GIFT OF 
 Marshall C. Cheney 
 
A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY 
 
 BY LAURENTINE HAMILTON 
 
 OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 
 
 "Ever the words of God resound; 
 But the porches of man's ear 
 Seldom, in this low life's round/ 
 Are unsealed, that he may hear." 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 ISSUED FOR THE AUTHOR BY DEWEY & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 1881 
 

 
 )fc ' 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1881. 
 
BR 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 I. The Return to Faith 13 
 
 II. The Word of God Unbound 30 
 
 III. Law in the Kingdom, of God 52 
 
 IV. A Progressive Creation the Type of a Progressive Rev- 
 
 elation 66 
 
 V. The Human Nature of Jesus 83 
 
 VI. The Divinity of Jesus 102 
 
 VII. The New Birth 115 
 
 VIII. The Atonement 128 
 
 IX. Repentance and Forgiveness 141 
 
 X. The Holy Spirit 154 
 
 XI. The Resurrection 169 
 
 XII. The Judgment Day.. 182 
 
 XIII. The Real Point at Issue between Sacred and Secular 
 
 Science 197 
 
 XIV. Physical Man the Final Term of Material Evolution . . 228 
 
 Appendix A. Is the Resurrection of the Body of Jesus 
 a Fundamental Article of the Christian Faith? 256 
 
 Appendix B. Cavour's Prophecy. Can Christianity 
 become the Universal Religion? 265 
 
Introduction. 
 
 "Pele's hair," says the Kanaka, as he sees the smoke 
 and flame streaming from the great chimney of Kilauea. 
 " An eruption of lava," says the scientific materialist ; 
 and curls the lip at the poor superstition which imagines 
 a God in the wonder. " As if we did not know how it all 
 comes to pass chemical forces generated in the subter- 
 ranean laboratory of the earth belch forth these rock- 
 flames ; ' Pele's hair/ indeed ! " Which is the nearer right ? 
 Is there no God hi the case ? If the atom originated the 
 forces that lift and shake that feathery plume of rock, 
 then the materialist has the question. If those forces came 
 forth from a personal Will, immediate or remote, then the 
 Kanaka is nearer the right in both fact and feeling. 
 This raises at once the vital question of religion : Is there 
 a Personal God ? The materialist says no. Jesus of Naz- 
 areth assumes the affirmative, nowhere attempting its 
 demonstration. The agnostic (whose philosophy is just 
 now the fashion) says we can know nothing positive of 
 an infinite Personality. Confused with this Babel of 
 voices, distressed with conscious vagueness in the idea of 
 God, not yet wise enough to see that our limited powers 
 must be content with sufficient evidence that God is, while 
 they can know but in part, and very limited part, what 
 He is, many a thoughtful mind wavers between conflict- 
 
6 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ing opinions, and gets neither comfort nor strength for 
 right living, from any faith. The need is of some idea of 
 God that puts the mind in the right practical attitude to- 
 ward Him. The Kanaka feels his relation to a personal 
 God, and reasons no further. The materialist speculates 
 himself out of all sense of such relation, and feels only 
 the properties of matter in the cold touch of nature. His 
 only felt relation to Heaven is gravitation and starlight. 
 The Kanaka asks help of God. The materialist seeks to 
 adjust" himself to impersonal law and inexorable force. 
 But the Kanaka looks for special interventions of the 
 Deity which never come. He imagines that God will 
 turn aside from the course of nature to smite him with a 
 thunderbolt if he sins, or send supernatural poe in answer 
 to his prayer, or wait on his material wants in like ways. 
 This is a false expectation. Its influence is bad. It 
 makes him a slave to fear, or leads to disappointment, 
 discontent, instability, and quarrel with nature and God. 
 Growing reason corrects the superstition. On the other 
 hand, the materialist, looking upon nature as Spiritless 
 and impersonal, feels no appeal from it, as the voice of 
 God, to conscience, aspiration, hope or love ; he misses the 
 highest influences that have made history heroic, and 
 souls grand. A sense of dependence and heart - relations 
 teaches the world better. 
 
 We want a faith that corrects the errors of each and 
 combines the good of both a faith that purifies by a 
 sense of personal responsibility to God, and warms with 
 personal trust and love, and still holds solidly to the or- 
 der of nature. Until we get such a faith, the alterna- 
 tive will be Kanaka piety, or materialistic indifference 
 and pessimism. There is a good deal of the former in 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 the Christian Church of to-day ; perhaps an equal amount 
 of the latter in the circles of science. 
 
 The discussions of this book* aim to aid, as far as they 
 may, the bringing in of the needed faith. They inter- 
 pret Jesus and his Word, not as a miracle or afterthought 
 of God, thrust into the order of the world, but as the 
 summit and crown of evolution, an integral and insepa- 
 rable part of the whole, the fullness of the divine mani- 
 festation, which was unfolding, progressively, from the 
 first globing of the star - mist, or whatever element it 
 was, that formed our earth. It is my conviction that 
 the course qf moral and spiritual evolution that places 
 Jesus at the head of the human race, can be inductively 
 traced, and with as much clearness, for minds capable of 
 discerning that kind of evidence, as that course of phys- 
 ical evolution which places man at the head of the ani- 
 mal kingdom. In this may we not yet find a truly sci- 
 entific basis for the Christian faith one that will not 
 only command the respect, but compel the assent of the 
 scientific and philosophic mind?-f- It may be a shock to 
 some deep-rooted prejudices ; it may call for the recon- 
 struction of dogmatic conceptions which have been sup- 
 
 * These discussions, save the Appendix and last two articles, were revised 
 carefully from sermons delivered in the pulpit of the Independent Church, 
 Oakland, and first printed in a local paper, issued only for the society of that 
 Church. Some local references are left to stand in them because I have be- 
 lieved that they illustrate conditions of society that are nearly universal. The 
 subjects follow each other in an order that aims at natural succession and 
 something more of unity and completeness than would be possible in a vol- 
 ume of miscellaneous discourses. 
 
 I owe grateful acknowledgments to Mr. A. T. Dewey, senior member of 
 the firm that publishes the book, for the generous liberality which offered to ste- 
 reotype and preserve the weekly discussions in this more permanent form. 
 
 t The last two articles of this book are added in the hope that they will 
 serve to make more clear the rational and scientific basis of my interpretation 
 of Christianity. I am aware that they are insufficient, and hope, with larger 
 opportunity of time and study, to give a fuller statement of the facts and laws 
 that form that basis. 
 
8 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 posed to involve the very essence of Christianity ; but, as 
 has often happened before, it will soon be seen that it de- 
 stroys only that which was becoming an obstacle to the 
 progress of faith. 
 
 Science has set aside the idea of specific acts of the 
 Creator in shaping the forms of vegetable and animal life. 
 The mind takes a new bent from this fact. The corollary 
 is not yet accepted, but it is easy to see whither the course 
 of thought tends. It will not rest until it has set aside 
 the idea of special "Divine Interpositions," "Govern- 
 mental Expedients," " Schemes of Salvation," and all sol- 
 emn fictions of that sort, in God's ruling of the world. 
 Nature knows nothing of such ex post facto laws. Her 
 methods are God's methods. Faith must learn to see God 
 where Science sees him, if at all, in nature, not in eccen- 
 tric power breaking now and then across her laws, as a 
 disturber of her order. " Not a sparrow falls to the ground 
 without your Father," says Jesus. Gravitation is his act. 
 He is in every force of nature. The movement of these 
 forces is the energy of his will. One question here com- 
 prehends all particular questions : Are we to think of 
 God as putting forth special volitions ? (See pp. 205- 
 210). If he does not in creating, does he in ruling ? The 
 conception of special Divine acts will not bear examina- 
 tion. It will be found an absurdity to reason, and prac- 
 tically mischievous. Can we think of the Infinite as put- 
 ting forth more energy or action at one moment than 
 at another? And whence spring the darkest doubts of 
 God's goodness, and the worst tempers of rebellion against 
 his providence ? Is it not from these Kanaka expecta- 
 tions of his special interpositions, awakened only to be 
 disappointed? If that be his way, why does he not come 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 at our cry? We cannot help but ask. He does not come. 
 We doubt his existence, or we charge him with heartless- 
 ness and cruelty. 
 
 But, I am asked, " If God answers not by special act, 
 why pray?" Strange question! Is God's action to be 
 counted for naught because it is uniform? The atmos- 
 phere does not press into the lungs by special volition ; 
 why breathe? Because your act is necessary. God is 
 the atmosphere of spiritual life in which you live, and 
 move, and have your being ; prayer inhales that life. 
 Your field puts forth no special volition to give you a 
 harvest ; why till the soil ? Because, though the field, in 
 its richness, is the perpetual offer of a harvest, you must 
 accept. Plowing and sowing is your act of acceptance. 
 God, the ever-present Spirit, is the perpetual offer of Him- 
 self to the soul. Prayer accepts. And, to the praying 
 soul God gives Himself forever and ever. This is all that 
 any special act could do. 
 
 " Yes, in spiritual influence and fellowship/' it will be 
 said ; " but does he never bestow, are we never to ask, 
 special temporal favors?" At two crises in the life of 
 Jesus, it is recorded that angels came and ministered unto 
 him ; and Jesus himself asked on one occasion, " Thinkest 
 thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall 
 presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" 
 We at once ask here, if it be God's way to come Himself 
 in special assistance, why send the angels? Could they 
 do better than the Omnipotent? Yet, in these very ex- 
 amples, it grows plain how answers to prayer, even in 
 special gifts, may come, without supposing that the Infi- 
 inite Will has first been moved to some new act. They 
 affirm the truth of Mediatorial Ministration. (See pp. 
 
10 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 222-225). All races of men have believed in " minister- 
 ing spirits." Reason cannot pronounce the belief a su- 
 perstition unless it denies spiritual existence outright. 
 What " legions," wiser in God's will than we, may watch 
 over human weakness and want, we know not. We 
 may well speak with reserve here. The laws and limits 
 of such aid are to us undefined. Humility may hope, 
 but selfishness may not presume on indulgence. Let 
 need ask; then let the heart be content with what is 
 given. 
 
 Thinking of God as never putting forth special acts, I 
 am aware, will seem to many, at first, as removing Him 
 far away from human need, and the heart's trust and 
 love. On the contrary, I arn wholly persuaded that, 
 when this way of thinking of Him shall become the habit 
 of faith (as in a more reflecting religion it surely will), 
 the result will be just the opposite. Man will learn to 
 look for God, not into the sky, but where only He can 
 bo found into himself. He will emphasize that central 
 truth of Jesus/s teaching, the Holy Spirit abiding in the 
 disciple forever. He will never think of God as away. 
 If, in the material world, not the lightest effect of gravi- 
 tation, not a sparrow's fall, is without Him, can there be 
 a twinge of conscience or a throb of love in the soul with- 
 out Him ? The same view will also banish effectually the 
 fatal delusion that the natural penalty of sin will be set 
 aside by the arbitrary act of God's pardon a delusion 
 which has made religious teachings prolific of immorality. 
 It will give at once warmth to faith, and moral health to 
 character. 
 
 Corresponding with the view of Christianity as the 
 highest evolution of the religious idea, the Bible is re- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 garded in the following pages as the history of that evo- 
 lution, or, at least, containing the chief materials for that 
 history. It is the story of the " Chosen Race," divinely 
 endowed and inspired to see and tell the world man's re- 
 lation to spiritual realities; becoming the Priesthood of 
 humanity for reasons which we can no more trace than 
 we can tell why John Milton was a poet and John Locke 
 a metaphysician, or why Greece became the teacher of 
 the world in art, and Rome in law. Springing from the 
 darkness of barbarism, with its crude notions of God, we 
 can see the dawn and slow rising of the divine idea that 
 broke at last, full-orbed and glorious, upon the world in 
 the Person and Word of Jesus. Read in this view, the 
 Bible becomes intelligible and full of quickening spiritual 
 truth and power. Under the theories of its inspiration 
 which have hitherto prevailed, it can hardly cease to be a 
 perplexity to honest faith, and the armory from which 
 the skeptic will draw his sharpest weapons. 
 
 We need to distinguish carefully what is constant and 
 what is variable in the progress of thought. The earth 
 is a constant quantity ; our ideas of it vary more or less 
 at every forward step of scientific discovery. The Bible, 
 as it lies in our hands, is a constant quantity ; our inter- 
 pretations of it change with the growing light. God is 
 a constant quantity if it be reverent so to speak ; man's 
 conceptions of what He is vary with every degree of 
 moral development. The scientist interprets the earth ; 
 the theologian, God and the Bible. In their search, each 
 aims to discover all we may know of what these Stabili- 
 ties are. The nearer they approach the reality, the less 
 do their thoughts clash. As each eliminates errors from 
 his line of investigation, their advance converges. Have 
 
12 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 we not hope and assurance in this that they will yet 
 stand together? I have ventured to hope that the view, 
 here presented, of the evolution of Christian truth, will 
 do something toward bringing the long estrangement and 
 strife between reason and faith, science and religion, to 
 an end, and help solemnize their heaven-ordained mar- 
 riage, so that no man will ever again put them asunder. 
 
The Return to Faith. 
 
 Isaiah li: 6: Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the 
 earth beneath, for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the 
 earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall 
 die in like manner; but my salvation shall be forever, and my righteous- 
 ness shall not be abolished. 
 
 In the spirit of these words, and probably with their 
 declaration in mind, Jesus says : " Heaven and earth shall 
 pass away, but my word shall not pass away." Among 
 all the things that change, there is one thing that stands 
 unchanged the truth of morality and religion. He that 
 identifies himself with that truth shall stand with it. He 
 shall change only to higher realizations of its perfection. 
 
 We speak of the laws of nature as immutable; and 
 rightly. The stone tossed into the air returns to the 
 earth by the force of gravitation. This is a perpetual 
 fact. It was never otherwise since the earth existed; 
 never will be otherwise while the earth shall exist. The 
 law is uniform. But the very objects to whose modes of 
 action we refer when we speak of the laws of nature, the 
 whole material realm with which physical science has to 
 do, are forever undergoing changes that must ultimate in 
 dissolution and recombination in new forms of existence. 
 The rock strata of the earth shall dissolve and turn into 
 star-mist. The fossils, buried in them for ages, shall dis- 
 solve with them. Nature's great historic library, the rec- 
 
14 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ord of millions of changes and generations of life upon 
 this earth, running through millions of years, like the 
 famous collection of ancient Alexandria, shall turn to 
 ashes. The very suns that we call fixed stars shall burn 
 out. Science unites with scripture in the testimony that 
 the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth 
 shall wax old like a garment ; and God shall fold them up, 
 and they shall be changed. They have not existed from 
 eternity ; they shall not exist to eternity. But the realm 
 of being, whose laws of action the Word of Christ unfolds, 
 is not touched with this mutability. It abides. That 
 Word shall not pass away. It opens to us the truths of 
 the world of spiritual life that world whose highest laws 
 are duty, aspiration, and love. We are in that realm now. 
 We build for eternity. The virtues we form to-day that 
 strike the key of the eternal harmonies of duty, aspiration, 
 and love, assimilate us to God and all holy intelligences. 
 These will shine on when the fixed stars shall have burned 
 out. 
 
 The Word of Christ is the art of right living. As it 
 embodies in practical form the highest truths of morality 
 and religion, it is the immutable standard of life. It can 
 never cease to be this till the principles of duty and love 
 are reversed, or moral beings cease to exist. " The chief 
 end of man " is to bring his whole being into conformity 
 with this standard. The highest use of life's discipline, as 
 of the knowledge of science or of human history, will 
 be found in the aid it gives to adjust ourselves prop- 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 15 
 
 erly in our moral relations to God and our fellow men 
 according to the terms of that Divine Word. By that do 
 we best learn how to become true souls true to ourselves, 
 our neighbor, and our God. 
 
 Now one who is morally earnest and true will always 
 bear two traits : First, he will seek to know the truth that 
 bears on his duties in every relation. He loves it, and 
 searches for it as the miner for gold. Secondly, when he 
 finds the truth, he acts upon it. To know duty, and not 
 do it, is to him a shameful divorce of things that God hath 
 joined together. It is doing violence to his nature. To 
 see a good thing that he might do, or an evil he might 
 abate, and remain inactive or indifferent, would require 
 an evil transformation of his whole character, it would 
 ' imply something of the baseness that can stand by and 
 look unmoved upon the consummation of an outrage. To 
 see one fallen and not want to raise him up; to see one 
 struggling to rise and not reach forth the helping hand; 
 to see the earnest struggling in the good cause against 
 opposition, and not join forces with theirs, is equally for- 
 eign to every instinct of his being. He wants to know ; 
 he is ready to do these are the never absent traits of such 
 a soul. 
 
 How will the times, and the religionists of the times, 
 stand this test? A becoming earnestness must make the 
 inquiry. Let us see. A few evenings since, in this house, 
 a well known clergyman and popular lecturer kindled a 
 round of applause by a vivid picture of the sham Christi- 
 
16 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 anity of fashionable city churches, and the cheap shifts 
 with which they keep up appearances of doing something 
 to give the gospel to the poor, by missionary chapels and 
 "straw preachers." The picture was just. The evil is 
 real. The applause, even in church, may not have been 
 untimely. But is it enough to see and confess the evil? 
 Will that make us true souls? Have we no responsibility 
 in the case? To make an evening's entertainment out of 
 the poor hypocrisies of religious profession, and the mise- 
 ries and degradation which they insult rather than re- 
 lieve, is one thing; to feel our own duty in the case, and 
 take hold of the need with the hand of help, is quite an- 
 other. 
 
 Let us take the case home. Yonder are the wandering 
 masses, rich and poor, with little thought and less care for 
 religion. Here are comfortably cushioned pews, vacant 
 Sunday after Sunday. We find our own very enjoyable. 
 The expense, if not quite up to the fashionable figure, is 
 quite beyond the purse of many a wanderer yonder. Are 
 we giving ourselves any concern to bring these self-out- 
 casts from the church and these empty seats together? 
 We often print at the end of our church notice the words, 
 "All cordially invited." Does the heart or the con- 
 duct second the invitation? Is that all we can do? Can 
 we use no other means to send our influence beyond our 
 own limited circle? The question is a little uncomfort- 
 able. But self-respect, if we mean to be true to our pro- 
 fessions, demands that we ask it of ourselves. While we 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 17 
 
 applaud the picture of an indolent and heartless Christi- 
 anity, we are in some danger of making ourselves the 
 reality. The case is too serious to be enjoyed as an even- 
 ing's entertainment and then dismissed. What can be 
 done? Or what ought we to attempt? 
 
 Here the facts confronting us half stagger me. I con- 
 fess that, for reasons which will soon appear, I am 
 not sanguine of early results, even if we try and do our 
 best. Not that the gospel has lost its power. That is 
 charged with the same vitality as ever to regenerate hu- 
 man hearts, and purify and transform human lives. But 
 two difficulties stand in the way : First, to get the true 
 gospel; secondly, to find a channel through which it 
 may be brought into contact with the minds and hearts 
 of these unchurched masses. It must be the real gospel. 
 No substitute, no counterfeit, can give the life that comes 
 from the real; no more than the cold marble image can 
 send the thrill of life that comes from the warm human 
 touch. And then, if we had the true gospel, as vital as it 
 fell in living words from the lips of the Christ himself, 
 there are so many thick layers of doubt, and prejudice, 
 and superstition, and downright unbelief to be broken 
 through and torn away before it could be made to touch 
 these masses which most need it, that I fear a long, hard 
 preliminary work -must be done, before we can hope for 
 its large success. Suppose that we should resolve that, for 
 one society under the sun, we would shape our order to 
 meet the case. We take counsel of the " holy grumblers." 
 
18 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 We put away the lofty airs of fashion. We clothe our- 
 selves with the garments of humility. We say that here 
 shall be seen the equality ef discipleship that walked by 
 the side of the Redeemer himself. Then we throw open 
 our church doors; we take our names off the pews; we 
 proclaim abroad that here is a Christian church where 
 every seat is free to every one who will come and occupy 
 it, and where the gospel can be had without money and 
 without price. Then we add to all this a real and hearty 
 welcome to every comer at our sociables, and make the 
 humblest feel that there they are accepted on an equality 
 with the most wealthy and fashionable that honor these 
 gatherings with their presence. What would you see? 
 These masses flocking into these seats and heartily identi- 
 fying themselves with this society and its work? No! 
 Not a dozen a year more than now. And why? They 
 don't want what is called the gospel. They don't believe 
 that it is either necessary or good for them. And they 
 do not know that they would find anything different from 
 that strange compound of philosophic guesses, church 
 rites, monstrous dogmas and childish superstitions, min- 
 gled with many grains of real truth, which they have 
 been taught to call by that name, if they should come 
 here. That compound they do not believe in. They want 
 no more of it. They would not come to hear if you should 
 make your pews ever so free. 
 
 I speak from experience when I say this. Permit me 
 to tell you how I learned it. When this church was or- 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 19 
 
 ganized, ten years ago, I said it must be a true Christian 
 church, for the poor as well as the rich. We started in 
 Brayton Hall, doors open, seats all free. We sent out our 
 welcome. The people did not come in. I said they did 
 not know what we meant; I would go to them and tell 
 them. I would follow the Christ, whose distinction 
 was that he preached the gospel to the poor. So I went 
 down below Seventh street, and in Judge Fogg's office, 
 kindly thrown open to me, called in those who would 
 come, talked to them in a familiar way, and invited con- 
 versation on the great theme. Judge Fogg said it was 
 the most interesting meeting he ever attended. A few 
 more came in the next Sunday. The address was brief; 
 the following conversation still more animated. At the 
 third meeting, they said it was too good a thing to be 
 shut up in such narrow limits, and we must go up town 
 into a larger hall, and give all a chance. We must organ- 
 ize. We must have a President and by-laws. We must 
 observe parliamentary order. It took the name of " The 
 Society of Free Inquiry." Very soon it turned into a sort 
 of free debating club, where every sort of self-conceit came 
 in to ventilate its decimal of an idea. It was little better 
 than a public resort for amusement, or, at best, entertain- 
 ment, and fortunately died with a crowded debate on 
 " Romanism and Liberty as related to Public Education," 
 between the late President Durant, of our University, and 
 our well known fellow townsman, Mr. Zach. Montgomery. 
 This taught me one lesson, viz., that the preacher who 
 
20 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 goes to the people must have a gospel to which he can 
 hold them as the main interest. It must not be the start- 
 ing point of debate over a thousand curious but irrelevant 
 questions, that do not touch the immediate personal moral 
 need. It must be no boggling over theological or meta- 
 physical puzzles, such as whether the Christ had two 
 souls, or whether God exists in three personalities, or how 
 many angels can find foot-hold together on the point of a 
 needle. It must be more than a scientific interest; more 
 than food for the intellect, or stimulus to curiosity. It 
 must vitally touch the life of the soul. Its herald must be 
 able to say to men, first, " This gospel commends itself to 
 your reason ; it is its own authority. You can see it to be 
 true if you will consent to consider it without prejudice." 
 Then he must be able to add with equal confidence : " It 
 presents the first matter of life to your consideration. You 
 should postpone every other unsettled question till you 
 have adjusted yourself rightly to this." No other kind of 
 gospel is worth preaching. 
 
 So I brooded over this matter for nine years, never los- 
 ing sight of it for a single day. Meantime, I was recon- 
 sidering the whole system that had come to me through 
 the pulpit, and Sunday-school, and my theological teach- 
 ers, as the gospel. I was searching, that I might, if possi- 
 ble, penetrate through tradition and dogma to the central 
 and essential truth of the Eternal Word, that which was 
 for the perpetual need, and for universal man. I sought 
 to winnow out of this the chaff of individual conceits and 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 21 
 
 temporary opinions. I sought to study man as he is as 
 human life shows him that I might, if possible, see what 
 makes his need of a gospel of salvation. I studied the 
 Christ hi his own Word and life, that I might see what 
 there is in him to meet that need. I could see clearly 
 enough that I must have a positive faith to preach, and 
 one that would rouse those who accepted it to action. At- 
 tacking errors alone would not do. Exploding an error 
 does not give men the truth. To shatter the old dogmas, 
 and tear down the churches, would not build up right- 
 eousness. To wrench away idols does not give men the 
 true God. To drive away the ghosts does not furnish 
 them with pleasant company. To banish superstitions 
 does not bring in realities. To pull down is not to build. 
 Building is the difficult thing. Any dirt-delver, with pick 
 and spade, could pull down St. Paul's or St. Peter's, or the 
 Cathedral of Milan. To build better would require a 
 genius surpassing a Wren or an Angelo, aided by the mas- 
 ter workman. Much that we have boasted over as our 
 brave progress in religion, has been this cheap work of 
 destruction. The dirt-delvers of theology have been very 
 busy, and have made great shoutings over their achieve- 
 ments, when they have leveled away some turret, or pin- 
 nacle, or porch, or vestry, too rotten to stand alone much 
 longer. Let us not undervalue their work. It was nec- 
 essary. But the time to build is now upon us. The dirt- 
 delvers stand without plan, perplexed and hesitating be- 
 fore the work. 
 
22 A BEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 During the maturing process of my own mind, I had 
 firmly resolved that I would never preach my opinions as 
 settled truths; that you who look to me for spiritual food 
 should never find me distributing the unripe fruits of my 
 thought among you. If I expressed an opinion to you, it 
 was given*only as an opinion, If I doubted, I never failed 
 to speak the doubt. I have dealt honestly with you and 
 with myself, whether wisely or not. At last I reached 
 convictions in which my own mind found rest and confi- 
 dence. Truth hi its substance as bread for the soul's hun- 
 ger; truth in its relations as self-consistent and satisfying 
 the reason, and truth in its adaptation to the times, seemed 
 to open the revelation of new possibilities of practical 
 success in persuading men to the faith of Christ. 
 
 I resolved to make a new effort to preach the Eternal 
 Word to the people not to the poor, not to the rich, but 
 to all who would hear me. Full of enthusiasm, I went 
 down below Seventh street again, hired Van Winkle Hall 
 at my own expense, hoping that a larger would soon be 
 needed, seated it reasonably well, banished the contribu- 
 tion-box, went from house to house during the week, 
 explained my design, and invited the people to come. I 
 associated with me persons of good powers of popular ad- 
 dress, in full sympathy with the object. The papers 
 quietly announced our movement. Our choir kindly came 
 down to sing for us. We met through the Sunday even- 
 ings of two months or more. I will not dwell on the 
 results. Suffice it to say that nearly all who came at- 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 23 
 
 tended some form of preaching elsewhere, and no larger 
 hall was ever needed. 
 
 From this experiment, two suspicions, which had some- 
 times risen in my mind in previous reflection on the mat- 
 ter, were confirmed : First, that it is not the obstacles which 
 fashion and wealth put in the way of the people that keep 
 them from hearing the gospel ; secondly, that some changed 
 conception of the whole matter of religion, some new way 
 of looking at the subject, must create in the minds of the 
 masses a new sense of their need of religious faith and 
 worship, or they will never come into the churches. A 
 revolution of thought must precede an awakening of ear- 
 nestness. Look at these two points. Is it aristocracy and 
 fashion that keep the poor out of the churches ? The 
 Romanists find no difficulty in crowding their gorgeous 
 and expensive cathedrals, although the gulf that separates 
 the rich and the poor socially in their communion is as 
 broad, at least, as in any other. All flock together around 
 their altar and ritual. And why? Because they have 
 succeeded in keeping up the belief in those masses that 
 there is something to be obtained there, and nowhere else, 
 which is essential to their temporal and eternal welfare. 
 They feel that their religion is a necessity. But you say 
 that it is ignorance that flocks around the altars standing 
 in the dim religious light of their superstitions. Educate 
 the people, let in the day, touch their minds with the best 
 thought of the time, and they will turn skeptics and stay 
 away. Aye, indeed! I grant you that. Too well they 
 
24 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 see that the desk of the public school teacher and the altar 
 of their worship cannot stand long side by side. But are 
 you going to say there is no possible form of Christian 
 faith and worship which education will not banish? Must 
 the night of ignorance around the altar of prayer be eter- 
 nal? When I believe that, I go down from this pulpit the 
 last time. I will preach no faith which cannot bear the 
 sunshine. With my whole' soul I believe the religion 
 which the Christ really taught is the one want of the 
 multitude which dwarfs every other. If that religion 
 were taught in the churches, and the people felt their need 
 of it, there would not be room for them. Wealth and 
 fashion would not keep them away. They would crowd 
 them aside if they were in their way, as they crowd them 
 aside at a public fair. Pew rents would be no bar. They 
 are willing to pay for what they want; or if they have 
 no money, they would gladly take it for granted, when 
 such a need is concerned, that you are in earnest when 
 you invite them to come and share the conveniences of 
 worship and instruction you have provided. But the fact 
 is they are indifferent or hostile. They will give neither 
 time nor money for what they don't want, much less for 
 what they despise. Some believe neither in God nor in 
 immortality. More are vague and confused in their reli- 
 gious notions. There is a dim feeling that a better hope 
 for their future would be a good thing, but they know not 
 what. They doubt whether any religion they know any- 
 thing about would do them good. They are uncertain, 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 25 
 
 so they drift along, and wait to see what will come. The 
 worst feature of the case is that through all this skepti- 
 cism, and uncertainty, and indifference, there runs a deep 
 undercurrent of contempt for doctrines that have been 
 held up to them as the essential thing in Christianity. 
 They look at history, and feel that some of those doctrines 
 are at once a menace to their mental liberty, and an insult 
 to their intelligence. They will not go where the sound 
 of them offends their ears. They are told that they are 
 in danger of being lost forever, in a sense from which 
 every idea of a just God, or of possible truth, revolts. 
 They fear no such danger. They want no Saviour from 
 such fictitious terrors. They prefer to throw their chances 
 on the opposite teaching, which tells them that they are 
 not lost, never were, and never will be. It looks the more 
 reasonable of the two, and indifference finds comfort in 
 the assurance that there is no danger. The natural and 
 immutable tendencies of moral experience, under both 
 these views of their condition, are lost sight of. This 
 modern confusion of tongues among religious teachers 
 befogs them. Their attention is completely diverted from 
 the real need of their souls. Speak of religion as an es- 
 sential thing to the well-being of man, and they do not 
 know what you mean. Preach to them just as Christ 
 preached, and their minds would be on the fictions of the 
 creeds. Talk of salvation from sin, and you are thinking 
 of one thing, they of another ; you of a bad moral condi- 
 tion in men, they of some outward penalty to be inflicted 
 
26 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 upon them ; you of their need of Christ's helping sympa- 
 thy in their efforts to rise into some sense of God's truth 
 and love ; they of running away from a whip. Your words 
 are lost in the air. 
 
 No temporary excitement of religious feeling is going to 
 disturb this deep indifference. Our Hammond and Moody 
 revivals but ripple the surface ; they are not f elt'lit all in 
 the depths. Indeed it may be doubted whether the final 
 effect of these superficial excitements is not to deepen the 
 indifference. The churches have come to rely on them 
 largely, if not mainly, for new conquests ; but the reaction 
 often sinks and stays below the point of apathy from which 
 the movement started. It is the young, chiefly, that are 
 caught up by these spiritual whirlwinds, and three years 
 after the gale, hardly one in ten will be found maintain- 
 ing their religious interest or activity. That means nine 
 out of ten still further alienated from the ways of the 
 church. The modern evangelist, however well-meaning, 
 and even useful in certain directions, will not bring the 
 remedy for the times. 
 
 What, then, is the first thing to be done? The answer 
 is seen in the necessities of the case. Do away with this 
 confusion of thought; disabuse the minds of the people of 
 these fictions that have taken the place of Christianity; 
 then concentrate their attention on the essential truth that 
 comes to us from the lips and life of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 When that is seen as it is, men will begin to feel their 
 need. That truth will commend itself. Their hunger 
 
THE KETURN TO FAITH. 27 
 
 will know its bread, and they will seek that bread wher- 
 ever it can be found. 
 
 In order to diffuse this new way of thinking through 
 the general mind, three things must be accomplished: 
 
 1. The people at large must be brought to see what the 
 Bible really is, as the most advanced and reverent Chris- 
 tian scholars of the day have come to understand its his- 
 tory and interpret its inspiration. This alone will be a 
 revolution. Only in this true understanding and inter- 
 pretation can our Sacred Scriptures ever come back into x 
 general respect and confidence as the true light ot religion. 
 This need will make the theme of my next discourse. 
 
 2. The people must be brought to think of Christianity, 
 not as a miracle, but as a part of God's unchanging order 
 in the evolution and manifestation of his being and pur- 
 poses. They must learn that God's methods in saving and 
 governing man are as much in the order and uniformity 
 of law as his methods in creating and controlling the ma- 
 terial world. The profound change in religious thinking 
 which this point involves will become apparent as we give 
 it further examination. The belief in special divine inter- 
 positions in the affairs of this world, and the expectation 
 of them, has been the paralysis of conscience and all moral 
 energy, and the disease of religious experience. The sense 
 of law in God's methods will bring back new health and 
 energy. 
 
 3. Then the interpretation of Christ's teachings must be 
 brought to harmonize with this view of divine inspiration 
 
28 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 and government. Repentance, faith, forgiveness, regenera- 
 tion, atoning sacrifice, the indwelling and power of the 
 Holy Spirit, the resurrection and final judgment, have all 
 been carried more or less into a realm of fiction and ca- 
 price. They must be brought back into the world of 
 actual life and experience. When interpreted by reality, 
 their truth will be confessed, their need will be felt. 
 
 Thus presented, that Word of Christ which shall never 
 pass away would come to men as almost a new religion. 
 It is no divine scheme of salvation thrown into this world 
 by miracle, no after-thought or splice to mend a break 
 in God's work, but the orderly unfolding of heaven's pur- 
 pose in forces that have been steadily working toward 
 completion from the foundation of the world. It presents 
 to men a Saviour who came in the order of nature, which 
 is the order of God, J/o enlarge the revelation of divine love 
 found less clearly in nature; appealing to the heart of 
 enmity in the mighty persuasions of self-sacrifice for the 
 hater, pointing the penitent, not to a way of escape from 
 the obligations of law, but to the healing that comes to 
 the contrite soul by returning into harmony with eternal 
 law. which is only another name for eternal love, beckon- 
 ing the soul, self -enslaved and struggling with its chains, 
 to the open door of mercy which leads to the bosom of 
 God, filling earth with hope and eternity with glory. 
 Hold up such a gospel to men in its divine simplicity and 
 reality, and reason and heart and all the soul will respond, 
 " This is the Saviour we need." 
 
THE RETURN TO FAITH. 29 
 
 Slowly this revolution of thought may come. You and 
 I may see but the beginning. But come it will. The eter- 
 nal order and nature of things will not change. Facts 
 will remain as they are. The growing light must reveal 
 what is. The poor fictions which men have put in the 
 place of reality will disappear as ghosts vanish in the ad- 
 vancing dawn. 
 
The Word of God Unbound. 
 
 John v: 39. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have 
 eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. 
 
 The Old Testament scriptures testify of Christ as the 
 sprouting acorn and the growing sapling testify o the 
 full-grown oak. The growing life prophesies its own 
 completeness. That germ of the kingdom of God among 
 men, which first becomes apparent to us in the account 
 which the sacred writings give us of the faith of Abraham, 
 the enlarging growth of which can be traced through all 
 the pre-Christian stages of Hebrew history, reached its 
 maturity and perfection in the Christ, and from him was 
 prepared to scatter its ripe seed over the field of the world. 
 I shall claim to-day that, whatever we may doubt in that 
 history, or abate from it as fiction, or legend, or incredible 
 absurdity, we can trace through its progress, with a dis- 
 tinctness that leaves no reasonable doubt, the expanding 
 of that germ of divine truth into clearer meaning an 1 
 broader proportions, till we see it culminate in what we 
 may accept with certainty as the highest manifestation of 
 divine truth to man the words and life of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth. I take up this subject that you may see the grounds 
 of certainty upon which our religion rests, and how unwise 
 and unnecessary it is to base it upon matters that are, and 
 perhaps to the end of time must remain, in question. 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 31 
 
 The general impression prevails among Christians, that 
 the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments, were 
 composed by certain authors who were divinely inspired 
 and infallibly guided, whose names are attached to them> 
 and to whose hands their origin can be traced without any 
 break in the chain of historic evidence. Among those 
 who do not accept the Bible as divinely inspired, the im- 
 pression is equally prevalent that this is the claim made 
 for those scriptures by all reliable Christian teachers, and 
 that it is necessary to substantiate the assumption before 
 they can be made the valid basis of religion. I think it 
 will appear in the course of this discussion that both of 
 these impressions are erroneous. Modern scholars and in- 
 terpreters claim, on the contrary, that their researches 
 have demonstrated beyond question that there is no such 
 certainty respecting the authorship of a large portion of 
 the Bible as has been supposed, and considerable portions 
 of it, in the Old Testament especially, could not possibly 
 have come from the hands to which they have been popu- 
 larly ascribed. The Pentateuch, for example, or first five 
 books of the Bible. In our early years, we were never 
 allowed to think of any other than Moses, the great law- 
 giver of Israel, as having had anything to do with its 
 composition. But the Biblical interpreters referred to are 
 now telling us that it could never have had existence in 
 its present form, or as a whole, till after the carrying away 
 of Israel to Babylon, eight hundred years later than the 
 death of Moses. It had long ago been noticed that the 
 
32 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 last of these five books contained an account of the death 
 of Moses himself, and it was felt that an author could 
 hardly be credited with acting as reporter of his own 
 funeral ceremonies. But it was easy to suppose that some 
 contemporaneous scribe attached this short addition to the 
 work of Moses to make his personal history more com- 
 plete. But a closer scrutiny discovers scores of allusions 
 which imply that the writer was living in a later age; 
 such as, "The Canaanite was then in the land;" "These 
 are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before 
 there reigned any king over the children of Israel." 
 Where else should the Canaanite be while Moses was lead- 
 ing Israel through the wilderness, we ask ; and who is this 
 writing the history when the Canaanite is no longer in 
 the land, and after the first king had reigned over Israel, 
 more than four hundred years after Moses? Moreover, if 
 any other author should have written like this of himself: 
 "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men 
 which were upon the face of the earth," we should not 
 feel that such a report of his humility from his own hand 
 quite sustained the claim. We would be glad to save the 
 credit of our hero by finding the hand of an interviewer 
 in the fulsome praise. There is also internal evidence, say 
 these scholars, that these books were" made up, in large 
 part, of various documents and traditions of different and 
 unknown origin; the style and many other distinctive 
 peculiarities forbid the idea that they all sprang from the 
 same mind. By whom they were gathered and combined 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 33 
 
 in their present form, with considerable additions of this 
 latest compiler, we know not, and probably never will 
 know. t 
 
 So of the Psalms the evidence is such that no competent 
 interpreter, with all the facts before him, can resist the 
 conclusion that the larger part ascribed to David never 
 could have been composed by him. Professor Robertson 
 Smith, inclined to be liberal in his allowance, does not feel 
 certain of more than two. Larger proportions of the pro- 
 phesies are conceded to have come from the persons whose 
 names they bear; but of these, again, many exceptions 
 must be made. Notably of Isaiah. The last third of that 
 grandest of all the prophetic writings must be credited, not 
 to Isaiah, but to one who has come to be designated among 
 the interpreters as " the great Unknown." 
 
 When we come into the New Testament, the light 
 grows clearer; but even here we are astonished to find 
 that the "four gospels" cannot be proved to have existed 
 in the form to which they come to us earlier than one 
 hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty years after 
 the crucifixion of Jesus. No ancient author pretends to 
 have ever seen the original manuscript of either of the 
 evangelists. And while made up of memorials and tradi- 
 tions that bear reasonable evidence of authenticity, so far 
 as they are historical, no one can dispute but that there 
 was large opportunity and strong motives for the intro- 
 duction of marvelous and legendary matter into the course 
 of their narrative. It is the view of many, Matthew 
 
34 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Arnold among the number, that the profound speculations 
 concerning the "Logos" or Word, in the gospel ascribed to 
 John, should be credited to some highly cultivated and 
 philosophic Christian Jew, of Alexandrian education, who 
 took occasion to unite the peculiar views of his own school 
 of thinkers with the memorials of Jesus that he wrote out, 
 possibly from the lips of that apostle himself. The man- 
 ner of alluding to places in Palestine with which the " be- 
 loved disciple" must have been perfectly familiar, betrays 
 the hand of the stranger. It is impossible to examine the 
 whole . composition closely, and retain the belief that it 
 came just as we receive it, from the pen of John. 
 
 Of the epistles, there is general agreement of testimony 
 that the larger ones ascribed to Paul, with the exception 
 of " Hebrews," bear the unmistakable impress of that au- 
 thor. Some of the shorter ones are decidedly dubious. 
 Among the number must be reckoned the second and 
 third of John, and the epistle of James. The second of 
 Peter is counted out entirely by an almost unanimous 
 vote. 
 
 I can find room in this discourse for only a bare outline 
 statement of the case thus submitted to the judgment of 
 Christendom. But who are the men that presume to 
 write such things of our Sacred Scriptures. Not, I beg 
 you to notice, the destructive rationalistic critics of France 
 and Germany only, like Renan, Baur, and Strauss, but 
 many of the most earnest and reverent, as well as pro- 
 foundly learned clergy of the churches of England and 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 35 
 
 Scotland, as the late Dr. Temple and Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, 
 Bishop Colenso, Dean Stanley, and Prof. Robertson Smith, 
 just now under the maul of Presbytery for his article on 
 the Bible, written for the new Encyclopedia Brittanica. 
 These authors differ widely from each other on minor 
 points. They often stand opposed to each other as to the 
 real date of some of the sacred writings, especially of the 
 older documents, and also in regard to the degree in which 
 the facts disclosed by their researches affect the credibility 
 of the history or the divine authority of the teaching. 
 Some insist on a basis of fact in the narrative, where oth- 
 ers affirm that the whole tissue of the story must have 
 been spun and woven in the imagination of an author 
 living centuries after the pretended period of the events.. 
 But on the main question a growing unanimity will be- 
 observed. Those who apply themselves to the in- 
 vestigation without bias, and take pains to render them- 
 selves competent to form a judgment in the case, invaria- 
 bly agree that the facts which have already come to light, 
 when made known to the people, must compel an immense 
 modification of the current views in the church respecting 
 the way in which God is revealed in the Bible. Those 
 facts will remain what they are. They cannot much 
 longer be covered. They will out. Like the facts of 
 astroromy, or geology, or evolution, they will compel the 
 human mind to bend to them ; they are not going to bend 
 to its pre-conceptions. Dr. Arnold, many years ago, pre- 
 dicted the shock they would give ere long to tho popular 
 
36 A EEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 reverence for the Bible. He knew but a part of what is 
 now known, but he knew enough to assure him that a 
 great change would come. I have not enj oyed opportunities 
 of original investigation in the questions here raised. I 
 make no pretensions to speak on the authority of my own 
 labors in that line. But I have entered into the labors of 
 the masters of these questions. I have studied both sides. 
 In so doing, I have found the notions in which my theo- 
 logical training aimed to establish me, respecting the way 
 in which the Bible was given to man, dropping away in 
 spite of myself. I have been led by the very obligations 
 of my position to inquire, for myself, as for you who look 
 to me as a teacher in spiritual things, What can we rely 
 on? Is there anything we can accept as established and 
 certain beyond the possibility of being shaken by any 
 researches and discoveries that have been made, or that 
 ever can be made? What may we hold for our own life 
 and hope ; what may we teach our children, in the assur- 
 ance that it can never deceive or fail us or them as the 
 foundation of religious trust? Must we throw away the 
 Bible? Must we count the religion which its teachings 
 inspire and nourish a delusion? Or may it be that all 
 these changes touching the letter, the mere shell of the 
 truth, will only serve to set free the substance and spirit 
 of the Word for new and higher demonstrations of power? 
 It is to give you the answers in which my own mind has 
 found rest, that I have ventured to bring forward this 
 theme. The time is more than ripe to open it to the peo- 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 37 
 
 pie at large, and prepare them for the impending change- 
 There is an honest timidity about attempting this on the 
 part of many good people, which I cannot share. I see 
 neither its need nor its wisdom. It seems to me to be run- 
 ning into the very disasters which it so dreads to bring on. 
 It puts on a face of solemn alarm, and whispers under 
 bated breath, " The facts may compel the learned to change, 
 but hush ! how terribly will you shake the trust and dis- 
 turb the peace of many sincere souls, beautiful in the 
 childlike simplicity of their faith! Do not, oh do not 
 trouble such! They can never separate the incidental 
 from the essential in inspiration; the form from the sub- 
 stance. Shake their belief in the infallible truth of every 
 letter of the sacred record, and their whole Bible will be 
 gone. Every dot is a vital part to them. Their mistaken 
 beliefs do not harm them, dear, good souls ! Leave them 
 alone ! " Ah, there is infinite mischief in this smothering 
 of light. The time has gone by for treating the people as 
 babes that must be thus tenderly lapped on the knees of 
 authority, and fed. the milk of the Word with bib and tea- 
 spoon. Many of them are ahead of their spiritual guides. 
 They have leaped from the lap of authority and made 
 their way out of doors. They see something of what is 
 passing in the sunlight, and wonder much at what it all 
 means. If a little knowledge might prove a dangerous 
 thing to some childlike believers, so beautiful in the sim- 
 plicity of their trust, that little has already come to mul- 
 titudes, disturbing their faith, and a little more may neu- 
 
38 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tralize its danger. Shall the quiet of these comfortable 
 little ones whose peace is never ruffled by the gentlest 
 breeze of doubt, be held so precious as to forbid us doing 
 anything for these vaster endangered multitudes? The 
 only safety is in the forward march. It can never be 
 found by going into perpetual winter-quarters to nurse 
 our comfortable camp-fires, for fear we may catch cold, 
 or encounter too stout a foe if we move on. 
 
 And now let us turn to consider the great outstanding 
 facts and doctrines of the Bible that are placed beyond 
 reasonable question, and see if they are not a certain and 
 sufficient basis of religion. 
 
