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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 HORACE W. CARPENTIER 
 
Manchester College, Oxford 
 
 Christianity in the Light of 
 Historical Science 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BY THE 
 
 Rev. J. E. \CARPENTER, M.A. 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 OPENING OF THE 120th SESSION 
 
 16th OCTOBER, 1905 
 
 The College adheres to its original principle of freely 
 imparting Theological knowledge ivithout insisting on the 
 adoption of particular Theological doctrines 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 50 and 51 BROAD STREET 
 
 1905 
 
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Manchester College. Oxford 
 
 Christianity in the Light of 
 Historical Science 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BY THE 
 
 Rev. J. E. CARPENTER, M.A 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 OPENING OF THE 120th SESSION 
 
 16th OCTOBER, 1905 
 
 The College adheres to its original principle of freely 
 imparting Theological knowledge without insisting on the 
 adoption of particular Theological doctrines 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 50 and 51 BROAD STREET 
 1905 
 
OAiiraNTfrii 
 
 MANCHESTER : 
 BAWSON AND CO., PRINTERS, 
 NEW BROWN STREET. 
 
HsCt 
 
 Christianity in the Light of Historical Science. 
 
 Gentlemen, — 
 
 The College which resumes its work to-day, ' exists for 
 the purpose of promoting the study of religion, theology, and 
 philosophy, without insisting upon the adoption of particular 
 doctrines.' This principle is of much wider application than is 
 commonly supposed. In this country, it is true, the conception 
 of religious fellowship without limitation of doctrine or definition 
 of creed has been the inheritance only of an inconspicuous group 
 of churches, which have found three small Colleges sufficient for 
 their needs. But it is also the basis of the Theological Faculty 
 of a great modern University like the Victoria University at 
 Manchester. Early in the last century it became the guiding 
 principle of the Divinity School of Harvard University, the 
 oldest of the American foundations, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
 And it provides the field for the whole religious life of the 
 Protestant Churches of an entire European State, the Federation 
 of the Swiss Cantons. Among a robust and energetic people 
 political freedom resulted in a remarkably thorough adoption of 
 religious freedom also. Thirty-one years ago at Geneva the last 
 vestiges of dogmatic control were swept away ; and the Church 
 Constitution declared that * any minister may preach and teach 
 freely on his own responsibility, nor may this liberty be restricted 
 either by confessions of faith or by liturgical formularies.' The 
 Theological Faculty of its University is no less free. When the 
 Conference of ' Unitarian and other Liberal Religious Thinkers 
 and Workers ' met within its walls seven weeks ago, the venerable 
 head of the Faculty, Prof. Chantre, affirmed that Unitarianism 
 stood ' for something more than opposition to an article of the 
 ancient creeds ;' it represented ' a free and independent theology, 
 with a method different from that of all orthodoxies, in which 
 
 M808655 
 
the search for truth was practised with the same sincerity as in 
 history, science, or philosophy.' 
 
 I. 
 
 I need not recite the well-worn tale of the steps by which 
 this freedom was won for ourselves, or describe the intellectual,' 
 moral, and political forces which have shaped its operation 
 abroad. To find anything really analogous to it we must go 
 behind the schools of Christendom, and mingle with the 
 philosophic theologians of Greece, or, as we may now add, of 
 India. It is among the ironies of history that the great 
 champion of spiritual liberty, who saved Christianity from 
 lapsing into the stagnation of a Jewish sect, should at the 
 same time have been the author of the idea of the Church, 
 founded on specific formulae such as that Jesus was the Messiah 
 and, in that function, also Lord. Here was the germ of a Credo, 
 with all its subsequent implications of exclusive salvation, and 
 doom of death for those who remained outside. Such ideas 
 might belong to the promoters of the Greek mysteries ; they 
 formed no part of the fabric of common religious thought. 
 Socrates describes Athens as the most free-spoken state in 
 Hellas,^ not having yet learned his own peril. Plato criticises 
 unsparingly the sacred traditions of the gods, and declares truth 
 the beginning of every good thing both to gods and men.- The 
 Sophists undertake to make men able to dispute about divine 
 things,^ and the corresponding teachers of the Ganges Valley, as 
 we see them around the person of Gotama the Buddha a century 
 before the death of Socrates, publicly question every received 
 belief. 
 
