SB M^ 021 
 
I 
 
 IN MEMOH1AM 
 GEORGE HOLMES HOWISON 
 
ST. PAUL & PROTESTANTISM 
 
 A.ND 
 
 LAST ESSAYS OX CHURCH & RELIGION 
 
ST. PAUL & PROTESTANTISM 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY ON 
 PURITANISM & THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 AND 
 
 LAST ESSAYS 
 ON CHUKCH & RELIGION 
 
 BY MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 £cfo gorfc 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1883 
 
A 7 
 
 * i •   
 
 Howw»\Scrv> ~ ' 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
ST. PAUL AND PEOTESTANTISM 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY ON PURITANISM AND 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 L49 
 
" We often read the Scripture without comprehending its full meaning ; 
 however, let us not be discouraged. The light, in God's good time, will 
 break out, and disperse the darkness ; and we shall see the mysteries of 
 the Gospel." Bishop Wilson. 
 
 " With them (the Puritans) nothing is more familiar than to plead in 
 their causes the Law of God, the Word of the Lord ; who notwithstanding, 
 when they come to allege what word and what law they mean, their 
 common ordinary practice is to quote by-speeches, and to urge them as if 
 they were written in most exact form of law. What is to add to the Law 
 of God if this be not ? " Hooker. 
 
 " It will be found at last, that unity, and the peace of the Church, will 
 conduce more to the saving of souls, than the most specious sects, 
 varnished with the most pious, specious pretences." 
 
 Bishop Wilson. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 (1870.) 
 
 The essay following the treatise on St. Paul and 
 Protestantism, was meant to clear away offence or 
 misunderstanding which had arisen out of that 
 treatise. There still remain one or two points on 
 which a word of explanation may be useful, and to 
 them this preface is addressed. 
 
 The general objection, that the scheme of doctrine 
 criticised by me is common to both Puritanism and 
 the Church of England, and does not characterise the 
 one more essentially than the other, has been re- 
 moved, I hope, by the concluding essay. But it is 
 said that there is, at any rate, a large party in the 
 Church of England, — the so-called Evangelical party, 
 — which holds just the scheme of doctrine I have 
 called Puritan ; that this large party, at least, if not 
 the whole Church of England, is as much a strong- 
 hold of the distinctive Puritan tenets as the Noncon- 
 formists are; and that to tax the Nonconformists with 
 these tenets, and to say nothing about the Evangelical 
 clergy holding them too, is injurious and unfair. 
 
Vlll ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 The Evangelical party in the Church of England 
 we must always, certainly, have a disposition to 
 treat with forbearance, inasmuch as this party has 
 so strongly loved what is indeed the most lovable 
 of things, — religion. They have also avoided that 
 unblessed mixture of politics and religion by which 
 both politics and religion are spoilt. This, however, 
 would not alone have prevented our making them 
 jointly answerable with the Puritans for that body 
 of opinions which calls itself Scriptural Protestant- 
 ism, but which is, in truth, a perversion of St. Paul's 
 Epistle to the Romans. But there is this difference 
 between the Evangelical party in the Church of 
 England and the Puritans outside her; — the Evan- 
 gelicals have not added to the first error of holding 
 this unsound body of opinions, the second error of 
 separating for them. They have thus, as we have 
 already noticed, escaped the mixing of politics and 
 religion, which arises directly and naturally out of 
 this separating for opinions. But they have also 
 done that which we most blame Nonconformity for 
 not doing ; — they have left themselves in the way of 
 development. Practically they have admitted that 
 the Christian Church is built, not on the foundation 
 of Lutheran and Calvinist dogmas, but on the foun- 
 dation : Let every one that nameth the name of Christ 
 depart from iniquity} Mr. Eyle or the Dean of Ripon 
 may have as erroneous notions as to what truth and 
 the gospel really is, as Mr. Spurgeon or the President 
 of the Wesleyan Conference ; but they do not tie 
 
 1 2 Timothy ii. 19. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 themselves tighter still to these erroneous notions, 
 nor do their best to cut themselves off from out- 
 growing them, by resolving to have no felloivship ivith 
 the man of sin who holds different notions. On the 
 contrary, they are worshippers in the same Church, 
 professors of the same faith, ministers of the same 
 confraternity, as men who hold that their Scrijrtural 
 Protestantism is all wrong, and who hold other notions 
 of their own quite at variance with it. And thus 
 they do homage to an ideal of Christianity which is 
 larger, higher, and better than either their notions 
 or those of their opponents, and in respect of which 
 both their notions and those of their opponents are 
 inadequate ; and this admission of the relative in- 
 adequacy of their notions is itself a stage towards 
 the future admission of their positive inadequacy. 
 
 In fact, the popular Protestant theology, which 
 we have criticised as such a grave perversion of the 
 teaching of St. Paul, has not in the so-called Evan- 
 gelical party of the Church of England its chief 
 centre and stronghold. This party, which, following 
 in the wake of Wesley and others, so felt in a day of 
 general insensibility the power and comfort of the 
 Christian religion, and which did so much to make 
 others feel them, but which also adopted and pro- 
 mulgated a scientific account so inadequate and so 
 misleading of the religion which attracted it, — this 
 great party has done its work, and is now under- 
 going that law of transformation and development 
 which obtains in a national Church. The power is 
 passing from it to others, who will make good some 
 
X ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 of the aspects of religion which the Evangelicals 
 neglected, and who will then, in their turn, from 
 the same cause of the scientific inadequacy of their 
 conception of Christianity, change and pass away. 
 The Evangelical clergy no longer recruits itself with 
 success, no longer lays hold on such promising sub- 
 jects as formerly. It is losing the future and feels 
 that it is losing it. Its signs of a vigorous life, its 
 gaiety and audacity, are confined to its older members, 
 too powerful to lose their own vigour, but without 
 successors to whom to transmit it. It was impossible 
 not to admire the genuine and rich though somewhat 
 brutal humour of the Dean of Kipon's famous simili- 
 tude of the two lepers. 1 But from which of the 
 younger members of the Evangelical clergy do such 
 strokes now come ? The best of their own younger 
 generation, the soldiers of their own training, are 
 slipping away from them ; and he who looks for the 
 source whence popular Puritan theology now derives 
 power and perpetuation, will not fix his eyes on the 
 Evangelical clergy of the Church of England. 
 
 Another point where a word of explanation seems 
 desirable is the objection taken on a kind of personal 
 
 1 In a letter to the Times respecting Dr. Pusey and Dr. 
 Temple, during the discussion caused by Dr. Temple's appoint- 
 ment to the see of Exete 1 '. Dr. Temple was the total leper, so 
 evidently a leper that all men would instinctively avoid him, 
 and he ceased to be dangerous ; Dr. Pusey was the partial leper, 
 less deeply tainted, but on that very account more dangerous, 
 because less likely to terrify peoxne from coming near him. A 
 piece of polemical humour, racy, indeed, but hardly urbane, 
 and still less Christian ! 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 ground to the criticism of St. Paul's doctrine which 
 we have attempted. "What!" it is said, "if this 
 view of St. Paul's meaning, so unlike the received 
 view, were the true one, do you suppose it would 
 have been left for you to discover it? Are you 
 wiser than the hundreds of learned people who for 
 generation after generation have been occupying 
 themselves with St. Paul and little else 1 ? Has it 
 been left for you to bring in a new religion and 
 found a new church?" Now on this line of ex- 
 postulation, which, so far as it draws from un- 
 worthiness of ours its argument, appears to have, 
 no doubt, great force, there are three remarks to be 
 offered. In the first place, even if the version of St. 
 Paul which we propound were both new and true, 
 yet we do not, on that account, make of it a new 
 religion or set up a new church for its sake. That 
 would be separating for opinions, heresy, which is just 
 what we reproach the Nonconformists with. In the 
 seventh century, there arose near the Euphrates a 
 sect called Paulicians, who professed to form them- 
 selves on the pure doctrine of St. Paul, which other 
 Christians, they said, had misunderstood and cor- 
 rupted. And we, I suppose, having discovered how 
 popular Protestantism perverts St. Paul, are expected 
 to try and make a new sect of Paulicians on the 
 strength of this discovery; such being just the 
 course which our Puritan friends would themselves 
 eagerly take in like case. But the Christian Church 
 is founded, not on a correct speculative knowledge 
 of the ideas of Paul, but on the much surer ground : 
 
Xll ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from 
 iniquity ; and, holding this to be so, we might change 
 the current strain of doctrinal theology from one end 
 to the other, without, on that account, setting up any 
 new church or bringing in any new religion. 
 
 In the second place, the version we propound of 
 St. Paul's line of thought is not new, is not of our dis- 
 covering. It belongs to the "Zeit-Geist," or time- 
 spirit, it is in the air, and many have long been 
 anticipating it, preparing it, setting forth this and 
 that part of it, till there is not a part, probably, of 
 all we have said, which has not already been said by 
 others before us, and said more learnedly and fully 
 than we can say it. All we have done is to take it 
 as a whole, and give a plain, popular, connected ex- 
 position of it ; for which, perhaps, our notions about 
 culture, about the many sides to the human spirit, 
 about making these sides help one another instead of 
 remaining enemies and strangers, have been of some 
 advantage. For most of those who read St. Paul 
 diligently are Hebraisers ; they regard little except 
 the Hebraising impulse in us and the documents 
 which concern it. They have little notion of letting 
 their consciousness play on things freely, little ear for 
 the voice of the " Zeit-Geist ; " and they are so im- 
 mersed in an order of thoughts and words which are 
 peculiar, that, in the broad general order of thoughts 
 and words, which is the life of popular exposition, 
 they are not very much at home. 
 
 Thirdly, and in the last place, we by no means 
 put forth our version of St. Paul's line of thought as 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 true, in the same fashion as Puritanism put forth its 
 Scrvptwal Protestantism, or gospel, as true. Their 
 truth the Puritans exhibit as a sort of cast-iron pro- 
 duct, rigid, definite, and complete, which they have 
 got once for all, and which can no longer have any- 
 thing added to it or anything withdrawn from it. 
 But of our rendering of St. Paul's thought we con- 
 ceive rather as of a product of nature, which has 
 grown to be what it is and which will grow more ; 
 which will not stand just as we now exhibit it, but 
 which will gain some aspects which we now fail to 
 show in it, and will drop some which we now give 
 it ; which will be developed, in short, farther, just in 
 like manner as it has reached its present stage hy 
 development. 
 
 Thus we present our conceptions, neither as some- 
 thing quite new nor as something quite true ; nor 
 yet as any ground, even supposing they were quite 
 new and true, for a separate church or religion. But 
 so far they are, we think, new and true, and a fruit 
 of sound development, a genuine product of the 
 " Zeit-Geist," that their mere contact seems to make 
 the old Puritan conceptions look unlikely and inde- 
 fensible, and begin a sort of remodelling and refacing 
 of themselves. Let us just see how far this change 
 has practically gone. 
 
 The formal and scholastic version of its theology, 
 Calvinist or Arminian, as given by its seventeenth- 
 century fathers, and enshrined in the trust-deeds of 
 so many of its chapels, — of this, at any rate, modern 
 Puritanism is beginning to feel shy. Take the Cal- 
 
XIV ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 vinist doctrine of election. "By God's degree a 
 certain number of angels and men are predestinated, 
 out of God's mere free grace and love, without any 
 foresight of faith or good works in them, to everlast- 
 ing life ; and others foreordained, according to the 
 unsearchable counsel of his will, whereby he extends 
 or withholds mercy as he pleases, to everlasting 
 death." In that scientific form, at least, the doctrine 
 of election begins to look dubious to the Calvinistic 
 Puritan, and he puts it a good deal out of sight. 
 Take the Arminian doctrine of justification. "We 
 could not expect any relief from heaven out of that 
 misery under which we lie, were not God's displeasure 
 against us first pacified and our sins remitted. This 
 is the signal and transcendent benefit of our free 
 justification through the blood of Christ, that God's 
 offence justly conceived against us for our sins (which 
 would have been an eternal bar and restraint to the 
 efflux of his grace upon us) being removed, the divine 
 grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us." 
 In that scientific form, the doctrine of justification 
 begins to look less satisfactory to the Arminian 
 Puritan, and he tends to put it out of sight. 
 
 The same may be said of the doctrine of election 
 in its plain popular form of statement also. "I 
 hold," says Whitefield, in the forcible style which so 
 took his hearers' fancy, — "I hold that a certain 
 number are elected from eternity, and these must 
 and shall be saved, and the rest of mankind must 
 and shall be damned." A Calvinistic Puritan now- 
 adays must be either a fervid Welsh Dissenter, or a 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 strenuous Particular Baptist in some remote place in 
 the country, not to be a little staggered at this sort 
 of expression. As to the doctrine of justification in 
 its current, popular form of statement, the case is 
 somewhat different. "My own works," says Wesley, 
 "my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so 
 far from reconciling me to an offended God, so far 
 from making any atonement for the least of those 
 sins which are more in number than the hairs of my 
 head, that the most specious of them need an atone- 
 ment themselves ; that, having the sentence of death 
 in my heart and nothing in or of myself to plead, I 
 have no hope but that of being justified freely through 
 the redemption that is in Jesus. The faith I want 
 is a sure trust and confidence in God, that through 
 the merits of Christ my sins are forgiven and I recon- 
 ciled to the favour of God. Believe and thou shalt 
 be saved ! He that believeth is passed from death to 
 life. Faith is the free gift of God, which he bestows 
 not on those who are worthy of his favour, not on 
 such as are previously holy and so fit to be crowned 
 with all the blessings of his goodness, but on the 
 ungodly and unholy, who till that hour were fit only 
 for everlasting damnation. Look for sanctification 
 just as you are, as a poor sinner that has nothing to 
 pay, nothing to plead but Christ died." Deliverances 
 of this sort, which in Wesley are frequent and in 
 Wesley's followers are unceasing, still, no doubt, 
 pass current everywhere with Puritanism, are ex- 
 pected as of course, and find favour ; they are just 
 what Puritans commonly mean by Scriptural Protest- 
 
XVI ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 antism, the truth, the gospel -feast. Nevertheless they 
 no longer quite satisfy ; the better minds among 
 Puritans try instinctively to give some fresh turn or 
 development to them ; they are no longer, to minds 
 of this order, an unquestionable word and a sure 
 stay ; and from this point to their final transforma- 
 tion the course is certain. The predestinarian and 
 solifidian dogmas, for the very sake of which our 
 Puritan churches came into existence, begin to feel 
 the irresistible breath of the " Zeit-Geist ; " some of 
 them melt quicker, others slower, but all of them are 
 doomed. Under the eyes of this generation Puritan 
 Dissent has to execute an entire change of front, and 
 to present us with a new reason for its existing. 
 What will that new reason be ? 
 
 There needs no conjuror to tell us. It will be the 
 Rev. Mr. Conder's reason, which we have quoted in 
 our concluding essay. It will be Scriptural Pro- 
 testantism in church -order, rather than Scriptural 
 Protestantism in church- doctrine. "Congregational 
 Nonconformists can never be incorporated into an 
 organic union with Anglican Episcopacy, because 
 there is not even the shadow of an outline of it in 
 the New Testament, and it is our assertion and pro- 
 found belief that Christ and the Apostles have given 
 us all the laws that are necessary for the constitution 
 and government of the Church. " This makes church- 
 government not a secondary matter of form, growth, 
 and expediency, but a matter of the essence of Chris- 
 tianity and ordained in Scripture. Expressly set 
 forth in Scripture it is not ; so it has to be gathered 
 
PREFACE. xvii 
 
 from Scripture by collection, and every one gathers 
 it in his own way. Unity is of no great import- 
 ance ; but that every man should live in a church- 
 order which he judges to be scriptural, is of the 
 greatest importance. This brings us to Mr. Miall's 
 standard-maxim : The Dissidence of Dissent, and the 
 Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! The more 
 freely the sects develop themselves, the better. The 
 Church of England herself is but the dominant sect ; 
 her pretensions to bring back the Dissenters within 
 her pale are offensive and ridiculous. What we ought 
 to aim at is perfect equality, and that the other sects 
 should balance her. 
 
 On the old, old subject of the want of historic and 
 philosophic sense shown by those who would make 
 church-government a matter of scriptural regulation, 
 I say nothing at present. A Wesleyan minister, the 
 Eev. Mr. Willey, said the other day at Leeds : "He 
 did not find anything in either the Old or New Testa- 
 ment to the effect that Christian ministers should 
 become State-servants, like soldiers or excisemen." 
 He might as well have added that he did not find 
 there anything to the effect that they should wear 
 braces ! But on this point I am not here going to 
 enlarge. What I am now concerned with is the rela- 
 tion of this new ground of existence, which more and 
 more the Puritan Churches take and will take as they 
 lose their old ground, to the Christian religion. In 
 the speech which Mr. Winterbotham 1 made on the 
 
 1 Mr. Winterbotham has since died. Nothing in my remarks 
 on his speech need prevent me from expressing here my high 
 VOL. VII. b 
 
XVlll ST. PAUL AND PKOTESTANTISM. 
 
 Education Bill, a speech which I had the advantage 
 of hearing, there were uncommon facilities supplied 
 for judging of this relation ; indeed that able speech 
 presented a striking picture of it. 
 
 And what a picture it was, good heavens ! The 
 Puritans say they love righteousness, and they are 
 offended with us for rejoining that the righteousness 
 of which they boast is the righteousness of the earlier 
 Jews of the Old Testament, which consisted mainly 
 in smiting the Lord's enemies and their own under 
 the fifth rib. And we say that the newer and 
 specially Christian sort of righteousness is something 
 different from this ; that the Puritans are, and always 
 have been, deficient in the specially Christian sort of 
 righteousness ; that men like St. Francis of Sales, in 
 the Koman Catholic Church, and Bishop Wilson, in 
 the Church of England, show far more of it than any 
 Puritans ; and that St. Paul's signal and eternally 
 fruitful growth in righteousness dates just from his 
 breach with the Puritans of his day. Let us revert 
 to Paul's list of fruits of the spirit, on which we have 
 so often insisted in the pages which follow : love, joy, 
 yeace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, 
 self-control} We keep to this particular list for the 
 sake of greater distinctness ; but St. Paul has per- 
 petually lists of the kind, all pointing the same way, 
 and all showing what he meant by Christian right- 
 eousness, what he found specially in Christ. They 
 
 esteem for his character, accomplishments, oratorical faculty 
 and general promise, and my sincere regret for his loss. 
 
 1 Gal. v. 22, 23. 
 
PREFACE. xix 
 
 may all be concluded in two qualities, the qualities 
 which Jesus Christ told his disciples to learn of him, 
 the qualities in the name of which, as specially 
 Christ's qualities, Paul adjured his converts. "Learn 
 of me," said Jesus, "that I am mild and lowly in 
 hearty "I beseech you," said Paul, " by the mildness 
 and gentleness of Christ." l The word which our Bibles 
 translate by " gentleness," means more properly 
 "reasonableness with sweetness," "sweet reasonable- 
 ness." "I beseech you by the mildness and sweet 
 reasonableness of Christ" This mildness and sweet 
 reasonableness it was, which, stamped with the indi- 
 vidual charm they had in Jesus Christ, came to the 
 world as something new, won its heart and conquered 
 it. Every one had been asserting his ordinary self 
 and was miserable ; to forbear to assert one's ordinary 
 self, to place one's happiness in mildness and sweet 
 reasonableness, was a revelation. As men followed 
 this novel route to happiness, a living spring opened 
 beside their way, the spring of charity ; and out of 
 this spring arose those two heavenly visitants, Charis 
 and Irene, grace and ])eace, which enraptured the poor 
 wayfarer, and filled him with a joy which brought 
 all the world after him. And still, whenever these 
 visitants appear, as appear for a witness to the vitality 
 of Christianity they daily do, it is from the same 
 spring that they arise ; and this spring is opened 
 solely by the mildness and sweet reasonableness 
 which forbears to assert our ordinary self, nay, which 
 even takes pleasure in effacing it. 
 
 1 8ia tt)$ ir pavTrjTos Kal £wiet.Keias rod Xptarou. — 2 Cor. x. 1. 
 
XX ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 And now let us turn to Mr. Winterbotham and the 
 Protestant Dissenters. He interprets their very inner 
 mind, he says ; that which he declares in their name, 
 they are all feeling, and would declare for themselves 
 if they could. " There was a spirit of watchful jealousy 
 on the part of the Dissenters, which made them prone to 
 take offence ; therefore statesmen should not introduce the 
 Established Church into all the institutions of the country." 
 That • is positively the whole speech ! " Strife, 
 jealousy, wrath, contentions, backbitings," 1 — we 
 know the catalogue. And the Dissenters are, by 
 their own confession, so full of these, and the very 
 existence of an organisation of Dissent so makes them 
 a necessity, that the State is required to frame its 
 legislation in consideration of them ! Was there ever 
 such a confession made 1 Here are people existing 
 for the sake of a religion of which the essence is mild- 
 ness and sweet reasonableness, and the forbearing to 
 assert our ordinary self ; and they declare them- 
 selves so full of the very temper and habits against 
 which that religion is specially levelled, that they 
 require to have even the occasion of forbearing to 
 assert their ordinary self removed out of their way, 
 because they are quite sure they will never comply 
 with it ! 
 
 Never was there a more instructive comment on 
 the blessings of separation, which we are so often 
 invited by separatists to admire. Why does not 
 Dissent forbear to assert its ordinary self, and help 
 to win the world to the mildness and sweet reason- 
 
 1 2 Cor. xii. 20. 
 
PREFACE. xxi 
 
 ableness of Christ, without this vain contest about 
 machinery ? Why does not the Church 1 is the 
 Dissenter's answer. What an answer for a Chris- 
 tian ! We are to defer giving up our ordinary self 
 until our neighbour shall have given up his ; that 
 is, we are never to give it up at all. But I will 
 answer the question on more mundane grounds. 
 Why are we to be more blamed than the Church 
 for the strife arising out of our rival existences'? 
 asks the Dissenter. Because the Church cannot 
 help existing, and you can ! Therefore, contra 
 ecclesiam nemo pacificus, as Baxter himself said in 
 his better moments. Because the Church is there ; 
 because strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are sure 
 to come with breaking off from her; and because 
 strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are the very 
 miseries against which Christianity is firstly levelled ; 
 — therefore we say that a Christian is inexcusable 
 in breaking with the Church, except for a departure 
 from the primal ground of her foundation : Let every 
 one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. 
 The clergyman — poor soul ! — cannot help being 
 the parson of the parish. He is there like the 
 magistrate ; he is a national officer with an appointed 
 function. If one or two voluntary performers, dis- 
 satisfied with the magisterial system, were to set 
 themselves up in each parish of the country, called 
 themselves magistrates, drew a certain number of 
 people to their own way of thinking, tried differences 
 and gave sentences among their people in the best 
 fashion they could, why, probably the established 
 
xxil ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 magistrate would not much like it, the leading people 
 in the parish would not much like it, and the new- 
 comers would have mortifications and social estrange- 
 ments to endure. Probably the established magis- 
 trate would call them interlopers ; probably he would 
 count them amongst his difficulties. On the side of 
 the newcomers "a spirit of watchful jealousy," as 
 Mr. Winterbotham says, would thus be created. 
 The public interest would suffer from the ill blood 
 and confusion prevailing. The established magistrate 
 might naturally say that the newcomers brought the 
 strife and disturbance with them. But who would 
 not smile at these lambs answering: "Away with 
 that wolf the established magistrate, and all ground 
 for jealousy and quarrel between us will disappear !" 
 And it is a grievance that the clergyman talks 
 of Dissent as one of the spiritual hindrances in his 
 parish, and desires to get rid of it ! Why, by Mr. 
 Winterbotham's own showing, the Dissenters live 
 "in a spirit of watchful jealousy," and this temper 
 is as much a spiritual hindrance, — nay, in the view 
 of Christianity it is even a more direct spiritual hind- 
 rance, — than drunkenness or loose living. Chris- 
 tianity is, first and above all, a temper, a disposition ; 
 and a disposition just the opposite to "a spirit of 
 watchful jealousy." Once admit a spirit of watchful 
 jealousy, and Christianity has lost its virtue ; it is 
 impotent. All the other vices it was meant to keep 
 out may rush in. Where there is jealousy and strife 
 among you, asks St. Paul, are ye not carnal ? 1 are ye 
 
 1 1 Cor. iii. 3. 
 
PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 not still in bondage to your mere lower selves 1 But 
 from this bondage Christianity was meant to free us ; 
 therefore, says he, get rid of what causes divisions, 
 and strife, and "a spirit of watchful jealousy." "I 
 exhort you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be 
 not divisions among you, but that ye all be perfectly 
 joined in the same mind and the same judgment." 1 
 
 Well, but why, says the Dissenting minister, is 
 the clergyman to impress St. Paul's words upon me 
 rather than I upon the clergyman? Because the 
 clergyman is the one minister of Christ in the parish 
 who did not invent himself, who cannot help existing. 
 He is not asserting his ordinary self by being there ; 
 he is placed there on public duty. He is charged 
 with teaching the lesson of Christianity, and the 
 head and front of this lesson is to get rid of "a 
 spirit of watchful jealousy," which, according to the 
 Dissenter's own showing, is the very spirit which 
 accompanies Dissent. How he is to get rid of it, 
 how he is to win souls to the mildness and sweet 
 reasonableness of Christ, it is for his own conscience 
 to tell him. Probably he will best do it by never 
 speaking against Dissent at all, by treating Dissenters 
 with perfect cordiality and as if there was not a point 
 of dispute between them. But that, so long as he 
 exists, it is his duty to get rid of it, to win souls to 
 the unity which is its opposite, is clear. It is not the 
 Bishop of Winchester 2 who classes Dissent, full of 
 "a spirit of watchful jealousy," along with spiritual 
 
 1 1 Cor. i. 10. 2 The late Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
xxiv ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 hindrances like beer-shops, — a pollution of the spirit 
 along with pollutions of the flesh; 1 it is St. Paul. 
 It is not the clergyman who is chargeable with wish- 
 ing to "stamp out" this spirit; it is the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 But what is to prevent the Dissenting minister 
 from being joined with the clergyman in the same 
 public function, and being his partner instead of his 
 rival ? Episcopal ordination. 2 If I leave the service 
 of a private company, and enter the public service, 
 I receive admission at the hands of the public officer 
 designated to give it me. Sentiment and the historic 
 sense, to say nothing of the religious feeling, will 
 certainly put more into ordination than this, though 
 not precisely what the Bishop of Winchester, per- 
 haps, puts ; this which we have laid down, however, 
 is really all which the law of the land puts there. 
 A bishop is a public officer. Why should I trouble 
 myself about the name his office bears % The name 
 of his office cannot affect the service or my labour 
 in it. Ah, but, says Mr. Winterbotham, he holds 
 opinions which I do not share about the sort of 
 
 1 1 Cor. vii. 1, 
 2 It has been inferred from what is here said that we propose 
 to make re-ordination a condition of admitting Dissenting minis- 
 ters to the ministry of the Church of England. Elsewhere I 
 have said how undesirable it seems to impose this condition ; 
 and to what respectful treatment and fair and equal terms, in 
 case of reunion, Protestant Nonconformity is, in my opinion, 
 entitled. See the Preface to Culture and Anarchy. What is 
 said in the text is directed simply against the objection to epis- 
 copal ordination as something wrong in itself and a ground for 
 schism. 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 character he confers upon me ! What can that 
 matter, unless he compels you, too, to profess the 
 same opinions, or refuses you admission if you do 
 not? But I should be joined in the ministry with 
 men who hold opinions which I do not share ! What 
 does that matter either, unless they compel you also 
 to hold these opinions, as the price of your being 
 allowed to work on the foundation : Let every one that 
 nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity ? To 
 recur to our old parallel. It is as if a man who 
 desired the office of a public magistrate and who 
 was fitted for it, were to hold off because he had to 
 receive institution from a Lord-Lieutenant, and he 
 did not like the title of Lord-Lieutenant ; or because 
 the Lord-Lieutenant who was to institute him had 
 a fancy about some occult quality which he conferred 
 on him at institution ; or because he would find him- 
 self, when he was instituted, one of a body of magis- 
 trates of whom many had notions which he thought 
 irrational. The office itself, and his own power to 
 fill it usefully, is all which really matters to him. 
 
 The Bishop of Winchester believes in apostolical 
 succession ; — therefore there must be Dissenters. Mr. 
 Liddon asserts the real presence ; — therefore there 
 must be Dissenters. Mr. Mackonochie is a ritualist ; 
 — therefore there must be Dissenters. But the Bishop 
 of Winchester cannot, and does not, exclude from the 
 ministry of the Church of England those who do not 
 believe in apostolical succession ; and surely not even 
 that acute and accomplished personage is such a 
 magician, that he can make a Puritan believe in 
 
XXVI ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 apostolical succession merely by believing in it him- 
 self ! In the same way, eloquent as is Mr. Liddon, 
 and devoted as is Mr. Mackonochie, their gifts cannot 
 yield them the art of so swaying a brother clergy- 
 man's spirit as to make him admit the real presence 
 against his conviction, or practise ritualism against 
 his will ; and official, material control over him, or 
 power of stipulating what he shall admit or practise, 
 they have absolutely none. 
 
 But can anything more tend to make the Church 
 what the Puritans reproach it with being, a mere 
 lump of sacerdotalism and ritualism, — than if the 
 Puritans, who are free to come into with their dis- 
 regard of sacerdotalism and ritualism and so to leaven 
 it, refuse to come in, and leave it wholly to the sacer- 
 dotalists and ritualists'? What can be harder upon 
 the laity of the national Church, what so incon- 
 siderate of the national good and advantage, as to 
 leave us at the mercy of one single element in the 
 Church, and deny us just the elements fit to mix with 
 this element and to improve it 1 
 
 The current doctrines of apostolical succession and 
 the real presence seem to us unsound and unedifying. 
 To be sure, so does the current doctrine of imputed 
 righteousness. For us, sacerdotalism and solifidian- 
 ism stand both on the same footing ; they are, both 
 of them, erroneous human developments. But as in 
 the ideas and practice of sacerdotalists or ritualists 
 there is much which seems to us of value, and of 
 great use to the Church, so, too, in the ideas and 
 practice of Nonconformists there is very much which 
 
PREFACE. xxvil 
 
 we value. To take points only that are beyond con- 
 troversy : they have cultivated the gift of preaching 
 much more than the clergy; and their union with the 
 Church would renovate and immensely amend Church 
 preaching. They would certainly bring with them, 
 if they came back into the Church, some use of what 
 they call free prayer ; to which, if at present they give 
 far too much place, it is yet to be regretted that the 
 Church gives no place at all. Lastly, if the body of 
 British Protestant Dissenters is in the main, as it 
 undoubtedly is, the Church of the Philistines, never- 
 theless there could come nothing but health and 
 strength from blending this body with the Establish- 
 ment, of which the very weakness and danger is that 
 it tends, as we have formerly said, to be an appendage 
 to the Barbarians. 
 
 So long as the Puritans thought that the essence 
 of Christianity was their doctrine of predestination or 
 of justification, it was natural that they should stand 
 out, at any cost, for this essence. That is why, when 
 the "Zeit-Geist" and the general movement of men's 
 religious ideas is beginning to reveal that the Puritan 
 gospel is not the essence of Christianity, we have 
 been desirous to spread this revelation to the best 
 of our power, and by all the aids of plain popular 
 exposition to help it forward. Because, when once 
 it is clear that the essence of Christianity is not 
 Puritan solifidianism, it can hardly long be main- 
 tained that the essence of Christianity is Puritan 
 church-order. When once the way is made clear, 
 by removing the solifidian heresy, to look and see 
 
XXVlll ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 what the essence of Christianity really is, it cannot 
 but soon force itself upon our minds that the essence 
 of Christianity is something not very far, at any 
 rate, from this : Grace and peace by the annulment of 
 our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reason- 
 ableness of Jesus Christ. This is the more particular 
 description of that general ground, already laid down, 
 of the Christian Church's existence : Let every one that 
 nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. If this 
 general ground, particularised in the way above given, 
 is not " the sincere milk " of the evangelical word, it 
 is, at all events, something very like it. And matters 
 of machinery and outward form, like church -order, 
 have not only nothing essentially to do with the sin- 
 cere milk of Christianity, but are the very matters 
 about which this sincere milk should make us easy 
 and yielding. 
 
 If there were no national and historic form of 
 church-order in possession, a genuine Christian would 
 regret having to spend time and thought in shaping 
 one, in having so to encumber himself with serving, 
 to busy himself so much about a frame for his reli- 
 gious life as well as about the contents of the frame. 
 After all, a man has only a certain sum of force to 
 spend ; and if he takes a quantity of it for outward 
 things, he has so much the less left for inward things. 
 It is hardly to be believed, how much larger a space 
 the mere affairs of his denomination fill in the time 
 and thoughts of a Dissenter, than in the time and 
 thoughts of a Churchman. Now all machinery-work 
 of this kind is, to a man filled with a real love of the 
 
PREFACE. xxix 
 
 essence of Christianity, something of a hindrance to 
 him in what he most wants to be at, something of a 
 concession to his ordinary self. When an established 
 and historic form exists, such a man should be, there- 
 fore, disposed to use it and comply with it. But, — 
 as if it were not satisfied with proving its unprofit- 
 ableness by corroding us with jealousy and so robbing 
 us of the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, 
 which is our mainstay, — political Dissent, Dissent for 
 the sake of church -polity and church -management, 
 proves it, too, by stimulating our ordinary self through 
 over-care for what natters this. In fact, what is it 
 that the everyday, middle -class Philistine, — not the 
 rare flower of the Dissenters but the common staple, 
 — finds so attractive in Dissent "2 Is it not, as to dis- 
 cipline, that his self-importance is fomented by the 
 fuss, bustle, and partisanship of a private sect, instead 
 of being lost in the greatness of a public body % As 
 to worship, is it not that his taste is pleased by usages 
 and words that come down to him, instead of drawing 
 him up to them ; by services which reflect, instead of 
 the culture of great men of religious genius, the crude 
 culture of himself and his fellows ? And as to doc- 
 trine, is it not that his mind is pleased at hearing no 
 opinion but its own, by having all disputed points 
 taken for granted in its own favour, by being urged 
 to no return upon itself, no development 1 ? And 
 what is all this but the very feeding and stimulating 
 of our ordinary self, instead of the annulling of it 1 
 No doubt it is natural ; to indulge our ordinary self 
 is the most natural thing in the world. But Chris- 
 
XXX ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 tianity is not natural ; and if the flower of Christianity 
 be the grace and peace which comes of annulling our 
 ordinary self, then to this flower it is fatal. 
 
 So that if, in order to gratify in the Dissenters 
 one of the two faults against which Christianity is 
 chiefly aimed, a jealous, contentious spirit, we were 
 to sweep away our national and historic form of 
 religion, and were all to tinker at our own forms, we 
 should then just be flattering the other chief fault 
 which Christianity came to cure, and serving our 
 ordinary self instead of annulling it. What a happy 
 furtherance to religion ! 
 
 For my part, so far as the best of the Noncon- 
 formist ministers are concerned, of whom I know 
 something, I disbelieve Mr. Winterbotham's hideous 
 confession. I imagine they are very little pleased 
 with him for making it. I do not believe that they, 
 at any rate, live in the ulcerated condition he describes, 
 fretting with watchful jealousy. I believe they have 
 other things to think of. But why 1 Because they 
 are men of genius and character, who react against 
 the harmful influences of the position in which they 
 find themselves placed, and surmount its obvious 
 dangers. But their genius and character might serve 
 them still better if they were placed in a less trying 
 position. And the rank and file of their ministers 
 and people do yield to the influences of their position. 
 Of these, Mr. Winterbotham's picture is perfectly 
 true. They are more and more jealous for their 
 separate organisation, pleased with the bustle and 
 self-importance which its magnitude brings them, 
 
PREFACE. XXXI 
 
 irritably alive to whatever reduces or effaces it; 
 bent, in short, on affirming their ordinary selves. 
 However much the chiefs may feel the truth of 
 modern ideas, may grow moderate, may perceive 
 the effects of religious separatism upon worship and 
 doctrine, they will probably avail little or nothing ; 
 the head will be overpowered and out-clamoured by 
 the tail. The Wesleyans, who used always to refuse 
 to call themselves Dissenters, whose best men still 
 shrink from the name, the Wesleyans, a wing of the 
 Church, founded for godliness, the Wesleyans more 
 and more, with their very growth as a separate deno- 
 mination, feel the secular ambition of being great as 
 a denomination, of being effaced by nobody, of giving 
 contentment to this self-importance, of indulging this 
 ordinary self; and I should not wonder if within 
 twenty years they were keen political Dissenters. A 
 triumph of Puritanism is abundantly possible ; we 
 have never denied it. What we, whose greatest care 
 is neither for the Church nor for Puritanism, but for 
 human perfection, what we labour to show is, that 
 the triumph of Puritanism will be the triumph of 
 our ordinary self, not the triumph of Christianity; 
 and that the type of Hebraism it will establish is one 
 in which neither general human perfection, nor yet 
 Hebraism itself, can truly find their account. 
 
 Elsewhere we have drawn out a distinction 
 between Hebraism and Hellenism, 1 — between the 
 tendency and powers that carry us towards doing, 
 and the tendency and powers that carry us towards 
 
 1 See Culture and Anarchy (2d edition), chap. iv. 
 
xxxii ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 perceiving and knowing. Hebraism, we said, has 
 long been overwhelmingly preponderant with us. 
 The sacred book which we call the Word of God, and 
 which most of us study far more than any other 
 book, serves Hebraism. Moses Hebraises, David 
 Hebraises, Isaiah Hebraises, Paul Hebraises, John 
 Hebraises. Jesus Christ himself is, as St. Paul truly 
 styles him, " a minister of the circumcision to the truth 
 of God." 1 That is, it is by our powers of moral 
 action, and through the perfecting of these, that 
 Christ leads us "to be partakers of the divine 
 nature." 2 By far our chief machinery for spiritual 
 purposes has the like aim and character. Throughout 
 Europe this is so. But, to speak of ourselves only, 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury is an agent of Hebraism, 
 the Archbishop of York is an agent of Hebraism, 
 Archbishop Manning is an Agent of Hebraism, the 
 President of the Wesleyan Conference is an agent of 
 Hebraism, all the body of Church clergy and Dissent- 
 ing ministers are agents of Hebraism. Now, we have 
 seen how we are beginning visibly to suffer harm 
 from attending in this one-sided way to Hebraism, 
 and how we are called to develop ourselves more in 
 our totality, on our perceptive and intelligential side 
 as well as on our moral side. If it is said that this 
 is a very hard matter, and that man cannot well do 
 more than one thing at a time, the answer is that 
 here is the very sign and condition of each new stage 
 of spiritual progress, — increase of task The more we 
 grow, the greater is the task which is given us. This 
 
 1 Romans xv. 8. 2 2 Peter i. 4. 
 
PREFACE. xxxiii 
 
 is the law of man's nature and of his spirit's history. 
 The powers we have developed at our old task enable 
 us to attempt a new one ; and this, again, brings with 
 it a new increase of powers. 
 
 Hebraism strikes too exclusively upon one string 
 in us. Hellenism does not address itself with serious 
 energy enough to morals and righteousness. For our 
 totality, for our general perfection, we need to unite 
 the two ; now the two are easily at variance. In 
 their lower forms they are irreconcilably at vari- 
 ance; only when each of them is at its best, is their 
 harmony possible. Hebraism at its best is beauty 
 and charm ; Hellenism at its best is also beauty and 
 charm. As such they can unite ; as anything short 
 of this, each of them, they are at discord, and their 
 separation must continue. The flower of Hellenism 
 is a kind of amiable grace and artless winning good- 
 nature, born out of the perfection of lucidity, sim- 
 plicity, and natural truth ; the flower of Christianity 
 is grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary 
 self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness 
 of Christ. Both are eminently humane, and for com- 
 plete human perfection both are required ; the second 
 being the perfection of that side in us which is moral 
 and acts, the first, of that side in us which is in- 
 telligential and perceives and knows. 
 
 But lower forms of Hebraism and Hellenism tend 
 always to make their appearance, and to strive to 
 establish themselves. On one of these forms of 
 Hebraism we have been commenting ; — a form which 
 had its first origin, no doubt, in that body of 
 
 VOL. VII. C 
 
XXXI V ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 impulses whereby we Hebraise, but which lands us 
 at last, not in the mildness and sweet reasonableness 
 of Christ, but in " a spirit of watchful jealousy." 
 We have to thank Mr. Winterbotham for fixing our 
 attention on it ; but we prefer to name it from an 
 eminent and able man who is well known as the 
 earnest apostle of the Dissidence of Dissent and the 
 Protestantism of the Protestant religion, and to call 
 it Mialism. Mialism is a sub-form of Hebraism, and 
 itself a somewhat spurious and degenerated form ; 
 but this sub-form always tends to degenerate into 
 forms lower yet, and yet more unworthy of the ideal 
 flower of Hebraism. In one of these its further 
 stages we have formerly traced it, and we need not 
 enlarge on them here. 1 
 
 Hellenism, in the same way, has its more or less 
 spurious and degenerated sub-forms, products which 
 may be at once known as degenerations by their 
 deflection from what we have marked as the flower 
 of Hellenism, — " a kind of humane grace and artless 
 winning good -nature, born out of the perfection of 
 lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth." And from 
 whom can we more properly derive a general name 
 for these degenerations, than from that distinguished 
 man, who, by his intelligence and accomplishments, is 
 in many respects so admirable and so truly Hellenic, 
 but whom his dislike for " the dominant sect," as he 
 calls the Church of England, — the Church of England, 
 in many aspects so beautiful, calming, and attaching, 
 — seems to transport with an almost feminine vehe- 
 
 1 See Culture and Anarchy (2d edition), chap. ii. 
 
PREFACE. XXXV 
 
 mence of irritation 1 ? What can we so fitly name the 
 somewhat degenerated and inadequate form of Hellen- 
 ism as Millism ? This is the Hellenic or Hellenistic 
 counterpart of Mialism ; and like Mialism it has its 
 further degenerations, in which it is still less com- 
 mendable than in its first form. For instance, what 
 in Mr. Mill is but a yielding to a spirit of irritable 
 injustice, goes on and worsens in some of his dis- 
 ciples, till it becomes a sort of mere blatancy and 
 truculent hardness in certain Millites, in whom there 
 appears scarcely anything that is truly sound or 
 Hellenic at all. 
 
 Mankind, however, must needs draw, however 
 slowly, towards its perfection ; and our only real 
 perfection is our totality. Mialism and Millism we 
 may see playing into one another's hands, and appa- 
 rently acting together; but, so long as these lower 
 forms of Hellenism and Hebraism prevail, the real 
 union between Hellenism and Hebraism can never 
 be accomplished, and our totality is still as far off 
 as ever. Unhappy and unquiet alternations of 
 ascendency between Hebraism and Hellenism are 
 all that we shall see ; — at one time, the indestruc- 
 tible religious experience of mankind asserting itself 
 blindly; at another, a revulsion of the intellect of 
 mankind from this experience, because of the auda- 
 cious assumptions and gross inaccuracies with which 
 men's account of it is intermingled. 
 
 At present it is such a revulsion which seems 
 chiefly imminent. Give the churches of Noncon- 
 formity free scope, cries an ardent Congregation- 
 
XXXVl ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 alist, and we will renew the wonders of the first 
 times ; we will confront this modern bugbear of 
 physical science, show how hollow she is, and how 
 she contradicts herself ! In his mind's eye, this 
 Nonconforming enthusiast already sees Professor 
 Huxley in a white sheet, brought up at the Surrey 
 Tabernacle between two deacons, — whom that great 
 physicist, in his own clear and nervous language, 
 would no doubt describe like his disinterred Roman 
 the other day at Westminster Abbey, as "of weak 
 mental organisation and strong muscular frame," — 
 and penitently confessing that Science contradicts 
 herself. Alas, the real future is likely to be very 
 different ! Rather are we likely to witness an 
 edifying solemnity, where Mr. Mill, assisted by his 
 youthful henchmen and apparitors, will burn all the 
 Prayer Books. Rather will the time come, as it has 
 been foretold, when we shall desire to see one of the 
 days of the Son of Man, and shall not see it ; when 
 the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Jesus 
 Christ, as a power to work the annulment of our 
 ordinary self, will be clean disregarded and out of 
 mind. Then, perhaps, will come another reaction, 
 and another, and another ; and all sterile. 
 
 Therefore it is, that we labour to make Hebraism 
 raise itself above Mialism, find its true self, show 
 itself in its beauty and power, and help, not hinder, 
 man's totality. The endeavour will very likely be 
 in vain ; for growth is slow and the ages are long, 
 and it may well be that for harmonising Hebraism 
 with Hellenism more preparation is needed than man 
 
PREFACE. XXXV11 
 
 has yet had. But failures do something, as well as 
 successes, towards the final achievement. The cup 
 of cold water could be hardly more than an ineffective 
 effort at succour ; yet it counted. To disengage the 
 religion of England from unscriptural Protestantism, 
 political Dissent, and a spirit of watchful jealousy, 
 may be an aim not in our day reachable ; and still 
 it is well to level at it. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 St. Paul and Protestantism . 1 
 
 Puritanism and the Church of England . 101 
 
ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 i. 
 
 M. Renan sums up his interesting volume on St. 
 Paul by saying: — "After having been for three 
 hundred years, thanks to Protestantism, the Christian 
 doctor par excellence, Paul is now coming to an end of 
 his reign." All through his book M. Renan is pos- 
 sessed with a sense of this close relationship between 
 St. Paul and Protestantism. Protestantism has made 
 Paul, he says ; Pauline doctrine is identified with 
 Protestant doctrine ; Paul is a Protestant doctor, and 
 the counterpart of Luther. M. Renan has a strong 
 distaste for Protestantism, and this distaste extends 
 itself to the Protestant Paul. The reign of this Pro- 
 testant is now coming to an end, and such a consum- 
 mation evidently has M. Renan's approval. 
 
 St. Paul is now coming to an end of his reign. Pre- 
 cisely the contrary, I venture to think, is the judg- 
 ment to which a true criticism of men and of things, 
 in our own country at any rate, leads us. The Pro- 
 testantism which has so used and abused St. Paul is 
 coming to an end ; its organisations, strong and active 
 as they look, are touched with the finger of death ; 
 
 VOL. VII. * B 
 
2 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 its fundamental ideas, sounding forth still every week 
 from thousands of pulpits, have in them no signifi- 
 cance and no power for the progressive thought of 
 bumanitj . But the reign of the real St. Paul is only 
 beginning; his fundamental ideas, disengaged from 
 the elaborate misconceptions with which Protestantism 
 has overlaid them, will have an influence in the future 
 greater than any which they have yet had, — an influ- 
 ence proportioned to their correspondence with a 
 number of the deepest and most permanent facts of 
 human nature itself. 
 
 Elsewhere 1 I have pointed out how, for us in this 
 country, Puritanism is the strong and special repre- 
 sentative of Protestantism. The Church of England 
 existed before Protestantism, and contains much 
 besides Protestantism. Remove the schemes of doc- 
 trine, Calvinistic or Arminian, which for Protestantism, 
 merely as such, have made the very substance of its 
 religion, and all that is most valuable in the Church 
 of England would still remain. These schemes, or 
 the ideas out of which they spring, show themselves 
 in the Prayer Book ; but they are not what gives the 
 Prayer Book its importance and value. But Puritan- 
 ism exists for the sake of these schemes ; its organisa- 
 tions are inventions for enforcing them more purely 
 and thoroughly. Questions of discipline and cere- 
 monies have, originally at least, been always admitted 
 to be in themselves secondary ; it is because that 
 conception of the ways of God to man which Puritan- 
 ism has formed for itself appeared to Puritanism 
 
 1 See Culture and Anarchy, chap. iv. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 3 
 
 superlatively true and precious, that Independents 
 and Baptists and Methodists in England, and Pres- 
 byterians in Scotland, have been impelled to constitute 
 for inculcating it a church-order where it might be 
 less swamped by the additions and ceremonies of 
 men, might be more simply and effectively enounced, 
 and might stand more absolute and central, than in 
 the church-order of Anglicans or Roman Catholics. 
 
 Of that conception the cardinal points are fixed by 
 the terms election and justification. These terms come 
 from the writings of St. Paul, and the scheme which 
 Puritanism has constructed with them professes to be 
 St. Paul's scheme. The same scheme, or something- 
 very like it, has been, and still is, embraced by many 
 adherents of the Churches of England and Rome ; 
 but these Churches rest their claims to men's interest 
 and attachment not on the possession of such a 
 scheme, but on other grounds with which we have 
 for the present nothing to do. Puritanism's very 
 reason for existing depends on the worth of this its 
 vital conception, derived from St. Paul's writings ; 
 and when we are told that St. Paul is a Protestant 
 doctor whose reign is ending, a Puritan, keen, pugna- 
 cious, and sophisticating simple religion of the heart 
 into complicated theories of the brain about election 
 and justification, we in England, at any rate, can best 
 try the assertion by fixing our eyes on our own 
 Puritans, and comparing their doctrine and their hold 
 on vital truth with St. Paul's. 
 
 This we propose now to do, and, indeed, to do it 
 will only be to complete what we have already begun. 
 
4 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 For already, when we were speaking of Hebraism 
 and Hellenism, 1 we were led to remark how the over- 
 Hebraising of Puritanism, and its want of a wide 
 culture, do so narrow its range and impair its vision 
 that even the documents which it thinks all-sufficient, 
 and to the study of which it exclusively rivets itself, 
 it does not rightly understand, but is apt to make of 
 them something quite different from what they really 
 are. In short, no man, we said, who knows nothing 
 else, knows even his Bible. And we showed how 
 readers of the Bible attached to essential words and 
 ideas of the Bible a sense which was not the writer's ; 
 and in particular how this had happened with regard 
 to the Pauline doctrine of resurrection. Let us take 
 the present opportunity of going further in the same 
 road; and instead of lightly disparaging the great 
 name of St. Paul, let us see if the needful thing is not 
 rather to rescue St. Paul and the Bible from the per- 
 versions of them by mistaken men. 
 
 So long as the well-known habit, on which we 
 have so often enlarged, prevails amongst our country- 
 men, of holding mechanically their ideas themselves, 
 but making it their chief aim to work with energy 
 and enthusiasm for the organisations which profess 
 those ideas, English Puritanism is not likely to make 
 such a return upon its own thoughts, and upon the 
 elements of its being, as to accomplish for itself an 
 operation of the kind needed; though it has men 
 whose natural faculties, were they but free to use 
 them, would undoubtedly prove equal to the task. 
 
 1 See Culture and Anarchy, chap. v. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 5 
 
 The same habit prevents our Puritans from being 
 reached by philosophical works, which exist in suffi- 
 cient numbers and of which M. Eeuss's history of the 
 growth of Christian theology 1 is an admirable speci- 
 men, — works where the entire scheme of Pauline 
 doctrine is laid out with careful research and impartial 
 accuracy. To give effect to the predominant points 
 in Paul's teaching, and to exhibit these in so plain 
 and popular a manner as to invite and almost compel 
 men's comprehension, is not the design of such works ; 
 and only by writings with this design in view will 
 English Puritanism be reached. 
 
 Our one qualification for the business in hand lies 
 in that belief of ours, so much contested by our 
 countrymen, of the primary needfulness of seeing 
 things as they really are, and of the greater import- 
 ance of ideas than of the machinery which exists for 
 them. If by means of letting our consciousness work 
 quite freely, and by following the methods of study- 
 ing and judging thence generated, we are shown that 
 we ought in real truth neither to abase St. Paul and 
 Puritanism together, as M. Renan does, nor to abase 
 St. Paul but exalt Puritanism, nor yet to exalt both 
 Puritanism and St. Paul together, but rather to abase 
 Puritanism and exalt St. Paul, then we cannot but 
 think that even for Puritanism itself, also, it will be 
 the best, however unpalatable, to be shown this. 
 Puritanism certainly wishes well to St. Paul ; it can- 
 
 1 Histoire de la TMologic Chrttienne au Sttcle Apostoliqiic, 
 par Edouard Reuss ; Strasbourg et Paris (in 2 vols. 8vo. ) There 
 is now (1875) an English translation of M. Reuss's work. 
 
6 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 not wish to compromise him by an unintelligent 
 adhesion to him and a blind adoption of his words, 
 instead of being a true child to him. Yet this is 
 what it has really done. What in St. Paul is second- 
 ary and subordinate, Puritanism has made primary 
 and essential ; what in St. Paul is figure and belongs 
 to the sphere of feeling, Puritanism has transported 
 into the sphere of intellect and made formula. On 
 the other hand, what is with St. Paul primary, Puri- 
 tanism has treated as subordinate : and what is 
 with him thesis, and belonging (so far as anything in 
 religion can properly be said thus to belong) to the 
 sphere of intellect, Puritanism has made image and 
 figure. 
 
 And first let us premise what we mean in this 
 matter by primary and secondary, essential and sub- 
 ordinate. We mean, so far as the apostle is con- 
 cerned, a greater or less approach to what really 
 characterises him and gives his teaching its originality 
 and power. We mean, so far as truth is concerned, 
 a greater or less agreement with facts which can be 
 verified, and a greater or less power of explaining 
 them. What essentially characterises a religious 
 teacher, and gives him his permanent worth and 
 vitality, is, after all, just the scientific value of his 
 teaching, its correspondence with important facts, 
 and the light it throws on them. Never was the 
 truth of this so evident as now. The scientific sense 
 in man never asserted its claim so strongly • the pro- 
 pensity of religion to neglect those claims, and the 
 peril and loss to it from neglecting them, never were 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 7 
 
 so manifest. The license of affirmation about God 
 and his proceedings, in which the religious world in- 
 dulge, is more and more met by the demand for veri- 
 fication. When Calvinism tells us : " It is agreed 
 between God and the Mediator Jesus Christ, the Son 
 of God, surety for the redeemed, as parties-contrac- 
 tors, that the sins of the redeemed should be imputed 
 to innocent Christ, and he both condemned and put 
 to death for them, upon this very condition, that 
 whosoever heartily consents unto the covenant of re- 
 conciliation offered through Christ, shall, by the 
 imputation of his obedience unto them, be justified 
 and holden righteous before God ; " — when Calvinism 
 tells us this, is it not talking about God just as if he 
 were a man in the next street, whose proceedings 
 Calvinism intimately knew and could give account of, 
 could verify that account at any moment, and enable 
 us to verify it also % It is true, when the scientific 
 sense in us, the sense which seeks exact knowledge, 
 calls for that verification, Calvinism refers us to St. 
 Paul, from whom it professes to have got this history 
 of what it calls " the covenant of redemption." But 
 this is only pushing the difficulty a stage further 
 back. For if it is St. Paul, and not Calvinism, that 
 professes this exact acquaintance with God and his 
 doings, the scientific sense calls upon St. Paul to pro- 
 duce the facts by which he verifies what he says ; and 
 if he cannot produce them, then it treats both St. 
 Paul's assertion, and Calvinism's assertion after him, 
 as of no real consequence. 
 
 No one will deny that such is the behaviour of 
 
8 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 science towards religion in our day, though many may 
 deplore it. And it is not that the scientific sense in 
 us denies the rights of the poetic sense, which em- 
 ploys a figured and imaginative language. But the 
 language we have just been quoting is not figurative 
 and poetic language, it is scholastic and scientific 
 language. Assertions in scientific language must 
 stand the tests of scientific examination. Neither is 
 it that the scientific sense in us refuses to admit 
 willingly and reverently the name of God, as a point 
 in which the religious and the scientific sense may 
 meet, as the least inadequate name for that universal 
 order which the intellect feels after as a law, and the 
 heart feels after as a benefit. " We, too," might the 
 men of science with truth say to the men of religion 
 — " we, too, would gladly say God, if only, the 
 moment one says God, youiwould not pester onejwith 
 your pretensions of knowing all about him." That 
 stream of tendency by which all things strive to fulfil the 
 law of their being, and which, inasmuch as our idea of 
 real welfare resolves itself into this fulfilment of the 
 law of one's being, man rightly deems the fountain of 
 all goodness, and calls by the worthiest and most 
 solemn name he can, which is God, science also might 
 willingly own for the fountain of all goodness, and 
 call God. But however much more than this the 
 heart may with propriety put into its language re- 
 specting God, this is as much as science can with 
 strictness put there. Therefore, when the religious 
 world, following its bent of trying to describe what it 
 loves, amplifying and again amplifying its description, 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 9 
 
 and guarding finally this amplified description by the 
 most precise and rigid terms it can find, comes at last, 
 with the best intentions, to the notion of a sort of 
 magnified and non-natural man, who proceeds in the 
 fashion laid down in the Calvinistic thesis we have 
 quoted, then science strikes in, remarks the differ- 
 ence between this second notion and the notion it 
 originally admitted, a nd demands to have the new, 
 notion verified, as the first can be verified, by 
 facts. But this does not unsettle the first notion, 
 
 or prevent science from acknowledging the import- 
 ance and the scientific validity of propositions which 
 are grounded upon the first notion, and shed light 
 over it. 
 
 Nevertheless, researches in this sphere are now a 
 good deal eclipsed in popularity by researches in the 
 sphere of physics, and no longer have the vogue which 
 they once had. I have related how an eminent 
 physicist with whose acquaintance I am honoured, 
 imagines me to have invented the author of the Sacra 
 Privata ; and that fashionable newspaper, the Morning 
 Post, undertaking, — as I seemed, it said, very anxious 
 about the matter, — to supply information as to who 
 the author really was, laid it down that he was Bishop 
 of Calcutta, and that his ideas and writings, to which 
 I attached so much value, had been among the main 
 provocatives of the Indian mutiny. Therefore it is 
 perhaps expedient to refresh our memory as to these 
 schemes of doctrine, Calvinistic or Arminian, for the 
 upholding of which, as has been said, British Puri- 
 tanism exists, before we proceed to compare them, for 
 
10 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 correspondence with facts and for scientific validity, 
 with the teaching of St. Paul. 
 
 Calvinism, then, begins by laying down that God 
 from all eternity decreed whatever was to come to 
 pass in time ; that by his decree a certain number 
 of angels and men are predestinated, out of God's 
 mere free grace and love, without any foresight of 
 faith or good works in them, to everlasting life ; and 
 others foreordained, according to the unsearchable 
 counsel of his will, whereby he extends or withholds 
 mercy as he pleases, to everlasting death. God made, 
 however, our first parents, Adam and Eve, upright 
 and able to keep his law, which was written in their 
 hearts ; at the same time entering into a contract 
 with them, and with their posterity as represented in 
 them, by which they were assured of everlasting life 
 in return for perfect obedience, and of everlasting 
 death if they should be disobedient. Our first 
 parents, being enticed by Satan, a fallen angel speak- 
 ing in the form of a serpent, broke this covenant of 
 works, as it is called, by eating the forbidden fruit ; 
 and hereby they, and their posterity in them and 
 with them, became not only liable to eternal death, 
 but lost also their natural uprightness and all ability 
 to please God ; nay, they became by nature enemies 
 to God and to all spiritual good, and inclined only to 
 evil continually. This, says Calvinism, is our original 
 sin ; the bitter root of all our actual transgressions, 
 in thought, word, and deed. 
 
 Yet, though man has neither power nor inclination 
 to rise out of this wretched fallen state, but is rather 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 11 
 
 disposed to lie insensible in it till he perish, another 
 covenant exists by which his condition is greatly 
 affected. This is the covenant of redemption, made and 
 agreed upon, says Calvinism, between God the Father 
 and God the Son in the Council of the Trinity before 
 the world began. The sum of the covenant of re- 
 demption is this : God having, by the eternal decree 
 already mentioned, freely chosen to life a certain 
 number of lost mankind, gave them before the world 
 began to God the Son, appointed Eedeemer, on con- 
 dition that if he humbled himself so far as to assume 
 the human nature in union with the divine nature, 
 submit himself to the law as surety for the elect, and 
 satisfy justice for them by giving obedience in their 
 name, even to suffering the cursed death of the cross, 
 he should ransom and redeem them from sin and 
 death, and purchase for them righteousness and 
 eternal life. The Son of God accepted the condition, 
 or bargain as Calvinism calls it ; and in the fulness of 
 time came, as Jesus Christ, into the world, was born 
 of the Virgin Mary, subjected himself to the law, 
 and completely paid the due ransom on the cross. 
 
 God has in his word, the Bible, revealed to man 
 this covenant of grace or redemption. All those 
 whom he has predestinated to life he in his own time 
 effectually calls to be partakers in the release offered. 
 Man is altogether passive in this call, until the Holy 
 Spirit enables him to answer it. The Holy Spirit, 
 the third person in the Trinity, applies to the elect 
 the redemption purchased by Christ, through working 
 faith in them. As soon as the elect have faith in 
 
12 ST. PAUL AND PKOTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 Jesus Christ, that is, as soon as they give their con- 
 sent heartily and repentantly, in the sense of deserved 
 condemnation, to the covenant of grace, God justifies 
 them by imputing to them that perfect obedience 
 which Christ gave to the law, and the satisfaction 
 also which upon the cross Christ gave to justice in 
 their name. They who are thus called and justified 
 are by the same power likewise sanctified ; the 
 dominion of carnal lusts being destroyed in them, 
 and the practice of holiness being, in spite of some 
 remnants of corruption, put in their power. Good 
 works, done in obedience to God's moral law, are the 
 fruits and evidences of a true faith ; and the persons 
 of the faithful elect being accepted through Christ, 
 their good works also are accepted in him and re- 
 warded. But works done by other and unregenerate 
 men, though they may be things which God com- 
 mands, cannot please God and are sinful. The elect 
 can after justification and sanctification no more fall 
 from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere 
 to the end and be eternally saved ; and of this they 
 may, even in the present life, have the certain assur- 
 ance. Finally, after death, their souls and bodies are 
 joyfully joined together again in the resurrection, and 
 they remain thenceforth for ever with Christ in glory ; 
 while all the wicked are sent away into hell with 
 Satan, whom they have served. 
 
 We have here set down the main doctrines of Cal- 
 vinistic Puritanism almost entirely in words of its 
 own choosing. It is not necessary to enter into 
 distinctions such as those between sublapsarians and 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 13 
 
 supralapsarians, between Calvinists who believe that 
 God's decree of election and reprobation was passed 
 in foresight of original sin and on account of it, and 
 Calvinists who believed that it was passed absolutely 
 and independently. The important points of Cal- 
 vinism, — original sin, free election, effectual calling, 
 justification through imputed righteousness, — are 
 common to both. The passiveness of man, the activity 
 of God, are the great features in this scheme ; there 
 is very little of what man thinks and does, very 
 much of what God thinks and does ; and what God 
 thinks and does is described with such particularity 
 that the figure we have used of the man in the next 
 street cannot but recur strongly to our minds. 
 
 The positive Protestantism of Puritanism, with 
 which we are here concerned, as distinguished from 
 the negative Protestantism of the Church of England, 
 has nourished itself with ardour on this scheme of 
 doctrine. It informs and fashions the whole religion 
 of Scotland, established and nonconforming. It is 
 the doctrine which Puritan flocks delight to hear 
 from their ministers. It was Puritanism's constant 
 reproach against the Church of England, that this 
 essential doctrine was not firmly enough held and set 
 forth by her. At the Hampton Court Conference in 
 1604, in the Committee of Divines appointed by the 
 House of Lords in 1641, and again at the Savoy 
 Conference in 1661, the reproach regularly appeared. 
 "Some have defended," is the Puritan complaint, 
 " the whole gross substance of Arminianism, that the 
 act of conversion depends upon the concurrence of 
 
14 
 
 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 [r. 
 
 man's free will ; some do teach and preach that good 
 works are concauses with faith in the act of justifica- 
 tion ; some have defended universal grace, some have 
 absolutely denied original sin." As Puritanism grew, 
 the Calvinistic scheme of doctrine hardened and 
 became stricter. Of the Calvinistic confessions of 
 faith of the sixteenth century, — the Helvetic Con- 
 fession, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Cate- 
 chism, — the Calvinism is so moderate as to astonish 
 any one who has been used only to its later develop- 
 ments. Even the much abused canons of the Synod 
 of Dort no one can read attentively through without 
 finding in parts of them a genuine movement of 
 thought, — sometimes even a philosophic depth, — and 
 a powerful religious feeling. In the documents of 
 the Westminster Assembly, twenty-five years later, 
 this has disappeared; and what we call the British 
 Philistine stands in his religious capacity, sheer and 
 stark, before us. Seriousness is the one merit of 
 these documents, but it is a seriousness too mixed 
 with the alloy of mundane strife and hatred to be 
 called a religious feeling. Not a trace of delicacy of 
 perception, or of philosophic thinking ; the mere 
 rigidness and contentiousness of the controversialist 
 and political dissenter ; a Calvinism exaggerated till 
 it is simply repelling ; and to complete the whole, a 
 machinery of covenants, conditions, bargains, and 
 parties-contractors, such as could have proceeded from 
 no one but the born Anglo-Saxon man of business, 
 British or American. 
 
 However, a scheme of doctrine is not necessarily 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 15 
 
 false because of the style in which its adherents may 
 have at a particular moment enounced it. From the 
 faults which disfigure the performance of the West- 
 minster divines the profession of faith prefixed to the 
 Congregational Year-Booh is free. The Congregation- 
 alists form one of the two great divisions of English 
 Puritans. " Congregational churches believe," their 
 Year-Booh tells us, " that the first man disobeyed the 
 divine command, fell from his state of innocence and 
 purity, and involved all his posterity in the conse- 
 quences of that fall. They believe that all who will 
 be saved were the objects of God's eternal and 
 electing love, and were given by an act of divine 
 sovereignty to the Son of God. They believe that 
 Christ meritoriously obtained eternal redemption for 
 us, and that the Holy Spirit is given in consequence 
 of Christ's mediation." The essential points of Cal- 
 vinism are all here. To this profession of faith, 
 annually published in the Year-Booh of the Inde- 
 pendents, subscription is not required; Puritanism 
 thus remaining honourably consistent with the pro- 
 tests which, at the Eestoration, it made against the 
 call for subscription. But the authors of the Year- 
 Booh say with pride, and it is a common boast of the 
 Independent churches, that though they do not 
 require subscription, there is, perhaps, in no religious 
 body, such firm and general agreement in doctrine as 
 among Congregationalists. This is true, and it is 
 even more true of the flocks than of the ministers, of 
 whom the abler and the younger begin to be lifted 
 by the stream of modern ideas. Still, up to the 
 
16 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 present time, the Protestantism of one great division 
 of English Puritans is undoubtedly Calvinist ; the 
 Baptists holding in general the scheme of Calvinism 
 yet more strictly than the Independents. 
 
 The other great division of English Puritanism is 
 formed by the Methodists. Wesleyan Methodism is, 
 as is well known, not Calvinist, but Arminian. The 
 Methodist Magazine was called by Wesley the Arminian 
 Magazine, and kept that title all through his life. 
 Arminianism is an attempt made with the best in- 
 tentions, and with much truth of practical sense, but 
 not in a very profound philosophical spirit, to escape 
 from what perplexes and shocks us in Calvinism. 
 The God of Calvinism is a magnified and non-natural 
 man who decrees at his mere good pleasure some men 
 to salvation and other men to reprobation ; the God 
 of Arminianism is a magnified and non-natural man 
 who foreknows the course of each man's life, and who 
 decrees each of us to salvation or reprobation in 
 accordance with this foreknowledge. But so long as 
 we remain in this anthropomorphic order of ideas the 
 question will always occur : Why did not a being of 
 infinite power and infinite love so make all men as 
 that there should be no cause for this sad foreknow- 
 ledge and sad decree respecting a number of them 1 
 In truth, Calvinism is both theologically more coherent, 
 and also shows a deeper sense of reality than Armin- 
 ianism, which, in the practical man's fashion, is apt 
 to scrape the surface of things only. 
 
 For instance, the Arminian Eemonstrants, in their 
 zeal to justify the morality, in a human sense, of 
 
L] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 17 
 
 God's ways, maintained that he sent his word to one 
 nation rather than another according as he saw that 
 one nation was more worthy than another of such a 
 preference. The Calvinist doctors of the Synod of 
 Dort have no difficulty in showing that Moses and 
 Christ both of them assert, with respect to the Jewish 
 nation, the direct contrary ; and not only do they 
 here obtain a theological triumph, but in rebutting 
 the Arminian theory they are in accordance with 
 historical truth and with the real march of human 
 affairs. They allow more for the great fact of the 
 not ourselves in what we do and are. The Calvinists 
 seize, we say, that great fact better than the Arminians. 
 The. Calvinist's fault is m jn^^gcjen tific appreciatio n 
 of the fact ; in the reasons he gives for it. God, he 
 says, sends his word to one nation rather than another 
 at his mere good pleasure. Here we have again the 
 magnified and non-natural man, who likes and dislikes, 
 knows and decrees, just as a man, only on a scale 
 immensely transcending anything of which we have 
 experience ; and whose proceedings we nevertheless 
 describe as if he were in the next street for people to 
 verify all we say about him. 
 
 Arminian Methodism, however, puts aside the 
 Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. The foremost 
 place, which in the Calvinist scheme belongs to the 
 doctrine of predestination, belongs in the Methodist 
 scheme to the doctrine of justification by faith. More 
 and more prominently does modern Methodism ele- 
 vate this as its essential doctrine ; and the era in 
 their founder's life which Methodists select to cele- 
 
 VOL. VII. c 
 
18 ST. PAUL AND PEOTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 brate is the era of his conversion to it. It is the 
 doctrine of Anselm, adopted and developed by Luther, 
 set forth in the Confession of Augsburg, and current 
 all through the popular theology of our day. We 
 shall find it in almost any popular hymn we happen 
 to take, but the following lines of Milton exhibit it 
 classically. By the fall of our first parents, says he : —   
 
 ' ' Man, losing all, 
 To expiate his treason hath nought left, 
 But to destruction sacred and devote 
 He with his whole posterity must die ; 
 Die he or justice must ; unless for him 
 Some other able, and as willing, pay 
 The rigid satisfaction ; death for death. " 
 
 By Adam's fall, God's justice and mercy were placed 
 in conflict. God could not follow his mercy without 
 violating his justice. Christ by his satisfaction gave 
 the Father the right and power (nudum jus Patri 
 acquirebat, said the Arminians) to follow his mercy, 
 and to make with man the covenant of free justifica- 
 tion by faith, whereby, if a man has a sure trust and 
 confidence that his sins are forgiven him in virtue of 
 the satisfaction made to God for them by the death 
 of Christ, he is held clear of sin by God, and admitted 
 to salvation. 
 
 This doctrine, like the Calvinist doctrine of pre- 
 destination, involves a whole history of God's proceed- 
 ings, and gives, also, first and almost sole place to 
 what God does, with disregard to what man does. It 
 has thus an essential affinity with Calvinism ; indeed, 
 Calvinism is but this doctrine of original sin and 
 justification, plus the doctrine of predestination. 
 
L] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 19 
 
 Nay, the Welsh Methodists, as is well known, have no 
 difficulty in combining the tenet of election with the 
 practices and most of the tenets of Methodism. The 
 word solifidian points precisely to that which is com- 
 mon to both Calvinism and Methodism, and which 
 has made both these halves of English Puritanism so 
 popular, — their sensational side, as it may be called, 
 their laying all stress on a wonderful and particular 
 account of what God gives and works for us, not on 
 what we bring or do for ourselves. "Plead thou 
 singly," says "Wesley, " the blood of the covenant, the 
 ransom paid for thy proud stubborn soul." Wesley's 
 doctrines of conversion, of the new birth, of sanctifi- 
 cation, of the direct witness of the spirit, of assurance, 
 of sinless perfection, all of them thus correspond with 
 doctrines which we have noticed in Calvinism, and 
 show a common character with them. The instan- 
 taneousness Wesley loved to ascribe to conversion and 
 sanctification points the same way. " God gives in a 
 moment such a faith in the blood of his Son as trans- 
 lates us out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear 
 into holiness and happiness." And again, "Look for 
 sanctification just as you are, as a poor sinner that 
 has nothing to pay, nothing to plead but Christ died" 
 This is the side in Wesley's teaching which his fol- 
 lowers have above all seized, and which they are 
 eager to hold forth as the essential part of his legacy 
 towards them. 
 
