. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received^ NOV 21 1891 
 Accessions No.^ 9 T&.^'&?. ' Shelf No... 
 
 18 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 1. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MORAL SCIENCE ; A First Course 
 
 of Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge. Crown 8vo. Ss. 6J. 
 
 2. MODERN UTILITARIANISM; or The Systems of Paley, 
 
 Bentham, and Mill, examined and compared. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 3. MODERN PHYSICAL FATALISM, and the Doctrine of Evo- 
 
 lution, including an Examination of Mr Herbert Spencer's First Principles. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 4. THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF in connection with the 
 
 Creation and the Fall, Redemption and Judgment. Second Edition, enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo. 5^. 
 
 5. AN ESSAY ON THE RIGHT ESTIMATION OF MSS. 
 
 EVIDENCE in the Text of the New Testament. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. 
 
 6. COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. Second 
 
 Edition, revised. 8vo. us. 6d. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 7. THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 
 
 8. THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 
 
 9. HOR^E APOSTOLIC^E. 
 
 RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
 10. THE WAYS OF GOD. 
 
 11. THE TREASURES OF WISDOM. 
 
 SEELEY, JACKSON & HALLIDAY. 
 
 12. SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF CREATION. 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 13. THE SACRAMENTS, SCIENCE AND PRAYER. 
 CHRISTIAN BOOK SOCIETY. 
 
SUPERNATURAL 
 REVELATION, 
 
 OR 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MORAL 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. T. R. BIRKS, 
 
 \l 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL THEOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVBRSIT7 
 
 Honlron : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1879 
 
 [The Right of Translation is resemtd.'] 
 
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, ]\T. A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 FOR forty-two years I have had the great privilege 
 of unfolding and maintaining the great truths of the 
 word of God both by speech and writing, as a clergyman 
 of the English Church. For the future I expect to be 
 restricted chiefly to the second means alone. The obli- 
 gation to maintain and unfold Christian truth through 
 the press is thus increased ; especially since I hold the 
 office of Professor of Moral Theology and Moral Philo- 
 sophy in the University of Bacon, Newton, and Milton. 
 Attacks have been made and are still in progress on 
 Christianity and on all the foundations of our Christian 
 empire, by three allied systems of error Ultramontan- 
 ism, Agnosticism, or Secularism, and the Liberationism, 
 which would banish the name of Christ from the whole 
 world of politics. At such a time, I would earnestly 
 counsel the younger clergy, and the moral instructors 
 of the next generation, lay or clerical, to lay to heart 
 the charge of St Paul, just before his martyrdom, to 
 Timothy, his son and companion in the faith. That 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 caution applies with equal force to the varieties of 
 unbelieving thought in our days, as to the Gnosticism 
 of the first century. " O Timothy, keep that which is 
 committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain bab- 
 blings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which 
 some professing have erred concerning the faith." 
 
 What " babblings " can be more " profane and vain " 
 than those of Positivism with its " new Supreme Being;" 
 or of Agnosticism, which places an algebraical x, THE 
 UNKNOWABLE, on the throne of the universe ? What 
 can be more falsely named science than the audacious 
 conjectures which have been of late repeatedly dignified 
 with the name of scientific theories ? Such as the con- 
 stant generation of the unlike from the unlike, through 
 infinite ages of geological time, before there existed 
 a single man who could witness this prodigious inver- 
 sion of the countless experiences of all real science for 
 the last six thousand years ? 
 
 One great duty of Cambridge at this crisis, is in 
 the study of nature to abide stedfastly by the induc- 
 tive principles of the philosophy of Bacon and Newton, 
 so well carried out by many Cambridge students of 
 these later times. But this implies the further duty to 
 refrain from that unbridled license of imagination in 
 scientific subjects, which leads many to dignify plausible 
 or even unplausible conjectures with the name of science. 
 Conjectures in science have a great use, but this depends 
 on our never confounding them with proved facts. 
 
 Their magnitude to the senses of casual observers, like 
 that of the tails of comets, is sometimes in inverse propor- 
 
PREFACE. Vil 
 
 tion to their solid mass. Yet even when their solid 
 substance is small and almost evanescent, it is often 
 possible that by their means, when carefully examined, 
 weighty scientific conclusions may be attained. 
 
 A second great duty is to apply this same principle 
 of careful and inductive search to the study of the sacred 
 Scriptures. The word of God will else be overlaid 
 with ambiguities, uncertainties, and partial misconcep- 
 tions, human traditions, distortions and corruptions of 
 its genuine meaning, which not only obscure its heavenly 
 brightness, but are liable to become a great encourage- 
 ment to the assaults of open unbelief. 
 
 There is scarcely any revealed limit to the appre- 
 hension of the beauty, truth and harmony of the Holy 
 Scriptures which may be attained by those who study 
 them with prayer, humility and perseverance, not as 
 if they were isolated and accidental compositions, but 
 as one comprehensive whole. The neglect of such study 
 by too many Christians, is one great cause of the many 
 controversies by which the church has been disfigured, 
 and its peace and unity disturbed. There is a promise in 
 the word of God, not only of the increase of natural 
 knowledge in the last days, but of the increase of 
 spiritual knowledge also. In the great day of the 
 Lord, "at eventide there will be light." " Then shall 
 we know if we follow on to know the Lord.'* "The 
 path of the just is as a shining light, that shinethmore 
 and more unto the perfect day." 
 
 May the University of Cambridge, by this double 
 work, the inductive study of all nature, and the indue- 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 tive and persevering study of all Scripture, fulfil in fuller 
 and still fuller measure its true office and calling, as a 
 seminary both of sound learning and religious education. 
 The present work, while endeavouring to clear away 
 some of the mists of unbelieving philosophy, is intended, 
 if life be spared, to be followed by others, in which 
 I would attempt, in reliance on the promised help of 
 the Holy Spirit, to unfold some of the manifold har- 
 monies of truth in the sacred Scriptures, the "lively 
 oracles " of the Living God. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 February, 1879. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTORY. THE SCEPTICAL STARTING-POINT. 
 
 Series of ten attacks on revealed religion in the present century, p. 2. 
 Strife among the assailants, 5. "Supernatural Religion." Bearing of 
 the controversy on "Moral Theology," 6. Sceptical starting-point, the 
 Duty of Inquiry, 7. Is this duty unlimited ? 10. Real and fictitious 
 inquiry, n. Search preferred to truth, 12. Results in the Hamiltonian 
 philosophy, 13. Two modes of inquiry, which may be called centrifugal 
 'and centripetal, 16. Negative creed of the author, 18. By which he 
 judges the apostles, 19. The Being of a Personal God is said to be 
 a mere assumption, on the authority of Christian Divines, 20. Thesis 
 of the Book, 22. First necessary condition of the duty of inquiry, 24. 
 The author's starting-point, religious nescience, 25 ... i 26 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S STATEMENT OF THE OBJECT OF HIS WORK. 
 
 "Is Christianity a Divine revelation or not?" 27. Moral presumption 
 in its favour from the number of believers through fifteen centuries, 27. 
 The Greek and Latin Churches, and a portion of the Anglican Church, 
 have renounced the principle of free inquiry. How far does this weaken 
 their testimony ? 28. Protestant Christians affirm the duty of free 
 inquiry, 30. The claim of Free-thinkers to be the only honest seekers 
 after truth, 31. The work now examined not an unbiassed inquiry. 
 32 27-33 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PROTESTANT FAITH IN CONTRAST WITH FREE-THINKING. 
 
 Protestantism not a negation, 34. What honest inquiry implies, 
 and what it does not imply, 34. Neutrality impossible, 35. The 
 promises of Scripture to seekers after Truth, 35. The perfect truthful- 
 ness of Holy Scripture, 36 34 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 The author constructs a puzzle by combining three different statements 
 of various Divines, (i) That Miracles and Prophecy are necessary creden- 
 tials of revelation. (2) That there may be false as well as true miracles. 
 (3) That the only truths proper to a revelation are "beyond reason," 38. 
 The two first are truths affirmed by Scripture, the third an ambiguous 
 statement, 39. How far any knowledge rests on pure reason, 39. How 
 far on observation and testimony, 40. These have narrow limits both 
 of time and place, 41. The problem which reason has to solve is to 
 construct a theory that will account for the facts of human experience as a 
 whole, 41. Eight solutions which have been attempted, 42. The latest 
 conclusions of H. Spencer and Mill, 43. Does Christianity claim abso- 
 lutely to solve this problem ? Its claim is quite different. It is to supply 
 fresh facts, with full evidence, centering in a unique Person, 44. In what 
 sense the words and acts of such a Person are supernatural, 44. The 
 facts of the Gospels illustrated by the first voyage of Columbus and the 
 discovery of the New World, 45 38 48 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 REASON AND THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 
 
 Misrepresentations of the doctrines of Christianity, 49. Frustration 
 of the supposed Divine design in Creation, contrasted with the u glorious 
 invariability of Nature," 50. Scriptural account of the Divine foreknow- 
 ledge of evil, 51. Dr Mozley quoted to convey a meaning the reverse 
 of his own, 51. His statement really agrees with that of our Lord Himself 
 concerning the true Christ, and a false Antichrist, 52. Consilience of 
 superhuman power, knowledge, and goodness, 52 . . . 49 54 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PERFECTION OF NATURE, AND FOUR MOCK DEITIES OF 
 SCEPTICISM. 
 
 Conflict of sceptical speculations, 55. M. Comte and Dr Tyndall, 
 Mr Spencer and Mr Mill, 56. "Glorious perfection" of Nature con- 
 trasted with Mill's description of the cruelty of Nature, 57. What is 
 Nature in the creed of Atheism? What does Nature really include? 57. 
 Is Mill's indictment valid? 59. The Deities of Scepticism; Collective 
 Humanity, Physical Force in two forms, Evolution, 60 . . 55 62 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 MR SPENCER'S THREE THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Spencer's definition of Philosophy, 63. He admits no medium between 
 Omniscience and utter Nescience, 62. His three alternative theories of 
 the Universe : (i) Endless Involution tending to Omnipresent Death, 64. 
 (2) Endless Oscillation tending to perfect quiescence, 64. (3) A self- 
 perfecting Theory of Nature, 65. A great truth of Scripture mis- 
 construed, 68. Physical laws are never broken, moral laws can be 
 and are, 69 6370 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 NATURE WITHOUT MAN OR GOD. 
 
 Four kinds of action conceivable : (i) The action of God ; (2) The 
 action of men and other rational beings; (3) The actings of the 
 animal and vegetable creation ; (4) The actings of matter devoid of 
 life, 71. Matter has real activity, subject to three laws: (i) Universal 
 appetency ; (2) Special appetency ; (3) Ethereal repulsion, 72. Limited 
 powers of matter, defined at Creation, 73. Matter necessarily non- 
 moral, 74. Mill exacts from Nature the unnatural, 74. Admitted 
 excellence of the laws of Nature, 74. The great problem beyond 
 man's solution, 75. The utter contrast between Mill's view and that of 
 the author of "Supernatural Religion," 75 71 76 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE UNNATURAL IN CONTRAST TO THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 Six main classes of Natures. In each there may be three kinds 
 of actings : (i) Natural or normal ; (2) Unnatural ; (3) Supernatural, 
 77. The apotheosis of Death most unnatural, 78. Agnosticism un- 
 natural, 79. It necessarily tends to unnatural degradation, 80. First 
 form of the Supernatural, the prophetic, 80. The higher form involved 
 in an Incarnation, 81 . . 77 83 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 
 
 Dr Mozley's Bampton Lectures on Miracles, 84. Professor Tyndall's 
 review in the "Fortnightly," 85. The truth midway between them, 85. 
 Tyndall's strictures justly apply not to Divines, but to Positivists, 86. 
 Dr Mozley's reasoning is weakened by his admission of one main principle 
 of the Positive Philosophy, 86. Bishop Berkeley's paradox, 87. Hume's 
 extension of the reasoning to mental phenomena, 87. Mill adopts this 
 phenomenalism in his " Logic," 87, fully with regard to matter, partially 
 with regard to mind, 88. Spencer adopts the same theory, 88. Con- 
 stancy of Nature: different meanings of the term, 89. Necessary 
 character of the laws of physical science. Tyndall ascribes this doctrine 
 to Newton, who expressly denounces it, 89. The result of excluding 
 all spontaneous action of man, or of God, 90. The future cannot be 
 exactly like the past, nor wholly different from it, 92. We rely on 
 permanence, and anticipate change, 93. All unforeseen changes come 
 practically under the head of the miraculous, 23. Constancy of 
 Nature, according to the author of " Supernatural Religion," 95. Varia- 
 tion as conspicuous in Nature as its constancy, 95. Nine laws in 
 operation, 95 98. The geological reasonings of Sir C. Lyell based on 
 a confusion of two different things, 98. The course of Nature has 
 three elements ; the permanent, the periodic, the ever varying, 100 
 
 84 100 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT INVOLVED IN THE WHOLE COURSE OF 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 Meaning of three terms ; the mysterious, the unusual, the mira- 
 culous, 101. The sense of mystery weakened within the limit of the 
 usual, 101. The unusual, its use, 103. Two classes of the unusual ; 
 the calculable and the incalculable, 104. Their 'effect on the human 
 
CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 mind widely different, 105. Relation of the miraculous to the unusual 
 and unforeseen, 105. Three different modes of the miraculous : (i) 
 Modification of instincts of lower creatures ; (2) Special powers 
 imparted to individual persons ; (3) Revelation of God Himself in a 
 Person, 105 .......... 101 107 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE THREEFOLD INCONSTANCY OF TERRESTRIAL NATURE. 
 
 Three limitations of the "Constancy of Nature." (i) The law of 
 human life and the rate of increase of population, 108. (2) The con- 
 stitution of the earth's crust, in. The "causes now in operation" 
 cannot be the same as the forces in operation 10,000 or 100,000 
 years ago, in. Some of the elements which must have varied, in. 
 The known elements in the problem of the constitution of the earth's 
 crust 10,000 years ago, only a small fraction of the unknown, 112. 
 (3) The relation of our earth and system to the Sun, 113. Various 
 scientific theories, all inconsistent with the unlimited constancy of ter- 
 restrial nature, 113 108115 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF ALL NATURE TO THE BEING AND PERFECTIONS 
 
 OF GOD. 
 
 Concessions of Divines quoted by the author of " Supernatural Religion," 
 1 1 6. These concessions added together, reduce the evidence for the ex- 
 istence of God to zero, 119. The true order of the evidence, 120. (i) That 
 of the world of matter, 121. The law of gravitation, 123. (2) The world 
 of living creatures, 124. Spencer's definition of life examined, 125. A 
 living thing implies a unit, linked with an organized system, 127. Power 
 of spontaneity, 128. Inferences in regard to the great First Cause, 129. 
 (3) The moral universe: its evidence as to the nature of God, 131, 
 How is it that the witness of Nature is not discerned by many? 133 
 
 116 134 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CENTRIFUGAL AND CENTRIPETAL TENDENCIES OF MODERN 
 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 Evolution defined, 135. Demonstrable result, 136. To avoid this re- 
 sult, the atheist re-introduces theistic elements, 137. The laws of "natural 
 selection" and "survival of the fittest," 137. The tendency of science to 
 unity, 138. Attraction and appetency, 138 . . .. . 135 142 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THREE HEADLESS PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 (i) The Positivism of Comte, 143. (2) The Agnosticism of Spencer, 
 143. (3) The Nihilism of Hamilton, 144. Positivism involves two physi- 
 cal mistakes, 144. Spencer's mistaken facts, 145. Hamilton's system 
 barren as to discovery, 145. All three have darkened the study of physical 
 science, 146 143147 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 THE FOUR MAXIMS OF MODERN NATURE-WORSHIP. 
 
 The Creed of Anti-Supernaturalism, 148. God "unknowable," 148. 
 The reign of Death " irreversible," 149. Angels or spirits, non-existent, 150. 
 Nature unchangeable, 151 148 152 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE ATTEMPT TO REVIVE HUME'S ARGUMENT. 
 
 Dr Farrar's statement; the author's retort, an inversion of facts, 153. 
 Proof from "Paley's Evidences, and Appendix," 155 157. Mill's com- 
 ment on Hume's argument, 157, brings clearly to light a sophism involved 
 in it, 159. Mill's doctrine of "kinds" clearly applies to the Gospel 
 miracles, 160. The man, CHRIST JESUS, a kind apart, 160 . 153 161 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE. 
 
 (i) The law of the world of matter, 162. (2) The law of the world of 
 life, 163. (3) The law of the moral world, 163. Benthamite utilitarian- 
 ism, 163. The Divine law of altruism, 164. (4) The Supreme law of 
 duty, 165. Its two aspects, 166. Its only foundation, the knowledge 
 of God, 166 162 169 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE. 
 
 (i) The Fall of Man, 170. (2) The existence of good and evil angels, 
 171. (3) Temptation and the Tempter, 173. (4) The conflict of good 
 and evil, 174. (5) The Supremacy of Death, 176 . . . 170176 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. 
 
 Christianity not the doctrine of an abortive design, 177. The statements 
 of Scripture, 178. (i) That God is the Only-Good, 179. (2) The Only 
 Wise, 1 80. (3) The Most Just, 181. (4) The Omnipotent, 182. Mis- 
 conceptions of Omnipotence, 182. Statements of Mill, Butler, and Mozley 
 compared, 183. Real doctrine of Scripture that Omnipotence is self- 
 limited, 184. Perfection of the Divine scheme, 185. Bampton Lectures of 
 1877, 1 86. True Christian Optimism, 187 . . . . 177188 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLD'S REDEEMER. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, 189. His Wisdom as the Christ, in the 
 fulfilment of prophecy, ' 191. His Wisdom as the King. St Matthew's 
 Gospel, 193195. His Wisdom as the Lord of nature. St Mark's Gospel, 
 196. Christ, the Son of Man, St Luke's Gospel, 197. The Adversary, 198. 
 The Redeemer is stronger than he, 199 189 200 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE LAST DAYS, A SCRIPTURE 
 
 PROPHECY. 
 
 The hidden source of the wide stream of physical science, 201. Lord 
 Bacon's motto, 202. His view of his own work, 203. Bacon's " Student's 
 prayer," 204. His "Writer's prayer," 205. Bacon's definition of the 
 relation between Christian faith and genuine Science, 205 . 201 206 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN CHRISTIAN FAITH AND SCIENCE "FALSELY 
 so CALLED" IN THE LAST DAYS. 
 
 " The Gospel of the Resurrection," 207. Its Appendix on Positivism, 
 209. Positivism the creed of the last Antichrist, 209. Newton's Scho- 
 lium, 210. Likeness of Agnosticism to early Gnosticism, 211 . 207 213 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE REVELATION IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS ONE 
 HARMONIOUS WHOLE. 
 
 Rationalism; its source and effects, 214. Rationalism and Superstition, 
 215. The darkest stage of Rationalism, a revelation impossible, 216. If 
 not impossible, it might be superfluous, 218. If possible and desirable, yet it 
 may never have been given, 219. The two forms of German Rationalism; 
 naturalist, 220, mythical, 221. They contradict each other, 222. Steps 
 of the evidence to an honest inquirer, 223. Three varieties of doctrinal 
 Rationalism, 224. Parker's "absolute religion," 225. Undogmatic Ra- 
 tionalism, 227. Depreciation of the Old Testament, 229. Coleridge's 
 " Confessions," 231. The Gospels affirm the contrast between the Old and 
 New Testaments, 232. The Ceremonial details and Genealogies of the 
 Old Testament, 231. The severity of the Old Testament, 234. Real 
 harmony of both Testaments, 236. The truth on which Rationalism 
 builds, 237. Man's reason is appealed to in Scripture, 238. Historical 
 study of the New Testament is the practical antidote of unbelief, 239 
 
 214239 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 17, line 4, for centripetal read centrifugal 
 ,, 94, ,, 8, more ,, some 
 
SUPERNATURAL REVELATION, 
 
 OR 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MORAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 THE SCEPTICAL STARTING-POINT. 
 
 THE anonymous work named " Supernatural Religion" 
 has attained sudden notoriety within the last few years, 
 and flashed like a lurid meteor across the theological 
 firmament. It is a formal challenge to all believers 
 in the old and everlasting Gospel to give a reason 
 of the faith that is in them. The writer complains 
 that Dr Lightfoot and Dr Westcott have not touched 
 his main thesis and central argument, but have turned 
 aside to a secondary issue as to the Ignatian Epistles. 
 I intend, in this work, to take up the main issue alone, 
 though if life be spared I shall hope to resume, with the 
 added light of thirty years' further study, the subject 
 treated in " Horae Evangelicae," and to place in a still 
 clearer light the concurrence of external and internal 
 evidence for the truth, authenticity, and Divine authority 
 of the four Gospels. 
 
 B. f- i 
 
2 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 For thirty years I have been mainly engaged, in 
 more than twelve works, in labouring to vindicate the 
 truth and authority of the Scriptures and the Gospel 
 of Christ, against several of the persevering attacks to 
 which they have been exposed, both from open unbe- 
 lievers and halting or timorous half-believers, whose 
 groundless surrenders of the truth of God are some- 
 times more dangerous than the assaults of its open 
 opposers. The works against which I have especially 
 contended are (i) Strauss's " Life of Jesus," with its 
 mythical theory of the Gospels. (2) The assault on 
 the authenticity of the Books of Moses by Bishop 
 Colenso and the German critics whom he has followed. 
 
 (3) The " Seven Essays and Reviews," with their 
 varied attacks on the fundamentals of Christianity. 
 
 (4) The " First Principles," of Mr Herbert Spencer, 
 and the Bampton Lectures on " The Limits of Religious 
 Thought," with their common theory which makes all 
 genuine revelation strictly impossible. (5) In my " Com- 
 mentary on Isaiah," I have replied to the attack of 
 Dr Davidson and the German sceptical critics on the 
 authenticity of that Book. 
 
 The present century, following close on the short- 
 lived infidel outbreak of the French Revolution, has been 
 marked through its whole course by a series of earnest 
 attacks on revealed religion, and the very foundations 
 of morality and religious faith, by a series of writers 
 of reputation and ability. Besides an immense mass 
 of loose and popular writing in the cause of scepticism, 
 there have been many leading schools of unbelieving 
 thought, each with a multitude of attached and credulous 
 followers, but distinct from, and even opposed to each 
 other, agreeing in little else than a rejection of the 
 Bible, and the Gospel of Christ, and faith in the God 
 of the Bible, whom some of them style " the wrathful 
 
THE SCEPTICAL STARTING-POINT. 3 
 
 Jehovah of the Old Testament." An exhaustive list 
 would be impossible, for the varied forms of unbelief, 
 like the heads of a Hydra, are intertwined with each 
 other, and agree in little else than a common antipathy 
 to the truth of God's Word. The following are some 
 of the chief divisions of the embattled array, (i) The 
 destructive criticism of Germany, aimed against the 
 authenticity and truth of the Old Testament Scriptures, 
 beginning with Strauss's " Life of Jesus," and the work 
 of Renan, followed in our country by the writings 
 of Bishop Colenso, and a multitude of similar works. 
 (2) The assaults on the historical truth and authenticity 
 of the Gospels, forming the mythical School of modern 
 German criticism. (3) The Positive Philosophy of 
 M. Comte, with its double rejection of Metaphysics 
 and Theology, as superstitions of the infancy and 
 youth of mankind, and its fictitious law of human pro- 
 gress culminating in the rejection of the living God, 
 as a dream of superstition, to be replaced by a new 
 religion, and a " new Supreme Being," the worship of 
 Collective Humanity ; a kind of earnest of the last 
 manifestation of that " Man of Sin " who will " seat 
 himself in the temple of God," averring that he is God. 
 
 (4) A fourth variety of unbelief is the agnostic philo- 
 sophy of Mr Spencer, summed up in this one statement; 
 that Pantheism, Atheism and Theism meaning by the 
 last faith in a personal God are three equally futile 
 attempts to solve the great problem of the universe, 
 with the added axiom that the unknown cause of the 
 universe is, and must ever remain, completely inscrutable. 
 
 (5) This Cimmerian creed of midnight darkness receives 
 a further supplement. Its author propounds to us a 
 new Trinity of Matter, Force, and Motion, each alike 
 indestructible. This supplement of the agnostic theory 
 is an apotheosis of solar force, embodying itself in the 
 
4 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 monstrous paradox that force and motion are inde- 
 structible, but that the sun, which is their great source, 
 is being steadily exhausted by his own activity, and his 
 diffusion of light and heat, so that all motion is con- 
 stantly tending to equilibration and rest, and the uni- 
 verse, under its new Divinity, tending steadily to the 
 reign of Omnipresent Death. (6) A sixth form of 
 unbelief is the elastic materialism of Dr Tyndall in 
 his Belfast Address, who thinks that modern science 
 binds fast all nature in the bonds of fate, and that 
 matter contains in itself the promise and potency of 
 every kind of life. (7) A seventh is what may be 
 called the negative materialism of Mr Mill, and his 
 sensational philosophy ; he denies that matter exists at 
 all, but allows us to speak of minds as if they did exist, 
 though strict philosophy would lead to the nihilism 
 which denies both mind and matter, and replaces both 
 by " permanent possibilities of sensation." (8) The 
 doctrine of Evolution, and Natural Selection, as held 
 by Mr Darwin and his disciples, which fills up by con- 
 jecture the intervals between a hundred thousand exist- 
 ing or extinct species of plants and animals by a thou- 
 sand times the number, or ten thousand thousand 
 intermediate varieties or types of being, which must 
 have existed if the theory be true, and have passed 
 utterly away without leaving a trace of their existence 
 either among the fossils or the actual flora and fauna. 
 This gigantic mass of conjecture, when supplemented 
 by the doctrine of natural selection, or survival of the 
 fittest, or by millions of millions of acts of choice where 
 there is no one to choose, and the survival of millions 
 of millions of organisms, on the ground of their superior 
 fitness to accomplish some wholly unconceived end or 
 purpose of the great scheme of the universe ; this 
 pyramid of pure conjecture, of telescopic magnitude, 
 
THE SCEPTICAL STARTING-POINT. 5 
 
 resting on a microscopic apex of ascertained and certain 
 fact, is gravely propounded even by some Divines, as 
 the latest revelation of God to man, to which all our 
 other beliefs, whether drawn from the Bible or genuine 
 science, must be made subordinate. (9) The direct 
 and simple Atheism or Monism of Professor Haeckel 
 is another variety. (10) A tenth, and perhaps least 
 remote from Christian faith, is the new Manicheism of 
 Mr Mill in his posthumous Essays; a kind of half-way 
 house in a progress from the outer darkness of utter 
 atheism to the dubious light on the verge and outskirts 
 of morality and religion. In various works I have 
 examined at length several of these main varieties of 
 sceptical thought, and shewn the great amount of error 
 and self-contradiction which they contain. I shall now 
 confine myself to two of the latest ; the anti-super- 
 naturalism of "Supernatural Religion;" and Mr Mill's 
 posthumous Essays : the parting contribution to this 
 great inquiry of one of the ablest and, as I think, 
 the most candid and truth-seeking of the leaders of 
 modern scepticism, whose early training makes regret 
 and pity almost forbid indignation even at those con- 
 clusions which are most abhorrent to the instincts of 
 Christian faith. 
 
 The danger to the faith from these many forms 
 of modern sceptical thought is somewhat lessened by 
 their internal strife and antagonism. The hosts of 
 unbelief resemble the camp of Agramant in Ariosto, 
 when discord had been sent by the archangel to hinder 
 their threatened attack on the Christian host by stirring 
 up strife among the Moorish paladins, and succeeded so 
 well that a mortal feud ensued between each separate 
 pair of the Paynim leaders, and these were followed 
 by secondary quarrels which pair should have the first 
 turn in the bloody tournament by which their strife was 
 
6 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 to be decided. There is here the same kind of conflict, 
 but one still more strange, for each school of infidel 
 philosophy includes some essential contradiction, by 
 which it is at hopeless variance with itself, and a lateral 
 feud by which it is in hopeless rivalry with each of its 
 neighbours. How refreshing it is to escape from this 
 dark and dreary chaos of human error and contradiction, 
 to the sacred confines of those true sayings of God, 
 where chaos first retires, and the ceaseless strife of 
 human error and falsehood is replaced by the dawning 
 of light from the eternal source and fountain of light. 
 
 The work I now propose to examine has a direct 
 bearing on the aim and purpose of the Knightbridge 
 Professorship. During the six years I have held that 
 office, I have published three volumes directly on Moral 
 Science, but none hitherto on Moral Theology. The 
 work in question contains a thousand pages devoted 
 to the task of proving supernatural revelation impossible 
 or incredible, and Christianity, in claiming to convey 
 a message from God to sinful men, a gigantic fraud 
 wholly unworthy the faith of rational beings. No more 
 audacious Goliath has ever stood forth to challenge and 
 defy the armies of the living God. One hundred pages 
 are occupied with an attempt to prove that the claim 
 of Christianity is to be a supernatural revelation founded 
 on miraculous evidence, and itself miraculous, but that 
 all miracles are impossible and incredible ; a hundred 
 pages more are employed in defaming the Apostles 
 and first Christians, as a set of credulous simpletons 
 steeped to the neck in Jewish prejudices, credulity and 
 childish superstition. 
 
 This accusation against the witnesses chosen before 
 by God for the transmission of His message, is supported 
 by laying to their charge all the follies and fables in 
 the rabbinical writings, and in the forgeries of the 
 
THE SCEPTICAL STARTING-POINT. 7 
 
 Apocryphal Books, wholly overlooking the charge which 
 St Paul has given against " giving heed to Jewish 
 fables." Tit. i. 13, 14. The other eight hundred pages 
 are spent in an attempt to prove that the four Gospels 
 themselves have no evidence of their existence before 
 the end of the second century, and are therefore forgeries 
 by unknown parties, which gained acceptance afterwards 
 in the church without any solid reason, as the writings 
 of two of the Apostles, and two companions of the 
 Apostles. The manner of dealing with the mass of 
 evidence, in the three first centuries, of their public 
 acceptance by all the churches of Christ as inspired 
 Scripture, is the very same by which some geologists 
 suppose that our present continents are being carted 
 away, grain by grain, by sub-aerial denudation, till they 
 may come to be buried at length in the depth of the 
 ocean ; but on this part of the subject I do not now enter. 
 The first hundred pages alone, on which the whole 
 argument rests, will afford ample materials for inquiry, 
 analysis and refutation. The writer complains that his 
 critics have dealt only with a side issue, but had he really 
 been seeking for truth, as he professes, he would have 
 found in Dr Westcott's " Gospel of the Resurrection" 
 much truth that bears directly on the main issue, and 
 a virtual reply to the greater part of his argument. 
 
 THE DUTY OF INQUIRY. 
 
 In a work where the unbelief is so deep and all- 
 pervading it is needful to pause at the outset, and dig 
 down to find if possible some first principle from which 
 our reasoning may proceed, that we may not fight in 
 utter darkness. Such a principle I find in the caustic 
 
8 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 censure of the Introduction, on the inconsistent half- 
 faith of many Christians, who strive 
 
 " with thoughtless dexterity to eliminate from Christianity every super- 
 natural element which does not quite accord with current opinion; 
 ...they ignore the fact that, in so doing, ecclesiastical Christianity 
 has been altogether abandoned." "This tendency is fostered with 
 profoundly illogical zeal by many distinguished men within the church 
 itself, who endeavour to arrest for a moment the pursuing wolves of 
 doubt and unbelief by practically throwing to them, scrap by scrap, 
 the very doctrines which constitute the claims of Christianity to be 
 regarded as a Divine revelation... They abandon some of the most 
 central doctrines of Christianity, and try to spiritualize or dilute the 
 rest into a form which does not shock their reason ; yet they cling to 
 the delusion that they still retain the consolation and hope of truths 
 which, if not divinely revealed, are mere speculation regarding matters 
 beyond reason. They have in fact as little warrant to abandon the 
 one part as they have to retain the other ; they build their house on the 
 sand, and the waves which have already carried away so much may any 
 day engulph the rest." S. R. Introduction, pp. xcii. xciii. 
 
 These remarks are clear, forcible and true, like a streak 
 of morning light in contrast to the thick moral dark- 
 ness which marks the rest of the book, from its begin- 
 ning to its close. If Christianity is a message from 
 God to men, guaranteed by works of supernatural power 
 and prophecies of superhuman wisdom, it is plainly 
 foolish to concede that we are at liberty to choose out 
 scraps and fragments of the message at our own pleasure, 
 and can retain our faith in those which fall in with our 
 wishes or tastes, while we reject all the rest. This arbi- 
 trary separation into two parts of a message which 
 has been attested as a whole, exposes those who practise 
 it to the charge of irrational superstition in what they 
 retain, on evidence which the very separation would 
 prove worthless, or else of profaneness and unbelief as 
 to the parts which they reject. 
 
 The one positive principle here implied is the duty 
 
THE DUTY OF INQUIRY. 9 
 
 of adequate inquiry into the truth of any statement of 
 serious importance before believing it. 
 
 "This," the writer says, "is universally admitted in theory, but in 
 practice no duty is more universally neglected, especially in regard to 
 religion." He continues, " Neglect of examination can never advance 
 truth, as the severest scrutiny can never retard it. Belief without dis- 
 crimination can only foster ignorance and superstition. It is in this 
 conviction that the following enquiry into the reality of divine revela- 
 tion was originally undertaken, and that others should enter upon it. 
 If truth acquired do not compensate for every illusion dispelled, the 
 path is thorny indeed, but must be faithfully trodden." Pp. xci. xcviii. 
 
 Here then, amidst abysses of sceptical thought, we 
 have something like a first principle man is a moral 
 being ; he has duties and obligations he is bound to 
 fulfil : one of these is to search after truth ; another im- 
 plied duty is to reject all detected falsehood. There is a 
 person whom the writer calls "the great teacher," and 
 who calls himself " The Truth." Now the aim of the 
 work, pursued through a thousarid pages, is to prove that 
 this " great teacher " ought rather to be styled by the 
 opposite name, which He applies to the great source of all 
 evil, " the father of lies ; " inasmuch as by false claims to 
 a nature He did not possess, and to a commission He had 
 not received, He has been really the parent and author 
 of the most extensive and prevalent fraud on the cre- 
 dulity of mankind, which has ever been practised since 
 the beginning of time, when we take into account the 
 number of those who have been thus deceived, and their 
 intellectual eminence ; so that the history of mankind 
 for 1800 years will have been turned into a gigantic 
 mass of credulity, deception and falsehood. Thus the 
 duty of inquiry after truth in the abstract is made 
 the starting-point for the most extensive and thorough- 
 going rejection of concrete truth, and the most complete 
 reversal, in reality, of the duty which is professedly the 
 
10 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 mainspring of the whole inquiry, which it is possible to 
 conceive. Let us examine this first principle a little 
 more closely. Is this duty of inquiry one without any 
 limit ? The duty of seeking for unknown truth must 
 imply the prior duty of holding fast some truth already 
 known ; but the duty of searching for unknown truth 
 and holding fast known truth both involve the same 
 condition, a power to discriminate between truth and 
 falsehood ; both in the case of known and unknown truth, 
 the duty to hold fast and to acquire implies two things, 
 a faculty of discernment by which we may distinguish 
 truth from falsehood, and a capacity of growth, by 
 which we may enlarge the sphere of our knowledge, 
 and contract the range of our ignorance. Thus, the 
 first principle, when developed, implies three great 
 germinant principles (i)That man is a moral creature, 
 subject to a law of duty, and bound to use aright the 
 faculties of discernment and investigation that God has 
 given. (2) That he is a knowing or intelligent creature, 
 who is capable of discriminating truth from falsehood. 
 (3) That he is a creature capable of indefinite progress, 
 of adding to his treasury of known truth, and of 
 detecting falsehood and separating it as dross from the 
 truth with which it had been mingled. What are the 
 conditions then under which the duty of inquiring after 
 truth in religion can alone take effect ? The truths to 
 be inquired into are the existence, the character and 
 attributes of the first Great Cause, the vast scheme of 
 universal Providence, and our own place in connection 
 with it, whether of hope of good to come, or fear of 
 future evil, or of duties and obligations towards God, 
 our fellow-men and ourselves. 
 
 There can be no duty in the case of one who is blind 
 to attempt to trace out all the mazy pathways and 
 jungles of that infinite forest the universe. The duty 
 
THE DUTY OF INQUIRY. II 
 
 of inquiry can belong only to a moral being who has 
 not put out the eyes of his own soul, or had them 
 blinded by sensuality and vice, who has some firm 
 standing for his feet upon clear and definite truth, 
 and something like a pathway open before him in which 
 progress is possible. These conditions are all expressly 
 taught us by " the great Teacher" who is the Truth. " The 
 light of the body is the eye : if thine eye be single, thy 
 whole body shall be full of light." " While ye have 
 light, walk in the light, that ye may be children of 
 light." " He that walketh in darkness knoweth not 
 whither he goeth." 
 
 REAL AND FICTITIOUS INQUIRY AFTER TRUTH. 
 
 The duty of inquiry or search after religious truth, 
 or truth of any kind, is one of three connected duties 
 which cannot be sundered from each other. (i) The 
 first is the duty to retain and hold fast truth already 
 known. (2) The second is to discriminate that truth 
 from adherent falsehood, to reject all that is false and 
 untrue, as well as to retain the true. (3) The third 
 is to seek for the knowledge of truths before unknown. 
 The first is the protection against indefinite instability 
 and change, in which the master passion is the love of 
 novelty and not the love of truth ; the second is the 
 protection against indefinite credulity, building up a 
 heterogeneous compound of truth and falsehood ; the 
 third is the antidote to moral and intellectual stagnation. 
 Wherever there is life there must be growth ; the only 
 condition under which truth which we have, can be 
 retained as a real possession, is that of seeking to add 
 to it by the accession of further truth. " The well- 
 spring of wisdom is as a flowing brook," and he who 
 
12 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 holds partial truth without seeking to add to it, changes 
 the flowing brook into a stagnant marsh, liable to be 
 covered with a thick slime of superstitious folly, and 
 to breed by its stagnation a moral pestilence. Whately 
 says : " It makes all the difference in the world whether 
 we place truth in the first place or in the second place ;" 
 but our author, in quoting this caution, has committed 
 the very fault against which it warns us. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton has said (after Lessing), that 
 if any one offered him truth with one hand, and in- 
 quiry after truth with the other, he would prefer the 
 second. By this one remark he forfeits his claim to 
 the title of a philosopher, and proclaims himself a mere 
 philo-athlete : a lover of intellectual exercise rather than 
 a lover of truth and wisdom. It is not surprising that 
 such a starting-point should lead to no better issue than 
 St Paul has described in his last Epistle, of those who 
 are " ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge 
 of the truth," and whom Cowper has pithily described as 
 " Dropping buckets into empty wells, and growing old in 
 drawing nothing up." What are the three prominent 
 features of this famous writer, I cannot call him a philoso- 
 pher after his own confession, though he has had a large 
 school of admiring disciples ? The first is a malignant 
 attack on the moral character of the leading heroes of 
 the great Reformation, which brought upon him the keen 
 and indignant rebuke of Archdeacon Hare. The second 
 is a persistent and bitter depreciation of Cambridge 
 University, the parent and nurse of the greatest intel- 
 lectual names of modern times. The third is a like 
 depreciation of mathematical study, the only field of 
 thought where pure, certain, and demonstrable truth 
 is widely accessible to men, without the help of Divine 
 revelation, and their previous extrication, at least in 
 part, from the deflecting power of moral evil within. 
 
HAMILTONIAN PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 What have been the practical fruits of this preference 
 of the intellectual hunting-field to truth itself, of this 
 contempt for the chosen instruments of the Spirit of God 
 in the great work of extricating the church from its 
 Babylonian captivity to superstition, and of the University 
 of Bacon, Newton, Barrow, Hooker, Joseph Mede, 
 Thomas More and Cud worth ? this contempt of that 
 one field of thought where even in a world in which the 
 higher regions of truth have all been obscured and 
 clouded by the prevalence of moral evil, clear and cer- 
 tain truth has been and is still attained through succes- 
 sive generations of mankind, from Euclid onward, till 
 it has become a stately and imposing structure, the 
 basis of all concrete physical science and also an earnest 
 and pledge that truth and assured certainty are attainable 
 when sought in due order, and under the needful moral 
 conditions, in the higher fields of Ethical Science, Theo- 
 logy, and that Knowledge of the Most Holy, which is 
 the truest and highest wisdom ? What have been the 
 practical fruits of this pretentious " philosophy of the 
 unconditioned 1 ?" The only results I know of are first, a 
 principle which makes all real revelation of Himself by 
 the true God to finite creatures strictly impossible, and 
 fixes a great gulf across which no ray of real light can pass 
 between the most Holy God and the whole world of 
 His creatures; secondly, an exposition of one word in 
 the inscription on the Athenian altar, which contradicts 
 the whole passage where it occurs and the discourse of 
 St Paul himself, based upon it. A third result is a tissue 
 of contradictions with regard to the Absolute, the Infinite 
 and the Unknowable, made up of the wildest chimeras 
 that ever passed through the brain of man. That the 
 Unknowable may be defined as a genus containing two 
 species, the Absolute and the Infinite ; that all the Know* 
 1 See " Scripture Doctrine of Creation." 
 
H SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 able lies as a mean between them ; that reason teaches 
 that one of these two extremes must exist, and leaves it 
 uncertain which, so that one of the two must be a synonym 
 for the only true God, and the other denote an impossible 
 mental fiction ; but that which of the two is a name of 
 a worthless and impossible fiction, and which a synonym 
 of the God of glory, the great and eternal Jehovah, must 
 remain for ever unknown. A fourth and last result, 
 is the logical invention of the quantification of the 
 predicate. The author's contempt for mathematics has 
 here avenged itself by leading him to corrupt his own 
 favourite science, with a strange addition, which would 
 put every process of reasoning into masquerade, en- 
 cumbering every statement of known truth with an 
 added alternative of something wholly unknown. The 
 real process of reasoning is thus confused and obscured. 
 Thus, if I say 'All philosophers are wise' this known 
 truth has for its shadowy attendant this alternative, either 
 ' Philosophers are the only wise beings ' or, ' There are 
 some other wise beings besides them.' Or again, the 
 truth ' All men are mortal ' has the attendant shadow, 
 either, ' Men are the only mortal existences/ or, ' There 
 are some other mortal things besides.' The " quantifi- 
 cation of the predicate " requires us, in all our reasoning, 
 to cut the living child in two, and suspend the two 
 halves on the horns of this dilemma. A more retrogade 
 step from clear reasoning into confusion and mental 
 darkness, was never taken than in Sir W. Hamilton's 
 pseudo-mathematical improvement on the Logic of 
 Aristotle. While such have been the negative results 
 of Sir W. Hamilton's preference of intellectual gym- 
 nastics to truth itself, what fruits have accrued from 
 the study he loads with contempt in the University 
 which he has followed with persistent calumny ? It 
 has extended the boundaries of the Solar system nearly 
 
HAMILTONIAN PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 to twice its former range, by the conjoint labours of 
 two of its Professors, one in the way of direct obser- 
 vation, and the other of mathematical reasoning and 
 analysis : the triumph is shared indeed with Berlin and 
 Paris, two other great centres of mathematical study and 
 experimental science. It has solved, by another mathe- 
 matician, the mysterious problem of the rings of Saturn, 
 near the former verge of the system. It has provided 
 at the head of our national Observatory, one who by 
 his double skill as an analyst and a practical observer, 
 has kept our country in the van of modern progress 
 in physical science, and to whom has been committed, 
 by European consent, the treatment of the latest transit 
 observations, to obtain from them the most probable esti- 
 mates of the actual magnitudes and distances of the Sun 
 and all the constituents of the Solar system. It has 
 popularized by him the results of the mathematical 
 reasoning of another eminent French analyst, and by 
 one of its own Professors has added to them fresh dis- 
 coveries, thus perfecting our knowledge of that agent 
 which forms the first step in the Divine record of 
 creation, and which is now becoming an instrument of 
 unexpected discoveries with regard to the motions, 
 the changes, and chemical constituents of the most distant 
 stars and of the mighty Sun himself. Such opposite 
 results naturally follow from the two opposite principles: 
 the love and pursuit of truth itself, and a professed 
 preference for mere intellectual gladiatorship. In that 
 arena the swordsman of to-day often falls by his own 
 weapon, and oftener still is the Retiarius of the morrow, 
 and falls at last ignominiously entangled in the meshes 
 of his own or his rival's metaphysical abstractions. In 
 the present case, the misfortune is that the Scotch 
 gladiator has found disciples among English divines, 
 who have striven to fling the net of these abstractions 
 
1 6 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 over the whole range of Christian theology. Sir W. 
 Hamilton, though himself personally a Christian believer, 
 has thus, through his English disciple, provided a logical 
 pedestal for the most comprehensive and audacious 
 system of antichristian speculation which our age has 
 witnessed. 
 
 Inquiry after truth has two different forms, which 
 bear a close analogy to the Newtonian doctrine of cen- 
 tral forces, and the exploded Cartesian theory of vortices 
 or celestial whirlpools. The first of these explains the 
 planetary motions by central forces tending towards the 
 Sun, and the other by centrifugal forces in imaginary 
 revolving whirlpools of unformed matter, tending to carry 
 planets outward to the farthest verge of the system ; 
 so, when with a small stock of known truth we begin 
 an inquiry after all that is unknown, there are two 
 opposite ways in which that inquiry may be carried on. 
 The first is to begin with what we know, the certainties 
 already attained; to dwell upon them in thought till 
 their light becomes clearer and more distinct ; to deve- 
 lope their internal relations from the centre outward till 
 at the further edge they may begin to win a little on the 
 surrounding darkness, and the " sacred influence of light 
 shoots into the bosom of dim night a glimmering dawn." 
 For light is like life and has a generative power, " that 
 which maketh manifest is light." Partial truth carefully 
 and reverently studied tends, however slowly, to enlarge 
 its own domain. The kingdom of light and knowledge 
 is like that of a civilized empire, which, surrounded 
 by the kingdom of darkness, like a host of barbarous 
 and ever-conflicting tribes, by its unity and compacted 
 strength tends, even without any sinful ambition, to en- 
 large its own borders and annex some outlying districts 
 to its domain. There is an opposite course which may 
 
NEWTONIAN AND CARTESIAN SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 17 
 
 be pursued under the deceptive title of inquiry into reli- 
 gious truth. It is that which neglects the modicum of 
 moral and religious truth already known, because it is 
 so small, and plunges itself at once with a centripetal 
 instinct into the vast and shoreless regions of the un- 
 known. Such is the course pursued by the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion." His knowledge at the outset, 
 the definite truth firmly and clearly held, is so small as 
 to approach to utter nescience. The few grains of truth 
 which he admits are nowhere plainly stated, but have 
 to be culled out with care from indirect and accidental 
 admissions. On the other hand, he launches at once 
 into the deepest abysses and mysteries of God's Provi- 
 dence, and of the statements of Scripture, and the super- 
 structures of theological systems, and the whole range 
 of Talmudical literature, the apocryphal forgeries of the 
 first and second centuries, arid the patristic literature of 
 the three first centuries. A slighter skiff and more 
 feebly manned never undertook to cross the Atlantic 
 Ocean : it is no wonder that the result should be an 
 entire shipwreck of what little faith he ever possessed. 
 But the effect is more mournful still, a deliberate and 
 prolonged effort to extinguish God's own lighthouse, 
 the one Pharos lighted by Him who is " the dayspring 
 from on high... to give light to those who are sitting 
 in darkness," to the myriads of voyagers across the 
 dark and troublous waves of this mortal life, and to 
 guide their steps to a haven of peace and light. The 
 guilt of one single murder, which shortens the span 
 of one little life, seems trivial compared with the guilt 
 of this prolonged effort, under the pretext of fulfilling 
 the duty of religious inquiry, to reverse and annul the 
 greatest gift of Divine goodness to a dark and sin- 
 disordered world ; and, after the true Light has dawned, 
 to shut up the present and all future generations of man- 
 is. 2 
 
I 8 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 kind in Stygian darkness for evermore. Before any 
 statement of what little truth he does hold or believe, 
 he plunges at once into an attempted summary of the 
 contents of the Bible and of the Christian faith, made 
 up by selecting those elements which he thinks the most 
 unreasonable and incredible, and completing them with 
 gross misrepresentations of his own, and proceeds to 
 build up a kind of panoply of darkness from the in- 
 accurate statements or the conflicting views with regard 
 to the truths of revelation, and the evidence upon which 
 it rests, of a dozen divines of four or five diverging 
 types of thought or schools of theology. It is not sur- 
 prising, in such a mode of inquiry, that instead of light 
 winning upon the darkness, moral and intellectual con- 
 fusion win upon the scanty modicum of known or recog- 
 nized truth with which the voyage of discovery began. 
 To call such a process a fulfilment of the duty of 
 adequate inquiry into the truth of supernatural religion 
 is to confound opposites. It is rather like what I have 
 called elsewhere " a dip into chaos in order to guess 
 out the nature of the coming world." 
 
 There are three elements which seem to make up the 
 modicum of faith or unbelief with which the anonymous 
 author sets out on his inquiry. He combines the fea- 
 tures of the ancient Jewish Sadducee and the modern 
 Gentile agnostic or negative atheist. To these two 
 first principles of his negative creed he adds a third, 
 the predicted doctrine of the scoffers of the last times, 
 the unalterable and necessary constancy of the laws or 
 forces of Nature, as incapable of any interruption from 
 any source whatever. He does not believe in angel, 
 demon or spirit of any kind, or in a resurrection, or a 
 life to come, or in a Personal God, or in anything but 
 
REAL AND FICTITIOUS SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 19 
 
 the unalterable continuance of things seen and temporal, 
 the world as limited by the experience of men between 
 the cradle and the grave for the last 2000 years ; the 
 Non-existence of God and the Omnipotence of Death. 
 With such a starting-point he can hardly be left in 
 deeper darkness at the end of his crusade against Chris- 
 tianity than he was in at its commencement. His creed 
 as a Sadducee may be seen in the 150 pages, chh. 
 in. vi., which he devotes to the task of defaming the 
 Apostles and the first Christians as wholly incompetent 
 witnesses to the leading facts of the Gospel history. 
 His proof of this incompetence of the Apostles as wit- 
 nesses is, in one word, that they were not Sadducees, 
 and did believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in 
 the existence of angels and demons. He ascribes to 
 them, on this negative ground, all the superstitions which 
 he can find in the Book of Tobit, the Book of Enoch, 
 and the Jewish Talmud and Targums, and completes 
 the list with various theories with regard to the stars, 
 demons, and magic, to be found in the writings of the 
 Fathers. The Apostles and first disciples are credited 
 at once, because they were not Sadducees, with the 
 whole farrago of Jewish fables and superstitions in these 
 apocryphal books or Targums. On this sole ground, 
 that the Apostles were not Sadducees, and did believe 
 that the resurrection of the dead was possible by the 
 power of God, he sets them down as witnesses wholly 
 incompetent to report whether they had seen, and con- 
 versed and eaten and drunk with the Lord forty days 
 after His crucifixion. Because they had more faith in 
 the express words of the Lord of glory, and in their own 
 experience when they returned from their first mission, 
 " Lord, even the spirits are subject unto us through Thy 
 name," than in the creed of the ancient or modern Sad- 
 ducee, we are told there is every reason for 
 
 2 2 
 
2O SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 " Concluding with certainty that their ignorance of natural laws, 
 their proneness to superstition, their love of the marvellous, and their 
 extreme religious excitement " would make them utterly untrustworthy, 
 "and peculiarly liable to incorrectness in their observation of phe- 
 nomena, and to error in the inferences drawn from them." P. 92. 
 
 He quotes from Dean Milman and the elder Lightfoot 
 to prove that " the nation of the Jews were given to 
 magical arts beyond measure, and to an easiness of 
 believing all manner of delusions, and that it is dispu- 
 table whether the nation were more mad with super- 
 stition in matters of religion, or with superstition in 
 curious arts." The whole mass of opinions in the 
 Talmud, in later Christian forgeries like the Book of 
 Enoch, and the writings of the early Fathers, the fable 
 of the Phoenix, and the remarks of Lactantius on the 
 Antipodes, are shoaled together to convict the Apostles 
 and first disciples of gross superstition and extreme 
 credulity, though there is no proof or sign whatever of 
 their sharing in those superstitious follies, and they have 
 even given us an express warning against them. The 
 author, while he charges the whole Christian Church and 
 Christ Himself, his own future Judge, with gross supersti- 
 tion, because of their belief in angels, spirits and demons, 
 seems not aware that in that very act he convicts -him- 
 self of the worst extreme of presumption. His little 
 knowledge, being limited to the experience of a few 
 hundred years on the surface of one little planet, he 
 dogmatizes with regard to the whole range of the 
 universe as if he were omniscient, and treats what lies 
 beyond the petty range of his own experience as if it 
 were "non-existent, and as if to believe anything on the 
 very highest authority, beyond that limit, were gross and 
 culpable credulity. 
 
 The writer's spiritual parentage is not that of the 
 old Jewish Sadducee alone, but of a modern Gentile 
 
REAL AND FICTITIOUS SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 21 
 
 Agnostic. He borrows from modern Christian divines 
 these maxims that the Being of God as a personal 
 conscious Agent is a pure assumption without any evi- 
 dence, and that nature bears no witness to the exist- 
 ence of an Omnipotent Supreme Being, and thus that 
 the whole evidence of revelation is a vicious circle left 
 suspended in space, revelation resting on miracles, and 
 miracles resting on revelation. For this view he quotes 
 Dr Mozley's Bampton Lectures. He says that Butler, 
 Paley and all other Divines have equally been obliged 
 to commence with the same assumption. He praises 
 the candour of Dr Mozley, for honestly admitting the 
 difficulty of the case. He adds that the 
 
 "Conception of the Deity proposed by theologians must be pro- 
 nounced irrational and derogatory to the wisdom and perfections which 
 we recognize in the invariable course of nature." 
 
 He adopts the doctrine from Dean Mansel and Sir W. 
 Hamilton that 
 
 "The class of phenomena which requires that kind of cause we 
 denominate a Deity is exclusively given in the phenomena of mind, 
 and that the phenomena of matter taken by themselves do not warrant 
 any inference as to the existence of a God." 
 
 He adds from Spinoza that 
 
 " Miracles, as contrary to the order of nature, should rather lead us 
 to doubt the existence of God." 
 
 His final conclusion is that 
 
 " Both the supernatural religion and its supernatural evidence labour 
 in common under the fatal disability of being antecedently incredible." 
 
 He borrows further from Dr Irons the rule that 
 
 "We are not bound to believe in any miracle related in the Old 
 Testament which has not been confirmed by the direct reference to 
 it of Jesus. The doctor abandons altogether the popular theory that 
 the Bible and the doctrines supposed to be derived from it can be 
 established by literary evidence; thus cutting away all solid ground, 
 he attempts to stand upon nothing in the shape of the vague feeling 
 
22 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 that the records are supernatural." "His admissions," the writer 
 continues, "as to the insufficiency of the evidence are creditable to 
 his honesty as a scholar, but his conclusion is simply lame and im- 
 potent ! " " This he denies to be an admission to which he is reluc- 
 tantly driven, and explains it as a vindication of the only possible 
 grounds on which revelation can rest." Pp. 65, 66. The writer adds 
 the comment, "After shewing revelation to be wholly unsupported 
 by anything worthy of the name of evidence, he affirms the religion 
 and the book to be supernatural because he feels they are so. No 
 one who does not feel as he does receives much help from the theory 
 of Dr Irons." 
 