 No great religious teacher has analysed more clearly the 
 
 1 Plato, Gorgiasy 461 E. 
 
 2 Laws, V. 730. Yet he will allow no private rites : and any one guilty of 
 impiety is to be punished with death, ibid. x. 910. 
 
 3 Cp. Laws, X. 886—9. 
 
moral and intellectual mischief of the controversial temper than 
 the historic founder of Buddhism. But so completely did he 
 impress upon his followers the love of truth and mutual good- 
 will, that the widest theological differences made no schism in 
 his Order. Sects might multiply, but they were not torn by 
 jealous rivalries. Even the difficult subject of the person of the 
 Buddha produced no cleavage between opposite views. On the 
 one hand, the men of what was called the ' Little Vehicle ' 
 adhered to the ancient tradition which declared that he had 
 lived and died as man, though superior by his Perfect Enlighten- 
 ment to all other beings in the world. As man he had passed 
 out of life, with that kind of passing away which left not a trace 
 behind. His disciples, therefore, offered him no worship ; they 
 sang no hymns ; they chanted no litanies ; they uttered no 
 prayer ; they entreated no help or protection ; they neither 
 sought nor enjoyed any communion with the departed Teacher. 
 On the other hand the men of the ' Great Vehicle ' affirmed that 
 their master was the Eternal and the Self- Subsis tent. Not once 
 only had he appeared on earth, and seemed to be born, to 
 attain enlightenment, and die. Many a time had he worn the 
 semblance of humanity for the welfare of men, but these 
 manifestations did not destroy his everlasting calm. Around 
 this Buddha rose a gorgeous ritual with praise and petition, 
 altar, functionary, and incense. The metaphysical reality which 
 the later scheme offered to faith, the original doctrine absolutely 
 denied. The fellowship after which the believer aspired, to 
 become one with the Buddha-nature, had no existence for the 
 psycliological nihilist of the primitive school, who asserted that 
 life was strictly limited to the thought or feeling of the moment. 
 The Truth was summed up for the one in a system of ethical 
 culture, leading to ultimate escape from the round of existences 
 into the void without rebirth : for the other, it meant a religion 
 of faith and love, realised through eternal union with the All- 
 Knowing and All-Holy. 
 
And yet, the professors of these two contradictory Biiddho- 
 logies, the humanitarian and the theistic, lived and taught side 
 by side. When the Chinese traveller, Yuan Chwang, arrived in 
 632 A.D. at the great University at Nalanda, south of the Gauges, 
 he found them installed together. As he traversed the nine 
 vast quadrangles round which its colossal buildings were erected, 
 went from one to another of the hundred lecture-rooms where 
 ten thousand students were daily instructed by professors of all 
 the sects, or entered the temples where different rituals were 
 practised, different scriptures read, and different doctrines 
 preached, no bitter sounds of controversy were heard. Under 
 the great trees which adorned the gardens and the park, beside 
 the lotus-ponds, brilliant with bloom, no less than in the academic 
 precincts, there was no wrangling. A common reverence for the 
 founder, a common homage to the same moral ideal, prevented 
 freedom from degenerating into licence, and converted liberty 
 into the bond of peace. 
 
 II. 
 
 A distinguished modern Buddhist has recently pleaded that 
 the ' absolute ' character of one religion need not interfere with 
 the absolute character of another.^ The Trinitarian theologian 
 will hardly admit his contention that as Christianity already 
 provides three ' Absolutes ' within its Godhead, it need not object 
 to the juxtaposition of another outside. It would be more true 
 to say that Buddhism has admitted two 'absolute' religions 
 within its own fold. Both the types which I have indicated, were 
 supposed to rest upon the word of an infallible Teacher ; Japanese 
 tradition naively assigning the first to an early, and the second to 
 a later and more fully developed revelation in the final stage of his 
 career. What will the student of theology make of such a plea ? 
 The interpreter of the Articles of the Church of England will 
 tell him that the seeming virtues of the Buddha all had the 
 