 It is true that from the same reason which pre- 
 vents, as we have said, those who know their Bible 
 and nothing else from really knowing even their Bible, 
 
20 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. . [i. 
 
 Methodists, who for the most part know nothing but 
 Wesley, do not really know even Wesley. It is true 
 that what really characterises this most interesting 
 and most attractive man, is not his doctrine of justi- 
 fication by faith, or any other of his set doctrines, 
 but is entirely what we may call his genius for godliness. 
 Mr. Alexander Knox, in his remarks on his friend's 
 life and character, insists much on an entry in Wesley's 
 Journal in 1767, where he seems impatient at the 
 endless harping on the tenet of justification, and 
 where he asks "if it is not high time to return to 
 the plain word : ' He that feareth God and worketh 
 righteousness is accepted with him.' " Mr. Knox is 
 right in thinking that the feeling which made Wesley 
 ask this is what gave him his vital worth and character 
 as a man ; but it is not what gives him his character 
 as the teacher of Methodism. Methodism rejects 
 Mr. Knox's version of its founder, and insists on 
 making the article of justification the very corner- 
 stone of the Wesleyan edifice. 
 
 And the truth undoubtedly is, that not by his 
 assertion of what man brings, but by his assertion 
 of what God gives, by his doctrines of conversion, 
 instantaneous justification and sanctification, assur- 
 ance, and sinless perfection, does Wesley live and 
 operate in Methodism. "You think, I must first 
 be or do thus or thus (for sanctification). Then 
 you are seeking it by works unto this day. If you 
 seek it by faith, you may expect it as you are ; then 
 expect it now. It is of importance to observe that 
 there is an inseparable connection between these 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PKOTESTANTISM. 21 
 
 three points : expect it by faith, expect it as you arc, 
 and expect it now. To deny one of them is to deny 
 them all • to allow one is to allow them all." This 
 is the teaching of Wesley, which has made the great 
 Methodist half of English Puritanism what it is, and 
 not his hesitations and recoils at the dangers of his 
 own teaching. 
 
 No doubt, as the seriousness of Calvinism, its 
 perpetual conversance with deep matters and with 
 the Bible, have given force and fervency to Calvinist 
 Puritans, so the loveliness of Wesley's piety, and 
 what we have called his genius for godliness, have 
 sweetened and made amiable numberless lives of 
 Methodist Puritans. But as a religious teacher, 
 Wesley is to be judged by his doctrine; and his 
 doctrine, like the Calvinistic scheme, rests with all 
 its weight on the assertion of certain minutely 
 described proceedings on Gdd V - part, indep endent 
 .e£-uy, Ulli expei lence, and UU1' Will; and leads its 
 recipients to look, in religion, not so much for an 
 "arduous progress on their own part, and the exercise 
 of their activity, as for strokes of magic, and what 
 may be called a sensational character. 
 
 In the Heidelberg Catechism, after an answer in 
 which the catechist rehearses the popularly received 
 doctrine of original sin and vicarious satisfaction for 
 it, the catechiser asks the pertinent question : " Uncle 
 id scis?" — how do you know all that? The Apostle 
 Paul is, as we have already shown, the great authority 
 for it whom formal theology invokes; his name is 
 used by popular theology with the same confidence. 
 
22 ST. PAUL AND PEOTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 I open a modern book of popular religion at the 
 account of a visit paid to a hardened criminal seized 
 with terror the night before his execution. The 
 visitor says : "I now stand in PauVs place, and say : 
 In Christ's stead we pray you, be ye reconciled to 
 God. I beg you to accept the pardon of all your 
 sins, which Christ has purchased for you, and which 
 God freely bestows on you for his sake. If you do 
 not understand, I say : God's ways are not as our 
 ways." And the narrative of the criminal's conver- 
 sion goes on : " That night was spent in singing the 
 praises of the Saviour who had purchased his pardon." 
 Both Calvinism and Methodism appeal, therefore, 
 to the Bible, and, above all, to St. Paul, for the 
 history they propound of the relations between God 
 and man ; but Calvinism relies most, in enforcing it, 
 on man's fears, Methodism on man's hopes. Calvin- 
 ism insists on man's being under a curse ; it then 
 works the sense of sin, misery, and terror in him, 
 and appeals pre-eminently to the desire to flee from 
 the wrath to come. Methodism, too, insists on his 
 being under a curse ; but it works most the sense of 
 hope in him, the craving for happiness, and appeals 
 pre-eminently to the desire for eternal bliss. No 
 one, however, will maintain that the particular 
 account of God's proceedings with man, whereby 
 Methodism and Calvinism operate on these desires, 
 proves itself by internal evidence, and establishes 
 without external aid its own scientific validity. So 
 we may either directly try, as best we can, its scien- 
 tific validity in itself; or, as it professes to have 
 
l] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 23 
 
 Paul's authority to support it, we may first inquire 
 what is really Paul's account of God's proceedings 
 with man, and whether this tallies with the Puritan 
 account and confirms it. The latter is in every way 
 the safer and the more instructive course to follow. 
 And we will follow Puritanism's example in taking 
 St. Paul's mature and greatest work, the Epistle to 
 the Eomans, as the chief place for finding what he 
 really thought on the points in question. 
 
 We have already said elsewhere, 1 indeed, what is 
 very true, and what must never be forgotten, that 
 what St. Paul, a man so separated from us by time, 
 race, training and circumstances, really thought, we 
 cannot make sure of knowing exactly. All we can 
 do is to get near it, reading him with the sort of 
 critical tact which the study of the human mind and 
 its history, and the acquaintance with many great 
 writers, naturally gives for following the movement 
 of any one single great writer's thought; reading 
 him, also, without preconceived theories to which 
 we want to make his thoughts fit themselves. It is 
 evident that the English translation of the Epistle 
 to the Eomans has been made by men with their 
 heads full of the current doctrines of election and 
 justification we have been noticing ; and it has 
 thereby received such a bias, — of which a strong 
 example is the use of the word atonement in the 
 eleventh verse of the fifth chapter, — that perhaps it 
 is almost impossible for any one who reads the 
 English translation only, to take into his mind 
 
 1 See Culture and Anarchy, chap. v. 
 

 24 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 Paul's thought without a colouring from the current 
 doctrines. But besides discarding the English trans- 
 lation, we must bear in mind, if we wish to get 
 as near Paul's real thought as possible, two things 
 which have greatly increased the facilities for mis- 
 representing him. 
 
 In the first place, Paul, like the other Bible-writers, 
 and like the Semitic race in general, has a much juster 
 sense of the true scope and limits of diction in reli- 
 gious deliverances than we have. He uses within the 
 sphere of religious emotion expressions which, in this 
 sphere, have an eloquence and a propriety, but which 
 are not to be taken out of it and made into formal 
 scientific propositions. 
 
 This is a point very necessary to be borne in mind 
 in reading the Bible. The prophet Nahum says in 
 the book of his vision : " God is jealous, and the Lord 
 revengeth;" 1 and the authors of the Westminster 
 Confession, drawing out a scientific theology, lay 
 down the proposition that God is a jealous and 
 vengeful God, and think they prove their proposi- 
 tion by quoting in a note the words of Nahum. 
 But this is as if we took from a chorus of iEschylus 
 one of his grand passages about guilt and destiny, 
 just put the words straight into the formal and exact 
 cast of a sentence of Aristotle, and said that here was 
 the scientific teaching of Greek philosophy on these 
 matters. The Hebrew genius has not, like the Greek, 
 its conscious and clear-marked division into a poetic 
 side and a scientific side ; the scientific side is almost 
 
 1 Nahum i. 2. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 25 
 
 absent. The Bible utterances have often the char- 
 acter of a chorus of iEschylus, but never that of a 
 treatise of Aristotle. We, like the Greeks, possess 
 in our speech and thought the two characters ; but 
 so far as the Bible is concerned we have generally 
 confounded them, and have used our double posses- 
 sion for our bewilderment rather than turned it to 
 good account. The admirable maxim of the great 
 mediaeval Jewish school of Biblical critics : The Law 
 speaks with the tongue of the children of men, — a maxim 
 which is the very foundation of all sane Biblical 
 criticism, — was for centuries a dead letter to the 
 whole body of our Western exegesis, and is a dead 
 letter to the whole body of our popular exegesis 
 still. Taking the Bible language as equivalent with 
 the language of the scientific intellect, a language 
 which is adequate and absolute, we have never been 
 in a position to use the key which this maxim of the 
 Jewish doctors offers to us. But it is certain that, 
 whatever strain the religious expressions of the 
 Semitic genius were meant, in the minds of those 
 who gave utterance to them, to bear, the particular 
 strain which we Western people put upon them is 
 one which they were not meant to bear. 
 
 We have used the word Hebraise 1 for another pur- 
 pose, to denote the exclusive attention to the moral 
 side of our nature, to conscience, and to doing rather 
 than knowing ; so, to describe the vivid and figured 
 way in which St. Paul, within the sphere of religious 
 emotion, uses words, without carrying them outside 
 
 1 See Culture and Anarchy, chap. iv. 
 
26 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 it, we will use the word Orientalise. When Paul says : 
 rod hath concluded them all in unbelief that he might 
 have mercy upon all," 1 he Orientalises; that is, he 
 does not mean to assert formally that God acted with 
 this set design, but being full of the happy and divine 
 end to the unbelief spoken of, he, by a vivid and 
 striking figure, represents the unbelief as actually 
 caused with a view to this end. But when the Cal- 
 vinists of the Synod of Dort, wishing to establish the 
 formal proposition that faith and all saving gifts flow 
 from election and nothing else, quote an expression 
 of Paul's similar to the one we have quoted, "He 
 hath chosen us," they say, " not because we were, but 
 that we might he holy and without blame before him," 
 they go quite wide of the mark, from not perceiving 
 that what the apostle used as a vivid figure of rhetoric, 
 they are using as a formal scientific proposition. 
 
 When Paul Orientalises, the fault is not with him 
 when he is misunderstood, but with the prosaic and 
 unintelligent Western readers who have not enough 
 tact for style to comprehend his mode of expression. 
 But he also Judaises ; and here his liability to being 
 misunderstood by us Western people is undoubtedly 
 due to a defect in the critical habit of himself and his 
 race. A Jew himself, he uses the Jewish Scriptures 
 in a Jew's arbitrary and uncritical fashion, as if they 
 had a talismanic character ; as if for a doctrine, how- 
 ever true in itself, their confirmation was still neces- 
 sary, and as if this confirmation was to be got from 
 their mere words alone, however detached from the 
 
 1 Rom. xi. 32. 
 
I.j ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 27 
 
 sense of their context, and however violently allegor- 
 ised or otherwise wrested. 
 
 To use the Bible in this way, even for purposes of 
 illustration, is often an interruption to the argument, 
 a fault of style ; to use it in this way for real proof 
 and confirmation, is a fault of reasoning. An example 
 of the first fault may be seen in the tenth chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Eomans, and in the beginning of 
 the third chapter. The apostle's point in either place, 
 — his point that faith comes by hearing, and his point 
 that God's oracles were true though the Jews did not 
 believe them, — would stand much clearer without 
 their scaffolding of Bible-quotation. An instance of 
 the second fault is in the third and fourth chapters of 
 the Epistle to the Galatians, where the Biblical argu- 
 mentation by which the apostle seeks to prove his 
 case is as unsound as his case itself is sound. How 
 far these faults are due to the apostle himself, how 
 far to the requirements of those for whom he wrote, 
 we need not now investigate. It is enough that he un- 
 doubtedly uses the letter of Scripture in this arbitrary 
 and Jewish way; and thus Puritanism, which has only 
 itself to blame for misunderstanding him when he Orien- 
 talises, may fairly put upon the apostle himself some of 
 its blame for misunderstanding him when he Judaises, 
 and for Judaising so strenuously along with him. 
 
 To get, therefore, at what Paid really thought and 
 meant to say, it is necessary for us modern and western 
 people to translate him. And not as Puritanism, which 
 has merely taken his letter and recast it in the formal 
 propositions of a modern scientific treatise ; but his 
 
28 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 letter itself must be recast before it can be properly 
 conveyed by such propositions. And as the order in 
 which, in any series of ideas, the ideas come, is of 
 great importance to the final result, and as Paul, who 
 did not write scientific treatises, but had always reli- 
 gious edification in direct view, never set out his doc- 
 trine with a design of exhibiting it as a scientific 
 whole, we must also find out for ourselves the order 
 in which Paul's ideas naturally stand, and the con- 
 nection between one of them and the other, in order 
 to arrive at the real scheme of his teaching, as com- 
 pared with the schemes exhibited by Puritanism. 
 
 We remarked how what sets the Calvinist in 
 motion seems to be the desire to flee from the wrath 
 to come ; and what sets the Methodist in motion, the 
 desire for eternal bliss. What is it sets Paul in 
 motion 1 It is the impulse which we have elsewhere 
 noted as the master-impulse of Hebraism, — the desire 
 for righteousness. " I exercise myself," he told Felix, 
 " to have a conscience void of offence toivards God and men 
 continually" 1 To the Hebrew, this moral order, or 
 righteousness, was pre-eminently the universal order, 
 the law of God; and God, the fountain of all goodness, 
 was pre-eminently to him the giver of the moral law. 
 The end and aim of all religion, access to God, — the 
 sense of harmony with the universal order — the par- 
 taking of the divine nature — that our faith and hope 
 might be in God — that we might have life and have 
 it more abundantly, — meant for the Hebrew, access 
 to the source of the moral order in especial, and har- 
 
 1 Acts xxiv. 16. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 29 
 
 mony with it. It was the greatness of the Hebrew 
 race that it felt the authority of this order, its pre- 
 ciousness and its beneficence, so strongly. "How 
 precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God ! " — "The 
 law of thy mouth is better than thousands of gold and 
 silver." — " My soul is consumed with the very fervent 
 desire that it hath alway unto thy judgments." * It was 
 the greatness of their best individuals that in them this 
 feeling was incessantly urgent to prove itself in the only 
 sure manner, — in action. " Blessed are they who hear 
 the word of God, and keep it." " If thou wouldst enter 
 into life, keep the commandments." "Let no man 
 deceive you, he that doeth righteousness is righteous." 2 
 What distinguishes Paul is both his conviction that 
 the commandment is holy, and just, and good; and 
 
 also hJS jies ireto givp. effect) tft tlhff frmimn.nrlrnfmt^tn 
 
 establish it. It was this which gave to his endeavour 
 after a clear conscience such meaning and efficacity. 
 It was this which gave him insight to see that there 
 could be no radical difference, in respect of salvation 
 and the way to it, between Jew and Gentile. " Upon 
 every soul of man that worketh evil, whoever he may 
 be, tribulation and anguish ; to every one that worketh 
 good, glory, honour, and peace ! " 3 
 
 St. Paul's piercing practical religious sense, joined 
 to his strong intellectual power, enabled him to dis- 
 cern and follow the range of the commandment, both 
 as to man's actions and as to his heart and thoughts, 
 with extraordinary force and closeness. His religion 
 
 1 Ps. cxxxix. 7 ; cxix. 72 ; Ibid. 20. 
 2 Luke xi. 28 ; Matt. xix. 17 ; 1 John iii. 7. 3 Rom. ii. 9, 10. 
 
30 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 had, as we shall see, a preponderantly mystic side, 
 and nothing is so natural to the mystic as in rich 
 single words, such as faith, light, love, to sum up and 
 take for granted, without specially enumerating them, 
 all good moral principles and habits ; yet nothing is 
 more remarkable in Paul than the frequent, nay, in- 
 cessant lists, in the most particular detail, of moral 
 habits to be pursued or avoided. Lists of this sort 
 might in a less sincere and profound writer be formal 
 and wearisome ; but to no attentive reader of St. 
 Paul will they be wearisome, for in making them he 
 touched the solid ground which was the basis of his 
 religion, — the solid ground of his hearty desire for 
 righteousness and of his thorough conception of it, — 
 and only on such a ground was so strong a super- 
 structure possible. The more one studies these lists, 
 the more does their significance come out. To illus- 
 trate this, let any one go through for himself the 
 enumeration, too long to be quoted here, in the four 
 last verses of the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Romans, of "things which are not convenient;" or 
 let him merely consider with attention this catalogue 
 towards the end of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to 
 the Galatians, of fruits of the spirit: "love, joy, 
 peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mild- 
 ness, self-control." - 1 The man who wrote with this 
 searching minuteness knew accurately what he meant 
 by sin and righteousness, and did not use these words 
 at random. His diligent comprehensiveness in his 
 plan of duties is only less admirable than his diligent 
 
 1 Verses 22, 23. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 31 
 
 sincerity. The sterner virtues and the gentler, his 
 conscience will not let him rest till he has embraced 
 them all. In his deep resolve "to make out by actual 
 trial what is that good and perfect and acceptable 
 will of God," 1 he goes back upon himself again and 
 again, he marks a duty at every point of our nature, 
 and at points the most opposite, for fear he should 
 by possibility be leaving behind him some weakness 
 still indulged, some subtle promptings to evil not yet 
 brought into captivity. 
 
 It has not been enough remarked how this incom- 
 parable honesty and depth in Paul's love of righteous- 
 ness is probably what chiefly explains his conversion. 
 Most men have the defects, as the saying is, of their 
 qualities. Because they are ardent and severe they 
 have no sense fur gentleness and sweetness ; because 
 they are sweet and gentle they have no sense for 
 severity and ardour. A Puritan is a Puritan, and a 
 man of feeling is a man of feeling. But with Paul the 
 very same f idness of moral nature which made him an 
 ardent Pharisee, " as concerning zeal, persecuting the 
 church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, 
 blameless, "was so large that it carried him out of Phari- 
 saism and beyond it, when once he found how much 
 needed doinc; in him which Pharisaism could not do. 
 
 Every attentive regarder of the character of Paul, 
 not only as he was before his conversion but as he 
 appears to us till his end, must have been struck with 
 two things : one, the earnest insistence with which 
 he recommends "bowels of mercies," as he calls them: 
 
 1 Rom. xii. 2. 
 
32 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 meekness, humbleness of mind, gentleness, unweary- 
 ing forbearance, crowned all of them with that emo- 
 tion of charity " which is the bond of perfectness ; " 
 the other, the force with which he dwells on the 
 solidarity (to use the modern phrase) of man, — the 
 joint interest, that is, which binds humanity together, 
 the duty of respecting every one's part in life, and of 
 doing justice to his efforts to fulfil that part. Never 
 surely did such a controversialist, such a master of 
 sarcasm and invective, commend, with such manifest 
 sincerity and such persuasive emotion, the qualities 
 of meekness and gentleness ! Never surely did a 
 worker, who took with such energy his own line, and 
 who was so born to preponderate and predominate in 
 whatever line he took, insist so often and so admir- 
 ably that the lines of other workers were just as good 
 as his own ! At no time, perhaps, did Paul arrive 
 at practising quite perfectly what he thus preached ; 
 but this only sets in a stronger light the thorough 
 love of righteousness which made him seek out, and 
 put so prominently forward, and so strive to make 
 himself and others fulfil, parts of righteousness which 
 do not force themselves on the common conscience 
 like the duties of soberness, temperance, and activity, 
 and which were somewhat alien, certainly, to his own 
 particular nature. Therefore we cannot but believe 
 that into this spirit, so possessed with the hunger and 
 thirst for righteousness, and precisely because it was 
 so possessed by it, the characteristic doctrines of 
 Jesus, which brought a new aliment to feed this 
 hunger and thirst, — of Jesus whom, except in vision, 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 33 
 
 he had never seen, but who was in every one's words 
 and thoughts, the teacher who was meek and lowly 
 in heart, who said men were brothers and must love 
 one another, that the last should often be first, that 
 the exercise of dominion and lordship had nothing in 
 them desirable, and that we must become as little 
 children, — sank down and worked there even before 
 Paul ceased to persecute, and had no small part in 
 getting him ready for the crisis of his conversion. 
 
 Such doctrines offered new fields of righteousness 
 to the eyes of this indefatigable explorer of it, and 
 enlarged the domain of duty of which Pharisaism 
 showed him only a portion. Then, after the satisfac- 
 tion thus given to his desire for a full conception of 
 righteousness, came Christ's injunctions to make clean 
 the inside as well as the outside, to beware of the 
 least leaven of hypocrisy and self-flattery, of saying 
 and not doing ; — and, finally, the injunction to feel, 
 after doing all we can, that, as compared with the 
 standard of perfection, we are still unprofitable 
 servants. These teachings were, to a man like Paul, 
 for the practice of righteousness what the others were 
 for the theory ; — sympathetic utterances, which made 
 the inmost chords of his being vibrate, and which 
 irresistibly drew him sooner or later towards their 
 utterer. Need it be said that he never forgot them, 
 and that in all his pages they have left their trace 1 
 It is even affecting to see, how, when he is driven for 
 the very sake of righteousness to put the law of 
 righteousness in the second place, and to seek outside 
 the law itself for a power to fulfil the law, how, I 
 
 VOL. VII. d 
 
34 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [l. 
 
 say, he returns again and again to the elucidation of 
 his one sole design in all he is doing; how he labours 
 to prevent all possibility of misunderstanding, and to 
 show that he is only leaving the moral law for a 
 moment in order to establish it for ever more victori- 
 ously. What earnestness and pathos in the assur- 
 ance : "If there had been a law given which could 
 have given life, verily, righteousness should have been 
 by the law ! " 1 " Do I condemn the law 1 " he keeps 
 saying ; " do I forget that the commandment is holy, 
 just, and good 1 Because we are no longer under the 
 law, are we to sin ? Am I seeking to make the course 
 of my life and yours other than a service and an 
 obedience ? " This man, out of whom an astounding 
 criticism has deduced Antinomianism, is in truth so 
 possessed with horror of Antinomianism, that he goes 
 to grace for the sole purpose of extirpating it, and 
 even then cannot rest without perpetually telling us 
 why he is gone there. This man, whom Calvin and 
 Luther and their followers have shut up into the two 
 scholastic doctrines of election and justification, would 
 have said, could we hear him, just what he said about 
 circumcision and uncircumcision in his own day : 
 " Election is nothing, and justification is nothing, but 
 the keeping of the commandments of God." 
 
 This foremost place which righteousness takes in 
 the order of St. Paul's ideas makes a signal difference 
 between him and Puritanism. Puritanism, as we 
 have said, finds its starting-point either in the desire 
 to flee from eternal wrath or in the desire to obtain 
 
 1 Gal. iii. 21. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 35 
 
 eternal bliss. Puritanism has learned from revela- 
 tion, as it says, a particular history of the first man's 
 fall, of mankind being under a curse, of certain con- 
 tracts having been passed concerning mankind in the 
 Council of the Trinity, of the substance of those con- 
 tracts, and of man's position under them. The great 
 concern of Puritanism is with the operation of those 
 contracts on man's condition ; its leading thought, if 
 it is a Puritanism of a gloomy turn, is of awe and 
 fear caused by the threatening aspect of man's condi- 
 tion under these contracts ; if of a cheerful turn, of 
 gratitude and hope caused by the favourable aspect 
 of it. But in either case, foregone events, the cove- 
 nant passed, what God has done and does, is the great 
 matter. What there is left for man to do, the human 
 work of righteousness, is secondary, and comes in but 
 to attest and confirm our assurance of what God has 
 done for us. We have seen this in Wesley's words 
 already quoted : the first thing for a man is to be 
 justified and sanctified, and to have the assurance 
 that, without seeking it by works, he is justified and 
 sanctified ; then the desire and works of righteousness 
 follow as a proper result of this condition. Still 
 more does Calvinism make man's desire and works of 
 righteousness mere evidences and benefits of more 
 important things; the desire to work righteousness 
 is among the saving graces applied by the Holy Spirit 
 to the elect, and the last of those graces. Denique, 
 says the Synod of Dort, last of all, after faith in the 
 promises and after the witness of the Spirit, comes, 
 to establish our assurance, a clear conscience and 
 
36 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 righteousness. It is manifest how unlike is this 
 order of ideas to Paul's order, who starts with the 
 thought of a conscience void of offence towards God 
 and man, and builds upon that thought his whole 
 system. 
 
 But this difference constitutes from the very outset 
 an immense scientific superiority for the scheme of 
 Paul. Hope and fear are elements of human nature 
 like the love of right, but they are far blinder and 
 less scientific elements of it. " The Bible is a divine 
 revelation ; the Bible declares certain things ; the 
 things it thus declares have the witness of our hopes 
 and fears ; " — this is the line of thought followed by 
 Puritanism. But what science seeks after is a satisfy- 
 ing rational conception of things. A scheme which 
 fails to give this, which gives the contrary of this, 
 may indeed be of a nature to move our hopes and 
 fears, but is to science of none the more value on that 
 account. 
 
 Nor does our calling such a scheme a revelation 
 mend the matter. Instead of covering the scientific 
 inadequacy of a conception by the authority of a 
 revelation, science rather proves the authority of a 
 revelation by the scientific adequacy of the concep- 
 tions given in it, and limits the sphere of that authority 
 to the sphere of that adequacy. The more an alleged 
 revelation seems to contain precious and striking 
 things, the more will science be inclined to doubt the 
 correctness of any deduction which draws from it, 
 within the sphere of these things, a scheme which 
 rationally is not satisfying. That the scheme of 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 37 
 
 Puritanism is rationally so little satisfying inclines 
 science, not to take it on the authority of the Bible, 
 but to doubt whether it is really in the Bible. The 
 first appeal which this scheme, having begun outside 
 the sphere of reality and experience, makes in the 
 sphere of reality and experience, — its first appeal, 
 therefore, to science, — the appeal to the witness of 
 human hope and fear, does not much mend matters ; 
 for science knows that numberless conceptions not 
 rationally satisfying are yet the ground of hope and 
 fear. 
 
 Paul does not begin outside the sphere of science ; 
 he begins with an appeal to reality and experience. 
 And the appeal here with which he commences has, 
 for science, undoubted force and importance ; for he 
 appeals to a rational conception which is a part, and 
 perhaps the chief part, of our experience; the con- 
 ception of the law of righteousness, the very law and 
 ground of human nature so far as this nature is 
 moral. Things as they truly are, — facts, — are the 
 object - matter of science ; and the moral law in 
 human nature, however this law may have origin- 
 ated, is in our actual experience among the greatest 
 of facts. 
 
 If I were not afraid of intruding upon Mr. Buskin's 
 province, I might point out the witness which ety- 
 mology itself bears to this law as a prime element 
 and clue in man's constitution. Our word righteous- 
 ness means going straight, going the way we are 
 meant to go ; there are languages in which the word 
 " way " or " road " is also the word for right reason 
 
38 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 and duty ; the Greek word for justice and righteous- 
 ness has for its foundation, some say, the idea of 
 describing a certain line, following a certain necessary 
 orbit. But for these fanciful helps there is no need. 
 When Paul starts with affirming the grandeur and 
 necessity of the law of righteousness, science has no 
 difficulty in going along with him. When he fixes 
 as man's right aim "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control," 1 he 
 appeals for witness to the truth of what he says to 
 an experience too intimate to need illustration or 
 argument. 
 
 The best confirmation of the scientific validity of 
 the importance which Paul thus attaches to the law 
 of righteousness, the law of reason and conscience, 
 God as moral law, is to be found in its agreement 
 with the importance attached to this law by teachers 
 the most unlike him ; since in the eye of science an 
 experience gains as much by having universality, as 
 in the eye of religion it seems to gain by having 
 uniqueness. " Would you know," says Epictetus, 
 "the means to perfection which Socrates followed 1 ? 
 they were these : in every single matter which came 
 before him he made the rule of reason and conscience 
 his one rule to follow." Such was precisely the aim 
 of Paul also ; it is an aim to which science does 
 homage as a satisfying rational conception. And to 
 this aim hope and fear properly attach themselves. 
 For on our following the clue of moral order, or 
 losing it, depends our happiness or misery ; our life 
 
 1 Gal. v. 22, 23. 
 
i.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 39 
 
 or death in the true sense of those words ; our har- 
 mony with the universal order or our disharmony 
 with it ; our partaking, as St. Paul says, of the wrath 
 of God or of the glory of God. So that looking to 
 this clue, and fearing to lose hold on it, we may in 
 strict scientific truth say with the author of the 
 Imitation : Omnia vanitas, propter amare Deum, et Mi 
 soli servire. 
 
 But to serve God, to follow that central clue in 
 our moral being which unites us to the universal 
 order, is no easy task; and here again we are on 
 the most sure ground of e xperience a nd ps ycholog y-i 
 In some way or other, says Bishop Wilson, every man 
 is conscious of an opposition in him between the flesh 
 and the spirit. Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor, 
 say the thousand times quoted lines of the Roman 
 poet. The philosophical explanation of this conflict 
 does not indeed attribute, like the Manichaean fancy, 
 any inherent evil to the flesh and its workings ; all 
 the forces and tendencies in us are, like our proper 
 central moral tendency the desire of righteousness, 
 in themselves beneficent. But they require to be 
 harmonised with this tendency, because this aims 
 directly at our total moral welfare, — our harmony as 
 moral beings with the law of our nature and the law 
 of God, — and derives thence a pre-eminence and a 
 right to moderate. And, though they are not evil in 
 themselves, the evil which flows from these diverse 
 workings is undeniable. The lusts of the flesh, the 
 law in our members, passion, according to the Greek 
 word used by Paul, inordinate affection, according to 
 
40 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM, [i. 
 
 the admirable rendering of Paul's Greek word in our 
 English Bible, 1 take naturally no account of anything 
 but themselves ; this arbitrary and unregulated action 
 of theirs can produce only confusion and misery. The 
 spirit, the law of our mind, takes account of the 
 universal moral order, the will of God, and is indeed 
 the voice of that order expressing itself in us. Paul 
 talks of a man sowing to his flesh, 2 because each of 
 us has of his own this individual body, this congeries of 
 flesh and bones, blood and nerves, different from that 
 of every one else, and with desires and impulses 
 driving each of us his own separate way ; and he says 
 that a man who sows to this, sows to a thousand 
 tyrants, and can reap no worthy harvest. But he 
 talks of sowing to the spirit ; because there is one 
 central moral tendency which for us and for all men 
 is the law of our being, and through reason and 
 righteousness we move in this universal order and 
 with it. In this conformity to the will of God, as we 
 religiously name the moral order, is our peace and 
 happiness. 
 
 But how to find the energy and power to bring all 
 those self-seeking tendencies of the flesh, those multi- 
 tudinous, swarming, eager, and incessant impulses, 
 into obedience to the central tendency 1 Mere com- 
 manding and forbidding is of no avail, and only 
 irritates opposition in the desires it tries to control. 
 It even enlarges their power, because it makes us feel 
 our impotence ; and the confusion caused by their 
 ungoverned working is increased by our being filled 
 1 Col. iii. 5. 2 Gal. vi. 8. 
 
I.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 41 
 
 with a deepened sense of disharmony, remorse, and 
 dismay. " I was alive without the law once," 1 says 
 Paul ; the natural play of all the forces and desires in 
 me went on smoothly enough so long as I did not 
 attempt to introduce order and regulation among 
 them. But the condition of immoral tranquillity 
 could not in man be permanent. That natural law of 
 reason and conscience which all men have, was suffi- 
 cient by itself to produce a consciousness of rebellion 
 and disquietude. Matters became only worse by the 
 exhibition of the Mosaic law, the offspring of a moral 
 sense more poignant and stricter, however little it 
 might show of subtle insight and delicacy, than the 
 moral sense of the mass of mankind. The very 
 stringency of the Mosaic code increased the feeling 
 of dismay and helplessness ; it set forth the law of 
 righteousness more authoritatively and minutely, yet 
 did not supply any sufficient power to keep it. 
 Neither the law of nature, therefore, nor the law of 
 Moses, availed to blind men to righteousness. So 
 we come to the word which is the governing word of 
 the Epistle to the Eomans, — the word all. As the 
 word righteousness is the governing word of St. Paul's 
 entire mind and life, so the word all is the governing 
 word of this his chief epistle. The Gentile with the 
 law of nature, the Jew with the law of Moses, alike 
 fail to achieve righteousness. "All have sinned, and 
 come short of the glory of God." 2 All do what they 
 would not, and do not what they would; all feel 
 themselves enslaved, impotent, guilty, miserable. 
 1 Rom. vii. 9 2 Rom. iii. 23. 
 
42 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [i. 
 
 ki wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death 1 " * 
 
 Hitherto, we have followed Paul in the sphere of 
 morals; we have now come with him to the point 
 where he enters the sphere of religion. Eeligion is 
 that which binds and holds us to the practice of 
 righteousness. We have accompanied Paul, and 
 found him always treading solid ground, till he is 
 brought to straits where a binding and holding power 
 of this kind is necessary. Here is the critical point 
 for the scientific worth of his doctrine. " Now at 
 last," cries Puritanism, " the great apostle is about to 
 become even as one of us ; there is no issue for him 
 now, but the issue we have always declared he finds. 
 He has recourse to our theurgy of election, justifica- 
 tion, substitution, and imputed righteousness." We 
 will proceed to show that Paul has recourse to nothing 
 of the kind. 
 
 1 Rom. vii. 24. 
 
il] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 43 
 
 II. 
 
 We have seen how Puritanism seems to come by its 
 religion in the first instance theologically and from 
 authority ; Paul by his, on the other hand, psycho- 
 logically and from experience. Even the points, 
 therefore, in which they both meet, they have not 
 reached in the same order or by the same road. The 
 miserable sense of sin from unrighteousness, the joyful 
 witness of a good conscience from righteousness, these 
 are points in which Puritanism and St. Paul meet. 
 They are facts of human nature and can be verified 
 by science. But whereas Puritanism, so far as science 
 is concerned, ends with these facts, and rests the 
 whole weight of its antecedent theurgy upon the 
 witness to it they offer, Paul begins with these facts, 
 and has not yet, so far as we have followed him, 
 called upon them to prove anything but themselves. 
 The scientific difference, as we have already remarked, 
 which this establishes between Paul and Puritanism 
 is immense, and is all in Paul's favour. Sin and 
 righteousness, together with their eternal accompani- 
 ments of fear and hope, misery and happiness, can 
 prove themselves ; but they can by no means prove, 
 also, Puritanism's history of original sin, election and 
 justification. 
 
 Puritanism is fond of maintaining, indeed, that 
 Paul's doctrines derive their sanction, not from any 
 
44 ST. PAUL AND PEOTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 agreement with science and experience, but from his 
 miraculous conversion, and that this conversion it 
 was which in his own judgment gave to them their 
 authority. But whatever sanction the miracle of his 
 conversion may in his own eyes have lent to the 
 doctrines afterwards propounded by Paul, it is clear 
 that, for science, his conversion adds to his doctrines 
 no force at all which they do not already possess in 
 themselves. Paul's conversion is for science an event 
 of precisely the same nature as the conversions of 
 which the history of Methodism relates so many ; 
 events described, for the most part, just as the event 
 of Paul's conversion is described, with perfect good 
 faith, and which we may perfectly admit to have 
 happened just in the manner related, without on that 
 account attributing to those who underwent them any 
 source of certitude for a scheme of doctrine which 
 this doctrine does not on other and better grounds 
 possess. 
 
 Surely this proposition has only to be clearly 
 stated in order to be self-evident. The conversion 
 of Paul is in itself an incident of precisely the same 
 order as the conversion of Sampson Staniforth, a 
 Methodist soldier in the campaign of Fontenoy. 
 Staniforth himself relates his conversion as follows, 
 in words which bear plainly marked on them the very 
 stamp of good faith : — 
 
 " From twelve at night till two it was my turn to 
 stand sentinel at a dangerous post. 1 had a fellow- 
 sentinel, but I desired him to go away, which he 
 willingly did. As soon as I was alone, I knelt down 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 45 
 
 and determined not to rise, but to continue crying 
 and wrestling with God till he had mercy on me. 
 How long I was in that agony I cannot tell ; but as 
 I looked up to heaven I saw the clouds open exceed- 
 ing bright, and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. 
 At the same moment these words were applied to my 
 heart : ' Thy sins are forgiven thee.' All guilt was 
 gone, and my soul was filled with unutterable peace : 
 the fear of death and hell was vanished away. I was 
 filled with wonder and astonishment. I closed my 
 eyes, but the impression was still the same ; and for 
 about ten weeks, while I was awake, let me be where 
 I would, the same appearance was still before my 
 eyes, and the same impression upon my heart, Thy 
 sins are forgiven thee." 
 
 Not the narrative, in the Acts, of Paul's journey 
 to Damascus, could more convince us, as we have 
 said, of its own honesty. But this honesty makes 
 nothing, as every one will admit, for the scientific 
 truth of any scheme of doctrine propounded by 
 Sampson Staniforth, which must prove itself and its 
 own scientific value before science can admit it. Pre- 
 cisely the same is it with Paul's doctrine ; and we 
 repeat, therefore, that he and his doctrine have herein 
 a great advantage over Puritanism, in that, so far as 
 we have yet followed them, they, unlike Puritanism, 
 rely on facts of experience and assert nothing which 
 science cannot verify. 
 
 We have now to see whether Paul, in passing from 
 the undoubted facts of experience, with which he 
 begins, to his religion properly so called, abandons in 
 
46 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 any essential points of his teaching the advantage 
 with which he started, and ends, as Puritanism com- 
 mences, with a batch of arbitrary and unscientific 
 assumptions. 
 
 We left Paul in collision with a fact of human 
 nature, but in itself a sterile fact, a fact on which it 
 is possible to dwell too long, although Puritanism, 
 thinking this impossible, has remained intensely 
 absorbed in the contemplation of it, and indeed has 
 never properly got beyond it, — the sense of sin. Sin 
 is not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to 
 be got rid of. All thinking about it, beyond what is 
 indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is 
 waste of energy and waste of time. We then enter 
 that element of morbid and subjective brooding, in 
 which so many have perished. This sense of sin, 
 however, it is also possible to have not strongly 
 enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it, and 
 the Greeks, with all their great gifts, had this sense 
 not strongly enough ; its strength in the Hebrew 
 people is one of this people's mainsprings. And no 
 Hebrew prophet or psalmist felt what sin was more 
 powerfully than Paul. " Mine iniquities have taken 
 hold upon me so that I am not able to look up ; they 
 are more than the hairs of mine head ; therefore my 
 heart faileth me." 1 They are more than the hairs of 
 mine head. The motions of what Paul calls " the law 
 in our members " are indeed a hydrabrood ; when we 
 are working against one fault, a dozen others crop up 
 without our expecting it ; and this it is which drives 
 
 1 Psalm xl. 12. 
 
n.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 47 
 
 the man who deals seriously with himself to difficulty, 
 nay to despair. Paul did not need James to tell him 
 that whoever offends on one point is, so far at least 
 as his own conscience and inward satisfaction are 
 concerned, guilty of all ; 1 he knew it himself, and the 
 unrest this knowledge gave him was his very starting- 
 point. He knew, too, that nothing outward, no 
 satisfaction of all the requirements men may make of 
 us, no privileges of any sort, can give peace of con- 
 science ; — of conscience, " whose praise is not of men 
 but of God." 2 He knew, also, that the law of the 
 moral order stretches beyond us and our private con- 
 science, is independent of our sense of having kept 
 it, and stands absolute and what in itself it is ; even, 
 therefore, though I may know nothing against myself, 
 yet this is not enough, I may still not be just. 3 
 Finally, Paul knew that merely to know all this and 
 say it, is of no use, advances us nothing ; " the king- 
 dom of God is not in word but in power." 4 
 
 "We have several times said that the Hebrew race 
 apprehended God, — the universal order by which all 
 things fulfil the law of their being, — chiefly as the 
 moral order in human nature, and that it was their 
 greatness that they apprehended him as this so dis- 
 tinctly and powerfully. But it is also characteristic 
 of them, and perhaps it is what mainly distinguishes 
 their spirit from the spirit of mediaeval Christianity, 
 that they constantly thought, too, of God as the 
 source of life and breath and all things, and of what 
 
 1 James ii. 10. 2 Rom. ii. 29. 
 
 3 1 Cor. iv. 4. 4 Ibid. 20. 
 
48 ST. PAUL AND PROTEST AN TISM. [n. 
 
 they called " fulness of life " in all things. This way 
 of thinking was common to them with the Greeks ; 
 although, whereas the Greeks threw more delicacy 
 and imagination into it, the Hebrews threw more 
 energy and vital warmth. But to the Hebrew, as to 
 the Greek, the gift of life, and health, and the world, 
 was divine, as well as the gift of morals. " God's 
 righteousness," indeed, " standeth like the strong 
 mountains, his judgments are like the great deep ; he 
 is a righteous judge, strong and patient, who is pro- 
 voked every day." 1 This is the Hebrew's first and 
 deepest conception of God, — as the source of the 
 moral order. But God is also, to the Hebrew, " our 
 rock, which is higher than we," the power by which 
 we have been " upholden ever since we were born," 
 that has " fashioned us and laid his hand upon us " 
 and envelops us on every side, that has "made us 
 fearfully and wonderfully," and whose " mercy is 
 over all his works." 2 He is the power that "saves 
 both man and beast, gives them drink of his pleasures 
 as out of the river," and with whom is " the well of 
 life." 3 In his speech at Athens, Paul shows how full 
 he, too, was of this feeling; and in the famous 
 passage in the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Bomans, where he asserts the existence of the natural 
 moral law, the source he assigns to this law is not 
 merely God in conscience, the righteous judge, but 
 God in the world and the workings of the world, the 
 
 1 Ps. xxxvi. 6 ; vii. 11. 
 
 3 Ps. lxi. 2 ; lxxxi. 6 ; cxxxix. 5, 14 ; cxlv. 9. 
 
 8 Ps. xxxvi. 6, 8, 9. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 49 
 
 eternal and divine power from which all life and 
 wholesome energy proceed. 1 
 
 This element in which we live and move and have 
 our being, which stretches around and beyond the 
 strictly moral element in us, around and beyond the 
 finite sphere of what is originated, measured, and 
 controlled by our own understanding and will, — this 
 infinite element is very present to Paul's thoughts, 
 and makes a profound impression on them. By this 
 element we are receptive and influenced, not origina- 
 tive and influencing; now, we all of us receive far 
 more than we originate. Our pleasure from a spring 
 day we do not make ; our pleasure, even, from an 
 approving conscience we do not make. And yet we 
 feel that both the one pleasure and the other can, 
 and often do, work with us in a wonderful way for 
 our good. So we get the thought of an impulsion 
 outside ourselves which is at once awful and bene- 
 ficent. " No man," as the Hebrew psalm says, " hath 
 quickened his own soul." 2 " I know," says Jeremiah, 
 " that the way of man is not in himself ; it is not in 
 man that walketh to direct his steps." 3 Most true 
 and natural is this feeling ; and the greater men are, 
 the more natural is this feeling to them. Great men 
 like Sylla and Napoleon have loved to attribute their 
 success to their fortune, their star; religious great 
 men have loved to say that their sufficiency was of 
 God. 4 But through every great spirit runs a train of 
 feeling of this sort ; and the power and depth which 
 
 1 Rom. i. 19-21. 2 p sa i m xx n. 2 9. 
 
 3 Jer. x. 23. 4 2 Cor. iii. 5. 
 
 VOL. VII. E 
 
50 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [il. 
 
 there undoubtedly is in Calvinism, comes from Cal- 
 vinism's being overwhelmed by it. Paul is not, like 
 Calvinism, overwhelmed by it ; but it is always before 
 his mind and strongly agitates his thoughts. The 
 voluntary, rational, and human world, of righteous- 
 ness, moral choice, effort, filled the first place in his 
 spirit. But the necessary, mystical, and divine 
 world, of influence, sympathy, emotion, filled the 
 
 /second; and he could pass naturally from the one 
 world to the other. The presence in Paul of this 
 twofold feeling acted irresistibly upon his doctrine. 
 What he calls "the power that worketh in us," 1 and 
 that produces results transcending all our expectations 
 and calculations, he instinctively sought to combine 
 with our personal agencies of reason and conscience. 
 
 Of such a mysterious power and its operation 
 some clear notion may be got by anybody who has 
 ever had any overpowering attachment, or has been, 
 according to the common expression, in love. Every 
 one knows how being in love changes for the time a 
 man's spiritual atmosphere, and makes animation and 
 buoyancy where before there was flatness and dulness. 
 One may even say that this is the reason why being 
 in love is so popular with the whole human race, — 
 because it relieves in so irresistible and delightful a 
 manner the tedium or depression of commonplace 
 human life. And not only does it change the atmo- 
 sphere of our spirits, making air, light, and move- 
 ment where before was stagnation and gloom, but 
 it also sensibly and powerfully increases our faculties 
 
 1 Ephesians iii. 20. 
 
il] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 51 
 
 of action. It is matter of the commonest remark how 
 a timid man who is in love will show courage, or an 
 indolent man will show diligence. Nay, a timid man 
 who would be only the more paralysed in a moment 
 of danger by being told that it is his bounden duty 
 as a man to show firmness, and that he must be ruined 
 and disgraced for ever if he does not, will show firm- 
 ness quite easily from being in love. An indolent 
 man who shrinks back from vigorous effort only the 
 more because he is told and knows that it is a man's 
 business to show energy, and that it is shameful in 
 him if he does not, will show energy quite easily from 
 being in love. This, I say, we learn from the analogy 
 of the most everyday experience; that a powerful 
 attachment will give a man spirits and confidence 
 which he could by no means call up or command of 
 himself ; and that in this mood he can do wonders 
 which would not be possible to him without it. 
 
 We have seen how Paul felt himself to be for the 
 sake of righteousness apprehended, to use his own 
 expression, by Christ. "I seek," he says, "to appre- 
 hend that for which also I am apprehended by Christ." 1 
 This for which he is thus apprehended is, — still to 
 use his own words, — the righteousness of God ; not an 
 incomplete and maimed righteousness, not a partial 
 and unsatisfying establishment of the law of the 
 spirit, dominant to-day, deposed to-morrow, effective 
 at one or two points, failing in a hundred ; no, but 
 an entire conformity at all points with the divine 
 moral order, the will of God, and, in consequence, 
 
 1 Philippians iii. 12. 
 
52 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 a sense of harmony with this order, of acceptance 
 with God. 
 
 In some points Paul had always served this order 
 with a clear conscience. He did not steal, he did 
 not commit adultery. But he was at the same time, 
 he says himself, "a blasphemer and a persecutor and 
 an insulter," 1 and the contemplation of Jesus Christ 
 made him see this, impressed it forcibly upon his 
 mind. Here was his greatness, and the worth of his 
 way of appropriating Christ. We have seen how 
 Calvinism, too, — Calvinism which has built itself 
 upon St. Paul, — is a blasphemer, when it speaks of 
 good works done by those who do not hold the Cal- 
 vinist doctrine. There would need no great sensitive- 
 ness of conscience, one would think, to show that 
 Calvinism has often been, also, a persecutor, and an 
 insulter. Calvinism, as well as Paul, professes to 
 study Jesus Christ. But the difference between 
 Paul's study of Christ and Calvinism's is this : that 
 Paul by studying Christ got to know himself clearly, 
 and to transform his narrow conception of righteous- 
 ness ; while Calvinism studies both Christ and Paul 
 after him to no such good purpose. 
 
 These, however, are but the veriest rudiments of 
 the history of Paul's gain from Jesus Christ, as the 
 particular impression mentioned is but the veriest 
 fragment of the total impression produced by the 
 contemplation of Christ upon him. The sum and 
 substance of that total impression may best be con- 
 veyed by two words — without sin. 
 
 1 1 Tim. i. 13. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 53 
 
 We must here revert to what we have already 
 said of the importance, for sound criticism of a man's 
 ideas, of the order in which his ideas come. For us, 
 who approach Christianity through a scholastic theo- 
 logy, it is Christ's divinity which establishes his being 
 without sin. For Paul, who approached Christianity 
 through his personal experience, it was Jesus Christ's 
 being without sin which establishes his divinity. The 
 large and complete conception of righteousness to 
 which he himself had slowly and late, and only by 
 Jesus Christ's help, awakened, in Jesus he seemed 
 to see existing absolutely and naturally. The devo- 
 tion to this conception which made it meat and drink 
 to carry it into effect, a devotion of which he himself 
 was strongly and deeply conscious, he saw in Jesus 
 still stronger, by far, and deeper than in himself. 
 But for attaining the righteousness of God, for reach- 
 ing an absolute conformity with the moral order and 
 with God's will, he saw no such impotence existing 
 in Jesus Christ's case as in his own. For Jesus, the 
 uncertain conflict between the law in our members 
 and the law of the spirit did not appear to exist. 
 Those eternal vicissitudes of victory and defeat, which 
 drove Paul to despair, in Jesus were absent. Smoothly 
 and inevitably he followed the real and eternal order, 
 in preference to the momentary and apparent order. 
 Obstacles outside him there were plenty, but obstacles 
 within him there were none. He was led by the 
 spirit of God ; he was dead to sin, he lived to God ; 
 and in this life to God he persevered even to the 
 cruel bodily death of the cross. As many as are led 
 
54 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 by the spirit of God, says Paul, are the sons of God. 1 
 If this is so with even us, who live to God so feebly 
 and who render such an imperfect obedience, how 
 much more is he who lives to God entirely and who 
 renders an unalterable obedience, the unique and 
 only son of God 1 
 
 This is undoubtedly the main line of movement 
 which Paul's ideas respecting Jesus Christ follow. 
 He had been trained, however, in the scholastic 
 theology of Judaism, just as we are trained in the 
 scholastic theology of Christianity; would that we 
 were as little embarrassed with our training as he was 
 with his ! The Jewish theological doctrine respecting 
 the eternal word or wisdom of God, which was with 
 God from the beginning before the oldest of his 
 works, and through which the world was created, this 
 doctrine, which appears in the Book of Proverbs and 
 again in the Book of Wisdom, 2 Paul applied to Jesus 
 Christ, and in the Epistle to the Colossians there is a 
 remarkable passage 3 with clear signs of his thus 
 applying it. But then this metaphysical and theo- 
 logical basis to the historic being of Jesus is something 
 added by Paul from outside to his own essential ideas 
 concerning him, something which fitted them and 
 was naturally taken on to them ; it is secondary, it is 
 not an original part of his system, much less the 
 ground of it. It fills a very different place in his 
 system from the place which it fills in the system of 
 the author of the Fourth Gospel, who takes his 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 14. 2 Prov. viii. 22-31 ; and Wisd. vii. 25-27. 
 
 8 Col. i. 15-17. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 55 
 
 starting-point from it. Paul's starting-point, it can- 
 not be too often repeated, is the idea of righteousness ; 
 and his concern with Jesus is as the clue to righteous- 
 ness, not as the clue to transcendental ontology. 
 Speculations in this region had no overpowering 
 attraction for Paul, notwithstanding the traces of 
 an acquaintance with them which we find in his 
 writings, and notwithstanding the great activity of 
 his intellect. This activity threw itself with an un- 
 erring instinct into a sphere where, with whatever 
 travail and through whatever impediments to clear 
 expression, directly practical religious results might 
 yet be won, and not into any sphere of abstract 
 speculation. 
 
 Much more visible and important than his identi- 
 fication of Jesus with the divine hypostasis known as 
 the Logos, is Paul's identification of him with the 
 Messiah. Ever present is his recognition of him as 
 the Messiah to whom all the law and prophets 
 pointed, of whom the heart of the Jewish race was 
 full, and on whom the Jewish instructors of Paul's 
 youth had dwelt abundantly. The Jewish language 
 and ideas respecting the end of the world and the 
 Messiah's kingdom, his day, his presence, his appear- 
 ing, his glory, Paul applied to Jesus, and constantly 
 used. Of the force and reality which these ideas and 
 expressions had for him there can be no question ; as 
 to his use of them, only two remarks are needed. 
 One is, that in him these Jewish ideas, — as any one 
 will feel who calls to mind a genuine display of them 
 like that in the Apocalypse, — are spiritualised ; and 
 
56 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [il. 
 
 as he advances in his course they are spiritualised in- 
 creasingly. The other remark is, that important as 
 these ideas are in Paul, of them, too, the importance 
 is only secondary, compared with that of the great 
 central matter of his thoughts : the righteousness of 
 God, the non-fulfilment of it by man, the fulfilment of it 
 by Christ. 
 
 Once more we are led to a result favourable to the 
 scientific value of Paul's teaching. That Jesus Christ 
 was the divine Logos, the second person of the 
 Trinity, science can neither deny nor affirm. That 
 he was the Jewish Messiah, who will some day appear 
 in the sky with the sound of trumpets, to put an end 
 to the actual kingdoms of the world and to establish 
 his own kingdom, science can neither deny nor affirm. 
 The very terms of which these propositions are com- 
 posed are such as science is unable to handle. But 
 that the Jesus of the Bible follows the universal 
 moral order and the will of God, without being let 
 and hindered as we are by the motions of private 
 passion and by self-will, this is evident to whoever 
 can read the Bible with open eyes. It is just what 
 any criticism of the Gospel-history, which sees that 
 history as it really is, tells us ; it is the scientific 
 result of that history. And this is the result which 
 pre-eminently occupies Paul. Of Christ's life and 
 death, the all-importance for us, according to Paul, is 
 that by means of them, " denying ungodliness and 
 worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, 
 and godly;" should be enabled to "bear fruit to 
 God" in "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 57 
 
 goodness, faith, mildness, self-control." 1 Of Christ's 
 life and death the scope was " to redeem us from all 
 iniquity, and make us purely zealous for good works." 
 Paul says by way of preface, that we are to live thus 
 in the actual world which now is, "with the expecta- 
 tion of the appearing of the glory of God and 
 Christ." 3 By nature and habit, and with his full 
 belief that the end of the world was nigh at hand, 
 Paul used these words to mean a Messianic coming 
 and kingdom. Later Christianity has transferred 
 them, as it has transferred so much else of Paul's, 
 to a life beyond the grave, but it has by no means 
 spiritualised them. Paul, as his spiritual growth ad- 
 vanced, spiritualised them more and more ; he came 
 to think, in using them, more and more of a gradual 
 inward transformation of the world by a conformity 
 like Christ's to the will of God, than of a Messianic 
 advent. Yet even then they are always second with 
 him, and not first ; the essence of saving grace is 
 always to make us righteous, to bring us into con- 
 formity with the divine law, to enable us to "bear 
 fruit to God." 
 
 " Jesus Christ gave himself for us that he might 
 redeem us from iniquity." First of all, he rendered 
 an unbroken obedience to the law of the spirit ; he 
 served the spirit of God ; he came, not to do his own 
 will, but the will of God. Now, the law of the 
 spirit makes men one ; it is only by the law in our 
 members that we are many. Secondly, therefore, 
 
 1 Tit. ii. 12 ; Rom. vii. 4 ; Gal. v. 22, 23. 
 2 Tit ii. 14. 3 Ibid. 13. 
 
58 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM, [il. 
 
 Jesus Christ had an unfailing sense of what we have 
 called, using an expressive modern term, the solidarity 
 of men : that it was not God's will that one of his 
 human creatures should perish. Thirdly, Jesus Christ 
 persevered in this uninterrupted obedience to the 
 law of the spirit, in this unfailing sense of human 
 solidarity, even to the death ; though everything 
 befell him which might break the one or tire out the 
 other. Lastly, he had in himself, in all he said and 
 did, that ineffable force of attraction which doubled 
 the virtue of everything said or done by him. 
 
 If ever there was a case in which the wonder-work- 
 ing power of attachment, in a man for whom the 
 moral sympathies and the desire of righteousness 
 were all-powerful, might employ itself and work its 
 wonders, it was here. Paul felt this power penetrate 
 him ; and he felt, also, how by perfectly identifying 
 himself through it with Jesus, and in no other way, 
 could he ever get the confidence and the force to do 
 as Jesus did. He thus found a point in which the 
 mighty world outside man, and the weak world in- 
 side him, seemed to combine for his salvation. The 
 struggling stream of duty, which had not volume 
 enough to bear him to his goal, was suddenly rein- 
 forced by the immense tidal wave of sympathy and 
 emotion. 
 
 To this new and potent influence Paul gave the 
 name of faith. More fully he calls it : " Faith that 
 worketh through love" 1 The word faith points, no 
 doubt, to " coming by hearing," and has possibly a 
 
 1 Gal. v. 6. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 59 
 
 reminiscence, for Paul, of his not having with his own 
 waking eyes, like the original disciples, seen Jesus, 
 and of his special mission being to Gentiles who had 
 not seen Jesus either. But the essential meaning of 
 the word is " power of holding on to the unseen," 
 "fidelity." Other attachments demand fidelity in 
 absence to an object which, at some time or other, 
 nevertheless, has been seen ; this attachment demands 
 fidelity to an object which both is absent and has 
 never been seen by us. It is therefore rightly called 
 not constancy, but faith ; a power, pre-eminently, of 
 holding fast to an unseen power of goodness. Identifying 
 ourselves with Jesus Christ through this attachment 
 we become as he was. We live with his thoughts 
 and feelings, and we participate, therefore, in his 
 freedom from the ruinous law in our members, in his 
 obedience to the saving law of the spirit, in his con- 
 formity to the eternal order, in the joy and peace of 
 his life to God. "The law of the spirit of life in 
 Christ Jesus," says Paul, " freed me from the law of 
 sin and death." 1 This is what is done for us by 
 faith. 
 
 It is evident that some difficulty arises out of 
 Paul's adding to the general sense of the word faith, 
 — a holding fast to an unseen potver of goodness, — a 
 particular sense of his own, — identification tcith Christ. 
 It will at once appear that this faith of Paul's is in 
 truth a specific form of holding fast to an unseen 
 power of goodness ; and that while it can properly be 
 said of Abraham, for instance, that he was justified 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 2. 
 
60 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 by faith, if we take faith in its plain sense of holding 
 fast to an unseen power of goodness, yet it cannot 
 without difficulty and recourse to a strained figure be 
 said of him, if we take faith in Paul's specific sense 
 of identification with Christ. Paul, however, un- 
 doubtedly, having conveyed his new specific sense 
 into the word faith, still uses the word in all cases 
 where, without this specific sense, it was before 
 applicable and usual ; and in this way he often 
 creates ambiguity. Why, it may be asked, does 
 Paul, instead of employing a special term to denote 
 his special meaning, still thus employ the general 
 term faith? We are inclined to think it was from 
 that desire to get for his words and thoughts not only 
 the real but also the apparent sanction and consecra- 
 tion of the Hebrew Scriptures, which we have called 
 his tendency to Judaise. It was written of the 
 founder of Israel, Abraham, that he believed God and 
 it was counted to him for righteousness. The prophet 
 Habakkuk had the famous text : " The just shall live 
 by faith." 1 Jesus, too, had used and sanctioned the 
 use of the word faith to signify cleaving to the unseen 
 God's power of goodness as shown in Christ. 2 Peter 
 and John and the other apostles habitually used the 
 word in the same sense, with the modification intro- 
 duced by Christ's departure. This was enough to 
 make Paul retain for that vital operation, which was 
 the heart of his whole religious system, the name of 
 faith, though he had considerably developed and 
 enlarged the name's usual meaning. Fraught with 
 
 1 Gen. xv. 6 ; Habakkuk ii. 4. 2 Mark xi. 22. 
 
ii.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 61 
 
 this new and developed sense, the term does not 
 always quite well suit the cases to which it was in 
 its old sense, with perfect propriety, applied ; this, 
 however, Paul did not regard. The term applied 
 with undeniable truth, though not with perfect 
 adequacy, to the great spiritual operation whereto he 
 affixed it ; and it was at the same time the name 
 given to the crowning grace of the great father of 
 the Jewish nation, Abraham ; it was the prophet 
 Habakkuk's talismanic and consecrated term, faith. 
 
 In this word faith, as used by St. Paul, 1 we reach 
 a point round which the ceaseless stream of religious 
 exposition and discussion has for ages circled. Even 
 for those who misconceive Paul's line of ideas most 
 completely, faith is so evidently the central point in 
 his system that their thoughts cannot but centre upon 
 it. Puritanism, as is well known, has talked of little 
 else but faith. And the word is of such a nature, 
 that the true clue once lost which Paul has given us 
 to its meaning, every man may put into it almost 
 anything he likes, all the fancies of his superstition or 
 of his fanaticism. To say, therefore, that to have 
 faith in Christ means to be attached to Christ, to 
 embrace Christ, to be identified with Christ, is not 
 enough ; the question is, Jb obe attached to him how , 
 to embrace him hoiv ? 
 
 A favourite expression of popular theology con- 
 
 1 With secondary uses of the word, such as its use with the 
 article, "the faith," in expressions like "the words of the 
 faith," to signify the body of tenets and principles received by 
 believers from the apostle, we need not here concern ourselves. 
 They present no difficulty. 
 
62 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 veys perfectly the popular definition of faith : to rest 
 in the finished ivork of the Saviour. In the scientific 
 language of Protestant theology, to embrace Christ, 
 to have saving faith, is "to give our consent heartily 
 to the covenant of grace, and so to receive the benefit 
 of justification, whereby God pardons all our sins and 
 accepts us as righteous for the righteousness of Christ 
 imputed to us." This is mere theurgy, in which, so 
 far as we have yet gone, we have not found Paul 
 dealing. Wesley, with his genius for godliness, 
 struggled all his life for some deeper and more 
 edifying account of that faith, which he felt working 
 wonders in his own soul, than that it was a hearty 
 consent to the covenant of grace and an acceptance of 
 the benefit of Christ's imputed righteousness. Yet 
 this amiable and gracious spirit, but intellectually 
 slight and shallow compared to Paul, beat his wings 
 in vain. Paul, nevertheless, had solved the problem 
 for him, if only he could have had eyes to see Paul's 
 solution. 
 
 " He that believes in Christ," says Wesley, " dis- 
 cerns spiritual things : he is enabled to taste, see, 
 hear, and feel God." There is nothing practical and 
 solid here. A company of Cornish revivalists will 
 have no difficulty in tasting, seeing, hearing, and 
 feeling God, twenty times over, to-night, and yet may 
 be none the better for it to-morrow morning. When 
 Paul said, In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth 
 anything nor uncircumcision, but faith that worJceth through 
 love; Have faith in Christ ! these words did not mean 
 for him : " Give your hearty belief and consent to 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. G3 
 
 the covenant of grace ; Accept the offered benefit of 
 justification through Christ's imputed righteousness." 
 They did not mean: "Try and discern spiritual 
 things, try and taste, sec, hear, and feel God." They 
 did not mean: "Rest in the finished work of Christ 
 the Saviour. " No, they meant : Die ivith him ! 
 
 The object of this treatise is not religious edifica- 
 tion, but the true criticism of a great and misunder- 
 stood author. Yet it is impossible to be in presence of 
 this Pauline conception of faith without remarking on 
 the incomparable power of edification which it contains. 
 It is indeed a crowning evidence of that piercing 
 practical religious sense which we have attributed to 
 Paul. It is at once mystical and rational ; and it 
 enlists in its service the best forces of both worlds, — 
 the world of reason and morals, and the world of 
 sympathy and emotion. The "world of reason and 
 duty has an excellent clue to action, but wants motive- 
 power ; the world of sympathy and influence has an 
 irresistible force of motive-power, but wants a clue 
 for directing its exertion. The danger of the one 
 world is weariness in well-doing ; the danger of the 
 other is sterile raptures and immoral fanaticism. Paul 
 takes from both worlds what can help him, and leaves 
 what cannot. The elemental power of sympathy and 
 emotion in us, a power which extends beyond the 
 limits of our own will and conscious activity, which 
 we cannot measure and control, and which in each of 
 us differs immensely in force, volume, and mode of 
 manifestation, he calls into full play, and sets it to 
 work with all its strength and in all its variety. But 
 
64 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 one unalterable object is assigned by him to this 
 power : to die ivith Christ to the law of the flesh, to 
 live tvith Christ to the law of the mind. 
 
 This is the doctrine of the necrosis, 1 — Paul's central 
 doctrine, and the doctrine which makes his profound- 
 ness and originality. His repeated and minute lists 
 of practices and feelings to be followed or suppressed, 
 now take a heightened significance. They were the 
 matter by which his faith tried itself and knew itself. 
 Those multitudinous motions of appetite and self-will 
 which reason and conscience disapproved, reason and 
 conscience could yet not govern, and had to yield to 
 them. This, as we have seen, is what drove Paul 
 almost to despair. Well, then, how did Paul's faith, 
 working through love, help him here 1 It enabled him 
 to reinforce duty by affection. In the central need of 
 his nature, the desire to govern these motions of 
 unrighteousness, it enabled him to say : Die to them ! 
 Christ did. If any man be in Christ, said Paul — that 
 is, if any man identifies himself with Christ by attach- 
 ment so that he enters into his feelings and lives 
 with his life, — he is a new creature ; 2 he can do, and 
 does, what Christ did. First, he suffers with him. 
 Christ throughout his life and in his death presented 
 his body a living sacrifice to God ; every self-willed 
 impulse blindly trying to assert itself without respect 
 of the universal order, he died to. You, says Paul to 
 his disciple, are to do the same. Never mind how 
 various and multitudinous the impulses are : impulses 
 to intemperance, concupiscence, covetousness, pride, 
 1 2 Cor. iv. 10. 2 2 Cor. v. 17. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 65 
 
 sloth, envy, malignity, anger, clamour, bitterness, 
 harshness, unmercifulness. Die to them all, and to 
 each as it comes ! Christ did. If you cannot, your 
 attachment, your faith, must be one that goes but a 
 very little way. In an ordinary human attachment, 
 out of love to a woman, out of love to a friend, out 
 of love to a child, you can suppress quite easily, 
 because by sympathy you enter into their feelings, 
 this or that impulse of selfishness which happens to 
 conflict with them, and which hitherto you have 
 obeyed. All impulses of selfishness conflict with 
 Christ's feelings, he showed it by dying to them all ; 
 if you are one with him by faith and sympathy, you 
 can die to them also. Then, secondly, if you thus 
 die with him, you become transformed by the renew- 
 ing of your mind, and rise with him. The law of the 
 spirit of life which is in Christ becomes the law of 
 your life also, and frees you from the law of sin and 
 death. You rise with him to that harmonious con- 
 formity with the real and eternal order, that sense of 
 pleasing God who trieth the hearts, which is life and 
 peace, and which grows more and more till it becomes 
 glory. If you suffer with him, therefore, you shall 
 also be glorified with him. 
 
 The real worth of this mystical conception depends 
 on the fitness of the character and history of Jesus 
 Christ for inspiring such an enthusiasm of attachment 
 and devotion as that which Paul's notion of faith 
 implies. If the character and history are eminently 
 such as to inspire it, then Paul has no doubt found a 
 mighty aid towards the attainment of that righteons- 
 
 VOL. VII. F 
 
66 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 ness of which Jesus Christ's life afforded the admir- 
 able pattern. A great solicitude is always shown by 
 popular Christianity to establish a radical difference 
 between Jesus and a teacher like Socrates. Ordinary 
 theologians establish this difference by transcendental 
 distinctions into which science cannot follow them. 
 But what makes for science the radical difference 
 between Jesus and Socrates, is that such a conception 
 as Paul's would, if applied to Socrates, be out of place 
 and ineffective. Socrates inspired boundless friend- 
 ship and esteem ; but the inspiration of reason and 
 conscience is the one inspiration which comes from 
 him, and which impels us to live righteously as he 
 did. A penetrating enthusiasm of love, sympathy, 
 pity, adoration, reinforcing the inspiration of reason 
 and duty, does not belong to Socrates. With Jesus 
 it is different. On this point it is needless to argue ; 
 history has proved. In the midst of errors the most 
 prosaic, the most immoral, the most unscriptural, con- 
 cerning God, Christ, and righteousness, the immense 
 emotion of love and sympathy inspired by the person 
 and character of Jesus has had to work almost by 
 itself alone for righteousness ; and it has worked 
 wonders. The surpassing religious grandeur of Paul's 
 conception of faith is that it seizes a real salutary 
 emotional force of incalculable magnitude, and rein- 
 forces moral effort with it. 
 
 Paul's mystical conception is not complete without 
 its relation of us to our fellow -men, as well as its 
 relation of us to Jesus Christ. Whoever identifies 
 himself with Christ, identifies himself with Christ's 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 67 
 
 idea of the solidarity of men. The whole race is con- 
 ceived as one body, having to die and rise with Christ, 
 and forming by the joint action of its regenerate 
 members the mystical body of Christ. Hence the 
 truth of that which Bishop Wilson says : " It is not 
 so much our neighbour's interest as our own that we 
 love him." Jesus Christ's life, with which we by 
 faith identify ourselves, is not complete, his aspiration 
 after the eternal order is not satisfied, so long as only 
 Jesus himself follows this order, or only this or that 
 individual amongst us men follows it. The same law ~ 
 of emotion and sympathy, therefore, which prevails 
 in our inward self-discipline, is to prevail in our deal- 
 ings with others. The motions of sin in ourselves 
 we succeed in mortifying, not by saying to ourselves 
 that they are sinful, but by sympathy with Christ 
 in his mortification of them. In like manner, our 
 duties towards our neighbour we perform, not in 
 deference to external commands and prohibitions, 
 but through identifying ourselves with him by sym- 
 pathy with Christ who identified himself with him. 
 Therefore, we owe no man anything but to love one 
 another ; and he who loves his neighbour fulfils the 
 law towards him, because he seeks to do him good 
 and forbears to do him harm just as if he was 
 himself. 
 
 Mr. Lecky cannot see that the command to speak 
 the truth to one's neighbour is a command which has 
 a natural sanction. But according to these Pauline 
 ideas it has a clear natural sanction. For, if my 
 neighbour is merely an extension of myself, deceiving 
 
68 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 my neighbour is the same as deceiving myself ; and 
 than self-deceit there is nothing by nature more 
 baneful. And on this ground Paul puts the injunc- 
 tion. He says : " Speak every man truth to his 
 neighbour, for we are members one of another." 1 
 This direction to identify ourselves in Jesus Christ 
 with our neighbours is hard and startling, no doubt, 
 like the direction to identify ourselves with Jesus and 
 die with him. But it is also, like that direction, in- 
 spiring ; and not, like a set of mere mechanical com- 
 mands and prohibitions, lifeless and unaiding. It 
 shows a profound practical religious sense, and rests 
 upon facts of human nature which experience can 
 follow and appreciate. 
 
 The three essential terms of Pauline theology are 
 not, therefore, as popular theology makes them : 
 calling, justification, sanctification. They are rather 
 these : dying with Christ, resurrection from the dead, 
 growing into Christ? The order in which these terms 
 are placed indicates, what we have already pointed 
 out elsewhere, the true Pauline sense of the expres- 
 sion, resurrection from the dead. In Paul's ideas the 
 expression has no essential connection with physical 
 death. It is true, popular theology connects it with 
 this almost exclusively, and regards any other use of 
 it as purely figurative and secondary. For popular 
 theology, Christ's resurrection is his bodily resurrec- 
 tion on earth after his physical death on the cross ; 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 25. 
 
 2 airodaveiv criV Xptcrry, Col. ii. 20 ; i^avdaraais iK vek'pQv, 
 Phil. iii. 11 ; atii-yc-is els Xpiar6v, Eph. iv. 15. 
 
ii.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 69 
 
 the believer's resurrection is his bodily resurrection 
 in a future world, the golden city of our hymns and 
 of the Apocalypse. For this theology, the force of 
 Christ's resurrection is that it is a miracle which 
 guarantees the promised future miracle of our own 
 resurrection. It is a common remark with Biblical 
 critics, even with able and candid Biblical critics, 
 that Christ's resurrection, in this sense of a physical 
 miracle, is the central object of Paul's thoughts and 
 the foundation of all his theology. Nay, the pre- 
 occupation with this idea has altered the very text of 
 our documents ; so that whereas Paul wrote, " Christ 
 died and lived," we read, " Christ died and rose again 
 and revived." 1 But whoever has carefully followed 
 Paul's line of thought as we have endeavoured to 
 trace it, will see that in his mature theology, as the 
 Epistle to the Romans exhibits it, it cannot be this 
 physical and miraculous aspect of the resurrection 
 which holds the first place in his mind; for under 
 this aspect the resurrection does not fit in with the 
 ideas which he is developing. 
 