 With such lamentable surrenders of the cause of Christ, 
 the Gospel, and the Bible, on the part of their professed 
 champions and defenders, can it be surprising that in- 
 fidelity should advance with rapid and gigantic strides ? 
 This Agnostic theory, borrowed from the Hamiltonian 
 metaphysics, then taken up by Dean Mansel, and trans- 
 ferred from both to the pages of Herbert Spencer, to 
 form an adequate logical basis for a massive pyramid 
 of utter unbelief, is then made the ground of a system 
 of thought the most antithetic to the whole range of 
 religion, natural and revealed, which has ever appeared. 
 And accepted in patches, and shreds, even by many who 
 have shrunk from the doctrine of utter darkness to 
 which it logically tends, it has spread like a thick and 
 blighting fog over the whole range of Christian theology. 
 The thesis of " Supernatural Religion" as a whole may 
 be summed up in these four propositions, (i) That Christ- 
 ianity as a supernatural revelation consists of a series of 
 doctrines which are antecedently incredible, and contrary 
 to reason. He gives a summary of them in four pages to 
 prove this indictment. (2) That the miracles or super- 
 natural facts by which it is alleged to be proved are them- 
 selves unreal and impossible, and of such antecedent in- 
 credibility as hardly any conceivable amount of evidence 
 could overcome. (3) That the Apostles and the first 
 
REAL AND FICTITIOUS SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 23 
 
 Christians are among the most incompetent of witnesses, 
 as belonging to an age and nation peculiarly credulous, 
 ignorant of natural laws and steeped in the grossest 
 superstition. (4) That in the New Testament we have 
 not even the testimony of these incompetent witnesses ; 
 that the Gospels are unauthentic memoirs, of the exist- 
 ence of which before the close of the second century 
 there is no evidence whatever; so that they are probably 
 forgeries of about that date by unknown parties, who 
 contrived to foist them off and get them accepted by the 
 whole Church as the writings of four eye-witnesses, two 
 of them Apostles, and the two others companions of 
 the Apostles. The 900 pages, in which these latter 
 propositions are unfolded, would require a lifetime, to 
 analyse, dissect and refute the multifarious mass of error 
 and misrepresentation of which they consist. In the 
 " Horae Evangelicae " I have discussed the same subject. 
 If life be spared I shall hope to discuss it more fully, 
 and to vindicate afresh the authenticity, the consistency, 
 the historical reality, the internal harmonies, the cumu- 
 lative evidences of truth and wisdom, and the divine 
 authority of the four Gospels. In the present work I 
 can deal only with the hundred pages of the Book which 
 unfold the two first propositions. I have already refuted 
 by anticipation all the main elements of the writer's 
 argument in more than a hundred pages of discussion of 
 the same subject in the " Bible and Modern Thought," 
 and in a supplement to " Paley's Evidences." But the 
 forms and the combinations under which falsehood may 
 be presented are endless, and whatever there is of novelty 
 in the writer's reasoning is due chiefly, to the confusion 
 of thought or baseless concessions of Christian Divines, 
 whose words he presses into the service of his own 
 sceptical argument. 
 
 The first condition for the genuine fulfilment of the 
 
24 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 duty of inquiry into religious truth is to hold fast all 
 truth already known and received. But the present 
 writer seems precluded from satisfying this condition of 
 the duty he recognizes, by the fact that he does not 
 seem at the outset to accept any religious or moral truth 
 whatever. His first principles are thus described by 
 Him whom he styles "the great Teacher," or the 
 Apostles whom He commissioned to proclaim His mes- 
 sage to the world. The first is the doctrine of the 
 Sadducees, "who say that there is no resurrection, 
 neither angel nor spirit;'' on which Christ gives the 
 brief comment, " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, 
 nor the power of God." The next is the Agnostic creed, 
 that the existence of God is a mere assumption, resting 
 on no evidence whatever. This is briefly described by 
 the Psalmist, " The fool hath said in his heart, There is 
 no God ; the Lord looked down from heaven to see if 
 there were any that did understand and seek God,"... 
 
 " Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge they 
 
 call not upon the Lord." The same appeal is repeated 
 in another form, " Understand, ye brutish among the 
 people ; ye fools, when will ye be wise ? He that planted 
 the ear, shall He not hear ; He that formed the eye, shall 
 He not see ? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall 
 not He know ?" Ps. xciv. The great Apostle of the 
 Gentiles teaches the same truth in a more direct and 
 dogmatic form. " The wrath of God is revealed from 
 heaven against the ungodliness of men who hold down 
 (or stifle) the truth in unrighteousness : for the invisible 
 things of God," he says, " from the creation of the world 
 are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 
 made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they 
 are without excuse." He goes on to denounce the gross 
 folly as well as the guilt of their unbelief. "When they 
 knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were 
 
REAL AND FICTITIOUS SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 25 
 
 thankful ; but became vain in their imaginations and 
 their foolish heart was darkened." He then states the 
 solemn judgment that ensued on their folly. " Even as 
 they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God 
 gave them over to an undiscerning mind." The same 
 Apostle, as God's ambassador, gives further this solemn 
 prophecy, that the Lord Jesus will hereafter "be revealed 
 from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire tak- 
 ing vengeance upon them that know not God." Such is 
 the real character, and the predicted issue of two of the 
 main principles of unbelief with which the writer begins 
 his inquiry. His third main principle, the unalterable 
 constancy of the course of physical change deduced from 
 experience, free from all intervention of a Supreme Law- 
 giver, has also been the subject of an express prediction 
 by another Apostle. " Knowing this first, that there shall 
 
 come in the last days scoffers saying, Where is the 
 
 promise of His coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep 
 all things continue as they were from the beginning of 
 the creation." " This they willingly are ignorant of, 
 
 that by the word of God the heavens were of old 
 
 but the heavens and the earth which are now, by the 
 same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against 
 a day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." He 
 then cautions the Church long beforehand, " Beloved, 
 beware lest ye also, being led away by the delusion of 
 the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness ; " and his 
 further charge is a full antithesis to the Agnostic theory, 
 " Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ." 
 
 The old maxim of philosophy, "Ex nihilo nihil 
 
 fit" finds a fresh illustration in the present work. The 
 
 starting-point being an absolute blank, a state of utter 
 
 religious nescience, there seems no nucleus of truth to 
 
 which accessions may be made, by accretions, as in all 
 
26 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 inquiry after truth which is real and genuine. The 
 long inquiry of a thousand pages begins with bare nega- 
 tions, and ends exactly where it began. The whole 
 is a dreary waste of darkness and confusion. The 
 only ray of light I can detect in the work from first to 
 last is the implied admission at the outset that man is a 
 moral being, and lies under a moral obligation to search 
 after truth not yet attained, implying of course the two 
 closely related duties, to hold fast and walk in the light 
 of truth already known, and to reject and put away all 
 falsehood either already accepted, or that solicits his ac- 
 ceptance in the course of that inquiry. But this first 
 implied truth remains like an unsprung seed, without 
 any attempt to trace out its related truths or ulterior 
 consequences. Thus at page 41 he says, that he will 
 pass over Dr Mozley's reference to the laws of moral 
 being as " involving questions too intricate for treatment 
 and alien from the argument." Had the author held 
 fast this one truth, he would have been kept from the 
 contemptuous disparagement of the statements he after- 
 wards quotes from Archbishop Trench, Professor Mozley, 
 and Dr Heurtley, as to the moral world higher than the 
 physical, and a region of moral laws higher than physical 
 sequence and uniformity, which lies at the basis of the 
 whole inquiry ; but neglecting to unfold and develope 
 the little morsel of truth he does recognize, and clinging 
 with passive credulity to the giant falsehoods with which 
 he starts, he wanders on through a thousand pages of 
 almost unmitigated darkness and delusion. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S STATEMENT OF THE OBJECT 
 OF HIS WORK. 
 
 " There can be no more urgent problem for humanity to solve than 
 the question : Is Christianity a supernatural Divine Revelation or not ? 
 To this we may demand a clear and decisive answer. The evidence 
 must be of no uncertain character which can warrant our abandoning 
 the guidance of Reason, and blindly accepting doctrines which, if not 
 supernatural truths, must be rejected by the human intellect as mon- 
 strous delusions. We propose in this work to seek a conclusive answer 
 to this momentous question."... "To no earnest mind can such inquiry 
 be otherwise than a serious and often a painful task, but, dismissing 
 preconceived ideas and preferences derived from habit and education, 
 and seeking only the Truth, and holding it, whatever it may be, to be 
 the only object worthy of desire, or capable of satisfying a rational mind, 
 the quest cannot but end in peace and satisfaction... the path is thorny 
 indeed, although it must still be faithfully trodden." Pp. xci xcviii. 
 
 THE Author in commencing his work of a thousand 
 pages, of which the object is to prove Christianity a mere 
 illusion, opposed to reason and devoid of all evidence, 
 has to meet at the outset a very grave objection. The 
 faith which he so describes is held at the present day by 
 about two hundred millions of men, including the most 
 civilized, developed, and powerful nations. One hundred 
 millions at least, including the foremost empire of the 
 world, have held the same faith, in one form or other, 
 throughout fifteen centuries of past time. The moral pre- 
 sumption that all these have not accepted a very unrea- 
 sonable creed without any evidence worthy of the name, 
 is plainly extreme. The author endeavours to remove 
 this insuperable prejudice against his conclusions by the 
 
28 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 assumption that all these accepted it without thought, 
 inquiry, or serious reflection, under the bias of their 
 birth and education alone. It is certainly true of a 
 very large proportion, that their faith has been accepted 
 as a whole, without any separate inquiry into the 
 reasonableness of each part, or the evidence upon which 
 that particular part reposes. Let us consider the question 
 more in detail. Three-fourths of the whole number 
 belong to the Greek or the Latin Churches, or main 
 sects separated from them, or those members of the 
 Anglican Church who have renounced the name of 
 Protestants. Now all of these have formally renounced 
 the principle of free inquiry, or the exercise of private 
 judgment on each part of the faith, and have replaced 
 it by that of deference to Church authority. They differ 
 only as to the particular authority to which this deference 
 is due. Their testimony then, however large the amount 
 of it, has little weight to confirm particular doctrines or 
 fragments of the faith, which they have only received 
 in gross along with the rest. But it by no means follows 
 that their authority has no moral weight whatever. 
 The case may be compared to that of miners in the 
 gold field, when they lay aside certain nuggets among 
 their stores, because they are convinced from their 
 appearance they contain so much gold that they will 
 more than repay the toil of a later analysis. When 
 the sceptic dilates on what he thinks the unreasonable- 
 ness and lack of evidence of many parts of the Christian 
 religion, and thinks that if tried by pure reason alone, 
 they must be held to be monstrous delusions, he does 
 not observe that in proportion as he darkens the colours 
 of his indictment, he increases the force of the moral 
 presumption in favour of those main truths and elements 
 of the faith, the importance of which, and the evidence 
 with which they commend themselves both to the 
 
THE OBJECT OF THE WORK. 2Q 
 
 reason and the conscience, have made hundreds of 
 millions, including the most intelligent of the human 
 race, through successive generations, willing to receive 
 the whole mingled mass, rather than weaken their hold 
 on those great fundamental verities. What are those 
 doctrines the importance of which, their moral attrac- 
 tiveness, or the strong presumption in favour of their 
 truth, has made this immense multitude of human beings 
 cling to Christianity as a whole, in spite of all the 
 objections or difficulties which may seem to press 
 against certain parts of the composite message ? They 
 are mainly these, (i) The existence of God, the con- 
 scious, intelligent, and benevolent Author of the Uni- 
 verse. (2) Divine Providence. That the world is not 
 the sport of chance, nor subject to blind fate, but 
 governed and guided by a powerful and good Intelli- 
 gence. (3) The beauty and excellency of the moral 
 character of Christ, and of some of the leading precepts 
 of the Gospel. (4) The doctrine of Immortality, or a 
 life after death, the happiness or unhappiness of which 
 is closely connected with the conduct of men in the 
 present life. (5) The doctrine of Divine mercy, or a 
 message of grace and forgiveness to man as guilty and 
 sinful, and proffered terms of restoration to the Divine 
 favour. (6) The doctrine of judgment to come, in which 
 God will bring every work into judgment, whether it 
 be good or evil. (7) The doctrine that the whole course 
 of Providence is so ordered that in the fulness of time 
 there will be a glorious issue worthy of the All-wise 
 God, of whom are all things, and to whom are all things. 
 The preciousness and excellence of these truths out- 
 weighing doubts, difficulties and perplexities as to other 
 elements included in the Scriptures, or in the various 
 forms of ecclesiastical Christianity, can alone account 
 for the tenacity with which the Christian faith has been 
 
30 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 held and retained by hundreds of millions of intelligent 
 men through successive generations. The more the 
 sceptic exaggerates the accessory difficulties of the 
 Creed, and depreciates the direct evidence in its favour, 
 the more does he confirm, in spite of himself, the 
 preciousness and immense importance of these central 
 truths, which have led millions on millions, even of those 
 who have neglected a minute analysis, to lay it up among 
 their choicest treasures. 
 
 There are from thirty to fifty millions of Christians 
 however, who, instead of accepting the principle of im- 
 plicit faith as a duty, and rejecting inquiry as a sin, 
 hold the very reverse. This is the nominal creed of 
 all Protestants, but probably of these there are not 
 more than one in ten whose practice corresponds with 
 their theory, and who really submit every part of 
 the faith to a serious personal inquiry. In the others, 
 either worldliness or religious indifference, or intellectual 
 torpor, or the passive acceptance of some ecclesiastical 
 creed, or current of religious thought, in the midst 
 of which they have been trained, transfers them really 
 to the large class whose faith is an implicit faith in 
 Christian doctrine as a whole, in one or other of its 
 many corporate forms, and not the result in detail, 
 of personal investigation and inquiry. The other 
 nine-tenths, in common with all the Christians of 
 the Greek and Roman churches, contribute a general 
 evidence of the preciousness and importance of those 
 great central truths of the Bible, for the sake of which 
 they are willing, at least in outward profession, to believe 
 all the rest. But there are left some millions at least 
 in every age, from Constantine until now, who hold 
 it a duty, in questions of such supreme importance, 
 to search and inquire for themselves, and to receive 
 nothing into the citadel of their understanding, which 
 
THE OBJECT OF THE WORK. 31 
 
 they do not believe in their inmost hearts to be sus- 
 tained by sufficient and reasonable evidence, whether 
 that of natural reason or of supernatural revelation. 
 Against these, we have to place the negative presump- 
 tion from some hundreds of thousands of sceptics, who 
 profess after inquiry to have discovered the emptiness 
 of the claims of Christianity to be a supernatural 
 message from God, and convince themselves that there 
 is no evidence of reason, even in favour of what are 
 called the doctrines of natural religion. The author, in 
 his Introduction, after dismissing as worthless the moral 
 presumption from the faith of hundreds of millions of 
 Christians through successive generations as simply 
 " due to preconceived ideas, and preferences derived 
 from habit and education/' and complaining of the 
 " general eclipse of faith," and blaming the uneasy 
 position of so many Christians in these days, who pro- 
 fess to retain their faith in the Gospel as a supernatural 
 message, and " still clip and prune its doctrines down 
 to the standard of human reason/' adds, 
 
 " The mass of intelligent men in England are halting between two 
 opinions, standing in what seems to us the most unsatisfactory position 
 conceivable : they abandon, in deference to the current of popular 
 opinion, some of the most central doctrines of Christianity, and try to 
 spiritualize or dilute the rest into a form which does not shock their 
 reason." 
 
 He claims for his own work, that it is the result of 
 
 " Many years of inquiry, undertaken for the regulation of personal 
 belief, and as a contribution towards the establishment of truth in the 
 minds of others who are seeking for it ... Seeking only the truth and 
 holding it, whatever it may be, as the only object worthy of desire." 
 
 The same is the frequent profession of " Free-thinkers," 
 who are accustomed to claim a thousandfold weight for 
 their own conclusions, as conducted without bias and 
 
32 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 with an honest search for truth alone. Now what are 
 the signs of this freedom from bias in the present case ? 
 The author begins his task as a Sadducee, who believes 
 neither resurrection to be possible, nor angel or spirit 
 to exist, that a Supernatural Revelation from God is 
 either impossible or incredible, and that the works of 
 Nature furnish no presumption whatever for the existence 
 of God as a personal and conscious Intelligence. To 
 these he adds the further doctrine that the course of 
 Nature, as known by the experience of the last thousand 
 years is fixed, necessary and invariable ; can never have 
 suffered a change or interruption in past time, nor suffer 
 such an interruption in the eternity to come. With 
 these doctrines he starts, and only adds to them at the 
 close, the high probability that the Apostles were 
 credulous and superstitious simpletons, wholly unworthy 
 of credit, if we were quite sure that we had the actual 
 words of their testimony ; and that the Gospels are most 
 probably forgeries of four unknown writers, about the 
 close of the second century, and therefore almost 
 wholly worthless as historical testimony to the sayings 
 and works of the Lord Jesus. Here then, there is not 
 the slightest trace of that unbiassed inquiry, " dismissing 
 preconceived ideas," the want of which the writer 
 imputes to hundreds of millions of Christian men, as 
 depriving their faith of all moral weight. The only 
 spark of truth recognized, that man is a moral being, 
 who has a duty to fulfil, remains wholly undeveloped 
 through a thousand pages, and when once forced upon his 
 notice by a quotation from Dr Mozley, he coolly passes 
 over it, as involving " questions too intricate for treat- 
 ment, and alien from the argument." The falsehoods 
 with which he sets out, remain undisturbed and un- 
 questioned from first to last : as if they were self-evident 
 and unquestionable truths. 
 
OBJECT OF THE WORK. 33 
 
 The duty of searching after unknown truth can only 
 be satisfied under two conditions ; first, to have some 
 small amount of known and certain truth from which 
 to start, and next, to proceed from this centre to 
 develope and unfold what is already known, so as to 
 reclaim some part from the outer darkness beyond. The 
 author wholly fails to satisfy both these conditions ; his 
 starting-point is a triad of untested falsehoods which 
 remain in undisturbed supremacy to the end of the work. 
 He plunges at once into the region of darkness, the wide 
 range of talmudical and patristical superstitions, and 
 the varied forgeries as well as genuine writings of the 
 three first centuries, and a chaos of the critical specula- 
 tions of the modern Sadducees of Germany. Thus, 
 professing to " seek only the truth, and hold it, as the 
 only object worthy of desire," he proceeds to answer the 
 question of Pilate, " What is truth ?" very much as Pilate 
 himself answered it, when he gave up the Lord of 
 glory, who is Himself the Truth, to be exposed to the 
 scorn and hate of the Jewish rabble on the cross, be- 
 tween two malefactors. He comes practically to the 
 conclusion that the " great Teacher" Himself, and the 
 Apostles who were His ambassadors to the world, were 
 either most culpable impostors, or amongst the most 
 blind, superstitious, credulous and unreasoning of men, 
 who never once caught a glimpse of the three doctrines 
 which are the alpha and omega of his own inquiry. 
 By calling this an unbiassed search for truth only, he 
 brings himself under that solemn sentence of the prophet, 
 " Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that 
 put darkness for light and light for darkness." 
 
 B. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PROTESTANT FAITH IN CONTRAST WITH FREE-THINKING. 
 
 THE name Protestant has been rejected by many in 
 our days on the ground that it expresses a mere nega- 
 tion. This is a great and grievous error. Protest- 
 antism is simply submission to that Divine command, 
 " Prove all things hold fast that which is good." It 
 is opposed alike to two extremes, an implicit and 
 traditional faith which rests only on Church authority, 
 which swallows blindly whatever ecclesiastical teachers 
 put into its mouth, neglecting the spirit of Christ's 
 command, " Call no man your father upon the earth, 
 neither be ye called master, for one is your master, 
 even Christ." The other extreme is that free handling 
 of religious and moral truth, of which the " Essays 
 and Reviews" were a specimen, which does not " hold 
 fast that which is good," or recognize any clear defi- 
 nite principles of truth to be first believed, and work 
 out from these to the region beyond, but counts it the 
 condition of free inquiry to have the mind like a sheet 
 of blank paper, ready to receive any inscription whatever 
 that may be traced upon it. Honest inquiry implies a 
 capacity in those by whom it is made to apprehend the 
 force of evidence, and to discriminate between truth and 
 falsehood. It does not imply a state of entire equilibrium 
 and strict indifference. Even among philosophers and 
 metaphysicians, since their speculations began, there has 
 
PROTESTANT FAITH IN CONTRAST WITH FREE-THINKING. 35 
 
 never been a case of pure, abstract, colourless indiffer- 
 ence to the truth or falsehood of Christianity ; the words 
 of Christ make no exception for philosophers or sceptics 
 any more than for Divines. "He that is not for me is 
 against me, and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth 
 abroad." Neutrality is here strictly impossible. He 
 who begins an inquiry with no bias in favour of the 
 Gospel, will certainly have a strong bias against it. 
 The first requisite of honest inquiry is to take stock of 
 our actual convictions, to sift them in turn, to hold fast 
 those which are good, and to reject those, however long 
 we may have held them, and whatever authorities we 
 may quote in their favour, which inquiry discovers to 
 have no sure evidence or firm foundation. The genuine 
 Protestant is he who acts on this principle, and obeys 
 this Divine command. The same inquiry which may 
 relax his hold on more disputable and doubtful parts 
 of his actual faith, will be sure to strengthen and 
 confirm it on those parts which are true and sound. 
 Truth shines by a light of its own, only that light is 
 obscured and clouded as soon as it is mingled with false- 
 hood. The Christian acts as a disciple of Him who is 
 the Truth, in retaining every particle of truth, moral, 
 religious, or natural, which he already holds, and in 
 rejecting detected falsehood of every kind. In this work 
 he is aided by a threefold promise, "If any man be will- 
 ing to do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine 
 whether it be true." "If thine eye be single, thy whole 
 body shall be full of light." (2) "Then shall we know 
 if we follow on to know the Lord." (3) " To him that 
 hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundance;" 
 and "he that seeketh shall find." To be able to discern 
 and retain old truth, and to add to it fresh truth, is the 
 promise of Christ to every faithful disciple, " Every 
 scribe instructed unto the kingdom of 
 
36 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 unto a householder who bringeth forth out of his treasure 
 things new and old," and the parting command of the 
 Apostle is, " Grow in grace and in the knowledge of the 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." The revealed descrip- 
 tion of the Scriptures is this, " The words of the Lord 
 are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, 
 purified seven times." "Thy word is very pure," and 
 "every one of Thy righteous judgments endureth for 
 ever." No bound is set to the growing light and 
 increasing knowledge of the Name and Character of 
 God, of the excellency of His word, and the grandeur 
 and wisdom of His counsels of Redemption and 
 Providence, which the Christian may gain by the per- 
 severing study of those Divine oracles, which are the 
 most precious gift of God the Holy Ghost to the suc- 
 cessive generations of mankind. We have no right to 
 expect indeed that all doubts and darkness shall dis- 
 appear until the coming Day-star shall arise. The light 
 shines here in a dark place, but to those who study and 
 reverently search into the Scriptures of truth, it will 
 continue to shine more and more, until at length the 
 "day shall dawn and the Day-star arise in their hearts." 
 My own experience for forty years has been, that grow- 
 ing study has more and more convinced me of the 
 perfect truthfulness of those canonical Scriptures which 
 are called in the Articles, " God's word written ;" in the 
 Ordination Service, " God's most holy word ; " which 
 many, even amongst the defenders of the faith, in the 
 present day, are making it a part of their new creed to 
 lower to the level reached by the words of all good 
 and honest men, that is, a mixture of Divine truth 
 and human falsehood, in which the first predominates. 
 But Dr Westcott's "Introduction to the Gospels" and 
 Bp Ellicott's " Lectures on the Life of Christ " and 
 Bp Wordsworth's "Commentary on the New Testament" 
 
PROTESTANT FAITH IN CONTRAST WITH FREE-THINKING. 37 
 
 are some out of many faithful testimonies which still 
 remain to the doctrine of the entire truthfulness of the 
 Gospels and the Canonical Scriptures. My own experi- 
 ence has been at every step, while unlearning some 
 secondary misinterpretations, or faulty human inferences 
 attaching themselves to, and obscuring the great truths 
 of Revelation, that fresh harmonies of truth have been 
 discovered lying either just below the surface, or deeper 
 in the mines of Scripture, for the solution of doubts and 
 difficulties which had once been perplexing. Thus year 
 by year a more harmonious apprehension of the great 
 truths and doctrines revealed, has been attained, and a 
 clearer conviction of the authenticity, and manifold his- 
 torical relations, of those lively oracles in which they are 
 revealed. The opposite experience of the author of 
 "Supernatural Religion" setting out in the deep shadows 
 of a modern sceptical philosophy, to end in a darkness 
 where even the few remaining stars seem to be blotted 
 out, impresses me with a feeling of profound pity, not 
 unmixed with indignation. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION, 
 
 THE author in his first chapter constructs an apparent 
 puzzle by combining three different statements of Christian 
 divines, with regard to the relation between reason and 
 the contents of a Divine Revelation, (i) He quotes 
 from Dr Mozley, Dean Mansel, Dr Heurtley, Paley, 
 Bp Butler, and J. H. Newman to shew that miracles 
 and prophecy are the natural and necessary credentials of 
 a Supernatural-Revelation. This truth, confirmed by the 
 testimony of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, 
 and the preaching of the Apostles, is only contravened 
 (so far as I know) by the Bampton Lecturer of 1877, 
 who strives to refute Dr Mozley's true statement on this 
 head. Again, he quotes Archbishop Trench, Dr Mozley, 
 and Dr Newman, and the express words of Scripture 
 to shew that there may be false as well as true miracles, 
 or Satanic as well as Divine; so that miraculous evidence 
 alone would not suffice to guarantee a message as really 
 Divine. He quotes several authors to establish a third 
 principle, that the proper subject of supernatural revela- 
 tion is to impart truths beyond the range of human 
 reason, which the human intellect could not otherwise 
 have discovered ; that " no one would maintain a system 
 discoverable by reason to have been supernaturally com- 
 municated." The only truths proper to such a revelation 
 are by the hypothesis "beyond our reason." Thus any 
 
REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 39 
 
 appeal to reason, or the moral sense, to confirm the divine 
 origin of a message which signs and wonders are insuffi- 
 cient to prove, he infers to be precluded and impossible ; 
 for internal evidence 
 
 " is itself an appeal to reason, but human reason cannot, in the nature 
 of the case, prove that which by the very hypothesis lies beyond human 
 reason." Therefore it follows "that no doctrine which lies beyond 
 reason, and requires the attestation of miracles, can possibly afford 
 that indication of the source and reality of miracles which is necessary 
 to endow them with evidential value." 
 
 He quotes both Newman and Mozley to shew that they 
 recognize the difficulty and do not remove it. He says 
 further, that 
 
 " to argue, as some theologians do, that the ambiguity of their testi- 
 mony is deliberately intended as a trial of our faith, is absurd, for 
 reason being unable to judge of the nature either of supernatural fact 
 or doctrine, it would be mere folly and injustice to submit to such a 
 test, being wholly incapable of sustaining it." Pp. 3 1 7. 
 
 Here, two clear and certain truths of Scripture, con- 
 firmed by a general consent of Christian divines, are 
 joined with a statement so ambiguous, as without fuller 
 explication, to involve the whole subject in hopeless 
 confusion. Let us analyze this statement, that super- 
 natural Revelation, in its own nature, is solely of truths 
 undiscoverable by reason and outside its range. In what 
 sense is our knowledge of the course of nature, and of 
 common things, due to a process of reasoning ? how far is 
 it due to the evidence of our senses, personal experience, 
 and human testimony ? Our knowledge of no one being 
 or circumstance around us is due to pure reason alone ; 
 for this would require us to know it and learn it as a 
 corollary and consequence from our own knowledge 
 a priori of the scheme of the universe. What are the 
 means by which we attain our limited knowledge of the 
 course of nature ? First, direct consciousness with regard 
 
4O SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 to our own existence, thoughts, and actions ; next, direct 
 observation with regard to the existence and actings, or 
 position and changes, of a certain number of human 
 beings, plants and animals, and material objects imme- 
 diately around us ; thirdly, the extension of this know- 
 ledge by the credible testimony of competent witnesses 
 to a larger range of men, animals, plants, and places 
 which we have never seen or visited ; fourthly, the ex- 
 tension of this from the present living generation to two 
 or three past generations, with the same varieties of 
 immediate, indirect, and more remote testimony. This 
 sixfold variety of evidence is completed, and enlarged 
 further, by written records of various kinds, by which 
 evidence of more remote events may be transmitted and 
 preserved from utter oblivion. Our knowledge, then, of 
 the world around us, and of the course of nature, is simply 
 the summation of these various particulars, of which only 
 a small part is obtained from inward consciousness and 
 from personal experience, and nearly the whole from 
 direct or indirect testimony of our fellow men, either of 
 the present or of past generations. The chief office of 
 reason is to sum up the information thus gained with 
 regard to each material object, plant, animal and human 
 being, or each particular part of the earth's surface acces- 
 sible to the foot of man. Besides this knowledge of 
 individual beings, or places, or successive changes, there 
 are a few further conclusions which reason is able to 
 deduce from comparison of these with each other. None 
 of these of course can have a higher evidence of reason 
 than the elements of which they are composed. This 
 loose classification gives birth to maxims which are 
 called "laws of nature" in a loose and popular sense, 
 such as these: That water will extinguish flame; that 
 water may be evaporated by fire and disappear; that it 
 may be frozen by cold and turned to ice ; that solid 
 
REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 41 
 
 lumps of any kind of matter will fall to the ground if not 
 supported ; that a piece of gold is heavier than an equal 
 bulk of lead, or iron, and that an iron axe if not sustained 
 will sink in water. Another large class of such laws 
 depend on the two great sets of changes, the succession 
 of light and darkness, of day and night, and the circuit 
 of the seasons, summer, autumn, winter and spring. All 
 these so-called laws of nature are a summation of specific 
 facts derived from the experience, direct and indirect, 
 of ourselves and our fellow men. This experience ex- 
 cludes of course all future time, and all past time except 
 about two thousand years, and even within these limits 
 it is inferential, constructive and liable to many illusions, 
 except for one century alone, that is, the furthest range of 
 the living generation of mankind. It is confined also in 
 place to the surface of our own planet, and to a depth 
 of one or two miles below that surface, with some scanty 
 information, derived from transient experiences alone, 
 with regard to the whole range of the visible universe 
 beyond. These individual men, plants, and animals, 
 coming within the range of observation by their birth 
 and successive generation, pass out of the range of 
 human observation by death and dissolution, at the other 
 limit. Thus the whole range of our experimental know- 
 ledge is shut in between the cradle and the grave. The 
 problem then of reason under a scheme of natural reli- 
 gion, apart from supernatural revelation, is to construct 
 a consistent and satisfactory theory to account for the 
 facts of human experience as a whole. The first and 
 simplest, that the universe has been created by a self- 
 existent Being, of perfect wisdom and goodness, is met 
 at once by the difficulty that the work of production is 
 everywhere followed by death and dissolution ; that the 
 generations of mankind appear and disappear like a 
 passing dream, and that not only the benefits, pleasures, 
 
42 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 and enjoyments of life, but strife, discord, conflict, 
 violence, wrong and crime, with their fruits of suffering, 
 bloodshed, and desolation, go on in almost undiminished 
 current as far back as human experience extends. 
 Hence reason is forced to make an uneasy choice 
 amongst seven or eight different alternatives. The 
 first is that of pure Monotheism, the dominion of a good 
 and wise Creator, leaving unexplained the long and 
 fearful prevalence of moral evil and physical suffering. 
 (2) The second is a theory of despair, which gives up the 
 problem as inscrutable, and denies that there is any evi- 
 dence at all for a good Creator distinct from the universe, 
 in consequence of the dark and fearful prevalence of moral 
 and physical evil. (3) The third is a doctrine of confusion, 
 which denies any contrast between the self-existent 
 Creator and the totality of existent things, which makes 
 God and the universe the same, an immense total includ- 
 ing all conceivable contrasts and disparities of Being, 
 the Pan of old heathen mythology, fitly symbolized by 
 a hideous and misshapen Satyr. (4) A fourth is Fetich- 
 ism or Polytheism, which recognizes some supernatural 
 power concealed behind, or included in, each natural 
 object, or class of natural objects, which sacrifices unity, 
 but retains diversity, and indulges the deep instinct of 
 mystery, by peopling each class of objects with its own 
 divinities, nymphs of the woods, of the rivers, and of 
 the mountains, the gnomes of the ocean depth, and 
 sportive, fairy-like denizens of the upper air or ether. 
 (5) Fifthly, the Manichean doctrine, which cuts the knot 
 reason fails to untie, by assuming two rival or balanced 
 powers of Good and Evil, contending long for the 
 mastery through successive ages. This may assume 
 various forms, from that which recognizes a strict 
 equality and co-eternity of these two powers, through 
 many stages of subordination of the destructive Siva or 
 
REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 43 
 
 Demon, to the good and beneficent Power. Two other 
 hypotheses may be included : (6) The sixth, which 
 recognizes the strict and unlimited Omnipotence of the 
 Creator, but ascribes to Him a very imperfect and 
 limited goodness, with some predominence only of a 
 benevolent over a malevolent disposition. (7) A seventh 
 variety is that which recognizes a Creator of pure and 
 perfect benevolence, but of limited and imperfect power, 
 who is thwarted and defeated in His kindly intentions 
 either by rival and malignant powers, or by the intract- 
 able nature of the materials and the beings with which 
 He has to deal. To these seven, we may add a last, 
 and perhaps the worst : the doctrine of simple Fate ; 
 blind, dark, fatal necessity. The difficulty then, of this 
 grand problem, proposed to the reason of man, is no 
 result of Christianity or the special revelations of the 
 Bible. The Bible has certainly not created the diffi- 
 culties of the problem ; the only reasonable charge that 
 can be brought against it, is that it has failed to remove 
 them, and throw full light upon the darkness. 
 
 What are the conclusions of natural reason in the 
 case of two of the most eminent of unbelieving philoso- 
 phers of our own day ? One pronounces that Atheism, 
 Deism and Pantheism are three equally untenable 
 attempts to explain the great mystery of being, and 
 that the power which the universe manifests (he should 
 have said, conceals), is utterly inscrutable by us, and 
 must ever so remain. The other comes to a conclusion 
 which is in appearance a new kind of Manicheanism, but 
 is really a closer approach to the teaching of the Bible 
 than it is in appearance, summed up in these words : 
 
 " The belief of Christians is not more absurd or immoral than the 
 belief of Deists who acknowledge an Omnipotent Creator ; the morality 
 of the Gospels is far higher and better than that which shews itself in 
 the order of nature, and what is morally objectionable in the Christian 
 
44 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 theory of the world, is objectionable only when taken in conjunction 
 with the doctrine of an Omnipotent God, at least as understood by the 
 majority of Christians 1 ." 
 
 What then is the express claim of Christianity, as a 
 Supernatural Revelation ? Is it simply and absolutely 
 to solve that great problem, which has proved able 
 to baffle, through successive ages, all the unassisted 
 efforts of human reason, starting from the limited data 
 of past experience ? Its claim is of a wholly different 
 kind. It is to supply us with fresh facts attested by 
 firm and distinct a posteriori evidence, like all the facts 
 which form the stock of our previous knowledge, but 
 intimately connected with this great mystery of the 
 origin and destinies of the universe, and of the whole 
 human race, and of each individual man, and throwing 
 clear and distinct light upon the darkness. These facts 
 all centre in the appearance of a fresh Person within 
 the sphere of human observation ; a Person wholly 
 unique in the world's history, by the admission of the 
 most eminent unbelievers who reject the Christian view of 
 His nature ; concerning Whom, when we combine all the 
 elements as to the facts of His personal history on earth, 
 and the later results that have flowed from it, the only 
 conclusions consistent with any shew of reason, are, 
 either that He was a Prophet singled out and commis- 
 sioned by the unseen Creator, for the fuller exposition 
 of His nature and purposes to men; or that He is 
 One who shares in the Divine nature and prerogatives 
 of the invisible God whom He came to reveal. The 
 words and acts of such a Person are supernatural only 
 in this sense, that they lie outside the very narrow 
 and limited bounds of the previous experiences of indi- 
 vidual men in their brief earthly lifetime. Instead 
 
 1 Mill's "Posthumous Essays," p. 214. 
 
REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 45 
 
 of lying outside the domain of Reason itself, they are 
 those added experiences which raise man out of dark- 
 ness into a region of dawning light. To confound 
 those fetters by which the faculty of Reason in 
 men in general is crippled and confined, in the 
 usual conditions of their earthly life, with the glorious 
 faculty itself, so that the gracious act of God, by 
 which He removes the fetters, and calls reason to 
 exercise itself on a wider range of facts, should be 
 mistaken for its extinction, is a strange and prodigious 
 error. He who has come near to us, and revealed 
 Himself to the children of men in the Gospels, in the 
 thirty-three years of an earthly lifetime, and in the 
 glorious records of His sayings, and His works of 
 Divine power, is Himself the Word, the Reason, the 
 Truth, the " true Light which lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world." All reason in others is only like 
 a spark derived from this glorious " Sun of Righteous- 
 ness." The first rising of the sun would be a stupendous 
 miracle to a race of troglodytes, who had lived till then 
 in subterranean caverns, yet not the less would that 
 sun have been the secret source of whatever feeble 
 rays of moonlight or candle-light had previously reached 
 them in their gloomy abode. 
 
 The relation of the facts revealed in the Gospels, \ 
 to the great problem of natural and revealed religion, 
 may be illustrated by the return of Columbus and his 
 companions from their first voyage. The facts of their 
 landing in Cuba and San Salvador have just the same re- 
 lation to the great problem of the earth's geography, and 
 the later discovery of the new world and its inhabitants. 
 Those clever persons who refused to credit the report 
 of Columbus and his crew, because ten thousand fisher- 
 men and mariners, after skirting the western ocean for 
 
46 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 hundreds of years, had never brought any information 
 worthy of trust concerning its farther shore, have their 
 exact counterpart in those sceptics who refuse to credit 
 the testimony of the Apostles and their companions 
 to the fact, that they saw and conversed with the Lord 
 Jesus after His resurrection for forty days, because no 
 such experience, or similar experience, had ever been 
 recorded before. For long ages, the shore of the great 
 ocean had seemed an impassable barrier to human know- 
 ledge and exploration, towards the region of the setting 
 sun ; and so too the grave, " that undiscovered bourn 
 from which no traveller returns," had seemed to shut 
 in and enclose all the children of men with a dark and 
 impassable barrier. But with the return of Columbus, 
 the ocean barrier was removed, the great problem was 
 solved, and the landing of those few voyagers on the 
 small islet, and their exploration of part of the coast 
 of Cuba, secured an open pathway of discoveries which 
 never ceased, till the whole of the American continent 
 was explored and brought within the range of human 
 knowledge, and " all the ends of the earth had seen the 
 salvation of God." So too the facts in the Gospel, 
 though few and simple, and unlike any previously re- 
 corded experience, and in that sense supernatural, were 
 the key facts to a new and wider range of human know- 
 ledge, when man's acquaintance with the works and 
 the ways of God should no longer be shut in by the 
 darkness of the grave. " Life and immortality were 
 brought to light" by the Gospel. The resurrection of 
 Christ was never announced to the world as a solitary 
 and unconnected fact, out of relation to all that had gone 
 before, and all that was to follow. On the contrary, it 
 was announced from the first as a great germinal fact, 
 the fulfilment of voices of the prophets from the begin- 
 
REASON AND SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 47 
 
 ning of the world, and the pledge of the resurrection 
 of all the dead. So St Paul proclaimed it to king 
 Agrippa. " Saying none other things than those that 
 the prophets and Moses did say before should come, that 
 Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that 
 should rise from the dead, and shew light to the people 
 and to the Gentiles." The resurrection of Jesus was 
 announced as the first-fruits of a glorious harvest that 
 should follow. So when Columbus and his companions 
 announced their landing on the island of San Salvador, 
 that fact was the pledge of the later discovery of the 
 whole American continent. The resurrection of Jesus 
 was the pledge and earnest of the truth of His words 
 to Martha, " I am the Resurrection and the Life ; he 
 that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live." 
 
 A new era of spiritual light began, when man's know- 
 ledge of the character and purposes of the Creator ceased 
 to be bounded by the darkness of the grave, and in- 
 cluded the blessed certainty of a life beyond, of the 
 resurrection and life everlasting. 
 
 The new facts reported in the Gospels were beyond 
 reason in this sense, that no process of abstract reasoning 
 could have discovered them. They needed to be con- 
 firmed by clear and full testimony, but when so con- 
 firmed, there was nothing whatever to hinder the 
 exercise of the reason and the conscience on their 
 moral features, or to hinder the wayfaring man, though 
 only a fool in natural wisdom, from seeing clearly and 
 with the fullest conviction, that the Son of Man was no 
 agent and accomplice of the father of lies, but a true 
 messenger from the God of love and grace, nay, Himself 
 the great Redeemer promised from the beginning of 
 time. One would think that the sceptic who quotes 
 
48 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 admissions of Christian Divines to prove that a message 
 of supernatural truths is not credible unless supported 
 by a supernatural guarantee, could scarcely be deceived 
 by his own sophism, and confound together two things 
 wholly different, because they are both sometimes ex- 
 pressed by one and the same ambiguous phrase, that 
 they lie " beyond the range of reason." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 REASON AND THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 
 
 THE great falsehood that the facts of the Gospel 
 history, because they are unprecedented, and do not 
 come within the range of previous experience, are there- 
 fore outside the range of human reason altogether, 
 instead of forming the highest, noblest, and widest sphere 
 for its perfect exercise, is reinforced by a special charge 
 against the contents of that Revelation. The author 
 affirms that a revelation of supernatural truths to promote 
 the salvation of men from the consequences of their own 
 sin is " antecedently incredible and contrary to reason." 
 To prove this, he supplements the difficulties and myste- 
 ries of natural religion by various misrepresentations 
 of the doctrines of Christianity. He says first that the 
 existence of Satan, and the Temptation and Fall are 
 not accounted for, and are incredible. Yet the ablest 
 and most candid of modern sceptics, in his latest efforts 
 to solve the great problem of the universe by the light 
 of natural reason alone, is brought back to the very 
 verge of the doctrine thus proclaimed incredible, a 
 mitigated Manicheanism ; or the doctrine of a God, vast 
 and unsearchable both in wisdom and goodness, but, 
 in some way we cannot understand or explain, limited 
 in power, or counteracted and thwarted in His efforts 
 B. 4 
 
50 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 and intentions for the good and happiness of His 
 creatures. The difficulty then is plainly in the facts 
 themselves, not created by the statements of Scripture. 
 But the writer adds this explication of those statements, 
 that 
 
 "the evil spirit succeeded in frustrating the designs of the Almighty," 
 that the " sweeping purification of the world by the Flood was as futile 
 as the original design." " We are asked to believe in the frustration of 
 the Divine design in Creation, and the fall of man into a state of 
 wickedness hateful to God, requiring and justifying the Divine design 
 of a revelation, and such a revelation as this, as preliminary to the 
 proposition, that on the supposition of such a design, miracles would 
 not be contrary to reason." " Nothing," it is said, " can be more abso- 
 lutely incredible or contrary to reason than these statements, or the 
 supposition of such a design." P. 48. 
 
 Dr Mozley is quoted as admitting that "as human 
 announcements the doctrines of Christianity would be 
 the wildest delusions, which we should not be justified in 
 believing." He sums up in the words 
 
 "incredible assumptions cannot give probability to incredible evi- 
 dence ;" and concludes, " the whole theory of this abortive design of 
 creation with such impotent efforts to amend it, is emphatically con- 
 tradicted by the glorious perfection and invariability of Nature ; it is 
 difficult to say whether the details of the scheme, or the circumstances 
 which are supposed to have led to its adoption, are the more shocking 
 to reason and to moral sense." P. 49. 
 
 These additions of the author to the doctrines and 
 teaching of the Bible, are in flagrant opposition to its 
 own express and repeated statements. The whole 
 scheme of redemption, instead of being a mere after- 
 thought, a patchwork addition to a baffled scheme of 
 creation, is expressly declared to have been " fore- 
 ordained from before the foundation of the world." The 
 fact is repeatedly proclaimed that unto God are " known 
 all His works from the beginning of the creation ;" that 
 the mystery of redemption from the beginning of the 
 
REASON AND THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 51 
 
 world had been " hid in God, who created all things 
 by Jesus Christ ;" and that what this writer blasphe- 
 mously calls, " incredible folly," is a declaration of 
 " the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal 
 purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 The Scripture does indeed announce a power, inveteracy, 
 and wide diffusion of moral evil among both men and 
 angels, the rational and responsible creatures of God, 
 which constitute a " mystery of iniquity," a kind of dark 
 and malignant shadow and opposite of that great 
 " mystery of godliness," the mystery of God the Father 
 and of Christ, wherein are " hid all the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge." When these great and solemn 
 mysteries are approached in the spirit of unbelief and of 
 pride, the result is a most " dangerous downfall," as 
 the Article says, For a time at least the same sentence 
 lights upon such inquirers which fell once in Cyprus 
 on Elymas in his laborious opposition to the Gospel 
 message, "there fell upon him a mist and darkness, 
 and he went about seeking for some one to lead him 
 by the hand." May there be an opposite issue in the 
 present case. May the unhappy man who sets out in 
 his professed search for truth as a Sadducean Atheist, 
 and ends almost exactly where he began yet receive 
 from God " repentance to the acknowledgment of the 
 truth." 
 
 The words of Dr Mozley are quoted to convey 
 a meaning almost the exact reverse of what he himself 
 designed. Dr Mozley (p. 13) puts the case of a per- 
 son of eminent integrity and loftiness of character, 
 but unattested by any miracle, or similar guarantee 
 beyond the statement itself, affirming that He had 
 existed before His natural birth from all eternity, and 
 that the world itself had been made by Him. He says 
 that no rational being could accept a just, benevolent 
 
 42 
 
52 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 life alone as proof of such astonishing announcements. 
 The words of Dr Mozley, so strangely torn from their 
 context, are merely the statement of our Lord Himself, 
 cast into a different form ; that a naked assertion of the 
 possession of Divine attributes, or of being the pro- 
 mised Redeemer of the world, disjoined from acts of 
 Divine power, and a fulfilment of predictions shewing 
 the presence of superhuman wisdom, would have been 
 undeserving of credence. Such would exactly be the 
 contrast between the true Christ and a false antichrist. 
 " I am come in my Father's name and ye receive me 
 not ; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will 
 receive." Naked self-assertion, unsustained by the testi- 
 monies and evidences which should fitly attend it and 
 confirm its truth, would be the characteristic of anti- 
 christ, and not of the true Christ. It is in the harmony 
 of words of surpassing wisdom, purity and grace, of 
 works surpassing the power of common men, and even 
 the gifts of the old Prophets, and these works them- 
 selves marked by features of surpassing bounty and 
 grace ; and the fulfilment of manifold predictions, all 
 centering in the world's promised Redeemer, from the 
 days of Paradise to Malachi, John the Baptist and 
 Caiaphas, and the Evangelists, and express and repeated 
 claims to be that Messiah of whom Moses and the 
 Prophets did write ; It is in the consilience of these 
 various inductions, these converging streams of evidence, 
 into one glorious and luminous centre, that the Christian 
 faith is really founded. This threefold cord of super- 
 human power, superhuman knowledge and superhuman 
 goodness, has its strands so wonderfully and mysteriously 
 interwoven, that no art of man, though they may be 
 distinguished in thought, can practically sunder them 
 from each other. The miracles are evidences of Divine 
 grace and mercy as well as of Divine power ; the fulfilled 
 
REASON AND THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 53 
 
 prophecies are not only marks of superhuman wisdom 
 but of Divine condescension and grace. The three 
 glorious perfections of the Godhead all co-exist and 
 must co-exist in every work of power, wisdom or good- 
 ness, by which the Godhead is revealed, yet each attri- 
 bute in turn may have a special prominence. The Trinity 
 in Unity of the Divine Persons has its counterpart in 
 the mysterious triunity of the Divine perfections. In 
 a miracle, the Divine power of the Son of God is 
 especially manifested ; in the fulfilment of the earlier 
 prophecies, and their completion by His own prophecy 
 on the Mount, and announcement of His own resurrec- 
 tion, and the future resurrection of all men, the attribute 
 of Divine Foreknowledge is specially revealed. In the 
 rest of His discourses, through the Gospels, in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, in the parables of the Prodigal 
 Son and of the lost sheep and the lost piece of money, 
 in the washing of the feet of the disciples, the discourses 
 at the Last Supper, and in all the words full of grace 
 and truth throughout the Gospels, such as the words 
 spoken to the woman who was a sinner, the promises 
 to Martha and her sister Mary, and the precedence 
 given to Mary Magdalene among the witnesses of His 
 resurrection, we have manifold and overflowing tokens 
 of Divine goodness, grace and compassion. Well did 
 He say to His Apostle, " Have I been so long time 
 with you, and hast thou not known me, Philip ? he that 
 hath seen me, hath seen the Father." " I and my Father 
 are one." And very solemn is His comment upon the 
 sin of the Jews, and the equal or greater sin of those, 
 who having received the full message of His love in 
 the Gospels, and seen it confirmed and unfolded by the 
 whole course of the world's history for 1800 years, 
 can still shut their eyes to the light of His Divine 
 glory, and strive to persuade their fellow-men to put 
 
54 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 out the eyes of their soul, and involve themselves in utter 
 darkness once more. " If I had not done among them 
 the works which none other man did, they had not had 
 sin ... but now have they both seen and hated both me 
 and my Father." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PERFECTION OF NATURE, AND FOUR MOCK 
 DEITIES OF SCEPTICISM. 
 
 THE conflict of Faith and Unbelief in the last times 
 is often said in Scripture to be "like the day of Midian." 
 There were two striking features of that day. The 
 first was an extreme illustration of the impotence of mere 
 numbers when opposed to faith and the fear of God. 
 Gideon's little company of three hundred light-bearers 
 went forth by divine command to encounter the Midian- 
 ite host, four hundred times more numerous, who were 
 slumbering in darkness, and the overthrow was complete 
 and entire. " The host ran and cried and fled . . . and 
 every man's sword was set against his fellow throughout 
 all the host." In the hour of panic they perished by 
 mutual self-destruction. So, in the immense confede- 
 racy of unbelief in the last times, there is no unity, but 
 endless self-contradiction, and all the materials are already 
 prepared for the overthrow of sceptical speculations 
 through intestine collision and conflict. Thus one lead- 
 ing sceptic prophesies that "the reign of matter must 
 extend till it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, 
 and action." Another, still more eminent, assures us, 
 that " Philosophy refuses to admit the very existence of 
 matter," and that there exist nothing but " permanent 
 possibilities of sensation." M. Comte tells us that the 
 era of forces and causes is past with the childhood of 
 
56 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 science, that faith in God and in supernatural powers 
 is only the stage of its infancy, and that Positivism, 
 which simply registers phenomena, is its full manhood. 
 Dr Tyndal assures us the exact reverse : that to pass 
 from phenomena to the forces by which they are pro- 
 duced, is the first requisite of philosophic thought. The 
 author of Positivism in the very work where he repro- 
 bates the introduction of forces, laws and causes, con- 
 tradicts his own principle two hundred times within 
 ninety pages. Mr Spencer refers all theology to the 
 Unknowable, and says that the " power which the 
 universe manifests is utterly inscrutable." Mr Mill re- 
 joins, and tells him that he admits an immense amount 
 of knowledge of the Unknowable. What is equally 
 clear is that he lays down the indestructibility of 
 motion as an a priori truth, and tells us in the same 
 work that the universe, by evolution and the law of 
 equilibration, is tending to a state of perfect rest, and 
 to the reign of omnipresent death. 
 
 " If equilibration must end in complete rest, what is the fate towards 
 which all things tend ? The solar system is slowly dissipating its forces, 
 the sun is losing its heat at a rate which will tell in millions of years. 
 If man and society are similarly dependent on this supply of force 
 which is gradually coming to an end, are we not manifestly progressing 
 towards Omnipresent Death ? That such must be the outcome of the 
 processes everywhere going on seems beyond doubt... That the proxi- 
 mate end of all the changes we have traced is a state of quiescence, 
 this admits of & priori proof." Spencer's First Principles, p. 514. 
 
 These contradictions of different sceptical theories, 
 and different parts of the same theory, might be multi- 
 plied almost without limit. Never perhaps, since the 
 beginning of time, was there so large a brevet as in 
 Mr Spencer's philosophical works, by which direct self- 
 contradictions are promoted to the rank of a priori 
 truths. One German atheistic theory professes to build 
 
THE PERFECTION OF NATURE. 57 
 
 up the universe without a God out of atoms which are 
 not atoms at all, but little whirlpools of revolving 
 matter. 
 
 With regard to Nature, and its perfection, we have 
 the like antithesis. The writer before us, haying cor- 
 rupted the Christian faith by patchwork additions of 
 his own, directly opposed to the statements of Scrip- 
 ture, then contrasts the compound, with what he calls 
 the " glorious perfection of nature." This anti-super- 
 naturalism encounters its direct opposite, in what may 
 be called the hypo-physicism of Mr Mill. 
 
 " Nearly all the ' things which men are hanged or imprisoned for 
 doing to one another are nature's every-day performances. Killing, 
 the most criminal act recognized by human laws, nature does once to 
 every creature that lives. Nature impales men, breaks them as if on 
 the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to 
 death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves 
 them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick 
 or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous 
 deaths such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never 
 surpassed. All this nature does, with the most supercilious disregard 
 both of mercy and justice, emptying her shafts on the best and the 
 noblest, indifferently with the meanest and worst. She mows down 
 those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people, 
 perhaps the prospects of the human race for generations to come, 
 with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to them- 
 selves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. Such are 
 Nature's dealings with life... A single hurricane destroys the hopes of 
 a season ; a flight of locusts, or an inundation desolates a district ; a 
 trifling chemical change in an edible root starves a million of people ; 
 everything, in short, which the worst of men commit either against 
 life or property, is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents. 
 Nature has noyades more fatal than those of Carrier; her explosions 
 of fire-damp are as destructive as human artillery; her plague and 
 cholera far surpass the poisoned cups of the Borgias. All which people 
 are accustomed to deprecate as disorder and its consequences, is pre- 
 cisely a counterpart of nature's ways : anarchy and the reign of terror 
 are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death by the hurricane and the 
 pestilence." Mill's Posthumous Essays, p. 31. 
 
58 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 Such, according to Mr Mill, is that " glorious per- 
 fection of nature," which the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion" uses as a foil, to demonstrate by contrast, 
 that the Christian faith is a contradiction to reason 
 and the moral sense. Mr Mill, on the contrary, insists 
 strongly that 
 
 " the morality of the Gospels is far higher and hetter than that which 
 shews itself in the order of nature." 
 
 What is nature in the creed of Atheism, and apart 
 from the vicegerent rule and action of man, ruling over 
 the earth, and bringing outward things into subjection 
 to his own will ? Mr Mill gives only two meanings to 
 the word, nature ; the first is 
 
 "the aggregate of the powers and properties of all things, of all 
 phenomena and the causes which produce them." " In another sense 
 nature means, not every thing which happens, but only what takes 
 place without the voluntary and intentional agency of man." "This 
 distinction," he adds, "is far from exhausting the ambiguities of the 
 word." 
 
 It does not in fact include the most fundamental 
 meaning ; it leaves Mr Mill quite unable to explain why 
 " unnatural " in every language should be a term of 
 strong reprobation ; or why the foremost school of 
 Greek philosophy came to make " living according to 
 nature," the first and chief maxim of duty and wisdom. 
 Nature, by its derivation, does not properly apply at 
 all to mere matter, but to things that are born and live. 
 It may be extended, by analogy, to God, the self-existent, 
 who does not come into being ; and by a further analogy, 
 it may be extended, in the opposite direction, to things 
 that are not born, such as lifeless atoms. The nature 
 of any particular thing or being is properly that dis- 
 tinctive character wherein its being consists ; the fun- 
 damental law imposed on it in the hour of its birth, the 
 
THE PERFECTION OF NATURE. 59 
 
 specific gift of being it has received from the Creator ; 
 when Nature is spoken of as a collective whole, it is 
 plainly a term of extreme ambiguity. It may either 
 include or exclude the perfect being and nature of the 
 self-existent Creator. It may include or exclude the 
 being and dominion of man, the vice-gerent of the 
 Creator in this lower world. It may include all the 
 unknown worlds throughout the universe, or be limited 
 to the world of human experience alone in this terres- 
 trial life ; it may include only that which is known, 
 shut in by the grave on the one side, and by two or 
 three thousand years of known history on the other ; or 
 it may comprehend both all past ages and a coming 
 eternity. When both the nature of God and of man are 
 excluded, all the unknown future, all the unknown or 
 unseen regions of the universe, and earthly life and 
 experience for the last two or three thousand years 
 alone is considered, it is plain that Nature so defined 
 denotes a very small and infinitesimal part of the vast 
 scheme of universal Being. When Nature within these 
 narrow limits, is extolled as " invariable and perfect," and 
 its " glorious perfection " is made the warrant for the 
 rejection of the Christian faith, the moral teaching of the 
 Gospel, the doctrine of the resurrection and the blessed 
 hope of immortal life beyond the grave, this is indeed 
 an illusion as well as a blasphemy, ft shocking both to 
 reason and to moral sense." 
 