 1 Prof. Anesaki in the Hibhert Journal, Oct., 1905, p. 7. 
 
nature of sin, and the preacher of the path of righteousness was 
 therefore deserving of ' God's wrath and condemnation/ Nay, 
 he will further be warned that if he ' presumes to say that every 
 man shall be saved by the law or sect that he professeth, so that 
 he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the 
 light of Nature/ he will be * had accursed.' ^ If his conscience 
 is vigorous enough to protest against this conclusion, and face 
 the threatened doom, he may take refuge in some philosophical 
 interpretation, under the great names of Schleiermacher or 
 Hegel. They will assure him that there is in truth only one 
 religion in idea and essence. This idea, this essence, lies hidden 
 in all historic religions as their origin and their goal. One has 
 developed it in one direction, another in another ; and in 
 Christianity alone has the idea attained complete expression. 
 What is latent elsewhere, is here actualised in full. The dim 
 anticipations of earlier and imperfect systems are brought by 
 Jesus into imperishable form, and shadows melt and blend, 
 absorbed into the realities of eternal light. In this way the 
 ' absolute ' character of Christianity is justified from an exactly 
 opposite point of view. Instead of writing ' all false ' (with the 
 ecclesiastical theologian) over the map of human faiths except 
 where the stream of Christian revelation has spread from 
 Nazareth, the philosophic theologian pronounces all true — 
 implicitly. Their achievement, indeed, is incomplete, but their 
 purpose is the same : and Christianity remains not only the 
 highest, but the ' absolute ' religion. Echoes of this view are 
 heard in our own day in the language of the most distinguished 
 scholar in Christian dogmatics. Theological faculties, it is the 
 warning of Prof. Harnack, should not pass beyond the investiga- 
 tion of the Christian religion, because Christianity in its purest 
 form is not one religion beside others, but ' the religion,' or, as we 
 might say, religion itself. And the reason for this is that Jesus 
 is not one Master beside others, but the Master, and his gospel 
 
 ^ Articles ix., xiii., xviii. 
 
8 
 
 corresponds to the innate capacities of humanity unveiled in 
 history.^ That is, indeed, a noble and inspiring faith. But 
 neither philosophy nor science, as I understand them, permits 
 us to ascribe finality to any single person, or to any specific body 
 of truths. 
 
 The fact is that during the last generation the whole study 
 of Christianity has entered on a new phase. Not only has one 
 great religion after another arisen out of the dim and distant 
 past, or even forced itself (as in the case of Japan) on our 
 attention as a vital factor in the living present, but it has been 
 discovered that many of these ancient faiths are intimately 
 connected with Christianity itself. From the point of view of 
 philosophy or science we have learned that while the great 
 religious personalities are, as it were, new centres of energy, 
 imparting fresh impulses of life and tliought to their age, they 
 can never be independent of it. However they may stand above 
 it, they must share its outlook, they are in part the products of 
 its religious culture. They may break with its institutions, 
 but they cannot emancipate themselves completely from the 
 intellectual and moral standards which encompass them. From 
 end to end of our Bible this fact is now made clear. You cannot 
 understand the book of Genesis or the book of Eevelation without 
 constant reference to the mythological conceptions of ancient 
 Babylonia. Turn to the Prophets, and you will find that their 
 hopes for Israel are always conditioned by the national circum- 
 stances. They announce the divine purpose amid the clash of 
 empires and the fall of kingdoms ; time does not always realise 
 their visions, but * God fulfils himself in many ways.' With the 
 Persian supremacy new suggestions of theodicy (to which it will 
 be my duty in the coming session to invite your attention) fall 
 on the fruitful soil of Judaism. The Messianic hope takes 
 another form and acquires a wider significance. Fresh problems 
 
 ^ 'Die Aufgabe der theolog. Fakultaten und die AUgemeine Religions- 
 geschichte.' (1901). Reden utid Aufsdtze^ ii. ^ V12. 
 
of the world and its duration, the earth and heavens and the 
 
 regions of the dead, of the peoples and their claims to 
 
 salvation, are forced upon the thought of Israel's seers. They 
 
 find their solution on the one hand in the magnificent 
 
 universalism of the later Psalms, with their splendid visions 
 
 of the nations of the earth bound together in one polity of faith 
 
 and peace, and, on the other, in expectations of judgment and 
 
 the life to come which beget an entire literature of Apocalypse. 
 