 Not for a moment do we deny that in Paul's 
 earlier theology, and notably in the Epistles to the 
 Thessalonians and Corinthians, the physical and 
 miraculous aspect of the resurrection, both Christ's 
 and the believer's, is primary and predominant. Not 
 for a moment do we deny that to the very end of his 
 life, after the Epistle to the Romans, after the Epistle 
 to the Philippians, if he had been asked whether he 
 held the doctrine of the resurrection in the physical 
 
 1 Rom. xiv. 9. 
 
70 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 and miraculous sense, as well as in his own spiritual 
 and mystical sense, he would have replied with entire 
 conviction that he did. Very likely it would have 
 been impossible to him to imagine his theology with- 
 out it. But : — 
 
 "Below the surface-stream, shallow and light, 
 Of what we say we feel — below the stream, 
 As light, of what we think we feel — there flows 
 With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep, 
 The central stream of what we feel indeed ; " 
 
 and by this alone are we truly characterised. Paul's 
 originality lies in the effort to find a moral side and 
 significance for all the processes, however mystical, of 
 the religious life, with a view of strengthening, in 
 this way, their hold upon us and their command 
 of all our nature. Sooner or later he was sure to be 
 drawn to treat the process of resurrection with this 
 endeavour. He did so treat it ; and what is original 
 and essential in him is his doing so. 
 
 Paul's conception of life and death inevitably came 
 to govern his conception of resurrection. What in- 
 deed, as we have seen, is for Paul life, and what is 
 death ? Not the ordinary physical life and death. 
 Death, for him, is living after the flesh, obedience to 
 sin ; life is mortifying by the spirit the deeds of the 
 flesh, obedience to righteousness. Resurrection, in its 
 essential sense, is therefore for Paul, the rising, within 
 the sphere of our visible earthly existence, from death 
 in this sense to life in this sense. It is indubitable 
 that, so far as the human believer's resurrection is 
 concerned, this is so. Else, how could Paul say to 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 71 
 
 the Colossians (to take only one out of a hundred 
 clear texts showing the same thing) : " If ye then he 
 risen with Christ, seek the things that are above." 1 
 But when Paul repeats again and again, in the Epistle 
 to the Eomans, that the matter of our faith is " that 
 God raised Jesus from the dead," the essential mean- 
 ing of this resurrection, also, is just the same. Real 
 life for Paul begins with the mystical death which 
 frees us from the dominion of the external shalls and 
 shall nois of the law. 2 From the moment, therefore, 
 that Jesus Christ was content to do God's will, he 
 died. Paul's point is, that Jesus Christ in his earthly 
 existence obeyed the law of the spirit, and bore fruit 
 to God ; and that the believer should, in his earthly 
 existence, do the same. That Christ " died to sin," 
 that he " pleased not himself," and that, consequently, 
 through all his life here, he was risen and living to 
 God, is what occupies Paul. Christ's physical resur- 
 rection after he was crucified is neither in point of 
 time nor in point of character the resurrection on 
 which Paul, following his essential line of thought, 
 wanted to fix the believer's mind. The resurrection 
 Paul was striving after for himself and others was a 
 resurrection noiv, and a resurrection to righteousness. 3 
 
 1 Col. iii. 1. 2 See Rom. vii. 1-6. 
 
 a It has been said that this was the error of Hyrnenpeus and 
 Philetas (2 Tim. ii. 17). It might be rejoined, with much 
 plausibility, that their error was the error of popular theology, 
 the fixing the attention on the past miracle of Christ's physical 
 resurrection, and losing sight of the continuing miracle of the 
 Christian's spiritual resurrection. Probably, however, Hymen- 
 seus and Philetas controverted some of Paul's tenets respecting 
 the approaching Messianic advent and the resurrection then to 
 
72 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [11. 
 
 But Jesus Christ's obeying God and not pleasing 
 himself culminated in his death on the cross. All 
 through his career, indeed, Jesus Christ pleased not 
 himself and died to sin. But so smoothly and so in- 
 evitably, as we have before said, did he always appear 
 to follow that law of the moral order, which to us 
 it costs such effort to obey, that only in the very 
 wrench and pressure of his violent death did any pain 
 of dying, any conflict between the law of the flesh 
 and the law of the spirit, in Christ become visible. 
 But the Christian needs to find in Christ's dying to 
 sin a fellowship of suffering and a conformity of death. 
 Well, then, the point of Christ's trial and crucifixion 
 is the only point in his career where the Christian 
 can palpably touch what he seeks. In all dying there 
 is struggle and weakness ; in our dying to sin there 
 is great struggle and weakness. But only jn his 
 crucifixion can we see, in Jesus Christ, a place for 
 struggle and weakness. 1 That self-sacrificing obedi- 
 ence of Jesus Christ's whole life, which was summed 
 up in this great, final act of his crucifixion, and which 
 is palpable as sacrifice, obedience, dolorous effort, only 
 there, is, therefore, constantly regarded by Paul under 
 the figure of this final act, as is also the believer's 
 conformity to Christ's obedience. The believer is 
 
 take place (1 Thess. iv. 13-17). If they rejected these tenets, 
 they were right where Paul was wrong. But if they disputed 
 and separated on account of them, they were heretics ; that is, 
 they had their hearts and minds full of a speculative contention, 
 instead of their proper chief-concern, — putting on the new man, 
 and the imitation of Christ. 
 
 1 i<TTavpwOr) e£ avdevelas, 2 Cor. xiii. 4. 
 
n.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 73 
 
 crucified with Christ when he mortifies by the spirit 
 the deeds of unrighteousness ; Christ was crucified 
 when he pleased not himself, and came to do not his 
 own will but God's. 
 
 It is the same with life as with death ; it turns on 
 no physical event, but on that central concern of 
 Paul's thoughts, righteousness. If we have the spirit 
 of Christ, we live, as he did, by the spirit, " serve the 
 spirit of God," 1 and follow the eternal order. The 
 spirit of God, the spirit of Christ is the same, — the 
 one eternal moral order. If we are led by the spirit 
 of God we are the sons of God, and share with Christ 
 the heritage of the sons of God, — eternal life, peace, 
 felicity, glory. The spirit, therefore, is life because of 
 righteousness. And when, through identifying our- 
 selves with Christ, we reach Christ's righteousness, 
 then eternal life begins for us; — a continuous and 
 ascending life, for the eternal order never dies, and 
 the more Ave transform ourselves into servants of 
 righteousness and organs of the eternal order, the 
 more we are and desire to be this eternal order and 
 nothing else. Even in this life we are " seated in 
 heavenly places," 2 as Christ is ; so entirely, for Paul, 
 is righteousness the true life and the true heaven. 
 But the transformation cannot be completed here ; 
 the physical death is regarded by Paul as a stage at 
 which it ceases to be impeded. However, at this 
 stage we quit, as he himself says, the ground of ex- 
 perience and enter upon the ground of hope. But, 
 
 1 According to the true reading in Phil. iii. 3. 
 2 Eph. ii. 6. 
 
74 ST. PAUL AND PEOTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 by a sublime analogy, he fetches from the travail of 
 the whole universe proof of the necessity and bene- 
 ficence of the law of transformation. Jesus Christ 
 entered into his glory when he had made his physical 
 death itself a crowning witness to his obedience to 
 righteousness ; we, in like manner, within the limits 
 of this earthly life and before we have yet persevered 
 to the end, must not look for full adoption, for the 
 glorious revelation in us of the sons of God. 1 
 
 That Paul, as we have said, accepted the physical 
 miracle of Christ's resurrection and ascension as a 
 part of the signs and wonders which accompanied 
 Christianity, there can be no doubt. Just in the 
 same manner he accepted the eschatology, as it is 
 called, of his nation, — their doctrine of the final 
 things and of the summons by a trumpet in the sky 
 to judgment ; he accepted Satan, hierarchies of angels, 
 and an approaching end of the world. What we deny 
 is, that his acceptance of the former gives to his 
 teaching its essential characters, any more than his 
 acceptance of the latter. We should but be continu- 
 ing, with strict logical development, Paul's essential 
 line of thought, if we said that the true ascension and 
 glorified reign of Christ was the triumph and reign 
 of his spirit, of his real life, far more operative after 
 his death on the cross than before it ; and that in 
 this sense, most truly, he and all who persevere to 
 the end as he did are " sown in weakness but raised 
 in power." Paul himself, however, did not distinctly 
 continue his thought thus, and neither will we do so 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 18-25. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 75 
 
 for him. How far Paul himself knew that he had 
 gone in his irresistible bent to find, for each of the 
 data of his religion, that side of moral and spiritual 
 significance which, as a mere sign and wonder, it had 
 not and could not have, — what data he himself was 
 conscious of having transferred, through following this 
 bent, from the first rank in importance to the second, 
 — we cannot know with any certainty. That the 
 bent existed, that Paul felt it existed, and that it 
 establishes a wide difference between the earliest 
 epistles and the latest, is beyond question. Already, 
 in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, he declares 
 that, " though he had known Christ after the flesh, 
 yet henceforth he knew him so no more ; " l and in 
 the Epistle to the Romans, shortly afterwards, he 
 rejects the notion of dwelling on the miraculous 
 Christ, on the descent into hell and on the ascent 
 into heaven, and fixes the believer's attention solely 
 on the faith of Christ and on the effects produced by 
 an acquaintance with it. 2 In the same Epistle, in 
 like manner, the kingdom of God, of which to the 
 Thessalonians he described the advent in such mater- 
 ialising and popularly Judaic language, has become 
 " righteousness, and peace, and joy in the holy 
 spirit." 3 
 
 These ideas, we repeat, may never have excluded 
 others, which absorbed the most part of Paul's con- 
 temporaries as they absorb popular religion at this 
 day. To popular religion, the real kingdom of God 
 is the New Jerusalem with its jaspers and emeralds ; 
 
 1 2 Cor. v. 16. 2 Rom. x. 6-10. 3 Rom. xiv. 17. 
 
76 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 righteousness and peace and joy are only the king- 
 dom of God figuratively. The real sitting in heavenly 
 places is the sitting on thrones in a land of pure de- 
 light after we are dead ; serving the spirit of God is 
 only sitting in heavenly places figuratively. Science 
 exactly reverses this process. For science, the spiritual 
 notion is the real one, the material notion is figurative. 
 The astonishing greatness of Paul is, that, coming 
 when and where and whence he did, he yet grasped 
 the spiritual notion, if not exclusively and fully, yet 
 firmly and predominantly ; more and more predomin- 
 antly through all the last years of his life. And 
 what makes him original and himself, is not what he 
 shares with his contemporaries and with modern 
 popular religion, but this which he develops of his 
 own ; and this which he develops of his own is just 
 of a nature to make his religion a theology instead of 
 a theurgy, and at bottom a scientific instead of a non- 
 scientific structure. "Die and come to life!" says 
 Goethe, — an unsuspected witness, assuredly, to the 
 psychological and scientific profoundness of Paul's 
 conception of life and death: — "Die and come to 
 life ! for, so long as this is not accomplished, thou 
 art but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom." 1 
 
 The three cardinal points in Paul's theology are 
 not therefore, we repeat, those commonly assigned 
 by Puritanism, calling, justification, sanctification ; but 
 they are these : dying with Christ, resurrection from 
 
 1 ' ' Stirb und werde ! 
 
 Demi so lang du. das niclit hast, 
 Bist du nur ein triiber Gast 
 Auf der dunkeln Erde." 
 
*T*7 
 
 II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 77 
 
 the dead, growing into Christ. And we will venture, 
 moreover, to affirm that the more the Epistle to the 
 Romans is read and re-read with a clear mind, the 
 more will the conviction strengthen, that the sense 
 indicated by the order in which we here class the 
 second main term of Paul's conception, is the essential 
 sense which Paul himself attaches to this term, in 
 every single place where in that Epistle he has used 
 it. Not tradition and not theory, but a simple im- 
 partial study of the development of Paul's central 
 line of thought, brings us to the conclusion, that 
 from the very outset of the Epistle, where Paul 
 speaks of Christ as " declared to be the son of God 
 with power according to the spirit of holiness by 
 resurrection from the dead," 1 to the very end, the 
 essential sense in which Paul uses the term resurrection 
 is that of a rising, in this visible earthly existence, 
 from the death of obedience to blind selfish impulse, 
 to the life of obedience to the eternal moral order ; — 
 in Christ's case first, as the pattern for us to follow ; 
 in the believer's case afterwards, as following Christ's 
 pattern through identifying himself with him. 
 
 We have thus reached Paul's fundamental concep- 
 tion without even a glimpse of the fundamental con- 
 ceptions of Puritanism, which, nevertheless, professes 
 to have learnt its doctrine from St. Paul and from 
 his Epistle to the Romans. Once, for a moment, the 
 term faith brought us in contact with the doctrine of 
 Puritanism, but only to see that the essential sense 
 given to this word by Paul Puritanism had missed 
 
 1 Bom. i. 4. 
 
78 ST. PAUL AND PEOTESTANTISM. [it. 
 
 entirely. Other parts, then, of the Epistle to the 
 Romans than those by which we have been occupied 
 must have chiefly fixed the attention of Puritanism. 
 And so it has in truth been. Yet the parts of the 
 Epistle to the Romans that have occupied us are un- 
 doubtedly the parts which not our own theories and 
 inclinations, — for we have approached the matter 
 without any, — but an impartial criticism of Paul's 
 real line of thought, must elevate as the most import- 
 ant. If a somewhat pedantic form of expression may 
 be forgiven for the sake of clearness, we may say 
 that of the eleven first chapters of the Epistle to the 
 Romans, — the chapters which convey Paul's theology, 
 though not, as we have seen, with any scholastic pur- 
 pose or in any formal scientific mode of exposition, — 
 of these eleven chapters, the first, second, and third 
 are, in a scale of importance fixed by a scientific 
 criticism of Paul's line of thought, sub-primary ; the 
 fourth and fifth are secondary ; the sixth and eighth 
 are primary ; the seventh chapter is sub-primary ; the 
 ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters are secondary. 
 Furthermore, to the contents of the separate chapters 
 themselves this scale must be carried on, so far as to 
 mark that of the two great primary chapters, the 
 sixth and the eighth, the eighth is primary down 
 only to the end of the twenty -eighth verse ; from 
 thence to the end it is, however eloquent, yet for 
 the purpose of a scientific criticism of Paul's essential 
 theology, only secondary. 
 
 The first chapter is to the Gentiles. Its purport 
 is : You have not righteousness. The second is to 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 79 
 
 the Jews ; and its purport is : No more have you, 
 though you think you have. The third chapter 
 announces faith in Christ as the one source of right- 
 eousness for all men. The fourth chapter gives to 
 the notion of righteousness through faith the sanction 
 of the Old Testament and of the history of Abraham. 
 The fifth insists on the causes for thankfulness and 
 exultation in the boon of righteousness through faith 
 in Christ ; and applies illustratively, with this design, 
 the history of Adam. The sixth chapter comes to 
 the all -important question: "What is that faith in 
 Christ which I, Paul, mean 1 " — and answers it. The 
 seventh illustrates and explains the answer. But the 
 eighth, down to the end of the twenty-eighth verse, 
 develops and completes the answer. The rest of the 
 eighth chapter expresses the sense of safety and 
 gratitude which the solution is fitted to inspire. The 
 ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters uphold the second 
 chapter's thesis, — so hard to a Jew, so easy to us, — 
 that righteousness is not by the Jewish law; but 
 dwell with hope and joy on a final result of things 
 which is to be favourable to Israel. 
 
 We shall be pardoned this somewhat formal analysis 
 in consideration of the clearness with which it enables 
 us to survey the Puritan scheme of original sin, pre- 
 destination, and justification. The historical trans- 
 gression of Adam occupies, it will be observed, in 
 Paul's ideas by no means the primary, fundamental, 
 all -important place which it holds in the ideas of 
 Puritanism. "This" (the transgression of Adam) 
 " is our original sin, the bitter root of all our actual 
 
80 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 transgressions in thought, word, and deed." Ah, no! 
 Paul did not go to the Book of Genesis to get the 
 real testimony about sin. He went to experience for 
 it. "I see," he says, " a law in my members fighting 
 against the law of my mind, and bringing me into 
 captivity." 1 This is the essential testimony respect- 
 ing the rise of sin to Paul, — this rise of it in his own 
 heart and in the heart of all the men who hear him. 
 At quite a later stage in his conception of the religious 
 life, in quite a subordinate capacity, and for the mere 
 purpose of illustration, comes in the allusion to Adam 
 and to what is called original sin. Paul's desire for 
 righteousness has carried him to Christ and to the 
 conception of the righteousness which is of God by 
 faith, and he is expressing his gratitude, delight, 
 wonder, at the boon he has discovered. For the pur- 
 pose of exalting it he reverts to the well-known story 
 of Adam. It cannot even be said that Paul Judaises 
 in his use here of this story ; so entirely does he sub- 
 ordinate it to his purpose of illustration, using it just 
 as he might have used it had he believed, which un- 
 doubtedly he did not, that it was merely a symbolical 
 legend, having the advantage of being perfectly 
 familiar to himself and his hearers. " Think," he 
 says, "how in Adam's fall one man's one transgression 
 involved all men in punishment; then estimate the 
 blessedness of our boon in Christ, where one man's 
 one righteousness involves a world of transgressors 
 in blessing ! " 2 This is not a scientific doctrine of 
 corruption inherited through Adam's fall ; it is a 
 
 1 Rom. vii. 23. 2 Rom. v. 12-21. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 81 
 
 rhetorical use of Adam's fall in a passing allusion 
 to it. 
 
 We come to predestination. We have seen how 
 strong was Paul's consciousness of that power, not 
 ourselves, in which we live and move and have our 
 being. The sense of life, peace, and joy, which 
 comes through identification with Christ, brings with 
 it a deep and grateful consciousness that this sense 
 is none of our own getting and making. No, it is 
 grace, it is the free gift of God, who gives abundantly 
 beyond all that we ask or think, and calls things that 
 are not as though they were. "It is not of him that 
 willeth or of him that runneth, but of God that 
 showeth mercy." 1 As moral agents, for whom alone 
 exist all the predicaments of merit and demerit, praise 
 and blame, effort and failure, vice and virtue, we are 
 impotent and lost; — we are saved through that in 
 us which is passive and involuntary ; we are saved 
 through our affections, it is as beings acted upon and 
 influenced that we are saved ! Well might Paul cry 
 out, as this mystical but profound and beneficent 
 conception filled his soul : "All things work together 
 for good to them that love God, to them who are the 
 called according to his purpose." 2 Well might he 
 say, in the gratitude which cannot find words enough 
 to express its sense of boundless favour, that those 
 who reached peace with God through identification 
 with Christ were vessels of mercy, marked from end- 
 less ages ; that they had been foreknown, predesti- 
 nated, called, justified, glorified. 
 
 1 Rom. ix. 16. Rom. viii. 28. 
 
 VOL. VII. G 
 
82 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 It may be regretted, for the sake of the clear 
 understanding of his essential doctrine, that Paul 
 did not stop here. It might seem as if the word 
 "prothesis," purpose, lured him on into speculative 
 mazes, and involved him, at last, in an embarrass- 
 ment, from which he impatiently tore himself by the 
 harsh and unedifying image of the clay and the potter. 
 But this is not so. These allurements of speculation, 
 which have been fatal to so many of his interpreters, 
 never mastered Paul. He was led into difficulty by 
 the tendency which we have already noticed as making 
 his real imperfection both as a thinker and as a writer, 
 — the tendency to Judaise. 
 
 Already, in the fourth chapter, this tendency had 
 led him to seem to rest his doctrine of justification 
 by faith upon the case of Abraham, whereas, in truth, 
 it needs all the goodwill in the world, and some effort 
 of ingenuity, even to bring the case of Abraham within 
 the operation of this doctrine. That righteousness is 
 life, that all men by themselves fail of righteousness, 
 that only through identification with Jesus Christ 
 can they reach it, — these propositions, for us at any 
 rate, prove themselves much better than they are 
 proved by the thesis that Abraham in old age believed 
 God's promise that his seed should yet be as the stars 
 for multitude, and that this was counted to him for 
 righteousness. The sanction thus apparently given 
 to the idea that faith is a mere belief, or opinion of 
 the mind, has put thousands of Paul's readers on a 
 false track. 
 
 But Paul's Judaising did not end here. To estab- 
 
ii. J ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 83 
 
 lish his doctrine of righteousness by faith, he had to 
 eradicate the notion that his people were specially 
 privileged, and that, having the Mosaic law, they did 
 not need anything farther. For us, this one verse of 
 the tenth chapter : There is no difference between Jew 
 and Gi'eek, for it is the same Lord of all, who is rich to 
 all that call upon him, — and these four words of 
 another verse : For righteousness, heart-faith necessary ! 
 effect far more for Paul's object than his three chap- 
 ters bristling with Old Testament quotations. By 
 quotation, however, he was to proceed, in order to 
 invest his doctrine with the talismanic virtues of a 
 verbal sanction from the law and the prophets. He 
 shows, therefore, that the law and the prophets had 
 said that only a remnant, an elect remnant, of Israel 
 should be saved, and that the rest should be blinded. 
 But to say that peace with God through Jesus Christ 
 inspires such an abounding sense of gratitude, and of 
 its not being our work, that we can only speak of 
 ourselves as called and chosen to it, is one thing \ in 
 so speaking, we are on the ground of personal ex- 
 perience. To say, on the other hand, that God has 
 blinded and reprobated other men, so that they shall 
 not reach this blessing, is to quit the ground of per- 
 sonal experience, and to begin employing the magni- 
 fied and non-natural man in the next street. We 
 then require, in order to account for his proceedings, 
 such an analogy as that of the clay and the potter. 
 
 This is Calvinism, and St. Paul undoubtedly falls 
 into it. But the important thing to remark is, that 
 this Calvinism, which with the Calvinist is primary, 
 
84 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. . [n. 
 
 is with Paul secondary, or even less than secondary. 
 What with Calvinists is their fundamental idea, the 
 centre of their theology, is for Paul an idea added 
 to his central ideas, and extraneous to them ; brought 
 in incidentally, and due to the necessities of a bad 
 mode of recommending and enforcing his thesis. It 
 is as if Newton had introduced into his exposition of 
 the law of gravitation an incidental remark, perhaps 
 erroneous, about light or colours ; and we were then 
 to make this remark the head and front of Newton's 
 law. The theological idea of reprobation was an idea 
 of Jewish theology as of ours, an idea familiar to Paul 
 and a part of his training, an idea which probably 
 he never consciously abandoned. But its complete 
 secondariness in him is clearly established by other 
 considerations than those which we have drawn from 
 the place and manner of his introduction of it. The 
 very phrase about the clay and the potter is not Paul's 
 own ; he does but repeat a stock theological figure. 
 Isaiah had said : "0 Lord, we are the clay, and thou 
 our potter, and we are all the work of thy hand." 1 
 Jeremiah had said, in the Lord's name, to Israel : 
 " Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye 
 in mine hand, O house of Israel." 2 And the son of 
 Sirach comes yet nearer to Paul's very words : " As 
 the clay is in the potter's hand to fashion it at his 
 pleasure, so man is in the hand of him that made 
 him, to render to them as liketh him best." 3 Is 
 an original man's essential, characteristic idea, that 
 
 ] Isaiah lxiv. 8. 2 Jeremiah xviii. 6. 
 
 3 Ecclesiasticus xxxiii. 13. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 85 
 
 which he adopts thus bodily from some one else? 
 But take Paul's truly essential idea. "We a^e buried 
 with Christ through baptism into death, that like as 
 he was raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
 Father, even so we also shall walk in newness of life." 1 
 Did Jeremiah say that 1 Is any one the author of it 
 except Paul? Then there should Calvinism have 
 looked for Paul's secret, and not in the commonplace 
 about the potter and the vessels of wrath. A common- 
 place which is so entirely a commonplace to him, that 
 he contradicts it even while he is Judaising ; for in 
 the very batch of chapters we are discussing he says : 
 " Whosoever shall . call upon the name of the Lord 
 shall be saved." 2 Still more clear is, on this point, 
 his real mind, when he is not Judaising : " God is 
 the saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." 3 
 And anything, finally, which might seem dangerous 
 in the grateful sense of a calling, choosing, and lead- 
 ing by eternal goodness, — a notion as natural as the 
 Calvinistic doctrine of predestination is monstrous, — 
 Paul abundantly supplies in more than one striking 
 passage ; as, for instance, in that incomparable third 
 chapter of the Philippians (from which, and from the 
 sixth and eighth chapters of the Romans, Paul's whole 
 theology, if all his other writings were lost, might be 
 reconstructed), where he expresses his humble con- 
 sciousness that the mystical resurrection which is his 
 aim, glory, and salvation, he does not yet, and cannot, 
 completely attain. 
 
 The grand doctrine, then, which Calvinistic Puri- 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 4. 2 Rom. x. 13. 3 1 Tim. iv. 10 
 
86 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 tanism has gathered from Paul, turns out to be a 
 secondary notion of his, which he himself, too, has 
 contradicted or corrected. But, at any rate, " Christ 
 meritoriously obtained eternal redemption for us." 
 " If there be anything," the quarterly organ of Puri- 
 tanism has lately told us in its hundredth number, 
 " that human experience has made certain, it is that 
 man can never outgrow his necessity for the great 
 truths and provisions of the Incarnation and the sacri- 
 ficial Atonement of the Divine Son of God." God, 
 his justice being satisfied by Christ's bearing accord- 
 ing to compact our guilt and dying in our stead, is 
 appeased and set free to exercise towards us his 
 mercy, and to justify and sanctify us in consideration 
 of Christ's righteousness imputed to us, if we give 
 our hearty belief and consent to the satisfaction thus 
 made. This hearty belief being given, " we rest," to 
 use the consecrated expression already quoted, "in 
 the finished work of a Saviour." This doctrine of 
 imputed righteousness is now, as predestination 
 formerly was, the favourite thesis of popular Pro- 
 testant theology. And, like the doctrine of pre- 
 destination, it professes to be specially derived from 
 St. Paul. 
 
 But whoever has followed attentively the main 
 line of St. Paul's theology, as we have tried to show 
 it, will see at once that in St. Paul's essential ideas 
 this popular notion of a substitution, and appease- 
 ment, and imputation of alien merit, has no place. 
 Paul knows nothing of a sacrificial atonement ; what 
 Paul knows of is a reconciling sacrifice. The true 
 
IT.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 87 
 
 substitution, for Paul, is not the substitution of Jesus 
 Christ in men's stead as victim on the cross to God's 
 offended justice ; it is the substitution by which the 
 believer, in his own person, repeats Jesus Christ's 
 dying to sin. Paul says, in real truth, to our Puri- 
 tans with their magical and mechanical salvation, 
 just what he said to the men of circumcision : " If I 
 preach resting in the finished work of a Saviour, why 
 am I yet persecuted ? why do I die daily ? then is the 
 stumbling-block of the cross annulled} That hard, that 
 well-nigh impossible doctrine, that our whole course 
 must be a crucifixion and a resurrection, even as 
 Christ's whole course was a crucifixion and a resurrec- 
 tion, becomes superfluous. Yet this is my central 
 doctrine." 
 
 The notion of God as a magnified and non-natural 
 man, appeased by a sacrifice and remitting in con- 
 sideration of it his wrath against those who had 
 offended him, — this notion of God, which science 
 repels, was equally repelled, in spite of all that his 
 nation, time, and training had in them to favour it, 
 by the profound religious sense of Paul. In none of 
 his epistles is the reconciling work of Christ really 
 presented under this aspect. One great epistle there 
 is, however, which does apparently present it under 
 this aspect, — the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
 Paul's phraseology, and even the central idea 
 which he conveys in that phraseology, were evidently 
 well known to the writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews. Nay, if we merely sought to prove a 
 
 1 Gal. v. 2. 
 
88 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 thesis, rather than to ascertain the real bearing of the 
 documents we canvas, we should have no difficulty in 
 making it appear, by texts taken from the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, that the doctrine of this epistle, no less 
 than the doctrine of the Epistle to the Eomans, 
 differs entirely from the common doctrine of Puri- 
 tanism. This, however, we shall by no means do ; 
 because it is our honest opinion that the popular 
 doctrine of " the sacrificial Atonement of the Divine 
 Son of God " derives, if not a real, yet at any rate a 
 strong apparent sanction from the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews. Even supposing, what is probably true, 
 that the popular doctrine is really the doctrine neither 
 of the one epistle nor of the other, yet it must be 
 confessed that while it is the reader's fault, — a fault 
 due to his fixed prepossessions, and to his own want 
 of penetration, — if he gets the popular doctrine out 
 of the Epistle to the Romans, it is on the other hand 
 the writer's fault and no longer the reader's if out of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews he gets the popular 
 doctrine. For the author of that epistle is, if not 
 subjugated, yet at least preponderantly occupied by 
 the idea of the Jewish system of sacrifices, and of the 
 analogies to Christ's sacrifice which are furnished by 
 that system. 
 
 If other proof were wanting, this alone would 
 make it impossible that the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 should be Paul's ; and indeed of all the epistles which 
 bear his name, it is the only one which we may not, 
 perhaps, in spite of the hesitation caused by grave 
 difficulties, be finally content to leave in considerable 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 89 
 
 part to him. 1 Luther's conjecture, which ascribes to 
 Apollos the Epistle to the Hebrews, derives corrobo- 
 ration from the one account of Apollos which we have ; 
 that "he was an eloquent man and mighty in the 
 Scriptures." The Epistle to the Hebrews is just such 
 a performance as might naturally have come from 
 an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures ; in 
 whom the intelligence, and the powers of combining, 
 type-finding, and expounding, somewhat dominated 
 the religious perceptions. The Epistle to the 
 Hebrews is full of beauty and power ; and what may 
 be called the exterior conduct of its argument is as 
 able and satisfying as Paul's exterior conduct of his 
 argument is generally embarrassed. Its details are 
 full of what is edifying ; but its apparent central con- 
 ception of Christ's death, as a perfect sacrifice which 
 consummated the imperfect sacrifices of the Jewish 
 
 1 Considerations drawn from date, place, the use of single 
 words, the development of a church organisation, the develop- 
 ment of an ascetic system, are not enough to make us wholly 
 take away certain epistles from St. Paul. The only decisive 
 evidence, for this purpose, is that internal evidence furnished 
 by the whole body of the thoughts and style of an epistle ; and 
 this evidence that Paul was not its author the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews furnishes. From the like evidence, the Apocalypse is 
 clearly shown to be not by the author of the Fourth Gospel. 
 This clear evidence against the tradition which assigns them to 
 St. Paul, the Epistles to Timothy and Titus do not offer. The 
 serious ground of difficulty as to these epistles will to the genuine 
 critic be, that much in them fails to produce that peculiarly 
 searching effect on the reader, which it is in general character- 
 istic of Paul's own real work to exercise. But they abound with 
 Pauline things, and are, in any case, written by an excellent 
 man, and in an excellent and large spirit. 
 
90 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 law, is a mere notion of the understanding, and is not 
 a religious idea. Turn it which way we will, the 
 notion of appeasement of an offended God by vicarious 
 sacrifice, which the Epistle to the Hebrews apparently 
 sanctions, will never truly speak to the religious sense, 
 or bear fruit for true religion. It is no blame to 
 Apollos if he was somewhat overpowered by this 
 notion, for the whole world was full of it, up to his 
 time, in his time, and since his time ; and it has 
 driven theologians before it like sheep. The wonder 
 is, not that Apollos should have adopted it, but 
 that Paul should have been enabled, through the in- 
 comparable power and energy of religious percep- 
 tion informing his intellectual perception, in reality 
 to put it aside. Figures drawn from the dominant 
 notion of sacrificial appeasement he used, for the 
 notion has so saturated the imagination and language 
 of humanity that its figures pass naturally and irre- 
 sistibly into all our speech. Popular Puritanism 
 consists of the apparent doctrine from the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, set forth with Paul's figures. But the 
 doctrine itself Paul had really put aside, and had 
 substituted for it a better. 
 
 The term sacrifice, in men's natural use of it, con- 
 tains three notions : the notion of winning the favour 
 or buying off the wrath of a powerful being by giving 
 him something precious ; the notion of parting with 
 something naturally precious; and the notion of 
 expiation, not now in the sense of buying off wrath 
 or satisfying a claim, but of suffering in that wherein 
 we have sinned. The first notion is, at bottom, merely 
 
IT.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 91 
 
 superstitious, and belongs to the ignorant and fear- 
 ridden childhood of humanity; it is the main element, 
 however, in the Puritan conception of justification. 
 The second notion explains itself; it is the main 
 element in the Pauline conception of justification. 
 Jesus parted Avith what, to men in general, is the 
 most precious of things, — individual self and selfish 
 ness; he pleased not himself, obeyed the spirit of 
 God, died to sin and to the law in our members, con- 
 summated upon the cross this death ; here is Paul's 
 essential notion of Christ's sacrifice. 
 
 The third notion may easily be misdealt with, but 
 it has a profound truth; in Paul's conception of justi- 
 fication there is much of it. In some way or other, 
 he who would "cease from sin" must nearly always 
 "suffer in the flesh." It is found to be true, that 
 "without shedding of blood is no remission." "If 
 you can be good with pleasure," says Bishop Wilson 
 with his genius of practical religious sense, " God does 
 not envy you your joy ; but such is our corruption, 
 that every man cannot be so." The substantial basis 
 of the notion of expiation, so far as we ourselves are 
 concerned, is the bitter experience that the habit of 
 wrong, of blindly obeying selfish impulse, so affects 
 our temper and powers, that to withstand selfish 
 impulse, to do right, when the sense of right awakens 
 in us, requires an effort out of all proportion to the 
 actual present emergency. We have not only the 
 difficulty of the present act in itself, we have the 
 resistance of all our past ; fire and the knife, cautery 
 and amputation, are often necessary in order to induce 
 
92 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 a vital action, which, if it were not for our corrupting 
 past, we might have obtained from the natural health- 
 ful vigour of our moral organs. This is the real basis 
 of our personal sense of the need of expiating, and 
 thus it is that man expiates. 
 
 Not so the just, who is man's ideal. He has no 
 indurated habit of wrong, no perverse temper, no 
 enfeebled powers, no resisting past, no spiritual organs 
 gangrened, no need of the knife and fire ; smoothly 
 and inevitably he follows the eternal order, and here- 
 to belongs happiness. What sins, then, has the just 
 to expiate ? — ours. In truth, men's habitual unright- 
 eousness, their hard and careless breaking of the 
 moral law, do so tend to reduce and impair the stand- 
 ard of goodness, that, in order to keep this standard 
 pure and unimpaired, the righteous must actually 
 labour and suffer far more than would be necessary if 
 men were better. In the first place, he has to under- 
 go our hatred and persecution for his justice. In the 
 second place, he has to make up for the harm caused 
 by our continual shortcomings, to step between us 
 foolish transgressors and the destructive natural con- 
 sequences of our transgression, and, by a superhuman 
 example, a spending himself without stint, a more 
 than mortal scale of justice and purity, to save the 
 ideal of human life and conduct from the deterioration 
 with which men's ordinary practice threatens it. In 
 this way Jesus Christ truly "became for our sakes 
 poor, though he was rich," he was truly " bruised for 
 our iniquities," he " suffered in our behoof," " bare the 
 sin of many," and " made intercession for the trans- 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 93 
 
 gressors." 1 In this way, truly, "he was sacrificed as 
 a blameless lamb to redeem us from the vain conver- 
 sation which had become our second nature ;" 2 in this 
 way, " he was made to be sin for us, who knew no 
 sin." 3 Such, according to that true and profound 
 perception of the import of Christ's sufferings, which, 
 in all St. Paul's writings, and in the inestimable First 
 Epistle of St. Peter, is presented to us, is the expia- 
 tion of Christ. 
 
 The notion, therefore, of satisfying and appeasing an 
 angry God's ivrath, does not come into Paul's real con- 
 ception of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. Paul's foremost 
 notion of this sacrifice is, that by it Jesus died to the 
 law of selfish impulse, parted with what to men in 
 general is most precious and near. Paul's second 
 notion is, that whereas Jesus suffered in doing this, 
 his suffering was not his fault, but ours ; not for his 
 good, but for ours. In the first aspect, Jesus is the 
 martyrion, — the testimony in his life and in his death, to 
 righteousness, to the power and goodness of God. In the 
 second aspect he is the antilytron or ransom. But, in 
 either aspect, Jesus Christ's solemn and dolorous con- 
 demnation of sin does actually loosen sin's hold and 
 attraction upon us who regard it, — makes it easier for 
 us to understand and love goodness, to rise above self, 
 to die to sin. 
 
 Christ's sacrifice, however, and the condemnation 
 of sin it contained, was made for us while we were 
 yet sinners ; it was made irrespectively of our power 
 
 1 2 Cor. viii. 9 ; Is. liii. 5 ; 1 Peter ii. 21 ; Is. liii. 12. 
 
 2 1 Peter i. 18, 19. * 2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
94 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [il. 
 
 or inclination to sympathise with it and appreciate it. 
 Yet, even thus, in Paul's view, the sacrifice reconciled 
 us to God, to the eternal order ; for it contained the 
 means, the only possible means, of our being brought 
 into harmony with this order. Jesus Christ, never- 
 theless, was delivered for our sins while we were yet 
 sinners, 1 and before we could yet appreciate what he 
 did. But presently there comes a change. Grace, 
 the goodness of God, the spirit, — as Paul loved to call 
 that awful and beneficent impulsion of things within 
 us and without us, which we can concur with, indeed, 
 but cannot create, — leads us to repentance toivards God, 2 
 a change of the inner man in regard to the moral 
 order, duty, righteousness. And now, to help our 
 impulse towards righteousness, we have a power en- 
 abling us to turn this impulse to full account. Now 
 the spirit does its greatest work in us ; now, for the 
 first time, the influence of Jesus Christ's pregnant act 
 really gains us. For now awakens the sympathy for 
 the act and the appreciation of it, which its doer dis- 
 pensed with or was too benign to wait for ; faith work- 
 ing through love towards Christ 3 enters into us, masters 
 us. We identify ourselves, — this is the line of Paul's 
 thought, — with Christ ; we repeat, through the power 
 of this identification, Christ's death to the law of the 
 flesh and self-pleasing, his condemnation of sin in the 
 flesh ; the death how imperfectly, the condemnation 
 how remorsefully ! But we rise with him, Paul con- 
 tinues, to life, the only true life, of imitation of God, 
 of putting on the new man which after God is created 
 
 1 Rom. v. 8. 2 Acts xx. 21. 3 Gal. v. 6. 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 95 
 
 in righteousness and true holiness, 1 of following the 
 eternal law of the moral order which by ourselves we 
 could not follow. Then God justifies us. We have 
 the righteousness of God and the sense of having it ; 
 we are freed from the oppressing sense of eternal order 
 guiltily outraged and sternly retributive ; we act in 
 joyful conformity with God's will, instead of in miser- 
 able rebellion to it; we are in harmony with the 
 universal order, and feel that we are in harmony with 
 it. If, then, Christ was delivered for our sins, he was 
 raised for our justification. If by Christ's death, says 
 Paul, we were reconciled to God, by the means being 
 thus provided for our else impossible access to God, 
 much more, when we have availed ourselves of these 
 means and died with him, are we saved by his life 
 which \ve partake. 2 Henceforward we are not only 
 justified but sanctified; not only in harmony with the 
 eternal order and at peace with God, but consecrated 3 
 and unalterably devoted to them; and from this devo- 
 tion comes an ever-growing union with God in Christ, 
 an advance, as St. Paul says, from glory to glory. 4 
 
 This is Paul's conception of Christ's sacrifice. His 
 figures of ransom, redemption, propitiation, blood, 
 offering, all subordinate themselves to his central idea 
 of identification with Christ through dying with him, and 
 are strictly subservient to it. The figured speech of 
 Paul has its own beauty and propriety. His language 
 
 1 Epli. iv. 24. 2 Kom. v. 10. 
 
 3 The endless words which Puritanism has wasted upon sanc- 
 tification, a magical filling with goodness and holiness, flow from 
 a mere mistake in translating ; ayia<r/j.6s means consecration, a 
 setting apart to holy service. 4 2 Cor. iii. 18. 
 
96 ST. PAUL AND PKOTESTANTISM. [n. 
 
 is, much of it, Eastern language, imaginative language; 
 there is no need for turning it, as Puritanism has done, 
 into the methodical language of the schools. But if 
 it is to be turned into methodical language, then it is 
 the language into which we have translated it that 
 translates it truly. 
 
 "We have before seen how it fares with one of the 
 two great tenets which Puritanism has extracted 
 from St. Paul, the tenet of predestination. "We now 
 see how it fares with the other, the tenet of justifica- 
 tion. Paul's figures our Puritans have taken literally, 
 while for his central idea they have substituted 
 another which is not his. And his central idea they 
 have turned into a figure, and have let it almost dis- 
 appear out of their mind. His essential idea lost, 
 his figures misused, an idea essentially not his sub- 
 stituted for his, — the unedifying patchwork thus 
 made, Puritanism has stamped with Paul's name, and 
 called the gospel. It thunders at Eomanism for not 
 preaching it, it casts off Anglicanism for not setting it 
 forth alone and unreservedly, it founds organisations 
 of its own to give full effect to it ; these organisations 
 guide politics, govern statesmen, destroy institutions: 
 — and they are based upon a blunder ! 
 
 It is to Protestantism, and this its Puritan gospel, 
 that the reproaches thrown on St. Paul, for sophisti- 
 cating religion of the heart into theories of the head 
 about election and justification, rightly attach. St. 
 Paul himself, as we have seen, begins with seeking 
 righteousness and ends with finding it j from first to 
 last, the practical religious sense never deserts him. 
 
n.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 97 
 
 If he could have seen and heard our preachers of 
 predestination and justification, they are just the 
 people he would have called " diseased about ques- 
 tions and word-battlings." 1 He would have told 
 Puritanism that every Sunday, when in all its 
 countless chapels it reads him and preaches from 
 him, the veil is upon its heart. The moment it 
 reads him right, a veil will seem to be taken away 
 from its heart ; 2 it will feel as though scales were 
 fallen from its eyes. 
 
 And now, leaving Puritanism and its errors, let 
 us turn again for a moment, before we end, to the 
 glorious apostle who has occupied us so long. He 
 died, and men's familiar fancies of bargain and 
 appeasement, from which, by a prodigy of religious 
 insight, Paul had been able to disengage the death 
 of Jesus, fastened on it and made it their own. Back 
 rolled over the human soul the mist which the fires 
 of Paul's spiritual genius had dispersed for a few 
 short years. The mind of the whole world was 
 imbrued in the idea of blood, and only through the 
 false idea of sacrifice did men reach Paul's true one. 
 Paul's idea of dying with Christ the Imitation elevates 
 more conspicuously than any Protestant treatise 
 elevates it ; but it elevates it environed and domi- 
 nated by the idea of appeasement ; — of the magnified 
 and non- natural man in Heaven, wrath -filled and 
 blood -exacting; of the human victim adding his 
 piacular sufferings to those of the divine. Mean while 
 
 1 1 Tim. \i. 4. 2 2 Cor. iii. 15, 16. 
 
 VOL. VII. H 
 
98 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. [il. 
 
 another clanger was preparing. Gifted men had 
 brought to the study of St. Paul the habits of the 
 Greek and Roman schools, and philosophised where 
 Paul Orientalised. Augustine, a great genius, who 
 can doubt it 1 — nay, a great religious genius, but 
 unlike Paul in this, and inferior to him, that he con- 
 fused the boundaries of metaphysics and religion, 
 which Paul never did, — Augustine set the example 
 of finding in Paul's eastern speech, just as it stood, 
 the formal propositions of western dialectics. Last 
 came the interpreter in whose slowly relaxing grasp 
 we still lie, — the heavy-handed Protestant Philistine. 
 Sincere, gross of perception, prosaic, he saw in 
 Paul's mystical idea of man's investiture with the 
 righteousness of God nothing but a strict legal trans- 
 action, and reserved all his imagination for Hell and 
 the New Jerusalem and his foretaste of them. A 
 so-called Pauline doctrine was in all men's mouths, 
 but the ideas of the true Paul lay lost and buried. 
 
 Every one who has been at Rome has been taken 
 to see the Church of St. Paul, rebuilt after a destruc- 
 tion by fire forty years ago. The church stands a 
 mile or two out of the city, on the way to Ostia and 
 the desert. The interior has all the costly magnifi- 
 cence of Italian, churches ; on the ceiling is written in 
 gilded letters : " Doctor Gentium." Gold glitters and 
 marbles gleam, but man and his movement are not 
 there. The traveller has left at a distance the fumum 
 et opes strepitumque Bomce ; around him reigns solitude. 
 There is Paul, with the mystery which was hidden 
 from ages and from generations, which was uncovered 
 
II.] ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. 99 
 
 by him for some half score years, and which then was 
 buried with him in his grave ! Not in our day will 
 he relive, with his incessant effort to find a moral 
 side for miracle, with his incessant effort to make the 
 intellect follow and secure all the workings of the 
 religious perception. Of those who care for religion, 
 the multitude of -us want the materialism of the 
 Apocalypse ; the few want a vague religiosity. 
 ^Sdfijaee;- which more and more teaches us to find 
 in the unapparent the real, will gradually serve to 
 conquer the materialism of popular religion. The 
 friends of vague religiosity, on the other hand, will 
 be more and more taught by experience that a 
 theology, a scientific appreciation of the facts of 
 religion, is wanted for religion ; but a theology which 
 is a true theology, not a false. Both these influences 
 will work for Paul's re-emergence. The doctrine of 
 Paul will arise out of the tomb where for centuries 
 it has lain buried. It will edify the church of the 
 future ; it will have the consent of happier genera- 
 tions, the applause of less superstitious ages. All 
 will be too little to pay half the debt which the 
 church of God owes to this " least of the apostles, 
 who was not fit to be called an apostle, because he 
 persecuted the church of God." * 
 
 1 l Cor. xv. 9. 
 
PURITANISM 
 
 AND THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 In the foregoing treatise we have spoken of Protest- 
 antism, and have tried to show, how, with its three 
 notable tenets of predestination, original sin, and 
 justification, it has been pounding away for three 
 centuries at St. Paul's wrong words, and missing his 
 essential doctrine. And we took Puritanism to stand 
 for Protestantism, and addressed ourselves directly 
 to the Puritans ; for the Puritan Churches, we said, 
 seem to exist specially for the sake of these doctrines, 
 one or more of them. It is true, many Puritans now 
 profess also the doctrine that it is wicked to have a 
 church connected with the State ; but this is a later 
 invention, 1 designed to strengthen a separation pre- 
 viously made. It requires to be noticed in due 
 
 1 In liis very interesting history, The CJmrch of the Restora- 
 tion, Dr. Stoughton says most truly of both Anglicans and 
 Puritans in 1660 : " It is necessary to bear in mind this cir- 
 cumstance, that both parties ivere advocates for a national 
 establishment of religion." Vol. i. p. 113. 
 
102 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 course ; but meanwhile, we say that the aim of setting 
 forth certain Protestant doctrines purely and integrally 
 is the, main title on which Puritan Churches rest 
 their right of existing. With historic Churches, like 
 those of England or Eome, it is otherwise ; these 
 doctrines may be in them, may be a part of their 
 traditions, their theological stock ; but certainly no 
 one will say that either of these Churches was made 
 for the express purpose of upholding these three 
 theological doctrines, jointly or severally. A little 
 consideration will show quite clearly the difference in 
 this respect between the historic Churches and the 
 churches of separatists. 
 
 People are not necessarily monarchists or republi- 
 cans because they are born and live under a monarchy 
 or republic. They avail themselves of the established 
 government for those general purposes for which 
 governments and politics exist, but they do not, for 
 the most part, trouble their heads much about parti- 
 cular theoretical principles of government. Nay, it 
 may well happen that a man who lives and thrives 
 under a monarchy shall yet theoretically disapprove 
 the principle of monarchy, or a man who lives and 
 thrives under a republic, the principle of republican- 
 ism. But a man, or body of men, who have gone 
 out of an established polity from zeal for the principle 
 of monarchy or republicanism, and have set up a 
 polity of their own for the very purpose of giving 
 satisfaction to this zeal, are in a false position when- 
 ever it shall appear that the principle, from zeal for 
 which they have constituted their separate existence, 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 103 
 
 is unsound. So predestinarianism and solifidianism, 
 Calvinism and Lutherism, may appear in the theology 
 of a national or historic Church, charged ever since 
 the rise of Christianity with the task of developing 
 the immense and complex store of ideas contained in 
 Christianity ; and when the stage of development has 
 been reached at which the unsoundness of predesti- 
 narian and solifidian dogmas becomes manifest, they 
 will be dropped out of the Church's theology, and she 
 and her task will remain what they were before. But 
 when people from zeal for these dogmas find their 
 historic Church not predestinarian or solifidian enough 
 for them, and make new associations of their own, 
 which shall be predestinarian or solifidian absolutely, 
 then, when the dogmas are undermined, the associa- 
 tions are undermined too, and have either to own 
 themselves without a reason for existing, or to dis- 
 cover some new reason in place of the old. Now, 
 nothing which exists likes to be driven to a strait of 
 this kind ; so every association which exists because 
 of zeal for the dogmas of election or justification, will 
 naturally cling to these dogmas longer and harder 
 than other people. Therefore we have treated the 
 Puritan bodies in this country as the great stronghold 
 here of these doctrines ; and in showing what a per- 
 version of Paul's real ideas these doctrines commonly 
 called Pauline are, we have addressed ourselves to the 
 Puritans. 
 
 But those who speak in the Puritans' name say 
 that we charge upon Puritanism, as a sectarian pecu- 
 liarity, doctrine which is not only the inevitable result 
 
* 
 
 104 PUEITANISM AND THE 
 
 of an honest interpretation of the writings of St. Paul, 
 but which is, besides, the creed held in common by 
 Puritans and by all the churches in Christendom, 
 with one insignificant exception. Nay, they even 
 declare that " no man in his senses can deny that the 
 Church of England was meant to be a thoroughly 
 Protestant and Evangelical, and it may be said Cal- 
 vinistic Church." To saddle Puritanism in special 
 with the doctrines we have called Puritan is, they 
 say, a piece of unfairness which has its motive in 
 mere ill-will to Puritanism, a device which can injure 
 nobody but its author. 
 
 Now, we have tried to show that the Puritans are 
 quite wrong in imagining their doctrine to be the 
 inevitable result of an honest interpretation of St. 
 Paul's writings. That they are wrong we think is 
 certain ; but so far are we from being moved, in 
 anything that we do or say in this matter, by ill-will 
 to Puritanism and the Puritans, that it is, on the 
 contrary, just because of our hearty respect for them, 
 and from our strong sense of their value, that we 
 speak as we do. Certainly we consider them to be 
 in the main, at present, an obstacle to progress and 
 to true civilisation. But this is because their worth 
 is, in our opinion, such that not only must one for 
 their own sakes wish to see it turned to more advan- 
 tage, but others, from whom they are now separated, 
 would greatly gain by conjunction with them, and 
 our whole collective force of growth and progress be 
 thereby immeasurably increased. In short, our one 
 feeling when we regard them, is a feeling, not of ill- 
 
CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 105 
 
 will, but of regret at waste of power ; our one desire 
 is a desire of comprehension. 
 
 But the waste of power must continue, and the 
 comprehension is impossible, so long as Puritanism 
 imagines itself to possess, in its two or three signal 
 doctrines, what it calls the gospel ; so long as it con- 
 stitutes itself separately on the plea of setting forth 
 purely the gospel, which it thus imagines itself to have 
 seized ; so long as it judges others as not holding the 
 gospel, or as holding additions to it and variations 
 from it. This fatal self-righteousness, grounded on a 
 false conceit of knowledge, makes comprehension 
 impossible ; because it takes for granted the posses- 
 sion of the truth, and the power of deciding how 
 others violate it ; and this is a position of superiority, 
 and suits conquest rather than comprehension. 
 
 The good of comprehension in a national Church 
 is, that the larger and more various the body of 
 members, the more elements of power and life the 
 Church will contain, the more points will there be of 
 contact, the more mutual support and stimulus, the 
 more growth in perfection both of thought and prac- 
 tice. The waste of power from not comprehending 
 the Puritans in the national Church is measured by 
 the number and value of elements which Puritanism 
 could supply towards the collective growth of the 
 whole body. The national Church would grow more 
 vigorously towards a higher stage of insight into 
 religious truth, and consequently towards a greater 
 perfection of practice, if it had these elements ; and 
 this is why we wish for the Puritans in the Church. 
 
106 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 But, meanwhile, Puritanism will not contribute to 
 the common growth, mainly because it believes that 
 a certain set of opinions or scheme of theological 
 doctrine is the gospel ; that it is possible and profitable 
 to extract this, and that Puritans have done so ; and 
 that it is the duty of men, who like themselves have 
 extracted it, to separate themselves from those who 
 have not, and to set themselves apart that they may 
 profess it purely. 
 
 To disabuse them of this error, which, by prevent- 
 ing collective life, prevents also collective growth, it 
 is necessary to show them that their extracted scheme 
 of theological doctrine is not really the gospel; and 
 that at any rate, therefore, it is not worth their while 
 to separate themselves, and to frustrate the hope of 
 growth in common, merely for this scheme's sake. 
 And even if it were true, as they allege, that the 
 national and historic Churches of Christendom do 
 equally with Puritanism hold this scheme, or main 
 parts of it, still it would be to Puritanism, and not to 
 the historic Churches, that in showing the invalidity 
 and unscripturalness of this scheme we should address 
 ourselves, because the Puritan Churches found their 
 very existence on it, and the historic Churches do 
 not. And not founding their existence on it, nor 
 falling into separatism for it, the historic Churches 
 have a collective life which is very considerable, and 
 a power of growth, even in respect of the very scheme 
 of doctrine in question, supposing them to hold it, 
 far greater than any which the Puritan Churches 
 show, but which would be yet greater and more 
 
CHUKCH OF ENGLAND. 107 
 
 fruitful still, if the historic Churches combined the 
 large and admirable contingent of Puritanism with 
 their own forces. Therefore, as we have said, it is 
 out of no sort of malice or ill-will, but from esteem 
 for their fine qualities and from desire for their help, 
 that we have addressed ourselves to the Puritans. 
 We propose to complete now our dealings with this 
 subject by showing how, as a matter of fact, the 
 Church of England (which is the historic Church 
 practically in question so far as Puritanism is con- 
 cerned) seems to us to have displayed with respect to 
 those very tenets which we have criticised, and for 
 which we are said to have unfairly made Puritanism 
 alone responsible, a continual power of growth which 
 has been wanting to the Puritan congregations. This 
 we propose to show first ; and we will show secondly, 
 how, from the very theory of a historic or national 
 Church, the probability of this greater power of 
 growth seems to follow, that we may try and commend 
 that theory a little more to the thoughts and favour 
 of our Puritan friends. 
 
 The two great Puritan doctrines which we have 
 criticised at such length are the doctrines of predes- 
 tination and justification. Of the aggressive and 
 militant Puritanism of our people, predestination has, 
 almost up to the present day, been the favourite and 
 distinguishing doctrine ; it was the doctrine which 
 Puritan flocks greedily sought, which Puritan ministers 
 powerfully preached, and called others carnal gospellers 
 for not preaching. This Geneva doctrine accompanied 
 the Geneva discipline. Puritanism's first great wish 
 
108 PUEITANISM AND THE 
 
 and endeavour was to establish both the one and the 
 other absolutely in the Church of England, and it 
 became nonconforming because it failed. Now, it is 
 well known that the High Church divines of the 
 seventeenth century were Arminian, that the Church 
 of England was the stronghold of Arminianism, and 
 that Arminianism is, as we have said, an effort of 
 man's practical good sense to get rid of what is shock- 
 ing to it in Calvinism. But what is not so well 
 known, and what is eminently worthy of remark, is 
 the constant pressure applied by Puritanism upon the 
 Church of England, to put the Calvinistic doctrine 
 more distinctly into her formularies, and to tie her 
 up more strictly to this doctrine ; the constant resist- 
 ance offered by the Church of England, and the large 
 degree in which Nonconformity is really due to this 
 
 Everybody knows how far Nonconformity is due 
 to the Church of England's rigour in imposing an 
 explicit declaration of adherence to her formularies. 
 But only a few, who have searched out the matter, 
 know how far Nonconformity is due, also, to the 
 Church of England's invincible reluctance to narrow 
 her large and loose formularies to the strict Calvinistic 
 sense dear to Puritanism. Yet this is what the record 
 of conferences shows at least as signally as it shows 
 the domineering spirit of the High Church clergy ; 
 but our current political histories, written always 
 with an anti- ecclesiastical bias, which is natural 
 enough, inasmuch as the Church party was not the 
 party of civil liberty, leaves this singularly out of 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 109 
 
 sight. Yet there is a very catena of testimonies to 
 prove it ; to show us, from Elizabeth's reign to Charles 
 the Second's, Calvinism, as a power both within and 
 without the Church of England, trying to get decisive 
 command of her formularies ; and the Church of 
 England, with the instinct of a body meant to live 
 and grow, and averse to fetter and engage its future, 
 steadily resisting. 
 
 The Lambeth Articles of 1595 exhibit Calvinism 
 potent in the Church of England herself, and among 
 the bishops of the Church. True ; but could it 
 establish itself there ? No ; the Lambeth Articles 
 were recalled and suppressed, and Archbishop Whit- 
 gift was threatened with the penalties of a prcemunire 
 for having published them. Again, it was usual from 
 1552 onwards to print in the English Bibles a cate- 
 chism asserting the Calvinistic doctrine of absolute 
 election and reprobation. In the first Bibles of the 
 authorised version this catechism appeared ; but it 
 was removed in 1615. Yet the Puritans had met 
 James the First, at his accession in 1603, with the 
 petition that there may be an uniformity of doctrine pre- 
 scribed; meaning an uniformity in this sense of strict 
 Calvinism. Thus from the very commencement the 
 Church, as regards doctrine, was for opening; Puri- 
 tanism was for narrowing. 
 
 Then came, in 1604, the Hampton Court Confer- 
 ence. Here, as usual, political historians reproach 
 the Church with havins; conceded so little. These 
 historians, as we have said, think solely of the 
 Puritans as the religious party favourable to civil 
 
110 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 liberty, and on that account desire the preponderance 
 of Puritanism in its disputes with the Church. But, 
 as regards freedom of thought and truth of ideas, 
 what was it that the Church was pressed by Puri- 
 tanism to concede, and what was the character and 
 tendency of the Church's refusal ? The first Puritan 
 petition at this Conference was " that the doctrine of 
 the Church might be preserved in purity according to 
 God's Word." That is, according to the Calvinistic 
 interpretation put upon God's Word by Calvin and 
 the Puritans after him ; an interpretation which we 
 have shown to be erroneous and unscriptural. This 
 Calvinistic doctrine of predestination the Puritans 
 wanted to plant hard and fast in the Church's formu- 
 laries, and the Church resisted. The Puritan foreman 
 complained of the loose wording of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles because it allowed an escape from the strict 
 doctrine of Calvinism, and moved that the Lambeth 
 Articles, strictly Calvinistic, might be inserted into the 
 Book of Articles. The Bishops resisted, and here 
 are the words of their spokesman, the Bishop of 
 London. "The Bishop of London answered, that 
 too many in those days, neglecting holiness of life, 
 laid all their religion upon predestination, — 'If I shall 
 be saved, I shall be saved,' which he termed a des- 
 perate doctrine, showing it to be contrary to good 
 divinity, which teaches us to reason rather ascendendo 
 than descendendo, thus : ' I live in obedience to God, 
 in love with my neighbour, I follow my vocation, 
 etc., therefore I trust that God hath elected me 
 and predestinated me to salvation ; ' not thus, which 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Ill 
 
 is the usual course of argument : ' God hath pre- 
 destinated and chosen me to life, therefore, though I 
 sin never so grievously, I shall not be damned, for 
 whom he once loveth he loveth to the end.' Who 
 will deny that this resistance of the Church to the 
 Puritans, who, laying all their religion upon predestina- 
 tion, wanted to make the Church do the same, was 
 as favourable to growth of thought and to sound 
 philosophy, as it was consonant to good sense 1 
 
 We have already, in the foregoing treatise, quoted 
 from the complaints against the Church by the Com- 
 mittee of Divines appointed by the House of Lords 
 in 1641, when Puritanism was strongly in the 
 ascendant. Some in the Church teach, say the 
 Puritan complainers, " that good works are concauses 
 with faith in the act of justification ; some have 
 oppugned the certitude of salvation ; some have 
 maintained that the Lord's day is kept merely by 
 ecclesiastical constitution ; some have defended the 
 whole gross substance of Arminianism, that the act 
 of conversion depends upon the concurrence of men's 
 free will ; some have denied original sin ; some have 
 broached out of Socinus a most uncomfortable and 
 desperate doctrine, that late repentance, that is, upon 
 the last bed of sickness, — is unfruitful, at least, to 
 reconcile the penitent to God." What we insist upon 
 is, that the growth and movement of thought, on 
 religious matters, are here shown to be in the Church ; 
 and that on these two cardinal doctrines of predes- 
 tination and justification, with which we are accused 
 of unfairly saddling Puritanism alone, Puritanism did 
 
112 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 really want to make the national religion hinge, 
 while the Church did not, but resisted. 
 
 The resistance of the Church was at that time 
 vanquished, not by importing strict Calvinism into 
 the Prayer Book, but by casting out the Prayer 
 Book altogether. By ordinance in 1645, the use of 
 the Prayer Book, which for churches had already 
 been forbidden, was forbidden also for all private 
 places and families ; all copies to be found in churches 
 were to be delivered up, and heavy penalties were 
 imposed on persons retaining them. 
 
 We come to the occasion where the Church is 
 thought to have most decisively shown her unyield- 
 ingness, — the Savoy Conference in 1661, after King 
 Charles the Second's restoration. The question was 
 what alterations were to be made in the Prayer Book, 
 so as to enable the Puritans to use it as well as the 
 Church party. Having in view doctrine and free 
 development of thought, we say again it was the 
 Puritans who were for narrowing, it was the 
 Churchmen who were for keeping open. Their 
 heads full of these tenets of predestination, origi- 
 nal sin, and justification, which we are accused of 
 charging upon them exclusively and unfairly, the 
 Puritans complain that the Church Liturgy seems 
 very defective, — why*? Because "the systems of 
 doctrine of a church should summarily comprehend 
 all such doctrines as are necessary to be believed," and 
 the liturgy does not set down these explicitly enough. 
 For instance, "the Confession," they say, "is very 
 defective, not clearly expressing original sin. The 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 113 
 
 Catechism is defective as to many necessary doctrines 
 of our religion, some even of the essentials of Chris- 
 tianity not being mentioned except in the Creed, and 
 there not so explicit as ought to be in a catechism." 
 And what is the answer of the bishops 1 It is the 
 answer of people with an instinct that this definition 
 and explicitness demanded by the Puritans are 
 incompatible with the conditions of life of a historic 
 church. "The church," they say, " hath been careful 
 to put nothing into the Liturgy but that which is 
 either evidently the Word of God, or what hath 
 been generally received in the Catholic Church." 
 The Catechism is not intended as a whole body of 
 divinity. The Puritans had requested that "the 
 Church prayers might contain nothing questioned by 
 pious, learned, and orthodox persons." Seizing on this 
 expression, wherein is contained the ground of that 
 separatism for opinions which we hold to be so fatal 
 not only to Church life but also to the natural growth 
 of religious thought, the bishops ask, and in the very 
 language of good sense : " Who are pious, learned, and 
 orthodox persons? Are we to take for such all who 
 shall confidently affirm themselves to be such ? If by 
 orthodox be meant those who adhere to Scripture and 
 the Catholic consent of antiquity, we do not yet know 
 that any part of our Liturgy has been questioned by 
 such. It was the wisdom of our reformers to draw 
 up such a liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could 
 justly except against. Persons want the book to be 
 altered for their own satisfaction." 
 
 This allegation respecting the character of the 
 VOL. VII. I 
 
1 1 4 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 Liturgy is undoubtedly true, for the Puritans them- 
 selves expressly admitted its truth, and urged this as 
 a reason for altering the Liturgy. It is in con- 
 sonance with what is so often said, and truly said, of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, that they are articles of 'peace. 
 This, indeed, makes the Articles scientifically worth- 
 less. Metaphysical propositions, such as they in the 
 main are, drawn up with a studied design for their 
 being vague and loose, can have no metaphysical 
 value. But no one then thought of doing without 
 metaphysical articles ; so to make them articles of 
 peace showed a true conception of the conditions of 
 life and growth in a church. The readiness to put a 
 lax sense on subscription is a proof of the same dis- 
 position of mind. Chillingworth's judgment about 
 the meaning of subscription is well known. " For 
 the Church of England, I am persuaded that the 
 constant doctrine of it is so pure and orthodox, 
 that whosoever believes it and lives according to 
 it, undoubtedly he shall be saved ; and that there is 
 no error in it which may necessitate or warrant any 
 man to disturb the peace or renounce the communion 
 of it. This, in my opinion, is all that is intended by subscrip- 
 tion." And Laud, a very different man from Chilling- 
 worth, held on this point a like opinion with him. 
 
 Certainly the Church of England was in no humour, 
 at the time of the Savoy Conference, to deal tenderly 
 with the Puritans. It was too much disposed to show 
 to the Puritans the same sort of tenderness which the 
 Puritans had shown to the Church. The nation, more- 
 over, was nearly as ill-disposed as the Church to the 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 115 
 
 Puritans ; and this proves well what the narrowness 
 and tyrannousness of Puritanism domir.n.nt had really 
 been. But the Church undoubtedly said and did to 
 Puritanism after the Restoration much that was harsh 
 and bitter, and therefore inexcusable in a Christian 
 church. Examples of Churchmen so speaking and 
 dealing may be found in the transactions of 1661 ; 
 but perhaps the most offensive example of a Church- 
 man of this kind, and who deserves therefore to be 
 studied, is a certain Dr. Jane, Regius Professor of 
 Divinity at Oxford and Dean of Gloucester, who was 
 put forward to thwart Tillotson's projects of compre- 
 hension in 1689. A certain number of Dr. Janes 
 there have always been in the Church. There are a 
 certain number of them in the Church now, and there 
 always will be a certain number of them. No Church 
 could exist with many of them j but one should have 
 a sample or two of them always before one's mind, 
 and remember how to the excluded party a few, and 
 those the worst, of their excluders, are always apt to 
 stand for the whole, in order to comprehend the full 
 bitterness and resentment of Puritanism against the 
 Church of England. Else one would be inclined to 
 say, after attentively and impartially observing the 
 two parties, that the persistence of the Church in 
 pressing for conformity arose, not as the political 
 historians would have it, from the lust of haughty 
 ecclesiastics for dominion and for imposing their law 
 on the vanquished, but from a real sense that their 
 formularies were made so large and open, and the 
 sense put upon subscription to them was so indulgent, 
 
116 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 that any reasonable man could honestly conform ; 
 and that it was perverseness and determination to 
 impose their special ideas on the Church, and to 
 narrow the Church's latitude, which made the Puri- 
 tans stand out. 
 
 Nay, and it was with the diction of the Prayer 
 Book, as it was with its doctrine ; the Church took 
 the side which most commands the sympathy of 
 liberal-minded men. Baxter had his rival Prayer 
 Book which he proposed to substitute for the old 
 one. And this is how the "Keformed Liturgy" was 
 to begin: "Eternal, incomprehensible and invisible 
 God, infinite in power, wisdom and goodness, dwell- 
 ing in the light which no man can approach, where 
 thousand thousands minister unto thee, and ten thou- 
 sand times ten thousand stand before thee," etc. 
 This, I say, was to have taken the place of our old 
 friend, Dearly beloved brethren; and here, again, we 
 can hardly refuse approval to the Church's resistance 
 to Puritan innovations. We could wish, indeed, the 
 Church had shown the same largeness in consenting 
 to relax ceremonies, which she showed in refusing to 
 tighten dogma, or to spoil diction. Worse still, the 
 angry wish to drive by violence, when the other 
 party will not move by reason, finally no doubt 
 appears ; and the Church has much to blame herself 
 for in the Act of Uniformity. Blame she deserves, 
 and she has had it plentifully ; but what has not 
 been enough perceived is, that really the conviction 
 of her own moderation, openness, and latitude, as far 
 as regards doctrine, seems to have filled her mind 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 117 
 
 during her dealings with the Puritans ; and that her 
 impatience with them was in great measure impatience 
 at seeing these so ill-appreciated by them. Very ill- 
 appreciated by them they certainly were ; and, as far 
 as doctrine is concerned, the quarrel between the 
 Church and Puritanism undoubtedly was, that for 
 the doctrines of predestination, original sin, and 
 justification, Puritanism wanted more exclusive pro- 
 minence, more dogmatic definition, more bar to future 
 escape and development ; while the Church resisted. 
 
 And as the instinct of the Church always made 
 her avoid, on these three favourite tenets of Puritan- 
 ism, the stringency of definition which Puritanism 
 tried to force upon her, always made her leave herself 
 room for growth in regard to them, — so, if we look 
 for the positive beginnings and first signs of growth, 
 of disengagement from the stock notions of popular 
 theology about predestination, original sin, and justi- 
 fication, it is among Churchmen, and not among 
 Puritans, that we shall find them. Few will deny 
 that as to the doctrines of predestination and original 
 sin, at any rate, the mind of religious men is no 
 longer what it was in the seventeenth century or in 
 the eighteenth. There has been evident growth and 
 emancipation ; Puritanism itself no longer holds these 
 doctrines in the rigid way it once did. To whom is 
 this change owing 1 who were the beginners of it 1 
 They were men using that comparative openness of 
 mind and accessibility to ideas which was fostered by 
 the Church. The very complaints which we have 
 quoted from the Puritan divines prove that this was 
 
118 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 so. Henry More, saying in the heat of the Calvinistic 
 controversy, what it needed insight to say then, but 
 what almost every one's common sense says now, that 
 "it were to be wished the Quinquarticular points 
 were all reduced to this one, namely, That none shall 
 be saved without sincere obedience;" Jeremy Taylor 
 saying in the teeth of the superstitious popular doc- 
 trine of original sin : " Original sin, as it is at this 
 day commonly explicated, was not the doctrine of the 
 primitive church ; but when Pelagius had puddled 
 the stream, St. Austin was so angry that he stamped 
 and puddled it more," — this sort of utterance from 
 Churchmen it was, that first introduced into our 
 religious world the current of more independent 
 thought concerning the doctrines of predestination 
 and original sin, which has now made its way even 
 amidst Puritans themselves. 
 
 Here the emancipation has reached the Puritans ; 
 but it proceeded from the Church. That Puritanism 
 is yet emancipated from the popular doctrine of justi- 
 fication cannot be asserted. On the contrary, the 
 more it loosens its hold on the doctrine of predestina- 
 tion the more it tightens it on that of justification. 
 "We shall have occasion by and by to discuss Wesley's 
 words : " Plead thou solely the blood of the Covenant, the 
 ransom paid for thy proud stubborn soul ! " and to show 
 how modern Methodism glories in holding aloft as its 
 standard this teaching of Wesley's, and this teaching 
 above all. The many tracts which have lately been 
 sent me in reference to this subject go all the same 
 way. Like Luther, they hold that " all heretics have 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 119 
 
 continually failed in this one point, that they do not 
 rightly understand or know the article of justification" 
 "do not see" (to continue to use Luther's words) 
 " that by none other sacrifice or offering could God's 
 fierce anger be appeased, but by the precious blood 
 of the Son of God." That this doctrine is founded 
 upon an entire misunderstanding of St. Paul's writ- 
 ings we have shown; that there is very visible a 
 tendency in the minds of religious people to outgrow 
 it, is true, but where alone does this tendency mani- 
 fest itself with any steadiness or power? In the 
 Church. The inevitable movement of growth will 
 in time extend itself to Puritanism also. Let it be 
 remembered in that day that not only does the move- 
 ment come to Puritanism from the Church, but it 
 comes to Churchmen of our century from a seed of 
 growth and development inherent in the Church, and 
 which was manifest in the Church long ago ! 
 