 How far is Mr Mill's counter indictment of the utter 
 immorality, injustice and cruelty of nature, valid and 
 well-founded ? The constancy and perfection of nature 
 to which the appeal is made in the sceptical argument, 
 is really nothing more than our limited human experience 
 of terrestrial changes on the earth's surface from the 
 dispersion of the sons of Noah till the birth of Christ 
 for two thousand years ; excluding the beginning, and 
 
60 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the flood of Noah and all previous ages, the resur- 
 rection and the life to come, the future judgment, and 
 all the prospects of a coming eternity ; all that is unseen, 
 or visible only in other worlds beyond our own planet, 
 and all the actings of the will of men through succes- 
 sive generations, to subdue the earth and bring it into 
 subservience to the wants, and desires, and spiritual 
 instincts and aspirations of their own nature. This 
 terrestrial nature, shut in by these narrow limits, is a 
 minute and almost infinitesimal fragment of the great 
 scheme of universal being. The information which it 
 supplies may be clear and express, and adequate, to the 
 present guidance of life, with regard to individual men, 
 animals and plants; and supply also some glimpses and 
 vistas of thought leading us onward into the abysses 
 that lie beyond. But to complete it into an adequate 
 key to the future hopes of man, and prospects of the 
 human race, and the vast scheme of universal providence, 
 it needs to be pieced out and completed, if supernatural 
 revelation be excluded, by infinite guesswork, blind con- 
 jecture, and baseless speculation. An inverted pyramid 
 has to be constructed of prodigious dimensions, resting 
 on a minute apex, little more than a mathematical point, 
 of certain truth and well-attested experience. As we 
 recede from this apex, conjecture is heaped on conjecture, 
 and Pelion is piled on Ossa, in the vain attempt to scale 
 the skies, and pull down the Almighty Creator from the 
 throne of the universe, where He sits enthroned in glory 
 for evermore. A hundred shadowy and spectral coun- 
 terfeits are set up by the pride of unbelieving philosophy, 
 to take the place of the Supreme and Eternal King. 
 
 One of these is M. Comte's new Supreme Being, col- 
 lective Humanity, that is the sum total of all the sinners 
 of mankind, who have fought with and murdered each 
 other through the last 6000 years, or fallen under the 
 
THE MOCK DEITIES OF SCEPTICISM. 6 1 
 
 stroke of death by wasting disease, and includes almost 
 every variety of moral enormity, with bright exceptional 
 instances of imperfect goodness and nobleness of being. 
 What a hideous folly is this worship of collective 
 humanity, this new god that has lately come up ! A 
 second counterfeit is physical force, a mock trinity of 
 indestructible matter, persistent motion, and continuous 
 force, and undiminished and unalterable solar energy. 
 A third counterfeit makes this new divinity of Solar 
 Force dissipate and waste itself continually in the regions 
 of infinite space, till at length, after millions of ages, 
 the new god of physical science is reduced to utter bank- 
 ruptcy, and the Sun will become a stagnant mass, drained 
 of light, and heat, and all its life-sustaining stores of 
 energy, and nature sink under a reign of utter darkness 
 and omnipresent death. 
 
 A fourth counterfeit and rival of the Living God has 
 two different names " Evolution " and " Natural Se- 
 lection." The first, as one of its main worshippers 
 allows, ought rather to be called Involution, and denotes 
 the process by which a diffused nebulous mass gradually 
 condenses, while the light and heat that may result from 
 this condensation are dissipated, and lost in infinite space. 
 It is a process of cooling carried on slowly through 
 millions of ages, till instead of sun, stars, and planets, 
 and animated worlds, the universe becomes one vast, 
 inert, black mass of lifeless matter. The other name of 
 .this modern Divinity is " Natural Selection," that is, as 
 expounded by its own author, " the course and sequence 
 of events as perceived by us," choosing out through suc- 
 cessive ages, what forms of life are fittest to endure ; 
 then, like Saturn, devouring all its children in swift 
 succession; a selection in which there is no one who 
 selects, and no real existence to be selected, and the 
 lives selected for endurance disappear like bubbles in 
 
62 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the great ocean of being, as soon as the selection is 
 made. A " survival of the fittest," where no one is fit to 
 survive at all except for a few passing moments, and 
 then each has to melt away in its turn into the " in- 
 finite azure of the future," the gulf of evanescent and 
 perishable being. The true and self-existent Jehovah 
 being denied, there is set up in His place the Buddhist 
 Maya, or universal illusion, an endless phantasmagoria of 
 evanescent sensations, without beginning and without 
 end, an infinite waste of empty shadows. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion," after de- 
 faming the Gospel of Christ, the glorious message by 
 which principalities and powers in heavenly places 
 learn the manifold wisdom of God, and are lost in 
 adoring wonder, as " shocking to reason and moral 
 sense," takes up the first substitute that comes to hand. 
 This happens to be the third of Mr Spencer's three 
 a priori schemes of the knowledge of the Unknowable, 
 and the mode of action of the Unknowable through 
 countless ages to come. The theory thus adopted is a 
 climax of unreason. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MR SPENCER'S THREE THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 MR SPENCER defines Philosophy as 
 
 "completely unified knowledge. This is the meaning we must give 
 to the word philosophy if we use it at all." (R P. p. 134.) "This," he 
 says, " is tacitly asserted by the simultaneous inclusion of God, Nature, 
 and Man within its scope." (P. 131.) 
 
 His next step is wholly to exclude the knowledge of 
 God, and he then attempts to frame a philosophy or 
 scheme of completely unified knowledge, from which the 
 principle and source of unity is wholly excluded. Total 
 ignorance of God, is the first maxim of this philosophy. 
 He claims for it to be more religious than any actual 
 religion. 
 
 " Those religions," he says, " are partially irreligious, because they 
 profess to have some knowledge of that which transcends knowledge, 
 and so contradict the teachings of religion." (Ib.) 
 
 This monstrous folly, that there is no medium between 
 Omniscience and utter Nescience is the foundation and 
 corner-stone of the whole system. The author cannot 
 even state his own first principle without a plain self- 
 contradiction. 
 
 " Religion has established the doctrine that all things are manifesta- 
 tions of a power that transcends our knowledge" (p. 100), 
 
 but a power of which we can know nothing at all plainly 
 cannot be manifested. 
 
64 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 " Religion," he adds, " has ever been more or less irreligious, because 
 it has claimed to know something of a power which transcends know- 
 ledge," 
 
 or cannot be exhaustively known. 
 
 Having thus rejected Christianity as irreligious, be- 
 cause it does profess to teach us definite truth with 
 regard to the nature and purposes of the great First 
 Cause, how does the author build on this negative foun- 
 dation ? He offers his readers confidently, not one only, 
 but three alternative theories of the universe, that is of 
 the plans and purposes of this Unknowable God through 
 ages to come. The first is the theory of endless Involu- 
 tion or condensation. It is a process by which satellites 
 drop into their suns, and the suns by successive collisions 
 fall into each other, till the whole universe will become 
 one great mass of dull, dead matter, a monstrous extin- 
 guished sun, from which heat and light have disappeared 
 and lost themselves in infinite space. 
 
 " We are manifestly progressing towards Omnipresent death. That 
 such a state must be the outcome of the processes everywhere going on, 
 seems beyond doubt... That the proximate end of all the transforma- 
 tions we have traced is a state of quiescence, this admits of a priori 
 proof." (P. 514.) 
 
 This " prodigious amount of knowledge of the un- 
 knowable," that all the changes of nature are beyond 
 doubt tending to a reign of Omnipresent death, is 
 Mr Spencer's first offered substitute for the Gospel. 
 It is made up of two a priori truths, that motion 
 is indestructible, and that all things are certainly tending 
 to a state of perfect quiescence. His second theory in 
 the same work, replaces the first by an endless oscillation 
 theory 
 
 "An unmeasurable period, during which attractive forces predomi- 
 nating cause universal concentration ; and then an unmeasurable period, 
 during which the repulsive forces predominating cause universal dif- 
 fusion, alternate eras of evolution and dissolution." (P. 537.) 
 
MR SPENCER'S THREE THEORIES. 65 
 
 Thus the whole scheme of universal Being is sup- 
 posed, like the stone of Sisyphus, through millions of 
 years or ages to be raised to a higher pitch of dig- 
 nity, perfection, and multiplied vitality, and then when 
 it has nearly reached some summit of ideal perfec- 
 tion, to bound downward, by a reverse process, and 
 dash itself to pieces at the foot of the mountain, the 
 whole creation resolving itself into diffused nebulous 
 vapour and nothingness once more. This reverse pro- 
 cess, it should be observed, is introduced purely by guess, 
 in contradiction to all the laws of mechanics, to provide 
 some escape from the dreary monotony of the first 
 theory. 
 
 In " Social Statics," Mr Spencer propounds a third 
 a priori theory of the universe distinct from, and incon- 
 sistent with, both the others. This is the self-perfecting 
 theory of nature. It is embodied in these maxims : 
 
 "Advancement is due to the working of universal law, and, in virtue 
 of that law, must continue till the state we call perfection is reached. 
 These are the steps of the argument. All imperfection is unfitness 
 to the conditions of existence. This unfitness must consist in having a 
 faculty or faculties in excess, or deficient, or in both. A faculty in excess 
 is one which has no opportunity for full exercise ; and a deficient faculty 
 is one from which circumstances demand more than it can perform. 
 The principle of life is, that a faculty which cannot obtain full exercise 
 diminishes, and one on which excessive demands are made, increases ; 
 while this excess and deficiency continue, there must be decrease on 
 one hand and growth on the other. Finally, then, all excess and 
 deficiency, and unfitness and imperfection, must disappear. Thus the - 
 ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain. Humanity 
 must, in the end, become completely adapted to its conditions; pro- 
 gress therefore is not an accident, but a necessity ;... As surely as a 
 passion grows by indulgence, and diminishes when restrained, so surely 
 must the things we call evil and immorality disappear, and man must 
 become perfect." (S. R. from S. S., p. 50, 51.) 
 
 This demonstration, Mr Spencer says, removes the 
 doctrine "out of the region of probability into that of 
 
 B- 5 
 
66 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 certainty." Let us now examine the data and premises 
 of which this grand discovery consists. First, a novel 
 definition of moral evil and immorality; that it consists in 
 a living creature having one or more faculties with no 
 opportunity for their exercise, or not having all the 
 senses or faculties he could exercise if he had them. 
 The ridiculous and entire falsehood of such a definition 
 is so plain that it is needless to develope it further. 
 The one grain of truth in the mock demonstration is, 
 that a faculty is commonly strengthened by repeated 
 exercise, "as the eye tends to become long-sighted in 
 the sailor, and short-sighted in the student, and a clerk 
 acquires rapidity in writing and calculation." But another 
 assumption is required to set the argument on its feet ; 
 that every living creature acquires instinctively, and of 
 course, all the senses and faculties for the exercise of 
 which there is a present opportunity. By this rule all 
 animals should have a faculty of articulate speech. Ac- 
 cording to all experience man alone has this faculty, 
 while different kinds of beasts and birds have their 
 distinctive notes, cries, and inarticulate sounds. Next, 
 men so far as experience goes, have five senses only, 
 sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste ; and these within 
 narrowly defined limits. If every one possessed, by natural 
 necessity, every faculty he could exercise if he had it, 
 every one must have a natural telescope for seeing objects 
 more distant, and a microscope for seeing objects more 
 minute, than come within the range of ordinary eyesight. 
 He must have also a natural thermometer, hygrometer, 
 anemometer, and micrometer. All these represent faculties 
 which never would want opportunities for their exercise, 
 but their spontaneous growth is flatly opposed to uni- 
 versal experience. If all living creatures had this prodigal 
 supply of all conceivable senses and faculties, there would 
 be nothing in this to secure their right use and applica- 
 
MR SPENCER'S THREE THEORIES. 67 
 
 tion. Many senses and faculties must be still more liable 
 to abuse than a few only. If circumstances underwent 
 no change, some faculties might be enfeebled by lack 
 of exercise, and others be quickened and made more 
 perfect and acute. If circumstances changed, even this 
 limited amount of variation would be suspended or re- 
 versed. The decay of faculties or senses, either by lack 
 of opportunity or of will to exert them, would be likely 
 to have a wider range than the perfecting of others 
 under the concurrence of three conditions ; the will to 
 exercise them to the utmost, circumstances favourable to 
 their exercise, and the continuance of those circumstances 
 unaltered for a long course of time. The demonstration 
 starts from a definition of moral evil so prodigiously 
 absurd, and involves an assumption with regard to the 
 senses and faculties of men and living creatures, so 
 utterly opposed to all experience, that the acceptance 
 on such grounds of a self-perfecting tendency in all 
 nature, seems the furthest possible limit of unreasoning 
 credulity. When propounded as an a priori demonstra- 
 tion by the same author who assures us, as another a 
 priori truth beyond doubt, that all nature is progressing 
 towards the reign of Omnipresent Death, and as another 
 a priori truth, that the power working behind all pheno- 
 mena is wholly "unknowable," and that it is the main defect 
 of all religious creeds to pretend to know something of a 
 Being of whom nothing can be known, the ridiculous 
 folly of these assertions seems scarcely to admit of in- 
 crease. We may know, it seems, how "the unknowable" 
 will act, through countless ages to come, and may know 
 as "an a priori truth" that He or it will act in three 
 different ways, each contradicting the two others. He will 
 crush up the whole universe, with all its suns and planets., 
 into one vast mass, which will cool down into icy frost 
 and blackness of darkness, so that the self-perfecting 
 
 52 
 
68 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 tendency of Nature will result in the extinction of all 
 life, leaving behind utter wasteness and desolation. Or 
 He will perad venture assume the task of Sisyphus, 
 and go on through countless ages laboriously raising 
 the universe near to some mountain summit of ideal per- 
 fection, only to see it roll down and bury itself in an 
 abyss of ruin and darkness in a later period of utter 
 dissolution. Of such theorists it may well be said in the 
 indignant words of the Prophet, "They have rejected 
 the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them." 
 
 Mr Spencer's third theory of the universe is further 
 unfolded in the following passage, in which a great truth 
 of Scripture is so misconstrued, as to change it into its 
 own exact reverse. 
 
 " The survival only of the fittest is the stern decree of nature. The 
 invariable action of law of itself eliminates the unfit. Progress is 
 necessary to existence, extinction is the doom of retrogression. The 
 highest effect contemplated by the supposed revelation is to bring 
 man into perfect harmony with law, and this is ensured by law itself 
 acting upon intelligence. Only in obedience to law is there life and 
 safety. Knowledge of law is imperatively demanded by nature. Igno- 
 rance of it is a capital offence. If we ignore the law of gravitation, we 
 are dashed to pieces at the foot of a precipice, or are crushed by a 
 falling rock ; if we neglect sanitary law, we are destroyed by a pesti- 
 lence ; if we disregard chemical laws, we are poisoned by a vapour. 
 There is not, in reality, a gradation of breach of law that is not fol- 
 lowed by an equivalent gradation of punishment. Civilization is nothing 
 but the knowledge and observance of natural laws. The savage must 
 learn them or be extinguished : the cultivated must observe them or 
 die. The balance of moral and physical development cannot be 
 deranged with impunity. In the spiritual as well as the physical sense, 
 only the fittest eventually can survive in the struggle for existence. 
 There is, in fact, an absolute upward impulse to the whole human 
 race supplied by the invariable operation of the laws of nature acting 
 upon the common instinct of self-preservation. As on the one hand, 
 the highest human conception of infinite wisdom and power is derived 
 from the universality and invariability of law, so that universality and in- 
 variability, on the other hand, exclude the idea of interruption or occa- 
 
MR SPENCER'S THREE THEORIES. 69 
 
 sional suspension of law for 'any purpose whatever, and more especially 
 for the correction of supposed original errors of design, which cannot 
 have existed, or for the attainment of objects already provided for in 
 the order of nature." (S. R, from S. S. 51, 52.) 
 
 Now in a scheme which pronounces God to be un- 
 knowable, and minds and material objects unknowable 
 also, so that what are called phenomena of matter or of 
 mind, are only "faint" and "vivid" manifestations of "the 
 unknowable," (which is a self-contradiction,) so that 
 human action is the fatal and inevitable result of material 
 circumstances, there are no laws but those of matter and 
 physical change. Now these laws are never broken, 
 and never can be. The man who is dashed to pieces 
 at the foot of a precipice, or crushed by a falling 
 rock, obeys the law of gravitation just as much as the 
 person who lies quietly in his bed. The laws of chemistry 
 are obeyed as much by the choke-damp or fire-damp 
 which causes the death of hundreds, as by the atmo- 
 sphere which sustains the life of millions. Physical 
 laws, the only laws which exist under the theory, are 
 never broken, and never can be, because their subjects 
 are atoms or masses of matter devoid of choice and 
 reason. The only laws which can be broken are those 
 which the theory excludes as unreal fictions, moral laws 
 imposed by God on rational, conscious, and responsible 
 creatures. Transferred to these real laws which can be 
 broken, and have been broken on the largest scale, the 
 remark is true, "only in obedience to law is there life 
 and safety." Such is the statement of Christ Himself. 
 " I know that His commandment is life everlasting." 
 Ignorance of these real laws of God for man is "a capital 
 offence." Such ignorance, utter and complete, is the start- 
 ing-point and boast of this wretched mock philosophy. 
 Breaches of the laws which it admits, are impossible, and 
 have never occurred ; breaches of the moral law which it 
 
7O SUPERNATURAL REVELATION, 
 
 refuses to recognize, and of which it counts the know- 
 ledge impossible, have occurred and do occur continually, 
 and to these transgressions the words do apply, "there 
 is no gradation of the breach of God's law that is 
 not followed by an equivalent gradation of punishment." 
 A great Scriptural truth is borrowed by a godless and 
 immoral philosophy in which it has no real place, and 
 then, is so disguised as hardly to be recognizable. 
 " The wages of sin is death." "In the way of right- 
 eousness is life, in the pathway thereof there is no death." 
 " The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much 
 more the wicked and the sinner." " The commandment 
 of God is life everlasting." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NATURE WITHOUT MAN OR GOD. 
 
 THE indictment of immorality which Mr Mill has 
 brought against Nature, that idol of modern physicists, 
 suggests a deep inquiry, which may throw light on the 
 whole question of anti-supernaturalism. There are four 
 classes of action of which we can conceive, (i) The 
 direct action of God Himself, the supreme intelligence 
 and perfect goodness, doing as He will among the 
 inhabitants of heaven and the dwellers upon earth. 
 The exclusion of all such direct action of God Him- 
 self, as unreasonable if not impossible, is the main 
 dogma of anti-supernaturalism. (2) The second class 
 of activity consists of the conscious voluntary actions 
 of good or bad men, who are subject to a law of moral 
 duty, and the similar action of good or bad spirits, 
 or rational beings in other parts of the universe, sup- 
 posing us to have access to them, and means of ascer- 
 taining their reality, and of discriminating them from all 
 lower activities. (3) Thirdly, the actings of the animal 
 creation, or of vegetable life. None of these can have a 
 strictly moral or anti-moral character. It is not surprising 
 that in brute nature no traces of moral action should be 
 found, though there are near approaches to it, and close 
 resemblances in the nobler animals, when humanized 
 by association with man. (4) Fourthly, there are the 
 
72 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 actings of all material creatures, things devoid either 
 of animal or vegetable life, which yet are most intimately 
 connected with the welfare or continued existence of 
 living things. Many indeed hold that lifeless matter 
 has no active power whatever ; that action is the dis- 
 tinctive character of conscious mind ; so that what we 
 popularly call the actings of material objects, are really 
 the direct actings of the Creator Himself. This view, 
 I think, is erroneous, and that activity of some kind is 
 essential to a real existence. That which cannot act in 
 some way or other cannot be acted upon, and that very 
 passivity and sluggishness which is imputed to lifeless 
 matter, still requires us to admit in it activity of some 
 kind. The wind acts when it blows upon us, fire when 
 it burns us, a stone when it bruises us, the earth itself 
 when it pinions us to its surface by its attraction. The 
 difference is that in the actings of lifeless things, or material 
 objects of all kinds, there is no spontaneity or element 
 of choice, but the action is determined by distance and 
 position alone. The immense disproportion, in amount, 
 of unorganized matter in the universe as known to us, 
 compensates in a certain sense for the inferior and more 
 passive form of its activity. Its actings, because they 
 are lower in kind than even those of the brutes them- 
 selves, cannot possibly reveal moral features of choice 
 or discrimination, with reference to moral ends or pur- 
 poses. There seem to be three laws at least to which 
 all matter is subject, (i) The first is that of universal 
 appetency, each atom of matter tending to approach 
 every other, with a force or intensity determined by the 
 distance alone. (2) The second is a law of special appe- 
 tency, determined by the union and interaction of matter 
 and self- repulsive ether. On this second law, probably, 
 all cohesion, electric affinity, and chemical structure 
 depend. (3) The third is a law of ethereal repulsion, 
 
NATURE WITHOUT MAN OR GOD. 73 
 
 on which all the phenomena of light, electricity, mag- 
 netism, heat, and the more subtle agencies of nature 
 depend. 
 
 If then we deny all direct action of God, the Supreme 
 Intelligence, and shut out the Creator from His own 
 universe, and then speak of nature in contrast to man, 
 of the natural in contrast to the artificial, it is idle to 
 look for moral qualities in the actings of brute crea- 
 tures, or the limited activities which alone belong to 
 unorganized creatures, or material objects in all their di- 
 versities. At the same time, these lowest creatures must 
 have had their limited powers defined by the Creator in 
 the moment of their creation, and out of infinite possi- 
 bilities, the same Creator must have decided all those 
 conditions of place, number, mass, concentration, or dif- 
 fusion, on which, by the very law of their being, all 
 their later activities and operations one upon another, 
 and upon the living things with which they co-exist, 
 will really depend. So far then as any semblances of 
 choice, moral purpose, or moral preference seem de- 
 tected in the changes of mere matter, it can be due to 
 no present purpose or choice in the things themselves, 
 but only be a remote consequence of the wisdom of 
 the Creator, in His wise arrangement of the material 
 universe in the hour of its creation. Thus, brute or 
 unorganized lifeless nature cannot possibly reveal moral 
 preferences in its separate actings. Those actings are 
 linked with each other by a law that extends through 
 distant ages, and which is determined by distance and 
 position alone ; but the actings of brute or inanimate 
 nature are modified continually by the voluntary actions 
 of all mankind, into which the elements of spontaneity, 
 choice, love, and hate, or moral preference and aversion 
 do continually enter. The same is true of the actings 
 of all moral and spiritual intelligences, in whatever part 
 
74 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 of the universe they may exist, and the laws which link 
 together the whole material universe would make it 
 impossible for such actings of spiritual being, in however 
 remote a region, not to extend their influence to the 
 earth and terrestrial changes. 
 
 That changes on the earth should be determined 
 solely by physical laws would require two great con- 
 ditions; that the Living God should, by a self-denying 
 ordinance, bind Himself never to stretch forth His 
 Almighty hand, whether for judgment or for mercy, to 
 interfere with the mechanical working of the laws of 
 brute and inanimate nature, and that He should equally 
 shut up in eternal inaction all rational and spiritual crea- 
 tures, in every part of the created universe. It is not 
 surprising then that Mr Mill should find Nature, as 
 defined by himself, nature, that is, exclusive both of 
 Man and God, guilty of strange enormities and moral 
 crimes, when he tries each separate event in which ma- 
 terial agents are concerned, by the same test as if they 
 were the separate and independent actions of a moral 
 agent. He exacts, in short, from nature the unnatural ; 
 from things not endowed with the power of choice, the 
 proper results of choice and spontaneity ; from creatures 
 that cannot choose, the virtue of choosing well. It is 
 not surprising, when God Himself and all moral and 
 spiritual creatures, have been excluded from the defi- 
 nition of nature, that the residuum should be found 
 devoid of moral excellences and perfections. Two ques- 
 tions alone remain. First, whether the general laws 
 appointed for the lower creatures, and for the whole 
 material universe devoid of life and moral preference, 
 disclose any proofs of wisdom and goodness, in Him 
 by whom they were first appointed. Now it is the 
 wisdom and excellency of these laws which tempt 
 atheistic speculators to embrace the strange hypothesis, 
 
NATURE WITHOUT MAN OR GOD. 75 
 
 that it is useless for the Creator Himself ever to inter- 
 fere with their undisturbed operation. The other ques- 
 tion is, whether the .special arrangement of the material 
 constituents of the universe might have been so or- 
 dained in their original creation, as to secure the bene- 
 fits, and escape all the inconveniences and mischiefs, 
 which result from time to time from their invariable 
 operation. Those who affect to solve this great and 
 mysterious problem more perfectly than the Allwise 
 Creator has done, shew the extreme of folly and pre- 
 sumption into which it is possible for sinful creatures 
 to fall. They are well rebuked by that voice of God 
 to the patriarch : " Hast thou an arm like God ? or 
 canst thou thunder with a voice like Him ? Shall 
 he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct Him ? 
 He that reproveth God, let him answer it." " Look on 
 every one that is proud and bring him low, and tread 
 down the wicked in their place, then will I also confess 
 unto thee, that thine own right hand can save thee." 
 Surely one glance on the grandeur, immensity, and mar- 
 vellous variety of the wonderful works of God, ought 
 to silence those rash and audacious speculators, who 
 would affect to improve on the counsels and works of 
 God the Only Wise ! 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion " says that 
 miracles, or the direct action of God Himself, are "em- 
 phatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and 
 the invariability of the order of nature ; the imperfec- 
 tion thus ascribed to the Divine work is derogatory to 
 the power and wisdom of the Creator." The hypo- 
 physicism, as it may be called, of Mr Mill, is a curious 
 contrast to this anti-supernaturalism. Having excluded 
 from nature all direct agency of God Himself, and of 
 all moral agents, men or spirits, and left only a residuum 
 of unmoral agencies, we see what is his conclusion as 
 
76 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 to the moral perfections of this residual nature. All 
 the worst crimes recorded in history are surpassed, he 
 says, by this idol of modern atheism. These two tribes 
 of the great Midianite camp effectually destroy each 
 other. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 THE UNNATURAL IN CONTRAST TO THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 THE term Nature when used comprehensively, in- 
 cludes a vast variety of beings and of natures widely 
 different from each other. We may distinguish six main 
 classes of natures. First, the nature of material things ; 
 secondly, of plants ; thirdly, of animals ; fourthly, of men ; 
 fifthly, of rational beings not human; sixthly, the Nature 
 of God, the Self-existent First Cause. Now in each 
 of these there may be first, natural or normal actings; 
 secondly, unnatural, and thirdly, supernatural actings, 
 above or beyond the ordinary standard and mode of 
 action. This last term may be extended, so as to include 
 unusual and extraordinary actings of the Creator Himself. 
 It will be enough to notice two forms of the Unnatural 
 and two of the Supernatural. First, the brutish unnatural. 
 " What they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those 
 things they corrupt themselves." Man may thus be self- 
 degraded below his own nature to the level of brute 
 beasts. Secondly, the animal preternatural, when some 
 lower creature, plant, or animal, is raised to a mode of 
 acting above the usual range of animal faculty, (i) " The 
 dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbade the mad- 
 ness of the prophet." (2) "The Lord spake unto the 
 fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land." (3) 
 "Cast an hook and take up the fish that first cometh 
 up, and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt 
 
78 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 find a piece of money." (4) "Cast the net on the right 
 side of the ship and ye shall find. They cast therefore, 
 and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude 
 of fishes." 
 
 One form of the unnatural in contrast to the Super- 
 natural is included as a main article of the Creed of Anti- 
 Supernaturalism. The Nature, of which the " glorious 
 perfection and invariability" are extolled, as excluding the 
 miracles and truths of the Christian Faith, is a Nature, 
 in which death reigns supreme and undisturbed from 
 age to age. It is that nature of which Mr Mill says 
 pithily, " Killing, the most criminal act recognized by 
 human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives." 
 It is that nature of which, according to Mr Spencer's 
 first theory, the undoubted tendency is " to a reign of 
 omnipresent death." This apotheosis of death is so com- 
 plete that according to Strauss, "the statement that a dead 
 man has returned to life is composed of two contradictory 
 elements." Thus the living God is dethroned, and His 
 existence is either denied, or thrust wholly beyond the 
 reach of human knowledge, and DEATH, the last enemy, 
 is enthroned in his place. This most monstrous and 
 unnatural of all creeds, is gravely propounded as a pre- 
 ferable substitute, more agreeable to reason and the 
 moral sense, than the glorious and everlasting Gospel 
 of redeeming love. Sinful man flings back the unspeak- 
 able gift of God, in the face of Him who offers it, and 
 chooses rather to sit down in blind and slavish subjec- 
 tion to the worst and foulest of all false gods. The 
 most degrading of all conceivable superstitions, is that 
 which shuts out God from the right to interfere, by a 
 message of redeeming grace, with a world over which 
 death reigns supreme, the "lazar. house" of Milton's 
 description. (Bk. XL 480.) 
 
 2. Another form of the Unnatural is the refusal to 
 
THE UNNATURAL. 79 
 
 see any signs or proofs of a superhuman Intelligence, or 
 of the working and dominion of a conscious First Cause 
 in the whole system of created things. The message 
 of God to sinful men, by the Prophet whose lips were 
 touched with a coal of fire from the heavenly altar, 
 begins by denouncing the more than brutish blindness 
 of this practical atheism, into which his own people had 
 so widely fallen. "Hear O heavens, and give ear, O 
 earth, for the Lord hath spoken ; I have nourished and 
 brought up children, and they have rebelled against 
 me. The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's 
 crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not 
 consider." (Is. i. 2, 3.) The speculative atheism which 
 openly professes to know nothing at all with regard to 
 the Being, works and character of God, is thus defined 
 by His own lips, to be a degradation of man below 
 the level of the brute creatures. The great Apostle 
 of the Gentiles applies the same truth specially to the 
 case of those with whom modern Agnostics would 
 prefer to be classed, the old philosophers of the heathen 
 world. " They are without excuse, because when they 
 knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither 
 were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, 
 and their foolish heart was darkened ; professing them- 
 selves to be wise, they became fools." Moral degra- 
 dation, and the influx of a tide of degrading lusts and 
 passions, is declared to be the Divine Nemesis on this 
 ungrateful and foolish blindness. " Even as they did 
 not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave 
 them over to a reprobate mind . . . filled with all un- 
 righteousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, and 
 malignity." 
 
 Atheistic speculations, spreading like a canker in any 
 one generation of mankind, are almost sure to breed 
 gigantic and unnatural wickedness in the generation that 
 
8o SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 follows. The mock philanthropy which sets out with 
 atheistic contempt for the living God, will be sure to 
 set in a sea of blood. And "when the kindness of 
 God the Saviour towards man," has been despised and 
 rejected, the "New Supreme Being" of M. Comte's 
 blasphemous philosophy, will be sure ere long to de- 
 velope his historical attributes, " foolish, disobedient, 
 deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in 
 malice and envy, hateful and hating one another." 
 (Tit. iii. 3.) 
 
 The first form of the Supernatural is the Prophetic. 
 This supposes that God, the Supreme Intelligence, 
 singles out amongst men some individuals, through 
 whom He would give messages of heavenly truth, and 
 announcements of His will to their fellow-men : that 
 He then bestows upon them gifts of power, or foresight, 
 to attest and prove the commission which they have re- 
 ceived. These supernatural gifts, exceeding the power 
 or wisdom of ordinary men, are tests and signs of 
 their divine commission. So it was said to Moses, 
 " take this rod in thine hand wherewith thou shalt do 
 signs." So St Paul writes to the Corinthians, "the 
 signs of an Apostle were wrought among you, in all 
 patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds." 
 The idea that though MAN at his will can make known 
 his thoughts and wishes to his fellow-man in writing, 
 yet the Lord of Heaven and of earth, the Architect 
 and Builder of all things, is unable so to do, is the 
 strange paradox of some modern sceptics. If God is 
 pleased to make known His will by speech or writing 
 to men, reason requires that the messengers He em- 
 ploys should have clear credentials to confirm their 
 commission. So the same Apostle says at the close of 
 his letter to Thessalonica, " The salutation of Paul with 
 mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle, so 
 
THE UNNATURAL. 8 I 
 
 I write." Thus a distinct proof that the writing was 
 his, and that he had a divine commission, attested by 
 supernatural works, was given with each epistle. So 
 " no prophecy," we are told, " came at any time by the 
 will of man, but holy men of God spake as moved (or 
 borne along) by the Holy Ghost;" and of these mes- 
 sengers we are further told that "God also bare them 
 witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles, 
 and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will." 
 Such a witness then, either in works of superhuman 
 power, directly wrought by them, or linked with their 
 message, has been the constant law of revelation by 
 prophets, from Adam in Paradise to the beloved dis- 
 ciple in Patmos. To make the contrast more con- 
 spicuous between Christ and His forerunner, "John 
 did no miracle." But his birth was announced by the 
 message of an angel, and his work and character by 
 a second prophecy uttered by his own father, and his 
 message was essentially only a preface to that of Christ 
 Himself. Works and sayings, preternatural in common 
 men, are natural, and essential to their work and cha- 
 racter, in men singled out to be prophets, messengers, 
 apostles, and ambassadors of the God of heaven. 
 
 But beyond this prophetic form of the supernatural, 
 there is one still higher. Should the living God Him- 
 self appear in human form, the words and acts of such 
 a Divine Person, conversing with men upon earth, must 
 be supernatural in the highest sense. They must trans- 
 cend not only the words and works of average men, and 
 of righteous men, but even of prophets ; a wisdom, a 
 power and a goodness surpassing those of human 
 prophets would be needful to justify the claim to be 
 such a Divine person. Such a claim, if advanced with 
 an entire absence of any such proofs, would be incredi- 
 ble. So our Lord says, " If I bear witness of myself 
 B. 6 
 
82 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 my witness is not true ; the works which the Father 
 hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear 
 witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." " Had 
 ye believed Moses ye would have believed me, for he 
 wrote of me." " If I had not done among them the 
 works which none other man did, they had not had sin, 
 but now have they both seen and hated both me and my 
 Father." And again when the messengers of the Jews 
 were asked "why have ye not brought him?" they an- 
 swered, " Never man spake like this man." Thus 
 works of divine power, and words of divine wisdom, 
 were joined with signal manifestations of divine good- 
 ness. " Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say 
 well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, 
 have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one 
 another's feet." " Peace I leave with you, my peace I 
 give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto 
 you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
 afraid." "When He was come near, He beheld the city 
 and wept over it." " Then said Jesus, Father, forgive 
 them, for they know not what they do." " He said, It 
 is finished, and He bowed His head, and gave up the 
 ghost." This threefold cord, of which the strands are, 
 works of superhuman power, words of divine wisdom, 
 and acts and tears of divine compassion, condescension, 
 and grace, is intertwined to guarantee this glorious 
 truth, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and 
 that "the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of 
 the world;" and that "all men should honour the Son 
 even as they honour the Father;" and again, that 
 " He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the 
 Father which hath sent Him." This great truth of the 
 divine glory and perfection of the " Sun of Righteous- 
 ness," the Incarnate Redeemer, shines out above all 
 other truths, with a brightness like that of the vision 
 
THE UNNATURAL. 83 
 
 seen by Saul on the way to Damascus, "a light from 
 heaven at midday, above the brightness of the sun." 
 And whenever the eyes of men are closed to this divine 
 and supernatural light, and they prefer to sit down con- 
 tent with the thick darkness of that course of nature, 
 in which death reigns supreme for evermore, the same 
 Apostle has taught us the secret cause of a preference 
 so unnatural. "If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to 
 them which are perishing, in whom the god of this 
 world hath blinded the minds of them which believe 
 not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who 
 is the image of God, should shine unto them." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 
 
 THE Bampton Lectures of Dr Mozley on Miracles 
 (1865) are, in the main, one of the most valuable con- 
 tributions which Oxford has given within the last forty 
 years to the defence of the Christian faith. I have shewn 
 elsewhere, that Professor Tyndall, in his reply to them 
 in " The Fortnightly," where he warns off the clergy 
 as " noble savages" from the field of physical science, 
 has himself committed two great errors, one with regard 
 to the views of Newton, and the other with regard to 
 the fundamental basis of all inductive science, as illus- 
 trated and confirmed by the " Principia." But while he 
 is thus wholly wrong in the issue he has raised, a serious 
 defect mingles with that part of the Lectures which has 
 occasioned his strictures. Dr Tyndall makes it the first 
 principle of real science, that the forces of nature and the 
 laws which men of science investigate, " are necessary," 
 
 " that if the force be permanent, the phenomena are necessary, whether 
 they do or do not resemble anything that has gone before." 
 
 Dr Mozley says on the other hand, that our faith in 
 the order of nature 
 
 " is an impulse which rests on no rational grounds, and can be traced 
 to no rational principle ; which possesses no intellectual character," and 
 that "the proper function of the inductive principle, or belief in the 
 order of nature, is to act as a practical basis for the affairs of life, and 
 the carrying on of human society." 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 85 
 
 Professor Tyndall rejoins effectively by enumerating 
 a series of scientific discoveries. 
 
 "What," he asks, "has the planet Neptune, or the belt of Jupiter, 
 or the whiteness about the poles of Mars, to do with the affairs of 
 society, or how is society affected by the fact that the sun's atmosphere 
 contains sodium, or that the nebula of Orion contains hydrogen gas? 
 What practical interest has society in the fact that the spots on the 
 sun have a decennial period, and that when a magnet is closely 
 watched for half a century, it is' found to perform small motions 
 which synchronize with the appearance and disappearance of the solar 
 spots?" He continues, "We hold it to be an exercise of reason to 
 explore the meaning of the universe to which we stand in relation, 
 and the work accomplished is the proper commentary on the methods 
 pursued." 
 
 The truth lies almost midway between Dr Mozley 
 and his critic ; though the error of Prof. Tyndall is the 
 more complete, and is one which would extinguish 
 that very process of induction on the value of which 
 he so strongly insists. Prof. Tyndall's writ of eject- 
 ment against all theologians, and nine-tenths of the 
 clergy, as ignorant savages, from the field of physical 
 science, as involving questions with which they are in- 
 competent to deal, and where they are ill-informed, self- 
 deluded, and likely to delude others, rests on two data. 
 The first is a direct inversion of the facts with regard 
 to Newton's own doctrine ; the other is an assertion of 
 the necessary character of the laws of nature, which is 
 opposed to every page of the reasoning in the Principia, 
 and would turn that immortal work into a tissue of 
 laborious folly. It affirms the laws of force to be ne- 
 cessary truths, and thereby stultifies the whole course 
 of experimental science, and reverses the plainest facts 
 in the history of discovery. The other ground of the 
 charge is the maxim, that 
 
 "a truly scientific intellect can never be satisfied till it reaches the 
 forces by which the succession is produced... In judging of the order of 
 nature, our enquiries relate to the permanence of force." 
 
86 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 This principle is true, but Prof. Tyndall has misdi- 
 rected the writ of ejectment which he founds upon it ; 
 its proper address is not to the Christian clergy, but 
 to M. Comte and all the Positive Philosophers. His 
 statement is a point blank contradiction of the funda- 
 mental maxim of that philosophy. For its first prin- 
 ciple is the exclusion, not only of supernatural powers, 
 but of such abstractions as cause, force, substance, and 
 vital power, from the researches of science, which in 
 its positive stage must be confined to the bare classi- 
 fication of phenomena. The whole course of reason- 
 ing by which Dr Mozley has brought on himself and 
 the clergy the reproach of being ignorant savages, is 
 not drawn from theology, but wholly borrowed from 
 the speculations of sceptical philosophers. By a rash 
 acceptance of their premises, he has greatly impaired 
 the value of lectures which contain much striking and 
 valuable thought. Dr Mozley's conclusion is, that the 
 inductive principle belongs to the irrational part of our 
 nature, that it is an unreasoning impulse or mechanical 
 instinct, by which we expect that future changes will be 
 like the past ; that it is simply a 
 
 " mechanical expectation of the likeness of the unknown to the known," 
 that it is "unreasoning, and no part of the distinctive reason of man." 
 He says that " step by step, philosophy has loosened the connection 
 of the order of nature with the ground of reason, befriending in the 
 same proportion the principle of miracles. Science has itself proclaimed 
 the truth, that we see no causes in nature; that the whole chain of 
 physical succession is to the eye of reason a rope of sand, consisting 
 of antecedents and consequents, but without a rational link or trace 
 of necessary connection between them; we know of law only in the 
 sense of recurrences in nature." 
 
 Here Dr Mozley starts with assuming the truth of 
 the first principle of the positive philosophy, that science 
 has to deal with phenomena and their recurrence alone, 
 the relations of likeness and unlikeness. 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 87 
 
 The only connection of this view with theology is 
 of a secondary and accidental kind. Bishop Berkeley 
 deceived himself with the notion that, by adopting the 
 current philosophy of ideas, and reasoning it out to the 
 sceptical conclusion of the non-existence of matter and 
 the material universe, he could gain a fresh argument 
 for the existence of God. This strange paradox, by 
 which he contradicted both Scripture and common sense, 
 was taken up by successors of a very different spirit, 
 and worked out to its natural issue. First, Hume 
 adopted his reasoning, and applied it to all mental 
 phenomena. Instead of material objects, Berkeley left 
 us floating in an ocean of momentary and evanescent 
 phenomena. Hume completed the process, and instead 
 of minds, left nothing but an interminable series of states 
 of consciousness, or sensations, or perceptions, or in- 
 ternal phenomena, with no minds, any more than things, 
 to which they belonged. The denial of the reality of 
 matter being thus followed by a like denial of the ex- 
 istence of mind, there could be no room left in this 
 abyss of darkness, for faith in the existence and attri- 
 butes of God, that is, of a creative and supreme In- 
 telligence. Bishop Berkeley, unhappily, took the first 
 step towards burying science and religion in this thick 
 jungle of sceptical philosophy, a double contradiction of 
 common sense and of Scripture. But its patrons have 
 not been the Christian clergy or theologians, who have 
 almost unanimously rejected it by a healthy instinct, 
 but sceptical philosophers. From Hume onward, this 
 phenomenalism has been the favourite creed of modern 
 sceptics. 
 
 Mr Mill, in his " Logic," makes this the main basis 
 of his Metaphysics, and adopts it fully with regard to 
 the non-existence of matter, which he would replace 
 by the new term " permanent possibilities of sensa- 
 
88 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 tion." With regard to mind, the phenomena of memory 
 make him hesitate. He owns that philosophical con- 
 sistency would make us deny the existence of minds, 
 as well as of material objects. But the phenomena of 
 memory forbid him fully to acquiesce in this view; so 
 he counsels a compromise, by which we may use the 
 popular language which implies their existence, with the 
 reserve of a secret doubt and philosophical uncertainty 
 whether they exist or not. Mr Spencer adopts the very 
 same theory with a new phraseology. All the material 
 phenomena which Berkeley left in their endless suc- 
 cession, when matter itself was abolished, are with 
 Mr Spencer an indefinite series of " vivid manifesta- 
 tions of the Unknowable." Again, all the series of 
 states of consciousness which Hume left to us after 
 minds were abolished, are with Mr Spencer an inter- 
 minable series of "faint manifestations of the Unknow- 
 able." Thus, in this grand funeral procession, Bishop 
 Berkeley led the way, under the guidance of a false 
 philosophy, by abolishing the whole world of matter, 
 Hume followed, and completed the funeral rites, by 
 abolishing the whole world of created minds, leaving 
 us floating in an abyss of material and mental changes, 
 without any things or persons, material objects, or con- 
 scious minds, to which they belong. Well may Mr Spencer 
 say that 
 
 " Metaphysics of this type usually produce a sceptical state of mind, 
 and are ordinarily followed by a sense of universal illusion." 
 
 His proposed remedy however for this great evil only 
 aggravates the disease. It is to introduce a new definition 
 of reality, that reality means only " persistence in con- 
 sciousness," a definition truly "unthinkable," and never 
 known or heard of till his "First Principles " appeared. 
 Hume has frankly acknowledged this inevitable result 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 89 
 
 of his own extension of Berkeley's reasoning on the 
 non-existence of matter to include mind also. 
 
 "These principles," he says, "may flourish and triumph in the 
 schools, where it is difficult to refute them, but as soon as they leave 
 the shade, and by the presence of the REAL OBJECTS (!) are put in 
 opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature, they vanish 
 like smoke, and leave the most determined sceptic in the same con- 
 dition as other mortals." 
 
 The constancy of Nature has a different meaning 
 with Prof. Tyndall, Mr Spencer, and the author of 
 "Supernatural Religion." In the author of the Belfast 
 address it means the necessary character of the laws of 
 physical science : the doctrine that 
 
 " Nature has never been crossed by spontaneous action, or a state of 
 things ever existed which could not be rigorously deduced from the 
 preceding state." 
 
 Prof. Tyndall boldly ascribes this doctrine to Newton 
 himself, and makes it the test of the scientific mind. A 
 startling contradiction of notorious facts, since this is the 
 very doctrine which Newton expressly denounces at the 
 close of the Principia, as unscientific and unreasonable. The 
 doctrine is indeed the most palpable of scientific errors : 
 it destroys the deep contrast between abstract sciences, 
 and concrete sciences which rest upon the evidence of 
 facts, and deal with concrete realities ; it stultifies the 
 whole course of experimental science as laborious trifling, 
 and reverses the plainest facts in the history of dis- 
 covery. It annuls that process which is the essence 
 of scientific advance, a comparison of the results of 
 different hypotheses with observed facts, so as to detect 
 which out of several hypotheses is actually true. The 
 binding of nature by modern science " in the bonds of 
 fate," spoken of in the Belfast address, is nothing else 
 than the contradiction of the fundamental principle of 
 M. Comte and the positive philosophy, which bids us 
 
90 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 set aside the research of forces and real entities, and 
 classify phenomena alone. On this view, we have an 
 infinite multitude of phenomena through successive 
 moments of time, but the phenomena of each moment 
 are quite independent of those of the previous or se- 
 quent moments. 
 
 The only indeterminateness which is set aside by 
 the progress of physical science, is the false inde- 
 pendence of the phenomena of each separate instant 
 of time, which would result from the positivist or 
 phenomenal philosophy. The indeterminateness which 
 still remains, and which separates the actual universe 
 and its physical laws, from that system of necessity with 
 which Prof. Tyndall confounds it, consists of the places 
 of all the atoms in the universe, containing three times 
 as many indeterminates, as there are atoms of matter 
 or of ether in the whole universe. These data cannot be 
 supplied by the laws themselves. They must be supplied 
 by the choice of a will, prior to and above the laws ; 
 till they have been thus supplied, the law of gravitation, 
 and any similar laws depending on the distances of the 
 atoms, cannot operate. The atoms must exist, and be at 
 definite distances from each other, and in definite direc- 
 tions, before any one of these laws can take effect. The 
 result of excluding all spontaneous action, of man or of 
 God, is not to supersede will by physical laws, but to 
 restrict the action of will to the first moment of crea- 
 tion, and to confine the choice of the number, properties, 
 and positions of all the atoms of the universe to that 
 moment of creation. The whole infinite spontaneity or 
 element of choice would be concentrated in one moment 
 of time ; thenceforward will and choice in the Creator 
 would be dormant and idle for evermore. And no will 
 or choice in any creature would be permitted to interfere 
 with the perfect and eternal development of the ever- 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 9 1 
 
 changing positions of the innumerable atoms. Such is 
 the senseless view of the history of the universe which 
 this mechanical theory sets before us. Its laws cannot 
 work, or come into existence at all, without the pre- 
 vious exercise of choice and will on the part of the 
 Supreme Lawgiver, and this choice once made, the 
 faculty of spontaneity is supposed to sink into an ever- 
 lasting sleep ; and the blinded Samson of the material 
 universe has to grind on in a prison-house of fated and 
 inevitable change for evermore. Had Prof. Tyndall 
 read with due care the Lectures he praises so justly, 
 and followed this by a study of the Principia and the 
 Scholium at its close, he would have escaped falling into 
 these blunders. But Dr Mozley's statement, that the 
 inductive principle, and our faith in the order of Nature, 
 is an unreasoning impulse, a blind and " unreasoning 
 instinct," and his further explanation in these words, that 
 
 " our nature, though endowed with reason, contains constitutionally 
 large irrational departments, and includes in it many processes which 
 are entirely spontaneous, irresistible and of the automaton kind" 
 (p. 46), 
 
 seem to have provoked the rejoinder that "as regards 
 the knowledge of Nature, which is here the one thing 
 needful, nine-tenths of the clergy are noble savages 
 and nothing more," with the further advice, " keep away 
 from physical nature." The fault of Dr Mozley is, that 
 he has adopted blindly the main principle of the 
 phenomenal or idealistic school of sceptical philosophy, 
 and has thereby greatly impaired and perplexed a course 
 of argument, marked in other respects by much ingenuity 
 and force of reasoning. Prof. Tyndall's writ of eject- 
 ment from the studies and researches of physical science 
 ought to have its superscription altered, and instead 
 of being served on theologians and the Christian clergy, 
 so as really to include with them Bacon, Newton, Milton, 
 
92 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 Barrow, Faraday, Whewell, Sedgwick, and most physical 
 discoverers of real eminence, should be addressed to 
 his own allies, the positive philosophers and Nihilists 
 of modern times. The "inductive principle according 
 to Dr Mozley is the expectation that the future will 
 be like the past ; this he regards as a blind instinct, 
 having nothing to do with the reason, and implanted 
 to assist us in the practical conduct of life. Now, in- 
 stead of settling whether this expectation belongs to 
 the rational or irrational part of our nature, there is a 
 prior question whether it exists at all. No one, either 
 peasant, philosopher or divine, really expects that to- 
 morrow will be exactly like to-day in all its events, 
 and the third day exactly like both. As the Bishop 
 of Exeter has well said, in the first Essay (p. 2), 
 
 " A series of recurring cycles, however conceivable to the logical under- 
 standing, is inconceivable to the spirit, for every later cycle must be 
 different from every earlier by the mere fact of coming after it and 
 embodying its results." 
 
 No one ever did believe the course of Nature, or any 
 portions of it, to be mere facsimiles, and perfect repe- 
 titions of previous events without any change. On the 
 other hand, to suppose that the events of to-morrow or 
 any later day will be wholly different from the events that 
 are past, with no elements common to both, is incredible 
 and inconceivable. It would imply the annihilation of 
 the actual universe around us, and of ourselves, and the 
 creation of another wholly new. Since no one, then, 
 expects the future to be like the past in all respects, 
 and every one expects it to be like the past in some 
 respects, there is plainly a wide range for the exercise 
 of reason, to decide how far it is probable the likeness 
 will extend, and what will be the degree of unlikeness, 
 variation, and change. The first step in the exercise of 
 reason on this subject, is to renounce as wholly false 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 93 
 
 the first principle of the positive philosophy ; that we 
 have to deal with a vast phantasmagoria of phenomena 
 alone, and not with real entities, things, persons and 
 places. The element of permanence, on which we con- 
 fidently and reasonably rely, has this ground, that the 
 persons, the animals, the trees and plants, and the places 
 and material objects of which we have had experience 
 to-day, will form the main part of our experiences to- 
 morrow, unless we travel away from our present to a 
 wholly different locality. There are various changes 
 on which we reasonably calculate amidst this general 
 identity ; death and dissolution in the case of some ; 
 growth and insensible vital progress in all ; and births, 
 introducing fresh persons, animals, and plants, besides 
 those which were known before. There are other 
 changes of a periodic kind. The regular succession of 
 day and night, of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, 
 of seed-time and harvest; and besides these, changes 
 which we cannot precisely predict or anticipate, of a 
 more exceptional kind ; partial or complete catastrophes, 
 such as sudden deaths, earthquakes, explosions, thun- 
 derstorms, destruction of life by lightning, river-floods 
 and oceanic inundations, and other violent and extreme 
 changes, to which Nature is liable in every part of her 
 wide dominion. The cultivation of our reason, and the 
 practical habits of human life, depend on the permanent 
 elements in Nature, and on those quiet and regular 
 changes which come within the range of reasonable 
 expectation and practical forecast. All exceptional 
 changes, which we cannot foresee or anticipate by our 
 knowledge of second causes, come practically under the 
 head of the miraculous ; there is no blinding influence 
 of custom to hinder our minds from passing at once, 
 in these, to the recognition of that Divine Agent, on 
 whom all second causes really depend. 
 
94 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 " Miracles viewed as evidences for a revelation, are unusual events 
 not within the ordinary power of man, nor capable of being foreseen 
 by man's actual knowledge of second causes, and wrought or announced 
 by some professed messenger of God, to confirm the reality of the 
 message; the definition has a negative and a positive side. There 
 must be no second causes, at least within human knowledge, that will 
 account for the event, and there must be an apparent connection with 
 a plain moral object or more professed message from God. Wherever 
 these two conditions meet, we have a case of miraculous evidence; 
 some of these, possibly, by an increase of man's insight into natural 
 changes, or of his power over nature, in some later age might cease 
 to be miraculous. Others may surpass not only human, but super- 
 human power. ..Whenever, through the power of sin, creation has 
 grown opaque to the eyes of men, and the physical course of nature 
 conceals from them the presence of the great Lawgiver, miracles are 
 needed to form an antidote to blind nature-worship, and to reverse 
 the blinding spell of unbelief. This end may be secured either by acts 
 of Divine power suspending or reversing some particular law of nature, 
 or by combining these in such an unusual way, and with such marks 
 of a moral purpose, as to force on reluctant minds the conviction that 
 Nature is only the servant and handmaid of the Living God, the Creator 
 and moral Governor of the universe." (Bible and Modern Thought, 
 p. 76.) 
 
 The Most High, when He answers the patriarch out 
 of the whirlwind, speaks of these extraordinary changes 
 in Nature, as His own treasures, "which I have reserved 
 against the time of trouble, against the day of battle 
 and war " (Job xxxviii. 23). And again, with regard 
 to the bounds of the ocean, the circuits of the earth, 
 the ordinances of heaven, and the lightnings, " Who 
 brake up for it a decreed place, and set bars and doors, 
 and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, here 
 shall thy proud waves be stayed ? Hast thou commanded 
 the morning, and caused the dayspring to know its place, 
 that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and 
 that the wicked might be shaken out of it ? Canst thou 
 lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters 
 may cover thee ? Canst thou send lightnings that they 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 95 
 
 may go and say unto thee, Here we are ? " All that 
 is vast, unforeseen, unusual, and magnificent in Nature, 
 constitutes the secret treasure-chamber of the Most High, 
 that He may " withdraw man from his purpose, and hide 
 pride from man." 
 
 The constancy of Nature, or as he styles it, "the 
 perfection and invariability of Nature," with the author 
 of " Supernatural Religion " is a third thing, distinct 
 from both the extremes of Mozley and Tyndall. It is 
 a passive adoption of the third of Mr Spencers three 
 inconsistent theories of the future manifestation of the 
 unknowable. It is neither the necessary character of 
 natural laws, nor the likeness in all respects of the future 
 to the past. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion " in accepting 
 as a first principle the predicted Creed of the scoffers 
 of the last days, that " all things continue as they were 
 since the fathers fell asleep," under the title of the 
 " glorious perfection and invariability of the order of 
 Nature," seems never to have taken the least pains to 
 analyze or define to himself that constancy of the laws 
 of Nature to which he appeals. It is plain that the end- 
 less variation of natural phenomena, and of the changes 
 of the visible universe, is quite as conspicuous as that 
 constancy of natural law to which the appeal is made. 
 Let us consider the matter a little more closely. There 
 may be said perhaps to be nine great laws or princi- 
 ples which reveal themselves in the constitution and 
 changes of the universe. (i) First, the law of Per- 
 manence ; the continuous existence of all the creatures 
 which God has made, and which come within the range 
 of our observations ; man, animals, and plants, and the 
 innumerable atoms of lifeless matter. Our knowledge 
 refers to things and persons that do really exist, and not 
 to perishable evanescent sensations or phenomena which 
 
96 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 expire in the moment of their birth. The first step then 
 of genuine science, is to renounce the Idealism of Berke- 
 ley, and the Sensationalism of Mr Mill in his " Logic." 
 This first law of permanence in all natural objects, results 
 directly from the fact of creation. THINGS abide and 
 endure, but sensations and phenomena expire from mo- 
 ment to moment. There is an element of permanence 
 in Nature, because "in the beginning God created the 
 Heavens and the Earth," and "they continue this day 
 according to His ordinance." (2) The second law is 
 that of Progression, or the successive stages of life and 
 growth in all living things. Thus, all men, animals and 
 plants, beginning with the embryo or the seed, pass 
 on through successive stages to maturity and old age. 
 This law of progress, and continual passage from infant 
 weakness to mature strength and fully-developed life, 
 extends through the whole range of animated being. 
 It has its defined periods, which extend from the ephe- 
 meral life of the insect tribes to the millennial duration 
 of the trees of the forest. (3) A third law, which ac- 
 companies the second, as a kind of negative counterpart 
 or dark shadow, is the law of Death or dissolution, what 
 the apostle calls " the law of sin and death." Life in all 
 plants and animals and even in man himself, after a 
 period of growth or maturity of varying length, is fol- 
 lowed by disease, death, and dissolution of being. This 
 law we accept as a fact, universal within the limits of 
 terrestrial existence, but reason protests against the 
 acceptance of it as a fundamental and absolute law of 
 universal being. (4) Fourthly, there is a law of Pe- 
 riodicity including three main elements, on which the 
 course of human history and the measurement of time 
 depend; i. The period and ceaseless alternation of day 
 and night, resulting from the daily revolution of the 
 earth, and revealing itself in every sunrise and sunset, 
 
THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 97 
 
 fulfilling the decree, "While the earth remaineth, day 
 and night shall not cease." 2. The second period is 
 that of the natural year, depending on the motion of 
 the earth in its annual orbit, and revealing itself in the 
 succession of the seasons ; this is ratified by the same 
 divine decree, "While the earth remaineth, seed-time 
 and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, shall 
 not cease." 3. A third period, less conspicuous than 
 these, but still playing an important part in natural 
 science and all human history, is the month, or lunation 
 of the moon. With these are connected many secondary 
 periods, of a more complex and dependent kind ; the 
 tides and ocean currents, the trade winds and other 
 changes of the ocean and the air. The heavens supply 
 other periods in the revolutions of the planets and their 
 satellites, and binary and variable stars. But all these 
 are very subordinate, in practical importance, to the three 
 fundamental periods of the day, the year and the 
 month. Nearly all the cases of man's limited power 
 of predicting future events depend on this law of 
 periodicity. 
 