 Into the midst of these hopes Jesus is born. The story of his 
 
 life is related under the conviction that they are destined to be 
 
 fulfilled in him. You will soon learn how complicated are the 
 
 questions thus generated. Behind the literary enquiries as to 
 
 the ultimate materials of our Gospels in early tradition, their 
 
 first written forms, and the editorial activities under which they 
 
 assumed their present shape, lie the far more significant historical 
 
 enquiries: 'Are these things true?' What are the influences 
 
 which have moulded the record ? What was the actual Jesus 
 
 whose radiant image gleams on us through the. golden haze of 
 
 the Gospel-page? This is the greatest problem of historical 
 
 religion. When you address yourselves to it, be not afraid that 
 
 you are belittling an exalted object of faith ; it must be the 
 
 worthiest homage to his greatness to seek to know him as he 
 
 really was. 
 
 III. 
 
 But for that purpose the Gospels must be read not in the 
 light of the philosophical theology of the fourth century, but in the 
 glowing expectations of the first. There is a certain atmosphere 
 of intellectual culture, of moral passion, of religious imagination, 
 which envelopes them and plays through them. You must 
 accustom yourselves to this atmosphere : it is very different 
 from our own. You must learn, for instance, to look out upon 
 the world not as history has shown it to us, not as modern 
 science now conceives it, but on the limited scale of the Hebrew 
 universe lying plastic in God's hand, with its seven heavens above, 
 
10 
 
 filled with thrones and dominions, powers and principalities, 
 and the abyss below, the dwelling-place of Satan and his hosts. 
 The message that the kingdom of God is at hand brings Jesus 
 into immediate conflict with these agencies. How is this to be 
 explained ? On the one side we are warned by the Bishop of 
 Birmingham that if the theory of demoniacal possession was not 
 true, Jesus was not even a perfect prophet. On the other, it is 
 suggested by Prof. Sanday that the Eternal Word accepted this 
 belief as part of his mental outfit just as he accepted the 
 principles of Hebrew grammar, when he condescended to be 
 born a Jew. With these theological alternatives historical 
 science has nothing to do. It is concerned only with the facts ; 
 and the main facts for this purpose are tliat this belief had had 
 a history of thousands of years in the adjacent countries of 
 Babylonia and Egypt, that it was in truth a common possession 
 of the Semitic race, — nor theirs alone, for it belongs to the lower 
 culture all around the world, and lives on this day in a hundred 
 curious forms enshrined in the practice of the higher faiths. 
 
 To this imaginative background again, belongs the beautiful 
 saying about the little ones whose ' angels do always behold the 
 face of my father who is in heaven.'^ Under the symbol of an 
 oriental court where only the officers of the highest rank have 
 the right of entry, Jewish belief pictured the heavenly king 
 surrounded by the angels of the 'Face' or 'Presence.' They 
 stood at the summit of the celestial hierarchy. Near them 
 (according to the Secrets of Enoch ^) were ' the angels ovei' all 
 the souls of men, who write down all their works and their lives 
 before the face of the Lord.' But the angels of the * little ones ' 
 are, strictly speaking, neither guardians nor recording officers. 
 They belong to the groups of heavenly counterparts, like the 
 heavenly Paradise, the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly 
 sanctuary, the heavenly altar, and even the heavenly Torah 
 (Law) into which God looked when he would create the world. 
 1 Matt, xviii. 10. ^ xix. 5. 
 
