it is fairly 
 probable that, notwithstanding its occurrence 
 in two Gospels, the portion including the text 
 cited by Herr Harnack is, at any rate in its 
 actual form, a product of the Christian tradition 
 of the earlier times. It is always a valuable 
 testimony, as far as concerns the conception of 
 Christ in the early age of the Church; but a 
 critic must use it with the greatest care, when it 
 is a question of establishing the idea Christ in 
 His teaching gave of Himself, His Divine Sonship, 
 and His mission. 
 
 Thus the text upon which Herr Harnack has 
 founded his theory of the Son of God is no more 
 certain in its interpretation, and favours his thesis 
 no more than does the one where he finds the 
 definition of the kingdom of God in the heart 
 of man. The gospel conception of the Son of God 
 is no more a psychological idea signifying a relation 
 of the soul with God than is the gospel concep- 
 tion of the kingdom. There is absolutely nothing 
 to prove it ; and even the text quoted does not 
 say that Jesus became the Son because He was 
 the first to know God as the Father. The compiler 
 1 Cf. Matt, xxiii. 34-36 ; Luke xi. 49-51. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 97 
 
 of the Gospel has not the least intention of 
 indicating that God was not known as the Father, 
 before the advent of Jesus : he wishes to say, 
 and says very clearly, that Christ (the Son) alone 
 knows perfectly God (the Father), and that because 
 He is the Son, just as the Father, God, alone 
 knows perfectly Christ His Son, and that because 
 He is the Father, because He is God. The thouii^ht 
 is fundamentally the same that inspires the 
 passage of John,^ "No man hath seen God at 
 any time ; the only begotten Son, which is in the 
 bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him/' 
 The special knowledge of the Son has for its 
 subject God as He is, and is not merely concerned 
 with the goodness of God, as though the hearers 
 of Jesus needed to be taught that God was 
 their Father. Such a thought is as foreign to the 
 evangelists as it would have been to the Saviour 
 Himself. It is an artificial and superficial 
 explanation of the Divine Sonship of Jesus. 
 
 The problem of the consciousness of the 
 Messiah must be solved by other means, and that 
 without keeping the idea of the Messiah in the 
 background. It is truly curious to see how 
 embarrassed certain Protestant theologians become 
 over this " Jewish " conception, which they would 
 1 John i. 18. 
 
 H 
 
98 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 willingly eliminate from the gospel and attribute 
 to apostolic tradition in order to shape themselves 
 a Christ after their own heart. Some have 
 already maintained that the Saviour did not 
 believe Himself the Messiah, and that the faith 
 of the disciples in the resurrection was the force 
 that gave Him that position in their minds and 
 for subsequent tradition. Herr Harnack does not 
 go so far. His Christ, the Son who reveals the 
 Divine Goodness, seems to assume the position 
 of Messiah as a kind of costume or disguise 
 suitable for dealing with the Jews ; but the con- 
 sciousness of being the Son of God preceded in 
 Him the consciousness of being the Messiah. 
 
 It would be well to see upon what historical 
 basis this theory rests, and if it is not a pure 
 hypothesis. Two questions must be distinguished 
 in it, of differing degrees of clearness, or rather of 
 obscurity ; the question as to what Jesus believed 
 Himself to be and declared that He was, and the 
 question of the mental processes which led Him 
 to His conclusion. For the first point a critical 
 discussion of the sources of the gospel should fur- 
 nish sufficiently definite indications for an answ^er ; 
 for the second, there is only room for conjecture, 
 on a basis of the knowledge discovered for the first. 
 
 It is not without some appearance of reason 
 
THE SON OF GOD 99 
 
 that the idea that Jesus regarded Himself as the 
 Messiah has been contested. Side by side with 
 the confused idea, frequently held both now and 
 formerly, of the kingdom of Heaven, there could 
 only be a conception equally vague of the 
 Messiah ; and just as the way out of the con- 
 tradictions involved in the idea of the king- 
 dom seemed to lie in the denial of all that was 
 least satisfying to the modern intelligence 
 (namely, its eschatological character), so to escape 
 from the difftculties preseuted by the conception 
 of the Messiah, it has been thought well to 
 suppress it, or at least subordinate it entirely to 
 the conception formed of the Son of God. 
 
 The gospel testimony, to say the truth, seems 
 sufficiently disconcerting. The preoccupation of 
 the narrators to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, 
 immediately rouses the critic to see if the point 
 of view of the evangelists conforms to the facts. 
 In many details an interest, either apologetic or 
 simply didactic, has influenced the narration of 
 discourses and occurrences ; but this natural 
 tendency would not fall under suspicion were 
 it not that the attitude the narratives attribute 
 to the Saviour seems at first sight inexplicable. 
 Jesus did not, in the course of His preaching, 
 announce Himself as the Messiah; He silenced 
 
loo THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 those possessed of devils who hailed Him as the 
 Son of God ; further, the populace never imagined 
 Him to have this mission ; they made Him the 
 subject of most extravagant hypotheses ^ without 
 suspecting the truth. The disciples alone held 
 Him for the Christ and finally declared their 
 faith through the mouth of Simon; but the 
 Master forbade them to speak of it to others, so 
 that we must look to the end of His career, 
 almost to His last day, to find the public avowal 
 of His dignity. It is true that, after the Confession 
 of Simon Peter, Jesus is said to have discoursed 
 to His disciples several times as to the fate that 
 awaited the Messiah ; but as the general scope 
 of His discourses is founded on the facts as they 
 actually occurred and on the subject of early 
 Christian preaching, and as they contain no 
 sentence definitely reported as the saying of the 
 Lord, such an assertion rather complicates the 
 difficulty than throws light on it. May it not 
 be that all that concerns Jesus as tlie Messiah 
 belongs to tradition, and that the reserve of the 
 Saviour, as narrated, was really an absolute 
 silence, much easier to imagine than the equi- 
 vocal situation described by the evangelists ? 
 The equivocal situation does not really exist, 
 1 Mark viii. 28. 
 
THE SON OF GOD loi 
 
 if it is once understood what the name of Messiah 
 signified to Jesus, as to His contemporaries. There 
 seems to be no doubt that the Saviour was con- 
 demned to death for having put forward preten- 
 sions to the throne of Israel, that is, to the position 
 of Messiah, since His claim had no political 
 meaning. But as far as can be determined from 
 the traditional recollections, even this point can 
 only be established by His avowal first before the 
 High Priest, and later before Pilate. Jesus did 
 not say openly in Jerusalem, any more than in 
 Galilee, that He was the Christ, the Son of God. 
 Only at Jerusalem He made evident the direc- 
 tion whither His doctrine tended, and the place 
 He claimed for Himself in the kingdom He 
 announced. Therefore He possessed the con- 
 sciousness of being the Messiah when He left 
 Galilee, and the confession of Peter, whose 
 historical truth there is no reason in any case 
 to suspect, comes to clear up the situation. The 
 conviction of the disciples was doubtless of 
 no long standing when it was expressed by 
 Simon ; but there is nothing to forbid the thought 
 that Jesus Himself, when He began to preach the 
 gospel, looked on Himself not only as the mes- 
 senger or prophet of the kingdom, but held Him- 
 self to be its principal agent and predestined head. 
 
I02 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 This is the key to the singularity of His attitude. 
 As the kingdom is essentially a thing of the 
 future, the office of Messiah is essentially eschato- 
 logical. Christ is the head of the society of the 
 elect. The ministry of Jesus was only the pre- 
 liminary to the kingdom of Heaven and the 
 fulfilment of the office of Messiah. In one sense 
 Jesus was the Messiah, in another sense He was 
 presently to become the Messiah. He was, in so 
 far as He was called personally to govern the 
 New Jerusalem ; He was not yet, since the New 
 Jerusalem had no existence and the power of the 
 Messiah no place in which to be exercised. 
 Jesus, tiien, had before Him the vision of His own 
 coming. The question of John the Baptist,^ " Art 
 thou He that should come ? " is thus easily under- 
 stood, as is also the reply of Jesus, its indirect 
 character and calculated reserve being due to no 
 modesty of the Saviour, but imposed on Him by 
 the actual conditions of the kingdom. John did 
 not say, " Art Thou the Christ ? " because the 
 kingdom was not realized, and Jesus was not 
 filling the place of the Messiah. He demands 
 rather if Jesus is not about to become the Christ, 
 and Jesus replies in a way to make him under- 
 stand, that He who prepares eflectively the coming 
 1 Matt. xi. 3. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 103 
 
 of the kingdom is He who must come to His 
 fulfilment with the kingdom. When Peter says, 
 "Thou art the Christ," he does not mean that 
 the Saviour is already exercising His power as 
 Messiah, but that He is the one designated for 
 that position. It is in this way that Caiaphas 
 understands the matter, and the discourse 
 addressed to him by Jesus only becomes intel- 
 ligible on this hypothesis. The Saviour avows 
 that He is the Christ ; but, to support His assertion, 
 He adds immediately, " And ye shall see the Son 
 of Man sitting on the right hand of power and 
 coming in the clouds of Heaven."^ This is 
 precisely the place of honour and the glorious 
 coming characteristic of the Messiah. Jesus 
 declares that He is the Son of Man who is to 
 
 come. 
 
 It is easy to understand why He did not wish 
 to avow Himself till the day of His death, and 
 the sense in which He makes His avowal is 
 evident. It was not for Him to declare Himself 
 earlier, not only because He would not have been 
 believed, or because He would have been at once 
 exposed to the vengeance of tlie authorities, but 
 because He could not, as His preaching was not 
 the duty of the Messiah, and His coming as the 
 1 Mark xiv. 62. 
 
I04 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Christ could not be till later, at the moment 
 decreed by Providence. It is easy to see, too, how 
 the apostolic Church should have come to teach 
 that Jesus became Christ and Lord by His 
 resurrection, that is, by His entry into heavenly 
 glory, and how it should at the same time await 
 His coming, that is. His appearance as the Christ, 
 and not His return, as His terrestrial ministry 
 was not then looked upon as the fulfilment of 
 the prophecy of the Messiah. 
 
 As to the origin of the conviction in the mind 
 of Jesus that He was the Messiah, it cannot be 
 deduced with certainty from the texts. The 
 oldest tradition seems to have explained or 
 symbolized it by a revelation made on the 
 occasion of the Baptism in the Jordan. The 
 tradition may have been an after-thought arising 
 from contemplation of the later history of Jesus, 
 although the Baptism was a definite point of 
 departure in His ministry. In any case, the dis- 
 tinction that is drawn between the consciousness 
 of Himself as the Son and as the Messiah is 
 absolutely without foundation. The earliest tradi- 
 tion had no suspicion of it; nor would modern 
 criticism have dreamed of it, had there been no 
 theological interests at stake. Truly the filial 
 sentiment that fills the inner life of Jesus is one 
 
THE SON OF GOD 105 
 
 thing, and the consciousness reflected from His 
 assigned position is another. It is not the 
 sentiment that makes Jesus the Son of God in 
 a sense that belongs to Him alone. All men who 
 say to God " Our Father," are sons of God by 
 the same right, and Jesus would be only one of 
 them, if it were merely a question of knowing 
 the Divine Goodness and trusting in it. The 
 critic may conjecture that in Jesus the filial 
 sentiment preceded and prepared the way for 
 the consciousness of being the Messiah, as His 
 soul was elevated by prayer, confidence and love 
 to the highest degree of union with God, till the 
 idea of His vocation as the Messiah came quite 
 naturally to crown the travail of His Spirit ; but 
 in so far as the title of Son of God belongs in 
 an exclusive sense to the Saviour, it is equivalent 
 to that of Messiah, and takes its meaning from 
 the rank of the Messiah ; it belongs to Jesus not 
 because of His inner disposition and His religious 
 experiences, but because of His Providential func- 
 tion as the sole maker of the kingdom of Heaven 
 It must be recognized also that the texts permit 
 no psychological analysis of the idea of the Son 
 of God. Jesus named Himself the Son of God to 
 the extent to wliich He avowed Himself the 
 Messiah. The historian must come therefore to 
 
io6 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the conclusion that He believed Himself the Son 
 of God, because He believed Himself to be the 
 Messiah. The idea of the Divine Sonship was 
 linked to that of the kingdom : it had no definite 
 signification, as far as Jesus was concerned, 
 except in regard to the kingdom about to be 
 established. Even for those who believe in the 
 Gospel, the dignity of children of God is not un- 
 related to the hope of the kingdom that the 
 Father has destined for them. How much more 
 when it is a question of the single ruler of the 
 kingdom ! He is the Son, -par excellence, not 
 because He has learnt to know the goodness of 
 the Father, and thus revealed it, but because He 
 alone is the vicar of God for the kingdom of 
 Heaven. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 To say therefore that the Father only and not 
 the Son belongs to the gospel of Jesus/ is to 
 define with little exactness the teaching of the 
 Saviour, and the relation between the conception 
 of Sonship and that of the kingdom. If the 
 gospel is only the revelation of Divine Goodness, 
 it is conceivable that the rank of the Revealer 
 might not be formally indicated in the gospel. 
 But as the good news (as the name gospel 
 implies, and the teaching of Jesus proves) is, 
 properly speaking, the announcement of the 
 great event, the Coming of the kingdom of 
 Heaven, the Son of God is the subject of the 
 gospel in so far as Christ belongs to the king- 
 dom, and it cannot be maintained that the 
 gospel conception of the kingdom is entirely 
 defined without the Christ. 
 
 The personality of John the Baptist remained 
 outside the kingdom he preached, because John 
 
 1 Page 91. 
 
io8 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 was only its prophet. The position of Jesus is 
 quite different. If He speaks but little of Him- 
 self in His preaching, it is because the only 
 direct object of His doctrine is the moral 
 preparation of those who wish to accept the 
 Divine promise, and also because He never 
 describes the bliss to come. None the less, 
 He assigns to Himself an essential part and a 
 unique place in the arrival and establishment of 
 the kingdom. What is the sign of the coming of 
 the Keign of God ? The Son of Man appearing 
 on the clouds. What is the place of Jesus in 
 the kingdom? The first; and His disciples 
 dispute the honour of occupying the seats that 
 shall be on His right hand and His left.^ There 
 is no question of a doctrine to be put forward 
 touching Himself and His office. Jesus, who 
 announced no dogmatic formula of the kingdom, 
 similarly announced none of Himself. ISTone the 
 less. He preached the kingdom, and, with the 
 kingdom, the Messiah. Those who believed in 
 His message, believed also in His mission, and 
 His grandeur was to be made manifest to them 
 with the promised kingdom. It was quite un- 
 necessary to put forward beforehand the theo- 
 retical definition of His dignity. No one reading 
 1 Mark x. 35-40. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 109 
 
 the gospel would doubt that Jesus demands only 
 faith in the goodness of God without any further 
 anxiety as to the future, or as to Himself. To 
 affirm that "he who holds Jesus for the Son of 
 God adds something to the gospel," ^ is not to put 
 forward a paradox, but simply to show an entire 
 misconception of the nature of Christ's teaching. 
 
 It is his own religion, not that of the gospel, 
 which Herr Harnack expounds and defends, 
 when he announces that " God and the soul, the 
 soul and its God, are the whole contents of the 
 gospel." ^ The historical gospel has none of this 
 mystic and individualistic character. The Pro- 
 testant theolof]jian must have a motive in forcingr 
 this form on it, or rather he has his faith, mor'd 
 powerful than any motive. The historian sees 
 no reason for this violent interpretation, nor 
 would he understand the tendency of an argument 
 deduced from the despairing hypothesis that in 
 the mind of Jesus His preaching was something 
 merely provisional, its meaning bound to be 
 changed after His death and resurrection, and a 
 part of it certain one day to be negligible and 
 held of no value. The hypothesis, as a matter of 
 fact, would have no significance for the historian ; 
 but it is not the historian who requires it. It is 
 * Page 92. 2 Page 90. 
 
no THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the theologian who may be tempted to make use 
 of it, and Herr Harnack only escapes the 
 necessity of such a conjecture by an argument 
 still less acceptable. The Christ of the gospel 
 did not divide His teaching into two parts, the 
 one comprising all that had an absolute value, 
 the other all that had only a relative value, fitted 
 to the present time. Jesus spoke in order to say 
 what He thought to be true, without the least 
 reofard to our categories of absolute and relative. 
 But who then has distinguished in the concep- 
 tion of the kingdom the idea of an inner king- 
 dom which is to have an absolute value, and the 
 idea of a kingdom that is to come whose value is 
 to be held only relative ? Who has found in the 
 Filial consciousness of Christ an element of 
 universal scope, namely, the knowledge of God the 
 Father, and a Jewish element of which the sole 
 advantage was to define Jesus in history, namely, 
 the idea of the Messiah ? From a historical point 
 of view it would be a gratuitous hypothesis to 
 attribute to Jesus a foreknowledge of the modi- 
 fications His doctrine must endure in the course 
 of centuries after the apostolic age ; but it is far 
 more arbitrary to limit this doctrine, in spite of 
 the gospel, to a single point which is nowhere 
 formally inculcated, and is not the gospel, as 
 
THE SON OF GOD m 
 
 though this solitary point represented all that 
 Jesus thought, desired and did. 
 
 To say that individuals shall hear the good 
 news of the Divine Mercy and Fatherhood, and 
 decide if they will take sides with God or with 
 the world, is not to give a summary of the gospel, 
 but simply to change its object, seeing that Jesus, 
 as a matter of fact, promised the heavenly king- 
 dom to the repentant sinner, and left it to His 
 hearers to receive or reject this hope. He who 
 wishes to decide historically the thoughts of the 
 Saviour has not first to discover what can suit 
 the mind of the man of to-day, or what can 
 be held to be unchanged, but must take the texts 
 and interpret them according to their natural 
 meaning and the guarantees of authenticity they 
 present. Further, it misleads the reader to give 
 the impression that the idea of God the Father is 
 entirely identical for the modern theologian and 
 for the compilers of the gospel and that nothing 
 in the teaching of Jesus can have been truthfully 
 reported, except that which has not changed its 
 meaning. Seeing that from the beginning all 
 the mass of Christian conceptions have been 
 constantly changing, it is neither possible nor 
 is it true that this one idea of God the Father 
 should have stood unshaken and should be the 
 
112 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 absolute kernel of the gospel teaching. Every 
 development of the idea of God has exercised and 
 will exercise an influence on the way of repre- 
 senting His Fatherhood. 
 
 There is nothing gained by employing tradi- 
 tional formulas, "the Way which leads to the 
 Father, the Judge established by the Father," ^ if 
 they are emptied of their meaning. If it is 
 desired to prove that Jesus is the Way, because 
 He brings the knowledge of God to men and 
 helps them to find the Father, it must be said 
 that this is not the characteristic feature of the 
 Saviour's mission, which may have been a 
 mission of teaching in its outlook on the present, 
 but was a different thing in its outlook on the 
 future, and at bottom, in its logical and Providen- 
 tial unity, was that of the Introducer and Chief 
 of the kingdom. Again, if the part played by 
 Christ as Judge is understood in the sense that 
 His preaching is the " critical sign '' of His office 
 because it "gives happiness and judges at the 
 same time," ^ then that which in the gospel is 
 a concrete and objective hope is turned into 
 a purely moral and abstract conception. It 
 may be well to say that Jesus was " the personal 
 realization of the gospel," ^ but if by that saying 
 1 Page 91. 2 Page 92. 3 Page 91. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 113 
 
 it is understood that Jesus realized the perfect 
 knowledge of the good God, then is His mission 
 arbitrarily defined, and there is no exit from 
 the same circle of systematic theology. There 
 seems to be a desire to limit, at any cost, the 
 office of Christ, which is universal in action as 
 well as in thought, and is both objective and 
 eschatological, to the measure of an individual 
 initiative for the communication of a truth per- 
 ceived in the soul, and producing all its beneficial 
 effect to-day. 
 
 It is perfectly true that the gospel contains 
 no theoretical doctrine, but it is impossible to 
 say that its only dogma is the truth of God the 
 Father.^ Many other things are taught in the 
 gospel as explicitly and as surely as the Father- 
 hood of God, and first of all is taught the reality 
 of the kingdom that is to come, the certainty of 
 the gospel message concerning it, and the mission 
 of Him who announces it. Faith in the goodness 
 of God is not conceived apart from faith in His 
 promise, in the kingdom, and in Christ, the maker 
 of the kingdom. The question of Christology 
 is in no way to be confounded with the question 
 of faith in Christ. If Jesus did not teach the 
 Christological doctrine, it does not follow that His 
 
 1 Page 92. 
 
 I 
 
114 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 preaching and the faith it inspired had no relation 
 to faith in Himself. As He did not call Himself 
 the Messiah, and only announced the kingdom 
 that was to come, Jesus asked no other faith in 
 His mission than faith in His message, the 
 promise of the kingdom ; but it was none the less 
 certain that, at the fulfilment of the great event, 
 all the elect would salute the Saviour with the 
 salutation of the Messiah. " Blessed is He that 
 cometh in the name of the Lord." ^ 
 
 The entire gospel is bound up with a con- 
 ception of the world and of history that is no 
 longer ours, but it is the whole gospel and not 
 only its imagined essence, which is not " insepar- 
 ably " ^ bound. The proof of this assertion is to 
 be sought in the facts, not in abstract possibility : 
 since the gospel has little by little detached 
 itself from its original form, it is permissible to 
 assert that the form was temporary, and that the 
 gospel is not inseparably connected with the con- 
 ceptions of which the form bore the trace. For 
 the rest, it cannot be said that faith in God the 
 Father, any more than hope in the reign of justice, 
 is "without an epoch, like man."^ Man is not 
 without an epoch, he is of all epochs, and changes 
 with them. The gospel was not addressed to 
 » Cf. Matt, xxiii. 39. 2 Page 94. » Page 94. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 115 
 
 abstract man, without an epoch, unchangeable, 
 who never existed save in the mind of theorizers, 
 but to real men who followed one another in time, 
 and to them it could not fail to accommodate itself. 
 The saying of the goodness of God, Who provides 
 for men as He provides for sparrows, is no more 
 susceptible to-day of a literal interpretation than 
 the saying which promised to the generation con- 
 temporary with Jesus the spectacle of the great 
 coming of the kingdom. Is it even so easy 
 to-day to represent God pardoning the sinner in 
 the way of the Father who welcomed the Prodigal 
 Son ? Have we not, for all our similar spirit of 
 confidence, a somewhat different conception of 
 Providence, Its mode of action and Its goodness ? 
 It is a pitiful philosopliy that attempts to fix 
 the absolute in any scrap of human activity, 
 intellectual or moral. The full life of the gospel 
 is not in a solitary element of the doctrine of 
 Jesus, but in the totality of its manifestation, 
 which starts from the personal ministry of Christ, 
 and its development in the history of Christianity.i 
 All that has entered into the gospel of Jesus 
 has entered into Christian tradition. The truly 
 evangelical part of Christianity to-day, is not thai 
 which has never changed, for, in a sense, all has 
 changed and has never ceased to change, but 
 
ii6 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 that which in spite of all external changes pro- 
 ceeds from the impulse given by Christ, and is 
 inspired by His Spirit, serves the same ideal and 
 the same hope. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 If the essence of the gospel and of the conscious- 
 ness of Divine Sonship is set in the knowledge 
 of God the Father, the idea of the kingdom and 
 the consciousness Jesus had of Himself as the 
 Messiah, appear not only as accessories of purely 
 relative value, but as sheer illusions, a debt, as 
 it were, paid by the Saviour to the prejudices of 
 His time. Understood in this way, the personal 
 work of Christ appears as a fine transport of un- 
 reflecting enthusiasm, prevented from falling into 
 fanaticism by an element of pure religion, but not 
 losing thereby any of its chimerical character. 
 
 It is vain for Herr Harnack to begin by setting 
 Jesus above Socrates.^ If the hope that centred 
 in the Messiah was inconsistent and false, then the 
 philosopher, dying in the cause of Eeason, was wiser 
 than Christ, dying in the cause of Faith. For he 
 simply accepted his destiny without promising 
 himself in the future a compensation which he 
 
 1 Pase 1. 
 
ii8 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 would have failed to realize. It is in this way that 
 theological rationalism, instead of explaining the 
 gospel, comes to mutilate it, and under the pre- 
 text of safeguarding the grandeur of Jesus, lowers 
 Him beneath, not only Socrates, but every man 
 endowed with common sense. The gospel and 
 the Christ are, as it were, separated into two 
 elements : a moral sentiment that is gladly hailed 
 as admirable, and a dream that one dare not call 
 ridiculous. With a more penetrating criticism and 
 a wider philosophy, these two elements would be 
 found in no way heterogeneous ; it would be found 
 that, if tradition has never separated them, it is 
 because they are inseparable, and that the religion 
 of the heart and the hope of the kingdom are 
 not respectively the reality and the fantasy of 
 Christianity, but together make up the religion of 
 Jesus. 
 