 That the accompaniments of the doctrine of justifi- 
 cation, the tenets of conversion, instantaneous sancti- 
 fication, assurance, and sinless perfection, — tenets 
 which are not the essence of Wesley, but which are 
 the essence of Wesleyan Methodism, and which have 
 in them so much that is delusive and dangerous, — 
 that these should have been discerningly judged by 
 that mixture of piety and sobriety which marks Angli- 
 cans of the best type, such as Bishop Wilson, 1 will 
 
 1 For example, what an antidote to the perilous Methodist 
 doctrine of instantaneous sanctification is this saying of Bishop 
 Wilson: "He who fancies that his mind may effectually be 
 changed in a short time, deceives himself." 
 
120 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 surprise no one. But years before Wesley was born, 
 the fontal doctrine itself, — Wesley's " Plead thou solely 
 the blood of the Covenant/" — had been criticised by 
 Hammond thus, and the signal of deliverance from 
 the Lutheran doctrine of justification given : " The 
 solifidian looks upon his faith as the utmost accom- 
 plishment and end, and not only as the first elements 
 of his task, which is, — the super strutting of good life. 
 The solifidian believes himself to have the only sancti- 
 fied necessary doctrines, that having them renders his 
 condition safe, and every man who believes them a 
 pure Christian professor. In respect of solifidianism 
 it is worth remembering what Epiphanius observes of 
 the primitive times, that wickedness was the only heresy, 
 that impious and pious living divided the whole Chris- 
 tian world into erroneous and orthodox." 
 
 In point of fact, therefore, the historic Church in 
 England, not existing for special opinions, but pro- 
 ceeding by development, has shown much greater 
 freedom of mind as regards the doctrines of election, 
 original sin, and justification, than the Nonconform- 
 ists have ; and has refused, in spite of Puritan pres- 
 sure, to tie herself too strictly to these doctrines, to 
 make them all in all. She thus both has been and is 
 more serviceable than Puritanism to religious pro- 
 gress ; because the separating for opinions, which is 
 proper to Puritanism, rivets the separatist to those 
 opinions, and is thus opposed to that development 
 and gradual exhibiting of the full sense of the Bible 
 and Christianity, which is essential to religious pro- 
 gress. To separate for the doctrine of predestination, 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 121 
 
 of justification, of scriptural church - discipline, is to 
 be false to the idea of development, to imagine that 
 you can seize the absolute sense of Scripture from 
 your own present point of view, and to cut yourself 
 off from growth and gradual illumination. That a 
 comparison between the course things have taken 
 in Puritanism and in the Church goes to prove the 
 truth of this as a matter of fact, is what I have been 
 trying to show hitherto ; in what remains I purpose 
 to show how, as a matter of theory and antecedent 
 likelihood, it seems probable and natural that so this 
 should be. 
 
 A historic Church cannot choose but allow the 
 principle of development, for it is written in its 
 institutions and history. An admirable writer, in 
 a book which is one of his least known works, but 
 which contains, perhaps, even a greater number of 
 profound and valuable ideas than any other one of 
 them, has set forth, both persuasively and truly, the 
 impression of this sort which Church-history cannot 
 but convey. " We have to account," says Dr. New- 
 man, in his Essay on Development, " for that apparent 
 variation and growth of doctrine which embarrasses 
 us when we would consult history for the true idea 
 of Christianity. The increase and expansion of the 
 Christian creed and ritual, and the variations which 
 have attended the process in the case of individual 
 writers and churches, are the necessary attendants on 
 any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the 
 intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended 
 dominion. From the nature of the human mind, 
 
122 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 time is necessary for the full comprehension and 
 perfection of great ideas. The highest and most 
 wonderful truths, though communicated to the world 
 once for all by inspired teachers, could not be com- 
 prehended all at once by the recipients ; but, as 
 admitted and transmitted by minds not inspired, and 
 through media which were human, have required 
 only the longer time and deeper thought for their 
 full elucidation." And again: "Ideas may remain 
 when the expression of them is indefinitely varied. 
 Nay, one cause of corruption in religion is the refusal 
 to follow the course of doctrine as it moves on, and 
 an obstinacy in the notions of the past. So our Lord 
 found his people precisians in their obedience to the 
 letter ; he condemned them for not being led on to 
 its spirit, — that is, its development. The Gospel is 
 the development of the Law ; yet what difference 
 seems wider than that which separates the unbending 
 rule of Moses from the grace and truth which came 
 by Jesus Christ % The more claim an idea has to be 
 considered living, the more various will be its aspects; 
 and the more social and political is its nature, the 
 more complicated and subtle will be its developments, 
 and the longer and more eventful will be its course. 
 Such is Christianity." And yet once more : "It 
 may be objected that inspired documents, such as 
 the Holy Scriptures, at once determine doctrine 
 without further trouble. But they were intended to 
 create an idea, and that idea is not in the sacred text, 
 but in the mind of the reader ; and the question is, 
 whether that idea is communicated to him in its 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 123 
 
 completeness and minute accuracy on its first appre- 
 hension, or expands in his heart and intellect, and 
 comes to perfection in the course of time. If it is 
 said that inspiration supplied the place of this 
 development in the first recipients of Christianity, 
 still the time at length came when its recipients 
 ceased to be inspired ; and on these recipients the 
 revealed truths would fall as in other cases, at first 
 vaguely and generally, and would afterwards be 
 completed by developments." 
 
 The notion thus admirably expounded of a gradual 
 understanding of the Bible, a progressive develop- 
 ment of Christianity, is the same which was in 
 Bishop Butler's mind when he laid down in his 
 Analogy that "the Bible contains many truths as 
 yet undiscovered." "And as," he says, "the whole 
 scheme of Scripture is not yet understood, so, if it 
 ever comes to be understood, before the restitution 
 of all things and without miraculous interpositions, 
 it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is 
 come at, — by the continuance and progress of learning 
 and of liberty, and by particular persons attending 
 to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up 
 and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded 
 by the generality of the world. For this is the way 
 in which all improvements are made ; by thoughtful 
 men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped 
 as by nature accidentally, or which seem to come 
 into our minds by chance." And again : " Our 
 existence is not only successive, as it must be of 
 necessity, but one state of our life and being is 
 
124 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 appointed by God to be a preparation for another, 
 and that to be the means of attaining to another 
 succeeding one ; infancy to childhood, childhood to 
 youth, youth to mature age. Men are impatient 
 and for precipitating things ; but the author of nature 
 appears deliberate throughout his operations, accom- 
 plishing his natural ends by slow successive steps. 
 Thus, in the daily course of natural providence, God 
 operates in the very same manner as in the dispensa- 
 tion of Christianity; making one thing subservient 
 to another, this to somewhat further ; and so on, 
 through a progressive series of means which extend 
 both backward and forward, beyond our utmost view. 
 Of this manner of operation everything we see in the 
 course of nature is as much an instance as any part 
 of the Christian dispensation." 
 
 All this is indeed incomparably well said ; and 
 with Dr. Newman we may, on the strength of it all, 
 beyond any doubt, "fairly conclude that Christian 
 doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true 
 developments ; " that " the whole Bible is written 
 on the principle of development." 
 
 Dr. Newman, indeed, uses this idea in a manner 
 which seems to us arbitrary and condemned by the 
 idea itself. He uses it in support of the pretensions 
 of the Church of Eome to an infallible authority on 
 points of doctrine. He says, with much ingenuity, 
 to Protestants : The doctrines you receive are no 
 more on the face of the Bible, or in the plain teaching 
 of the ante-Nicene Church, which alone you consider 
 pure, than the doctrines you reject. The doctrine 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 125 
 
 of the Trinity is a development, as much as the 
 doctrine of Purgatory. Both of them are develop- 
 ments made by the Church, by the post-Nicene 
 Church. The determination of the Canon of Scrip- 
 ture, a thing of vital importance to you who acknow- 
 ledge no authority but Scripture, is a development 
 due to the post-Nicene Church. — And thus Dr. 
 Newman would compel Protestants to admit that 
 which is, he declares, in itself reasonable, — namely, 
 " the probability of the appointment in Christianity 
 of an external authority to decide upon the true 
 developments of doctrine and practice in it, thereby 
 separating them from the mass of mere human 
 speculation, extravagance, corruption, and error, in 
 and out of which they grow. This is the doctrine 
 of the infallibility of the Church, of faith and 
 obedience towards the Church, founded on the prob- 
 ability of its never erring in its declarations or 
 commands." 
 
 Now, asserted in this absolute way, and extended 
 to doctrine as well as discipline, to speculative thought 
 as well as to Christian practice, Dr. Newman's con- 
 clusion seems at variance with his own theory of 
 development, and to be something like an instance of 
 what Bishop Butler criticises when he says: "Men 
 are impatient and for precipitating things." But Dr. 
 Newman has himself supplied us with a sort of com- 
 mentary on these words of Butler's which is worth 
 quoting, because it throws more light on our point 
 than Butler's few words can throw on it by them- 
 selves. Dr. Newman says : " Development is not an 
 
126 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 effect of wishing and resolving, or of forced enthusiasm, 
 or of any mechanism of reasoning, or of any mere 
 subtlety of intellect; but comes of its own innate 
 power of expansion within the mind in its season, 
 though with the use of reflection and argument and 
 original thought, more or less as it may happen, with 
 a dependence on the ethical growth of the mind itself, 
 and with a reflex influence upon it." 
 
 It is impossible to point out more sagaciously and 
 expressively the natural, spontaneous, free character 
 of true development ; how such a development must 
 follow laws of its own, may often require vast periods 
 of time, cannot be hurried, cannot be stopped. And 
 so far as Christianity deals, — as, in its metaphysical 
 theology, it does abundantly deal, — with thought and 
 speculation, it must surely be admitted that for its 
 true and ultimate development in this line more time 
 is required, and other conditions have to be fulfilled, 
 than we have had already. So far as Christian doc- 
 trine contains speculative philosophical ideas, never 
 since its origin have the conditions been present for 
 determining these adequately; certainly not in the 
 mediaeval Church, which so dauntlessly strove to 
 determine them. And therefore on every Creed 
 and Council is judgment passed in Bishop Butler's 
 sentence : " The Bible contains many truths as yet un- 
 discovered." 
 
 The Christian religion has practice for its great 
 end and aim ; but it raises, as any one can see, and as 
 Church-history proves, numerous and great questions 
 of philosophy and of scientific criticism. Well, for 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 127 
 
 the true elucidation of such questions, and for their 
 final solution, time and favourable developing condi- 
 tions are confessedly necessary. From the end of 
 the apostolic age !and of the great fontal burst of 
 Christianity, down to the present time, have such 
 conditions ever existed, in the Christian communities, 
 for determining adequately the questions of philosophy 
 and scientific criticism which the Christian religion 
 starts 1 God, creation, will, evil, propitiation, immortality, 
 — these terms and many more of the same kind, how- 
 ever much they might in the Bible be used in a 
 concrete and practical manner, yet plainly had in 
 themselves a provocation to abstract thought, carried 
 with them the occasions of a criticism and a philo- 
 sophy, which must sooner or later make its appear- 
 ance in the Church. It did make its appearance, and 
 the question is whether it has ever yet appeared there 
 under conditions favourable to its true development. 
 Surely this is best elucidated by considering whether 
 questions of criticism and philosophy in general ever 
 had one of their happy moments, their times for 
 successful development, in the early and middle ages 
 of Christendom at all, or have had one of them in the 
 Christian churches, as such, since. All these questions 
 hang together, and the time that is improper for 
 solving one sort of them truly, is improper for solving 
 the others. 
 
 Well, surely, historic criticism, criticism of style, 
 criticism of nature, no one would go to the early or 
 middle ages of the Church for illumination on these 
 matters. How then should those ages develop sue- 
 
128 PUEITANISM AND THE 
 
 cessfully a philosophy of theology, or in other words, 
 a criticism of physics and metaphysics, which involves 
 the three other criticisms and more besides 1 Church- 
 theology is an elaborate attempt at a philosophy of 
 theology, at a philosophical criticism. In Greece, 
 before Christianity appeared, there had been a favour- 
 ing period for the development of such a criticism ; a 
 considerable movement of it took place, and consider- 
 able results were reached. When Christianity began, 
 this movement was in decadence; it declined more 
 and more till it died quite out ; it revived very slowly, 
 and as it waxed, the mediaeval Church waned. The 
 doctrine of universals is a question of philosophy 
 discussed in Greece, and re-discussed in the Middle 
 Ages. Whatever light this doctrine receives from 
 Plato's treatment of it, or Aristotle's, in whatever 
 state they left it, will any one say that the Nominalists 
 and Realists brought any more light to it, that they 
 developed it in any way, or could develop it ] For 
 the same reason, St. Augustine's criticism of God's 
 eternal decrees, original sin, and justification, the 
 criticism of St. Thomas Aquinas on them, the de- 
 cisions of the Church on them, are of necessity, and 
 from the very nature of things, inadequate, because 
 being philosophical developments, they are made in 
 an age when the forces for true philosophical develop- 
 ment are waning or wanting. 
 
 So when Hooker says most truly : " Our belief in 
 the Trinity, the co-eternity of the Son of God with 
 his Father, the proceeding of the Spirit from the 
 Father and the Son, with other principal points the 
 
CHUKCH OF ENGLAND. 129 
 
 necessity whereof is by none denied, are notwith- 
 standing in Scripture nowhere to be found by express 
 literal mention, only deduced they are out of Scripture 
 by collection ; " — when Hooker thus points out, what 
 is undoubtedly the truth, that these Church-doctrines 
 are developments, we may add this other truth equally 
 undoubted, — that being philosophical developments, 
 they are developments of a kind which the Church 
 has never yet had the right conditions for making 
 adequately, any more than it has had the conditions 
 for developing out of what is said in the Book of 
 Genesis a true philosophy of nature, or out of what 
 is said in the Book of Daniel, a true philosophy of 
 history. It matters nothing whether the scientific 
 truth was there, and the problem was to extract it ; 
 or not there, and the problem was to understand why 
 it was not there, and the relation borne by what ivas 
 there to the scientific truth. The Church had no 
 means of solving either the one problem or the other. 
 And this from no fault at all of the Church, but for 
 the same reason that she was unfitted to solve a 
 difficulty in Aristotle's Physics or Plato's Timceus, 
 and to determine the historical value of Herodotus 
 or Livy; simply from the natural operation of the 
 law of development, which for success in philo- 
 sophy and criticism requires certain conditions, 
 which in the early and mediaeval Church were 
 not to be found. 
 
 And when the movement of philosophy and criti- 
 cism came with the Renascence, this movement was 
 almost entirely outside the Churches, whether Catholic 
 
 VOL. VII. K 
 
130 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 or Protestant, and not inside them. It worked in 
 men like Descartes and Bacon, and not in men like 
 Luther and Calvin ; so that the doctrine of these two 
 eminent personages, Luther and Calvin, so far as it 
 was a philosophical and critical development from 
 Scripture, had no more likelihood of being an adequate 
 development than the doctrine of the Council of Trent. 
 And so it has gone on to this day. Philosophy 
 and criticism have become a great power in the world, 
 and inevitably tend to alter and develop Church- 
 doctrine, so far as this doctrine is, as to a great extent 
 it is, philosophical and critical. Yet the seat of the 
 developing force is not in the Church itself, but else- 
 where ; its influences filter strugglingly into the 
 Church, and the Church slowly absorbs and incor- 
 porates them. And whatever hinders their filtering 
 in and becoming incorporated, hinders truth and the 
 natural progress of things. 
 
 While, therefore, we entirely agree with Dr. New- 
 man and with the great Anglican divines that the 
 whole Bible is written on the principle of develop- 
 ment, and that Christianity in its doctrine and 
 discipline is and must be a development of the Bible, 
 we yet cannot agree that for the adequate develop- 
 ment of Christian doctrine, so far as theology exhibits 
 this metaphysically and scientifically, the Church, 
 whether anti-Nicene or post-Nicene, has ever yet fur- 
 nished a channel. Thought and science follow their 
 own law of development, they are slowly elaborated 
 in the growth and forward pressure of humanity, in 
 what Shakspeare calls, — 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 131 
 
 " the prophetic soul 
 
 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come ; " 
 
 and their ripeness and unripeness, as Dr. Newman 
 most truly says, are not an effect of our wishing or 
 resolving. Bather do they seem brought about by a 
 power such as Goethe figures by the Zeit-Geist or 
 Time-Spirit, and St. Paul describes as a divine power 
 revealing additions to what we possess already. 
 
 But sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian 
 ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general 
 ideas than the main body of men ; therefore St. 
 Paul in the same breath exhorts to unity. What 
 may justly be conceded to the Catholic Church is, 
 that in her idea of a continuous developing power in 
 united Christendom to work upon the data furnished 
 by the Bible, and produce new combinations from 
 them as the growth of time required it, she followed 
 a true instinct. But the right philosophical develop- 
 ments she vainly imagined herself to have had the 
 power to produce, and her attempts in this direction 
 were at most but a prophecy of this power, as alchemy 
 is said to have been a prophecy of chemistry. 
 
 With developments of discipline and church-order 
 it is very different. The Bible raises, as we have 
 seen, many and great questions of philosophy and 
 criticism ; still, essentially the Church was not a cor- 
 poration for speculative purposes, but a corporation 
 for purposes of moral growth and of practice. Terms 
 like God, creation, icitt, evil, propitiation, immortality, 
 evoke, as we have said, and must evoke, sooner or 
 later, a philosophy ; but to evoke this was the accident 
 
132 PUEITANISM AND THE 
 
 and not the essence of Christianity. What, then, 
 was the essence ? 
 
 An ingenious writer, as unlike Dr. Newman as it 
 is possible to conceive, has lately told us. In an 
 article in Fraser's Magazine, — an article written with 
 great vigour and acuteness, this writer advises us to 
 return to Paley, whom we were beginning to neglect, 
 because the real important essence of Christianity, or 
 rather, to quote quite literally, " the only form of 
 Christianity which is worthy of the serious considera- 
 tion of rational men, is Protestantism as stated by 
 Paley and his school." And why? "Because this 
 Protestantism enables the saint to prove to the 
 worldly man that Christ threatened him with hell- 
 fire, and proved his power to threaten by rising from 
 the dead and ascending into heaven ; and these alle- 
 gations are the fundamental assertions of Christianity" 
 
 Now it may be said that this is a somewhat con- 
 tracted view of " the unsearchable riches of Christ ; " 
 but we will not quarrel with it. And this for several 
 reasons. In the first place, it is the view often taken 
 by popular theology. In the second place, it is the 
 view best fitted to serve its Benthamite author's 
 object, which is to get Christianity out of the way 
 altogether. In the third place, its shortness gives us 
 courage to try and do what is the hardest thing in 
 the world, namely, to pack a statement of the main 
 drift of Christianity into a few lines of nearly as short 
 compass. 
 
 What then was, in brief, the Christian gospel, or 
 " good news % " It was this : The kingdom of God is 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 133 
 
 come unto you. The power of Jesus upon the multi- 
 tudes who heard him gladly, was not that by rising 
 from the dead and ascending into heaven he enabled 
 the saint to prove to the worldly man the certainty of 
 hell-fire (for he had not yet done so) • but that he talked 
 to them about the kingdom of God. 1 And what is the 
 kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven % It is this : 
 God's will done, as in heaven so on earth. And how was 
 this come to mankind 1 Because Jesus is come to save 
 his people from their sins. And what is being saved from 
 our sins 1 This : Entering into the kingdom of heaven 
 by doing the will of our Father which is in heaven. And 
 how does Christ enable us to do this 1 By teaching 
 us to take his yoke upon us, and learn of him to deny our- 
 selves and take up our cross daily and follow him, and to 
 
 1 Nothing can be more certain than that the kingdom of God 
 meant originally, and was understood to mean, a Messianic 
 kingdom speedily to be revealed ; and that to this idea of the 
 kingdom is due much of the effect which its preaching exercised 
 on the imagination of the first generation of Christians. But 
 nothing is more certain, also, than that while the end itself, 
 the Messianic kingdom, was necessarily something intangible 
 and future, the way to the end, the doing the will of God by 
 intently following the voice of the moral conscience, in those 
 duties, above all, for which there was then in the world the most 
 crying need, — the duties of humbleness, self-denial, pureness, 
 justice, charity, — became from the very first in the teaching of 
 Jesus something so ever-present and practical, and so associated 
 with the essence of Jesus himself, that the way to the kingdom 
 grew inseparable, in thought, from the kingdom itself, and was 
 bathed in the same light and charm. Then, after a time, as 
 the vision of an approaching Messianic kingdom was dissipated, 
 the idea of the perfect accomplishment on earth of the will of 
 God had to take the room of it, and in its own realisation to 
 place the ideal of the true kingdom of God. 
 
134 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 lose our life for the purpose of saving it. So that St. 
 Paul might say most truly that the seal of the sure 
 foundation of God in Christianity was this : Let every 
 one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity ; 
 or, as he elsewhere expands it : Let him bring forth 
 the fruits of the Spirit, — love, joy, peace, long suffering, 
 kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control. 1 
 
 On this foundation arose the Christian Church, and 
 not on any foundation of speculative metaphysics. It 
 was inevitable that the speculative metaplrysics should 
 come, but they were not the foundation. When they 
 came, the danger of the Christian Church was that 
 she should take them for the foundation. The people 
 who were built on the real foundation, who were 
 united in the joy of Christ's good news, naturally, as 
 they came to know of one another's existence, as their 
 relations with one another multiplied, as the sense of 
 sympathy in the possession of a common treasure 
 deepened, — naturally, I say, drew together in one 
 body, with an organisation growing out of the needs 
 of a growing body. It is quite clear that the more 
 strongly Christians felt their common business in 
 setting forward upon earth, through Christ's spirit, 
 the kingdom of God, the more they would be drawn 
 to coalesce into one society for this business, with the 
 natural and true notion that the acting together in 
 this way offers to men greater helps for reaching their 
 aim, presents fewer distractions, and above all, supplies 
 a more animating force of sympathy and mutual 
 assurance, than the acting separately. Only the 
 
 1 2 Tim. ii. 19 ; Gal. v. 22, 23. 
 
CHUEOH OF ENGLAND. 135 
 
 sense of differences greater than the sense of sympathy 
 could defeat this tendency. 
 
 Dr. Newman has told us what an impression was 
 once made upon his mind by the sentence : Securus 
 judical orbis terrarum. We have shown how, for 
 matters of philosophical judgment, not yet settled 
 but requiring development to clear them, the consent 
 of the world, at a time when this clearing develop- 
 ment cannot have happened, seems to carry little or 
 no weight at all ; indeed, as to judgment on these 
 points, we should rather be inclined to lay down the 
 very contrary of Dr. Newman's affirmation, and to 
 say : Securus delirat orbis terrarum. But points of 
 speculative theology being out of the question, and 
 the practical ground and purpose of man's religion 
 being broadly and plainly fixed, we should be quite 
 disposed to concede to Dr. Newman, that securus colit 
 orbis terrarum; — those pursue this purpose best who 
 pursue it together. For unless prevented by ex- 
 traneous causes, they manifestly tend, as the history 
 of the Church's growth shows, to pursue it together. 
 
 Nonconformists are fond of talking of the unity 
 which may co-exist with separation, and they say : 
 " There are four evangelists, yet one gospel ; why 
 should there not be many separate religious bodies, 
 yet one Church 1 " But their theory of unity in 
 separation is a theory palpably invented to cover 
 existing facts, and their argument from the evan- 
 gelists is a paralogism. For the Four Gospels arose 
 out of no thought of divergency ; they were not 
 designed as corrections of one prior gospel, or of one 
 
136 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 another ; they were concurring testimonies borne to 
 the same fact. But the several religious bodies of 
 Christendom plainly grew out of an intention of 
 divergency ; clearly they were designed to correct the 
 imperfections of one prior church and of each other ; 
 and to say of things sprung out of discord that they 
 may make one, because things sprung out of concord 
 may make one, is like saying that because several 
 agreements may make a peace, therefore several wars 
 may make a peace too. No; without some strong 
 motive to the contrary, men united by the pursuit of 
 a clearly denned common aim of irresistible attrac- 
 tiveness naturally coalesce ; and since they coalesce 
 naturally, they are clearly right in coalescing and find 
 their advantage in it. 
 
 All that Dr. Newman has so excellently said about 
 development applies here legitimately and fully. 
 Existence justifies additions and stages in existence. 
 The living edifice planted on the foundation, Let every 
 one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity, 
 could not but grow, if it lived at all. If it grew, it 
 could not but make developments, and all develop- 
 ments not inconsistent with the aim of its original 
 foundation, and not extending beyond the moral and 
 practical sphere which was the sphere of its original 
 foundation, are legitimated by the very fact of the 
 Church having in the natural evolution of its life and 
 growth made them. A boy does not wear the clothes 
 or follow the ways of an infant, nor a man those of a 
 boy ; yet they are all engaged in the one same busi- 
 ness of developing their growing life, and to the clothes 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 137 
 
 to be worn and the ways to be followed for the purpose 
 of doing this, nature will, in general, direct them safely. 
 The several scattered congregations of the first age of 
 Christianity coalesced into one community, just as the 
 several scattered Christians had earlier still coalesced 
 into congregations. Why'? — because such was the 
 natural course of things. It had nothing inconsistent 
 with the fundamental ground of Christians, Let every 
 one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity ; 
 and it was approved by their growing and enlarging 
 in it. They developed a church - discipline with a 
 hierarchy of bishops and archbishops, which was not 
 that of the first times ; they developed church-usages, 
 such as the practice of infant baptism, which were not 
 those of the first times ; they developed a church-ritual 
 with ceremonies which were not those of the first 
 times ; — they developed all these, just as they deve- 
 loped a church-architecture which was not that of the 
 first times, because they were no longer in the first 
 times, and required for their expanding growth what 
 suited their own times. They coalesced with the 
 State because they grew by doing so. They called 
 the faith they possessed in common the Catholic, that 
 is, the general or universal faith. They developed, 
 also, as we have seen, dogma or a theological philo- 
 sophy. Both dogma and discipline became a part of 
 the Catholic faith, or profession of the general body 
 of Christians. 
 
 Now to develop a discipline, or form of outward 
 life for itself, the Church, as has been said, had 
 necessarily, like every other living thing, the requisite 
 
138 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 qualifications ; to develop scientific dogma it had not. 
 But even of the dogma which the Church developed 
 it may be said, that, from the very nature of things, 
 it was probably, as compared with the opposing dogma 
 over which it prevailed, the more suited to the actual 
 condition of the Church's life, and to the due progress 
 of the divine work for which she existed. For in- 
 stance, whatever may be scientifically the rights of 
 the question about grace and free-will, it is evident 
 that, for the Church of the fifth century, Pelagianism 
 was the less inspiring and edifying doctrine, and the 
 sense of being in the divine hand was the feeling which 
 it was good for Christians to be filled with. What- 
 ever may be scientifically the merits of the dispute 
 between Arius and Athanasius, for the Church of their 
 time whatever most exalted or seemed to exalt Jesus 
 Christ was clearly the profitable doctrine, the doctrine 
 most helpful to that moral life which was the true 
 life of the Church. 
 
 People, however, there were in abundance who 
 differed on points both of discipline and of dogma 
 from the rule which obtained in the Church, and who 
 separated from her on account of that difference. 
 These were the heretics : separatists, as the name 
 implies, for the sake of opinions. And the very name, 
 therefore, implies that they were wrong in separating, 
 and that the body which held together was right; 
 because the Church exists, not for the sake of opinions, 
 but for the sake of moral practice, and a united endea- 
 vour after this is stronger than a broken one. Valen- 
 tinians, Marcionites, Montanists, Donatists, Mani- 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 139 
 
 chseans, Novatians, Eutychians, Apollinarians, Nestor- 
 ians, Arians, Pelagians, — if they separated on points 
 of discipline they were wrong, because for developing 
 its own fit outward conditions of life the body of a 
 community has, as we have seen, a real natural power, 
 and individuals are bound to sacrifice their fancies to 
 it ; if they separated on points of dogma they were 
 wrong also, because, while neither they nor the Church 
 had the means of determining such points adequately, 
 the true instinct lay in those who, instead of sepa- 
 rating for such points, conceded them as the Church 
 settled them, and found their bond of union, where 
 it in truth really was, not in notions about the co- 
 eternity of the Son, but in the principle : Let every one 
 that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. 
 
 Does any one imagine that all the Church shared 
 Augustine's speculative opinions about grace and pre- 
 destination 1 that many members of it did not rather 
 incline, as a matter of speculative opinion, to the 
 notions of Pelagius 1 Does any one imagine that all 
 who stood with the Church and did not join them- 
 selves to the Arians, were speculatively Athanasians 1 
 It was not so ; but they had a true feeling for what 
 purpose the Gospel and the Church were given them, 
 and for what they were not given them ; they could 
 see that "impious and pious living," according to 
 that sentence of Epiphanius we have quoted from 
 Hammond, " divided the whole Christian world into 
 erroneous and orthodox ; " and that it was not 
 worth while to suffer themselves to be divided for 
 anything else. 
 
140 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 And though it will be said that separatists for 
 opinions on points of discipline and dogma have often 
 asserted, and sometimes believed, that piety and im- 
 piety were vitally concerned in these points ; yet here 
 again the true religious instinct is that which discerns, 
 — what is seldom so very obscure, — whether they are 
 in truth thus vitally concerned or not ; and, if they 
 are not, cannot be perverted into fancying them con- 
 cerned and breaking unity for them. This, I . say, is 
 the true religious instinct, the instinct which most 
 clearly seizes the essence and aim of the Christian 
 Gospel and of the Christian Church. But fidelity to 
 it leaves, also, the way least closed to the admission 
 of true developments of speculative thought, when 
 the time is come for them, and to the incorporation 
 of these true developments with the ideas and practice 
 of Christians. 
 
 Is there not, then, any separation which is right 
 and reasonable? Yes, separation on plain points of 
 morals. For these involve the very essence of the 
 Christian Gospel, and the very ground on which the 
 Christian Church is built. The sale of indulgences, 
 if deliberately instituted and persisted in by the main 
 body of the Church, afforded a valid reason for break- 
 ing unity ; the doctrine of purgatory, or of the real 
 presence, did not. 
 
 However, a cosmopolitan church-order, commenced 
 when the political organisation of Christians was also 
 cosmopolitan, — when, that is, the nations of Europe 
 were politically one in the unity of the Eoman Empire, 
 — might well occasion difficulties as the nations solidi- 
 
CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 141 
 
 fied into independent states with a keen sense of their 
 independent life ; so that, the cosmopolitan type dis- 
 appearing for civil affairs, and being replaced by the 
 national type, the same disappearance and replace- 
 ment tended to prevail in ecclesiastical affairs also. 
 But this was a political difficulty, not a religious one, 
 and it raised no insuperable bar to continued reli- 
 gious union. A Church with Anglican liberties might 
 very well, the English national spirit being what it is, 
 have been in religious communion with Rome, and yet 
 have been safely trusted to maintain and develop its 
 national liberties to any extent required. 
 
 The moral corruptions of Rome, on the other hand, 
 were a real ground for separation. On their account, 
 and solely on their account, if they could not be got 
 rid of, was separation not only lawful but necessary. 
 It has always been the averment of the Church of 
 England, that the change made in her at the Refor- 
 mation was the very least change which was absolutely 
 necessary. No doubt she used the opportunity of 
 her breach with Rome to get rid of several doctrines 
 which the human mind had outgrown; but it was the 
 immoral practice of Rome that really moved her to 
 separation. And she maintained that she merely got 
 rid of Roman corruptions which were immoral and 
 intolerable, and remained the old, historic, Catholic 
 Church of England still. 
 
 The right to this title of Catholic is a favourite 
 matter of contention between bodies of Christians. 
 But let us use names in their customary and natural 
 senses. To us it seems that unless one chooses to 
 
142 PUEITANISM AND THE 
 
 fight about words, and fancifully to put into the word 
 Catholic some occult quality, one must allow that the 
 changes made in the Church of England at the Refor- 
 mation impaired its Catholicity. The word Catholic 
 was meant to describe the common or general profes- 
 sion and worship of Christendom at the time when 
 the word arose. Undoubtedly this general profession 
 and worship had not a strict uniformity everywhere, 
 but it had a clearly-marked common character ; and 
 this well-known type Bede, or Anselm, or Wiclif him- 
 self, would to this day easily recognise in a Roman 
 Catholic religious service, but hardly in an Anglican ; 
 while, on the other hand, in a Roman Catholic religious 
 service an ordinary Anglican finds himself as much in 
 a strange world and out of his usual course, as in a 
 Nonconformist meeting-house. Something precious 
 was no doubt lost in losing this common profession 
 and worship; but the loss was, as we Protestants 
 maintain, incurred for the sake of something yet more 
 precious still, — the purity of that moral practice which 
 was the very cause for which the common profession 
 and worship existed. Now, it seems captious to incur 
 voluntarily a loss for a great and worthy object, and 
 at the same time, by a conjuring with words, to try 
 and make it appear that we have not suffered the loss 
 at all. So on the word Catholic we will not insist too 
 jealously; but thus much, at any rate, must be allowed 
 to the Church of England, — that she kept enough of 
 the past to preserve, as far as this nation was con- 
 cerned, her continuity, to be still the historic Church 
 of England ; and that she avoided the error, to which 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 143 
 
 there was so much to draw her, and into which all the 
 other reformed Churches fell, of making improved 
 speculative doctrinal opinions the main ground of her 
 separation. 
 
 A Nonconformist newspaper, it is true, reproaching 
 the Church with what is, in our opinion, her greatest 
 praise, namely, that on points of doctrinal theology 
 she is "a Church' that does not know her own mind," 
 roundly asserts, as we have already mentioned, that 
 "no man in his senses can deny that the Church of 
 England was meant to be a thoroughly Protestant 
 and Evangelical, and it may be said Calvinistic 
 Church." But not only does the whole course of 
 Church-history disprove such an assertion, and show 
 that this is what the Puritans always wanted to make 
 the Church, and what the Church would never be 
 made, but we can disprove it, too, out of the mouths 
 of the very Puritans themselves. At the Savoy Con- 
 ference the Puritans urged that " our first reformers 
 out of their great wisdom did at that time (of the 
 Reformation) so compose the Liturgy, as to win upon 
 the Papists, and to draw them into their Church com- 
 munion by varying as little as they could from the Romish 
 forms before in use;" and this they alleged as their 
 great plea for purging the Liturg}?-. And the Bishops 
 resisted, and upheld the proceeding of the reformers 
 as the essential policy of the Church of England ; as 
 indeed it was, and till this day has continued to be. 
 No ; the Church of England did not give her energies 
 to inventing a new church-order for herself and fight- 
 ing for it ; to singling out two or three speculative 
 
144 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 dogmas as the essence of Christianity, and fighting 
 for them. She set herself to carry forward, and as 
 much as possible on the old lines, the old practical 
 work and proper design of the Christian Church ; and 
 this is what left her mind comparatively open, as we 
 have seen, for the admission of philosophy and criti- 
 cism, as they slowly developed themselves outside the 
 Church and filtered into her; an admission which 
 confessedly proves just now of capital importance. 
 
 This openness of mind the Puritans have not shared 
 with the Church, and how should they have shared 
 it 1 They are founded on the negation of that idea 
 of development which plays so important a part in 
 the life of the Church ; on the assumption that there 
 is a divinely appointed church -order fixed once for 
 all in the Bible, and that they have adopted it ; that 
 there is a doctrinal scheme of faith, justification, and 
 imputed righteousness, which is the test of a standing 
 or falling church and the essence of the gospel, and 
 that they have extracted it. These are assumptions 
 which, as they make union impossible, so also make 
 growth impossible. The Church makes church-order 
 a matter of ecclesiastical constitution, is founded on 
 moral practice, and though she develops speculative 
 dogma, does not allow that this or that dogma is the 
 essence of Christianity. 
 
 "Congregational Nonconformists," say the Inde- 
 pendents, " can never be incorporated into an organic 
 union with Anglican Episcopacy, because there is not 
 even the shadow of an outline of it in the New Testa- 
 ment, and it is our assertion and profound belief that 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. I L5 
 
 Christ and the Apostles have given us all the laws 
 that are necessary for the constitution and govern- 
 ment of the Church." 1 "Whatever may come," says 
 the President of the Wesleyan Conference, " we are 
 determined to be simple, earnest preachers of the 
 gospel. Whatever may come, we are determined to 
 be true to Scriptural Protestantism. We would be 
 friendly with all evangelical churches, but we will 
 have no fellowship with the man of sin. We will 
 give up life itself rather than be unfaithful to the truth. 
 It is ours to cry everywhere : ' Come, sinners, to the 
 gospel-feast ! ' " And this gospel, this Scriptural Protes- 
 tantism, this truth, is the doctrine of justification by 
 "pleading solely the blood of the covenant," of which 
 we have said so much. Methodists cannot unite with 
 a church which does not found itself on this doctrine 
 of justification, but which holds the doctrine of priestly 
 absolution, of the real presence, and other doctrines 
 of like stamp ; Congregationalists cannot unite with 
 a church which, besides not resting on the doctrine of 
 justification, has a church-order not prescribed in the 
 New Testament. 
 
 Now as Hooker truly says of those who " desire 
 to draw all things unto the determination of bare 
 and naked Scripture," as Dr. Newman, too, has said, 
 and as many others have said, the Bible does not 
 exhibit, drawn out in black and white, the precise 
 tenets and usages of any Christian society; some 
 inference and criticism must be employed to get at 
 
 1 Address of the Rev. G. W. Conder at Liverpool, in the 
 Lancashire Congregational Calendar for 1869-70. 
 
 VOL. VII. L 
 
146 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 them. "For the most part, even such as are readiest 
 to cite for one thing five hundred sentences of Scrip- 
 ture, what warrant have they that any one of them 
 doth mean the thing for which it is alleged 1 " Nay, 
 "it is not the word of God itself which doth, or 
 possibly can, assure us that we do well to think it his 
 word." So says Hooker, and what he says is perfectly 
 true. A process of reasoning and collection is neces- 
 sary to get at the Scriptural church discipline and 
 the Scriptural Protestantism of the Puritans \ in short, 
 this discipline and this doctrine are developments. 
 And the first is an unsound development, in a line 
 where there was a power of making a true develop- 
 ment, and where the Church made it ; the second is 
 an unsound development in a line where neither the 
 Church nor Puritanism had the power of making true 
 developments. But as it is the truth of its Scriptural 
 Protestantism which in Puritanism's eyes especially 
 proves the truth of its Scriptural church-order which 
 has this Protestantism, and the falsehood of the 
 Anglican church-order which has much less of it, to 
 abate the confidence of the Puritans in their Scrip- 
 tural Protestantism is the first step towards their 
 union, so much to be desired, with the national 
 Church. 
 
 We say, therefore, that the doctrine : " It is agreed 
 between God and the mediator Jesus Christ the Son 
 of God, surety for the redeemed, as parties-contractors, 
 that the sins of the redeemed should be imputed to 
 innocent Christ, and he both condemned and put to 
 death for them upon this very condition, that whoso- 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 147 
 
 ever heartily consents unto the covenant of reconcilia- 
 tion offered through Christ shall, by the imputation 
 of his obedience unto them, be justified and holden 
 righteous before God," — we say that this doctrine is 
 as much a human development from the text, " Christ 
 Jesus came into the world to save sinners," as the 
 doctrine of priestly absolution is a human develop- 
 ment from the text, " Whosesoever sins ye remit, they 
 are remitted unto them," or the doctrine of the real 
 presence from the text, "Take, eat, this is my 
 body." In our treatise on St. Paul we have shown 
 at length that the received doctrine of justification 
 is an unsound development. It may be said that 
 the doctrine of priestly absolution and of the real 
 presence are unsound developments also. True, in 
 our opinion they are so ; they are, like the doctrine 
 of justification, developments made under conditions 
 which precluded the possibility of sound develop- 
 ments in this line. But the difference is here : the 
 Church of England does not identify Christianity 
 with these unsound developments ; she does not call 
 either of them Scriptural Protestantism, or truth, or 
 the gospel; she does not insist that all who are in 
 communion with her should hold them ; she does not 
 repel from her communion those who hold doctrines 
 at variance with them. She treats them as she does 
 the received doctrine of justification, to which she 
 does not tie herself up, but leaves people to hold it if 
 they please. She thus provides room for growth and 
 further change in these very doctrines themselves. 
 But to the doctrine of justification Puritanism ties 
 
148 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 itself up, just as it tied itself up formerly to the 
 doctrine of predestination ; it calls it Scriptural Pro- 
 testantism, truth, the gospel; it will have communion 
 with none who do not hold it ; it repels communion 
 with any who hold the doctrines of priestly absolution 
 and the real presence, because they seem to interfere 
 with it. Yet it is really itself no better than they. 
 But how can growth possibly find place in this doc- 
 trine, while it is held in such a fashion ? 
 
 Every one who perceives and values the power 
 contained in Christianity, must be struck to see how, 
 at the present moment, the progress of this power 
 seems to depend upon its being able to disengage 
 itself from speculative accretions that encumber it. 
 A considerable movement to this end is visible in the 
 Church of England. The most nakedly speculative, 
 and therefore the most inevitably defective, parts of 
 the Prayer Book, the Athanasian Creed and the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, — our generation will not improb- 
 ably see the Prayer Book rid of. But the larger the 
 body in which this movement works, the greater is 
 the power of the movement. If the Church of Eng- 
 land were disestablished to-day it would be desirable 
 to re-establish her to-morrow, if only because of the 
 immense power for development which a national body 
 possesses. It is because we know something of the 
 Nonconformist ministers, and what eminent force and 
 faculty many of them have for contributing to the 
 work of development now before the Church, that we 
 cannot bear to see the waste of power caused by their 
 separatism and battling with the Establishment, which 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 149 
 
 absorb their energies too much to suffer them to 
 carry forward the work of development themselves, 
 and cut them off from aiding those in the Church who 
 carry it forward. 
 
 The political dissent of the Nonconformists, based 
 on their condemnation of the Anglican church-order 
 as unscriptural, is just one of those speculative accre- 
 tions which we have spoken of as encumbering religion. 
 Politics are a good thing, and religion is a good thing ; 
 but they make a fractious mixture. " The Noncon- 
 formity of England, and the Nonconformity alone, 
 has been the salvation of England from Papal tyranny 
 and kingly misrule and despotism." 1 This is the 
 favourite boast, the familiar strain ; but this is really 
 politics, and not religion at all. But righteousness is 
 religion ; and the Nonconformists say : " "Who have 
 done so much for righteousness as we 1 " For as 
 much righteousness as will go with politics, no one ; 
 for the sterner virtues, for the virtues of the Jews of 
 the Old Testament ; but these are only half of right- 
 eousness and not the essentially Christian half. We 
 have seen how St. Paul tore himself in two, rent his 
 life in the middle and began it again, because he was 
 so dissatisfied with a righteousness which was, after 
 all, in its main features, Puritan. And surely it can 
 hardly be denied that the more eminently and 
 exactly Christian type of righteousness is the type 
 exhibited by Church worthies like Herbert, Ken, and 
 Wilson, rather than that exhibited by the worthies 
 of Puritanism ; the cause being that these last mixed 
 
 1 The Rev. G. W. Conder, ubi supra. 
 
150 PUEITANISM AND THE 
 
 politics with religion so much more than did the 
 first. 
 
 Paul, too, be it remembered, condemned disunion 
 in the society of Christians as much as he declined 
 politics. This does not, we freely own, make against 
 the Puritan's refusal to take the law from their adver- 
 saries, but it does make against their allegation that 
 it does not matter whether the society of Christians 
 is united or not, and that there are even great advan- 
 tages in separatism. If Anglicans maintained that 
 their church -'order was written in Scripture and a 
 matter of divine command, then, Congregationalists 
 maintaining the same thing, to the controversy 
 between them there could be no end. But now, 
 Anglicans maintaining no such thing, but that their 
 church-order is a matter of historic development and 
 natural expediency, that it has grown, — which is 
 evident enough, — and that the essence of Christianity 
 is in nowise concerned with such matters, why should 
 not the Nonconformists adopt this moderate view of 
 the case, which constrains them to no admission of 
 inferiority, but only to the renouncing an imagined 
 divine superiority and to the recognition of an 
 existing fact, and allow Church bishops as a develop- 
 ment of Catholic antiquity, just as they have allowed 
 Church music and Church architecture, which are 
 developments of the same 1 Then might there arise 
 a mighty and undistracted power of joint life, which 
 would transform, indeed, the doctrines of priestly 
 absolution and the real presence, but which would 
 transform, equally, the so-called Scriptural Proles- 
 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 151 
 
 tantism of imputed righteousness, and which would 
 do more for real righteousness and for Christianity 
 than has ever been done yet. 
 
 Tillotson's proposals for comprehension, drawn up 
 in 1689, cannot be too much studied at the present 
 juncture. These proposals, with which his name and 
 that of Stillingfleet, two of the most estimable names 
 in the English Church, are specially associated, 
 humiliate no one, refute no one ; they take the basis 
 of existing facts, and endeavour to build on it a solid 
 union. They are worth quoting entire, and I con- 
 clude with them. Their details our present circum- 
 stances would modify ; their spirit any sound plan of 
 Church-reform must take as its rule. 
 
 "1. That the ceremonies enjoined or recommended 
 in the Liturgy or Canons be left indifferent. 
 
 " 2. That the Liturgy be carefully reviewed, and 
 such alterations and changes be therein made as may 
 supply the defects and remove as much as possible 
 all ground of exception to any part of it, by leaving 
 out the apocryphal lessons and correcting the trans- 
 lation of the psalms used in the public service 
 where there is need of it, and in many other par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 " 3. That instead of all former declarations and 
 subscriptions to be made by ministers, it shall be 
 sufficient for them that are admitted to the exercise 
 of their ministry in the Church of England to sub- 
 scribe one general declaration and promise to this 
 purpose, viz : That we do submit to the doctrine, dis- 
 cipline, and worship of the Church of England as it shall 
 
152 PURITANISM AND THE 
 
 be established by law, and promise to teach and practise 
 accordingly. 
 
 " 4. That a new body of ecclesiastical Canons be 
 made, particularly with a regard to a more effectual 
 provision for the reformation of manners both in 
 ministers and people. 
 
 " 5. That there be an effectual regulation of 
 ecclesiastical courts to remedy the great abuses and 
 inconveniences which by degrees and length of time 
 have crept into them ; and particularly that the 
 power of excommunication be taken out of the hands 
 of lay officers and placed in the bishop, and not to be 
 exercised for trivial matters, but upon great and 
 weighty occasions. 
 
 "6. That for the future those who have been 
 ordained in any of the foreign churches be not 
 required to be re -ordained here, to render them 
 capable of preferment in the Church. 
 
 " 7. That for the future none be capable of any 
 ecclesiastical benefice or preferment in the Church of 
 England that shall be ordained in England otherwise 
 than by bishops ; and that those who have been 
 ordained only by presbyters shall not be compelled 
 to renounce their former ordination. But because 
 many have and do still doubt of the validity of such 
 ordination, where episcopal ordination may be had, 
 and is by law required, it shall be sufficient for such 
 persons to receive ordination from a bishop in this or 
 the like form : ' If thou art not already ordained, I 
 ordain thee,' etc. ; as in case a doubt be made of an}' 
 one's baptism, it is appointed by the Liturgy that lie 
 
CHUECII OF ENGLAND. 153 
 
 be baptized in this form : ' If thou are not baptized, 
 I baptize thee.' " 
 
 These are proposals " to be made by the Church of 
 England for the union of Protestants." Who cannot 
 see that the power of joint life already spoken of 
 would be far greater and stronger if it comprehended 
 Roman Catholics too. And who cannot see, also, 
 that in the churches of the most strong and living 
 Roman Catholic countries, — in France and Germany, 
 — a movement is in progress which may one day 
 make a general union of Christendom possible ? But 
 this will not be in our day, nor is it business which 
 the England of this generation is set to do. AVhat 
 may be done in our day, what our generation has the 
 call and the means, if only it has the resolution, to 
 bring about, is the union of Protestants. But this 
 union will never be on the basis of the actual Scrip- 
 tural Protestantism of our Puritans ; and because, so 
 long as they take this for the Gospel or good news 
 of Christ, they cannot possibly unite on any other 
 basis, the first step towards union is showing them 
 that this is not the gospel. If we have succeeded in 
 doing even so much towards union as to convince 
 one of them of this, we have not written in vain. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 CHURCH AND RELIGION 
 
Qu'onfonde lafoi profonde > 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The present volume closes the series of my attempts 
 to deal directly with questions concerning religion 
 and the Church. Indirectly such questions must 
 often, in all serious literary work, present them- 
 selves ; but in this volume I make them my direct 
 object for the last time. Assuredly it was not for 
 my own pleasure that I entered upon them at first, 
 and it is with anything but reluctance that I now 
 part from them. Neither can I be ignorant what 
 offence my handling of them has given to many 
 whose goodwill I value, and with what relief they 
 will learn that the handling is now to cease. Per- 
 sonal considerations, however, ought not in a matter 
 like this to bear sway ; and they have not, in fact, 
 determined me to bring to an end the work which I 
 had been pursuing. But the thing which I proposed 
 to myself to do has, so far as my powers enabled me 
 to do it, been done. What I wished to say has been 
 said. And in returning to devote to literature, more 
 strictly so-called, what remains to me of life and 
 strength and leisure, I am returning, after all, to 
 a field where work of the most important kind has 
 
158 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 now to be done, though indirectly, for religion. I 
 am persuaded that the transformation of religion, 
 which is essential for its perpetuance, can be accom- 
 plished only by carrying the qualities of flexibility, 
 perceptiveness, and judgment, which are the best 
 fruits of letters, to whole classes of the community 
 which now know next to nothing of them, and by 
 procuring the application of those qualities to matters 
 where they are never applied now. 
 
 A survey of the forms and tendencies which reli- 
 gion exhibits at the present day in England has been 
 made lately by a man of genius, energy, and sym- 
 pathy — Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone seems dis- 
 posed to fix as the test of value, for those several 
 forms, their greater or lesser adaptedness to the mind 
 of masses of our people. It may be admitted that 
 religion ought to be capable of reaching the mind of 
 masses of men. It may be admitted that a religion 
 not plain and simple, a religion of abstractions and 
 intellectual refinements, cannot influence masses of 
 men. But it is an error to imagine that the mind of 
 our masses, or even the mind of our religious world, 
 is something which may remain just as it now is, and 
 that religion will have to adapt itself to that mind 
 just as it now is. At least as much change is 
 required, and will have to take place, in that mind 
 as in religion. Gross of perception and materialising 
 that mind is, at present, still disposed to be. Yet at 
 the same time it is undeniable that the old anthropo- 
 morphic and miraculous religion, suited in many 
 respects to such a mind, no longer reaches and 
 
PREFACE. 159 
 
 rules it as it once did. A check and disturbance 
 to religion thence arises. But let us impute the dis- 
 turbance to the right cause. It is not to be imputed 
 merely to the inadequacy of the old materialising 
 religion, and to be remedied by giving to this religion 
 a form still materialising, but more acceptable. It is 
 to be imputed, in at least an equal degree, to the 
 grossness of perception and materialising habits of 
 the popular mind, which unfit it for any religion not 
 lending itself, like the old popular religion, to those 
 habits ; while yet, from other causes, that old religion 
 cannot maintain its sway. And it is to be remedied 
 by a gradual transformation of the popular mind, by 
 slowly curing it of its grossness of perception and 
 of its materialising habits, not by keeping religion 
 materialistic that it may correspond to them. 
 
 The conditions of the religious question are, in 
 truth, profoundly misapprehended in this country. 
 In England and in America religion has retained so 
 much hold upon the affections of the community, 
 that the partisans of popular religion are easily led 
 to entertain illusions ; to fancy that the difficulties of 
 their case are much less than they are, that they can 
 make terms which they cannot make, and save things 
 which they cannot save. A good medicine for such 
 illusions would be the perusal of the criticisms which 
 Literature and Dogma has encountered on the Conti- 
 nent. Here in England that book passes, in general, 
 for a book revolutionary and anti-religious. In foreign 
 critics of the liberal school it provokes a feeling of 
 mingled astonishment and impatience; impatience, 
 
160 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION, 
 
 that religion should be set on new grounds when 
 they had hoped that religiou, the old ground having 
 in the judgment of all rational persons given way, 
 was going to ruin as fast as could fairly be expected ; 
 astonishment, that any man of liberal tendencies 
 should not agree with them. 
 
 Particularly striking, in this respect, were the 
 remarks upon Literature and Dogma of M. Challemel- 
 Lacour, in France, and of Professor de Gubernatis, 
 in Italy. Professor de Gubernatis is perhaps the 
 most accomplished man in Italy ; he is certainly one 
 of the most intelligent. M. Challemel-Lacour is, or 
 was, one of the best, gravest, most deeply interesting 
 and instructive, of French writers. His admirable 
 series of articles on Wilhelm von Humboldt, which I 
 read a good many years ago in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, still live as fresh in my memory as if I 
 had read them yesterday. M. Challemel-Lacour has 
 become an ardent politician. It is well known how 
 politics, in France, govern men's treatment of the 
 religious question. Some little temper and heat are 
 excusable, undoubtedly, when religion raises in a 
 man's mind simply the image of the clerical party 
 and of his sworn political foes. Perhaps a man's 
 view of religion, however, must necessarily in this 
 case be somewhat warped. Professor de Gubernatis 
 is not a politician; he is an independent friend of 
 progress, of high studies, and of intelligence. His 
 remarks on Literature and Dogma, therefore, and on 
 the attempt made in that book to give a new life to 
 religion by giving a new sense to words of the Bible, 
 
PREFACE. 161 
 
 have even a greater significance than M. Challemel- 
 Lacour's. For Italy and for Italians, says Professor 
 de Gubernatis, such an attempt has and can have no 
 interest whatever. "In Italy the Bible is just this : 
 — for priests, a sacred text ; for infidels, a book full 
 of obscurities and contradictions ; for the learned, an 
 historical document to be used with great caution ; 
 for lovers of literature, a collection of very fine speci- 
 mens of Oriental poetic eloquence. But it never has 
 been, and never will be, a fruitful inspirer of men's 
 daily life." "And how wonderful," Professor de 
 Gubernatis adds, "that any one should wish to make 
 it so, and should raise intellectual and literary discus- 
 sions having this for their object ! " " It is strange 
 that the human genius should take pleasure in com- 
 bating in such narrow lists, with such treacherous 
 ground under one's feet, with such a cloudy sky over 
 one's head ; — and all this in the name of freedom of 
 discussion!" "What would the author of Literature 
 and Dogma say," concludes Professor de Gubernatis, 
 "if Plato had based his republic upon a text of 
 Hesiod ; — se Platone avesse fondata la sua Repubblica 
 sopra un testo d'Esiodo ? " That is to say, the Bible 
 has no more solidity and value, as a basis for human 
 life, than the Theogony. 
 
 Here we have, undoubtedly, the genuine opinion 
 of Continental liberalism concerning the religion of 
 the Bible and its future. It is stated with unusual 
 frankness and clearness, but it is the genuine opinion. 
 It is not an opinion which at present prevails at all 
 widely either in this country or in America. But 
 
 VOL. VII. M 
 
162 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 when we consider the immense change which, in 
 other matters where tradition and convention were 
 the obstacles to change, has befallen the thought of 
 this country since the Continent was opened at the 
 end of the great war, we cannot doubt that in religion, 
 too, the mere barriers of tradition and convention will 
 finally give way, that a common European level of 
 thought will establish itself, and will spread to America 
 also. Of course there will be backwaters, more or less 
 strong, of superstition and obscurantism ; but I speak 
 of the probable development of opinion in those 
 classes which are to be called progressive and liberal. 
 Such classes are undoubtedly the multiplying and 
 prevailing body both here and in America. And I 
 say that, if we judge the future from the past, these 
 classes, in any matter where it is tradition and con- 
 vention that at present isolates them from the com- 
 mon liberal opinion of Europe, will, with time, be 
 drawn almost inevitably into that opinion. 
 
 The partisans of traditional religion in this country 
 do not know, I think, how decisively the whole force 
 of progressive and liberal opinion on the Continent 
 has pronounced against the Christian religion. They 
 do not know how surely the whole force of progressive 
 and liberal opinion in this country tends to follow, so 
 far as traditional religion is concerned, the opinion of 
 the Continent. They dream of patching up things 
 unmendable, of retaining what can never be retained, 
 of stopping change at a point where it can never be 
 stopped. The undoubted tendencjr of liberal opinion 
 is to reject the whole anthropomorphic and miracu- 
 
PREFACE. 163 
 
 lous religion of tradition, as unsound and untenable. 
 On the Continent such opinion has rejected it already. 
 One cannot blame the rejection. " Things are what 
 they are," and the religion of tradition, Catholic or 
 Protestant, is unsound and untenable. A greater 
 force of tradition in favour of religion is all which 
 now prevents the liberal opinion in this country from 
 following Continental opinion. That force is not of 
 a nature to be permanent, and it will not, in fact, 
 hold out long. But a very grave question is behind. 
 Rejecting, henceforth, all concern with the obsolete 
 religion of tradition, the liberalism of the Continent 
 rejects also, and on the like grounds, all concern with 
 the Bible and Christianity. To claim for the Bible the 
 direction, in any way, of modern life, is, we hear, as 
 if Plato had sought to found his ideal republic " upon 
 a text of Hesiod." The real question is whether this 
 conclusion, too, of modern liberalism is to be admitted, 
 like the conclusion that traditionary religion is un- 
 sound and obsolete. And it does not find many 
 gainsayers. Obscurantists are glad to see the ques- 
 tion placed on this footing : that the cause of tradi- 
 tionary religion, and the cause of Christianity in 
 general, must stand or fall together. For they see 
 but very little way into the future ; and in the imme- 
 diate present this way of putting the question tells, 
 as they clearly perceive, in their favour. In the 
 immediate present many will be tempted to cling to 
 the traditionary religion with their eyes shut, rather 
 than accept the extinction of Christianity. Other 
 friends of religion are busy with fantastic projects, 
 
164 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 which can never come to anything, but which prevent 
 their seeing the real character of the situation. So 
 the thesis of modern liberals on the Continent, that 
 Christianity in general stands on the same footing as 
 traditionary religion and must share its fate, meets 
 with little direct discussion or opposition. And liberal 
 opinion everywhere will at last grow accustomed to 
 finding that thesis put forward as certain, will become 
 familiarised with it, will suppose that no one disputes 
 it. This in itself will tend to withhold men from any 
 serious return upon their own minds in the matter. 
 Meanwhile the day will most certainly arrive, when 
 the great body of liberal opinion in this country will 
 adhere to the first half of the doctrine of Continental 
 liberals; — will admit that traditionary religion is 
 utterly untenable. And the danger is, that from the 
 habits of their minds, and from seeing the thing 
 treated as certain, and from hearing nothing urged 
 against it, our liberals may admit as indisputable the 
 second half of the doctrine too : that Christianity, also, 
 is untenable. 
 
 And therefore is it so all-important to insist on 
 what I call the natural truth of Christianity, and to 
 bring this out all we can. Liberal opinion tends, as 
 we have seen, to treat traditional religion and Chris- 
 tianity as identical ; if one is unsound, so is the other. 
 Especially, however, does liberal opinion show this 
 tendency among the Latin nations, on whom Protes- 
 tantism did not lay hold; and it shows it most among 
 those Latin nations of whom Protestantism laid hold 
 least, such as Italy and Spain. For Protestantism 
 
PKEFACE. 165 
 
 was undoubtedly, whatever may have been its faults 
 and miscarriages, an assertion of the natural truth of 
 Christianity for the mind and conscience of men. 
 The question is, whether Christianity has this natural 
 truth or not. It is a question of fact. In the end 
 the victory belongs to facts, and he who contradicts 
 them finds that he runs his head against a wall. Our 
 traditional religion turns out not to have, in fact, 
 natural truth, the only truth which can stand. The 
 miracles of our traditional religion, like other miracles, 
 did not happen ; its metaphysical proofs of God are 
 mere words. Has or has not Christianity, in fact, the 
 same want of natural truth as our traditional religion 1 ? 
 It is a question of immense importance. Of questions 
 about religion, it may be said to be at the present 
 time, for a serious man, the only important one. 
 
 Now, whoever seeks to show the natural truth of 
 a thing which professes to be for general use, ought 
 to try to be as simple as possible. He ought not to 
 allow himself to have any recourse either to intel- 
 lectual refinements or to sentimental rhetoric. And 
 therefore it is well to start, in bringing out the truth 
 of Christianity, with a plain proposition such as every- 
 body, one would think, must admit : the proposition 
 that conduct is a very important matter. I have 
 called conduct three-fourths of life. M. Challemel- 
 Lacour quarrels greatly with the proposition. Cer- 
 tainly people in general do not behave as if they were 
 convinced that conduct is three-fourths of life. Butler 
 well says that even religious people are always for 
 placing the stress of their religion anywhere other 
 
166 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND EELIGION. 
 
 than on virtue ; — virtue being simply the good direc- 
 tion of conduct. We know, too, that the Italians at 
 the Renascence changed the very meaning of the word 
 virtue altogether, and made their virtic mean a love of 
 the fine arts and of intellectual culture. And we see 
 the fruits of the new definition in the Italy of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We will not, 
 then, there being all this opposition, offer to settle the 
 exact proportion of life which conduct may be said to 
 be. But that conduct is, at any rate, a very consider- 
 able part of life, will generally be admitted. 
 
 It will generally be admitted, too, that all experi- 
 ence as to conduct brings us at last to the fact of two 
 selves, or instincts, or forces, — name them how we 
 will, and however we may suppose them to have 
 arisen, — contending for the mastery in man : one, a 
 movement of first impulse and more involuntary, 
 leading us to gratify any inclination that may solicit 
 us, and called generally a movement of man's ordinary 
 or passing self, of sense, appetite, desire ; the other, a 
 movement of reflection and more voluntary, leading 
 us to submit inclination to some rule, and called 
 generally a movement of man's higher or enduring 
 self, of reason, spirit, will. The thing is described in 
 different words by different nations and men relating 
 their experience of it, but as to the thing itself they 
 all, or all the most serious and important among them, 
 agree. This, I think, will be admitted. Nor will it 
 be denied that they all come to the conclusion that 
 for a man to obey the higher self, or reason, or what- 
 ever it is to be called, is happiness and life for him ; 
 
PREFACE. 167 
 
 to obey the lower is death and misery. It will be 
 allowed, again, that whatever men's minds are to 
 fasten and rest upon, whatever is to hold their atten- 
 tion and to rule their practice, naturally embodies it- 
 self for them in certain examples, precepts, and sayings, 
 to which they perpetually recur. Without a frame 
 or body of this kind, a set of thoughts cannot abide 
 with men and sustain them. "If ye abide in me," 
 says Jesus, "ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free;" — not if you keep skipping about 
 all over the world for various renderings of it. " It 
 behoves us to know," says Epictetus, "that a prin- 
 ciple can hardly establish itself with a man, unless he 
 every day utters the same things, hears the same 
 things, and applies them withal to his life." And 
 naturally the body of examples and precepts, which 
 men should use for this purpose, ought to be those 
 which most impressively represent the principle, or 
 the set of thoughts, commending itself to their minds 
 for respect and attention. And the more the precepts 
 are used, the more will men's sentiments cluster around 
 them, and the more dear and solemn will they be. 
 
 Now to apply this to Christianity. It is evident 
 that to what they called righteousness, — a name which 
 covers all that we mean by conduct, — the Jewish 
 nation attached pre-eminent, unique importance. 
 This impassioned testimony of theirs to the weight 
 of a thing admittedly of very considerable importance, 
 has its own value of a special kind. But it is well 
 known how imperfectly and amiss the Jewish nation 
 conceived righteousness. And finally, when their 
 
168 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION". 
 
 misconceived righteousness failed them in actual life 
 more and more, they took refuge in imaginings about 
 the future, and filled themselves with hopes of a king- 
 dom of God, a resurrection, a judgment, an eternal life, 
 bringing in and establishing for ever this misconceived 
 righteousness of theirs. As God's agent in this work 
 of restoring the kingdom to Israel they promised to 
 themselves an Anointed and Chosen One, Christ the 
 son of God. 1 
 
 Jesus Christ found, when he came among his 
 countrymen, all these phrases and ideas ruling their 
 minds. Conduct or righteousness, a matter admittedly 
 of very considerable importance, and which the Jews 
 thought of paramount importance, they had come 
 entirely to misconceive, and had created an immense 
 poetry of hopes and imaginings in favour of their 
 misconception. What did Jesus do 1 From his 
 countrymen's errors about righteousness he reverted 
 to the solid, authentic, universal fact of experience 
 about it : the fact of the higher and lower self in 
 man, inheritors the one of them of happiness, the 
 other of misery. He possessed himself of it, he 
 made it the centre of his teaching. He made it so in 
 the well-known formula, his secret : " He that will 
 save his life shall lose it ; he that do love his life 
 shall save it." And by his admirable figure of the 
 two lives of man, the real life and the seeming life, he 
 connected this profound fact of experience with that 
 attractive poetry of hopes and imaginings which 
 possessed the minds of his countrymen. Eternal life 1 
 
 1 John xx. 31. 
 
PREFACE. 169 
 
 Yes, the life in the higher and undying self of man. 
 Judgment 1 Yes, the trying, in conscience, of the 
 claims and instigations of the two lives, and the 
 decision between them. Eesnrrection 1 Yes, the 
 rising from bondage and transience with the lower 
 life to victory and permanence with the higher. The 
 kingdom of God 1 Yes, the reign amongst mankind 
 of the higher life. The Christ the son of God ? Yes, 
 the bringer-in and founder of this reign of the higher 
 life, this true kingdom of God. 
 
 But we can go farther. Observers say, with much 
 appearance of truth, that all our passions may be run 
 up into two elementary instincts : the reproductive 
 instinct and the instinct of self-preservation. It is 
 evident to what these instincts will in themselves 
 carry the man who follows the lower self of sense, and 
 appetite, and first impulse. It is evident, also, that 
 they are directly controlled by two forces which 
 Christianity, following that law of the higher life 
 which St. Paul names indifferently the law of God, the 
 law of our mind, the line of thought of the spirit 1 — has 
 set up as its two grand virtues : kindness and pure- 
 ness, charity and chastity. If any virtues could stand 
 for the whole of Christianity, these might. Let us 
 have them from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. 
 " He that loveth his life shall lose it ; a new com- 
 mandment give I unto you that ye love one another." 
 There is charity. " Blest are the pure in heart, for 
 they shall see God." There is purity. 
 
 We go here simply on experience, having to estab- 
 
 1 <pooPT]/xa rod Trvev/xaTos. 
 
170 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 lish the natural truth of Christianity. That the " new 
 commandment " of charity is enjoined by the Bible, 
 gives it therefore, we shall suppose, no force at all, 
 unless it turns out to be enjoined also by experience. 
 And it is enjoined by experience if experience shows 
 that it is necessary to human happiness, — that men 
 cannot get on without it. Now really if there is a 
 lesson which in our day has come to force itself upon 
 everybody, in all quarters and by all channels, it is 
 the lesson of the solidarity, as it is called by modern 
 philosophers, of men. If there was ever a notion 
 tempting to common human nature, it was the notion 
 that the rule of " every man for himself " was the rule 
 of happiness. But at last it turns out as a matter 
 of experience, and so plainly that it is coming to be 
 even generally admitted, — it turns out that the only 
 real happiness is in a kind of impersonal higher life, 
 where the happiness of others counts with a man as 
 essential to his own. He that loves his life does 
 really turn out to lose it, and the new commandment 
 proves its own truth by experience. 
 
 And the other great Christian virtue, pureness 1 
 Here the case is somewhat different. One hears 
 doubts raised, nowadays, as to the natural truth of 
 this virtue. While science has adopted, as a truth con- 
 firmed by experience, the Christian idea of charity, long 
 supposed to conflict with experience, and has decked 
 it out with the grand title of human solidarity, one 
 may hear many doubts thrown, in the name of science 
 and reason, on the truth and validity of the Christian 
 idea of pureness. As a mere commandment this virtue 
 
PEEFACE. 171 
 
 cannot have the authority which it once had, for the 
 notion of commandments in this sense is giving way. 
 And on its natural truth, when the thing conies to be 
 tested by experience, doubts are thrown. "Well, ex- 
 perience must decide. It is a question of fact. 
 " There is no honest woman who is not sick of her 
 trade," says La Rochefoucauld. " I pass for having 
 enjoyed life," said Ninon in old age, " but if any one 
 had told me beforehand what my life was going to 
 be I would have hanged myself." Who is right 1 
 On which side is natural truth ? It will be admitted 
 that there can hardly be a more vital question for 
 human society. And those who doubt on which side 
 is natural truth, and who raise the question, will have 
 to learn by experience. But finely touched souls 
 have a presentiment of a thing's natural truth even 
 though it be questioned, and long before the palpable 
 proof by experience convinces all the world. They 
 have it quite independently of their attitude towards 
 traditional religion. " May the idea of pureness, ex- 
 tending itself to the very morsel which I take into 
 my mouth, grow ever clearer in me and clearer ! " * 
 So prayed Goethe. And all such well-inspired souls 
 will perceive the profound natural truth of the idea 
 of pureness, and will be sure therefore, that the more 
 boldly it is challenged, the more sharply and signally 
 will experience mark its truth. So that of the two 
 great Christian virtues, charity and chastity, kindness 
 and pureness, the one has at this moment the most 
 
 1 " Moge die Idee des Reinen, die sicli auf den Bissen erstreckt 
 den icli in den Mund nehine, immer lichter in mir werden ! " 
 
172 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 signal testimony from experience to its intrinsic truth 
 and weight, and the other is expecting it. 
 
 All this may enable us to understand how admir- 
 ably fitted are Jesus Christ and his precepts to serve 
 as mankind's standing reminder as to conduct, — to 
 serve as men's religion. Jesus Christ and his precepts 
 are found to hit the moral experience of mankind, to 
 hit it in the critical points, to hit it lastingly ; and, 
 when doubts are thrown upon their really hitting it, 
 then to come out stronger than ever. And we know 
 how Jesus Christ and his precepts won their way 
 from the very first, and soon became the religion of 
 all that part of the world which most counted, and 
 are now the religion of all that part of the world 
 which most counts. This they certainly in great part 
 owed, even from the first, to that instinctive sense of 
 their natural fitness for such a service, of their natural 
 truth and weight, which amidst all misapprehensions 
 of them they inspired. 
 
 Moreover, we must always keep in sight one 
 specially important element in the power exercised 
 by Jesus Christ and his precepts. And that is, the 
 impression left by Jesus of what we call sweet reason 
 in the highest degree ; of consummate justness in 
 what he said, perfect balance, unerring felicity. For 
 this impression has been a great element of progress. 
 It made half the charm of the religion of Jesus in the 
 first instance, and it makes it still. But it also serves 
 in an admirable way against the misapprehensions 
 with which men received, as we have said, and could 
 not but receive, the natural truth he gave them, and 
 
PREFACE. 173 
 
 which they made up along with that truth into their 
 religion. For it is felt that anything exaggerated, 
 distorted, false, cannot be from Jesus • that it must 
 be human perversion of him. There is always an 
 appeal open, and a return possible, to the acknowledged 
 sweet reason of Jesus, to his " grace and truth." And 
 thus Christians, instead of sticking for ever because 
 of their religion to errors which they themselves have 
 put into their religion, find in their religion itself a 
 ground for breaking with them. For example : medi- 
 eval charity and medieval chastity are manifestly 
 misgrowths, however natural, — misgrowths unwork- 
 able and dangerous, — of the ideas of kindness and 
 pureness. Then they cannot have come from Jesus ; 
 they cannot be what Jesus meant. Such is the inevit- 
 able inference ; and Christianity here touches a spring 
 for self -correction and self -readjustment which is of 
 the highest value. 
 