 A marvelous race came into notice over three thousand 
 years ago, whose historic life can b3 clearly traced down 
 to our time. They dwell among the nations of to-day " a 
 peculiar people." Their own traditions say that they 
 sprung from an ancient Patriarch, named Abraham, who 
 emigrated from UT, of the Chaldees, westward to the 
 eastern shore of the Mediterranean, that he might found 
 a nation devoted to the worship of the M 03T HIGH GOD. 
 Some of the critics insist that this name represents, not a 
 historical person, but a tribe; others, that it is but a myth. 
 Whether it be the one or the other, no matter to our faith. 
 The name does stand for the germinal idea of a great re- 
 ligion. The nation that cherished and evolved that germ 
 must have had an origin. Their faith must have had its 
 beginning. There must have been a life in its germ capa- 
 ble of the mighty growth that has sprung from it. Great 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 39 
 
 religions do 'not spring forth without origin any more than 
 great nations. A feeble germ cannot grow into a great 
 religion any more than a puff-ball can grow into a world. 
 The central idea of that faith must have originated in an 
 individual. Religions do not rise from masses of men any 
 more than constitutions of government or systems of phil- 
 osophy. There must be an originating mind. With what 
 person soever, standing at or near the dim origin of Israel, 
 the "worship of the Most High God first rose, represented 
 to us by whatever name, or by no name, he clearly de- 
 serves to be counted "the Father of all them that believe." 
 Inheriting his mighty idea and its living fruits, small 
 trouble should it give us that we cannot be certain of his 
 name and the minute incidents of his life. 
 
 In a tolerably clear historic light, this race emerges to 
 our view in the land of Egypt, as a people in crushing 
 servitude. A great leader and law-giver, Moses by name, 
 rises among them, delivers them from the hand of their 
 oppressors, leads them forth from -the land to find a new 
 place of habitation, consolidates their separate tribes into 
 a nation, gives them the " ten words," or commandments, 
 for their moral and religious guidance, and establishes 
 them in the worship of Jehovah. So much the learned 
 critics find historic reasons to concede. It is enough for 
 our faith. The man who had wisdom to do so much for 
 his people must have been able to give them many things 
 besides. His power is seen in the consolidated nation. 
 We know that under some leadership this people con- 
 
40 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 quered possession of the land of Canaan, which their tra- 
 ditions claim to have been divinely promised to Abraham 
 as a home for his descendants. There we can trace the 
 outline of their varied history for twelve hundred years. 
 No history like it of any other people. Lapses from the 
 worship of Jehovah into idolatry through all the earlier 
 centuries, morals growing too corrupt for the land to bear; 
 but great reformers, prophets of Jehovah, ever rising to 
 denounce the judgments of heaven upon their infidelity 
 and iniquities, to call them to repentance and return to 
 the God of their fathers ; to insist on purity of morals and 
 righteousness of life as the essential condition of his favor, 
 and to fire the hearts of the faithful with the divine prom- 
 ise of a magnificent future in store for the race. Grand 
 souls were those old prophets; teachers such as no other 
 religion or nation of ancient days gave the world. Provi- 
 dence wrought with their words in the discipline of the 
 people. Disaster after disaster fell upon their armies in wars 
 with enemies round about them. Humiliations of defeat, 
 subj ugation, and captivity followed each other in succession, 
 until the great body of the people were borne away to- 
 gether from their land of promise into the country of their 
 conqueror. This purged the virus of idolatry from their 
 blood. The remnant that came back to their old homes 
 after seventy years brought in them an abhorrence of 
 idols that counted any reverence or worship paid to any 
 other than Jehovah an inexpressible abomination and the 
 sum of all villanies. Their religion thus demonstrated its 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 41 
 
 purifying power. It contained some mighty element of 
 truth that made the nation purer and better as it grew 
 older a significant fact that I think you will discover in 
 the history of no other religion of the ancient world. 
 
 But now we come to facts bearing more vitally upon 
 our faith. We turn to Northern Palestine, to the geo- 
 graphical division called Gallilee, and to the small, mean 
 city of Nazareth. Here is a rude, half -savage population, 
 of bad reputation even in an age that was not nice in its 
 moral discriminations. From these Gallilean Jews, about 
 eighteen and one-half centuries ago, rose a most remarka- 
 ble character, in the person of a workingman of this pro- 
 vincial city. We have what purports to be a fourfold 
 biography of him in the first four books of the New Tes- 
 tament, written by his intimate friends. We may doubt 
 the miraculous origin claimed for him, the precocious wis- 
 dom by which he is reported to have astonished the doc- 
 tors of the temple at twelve years of age, and the super- 
 natural deeds by which he still more profoundly amazed 
 the multitudes. These are not the pivots of our faith. 
 Prove them facts or prove them fictions to-day, and the 
 religion he taught would be and remain just the same. 
 In no sense do they enter into its substance. But this we 
 know the testimony weaves itself in with all subsequent 
 history, and speaks everywhere in the best life of Christen- 
 dom to-day this obscure carpenter, T esus of Nazareth, 
 conceived the idea of a universal kingdom of Truth, to be 
 built up within the hearts of men by faith in God ; its sole 
 
42 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 weapons of conquest truth and love, its fundamental law 
 " Good Will to Men," its symbol of power the cross, it ; bat- 
 tle-cry " self -sacrifice," its title to promotion humility, its 
 noblest service kind deeds to the poor and needy, its aim 
 the redemption of universal humanity from sin and all 
 forms of evil. No dream of philosopher was ever so bold. 
 The ambitions of the great world-conquerors look puny 
 in comparison. It would seem to indicate insanity, or 
 else some divine insight into the power of truth. This 
 humble Jewish workingman goes quietly about the 
 effort to establish this kingdom. He gathers a dozen 
 followers around him from equally humble stations in life, 
 preaches repentance of sin to the people, purity of morals, 
 righteousness in all actions, self-control, self-devotion to 
 truth, forbearance under wrongs and persecutions, love to 
 enemies, faith in God, and a living trust in him as a Father 
 and ever-present Spirit of love_ and helpfulness. He 
 crowns this simple teaching with the assurance to men 
 that the soul shall live beyond the grave, and shall there 
 be judged according to the deeds done in the body. After 
 two or three years of this public teaching, limited wholly 
 to Palestine, he was accused of being a dangerous agitator 
 against the peace of civil government; and foreseeing his 
 death as near, commissioned his few followers to preach 
 the gospel of his kingdom after he was gone, and then 
 suffered crucifixion at the hands of the civil authorities. 
 
 These humble disciples took up the word of their mas- 
 ter. They began to proclaim that he was risen from the 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 43 
 
 
 
 dead, and was not only alive but with them in a divine 
 Spirit of truth and power, to move the hearts of men and 
 save from sin. With such enthusiasm did they deliver 
 their message and pursue their work, and such influence 
 did they gain with the people, that in a few years they 
 had filled the most populous portions of Asia and North- 
 ern Af rka with the faith of Christ ; and in less than three 
 centuries his religion had subverted idolatry, and gained a 
 controlling power in the world-wide empire of Rome. 
 
 Now take this religion whose light we have seen open- 
 ing more and more broadly and brightly through the 
 centuries from Abraham (or whatever the name under 
 which its first life germinated), to Jesus, perfected in the 
 latter take it for just what you can see it to be. Strip 
 it of all dubious incident, of all myth and miracle ; let it 
 stand on its intrinsic merits. What do you find? Not 
 one essential doctrine but commends itself to your highest 
 reason and conscience. Not one that you can set aside if 
 you would have any religion that gives hope and life. 
 Consider. You will raise no debate over the morality of 
 Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount, and other utterances 
 of his, so far as the duties of man to man are concerned, 
 but echo the voice of reason. Morality and Christianity 
 are so far on the same ground. But turn to what Jesus 
 teaches of God and man's relations to him. One God! 
 You will not quarrel with him there. That God "our 
 Father," tenderly loving and caring for us. There is 
 something in that word which the human heart grapples 
 
44 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 * 
 
 the moment it is heard, and says, " If he be God, he cannot 
 be other than such a God." That Father ever with us, 
 d'welling in those that receive him in faith by his Spirit, 
 teaching, comforting, strengthening, giving them to know 
 and love the truth. This doctrine of the Holy Spirit I 
 accustom myself to cherish as the central truth of the re- 
 ligion which Jesus taught. In experience it is the reali- 
 zation of " Immanuel" God with us. It is the life of faith. 
 It is victory over evil. It involves every other truth at 
 the basis of religion. And yet, when you reflect, that 
 doctrine is little more than a truism to the reason. 
 To deny it is virtual atheism. Is there a God ? Is he 
 here with me? And yet can he not, will he not aid me? 
 Must I think of him as an indifferent spectator of my 
 search after truth and struggles to do his will? Is he 
 interested, but powerless to aid? The thought would 
 undeify him. Doubtless there are laws which he never 
 overpasses in the manner and degree of imparting his help, 
 immutable conditions under which we must receive; peni- 
 tence must prepare the way for him to give peace; faith 
 must lift the eyes to the light; prayer must inhale the 
 divine life all this Jesus taught, and reason affirms with 
 equal emphasis. But to say that a dead, impenetrable 
 wall of separation rises between the spiritual nature of 
 man and the Spirit of God, cutting off all possible com- 
 munion or communication between them, shocks every 
 instinct of reason and truth in the soul. " To know God," 
 says Jesus, " is eternal life." Theodore Parker insists that 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 45 
 
 
 
 the full-grown moral man is " conscious of God." And 
 even Buckle talks of " the fine instinct of immortality in 
 man." Are this consciousness and this instinct realities? 
 May we not well believe, then, that to a soul like Jesus, 
 whose insight seemed to penetrate every secret of the 
 interior life of man, the realities of this consciousness and 
 instinct ever lay open and present to the eye like house- 
 hold pictures? To other powers of the mind we may be 
 unable to demonstrate the being of God or immortal life, 
 the fundamental truths of religion ; if these are closed, the 
 soul remains dark. But it is much to lower natures that 
 one like Jesus spoke of God and immortality as facts at 
 the heart of all life that were never to be called in ques- 
 tion. Wonderfully do his words penetrate our inmost 
 being, and commend themselves as heaven's own light. 
 Will you insist that a testimony which stands revealed in 
 its own inherent certainty shall be spoken to you audibly 
 out of the sky, and authenticated by miracle, before you 
 will confess its reliability? Compare the whole Word of 
 Jesus with any other religion the world offers you. Will 
 you doubt which is best for human life? As well doubt 
 whether the unclouded noonday sun shines with a clearer 
 light than the pale crescent of the waning moon. Exam- 
 ine closely, decide honestly, and we have no fear but you 
 will say, that if we are to have any religion at all, it can 
 be no other than the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 But here the objection will recur, "If we cannot accept 
 the whole record, miracles, predictions, dreams, divine voi- 
 
46 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ces, physical appearances of Deity, and all, as statements 
 of indubitable facts, what can we rely on? Can we re- 
 ject a part without thawing discredit on the whole? 
 Where shall we draw the line? Who shall tell us what 
 to believe?" I answer, seek the truth; be sure you want 
 to find; ask guidance of the Spirit of Truth; and then 
 act upon what you can see and know to be true and best. 
 Draw the line for yourself. Decide for yourself ; reject what 
 you must; suspend judgment where you doubt; take 
 warmly to your heart what commends itself as divine, 
 and you will make no fatal mistake. Can you not doubt 
 what is dubious, without throwing discredit on what every 
 instinct of the soul feels to be true? Let me illustrate 
 what I conceive to be the intrinsic force of this objection. 
 It is well known that the wonderful system of law which 
 comes to us in the Justinian Code, elaborated in the pecu- 
 liar genius of the old Roman mind to meet the exigencies 
 of government rising through many centuries of their 
 rugged history, is accepted in its fundamental principles 
 is a safe guide in the practice and decisions of our courts 
 of law to-day. Those principles are self-evident, and good 
 for all men and all times. But now imagine your wise 
 critic to take it into his head that this practical use of that 
 old code is behind the times. There are so many legends 
 and absurd incidents mingled with the story of its growth ! 
 Why will sensible men so stultify their reason? He re- 
 peats the story of Romulus, founder of the nation, suckled 
 by a wolf; and of Quintus Curtius, who jumped into the 
 
THE WOED OF GOD UNBOUND. 47 
 
 chasm that yawned across the forum, that it might close 
 over him and leave smooth ground for after generations ; 
 quotes the sayings claimed to have been miraculously 
 uttered through the priestly oracles; makes a long story 
 of other wonders of like nature, scattered through the 
 whole history of the people, and then scornfully exclaims: 
 " What a tissue of absurdities ! What confidence can you 
 place in a code of laws purporting to have come through 
 such a long line of incredible nonsense?" You would re- 
 ply that this is egregious trifling. Those eternal princi- 
 ples of justice and right shine by their own inherent light ; 
 depend in no slightest degree for their authority upon any 
 incidents or legends attending the history of their intro- 
 duction as human laws, although the real facts of that 
 history may illustrate and make clearer their practical 
 application. They commend themselves. They need no 
 other credentials than their usefulness to men. 
 
 Now turn to the " Ten Commandments," conceded to 
 have come, substantially as we receive them, from the 
 hand of Moses. Does the credibility or authority of that 
 divine Code depend upon our ability to prove that it was 
 literally written on two tables of stone by the finger of 
 God? Turn to the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable pf 
 the Prodigal Son, the words of Jesus asserting the father- 
 hood of God, the forgiveness of the penitent sinner, the 
 presence and help of the Holy Spirit in the heart of faith. 
 Are you going to hesitate over receiving these blazing, 
 noon-day truths of the soul because you cannot be sure 
 
48 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that all the setting of miracle and story in which they 
 come to you is entirely demonstrable? Is the diamond 
 any the less pure and precious because you are not quite 
 sure of the quality of the casket? The law found in 
 Sacred Scripture for your practical guidance and self -dis- 
 cipline, the Spirit promised to aid your search for truth, 
 and your efforts to obey its light, the God in whom your 
 trust may repose, the whole substance of the religion you 
 learn from the lips and life of Jesus, is just the same, 
 whichever way the weight of evidence respecting the mar- 
 vels of the record may turn the scale. Your soul's moral 
 welfare, here and hereafter, is not made to hinge on a 
 theory to be proven, nor on a fact that cannot be demon- 
 strated, nor on witnesses who died many centuries ago, 
 and cannot now be put on the stand; it depends solely on 
 truth that you can see here and know to be true. I cannot 
 express how childish the trifling of this objection with the 
 vastest interests seems to me. When I watch the un- 
 folding of God's self -manifestation seen through the whole 
 history of the Jewish race, when I see its glory culminate 
 and complete itself in the Man of Nazareth, when I feel 
 how the truth he speaks, and the truth he lives, and the 
 truth he is, meets and satisfies the deepest wants and di- 
 vinest yearnings of my spiritual being, I could sooner 
 doubt whether the fruits of the earth are good for my 
 bodily hunger and nourishment than I can doubt that his 
 gospel of hope and comfort and love is good for my soul. 
 No spot that the telescope of critical learning can detect 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 49 
 
 on the face of that Sun can make me question for a mo- 
 ment whether it is the true light of the world. 
 
 I cannot forbear adding two or three suggestions in 
 conclusion, respecting the advantages which this view will 
 give in reading the Bible. 
 
 1. It will relieve the reader of that strange repulse of 
 feeling which certain incongruous elements of the Book 
 are sure to awaken in the thoughtful mind. Can this be 
 of God? is the secret question. It rises even in early 
 childhood. "Words cannot tell the torture it causes some 
 who dare not refuse to read, yet dare not doubt. Here 
 this incubus is lifted from the mind. Our view permits 
 us to see how these discordant human conceits came to be 
 mingled with divine truth. It gives us the Bible as a 
 teacher, not as a tyrant over our faith. It offers its ut- 
 terances, not under the raised whip of authority, saying, 
 " Receive every word, however incredible it may seem to 
 you, on pain of eternal wrath;" it offers counsels of wis- 
 dom in the name of love, never trying to force upon us 
 treasures which we cannot see to be valuable. If we find 
 it impossible to believe that a lifeless rod in the hand of 
 an ancient prophet turned into a living serpent, and other 
 rods into smaller serpents, only to be swallowed up by the 
 first, which again, upon being grasped by the prophet, was 
 reconverted into a rod, as before; or if we cannot believe 
 that at the hour when Jesus was crucified the graves cast 
 forth their dead, to appear among their living friends 
 again in the Holy City, our view makes room for this in- 
 
50 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 firmity, if infirmity it be, and does not insist upon the 
 impossible as the inexorable condition of our salvation. 
 "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good," is at 
 once its counsel and our right. 
 
 2. It will free us from the impositions of tyrranous re- 
 ligious dogmas. The strongest hand of iron upon the 
 human soul has been the assumption of an infallibility in 
 the letter of the Bible, which man must not question, on 
 peril of God's displeasure. No device for the suppression 
 of free thought could have been more effectual. Under 
 this assumption has flourished that pettifogging with texts 
 of scripture, by which, as one has said, " anything can be 
 made of anything." There has been no end to the 
 absurdities drawn from the mere chance phrases of the 
 scripture writers, from the mere sound of the words, and 
 imposed on the consciences of men as, a " Thus saith the 
 Lord." We here find the liberty, nay, learn the duty, to 
 inquire whether it be a "thus saith the Lord," or only the 
 opinion of some erring mortal. We shall not receive the 
 words of a book if they contradict the Word of God writ- 
 ten in our own hearts. Vast gain ! for measureless have 
 been the mischiefs which these human inventions claiming 
 divine authority have wrought in human character 
 atonements substituted for morality; ceremony put in the 
 place of righteous doing; formal worship compounding 
 with heaven for downright dishonesty ; sincerity withered 
 away in the heart of prayer; conscience lulled to sleep, and 
 religion itself turned into a corrupter of virtue, and a 
 
THE WORD OF GOD UNBOUND. 51 
 
 refuge of licentiousness. Here that whole view of Script- 
 ure in which these disastrous methods of letting sinners go 
 free of the merited scourge have found suggestion and sup- 
 port, is swept away. Eternal law comes back into au- 
 thority. That will accept no substitute for righteousness. 
 Conscience regains its sensibility. The refuge in which 
 all depravities of heart and life find impunity is torn 
 away. The motives which lie at the heart of all upright 
 character can resume their place. 
 
 3. Under this new interpretation of the Bible, the inind 
 turns instinctively from the form to the substance. " The 
 letter killeth; the spirit giveth life." The interest no 
 longer sticks in the letter, withers under its hard, dry 
 crust, or drivels over a date, or incident, or shade of mean- 
 ing in a word. The mind goes straight for reality. What 
 is man's condition? What does he need? What are his 
 relations to God, and his inalienable obligations? The 
 Word has a distinct answer. The thoughts set free from 
 the bias of false assumptions and artificial dogmas, find that 
 answer. The soul recognizes the truth that supports its 
 own life. 
 
Law in the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Acts xv: 28: For in him we live and -move and have our being. 
 The problem of religion is to bring God near to man. 
 This is the same as to say that it aims to raise in man the 
 sense of the fact that God is near him. The fact is a per- 
 petual reality; but man goes through the world with his 
 eyes shut. He makes no discovery of the fact, or if some 
 dim glimpse of it opens on his soul in his higher moments, 
 some mist of the world floats over him and cuts off the 
 vision. He goes on as if he were not walking in the Di- 
 vine Presence. Religion has often done much to defeat 
 her own aim, and keep man from seeing God, by what 
 she has taught of the way in which he manifests himself. 
 She has asked us to see God in the special and unnatural, 
 rather than to look for him directly in the common, the 
 natural, and the universal. She has led us into the habit 
 of waiting for the special and extraordinary before we 
 would recognize the Divine Presence at all. She tells us 
 of a burning bush seen by the prophet on the side of Sinai 
 three thousand years ago, and bids us bare our heads and 
 "put off our shoes from our feet " before this wonder of the 
 divine power and glory ; but she has not enough insisted 
 on the fact that, 
 
 "Every common bush is afire with God," 
 
LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 53 
 
 and that a blazing bramble unconsumed by an hour's 
 flames is a far inferior wonder to many a bush on many a 
 hillside that flames out with the blossoms of spring, and 
 then wears the soberer beauty of summer and autumn 
 through the seasons of many years. 
 
 The mistake here is in separating God from nature. 
 It looks upon nature as a dead machine, with which God 
 once had something to do, perhaps, as the patentee of the 
 invention, and as having shaped and arranged its parts, 
 and set it in motion. Then it supposes him to have taken 
 his hand from his work and stepped one side to watch and 
 see how it would go. Now it can see no direct manifesta- 
 tion of God except as he reaches in his hand to arrest the 
 order of this machine, and produce a wonder. It asks his 
 special interpositions. It imagines that these are, or might 
 be made, the best proofs of his being, and power, and love. 
 It says that nature grows the lily, and sees not God in its 
 clothing of beauty that outrivals Solomon in all his glory. 
 A little reflection will see that this view puts God far 
 away from us. How much nearer to man will religion 
 bring him when she learns to recognize him in all the en- 
 ergies of nature we see at work around us in the force 
 that makes the streams flow and the stone fall; in the 
 life that makes the plant grow and the animal strong; in 
 the beating of the pulse, and the thrill or the ache of a 
 nerve! This is what Jesus taught. God "clothes the 
 grass " in its hues of beauty. And this is all involved in 
 Paul's words: "In him we live and move and have our 
 
54 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 being." God is in nature, and not apart from his work 
 in us, in our nature, and not away from us. There is 
 where we are to look for him. We have much to say in 
 this age about the laws of nature. But what is a law? 
 It is simply the way in which some being or force acts. 
 A law is not a power. It is not the thing that acts. It 
 is only a mode of action. What is the force in nature 
 that acts? Is it the birth of inert matter? If philosophy 
 is right in attributing inertness to matter, it has no power 
 to originate force. It cannot start itself in motion. If 
 this be so, the forces of nature must spring from some liv- 
 ing Will, the only other conceivable origin of force. Then 
 we shall conclude that the laws of nature are the ways in 
 which this Will acts, or puts forth its energies hi self- 
 manifestation. God is the force; the law is his method. 
 And why may we rest with such confidence on the uni- 
 formity of these laws? Because the infinite Will that is 
 in them is unchangeable. They are the direct expression 
 of the divine immutability. 
 
 And when we make the discovery that God is thus in 
 nature vitally, the very life of her life and the energy of 
 all her forces, the manifestations of his presence become 
 not only constant but reliable. Nature cannot possibly 
 be a counterfeit. No finite being, angel, or demon, or jug- 
 gler, can produce or copy her realities. They expand into 
 being slowly the outputting of forces that have the di- 
 vine patience in them. They are no sudden freak of some 
 hasty agent who cannot wait. They bear the inimitable 
 
LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 55 
 
 stamp of their Original. Can we say this with certainty 
 of any sudden arrest of nature's order, or temporary in- 
 terposition? A chemist, for aught we know, might con- 
 struct an asbestos bush that would blaze for a day and 
 not consume. A malign spirit might, for a purpose, heal 
 a fever, or start the current of life afresh in a body from 
 which the breath had departed. The Bible suggests, and 
 even records, miracles of evil spirits. How can you be 
 sure of the divine agency in such manifestations? They 
 do not necessarily imply unlimited power. How really 
 puny does the greatest of these sudden interpositions, or 
 arrests of nature, look beside almost the least of nature's 
 real works. The rose that blazes in your garden through 
 several months of the year you feel sure that no created 
 agent could do that. It outdoes all the miracles ever re- 
 ported, as a reliable manifestation of God. So with the 
 heart that throbs steadily on through three score years 
 and ten, sustaining the growth from infancy to maturity. 
 The doctor may hurry or slow the pulse for a day or a 
 week; the magnetic healer may steady the deranged 
 nerves for a like period ; but no agent but the God in whom 
 we live and move and have our being could give that heart 
 its wondrous power to throb on through seventy years of 
 life. 
 
 And do not imagine that the slowness in which nature 
 works, or the length of time which she takes to accom- 
 plish her results detracts anything from the evidence that 
 it is God who is working, or that the suddenness with 
 
56 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 which special interpositions come and finish their work 
 and end, adds anything to the evidence of the Divine 
 Presence and power in them. Sober reflection will come 
 to the very opposite conclusion. Time is one verifying 
 element in the manifestation of Him with whom a thou- 
 sand years is as one day, and one day as a thousand years. 
 The mill of God grinds slowly. It is only the mill of man 
 that sends the grist home the next hour after it is received. 
 The patience of the work in nature proves the present 
 God. It is the child that plants the bean at night, and 
 runs in the morning as soon as he wakes to dig it up and 
 see how it is coming on. The man plants and waits 
 through the week of its germination and the months of 
 its growth and ripening, till his patience is rewarded with 
 the increase. God plants and nurtures and waits a thou- 
 sand or a million years or ages, if need be, for the ripe 
 harvest; and it is just this infinite patience of nature in 
 which we recognize with certainty the presence of the 
 Infinite Worker. Let us not be caught by the sudden- 
 ness of any manifestations, present or reported, and car- 
 ried away with the idea that we have in them a revela- 
 tion of God that can be compared in clearness and 
 certainty with the grand unfoldings of the Purpose that 
 runs through the centuries and the ages. 
 
 Keligion squanders her greatest advantage when she 
 turns from the uniformity of nature, and lays the chief 
 emphasis of her teaching on miraculous interpositions. 
 You will begin to see., friends, why I am so much in earn- 
 
LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 57 
 
 est to impress this idea that the divine kingdom is one of 
 order. Unchanging law is the sign-manual of God. We 
 know his work, and we know his presence, by that signa- 
 ture. We cannot know him with certainty in any mira- 
 cle. It is not infinite. It is not, like any growth or 
 object in nature, a finite part of a universal system or 
 order. It is a thing by itself. It might be the product of 
 a finite agent say, if you will, some mighty angel, or 
 some spirit from earth grown to a power manifold greater 
 than is ever attained on earth. It cannot be, in the nature 
 of the case, the sure witness of the present God. The 
 Creator is in the universal and natural directly and mani- 
 festly; in the exceptional or miraculous, if at all, only 
 indirectly and through a finite representative. Miracles 
 are as numerous in this day as in any former age. They 
 are as well authenticated as they ever were. I do not 
 deny their reality. That is purely a question of fact, to 
 be determined by testimony. Neither you, nor I, nor 
 Huxley, nor any most competent scientist that has scanned 
 all that is known of material nature, the whole universe 
 with which his science has to do, are competent to deny the 
 possibility of miracles. To do that, we must have looked 
 beyond material nature, and scanned the whole realm of 
 spiritual existences, and become able to say that there is 
 certainly no being in all that realm competent to produce 
 on our earth, impressing itself on our senses, the phenome- 
 non we call a miracle. Let no mortal say that. It is the 
 sheerest dogmatism and presumption in the scientist when 
 
58 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 he assumes to do so. I must not be misunderstood as 
 taking that ground. But I am fully prepared to assert 
 my conviction that the Divine Will or Power is not, and 
 never has been in a single instance, directly exerted to 
 work a miracle. I so believe from a deep sense that grows 
 up within me as I study the ways of God's working in 
 nature, in life, and in the human soul, that miracle is not 
 one of his ways. I cannot think that he would resort to 
 this mode of manifesting himself, when, in the very nature 
 of the case, as soon as the human mind has grown to a 
 capacity to weigh evidence, the manifestation must be 
 dubious and unsatisfactory. I cannot think that he would 
 resort to this lower evidence, if it be evidence at all, when 
 he has spread all over the face of earth and sky, and 
 woven into every fiber of man's own being, overwhelming 
 proof of his presence and power and goodness evidence 
 that no finite being can counterfeit. I cannot believe 
 that he would descend from a method which no mind that 
 fully takes it in can resist, to a method which every com- 
 petent judgment feels to be unreliable. And the more 
 that method is considered, the more will it be distrusted 
 as a manifestation of the Divine. 
 
 I can see here, also, the reason why Jesus ever refused 
 to rest his claim to be heard on the physical wonders he 
 was able to work. I can see why he met the eager mul- 
 titude that ran after him to see a miracle, with the half 
 impatient reproach: "Except ye see signs and wonders, 
 ye will not believe." Signs and wonders could not be the 
 
. LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 59 
 
 evidence of God he sought to give them. I can see why 
 he hurled the charge of depravity and sensuality against 
 this class with such vehement energy: "A wicked and 
 adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." Their in- 
 ward eye was so dark to divine light, their souls were so 
 buried in the senses, that spiritual things must be mate- 
 rialized to find any entrance to their hearts. His claim 
 rested on the inherent and eternal authority of the truth ; 
 and his appeal was made directly to the universal recep- 
 tivity in truth-loving souls, which does not need to be 
 assaulted and forced by any startling physical displays. 
 " He that hath ears to hear let him hear," is the refrain 
 that runs through all the solemn music of his utterances. 
 The ear that is healthfully true will not miss the meaning 
 of the sound in my words of truth. God's voice is not so 
 uncertain that it need be mistaken. The healthy appetite 
 knows its own bread. The true soul knows its own kin. 
 I can see, further, that those discoveries in ancient lit- 
 erature, and the criticisms on the Sacred Scriptures which 
 they compel us to make (noticed at length last Sunday), 
 showing, though they do beyond question, that we are 
 not and never can be sure of the miracles recorded in the 
 Bible as veritable historic facts, will bring no loss, but a 
 positive gain, to religion. To the superstition that bases 
 the truth on miracles it will seem the inevitable ruin of 
 Christianity. To the faith that rests on the eternal au- 
 thority which is in the truth itself, just where Christ 
 rested his claim, it will touch nothing at all that is of the 
 
60 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 least value. It will bring help. It will throw off an in- 
 cubus that was threatening to stifle the life and power of 
 the truth. It will leave us fre'e to drop the vexing ques- 
 tions that were keeping the mind in perpetual hesitation 
 and uncertainty, and turn to those indubitable truths that 
 take hold upon the life and duties of the hour. Christi- 
 anity will start forward on a new career of power ; disen- 
 tangled from the subtle webs of dogma and superstition, 
 when this view comes to prevail as prevail it will. 
 
 Furthermore, we have but to reflect a little to see that 
 the view which regards the Divine Government as carried 
 on by a series of miraculous interpositions and interfer- 
 ences with nature is unfortunate (to use no stronger 
 word), in its influence on the mind. It unbalances its 
 poise, unsettles its rest, unsteadies its trust. Observe, and 
 you will see that this has been its effect. For ages men 
 have thought of God as creating the world by a turn of 
 the hand, and then as throwing each new form of life 
 into it by a miraculous act, and at last as finishing a full- 
 grown man out of the dust, between sun and sun Now 
 that the demonstrations of science have scattered all this, 
 we see how much grander and more worthy of deity is 
 the view which sees him creating in the method of law 
 with a slow progress, it is true, advancing through ages 
 of ages, but in a sublime order that is radiant along its 
 whole line with infinite wisdom and skill and love. In 
 the same way, men have conceived of the moral govern- 
 ment of God as inaugurated and carried on by broken 
 
LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 61 
 
 and convulsive manifestations of the divine power. All 
 along its course God is seen as flinging miracles out of the 
 sky before the startled eyes of men, and at last crowns 
 this system of irregularities with a Being so entirely out 
 of the order of nature and human life, that for eighteen 
 hundred years he has been interpreted as setting science 
 and religion, faith and reason, the heart and the head, 
 God and nature, in antagonism with each other. So the 
 whole moral administration of God has been turned into 
 a series of special expedients. Regular order is lost sight 
 of. The wholesome sense of such order, the basis of all 
 stable principle in human character, is dissipated. The 
 mind is stimulated with a prurient expectation of extra- 
 ordinary and unnatural manifestations. Faith is thrown 
 off its poise of trust in the ever present One, and demands 
 wonders. Christian effort grows jerky and spasmodic. 
 All reliance on the regular, educating forces of religion is 
 broken. And religion itself too often becomes a pitiful 
 oscillation between the frantic, fevered activities that 
 spring from the imagination of special divine interposi- 
 tions, and the sluggish apathy that grows over reaction 
 and disappointment. The religious community is put in 
 much the same state of mind with the citizens of a gov- 
 ernment whose legislation is capricious, and regulated by 
 no fixed principles The wonder in every mind is what 
 the legislators will be about next. Nobody can tell. 
 Nobody knows what to do. The only certain thing is 
 the universal uncertainty and lack of confidence. Such 
 
62 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is the feeling when the methods of divine manifestation 
 are regarded as incalculable, and out of all established 
 order. When we shall consent to see that God's moral 
 administration is as regular, aud as free from the touch 
 of special expedients and interferences as his physical 
 creation, we shall begin to feel its Divinity. Its mighty 
 uniformity will tell us it is of God. No deceiver can 
 mimic the universe, nor put in a section that fits and fills 
 a place as a part of the creative whole. We shall be able 
 to trace the unity of God's self-manifestation in creation 
 and Christ, the unfolding of his purpose from the monad 
 to the man, from the man in his moral infancy to THE 
 MAN in the divinity of his perfection ; and then on still 
 in the work begun and going slowly forward, and that 
 shall never cease till all the families of the earth, now torn 
 apart and warring with each other, shall be gathered 
 under the power of that harmonizing perfection into the 
 one united family of God. 
 
 But some philosophic thinker may here object, "In thus 
 representing God as intimately and inseparably in nature, 
 in the present energy of all her forces now , you identify 
 the Deity with nature, and even with matter." No; I do 
 not even raise that question. As to whether creation is 
 of one, or of dual, or of manifold substance, I have noth- 
 ing to say. I simply identify the forces of nature with 
 the present direct manifestation of God. One thing is 
 certain God either is or is not in matter. If he is not, 
 then matter cannot be inert. It must bear in its atoms 
 
LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 63 
 
 some inherent principle or power of action. In that case, 
 the materialists would seem to have the advantage of us. 
 Who could say but that principle might, if we could fully 
 comprehend it, account for all the forms of existence with 
 which we are acquainted? Who could say that the atom 
 did not make the universe, as Lucretius claims, " without 
 the meddling of God?" But if God is in matter, then 
 have we full warrant for what I have assumed touching 
 his direct manifestation in nature. I claim that God is 
 the Builder of the physical universe, and that he holds 
 every part and atom of it under direct, eternal, perfect 
 control that is all. I no more identify him with the 
 creation than I identify the engineer with the engine that 
 he builds and runs. 
 
 But this impressive inference does follow, beyond ques- 
 tion, from the view here taken of God as being in nature. 
 We are ever dealing directly with him in our life here on 
 earth. He is not afar off. He is not a Being whom we 
 are to meet and settle with hereafter. He settles with us 
 every moment. What we feel here and now is his con- 
 tinuous, unvarying administration. We feel his touch in 
 nature. He is in all her forces. He is in their laws of 
 action. They are the laws of his action. All the results 
 they work out are of his appointment. He is in the 
 pleasure of every taste that nature gives us. He is in the 
 pain of every nerve. Both are the expression of his will. 
 Both come in the immutable order or system of things 
 which he has arranged, and which he upholds and impels, 
 
64 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 knowing from the beginning, and at every stage of its 
 advance, every minutest effect that would spring forth 
 from its ongoing. All that comes into our experience in 
 the line of nature's forces and laws, whether agreeable or 
 the reverse, whether of joy or of pain, is to be referred 
 directly to him from whose WILL these forces stream 
 forth, and these laws derive their sanction. What we 
 feel through them is God putting his laws in force. If 
 there be a God, it must be good philosophy, as well as 
 good faith, which teaches that in "him we live and move 
 and have our being." It must be true that we are to re- 
 gard ourselves as dealing directly with him in all that 
 comes to us in the fixed order of nature. 
 
 Then, finally, this way of thinking forbids the antici- 
 pation of special divine interpositions in the future, either 
 to reward or punish. God's immutable order will go on. 
 We have seen the mistake that looks back upon his past 
 administration as a series of such interpositions, stepping 
 aside to attain ends that could not be reached in the ap- 
 pointed order of things. This is the parent of that artifi- 
 cial conception of the divine government, as ruinous to 
 human conscience and morals as it is to faith, that ex- 
 pects our future of good or evil to be made by special 
 interferences and arbitrary acts of God. Its heaven is a 
 toy with which the Great Father will make his good child 
 happy. Its hell is a whip of flame, or some form of pain 
 inflicted, with which he will forever scourge the nerves. 
 The immutable connection between the life and the con- 
 
LAW IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 65 
 
 dition which makes the good or the evil, the joy or the 
 pain, the inevitable retributions of law, are lost sight of. 
 The feeling grows into the soul that God can give us just 
 what he pleases, and as he is good he will heap joys upon 
 us, no matter what our moral condition has grown to be. 
 This violence to reason and order must be stayed. It 
 turns religion into a curse, instead of making it the life of 
 the world. Every act of to-day goes into our moral con- 
 dition bettering it, if the act be good ; lowering it, if the 
 act be evil. Its effect is instantaneous. The very doing 
 throws its change into the condition. Its consequences 
 run forward into the future, because that condition re- 
 mains and grows better or worse according as we go on 
 to act well or ill. We shall have what we can have in the 
 state we make in ourselves. The award in kind and de- 
 gree is meted out by forces as invariable and inevitable 
 as the magnetism that turns the needle to the pole. No- 
 interposition can change at will that interior growth of 
 the soul shaped under the hand of bygone years, any 
 more than it could change a fiend into an angel. And 
 that condition is our heaven or our hell. 
 
A Progressive Creation the Type of a Pro- 
 gessive Revelation. 
 
 Romans 1: 20: For the invisible things of him from the creation of 
 the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 
 made, even his eternal power and Godhead. 
 
 God is seen in nature. The works reveal the Worker. 
 Natural religion, whose interpreter is reason, makes this 
 assertion. The Life at the heart of nature flushes the 
 face of creation. Reason finds God as creator, and learns 
 not only that he is, but something of what he is, from 
 what he does. This is the purport of the text. 
 
 When the claim is advanced that the Bible is also a 
 revelation of God still more clear and inspiring, it is met 
 with objection. Some portions of the Book are admitted 
 to be worthy of a divine origin. Nothing purer in mor- 
 ality or grander in aim lies on the page of literature. 
 But other portions wear a strange look such crude state- 
 ments; such puerile exactions; sometimes such cruel and 
 bloody sentiments and commands it seems a sacrilege to 
 attribute anything emanating from the same source with 
 these to God's inspiration. The Book seems like the 
 mythical figure of the ancient imagination, which pre- 
 sents the perfect face and form of a man above, but runs 
 into the legs and claws and tail of a dragon below. We 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 67 
 
 like the face, but object to the continuations. We think 
 the creature cannot be of God's creation. 
 
 I have made it plain that many of these absurdities 
 may be accounted for as the invention of writers who 
 lived centuries after the characters whom they pretend to 
 represent. Yet with this admission, and after all the al- 
 lowances it demands are made, I have claimed, and do 
 claim, that the evolution of a perfect and universal reli- 
 gion can be traced in the histories and teachings of the 
 Bible. In the coarse but rich soil of the primitive Jewish 
 mind the divine seed germinated ; there took root, sprang 
 up, and grew, till it gave the world its ripe fruit in the 
 Person and Word of Jesus of Nazareth. Rough was the 
 bark of the letter that enveloped and protected that 
 growth, but nothing less than a divine life of truth within 
 could have survived the wear and shocks of that history, 
 and risen to such a splendid and beneficent maturity. It 
 may conciliate the objector's prejudices on the score of 
 these uncouth imperfections of the letter, and pre-dispose 
 him to search for the hidden treasure within it, if we can 
 discover a clear parallel in this growth of Revelation out 
 of the imperfect into the perfect, with that evolution of 
 creation where Paul and human reason unite in testifying 
 that the eternal Power and Godhead are seen to be at 
 work. This will be the attempt of the present discourse. 
 
 A century and a quarter ago, Bishop Butler gave the 
 world his immortal " Analogy of Revealed Religion to the 
 Constitution and Course of Nature." He traced in the 
 
 . 
 
68 A KEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 "facts of creation and natural Providence " a close parallel 
 with the worst looking features objected to in the Bible. 
 He then drew the patent inference that if these observed 
 facts do not require us to deny that creation is the work 
 of God, the matters so entirely like them in the Sacred 
 Scriptures are not a valid reason for rejecting them as 
 containing a revelation of God. But in the good Bishop's 
 day the habit of mind was to regard the whole creation 
 as a mechanical product of Almighty Power, begun and 
 finished within the six working days of our calendar 
 week. There was hardly a dream of that long process 
 going on through uncomputed ages, and by the orderly 
 working of natural forces, which it is the glory of our 
 later science to have demonstrated. This opens the way, 
 I am sure, for tracing a profounder and more wonder- 
 fully convincing analogy between a progressive creation 
 and a progressive revelation. The former will appear as 
 a marvelously distinct type of the latter. The God who 
 is moving step by step towards a clearly defined result in 
 the one, is seen advancing in like steps toward an equally 
 definite aim in the other. The process and the consum- 
 mation both reveal the presence and purpose of the same 
 comprehending Mind. 
 
 I. Let us turn, first, to the facts of creation. God be- 
 gins with the lower and ruder forms, and gradually ad- 
 vances to the more perfect. The process is written with 
 sunbeams everywhere through the leaves of nature. He 
 begins with matter " without form and void." He slowly 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 69 
 
 reduces the chaos to order and beauty for the home of 
 life. In this process, matter is thought to have been at 
 first a mere "star mist," diffused widely through space. 
 Then it is condensed into a fluid ball. Afterward, it is 
 brought into solider cohesion as rock and clod. Then as 
 chemical and magnetic forces begin their play, the crystal, 
 the gem, and every other mineral form of use and beauty 
 takes shape. When the earth is ripe for such a new form 
 of being, vegetable life starts forth first in the lowest 
 forms, as kelp, lichen, and moss, afterward rising into the 
 grandeurs of the forest, and offering seeds and scions that 
 may be cultivated into the lovely growths of our gardens. 
 When the dwelling is ready and provisions stored, animal 
 life appears, the full maturity of its lowest known form 
 seeming but an inorganic drop of gum or jelly. From 
 this humble beginning the creation advances through ris- 
 ing grades and orders of life, until man appears and is 
 crowned as "Lord of Creation" the end toward which 
 creative Wisdom in all that preceded was approaching. 
 
 Do not overlook one remarkable fact here, the highest 
 proof of a controlling Intelligence in all this progress the 
 first and lowest animal forms dimly prophesy the last and 
 highest. The idea, of the highest is outlined in the lowest. 
 The whole process struggles upward toward the realiza- 
 tion of the ideal in the Creator's mind. But lest you 
 shall accuse me of shaping these statements to suit a pur- 
 pose, and not to mirror facts, let me ask you to call in as 
 witnesses some of the first scientific minds of the world, 
 
70 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 who have made the study of this department of nature a 
 specialty. Professor Owen is confessed " supreme in his 
 own special walk as a comparative anatomist." Let us 
 first hear him : " The recognition of an ideal exemplar for 
 the vertebrated animals, proves that the knowledge of 
 such a being as man must have existed before man ap- 
 peared. For the Divine Mind that planned the archetype 
 also foreknew all its modifications. The archetypal idea 
 was manifested in the flesh, under divers modifications, 
 upon this planet long prior to the existence of those ani- 
 mal species that actually exemplify it." This is to the 
 point. Next call Agassiz to the witness-stand. He opens 
 his testimony with these remarkable words: "I have de- 
 voted my whole life to the study of nature, and yet a 
 single sentence may express all that I have done I have 
 shown that there is a correspondence between the succes- 
 sion of fishes in geological times and the different stages 
 of their growth in the egg that is all." He means to say 
 that if you place the egg of the highest species of fish 
 under examination, and watch it from the first quickening 
 of the "germ-spot" which your microscope reveals, to its 
 complete development, you will read the history of the 
 creation of fishes on our globe. The first stage of growth 
 represents in form and condition the full-grown fish of the 
 lowest grade ; the next, a species one grade higher, and so 
 on in just the order in which they appeared in the seas of 
 our earth, as the places of their fossils in the geological 
 strata clearly evidence. He modestly adds: "It chanced 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 71 
 
 to be a result that was found to apply to other groups, 
 and has led to other conclusions of a like nature." It is 
 really a discovery that is to the study of biological science 
 what the Copernican theory was to astronomy ; and If I 
 mistake not, will be found to be even more fruitful of re- 
 sults in human advancement. It applies to the whole 
 range of animal life. There is a close resemblance be- 
 tween the lower orders of each type, radiate, mollusk, 
 articulate, and vertebrate, and the embryo stages of growth 
 in the higher species of that type. Of this Agassiz says: 
 " They truly reveal the unity of the organic conception, of 
 which man himseif is a part, and mark not only the in- 
 cipient steps in its manifestation, but also with equal dis- 
 tinctness every phase in its gradual realization. They 
 mean that when the first fish was called into existence, 
 the vertebrate type existed as a whole in the creative 
 thought, and the first expression of it embraced potenti- 
 ally all the organic elements of that type up to man him- 
 self." An organic prophecy, or anticipative idea, of God- 
 The German naturalist Oken, speaks the same thing in 
 the terse sentence, " Man is the sum total of all the ani- 
 mals." In another work, Agassiz says again of this pro- 
 gressive creation : " It is evident that there is a manifest 
 progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the 
 earth. This progress consists in an increasing similarity 
 to the living fauna, and among the vertebrates especially 
 in their increasing resemblance to man." When he adds: 
 <: But this connection is not the consequence of direct line- 
 
72 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 age between the faunas of different ages; there is nothing 
 like parental descent connecting them ; the fishes of the 
 Paleozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the rep- 
 tiles* of the Secondary age ; nor does man descend from 
 the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age;" 
 I must think that he would have yielded to the accumu- 
 lating evidence that the Creator brought these rising 
 grades of life into existence under the law of genetic de- 
 scent, had he lived a few years longer. This evidence is 
 such that it has compelled the conviction of living scien- 
 tists one by one, till hardly a single representative of any 
 note stands for the opposed view. But Ke is in full accord 
 with the Christian evolutionist again when he goes on to 
 say of these progressive species of life, " The link by which 
 they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature; 
 and their connection is to be sought in the view of the 
 Creator himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in al- 
 lowing it to undergo the successive changes which Geology 
 has pointed out, and creating successively all the different 
 types of animals which have passed away, was to intro- 
 duce man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end 
 toward which all the animal weation has tended front 
 the first Palceozoic fishes " Well may Hugh Miller add: 
 " These are extraordinary deductions. ' In thy book/ says 
 the Psalmist, ' all my members were written which in 
 continuance were fashioned when as yet there were none 
 of them.' And here is natural science, by the voice of 
 
NATUItE AND THE BIBLE. 73 
 
 two of its most distinguished professors, saying exactly 
 the same thing." 
 