 According to the logic of Faith, if the idea of 
 the kingdom is real, the gospel is Divine, and God 
 Himself is revealed in Jesus. According to the 
 logic of Eeason, if the idea of the kingdom is 
 inconsistent with fact, the gospel as a Divine reve- 
 lation falls to the ground, Jesus is no more than a 
 pious man, who could not separate His piety from 
 His dreams, and died the victim of error rather 
 than the servant of the truth that was in Him. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 119 
 
 For Jesus suffered on the cross because He avowed 
 Himself, and believed Himself to be, the Messiah ; 
 not because He knew the goodness of the Heavenly- 
 Father, nor because He wished to demonstrate it 
 by His death. He died because such was the will 
 of the Father, and because His death seemed to 
 Him the providential condition of the definite 
 fulfilment of the kingdom He had preached. He 
 applied to Himself the lesson He gave to His 
 disciples — " He that saveth his life in this world 
 shall lose it for eternity ; whosoever shall lose his 
 life for My sake and the Gospel, the same shall 
 save it for the kingdom of Heaven." ^ On the eve 
 of the Passion, He presented to His disciples the 
 bread and the wine of the Eucharist, as a symbol 
 of the death He was about to endure, and at the 
 same time as a pledge of the Communion which 
 should reunite His disciples and Himself in the 
 kingdom that was to be. He therefore died as 
 the Messiah, filled with the idea of thi^ kingdom, 
 whose fulfilment He thought to ensure, the 
 kingdom where He trusted to live again in the 
 full glory of the Messiah. Such is the Christ 
 of history, and the true measure of His greatness 
 is to be sought in nothing but in what He believed 
 and desired to be. 
 
 1 Cf. Mark viii. 35. 
 
I20 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Jesus, on the earth, was the great representative 
 of faith. Now, the religious faith of humanity 
 always has been and always will be supported by 
 symbols more or less imperfect: its aspirations, 
 which have infinity as their object, can only 
 become definite in human thought in a finite form. 
 The concrete symbol, the living image, not the 
 pure idea, is the normal expression of faith, and 
 the condition of its moral efficacy in man and in 
 the world. The choice and the quality of the 
 symbols are necessarily related to the stage of 
 evolution of faith and of religion. The conceptions 
 of the kingdom and of the Messiah are not merely 
 the features that made it possible for Christianity 
 to come forward beside Judaism, they are the neces- 
 f-ary form in which Christianity had to be born in 
 Judaism before spreading out into the world. 
 
 Nothing could make Jesus other than a Jew. 
 He was only man under condition of belonging to 
 one branch of humanity. In that in which he 
 was born, the branch that may well be said to 
 have carried in it the religious future of the 
 world, this future was known in quite a precise 
 manner, by the hope of the reign of God, by the 
 symbol of the Messiah. He who was to be the 
 Saviour of the world could only enter on his office 
 by assuming the position of Messiah, and by 
 
^ ^ O*- THE 
 
 ThE SON OF GOD 121 
 
 presenting Himself as the founder of the kingdom 
 come to accomplish the hope of Israel. The 
 Gospel, appearing in Judsea and unable to appear 
 elsewhere, was bound to be conditioned by 
 Judaism. Its Jewish exterior is the human body, 
 whose Divine Soul is the spirit of Jesus. But 
 take away the body, and tlie soul will vanish in 
 the air like the lightest breath. Without the idea 
 of the Messiah, the gospel would have been but a 
 metaphysical possibility, an invisible, intangible 
 essence, even unintelligible, for want of a definition 
 appropriate to the means of knowledge, not a 
 living and conquering reality. The gospel will 
 always need a body to be human. Having become 
 the hope of Christian people, it has corrected in 
 tlie interpretation certain parts of its Israelitish 
 symbolism. None the less, it remains the shadowy 
 representation of the great mystery, God and the 
 providential destiny of man and of humanity, 
 because it is a representation always striving after 
 perfection, inadequate and insufficient. 
 
 This is the mystery that Jesus revealed, as far 
 as it could be revealed, and under the conditions 
 which made revelation possible. It may be said 
 that Christ lived it as much as He made it 
 manifest. If He had only had in view the 
 propagation of a doctrine, the organization of au 
 
122 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 earthly society, or even the foundation of a par- 
 ticular religion, Christ must have been judged not 
 only less wise than Socrates, but much less able 
 than Mahomet. He sought no such object, and 
 it was for no deceiving dream that he turned aside 
 from it. His dream was His project, the realiza- 
 tion of perfect happiness in perfect justice, of im- 
 mortality in holiness. This realization was already 
 complete in Him, by His union with God, His 
 faith in the Heavenly Father, the inner certainty 
 of the eternal future guaranteed to humanity in 
 His person and by His agency. The historian, as 
 such, cannot appreciate the objective value of this 
 persuasion : the Christian will not doubt it, and, 
 beyond any question, no one is Christian who does 
 not admit it. 
 
 It may appear to some minds, in which the 
 habits of abstraction and of reasoning have over- 
 grown the sense of vital things, that the hope of 
 the kingdom was too common, too imaginative, too 
 little in accord with actual occurrence, to be 
 worthy of the Saviour. Have we not already 
 seen learned Catholics insinuate, if not openly 
 profess, that the earliest Christians may have lent 
 their Divine Master their own apocalyptic illusion, 
 as though the Parousia, the advent of Christ in 
 glory, were not the essential element of belief 
 
THE SON OF GOD 123 
 
 in the Messiah, and as if the appearance as 
 Messiah were not the only historical definition of 
 the position of Jesus ? It would be impossible to 
 show a more paltry appreciation of a fact that 
 presents itself to the historian as the greatest 
 manifestation of faith ever displayed on the earth. 
 Jesus died confident in the future of His work 
 and in His own approaching triumpli. His con- 
 fidence came, not from an effort to conceal His 
 present failure, or to overcome the terrors of 
 death, but from the same feeling that rendered 
 Him unable to suppose that the Divine life in 
 Him could vanish with His last breath, or that 
 the kingdom could fall with Him or He Himself 
 be lost to the kingdom. IN'o ! the Messiah would 
 live and the kingdom would come. It is because 
 of preconceptions foreign to healthy philosophy, 
 and to knowledge of men and of history, that men 
 search in the gospel and in the thoughts of Christ 
 for the abstract definition they judge the best 
 to characterize Himself or His mission, or that 
 they are scandalized not to find in His discourses 
 the exact prevision of the future reserved for 
 Christianity. Jesus has not considered or repre- 
 sented its future under the aspects which, ac- 
 cording to the law of humanity, only accompany a 
 knowledge of the past. As far as the critic can 
 
124 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 judge from the clearest and most authenticated 
 documents of gospel history, Christ contem- 
 plated and announced the future in terms of 
 the only kinds of belief suitable for such a 
 purpose ; He saw it and described it under the 
 traditional symbol of Israelitish hope that He 
 had taken possession of; it appeared to Him like 
 a ray of light, as a single infinitely comprehensive 
 conception, the complete and final advent of the 
 reign of God. From a really logical point of view, 
 no symbol can be conceived, better adapted to the 
 conditions of His ministry and the success of His 
 message. The idea of the kingdom of the Mes- 
 siah was the sole living form, in which he could 
 conceive, could represent to other?, and make 
 sure to Himself, the future of faithful humanity, 
 taking root in the present. 
 
 In the gospel, then, the hope of the kingdom 
 was a simple idea, or rather, bearing in mind the 
 faith that it inspired, a simple reality. To the 
 Christian historian it now appears as the concrete, 
 rudimentary, indistinct symbol of subsequent 
 events ; namely, faith in the resurrection of 
 Christ, in His invisible and constant presimce 
 among His own people, in His Eternal Glory ; 
 the indefinite progress of the Gospel in the 
 world; the regeneration of human kind by 
 
THE SON OF GOD 125 
 
 Christianity, and the anticipation of the kingdom 
 of Heaven in the Church. From the point of 
 view of faith, it was the certain presentiment of 
 what is seen to-day and also of what is not seen, 
 since the aspect presented by the reign of God, 
 contemplated as eternal, the way in which, 
 behind the curtain of this world, the accounts 
 of the Divine justice and the Divine goodness are 
 regulated, escape our experience. Let it never be 
 said that Jesus only expected the reward of His 
 hope, and that its fulness was never awarded to 
 Him! For the faith. He is King and God to 
 all eternity. As far as we can penetrate the 
 economy of things in this world, Jesus lives in 
 humanity to an extent and in a way never ex- 
 perienced by any other human being. He, the 
 Divine Liberator, has proceeded to God by the 
 path of sorrow and death, sure that He was 
 not deceived, whatever were the conditions it 
 pleased the Father to assign to the accomplish- 
 ment of the work for wliich His earthly life was 
 sacrificed. K His hope has only been actually 
 realized before the eyes of faith, the philosopliical 
 historian will not hesitate to find even that an 
 astonishingly true fulfilment, when he notes the 
 results the hope has achieved and its inexhaust- 
 ible fruitfulness. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 The place occupied in the teaching of Saint Paul 
 by the death and resurrection of Christ is well 
 known : they constitute for the apostle a veri- 
 table Gospel of Salvation, because they have 
 brought the kingdom of God, by obtaining for 
 Jesus the glory of the Messiah, and through Jesus 
 for them that believe, the spirit of God in the 
 Communion with the glorified Christ. Herr 
 Harnack writes : ^ " We may take it as certain 
 that the Apostle Paul was not the first to seize 
 upon the ideas of the death and of the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, but that he ranked himself with 
 the early community in attaching supreme value 
 to both." There may be something equivocal in 
 this statement. The early community knew full 
 well that Christ had died on the cross, and they 
 believed, before Paul, that he had risen from the 
 dead ; but this death and resurrection might well 
 give rise to different conceptions that must not 
 
 » Page 97. 
 
THE SON OF GOD ^V 
 
 be attributed without distinction to the early 
 believers or to Jesus Himself and to the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles. The passage from the Epistle to 
 the Corinthians/ " For I delivered unto you that 
 which I also received, how that Christ died 
 for our sins 2 ... and that He rose again the 
 third day "—by no means makes it certain that 
 the idea of the Atonement by death existed from 
 the beginning with the distinctness that the 
 teaching of Paul conferred on it, or that it con- 
 tributed to lay the foundations of Christology to 
 the same extent as the idea of the resurrection. 
 
 As far as can be determined from witnesses who 
 have all come more or less under the influence 
 of the Pauline theology, it was the resurrection 
 alone that made Jesus the Christ and established 
 Him on His throne of glory ; the death was only 
 the Providential condition of the resurrection, 
 willed by God and accepted by Jesus. Too much 
 insistence must not be laid on the fact that the 
 death of Christ put an end to blood sacrifices,^ for 
 the idea of an atoning death did not contribute 
 alone or principally to this result. The Jews 
 
 1 1 Cor. XV. 3, 4. 
 
 2 St. Paul says "according to the Scriptures," a foct 
 showing that the historical character of the tradition he 
 alludes to must not be exaggerated. 
 
 3 Page 99. 
 
128 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 only offered up sacrifices at Jerusalem, and the 
 disciples of the gospel would not have dreamed 
 of sacrificing elsewhere ; their separation from the 
 Jews and the destruction of the Temple have 
 had a sequel for them that has also affected the 
 Israelites. It may be thought that the moral 
 idea underlying sacrifice ought finally to eliminate 
 the reality; but the logic of facts brought about 
 the consummation rather than the logic of ideas, 
 and it is not strictly true to say that the moral 
 idea replaced the reality. Also it is playing a 
 little on the double sense of the word " sacrifice " 
 to speak in this connection of the law which 
 demands that progress shall be bought for 
 humanity by the suffering and often by the death 
 of those who contribute to advancement most 
 effectively.^ Between the man who dies, the victim 
 of his destiny, or rather of the resistance opposed 
 by the force of inertia to the force of progress, 
 and the lamb, the goat, or even the human being 
 immolated to a Divinity to win His favour, there 
 is only the analogy that explains the use of the 
 same word, but should not be able to deceive the 
 historian. 
 
 As for the idea, that as evil and sin require 
 punishment, there is in the suffering of the just 
 1 Page 100. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 129 
 
 a purifying expiation, it comes as an intermediary 
 between the material notion of sacrifice and the 
 purely spiritual conception, related to the first 
 by the idea of expiatory satisfaction and to the 
 second by the moral element it contains ; it is a 
 symbolic conception which should not be forcibly 
 translated into the expression of an absolute 
 indestructible truth, vivid in the conscience of 
 mankind in this particular form. This mixed 
 conception is to be found in Isaiah ; there is no 
 other proof that it belongs to the teaching of 
 Jesus, and to the faith of the first community. 
 The passage in Mark,^ where it is said that Christ 
 came " to give His life a ransom for many," was 
 in all probability influenced by the theology of 
 Paul, and as much may be said of the narratives 
 of the Last Supper. 
 
 According to the early text of St. Luke,^ Jesus 
 presents the cup and the bread to His disciples, 
 in view of His imminent death, and His future 
 reunion with His own in the kingdom of God, 
 but without bringing out the expiatory cha- 
 racter and redeeming intention of His death. 
 
 1 Mark x. 45. 
 
 2 Luke xxii. 18, 19, to the words "This is my body." 
 The rest of 19 and 20 luive been taken from 1 Cor. (xi. 
 24, 25), and seem to be an addition to the narrative. 
 
 E 
 
I30 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The narrative of Mark seems founded on a 
 statement very like that of Luke, and all that 
 is said of the " blood of the new testament " 
 must have been added after the teaching of 
 Paul ; " And He took the cup, and when He 
 had given thanks, He gave it to them : and 
 they all drank of it. And He said unto them, 
 This is My blood of the new testament, which is 
 shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will 
 drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that 
 day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God." •^ 
 The time to say " This is my blood," was not after 
 the disciples had drunk, as Matthew saw, for he 
 associates these words with the presentation of 
 the cup.^ But the compiler of the second Gospel 
 did not wish to upset the arrangement of the early 
 narrative, and contented himself with associating 
 with the words said after the passing of the cup 
 those that, according to St. Paul,^ were s^^oken 
 before. 
 
 The earliest believers corrected the brutal fact of 
 the death by the glory of the resurrection. Paul 
 discovered in the death a meaning and an efficacy 
 able to act independently of the resurrection, 
 thouoh co-ordinated with it. But if Jesus was 
 
 •^O"" 
 
 1 Mark xiv. 23-25. 2 Matt. xxvi. 28, 29. 
 
 3 1 Cor. xi. 25. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 131 
 
 proclaimed Christ and Lord by the first disciples, 
 it was not because of His death, but because of 
 His resurrection, which displayed Him in the 
 glory of the Messiah. 
 
 It must be granted to Herr Harnack ^ that the 
 "message of Easter" and "the faith of Easter" 
 are distinct things, althougli it is not easy to 
 follow him in finding the distinction in the 
 Gospels. The message of Easter (that is to say, 
 the discovery of the empty tomb and the appear- 
 ances of Jesus to His disciples, so far as these 
 facts are taken for physical proofs of the resurrec- 
 tion) is not an irrefutable argument from which 
 the historian can conclude with entire certainty 
 that the Saviour rose in the body from the dead. 
 The case is not one that can supply complete 
 proof Christ risen from the dead does not 
 belong to the order of the present life, which is 
 that of sensible experience, and consequently the 
 resurrection is not a fact that can have been 
 directly and formally established. The cure of 
 the sick can be verified ; even the return of a dead 
 man to natural life would be susceptible of proof 
 were it to occur ; but the entry of a dead man 
 into immortal life escapes our powers of observa- 
 tion. The empty tomb is only an indirect 
 
 1 Pai-e 101. 
 
132 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 argument and not decisive, since the only estab- 
 lished fact, the disappearance of the body, can be 
 explained in other ways than by the resurrection. 
 The appearances are a direct argument, but one 
 uncertain in its significance. Before any exami- 
 nation of the narratives, it is a natural thought 
 that sensory impressions are not an adequate 
 testimony to a purely supernatural reality. Jesus 
 after His resurrection appeared and disappeared in 
 the manner of a spirit ; during the time of His 
 appearance. He was visible, palpable, and could 
 be regarded as a man in a normal state. Can this 
 mixture of qualities inspire entire confidence in 
 the historian who approaches the question without 
 previous faith ? Obviously not. The historian 
 will reserve his conviction, because the objective 
 reality of the appearances is not defined for him 
 with sufficient precision. The critical examina- 
 tion of the narratives will confirm him in his 
 doubt, because it will be impossible for him to 
 reconstitute with sufficient certainty, according to 
 the Gospels and Saint Paul, the series of appari- 
 tions, in sequence, with the circumstances under 
 which they occurred. The fact of some appear- 
 ances will seem to him incontestable, but he will 
 be unable to decide their nature and extent with 
 precision. Looked at independently of the belief 
 
THE SON OF GOD 133 
 
 of the apostles, the witness of the New Testament 
 only supplies a limited probability, hardly pro- 
 portionate to the extraordinary importance of the 
 fact attested. But is it not inevitable that every 
 natural proof of a supernatural occurrence should 
 be incomplete and defective ? 
 
 The faith of the apostles is not the message of 
 Easter : it comes direct from the ever-livinsr 
 Christ, and hails Him as such. Compared with 
 this faith, the imaginative representation or theo- 
 retical conception of the resurrection, and the 
 character of the appearances, are secondary 
 matters. However, the faith is not independent 
 of the message. Whatever criticism may think of 
 the difficulties and divergences that the narratives 
 present concerning the Saviour's resurrection, it is 
 beyond question that tlie faith of the apostles was 
 stimulated by the apparitions that followed the 
 death of Jesus, and that the apostles, even St. 
 Paul, had no conception of an immortality dis- 
 tinct from bodily resurrection. The message of 
 Easter and the faith of Easter have for them the 
 same object and the same significance. " The 
 history of Thomas is related solely to show that 
 he ought to have had the faith of Easter, even 
 without the message ; " ^ but in this narrative the 
 
 * hoc. cit. 
 
134 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 object of the message constitutes precisely the 
 faith ; he ought to have believed that Christ was 
 risen, in the sense of the message, witliout having 
 seen the apparition. The same thing applies to 
 the disciples at Emmaus ; " they were blamed in 
 that faith in the resurrection was wanting, 
 although they had not yet received the message 
 of Easter ; " ^ but it is simply left to be understood, 
 that if they had been apprehensive, the Scriptures 
 would have taught them what the message 
 announced, namely, that the Christ must rise 
 from the dead on the third day after His death. 
 
 The distinction between the message and the 
 faith can then be founded on fact, without beiuij 
 founded on the gospel. A fundamental element 
 in the faith, namely, the belief in the living 
 Christ, which is the substance of the faith, can be 
 distinguished from its form, which resembles the 
 object of the message. There is no space 
 here to discuss whether or no the form is essential 
 to the preservation of the essence. Herr Har- 
 nack desires to keep the essence and not the 
 form, the faith without its proof, which he judges 
 obsolete. Perhaps he is mistaken in taking 
 for a mere proof that which in the apostolic 
 writings is above all an expression of faith. 
 * hoc. cit. 
 
THE SON OF GOD 135 
 
 Understood in this way the Easter message 
 remains the main testimony of the faith, and the 
 distinction between the faith and the message 
 has only a theoretical significance of no trreat 
 importance in religion. It is a mistake to 
 oppose the faith, as an absolute thing, to the 
 message and call the message relative : the faith 
 has lived, and still lives, in the message, which is 
 even its reality, in so far as it is an attempt to 
 communicate the faith. 
 
 There is some exaggeration in dismissing Plato, 
 the religion of the Persians, and the beliefs of 
 Judaism after the exile, as though they had in no 
 way aided in creating the certainty of eternal life, 
 and as though this certainty came once and for 
 all from faith in the resurrection of Christ.^ The 
 religious evolution of Judaism, in the time that 
 immediately preceded the Christian era, con- 
 tributed not a little to prepare the soil in which 
 such a belief could take root. Jesus Himself 
 found among the Jews a belief in the resurrection 
 of the dead, and He spoke conformably to this 
 belief. The idea of His personal resurrection pre- 
 supposes the acceptance of the idea of a general 
 resurrection. It cannot be questioned that faith 
 in the resurrection of Christ gave a decisive 
 1 Pa-e 102. 
 
136 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 impulse to later belief; but it is not for the 
 historian to contest the relation of this faith to 
 the belief that preceded it. 
 
 Nor can it be truly said that to-day faith 
 in the eternally living Christ is the sole sup- 
 port of belief in immortality. It is one thing 
 to say that humanity never gained this faith from 
 philosophic speculations, and quite another to say 
 that it derives it solely from the life and death of 
 Christ, for ever one with God. The impression 
 of the life and death of Jesus would be nothing 
 on a humanity that had not in it the desire, more 
 or less conscious, of all that Jesus brings to it, 
 and did not already await what He promises. It 
 is too easy to assert that the disciples, having 
 conversed with the Saviour, knew well how 
 intense a life He inspired, and therefore could be 
 but temporarily shaken by His death. Even 
 admitting this hypothesis, men who had not been 
 familiarized with the idea of eternal life, as it 
 was presented in the doctrine of the kingdom of 
 Heaven, would have been ill prepared to believe 
 that their Master had risen from the dead. Add 
 that the moral vitality that radiated from Jesus 
 and immortality are two quite distinct forms of 
 life, however intertwined, and that the fishermen 
 of Galilee would have had some difficulty in 
 
THE SON OF GOD 137 
 
 deducing the one from the other, had they come 
 to the question quite unaided. 
 
 In this absolute thesis of Herr Harnack as in 
 his conception of the kingdom of Heaven, his 
 tendency is evident, to concentrate religion into a 
 single point where the realization of the perfect is 
 to be seen : this solitary point in this case would 
 be the eternal life acquired now by union with 
 the good God. Jesus is to be regarded as the 
 sole herald of this unique revelation, which 
 remains unchangeable in this pure form, with 
 nothing before it to prepare the way, and itself 
 unchanged through the centuries that follow. In 
 place of the supernatural, which he abandons 
 instead of explaining the idea at the back of it, 
 the learned theologian introduces something 
 equally inconsistent, a kind of revelation, human 
 and absolute, sudden and unchangeable, which is 
 held to have been produced in the consciousness 
 of Jesus, but is unknown to the gospel. 
 
 It is not in this way that Christianity made 
 its entry into the world. If it was not (and it 
 was far from being) the chance product of a com- 
 bination of heterogeneous beliefs, from Chaldea, 
 Egypt, India, Persia, and Greece : if it was born 
 of the incomparable word and action of Jesus, it 
 is none the less true that Jesus gathered up and 
 
138 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 vivified the best of the religious wealth amassed 
 by Israel before Him, and that He transmitted 
 this wealth not as a simple deposit that the faith- 
 ful of all time had but to guard, but as a living 
 faith in the form of a collection of beliefs, which 
 had to live and grow after Him, even as they 
 had grown and lived before, by the preponderating 
 influence of the spirit that animated them. By 
 isolating Him in history, Herr Harnack makes 
 his Christ no greater, but only less intelligible 
 and less real.^ 
 
 1 Cf. E. Caird, art. cit, p. 6. 
 
SECTION IV 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Once the essence of Christianity has been re- 
 stricted to faith in God the Father, almost every- 
 thing that constitutes or has constituted historical 
 Christianity becomes necessarily secondary, or 
 adventitious, contrary, and foreign to this pure 
 essence. The whole development of the Church, 
 hierarchic, dogmatic, and ritual, is thus placed 
 outside true Christianity and presented as a pro- 
 gressive abasement of religion. It is the Protes- 
 tant and anticatholic idea pushed to its extreme 
 limit. But if the foundation of this system of 
 belief, the determination of the essence of Chris- 
 tianity, has been fixed in despite of history, it is 
 possible that the edifice it supports is no more 
 solid than the foundation, and that the considera- 
 tion of Christian development justifies the same 
 criticism as the consideration of the Gospel. Yov 
 
I40 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the historian, everything by which the gospel 
 continues to live is Christian, and the criterion 
 for judging of this quality cannot be an abstract 
 essence, defined to suit the principles of a par- 
 ticular theology rather than to harmonize with 
 the facta. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 The society imagined by Christ, says Herr 
 Harnack, was something invisible and heavenly, 
 because it concerned the inner life of man. 
 Evangelical Christianity was as a soul without a 
 body.^ When He had broken with Judaism, He 
 was forced to create forms of life and a social 
 organization first of all : hence preoccupation with 
 external things occupies a place beside preoccupa- 
 tion with the only essential : and once the purely 
 inner sphere is left, there is no progress that has 
 not reverses, and does not bring inconveniences.^ 
 
 Towards the year 200 A.D. Christianity had 
 definitely evolved towards Catholicism. A great 
 ecclesiastical society had been established, reject- 
 ing many sects that also called themselves Chris- 
 tian: it was made up of different Churches scattered 
 through the Roman Empire, which, thougli mutu- 
 ally independent, maintained constant and regular 
 
 1 Page 113. a Page 114. 
 
142 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 relations, were organized in the same way, and 
 professed a common doctrine, wherein rules of 
 discipline were distinguished from rules of faith. 
 Each Church regarded itself as the instrument 
 of a worship which had its solemn rites, and 
 whose principal acts could only be accomplished 
 by priests. We are told that this means that 
 formalism is introduced with fatal result into 
 religions tliat endure, as soon as the fervour of 
 euthusiasm that gave them birth is passed : it is 
 in this way that " The struggle against Gnosticism 
 compelled the Church to formulate its doctrine, 
 its worship, and its discipline in fixed forms and 
 with fixed laws, and to exclude whomsoever did 
 not submit." ^ Alas for liberty ! The primitive 
 life had vanished, " mediocrity laid the foundation 
 of authority." ^ Nevertheless it can be seen by 
 Acts of the martyrs, the writings of Clement of 
 Alexandria and of Tertullian, that the Church 
 " had not stifled the gospel." ^ 
 
 The Church, Eastern as well as Western, 
 organized itself as a juridical institution and 
 as a political administration. In the East, 
 the hierarchic development only ended with the 
 establishment of national Churches, largely de- 
 pendent on the civil power. Matters went very 
 1 Page 119. 2 Page 130. 3 Page 135. 
 