 And, finally, the figure and sayings of Jesus, em- 
 bodying and representing men's moral experience to 
 them, serving them as a perpetual reminder of it, 
 by a fixed form of words and observances holding 
 their attention to it, and thus attaching them, have 
 attracted to themselves, by the very force of time, 
 and use, and association, a mass of additional attach- 
 ment, and a host of sentiments the most tender and 
 profound. 
 
 This, then, is what we mean by saying that Chris- 
 tianity has natural truth. By this truth things must 
 stand, not by people's wishes and asseverations about 
 them. Omnium Deus est, cujus, velimus aut nolimiis, 
 
174 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 ornnes stimus, says Tertullian. "The God of all of 
 us is the God that we all belong to whether we will 
 or no." The Eternal that makes for righteousness 
 is such a God ; and he is the God of Christianity. 
 Jesus explains what this God would have of us ; and 
 the strength of Jesus is that he explains it right. 
 The natural experimental truth of his explanations is 
 their one claim upon us ; but this is claim enough. 
 Does the thing, being admittedly most important, 
 turn out to be as he says? If it does, then we 
 " belong to him whether we will or no." 
 
 A recent German writer, wishing to exhalt Scho- 
 penhauer at the expense of Jesus, says that both 
 Jesus and Schopenhauer taught the true doctrine of 
 self-renouncement, but that Schopenhauer faced the 
 pessimism which is that doctrine's natural accompani- 
 ment, whereas Jesus sought to escape from it by the 
 dream of a paradise to come. This critic credits 
 Jesus, as usual, with the very misconceptions against 
 which he strove. It was the effort of Jesus to place 
 the bliss, the eternal life of popular religion, not 
 where popular religion placed it, in a fantastic para- 
 dise to come, but in the joy of self -renouncement. 
 This was the " eternal life " of Jesus ; this was his 
 "joy; " — the joy which he desired that his disciples, 
 too, might have full and complete, might have " ful- 
 filled in themselves." His depth, his truth, his Tight- 
 ness, come out in this very point ; that he saw that 
 self -renouncement is joy, and that human life, in 
 which it takes place, is therefore a blessing and a 
 benefit. And just exactly here is his superiority to 
 
PREFACE. 175 
 
 Schopenhauer. Jesus hits the plain natural truth 
 that human life is a blessing and a benefit, while 
 Schopenhauer misses it. " It is evident, even a 
 priori, that the world is doomed to evil, and that it 
 is the domain of irrationality. In abstinence from 
 the further propagation of mankind is salvation. 
 This would gradually bring about the extinction of 
 our species, and, with our extinction, that of the 
 universe, since the universe requires for its existence 
 the co-operation of human thought." The fault of 
 this sort of thing is, that it is plainly, somehow or 
 other, a paradox, and that human thought (I say it 
 with due deference to the many persons for whom 
 Schopenhauer is just now in fashion) instinctively 
 feels it to be absurd. The fact is with Jesus. " The 
 Eternal is king, the earth may be glad thereof." 
 Human life is a blessing and a benefit, and constantly 
 improvable, because in self-renouncement is a fount 
 of joy, "springing up unto everlasting life." Not 
 only, " It is more right to give than to receive," more 
 rational, more necessary ; but, " It is more Messed 
 to give than to receive." 
 
 The fad, I say, the real fact, is what it imports us 
 to reach. A writer of remarkable knowledge, judg- 
 ment, and impartiality, M. Maurice Vernes, of the 
 Revue Scientifique, objects to the contrast of an earlier 
 intuition of Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life, the 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation, with a later 
 " Aberglaube," such as we find in the Book of Daniel, 
 and such as Jesus had to deal with. He objects to 
 the contrast of the doctrine of Jesus with the meta- 
 
176 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 physics of the Church. M. Maurice Vernes is one of 
 those, of whom there are so many, who have a 
 philosophical system of history, — a history ruled by 
 the law of progress, of evolution. Between the 
 eighth century before our era and the second, the 
 law of evolution must have been at work. Progress 
 must have gone on. Therefore the Messianic ideas 
 of the Book of Daniel must be a higher stage than 
 the ideas of the great prophets and wise men of the 
 eighth and ninth centuries. Again. The importa- 
 tion of metaphysics into Christianity means the 
 arrival of Greek thought, Western thought, — the 
 enrichment of the early Christian thought with new 
 elements. This is evolution, development. And 
 therefore, apparently, the Athanasian Creed must be 
 a higher stage than the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 Let us salute with respect that imposing generality, 
 the law of evolution. But let us remember that, in 
 each particular case which comes before us, what 
 concerns us is, surely, the fact as to that particular 
 case. And surely, as a matter of fact, the ideas of 
 the great prophets and wise men of the eighth or 
 ninth century before Christ are profounder and more 
 true than the ideas of the eschatologist of the Book of 
 Daniel. As a matter of fact, again, the ideas of Jesus 
 in the Sermon on the Mount are surely profounder 
 and more true than the ideas of the theologian of 
 the Athanasian Creed. Ins and outs of this kind may 
 settle their business with the general law of evolution 
 as they can ; but our business is with the fact. And 
 the fact, surely, is here as we have stated it. 
 
PKEFACE. 177 
 
 M. Vernes further objects to our picking and 
 choosing among the records of Jesus, and pronouncing 
 that whatever suits us shall be held to come from 
 Jesus, and whatever does not suit us from his 
 reporters. But here, again, it is a question of fact ; 
 — a question, which of two things is, in fact, more 
 likely 1 It is, in fact, more likely that Jesus, being 
 what we can see from certain of the data about him 
 that he was, should have been in many points mis- 
 understood and misrepresented by his followers ; or 
 that, being what by those data he was, he should 
 also have been at the same time the thaumaturgical 
 personage that his followers imagined 1 ? The more 
 reasonable Jesus is likewise, surely, the more real 
 one. 
 
 I believe, then, that the real God, the real Jesus, 
 will continue to command allegiance, because we do, 
 in fact, "belong to them." I believe that Christi- 
 anity will survive because of its natural truth. Those 
 who fancied that they had done with it, those who 
 had thrown it aside because what was presented to 
 them under its name was so unreceivable, will have 
 to return to it again, and to learn it better. The 
 Latin nations, — even the southern Latin nations, — 
 will have to acquaint themselves with that funda- 
 mental document of Christianity, the Bible, and to 
 discover wherein it differs from "a text of Hesiod." 
 Neither will the old forms of Christian worship be 
 extinguished by the growth of a truer conception of 
 their essential contents. Those forms, thrown out 
 at dimly -grasped truth, approximative and provisional 
 
 VOL. VII. N 
 
178 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 representations of it, and which are now surrounded 
 with such an atmosphere of tender and profound 
 sentiment, will not disappear. They will survive as 
 poetry. Above all, among the Catholic nations will 
 this be the case. And, indeed, one must wonder at 
 the fatuity of the Roman Catholic Church, that she 
 should not herself see what a future there is for her 
 here. Will there never arise among Catholics some 
 great soul, to perceive that the eternity and univer- 
 sality, which is vainly claimed for Catholic dogma 
 and the ultramontane system, might really be possible 
 for Catholic worship ? But to rule over the moment 
 and the credulous has more attraction than to work 
 for the future and the sane. 
 
 Christianity, however, will find the ways for its 
 own future. What is certain is that it will not dis- 
 appear. Whatever progress may be made in science, 
 art, and literary culture, — however much higher, 
 more general, and more effective than at present the 
 value for them may become, — Christianity will be 
 still there as what these rest against and imply ; as 
 the indispensable background, the three-fourths of life. 
 It is true, while the remaining fourth is ill-cared for, 
 the three-fourths themselves must also suffer with it. 
 But this does but bring us to the old and true 
 Socratic thesis of the interdependence of virtue and 
 knowledge. And we cannot, then, do better than 
 conclude with some excellent words of Mr. Jowett, 
 doing homage, in the preface introducing his trans- 
 lation of Plato's Protagoras, to that famous thesis. 
 "This is an aspect of the truth which was lost almost 
 
PREFACE. 179 
 
 as soon as it was found ; and yet has to be recovered 
 by every one for himself who would pass the limits of 
 proverbial and popular philosophy. The moral and 
 intellectual are always dividing, yet they must be 
 reunited, and in the highest conception of them are 
 inseparable." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. A Psychological Parallel . . .183 
 
 II. Bishop Butler and the Zeit-Geist . . 235 
 
 III. The Church of England . . . 309 
 
 IV. A Last Word on the Burials Bill . . 344 
 
I. 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGICAL PAEALLEL. 
 
 "Whoever has to impugn the soundness of popular 
 theology will most certainly find parts in his task 
 which are unwelcome and painful. Other parts in it, 
 however, are full of reward. And none more so than 
 those, in which the work to be done is positive, not 
 negative, and uniting, not dividing; in which what 
 survives in Christianity is dwelt upon, not what 
 perishes ; and what offers us points of contact with 
 the religion of the community, rather than motives 
 for breaking with it. Popular religion is too forward 
 to employ arguments which may well be called argu- 
 ments of despair. " Take me in the lump," it cries, 
 " or give up Christianity altogether. Construe the 
 Bible as I do, or renounce my public worship and 
 solemnities ; renounce all communion with me, as an 
 imposture and falsehood on your part. Quit, as 
 weak-minded, deluded blunderers, all those doctors 
 and lights of the Church who have long served you, 
 aided you, been dear to you. Those teachers set 
 forth what are, in your opinion, errors, and go on 
 
184 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 grounds which you believe to be hollow. Whoever 
 thinks as you do, ought, if he is courageous and con- 
 sistent, to trust such blind guides no more, but to 
 remain staunch by his new lights and himself." 
 
 It happens, I suppose, to most people who treat 
 an interesting subject, and it happens to me, to receive 
 from those whom the subject interests, and who may 
 have in general followed one's treatment of it with 
 sympathy, avowals of difficulty upon certain points, 
 requests for explanation. But the discussion of a 
 subject, more especially of a religious subject, may 
 easily be pursued longer than is advisable. On the 
 immense difference which there seems to me to be 
 between the popular conception of Christianity and 
 the true conception of it, I have said what I wished to 
 say. I wished to say it, partly in order to aid those 
 whom the popular conception embarrassed ; partly 
 because, having frequently occasion to assert the 
 truth and importance of Christianity against those 
 who disparaged them, I was bound in honesty to 
 make clear what sort of Christianity I meant. But 
 having said, however imperfectly, what I wished, I 
 leave, and am glad to leave, a discussion where the 
 hope to do good must always be mixed with an 
 apprehension of doing harm. Only, in leaving it, I 
 will conclude with what cannot, one may hope, do 
 harm : an endeavour to dispel some difficulties raised 
 by the arguments of despair, as I have called them, of 
 popular religion. 
 
 I have formerly spoken at much length of the writ- 
 ings of St. Paul, pointing out what a clue he gives us 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 185 
 
 to the right understanding of the word resurrection, 
 the great word of Christianity ; and how he deserves, 
 on this account, our special interest and study. It is 
 the spiritual resurrection of which he is thus the in- 
 structive expounder to us. But undoubtedly he 
 believed also in the miracle of the physical resurrec- 
 tion, both of Jesus himself and for mankind at large. 
 This belief those who do not admit the miraculous 
 will not share with him. And one who does not 
 admit the miraculous, but who yet had continued 
 to think St. Paul worthy of all honour and his teach- 
 ing full of instruction, brings forward to me a 
 sentence from an eloquent and most popular author, 
 wherein it is said that "St. Paul — surely no imbecile 
 or credulous enthusiast — vouches for the reality of 
 the (physical) resurrection, of the appearances of Jesus 
 after it, and of his own vision." Must then St. Paul, 
 he asks, if he was mistaken in thus vouching, — which 
 whoever does not admit the miraculous cannot but 
 suppose, — of necessity be an "imbecile and credulous 
 enthusiast," and his words and character of no more 
 value to us than those of that slight sort of people ? 
 And again, my questioner finds the same author .say- 
 ing, that to suppose St. Paul and the Evangelists 
 mistaken about the miracles which they allege, is 
 to " insinuate that the faith of Christendom was 
 founded on most facile and reprehensible credulity, 
 and this in men who have taught the spirit of truth- 
 fulness as a primary duty of the religion which they 
 preached." And he inquires whether St. Paul and 
 the Evangelists, in admitting the miraculous, were 
 
186 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 really founding the faith of Christendom on most 
 facile and reprehensible credulity, and were false to 
 the spirit of truthfulness taught by themselves as the 
 primary duty of the religion which they preached. 
 
 Let me answer by putting a parallel case. The 
 argument is that St. Paul, by believing and asserting 
 the reality of the physical resurrection and subsequent 
 appearances of Jesus, proves himself, supposing those 
 alleged facts not to have happened, an imbecile or 
 credulous enthusiast, and an unprofitable guide. St. 
 Paul's vision we need not take into account, because 
 even those who do not admit the miraculous will 
 readily admit that he had his vision, only they say it 
 is to be explained naturally. But they do not admit 
 the reality of the physical resurrection of Jesus and 
 of his appearances afterwards, while yet they must 
 own that St. Paul did. The question is, does either 
 the belief of these things by a man of signal truthful- 
 ness, judgment, and mental power in St. Paul's 
 circumstances, prove them to have really happened ; 
 or does his believing them, in spite of their not having 
 really happened, prove that he cannot have been a 
 man of great truthfulness, judgment, and mental 
 power 1 
 
 Undeniably St. Paul was mistaken about the im- 
 minence of the end of the world. But this was a 
 matter of expectation, not experience. If he was 
 mistaken about a grave fact alleged to have already 
 positively happened, such as the bodily resurrection 
 of Jesus, he must, it is argued, have been a credulous 
 and imbecile enthusiast. 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 187 
 
 II. 
 
 I have already mentioned elsewhere l Sir Matthew 
 Hale's belief in the reality of witchcraft. The con- 
 temporary records of this belief in our own country 
 and among our own people, in a century of great 
 intellectual force and achievement, and when the 
 printing press fixed and preserved the accounts of 
 public proceedings to which the charge of witchcraft 
 gave rise, are of extraordinary interest. They throw 
 an invaluable light for us on the history of the human 
 spirit. I think it is not an illusion of national self- 
 esteem to flatter ourselves that something of the Eng- 
 lish "good nature and good humour" is not absent 
 even from these repulsive records ; that from the 
 traits of infuriated, infernal cruelty which characterise 
 similar records elsewhere, particularly among the Latin 
 nations, they are in a great measure free. They reveal, 
 too, beginnings of that revolt of good sense, gleams of 
 that reason, that criticism, which was presently to 
 disperse the long-prevailing belief in witchcraft. At 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century Addison, 
 though he himself looks with disfavour on a man who 
 wholly disbelieves in ghosts and apparitions, yet 
 smiles at Sir Roger de Coverley's belief in witches, as 
 a belief which intelligent men had outgrown, a sur- 
 vival from times of ignorance. Nevertheless, in 1716, 
 two women were hanged at Huntingdon for witchcraft. 
 But they were the last victims, and in 1736 the penal 
 statutes against witchcraft were repealed. And by 
 
 1 God and the Bible, p. 337. 
 
188 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 the end of the eighteenth century, the majority of 
 rational people had come to disbelieve, not in witches 
 only, but in ghosts also. Incredulity had become the 
 rule, credulity the exception. 
 
 But through the greater part of the seventeenth 
 century things were just the other way. Credulity 
 about witchcraft was the rule, incredulity the excep- 
 tion. It is by its all-pervadingness, its seemingly in- 
 evitable and natural character, that this credulity of 
 the seventeenth century is distinguished from modern 
 growths which are sometimes compared with it. In 
 the addiction to what is called spiritualism, there is 
 something factitious and artificial. It is quite easy 
 to pay no attention to spiritualists and their exhibi- 
 tions ; and a man of serious temper, a man even of 
 matured sense, will in general pay none. He will 
 instinctively apply Goethe's excellent caution : that 
 we have all of us a nervous system which can easily 
 be worked upon, that we are most of us very easily 
 puzzled, and that it is foolish, by idly perplexing our 
 understanding and playing with our nervous system, 
 to titillate in ourselves the fibre of superstition. Who- 
 ever runs after our modern sorcerers may indeed find 
 them. He may make acquaintance with their new 
 spiritual visitants who have succeeded to the old- 
 fashioned imps of the seventeenth century, — to the 
 Jarmara, Elemauzer, Sack and Sugar, Vinegar Tom, 
 and Grizzel Greedigut, of our trials for witchcraft. 
 But he may also pass his life without troubling his 
 head about them and their masters. In the seven- 
 teenth century, on the other hand, the belief in 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 189 
 
 witches and their works met a man at every turn, 
 and created an atmosphere for his thoughts which 
 they could not help feeling. A man who scouted the 
 belief, who even disparaged it, was called Sadducee, 
 atheist, and infidel. Eelations of the conviction of 
 witches had their sharp word of " condemnation for 
 the particular opinion of some men who suppose there 
 be none at all." They had their caution to him " to 
 take heed how he either despised the power of God 
 in his creatures, or vilipended the subtlety and fury 
 of the Devil as God's minister of vengeance." The 
 ministers of religion took a leading part in the pro- 
 ceedings against witches ; the Puritan ministers were 
 here particularly busy. Scripture had said : Thou 
 shalt not suffer a witch to live. And, strange to say, 
 the poor creatures tried and executed for witchcraft 
 appear to have usually been themselves firm believers 
 in their own magic. They confess their compact with 
 the Devil, and specify the imps, or familiars, whom 
 they have at their disposal. All this, I say, created 
 for the mind an atmosphere from which it was hard 
 to escape. Again and again we hear of the " suffi- 
 cient justices of the peace and discreet magistrates," 
 of the " persons of great knowledge," who were satis- 
 fied with the proofs of witchcraft offered to them. 
 It is abundantly clear that to take as solid and con- 
 vincing, where a witch was in question, evidence 
 which would now be accepted by no reasonable man, 
 was in the seventeenth century quite compatible with 
 truthfulness of disposition, vigour of intelligence, and 
 penetrating judgment on other matters. 
 
190 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 Certainly these three advantages, — truthfulness of 
 disposition, vigour of intelligence, and penetrating 
 judgment, — were possessed in a signal degree by the 
 famous Chief Justice of Charles the Second's reign, 
 Sir Matthew Hale. Burnet notices the remarkable 
 mixture in him of sweetness with gravity, so to the 
 three fore-named advantages we may add gentleness 
 of temper. There is extant the report of a famous 
 trial for witchcraft before Sir Matthew Hale. 1 Two 
 widows of Lowestoft in Suffolk, named Rose Cullen- 
 der and Amy Duny, were tried before him at Bury 
 St. Edmunds, at the Spring Assizes in 1664, as witches. 
 The report was taken in Court during the trial, but 
 was not published till eighteen years afterwards, in 
 1682. Every decade, at that time, saw a progressive 
 decline in the belief in witchcraft. The person who 
 published the report was, however, a believer; and he 
 considered, he tells us, that "so exact a relation of 
 this trial would probably give more satisfaction to a 
 great many persons, by reason that it is pure matter 
 of fact, and that evidently demonstrated, than the 
 arguments and reasons of other very learned men that 
 probably may not be so intelligible to all readers ; 
 especially, this being held before a judge whom for 
 his integrity, learning, and law, hardly any age either 
 before or since could parallel ; who not only took a 
 great deal of pains and spent much time in this trial 
 himself, but had the assistance and opinion of several 
 other very eminent and learned persons." One of 
 
 1 Reprinted in A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts relat- 
 ing to Witchcraft. London 1838. 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 191 
 
 these persons was Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, 
 the author of the Beligio Medici and of the book on 
 Vulgar Errors. 
 
 The relation of the trial of Rose Cullender and 
 Amy Duny is indeed most interesting and most 
 instructive, because it shows us so clearly how to live 
 in a certain atmosphere of belief will govern men's 
 conclusions from what they see and hear. To us who 
 do not believe in witches, the evidence on which Rose 
 Cullender and Amy Duny were convicted carries its 
 own natural explanation with it, and itself dispels the 
 charge against them. They were accused of having 
 bewitched a number of children, causing them to have 
 fits, and to bring up pins and nails. Several of the 
 witnesses were poor ignorant people. The weighty 
 evidence in the case was that of Samuel Pacy, a mer- 
 chant of Lowestoft, two of whose children, Elizabeth 
 and Deborah, of the ages of eleven and nine, were 
 said to have been bewitched. The younger child was 
 too ill to be brought to the Assizes, but the elder was 
 produced in Court. Samuel Pacy, their father, is 
 described as " a man who carried himself with much 
 soberness during the trial, from whom proceeded no 
 words either of passion or malice, though his children 
 were so greatly afflicted." He deposed that his 
 younger daughter, being lame and "without power in 
 her limbs, had on a sunshiny day in October " desired 
 to be carried on the east part of the house to be set 
 upon the bank which looketh upon the sea." While 
 she sat there, Amy Duny, who as well as the other 
 prisoner is shown by the evidence to have been by 
 
192 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 her neighbours commonly reputed a witch, came to 
 the house to get some herrings. She was refused, 
 and went away grumbling. At the same moment the 
 child was seized with violent fits. The doctor who 
 attended her could not explain them. So ten days 
 afterwards her father, according to his own deposition, 
 " by reason of the circumstances aforesaid, and in 
 regard Amy Duny is a woman of an ill fame and 
 commonly reported to be a witch and a sorceress, 
 and for that the said child in her fits would cry out 
 of Amy Duny as the cause of her malady, and that 
 she did affright her with apparitions of her person, as 
 the child in the interval of her fits related, did suspect 
 the said Amy Duny for a witch, and charged her with 
 the injury and wrong to his child, and caused her to 
 be set in the stocks." While she was there, two 
 women asked her the reason of the illness of Mr. 
 Pacy's child. She answered : " Mr. Pacy keeps a 
 great stir about his child, but let him stay until he 
 hath done as much by his children as I have done by 
 mine." Being asked what she had done to hers, she 
 replied that " she had been fain to open her child's 
 mouth with a tap to give it victuals." Two days 
 afterwards Pacy's elder daughter, Elizabeth, was 
 seized with fits like her sister's ; " insomuch that they 
 could not open her mouth to preserve her life without 
 the help of a tap which they were obliged to use." 
 The children in their fits would cry out : " There 
 stands Amy Duny " or " Eose Cullender " (another 
 reputed witch of Lowestoft) ; and, when the fits were 
 over, would relate how they had seen Amy Duny 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 193 
 
 and Rose Cullender shaking their fists at them and 
 threatening them. They said that bees or flies 
 carried into their mouths the pins and nails which 
 they brought up in their fits. During their illness 
 their father sometimes made them read aloud from 
 the New Testament. He " observed that they would 
 read till they came to the name of Lord, or Jesus, or 
 Christ, and then before they could pronounce either 
 of the said words they would suddenly fall into their 
 fits. But when they came to the name of Satan or 
 Devil they would clap their fingers upon the book, 
 crying out : ' This bites, but makes me speak right 
 well.' " And when their father asked them why they 
 could not pronounce the words Lord, or Jesus, or Christ, 
 they answered : " Amy Duny saith, I must not use 
 that name." 
 
 It seems almost an impertinence nowadays to sup- 
 pose, that any one can require telling how self- 
 explanatory all this is, without recourse to witchcraft 
 and magic. These poor rickety children, full of 
 disease and with morbid tricks, have their imagina- 
 tion possessed by the two famed and dreaded witches 
 of their native place, of whose prowess they have 
 heard tale after tale, whom they have often seen with 
 their own eyes, whose presence has startled one of 
 them in her hour of suffering, and round whom all 
 those ideas of diabolical agency, in which they have 
 been nursed, converge and cluster. The speech of 
 the accused witch in the stocks is the most natural 
 speech possible, and the fulfilment which her words 
 received in the course of Elizabeth Pacy's fits is per- 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
194 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 fectly natural also. However, Sir Thomas Browne 
 (who appears in the report of the trial as " Dr. 
 Brown, of Norwich, a person of great knowledge "), 
 being desired to give his opinion on Elizabeth Pacy's 
 case and that of two other children who on similar 
 evidence were said to have been bewitched by the 
 accused, — Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 " was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched ; and 
 said that in Denmark there had been lately a great discovery 
 of witches, who used the very same way of afflicting persons by 
 conveying pins into them, and crooked, as these pins were, 
 with needles and nails. And his opinion was that the Devil in 
 such cases did work upon the bodies of men and women upon a 
 natural foundation, . . . for he conceived that these swooning 
 fits were natural, and nothing else but what they call the mother, 
 but only heightened to a great excess by the subtlety of the 
 Devil, co-operating with the malice of these which we term 
 witches, at whose instance he doth these villainies. " 
 
 That was all the light to be got from the celebrated 
 writer on Vulgar Errors. Yet reason, in this trial, 
 was not left quite without witness : — 
 
 " At the hearing the evidence, there were divers known per- 
 sons, as Mr. Serjeant Keeling, Mr. Serjeant Earl, and Mr. 
 Serjeant Bernard, present. Mr. Serjeant Keeling seemed much 
 unsatisfied with it, and thought it not sufficient to convict the 
 prisoners ; for admitting that the children were in truth be- 
 witched, yet, said he, it can never be applied to the prisoners 
 upon the imagination only of the parties afflicted. For if that 
 might be allowed, no person whatsoever can be in safety ; for 
 perhaps they might fancy another person, who might altogether 
 be innocent in such matters." 
 
 In order, therefore, the better to establish the guilt 
 of the prisoners, they were made to touch the children 
 whom they were said to have bewitched. The 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 195 
 
 children screamed out at their touch. The children 
 were " blinded with their own aprons," and in this 
 condition were again touched by Rose Cullender ; and 
 again they screamed out. It was objected, not that 
 the children's heads were fidl of Rose Cullender and 
 Amy Duny and of their infernal dealings with them, 
 but that the children might be counterfeiting their 
 malady and pretending to start at the witch's touch 
 though it had no real power on them : — 
 
 " Wherefore, to avoid this scruple, it was privately desired by 
 the judge, that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edward Bacon, Mr. 
 Serjeant Keeling, and some other gentlemen then in Court, 
 would attend one of the distempered persons in the further part 
 of the hall, whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one 
 of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did 
 accordingly. And Amy Duny was conveyed from the bar and 
 brought to the maid ; they put an apron before her eyes, and 
 then one other person touched her hand, which produced the 
 same effect as the touch of the witch did in the Court. Where- 
 upon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting that they did 
 believe the whole transaction of this business was a mere im- 
 posture. " 
 
 This, we are told, " put the Court and all persons 
 into a stand. But at length Mr. Pacy did declare 
 that possibly the maid might be deceived by a sus- 
 picion that the witch touched her when she did not." 
 And nothing more likely ; but what does this prove ? 
 That the child's terrors were sincere ; not that the 
 so-called witch had done the acts alleged against her. 
 However, Mr. Pacy's solution of the difficulty was 
 readily accepted. If the children were not shamming 
 out of malice or from a love of imposture, then "it is 
 very evident that the parties were bewitched, and 
 
196 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 that when they apprehend that the persons who have 
 done them this wrong are near, or touch them, then, 
 their spirits being more than ordinarily moved with 
 rage and anger, they do use more violent gestures of 
 their bodies." 
 
 Such was the evidence. The accused did not con- 
 fess themselves guilty. When asked what they had 
 to say for themselves, they replied, as well they 
 might : " Nothing material to anything that had been 
 proved." Hale then charged the jury. He did not 
 even go over the evidence to them : — 
 
 " Only this he acquainted them : that they had two things 
 to inquire after. First, whether or no these children were 
 bewitched ; secondly, whether the prisoners at the bar were 
 guilty of it. That there were such creatures as witches he 
 made no doubt at all. For, first, the Scriptures had affirmed 
 so much ; secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided 
 laws against such persons, which is an argument of their con- 
 fidence of such a crime. And such hath been the judgment of 
 this kingdom, as appears by that Act of Parliament which hath 
 provided punishments proportionable to the quality of the 
 offence. And he desired them strictly to observe their evidence, 
 and desired the great God of Heaven to direct their hearts in 
 this weighty thing they had in hand. For to condemn the 
 innocent, and to let the guilty go free, were both an abomina- 
 tion to the Lord." 
 
 The jury retired. In half an hour they came back 
 with a verdict of guilty against both prisoners. Next 
 morning the children who had been produced in court 
 were brought to Hale's lodgings, perfectly restored : — 
 
 " Mr. Pacy did affirm, that within less than half an hour 
 after the witches were convicted, they were all of them restored, 
 and slept well that night ; only Susan Chandler felt a pain like 
 pricking of pins in her stomach." 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 197 
 
 And this seems to have removed all shadow of doubt 
 or misgiving : — 
 
 " In conclusion, the judge and all the court were fully satis- 
 fied with the verdict, and thereupon gave judgment against the 
 witches that they should be hanged. They were much urged 
 to confess, but would not. That morning we departed for Cam- 
 bridge ; but no reprieve was granted, and they were executed 
 on Monday, the 17th of March (1664) following, but they con- 
 fessed nothing." 
 
 Now, the inference to be drawn from this trial is 
 not by any means that Hale was " an imbecile or 
 credulous enthusiast." The whole history of his life 
 and doings disproves it. But the belief in witchcraft 
 was in the very atmosphere which Hale breathed, as 
 the belief in miracle was in the very atmosphere 
 which St. Paul breathed. What the trial shows us 
 is, that a man of veracity, judgment, and mental 
 power, may have his mind thoroughly governed, on 
 certain subjects, by a foregone conclusion as to what 
 is likely and credible. But I will not further enlarge 
 on the illustration which Hale furnishes to us of this 
 truth. An illustration of it, with a yet closer appli- 
 cability to St. Paul, is supplied by another worthy of 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 III. 
 
 The worthy in question is very little known, and 
 I rejoice to have an opportunity of mentioning him. 
 John Smith! — the name does not sound promising. 
 He died at the age of thirty-four, having risen to no 
 higher post in the world than a college fellowship. 
 
198 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 "He proceeded leisurely by orderly steps," says Simon 
 Patrick, afterwards Bishop of Ely, who preached his 
 funeral-sermon, "not to what he could get, but to 
 what he was fit to undertake." John Smith, born in 
 1618 near Oundle in Northamptonshire, was admitted 
 a scholar of Emanuel College at Cambridge in 1636, 
 a fellow of Queen's College in 1644. He became a 
 tutor and preacher in his college ; died there, " after 
 a tedious sickness," on the 7th of August 1652, and 
 was buried in his college-chapel. He was one of that 
 band of Cambridge Platonists, or latitude men, as in 
 their own day they were called, whom Burnet has 
 well described as those " who, at Cambridge, studied 
 to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from 
 being in parties, or from narrow notions, from super- 
 stitious conceits and fierceness about opinions." Prin- 
 cipal Tulloch has done an excellent work in seeking 
 to reawaken our interest in this 'noble but neglected 
 group. His book 1 is delightful, and it has, at the 
 same time, the most serious value. But in his account 
 of his worthies, Principal Tulloch has given, I cannot 
 but think, somewhat too much space to their Platonic 
 philosophy, to their disquisitions on spirit and in- 
 corporeal essence. It is not by these that they 
 merited to live, or that, having passed away from 
 men's minds, they will be brought back to them. It 
 is by their extraordinary simple, profound, and just 
 conception of religion. Placed between the sacer- 
 
 1 Rational Theolocj}) and Christian Philosophy in England in 
 the Seventeenth Century ; 2d edition, Edinburgh and London, 
 1874. 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 199 
 
 dotal religion of the Laudian clergy on the one side, 
 and the notional religion of the Puritans on the other, 
 they saw the sterility, the certain doom of both ; — 
 saw that stand permanently such developments of 
 religion could not, inasmuch as Christianity was not 
 what either of them supposed, but was a temper, a 
 behaviour. 
 
 Their immediate recompense was a religious isola- 
 tion of two centuries. The religious world was not 
 then ripe for more than the High Church conception 
 of Christianity on the one hand, or the Puritan con- 
 ception on the other. The Cambridge band ceased 
 to acquire recruits, and disappeared with the century. 
 Individuals knew and used their writings ; Bishop 
 Wilson of Sodor and Man, in particular, had profited 
 by them. But they made no broad and clear mark. 
 And this was in part for the reason already assigned, 
 in part because what passed for their great work was 
 that revival of a spiritualist and Platonic philosophy, 
 to which Principal Tulloch, as I have said, seems to 
 me to have given too much prominence. By this 
 attempted revival they could not and cannot live. 
 The theology and writings of Owen are not more 
 extinct than the Intellectual System of Cud worth. But 
 in a history of the Cambridge Platonists, works of 
 the magnitude of Cudworth's Intellectual System of the 
 Universe must necessarily, perhaps, fill a large space. 
 Therefore it is not so much a history of this group 
 which is wanted, as a republication of such of their 
 utterances as show us their real spirit and power. 
 Their spiritual brother, "the ever memorable Mr. 
 
200 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 John Hales," must certainly, notwithstanding that he 
 was at Oxford, not Cambridge, be classed along with 
 them. The remains of Hales of Eton, the sermons 
 and aphorisms of Whichcote, the sermon preached by 
 Cudworth before the House of Commons with the 
 second sermon printed as a companion to it, single 
 sayings and maxims of Henry More, and the Select 
 Discourses of John Smith, — there are our documents ! 
 In them lies enshrined what the latitude men have of 
 value for us. It were well if Principal Tulloch would 
 lay us under fresh obligations by himself extracting 
 this and giving it to us ; but given some day, and by 
 some hand, it will surely be. 
 
 For Hales and the Cambridge Platonists here offer, 
 formulated with sufficient distinctness, a conception 
 of religion, true, long obscured, and for which the 
 hour of light has at last come. Their productions 
 will not, indeed, take rank as great works of litera- 
 ture and style. It is not to the history of literature 
 that Whichcote and Smith belong, but to the history 
 of religion. Their contemporaries were Bossuet, 
 Pascal, Taylor, Barrow. It is in the history of litera- 
 ture that these men are mainly eminent, although 
 they may also be classed, of course, among religious 
 writers. What counts highest in the history of reli- 
 gion as such, is, however, to give what at critical 
 moments the religious life of mankind needs and can 
 use. And it will be found that the Cambridge Pla- 
 tonists, although neither epoch-making philosophers 
 nor epoch-making men of letters, have in their con- 
 ception of religion a boon for the religious wants of 
 
L] a psychological parallel. 201 
 
 our own time, such as we shall demand in vain from 
 the soul and poetry of Taylor, from the sense and 
 vigour of Barrow, from the superb exercitations of 
 Bossuet, or the passion-filled reasoning and rhetoric 
 of Pascal. 
 
 The Select Discourses of John Smith, collected and 
 published from his papers after his death, are, in my 
 opinion, by much the most considerable work left to 
 us by this Cambridge school. They have a right to 
 a place in English literary history. Yet the main 
 value of the Select Discourses is, I repeat, religious, not 
 literary. Their grand merit is that they insist on the 
 profound natural truth of Christianity, and thus base 
 it upon a ground which will not crumble under our 
 feet. Signal and rare indeed is the merit, in a theo- 
 logical instructor, of presenting Christianity to us in 
 this fashion. Christianity is true ; but in general the 
 whole plan for grounding and buttressing it chosen 
 by our theological instructors is false, and, since it is 
 false, it must fail us sooner or later. I have often 
 thought that if candidates for orders were simply, in 
 preparing for their examination, to read and digest 
 Smith's great discourse, On the Excellency and Noble- 
 ness of True Religion, together with M. Reuss's History 
 of Christian Theology at the time of the Apostles, and 
 nothing further except the Bible itself, we might have, 
 perhaps, a hope of at last getting, as our national 
 guides in religion, a clergy which could tell its bear- 
 ings and steer its way, instead of being, as we now see 
 it, too often conspicuously at a loss to do either. 
 
 Singularly enough, about fifteen years before the 
 
202 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 trial at Bury St. Edmunds of the Lowestoft witches, 
 John Smith, the author of the Select Discourses, had 
 in those very eastern counties to deliver his mind on 
 the matter of witchcraft. On Lady-day every year, 
 a Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, was required 
 to preach at Huntingdon a sermon against witchcraft 
 and diabolical contracts. Smith, as one of the Fellows 
 of Queen's, had to preach this sermon. It is printed 
 tenth and last of his Select Discourses, with the title : 
 A Christian's Conflicts and Conquests/ or, a Discourse 
 concerning the Devil's Active Enmity and Continual Hos- 
 tility against Man, the Warfare of a Christian Life, the 
 Certainty of Success and Victory in this Spiritual Warfare, 
 the Evil and Horridness of Magical Arts and Bites, Dia- 
 bolical Contracts, &c. The discourse has for its text the 
 words : "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." 
 The preacher sets out with the traditional account 
 of "the prince of darkness, who, having once stained 
 the original beauty and glory of the divine workman- 
 ship, is continually striving to mould and shape it 
 more and more into his own likeness." He says : — 
 
 " It were perhaps a vain curiosity to inquire whether the num- 
 ber of evil spirits exceeds the number of men ; but this is too, 
 too certain, that we never want the secret and latent attendance 
 of them. . . . Those evil spirits are not yet cast out of the world 
 into outer darkness, though it be prepared for them ; the bot- 
 tomless pit hath not yet shut its mouth upon them." 
 
 And he concludes his sermon with a reflection and a 
 
 caution, called for, he says, by the particular occasion. 
 
 The reflection is that — 
 
 "Did we not live in a world of professed wickedness, wherein 
 so many men's sins go in open view before them to judgment, 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 203 
 
 it might be thought needless to persuade men to resist the devil 
 when he appears in his own colours to make merchandise of 
 them, and comes in a formal way to bargain with them for their 
 souls, that which human nature, however enthralled to sin and 
 Satan in a more mysterious way, abhors, and none admit but 
 those who are quite degenerated from human kind." 
 
 And he adds the caution, that — 
 
 " The use of any arts, rites or ceremonies not understood, of 
 which we can give no rational or divine account, this indeed is 
 nothing else but a kind of magic which the devil himself owns 
 and gives life to, though he may not be corporeally present, or 
 require presently any further covenant from the users of them. 
 The devil, no question, is present to all his own rites and cere- 
 monies, though men discern him not, and may upon the use of 
 them secretly produce those effects which may gain credit to 
 them. Among these rites we may reckon insignificant forms of 
 words, with their several modes and manner of pronunciation, 
 astrological arts, and whatsoever else pretends to any strange 
 effects which we cannot with good reason either ascribe to God 
 or nature. As God will only be conversed withal in a way of 
 light and understanding, so the devil loves to be conversed with 
 in a way of darkness and obscurity." 
 
 But between his exordium and his conclusion the 
 real man appears. Like Hale, Smith seems to have 
 accepted the belief in witchcraft and in diabolical 
 contracts which was regnant in his day. But when 
 he came to deal with the belief as an idea influencing 
 thought and conduct, he could not take it as the 
 people around him took it. It was his nature to seek 
 a firm ground for the ideas admitted by him ; above 
 all, when these ideas had bearings upon religion. 
 And for witchcraft and diabolical operation, in the 
 common conception of them as external things, he 
 could find no solid ground, for there was none ; and 
 
204 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 therefore he could not so use them. See, therefore, 
 how profoundly they are transformed by him ! After 
 his exordium he makes an entirely fresh departure : — 
 " When we say the devil is continually busy with 
 us, I mean not only some apostate spirit as one parti- 
 cular being, but that spirit of apostasy which is lodged 
 in all men's natures." Here, in this spirit of apostasy 
 tvhich is lodged in all men's natures, Smith had what 
 was at bottom experimental and real. And the whole 
 effort of the sermon is to substitute this for what men 
 call the devil, hell, fiends, and witches, as an object 
 for their serious thought and strenuous resistance : — 
 
 " As the kingdom of heaven is not so much without men as 
 within, as our Saviour tells us ; so the tyranny of the devil and 
 hell is not so much in some external things as in the qualities 
 and dispositions of men's minds. And as the enjoying of God, 
 and conversing with him, consists not so much in a change of 
 place as in the participation of the divine nature and in our 
 assimilation unto God ; so our conversing with the devil is not 
 so much by a mutual local presence as by an imitation of a 
 wicked and sinful nature derived upon men's own souls. . . . 
 He that allows himself in any sin, or useth an unnatural dalli- 
 ance with any vice, does nothing else in reality than entertain 
 an incubus demon. " 
 
 This, however, was by no means a view of diaboli- 
 cal possession acceptable to the religious world and to 
 its Puritan ministers : — 
 
 " I know these expressions will seem to some very harsh and 
 unwelcome ; but I would beseech them to consider what they 
 will call that spirit of malice and envy, that spirit of pride, 
 ambition, vain-glory, covetousness, injustice, uncleanness, etc., 
 that commonly reigns so much and acts so violently in the 
 minds and lives of men. Let us speak the truth, and call 
 things by their own names ; so much as there is of sin in any 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 205 
 
 man, so much there is of the diabolical nature. Why do we 
 defy the devil so much with our tongues, while we entertain 
 him in our hearts ? As men's love to God is ordinarily nothing 
 else but the mere tendency of their natures to something that 
 hath the name of God put upon it, without any clear or distinct 
 apprehensions of him, so their hatred of the devil is commonly 
 nothing else but an inward displacency of nature against some- 
 thing entitled by the devil's name. And as they commonly 
 make a God like to themselves, such a one as they can but 
 comply with and love, so they make a devil most unlike to 
 themselves, which may be anything but what they themselves 
 are, that so they may most freely spend their anger and hatred 
 upon him ; just as they say of some of the Ethiopians who used 
 to paint the devil white because they themselves are black. 
 This is a strange, merry kind of madness, whereby men sport- 
 ingly bereave themselves of the supremest good, and insure 
 themselves, as much as may be, to hell and misery ; they may 
 thus cheat themselves for a while, but the eternal foundation of 
 the Divine Being is immutable and unchangeable. And where 
 we find wisdom, justice, loveliness, goodness, love, and glory in 
 their highest elevations and most unbounded dimensions, that 
 is He ; and where we find any true participations of these, there 
 is a true communication of God ; and a defection from these is 
 the essence of sin and the foundation of hell." 
 
 Finally (and I quote the more freely because the 
 author whom I quote is so little known), — finally our 
 preacher goes on to even confute his own exordium : — 
 
 " It was the fond error of the Manichees that there was some 
 solid principium mali, which, having an eternal existence of its 
 own, had also a mighty and uncontrollable power from within 
 itself whereby it could forcibly enter into the souls of men, and, 
 seating itself there, by some hidden influences irresistibly incline 
 and enforce them to evil. But we ourselves uphold that king- 
 dom of darkness, which else would tumble down and slide into 
 that nothing from whence it came. All sin and vice is our oiai 
 creature ; we only give life to them which indeed are our death, 
 and would soon wither and fade away did we substract our con- 
 currence from them." 
 
206 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 fortunate Huntingdon Church, which admitted 
 for even one day such a counterblast to the doctrines 
 then sounding from every pulpit, and still enjoined 
 by Sir Eobert Phillimore ! 
 
 That a man shares an error of the minds around 
 him and of the times in which he lives, proves nothing 
 against his being a man of veracity, judgment, and 
 mental power. This we saw by the case of Hale. 
 But here, in our Cambridge Platonist, we have a man 
 who accepts the erroneous belief in witchcraft, pro- 
 fesses it publicly, preaches on it ; and yet is not only 
 a man of veracity and intelligence, but actually 
 manages to give to the error adopted by him a turn, 
 an aspect, which indicates its erroneousness. Not 
 only is he of help to us generally, in spite of his error ; 
 he is of help to us in respect of that very error itself. 
 
 Now, herein is really a most striking analogy 
 between our little -known divine of the seventeenth 
 century and the great Apostle of the Gentiles. St. 
 Paul's writings are in every one's hands. I have 
 myself discussed his doctrine at length. And for our 
 present purpose there is no need of elaborate exposi- 
 tion and quotation. Every one knows how St. Paul 
 declares his belief that " Christ rose again the third 
 day, and was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve ; after 
 that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at 
 once." 1 Those who do not admit the miraculous can 
 yet well conceive how such a belief arose, and was 
 entertained by St. Paul. The resurrection of the just 
 was at that time a ruling idea of a Jew's mind. 
 
 1 1 Cor. xv. 4, 5, G. 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 207 
 
 Herod at once, and without difficulty, supposed that 
 John the Baptist was risen from the dead. The Jewish 
 people without difficulty supposed that Jesus might 
 be one of the old prophets, risen from the dead. In 
 telling the story of the crucifixion men added, quite 
 naturally, that when it was consummated, "many 
 bodies of the saints which slept arose and appeared 
 unto many." Jesus himself, moreover, had in his life- 
 time spoken frequently of his own coming resurrection. 
 Such beliefs as the belief in bodily resurrection were 
 thus a part of the mental atmosphere in which the 
 first Christians lived. It was inevitable that they 
 should believe their Master to have risen again in the 
 body, and that St. Paul, in becoming a Christian, 
 should receive the belief and build upon it. 
 
 But Paul, like our Cambridge Platonist, instinc- 
 tively sought in an idea, used for religion, a side by 
 which the idea could enter into his religious experi- 
 ence and become real to him. No such side could be 
 afforded by the mere external fact and miracle of 
 Christ's bodily resurrection. Paul, therefore, as is 
 well known, by a prodigy of religious insight seized 
 another aspect for the resurrection than the aspect 
 of physical miracle. He presented resurrection as 
 a spiritual rising which could be appropriated and 
 enacted in our own living experience. "If One died 
 in the name of all, then all died ; and he died in the 
 name of all, that they who live should no more live 
 unto themselves, but unto him who died and rose 
 again in their name." 1 Dying became thus no longer 
 
 1 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 
 
208 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 a bodily dying, but a dying to sin ; rising to life no 
 longer a bodily resurrection, but a living to God. 
 St. Paul here comes, therefore, upon that very idea 
 of death and resurrection which was the central idea 
 of Jesus himself. At the very same moment that he 
 shares and professes the popular belief in Christ's 
 miraculous bodily resurrection, — the idea by which 
 our Saviour's own idea of resurrection has been over- 
 laid and effaced, — St. Paul seizes also this other 
 truer idea or is seized by it, and bears unconscious 
 witness to its unique legitimacy. 
 
 Where, then, is the force of that argument of 
 despair, as we called it, that if St. Paul vouches for 
 the bodily resurrection of Jesus and for his appear- 
 ance after it, and is mistaken in so vouching, then 
 he must be " an imbecile and credulous enthusiast," 
 untruthful, unprofitable 1 We see that for a man to 
 believe in preternatural incidents, of a kind admitted 
 by the common belief of his time, proves nothing 
 at all against his general truthfulness and sagacity. 
 Nay, we see that even while affirming such preter- 
 natural incidents, he may with profound insight seize 
 the true and natural aspect of them, the aspect which 
 will survive and profit when the miraculous aspect 
 has faded. He may give us, in the very same work, 
 current error and also fruitful and profound new 
 truth, the error's future corrective. 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 209 
 
 IV. 
 
 Bat I am treating of these matters for the last 
 time. And those who no longer admit, in religion, 
 the old basis of the preternatural, I see them encoun- 
 tered by scruples of their own, as well as by scruples 
 raised by their opponents. Their opponents, the par- 
 tisans of miracle, require them, if they refuse to admit 
 miracle to throw aside as imbecile or untruthful all 
 their instructors and inspirers who have ever admitted 
 it. But they themselves, too, are sometimes afraid, 
 not only of being called inconsistent and insincere, 
 but of really meriting to be called so, if they do not 
 break decidedly with the religion in which they have 
 been brought up, if the}*- at all try still to conform to 
 it and to use it. I have now before me a remarkable 
 letter, in which the writer says : — 
 
 "There is nothing I and many others should like better 
 than to take service as ministers in the Church as a national 
 society for the promotion of goodness; but how can we do so, 
 when we have first to declare onr belief in a quantity of things 
 which every intelligent man rejects ? " 
 
 Now, as I have examined the question whether a 
 man who rejects miracles must break with St. Paul 
 because Paul asserted them, so let me, before I end, 
 examine the question whether such a man must break 
 with the Church of his country and childhood. 
 
 Certainly it is a strong thing to suppose, as the 
 writer of the above -quoted letter supposes, a man 
 taking orders in the Church of England who accepts, 
 
 VOL. vir. p 
 
210 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 say, the view of Christianity offered in Literature and 
 Dogma. For the Church of England presents as 
 science, and as necessary to salvation, what it is the 
 very object of that book to show to be not science 
 and not necessary to salvation. And at his ordination 
 a man is required to declare that he, too, accepts this 
 for science, as the Church does. Formerly a deacon 
 subscribed to the Thirty -nine Articles, and to a 
 declaration that he acknowledged "all and every 
 the articles therein contained to be agreeable to 
 the word of God." A clerk, admitted to a benefice 
 with cure, declared "his unfeigned assent and con- 
 sent to all the matters contained in the Articles." 
 At present, I think, all that is required is a general 
 consent to whatever is contained in the Book of 
 Common Prayer. But the Book of Common Prayer 
 contains the Thirty-nine Articles. And the Eighth 
 Article declares the Three Creeds to be science, science 
 " thoroughly to be received and believed." Now, 
 whether one professes "an unfeigned assent and 
 consent" to this Article, as contained among the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, or merely "a general consent" 
 to it, as contained in the Prayer Book, one certainly, 
 by consenting to it at all, professes to receive the 
 Three Creeds as science, and as true science. And 
 this is the very point where it is important to be 
 explicit and firm. Whatever else the Three Creeds 
 may be, they are not science, truly formulating the 
 Christian religion. And no one who feels convinced 
 that they are not, can sincerely say that he gives even 
 a general consent to whatever is contained in the 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 211 
 
 Prayer Book, or can at present, therefore, be ordained 
 a minister of the Church of England. 
 
 The obstacle, it will be observed, is in a test which 
 lies outside of the Ordination Service itself. The test 
 is a remnant of the system of subscriptions and tests 
 formerly employed so vigorously. It was meant as a 
 reduction and alleviation of that old yoke. To obtain 
 such a reduction seemed once to generous and ardent 
 minds, and indeed once was, a very considerable con- 
 quest. But the times move rapidly, and even the 
 reduced test has now a great power of exclusion. If 
 it were possible for Liberal politicians ever to deal 
 seriously with religion, they would turn their minds 
 to the removal of a test of this sort, instead of play- 
 ing with political dissent or marriage with a deceased 
 wife's sister. The Ordination Service itself, on a 
 man's entrance into orders, and the use of the 
 Church services afterwards, are a sufficient engage- 
 ment. Things were put into the Ordination Service 
 which one might have wished otherwise. Some of 
 them are gone. The introduction of the Oath of 
 Supremacy was a part, no doubt, of all that lion and 
 unicorn business which is too plentiful in our Prayer 
 Book, on which Dr. Newman has showered such 
 exquisite raillery, and of which only the Philistine 
 element in our race prevents our seeing the ridiculous- 
 ness. But the Oath of Supremacy has now no longer 
 a place in the Ordination Service. Apart, however, 
 from such mere matters of taste, there was and still 
 is the requirement, in the Ordering of Deacons, of a 
 declaration of unfeigned belief in all the canonical 
 
'212 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Perhaps 
 this declaration can have a construction put upon it 
 which makes it admissible. But by its form of expres- 
 sion it recalls, and appears to adopt, the narrow and 
 letter -bound views of Biblical inspiration formerly 
 prevalent, — prevalent with the Fathers as well as 
 with the Reformers, — but which are now, I suppose, 
 generally abandoned. I imagine the clergy them- 
 selves would be glad to substitute for this declaration 
 the words in the Ordering of Priests, where the can- 
 didate declares himself " persuaded that the Holy 
 Scriptures contain sufficiently all doctrine required 
 for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ." 
 These words present no difficulty, nor is there any 
 other serious difficulty, that I can see, raised by the 
 Ordination Service for either priests or deacons. 
 The declaration of a general consent to the Articles 
 is another matter ; although perhaps, in the present 
 temper of men's minds, it could not easily be got 
 rid of. 
 
 The last of Butler's jottings in his memorandum- 
 book is a prayer to be delivered " from offendiculum of 
 scrupulousness." He was quite right. Religion is a 
 matter where scrupulousness has been far too active, 
 producing most serious mischief; and where it is 
 singularly out of place. I am the very last person to 
 wish to deny it. Those, therefore, who declared 
 their consent to the Articles long ago, and who are 
 usefully engaged in the ministry of the Church, would 
 in my opinion do exceedingly ill to disquiet them- 
 selves about having given a consent to the Articles 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 213 
 
 formerly, when things had not moved to the point 
 where they are now, and did not appear to men's 
 minds as they now appear. " Forgetting those things 
 which are behind and reaching forth to those things 
 which are before," should in these cases be a man's 
 motto. The Church is properly a national society 
 for the promotion of goodness. For him it is such ; 
 he ministers in it as such. He has never to use the 
 Articles, never to rehearse them. He has to rehearse 
 the prayers and services of the Church. Much of 
 these he may rehearse as the literal, beautiful render- 
 ing of what he himself feels and believes. The rest 
 he may rehearse as an approximative rendering of it ; 
 — as language thrown out by other men, in other 
 times, at immense objects which deeply engaged 
 their affections and awe, and which deeply engage 
 his also ; objects concerning which, moreover, ade- 
 quate statement is impossible. To him, therefore, 
 this approximative part of the prayers and services 
 which he rehearses will be poetry. It is a great 
 error to think that whatever is thus perceived to be 
 poetry ceases to be available in religion. The noblest 
 races are those which know how to make the most 
 serious use of poetry. 
 
 But the Articles are plain prose. They aim at the 
 exactitude of a legal document. They are a precise 
 profession of belief, formulated by men of our own 
 nation three hundred years ago, in regard, amongst 
 other things, to parts of those services of the Church 
 of which we have been speaking. At all points the 
 Articles are, and must be, inadequate ; but into the 
 
214 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 question of their general inadequacy we need not now 
 enter. One point is sufficient. They present the 
 Creeds as science, exact science ; and this, at the 
 present time of day, very many a man cannot accept. 
 He cannot rightly, then, profess in any way to accept 
 it; cannot, in consequence, take orders. 
 
 But it is easy for such a man to exaggerate to 
 himself the barrier between himself and popular re- 
 ligion. The barrier is not so great as he may sup- 
 pose ; and it is expedient for him rather to think 
 it less great than it is, than more great. It will 
 insensibly dwindle, the more that he, and other serious 
 men who think as he does, strive so far as they can 
 to act as if it did not exist. It will stand stiff and 
 bristling the more they act as if it were insurmount- 
 able. The Church of our country is to be considered 
 as a national Christian society for the promotion of 
 goodness, to which a man cannot but wish well, and 
 in which he might rejoice to minister. To a right- 
 judging mind, the cardinal points of belief for either 
 the member or the minister of such a society are but 
 two : Salvation by Righteousness and Righteousness by 
 Jesus Christ. Salvation by Eighteousness, — there 
 is the sum of the Old Testament : Righteousness by 
 Jesus Christ, — there is the sum of the New. For 
 popular religion, the cardinal points of belief are of 
 course a good deal more numerous. Not without 
 adding many others could popular religion manage to 
 benefit by the first-named two. But the first-named 
 two have its adherence. It is from the very effort 
 to benefit by them that it has added all the rest. The 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 215 
 
 services of the Church are full of direct recognitions 
 of the two really essential points of Christian 
 belief : Salvation by Righteousness and Righteousness by 
 Jesus Christ. They are full, too, of what may be 
 called approximate recognitions of them ; — efforts of 
 the human mind, in its gradual growth, to develop 
 them, to fix them, to buttress them, to make them 
 clearer to itself, to bring them nearer, by the addition 
 of miracle and metaphysic. This is poetry. The 
 Articles say that this poetry is exact prose. But the 
 Articles are no more a real element of the Prayer 
 Book than Brady and Tate's metrical version of the 
 Psalms, which has now happily been expelled. And 
 even while the Articles continue to stand in the 
 Prayer Book, yet a layman can use the Prayer Book 
 as if they and their definitions did not exist. To be 
 ordained, however, one must adhere to their defini- 
 tions. But, putting the Articles aside, will a layman, 
 since he is free, would a clergyman, if he were free, 
 desire to abandon the use of all those parts of the 
 Prayer Book which are to be regarded as merely 
 approximative recognitions of its two central truths, 
 and as poetry 1 Must all such parts one day, as our 
 experience widens and this view of their character 
 comes to prevail, be eliminated from our public 
 worship 1 The question is a most important one. 
 
 For although the Comtists, by the mouth of their 
 most eloquent spokesman, tell us that "'tis the 
 pedantry of sect alone which can dare to monopolise 
 to a special creed those precious heirlooms of a 
 common race," the ideas and power of religion, and 
 
216 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 propose to remake religion for us with new and im- 
 proved personages, and rites, and words ; yet it is 
 certain that here as elsewhere the wonderful force of 
 habit tells, and that the power of religious ideas over 
 us does not spring up at call, but is intimately de- 
 pendent upon particular names and practices and 
 forms of expression which have gone along with it 
 ever since we can remember, and which have created 
 special sentiments in us. I believe, indeed, that the 
 eloquent spokesman of the Comtists errs at the very 
 outset. I believe that the power of religion does of 
 nature belong, in a unique way, to the Bible and to 
 Christianity, and that it is no pedantry of sect which 
 affirms this, but experience. Yet even were it as he 
 supposes, and Christianity were not the one proper 
 bringer-in of righteousness and of the reign of the 
 Spirit and of eternal life, and these were to be got 
 as well elsewhere, but still we ourselves had learnt 
 all we know about them from Christianity, — then for 
 us to be taught them in some other guise, by some 
 other instructor, would be almost impossible. Habits 
 and associations are not formed in a day. Even if 
 the very young have time enough before them to 
 learn to associate religion with new personages and 
 precepts, the middle-aged and the old have not, and 
 must shrink from such an endeavour. Mane nobiscum, 
 Domine, nam advesperascit. 
 
 Nay, but so prodigious a revolution does the 
 changing the whole form and feature of religion turn 
 out to be, that it even unsettles all other things too, 
 and brings back chaos. When it happens, the civil i- 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 217 
 
 sation and the society to which it happens are dis- 
 integrated, and men have to begin again. This is 
 what took place when Christianity superseded the 
 old religion of the Pagan world. People may say 
 that there is a fund of ideas common to all religions, 
 at least to all religions of superior and civilised races ; 
 and that the personages and precepts, the form and 
 feature, of one such religion may be exchanged for 
 those of another, or for those of some new religion 
 devised by an enlightened eclecticism, and the world 
 may go on all the while without much disturbance. 
 There were philosophers who thought so when 
 Paganism was going out and Christianity coming- 
 in. But they were mistaken. The whole civilisa- 
 tion of the Roman world was disintegrated by the 
 change, and men had, I say, to begin again. So 
 immense is the sentiment created by the things to 
 which we have been used in religion, so profound is 
 the wrench at parting with them, so incalculable is 
 the trouble and distraction caused by it. Now, we 
 can hardly conceive modern civilisation breaking up 
 as the Roman did, and men beginning again as they 
 did in the fifth century. But the improbability of 
 this implies the improbability, too, of our seeing all 
 the form and feature of Christianity disappear, — of 
 the religion of Christendom. For so vast a revolution 
 would this be, that it would involve the other. 
 
 These considerations are of force, I think, in re- 
 gard to all radical change in the language of the 
 Prayer Book. It has created sentiments deeper than 
 we can see or measure. Our feeling does not connect 
 
218 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 itself with any language about righteousness and 
 religion, but with that language. Very much of it 
 we can all use in its literal acceptation. But the 
 question is as to those parts which we cannot. Of 
 course, those who can take them literally will still 
 continue to use them. But for us also, who can no 
 longer put the literal meaning on them which others 
 do, and which we ourselves once did, they retain a 
 power, and something in us vibrates to them. And 
 not unjustly. For these old forms of expression were 
 men's sincere attempt to set forth with due honour 
 what we honour also ; and the sense of the attempt 
 gives a beauty and an emotion to the words, and 
 makes them poetry. The Creeds are in this way an 
 attempt to exalt to the utmost, by assigning to him 
 all the characters which to mankind seemed to confer 
 exaltation, Jesus Christ. I have elsewhere called the 
 Apostles' Creed the popular science of Christianity, 
 and the Nicene Creed its learned science ; and in one 
 view of them they are so. But in another and a 
 better view of them, they are, the one its popular 
 poetry, the other its learned or, — to borrow the word 
 which Schopenhauer applied to Hegel's philosophy, 
 — its scholastic poetry. The one Creed exalts Jesus by 
 concrete images, the other by an imaginative play of 
 abstract ideas. These two Creeds are the august 
 amplifications, or the high elucidations, which came 
 naturally to the human spirit working in love and 
 awe upon that inexhaustible theme of profound truth : 
 Salvation through Jesus Christ. As such, they are 
 poetry for us ; and poetry consecrated, moreover, by 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 219 
 
 having been on the tongue of all our forefathers for 
 two thousand years, and on our own tongue ever since 
 we were born. As such, then, we can feel them, even 
 when we no longer take them literally; while, as 
 approximations to a profound truth, we can use them. 
 We cannot call them science, as the Articles would 
 have us ; but we can still feel them and still use 
 them. And if we can do this with the Creeds, still 
 more can we do it with the rest of the services in the 
 Prayer Book. 
 
 As to the very and true foundations, therefore, of 
 the Christian religion, — the belief that salvation is by 
 righteousness, and that righteousness is by Jesus 
 Christ, — we are, in fact, at one with the religious 
 world in general. As to the true object of the 
 Church, that it is the promotion of goodness, we are 
 at one with them also. And as to the form and 
 wording of religion, — a form and wording consecrated 
 by so many years and memories, — even as to this we 
 need not break with them either. They and we can 
 remain in sympathy. Some changes will no doubt 
 befall the Prayer Book as time goes on. Certain 
 things will drop away from its services, other things 
 will replace them. But such change will happen, not 
 in a sweeping way ; — it will come very gradually, and 
 by the general wish. It will be brought about, not 
 by a spirit of scrupulosity, innovation, and negation, 
 but by a prevalent impulse to express in our church- 
 services somewhat which is felt to need expression, 
 and to be not sufficiently expressed there already. 
 
 After all the great confirmation to a man in be- 
 
220 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [j. 
 
 lieving that the cardinal points of our religion are far 
 fewer and simpler than is commonly supposed, is that 
 such was surely the belief of Jesus himself. And in 
 like manner, the great reason for continuing to use 
 the familiar language of the religion around us as 
 approximative language, and as poetry, although we 
 cannot take it literally, is that such was also the prac- 
 tice of Jesus. For evidently it was so. And evidently, 
 again, the immense misapprehension of Jesus and of 
 his meaning, by popular religion, comes in part from 
 such having been his practice. But if Jesus used this 
 way of speaking in spite of its plainly leading to such 
 misapprehension, it must have been because it was the 
 best way and the only one. For it was not by intro- 
 ducing a brand-new religious language, and by parting 
 with all the old and cherished images, that popular 
 religion could be transformed ; but by keeping the 
 old language and images, and as far as possible con- 
 veying into them the soul of the new Christian ideal. 
 When Jesus talked of the Son of Man coming in 
 his glory with the holy angels, setting the good on 
 his right hand and the bad on his left, and sending 
 away the bad into everlasting fire prepared for the 
 devil and his angels, was he speaking literally 1 Did 
 Jesus mean that all this would actually happen? 
 Popular religion supposes so. Yet very many reli- 
 gious people, even now, suppose that Jesus was but 
 using the figures of Messianic judgment familiar to 
 his hearers, in order to impress upon them his main 
 point : — what sort of spirit and of practice did really 
 tend to salvation, and what did not. And surely al- 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 221 
 
 most every one must perceive, that when Jesus spoke 
 to his disciples of their sitting on thrones judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel, or of their drinking new wine 
 with him in the kingdom of God, he was adopting 
 their material images and beliefs, and was not speak- 
 ing literally. Yet their Master's thus adopting their 
 material images and beliefs could not but confirm the 
 disciples in them. And so it did, and Christendom, 
 too, after them; yet in this way, apparently, Jesus, 
 chose to proceed. But some one may say, that Jesus 
 used this language because he himself shared the 
 materialistic notions of his disciples about the king- 
 dom of God, and thought that coming upon the clouds, 
 and sitting upon thrones, and drinking wine, would 
 really occur in it, and was mistaken in thinking so. 
 And yet there are plain signs that this cannot be the 
 right account of the matter, and that Jesus did not 
 really share the beliefs of his disciples or conceive the 
 kingdom of God as they did. For they manifestly 
 thought, — even the wisest of them, and after their 
 Master's death as well as before it, — that this king- 
 dom was to be a sudden, miraculous, outward trans- 
 formation of things, which was to come about very 
 soon and in their own lifetime. Nevertheless they 
 themselves report Jesus saying what is in direct con- 
 tradiction to all this. They report him describing the 
 kingdom of God as an inward change requiring to be 
 spread over an immense time, and coming about by 
 natural means and gradual growth, not suddenly, 
 miraculously. Jesus compares the kingdom of God 
 to a grain of mustard seed and to a handful of leaven. 
 
222 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 He says : " So is the kingdom of God, as a man may 
 cast seed in the ground, and may go to bed and get 
 up night and day, and the seed shoots and extends 
 he knoweth not how." l Jesus told his disciples, 
 moreover, that the good news of the kingdom had to 
 be preached to the whole world. The whole world 
 must first be evangelised, no work of one generation, 
 but of centuries and centuries ; and then, but not till 
 then, should the end, the last day, the new world, the 
 grand transformation of which Jewish heads were so 
 full, finally come. True, the disciples also make Jesus 
 speak as if he fancied this end to be as near as they 
 did. But it is quite manifest that Jesus spoke to 
 them, at different times, of two ends : one, the end of 
 the Jewish state and nation, which any one who could 
 " discern the signs of that time " might foresee ; the 
 other, the end of the world, the instatement of God's 
 kingdom ; — and that they confused the two ends to- 
 gether. Undeniably, therefore, Jesus saw things in 
 a way very different from theirs, and much truer. 
 And if he uses their materialising language and 
 imagery, then, it cannot have been because he shared 
 their illusions. Nevertheless, he uses it. 
 
 And the more we examine the whole language of 
 the Gospels, the more we shall find it to be not lan- 
 guage all of the speaker's own, and invented by him 
 for the first time, but to be full of reminiscence and 
 quotation. How deeply all the speakers' minds are 
 governed by the contents of one or two chapters in 
 Daniel, everybody knows. It is impossible to under- 
 
 1 Mark iv. 26, 27. 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 223 
 
 stand anything of the New Testament, without bearing 
 in mind that the main pivot, on which all that is said 
 turns, is supplied by half a dozen verses of Daniel. 
 " The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which 
 shall never be destroyed, and shall stand for ever. 
 There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was 
 since there was a nation even to that time. I beheld, 
 till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of 
 days did sit; and, behold, one like the Son of man 
 came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the 
 Ancient of days; the judgment was set and the books 
 were opened. And many of them that sleep in the 
 dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, 
 and some to shame and everlasting contempt." l The 
 language of this group of texts, I say, governs the 
 whole language of the New Testament speakers. The 
 disciples use it literally, Jesus uses it as poetry. But 
 all use it. 
 
 Those texts from Daniel almost every reader of the 
 Bible knows. But unless a man has an exceedingly 
 close acquaintance with the prophets, he can have no 
 notion, I think, how very much in the speeches of 
 Jesus is not original language of his own, but is lan- 
 guage of the Old Testament, — the religious language 
 on which both he and his hearers had been nourished, 
 — adopted by Jesus, and with a sense of his own com- 
 municated to it. There is hardly a trait in the great 
 apocalyptic speech of the twenty-fourth chapter of St. 
 Matthew, which has not its original in some prophet. 
 Even where the scope of Jesus is most profoundly 
 
 1 Dan. ii. 44 ; xii. 1, 2 ; vii. 9, 10, 13. 
 
224 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 new and his own, his phrase is still, as far as may be, 
 old. In the institution of the Lord's Supper his new 
 covenant is a phrase from the admirable and forward- 
 pointing prophecy in the thirty-first chapter of Jere- 
 miah. 1 The covenant in my Hood points to Exodus, 2 
 and probably, also, to an expression in that strange 
 but then popular medley, the book of Zechariah. 3 
 These phrases, familiar to himself and to his hearers, 
 Jesus willingly adopted. 
 
 But if we confine to the Old Testament alone our 
 search for parallel passages, we shall have a quite 
 insufficient notion of the extent to which the language 
 of Jesus is not his own original language, but language 
 and images adopted from what was current at the 
 time. It is this which gives such pre-eminent value 
 to the Book of Enoch. That book, — quoted, as every 
 one will remember, in the Epistle of Jude, 4 — explains 
 what would certainly appear, if we had not this 
 explanation, to be an enlargement and heightening 
 by Jesus, in speaking about the end of the world, of 
 the materialistic data furnished by the Old Testa- 
 ment. For if he thus added to them, it may be said, 
 he must surely have taken them literally. But the 
 Book of Enoch exhibits just the farther stage reached 
 by these data, between the earlier decades of the 
 second century before Christ when the Book of 
 Daniel was written, and the later decades to which 
 belongs the Book of Enoch. And just this farther 
 growth of Messianic language and imagery it was, 
 
 1 Verses 31-34. 2 Exod. xxiv. 8. 
 
 3 Zech. ix. 11. 4 Verse 14. 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 225 
 
 with which the minds of the contemporaries of Jesus 
 were familiar. And in speaking to them Jesus had 
 to deal with this familiarity. Uncanonical, therefore, 
 though the Book of Enoch be, — for it came too late, and 
 perhaps contains things too strange, for admission into 
 the Canon, — it is full of interest, and every one should 
 read it. The Hebrew original and the Greek version, 
 as is well known, are lost • but the book passed into 
 the iEthiopic Bible, and an .ZEthiopic manuscript of 
 it was brought to this country from Abyssinia by 
 Bruce, the traveller. The first translator and editor 
 of it, Archbishop Laurence, did his work, Orientalists 
 say, imperfectly, and the English version cannot be 
 trusted. There is an excellent German version ; but 
 I wish that the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who 
 is, I believe, an iEthiopic scholar, would give us the 
 book correctly in English. 
 
 The Book of Enoch has the names and terms 
 which are already familiar to us from the Old Testa- 
 ment : Head or Ancient of days, Son of man, Son of 
 God, Messiah. It has in frequent use a designation 
 for God, the Lord of Sjririts, and designations for the 
 Messiah, the Chosen One, the Just One, which we come 
 upon in the New Testament, 1 but which the New 
 Testament did not, apparently, get from the Old. 
 It has the angels accompanying the Son of Man 
 to judgment, and the Son of Man " sitting on 
 the throne of his glory." It has, again and again, 
 the well-known phrase of the New Testament : the 
 
 1 The Father of Spirits in Hebrews xii. 9 ; the Chosen One in 
 Luke xxiii. 35 ; the Just One in Acts xxii. 14. 
 
 VOL. VII. Q 
 
226 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND RELIGION. [r. 
 
 day of judgment ; it has its outer darkness and its 
 hell-fire. It has its beautiful expression, children of 
 light. These additions to the Old Testament language 
 had passed, when Jesus Christ came, into the religion 
 of the time. He did not create them, but he found 
 them and used them. He employed, as sanctions of 
 his doctrine, his contemporaries' ready-made notions 
 of hell and judgment, just as Socrates did. He 
 talked of the outer darkness and the unquenchable 
 fire, as Socrates talked of the rivers of Tartarus. 
 And often, when Jesus used phrases which now seem 
 to us to be his own, he was adopting phrases made 
 current by the Book of Enoch. When he said : " It 
 were better for that man he had never been born ; " 
 when he said : " Rejoice because your names are 
 written in heaven;" when he said: "Their angels 
 do always behold the face of my Father which is in 
 heaven ; " when he said : " The brother shall deliver 
 up the brother to death and the father the child ; " 
 when he said : " Then shall the righteous shine forth 
 as the sun in the kingdom of their Father," he was 
 remembering the Book of Enoch. When he said : 
 "Tell it to the church;" when he said to Peter: 
 " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my 
 church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
 it," — expressions which, because of the word church, 
 some reject, and others make the foundation for the 
 most illusory pretensions, — Jesus was but recalling 
 the Book of Enoch. For in that book the expression, 
 the company or congregation (in Greek ecclesia) of the 
 just or righteous, — of the destined rulers of the coming 
 
i.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 227 
 
 kingdom of the saints, — has become a consecrated 
 phrase. The Messiah, the founder of that kingdom, 
 is the Just One ; " the congregation of the just " are 
 those who follow the Just One, the Just One's com- 
 pany or ecdesia. When Peter, therefore, made his 
 ardent declaration of faith, Jesus answered: "Eock 
 is thy name, and on this rock will I build my com- 
 pany, and the power of death shall not prevail against 
 it." Behold at its source the colossal inscription 
 round the dome of St. Peter's : Tu es Petrus, et super 
 hanc yetram cediftcabo ecdesiam meam ! 
 