 The testimony to a progressive and prophetic creation, 
 so far as there is now time to give, is before you. 
 
 II. Turn now to Revelation. We shall find in tne Bi- 
 ble a similar course of progress and prophecy. We need 
 not allow the objection that its earlier portions are un- 
 historic to embarrass us. We are not looking for inci- 
 dents of history, but for the progress of ideas, conceptions 
 of God and man, and of the whole range of moral and 
 religious obligation. Grant that the history was com- 
 piled in a later day and is in many of its incidents unre- 
 liable; in the very progress of ideas that can be traced 
 through its course we have the proof that the writer was 
 guided by some documents, or traditions, or inspiration 
 that kept him essentially to the actual course of the hu- 
 man mind. It is hardly more supposable that a later 
 imagination invented, purely out of its own conceits, the 
 features of a great history, than that some great human 
 genius devised the order of nature. 
 
 Begin with Genesis. What idea of God will you gain 
 from the account of creation? Simply that he is a Being 
 of creative power and order. No hint as yet of a moral 
 attribute. In the story of the Fall, a dim sense of obli- 
 gation appears. The Creator commands. The creature, 
 made in his image, feels bound to obey. Fear and shame 
 slink away to hide after disobedience. Right and wrong 
 .re faintly recognized the most primary distinction es- 
 
74 A KEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sential to a moral nature. It is the Palseozoic stage of 
 the moral creation the outline sketch only of the com- 
 plete moral man. We discover little, if any, advance 
 upon this until we come to the story of Abraham. Here 
 I must think real history begins, though mingled largely 
 with legend. The grand idea of the Patriarch to take 
 his family away from the idolatry of his kindred and 
 neighbors, and emigrate to a region where they would be 
 isolated from the corruptions of a polytheistic worship, 
 that he might found a nation devoted to the worship of 
 THE MOST HIGH GOD this is not in the style of the 
 romancer. It is too large, too real. The story wears the 
 colors of a real life. We need not affirm that Abraham 
 was a monotheist, denying the existence of any other god; 
 The time may have been too early for that. That he 
 worshiped the Most High may have been a tacit admis- 
 sion that there were inferior gods. But the faith that 
 stoutly refused to worship any other than the Most High, 
 and felt assured that " the Judge of all the earth would 
 do right, and that he would ultimately give possession of 
 the earth to those who walked in his law of righteousness 
 this faith marks an era in the growth of religion. 
 Abraham founded the worship that culminated in Chris- 
 tianity. He was justified by faith, and became "the 
 Father of all them that believe." 
 
 We may pass the story of Joseph as wearing a less au- 
 thentic look, and as adding no new element of truth to 
 the idea of God found in the faith of Abraham. We next 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 75 
 
 come to the great Lawgiver of Israel. An exile from the 
 court of Egypt, in his solitary meditations among the 
 awfully rugged mountains of the desert of Sinai, there 
 comes over the soul of Moses a new sense of God's pres- 
 ence and being, figured as a " burning bush," and he feels 
 as if he must put off his shoes from his feet, because the 
 place on which he stands is " holy ground." The idea of 
 the Divine Holiness has dawned. Here in this third 
 chapter of Exodus the word " holy " first occurs. It is a 
 sense of something higher, purer than anything ever dis- 
 tinctly conceived before. Right and justice have been 
 held as a sort of commercial virtue, good for traffic, and 
 in general for man's relations to his fellow man. Holi- 
 ness turns the eye within upon what we are in secret 
 thought and intention. It demands that these be such 
 as to bear the scrutiny of the All-searching Eye. And 
 henceforth the constant reiteration sounds in the ears of 
 God's chosen people, "Be ye holy, for I am holy!" No- 
 tice the striking fact. Their highest conception of God's 
 purity, righteousness, and perfection is here made the 
 ideal for their own inward life. Their ideal of him might 
 be imperfect, but it was the best their minds could shape. 
 If there was anything they conceived as low, and mean, 
 and wicked, they left that out of their idea of God. If 
 there was anything transcendentally excellent and good, 
 they wove that in. " That ye must be," said the Prophet. 
 There is no measuring the power of this law of self -disci- 
 pline, this spiritual ideal to which they were taught that 
 
76 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 they must conform even their secret thoughts. With 
 this holiness of God particularized in the law of the " Ten 
 Commandments," the nation started forth on its inde- 
 pendent career. It took many generations to naturalize 
 their wild blood under the divine law. With the people 
 at large, it was never more than a partial success. Still 
 there is a maturing of their thought of God, and a deep- 
 ening of its influence in the life of the people to be traced 
 through their history. In the stern equity of the Judges, 
 in the tender songs of Psalmists, turning to human view 
 the side of mercy in a holiness that was coming to appear 
 too awful in its justice, in the visions of holy Prophets* 
 withering idolatry and its corruptions with Jehovah's 
 wrath, and picturing THE MAN and the glory that was to 
 be in all these the ideal of God's holiness is seen to be 
 growing clearer and fairer. But not yet do we see the 
 highest. It is only when we have passed through Law 
 and Psalm and Prophecy, and come to THE MAN in whom 
 all these are fulfilled, that the full glory of that which has 
 been opening to our eyes through the ages, breaks upon 
 us. Then the Divine Perfection is summed in one lu- 
 minous word God is Love. Jesus, " the brightness of the 
 Father's glory, and the express image of his Person," 
 directs us to look toward the Infinite Holiness and say 
 " Our Father." " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father." That is to say, " In my life of love and self- 
 sacrifice and self-devotion to humanity, you see what God 
 i9-to man. You learn the heart he bears toward you. 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 77 
 
 I am the Truth. I am the Word of God. He speaks to 
 the world through me. In me you may rise to the high- 
 est idea of God and his relation to man." The closest 
 study of Jesus and his words but serves to confirm this 
 claim. We do learn the highest the mind of man has 
 conceived and, so far as appears, can conceive of God in 
 him. He stands commended even to science, in what he 
 is seen to be, as the consummation of moral and spiritual 
 evolution. As man is " the sum total of all the animals," 
 so the Love of Jesus to humanity is the sum total of the 
 divine virtues. He crowns and completes the moral and 
 spiritual revelation of God, as the physical man crowns 
 and completes the material creation. Both are alike the 
 culmination of a long, gradual, progressive evolution. 
 
 III. Let us now gather up some of the suggestions 
 which this instructive parallel offers. 
 
 It appears that Divine inspiration just keeps pace with 
 the growth of the human mind. The first truth given is 
 very rudimentary, because human faculties are yet very 
 rudimentary. God develops a mind capable of a full in- 
 spiration before he gives the absolutely perfect truth. 
 There is no evidence of a verbal communication of truth 
 from Heaven to man above the grade of faculty he had 
 attained, or beyond the stage of advancement he had at 
 a given time reached. The Spirit works in and through 
 man's faculties, not upon them from without. The choice 
 of the Jewish race as the channel through which a perfect 
 .Revelation should be evolved and given to the world is 
 
78 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 not to be conceived as arbitrary, or without reference to 
 their inherent adaptability to that end. The Genius of 
 that race, if I may so speak, was religious. Spiritual in- 
 sight dwelt within them in a peculiar degree, and rose in 
 their exalted Seers to an open vision of divine reality. 
 This is no theory. It is the affirmation of facts. Just as 
 certainly as the genius of the old Roman mind gave the 
 world the highest principles of civil law and human just- 
 ice, and the Greek mind the highest principles of art, just 
 so certainly did the Jewish mind, inspired of Heaven, give 
 the world the highest conception of God and the princi- 
 ples of religion. Compare the great religions of the world, 
 evolved through other races, with the Christianity of 
 Jesus, the ripe fruit of the long growth in the Jewish 
 mind, and there is hardly room for two opinions on this 
 point. The immeasurable superiority of his religion will 
 stand confessed. But we need not therefore assume the 
 infallibility of every inspired mind. The Spirit can surely 
 inspire without making infallible. It would be regarded 
 as a strange absurdity to claim that God could not aid a 
 man at all to do right without making him perfect. The 
 Spirit helps the African Bushman, no doubt, in his rude 
 and feeble efforts to do well when he is tempted to do ill, 
 but that help does not make him an angel. God does 
 not raise the newly-converted savage at once into the 
 keen sense of holiness felt by an Edwards, inheriting 
 generations of Christian culture. Why can he not in- 
 spire one to see and speak the truth according to degree 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 79 
 
 of capacity without making one infallible, as well as he 
 can aid a man to do the truth without raising him at 
 once to perfection. The assumption of infallibility in 
 every inspired writer, without any regard to his stage of 
 knowledge or development, has been the source of infinite 
 mistake and confusion. It seems to me no less absurd 
 than to claim infallibility for the Pope. The Scriptures 
 set up no such claim for themselves. They plainly and 
 repeatedly declare, on the contrary, that their earlier por- 
 tions were imperfect; that they contained laws given on 
 account of the hardness of the hearts, or rude stage of 
 development in the people ; that a better law was needed, 
 because the earlier was not perfect. Why press a claim 
 for them which they explicitly reject? 
 
 It will appear, then, that the perfection of Revelation 
 must be judged by the final result, not by what is seen 
 at the crude beginning, or at any stage of its unfinished 
 progress. We look to Christ, not back to Moses, for the 
 religion God meant to give the Avorld. Is Christ what 
 we need? That is the only question we have to settle. 
 You say the early story is full of puerilities the eating 
 of a forbidden apple, the silly doings of old patriarchs, the 
 tedious ceremonial of worship, smearing garments, furni- 
 ture, the tip of the right ear and right toe with blood, the 
 charm attached to the color, age, and condition of the 
 sacrifice to be slain, the nice specification of the parts to 
 be used, the burning upon the altar, as if God were a 
 Leing to be pleased with the smell of roast meat. What 
 
80 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nonsense, you say, to imagine that the Almighty ever 
 demanded or stood upon snch punctilios of form, such 
 child's play, as these ! Enough to answer that the race 
 was in its childhood. Do you ask the gravity and wis- 
 dom of sixty from the child of ten? Will the learned Pro- 
 fessor despise the blocks and counters and letters of the 
 Kindergarten because he finds them no longer helpful to 
 his studies? Would you banish Santa Glaus, and toys, 
 and all the "puerilities" of Christmas from the world 
 because you have grown too wise to find any use or 
 pleasure in such trifles? But you say, "God was as wise 
 when Moses wrote the ceremonial as when Jesus preached 
 the Sermon on the Mount." Certainly. But man was 
 not; and God inspires according to what there is in man 
 to be inspired. The light grows with capacity, no faster. 
 Childlike methods for childlike minds adaptation that 
 is God's law of educating man, as it is the true law of 
 educating everywhere. Your objection strikes creation 
 just as hard as it strikes Revelation. Take one of the 
 lower forms of animal life, the oyster, for example. You 
 turn it over and view its shapeless rudeness on every side, 
 and then exclaim, " Could an all- wise God have made 
 such a thing as that, and with the perfect idea of man in 
 mind? Preposterous!" But, my friend, remember that 
 you are here dealing with facts. God did make that 
 thing, if he ever made anything made it with the per- 
 fect idea of man in mind; made it as one of the progres- 
 sive steps in that creative order by which he was advanc- 
 
NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 81 
 
 ing toward his final and most perfect creature, man. 
 AVill you now rule God out of creation because he made a 
 mollusk before he made a man? 
 
 God's progressive creation is perfect only in its adapta- 
 tions. He fills the earth with happy forms of life, of an 
 increasingly higher organization, just as fast as it is ready 
 to receive them. He never hurries forward a sensitive 
 life into conditions that would torture and destroy. -Its 
 home is first made ready. It is only after countless gen- 
 erations of lower creatures have enjoyed their day, and 
 unmeasured ages of change have ripened the earth for 
 his home, that man appears. If he had come earlier, it 
 would have been only to perish. God knows his time. 
 So with the revelation of himself in the Spirit. His Word 
 just keeps pace with the powers of man. No truth 
 breaks from the lips of seer, lawgiver, poet, prophet, or 
 angel from heaven, till there is an ear to hear, and squls 
 ready to receive and preserve. The Sermon on the Mount 
 lives because there were hearers in whom it could live. 
 Earlier it would have been lost on the air. " In the ful- 
 ness of time," Christ came. Earlier he could have founded 
 no kingdom of heaven on earth. The perfection of the 
 earlier Revelation was in its adaptation to the age and the 
 people; the perfection of the final Revelation is in its suf- 
 ficiency for universal man at his best attainment. By 
 that let it be judged. 
 
 The first and rudest fish was the prophecy of man, says 
 Agassiz. The first and rudest man was the prophecy of 
 
82 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Christ. "The seed of the woman shall bruise the ser- 
 pent's head." The higher moral and spiritual life within 
 him shall yet bring the animal nature into subjection. 
 You say the prophecy is dim. So was the prophecy of 
 man in the fish. But the patience and the power of God 
 brought it to fulfillment. Omnipotence could not be de- 
 feated. The creative forces could not stay till they had 
 reached the predetermined end. No more can the divine 
 Wisdom and Love stay till they have reached the perfect 
 man. The moral forces move under the same irresistible 
 Will as the natural. The spiritual evolution will as cer- 
 tainly complete itself as the material. The one Creator is 
 in both; one purpose runs through all. The divine ideal 
 must be realized. Behold it in the Christ behold THE 
 MAN ! And in him, O man, discover your own better self. 
 He is the prophecy of what humanity was created to 
 bacome. Feel the inspiration of that prophecy. It is for 
 you. You are the heir of all the creative ages. Head of 
 God's creation, Image of his being, gifted with the powers 
 of eternal progress, it rests with you to say whether you 
 will be the perfection you see in the Christ. In the early 
 stage of the moral creation now, it doth not yet appear 
 what you shall be, but you shall be like Him, if you will. 
 God's love in him beckons you upward. Let every day 
 carry you higher the senses mastered, the passions con- 
 quered, better purposes formed and fulfilled, nobler thoughts 
 kindled, nobler aims cherished, Christ-like deeds done s > 
 on and up along the path of limitless ascent. 
 
The Human Nature of Jesus. 
 
 John xiv: 6: Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me. 
 
 The human soul, groping under the mysteries of life, 
 needs above all things a friend and guide whom it may 
 trust absolutely. It is a child crying in the dark. It is 
 away from home, bewildered, and unable to find its way. 
 You and I need no other witnesses of this than ourselves. 
 Ten thousand times, perplexed with questions of duty or 
 faith, have we breathed the wish, " O that I knew ! that 
 some one would tell me what to think and do, so as to 
 leave on me no tremor of doubt or hesitation!" Our 
 longing in such moments asks the questions that are per- 
 petual in human life. Every new generation repeats them. 
 The intellect ne.ver relieves, never outgrows this perplexity. 
 The larger human knowledge grows, the deeper the anxiety 
 in these questions of faith and duty in religion. Not the 
 savage, but the wisest of thinkers, puts them in the deep- 
 est doubt and intensest earnestness. 
 
 Now Jesus comes to us, to the race, this crying child in 
 the darkness, and says, "Follow me; I am the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life; I will lead you home ! No man com- 
 eth unto the Father but by me." Can we trust him? 
 There are millions of witnesses to testify that we can ; 
 that when we yield him the absolute faith he invites, we 
 
84 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 find in him that which justifies our trust; light rises on 
 our darkness; our questions are answered; we know that 
 we have found our way home. 
 
 I invite you this morning to join me in the contempla- 
 tion of his life, if perhaps we may discover what it is in 
 him that inspires this confidence. Is it the instinct of 
 truth in all souls that recognizes in him the true Leader 
 and Head of humanity? I have claimed that he is the 
 perfect Man. Let us see whether our view of him will 
 approve this claim? If a Creator and Divine Purpose are 
 in that evolution of life from the lowest form up to man, 
 which we trace in nature, and are growingly manifest in 
 that new course of intellectual, moral and spiritual evolu- 
 tion, which we trace in human history, was not a perfect 
 man to have been expected? Can God's self -manifestation 
 stop short of the most complete expression possible? The 
 faith which sees God as present in nature will have no 
 sneer for such a question. My own conviction is that the 
 scientific historian will yet recognize facts in ancient races 
 of men which will make it clear that the highest form of 
 human character and life was to have been anticipated to 
 appear among the people of the Jews. But setting aside 
 such considerations for the present, I turn your attention 
 to the Fact that has appeared. Well might we with the 
 ancient Cynic go forth into the streets, lighted candle in 
 hand, hi quest of a man, if the search only promised suc- 
 cess. The philosopher would have been less laughed at, 
 perhaps, if the tremendous want his act expressed were 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 85 
 
 only felt. A perfect man is the highest need of our race. 
 If he comes, he cannot fail to be the light of the world. 
 In the fact embodying in living reality before our eyes all 
 that goes to make up a perfect humanity, in proportions 
 that exclude defect, we see what we ought to be, what are 
 our true relations to God and to our fellow men. There 
 is the reality. The whole range of human duty is illum- 
 inated by such a presence. Conscience responds to the 
 light. Virtue realized, impersonated, lived, binds us as a 
 law. We cannot exclude the sense of obligation to be the 
 practical worth it reveals. Shape ever so perfect an ideal 
 in words and it bears no such impression to the conscience. 
 It is a fiction, the creation of some brilliant imagination. 
 It may not be practicable. The critic may riddle it with 
 his censures. It cannot speak with authority. Place the 
 reality of perfection before us, and we know it is practi- 
 cable. The critic's occupation is gone. His shafts rebound 
 and drop harmless at the feet of a flawless integrity. It 
 speaks with the authority of eternal truth. 
 
 I do not propose any formal argument to prove the 
 perfection of Jesus. The German Dorner and the Ameri- 
 can Bushnell have attempted this. If you will read their 
 words, I think you will confess their strength. But argu- 
 ments of this kind depend very much upon the hearer. 
 His moral quality and prejudices go far in shaping their 
 impression. The personal factor is a large one in the 
 equation. It is sure to appear in the answer. The most 
 irresistible evidence is the man himself. Perfection needs 
 
86 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 no certificate. It commends itself. Virtue is the strong- 
 est argument for virtue. The best sermon on living is a 
 good life. And it is to this instinctive sense of perfection 
 that the life of Jesus appeals. His enemies are constrained 
 to confess the beneficence of his deeds and the marvelous 
 symmetry of his character. The fact that the sharpest 
 hostile eyes, after a search of eighteen hundred years, have 
 not been able to fix a material blemish upon him, is one 
 of the strangest in history. His astonishing pretentions 
 have been the ground of the most serious charge and it 
 is true that he announces aims of a wider scope, looking to 
 an empire over men and human affairs more absolute than 
 military conqueror ever conceived yet when we scrutin- 
 ize those aims, we find them of such a nature, and pursued 
 in such a temper, that we do not even think to accuse him 
 of egotism. There is not even the suggestion of a selfish 
 ambition in them. The empire of truth in the soul of man 
 is what they contemplate, and we would as soon quarrel 
 with men for breathing the atmosphere lest they should 
 exhaust the supply, as set up a -serious resistance to such 
 purely spiritual claims. 
 
 But what I desire you to especially notice, is that in 
 spite of his apparent assumption of superiority, and with 
 all his grandeur of character, he awakens the feeling that 
 we can and ought to be like him. His character is imita- 
 ble. His virtues are home virtues. What he does is done 
 in relations to God and man that are common to us all. 
 We are moving in essentially the same sphere of action. 
 
. THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 87 
 
 Our duties, not in particular act but in essential spirit and 
 quality, are the same as his. We can speak his words. 
 We can radiate the cheer of his sympathy. We can grow 
 weary in ministries to the sick and needy. We can prac- 
 tice his forbearance. We can deny self for the welfare of 
 others. And when he promises his disciples that they 
 .shall sit on the throne of divine power with him, we may 
 well feel that it is no extravagance of enthusiasm or play 
 of rhetoric. We can all master temptations as he did, if 
 we will. We can all get the victory over our own pas- 
 sions the most honorable of all victories " Greater is he 
 that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." 
 We can all put on the royal purple of a divine righteous- 
 ness a royalty that turns the crown of the greatest em- 
 pire of earth into a bauble in comparison. The kingdom 
 he promises is the reign, in God, over self, and all forms of 
 worldly enslavement a throne which countless millions 
 can share as well as one. The greatness of Jesus is avail- 
 able to us, to all. It is wholly on the plane of common 
 life. And here, if I mistake not, is the hiding of his power 
 over men. 
 
 But you say, we cannot work miracles. No; and no 
 matter ! What part of the following him which he invites 
 would working miracles be? What would it add to per- 
 fection of character if the power were divinely conferred 
 on us? Jesus made very little of his own miracles. They 
 were but an incident to his work. He deprecated rather 
 than courted public notice of them. He knew how shal- 
 
88 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 low all the impression they could possibly make on the 
 moral life must be. His real greatness seems belittled or 
 obscured, rather than enhanced, by dwelling on his mira- 
 cles. And the sooner the glamour of the supernatural, 
 which the reports of these have thrown around his person, 
 is dispelled, the sooner will the minds of men turn from 
 what is essentially insignificant in his life, a factitious 
 reputation, to what he really was a greatness which be- 
 littles all miracles. 
 
 We may imagine that if men could see in Jesus those 
 special forms of human greatness which the world most 
 admires, it would greatly increase his power and extend 
 his influence in human affairs. But consider where this 
 would place him in relation to your real need. You ad- 
 mire the military hero. The poet sings his exploits. The 
 historian extols his genius. When he comes to Oakland, 
 you close your shops, and stores, and offices, and decorate 
 your streets and houses for a great gala-day in honor of 
 him. But can you imitate the hero? Does his life an- 
 swer your deepest questions? Is his greatness available 
 for your want? After you have feted and feasted him, 
 and seen all of human glory that his life can reveal, you 
 go home to find yourself, with reference to your life's 
 doubts and duties, just where you were before. No light 
 on your darkness; no help under your burdens. So with 
 the great inventor in mechanics, the discoverer in science, 
 the thinker in philosophy, the poet, orator, or statesman. 
 These may amaze you with the displays of their power, 
 
THE HUMAN NATUKE OF JESUS. 89 
 
 but the more their greatness makes you wonder, the far- 
 ther is it from your want. It takes them out of your 
 sphere. They cannot be your leader. You cannot follow 
 them. But when you turn to Jesus you find your leader. 
 You can follow him. His qualities are thoroughly human, 
 and quite within your reach, not so coldly grand that 
 you despair of ever climbing their frosty hights. A win- 
 ning sense of faultlessness comes over you as you trace 
 his life. His virtues are divine; yet you feel that it is. 
 within the compass of your powers to transcribe and make 
 them your own. 
 
 And the simplest view we can take of him will best 
 meet the wants of heart and life. He has been studied 
 too much under the refracted and colored light coming 
 through some ingenious theory. The theorists have crea- 
 ted an imaginary want that the heart does not really feel, 
 and then constructed a theoretical Savior to meet that 
 want, thus turning both the Savior and the salvation into 
 fictions of their imagination as when they tell us that 
 our sin is infinite in potential evil, hence must be matched 
 by an infinite penalty ; or if forgiven, expiated by an in- 
 finite sacrifice, even the very Deity incarnate; all of 
 which no heart would have ever dreamed as its real want 
 if it had not been mystified by the theory. It is as if one 
 should come to us in a cave or dark room and insist that 
 we must accept their theory of light before we could en- 
 joy the benefit and blessing of the rays that fall from the 
 sun. To stop over the theory but detains us from action, 
 
90 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 and postpones the benefit. Come out into the sunshine! 
 Never mind the theory! Let one tell us that we are 
 spiritually ignorant and dark, and need a teacher, weak, 
 and need a helper, sorrowful, and need a comforter, sinful, 
 and need some one who can lead us back to right and 
 duty and peace, he speaks to a want we feel. His voice 
 finds an echo in our own consciousness. Let us study the 
 Man of Nazareth as he moves before us in the ordinary 
 relations of life, and see if we do not find in him provision 
 for our felt need. Come into the sunshine! 
 
 Look at him in his religion. A perfect man will stand 
 perfect in his relation to God. He cannot ignpre that re- 
 lation; can neither sink below nor exaggerate the proper 
 fervor of its love and measure of its service. In him we 
 should see what is the normal relation of every soul to 
 God. Those who assume the perfection of Jesus, tin -re- 
 fore, would naturally approach his religion as a sort of 
 holy place, a "burning bush," in the presence of which 
 we should reverently put off our poor human modes and 
 stand in awe. Yet no sense of a ghostly and supernatural 
 awfulness falls upon us as we see him in his inter-com- 
 munion with heaven. He rather makes us feel that relig- 
 ion is the native element of man. It is a home spirit. 
 His religion is so thoroughly human and on a level with 
 our own thoughts and feelings, that we can welcome it in 
 the household, and make it the companion of our business. 
 It was a first truth in his teaching that the true life of 
 man is in God, his strength in simple faith; that if he 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 91 
 
 would be entirely himself, or know the truth, he must 
 " dwell in God and God in him," through that Spirit that 
 guides into all truth. His own life was this teaching 
 realized. It was a life of faith, a walking with God. 
 While we are apt to think of him as a being superior to 
 the need of prayer, I believe it is oftener noted of him 
 that he prayed, than of any other character named in the 
 New Testament. Luke tells us that when he was about 
 to utter the Sermon on the Mount, he went up into the 
 mountain, and was all night long in prayer. Again, "he 
 was alone with his disciples praying." He prays at the 
 grave of Lazarus. He closes his dying counsels to " the 
 Twelve " at the last supper with a prayer that reads like 
 a face to face talk with God. Then thrice in Gethsemane, 
 thrice again on the cross, do we hear his voice in prayer. 
 On every occasion that presses his spirit he turns to God 
 for light and strength. Indeed he walks, through the 
 world as if the heavens stood open above him, and the 
 angels of God were ever visible to his eye ascending, and 
 descending the ladder of communication between earth 
 and heaven. The nearer to God the more of prayer, is 
 the lesson of his life. Yet there is no trace of the ascetic, 
 the monk, in him ; no hy^er-spiritualism, no strain to keep 
 up the mood of devotion. His religion sets naturally 
 upon him. He does not abandon the world. He is a man 
 among men. He partakes freely of the good cheer of the 
 feasts to which his friends invite him, with never a hint 
 or suspicion that the .temperate enjoyment of such good 
 
92 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 things was an enemy to the soul or the foe to spirituality. 
 The most divinely spiritual and unworldly of all religions, 
 his is nevertheless pre-eminently for this earth, for man, 
 for all men, in every calling, temptation, or condition in 
 life. 
 
 Look at him in his mighty purpose to save men from 
 evil and raise them to a divine life his inauguration of 
 the kingdom of God among men. One is not so much 
 struck with his practical benevolence unceasing provi- 
 dence of love and relief to all forms of human want though 
 his life was as with a certain divine exaltation of soul 
 seen in him in his feeling toward the race. His majesty 
 of manhood is here simply Godlike. It is the bearing of 
 an infinite Patience and Love. 
 
 There is danger to most men in taking up a work of 
 reform. The constant dwelling upon some aggravating 
 shape of wickedness, worries the temper. Indignation 
 grows personal. The reformer often comes to hate the 
 sinner rather than the sin. He becomes such that he 
 needs another reformer to set him right. Now no man 
 ever had more to irritate him than Jesus ; yet no one ever 
 bore a sunnier temper in the very radiance of prosperity 
 and human favor. Never a tone of petulance in his 
 words, no vitriolic sarcasm flung upon the bare nerves of 
 the erring; no flush of anger in his face; no spasmodic 
 outburst of rage that would brush away wrong-doers as if 
 they were worthless and annoying insects, with one 
 wrathful sweep of the arm. His self-possession is never 
 
. THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 93 
 
 ruffled. When his indignation does flash forth, it is as 
 purely impersonal as the feelings of the judge in sentenc- 
 ing the criminal. Toward those who err in judgment, or 
 sin through weakness, he shows a patience and tenderness 
 that speaks the mother toward her erring children, rather 
 than the hard censor of evil-doers. 
 
 His sublime steadfastness in his aims for human wel- 
 fare is equally noteworthy. There is no source of inspi- 
 ration and strength for a good purpose struggling with 
 obstacles like this granite immovability seen in him. 
 Those who take any great interest of humanity on their 
 hearts must expect to have the moral force and stamina 
 in them tried to the utmost. If they anticipate popular 
 favor and an easy time, they had better not begin. We 
 see society full of discouraged reformers and despondent 
 workers for truth and human progress. They are found 
 in our churches, our Sunday-schools, our temperance so- 
 cieties, our benevolent organizations, our good causes of 
 every name as they have ever been found, thick as sum- 
 mer butterflies that turn to autumn skeletons, in every 
 good cause that has fought its way through indifference 
 and obloquy to triumph and honor. They mean well 
 these disheartened righteous ! their sympathies are in the 
 right direction; but their hearts are not stout in truth 
 and love. Social prejudices are so perverted and so in- 
 veterate, men are so willfully blind, antagonists are so 
 unreasonable, the friends of the right way are so luke- 
 warm and so fickle, they conclude it is of no use, and they 
 
94 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 had as well give up. Many a Christian minister, with 
 Christ's Gospel in his hands, sometimes finds himself verg- 
 ing on this mood. But if ever he feels how little real man 
 there is in him, what a thin, breeze-shaken reed he is, it 
 will be when he notices this feeling rising in himself and 
 then turns to the life of Jesus. There he sees one strug- 
 gling with difficulties compared with which his are but an 
 ant-heap to the Sierras, unfaltering through every reverse, 
 gathering new force out of the very conditions of despair, 
 and all because he has a manhood large enough to grasp 
 and feel the divinity there is in the truth, and the possi- 
 bilities that slumber in erring human souls all because he 
 laved men well enough to make him so great. He stands 
 with the truth, come favor or come ruin. Before that 
 sight one grows ashamed of his littleness and vacillation, 
 and even greedy of self-sacrifice for the truth's sake. His 
 great love, unconquerable in its hopefulness, threw over 
 the weak and sinful the glory of their possible future in 
 the grace of God, and veiled in light the imperfections 
 that clung around them for the moment. Not as they 
 are does he see them, distorted with passion and stained 
 with sin, but radiant in the beauty of holiness under the 
 light of the great White Throne. Nothing can daunt his 
 courage or damp his ardor. Persecution is his opportunity ; 
 reverses but stimulate him ; defeat itself turns to victory 
 for him. We all know how the mettle of a man comes 
 out when his great plans meet rebuff, and the world turns 
 cold. Weak men will then lie down and whine. Even 
 
I 
 
 . THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 95 
 
 strong men, unless they be divinely strong, will turn 
 silent. The mighty Napoleon, conscious that his vast 
 schemes of ambition had nothing in them that men could 
 wish immortal, and had met their death-blow, went stag- 
 gering through the darkness towards Paris after his 
 Waterloo, cursing his star that had shed baleful influence 
 on the day, to live henceforth the morose, complaining life, 
 and at last to die the miserable death of a disappointed 
 and defeated man. Jesus sees the crowd drop suddenly 
 away at a saying of his too radical for their traditional 
 prejudices, to feel keenly the desertion, no doubt; to re- 
 member that his enemies will exult at this defection, and 
 hasten to call the notice of the world to what a mushroom 
 excitement his movement is showing itself to be, and to 
 what insignificance his following has already dwindled; 
 but to manifest no sign of despondency, or chagrin, or 
 wavering in his purpose. He sorrowfully turns to the few 
 who knew him best and asks, "Will ye also go away?'' 
 Gaining a reply of faithful adherence from them, he goes on 
 in his work as calmly and firmly as if all the multitude and all 
 the world were with him. And when the rabble that were 
 but yesterday shouting their " Hosannah to the Son of Da- 
 vid !" wishing to thrust a crown upon his head, turn suddenly 
 around to-day and cry just as clamorously, "Crucify him, 
 crucify him ! " he faces their anger, and marches bravely 
 on to his cross, knowing that his designs, built on immor- 
 tal truth, will live all the more that his life fails a sacri- 
 fice. 
 
* 
 
 96 A REASONABLE CHIUSTIANITY. 
 
 View him in the light he sheds on humble position 
 The marvel is not that he began in a carpenter's shop and 
 rose to a commanding station it is that Re was born, and 
 lived, and ended life without once attaining a position that 
 gave him influence by reason of the honor in which that 
 position is held among men, and yet sent forth from his 
 lowliness a power upon the world such as history has 
 never felt from any other single life. Men are prone to 
 attribute their failures or their personal insignificance to 
 external circumstances. "Ah me!" they sigh, "if I only 
 had the money of my neighbor who lives in the palace on 
 the hill, I would make this arid desert of a world about 
 me bloom like a garden. It is poverty that crushes me 
 down. Poverty is the coffin of my buried aspirations ! " 
 But here is an example that throws suspicion on this com- 
 plaint. Did Jesus have the money of your neighbor on 
 the hill? Did he count life worthless or bare of opportu- 
 nity because he was so poor that he had not where to lay 
 his head? Did he give up trying to do God's good work 
 because he could not rival Pilate or Herod or Caesar in 
 the splendor of his retinue and establishment? As you 
 observe the peculiar power that streams forth from his 
 life, will it not dawn upon you that possibly the poverty 
 of which you complain as crushing you down may be the 
 very circumstance which puts you at an advantage? You 
 cannot depend on wealth or social eminence for your in- 
 fluence. Very well; the influence that emanates from 
 these is rarely of a deep spiritual quality. Make yours 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 97 
 
 the power that streams from the heart to the heart in the 
 living flow of duty and love, and you will discover that 
 God has made tlie man to be more than his wealth or 
 position. The life of Jesus was surely no failure because 
 he had not large sums of money to take care of, nor the 
 petty annoyances of rank or honors heaped on lofty sta- 
 tion to take up his time. The true man, in the might of 
 the in-dwelling God, lays his hand on adverse circum- 
 stances and asserts his superiority to all external disad- 
 vantages. Jesus demonstrates that power is not in the 
 surroundings but in the man. 
 
 Look at him on the cross. A perfect man in suffering! 
 The sight would at first seem to impeach both the justice 
 and the goodness of God. Suffering is the penalty of sin, 
 we say; yet here is one suffering beyond the measure of 
 mortal agony, who is claimed to be "without sin." What 
 does this mean? Set aside theory, and let the light of 
 experience and universal fact fall on the sufferer, and you 
 will see what it means. Is it not a fact as wide as sinless 
 human goodness that the purest love suffers for its un- 
 worthy loved the reformer and philanthropist for his 
 degraded wards, the friend for his fallen friend, the mother 
 for her wild, self -ruining scapegrace of a boy? The more 
 saintly the innocence and purity, the keener will be the 
 pain. The nobler and stronger and more divinely endur- 
 ing the love, the greater will be its sacrifices, the more 
 will it express itself in painful effort voluntarily under- 
 taken in behalf of its objects. Strange fact! The very 
 
98 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 intensity of love laying the good and the holy in this evil 
 world under the moral necessity of the sharpest suffering ! 
 Strange to our earthly moods and selfish estimates of life's 
 ends and uses; but not strange to a divinely taught heart. 
 Ask this suffering love whether it wants any cold, 
 calculating questions of justice raised in its case. Would it 
 love less that it might surfer less? Would the philanthro- 
 pist be a lower style of man that he might feel less keenly 
 the miseries and follies of our human condition? Would 
 the mother have her heart die toward her unworthy boy, 
 that she might be spared her yearning struggles and 
 prayers and weepings? Oh, insult not a holy love with 
 such questions ! It would shudder to think of descend- 
 ing to be lower or less than it is, though to remain and 
 rise were to surfer a thousand times more. Such a love 
 feels a worth in itself that is not to be balanced against 
 any degree of pain. A sense of its own divineness and 
 immortal life makes it strong to endure. It detects the 
 shallowness and selfishness of the error that says pain is to 
 punish sin; it learns from its own heart that the object 
 for which a good God has appointed suffering is to rescue 
 and raise up the sinner. There is something besides a 
 hard-faced justice to be satisfied; its own yearning good- 
 ness demands the privilege of sacrifice that the fallen may 
 be restored and become " partakers of the divine Holi- 
 ness." Love must impart its gift. It cannot look upon 
 the perishing that lack yet might receive, and remain at 
 rest. It must go forth along whatever path of thorns 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 99 
 
 leads to the end, that it may bear to them God's gift of 
 life. 
 
 This is the meaning of the sufferings of Jesus. They 
 speak a love that could not withhold, but must go forth 
 to "seek and to save that which was lost," "to save his 
 people from their sins;" by its own self-expression to in- 
 spire in the saved its own life, and in that fact make 
 them partakers of God's holiness. The cross is the key to 
 the mystery of human pain. For although there is much 
 suffering that is involuntary, and does not rise from love 
 to others, yet its end in God's appointment is the same. 
 It is to teach men the supreme value God places on spir- 
 itual good, holiness of character. It is to bring men into 
 the same estimate; and when accepted in love never fails 
 to bring forth "fruits unto holiness and the end, ever- 
 lasting life." We often complain of the injustice of 
 Providence. We say we suffer more than we deserve, 
 It was but yesterday that one said to me, " In pearly life 
 and for many years, I was prosperous and happy. I had 
 enough of this world's goods. Life went smoothly with 
 me. But a brief illness was followed by paralysis ; and 
 here I am, a helpless cripple ; pain never lets go ; sleepless 
 nights followed by suffering days, and suffering days 
 leading on to worse-suffering nights; my money gone; 
 my plans defeated; my hopes blasted; nothing in pros- 
 pect but one dreary waste of suffering and want; and yet 
 I live on. Why can I not die? I find it hard to believe 
 there is a God while I am doomed to suffer in this way." 
 
100 A IlEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Bitter indeed seemed the lot of that sufferer. I could only 
 reply from the cross: "Is your life blasted? Is the great 
 end for which you are here on God's fair earth certainly 
 defeated? Think of some who have never met your mis- 
 fortune. Prosperity continues unbroken. Health never 
 wavers. Life runs smoothly. They have more than heart 
 could wish. But as life goes on, what do they become? 
 Pampered pets of the world; sleek, comfortable animals, 
 too often; with never a thought for the soul; never an 
 aspiration towards a diviner life. And when they come 
 to the end, look at what they are, what their favored life 
 has made of them. Would you change? You would not 
 be they for a thousand worlds ! What they miss you may 
 have in spite of your pains, may by the help of your pains, 
 through trust in God. Think not your life is blasted; its 
 main good, its only good that would not soon perish at the 
 longest, is still within your reach. Accept the pain that 
 must be, as Christ accepted his cross, and having suffered 
 with him you shall reign with him." As this thought 
 came like a divine revelation to the sufferer, a new light 
 suddenly rested on that pain- weary face, and the suffer- 
 ings which had been such a black mystery seemed glori- 
 fied. We shall never complain that we suffer more than 
 we deserve when we stand under the light of the cross. 
 
 So, finally, view this one who comes to you and offers 
 himself as a Leader and Friend in the darkness of life in 
 every possible aspect. Compare him with all others who 
 have claimed to do the world the same service; know the 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS. 101 
 
 best that each can do for you ; concede freely all the good 
 there is in them ; and then say if your highest reason does 
 not compel you to admit that Jesus stands peerless in the 
 manifest glory of his excellence; see if your heart will not 
 respond to his claims, " Oh thou Son of Man and Son of 
 God, let others choose whom they will, but be Thou my 
 heart's Leader and Lord, and let it be my dear privilege 
 to follow thee, though it be with distant and faltering 
 step, along the path of suffering an<"l love which thou hast 
 trod, leading unto everlasting life. 
 
The Divinity of Jesus. 
 
 John xiv: 9: He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. John x: 30: 
 I and my Father are one. 
 
 We speak of this world as the home of man; but we 
 shall never dwell in it with any proper appreciation of its 
 significance, until we learn to see it in the manifestation 
 of God. Man is never at home until he " sees the Father " 
 as the Builder of the house for him. To see the creation 
 and not see the Creator is to look upon a dead mechanism 
 and imagine it to be greater than the inventor. The brute 
 crops the grass and sees nothing better in the sod from 
 which it springs. The man who lives of the fruits of the 
 earth and sees nothing but matter and its forces as their 
 origin, is hardly above the brute in the dignity of his 
 thought. Not to feel a throbbing Heart under the ribs of 
 nature, not to recognize a thinking Mind in her order, not 
 to trace an intelligent purpose in her ongoings and results, 
 is to miss the chief significance of her works. It is to 
 study nature as one dissects a corpse after that which is 
 of supreme interest, the life, the soul, is gone out of it. 
 Matter would be a lifeless lump, and all the motions of 
 nature but the random play of insensate forces, if God 
 were not in them. 
 
 But once look upon creation as the manifestation of 
 God, and you are in the way, if I have learned rightly, to 
 the true interpretation of the Life and Person of Jesus 
 
THE CROWN OF CREATION. 103 
 
 of the claim he asserts that he is one with the Father, and 
 that to sfee him is to see the Father. This is simply the 
 claim that he is the fulness of that manifestation of God 
 which we see opening more and more clearly throughout 
 the whole course of creation. He is the consummate 
 flower and fruit of the whole growth of nature, and of 
 moral and spiritual life on our earth. He is the highest 
 ' and completest manifestation of God that man can see or 
 comprehend. Let us see if this cannot be made to ap- 
 pear. 
 
 One fact strikes the student of nature, as he reads the 
 history of creation written in the strata of the earth, as 
 significant beyond every other the fact of progress. Na- 
 ture begins in chaos and advances to the cosmos. She 
 starts with the lowest forms of life and rises by gradual 
 steps to the highest. To trace these steps is the work and 
 the wonder of science. Beginning with the moner, or 
 primitive germ of life, the advance is through ascending 
 classes, orders, families, genera and species, till man crowns 
 and completes the physical series. There are stationary 
 forms, degenerate forms, even lower branches that nature 
 suffers to die and drop off altogether from the growing 
 tree of physical life; but there is a central stem that ever 
 continues to rise. In man begins a new creation moral 
 and spiritual. This is characterized by the same law of 
 growth. Beginning in the lowest savage, it advance? 
 through various forms and grades of cultivated humanity 
 until it culminates in the highest example of moral and 
 
104 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 spiritual life that appears along the range of history. 
 Here again there are stationary races, cases of arrested 
 growth, like the Chinese, degenerate races, like the Greeks 
 and Arabs, dead and buried civilizations, like the ancient 
 Egyptians and Phoenicians; but there was one ancient 
 stock whose growth can be traced from a very humble 
 origin through a marvelous course of development, till it 
 gave the world One whose peculiar and peerless person- 
 ality and influence on human character and history have 
 constrained the purest and loftiest minds of other races to 
 confess him to be the impersonation of all excellence in 
 moral and spiritual life the Perfection of the new crea- 
 tion. 
 
 Now if we are to recognize a Creator in creation, if we 
 are to say that this earth is a manifestation of God, it is 
 impressively apparent that He is increasingly manifest in 
 the progress we have traced. More and more of God is 
 seen in these rising grades of life beneath man; more and 
 more of God is revealed in the moral and spiritual life of 
 humanity, in the succeeding higher types of men which 
 the study of history brings to view. Then but admit that 
 Jesus is the grandest and divinest of men as Renan and 
 Parker and Emerson agree that he is and do you not by 
 that admission confess in him the highest manifestation of 
 God that has appeared on our earth ? Study him under 
 the severest scrutiny, and can you refuse to acknowledge 
 in his manifest superiority, if not absolute perfection, his 
 moral supremacy among men? For one, I am satisfied 
 
THE CROWN OF CREATION. 105 
 
 / 
 
 that the facts which may be gathered from the ancient 
 records of human life, combined with the view of THE 
 MAN, furnish a moral demonstration that places him at 
 the head of the human race, as conclusive as the scientific 
 demonstration that man physical stands at the head of 
 the lower orders of creation. 
 
 The Scriptures, then, have made no mistake in exalting 
 him to the leadership of humanity. This thought seems 
 to have possessed the Apostle Paul especially like a pas- 
 sion. To him Jesus was " God manifest in the flesh ;" 
 " The image of the invisible God, the first-born of every 
 creature;" the image, as being the consummate mani- 
 festation of God; the First-born of every creature, not in 
 time, of course, but in the idea of God, the final end of his 
 creative self-manifestation. Again he says of Jesus, "God 
 gave him to be Head over all things to the church;" and 
 again that it was the Divine purpose " To gather together 
 (original, head together), in one all things in Christ, both 
 which are in heaven and which are on earth." The intu- 
 itions of the Apostle's faith thus caught the vision of the 
 mightiest fact of creation ; saw and felt the divine dignity 
 in Jesus, by virtue of which he is the head of humanity. 
 If I am not deceived, nature and history will ere long 
 confirm this insight of faith with impregnable demonstra- 
 tion. In that demonstration, Science and Faith will join 
 hands, never again to raise them in warfare against each 
 other. 
 
 Another law observed in this unfolding manifestation 
 
106 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of God is deeply suggestive. The close scientific study of 
 this progressive creation discovers that every higher 
 form that appears epitomizes in its own structure and 
 contents all the forms below itself. That is to say, along 
 with some new distinctive quality that ranks it as higher, 
 it contains within itself all the elements that go to make 
 up the lower grades. The rock embodies all that is in the 
 clod, and holds it together in a firmer cohesion. The 
 crystal contains all that is in the rock, combined under 
 some beautiful law of arrangement not seen in the rock. 
 The vegetable contains the same coarse matter as the clod 
 and the rock and the crystal, but deftly woven into an 
 organism by a principle we call life, more wonderful far 
 than the law which arranges the constituent particles of 
 the crystal. The body of the animal, again, contains 
 gross matter akin to dust, and also the vital principle, the 
 same as the vegetable, but added to these, even in the 
 lowest forms, a marvelous something we call instinct, 
 which more than life, if possible, baffles all our analysis 
 and science. And the more complex and highly organ- 
 ized animal structures, from the polyp up to man, ever 
 include in themselves all the elements of matter and struc- 
 ture found in the forms below themselves. Man has an 
 organic, living body and instinct like the animal, but 
 joined mysteriously with these, and rising immeasurably 
 above them, he bears the divine endowment of reason. 
 In this is included a judgment that can discriminate the 
 good from the evil, the right from the wrong, and a con- 
 
THE CROWN OF CREATION. 107 
 
 science which can feel obligation. A creature has now 
 appeared that can know himself, and in himself the image 
 of God and the God whom his image reflects. He is the 
 epitome of creation, representing the whole in himself all 
 the way up from the clod to the rational soul. 
 