11 
 
 They correspond, as is now generally understood, to the Persian 
 Fravashis, once the spirits of the dead, who became the invisible 
 types of the realities of earth. ^ 
 
 Or, once more, consider the singular complex of anticipations 
 suggested by the answer ascribed to Jesus, when Peter, boasting 
 of the sacrifices of discipleship, enquires ' What then shall we 
 have ?' 'In the regeneration,' says Jesus solemnly, ' when the Son 
 of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon 
 twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.'^ What is 
 the 'regeneration,' the Palingenesia? It is the renewal of the world 
 which apocalyptic faith had long learned to expect. It belongs 
 ultimately, perhaps, to speculations of extreme antiquity about 
 world-periods, possibly (in Babylonia) a great world-year, ** which 
 must have been wide-spread through Western Asia. They even 
 appear in India (were they derived from Mesopotamia ?) after 
 the Vedic age, and they were incorporated into early Buddhism, 
 where they produced a very remarkable equivalent of the 
 Messianic age. They probably modified, though in a different 
 way, the conceptions of the last things which belonged to the 
 cycle of Iranian hope. There they formed a striking feature in 
 the splendid theodicy of the Zend Avesta, where the end of the 
 existing order should arrive, the general resurrection and the 
 last judgment should take place, the powers of evil should be 
 for ever overthrown, and hell itself should be brought back for 
 the enlargement of the world. The cyclic view of the cosmic 
 history worked out by Hindu thought,* has its match, curiously 
 
 ^ See Soderblom's admirable study in the Eeviie de VHist. des Religions, 
 xxxix., 373 ff ; Moulton, Journ. Theol. Studies, 1902, p. 516; Moffatt, Eibhert 
 Journ., i. 778; Blau, Jewish Encycl. i. 587a. 
 
 2 Matt, xix. 28. 
 
 ^ See the clear sketch by Prof. Jeremias in the Hihhert Journal, Oct., 1905, 
 p. 218. 
 
 * To the destroying agencies, fire and water (Jeremias), Indian cosmology 
 added wind. For the early Buddhist account of the destruction by fire, 
 through the appearance of successive suns up to seven, cf. Anguttara Nikaya, 
 iv. p. 100. A description of the renewal ot the world will be found in the 
 Aggaima Sutta in the third vol. of the Blgha Nikdya, which I hope to publish 
 next year. 
 
12 
 
 enough, in the Stoic philosophy, where the end of the world 
 would be accomplished through a vast conflagration, the 
 ekpurosis, which is immediately followed by the palingenesia, 
 or, as Cicero calls it, the renovatio. ' In the renewal of the 
 world ' is, in fact, the phrase of the Syriac translators of the 
 Peshitta/ In this new world for which the later prophecy 
 {Isaiah Ixv. 17 — 18) had begun to look, the prayer ' Thy kingdom 
 come ' should be fulfilled. The Son of Man should sit (like Vohu 
 Mano, Ahura himself, and the Immortal Holy Ones") on a 
 radiant throne, and there his twelve Apostles should share his 
 high prerogative of judgment. To this group of expectations 
 the apostle Paul makes such definite reference that it plainly 
 occupied a large place in Christian hope. When he would 
 dissuade the Corinthians from going before a secular tribunal for 
 the settlement of their disputes, he asks them if they do not 
 know that the saints shall judge the world, — nay, he adds, 
 * Know ye not that ye shall judge angels ?'^ The angelic powers 
 were by no means all holy. In the second heaven Enoch saw 
 regions of darkness where prisoners were suspended, and the 
 apostates who had been cast down from the fifth heaven awaited 
 their eternal doom,;* while the earlier Testament of Levi locates 
 there 'fire and snow and ice, ready against the day of the 
 ordinance of the Lord,' for the punishment of the spirits of the 
 lawless ones.^ In the heavenly ranks were principalities and 
 authorities which must be brought to nouglit, and the Messiah's 
 reign would not reach its term till the last enemy should be 
 subdued.'' With him, accordingly, would the saints be associated 
 
 1 In the Sinaitic - Syriac the text is defective. Burkitt's Evangelion da . 
 Mepharreshe, ' in the new birth.' 
 
 2 ZcTid Avesta, in S.B.K iv. p. 215. 
 
 3 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3. 
 
 * Secrets of Enoch, viii. 1 — 3. 
 