THE CHURCH 143 
 
 differently in tlie West, where the Empire had 
 crumbled away by the fifth century. Our critic 
 declares, in a description wherein he seems a little 
 carried away by his own eloquence, that " in an 
 underhand way tlie Eoman Church substituted 
 itself for the Eoman Empire, which in reality sur- 
 vived in her ; the Eoman Empire did not perish, 
 it was only transformed. . . . The Eoman Church 
 still governs the nations : its Popes reign as did 
 Trajan or Marcus Aurelius. Peter and Paul take 
 the place of Eomulus and Eemus ; archbishops 
 and bishops replace proconsuls ; instead of legions 
 come troops of priests and monks ; instead of the 
 Pretorian Guard, the Jesuits. Even into minute 
 details, peculiarities of law, even details of clothing, 
 the influence of the ancient Empire and its insti- 
 tutions can be traced. It is not in the least a Church 
 like the Gospel Communities, or like the national 
 Churches of the East ; it is a political creation, as 
 considerable as a universal empire because it is 
 the successor of the Roman Imperium. The 
 Pope, who is called ' king ' and ' supreme pontiff,' 
 is the successor of Csesar. . . . He governs 
 an empire. Therefore it is a useless enterprise 
 to attack him with the weapons of doctrinal 
 warfare only. . . . For this Church, to govern 
 is as important as to announce the Gospel. . . . 
 
144 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 He is held to have no piety who does not, first 
 of all, submit to this Papal Church, gain her 
 approval, and live in perpetual dependence on 
 her. . . . The development the Church has fol- 
 lowed as a terrestrial State was bound to lead 
 logically to the absolute monarchy and infallibility 
 of the Pope, for infallibility in a terrestrial theo- 
 cracy signifies nothing more, at bottom, than abso- 
 lute sovereignty in an ordinary state." ^ 
 
 This special character of Latin Catholicism has 
 had the effect of modifying greatly the features 
 common to it and to Eastern Catholicism. Thus, 
 Herr Harnack observes, the principle of tradition 
 is proclaimed as loudly by the Eoman as by the 
 Greek Church ; but when it becomes irksome, the 
 Church passes beyond it; the Pope becomes 
 tradition. The same thing happens with orthodoxy ; 
 " the politics of the Pope can modify it ; by means 
 of subtle distinctions many a dogma has changed 
 its meaning ; new dogmas are established ; in 
 many respects doctrine has become arbitrary." 
 The tradition of ritual is no more really unchange- 
 able than that of doctrine, and the same may be 
 said of religious life, the old monastical system 
 having been transformed to the point of becoming, 
 in great institutions, " the exact contrary of what it 
 1 Pages 157-159. 
 
THE CHURCH 145 
 
 was. This Church possesses in its organization a 
 unique faculty for adapting itself to the course of 
 history ; it remains always the ancient Church, or 
 at least appears to do so, and is always new." ^ 
 
 Herr Harnack does not insist on this flexibility 
 of the Eoman Church, he seems to see in it a 
 defect rather than a merit, and without doubt he 
 does not estimate sufficiently its importance from 
 the standpoint of the general philosophy of Chris- 
 tianity and of its history. But there is a certain 
 piquancy in meeting a liberal-minded and learned 
 Protestant who is inclined to think the Church of 
 Rome changes too much, and is astonished that 
 She should change so frequently and so easily. 
 How many others have made it a repioach to her, 
 that She does not change enough ! 
 
 » Pages 159, 160. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Although the statement has been repeatedly made 
 for several centuries, it is difficult to understand, 
 without the preparation of a special theological 
 education, how the Society of Christ was something 
 less visible and less external than the Roman 
 Church. This Society, comprising those who 
 accepted the gospel of Jesus, was not formed of 
 pure spirits who had no other bond than a com- 
 mon sentiment. They were not numerous ; but 
 the fewer their numbers are reckoned at, the more 
 distinctly they stand out against the surrounding 
 world. The Society was composed of certain 
 faithful ones who persevered to the end, and met 
 again after the Passion to form the nucleus of the 
 first Christian community. They form a circum- 
 scribed group, perfectly distinct, a very centralized, 
 even a hierarchical fraternity. Jesus is the centre 
 and the chief, the incontestable authority. Around 
 Him the disciples are not a confused mass ; the 
 Saviour has distinguished among them the Twelve, 
 
THE CHURCH 147 
 
 and has associated tliem, directly and effectively, 
 with His ministry ; even among the Twelve there 
 is one who stands first, not only by priority of 
 conversion or the ardour of his zeal, but by a kind 
 of designation by the Master, accepted by the 
 apostolic community with consequences still 
 evident in their history. 
 
 It was a practical situation, apparently brought 
 about by the wanderings of the Galilean ministry, 
 but also evidently received and ratified by Jesus 
 some time before the Passion. There is no need 
 to look for formal programmes, constitutional 
 charters, pompous inaugurations. Jesus provided 
 for the diffusion of the gospel in the present, and 
 thus prepared the kingdom to come. Neither the 
 society round him, nor the kingdom, was an in- 
 visible, impalpable reality, a sect of souls, but a 
 society of men which carried the gospel, and was 
 to become the kingdom. 
 
 The Church was born and endured throucrh the 
 development of an organization whose outline is 
 traced in the gospel. It was a community having 
 as its basis a belief in the "good news" of the 
 resurrection of Jesus ; as its law, charity ; as its 
 end, the propagation of the great hope ; as its form 
 of government, the distinction between the apos- 
 tolic college and the ordinary disciples. The 
 
148 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Twelve form a kind of directing committee, with 
 Simon Peter at the head. As yet nothing can be 
 seen resembling the administration of a monarchy. 
 The saying of the Saviour, " Whosoever would be 
 first among you shall be the servant of all," ^ is 
 applied literally. The community knows but one 
 Master, one Lord, who is the Christ, and knows 
 no dominating authority : the hierarchy that 
 exists is that of devotion. Nevertheless, a positive 
 power of social order belongs to the apostles, 
 that of receiving converts into the community, 
 excluding the unworthy, and maintaining good 
 order. 
 
 This state of things was the result of all that 
 Jesus did and willed : for the Saviour did not 
 abandon the preaching of the gospel to the first 
 comers, but confided it to those who left all to 
 follow Him. It matters little that this first 
 Christian group had as yet no consciousness that 
 it formed a society distinct from Judaism : its own 
 vital principle, obtained from its faith in Jesus, 
 had already provided it with means of subsistence : 
 its individuality was to grow in the struggle it 
 had to face in order to exist and extend. The 
 apostles were no more restricted to a purely inner 
 sphere of action than was Jesus Himself. Their 
 1 Mark x. 44. 
 
THE CHURCH 149 
 
 activity tended to the formation of a religious 
 society, and it was not only later that the incon- 
 veniences of external action became evident. The 
 gospel of Jesus has its reverse side in the absolute 
 character of its formula, which is at once its 
 weakness and the condition of its entry into the 
 world : the gospel of the apostles has its reverse 
 side in the explosion of enthusiasm, which is an 
 element of its force, and a disconcerting pheno- 
 menon for those who do not yet believe. Never- 
 theless it is always the living gospel, not spirit 
 merely, but body also from the beginning. 
 
 Christian communities were founded among the 
 Gentiles, and soon became the Church, entirely 
 distinct and even separated from the Synagogue. 
 In these communities the apostles and early 
 missionaries established colleges of elders, or 
 superintendents, to govern the societies as they 
 themselves had governed the first community at 
 Jerusalem. The organization of the body of 
 elders, the affirmation of their rights, the pre- 
 eminence of the bishop in the body and in the 
 community, the pre-eminence of the bisliop of 
 Eome amongst the bishops, these changes are 
 only defined and established in the course of time, 
 according to the needs of the evangelical work. 
 The Church became, at important moments, what 
 
ISO THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 it had to become in order not to decline and 
 perish, dragging the gospel down with it. Never- 
 theless, it created no essential portion of its con- 
 stitution. An organ which up to one moment 
 seemed rudimentary, and of little vigour, took on 
 the proportions and structure that an imminent 
 necessity demanded : then it existed in this 
 acquired form, except for accessory modifications 
 produced on the occasion of other developments 
 to preserve the equilibrium of the whole. This 
 equilibrium was seldom established without in- 
 ternal movement, having all the characters of a 
 serious crisis. Such, as a matter of fact, is the 
 law of all development, and the natural growth of 
 living things knows similar experiences. These 
 struggles do not prove a diminution of life, but 
 that life is threatened : when the crisis is over, and 
 the power of the organism is augmented, it is to 
 be praised for its vitality, not blamed because it 
 suffered or because it did not succumb. The 
 Church can fairly say that, in order to be at all 
 times what Jesus desired the society of His 
 friends to be, it had to become what it has 
 become : for it has become what it had to be to 
 save the gospel by saving itself. 
 
 The earliest communities could not have 
 lasted without the rudimentary organization their 
 
THE CHURCH 151 
 
 founders gave tbem. The college of elders main- 
 tained order in the assemblies, and peace among 
 the brethren, ensured the management of alms, 
 and of all external relations. Just as the disciples 
 of Jesus had formed a society, and as the kingdom 
 of Heaven was conceived as a society, not as a 
 coalition of fervent and perfect individualists, the 
 Christian communities naturally formed societies, 
 confraternities : they needed the preservative 
 element of all society — authority. When there 
 appeared in the Churches (and they appeared 
 quite early) movement of ideas, tendencies more 
 or less marked and more or less divergent, in- 
 ternal and external difficulties more or less con- 
 siderable, the necessity of a directing power 
 became still more pressing, and the only hope for 
 the community to hold its ground was by means 
 of a perfect unity. It is certain that Christianity 
 and the gospel would have gone imder in the 
 gnostic crisis, without the opposition that the 
 ruling episcopate made to the flood of heresies, 
 and the episcopate strengthened its position 
 decidedly in this struggle. Does it not follow 
 that the Church is as necessary to the gospel as 
 the gospel to the Church, and that the two are 
 really one, as the gospel and the group of 
 believers were one during the ministry of Jesus ? 
 
152 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Surely there is nothing but a spirit of epigram 
 in the reflection on " the mediocrity " that " founded 
 authority." Were the Christians of Lyons in the 
 time of Irenaeus, or those of Africa in the time of 
 Tertullian, so much inferior to the believers of 
 Corinth as we know them in the Epistles of Paul ? 
 Does the diminution of the early acts of grace 
 prove that real faith was any less strong, and is it 
 a matter of regret that the whole Church was not 
 given over to Montanism ? Even in matters of 
 religion, attacks of fever are not the normal 
 conditions of life. 
 
 In proportion as the episcopate increased, the 
 preponderance of the Church of Eome became 
 evident. Herr Harnack has himself shown this 
 point very well in his " History of Dogma." ^ 
 This Church played a considerable part in the 
 combat with gnosticism ; the principal leaders of 
 the gnostics came to Rome as to the central point 
 of Christendom, where it was most important to 
 have their doctrines approved, and there they 
 were condemned in succession. But it is not 
 only thus that the Eoman community appears in 
 its dignity as principal Church. Each particular 
 Church had the sentiment of the general unity, 
 and even anxiety for it : it held itself within this 
 1 I. 439-454. 
 
THE CHURCH 153 
 
 unity while superintending the maintenance of 
 the standard by the others around it. But a 
 central body was needed to give some kind of 
 support to the force of the universal tendency, and 
 to safeguard the concerted action of the Churches, 
 by making its results visible and regular. This 
 central point and capital of ecclesiastical unity 
 was indicated at once by the grandest Christian 
 memories, and by the political situation of the 
 Empire. Incontestably it is owing to its rank as 
 the capital that Eome owed the attraction that 
 brought to it the two most important personages 
 of the Apostolic Church. Peter and Paul both 
 came to Eome : but wliatever may have been the 
 prestige of Paul, that of the prince of the apostles 
 remained the greater in traditional recollection. 
 Their memory was honoured, and their tombs 
 guarded. Many of the elders who governed the 
 community towards the end of the first century 
 had known them, and retained full memory of 
 their martydom. Fifty years later, when Irena3us 
 came to Eome, there were certainly still faithful 
 to be found there who had been disciples of Peter's 
 and Paul's disciples, and a list of bishops was 
 kept, going back to Linus, the first, he who had 
 taken up the government of the Eoman Churcli 
 after the death of Peter. 
 
154 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Critics have noted that the bishop of Eome, 
 whose position is so outstanding before the end of 
 the second century, is hardly distinguished from 
 the body of the elders at the end of the first, and 
 that solitary episcopal rule was constituted later 
 in the West than in the East. The very im- 
 portance of the community, which must early 
 have been divided into several groups, aided to 
 maintain for long the pre-eminence of the council 
 of Presbyters, which indeed always retained at 
 Eome a greater effective authority, under the 
 bishop, than it seems to have had in other 
 Churches. No doubt all the same there was from 
 the beginning at Ptome, as elsewhere, a kind of 
 president in the body of elders, who soon became 
 the sole bishop. The Epistle of St. Clement to 
 the Corinthians is written in the name of the 
 Eoman Church, and the personality of the writer 
 does not appear : nevertheless, the letter was 
 received and kept as an Epistle of Clement, who 
 was the responsible author and the official 
 mouthpiece of the community. This very Epistle 
 makes it evident that the Eoman Church inter- 
 ested itself in the internal life of far-off Christian 
 communities, and believed itself to have the 
 right to intervene in their affairs with authority. 
 Paul would not have spoken to the disunited 
 
THE CHURCH 155 
 
 Corinthians with more force than Clement, al- 
 though it is still from the community as the heir 
 of the apostolic tradition, and not from the personal 
 successor of Peter, that the word comes. This 
 distinction is unimportant, for the sentiment of 
 authority is identical in the case of Clement, who 
 speaks in the name of the Church, whose mouth- 
 piece he is, and in the case of Victor or Callixtus 
 or Stephen, who speak in their own names, as 
 filling the place of the apostle Peter. 
 
 It cannot, then, be contested that the central 
 position of Eome both attracted the apostles to 
 it and then enabled its bishop to exercise an 
 influence that no otlier in another place could 
 have had. The importance of the town con- 
 tiibuted to the importance of the see, but it 
 cannot be said to have created it. It is possible 
 to believe that the force of events, acquired experi- 
 ence, tlie fact that Christianity was penetrating to 
 Eome without them, that the Koman community 
 was increasing, and that an apostolic intervention 
 seemed necessary to achieve its establishment, lest 
 a point that ought to radiate their influence should 
 be left outside of it, that all these considera- 
 tions together, led the apostles to the capital of the 
 Empire. We may imagine also, that when they 
 died, they little thought they were bequeathing 
 
156 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 a master to Ca3sar, or even that tliey had given 
 a supreme chief to the Church. The thought of 
 the great Advent was too strong in their minds, 
 the questions of creed and of government too 
 little familiar, for them to see in Rome and the 
 Roman Church anything but the providential 
 centre of Christian evangelization. Their death 
 consecrated what their presence had signified. 
 Nowhere else liad the evangelical tradition been 
 more solidly implanted, nowhere else had it found 
 a soil more favourable to its preservation. With 
 full consciousness they made Rome the capital of 
 the gospel. At the same time, all unknowing, 
 they made the Roman Church the mother and 
 queen of the Churches of the whole world ; they 
 left the inheritance of the apostles in hands 
 capable of making its value felt. 
 
 The ease with which the bishops of Rome 
 established their superiority over the other 
 Christian communities was not a thing entirely 
 unforeseen by the apostles. The head of the 
 Empire, the accepted head of the world, ought to 
 be also, as far as was necessary, the head of 
 universal Christianity. It is not astonishing 
 that this idea was never lost, and that the 
 development of Christianity only gave it added 
 strength as the need arose for new applications of 
 
THE CHURCH 157 
 
 it. A matter still less astonishing is, that the 
 consciousness of this pre-eminence, which was a 
 burden rather than a privilege, should have been 
 especially vivid in the town where it had its place 
 of action, and whence it derived its existence. 
 The necessity of union with the Church of Eome, 
 a union implying a certain subordination in riglit 
 and in fact, on the part of the other Churches, was 
 as profoundly felt by the Churches of the West, 
 founded by Eome, as the idea, at Eome itself, of 
 a kind of general responsibility for the common 
 welfare. 
 
 It was otherwise in the East, where the 
 Churches, not owing their existence to Eome, were 
 less closely attached to her by tradition. It would 
 seem that, as the idea of union with Eome was 
 not implanted in them at their origin, it could 
 never afterwards acquire strength enough to resist 
 political divisions and special tendencies. The 
 transference of the seat of Empire to Constanti- 
 nople prepared the way for the schism, and it is 
 well established that the Greek Church is, in 
 itself, a political institution, whose principle is in 
 no way traditional.^ With a more complete 
 autonomy, and with a less vivid sentiment of all 
 that the bishop of Eome owed to the succession 
 1 Cf. Duchesne, " lilglises Sepaiees," 163-227. 
 
158 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 of Peter, the Eastern Church during the early 
 centuries had yet gravitated towards Eome; it 
 would have continued to do so, and would have 
 come more and more into the orbit of the 
 Apostolic Church, if the normal development of 
 ecclesiastical government had not been fettered by 
 political considerations as soon as the Empire was 
 converted. In proportion as the bishops of Eome 
 acquire a more precise idea of their function as 
 moderators, and translate it into a positive and 
 Divine right, the Easterns come to understand the 
 claim less and less, and finish by no longer com- 
 prehending it at all : they can see only Rome's 
 pretensions, and have no feeling of what is 
 demanded for the maintenance of unity beyond 
 the divisions of frontiers. So completely have 
 they made Christianity a State religion, that once 
 Eome is lost to the Empire, it seems to them that 
 the bishop of Eome has nothing to do with their 
 concerns, and that the bishop of Constantinople, 
 the new Eome, has the same rights and powers over 
 the East that the bishop of the old has over the 
 Western countries that obey him. At a time when 
 the Popes recognize no frontiers and ensure, in 
 the spirit for which Herr Harnack praises them, 
 the independence of religion before the secular 
 authority, the patriarchs of Constantinople are 
 
THE CHURCH 159 
 
 enclosing their Church in the fragments of the 
 Empire, and in the effort to organize their own 
 Papacy are making that of the Emperor. By 
 bringing Christianity back to the proportions of 
 a national worship, they destroyed, as far as they 
 could, that conception of Catholicism tliat the 
 Eoman Church had received as a sacred charge and 
 intended to keep. 
 
 If this Church has assumed an imperial air 
 it did not possess in the early days, if She has 
 desired to give juridical, or rather constitutional, 
 form to her pre-eminence and her actions, it is 
 not only in virtue of a local and inherited tradi- 
 tion of dominion, which passed from the Empire 
 to the Church, from Caesar to the successor of 
 Peter, but as the result of a general tendency, 
 which, from the beginning, inclined the Church to 
 organize herself and her government, a tendency 
 felt in the East as much as in the West, The 
 Church had possessions, discipline, a hierarchy • 
 She could not dispense with legal rights. But 
 legal rights cannot exist without an authority to 
 guarantee them, and tliis authority, to be effi- 
 cacious, must have its official representatives. 
 The Popes of the fourth and fifth centuries wished 
 to be, in the last resort, the judges of all Chis- 
 tendom, as those of the two preceding centuries 
 
i6o THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 desired the Eoman Church to be the type of all 
 Churches for teaching, organization, and discipline. 
 In both cases the pretension is the same, but 
 applied to different situations. Eome claims no 
 new power, or rather, the power is no newer than 
 the situation it is designed to meet. The Church 
 had to find for herself a government or cease to 
 exist ; but government in a Church, one and uni- 
 versal, is inconceivable without a central authority. 
 A central ideal, with no real power, as conceived 
 by St. Cyprian, would have been useless. Some 
 final solution had to be found to important ques- 
 tions. Particular councils could not have had 
 sufficient prestige ; general councils could never 
 have been anything but a tribunal for extraordi- 
 nary occasions, and experience showed that these 
 assemblies had many great inconveniences. The 
 superior and permanent tribunal before which all 
 more important cases should naturally come, by 
 which all conflicts should be finally decided, could 
 be only that Church, the most apostolic of all, 
 holding the tradition of Peter and Paul, whose 
 chiefs did not hesitate to call themselves successors 
 of the prince of the apostles. 
 
 To the Churches maintained or established 
 in barbarian lands, and to the nations them- 
 selves, the Pope appears not only as the supreme 
 
THE CHURCH i6i 
 
 judge of all ecclesiastical causes and controversies. 
 From tlie end of the eighth century, he acts as the 
 depository of the Imperial tradition, transferring 
 the title of Csesar to Charlemagne and his suc- 
 cessors. Towards the close of the eleventh century, 
 all authority seems vested in him, not only over 
 particular Churches, but also over nations. The 
 Pope has become social instructor, tutor of 
 monarchies, head of the Christian Confederation, 
 while he remains and becomes more and more 
 supreme as the chief of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, 
 the arbiter of the faith, the guardian of discipline, 
 the bishop of all the Churches. His two offices 
 are not distinguished one from the other. Al- 
 though the first was not conferred upon him as the 
 direct result of a purely religious, evangelical, 
 Catholic principle, it was found to be included in 
 the second by force of circumstances. In the 
 chaos in which the Empire of the West foundered, 
 the Church maintained her structure ; she alone 
 survived, and the new kingdoms arose and ad- 
 vanced towards civilization in the bosom of the 
 Church, and under her influence and direction. The 
 Church could not accomplish the work of tlieir 
 conversion without be^coming also their instructress 
 in temporal order. She had to be their mistress 
 in every branch of knowledge, and teacli tliiun the 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 elements of ancient wisdom side by side Avith the 
 gospel of salvation ; she had even to make herself 
 feared in the temporal realm, that she should not 
 be overwhelmed in the spiritual. The individu- 
 ality of the growing nations was scarcely beginning 
 to be defined ; the memory of the Eoman Empire, 
 of Eoman unity, rested over them all, idealized in 
 the sentiment of Catholic unity ; a kind of great 
 State grew into being, made up of States still un- 
 formed, a universal republic, which was a Church, 
 and whose true and only natural leader was the 
 Pope, having under him the temporal sovereigns 
 whether they would or no. In this confusion, 
 where she must dominate or perish, the Church 
 became transformed, and grew in stature contin- 
 ually, grew in order to endure, because the changes 
 which shaped themselves in her were the very 
 conditions of her continued existence. 
 
 Had there been any actual autonomy of the 
 individual Churches, Christianity would have been 
 completely submerged in superstition and Germanic 
 feudalism. Eeforms became possible as soon as 
 Eome had full power to support them, even though 
 she had not always had the initiative to propose 
 them. The proud temporal position of the Popes 
 of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was only 
 the safeguard of their independence in the spiritual 
 
THE CHURCH 163 
 
 sphere ; and in this sphere, the Popes were per- 
 force what they were and what they became, in 
 order that the Church might be still the Church, 
 and continue to represent Christianity and the 
 religion of Jesus. What would have happened had 
 the Pontiffs suddenly perceived that the essence 
 of Christianity was faith in God the Father, and 
 that their duty consisted in representing this 
 truth to those who might be willing to make 
 their religion out of this alone ? 
 
 From the fourteenth century onwards, the 
 general conditions of Catholic society were modi- 
 fied. There was no longer in any truth a Christian 
 republic, but Christian States, sufficiently strono' 
 in themselves, and never again to be united 
 by a common faith or a common danger in 
 a common course of action, as they had been for 
 the Crusades. In fact, the authority of the Pope 
 was exercised with more and more difficulty in the 
 political sphere ; the Church, rich and powerful in 
 every State, was sapped with increasing corruption. 
 A great reform became essential to free it from 
 the world, and return it to its proper path. But 
 at this point Church and State were so in- 
 timately bound together, that tlie independent 
 organization of religious power and political power 
 could not be accomplished without difficuUii'S, 
 
i64 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 shocks, and forcible separations. Eegarding 
 events from this distance of time, after allowing 
 that the Papacy of the fifteenth centuries was 
 much too preoccupied with its own interests, and 
 not enough with the reform that was always more 
 urgent, it is evident that if by force of circum- 
 stances, the political influence of the Church 
 steadily decreased, the spiritual power of the Pope 
 as steadily increased, and became that which it 
 had to become if the Catholic Church were to 
 be preserved in the midst of the revolutions 
 and troubles of modern times. The Pope remains 
 the father of the faithful and the head of the 
 Churches. It is easy to perceive that his power 
 will never again be exercised in the forms it 
 assumed in the Middle ages, but this power is of 
 constant importance for the preservation of the 
 Church, and the preservation in the Church of the 
 gospel. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Thus to reproach the Catholic Church for the 
 development of her constitution is to reproach her 
 for having chosen to live, and that, moreover, when 
 her life was indispensable for the preservation of 
 the gospel itself. There is nowhere in her history 
 any gap in continuity, or the absolute creation of 
 a new system : every step is a deduction from the 
 preceding, so that we can proceed from the 
 actual constitution of the Papacy to the Evangel- 
 ical Society around Jesus, different as they are 
 from one another, without meeting any violent 
 revolution to change the government of the 
 Christian community. At the same time every 
 advance is explained by a necessity of fact 
 accompanied by logical necessities, so that the 
 historian cannot say that the total extent of the 
 movement is outside tlie gospel. The fact is, it 
 proceeds from it and continues it. 
 