 There are four other natural laws of mutation, de- 
 pendent on the inter-action of the two elements of water 
 and fire. First, the law of evaporation, by which water 
 under the influence of heat evaporates and disappears, 
 and the whole aqueous system of the earth is main- 
 tained. Secondly, the law of freezing, by which water 
 solidifies with cold, and the snows of winter and the 
 mountain glaciers are formed. Thirdly, the law of indu- 
 ration, by which bodies imperfectly solid are hardened, 
 and changed to a rocky texture. Fourthly, the law of 
 combustion, by which, under the application of intense 
 heat, the texture of material masses, either great or 
 small, is completely changed, and they are either en- 
 tirely dissipated or assume wholly altered forms, while 
 B. 7 
 
98 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 life is extinguished in all living things. To these eight 
 main principles or laws of material change, we may 
 add a ninth, the law of occasional catastrophes, or non- 
 periodic changes of an exceptional and peculiar kind. 
 Phenomena of this kind are, explosions, sudden con- 
 flagrations, floods and inundations, shipwrecks, earth- 
 quakes, volcanic eruptions, pestilences, tornadoes, and 
 hurricanes. Though not infractions of natural laws, they 
 are exceptional results of a combination of those laws 
 beyond the range of human foresight, but foreseen and 
 pre-arranged by the great Governor of the universe. 
 The constancy, then, of natural laws is an ambiguous 
 term. The sameness of a law itself is one thing, and 
 the sameness of the conditions under which it operates 
 is something wholly different. While fundamental laws 
 are the same, the conditions under which they operate, 
 and by which their effects are determined, vary ever 
 from hour to hour, from year to year, and still more 
 from age to age. 
 
 The geological reasonings of Sir C. Lyell are wholly 
 based on a confusion of these two different things ; 
 the sameness of laws, and of the conditions under which 
 they operate. He professes to aim at explaining all 
 geological changes through many past myriads of years, 
 by causes that are now in operation, as inferred from 
 the experience of the past hundred years. The causes 
 themselves, now in operation, are the attractive, cohe- 
 sive and ethereal forces of the actual atoms or masses 
 of matter in the solar system. The action of the law 
 of gravitation, and doubtless of cohesion and electric 
 repulsion also, depends for its amount on the position 
 of the different atoms or masses ; but those positions 
 have changed and are changing from hour to hour, 
 by the action of those laws themselves ; these changes 
 in the course of long ages may have been, and indeed 
 
, THE CONSTANT ELEMENT IN NATURE. 99 
 
 in the course of long ages must have been, so great 
 and various as practically to annul the sameness of the 
 law, by utter diversity and entire contrast in the con- 
 ditions under which it is exercised. To strive to account 
 for all past changes, whether on the earth's surface, or 
 throughout its entire mass, by "causes now in opera- 
 tion," if by these are meant present laws, operating 
 under present conditions, is an attempt which is sure 
 to fail. It assumes sameness of conditions and circum- 
 stances through myriads of past years, where all ex- 
 perience and reason conspire to demonstrate the fact 
 of a wide, indefinite and almost immeasurable diversity. 
 It is true of the life of each individual man, that he 
 " is cut down as a flower, and fleeth as it were a 
 shadow," while it may be said of the universal frame 
 of Nature, and of the earth itself in past ages of geolo- 
 gical change, and in the promised ages of the world to 
 come, that it " never continueth in one stay." "In the 
 midst of life we are in death," and terrestrial experience 
 since exact records began, is confined within far too 
 narrow bounds, to allow us to determine thereby the 
 working and the limits of the two contrasted laws of 
 life and death. We need for this all the further light 
 which Divine revelation can supply, and in part has 
 supplied. When we go a little further back than three 
 thousand years, we are confronted at once by the two 
 great facts of which unbelievers are " willingly ignorant " 
 the creation of "all things in the beginning by the 
 word of God," and the Flood which came "upon the 
 world of the ungodly." And for the last eighteen hundred 
 years, the whole history of our world has been determined 
 and moulded by those two facts which the Gospel history 
 alone sets before us, the actual resurrection of Christ, 
 and the promise which He has given of a future hour 
 when "all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, 
 
IOO SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 and shall come forth." The moral and even the physical 
 history of all Christian nations, that is, of the dominant 
 and ruling part of the earth's population, has been de- 
 termined and moulded by these two great facts, which 
 the sceptic in his blind worship of the constancy of 
 natural causes, would set aside as dreams of superstition. 
 The course of Nature may be said to be compounded 
 of three elements : the fixed or permanent, the periodic, 
 and the ever varying. Man's power of forecast depends 
 on the second. The elements of change and variation 
 outnumber and exceed those of fixity and permanence. 
 The further we recede from present time, the more 
 complete is the change, and the fewer are the unchanged 
 and abiding elements. In less than a hundred years, 
 the whole generation of living men will have passed 
 away, and in a thousand years, only a few forest trees 
 and the everlasting hills will remain, of all the objects 
 that now meet the eyes of man on the surface of the 
 earth. What is permanent and enduring is a very small 
 fraction indeed of that which existed once, and will soon 
 have passed away. For permanence and constancy we 
 need to mount higher, and look to Him who is the Self- 
 existent and the Unchangeable, and to those elements of 
 created being which partake most largely of these Divine 
 attributes ; to the spiritual being of man, in those who, 
 by partaking of a Divine nature, are raised above the 
 sphere of death and corruption, and the darkness of the 
 grave, into a higher region of blissful hope and expecta- 
 tion of an immortal life to come. "He that doeth the 
 will of God abideth for ever." 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT INVOLVED IN THE WHOLE 
 COURSE OF NATURE. 
 
 A DOUBLE confusion of thought with regard to the 
 meaning of Nature, and of miraculous evidence, forms the 
 basis of that monstrous tissue of sophistry, by which the 
 author of " Supernatural Religion " seeks to blot out the 
 light of the Gospel, and of the blessed Dayspring from 
 on high, and to bury the whole world in midnight dark- 
 ness once more. Let us examine the meaning of three 
 cognate terms in connection with the whole course of 
 Nature : the mysterious, the unusual, and the miraculous. 
 Man's knowledge of the course of Nature, and of the 
 universe around him, is a very small fragment of a vast 
 and mighty whole. The little island of human know- 
 ledge is shut in and surrounded by a vast ocean of the 
 unknown, and that unknown ocean is the home of in- 
 finite and unsearchable mysteries. The range of common 
 and ordinary experience includes mainly two things : 
 certain known objects or permanent existences ; human 
 beings, animals, plants, portions of the earth's surface, 
 the atmosphere, the lights of the sky, the sun, moon and 
 stars ; and certain usual changes, of birth, growth and 
 death, and of the circuits of the heavens, and that succes- 
 sion of the seasons, and of day and night, of which he has 
 constant experience. Within these narrow limits, custom, 
 indolence, and moral torpor weaken the sense of mystery. 
 
IO2 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 and make it possible for men to forget the Author of 
 their being, the great Cause on whom both they and all 
 things around them depend. Our own existence, and 
 that of the persons and things immediately around us, 
 is itself a great mystery. Whenever we reflect upon it 
 seriously, reason cannot pause, till it reaches the footstool 
 of the throne of God. Since we and things around us 
 exist, there must be self-existence somewhere, a First 
 Cause of all things. Again, not only the existence of the 
 things around us, but the ordinary circuit of changes 
 which they undergo, is highly mysterious. To thoughtful 
 minds "the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
 firmament sheweth His handiwork/' When the Psalmist 
 considered the sun, moon, and stars, he was lost in ad- 
 miration of the greatness and glory of the Creator, and 
 of His condescending goodness towards the children 
 of men. " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? 
 and the son of man, that Thou regardest him ?" The 
 sense of mystery, though it may lie dormant for a time 
 while we abide within the narrow sphere of man's daily 
 experience, wakens up afresh when his understanding 
 returns to him, and he begins to reflect seriously on the 
 wonders of the universe which surround him on every 
 side. Even the known and familiar objects of Nature, 
 and their customary changes, are full of mystery, and 
 ought to lead the thoughts of men upward to the 
 presence of God. Still more is this true of that immense 
 abyss of unknown, undiscovered truth, by which the 
 islet of our actual knowledge of Nature and outward 
 things is shut in and enclosed on every side. The 
 unusual and unfamiliar in Nature has a far wider range 
 than the familiar and the usual. As soon as men travel 
 from place to place they become acquainted with fresh 
 groups of terrestrial objects ; and the men, animals, and 
 plants, of which any one has had a personal experience, 
 
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN NATURE. 1 03 
 
 and gained a familiar knowledge, are a very small part 
 of the whole range of earthly existence. Growing study 
 of the skies opens a still wider range of celestial mysteries, 
 of worlds and systems, wholly inaccessible to the foot- 
 steps of man in his present state. The unusual, the un- 
 familiar in Nature, is thus the appointed pathway, by 
 which man is conducted out of the littleness of his own 
 actual ignorance, into the contemplation of the infinite 
 vastness of that universe which is on every side, and is 
 raised to a growing apprehension of the wisdom, power, 
 and goodness of the great Author and Parent of the 
 whole. " All we behold is miracle, but seen so duly, all 
 is miracle in vain." The unusual and unfamiliar, then, 
 is that by which the deadening effect of custom and habit 
 is overcome. It is God's surgical instrument for re- 
 moving the scales and couching the cataract, by which 
 the eyes of the soul are darkened ; till men are content 
 to live on in thoughtless unconcern, in a constant round 
 of day and night, seed-time and harvest, summer and 
 winter, forgetful of all the mysteries of human life, and 
 of the wonderful world around them, never asking, 
 Whence am I, and whither am I going ? What means 
 this gift of life, this " vapour, which appears for a little 
 time and then vanishes away?" It is the unusual and 
 unfamiliar which wakens man from the dull sleep of 
 custom, to draw once more the conclusion of the wisest 
 of men, " Fear God and keep His commandments, for 
 this is the whole business of man." The awakened 
 conscience will then soon pass on to accept the further 
 truth, " God will bring every work into judgment, with 
 every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it 
 be evil." 
 
 But this wide range of the unusual and unfamiliar in 
 Nature, this Divine pathway, which leads man out of his 
 own littleness into fellowship with the full grandeur and 
 
IO4 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 magnificence of the universe, admits of a twofold dis- 
 tinction. It includes changes foreseen and anticipated, 
 and changes wholly unforeseen, unexplained, and un- 
 expected. These two classes of the unfamiliar and 
 unusual are very dissimilar in their operation on the 
 human mind. Changes however unusual, which man can 
 foresee and anticipate, because he can trace them to 
 some special concurrence of second causes in usual and 
 daily operation, do not awaken in him the impression 
 of witnessing an immediate operation of Divine power, 
 a direct effect of supernatural agency ; the tendency is 
 rather to enlarge and enrich his impressions of the order 
 and method that reigns in the universe, and of the wide 
 range and complexity of those laws by which the Creator 
 governs and regulates all the works of His hands. The 
 phenomena of a total eclipse of the sun are impressive 
 and startling in the highest degree ; they must arrest 
 and absorb the attention of all who witness them, and 
 they even disturb the accustomed instincts of the lower 
 creatures. But, when observed as a consequence of 
 calculations made beforehand, which determine with the 
 greatest accuracy the moment of its occurrence, and its 
 short continuance, it can produce no such impression as 
 it does amongst savages, on whom it bursts without any 
 warning; an impression of the direct action of some malig- 
 nant demon, blotting out the whole light of heaven in 
 pure malice, and awakening a fear that this may never 
 be restored. On the other hand, the strange occurrence, 
 being foreseen, and referred to a specific combination 
 of second causes, serves to crown and complete the 
 evidence of the wide range of natural laws, and of the 
 constancy of their operation, not only in the regular 
 succession of day and night, and summer and winter, but 
 in an immense variety of celestial changes that, on a 
 superficial view, seem irregular and arbitrary. 
 
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN NATURE. 105 
 
 But unusual and unfamiliar changes, not foreseen or 
 anticipated, have an opposite effect. They waken men 
 equally from the trance of custom, but their further lesson 
 is not of the greatness of human knowledge, and the 
 wide extent of natural laws, but on the contrary of the 
 narrow limit of man's knowledge, and the vast range of 
 Divine power, optional and not confined and fettered by 
 any law that man can trace or discover, but still at the 
 free disposal of the Almighty Creator, to hide pride from 
 man, and bring him to worship in humble reverence at 
 the footstool of the Almighty. 
 
 Now what is the relation of the miraculous, in the 
 scriptural sense of the phrase, to this wide range of un- 
 familiar and unforeseen elements in the course of Nature ? 
 It is a selection from amongst all the changes that 
 might arrest attention, of a limited number, to connect 
 them by some plain and specific marks with a moral pur- 
 pose, and the manifest presence of the Supreme Creator. 
 This connection may be secured in three different ways. 
 First, by an alteration and modification of the instincts 
 of the lower creatures, such as can only be reasonably 
 assigned to a superhuman cause. Secondly, by special 
 powers or gifts imparted to individual persons, the 
 bearers of a Divine message ; or, thirdly, the Most High 
 God may reveal Himself, as a Person, by personal acts 
 of Divine power, or by words of Divine wisdom and 
 goodness, speaking to men face to face, as a man 
 speaketh to his friend, with a presence of condescending 
 love in the midst of the creatures He has made. All 
 these different forms of the miraculous are set before 
 us in the messages of the Bible. First, we have cases of 
 the miraculous control and elevation of instinct in the 
 lower creatures. 
 
 A wider range of Scripture miracles is that of signs 
 and wonders, wrought by a long series of prophets, 
 
IO6 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 commissioned to bear God's messages to the people of 
 Israel, from Moses to Malachi, and the prophets and 
 apostles of the New Testament. Three signs were given 
 to Moses at his first commission, as the pledges and 
 proofs of its reality Then "he put forth his hand and 
 caught it, and it became a rod in his hand... that they 
 may believe that Jehovah, the God of their fathers, the 
 God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared 
 unto thee."..."Thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, 
 wherewith thou shalt do signs." So St Paul says to the 
 Corinthians, " Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought 
 among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and 
 mighty deeds." But the crowning glory of the Gospel, 
 and the fullest form of miraculous self-manifestation of 
 God, is in the person, ministry and presence on earth 
 of the incarnate Son of God, and the like manifesta- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, in the mani- 
 fold gifts of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and in 
 the later history of the Church. Hence reasons the 
 Apostle, " How shall we escape if we neglect so great 
 a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the 
 Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard 
 Him; God also bearing them witness with signs and 
 wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost, according to His own will." Thus, from the 
 insect plagues of Egypt, through the barren fig-tree, and 
 the fishes of the ocean depths, upward to the throne of 
 God, all departments of the creation, and the Supreme 
 Creator Himself, give consenting testimony, by signs, 
 wonders and mighty deeds, to the truth, reality and 
 excellency of the everlasting Gospel of the grace of 
 God to sinful men. Those who venture to defame and 
 denounce this glorious message of redeeming love and 
 grace, as " shocking to their reason and moral sense," 
 and contradicted by " the glorious perfection " of that 
 
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN NATURE. IO*J 
 
 order of Nature, in which death reigns supreme without 
 a Redeemer ; show merely the depth of moral darkness 
 into which it is possible for men to sink, even in the 
 midst of the noonday brightness of "the Day-spring 
 from on high," the " Sun of Righteousness," the only 
 true and eternal Light of the souls of sinful men. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE THREEFOLD INCONSTANCY OF TERRESTRIAL 
 NATURE. 
 
 THE free thinkers of the last days, who make the 
 constancy of Nature, within the limits of earthly experi- 
 ence, " since the fathers fell asleep," a warrant for their 
 disbelief of the Creation and the Deluge in time past, 
 and of the solemn warning of a Judgment to come, over- 
 look three great limitations of that constancy to which 
 they appeal as a first principle ; three scientific refutations 
 of their uniformitarian philosophy. In our own days, a 
 whole school of geological speculation, with many disci- 
 ples, has been founded on the misconstruction of a single 
 ambiguous phrase, "causes now in operation." First, the 
 constancy of terrestrial nature for indefinite ages past, 
 and countless ages to come, is disproved and forbidden 
 by the nature of man, and the known course of human 
 parentage and descent. The habitable surface of our 
 earth is of known and definite extent, about fifty millions 
 of square miles. The present population of our globe is 
 either a thousand or twelve hundred millions of human 
 beings ; or from twenty to twenty-four for every square 
 mile, whether barren or fertile, locked in eternal frost 
 or scorched with torrid heat, from the North to the 
 South Pole. This surface is a fixed, invariable quantity, 
 but the law of human life is one of geometrical pro- 
 gression. 
 
THE INCONSTANCY OF TERRESTRIAL NATURE. IOQ 
 
 It is not unlikely that the present population of our 
 globe is ten times greater than at the beginning of the 
 Christian era. With the same rate of increase forward, 
 or decrease backward, the population might be from 
 eight to ten millions, eighteen hundred years before 
 Christ ; now it is quite easy to conceive of an increase a 
 million-fold of the sons of Noah, in five centuries, when 
 the unpeopled earth lay all before them, open for their oc- 
 cupation. But such a relation between the earth's surface 
 and its population is incapable of being produced in- 
 definitely, either backward or forward, except under 
 conditions quite contrary to this assumed constancy of 
 terrestrial nature. One possible alternative is, that the 
 whole race might be placed under a law of comparative 
 barrenness and sterility, so that with few exceptions no 
 parents should have more than one son and one daughter. 
 But this, according to the past experience of human 
 nature, could only be by a constant miracle, operating 
 through successive millennia of the world's history, and 
 therefore flatly opposed to the constancy of laws purely 
 physical. The second alternative is, such an increased 
 prevalence of pestilence, bloodshed, violent war, and other 
 causes of human mortality, as might reverse and nullify 
 from age to age, the tendency, in more peaceable and 
 prosperous times, to a constant increase and overflow 
 of the world's population. The third alternative is one, 
 in which the moral and spiritual elevation of the whole 
 race would bring the higher elements of our nature into 
 such activity, as to overcome all its lower instincts and 
 passions, and prevent all marriages but those guided 
 by a Christian ideal, social forethought, and a full sense 
 of paternal and maternal responsibility. In the absence 
 of these three alternatives, none of which agrees with 
 past experience, the constancy of Nature, instead of con- 
 tinuing unbroken through many millennia of coming time, 
 
I 10 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 must terminate in a few centuries, or else require a 
 communication to be opened miraculously with other 
 worlds, to provide space for overflowing multitudes of 
 the earth's population. The laws of human increase 
 wholly exclude a doctrine of the constancy of terrestrial 
 nature, even for a single millennium. They supply 
 also a scientific presumption of great force, against that 
 hypothesis of the extreme antiquity of the human race, 
 for many myriads of years before the time of Moses 
 and Noah, which many have lately espoused, in entire 
 contradiction to the plain teaching of the word of God. 
 A miraculous process by which men and women had 
 been developed out of apes or monkeys, must have been 
 succeeded by a law of unnatural sterility and barrenness, 
 and by a further law of preternatural indolence and 
 inaction, so that through successive ages many gene- 
 rations were born and died like ephemera, without 
 leaving behind them any visible and palpable signs of 
 their existence. All the strongest instincts and charac- 
 teristics of man, as unfolded in the last two or three 
 thousand years, must have been reversed, or wholly 
 wanting, in these thousand or ten thousand generations 
 of pre-Adamite men, bred and reared in the fertile brains 
 of a few inventive speculators of the present or the 
 last century. 
 
 A second limit to the constancy of terrestrial nature, 
 is that which depends on the earth itself. The earth, as 
 explored by modern science, seems to be throughout 
 its crust, or the parts nearest the surface to the depth 
 of a few miles, an immense cemetery, with strata 
 superimposed one upon another, of systems of plants 
 and animals which have existed in succession arid 
 then passed away, whether through a great number of 
 partial catastrophes and violent changes, or a smaller 
 number almost total. Now, our earth being thus con- 
 
THE INCONSTANCY OF TERRESTRIAL NATURE. Ill 
 
 stituted, a constancy of terrestrial nature for many past 
 myriads of years, and still more, through myriads of 
 past centuries, is a manifest contradiction of the known 
 facts. The disciples of the uniformitarian scheme of 
 geology, in striving to account for all changes of the 
 earth through the eras of geology by causes now in 
 operation, merely deceive themselves with an ambiguous 
 phrase. The causes now in operation are certain atoms 
 of matter which constitute the mass of the earth, and 
 certain laws of terrestrial change, and relations of place, 
 distance, density, rest or atomic motion, and heat, under 
 which the forces operate at the present time. Now the 
 known law of gravitation, and most probably the un- 
 known laws of cohesion and repulsion, are functions of 
 the distances. The force exercised by every atom or 
 body, on every other, varies with every change of dis- 
 tance. The causes in operation ten thousand, or a 
 hundred thousand years ago, if the mass of the earth 
 and its component atoms were the same, and the laws 
 of force the same, must have been different, and could 
 not have been the same as the forces which are in 
 operation now. The theoretical sameness would be 
 that of the atoms composing the mass of the earth, and 
 of the abstract laws, but the forces would probably 
 differ in all the following respects. First, the mean 
 density of the earth must probably have varied from 
 age to age, if it was condensed from a primitive nebula ; 
 and if the moon, which is of less density, was parted from 
 it many millennia ago. Also the mean temperature of the 
 whole has plainly varied from age to age ; the pressure 
 on every stratum from the surface to the centre ; the 
 density of each stratum, resulting from that pressure ; the 
 more or less intense resistance to further condensation, 
 or the modulus of elasticity ; the coast lines, or separa- 
 tions between land and sea, the bed or depression of 
 
I I 2 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the ocean ; the heights and position of all the different 
 mountain ranges; the total amount of light and heat 
 received from the sun ; the electric and magnetic con- 
 ditions of every part of the surface, and of the whole 
 mass. These are only a few of the elements which 
 almost certainly have varied from age to age, through- 
 out all past time, since the crust of our earth became 
 solid. 
 
 To found a scheme of geology, then, on the assump- 
 tion that the causes in operation in all past time, were 
 the same which operate at present in the nineteenth 
 century of the Christian era, is to build a pyramid of 
 guess-work on the foundation of a demonstrable false- 
 hood. At the same time, within a limit of two cen- 
 turies, it may be highly probable that the structure of 
 the earth, and the main elements of its constitution, on 
 which local changes, their nature and direction, would 
 chiefly depend, would not differ much from those which 
 operate at present. But with every century that we 
 remove from the present time, the differences must in- 
 crease ; probably at least in the ratio of the square, and 
 more probably in the ratio of the cube, or some higher 
 power of that interval. For the difference in each of a 
 dozen different elements of the great problem reacts on 
 all the rest, and multiplies their compound effect. Thus 
 it will be probable that the differences a millennium ago, 
 compared with those of a single century, are not tenfold 
 but at least a thousand-fold, and more probably a million 
 times greater. Never surely was a scientific theory built 
 in the dark, on a more demonstrable falsehood, than the 
 uniformitarian doctrine of some modern geologists, at least 
 in its most extreme form. At present, the known and 
 really scientific elements of the vast problem, to determine 
 what was the state, configuration and chemical structure, 
 of every part of the earth's crust, and its fauna and flora 
 
THE INCONSTANCY OF TERRESTRIAL NATURE. 113 
 
 to the depth of one mile from the sea level, a thousand 
 or ten thousand years ago are only as one in a million, 
 compared with the data which are purely conjectural and 
 still unknown. The constancy then of terrestrial nature 
 in past ages, is excluded and disproved by the whole 
 structure of the crust of the earth, as far down as science 
 has been able to penetrate. The lesson taught is the 
 very opposite ; inconstancy, change and perpetual varia- 
 tion, only with some fixed and permanent elements in 
 the midst of a vast series of indefinite cKanges. But 
 the elements of permanence bring out into fuller relief 
 the predominence and manifold complexity of the causes 
 of change which were in ceaseless operation. The whole 
 structure then of the earth's crust, from the Laurentian 
 strata of Canada upwards, is one continuous protest 
 against that doctrine of the constancy of terrestrial 
 nature, which the scoffers of the last days make the 
 excuse for their rejection of the statements of Scripture 
 with regard to the Creation and the Flood, and of its 
 solemn warning of a future Day of Judgment, when the 
 earth and the works therein shall be burned up and 
 dissolved, and be followed by new heavens and a new 
 earth according to the Divine promise. 
 
 A third proof of the inconstancy of terrestrial nature 
 may be drawn from the relation of our earth and its 
 whole system to the sun, the great source of light, heat, 
 and central attraction. On no reasonable view can we 
 assume the thorough constancy of terrestrial nature, 
 wholly dependent as it is on the sun, for immense and 
 limited ages, either in the past or the future. In fact, 
 several different theories and conjectures are prevalent 
 among scientific men on this subject, and all of them 
 alike are incompatible with an unlimited constancy of 
 terrestrial nature. One very prevalent view, at the 
 present time, is that the sun is a great spendthrift, send- 
 B. 8 
 
114 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 ing out his light and heat throughout space never to 
 return to him, a prodigal wasting his substance in riotous 
 living, the stock of primitive energy on which the 
 light, warmth, and life of the whole system depend. 
 They predict that in ten, twenty, or four hundred mil- 
 lions of years, this stock will probably be exhausted, in 
 which case the whole system must issue in a glacial 
 period, very different from that which geologists think 
 they have deciphered in the boulder drift age; and the 
 whole planet remain covered for ever with a frozen 
 ocean, or mountain glaciers, w r ith all life extinct, for 
 evermore. This is the basis of the first of Mr Spencers 
 three incompatible theories, or a priori conclusions, with 
 regard to the future mode and scheme of action of the 
 UNKNOWABLE through millions of ages to come. Half a 
 dozen kindred theories might be named. The sun is 
 speeding fast through the realms of space. He is rapidly 
 losing energy, light and heat, by sending out his rays 
 through all surrounding space. He is gaining fresh 
 light and heat by the constant dropping in of streams of 
 meteors. Or again, by a ceaseless condensation of his 
 mass from age to age. Many think that his present 
 light, heat, and mass have been attained in millions of 
 years by condensation from a vast nebular cloud. Others 
 conjecture that as the sun and Sirius are now approach- 
 ing each other at the rate of some hundreds of millions 
 of miles each year, they will probably, in less than a 
 million of years, end their course by a violent collision, 
 which certainly would involve the destruction of both 
 systems ; of the Sirian planets, if any, and of the earth 
 and all its sister planets as far as Neptune. Thus modern 
 men of science offer us almost as many alternative 
 theories of change, inconstancy, and probable destruction 
 in store for the sun, as they have detected dark lines 
 in the solar spectrum itself. 
 
THE INCONSTANCY OF TERRESTRIAL NATURE. 115 
 
 When therefore we consider the nature of man as a 
 living being, the constitution of the earth's crust, and the 
 probable past and future history of the sun, we have a 
 threefold refutation of the maxim of the scoffers of the 
 last days. " Since the fathers fell asleep, all things con- 
 tinue as they were from the beginning of the Creation," 
 and will so continue for ever. They further affirm that 
 "the universe is unlimited and immeasurable, it is eternal 
 and it is infinite," so that in fact there was no creation, 
 and there has been no beginning, and will be no end 1 . 
 Thus the physical theory of the bankruptcy of the sun 
 some millions of years hence, has been anticipated in 
 the higher sphere of morals. In the souls of some modern 
 atheists a state of moral darkness has been reached 
 already, in which the " Sun of Righteousness," the true 
 Light of the world, is quenched in utter darkness. 
 
 1 Haeckel's " History of Creation," p. 324. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF ALL NATURE TO THE BEING AND 
 PERFECTIONS OF GOD. 
 
 THE author of "Supernatural Religion " in his Intro- 
 duction, professes to deplore the general eclipse of faith, 
 and the inconsistencies of those Christian Divines, who 
 pick out scraps and fragments from the Christian Reve- 
 lation, and reject the rest, or dilute it into seeming 
 agreement with modern currents of unbelieving thought. 
 Yet the one great object of his work is to render that 
 eclipse total, permanent and irreversible, and his chief 
 implement in this melancholy task, is a gathering up 
 and collecting into one focus of those concessions and 
 partial surrenders of divine truth of which he complains. 
 The apparent success is almost complete. The impres- 
 sion left after reading his first chapter, is, that if Nature 
 or revelation yield any evidence for the existence and 
 perfections of a personal God, it has been so effectually 
 disguised, frittered away, mixed up with confused thought, 
 and surrendered or contradicted in detail, as to be robbed 
 of all moral power, and practically to be equivalent to the 
 entire absence of all real evidence whatever. The first 
 step of his argument is a statement that faith in miracles 
 and the supernatural is almost entirely rejected by con- 
 tinental divines and philosophers, so that its defence 
 is made to rest on English writers alone, and certainly 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. I I 7 
 
 the admissions or contradictions which he quotes from 
 these, are of a very startling kind. The concessions 
 he affects to condemn, constitute the whole sinews and 
 strength of his own argument. I will first state separately 
 the negative elements, by the union of which the testi- 
 mony of Nature to a God is wholly abolished, and then 
 reverse the process, and expound briefly what is the 
 cumulative force of that testimony. 
 
 A first negative element is borrowed from Sir W. 
 Hamilton and Dean Mansel. They both in their pe- 
 culiar phraseology, do not hesitate to affirm 
 
 "that the kind of cause we denominate a Deity is exclusively given 
 in the phenomena of mind, and that the phenomena of matter do not 
 warrant any inference to the existence of a God." (S. R., p. 55.) 
 
 Here at one blow the whole universe, except the liv- 
 ing generation of men, is pronounced to be destitute of 
 any voice to bear witness to the existence of its Author, 
 His power, wisdom, or goodness. In the second part, 
 the author adopts the creed of the ancient Sadducee, 
 and counts it a sufficient proof of the blind credulity of 
 the apostles, that they believed in a resurrection, in 
 angels and spirits. This increases the effect of the first 
 admission, and confines the testimony for a God exclu- 
 sively to the living generation of men upon earth, since 
 it is held that no other minds, either spirits of men or 
 angels, have any existence. The testimony, even of 
 these, is limited to their minds alone, and excludes 
 wholly their bodily organization. 
 
 Meanwhile, another school of sceptical philosophers 
 are busily engaged in striving to prove that mind is 
 nothing whatever but a product of material organization, 
 and that the phenomena of mind are only a sub-province 
 of the phenomena of matter, and that the mind of man 
 in fact is only a condensed bundle of transformed solar 
 
I 1 8 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 force. Dr Mozley next makes the strange admission 
 that 
 
 " the argument from miracles for the truth of a revelation begins and 
 ends with an assumption ; we assume the existence of a personal Deity 
 prior to the proof of miracles in a religious sense... the question of 
 miracles is thus shut up within the enclosure of one assumption, that of 
 the existence of a God... When we state this, it is replied that this very 
 conception of God as a Personal, Omnipotent Being, is one for which 
 there is no evidence in material nature. 5 ' 
 
 Thus revelation, real or supposed, merely assumes 
 His existence, and proves nothing; the idea it is said 
 further, has never been practically derived from the 
 Study of Nature, but has resulted from a supposed revela- 
 tion, and that the philosophers who held a universal 
 first cause never thought of that cause being a proper 
 object for worship. He holds however that though the 
 idea was never actually derived from reason and the 
 works of Nature, and revelation never proves it, but 
 begins by assuming it, still the idea, once possessed, 
 is seen to rest on some ground of reason. This ground 
 is thus explained, that when we see marks of design in 
 Nature issuing in the production or existence of personal 
 beings, 
 
 " this implies a personal being at the othef end of the chain of causes ; 
 from personality at one end, we may infer personality at the other. We 
 cannot suppose that the existence of that which is contrived can be per- 
 sonal, and the contriver a blind, irrational force." (B. L., pp. 24, 99.) 
 
 This is certainly true, but the truth is so hemmed 
 in by needless limitations, that the whole argument 
 seems in danger of vanishing away. All Nature, except 
 some individual human minds, is owned to yield no 
 evidence for the being of a God. All revelation, true 
 Or false, is owned to yield no evidence or proof, but 
 to begin and end with assuming it to be true. If phy- 
 siologists were to succeed in reducing mind itself to be 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 119 
 
 merely brain or cerebral organization, then the sole 
 evidence for the Divine existence, according to these 
 writers, would wholly disappear. But this is not the 
 last step of surrender. We are carried still further 
 by Dr Westcott's admission, apparently borrowed from 
 Mansel and Hamilton, but expressly rejected by Dr 
 Mozley, 
 
 " the only approximately adequate conception we can form of a Divine 
 Being is in the form of a contradiction." ("Gospel of Resurrection," 
 p. 21, S. R. 69.) 
 
 Now a contradiction is to say a thing, and straight- 
 way to unsay it. If then human minds alone, with or 
 without revelation, yield us any evidence for the exis- 
 tence of a God, and the only idea of a God of which 
 they yield any evidence, is made up of contradictions, 
 a series of assertions completed by as many more as- 
 sertions which contradict them, such evidence must be 
 a mere zero. These human minds, which alone furnish 
 any evidence for the existence of God, furnish no 
 evidence of any real being whatever, but only of a 
 blank of total darkness within them, as well as in the 
 universe around them. Such is the logical issue of 
 these various concessions and surrenders of truth when 
 combined together. 
 
 Let us now turn to the clear light and plain testi- 
 monies of the word of God. " The invisible things of 
 God from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, 
 being understood by the things that are made, even 
 His eternal power and Godhead " (Rom. i. 20). The first 
 step of the proof, is our knowledge of our own existence, 
 and of that of our fellow men, and of the various objects 
 and real existences of the world around us. From this 
 real a posteriori knowledge, however limited and partial, 
 of an actual universe, reason at once infers concerning 
 each of these, that it must either be self-existent, or 
 
120 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 formed by a self-existent Being. But all the things 
 we know by experience, including ourselves and our 
 fellow men, have many features of change, weakness, 
 littleness, passiveness or recent birth, which exclude the 
 notion that any one of them is a self-existent being, 
 the cause of all other beings. Since then there must 
 be a self-existent Cause, distinct from each and all 
 the particular beings, things, or persons we know by ex- 
 perience, what light do these supply with regard to the 
 nature of that First Cause ? Our knowledge of all actual 
 things is joined with a clear conviction, that there are 
 many possible beings besides those which are actual, and 
 that even of real existences, those known to us are only 
 a very small part. Our knowledge of the First Cause, 
 to be complete and exhaustive, would require a double 
 extension of our thoughts, from the beings actually known 
 to us to all the unknown, and from all actual existences 
 known or unknown, so as to include also all unknown 
 possibilities of being. Only then do we attain to a full 
 conception of the universe of non self-existent being on 
 the one side, or of the self-existent uncreated First 
 Cause, the Author of all actual and possible creatures, 
 on the other. What then are the steps by which we 
 may rise from our limited and partial knowledge of 
 ourselves and things around us, to a right and true con- 
 ception, of the great First Cause ? There is no creature 
 great or small, living or lifeless, which is not able to 
 contribute some spark of light towards this, the final 
 cause of its own creation, a fuller manifestation of the 
 great Creator. Such is the consenting voice both of 
 reason and of the word of God. " All Thy works shall 
 praise Thee, O Lord." Some of those works may be 
 mute for a time, or men may be deaf and fail to catch their 
 heavenly melody. "Every creature which is in heaven 
 and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 121 
 
 in the sea, heard I saying, " Blessing, and honour, and 
 glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, 
 and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." A first prin- 
 ciple of reason is that the Creator may be greater and 
 nobler, but cannot be weaker and more imperfect than 
 any of His creatures. The nature of each creature then, 
 is a kind of inferior limit to our conception of the great 
 Creator. We must sum up the separate elements of 
 power, intelligence, or goodness of any kind, which each 
 creature supplies, excluding in this summation whatever 
 attaches to each of limitation, feebleness, littleness, and 
 natural or moral evil, through this summation to gain 
 the nearest approach to an adequate conception of the 
 nature and character of the First Cause. 
 
 First, what materials or elements for such a summa- 
 tion, does matter and the whole lifeless universe supply ? 
 We can resolve that universe imperfectly in our thoughts, 
 into an immense multitude of atoms ; and these, so far 
 as our present knowledge extends, are of two opposite 
 kinds, self-attractive matter, and self-repulsive ether. All 
 distinct and definite material objects are composed chiefly 
 of the first ; and light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and all 
 the more subtle influences of nature, usually classed as 
 the imponderables, depend on the other. Now what 
 is the testimony of this material world, by its bare exist- 
 ence, apart from all the special features of its cosmical 
 arrangement, with regard to the existence, works, and 
 perfections, of the self- existent Being ? First, they bear 
 a distinct and clear testimony that they are not them- 
 selves, or any one of them, the self-existent Cause and 
 Author of the universe. Not one of these atoms could 
 possibly create itself, still less the trillions of its fellow 
 atoms ; nor could any one of them choose for itself 
 whether it should be an atom of matter or of ether. 
 Two elements, it seems, must co-exist in each : a force, 
 
122 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 or law of force, by which it acts on many or all the rest, 
 and a place, or position, where it is at each particular 
 moment of time. One of these is an active and the 
 other a passive element of its being. The law of 
 force and its variation can never determine itself, but 
 must have been determined by the will and choice of 
 the great Creator. The position, the passive element 
 of its being, that it is in one particular spot or point 
 of infinite space, in contrast to a threefold infinity, of 
 other spots or points of infinite space, must equally be 
 referred to the will, choice, and appointment, of the 
 First Cause alone. We cannot conceive either a point 
 or a mass of matter placed nowhere : but the place 
 where it is, is a contrast to an infinite number of places 
 where it might have been and is not. This contrast 
 between the one actual place of each material object, 
 and millions of possible places, where it might have 
 been and is not, when multiplied by the whole number 
 of those objects, and of their component parts, forms 
 a vast and infinite abyss which separates our conception 
 of the actual world, from that of a fatal necessity. For as 
 Newton says, " blind necessity, which is certainly the 
 same always and everywhere, could produce no variety 
 of things." 
 
 From this first truth, that matter is created, and not 
 self-existent, we may infer a second truth, the Divine 
 Omnipresence. The Being who created all these count- 
 less atoms, must be present wherever those atoms exist, 
 and the words of the Psalmist must be absolutely true, 
 " Thou knowest my downsitting, and mine uprising ; 
 Thou understandest my thought afar off... whither shall 
 I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy 
 presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there. 
 And if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there ; 
 if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 123 
 
 uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand 
 lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." But a 
 farther truth taught by the material universe and the 
 atoms of lifeless matter, is the unity of a vast scheme 
 of Providence which reaches to the farthest range of 
 the stellar universe. This is why Mr Mill says, that 
 
 " Monotheism is the only Theism which can claim for itself any 
 footing on scientific ground ; every other supernatural theory is in- 
 consistent either with the carrying on of the government of the universe 
 according to fixed laws, or with the inter-dependence of each series of 
 natural antecedents on all the rest, which are the two most general 
 results of science." (P. E., p. 133.) 
 
 The law of gravitation, reaching as far as the re- 
 motest binary stars, proves a unity of plan, extending 
 throughout a sphere with a radius of several billions of 
 miles, and thus confirms strongly our conception of all 
 material things, as creatures of one great super-mundane 
 Intelligence. But the same facts teach a further lesson 
 with regard to the range and vastness of that supreme 
 Intelligence. The course from moment to moment, of 
 each atom of matter, as determined by that law alone, 
 depends on the position and distance, at the same 
 moment, of every other atom in the universe. Now to 
 know all these with infinitesimal accuracy at any one 
 moment, would almost require Omniscience. But, sup- 
 posing the fact known for that moment, what is the 
 knowledge that would be required to calculate, according 
 to that law, the motion of a single atom for a single 
 hour? It would infinitely surpass the combined powers 
 of all the ablest mathematicians who have ever lived, 
 from Pythagoras down to Adams and Leverrier. The 
 number of the atoms of matter included within the 
 range of that law, must be many trillions, and probably 
 many trillions of trillions. But it is notorious that the 
 problem of tracing out the motions and courses of three 
 
124 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 spheres or bodies only, when their initial places and 
 motions are given, and they are acted on by the law 
 of gravitation alone, baffles the efforts of all modern 
 analysis to solve it, except by imperfect approximations. 
 How clearly then, from the world of matter alone, which 
 according to the foolish dictum of Sir W. Hamilton and 
 Dean Mansel, can " teach us nothing whatever with 
 regard to the cause we denominate a Deity," are we 
 forced irresistibly to the conclusion that the Supreme 
 Intelligence, who has ordained the law of gravitation, 
 and thereby bound in unity countless worlds, and who 
 is able to enforce that law in an ever changing uni- 
 verse through successive ages, must correspond to the 
 description of patriarchs, apostles, and prophets, " I 
 know that no thought can be withholden from Thee." 
 Job xlii. 2. "Thou knowest all things." Joh. xxi. 17. 
 "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I 
 cannot attain unto it." Ps. cxxxix. 
 
 Let us pass on from the evidence of the Being and 
 perfections of God, taught us even by the world of matter, 
 to the higher and fuller message conveyed to us by all 
 the varieties of living creatures, and most of all by man, 
 created at first by God in His own image. It must 
 be remembered that the world of matter itself cannot be 
 known or studied without one mind at least, by whom 
 that process of inquiry shall be carried on. The ques- 
 tion, therefore, can never really arise, what lessons could 
 be learned from the material universe wholly apart from 
 the experience and consciousness of any mind whatever. 
 But if the question be asked, What lessons may be 
 learned from the material universe by any one rational 
 intelligence, studying it without assistance from other 
 minds ? Then the rational inferences from the contem- 
 plation of the material universe cannot be confined to 
 the intellectual perfections of God only, but must include 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 125 
 
 some knowledge of His moral perfections also. In the 
 study of Nature we must have a Person at the lower 
 end of the scale, before that study can begin, and there- 
 fore the requirement of Dr Mozley is already satisfied. 
 If there were only one person, one conscious intelligence 
 capable of discerning moral truth, and recognizing a law 
 of duty, this would be as sure a warrant for ascribing 
 moral perfections to the author of that universe, as if 
 there were a thousand such beings ; but of course the 
 larger the number of known beings, endowed with these 
 higher attributes and faculties, and the more important 
 the influence which these have exercised on the whole 
 course of known physical change, and the actual state 
 of the world in which we live, the stronger is the pre- 
 sumption for the prominence which moral truths, motives 
 and aims may be expected to have from age to age in 
 the whole scheme of universal being. That prominence, 
 however, in the eye of reason must depend mainly on the 
 essential dignity of moral truth, duty, and moral goodness 
 in themselves, and only in a secondary degree on the 
 number of individuals, within the range of our knowledge, 
 who have this nobler and higher gift of moral being. 
 
 Let us next consider the further inferences which may 
 be drawn from a contemplation of the wide range of 
 living creatures, plants, and animals, exclusive of man 
 or creatures endowed with reason, and voluntary choice 
 as well as life. Here we must seek to abide in the clear 
 daylight of conspicuous facts, and avoid losing ourselves 
 in the mists and jungle of modern physiology and meta- 
 physics. What foothold for reason or inference of any 
 kind can we find in this vast range of the living universe, 
 by starting from Mr Spencer's proposed definition of life? 
 
 "Life," he instructs us, "is a definite combination of heterogeneous 
 changes, simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external 
 co-existences and sequences." 
 
126 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 Every word here is either an ambiguity, an unexplained 
 assumption, or a self-contradiction. First, life is a com- 
 bination of changes ; it is not the source or cause of 
 changes, but those changes themselves ; how many of 
 these changes then are needed to satisfy the definition? 
 Through how many changes must a living plant or ani- 
 mal have passed in order to be really alive ? Again, 
 of what are they to be the changes? Of some millions 
 of atoms, which had pre-existed for countless ages before 
 the birth of this living creature, and have been changing 
 ever since through every moment of their existence ? Next, 
 life is said to be a "combination" of these changes. How 
 is this possible ? How can these changes combine at all, 
 since any one state of this set of atoms must have ceased 
 before the next comes into being ? Life then it seems, 
 is a combination of past, present, and future changes of 
 countless atoms, all co-existing at the same moment. 
 But if life is a combination of past, present, and future 
 changes, who or what is to combine them ? The theory 
 and definition are framed to exclude the need of any 
 reference to a Creator. The phrase itself, " persistence 
 of force/' instead of its preservation, is framed to avoid 
 the risk of suggesting an idea foreign to this atheistic 
 creed, of a Divine Preserver and Sustainer of all things. 
 The definition further excludes the unity of a living 
 plant or animal, distinct from the atoms that compose it. 
 Do the changes combine themselves ? The successive 
 changes then must either all exist before they combine, 
 or combine themselves before they exist. Or is the com- 
 bination nothing more than the bare fact of the successive 
 occurrence of these different states ? What claim can 
 such a series have to the title of combination ? Life 
 again is a " definite " combination of changes. By whom 
 or what is this to be defined ? What severs these special 
 changes from an innumerable multitude of other changes 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 127 
 
 adjacent to them in place, and contemporaneous with 
 them in time, which it is meant to exclude ? The changes 
 which are to constitute life, when they have been com- 
 bined, without any combiner, and defined, in the entire 
 absence of any power able to define them, are further 
 said to be " simultaneous and successive." This can be 
 no special character of vital changes, but must be true 
 alike of the changes of all things, living and lifeless. 
 The millions of atoms cannot fail to have simultaneous 
 changes, since they all co-exist throughout their suc- 
 cessive changes. Those changes cannot be "heterogen- 
 eous," or unlike in kind, unless we introduce surrep- 
 titiously that idea of definite kinds or species, which 
 forms one of the plainest elements in the Bible account 
 of creation, but which it is one main object of the modern 
 theory of evolution wholly to exclude. Let us return 
 from this morass of obscure verbiage, where our feet 
 sink deeper and deeper in contradiction at every step, 
 when we attempt to tread upon it, and contemplate the 
 facts themselves. 
 
 A living plant or animal implies and requires a 
 unit of some kind, associated with an organized system, 
 composed of a vast multitude of material or ethereal 
 atoms, in some special relation to that unit and to each 
 other. The first question is, what is the characteristic 
 feature of these various units, living plants and animals, 
 as distinct from the multitude and manifoldness of the 
 structures of material atoms with which they are asso- 
 ciated ? Vegetable and animal life, except in their lowest 
 forms, have many features of contrast with each other, 
 and in each class the varieties are almost innumerable ; 
 but in both, some kind or degree of spontaneity, or the 
 power to originate certain changes at its own choice or 
 pleasure, seems inseparable from the conception of life. 
 The power of each living thing to originate changes 
 
128 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 directly, is limited to its associate organism ; indirectly 
 through the changes of its own organism, it may produce 
 changes in other living creatures and in the lifeless world 
 around. The amount or range of power to effect change 
 may vary immensely, from the animalcule, of which there 
 are millions in a drop of water, to the elephant, the hippo- 
 potamus, the whale, or the mammoth. But a power of 
 spontaneous motion seems as clearly revealed in the 
 most minute, as in the most ponderous, and massive. 
 Spontaneity then, or a power to vary the motions or 
 positions of its own frame within certain limits, by an 
 internal choice or preference, not determined from with- 
 out, but depending on its own secret nature, seems 
 to be the essential and defining feature of life in all 
 living things. In plants, this character is more obscure 
 and less developed than in animals, yet we speak in- 
 stinctively of a tree struggling towards the light, and of 
 the sun-flower as turning to seek and meet the rays 
 of the sun, and of the sensitive plant, as shrinking, by 
 a kind of instinct, from any contact of foreign bodies. 
 Spontaneity, or action not determined by mechanical 
 laws, seems to be a main feature in the whole universe 
 of life, from the animalcule, detected only by the 
 microscope, up to man himself, the lord and head of 
 the visible universe. It is thus a startling assertion of 
 Prof. Tyndall, in the advocacy of his statement in the 
 Belfast address, that "modern science has bound nature 
 fast in the bonds of fate to an extent before unsus- 
 pected," that from Galileo and Newton to our own time, 
 while eager eyes have been pondering the phenomena of 
 the universe, 
 
 "Nothing has ever intimated that nature has been crossed by spon- 
 taneous action, or that a state of things at any time existed which could 
 not be rigorously deduced from the preceding state." 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 1 29 
 
 One would have thought that to watch the sportive 
 flutterings of a single butterfly on a summer day amidst 
 the flowers and trees, or the gambols of a kitten, when it 
 coils itself up for rest on some favoured spot, or starts 
 up suddenly into fresh and free activity of manifest 
 enjoyment, would be enough to shew the utter baseless- 
 ness of this statement. Life, in all its forms, is one 
 vast range of activity, chequered and intersected by 
 countless conditions and laws of a mechanical and purely 
 material kind, but intertwined in every part, and through 
 the whole range of being, with the elements of choice, 
 freedom, spontaneity ; and this vital action is determined 
 in all its details by reasons and motives which are not 
 mechanical, which indicate the internal preferences of 
 conscious or semi-conscious existences, that is of things 
 that live and feel and choose. The range of choice in 
 many of these creatures is almost infinitesimally small, 
 but internal choice and preference, and activity depend- 
 ing upon it, seems almost inseparable from the very 
 conception of a living creature. What then are the 
 main inferences with regard to the Divine nature, which 
 in the view of sound reason, result inevitably from the 
 contemplation of the whole universe of living things ? 
 The general conclusion must be that the great First 
 Cause possesses in the fullest measure, and to the great- 
 est extent, every excellence which may be seen in any 
 of His creatures, but free from the endless imperfections 
 and limitations and negative characters by which those 
 different creatures are distinguished from, and contrasted 
 with, each other. We are bound then to ascribe to the 
 First Cause, in our thoughts, the highest conceivable 
 degree of spontaneity, or freedom from bondage to cir- 
 cumstances and physical determination from without, 
 and a mode of activity as far removed as is possible 
 or conceivable from dull, blind, unalterable, and fatal 
 B. 9 
 
130 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 necessity, without lapsing into the other extreme of 
 mere caprice, or changes and mutations devoid of any 
 kind of reason from within or from without ; the highest 
 degree of liberty consistent with our ascribing to Him 
 reason in its fullest perfection, and all-perfect goodness. 
 Again, since we see throughout the whole universe of 
 living things, instincts of various kinds, often of ex- 
 treme complexity, which tend to the preservation of the 
 individual life, and in many cases to the preservation 
 of an association or fraternity of living things, as in the 
 case of the hive-bee, and the ant, and colonies of the 
 beaver, so we may reasonably attribute to the Author 
 and Source of all these countless instincts, a will or 
 purpose tending to the preservation or bettering of the 
 whole community of living things, subject only to those 
 conditions which may be involved in the nature of the 
 gifts bestowed on each part, or such as may be involved 
 in the nature of the whole, as a universe of derived 
 and dependent existence. Each part of this universe, 
 and all parts combined, must form a contrast in many 
 unknown respects, to the perfect, indefectible goodness 
 of the self-existent God from whom their existence is 
 derived. Subject to this condition, the range and extent 
 of which we can never determine by a priori reasoning, 
 we may with the highest reason infer from the count- 
 less instincts in the living universe of lower creatures, 
 and their common tendency to the preservation of in- 
 dividual life, or of partial communities of living things, 
 the largest measure of the like instinct in the First 
 Cause and Author of the great world of life, tending 
 towards the preservation, comfort, and well being of the 
 whole. Thus every sentient and intelligent creature has 
 the highest warrant of reason for faith in the overflowing 
 bounty and benevolence of God ; and for following the 
 instruction of the Apostle, to those who suffer, -"to com- 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 131 
 
 mit the keeping- of their souls to God in well-doing, 
 as unto a faithful Creator." 
 
 What conclusions with regard to the existence and 
 perfections of God may be drawn from a contempla- 
 tion of the moral universe ; that is, of all mankind, crea- 
 tures endued with reason and choice, and with a power of 
 discernment between good and evil, created at first in 
 the image and after the likeness of God ? The first 
 and simplest conclusion is of this kind. We are bound 
 to ascribe to the Supreme God, a wisdom greater and 
 more vast than the combined intelligence of the wisest 
 and most gifted of His creatures ; a knowledge of mathe- 
 matical truth far greater than that attained by man, from 
 the earliest Greek geometers down to the latest French, 
 German and British analysts, combined and summed up 
 in one prodigious and superhuman intelligence ; and 
 instinctive possession of a wide range of mathemati- 
 cal truths, theorems, and certainties, compared with 
 which their combined discoveries are only like a drop out 
 of the abysses of an inexhaustible and infinite ocean. 
 We are bound also to ascribe to Him as the supreme, 
 uncreated Wisdom, a like pre-eminence over the com- 
 bined knowledge of the various forms of animal life 
 attained by modern naturalists, and over the knowledge 
 of past changes in the depths of earth and ocean reached 
 by all modern geologists. This is the true description 
 of the uncreated Wisdom by the wisest of men : "The 
 Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before 
 His works of old. When there were no depths, I was 
 brought forth ; when there were no fountains abounding 
 with water. Before the mountains were settled, before 
 the hills was I brought forth : while as yet He had not 
 made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of 
 the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, 
 I was there : when He set a compass upon the face of 
 
 92 
 
132 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the depth : when He gave to the sea His decree, that 
 the waters should not pass His command : when He 
 appointed the foundations of the earth : then I was with 
 Him; I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before 
 Him ; rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth ; and 
 my delights were with the sons of men." (Prov. vm. 
 22 31.) And we are bound to complete this sublime 
 description of the uncreated Wisdom, who was w T ith the 
 Father before all worlds, by the further statement of the 
 Apostle, concerning this beloved Son of God, " in whom 
 we have redemption through His blood," that " HE is 
 
 BEFORE ALL THINGS, AND BY HlM ALL THINGS CONSIST," 
 
 and "He is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead 
 ...in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge." (Col. i. 14 18; n. i 3.) 
 
 Reason, from a contemplation of the moral universe, 
 compels us further to ascribe to the Creator, a moral 
 goodness greater than that of the best man whom we 
 have personally known, and greater even than the col- 
 lective goodness, purified from all adherent faults and 
 imperfections, of all the best men of whom we have 
 learned by the testimony of others, and whose names 
 meet us, as recorded in the ample scroll of human 
 history from the beginning of time. The various sparks 
 of goodness, benevolence, and virtuous activity, that 
 have appeared separately in a Howard, a Livingstone, 
 a Washington, an Aurelius ; in Cato, Socrates, Plato, 
 Noah, Daniel, Job, Lycurgus, Justinian or Moses, must 
 all, when combined and freed from their several imper- 
 fections, faults and errors, be far exceeded by the good- 
 ness of that Divine Being who is the secret fountain 
 from which flows forth every rivulet of human virtue ; 
 the Sun of Righteousness, to whose uncreated and in- 
 exhaustible brightness all the stars of human and created 
 excellence " repairing, in their golden urns draw light." 
 