 ^ Prof. Charles, Secrets of Enoch, p. xxxv. Beer's translation, Kautzsch, 
 Die Apokryphen des A. Ts. ii. 466, is slightly different. 
 « Cp. 1 Cor. XV. 24—26. 
 
13 
 
 in cu-sovereignty ;^ and in this jurisdiction the twelve tribes of 
 Israel are placed under the authority of the twelve apostles. I 
 do not ask now whether this was really part of the thought of 
 Jesus ; it is part of the picture of him in the Gospels ;* and the 
 student who is anxious to understand Christianity in the light 
 of historical science, cannot ignore it.^ 
 
 IV. 
 Pass beyond the limits of Israel and its hopes, and you enter 
 a world of religious phenomena so varied as to be practically 
 inexhaustible, and all the patient labour of the last thirty years 
 has only begun to exhibit to us its contents. At every turn you 
 are confronted with beliefs resembling those which pervade our 
 New Testament, so that Prof. Cheyne has recently attempted, 
 in a very remarkable little volume, Bible Problems, to trace, 
 archseologically, the roots of four great doctrines associated with 
 the person of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, the Descent into Hades, 
 the Pesurrection, and the Ascension. The inscriptions reveal to 
 you the very language of Christianity in the making. The 
 hymns and liturgies of other faiths derive their strength from 
 similar ideas, and express similar aspirations. Does Jesus, 
 according to the Gospels, give sight to the blind and call the 
 dead back to life ? So does JEsculapius. He, too, is wondrously 
 born ; he, too, is in danger in his infancy. He, too, heals the 
 sick and raises the dead,* till Zeus, jealous of this infringement of 
 his prerogatives, smites him with his thunderbolt, and translates 
 him to the world above. ° But from his heavenly seat he 
 
 1 Cp. Eom. V. 17 ; 1 Cor. iv. 8 ; 2 Tim. ii. 2 ; Mev. xx. 4, v. 10. 
 
 2 Cp. Luke xxii. 30. 
 
 ' Modern orthodoxy appears to be frankly abandoning these ideas. Thus 
 the editor of the Expository Times, Oct. 1905, writes k propos of 1 Thess. 
 V. 16, ' Was St. Paul mistaken ? He has not descended with a shout yet. 
 Will he never descend ? For the most part the church of Christ is now 
 content to answer. Never,' The Credo and the Te Deum, then, must be 
 revised. 
 
 * Pausanias, ii. 26, 5. 
 
 "^ Roscher, Lexikooi der Gr. und Rom. Mythologie, ' Asklepios.' 
 
14 
 
 continues to exercise his healing power. His worship spreads all 
 through Greece. After a great plague in Eome, in 291 B.C., it is 
 planted on a sacred island in the Tiber. In the first century of 
 our era you may follow it all round the Eastern Mediterranean. 
 In Greece alone Pausanias mentions sixty-three Asklepeia. There 
 were others in Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily ; nearly two hundred 
 being still traceable. They were both sanctuaries and medical 
 schools. A number of inscriptions relate details of cures, or 
 consecrate the ex-voios which are still dedicated at Loretto or 
 Lourdes.^ The temple by tlie Tiber won special fame in the 
 reign of Antoninus Pius for the restoration of the sight of a 
 blind man. ^sculapius himself bears the titles 'king' and 
 Geos cr(jDT7]p, ' divine saviour.' He was even a-oirrjp rajv 6Xo)v, 'saviour 
 of the universe.' In his cosmic significance he was thus identified 
 with Zeus himself, and on earth he was felt to be ' most loving 
 to man' (cp. Tit. iii. 4). Harnack, in one of the fascinating 
 chapters of his Expansion of Christianity, has traced the action 
 of these influences on the later Christianity conceived as a 
 religion of healing or salvation, medicine alike of body and of 
 mind. It must be enough now to remind you that the god was 
 believed to reveal himself to those who sought his aid;'^ and 
 Origen affirms that a great multitude both of Greeks and 
 barbarians acknowledge that they have frequently seen, and still 
 see, no mere phantom, but ^sculapius himself, healing and doing 
 good, and foretelling the future.^ Was it surprising, then, that 
 
 1 Some interesting samples from the Epidaurian Sanctuary are given by 
 Frazer, Faus. vol. ii. p. 249. — It was at Epidaurus that the inscription 
 quoted by Porphyry {De Ahstin. Anim. ii. 19) demanded of the worshipper a 
 consecrated heart : — 
 
 ' Into an odorous temple he who goes 
 Should pure and holy be ; but to be wise 
 In what makes holiness, is to be pure.' 
 