 It will be obvious to a little reflection that the moral 
 and spiritual creation is pervaded by the same law as the 
 natural. The higher include the lower. In the rising 
 types of character, each nobler man cannot fail to com- 
 bine in living illustration all the virtues of those below 
 himself. If, therefore, it be true that in all the qualities 
 that make man divine Jesus stands as the preeminent 
 man, it is apparent by this law of assimilation and inclu- 
 sion that he epitomizes and carries higher in his own per- 
 son the whole manifestation of God in creation. By 
 another line of evidence we have thus come to the same 
 conclusion with Paul's faith. As we have heard the 
 naturalist Oken, with this very law in view, exclaim, 
 " Man is the sum total of all the animals," so we hear the 
 apostle asserting with an equally startling boldness, that 
 Jesus is " The fulness of the Godhead bodily." That is, 
 he is the completeness of the Divine manifestation in na- 
 ture and in man. In his human body he represents the 
 entire physical creation ; in his spirit the entire moral and 
 spiritual creation; and thus crowns and perfects the mani- 
 festation of God. 
 
 If the view now presented be correct, it will be apparent 
 at once that Jesus is no afterthought or side-thought of 
 
108 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 God, brought in upon the course of evolution by miracle 
 or separate divine act. He is seen as the final end and 
 realization of God's aim in the long progress of self -revela- 
 tion. We may regard nature and man as a system of 
 object lessons through which God is revealing as much of 
 Himself as can be revealed outwardly to the human soul 
 Jesus then will appear by virtue of what he is seen to be 
 as the supreme manifestation of God. . And when the 
 theologians will consent to see him thus, as the crowning 
 fact of creation or evolution, rising out of the creative 
 forces that have been at work from the beginning, an 
 integral and inseparable part of the system, illuminating 
 the whole by opening tc view in unspeakable grandeur 
 the design and meaning of the whole, they will have an 
 argument for his divine supremacy over the race as much 
 more conclusive than tliDse upon which they have hitherto 
 relied, as it is nearer to God's known and visible methods 
 of working. We cannot cut out and set aside a part or 
 section in the system of nature through which God is 
 manifesting himself, and put in its place some puny de- 
 vice of our own. What is put in by miracle we can 
 imagine away without breaking the continuity of the 
 whole; but what comes in by growth or evolution holds 
 its place by virtue of eternal law. No more can we cut 
 off and set aside the Crown and Head, and make it good 
 by any human substitute. As well attempt to put out 
 the Sun and substitute the electric light. Man is not 
 competent for the work of God ; and the work of God ap- 
 
THE CROWN OF CREATION. 109 
 
 proves its origin by its divine greatness. The eternal 
 forces of God, working in nature, place Jesus at the head 
 of creation and of men; and you must reverse the work 
 of God, the very order of nature, before you can unthrone 
 him. 
 
 And do we miss anything from the fulness and au- 
 thority of God's revelation in thus seeing in Jesus a part, 
 and the perfection, of the whole system? The Christian 
 evolutionist sees God in the creation of man by the long 
 growth from the lowest form of life just as distinctly, and 
 with fewer embarrassing questions, as when he thought of 
 the first man as shaped from the clay of the earth by the 
 mechanical act of God within twelve hours. So the 
 Christian believer will see God in the Christ, regarded as 
 the final and highest result of moral and spiritual evolu- 
 tion, just as fully and clearly, and with far fewer chilling 
 shadows upon his reason and heart, as when he viewed 
 him as a separate and miraculous attachment to the mani- 
 festation of God in nature and man. He sees in him the 
 Father, and finds in him the way home. It is only a 
 mild form of Atheism in the guise of Christian faith, 
 failing to recognize God as ever present in nature, really 
 seeing him in nothing at all, that insists on a mechanical 
 creation of man and a miraculous Christ before it will see 
 God in either. 
 
 We should find small edification now in entering into 
 the long debate which has ragd for sixteen centuries in 
 the Christian church between those who teach the su- 
 
110 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 preme Deity of Jesus on the one hand, and those who hold 
 his creature dependence on the other, between those who 
 insist on his essential oneness of Personality with the 
 Father, and those who claim that the unity is only of 
 spirit and purpose, between those who address an adoring 
 worship to him as equal with the Father, and those who 
 denounce such worship as addressed to a creature, and 
 therefore as essential idolatry. Our view simply sets 
 aside the controversy as nearly meaningless. The dis- 
 putants set out from some baseless assumptions among 
 their fundamental data, and hence have ever found it 
 impossible to reach a stable and satisfactory conclusion. 
 We say that the Supreme Deity comes forth from the 
 mystery of the infinite into his supreme manifestation in 
 Jesus. We see Him in Jesus. We know Him in our 
 highest conception of what He is in himself and of what 
 He is to man, in and through Christ. If you point me 
 to the bodily form that went to and fro along the roads 
 of Palestine about eighteen and a half centuries ago, and 
 ask if I can believe that being of flesh and blood whom 
 my eye can measure and the scales can weigh, to be the 
 infinite God, I answer without hesitation, That body 
 cannot be God; God is a Spirit; that body is matter, the 
 same as any other human form. A limited form cannot 
 be the infinite Spirit. If then you refer me to the Mind 
 that dwelt in that body, that grew in wisdom and knowl- 
 edge, and confessed ignorance of some things known to 
 the Heavenly Father, and ask me if that mind is one and 
 
THE CROWN OF CREATION. 'Ill 
 
 co-equal with the infinite Mind, I can only answer again 
 that Omniscience cannot grow in knowledge or confess 
 ignorance; the finite cannot be the Infinite in the sphere 
 of mind, any more than in the sphere of matter. If you 
 remind me, again, that the Will which controlled that 
 body and directed the powers of that mind, in the act of 
 prayer confessed dependence and the need of help, and ask 
 me if that can be one with the Omnipotent Will, I reply 
 once more that the dependent cannot at the same time be 
 the absolute Independent; the finite cannot be the Infinite 
 in the sphere of will any more than in the sphere of mat- 
 ter or knowledge. To affirm that they are is sheer self- 
 contradiction. It is merely to play with words; to amuse 
 ourselves with impossible imaginations. Let us not im- 
 pose upon our reason with palpable absurdities. If you 
 once more ask me to open the mystery of the connection 
 between the finite and the Infinite, and make clear the 
 metaphysical relation of Jesus to the Father, I can only 
 confess that as my powers are finite, and one of the fac- 
 tors of your problem is the Infinite, you have set me a 
 task for which I am incompetent. I cannot grasp a unity 
 in which I must still believe. This only, seems important 
 to my faith I need to remember that all I can know of 
 the Infinite must come to me in the finite. All I can see 
 of God must be in his limited manifestations. Jesus ap- 
 pears as the supreme manifestation of the Father. To see 
 him is to see the Father. I can worship God at all only 
 under the conceptions I gain from his manifestation. I 
 
112 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cannot do otherwise, therefore, than worship Him in that 
 thought of the Divine that Jesus gives me. As my eye 
 ranges upward along the rising orders of life and being 
 in which God has come forth into manifestation, the last 
 and highest I see is the Man of Nazareth. When the 
 search after God leaps beyond the thought of Him it there 
 gains, the mind finds itself floating in a vague and limit- 
 less vacancy, where nothing is discovered upon which it 
 can rest but its own imaginings. I turn from them as 
 unsubstantial support. I am compelled to worship God 
 through Christ. If I discard the conception, of God that 
 comes through him, I find myself projecting the fiction of 
 my own brain into infinite space and worshiping that as 
 God. I may call him Law, may call him Life, may call 
 him Goodness, or by whatever other lofty abstraction hu- 
 man language supplies; but under all these names the 
 sense of his nearness, of the reality of his personal rela- 
 tion to me, fades into dimness. When by faith I see in 
 Jesus the Father, I recover the lost sense of that nearness 
 and reality, and taste the "fruits of the Spirit" in the 
 communion of prayer. 
 
 A truce, then, to controversy. It is time we begin to 
 believe in Jesus practically. Whatever incomprehensible 
 wonders we may believe about him, our faith will avail little 
 until we believe in him for what we can see him to be. 
 We need to look at him in his relation to our felt want. 
 What light does he throw upon our life? What sugges- 
 tions may we gain from him for our own improvement; 
 
THE CROWN OF CREATION. 
 
 what help in the fight with conscious evils? What in- 
 spirations to higher aims and holier endeavors? He was 
 named Jesus because he should save his people from their 
 sins. To see the human beauty of his life, to call him 
 Divine, and then turn away to plunge into impurities of 
 self-indulgence, or to follow the law of selfishness in our 
 work, or give ourselves up to all meannesses of motive and 
 living, is only to prepare for ourselves the repulse at last, 
 "I know you not." If we know him by heart, he will 
 know us. And to know him is to know God who is re- 
 vealed in him. And to know God is eternal life the end 
 for which the whole divine Manifestation comes forth 
 from the bosom of the Infinite. 
 
 We have said that Jesus crowns and completes this 
 manifestation. " What further, then? " you may ask. "If 
 evolution has reached its highest, progress would seem to 
 be at an end." No, not for the human race at large. 
 God's way is to educate men through some higher man. 
 The history of human progress is the history of the thought 
 of a few individuals. We claim that the race of Israel is 
 the High Priest of humanity. It is simply fact, not 
 theory, that the consciousness of the Divine and of the 
 spiritual relations of man, rose to its highest and broadest 
 intuitions of truth in the Jewish mind. Other ancient 
 races rose higher in art, in literature, in law, in science 
 and philosophy; but in Jesus religion gave its clearest 
 light to the world. The further the comparative study 
 of religion is carried, the more will this be made to appear. 
 
A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 No sparkling planet, however brilliant its ray, will be 
 mistaken for the central Sun. The religion of Jesus is for 
 all mankind. He clearly indicated in his teachings what 
 his own relation to other races was to be. He came to 
 found a kingdom of God that should be universal. He 
 unlocalizes its worship, and erects its temple and its altar 
 wherever there is a heart to "worship in spirit and in 
 truth." He irritates his countrymen with parables that 
 intimate that they are no longer the special favorites of 
 heaven. Once he tells them flatly that the kingdom of 
 God should be taken from them and given to others, who 
 would bring forth the fruits thereof. "Other sheep I have," 
 says he to his own disciples, "which are not of this fold." 
 And he finally gives them his commission to preach this 
 kingdom in all the world, and to every creature. It way 
 the kingdom of truth, the mastery in each soul gained 
 by the good will over all the lower passions, right princi- 
 ple regnant over grasping greed, God in the heart en- 
 throned over the man. It is to be as wide as tl^e mani- 
 festation of the King. Wherever He can be seen He has 
 the right to reign. And as God has consummated his 
 self -revelation in Jesus, has made him " the brightness of 
 His glory, and the express Image of His Person," by that 
 fact Jesus is the Crowned Head of this kingdom of truth. 
 He is lifted up to the view of all men in the Passion of 
 Love, in the attraction of the cross, that he might draw 
 all men unto himself. Blessed is the man who, feeling, 
 yields to that divine attraction ! 
 
The New Birth. 
 
 JOHN iii; 3: Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say 
 unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 " Born from above/' you will see in the margin of your 
 reference Bibles, which is the more accurate and the more 
 suggestive rendering of the words of Jesus. As natural 
 birth brings one into the world of the senses with organs 
 for the perception of its objects, so a birth from above into 
 the higher world of the spirit, must give him eye and ear 
 and taste for the things of the spirit in order to the com- 
 pleteness of his being. This saying of Jesus to the timid 
 Jewish ruler has ever possessed a peculiar attraction for 
 the purer minds of the Christian world. Clouded often 
 by a mystical and artificial interpretation,, it makes itself 
 felt even through the obscurity as a true light of heaven. 
 Like the living fountain gushing from the hillside and 
 fouled by the tread of some passing herd, it soon runs 
 clear again, and men turn aside to slake their thirst from 
 its pure waters. A perpetual sense of want, deep in the 
 heart of our human nature, finds here its way to satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 It is only necessary to mention what has so often been 
 explained, that the figure of the text was drawn from a 
 well-known custom among the Jews of baptizing Gentile 
 proselytes into the Jewish religion. This baptism had the 
 
116 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 force of naturalization. It initiated the subject into the 
 same privileges as if he had been born a Jew; and so he 
 was counted as born again of the water of his baptism. 
 Nicodemus, as a ruler of the Jews, ought to have under- 
 stood that this baptism was but a symbol, and that the 
 reality for which it stood was a heart of loyalty to the 
 law of Jehovah. Without the true spirit of a Jewish 
 citizen the symbol was but a mockery. So a man must 
 be " born of water and of the spirit," says Jesus, before he 
 can enter into the privileges of citizenship in the kingdom 
 of God. He must get a heart of loyalty to this realm and 
 rule of the Spirit. 
 
 It is hardly probable that the Teacher intended this fig- 
 ure, used by him so far as we know only on this single 
 occasion, as the basis of a formal and fundamental doc- 
 trine of his Church, much less as an exaction that should 
 be used, after the modern style, to concentrate the atten- 
 tion of penitents, in their initial efforts after amendment, 
 upon some mysterious change to be divinely wrought 
 within them, the perception of which should be hailed as 
 God's smile of acceptance. Such a use only throws con- 
 fusion over the way of repentance. It diverts the mind 
 from the real duty to be done to the illusions that come of 
 watching the flitting moods of feeling. If such had been 
 the Savior's intention, it is strange that three out of four 
 reporters of his sayings to us, make no mention of this 
 doctrine. It virtually charges three of the Gospels with 
 radical defect. And yet there can be no doubt that this 
 
4 
 
 THE NEW BIRTH. 117 
 
 figure entered deeply into all the early Christian thought 
 and teaching. Paul echoes it in such words as "The 
 washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy 
 Spirit," "Created anew in Christ Jesus," "Quickened in 
 the spirit;" and John in his often reiterated, "Born of 
 God," " Born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
 of man, but of God." It expresses a great fact inherent 
 and perpetual in human nature. Man must rise into the 
 sense of his relation to God and the spirit world, or he 
 cannot be a complete man. He is as dependent upon influ- 
 ences that come from that world for the full and rounded 
 development of his moral being as his body is dependent 
 in its growth upon the nourishment drawn from the ma- 
 terial world. No other words can say this truth so 
 strongly and so well as these " Ye must be born from 
 above." Our human need cannot afford to lay aside or 
 forget this saying. 
 
 Do we ask, What makes this necessity? why this 
 Must ? The answer of some would be, Because sin hath 
 depraved man's nature. We rather say, Because God 
 hath made the need inherent in man's nature. The ne- 
 cessity is based in his very constitution. It pertains to 
 man as man. He can never be a full-grown man without 
 this new birth. The Adam would have needed to be born 
 from above, if he had never eaten the apple. And why? 
 Because He must rise out of the appetites and senses into 
 the spiritual, or he can never become a true man. It is 
 well enough for him to begin with eating ; we must all 
 
118 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 do that; but he must outgrow this putting of appetitive 
 or material good above every higher interest and aim, or 
 he remains less than a man. There is a spiritual life into 
 which he must rise. Not to rise is to fall. This becomes 
 apparent by simply tracing the growth of a human soul. 
 We start with infancy. The babe comes into the world 
 an animate bundle of uneasiness. It opens its eyes on 
 this outward scene. Material things touch the senses and 
 evoke their action. Appetite begins to crave as the heart 
 beats, involuntarily. Hunger and pain raise the instinct- 
 ive cry for relief nature's prayer for food and help and 
 parental providence. The bundle grows. It opens its 
 eyes wider. The sense of color comes with the myriad 
 tints that float in on beams of light. The vague feeling 
 of beauty flits over the face in a smile. Sounds touch the 
 ear and awaken another form of feeling. Explosions and 
 discords send their fright into the look. Musical harmo- 
 nies are seen playing over the features. The little auditor 
 dances and crows his applause, encoring every piece. But 
 as yet there is no emotion higher than comes from the 
 senses. Human forms are hardly distinguished from the 
 marble bust in the niche on the wall. But ere long the 
 mother's kiss meets a smile that means more than passive 
 pleasure; it is a response to love. That is a great fact. 
 The babe is born anew into filial love. The soul has risen 
 out of the senses into a higher experience. Motherly ten- 
 derness has touched and quickened a new susceptibility of 
 the being. How early we need not say ; but the feelin^ 
 
THE NEW BIRTH. 119 
 
 is new, better than any that went before faint at first, 
 like the dawn that breaks the darkness before the dawn, 
 but full of promise. It may seem at the moment a very 
 little matter, that faint, tremulous quiver of new-born 
 love, vibrating over the chords of an infant's heart, and 
 rippling out in smiles ; but who shall say it is not a great 
 moment in the life of the child? better than all beauty 
 of colors, better than the keenest delight in musical har- 
 monies, better than the best the senses can give ; a new 
 faculty waked up, a new life within the soul begun. No 
 doubt this will be slow in maturing and coming to its ful- 
 ness of strength. The age of half lawless impulse suc- 
 ceeds. The babe grows into the rollicking child, that sees 
 everything, wants everything, grasps at everything, put- 
 ting no restraint upon itself, needing its law of restraint 
 from an older will until it can learn self-restraint, filial 
 love itself strangely mixed up with tops, marbles, kites 
 and dolls. But what if that love had never waked? 
 What if the very power had been left dormant ? What 
 would have been lost from the life ? What would be lost 
 out of the world and out of human experience here, if love 
 to parents were never felt. Could we be complete ? Ye 
 must be born from above ! 
 
 As maturity approaches, a more serious sense of rela- 
 tions to others falls on the soul. Vague yearnings 
 prophesy new heart-births. Other regenerations are 
 coming. Help comes from some "good Samaritan" in 
 the hour of sorest need, and gratitude is born. No other 
 
120 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sentiment that moves the heart ever brings just the like 
 experience. It is another new life. Two congenial spirits 
 meet; heart answers to heart, and they become conscious 
 of that new, good life within which we call friendship. 
 There is even less of self in this than in the love of the 
 chfld for the parent. In the sense of being more com- 
 pletely disinterested it is higher and purer. Two other 
 souls exchange glances, and the affection is born which 
 makes them one for life and one forever. God hath joined 
 them together; let no man put them asunder. In this 
 union Paradise is repeated in its morning purity and joy. 
 So when the first-born is laid in the arms of the parent, 
 it brings another regeneration. The heart is born again 
 into a new kingdom of love. None but the parent, as 
 every true parent knows, can see that kingdom and know 
 its joy. What a new world of experiences is here entered ! 
 In this feeling we find the very crown of the natural af- 
 fections. Parental love is the highest type of the love of 
 the Father in heaven. 
 
 But is this growth of a soul yet complete? Are all the 
 faculties waked? Is the man wholly alive? Is there not 
 a higher kingdom of love and responsibility not yet en- 
 tered? Man is a spirit as well as a being of intelligence 
 and natural affections. Spirit is related to spirit as truly 
 as body to body. If we are to say that man is immortal, 
 that relation must extend to another life. All finite 
 spirits are related to each other. If we are to say there 
 is a Qpd, an Infinite Spirit, all spirits are related to him. 
 
THE NEW BIRTH. 121 
 
 And now pause a moment and think of the new world 
 thus suggested. Is it conceivable that an Infinite Father 
 in Heaven should pervade every spot on earth with his 
 presence and warm every object with his love, yet the 
 spirit of man be incapable of rising into a sense of the 
 great fact? Is there a God, and yet must we live and 
 feel and suffer and be in all things just as if there were 
 no God? Are we indeed "his offspring," and must our 
 hearts lie forever dead and cold under the smile of our 
 
 * 
 
 Father? It cannot be! Reason, no less than the instinct 
 of love, repels the chilling suggestion. It must be that 
 we can see God in the spirit if our faith will consent to 
 look for Him. It must be that we can raise our life into 
 a living and growing sense of what he is. And what less 
 can that vision be but the very life o our life? . 
 
 There are times when every heart craves this revela- 
 tion. I believe it comes with more or less clearness to 
 every earnest soul. To one earlier, to another later, but 
 in every one that aspires to a better life there dawns the 
 sense of a LIVING PRESENCE, greater, more solemn, more 
 sweet, than the bodily eye ever sees. Nature hints this 
 Presence in a thousand ways. Her bountiful growths 
 satisfy our material wants. Her beauty kindles within 
 us a pure joy. Her order speaks of an intelligent Mind 
 and purpose. Her beneficent forces soothe our pains and 
 heal our sicknesses. Think well, feel the deepest meaning 
 of all these, and you will say there must be a Heart of 
 goodness in them. And when we come into the light of 
 
122 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the Cross, the words, the life, the death of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, the hint of nature rises into moral demonstration. 
 The clearest Word of God's presence there speaks. The 
 soul feels the reality. But whenever and by whatever 
 means the revelation comes, its advent is the supreme 
 hour of life. God discovers himself to the soul. Hence- 
 forth the best light that ever falls into this world lies in 
 growing brightness on the pathway. When the teacher 
 of the deaf and blind girl Laura Bridgman had succeeded 
 with untiring effort and ingenuity in conveying to Her 
 imprisoned mind the thought of a Supreme Being, Creator 
 of the universe and Father of all, the ecstasy into which 
 it threw her, he says, was indescribable. She was held 
 for some minutes in a sort of trance-vision. When she 
 came to herself again and sought by her mute eloquence 
 to express her emotions, her face glowed with what seemed 
 more than mortal joy. A God, a Father, a Heart of love 
 at the center of this vast cold universe ! That was the 
 supreme Fact. And this discovery, thus first opening it- 
 self to view, raised her life into a new world which has 
 grown more bright and joyous as she has advanced in 
 years. No wonder that the first opening of this Fact to 
 any soul, in the shadows that rest so heavily on this mor- 
 tal state, should seem to transfigure the universe. That 
 light which was never on land or sea is in the soul. New 
 faculties seem to wake. An encompassing Presence of 
 Goodness and Power is felt. "Old things have passed 
 away ; behold, all things are become new ! " 
 
THE NEW BIRTH. 123 
 
 Now let us consider a moment where this view brings 
 us. The " birth from above " which Jesus declares to be 
 the essential condition of our seeing the kingdom of God, 
 is no reconstruction of our natural constitution, as has 
 often been imagined, no creation of new faculties within 
 us, no arbitrary change wrought in us, against all known 
 laws of the mind, by a force sent from heaven; it is in the 
 line of the normal growth of the soul the last great step 
 towards its completion. It is the unsealing of the highest 
 faculties of man. It is simply rising into the perception 
 of our true relation to God and spiritual realities. That 
 realm of the spiritual is real ; it is all around us. We are 
 part of it. This new birth is but opening the eyes of the 
 spirit upon its own world. It should be no mystery that 
 a man cannot enter that world and live in its relations 
 until he gets a perception for its realities. Home is a 
 meaningless word till one loves home. Friendship is but 
 a sound on the tongue till one both has a friend and is a 
 friend. No kingdom of love is entered but by love. What 
 wonder, then, that a man cannot possess this highest 
 birthright that crowns his humanity till the new birth 
 opens his eyes. 
 
 The unnatural air of mystery which has been thrown 
 around this theme is thus dissipated. This need is a 
 great world-fact. It is as wide as humanity. It is a 
 home fact for each of us. It is just as clear as the fact 
 that we cannot be mathematicians, or see the kingdom of 
 mathematics, if we will not study numbers, or that we 
 
124 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cannot be geologists if we give no attention to the facts 
 of geology. It is simply saying that we cannot see a 
 thing if we will not use the eye to see it. 
 
 Let us not imagine the truth loses its importance because 
 it is thus cleared of its look of spiritual magic. It be- 
 comes us each to ask, Have we risen into any experience 
 of this higher life? Are we born from above? Are we 
 in the way to completeness of soul? We do not like to 
 think of being dwarfs in body. But a dwarf body often 
 carries a beautifully complete oul. Then the bodily mis- 
 fortune is not very serious. But a dwarf-soul, a divine 
 creature that stops short of complete growth that is a 
 sad spectacle ! We are shocked to meet one of those ab- 
 normal beings that now and then appear on earth, like 
 Pomeroy, the boy-murderer of Boston, who seem destitute 
 of any power of moral perception. They are moral idiots 
 With all the keenness of intellect and desire seen in other 
 human beings, they seem incapable of grasping the dis- 
 tinction between right and wrong, or feeling any of the 
 obligations that bind others in their moral relations. No 
 words can speak the repulsive monstrosity. May it not 
 be that there are beings in a higher sphere that look upon 
 that human soul that has never waked to the perception 
 of God and divine things with feelings akin to those with 
 which we look upon such an abnormal human creature? 
 A soul dark toward God; blind to the things of prayer and 
 sacred song, and all spiritual worship, that is to all these 
 just at if there were no realities answering to them! 
 
THE NEW BIRTH. 125 
 
 That surely we do not want to be. We have asked what 
 would be lost from the life if filial love were never waked 
 in the heart. We feel at once that no words could mourn 
 that desolation enough. Would the loss be less if love to 
 the Father in Heaven wakes not? 
 
 Let us be advised, also, to spend no time over the ques- 
 tion how early this great change may take place in the 
 child. Nurture children in the truth; tell them the 
 story of the One who took little children in his arms and 
 blessed them, and said " of such is the kingdom of heaven;" 
 see that God's love shines on them through human love; 
 then leave their hearts to wake as they will. Wake they 
 will under this nurture, even as filial love wakes under 
 the fostering of a mother's tenderness. Perhaps, as Bush- 
 nell suggests, children should never know when this new 
 life begins. Perhaps if they were surrounded from the 
 very dawn of their intelligence with the best influences 
 of a Christian home they would "grow up Christians," 
 and never think of a date for the great change. 
 
 Stay as little over the question where rests the point 
 of our responsibility for this change. It is simply to use 
 the powers that God has .given to see and act. The pres- 
 ence of the Spirit is a fact. The pressure of the Spirit 
 on conscience and heart is a fact. Every twinge of re- 
 morse, no matter how faint, every impulse and aspiration 
 to leave the worse life and choose the better, is the con- 
 tact of the spirit of God with the soul, moving it to the 
 right way. Yield and act, and the new life is begun. 
 
126 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 What is your responsibility for using the light of the 
 Sun? It is to open your eyes, and then do the work you 
 see to be done. The world of material things is real, is 
 permanent. God has given the light and given you eyes 
 to see them. The world of spiritual things is more real, 
 Tnore permanent. God is the ever present light, and has 
 given you eyes to see these too. Your part is to open 
 your eyes and act on what you see. Let in the light ; and 
 let the light meet an obedient will ; and the heart is at 
 home with God. 
 
 Furthermore, let it never be forgotten that the new 
 birth is not a matured life. It is a new life quickened' 
 but not grown. It is but the starting germ. If not fos- 
 tered it will die. If kept alive it will be according to the 
 culture it receives. Neglected, overshadowed by the rank 
 growths of worldliness, it will be dwarfed and sickly; 
 cherished with daily prayer and Christlike works it will 
 rise into a strong tree of life, " yielding its fruits every 
 month." No mistake is more disastrous than the idea 
 that the spiritual life once begun will take care of itself. 
 Religion is an education as well as an inspiration. The 
 result will be as the conditions -and culture given. The 
 filial love that turns away satisfied with a few glimpses 
 of the Father's face will die in its infancy. It lives only 
 in the Father's presence and in finding its delight there 
 day by day. In no other way can it live and grow. 
 
 When this vision of God is not unsealed till the years 
 of maturity, the occasion on which the change comes are 
 
THE NEW BIRTH. 
 
 infinitely varied . It may be some moment of high thought 
 or clear insight, when the eye suddenly pierces the crust 
 of material things and rests directly upon the Reality, of 
 which they are but the shadow. It may be in the solemn 
 twilight, when out of the gathering mystery of darkness, 
 steals into the hushed soul a sense of HIM who gave the 
 sunset its glory and night its palpitating sheen of stars. 
 It may be under the depression of some great sorrow, 
 when the spirit lies crushed, and panting for a love that 
 cannot betray, a friend that will not forsake, a comforter 
 who will not deceive, a refuge that cannot fail, and sud- 
 denly it feels itself in the supporting arms of an Infinite 
 Goodness. It may be, especially to one who has sinned 
 grievously, in the terrible smiting of conscience, when fear 
 and shame and conscious unworthiness are just falling 
 into despair; but lo, a change comes as the eye turns 
 heavenward; a strange, unlocked for peace gives assur- 
 ance that the great Father hath not cast off his unworthy 
 child. Let no one await occasion. The sense of spiritual 
 want, weakness, imperfection, the cry of the soul for help 
 to live a better life and be a better soul, is the occasion. 
 The renewing Spirit is never absent. The Helper is ever 
 ready. Turn the thoughts to Him, and even before the lips 
 can utter the heart's call the infinite Life and Love answer. 
 It only needs to be added that we have in this doctrine of 
 the "birth from above," which has so generally been clouded 
 with mystery and transcendental sentiment, an-other ex- 
 ample of the perfect simplicity, reasonableness, and accord 
 with nature that run through all the teachings of our Savior 
 
The Atonement. 
 
 JOHN ili: 16, 17, 18: For God so loved the world that he gave his 
 only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish 
 but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to 
 condemn the world, but that the world through him might be sa ved. 
 He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not 
 is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the 
 only-begotten Son of God. 
 
 If you had a bad, reckless boy who had trampled on 
 your commands and spurned your kindness, and run away 
 from home, and continued to outrage all your known 
 wishes in such behavior that his own self -accusing con- 
 science made him afraid to return, the feeling of ill-desert 
 in him picturing your anger as burning to get hold of 
 him and take vengeance on his evil conduct, that feeling 
 you readily see, so long as it is unassured, must bar all 
 reconciliation. Fear dare not return ; and fear is next of 
 kin to hate. But that feeling is partly an error. Its 
 sense of guilt and shame is just; it ought to be felt; but 
 its picture of your wrath burning for vengeance is the 
 fiction of a guilty conscience. Your heart towards your 
 erring boy longs for his repentence and return home. 
 Now if you would effect a reconciliation and bring him 
 back to you, what must you do? You must correct this 
 false impression; you must let him know how you really 
 feel towards him ; you must in some way manifest your 
 love to him. And nothing will tell your whole heart to 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 129 
 
 him, and make him feel how he has misjudged and wronged 
 you, as when he sees you suffering for his sake. Words 
 are cheap; it is easy to pretend love; but when he sees 
 you on the rack of agony for his disgrace; when you go 
 after him in long, painful journeyings, and down into the 
 disgusting haunts of his degradation that you may speak 
 kindly to him and invite him home, he knows how you 
 feel. Affection will do this; but affectation never makes 
 its displays at such expense. You effect a twofold result 
 you dissipate the false idea of his guilty fear; and bet- 
 ter, you make him feel, if all sense of manhood is not 
 gone, his own baseness in so outraging your love. No 
 wrath waits at home, rod in hand, to smite him; the 
 way is open; the welcome is assured; the mightiest of 
 all attractions, love, draws him home ; and no other power 
 could do so much to make him fit to come, and want to 
 come. 
 
 Here, if I have rightly apprehended it, you have the 
 Gospel. This little picture of a possible and sometimes 
 actual human experience will give you a true idea of the 
 divine atonement for man's sin, what it is, how it acts, 
 and the results it effects. God so loved the world that he 
 gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
 him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Sin on 
 the part of man, manifold disobediences and wickednesses, 
 the unrest, sometimes the sharp remorse, of a guilty con- 
 science for these which we ought to feel the fear born 
 naturally of this sense of guilt, which paints God as a 
 
130 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 grim Wrath, though His name is Love; a mistake; but 
 one that must shut the gate of repentance and reconcilia- 
 tion with God until it is corrected to man in this condi- 
 tion God sends forth his Son, the manifestation of his 
 love, to correct the mistake of his fear, melt his enmity to 
 repentance and call him home. Remember now that the 
 highest manifestation of God to man is in and through 
 man, remember that in Jesus we "see the Father," the 
 clearest Word that speaks the heart of God to man, then 
 the expression of God's love in Christ to you and me is 
 just as direct, just as personal, as if we had been the sole 
 object of his coming. If we are sinners, if we are in the 
 need that sin creates, here is God's appeal of love to our 
 hearts. He asks our reconciliation to himself. We know 
 in Christ that the way is open and welcome awaits us. 
 
 I. Let us seek an answer to the inquiry, What is the 
 atonement? Cleared of all artificial notions, interpreted, 
 as it must be if we would ever understand it, by human 
 experience, we shall learn that it has been no mistake to 
 count the sacrifice in the life and death of Jesus the divinest 
 fact that has fallen into the life of our sin-disordered 
 world. We shall discover it to be the very heart of power 
 to save the lost, to lift up the fallen, to give the despair- 
 ing hope. We shall find it to be a fact that multiplies 
 itself in every noble life and runs through all holy en- 
 deavor to make the world better, as the very spring and 
 life that impels the beneficent activities. 
 
 Bear in mind the simple illustration with which we 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 131 
 
 started, and you will see that objectively considered, the 
 Atonement is the expression of love to the unworthy by 
 self -sacrifice. It is the costly manifestation of love. It 
 is the heart speaking by its own pain. In this is its 
 power to reconcile or atone. Set aside at once the idea 
 that Christ's atonement is an enduring of the penalty of 
 transgression in the place of the sinner, pays his debt, 
 satisfies justice, placates God, appeases His wrath, soothes 
 His vengeance, moves His heart to mercy, or does any- 
 thing, aside from the effect wrought in the sinner, to make 
 it possible for God to forgive. It does not change God's 
 feeling; it simply declares what his feeling is. It does 
 not make the fact or possibility that God can forgive the 
 penitent; it declares that fact. It tells us what has been 
 a fact from eternity in the bosom of God, and would have 
 remained a fact if no outward atonement or expression of 
 it had been made. Just as Paul teaches the Romans : 
 " Being j ustified freely by his grace through the redemp- 
 tion that is in Christ Jesus ; whom God hath set forth to 
 be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his 
 righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through 
 the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his 
 righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of 
 him who believeth in Jesus," not to make Him righteous 
 in forgiving, but to let the world know that He is right- 
 eous. God's declaration of love to the world in Jesus 
 opens to view his heart as eternal forgiveness to the repent- 
 ing. It tells us the sinner is forgiven the moment he 
 
132 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 repents. Heart-felt repentance is the only condition. 
 God's love is forgiveness, and takes effect the instant the 
 sinner repents, as the sun begins to warm the instant one 
 comes out of a dungeon into his light. The sun does not 
 change; the darkened soul is the one that changes. 
 
 It was once the style to represent God as a hot sky, 
 shimm'ering with wrath over the sinner, and closing piti- 
 lessly down upon him ; and the atonement was to cool His 
 burning vengeance, and hold back its fires. This fell in 
 with the mistake of guilty fear, confirmed instead of cor- 
 recting it. It virtually said to the sinner, God does feel 
 toward you just as your terrified conscience imagines. 
 The Father is irreconcilably mad with his child. His 
 wrath " burns as an oven " to consume you. Your re- 
 pentance, be it never so deep and thorough, cannot appease 
 him. It is not enough. His outraged law, his angry 
 justice, demands satisfaction. Somebody must suffer to 
 soothe this wrath. It must have a victim. And so the 
 Atonement of Christ was not primarily to declare or mani- 
 fest the love of God, but to satisfy the law for the sin of 
 man. It was to work a change in God rather than in 
 the sinner. It was to content justice with the sight of 
 the suffered penalty of the law, or what was equivalent to 
 the penalty; although in what way justice could find any 
 satisfaction in the suffering of the innocent for the guilty, 
 or accept it, or any substituted pain, as an equivalent to 
 the penalty, no principle upon which we are accustomed 
 to estimate and apply that quality makes apparent. 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 133 
 
 That love suffers for the unworthy, we know ; it is a fact 
 as wide as human goodness. That it finds a peculiar sat- 
 isfaction in expressing itself by pain or sacrifice, if occa- 
 sion demands, we know ; every mother's heart that wears 
 out her body to save her sinning child, every effort that 
 goes forth in toil and reproach to rescue the tempted, to 
 raise the fallen, to wash the uncleanness of vice from hu- 
 man souls, is a demonstration. That God's love should 
 find a way of expressing itself to men through suffering 
 in the divinest of men, we can understand; but that He 
 should feel any satisfaction in the sight of a guiltless one 
 suffering for the claim of a law that the sufferer has never 
 broken, or that He should refuse to forgive the penitent 
 until he sees some innocent one suffer the pain due their 
 sins, or suffer at all on their account, seems but the con- 
 fusion of all justice, nay, but for the blin Iness of the mis- 
 take, the awfullest of blasphemies. Do you say that the 
 sense of justice in Him must demand something more 
 than repentance before it forgives? Think a little 
 Would your sense of justice as a parent stop your stray- 
 ing child on the threshold, returning to you thoroughly 
 humbled, penitent, contrite, and insist that he should suf- 
 fer more, or somebody must suffer for him, before you 
 will forgive? Is there anything in your heart that clamors 
 to see somebody pained for his disobediences before you 
 will consent to be reconciled? If there is, so much the 
 worse for your heart. Or if you say it is necessary to 
 make an example of the disobedient, or inflict suffering on 
 
134 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 some one to make an equivalent impression, is there any- 
 thing in you that would take the least satisfaction in see- 
 ing an innocent person pained for the child of your neigh- 
 bor, returning in penitence to his home, before the father 
 should accord forgiveness? If there is, so much the worse 
 for yourself. A right temper could need no such specta- 
 cle to confirm its fidelity. God's government does not 
 stand upon any such subterfuges. God's authority needs 
 no such devices to keep it in respect. God's love finds no 
 bar in the way of its mercy but the hard impenitence of 
 the heart. When that yields to the manifestation of his 
 love, the atonement goes into effect in the soul. God and 
 the sinner are at-one. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the sacrifice of Jesus is not 
 to move God's feelings toward the sinner, but to declare 
 what His feelings are; not an expiation of man's sin, but 
 a, manifestation of God's love; not to satisfy justice, but 
 to satisfy love in the effort to win back the hearts of God's 
 alienated children. 
 
 II. We turn to inquire how we may enter into the re- 
 alization of this great fact? It took place more than 
 eighteen hundred years ago. It was in an obscure cor- 
 ner of the world. It was the life and death of a plain 
 peasant, who was crucified on a charge of sedition, in 
 company with two criminals. What was there in this 
 man to touch all our lives more closely and deeply than 
 any other, yea, than all other facts in human history? 
 No startling stroke of genius, no vast achievement, noth- 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 135 
 
 ing that made the world stand amazed, or even sent 
 any report of itself beyond the boundaries of the lit- 
 tle state in which it occurred till some years later. How 
 could there be anything in an event of such small notice 
 to make a revolted world of men change front in their 
 attitude towards God, lay down arms, and sue for him to 
 resume his sovereignty over them? It does not look pos- 
 sible. No, not to our coarse way of estimating events by 
 the loudness of their report, or the amount and flashing 
 brilliance of their display. None of the deeper meanings 
 of life ever come to this mood. It requires a certain faith 
 that looks through the show of things to their substance 
 to interpret the sacrifice in the life and death of Jesus. 
 Faith only can catch the significance of any really great 
 event. The grandest meanings always hide under an 
 unimpressive exterior. Look at our Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. It made us a nation. What was there in the 
 surroundings amid which it arose to notify men of 
 the power it held? A few plain men deliberating to- 
 gether in a dingy hall, in behalf of two or three millions 
 of poor people, scattered along the coast of a wild conti- 
 nent of savages. Here was no look of power. The grand 
 courts of Europe, and the captains that could count then 
 soldiers by hundreds of thousands, might well have smiled 
 at that little band. But the throb of liberty was in then 
 hearts; the flame of liberty was on their lips; the nerve 
 of freemen guided their pen; and so the little act they 
 sent forth to the world, alive in every sentence with the 
 
136 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 spirit of the hearts from which it sprung, has been the 
 inspiration to manlier thoughts and grander deeds of 
 growing millions of freemen through more than a century, 
 and gathers, rather than loses, power of inspiration for 
 the millions of other centuries to come. The world is 
 changing front in its government of men at the sound of 
 that still, small voice. It was only faith in truth, justice, 
 liberty, man, God, that could have seen the meaning there 
 was in that little event. It is only faith in these that can 
 catch any of the grander significances of life. If we have 
 not that faith, God pity us; for it is certain that without 
 it we must remain blind to all that is best worth seeing. 
 And when you turn the eye of a faith that can see on the 
 Sufferer of Calvary, mark the spirit in which he lived 
 take in the scope of the words he spoke, and see how he 
 dies, you will not want any grandeurs of outward dis- 
 play to reveal the Divinity there expressed. You will be 
 glad that these are away. They would but annoy and 
 divert your mind. You feel there the mightiest power 
 that has dropped into human history. We know that 
 more of God is expressed in man than in any or all other 
 of His works. Most of God is expressed in the highest 
 man. And faith will make no doubt, while it gazes there, 
 that it is indeed looking upon the highest and completest 
 manifestation of the thought and heart of God toward men 
 that has ever been given to our earth. " He that believeth 
 in him is not condemned." 
 
 III. The fruits of experience and life that must spring 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 137 
 
 from this sacrifice, so apprehended by faith, are now easily 
 anticipated. God's love manifest; man's heart touched 
 by its power; the guilt-stricken, alienated child reconciled 
 to his Father this but tamely expresses the changed con- 
 ditions under which the life goes forward that has ac- 
 cepted the atonement. It will be a new life. It will 
 drink from the living fountains of divine Goodness. It 
 will walk in the light of God. 
 
 I have presented Christ as manifesting the love of God 
 to our race in an entirely natural way. If there is a God, 
 will any one doubt that he loves us as we learn in Christ? 
 I have presented him as seeking to move us to repent- 
 ance and better living by a means that is entirely incel-li- 
 gible and reasonable, a power that the universal human 
 heart confesses to be the mightiest to soften enmity and 
 effect reconciliation. I have presented him as living and 
 suffering to meet the need of our actual condition, a broken 
 harmony with God, alienation from Him. Is this real? 
 Was the work of Jesus more than a fiction? Is the state 
 of things in man's relation to God what he assumed? 
 Then the charge against us is serious. It touches us in- 
 dividually. It says if the love of God does not move us 
 to repentance, we remain alienated from Him. It is to 
 make us feel our sin, our individual responsibility and 
 need, as well as God's love. Till that sense of sin is felt 
 there is no atonement. We shall do well to understand 
 our condition. It looks like a verge of bankruptcy that 
 admits of no trifling in the case. If it be a fact that we 
 
138 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 are not in relations of perfect harmony with God, if we 
 have crossed the divine justice, or stained the divine purity, 
 or wronged the infinite Goodness, in thought, or word, or 
 act, then the eternal nature of things, the immutable laws 
 of our own being make it certain that we can never come 
 back into that lost harmony and be at one with God, 
 save through repentance and faith. Once in sin, the way 
 back into purity is forever closed unless repentance, deep 
 and hearty, opens the gate. The certainty is as sure as 
 that God will not change, or that we will remain respon- 
 sible beings. Here is no fictitious hell ; we are dealing 
 with ourselves, with facts as they are, with inflexible 
 verities. There is no sharp device of infinite craft, with 
 amiable wishes to help us, that can let us go free. No 
 substitute, though his pain for us were infinite, can stand 
 for that repentance. The necessity will not lapse with 
 time, will not wear away, will not be lost in the variety 
 of changing experiences, will not grow lighter by the 
 smallest atom, will not be forgotten by the laws of the 
 soul, even should it drop wholly out of our memory 
 The party that is in the wrong must yield ; and God is 
 not that party. The repentance must be j ust as deep and 
 humbling as the error demands, or the life inevitably goes 
 on under whatever curse is implied in being out of har- 
 mony with God. We know the terms under which we 
 live, if we but think. I want to be no terrorist; but I 
 want to see things as they are. I cannot speak otherwise 
 than as I see. And no rose-water Gospel here will meet 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 139 
 
 the case. I have come to feel entirely sure that if Chris- 
 tianity be not at heart radically false, if there is any truth 
 in its central aim, its proclaimed mission to the world, 
 any need of its work, the world of our time has fallen 
 into a way of passing by its warnings with a cheerful 
 levity that bodes no good. We groan, it is true, over the 
 corruptions of the times ; we exclaim over human depravity 
 in the mass; we fling about us unsparing charges of the 
 baseness practiced in high places and low; but if one 
 grows really serious and attempts to individualize and fix 
 the sin to its point of responsibility, we turn red in the 
 face and pronounce it an impertinence. Humanity is sick, 
 and is putting little check on indulgences that inflame its 
 disease ; but we expect it to get well. We seem to think 
 that the average individual can be rising while the nation 
 or community whose common life he represents is sinking. 
 We feel quite easy about ourselves if we are not worse 
 than the average. We take little concern to ourselves 
 about a cure for our moral ailments. Sometimes we 
 boast of our expanding knowledge, and look to that as 
 the panacea of all evils. We seem to think there is some 
 magic in the acquaintance with a few more facts of sci- 
 ence, or broader ideas of human life, to stay the eager 
 passions of men and bring us moral health. But the 
 wounds of sin do not heal under this salve ; their cor- 
 ruptions continue to flow. Oh, how much men need the 
 sense of sin that the atonement strives to awake ! It 
 must go before amendment. It is the indispensable pre- 
 
140 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 requisite. We cannot grow better till it comes. Indi- 
 vidual sin, need, imperfection ours, yours, mine this 
 must be felt before there can be improvement in us. The 
 nation, the race, can improve only as this individual con- 
 science is quickened, and its sense of responsibility 
 raised. 
 