 Many objections, very grave from the point of 
 view of a certain theology, have little or no 
 
1 66 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 significance for the historian. It is certain, for 
 instance, that Jesus did not systematize beforehand 
 the constitution of the Church as that of a govern- 
 ment established on earth and destined to endure 
 for a long series of centuries. But a conception 
 far more foreign still to His thoughts and to His 
 authentic teaching is that of an invisible society 
 formed for ever of those who have in their hearts 
 faith in the goodness of God. We have seen that 
 the gospel of Jesus already contained a rudiment 
 of social organization, and that the kingdom also 
 was announced as a society. Jesus foretold the 
 kingdom, and it was the Church that came ; she 
 came, enlarging the form of the gospel, which it 
 was impossible to preserve as it was, as soon as the 
 Passion closed the ministry of Jesus. There is 
 no institution on the earth or in history whose 
 status and value may not be questioned if the 
 principle is established that nothing may exist 
 except in its original form. Such a principle 
 is contrary to the law of life, which is movement 
 and a continual effort of adaptation to conditions 
 always new and perpetually changing. Chris- 
 tianity has not escaped this law, and cannot be 
 reproached for submission to it. It could not do 
 otherwise than it has done. 
 
 The preservation of its primitive state was 
 
THE CHURCH 167 
 
 impossible, its restoration now is ef|nally out 
 of the question, because the conditions under 
 wliich the gospel was produced have disappeared 
 for ever. History shows the evolution of the 
 elements that composed it. These elements have 
 undergone, as they could not fail to undergo, 
 many transformations ; but they are always 
 recognizable, and it is easy to see in the Catholic 
 Church what stands to-day for the idea of the 
 Heavenly kingdom, for the idea of the Messiah, 
 the maker of the kingdom, and for the idea of the 
 apostolate, or the preaching of the kingdom, that 
 is to say, the three essential elements of the living 
 gospel, which have become what they were forced 
 to become in order to endure at all. The theory 
 of a purely inner kingdom suppresses them and 
 makes an abstraction of the real gospel. The 
 tradition of the Church keeps them, interpreting 
 them and adapting them to the varying condition 
 of humanity. 
 
 It would be absurd to desire that Clirist should 
 have determined beforeliand the interpretations 
 and adaptations that time would exact, since they 
 had no reason to exist before the hour whicli 
 rendered them necessary. It was neitlicr possible 
 nor useful for Jesus to reveal to His disciples tlie 
 future of the Church. The thoufrht that the 
 
l6S THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Saviour left to them was that they must continue 
 to wish, to prepare, to await and to realize the 
 kingdom of God. The view of the kingdom has 
 been enlarged and modified, the conception of its 
 definite advent fills a smaller place, but the object 
 of the gospel remains the object of the Church. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is worthy of notice that 
 the Church, for all her advanced age, for all her 
 apparent want of anxiety as to the imminence of 
 the final judgment, and for all the long future 
 she anticipates still on the earth, regards herself 
 nevertheless as a provisional institution, a transi- 
 tional organization. The Church of the world, 
 called the Church militant, is, as it were, the 
 vestibule of the Church triumphant, which is the 
 kingdom of Heaven realized in eternity, still held 
 to be possible in the fulness of time. If the 
 dimensions of the evangelical horizon have 
 changed, the point of view remains the same. 
 The Church has kept the fundamental idea of 
 Christ's teaching : no terrestrial institution realizes 
 the kingdom finally, and the gospel only prepares 
 the way for the accomplishment. It is easy to 
 divine why theologians, like Herr Harnack, 
 abandon evangelical eschatology. But the question 
 at issue is only to know if eschatology was not 
 historically an essential element of the gospel, and 
 
THE CHURCH 169 
 
 if the Cliiirch, which has retained tliis essential 
 element, is not the veritable continuation of Christ. 
 What if the gospel eschatology were at bottom the 
 expressive symbol of complex and indescribable 
 realities; what if the eschatology of the Churcli 
 be also a symbol, always striving for perfection, 
 of the same expected benefits, the traditional 
 theologian can still support it, and so continue to 
 find the essence of the gospel where Jesus desired 
 to set it. It means that Jesus and the Churcli 
 have their eyes raised always in the same direc- 
 tion, towards the same symbol of hope, and that 
 the Church maintains the attitude of Jesus, 
 towards the kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 In their warfare against tradition, the most 
 enlightened Protestant theologians, those who, like 
 Herr Harnack, recognize a kind of relative 
 necessity in the Catholic development, argue none 
 the less eagerly about it, as though it were not 
 evident that the desire to restore Christianity to 
 its primitive form and organization is really a 
 desire to condemn it to death, and as if change 
 were not the natural condition of its preservation 
 and the expression of its vitality. They are less 
 exacting for themselves, when concerned to justify 
 their own religious- convictions, unlikely as they 
 are to be confused with the gospel of Jesus. 
 
I70 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 What else do they do but adapt the gospel to the 
 needs of their special consciences ? The Church 
 also, from the beginning, adapts the gospel to the 
 needs of the men she addresses. 
 
 It is not the personal adaptation that continues 
 the ministry of Christ, the preaching of the " good 
 news" and the preparation of the kingdom of 
 Heaven. Even among Protestants, the directing 
 tradition has a considerable influence on the way 
 the Divine word is understood, and without this 
 tradition the effect of the written gospel on 
 the mass of believers would probably be very 
 slight or not always salutary. In all Chris- 
 tian communities there is a service of the 
 gospel which ensures the transmission and appli- 
 cation of the Master s word. The Catholic Church 
 is such a service formed by the centuries and 
 continuous from the beginning. To be identical 
 with the religion of Jesus, it has no more need 
 to reproduce exactly the forms of the Galilean 
 gospel, than a man has need to preserve at fifty 
 the proportions, features, and manner of life of 
 the day of his birth, in order to be the same 
 individual. The identity of a man is not ensured 
 by making him return to his cradle. 
 
 The Church, to-day, resembles the community 
 of the first disciples neither more nor less than a 
 
THE CHURCH 171 
 
 grown man resembles the child he was at first. 
 The identity of the Church or of the man is 
 not determined by permanent immobility of 
 external forms, but by continuity of existence 
 and consciousness of life through the perpetual 
 transformations which are life's condition and 
 manifestation. Setting aside all theological 
 subtleties, the Catholic Church, as a society 
 founded on the gospel, is identical with the first 
 circle of the disciples of Jesus if she feels herself 
 to be, and is, in the same relations with Jesus as 
 the disciples were, if there is a general correspon- 
 dence between her actual state and the primitive 
 state, if the actual organism is only the primitive 
 organism developed and decided, and if the 
 elements of the Church to-day are the primitive 
 elements, grown and fortified, adapted to the 
 ever -increasing functions they have to fulfil. 
 
 It is the very duration of Christianity that 
 has caused this evolution. If the end of the 
 world had arrived in the years that followed the 
 publication of the Apocalypse, the ecclesiastical 
 development would not have taken place, and the 
 Church even would hardly have existed. But the 
 world did not perisli : the Church retained a 
 reason for existence and retains it still. Her 
 history is that of the gospel in the world, and to 
 
172 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 find that the history is not that of the religion of 
 Christ is only possible if the religion is placed 
 outside history and the actual world. 
 
 If the Church were entirely a political institu- 
 tion, such as Herr Harnack conceives and repre- 
 sents her, it is certain that she would have nothing 
 in common with the gospel, and would simply have 
 to be regarded as the successor of the Roman 
 Empire. We have already seen in what sense 
 the Church really succeeded the Empire. The 
 memories and the tradition of the Empire, con- 
 ditioned, so to speak, the action of the Church, 
 but did not change her essential character. 
 Whatever can be said, it is a long step from Leo 
 XIII. to Trajan, from bishops to pro-consuls, 
 from monks to legionaries, from Jesuits to the 
 Pretorian Guard. The Pope is not king, in so 
 far as he is Pope, and the question is still of 
 the Universal Church, not of the Empire. The 
 Catholics do not regard the Pope as their sovereign, 
 but as their spiritual guide. Although they re- 
 ceive their investiture from the Pope, the bishops 
 are not simple delegates either in law or in fact ; 
 if the Pope is the successor of Peter, the bishops 
 are the successors of the apostles, and their 
 ministry is not of a political order nor purely 
 administrative. It is only by way of metaphor 
 
THE CHURCH 173 
 
 that the faithful can be compared to an army. 
 Secular priests and monks do not preach the 
 policy of the Pope, even when he has one ; they 
 preach first of all the gospel, with the traditional 
 interpretation the Church gives, and the kingdom 
 they endeavour to extend is that of the gospel, 
 not that of the Pope, so far as that is distinct 
 from the kingdom of Christ. Even the Jesuits, 
 founded to defend the Eoman Church a^rainst 
 Protestant and antipapal reform, are not political 
 agents, but preachers of religion and religious 
 educators, whatever may be thought of their 
 methods and their special tendencies. The poli- 
 tical side of the great institution, Catholicism, is 
 naturally the one that first strikes those who are 
 outside it, but it is wholly external, even accessory. 
 Seen from within, the ecclesiastical organization 
 is essentially of a religious order, and has no other 
 reason for its existence than the preservation and 
 propagation of religion in the world. Although 
 the whole Catholic development, superficially 
 observed, seems to tend solely to augment the 
 authority of the hierarchy, or rather of the Pope, 
 the fundamental principle of Catholicism has 
 never ceased to be the very priiicii)le of the gosj)el. 
 The faithful do not exist for tlie sake of the 
 hierarchy, but the hierarchy fur ihe sake of the 
 
174 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 faithful. The Church does not exist for the sake of 
 the Pope, but the Pope for the sake of the Church. 
 Of course, the Church has put on in many 
 respects the form of a human government, and 
 has become and still remains a political power. 
 None the less, she has always desired, and still 
 desires, quite a different end. The fact that she is 
 of political importance, and that politics must 
 reckon with her, is the inevitable consequence of 
 her existence, and became certain as soon as 
 Christianity had spread sufficiently through the 
 Roman Empire. That she should set herself up 
 as a political power, treating with governments as 
 an equal or as a superior, negotiating religious 
 affairs with them as international treaties are 
 negotiated, is a special and transitory form of her 
 relations with human powers. In this sense the 
 Church has not always been a political power, and 
 may cease to be one. The actual situation now is 
 a legacy of the past, to be dealt with only with 
 precaution. But it is possible to foresee in the 
 future a general comity of civilized nations, 
 wherein the Church, as a spiritual power, in no 
 way political in the present sense, should lose 
 none of her prestige, none of her independence, 
 none of her moral influence. Are not politics 
 falling more and more from the hands of managers 
 
THE CHURCH 175 
 
 of men, into the hands of managers of affairs, and 
 will tlioy not finally remain completely there? 
 What would the Church gain by treating directly 
 with such men of all that regards herself, and 
 what interest would they have to occupy them- 
 selves with such matters ? . ^ 
 
 "We may even go further, and conjecture that the 
 Church, when dealing with those who recognize her 
 authority, will find a procedure more conformable 
 to the fundamental equality and personal dignity 
 of all Christians. In the universal levelling of 
 ranks which is in prospect, the members of the 
 ecclesiastical hierarchy may be less great person- 
 ages in the eyes of the world, without in any way 
 losing the rights of their ministry, which will 
 assume again, more visibly, their essential form of 
 duties. 
 
 In any case, it is not true that ecclesiastical 
 authority is, or ever was, a species of external con- 
 straint repressing all personal activity of con- 
 science. The Church is an educator, rather than a 
 dominating mistress : she instructs rather than 
 directs, and he who obeys her only does so accord- 
 ing to his conscience, and in order to obey God. 
 In principle, Catholicism aims, as much as Pro- 
 testantism, at the formation of religious person- 
 alities, souls masters of themselves, pure and free 
 
176 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 consciences. It is true, the danger for Catholicism 
 is that of desiring too much to govern men instead 
 of simply elevating their souls. It cannot be 
 denied, that its tendency, reacting against Pro- 
 testantism has been towards the effacement of the 
 individual, towards the careful guardianship of 
 men, towards a control of human activity which 
 by no means makes for the development of 
 initiative. But it is only a tendency. It would 
 be going almost too far to say that there is in 
 the Church a " legion," whose religious and political 
 ideal is that of a society regulated in all matters 
 of thought and action by a kind of military disci- 
 pline. Yet the main defect of such an ideal is not 
 precisely that it is contrary to the gospel, but that 
 it is dangerous, and impossible to realize. 
 
 The gospel of Jesus was neither wholly indi- 
 vidualistic in the Protestant sense, nor wholly 
 ecclesiastical in the Catholic sense. It addressed 
 itself to the mass of mankind in order to establish 
 the free society of the elect; is it possible to 
 form an idea of the development of personality 
 or of the form of government in the kingdom of 
 Heaven ? It is the life and persistence of the gospel, 
 which have made of it a permanent principle of 
 religious and moral education, and a spiritual 
 society where the principle is put in force. The 
 
THE CHURCH 177 
 
 principle has no hold without the society, nor the 
 society without the principle. Protestantism and 
 Herr Harnack wish to keep only the principle. It 
 is a conception which lacks consistence and reality. 
 Catholicism stands for both principle and society. 
 Historical circumstances have made the social 
 organization seem to compromise the principle 
 more or less, even in some sort to appear to threaten 
 it still. But it is the condition of all that lives in 
 this world to be sul)ject to imperfection. What- 
 ever reservations the historian may make in details 
 as to the way in which the action of the Churcli 
 is or has been exercised, he cannot deny that 
 Catholicism has been, and is still, the service of the 
 gospel, continued since the days of the apostles. 
 
 The power of adaptation recognized in the Roman 
 Church is its best title to the admiration of the 
 impartial observer. It does not follow that the 
 Church alters either the Gospel or tradition, but 
 that she knows how to understand the needs of 
 the time. It cannot be too often repeated that 
 the gospel was not an absolute, abstract doctrine, 
 directly applicable at all times and to all men by 
 its essential virtue. It was a living faith, linked 
 everywhere to the time and the circumstances that 
 witnessed its birth. In order to preserve this faith 
 in the world, a work of adaptation has been, ami 
 
 N 
 
178 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 will be, perpetually necessary. Though the 
 Catholic Church has adapted, and still adapts, the 
 faith, though she adapt herself continually to 
 the needs of new ages, that is no proof that she 
 forgets the gospel or despises her own tradition, 
 but that she wishes to display the value of both, 
 and has confidence that they are flexible and capa- 
 ble of further perfection. 
 
 The " reasons of superior order," ^ which, accord- 
 ing to Herr Harnack, caused orthodoxy to be 
 corrected, ancient dogmas to be interpreted, new 
 dogmas to be produced, new practices and de- 
 votions to be authorized, are not to be sought in 
 the caprices or calculations of an arbitrary or 
 egoistic despotism. Whatever may have been the 
 external circumstances surrounding any particular 
 fact, all this development proceeds from the 
 innermost life of the Church, and the decisions of 
 authority only sanction, so to speak, or consecrate, 
 the movement that arises from general thought 
 and piety. If it does not please the Catholic 
 Church to bury herself, immovably, in the contem- 
 plation of traditional formulas, if she scrutinizes 
 and explains them, it is because she employs 
 activity and intelligence in the faith. If she 
 modifies her discipline and modes of action, it is 
 
 1 Page 155. 
 
THE CHURCH 179 
 
 because she wishes to act, seeiiiLT tliat she lives. 
 As the CI lurch she has a collective life whicli, not- 
 withstanding partial faihires, is the universal lite 
 of the gospel. She is not content to make only 
 Christians, she tends to create a Christian world 
 state. It is easy enough to understand that 
 individualist theologians have no sense of this 
 collective and continuous life of the gospel in the 
 Church, and do not always see it even when they 
 look at it. Its reality is none the less definite, 
 and its variety does not prove that the " essence 
 of Christianity " is, as it were, hidden and stifled 
 there under an accumulation of foreign material, 
 but that this essence dwells in it perpetually in 
 action, under all the forms that display its abundant 
 fruitfulness. 
 
SECTION V 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Past centuries regarded dogma as the expression 
 and the rampart of the faith. It was believed to 
 be immutable, altliough men were never weary of 
 perfecting its formulas. Herr Harnack also teaches 
 the immutability of dogma, but he finds but one 
 dogma in the gospel, and the work of Christian 
 thought since St. Paul is thus condemned totally, 
 since its object, in the main, is other than the 
 paternal goodness of God. The time-honoured 
 effort to define the truth of the gospel is there- 
 fore to be held entirely vain, foreign even to the 
 gospel it wishes to interpret. It is a fact, that 
 the development of dogma is not in the gospel, 
 and could not be there. But it does not follow 
 that the dogma does not proceed from the gospel, 
 and that the gospel has not lived and lives still 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA i8i 
 
 in the dogma as well as in the Churcli. Even the 
 teaching and the appearance of Jesus have had 
 perforce to be interpreted ; the whole question is 
 to know if the commentary is homogeneous with 
 the text or heterogeneous. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Even if there is unwillingness to recognize in the 
 gospel the first lineaments of Christology, they 
 must be admitted to be present in St. Paul. The 
 apostle, who rendered the Christian religion the 
 eminent service of detaching it from Judaism, 
 who presented the kingdom of God as a fact 
 accomplished in the Redemption through Christ, 
 who conceived the gospel as the Spirit of the 
 Law, also laid the foundations of Christian dogma. 
 There was, we are told, a latent danger in the 
 conception of an " objective redemption," because 
 of the temptation to separate it from the inner 
 renewal of the soul. Men might be led also to 
 count among the conditions of salvation an exact 
 knowledge of the Saviour and of His work. Did 
 not Paul himself attribute a celestial nature to 
 Christ, and notwithstanding the freedom of his 
 attitude with regard to the Law, did he not retain 
 the Old Testament as a source of truth ? If he 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 1S3 
 
 formulated no dogma, he set the Church on the 
 slope of dogmatic development.^ 
 
 However, according to Herr Harnack, this 
 development is, properly speaking, (I reek, and 
 the direct influence of Greek thouglit on Clnistian 
 makes itself felt about the year lUO. John, it 
 is true, had written that Jesus was the " Lo^os." 
 but " he had not made this proposition the basis 
 of all speculation concerning Christ." ^ After him 
 came the learned men who taught that Jesus 
 Christ was the corporeal appearance of the Logos, 
 and this idea replaced the unintelligible notion of 
 the Messiah. " It gave a metaphysical meaning 
 to a historic fact; it introduced into cosmology, 
 and into the philosophy of religion, a personality 
 that had appeared in time and space." ^ This 
 identification brought the Greek thinkers to 
 Christianity. But the gnostic crisis forced the 
 Church to trace the limits of speculation that 
 could be called Christian. There, strictly speak- 
 ing, begins dogma, and with it tlie menace it 
 brings for religious liberty. " No one may feel 
 or believe himself a Christian, tliat is, a cliild of 
 God, unless he has first submitted his religious 
 experience and knowledge to the control of the 
 ecclesiastical confession. . . . lEe will never attain 
 1 Page 115. « Fage 127. 3 Tago 128. 
 
i84 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 his spiritual majority, since he must remain in 
 dependence on dogma, on the priest, on ritual, and 
 on the Book." ^ 
 
 On this plane, continues our author, tradi- 
 tionalism, orthodoxy, and intellectualism proceed 
 together. The gospel has become " a great 
 cosmo- theological philosophy, wherein enter all 
 imaginable things." Men are persuaded that 
 " Christianity, being absolute religion, must be 
 able to reply to all questions of metaphysics, 
 cosmology, or history." Two features, however, 
 separate this doctrine from Greek philosophy, 
 namely, the dogma of creation, and especially the 
 Christological dogma. The great factor of this 
 dogma was a special conception of redemption 
 which came into prominence in the third century, 
 namely, that the salvation achieved by Christ 
 consists in the deliverance from death, and at the 
 same time an elevation to the Divine life, a 
 deification of man. To obtain this benefit for 
 humanity, the Kedeemer Himself must be God, 
 and become man. This is the reason that Atha- 
 nasius fought for the consubtantiality of the 
 Word and the Father, as though all Christianity 
 were at stake. For the same reason, the idea of 
 a simple moral union between the divinity and 
 
 Page 131. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 185 
 
 the humanity of the Saviour could not be 
 accepted. The dogmas of the consubstautial 
 Trinity, and of the God-man, are bound up with 
 this conception of the Eedemption and fall with 
 it. For this conception is not Christian, nor 
 moral : it has hardly any connection with the 
 Christ of the Gospel, to whom its formulas do not 
 apply ; it leads away from the real Christ, Whose 
 living image it does not keep, but rather presents 
 Him solely in the guise of " hypotheses expressed 
 in theoretical propositions." ^ 
 
 Herr Harnack regards the Augustinian doctrine 
 of grace rather from the point of view of piety 
 than that of dogma. " The piety and theology of 
 Augustine formed a special revival of the Pauline 
 experience and doctrines of sin and of grace, of 
 wickedness and justification, of Divine predestina- 
 tion, and of the defect of human liberty." " Down 
 to our own day, in Catholicism, inner living 
 piety and the manner of expressing it have 
 remained essentially Augustinian." How wise is 
 the theologian to note this contrast between the 
 most individual piety and the Church of law and 
 Imperialism 1 All Catholic reformers have been 
 Augustinians. "It is true that the Church has 
 joined to her dogma of grace, conceived essentiully 
 1 Pages 142-U7. 
 
1 86 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 as Augustine conceived it, a practice of confession 
 which threatens to make the dogma completely 
 valueless. But however wide she makes her 
 boundaries, so as to include all who do not rebel 
 against her, she not only supports those who think 
 with Augustine of sin and of grace, but she 
 desires that every one, as far as possible, should 
 feel as strongly as he did the gravity of sin and 
 the bliss of belonging to Grod." ^ 
 
 Great admirer of Luther as he is, Herr Harnack 
 holds the Protestant Eeformation to have been 
 incomplete. In matters of dogma, there are a 
 crowd of problems that Luther did not know, 
 much less was able to solve ; '' he was, in conse- 
 quence, unable to separate the kernel from the 
 hush. . . . He not only admits in the gospel the 
 ancient dogmas of the Trinity and the two natures 
 of Christ, ... he constructed new dogmas ; but, 
 generally speaking, did not know how to draw a 
 clear distinction between dogma and the gospel. 
 . . . The inevitable consequence was, that intel- 
 lectualism was not destroyed, but formed a new 
 scholastic dogma, considered essential to salvation, 
 so that there remained two classes of Christians, 
 those who understood the doctrine, and those who 
 accejDted it from those who understood and thus 
 
 1 Pages 160-163. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 187 
 
 continued spiritually minors." In this respect, 
 Protestantism threatens to become an inferior type 
 of Catholicism. Let the Evangelical Churclies 
 beware of becoming Catholicized ! If they would 
 remain truly evangelical, they must have no 
 orthodoxy.^ 
 
 1 Pases 182-185. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Christian thought at the commencement was 
 Jewish, and could not be other than Jewish, 
 although evangelical Christianity contained the 
 germ of a universal religion. The first change, 
 the most decisive, most important, most rapid 
 also, perhaps, it ever experienced, was that which 
 made out of a Jewish movement, founded on 
 the idea of the reign of the Messiah, a religion 
 acceptable to the Greco-Eoman world and to hu- 
 manity. However rapid it was, the change was 
 effected in successive stages : St. Paul, the Fourth 
 Gospel, St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, Origen, mark the 
 steps of this progression in the evolution of ideas, 
 and the adaptation of the faith to the conditions 
 of intellectual culture in the first centuries of 
 our era. The transformation was effected in spite 
 of the traditional and conservative tendency 
 inherent in every religion, and manifest from 
 the beginning in Christianity. The obligation of 
 the Mosaic Law was abrogated in spite of the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 189 
 
 Judaizers : the theory of the Lo^i^os triumphed in 
 spite of the adversaries of the Johannic writings, 
 to whom St. Epiphanes gave the name of Aloges . 
 the theology of Origan was accepted, with some 
 amendment, by those who contested it. Each step 
 of the doctrine, taken in spite of resistance, is 
 achieved by some sort of accommodation with 
 those that preceded it. The thesis of St. Paul on 
 the law of servitude and the gospel of liberty, the 
 Johannic conception of Christ, entered into the 
 tradition of the teaching Church under condition 
 of adaptation to primitive Christianity. In order 
 to assimilate the greater part of Origen's theology, 
 the Church cut up his system into fragments, and 
 even condemned certain philosophic hypotheses 
 which were not to her liking. 
 