 2 Usually in dreams ; see (among other cases cited by Frazer) the very 
 curious record of the sceptic whose lingers were all paralysed butane. He 
 scoffed at the tablets relating the cures, but fell asleep in the Dormitory, and 
 dreamed that as he was playing dice in the temple and was about to make a 
 throw, the god seized his hand and straightened out his fingers. In the 
 morning he went forth whole. This was apparently somewhere between 350 
 and 200 B.C. (Frazer, ii. 248). 
 
 3 Contra Cels. iii. 24. 
 
15 
 
 in states of exalted emotion the disciple of Jesus should believe 
 that he saw Christ ? If religion is to be treated after the modern 
 fashion, psychologically, as having a basis in experience, you 
 cannot settle beforehand to affirm the one and deny the other. 
 
 Or, study the language which gathered in Egypt and in Syria, 
 during the centuries before our era, round the conception of the 
 divine King. In the temples by the Nile it is of immemorial 
 antiquity ; and the whole process of the incarnation is naively 
 displayed upon the walls. ^ In later days the Ptolemies were 
 the * beneficent gods,' 6eot evcpykrai. Ptolemy Y., the ' god 
 manifest,' was termed atwi/o^tos, ' immortal ' ; he was likened to 
 the Sun, and actually designated the living image of Zeus.^ 
 Antiochus is the ' God and Saviour.' Julius Csesar is called 
 ' Saviour ' at Athens, and Ephesus described him as the ' God 
 manifest and the common Saviour of human life.' Still more 
 remarkable is the language of the inscriptions discovered a few 
 years ago at Priene and Halicarnassus by the German archaeo- 
 logical expedition, instituting the birthday of Augustus as a 
 general festival from which the New Year should be dated. 
 It ig hailed as the beginning of life.. Augustus has been 
 sent by Providence for the welfare of man. He is a saviour 
 destined to make war cease, so that the birthday of the ' god ' 
 is become the beginning of glad tidings (evangelia) to the world, 
 for he is the saviour of the whole human race.^ Elsewhere he 
 is the son of Zeus the liberator ; or, again, lord of Europe and Asia, 
 and star of all Greece, who has arisen as ' great saviour Zeus.' At 
 Philae, once more in the cycle of Egyptian theological ideas, he 
 is himself identified with Zeus the liberator, with the remarkable 
 addition, ck Zavos Trarposj * out of Father Zeus.'* It is probably 
 
 1 See the figures from Luxor given by Moret, Du Caractere Eeligieux de la 
 Royaut6 Pharaonique (1902), p. 51. 
 
 2 Rosetta stone, G. I. Gr. 4697 (3). 
 
 ' The inscriptions can be conveniently consulted in the appendix to 
 Soltau's essay. The Birth of Jesus Christ, tr. Canney (1903), p. 67. 
 
 * Wendland, 2)a)T>^p, in Preuschen's Zeitschr. fiir N,T. Wissennchaft, 
 1904, p. 343. 
 