 But when this comes a new world begins. The atone- 
 ment sets the heaven of God's love open, wide open. The 
 Father will welcome the penitent, and pour his helping 
 grace into the soul to conquer sin. Life will get a new 
 meaning. The very evils in the world will give it a new 
 zest, by giving it an aim and a work. The originality of 
 a little moral earnestness will relieve the aching emptiness 
 of its routine, and lift the intolerable weariness of its ef- 
 forts to be amused. We shall wonder that life hid such 
 glorious meanings for us close along our path, and we 
 failed to discover them. The new creation rising within 
 us and around us will be hailed with a deeper and steadier 
 exultation than ever greeted the old ; a loftier anthem will 
 be in the soul than when the morning Stars sang together 
 and all the Sons of God shouted for joy! 
 
Repentance and Forgiveness. 
 
 Luke xv: 17, 18, 19: And when he came to himself he said, * * I 
 will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have 
 sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be 
 called thy son. 
 
 1 John i: 9: If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive 
 us onr sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
 
 These Scriptures, taken together, bring under one view 
 repentance and forgiveness, the act of turning from sin, 
 and the fruit of that act ever received in the inward 
 cleansing from unrighteousness. These are vital truths 
 in the teachings of Christ. They mark the starting-point 
 of the Christian life, and, I think, will be found the quick- 
 ening impulse in every incipient effort for moral improve- 
 ment. 
 
 I have incidentally touched upon repentance and for- 
 giveness in treating of the Atonement; but the import- 
 ance of the subject demands a more extended discussion. 
 
 It were well, doubtless, if we needed no repentance if 
 we could scan every step of our past and challenge 
 heaven's scrutiny and claim God's approval. But no 
 mortal is capable of that degree of self-conceit. We have 
 sinned; we are imperfect. That is the universal con- 
 sciousness, more or less clear. Being what we are, no act 
 is more noble in us than repentance. It is the re-assertion 
 of the soul's supremacy over the lower nature. It is proof 
 
142 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that the moral vitality in it is stronger than the depravity 
 of its disease. It is spiritual convalescence, the promise 
 that the soul, however weak, will again be well. 
 
 Repentance is the declaration of war against one's own 
 sins and conscious imperfections. It is no passive sorrow 
 or languid regret for what has been done, and feeble wish 
 that we had not done it; it is a confession to our own 
 heart, and if the case demands, to the injured also, that 
 we have done wrong, a sense of the moral weakness in us 
 that led to the wrong ; and then an active, vigorous taking 
 sides practically against our own wrong and for the right. 
 Purpose is the decisive element in repentance. Feeling 
 must go before the purpose, no doubt, the sense of sin 
 which says, with Paul, " The law is holy, and the com- 
 mandment holy and just and good, the evil is in me." 
 This recognizes the need of action. Then the energetic 
 Will to stop the sin and conquer the weakness that gave 
 it room, and to abide henceforth in the law from which it 
 departed this only can consummate the change which 
 can properly be called repentance. " War to the death 
 and no quarter," is the motto of the sincere penitent, as 
 he enlists for this struggle with evil in himself. The crisis 
 of the Prodigal's repentance was the purpose, " I will arise 
 and go unto my father." Not the degree of feeling, but 
 the vigor of this resolution was what determined the re- 
 sult. Action was what carried him home and restored 
 him to a place in his father's house. The resolute " I will " 
 was the pivot on which he turned homeward. 
 
REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. 143 
 
 Now observe: The Divine forgiveness is never to be 
 thought of as separated from repentance. It is ever as 
 early and as full as the repentance ; never an instant later 
 or less complete. How can we know this? No voice 
 from the throne of the Supreme falls on the ear, saying, 
 " Thou art forgiven." No parchment of pardon is sent 
 forth attested by the sign and seal of sovereign Authority, 
 commanding, " Let this soul go free." How can we fathom 
 the infinite Mind and find assurance that the word has 
 passed therein, "I forgive?" The answer is by an infal- 
 lible witness within the consciousness of restored har- 
 mony with the broken law of the Father, and so with the 
 Father from whom the breach alienated us. Forgiveness 
 responds to repentance, and love responds to forgiveness 
 the witness of the Spirit in our spirits that we are the 
 children of God. We need no other parchment of pardon. 
 It is the nature of love to forgive as it is the nature of 
 the sun to shine; and "God is Love." The condition of 
 repentance being present, it is as impossible for the fact 
 of forgiveness to be absent as it is that the sun's rays, 
 where every obstructing object is removed, should not 
 make it light. The shadow departs with the dark body 
 that casts it; the divine condemnation goes with the sin 
 which repentance puts away. " If we confess our sins, 
 God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to 
 cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The voice of God 
 within assures our forgiveness. As repentance is taking 
 with the violated law against ourselves and against 
 
144 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the violating evil in our own hearts, so forgiveness appears 
 in a rising delight in the law that condemns our sin and 
 ourselves. It is conscious victory in the warfare with 
 evil. It is a manly sense of having come out of the wrong 
 and of being heartily in the right. It is the peace and 
 joy of conscious harmony with God welling up from the 
 fellowship of love. It is the incipient realization of that 
 health of soul of which repentance is the promise. 
 
 Guard against a half idea of these words which has 
 done infinite mischief. Ask many a Christian what re- 
 pentance is, and the answer would be, " Sorrow for sin." 
 Ask, what is forgiveness? And the reply is, "Taking 
 away penalty." Both answers mislead. Sorrow there is 
 in repentance, no doubt; one who can look upon a wrong 
 he has done, or a wrong in himself, and feel coldly indif- 
 ferent, is not in the way to repent; he must feel or he 
 will not act. And action, energetic purpose moving into 
 execution, rather than feeling, is, as we have seen, the 
 central force of repentance. It is turning from the wrong 
 to the right. It is forsaking sin by righteousness, and 
 iniquity by turning unto the Lord. But sorrow alone is not 
 repentance. The child under the raised rod is sorry he 
 has disobeyed; the thief in the hands of the policeman is 
 sorry for his theft; the murderer marched into court to 
 receive sentence is sorry for his crime. All have sorrow 
 or feeling enough. But not one of them may be truly re- 
 pentant. It is sorrow that they are caught, not that they 
 have broken the law. It is regret that they must be 
 
REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. 145 
 
 punished, not remorse that they have sinned. There is 
 no condemnation of their own act ; no taking sides against 
 themselves with the law; no resolute inward turning 
 from the sin to the right. Pardon them and they will be 
 plotting to repeat the crime before they are fairly out of 
 the hands of the sheriff. No such repentance can find 
 forgiveness, because there is no real change of heart toward 
 the law; no assent to it as good; no harmony with its 
 justice; no joy in its Giver. The law that punishes is a 
 dread and a hate ; the Lawgiver a terror or a tyrant. 
 
 And let us beware how we delude ourselves with the 
 idea that forgiveness is a taking away of penalty. The 
 soul whom God forgives has to bear the direct penalty of 
 its sin. The penitent drunkard bears the shattered con- 
 stitution of his bad habits; and forgiveness may not save 
 him from premature death. The bad temper carries its 
 jarred and morbid nerves long after others have forgiven 
 and forgotten the wounds of its thrusts. The dishonest 
 trader who has been for many years in bad standing, 
 struggles under debility of conscience long after old scores 
 are cleared and every victim has reached out to his peni- 
 tent endeavors the right hand of fellowship. The sore 
 remains after the irritant has been removed. The scar 
 stays after the sore heals. It is a strong delusion which 
 imagines that the penalty of sin goes when forgiveness 
 comes. But this forgiveness does which is better than 
 mere removal of penalty being the consciousness of re- 
 stored harmony with law, it ceases to break the law. It 
 
146 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 stops incurring new penalties. Its delight in the law and 
 its love of the Lawgiver inspires brave endurance and good 
 cheer in bearing those already incurred till they shall have 
 run their course. And that is the appeal with which 
 nature, the voice of God speaking in our own experience, 
 urges to early repentance. The earlier the easier. 
 
 We must not confound God's forgiveness with the par- 
 don of the human executive. Human law has an arbi- 
 trary penalty. The legislator says what it will be for the 
 given crime. The chief magistrate may say it shall not 
 be inflicted. That takes it away. The prison is not con- 
 nected by an immutable chain of cause and effect with 
 theft, nor the gallows with murder. Petition the Gov- 
 ernor for pardon, and if he says, " Let the prisoner go free," 
 the culprit escapes the penalty that man has affixed to his 
 crime. But in God's administration the law is self- 
 executing. The sinner is his own executioner. It is as if 
 the prison walls began to close round the thief the moment 
 he commits the theft, or the murderer felt the black cap 
 drawing over his eyes, and the fatal drop under his feet, 
 and the noose tightening around his neck in the very act 
 of smiting his victim. The very flow of the forces in our 
 constitution brings God's penalty for sin the hard heart' 
 the blunted moral sensibilities, the momentum in evil 
 that rushes on with ever increasing impulse to repeat the 
 sin. If we have gained the right view of God as being 
 in nature, those forces are the action of God himself, the 
 Omnipresent in whom " we live and move and have our 
 
REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. 147 
 
 being." God can no more arrest them than he can deny 
 himself. We can cease hurling ourselves against them ; 
 we can stop crossing the track of their flow; we can, by 
 repentance, come into harmony with them. Then the 
 wounds we have got by throwing ourselves across their 
 current will ere long heal, and we shall move peacefully 
 with them on toward the home of the soul. But God 
 would reverse the whole system of his moral government 
 if he should take away the penalty of these immutable 
 forces as the chief magistrate takes away the penalty of 
 human law. 
 
 Let me counsel you, again, to banish carefully the habit 
 of thought, fixed by ages of artificial religious teaching, 
 which looks for some external infliction of penalty at the 
 hand of God in the world to come. The old Greeks and 
 Romans had their Underworld of gloomy shades, with 
 various devices of torture; the Jews, their Sheol and Ge- 
 henna, " where their worm dieth not and the fire is not 
 quenched;" and the Christian Church has ever had its 
 lake of fire to frighten the evil-doer. These gross images 
 have been literalized in the common mind to make up 
 their ideas of the future state. They have constituted 
 the capital of religious sensationalists to alarm the ignorant 
 and unthinking. And even where these images are re- 
 fined into something less gross, the inveterate habit of 
 ages still lingers that thinks of God as coming forth from 
 the order of his moral rule to inflict some form of pain, 
 some lash on the nerves of the sinner. There is an unde- 
 
148 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 fined dread of this in millions who would now laugh at 
 the lake of fire. I will not say that this is never a useful 
 restraint on men. It may be that gross natures can be 
 reached only by gross ideas of penalty, that the soul of 
 some can be touched only through the sense ; but I love 
 to think better of the general intelligence. Sure I am 
 that if we are ever to have a religion that the human 
 mind will not outgrow and reject as in great part a super- 
 stition fit only for children and savages (and not fit for 
 them), we must lay aside these fictions of terror, and direct 
 the minds of men to the real penalty of sin in the soul of 
 the sinner, the spiritual death there that comes with the 
 sin as fever and pain and diseased condition come with 
 the poison taken. I do not believe it necessary or useful 
 to terrify the people at large with absurdities which, if 
 real, would make God a demon and the universe a horror 
 to every being of holy sympathies within its limits. I 
 believe they can be made to feel the restraint of that self- 
 executing law, written in every fiber and nerve of their 
 bodies, and read, if they will, in every motion of their 
 minds and hearts, whose penalty, when broken, is as cer- 
 tain as that the pulse of moral life shall throb on in the 
 soul. Continue to appeal to animal fear and you will 
 have Christians whose religion is an animal fear, marked 
 by the mercurial fickleness and unsteadiness of that feel- 
 ing. Speak to the moral sense, and the powers you ad- 
 dress will awake. 
 
 Let us say, then, that the dread of an outward infliction 
 
REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. 149 
 
 of suffering at the hand of God is an illusion. You have 
 no need to ask the forgiveness which removes such a pen- 
 alty; there is no such penalty to be removed. God has 
 no intention to so punish; never had; never will have. 
 It is a mere phantom of the guilty brain. The guilt- 
 stricken soul is doomed, indeed, by its very condition, 
 deranged by its own evil act, to forebode the wrath of 
 some angry Nemesis, the vague fear says not what. It is 
 the voice of nature kindly warning it to stop, turn back, 
 and not work remediless ruin in itself. But God is not 
 its enemy. His hand will not hurl the ruin. No ! the 
 worst that the soul has to fear from the " Father Almighty" 
 is the word, " Let him alone ! he has chosen his way and 
 his portion; he refuses any part in me; he is joined to his 
 idols ; let him alone ! " And this word is never spoken 
 save through the laws of the soul's own activities. 
 
 Equally delusive is the idea that God will go outside 
 of established law, or set aside his moral order, to repair 
 the moral mischiefs we may do ourselves. Wherever 
 Christianity has been represented as a scheme for this 
 purpose, sooner or later a lower tone of conscience, a re- 
 laxed sense of the obligation of law and of the absolute 
 necessity of obedience, has followed. Men have been 
 ready enough to infer that a Sovereign who was so ingeni- 
 ous in circumventing the demands of his own laws, would 
 certainly find some way to repair any ruin they could 
 cause. The law loses its hold. It becomes but a thread 
 of tow in the flame of human passion and desire. The 
 
150 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 feeling takes possession of the mind that God is not in 
 earnest with us. The state of mind it induces was well 
 illustrated by the words of a lecturer heard by many of 
 us a few evenings since, in this place. Said he " When 
 my little girl, playing around the house, breaks anything, 
 she says at once, ' Never mind ! Papa will fix it !' She 
 knows there is a strong love at hand that can and will 
 set things right. So we are children at play in this world 
 which God has given us for a home. However badly 
 wrong affairs may go, we may comfort ourselves with 
 the assurance that the great Father will mend all. No 
 need of despondency and despair." Well, to the spirit of 
 obedience this is a safe and beautiful trust ; to the careless 
 and self-indulgent, it is not only false in fact, but it is 
 sure to be taken as a license to riot. It is not a truth for 
 any who are not already under the law of love. It is a 
 corrupting delusion, cruel as the grave, to all others. Our 
 Father in heaven will set all things right; he will mend 
 what can be mended in the order of his immutable work- 
 ing; but we do well to remember that we may break 
 what he will not mend. Wound the young tree slightly 
 and God will mend it. The law of vegetable life, work- 
 ing steadily on year after year, at last grows over the 
 wound, and hides, though not wholly restores, the weak 
 place in the wood. Gash your own body, so that you 
 touch no vital part, nor jraise a fatal fever in the blood, 
 and God will mend the blow. The vital force, busy with 
 friendly ministries to repair the violence you have done 
 
. .REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. 151 
 
 your own flesh, will heal the wound, though it leaves a 
 scar. Law is merciful. But break an egg and God will 
 not mend the violence. You have put it beyond the re- 
 pairing force of law. God will stand by his fixed order. 
 Send a bullet through a vital part of the brain, or strike 
 a dagger through the heart, and God will not mend the 
 harm. You have gone beyond the limits of mercy under 
 law. There is no healing agency to reach the case. And 
 so all nature and all life teem with proofs that God loves 
 to repair our breaks and heal what can be healed, but 
 are equally strown with demonstrations that we must not 
 take his goodness in mending our mischiefs as the annul- 
 ling of law, or in the smallest degree slackening the ten- 
 sion of its obligation. We may mar so that he will not 
 
 1 
 
 mend. We know what to expect. 
 
 We have seen the necessity of repentance in order to 
 forgiveness. Sin once done remains an eternal fact ; there 
 is no recall. The alienation from infinite Truth and Good- 
 ness it ever carries with it remains, unless the sinner takes 
 sides against his sin. The law changes not; conscience 
 changes not; God changes not. The only possible return 
 to harmony, therefore, among these immutable factors, is 
 that change in the heart of the sinner which expels the 
 element of discord. 'Alienation ceases when sincere con- 
 fession begins. The contrite heart God will not despise. 
 
 But let us turn from the necessity to a few concluding 
 words on the privilege of repentance. To an imperfect 
 being this is heaven's best gift, for it opens the way for 
 
152 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 all other good. It is for the prodigal the privilege of re- 
 turn to his father's house. It is for the hungry the 
 privilege to be fed. It is for the naked the privilege to 
 be clothed. It is for the sick the privilege to be well 
 again. It is for the dying the privilege of return to life 
 and the full joys of life. It is for the imperfect, conscious 
 of their defects, the open way of return to perfection. 
 
 We may better appreciate the privilege by a view of its 
 contrast. The deepest touch in Milton's picture of the 
 misery of a lost spirit is the dark impossibility of repent- 
 ance. The Arch Fiend pauses in his flight to earth for 
 the seduction and ruin of man: 
 
 "Horror and doubt distract 
 His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir 
 The Hell within him; for within him Hell 
 He brings, and round about him; nor from Hell 
 One step, no more than from himself, can fly 
 By change of place; now Conscience wakes Despair 
 That slumbered, wakes the bitter memory 
 Of what he was, what is, and what must be 
 Worse: of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. 
 
 Me miserable ! which'way shall I fly, 
 Infinite wrath and infinite despair? 
 Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell, 
 And in the lowest deep a lower deep, 
 Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, 
 To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n." 
 
 A soul broken away from God's harmony, at conscious 
 discord with itself, and by all the action of its own pow- 
 ers throwing that discord into more dreadful and hopeless 
 confusion. From the incipient steps towards this condi- 
 tion repentance is the privilege of return. It touches 
 
. REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. 153 
 
 with the foot a firm rock which stays the soul sinking 
 into the mire by the helpless weight with which it has 
 loaded itself. It is a firm support which the sinner may 
 grasp and feel himself drawn upward by a power, mighty 
 to save, back to light and life. Recovered harmony with 
 himself, the father's house, the feast of joy, the bosom of 
 God all this for consenting, not to anything degrading 
 to himself, but to see his own imperfections, and ask 
 God's help to put them away. 
 
The Holy Spirit. 
 
 John xiv: 16, 17: That He may abide with you forever, even the 
 Spirit of truth. 
 
 The complete man is a three-fold being. He lives in 
 three worlds here on earth. He has powers to discern the 
 objects of each. His senses reveal material things; his 
 intellect opens to him a world of science, truths, princi- 
 ples, causes and laws; his conscience and moral affections 
 bear him into a world of spiritual relations and activities, 
 a life of duty, sympathy, aspiration and love. None of 
 us doubt the reality of the material world, the solid earth 
 under our feet, with its soil and rock, its colors, shapes, 
 sounds, odors and tastes. The open senses never leave 
 one moment without proof of the reality of these, or of 
 our relation to them. The intellect also is out very early 
 on its scientific explorations, gathers and classifies facts, 
 thinks, reasons, comes to conclusions, makes many mis- 
 takes, revises, corrects, and goes on to enlarge its stores of 
 knowledge. This costs effort. The price of large learn- 
 ing is large toil. It is not so easy to see clearly in the 
 world of science as it is in the world of sense. It is 
 harder for the mind to think than for the senses to feel. 
 The more valuable the objects discovered, the more pains 
 required to find them. No wonder, then, that clear and 
 lull spiritual discernment comes slowest and latest, only 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 155 
 
 with the greatest care. "The natural first, afterward that 
 which is spiritual," says Paul. This higher world must 
 be conquered; we are not born to its throne. We begin 
 in the natural ; advance carries us into the spiritual. And 
 as it costs the best training and highest effort of the pow- 
 ers of intellect to attain the broadest and clearest under- 
 standing of the natural, the knowledge of science and 
 practical affairs, so the right view of the spiritual ^can 
 never be ours without due discipline and endeavor. Let 
 this fact conciliate us towards the demands which this 
 subject makes upon our close attention. 
 
 There is a peculiarity in the teachings of Jesus in respect 
 to our spiritual relations which it is of the utmost import- 
 ance that we should understand. It is the heart of his 
 religion. He contemplates man as now living in close 
 and influential relations with the spirit world. He is not 
 getting ready to live in it, but lives in it. The powers of 
 that world live in him. Influences from thence color his 
 thoughts and feelings, suggest aims of life, bias his plans 
 and purposes, and impel his activities. He is a denizen of 
 the unseen world now. He lives and moves and has his 
 being in its vital relations. And this is no life in the air. 
 Faith is the power that discerns its realities. It " is the 
 substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
 seen." It is the soul's eye for the spiritual world. God 
 the ever-present Spirit, is the great fact of that world, 
 Faith sees Him, feels Him, knows Him as the indwelling 
 Spirit, and so makes the out-goings of the soul's life, in 
 
156 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 its varied manifestations to men, bear in them qualities 
 that can emanate only from a Divine source. But to do 
 this it must be faith ; not mere cold belief, but real spiritual 
 sight, the deepest, most living sense of actual relations in 
 the heart. Mark the difference. Great spiritual blindness 
 and corruption have come of confounding the two. Be- 
 lief is of the intellect ; faith is of the heart and conscience. 
 Belief looks at facts; faith lays hold of spiritual powers. 
 Belief assents; faith affirms. Belief searches for truth; 
 faith finds the truth. Belief is passive ; faith throbs with 
 vital energy. Belief is morally indifferent ; faith is alive 
 with keen moral interest. Belief admits the spiritual 
 fact and turns away careless of its claim ; faith feels its 
 obligation and lives on its motive. To belief God is a 
 tradition; to faith a living Presence. To belief He is a 
 cold, distant fact somewhere behind the sky; to faith He 
 is a warm Love, an active Goodness, at the center of soul's 
 life. Ye believe in God, says Jesus, believe also in me. 
 That is, make your belief a faith ; bring that Most High 
 God, Omnipotent Creator and Ruler of the world, in 
 whom your traditions teach you to believe, near to you 
 as a Father, within you as a Holy Spirit, to guide you 
 into all truth and abide in you forever as the Comforter. 
 Then you will see and, seeing, have peace. 
 
 This is the central truth of Christ's teachings. What 
 the sun is to the solar system is this doctrine of the in- 
 dwelling, guiding, life-giving Spirit to the words of Christ 
 on man's duty and destiny. They revolve in its light, 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 157 
 
 and hold their orbits and harmony under its power. In 
 the outset of his public life he had proclaimed the truths 
 of the Sermon on the Mount, the by-laws, so to speak, or 
 practical code of the kingdom of God which he was found- 
 ing among men, regulating man's duties to his fellow men ; 
 a pure morality, having much in common with other 
 religions, but carrying its law inward to the secret thoughts 
 and motives, and exalting the whole even then by giving 
 the Father in Heaven as the model and law for the spirit 
 and conduct of man ; but here, standing in the shadow of 
 his own cross, giving his dying counsels to his friends, he 
 opens their relation to God and the eternal world in this 
 promise of the Holy Spirit. He dwells upon this truth 
 with fond repetition. He varies its form in a score of dif- 
 ferent presentations. He insists that they will find more 
 of comfort and light in it than in his presence, making it 
 even better for them that he should go away. He crowns 
 his instructions with this one word of life and power, giv- 
 ing force and effect to the whole; for well he knew that 
 it was only in the living sense of this immediate relation 
 to God that human conscience would get and maintain its 
 proper tone, or human senses rise out of their lusts, or the 
 human heart out of its selfishness. The law of human 
 duty must draw its vitality from this truth. The Sermon 
 on the Mount would become a dead letter without this 
 sense of a present God. 
 
 This Word of the Spirit raises the faith of Christ out 
 of a dry code of duty and makes it a religion. Along 
 
158 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 with the commandment it sends the impulse and the 
 power to obey. Under it the law of duty is not a whip 
 but a lamp. The feet love the path it lights. Eagerness 
 to obey outruns all naked rules of action. The child glo- 
 ries in pleasing the Father under whose eye he acts. The 
 motives that Jesus gives to faith are the strongest and the 
 steadiest the heart ever feels. 
 
 It is no less a Word of reason than of faith. Grant 
 that there is a God and you have affirmed Christ's prom- 
 ise of the Holy Spirit in its fulness. Is the Infinite One 
 a reality; and can He be absent? Can He be indifferent? 
 Can He withhold his aid, in such measure as is possible 
 for us to receive, from our good endeavors? The thought 
 would undeify Him. To doubt the promise is to stand 
 balancing between Christ and atheism. So certainly is 
 Christ's doctrine of the Spirit a truth based in the consti- 
 tution of man, that it was an inference of reason before 
 it was a revelation from his lips. The higher spirits of 
 the heathen world caught its light. Socrates regarded 
 himself as ever moving under the guidancp of a good 
 Spirit. The biographer of Epictetus says that the sense 
 of the Divine Presence was ever so vivid hi him that it 
 made his whole life a hymn of praise to God. And Seneca 
 affirms in language almost identical with that of Jesus, 
 that " the Spirit of God is ever with us, yea, dwells within 
 us." Our own Emerson, thirty years ago, when the heat 
 of reaction from Christian dogmatism around him was at 
 its hight, and he seemed farther from sympathy with 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 159 
 
 Christian thought than he has appeared in his riper days, 
 wrote such words as these : " Man is a stream whose 
 source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from 
 we know not whence. * * I am constrained every mo- 
 ment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the 
 will I call mine. As with events so is it with thoughts. 
 When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I 
 see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that 
 I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator 
 of this ethereal water. That I desire and look up, and 
 put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some 
 alien energy the vision conies. * * * A wise old 
 proverb says, 'God comes to us without bell;' that is, as 
 there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the 
 infinite heaven, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where 
 man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The 
 walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the 
 deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God." 
 Words without significance till we read in them essen- 
 tially Christ's doctrine of the ever-present and helping 
 Spirit of God. I could wish he had made them warmer 
 with personal love. I fear they will hardly reach the 
 hearts of children under fifty of average mental breadth. 
 They are not for the many. They are less simple than 
 the words of Jesus, less profound, less- comprehensive. 
 They speak to the abstract intellect, and not as the great 
 Teacher's, to the whole soul. They contemplate passive 
 reception -of the Divine influence, not reciprocal or re- 
 
160 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sponsive communion. They promise no "fellowship of the 
 Spirit." Yet for those who can receive them they mean 
 nothing less than " Immanuel," God with us. 
 
 We are living, then, every moment in the presence of 
 spiritual Reality. It ought not to be with our eyes shut. 
 We ought to see. That which is so near, which is kin- 
 dred to our spirit, the source of our best life, the measure 
 and blessing of whose influence depends upon our recog- 
 nition and voluntary reception, ought not to be held as a 
 distant expectation or a vague perhaps. But let no one 
 imagine that the effort to discern the realities of the Spirit 
 will put one on the watch for phenomena of the senses, or 
 for moods of feeling that come of our mercurial physical 
 sensibilities. These are of the earth earthy. They are of 
 the body, not of the Spirit. We need not expect to see a 
 ghost. One pities the shallow conceit which thinks it 
 hears signs of spiritual presence and power in the dry 
 clatter of the material, or feels them is those exalta- 
 tions of bodily sensibility which might just as well come 
 of wine or opium. This is mere surface. The Spirit 
 goes deeper. He reveals spiritual things to the spirit. 
 He abides in the soul. He is known there as health is 
 known in the body, by permanent condition. "The 
 fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Where 
 these are God abides. These are His attributes and ac- 
 tivities. The life of that soul which feels and radiates 
 these has God at the center. The proof that God dwells 
 
THE HOLY SPIKIT. 161 
 
 
 
 within is to be found, not in any transient ecstasy or 
 happy feeling, but in the steady reign of these virtues in 
 heart and life. No experience however brilliant, no rapt- 
 ure however ecstatic, that, passing away, does not leave 
 these solid virtues regnant over all lusts of the flesh and 
 spirit, affords the least evidence that God has even paid a 
 visit to the soul, much less taken up his abode therein. 
 No wonders that amaze the senses, however startling, have 
 any tendency in themselves to produce these fruits of the 
 Spirit; they oftener create a prurient craving for more 
 startling wonders as stimulants to keener sensations. 
 The mind is diverted from truth and duty to stand in 
 gaping wonder. The good purpose grows fickle. The 
 nerves are strained into morbid irritability. The excite- 
 ment of the senses over " phenomena " usually acts as a 
 stimulant to the "works of the flesh." Moreover, no 
 degree of emotion tends in itself to awaken or establish 
 the virtues of the Spirit. Feeling does not make the 
 heart true. Even good feeling, gushing with benevolence, 
 easily degenerates into puling sentimentalism. It over- 
 flows with tender demonstrations, but when you touch 
 its principle with temptation, test its conscience, or ir- 
 ritate its temper with opposition, you discover how empty 
 and selfish and essentially false it is a mere hot vapor 
 that falls flat and powerless at the first touch of a con- 
 densing chill. The melting philanthropist turns savage 
 and burns to torture those he cannot sway. The fire of 
 feeling does not evidence the Spirit. It depends on the 
 
162 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 
 
 nature of the heat. The most intense is not likely to be 
 the most permanent. When God comes to the soul in the 
 Divine gift of the Spirit, the good will He inspires is com- 
 prehensive of all the opponent who thwarts as well as 
 the ally who helps, the enemy that curses, as well as the 
 friend that caresses. God's charity is not partial. And 
 the characteristic of the faith which receives and cherishes 
 the Holy Spirit as the indwelling Guest and Guide, is 
 that it makes the idea of God the ideal of human love and 
 duty. It binds the conscience to that ideal. It exacts of 
 itself a love like that of the Father in Heaven, who mak- 
 eth his sun to rise on the evil and on the good. It cannot 
 be satisfied with less. It condemns itself for every secret 
 motion within of a contrary spirit. God is there as wit- 
 ness. It recognizes His presence. It feels that God loves 
 men in its love; and if it does not love them as He loves, 
 it is resisting the Holy Spirit. The very power of faith 
 to raise men to a higher moral and spiritual life is largely 
 in this fact, that it holds them in its secret thought and 
 desire, as well as in external act, to this divine ideal. It 
 is the very perfection of truth and justice and honor and 
 honesty and love identified with the sense of God's being 
 and presence in the soul. The abiding supremacy of these 
 virtues is the witness of the Spirit within. The perma- 
 nent condition is the fullest demonstration, not the exal- 
 tation of the emotions. The presence and power of the 
 Spirit may be as grandly manifest in the deliberate strug- 
 gle with temptation, he feelingless perseverance in un- 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 1(53 
 
 pleasant duty, or the severe calm under the long wear 
 of adversity, as in the most rapt ecstasy of contemplation 
 or prayer. The cold-blooded refusal to do wrong or per- 
 severance in the good way, because the idea of God is 
 the ideal of duty and life, is often the very sublimity of 
 (inspiration. To see GoJ in emotion and not see Him in 
 conscience and purpose, is to see substance in fog and deny 
 it in land and rock. 
 
 We are never to think of the action of the Holy Spirit 
 in us as separate from our own action. The Divine and 
 the human blend. Our faculties are organs for the Spirit. 
 The power is from above, but the reception and acting 
 forth of the Divine energy depends upon us. God works 
 in us to will and to do, yet we work out our own salva 
 tion. The soul draws its lifo from the Spiritual as really 
 as the body draws its life from the material. Unless you 
 plow and sow and provide bread, and feed the body, it 
 cannot perform its functions. It lives by bread. Yet 
 when the body does its work you never say that it is the 
 food that acts. It eats and assimilates and makes its 
 bread a vital part of itself, and on the strength thus drawn 
 from nature fulfils its office. In a coarse way this may 
 symbolize our dependence on God. By self-restraint and 
 self-denial we put away the temptations that would feed 
 our souls on poison. In our prayer and our search after 
 truth we ask the bread of Heaven. The Holy Spirit is 
 the answer. " We eat angel's food." We assimilate the 
 Divine gift. " We are made partakers of the Divine na- 
 
164 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tare." The spirit of God becomes, in a sense, a vital part 
 of our own spiritual powers, to the extent we are able to 
 receive, so that when the holy aspirations and affections 
 rise within us they are our own, and when the good pur- 
 pose goes forth on its errand of divine love it is our 
 purpose. We act out the energies that God pours into 
 our being and powers. That spiritual unity which is 
 contemplated in the prayer of Jesus is realized: " As thou, 
 Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be 
 one in us. And the calm sense of power and of rest that 
 makes such a faith strong is the consciousness of this in- 
 dwelling of God. There is a sense of dependence, but it 
 is a weakness that leans on Omnipotence. " When I am 
 weak then am I strong." 
 
 This intimacy of union and absolute dependence of the 
 soul upon the Divine iufluence lend a fearful significance 
 to those scriptures which warn us against resisting the 
 Holy Spirit. To refuse where we know that God com- 
 mands, to indulge where we are sure that He must frown, 
 to will where the conscience warns us He has forbidden 
 this is to break the union with the Source of life, and feed 
 on poison in the place of bread. It is to court spiritual 
 weakness and death. " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God 
 whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." To 
 resist is to rivet our own fetters. It is treachery to our 
 own liberty and life. 
 
 Another important inference follows here : The capacity 
 of inspiration, or one's measure of the Spirit, depends 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 165 
 
 largely upon one's own endeavor. Like every power of 
 the mind it is capable of education. It begins in weak- 
 ness; if rightly cultured, it grows to power. The Divine 
 Spirit is eternally one and the same; but human capacity 
 to receive His influence varies indefinitely. " He touches 
 hallowed lips with fire," but they are never the lips of an 
 idiot. God never gives his deepest messages of truth to 
 men from the tongue of a child. The child may be our 
 teacher, but it is from his artless unconsciousness, rather 
 than any distinct grasp and utterance of truth. The 
 child will " speak as a child," even though taught of the 
 Spirit. The manifestations of the Spirit in the young will 
 be colored by the qualities of youth. The thought of di- 
 vine things in a mind that is mature in holy contempla- 
 tion and experience will differ from the thought of the 
 novice in religion, as the thought of mathematics in the 
 mind of a Newton differs from the thought of one who 
 has just learned to add simple numbers. Both are 
 correct; but the one comprehends the whole range 
 of the principles of the science, the other only its 
 most primary truth. We shall look in vain for lives that 
 will move before us, under the fullest guidance of the in- 
 dwelling Spirit, until we cease to expect the divine power 
 to come in flashes of light or arbitrary and sudden gifts 
 of grace, and learn that we must prepare the way for His 
 largest coming by a life-long education of our own 
 hearts. 
 
 This doctrine of the Spirit is also a very practical one 
 
166 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 for the life that now is. As we are living in the spirit 
 world and dealing with spiritual realities at every step 
 along the path of our life, the Holy Spirit comes to abide 
 in us as a present guide, a monitor of temper in our every- 
 day affairs. God aims to fit us for living in the present, 
 not for living in the future, for which we do not yet need 
 to be fit. Our work is here. Our relations to spiritual 
 powers are here. Our duties are here. What we need to 
 know is how to regulate the temper and order the con- 
 duct aright here. The faith that is so lofty and ethereal 
 that it cannot attend vigorously to the work-day duties 
 of home and trade and neighborly kindness, is a little too 
 high for earth and quite too low for heaven. It keeps 
 company with the coffin of the Arabian Prophet, suspended 
 midway between the two, and as having to do mainly 
 with the dead were better buried with them. The religion 
 which the living need must be ready for solid service here. 
 Our faith in the spiritual will doubtless contemplate the 
 present existence of all the good that have lived in the 
 past ages of the world; it will not doubt that Abraham 
 and Moses and Isaiah and Paul and John are living and 
 doing God service somewhere in the universe at this mo- 
 ment; God is not a God of the dead but of the living; 
 but our individual relation to these distinguished person- 
 ages, so far as God permits us to know, is of the least pos- 
 sible consequence. It is idle to waste thought in guesses 
 upon that matter. Our relations to our next-door neigh- 
 bor, and to the trader of whom we buy, and to the cus- 
 
THE HOLY SHIRIT. 167 
 
 tomer to whom we sell, and to the inmates of our own 
 home, are of the utmost consequence now. Anl it is to 
 fit us for our right part in these relations that God's Spirit 
 is promised to abide in us. To think toward those who 
 are thus near us as we believe God thinks, to feel toward 
 them as God feels, to act toward them as we believe God 
 would act if he were in our place in very deed, to make 
 the idea of God thus the ideal of our own temper and 
 life, is the good for which we most need the Holy Spirit. 
 And most solemn and searching is the thought that as 
 we deal every day by others God's Spirit deals by us. 
 By a law that is self -executing, that never remits, never 
 postpones its award, we are becoming according as we 
 think and act in these near relations to those around us. 
 With the judgment wherewithal we judge are we judged. 
 Just according to the spirit we bear within us is the ever- 
 present working of the Spirit of God or the spirit of evil, 
 penetrating and shaping the inmost life of the heart. 
 
 Finally: the influence and power of religion in men 
 will be just according as they hold vitally in their faith 
 and practically for their conduct, this doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit. It is the substance of religion. It is the one cen- 
 tral truth of faith. Real faith which does not include or 
 comprehend it there cannot be. "I will dwell in them 
 and walk in them ; and I will be their God and they shall 
 be my people," was the promise of old. When Jesus came, 
 his deepest word but reiterated aud expanded this prom- 
 ise : " If a man love me he will keep my words, and my 
 
168 A EEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 father will love him, and we will come unto him, and 
 make our abode with him;" "I will pray the Father and 
 He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide 
 with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth." God dwel- 
 ling in man and man dwelling in God, living consciously 
 in the divine Life this is the truth of truths. It is com- 
 prehensive of all good. There is no ignorance for which 
 it is not light, no sorrow for which it is not comfort; no 
 weakness for which it is not strength; no joy or strength 
 or wisdom or prosperity of the soul for which it is not the 
 security of permanence. It is the one most central dis- 
 tinction of man from the lower orders of life. It is his 
 crown of glory. God in man and man in God, making 
 the idea of God the ideal of man, and rising ever into 
 higher realizations of that ideal this is the whole sub- 
 stance of meaning, if we can interpret Him, in the Person 
 of Jesus. It comprehends the whole truth which his life 
 and cross aim to impress. It is religion. And it is the 
 'religion for universal humanity ; shut up within no creed, 
 limited to no time or place, bound to no rite or ceremony, 
 the monopoly of no sacred order or caste, wherever God 
 and a human heart are together there is present every- 
 thing essential to its highest worship. Man has no com- 
 pleteness without this truth in it the divinest complete- 
 ness. It is the reason of prayer, the joy of praise, the life 
 and substance of worship all worship but dumb show 
 or meaningless sound till this truth is its inspiration 
 Glorious will be that day when men shall drop all debate 
 over the uncertain and unsettled, and center the whole 
 thought and aspiration of their religion upon this one 
 truth of the abiding Spirit God in man and man in God. 
 
The Resurrection. 
 
 John v: 28,29: Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in the which 
 all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they 
 that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have 
 done evil unto the resurrection of judgment. 
 
 With the aim in the present discussion of attaining to 
 the real thought of Jesus respecting the resurrection, it 
 will not be necessary or profitable to spend time over the 
 question of the literal raising of the body, the identical 
 flesh and bones which we carry here. It would be a 
 waste of words. Such literal resurrection no longer com- 
 mands the respect of intelligent faith. We are not dis- 
 tressed with the perplexity of the Sadducees who came to 
 Jesus with the problem what was to be done in the res- 
 urrection with so many bodies when a woman had had 
 seven husbands. The chief concern with us is to learn 
 what becomes of the souls. 
 
 Let us also dismiss as equally puerile the idea of a 
 mechanical resurrection, or the arbitrary interference of 
 any form of external force or power to bring the soul up 
 from the dead. The evidence that banishes the idea of a 
 mechanical creation of man, and compels us to see him 
 coming forth from the Divine hand in the order of law, 
 insures the early disappearance of all such artificial notions 
 of the resurrection. No special exertion of the divine 
 power is needed. The rising up of the soul at the disso- 
 
170 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 lution of the body is as natural as birth. When nature 
 has advanced through her prescribed course of changes and 
 the hour strikes, this event comes as manly strength comes 
 to the full-grown body, or as wrinkles and gray hairs 
 come to old age ; it is a part of the soul's history or life. 
 It comes of forces inherent in the human constitution. 
 This is in entire harmony with the teachings of Jesus and 
 his Apostles, when fairly interpreted, and also agrees with 
 the preintimations of the life to come in human experi- 
 ence. 
 
 It may be inferred, therefore, that the resurrection is 
 an inseparable incident of the soul's existence, that there 
 are forces and powers in the very constitution of our being 
 that survive the death of the body as naturally as the life 
 of the seed-grain, to use the famous illustration of Paul, 
 goes into the sprouting germ and survives the dissolution 
 of that grain ; that each will rise into the spirit life iden- 
 tically the same being that dwelt in the body here, bear- 
 ing the same character and qualities, intellectual, social, 
 moral and spiritual, that were acquired in the body; hence 
 that there will be the same limitless variety of character 
 in the world to come that we witness here, all the grades 
 of good and evil that we see passing out of the life on 
 earth, all beginning there as they left off here; pure and 
 loving and aspiring to nobler hights of holy attainment if 
 such was their temper among men, vicious and hateful 
 and loving to do mischief if such a spirit had been the 
 growth of their earthly life. In the words of the text, 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 171 
 
 "They that have done good shall come forth unto the 
 resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil unto the 
 resurrection of judgment or condemnation." To what 
 glory the good may advance in their progress, or to what 
 lower depths of animal stupidity and darkness the evil 
 may descend, we cannot say ; but grant the continuance 
 of personal identity and the admission carries with it an 
 evidence amounting to moral certainty that there passes 
 into the life to come, essentially unchanged, all that vast 
 variety of moral condition, all those grades of good and 
 evil, that we witness as the final product of the discipline 
 of life on earth. We can see no power in death to radi- 
 cally change the moral status or likings or tendencies of 
 the soul. The resurrection is continued life. The outward 
 conditions will doubtless be different, but that inward life 
 of the spirit which goes far to determine what outward 
 conditions shall be to us, is the same. Those who wake 
 from death will be themselves still. 
 
 But here the question with which Paul had to deal 
 meets us, "With what body do they come?" Not this 
 mortal flesh, insists the Apostle with emphasis. "Flesh 
 and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Not the 
 body that dies is the body " that shall be," he again en- 
 forces with his illustration of the growing grain. This 
 but affirms what Jesus implies when he says that in the 
 resurrection "they are as the angels of God;" and again, 
 " I am the resurrection and the life." What sense these 
 latter words could bear, as applied to the reorganizing of 
 
172 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the dust of the body, we are unable to see. And when 
 we take into view the well known facts connected with 
 the sustenance, growth and dissolution of the body, chang- 
 ing every constituent particle several times during an 
 average life, as it does, and often giving up its life at last 
 only to become a part of other living organisms, we won- 
 der at the violence done to reason as well as to language 
 in the interpretation which has extorted a material resur- 
 rection from the teachings of Jesus and Paul. 
 
 And yet we must believe there will be a body. We 
 cannot conceive of a spirit existing separate from form. 
 As the metaphysician will tell you, a finite spirit cannot 
 be omnipresent; cannot fill infinite space. It must be 
 somewhere. This is to say that it must occupy in space 
 a definite position in relation to all other objects in space. 
 It must have dimensions, greater or less. Dimensions 
 imply shape or form. And form that is not a mere 
 vacuum or nothing implies substance that has outline in 
 space. Hence we are prepared to accept that inspiration 
 of Paul which tells us that there is a " spiritual body " 
 (soma pneumatikori), in contradistinction to the natural 
 body (soma psuchikori) ; that over this spiritual body the 
 death that dissolves the natural hath no power, but when 
 nature puts off this " body of corruption," the spirit that 
 is vital with the principle of eternal life will be clothed 
 with a body incorruptible; "for this corruptible must put 
 on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality; 
 and so shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 
 
THE KESUKRECTION. 173 
 
 ' Death is swallowed up in victory ! ' " Once grant the 
 continued life of the spirit, and no sounder word of reason 
 ever came from human lips. 
 
 In regard to the nature of this spiritual body, it would 
 be over-curious to inquire. We may well believe that in 
 the complex nature of man is a third force or element 
 which our science calls neither matter nor mind, which 
 no scalpel or microscope or most searching chemical analy- 
 sis ever reveals, which counts for nothing on the scales, 
 but which, more subtle than electricity, more enduring 
 than adamant, yea, possibly as eternal as the being of 
 God himself, the life of the spirit weaves into a garment 
 and shapes into an instrument for the immortal part in its 
 celestial activities, by a law as natural and uniform as 
 that under which the physical life builds and molds the 
 body for our services on earth. And so " God giveth it a 
 body as it hath pleased Him." This may well be one of 
 those things in heaven and earth of which our philosophy 
 has never dreamed. Even now the foremost investigators 
 in physics are telling us that there must be some hidden 
 force or universal ether, filling all space, undetected and 
 unmeasured by any of their scientific methods, yet abso- 
 lutely necessary to account for some of the most common 
 phenomena that meet our eyes. The argument against 
 immortality in the plea that no substance save that which 
 is liable to dissolution can serve as organ and form for the 
 eternal life of the spirit, is merely the assumption of ig 
 norance. What did the world know of the universal force 
 
174 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of gravity before the time of Sir Isaac Newton? Who 
 suspected the presence of such elements as electricity and 
 magnetism in nature four or five generations ago? And 
 who shall say that tomorrow will not discover still greater 
 wonders in the Creation, of whose mysteries we have just 
 begun to learn a little? True science is to be respected 
 always, but when it travels beyond experience and as- 
 sumes to affirm or deny where it can only guess, it ceases 
 to be science ; and the faith that communes with God will 
 rest in the assurance that the instincts of the divine life 
 it feels within are a truer and safer guide. 
 
 It was necessary to notice the questions I have touched 
 upon in the discussion of this subject. The history of the 
 doctrine and the position in which it has left the popular 
 mind, makes the demand. Yet we do well to remember 
 that our knowledge at present of the external and inci- 
 dental conditions of the life beyond the grave, can be but 
 partial and very inadequate. It doth not yet appear 
 what we shall be. It does not need to appear. It is safe 
 for us to wait till time and change shall reveal what shall 
 be in the life hereafter, if only we give due heed to what 
 we may certainly know of the resurrection life as it is 
 shaping itself within us now. This brings us to the prac- 
 tical part of our subject. 
 