THE WITNESS OF NATURE. 133 
 
 Full and various indeed is the testimony to His own 
 greatness and Divine perfections, to His eternal power 
 and Godhead, which the living God has provided for 
 Himself in the things which are made. Truly says 
 the Apostle, " He left not Himself without witness in 
 that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and 
 fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and glad- 
 ness." There is indeed a strange blinding power, which 
 may conceal the bright evidences of wisdom and good- 
 ness in the whole range of creation, from the hearts 
 of sinful men, an effect which in its worst and most 
 extreme forms can only be fitly described by three dif- 
 ferent figures of the Word of God. First, the second 
 woe, when " there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the 
 smoke out of a great furnace, and the sun and the air 
 were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." 
 The second, the "mist and darkness" which fell in 
 Cyprus upon the unhappy Elymas, when he sought to 
 turn away the deputy from the faith ; and the third, the 
 same Apostle's description of the secret cause of the 
 rejection and contempt of the Gospel by its open op- 
 posers, " In whom the god of this world hath blinded 
 the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of 
 the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of -God, 
 should shine unto them." 
 
 The author of "Supernatural Religion," while ex- 
 tolling the " glorious perfection " of the order of nature, 
 which Mr Mill has so oppositely described, ventures to 
 affirm of this glorious Gospel, 
 
 "It is difficult to say whether the details of the scheme, or the 
 circumstances which are supposed to have led to its adoption, are 
 more shocking to reason or to moral sense." That "it is derogatory 
 to the power and wisdom of the Creator, and degrading to the idea of 
 His moral perfection." (P. 49.) 
 
134 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 So thick is the darkness and mist which has fallen 
 upon him with regard to that very message, of which 
 the apostle, who had been caught up into Paradise, 
 assures us, that therein "unto principalities and powers 
 in heavenly places are made known by the church the 
 manifold (many-varied) wisdom of God, according to 
 the eternal purpose which He purposed in Jesus Christ 
 our Lord," and of which he solemnly proclaims that 
 "therein are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of 
 knowledge." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CENTRIFUGAL AND CENTRIPETAL TENDENCIES OF 
 FALSE AND GENUINE SCIENCE. 
 
 A KIND of rival to the Christian doctrine of Creation, 
 with its corollary in the unity of the whole universe, has 
 been devised of late in the doctrine of Evolution. This, 
 however loudly extolled, is very vague and indefinite, so 
 that many of its disciples seem to attach no definite 
 meaning to the phrase. Mr Spencer, one of its great 
 admirers and patrons, confesses that it ought rather to be 
 called a doctrine of involution, that is of the winding up and 
 involving, rather than evolving, the great complex cotton- 
 ball of the universe. By his definition, Evolution is really 
 nothing more or less than a process of cooling, by which 
 a primitive nebula, excessively rare at first, is condensed, 
 and all the heat and motion generated by that condensa- 
 tion are dissipated and lost in infinite space ; so that the 
 result would be a great sluggish central mass, a kind of 
 monstrous extinguished sun. If we strive to define the 
 doctrine, as a substitute or rival for the doctrine of crea- 
 tion, we must view it as shewing the necessary conse- 
 quences of physical change in the whole universe of life 
 and lifeless matter, when once the conceptions of a 
 Creator, of a creation, of a Supreme and Guiding Intelli- 
 gence, and all specific laws ordained by such a conscious 
 intelligence have been set aside and excluded. Evolution 
 will thus express the results of motion and perpetual 
 
136 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 change in all actual existences, when special acts of crea- 
 tion, and all special laws instituted by the wisdom of the 
 Creator, have been excluded. Then the universe will 
 exhibit to us nothing but a Proteus without reason or 
 intelligence, going through a series of endless changes, 
 without conscious design, or any intelligible end and 
 purpose in those changes. 
 
 Now what must be the demonstrable result of an 
 evolution consisting in endless motion, without any 
 guiding law or superior intelligence ? Let us conceive a 
 universe consisting of an almost infinite number of mate- 
 rial atoms; some associated in the forms of living things; 
 the greater part not so aggregated, guided by no intelli- 
 gence, and subject to no optional law appointed by such 
 an intelligence, but simply moving on continually without 
 rest, under the first law of motion alone. That law is 
 that every atom or body, unless deflected by some force, 
 will persevere in its actual motion uniformly in a 
 straight line. To trace the result of Evolution, we must 
 take every point or spot in which there is any atom of 
 matter in the universe, and draw from it a straight line 
 in the direction of the actual motion of that atom, reach- 
 ing out infinitely into empty space. The effect then of 
 evolution must be to transfer all the atoms of the uni- 
 verse from their actual places, to some spot in the further 
 extension of these lines, and to transform the whole into 
 some semblance of an immense hedgehog piercing in- 
 finite space with mathematical lines diverging from each 
 other in all conceivable directions. The atoms in no 
 finite time would reach any end of their expanding and 
 diverging progress, but this must lead them farther and 
 farther apart from each other, s'ince the directions of 
 their actual motion are infinitely various. If any two 
 were moving in parallel lines, and there were the least 
 difference in their velocities, they might approach for a 
 
EVOLUTION. 137 
 
 short time, but must ultimately diverge, and be wider 
 and wider apart. What then must be the result of an 
 evolution in which there is simply continuous and inter- 
 minable change, with no guiding and controlling law ? 
 The whole universe would expand and separate into a 
 rarity greater than that of the most rarified gas, and 
 every part of it, severed from the rest, would be lost for 
 ever in outer darkness. 
 
 To escape from this inevitable result of a doctrine 
 of pure evolution, we must re-introduce by stealth, some 
 of the elements which the atheist professes himself able 
 to dispense with ; either special acts of creation, or special 
 laws ordained by a superior intelligence, or other theistic 
 elements, introduced by mere caprice or blind guess- 
 work, or from the inventive imagination of the specu- 
 lator, to disguise the utter nakedness of a theory of 
 evolution pure and simple. We must re-introduce the 
 notion of a guiding intelligence, capable of choosing 
 some one out of many alternative laws or positions, and 
 of guiding changes towards definite and rational results. 
 As for instance, a law of "natural selection," when 
 there is no intelligence capable of an act of choice, and 
 when selection of any kind must be a self-contradiction 
 and a chimera. Or again, a law of the " survival of the 
 fittest," when life has been pronounced to be a combina- 
 tion of successive changes without any one to combine 
 them, and any survival would be a continuance of one 
 series of changes of ever-changing atoms, longer than 
 another series, while neither series has any limit but a 
 past or future eternity. Siirvival is impossible in a 
 scheme of the universe where there is nothing but sets of 
 atoms that have existed from eternity, and will co-exist 
 for ever. A survival of the fittest is equally a contra- 
 diction in the scheme of the atheist. There can be no 
 degrees in the fitness of a set of atoms to fulfil any 
 
138 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 definite purpose, when a creator, and special acts of 
 creation, have been set aside as dreams of superstition; 
 and a new term, "persistence of Force," is expressly in- 
 vented, lest the phrase, preservation of Force, should let 
 in the unwelcome idea of a Supreme Intelligence, who is 
 at once the Creator of all things, and the Preserver of 
 men. These phrases then are only fig-leaves stolen from 
 the trees in the Paradise of God, that field where fitness, 
 choice, life, intelligence, and beauty, are prodigally re- 
 vealed on every side, so as to disguise the utter nakedness 
 of a creed which admits no choice, or fitness, or moral 
 beauty, no creative power, or providential wisdom. This is 
 the latest birth of the spirit of unbelief, in which a uni- 
 verse that had its beginning some way or other, without 
 any First Cause or Beginner of its existence, is left by 
 its unknown author, to evolve or involve itself through 
 interminable ages of change ; and the wisdom of the 
 Creator, if there be a Creator, is supposed to be best 
 maintained, by denying His interference with the great 
 machine which has proceeded from Him, when He 
 has once set it going. He is thus likened to the bird 
 which He singles out as lowest in the scale of animal in- 
 telligence. " The ostrich which leaveth her eggs in the 
 earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that 
 the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may 
 break them," and whose conduct He thus describes : 
 "She is hardened against her young ones, as though 
 they were not hers ; her labour is in vain without fear ; 
 because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath 
 He imparted to her understanding." (Job xxxix. 13 
 17.) What is that glorious perfection and invariability 
 of the order of nature, which the author before us says, 
 is emphatically contradicted by the Christian doctrine of 
 redemption, and by the Resurrection of Christ, and the 
 promise of the life to come after death ? It consists in 
 
ATTRACTION AND APPETENCY. 139 
 
 imputing to the only wise God that very course of con- 
 duct towards the noblest works of His hands, which He 
 Himself pronounces to be the proof of a folly and lack of 
 understanding which falls below the average standard of 
 the birds of the air. 
 
 There is a tendency towards unity in all true Science. 
 No part of it can be wholly isolated from the rest ; any 
 branch broken off from the common stem of truth withers 
 and ceases to grow. The first and highest source of this 
 unity is found in the doctrine of creation. The MANY 
 are all made by ONE. The multitude of derived exist- 
 ences, with all their laws, circumstances and conditions 
 of being, are derived from the will of the one Perfect arid 
 Self-existent Being. We find a reflection of this truth, 
 this unity of all creation, as created, in the law of uni- 
 versal gravitation. The usual mode of expressing this 
 law seems to me doubly defective. It seems to place the 
 action of every atom of matter in every place where it is 
 not, and to represent the nature of that action as a 
 selfish tendency to attract and absorb every other being 
 or atom into itself. Newton did not give this name 
 to the law he discovered. He expressly states it as 
 capable of three different modes of expression, Impulse, 
 Attraction, or Appetency. When A tends towards B, 
 it is surely more natural to regard A than B as the seat 
 and centre of that tendency, and that the tendency is not 
 that of B to pull A into itself, but of A to transport 
 itself out of its actual place, and unite itself with B. 
 The law then of attraction is really a law of universal 
 appetency, a tendency of each material atom to link 
 itself in turn with every other atom of the material uni- 
 verse, to travel out of itself into nearer fellowship with 
 each of its neighbours in turn, and that in proportion to 
 their nearness. It is thus analogous in the lowest field 
 of nature to appetite in higher creatures, and to the moral 
 
I4O SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 law of universal love in those still higher. This great 
 law, always observed in the material world, and existing 
 in a higher form, whether obeyed or disobeyed, in the 
 moral world also, is plainly a uniting principle that 
 secures evermore the unity of the material and the 
 moral universe. The same unity may be seen further in 
 the great law of subordination. There are not only 
 many creatures of one common Creator, but the multi- 
 tude of each class of creatures seems to increase with 
 our descent in the scale of being. The mass of dull 
 lifeless matter in the universe immensely exceeds, so far 
 as our knowledge extends, the mass of organized matter, 
 or living objects; or to speak more exactly, the multi- 
 tude or number of the atoms of lifeless matter or ether 
 is immensely greater than the multitude of all living 
 things. The multitude again of the lowest microscopic 
 forms of vegetable and animal life, is far greater than that 
 of the blades of grass, or of insects perceptible to our 
 senses. The tribes of insects again, and of low parasitic 
 forms of life, are far more numerous than the tribes of 
 birds, and fishes, and living creatures upon the earth. 
 The number of each class of creatures seems to diminish 
 as we rise nearer to the great source and fountain of 
 all Being. When we mount to man, the highest of 
 God's creatures here on earth, though the actual num- 
 ber of human beings is very great, we are compelled 
 by the known laws of life, and human experience and 
 parentage, to travel back in thought to a time when there 
 were only a few pairs, or even a single pair of human 
 beings. Thus even where the actual unity of the uni- 
 verse is at present disguised and hidden by its vast- 
 ness and multiplicity, it shines out more brightly, when 
 we travel out of the present into past time. The unity 
 of a common origin is linked with the unity of gradation, 
 order, and subordination. The solar system has its one 
 
THE UNITY OF GENUINE SCIENCE. 14! 
 
 central sun, its revolving planets, its satellites and aste- 
 roids, its comets, meteoric streams, and diffused nebulous 
 patches of unformed matter, in regular series, descend- 
 ing from the one great central orb, to the innumerable 
 multitude of loose, unformed, and floating atoms. This 
 unity of gradation seems crowned and completed, by the 
 further unity of a common aim and purpose extending 
 throughout the whole creation. 
 
 Unformed and lifeless matter, massed together 
 throughout the universe, fulfils the evident purpose of 
 supplying a dwelling-place for the various ranks and 
 orders of the sentient and living creation. So we are 
 taught by the Prophet, " Thus saith the Lord that 
 created the heavens, God Himself that formed the earth 
 and made it: He hath established it, He created it not 
 in vain: He formed it to be inhabited.'* (Isa. XLV. 18.) 
 The whole animal creation is sustained by nourishment, 
 derived from the products and results of vegetable life. 
 The higher orders of the animal world in their turn, 
 depend for their nutriment on creatures below themselves 
 in the great scheme of creation. 
 
 The various fields of science are rather distinguished 
 than severed from each other, and whenever a logical 
 distinction is mistaken for a real severance, fresh truths 
 come to light to correct the error, and establish the unity 
 of the whole, once more. Thus theories of light, heat, 
 electricity, galvanism and magnetism, of crystallization and 
 chemical attraction, have been more and more traced to 
 a common source by the successive advances of science. 
 The wide contrast laid down by M. Comte, between 
 Chemistry and Astronomy, began to disappear under 
 the influence of new discoveries of the spectroscope, 
 almost as soon as he had laid it down as a fundamental 
 truth of science. All creatures, from the highest to the 
 lowest, through all their gradations of being, as they 
 
142 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 proceed from a common source, minister to one common 
 purpose, and are sustained by the power, wisdom, and 
 goodness, of one Supreme Intelligence. It is truly said 
 of Christ our Lord, " He is before all things, and by 
 Him all things consist; He upholdeth all things by the 
 word of His power." And the tribute of praise ascends 
 ever to the Lord of heaven in this double ascription, 
 " Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they 
 are, and were created." " Blessing, and honour, and glory, 
 and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, 
 and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THREE HEADLESS PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 THE first of three Philosophies, which are alike head- 
 less, by reason of their common Atheism, is Positivism, or 
 the scheme of M. Comte and his disciples. Its first princi- 
 ple is, that the manhood and perfection of science consists 
 in rejecting all supernatural ideas, or faith in God, as the 
 mark of a childish or puerile stage of thought. It pro- 
 fesses further to exclude all metaphysical ideas, such as 
 law, force, and causation, and pretends to restrict it- 
 self to the registration and classification of phenomena 
 alone. It thus not only excludes wholly Theology 
 from the scheme of knowledge, but makes its admission 
 the sign of intellectual childishness : excluding meta- 
 physical ideas also, it brings on itself the curse of utter 
 emptiness and vanity, even in those fields of thought 
 with which it professes to deal. Professor Tyndal has 
 truly said, that to pass from bare " sequences and phe- 
 nomena, to forces or causes by which the succession is 
 produced, is the first law and necessity of the scientific 
 intellect." In fact, Mr Comte, in a hundred pages of the 
 appendix, in which he lays down this absurd law of 
 scientific progress, contradicts himself two hundred times, 
 and by introducing one of the very ideas which he makes 
 it a mark of manly science to exclude. 
 
 The second headless system, misnamed philosophy, is 
 the Agnosticism of Mr H. Spencer. This system, pre- 
 tending to unify all human knowledge, and develope a 
 
144 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 consistent theory of the universe, takes for its first 
 principle a bold assertion that Theism, or faith in a 
 First Cause and intelligent Governor of the world, is an 
 untenable and unthinkable hypothesis, and that the nature 
 of God is wholly and for ever inscrutable. Theology is 
 thus made a synonym for nescience, and midnight dark- 
 ness in which nothing can be seen or known. 
 
 Besides Comtism or Positivism, the French variety 
 of Atheistic philosophy, and Spencerism or Evolutionism, 
 which may be called the English variety, there is a 
 third, which Scotland has furnished, the Nihilism, or 
 philosophy of the unconditioned, of Sir W. Hamilton. 
 This philosophy, like the two others, pronounces 
 Theology an impossible science, fruitful only in chimeras 
 and direct contradictions. This theory, whatever the 
 good intentions of its author, fixes a gulf of eternal 
 separation between the Infinite God and every creature, 
 across which no ray of genuine knowledge and real light 
 can ever come. 
 
 Let us inquire what are the social or physical merits 
 of Positivism, the first form of godless philosophy. I 
 know of no physical discovery that it can claim as its own. 
 It plainly involves two great physical mistakes. First, in 
 M. Comte's classification of the sciences, he placed a line 
 of utter separation between Astronomy and Chemistry, 
 and affirmed that we could never gain any light as to the 
 chemical constitution of the heavenly bodies. Within a 
 few years, this prediction was falsified by the researches 
 of the spectroscope. Another great mistake was the 
 denial and rejection of the existence of an ether, dis- 
 tinct from ponderable matter. The admission of this, 
 M. Comte placed in the same category with the vortices 
 of Descartes. The whole course of later science has 
 tended to prove the utter baselessness of this dictum of 
 the Positive Philosophy. 
 
THREE HEADLESS PHILOSOPHIES. 145 
 
 Secondly, what is the result of Mr Spencer's ambitious 
 attempt to build up a complete scheme of philosophy 
 and history of the universe, setting out, as a first principle, 
 from the extinction and denial of all theology, and an 
 utter rejection, as unthinkable and unreasonable, of that 
 fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, and 
 that knowledge of the Holy, which alone is under- 
 standing ? His success in the field of zoology may be 
 inferred from his definition of life already examined. 
 His like success in the field of physics, or of lifeless 
 matter, may be inferred from the utter inversion of 
 notorious facts, and of logic, which stood sentinel fifteen 
 years at the entrance to his physical speculations ; that 
 Newton and men of science had adopted the law of the 
 inverse square for that of gravitation, as an a priori 
 truth, because any other was unthinkable. This was a 
 plain warning to any thoughtful reader, that in this sys- 
 tem the reign of darkness would not be confined to 
 theology alone, but extend impartially to the whole range 
 of material and physical science. 
 
 The third variety of headless philosophy, that of 
 Sir W. Hamilton, is equally barren of any trace or sign 
 of success in the discovery of any new truth, in physics or 
 sociology. This is the less surprising when we remember 
 the profound contempt expressed by Sir W. Hamilton 
 for mathematics, that one sphere of thought, below the 
 region of morals, where clear and certain truth has been 
 attained, and is still attained by all patient inquirers, 
 and which alone supplies master keys for its progres- 
 sive attainment in all the rest. All these three philo- 
 sophies have supplied a large and indefinite amount 
 of flat self-contradictions, thinly disguised and veiled 
 from superficial readers by learned phrases and meta- 
 physical abstractions ; but I doubt whether any one of 
 the three has contributed a single grain to our know- 
 B. 10 
 
146 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 ledge of the laws of Nature and of the material universe. 
 Certainly in every age the King of Heaven has reserved 
 his chief gifts, of new insight into the laws of Nature 
 and the system of the material universe, for men of a 
 serious and reverent tone of mind. Copernicus, Kepler, 
 and Newton, the two Herschels, Lord Bacon, Boyle, 
 Cavendish, Dalton, Davy, Faraday, Cuvier, are examples 
 of this general law of the Divine government. 
 
 The three Anti-theologies of Comte, Spencer, and 
 Hamilton, have one common feature, a darkening and 
 benumbing effect on the study of physical science. M. 
 Comte's first principle with regard to the stages of science 
 is the exact antithesis of the real truth. The only manly 
 and mature stage of scientific thought is that which he 
 defames as its puerile and infant stage ; when men cease to 
 grovel on the ground like the brutes, or Nebuchadnezzar 
 in his madness, and in their study of God's works lift up 
 their eyes unto heaven, their understanding returns to 
 them, and they bless, praise, and honour the Most High. 
 Having mistaken the highest and only truly human stage 
 of science for the lowest and worst, he inverts the relation 
 of the two others, and honours with the name of youth 
 that mere infancy in which men renounce the study of 
 second causes, along with the knowledge of the great 
 First Cause, and reason itself goes to sleep, and the mind 
 of man is degraded to a mere camera obscura, to register 
 passing phenomena as they occur. The stage M. Comte 
 extols as the maturity of science, answers either to its 
 mere babyhood, or its extreme old age and decrepi- 
 tude, in which it has been smitten with utter palsy. The 
 effect of the atheistic starting-point, in Spencer's system, 
 is a like confusion, perplexity, and darkness. Even 
 when he borrows facts from the discoveries of others 
 to weave them into his system, they are so disguised 
 by some cloak of metaphysical mist, that their definite 
 
ATHEISTIC PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS. 147 
 
 meaning is obscured. The same is true of the Hamil- 
 tonian system. Some degree of light is needed even 
 for the healthy growth of a plant, .and some clearness 
 in the apprehension of fundamental ideas is essential 
 to real progress in all natural science. What results 
 can be expected to follow, when in the highest and 
 noblest field of thought, the proper home of light, to 
 multiply direct contradictions, to say things and straight 
 unsay them, the fit character in Milton of the father of 
 lies, is proclaimed to be the highest possible achievement 
 of human reason. Now this is the common feature of 
 the Scotch, French, and English varieties of atheistic 
 speculation, and the same principle applies, doubtless, to 
 other German theories. Thus the atheistic theory of 
 Haeckel and Helmholz starts from a self-contradiction at 
 the lowest point of its scheme of being, besides ending in 
 a blank of darkness at the summit. It professes to build 
 up the whole universe out of atoms, which are vortices 
 of revolving matter, made unalterable by some artifice of 
 mathematical calculation, when from their very definition 
 it is plain that they are not atoms at all, but an im- 
 mense multitude of smaller atoms, ever changing, and to 
 which permanence can be ascribed by a blunder of rea- 
 soning alone. The clearness of vision, on which progress 
 in natural knowledge depends, can never be gained by 
 putting out the eyes of the soul, till it becomes blind to 
 the simplest and highest of all truths, that there must be 
 Self-existence somewhere. So that it starts, like Mr Spen- 
 cer, with affirming two opposites at the same moment, 
 that to think of Self-existence anywhere is impossible, and 
 yet that we cannot help thinking of Self-existence some- 
 where. A philosophy which starts in such mental dizzi- 
 ness, can hardly reach a greater depth of confusion at 
 its close, than that with which it begins. 
 
 10 2 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE FOUR MAXIMS OF MODERN NATURE-WORSHIP. 
 
 ANTI-SUPERNATURALISM, in striving to sweep away 
 Christian faith and all revealed religion, as a fraud and 
 gigantic delusion, and to prove the four Gospels forgeries 
 of a late date, which gained general acceptance by some 
 unaccountable delusion of the early Christians, has a rival 
 creed of its own, based on four main principles. 
 
 "Just are the ways of God... unless there be 
 Who think not God at all, 
 If any be, they walk obscure ; 
 For of such doctrine never was there school 
 But the heart of the fool, 
 And no man therein doctor but himself." Sam. Agon. 
 
 The first is the old doctrine of the " fool," who says in 
 his heart, " There is no God." It is unfolded by the 
 help of "Science falsely so called," into two great max- 
 ims. First, that Theism, Belief in a personal God, is one 
 of three untenable attempts to explain the mystery of 
 the universe ; and that the great First Cause which sits 
 concealed behind all phenomena is, and must ever remain, 
 wholly inscrutable. Next, that all pretended revelation 
 merely assumes without proof the existence of a God, 
 and that all Nature is mute, and supplies no real 
 evidence whatever. Its starting-point is thus the same 
 which the Psalmist long ago described, " Understand, ye 
 brutish among the people, and ye fools when will ye be 
 wise?" 
 
THE FOUR MAXIMS OF MODERN NATURE- WORSHIP. 149 
 
 A second main principle of Nature- Worship, bor- 
 rowed from the creed of the Sadducees, is the eternal 
 and irreversible reign of death ; for it proclaims " the 
 glorious perfection and invariability of the order of 
 nature ;"' this order includes as a matter of fact the uni- 
 versality of death ; and its sure tendency, according to 
 one of its exponents, is to a reign of omnipresent death. 
 Dr Strauss, in his " Life of Christ," tells us that the 
 proposition, 
 
 " 'A dead man has returned to life,' is composed of two contradictory 
 elements ; that in the attempt to maintain the one, the other threatens 
 to disappear ; if he has really returned to life, it is natural to conclude 
 that he was not wholly dead; if he was really dead, it is difficult to 
 believe that he has really become living." " Thus that unbelief alike 
 in God's power and God's goodness, which it must be one main aim 
 of revelation to remove, is found to centre in one gloomy doctrine, 
 the omnipotence of death. The Christian revelation, in its central 
 truth, the Resurrection of Jesus, directly meets this great evil, and 
 thereby satisfies the moral conditions of a message of God. A revela- 
 tion would be a mockery, which left men at liberty still to continue 
 Sadducees, worshippers of the powers of Nature, believers in no supre- 
 macy but that of death and the grave." (" Horae Evangelioe," p. 467.) 
 
 How deep-rooted is the evil to be overcome, a 
 slavish prostration of the mind before the despotism of 
 Death, is clear from this statement of Strauss. The Gos- 
 pel, according to the author of "Supernatural Religion," "is 
 emphatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and 
 invariability of the order of Nature." " That perfect and 
 invariable order" by which death has reigned supreme 
 from Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ ; of 
 which he seems as enamoured, as Satan is described by 
 Milton to have been, of SIN, before he saw her hideous 
 offspring and his own. What an outrage on all reason ! 
 to speak of the glorious perfection of an order of Nature, 
 in which death reigns for ever supreme. What a blessed 
 contrast are those gracious promises, " I will ransom 
 
150 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them 
 from death. O death, I will be thy plagues ; O grave, I 
 will be thy destruction." " The last enemy that shall be 
 destroyed is death." The first principle then, of the 
 Creed of Nature- Worship, is an expansion of the voice 
 of the " fool " in Ps. xiv. into a developed theory of the 
 non-existence of God, our Heavenly Father. The second 
 is the glad tidings of the invariable and gloriously perfect 
 supremacy of death and the grave. 
 
 The third main principle is the other half of the Sad- 
 ducean creed, or the doctrine that there is no angel or 
 spirit. The Apostles are adjudged wholly incompetent 
 witnesses of the fact, that they ate and drank with the 
 Lord Jesus forty days after His crucifixion, because they 
 shared with the other Jews in the belief that there are 
 angels, and spirits, good angels, and demons. The sceptic, 
 who after crawling on the surface of our earth like an 
 insect for a few years, never able to leave it, assures 
 us that there are no moral agents or rational intelligences 
 in any part of the wide universe except himself, and his 
 fellow insects on this one little globe, thereby evinces 
 an audacious folly, hardly less than that of the " fool " 
 who rejects the testimony of all Nature, when she 
 bears witness to a supremely good and wise Creator. 
 Surely, even apart from the express testimony of Him 
 who is the Lord both of angels and of men, and who 
 will assuredly return with His holy angels, to execute 
 judgment "in flaming fire on those who know not God, 
 and obey not the Gospel," there is every presumption 
 from natural reason alone, that all the abysses of infinite 
 space are not wholly bare and devoid of intelligent and 
 rational existence, except this one little planet, which is 
 a million times less than the central orb around which it 
 revolves. There is no conceivable presumption of ab- 
 stract reason, in favour of the doctrine that no spiritual 
 
THE FOUR MAXIMS OF MODERN NATURE- WORSHIP. 
 
 intelligence exists in the universe, which is not weighted 
 and tied down, by a few stones weight of material sub- 
 stance, to one planetary prison. 
 
 The fourth principle or pillar of the system of Nature- 
 Worship, is the constancy or perfect uniformity of the 
 course of Nature, as determined by the earthly experience 
 of men for a few past generations, bounded and shut in 
 by the grave ; and thence extended conjecturally to all 
 ages of past time, and to a coming eternity; and from 
 the surface of our own planet to the whole range of 
 the material universe, but so as to exclude all faith in 
 things beyond the range of our senses, "unseen, and 
 eternal." This attempt to elevate the insect-like expe- 
 riences of some myriads of men of the last two or three 
 thousand years, ended in each case by the gloom and 
 darkness of the grave, into the adequate foundation for a 
 theory of universal being, and of the whole course of 
 cosmical change through myriads of ages, and throughout 
 myriads of starry systems, is surely almost the widest con- 
 ceivable aberration of unreasoning folly. Especially when 
 we remember that, even within these narrow limits, a 
 constancy of variation, by which the past never repeats 
 itself in the future, is still clearer than the partial resem- 
 blance which links past with future changes. The partial 
 constancy of Nature, even within the narrow limit of two 
 or three generations, is chequered by many striking cata- 
 strophes of various kinds. When we go further back, the 
 whole globe of the earth from its surface to its centre 
 seems, in the eye of science, like a stereotyped record 
 of many catastrophes and changes, wholly different from 
 the present quiet and orderly state of things, within the 
 experience of the present or recent generations. 
 
 The three first principles of the anti-christian creed, 
 which denies the Father and the Son, are gigantic false- 
 hoods of a negative kind. The first blots out and annuls 
 
152 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the Living God, the good, wise, and intelligent Author 
 and Disposer of the universe, and leaves the whole a 
 sightless Samson, with no light either as to its own 
 origin or issue. The second provides a gloomy sub- 
 stitute for the Living God, whom the first has dethroned, 
 the eternal prevalence and unlimited supremacy of Death, 
 thus turning the universe into one gigantic valley of 
 the shadow of death, one bottomless gulph of dissolu- 
 tion and decay. The third is almost equally prodigious 
 in its negative character. It affirms, without a grain 
 of evidence, after abolishing the Creator, and enthroning 
 Death in His stead, that nowhere in the wide universe, 
 except on the surface of our planet, are spiritual and 
 rational creatures to be found. The fourth principle 
 degrades still further that little fragment of a godless, 
 death-dominated universe, of which it admits the exist- 
 ence, by making it repeat itself in cycles of unending 
 recurrence to all eternity. The dethronement of God, the 
 enthronement of death, and the extinction of all rational 
 creatures but men now living upon the earth, needed 
 only this further element, to complete its emptiness and 
 degradation, as a creed of utter vanity and hopeless 
 despair. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE ATTEMPT TO REVIVE HUME'S ARGUMENT. 
 
 THE famous dictum of Hume, that it is not contrary 
 to experience that testimony should be false, but is con- 
 trary to experience that a miracle should be true, has 
 been answered and refuted a dozen times by as many 
 authors ; Campbell, Somerville, Penrose, Dr Chalmers, 
 Bp. Mcllvaine, Dr Mozley, Archbp. Trench, Paley, 
 myself, and many others. The author strives to revive 
 it out of the grave, in which it had lain for forty years, 
 after being pierced through and through many times. 
 Dr Farrar says, 
 
 " Its logical consistency has been shattered to pieces by a host of 
 writers, as well sceptical as Christian." 
 
 This is quite true. Our author retorts that 
 
 "Apologists find it much more convenient to evade the arguments of 
 Hume than to answer them, and where it is possible, they dismiss them 
 with a sneer." 
 
 This monstrous inversion of the facts is worthy of one 
 who spends a thousand pages in the effort to prove 
 the Gospels forgeries, and the Gospel itself a series of 
 incredible falsehoods. Instead of apologists evading the 
 argument they have repeatedly laid bare its emptiness. 
 
 " The argument consists of two premises, that the falsehood of testi- 
 mony is not improbable, since it is of frequent occurrence; and that 
 
154 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the truth of a miracle is impossible, because it opposes a fixed and 
 unalterable experience. Each of these is a sophism of the grossest 
 kind. 
 
 "And first, that some testimony is false, can never warrant the 
 inference that all testimony alike is deceitful and uncertain. This is 
 a return to worse than childish ignorance. It is the very test of 
 growing wisdom to be able to discriminate between different kinds of 
 testimony, according to the moral character of the witnesses and their 
 means of information. But the force of the objection depends on a 
 rejection of all these distinctions, the fruits of a ripe and manly reason. 
 1 The error,' Dr Chalmers observes, ' lies in this, that s all testimony is 
 made responsible for all instances of falsehood, whereas each kind 
 should be made responsible for its own. Divide the testimony into 
 its kinds, and the sophistry is dispelled. It were thought a strange 
 procedure in ordinary life to lay on a man of strict honesty any portion 
 of the discredit which is attached to an habitual impostor, or even to 
 one who has been detected in one instance of fraud or falsehood. 
 It were equally strange to lay upon testimony, marked by all the 
 characters, and accompanied by all the pledges of sincerity, the burden 
 of that discredit which belongs to testimony of a different kind.' 
 
 "The first sophism then of the sceptical argument has been answered 
 long ago in that one brief sentence of the wisest of men, 'A faithful 
 witness will not lie : but a false witness will utter lies.' To confound 
 together these moral contrasts, in order to shake our faith in the 
 Gospel, is not only a wicked perverseness, but a childish folly. The 
 other premiss is, if possible, still more strange. Miracles are said to 
 be impossible, because they contradict a firm and unalterable expe- 
 rience. In other words, God cannot suspend any law of Nature, or 
 reveal his will by supernatural tokens to mankind, because unalterable 
 experience proves that this has never been done. This is the boasted 
 argument against Divine revelation ; to assume it false, to derive from 
 that assumed falsehood a most absurd inference, and then by that 
 absurdity to prove the falsehood again ! The moral blindness implied 
 in such reasoning seems almost incredible. To say that miracles con- 
 tradict universal experience, is merely to beg the question that "they 
 never have occurred, or can occur. To say that they contradict our 
 experience is simply untrue. They may lie beyond it, as the battles 
 of Thermopylae and Salamis, or the death of Caesar ; but they contra- 
 dict it only if they are asserted to have happened before our eyes, and 
 we did not see them. Miracles are unlikely, prior to actual experience, 
 only so far as it is unlikely that God should reveal His will to man- 
 kind. They are likely to be frequent, only if it be likely that God 
 
MISREPRESENTATION OF PALEY. 155 
 
 will often suspend the laws of Nature to attest new revelations of His 
 will, or to confirm others already given. And hence the fact, that 
 none may have occurred within our own experience, yields not the 
 slightest presumption against their reality in other cases. The sceptic 
 can draw no just inference against them from his own limited expe- 
 rience, unless there be good reason to suppose that God would select 
 him, or some one in his circle of friends, for his agent or witness, in 
 conveying a supernatural revelation to mankind. When it is said, 
 however, that a fixed and unalterable experience disproves all miracles, 
 it is plain that an inference from a partial and limited experience, is con- 
 founded with the proper teaching of experience itself, whether particular 
 or universal." (Appendix to Paley's Evidences, BIRKS, p. 376, 377.) 
 
 Paley's two or three pages on this subject are marked 
 by that lucid simplicity and clearness, and plain common 
 sense, which are the characteristics of his style. In force 
 of reasoning they immensely outweigh the twenty pages 
 of confused thought which our author spends in a vain 
 attempt to refute them. His self-satisfied comment on 
 them is, 
 
 " It seems almost incredible that arguments like these should for so 
 many years have been tolerated in the text-book of a University." 
 
 The ground of this censure is a gross misinterpreta- 
 tion of one expression in Paley's statement of the case. 
 Paley's words are these : 
 
 " If twelve men whose probity and good sense I had long known, 
 should seriously and circumstantially relate to me an account of a 
 miracle wrought before their eyes, in which it was impossible they 
 should be deceived, and if the governor of the country, hearing a 
 rumour of this account, should call these men to his presence and 
 offer them either to confess the imposture, or submit to be tied up to 
 a gibbet, and if they should refuse with one voice to acknowledge that 
 there existed any falsehood or imposture in the case; if this threat 
 was communicated to them separately, yet with no different effect, and 
 it was at last executed, and if I myself saw them one after another 
 consenting to be racked, burned, or strangled rather than give up the 
 truth of their account, still if Hume's rule be my guide, I am not to 
 believe them. I undertake to say that there exists not a sceptic in 
 
156 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the world who would not believe them, or who would defend such 
 incredulity." 
 
 The words of Paley " in which it was impossible they 
 should be deceived," are interpreted by this writer to 
 mean an ascription to the twelve witnesses of indefinite 
 and unlimited infallibility on all subjects whatsoever. 
 It is self-evident that Paley means nothing of the kind. 
 What he means is plainly something very different : that 
 their testimony in this particular case was based on such 
 ample testimony of their own senses, so full and various 
 that no suspicion of their being deceived would have 
 arisen, if the fact to which they bore witness had not 
 been of an exceptional and peculiar kind, and such as 
 would commonly be called miraculous. The gloss of 
 the writer, and his scoff at Cambridge University, proves 
 nothing but the readiness with which a cloudy and pre- 
 judiced writer may import his own mistiness of thought 
 into a clear and simple statement. 
 
 I have endeavoured to complete Paley's argument, 
 and make the precise force of it plain in the following 
 words : 
 
 "What is the strength of the evidence which results from the con- 
 currence of many distinct eye-witnesses, as in the fact of our Lord's 
 Resurrection? Two alternatives have here to be considered, illusion 
 or imposture. Now the first of these may be reckoned absolutely 
 impossible. Let us suppose, what is far too great an admission, that 
 our senses may commonly deceive us, in a single look, once in a thousand 
 times. If now we combine all the appearances of our Lord that are men- 
 tioned, the numbers present, and the time occupied in each appearance, 
 the whole number of distinct observations by sight, hearing, and touch, 
 will amount to some thousands. And hence the possibility of decep- 
 tion will be expressed by the inverse of a number, formed of at least 
 six thousand figures, a quantity inconceivably small, and practically 
 nothing. Illusion, then, is absolutely impossible. The supposed con- 
 flict of probabilities is thus reduced simply to these two questions. Is 
 it more likely that the Almighty Creator would, or would not, reveal 
 His will to mankind ? Is it more likely that the Apostles, who laid 
 
COMPLETION OF PALEY S ARGUMENT. 157 
 
 down their lives in spreading the Gospel, were honestly persuaded of 
 our Lord's Resurrection, or all leagued in a wicked conspiracy of fraud 
 and imposture. The answer to both inquiries is plain. There is here 
 no contest of improbabilities, because they are both of them on the 
 same side. It is most unlikely, a priori, that God would leave all 
 mankind in sin and ignorance, without some message of warning or of 
 mercy from on high. It is most unlikely, nay, morally impossible, that 
 the witnesses who endured scorn and mockery for their faith, and laid 
 down their lives for the sake of Jesus, were merely confederates in 
 a vile imposture, and that they who denounced judgment speedily to 
 come on all iniquity, were themselves monsters of fraud and deceit. 
 The infidel, who rejects and denies the resurrection of our Lord, is thus 
 guilty of a double folly. He prefers to believe that God is careless 
 about the highest good of His creatures, rather than to own that He 
 regards them with the compassion of a father and the vigilance of a 
 sovereign. He imputes the foulest crime to good and upright men, 
 rather than own himself so ignorant as to need a Divine Teacher, or 
 so guilty as to require the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. The 
 charge he brings against the Christian believer applies fully to his 
 own case. His unbelief in the midst of Gospel light is a miracle and 
 a marvel which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and 
 gives him a sullen determination to believe what is at once most 
 dishonourable and blasphemous towards God, and most false and 
 calumnious towards the best and holiest of his fellow men." (Appendix 
 to Paley's Evidences, p. 381.) 
 
 The sound part of Mr Mill's comment on Hume's 
 argument ("Logic," Vol. n. pp. 170 180), consists in 
 marking the contrast between the improbability of a 
 mere guess being right, and of an alleged fact being 
 true. 
 
 "This," he says, "has been overlooked by Bishop Butler and 
 several of the writers against Hume, in their anxiety to destroy what 
 appeared to them a formidable weapon of assault against the Christian 
 religion." 
 
 Now in my appendix to Paley I have devoted three 
 pages to an exposition of this very distinction between 
 mathematical and historical probability, which Bishop 
 Butler and Dr Price both felt, without clearly explaining 
 it. Mr Mill says that 
 
158 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 " Hume's argument is merely this very plain and harmless proposition 
 that whatever is contradictory to a complete induction is incredible. 
 That such a maxim as this should either be accounted a dangerous 
 heresy, or mistaken for a great and recondite truth, speaks ill for the 
 state of philosophic speculation on such subjects." (n. 262.) 
 
 Hume's argument, if we accept Mr Mill's gloss is, as 
 he owns, 
 
 " in fact, a flagrant petitio principii, used to support a wholly unphilo- 
 sophical assertion." 
 
 What is astonishing is, that our author should charge 
 Dr Farrar with misinterpreting and misstating Mr Mill's 
 remarks, and say that 
 
 "far from shattering to pieces the logical consistency of Hume's 
 reasoning, Mr Mill substantially confirms it " ! 
 
 Mr Mill has no right to despise Christian apologists 
 for dealing with Hume's real argument and not with the 
 fictitious substitute of his own invention, yet with the 
 help of this friendly gloss, it still remains exactly what he 
 says, "a flagrant petitio principii." Our author thinks it 
 astonishing that Dr Farrar should take Mr Mill's own 
 words, quoted verbatim, as expressing Mr Mill's verdict 
 on the logical value of Hume's argument. What is 
 really astonishing is the blindness with which he himself 
 labours to prove the very opposite. Mr Mill's comment 
 is a friendly attempt to attach some meaning not wholly 
 ridiculous to Hume's maxim. After he has mended and 
 tinkered it, he calls it a 
 
 "flagrant petitio principii, used to support a wholly unphilosophical 
 
 After this our author audaciously affirms that Mr Mill 
 confirms Hume's reasoning. He rejects the true and 
 sound part of that reasoning as quoted by Dr Farrar, 
 and strives to neutralize it by quoting Mr Mill's ridicu- 
 
HUME'S ARGUMENT AS MODIFIED BY MILL. 1 95 
 
 lous censure of Christian apologists for not aiming their 
 weapons against his own gloss instead of against the 
 statement of Hume himself. 
 
 Mr Mill's gloss on Hurne is that anything is incre- 
 dible which is contrary to a complete induction. Now a 
 complete induction must plainly include the disputed case 
 itself. Mr Mill's phrase merely brings into full relief 
 a sophism essentially involved in Hume's statement. 
 Our author spends eight pages, (79 87,) in a vain 
 effort to neutralize and undo the effect of Mr Mill's 
 candid admission. But if he had not been blinded by 
 his unbelief, he might have found in Mr Mill's later 
 remarks a real key to the main question. Mr Mill 
 specifies one or two cases in which a fact is loosely said 
 to contradict experience. 
 
 " One is the case in which the alleged fact appears to conflict with 
 a real law of causation. But a more common case, perhaps, is that 
 of its conflicting... with the properties of Kinds. It is with these prin- 
 cipally that marvellous stories related by travellers are apt to be at 
 variance : as of men with tails, or with wings, and (until confirmed by 
 experience) of flying fish ; or of ice, in the celebrated anecdote of the 
 Dutch travellers and the king of Siam. Facts of this description, pre- 
 viously unheard of, but which could not, from any law of causation be 
 pronounced impossible, are what Hume characterizes (elsewhere) as 
 not contrary to experience, but merely unconformable to it.... In a case 
 of this description, the fact asserted is the existence of a new Kind ; 
 which in itself is not in the slightest degree incredible, and only to 
 be rejected if the improbability that any variety of object existing 
 at that particular place and time should not have been discovered 
 sooner, be greater than that of error or mendacity in the witnesses. 
 Accordingly, such assertions when made by credible persons, and of 
 unexplored places, are not disbelieved, but at most regarded as requiring 
 confirmation from subsequent observers.... Of reputed impossibilities 
 which rest on no other grounds than our ignorance of any cause 
 capable of producing the supposed effects ; very few are certainly im- 
 possible, or permanently incredible. The facts of travelling seventy 
 miles an hour, painless surgical operations, and conversing by instan- 
 taneous signals between London and New York held a high place not 
 
160 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 many years ago among such impossibilities." ("System of Logic," 
 Vol. ii. pp. 167, 169.) 
 
 Now the miracles of the Gospel clearly fall under 
 Mr Mill's description. They are facts concerning a 
 person wholly unique, who cannot be classed with or- 
 dinary men, nor even adequately with human prophets ; 
 who is essentially the God-man, " Emmanuel," "the man 
 Christ Jesus," " God manifested in the flesh." Mr Mill 
 admits that the prophet of Nazareth, " even in the esti- 
 mation of those who have no belief in his inspiration/' is 
 a unique man. 
 
 " there is in his life and sayings a stamp of personal originality com- 
 bined with profundity of insight, ... which must place him in the 
 very first rank of men of sublime genius. ... When this pre-eminent 
 genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral 
 reformer, and martyr to his mission, who ever existed on earth, 
 religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this 
 man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity." ("Three 
 Essays," p. 254.) 
 
 Thus this person is a KIND or species to himself. 
 The miracles of Christ, His sayings, the fulfilments of 
 prophecy in His life, the angelic messages which heralded 
 His birth, His birth itself, His rejection by His own 
 people, His death as the true Paschal Lamb, His lift- 
 ing up from the earth, like the brazen serpent, to be 
 a centre of moral attraction to all mankind through 
 successive ages, His resurrection the third day from the 
 dead, His appearance to chosen witnesses for forty days 
 after His resurrection, His ascension into heaven in the 
 view of those same witnesses, and the promise of His 
 return in the clouds of heaven to be the Judge of all 
 mankind ; these are not separate and independent facts 
 out of relation to each other, contradicting that experi- 
 ence by which individuals gain their knowledge of the 
 characters and properties of the individual objects which 
 
THE AUTHOR'S ATTEMPT TO REVIVE HUME'S ARGUMENT. 161 
 
 come within the range of the separate experience of 
 each one. They are supernatural facts only in this 
 sense, that they are manifestations of a PERSON never 
 manifested before, whose birth is the great central fact 
 in the whole scheme of universal providence. It is in 
 reality the fulfilment of a prophecy which completes and 
 fills up the long series of the messages of God to man in 
 the Old Testament Scriptures, flowing onward through 
 four thousand years from the opening sentence, "In the 
 beginning God created the heavens and the earth," in 
 an ever-widening stream of Divine truth, till it issues in 
 the long-predicted rising of " the Sun of Righteousness 
 with healing in his wings," to give light to those who 
 were " sitting in- darkness and in the shadow of death," 
 and by His own resurrection to " bring life and immor- 
 tality to light." 
 
 B. II 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE. 
 
 THE laws of nature are a favourite topic with 
 modern sceptical philosophers. But the phrase in their 
 lips is extremely vague, obscure, and indefinite. The 
 laws are without a Lawgiver, or at least he is removed to 
 an infinite distance. They are not really laws at all, 
 but vain attempts to classify ever changing phenomena, 
 when the great Creator, all created minds, and all 
 things, or material bodies, have alike been consigned 
 to the common gulf of the UNKNOWABLE. 
 
 The laws of God include: (i) first, a great law 
 of the sub-moral universe. This is the Newtonian law, 
 commonly styled the law of universal attraction, but 
 more correctly named a law of universal appetency. 
 It applies to all matter, living or lifeless, except so far 
 as it is modified by other laws yet undetermined, of 
 special affinity, or of repulsive self-preservation. It co- 
 exists with, and its effects are modified by, higher laws 
 of life in plants and animals, and by a still higher law of 
 right, wrong, duty, and spontaneous choice of good or 
 evil, in all moral and responsible creatures. (2) A 
 second Law, higher than the self-attraction or mutual 
 appetency of all material masses, is the law of self- 
 preservation. The instinct of life in every plant or 
 animal is to shrink from everything that pains, and to 
 seek everything that pleases, or tends to perfect and 
 
THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE. 163 
 
 expand its own conscious life, so far as the momentary 
 consciousness extends. This instinct is the first germ 
 of rational self-love. It passes into it only when mo- 
 mentary sensation is exchanged for a rational appre- 
 hension, on the part of each creature, of the true law 
 and attainable limits of its own being. Then the in- 
 stinctive shrinking from momentary pain, and pursuit 
 of momentary pleasure, is succeeded by that rational self- 
 love by which each recognizes the true law of its own 
 being, and aims to realize and fulfil that ideal law. 
 
 (3) Higher than this law or instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion, is the great moral law, " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bour as thyself." This is a Divine law of duty expressly 
 revealed, of eternal and irreversible obligation. The 
 duty depends on two conditions only, the possession of 
 a power of choice and faculty of reason by the individual, 
 and the co-existence of a moral universe of creatures 
 similarly endowed, susceptible of having their welfare 
 increased or diminished by the actings of their fellow- 
 creatures. This Divine law constitutes the one sound 
 element in Benthamite Utilitarianism, or the greatest 
 happiness principle, but its truth and Divine authority 
 are there neutralized by transferring it from the heart, 
 as a law prescribing a right state of inward feeling and 
 desire, and turning it into a law of calculation alone. 
 What is the calculation thus enjoined ? Supposing 
 three alternatives open in any case, then three posi- 
 tive totals or sums of pleasure would have to be cal- 
 culated for the whole universe of being through a 
 coming eternity, and as many negative totals of pain. 
 Of the three differences A - D, B - E, C - F, the 
 moral rule prescribed is, to adopt that alternative 
 which makes the excess of pleasure above pain the 
 largest. Each of the six sums is composed of terms 
 not only doubly infinite, but incommensurable, and 
 
 II 2 
 
164 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 incapable of being accurately measured by any com- 
 mon standard. Each sum also involves an infinite 
 number of undetermined quantities, depending on the 
 volitions of an almost countless number of free agents. 
 Such a calculation could never be performed without 
 Omniscience. Even when performed, it could have no 
 binding authority, either from spontaneous instinct or 
 reason, to enforce its fulfilment. The only effect of 
 such a rule must be to throw back the individual on 
 the instinct of self-preservation, or the avoidance of the 
 pain, and the pursuit of the pleasure, of the moment. 
 Still the mere attempt to perform this impossible calcula- 
 tion might remind of the double truth that life is not 
 the present moment, and that we are surrounded by 
 fellow-creatures towards whom we ought to cherish feel- 
 ings of good-will and not of ill-will. The Divine law 
 applies itself directly to the spring of action, the desires 
 of the heart, " Thou shalt LOVE thy neighbour as thyself." 
 It does not, like its human parody, recommend a choice 
 to be made on arithmetical grounds, after a wholly 
 impossible calculation. The altruism alone is true, being 
 borrowed from the Divine law, and exempts the Ben- 
 thamite maxim from a charge of total error. 
 
 The Divine law includes two elements ; the first is 
 altruism in contrast to egoism ; that self is to be loved 
 not as self, but " counting as one," on the same ground 
 that every other also is to be loved, for his capacity of 
 happiness. The second element is the law of neigh- 
 bourhood, that is moral or physical nearness ; the law 
 does not command us to love every one alike, but each 
 according to the degree of nearness, that is, our op- 
 portunity to do good and impart a blessing. It is so 
 expounded by two apostles : " as we have opportunity 
 let us do good unto all men, especially to them who 
 are of the household of faith." " To him that knoweth 
 
THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE. 165 
 
 to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." " Knoweth " 
 seems here the same as "hath opportunity." The law 
 thus explained is the exact moral counterpart of the 
 natural law. Each atom seeks to approach, and so far 
 to unite itself with every other atom, with a force 
 varying inversely as the square of the distance. Not 
 equality, but immense and eternal disparity is a funda- 
 mental law of both the natural and the moral universe. 
 The triad of the French Revolution, " Liberty, Equality 
 and Fraternity," exalts a great falsehood between two 
 fundamental truths of the Law of God. For, " where the 
 Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ; " and the Christian 
 code is, " Love the brotherhood," "all ye are brethren." 
 The real triad of Divine truth is, Liberty, Inequality, 
 and Fraternity. 
 
 (4) The supreme Law of duty is that which defines 
 the relation between the Creator and all His moral and 
 responsible creatures. It is "the first and great command- 
 ment," " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." 
 This law of religious duty, like the great law of social 
 duty which resembles it, rests on two data ; the pre- 
 sence in the individual to whom it applies, of the power 
 of choice, will, and intelligent action, and the fact that 
 in God the Creator, beyond any of His creatures, or 
 all those creatures combined, there is a vast and im- 
 measurable fulness of Being. Thus, to seek the glory 
 of the Creator is a higher object than to seek the 
 welfare of any one creature, or of all creatures combined. 
 Therefore, love to being in general, Jonathan Edwards's 
 definition of virtue, finds its true explication in both 
 these great commandments of the perfect Law of God. 
 There is first, Self-love, not excluded, but really in- 
 cluded by the words, " as thyself." The unreal mysticism 
 which would abolish self-love, must abolish along with it 
 
1 66 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 philanthropy, or the love of our neighbour. Again, the 
 second commandment, the love of our neighbour, or 
 universal philanthropy, cannot be severed from the higher 
 law and obligation of the love of God. Both are 
 enforced by the same authority, and rest on a common 
 principle, by which the soul travels out of itself, first 
 into communion with all its fellow-creatures, and next 
 into fellowship with the Creator, from whom all things 
 proceed, and to whom they must return as to the proper 
 end and purpose of their being. " For of Him, and 
 to Him and through Him are all things; to whom 
 be glory for ever and ever." 
 
 The love of God, the supreme law of moral duty, has 
 two opposite aspects, of which one is downward towards 
 the whole world of possible or actual evil. This is that 
 fear of the Lord, and keeping of His commandments, 
 which is the whole duty of man. Of this the patriarch 
 says, "The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to 
 depart from evil is understanding." This is that faith 
 in the Divine warnings by which the soul is deterred 
 from every evil way. The upward aspect of the same 
 duty is the grace of hope, not for ourselves alone, 
 but for the whole world of being, and has respect to 
 the whole range of possible good to be expected or 
 looked for from the hand of God. It is that grace of 
 which the apostle says, " Ye are saved by hope," and, 
 " rejoice in hope of the glory of God." This love of 
 God, both in its Old Testament form, the holy fear 
 of God by which men depart from evil, and dread 
 all disobedience ; and its New Testament form, in which 
 it has respect to the whole universe of possible good, 
 the faith which accepts the Divine promises, and the 
 hope which looks forward to the good things to come ; 
 must rest on a common foundation, the knowledge of 
 God as a God both of mercy and of judgment. This 
 
THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE. 1 67 
 
 great truth that God may be known, and that in such 
 knowledge alone is life, peace, and blessedness, pervades 
 the whole of Scripture from its beginning to its close. 
 " This is life eternal that they may KNOW Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." 
 Again, " Ye worship ye know not what, we KNOW what 
 we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." " God will 
 have all men to be saved, and to come unto the KNOW- 
 LEDGE of the truth." " The people that do KNOW their 
 God shall be strong and do exploits." "There is no 
 truth nor mercy, nor KNOWLEDGE OF GOD in the land." 
 " Then shall we know if we follow on to KNOW the 
 Lord." (f I desired mercy not sacrifice, and the KNOW- 
 LEDGE OF GOD more than burnt-offering. " Then "when 
 ye KNEW NOT GOD, ye did service unto them which 
 by nature are no gods, but now ye have KNOWN GOD, 
 or rather are known of God." "He hath given unto us 
 all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through 
 the KNOWLEDGE of Him who hath called us to glory and 
 virtue." And all these testimonies of Scripture are crowned 
 by the words of the beloved disciple, "We know that 
 the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under- 
 standing that we may KNOW Him that is true." The 
 truth that the Infinite God cannot be exhaustively or 
 comprehensively known, or understood by creatures who 
 are finite, or the inquiry of the Patriarch, " Canst thou 
 by searching find out God, or know the Almighty unto 
 perfection?" is wide as the poles apart from that mon- 
 strous falsehood which an unbelieving philosophy sub- 
 stitutes for it. If nothing at all can be known of 
 anything of which our knowledge is only partial, we 
 must be shut up in utter nescience. The doctrine of 
 the UNKNOWABLE in all its forms dethrones the Most 
 High, annuls all religion natural or revealed, destroys 
 the very foundations of morality, and is high treason 
 
I 68 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 against the dominion of the Living God, and the welfare 
 of the whole Universe. No terms are strong enough to 
 express the moral aversion and repugnance with which 
 every disciple of Christ should turn away from it. 
 
 Love towards God, the All-perfect Being, who is 
 " blessed for ever," cannot have all the same characters 
 as love towards creatures actually sinful and miserable, 
 or at least exposed to the risk of natural or moral evil, 
 or of both at once. The forms of goodwill and inward 
 love of which the blessed God can be the object, are 
 first, Adoration of His infinite goodness and majesty; 
 next, the desire that His glory may be manifested, and 
 His excellent goodness be owned and understood by 
 every creature capable of such knowledge ; that His 
 name may be hallowed, that His will may be done in 
 earth as in heaven, that is, in every sphere of His wide 
 dominion, as perfectly as it is done by those who stand 
 before the presence of His glory. It must include in- 
 tense gratitude for benefits received, "we love Him be- 
 cause He first loved us." It must include unreserved 
 obedience, or entire conformity of heart and mind to His 
 revealed law. It must include fellowship with God, ac- 
 cording to His charge to Abraham, "Walk before me 
 and be thou perfect;" and the experience of Enoch, who 
 walked with God, and "was translated that he should 
 not see death," and before his translation "had this 
 testimony that he pleased God." It should include 
 adoration after the pattern of the Psalmist. "I will 
 praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made ; 
 marvellous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth 
 right well. How precious are Thy thoughts unto me, 
 O God ! How great is the sum of them ; if I should 
 count them, they are more than the sand ; they cannot 
 be reckoned up in order unto Thee, they are more than 
 can be numbered." 
 
THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE. 169 
 
 Its perfect types may be found in those words of the 
 apostle, " Unto the King Eternal, immortal, invisible, 
 the Only Wise God, be honour and glory for ever and 
 ever." And in the fourfold ascription of praise from 
 every creature. " Blessing and honour and glory and 
 power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
 unto the Lamb for ever and ever." And still further, in 
 the sevenfold anthem from the heavenly host, " Worthy 
 is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches 
 and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and 
 blessing." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE 
 MORAL UNIVERSE. 
 
 THERE are five fundamental facts in the history of the 
 moral universe which must be recognized by every one 
 who would gain, whether from natural reason alone, or 
 the Christian revelation, a consistent view of the whole 
 scheme of Divine Providence, and attempt the great 
 argument which Milton proposed to himself, 
 
 "that... 
 
 I may assert Eternal Providence 
 And justify the ways of God to men." 
 
 i. THE FALL OF MAN. 
 
 The Fall is no obscure and esoteric doctrine of 
 doubtful speculation, but results directly from a com- 
 parison of the actual state of mankind, at present and as 
 far back as the records of history extend, with the stand- 
 ard of uprightness and sinless perfection in the perfect 
 law of God. That law enjoins the love of God our 
 Creator with all our strength, and the love of our neigh- 
 bour as ourselves. When tried by this perfect standard, 
 the testimony of experience in every age corresponds 
 with and echoes the testimony of the word of God, " All 
 have sinned, and do come short of the glory of God." 
 
 The great law of love cannot be reversed or abro- 
 gated to suit the practice and low moral state of sinful 
 
FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE. 171 
 
 creatures, but is a direct effluence from Him who is the 
 Father of lights. The standard of perfect love in the 
 stream, that is, in the revealed will and law of God, is 
 a necessary corollary from the perfection of the Divine 
 nature, the fountain from whence it flows. Thus the 
 facts of human experience, if we receive the revealed 
 truth of a judgment to come, point plainly to the further 
 truth that "every mouth will be stopped, and all the 
 world become guilty before God ; " and ought to sug- 
 gest to each one the prayer of the Psalmist, " Enter not 
 into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall 
 no man living be justified." 
 
 2. GOOD AND EVIL ANGELS. 
 
 The existence of other moral and spiritual beings 
 besides men, some good and others evil, is a second 
 main fact in the revealed history of the moral universe. 
 Apart from express revelation, there is the strongest pre- 
 sumption of reason, that men are not the only spiritual 
 beings in the whole range of the created universe. 
 There is also a like presumption of reason that the same 
 conflict of moral good and evil which experience proves 
 to exist amongst men, is not confined to them, but exists 
 also in the other races which together with them constitute 
 the universe of moral and rational being. The express 
 teaching of Scripture that there are angels as well as 
 men, and their number very great, "ten thousand times 
 ten thousand," and that among these angels, some are 
 morally evil, and others pure and sinless, is thus most 
 agreeable to the presumptions of reason. Yet the author 
 before us says it is "shocking both to reason and the 
 moral sense." That among evil and malevolent beings 
 there should be great disparity, both of natural gifts, 
 and of degrees of guilt or wickedness, is in complete 
 harmony with the analogies of universal nature. Now 
 
172 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 since the nature of man is a little, though but a little, 
 lower than the nature of angels, and the creation of 
 angels was earlier than that of Adam, and the fall of the 
 angels that first sinned was earlier than the fall of man, 
 the foremost and chief of sinning angels must have a 
 natural pre-eminence among all evil beings, whether 
 angels or men, and deserve the titles which he receives 
 in Scripture, " Satan," the great Adversary, the " Wicked 
 One," the " Tempter," the " King over all the children 
 of pride." This solemn truth, taught under a veil in 
 the second page of the Old Testament, and expressly 
 and openly throughout the New Testament, from the 
 opening of the Gospels to the close of the Apocalypse, 
 however repulsive to superficial and thoughtless minds, 
 is in full harmony with the voice of sound reason. The 
 most candid of modern Sceptics, in his latest thoughts, 
 offers this as the nearest approach to an explanation of 
 the actual course of the universe to which by his own 
 reason alone he can attain, that 
 
 "The author of the world, wise and knowing, but not all-wise and 
 all-knowing, may always have done the best that was possible under 
 the conditions of the problem; and the Creator, though not 
 Omnipotent in the usual sense of the word, for some inscrutable 
 reason tolerates the perpetual counteraction of his purposes by 
 another being of opposite character, and of great though inferior 
 power." Mill's " Posthumous Essays," p. 183. 
 
 The dim guesses of natural reason thus lead men to 
 the very verge of the doctrine expressly revealed in 
 Scripture, and which even there is presented to us as a 
 deep and unsearchable mystery. " The Son of God was 
 manifested that He might destroy the works of the 
 Devil." " He went about doing good, and healing all 
 that were oppressed of the Devil;" and his crowning 
 triumph is expressed in the words, " The prince of this 
 world is judged." 
 
FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE. I 73 
 
 3. TEMPTATION AND THE TEMPTER. 
 
 A third great fact, underlying the whole economy of 
 providence, is that all moral and rational creatures, from 
 the highest to the lowest, are liable to be tempted, and 
 turned aside from the path of goodness and uprightness 
 into a downward pathway of sin, corruption, and dis- 
 obedience. God alone, the All-perfect Being, is in Him- 
 self free from this great liability of all created intelligence. 
 " God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth He 
 any man." This is one part of the mysterious conde- 
 scension involved in the Incarnation, that fundamental 
 mystery of the Christian faith, that God in the Person of 
 His Son, Emmanuel, the God-man, did come within the 
 .sphere and range of possible temptation ; that the Son of 
 God, our High priest, "can be touched with the feeling 
 of our infirmities, and was in all points tempted like as 
 we are, yet without sin." 
 
 Temptation to all men through successive ages is set 
 before us as having three distinct but confederate sources. 
 First, the flesh, or the internal infirmity or wilful per- 
 version of the individual himself, as expressed by the 
 Apostle, " Every man is tempted when he is drawn away 
 of his own lust and enticed. Lust when it has conceived 
 bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth 
 forth death." The second great source of temptation is 
 the world, by which is expressed the collective amount of 
 moral evil, bad example, and corrupting or degrading 
 influence from mankind at large, "the lust of the flesh, 
 the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." So that, 
 " the friendship of the world is enmity with God." The 
 third great source of temptation is the Devil, who has 
 this very name, the Tempter. By this is expressed all 
 temptation from unseen powers of evil, beyond the range 
 of our senses and our actual contact with evil in our fel- 
 low-men. Now since evil in individual men, through its 
 
174 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 own self-contradiction and diversity, tends to conflict and 
 endless antagonism ; hence all confederacies and long- 
 lasting systems of error and delusion ; enduring forms 
 and modes of idolatry, unbelief, and systematic opposition 
 to the revealed word and will of God, are everywhere 
 in Scripture referred to this secret and mighty ultra-mun- 
 dane source of evil. When the servants of the heavenly 
 householder inquire, " Didst not Thou sow good seed in 
 Thy field, whence then hath it tares ? he said unto them, 
 An enemy hath done this .... The tares are the children 
 of the wicked one, the enemy that sowed them is the 
 Devil." 
 
 4. THE CONFLICT OF GOOD AND EVIL. 
 
 The whole course of God's providence through the 
 ages of the world's history, in the word of God as in the 
 book of human experience, is revealed as a ceaseless con- 
 flict and warfare of moral good and moral evil, " Supernal 
 grace contending with sinfulness of men." So in the first 
 promise two classes are contrasted, and proclaimed to be 
 in lasting opposition, " I will put enmity between thee 
 and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." 
 This enmity is then described as a striving of God's 
 Spirit with sinful man. " The Lord said, My Spirit shall 
 not alway strive with man, for that he also is flesh ; yet 
 his days shall be 120 years." So again in later times. 
 " Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse bit- 
 terly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to 
 the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the 
 mighty." And the voice of the first Christian martyr 
 proclaimed the same truth to his Jewish persecutors. " Ye 
 do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so 
 do ye." So the great Apostle found in every step of 
 his labours for the spread of the truth ; " a great and 
 effectual door is opened unto me and there are many acl- 
 
FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE. I 75 
 
 versaries." He gives this charge to all the disciples of 
 Christ, " Ye wrestle not against flesh and blood, but 
 against principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
 in heavenly places. Therefore take unto you the whole 
 armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the 
 evil day, and having done all, to stand." So we are told 
 by the Lord that " the kingdom of heaven suffereth 
 violence, and the violent take it by force." 
 
 The first great moral contrast is between the Holy 
 and All-perfect God, who is love, and light, and "in 
 whom there is no darkness at all," so perfectly and essen- 
 tially good that He cannot even be tempted with evil ; 
 and the whole universe of created Being, men and angels 
 and any other unknown races of rational and responsible 
 beings, who either have actually fallen under the power 
 of moral evil, or at least are liable so to fall, but for 
 whom also redemption and recovery are not impossible. 
 
 But here again there is a second great moral contrast 
 between the sinless and the fallen, or those who have 
 actually wandered from God into the paths of sin ; and 
 again, between the penitent and the impenitent, those 
 who persevere in evil and sin presumptuously, and those 
 who turn their face to God, and seek to return to the 
 path from which they have wandered. This great 
 contrast, among angels, between the elect angels and 
 those who "sinned and left their first habitation;" and 
 amongst men, between the "poor in spirit," the lowly 
 and penitent, who are willing to learn of Him who is 
 " meek and lowly in heart,'* knd the proud, the unbe- 
 lieving and profane, who turn their back to the light, 
 and walk on wilfully in darkness ; between the church 
 of true believers and the world, is set before us through 
 all Scripture as the summary of the moral history of our 
 fallen race. The conflict, though it lasts for long ages, 
 
I 76 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 is to be followed by a sure and full triumph of redeeming 
 mercy. The exalted Redeemer at God's right hand is now 
 " expecting until His enemies be made His footstool," 
 and we are taught that " the earnest expectation of the 
 creature, (or, the whole creation with outstretched neck), 
 waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." 
 
 5. THE SUPREMACY OF DEATH, 
 
 A last main feature and law of the economy of provi- 
 dence from the days of Paradise, through 6000 years, is 
 the reign and supremacy of death, summed up in the 
 words, " By one man's offence death reigned by one," 
 and " by one man sin entered into the world and death 
 by sin, and so death passed through unto all men, for 
 that all have sinned." This dark and gloomy reign of 
 death and the grave from age to age, our author per- 
 versely and blindly extols as the " glorious perfection and 
 invariability of the order of nature." He is so enamoured 
 of this " law of sin and death," that he counts any inter- 
 ference with its unbroken sway, by the resurrection of the 
 Son of God Himself from the grave, " shocking to reason 
 and to moral sense." He seems so satisfied with the 
 world in which death reigns supreme, that he reckons 
 any communication with the higher world, where moral 
 laws reign supreme, to be superfluous and incredible. 
 
 How far more consistent with reason, and moral sense, 
 and true philosophy, is the double description of death 
 which Milton, in his striking allegory, has put into the 
 mouth of Sin and Satan. 
 
 " I fled, and cried out, Death. 
 Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd 
 From all her caves, and back resounded, Death. 
 
 What thing art thou thus double form'd? 
 
 I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 
 Sight more detestable than him and thee." 
 
 "Paradise Lost," B. ii. 788, 741. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY, as expounded and distorted by this 
 author, is a theory of an abortive design of creation, and 
 of impotent efforts- to amend it. 
 
 " Both the details of the scheme and the circumstances which are 
 supposed to have led to its adoption, are shocking to reason and to 
 moral sense, derogatory to the power and wisdom of the Creator, and 
 degrading to the idea of His moral perfection."..." Not only is the 
 assumption that any such revelation was necessary, excluded on philo- 
 sophical grounds, but it is contradicted by the whole operation of 
 natural laws." S. R. I. p. 49. 
 
 Long ago the Apostle said, " We preach Christ cruci- 
 fied, to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks 
 foolishness," but he adds, "The foolishness of God is 
 wiser than men." i Cor. i. 23, 25. He who had been 
 caught up into Paradise, and " heard unspeakable words, 
 which it is not lawful for man to utter," 2 Cor. xii. 4, 
 thus describes the real character of that message which 
 the 'bats and moles' of earth account so foolish and 
 unreasonable. " To me is this grace given that I should 
 preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of 
 Christ, the mystery which from the beginning of the 
 world hath been hid in God, to the intent that now 
 unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, 
 might be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom 
 of God, according to the eternal purpose which He pur- 
 
 15. 12 
 
178 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 posed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Eph. iii. 8 n. He 
 expounds the secret cause of the contemptuous rejection 
 of this mystery by earthly minded Sadducees, " The god 
 of this world hath blinded the minds of them which be- 
 lieve not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, 
 who is the image of God, should shine unto them." 
 2 Cor. iv. 4. Not only the message itself, but the 
 wisdom to discern its excellence, is a gift of Divine grace. 
 "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
 hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of th.e know- 
 ledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 
 v. 6. The duty of the servants of God is, with patience 
 and " meekness to instruct those who oppose themselves, 
 if God peradventure will give them repentance to the 
 acknowledging of the truth, that they may recover them- 
 selves out of the snare of the devil." 2 Tim. ii. 25, 26. 
 
 Creation is no abortive work, in which the expecta- 
 tions of the Creator have been wholly frustrate and 
 disappointed. The exact reverse is the express and re- 
 peated statement of Scripture. (Acts xv. 18) " Known 
 unto God are all His works from the beginning of the 
 world." The redemption of the Gospel is the " eternal 
 purpose of God;" and Christ is the " Lamb of God, who 
 verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the 
 world." i Pet. i. 20. It proclaims that " hope of eternal 
 life which God, that cannot lie, promised before the 
 world began." Tit. i. 2. It is the " revelation of the 
 mystery which was kept secret since the world began," 
 but then by " the commandment of the everlasting God," 
 the " Only wise," to whom be "glory for ever, was made 
 known to all nations for the obedience of faith," Rom. 
 xvi. 25 27, and "this is the condemnation, that light is 
 come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than 
 light, because their deeds were evil." Joh. iii. 19. Let 
 us turn from the follies and blasphemies of modern Sad- 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. I 79 
 
 ducees, enamoured of the reign of death ; and observe 
 the revealed laws and principles of that Gospel, which is 
 the highest and noblest exhibition of the perfect wisdom 
 and love of God, and the subject of adoring praise and 
 devout wonder to ten thousand times ten thousand pure 
 and perfect spirits, dwelling in light and bliss before the 
 throne of the " blessed and only Potentate ; whom no 
 man hath seen or can see, to whom be glory and power 
 everlasting." i Tim. vi. 15. 
 
 (i) The first principle is the great truth proclaimed 
 by Christ Himself, that God is the only Good Being; 
 " there is none good but one, that is God." Matt. xix. 17. 
 This glorious and primary truth, uttered by Christ in 
 reply to a solemn inquiry, and transmitted by the con- 
 senting evidence of more than 500 copies of each of three 
 Evangelists, has been replaced in five copies only, of one 
 of the three, by a human substitute which blots out this 
 great truth and substitutes the pointless inquiry, "Why 
 dost thou ask of me concerning the good ?" This seems 
 to imply a censure on what is most lawful and praise- 
 worthy, for to inquire after God is one of the first of re- 
 vealed duties. The great truth proclaimed by our Lord 
 is afterwards expounded by St James, into the double 
 maxim, that all evil is from the creature, and all good 
 from God alone : "God cannot be tempted with evil, nei- 
 ther tempteth He any man. Every good and perfect gift 
 is from above, and cometh down from the Father of 
 Lights." Jas. i. 13, 17. The negative truth, of evil in 
 the creature is expounded both by the apostle and the 
 patriarch: Rom. iii. 23, "All have sinned;" v. 12, 
 " Death passed through unto all men, for that all have 
 sinned;" " Behold, He put no trust in His servants, and 
 His angels He charged with folly." Job iv. 18. "The 
 heavens are not clean in His sight." xv. 15. " It was ne- 
 cessary" that " the heavenly things themselves "should be 
 
 12 2 
 
l8o SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 " purified with better sacrifices than these." Heb. ix. 23. 
 As the spots of the sun, though luminous, shew like blots 
 of darkness in contrast with his still more luminous disc ; 
 so every creature, compared with the Divine perfection, 
 reveals either an actual presence of moral evil, or at least 
 a mournful liability to rebel, and go astray. Redemption 
 is a sequel of the truth, that God is the only Good Being, 
 perfectly and indefectibly good, and of the solemn fact 
 that both men and angels have sinned. A fallen creature 
 is without strength to restore itself, and can be restored 
 only by Divine power and grace. " O Israel, thou hast 
 destroyed thyself, but in Me is thine help." Hos. xiii. 9. 
 "Without Me ye can do nothing." John xv. 5. "When 
 we were without strength, Christ died for the ungodly." 
 Rom. v. 6. Such is a first great principle and law of 
 the Gospel, growing out of the truth that " God is the 
 only Good," and embodied by St Paul in the words, " By 
 grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of your- 
 3elves, it is the gift of God." Eph. ii. 8. 
 
 (2) The second great maxim and law of Provi- 
 dence, is the truth that God is the Only Wise. Nothing, 
 even the most minute, can escape from the vision of His 
 Omniscience and from the control of His providence. 
 " Even the hairs of your head are all numbered." 
 Matt. x. 30. " Gather up the fragments that remain, 
 that nothing be lost." Joh. vi. 1 2. Evil men and angels 
 may and do rebel against His will, and strive against 
 Him, but the "counsel of His will," Eph. i. n, they 
 cannot disappoint or annul : " there is no wisdom, nor 
 understanding, nor counsel, against the Lord." Prov. 
 xxi. 30. So was it announced to Pharaoh in the height 
 of his rebellion. " For this cause have I raised thee up, 
 to shew. in thee my power, and that my name may be 
 declared throughout all the earth." Ex. ix. 16. And 
 Solomon and David both proclaim the same truth : " The 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. iSl 
 
 Lord hath made all things for Himself, yea, even the 
 wicked for the day of evil." Prov. xvi. 4. " Surely the 
 wrath o man shall praise Thee, and the remainder (or, 
 excess) of wrath wilt Thou restrain." Ps. Ixxvi. 10. 
 
 (3) The third principle or law of the whole economy 
 of Redemption is that God is most Just, expressed by 
 Abraham, in his intercession for Sodom. " Shall not 
 the Judge of all the earth do right?" Gen. xviii. 25. 
 This truth is guarded by the solemn oath, " As I live, 
 saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of 
 the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his way 
 and live... why will ye die, O house of Israel?" Ezek. 
 xxxiii. ii. So sternly does God repel the double false- 
 hood that He takes pleasure in the destruction and moral 
 ruin of His own creatures : or that His judgments, how- 
 ever severe, shall exceed the measure of the most perfect 
 equity, and the highest wisdom. " He will not lay upon 
 man more than right, that he should enter into judgment 
 with God," Job xxxiv. 23; and again, "Thou wilt be 
 justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou 
 standest in judgment." Ps. li. 4. " Hear, ye strong 
 foundations of the earth, for the Lord hath a controversy 
 with His people, and He will plead with Israel." Mic. 
 vi. 2. In His own time, God will make "all the hard 
 speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against 
 Him," Jude 15, to turn back upon themselves by the 
 testimony of their own re-awakened conscience and rea- 
 son, according to those words, " Why, even of yourselves, 
 judge ye not what is right?" Lu. xii. 57. "The glory 
 of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it 
 together." Isa. xl. 5. And what that glory is, is thus ex- 
 plained by another prophet: "Let him that glorieth, 
 glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, 
 that I am the Lord, which execute lovingkindness, judg- 
 ment, and righteousness in the earth ; for in these things 
 
I 82 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 1 delight, saith the Lord." Jer. ix. 24. The long delay 
 of judgment is ascribed to the " riches of God's forbear- 
 ance." "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, 
 but is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any 
 should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 
 
 2 Pet. iii. 9. The certainty of judgment in its own 
 appointed time is assured alike by the perfect truth, the 
 holiness, and the wisdom of God. It is said of this 
 message of solemn warning, "At the end it will speak 
 and not lie ; though it tarry, wait for it ; because it will 
 surely come, it will not tarry." Hab. ii. 3. " Yet a little 
 while, and He that shall come will come, and will not 
 tarry." Heb. x. 37. 
 
 (4) The fourth revealed principle and law of all pro- 
 vidence is the Omnipotence of God. The most candid, 
 and one of the ablest of modern leaders of sceptical 
 thought, in his latest work, comes much nearer to the 
 Christian faith than most other sceptics. He holds 
 that there is evidence for the existence of an intelligent 
 and conscious creator of the Cosmos, and that 
 
 " the morality of the Gospels is far higher and better than that which 
 shews itself in the order of Nature, and that what is objectionable in 
 the Christian theory, is only so when taken in connection with the 
 doctrine of an Omnipotent God, at least as understood by most enlightened 
 Christians. The grave error of Butler was that he shrank from ad- 
 mitting the hypothesis of limited powers. His appeal amounts to this. 
 The belief of Christians is not more absurd or immoral than that of 
 Deists who acknowledge an Omnipotent Creator.'* Mill's "Three 
 Essays on Religion," p. 214. 
 
 He thinks that there is strong evidence for the ex- 
 istence of a God of real dominion, great goodness, 
 and great power, and that the goodness may be held 
 perfect, if we admit the power to be limited. The 
 stumbling-block which keeps him back from accepting 
 the. Christian faith, when he has reached its very thresh- 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. 183 
 
 old, is an implicit and unreasoning adoption of current 
 or popular impressions with regard to the true meaning 
 of one Divine attribute. The construction of omnipo- 
 tence which leaves him in a midway position, with one 
 foot on the ground of Christian faith, and the other 
 in a quagmire of scepticism, does not even pretend to 
 have been derived from any direct and inductive study of 
 the Bible itself. He takes it merely from current and 
 popular notions, which he ascribes, in flagrant contrast to 
 the scope of his own reasonings, to the most enlightened 
 Christians, when he ought, to be consistent, to have said 
 rather, the least enlightened Christians. On no better 
 basis than this loose impression, he affirms that "the 
 notion of a providential government by an omnipotent 
 being, for the good of his creatures, must be entirely 
 dismissed," and calls it " absurd and immoral." Yet 
 Bishop Butler does virtually what he blames him for not 
 doing, and offers thoughts which, if Mr Mill had followed 
 them out, would have proved the rashness and utter 
 baselessness of his own statement. 
 
 "Many instances," Butler says, "may be alleged of suppositions 
 utterly impossible, and reducible to palpable contradictions, which 
 not every one could perceive to be such, or perhaps any one at 
 first sight suspect. We are unacquainted with what is in the nature 
 of things practicable in the case before us, and our ignorance is a 
 satisfactory answer, for some unknown impossibility may render what 
 is objected against just and good, nay good in the highest practicable 
 degree." 
 
 Dr Mozley, in his fourth Lecture, has developed 
 the same thought a little further, marking the contrast 
 between real and apparent limitations of the Divine 
 power. 
 
 "A contradiction to necessary truth being nothing, nothing is taken 
 away in the abstraction of the power to effect it. ...It is no real limita- 
 tion of Omnipotence to deny the power to contradict a mathematical 
 truth." 
 
I 84 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 In the "Ways of God," I have quoted these words of 
 Bishop Butler, and unfolded the same important truth 
 still further, at some length. I have shewn by a full 
 induction of Scripture, from the first to the last, that what 
 Mill misnames the hypothesis of limited power, is the 
 real doctrine of Scripture throughout that is, a power 
 self-limited by the perfect wisdom and holiness of God, 
 so as to discern and exclude every lie, self-contradiction, 
 and chimera. Thus we are taught that " God cannot 
 lie," that " He cannot deny Himself." There are many 
 other such cases of moral contradictions, which do not 
 reveal themselves as such at the first glance, to ignorant 
 and sinful creatures. The Bible proclaims the two doc- 
 trines side by side with equal clearness, that God is 
 really Almighty, in the words of the patriarch, " I know 
 that Thou canst do everything," Job xlii. 2 ; and in the 
 words of the angel to the Virgin, that " with God nothing 
 shall be impossible," Lu. ii. 37; and in the words of the 
 heavenly elders, " They rest not day and night, saying, 
 Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," Rev. iv. 8. And 
 still that there is a real warfare of good and evil between 
 the thrice holy God, with holy angels and redeemed men 
 on one side, and the world, the flesh, and the devil and 
 his angels on the other ; a warfare so real and intense, 
 that every warning and every promise in the word of 
 God is based upon the fact of its deep reality. " To him 
 that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life 
 which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." Rev. ii. 7. 
 " He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second 
 death." Rev. ii. n. "To him that overcometh will I 
 grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I overcame 
 and am set down with my Father on His throne." Rev. 
 iii. 21. Power then, not wholly vague and indefinite, but 
 self-limited by the eternal truth of things, by the es- 
 sential nature and perfection of the Living God, and by 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. 185 
 
 the essential imperfection and variability of all created 
 being, is that glorious attribute which is brightly revealed 
 throughout the whole of Scripture. Any other view 
 of the Divine Omnipotence would degrade the doctrine 
 of the Cross, and of atonement through the sufferings 
 of the Divine and Incarnate Saviour into a gratuitous 
 folly and act of cruelty, instead of a most glorious mani- 
 festation of the perfect love and wisdom and holiness of 
 the Almighty. 
 
 (5) A fifth main law and principle of Redemption, 
 and of the whole scheme of providence, is taught us 
 in the law of God, near its close. " He is the Rock : 
 His work is perfect; all His ways are judgment; a God 
 of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He." 
 The scheme of Divine providence, it is thus proclaimed, 
 is a perfect work. It is a contrast to the vision of the 
 prophet. " I went down to the potter's house, and be- 
 hold he wrought a work upon the wheels ; and the 
 vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand 
 of the potter, so he made it again another vessel as 
 it seemed good to the potter to make it." Jer. xviii. 3, 4. 
 But the scheme of universal providence, if once marred, 
 could never be repaired. So, if our blessed Lord had 
 committed one sin, the perfectness of His example and 
 His Divine atonement, as the Lamb without blemish 
 and without spot, would have been precluded for ever. 
 So, any mistake, error or ignorance on God's part, in His 
 dealing with the mighty problem of the government of 
 the universe, could never be reversed. The whole would 
 contract a flaw that could never be repaired. But such 
 a failure is precluded and forbidden by the perfect 
 wisdom, the perfect goodness, and the spotless holiness 
 of the Most High. Because "He is the Rock, a God 
 of truth and without iniquity ; just and right," therefore 
 His "work" also is "perfect." Deut. xxxii. 4, 
 
1 86 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 This Christian optimism, the faith that no man or 
 creature can devise a better scheme of universal pro- 
 vidence, than that which the all-wise God Himself has 
 planned, foreseen, and appointed, and will assuredly bring 
 to pass in the appointed season, is a direct and in- 
 separable corollary from the revealed perfections of God. 
 A recent Bampton Lecturer (1877) says, " It is un- 
 questionable that the present order of the universe is 
 not a perfect manifestation of justice. Every theist, 
 
 "it is said, will deny that the impress of perfection must of necessity 
 be stamped on all the works of a perfect Creator. It is assumed 
 (by Mr Mill) that if a God of infinite power, wisdom and benevolence 
 has made the universe, He was bound to realize our highest concep- 
 tion of those attributes in every portion of His creative work. This 
 we know as a matter of fact He has not done." p. 449. 
 
 In Mr Mill's statements, of which the " unsparing 
 logic " is praised by the Lecturer, to prove the error of a 
 priori reasoning^ there is no a priori reasoning whatever. 
 They consist of an a posteriori comparison between the 
 actual course of providence as a whole, and current popular 
 impressions of perfect goodness and Divine omnipotence, 
 and affirm their utter inconsistency. Mr Mill fails to 
 draw the only true conclusion, that loose popular im- 
 pressions of the meaning of omnipotence are at variance 
 with the actual facts of providence, and he might have 
 added, contradict the consenting testimony of the whole 
 word of God. Mr Mill's real premiss is, that perfection 
 must be stamped, not on all the works of a perfect 
 Creator, separately, one by one, but only upon crea- 
 tion and providence as a whole, so far at least as 
 knowledge of them is attainable. The Lecturer affirms 
 this premiss to be unquestionably false. It is rather a 
 truth, expressly revealed ; not of course that the moral 
 order of the universe, so far as known to us, within the 
 range of earthly experience, is a perfected or finished 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOD IN REDEMPTION. 187 
 
 manifestation of justice. A small infinitesimal part 
 cannot have the qualities of the mighty whole. But 
 those who deny that the past history of our world, 
 with all its solemn mysteries of prevailing rebellion, 
 wickedness, reigning death, wide-spread misery, wasting 
 and destruction, can be one part of a scheme of provi- 
 dence perfectly wise and good, if we could see the whole, 
 and fathom the mysteries of the eternal ages to come, 
 flatly contradict an express statement of the word of 
 God, as well as the voice of sound reason. 
 
 Thus Christian optimism, or the doctrine that God's 
 real plan must be better than any fancied substitute, or 
 imaginary improvement, devised by sinful and ignorant 
 creatures, is a direct and sure inference from that maxim 
 of the Apostle, " To him that knoweth to do good, and 
 doeth it not, to him it is sin." It must be sin for the 
 All-wise and All-good Creator to reject a greater good, 
 and to choose a less, out of the manifold possibilities of 
 being, in creation and providence, alike open to the gaze 
 of His immeasurable wisdom and goodness. The glorious 
 doctrine of Leibnitz that the actual scheme of universal 
 providence, is the best out of an infinite diversity of 
 alternatives, or of conceivable and possible universes, 
 however ridiculed by frivolous scoffers like Voltaire, is 
 a sure inference from a thorough faith in the two Divine 
 attributes, of perfect wisdom and perfect goodness ; but 
 it is equally certain that to judge of this scheme as a 
 whole, from the limited past experience of men alone in 
 their earthly life for a few thousand years, would be a 
 prodigious folly. The' mysterious depths of evil in the 
 totality of created being, like the depths of the Divine 
 goodness, are unsearchable. The mighty scheme of 
 providence as a whole, has a breadth, and length, and 
 depth, and height, like that love from which it flows, 
 which passeth all created knowledge. And its Divine 
 
I 88 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 author, out of His infinite fulness, "is able to do exceed- 
 ing abundantly above all that we ask or think;" unto 
 Him be "glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout 
 all ages, world without end." Eph. iii. 20, 21. The long 
 conflict and warfare between moral good and evil, so 
 dark, mysterious, and perplexing to the thoughts of men 
 from the beginning until now, will end, we are assured, 
 in a full victory of redeeming mercy, holiness, and tri- 
 umphant goodness. In that victory, the unsearchable 
 riches of the Divine bounty and goodness, and also the 
 eternal contrast between the glorious God, the Self- 
 existent, the Unchangeable, and the mighty universe 
 which He has called into being to manifest His perfec- 
 tions ; both the depth and the height of divine holiness 
 and redeeming love, must and will be displayed for ever 
 more and more. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLD'S REDEEMER. 
 
 JESUS of Nazareth is the Christ of God. What this 
 title really implies is often overlooked and forgotten even 
 by Christians themselves. It is virtually denied, when we 
 are told that Christians are at liberty not to believe any 
 miracle of the Old Testament, which has not been con- 
 firmed by direct reference to it in the Gospels. (Dr Irons, 
 'Supernatural Religion,' Vol. i. p. 95). The argument, 
 it is truly said, is an amazing one. The " Christ" is 
 a title which has a distinct and definite meaning. It 
 means Him of whom Moses and the Prophets did write ; 
 the Redeemer, promised at first as the Seed of the woman 
 to bruise the head of the Serpent ; the Son of Abraham, 
 the Son of David ; the Person on whom there converges 
 a whole series of predictions in the Old Testament, from 
 the beginning of Genesis to the end of Malachi. Any 
 attempt to get rid of the Old Testament, and retain 
 faith in the Gospel, involves a moral and logical impos- 
 sibility. If the writers of the Old Testament were not 
 prophets commissioned by, God to be messengers of His 
 truth to men ; if the Pentateuch is a forgery, the Book 
 of Isaiah a second forgery, the Book of Daniel a third 
 forgery, dating from the time of the Maccabees, a real 
 Messiah could not exist ; he would be a wholly imagin- 
 ary person, defined by self-contradictory characters, the 
 fulfiller of prophecies which were not real prophecies, 
 
SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 supplying the keystone to a complete arch of forgeries 
 composed of mistaken glosses and wicked frauds, per- 
 petrated by unknown parties, who traded on Jewish 
 credulity and superstition. Rejection of the Old Testa- 
 ment, our Lord declares, makes real faith in Himself as 
 the Christ impossible. " Had ye believed Moses, ye 
 would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye 
 believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" 
 Joh. v. 46, 47. And once again : " They have Moses 
 and the prophets, let them hear them.... If they hear not 
 Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded 
 though one rose from the dead." Lu. xvi. 29, 31. This 
 title, the " Christ" sums up and embodies the fact, that 
 God had before announced His will to men, from the be- 
 ginning of the world, by a succession of prophets, commis- 
 sioned to give messages in His name. The Christ is one 
 " of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write." 
 The Jews and Samaritans alike knew that such a person 
 was to come. The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, " I 
 know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ; when 
 he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus said unto her, 
 I that speak unto thee am He." Joh. iv. 26. The message 
 of the prophets was a first stage in that Divine husbandry 
 which Jesus sent the Apostles to complete into a perfect 
 harvest. " Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for 
 they are white already to harvest... and he that reapeth 
 receive th wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, 
 that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice 
 together. ... I have sent you to reap that whereon ye 
 bestowed no labour ; other men laboured, and ye are 
 entered into their labours." vv. 36, 38. The Christ is 
 one who continues, completes, and fulfils a message, which 
 had been already given in the Law and by the Prophets. 
 Thus taught the Apostles from the first chapter of the 
 Book of Acts to its close. The Gospel was a fulfilment 
 
THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLDS REDEEMER. 
 
 of all things "which God had spoken by the mouth of 
 all His holy prophets since the world began." Acts iii. 21. 
 So St Paul at Rome "persuaded the Jews concerning 
 Jesus out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, 
 from morning till evening;... and some believed the things 
 which were spoken, and some believed not ; and when 
 they agreed not among themselves they departed, after 
 that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy 
 Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers.'* Acts 
 xxviii. 23 25. 
 
 Thus the first message of the New Testament history 
 is, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David, the Son 
 of Abraham; the final end and consummation of the 
 whole history of the Old Testament ; also the fulfiller of 
 distinct prophecies of Isaiah and Micah, and of implied 
 predictions of Hosea, Jeremiah, and all the prophets. 
 And the same history closes with the assurance by St 
 Paul, that the words of Isaiah vi. were a voice of the 
 Holy Spirit, by Isaiah the prophet, unto the fathers of 
 the Jews. These testimonies are crowned by the words 
 of the angel to St John, " The testimony of Jesus is the 
 spirit of prophecy." Rev. xix. 10. 
 
 The Wisdom of the Lord Jesus as the Christ will 
 be seen by reflecting on the truths implied in that title. 
 His life from the cradle to the grave was the perfect 
 fulfilment of a work, ordained before the foundation of 
 the world, but revealed in part and only in part, in a 
 series of divine predictions, ranging through 4000 years 
 until His actual appearance. AH these predictions, and 
 the true purport of each one of them, must have succes- 
 sively been opened before the Son of God, from the hour 
 of His birth at Bethlehem, to His ascension from Olivet. 
 Their fulfilment occupied His thoughts in the hour of 
 His extreme anguish on the cross. "Jesus knowing that 
 all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture 
 
1 92 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. ...When He had received 
 the vinegar, He bowed His head, and gave up the 
 ghost." Joh. xix. 28, 30. After His Resurrection, His 
 first message revealed to His disciples this aspect of His 
 finished work. " These,, are the words which I spake 
 unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must 
 be fulfilled which were written in the Law, and in the 
 Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then 
 opened He their understanding that they might under- 
 stand the Scriptures." Lu. xxiv. 44, 45. Thus the Son 
 of God, throughout His life, "set the Lord always 
 before" Him, with the whole series of prophetic mes- 
 sages, from the first record of creation, to the announce- 
 ment in Malachi of His own rising on the benighted 
 world, as the "Sun of Righteousness, with healing in 
 His wings." Mai. iv. 2. His task was not only to 
 discern and fulfil all the express predictions of His life, 
 death, and resurrection, but to satisfy and accomplish all 
 the various types of the sacred history, or of the Divine 
 law which really pointed to Him, and converged on Him 
 as their common centre. How vast and unsearchable 
 is the wisdom implied in this one aspect of the Saviour's 
 work, as taught in His own words : " I am not come to 
 destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil." Matt. v. 1 7. 
 " I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the 
 work which Thou gavest me to do." Joh. xvii. 4. " I 
 have kept my Father's commandment, and abide in His 
 love." Joh. xv. 10. "The words that I speak unto you, 
 I speak not of myself; but the Father which dwelleth in 
 me, He doeth the works." Joh. xiv. 10. Thus our Lord 
 as the Christ, was consciously fulfilling a specific work 
 of Redeeming grace, ordained and appointed by His 
 Father from the foundation of the world, and largely 
 unfolded, both in express predictions, and manifold types 
 through four, thousand years. All of which lay open to 
 
THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLDS REDEEMER. 1 93 
 
 His clear and eagle gaze ; and were fulfilled in the midst 
 of all the ''contradictions of sinners," and the malice of 
 the powers of darkness, with strict, perfect, and un- 
 swerving fidelity. 
 
 "The Scripture," He said, "cannot be broken," 
 Joh. x. 35. "Even the things concerning Me have an 
 end" (re'Xo? e^et, or y must be fulfilled), Lu. xxii. 37. 
 He rejects, in the hour of His sufferings, the angelic 
 succours which were at His command, rather than one 
 sentence of Scripture should fail of fulfilment. " Thinkest 
 thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He 
 will presently give me more than twelve legions of 
 angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled 
 that thus it must be ?" Matt. xxvi. 53, 54. So profound 
 is the reverence of the Incarnate Son of God for those 
 words of the prophets, which are the "sword of the Holy 
 Spirit," Eph. vi. 17, "the Scripture of truth," Dan. x. 21, 
 and the "true sayings of God," Rev. xviii. 9. What an 
 utter contrast is this to the light and flippant manner in 
 which they are too often treated by modern Sadducees, 
 or half disciples, who degrade them to the level of their 
 own writings, that is, fallible sayings, mixed up of truth 
 and falsehood in uncertain proportions. If we accept 
 their theories they are not words of the holy Prophets, 
 but of anonymous and unscrupulous forgers, so that 
 their real parent would not be the God of truth, but the 
 Father of lies. But the perfect truthfulness of Scripture 
 shines out in the whole teaching of our blessed Lord, 
 from His first great conflict and victory in the wilder- 
 ness, to His final session at the Father's right hand in 
 heavenly glory. There He is now "expecting," until His 
 voice on the cross, " It is finished," Joh. xix. 30, shall be 
 completed by that later voice of His heavenly Father, 
 "He that sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all 
 things new. And He said unto me write, for these words 
 B. 13 
 
IQ4 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 are true and faithful, and he said unto me, "It is done." 
 Rev. xxi. 6. 
 
 Another aspect of the deep wisdom and love of the 
 Gospel of Christ will be seen, when we consider the 
 Kingly office of the Saviour, as specially revealed in the 
 first Gospel. The world in all past ages has been groan- 
 ing under the curse of selfish, despotic, and unrighteous 
 government. Oppression has made even wise men mad, 
 and men in the last days, recoiling from the curse of 
 despotic rule, have been ready to fling themselves into 
 a still lower gulf, of lawlessness and utter anarchy. The 
 promised Redeemer was predicted from the first, under 
 the character of a Righteous King, in whom would be 
 realized what sinful men had vainly longed for through 
 successive ages, but had never been able to attain per- 
 manently by any devices of human wisdom. He was 
 to be a King of the race of David, but better and greater 
 than David ; a King of Peace, greater and better than 
 Solomon, in whom the words should be fulfilled, " I will 
 raise unto David a righteous branch, and a King shall 
 reign and prosper, and execute judgment in the earth," 
 Jer. xxiii. 5. 
 
 This Kingly glory of Christ is the truth specially 
 revealed in the first Gospel, which begins with His 
 line of royal descent, and with the message to the Wise 
 Men, "Where is He that is born King of the Jews ? for 
 we have seen His star in the East, and are come to 
 worship Him." It is continued by the solemn mes- 
 sage of His work of judgment, " When the Son of man 
 shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with 
 Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory." It 
 is crowned and completed by His parting words, on the 
 mountain in Galilee, " All power is given to me in heaven 
 and in earth, Go and teach all nations . . . teaching them 
 to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you." 
 
THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLD'S REDEEMER. IQ5 
 
 The unsearchable wisdom implied in this office of 
 Christ is shewn in three things. It is all-inclusive as 
 to the actions on which judgment is to be passed. "God 
 shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret 
 thing whether it be good, or whether it be evil," Eccles. 
 xii. 14. It is all inclusive as to the persons who are 
 judged. "Before Him shall be gathered all nations,' 1 
 Matt. xxv. 32. "We must all appear before the judg- 
 ment seat of Christ that every one may receive the 
 things done in his body, according to that he hath done, 
 whether it be good or bad," 2 Cor. v. 10. "I saw the 
 dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books 
 were opened . . . and the dead were judged out of those 
 things which were written in the books, according to 
 their works," Rev. xx. 12. This judgment requires in 
 Him who executes it, unsearchable wisdom, not only 
 because it includes all mankind and all their actions, 
 but has respect to all the principles on which righteous 
 judgment depends. It is a judgment without respect of 
 persons by one "who searcheth the reins and the hearts," 
 who " will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, 
 and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts." It 
 is the judgment of one who is able to weigh in scales of 
 perfect equity, the varying opportunities, and degrees 
 of light, which men have enjoyed or abused, and all 
 the excuses by which they have sought to veil their guilt, 
 from the time of the fig-leaves of Paradise, to the hour 
 of the last judgment. And this Judge is also the great 
 " High Priest, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from 
 sinners, and made higher than the heavens," Heb. vii. 26, 
 " who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, 
 and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin," Heb. iv. 15. The mingled folly and blasphemy of 
 those sinners is extreme, who charge this glorious King 
 of Righteousness, the future Judge of all mankind, with 
 
 132 
 
SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 utter and incredible folly, in that glorious Gospel of 
 redeeming grace and love, which is really the brightest 
 effluence of the wisdom and grace of the "Sun of Right- 
 eousness," where it shines with a brightness above that 
 of the sun at noonday. 
 
 A third aspect of the glorious wisdom of Christ 
 as revealed in the Gospels is seen in His character as 
 the Lord of all nature, the unwearied and indefatigable 
 Worker. This is the view of our Lord's character 
 specially revealed in the second Gospel, which ends 
 with this solemn message. " After that the Lord had 
 spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven and 
 sat at the right hand of God ; and they went forth and 
 preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and 
 confirming the word with signs following." The fact 
 of this unwearied working of the Son of God, is ex- 
 pressly stated by Himself, to justify his cure of the 
 impotent man on the Sabbath day. " Jesus answered 
 them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," Joh. v. 
 1 7. But it constitutes the main feature of the second 
 Gospel, in which there are few discourses, but an un- 
 wearied succession of acts of grace, swiftly following 
 each other. " Straightway, coming up out of the water, 
 He saw the heavens opened." " Immediately the Spirit 
 driveth Him into the wilderness." " Straightway they 
 forsook their nets and followed him ;" and " Straight- 
 way He called them;" and "Straightway, on the Sab- 
 bath day, He entered into the Synagogue and taught," 
 Mk. i. 10, 12, 1 8, 20, 21, 29, 43. 
 
 Along with this character of Christ, as the indefatig- 
 able worker, answering to the symbol of the ox, there is 
 here revealed His lordship over all nature. The double 
 message is here given, "Is not this the carpenter? and 
 they were offended at him." " Go into all the world, and 
 preach the Gospel to every creature," or to the whole 
 
THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLDS REDEEMER. 197 
 
 creation. The lordship of Christ over all nature, both 
 material and spiritual, is further summed up in the words 
 that follow, "These signs shall follow them that believe. 
 In my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak 
 with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if 
 they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they 
 shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover/' 
 Mk. xvi. 17 20. 
 
 All the actc of Him who is the Lord of nature, must 
 in a certain sense be supernatural. The one supreme 
 law to which they are subject is, "the counsel of His 
 own will," or their subservience to the great ends of His 
 universal providence. The common course of nature, 
 as well as all that is rare and exceptional, proceeds from 
 His supreme wisdom. The rising and setting of the sun, 
 and the circuits of the seasons ; " they continue this day 
 according to Thine ordinances, for all are Thy servants," 
 Ps. cxix. 90, 91; and the stedfastness of the earth itself, 
 lt Thou hast established the earth and it abideth." But 
 so also, when He "said to the fig-tree, No man eat fruit 
 of thee hereafter for ever, and His disciples heard it;" 
 " in the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree 
 dried up from the roots," Mk. xi. 14, 20. For, it was 
 the word of Him by whom all things were made at the 
 first, and who has said, " Heaven and earth shall pass 
 away, but my word shall not pass away." The laws of 
 nature include not only an element of permanence, but 
 of immense and ceaseless variation. The supreme law 
 to which all others must ever be subordinate, is the will 
 of the Lord God of hosts ; and the nature of every seed 
 and every plant and grain, and all the processes of human 
 husbandry, in their profoundest wisdom, " come forth 
 from the Lord of hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and 
 excellent in working," Isa. xxviii. 29. 
 
 The character of Christ, as the Son of Man and as 
 
198 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 the true High Priest is especially set before us in the 
 third Gospel. This Gospel is especially rich in its mani- 
 festation of the human sympathies, grace, and compas- 
 sion of the Saviour. He presents himself to us, as the 
 Son of Man predicted by Daniel ; the ideal man, the 
 perfect pattern and standard, not only of grace and com- 
 passion, as in the parables of the Good Samaritan and 
 the Prodigal Son, but also of worship, reverence, and 
 piety towards God. When " He was praying, the hea- 
 vens were opened" at His Baptism, Lu. iii. 21. When 
 He chose the Apostles, He "went out into the mountain 
 to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God," Lu. 
 vi. 12. As this Gospel begins with the vision to Zacha- 
 rias, while ministering in the temple, so its close sets 
 before us the Son of Man, ascending to the throne of 
 God, in the very act of priestly benediction. " While 
 He blessed them, He was parted from them and carried 
 up into heaven, and they worshipped Him, and returned 
 to Jerusalem with great joy," Lu. xxiv. 51, 52. In all 
 these passages is implied the full and perfect wisdom of 
 Christ as the Son of Man. 
 
 In the "old Serpent," one name of the great adver- 
 sary, is implied the greatness of that perverse and un- 
 principled cunning, which forms the treasury of delusion 
 and falsehood, on which the kingdom of darkness is 
 founded. He is set before us in the word of God, as 
 combining angelic and superhuman intelligence, the ut- 
 most tortuosity, fertility in inventing ever varying delu- 
 sions and falsehoods ; the utmost conceivable blindness 
 to the superior wisdom of God ; an intense power of self- 
 delusion, and along with all this the consciousness of 
 power to wage a warfare against God and His truth, 
 and a temper wholly devoid of fear and alarm, so as to 
 harden himself against the Most High. Such are the 
 characters in which he was revealed to that Patriarch who 
 
THE PERFECTIONS OF THE WORLDS REDEEMER. 199 
 
 was especially exposed to his temptations. He is the 
 "king over all the children of pride, and beholdeth all 
 high things : on earth there is not his like, who is made 
 without fear .... his heart is as firm as a stone, yea, hard 
 as a piece of the nether mill-stone : the sword of him 
 that layeth at him cannot hold," Job xli. 24, 33, 34. As 
 he is the foremost and chief of rebels against God, so 
 he seems to be pronounced, in natural gifts, the foremost 
 of created intelligences. " He is the chief of the ways of 
 God, but He that made him, can make His sword to ap- 
 proach unto him," Job xl. 19. The great day of Christ's 
 judgment is that in which " the Lord with his sore, and 
 great, and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan the 
 piercing and crooked serpent," Isa. xxvii. i. 
 
 As in this enemy we have set before us, the sum 
 and climax of all perverse cunning as figured in the ser- 
 pent tribes, employed for the dishonour of God and the 
 injury of man ; so this perfect cunning, perversity and 
 malice of " the spirit who worketh in the children of 
 disobedience," Eph. ii. 2, can only be overcome by the 
 all-perfect wisdom of the God-man. " For this purpose 
 was the Son of God manifested that He might destroy 
 the works of the Devil," i Jo. iii. 8. " Christ is the 
 power of God and the wisdom of God," i Cor. i. 24. 
 " The cross is that mystery of godliness and of redeem- 
 ing grace, wherein Christ, the Son of Man, "spoiled 
 principalities and made a show of them openly, triumph- 
 ing over them in it," Col. ii, 15. The adversary is the 
 " strong man armed" with seemingly interminable re- 
 sources of delusion, which constitute the armoury of the 
 kingdom of darkness. As human nature in its perfection 
 is higher and nobler than the nature of the serpent, the 
 Redeemer is that t( stronger than he," who can overcome 
 him, " take from him all the armour wherein he trusted, 
 and divide his spoils ;" because He is the Incarnate 
 
2OO SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 Wisdom, the Word, " in whom are hid all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge," ver. 3. 
 
 Inexpressibly mournful and solemn are charges of 
 folly, falsehood, and delusion, brought by guilty mortals 
 against that glorious Gospel, in which omniscient Wis- 
 dom, and inexpressible grace, and spotless holiness have 
 conspired to reveal the choicest treasures of Divine good- 
 ness, so as to rescue all but the more stubborn and 
 perverse of the human race, from the ruin of that fall in 
 which they were involved at first, by the malice of the 
 great ringleader of evil. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE LAST DAYS, 
 A SCRIPTURE PROPHECY. 
 
 THE present century has witnessed the solution of a 
 great problem, which awakened the curiosity, and baffled 
 the researches of the ancients, from Herodotus onward 
 through more than two thousand years, till it passed into 
 a proverb. The sources of the Nile have been detected 
 and explored, by the laborious researches of Livingstone, 
 Krapf, Grant, Speke, Stanley, Cameron, and other 
 travellers. They have been found to lie in a series of 
 Lakes in the South of Africa, fed by the copious and 
 abundant rains of the Tropics. 
 
 From these hidden sources, for thousands of years, 
 has flowed the fertilizing stream which formed the pride 
 and glory of Egypt, the main source of its wealth, 
 fertility, and greatness, through successive ages, when 
 the land of the Pharaohs was the foremost of the world's 
 empires. That stream of the Nile received on its bosom, 
 almost four thousand years ago, in an ark of papyrus the 
 infant Moses, the first and noblest in the series of those 
 messengers by whom it has pleased God to give written 
 messages of His will to mankind. On the side of this 
 stream in later years, were built those pyramids, which 
 are the most conspicuous and enduring products of man's 
 skill and labour to be found on the face of the whole 
 
202 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 earth. Both these, and their contents, are the record of 
 his vain and earnest efforts to resist the reign of corrup- 
 tion, to baffle death and the grave. 
 
 There is another flood which in these days is pouring 
 its broad and fertilizing stream, not over the valley of 
 the Nile alone, but over the far wider range of all the 
 civilized regions of the earth. That flood is the wide, 
 and still widening stream of physical science, growing 
 in depth and breadth from year to year, with its manifold 
 contributions to the arts of life, and to the supply of 
 human wants. Very wonderful and various are its dis- 
 coveries of the secrets of nature, with its microscope, its 
 telescope, steam engines, steam boats, locomotives, rail- 
 ways, electric telegraphs, spectroscope, in the strata of 
 the earth below, and throughout the starry universe to 
 the farthest depths of space. This wide and fertilizing 
 flood has changed the whole face of modern society, and 
 by its mighty operation has introduced a new era in the 
 history of our world. It has laid bare a thousand secrets 
 in nature, long veiled in darkness, to the contemplation of 
 the human reason, and made them minister to the supply 
 of human wants, and to the development of the secret 
 and mysterious faculties of the mind of man. Now it 
 is a natural inquiry, Is there any lake on a mountain 
 side near some mighty watershed, to which we can 
 trace the secret origin of this fertilizing flood of modern 
 scientific discovery? There is such a source. We find 
 it in one sentence of the inspired word of God ; one 
 verse near the close of the visions of the prophet Daniel, 
 which Christ has given His disciples a special charge to 
 read with understanding; given to him in vision 2,400 
 years ago. It is the prediction that in the time of the 
 end, and in the near approach of a time of great politi- 
 cal and national trouble, " many shall run to and fro, and 
 knowledge shall be increased." Dan. xii. 4. 
 
BACONS MOTTO. 2O3 
 
 This verse was singled out by Lord Bacon as the 
 motto of his immortal work, which gave the first great 
 impulse to that revived energy of inductive search into 
 nature which has gone on increasing ever since. The 
 increase of travelling, or running to and fro in the earth, 
 is here described as the first step in this predicted growth 
 of knowledge. The knowledge of every child of man, 
 has both its pedestal, and its commencement, in his 
 familiar knowledge of a few persons, things, plants, 
 animals, and material objects in that small spot of earth 
 where he lives ; on his intimate knowledge of this small 
 and narrow circle of the objects immediately around him, 
 he founds the whole fabric and structure of his later 
 knowledge. Thus an age of increased facilities for 
 travelling and running to and fro in the earth, increases 
 at once for every individual, the range of that circle of 
 persons, things, spots, local relations, and material objects, 
 which is the intellectual foundation upon which all his 
 wider knowledge of the material universe, and his further 
 speculations, or philosophical conjectures on the system 
 of the universe, and on the nature of all his fellow crea- 
 tures must be founded. Thus facilities for travelling, 
 and a general habit of running to and fro in the earth, 
 are a natural preparation for any further increase and 
 development of man's knowledge of natural things. They 
 provide a wider and broader basis than can exist, when 
 each person is tied down, and limited, to the range of 
 one day's foot journey on the face of the earth, and 
 remains almost wholly ignorant, except by report, of all 
 that lies beyond. 
 
 It has been estimated, by statistical inquirers, that the 
 amount of locomotion, or travelling to and fro upon the 
 earth, has increased more than a hundredfold in the 
 course of the present century. The Roman Empire in 
 this respect had made a great advance on all earlier 
 
204 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 ages. The Romans paid special attention to the construc- 
 tion of roads, the building of bridges, and the formation 
 of regular pathways between Rome itself, and every part 
 of her widely extended empire. It is probable that the 
 amount and ease of travelling was increased tenfold 
 under the Roman Empire, as compared with all previous 
 ages of the world. It is plain that running to and fro in 
 the earth, and the increase of natural knowledge, and a de- 
 velopment of zeal in the study of the works of God, have 
 been marked features in the whole history of the world, 
 from the date of Bacon's work, down to the present hour. 
 What view did Lord Bacon himself take of his own 
 work ? Plainly, he believed that he was one selected 
 instrument, for the fulfilment of an express promise and 
 prophecy, which God had already given so long before 
 by His holy Prophet, to the children of men. Hence 
 arose his strong faith in the success of his great effort, 
 to open a clearer pathway into the fields of science. 
 Hence also his warning against the deceptive shortcuts 
 which human impatience is ever prone to make, when 
 it substitutes mere guess-work of a pretentious kind, 
 for a patient induction of particular facts, and that 
 careful testing of hypotheses at every step, on which the 
 whole efficacy and value of induction, in his opinion, 
 depended. He had a firm and sublime faith in the suc- 
 cess of his own labours, even when all past experience, 
 from the slow and scanty increase of knowledge for nearly 
 2000 years, might have seemed most discouraging. Be- 
 cause as man, he truly says, is the minister and inter- 
 preter of nature, so he felt himself in this great work, of 
 laying the foundations for a theory of the inductive 
 study of nature, to be only a servant, an interpreter of a 
 promise already given to men, by the Lord God of the 
 holy prophets. This promise assured the arrival in the 
 time of the end, (which he referred with good reason 
 
BACON S TWO PRAYERS. 2O5 
 
 to the times after the Reformation, and the fall of the 
 Eastern empire of Rome), of an age when travelling and 
 running to and fro in the earth should be greatly mul- 
 tiplied. And when along with this increase in the stimulus 
 and materials of science, science itself should also be 
 increased. 
 