 The practical lesson to be drawn from all this is, 
 that we should avoid violent revolution in the words 
 and externals of religion. Profound sentiments are 
 connected with them ; they are aimed at the highest 
 good, however imperfectly apprehended. Their form 
 often gives them beauty, the associations which cluster 
 around them give them always pathos and solemnity. 
 They are to be used as poetry ; while at the same 
 time to purge and raise our view of that ideal at 
 which they are aimed, should be our incessant endea- 
 vour. Else the use of them is mere dilettanteism. 
 We should seek, therefore, to use them as Jesus did. 
 How freely Jesus himself used them, we see. And 
 yet what a difference between the meaning he put 
 upon them and the meaning put upon them by the 
 Jews ! In how general a sense alone can it with truth 
 be said, that he and even his disciples had the same 
 aspirations, the same final aim ! How imperfectly 
 did his disciples apprehend him ; how imperfectly 
 must they have reported him ! But the result has 
 
228 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 justified his way of proceeding. For while he carried 
 with him, so far as was possible, his disciples, and the 
 world after them, and all who even now see him 
 through the eyes of those first generations, he yet 
 also marked his own real meaning so indelibly, that 
 it shows and shines clearly out, to satisfy all whom, 
 — as time goes on, and experience widens, and more 
 things are known, — the old imperfect apprehension 
 dissatisfies. And it is not to be supposed that a 
 rejection of all the poetry of popular religion is neces- 
 sary or advisable now, any more than when Jesus 
 came. But it is an aim which may well indeed be pur- 
 sued with enthusiasm, to make the true meaning of 
 Jesus, in using that poetry, emerge and prevail. For 
 the immense pathos, so perpetually enlarged upon, of 
 his life and death, does really culminate here : that 
 Christians have so profoundly misunderstood him. 
 
 And perhaps I may seem to have said in this essay 
 a great deal about what was merely poetry to Jesus, 
 but too little about what was his real meaning. What 
 this was, however, I have tried to bring out elsewhere. 
 Yet for fear, from my silence about it here, this essay 
 should seem to want due balance, let me end with 
 what a man who writes it down for himself, and 
 meditates on it, and entitles it Christ's religion, will 
 not, perhaps, go far wrong. It is but a series of well- 
 known sayings of Jesus himself, as the Gospels deliver 
 them to us. But by putting them together in the 
 following way, and by connecting them, we enable 
 ouselves, I think, to understand better both what 
 Jesus himself meant, and how his disciples came with 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 229 
 
 ease, — taking the sayings singly and interpreting them 
 by the light of their preconceptions, — to mistake 
 them. We must begin, surely, with that wherewith 
 both he and they began ; — with that wherewith 
 Christianity itself begins, and wherein it ends : " the 
 kingdom of God." 
 
 The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at 
 hand ! change the inner man and believe the good news ! 
 
 He that believeth hath eternal life. He that heareth 
 my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal 
 life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from 
 death to life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour 
 cometh and now is, ivhen the dead shall hear the voice of 
 the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. 
 
 I am come forth from God and am here, for I have 
 not come of myself, but he sent me. No man can come 
 unto me except the Father that sent me draw him ; and I 
 will raise him up in the last day. He that is of God 
 heareth the ivords of God ; my doctrine is not mine but 
 his that sent me. He that receiveth me receiveth him that 
 sent me. 
 
 And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not what I 
 say ? If ye knoiv these things, happy are ye if ye do 
 them. Cleanse that which is within ; the evil thoughts 
 from within, from the heart, they defile the man. And 
 why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but 
 perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? Take 
 heed to yourselves against insincerity ; God knoweth your 
 hearts; blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God/ 
 Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy-burdened, 
 
230 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and 
 learn of me that I am mild and lowly in heart, and ye 
 shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is kindly, 
 and my burden light. 
 
 I am the bread of life ; he that comelh to me shall 
 never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never 
 thirst. I am the living bread ; as the living Father sent 
 me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even 
 he shall live by me. It is the spirit that maketh live, the 
 flesh profiteth nothing ; the words which I have said unto 
 you, they are spirit and they are life. If a man keep my 
 word, he shall never see death. My sheep hear my voice, 
 and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto 
 them eternal life, and they shall never perish. 
 
 If a man serve me, let him follow me ; and where I 
 am, there shall also my servant be. Whosoever doth not 
 carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. 
 If any man will come after me, let him renounce himself, 
 and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For ivhoso- 
 ever will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever shall 
 lose his life for my sake and the sake of the good news, 
 the same shall save it. For what is a man profited, if 
 he gain the whole world, but lose himself, be mulcted of 
 himself % Therefore doth my Father love me, because I 
 lay down my life that I may take it again. A new com- 
 mandment give I unto you, that ye love one another. 
 The Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and 
 to give his life a ransom for many. 
 
 I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth 
 on me, though he die, shall live ; and he that liveth and 
 believeth on me shall never die. I am come that ye might 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 231 
 
 have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly. I 
 cast out devils and I do cures to-day and to-morrow ; and 
 the third day I shall be 'perfected. Yet a little while, and 
 the world seeth me no mare ; but ye see me, because I live 
 and ye shall live. If ye keep my commandments ye shall 
 abide in my love, like as I have kept my Father's command- 
 ments and abide in his love. He that loveth me shall be 
 loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest 
 myself to him. If a man love me, he will keep my word, 
 and my Father will love him, and ive w'dl come unto him, 
 and make our abode with him. 
 
 I am the good shepherd ; the good shepherd lays 
 down his life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, 
 which are not of this fold ; them also must I bring, 
 and they shall be one flock, one shepherd. Fear not, little 
 flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
 kingdom. 
 
 My kingdom is not of this world ; the kingdom of 
 God cometh not with observation ; behold, the kingdom of 
 God is within you/ Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom 
 of God ? It is like a grain of mustard seed, ivhich a man 
 took and cast into his garden, and it grew, and waxed a 
 great tree, and the foivls of the air lodged in the branches 
 of it. It is like leaven, which a woman took, and hid in 
 three measures of meal, till the whole ivas leavened. So 
 is the kingdom of God, as a man may cast seed in the 
 ground, and may go to bed and get up night and day, and 
 the seed shoots and extends he knoweth not how. 
 
 And this good news of the kingdom shall be preached 
 in the whole world, for a witness to all nations ; and then 
 shall the end come. 
 
232 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [i. 
 
 With such a construction in his thoughts to govern 
 his use of it, Jesus loved and freely adopted the 
 common wording and imagery of the popular Jewish 
 religion. In dealing with the popular religion in 
 which we have been ourselves bred, we may the more 
 readily follow his example, inasmuch as, though all 
 error has its side of moral danger, yet, evidently, the 
 misconception of their religion by Christians has pro- 
 duced no such grave moral perversion as we see to 
 have been produced in the Scribes and Pharisees by 
 their misconception of the religion of the Old Testa- 
 ment. The fault of popular Christianity as an en- 
 deavour after righteousness by Jesus Christ is not, like 
 the fault of popular Judaism as an endeavour after 
 salvation by righteousness, first and foremost a moral 
 fault. It is, much more, an intellectual one. But it 
 is not on that account insignificant. Dr. Mozley 
 urges, that " no inquiry is obligatory upon religious 
 minds in matters of the supernatural and miraculous," 
 because, says he, though "the human mind must 
 refuse to submit to anything contrary to moral sense 
 in Scripture," yet, " there is no moral question raised 
 by the fact of a miracle, nor does a supernatural 
 doctrine challenge any moral resistance." As if there 
 were no possible resistance to religious doctrines, but 
 a resistance on the ground of their immorality ! As 
 if intellectual resistance to them counted for nothing ! 
 The objections to popular Christianity are not moral 
 objections, but intellectual revolt against its demon- 
 strations by miracle and metaphysics. To be in- 
 tellectually convinced of a thing's want of conformity 
 
I.] A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLEL. 233 
 
 to truth and fact is surely an insuperable obstacle to 
 receiving it, even though there be no moral obstacle 
 added. And no moral advantages of a doctrine can 
 avail to save it, in presence of the intellectual con- 
 viction of its want of conformity with truth and fact. 
 And if the want of conformity exists, it is sure to be 
 one day found out. "Things are what they are, and 
 the consequences of them will be what they will be;" 
 and one inevitable consequence of a thing's want of 
 conformity with truth and fact is, that sooner or later 
 the human mind perceives it. And whoever thinks 
 that the ground-belief of Christians is true and indis- 
 pensable, but that in the account they give of it, and 
 of the reasons for holding it, there is a want of con- 
 formity with truth and fact, may well desire to find 
 a better account and better reasons, and to prepare 
 the way for their admission and for their acquiring 
 some strength and consistency in men's minds, against 
 the day when the old means of reliance fail. 
 
 But, meanwhile, the ground-belief of all Christians, 
 whatever account they may give to themselves of its 
 source and sanctions, is in itself an indestructible 
 basis of fellowship. Whoever believes the final 
 triumph of Christianity, the Christianisation of the 
 world, to have all the necessity and grandeur of a 
 natural law, will never lack a bond of profound sym- 
 pathy with popular religion. Compared with agree- 
 ment and difference on this point, agreement and 
 difference on other points seem trifling. To believe 
 that, whoever are ignorant that righteousness is salva- 
 tion, "the Eternal shall have them in derision;" to 
 
234 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
 
 [I. 
 
 believe that, whatever may be the substitute offered 
 for the righteousness of Jesus, a substitute, however 
 sparkling, yet "whosoever drinketh of this water 
 shall thirst again ; " to desire truly " to have strength 
 to escape all the things which shall come to pass and 
 to stand before the Son of Man," — is the one 
 authentic mark and seal of the household of faith. 
 Those who share in this belief and in this desire are 
 fellow-citizens of the "city which hath foundations." 
 Whosoever shares in them not, is, or is in danger of 
 any day becoming, a wanderer, as St. Augustine says, 
 through "the waste places fertile in sorrow;" a 
 wanderer "seeking rest and finding none." In all 
 things I sought rest ; then the Creator of all things gave 
 me commandment and said : Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, 
 and thine inheritance in Israel ! And so was I established 
 in Sion ; likewise in the beloved city he gave me rest, and 
 in Jerusalem was my 'power. 
 
II. 
 
 BISHOP BUTLEB AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 1 
 
 I. 
 
 In Scotland, I imagine, you have in your philosophical 
 studies small experience of the reverent devotion for- 
 merly, at any rate, paid at Oxford to text-books in 
 philosophy, such as the Sermons of Bishop Butler, or 
 the Ethics of Aristotle. Your students in philosophy 
 have always read pretty widely, and have not con- 
 centrated themselves, as we at Oxford used to con- 
 centrate ourselves, upon one or two great books. 
 However, in your study of the Bible you got abundant 
 experience of our attitude of mind towards our two 
 philosophers. Your text-book was right ; there were 
 no mistakes there. If there was anything obscure, 
 anything hard to be comprehended, it was your 
 ignorance which was in fault, your failure of compre- 
 
 1 The two following discourses were delivered as lectures at 
 the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. They had the form, 
 therefore, of an address to hearers, not readers ; and they are 
 printed in that form in which they were delivered. 
 
236 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 hension. Just such was our mode of dealing with 
 Butler's Sermons and Aristotle's Ethics. Whatever 
 was hard, whatever was obscure, the text-book was all 
 right, and our understandings were to conform them- 
 selves to it. What agonies of puzzle has Butler's 
 account of self-love, or Aristotle's of the intellectual 
 virtues, caused to clever undergraduates and to clever 
 tutors ; and by what feats of astonishing explanation, 
 astonishingly acquiesced in, were those agonies calmed ! 
 Yet the true solution of the difficulty was in some 
 cases, undoubtedly, that our author, as he stood, was 
 not right, not satisfactory. As to secular authors, at 
 any rate, it is indisputable that their works are to be 
 regarded as contributions to human knowledge, and 
 not more. It is only experience which assures us 
 that even the poetry and artistic form of certain 
 epochs has not, in fact, been improved upon, and is, 
 therefore, classical. But the same experience assures 
 us that in all matters of knowledge properly so called, 
 — above all, of such difficult knowledge as are ques 
 tions of mind and of moral philosophy, — any writer 
 in past times must be on many points capable of 
 correction, much of what he says must be capable of 
 being put more truly, put clearer. Yet we at Oxford 
 used to read our Aristotle or our Butler with the 
 same absolute faith in the classicality of their matter 
 as in the classicality of Homer's form. 
 
 The time inevitably arrives, to people who think at 
 all seriously, when, as their experience widens, they ask 
 themselves what they are really to conclude about the 
 masters and the works thus authoritatively imposed 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 237 
 
 upon them in their youth. Above all, of a man like 
 Butler one is sure to ask oneself this, — an Englishman, 
 a Christian, a modern, whose circumstances and point 
 of view we can come pretty well to know and to under- 
 stand, and whose works we can be sure of possessing just 
 as he published them and meant them to stand before 
 us. And Butler deserves that one should regard him 
 very attentively, both on his own account, and also 
 because of the immense and confident laudation be- 
 stowed upon his writings. Whether he completely 
 satisfies us or no, a man so profoundly convinced that 
 "virtue, — the law of virtue written on our hearts, — 
 is the law we are born under ; " a man so staunch in 
 his respectful allegiance to reason, a man who says : 
 " I express myself with caution, lest I should be mis- 
 taken to vilify reason, which is indeed the only 
 faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning any- 
 thing, even revelation itself;" a man, finally, so 
 deeply and evidently in earnest, filled with so awful 
 a sense of the reality of things and of the madness of 
 self-deception : " Things and actions are what they 
 are, and the consequences of them will be what they 
 will be ; why then should we desire to be deceived 1 " 
 — such a man, even if he was somewhat despotically 
 imposed upon our youth, may yet well challenge the 
 most grave consideration from our mature manhood. 
 And even did we fail to give it willingly, the strong 
 consenting eulogy upon his achievements would extort 
 it from us. It is asserted that his three Sermons on 
 Human Nature are, in the department of moral philo- 
 sophy, " perhaps the three most valuable essays that 
 
238 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 were ever published." They are this, because they 
 contain his famous doctrine of conscience, — a doctrine 
 which, being in those sermons " explained according 
 to the strict truth of our mental constitution, is irre- 
 sistible." Butler is therefore said, in the words of 
 another of his admirers, " by pursuing precisely the 
 same mode of reasoning in the science of morals as 
 his great predecessor Newton had done in the system 
 of nature, to have formed and concluded a happy 
 alliance between faith and philosophy." And again : 
 " Metaphysic, which till then had nothing to support 
 it but mere abstraction or shadowy speculation, 
 Butler placed on the firm basis of ' observation and 
 experiment." And Sir James Mackintosh says of the 
 Sermons in general : " In these sermons Butler has 
 taught truths more capable of being exactly dis- 
 tinguished from the doctrines of his predecessors, 
 more satisfactorily established by him, more compre- 
 hensively applied to particulars, more rationally con- 
 nected with each other, and therefore more worthy of 
 the name of discovery, than any with which we are 
 acquainted, if we ought not, with some hesitation, to 
 except the first steps of the Grecian philosophers 
 towards a theory of morals." The Analogy Mackin- 
 tosh calls "the most original and profound work 
 extant in any language on the philosophy of religion." 
 Such are Butler's claims upon our attention. 
 
 It is true, there are moments when the philosophy 
 of religion and the theory of morals are not popular 
 subjects, when men seem disposed to put them out of 
 their minds to shelve them as sterile, to try whether 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 239 
 
 they cannot get on without them. Mr. John Morley, 
 in that interesting series of articles on Diderot which 
 he has lately published in the Fortnightly Bevieiv, points 
 out how characteristic and popular in the French 
 Encyclopaedia was its authors' "earnest enthusiasm 
 for all the purposes, intents, and details of productive 
 industry, for physical science and the practical arts;" 
 how this was felt to be a welcome relief to people tired 
 of metaphysical and religious discussions. "Intel- 
 lectually," says he, " it was the substitution of interest 
 in things for interest in words." And undoubtedly 
 there are times when a reaction of this sort sets in, 
 when an interest in the processes of productive in- 
 dustry, in physical science and the practical arts, is 
 called an interest in things, and an interest in morals 
 and religion is called an interest in words. People really 
 do seem to imagine that in seeing and learning how 
 buttons are made, or papier mdche', they shall find 
 some new and untried vital resource ; that our pros- 
 pects from this sort of study have something peculiarly 
 hopeful and animating about them, and that the posi- 
 tive and practical thing to do is to give up religion 
 and turn to them. However, as Butler says in his 
 sermon on Self -Deceit: "Keligion is true, or it is 
 not. If it be not, there is no reason for any concern 
 about it." If, however, it be true, it is important, 
 and then it requires attention ; as in the same sermon 
 Butler says, in his serious way: "We cannot be 
 acquainted with, nor in any propriety of speech be 
 said to know, anything but what we attend to." And 
 he speaks of the disregard of men for what he calls 
 
240 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND KELIGION. [n. 
 
 " the reproofs and instructions " that they meet with 
 in religion and morals, as a disregard of what is 
 " exactly suitable to the state of their own mind and 
 the course of their behaviour;" — more suitable, he 
 would certainly have thought, than being instructed 
 how buttons are made, or papier mdcM. I am entirely 
 of Butler's opinion. And though the posture of mind 
 of a good many cleyer persons at the present day is 
 that of the French Encyclopedists, yet here in the 
 capital of Scotland, of that country which has been 
 such a stronghold of what I call " Hebraism," of deep 
 and ardent occupation with righteousness and religion, 
 you will not complain of my taking for my subject so 
 eminent a doctor in the science of these matters as 
 Butler, and one who is said to have established his 
 doctrine so firmly and impregnably. I can conceive 
 no claim more great to advance on a man's behalf, 
 and none which it more behoves us to test accurately. 
 Let us attempt to satisfy ourselves how far, in But- 
 ler's case, the claim is solid. 
 
 2. 
 
 But first we should have before our minds a notion 
 of the life and circumstances of the man with whose 
 works we are going to deal. Joseph Butler was born 
 on the 18th of May 1692, at Wantage in Berkshire. 
 His father was a retired tradesman, a Dissenter, and 
 the son was sent to a Dissenting school. Even before 
 he left school, he had his first correspondence with 
 Dr. Samuel Clarke on certain points in Clarke's 
 Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, and 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 241 
 
 he wrote to a friend that he " designed to make truth 
 the business of his life." Dissent did not satisfy 
 him. He left the Presbyterian body, to which his 
 father belonged, and was entered, in 1714, at Oxford, 
 at Oriel College. There he formed a friendship with 
 Edward Talbot, a Fellow of Oriel, son of Bishop 
 Talbot, and brother to the future Lord Chancellor 
 Talbot ; and this friendship determined the outward 
 course of Butler's life. It led to his being appointed 
 preacher at the Rolls Chapel in 1719, the year after 
 his ordination as priest, and when he was only twenty- 
 six years old. There the famous Sermons were 
 preached, between 1719 and 1726. Bishop Talbot 
 appointed him, in 1722, to the living of Haughton, 
 in the diocese of Durham; and, in 1725, transferred 
 him to the rich living of Stanhope, in the same dio- 
 cese. After obtaining Stanhope, Butler resigned, in 
 1726, his preachership at the Rolls, and published 
 his Fifteen Sermons. They made no noise. It was 
 four years before a second edition of them was re- 
 quired. Butler, however, had friends who knew his 
 worth, and in 1733 he was made chaplain to Lord 
 Chancellor Talbot, in 1736 Clerk of the Closet to 
 Queen Caroline, the wife of George the Second. In 
 this year he published the Analogy. Queen Caroline 
 died the year afterwards, and Butler returned to 
 Stanhope. But Queen Caroline had, before her 
 death, strongly recommended him to her husband; 
 and George the Second, in 1738, made him Bishop of 
 Bristol, then the poorest of sees, with an income of 
 but some £400 a year. About eighteen months after- 
 
 VOL. VII. R 
 
242 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 wards, Butler was appointed to the deanery of St. 
 Paul's, when he resigned Stanhope and passed his 
 time between Bristol and London, acquiring a house 
 at Hampstead. He attended the House of Lords 
 regularly, but took no part, so far as is known, in the 
 debates. In 1746 he was made Clerk of the Closet 
 to the King, and in 1750 he was translated to the 
 great and rich see of Durham. Butler's health had 
 by this time given way. In 1751 he delivered his 
 first and only charge to the clergy of Durham, the 
 famous charge upon the Use and Importance of Ex- 
 ternal Religion. But in June 1752 he was taken in 
 a state of extreme weakness to Bath, died there on 
 the 16th of June, and was buried in his old cathedral 
 of Bristol. When he died, he was just sixty years of 
 age. He was never married. 
 
 Such are, in outline, the external facts of Butler's 
 life and history. To fill up the outline for us there 
 remain a very few anecdotes, and one or two 
 letters. Bishop Philpotts, of Exeter, who afterwards 
 followed Butler in the living of Stanhope, sought 
 eagerly at Stanhope for some traditions of his great 
 predecessor. All he could gather was, that Butler 
 had been much beloved, that he rode about on a 
 black pony and rocle very fast, and that he was 
 greatly pestered by beggars because of his known 
 easiness. But there has been preserved Butler's letter 
 to Sir Robert Walpole on accepting the see of Bristol, 
 and a passage in this letter is curious, as coming from 
 such a man. He expresses his gratitude to the King, 
 and then proceeds thus : — 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 243 
 
 " I know no greater obligation than to find the Queen's con- 
 descending goodness and kind intentions towards me transferred 
 to his Majesty. Nor is it possible, while I live, to be without 
 the most grateful sense of his favour to me, whether the effects 
 of it be greater or less ; for this must, in some measures, depend 
 upon accident. Indeed, the bishopric of Bristol is not very- 
 suitable either to the condition of my fortune or the circum- 
 stances, nor, as I should have thought, answerable to the re- 
 commendation with which I was honoured. But you will 
 excuse me, sir, if I think of this last with greater sensibility 
 than the conduct of affairs will admit of. But without entering 
 further into detail, I desire, sir, you Anil please let his Majesty 
 know that I humbly accept this instance of his favour with the 
 utmost possible gratitude." 
 
 As one reads that passage, it is impossible not to 
 have the feeling that we are in the somewhat arid air 
 of the eighteenth century. Ken or Leighton, in the 
 seventeenth century, could not have written it ; and 
 in Butler's own century that survivor of the saints, 
 Wilson of Sodor and Man, could not have written it. 
 And indeed the peculiar delicacy and loveliness which 
 attaches to our idea of a saint does not belong to 
 Butler. Nobly severe with himself he was, his eye 
 was single. Austerely just, he follows with awe-filled 
 observance the way of duty ; — this is his stamp of 
 character. And his liberality and his treatment of 
 patronage, even though we may not find in him the 
 delicacy of the saint, are yet thorough and admirable 
 because they are determined by this character. He 
 said to his secretary: "I should be ashamed of 
 myself if I could leave ten thousand pounds behind 
 me." There is a story of a man coming to him at 
 Durham with a project for some good work. The 
 plan struck Butler's mind ; he sent for his house- 
 
244 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 steward, and asked liim how much money there 
 was in his hands. The steward answered that he 
 had five hundred pounds. " Five hundred pounds ! " 
 said Butler, "what a shame for a bishop to have so 
 much money ! Give it away, give it all to this 
 gentleman for his charitable plan ! " Open house 
 and plain living were Butler's rule at Durham. He 
 had long been disgusted, he said, with the fashionable 
 expense of time and money in entertainments, and 
 was determined it should receive no countenance 
 from his example. He writes to one who congratu- 
 lated him on his translation to Durham : — 
 
 1 ' If one is enabled to do a little good, and to prefer worthy 
 men, this indeed is a valuable of life, and will afford satisfaction 
 at the close of it ; but the station of itself will in nowise answer 
 the trouble of it, and of getting into new forms of living ; I 
 mean in respect to the peace and happiness of one's own mind, 
 for in fortune to be sure it will. " 
 
 Again one has a sense, from something in the 
 phraseology and mode of expression, that one is in 
 the eighteenth century ; but at the same time what 
 a perfect impression of integrity and simplicity do 
 Butler's words leave ! To another congratulator he 
 writes : — 
 
 "I thank you for your kind congratulations, though I am not 
 without my doubts and fears how far the occasion of them is a 
 real subject of congratulation to me. Increase of fortune is in- 
 significant to one who thought he had enough before ; and I 
 foresee many difficulties in the station I am coming into, and 
 no advantage worth thinking of, except some greater power of 
 being serviceable to others ; and whether this be an advantage 
 depends entirely on the use one shall make of it ; I pray God 
 it may be a good one. It would be a melancholy thing, in the 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GELST. 245 
 
 close of life, to have no reflections to entertain oneself with but 
 that one had spent the revenues of the bishopric of Durham in 
 a sumptuous course of living, and enriched one's friends with 
 the promotions of it, instead of having really set oneself to do 
 good, and promote worthy men ; yet this right use of fortune 
 and power is more difficult than the generality of even good 
 people think, and requires both a guard upon oneself, and a 
 strength of mind to withstand solicitations, greater (I wish I 
 may not find it) than I am master of. " 
 
 There are not half a dozen of Butler's private 
 letters preserved. It was worth while, therefore, to 
 quote his letter to Walpole; and it was but just, 
 after quoting that letter, to quote this to his con- 
 gratulatory 
 
 Like Bishop Philpotts, one may well be tantalised 
 at not knowing more of a man so full of purpose, and 
 who has made his mark so deeply. Butler himself, 
 however, helped to baffle us. The codicil to his will, 
 made in 1752, not two months before his death, con- 
 cludes thus : — " It is my positive and exj>ress will, 
 that all my sermons, letters, and papers whatever, 
 which are in a deal box, locked, directed to Dr. 
 Forster, and now standing in the little room within 
 my library at Hampstead, be burnt without being 
 read by any one, as soon as may be after my decease." 
 His silent, inward, concentrated nature pondered well 
 and decided what it meant to give to the world ; — 
 gave it, and would give no more. A characteristic 
 habit is mentioned of him, that he loved to walk 
 alone, and to walk at night. He was an immense 
 reader. It is said of him that he read every book he 
 could lay his hands upon ; but it was all digested 
 silently, not exhibited in the way of extract and 
 
246 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 citation. Unlike the seventeenth century divines, he 
 hardly ever quotes. As to his tastes and habits, we 
 are informed, further, that he was fond of religious 
 music, and took for his under-secretary an ex-chorister 
 of St. Paul's, that he might play to him upon the 
 organ. He liked building and planting, and one of 
 his few letters preserved bears witness to these tastes, 
 and is altogether so characteristic, and, in the paucity 
 of records concerning Butler, so valuable, that I will 
 quote it. It is to the Duchess of Somerset, and 
 written in 1751, just after he had taken possession of 
 the see of Durham : — 
 
 ' ' I had a mind to see Auckland before I wrote to your 
 Grace ; and as you take so kind a part in everything which 
 contributes to my satisfaction, I am sure you will be pleased 
 to hear that the place is a very agreeable one, and fully 
 answering expectations, except that one of the chief prospects, 
 which is very pretty (the river Wear, with hills much diver- 
 sified rising above it), is too bare of wood ; the park, not much 
 amiss as to that, but I am obliged to pale it anew all round, 
 the old pale being quite decayed. This will give an opportunity, 
 with which I am much pleased, to take in forty or fifty acres 
 completely wooded, though with that enlargement it will scarce 
 be sufficient for the hospitality of the country. These, with 
 some little improvements and very great repairs, take up my 
 leisure time. 
 
 " Thus, madam, I seem to have laid out a very long life for 
 myself ; yet, in reality, everything I see puts me in mind of the 
 shortness and uncertainty of it : the arms and inscriptions of 
 my predecessors, what they did and what they neglected, and 
 (from accidental circumstances) the very place itself, and the 
 rooms I walk through and sit in. And when I consider, in 
 one view, the many things of the kind I have just mentioned 
 which I have upon my hands, I feel the burlesque of being 
 employed in this manner at my time of life. But in another 
 view, and taking in all circumstances, these things, as trifling 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 247 
 
 as they may appear, no less than things of greater importance, 
 seem to be put upon me to do, or at least to begin ; whether I 
 am to live to complete any or all of them, is not my concern." 
 
 With Butler's taste for building and improving is 
 connected a notable incident. While at Bristol he 
 restored the episcopal palace and chapel, and in the 
 chapel he put up an altar-piece, which is described as 
 "of black marble, inlaid with a milk-white cross of 
 white marble, which is plain, and has a good effect." 
 For those bare Hanoverian times this was a reredos 
 case. Butler's cross excited astonishment and gave 
 offence, and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke begged a 
 subsequent Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Young, to have it 
 taken down. Young made the excellent answer, that 
 it should never be said that Bishop Young had pulled 
 down what Bishop Butler had set up ; and the cross 
 remained until the palace was burnt and the marble 
 altar-piece destroyed in the Bristol riots in 1831. 
 But the erection of this cross was connected with 
 his remarks, in his Durham Charge, on the Use and 
 Importance of External Religion, and caused it to be 
 reported that Butler had died in the communion of 
 the Church of Kome. Pamphleteers and newspaper- 
 writers handled the topic in the style which we know 
 so well. Archbishop Seeker thought it necessary to 
 write in denial of his friend's perversion, owning, as 
 he did so, that for himself he wished the cross had 
 not been put up. And Butler's accuser replied, as 
 " Phileleutheros," to Seeker, that "such anecdote 
 had been given him, and that he was yet of opinion 
 there is not anything improbable in it, when it is 
 
248 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [ii. 
 
 considered that the same prelate put up the Popish 
 insignia of the cross in his chapel, when at Bristol ; 
 and in his last episcopal charge has squinted very 
 much towards that superstition." Another writer 
 not only maintained that the cross and the Durham 
 charge together " amounted to full proof of a strong 
 attachment to the idolatrous communion of the 
 Church of Rome," but volunteered to account for 
 Butler's " tendency this way," as he called it. This 
 he did "from the natural melancholy and gloomi- 
 ness of Dr. Butler's disposition, from his great fond- 
 ness for the lives of Romish saints, and their books 
 of mystic piety; from his drawing his notions of 
 teaching men religion, not from the New Testament, 
 but from philosophical and political opinions of his 
 own; and, above all, from his transition from a 
 strict Dissenter amongst the Presbyterians to a rigid 
 Churchman, and his sudden and unexpected elevation 
 to great wealth and dignity in the Church." It was 
 impossible that Butler should be understood by the 
 ordinary religious world of his own day. But no 
 intelligent man can now read the Durham Charge 
 without feeling that its utterer lives in a higher 
 world than that in which disputes between Catholi- 
 cism and Protestantism, and questions of going over 
 to Rome, or at any rate "squinting very much 
 towards that superstition," have their being. Butler 
 speaks as a man with an awful sense of religion, yet 
 plainly seeing, as he says, "the deplorable distinc- 
 tion" of his own a°re to be "an avowed scorn of 
 
 O 
 
 religion in some, and a growing disregard to it in 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 249 
 
 the generality." He speaks, with "the immoral 
 thoughtlessness, as he called it, of the bulk of man- 
 kind astounding and grieving his soul, and with the 
 single desire " to beget a practical sense of religion 
 upon their hearts." " The form of religion," he says, 
 with his invincible sense for reality, "may indeed be 
 where there is little of the thing itself ; but the thing 
 itself cannot be preserved amongst mankind without 
 the form." And the form he exhorts to is no more 
 than what nowadays all religious people would think 
 matter of course to be practised, and where not prac- 
 tised, to be enjoined : family prayer, grace at meals, 
 that the clergy should visit their parishioners and 
 should lay hold of natural opportunities, such as con- 
 firmation or sickness, for serious conversation with 
 them and for turning their thoughts towards religion. 
 
 Butler met John Wesley, and one would like to 
 have a full record of what passed at such a meeting. 
 But all that we know is this : that when Butler was 
 at Bristol, Wesley, who admired the Analogy, and 
 who was then preaching to the Kingswood miners, 
 had an interview with him; and that Butler "ex- 
 pressed his pleasure at the seriousness which Wesley's 
 preaching awakened, but blamed him for sanctioning 
 that violent physical excitement which was considered 
 almost a necessary part of the so-called new birth." 
 
 I have kept for the last the description we have 
 from Surtees, the historian of Durham, of Butler's 
 person and manners : — 
 
 " During the short time that he held the see," says Surtees, 
 "he conciliated all hearts. In advanced years and on the 
 
250 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND KELIGION. [n. 
 
 episcopal throne, he retained the same genuine modesty and 
 native sweetness of disposition which had distinguished him 
 in youth and in retirement. During the ministerial perform- 
 ance of the sacred office, a divine animation seemed to pervade 
 his whole manner, and lighted up his pale, wan countenance, 
 already marked with the progress of disease." 
 
 From another source we hear : — 
 
 ' ' He was of a most reverend aspect ; — his face thin and 
 pale, but there was a divine placidness in his countenance, 
 which inspired veneration and expressed the most benevolent 
 mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders, and 
 his whole figure was patriarchal." 
 
 This description would not ill suit Wesley himself, 
 and it may be thought, perhaps, that here at any 
 rate, if not in the letter to Sir Kobert Walpole, we 
 find the saint. And, doubtless, where the eye is so 
 single and the thoughts are so chastened as they 
 were with Butler, the saintly character will never 
 be far off. But still the total impression left by 
 Butler is not exactly, I repeat, that of a saint. 
 
 Butler stood alone in his time and amongst his 
 generation. Yet the most cursory reader can perceive 
 that, in his writings, there is constant reference to 
 the controversies of his time, and to the men of his 
 generation. He himself has pointed this out as a 
 possible cause of obscurity. In the preface to the 
 second edition of his Sermons he says : — 
 
 "A subject may be treated in a manner which all along 
 supposes the reader acquainted with what has been said upon 
 it both by ancient and modern writers, and with what is the 
 present state of opinion in the world concerning such subject. 
 This will create a difficulty of a very peculiar kind, and even 
 throw an obscurity over the whole before those who are not 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 251 
 
 thus informed ; but those who are, will be disposed to excuse 
 such a manner, and other things of the like kind, as a saving 
 of their patience. " 
 
 This reference to contemporary opinion, if it some- 
 times occasions difficulty in following Butler, makes 
 his treatment of his subject more real and earnest. 
 Nearly always he has in mind something with which 
 he has actually come in conflict. When he recurs so 
 persistently to self-love, he is thinking of the " strange 
 affectation in many people of explaining away all par- 
 ticular affections, and representing the whole of life 
 as nothing but one continual exercise of self-love," by 
 which he had so often been made impatient. One of 
 the signal merits of Mr. Pattison's admirable sketch, 
 in Essays and Reviews, of the course of religious ideas 
 in England from the Eevolution to the middle of the 
 eighteenth century, is that it so clearly marks this 
 correspondence, at the time when Butler wrote, be- 
 tween what English society argued and what English 
 theology answered. Society was full of discussions 
 about religion, of objections to eternal punishment as 
 inconsistent with the Divine goodness, and to a system 
 of future rewards as subversive of a disinterested love 
 of virtue : — 
 
 "The deistical writers," says Mr. Pattison, "formed the 
 atmosphere which educated people breathed. The objections 
 the Analogy meets are not new and unreasoned objections, but 
 such as had worn well, and had borne the rub of controversy, 
 because they were genuine. It was in society, and not in his 
 study, that Butler had learned the weight of the deistical 
 arguments." 
 
 And in a further sentence Mr. Pattison, in my 
 
252 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 opinion, has almost certainly put his finger on the 
 very determining cause of the Analogy's existence : — 
 
 "At the Queen's philosophical parties, where these topics 
 (the deistical objections) were canvassed with earnestness and 
 freedom, Butler must often have felt the impotence of reply 
 in detail, and seen, as he says, ' how impossible it must be, in 
 a cursory conversation, to unite all into one argument, and 
 represent it as it ought to be.' " 
 
 This connecting of the Analogy with the Queen's 
 philosophical parties seems to me an idea inspired by 
 true critical genius. The parties given by Queen 
 Caroline, — a clever and strong-minded woman, — the 
 recluse and grave Butler had, as her Clerk of the 
 Closet, to attend regularly. Discussion was free at 
 them, and there Butler no doubt heard in abundance 
 the talk of what is well described as the " loose kind of 
 deism which was the then tone of fashionable circles." 
 The Analogy, with its peculiar strain and temper, is 
 the result. " Cavilling and objecting upon any sub- 
 ject is much easier than clearing up difficulties ; and 
 this last part will always be put upon the defenders 
 of religion." Surely that must be a reminiscence of 
 the " loose kind of deism " and of its maintainers ! 
 And then comes the very sentence which Mr. Pattison 
 has in part quoted, and which is worth quoting 
 entire : — 
 
 "Then, again, the general evidence of religion is complex 
 and various. It consists of a long series of things, one prepara- 
 tory and confirming another, from the very beginning of the 
 world to the present time. And 'tis easy to see how impossible 
 it must be, in a cursory conversation, to unite all this into one 
 argument and represent it as it ought ; and, could it be done, 
 how utterly indisposed people would be to attend to it. I say 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 253 
 
 in a cursory conversation, whereas unconnected objections are 
 thrown out in a few words and are easily apprehended, without 
 more attention than is usual in common talk. So that notwith- 
 standing we have the best cause in the world, and though a 
 man were very capable of defending it, yet I know not why he 
 should be forward to undertake it upon so great a disadvantage 
 and to so little good effect, as it must be done amidst the 
 gaiety and carelessness of common conversation." 
 
 In those remarks to the Durham clergy, Butler, I 
 
 say again, was surely thinking of difficulties with 
 
 which he had himself wrestled, and of which the 
 
 remembrance made the strenuous tone of his Analogy, 
 
 as he laboured at it, yet more strenuous. What a 
 
 sceva indignatio burns in the following passage from 
 
 the conclusion to that work : — 
 
 1 ' Let us suppose that the evidence of religion in general, 
 and of Christianity, has been seriously inquired into by all 
 reasonable men among us. Yet we find many professedly to 
 reject both, upon speculative principles of infidelity. And all 
 of them do not content themselves with a bare neglect of reli- 
 gion, and enjoying their imaginary freedom from its restraints. 
 Some go much beyond this. They deride God's moral govern- 
 ment over the world. They renounce his protection and defy 
 Ids justice. They ridicule and vilify Christianity, and blaspheme 
 the Author of it ; and take all occasions to manifest a scorn and 
 contempt of revelation. This amounts to an active setting 
 themselves against religion, to what may be considered as a 
 positive principle of irreligion, which they cultivate within 
 themselves, and whether they intend this effect or not, render 
 habitual, as a good man does the contrary principle. And 
 others, who are not chargeable with all this profligateness, yet 
 are in avowed opposition to religion, as if discovered to be 
 groundless." 
 
 And with the same penetrating tone of one who 
 has seen with his own eyes that of which he com- 
 plains, has heard it with his own ears, suffered from it 
 
254 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [it. 
 
 in his own person, Butler, in 1740, talks of "the 
 dark prospects before us from that profligateness of 
 manners and scorn of religion which so generally 
 abound ; " and, in 1751, speaking in the last year but 
 one of his life, he thus begins his charge to the clergy 
 of Durham : — 
 
 " It is impossible for me, my brethren, upon our first meet- 
 ing of this kind, to forbear lamenting with you the general 
 decay of religion in this nation, which is now observed by every 
 one, and has been for some time the complaint of all serious 
 persons. The influence of it is more and more wearing out of 
 the minds of men, even of those who do not pretend to enter 
 into speculations upon the subject. But the number of those 
 who do, and who profess themselves unbelievers, increases, and 
 with their numbers their zeal." 
 
 One cannot but ask oneself, when one considers 
 the steadiness of our country through the French 
 Revolution, when one considers the power and preva- 
 lence of religion, even after every deduction has been 
 made for what impairs its strength, — the power and 
 prevalence, I say, of religion in our country at this 
 hour, — one cannot but ask oneself whether Butler 
 was not over-desponding, whether he saw the whole 
 real state of things, whether he did not attach over- 
 importance to certain workings which he did see. 
 Granted that he himself did something to cure the 
 evil which he describes; granted that others did 
 something. Yet, had the evil existed fully as he 
 describes it, I doubt whether he, and Wesley, and 
 all the other physicians, could have cured it. I doubt, 
 even, whether their effort would itself have been pos- 
 sible. Look at a contemporary of Butler in France, 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 255 
 
 — a man who, more than any one else, reminds me of 
 Butler, — the great French statesman, the greatest, in 
 my opinion, that France has ever had ; look at Turgot. 
 Turgot was like Butler in his mental energy, in his 
 deep moral and intellectual ardour, his strenuousness. 
 "Every science, every language, every literature, 
 every business," says Michelet, "interested Turgot." 
 But that in which Turgot most resembled Butler was 
 what Michelet calls his fkociti, — what I should rather 
 call his sceva indignatio. Like Butler, Turgot was 
 filled with an astonished, awful, oppressive sense of 
 " the immoral thoughtlessness " of men ; of the heed- 
 less, hazardous way in which they deal with things of 
 the greatest moment to them ; of the immense, incal- 
 culable misery which is due to this cause. "The 
 greatest evils in life," Turgot held, just as Butler did, 
 " have had their rise from somewhat which was 
 thought of too little importance to be attended to." 
 And for these serious natures religion, one would 
 think, is the line of labour which would naturally 
 first suggest itself. And Turgot was destined for the 
 Church ; he prepared to take orders, like Butler. But 
 in 1752, when Butler lay dying at Bath, Turgot, — 
 the true spiritual yoke-fellow of Butler, with Butler's 
 sacred horror at men's frivolity, with Butler's sacred 
 ardour for rescuing them from the consequences of it, 
 — Turgot, at the age of twenty-five, could stand reli- 
 gion, as in France religion then presented itself to 
 him, no longer. "Iljeta ce masque" says Michelet, 
 adopting an expression of Turgot's own; "he flung 
 away that mask." He took to the work of civil 
 
256 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 government; in what spirit we many of us know, 
 and whoever of us does not know should make it his 
 business to learn. Nine years afterwards began his 
 glorious administration as Intendant of the Limousin, 
 in which for thirteen years he showed what manner 
 of spirit he was of. When, in 1774, he became 
 Minister and Controller-General, he showed the same 
 thing on a more conspicuous stage. "Whatsoever 
 things are true, whatsoever things are nobly serious, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are 
 pure, whatsoever things are of good report," — that 
 is the history of Turgot's administration ! He was a 
 Joseph Butler in government. True, his work, though 
 done as secular administration, has in fact and reality 
 a religious character ; all work like his has a religious 
 character. But the point to seize is here : that in our 
 country, in the middle of the eighteenth century, a 
 man like Butler is still possible in religion ; in France 
 he is only possible in civil government. And that is 
 what I call a true " decay of religion, the influence of 
 it more and more wearing out of the minds of men." 
 The very existence and work of Butler proves, in 
 spite of his own desponding words, that matters had 
 not in his time gone so far as this in England. 
 
 But indeed Mr. Pattison, in the admirable essay 
 which I have mentioned, supplies us with almost 
 positive evidence that it had not. Amongst a number 
 of instructive quotations to show the state of religion 
 in England between 1700 and 1750, Mr. Pattison 
 gives an extract from a violent newspaper, The Inde- 
 pendent Whig, which had been attacking the clergy 
 
il] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 257 
 
 for their many and great offences, and counselling 
 
 them to mend their ways. And then the article 
 
 goes on : — 
 
 " The High Church Popish clergy will laugh in their sleeves 
 at this advice, and think there is folly enough yet left among 
 the laity to support their authority ; and will hug themselves, 
 and rejoice over the ignorance of the Universities, the stupidity 
 of the drunken squires, the panic of the tender sex, and the 
 never -to-be-shaJccn constancy of the multitude." 
 
 The date of that extract is 1720. The language is 
 the well-known language of Liberal friends of pro- 
 gress, when they speak of persons and institutions 
 which are inconvenient to them. But it proves, to 
 my mind, — and there is plenty of other evidence to 
 prove the same thing, — it proves that religion, what- 
 ever may have been the deficiencies of itself and of 
 its friends, was nevertheless, in 1720, still a very 
 great and serious power in this country. And cer- 
 tainly it did not suddenly cease to be so between 
 1720 and 1750. 
 
 No, Butler's mournful language has in it, one may 
 be almost certain, something of exaggeration. To a 
 man of Butler's seriousness the world will always 
 afford plenty of matter for apprehension and sorrow. 
 And to add to this were certain special circumstances 
 of his time, peculiarly trying to an earnest dealer, 
 such as he was, with great thoughts and great 
 interests. There was his bitter personal experience 
 of " the loose kind of deism which was the tone of 
 fashionable circles." There was his impatience, — half 
 contemptuous, half indignant, — of a state of things 
 where, as Mr. Pattison says, " the religious writer 
 
 vol. VII. s 
 
258 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 had now to appear at the bar of criticism," but of 
 such criticism ! For, "if ever there was a time," says 
 Mr. Pattison, again, "when abstract speculation was 
 brought down from inaccessible heights and com- 
 pelled to be intelligible, it was the period from the 
 Eevolution to 1750." This in itself was all very 
 good, and Butler would have been the last man to 
 wish it otherwise. But to whom was abstract specu- 
 lation required thus to make itself intelligible 1 To 
 the " fashionable circles," to the whole multitude of 
 loose thinkers and loose livers, who might choose to 
 lend half an ear for half an hour to the great argu- 
 ment. "It must gain," we are told, "the wits and 
 the town." Hence the sceva indignatio. 
 
 And therefore Butler, when he gets into the pulpit, 
 or when he sits down at his writing-table, will have 
 the thing out with his adversaries. He will " unite 
 it all into one argument and represent it as it ought," 
 and he will fairly argue his objectors down. He will 
 place himself on their own ground, take their own 
 admissions, and will prove to them, in a manner 
 irresistible to any fair thinker, that they are wrong, 
 and that they are bound to make their life and prac- 
 tice, what it is not, religious. 
 
 There is a word which I have often used, and with 
 my use of which some of those who hear me may 
 possibly be familiar : the Greek word epieikes or 
 epieikeia, meaning that which is at once reasonable 
 and prepossessing, or "sweet reasonableness." The 
 original meaning of the word epieikes is, that which 
 has an air of consummate truth and likelihood, and 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 259 
 
 which, by virtue of having this air, is prepossessing. 
 And ejrieikeia is well rendered by " sweet reasonable- 
 ness," because that which above all things has an air 
 of truth and likelihood, that which, therefore, above 
 all things, is prepossessing, is whatever is sweetly 
 reasonable. You know what a power was this quality 
 in the talkings and dealings of Jesus Christ. JEpieikeia 
 is the very word to characterise true Christianity. 
 And true Christianity wins, not by an argumentative 
 victory, not by going through a long debate with a 
 person, examining the arguments for his case from 
 beginning to end, and making him confess that, 
 whether he feels disposed to yield or no, yet in fair 
 logic and fair reason he ought to yield. No, but it 
 puts something which tends to transform him and his 
 practice, it puts this particular thing in such a way 
 before a man that he feels disposed and eager to lay 
 hold of it. And he does, therefore, lay hold of it, 
 though without at all perceiving, very often, the 
 whole scheme to which it belongs ; and thus his 
 practice gets changed. This, I think, every one will 
 admit to be Christianity's most true and characteristic 
 way of getting people to embrace religion. Now, it 
 is to be observed how totally unlike a way it is to 
 Butler's, although Butler's object is the same as 
 Christianity's : to get people to embrace religion. 
 And the object being the same, it must strike every 
 one that the way followed by Christianity has the 
 advantage of a far greater effectualness than Butler's 
 way; since people are much more easily attracted 
 into making a change than argued into it. However, 
 
260 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 Butler seems to think that enough has been done if 
 
 it has been proved to people, in such a way as to 
 
 silence their arguments on the other side, that they 
 
 ought to make a change. For he says expressly : — 
 
 " There being, as I have shown, such evidence for religion as 
 is sufficient in reason to influence men to embrace it, to object 
 that it is not to be imagined mankind will be influenced by such 
 evidence is nothing to the purpose of the foregoing treatise (his 
 Analogy). For the purpose of it is not to inquire what sort of 
 creatures mankind are, but what the light and knowledge which 
 is afforded them requires they should be ; to show how in reason 
 they ought to behave, not how in fact they will behave. This 
 depends upon themselves and is their own concern — the personal 
 concern of each man in particular. And how little regard the 
 generality have to it, experience, indeed, does too fully show. 
 But religion, considered as a probation, has had its end upon 
 all persons to whom it has been proposed with evidence suffi- 
 cient in reason to influence their practice ; for by this means 
 they have been put into a state of probation, let them behave 
 as they will in it. " 
 
 So that, in short, Butler's notion of converting the 
 loose deists of fashionable circles comes to this : by 
 being plied with evidence sufficient in reason to influ- 
 ence their practice, they are to be put into a state of 
 probation ; let them behave as they will in it. Prob- 
 ably no one can hear such language without a secret 
 dissatisfaction. For, after all, the object of religion is 
 conversion, and to change people's behaviour. But 
 where, then, is the use of saying that you will inquire 
 not what people are, but how in reason they ought to 
 behave ? Why, it is what they are which determines 
 their sense of how they ought to behave. Make 
 them, therefore, so to feel what they are, as to get a 
 fruitful sense of how they ought to behave. The 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 261 
 
 Founder of Christianity did so ; and whatever success 
 Christianity has had, has been gained by this method. 
 However, Butler's line is what it is. We are con- 
 cerned with what we can use of it. With his argu- 
 mentative triumphs over the loose thinkers and talkers 
 of his day, so far as it is a triumph won by taking their 
 own data and using their own admissions, we are not 
 concerned unless their admissions and their data are 
 ours too. And they are not. But it is affirmed, not (JU* 
 only that the loose deists of fashionable circles could 
 not answer the Analogy; it is affirmed, farther, 
 that the Analogy is unanswerable. It is asserted, 
 not only that Hobbes or Shaftesbury delivered an 
 unsatisfactory theory of morals, and that Butler in 
 his Sermons disputed their reasonings with success ; 
 but it is asserted, farther, that Butler, on his side, 
 " pursued precisely the same mode of reasoning in the 
 science of morals as his great predecessor, Newton, 
 had done in the system of nature," and that by so 
 doing Butler has "formed and concluded a happy 
 alliance between faith and philosophy." Achieve- 
 ment of this kind is what the " Time-Spirit," or Zeit- 
 Geist, which sweeps away so much that is local and 
 personal, will certainly respect. Achievement of this 
 sort deeply concerns us. An unanswerable work on 
 the evidence of religion, a science of human nature 
 and of morals reached by a method as sure as New- 
 ton's, a happy alliance between faith and philosophy, 
 — what can concern us more deeply? If Butler 
 accomplished all this, he does indeed give us what we 
 can use ; he is indeed great. But supposing ho 
 
262 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 should turn out not to have accomplished all this, 
 what then? Does he vanish away 1 ? Does he give 
 us nothing which we can use 1 And if he does give 
 us something which we can use, what is it 1 and if he 
 remains a great man to us still, why does he 1 
 
 3. 
 
 Let us begin with the Sermons at the Rolls, Butler's 
 first publication. You have heard, for I have quoted 
 it, the unbounded praise which has been given to the 
 three sermons On Human Nature. And they do in- 
 deed lay the foundation for the whole doctrine of the 
 Sermons at the Rolls, of the body of sermons wherein 
 is given Butler's system of moral philosophy. Their 
 argument is familiar, probably, to many of us. Let 
 me recite it briefly by abridging the best of all possible 
 accounts of it, — Butler's own account in his preface : — 
 
 " Mankind has various instincts and principles of action. The 
 generality of mankind obey their instincts and principles, all of 
 them, those propensions we call good as well as the bad, accord- 
 ing to the constitution of their body and the external circum- 
 stances which they are in. They are not wholly governed by 
 self-love, the love of power, and sensual appetites ; they are 
 frequently influenced by friendship, compassion, gratitude ; and 
 even a general abhorrence of what is base, and liking of what 
 is fair and just, take their turn amongst the other motives of 
 action. This is the partial inadequate notion of human nature 
 treated of in the first discourse, and it is by this nature, if one 
 may speak so, that the world is in fact influenced and kept in 
 that tolerable order in which it is. 
 
 " Mankind in thus acting would act suitably to their whole 
 nature, if no more were to be said of man's nature than what has 
 been now said. But that is not a complete account of man's 
 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 263 
 
 nature. Somewhat further must be brought in to give us an 
 adequate notion of it — namely, that one of those principles of 
 action — conscience or reflection — compared with the rest as they 
 all stand together in the nature of man, plainly bears upon it 
 marks of authority over all the rest, and claims the absolute 
 direction of them all, to allow or forbid their gratification ; a 
 disapprobation of reflection being in itself a principle manifestly 
 superior to a mere propension. And the conclusion is, that to 
 allow no more to this superior principle or part of our nature 
 than to other parts, to let it govern and guide only occasionally 
 in common with the rest, as its turn happens to come, from the 
 temper and circumstances one happens to be in — this is not to 
 act conformably to the constitution of man, neither can any 
 human creature be said to act conformably to his constitution 
 and nature, unless he allows to that superior principle the abso- 
 lute authority which is due to it. And this conclusion is abun- 
 dantly confirmed from hence — that one may determine what 
 course of action the economy of man's nature requires, without 
 so much as learning in what degrees of strength the several prin- 
 ciples prevail, or which of them have actually the greatest in- 
 fluence." 
 
 And the whole scope and object of the three sermons 
 
 On Human Nature, Butler describes thus : — 
 
 ' ' They were intended to explain what is meant by the nature 
 of man, when it is said that virtue consists in following, and 
 vice in deviating from it ; and by explaining to show that the 
 assertion is true." 
 
 Now, it may be at once allowed that Butler's 
 notion of human nature as consisting of a number of 
 instincts and principles of action, with conscience as 
 a superior principle presiding over them, corresponds 
 in a general way with facts of which we are all con- 
 scious, and if practically acted upon would be found 
 to work satisfactorily. When Butler says : " Let any 
 plain honest man before he engages in any course of 
 action, ask himself, ' Is this I am going about right, 
 
264 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 or is it wrong ? Is it good or is it evil 1 ' and I do 
 not in the least doubt but that this question would 
 be answered agreeably to truth and virtue by almost 
 any fair man in almost any circumstance;" — when 
 Butler says this, he is on solid ground, and his whole 
 scheme has its rise, indeed, in the sense that this 
 ground is solid. When he calls our nature " the voice 
 of God within us ; " or when he suggests that there 
 may be " distinct from the reflection of reason, a 
 mutual sympathy between each particular of the species, 
 a fellow-feeling common to mankind;" or when he 
 finely says of conscience, " Had it strength as it has 
 right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it 
 would absolutely govern the world ; " — in all this, 
 Butler is in contact with the most precious truth and 
 reality, and so far as this truth and reality inform the 
 scheme which he has drawn out for human nature, his 
 scheme has life in it. 
 
 Equally may it be allowed, that the errors, which 
 his scheme is designed to correct, are errors indeed. 
 If the Epicureans, or Hobbes, or any one else, " ex- 
 plain the desire of praise and of being beloved, as no 
 other than desire of safety ; regard to our country, 
 even in the most virtuous character, as nothing but 
 regard to ourselves ; curiosity as proceeding from 
 interest or pride ; as if there were no such passions 
 in mankind as desire of esteem, or of being beloved, 
 or of knowledge;" — if these delineators of human 
 nature represent it thus, they represent it fantastic- 
 ally. If Shaftesbury, laying it clown that virtue is 
 the happiness of man, and encountered by the objec- 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 265 
 
 tion that one may be not convinced of this happy 
 tendency of virtue or may be of a contrary opinion, 
 meets the objection by determining that the case is 
 without remedy, then this noble moralist moralises 
 ill. If Butler found some persons (probably the loose 
 deists of fashionable circles) " who, upon principle, 
 set up for suppressing the affection of compassion as 
 a weakness, so that there is I know not what of fashion 
 on this side, and by some means or other the whole 
 world, almost, is run into the extremes of insensibility 
 towards the distresses of their fellow-creatures;" — if 
 this was so, then the fashionable theory of human 
 nature was vicious and false, and Butler, in seeking 
 to substitute a better for it, was quite right. 
 
 But Butler himself brings in somebody as asking : 
 "Allowing that mankind hath the rule of right within 
 itself, what obligations are we under to attend to and 
 follow it 1 ?" And he answers this question quite 
 fairly: "Your obligation to obey this law, is its being 
 the law of your nature." But let us vary the ques- 
 tion a little, and let us ask Butler : " Suppose your 
 scheme of human nature to correspond in a general 
 way, but no more, with facts of which we are con- 
 scious, and to promise to work practically well enough, 
 what obligations are we under to attend to and follow 
 it ? " Butler cannot now answer us : " Your obliga- 
 tion to obey this law, is its being the law of your 
 nature." For this is just what is not yet made out. 
 All that we suppose to be yet made out about Butler's 
 scheme of human nature, — its array of instincts and 
 principles with the superior principle of conscience 
 
266 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 presiding, — is, that the scheme has a general corre- 
 spondence with facts of human nature whereof we are 
 conscious. But the time comes, — sooner or later the 
 time comes, — to individuals and even to societies, 
 when the foundations of the great deep are broken 
 up, and everything is in question, and people want 
 surer holding-ground than a sense of general corre- 
 spondence, in any scheme and rule of human nature 
 proposed to them, with facts whereof they are con- 
 scious. They ask themselves what this sense of 
 general correspondence is really worth. They sift 
 the facts of which they are conscious, and their con- 
 sciousness of which seemed to lend a credibility to the 
 scheme proposed. They insist on strict verification 
 of whatever is to be admitted ; and the authority of 
 the scheme with them stands or falls according as it 
 does or does not come out undamaged, after all this 
 process has been gone through. If Butler's scheme 
 of human nature comes out undamaged after being 
 submitted to a process of this kind, then it is indeed, 
 as its admirers call it, a Newtonian work. It is a 
 work " placed on the firm basis of observation and 
 experiment ;" it is a true work of discovery. His 
 doctrine may, with justice, be then called "an irre- 
 sistible doctrine made out according to the strict truth 
 of our mental constitution." 
 
 Let us take Butler's natural history of what he 
 calls " our instincts and principles of action." It is 
 this : — They have been implanted in us ; put into 
 us ready-made, to serve certain ends intended by the 
 Author of our nature. When we see what each of 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 267 
 
 them "is in itself, as placed in our nature by its 
 Author, it will plainly appear for what ends it was 
 placed there." "Perfect goodness in the Deity," 
 says Butler, "is the principle from whence the uni- 
 verse was brought into being, and by which it is 
 preserved ; and general benevolence is the great law 
 of the moral creation." But some of our passions 
 and propensions seem to go against goodness and 
 benevolence. However, we could not do without 
 our stock of passions and propensions of all sorts, 
 because "that would leave us without a sufficient 
 principle of action." "Eeason alone," argues 
 Butler — 
 
 "Reason alone, whatever any one may wish, is not in 
 reality a sufficient motive of virtue in such a creature as man ; 
 but this reason, joined with those affections which God has 
 impressed upon his heart ; and when these are allowed scope 
 to exercise themselves, but under strict government and direc- 
 tion of reason, then it is we act suitably to our nature, and to 
 the circumstances God has placed us in." 
 
 And even those affections, which seem to create 
 difficulties for us, are purposely given, Butler says — 
 
 ' ' Some of them as a guard against the violent assaults of 
 others, and in our own defence ; some in behalf of others ; and 
 all of them to put us upon, and help to carry us through, a 
 course of behaviour suitable to our condition." 
 
 For 
 
 "As God Almighty foresaw the irregularities and disorders, 
 both natural and moral, which would happen in this state of 
 things, he hath graciously made some provision against them, 
 by giving us several passions and affections, which arise from, 
 or whose objects are, those disorders. Of this sort are fear, 
 resentment, compassion, and others, of which there could be 
 
268 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 no occasion or use in a perfect state, but in the present we 
 should be exposed to greater inconveniences without them, 
 though there are very considerable ones which they them- 
 selves are the occasion of. " 
 
 This is Butler's natural history of the origin of 
 our principles of action. I take leave to say that 
 it is not based on observation and experiment. It 
 is not physiology, but fanciful hypothesis. There- 
 fore it is not Newtonian, for Newton said : Hypotheses 
 non jingo. And suppose a man, in a time of great 
 doubt and unsettlement, finding many things fail 
 him which have been confidently pressed on his 
 acceptance, and looking earnestly for something 
 which he feels he can really go upon and which 
 will prove to him a sure stay; — suppose such a 
 man coming to Butler, because he hears that in 
 the ethical discussions of his sermons Butler sup- 
 plies, as Mackintosh says, "truths more satisfac- 
 torily established by him, and more worthy of the 
 name of discovery, than perhaps any with which we 
 are acquainted." Well, such a man, I think, when 
 he finds that Butler's ethics involve an immense 
 hypothesis to start with, as to the origin and final 
 causes of all our passions and affections, cannot but 
 feel disconcerted and impatient. 
 
 And disconcerted and impatient, I am afraid, we 
 must for the present leave him. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZETT-GEIST. 
 
 II 
 
 Butler designs to found a sure system of morals, 
 and, in order to found it, he, as we have seen, tells 
 us how we originally came by our instincts and 
 affections. They were, he tells us, "placed in us 
 by God, to put us upon and help to carry us through 
 a course of behaviour suitable to our condition." 
 Here, as every one will admit, we cannot directly 
 verify the truth of what our author says. But he 
 also examines such and such of our affections in 
 themselves, to make good his theory of their origin 
 and final causes. And here we can verify the degree 
 in which his report of facts, and the construction he 
 puts upon them, carries us along with it, inspires us 
 with confidence in his scheme of human nature. 
 
 Butler notices, that compassion for the distresses 
 of others is felt much more generally than delight 
 in their prosperity. And he says :— 
 
 "The reason and account of which matter is this : when a 
 man has obtained any particular advantage or felicity, his end 
 is gained, and he does not, in that particular, want the assist- 
 ance of another ; there was therefore no need of a distinct affec- 
 tion towards that felicity of another already obtained, neither 
 would such affection directly carry him on to do good to that 
 person ; whereas men in distress want assistance, and com- 
 passion leads us directly to assist them. The object of the 
 former is the present felicity of another ; the object of the 
 
270 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 latter is the present misery of another. It is easy to see that 
 the latter ivants a particular affection for its relief, and that 
 the former does not want one, because it does not want 
 assistance. " 
 
 Such an explanation, why compassion at another's 
 distress is stronger than satisfaction at another's pros- 
 perity, was well suited, no doubt, to Butler's theory 
 of the origin and final causes of all our affections. 
 But will any one say that it carries a real student 
 of nature along with it and inspires him with con- 
 fidence, any more than Hobbes's resolution of all 
 benevolence into a mere love of power 1 — that it is 
 not just as fantastic ? 
 
 Again, take Butler's account of the passion of 
 
 anger and resentment. There is sudden anger, he 
 
 says, and there is deliberate anger : — 
 
 "The reason and the end for which man was made liable 
 to the passion of sudden anger is, that he might be better 
 qualified to prevent, and likewise (or perhaps chiefly) to resist 
 and defeat, sudden force, violence, and opposition, considered 
 merely as such. It stands in our nature for self-defence, and 
 not for the administration of justice. Deliberate anger, on the 
 other hand, is given us to farther the ends of justice ; not 
 natural but moral evil, not suffering but injury, raises that 
 anger ; it is resentment against vice and wickedness. " 
 
 And — 
 
 "The natural object of settled resentment, then, being injury, 
 as distinct from pain or loss, it is easy to see that to prevent 
 and to remedy such injury, and the miseries arising from it, 
 is the end for which this passion was implanted in man. " 
 
 But anger has evident dangers and abuses. True. 
 But— 
 
 " Since it is necessary, for the very subsistence of the world, 
 that injury, injustice, and cruelty should be punished ; and 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 271 
 
 since compassion, which is so natural to mankind, would 
 render that execution of justice exceedingly difficult and 
 uneasy, indignation against vice and wickedness is a balance 
 to that weakness of pity, and also to anything else which 
 would prevent the necessary methods of severity. " 
 
 And it is the business of the faculty of conscience, or 
 reflection, to tell us how anger may be innocently 
 and rightly employed, so as to serve the end for 
 which God placed it in our nature. 
 
 In times when everything is conventional, when 
 no one looks very closely into himself or into what is 
 told him about his moral nature, this sort of natural 
 history may, perhaps, look likely enough, and may 
 even pass for Newtonian. But let a time come when, 
 as I say, the foundations of the great deep are broken 
 up, when a man searches with passionate earnestness 
 for something certain, and can and will henceforth 
 build upon facts only ; then the arbitrary assertions 
 of such a psychology as this of Butler's will be felt to 
 be perfectly fantastic and unavailing. 
 
 And even when the arbitrary and fantastic char- 
 acter of his psychology is not so apparent, Butler will 
 be felt constantly to puzzle and perplex, rather than 
 to satisfy us. He will be felt not to carry us along 
 with him, not to be convincing. He has his theory 
 that our appetites and affections are all placed in our 
 nature by God, that they are all equally natural, that 
 they all have a useful end to serve and have respect 
 to that end solely ; that the principle of conscience is 
 implanted in us for the sake of arbitrating between 
 them, of assigning to certain among them a natural 
 
272 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 superiority, of using each in its right measure and of 
 guiding it to its right end ; and that the degree of 
 strength, in which any one of our affections exists, 
 affords no reason at all for following it. And Butler's 
 theory requires, moreover, that self-love shall be but 
 one out of our many affections, that it shall have a 
 strictly defined end of its own, and be as distinct 
 from those affections which seem most akin to it, and 
 which are therefore often confounded with it, as it is 
 from those, — such as benevolence, we will say, — which 
 nobody is tempted to confound with it. Such is 
 Butler's theory, and such are its requirements. And 
 with this theory, we find him declaring that compas- 
 sion is a primitive affection implanted in us from the 
 first by the Author of Nature to lead us to public 
 spirit, just as hunger was implanted in us from the 
 first to lead us to our own personal good, and from 
 the same cause : namely, that reason and cool self- 
 love would not by themselves have been sufficient to 
 lead us to the end in view, without the appetite and 
 the affection. 
 
 " The private interest of the individual would not be suffi- 
 ciently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone ; 
 therefore the appetites and passions are placed within as a guard 
 and further security, without which it would not be taken due 
 care of. It is manifest, our life would be neglected were it not 
 for the calls of hunger and thirst and weariness, notwithstand- 
 ing that without them reason would assure us, that the recruits 
 of food and sleep are the necessary means of our preservation. 
 It is therefore absurd to imagine that, without affection (the 
 affection of compassion), the same reason alone would be more 
 effectual to engage us to perform the duties we owe to our 
 fellow-creatures. " 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 273 
 
 The argument may be ingenious, but can any- 
 thing be more unsatisfactory 1 And is it not, to 
 use Butler's words, " absurd to imagine " that in 
 this manner, and by this parallel plan, and thus to 
 supplement one another, hunger and reasonable self- 
 love, compassion and " a settled reasonable principle 
 of benevolence to mankind," did really have their 
 rise in us 1 
 
 Presently we find Butler marvelling that persons 
 of superior capacity should dispute the obligation of 
 compassion and public spirit, and asking if it could 
 ever occur to a man of plain understanding to think 
 " that there was absolutely no such thing in man- 
 kind as affection to the good of others, — suppose of 
 parents to their children." As if the affection of 
 parents to>their children was an affection to the good 
 of others of just the same natural history as public 
 spirit ! — as if the two were alike in their primariness, 
 alike in their date of obligation, alike in their kind of 
 evidence ! One is an affection of rudimentary human 
 nature, the other is a slow conquest from rudimentary 
 human nature. And once more :— 
 
 "To endeavour to get rid of the sorrow of compassion, by 
 turning from the wretched, is as unnatural," says Butler, "as 
 to endeavour to get rid of the pain of hunger, by keeping from 
 the sight of food. " 
 
 Now, we are to consider this as a practical argument 
 by which to bring a man, all unsettled about the rule 
 of his conduct, to cultivate in himself compassion. 
 Surely such an argument would astonish rather than 
 convince him ! He would say : " Can it be so, since 
 VOL. VII. T 
 
274 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 we see that men continually do the one, never the 
 other ? " But Butler insists, and says : — 
 
 ' ' That we can do one with greater success than we can the 
 other, is no proof that one is less a violation of nature than the 
 other. Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the 
 unhappy, as hunger is a natural call for food." 
 
 Surely, nature, natural, must be used here in a some- 
 what artificial manner, in order to get this argument 
 out of them ! Yet Butler professes to stick to plain 
 facts, not to sophisticate, not to refine. 
 
 "Let me take notice," he says, "of the danger of going 
 beside or beyond the plain, obvious, first appearances of things, 
 upon the subject of morals and religion." 
 
 But is it in accordance with the plain, obvious, first 
 appearances of things, to pronounce compassion to 
 be a call, a demand of nature to relieve the unhappy, 
 precisely in the same manner as hunger is a natural 
 call for food ; and to say that to neglect one call is 
 just as much a violation of nature as the other 1 
 Surely Butler could not talk in this way, unless he 
 had first laid it down that all our affections are in 
 themselves equally natural, and that no degree of 
 greater strength and frequency can make one affec- 
 tion more natural than the other. They are all, 
 according to him, voices of God. But the principle 
 of reflection or conscience, — a higher voice of God, — 
 decides how and when each is to be followed. And 
 when Butler has laid this down, he has no difficult}^ 
 in affirming that it is as unnatural not to relieve the 
 distressed as not to eat when one is hungry. Only 
 one feels, not convinced and satisfied, but in doubt 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 275 
 
 whether he ought to have laid it down, when one sees 
 that it conducts him to such an affirmation. 
 
 Yet once more. The affection of compassion 
 not only proves that it is as unnatural to turn away 
 from distress as to turn from food when one is 
 hungry. It proves, also, that this world was in- 
 tended neither to be a mere scene of unhappiness and 
 sorrow, nor to be a state of any great satisfaction or 
 high enjoyment. And it suggests the following 
 lesson for us : — 
 
 " There being that distinct affection implanted in the nature 
 of man tending to lessen the miseries of life, that provision 
 made for abating its sorrows more than for increasing its posi- 
 tive happiness, this may suggest to us what should be out- 
 general aim respecting ourselves in our passage through this 
 world, namely, to endeavour chiefly to escape misery, keep free 
 from uneasiness, pain, and sorrow, or to get relief and mitiga- 
 tion of them ; to propose to ourselves peace and tranquillity of 
 mind rather than pursue after high enjoyments." 
 