 One of the truths of highest practical importance for 
 this age to consider is the fact that we make our own fu- 
 ture, and that we are making it every day. It will be 
 no arbitrary creation. No force will crush us into an evil 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 176 
 
 condition which we have not prepared for ourselves and 
 made inevitable by our own voluntary action and choice- 
 No power external to our own being can raise us out of 
 such a condition into its opposite, and fill us with the 
 blessedness of a holy state. The immutable terms of 
 moral action and character seal this certainty. If we 
 make a bad future for ourselves, it will be our own fault. 
 God will not be to blame. It will not be because He did 
 not place opportunity and aid within our reach to make 
 it otherwise. If we make a good future for ourselves, it 
 will be only by the right voluntary use of those opportu- 
 nities and aids which, under God, lie open to our choice. 
 No chance decides the issue. No power of malevolence 
 or benevolence forces it, nor can. We are the arbiters of 
 our own destiny. 
 
 The life of the resurrection is growing within us now. 
 We are shaping its results every day. Our choices, our 
 pleasures, our business, pur ruling passion, all those activi- 
 ties of body and mind that organize themselves in our be- 
 ing as fixed habit, character and tendency, are molding 
 the creatures- we are to be. Not less certainly does the 
 life at work in the cocoon or chrysalis determine the 
 creature that will ere long break forth into the light and 
 air, than the moral life that is acting in us now d eter 
 mines what sortr of beings will emerge from our dissolving 
 bodies. The life that is in harmony with the highest laws 
 of our being, that grows strong in noble effort to do right 
 and to do good in the world, must come forth in the like- 
 
176 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ness of the Son of God. A life that rends those laws as if 
 they were but cobwebs drawn across the path of its im- 
 patient desires and passions, that deranges the whole 
 being with its excesses that bad life can come forth only 
 in a dark contrast. And every one in his degree between 
 these extremes, according as he lives here. This is hardly 
 more than the assertion of continued personal identity. 
 
 So Jesus is but speaking out of the very heart of reason 
 and nature when He proclaims the resurrection life a 
 present reality : " Verily, Verily, I say unto you, the hour 
 is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice 
 of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." The 
 hour is now ; the dead hear now ; the hearer lives now. 
 Again : "He that believeth on me hath everlasting 
 life;" and again, " He that heareth my word and believeth 
 on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not 
 come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto 
 life." Lucke, an acute German interpreter, says of this : 
 "If a higher kind of life, a resurrection process, prior to 
 bodily death, is represented by 'hath' and 'is passed' then 
 life and everlasting life are not to be understood of a life 
 that begins after physical death, but of the true 
 and eternal Messianic life, which begins even here." 
 The celebrated Meyer makes this comment : " The be- 
 liever already possesses eternal life in this world, that is % , 
 in the temporal development of that moral and blessed 
 life which is independent of death, and which will rise to 
 its highest perfection and glory at the coming of Christ." 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 177 
 
 Tholuck adds these words : " To him who by faith in Christ 
 has obtained entrance into an inward communion of life 
 with him to him death is no interruption, but only a 
 completion of his existence." Paul, in like language, 
 speaks of a present resurrection as the prize for which he 
 was running the Christian race, " That I may know him 
 (Christ) and the power of his resurrection, and the fellow- 
 ship of his suffering, being made conformable to his death, 
 if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of 
 the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either 
 were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may 
 apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of Christ 
 Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended 
 i. e., to have attained the perfection of the resurrection 
 life; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which 
 are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which 
 are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the 
 high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Jesus was his 
 ideal, " The Resurrection and the Life " to him now ; 
 not a life that was to be given him in some future day, 
 but beginning now ; not an event in which he was to be 
 passive, but an attainment for which he must struggle: 
 not the work of another upon him, but a growing life 
 within him ; not a gift thrown to him, but a prize to be 
 won by him. He was struggling to realize his ideal, to 
 be a perfectly Christ-like man. The life begins here, cul- 
 minates in eternity ; just when, in date of time, we can- 
 not tell just when, in date of character, the soul becomes 
 perfectly like Christ. 
 
178 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Now, let us consider how this life, which we should 
 struggle to attain, manifests itself, and the care it needs 
 to give it a full and healthy growth. 
 
 We all know that there is a natural life within us that 
 must decay. It is a good life that God has given us for 
 the time, but it feeds on the perishable, and must perish 
 like that which sustains it. The senses of the body early 
 reach the climax of their strength. The zest of food is keen- 
 est in childhood; the eye is clearest in youth; the ear will 
 detect every sound at ten that it can at fifty, and many 
 that it cannot at seventy. The life of the senses must de- 
 cline. Nature writes their doom. Cherish them ever so 
 carefully, refine them to ever so exquisite a delicacy, by 
 and by lethargy and numbness come over them. The eye 
 grows dim, the ear dull, and no dainty can tease the pal- 
 ate into zest. So of a whole world of pleasures that de- 
 pend upon the spring and vigor of the senses the feast, 
 the dance, the ride, the gatherings for social chat and 
 mirth, even the excitements of pecuniary gain and the 
 exultations of successful ambition. These wear out. The 
 time comes when the quiet corner at home is better than 
 all of them. Good for their uses by the way, essential in 
 their place, they are nevertheless stamped with decay. 
 They are of that life of nature which must die. But we 
 know as well that there is a life of the spirit which only 
 increases in the keenness of its sensibility and relish for 
 its objects as the years grow into old age. It may lie dor- 
 mant in early years, it may fail to be quickened, it may 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 179 
 
 be smothered under excesses of worldliness; but it is a life 
 which every heart knows that consecrates itself in any 
 degree to the pure service of humanity. It wakes in the 
 love that goes forth to do good. It is the life which that 
 noble minister of Boston feels when he says that he can- 
 not live without his poor. It is the life which many a 
 pastor feels glowing in every sensibility of his being as he 
 turns away from some abode of want or suffering with the 
 consciousness that he has poured the balm of healing 
 sympathy into some crushed heart, or spoken words that 
 cheer the gloom or rouse the good hopes and ener- 
 gies of some souls that were sinking into darkness. 
 It is the life that Florence Nightingale felt like a 
 warm light of Heaven diffusing its radiance through the 
 hospitals of sick and wounded soldiers, attracting her to 
 her toils amid those scenes of suffering with a charm 
 stronger than the devotee of pleasure ever felt in ball-room 
 or theater, making the home of groans and unsightly 
 miseries the source of a higher joy to her beautiful spirit 
 than ever came from the place of song and laughter. It 
 is conscious affinity with God, the Infinite Goodness. It 
 is not a belief that it shall live; it is living. And it lives 
 more and more. Its good work gives it an appetite that 
 never palls. The joy in a deed that puts a song in a sad 
 human heart is not less, but more, than it was in the same 
 act ten years ago. Such repetition never wearies, but stim- 
 ulates. Wash the reek of his low contact from the body 
 and soul of the inebriate, and see him stand up a man once 
 
180 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 more, and will you not be the readier to do the same kind- 
 ness for another in the same case ? Teach the ignorant, 
 awaken the vicious to holy purposes, see the divine life in 
 them growing into established character, and will not the 
 reward you feel draw you on to higher endeavors ? It is 
 the banquet of God, to which no one who tastes ever needs 
 new invitation. This life grows with years; and when 
 the active powers have failed, and old age has nothing 
 but love to give, the heart is a fountain of Divine good- 
 ness, that pours forth its streams in larger volume than 
 ever before. There is nothing so divine as love to give. 
 Love is the life that gives itself. It is an immortal youth. 
 And so this life of love, the blessed present resurrection, 
 which only enlarges as the body wears out with years and 
 service, triumphs over death, and at last passes upward to 
 its larger and freer sphere of activity. 
 
 For, it is to be noticed, this life knows itself as the vic- 
 tory over death. It feels that it cannot die. Death is not 
 real ; it is " abolished." The fear of death is but the child's 
 fear of the dark. This life knows that no form of dark- 
 ness can hide a danger in which it will not be as safe as 
 in the clearest light. Every place is as safe as where it 
 now" is. Let the body crumble ; let the fever burn out its 
 poor life, or consumption waste its vigor, or the bullets 
 of an enemy riddle its heart, or the poisonous vapors of 
 the burning mine, a thousand feet below the pure air and 
 sunlight, smother its breath, or the sudden explosion rend 
 limb from limb these can no more touch that inward 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 181 
 
 life than the rocket exploding in the night sky can wound 
 the moon. It is hidden in God. It is bound up in the. 
 Divine Life. It is as safe from harm as the heart of God 
 Himself. 
 
 Under this view, how plain the essential question of 
 our destiny becomes ! We know, if we will but consider, 
 whether we are living only in that life of nature which must 
 die, or in that life of the spirit, that life of duty and love, 
 which rises in ever-growing strength toward God, its 
 source. We know to what the one and the other must 
 come. We have only to make our choice. And so no 
 words could more fitly close the discussion of this great 
 theme than those with which Paul impresses its final prac- 
 tical lesson : " Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stead- 
 fast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, 
 forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in 
 the Lord." 
 
The Judgment Day. 
 
 John vii, 48 : He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my worda 
 hath one that judgeth him ; the word that I have spoken, the same 
 shall judge him in that day. 
 
 If the idea of the final judgment here announced could 
 be flashed suddenly upon the minds of many Christians, it 
 would startle them. That they are in the last day, that 
 the word of Christ is now judging them, that the process 
 of separation, "one from another, as a shepherd divideth 
 his sheep from the goats," is now going on, and that each 
 is moving to the right hand or the left by the very work- 
 ing of the word of truth within him, according as he re- 
 ceives or rejects, is a thought that has never crossed their 
 minds. Their religious training has never impressed it; 
 their own reflection and experience have never suggested 
 the truth. Yet, if I have been able to study the sayings 
 of Jesus on this subject to any purpose, this is precisely 
 the idea he meant to convey. In the place of this truth, 
 that goes to the conscience like a swift arrow, a present, 
 practical force, the church has for ages treated her chil- 
 dren to an outward scene, an imposing pageant, stimu- 
 lating to the artistic imagination, but robbed of all spirit- 
 ual influence by its external pomp terrorizing the senses, 
 and of all practical force by being postponed indefinite 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 183 
 
 ages into the future. Most of you will readily recognize 
 the picture as it was thrown upon my boyish imagination 
 by the preaching to which I listened, and lingered there 
 with the tenacity of early impressions far into my later 
 years a vast amphitheater, whose breadth would crowd 
 back the bordering hills of the widest plain, gathering 
 within it all the generations of time, just called up by the 
 judgment trumpet from the sleeping dust, a countless 
 throng, a shoreless sea of human faces ; at one side to'wer- 
 ing a throne of terrific splendor ; on ifc seated the awful 
 form of the Almighty Judge, his head white with dread- 
 ful glory, his eyes flaming with fires that burn into every 
 soul, a hushed silence upon all those myriads, each waiting 
 in trembling suspense as one by one is called forth, the 
 old, the middle-aged, the child, the infant, each in turn 
 compelled to answer ; not one allowed to escape ; even the 
 holiest saints trembling under the ordeal : out of the open 
 books, containing the record of "the deeds done in the 
 body," each soul reads the verdict, "Come, ye blessed," or 
 "Depart, ye cursed," and, bowing to the inexorable decree, 
 passes to the right hand or to the left ; the scene laid 
 somewhere in the upper ether ; time gone, eternity begun, 
 and, to complete the picture, this old earth, on the last 
 round in its distant orbit, dry and ripe for doom by ages 
 of sin, hangs burning in the lurid flames of the last confla- 
 gration. You know how pulpit sensationalists have used 
 this Apocalyptic imagery, with all the terrific variations 
 their inventive imaginations could lend. Your own young 
 
184 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nerves have probably quivered with momentary fright 
 before its lurid colors. Literalized from the Oriental 
 imagery of the Bible, you looked upon it as painted by 
 the finger of God. It came to you as bearing the seal of 
 divine authority. It did not occur to your young thoughts 
 to question the ludicrous absurdities in the stupendous fic- 
 tion the time it would take for the grand session to dis- 
 pose of all the cases that had been accumulating on the 
 docket, at the rate of sixty a minute, one every second, 
 through all the centuries of history; the lawyer's task it 
 would be for each waiting spectator to grasp and profit by 
 the voluminous testimony, and the weariness of standing 
 out the interminable trials. But the world has grown old 
 enough to ask these questions, which our young minds 
 did not think to ask. Religion is suffering from the ex- 
 posure of these transparent fictions with which her teach- 
 ers have so long frightened the world. We must come 
 back to reason and common sense. It is safe to say that 
 Jesus had no such impossible absurdity in mind with his 
 imagery of the last day. Blundering interpreters may 
 mistake figure for fact, and see a pageant where the 
 speaker or writer saw only a truth or idea ; but the origi- 
 nating mind always knows whether it is dealing in imag- 
 inations or in literal description. Jesus was not one to 
 amuse his hearers with empty words on such a theme. Let 
 us inquire what he did mean: 
 
 I. In regard to the date of the last day. The Son of 
 Man was to be revealed from Heaven, to come in his 
 
JHE JUDGMENT DAY. ., 185 
 
 kingdom, come to reign, come to judge the world. When ? 
 On one occasion, the disciples, in amazement at the asser- 
 tion that not one stone of their magnificent temple should 
 be left upon another, pointedly asked the teacher : " Tell 
 us, when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign 
 of thy coming and of the end of the world ? " In answer, 
 Jesus first cautioned them to be on their guard against 
 deceivers, and then, with the annunciation of commotions 
 and miseries that should overwhelm the nation, more with- 
 ering than old Prophet had ever denounced upon the back- 
 sliding people, he limited the date with this emphatic 
 close : " Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not 
 pass till all these things be fulfilled." Turn to any relia- 
 ble commentator on these passages, and he will tell you 
 that " the end of the world," or aeon, as here used, means 
 simply the end of the age or dispensation, according to 
 the prevailing belief among the Jews that the Messiah 
 would bring that dispensation to a close, and inaugurate a 
 new age of far happier conditions to their nation. Hence 
 Olshausen says : " We do not, therefore, scruple to accept 
 the simple explanation which alone suits the text, that 
 Christ speaks of his coming as coincident with the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem and with the downfall of the Jewish 
 state." This corresponds with the signs of his coming, for 
 which the disciples asked. When the Gospel had been 
 preached through all the nations then known; when the 
 abomination of desolation, the standard of the victorious 
 Roman legions, was borne in triumph into the Holy Place ; 
 
186 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 when the stones of the temple were thrown down, and the 
 plough-share driven through the very foundations on 
 which they rested; when the daily sacrifice was taken 
 away, and the old temple- worship made an impossibility, 
 then the end came the old dispensation was no more, the 
 last day began. It is needless to dwell further on the 
 minutiae of evidence. We are in that day; the judgment 
 is set; the books are opened; the process is going for- 
 ward; the decisions of that day are being immutably 
 settled. 
 
 II. We inquire in regard to the nature of the judgment. 
 Krisis is the word. It means separation. To judge is to 
 separate. Bear that fact in mind. As a mental act, 
 judgment separates or discriminates the true from the 
 false in testimony, the like from the unlike in science or 
 philosophy, the good from the evil in morals. In the court 
 of civil justice, judgment separates the wrong from the 
 right, and awards satisfaction to the wronged. In the 
 criminal court, it separates the guilty from the innocent, 
 and its sentence, carried into execution, literally separates 
 the criminal from the law-abiding, and shuts up the former 
 with their own kind. Separation is the undertone of 
 meaning that runs through every application of the word. 
 Jesus says: "In the last day, the word that I speak shall 
 judge him that receiveth it not and rejecteth me." My 
 word is his judge. No other is needed. It tries him, con- 
 victs him, sentences him, and carries the sentence into 
 execution by separating him from the good. How ? By 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 187 
 
 the natural and inevitable effect of rejected truth upon 
 the mind and heart. No external force is needed, no ma- 
 chinery of justice, no formality of trial, no sheriff or jailer 
 or prison walls. Just speak the truth, and let it have its 
 way with the soul, and the judgment is accomplished. 
 
 Let me illustrate this by an incident. Some years ago, 
 as I was passing an Indian encampment in company with 
 a missionary who had become well acquainted with their 
 habits and social life, I asked him, " Do you find the same 
 variety of character or the wide difference in moral grade 
 among those Indians that you meet in civilized society ? " 
 " By no means," was his reply. " There are individual dif- 
 ferences of talent and temper. For example,. Deer-foot 
 there has a little more energy than Sleepy-eye, and Watch- 
 dog is a little less savage and cruel than Springing-cat ; 
 but, take them together, they are all just about alike. 
 They hunt the same game, practice the same rude arts, 
 have the same amusements, eat the same food, the women 
 all bear the same drudgery, and the men all indulge in 
 the same vices." " Then there is no depraved class among 
 them, expelled from respectable society by their excep- 
 tional badness ? " " None." " No outcasts ? " " None." 
 " No criminals that they fetter or shut in prison for the 
 public safety ? " " No ; if one is sharp and energetic enough 
 to commit daring crimes, they are about as apt to praise 
 and promote and try to imitate as they are to punish him." 
 " Well, if you preach the Gospel to these savages, some 
 will receive, some reject. The believers will grow better; 
 
188 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the rejecters will remain as they are or grow worse. 
 Will not this create the moral antagonism, differences, 
 grades, or variety of character that are now absent?" 
 " Unquestionably. We cannot hope that all will receive 
 the Gospel ;' if some would not, we should have no motive 
 to preach to them." "And thus from the very word of 
 Christ which you speak to them, diverse moral sympathies 
 spring into being; mutual repulsions grow stronger year 
 by year, ever widening out the moral distance that sepa- 
 rates the unlike classes." " Yes, in some sense," half-pro- 
 testingly assented my friend; "but the true convert could 
 not refuse to associate with his old companions. The 
 Gospel does not extirpate natural affection, and the love 
 of God must teach him to go down to the degraded, as 
 Jesus mingled with publicans and sinners, that he may 
 win them and raise them up." "Yes, no doubt, while 
 there is hope," I replied ; " yet he will only be ' among 
 them, not of them/ And must not their growing antipa- 
 thies of moral taste, as opposite as light and darkness, push- 
 ing them ever farther apart, at last make it apparent that 
 they can never dwell together as congenial spirits ? " 
 "Ay, indeed ! " was the reply; " and that looks like noth- 
 ing less than the bridgeless gulf of separation." Well> 
 then, I asked my friend, and I ask you who hear me to- 
 day, what is that but judgment ~by the word which Jesus 
 has spoken ? What is it but a single example of a world- 
 wide fact the "natural selection" of religion, sorting the 
 good from the bad by a law as uniform and inevitable as 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 189 
 
 that which separates oil from water. The response of the 
 moral nerve to the touch of the truth decides the matter. 
 The antipathies of taste, of sentiment, of every principle 
 of association, which the truth creates in those who re- 
 ceive it, just as certainly send them apart from those who 
 reject, as lambs fly from wolves or doves from hawks. 
 Their natures become opposites. They refuse to be to- 
 gether. Force them by external constraint to remain in 
 each other's presence, and they are not together; they 
 are at moral antipodes. They are apart by the whole 
 diameter of the moral world. No third power thrusts 
 any bars of separation between them; the truth simply 
 does its work in the heart and conscience of some, is for- 
 bidden to do it in others, and the judgment is accom- 
 plished. Moral affinities are decided. The congenial cling 
 together ; the uncongenial turn away from each other. 
 
 1 ' Nor less the eternal poles 
 Of tendency distribute souls. 
 These need no vows to bind 
 Whom not each other seek, but find. 
 They give and take no pledge or oath 
 Nature is the bond of both." 
 
 And so the Word of Jesus proves the magnet of character, 
 separating the sand from the gold. It reveals the evil in 
 men as the touch of Ithuriel's spear, according to Milton, 
 detected the subtle and masked arch-deceiver, " squat like 
 a toad," at the ear of our first mother. The sense of sin 
 starts up in shame, and shrinks away from the presence 
 and the. sight of the innocent. Every one may hear, if 
 
190 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 he will " lay his ear intently down over the beating of his 
 own heart," the clear voice of the Infinite Judge pro- 
 nouncing upon every moral act His approval or condem- 
 nation. No form or pageant is needed. The trial and 
 the verdict and the execution all go on in the silence of 
 the secret soul. Each judges himself. 
 
 III. Some suggestions that spring naturally from this 
 view: 
 
 1. The judgment which fixes our final state is not the 
 decision of another or sentence passed upon us, but a self- 
 determined process within ourselves. It begins when the 
 first claim of truth awakens the conscience. It advances 
 with every newly awakened feeling of obligation. Never 
 is the voice within heard bidding us, " Go, work in the 
 vineyard of duty;" or, Withhold thy hand and thy 
 thought from evil;" but our response is separating us 
 from the evil or from the good, moving us toward the 
 company at the right or toward the company at the left 
 of the great white Throne. " Come," or " Depart," is the 
 immediate echo to our answer. No matter how small the 
 duty to give the cup of cold water, to speak a kindly 
 word or suppress a bitter one, to check the momentary 
 craving for some hurtful dainty, or strangle the indul- 
 gence that is beginning to weave the snare of enslaving 
 habit, to confess a fault, or pluck the vanity that thinks 
 too much of self to care much for others life is made up 
 of small occasions, not of grand crises, and the decision 
 upon each goes into the bias of moral sensibility, tones 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 191 
 
 the conscience, and does just so much to create those spir- 
 itual attractions and repulsions that place the soul in its 
 moral companionship as certainly as gravitation fixes the 
 place of the planet among the stars. Oh, careless mor- 
 tal, awake to the tremendous significance of the present 
 moment! You are in the presence of the Almighty 
 Judge ! You are shaping His decision by your own upon 
 the duty of the moment. Think not of a postponed judg- 
 ment, lying uncounted ages in the future, so far away 
 that it cannot seem a reality which much concerns you 
 now. You are now on trial ; the verdict on your life is 
 now being made up. Every moral act swells the testi- 
 mony for or against you. The momentous issue advances 
 apace toward irrevocable settlement. The companion- 
 ship of eternity is gathering around you in the choices of 
 the hour. 
 
 I am aware that the textual critic will remind me of 
 the sacred Scripture, " It is appointed unto men once to 
 die, and after this the judgment," and that Jesus himself 
 declares it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomor- 
 rah in the day of judgment than for certain cities of his 
 own time plainly implying that the judgment lies be- 
 yond this life. Enough to reply that the day is passing, 
 but not closed; the process is going forward, but not 
 ended. Not till human history ends, and the life beyond 
 the grave shall have received its last accession from earth, 
 can the account with all be closed and the result declared. 
 This fact sufficiently accounts for the language referred 
 
192 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 to. But for you and me, all the same, must the decision 
 soon be settled not by death, but by life ; not at a point 
 that may be determined by accident, but by choices of 
 our own free will ; not at an appointed date of time, but 
 by a self-confirmed state of character. 
 
 2. We ought to forecast our own future in the ruling 
 tendencies we can observe in ourselves in the present. 
 Watch the forces at work within you conscience in con- 
 tact with the claims of truth, desire in contact with the 
 world, the habitual bent of thought, the things that attract 
 you most, the ends for which you are living, your ruling 
 passion. Take the bearing of these forces. Compute care- 
 fully the value of the results to which they have brought 
 you and are bringing you. Then, from the range of 
 direction thus gained, throw your eye forward, and you 
 can foresee the end. It will be the ripened present. Re- 
 flect, and you can say now whether you are willing to 
 arrive at such a goal, or whether it would be wiser to 
 change your course, and put your destiny in the hands of 
 quite other forces. There is no contingency, no uncer- 
 tainty, save in our refusal to foresee. God will not judge 
 us by any ex post facto law, nor save us by any ex post 
 facto salvation. Not more certainly can the astronomer, 
 whose eye at the lens of his telescope follows the planet 
 through a short arc of its orbit and measures its curve, 
 tell the whole sweep of its revolution, than we can tell 
 from our course in the present, if we will be at the pains 
 to calculate, to what point the whole orbit of life will 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 193 
 
 bring us. We often wonder where we shall be in the 
 world to come. Where are we now not in space, but 
 in purpose and ruling tendency, our moral " where ? " 
 Where are the days and the years,' as they go by, bear- 
 ing us? Answer that question, and unless some voluntary 
 change bends our steps in some new direction, leading 
 toward some new moral goal, our curious or anxious 
 uncertainty may be at rest. We shall only be more of 
 what we are. 
 
 3. This view disposes at once of the peculiar question 
 which has agitated all the Christian centuries, as to what 
 is to be done with the souls of the dead generations 
 while awaiting the judgment of the last day. An " inter- 
 mediate state " has been invented for their accommoda- 
 tion. They are shut up in Hades, say some the good in 
 Paradise or the pleasant upper story, the bad in Gehenna 
 or the hot cellar, the final Heaven and Hell to be respect- 
 ively higher and lower. Others insist on a suspension of 
 conscious existence, a sleep of ages, a long spiritual syn- 
 cope, from which the resurrection trumpet will startle the 
 sleeping souls to life again a loss of time for which we 
 can hardly imagine any use. Such curious conceits 
 would never have occurred to any mind, if the words of 
 Christ had received their natural interpretation. The 
 Swedish seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, teaches that there 
 will be great krises, judgments, or periods of separation in 
 the world to come, at which myriads and masses of souls, 
 grown ripe for such a result by their demonstrated and 
 
194 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 confirmed spiritual affinities, will be rapidly sifted and 
 assigned to their final abodes and associations. For aught 
 we can tell, this may be true. It would be analogous to 
 many great crises in human history. But this would 
 involve no long delay or suspense of all till earth had 
 closed its history. We should still infer that as soon as 
 each soul has reached its ripe state of character it is gath- 
 ered to its own. 
 
 4. A most cheering hope springs up from the truth thus 
 unfolded to view. No uncertainty clouds its light. Faith 
 is conscious of holding in her hand the power to command 
 the most desired award of the last day. This growing 
 ". life of God in the soul," coming more and more to be 
 "partaker of the divine nature," cannot fall short of that 
 holy companionship and fellowship which is its dearest 
 desire. In the old view there was a weird atmosphere of 
 unreality ever hanging over the picture of the final judg- 
 ment, that either raised a secret suspicion that such an 
 artificial scenic display could hardly be God's method of 
 closing up accounts with this earth, or else produced the 
 feeling that, as the result depended on the arbitrary will 
 of another, the proverbial uncertainty attending the ad- 
 ministration of justice in human courts, with their long, 
 formal trials, would reach forward to this final assize, and 
 the soul must simply take its chances with others. But 
 here is placed under our own eyes the working of the 
 forces that compel us to see that there is no chance in 
 the case. Cause and effect do not wait on chance. Their 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 195 
 
 immutable order speaks to us in the voice of certainty. 
 And here we not only see, but control yea, are the causes 
 of the result. In the causes we can foresee the final end. 
 There is no day of uncertain date, no dilatory formalities 
 of trial, no contingency of the decision. We know what 
 comes and must come from the motives under which we 
 act and the influences to which we yield. Examples are 
 ever before us. Conscience heeded in every act makes 
 the honest man ; conscience often violated shows the 
 confirmed knave. Appetite well regulated brings tho 
 blessings of temperance and self-control; appetite over 
 indulged habitually never fails to reap its harvest of fever 
 ing congestions, shattered health, and will enslaved ix/ 
 animal cravings. Avarice, ruling the life for long years, 
 withers the generous sympathies and dries up the fount 
 ains of noble feeling and action. Benevolence, ever over- 
 flowing with deeds of kindness, enlarges its own heart, 
 and blesses itself above the objects it blesses most. We 
 know all this. It is the observed order of nature as seen 
 in human experience. There is no uncertainty, no con- 
 tingency. The reaping is as the sowing. We choose the 
 harvest when we choose the seed. 
 
 And oh, if there be one attraction more fitted than 
 another to draw the soul onward in holy endeavor, it 
 must be the sure hope of mingling at last and forever in 
 the communion which at once fills and enlarges every 
 pure affection and divine aspiration. To be away from 
 the misunderstandings, irritations, hostilities of uncon- 
 genial aims and tempers; to let the heart go out in all 
 
196 A SEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the largeness and joy of its love, with no fear of betrayal, 
 no chill of distrust in our better moments that rises as 
 the dearest ideal of the "Saint's Rest." It is a privilege 
 here to labor for the needy, to instruct the ignorant, 
 to stretch out the helping hand to the fallen, no doubt; 
 but every one will feel that Heaven would have 
 little charm to draw us towards itself if it promised 
 only the continued commingling of the evil with the good, 
 and all that would be incident to that condition. If that 
 had been the prospect, never would homesick souls, strug- 
 gling against evil in the world and in themselves, have 
 breathed forth their longings through so many ages in 
 the sweet, plaintive old hymn : 
 
 mother dear, Jerusalem, 
 
 When shall I come to thee ? 
 When shall my sorrows have an end ? 
 
 Thy joys, when shall I see ? 
 O happy harbor of God's saints ! 
 
 O sweet and pleasant soil ! 
 In thee no sorrows can be found, 
 
 No grief, no care, no toil ! 
 
 My dear Redeemer is above, 
 
 Him will I go to see; 
 And all my f fiends in Christ below 
 
 Shall soon come after me. 
 
 Not ceasing from effort, but fullness of fellowship, is the 
 joy for which the yearning spirit pants. And the word 
 which Christ has spoken plainly says to us through the 
 irreversible law of experience: Be worthy, and you will 
 have your part with the worthy ; be loving, and love will 
 be your heart's answer; be Christ-like, and you shall 
 dwell forever with Christ. 
 
The Real Point at Issue between 
 Sacred and Secular Science. 
 
 Read before the Berkeley Club, of Oakland, Cal., Aug. 17, 1876. 
 
 The religious sentiment in man is a fact a fact of 
 universal experience. Its invariable manifestation points 
 to some original attribute or inherent tendency of the 
 human mind. Secular science has also its realm of fact 
 and law, which observation and reflection compel us to 
 recognize. Between this sentiment, as such, and the facts 
 of this science, with their respective laws properly under- 
 stood, there can be no conflict. Fact in nature cannot 
 disagree with fact in experience. Indeed, it seems absurd 
 to speak of any antagonism between sentiment and sci- 
 ence. The one is the action of sensibility ; the other, of 
 intellect. The two have no factors, or qualities, or terms 
 in common, through which a collision could be felt. We 
 had as well speak of antagonism between a passion for 
 music and the properties of the triangle, as of conflict be- 
 tween the sentiment of religion and any form of purely 
 scientific thought. 
 
 But the human mind must inquire into the basis of this 
 sentiment, frame some philosophy of its nature, define, 
 
198 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 more or less clearly, certain beliefs for its support, and 
 shape some intelligible system for its excitement and de- 
 liberate culture. This is the work of intellect; hence 
 springs up, of necessity, a science of religion, having its 
 realm of facts, real or assumed, and its regulative laws, as 
 much as the science of physics. On this scientific side, 
 religion shapes itself into terms of intellectual conception 
 and expression which can feel the touch of any opposing 
 elements in other science. 
 
 And here arises, through the limitations of human 
 knowledge and mistaken reasoning, the liability to col- 
 lision between an erroneous religious science and a true 
 secular science on the one hand, or between an erroneous 
 secular science and a true religious science on the other ; 
 or, finally, between the two when both are in error. Of 
 course, truth can never conflict with truth, real science 
 with other real science. But one could easily foresee, at 
 this point, that the intellectual armatures of the two sciences 
 would soon be heard fiercely clashing with each other. If 
 sacred science assumes as fact, either in the sphere of 
 spiritual being, history, or phenomena, anything which 
 the advancing researches of secular science shall clearly 
 negative, the latter must ere long serve a writ of error 
 against her decisions, and insist that the case shall go to 
 the supreme court of reason. Religion is substituting 
 superstition for faith. She is using fiction instead of 
 truth, or, at least, mingling the two, in the culture of her 
 peculiar sentiment. Her intellectual work is not science, 
 
THE EEAL ISSUE. 199 
 
 but dogmatism; putting opinion, confidently asserted, in 
 the place of established facts and principles. Happy will 
 it be for her if she get wisdom to accept the aid of secular 
 science in correcting her mistakes. If she stubbornly in- 
 sist that her false assumptions are vital to true religious 
 faith and worship, she will pay the penalty in seeing the 
 best minds deserting her standard, leaving in her ranks 
 only the ignorant and the unthinking. 
 
 On the other hand, if secular science leaves the field of 
 demonstration, and assumes as established unproved data 
 antagonistic to the fundamental facts of religion, it makes 
 a mistake of the same nature as the former, and perhaps 
 of a more mischievous tendency. It is false to its own 
 principles and methods. It puts hypothesis in the place of 
 demonstration. It calls assumptions science. It uses the 
 intellect, not to cultivate, but to crush some of the dear- 
 est sentiments and hopes of human hearts. It is matter 
 of grave doubt with many candid thinkers, whether it 
 does not strike at the very life of the moral virtues. 
 
 The collision thus made possible has become actual I 
 need not say how or where. You are all aware that the 
 battle thus far has raged mainly around questions re- 
 specting the time and manner of creation, the assertion 
 of subsequent miraculous interventions by the Creator, 
 and the degree rather than the reality of divine inspira- 
 tion. It must be confessed that many assumptions which 
 religion once thought it necessary to make on all these 
 questions have been exploded by the progress of scientific 
 
200 A KEASONABLE CHEISTIANITY. 
 
 knowledge. But few of us now believe that the world 
 was begun and finished within six times twenty-four 
 hours, or that woman was manipulated into the creature 
 she is out of a rib literally cut from the side of a man, or 
 that the sun and moon stopped their revolutions at the 
 word of a great captain, or that the prophet found marine 
 hotel accommodations for three days and nights in the 
 stomach of a fish. We discover truth no less clear and 
 divine, and far less embarrassed by suggestions of doubt, 
 in reading such marvelous stories as legend or poetry 
 than in reading them as history. 
 
 But the conflicts over these questions seem to me to be 
 mere skirmishes on the frontiers. They touch no vital 
 matter. Whether victory or defeat settles on the one side 
 or the other, nothing fundamental to the subject is deter- 
 mined. It is easy to see that religion can accept any cor- 
 rection of her mistakes which any possible discoveries of 
 science in this direction may make. The war is not 
 worth the powder. But secular science is now showing 
 some disposition to carry the fight into the citadel. " In 
 some of its leaders it seems inclined to make assumptions 
 which strike at the fundamental facts of all religion; 
 which, indeed, if true, would call upon us to eliminate the 
 religious sentiment from the human mind, because there 
 would be no fact in the universe that could stand as a 
 rational support of its existence, much less justify its de- 
 liberate culture. 
 
 Professor Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, Germany, in his 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 201 
 
 " History of Creation," after .setting in sharp contrast the 
 view of the universe which regards the order of nature as 
 the product of intelligent design, with that which looks 
 upon it as the outcome of mechanical forces inherent in 
 matter, holds this language : " We must decidedly adopt 
 that view of the universe which is called the mechanical 
 or causal. It may also be called the monistic or single 
 principle theory, as opposed to the two-fold principle or 
 dualistic theory, which is necessarily implied in the 
 teleological conception of the universe." [Vol. I, p. 20.] 
 Again : " In opposition to the dualistic or teleological con- 
 ception of nature, our theory considers organic, as well as 
 inorganic bodies to be the necessary products of natural 
 forces. It does not see in every individual species of ani- 
 mal and plant the embodied thought of a personal Creator, 
 but the expression for the time being of a mechanical 
 process of development of matter, the expression of a 
 necessarily active cause that is, of a mechanical cause 
 (causa efficiens}" [Vol. I, p. 34.] And again, on page 
 thirty-five : " Scientific materialism positively rejects 
 every belief in the miraculous, and every conception, in 
 whatever form it appears, of supernatural processes. 
 Accordingly, nowhere in the whole domain of human 
 knowledge does it recognize real metaphysics, but through- 
 out only physics." This is from a leader of scientific 
 thought who counts a numerous following. The surpass- 
 ing ability and real scientific value of his work will go 
 far in commending his unscientific assumptions and 
 speculations. 
 
202 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Professor Tyndall is a still more popular teacher in the 
 English-speaking world. With less baldness of statement, 
 but with more insinuating subtlety, in his famous Belfast 
 address of two years ago,* he seems to commit himself 
 freely to the same position. I refer to him here, not for 
 the purpose of adding another to the many answers that 
 have been attempted, but because he furnishes the best 
 introduction to the thought I desire to present. Allow 
 me to quote, in connection with the sentence which has 
 provoked most criticism, the foregoing paragraph, by 
 which he prepared the way for his grand climax. He is 
 speaking of " the origination " of life. He says : " We 
 break a magnet, and find two poles in each of its frag- 
 ments. We continue the process of breaking, but however 
 small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the 
 polarity of the whole. And, when we can break no 
 longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar 
 molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in 
 the case of life? Is there not a temptation to close to 
 some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that ' Nature 
 is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without 
 the meddling of the gods ; ' or with Bruno, when he de- 
 clares that ' Matter is not that mere empty capacity which 
 philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal 
 mother, who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own 
 womb? ' The questions here raised are inevitable. They 
 are approaching us with accelerated speed; and it is not a 
 * See heading for date at which this article was read. 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 203 
 
 matter of indifference whether they are introduced with 
 reverence or irreverence." Then follows the climax : 
 " Abandoning all disguise,, the confession I feel bound to 
 make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward 
 across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and 
 discern in matter * * * the promise and potency of 
 every form and quality of life." 
 
 Let us be reminded here again that Professor Tyndall 
 is speaking, not of time or manner, but of " the origina- 
 tion of life." He would have no meddling of God with 
 this ; he sees it springing spontaneously from the womb 
 of matter as universal mother. I think I do him no in- 
 justice by this inference ; for if he has not quite formally 
 indorsed this language, quoted from two famous authors, 
 as interpreting his own, taking the whole connection, it Is 
 difficult to see how he could have intended anything else. 
 The question at issue is thus taken out of the domain of 
 methods or order of procedure in creation, and centers 
 upon the nature of the force that creates or evolves. Is it 
 Intelligence, working by foresight, aim, purpose, or is it 
 some blind, unguided energy, pushing forth results, un- 
 conscious of what it is about ? This is the real issue; the 
 only one, as it seems to me, worth the trouble of trying 
 out. If this creating or evolving force is Intelligence, 
 working to a design, after the known laws of intelligence, 
 then religion has in nature all the basis for her worship, and 
 the culture of her proper sentiment, that she can ask. If 
 it is some mole-like push-principle merely, " going it blind," 
 
204 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 then it is difficult to see what excuse an intelligent being 
 can have for giving any scope to the religious faculty or 
 feeling. An "absentee God,", outside of creation, can 
 never command the reverence of the human mind. 
 
 I can fully accept the language of Professor Tyndall, if 
 he will allow me to put my meaning into his words. I 
 too discern in matter the promise and potency of every 
 form and quality of life. I call that promise and potency 
 GOD Will, Thought, Intelligent Design. I claim that he 
 is not absent from, but in every atom of these evolving 
 forces and phenomena the potency, the law, the prede- 
 termining agent of the result. But will any one pretend 
 that this was what Professor Tyndall meant to say he 
 discerned in matter? If so, why did he preface his asser- 
 tion with unctious quotations about the spontaneous 
 origination of life, dispensing with the meddling of God ? 
 
 I cordially accept the doctrine of evolution, although 
 not able to see the sufficiency of Mr. Darwin's account of 
 that doctrine. I do not believe it possible for any well- 
 balanced mind, trained in the rigid methods of science, to 
 trace the links of the growing chain of animal life, link 
 by link, from lower to higher, observing what is common 
 to both, and the slight peculiarity that ranks the latter 
 above the former in each case, without corning to believe 
 fully in some genetic connection running through the 
 whole chain. But does this exclude God, Will, Intelligence, 
 and Purpose from all connection with this evolving order? 
 Does it prove that He can not be both fountain and stream 
 
THE SEAL ISSUE. 205 
 
 in these ever onward-flowing forces? Is it more rational 
 and scientific to say that " matter is the universal mother 
 that brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb? " 
 Is there no Father in the case of these wonderful births of 
 nature ? Is Parthenogenesis, with nothing higher than 
 virgin atoms, the scientifically demonstrated origin of this 
 earth and all its multiform life? As the scientist looks 
 beyond the boundary of the experimental evidence, does 
 he really discern in matter, apart from God, or does he 
 only guess, the potency of every form and quality of life? 
 If the latter, he turns false to the ruling principle of his 
 own method, which demands for such positively asserted 
 conclusions, not guesses or opinion, but demonstration. 
 We must be pardoned for not seeing the validity of such 
 conclusions. 
 
 The question recurs to the nature of the force at work 
 in this process of evolution. Is it Intelligence, or is it the 
 blind push-principle ? 
 
 It is necessary here, in order to reach an answer in any 
 degree satisfactory, to first rid the mind of some, not only 
 inadequate, but very misleading conceptions of God, and 
 of his mode of working or self -manifestation. These are 
 nearly universal in popular thought, and by no means 
 uncommon among the educated. Let no one imagine 
 that the assumption that a personal God is this creative 
 force involves the idea of "broken efforts" or separate acts 
 of creation, going by "fits and starts," in the origination 
 of new forms of life. It involves the very opposite con- 
 
206 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 elusion. If God creates, we must suppose it is as much a 
 certainty, or, if you please, necessity, when the divine 
 action reaches certain conditions of evolving life, that a 
 new and higher species should be generated, as it is that 
 any seed, in the most favorable conditions, should ger- 
 minate. The result comes forth naturally from the con- 
 tinuous action of antecedent forces the linked connection 
 of cause and effect. If it is God who is evolving this 
 creative progress, there can be no caprice. The infinite 
 Intelligence and Wisdom, in any given case, can choose 
 but one course the best ; can do but one thing the 
 wisest. The idea of his taking either of several courses 
 is ruled out. One, among all the possibilities in the Cre- 
 ator's view, must be the wisest and best. Infinite knowl- 
 edge and integrity close the divine action to that course. 
 With the Absolute Mind we must suppose that choice and 
 purpose are one; that omniscience determines what the 
 action shall be, and that while the creative force moves 
 in infinite freedom, it as certainly moves in one fixed line 
 to one predetermined result, in every case, as if impelled 
 by an inexorable fate or necessity. 
 
 We derive the same conclusion from the divine immu- 
 tability. God's volition can not be jerky and spasmodic. 
 It can not originate and initiate new lines of force and 
 being to-day that were not virtually in the energies at 
 work yesterday. We conceive of the grand forces of na- 
 ture as the expression of that volition. The unswerving 
 uniformity of their action, which we name law, is at once 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 207 
 
 the manifestation and proof of the immutability of God. 
 The laws of nature are uniform because the divine will, 
 whose mode of action they are, is immutable. We claim 
 no intimacy with the hidden methods of the Absolute. 
 We do not pretend ability to trace the passage of the 
 infinite energy forth into specific act. But surely it can 
 not be exceeding the warrant of reason to assume that the 
 force,-; which go forth under an Infinite purpose ^vill be 
 steady and reliable in their action. 
 
 In saying this, we have not forgotten Neibuhr's pithy 
 mot, " I have no use for the God of the metaphysicians." 
 Our thought is in danger of getting lost in the fathomless 
 abyss. We do not want a Deity who is frozen or par- 
 alyzed by his own infiniteness. He must be capable of 
 specific acts, and of all the infinite variety we see in na- 
 ture. Out of the Infinite oomes forth the finite. But 
 what we would have especially considered here is, that we 
 are under the necessity of shaping our ideas of what is in 
 the Infinite from what we see in the finite, including, of 
 course, the phenomena of our own consciousness, as well 
 as those of the outer world. We admit the inadequacy of 
 those ideas; the finite can not comprehend the Infinite; 
 yet we can not refuse a place to the conceptions that force 
 themselves upon the thinking mind as necessarily involved 
 in the infinity of God. Though inadequate, they need not 
 therefore be erroneous. Wo shall find the glory of the 
 Creator, as manifested in his works, rising in sublimity, 
 just in proportion as the mind rises in the conception of 
 
208 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that comprehensive unity which binds together all specific 
 acts and facts, in both their origin and their issue, un- 
 der immutable law. We say there is will in the creative 
 force, yet when this term is used of the Infinite, we are 
 not to think of his action as a series of volitions separate, 
 " broken " acts but rather as a force acting from center 
 to circumference of the universe, and flowing on forever 
 and ever in the continuity of one invariable stream of 
 energy. It is (me volition. There is not only unity in 
 the power that acts, but unity in the action. All specific 
 effects are comprehended in this unity. 
 
 Perhaps this abstract and somewhat difficult conception 
 may become clearer by reference to another divine attri- 
 bute, more familiar to the contemplation of the common 
 mind omniscience. We think of the divine Will as of 
 the divine Intelligence. It would be an absurdity to con- 
 ceive of the knowledge belonging to that intelligence as 
 consisting of separate facts or items gathered into the 
 infinite Mind at different times and by separate acts of 
 cognition. Such an idea would imply limits of knowledge. 
 There would not be omniscience. Such a being would not 
 be God. Our finite thought doubtless falls short of grasp- 
 ing the subject in its fullness; it need not for this reason 
 be false as far as it goes. The conclusions which it finds 
 itself compelled by the laws of its own action to rest in, 
 after the utmost stretch of its powers, have the warrant 
 of the inevitable for their validity. And after such effort 
 we find ourselves compelled to think of all particulars in 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 209 
 
 the divine knowledge, from the greatest fact to the least, 
 from the world or the universe to the minutest atom, as 
 included in the one act of intelligence which was, and is, 
 and is to be forevermore ; which sees all and each at once, 
 and from eternity to eternity. So of the infinite volition. 
 We may, perhaps, find further helpful illustration in 
 our ideas of time and space. We gain our conceptions of 
 these from limited parts of them from finite duration 
 and extension. Yet the mind is compelled by the laws of 
 its own action to think of both as infinite. It sees that 
 they must be without limits. At least it can not conceive 
 the contrary as true. All finite parts of duration, from 
 the winking of an eye to the rise and fall of a kingdom, 
 or the aeons of a world's evolution, are included in the 
 unity of infinite time. All limited parts of space, from 
 that filled by a mote or " ultimate monad," to that filled 
 by a world or measured by solar systems, are included in 
 the unity of unlimited space. The infinite must finite 
 itself, or come within metes and bounds, before its mani- 
 festation can come within our finite comprehension. It 
 does not therefore follow that there is no infinite. God must 
 finite himself in particular acts in order to manifest himself 
 to finite beings. And so far as we can be sure that we are 
 looking upon reality, and have made no mistake in our 
 apprehension of his Word or his works, we have a right to 
 the conviction that we see him as he is through these 
 manifestations. He can not mask himself in the finite 
 with the design to deceive. On the other hand, we have 
 
210 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 a right to take it for granted that our interpretation of 
 either his Word or his works has gone wrong whenever 
 it involves a conception that necessarily contradicts the 
 immutability or infinity of his being. 
 