 In a sense, it may be said that the Hellenization 
 of Christian doctrine dates from the Apologist 
 Fatliers, because they were the first to present 
 Christianity as a philosophy, and because they 
 elaborated the theory of the Logos, which was not 
 enunciated in the Fourth Gospel as a speculation, 
 but as a series of assertions of laith and mystical 
 pictures. This opinion wuuUl be inexact if it were 
 held to involve, as Herr Ifarnack seems to tldiik, 
 the conclusion that the idea of the Logos, or, more 
 exactly, the idea of the Incarnate Word, does not 
 
I90 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 dominate entirely the Fourth Gospel. There is 
 not a single verse of the Gospel of John written 
 independently of this influence. But the con- 
 ception of the Logos enters, so to speak, into a 
 living faith, enlarges the formula of the faith, and 
 changes its own nature : it ceases to be a purely 
 theoretical conception upon which are founded 
 speculations of the same order, and becomes 
 Christian by serving to define the Christ : it is a 
 vital theology, mystical, not abstract, in no way 
 scholastic, whilst the doctrine of the Fathers 
 develops the cosmological point of view merely 
 indicated in the prologue of John. 
 
 The Pauline theory of salvation was indis- 
 pensable in its time, if Christianity were not to 
 remain a Jewish sect without a future. The 
 theory of the Incarnate Logos was also necessary 
 when the gospel was presented, not only to the 
 proselytes of Judaism in the Empire, but to the 
 whole pagan world, and to every one who had 
 received a Hellenic education. The learned theo- 
 logy of Origen was the synthesis of doctrine, that 
 could make Christianity acceptable to the most 
 cultivated minds. It was the bridge between the 
 new religion and the science of antiquity. The 
 Greek w^orld would never have admitted the neces- 
 sity of circumcision, nor have become converted to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 191 
 
 the Messiah of Israel, but it could and did become 
 a convert to the God Who became man, to the 
 Incarnate Word. All the development of Trini- 
 tarian and Christological dogma, which, according 
 to Herr liarnack and other critical tlieologians, 
 has weighed so heavily on all Christian orthodoxies, 
 binding them to an effete doctrine and to the 
 science of Plato and Aristotle, long since passed by 
 modern knowledge, was, in the beginning, a vital 
 manifestation, a great effort of faith and intelli- 
 gence, which enabled the Church to link her own 
 tradition to the science of the age, to fortify one 
 by the other, and transform both into a learned 
 theology which believed it contained the know- 
 ledge of the world and the knowledge of God. 
 Philosophy could become Christian without being 
 obliged to deny itself, and yet Christianity had 
 not ceased to be a religion, the religion of Christ. 
 This work of Christian thouglit must not be 
 judged as a scientific achievement. It did not 
 pretend to be, and had it desired to be, it must ])e 
 confessed its method would have led to failure. 
 It was not erudite research that determined its 
 character and fixed its results, but the instinct of 
 faith in souls otherwise saturated witli the Greek 
 spirit. Further, the Hellenizatioii of Christianity 
 was not anticipated by professional philosophers. 
 
192 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 like the gnostic doctors, nor desired by skilful 
 politicians, who would have carefully fostered 
 every chance of success for the work of conver- 
 sion, and would have taken pains to remove 
 from Christianity every sign of its Jewish origin, 
 that in a Greek guise it might penetrate the 
 pagan world more easily. The cause of the move- 
 ment lay deeper, and, so to speak, was more 
 profoundly necessitated. The development of 
 Christian dogma was brought about by the state 
 of mind and culture of the earliest converts, 
 who were Gentiles, or under Gentile influence. 
 So far as they were won over to Jewish beliefs, 
 they were prepared to understand and appreciate 
 primitive Christianity, and to this extent they 
 became attached to it. So far as they were 
 imbued with Greek culture, they felt the need 
 of interpreting their new faith to themselves. 
 They did so, the more promptly and the more 
 willingly, because some explanation was essential 
 to any one who wished to speak of Christianity 
 to pagans ignorant of Judaism. In this way, 
 progressively, but beginning at a very early date, 
 the Greek interpretation of the Christian doctrine 
 of the Messiah came into being through the 
 spontaneous effort of the faith to define itself, 
 through the natural exigencies of propagandism, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 193 
 
 and thus the Christ, Son of God and Son of man, 
 predestined Saviour, became the Word made 
 flesh, the Eevealer of God to Innnanity. 
 
 All the development of Christological doctrine 
 up to the end of the third century comes from 
 this double impulse, which at the same time accel- 
 erates its progress. It is moderated and controlled 
 by the principle of tradition v^^hich compels it to 
 remain always in close relation with its point of 
 departure, the monotheistic conception, and tlie 
 real humanity and historical personality of Jesus. 
 Israelitish monotlieism was a doctrine nmch 
 more religious and moral than philosophic ; to it 
 is adapted the metaphysics of Plato and Philo, 
 without which, faith in tlie one God would have 
 hardly had any meaning for the Greeks, much 
 more " intellectual " than religious. In the 
 same way, the Divinity of Christ, the Incarna- 
 tion of the Word was the only conceivable way 
 of translating to Greek intelligence the idea 
 of the Messiah. God does not cease to be 
 One, and Jesus remains Christ ; but God is 
 triple without multiplication of Hinisclf, Jesus 
 is God witliout ceasing to be man, and the 
 AVord becomes man witliout losing its single 
 identity. Each step of dogma marks the intro- 
 duction of Greek philosopliy into ('liristitiniry, jiml 
 
 o 
 
194 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 a compromise between this philosophy and Chris- 
 tian tradition. 
 
 For philosophy was not introduced into the 
 Faith as such, nor entirely, but only in so far 
 as an explanation or a learned formula was bor- 
 rowed, or rather stolen, from it to give value to 
 tradition. The apologists may speak of philo- 
 sophy in connection with Christianity, and Origen 
 regard theology as a true science, a gnosis superior 
 to the common faith, but the official representa- 
 tives of the Church affect to know nothing but 
 tradition, and do not acknowledge, having no 
 consciousness of them, the loans that Christianity 
 has made before them, and is making still 
 through them, from Hellenic wisdom. Ortho- 
 doxy is nourished by Plato, Philo, and Origen, and 
 condemns them all more or less, for it does not 
 always draw from them directly. The principle 
 of tradition, a religious, moral, and social prin- 
 ciple, a principle of government rather than of 
 science, generally wins the day over the principle 
 of free speculation, which is that of philosophy, 
 and always wins at decisive moments. It is, 
 therefore, permissible to say that Christian 
 theology undertook a work of selection from 
 Greek philosophy. But if it is true, in a sense, 
 that it absorbed philosophy, seeing that it took 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 195 
 
 the place of it, after assimilatiiiL,^ a good part of 
 its elements, it is certain tliat primitive Christian 
 tradition was never exchanged for philosophy, nor 
 Greek science substituted for the gospel, nor 
 Plato taken for master in place of Christ and the 
 apostles. From a historical point of view, it may 
 be maintained that the Trinity and the Incarna- 
 tion are Greek dogmas, since they are unknown to 
 Judaism and Judaic Christianity, and that Greek 
 philosophy, which helped to make them, also aids 
 in their comprehension. None the less, they are 
 not scientific dogmas transported from Pagan 
 philosophy into Christian theology ; they are 
 religious dogmas, which owe to philosophy only 
 certain theoretical elements and their formulas, 
 not the spirit which penetrates elements and 
 formulas, nor the special combination of concep- 
 tions which constitute them. The evolution of 
 the idea of the Divine life in the Trinity does not 
 proceed from Israelitish monotheism without the 
 influence of Hellenic speculations, but the main- 
 tenance of unity, the definition of the three terms 
 of the Divine life are dictated by Jewish tradition 
 and Christian experience. In the conception of 
 the Incarnation, the idea of the Word comes in mi 
 Pliilo as much as from the l)ibl(', l)ut it dors not 
 cease to be partly lUblical, ami, above all, it is 
 
196 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 fixed, made concrete, turned, as it were, from 
 cosmology towards revelation, directed towards 
 Christ in such a way as to derive an original 
 significance in its relation to Him and to the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 It is not astonishing that the result of so special 
 a labour seems to lack logic and rational con- 
 sistency. However, it is found that this defect, 
 which would be fatal to a philosophic system, is, 
 in theology, an element of endurance and solidity. 
 May it not be said that all heresies are born of 
 deductions followed out in a special sense, start- 
 ing from one principle of tradition or of science 
 isolated from all the rest, erected into absolute 
 truth, from which, as a result of reasoning, con- 
 clusions are drawn incompatible with the general 
 harmony of religion and traditional teaching ? Or- 
 thodoxy seems to follow a kind of politic line, 
 balanced and obstinately conciliatory, between the 
 extreme conclusions that can be drawn from the 
 data it preserves. When it can no longer perceive 
 the logical agreement of the assertions it seems to 
 set one against the other, it proclaims the mystery, 
 and does not purchase unity of theory by the 
 sacrifice of an important element of its tradition. 
 So it acted in the case of the Trinity, when the 
 principle of the consubstantiality of the three 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 197 
 
 Divine Persons finally triumphed, and it was no 
 longer possible to oscillate between Modalisni, 
 which admitted but one Person manifested in three 
 works, creation, redemption, sanctificati(jn, and 
 Subordinationisni, which attributed the three works 
 to three unequal Persons. So also it acted in the 
 case of the Incarnation, when the dual nature was 
 definitely affirmed in the one Person, and when 
 it was necessary to take a stand simultaneously 
 against Nestorianism and Monophysism. Christian 
 tradition refused, more or less consciously, to limit 
 the real nature of religious things by the rational 
 nature of our conceptions ; its aim was rather to 
 render to the eternal truth the only homage that 
 is of value, by holding it always higher than our 
 intelligence, affirmations which seem contradictory 
 being, perhaps, compatible at the limit of infinity. 
 There is but one eternal God, and Jesus is God — 
 that is the theological dogma. The salvation of 
 man is entirely in the hand of God, and man is 
 free to save himself, or not — that is the dogma of 
 grace. The Church has authority over men, and 
 the Christian is only responsible to God — that is 
 ecclesiastical dogma. Abstract logic would 
 demand that throughout one or other of these 
 strangely linked projHJsitions should be sacriliced. 
 But attentive observation shows that such a 
 
198 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 course would compromise tlie living equilibrium 
 of religion. 
 
 The dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation 
 are associated with an idea of Eedemption in- 
 fluenced by Hellenism; but neither is the idea 
 purely Hellenic, nor is its relation with the dogmas 
 so close that they absolutely depend on it. If 
 Herr Harnack's judgment is that the gospel does 
 not, by Eedemption, intend to signify exemption 
 from death, it is because he began by considering 
 eternal life to be the actual possession of God 
 through faith in His mercy. But we have seen 
 that this hypothesis is founded on an interpretation 
 of gospel teaching, which is of very doubtful 
 value. Eternal life, in the teaching of Jesus, is 
 not the possession of God by man through faith, 
 but the possession of the kingdom in the life to 
 come, the life that is unending. Thus the im- 
 mortality guaranteed to those who will see the 
 great advent, and those who will rise from the dead 
 to partake in it, is an element in the gospel, and 
 the necessary and explicitly formulated condition 
 of participation in the kingdom of God. The gift 
 of immortality is not yet conceived as a ransom- 
 ing, a restoration of humanity ; it constitutes the 
 recompense promised to the righteous. The re- 
 conciliation of sinners in the parables of mercy is 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 199 
 
 not represented as a redemption. God jtardons 
 tlie repentant sinner wlio thus acquires a title to 
 eternal life. 
 
 But St. Paul already sets forth Christian ri«rht- 
 eousness and blessed immortality as an effect of 
 the mediation and sacrifice of the " lieavenly m.iu " 
 Christ, Who restored to humanity the gift it lost 
 by the fault of our first parent, the ** earthly man," ^ 
 The author of the Fourth Gospel makes little of 
 the idea of propitiation ; but he associates the idea 
 of life in God with that of life in the kin«'dom. 
 and thus conceives the eternal life both as to come 
 and as already present. This life is a deification 
 of man ; for if the deification of Jesus consisted in 
 the full communication of the Divine Spirit, which 
 was the Incarnation of the Word, that of man is 
 realized by the partial communication which is 
 made of the same Spirit to believers, united to 
 God in Christ, as Christ Himself is united to His 
 Father. 
 
 The dogmatic theory of the Fathers of the 
 Church is, therefore, already present in the 
 New Testament. The reasoning of Athanasius, 
 and the other doctors, only gave it the rigour 
 of a system. John had said that man participates 
 in the Divine life and triumphs over dc;ith by 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 35-57 
 
200 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the gift of the Divine Spirit, which Christ, In- 
 carnate God, obtains for liim. The defenders of 
 consubstantiality said that Christ could not thus 
 deify man, unless He Himself were God. The 
 reasoning of the ecclesiastical theologians is 
 founded on the assertion of the evangelist, and 
 all the Greek development is linked to one 
 element of the teaching of Jesus, wherein the 
 Messiah was already the messenger and the 
 agent of immortality. On the other hand, 
 the dogma of the Trinity does not rest only on 
 the idea of the deification of man by Christ, but 
 on the assertion of faith which first presented 
 Jesus as Christ and Lord, hallowed by the Spirit 
 of God, and later, as identified with the Divine 
 Word, and on the assertion which, before all 
 doctrinal systematization, conceived the Spirit 
 which acted in the Church as a Divine Per- 
 sonality, dependent and distinct from the Father 
 and the Son. The Apostles' Creed and the 
 formula of baptism are of a date anterior 
 to the third century, and it cannot be denied 
 that they contain the essential elements of the 
 dogma of the Trinity. The systematic definition 
 of the dogma is in relation to the systematic 
 definition of liedemption, but the ideas which sup- 
 ported these definitions existed before them in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 201 
 
 Christian belief, and iheir evolution lias its startin.^' 
 point in the gospel of Jesus and apostolic tradition. 
 The development of the dogma of grace, and 
 that of the dogma of the Churcli, has been effected 
 under the same conditions as that of the theo- 
 logical dogma. The West has never liad inncli 
 liking for the speculations wherein the genius of 
 the ancient East has always delighted to wander, 
 and frequently to go astray. Her religion, instead 
 of being a matter of transcendental metapliysics, 
 or of cosmological epic, was a wellspring of inner 
 piety and an instrument of social order. At 
 Eome, and in the Latin countries, religion is 
 readily conceived as a discipline and a social 
 duty. For the Germanic races, it is a principle of 
 inner life, the poem of the sonl, where nothing 
 is really visible but " God and the soul, the soul 
 and its God." The spirit of government, inherent 
 in Eome, contributed to the ecclesiastical de- 
 velopment, and prepared for modern times the 
 development of the dogma of the Church. The 
 spirit of piety was not lacking in any fraction 
 of ancient Christianity; nevertheless, it gave rise 
 to no special development peculiar to the Latin 
 Church, except through St. Augustine and the 
 influence of Augustinism, an influence that must 
 not be altogether confused with the credit the 
 
202 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Augustinian system of grace has enjoyed among 
 theologians. As Herr Harnack has said, the 
 history of Western Christianity, since the fifth 
 century, is made up of the relations that have 
 existed between two factors ; the spirit of piety, 
 which tends to make religion a personal matter, 
 and the spirit of government, which tends to 
 make it an official thing, regulated throughout 
 by the sovereign authority of the Eoman Pontiff. 
 Eeligious individualism is the extreme limit of 
 the first tendency, ecclesiastical absolutism of the 
 second. From their equilibrium, the life of 
 Christianity results, a life that will vanish 
 promptly enough on the day when one of these 
 tendencies fails to counterbalance the other, for 
 Protestantism only exists as religion by means of 
 fragments of hierarchy and traditional organiza- 
 tion, and Catholicism derives its vitality at least 
 as much from the intimate ardour of piety as 
 from the solidity of the hierarchical bond, or the 
 riojour of administrative centralization. 
 
 St. Augustine contemplated the Christian idea 
 from the point of view of individual salvation, an 
 abstraction made from the cosmolo^ical s^nosis. 
 He does not regard salvation alone as a final end, 
 but first of all in the guise of that spiritual 
 regeneration, which constitutes its reality for the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 203 
 
 present life. The history of Christianity becomes 
 a psychological drama: Adam and Eve were 
 righteous and holy; they had within them the 
 grace of God, and the power to do good, but never- 
 theless, in such a way, that in the trial of the 
 forbidden fruit, they had the faculty of obedience 
 witliout the overwhelming compulsion to fulfil 
 their duty ; they failed, the attraction of the flesh 
 gaining the day over the spiritual force of grace, 
 and so destroying the harmony God had estab- 
 lished in His chosen creation ; henceforth, the 
 lust of the flesh, that is, sin, in a permanent and 
 abiding form, reigns in man ; all the sons of 
 Adam are born sinners, because they are born 
 of the lust of the flesh, and bear within them the 
 deadly principle which brought them to birth; 
 but as the evil, so is the remedy ; the grace 
 deserved through Jesus, which is essentially the 
 gift of faith and love of God, is an attraction of 
 another order, all-powerful and Divine, by which 
 man acquires the liberty of righteousness, by 
 becoming capable of resisting effectively the 
 deadly attraction of lust ; as long as he lives 
 on the earth, the lust of the flesh is not plucked 
 up by the root, it is simply combated and over- 
 tlirown by the superior attraction of the grace 
 of God. 
 
204 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The doctrine of grace is no more Roman in 
 origin than the doctrine of tlie Incarnate Word. 
 The African Church was Roman neither in race 
 nor in spirit, notwithstanding its close and per- 
 manent rehations with the community of Rome. 
 The sens^e of the personal dignity of the Christian 
 and of Christian holiness was preserved there very 
 vividly ; although they had not followed Tertullian 
 into the chimerical realm of Montanism, they had, 
 so to speak, the worship of the Spirit and of the 
 sacraments that confer it : for a long time they 
 refused to accept the baptism of repentant heretics, 
 and a formidable schism, that of the Donatists, 
 arose from the same cause as the error of Cyprian 
 and tlie rebaptizers ; in the same way that baptism 
 given by a heretic could not be valid, because the 
 heretic, not having the Holy Spirit, could not 
 communicate it, so the ordinations made by the 
 " Traditors," those who, during the persecutions 
 of Diocletian, had been so weak as to hand over the 
 sacred treasure of the Scriptures to the Roman 
 authorities, were necessarily void, because a 
 " Traditor " bishop is deprived of his grace, and 
 cannot confer what he no longer possesses. It is in 
 such an atmosphere that the dogma of efficacious 
 grace was sure to be born. Alexandria might be 
 interested in the Divine Essence, Antioch in the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 205 
 
 theandric constitution of Christ, Eome in rules 
 of ecclesiastical government, but Carthage and 
 the Church of Africa were concerned with the 
 holiness of the Church in its chiefs and in its 
 members. This way of understanding religion 
 was defined by Augustine in a theory, which had 
 the advantage over the principle that guided 
 Cyprian and the Donatists, that it did not 
 disturb the constitution of the Church, since it 
 accepted from common tradition both the 
 theological dogma and the form of ecclesiastical 
 institution. 
 
 By presenting to each believer a scheme of 
 moral redemption founded on the profound senti- 
 ment of human weakness, and the mysterious 
 efficacy of grace, through faith, hope, and love, 
 the dogma of grace was found to be absolutely 
 fitted to the spirit of the new nations the Church 
 had soon to convert, who are now the Christian 
 nations, Catholic and Protestant, of Western 
 Europe. These nations have taken religion as 
 a spiritual medicine, the condition and fruit of 
 an inner struggle, the second birth of the indi- 
 vidual and his progress towards moral perfection, 
 liberty above all the freedom of social order, the 
 principle of righteous action and of rigliteous life, 
 and the deification of man, no longer only in the 
 
2o6 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 radiance of God, but by the life of God in himself 
 and by the activity of love. 
 
 This dogma, psychological and human, some- 
 what modified by the interpretations of a later 
 tradition, is bound up with the teaching of Jesus 
 neither more nor less than the theological dogma. 
 It proceeds directly from St. Paul. The apostle 
 considered salvation not only as a cosmological 
 function, but first of all as an interest of humanity 
 in general and of the individual in particular ; 
 from his meditations on the relations of the Law 
 and the Gospel, on Sin and Eedemption, was 
 derived his theory of salvation, through faith in 
 Jesus and the grace of God alone, without the 
 works of the Law. Man, since Adam, is inclined 
 to sin — in his natural state, a sinner: far from 
 serving him, the Law, by multiplying precepts, 
 multiplies transgressions ; it is only an instruction, 
 a guide; through the Law has no one ever been 
 saved. 
 
 Faith is the true remedy for sin ; but faith is 
 founded only on Jesus Christ, Who delivers men 
 from the Law, from sin, and from death, having 
 left this triple burden buried in the sepulchre 
 whence He ascended, free and glorious ; the 
 "heavenly man" made flesh has redeemed all 
 sinners, the descendants of the " earthly man : " 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 207 
 
 He has condemned sin in the flesh, He has 
 crucified it; unjustly smitten in virtue of the 
 Law, He has broken the Law in pieces : dying of 
 His own free will, He has destroyed the empire 
 of death ; thus He remains a principle of justice 
 and eternal life for those who believe in Him.^ 
 St. Augustine disentangled these ideas from their 
 connection with the question of the Law, which 
 was an essential matter for Paul, but had no 
 significance for the Church; drew from them a 
 logical system ; made precise the conception of 
 original sin and that of personal sin, of grace and 
 of nature, and interpreted as a theologian the 
 institutions and subtle polemic of the apostle. 
 
 As the reformers made much of the Pauline 
 and Augustinian theory of justification, and as 
 liberal theologians readily find therein their con- 
 ception of salvation or of eternal life acquired 
 through faith in God the Father, it is seldom 
 insisted that this dogma of grace is no more 
 expressly taught in the gospel than the Christo- 
 logical dogma. But the teaching of the Saviour 
 would be searched in vain for a doctrine of sin 
 and of justification. The Kingdom of Heaven is 
 promised to him that repents, in such a way tliat 
 the gain of eternal life seems subordinated to two 
 1 Cf. Rom. V. 
 
2o8 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 conditions ; one implicit, namely, faith in the 
 Divine mercy and in the coming kingdom, and 
 one explicit, namely, repentance ; otherwise the 
 conditions of salvation, which is, as a matter of fact, 
 offered only to Jews, are not discussed. It is easy 
 to see all that St. Paul adds to the gospel, where 
 are to be found only ordinary ideas of sin, pardon, 
 and eternal life, without any theory. 
 
 Just as truly as the Christological dogma, the 
 dogma of grace is an interpretation of the salva- 
 tion of the Messiah and of the theology of the 
 heavenly kingdom, and this interpretation also 
 was made necessary by the circumstances in which 
 the gospel was perpetuated, and by the problems 
 presented by the conversion of pagans, problems 
 which had to be resolved by drawing inspiration 
 much more from the Spirit of Jesus than from 
 His formal declarations. 
 
 It is since the Eeformation especially, that the 
 conception even of the Church has become a 
 matter of dogmatic development. Previously the 
 Church grew without much speculation on the 
 nature of her progress. Protestantism first threw 
 doubt on her authority, thus throwing doubt on 
 the Church herself. Now, the main point at issue 
 between Catholic theologians and those of the 
 reformed communions may be stated in these 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 209 
 
 simple terms : Is the gospel of Jesus in principle 
 individualist or collectivist ? The question whieh 
 seemed of prime importance to past centuries, 
 namely, if the object of faitk is to be determined 
 by Scripture alone or by tradition with Scripture, 
 retires into the background ; for, in spite of 
 appearances, it is no longer a question of knowing 
 if Scripture contains the plenitude of the revela- 
 tion or no, but whether it is for the individual 
 Christian himself to build up his own faith 
 and all his religion with the aid of Scripture, 
 or whether Christian faith and religion ought not 
 to be and are not rather a perpetual and universal 
 work, to which each contributes and from which 
 each derives benefit. 
 
 In opposition to Protestantism which leads the 
 Christian religion logically to absolute indivi- 
 dualism, that is, to indefinite subdivision, Catholic 
 Christianity has kept a clearer consciousness of 
 itself, and has declared itself a Divine institution 
 as an external and visible society, with a single 
 chief who possesses to the full, powers of teaching, 
 of jurisdiction, of sanctification, that is to say, 
 all the powers that are in the Church, powers 
 which earlier centuries placed in the general 
 episcopate under the hegemony of the Pope, 
 without specifying whether the I*ope alone 
 
 P 
 
2IO THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 possessed tliem wholly. The definitions of the 
 Vatican are to some extent sprung from reality ; 
 but if the centralizing tendency that led to it 
 seems to have reached its limit, theological re- 
 flection has not yet spoken its final word on the 
 subject. It is possible that the future will make 
 observations on the true nature and object of 
 ecclesiastical authority, which cannot fail to react 
 on the manner and conditions of its exercise. 
 