 And Butler goes on to enumerate several so-called 
 high enjoyments, such as "to make pleasure and mirth 
 and jollity our business, to be constantly hurrying 
 about after some gay amusement, some new gratifica- 
 tion of sense or appetite." And he points out, what 
 no wise man will dispute, that these do not confer 
 happiness, and that we do wrong to make them our 
 end in life. No doubt ; yet meanwhile, in his main 
 assertion that man's proper aim is escape from misery 
 rather than positive happiness, Butler goes clean 
 counter to the most intimate, the most sure, the 
 most irresistible instinct of human nature. As a 
 little known but profound French moralist, Senan- 
 
276 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND EELIGION. [n. 
 
 cour, has said admirably : " The aim for man is to 
 augment the feeling of joy, to make our expansive 
 energy bear fruit, and to combat, in all thinking 
 beings, the principle of degradation and misery." 
 But Butler goes counter, also, to the clear voice of 
 our religion. " Eejoice and give thanks ! " exhorts 
 the Old Testament; "Rejoice evermore!" exhorts 
 the New. This, and not mere escape from misery, 
 getting freedom from uneasiness, pain, and sorrow, or 
 getting mitigation of them, is what (to turn Butler's 
 words against himself) " the consideration of nature 
 marks out as the course we should follow and the 
 end we should aim at." And a scheme of human 
 nature, meant to serve as a rule for human conduct, 
 cannot, however ingenious, be said to explain things 
 irresistibly according to the strict truth of our mental 
 constitution, when we find it strongly at variance with 
 the facts of that constitution on a point of capital 
 inrportance. 
 
 Even at past fifty years of age I approach the sub- 
 ject, so terrible to undergraduates, of Butler's account 
 of self-love, with a shiver of uneasiness. Yet I will 
 point out how Butler's own arbitrary definition of 
 self-love, a definition which the cast of his scheme of 
 human nature renders necessary, creates the diffi- 
 culties of his assiduous, laboured, and unsatisfying 
 attempt to reconcile self-love with benevolence. He 
 describes self-love, occasionally, as "a general desire 
 of our own happiness." And he knew well enough, 
 that the pursuit of our own interest and happiness, 
 rightly understood, and the obedience to God's com- 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 277 
 
 mands, "must be in every case one and the same 
 thing." Nevertheless, Butler's constant notion of the 
 pursuit of our interest is, that it is the pursuit of our 
 temporal good, as he calls it ; the cool consideration 
 of our own temporal advantage. And he expressly 
 defines his self-love, which he names " a private con- 
 tracted affection," as " a regard to our private good, 
 our private interest." Private interest is the favourite 
 expression: "a cool pursuit of our private interest." 
 Now to say, that there is no opposition between a 
 general desire for our own happiness, and a love of 
 our neighbour, has nothing puzzling in it. But to 
 define self-love as a private contracted affection, con- 
 sisting in a cool deliberate pursuit of our private 
 interest, and then to say, as Butler does, that from 
 self-love, thus denned, love of our neighbour is no 
 more distant than hatred of our neighbour, is to 
 sophisticate things. Butler may make it out by 
 stipulating that self-love shall merely mean pursuing 
 our private interest, and not pursuing it in any par- 
 ticular manner, just as he makes out that not to 
 relieve the distressed is as unnatural to a man as not 
 to eat when he is hungry, by stipulating that all our 
 affections shall be considered equally natural. But 
 he does not convince a serious student by these 
 refinements, does not carry such a student with him, 
 does not help such a student, therefore, a step nearer 
 towards practice. And a moralist's business is to 
 help towards practice. 
 
 The truth is, all this elaborate psychology of 
 Butler's, which satisfies us so little, — so little, to 
 
278 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 use Coleridge's excellent expression, finds us, — is 
 unsatisfying because of its radical defectiveness as 
 natural history. What he calls our instincts and 
 principles of action, which are in truth the most 
 obscure, changing, interdependent of phenomena, 
 Butler takes as if they were things as separate, fixed, 
 and palpable as the bodily organs which the dissector 
 has on his table before him. He takes them as if, 
 just as he now finds them, there they had always 
 been, and there they must always be ; as if benevo- 
 lence had always gone on secreting love of our neigh- 
 bour, and compassion a desire to relieve misery, and 
 conscience right verdicts, just as the liver secretes 
 bile. Butler's error is that of the early chemists, 
 who imagined things to be elements which were not, 
 but were capable of being resolved and decomposed 
 much farther. And a man who is thrown fairly upon 
 himself, and will have the naked truth, must feel that 
 it is with Butler's principles and affections as it was 
 with the elements of the early chemists ; they are 
 capable of being resolved and decomposed much 
 farther, and solid ground is not reached until they 
 are thus decomposed. " There is this principle of 
 reflection or conscience in mankind." — "True," the 
 student may answer ; " but what and whence is it % 
 It had a genesis of some kind, and your account of 
 its genesis is fantastic. What is its natural genesis, 
 and what the natural genesis of your benevolence, 
 compassion, resentment, and all the rest of them 1 ? 
 Till I know this, I do not know where I am in talk- 
 ing about them." — But into this vast, dimly lighted, 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 279 
 
 primordial region of the natural genesis of man's 
 affections and principles, Butler never enters. 
 
 Yet in this laboratory arose those wonderful com- 
 pounds with which Butler deals, and the source of 
 his ruling faculty of conscience is to be traced back 
 thither. There, out of the simple primary instinct, 
 which we may call the instinct or effort to live, grew 
 our affections; and out of the experience of those 
 affections, in their result upon the instinctive effort 
 to live, grew reflection, practical reason, conscience. 
 And the all-ruling effort to live is, in other words, 
 the desire for happiness ; that desire which Butler, — 
 because he identifies it with self-love, and defines 
 self-love as the cool pursuit of our private interest, 
 of our temporal good, — is so anxious to treat as only 
 one motive out of many, and not authoritative. And 
 this instinct rules because it is strongest; although 
 Butler is so anxious that no instinct shall rule because 
 it is strongest. And our affections of all kinds, too, 
 according as they serve this deep instinct or thwart 
 it, are superior in strength, — not in present strength, 
 but in permanent strength ; and have degrees of 
 worth according to that superiority. And benevo- 
 lence, or a regard to the good of others, does often 
 conflict with the private contracted affection of self- 
 love, or a regard to our private interest, with which 
 Butler denies that it conflicts at all. But it has the 
 call to contend with it, and the right to get the better 
 of it, because of its own superiority in permanent 
 strength. And this superiority it derives from the 
 experience, painfully and slowly acquired, that it 
 
280 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 serves our instinct to live, our desire for happiness, 
 better than the private contracted affection does; 
 that the private contracted affection, if we follow 
 it, thwarts this instinct. For men are solidary, or 
 co-partners ; and not isolated. And conscience, in a 
 question of conflict between a regard to the good of 
 others and a regard to our private good, is the sense 
 of experience having proved and established, that, 
 from this reason of men's being really solidary, our 
 private good ought in a conflict of such kind to give 
 way ; and that our nature is violated, — that is, our 
 instinct to live is thwarted, — if it does not. That 
 this sense finds in us a pre-adaptation to it, and a 
 presentiment of its truth, may be inferred from its 
 being a sense of facts which are a real condition of 
 human progress. But whatever may be the case as 
 to our pre-adaptation to it and presentiment of it, the 
 great matter in favour of the sense is, that the experi- 
 ence reported by it is true; that the thing is so. 
 People may say, they have not got this sense that 
 their instinct to live is served by loving their neigh- 
 bour ; — they may say that they have, in other words, 
 a dull and uninformed conscience. But that does not 
 make the experience the less a true thing, the real 
 experience of the race. Neither does it make the 
 sense of this experience to be, any the less, genuine 
 conscience. And it is genuine conscience, because it 
 apprehends what does really serve our instinct to live, 
 or desire for happiness. And when Shaftesbury sup- 
 poses the case of a man thinking vice and selfishness 
 to be truly as much for his advantage as virtue and 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 281 
 
 benevolence, and concludes that such a case is without 
 remedy, the answer is : Not at all ; let such a man 
 get conscience, get right experience. And if the man 
 does not, the result is not that he goes on just as well 
 without it ; the result is, that he is lost. 
 
 Butler, indeed, was evidently afraid of making the 
 desire of happiness to be that which we must set 
 out with in explaining human nature. And he was 
 afraid of it for this reason : because he was appre- 
 hensive of the contracted self-love, and of the con- 
 tracted judgments, of the individual. But if we say 
 the instinct to live instead of the desire of happiness, — 
 and the two mean the same thing, and life is a better 
 and more exact word to use than happiness, and it is, 
 moreover, the Bible-word, — then the difficulty vanishes. 
 For, as man advances in his development, he becomes 
 aware of two lives, one permanent and impersonal, 
 the other transient and bound to our contracted self ; 
 he becomes aware of two selves, one higher and real, 
 the other inferior and apparent ; and that the instinct 
 in him truly to live, the desire for happiness, is served 
 by following the first self and not the second. It is 
 not the case that the two selves do not conflict ; they 
 do conflict. It is not true that the affections and 
 impulses of both alike are, as Butler says, the voice of 
 God ; the self-love of Butler, the " cool study of our 
 private interest," is not the voice of God. It is a 
 hasty, erroneous interpretation by us, in our long, 
 tentative, up -struggling development, of the instinct 
 to live, the desire for happiness, which is the voice of 
 our authentic nature, the voice of God. And it has 
 
282 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [it 
 
 to be corrected by experience. Love of our neigh- 
 bour, Butler's benevolence, is the affection by which 
 experience bids us correct it. Many a hard lesson 
 does the experience involve, many a heavy blow. 
 But the satisfaction of our instinct to live, of our 
 desire for happiness, depends on our making and 
 using the experience. 
 
 And so true is this history of the two lives in man, 
 the two selves, — both arising out of the instinct to 
 live in us, out of the feeling after happiness, but one 
 correcting and at last dominating the other, — that the 
 psychology of Jesus Christ, which without the least 
 apparatus of system is yet incomparably exacter than 
 Butler's, as well as incomparably more illuminative 
 and fruitful, — this psychology, I say, carries every 
 one with it when it treats these two lives in man, 
 these two selves, as an evident, capital fact of human 
 nature. Jesus Christ said : " Benounce thyself 7" and 
 yet he also said : " What is a man profited, if he gain 
 the whole world, and yet lose himself, be mulcted of 
 himself V He said: "I am come that men might 
 have life, and might have it more abundantly ; and 
 ye will not come to me that ye may have life ! ,: And 
 yet he also said : " Whosoever will save his life, shall 
 lose it." So certain is it that we have two lives, two 
 selves; and that there is no danger in making the 
 instinct to live, the desire of happiness, to be, as it 
 really is, that which we must set out with in explaining 
 human nature, if we add that only in the impersonal 
 life, and with the higher self, is the instinct truly 
 served and the desire truly satisfied ; that experience 
 
ii.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 283 
 
 is the long, painful, irresistible, glorious establishment 
 of this fact, and that conscience is the recognition of 
 that experience. 
 
 Now, as Butler fears to set out, in explaining- 
 human nature, with the desire for happiness, because 
 he imagines each man cutting and carving arbitrarily 
 for his own private interest in pursuit of happiness, 
 so he apprehends a man's cutting and carving arbi- 
 trarily, and with mistaken judgment, for the happiness 
 of others. He supposes a man fancying that an over- 
 balance of happiness to mankind may be produced by 
 committing some great injustice, and says very truly 
 that a man is not on that account to commit it. 
 And he concludes that " we are constituted so as to 
 condemn injustice abstracted from all consideration 
 what conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of 
 happiness or misery." And he thinks that his theory 
 of our affections being all implanted separately in us, 
 ready-made and full-grown, by a Divine Author of 
 Nature, his theory of the dignified independence, on 
 the part of virtue and conscience, of all aim at happi- 
 ness, is thereby proved. So far from it, that man did 
 not even propose to himself the worthier aim, as it 
 now is seen by us to be, of the production of general 
 happiness, in feeling his way to the laws of virtue. 
 He proposed to himself the production simply of his 
 own happiness. But experience of what made for 
 this, such experience slowly led him to the laws of 
 virtue ; — laws abridging in a hundred ways what at 
 first seemed his own happiness, and implying the 
 solidarity of himself and his happiness with the race 
 
284 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 and theirs. This is what experience brought him to, 
 and what conscience is concerned with : a number of 
 laws determining our conduct in many ways, and im- 
 plying our solidarity with others. But experience 
 did not bring him to the rule of every man just 
 aiming, " according to the best of his judgment," at 
 what might " have the appearance of being likely to 
 produce an overbalance of happiness to mankind in 
 their present state." It did not conduct him to this, 
 or establish for him any such rule of action as this. 
 This is not his experience, and conscience turns on ex- 
 perience. It is not in the form of carving for men's 
 apparent happiness in defiance of the common rules 
 of justice and virtue, that the duty of caring for other 
 men's happiness makes itself felt to us, but in the 
 form of an obedience to the common rules themselves 
 of justice and of virtue. Those rules, however, had 
 indubitably in great part their rise in the experience, 
 that, by seeking solely his own private happiness, a 
 man made shipwreck of life. 
 
 In morals, we must not rely just on what may 
 "have the appearance " to the individual, but on the 
 experience of the race as to happiness. To that ex- 
 perience, the individual, as one of the race, is pro- 
 foundly and intimately adapted. He may much more 
 safely conform himself to such experience than to his 
 own crude judgments upon " appearances ; " nay, 
 such experience has, if he deals with himself fairly, a 
 much stronger hold upon his conviction. Butler con- 
 fuses the foreseen overbalance of happiness or misery, 
 which, as the result of experience in the race, has 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 285 
 
 silently and slowly determined our calling actions 
 virtuous or vicious, with that overbalance which each 
 transient individual may think he can foresee. The 
 transient individual must not cut and carve in the 
 results of human experience, according to his crude 
 notions of what may constitute human happiness. 
 His thought of the obligation laid upon him by those 
 rules of justice and virtue, wherein the moral experi- 
 ence of our race has been summed up, must rather 
 be : " The will of mortal man did not beget it, neither 
 shall oblivion ever put it to sleep." But the rules 
 had their origin in man's desire for happiness not- 
 withstanding. 
 
 2. 
 
 Impressive, then, as the Sermons at the Rolls are, 
 and much as they contain which is precious, I do not 
 think that these sermons, setting forth Butler's theory 
 of the foundation of morals, will satisfy any one who 
 in disquietude, and seeking earnestly for a sure stay, 
 comes for help to them. But the Sermons at the Bolls 
 were published in 1726, when Butler was but thirty- 
 four years old. They were all preached in the eight 
 years between 1718 and 1726, — between the twenty- 
 sixth year of Butler's life and the thirty-fourth. The 
 date is important. At that age a man is, I think, 
 more likely to attempt a highly systematic, intricate 
 theory of human nature and morals, than he is after- 
 wards. And if he does attempt it, it cannot well be 
 satisfactory. The man is hardly ripe for it, he has 
 not had enough experience. So at least, one is dis- 
 
286 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [il. 
 
 posed to say, as one regards the thing from the point 
 of view of a more mature age oneself. The Analogy 
 did not come till ten years after the Sermons. The 
 Analogy appeared in 1736, when Butler was forty-four. 
 It is a riper work than the Sermons at the Bolls. 
 Perhaps it will seem in me the very height of over- 
 partiality to the merits of old age, of that unpopular 
 condition which I am myself approaching, if I say, 
 that I would rather have had the opus magnum of 
 such a man as Butler, and on such a subject as the 
 philosophy of religion, ten years later from him still. 
 I would rather have had it from him at fifty-four than 
 at forty-four. To me, the most entirely satisfactory 
 productions of Butler are the Six Sermons on Public 
 Occasions, all of them later than the Analogy; the 
 Charge to the Clergy of Durham, delivered the year 
 before his death ; and a few fragments, also dating 
 from the close of his life. 
 
 But let us be thankful for what we have. The 
 Analogy is a work of great power; to read it, is a 
 very valuable mental exercise. Not only does it con- 
 tain, like the Sermons, many trains of thought and 
 many single observations which are profound and 
 precious, but the intellectual conduct of the work, so 
 to speak, seems to me to be more that of a master, to 
 be much firmer and clearer, more free from embarrass- 
 ment and confusion, than that of the Sermons. Of 
 course the form of the work gave Butler advantages 
 which with the form of a sermon he could not have. 
 But the mental grasp, too, is, I think, visibly stronger 
 in the Analogy. 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 287 
 
 I have drawn your attention to the terms of un- 
 bounded praise in which the Analog)/ is extolled. It 
 is called "unanswerable." It is said to be "the most 
 original and profound work extant in any language 
 on the philosophy of religion." It is asserted, that, 
 by his Analogy, Butler "placed metaphysic, which till 
 then had nothing to support it but mere abstraction 
 or shadowy speculation, on the firm basis of observa- 
 tion and experiment." 
 
 I have also told you what is to my mind the one 
 sole point of interest for us now, in a work like the 
 Analogy. To those who search earnestly, — amid that 
 break-up of traditional and conventional notions re- 
 specting our life, its conduct, and its sanctions, which 
 is undeniably befalling our age, — for some clear light 
 and some sure stay, does the Analogy afford it to 
 them ? A religious work cannot touch us very deeply 
 as a mere intellectual feat. Whether the Analogy was 
 or was not calculated to make the loose Deists of 
 fashionable circles, in the year of grace 173G, feel 
 uncomfortable, we do not, as I said the other night, 
 care two straws, unless we hold the argumentative 
 positions of those Deists ; and we do not. What has 
 the Analogy got to enlighten and help us ? is the one 
 important question. 
 
 Its object is to make men embrace religion. And 
 that is just what we all ought most to desire : to make 
 men embrace religion, which we may see to be full of 
 what is salutary for them. Yet how many of them 
 will not embrace it ! Now, to every one with whom 
 the impediment to its reception is not simply moral, 
 
288 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 — culpable levity, or else a secret leaning to vice, — 
 Butler professes to make out clearly in his Analogy 
 that they ought to embrace it, and to embrace it, 
 moreover, in the form of what is called orthodox 
 Christianity, with its theosophy and miracles. And 
 he professes to establish this by the analogy of reli- 
 gion, — first of natural religion, then of revealed reli- 
 gion, — to the constitution and laws of nature. 
 
 Elsewhere I have remarked what advantage Butler 
 had against the Deists of his own time, in the line of 
 argument which he chose. But how does his argu- 
 ment in itself stand the scrutiny of one who has no 
 counter-thesis, such as that of the Deists, to make 
 good against Butler 1 How does it affect one who has 
 no wish at all to doubt or cavil, like the loose wits of 
 fashionable society who angered Butler, still less any 
 wish to mock ; but who comes to the Analogy with an 
 honest desire to receive from it anything which he 
 finds he can use ? 
 
 Now, I do not remember to have anywhere seen 
 pointed out the precise break-down, which such an 
 inquirer must, it seems to me, be conscious of in 
 Butler's argument from analogy. The argument is of 
 this kind : — The reality of the laws of moral govern- 
 ment of this world, says Butler, implies, by analogy, 
 a like reality of laws of moral government in the 
 second world, where we shall be hereafter. — The 
 analogy is, in truth, used to prove not only the prob- 
 able continuance of the laws of moral government, but 
 also the probable existence of that future world in 
 which they will be manifested. It does only prove the 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLEK AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 289 
 
 probable continuance of the laws of moral government 
 in the future world, supposing that second world to 
 exist. But for that existence it supplies no prob- 
 ability whatever. For it is not the laws of moral 
 government which give us proof of this present world 
 in which they are manifested ; it is the experience 
 that this present world actually exists, and is a place 
 in which these laws are manifested. Show us, we 
 may say to Butler, that a like place presents itself 
 over again after we are dead, and we will allow that 
 by analogy the same moral laws will probably con- 
 tinue to govern it. But this is all which analogy can 
 prove in the matter. The positive existence of the 
 world to come must be proved, like the positive exist- 
 ence of the present world, by experience. And of this 
 experience Butler's argument furnishes, and can fur- 
 nish, not one tittle. 
 
 There may be other reasons for believing in a 
 second life beyond the grave. Christians in general 
 consider that they get such grounds from revelation. 
 And people who come to Butler with the belief al- 
 ready established, are not likely to ask themselves 
 very closely what Butler's analogical reasoning on its 
 behalf is good for. The reasoning is exercised in 
 support of a thesis which does not require to be made 
 out for them. But whoever comes to Butler in a state 
 of genuine uncertainty, and has to lean with his whole 
 weight on Butler's reasonings for support, will soon 
 discover their fundamental weakness. The weakness 
 goes through the Analogy from beginning to end, 
 For example : — 
 
 VOL. VII. u 
 
290 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND EELIGION. [il 
 
 1 ' The states of life in which we ourselves existed formerly, 
 in the womb and in our infancy, are almost as different from 
 our present in mature age as it is possible to conceive any two 
 states or degrees of life can be. Therefore, that we are to exist 
 hereafter in a state as different (suppose) from our present as 
 this is from the former, is but according to the analogy of nature. " 
 
 There it is in the first chapter ! But we have experi- 
 ence of the several different states succeeding one an- 
 other in man's present life; that is what makes us 
 believe in their succeeding one another here. We 
 have no experience of a further different state beyond 
 the limits of this life. If we had, we might freely 
 'admit that analogy renders it probable that that state 
 may be as unlike to our actual state, as our actual 
 state is to our state in the womb or in infancy. But 
 that there is the further different state must first, for 
 the argument from analogy to take effect, be proved 
 from experience. 
 Again : — 
 
 "Sleep, or, however, a swoon, shows us, says Butler, "that 
 our living powers exist when they are not exercised, and when 
 there is no present capacity for exercising them. Therefore, 
 there can no probability be collected from the reason of the 
 thing that death will be their destruction." 
 
 But "the reason of the thing," in this matter, is 
 simply experience; and we have experience of the 
 living powers existing on through a swoon, we have 
 none of their existing on through death. 
 
 Or, again, the form of the argument being altered, 
 but its vice being still of just the same character : — 
 "All presumption of death's being the destruction of 
 living beings must go upon supposition that they are 
 
ir.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 291 
 
 compounded and so discerptible." So says Butler, 
 and then off he goes upon a metaphysical argument 
 about consciousness being a single and indivisible 
 power. But a doubter, who is dealing quite simply 
 with himself, will stop Butler before ever his meta- 
 physical argument begins, and say : " Not at all ; the 
 presumption of death's being the destruction of living 
 beings does not go upon the supposition that they are 
 compounded and so discerptible ; it goes upon the un- 
 broken experience that the living powers then cease." 
 
 Once more. "We see by experience," says Butler, 
 " that men may lose their limbs, their organs of sense, 
 and even the greatest part of their bodies, and yet re- 
 main the same living agents." Yes, we do. But that 
 conscious life is possible with some of our bodily organs 
 gone, does not prove that it is possible without any. 
 We admit the first because it is shown to us by expe- 
 rience ; we have no experience of the second. 
 
 I say, a man who is looking seriously for firm 
 ground, cannot but soon come to perceive what 
 Butler's argument in the Analogy really amounts 
 to, and that there is no help to be got from it. 
 "There is no shadow of anything unreasonable," 
 begins Butler always, "in conceiving so-and-so, — 
 in the conception of natural religion, in the concep- 
 tion of revealed religion." The answer of any 
 earnest man must be in some words of Butler's 
 own : " Suppositions are not to be looked on as 
 true, because not incredible." "But," says Butler, 
 "it is a fact that this life exists, and there are 
 analogies in this life to the supposed system of 
 
292 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [il 
 
 natural and revealed religion. The existence of 
 that system, therefore, is a fact also." "Nay," is 
 the answer, " but we affirm the fact of this life, not 
 because 'there is no shadow of anything unreason- 
 able in conceiving it,' but because we experience it." 
 As to the fact, experience is the touchstone. 
 
 " There is nothing incredible," argues Butler again, 
 " that God, the moral and intelligent Author of all 
 things, will reward and punish men for their actions 
 hereafter, for the whole course of nature is a present 
 instance of his exercising that government over us 
 which implies in it rewarding and punishing." But 
 how far does our positive experience go in this 
 matter? What is fact of positive experience is, 
 that inward satisfaction (let us fully concede this 
 to Butler) follows one sort of actions, and inward 
 dissatisfaction another ; and, moreover, that also 
 outward rewards and punishments do very gene- 
 rally follow certain actions. In this sense we are 
 punished and rewarded; that is certain. And one 
 must add, surely, that our not being punished and 
 rewarded more completely and regularly might quite 
 well, one would think, have been what suggested to 
 mankind the notion of a second life, with a restitu- 
 tion of all things. But, be that as it may, we have 
 no experience, — I say what is the mere undoubted 
 fact, — we have no experience that it is a quasi-human 
 agent, whom Butler calls the Author of Nature, a 
 Being moral and intelligent, who thus rewards and 
 punishes us. 
 
 But Butler alleges, that we have, not indeed expe- 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 293 
 
 rience of this, but demonstration. For he says that 
 a uniform course of operation, this world as we see 
 it, nature, necessarily implies an operating agent. It 
 necessarily implies an intelligent designer with a will 
 and a character, a ruler all -wise and all-powerful. 
 And this quasi-human agent, this intelligent designer 
 with a will and a character, since he is all-wise and 
 all-powerful, and since he governs the world, and 
 evidently, by what we see of natural rewards and 
 punishments, exercises moral government over us 
 here, but admittedly not more than in some degree, 
 not yet the perfection of moral government, — this 
 Governor must be reserving the complete consum- 
 mation of his moral government for a second world 
 hereafter. And the strength of Butler's argument 
 against the Deists lay here : that they held, as he 
 did, that a quasi -human agent, an intelligent de- 
 signer with a will and a character, was demonstrably 
 the author and governor of nature. 
 
 But in this supposed demonstrably true starting- 
 point, common both to Butler and to the Deists, we 
 are in full metaphysics. We are in that world of 
 "mere abstraction or shadowy speculation," from 
 which Butler was said to have rescued us and placed 
 us on the firm basis of observation and experiment. 
 The proposition that this world, as we see it, neces- 
 sarily implies an intelligent designer with a will and 
 a character, a quasi-human agent and governor, can- 
 not, I think, but be felt, by any one who is brought 
 fairly face to face with it and has to rest everything 
 upon it, not to be self -demonstrating, nay, to be 
 
294 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n, 
 
 utterly impalpable. Evidently it is not of the same 
 experimental character as the proposition that we are 
 rewarded and punished according to our actions ; or 
 that, as St. Augustine says : Sibi poena est omnis inordi- 
 natus animus. The proposition of St. Augustine pro- 
 duces, when it is urged, a sense of satisfying convic- 
 tion, and we can go on to build upon it. But will 
 any one say that the proposition, that the course of 
 nature implies an operating agent with a will and a 
 character, produces or can produce a like sense of 
 satisfying conviction, and can in like manner be 
 built upon ? It cannot. It does not appeal, like the 
 other, to what is solid. It appeals, really, to the 
 deep anthropomorphic tendency in man; and this 
 tendency, when we examine the thing coolly, we feel 
 that we cannot trust. 
 
 However, the proposition is thought to have scien- 
 tific support in arguments drawn from being, essence. 
 But even thus supported it never, I think, can pro- 
 duce in any one a sense of satisfying conviction ; it 
 produces, at most, a sense of puzzled submission. 
 To build religion, or anything else which is to stand 
 firm, upon such a sense as this, is vain. Religion 
 must be built on ideas about which there is no puzzle. 
 Therefore, in order to get rid of this foundation of 
 puzzle for religion, and with a view to substituting 
 a surer foundation, I have elsewhere tried to show 
 in what confusion the metaphysical arguments drawn 
 from being, essence, for an intelligent author of nature 
 with a will and a character, have their rise. The 
 assertion of such an author is then left with our 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 295 
 
 anthropomorphic instinct as its sole warrant, and is 
 seen not to be a safe foundation whereon to build all 
 our certainties in religion. It is not axiomatic, it is 
 not experimental. It deals with what is, in my 
 judgment, altogether beyond our experience; it is 
 purely abstract and speculative. A plain man, when 
 he is asked how he can affirm that a house is made 
 by an intelligent designer with a will and a character, 
 and yet doubt whether a tree is made by an intelli- 
 gent designer with a will and a character, must 
 surely answer that he affirms a house to have been 
 made by such a designer because he has experience 
 of the fact, but that of the fact of a tree being made 
 by such a designer he has none. And if pressed, how 
 then can the tree possibly be there 1 ? surely the 
 answer: "Perhaps from the tendency to grow!" is 
 not so very unreasonable. 
 
 Butler admits that the assertion of his all-fore- 
 seeing, all-powerful designer, with a will and a char- 
 acter, involves grave difficulties. "Why anything 
 of hazard and danger should be put upon such frail 
 creatures as we are, may well be thought a difficulty 
 in speculation." But he appeals, and no man ever 
 appealed more impressively than he, to the sense 
 we must have of our ignorance. Difficulties of this 
 kind, he says, " are so apparently and wholly founded 
 in our ignorance, that it is wonderful they should be 
 insisted upon by any but such as are weak enough to 
 think they are acquainted with the whole system of 
 things." And he speaks of "that infinitely absurd 
 supposition that we know the whole of the case." 
 
296 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 But does not the common account of God by theo- 
 logians, does not Butler's own assertion of the all- 
 foreseeing, quasi-human designer, with a will and a 
 character, go upon the supposition that we know, at 
 any rate, a very great deal, and more than we actually 
 do know, of the case 1 ? And are not the difficulties 
 alleged created by that supposition 1 And is not the 
 appeal to our ignorance in fact an apj)eal to us, 
 having taken a great deal for granted, to take 
 something more for granted : — namely, that what 
 we at first took for granted has a satisfactory 
 solution somewhere beyond the reach of our know- 
 ledge 1 
 
 Then, however, the argument from analogy is 
 again used to solve our difficulties. It is hard to 
 understand how an almighty moral Creator and 
 Governor, designing the world as a place of moral 
 discipline for man, should have so contrived things 
 that the moral discipline altogether fails, in a vast 
 number of cases, to take effect. Butler, however, 
 urges, that the world may have been intended by its 
 infinite almighty Author and Governor for moral dis- 
 cipline, although, even, "the generality of men do 
 not improve or grow better in it ; " because we see 
 that "of the seeds of vegetables, and bodies of 
 animals, far the greatest part decay before they are 
 improved to maturity, and appear to be utterly 
 destroyed." But surely the natural answer is, that 
 there is no difficulty about millions of seeds missing 
 their perfection, because we do not suppose nature 
 an Infinite Almighty and Moral Being ; but that the 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 297 
 
 difficulty in the other case is because we do suppose 
 God such a Being. 
 
 However, against the Deists who started with 
 assuming a quasi -human agent, a Being of infinite 
 wisdom and power with a will and a character, as a 
 necessary conception, Butler's argument is very effec- 
 tive. And he says expressly that in his Analogy the 
 validity of this conception " is a principle gone upon 
 as proved, and generally known and confessed to be 
 proved." But, however, Butler in his Analogy affirms 
 also (and the thing is important to be noted) " the 
 direct and fundamental proof of Christianity " to be, 
 just what the mass of its adherents have always sup- 
 posed it to be : — miracles and the fulfilment of pro- 
 phecy. And from a man like Butler this dictum 
 will certainly require attention, even on the part of 
 an inquirer who feels that Butler's metaphysics, and 
 his argument from analogy, are unavailing. 
 
 But any clear-sighted inquirer will soon perceive 
 that Butler's ability for handling these important 
 matters of miracles and prophecy is not in proportion 
 to his great powers of mind, and to his vigorous and 
 effective use of those powers on other topics. Butler 
 could not well, indeed, have then handled miracles 
 and prophecy satisfactorily ; the time was not ripe 
 for it. Men's knowledge increases, their point of 
 view changes, they come to see things differently. 
 That is the reason, without any pretence of intellec- 
 tual superiority, why men are now able to view 
 miracles and prophecy more justly than Butler did. 
 The insufficiency of his treatment of them is, indeed, 
 
298 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 manifest. Can anything be more express or deter- 
 minate, he asks, than the fulfilment of prophecy men- 
 tioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews, — the fulfilment 
 of the words, " Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest 
 not, but a body hast thou prepared me," by the offer- 
 ing for man's sins of the body of Jesus Christ upon 
 the cross 1 A man like Butler could not nowadays 
 use an argument like that. He could not be unaware 
 that the writer of the Epistle is using the false 
 rendering of the Greek Bible, a body hast thou prepared 
 me, instead of the true rendering of the original, mine 
 ears hast thou opened, and gets his fulfilment of pro- 
 phecy out of that false rendering; — a fulfilment, 
 therefore, which is none at all. 
 
 Neither could Butler now speak of the Bible- 
 history being all of it equally " authentic genuine 
 history," or argue in behalf of this thesis as he does. 
 It must evidently all stand or fall together, he argues; 
 now, " there are characters in the Bible with all the 
 internal marks imaginable of their being real." Most 
 true, is the answer ; there is plenty of fact in the 
 Bible, there is also plenty of legend. John the 
 Baptist and Simon Peter have all the internal marks 
 imaginable of their being real characters ; granted. 
 But one Gospel makes Jesus disappear into Egypt 
 directly after his birth, another makes him stay 
 quietly on in Palestine. That John the Baptist and 
 Simon Peter are real characters does not make this 
 consistent history. As well say that because Mirabeau 
 and Danton are real characters, an addition to Louis 
 the Sixteenth's history which made him to be spirited 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 299 
 
 away from Varennes into Germany, and then to come 
 back after some time and resume his career in France, 
 would not jar. No. " Things are what they are, 
 and the consequences of them will be what they will 
 be." And the accounts in the Gospels of the Holy 
 Child's incarnation and infancy, and very many things 
 in the Bible besides, are legends. 
 
 Again. " The belief of miracles by the Apostles 
 and their contemporaries must be a proof of those 
 facts, for they were such as came under the observa- 
 tion of their senses." The simple answer is : " But 
 we know what the observation of men's senses, 
 under certain circumstances, is worth." Yet further : 
 " Though it is not of equal weight, yet it is of weight, 
 that the martyrs of the next age, notwithstanding 
 they were not eye-witnesses of those facts, as were 
 the Apostles and their contemporaries, had however 
 full opportunity to inform themselves whether they 
 were true or not, and gave equal proof of their be- 
 lieving them to be true." The simple answer again 
 is : "The martyrs never dreamed of informing them- 
 selves about the miracles in the manner supposed ; 
 for they never dreamed of doubting them, and could 
 not have dreamed of it." If Butler cannot prove 
 religion and Christianity by his reasonings from 
 metaphysics and from analogy, most certainly he 
 will not prove them by these reasonings on Bible- 
 history. 
 
 But the wonderful thing about the Analogy is the 
 poor insignificant result, even in Butler's own judg- 
 ment, — the puny total outcome, — of all this accumu- 
 
300 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 lated evidence from analogy, metaphysics, and Bible- 
 history. It is, after all, only " evidence which keeps 
 the mind in doubt, perhaps in perplexity." The 
 utmost it is calculated to beget is, "a serious doubt- 
 ing apprehension that it may be true." However, " in 
 the daily course of life," says Butler, " our nature 
 and condition necessarily require us to act upon 
 evidence much lower than what is commonly called 
 probable." In a matter, then, of such immense prac- 
 tical importance as religion, where the bad conse- 
 quences of a mistake may be so incalculable, we 
 ought, he says, unhesitatingly to act upon imperfect 
 evidence. "It ought, in all reason, considering its 
 infinite importance, to have nearly the same influence 
 upon practice, as if it were thoroughly believed ! ,: 
 And such is, really, the upshot of the Analogy. Such 
 is, when all is done, the "happy alliance" achieved 
 by it "between faith and philosophy." 
 
 But we do not, in the daily course of life, act upon 
 evidence which we ourselves conceive to be much lower 
 than what is commonly called probable. If I am 
 going to take a walk out of Edinburgh, and thought 
 of choosing the Portobello road, and a travelling 
 menagerie is taking the same road, it is certainly 
 possible that a tiger may escape from the menagerie 
 and devour me if I take that road ; but the evidence 
 that he will is certainly, also, much lower than what 
 is commonly called probable. Well, I do not, on that 
 low degree of evidence, avoid the Portobello road 
 and take another. But the duty of acting on such a 
 sort of evidence is really made by Butler the motive 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 301 
 
 for a man's following the road of religion, — the way 
 of peace. 
 
 How unlike, above all, is this motive to the motive 
 always supposed in the book itself of our religion, 
 in the Bible ! After reading the Analogy one goes 
 instinctively to bathe one's spirit in the Bible 
 again, to be refreshed by its boundless certitude and 
 exhilaration. " The Eternal is the strength of my 
 life!" "The foundation of God standeth sure!" — 
 that is the constant tone of religion in the Bible. 
 " If I tell you the truth, why do ye not believe me ? — 
 the evident truth, that whoever comes to me has life ; 
 and evident, because whoever does come, gets it ! " 
 That is the evidence to constrain our practice which 
 is offered by Christianity. 
 
 3. 
 
 Let us, then, confess it to ourselves plainly. The 
 Analogy, the great work on which such immense 
 praise has been lavished, is, for all real intents and 
 purposes now, a failure ; it does not serve. It seemed 
 once to have a spell and a power ; but the ZeU-Geist 
 breathes upon it, and we rub our eyes, and it has the 
 spell and the power no longer. It has the effect 
 upon me, as I contemplate it, of a stately and severe 
 fortress, with thick and high walls, built of old to 
 control the kingdom of evil ; — but the gates are open, 
 and the guards gone. 
 
 For to control the kingdom of evil the work was, 
 no doubt, designed. Whatever may be the proper 
 
302 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 tendencies of Deism as a speculative opinion, there 
 can be no doubt, I think, that the loose Deism of 
 fashionable circles, as seen by Butler, had a tendency 
 to minimise religion and morality, to reduce and im- 
 pair their authority. Butler's Deists were, in fact, 
 for the most part free-living people who said, We are 
 Deists, as the least they could say ; as another mode 
 of saying : " We think little of religion in general, 
 and of Christianity in particular." Butler, who felt 
 to the bottom of his soul the obligation of religion 
 in general, and of Christianity in particular, set him- 
 self to establish the obligation of them against these 
 lax people, who in fact denied it. And the religion 
 and the Christianity, of which Butler set himself 
 to establish the obligation, were religion and Chris- 
 tianity in the form then received and current. And 
 in this form he could establish their obligation as 
 against his Deistical opponents. But he could not 
 establish them so as quite to suit his own mind and 
 soul, so as to satisfy himself fully. 
 
 Hence his labour and sorrow, his air of weariness, 
 depression, and gloom ; — the air of a man who cannot 
 get beyond " evidence which keeps the mind in 
 doubt, perhaps in perplexity." Butler "most readily 
 acknowledges that the foregoing treatise" (his Analogy) 
 "is by no means satisfactory ; very far indeed from 
 it." He quotes the Preacher's account of what he 
 himself had found in life, as the true account of what 
 man may expect here below : — " Great ignorance of 
 the works of God and the method of his providence 
 in the government of the world ; great labour and 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 303 
 
 weariness in the search and observation he employs 
 himself about ; and great disappointment, pain, and 
 even vexation of mind upon that which he remarks 
 of the appearances of things and of what is going 
 forward upon this earth." " The result of the 
 Preacher's whole review and inspection is," says 
 Butler, " sorrow, perplexity, a sense of his necessary 
 ignorance." That is certainly a true description of 
 the impression the Preacher leaves on us of his own 
 frame of mind; and it is not a bad description of 
 Butler's frame of mind also. But so far is it from 
 being a true description of the right tone and temper 
 of man according to the Bible-conception of it, that 
 the Book of Ecclesiastes, which seems to recommend 
 that temper, was nearly excluded from the Canon on 
 this very account, and was only saved by its animat- 
 ing return, in its last verses, to the genuine tradition 
 of Israel : " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
 matter : fear God and keep his commandments, for 
 that is the whole duty of man." 
 
 But yet, in spite of his gloom, in spite of the 
 failure of his Analogy to serve our needs, Butler re- 
 mains a personage of real grandeur for us. This 
 pathetic figure, with its earnestness, its strenuous 
 rectitude, its firm faith both in religion and in reason, 
 does in some measure help us, does point the way 
 for us. Butler's profound sense, that inattention to 
 religion implies " a dissolute immoral temper of 
 mind," engraves itself upon his readers' thoughts 
 also, and comes to govern them. His conviction, 
 that religion and Christianity do somehow " in them- 
 
304 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 selves entirely fall in with our natural sense of 
 things," that they are true, and that their truth, 
 moreover, is somehow to be established and justified 
 on plain grounds of reason, — this wholesome and in- 
 valuable conviction, also, gains us as we read him. 
 The ordinary religionists of Butler's day might well 
 be startled, as they were, by this bishop with the 
 strange, novel, and unhallowed notion, full of danger- 
 ous consequence, of " referring mankind to a law of 
 nature or virtue, written on their hearts." The 
 pamphleteer, who accused Butler of dying a Papist, 
 declares plainly that he for his part " has no better 
 opinion of the r certainty, clearness, uniformity, uni- 
 versality, etc., of this law, than he has of the import- 
 ance of external religion." But Butler did believe in 
 the certainty of this law. It was the real foundation 
 of things for him. With awful reverence, he saluted, 
 and he set himself to study and to follow, this "course 
 of life marked out for man by nature, whatever that 
 nature be." And he was for perfect fairness of mind 
 in considering the evidence for this law, or for any- 
 thing else. " It is fit things be stated and considered 
 as they really are." " Things are what they are, and 
 the consequences of them will be what they will be ; 
 why, then, should we desire to be deceived ? " And 
 he believed in reason. "I express myself with 
 caution, lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason, 
 which is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith 
 to judge concerning anything, even religion itself." 
 Such was Butler's fidelity to that sacred light to 
 which religion makes too many people false, — reason. 
 
II.] BISHOP BUTLEE AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 305 
 
 It always seems to me, that with Butler's deep 
 sense that " the government of the world is carried 
 on by general laws;" with his deep sense, too, of 
 our ignorance, — nay, that "it is indeed, in general, 
 no more than effects that the most knowing are 
 acquainted with, for as to causes, they are as entirely 
 in the dark as the most ignorant," — he would have 
 found no insuperable difficulty in bringing himself to 
 regard the power of "the law of virtue we are born 
 under," as an idea equivalent to the religious idea of 
 the power of God, without determining, or thinking 
 that he had the means to determine, whether this 
 power was a quasi -human agent or not. But a 
 second world under a righteous judge, who should 
 redress the imperfect balance of things as they are 
 in this world, seemed to Butler indispensable. Yet 
 no one has spoken more truly and nobly than he, of 
 the natural victoriousness of virtue, even in this 
 world. He finds a tendency of virtue to prevail, 
 which he can only describe as " somewhat moral in 
 the essential constitution of things;" as "a declara- 
 tion from the Author of Nature, determinate and 
 not to be evaded, in favour of virtue and against 
 vice." True, virtue is often overborne. But this is 
 plainly a perversion. "Our finding virtue to be 
 hindered from procuring to itself its due superiority 
 and advantages, is no objection against its having, in 
 the essential nature of the thing, a tendency to pro- 
 cure them." And he can see, he says, "in the nature 
 of things, a tendency in virtue and vice to produce 
 the good and bad effects now mentioned, in a greater 
 
 VOL. VII. X 
 
306 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [n. 
 
 degree than they do in fact produce them." Length 
 of time, however, is required for working this fully 
 out; whereas "men are impatient and for precipi- 
 tating things." "There must be sufficient length of 
 time ; the complete success of virtue, as of reason, 
 cannot, from the nature of the thing, be otherwise 
 than gradual." " Still, the constitution of our nature 
 is as it is ; our happiness and misery are trusted to 
 our conduct, and made to depend upon it." And 
 our comfort of hope is, that "though the higher 
 degree of distributive justice, which nature points 
 out and leads towards, is prevented for a time from 
 taking place, it is by obstacles which the state of this 
 world unhappily throws in its way, and which are in 
 their nature temporary." And Butler supposes and 
 describes an ideal society upon earth, where "this 
 happy tendency of virtue," as he calls it, should at 
 last come to prevail, in a way which brings straight 
 to our thoughts and to our lips the Bible-expression : 
 the kingdom of God. However, Butler decides that 
 good men cannot now unite sufficiently to bring 
 this better society about; that it cannot, therefore, 
 be brought about in the present known course of 
 nature, and that it must be meant to come to pass 
 in another world beyond the grave. 
 
 Now, the very expression which I have just used, 
 the kingdom of God, does certainly, however little it 
 may at present be usual with religious people to 
 think so, it does certainly suggest a different conclu- 
 sion from Butler's. It does point to a transformation 
 of this present world through the victory of what 
 
II.] BISHOr BUTLER AND THE ZEIT-GEIST. 307 
 
 Butler calls virtue, and what the Bible calls righteous- 
 ness, and what in general religious people call good- 
 ness ; it does suggest such transformation as possible. 
 This transformation is the great original idea of the 
 Christian Gospel ; nay, it is properly the Gospel or 
 good news itself. "The kingdom of God is at hand," 
 said Jesus Christ, when he first came preaching ; 
 " repent, and believe the good news." Jesus " talked" 
 to the people " about the kingdom of God." He told 
 the young man, whom he called to follow him, to "go 
 and spread the news of the kingdom of God." In the 
 Acts, we find the disciples " preaching the kingdom 
 of God," " testifying concerning the kingdom of God," 
 still in their Master's manner and words. And it is 
 undeniable that whoever thinks that virtue and good- 
 ness will finally come to prevail in this present world 
 so as to transform it, who believes that they are even 
 now surely though slowly prevailing, and himself does 
 all he can to help the work forward, — as he acquires 
 in this way an experimental sense of the truth of 
 Christianity which is of the strongest possible kind, 
 so he is, also, entirely in the tradition and ideas of 
 the Founder of Christianity. In like manner, who- 
 ever places immortal life in coming to live, even here 
 in this present world, with that higher and im- 
 personal life on which, in speaking of self-love, we 
 insisted, — and in thus no longer living to himself 
 but living, as St. Paul says, to God, — does entirely 
 conform himself to the doctrine and example of the 
 Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, who " annulled 
 death, and brought life and immortality to light 
 
308 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [ii. 
 
 through the Gospel." And could Butler, whose 
 work has many precious and instructive pointings 
 this way, have boldly entered the way and steadily 
 pursued it, his work would not, I think, have borne 
 the embarrassed, inconclusive, and even mournful 
 character, which is apparent in it now. 
 
 Let us not, however, overrate the mournfulness of 
 this great man, or underrate his consolations. The 
 power of religion which actuated him was, as is the 
 case with so many of us, better, profounder, and 
 happier, than the scheme of religion which he could 
 draw out in his books. Nowhere does this power 
 show itself more touchingly than in a fragment or 
 two, — memoranda for his own use, — which are among 
 the last things that his pen wrote before death brushed 
 it from his hand for ever. " Hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness," he writes, " till filled with it by being 
 made partaker of the divine nature !" And again 
 he writes, using and underscoring words of the Latin 
 Vulgate which are more earnest and expressive than 
 the words of our English version in that place : 
 "Sicut oculi servorum intenti sunt ad manum domin- 
 orum suorum, sicut oculi ancillce ad manum domince 
 sum, ita oculi nostri ad Deum nostrum, donee misereatur 
 nostri ; — As the eyes of servants are bent towards the 
 hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maiden 
 towards the hand of her mistress, even so are our 
 eyes towards our God, until he have mercy upon us." 
 Let us leave Butler, after all our long scrutiny of 
 him, with these for his last words ! 
 
III. 
 
 THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 1 
 
 I HAVE heard it confidently asserted, that the Church 
 of England is an institution so thoroughly artificial, 
 and of which the justification, if any justification 
 for it can be found, must be sought in reasons so 
 extremely far-fetched, that only highly trained and 
 educated people can be made to see that it has a 
 possible defence at all, and that to undertake its 
 defence before a plain audience of working men 
 would be hopeless. It would be very interesting 
 to try the experiment ; and I had long had a half- 
 formed design of endeavouring to show to an audience 
 of working men the case, as I for my part conceived 
 it, on behalf of the Church of England. But mean- 
 while there comes to me my friend, your President, 
 and reminds me of an old request of his that I should 
 some day speak in this hall, and presses me to comply 
 with it this very season. And if I am to speak at Sion 
 College, and to the London clergy, and at this junc- 
 
 1 The following discourse was delivered as an address to the 
 London clergy at Sion College. 
 
310 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 ture, how can I help remembering my old design of 
 speaking about the Church of England ; — remember- 
 ing it, and being tempted, though before a very 
 different audience, to take that subject 1 
 
 Jeremy Taylor says : " Every minister ought to 
 concern himself in the faults of them that are pre- 
 sent, but not of the absent." "Every minister," he 
 says again, " ought to preach to his hearers and urge 
 their duty; St. John the Baptist told the soldiers 
 what the soldiers should do, but troubled not their 
 heads with what was the duty of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees." And certainly one should not defend 
 the Church of England to an audience of clergy and 
 to an audience of artisans in quite the same way. 
 But perhaps one ought not to care to put at all 
 before the clergy the case for the Church of England, 
 but rather one should bring before them the case 
 against it. For the case of the Church of England 
 is supposed to be their own case, and they are the 
 parties interested ; and to commend their own case 
 to the parties interested is useless, but what may do 
 them most good is rather to show them its defects. 
 And in this view, the profitable thing for the London 
 clergy at Sion College to hear, would be, perhaps, a 
 lecture on disestablishment, an exhortation to " happy 
 despatch." 
 
 Yet this is not so, for the simple reason that the 
 Church of England is not a private sect but a national 
 institution. There can be no greater mistake than to 
 regard the cause of the Church of England as the 
 cause of the clergy, and the clergy as the parties con- 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 311 
 
 cerned for the maintenance of the Church of England. 
 The clergy are a very small minority of the nation. 
 As the Church of England -will not be abolished to 
 gratify the jealousy of this and that private sect, also 
 a small minority of the nation, so neither will it be 
 maintained to gratify the interest of the clergy. 
 Public institutions must have public reasons for 
 existing; and if at any time there arise circum- 
 stances and dangers which induce a return to those 
 reasons, so as to set them in a clear light to oneself 
 again and to make sure of them, the clergy may with 
 just as much propriety do this, or assist at its being 
 done, — nay, they are as much bound to do it, — as any 
 other members of the community. 
 
 But some one will perhaps be disposed to say, that 
 though there is no impropriety in your hearing the 
 Church of England defended, yet there is an impro- 
 priety in my defending it to you. A man who has 
 published a good deal which is at variance with the 
 body of theological doctrine commonly received in 
 the Church of England and commonly preached by 
 its ministers, cannot well, it may be thought, stand 
 up before the clergy as a friend to their cause and to 
 that of the Church. Professed ardent enemies of the 
 Church have assured me that I am really, in their 
 opinion, one of the worst enemies that the Church 
 has, — a much worse enemy than themselves. Per- 
 haps that opinion is shared by some of those who 
 now hear me. I make bold to say that it is totally 
 erroneous. It is founded in an entire misconception 
 of the character and scope of what I have written 
 
312 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 concerning religion. I regard the Church of England 
 as, in fact, a great national society for the promotion 
 of what is commonly called goodness, and for promot- 
 ing it through the most effectual means possible, the 
 only means which are really and truly effectual for 
 the object : through the means of the Christian reli- 
 gion and of the Bible. This plain practical object is 
 undeniably the object of the Church of England and 
 of the clergy. " Our province," says Butler, whose 
 sayings come the more readily to my mind because I 
 have been very busy with him lately, " our province 
 is virtue and religion, life and manners, the science of 
 improving the temper and making the heart better. 
 This is the field assigned us to cultivate ; how much 
 it has lain neglected is indeed astonishing. He who 
 should find out one rule to assist us in this work 
 would deserve infinitely better of mankind than all the 
 improvers of other knowledge put together." This 
 is indeed true religion, true Christianity. 111% sunt 
 veri fideles Tui, says the " Imitation," qui totam vitam 
 suam ad emendationem disponunt. Undoubtedly this is 
 so ; and the more we come to see and feel it to be so, 
 the more shall we get a happy sense of clearness and 
 certainty in religion. 
 
 Now, to put a new construction upon many things 
 that are said in the Bible, to point out errors in the 
 Bible, errors in the dealings of theologians with it, is 
 exactly the sort of " other knowledge " which Butler 
 disparages by comparison with a knowledge more 
 important. Perhaps he goes too far when he dis- 
 parages it so absolutely as in another place he does, 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 313 
 
 where he makes Moses conclude, and appears to agree 
 with Moses in concluding, that "tlie only knowledge, 
 which is of any avail to us, is that which teaches us 
 our duty, or assists us in the discharge of it." "If," 
 says he, " the discoveries of men of deep research and 
 curious inquiry serve the cause of virtue and religion, 
 in the way of proof, motive to practice, or assistance 
 in it \ or if they tend to render life less unhappy and 
 promote its satisfactions, then they are most usefully 
 employed ; but bringing things to light, alone and of 
 itself, is of no manner of use any otherwise than as 
 entertainment and diversion." "Bringing things to 
 light " is not properly to be spoken of, I think, quite 
 in this fashion. Still, with the low comparative rank 
 which Butler assigns to it we will not quarrel. And 
 when Butler urges that " knowledge is not our proper 
 happiness," and that "men of research and curious 
 inquiry should just be put in mind not to mistake 
 what they are doing," we may all of us readily admit 
 that his admonitions are wise and salutary. 
 
 And therefore the object of the Church, which is 
 in large the promotion of goodness, and the business 
 of the clergy, which is to teach men their duty and to 
 assist them in the discharge of it, do really and truly 
 interest me more, and do appear in my eyes as things 
 more valuable and important, than the object and 
 business pursued in those writings of mine which are 
 in question, — writings which seek to put a new con- 
 struction on much in the Bible, to alter the current 
 criticism of it, to invalidate the conclusions of theo- 
 logians from it. If the two are to conflict, I had 
 
314 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 rather that it should be the object and business of 
 those writings which should have to give way. Most 
 certainly the establishment of an improved biblical 
 criticism, or the demolition of the systems of theo- 
 logians, will never in itself avail to teach men their 
 • duty or to assist them in the discharge of it. Per- 
 haps, even, no one can very much give himself to 
 such objects without running some risk of over- 
 valuing their importance and of being diverted by 
 
 
 
 them from practice. 
 
 But there are times when practice itself, when the 
 very object of the Church and of the clergy, — the 
 promotion of goodness through the instrumentality 
 of the Christian religion and of the Bible, — is en- 
 dangered, with many persons, from the predominance 
 of the systems of theologians, and from the want of a 
 new and better construction than theirs to put upon 
 the Bible. And ours is a time of this kind ; such, at 
 least, is my conviction. Nor are persons free to say 
 that we had better all of us stick to practice, and 
 resolve not to trouble ourselves with speculative ques- 
 tions of biblical and theological criticism. No ; such 
 questions catch men in a season and manner which 
 does not depend on their own will, and often their 
 whole spirit is bewildered by them and their former 
 hold on practice seems threatened. Well then, at 
 this point and for those persons, the criticism which 
 I have attempted is designed to come in ; when, for 
 want of some such new criticism, their practical hold 
 on the Bible and on the Christian religion seems to 
 be threatened. The criticism is not presented as 
 
in.] THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 315 
 
 something universally salutary and indispensable, far 
 less as any substitute for a practical hold upon Chris- 
 tianity and the Bible, or of at all comparable value 
 with it. The user may even, if he likes, having in 
 view the risks which beset practice from the mis- 
 employment of such criticism, say while he uses it 
 that he is but making himself friends through the 
 mammon of unrighteousness. <■ ~— *- *-**• 
 
 It is evident that the author of such criticism, 
 holding this to be its relation to the object of the 
 Church of England and to the business of the clergy, 
 and holding it so cheap by comparison with that 
 object and that business, is by no means constituted, 
 through the fact of his having published it, an enemy 
 of the Church and clergy, or precluded from feeling 
 and expressing a hearty desire for their preservation. 
 
 II. 
 
 » 
 I have called the Church of England, — to give the 
 
 plainest and most direct idea I could of its real reason 
 
 for existing, — a great national society for the promotion 
 
 of goodness. Nothing interests people, after all, so 
 
 much as goodness ; 1 and it is in human nature that 
 
 what interests men very much they should not leave 
 
 to private and chance handling, but should give to it 
 
 a public institution, There may be very important 
 
 things to which public institution is not given ; but 
 
 1 • • We have no clear conception of any positive moral attri- 
 bute in the Supreme Being, but what may be resolved up into 
 goodness." — Butler, in Sermon Upon the Love of Our Kcighboicr. 
 
316 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 it will generally turn out, we shall find, that they 
 are things of which the whole community does not 
 strongly feel the importance. Art and literature are 
 very important things, and art and literature, it is 
 often urged, are not matters of public institution in 
 England ; why, then, should religion be 1 The answer 
 is, that so far as art and literature are not matters 
 of public institution like religion, this is because the 
 whole community has not felt them to be of vital 
 interest and importance to it, as it feels religion to 
 be. In only one famous community, perhaps, has the 
 people at large felt art and literature to be necessaries 
 of life, as with us the people at large has felt religion 
 to be. That community was ancient Athens. And 
 in ancient Athens art and literature were matters of 
 public and national institution, like religion. In the 
 Christian nations of modern Europe we find religion, 
 alone of spiritual concerns, to have had a regular 
 public organisation given to it, because alone of 
 spiritual concerns religion was felt by every one to 
 interest the nation profoundly, just like social order 
 and security. 
 
 It is true, we see a great community across the 
 Atlantic, the United States of America, where it 
 cannot be said that religion does not interest people, 
 and where, notwithstanding, there is no public insti- 
 tution and organisation of religion. But that is 
 because the United States were colonised by people 
 who, from special circumstances, had in this country 
 been led to adopt the theory and the habit, then 
 novel, of separatism; and who carried the already 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 317 
 
 formed theory and habit into America, and there 
 gave effect to it. The same is to be said of some 
 of our chief colonial dependencies. Their communi- 
 ties are made up, in a remarkably large proportion, 
 out of that sort and class of English people in whom 
 the theory and habit of separatism exist formed, 
 owing to certain old religious conflicts in this country, 
 already. The theory and the habit of separatism soon 
 make a common form of religion seem a thing both 
 impossible and undesirable \ and without a common 
 form of religion there cannot well be a public institu- 
 tion of it. Still, all this does not make the public 
 institution of a thing so important as religion to be 
 any the less the evident natural instinct of mankind, 
 their plain first impulse in the matter ; neither does 
 it make that first impulse to be any the less in itself 
 a just one. 
 
 For a just one it is in itself, surely. All that is 
 said to make it out to be so, said by Butler for 
 instance, — whom I have already quoted, and whose 
 practical view of things is almost always so sound and 
 weighty, — seems to me of an evidence and solidity 
 quite indisputable. The public institution of religion, 
 he again and again insists, is " a standing publication 
 of the Gospel," "a serious call upon men to attend 
 to it," and therefore of an "effect very important 
 and valuable." A visible Church, with a publicly 
 instituted form of religion is, he says, "like a city 
 upon a hill, — a standing memorial to the world of 
 the duty which we owe our Maker ; to call men con- 
 tinually, both by example and instruction, to attend 
 
318 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 to it, and, by the form of religion ever before their 
 eyes, to remind them of the reality ; to be the reposi- 
 tory of the oracles of God ; to hold up the light of 
 revelation in aid to that of nature, and to propagate 
 it throughout all generations to the end of the world." 
 " That which men have accounted religion," he says 
 again, in his charge to the clergy of Durham, " has 
 had, generally speaking, a great and conspicuous part 
 in all public appearances, and the face of it has been 
 kept up with great reverence throughout all ranks 
 from the highest to the lowest ; and without some- 
 what of this nature, piety will grow languid even 
 among the better sort of men, and the worst will go 
 on quietly in an abandoned course, with fewer inter- 
 ruptions from within than they would have, were 
 religious reflections forced oftener upon their minds, 
 and, consequently, with less probability of their 
 amendment." Here, I say, is surely abundant reason 
 suggested, if the thing were not already clear enough 
 of itself, why a society for the promotion of goodness, 
 such as the Church of England in its fundamental 
 design is, should at the same time be a national 
 society, a society with a public character and a 
 publicly instituted form of proceeding. 
 
 And yet with what enemies and dangers is this 
 reasonable and natural arrangement now encompassed 
 here ! I open the Fortnightly Review for the beginning 
 of the present year, 1 in order to read the political 
 summary, sure to be written with ability and vigour, 
 and to find there what lines of agitation are in pro- 
 
 1 1876. 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 319 
 
 spect for us. Well, I am told in the political sum- 
 mary that the disestablishment of the Church of 
 England is "a question which the very Spirit of 
 Time has borne on into the first place." The Spirit 
 of Time is a personage for whose operations I have 
 myself the greatest respect ; whatever he does, is, in 
 my opinion, of the gravest effect. And he has borne, 
 we are told, the question of the disestablishment of 
 the Church of England into the very first rank of 
 questions in agitation. " The agitation," continues 
 the summarist, " is the least factitious of any political 
 movement that has taken place in our time. It is 
 the one subject on which you are most certain of 
 having a crowded meeting in any large town in Eng- 
 land. It is the one bond of union between the most 
 important groups of Liberals. Even the Tapers and 
 Tadpoles of politics must admit that this party is 
 rapidly becoming really formidable." 
 
 Then our writer proceeds to enumerate the forces 
 of his party. It comprises practically, he says, the 
 whole body of the Protestant Nonconformists; this 
 is, indeed, a thing of course. But the Wesleyans, 
 too, he adds, are almost certainly about to join it ; 
 while of the Catholics it is calculated that two-thirds 
 would vote for " the policy of taking away artificial 
 advantages from a rival hierarchy." 
 
 "From within tlio Church itself," he goes on, "there are 
 gradually coming allies of each of the three colours : Sacra- 
 mentalists, weary of the Erastian bonds of Parliament and the 
 Privy Council ; Evangelicals, exasperated by State connivance 
 with a Romanising reaction ; Broad Churchmen, who are begin- 
 ning to see, first, that a laity in a Free Church would hold the 
 
320 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND RELIGION. [ill. 
 
 keys of the treasury, and would therefore be better able than 
 they are now to secure liberality of doctrine in their clergy ; 
 and, secondly, are beginning to see that the straining to make 
 the old bottles of rite and formulary hold the wine of new 
 thought withers up intellectual manliness, straightforwardness, 
 and vigorous health of conscience, both in those who prac- 
 tise these economies and in those whom their moderation 
 fascinates." 
 
 The thing could not well be more forcibly stated, 
 and the prospect for the Established Church does 
 indeed, as thus presented, seem black enough. But 
 we have still to hear of the disposition of the great 
 body of the flock, of the working multitudes. "As 
 for the working classes," the writer says, "the reli- 
 gious portion would follow the policy of the sect to 
 which the individual happened to belong ; while that 
 portion which is not attached either to church or 
 chapel, apart from personal or local considerations of 
 accidental force, would certainly go for disestablish- 
 ment. Not a single leader of the industrial class, 
 with any pretence to a representative character, but 
 is already strongly and distinctly pledged." And the 
 conclusion is, that " the cause of disestablishment, so 
 far from being the forlorn crusade of a handful of 
 fanatics, is in fact a cause to which a greater number 
 of Radicals of all kinds may be expected to rally than 
 to any other cause whatever." And therefore this 
 cause should be made by all Liberals, the writer 
 argues, the real object, and other things should be 
 treated as secondary and contributory to it. " Let 
 us reform our electoral machinery," says he, " by all 
 means, but let us understand, and make others under- 
 
III.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 321 
 
 stand, that we only seek this because we seek some- 
 thing else : the disestablishment of the Episcopal 
 Church in England." Such is the programme of what 
 calls itself "scientific liberalism." 
 
 By far the most formidable force in the array of 
 dangers which this critic has mustered to threaten 
 the Church of England, is the estrangement of the 
 working classes, — of that part of them, too, which 
 has no attachment to Dissent, but which is simply 
 zealous about social and political questions. This 
 part may not be overwhelming in numbers, but it is 
 the living and leading part of the whole to which it 
 belongs. Its sentiment tends to become, with time, 
 the sentiment of the whole. If its sentiment is un- 
 alterably hostile to the Church of England, if the 
 character of the Church is such that this must needs 
 be so and remain so, then the question of disestablish- 
 ment is, I think, settled. The Church of England 
 cannot, in the long run, stand. 
 
 The ideal of the working classes is a future, — a 
 future on earth, not up in the sky, — which shall pro- 
 foundly change and ameliorate things for them ; an 
 immense social progress, nay, a social transformation; 
 in short, as their song goes, "a good time coming." 
 And the Church is supposed to be an appendage to 
 the Barbarians, as I have somewhere, in joke, called 
 it ; an institution devoted above all to the landed 
 gentry, but also to the propertied and satisfied classes 
 generally; favouring immobility, preaching submis- 
 sion, and reserving transformation in general for the 
 other side of the grave. 
 
 VOL. VII. Y 
 
322 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION, [ill. 
 
 Such a Church, I admit, cannot possibly nowadays 
 attach the working classes, or be viewed with any- 
 thing but disfavour by them. But certainly the 
 superstitious worship of existing social facts, a de- 
 voted obsequiousness to the landed and propertied 
 and satisfied classes, does not inhere in the Christian 
 religion. The Church does not get it from the Bible. 
 Exception is taken to its being said that there is com- 
 munism in the Bible, because we see that communists 
 are fierce, violent, insurrectionary people, with temper 
 and actions abhorrent to the spirit of the Bible. But 
 if we say, on the one hand, that the Bible utterly 
 condemns all violence, revolt, fierceness, and self- 
 assertion, then we may safely say, on the other hand, 
 that there is certainly communism in the Bible. The 
 truth is, the Bible enjoins endless self-sacrifice all 
 round; and to any one who has grasped this idea, 
 the superstitious worship of property, the reverent 
 devotedness to the propertied and satisfied classes, is 
 impossible. And the Christian Church has, I boldly 
 say, been the fruitful parent of men who, having 
 grasped this idea, have been exempt from this super- 
 stition. Institutions are to be judged by their great 
 men ; in the end, they take their line from their 
 great men. The Christian Church, and the line 
 which is natural to it and which will one day prevail 
 in it, is to be judged from the saints and the tone of 
 the saints. Now really, if there have been any 
 people in the world free from illusions about the 
 divine origin and divine sanctions of social facts just 
 as they stand, — open, therefore, to the popular hopes 
 
III.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 323 
 
 of a profound renovation and a happier future, — it 
 has been those inspired idiots, the poets and the 
 saints. Nobody nowadays attends much to what the 
 poets say, so I leave them on one side. But listen to 
 a saint on the origin of property ; listen to Pascal. 
 " 'This dog belongs to me,' said these poor children ; 
 ' that place in the sun is mine ! ' Behold the begin- 
 ning and the image of all usurpation upon earth ! " 
 Listen to him instructing the young Duke of Roannez 
 as to the source and sacredness of his rank and his 
 estates. First as to his estates : — 
 
 "Do you imagine," lie says, "that it is by some way of 
 nature that your property has passed from your ancestors to 
 you ? Such is not the case. This order is but founded on the 
 simple will and pleasure of legislators, who may have had good 
 reasons for what they did, but not one of their reasons was 
 taken from any natural right of yours over these possessions. 
 If they had chosen to ordain that this proj^erty, after having 
 been held by your father during his lifetime, should revert to 
 the commonwealth after his death, you would have had no 
 ground for complaint. Thus your whole title to your property 
 is not a title from nature, but a title of human creation. A 
 different turn of imagination in the law -makers would have 
 left you poor ; and it is only that combination of the chance 
 which produces your birth with the turn of fancy producing 
 laws advantageous to you, which makes you the master of all 
 these possessions. " 
 
 And then, the property having been dealt with, 
 comes the turn of the rank : — 
 
 " There are two sorts of grandeurs in the world ; grandeurs 
 which men have set up, and natural grandeurs. The gran- 
 deurs which men have set up depend on the will and pleasure 
 of men. Dignities and nobility are grandeurs of this kind. In 
 one country they honour nobles, in another commoners ; here 
 
324 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [ill. 
 
 the eldest son, there the youngest son. Why ? because such 
 has been men's will and pleasure. " 
 
 There, certainly, speaks a great voice of religion 
 without any superstitious awe of rank and of pro- 
 perty ! The treasures of Pascal's scorn are bound- 
 less, and they are magnificent. They are poured out 
 in full flood on the superstitious awe in question. 
 The only doubt may be, perhaps, whether they are 
 not poured out on it too cruelly, too overwhelmingly. 
 But in what secular writer shall we find anything to 
 match them 1 
 
 Ay, or in what saint or doctor, some one will say, 
 of the Church of England 1 If there is a stronghold, 
 of stolid deference to the illusions of the aristocratic 
 and propertied classes, the Church of England, many 
 people will maintain, is that stronghold. It is the most 
 formidable complaint against the Church, the com- 
 plaint which creates its most serious danger. There 
 is nothing like having the very words of the com- 
 plainants themselves in a case of this sort. " I wish," 
 says Mr. Goldwin Smith, " I wish the clergy would 
 consider whether something of the decline of Chris- 
 tianity may not be due to the fact that for ages 
 Christianity has been accepted by the clergy of the 
 Established Church as the ally of political and social 
 injustice." " The Church of England," says Mr. 
 John Morley, " is the ally of tyranny, the organ of 
 social oppression, the champion of intellectual 
 bondage." There are the leaders ! — and the Beehive 
 shall give us the opinion of the rank and file. " The 
 clergy could not take money from the employing 
 
III.] THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 325 
 
 classes and put it into the pockets of the employed ; 
 but they might have insisted on such a humane con- 
 sideration and Christian regard for human welfare, 
 as would have so influenced men's dealings in regard 
 to each other as to prevent our present misery and 
 suffering. " 
 
 You will observe, by the way, and it is a touching 
 thing to witness, that the complaint of the real suf- 
 ferers, as they think themselves, is in a strain com- 
 paratively calm and mild ; how much milder than 
 the invective of their literary leaders ! Still, the 
 upshot of the complaint is the same with both. The 
 Church shares and serves the prejudices of rank and 
 property, instead of contending with them. 
 
 Now, I say once more that every Church is to be 
 judged by its great men. Theirs are the authorita- 
 tive utterances. They survive. They lay hold, 
 sooner or later, and in proportion to their impres- 
 siveness and truth, on the minds of Churchmen to 
 whom they come down. They strike the note to 
 be finally taken in the Church. Listen, then, to 
 this on "the seemingly enormous discrimination," 
 as the speaker calls it, " among men " : — 
 
 "That distinction which thou standest upon, and which 
 seemeth so vast, between thy poor neighbour and thee, what 
 is it ? whence did it come ? whither tends it ? It is not any- 
 wise natural, or according to primitive design. Inequality 
 and private interest in things (together with sicknesses and 
 pains, together with all other infelicities and inconveniences) 
 were the by-blows of our guilt ; sin introduced these degrees 
 and distances ; it devised the names of rich and poor ; it begot 
 those ingrossing and inclosures of things ; it forged those two 
 
326 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [ill. 
 
 small pestilent words, meum and tuum, which have engendered 
 so much strife among men, and created so much mischief in the 
 world ; these preternatural distinctions were, I say, brooded by 
 our fault, and are in great part fostered and maintained thereby ; 
 for were we generally so good, so just, so charitable as we should 
 be, they could hardly subsist, especially in that measure they 
 do. God, indeed (for promoting some good ends and for pre- 
 vention of some mischiefs apt to spring from our ill-nature in 
 this our lapsed state, particularly to prevent the strife and dis- 
 order which scrambling would cause among men, presuming 
 on equal right and parity of force), doth suffer them in some 
 manner to continue ; but we mistake if we think that natural 
 equality and community are in effect quite taken away ; or that 
 all the world is so cantonised among a few that the rest have 
 no share therein. " 
 
 Who is it who says that 1 It is one of the emi- 
 nently representative men of the English Church, 
 its best and soundest moralist ; a man sober-minded, 
 weighty, esteemed ; — it is Barrow. And it is Barrow 
 in the full blaze of the Eestoration, in his Hospital 
 Sermon of 1671. 
 