 When we claim, therefore, that a personal God is the 
 primal force in the creative evolution going on around 
 us, and of which we are a part, we do not imply that it 
 must go forward by broken, separate, unconnected acts in 
 the origination of new forms, either of matter or of life; 
 we rather say that such acts in the case are impossible. 
 Creation goes on in the inexorable uniformity of law be- 
 cause it is God who creates. The never varying uniformity 
 of nature's grand forces is the direct sublime expression 
 of his immutability the warrant and invitation for the 
 highest trust of his intelligent creatures. 
 
 Once having reached this position, it becomes readily 
 apparent that the real question at issue between science 
 and religion is, not whether God creates by evolution and 
 according to fixed law, or in some other manner the real 
 issue is whether it is God who creates ; and that at last 
 inevitably resolves itself into the question ivheiher there 
 is any God to create. It is only when science takes the 
 negative on this question, either openly or by implication, 
 that religion has anything to dread from its activity and 
 influence. 
 
 Religion claims, and must claim, that there is a God, 
 and that he creates. Her reverence, her worship, her very 
 existence, have no basis save in the evidence for that fact. 
 
THE KEAL ISSUE. 211 
 
 They would vanish from the world with the general fail- 
 ure of that conviction. Heaven would be vacant ; earth 
 would be a sepulchre ; man would be the saddest of or- 
 phans. 
 
 Religion must insist, also, on attributes in her God that 
 answer to the personality of man. She can not worship 
 a laio of nature. She can not hold mutual communion 
 with an unconscious force. She can not very warmly 
 love " a stream of tendency." If she attenuate her con- 
 ception of God into Matthew Arnold's " Power above our- 
 selves that makes for righteousness," she will be in great 
 danger of falling asleep in her devotions. Such phrases, 
 designating the divine Personality, may well enough be 
 allowed to such minds as Arnold's, at once philosophic 
 and devoutly earnest, and struggling to meet the difficul- 
 ties of other perplexed minds, or to rid the popular ideas 
 concerning God of crude absurdities ; but they are fatally 
 abused when they are permitted to eliminate from our 
 conception and sense of the Divine the vivid faith and 
 feeling that there is some reality in the ONE whom we 
 trust and adore, that answers perfectly to the trust and 
 want of man, thought to thought, heart to heart, love to 
 love. 
 
 None of us are unaware of the difficulties that gather 
 around the conception of a personal God. Doubtless we 
 have all shared, more or less, in the struggles which have 
 led some of the acutest minds of this age, both among 
 scientists and churchmen, to declare God the Unknowable 
 
212 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 They strain the eye along the visible lines of finite mani- 
 festation toward the Infinite, and say it seems to us as 
 though there must be some reality there nay, kindly 
 permit us to believe there is ; but they affirm, neverthe- 
 less, that whatever it may be, it is forever unapproachable 
 to our thought ; it is lost to us in the limitless depths. 
 We can, in reason, neither affirm nor deny anything posi- 
 tive of that existence in which we believe if we believe. 
 Against these powerful negations I must insist that 
 religion can vindicate her claim that God is the most 
 clearly and intensely knowable fact in the universe ; that 
 she can establish this claim on a firm, rational, and scien- 
 tific basis. Faith in the existence of a personal God is 
 nearly universal among the races of mankind. Save in 
 quite explainable exceptions, it rises to a clearer conviction 
 as culture exalts the powers of the mind. There must be 
 reasons for this fact. I must intist that those reasons can 
 be clearly seen and intelligibly stated. The candid mind 
 will find them valid for this faith. A personal God is 
 knowable through the phenomena of his manifestation in 
 nature and in the soul of man, just as certainly as any 
 supersensible fact, gravitation, for example, or electricity, 
 or the intelligent mind of the friend with whom you con- 
 verse face to face, is knowable through the phenomena 
 of its manifestation. Not all that he is (for that would 
 imply infinite capacity in us), yet that he is, and as far 
 as his manifestation of himself to us goes, in the essential 
 attributes of his being, what ke is, find as firm a basis of 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 213 
 
 conviction in the conscious cognizance of the human 
 mind as any fundamental principle of physical science. 
 The evidence in the case will be embarrassed, if at all, by 
 its simplicity. As with all primal truths, the difficulty is 
 not that the proof is too far, but that it is too near. Few 
 of us ever doubt the reality of existences, both material 
 and spiritual, outside of ourselves. If another, however, 
 sees fit to demand of you the proof, you may find it far 
 from easy to demonstrate that which it is impossible for 
 you to doubt. Yet, unless you have encountered one of 
 those perversely original minds that doggedly persist in 
 denying "first truths," you may shape an argument that 
 will carry conviction. 
 
 I shall not rely, in this case, upon the argument from 
 final causes. This is as old as Socrates, and was never 
 more tersely or clearly stated than in his saying, " No 
 work of skill makes itself." * In the hands of Paley, it 
 greatly stimulated inquiry, and seemed to give a powerful 
 check to the popular religious skepticism of a century ago. 
 It has a value no doubt. I would not throw it aside. 
 But standing alone, it must be confessed inadequate. 
 
 Nor shall I dwell on the more modern argument, urged 
 by some vigorous thinkers, that intuition tells us that 
 all force must originate in and emanate from Will. Inert 
 matter, they say, can not start new lines of activity. We 
 are compelled to think of all forces which are not abso- 
 lutely eternal as springing from some voluntary agent. 
 
 * Uberweg's History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 280. 
 
214 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I confess that my own mind can not resist this conclusion. 
 And I think that with many who are accustomed to 
 analyze their own mental activities closely, it is an argu- 
 ment that will carry great weight.* But in seeking' a 
 
 * The following remarks on the point here suggested were made during 
 the discussion which followed the reading of this essay, by Professor 
 Joseph Le Conte, of the University of California, and made so much 
 impression at the time that I have felt that I would be doing the 
 public a service in procuring them for print : 
 
 "I think a little reflection will convince that the idea of causation or 
 force is not derived from without by observation, but wholly from within 
 through consciousness. The idea of external forces is a projection of con- 
 scious internal states into external nature. We can not conceive of 
 effects without causative force, because we are intensely conscious of 
 being ourselves, through our wills, an active cause of external phenomena. 
 If we were merely passive intelligent observers, and not causers, of 
 changes in the external world, these phenomena would seem to us only 
 to shift, and change, and succeed each other, without cause. We might 
 note the order and determine the laws of sequence, but would never 
 imagine any causal nexus between them. In the minds of such passive 
 observers, but not doers, would be completely realized the only consis- 
 tent material philosophy a philosophy in which, like Comte's, cause 
 and force have no place. But the certainty of a causative force within 
 the certainty that we, through our wills, and by the conscious exertion of 
 a force, do determine effects in the external world, compels the mind 
 to attribute all effects to causative forces having their origin in will; 
 and therefore when the effects are not caused by ourselves, we necessa- 
 rily attribute them to forces external to ourselves. At first that is, in 
 primitive races and in early childhood the external forces take the form 
 of & personal will like our own, resident in each object, and determining 
 its phenomena Fetichism. Afterwards, we gradually learn to recog- 
 nize the wide difference between the conscious internal and external 
 forces. Then we naturally conceive of phenomena as caused by uncon- 
 scious resident forces, under the control of several (Polytheism), or of 
 one (Monotheism) personal will. Thus a human philosophy of nature 
 necessarily consists of two antithetic elements, or is a product of two 
 factors; the one derived from without, the other contributed from within; 
 the one objective, the other subjective. In the language of philosophy, 
 these two are phenomena and cause; in the language of science, matter 
 and force. In the language of psychology, they-are matter and spirit ; 
 in the language of religion, nature and God. The pure idealist would 
 empty existence of the former, the pure materialist of the latter ; but a 
 rational philosophy requires both. Again, uncultured man projects his 
 own personal conscious will into every object of nature; the modern 
 materialist, on the contrary, injects external material forces into this 
 realm of consciousness ; but a rational philosophy requires the complete 
 distinction of these two." 
 
THE KEJLL ISSUE. 215 
 
 less abstract evidence, I have traced out a line of proof 
 which I believe to be not less conclusive, and one that 
 will carry conviction to a greater number of minds. 
 
 Let us start from that universal intuition which lies at 
 the basis of all valid reasoning; namely, that cause and 
 effect must answer reciprocally to each other. There 
 must be something in every cause adequate to account 
 for every effect it produces. To question this principle is to 
 suspend all reasoning until it shall bo put beyond doubt. 
 In the unmeasured Cause, therefore, from which (if we 
 may not yet say from whom) this vast series of effects, 
 which we call creation or the universe, springs, must 
 dwell the adequate explanation of every fact and phenom- 
 enon included in the whole. Among these facts and 
 phenomena we are conscious of thought, affection, will 
 in short, of spiritual personality. These are the highest 
 effects in kind of all that come within our cognizance. 
 What follows ? Must there not be in the original Cause 
 that which answers to these grandest effects thought, 
 affection, will, spiritual personality ? The human mind 
 can not rationally resist this demonstration. 
 
 It may be objected that this makes our faith in a per- 
 sonal God rest on an inference. What matters ? The 
 inference is but one step from the intuition of the princi- 
 ple which binds together cause and effect. The step is as 
 inevitable as any corollary from a theorem in geometry. 
 Deny its validity, and all reasoning becomes but dream- 
 ing, and every grandest structure it builds, but " the base- 
 less fabric of a vision." 
 
216 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 It seems to me that this short, easy, and certain step of 
 reasoning from a universal intuition, accounts for the 
 universal belief in a God among the races of mankind. 
 Few may be able to analyze their own mental conscious^ 
 ness back to the sources of this conviction ; but when it is 
 done, here will be found its germ. And however the evi- 
 dence may become obscured and the reason confused for a 
 time, the force of this ever-present principle is sure to draw 
 the human mind back again into this faith. Theodore 
 Parker insisted that the being of God is an intuition or 
 direct consciousness of the soul. Emerson is reported to 
 have asked him, " But what are we poor mortals to do 
 who have not this intuition or direct consciousness ? " 
 confessing that it was not clear to him. Multitudes share 
 in the doubt of Emerson, but a 'valid demonstration may 
 carry weight when the consciousness of God is not clear. 
 If, upon reflection, they find that in denying a personal 
 Creator they would be virtually contradicting one of 
 their most familiar intuitions, they may accept from rea- 
 son a faith which they were not prepared to accept from 
 any conscious experience or reading of interior phenomena. 
 
 If it be objected, again, that the inference from our 
 personal attributes, as creatures, is good only for the per- 
 sonality, and not for the infinitude, of the Creator not 
 therefore for a God it suffices to answer, that, a personal 
 Creator granted, the human mind will never find itself 
 able to stop short of clothing him with the attribute 
 of infinity. The leap of thought from the finite to the 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 217 
 
 infinite is just as inevitable in the sphere of mental, moral, 
 and spiritual existence as in the conception of time and 
 space. 
 
 But the claim is urged that there may be in matter 
 alone some hidden quality or force sufficient, if we could 
 but trace its evolution, to account for all the higher phe- 
 nomena of our personal being, thought, moral sentiment, 
 and volition. This is a may-be ; no science has yet been 
 able to take one plausible step toward transmuting it into 
 a must-be or is. To the mass of mankind it is a supposi- 
 tion that seems to contradict some of the primal facts of 
 their consciousness. But let us admit, for the moment, 
 that there is in matter some inherent power which 
 evolves at last into all the mental and spiritual phenomena 
 of human consciousness ; we would then ask how far this 
 evolution may go ? Who can say that its highest product 
 is revealed in the consciousness with which we are familiar? 
 If this power be inherent in matter, and if matter be self- 
 existent, as we must in that case suppose, it has already 
 had an eternity in which to evolve its possibilities. Count- 
 less ages ago it must have done its best. Who could say 
 that it had not developed a personal consciousness as uni- 
 versal as matter itself ? Who could say that this won- 
 derful restless power hi matter had not already brought 
 the entire physical universe into an exquisite organism, 
 at its summit a brain and sensorium, at its center a heart, 
 and throughout its infinite members, nerves of action and 
 feeling, vibrating with unimaginable sensitiveness to the 
 
218 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 melody or the discord of the spheres in short, an infinite 
 Personality, 
 
 "Whose body nature is, and Ood the soul." 
 
 And why may not a central will find this universal body 
 of matter at least as pliant to its purposes as the human 
 body is to its controlling will ? So the physicist, who 
 finds the genesis of all life and intelligence in material 
 atoms, can not be sure, after all, that he has eliminated 
 God from the universe. 
 
 This is but an argumentum ad hominem. It is doubt- 
 less fanciful to the verge of trifling ; yet not one whit 
 more so, it seems to me, than the philosophy which sees in 
 all effects nothing higher than a material cause. The high- 
 est intuitions of the human reason, awakened and grow- 
 ing clearer by all the facts that feed the growth of intel- 
 lect, rest in a God whose qualities and attributes must 
 answer to the highest conscious facts of man's own per- 
 sonality, and thus give religion the firmest ground and 
 justification for her worship, trust, and personal love. 
 Intellect and heart, reason and faith, science and religion, 
 unite their testimony, and bending the knee in reverent 
 worship together, blend their voices in sublime ascription 
 of honor, and wisdom, and power, and might, to HIM 
 Creator and Father who "stretcheth forth the heavens, 
 and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the 
 spirit of man within him." 
 
 I must here enter my protest against that mistaken 
 admission (becoming common, I am sorry to see, among 
 
THE HEAL ISSUE. 219 
 
 theologians), that the faculties of the mind that occupy 
 themselves with the matters of secular science can not 
 grasp the truths of religion ; that the latter belong to* a 
 realm of moral feeling and insight too lofty for the tele- 
 scope of intellect to scan ; that their firmest evidence is 
 given only in an experience which presupposes faith. 
 This looks very much like pleading the baby act. It has 
 an air of wishing to raise a prejudice in favor of our own 
 side before the debate begins. 
 
 Let us not lose sight of the distinction between senti- 
 ment and science. Sentiment feels ; science sees and de- 
 fines. The feeling of sentiment is variable ; it comes and 
 goes. The definition of science, once made clear to the 
 mental eye, is steady and permanent. Feeling is often 
 the phantom-born illusion of our own imagination. Sci- 
 ence is sure of the reality of what it sees. But a senti- 
 ment is sometimes observed to be universal, or nearly so. 
 This fact forbids the idea of its being mere illusion. It is 
 hardly reason to suppose that men of all races, in every 
 variety of circumstances, and through all ages of time, 
 are deceived by the same phantom. In this case, feeling 
 is undoubtedly reliable evidence of some substantial reality 
 as its cause. And what we claim here is this such cause 
 will never fail to come forth in some forms of manifesta- 
 tion that will render it capable of more or less distinct 
 intellectual apprehension and definition. Real causes can 
 be discriminated from illusion. Yet feeling alone can 
 never make this discrimination, nor bring its cause into 
 
220 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the domain of science. It must summon the aid of intel- 
 lect to see and define its reality. A person takes into his 
 hands the opposite poles of an electric battery ; he feels 
 electricity. If every one who does the same has the same 
 sensations, he becomes sure there must be some external 
 reality which awakens this feeling. Yet feeling tells him 
 little or nothing of the nature of that force. Intellect 
 must take it in hand, construct apparatus, experiment on 
 the conditions under which it appears, mark its flash, and 
 measure the power of its stroke, and write out the laws 
 of its action. Then he has not a mere sensation, but a 
 science of electricity. One who has never felt the sensa- 
 tion may, by diligent observation and study, become 
 master of the science. He may come to know much more 
 of this force scientifically, through its other manifestations, 
 than the one whose nerves have been shaken by it even 
 in intensest degree. 
 
 Now, the sentiment of religion is nearly universal. We 
 have a right to conclude from this fact that it has its 
 source in some substantial objective reality. But this 
 sentiment alone can not give us a science of religious 
 truths. In this case, again, I claim that there are mani- 
 festations of all realities underlying the essential doctrines 
 of religion, aside from any feeling or experience coming 
 only through faith, which place them within the grasp of 
 the scientific intellect. I must insist that the purely 
 intellectual basis of religion is as reliable as that of any 
 natural science, and that it presents to the scientific eye 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 221 
 
 for study and definition, a body of fact and law equally 
 sharp and clear in outline. Shall . we turn from this firm 
 ground, and give out that if our opponents only would 
 follow us into the realm of feeling or religious experience, 
 and consent to bring other faculties into play, we could 
 overwhelm them with evidence ? Shall we thus abandon 
 the fair, open field of battle, and retire behind our breast- 
 works ? This would be a half confession of defeat. It 
 confounds the distinction between sentiment and science, 
 and surrounds the whole discussion with nebulous vague- 
 ness. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the experience of religion, the feeling of 
 her grand truths that comes only through faith, is essen- 
 tial to the realization of her practical benefits. Electricity 
 will not heal our infirmities unless we have faith to take 
 it feelingly into the system. But this is no reason for 
 telling the skeptic that there is no sufficient proof for the 
 reality of religious truths until he has the experience of 
 faith. One need not doubt that there is such a force as 
 electricity until he has been struck by lightning. 
 
 If we are to have a sacred science or theology, it must 
 abide by the methods and submit to the tests by which 
 all other science stands or falls. We must not ask for it 
 "poetic license," or the indulgence ever accorded to senti- 
 ment. On the field of reform, and in all practical appli- 
 cation of religious truths for the improvement of character 
 and life, we may use the weapons of sentiment. On the 
 field of science, we must keep to the weapons of science. 
 
222 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 A word further respecting the bearing of this discus- 
 sion on the questions of miracles and prayer. It seems 
 to me that a far clearer light would rest upon these ques- 
 tions, if we should come to them with some proper con- 
 ception of the fact that the action of the infinite Personality 
 must be manifested to us through finite agents or media. 
 Let us call this the doctrine of mediate manifestation. 
 If this one principle had been duly considered, it would 
 have saved an immense amount of heated and well-nigh 
 meaningless controversy. The disputants have started 
 from a premise of fiction and impossibility. There has 
 been a vague, half-conscious assumption that the mani- 
 festation of the Infinite to us can be infinite. This, of 
 course, is an absurdity. It would imply infinite powers 
 in us to receive the manifestation. By our limitations, 
 God must come into terms of the finite in order to reveal 
 himself to us, or in any way touch our life. We -can not 
 grasp the entirety of his being. "We know in part." 
 Phenomena suggest ; intuition catches the suggestion and 
 interprets the power revealed. We can not conceive that 
 the Infinite should come forth in self -manifestation save 
 in and through some finite medium. 
 
 It will be readily seen how this principle applies to 
 miracles. The immediate agent need not be conceived as 
 the Infinite Power. It may be of the least possible conse- 
 quence to the science of religion, or, indeed, to its practical 
 obligations, whether we can or can not establish histori- 
 cally the intervention of God with the forces of nature in 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 223 
 
 this or that particular event. The proofs of his being 
 and care and sovereign rule are so infinitely grander in 
 nature and in the soul of man, that they dwarf into insignifi- 
 cance any possible evidence from the exceptional display 
 of the divine power in miracles. The longer I reflect, the 
 stronger becomes the conviction in me that the ultimate 
 conclusion of Christian thought will be, that the direct 
 and specific action of the divine will and power is not, and 
 never has been, manifested in any phenomena that im- 
 plies supernatural interference, or the intrusion of a super- 
 human purpose into the order of nature. Such phenomena 
 will be referred at once to finite purpose and agency. 
 And as the Scriptures suggest the possibility of evil mira- 
 cles, the character of the agent will be estimated by the 
 quality and apparent aim of the act, just as we estimate 
 the character of visible actors. God will be seen acting 
 directly only in the unvarying movements of nature and 
 spirit that transcend immeasurably the possibilities of all 
 finite powers. But when secular science assumes to pro- 
 nounce a miracle either impossible or incredible, because 
 the forces of nature act with inflexible uniformity, we 
 must ask its proofs. Admit that the uniformity of physi- 
 cal laws is as relentless as fate ; say that they are the 
 expression of infinite immutability, and that God would 
 shake our confidence in that attribute if any of the primal 
 forces of nature should be observed to waver, as by arbi- 
 trary diversion, one hairbreadth from the lines of action 
 predetermined under the sequence of cause and effect is 
 
224 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 a miracle therefore impossible or incredible ? To prove 
 this, you must not only show that God will not or can not 
 work a miracle, but also that there is no created finite 
 intelligence serving his will in the universe that can and 
 will. Has science done this ? Has she swept the whole 
 realm of spiritual existence with her telescope, and dem- 
 onstrated that there is no agent within all its bounds 
 competent for the supposed effect ? To deny any intelli- 
 gent existence separate from the body, is, of course, to cut 
 the knot ; but to admit such existence, and then deny the 
 possibility of a miracle, seems to be not only unscientific, 
 but irrational. The boy snaps a pebble into the air. 
 Nature's forces, in their immutable uniformity, would not, 
 could not, have done this in the particular case. Is the 
 order of nature violated, her uniformity broken, by this 
 act ? No ; a free personal will or agent takes hold of her 
 forces, and uses them for his purpose. Is reason shocked 
 at the supposition of such agents in a higher world, or of 
 their power to produce in this effects that bear the stamp 
 of the miraculous ? 
 
 If it be said that a miracle wrought through a subor- 
 dinate finite agent could be no proof of the existence or 
 care of God, I would refer the objector to the old maxim, 
 " Qui facit per alium, facit per se," (whoever acts 
 through his agent, acts himself.) We shall easily con- 
 clude that every good thing done in this world " com- 
 eth down from the Father of lights, with whom is no 
 variableness nor shadow of turning." I care not to 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 225 
 
 insist that a miracle has actually been wrought either 
 here or there. I would strenuously deny that the evi- 
 dences or interests of religion are vitally involved in our 
 ability to prove any such fact. The main question, 
 whether God actually upholds and rules this world in the 
 interest of truth and righteousness, must be appealed, in 
 any case, to a higher court. Yet when the denial of 
 miracles is set up in the name of natural law, it seems 
 worth while to insist, in the interest of accurate thinking, 
 that science shall be scientific. 
 
 What has been said of miracles applies, with equal 
 pertinency, to prayer. The Scriptures uniformly and 
 consistently teach that God answers prayer through the 
 ministration of finite spiritual agents. This takes away 
 all need of the inference that the infinite Will must turn 
 aside from his fixed and immutable course to bring answer. 
 You breathe the wish for water to quench your thirst. 
 Your child, hearing you, runs to bring the brimming gob- 
 let. Your prayer is answered. . The order of nature has 
 received no shock. Is reason revolted at the suggestion 
 of spiritual agents, able and ready to run to the aid of 
 your want ? Deny the suggested fact, and you tread 
 close upon the denial of a spiritual immortality. Admit 
 the fact, and neither the demonstrations of science nor 
 the deductions of reason will support the inference that it 
 is vain to expect answers to prayer. As miracles are 
 possible through the mediate manifestations of divine 
 power, so answers to prayer through 'mediatorial minis- 
 tration. 
 
226 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I do not believe that the fixed order of nature will ever 
 be disturbed, in the slightest degree, to answer prayer ; 
 yet I make no doubt either of its benefits or of its answers 
 from objective sources. Prayer is the rational means to 
 certain desirable ends, as much as plowing and sowing. 
 "Sow, and ye shall reap;" "Ask, and ye shall receive." 
 These are kindred promises, though belonging to different 
 spheres. Work takes hold of material forces ; prayer 
 takes hold of spiritual forces. Labor for material bless- 
 ings ; pray for spiritual ; recognize the goodness of God 
 in both this is the will of God, as read in the order of 
 nature. This will be the law of a scientifically instructed 
 piety, which holds that will in deepest reverence. Beg- 
 ging heaven for material gifts that can come only through 
 exceptional means becomes revolting to noble minds, for 
 deeper reasons than the impossibility of answers through 
 the agency moved by the prayer ; but the immediate con- 
 tact of the Infinite with the finite mind is a scientific 
 truth, if there is a God, and I can not believe that the 
 noblest will ever cease to need and profit by that highest 
 form of prayer, the devout contemplation which opens 
 the yearning capacities of the human soul to the conscious 
 incoming and indwelling of the Infinite Life and Love. 
 
 To sum up this discussion, then, the real issue between 
 sacred science and secular science is, not whether God 
 created in this or that particular time or manner, nor 
 whether his care intervened miraculously for human needs 
 in this or that particular event, nor whether he inspired a 
 
THE REAL ISSUE. 227 
 
 few men to infallible utterances ; but the issue is, whether 
 God created, cared for, or inspired at all ; and that is 
 equivalent to the issue whether there is or is not a God. 
 
Physical Man the Final Term of 
 Material Evolution. 
 
 A lecture delivered in the Independent Church, Oakland, Sunday 
 evening, February 24th, 1878. 
 
 Eight or nine years ago, after considerable reading and 
 study upon the facts in the case, I felt myself driven to 
 accept the doctrine of evolution. Not satisfied that the 
 explanation proposed by Darwin aad others had grasped 
 all the forces that have been active in producing the vastly 
 varied phenomena of life on our globe, I nevertheless found 
 it impossible to doubt longer that the word evolution fitly 
 expresses the law under which those forces have acted 
 that species are genetically derived, not separately created. 
 The facts amount to scientific demonstration. But it 
 seems desirable to state here one feature of the law of 
 evolution, which, if not observed, leaves the way open to 
 many absurd misunderstandings. The popular idea is 
 that evolution implies continuous and invariable progress ; 
 that its course is ever forward and upward ; that every 
 new species springing from any well-developed form of 
 life is higher than the parent form. This is by no means 
 the case. The new species is differentiated (to use the 
 current word of science) from its progenitor, but is not 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 229 
 
 always higher. Sometimes there is retrogression instead 
 of progression. The new form is lower than that from 
 which it sprung. Sometimes it is difficult to say whether 
 it is lower or higher ; we are only sure that it is different. 
 In some instances, from one original stock have sprung 
 several branches, some higher, others lower than the 
 original; each differing from all the others as greatly as, 
 or even more than, it differs from the common parent. 
 Each proves to be a new species which perpetuates its 
 kind. The general law here indicated is thus formulated 
 by Professor Joseph LeConte : " The first introduced of 
 any class or order were not typical representatives of that 
 class or order, but connecting links with other classes or 
 orders ; the complete separation of the two or more classes 
 or orders represented being the result of subsequent evo- 
 lution."* Thus that strange flying creature called the 
 Archseopteryx, with the long, pointed tail of the reptile, 
 edged with flat, radiating feathers, like the tail of a bird, 
 with feathered arms or fore-legs like wings, yet terminat- 
 ing in claws, like the fore-legs of the reptile, seems to have 
 been one of these connecting or comprehensive types. In 
 one direction possibly sprung some reptilian form, a lower 
 or degenerate offspring of the flying parent ; in the other, 
 almost certainly rose the perfect bird, nobler than its pro- 
 genitor, 
 
 "To sweep the heavens on easy wing." 
 
 So, again, the mud-fishes (dipneusta), that make a nest 
 
 * " Elements of Geology," p. 332. See, also, Spencer's " Sociology," 
 Vol. I, p. 106. 
 
230 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of leaves for themselves in the dry mud during summer, 
 and breathe through lungs, then in the winter take to the 
 water of marshes and rivers, and breathe through gills 
 like fishes, are thought to have branched one way into a 
 low form of exclusively gill-breathing water animal, and 
 another way into an exclusively lung-breathing amphibian. 
 The ascidian and amphioxus are also notable transitional 
 forms. The whole course of evolution, indeed, is marked 
 by examples of such generalized or connecting types. 
 They seem not to have been very numerous comparatively, 
 nor, as a rule, to have lasted very long. They come forth 
 in the economy of nature, enrich the earth with new va- 
 rieties of life, and then disappear, or survive in only a few 
 obscure representatives. Hence, evolution does not affirm, 
 as is popularly supposed, that man is descended directly 
 from the highest of the simian tribes, the gorilla, chim- 
 panzee, orang, or gibbon, but would rather suggest some 
 higher intermediate form, of which the ape is a degenerate, 
 and man an improved branch. That no remains of this 
 intermediate being have been found, weighs little against 
 this suggestion. According to the general law, we should 
 expect them to be but few ; and too small a section of 
 the earth has been thoroughly explored to justify the con- 
 clusion that they never will be discovered. To a wider 
 search, the continents may any day yield up the proofs 
 that vindicate the regularity and uniformity of the meth- 
 ods of nature. 
 
 But here man is. Some power or process has placed 
 
THE FINAL TEEM OF EVOLUTION. 231 
 
 this supreme fact of creation before us for our study, to 
 make out of him what we can. That in physical struct- 
 ure he is closely allied to the animal races, no one will 
 dispute. It is plain, also, that he stands at the head of 
 the animal kingdom. Physically, he is the most complex 
 and highly organized being we know. Nature, at one 
 with sacred scripture, crowns him king, and gives him 
 dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and 
 over every living thing that creepeth on the earth. He 
 comes forth as the last-born species in the sub-kingdom 
 of vertebrates. Then, as we trace a genetic relationship 
 through the various grades of life, from man down to the 
 lowest, the question rises spontaneously in the mind, is he 
 the last and highest to be expected ? Is he the final term 
 of nature's physical progress ? Does the upward course of 
 the material forces of evolution end in him ? Or may we 
 expect them to differentiate still further, and produce 
 some higher species, that will stand in a relation to him 
 like that which he holds to the species next below him- 
 self ? This question possesses more than a scientific inter- 
 est. Its bearing on the moral and religious view of man 
 and his destiny makes a conclusive answer, if one may be 
 given, peculiarly desirable. 
 
 When I first came to the conclusion that the evidences 
 of evolution must compel the assent of thinking men, 
 sooner or later, this question at once confronted me. Along 
 with it came the thought that in the brain (the size and 
 quality of which peculiarly characterize the human spe- 
 
232 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cies), and in its functions and its relations to the whole 
 body, ought, if anywhere, to be found the answer. In a 
 conversation on the subject with the late Dr. Durant, 
 President of our University, he suggested that even the 
 position of the human body, perfectly erect as it should 
 be, might furnish, when compared with the position of 
 the lower animals, a hint of completeness. Professor 
 Joseph LeConte also informed me that Agassiz had noticed 
 the fact of the gradual turning of the face from the back 
 of the head in the lowest vertebrates, over to the front in 
 the highest. Acting upon these hints, I began to observe 
 animal forms more closely. If I have not been a misin- 
 terpreter of the facts, there is to be found in the very 
 steps of evolutionary progress leading up to man, viewed 
 in connection with his physical form and structure, full 
 evidence that physical evolution has reached its goal in 
 man ; that in a typical human body, perfect of its kind, 
 the Creator's ideal would be realized. Various lines of 
 advance, running through the whole course of organic 
 evolution, all seem to center and end in the form of man. 
 Let us inquire if they do not justify the conclusion that 
 the forces of evolution have done their best in him. 
 
 I. A presumption to this effect, of more or less force, 
 may be drawn from the fact that there has been no radi- 
 cal change of type since man first appeared. We know 
 with reasonable certainty what the primitive man was, 
 physically, from his remains that have been exhumed in 
 various parts of the earth. The "Man of Mentone," 
 
THE FINAL TEEM OF EVOLUTION. 233 
 
 whose skeleton was found in an Italian cave, in connec- 
 tion with the bones of the cave bear, hyena, and lion, con- 
 temporaneous with the mammoth, and other species of 
 animals long since extinct, must have been physically a 
 fine specimen of the genus homo. He was tall and well- 
 proportioned. His brain was as large as the average 
 human brain of the present day. Yet his life ran its 
 course far back in the Paleolithic era, probably tens of 
 thousands of years before history had begun to take note 
 of human deeds. 
 
 True, this evidence from time is only presumptive. No 
 one claims that it furnishes demonstration. It may be 
 urged against its conclusiveness that many lower forms 
 of life held possession of the earth a much longer time 
 than we claim for man, without showing any advance of 
 grade. The rhizopod and other low forms of marine 
 fauna may have passed hundreds of thousands of years 
 without witnessing any radical advance of type. But, on 
 the other hand, it must be remembered that, as the forms 
 of life become more highly organized, more complex and 
 active, the rate of evolution is accelerated. This seems to 
 be a general law. Man, therefore, as the most highly 
 organized animal, ought to require only a comparatively 
 brief time to outgrow himself in the way of evolution, if 
 he is ever to do so at all. We hence conclude that if a 
 creature higher than man in physical type is ever to ap- 
 pear, he is rather tardy in his coming. 
 
 II. Turning to more positive evidence, let us see what 
 
234 
 
 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 suggestions may be found 
 in the comparative position 
 of the body. Begin with 
 the lowest of the Verte- 
 brates, the sub-kingdom to 
 which man belongs. Take 
 the fish or the serpent, and 
 the lowest reptiles. The 
 position which nature gives 
 them is horizontal, and, if 
 their life is on land, prone in 
 the dust. Their vertebral 
 column maintains along its 
 whole length nearly a level 
 with the horizon. The be- 
 ginning could not be more 
 groveling. But as you come 
 to a little higher species, 
 as, for example, the sala- 
 mander* and the horned-toad of California, the body be- 
 gins to be lifted up out of the dust on legs, and the head 
 rises slightly above the line of the vertebral column. The 
 cervical vertebrae bend upward. In our domestic animals 
 every one can observe large progress in the same direc- 
 tion. In the horse, especially, the legs, instead of project- 
 ing and sprawling out from the sides, as in the highest of 
 
 * See i lustrations uader the word in Webster's and Worcester's Dic- 
 tionaries. 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 25 
 
 the reptiles, are firmly under the body, lifting the animal 
 clear away from the ground, and the arching neck car- 
 ries the head almost up to the angle of forty-five degrees, 
 the half-way line between the horizontal and the perpen- 
 dicular. In the lowest of the simian tribes, still further 
 advance is indicated by a position above this line. The 
 bodies of the higher species are almost erect. In the 
 typical man perfection is reached. He stands erect, his 
 feet pointing to the center of the earth, his head to the 
 zenith the attitude of noblest majesty. 
 
 This upright position is also the one in which least physi- 
 cal strength is expended in supporting the body, either 
 standing still, in locomotion, or at active work. Here, 
 manifestly, the limit of this line of progress is reached. 
 Beginning in the horizontal, evolution ends in the perpen- 
 dicular. It can go no further in that direction without 
 leaning backward, and descending toward the groveling 
 position from which it started. May we not hence infer 
 that in the matter of position, evolution has done its best 
 in man ? 
 
 III. Several examples may be drawn from morphology, 
 or the study of the external forms of animals, that clearly 
 look toward the same conclusion. The most obvious, 
 perhaps, is the one already mentioned as suggested by 
 Agassiz. The face, in the lower species of vertebrates 
 with which we are familiar (fishes and ophidian reptiles), 
 in its relative position to the vertebral column, as com- 
 pared with man, is on the back of the head. As the forms 
 
236 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of life begin to rise in grade, the face begins to turn over 
 toward the front, making an increasing angle with the 
 line of the back-bone. Observe, again, the salamander 
 and horned toad already named. In the hog, the lowest 
 of our domesticated animals, a considerable advance is 
 indicated by the increase of this angle. In our greater 
 domestic favorites, this progress has gone so far as to carry 
 the line of the face well over toward a right angle with 
 the vertebral column. In the gibbon and orang of Asia, 
 among the highest of the anthropoid apes, several degrees 
 of further advance are seen ; the change is almost com- 
 plete. In man, at last, the face comes to the front. It 
 has changed sides on the head, having made a revolution 
 of nearly one hundred and eighty degrees. Here it is ob- 
 vious, again, that we have come to the end of this line of 
 evolution. For physical reasons it can not well go farther. 
 We can not conceive that if this change should turn the face 
 still farther around its features would be improved in posi- 
 tion, more beautiful, or better subserve their proper func- 
 tions. 
 
 Look, again, at the position of the eye. In the fish 
 it is on the side of the head. The axis of vision, pierc- 
 ing the center of each eye, and running through the 
 head, would make nearly a straight line, like the 
 axle running through the hubs of a pair of wheels. 
 Sight is monocular. The object seen by one eye is con- 
 cealed from the other, because the animal's own head is 
 in its light. But as the species rise in grade, the eye 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 237 
 
 moves round to the front of the head, just as we have 
 seen the face turning over to the front. At about the 
 medium line, vision becomes dimly binocular. From this 
 point it grows clearer at every step of progress. In the 
 anthropoid apes, the limit of advance is almost touched. 
 In man, the axes of vision become exactly parallel, and 
 sight is perfectly stereoscopic. Evolution can go no far- 
 ther on that line of improvement without a result which 
 is regarded as neither a beauty nor an advantage. No 
 one wishes to have the axes of vision cross each other. 
 
 I can see no marked significance in what is called the 
 " facial angle," beyond what has already been observed in 
 the relation of the face to the line of the vertebral column. 
 Comparative anatomists admit that this angle is affected by 
 so many local variations of form, of no special significance, 
 that it can not be relied on as establishing any charac- 
 teristic distinctions of species. But what may, for con- 
 venience sake, be called the axis of the profile, seems to 
 me to afford the base-line of a measurement that is far 
 more suggestive. Every one must notice that in the low- 
 est vertebrates there is properly no nose at all, and the 
 muzzle, when the upper and lower jaws are closed together, 
 is wedge-shaped. The jaws of a fish make a blunt wedge. 
 The lower land vertebrates, reptiles and saurians, approxi- 
 mate the fish in this respect, but in them nostrils appear. 
 These begin to thicken the point of the wedge. A broad, 
 flat muzzle results. The nostrils turn upward and out- 
 ward. Nature has blocked out a nose. As the grade of 
 
238 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 life rises, the nose contracts in width, and increases rela- 
 tively in length and prominence. The nostrils gradually 
 turn inward and downward. Every naturalist will recall 
 at once in this connection the fact that the monkeys 
 grouped as platyrrhine, from the comparative breadth of 
 the nose, are much lower in type than the catarrhine, or 
 narrow-nosed species. Observe that the nose proper is to 
 be carefully distinguished from the upper jaw on which it 
 is situated, and from any prehensile appendage, like the 
 trunk of the elephant, and the similar instrument on the 
 snout of the ant-eater ; then it will be obvious that in the 
 human species the nose is at once narrower and more 
 prominent, relatively, than is seen in any animal form. 
 'The tubes of the nostrils have become parallel, and open 
 directly downward. Here we come to another limit. 
 
 Now, if we turn to the under side of the wedge, the 
 lower jaw, as we found at first no nose on the upper, so 
 here we find no chin. It may be a fancy, but observation 
 of race and individual characteristics, suggests the query, 
 whether the development of this organ or feature may 
 not express the evolution of will power, and perhaps of 
 affection, which, in man, give what we call force of char- 
 acter and personal magnetism in excess, degenerating 
 into selfish ambition, willfulness, conceit, or avarice. At 
 any rate, the lower face, or chin, and the upper face, or 
 forehead, seem equally to mark the stage arrived at in 
 evolution. Chin and brain advance pari passu. The 
 mid-face becomes relatively less prominent. Run along 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 239 
 
 up the scale which we have instanced so often, from the 
 fish- wedge to the human face, and this will be apparent. 
 There is a constant receding of the muzzle proper, or 
 upper and lower jaws, and an increasing prominence of 
 the forehead and chin, until, in the human countenance, 
 the upper, middle, and lower face are on a straight line. 
 In the classic Greek face, accepted as the ideal of the 
 human features, draw a line from the center of the fore- 
 head, or extreme front of the brain, to the end of the chin, 
 
 Fig. 2. HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 
 
 and it just touches the root of the upper lip below the 
 nose. This is what I have denominated the axis of the 
 profile. The average face of civilized peoples will stand 
 the test of this line, or nearly so. If we apply it in savage 
 tribes, or even to half-civilized races, it will suggest the 
 question whether they have attained a complete develop- 
 ment physically, any more than they have mentally and 
 morally. Observe any group of Chinese you may happen 
 to fall in with. Compare them in this respect with the 
 
240 
 
 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 representatives of other na- 
 tionalities with whom they 
 here mingle. In no case 
 will you fail to observe a 
 most striking difference. In 
 the average Mongolian face, 
 the middle portion, or muz- 
 zle, falls more than half an 
 inch forward of the axial 
 line suggested. In the av- 
 erage negro face of pure 
 Fig. 3. AH SIX.* blood, this characteristic is 
 
 (Photograph by Wm. B. Ingersoll, Esq.) s tiH more marked, the pl'Og- 
 
 nathous muzzle often projecting an inch and a half, and 
 sometimes full two inches in front of the axial line. 
 Whether we regard their physical development as com- 
 plete or arrested, there can hardly be a doubt that if the 
 intellects of these savage and semi-civilized races could 
 be roused by the' studies that make the glory of the cul- 
 tivated mind, and their consciences quickened with the 
 sense of a higher morality, and their wills energized by 
 the enterprise of civilization, their features would soon 
 begin to confess the influence in a very visible change of 
 form. The animal prominence of jaw would recede, fore- 
 head and chin would advance, and in a very few genera- 
 tions the upper, middle, and lower face would be found in 
 
 * The artist was directed to take the photograph of the first live Chinaman 
 he could catch. This is the result. The prominence of the mid-face is quite 
 within, rather than beyond, the average. 
 
THE FINAL TKRM OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 241 
 
 line. Take the infant of 
 prognathous savages into a 
 civilized home, and give it 
 the best culture of educa- 
 tion, and the result will be 
 expressed in a greatly mod- 
 ified form of features. On 
 the other hand, among civ- 
 ilized and highly cultivated 
 people, you will meet in- 
 stances, not very rare, of 
 persons in whom the fore- 
 head and chin are relatively Fi - 4 " MARQUESAS 
 so prominent that the mid-face falls considerably in the 
 rear of the axial line. The profile is actually concave or 
 dishing. I have never discovered one example of this 
 
 kind among Chinese, In- 
 dians, or Negroes. In 
 such instances there may 
 be superior powers of in- 
 tellect in some directions, 
 and a certain moral in- 
 tensity, but some want 
 of balance is likely also 
 to be observed ; the equi- 
 librium of nature is not 
 maintained. The char- 
 Fig. , MAORI WOMAN. acter wiil commonly be 
 
242 
 
 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 marred by eccentricity, 
 or some form of amia- 
 ble weakness. Evolu- 
 tion has gone beyond 
 its due bounds. But we 
 never see a very prom- 
 inent normal forehead 
 matched with a weak, 
 receding chin. 
 
 It is worthy of re- 
 mark in passing, that, 
 in all savage tribes, you 
 
 Fig. 6. PINO. Chief of, he Ules, Colorado.- ^ ^ ^ broad| flat 
 
 nose, with the nostrils apparently struggling to turn out- 
 ward and upward. The depressed point and unshaped 
 outline stop at the child stage of development. The bulb- 
 ous nostrils, with round openings like large gimlet holes 
 (the nose of the young child simply enlarged), spreading 
 the base, as if growth in length had met some obstacle 
 that compelled it to find room in width, just hint the pe- 
 culiar form and expression of the reptile face. In the 
 semi-civilized races, you will always see this feature mod- 
 ifying in the direction of the higher type. Taking all 
 these facts connected with the morphology of the human 
 features, I think they give support to the conclusion that 
 
 * The typical Indian face is often represented with a long, sharp nose, and 
 projecting chin such a face as is never actually seen among our aborigines. 
 
 Figures 4, 5, and 6 are from photographs obtained among the natives, by 
 C. D. Voy, Esq. , of Oakland. 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 243 
 
 Fig. 7. HOTTENTOT WOMAN. Fig. 8. FEMALE GORILLA.* 
 
 (From Winchell's Pre-adamites.} 
 
 in the typical face of the civilized man, nature shows the 
 final result of physical evolution. 
 
 Other examples might be drawn from the shape and 
 structure of the eye, the ear, the mouth or lips, and per- 
 haps from every other feature. I doubt not, also, that a 
 more minute acquaintance with comparative anatomy 
 and physiology than I can pretend to, viewed with this 
 reference, would reveal the same truth in the relative 
 proportions of the arms and limbs, the structure and 
 functions of the heart and lungs, the size and arrange- 
 ment of the muscles in short, in almost every part and 
 member of the vital organism. The illustrations given 
 
 * I cannot resist the suspicion that the look of this beast's face is more 
 human than in the original ; but the profile and form of the features are, no 
 doubt, correctly represented, and clearly fall in with the line of thought I aim 
 to illustrate. 
 
244 
 
 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 but just open a glimpse into a 
 field upon which rich fruits 
 may hereafter be gathered. 
 
 But I will tax your patience 
 at this time with but one illus- 
 tration further. It is drawn 
 from the evolution of the nerv- 
 ous system, or what has come 
 to be known among scientists 
 as ceplializaticyii. It is nature's 
 process of brain building. The 
 example may be called at once 
 
 Fig. 9. TAMITIWAKA XKNK, . . _ 
 
 structural and psychological. 
 