 Any one who has followed the progress of 
 Christian thought from the beginning must per- 
 ceive that neither the Christological dogma nor 
 the dogma of grace nor that of the Church is to be 
 taken for a summit of doctrine, beyond which no 
 prospect opens for the believer or can ever open 
 except the dazzling distance of infinite mystery ; 
 it is not to be expected that these dogmas will 
 remain firmer than the rock, inaccessible even to 
 accidental change, and yet intelligible for all gene- 
 rations, and equally applicable, without any new 
 translation or explanation, to all states, and to 
 every advance of science, life, and human society. 
 The conceptions that the Church presents as re- 
 vealed dogmas are not truths fallen from heaven, 
 and preserved by religious tradition in the precise 
 form in which they first appeared. The historian 
 sees in them the interpretation of religious facts, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 211 
 
 acquired by a laborious effort of theological 
 thought. Though the dogmas may be Divine iu 
 origin and substance, they are human in structure 
 and composition. It is inconceivable that their 
 future should not correspond to their past. Eeason 
 never ceases to put questions to faith, and tradi- 
 tional formulas are submitted to a constant work 
 of interpretation wherein " the letter that killeth " 
 is effectively controlled by " the spirit that giveth 
 life." * 
 
 » 2 Cor. iii. 6. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 It is only by starting from a scholastic conception, 
 abstract and unreal, of revelation and of dogma 
 that a conclusion is reached condemnatory of all 
 the fruit of Christian reflection upon the object of 
 Christianity. It is clear that if the unchangeable 
 essence of the gospel had been only faith in God 
 the Father, all Christian development of doctrine, 
 as well as of ecclesiastical organization and ritual, 
 would have been a vast aberration. But besides 
 the fact that the gospel is not to be summed up 
 in such a belief, it would be absurd to suppose 
 that the statement of this faith could remain un- 
 changeable, or become so if it were judged expe- 
 dient for mankind to content themselves with it. 
 If the attention of the first believers had not 
 been directed towards the Son of God, it would 
 have turned to the Father Himself, and become 
 occupied with His nature and relations with the 
 world, thus leading speculation back to cosmology. 
 Interest would have been roused in this goodness. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 213 
 
 which had its essential significance in relation to 
 mankind, its historical manifestations would have 
 been tentatively defined, or, at any rate, its secret 
 action in each believing soul, a process leading 
 thought again to Christology and the economy of 
 Divine Grace. Sooner or later attention would 
 have been brought to bear on the normal con- 
 ditions of evangelization, and the problem of 
 ecclesiulogy would have arisen. Doctrinal Chris- 
 tian development was inevitable, therefore, and in 
 principle, legitimate ; on the whole, it has served 
 the cause of the gospel, which could not exist as a 
 pure essence, but being constantly transformed into 
 living doctrines has itself lived in these doctrines, 
 whose development is therefore justified in fact.^ 
 
 It is easy to say that the Catholic Church does 
 not even recognize the existence of this develop- 
 ment, and condemns the very idea of it. Perhaps 
 it would be nearer the truth to say that she has 
 never had consciousness of it, and that she has 
 no official theory concerning the philosophy of 
 her own history. That which is taught by Vincent 
 de Lerins, modern theologians (except Cardinal 
 Newman) and the Council of the Vatican, touch- 
 ing the development of dogma, applies in reality 
 to the definitely intellectual and theological phase 
 ^ Cf. E. Caird, art. cit. p. 10. 
 
214 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 of its development, not to the first budding and 
 formation of beliefs, or at least includes in an 
 abstract definition, much work for which this 
 definition is no adequate expression. It is just 
 the idea of development which is now needed, 
 not to be created all at once, but established from 
 a better knowledge of the past. The acquisition 
 of this new dogma will have no different effect to 
 that of the old ones. These latter were not con- 
 tained in primitive tradition, like a conclusion in 
 the premises of a syllogism, but as a germ in a 
 seed, a real and living element, which must 
 become transformed as it grows, and be determined 
 by discussion before its crystallization into a 
 solemn formula. They existed as more or less 
 conscious facts or beliefs, before they were the 
 subject of learned speculations or of official 
 judgments. The Christological dogma was, before 
 everything, the expression of what Jesus repre- 
 sented from the beginning to Christian conscious- 
 ness; the dogma of grace was the expression of 
 the Divine work accomplished in the souls that 
 were regenerated through the gospel ; the ecclesio- 
 logical dogma was the expression of the per- 
 manent position of the Episcopate and the Pope 
 in the Church. If ever a dogmatic conclusion is 
 formulated on the subject of Christian development 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 215 
 
 it will almost certainly be an expression of the 
 law of progress which has governed the history 
 of Christianity from the beginning. Till now, 
 Catholic theologians have been especially pre- 
 occupied with the absolute character that the 
 dogma derives from its source, the Divine revela- 
 tion, and critics have hardly noticed the relative 
 character that its history makes manifest. The 
 efforts of a healthy theology should be directed 
 to a solution of the difficulty, presented by the 
 unquestionable authority faith demands for dogma, 
 and the variability, the relativity, the critic cannot 
 fail to perceive in the history of dogmas and 
 dogmatic formulas. 
 
 We have seen how the whole development of 
 Christian doctrine is not outside the faith, but 
 within the faith, which dominates it entirely. 
 The traditional principle and the religious sense 
 have always overcome the need of scientific adapta- 
 tion, and have saved the originality of Christianity. 
 The ancient dogmas have their root in the preach- 
 ing and ministry of Christ, and in the experiences 
 of the Church, and their development in the 
 history of Christianity and in theological thought : 
 nothing else was possible. Further, it is no less 
 natural that the creeds and dogmatic definitions 
 should be related to the state of general human 
 
2i6 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 knowledge in the time and under the ciiciimstances 
 when they were constituted. It follows that a 
 considerable change in the state of knowledge 
 might render necessary a new interpretation of 
 old formulas, which, conceived in another intel- 
 lectual atmosphere, no longer say what is neces- 
 sary, or no longer say it suitably. In such a 
 case, a distinction must be drawn between the 
 material sense of the formula, tlie external image 
 it presents, related to ideas received Irom an- 
 tiquity, and its proper religious and Christian 
 significance, its fundamental idea, which can be 
 reconciled with new views of the constitution of 
 the world and the nature of things in general. 
 The Church still repeats every day in the creed of 
 the apostles, "He descended into Hell, He has 
 ascended to Heaven." These propositions have 
 for many centuries been taken literally. Genera- 
 tions of Christians have followed one another 
 believing Hell, the abode of tlie damned, to be 
 beneath their feet, and Heaven, the abode of the 
 elect, above their heads. Neither learned theology 
 nor even popular preaching maintains this locali- 
 zation to-day : and no one any longer will hold 
 that he can determine the place of the soul of 
 Christ in the interval between His death and His 
 resurrection, nor that of His glorified humanity 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 217 
 
 since His ascension. The real dogmatic meaning 
 of these sentences remains unaltered, because by 
 them is always taught a transitory relation of the 
 soul of Christ with the just under the ancient 
 law, and the glorification of His risen humanity. 
 May we not say, looking at the transformation 
 that the apparent sense of the formulas has under- 
 gone, that the theology of the future will again 
 construct a more spiritual idea of their content ? 
 It is quite true that the Church corrects its dog- 
 matic formulas by means of distinctions, sometimes 
 rather subtle. But, in so acting, she continues in 
 tlie way she has walked from the beginning, she 
 adapts the gospel to the constantly changing 
 condition of human life and intelligence. 
 
 It is not indispensable to the authority of be- 
 lief that it should be rigorously unchangeable in 
 its intellectual form and its verbal expression. 
 Such immutability is not compatible with the 
 nature of human intelligence. Oiu" most certain 
 knowledijje in the domains of nature and of science 
 is always in movement, always relative, always 
 perfectible. It is not with the elements of human 
 thought that an everlasting edifice can be built. 
 Truth alone is unchangeable, but not its image in 
 our minds. Faith addresses itself to the un- 
 changeable truth, through a formula, necessarily 
 
2i8 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 inadequate, capable of improvement, consequently 
 of change. When Jesus said, in all solemnity, 
 " Verily I say unto you, There be some of them 
 that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of 
 death, till they see the Son of man coming in His 
 kingdom," ^ He put forward a dogmatic proposi- 
 tion much less absolute in reality than in appear- 
 ance ; He demanded faith in the approaching 
 kino-dom, but the idea of the kingdom and of its 
 proximity were two very simple symbols of very 
 complex matters, and even those who were the 
 first to believe must have attached their minds 
 more to the spirit than to the letter of this state- 
 ment, to find it always true. The dogmatic 
 formulas stand in the same position as the words 
 of the Saviour, and it is no demonstration that 
 they are objectless, to discover at any given 
 moment that the reality has passed them by. 
 
 The singularly defective logic which seems to 
 preside over the formation and growth of dogmas, 
 is in no way difficult to understand, and may 
 even be called normal, by the historian who con- 
 siders the proofs of faith as expressions of its 
 vitality rather than the real reasons of its origin. 
 
 Nothing is more precarious, from the point of 
 view of the ordinary rules of human reasoning 
 I Matt. xvi. 28. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 219 
 
 and textual criticism, than certain arguments by 
 which the gospel is founded on the Old Testa- 
 ment, and Catholic Christianity on the whole 
 Bible. The work of traditional exegesis, from 
 whence dogma may be said to proceed by a slow 
 and continuous elaboration, seems in permanent 
 contradiction with the principles of a purely 
 rational and historical interpretation. It is always 
 taken for granted that the old Biblical texts and 
 the witness of tradition must contain the truth of 
 the present time, and the truth is found there 
 because it is put there. Catholic theologians had 
 a right appreciation of this state of affairs when 
 they laid down the rule that the infallibility of 
 the Church applies to dogmatic definitions, not to 
 the preambles that stated the reasons of them, 
 even when the preambles were expressed in the 
 official declarations of Councils and Popes. A 
 distinction of this kind would be useful for the 
 New Testament, wherein the resurrection of the 
 dead is proved by the text, " I am the God of 
 Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
 Jacob," ^ the independence of the Christian from 
 the Mosaic law l)y the history of Hagar and 
 Sarah,^ and quotations from the ancient Scripture 
 applied generally in a sense that did not originally 
 1 Markxii. 26. 2 ciul. iv. 21-31. 
 
220 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 belong to them. As for tradition, it suffices to 
 recall how the Fathers and theologians prove the 
 Trinity of Divine Persons by the words of Genesis, 
 "Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
 ness," ^ and by the three angels that visited 
 Abraham ; ^ how the two swords that Peter is 
 said to have carried at Gethsemane ^ demonstrated, 
 according to Boniface VIII. and the mediaeval 
 doctors, the double power, spiritual and temporal, 
 of the Popes. It is well known, also, how texts, 
 in themselves perfectly clear, like the lamenta- 
 tions of Job and the psalmists over the annihila- 
 tion of man by death, the assertions of the Saviour 
 and the apostles upon the approaching end of the 
 world, the saying of Christ as reported by John, 
 " The Father is greater than I," ^ are not held to 
 mean that which they obviously signify. 
 
 May it not be said that, in the order of things 
 moral and religious, human logic has no care for 
 itself, that the effort towards improvement runs 
 ahead of the reasoning that justifies it, and that 
 it bears within itself a truth superior to all the 
 arguments that seek to establisli it ? Thus the 
 best apology for all that lives lies in the life 
 ilself. All the scaffolding of theological and 
 
 1 Gen. i. 26. 2 Gen. xviii. 2. 
 
 ' Luke xxii. 38 ; John xviii. 10. * John xiv. 28. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 221 
 
 apologetic argument is only an attempt, and a 
 necessary one, to figure the relation of the past to 
 the present as well as the continuity of religion 
 and religious progress from the beginning. The 
 artifices of interpretation serve ceaselessly to 
 enlarge and spiritualize the meaning of the Sym- 
 bols, to promote tlie development and intelligence 
 of religion by the ever renewed perception of 
 analogies, higher and more worthy of their mys- 
 terious object. External imperfections, which are 
 above all, imperfections relative to us to the critical 
 knowledge of the sources of history and to the 
 modern education of intelligence, do not render this 
 great work vain nor prejudice the importance of its 
 results. If the gospel had been a philosophical 
 thesis, the thesis would have been very badly con- 
 structed and developed, Ijut as the gospel was a 
 living religion, the theological work of Christian 
 centuries testifies that this religion has really 
 lived, as an infinitely powerful movement, of 
 which those who supported it and whom it sup- 
 ported had only a partial consciousness, the 
 whole of whose depth, those who to-day attempt 
 to analyze it are incapable of sounding. How 
 vain it is to proclaim the end of dogma because 
 the doctrinal flower of this great life appears 
 withei-ed, and to imagine that the fruitfuluess of 
 
222 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Christian thought is definitely exhausted, and 
 that the old tree can never again renew its adorn- 
 ment for a new epoch, a new springtime ! 
 
 From the moment the gospel is believed, it is 
 impossible not to think of the belief, not to work 
 at the thought, and so produce a theology of faith. 
 It is equally impossible to keep the faith without 
 transmitting it, for it demands to be communi- 
 cated, being universal hope and charity; and 
 it cannot be communicated without a certain 
 teaching, a dogma regularly put forward for belief. 
 There is a mastership of the faith. Eeasoning in 
 the abstract, it is possible to say that faith springs 
 up in the soul at the contact of the gospel as 
 expressed in its text. But in fact, faith is born of 
 Christian instruction, and the gospel is explained 
 to those who are taught to believe. The distinction 
 of masters and pupils is therefore inevitable. It is 
 impossible that no science of religion should exist, 
 or that it should be indifferent to the preservation 
 of faith in cultivated society. Equally is it im- 
 possible that this science should be accessible to 
 all, that all should be doctors of religion. From 
 the beginning all the faithful could not be apostles. 
 Under the conditions which are prescribed for the 
 gospel in this world, masters are needed to propa- 
 gate it, and doctrines to express it. A durable 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 223 
 
 society, a Church, can alone maintain equilibrium 
 between tradition, which preserves the heritage 
 of acquired truth, and the incessant toil of human 
 reason to adapt ancient truth to the new needs 
 of thought and knowledge. It is inconceivable 
 that each individual should recommence the 
 interrogation of the past on his own account, and 
 reconstruct, for his own use, an entire religion. 
 Here, as elsewhere, each is aided by all, and all 
 by each one. 
 
 It is no longer a matter for astonishment that 
 the Church presents herself as an infallible mis- 
 tress to those believers who venture forth with- 
 out her. Her attitude is as easy to understand as 
 that of the Protestant theologians who, seeing the 
 powerlessness of the individual to formulate a 
 creed for others besides himself, and knowing no 
 other religious principle than individualism, take 
 refuge in one solitary idea, which they wisli to 
 believe is alone evangelical and accessible of 
 itself to all souls. But their hypothesis has the 
 inconvenience of being unfounded and imprac- 
 ticable, whilst the Catholic hypothesis is a real 
 institution that continues the real gospel. It 
 was not without reason that Luther retained a 
 dogma, and that organized Protestantism tends to 
 orthodoxy in spite of itself. 
 
224 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Is this the same thing as to say that Christian 
 dogma thus becomes a ready-made belief, before 
 which it is wise to bow, without too close investi- 
 gation, lest contradiction be called for ? Even as 
 the constant flexibility of ecclesiastical teaching 
 brings it about that no conflict of dogma with 
 knowledge can be considered as irreducible, so 
 the very character of this teaching causes the 
 authority of the Church and its formulas to be not 
 incompatible with individuality of faith, and 
 does not necessarily bring with it that perpetual 
 subserviency which seems, to Protestant theo- 
 logians, the normal condition of the Catholic 
 believer. The Church does not exact belief in its 
 formulas as the adequate expression of absolute 
 truth, but presents them as the least imperfect 
 expression that is morally possible ; she demands 
 that men respect them for their quality, seek the 
 faith in them, and use them to transmit it. The 
 ecclesiastical formula is the auxiliary of faith, the 
 guiding line of religious thought : it cannot be 
 the integral object of that thought, seeing that 
 object is God Himself, Christ and His work ; eacli 
 man lays hold of the object as he can, with the 
 aid of the formula. As all souls and all intelli- 
 gences differ one from the other, the gradations of 
 belief are also of infinite variety, under the sole 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA 225 
 
 direction of the Cliiircli, and in the nnity of her 
 creed. The incessant evolution of doctrine is 
 made by the work of individuals, as their activity 
 reacts on the general activity, and these individuals 
 are they who think for the Church while thinking 
 with her. 
 
 This is not the place to examine whether the 
 tendency of modern Catholicism has not been too 
 tutelary, or if the movement of religious and even 
 scientific thought has not been more or less im- 
 peded by it. The object of this chapter is simply 
 to show that the Catholic conception of dogma 
 and of faith excludes neither the personal charac- 
 ter of belief nor the vitality of dogma. 
 
SECTION VI 
 
 THE CATHOLIC WOESHIP 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 History knows no instance of a religion without 
 a ritual, and consequently the existence of a 
 Christian ritual should surprise no one. But it 
 is easy to conceive that, if the essence of Chris- 
 tianity is such as Herr Harnack has defined it, so 
 pure a Christianity must exclude all external 
 forms of worship. A singular religion, designed, 
 one would think, for angelic hosts, where every 
 individual constitutes a separate species, rather 
 than for men destined to live together on the 
 earth ! 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 As the rupture with Judaism obliged the primi- 
 tive commuDity to take the form of a distinct 
 society, so also it led to the establishment of 
 forms of worship. " No religious movement can 
 exist without a body." ^ We are yet told that 
 Christian ritual was the result of tlie struggle 
 of the Church against gnosticism. Tlie Church 
 assumed forms similar to those it reproved in its 
 adversaries.^ By the end of the second century 
 she is an organ of worship, the separation of the 
 priests from the laity is an accomplished fact, and 
 intermediaries are admitted between God and man. 
 Just as Greek philosophy influenced Christian 
 faith from the year 130 onwards, so a new era of 
 Hellenization began towards the years 220 to 
 230 : " then Greek mysteries and Greek civiliza- 
 tion, in all the fulness of their development, acted 
 upon the Church, but not Greek mythology nor 
 Polytheism. In the century following, pure 
 
 I Paire 113. '^ I'a-e 130. 
 
228 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Hellenism, with all its creations and acquisitions, 
 is established in the Catholic Church. Here also 
 there were reservations, but they often consisted 
 only in a change of label, the thing being taken 
 just as it was, and in the worship of the saints a 
 Christianity of a lower order was born." ^ 
 
 Judged by its external appearance, the Greek 
 Church (and in matters of ritual the same may be 
 said of the Roman Church) has collected, we are 
 told, the impressions, superstitions, knowledge, 
 and practices of unknown ages ; with its solemn 
 rites, its relics, its images, its priests, its monks, 
 and its mysteries, it is connected with the Hellenic 
 worship of the Neo-Platonist epoch, and not with 
 the Church of the first centuries. " It appears 
 not as a Christian creation with a Greek thread, 
 but as a Greek creation with a Christian thread. 
 The Christians of the first century would have 
 fought it as they fought the worship of the Magna 
 Mater or of Zeus Soter. ... It is the natural 
 product of the alloy made with Hellenism, split 
 up by oriental influence and Christian preaching." ^ 
 The worship in spirit and in truth is become a 
 worship of signs, formulas, and idols. " Jesus 
 Christ gave Himself to be crucified in order to 
 destroy religion of this kind."^ The Greek 
 1 Page 126. « p^ges 137, 138. 3 Page 148. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 229 
 
 mystery is associated in the Latin Church with 
 tlie idea of contract, of salvation depending on 
 definite conditions ; the Sacraments are means of 
 union with God, conceived as obligatory acts ; the 
 discipline of penitence resembles a code of civil 
 procedure : even as the dispenser of salvation, the 
 Koman Church is a juridical institution as " poly- 
 theistic," in any case, as the Greek Church.^ 
 
 Herr Harnack holds, with Luther, that grace is 
 not given in fragments; that the only grace is 
 God Himself ; that all the doctrine of sacraments 
 is an "outrage on the majesty of God and a 
 servitude of souls." But he holds that the 
 reformer was wrong to be led away into distress- 
 ing discussions on the means of grace, on the 
 communion, and the question of infant baptism, 
 whereby he ran the risk of exchanging his lofty 
 conception of Divine grace for the Catholic idea ; 
 in this respect he has left his Church a fatal 
 heritage.^ 
 
 1 Pages 155, 156. 2 Pages 175, 183, 184. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 It may be said that Jesus, in the course of His 
 ministry, neither prescribed nor practised any 
 external rite of worship which would have charac- 
 terized the gospel as religion. Jesus no more 
 decided the form of Christian worship beforehand 
 than He laid down the constitution and dogmas 
 of the Church. The reason is that, in the gospel, 
 Christianity is not yet a religion with a separate 
 existence. It has taken up no independent posi- 
 tion in regard to legal Judaism ; the Mosaic rites, 
 practised by the Saviour and His disciples, take 
 the place of any other form, and satisfy the need 
 that all religion feels to express itself in acts of 
 worship. The gospel, as such, was only a religious 
 movement within the bosom of Judaism, an 
 attempt to realize perfectly its principles and 
 hopes. It would therefore be inconceivable that 
 Jesus should have formulated a ritual before His 
 final hour. He could only have begun to think 
 of it at that supreme moment when the imme- 
 diate accomplishment of the reign of the Messiah 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 231 
 
 appeared impossible in Israel, and another accom- 
 plishment, mysterious in its prospect, to be 
 obtained by the death of the Messiah, remained 
 the last chance for the kingdom of God on the 
 earth. The supper of the Eucharist, then, stands 
 out as the symbol of the kingdom, that the sacri- 
 fice of Jesus is to bring ; and more distinctly still, 
 this communion, on the day of its first celebration, 
 signifies the abrogation of the ancient worship and 
 the approaching advent of the kingdom, rather 
 than the institution of a new ritual, as the thought 
 of Jesus was bent, as always, on the idea of 
 realizinir the kinf^jdom of Heaven rather than the 
 direct idea of founding a new religion and a 
 Church. 
 
 However, it was the Church that came to the 
 world, and by force of circumstances took shape 
 more and more outside the pale of Judaism. In 
 this way Christianity became a religion, distinct, 
 independent, and complete ; as a religion it needed 
 a ritual, and obtained it, of such a nature as its 
 origin permitted or compelled. At first the 
 worship was imitated from that of the Jews, so 
 far as concerned the external forms of prayer, and 
 also certain important rites, such as baptism, 
 anointing with oil, and laying on of hands. Tlie 
 central act of worship, the celebration of the 
 
232 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Eucharist, was really the creation of Jesus. It 
 became, in the Church of the Gentiles, the great 
 mystery, and without it Christianity would not 
 have been received as a perfect religion. 
 
 A ritual was already organized in the apostolic 
 communities, and the promptitude with which 
 it was established shows clearly how it responded 
 to an intimate inevitable necessity of the new 
 body. It would have been an absolute impos- 
 sibility to gain proselytes to a religion with no 
 external forms and sanctifying acts ; Christianity 
 had to find a ritual, or cease to exist. For this 
 reason, it was from the first the most living 
 worship that can be imagined. Attempt merely 
 to conceive those baptisms, with laying on of 
 hands, and sensible manifestations of the Divine 
 Spirit ; that breaking of bread, and the meal where 
 the very presence of the Master, Who had just 
 left the earth, was felt ; the songs, celebrating the 
 acts of grace, that burst forth from the heart, the 
 signs, sometimes strange ones, of the overflowing 
 enthusiasm. Is it not true that, just as there 
 is there no cold and abstract belief, so there 
 is no purely symbolic rite, the material ex- 
 pression of such a belief ? Everything is living, 
 the faith and the rite, the baptism and the break- 
 ing of bread ; the baptism is the Holy Ghost the 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 233 
 
 Eucharist is the Christ. There is no speculation 
 about the token, no hint of physical efficacy of 
 the sacrament in baptism, nor of transubstantiation 
 in the Eucharist ; but what is said and believed 
 goes almost beyond these theological assertions. 
 The worship of that primitive age might be def^^ined 
 as a kind of spiritual realism, knowing no pure 
 symbols, and essentially sacramental by virtue of 
 the place that rites hold in it as the vehicle of 
 the Spirit, and the means of Divine life. St. Paul 
 and the author of the Fourth Gospel are witnesses 
 to it. 
 
 The same necessity that presided at the birth 
 of Christian ritual caused its increase. The ritual 
 of the apostolic Church could respond to the 
 essential needs of Christian society in all times ; 
 in its special form it corresponded to the special 
 conditions of nascent Christianity. As the 
 Church did not attain, at one stroke, the normal 
 development she still continues to pursue, her 
 ritual has developed, and is developing, under 
 the permanent influence that gave it birth. 
 