 Well, then, a fascinated awe of class -privileges, 
 station, and property, a belief in the divine appoint- 
 ment, perfectness, and perpetuity of existing social 
 arrangements, is not the authentic tradition of the 
 Church of England. It is important to insist upon 
 this, important for the Church to feel and avow it, 
 because no institution with these prejudices could 
 possibly carry the working classes with it. And it 
 is necessary for the Church, if it is to live, that it 
 should carry the working classes with it. Suffer me, 
 after quoting to you Jeremy Taylor and Butler and 
 Pascal and Barrow, to quote to you a much less 
 orthodox personage : M. Eenan. But what I am 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 327 
 
 going to quote from him is profoundly true. He 
 has been observing that Christianity, at its outset, 
 had an immense attraction for the popular classes, 
 as he calls them ; " the popular classes whom the 
 State and religion neglected equally." And he pro- 
 ceeds : " Here is the great lesson of this history for 
 our own age ; the times correspond to one another ; 
 the future will belong to that party which can get 
 hold of the popular classes and elevate them." 
 "But in our days," M. Eenan adds, "the difficulty 
 is far greater than it ever was." And this is true; 
 the difficulty is great, very great. But the thing 
 has to be done, and the Church is the right power 
 to do it. 
 
 Now, the Church tends, people say, at present to 
 become more mixed and popular than it used to be in 
 the composition of its clergy. They are recruited from 
 a wider field. Sometimes one hears this lamented, 
 and its disadvantages insisted upon. But, in view of 
 a power of comprehending popular ideals and sym- 
 pathising with them, it has, I think, its advantage. 
 No one can overlook or deny the immense labours 
 and sacrifices of the clergy for the improvement of 
 the condition of the popular, the working classes ; — 
 for their schools, for instance, and for their physical 
 well-being in countless ways. But this is not enough 
 without a positive sympathy Avith popular ideals. 
 And the great popular ideal is, as I have said, an 
 immense renovation and transformation of things, a 
 far better and happier society in the future than 
 ours is now. Mixed with all manner of alloy and 
 
328 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 false notions this ideal often is, yet in itself it is 
 precious, it is true. And let me observe, it is also 
 the ideal of our religion. It is the business of our 
 religion to make us believe in this very ideal ; it is 
 the business of the clergy to profess and to preach 
 it. In this view it is really well to consider, how 
 entirely our religious teaching and preaching, and 
 our creeds, and what passes with us for " the gospel," 
 turn on quite other matters from the fundamental 
 matter of the primitive gospel, or good news, of our 
 Saviour himself. This gospel was the ideal of popular 
 hope and longing, an immense renovation and trans- 
 formation of things : the kingdom of God. " Jesus 
 came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God 
 and saying : The time is fulfilled and the kingdom 
 of God is at hand ; repent and believe the good news." 
 Jesus went about the cities and villages " proclaiming 
 the good news of the kingdom." The multitudes 
 followed him, and he "took them and talked to 
 them about the kingdom of God." He told his 
 disciples to preach this. " Go thou, and spread the 
 news of the kingdom of God." " Into whatever city 
 ye enter, say to them : The kingdom of God has come 
 nigh unto you." He told his disciples to pray for it, 
 — to pray: "Thy kingdom come!" He told them 
 to seek and study it before all things. " Seek first 
 God's righteousness and kingdom." He said that 
 the news of it should be published throughout the 
 world. "This good news of the kingdom shall be 
 proclaimed in the whole world, for a witness to all 
 nations." And it was a kingdom here on earth, 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 329 
 
 not in some other world unseen. It was "God's 
 will done, as in heaven, so on earth." 
 
 And in this line the preaching went on for some 
 time after our Saviour's death. Philip, in Samaria, 
 " delivers the good news concerning the kingdom of 
 God." Paul, at Ephesus, "discusses and persuades 
 concerning the kingdom of God." At Pome, he 
 "testifies to the kingdom of God," "proclaims the 
 kins;dom of God." He tells the Corinthians that 
 Christ sent him " not to baptize but to deliver the 
 good news," — the good news of the kingdom of God. 
 True, additions soon appear to the original gospel, 
 which explain hoAv preaching came to diverge from 
 it. The additions were inevitable. The kingdom 
 of God was realisable only through Jesus, — was im- 
 possible without Jesus. And therefore the preaching 
 concerning Jesus had necessarily to be added to the 
 preaching concerning the kingdom. Accordingly, 
 we find Philip " delivering the good news concerning 
 the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesas Christ" 
 We find him " delivering (to the eunuch) the good 
 news of Jesus." We find Paul "proclaiming Jesus, 
 that he is the Son of God," " proving that he is the Christ" 
 putting, as the foremost matter of the "good news," 
 Christ's death and resurrection. 
 
 "The kingdom" was to be won through faith in 
 Christ; in Christ crucified and risen, and crucified 
 and risen, I freely admit, in the plain material sense 
 of those words. And, moreover, " the kingdom " 
 was conceived by the apostles as the triumphant 
 return of Christ, in the lifetime of the very genera- 
 
330 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [ill. 
 
 tion then living, to judge the world and to reign in 
 glory with his saints. The disciples conceived " the 
 kingdom," therefore, amiss ; it was hardly possible 
 for them not to do so. But we can readily under- 
 stand how thus, as time went on, Christian preaching 
 came more and more to drop, or to leave in the back- 
 ground, its one primitive gospel, the good news of the 
 kingdom, and to settle on other points. Yet whoever 
 reverts to it, reverts, I say, to the primitive gospel ; 
 which is the good news of an immense renovation 
 and transformation of this world, by the establish- 
 ment of what the Sermon on the Mount calls (in 
 the most authentic reading of the passage) "God's 
 righteousness and kingdom." This was the ideal of 
 Jesus : — the establishment on earth of God's kingdom, 
 of felicity, not by the violent processes of our Fifth 
 Monarchy men, or of the German Anabaptists, or of 
 the French Communists, but by the establishment on 
 earth of God's righteousness. 
 
 But it is a contracted and insufficient conception 
 of the gospel which takes into view only the estab- 
 lishment of righteousness, and does not also take into 
 view the establishment of the kingdom. And the 
 establishment of the kingdom does imply an immense 
 renovation and transformation of our actual state of 
 things; — that is certain. This, then, which is the 
 ideal of the popular classes, of the multitude every- 
 where, is a legitimate ideal. And a Church of 
 England, devoted to the service and ideals of any 
 limited class, — however distinguished, wealthy, or 
 powerful, — which is perfectly satisfied with things 
 
III.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 331 
 
 as they are, is not only out of sympathy with the 
 ideal of the popular classes ; it is also out of sym- 
 pathy with the gospel, of which the ideal does, in 
 the main, coincide with theirs. True, the most clear 
 voice one could even desire in favour of such an ideal 
 is found to come, as we -have seen, from the Church 
 of England, from a representative man among the 
 clergy of that Church. But it is important that 
 the clergy, as a body, should sympathise heartily 
 with that ideal. And this they can best bring them- 
 selves to do, any of them who may require such 
 bringing, by accustoming themselves to see that the 
 ideal is the true original ideal of their religion and 
 of its Founder. 
 
 I have dwelt a long while upon this head, because 
 of its extreme importance. If the Church of England 
 is right here, it has, I am persuaded, nothing to 
 fear either from Eome, or from the Protestant Dis- 
 senters, or from the secularists. It cannot, I think, 
 stand secure unless it has the sympathy of the 
 popular classes. And it cannot have the sympathy 
 of the popular classes unless it is right on this head. 
 But, if it is right on this head, it may, I feel con- 
 vinced, nourish and be strong with their sympathy, 
 and with that of the nation in general. For it has 
 natural allies in what Burke, that gifted Irishman, so 
 finely calls " the ancient and inbred integrity, piety, 
 good nature, and good humour of the English people." 
 It has an ally in the English people's piety. If the 
 matter were not so serious, one could hardly help 
 smiling at the chagrin and manifest perplexity of 
 
332 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 such of one's friends as happen to be philosophical 
 radicals and secularists, at having to reckon with 
 religion again when they thought its day was quite 
 gone by, and that they need not study it any more 
 or take account of it any more, but it was passing out, 
 and a kind of new gospel, half Bentham, half Cobden, 
 in which they were themselves particularly strong, 
 was coming in. And perhaps there is no one who 
 more deserves to be compassionated than an elderly or 
 middle-aged man of this kind, such as several of their 
 Parliamentary spokesmen and representatives are. 
 For perhaps the younger men of the party may take 
 heart of grace, and acquaint themselves a little with 
 religion, now that they see its day is by no means 
 over. But, for the older ones, their mental habits 
 are formed, and it is almost too late for them to 
 begin such new studies. However, a wave of reli- 
 gious reaction is evidently passing over Europe ; due 
 very much to our revolutionary and philosophical 
 friends having insisted upon it that religion was gone 
 by and unnecessary, when it was neither the one nor 
 the other. And what one sees in France, and else- 
 where, really makes some words of Butler (if you 
 are not yet tired of Butler) read like a prophecy : — 
 
 "Indeed," lie sa\s, "amongst creatures naturally formed 
 for religion, yet so much under the power of imagination, so 
 apt to deceive themselves, as men are, superstition is an evil 
 which can never be out of sight. But even against this, true 
 religion is a great security ; and the only one. True religion 
 takes up that place in the mind which superstition would 
 usurp, and so leaves little room for it : and likewise lays us 
 under the strongest obligations to oppose it. On the contrary, 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 333 
 
 the danger of superstition cannot but be increased by the pre- 
 valence of irreligion ; and by its general prevalence the evil 
 will be unavoidable. For the common people, "wanting a reli- 
 gion, will of course take up with almost any superstition which 
 is thrown in their way ; and in process of time, amidst the 
 infinite vicissitudes of the political world, the leaders of parties 
 will certainly be able to serve themselves of that superstition, 
 whatever it be, which is getting ground ; and will not fail to 
 carry it on to the utmost lengths their occasions require. " 
 
 And does not one see at the present day, in the very 
 places where irreligion had prevailed most, supersti- 
 tion laying hold of those who seemed the last people 
 likely to be laid hold of by it, and politicians making 
 their game out of this state of things ? Yet that 
 there should spring up in Paris, for instance, a 
 Catholic Working Men's Union, and that it should 
 prosper, will surprise no one who considers how 
 strong is the need in human nature for a moral rule 
 and bridle, such as religion, even a superstitious one, 
 affords ; and how entirely the Paris workman was 
 without anything of the kind. La Rochefoucauld, 
 who is here a witness whom no one will challenge, 
 says most truly : " It is harder to keep oneself from 
 being governed than to govern others." Obedience, 
 strange as it may sound, is a real need of human 
 nature ; — above all, moral and religious obedience. 
 And it is less hard to a Paris workman to swallow 
 beliefs which one would have thought impossible for 
 him, than to go on in life and conduct in unchartered 
 freedom, like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind 
 and tossed. Undoubtedly, then, there are in the 
 popular classes of every country forces of piety and 
 
334 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 religion capable of being brought into an alliance with 
 the Church, the national society for the promotion of 
 goodness in that country. And of no people may 
 this be more certainly said than of ours. 
 
 Still, there is in this English people an integrity, 
 as Burke calls it, — a native fund of downrightness, 
 plain honesty, integrity, — which makes our popular 
 classes very unapt to cheat themselves in religion, 
 and to swallow things down wholesale out of senti- 
 ment, or even out of weariness of moral disorder and 
 from need of a moral rule. And therefore I said that 
 Rome was not a real danger for us, and that in the 
 integrity of the English people the Church of 
 England had a natural ally. I say this in view of 
 the popular classes. Higher up, with individuals, 
 and even with small classes, sentiment and fantasy, 
 and morbid restlessness and weariness, may come in. 
 But with the popular classes and with the English 
 people as a whole, it is in favour of the Church that 
 it is what Butler called it, and what it is sometimes 
 reproached for being : a reasonable Establishment. 
 And it is a reasonable Establishment, and in the 
 good sense. I know of no other Establishment so 
 reasonable. Churches are characterised, I have said, 
 by their great men. Show me any other great 
 Church of which a chief doctor and luminary has a 
 sentence like this sentence, splendide verax, of Butler's : 
 "Things are what they are, and the consequences of 
 them will be what they will be ; why, then, should 
 we desire to be deceived 1 " To take in and to digest 
 such a sentence as that, is an education in moral and 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 335 
 
 intellectual veracity. And after all, intensely Butler- 
 ian as the sentence is, yet Butler came to it because 
 he is English ; because at the bottom of his nature 
 lay such a fund of integrity. 
 
 Show me another great Church, again, in which a 
 theologian, arguing that a religious doctrine of the 
 truth of which a man is not sure, — the doctrine, let 
 us suppose, of a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments, — may yet properly be made to sway his con- 
 duct and practice (a recommendation which seems to 
 me, I must confess, impossible to be carried into 
 effect) ; but show me in another Church a theologian 
 arguing thus, yet careful at the same time to warn 
 us, that we have no business to tamper with our 
 sense of evidence, by believing the doctrine any the 
 more on the ground of its practical importance to us. 
 For this is what Butler says : — "To be influenced," 
 he says, " by this consideration in our judgment, to 
 believe or disbelieve upon it, is indeed as much pre- 
 judice as anything whatever." The force of integrity, 
 I say, can no farther go. 
 
 And, distracted as is the state of religious opinion 
 amongst us at this moment, in no other great Church 
 is there, I believe, so much sincere desire as there is 
 in the Church of England, — in clergy as well as in 
 laity, — to get at the real truth. In no other great 
 Church is there so little false pretence of assured 
 knowledge and certainty on points where there can 
 be none ; so much disposition to see and to admit 
 with Butler, in regard to such points and to the root 
 of the whole matter in religion, that " mankind are 
 
336 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 for placing the stress of their religion anywhere 
 rather than upon virtue," and that mankind are 
 wrong in so doing. To this absence of charlatanism, 
 to this largeness of view, to this pressing to the 
 genuine root of the matter, all the constituents 
 assigned to the English people's nature by Burke, — 
 our people's piety, their integrity, their good nature, 
 their good humour, but above all, their integrity, — 
 contribute to incline them. That the Church should 
 show a like inclination, is in its favour as a National 
 Church. 
 
 Equally are these constituents of the English 
 character, and the way of thinking which naturally 
 springs from them, in favour of the Church as regards 
 the attacks of the political Dissenters. Plain direct- 
 ness of thinking, a largeness and good-naturedness of 
 mind, are not favourable judges, I think, for the 
 Dissenters at the present moment, — for their griev- 
 ances and for their operations. A sense of piety and 
 religion in the nation is to be supposed to start with. 
 And I suppose it to be clear that the contention no 
 longer is, even on the part of the Dissenters them- 
 selves, that a certain Church-order is alone scriptural 
 and is therefore necessary, and that it is that of the 
 Dissenters, not of the Church ; or that the Gospel 
 consists in one or two famous propositions of specula- 
 tive doctrine, and that the Dissenters make it so to 
 consist, while the Church does not. At any rate, 
 the nation in general will no longer regard this con- 
 tention as serious, even if some Dissenters do. The 
 serious contention is, that there ought to be perfect 
 
III.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 337 
 
 religious equality, as it is called ; and that the State 
 ought not to adopt, and by adopting to favour and 
 elevate above the rest, one form of religion out of 
 the many forms that are current. 
 
 But surely, the moment we consider religion and 
 Christianity in a large way as goodness, and a Church 
 as a society for the promotion of goodness, all that is 
 said about having such a society before men's eyes as 
 a city set upon a hill, all that is said about making 
 the Gospel more and more a witness to mankind, 
 applies in favour of the State adopting some form 
 of religion or other, — that which seems best suited 
 to the majority, — even though it may not be perfect ; 
 and putting that forward as the national form of 
 religion. "A reasonable establishment has" surely, 
 as Butler says, " a tendency to keep up a sense of 
 real religion and real Christianity in a nation." That 
 seems to me to be no more than the plain language 
 of common sense. And I think what follows is 
 true also : — " And it is moreover necessary for the 
 encouragement of learning, some parts of which the 
 Scripture -revelation absolutely requires should be 
 cultivated." 
 
 But what seems to me quite certain is, that, if 
 goodness is the end, and "all good men are," as 
 Butler says, " equally concerned in promoting that 
 end," then, as he goes on to conclude, "to do it more 
 effectually they ought to unite in promoting it ; which 
 yet is scarce practicable upon any new models, and 
 quite impossible upon such as every one would think 
 unexceptionable." And as for such, he says, as " think 
 
 vol. vi r. z 
 
338 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND KELIGION. [ill. 
 
 ours liable to objection, it is possible they themselves 
 may be mistaken, and whether they are or no, the 
 very nature of society requires some compliance 
 with others. Upon the whole, therefore, these per- 
 sons would do well to consider how far they can 
 with reason satisfy themselves in neglecting what is 
 certainly right on account of what is doubtful whether 
 it be wrong ; and when the right is of so much greater 
 consequence one way than the supposed wrong can 
 be the other." Here Butler seems to me to be on 
 impregnable ground, and it is the ground which the 
 largest and surest spirits amongst us have always 
 pitched upon. Sir Matthew Hale, the most moderate 
 of men and the most disposed to comprehension, said : 
 "Those of the separation were good men, but they 
 had narrow souls, who would break the peace of 
 the Church about such inconsiderable matters as the 
 points in difference were." Henry More, that beauti- 
 ful spirit, is exactly to the same effect. "A little 
 religion may make a man schismatical, but a great 
 deal will surely make a man decline division where 
 things are tolerable, which is the case of our English 
 Church." And the more a large way of thinking 
 comes to spread in this nation, which by its good 
 nature and good humour has a natural turn for it, 
 the more will this view come to prevail. It will 
 be acknowledged that the Church is a society for 
 the promotion of goodness ; that such a society is the 
 stronger for being national, and ought to be national ; 
 that to make its operations, therefore, more effectual, 
 all good men ought to unite in it, and that the objec- 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 339 
 
 tions of the Protestant Dissenters to uniting in it are 
 trivial. 
 
 At least, their religious objections to uniting in it 
 are trivial. Their objections from the annoyance and 
 mortification at having, after they have once separated 
 and set up forms of their own, to give in and to accept 
 the established form, and their allegations of their 
 natural jealousy at having to see, if they do not accept 
 it, the clergy preferred before them by being invested 
 with the status of national ministers of religion — these 
 objections are much more worthy of note. But, in 
 the first place, whatever preference is given, is given 
 for the sake of the whole community, not of those 
 preferred. And many preferences, for its own sake 
 and for what it judges to be the public good, the 
 whole community may and must establish. But that 
 which, as men's minds grow larger, will above all pre- 
 vent the objections and complaints of the Dissenters 
 from winning sympathy and from attaining effect, is 
 that, in the second place, it will be more and more 
 distinctly perceived that their objections and com- 
 plaints are, to speak truly, irreligious objections and 
 complaints, and yet urged in the sphere of religion. 
 
 To philosophical Radicals in or out of Parlia- 
 ment, who think that religion is all a chimsera, and 
 that in a matter so little important the fancies of the 
 Dissenters, whose political aid is valuable, may well 
 be studied and followed, this will seem nothing. But 
 the more the sense of religion grows, and of religion 
 in a large way, — the sense of the beauty and rest of 
 religion, the sense that its charm lies in its grace and 
 
340 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND RELIGION. [m. 
 
 peace, — the more will the present attitude, objections, 
 and complaints of the Dissenters indispose men's 
 minds to them. They will, I firmly believe, lose 
 ground ; they will not keep hold of the new genera- 
 tions. In most of the mature Dissenters the spirit of 
 scruple, objection-taking, and division, is, I fear, so 
 ingrained, that in any proffered terms of union they 
 are more likely to seize occasion for fresh cavil than 
 occasion for peace. But the new generations will be 
 otherwise minded. As to the Church's want of grace 
 and peace in disputing the ground with Dissent, the 
 justice of what Barrow says will be more and more 
 felt : — " He that being assaulted is constrained to 
 stand on his defence, may not be said to be in peace ; 
 yet his not being so (involuntarily) is not to be 
 imputed to him." But the Dissenters have not this, 
 the Church's excuse, for being men of war in a sphere 
 of grace and peace. And they turn themselves into 
 men of war more and more. 
 
 Look at one of the ablest of them, who is much 
 before the public, and whose abilities I unfeignedly 
 admire : Mr. Dale. Mr. Dale is really a pugilist, a 
 brilliant pugilist. He has his arena down at Birming- 
 ham, where he does his practice with Mr. Chamberlain, 
 and Mr. Jesse Collings, and the rest of his band ; and 
 then from time to time he comes up to the metropolis, 
 to London, and gives a public exhibition here of his 
 skill. And a very powerful performance it often is. 
 And the Times observes, that the chief Dissenting 
 ministers are becoming quite the intellectual equals 
 of the ablest of the clergy. Very likely ; this sort 
 
ill.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 341 
 
 of practice is just the right thing for bracing a man's 
 intellectual muscles. I have no fears concerning Mr. 
 Dale's intellectual muscles ; what I am a little uneasy 
 about is his religious temper. The essence of religion 
 is grace and peace. And though, no doubt, Mr. Dale 
 cultivates grace and peace at other times, when he is 
 not busy with his anti-Church practice, yet his culti- 
 vation of grace and peace can be none the better, and 
 must naturally be something the worse, for the time 
 and energy given to his pugilistic interludes. And 
 the more that mankind, instead of placing their reli- 
 gion in all manner of things where it is not, come to 
 place it in sheer goodness, and in grace and peace, — 
 and this is the tendency, I think, with the English 
 people, — the less favourable will public opinion be to 
 the proceedings of the political Dissenters, and the 
 less has the Church to fear from their pugnacious 
 self-assertion. 
 
 Indeed, to eschew self-assertion, to be, — instead of 
 always thinking about one's freedom, and one's rights, 
 and one's equality, — to be, as Butler says, " as much 
 afraid of subjection to mere arbitrary will and plea- 
 sure in ourselves as to the arbitrary will of others," 
 is the very temper of religion. What the clergy have 
 to desire, — and the clergy of London may well bear 
 to hear this, who have, as a body, been so honourably 
 distinguished for their moderation and their intelli- 
 gence, — what the clergy have to aim at, is the 
 character of simple instruments for the public good. 
 What they have to shun, is their action having at all 
 the appearance of mere arbitrary will and pleasure 
 
342 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [in. 
 
 of the individual. One can hardly speak about the 
 Church at this moment without touching on the 
 Burials Bill. Give me leave to say, that the danger- 
 ous thing to the Church, as regards this vexed ques- 
 tion of burials, has been the opening afforded, in the 
 exclusion of unbaptized persons, to the exercise of 
 what might always seem, and often was, the exercise 
 of mere arbitrary will and pleasure in the individual 
 clergyman. This, it seems to me, ought certainly to 
 be abandoned ; and here, surely, is an occasion for 
 remembering St. Paul's dictum, that "Christ sent 
 him not to baptize, but to preach the good news." 
 If this exclusion were wholly abandoned, if the option 
 of silent funerals, and of funerals with a shortened 
 service, were also given, I think as much would have 
 been done as it is for the public advantage (I put the 
 advantage of the clergy out of question altogether, — 
 they have none but that of the community), in the 
 special circumstances of this country, to do. I do 
 not believe it would be necessary to do more, in order 
 to remove all real sense of grievance, and to end, for 
 sensible people, the need for further occupying them- 
 selves with this whole barren and retarding question 
 of Church and Dissent. 
 
 And I, for my part, now leave this question, I 
 hope, for ever. I became engaged in it against my 
 will, from being led by particular circumstances to 
 remark the deteriorating effect of the temper and 
 strifes of Dissent upon good men, the lamentable 
 waste of power and usefulness which was thereby 
 caused ; and from being convinced that the right 
 
in.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 343 
 
 settlement was to be reached in one way only ; not 
 by disestablishment, but by comprehension and union. 
 However, as one grows old, one feels that it is not 
 one's business to go on for ever expostulating with 
 other people upon their waste of life, but to make 
 progress in grace and peace oneself. And this is the 
 real business of the Church, too : to make progress in 
 grace and peace. Force the Church of England has 
 certainly some; perhaps a good deal. But its true 
 strength is in relying, not on its powers of force, but 
 on its powers of attractiveness. And by opening 
 itself to the glow of the old and true ideal of the 
 Christian Gospel, by fidelity to reason, by placing the 
 stress of its religion on goodness, by cultivating 
 grace and peace, it will inspire attachment, to which 
 the attachment which it inspires now, deep though 
 that is, will be as nothing ; it will last, be sure, as 
 long as this nation. 
 
IV. 
 
 A LAST WOPJ) ON THE BUEIALS BILL. 
 
 In my address at Sion College I touched for a moment 
 on the now much-discussed question of the Burials 
 Bill. I observed, that whatever resembled an 
 arbitrary assertion of his own private will and 
 pleasure should be shunned by a clergyman; that 
 the exercise of his right of refusing burial to un- 
 baptized persons often resembled, and not unfre- 
 quently was, such an assertion ; and that it would 
 be for the advantage of the Church to abandon this 
 right. I added that if this were done, and if the 
 option of a silent service, or of a shortened service, 
 in place of the present Burial Service, were also 
 given, as much would have been conceded to the 
 Dissenters, in the matter of burials, as justice re- 
 quires, as much as it is for the public interest to 
 concede, and as much as it will, finally, I think, be 
 found necessary to concede. 
 
 But much more than this is claimed for the Dis- 
 senters. Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill la}^s down, that 
 "it is just and right to permit the performance in 
 
iv.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 345 
 
 parish churchyards of other burials than those of the 
 Church of England, and by other persons than the 
 ministers of that Church." And the Times says in 
 recommendation of Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill : — 
 
 "A just legislature has to put the business on the basis of 
 justice and truth. It will consider what a Dissenter or his 
 friends desire, and what, being in accordance with his or their 
 wishes, will be no injustice or untruth. It does really seem 
 late in the day to have to prove that the imposition of a service 
 at variance with the whole course of a man's life, opinions, and 
 practice, is an injustice and an untruth. An Englishman has a 
 right to worship in the style he thinks truest and best, just as 
 he has a right to dress as he likes, to select his own acquaint- 
 ances, or to choose his own pursuits. Let the Dissenting min- 
 ister then," concludes the Times, "enter the churchyard, and 
 have his own say over his own spiritual son or daughter ; and 
 let the incumbent cease to intrench himself in the vain illusion 
 of an inviolable churchyard in a parish which has long ceased 
 to be his exclusive domain." 
 
 Lord Selborne, too, in the debate on Lord Gran- 
 ville's resolution upon the subject of burials, treated 
 it as a matter quite clear and self-evident, that to 
 deny this right to Dissenters was a violation of the 
 established English principle of religious liberty : — 
 
 "Is there any conceivable logical answer," he asked, "to 
 the observation, that in these cases you deny after death that 
 religious liberty which in every other respect is given to the 
 deceased during the whole of their lives ? You deny this 
 liberty in the present state of things in two ways : by refusing 
 to them the liberty of being religious in their own way, and 
 by imposing upon them the necessity of being religious in your 
 way." "The feelings of the great majority of the laity," Lord 
 Selborne adds, "when it is brought home to them that there 
 is this violation of the established principle of religious liberty 
 in dealing with interments, will go more and more with those 
 who complain of this grievance." 
 
346 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND EELIGION. [iv. 
 
 A number of clergymen, many of them bearing 
 names well known and respected, have proposed, as 
 "a reasonable concession to the feelings of Non- 
 conformists," to "grant permission to a recognised 
 minister or representative of any religious body to 
 perform in the churchyard a funeral service consist- 
 ing of passages of Holy Scripture, prayers, and 
 hymns." But absolute liberty is the right claimed, 
 and these limitations are evidently inconsistent with 
 it. "We are afraid," says the Times of the clergy- 
 men's proposal, "that even with the most liberal 
 interpretation, this restriction leaves out of account 
 some communities for whose rights the supporters 
 of the Bill would contend as strenuously as for those 
 of others. But it is a misapprehension, it is to be appre- 
 hended, of the essential nature of a Nonconformist, to 
 suppose that he would ever pledge himself to conform to 
 anything. The essence of his demand is to claim free 
 access to sacred places, which the necessity of nature 
 compels him to use, with such observances as the 
 principles of his communion may prescribe." Yes, 
 "necessity of nature." For, it is argued, "while 
 every other public incident of a man's life must be 
 optional, he must be buried." And therefore, con- 
 tends the Times to exactly the same effect as Lord 
 Selborne, " let the natural necessity of burial be once 
 admitted, and the necessity of according religious 
 freedom in the satisfaction of it must inevitably be 
 allowed." 
 
 Finally, it is said that in all other Christian 
 countries, except Spain, the right of burying their 
 
iv.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 347 
 
 dead in the parish churchyard, with their own 
 services and their own ministers, is conceded to 
 Dissenters. And here again, then, is a reason why 
 in England too the clergyman should, as the Times 
 says, "cease to intrench himself in the vain illusion 
 of an inviolable churchyard in a parish which has 
 long ceased to be his exclusive domain;" should 
 "let the Dissenting minister enter the ground, and 
 have his own say over his own spiritual son or 
 daughter." 
 
 I have been asked, how the concession which I 
 spoke of at Sion College can be thought sufficient, 
 when it is so much less than what the Dissenters 
 themselves and their friends demand, than what 
 some of the best of the clergy offer to concede, than 
 what natural justice and the recognised English prin- 
 ciple of religious liberty require, and than what is 
 almost universally conceded in the rest of Christen- 
 dom 1 And I am asked this by those who approach 
 the question, just as I approach it myself, in a spirit 
 perfectly disinterested. They, like myself, have no 
 political object to serve by answering it in a way 
 favourable to the Dissenters, they do not care whether 
 or not it is the liberal-looking, popular, taking thing 
 so to answer it. And, on the other hand, they have 
 no need to bid for the support of the clergy ; they 
 are, moreover, without the least touch of ecclesias- 
 tical bias. They simply want to get the question 
 answered in a way to satisfy their own minds and 
 consciences, want to find out what is really the right 
 and reasonable course to pursue. And for their satis- 
 
348 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 faction, and also for my own, I return for a moment 
 to this matter of burials, before finally leaving the 
 whole question of Church and Dissent ; that I may 
 not seem to be leaving it with a curt and inconsider- 
 ate judgment on a matter where the feelings of the 
 Dissenters are strongly interested. 
 
 II. 
 
 What is the intention of all forms of public cere- 
 monial and ministration 1 ? It is, that what is done 
 and said in a public place, and bears with it a public 
 character, should be done and said worthily. The 
 public is responsible for it. The public gets credit 
 and advantage from it if it is done worthily, is com- 
 promised and harmed by it if it is done unworthily. 
 The mode, therefore, of performing public functions 
 in places invested with a public character is not left 
 to the will and pleasure of chance individuals. It is 
 expressly designed to rise above the level which would 
 be thence given. If there is a sort of ignobleness and 
 vulgarity (was tins alle blindigt, das Gemeine) which 
 comes out in the crude performance of the mass of 
 mankind left to themselves, public forms, in a higher 
 strain and of recognised worth, are designed to take 
 the place of such crude performance. They are a 
 kind of schooling, which may educate gradually such 
 performance into something better, and meanwhile 
 may prevent it from standing forth, to its own dis- 
 credit and to that of all of us, as public and repre- 
 sentative. This, I say, is evidently the design of all 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BU1UALS BILL. 319 
 
 forms for public use on serious and solemn occasions. 
 No one will say that the common Englishman glides 
 off-hand and by nature into a strain pure, noble, and 
 elevated. On the contrary, he falls with great ease 
 into vulgarity. But no people has shown more attach- 
 ment than the English to old and dignified forms 
 calculated to save us from it. 
 
 Such is the origin and such is the defence of the 
 use of a set form of burial-service in our public 
 churchyards. It stands on the same ground as the 
 use of all appointed forms whatever, in public places 
 and on serious occasions. It is designed to save 
 public places and occasions, and to save our char- 
 acter as a community, from being discredited through 
 what the caprice and vulgarity of individuals might 
 prompt them to. The moment a place has a public 
 and national character, there emerges the require- 
 ment of a public form for use there. And therefore 
 it is really quite marvellous to find a man of Lord 
 Selborne's acuteness maintaining, that to withhold 
 from the Dissenting minister the right, as the Times 
 says, "to enter the churchyard and have his own 
 say over his own spiritual son or daughter," is "to 
 deny after death that religious liberty, which in 
 every other respect is given to the deceased during 
 the whole of their lives." To be sure, Lord Selborne 
 was speaking in a parliamentary debate, where per- 
 haps it is lawful to employ any fallacy which your 
 adversaries cannot at the moment expose. But is it 
 possible that Lord Selborne can himself have been 
 deceived by the argument, that to refuse to Dis- 
 
350 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 senters the liberty to have what services they please 
 performed over them in the parish churchyard, is to 
 "deny after death that religious liberty, which in 
 every other respect is given to the deceased during 
 the whole of their lives'?" True, the deceased have 
 had religious liberty during their lives, have been 
 free to choose what religious services they pleased. 
 But where 1 In private places. They have no more 
 been free, during their lifetime, to have what pro- 
 ceedings they liked in the parish church and in the 
 parish churchyard, than to have what proceedings 
 they liked in the House of Lords or in the Court 
 of Chancery. And for the same reason in each case : 
 that these places are public places, and that to safe- 
 guard the worthy use of public places we have public 
 forms. 
 
 That liberty, then, in his choice of religious pro- 
 ceedings, which the deceased Dissenter enjoyed during 
 his lifetime, or which any Englishman enjoys, is a 
 liberty exercisable only in private places. The Dis- 
 senter, like other people, enjoys just the same liberty 
 after his death. To refuse to any and every indivi- 
 dual the liberty to dictate after his death what shall 
 be done and said in a place set apart for national use, 
 and belonging to the public, is just the same abridg- 
 ment of his religious liberty, — as much and as little 
 an abridgment of it, — as he has been subjected to dur- 
 ing the whole course of his life. He has never during 
 his whole life been free to have, in such a place, 
 whomsoever he likes " enter the ground and have his 
 own sa}^." He is not free to have it after his death. 
 
i v.J A LAST WORD ON THE BUEIALS BILL. 351 
 
 It is impossible to establish a distinction between 
 a man's rights in regard to his burial, and his rights 
 in regard to other public incidents, as they are called, 
 of his life. They are optional, it is sometimes said ; 
 burial is necessary. Even were this true, it would 
 prove nothing as to a need for exemption in burial, 
 rather than in other matters, from the requirement of 
 public forms in public places. Burial is necessary, 
 but not burial in public places. But the proposition 
 is practically not true. For practical purposes, and 
 in regard to mankind in general, it is not true that 
 marriage is optional. It is not even true that religious 
 worship is optional. Human nature being what it is, 
 and society being what it is, religious worship and 
 marriage may both of them, like burial, be called 
 necessary. They come in the regular course of things 
 and engage men's sentiments widely and deeply. 
 And everything that can be said about the naturalness 
 of a man's wishing to be buried in the parish church- 
 yard by a minister of his own persuasion and with a 
 service to his own liking, may be said about the 
 naturalness of his wishing to be married in the 
 parish church in like fashion. And the same of 
 worshipping in the parish church. It is natural that 
 a man should wish to enjoy, in his own parish church, 
 worship of his own choice, conducted by a minister 
 of his own selecting. And the hearty believers in a 
 man's natural right to have in the parish churchyard 
 a burial to his own liking, do not conceal that they 
 believe also in a man's natural right to have in the 
 parish church a worship to his own liking. "Let 
 
352 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 me be honest about it," said Sir Wilfrid Lawson at 
 Carlisle ; "if you let the Nonconformist into the 
 churchyard, that is only a step towards letting him 
 into the church." The two rights do, in fact, stand 
 on precisely the same footing. If the naturalness of 
 a man's wishing for a thing creates for him a right to 
 do it, then a Dissenter can urge his right to have his 
 own minister say his say over him in the parish 
 churchyard. Equally can he urge his right to have 
 his own minister say his say to him in the parish 
 church. 
 
 What bars the right is in both cases just the same 
 thing : the higher right of the community. For the 
 credit and welfare of the community, public forms 
 are appointed to be observed in public places. The 
 will and pleasure of individuals is not to have sway 
 there. This is what bars the Nonconformist's right 
 to have in his lifetime what minister and service he 
 likes in the parish church. It is also what bars his 
 right to have after his death what minister and 
 service he likes in the parish churchyard. 
 
 Certain clergymen have been arbitrary, insolent, 
 and vexatious, in exercising the power given to them 
 by that rubric which excludes unbaptized persons 
 from a legal claim to the burial-service of the Church 
 of England. I can understand people being provoked 
 into a desire to " give a lesson," as Lord Coleridge 
 said, to such clergymen, by admitting Dissenting 
 ministers to perform burial-services in the church- 
 yard. I can understand the better spirits among the 
 clergy being disposed, out of shame and regret at the 
 
IV.] A LAST WOBD ON THE BUEIALS BILL. 353 
 
 doings of some of their brethren, to concede to Dis- 
 senters what they desire in the matter of burials. I 
 can understand their being disposed to concede it, 
 too, out of love of peace, and from the wish to end 
 disputes and to conciliate adversaries by abandoning 
 a privilege. But the requirement of a fixed burial- 
 service in the parish churchyard is not made for the 
 benefit of the clergy, or in order to confer upon the 
 clergy a privilege. It is made for the benefit of the 
 community. It is not to be abandoned out of resent- 
 ment against those who abuse it, or out of generosity 
 on the part of the more liberal clergy. They are 
 generous with what is really, however it may appear 
 to them, not a privilege of theirs, but a safeguard of 
 ours. If it is for the advantage of the community 
 that in public places some public form should be 
 followed, if the community runs risk of discredit 
 from suffering individuals to say and do what they 
 like in such places, and if the burial-service of the 
 Church of England is enjoined on this principle, then 
 it is not to be given up in order to punish the folly 
 of some of the clergy or to gratify the generosity of 
 others. If the principle on which it has been en- 
 joined is sound, the service is to be retained for the 
 sake of this principle. 
 
 And so evidently sound is the principle, that the 
 politicians who take the Dissenters' cause in hand 
 cannot help feeling its force. Mr. Osborne Morgan 
 proposes, while allowing the Dissenters to have their 
 own services in the parish churchyard, to " make 
 proper provision for order and decency." Lord Gran- 
 
 VOL. VII. 2 A 
 
354 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 ville stipulates that the services shall be conducted 
 "in an orderly and Christian manner." But unless 
 these are mere words, meant to save appearances but 
 not to have any real operation, we are thus brought 
 back to the use of some public and recognised form 
 for burials in the parish churchyard. And the burial- 
 service of the Church of England was meant for a 
 public and recognised form of this kind, which people 
 at large could accept, and which ensured an " orderly 
 and Christian " character to proceedings in the parish 
 churchyard. Proceedings dependent solely on the 
 will and pleasure of chance individuals, and liable to 
 bear the marks of their " natural taste for the 
 bathos," as Swift calls it, cannot ensure this character. 
 But proceedings in a public place ought to have it. 
 And that they ought, the very politicians who 
 advocate the Dissenters' cause admit. 
 
 So it is a case for revision of the public form of 
 burial at present imposed. The burial-service of the 
 Prayer Book was meant to be used in the parish 
 churchyard over all Christians, — meant to suit all. 
 It does not suit all. Some people object to things in 
 the service itself. More object to being strictly con- 
 fined to that service only. More still object to being 
 deprived, in their burial, of the offices of a minister 
 of their own persuasion. On the other hand, a self- 
 willed clergyman is enabled by a rubric of the burial- 
 service to withhold its use in some cases where its 
 use is desired, and where to withhold it is both 
 foolish and cruel. Such is the present state of things. 
 And it has to be dealt with by means of some change 
 
iv.] A LAST WOED ON THE BUEIALS BILL. 355 
 
 or other, which shall remove causes for just discontent, 
 without abandoning the principle of requiring proper 
 and worthy forms to be observed at proceedings in the 
 parish churchyard. 
 
 III. 
 
 There is division among Christians, and in no 
 country are they found all agreeing to adopt the same 
 forms and ministers of religion. Different bodies of 
 Christians have their own forms and ministers. And 
 except in England these different bodies have, it is 
 said, the churchyard in common. In Ireland it is so. 
 In Scotland there is, as in England, an Established 
 Church ; yet in Scotland the forms and ministers of 
 other religious bodies are admitted to the use of the 
 parish churchyard. In France the Catholics are in 
 an enormous majority, yet Protestants can be buried 
 with their own forms in the graveyards of Catholic 
 churches. In Germany, where both Catholics and 
 Protestants are found in great numbers, and much 
 intermixed, the churchyards of the one confession 
 are open to the burial-rites of the other. 
 
 Now, in comparing the Church of England with 
 other Churches, it is right to remember one character 
 which distinguishes it from all of them. The Church 
 of England was meant, in the intention of those who 
 settled it at the Reformation, to satisfy the whole 
 English people and to be accepted by them. It was 
 meant to include both Catholics and Protestants in a 
 compromise between old and new, rejecting Romish 
 corruptions and errors, but retaining from Catholi- 
 
356 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 cism all that was sound and truly attaching, and thus 
 to provide a revised form of religion, adapted to the 
 nation at large as things then stood, and receivable 
 by it. No other Church has been settled with the 
 like design. And therefore no other Church stands 
 precisely on the like ground in offering its formularies 
 to people. For whereas other Churches, in offering 
 their formularies to people, offer them with the recom- 
 mendation that here is truth and everywhere else is 
 error, the Church of England, in offering its formu- 
 laries to Englishmen, offers them with the recom- 
 mendation that here is truth presented expressly so 
 as to suit and unite the English nation. And there- 
 fore to no Church can dissent be so mortifying as to 
 the Church of England ; because dissent is the denial, 
 not only of her profession of the truth, but also of her 
 success in her direct design. However, this cannot 
 make things otherwise than they are. The Church 
 of England, whatever may have been its design, does 
 not manage to satisfy every one any more than the 
 Churches in other countries. And whatever special 
 mortification she may have cause for, in seeing, around 
 her, forms and ministers of religion other than her 
 own, that is no reason why she should be less liberal 
 in her dealings with them than the Churches in other 
 countries. Either she must manage to suit them 
 herself, or she must be liberal to them. 
 
 Eeciprocity, at any rate, is but fair. If the burial- 
 rites of the Church of England are admitted to Pres- 
 byterian churchyards in Scotland, and to Catholic 
 churchyards in Ireland, the burial- rites of Scotch 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 357 
 
 Presbyterians and of Irish Catholics ought surely to 
 be admitted to Anglican churchyards. There can be 
 no fear that the burial-rite of either should do dis- 
 credit to the churchyard. The funerals of Scotch 
 Presbyterians are conducted, I believe, in silence. In 
 a silent interment there can be nothing offensive. 
 The Catholic offices for the dead are the source from 
 whence our own are taken. In either case we have 
 the security for decency which the deliberate public 
 consent of large and well-known bodies of our fellow 
 Christians affords on behalf of the burial-rites in use 
 with them. Great bodies, like these, are not likely 
 to have given their sanction to a form of burial- 
 service discreditable to a public churchyard and inad- 
 missible there. And if we had only to deal with the 
 Presbyterians and the Catholics, the burials question 
 would present itself under conditions very different 
 from those which now do actually attend it. Nay, if 
 the English Dissenters were reducible, even, to a few 
 great divisions, — suppose to the well-known three 
 denominations, — and either there were a common 
 form of burial-service among these denominations, 
 or each denomination had its own ; and if the Dis- 
 senters were content to be thus classed, and to adhere 
 either to a single form of Dissenters' burial-service, or 
 to one out of two or three ; then, also, the case would 
 be different. 
 
 But these are not the conditions under which we 
 are dealing with the burials question. The dissidence 
 of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 
 religion have brought the Dissenters in England to 
 
358 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 classify themselves, not in two or three divisions, but 
 in, I believe, one hundred and thirty -eight. And 
 their contention is, that no matter how they may 
 split themselves up, they have still their right to the 
 churchyard, — new sects as much as old, small sects 
 as much as great, obscure sects as much as famous ; 
 Ranters, Recreative Religionists, and Peculiar People, 
 as much as Presbyterians and Baptists. And no man 
 is entitled to tell them that they must manage to 
 agree among themselves upon one admissible form of 
 burial-service or upon one or two admissible forms. 
 That would be restricting their religious liberty. " It 
 is a misapprehension," the Times, their advocate, tells 
 us, " of the essential nature of a Nonconformist, to 
 suppose that he could ever pledge himself to conform 
 to anything. The essence of his demand is to claim 
 free access to sacred places, which the necessity of 
 nature compels him to use, with such observances 
 as the principles of his communion may prescribe." 
 Whether the observances are seemly, and such as to 
 befit a public and venerable place, we are not to ask. 
 Probably the Dissenters themselves think that a 
 man's conscience recommending them to him makes 
 them so. And what Lord Granville and Mr. Osborne 
 Morgan and the political friends of the Dissenters 
 think on this matter, and how they propose to ensure 
 the decent and Christian order for which they stipu- 
 late, and at the same time not to violate that essential 
 principle of a Nonconformist's nature which forbids 
 him in religion "ever to pledge himself to conform 
 to anything," does not quite appear. Perhaps they 
 
iv.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 359 
 
 have not looked into the thing much. Or they may 
 think that it does not matter much, and that the 
 observances of one body of religionists are likely to 
 be about as good as those of another. 
 
 Yet surely there is likely to be a wide difference 
 between the observances of a great body like the 
 Presbyterians, counting its adherents by hundreds of 
 thousands, having existed for a long time, and possess- 
 ing a well-known reason for existence, — counting, 
 also, amongst its adherents, a great mass of educated 
 people, — there is likely to be a wide difference 
 between the observances of a body like this, and 
 the observances of such a body, say, as the Peculiar 
 People. Both are Dissenters in England. But one 
 affords the same sort of security, that its proceedings 
 in a parish churchyard will be decorous, which Angli- 
 canism itself affords. The other affords no such 
 security at all. And it is precisely in the country 
 churchyards, if accessible to them, that the obser- 
 vances of ignorant and fanatical little sects would 
 parade themselves ; for these sects are found above 
 all in country places, where there are no cemeteries, 
 and not in great towns, where these are. And we 
 are not to take security against such a violation of 
 the parish churchyard, by requiring the hundred and 
 thirty-eight Dissenting sects to agree to one or more 
 authorisable forms of burial-service for themselves, 
 if they object to the burial-service of the Church of 
 England, because, where religious observances are 
 concerned, "it is the essential nature of a Noncon- 
 formist not to pledge himself to conform to any- 
 
360 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 thing ! " But the Nonconformist's pretension, to be 
 dispensed from pledging himself thus, can only be 
 allowed so long as he is content to forego, in exercis- 
 ing it, the use of places with a public and national 
 character. To admit such a pretension in those using, 
 for any purpose, a place with a public and national 
 character, is a mere plunge into barbarism. 
 
 The example of foreign countries is quoted, and of 
 the foreign countries most like our own, France and 
 Germany. In France there are many churchyards 
 with a separate portion for Protestants, and in this 
 separate portion Protestants are buried with their 
 own rites and by their own ministers. This, as has 
 been pointed out, is not what our Dissenters wish 
 for or would accept. In Germany there is no such 
 separation, and Protestants are buried in Catholic 
 churchyards by their own ministers, with their own 
 rites. But, in either case, what Protestants? In 
 France, Protestants belonging to the Reformed, or 
 Calvinistic, Church ; a Church with a great history, 
 a Church well known, with a well-known rite, and 
 paid and recognised by the State equally with the 
 Catholic Church. In Germany, Protestants belonging 
 to the Lutheran Church, to the Calvinistic Church, 
 and to the Church formed by the union of the two. 
 Like the Reformed Church in France, these are all of 
 them public bodies, with a public status, a recognised 
 rite, and offering sound security for their proper use 
 of a public place like the churchyard. Do English 
 people imagine that in France or Germany, whose 
 liberality is vaunted at the expense of ours, Ranters 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 361 
 
 or Eecreative Eeligionists or Peculiar People are 
 all of them free to " have their say " in the parish 
 churchyards 1 Do they imagine that in the use, such 
 as it is, of Catholic churchyards by Protestants in 
 France and Germany, the "essential principle" of 
 our English Nonconformist, "not to pledge himself 
 to conform to anything," is allowed to have sway 1 ? 
 If they do, they are very much mistaken. 
 
 Nothing, therefore, in the example of France and 
 Germany condemns the taking a security from those 
 who are admitted to use their burial-rites in the parish 
 churchyard. If Catholics and the three Dissenting 
 denominations were admitted, each with a recognised 
 burial-service, to our churchyards, that would be, in 
 a general way, a following of the precedent set by 
 France and Germany ; — at any rate, of the precedent 
 set by Germany. But to this the Nonconformists 
 themselves will never consent, therefore it is idle to 
 propose it. And there are other reasons, too, for not 
 proposing such an arrangement in this country. In 
 the first place, it is not required in order to ensure 
 religious burial for Christians of all kinds. The 
 Church of England, as has been already said, was 
 expressly meant to serve the needs of the whole 
 community. And speaking broadly and generally, 
 one may say that the whole Christian community 
 has at present a legal right to her burial-offices, and 
 does obtain them. The Catholic Church does not 
 bury Protestants, but the Church of England buries 
 Protestants and Catholics alike. Then, too, the mass 
 of the Protestant Dissenters use the burial-service of 
 
362 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 the Church of England without objection. And the 
 country is accustomed from of old to see used in the 
 parish churchyards this burial-service only, and to 
 see it performed by the clergyman only. Public 
 feeling would certainly be displeased by a startling 
 innovation in such a matter, without urgent need. 
 And there is no urgent need. Again, there is cer- 
 tainly a danger that Catholics, their position towards 
 the Church of England being what it is, might be 
 disposed, if they were admitted with their ceremonies 
 to the parish churchyards, to make capital, as the 
 phrase is, out of that event, to render it subservient 
 to farther ends of their own. And this danger does 
 not exist on the Continent, for there the Catholics 
 stand towards no Protestant Church in the position 
 which here they hold towards the Church of England. 
 It does not exist in Scotland, where the Established 
 Church is not (I may say it, I hope, as I mean it, 
 without offence) a sufficiently great affair to tempt 
 Catholics to make capital out of the admission of 
 their rites to the parish churchyards. All this would 
 incline one to keep the practice as to burials in the 
 main as it is now, in the English churchyards, unless 
 there is some clear hardship in it. 
 
 Such a hardship is found by some people in the 
 mere fact of not being free to choose one's own rite 
 and one's own minister. As to the free choice of rite 
 in a public place, enough has been said; and it is 
 admitted that in itself the burial-rite of the Church 
 of England is not generally unacceptable. There 
 remains the hardship of not being able to have one's 
 
iv.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 363 
 
 own minister to bury one. The language used by 
 Lord Granville on this topic was surprising. No 
 doubt, the feelings may be soothed and pleased by 
 the thought that the service over one's remains will 
 be performed by a friend and acquaintance, not by a 
 stranger. But to say that the sentiment demanding 
 this satisfaction is so deep and natural that its 
 demands must without fail be obeyed, and that 
 much ought to be sacrificed in order to enable us 
 to obey them, is really ridiculous. From the nature 
 of things, such a sentiment cannot generally be 
 indulged. Life and its chances being what they 
 are, to expect that the minister, whose services we 
 require to bury us, shall be at the same time a friend 
 or acquaintance, shall be at any rate a man of our 
 own choosing, is extravagant. That the form fixed 
 for him to follow in ministering over us shall in itself 
 be proper and acceptable, is the great matter. This 
 being once secured, the more we forget the func- 
 tionary in the service, the better. The Anglican 
 burial-service has a person appointed to read it : the 
 parish clergyman. In itself, the Anglican burial- 
 service is considered, by the great majority of Pro- 
 testant Dissenters, fit and acceptable. And it is 
 taken, almost every word of it, from the Catholic 
 offices of religion, the old common form of worship 
 for Christendom. For a national Christian burial- 
 service this is surely enough. The service is both 
 approved and approvable. But Lord Granville's 
 sentiment, it seems, is wounded, unless he may also 
 approve the minister who is to read it over him. I 
 
364 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 should never have credited him with so much 
 scrupulosity. 
 
 A parishioner's right to be buried in the parish 
 churchyard, with this approved and approvable burial- 
 service, is what we really have to guard. The real 
 grievance is when this right is infringed. It is occa- 
 sionally infringed, and infringed very improperly and 
 vexatiously. The means for infringing it are afforded 
 by the rubric prefixed to the burial-service, a rubric 
 directing that " the office ensuing is not to be used 
 for any that die unbaptized, or excommunicate, or 
 have laid violent hands upon themselves." Ex- 
 communication is no longer practised. To refuse 
 the burial -office to suicides is a penal measure, in 
 the abstract perhaps consonant with public opinion, 
 practically, however, in all but extreme cases, evaded 
 by treating the suicide as of unsound mind. In the 
 denial of the burial -office to "any that die unbap- 
 tized " lies the true source of grievance. 
 
 The office is meant for Christians, and this was 
 what the rubric intended, no doubt, to mark; 
 baptism being taken as the stamp common to all 
 Christians. But a large and well-known sect of 
 Christians, the Baptists, defer baptism until the 
 recipient is of adult age, and their children, there- 
 fore, if they die, die unbaptized. To inquire whether 
 a child presented for burial is a Baptist's child or not, 
 is an inquiry which no judicious and humane clergy- 
 man would make. The office was meant for Chris- 
 tians, and Baptists are Christians, for surely they do 
 not cease to be so because of their tenet of adult 
 
iv.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 365 
 
 baptism. Adult baptism was undoubtedly the primi- 
 tive usage, although the change of usage adopted by 
 the Church was natural and legitimate, and the 
 sticklers (as may so often be said of the sticklers 
 in these questions) would have been wiser had they 
 acquiesced in it. But the rubric dresses the clergy- 
 man in an authority for investigating and excluding, 
 which enables a violent and unwise man to play 
 tricks that might, indeed, make the angels weep. 
 Where he has the law on his side, he can refuse 
 the burial-service outright to innocent infants and 
 children the most piously brought up ; he can, under 
 pretence of doubt and inquiry, adjourn, and often 
 withhold it, where he has not. 
 
 Such a man does harm to the Church ; but it is 
 not likely that he will have the sense to see this, 
 when he has not eyes to see what harm he does to 
 himself. There may not be many of such men, but 
 a few make a great noise, and do a great deal of 
 mischief. There is no stronger proof of the immense 
 power of inspiring attachment which the Church of 
 England possesses, and of the lovable and admirable 
 qualities shown by many of the clergy, than that the 
 Church should still have so strong a hold upon the 
 affections of the country, in spite of such mischief- 
 makers. If the Church ever loses it and is broken 
 up, it will be by their fault. It was the view of 
 this sort of people with their want of temper and 
 want of judgment, the view of their mischievous 
 action, exerting itself with all the pugnacity and 
 tenacity of the British character, and of their fatal 
 
366 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUECH AND KELIGION. [iv. 
 
 prominence, which moved Clarendon, a sincere friend 
 of the Church of England, to that terrible sentence 
 of his : " Clergymen, who understand the least, and 
 take the worst measure of human affairs, of all 
 mankind that can write and read ! " 
 
 The truly desirable, the indispensable change in 
 the regulation of burials, is to remove the power of 
 doing mischief which such persons now enjoy. And 
 the best way to remove it, is to strike out the first 
 rubric to the burial-service altogether. Excommuni- 
 cated persons there are none to exclude. What is 
 gained by insisting on the exclusion of suicides 1 In 
 nine cases out of ten, the plea of unsound mind is at 
 present used to prevent their exclusion, from the 
 natural feeling that to exclude them is really to visit 
 their offence, not upon them, but upon their relations 
 and friends, — to punish the living for the fault of the 
 dead. Where ought the widest latitude of merciful 
 construction to be more permitted, where ought 
 rigidity in sentencing, condemning, and excluding to 
 be more discouraged, than in giving or withholding 
 Christian burial 1 Of the test of baptism we have 
 just now spoken. It was meant as a test of the 
 Christian profession of those buried in a Christian 
 churchyard. The test excludes many whose Chris- 
 tian profession is undoubted. But with regard to 
 this profession, again, where is the virtue of being 
 jealously critical after a man's death and when he is 
 brought for burial ? What good end can be served 
 by severity here, what harm prevented 1 Those who 
 were avowedly and notoriously not Christians, will, 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 367 
 
 it may be supposed, have forbidden their friends to 
 bring them for Christian burial. If their friends do 
 bring them, that is in fact to recant on behalf of the 
 dead his errors, and to make him profess Christianity. 
 Surely the Church can be satisfied with that, so far, 
 at least, as not to refuse him burial ! But, in fact, 
 the great majority of those who reject Christianity, 
 and who openly say so, have nevertheless been 
 baptized, and cannot be excluded from Christian 
 burial. Can it be imagined, that the mere rite of 
 baptism is a rite the non-performance of which on a 
 man during his lifetime makes the Christian burial 
 of him, after his death, a vain and impious mockery 1 
 Yes, clergymen can be found who imagine even this. 
 Clergymen write and print that their conscience will 
 not suffer them to pronounce words of hope over an 
 unbaptized person, because Jesus Christ said : " Ex- 
 cept a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Perhaps no 
 vagaries in the way of misinterpretation of Scripture- 
 texts ought to cause surprise, the thing is so common. 
 But this misinterpretation of Jesus Christ's words is 
 peculiarly perverse, because it makes him say just 
 the very opposite of what he meant to say. " Except 
 a man be cleansed and receive a neio influence" Jesus 
 meant to say, " he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 God." And St. Peter explains what this being cleansed 
 is : " The answer of a good conscience towards God," 
 — of which baptism is merely the figure. Reliance 
 on miracles, reliance on supposed privileges, reliance 
 on external rites of any kind, are exactly what our 
 
368 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND EELIGION. [iv. 
 
 Saviour meant, in the words given in the Fourth 
 Gospel, to condemn; — reliance on anything, except 
 an interior change. 
 
 The rubric in question, therefore, might with 
 advantage be expunged altogether. If clergymen 
 complain that they shall then be compelled to pro- 
 nounce words of hope and assurance in cases where 
 it is shocking, and a mere mockery, to use them, it 
 is to be said that this they are just as much com- 
 pelled to do now. But no doubt such a necessity 
 ought not to be imposed upon the clergy. And in 
 some cases, so long as the service stands as it does 
 now, it is imposed upon them, and this equally 
 whether the rubric is struck out or not. The words 
 expressing good hope concerning the particular person 
 buried impose it. But perhaps what has been said 
 of the unadvisableness of using the occasion of burial 
 for passing sentence of condemnation or pronouncing 
 an opinion against the particular person dead, is true 
 also, though certainly in a much less degree, of using 
 it for pronouncing an opinion in his favour. We 
 are intruding into things too much beyond our ken. 
 At any rate, even though the bystanders, who know 
 the history of the departed, may well in their hearts 
 apply specially to him the hopes and promises for the 
 righteous, the general burial-service has another 
 function. It moves in a higher region than this 
 region of personal application. Its grandeur lies in 
 its being a service over man buried. " We commit 
 his body to the ground in the sure and certain hope 
 of the resurrection to eternal life," is exactly right. 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 369 
 
 The resurrection, not this or that individual's resur- 
 rection. We affirm our sure and certain hope, that 
 for man a resurrection to eternal life there is. To 
 add anything like a pronouncement concerning this 
 or that man's special share in it, is not the province 
 of a general service. The words, "as our hope is 
 this our brother doth," would really be better away. 
 For the sake of the service itself, its truth, solemnity, 
 and impressiveness, they would be better away. And 
 if they were away, there would be removed with 
 them a source of shock and distress to the conscience 
 of the officiating clergyman, which exists now, and 
 which, he might say, would exist even more were the 
 introductory rubric expunged. 
 
 The requirement of a fixed and noble form, con- 
 secrated by use and sentiment, as the national burial- 
 service in our parish churchyards, is a thing of the 
 highest importance and value. Speech-making and 
 prayer -making, substitutions or additions of indi- 
 vidual invention, hazarded ex tempore, seem to me 
 unsuitable and undesirable for such a place and such 
 an occasion. In general, what it is sought to give 
 utterance to by them can find its proper expression 
 in the funeral-sermon at another time. With hymns 
 the case is different. They are not inventions made 
 off-hand by individuals round the grave. We at 
 least know what they will be, and we are safe in 
 them from the incalculable surprises and shocks of a 
 speech or an outpouring. Hymns, such as we know 
 them, are a sort of composition which I do not at all 
 admire. I freely say so now, as I have often said it 
 
 VOL. VII. 2 B 
 
370 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 before. I regret their prevalence and popularity 
 amongst us. Taking man in his totality and in the 
 long run, bad music and bad poetry, to whatever 
 good and useful purposes a man may often manage 
 to turn them, are in themselves mischievous and de- 
 teriorating to him. Somewhere and somehow, and 
 at some time or other, he has to pay a penalty and 
 to suffer a loss for taking delight in them. It is bad 
 for people to hear such words and such a tune as the 
 words or tune of, happy place ! when shall I be, my 
 God, with thee, to see thy face? — worse for them to 
 take pleasure in it. And the time will come, I hope, 
 when we shall feel the unsatisfactoriness of our 
 present hymns, and they will disappear from our 
 religious services. But that time has not come yet, 
 and will not be brought about soon or suddenly. 
 We must deal with circumstances as they exist for 
 us. Hymns are extremely popular both with Church- 
 people and with Dissenters. Church and Dissent 
 meet here on a common ground ; and both of them 
 admit, in hymns, an element a good deal less worthy, 
 certainly, than the regular liturgy, but also a good 
 deal less fixed. In the use of hymns we have not, 
 then, as in the use of speeches and extemporaneous 
 prayings, a source of risk to our public religious 
 services from which they are at present free ; for 
 they allow of hymns already. Here are means for 
 offering, without public detriment, a concession to 
 Dissenters, and for gratifying their wishes. Many 
 of them would like, in burying their friends, to sing 
 a hymn at the grave. Let them. Some concession 
 
TV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 371 
 
 has been already proposed in the way of allowing a 
 hymn to be sung as the funeral enters the church- 
 yard. Let the concession be made more free and 
 ample ; let a hymn or hymns be admitted as a part 
 of the regular service at the grave. The mourners 
 should have to give notice beforehand to the clergy- 
 man of their wish for the hymn, and it ought to be 
 taken from one of the collections in general use. 
 
 This hymnody would lengthen the burial-service. 
 In view of this, I should like to suggest one alteration 
 in that beautiful and noble service ; an alteration by 
 which time might be got for the hymn when desired, 
 and which would moreover in itself be, I cannot but 
 think, an improvement. The burial-service has but 
 one lesson, taken out of the fifteenth chapter of the 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians. The passage taken 
 is very long, and, eloquent and interesting as it is, 
 yet it is also, as a whole, very difficult to understand. 
 I should say that it is difficult as a whole because as 
 a whole it is embarrassed, were it not that many 
 people cannot conceive of an inspired writer as ever 
 embarrassed. I will not raise questions of this kind 
 now. But difficult the lesson certainly is ; difficult, 
 and also very long. Yet it has parts which are most 
 grand and most edifying ; and which also, taken by 
 themselves, are quite clear. And a lesson of Scrip- 
 ture should make, as far as possible, a broad, deep, 
 simple, single impression ; and it should bring out 
 that impression quite clear. Above all, a lesson used 
 at the burial of the dead, and with the hearers' minds 
 affected as they then are, should do this. It should 
 
372 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 be a real lesson, not merely a lection ; which, — from 
 our habit of taking for this purpose long readings, 
 hardly ever less than an entire chapter, and in which 
 many matters are treated, — our lessons read in church 
 too often are. 
 
 Now the offices in our Prayer Book are, as has 
 been already said, for the most part made up out of 
 the old Catholic offices, the common religious offices 
 of Christendom before it was divided. But whoever 
 looks at a Catholic service-book will find that the 
 lessons there are in general very much shorter than 
 ours. There are more of them and they are much 
 shorter, aiming at being as far as possible, all of them, 
 complete wholes in themselves, and at producing one 
 distinct, powerful, total impression ; which is the 
 right aim for lessons to follow. To this end chapters 
 are broken up, and parts of them taken by them- 
 selves, and verses left out, and things which are 
 naturally related brought together. And this not in 
 the least with a controversial design, or to favour 
 what are called Eomish doctrines, but simply to pro- 
 duce a clearer and stronger impression. The unknown 
 arranger of these old lessons has simply followed the 
 instinct of a true critic, the promptings of a sound 
 natural love for what is clear and impressive. And 
 in following this, he gives an instance of the truth of 
 what I have somewhere said, that practically, in many 
 cases, Catholics are less superstitious in their way of 
 dealing with the Bible than Protestants. 
 
 The fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the 
 Corinthians appears in the Catholic offices for the 
 
 
iv.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 373 
 
 dead, but in detached portions ; each portion thus 
 becoming more intelligible, and producing a greater 
 effect. Thus the seven verses from the beginning of 
 the 20th verse (Now is Christ risen from the dead), to 
 the end of the 26th (The last enemy that shall be 
 destroyed is death), form one lesson, and a most im- 
 pressive one. Another admirable and homogeneous 
 lesson is given by taking the verses from the 41st 
 (There is one glory of the sun), to the end of the 50th 
 (Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption), then 
 passing from thence to the beginning of the 53d 
 (For this corruptible must put on incorruption), and con- 
 tinuing down to the end of the next verse (Death is 
 swallowed up in victory). Here we have two separate 
 lessons, much shorter, even both of them together, 
 than the present lesson, and (I think it will be found) 
 more impressive by oeing detached from it. 
 
 But a lesson from the Old Testament is surely to 
 be desired also. Who would not love to hear, in such 
 a service, that magnificent prophecy on the breathing 
 of life into the dry bones, the first ten verses of the 
 thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel? This also is to 
 be found as one of the lessons in the Catholic offices 
 for the dead. In the same offices is another lesson, 
 even more desirable, it seems to me, to have in our 
 burial-service ; — a lesson, the most explicit we have, 
 a lesson from our Saviour himself on the resurrection 
 of the dead. Simply that short passage of the fifth 
 chapter of St. John, from the 24th verse to the 
 end of the 29th ; — the passage containing the verse : 
 The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall 
 
374 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear 
 shall live. 
 
 Thus we have, instead of one long and difficult 
 lesson, four short, clear, and most powerfully impres- 
 sive ones. Let the rubric before the existing lesson 
 be changed to run as follows : — "Then shall be read 
 one or more of these lessons following;" and we 
 shall have the means of making time for the hymn, 
 if hymns are desired, without unduly lengthening 
 the service ; and if hymns are not desired, we shall 
 be richer in our lessons than we are now. 
 
 But the hymn at the grave is not the only con- 
 cession which we can without public detriment make 
 in this matter to the Dissenters. Many Dissenters 
 prefer to bury their dead in silence. Silent funerals 
 are the practice in the Church of Scotland, and, I 
 believe, with Presbyterians generally. To silent 
 funerals in the parish churchyard, there can mani- 
 festly be, on the score of order, propriety, and dig- 
 nity, no objection. A clergyman cannot feel himself 
 aggrieved at having to perform them. The public 
 cannot feel aggrieved by their being performed in a 
 place of solemn and public character. Whenever, 
 therefore, it is desired that burial in the parish 
 churchyard should take place in silence, the clergy- 
 man should be authorised and directed to comply 
 with this desire. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thus I have sought to make clear and to justify 
 what I meant by that short sentence about burials 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 375 
 
 which occurred in what I said at Sion College, and 
 at which a certain dissatisfaction was expressed by 
 some whom I am loth to dissatisfy. The precise 
 amount of change recommended, and the reasons 
 for making it, and for not making it greater, have 
 now been fully stated. To sum up the changes 
 recommended, they are as follows : — The first rubric 
 to be expunged; four lessons to be substituted for 
 the present single lesson, and the rubric preceding 
 it to run : — " Then shall be read one or more of 
 these lessons following;" the words, as our hope is 
 this our brother doth, to be left out; a hymn or 
 hymns, from one of the collections in general use, to 
 be sung at the grave if the friends of the deceased 
 wish it, and if they notify their desire to the clergy- 
 man beforehand; silent burial to be performed on 
 the like conditions. 
 
 The Dissenters, some of them, demand a great deal 
 more than this, and their political friends try to get a 
 great deal more for them. What I have endeavoured 
 is to find out what to a fair and sensible man, without 
 any political and partisan bias whatever, honestly 
 taking the circumstances of our country into account 
 and the best way of settling this vexed question of 
 burials, — to find out what to such a man would seem 
 to be reasonable and expedient. Nor are the conces- 
 sions and changes proposed so insignificant. I believe 
 the majority of the Dissenters themselves would be 
 satisfied with them. Certainly this would be the 
 case if we count the Methodists with the Dissenters, 
 and do not mean by Dissenters, as people sometimes 
 
376 LAST ESSAYS ON CHUKCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 mean, the political Dissenters only. And those who 
 are incensed with the folly of some of the clergy in 
 this matter, and desire to punish them, would prob- 
 ably find that they could inflict upon these men of 
 arbitrary temper no severer punishment, than by 
 simply taking away from them, where burials are 
 concerned, the scope for exercising it. However, 
 my object in what I have proposed is not to punish 
 certain of the clergy, any more than to mortify certain 
 of the Dissenters, but simply to arrive at what is 
 most for the good and for the dignity of the whole 
 community. Certainly it is postulated that to accept 
 some public form shall be the condition for using 
 public and venerable places. But really this must 
 be clear, one would think, to any one but a partisan, 
 if he at all knows what "things lovely and of good 
 report " are, and the value of them. It must be clear 
 to many of the warmest adversaries of the Church. 
 It is not hidden, I am sure, from Mr. John Morley 
 himself, who is a lover of culture, and of elevation, 
 and of beauty, and of human dignity. I am sure 
 he feels, that what is here proposed is more reason- 
 able and desirable than what his Dissenting friends 
 demand. Scio, rex Agrvppa, quia credis. He is keep- 
 ing company with his Festus Chamberlain, and his 
 Drusilla Collings, and cannot openly avow the truth ; 
 but in his heart he consents to it. 
 
 And now I do really take leave of the question 
 of Church and Dissent, as I promised. Whether the 
 Dissenters will believe it or not, my wish to reconcile 
 them with the Church is from no desire to give their 
 
IV.] A LAST WORD ON THE BURIALS BILL. 377 
 
 adversaries a victory and them a defeat, but from the 
 conviction that they are on a false line ; from sorrow 
 at seeing their fine qualities and energies thrown 
 away, from hope of signal good to this whole nation 
 if they can be turned to better account. " The dis- 
 sidence of Dissent, and the Protestantism of the Pro- 
 testant religion," have some of mankind's deepest and 
 truest instincts against them, and cannot finally pre- 
 vail. If they prevail for a time, that is only a tem- 
 porary stage in man's history ; they will fail in the 
 end, and will have to confess it. 
 
 It is said, and on what seems good authority, that 
 already in America, that Paradise of the sects, there 
 are signs of reaction, and that the multitude of sects 
 there begin to tend to agglomerate themselves into two 
 or three great bodies. It is said, too, that whereas 
 the Church of Rome, in the first year of the j)resent 
 century, had but one in two hundred of the popula- 
 tion of the United States, it has now one in six or 
 seven. This at any rate is certain, that the great and 
 sure gainer by the dissidence of Dissent and the Pro- 
 testantism of the Protestant religion is the Church of 
 Rome. Unity and continuity in public religious wor- 
 ship are a need of human nature, an eternal aspiration 
 of Christendom ; but unity and continuity in religious 
 worship joined with perfect mental sanity and free- 
 dom. A Catholic Church transformed is, I believe, 
 the Church of the future. But what the Dissenters, 
 by their false aims and misused powers, at present 
 effect, is to extend and prolong the reign of a Catholic 
 Church, witransformed, with all its conflicts, impossi- 
 
 VOL. VII. 2 B 2 
 
378 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. [iv. 
 
 bilities, miseries. That, however, is what the Dis- 
 senters, in their present state, cannot and will not 
 see. For the growth of insight to recognise it, one 
 must rely, both among the Dissenters themselves and 
 in the nation which has to judge their aims and pro- 
 ceedings, on the help of time and progress; — time 
 and progress, in alliance with the ancient and inbred 
 integrity, piety, good nature, and good humour of the 
 English people. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
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