 Maori Chief.* r J 
 
 It is furnished by the material 
 
 organ of the mind. It was the first to suggest the argu- 
 ment I Jiave attempted here, and to me it seems still at once 
 the most richly suggestive and the most conclusive of any 
 I can present. Let us begin with the lowest discovered 
 form of animate existence, the moner. This is a micro- 
 scopic speck of protoplasm, or jelly-like albumen, appar- 
 ently structureless and inorganic. Yet the principle of 
 life is in it, for it can assimilate food and propagate its 
 
 * From a photograph furnished by Hugh Craig, Esq., of Oakland, who 
 was with the English army in one of their later wars with the Maoris, and who 
 sends me the following note with the picture : 
 
 "Tamiti Waka Nene, an aboriginal New Zealand Chief, or Rangatira 
 Maori, of the Ngapuhi tribe in the North Island of New Zealand, who be- 
 friended the European settlers in the Maori war of 1840-41 when Honi Heke, 
 another aboriginal, attempted to drive the settlers from Kororareka. The 
 English Government, in grateful remembrance of the services of the old hero, 
 allowed him an annual honorarium from that date until his death." 
 
 The Maoris were probably the highest type of people on the earth, who 
 ranked as savages when the English took possession of New Zealand. Their 
 superiority finds clear expression in their features. 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION 245 
 
 kind. It is all mouth, for it absorbs its nutriment indif- 
 ferently from every side. The whole thing, though un- 
 doubtedly a completely developed organism, appears to be 
 but a germinal vesicle, not distinguishable from the egg 
 of higher forms of life. The first process of differentiation, 
 or that activity which makes one part distinguishable 
 from another in structure and function, shows itself under 
 the microscope in the formation of an interior nucleus 
 or germ-spot, and within this again of a nucleolus. At 
 this stage the animal is called the amoeba. It multiplies, 
 like the moner, by fission, or self-division, forming, as it 
 grows, another nucleus and nucleolus, and then separating. 
 The new individual, after this separation, is an adult, a 
 full-grown animal, sets up an independent business, and 
 grows and divides in the same manner to produce others 
 of its kind. But in some cases the two parts, instead of 
 separating, cling together. The one becomes two, the 
 two become four, the four eight, the eight sixteen, and so 
 on, until the growing union becomes a countless mass of 
 cells, each with its germ-spot and nucleolus, each undis- 
 tinguishable in appearance and function from an} of the 
 others. The whole seem but a structureless drop of jelly. 
 It is now called the synamoeba, or amoeba community, 
 and sometimes the morula, from its resemblance in form 
 to a mulberry or blackberry. Here, again, nature stops 
 with some examples, and development goes no higher. 
 Another form of life is complete. But in another line of 
 evolution, differing for reasons which no science can yet 
 
246 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 penetrate, an indentation appears on one side of the globu- 
 lar mass of cells. The creature assumes the form of an 
 open sack. Nature, refusing longer to eat through the 
 pores of the skin, or absorb her nourishment from all 
 sides alike, is forming a mouth. In the peculiar internal 
 structure of this sack, she is indicating her intention, also, 
 to match that mouth with a stomach. Hence this animal 
 is named the gastrula. 
 
 I do not propose to trace the steps of evolution further, 
 so far as the whole animal form is concerned. At about 
 this stage, we reach the fact essential to my present pur- 
 pose. Under a powerful microscope, the creature of this 
 grade reveals certain fine whitish filaments, or threads, 
 running through the albuminous substance of its body. 
 They lie, for the most part, near the surface, with some 
 degree of order, and are most numerous at the points of 
 the animal's greatest activity. At first discovery, biolo- 
 gists were puzzled what to make of these ; but upon trac- 
 ing their development in higher forms, it became evident 
 that they were the nervous system hints toward a 
 brain, although here scattered all over the body. In more 
 advanced species, small knots showed themselves forming 
 along these lines, as if nature had here and there tied the 
 threads. Tracing these in still higher species, observers 
 satisfied themselves that they are no other than ganglia, 
 or nerve centers. They are the reservoirs where nature 
 stores up a reserve of nervous force for the hour of action. 
 As the grade of life rose, these grew larger, and also more 
 
THE FINAL TEEM OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 247 
 
 numerous toward one extreme of the body. The white 
 threads also seemed to gather toward a median line, run- 
 ning lengthwise along the upper side of the animal, where 
 the notochord, or rudimentary back-bone, was to appear in 
 
 Fig. 10. STENTOR POLYMORPHIC. Magnified 130 Diameters. 
 ( Trumpet A n imalcule. ) 
 
 a, posterior ; sh, sheath into which the animal withdraws when disturbed ; 
 rf, disk, or trumpet expansion ; c, ciliated border ; ^, larger rigid cilia ; m, mouth; 
 r, r, r, radiating filaments, supposed to be the nervous system ; cv, contractile 
 vesicle and its prolongation, cvr, cv2, the point of greatest activity closely con- 
 nected with the nerves, (From Prof. Henry J. Clark). 
 
248 
 
 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY 
 
 h ma 
 
 Fig. n. IDEAL PROTOZOAN. 
 Longitudinal View 
 
 k nc 
 
 Fig. 12. Foreshortened View 
 of Same. 
 
 nc in a h 
 
 Fig. 13. IDEAL ZOOPHYTE. Long. view. Fig. 14. For. view of same. 
 
 Fig. 15. IDEAL Ivt JLLJSCAN*. Long. view. Fig. 16. For. view of same. 
 
 M, mouth; a, posterior; ma, digestive cavity ; h, heart ; nc, nerve cells or 
 threads; g, g, ganglia or ner\e centers; c, nerve collar, or ring uniting the 
 ganglia on each side of the heart and the central ganglion at the head of the 
 main nerve trunk, or median line that ultimately develops into the spinal 
 cord, en; ch, position of internal skeleton in the vertebrate. The correspond- 
 ing parts are lettered alike in all the figures. For greater simplicity I have not 
 followed exactly the lettering of the author. 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 249 
 
 g A ma. 
 
 Fig. 17. IDEAL ARTICULATE. Long. view. 
 
 ch nc c g 
 
 Fig. 19. IDEAL VERTEBRATE. Long. view. 
 
 Fig. 1 8. For. view of Fig. 17. 
 
 For. view of Fig. 19. 
 
 The annexed ideal figures are taken from Mind in Nature, pp. 122-3, an 
 able scientific work by the late Prof. Henry James Clark, of Cambridge. The 
 author was a patient, original observer of microscopic forms of life. These 
 figures may not be the best representation that can be constructed of the early 
 progressive development of the nervous system. Later studies make it probf 
 able that the leading types of animal structure, they are intended to set be- 
 fore us, are not in a direct line of evolution ; the lower may even be degraded 
 forms from some superior stock. But they do undoubtedly represent rising 
 grades of life, and are the clearest compact illustration of the general line of 
 thought in the text that has fallen under my notice. 
 
250 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 more advanced offspring. In further progress, these massed 
 themselves in the central nerve-cord, or medullary tube. 
 Then the forward end of this cord enlarged itself into 
 one grand ganglion, or nerve-center, from which went 
 forth the power to control the whole organism. Nature 
 had come to a head. Creative evolution had formed a 
 brain. The first product of the kind was not Websterian, 
 by any means, but it contained the promise, if not the 
 potency, of the noble organ of the human mind. Ceph- 
 alization only needs to complete what it has begun. We 
 are familiar with animals, as the oyster, the sea-nettle or 
 Portuguese man-of-war, and other jelly-like creatures, in 
 which no brain proper exists. They are called acephala, 
 or headless, from this fact. But we discover in every 
 specimen of completely developed fish or reptile, proof of 
 a higher organization in the fact that it has a true brain. 
 The first single enlargement of the anterior end of the 
 spinal-cord is followed by four similar growths or sections 
 (brain ventricles) which appear as if this part of the cord 
 had been constricted by threads tied around it at not 
 quite regular intervals. These, at a more developed stage, 
 become what are known as fore-brain, twixt-brain, mid- 
 brain, hind-brain, and after-brain. The hind-brain de- 
 velops into the cerebellum, and the fore-brain into the 
 cerebrum. The vast enlargement of the latter quite over- 
 grows and covers up the other sections in man, and gives 
 that prominence to the human forehead which has been 
 already noticed. Without following the process of ceph- 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 251 
 
 alization step by step, it will suffice to say that, as you 
 ascend along the scale of life, with only a few seeming 
 exceptions, you find the brain growing larger in propor- 
 tion to the whole body, just in the degree that the species 
 rises in grade of organization. This is the general law. 
 The size of the brain, as compared with the body, quality, 
 or complexity and fineness of organization, being also 
 considered, marks the rank of the animal among the or- 
 ders of life. In man it is absolutely larger than in any 
 other animal, if you except the whale and the elephant. 
 In proportion to the body, it is many times larger in man 
 than in these. Bring the ape into the comparison, and 
 the lowest man, of normal condition, has a brain propor- 
 tionally at least a third larger than that of the highest 
 anthropoid. But the crowning fact to be noticed in this 
 line of evolution is the following : The average human 
 brain is as large as it can be, relatively to the 'muscular 
 and vital systems, to give the highest nervous force and 
 mental power. Increase its proportional size, and you 
 weaken, instead of strengthening the organ of mind. You 
 unsettle the balance of the nervous and vital systems. 
 The action of the engine will be too violent for the frame. 
 The average brain in man is as large as it ought to be for 
 its highest functions. Here, then, we once more touch 
 the limit of possible physical progress. 
 
 Of course, the reference here is to the average human 
 brain. You will meet with individuals enough in whom 
 the larger growth of this organ would not endanger the 
 
252 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 physical equilibrium. Nor is it claimed that the average 
 brain always, or even in the majority, attains the size or 
 power which a vigorous use and culture might give. Its 
 organic or constitutional relation to the body is the point 
 here in view. On the other hand, examples have doubt- 
 less fallen under the observation of us all, in which the 
 brain was too large for the body. Its excessive activity 
 exhausted the sources of its own supplies. The result was 
 a deficiency instead of an increase of nervous force and 
 mental power. This fact also goes to confirm my main 
 proposition. 
 
 We have now seen nature struggling through all the 
 long ages of evolution to produce the best possible organ 
 for the mind and spirit of man. This was the grand aim 
 and goal of her creative work. She rose toward her 
 object in every higher form of animal life, by giving it 
 a larger brain in proportion to its body than to preceding 
 forms, and, with that brain, greater intelligence and nerv- 
 ous power. To man, at last, she has given as large a 
 brain as the finest physical organization can bear. She 
 has reached the climax of her endeavors. Her material 
 work can rise to no higher product. All through the 
 organization she has created are scattered the witnesses 
 that this is her goal. We may look for the birth of no 
 child that will inaugurate a higher type of physical life. 
 
 The imagination may, no doubt, indulge in conceits of 
 improvement on the finished work of the Creator. Said 
 a Doctor of Divinity, on hearing the theme of this lecture : 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 253 
 
 " Oh, no ! Evolution is not yet at the highest ; it can 
 give the body of man wings ! " Enough to reply that the 
 wings of man are in his Imperial brain. Better there than 
 a monstrous attachment pinned to his shoulders. As his 
 inventive brain has already given him power to outrun 
 the fleetest animal on land, so it may yet enable him to 
 pass the bird of swiftest wing in the air. Wood, and 
 metal, and air, and water, and fire, are all wings for that 
 wonderful brain, and are made to serve him as if they 
 were vital members of his body. That body, I must be- 
 lieve, is in type the ideal of the Creator realized ; and as 
 the work of art expresses the artist, may we not say that 
 the perfect human form is, in some profound sense, the 
 highest material manifestation of God ? The perfect man, 
 when he appears, needs no higher organism for his activi- 
 ties. 
 
 The organ of the soul now complete, a new course of 
 evolution begins mental, moral, and spiritual. This 
 must be traced in the history of the human mind. The 
 various races of men must be compared. The psycho- 
 logical phenomena of their development and decay (in 
 those that have decayed), their intellectual characteristics, 
 their moral life, their religious conceptions and worship, 
 must be set side by side. The race vitality and power of 
 progress and self -perpetuation in each must be observed. 
 The highest point in the various lines of progress which 
 each has been able to touch must be marked. Where the 
 elements of human excellence are combined in the nearest 
 
254 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 approach to a living and realized perfection, must, if pos- 
 sible be determined. It is the claim of Christianity that 
 its founder was the Perfect Man. If this is a fact, it 
 ought to find support and confirmation in the history of 
 this higher evolution, viewed in the light of those intuitions 
 of human perfection given to the clearest moral and spir- 
 itual development. The psychological phenomena of evo- 
 lution must have a bearing on this claim. 
 
 The ancient seas and lands were thronged with low 
 forms of life that ran their course and disappeared. The 
 early mind of man was filled with equally rude concep- 
 tions of God and duty, which had their day, and gave 
 place to higher thoughts and feelings. Along the line of 
 physical evolution we see various races of creatures branch 
 off, grow vigorously, attain a predominance over all other 
 forms for a time, then decline, or remain stationary, till 
 some higher branch outgrows and overshadows them. 
 Their vitality can carry them no higher. In many cases 
 they die and drop off altogether from the tree of physical 
 evolution. So, along the course of human history, we see 
 races of men develop their respective civilizations to a cer- 
 tain hight of knowledge, morality and religion, and then 
 stop as under an arrested vitality. There is not only no 
 life in them that can go on upward, but none that can 
 preserve them from decay or decline. Many have died 
 and dropped away from the tree of human life. Again, 
 through all the ages of physical evolution ran one line of 
 life whose progress was ever onward and upward. It did 
 
THE FINAL TERM OF EVOLUTION. 255 
 
 not pause till the perfect physical man stood on the earth, 
 the epitome and crown of all that went before. Can there 
 not be traced, running through the history of the moral 
 and spiritual evolution of man, one line of progress that 
 ever moved onward and rose higher, until it touched the 
 nearest approximation of human perfection that has ever 
 appeared on earth, in Jesus of Nazareth? If this can be 
 made to appear, as I firmly believe it can, then will the 
 religion that Jesus really taught, find a scientific basis as 
 impregnable as the truth of evolution itself. And when 
 his church shall cease to substitute belief in certain things 
 about him for the simple faith in God, personal righteous- 
 ness and good- will to men, which were the substance of his 
 doctrine; and when his followers, instead of contenting 
 themselves with that belief, shall heartily accept the practi- 
 cal ideal they find in him, and make it the stimulus of their 
 aspirations, the aim and endeavor of their lives, we may 
 hope, under that law of evolution which accelerates prog- 
 ress with every higher attainment, that the earth will soon 
 clothe itself in a new moral beauty, and humanity will 
 become in very deed the image and glory of God. 
 
Appendix A. 
 
 Is the Resurrection of the Body of Jesus a Fundamental Arti- 
 cle of the Christian Faith ? 
 
 If it is so we ought to know it. If Christianity is to 
 stand or fall with this belief, the evidence of its truth 
 ought to leave no room for reasonable doubt. It is in- 
 credible that God should have turned aside from the order 
 of nature to do so wonderful a thing, and then should 
 have left the testimony for the fact so confused or defect- 
 ive that honest inquirers in after ages would be at a loss 
 to make up their minds upon it. Outside the four Gospels 
 the resurrection of the body is not clearly asserted in the 
 New Testament. The resurrection is everywhere, but 
 spiritual. Paul declares for a spiritual body : but all he 
 says on the subject, taken together, seems to discredit, 
 rather than favor the idea of a physical resurrection. Put 
 the four Evangelists, therefore, on the stand. Cross- 
 question them fairly. Sift the testimony given under 
 their names. See whether there is that substantial agree- 
 ment and air of truthfulness that leaves no ground of 
 reasonable doubt in the mind of an impartial judge. 
 
 Turn to the last chapters of Matthew (xxviii), Mark 
 (xvi), Luke (xxiv), and John (xx*), and we have the 
 whole testimony before us. A careful comparison of 
 these discovers substantial agreement in the following 
 particulars : 
 
 * The twenty-first chapter of John is not reliable, as it is (in the words of 
 Olshausen) "beyond question a later addition to the completed work." 
 
APPENDIX A. 257 
 
 1. The persons first at the sepulchre the women of 
 
 Galilee. 
 
 2. The time of their coming early morning. 
 
 3. Their object to embalm the body. 
 
 4. The sealed stone rolled from the door of the sepul- 
 
 chre. 
 
 5. The absence of the body of Jesus. 
 
 6. An angelic appearance announcing his resurrec- 
 
 tion. 
 
 7. The women (John mentioning only Mary Magda- 
 
 lene), first to report these facts to the Apostles. 
 
 8. The appearance of Jesus himself to the disciples, 
 
 and conversing with them on different occasions. 
 
 Mark and John agree that his first appearance after the 
 resurrection was to Mary Magdalene. Matthew says it 
 was to the women ; Luke is silent on this point. Luke 
 and John agree that Peter ran to the sepulchre, after 
 hearing the report of the women. John adds that " the 
 disciple whom Jesus loved " was with Peter, outran him, 
 and was before him at the sepulchre. Matthew and 
 Mark grre silent here. Matthew and Mark say the angel 
 directed the women to tell the disciples that Jesus would 
 meet them in Galilee. Matthew states that Jesus also- 
 gave them the same message. Luke and John are silent 
 upon this commission to the women, but both report that 
 Jesus himself met the disciples the same evening in Jeru- 
 salem. Matthew says nothing of this meeting in Jerusa- 
 lem, but reports a meeting in Galilee. Mark mentions a 
 meeting, but does not name the place. Matthew and 
 Mark speak of but one angel at the tomb ; Luke and John 
 of two. The first three Evangelists place the angelic ap- 
 pearance at the first approach of the women to the sepul- 
 chre. John has it that the first appearance of the angels, 
 and also of Jesus, was to Mary after the disciples had 
 
258 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 examined the sepulchre and gone away home. Luke and 
 John state that Jesus challenged his disciples to examine 
 his hands and feet, and called for food, and ate before 
 them, in proof that it was hfs real body ( "flesh and bones ") 
 that was risen. Matthew and Mark are silent respecting 
 these facts. Luke and John assert the sudden appear- 
 ance of Jesus among the disciples in a closed room, as if 
 he were a bodiless spirit, unconscious of impediment in 
 doors and walls. Luke also narrates how he walked and 
 conversed with two of their number without being recog- 
 nized, and then suddenly vanished out of their sight. 
 Matthew naively confesses that when the disciples met 
 Jesus, according to his appointment, in Galilee, and " wor- 
 shiped him," "some doubted," showing that after all his 
 striking appearances at Jerusalem, some of the immediate 
 and friendly witnesses were not convinced. Finally, Luke 
 represents the ascension into heaven as taking place visi- 
 bly before the eyes of the disciples, and even specifies the 
 place. Matthew and John say nothing of this* event. 
 Mark (if we are to accept the last twelve verses of his 
 Gospel as genuine, notwithstanding their absence from 
 the oldest manuscripts), contents himself with saying } 
 " So, then, after the Lord had spoken to them, he was 
 received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of 
 God." 
 
 Now, suppose a court of inquiry into this case judges 
 without bias this testimony heard for the first time. 
 Let the previous accounts of the crucifixion be added. 
 Also let the subsequent conduct of the witnesses be sub- 
 mitted for full consideration the sudden return of con- 
 fidence to these simple-njinded disciples, stricken with 
 despair at the execution of the one whom they had trusted 
 
APPENDIX A. 25 > 
 
 to be their deliverer and king, and their life-long devotion, 
 many of them even in the martyr's death, to bearing 
 witness to him as risen from the dead to be the Savior of 
 the world. Reinforce the evidence by whatever support 
 is fairly due from the effect of their testimony upon their 
 own time, and its later influence in history. The court 
 is to decide whether we must conclude from this combined 
 evidence that the body of Jesus was raised from the dead. 
 
 First, the narratives of the crucifixion are taken up. 
 It strikes the judges as singular that one in the vigor of 
 young and healthy manhood should have died so soon 
 after he was nailed to the cross, exciting the wonder of 
 Pilate, who " marveled if he were already dead " (Mark 
 xv, 44) ; and then that it should be explicitly stated that 
 the legs of the two thieves who were crucified with him 
 were broken to assure their death, but that " not a bone 
 of him was broken ;" and his body, without certain evi- 
 dence of a mortal wound in it, was delivered to his friends,, 
 taken down from the cross, and laid in one of their private 
 sepulchres. On the other hand, the judges reflect that 
 the Roman soldier, as an executioner, was no sentimental- 
 ist, and made no half-way work of it, especially as his 
 own life was the forfeit if his prisoner escaped. It was 
 not likely that the spear thrust in the side would stop 
 short of a vital point the force of this reason being some- 
 what weakened, however, by the admission of one of the 
 witnesses that the soldiers, for "large money," took this 
 very risk by falsely reporting against themselves a capital 
 delinquency sleeping on watch at the sepulchre. So far 
 the case looks dubious. 
 
 Next, the court turns to the direct testimony. Here 
 they note the points of agreement above stated, and then 
 
260 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 take under review the apparent discrepancies and singular 
 omissions of some of the narrators two angels named 
 by some, only one by others ; angels sent to announce his 
 resurrection, then Jesus immediately appearing to an- 
 nounce himself (one or the other an apparently superfluous 
 miracle) ; his first appearance to Mary according to one, 
 to "the women," according to three ; after the disciples 
 had found the tomb empty and had departed, according 
 to one, before, according to three ; angels and Jesus send- 
 ing word to his disciples to meet him in Galilee, then Jesus 
 himself meeting them the same evening in Jerusalem ; 
 two of the witnesses omitting to mention this meeting ; 
 two making no record of the amazing act of his eating 
 and drinking before the disciples ; one acknowledging 
 that there was doubt among the disciples themselves after 
 all these proofs had been witnessed at Jerusalem ; only 
 one intimating that he ever returned to Jerusalem after 
 going into Galilee ; only thiione relating the astonishing 
 fact of his leading his disciples out as far as Bethany, near 
 the Holy City, and there being lifted up from the earth 
 before their eyes, and disappearing in the clouds of heaven ; 
 the others strangely omitting to mention this final wonder, 
 and leaving the impression that his last appearance was 
 in Galilee. 
 
 The court discovers, upon further investigation, that 
 several years almost certainly elapsed after the date of 
 these events before they were committed to writing ; that 
 in the interval they were probably in the form of oral 
 traditions, passing from mouth to mouth ; that the ac- 
 counts of them do not appear in history, in their present 
 shape, until three or four generations had passed away ; 
 that there was abundant opportunity, and no lack of dis- 
 
APPENDIX A. 261 
 
 position, to introduce a marvelous and legendary element 
 into them ; that considerable interpolations and additions 
 to the original narratives are admitted by all competent 
 scholars ; and hence that it would have been nothing new 
 had simple facts grown into startling rumors, and these, 
 again, into stupendous miracles. They can not help ask- 
 ing, also, if the body of Jesus was reanimated, and moved 
 among men, impressing the physical senses, after his burial, 
 why were none but his friends permitted the sight ? 
 
 They next come to the subsequent conduct of the wit- 
 nesses. Here the evidence is irresistible that something 
 occurred soon after the crucifixion that strangely revived 
 the courage of the desponding friends of Jesus, and in- 
 spired in them the life-long conviction that their beloved 
 Master was alive again. Men do not suffer the loss of 
 all things, and cheerfully meet death itself for what they 
 know to be a lie. Was it the body, startling the senses ? 
 Was it the Spirit, revealed to an opened spiritual vision, 
 as a certain weird peculiarity of impression on the disci- 
 ples, discernible in the narrative, would suggest ? Or was 
 it the illusion of excited imaginations, reported as fact, 
 and gaining currency at the time, and large additions in 
 after years ? The history of human experience allows a 
 wide margin of alternative supposition here. The natural 
 body is not the one to which the mind feels driven. 
 
 Finally, the court considers the impression these wit- 
 nesses made on their own time and on after ages. Was 
 the fact of the physical resurrection an essential element 
 in the power of their testimony of Jesus ? Whatever 
 they may have thought of his body, they believed that 
 he was alive again. Of this there can be no doubt. 
 They believed that he lived as the head of a universal 
 
262 A -REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 spiritual kingdom. This conviction was a flame of zeal 
 in them. It gave a burning earnestness to their message. 
 Then the universal mind of their age stood in an attitude 
 of peculiar preparation to hear what they had to say on 
 the resurrection or a life to come the Jews divided into 
 two parties, the one affirming, the other denying the doc- 
 trine, raising a blinding dust of controversy between them ; 
 the Romans who thought at all of such matters, nearly 
 all Epicureans or Stoics ; the former with their maxim of 
 good cheer, ''Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, 
 and that is the last of us ;" the latter gravely shaking 
 their heads and saying, " We know nothing of the mor- 
 row ; the- wise man will not trouble himself about that 
 which he can not know." Imagine a preacher of the 
 resurrection as a demonstrated fact, aflame with zeal, 
 coming into a community whose minds are in this posi- 
 tion. His words are upon the burning question of the 
 time. Men are inclined to believe with him. They love 
 the hope of another life. He easily gains attention. And 
 then if he is attended with the reputation of some myste- 
 rious power over the forces of nature, such as has almost 
 invariably been credited to the founders of new religions, 
 he can not fail to soon have a multitude with him. The 
 judges note further the purity and elevation of the doc- 
 trine of life these .witnesses bore with them, its intrinsic 
 truth, its adaptation to man's moral and religious nature, 
 its power to kindle noble aspirations, strengthen the weak 
 and comfort the sorrowing. They can not believe that 
 the fate of such truth depends upon the question as to 
 what became of the body of the great Teacher who first 
 promulgated it. Its inherent quality accounts for its 
 power in history, not an astounding miracle connected 
 with its revelation. 
 
APPENDIX A. 263 
 
 But the advocates of the affirmative urge that a special 
 divine influence inspired the utterance of the testimony, 
 and preserved its record from all admixture of error. 
 This the court sets aside as mere assumption. The facts 
 in the case forbid its admission. The evidence must stand 
 on its own self-consistency and intrinsic reasonableness. 
 It must submit to the scales which decide the value of all 
 historic testimony. So weighed, the court could hardly 
 fail of unanimity in the decision "not proven." And if 
 appeal be taken from this judgment, it can hardly be de- 
 nied that the competent scholarship and profoundest piety 
 of Christendom show themselves increasingly disposed to 
 affirm it. 
 
 What is the spiritual value of this article of belief ? 
 The resurrection it affirms is like no other. Jesus saw no 
 corruption. Our bodies must return to dust. Their lit- 
 eral resurrection is an almost abandoned superstition, even 
 in the church. Who now bases his hope of immortality 
 on the resurrection of the body of Jesus ? How few ever 
 connect the two in their thoughts. Who that believes in 
 the life to come at all would doubt that Jesus still lives, 
 and that we shall all live on after our bodies crumble, if 
 it could be demonstrated to-day that his body was never 
 requickened ? That the belief is not vital to the spiritual 
 life is demonstrated. Many an intelligent and earnest 
 Christian does not believe it. The insistence that piety 
 can not thrive without it springs from that gross way of 
 thinking, which imagines that the divine life in the soul 
 can not be properly nurtured without dazing the senses 
 with wonders. 
 
 It is deprecatingly objected that if we pluck Christian- 
 ity from the soil of historic fact from which it sprung, it 
 
264 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 will wither and die. That is true. The Christian evolu- 
 tionist readily assents. But what is fact; what fiction 
 and legend ? We must discriminate. Then, further, in 
 the history established beyond reasonable question, we 
 must distinguish, as we easily may, the facts essential to 
 the life of Christianity from the merely incidental. That 
 Jesus lived; that he led a pure and beneficent life, gave 
 forth truth and conceptions of duty and character that 
 compelled assent by their own divine light ; that he died 
 a martyr death, sealing his fidelity to the truth and his 
 love to men with his blood these are essential. Truth 
 throbs with life and power in them. These things are 
 what Jesus himself did. What was done to him to his 
 body after he was dead that is quite another matter. 
 His truth can not get its life from that. 
 
 Let no one insist that others deny the bodily resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus. That is not the point here. The dogma- 
 tism of denial is as bad as the dogmatism of assertion. 
 If any find reason and comfort in believing it, let them 
 believe it. The point here is that its believers shall not 
 insist that others believe and affirm it, on peril of being 
 unchristianized. I protest against committing the credit 
 and very life of Christianity to fact or theory resting 
 upon evidence which is not, and can not be made, conclu- 
 sive a folly of which its friends have been too often guilty. 
 Many a candid skeptic would willingly accept the physi- 
 cal resurrection, but can not see the proof to be satisfactory. 
 Since experience in the hearts of many devoted Christians 
 demonstrates it to be non-essential, let it be placed among 
 the non-essentials ; and I am persuaded that instead of 
 losing a vital aid to faith, it will be found that an impedi- 
 ment to the progress and spiritual life of Christianity has 
 been removed. 
 
Appendix B. Cavour's Prophecy. 
 
 Can Christianity become the Universal Religion? 
 
 The prophecy of Count Cavour, the free thinking Ital- 
 ian statesman, strikingly expresses a vague anticipation 
 in many thoughtful minds, who long for some power to 
 give us a purer world. He was dying, and well knew 
 that he had but few days to live. This prediction was 
 uttered in his last conversation with Col. de la Motte 
 Baudin, his biographer, who gives it as follows: 
 
 Said Col. Baudin : If you knew how your country will 
 miss you, you could hardly be so resigned to your fate. 
 Tell me, is Hamlet's alternative really a matter of indif- 
 ference to you ? 
 
 Cavour replied: Italy has passed the dangerous ford,, 
 and I dare say will be able to muddle along on terra- 
 firma without me. But as for myself, speaking from a- 
 spectator's, rather than an actor's standpoint, I do not 
 deny that I regret my exit from the play-house. I have 
 witnessed some pretty lively performances in my time; 
 but I shall miss the grand sensation piece. Before the 
 curtain of the century drops, we shall have a new 
 religion. 
 
 At the rate our English-speaking fellow creatures are 
 manufacturing that article, we shall have a pretty good 
 stock on hand by that time, suggested his friend. 
 
 No, no, protested the Count; I do not mean a new hy- 
 pocrisy; I mean a new religion. 
 
266 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Don't you tMnk that the Protestants are in earnest ? 
 
 Yes, in their protest against Catholicism ; so much, in- 
 deed, that they have protested it out of the better portion 
 of the world. But what they have substituted for it is 
 purely negative; born of schism, and prolific of new 
 schism ; skepticism the very essence and soul of it. 
 
 But will not that skepticism prevent the growth of 
 what you call a new religion? 
 
 Indeed not. Rotten trees make excellent manure for 
 new trees, you know: our old creed has become a heap 
 of vegetable mold the very soil for a new creed to ger- 
 minate in. On naked rationalism no such plant can 
 grow ; but the world is as far from being rational as from 
 being 
 
 Being what ? 
 
 Trinitarian, if I must speak it out of course I mean 
 the living portion of the world, not the big petrified trees 
 in Asia. 
 
 But among our own variety of trees there are some 
 pretty good sized ones. 
 
 Yes, in circumference ; but that is no criterion for their 
 staying power ; a hollow oak can often boast of an im- 
 posing girth. Of course the collapse of the old shell will 
 not come off without a crash, both audible and sensible 
 to the ends of the world. It will be catastrophic, spec- 
 tacular, and exciting worth while seeing in short; and 
 that's what makes me loth to leave. It's hard to leave 
 on the very eve of a phenomenon that occurs only once 
 n two thousand years or so. 
 
 And so you think a few more years would have been 
 jufficient to 
 
 To witness it ? Yes, sir. The old shell is very hollow. 
 
APPENDIX B. 267 
 
 But infidels have battered it in vain ever so long. 
 
 For good reasons. An old creed can never be super- 
 seded by infidelity, which means indifference upon the 
 whole, but by a new creed. 
 
 It can ; but will it ? And who knows when ? 
 
 During the next thirty or forty years. The decay of 
 an old faith always coincides with the advent of a new 
 one. 
 
 What makes you think so ? 
 
 The history of religions. 
 
 Here the subject was dropped, and was never resumed. 
 What the statesman-prophet had in mind beyond some 
 great impending change in religious ideas, we can only 
 conj ecture. But the following conversation, to which this 
 prophecy gave rise, may be worth reporting. It took 
 place between one who calls himself a Rational Christian 
 and a High Churchman, and fitly represents the conflict- 
 ing thoughts that would be in many minds at the sug- 
 gestion of this subject. 
 
 Churchman. A new religion ! What would be nec- 
 essary in the case to win faith and give the new religion 
 power ? 
 
 Rationalist. To speak the truth of God and man, 
 and all human duty, more clearly than it has ever been 
 spoken, if that be possible. 
 
 C. Truth alone would not do. It must be backed by 
 authority ; and the authority must bear the seal of mira- 
 cles. No religion could make way in the world without 
 the sanction of miracles. Without them who would 
 know whether he was to accept or reject? 
 
 R. Who would know any better with them? Sup- 
 
268 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 pose miracles in any number, and ever so startling the 
 sky filled with unwonted illuminations, and choirs of sing- 
 ing angels every night, and the world set agape by won- 
 ders of healing, and even resurrections from the dead 
 every day what then? The senses are smitten with 
 strange phenomena ! That is about all. The truth is not 
 revealed in such phenomena cannot be. Look upon 
 them forever, and you would know no more of what es- 
 sential spiritual truth is truth of human duty and 
 love or of what the spiritual world is, than if you had 
 been dreaming. They are of the senses, not of the spirit. 
 They belong wholly to the sense sphere of experience, 
 and cannot lift one a line above that sphere. The at- 
 tempt to reveal spiritual truth through them would be 
 like singing songs to the deaf or painting brilliant colors 
 for the blind. The medium used does not touch the right 
 sense. 
 
 C. But a prophet might surely come, certified of 
 heaven by these wonders, which no man can do, and 
 speak to us with a tongue of flame that would compel 
 us to confess, "Never man spake like this man? " 
 
 R. Very well. But could the prophet's truth be more 
 than truth? Miracles might attract a brief attention to 
 his words that would not otherwise be accorded; but it 
 would be at the imminent danger (as seems to have been 
 the case with Jesus) that his miracles would gain the chief 
 attention, and his truth would get the go-by. As mira- 
 cles have no power to reveal truth, or make truth more 
 true, so they have none to make men love the truth. 
 That must, at last, be received and loved and done, if at 
 all, for what it is, and not for its incidents. It must be 
 seen by the soul, not by the eye of sense. It must be seen 
 
APPENDIX B. 269 
 
 by its own light, not by some poor, smoking torch of mir- 
 acle or material manifestation, as if that were a better 
 light to make it clear. The sun does not need a candle, 
 or even a lightning-flash, to make it visible. 
 
 C. But if some one should come from the spirit- world 
 and tell us from experience of its life and conditions, would 
 we not have a reliable revelation? 
 
 R. How could you know that the words of such a 
 ghost were true? 
 
 C. Why, miracles might surely attest them from God. 
 
 R. But suppose they should be satanic miracles, as the 
 Bible itself suggests they might be, and your ghost only 
 an agent of Satan? 
 
 C. Oh, the quality of the message would settle that. 
 Satan would not wprk a miracle in support of divine 
 truth. He would be undermining his own power; divided 
 against himself, pulling down his own house. He is too- 
 sharp for that. 
 
 R. The quality of the message ! So, then, after all it 
 is the truth that approves the miracle, and not the mira- 
 cle the truth ; and you must still fall back on your reason 
 to determine whether the miracle is in the interest of 
 truth or of deviltry? that "poor human reason," against, 
 trusting in which you are so often warned ! Why not, 
 then, let the truth certificate the messenger and itself 
 without the miracle, and relieve it from the burden of 
 carrying the miracle also? Why not receive the truth, 
 the only valuable thing in the case, for its own sake, and 
 let the poor miracle go its way? 
 
 C. But is not Christianity founded on miracles? Did 
 not Jesus work miracles in attestation of his divine au- 
 thority to speak as the Word of God? 
 
270 A EEASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 R. Suppose he did. He did not seem to make much 
 of his miracles as a support of his truth ; he charged it 
 as a reproach and a wickedness on his hearers that they 
 would not believe without them. But grant, for the time, 
 that he wrought them with the intent assumed, we cannot 
 see his miracles ; we cannot talk with those who witnessed 
 them. In the present state of the evidence, we cannot 
 put the truth of the reports of them beyond all doubt ; 
 they are not available to us. Do we need them ? Do the 
 words reported to us as the sayings of Jesus need them ? 
 Could they add one grain to the evidence of the truth of 
 those words? Do not his teachings shine with their own 
 light? Penetrate their simple substance, strip them of all 
 the foreign additions and false assumptions by which they 
 have been obscured, set them clear of the poor substitutes 
 of ritual and dogma which men have put in their place, 
 see just what the religion they embody is, and then say if 
 you can conceive the possibility that an angel from heav- 
 en, with ten thousand new miracles, could bring us truths 
 more certainly true or more grandly comprehensive of 
 the whole range of human duty and religious faith? Let 
 us stop here and see if we can grasp something of their 
 breadth and completeness. Look at his teachings in the 
 threefold aspect which sweeps the whole arc of human 
 life and experience man's relation and duty to God, to 
 his fellow-men, and to himself. 
 
 First, God and man. God is a Spirit, to be worshiped 
 in spirit and in truth under no limits of time or place ; 
 not on the mountain of Samaria, nor at Jerusalem ; no 
 temple needed, no altar, no priest, no sacrifice, no rite or 
 ceremony. The spirit of worship finds God at once and 
 every where on holy day or holiday, in joy or in grief, 
 
APPENDIX B. -.,' 271 
 
 at home or abroad, in temple or market, in society or in 
 solitude. The conditions are all present ; let the worship 
 be rendered. God the Spirit, and man the worshiper in 
 spirit, are related as father and child. This is the best 
 human expression of what they are to each other. Man, 
 the child, owes love, trust, and obedience ; God, the father, 
 responds with cherishing influence, tenderness, helpfulness, 
 parental love. And when the spirit of man rises to its 
 full privilege of love and trust, God the Spirit dwelleth in 
 him and he in God, blending the life of the two into a 
 unity in which the soul can truthfully say, " I and my 
 Father are one." Notice here the truth and all the con- 
 ditions of a universal religion. And can you conceive of 
 a more vital, spiritually quickening and life-giving rela- 
 tion of man to God? 
 
 Secondly, man to his fellow-men. Good will, universal 
 love these are the words of Jesus here. Let there be 
 true home-affection for every member of the family of the 
 one Father sympathy, forbearance, forgiveness, helpful- 
 ness, good for evil, love to enemies, mercy that turns away 
 from no depth of unworthiness, sparing no painful self- 
 sacrifice to lift up the fallen and bear them forward on 
 the heart of a Godlike love to a conquering strength over 
 evil, " that ye may be the children of your Father who is 
 in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
 on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the un- 
 just." In short, man is to make his idea of God's love 
 and goodness the ideal of his own conduct and spirit 
 toward his fellow-men. Can heaven send or angel bring 
 a better law or a diviner spirit than this? 
 
 Thirdly, man to himself. Let him be inwardly true to 
 his own highest thought. That is all. The anger that 
 
272 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 would kill is murder ; smother it. The lust that would 
 sin is the sin ; quench it. Let the thought be as the deed 
 ought to be. Sternly exact this of your own secret self. 
 The love of God the light by which you see, your own 
 conscience the eye that sees be the truth and purity and 
 goodness that shape themselves to your inward vision. 
 
 Now, take the measure of this threefold law of duty, 
 and then set yourself the task to devise or suggest im- 
 provement. Tell us of a better religion, if you can one 
 that gives a higher idea of God or brings man nearer to 
 Him. Tell us of a law of life that will make a better 
 kind of man. I think you will throw up the task in de- 
 spair. Criticism searches in vain for a flaw ; reason falls 
 baffled in the effort to imagine truth more certainly true, 
 or more complete as a law for conduct and spirit. We 
 laugh at the folly that asks a miracle to certify such 
 truth. It is asking a beggar to go surety for the word of 
 a king; it is asking a candle to light the path of the sun. 
 The truth stands in its own worth ; it shames the miracle 
 by its own manifest divinity. 
 
 C. Quite a sermon, with the three traditional heads 
 and application to boot ! But have you not lost sight of 
 one fact? The common people must have authority. 
 
 R. Yes, as citizens and for their civil conduct ; never 
 for their religion. 
 
 C. How ? Would you never have authority enforce 
 religious truth, not even on children? 
 
 R. Never. 
 
 C._ Why not? 
 
 R. Because when it does so it puts truth on a level 
 with error. 
 
 C. How so? 
 
APPENDIX B. 273 
 
 R. Let authority enforce the truth on belief, and men 
 will receive it; but why? Not because it is truth, but 
 because authority commands. Enforce error by author- 
 ity, and men receive it (as they have done in what innu- 
 merable instances!) and why? For the same reason as 
 before: authority compels. The same motive in either 
 case. Truth and falsehood are made equal. 
 
 C. Sharp logic ! You are good at making out that 
 white is black. 
 
 R. That is the business of authority when it enforces 
 belief. Enforce a religion, and you make a hypocrisy. 
 
 C. But how would you secure the reception of the 
 perfect truth of Christ? 
 
 R. Teach it. 
 
 C. What would be the penalty of rejecting? 
 
 R. Being without the truth. 
 
 C. Is that all? What would the rejecter care? 
 
 R. All? You remind me of the orthodox hearer who 
 came out from a liberal lecture, exclaiming, " Why, he 
 left us nothing but God to believe in ! " Nothing but 
 God! No penalty but to be without the truth! You 
 seem to think that wouldn't be much. 
 
 C. No, I do not mean that. But your fine rational- 
 istic abstractions do not touch the multitude. I do not 
 believe they ever will. You must use some reasons that 
 they can be made to feel. 
 
 R. Take as much pains to teach them what is involved 
 in being without the truth as have been taken to teach 
 them the fictions of theology, and the motives will carry 
 far more weight with them than your fictitious hell, which 
 every school-girl of respectable intelligence has learned to 
 laugh at. 
 
274 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 C. But the popular imagination must be gratified. It 
 must have its scenery of the spirit-world. Why should 
 not angels or spirits from God, who can speak from expe- 
 rience, supply the want in the words of a true revelation? 
 
 R. Well, suppose an angel from heaven to come and 
 describe that scenery, and tell the ways of that world, 
 what more would that scenery be in our thought and 
 imagination than another world of matter matter great- 
 ly attenuated, no doubt, sublimated, etherealized, phan- 
 omized; yet, after all, only matter with its phenomena 
 -appealing to the senses, so only another world of sense? 
 What more could the ways of those inhabitants be to us 
 than another society of earth, moving among themselves, 
 and communing of those interests that make up the life 
 of earth? It is the dream of many that if we could only 
 walk in the visible and audible presence of spirits from 
 the other world every day, we might rejoice in overwhelm- 
 ing revelations of truth. But are we not walking in the 
 visible and audible presence of spirits every day ? Is not 
 every one who moves at our side a spirit? And are not 
 some of these even now uttering and writing thoughts 
 and truths of the real spiritual life that are so far beyond 
 our capacity to receive, the powers of comprehension to 
 which we have grown, that we only stare in blank va- 
 cancy and wonder what they mean? What better would 
 oe a ghost, or an army of ghosts? Why should spirits 
 come to waste on us words of the third heaven when we 
 have not learned the alphabet of the first ? Jesus and 
 Paul could not speak their highest truths of the spiritual 
 life because their mole-blind hearers had no vision open to 
 admit their light. Tush ! it is time men and women had 
 outgrown such childish conceits. New miracles, ecstatic 
 
APPENDIX B. 275 
 
 prophets, angel visits, or bodiless spirits are not the want ; 
 the want is an eye to see, and an ear to hear, and a heart 
 to do the truth we have. 
 
 C. So you do not look, with Cavour, for a new re- 
 ligion? 
 
 R. I cannot conceive that God could send or man re- 
 ceive a better religion than Jesus has given. To accept 
 another would be to take up with something poorer than 
 we already have. 
 
 C. And you deny that Christianity rests on miracles? 
 
 R. Shall our religion rest upon the report of what, in 
 the nature of the case, only a few persons of one genera- 
 tion could have seen? Shall it have its vital evidence in 
 what can be to all other ages only a tradition? Infinite 
 absurdity ! No ! Real Christianity rests upon its own 
 inherent, self-evident, eternal truthfulness. It appeals to 
 " that light which lighteth every man that cometh into- 
 the world" the universal reason of man- It has its home- 
 witness in every breast. " They that do God's will know 
 of the doctrine." 
 
 C. Do you deny that Jesus wrought miracles? 
 
 R. No. Nor do I deny that many who claim to do 
 the like now work miracles. I do not pretend to know 
 all the powers hidden in heaven and earth, nor how or by 
 whom they can be commanded. Are not miracles as nu- 
 merous, as wonderful, and as well witnessed to-day as 
 ever before? What I do deny is that the universal and 
 perpetual religion of humanity does or can rest on mira- 
 cles. They are too shallow. They belong, I repeat, to 
 the world of phenomena, to the sphere of the senses. 
 They cannot reveal spiritual truth, nor make it more 
 clear, nor make men love it. When the friends of Chris- 
 
276 A REASONABLE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tianity shall see and confess this fact, and call the diverted 
 attention of men from the incidents to the essence of their 
 religion, we may hope that a world, growing in reason, 
 will listen to them. 
 
 C. But absolute truth must have its form of statement, 
 and united worship its ritual, however simple. Has Jesus 
 fixed nothing in this line for his religion. 
 
 R. The form of expression varies indefinitely, the sub- 
 stance remains the same. As to rites of worship, love, 
 the most unchangeable, never wants to go a-courting with 
 set phrase or studied attitudes. 
 
 C. You mean, then, that Christianity is left all out- 
 doors in these respects. 
 
 R. Fresh air is healthful. I have no fear that my re- 
 ligion will take cold from such exposure. Christianity is 
 in far more danger of becoming feeble and sickly from 
 the close atmosphere of the churches and creeds than 
 from dwelling under the open sky of free statement and 
 worship. 
 
 C. Truth its own authority ! No established form of 
 worship! Every one free to make his own creed and 
 choose his own ritual ! It will not do. Christianity would 
 dissolve and be lost in the immense vacuum of such lib- 
 erty. 
 
 R. Try it. Leave men free to find what they can, 
 and accept the good they find, in the words and life of. 
 Jesus, though without doubt imperfectly reported, and 
 they will discover there what will be, simply because it 
 is, the universal and perpetual religion. God and truth 
 will not change.