 Exactly the same experience had overtaken 
 Israelitish worship. It is as an effect of theo- 
 logical perspective, from the point of view of 
 faith, that this worship is represented in the 
 Sacred Books as a homogeneous whole, proceeding 
 
234 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 from a Divine revelation, regulating the least 
 details of liturgy and sacerdotal costume. In 
 reality, Moses, as far as the historian can gather, 
 only did relatively for the Israelitish ritual what 
 the apostolic Church did for the Christian ; he 
 authorized, or instituted, the fundamental practice, 
 the worship of the ark, where Jehovah, the God 
 of Israel, was present without an image. All the 
 rest of the forms of worship may have been 
 borrowed, before Moses, or after him, from other 
 religions, with certain changes affecting the mean- 
 ing, rather than the form, of the rites. While 
 running the risk of corruption through the ad- 
 mixture of foreign elements, the Mosaic ritual 
 realized successively the transformations that its 
 preservation and progress demanded. The Jews 
 of the captivity were descendants of the Hebrew 
 companions of Moses, of Joshua, of David, and of 
 the inhabitants of Canaan, who had little by little 
 become assimilated to the children of Israel. 
 When human groups are thus mingled, not only 
 physical and racial, but also intellectual and moral 
 qualities, customs and traditions are blended 
 together. More than one Canaanitish rite has 
 been canonized in Deuteronomy or Leviticus. 
 It would have been as difficult to discern the 
 features derived from Canaan in the Jewish 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 235 
 
 type of the fifth century B.C., as to distinguish 
 the non-Israelitish contribution to the Pentateuch. 
 The worsliip, as a whole, however diverse the 
 services of its elements, was one by the spirit 
 that penetrated it, the spirit of Moses and the 
 Prophets, eliminating or neutralizing the spirit of 
 pagan tradition. 
 
 All that happened in the history of Israelite 
 religion, happened also in that of Christianity, 
 but under different, that is to say, more regular, 
 and less perilous, conditions. Suppose that the 
 pagan origin of a certain number of Christian 
 rites can be demonstrated, these rites ceased to 
 be pagan, when accepted and interpreted by the 
 Church. Suppose that the great development of 
 the worship of saints, of relics, of the Virgin, is 
 due, in some degree, to a pagan influence, it is 
 not to be condemned on the sole fact of its origin. 
 If apostolic preaching had converted only Jews, 
 there would not, properly speaking, have been any 
 Christian ritual, any more than there would have 
 been a Christian Church or Christian dogmas. 
 But Christianity, by remaining Jewish, could not 
 have become a universal religion, it would not 
 have become Christianity; and to become universal 
 it was not enough that it should lay aside its 
 Jewish form. It cannot be maintained that it 
 
236 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 had no need to assume a Greek, a Eoman, or a 
 German form, but should have conquered the 
 world by might of its principles alone. Principles 
 are the soul of religion, but principles, without 
 religious institutions and doctrines, are, in sober 
 truth, a soul without a body, something which 
 has neither reality nor consistence in the realm 
 of present life. Now, the institutions, the ex- 
 ternal and traditional forms, which are indis- 
 pensable to the existence or to the preservation 
 of a religion, are necessarily adapted, in one way 
 or another, to the surroundings w^herein they 
 are established ; they even result, to some extent, 
 from their surroundings, as the adaptation is made 
 by virtue of a reciprocal action, since if religion 
 marks with its influence the men who accept it, 
 the men in their turn, as nations or as individuals, 
 stamp their impression on the religion they 
 receive. 
 
 The number and variety, even to some extent 
 the quality of the symbols, are things indifferent 
 or unimportant in themselves ; custom gives them 
 their credit, and their value depends upon the 
 si2:nificance attached to them. Of what value in 
 itself is the rite of circumcision ? Less than 
 nothing, since in the abstract it may be con- 
 sidered absurd and ridiculous. Nevertheless, in 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 237 
 
 the time of Antiocliiis Epiplianes, when it was a 
 symbol of fidelity to God, it became something 
 worthy, noble, and holy. It would be puerile to 
 blame the Jews for practising the rite, or the 
 prophets for not condemning it. At no epoch of 
 history before the gi'eat upheaval brought about 
 by Christianity, and the conversion of the pagans 
 to Jesus outside the Law, could the idea of dis- 
 pensing with it have occurred to any pious Jew, and 
 he would have been mad to wish to suppress it as a 
 practice. It was the consideration of the Gentiles 
 that forced the apostolic Church not to exact it. 
 
 But the Gentiles, who thus succeeded in obtain- 
 ing exemption from a Jewish custom, might well 
 obtain, on the other hand, power to retain their 
 own customs, on condition of imparting to them a 
 Christian significance. They could in no way 
 bring themselves to Judaism ; and they could 
 only settle down as Christians by imparting to 
 Christianity something of themselves, forms of 
 thought and forms of worship. The Church has 
 adopted no rite that resembles circumcision ; she 
 has proscribed all the bloody and magical rites 
 of ancient religions, and thereby has guaranteed, 
 as far as is necessary or possible, the spiritual 
 character of the Christian religion. But just as 
 fjiy way of representing God, the economy of 
 
238 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 salvation, redemption, the action of the glorified 
 Christ, cannot fail to have some analogy or historic 
 relation to philosophical or religious conceptions 
 of Greco-Eoman antiquity, so also the Catholic 
 worship cannot fail to retain something from 
 the ancient religions it has supplanted. It could 
 not do otherwise, once it took their place : 
 Christianity could not become the religion of 
 Greeks, Eomans, or Germans, unless it became 
 one with them, unless it received many things 
 from them, unless they themselves, as it were, 
 entered into it, and made it in truth their own 
 religion. In matters of worship, the religious 
 feeling of the masses has always preceded the 
 doctrinal definitions of the Church as to the 
 object of their worship. The fact is full of signi- 
 ficance ; it attests the law wliich demands a form 
 of worship suitable to all the conditions of exist- 
 ence and to the character of the people that 
 believe. The real communion with Christ in the 
 Eucharist was exacted by the Christian conscience 
 as imperiously as the Divinity of Jesus; never- 
 theless the Divinity of Christ is not a dogma 
 conceived in the spirit of Jewish theology, neither 
 is the Eucharist a Jewish rite ; dogma and rite 
 are specifically Christian, and proceed from the 
 apostolic tradition, without altering the fact that 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 239 
 
 the influence of Greek wisdom can be perceived 
 in the traditional way of understanding the first, 
 and in the manner of understanding the second, 
 an element doubtless at bottom common to several 
 religions, if not to all, but which recalls rather the 
 pagan mysteries than the unadorned conception of 
 sacrifice of post-exilian Judaism. If it were not 
 to become Greek, Eoman, or Geiman in its form 
 of worship, Christianity must have avoided the 
 Greeks, Romans and Germans ; the adaptation 
 of Christianity was inevitable. The important 
 question is whether the adaptation has served the 
 spread and preservation of the gospel, or whether 
 the gospel itself has been lost in it. Have the 
 institution of the ecclesiastical ministry, the sac- 
 rament, the worship of Christ and the Virgin, of 
 saints and angels, compromised the gospel, and 
 are they foreign to its spirit ? 
 
 Since Christianity has become a religion, and, 
 becoming a religion, has become a form of worship, 
 it has needed ministers. No assemblies of many 
 persons could take place regularly and frequently 
 without chiefs, presidents, superintendents, and 
 minor officers to ensure order. The college of 
 elders, more or less imitated from the synagogues, 
 was, in each community, what the apostolic 
 college had been at first in the community of 
 
240 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHLRCH 
 
 Jerusalem. The presidency was naturally an 
 attribute of the elders, and it was also natural 
 that one of them should occupy the leading place 
 in the celebration of the Communion. The hypo- 
 thesis of a rotation of officials, a presidency 
 exercised by each elder in turn, set forth by some 
 critics, is not authorized by any evidence, and is 
 unlikely. Besides the leaders, the elders, pres- 
 byters (priests) or bishops, there were inferior 
 ministers, the deacons. When the extraordinary 
 ministry of the apostles and the missionary 
 preachers came to an end in due course, with the 
 enthusiasm that stimulated the prophets, towards 
 the close of the first century, the duties of instruc- 
 tion and direction of the community passed 
 entirely to the resident chiefs, or rather adminis- 
 trators, who doubtless exercised these functions in 
 part from the beginning. They alone decided the 
 question of the admission of neophytes, and, 
 except in exceptional cases, alone conferred 
 baptism ; in proportion as a discipline of penance 
 required organization for baptized Christians, they 
 determined its conditions. The hierarchy of 
 order, in three degrees, became constituted when 
 the first of the elders was really separated from 
 the presbyteral group, and reserved the title of 
 bishop for himself. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 241 
 
 The needs of the liturgical service determined 
 later on the creation of minor officers, who are 
 to be regarded as a division of the diaconate: 
 the Church of the East had subdeacons and 
 leaders, with exorcists, fulfilling their individual 
 ministry and not constituting an order of the 
 clergy; the Church of the West had its sub- 
 deacons, acolytes, readers, exorcists, who had all 
 regular duties in the preliminary ceremonies of 
 baptism, and door-keepers. In any case, the 
 orders below the subdiaconate, later even the 
 subdiaconate, and finally the diaconate itself, 
 ended by becoming in the Latin Church no 
 more than preparatory steps to the priesthood, 
 which remains the only really active ministry 
 below the episcopate. The liturgical functions 
 of the other orders have ceased, in fact, to be 
 specialized ; the highest are exercised on occasion 
 by priests and the lower by laics, and thus a 
 special example is constituted of what may be 
 called suppressed development, like a stunted 
 branch on a tree that grows vigorously in another 
 direction, or like the rudiment of an organ no 
 longer existing actually in the living body. 
 
 The organization of this service has been related 
 to the development of the system of sacraments 
 and must not be judged independently of it. The 
 
 B 
 
242 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Church herself counts ordination, that is, the 
 ceremony by which her ministers are invested 
 with their powers, among the sacraments. As 
 to their origin, it stands with the sacraments as 
 with the Church and the dogmas, they proceed 
 fiom Jesus and the gospel as living realities and 
 not as expressly defined institutions. It is only 
 from the twelfth century onwards that Western 
 tradition has determined their number. The 
 piimitive Church knew but two principal: baptism, 
 with which confirmation was associated, and the 
 Eucharist ; the number of secondary sacraments 
 was indefinite. Such indefiniteness would be 
 inexplicable if Christ, in the course of His mortal 
 life, had drawn the attention of His disciples to 
 seven separate rites, destined to be the basis of 
 Christian worship for all time. The sacraments 
 are born of a thought, an intention, of Jesus, 
 interpreted by the apostles and their successors, 
 in the light and u.nder the pressure of facts and 
 circumstances. 
 
 It may be by a sort of anticipation .that the 
 Fourth Gospel shows Christian baptism practised 
 during the Saviour's ministry. It is a fact that 
 Christ gave no formal precept on the subject before 
 His death. Baptism was a Jewish rite, raised to 
 special honour by John the Baptist, and Jesus 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 243 
 
 Himself received it at tlie hands of John. Just 
 as the Saviour's baptism served as the introduction 
 to the gospel, so baptism introduced each believer 
 into the evangelical society, substituted for the 
 kingdom of Heaven. It was not purely a symbol 
 of remission of sins and spiritual regeneration, 
 but the effective sign of the reception of the 
 Spirit by the faithful, and of their incorporation 
 with the Church. The idea and the practice of 
 baptism have undergone no important change in 
 Catholic tradition. The custom of baptizing 
 infants constitutes a disciplinary development, 
 which makes no change in the significance of 
 the Sacrament, though perhaps it has a little 
 diminished it, and has contributed to redoubling: 
 the significance of penance.^ Baptism, followed 
 by confirmation and communion, was the rite of 
 Christian initiation and of remission of sins ; but 
 the Eucharist remained the real sacrament of the 
 initiated. The idea of the Christian as a recon- 
 ciled sinner was not held at first, and the Church 
 was slow in becoming accustomed to it. It was 
 supposed that ordinary failings were atoned for by 
 a kind of continuous effect of baptism, by prayer, 
 by communion, and by all good works, especially 
 by works of charity. Very grave and scandalous 
 1 Cf. Newman, "Essay on Development" (184G), p. 154. 
 
244 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 sins set the sinners outside the Church and the 
 regular economy of salvation. Soon, however, 
 such sinners were admitted to a perpetual penance, 
 accepted gladly, in the interest of their salvation, 
 although as yet the Church did not take it on 
 herself to pardon, and left the repentant sinner 
 to the Divine mercy. But the multiplication of 
 sins was sure to produce the indulgence, and an 
 institution of pardon. It was at first in regard to 
 sins of the flesh that discipline was slackened. 
 Calixtus, the Bishop of Rome, decided that these 
 sins could be remitted after a penitence more or 
 less prolonged. Concessions were soon made in 
 cases of apostasy, notably after the persecu- 
 tion of Decius. The principle of temporary and 
 absolving penance, with reconciliation by the 
 authority of the Churcli, either at the moment 
 of death, or after a definite lapse of time, was 
 established : it exists as a second baptism, a 
 plank of salvation after shipwreck. But if 
 penance thus became a Christian institution, 
 and the reconciliation of sinners a function of 
 the Church, as yet there was no thought of em- 
 ploying the name of sacrament to designate 
 such a duty : it was a shameful sacrament. The 
 sinner must submit to it, if he desired recon- 
 ciliation, but whoever endured public penance. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 245 
 
 and there was no other form, was disqualified 
 as a Christian ; clerks were only admitted to it 
 by losing their status, and a reconciled penitent 
 could be no member of the clergy. The discredit 
 attaching to penance gradually disappeared, 
 through the multiplication of cases wherein it 
 was judged necessary, through the fact that many 
 Christians submitted, in a spirit of mortification 
 of the body, to a life very analogous to that 
 enjoined as penance, and finally through the 
 fact that this rule of public penance was trans- 
 formed and gave way to that of private penance. 
 The fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) definitely 
 consecrates and regulates private penance, and all 
 mortal sins must be submitted to the proper 
 pastor or priest, once a year, before the Easter 
 Communion, which is declared obligatory. The 
 priest will enjoin a penance proportioned to 
 tlie faults, and will give absolution. From the 
 twelfth century penance follows absolution instead 
 of preceding it, a fact which tends to augment 
 the character of grace in absolution, and even gives 
 it the form of a sacramental grace. The develop- 
 ment of discipline has had an effect upon the 
 institution as a whole, upon the subject and object 
 of penance, the declaration of sins, the character, 
 duration and place of satisfactory penance, and 
 
246 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 even upon the formula of absolution, which was 
 at first deprecatory, the bishop or priest asking 
 of God the pardon of him whom they sought to 
 reconcile, but has become imperative, the minister 
 of the Church saying, " I absolve thee," because 
 he gives a sentence and confers a sacrament. 
 
 We know that development did not stop there, 
 and that penance, instituted to deal with mortal 
 sins committed after baptism, became, in fact, 
 especially after the Council of Trent and in the 
 Church of the latter centuries, a common practice 
 of Christian perfection, whose use is only neglected 
 by the real sinners. The sacrament of penance 
 has assumed the character of a moral discipline, 
 whose efficacy can only be equitably judged by 
 those who make use of it. and they find it an aid 
 and not an obstacle to piety. 
 
 The development of the Eucharist has been 
 mainly theological and liturgical. At bottom 
 the belief and the rite have no more changed than 
 have the belief in baptism and its rite. The 
 Supper of the early Christians was a memorial of 
 the Passion and an anticipation of the festival of 
 the Messiah, whereat Jesus was present. There 
 is no very marked difference between the Pauline 
 conception of the Eucharist and the idea that 
 simple Christians have of it to-day, those who 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 247 
 
 are strangers to the speculations of theology, who 
 believe that they enter into leal communion with 
 God in Christ by taking the consecrated bread. 
 The entire Christian worship developed round tlie 
 supper of the Eucharist. The simple blessing and 
 distribution of bread and wine, detached from the 
 Love feast, surrounded by readings and prayers 
 and hymns, became the offering of the Mass. 
 Since the death of Jesus was conceived as a 
 sacrifice, the act commemorating this death 
 naturally partook of the same character. The 
 liturgical form helped to impart the same thing, 
 by the real offering of the bread and wine, and the 
 participation of all the faithful in the sanctified 
 food, as in the sacrifices of the ancients. Thence 
 came the idea of a commemorative sacrifice, which 
 simply perpetuated that of the Cross, took nothing 
 from its significance or its merit, and satisfied all the 
 aims included in the common prayer of the Church, 
 interests spiritual and temporal, the salvation of 
 the living and the dead. The Christian senti- 
 ment which has preserved, in a sense, the Divinity 
 of Jesus against certain speculations of learned 
 metaphysics, has protected the Eucharist against 
 speculations of abstract symbolism, and as the 
 evolution of penance ended by bringing about the 
 confession of the devout, the evolution of the rite 
 
248 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 of the Eucharist ended in private masses for the 
 priests, and communions of piety for the faithful. 
 
 Jesus seems to have commanded or permitted 
 His disciples to anoint the sick with oil, and piay 
 over them with a view to relieve or even to cure 
 them. Possibly, He even set them the example 
 of this procedure : ^ that is, in the gospel, the 
 whole sacrament of extreme unction. The history 
 of this custom in the first Christian centuries is 
 obscure enough. The use of applications of oil 
 has probably never ceased since primitive times, 
 but the use of sacred oil was very variable. The 
 anointing of the sick in danger of death, by the 
 priest, was distinguished by its special significance 
 and more solemn character. From a historical 
 point of view, it was this use of the oil that gave 
 it a place among the sacraments when the cata- 
 logue was drawn up, limited to the number seven. 
 
 Christ recognized monogamy as a Divine insti- 
 tution, and declared it indissoluble : that in the 
 gospel is the whole sacrament of marriage. 
 Among Christians marriage was very soon the 
 object of a special benediction ; nevertheless, this 
 prayer of the Church was never regarded as an 
 indispensable consecration of the conjugal bond. 
 Marriage entered the list of sacraments by reason 
 » Cl. Mark vi. 13. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 249 
 
 of those words in the Epistle to the Ephesians/ 
 wherein it is presented as the symbol of the union 
 between Christ and the Church, and because of 
 the use of the word " sacramentum " in the Latin 
 Vulgate, although the word in this place has the 
 meaning of allegorical mystery, and does not stamp 
 marriage in itself as a sacred rite. 
 
 The sacramental system is thus found to include 
 and consecrate the hierarchical organization of the 
 Church and the principal moments of Christian 
 life. Without any previously constructed scheme, 
 an institution became realized which surrounds 
 human existence with a Divine atmosphere, and 
 is, without doubt, by the intimate harmony of all 
 its parts and the intensity of its influence, the 
 most remarkable creation that has ever proceeded 
 spontaneously from a living religion. The period 
 at which the Church fixed the number of the 
 sacraments, is only a special point in the develop- 
 ment, and marks neither the beginning nor tlie 
 end. The starting-point of the system is, as has 
 been indicated, the baptism of Jesus and the 
 Last Supper. The end is still to come, as sacra- 
 mental development, continuing to follow the 
 same general lines, can only end with the Church 
 herself. 
 
 * Ephesians v. 32. 
 
250 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The importance, therefore, of the work of 
 scholastic theologians must not be exaggerated, 
 though they fixed the number of sacraments 
 before the Council of Trent, and united in the 
 same rubric actions as different as baptism and 
 matrimonial contract, absolution of sins and 
 extreme unction, finding in each, according to the 
 Aristotelian formula, a substance and a form. 
 All these things existed, more living in them- 
 selves than in the studied description made of 
 them, and have not ceased to surpass the descrip- 
 tion, which bears the same relation to them as 
 an incomplete anatomical statement to a real or- 
 ganism. Eegarded historically, the development 
 shows a persevering effort on the part of Chris- 
 tianity to penetrate with its spirit the whole 
 existence of man. Is not this effort the very 
 essence of a perfect religion, and is it astonishing 
 that a religion that has taken to itself absolutely, 
 not only its founder, but the first generations of 
 its adherents, demanding the sacrifice of their 
 life, should have left outside its sphere of action 
 no part of man nor of human life ? 
 
 This religion considers man wholly as its 
 property. This power of possession is signified in 
 a way by all the sacraments, as was necessary. 
 Christianity has not escaped the need of symbol. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 251 
 
 the normal form of worship, as well as of religious 
 knowledge. It announces its right, the right of 
 God revealed in Jesus Christ, at the same time it 
 acts on man by sensible signs, rites, and formulas, 
 appropriate to the particular ends it has in view. 
 The signs that are employed have not been chosen 
 hap-hazard, but have been suggested or imposed 
 by past tradition, by customs of life or by circum- 
 stances. Christianity has found in tliem an 
 indispensable refuge made to its needs, since the 
 evolution of rites has been conditioned by the con- 
 stant evolution of religion and piety. Christianity 
 needed sacramental signs, and needed sufficient 
 of them; they have been such as the conditions 
 of the Christian institution indicated; they were 
 sure to be modified, at least accidentally, and 
 they have developed under the influence of the 
 external and internal conditions in which Chris- 
 tianity has lived. 
 
 There is little need to show how the worship 
 of Jesus was born in, or rather with, Christianity. 
 In their daily intercourse with their JMaster, the 
 disciples had no other worsliip for Him than a 
 religious reverence. Even after the confession 
 of Peter, there was no alteration of the simplicity 
 that governed the relations between Christ and 
 the apostles. The glory of the Messiah was still 
 
252 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 to come, and no homage would be rendered till 
 the glory was made mani est. But the respective 
 situations of the Saviour and His followers were 
 entirely changed as a result of the Passion and the 
 Eesurrection. Jesus had then entered, for His 
 part, into the splendour of His reign ; He was 
 living and immortal, seated at the right hand of 
 the Father, participating in His power : He was 
 no longer only the Master who taught with 
 authority the revelation of God, He was the Lord 
 whom God had set as the governor over His 
 Kingdom. " Ye men of Israel, liear these words ; 
 Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto 
 you by mighty works and wonders and signs 
 which God did by Him in the midst of you, even 
 as ye yourselves know. . . . God hath made Him 
 both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye 
 crucified." ^ " All authority hath been given unto 
 me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and 
 make disciples of all the nations. ... I am with 
 you alway, even unto the end of the world." ^ 
 It was thus that Christian consciousness repre- 
 sented the founder of Christianity, following all 
 that Jesus had Himself proclaimed of His coming 
 glory. It was therefore very natural that men 
 should pray to God through Jesus, with Jesus, 
 ^ Acts ii. 22-36. 2 Matt, xxviii. 18-20. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 253 
 
 in Jesus, and soon come to pray to Jesus Himself, 
 if indeed they did not do so from the beginning, 
 since He was always with His own, ready to hear 
 and with power to grant their prayers. 
 
 It is impossible even to conceive how Chris- 
 tianity could have failed to be the worship of 
 Christ, and it is a probable supposition that this 
 worship preceded in some way, sustained, and in- 
 spired the work of Christian thought on the person 
 of the Eedeemer. The intercourse of the Christian 
 was in heaven with his Lord ; if he distinguished 
 God from Christ, none the less he saw God in 
 Christ, so close and indissoluble was the union 
 of the two ; praying to Christ he prayed to God, 
 although the solemn prayers of the community 
 were addressed to God through Christ. Jesus was, 
 as it were, the countenance of God turned towards 
 humanity. Christian piety continued to phice 
 the Saviour at an ever higher degree of glory, 
 seeking God in Him and finding Him, adoring 
 Him in heaven, and endeavouring to follow His 
 example on earth, drawing strengtli from His 
 double character— the Divine and the human. 
 Therein has always lain the life of Christianity, 
 and the principle of its moral fruitfulness. Those 
 are bold indeed who believe this conduct to be 
 an alteration of its essence. It is unnecessary to 
 
254 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 add tliat the same piety under different forms 
 continues to exist in the numberless devotions 
 that have become linked to the worship of Jesus, 
 and have continued down to our own day, princi- 
 pally the worship of the Eucharist and of the 
 Sacred Heart, the latter more recent in appearance 
 than in reality. 
 
 The worship of martyrs is hardly less ancient 
 than martyrdom itself. From the earliest times 
 care was taken to preserve the remains of dead 
 brethren, especially of those who died for the 
 faith, because of the belief in the approaching 
 resurrection of the body at the second coming of 
 the Lord. This conception of resurrection had a 
 more powerful influence on minds then than it 
 has to-day over the most sincere believers. The 
 care of dead bodies finds thus a most natural 
 explanation, and this care was accompanied by a 
 sense of piety, having for its object these remains 
 hallowed by the spirit and by an immortal hope. 
 The kingdom they had awaited, and still expected 
 so eagerly, was now visibly constituted beyond 
 mortal vision by all the blessed who rejoined 
 Christ in His glory, and were none the less united 
 in Him, even as He was, to the Church on the 
 earth, the organ of evangelical preaching and of 
 the preparation of the kingdom of Heaven. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 255 
 
 The worship of the Saints is, therefore, the 
 natural complement of the worship of Jesus, and 
 the worship of Jesus is the Christian worship. 
 Christianity without this worship is only a 
 philosophy — if it is preferred, call it a mystic 
 philosophy — which would gladly take the name 
 of religion, but has no right to it, having kept 
 no definite religious form. It is not Israelitish 
 monotheism, seeing that this religion finds its 
 form in the privilege which makes the sole God 
 the God of Israel alone. Christianity is a religion, 
 and a universal one, because it incarnates the sole 
 God in the Son of man, and adores in God Man 
 the God of all humanity. 
 