 That increase he might well expect, would be twofold, 
 like that of a river, spreading over a wider surface, and 
 including a greater number of individuals ; and also 
 piercing further into the secrets of nature than had ever 
 been done before ; so as not only to increase the intellectual 
 wealth of the race, but to furnish human life with a large 
 variety of inventions, ministering to the hourly comfort of 
 mankind. It was probably a deep, secret conviction of 
 the true fountain from which his work derived its inspi- 
 ration, that led Bacon, in the confidence of expected 
 success, to append to his work the following prayer : 
 
 THE STUDENT'S PRAYER. 
 
 " To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour forth 
 most humble and hearty supplications ; that he remembering the 
 calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which 
 we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new 
 refreshments out of the fountains of his goodness, for the alleviating 
 of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human 
 things may not prejudice such as are divine ; neither that from the 
 unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural 
 light, any thing of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our 
 minds towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind 
 thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet 
 subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be 
 given unto faith the things that are faith's." Amen. 
 
 The rash and ambitious hypotheses of many modern 
 speculators in science, while they depart very widely from 
 the strict and exact laws of Bacon's Inductive Philosophy, 
 at the same time suggest the duty to all the friends of 
 real science, as well as to every sincere disciple of Christ, 
 
2O6 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 to offer up once more, with renewed earnestness, both 
 for themselves, and for all their fellow students, this sim- 
 ple and striking prayer of Bacon, and to follow it by 
 adopting his prayer as a writer. 
 
 THE WRITER'S PRAYER. 
 
 " Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of 
 thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top 
 and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and 
 govern this work, which coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy 
 glory. Thou, after thou hadst reviewed the works which thy hands 
 had made, beheldest that every thing was very good, and thou didst 
 rest with complacency in them. But man, reflecting on the works 
 which he had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and 
 could by no means acquiesce in them. Wherefore if we labour in thy 
 works with the sweat of our brows, thou wilt make us partakers of thy 
 vision and thy sabbath. We humbly beg that this mind may be 
 steadfastly in us ; and that thou, by our hands, and also by the hands 
 of others, on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please 
 to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of mankind. These 
 things we commend to thy everlasting love, by our Jesus, thy Christ, 
 God with us." 
 
 The true relation between Christian faith and genuine 
 science, so often distorted or denied by sceptics or scio- 
 lists, is well defined by the same great philosopher in 
 " Filum Labyrinthi," and in the Essay on Truth. 
 
 " There cannot be a greater and more evident truth than this, that 
 all knowledge, specially that of natural philosophy, tendeth highly to 
 the magnifying of the glory of God, in his power, providence and 
 benefits;... as engraven in his works, which, without this knowledge, are 
 beheld but as through a veil. If the heavens in the body of them, do 
 declare the glory of God to the eye, much more do they in the rule 
 and decrees of them, declare it to the understanding. And another 
 reason (for its culture) not inferior to this, is that the same natural 
 philosophy principally among all human knowledge, doth give an 
 excellent defence against both extremes in religion, superstition and 
 infidelity; for both it freeth the mind from a number of weak fancies 
 and imaginations, and raiseth it to acknowledge that to God ' all things 
 are possible.' To this purpose speaketh our Saviour in that first 
 
BACON'S TWO PRAYERS. 207 
 
 Canon against heresies ... ' Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, 
 nor the power of God ' . . . So He saw well that natural philo- 
 sophy was of excellent use to the exaltation of the Divine Majesty. 
 And what is admirable, being a remedy for superstitions, it is never- 
 theless a help to faith ... ' What is truth ? ' asked Pilate. Certainly 
 there are that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a 
 belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. It is not 
 only the difficulty and labour which men have in finding out of truth 
 that doth bring lies into favour, but a natural though corrupt love of 
 the lie itself . . . This same truth is a naked and open daylight, which 
 doth not shew the masks and mummeries of the world half so stately 
 and daintily as candle-light. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. 
 Doth any doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
 opinions, flattering hopes, and false imaginations, it would leave the 
 minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy 
 and unpleasing to themselves ? But howsoever these things are in 
 men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth 
 judge itself, teacheth that inquiry for truth, which is the wooing of it, 
 the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of 
 truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human 
 nature. 
 
 " The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light 
 of the sense : the last was the light of reason, and His Sabbath work 
 ever since is the illumination of His Spirit. First, he breathed light 
 on the face of the matter, or chaos ; then he breathed light into the face 
 of man, and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His 
 chosen. The poet (Lucretius), that beautified the sect that otherwise 
 was inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, ' It is a pleasure 
 to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a 
 pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the 
 adventures thereof below : but no pleasure is comparable to the standing 
 on the vantage-ground of truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where 
 the air is always clear and serene : and to see the errors and wanderings, 
 and mists and tempests in the vale below.' But so always that this 
 prospect be with pity and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is 
 heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in 
 providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. To pass from theological 
 and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business ; it will be acknow- 
 ledged even by those who practise it not, that clear and round dealing 
 is the honour of man's nature, and the mixture of falsehood is like alloy 
 that embaseth it." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN CHRISTIAN FAITH AND 
 SCIENCE " FALSELY so CALLED," IN THE LAST DAYS. 
 
 THE " Gospel of the Resurrection " by Dr Westcott 
 contains two hundred pages developing the truths in- 
 volved in, and growing out of, the Resurrection of Christ, 
 which seem to me mainly true and beautiful. Still there 
 are two drawbacks which do much to obscure the whole, 
 and deprive it of practical power. The first is, the mis- 
 taken transfer to the Son, God Incarnate, of the transcen- 
 dental conception of God, as a Being above time and 
 space, with whom there is no past, present, or future, but 
 simply an ETERNAL NOW. It is one main feature of the 
 great mystery of godliness, that God has condescended, 
 in the person of His Son, not only to be tempted like as 
 we are, but subject, like His creatures, to the con- 
 ditions of time and place. This is the very central truth 
 of the Christian creed, that God the Son became in- 
 carnate at Bethlehem, a specific place, in the reign of 
 Herod and Augustus, and during the government of 
 Pilate, a specific time, in "the last days." To forget 
 and overlook this great truth, instead of helping us to 
 see deeper into sacred mysteries, spreads a veil of mist 
 and confusion over the whole. The other drawback 
 is the entire omission of the doctrine of a Judgment 
 to come, and of the fundamental contrast between the 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE. 2OQ 
 
 church and the world; and the double character of Christ 
 as the " head of every man," and as the head of the 
 body, the church. This is the truth which forms the 
 woof of the whole message of Scripture, from the history 
 of Cain and Abel to the last chapter of the Apocalypse. 
 The entire pretermission of this great and fundamental 
 truth, turns the whole discussion into a kind of luminous 
 haze, where every part produces an effect, like that of 
 the nebulous spaces in the milky way, instead of shed- 
 ding a definite light, like that of the pole star or the 
 southern cross. 
 
 The Appendix of thirty pages, is an attempt to pro- 
 claim a peace and friendship between Christian faith and 
 the Positivism of M. Comte ; an attempt as hopeless 
 as it is suicidal, in a Professor of Divinity. I have 
 read it with intense surprise and regret, but it would 
 require a book to unfold fully the reasons of my entire 
 dissent from that Appendix. 
 
 Positivism, in its fundamental law of progress, com- 
 bines a fearful blasphemy, with a complete reversal of 
 the very first principle of genuine philosophy. For 
 that principle is the transition in our thoughts from 
 momentary phenomena, to the causes, things, and per- 
 sons, the real existences, mental or material, on which 
 phenomena depend. The creed which denies the living 
 God, and consigns Him to the 'moles and bats/ as a 
 dream of the infancy of science, that must disappear with 
 the daybreak, and then be replaced by M. Comte's NEW 
 SUPREME BEING, COLLECTIVE HUMANITY, is exactly the 
 creed of the last Antichrist, in that final stage in which 
 he will have dropped every veil, or theological disguise, 
 aud when openly, and no longer in a mystery, he "opposes 
 and exalts himself against all that is called God, or that 
 is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of 
 God, shewing himself that he is God," 2 Thess. ii. 4. 
 B. 14 
 
2IO SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 It is refreshing to escape from the mephitic neigh- 
 bourhood of this Satanic religion without a God, which, 
 when they approach it incautiously, seems able to con- 
 fuse and dazzle the senses and instincts even of some 
 Christian men. Let us listen to the clear and manly tes- 
 timony of that Christian philosopher, who is the second 
 great glory of Cantbridge. What a contrast to the blas- 
 phemy of M. Comte, with his " new Supreme Being," 
 collective humanity, or a total including all the sinners of 
 mankind, who have murdered and tortured one another, 
 from Cain and Abel to the orgies of the Commune of 
 Paris, and the last Turkish or Bulgarian atrocities. Let 
 us turn from this " new God " of Positivism which has 
 "lately come up," to the words of that noble Scholium 
 which closes the "Principia" of Newton. That work is 
 the greatest single step of advance in the knowledge of 
 nature which man has been permitted to attain ; and the 
 Scholium is its fitting close. 
 
 " This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could 
 only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and 
 powerful being. If the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, 
 these being formed by the like wise counsel, must all be subject to the 
 dominion of One. From every system light passes into all the others, 
 and lest the systems of the fixed stars should fall on each other, He 
 hath placed them at immense distances one from another. This being 
 governs all things, not as a soul of the world, but as Lord over all, 
 and on account of His dominion he is wont to be called the Lord God, 
 TravTOKparcDp, or universal ruler . . . 
 
 " The supreme God is a being, eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect. 
 But a being however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to 
 be the Lord God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which con- 
 stitutes a God. A true, supreme or imaginary dominion makes a 
 true, supreme or imaginary God; and from His true dominion it follows 
 that the true God is a living, intelligent and powerful being ; and from 
 His other perfections that He is supreme or most perfect. He is eter- 
 nal, infinite, omnipotent and omniscient. That is, His duration reaches 
 from eternity to eternity, His presence from infinity to infinity. He 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE. 211 
 
 governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. God 
 is the same God, always and everywhere. In Him are all things con- 
 tained and moved, yet neither affects the other. God suffers nothing 
 from the motion of bodies, and bodies find no resistance from the 
 omnipresence of God . . . 
 
 " We know Him only by His most wise and excellent contrivances 
 of things and final causes; but we admire Him for His perfections, 
 but we reverence and adore Him on account of His dominion ; for 
 we adore Him as His servants; and a God without dominion, provi- 
 dence and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature. Blind 
 metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every- 
 where, could produce no variety of things; and that diversity of 
 natural things which we find suited to different times and places, 
 could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a being necessarily 
 existing. Thus much concerning God, to discourse of whom from the 
 appearances of things, does certainly belong to natural philosophy." 
 
 The Agnosticism of the nineteenth century differs in 
 two respects from the Gnosticism of the first century, 
 and its " oppositions of science falsely so called/' to the 
 truth of God and the glorious message of the everlasting 
 Gospel, while it agrees with it in most of its other fea- 
 tures. First, it strives to incorporate with itself the 
 materials, provided by the progress of real science, in 
 man's knowledge of the works of God, or the divine 
 fulfilment of the gracious promise of God made by the 
 prophet Daniel so long before, that in the time of the 
 end knowledge should be increased. It seeks to in- 
 terweave all these discoveries of science into the web 
 of its own unbelieving speculations, and it uses them 
 to form fresh weapons of assault against the true sayings 
 of God, as well as to point afresh the blunted shafts 
 that have recoiled, and aim them at the shield of truth 
 again. It thus fulfils a real law of progress announced 
 by the great Apostle of the Gentiles, in his parting mes- 
 sage to the church of Christ; there is a law of moral 
 development in the case of wilful and open opposers of 
 the truth, no less real, than that progress of real science 
 
 142 
 
212 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 which had been earlier assured to mankind by the Divine 
 promise. " Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and 
 worse, deceiving and being deceived." But this down- 
 ward progress is to receive a sudden arrest and reversal 
 in the last times, when the blasphemous presumption 
 of those who have succeeded to the task of Jannes and 
 Jambres shall have reached its height. " As Jannes 
 and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the 
 truth, men of perverted understanding, devoid of dis- 
 cernment as to the faith. They shall proceed no further, 
 for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs 
 also was." This climax seems almost reached in Positiv- 
 ism, and its Satanic religion, if religion it is to be called, 
 which consigns the true and living God to eternal oblivion 
 and contempt, as one of the dreams of a childish and out- 
 worn superstition, and would place upon His throne, for 
 the worship of a coming and more enlightened genera- 
 tion, the " new Supreme Being" of M. Comte, "collective 
 humanity." 
 
 Along with this downward moral progress of Agnos- 
 ticism it has a second feature, in the reversal of the 
 simple and noble prayer of Bacon, that "from the kindling 
 of greater natural light, nothing of incredulity or intellec- 
 tual night may arise toward the Divine mysteries." The 
 warning prophecy of the Psalmist with regard to Judas 
 has been fulfilled in its disciples, with regard to the higher 
 intellectual food of the soul. " Their table is turned into 
 a snare, a trap, a recompense, a stumblingblock to them." 
 The words of the Psalmist do not refer mainly to the 
 food of the body, but to the higher and richer food 
 in the Divine discourses of Christ, and His multiplied 
 acts of grace, the gift of working miracles, and the high 
 privilege of the call to be an Apostle of Christ, all 
 which the traitor abused and perverted to his own loss 
 and shame. The celebrated saying of M. Comte, that to 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE. 213 
 
 the eyes of an enlightened philosopher, the heavens re- 
 veal no glory but that of the astronomers by whom their 
 laws are discovered, fulfils perfectly the description of 
 Milton, the third great light and glory of Cambridge : 
 
 " For swinish gluttony 
 
 Ne'er looks to Heav'n amidst its gorgeous feast, 
 But with besotted base ingratitude 
 Crams and blasphemes its feeder." 
 
 The words of Milton apply with still greater emphasis 
 to the rich and abundant intellectual feast which science, 
 by its manifold discoveries, has provided for all its dis- 
 ciples and students in these last days, than to abuse and 
 excess in the indulgence of the bodily appetites alone. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE REVELATION IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS 
 ONE HARMONIOUS WHOLE. 
 
 RATIONALISM may be defined as the abuse and per- 
 version of human reason, in dealing with the claims of 
 Divine Revelation. Its source is an undue confidence in 
 man's unaided faculties, and an excessive estimate of his 
 religious instincts and reasoning powers. Its effect is to 
 set aside all the truths of Christianity, or else to choose 
 out such as suit individual taste or fancy, and to de- 
 preciate or deny the supernatural evidence by which 
 they are all invested with Divine authority, and claim the 
 reverence and submission of mankind. It ranges through 
 many degrees of error, from the broad assertion that 
 Christianity is a fraud, and supernatural revelation impos- 
 sible, to the rejection of some secondary truths, or books 
 of an inferior importance, or of particular passages or 
 texts, on insufficient evidence, from their rightful place 
 in the volume of inspired truth. 
 
 If God has made a supernatural revelation of His 
 will to mankind, it is plain that the gift may be per- 
 verted in two opposite ways. Men may add to it, or 
 take away from it. They may corrupt it by spurious 
 additions, or mutilate it by either a partial or a total 
 rejection. They may confound false interpretations, 
 and human traditions or additions, with the message 
 itself, so as to invest them with a like authority ; or 
 
RATIONALISM. 215 
 
 they may pare down and extenuate its meaning till only 
 a scanty residuum is left, which few people would think 
 worth the trouble, of being conveyed to men by a special 
 revelation. 
 
 The Pharisees and Sadducees in the time of our Lord 
 are striking instances of these opposite evils. We have 
 a warning against both, alike in the opening of Deutero- 
 nomy, iv. 2, and at the close of the Apocalypse, Rev. 
 xxii. 1 8, 19. The same charge was given by Christ 
 Himself to his disciples. We are thus taught that under 
 the Law and the Gospel these are two lasting sources of 
 danger to the Church of God. Such is the natural rela- 
 tion of these two errors, that every faithful Christian is 
 likely to be charged in turn with each of them. Some 
 will condemn him for believing too little, others for 
 believing too much. He will seem a Rationalist or semi- 
 Sadducee to superstitious devotees ; or again, a super- 
 stitious bigot to the disciples of human reason. The 
 best, wisest, and holiest Christians have only a partial and 
 incomplete understanding of divine truth. The void left 
 by an immature faith will either be filled up with opinions 
 and misinterpretations which men mistake in their haste 
 for parts of the divine message ; or else they may accept 
 a maimed and imperfect creed, instead of including within 
 the circle of their faith the full scope and compass of the 
 whole word of God. In one case they will add to its 
 teaching, in the other they will take away from it. We 
 ought never to suppose that we ourselves are free from 
 all participation in one or other of these evils, against both 
 of which it is our duty to contend. Renouncing rational- 
 ism we may fall easily into the arms of superstition ; in 
 condemning formalism and a mere traditional creed, we 
 may contract a captious and sceptical habit of thought, 
 which must betray us into partial unbelief. In dealing 
 with slighter departures, on either side, from the line of 
 
2l6 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 truth, we need to be very guarded in our censures, lest 
 the fault after all should prove to be our own. We may 
 think that we have detected rationalism in others, when 
 the real fault is some mixture of superstition in our own 
 faith ; or, in other cases, we may charge men wrongfully 
 with superstition, through a false and diseased estimate 
 of our own powers of spiritual discernment. The arrows 
 from both camps, that of the Sadducee and of the Pharisee, 
 will be aimed, not less frequently against the truth which 
 lies between them, than against each other. As Caiaphas 
 and Pilate conspired together against the Lord of glory, 
 a double reproach, both from the Pharisee and the Sad- 
 ducee, is the natural consequence and usual price of a 
 faithful adherence to the inspired word of God. 
 
 The stage of Rationalism farthest removed from 
 Christianity, is that which denies even the possibility of a 
 supernatural revelation, either in an oral or written form. 
 In Atheists of the French school, such as Helvetius, Con- 
 dillac and Volney, in the last century, and M. Comte and 
 the Positivists of our own day, this doctrine is only the 
 natural consequence of their dreary creed. The " fool " 
 who says in his heart " There is no God," must naturally 
 infer, there can be no Divine Revelation. With such 
 men, nature is an immense lumber-room of effects without 
 a cause, and of laws without any lawgiver. Their barren 
 theory makes every star in the firmament re-echo the 
 boast ascribed by Milton to the arch-fiend in the hour of 
 his rebellion : 
 
 " We know no time when we were not as now, 
 Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais'd, 
 By our own quick'ning power, when fatal course 
 Had circled its full orb, the birth mature 
 Of this our native Heav'n, ethereal sons." 
 
 But the paradox that all revelation is impossible, is 
 not confined to Atheists, whose one great falsehood incor- 
 
VARIETIES OF RATIONALISM. 217 
 
 porates into itself a thousand lesser follies. It is held 
 more or less fully by some who profess to be Theists, 
 and even Christians of a high order, ardent lovers of "the 
 absolute religion." It appears in F. Newman's works on 
 "the Soul;" T. Parker's " Discourses on Religion;" and 
 Strauss's " Mythical Theory of the Gospels." In the first, 
 religion is a sentiment, not a conclusion of the intel- 
 lect, and therefore can never be embodied in a creed, or 
 conveyed by a " Book revelation." In the second, the 
 perfections of God imply the certainty of a universal 
 revelation of pure and absolute religion, and exclude any 
 other of an historical, limited, and partial kind. In the 
 last, the alleged proofs of Supernatural revelation are 
 said to be proved impossible by the progress of sound 
 metaphysics, and their inconsistency with the discoveries 
 of modern science. 
 
 The doctrine that miracles are impossible in their 
 own nature, is itself a moral miracle, a marvellous ex- 
 treme of presumptuous folly, veiled under a thin mantle 
 of metaphysical subtleties. From the fact that God has 
 richly displayed His wisdom in the universe, as the great 
 architect and mechanician, it draws the inference that He 
 can never manifest any nobler attributes as the Father of 
 mercies, the supreme Judge and moral Governor of all 
 reasonable beings. Creation, and the silent quiet course 
 of daily providence, as man now experiences it here on 
 earth, can never exhaust all the conceivable or probable 
 modes of His operation, who is "wonderful in counsel 
 and excellent in working." Man is able easily to con- 
 vince his fellow-man of his own presence. And shall the 
 Almighty God, who upholds all things by His power, 
 and fills Heaven and earth by His presence, be unable 
 to manifest Himself by means more decisive and effectual 
 than those which, at the present hour, leave Atheists at 
 full liberty to deride the superstition of His worshippers, 
 
2l8 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 and to boast of their own superior wisdom, in their 
 strenuous efforts to banish the Creator from His own 
 universe ? How much wiser to say with the ancient 
 patriarch, after all our fancied advances in metaphysics 
 and real progress in natural science, " Lo ! these are a 
 part of His ways ; but how faint a whisper is heard of 
 Him ; the thunder of His power who can understand ?" 
 
 But Supernatural religion, though not impossible, may 
 perhaps be superfluous. Natural reason may be sufficient 
 without the feeble help of historical records like those of 
 the Gospels. The traditional saying of Omar has been 
 applied to this subject by some modern writers. 
 
 " If the doctrine of Scripture agree with the conclusions of sound 
 reason, they are superfluous; if opposed to it they are untrue and ought 
 to be thrown away. To ascertain what is absolute religion," (Mr Parker 
 affirms) " is not difficult. It is perfect obedience to the law of God ; perfect 
 love towards God and man exhibited in a life allowing the harmonious 
 action of all the faculties. Christianity is either absolute religion and 
 morality, or it is less; greater it cannot be. Jesus of Nazareth may 
 either have taught absolute religion, or an imperfect form ; he may 
 have omitted what was essential, or have added what was national, 
 temporal and personal. But if His religion has none of these faults, 
 then it is the absolute religion, eternally true before revelation." 
 Parker's 'Discourses,' pp. 180 182. 
 
 One would suppose that a single glance at the present 
 state or past history of the world, would dispose at once of 
 this strange wild fancy, that a supernatural revelation is 
 entirely needless. A few jackdaws in Christian countries 
 may strut about in borrowed feathers, and may boast of an 
 "absolute religion" which they have stolen from the Bible, 
 and then carved and mangled, till it is no better than a 
 bleeding corpse. This residuum is a law without any 
 sanction, a morality without life ; the worship of a Being 
 wholly unknown, without any remedy for conscious guilt, 
 or any clear hope of life beyond the grave, or of any 
 deliverance from the dark despotism of death. There is 
 
VARIETIES OF RATIONALISM. 
 
 in fact no myth so purely mythical, as this dream of some 
 philosophers in their dotage, that the light of man's reason 
 has made all supernatural revelation superfluous. 
 
 If the sun of Christianity were once blotted out of 
 the firmament, the dim feeble moonlight which these pre- 
 tentious deists call " the absolute religion," a mere reflec- 
 tion lighted by that sun, on the sterile plains and volcanic 
 caverns of the human heart, in its ceaseless lunations, 
 would also disappear and pass away for ever. Wherever 
 the true sunlight from heaven has not dawned, the words 
 of the prophet have been verified, " Darkness has covered 
 the earth, and gross darkness the people." Amidst all 
 these declamations on the virtue and clearness of the ab- 
 solute religion, the words of the Apostle remain still as 
 true as ever, " after that in the wisdom of God, the world 
 by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolish- 
 ness (TOV /ajpuy/Ao/ros) of the preached word to save 
 them that believe." 
 
 Though a divine revelation be admitted to be both 
 possible and desirable, it may still be maintained that it 
 has never been actually given. When the evidences of 
 the Gospel are pleaded in the court of reason, the verdict 
 may be returned, ' It is either an imposture or a mere 
 dream of excited imagination/ Rationalism, in its third 
 form, admits that a divine message might be given to 
 men, and be in some respects desirable, and affirms only, 
 that the proof of the fact, in the case of the Gospel, and 
 still more of other religions, is insufficient and defective. 
 This view is common to the earlier rationalism of Ger- 
 many, and to the mythical theory which has widely dis- 
 placed it. In reality it is seldom found to be maintained 
 on its own merits. In those who maintain it, there is 
 commonly a secret conviction that the laws of Nature 
 have, in some way or other, tied up the hands of the 
 supreme lawgiver. Or else there is an evident desire to 
 
22O SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 whitewash the religious history of the world, and to make 
 it out that fetichism and devil-worship, human sacrifices 
 and widow-burning, infanticide, the crocodile gods of 
 Egypt, and the monster gods of India, are very fair and 
 respectable varieties of the one universal religion. Once 
 let the double truth be frankly admitted, that the living 
 God can make a revelation of His own will, character 
 and purposes, and that mankind greatly need it, and 
 nine-tenths of the cavils brought against Christianity 
 and its evidences will die away of themselves. 
 
 The elder form of German rationalism, beginning with 
 Semler, aimed its attacks solely against the miraculous ele- 
 ments in the Scripture history. These were got rid of, by 
 any expedients, however violent. According to Bahrdt, 
 the angel who appeared to Zacharias was a flash of 
 lightning; Paulus explains it as the light of lamps falling 
 upon a cloud of incense, and followed by an apoplectic 
 stroke ; his solution of the later history of the miraculous 
 conception is too revolting to be repeated. The magi 
 were common merchant travellers, and the star of Beth- 
 lehem either a comet, or a conjunction of planets ; and 
 the dreams were the accidental reflections of Joseph's 
 own waking meditations. The opening of the heavens at 
 our Lord's baptism was a parting of the clouds, or a flash 
 of lightning, while Paulus gravely adduces examples of 
 the tameness of birds, to shew that a real dove might 
 have alighted on the head of Jesus. The angel who ap- 
 peared to the shepherds, in one writer is a Jewish mes- 
 senger, carrying a torch ; and the song, the merry notes of 
 a party who were with him. In a second, it was an ignis 
 fatuus, or a flash of lightning; and again, in a third a 
 swoon, or mental vision. These examples, which weary 
 us by their monotony of dull absurdity, shew the despe- 
 rate efforts made by the elder rationalists to pare down 
 the Gospel narratives to the level of common history. 
 
GERMAN RATIONALISM. 221 
 
 The features of the other system are equally strange. 
 It admits that there was a person called John the Baptist, 
 and a Jewish peasant called Jesus, who lived for some 
 time at Nazareth, but all beyond these two facts is 
 mythical invention, the result of a creative and legendary 
 habit of thought in the early Christians. No miracles 
 were wrought by this Jewish peasant, and no prophecy 
 was fulfilled in him. He was perhaps condemned to 
 death, but was either taken down from the cross while 
 still alive, or never appeared again after his burial. But 
 a small company of disciples resolved to treat him as the 
 promised Messiah, in the teeth of all their deepest preju- 
 dices as Jews, without one grain of real evidence, and yet 
 without the least purpose of fraud. Through the vivid- 
 ness of their fancy, and their faith in prophecies which 
 they wholly misunderstood and misapplied, they ascribed 
 to him cures he never wrought, and a resurrection which 
 never occurred ; parables and discourses, rich with trea- 
 sures of divine wisdom, which he never spoke ; and a 
 character both in word and in deed, which was due to 
 their own creative imagination alone. The very in- 
 ventors of these fictions, according to the theory, mistook 
 them for facts, and spent their lives in persuading others 
 that they were facts, while the woof of the fiction was 
 only half complete. 
 
 The case is just the same as if Bunyan, when he had 
 written one half of the Pilgrim's Progress, had founded 
 a society to preach these doctrines ; that Christian, 
 Obstinate, and Pliable, were three villagers of Bed- 
 fordshire ; that the City of Destruction was Bedford, the 
 county town ; that the Slough of Despond was one of the 
 fens of Cambridgeshire ; and the castle of Giant Despair, 
 the county jail ; and that while he and his friends were 
 fined, imprisoned, and hunted out of society for teaching 
 these strange doctrines, he calmly employed his intervals 
 
222 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 of leisure in completing the allegory; and enriched his 
 creed with the further dogma, that the Delectable moun- 
 tains were a district somewhere in Wales. In short, on 
 this mythical hypothesis, the Apostles turned the world 
 upside down by proclaiming with the utmost zeal, self- 
 sacrifice, and apparent conviction, the truth and immense 
 importance of legends, which they were gradually weaving, 
 at the very time, out of their own diseased and fertile 
 imagination. 
 
 It is some comfort to the plain Christian, that these 
 two schools of rationalism flatly contradict each other, and 
 thereby lend an indirect confirmation to the truth of the 
 Gospel. From the school of Semler and Paulus we learn 
 that the Gospel narrative is so deeply rooted in the his- 
 tory of the times, and in the whole course of the known 
 events of that age, that a thousand grossly absurd criti- 
 cisms must be ventured on, rather than attempt the Her- 
 culean task of uprooting the whole from its historical 
 context by denying its reality. From the mythical school 
 of Bauer, Gabler, and Strauss, we learn that the super- 
 natural element is so closely interwoven in the whole tex- 
 ture of the New Testament, that its exclusion is quite 
 hopeless. When we combine these reluctant admissions, 
 the evidence for the Gospel, as a revelation from heaven, 
 is complete. The countless and absurd glosses of the 
 naturalists bear witness that the substratum is true and 
 real history; the late invented and laboured hypotheses 
 of their rivals prove that this real history is indisputably 
 miraculous. Thus, unless we revive the old blasphemy 
 of the Pharisees, we must also own that it is truly and 
 properly divine. We are thus landed> concerning our 
 blessed Lord, in the confession of Nicodemus, which may 
 ripen afterwards into fuller and clearer faith : " Rabbi, we 
 know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man 
 can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be 
 
GERMAN RATIONALISM. 223 
 
 with him/' The mythical theorists have thus, indirectly, 
 done some service to truth, by sweeping away without 
 compunction many cobwebs of criticism, which had been 
 spun with much labour and perverse ingenuity by Ra- 
 tionalists of the earlier school. But the scheme which 
 they would substitute, from its very nature, must be still 
 more ephemeral than its predecessor. No intelligent 
 Englishman can read the " Horse Paulinae" with care, 
 the Epistles of St Paul, and the Book of Acts, and not 
 feel sure that the letters are genuine documents of the 
 first century, and the narrative a contemporary history, 
 true and faithful, at least in its main outlines. Let him 
 read them again, comparing the letters with the narra- 
 tive, and striving honestly to realize the course of actual 
 history thus implied, both on the part of the apostle him- 
 self, and of the early churches ; and he will discover clear 
 evidence of a state of things, which, both in its moral 
 features, its historical freshness, and the sparing, but yet 
 inseparable admixture of a supernatural and miraculous 
 element with the whole current of the history, involves, 
 requires, and presupposes all the main facts, whether 
 miraculous or not, which compose the substance of the 
 four Gospels. 
 
 The New Testament, which is a mine and treasury of 
 truth to simple Christians, when it has to encounter the 
 subtle theories of modern unbelief, will be found to pos- 
 sess a further character. It is a golden chain of evidence, 
 where every link is firm as the foundations of heaven 
 and earth ; from the known history of the early church 
 after the close of the Gospels to the twenty-one Epistles ; 
 from these again to the later portion of the Book of 
 Acts; and from the facts, doctrines, and allusions in all 
 these, to the contents of the early chapters from the day 
 of Pentecost ; and further, from all these combined, to 
 the great fundamental facts of the Baptism, the moral 
 
224 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 teaching, and the miracles of the Lord Jesus ; His trans- 
 figuration, agony, crucifixion, burial, resurrection and 
 ascension, as they are recorded in all the four evangelists. 
 There is no crevice in this panoply of divine truth given 
 to the church by the Spirit of God. " Without contro- 
 versy great is the mystery of godliness ; God was mani- 
 fested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, 
 preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
 received up into glory." 
 
 The history then is real, the facts are miraculous, the 
 message is both divine and unspeakably glorious. 
 
 Doctrinal Rationalism has three varieties. The first 
 accounts Christ a mere fallible man, however good and 
 wise ; it pretends to separate his mistakes and those of 
 his followers from that "absolute religion" which was the 
 sum of his teaching. The second teaches that Chris- 
 tianity is a sentiment, and not a set of dogmas, so that 
 if only we entertain a feeling of religious reverence to- 
 wards Christ, all questions of doctrine are superfluous. 
 The third sets aside particular doctrines, commonly held 
 to be main parts of the Gospel, as due to Jewish preju- 
 dices and misconceptions of the apostles and evangelists, 
 which our more advanced and enlightened reason is 
 bound to cast away. 
 
 The first of these views is held by those pietists of 
 unbelief who pretend to glorify the essence of Chris- 
 tianity, and borrow largely from its phrases, while they 
 discard its authority. In Parker's Discourses, we have 
 such monstrous statements as these : 
 
 " Did Jesus lay any stress on this watery baptism, then we must 
 drop a tear for the weakness. If it came from him, we can only say, 
 there is no perfect guide but the Father. It is apparent that he shared the 
 erroneous notion of the times respecting devils and possessions. He 
 never set up for a teacher of physiology. The acceptance of this error 
 is no impeachment of his moral and religious excellence, more than his 
 
PARKERS ABSOLUTE RELIGION. 225 
 
 ignorance of the steam engine. The errors of great men are the glory 
 of dunces alone. He was mistaken in his interpretation of the Old 
 Testament, if we may believe the Gospels. If he supposed those earlier 
 writers spoke of him, it is but a trifling mistake, affecting a man's head, 
 not his heart (!). He is said to be an enthusiast, who hoped to found 
 a visible kingdom, and to return in the clouds, and certainly a strong 
 case may be made out to favour the charge (!). What then? If the 
 dull evangelists have not thrust their fancies into his mouth, it does 
 not militate against his morality and religion. How many a saint has 
 been mistaken in such matters." 
 
 How kind and generous are these half-believers, or 
 demi-semi-believers, to extend their patronage to the Son 
 of God, in spite of all these serious errors, with which " if 
 the dull evangelists " are to be credited, He has disfigured 
 the beauty of their "absolute religion." Such statements, 
 however offensive, are quite natural, in those who reject 
 the idea of any direct and supernatural revelation of God 
 to man. The Gospel, in their view, is a surprising wind- 
 fall of " absolute religion," covered with rotten twigs and 
 branches of Jewish ignorance and prejudice, which, by 
 some strange chance or other, found its way into a world 
 where it was much needed, through a Galilean peasant. 
 On any other view, such statements are not more offen- 
 sive than absurd. If God has indeed spoken to man, 
 what can be more unreasonable than to maintain that the 
 message is filled up with Jewish prejudices, scientific 
 errors, scraps of unmeaning ritual, and enthusiastic mis- 
 takes and follies ? If the truth is allowed, that our Lord, 
 at the least, is a teacher sent from God, without which 
 the claim to be a Christian is a direct fraud, what a folly 
 it must be to claim the right of instructing our teacher. 
 What an extreme folly to pretend to enlighten Him, 
 whose name and office has been revealed by His own 
 lips, and sealed by signs and wonders, as the " Light of 
 the world." We cannot be at once both patrons and dis- 
 ciples of the Lord. We cannot claim to be possessors 
 B. 15 
 
226 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 of an "absolute religion," pure, perfect, and undefiled, and 
 praise him for teaching so much of it, and profess piously 
 to "drop a tear" of pity over his mistakes, and still pretend 
 to believe even the first and lowest of his claims, that he 
 is the prophet of God, commissioned to guide our feet 
 into the way of peace. This mongrel Christianity, amidst 
 all its spiritual phrases and pretences, is really less honest, 
 and much more revolting to every sincere disciple, than 
 open and avowed unbelief. 
 
 Others admit vaguely the claim of Christ to be the 
 Son of God, but they are possessed with the notion 
 that dogmas have been the chief bane of true religion. 
 Spiritual Christianity consists simply, in their view, in 
 an undefined and mysterious reverence for the person and 
 character of Christ. This view has its source in the 
 recoil from a dry orthodoxy, and the critical follies of 
 rationalism within the Lutheran church. This is the 
 school of Schleiermacher, and in a less degree of the 
 lamented Neander. However useful its protest against 
 two great evils, and whatever the beauty with which it may 
 have sometimes been clothed, its principle is fatally op- 
 posite to the truth of the Gospel. There can be no deep 
 reverence for Christ, without submission to the truth and 
 authority of His own repeated sayings. He does insist 
 strongly on the acceptance and belief of certain distinct 
 and definite truths. He calls Himself "the way, the 
 truth, and the life." Truth takes precedence even of life 
 itself. We must first climb this steep hill-side, and gaze 
 from this mountain-top on the glorious landscape, before 
 the joy of spiritual life can take possession of our souls. 
 The promise is express, " Ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free." Eternal life is solemnly 
 declared to consist in the knowledge of God the Father 
 and of Jesus Christ. In many sayings of our Lord we 
 find the clear and distinct assertion of great religious 
 
UNDOGMATIC RATIONALISM. 22 7 
 
 truths, which every disciple is bound to receive on His 
 authority. All professions of reverence must be in- 
 sincere, while we evade this simple test of a genuine 
 disciple, and try to steal away, under a mist of our own 
 raising, from hearty submission to these true sayings of 
 God. 
 
 The view which denies all doctrine in Christianity is 
 equally untenable on the ground of reason. The words 
 of Solomon are true of the palace of the soul, and all its 
 hidden chambers of emotion, sympathy, and affection : 
 " Through wisdom a house is builded, and by under- 
 standing it is established, and by knowledge shall the 
 chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches." 
 It is knowledge of the truth which makes the Christian 
 free, knowledge of sin which makes him humble, know r - 
 ledge of the love of God which inspires him with love. To 
 be " saved," and " to come to the knowledge of the truth," 
 in the language of Christ and His Apostles, are equiva- 
 lent expressions. It is foolish to suppose that a vague, 
 misty sentiment, which dare not clothe itself in words, 
 lest it should become a dogma, can serve for the basis 
 of a new moral being. Light must precede life, both in 
 the old and the new creation. 
 
 The fact that a revelation from heaven is needed, 
 implies that the conscience of man has been darkened by 
 sin, and his reason greatly obscured in its perceptions of 
 moral truth. This must also make him liable to err in 
 his interpretation of the message. What then is his duty, 
 when the first impressions of his reason, and his first 
 notions as to the meaning of the revelation, are found to 
 diverge ? Both alike must be re-examined. He must 
 search more deeply both into the Bible and his own 
 heart, till he discovers the real source of this seeming 
 opposition. When we screen our conscience from this 
 purifying process, and throw the blame at once on the 
 
 152 
 
228 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 message, or at least on the divinely appointed vehicle of 
 that message, we commit a double error ; we indulge 
 both our pride and our unbelief; we defeat one main 
 purpose for which the revelation is given, which is to 
 purify and elevate the faculties of the soul, and we 
 strike directly at the root of its authority as a message 
 of God to man. 
 
 Our present life is really a childhood, to prepare us 
 for a life to come ; the law of childhood, under which 
 alone its training can be carried on, is to receive many 
 truths on authority, and to wait till riper years for more 
 direct and full evidence. This is an imperfect state, 
 when compared with the wisdom and insight of a later 
 age ; but it is wisdom itself, when contrasted with the 
 perverseness of the child who refuses to believe anything, 
 of which the proof is not plain at once to his childish 
 understanding. This mimicry of manly reason only 
 shuts up the rebel of the nursery in hopeless ignorance. 
 The price which has to be paid, for affecting to be wise 
 before the time, is never to grow wise at all. The ac- 
 ceptance of honest and well-informed testimony, in daily 
 life as in religion, is the only bridge that can lead us 
 from childish ignorance, across impassable perplexities, 
 to a clear and full discernment, and firm possession, of 
 heavenly truth. 
 
 The love of God is deeper, sterner, and higher than 
 what sentimentalists pass off under its name. It includes 
 three distinct forms of goodness, answering to three main 
 facts or principles of the moral universe. There is bene- 
 volence to being as being; there is righteousness, or 
 holiness, discriminating goodness to creatures as morally 
 good or evil ; there is mercy and grace to creatures, as 
 guilty, but still recoverable to goodness and holiness again. 
 The maxim " God is Love," would seem simple, if it had 
 to be applied only to a sinless world. But it is the pro- 
 
DEPRECIATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 22Q 
 
 blem of problems, to know in what forms it will reveal itself 
 in a world, where sin and rebellion have ploughed their 
 deepest furrows. We need to learn how sinners may be 
 translated from the outer court of simple benevolence, as 
 shewn in the sunlight and fruitful seasons, into the high- 
 est and innermost region of triumphant mercy. Who 
 shall span and bridge over for us the region of infinite 
 justice which lies between, and severs as with an im- 
 passable gulf, the fallen, the proud, the impure, and the 
 profligate, from the bright land of purity and unspotted 
 holiness ? The religions of fear and superstition cannot 
 solve the problem. They lead man within the edge of 
 that sphere of justice by their penances and macerations 
 and bloody or unbloody sacrifices, but they leave him 
 only on the brink of this vast gulf, which the conscience 
 feels it can never fathom or cross over by its own efforts. 
 A voice is heard from beyond the abyss : " No man can 
 by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ran- 
 som for him : the redemption of their soul is precious, 
 and it ceaseth for ever." The doctrine of the atonement, 
 revealed in the Gospel of Christ, can alone carry us 
 across this dreary wilderness, in which reason is lost, and 
 where remorse wanders up and down, seeking in vain for 
 rest, with deep outcries and sorrowful waitings. There 
 alone the three glorious elements are harmonized which 
 compose the heavenly light of God's love. A benevo- 
 lence wide as creation ; a righteousness and justice deep 
 as hell ; and a mercy and grace reaching far above those 
 clouds where reason is lost, vast and infinite as heaven. 
 
 The form of Rationalism most prevalent among real 
 Christians is that which denies, or greatly depreciates, the 
 authority of the Old Testament. Its extreme is found 
 in writers of the infidel school, who think no terms too 
 strong to express their dislike of the Divine character, 
 as pourtrayed in the Old Testament, and speak of the 
 
230 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 "wrathful Jehovah of the Jews." Thus Theodore Parker 
 gives this judgment on Num. xiv. : 
 
 " If an unprejudiced Christian were to read this in a heathen author, 
 related of Kronos or Moloch, he would say, ' What foul ideas these 
 heathen had of God ! Thank heaven, we cannot believe in a Deity so 
 terrible.' There are some things which may be true, but must be 
 rejected for lack of evidence, but this story no amount of evidence could 
 render possible." 
 
 The moral darkness is indeed prodigious, which can 
 utter such railings against the Bible history, in one of the 
 most solemn, tender, noble, pathetic, and profoundly spi- 
 ritual of its messages. But there are many Christians 
 who would recoil from them with utter abhorrence, who 
 yet betray a secret wish to sever Christianity from its 
 connection with the Law and the Prophets, as if these, 
 not only in particular passages, but in their general tone 
 and character, were unworthy to be associated on a foot- 
 ing of equal authority with the Christian revelation. It 
 is very common, even with earnest and devout men, to 
 speak of the New Testament alone, as the Christian 
 Scriptures, binding on our faith. Coleridge says in the 
 " Confessions of an inquiring spirit" that 
 
 "it is the imagined contrast and diversity of spirit which many have 
 believed themselves to find in the Old Testament and in the Gospel 
 which has given occasion to the doubt, and in the heart of thousands 
 supplies fuel to a fearful wish, that it were permitted to make a distinc- 
 tion." 
 
 So far as this feeling of a general dislike to the Old Tes- 
 tament extends, it is clear that it cannot be relieved by 
 the sacrifice of one or another obnoxious passage. The 
 questions whether the books are genuine, and the canon 
 free from spurious additions, are subordinate to one still 
 higher and larger, whether the whole is defective in its 
 general tone, opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, and the 
 instincts of universal morality. The forms and degrees 
 
DEPRECIATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 231 
 
 of rejection, dislike, and partial approval, may vary widely. 
 Parker, whose blasphemy we have just quoted, speaks 
 also of 
 
 "the sweet notes of David's prayers; his mystic hymn, full of rippling 
 life ; his lofty Psalm, which unites the warbling music of the wind, the 
 sun's glance, and the rush of the lightning ; and the stalwart character 
 and masculine piety of the old prophets, that puts to shame our puny 
 littleness." 
 
 Coleridge writes vaguely of these same Scriptures, 
 that we see in them 
 
 " the first ferment of the great affections, the protoplastic waves of the 
 microcosmic chaos, swelling up against the outspreadings of the Dove 
 that lies brooding on the troubled waters." 
 
 In this gentle and somewhat misty and poetic dis- 
 claimer, the language of men's hearts may be thus ex- 
 pounded. ' The New Testament, at least in the main, 
 is a revelation worthy of God, which approves itself to 
 our inmost conscience. We cannot deny the fact that it 
 is closely linked with the Old Testament, and seems to 
 recognise in it an origin and authority as Divine as its 
 own. We can also admire and enjoy the greater part 
 of the Psalms, and many passages of the Prophets ; but 
 still the book, as a whole, jars greatly against our moral 
 instincts. We could wish from our heart that Chris- 
 tianity stood alone. We should love it more, and count 
 it more worthy of a Divine author, if it were encum- 
 bered by no connection with the Jewish law, and the 
 trivial ceremonies, or stern and harsh features, of the 
 Mosaic economy.' 
 
 The two features of the Old Testament which bring 
 down upon it the dislike of sentimental dreamers, are its 
 minute ceremonial details and barren genealogies, and 
 the severe, awful, and alarming tone of its messages. 
 What can be wider apart than Kant's Treatise on the 
 Pure Reason, Schelling's Theory of the .Absolute, or 
 
232 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 Hegel's Scheme for the evolution of the Universe out of 
 the possible, and the first chapters of the Chronicles, or 
 the offerings of the Princes in the Book of Numbers ? 
 What can be more opposite to that amiable, gentle, 
 passive benevolence, which appears to sentimentalists the 
 proper conception of Divine goodness, than the account 
 of the plagues of Egypt, or the overthrow of Sodom 
 and Gomorrah by fire from heaven ? 
 
 These very features of the Old Testament, by which 
 it is contrasted with the Gospel, have not been left for 
 modern objectors to discover, but are stated prominently 
 in the Gospels themselves. The mention of them, in 
 reality, forms the preface to the most gracious and tender, 
 the most spiritual and heavenly, of the discourses of our 
 Lord, in the gospel of the beloved disciple, who was chosen 
 to announce the sublime doctrine, that God is Love : 
 "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came 
 by Jesus Christ." Grace in contrast with the law's ju- 
 dicial severity ; and truth in equal contrast with its 
 copious historical details, and its multitude of outward 
 rites and ceremonies. The difficulty is not eluded; nay, 
 rather, the contrast is stated in such a manner, as to 
 imply that no difficulty was felt by the Apostle. For we 
 find in the same gospel those striking words of the Sa- 
 viour: "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed 
 me : for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, 
 how shall ye believe my words?" Joh. v. 46. And a 
 similar statement meets us in that gospel which of the 
 three others is fullest of human gentleness and grace. 
 Our Lord there puts the evidence of truth in the Old 
 Testament on a level with- the approaching miracle of 
 His own resurrection. "If they hear not Moses and 
 the prophets* neither will they be persuaded though 
 one rose from the dead," Lu. xvi. 31. The difficulty 
 then is no sunken rock, on which our faith may be 
 
DEPRECIATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 233 
 
 stranded, because its first discovery is due to the in- 
 genuity of unbelievers. It is rather a landmark on the 
 wide sea of Divine revelation, which the New Testa- 
 ment itself holds up prominently to our view. 
 
 Again, the ceremonial features of the Old Testament, 
 when we view it as an earlier revelation preparing for a 
 later, are in full agreement with the favourite theories of 
 these philosophical objectors themselves. They delight to 
 represent mankind as self-educated, without any need for 
 Divine interference. In their theory of progress, the race 
 ascends through Fetichism of the most barbarous kind to 
 Polytheism, then to Dualism and Pantheism, and finally 
 to Monotheism. The history of all nations is carved 
 into shape, to suit this fancied law of human development. 
 The interval to be traversed,, then, is immense; whether 
 man is left to the hopeful task of raising himself from the 
 worship of rags, flies, and monkeys, to the pure " absolute 
 religion"; or whether, as Christians believe, it has pleased 
 God to carry on the gireat work, by Supernatural revela- 
 tions of His will. The change is like the upheaving of 
 a deep ocean-bed to form a Himalayan range, that may 
 pierce far into the blue vault of heaven. Now if the 
 All-Wise God undertakes this work, may we not expect 
 that He will do it wisely? In His messages to mankind, 
 must He not begin by stooping to their actual state, that 
 He may raise them above it ? Will not the degree of 
 light which He sees fit to impart depend, more or less, on 
 the capacity of vision, which has been the result of pre- 
 vious steps in the course of Divine revelation? If the 
 Word of God be food, must not the milk be supplied 
 earlier than the strong meat ? if light, must not the twi- 
 light come before the day-break, and the day-break before 
 the brilliance of noon-day? In short, are not the words 
 of our great poet the sketch of a truer and juster philo- 
 sophy of revelation, than that monotony of spiritual efful- 
 
234 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 gence which these objectors would impose as a law to 
 the messages of the Almighty ? 
 
 "So law appears imperfect, and but given 
 With purpose to resign them, in full time, 
 Up to a better covenant, disciplined 
 From shadowy types to truth, from flesh to spirit, 
 From imposition of strict laws, to free 
 Acceptance of large grace, from servile fear 
 To filial, works of law to works of faith." 
 
 " Par. Lost," Bk. xn. 
 
 Nor will we refuse, however fanciful in the eye of dim- 
 sighted theorists, the typical fore-shadowing of the same 
 truth, by which the angel is made to confirm his own 
 explanation. 
 
 "And therefore shall not Moses, though of God 
 Greatly beloved, being but the minister 
 Of law, His people into Canaan lead : 
 But Joshua, whom the Gentiles Jesus call ; 
 His name and office bearing, who shall quell 
 The Adversary Serpent, and bring back 
 Thro' this world's wilderness, long-wandered man, 
 Safe, to eternal Paradise of rest." Ib. 
 
 The other feature in the Old Testament, which repels or 
 perplexes many, is its sternness and severity. And this, 
 too, admits of a full explanation, when we gaze with re- 
 verence on the perfections of the Most High, or look 
 thoughtfully into the hidden depths of our own being. 
 
 Benevolence, justice, and mercy, it has been remarked 
 already, are the three contrasted, yet harmonious elements 
 of the Divine goodness. They answer to three possibi- 
 lities affecting the rational creation, happiness, guilt, and 
 recovery. Benevolence alone could be fully manifested 
 to unfallen creatures, and it shone clearly upon man in 
 the days of Paradise. Since the Fall, even this light has 
 been obscured from his view. True, there is still a voice 
 in the shower and the sunshine, in the beauty and fra- 
 grance of the flowers, and in the quiet glory of the stars, 
 
HARMONY OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 235 
 
 which whispers to him "The Lord is good to all; his 
 tender mercies are over all his works." But it reaches 
 his ears, mingled with sterner sounds which awaken fore- 
 bodings of evil in the guilty conscience, the voice of the 
 hurricane and the thunderstorm, and the deep sad howl- 
 ing of wintry winds. Meanwhile there are fears and 
 hopes within his heart, which utter confusedly the double 
 and seemingly contradictory message, that God is terrible 
 in justice, and also wonderful in mercy. But who can 
 solve and reconcile these solemn and mysterious truths 
 by the light of fallen reason alone ? Who shall quiet the 
 fears of a darkened self-accusing conscience, or reduce 
 the blind flatteries of hope into concord with the voice 
 of righteousness ? Man alone never has done and never 
 can do it. Many dim imperfect guesses he has made, 
 and commonly with light borrowed from a higher source. 
 But these dim guesses have had no sanction to assure him 
 of their truth, and the little power they might else have 
 gained has been lost by their inconsistency and contradic- 
 tion. When the thought of God's justice has flashed out 
 upon him, he has framed a creed of terror and darkness, 
 like the dark rites of Egypt, or the Hindoo worship of 
 Siva the Destroyer. When this sterner voice has slum- 
 bered within him, he has resigned himself to the sportive 
 illusions of childhood, and framed an airy creed, like the 
 Grecian Polytheism ; though even here conscience has 
 claimed its rights, and spoken to the soul of Nemesis and 
 Tartarus, of awful Fates and avenging Furies. The pro- 
 blem of life remained still unsolved. The mystery was 
 too complex and too deep to be fathomed. The facts of 
 Providence, even in this life, were confused and chequered, 
 and there mingled with them strange and uncertain fore- 
 bodings of a life to come. The soul of man could only 
 utter its sorrowful complaint: " Behold I go forward, but 
 he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive 
 him; on the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot 
 
236 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 behold him : he hideth himself on the right hand, that I 
 cannot see him." 
 
 What man was unable to do for himself, it has pleased 
 God, in His love and wisdom, to do for him, by a super- 
 natural revelation of His will. The fact of the Divine 
 benevolence had already abundant voices to proclaim it, 
 in the course of Providence, and the instincts of the heart, 
 if only these were cleared from the pains and dissonant 
 notes of care and sorrow, which sin had introduced in the 
 world. It was justice and mercy which needed to be 
 revealed, and all the more, because of their seeming con- 
 tradiction, which the wisdom of men could never resolve 
 into their true and hidden harmony. In the instincts of 
 the heart, each seemed to interfere with the other, till no 
 impression was left on the conscience, but a vague un- 
 certainty, as when twilight and moonlight struggle with 
 each other. Amidst the anomalies of Providence, justice 
 ceased to be just; and amidst the sorrows of life, mercy 
 itself, it might seem, had forgotten to be merciful. To 
 disentangle the web, and bring out in full relief once 
 more the Divine character which sin had entirely shroud- 
 ed, each voice required to find a separate utterance. It 
 was needful that God should, first of all, reveal His jus- 
 tice, and then crown this by a further revelation of His 
 grace. Revelation, to fulfil its great end, thus required to 
 be parted into two main portions, of which the respective 
 voices should be, severity to the sinner in his rebellion, 
 and mercy to the prodigal, returning to seek rest in a 
 Father's love. It is true that the separation could not be 
 complete-. For since these three perfections all unite in 
 the mind of God, they must all coexist in every part of 
 His revelation, though one of them may form its predo- 
 minant feature. The main feature of the old covenant 
 is the voice of Law, denouncing death to the sinner, and 
 " revealing the wrath of God from heaven, against all 
 ungodliness, and unrighteousness of men." But even here, 
 
HARMONY OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 237 
 
 there will be found a memory of Paradise, and a hope 
 of Paradise to be restored, and undertones that speak of 
 God's universal benevolence, wherever the dark clouds 
 of sin come not in the way. And deeper notes resound 
 first in types from the mercy-seat, and more plainly from 
 the harp of prophecy, which tell of rich mercy, still in 
 reserve, and shortly to be revealed to the sons of men. 
 And thus we are brought to the conclusion, that the 
 feature of the Old Testament which revolts the proud 
 heart, and staggers the sentimental and the timorous, is 
 the secret pledge of its Divine wisdom. The law with all 
 its severity, as given by Moses, as well as the grace and 
 truth which have come by Jesus Christ, are alike from 
 the Lord of hosts, and the Father of mercies ; they are 
 varied but harmonious exhibitions of His character "who 
 is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working." 
 
 The first step towards a cure of Rationalism is to re- 
 cognise, at the outset, the just claims and real dignity of 
 human reason. No error can be effectually overcome, till we 
 have made an ally of that truth, of which it is the parody. 
 The superstition of the Romans, who began their wars or 
 sieges by public ceremonies, inviting the gods of their 
 enemies to a new and lasting home in the Capitol, conveys 
 a deep lesson in every moral conflict. Truth, perverted 
 and held down in unrighteousness, is the guardian-power 
 in every citadel of error. This Palladium once removed, 
 the walls will crumble to pieces. Now the truth on which 
 Rationalism builds its strength, is that dignity of human 
 reason, by which man is distinguished from the beasts 
 that perish. We cannot advance the cause of Christianity 
 by a blind attempt to depreciate this gift of God to man- 
 kind. To found the claims of the Gospel on an utter 
 denial of man's moral faculties, by whomsoever it may be 
 attempted, is a suicidal course, and resigns us to the 
 mercy of every superstition, which comes pretending to 
 be a voice from heaven. The power of moral discern- 
 
238 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 ment is not wholly lost, though grievously obscured. 
 The Bible does not speak to us as stocks and stones, or 
 brute creatures without reason, else its message would be 
 in vain ; but simply as to children, whose reason is 
 unripe, and whose ignorance is aggravated by moral per- 
 verseness. But the faculty itself is recognised on every 
 page. Its admitted presence gives keenness to every 
 rebuke, and emphasis to every warning. " Yea, and why 
 even of your own selves judge ye not what is right ? " 
 Lu. xii. 57. "I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I 
 say." i Cor. x. 15. " O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and 
 men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my 
 vineyard." Isa. v. 3. Revelation never attempts to si- 
 lence the voice of reason. It simply recalls it from 
 heights and depths of speculation, where it loses all sure 
 footing, that it may give its verdict on truths within its 
 reach, and where the answer must be plain, unless pride 
 falsifies it the two truths of the righteousness of God, 
 and the guiltiness of man. 
 