 Save for the special importance of its develop- 
 ment, the worship of Mary presents itself under 
 the same conditions as the worship of the saints. 
 Primitive evangelical tradition was entirely filled 
 with the memory of Jesus ; the mother of Christ 
 is barely mentioned in one situation where her 
 intervention had no favourable significance.^ Later 
 thought centred on Mary in the consideration of 
 the origin of Jesus. The virginal conception, 
 which tended merely to heighten the personality of 
 the Saviour, and cause appreciation of His Di\ine 
 Sonship, came to imply a special honour for the 
 * Mark iii. 31. 
 
256 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 Virgin Mother. It may be said that the worship 
 of Mary has profited by every advance of the 
 Christological dogma. Belief in the virginity 
 maintained after the birth of Christ, and in the 
 material virginity maintained even in the birth, 
 completed the idea of the virginal conception; 
 it served to glorify Jesus, and incidentally more 
 and more to glorify the mother of Jesus. It seems 
 that here, too, common piety preceded learned 
 theology, and that the Council of Ephesus, in 
 proclaiming Mary the mother of God, far less gave 
 a new direction to worship than a dogmatic con- 
 secration to a very vivid sentiment of Christian 
 consciousness. 
 
 It has been remarked that Mary occupied in 
 theology later than the Council of Nicsea, the 
 place that Arius assigned to the Word of God. 
 The substitution, though unconscious, was not 
 therefore accidental; it arose from a kind of 
 unseen necessity, as though Catholic piety could 
 not dispense with this intermediary power that 
 the heresiarch desired to personify in Christ and 
 orthodoxy actually personified in His Mother. 
 Again, it was popular or monastic devotion that 
 initiated the later progress of the worship of Mary 
 and of what may be called Mariology. It is 
 known that the festival of the Conception 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 2^y 
 
 preceded, and in a way provoked, the doctrine of 
 the Immaculate Conception. 
 
 Thus there was formed in Catholicism a human 
 ideal that has continued to grow incessantly. The 
 historical justification of the assertions of faith, 
 of which this ideal is composed, has never been 
 sought otherwise than by the collection of testi- 
 mony wherein these very assertions are formu- 
 lated, testimony which is an expression of Catholic 
 Christianity. It is perhaps less easy than is 
 believed to show that this ideal is contrary to the 
 gospel, and has in no way proceeded from it. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 If, however, tlie moral necessity of this develop- 
 ment can be proved, does it not also follow that 
 it has been " natural," as Herr Harnack calls it, 
 and outside that worship of the spirit that the 
 Saviour came to establish ? Truly the develop- 
 ment has been natural, inasmuch as it has been 
 a historical fact, arising to satisfy the innate needs 
 of human nature. In this sense it may just as 
 well be said that confidence in God is natural to 
 man, and that the gospel of Divine goodness is 
 as little supernatural as the Christian ritual. If 
 all movement whose sequence can be perceived is 
 to be called natural, and if the nature of God's 
 action in the soul, and the confident impulse of 
 the soul towards God, are to be classed as outside 
 nature, then Christian worship is natural in its 
 external characteristics and co-ordinated to a 
 supernatural effect, in so far as it acts on the soul 
 by a sensible means to aid in producing that 
 which is properly supernatural in man, namely, 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 259 
 
 life in God.^ The evangelical word, the indispen- 
 sable means of faith, is just as natural as a text, as 
 the sacraments are as a sign, but it is none the 
 less the vehicle of a supernatural good. 
 
 The conception that Protestant theologians 
 readily form of the worship in spirit is no more 
 rational than evangelical. It is impossible to 
 unite men in a worship that is purely an affair of 
 the soul, and it would be vain to impose such 
 worship on human beings, who are bound by 
 their physical conditions, and can only think 
 through being able to hear and to speak. Their 
 religious life cannot be independent of every 
 sensible element, which aids them to become 
 conscious of it, to define and affirm it. Jesus 
 was the first to give His disciples a formula of 
 prayer; He observed the practices of Jewish 
 worship ; He never recommended to His followers 
 a worship without external forms, and never in- 
 tended to establish such a worship. The saying 
 of Christ in the Gospel of John, as to the worship 
 " in spirit and in truth," ^ does not oppose a 
 purely inner worship to an external one ; but the 
 worship that may be called inspired, spiritualized, 
 
 1 Cf. Newman, " Essays critical and historical," ii. 230 
 194-196. 
 
 2 John iv. 23, 24. 
 
26o THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the Christian worship known to the evangelist, 
 and animated by the spirit given to tlie faithful, 
 is substituted for a worship localized at Jerusalem 
 or on Mount Gerizim. 
 
 The same evangelist who gives the formula of 
 worship in spirit, gives also the formula of the 
 Incarnation ; the two correspond to one another ; 
 God is a Spirit, as is also His Word ; the true 
 worship is spiritual, since it is founded on the 
 communication of the Divine Spirit. But just as 
 God the Spirit is made manifest in the Incarnate 
 Word, so the life of the Spirit is communicated 
 and maintained by Spiritual sacraments, the water 
 of baptism, the bread and wine of the Eucharist. 
 The system of John is a perfect whole ; neither 
 the discourse to Nicodemus nor the instruction 
 concerning the bread of life contradict the state- 
 ment made to the woman of Samaria, and the 
 whole agrees with the conception of the Incarna- 
 tion, the Divine manifesting itself in the human, 
 the spiritual acting in the sensible, the eternal 
 reality figured in the terrestrial symbol and com- 
 municated by it. Catholic worship does nothing 
 but apply the theory of John, and this theory was 
 the description of the evangelical fact. 
 
 From the point of view of pure reason, the 
 efficacy of the sacraments is not so very difficult 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 261 
 
 a tiling to conceive. It is with the sacraments 
 as with ordinary language, the virtue of ideas 
 passes into the words, acts through the words, is 
 communicated really, physically, by the words, and 
 only produces its effect on the mind by the aid 
 of the words. Therefore it is fair to speak of 
 the virtue of words, for they contribute to the 
 existence and fortune of ideas. In so far as an 
 idea has found no formula capable of striking 
 the mind by a clearness, at least in appearance, 
 by its simplicity and its vigour, it has no power 
 of action. It is true that the action of the formula 
 depends on the historical circumstances of its pro- 
 duction, but this fact by no means lessens the 
 analogy between words, the natural expression 
 and indispensable means of communication of 
 ideas, and the sacraments, the expression of inner 
 religion and means of communication with God. 
 The significance of the sacramental symbols has 
 also been determined by the historical circum- 
 stances connected with their establishment and 
 use. Thence comes their efficacy ; they are signs 
 appropriate to their end, as words can be appro- 
 priate to the expression of thought; they are 
 Divine signs because they are religious ; they are 
 Christian, because they proceed from Christ. On 
 all these grounds they are etlicacious, and their 
 
262 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 power comes not from him on whom they are 
 conferred, but is exercised in him and upon him ; 
 it is bound up with the tie that links them to 
 Jesus, which makes them, as it were, actions of 
 Christ living in the Church, and it is conditioned 
 at once by the special application of the symbol 
 to him who receives it and by the disposition it 
 finds in him. 
 
 These considerations help to make clear the, 
 doctrine of the Catholic Church regarding the 
 sacraments, and the essential harmony of this 
 doctrine with the gospel. This is not the place 
 to set forth the theory of the efficacy of the 
 sacrament in itself, as a definite institution of 
 Christ, in its substance and its form, that cannot 
 be modified without destroying its effect. The 
 formulas of sacramental theology, like the greater 
 number of dogmatic definitions, were conceived 
 in opposition to assertions rejected by the Church 
 as erroneous, namely, that sacraments have no 
 real efficacy, that they do not come from Christ, 
 that the choice of them is arbitrary and without 
 relation to the effect. Positive doctrine, as a 
 counterblast to condemned opinion, is always 
 capable of explanation and of progress. It 
 matters little that sacraments are held to be 
 composed of form and of substance ; there would 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 263 
 
 be nothing unsuitable in abandoning these notions 
 of ancient philosophy, artificially applied to the 
 sacraments, and considering them in themselves, 
 taking tliem for what they are, namely, religious 
 acts, endowed with supernatural efficacy. Tliis 
 efficacy does not belong to them merely as 
 religious acts, but in so far as they are the acts 
 of religious Christians, related to Christ through 
 the Church, men in whom Christ lives and acts, 
 as He lives and acts in the Church and the 
 Church's teaching. 
 
 The life of a religion consists not in its ideas, 
 its formulas and its rites as such, but in the secret 
 principle which first gave an attractive power, a 
 supernatural efficacy, to the ideas and formulas and 
 rites. The sacraments have no meaning for the 
 Christian except through Jesus or His Spirit acting 
 in the material symbol; they figure and realize 
 the constant action of Christ in the Church. Jesus 
 established them so far as they are a permanent 
 institution proceeding from Him, powerful through 
 Him. The incontestable and important changes 
 undergone in the management and arrangement 
 of several of them do not deprive them either of 
 their character or their value as sacraments of 
 Christ. The Church has always believed that she 
 possesses in herself the Spirit of Jesus to direct 
 
264 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 her in all things. The action of the Spirit is 
 linked to the forms of her government, her teach- 
 ing and her worship. The sacramental institution 
 is not an inert instrument, but a principle, a 
 mode of action transmitted from Christ to the 
 Church, susceptible of varied application, change- 
 less only in itself, its general direction and 
 essential form. The Church regulates its progress 
 and action, regarding herseK as the authorized 
 interpreter of the intentions of its founder, and 
 of the suitable way to execute it. The sacra- 
 mental system is the historically established form 
 taken by the Christian institution, the Church, 
 inasmuch as it is a sanctifying organization through 
 which the immortal Christ continues to act. 
 
 It is, perhaps, true that God is the only Grace, 
 as He is the supreme good of man and his final 
 end. But human life cannot be resolved into a 
 simple act of union with God, to contain the 
 whole of religion. It is written that the " Grace 
 of God " is " manifold," ^ and truly it must adapt 
 itself to very varied conditions of existence, 
 bringing God to them, whose inexhaustible nature 
 can no longer be summed up for man in a single 
 aspect. The activity of the Father is not exhausted 
 by the single movement of pardon. Why should 
 » 1 Pet. iv. 10. 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 265 
 
 not His permanent assistance be recalled and 
 guaranteed by material symbols ? These symbols 
 take notliing from tlie Divine majesty, if it is 
 well understood that their efficacy is in no way 
 magical, and if, instead of interposing between 
 God and man, they only remind human beings 
 of the constantly beneficent presence of their 
 Creator. Nor does the administration of the 
 sacraments come between man and his Supreme 
 Master, to take the place of God. The social 
 character of Christianity exacts a regulation of 
 external worship and a division of duty in the 
 acts which constitute it; but none the less is 
 there a direct relation between God and all those 
 who, under different titles, participate in the 
 symbolic actions of Christian ritual. God is no 
 farther from the simple believer than from the 
 bishop or the priest. Clerics and laity come 
 together to God, pray together, are sanctified to- 
 gether. There is between them only a " diversity 
 of gifts and of ministrations," as St. Paul says, but 
 " the same Spirit " * is in all. The gospel is not 
 the enemy of order, and it is difficult to see how 
 the regular economy of Divine service can im- 
 pede the operation of the grace of God. 
 
 Every religion is sacramental ; every religion is 
 1 1 Cor. xii. 4, 5. 
 
266 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 also more or less deifying, offering man a means of 
 raising himself to Divinity, conceived first by 
 analogy in the image of man. Perhaps it would 
 not be very difficult to prove that the worship of 
 man is, in all known religions, associated in some 
 way with that of God. But in pagan worship 
 this association is made definitely, to the detri- 
 ment of Divinity, whose essential feature, that of 
 remaining infinitely above humanity, is not recog- 
 nized. Christianity avoided this confusion, while 
 satisfying, by the worship of Jesus and the sacra- 
 ments co-ordinated therewith, that need of deifica- 
 tion which seems inseparable from human nature. 
 It renders to Christ the worship the Jews rendered 
 to the hidden God, Whom no human being could 
 look on and live. It has been able to do so 
 without falling into Polytheism or man-worship, 
 because it distinguishes, in the object of its adora- 
 tion, the Eternal God and the human nature in 
 which this God was manifested on earth. Christ 
 is none the less seated on the right hand of the 
 Father, and humanity is raised in Him up to 
 Divinity. It may be said that humanity adores 
 itself in Jesus, but it must be added that, so 
 doincT, it for^jets neither its own condition nor that 
 of God. 
 
 Herr Harnack does not expressly condemn the 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 267 
 
 worship accorded to Christ, but he regards it all 
 the same as a kind of idolatry, born of ancient 
 polytheism. For him, the worship of Jesus is no 
 more legitimate than the dogma of His Divinity. 
 Did the apostles adore Christ even when they had 
 acquired belief in His resurrection ? Was Jesus 
 for the first Christian generation any other than a 
 Divine mediator, with Whom, and through Whom, 
 men could pray to and worship the Father, instead 
 of One to be worshipped? But these ckcum- 
 stances only serve to make more evident the need 
 of a worship deifying humanity, since from a 
 rio-orous monotheism, whose formula has l)een 
 strengthened rather than weakened, was derived 
 the worship of a human being, whose human 
 character has been never denied, though His 
 Divinity has been proclaimed; while, after this. 
 Christian piety has made for itself a wliole hier- 
 archy of intercessors from heavenly spirits and 
 spiritual ancestors, as though to aid Christ in His 
 position of intercessor, and at the head of them 
 has set the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Neither the worship of Christ nor the worship 
 of the saints could be part of the gospel of Jesus, 
 nor does either belong to it: they arose sponta- 
 neously, and have increased one after the other, 
 and then together, in Christianity as it became 
 
268 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 established. All the same, the worship, both of 
 Jesus and of the saints, proceeds from what may 
 be called, in all truthfulness, the primitive revela- 
 tion, the revelation that has never been specified 
 in a formal doctrine, that mankind bears in the 
 depths of its religious consciousness written in 
 indistinct characters. The sole article that con- 
 stitutes this unexplained revelation, that Jesus 
 manifested in Himself and in His life as much as 
 in His teaching, and was the first to show in a 
 clear and intelligible manner because He realized 
 it in Himself, is that God reveals Himself to man 
 in man, and that humanity enters with God into 
 a Divine association. Man had always believed 
 it, and only understood it vaguely ; Jesus made 
 it intelligible, and from that moment, as it were, 
 the direction of prayer was changed, and the 
 mythological cloud dissipated, while at the same 
 time the barrier of law and verbal revelation was 
 overthrown. The most Divine thing in the world 
 is not the crash of the thunder, nor the light of 
 the sun, nor the unfolding of life ; it is beauty of 
 soul, purity of heart, perfection of love in sacrifice, 
 because this is the sovereign gift of God to man, 
 the grandest work and supreme manifestation of 
 God in the universe. In this way Jesus revealed 
 to men the secret of God and religion, because 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 269 
 
 God was in Him revealing Himself; in this way- 
 men felt that in Jesus they possessed God revealed 
 to them. The impression was deeper among the 
 Gentiles, who knew not God, than among the 
 Jews, who knew Him better, but were accustomed 
 to adore Him in His redoubtable majesty. It is 
 certain that the eternal principle of the passage of 
 the Divine through the human then received a 
 new application, very clear and very fruitful, that 
 this application was the Christian religion and 
 the worship of Jesus, and that it could be nothing 
 else. 
 
 This application of the principle itself refused 
 to be limited to the worship of Christ. All those 
 who bore witness to the revelation of God in 
 Jesus, who had not feared to die rather than 
 disavow their certainty, who had demonstrated its 
 power by the practice of Christian virtues, and 
 had died in the peace of the Lord, all these equally 
 received on their foreheads a ray of Divinity. It 
 was not the full light, the unmeasured communi- 
 cation of the Spirit and of the glory of God, but 
 it was a part of this gift, to be saluted with 
 reverence. 
 
 In fact, it is as an extension of the worship of 
 Jesus that, from the Catholic point of view, the 
 worsliip of tlie Virgin and the saints is justified. 
 
270 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The saints live, not only in the memory of the 
 Church, but in her present work, by the lasting 
 influence of their personal activity, and of the 
 ideal signified by their name. Worship of them, 
 like that of the Virgin and of Christ Himself, has 
 become what it might and ought to have become 
 under the circumstances and in the times where 
 it has developed. The Christian spirit gave life, 
 and still gives it, to practices apparently trivial, 
 and easily becoming superstitious ; but the point 
 at issue is whether those who follow them do not 
 find Christ therein, and whether they would be 
 capable of finding Him more easily elsewhere. 
 From the actual point of view, the Virgin and 
 saints are religious types inferior to Christ, but 
 united to Him, leading to Him, acting through 
 Him and for Him. From the point of view of 
 theological symbolism and popular conception, 
 Christ alone is the mediator, all powerful by 
 reason of His Divinity; the Virgin is a sub- 
 ordinate intercessor all-powerful through Christ; 
 and the power of the saints is equally subordinated 
 to that of Jesus. 
 
 It may be said that the government of this 
 world, even of moral things, should not be divided 
 into provinces according to specialities which 
 recall a little too vividly the lesser gods of 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 271 
 
 paganism. Yet all that ever was has an eternal life 
 and action in God, wherein all things abide. He 
 who suppresses intercession is on the way to 
 suppress prayer. Is it not true in the strictest 
 sense for the Catholic, that he goes to God 
 through Jesus, to Jesus through the saints ? Is 
 it not true that Christianity endures by the force 
 of all its past, from Jesus to the Christians of our 
 own day, worthy of the name ? Is it not true 
 that all the fruits of tlie gospel in Christianity 
 are still the gospel ? Is it not true that to have 
 recourse to the saints is to have recourse to Jesus 
 — to Jesus, then to God ; and that to turn to God 
 with a simple faith is to rise above one's self, to 
 enter into religion and make it a personal reality ? 
 Is it not true that by all those means the 
 Protestant finds so vulgar and so ridiculous — by 
 wearing a scapulary, by telling beads, by gaining 
 indulgences on the merits of saints for this life or 
 for souls in Purgatory — the Catholic places himself 
 effectively in the communion of the saints, which 
 is the communion of Jesus, which is the commu- 
 nion of God ? 
 
 Assuredly it would be wise to moderate tliis 
 worship in some of its manifestations, and above 
 all to make clear its real siornificance. The general 
 considerations which allow, from the Christian 
 
272 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 point of view, prayers of intercession, as a mean3 
 of attaching the soul to God by the intermediary 
 of those in whom God was especially made mani- 
 fest, demand also that these prayers should be 
 different in spirit from pagan superstitions, and 
 should not be sustained by wild imaginations. 
 After all, it will be said, if St. Antony of Padua 
 has not really the power to cause the recovery of 
 things that are lost, the winning of the great prize 
 in the lottery, the gaining of diplomas by devout 
 but lazy students, it is possible that a naive 
 credulity may provide the hope of supernatural 
 intervention that is solicited in these cases, so 
 that the religious and moral value of such prayers 
 is not superior to that of the requests commonly 
 addressed to pagan deities : far better recommend 
 students to deserve success by their work, advise 
 all to look to their affairs and count at once on 
 Providence and on themselves for the success of 
 their enterprises. 
 
 Nevertheless the apparent puerilities of devotion 
 are less removed from religion than they seem. 
 The face of the world is twofold. Man is placed 
 between nature, where all seems inevitable, and 
 consciousness, where all appears free. The universe 
 for him is a gigantic mechanism, which encom- 
 passes him on all sides, and will overwhelm 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 273 
 
 him without mercy if the opportunity arise ; and, 
 at the same time, it is the revelation that a 
 Being, good and omnipotent, gives of Himself. 
 The contradiction evident in the conduct of man 
 demanding to be freed from inevitability, exists 
 also in the world, where necessity and liberty 
 meet in opposition. No prayer is insignificaDt 
 or ridiculous for the man of faith, so long as it 
 does not misrepresent God in His goodness and 
 respects His sovereignty. No prayer is justified 
 as an act of pure reason and of perfect piety, save 
 by the uprightness of its intentions, its applica- 
 tion to duty, and submission to the Divine will. 
 Taken solely in its natural and primitive signifi- 
 cance, the Lord's Prayer in some respects would be 
 as open to critical objection as a prayer to St. 
 Antony of Padua to recover an object that has 
 been lost. Would not the demand, " Give us this 
 day our daily bread," considered in its strict 
 historical meaning,^ be subversive of social 
 economy ? Practically, as a general rule, the 
 adult healthy man can and should earn his bread 
 with his own powers. To-day, the Christian 
 requests that this activity be blessed by Heaven, 
 but the original sense of the words he uses was 
 v^ery different. In the same way the meaning of 
 
 * Cf. supra. 
 
 T 
 
274 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the request, " Thy Kingdom come," is very different 
 for the modern Christian from the sense the first 
 converts attached to it. Thus the prayer derives 
 its value from the feeling that prompts it and 
 determines its moral efficacy, not from the occasion 
 that provokes it, not even from the good to which 
 it seems directed. This efficacy of prayer is inde- 
 pendent of its formal fulfilment, and is no more a 
 matter of question for the Christian than the 
 personal existence of God. 
 
 It must not be imagined that sentence of con- 
 demnation has been passed on the worship of 
 saints, of relics, of the Virgin, and of the Saviour 
 Himself because such worship appears to the 
 historian as a concession to the tendencies of 
 popular religion.^ It is essential that every 
 relii:rion that lives should be a concession of this 
 kind, though Christianity may be asked to raise 
 the character of the concession by the spirit that 
 informs its worship and its practices. The ten- 
 dencies in question are a fundamental law of 
 religion, and a condition of religious development. 
 All is well so long as the forms of worship are 
 not esteemed beyond and at the expense of the 
 spirit that should animate them. The Church is 
 unable to suppress the religious instinct, and as 
 1 Cf. Newman, " Development." 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 275 
 
 little dis})osed to leave it to itself: she sets out 
 to regulate it, and devotions are to her a means 
 of maintaining religion. The piety of any Catholic 
 nation does not, perhaps, represent the ideal of 
 Catholicism, but it is all that Catholicism can 
 obtain from that nation. What can be asked of 
 the Church beyond a constant effort to obtain 
 more tlian has as yet been given ? This effort 
 exists. Herr Harnack recognizes ^ that devotions 
 paid to the Sacred Heart, the Holy Virgin, and 
 others, have become in the Catliolic Church a 
 source of blessing and a means of reaching the 
 good God. This is because the Christian spii^it 
 has penetrated to the depth of the devotion, and 
 set the gospel there. These devotions, far from 
 being a hindrance to religion, are a support to it, 
 just as the sacraments do not take Christ from 
 the believer, but give Him. 
 
 Protestant critics, when they express surprise 
 that the Christian spirit is still found in Catholi- 
 cism in spite of the Church, faith in spite of 
 dogma, true piety in spite of the multiplication of 
 external rites, take for obstacles the real guaran- 
 tees and normal conditions of the good that the 
 gospel, now become a religion, has given to 
 the world, good that their own speculations on 
 * " Dogmengeschichte," iii. G70, n. 3. 
 
276 THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the pure essence of Christianity are unable to 
 procure. Does not Protestantism itself exist as 
 a religion through that amount of ecclesiastical 
 organization, ofi&cial doctrine, and confessional 
 worship that it has retained ? 
 
 It is true that as a result of the evolution, 
 political, intellectual, economic, of the modern 
 world, as a result of all that may be called the 
 modern spiiit, a great religious crisis, affecting 
 Churches, orthodoxies, and forms of worship has 
 arisen to a greater or less extent everywhere. The 
 best means of meeting it does not appear to be 
 the suppression of all ecclesiastical organization, 
 all orthodoxy, and all traditional worship — a pro- 
 cess that would thrust Christianity out of life and 
 humanity, — but to take advantage of what is, in 
 view of what should be, to repudiate nothing of 
 the heritage left to our age by former Christian 
 centuries, to recognize how necessary and useful 
 is the immense development accomplished in the 
 Church, to gather the fruits of it and continue it, 
 since the adaptation of the gospel to the changing 
 conditions of humanity is as pressing a need 
 to-day as it ever was and ever will be. It is no 
 part of the present book to say what difficulties — 
 more apparent, perhaps, than real — this work 
 may encounter in the Catholic Church, nor what 
 
THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP 277 
 
 incomparable resources exist for it, nor in what 
 way the agreement of dogma and science, reason 
 and faith, the Church and society, can be conceived 
 to-day. This little volume is full enough if it has 
 shown how Christianity has lived in the Church 
 and by the Church, and how futile is the desire 
 to save it by a search after its quintessence. 
 
 THE END 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 TO-i-^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 - HOME USE 
 
 2 : 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 ( 
 
 5 
 
 ALL BOOK^^AY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 PAYS 
 
 ^ear loans rr^ay 'L. .cc^v j-.. -> o^f^.o;:;. t-:^? Locks ic tne CircuJalion Desk 
 — ,— ^anaivaia and recMcr-oec- rr:sy bo triacie 4 days orior to due date 
 
 RECEIVED BY 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 J UN 1 1 "juc 
 
 c; 
 
 
 CIRCULATION D 
 
 k 
 
 
 NOV 27 1985 
 
 • • 
 
 
 SGGLCII. NOV 8^98 
 
 5 
 
 
 APR / ?no 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 
 FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
 ®$ 
 
f 
 
 GENERAL LIBRARY U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 8000207227