 But when the presence and excellence of this Divine 
 faculty of the soul has been clearly recognised, we 
 need, further, to have a just and clear perception of its 
 actual weakness, when employed in the search for re- 
 ligious truth. And for this we have only to review 
 the history of the heathen world, or to consider the 
 ignorance and spiritual darkness, which prevails every- 
 where even in countries nominally Christian. Wherever 
 the light of the Word of God is unknown, or criminally 
 withheld by a priesthood who love darkness, what dense 
 and deadly ignorance meets us on every side ! We 
 have the worship of flies, of apes and crocodiles, of mon- 
 keys and wafers of bread, of hideous images, or of bones 
 and rags, to which superstition ascribes some magical 
 virtue. A darkness that may be felt, like the plague of 
 Egypt, settles down upon the nations. History in all 
 ages has the same lesson, and tells us that reason, without 
 
HARMONY OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 239 
 
 external revelation, and without Divine teaching to apply 
 that revelation to the heart, is too feeble to restore 
 mankind to the knowledge of God, and to the practice 
 of true and solid piety. The result is uniform, from 
 the philosophers of Greece and Rome, down to the 
 savages of South Africa and the Fiji Islands. 
 
 Another main help, in resisting the inroads of Ration- 
 alism, and the pretences of that mock spiritual religion 
 which disowns the authority of the Bible, consists in a 
 familiar acquaintance with the historical aspect of Chris- 
 tianity. There are many who treat the New Testament 
 as a mere string of texts and mottoes, and lose sight of 
 the connection of the parts, the object of each separate 
 book, and the countless links by which it is connected 
 with the history of the times, and the actual state and 
 practical wants of the early churches. It stands midway, 
 between a dry narrative of facts without soul or purpose, 
 and speculative theories, which look in vain for any fact 
 whatever to confirm their reality. In the New Testament 
 we have a real message, addressed by real messengers 
 to living men. 
 
 The historical study of the New Testament is the 
 practical remedy for every form of loose and floating un- 
 belief, if it be honest. "If any man will do His will" (i.e. 
 of the Father) " he shall know of the doctrine whether it 
 be of God." Joh. vii. 17. Let the Christian, who feels 
 perplexity, and has clouds on some part of the wide hori- 
 zon of his faith, practise what he feels to be duty, and 
 meditate on the truths he clearly sees to be Divine, and 
 then use a wise suspense, waiting for clearer light where - 
 ever shadows are still round him. Then the promise will 
 be fulfilled: "At the eventide there shall be light." Clouds 
 will, by degrees, be rolled away ; difficulties, that once 
 seemed formidable, will disappear. What once was mis- 
 taken for a spectre of darkness, will prove to be a sign- 
 post for the pilgrim on his homeward journey. If the father 
 
240 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION. 
 
 of the faithful had listened to the voice of the tempter, 
 the God of love might have seemed to him, in the hour 
 of his trial, a Moloch of cruelty ; and the blasphemies of 
 modern disciples of the "absolute religion" would have been 
 anticipated four thousand years ago. But obedience, and 
 faith in the Divine goodness proved by long experience, 
 had their full reward. " In the mountain, the Lord was 
 seen." That trial of his faith, so dark and stern in pros- 
 pect, became a window, through which he could see the 
 day of Christ afar off; "and he saw it and was glad.'* 
 Joh. viii. 56. His words of simple trust became a glo- 
 rious prophecy, " My son, God will provide a lamb for a 
 burnt-offering." Gen. xxii. 8. 
 
 Mere unassisted reason, in its search for religious 
 truth, is like a blear-eyed observer, gazing on a landscape 
 veiled in mist or twilight shadow. He sees enough to 
 convince him that there is a reality before him, but not 
 enough to guide his footsteps aright. We need the reve- 
 lation in the word of God, to roll away the mist from the 
 landscape ; and the secret power of the Holy Spirit, to 
 anoint our eyes, in order that we may see it clearly. 
 Then, and not till then, doubt after doubt will vanish, 
 and mystery after mystery be explained. We shall see 
 the hills and valleys of a glorious land of promise, stand- 
 ing out in full relief before us, clothed in heavenly beauty. 
 And our spirits will be prepared, even in this vale of 
 sorrow and twilight darkness, for that holier and happier 
 world, where they " need no candle" of human reason, 
 nor even the brighter sunshine of written revelation, " for 
 the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for 
 ever and ever." Rev. xxii. 5. 
 
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8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 COTTON (Bishop) continued. 
 
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 DONALDSON (J., LL.D.) continued. 
 
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 11 
 
 FARRAR (Rev. F. W.) continued. 
 
 11 All Dr. Farrar's peculiar charm of style is apparent here, all that 
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 f 
 
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12 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 13 
 
 Hort. TWO DISSERTATIONS. I. On MONOFENHS EOS 
 
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14 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Jennings and Lowe. THE PSALMS, with Introduc- 
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 THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH ; AND DAVID. 
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
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 S. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Re- 
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 While the Author's object has been to make this commentary generally 
 complete, he has paid special attention to everything relating to St. Paul's 
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 S. CLEMENT OF ROME. An Appendix containing the 
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 ON A FRESH REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW 
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 Artificial distinctions created. 3. Real distinctions obliterated. 4. Faults 
 
16 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
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 A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS. Third Edition. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
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 Maclear. Works by the Rev. G. F. MACLEAR, D.D., Head 
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 A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 With Four Maps. New Edition. i8mo. 4^. 6d. 
 " The present volume," says the Preface, "forms a Class- Book of Old 
 Testament History from the Earliest Times to those of Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah. In its preparation the most recent authorities have been consulted, 
 and wherever it has appeared useful, Notes have been subjoined illustra- 
 tive of the Text, and, for the sake of more advanced students, refei'ences 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. , 17 
 
 MACLEAR (Dr. G. Y .} continued. 
 
 added to larger works. The Index has been so arranged as to form a 
 concise Dictionary of the Persons and Places mentioned in the course of the 
 Narrative. " The Maps, prepared by Stanford, materially add to the 
 vahie and usefulness of the book. The British Quarterly Review calls it 
 "A careful and elaborate, though brief compendium of all that modern 
 research has done for the illustration of the Old Testament. We know of 
 no work which contains so much important information in so small a 
 compass." 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 Including the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. New 
 Edition. i8mo. 5-r. 6d. 
 
 The present volume forms a sequel to the Author's Class- Book of Old 
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 Gospel History. III. The Apostolic History. In the Appendix are given 
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 A CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. New and Cheaper Edition. i8mo. 
 is. 6d. 
 
 The present work is intended as a( sequel to the two preceding books. 
 "Like them, it is furnished with notes and references to larger works, 
 and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the higher forms of our 
 Public Schools, to supply a suitable manual of instruction in the chief 
 doctrines of our Church, and a useful help in the preparation of Can- 
 didates for Confirmation." The Literary Churchman says, "It is indeed 
 the work of a scholar and divine, and as such, though extremely simple, it 
 is also extremely instructive. There are few clergy who would not find 
 it useful in preparing Candidates for Confirmation; and there are not a 
 few who ivouldfind it useful to themselves as well. " 
 
 A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs for 
 Junior Classes and Schools. New Edition. i8mo. 6d. 
 
 This is an epitome of the larger Class-book, meant for junior students 
 and elementary classes. The book has been carefully condensed, so as to 
 contain clearly and fully, the most important part of the contents of the 
 larger book. 
 
1 8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 MACLEAR (Dr. G. F.) continued. 
 
 A SHILLING-BOOK of OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. u. 
 
 This Manual bears the same relation to the larger Old Testament His- 
 tory, that the book just mentioned does to the larger work on the Catechism. 
 It consists of Ten Books, divided into short chapters, and subdivided into 
 sections, each section treating of a single episode in the history, the title of 
 which is given in bold type. 
 
 A SHILLING-BOOK of NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is. 
 
 A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION FOR CONFIRMA- 
 TION AND FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devo- 
 tions. 32mo. cloth extra, red edges. 2s. 
 
 This is an enlarged and improved edition of ' The Order of Conforma- 
 tion.'' To it have been added the Communion Office, with Notes and 
 Explanations, together with a brief form of Self Examination and De- 
 votions selected from the works of Cosin, Ken, Wilson, and others. 
 
 THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION, with Prayers and 
 Devotions. 32mo. cloth. 6d. 
 
 THE FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devotions 
 for the Newly Confirmed. 32mo. 6d. 
 
 THE HOUR OF SORROW ; or, The Order for the Burial 
 of the Dead. With Prayers and Hymns. 32mo. cloth extra. 2s. 
 
 APOSTLES OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. Cr. 8vo. ^s.6d. 
 
 In two Introductory Chapters the author notices some of the chief cha- 
 racteristics of the mediceval period itself; gives a graphic sketch of the de- 
 vastated state of Europe at the beginning of that period, and an interesting 
 account of the religions of the three great groups of vigorous barbarians 
 the Celts, the Teutons, and the Sclaves who had, wave after wave, over- 
 flowed its surface. He then proceeds to sketch the lives and work of the 
 chief of the courageous men who devoted themselves to the stupendous task 
 of their conversion and civilization, during a period extending from the 
 $th to the i-tfh century; such as St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Colum- 
 banus, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Boniface, St. Olaf, St. Cyril, 
 Raymond Sull, and others. "Mr. Maclear will have done a great work 
 if his admirable little volume shall help to break up the dense ignorance 
 which is still prevailing among people at large. " --Literary Churchman. 
 
 Macmillan. Works by the Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D. 
 F.R.S.E. (For other Works by the same Author, see CATALOGUE 
 OF TRAVELS and SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUE). 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 19 
 
 MACMILLAN (Rev. H., LL.D.) continued. 
 
 THE TRUE VINE; or, the Analogies of our Lord's 
 Allegory. Third Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The Nonconformist says, "It abounds in exquisite bits of description, 
 and in striking facts clearly stated. " The British Quarterly says, ' ' Readers 
 and preachers who are unscientific "will find many of his illustrations as 
 valuable as they are beaiitiful. " 
 
 BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Twelfth Edition. 
 Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 In this vohime the author has endeavoured to shew that the teaching of 
 Nature and the teaching of the Bible are directed to the same great end; 
 that the Bible contains the spiritual truths which are necessary to make us 
 wise unto salvation, and the objects and scenes of Nature are the pictures 
 by which these truths are illustrated. "He has made the world more 
 beautiful to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of 
 love that might otherwise have been unheard." British Quarterly Review. 
 1 ' Dr. Macmillan has produced a book which may be fitly described as one 
 of the happiest efforts for enlisting physical science in the direct service of 
 religion. " Guardian. 
 
 THE SABBATH OF THE FIELDS. A Sequel to " Bible 
 Teachings in Nature. " Second Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " This volume, like all Dr. Macmillarfs productions, is very delight- 
 ful reading, and of a special kind. Imagination, natural science, and 
 religious instruction are blended together in a very charming way" 
 British Quarterly Review. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Fourth Edition. Globe 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " Whether the reader agree or not with his conclusions, he will ac- 
 knowledge he is in the presence of an original and thoughtful writer. " 
 Pall Mall Gazette. " There is no class of educated men and women that 
 will not profit by these essays." Standard. 
 
 OUR LORD'S THREE RAISINGS FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 M'Clellan. THE NEW TESTAMENT. A New Trans- 
 lation on the Basis of the Authorised Version, from a Critically re- 
 vised Greek Text, with Analyses, copious References and Illus- 
 trations from original authorities, New Chronological and Ana- 
 lytical Harmony of the Four Gospels, Notes and Dissertations. 
 A contribution to Christian Evidence. By JOHN BROWN M'CLEL- 
 LAN, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In Two 
 
20 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 M'CLELLAN (J. K.} continued. 
 
 Vols. Vol. I. The Four Gospels with the Chronological and 
 Analytical Harmony. 8vo. 30.?. 
 
 " One of the most remarkable productions of recent times" says the 
 Theological Review, " 'in this department of sacred literature ;" and the 
 British Quarterly Review terms it "a thesaurus of first-hand investiga- 
 tions." "Of singular excellence, and stire to make its mark on the 
 criticism of the New Testament. " John Bull. 
 
 Maurice. Works by the late Rev. F. DENISON MAURICE, 
 M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cam- 
 bridge : 
 The Spectator says, "Few of those of our own generation whose names 
 
 will live in English history or literature have exerted so profound and so 
 
 permanent an influence as Mr. Maurice," 
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT. Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 
 Svo. 5-r. 
 
 The Nineteen Discourses contained in this volume were preached in the 
 chapel of Lincoln's Inn during the year 1851. The texts are taken from 
 the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 
 and Samuel, and involve some of the most interesting biblical topics dis- 
 cussed in recent times. 
 
 THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TES- 
 TAMENT. Third Edition, with new Preface. Crown Svo. 
 icxr. 6d. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, in the spirit which animated the compilers of the Church 
 Lessons, has in these Sermons regarded the Prophets more as preachers of 
 righteousness than as mere predictors an aspect of their lives which, he 
 thinks, has been greatly overlooked in our day, and than which, there is 
 none we have more need to contemplate. He has found that the Old 
 Testament Prophets, taken in their simple natural sense, clear up many 
 of the difficulties which beset us in the daily work of life ; make the past 
 intelligible, the present endurable, and the future real and hopeful. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 
 A Series of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. Crown Svo. 9^. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, in his Preface to these Twenty-eight Lectures, says, 
 ' ' In these Lectures I have endeavoured to ascertain zvhat is told us respect- 
 ing the life of Jesus by one of those Evangelists who proclaim Him to be 
 the Christ, who says that He did come from a Father, that He did baptize 
 with the Holv Spirit, that He did rise from the dead. I have chosen the 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 21 
 
 MAURICE (Rev. F. D.) continued. 
 
 one who is most directly connected with the later history of the Church, 
 who was not an Apostle, who professedly wrote for the use of a man 
 already instructed in the faith of the Apostles. I have followed the course 
 of the writer's narrative, not changing it under any pretext. I have 
 adhered to his phraseology, striving to avoid the substitution of any other 
 for his." 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Discourses. 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The Literary Churchman thus speaks of this volume: "Thorough 
 honesty, reverence, and deep thought pervade the work, which is every 
 .way solid and philosophical, as well as theological, and abounding with 
 suggestions which the patient sttident may draw out more at length for 
 himself." 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Lectures 
 on Christian Ethics. Second and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 These Lectures on Christian Ethics were delivered to the students of the 
 Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, London, on a series of 
 Sunday mornings. Mr. Maurice believes that the question in which we 
 are most interested, the question which most affects our studies and our daily 
 lives, is the question, whether there is a foundation for human morality, 
 or whether it is dependent upon the opinions and fashions of different ages 
 and countries. This important question will be found amply and fairly 
 discussed in this volume, which the National Review calls "Mr. 
 Maurices most effective and instructive 'work. He is peculiarly fitted 
 by the constitution of his mind, to throiu light on St. John's writings. " 
 Appended is a note on "Positivism and its Teacher." 
 
 EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE PRAYER-BOOK. 
 
 The Prayer-book considered especially in reference to the Romish 
 System. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d. 
 
 After an Introductory Sermon, Mr. Maurice goes over the various parts 
 of the Church Service, expounds in eighteen Sermons, their intention and 
 significance, and shews how appropriate they are as expressions of the 
 deepest longings and wants of all classes of men. 
 
 WHAT IS REVELATION ? A Series of Sermons on the 
 Epiphany ; to which are added, Letters to a Theological Student 
 on the Bampton Lectures of Mr. Mansel. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 Both Sermons and Letters were called forth by the doctrine maintained 
 by Mr. Mansel in his Bampton Lectures, that Revelation cannot be a direct 
 Manifestation of the Infinite Nature of God. Mr. Maurice maintains 
 
22 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 MAURICE (Rev. F. D.) continued. 
 
 the opposite doctrine, and in his Sermons explains why, in spite of the high 
 authorities on the other side, he must still assert the principle which he 
 discovers in the Services of the Church and throughout the Bible. 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE INQUIRY, "WHAT IS REVELA- 
 TION?" Letters in Reply to Mr. Hansel's Examination of 
 "Strictures on the Bampton Lectures." Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This, as the title indicates, was called forth by Mr. ManseVs examina- 
 tion of Mr. Maurices Strictures on his doctrine of the Infinite. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 
 los. 6d. 
 
 " The book," 1 " 1 says Mr. Maurice, ""expresses thoughts which have been 
 working in my mind for years ; the method of it has not been adopted 
 carelessly ; even the composition has undergone frequent revision. " There 
 are seventeen Essays in all, and although meant primarily for Unitarians, 
 to quote the words of the Clerical Journal, "zV leaves untouched scarcely 
 any topic which is in agitation in the religious world ; scarcely a moot 
 point between our various sects ; scarcely a plot of debateable ground be- 
 tween Christians and Infidels, between Romanists and Protestants, between 
 Socinians and other Christians, between English Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters on both sides. Scarce is there a misgiving, a difficulty, an aspira- 
 tion stirring amongst us now now, when men seem in earnest as hardly 
 ever before about religion, and ask and demand satisfaction with a fear- 
 lessness which seems almost awful when one thinks what is at stake which 
 is not recognised and grappled with by Mr. Maurice" 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE DEDUCED FROM 
 THE SCRIPTURES. Crown Svo. js. 6d. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR 
 RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. Fifth Edition. Crown 
 Svo. 5j. 
 
 ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 
 Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ON THE SABBATH DAY; the Character of the Warrior, 
 and on the Interpretation of History. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND THE 
 COMMANDMENTS. A Manual for Parents and Schoolmasters. 
 To which is added the Order of the Scriptures. iSmo. cloth 
 limp. is. 
 
 DIALOGUES ON FAMILY WORSHIP. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 23 
 
 MAURICE (Rev. F. D .) continued. 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY. Twenty-one Lectures delivered in 
 the University of Cambridge. New and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 
 8vo. ioj. 6d. 
 
 ''Whilst reading it we are charmed by^ the freedom from exdusiveness 
 and prejudice, the large charity, the loftiness of thought, the eagerness to 
 recognise and appreciate whate^'er there is of real worth extant in the 
 world, which animates it from one end to the other. We gain new 
 thoughts and new ways of viewing things, even more, perhaps, from being 
 brought for a time under the influence of so noble and spiritual a mind." 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE: Lectures on Casuistry, delivered in 
 the University of Cambridge. Second and Cheaper Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. 5^. 
 
 The Saturday Review says: " We rise from the perusal of these lec- 
 tures with a detestation of all that is selfish and mean, and with a living 
 impression that there is such a thing as goodness after all. " 
 
 LECTURES ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 
 OF THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES. 8vo. IDS. 6d. 
 
 LEARNING AND WORKING. Six Lectures delivered 
 in Willis's Rooms, London, in June and July, 1854. THE 
 RELIGION OF ROME, and its Influence on Modern Civilisa- 
 tion. Four Lectures delivered in the Philosophical Institution of 
 Edinburgh, in December, 1854. Qrown 8vo. $j. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN COUNTRY CHURCHES. 
 
 Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 "Earnest, practical, and extremely simple" Literary Churchman. 
 "Good specimens of his simple and earnest eloquence. The Gospel inci- 
 dents are realized with a vividness which we can well believe made the 
 common people hear him gladly. Moreover they are sermons which must 
 have done the hearers good." John Bull. 
 
 Moorhouse. Works by JAMES MOORHOUSE, M.A., Bishop 
 
 of Melbourne : 
 
 SOME MODERN DIFFICULTIES RESPECTING the 
 FACTS OF NATURE AND REVELATION. Fcap. 8vo. 
 
 2S. 6d. 
 
 JACOB. Three Sermons preached before the University of 
 Cambridge in Lent 1870. Extra fcap. 8vo. T>S. 6d. 
 
24 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 O'Brien. PRAYER. Five Sermons preached in the Chapel 
 of Trinity College, Dublin. By JAMES THOMAS O'BRIEN, D.D., 
 Bishop of Ossory and Ferns. 8vo. 6s. 
 "It is with much pleasure and satisfaction that we render our humble 
 
 tribute to the value of a publication whose author deserves to be remembered 
 
 with such deep respect" Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 Palgrave. HYMNS. By FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE. 
 
 Third Edition, enlarged. i8mo. is. 6d. 
 
 This is a collection of twenty original Hymns, which the Literary 
 Churchman speaks of as "so choice, so perfect, and so refined, so tender 
 in feeling, and so scholarly in expression" 
 
 Paul of Tarsus. An Inquiry into the Times and the Gospel 
 
 of the Apostle of the Gentiles. By a GRADUATE. 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 " Turn where we will throughout the volume, we find the best fruit 
 
 of patient inquiry, sound scholarship, logical argument, and fairness oj 
 
 conclusion. No thoughtful reader will rise from its perusal without a 
 
 real and lasting profit to himself, and a sense of permanent addition to 
 
 the cause of truth" Standard. 
 
 Philochristus. MEMOIRS OF A DISCIPLE OF THE 
 
 LORD. Second Edition. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 "The winning beauty of this book and the fascinating power with 
 which the subject of it appeals to all English minds will secure for it 
 many readers" Contemporary Review. 
 
 Picton. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER; and other Essays. 
 
 By J. ALLANSON PICTON, Author of "New Theories and the 
 
 Old Faith." Cheaper Edition. With New Preface. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Contents The Mystery of Matter : The Philosophy of Ignorance : The 
 
 Antithesis of Faith and Sight: The Essential Nature of Religion: 
 
 Christian Pantheism. 
 
 Plumptre MOVEMENTS IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 
 Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, Lent Term, 
 1879. By E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., Professor of Divinity, King's 
 College, London, Prebendary of St. Paul's, etc. Fcap. 8vo. 3J. 6d. 
 
 Prescott THE THREEFOLD CORD. Sermons preached 
 before the University of Cambridge. By J. E. PRESCOTT, B.D. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 Procter. A HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
 PRAYER : With a Rationale of its Offices. By FRANCIS PROCTER, 
 M.A. Thirteenth Edition, revised and enlarged. Cr. 8vo. los. 6d. 
 The Athenaeum says: " The origin of every part of the Prayer-book 
 has been diligently investigated, and there are few questions or facts con- 
 nected with it which are not either sufficiently explained, or so referred to 
 that persons interested may work out the trttfhfor themselves" 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 25 
 
 Procter and Maclear. AN ELEMENTARY INTRO- 
 DUCTION TO THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 
 
 Re-arranged and Supplemented by an Explanation of the Morning 
 and Evening Prayer and the Litany. By F. PROCTER, M.A., and 
 G. F. MACLEAR, D.D. New Edition. Enlarged by the addition 
 of the Communion Service and the Baptismal and Confirmation 
 Offices. i8mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 The Literary Churchman characterizes it as " by far the completest 
 and most satisfactory book of its kind -we know. We wish it were in 
 the hands of every schoolboy and every schoolmaster in the kingdom." 
 
 Psalms of David CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. 
 
 An Amended Version, with Historical Introductions and Ex- 
 planatory Notes. By FOUR FRIENDS. Second and Cheaper 
 Edition, much enlarged. Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d. 
 
 One of the chief designs of the Editors, in preparing this volume, was 
 to restore the Psalter as far as possible to the order in which the Psalms 
 were written. They give the division of each Psalm into strophes, and 
 of each strophe into the lines which composed it, and amend the errors of 
 translation. The Spectator calls it "one of the most instructive and 
 valuable books that have been friblished for many years. " 
 
 Psalter (Golden Treasury). THE STUDENT'S EDITION. 
 
 Being an Edition of the above with briefer Notes. i8mo. $s. 6d. 
 
 The aim of this edition is simply to put the reader as far as Possible in 
 possession of the plain meaning of the writer. " It is a gem, " the Non- 
 conformist says. 
 
 Pulsford. SERMONS PREACHED IN TRINITY 
 CHURCH, GLASGOW. By WILLIAM PULSFORD, D.D. 
 Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 4*. 6d. 
 
 Ramsay. THE CATECHISER'S MANUAL; or, the 
 Church Catechism Illustrated and Explained, for the Use of 
 Clergymen, Schoolmasters, and Teachers. By ARTHUR RAMSAY, 
 M.A. Second Edition. i8mo. is. 6d. 
 
 Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days. A Book of Selec- 
 tions for the Suffering. With a Preface by C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D. 
 i8mo. Eighth Edition. 3^. 6d. Also in morocco, old style. 
 Dr. Vaughan says in the Preface, after speaking of the general run of 
 Books of Comfort for Mourners, "It is because I think that the little 
 volume now offered to the Christian sufferer is one of greater wisdom and 
 
26 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 of deeper experience, that I have readily consented to the request that I 
 would introduce it by a few words of Preface " The book consists of a 
 series of very brief extracts from a great variety of authors, in prose and 
 poetry, suited to the many moods of a mourning or suffering mind. 
 "Mostly gems of the first water. " Clerical Journal. 
 
 Reynolds. NOTES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. A 
 Selection of Sermons by HENRY ROBERT REYNOLDS, B.A., 
 President of Cheshunt College, and Fellow of University College, 
 London. Crown 8vo. 7-r. 6d. 
 
 Roberts. DISCUSSIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By the 
 Rev. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D. Second Edition, revised and 
 enlarged. 8vo. i6s. 
 
 Robinson. MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD ; and other 
 Sermons preached in the Chapel of the Magdalen, Streatham, 
 187476. By H. G. ROBINSON, M.A., Prebendary of York. 
 Crown 8vo. 7-y. 6d. 
 
 Romanes. CHRISTIAN PRAYER AND GENERAL 
 LAWS, being the Burney Prize Essay for 1873. With an Ap- 
 pendix, examining the views of Messrs. Knight, Robertson, Brooke, 
 Tyndall, and Galton. By GEORGE J. ROMANES, M.A. Crown 
 8vo. 5.?. 
 
 Salmon. THE REIGN OF LAW, and other Sermons, 
 preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. By the Rev. 
 GEORGE SALMON, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Dublin. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "Well considered, learned, and powerful discourses. " Spectator. 
 
 Sanday. THE GOSPELS IN THE SECOND CEN- 
 TURY. An Examination of the Critical part of a Work entitled 
 "Supernatural Religion." By WILLIAM SANDAY, M. A., late 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. 
 
 il A very important book for the critical side of the question as to the 
 authenticity of the New Testament, and it is hardly possible to conceive a 
 writer of greater fairness, candour, and scrupulousness." Spectator. 
 
 Selborne. THE BOOK OF PRAISE : From the Best 
 English Hymn Writers. Selected and arranged by Lord SELBORNE. 
 With Vignette by WOOLNER. i8mo. 4.5-. 6d. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 27 
 
 SELBORNE (Lord) continued. 
 
 It has been the Editor's desire and aim to adhere strictly, in all cases in 
 which it could be ascertained, to the genuine uncorrupted text of the authors 
 themselves. The names of the authors and date of composition of the 
 hymns, when known, are affixed, while notes are added to the volume, 
 giving further details. The Hymns are arranged according to subjects. 
 ' ' There is not room for two opinions as to the value of the 'Book of Praise. ' " 
 Guardian. " 'Approaches as nearly as one can conceive to perfection." 
 Nonconformist. 
 
 BOOK OF PRAISE HYMNAL. See end of this Catalogue. 
 
 Service. SALVATION HERE AND HEREAFTER. 
 
 Sermons and Essays. By the Rev. JOHN SERVICE, D.D., Minister 
 of Inch. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ' ' We have enjoyed to-day a rare pleasure, having just closed a volume 
 of sermons which rings true metal from title page to finis, and proves that 
 another and very powerful recruit has been added to that small band of 
 ministers of the Gospel who are not only abreast of tlie religious thought 
 of their time, but have faith enough and courage enough to handle the 
 questions which are the most critical, and stir men's minds most deeply, 
 with frankness and thoroughness." Spectator. 
 
 Shipley. A THEORY ABOUT SIN, in relation to some 
 Facts of Daily Life. Lent Lectures on the Seven Deadly Sins. 
 By the Rev. ORBY SHIPLEY, M.A. Crown 8vo. js. 6d. 
 
 "Two things Mr. Shipley has done, and each of them is of considerable 
 
 worth. He has grouped these sins afresh on a philosophic principle 
 
 and he has applied the touchstone to the fans of our moral life. . . so wisely 
 and so searchingly as to constitute his treatise a powerful antidote to self- 
 deception. " Literary Churchman. 
 
 Smith. PROPHECY A PREPARATION FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford, being the 
 Bampton Lectures for 1869. By R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D., Dean 
 of Canterbury. Second and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The author's object in these Lectures is to shew that there exists in the 
 Old Testament an element, which no criticism on naturalistic principles 
 can either account for or explain away: that element is Prophecy. The 
 author endeavours to prove that its force does not consist merely in its 
 predictions. "These Lectures overflow with solid learning. " Record. 
 
 Smith. CHRISTIAN FAITH. Sermons preached before 
 the University of Cambridge. By W. SAUMAREZ SMITH, M.A., 
 Principal of St. Aidan's College, Birkenhead. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
28 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Stanley. Works by the Very Rev. A. P. STANLEY, D.D., 
 Dean of Westminster : 
 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED, with a Preface on the 
 General Recommendations of the RITUAL COMMISSION. Cr. 
 8vo. 2s. 
 
 "Dr. Stanley puts with admirable force the objections which may be 
 made to the Creed ; equally admirable, we think, in his statement of its 
 advantages" Spectator. 
 
 THE NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. Sermons preached 
 in Westminster Abbey. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ADDRESSES AND SERMONS AT ST. ANDREW'S 
 
 in 1872, 1875 and 1876. Crown 8vo. $s. 
 
 Stewart and Tait. THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE ; or, 
 
 Physical Speculations on a Future State. By Professors BALFOUR 
 STEWART and P. G. TAIT. Sixth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "A most remarkable and most interesting volume, which, probably 
 more than any that has appeared in modern times, will affect religioiis 
 thought on many momentous questions insensibly it may be, but very 
 largely and very beneficially." Church Quarterly. " This book is one 
 
 which well deserves the attention of thoughtful and religious readers 
 
 It is a perfectly safe enquiry, on scientific grounds, into the possibilities of 
 a future existence. " Guardian. 
 
 Swainson. Works by C. A. SWAINSON, D.D., Canon of 
 Chichester : 
 
 THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH in their Relations to 
 Holy Scripture and the Conscience of the Christian 8vo. cloth. 9-r. 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 and other LECTURES, delivered before the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 8vo. cloth. I2s. 
 
 Taylor. THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. New and 
 
 Revised Edition. By ISAAC TAYLOR, Esq. Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d. 
 
 Temple. SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL 
 of RUGBY SCHOOL. By F. TEMPLE, D.D., Bishop of Exeter. 
 New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 This volume contains Thirty-five Sermons on topics more or less inti- 
 mately connected with every-day life. The following are a few of the 
 subjects discoursed upon: "Love and Duty:" "Coming to Christ;" 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 29 
 
 TEMPLE (Dr. ) -continued. 
 
 "Great Men;" "Faith;" "Doubts;" "Scruples;" "Original Sin;" 
 "Friendship;" "Helping Others;" "The Discipline of Temptation;" 
 "Strength a Duty;" " Worldliness ;" "III Temper;" "The Burial oj 
 the Past." 
 
 A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN 
 THE CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. Second Edition. 
 Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This Second Series of Forty-two brief, pointed, practical Sermons, on 
 topics intimately connected with the every-day life of young and old, will be 
 acceptable to all who are acquainted with the First Series. The following 
 are a few of the subjects treated of: ''''Disobedience," ''''Almsgiving," 
 "The Unknown Guidance of God " " Apathy one of our Trials," "High 
 Aims in Leaders," "Doing our Best," " The Use of Knowledge," "Use 
 of Observances," "Martha and Mary" "John the Baptist," "Severity 
 before Mercy ," "Even Mistakes Punished," ''''Morality and Religion," 
 "Children," "Action the Test of Spiritual Life," "Self -Respect," "Too 
 Late," f ' The Tercentenary. " 
 
 A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN 
 RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL IN 18671869. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This Third Series of Bishop Temples Rugby Sermons, contains thirty-six 
 brief discourses, including the " Good-bye" sermon preached on his leaving 
 Rugby to enter on the office he now holds. 
 
 Thring. Works by Rev. EDWARD THRING, M.A. : 
 
 SERMONS DELIVERED AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5*. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE-SCIENCE. New Edition, en- 
 larged and revised. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d. 
 
 Trench. Works by R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin : 
 
 NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Thirteenth Edition. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 This work has taken its place as a standard exposition and interpreta- 
 tion of Christ's Parables. The book is prefaced by an Introductory Essay 
 in four chapters : /. On the definition of the Parable. II. On Teach- 
 ing by Parables. III. On the Interpretation of the Parables. IV. On 
 other Parables besides those in the Scriptures. The author then proceeds 
 to take up the Parables one by one, and by the aid of philology, history, 
 antiquities, and the researches of travellers, shews forth the significance, 
 
30 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 TRENCH (Archbishop) continued. 
 
 beauty ', and applicability of each, concluding with what he deems its true 
 moral interpretation. In the numerous Notes are many valuable references, 
 illustrative qitotations, critical and philological annotations, etc., and ap- 
 pended to the volume is a classified list of fifty-six works on the Parables. 
 
 NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. 
 Eleventh Edition, revised. 8vo. I2s. 
 
 In the ''Preliminary Essay 1 to this work, all the momentous and in- 
 teresting questions that have been raised in connection with Miracles, are 
 discussed with considerable fulness. The Essay consists of six chapters : 
 /. On the Names of Miracles, i.e. the Greek words by which they are 
 designated in the New Testament. II. The Miracles and Nature What 
 is the difference between a Miracle and any event in the ordinary course 
 of Nature ? III. The Authority of Miracles Is the Miracle to command 
 absolute obedience ? IV. The Evangelical, compared with the other cycles 
 of Miracles. V. The Assaults on the Miracles I. The Jewish. 2. The 
 Heathen (Celsus etc.). 3. The Pantheistic (Spinosa etc.). 4. The 
 Sceptical (Hume). 5. The Miracles only relatively miraculous ( Schleier- 
 macher). 6. The Rationalistic (Paulus). 7. The Historico- Critical 
 (Woolston, Strauss). VI. The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles. The 
 author then treats the separate Miracles as he does the Parables. 
 
 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Eighth 
 Edition, enlarged. 8vo. cloth. 12s. 
 
 This Edition has been carefully revised, and a considerable number of 
 new Synonyms added. Appended is an Index to the Synonyms, and an 
 Index to many other words alluded to or explained throughout the work. 
 "He is," the Athenaeum says, " a guide in this department of knowledge 
 to whom his readers may intrust themselves with confidence. His sober 
 judgment and sound sense are barriers against the misleading influence of 
 arbitrary hypotheses." 
 
 ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT. Second Edition. 8vo. JS. 
 
 After some Introductory Remarks, in which the propriety of a revision 
 is briefly discussed, the whole question of the merits of the present version 
 is gone into in detail, in eleven chapters. Appended is a chronological list 
 of works bearing on the subject, an Index of the principal Texts con- 
 sidered, an Index of Greek Words, and an Index of other Words re- 
 ferred to throughout the book. 
 
 STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Fourth Edition, revised. 
 
 8vo. ioj. 6d. 
 
 This book is published under the conviction that the assertion often 
 made is untrue, viz. that the Gospels are in the main plain and easy, 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 31 
 
 TRENCH (Archbishop) continued. 
 
 and that all the chief difficulties of the Neiv Testament are to be founa 
 in the Epistles. These "Studies" sixteen in number, are the fruit of a 
 much larger scheme, and each Study deals with some important episodt 
 mentioned in the Gospels, in a critical, philosophical, and practical man- 
 ner. Many references and quotations are added to the Notes. Among 
 the subjects treated are: The Temptation; Christ and the Samaritan 
 Woman; The Three Aspirants ; The Transfiguration; Zacch&us ; The 
 True Vine; The Penitent Malefactor; Christ and the Two Disciples on 
 the way to Rmmaus. 
 
 COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES to the SEVEN 
 CHURCHES IN ASIA. Third Edition, revised. 8vo. &r. 6d. 
 
 The present work consists of an Introduction, being a commentary on 
 Rev. i. 4 20, a detailed examination oj each of the Seven Epistles, in all 
 its bearings, and an Excursus on the Historico- Prophetical Interpreta- 
 tion of the Epistles. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. An Exposition 
 drawn from the writings of St. Augustine, with an Essay on his 
 merits as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture. Third Edition, en- 
 larged. 8vo. ioj. 6d. 
 
 The first half of the present work consists of a dissertation in eight 
 chapters on "Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture," the titles of the 
 several chapters being as follow : /. Augustine's General Views of Scrip- 
 ture and its Interpretation. II. The External Helps for the Interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture possessed by Augustine. III. Augustine's Principles 
 and Canons of Interpretation. IV. Augustine ''s Allegorical Interpretation 
 of Scripture. V. Illustrations of ^ Augus'ine' s Skill as an Interpreter of 
 Scripture. VI. Augustine on John the Baptist and on St. Stephen. 
 VII. Augustine on the Epistle to the Romans. VIII. Miscellaneous 
 Examples of Augustine 's Interpretation of Scripture. The latter half of 
 the work consists of Augustine's Exposition of the Sei'mon on the Mount, 
 not however a mere series of quotations from Augustine, but a connected 
 account of his sentiments on the various passages of that Sermon, intei'- 
 spersed with criticisms by Archbishop Trench. 
 
 SHIPWRECKS OF FAITH. Three Sermons preached 
 before the University of Cambridge in May, 1867. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 These Sermons are especially addressed to young men. The 
 are "Balaam," "Saul," and "Judas Iscariot," These lives are set 
 forth as beacon-lights, ' ' to warn us off from perilous reefs and quick- 
 sands, which have been the destruction of many, and which might only too 
 easily be ours." The John Bull says, "they are, like all he writes, af- 
 fectionate and earnest discourses. " 
 
32 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 TRENCH (Archbishop) continued. 
 
 SERMONS Preached for the most part in Ireland. 8vo. 
 icw. 6d. 
 
 This volume consists of Thirty-two Sermons, the greater part of which 
 were preached in Ireland ', the subjects are as follow : Jacob, a Prince 
 with God and with Men Agrippa The Woman that was a Sinner 
 Secret Faults The Seven Worse Spirits Freedom in the Truth Joseph 
 and his Brethren Bearing one another's Burdens Christ's Challenge to 
 the World The Love of Money The Salt of the Earth The Armour of 
 God Light in the Lord The Jailer ofPhilippi The Thorn in the Flesh 
 Isaiah's Vision Selfishness Abraham interceding for Sodom Vain 
 Thoughts Pontius Pilate The Brazen Serpent The Death and Burial 
 of Moses A Word from the Cross The Church's Worship in the 
 Beauty of Holiness Every Good Gift from Above On the Hearing of 
 Prayer The Kingdom which comet h not %vith Observation Pressing 
 towards the Mark Saul The Good Shepherd The Valley of Dry Bones 
 All Saints. 
 
 LECTURES ON MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 Being the Substance of Lectures delivered in Queen's College, 
 
 London. Second Edition, revised. 8vo. 12s. 
 Contents : The Middle Ages Beginning The Conversion of Eng- 
 land Islam The Conversion of Germany The Iconoclasts The 
 Crusades The Papacy at its Height The Sects of the Middle Ages 
 The Mendicant Orders The Waldenses The Revival of Learning 
 Christian Art in the Middle Ages, &=c., 6r. 
 
 Tulloch. THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND 
 THE CHRIST OF MODERN CRITICISM. Lectures on 
 M. RENAN'S "Vie de Jesus." By JOHN TULLOCH, D.D., 
 Principal of the College of St. Mary, in the University of St. 
 Andrew's. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Vaughan. Works by the very Rev. CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, 
 
 D.D., Dean of Llandaff and Master of the Temple : 
 
 CHRIST SATISFYING THE INSTINCTS OF HU- 
 MANITY. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church. 
 Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 " We are convinced that there are congregations, in number unmistakably 
 increasing, to whom such Essays as these, full of thought and learning, 
 are infinitely more beneficial, for they are more acceptable, than the recog- 
 nised type of sermons." John Bull. 
 
 THE BOOK AND THE LIFE, and other Sermons, 
 preached before the University of Cambridge. Third Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. AfS. 6d. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 33 
 
 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. }.} continued. 
 
 TWELVE DISCOURSES on SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH THE LITURGY and WORSHIP of the CHURCH 
 OF ENGLAND. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 LESSONS OF LIFE AND GODLINESS. A Selection 
 of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Fourth 
 and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 This volume consists of Nineteen Sermons, mostly on subjects connected 
 with the every-day walk and conversation of Christians. The Spectator 
 styles them " earnest and human. They are adapted to every class and 
 order in the social system, and will be read with wakeful interest by all 
 who seek to amend whatever may be amiss in their natural disposition 
 or in their acquired habits. " 
 
 WORDS FROM THE GOSPELS. A Second Selection 
 of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Third 
 Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 The Nonconformist characterises these Sermons as ' ' of practical earnest- 
 ness, of a thoughtfulness that penetrates the common conditions and ex- 
 periences of life, and brings the truths and examples of Scripture to bear 
 on them with singular force, and of a style that owes its real elegance to 
 the simplicity and directness which have fine culture for their roots. " 
 
 LIFE'S WORK AND GOD'S DISCIPLINE. Three 
 
 Sermons. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE WHOLESOME WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in 
 
 November 1866. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan uses the word " 'Wholesome" here in its literal and 
 
 original sense, the sense in which St. Paul uses it, as meaning healthy, 
 
 sound, conducing to right living ; and in these Sermons he points out 
 
 and illustrates several of the "wholesome" characteristics of the Gospel, 
 
 the Words of Christ. The John Bull says this volume is " replete with 
 
 all the author's well-known vigour of thought and richness of expression." 
 
 FOES OF FAITH. Sermons preached before the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge in November 1868. Second Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 The "Foes of Faith" preached against in these Four Sermons are: 
 /. "-Unreality." II. "Indolence" III. "Irreverence." IV. "Incon- 
 sistency." 
 
 LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE to the PHILIPPIANS. 
 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 
 Each Lecture is prefaced by a literal translation from the Greek of 
 the paragraph which forms its subject, contains first a minute explanation 
 
34 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. J.) continued. 
 
 of the passage on which it is based, and then a practical application of 
 the verse or clause selected as its text. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Two Vols. Extra fcap. 8vo. gs. 
 In this Edition of these Lectures, the literal translations of the passages 
 expounded will be found interwoven in the body of the Lectures themselves. 
 " Dr. Vaughan's Sermons," the Spectator says, "are the most prac- 
 tical discourses on the Apocalypse with zvhich we are acquainted. " Pre- 
 fixed is a Synopsis of the Book of Revelation, and appended is an Index 
 of passages illustrating the language of the Book. 
 
 EPIPHANY, LENT, AND EASTER. A Selection of 
 Expository Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. For English Readers. 
 PART I., containing the FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 
 Second Edition. 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 It is the object of this work to enable English readers, unacquainted 
 with Greek, to enter with intelligence into the meaning, connection, and 
 phraseology of the ^vritings of the great Apostle. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. The Greek 
 Text, with English Notes. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 
 
 The Guardian says of the work, '"''For educated young men his com- 
 mentary seems to fill a gap hitherto unfilled. . . . As a whole, Dr. Vaughan 
 appears to us to have given to the world a valuable book of original and 
 careful and earnest thought bestowed on the accomplishment of a work 
 which will be of much service and which is much needed." 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST DAYS. 
 Series I. The Church of Jerusalem. Third Edition. 
 " II. The Church of the Gentiles. Third Edition. 
 " III. The Church of the World. Third Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. each. 
 
 The British Quarterly says, " These Sermons are worthy of all praise, 
 and are models of pulpit teaching." 
 
 COUNSELS for YOUNG STUDENTS. Three Sermons 
 preached before the University of Cambridge at the Opening of 
 the Academical Year 1870-71. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6ct. 
 
 The titles of the Three Sermons contained in this volume are: /. 
 11 The Great Decision." II. "The House and the Builder." HI. "The 
 Prayer and the Counter- Prayer" They all bear pointedly, earnestly, and 
 sympathisingly upon the conduct and pursuits of young students and 
 young men generally. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 35 
 
 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. J.) continued. 
 
 NOTES FOR LECTURES ON CONFIRMATION, 
 with suitable Prayers. Tenth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 THE TWO GREAT TEMPTATIONS. The Tempta- 
 tion of Man, and the Temptation of Christ. Lectures delivered in 
 the Temple Church, Lent 1872. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 3J. 6d. 
 
 WORDS FROM THE CROSS : Lent Lectures, 1875 ; and 
 Thoughts for these Times : University Sermons, 1874. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 4J. 6d. 
 
 ADDRESSES TO YOUNG CLERGYMEN, delivered at 
 
 Salisbury in September and October, 1875. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 HEROES OF FAITH : Lectures on Hebrews xi. Extra 
 fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 THE YOUNG LIFE EQUIPPING ITSELF FOR GOD'S 
 SERVICE : Sermons before the University of Cambridge. Sixth 
 Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 THE SOLIDITY OF TRUE RELIGION ; and other 
 Sermons. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. y. 6d. 
 
 SERMONS IN HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL (1847). 
 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 NINE SERMONS IN HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL 
 (1849). Fcap. 8vo. 5-y. 
 
 "MY SON, GIVE ME THINE HEART," SERMONS 
 Preached before the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1876 
 78. Fcap. 8vo. 5-y. 
 
 Vaughan (E. T.) SOME REASONS OF OUR CHRIS- 
 TIAN HOPE. Hulsean Lectures for 1875. By E. T. VAUGHAN, 
 M. A., Rector of Harpenden. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 " His words are those of a well-tried scholar and a sound theologian, 
 
 and they -will be read widely and valued deeply by an audience far beyond 
 
 the range of that which listened to their masterly pleading at Cambridge.' 1 '' 
 
 Standard. 
 
 Vaughan (D.J.) Works by CANON VAUGHAN, of Leicester: 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, 
 LEICESTER, during the Years 1855 and 1856. Cr. 8vo. 5*. 6d. 
 
36 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 VAUGHAN (D. }.} -continued. 
 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND THE BIBLE. New 
 
 Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. $s. 6d. 
 
 THE PRESENT TRIAL OF FAITH. Sermons preached 
 in St. Martin's Church, Leicester. Crown 8vo. ()s. 
 
 Venn. ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 BELIEF, Scientific and Religious. Being the Hulsean Lectures 
 for 1869. By the Rev. J. VENN, M. A. 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 These discourses are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into 
 
 some of their consequences, certain characteristics by which the attainment of 
 
 religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief 
 
 upon most other subjects. 
 
 Warington. THE WEEK OF CREATION ; or, The 
 
 Cosmogony of Genesis considered in its Relation to Modern Sci- 
 ence. By GEORGE WARINGTON, Author of "The Historic 
 Character of the Pentateuch vindicated." Crown 8vo. 4*. 6d. 
 "A very able vindication of the Mosaic Cosmogony by a writer who 
 
 unites the advantages of a critical knowledge of the Hebrew text and of 
 
 distinguished scientific attainments." Spectator. 
 
 Westcott. Works by BROOKE Foss WESTCOTT, D.D., 
 Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ; 
 Canon of Peterborough : 
 
 The London Quarterly, speaking of Mr. Westcott, says, " To a learn- 
 ing and accuracy which command respect and confidence, he unites what 
 are not always to be found in union with these qualities, the no less valuable 
 faculties of lucid arrangement and graceful and facile expression." 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE 
 GOSPELS. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 The author's chief object in this work has been to shew that there is 
 a true mean between the idea of a formal harmonization of the Gospels 
 and the abandonment of their absolute truth. After an Introduction on 
 the General Effects of the course of Modern Philosophy on the popular 
 views of Christianity, he proceeds to determine in what way the principles 
 therein indicated may be applied to the study of the Gospels. 
 
 A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT during the First Four 
 Centuries. Fourth Edition, revised, with a Preface on "Super- 
 natural Religion." Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 The object of this treatise is to deal with the Neio Testament as a whole, 
 and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 37 
 
 WESTCOTT (Dr.) continued. 
 
 composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts of the 
 apostolic heritage of Christians. The Author has thus endeavoured to con- 
 nect the history of the New Testament Canon with the grmvth and con- 
 solidation of the Catholic Church, and to point out the relation existing 
 between the amount of evidence for the authenticity of its component parts 
 and the whole mass of Christian literature. "The treatise" says the 
 British Quarterly, "is a scholarly performance, learned, dispassionate, 
 discriminating, worthy of his subject and of the present state of Christian 
 literature in relation to it. " 
 
 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account 
 of the Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the 
 Christian Churches. Sixth Edition. i8mo. qs. 6d. 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH BIBLE. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 The Pall Mall Gazette calls the work "A brief, scholarly, and, to a 
 great extent, an original contribution to theological literature. " 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, MANIFOLD AND ONE. 
 
 Six Sermons preached in Peterborough Cathedral. Crown 8vo. 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 The Six Sermons contained in this volume are the first preached by 
 the author as a Canon of Peterborough Cathedral. The subjects are: 
 /. "Life consecrated by the Ascension." II. "Many Gifts, One Spirit." 
 III. ' ' The Gospel of the Resurrection. " IV. ' 'Sufficiency of God. " V. 
 "Action the Test of Faith." VI. "Progress from the Confession of God" 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts 
 on its Relation to Reason and History. Third Edition, enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The present Essay is an endeavour to consider some of the elementary 
 triiths of Christianity, as a miraculous Revelation, from the side of History 
 and Reason. The author endeavours to shezv that a devout belief in the 
 Life of Christ is quite compatible with a broad view of the course of human 
 progress and a frank trust in the laws of our own minds. In the third 
 edition the author has carefully reconsidered the whole argument, and by 
 the help of several kind critics has been enabled to correct some faults and 
 to remove some ambiguities, which had been overlooked before. 
 
 ON THE RELIGIOUS OFFICE OF THE UNIVER- 
 SITIES. Crown 8vo. $s. 6d. 
 
 " There is certainly no man of our time no man at least who has ob- 
 tained the command of the public ear whose utterances con compare with 
 those of Professor Westcott for largeness of views and comprehensiveness of 
 
38 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 grasp. There is wisdom, and truth, and thought enough, and a 
 
 harmony and mutual connection running through them all, which makes 
 the collection of more real value than many an ambitious treatise.^ - 
 Literary Churchman. 
 
 Wilkins. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. An Essay, 
 by A, S. WILKINS, M.A., Professor of Latin in Owens College, 
 Manchester. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. $s. 6d. 
 
 ' ' It would be difficult to praise too highly the spirit, the burden, the 
 conclusions, or the scholarly finish of this beautiful Essay. " British Quar- 
 terly Review. 
 
 Wilson. THE BIBLE STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE 
 
 MORE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of the ENGLISH 
 
 TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, by Reference 
 
 to the Original Hebrew. By WILLIAM WILSON, D.D., Canon of 
 
 Winchester. Second Edition, carefully revised. 4to. 25^. 
 
 " The author believes that the present work is the nearest approach to 
 
 a complete Concordance of every word in the original that has yet been 
 
 made: and as a Concordance, it may be found of great use to the Bible 
 
 student, while at the same time it serves the important object of furnishing 
 
 the means of comparing synonymous words, and of eliciting their precise 
 
 and distinctive meaning. The knowledge of the Hebrew language is not 
 
 absolutely necessary to the profitable use of the work. The plan of the 
 
 work is simple : every word occurring in the English Version is arranged 
 
 alphabetically, and under it is given the Hebrew word or words, with a 
 
 full explanation of their meaning, of which it is meant to be a translation, 
 
 and a complete list of the passages where it occurs. Following the general 
 
 work is a complete Hebrew and English Index, which is, in effect, a 
 
 Hebrew- English Dictionary. 
 
 Worship (The) of God and Fellowship among 
 
 Men. Sermons on Public Worship. By Professor MAURICE, 
 and others. Fcap. 8vo. ~$s. 6d. 
 
 Yonge (Charlotte M.) Works by CHARLOTTE M.YONGE, 
 Author of " The Heir of Redclyffe :" 
 
 SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR SCHOOLS AND FA- 
 MILIES. 5 vols. Globe 8vo. is. 6d. With Comments, 3-r. 6d. each. 
 FIRST SERIES. Genesis to Deuteronomy. 
 SECOND SERIES. From Joshua to Solomon. 
 THIRD SERIES. The Kings and Prophets. 
 FOURTH SERIES. The Gospel Times. 
 FIFTH SERIES. Apostolic Times. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 39 
 
 YONGE (Charlotte M, .) continued. 
 
 Actual need has led the author to endeavour to prepare a reading book 
 convenient for study with children, containing the very words of the 
 Bible, with only a few expedient omissions, and arranged in Lessons of 
 such length as by experience she has found to suit with children's ordinary 
 power of accurate attentive interest. The verse form has been retained be- 
 cause of its convenience for children reading in class, and as more re- 
 sembling their Bibles ; but the poetical portions have been given in their 
 lines. Professor Huxley at a meeting of the London School-board, par- 
 ticularly mentioned the Selection made by Miss Yonge, as an example of 
 hcnv selections might be made for School reading. " Her Comments are 
 models of their kind.' 1 '' Literary Churchman. 
 
 THE PUPILS OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. New 
 Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " Young- and old will be equally refreshed and taught by these pages, 
 in which nothing is dull, and nothing is far-fetched. " Churchman. 
 
 PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS; or, Recent Workers in 
 the Mission Field. With Frontispiece and Vignette Portrait of 
 Bishop HEBER. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The missionaries whose biographies are here given, are John Eliot, 
 the Apostle of the Red Indians ; David Brainerd, the Enthusiast; Chris- 
 tian F. Schwartz, the Councillor of Tanjore; Henry Martyn, the Scholar- 
 Missionary ; William Carey and Joshua Marshman, the Serampore Mis- 
 sionaries ; the Judson Family; the Bishops of Calcutta Thomas 
 Middleton, Reginald Heber, Daniel Wilson; Samuel Mar sden, the Aus- 
 tralian Chaplain and Friend of the Maori ; John Williams, the Martyr 
 of Erromango; Allen Gardener, the Sailor Martyr; Charles Frederick 
 Mackenzie, the Martyr of Zambesi. 
 
THE "BOOK OF PRAISE" HYMNAL, 
 
 COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 LORD SELBORNE. 
 
 In the following four forms : 
 
 A. Beautifully printed in Royal 32mo., limp cloth, price 6d. 
 
 B. ,, Small 18mo., larger type, cloth limp, Is. 
 
 C. Same edition on fine paper, cloth, Is. 6d. 
 
 Also an edition with Music, selected, harmonized, and composed 
 
 by JOHN HULL AH, in square 18mo., cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 The large acceptance which has been given to " The Book of Praise" 
 by all classes of Christian people encourages the Publishers in entertaining 
 the hope that this Hymnal, which is mainly selected from it, may be ex- 
 tensively used in Congregations, and in some degree at least meet the 
 desires of those who seek uniformity in common worship as a means 
 towards that unity which pious souls yearn after, and which our Lord 
 prayed for in behalf of his Church. "The office of a hymn is not to 
 teach controversial Theology, but to give the voice of song to practical 
 religion. No doubt, to do this, it mtist embody sound doctrine ; but it 
 ought to do so, not after the manner of the schools, but with the breadth, 
 freedom, and simplicity of the Fountain-head. " On this principle has 
 Sir R. Palmer proceeded in the preparation of this book. 
 
 The arrangement adopted is the following : 
 
 PART I. consists of Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the 
 Creed "God the Creator," "Christ Incarnate," "Christ Crucified," 
 "Christ Risen" "Christ Ascended," "Christ's Kingdom and Judg- 
 ment," etc. 
 
 PART II. comprises Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the 
 Lord's Prayer. 
 
 PART III. Hymns for natural and sacred seasons. 
 There are 320 Hymns in all. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY J. PALMER. 
 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 
 
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 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 
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