16 
 
 a piece of that ' vigour and rigour ' which Matthew Arnold 
 ridiculed in German criticism, when Soltau seeks in the inscrip- 
 tions concerning the birthday of Augustus the actual origin of 
 the Gospel narratives of the Nativity, just as I hold it equally 
 overstrained to derive the shepherds of Luke from the Mithra- 
 legend, or to identify the angels' throng with the shining devas 
 of Buddhist piety. But the accumulating force of these parallels 
 which it has been the work of the historical science of the last 
 decades to bring to light, enables us to realise with more and 
 more clearness why the imagination of the early church should 
 have chosen these forms in which to express its love and 
 reverence. They were the forms which the religious culture of 
 the age supplied, and there were no others. The Gentile 
 language acquired new meaning when, to use Prof. Gardner's 
 happy figure, it was ' baptised into Christ.' But in entering this 
 high fellowship did it carry with it historic truth ? ^ 
 
 It may be asserted, however, that these phrases were after 
 all only the debased coinage of political flattery. Turn, then, to 
 the group of ideas pervading the various mysteries through 
 which the religions of Western Asia opened to the initiate the 
 pathway of immortality and the promise of divine life. The 
 early Christian salvation is bound up in its primitive form with 
 the Messianic Kingdom, the expectation of the resurrection and 
 the judgment. It is something, that is, to be realised hereafter, 
 at the end of the age. Side by side with this in the writings of 
 the apostle Paul, appears another type, effected through the 
 mystical identification of the experience of the believer with the 
 risen Christ, so that baptism becomes a symbolic communion 
 with the Messiah's death and resurrection. Modern researches 
 into the cults of Isis, of Attis, and above all ofMithra, have 
 shown that here, too, the primitive church was in contact with 
 desires for spiritual re-birth that had long been deep-rooted in 
 
 1 What that historic truth was, I have recently tried to say briefly 
 elsewhere (First Three Gospels, 3rd ed., chap. viii). 
 
17 
 
 the East, though they had never entered Judaism. In the 
 remarkable liturgy published two years ago by Prof. Dietrich, 
 the disciple prays to be reborn with the help of water and Spirit ; 
 he entreats the god to 'abide' with him in his soul and not 
 forsake him; and concludes, 'Hail to thee, Lord, sovereign of 
 water ! Hail, founder of the earth ! Hail, mighty one of Spirit. 
 Lord, being born again I pass out of life, in that I am 
 being exalted, and being exalted die. Born of the birth which 
 begets life, I depart unto death, and go the way as thou hast 
 instituted.'^ Pfleiderer has not hesitated to suggest that the 
 rites of Adonis, celebrated at Antioch to commemorate his death 
 and resurrection, may have supplied to the Apostle Paul the 
 mould into which he could pour the new life of Christian 
 experience."^ The death of Attis was followed on the fourth 
 day by the feast of joy which celebrated his ascension to the 
 world of light. ' Attis has returned from the realm of the dead,' 
 ran the message from the high priest, ' Kejoice ye in his parousia.' 
 It was apparently at the same festival that the priest anointed 
 the mouths of the worshippers, with the low chant — 
 
 ' Be of good cheer, ye faithful, for the god is saved : 
 For there will be salvation to us from our trials.' ^ 
 
 At any rate it is in this direction that modern enquiry is seeking 
 for the antecedents of the Pauline doctrine of the fellowship of 
 the Christian believer with his Lord, summed up (in contrast to 
 the demands of the Jewish law) in the familiar formula, 'justifi- 
 cation by faith.' I will not now attempt to pursue these difficult 
 ways, where the student must be content to take slow steps 
 before any results can be said to be assured. Eather let me 
 present to you an analogy from a totally different field, by way 
 of illustrating what has been aptly called the ' sympathy of 
 religions.' 
 
 * Eine Mithras Liturgie, 1903, p. 14. 
 
 ^ Die Entstehung des Christenthums, 1905, p. 147. 
 
 3 Anrich, Das Antike Mysterienioesen, p. 51 ; Pfleiderer, The Early Christian 
 Conception of Christ, p. 95 ; Hepding, Attis, seine Mythen wnd sein Kult, 1903, 
 p. 167. 
 
18 
 
 V. 
 
 The higher faiths of India have this in common with 
 Christianity that they are all of them religions of deliverance. 
 To those who are entangled in the weary round of rebirths they 
 offer liberation ; and inasmuch as the detaining causes are mental 
 blindness and moral wrong, they seek to rescue men from 
 ignorance and sin. They are agreed, moreover, in rejecting legal 
 morality or ceremonial rite. Only the higher insight and the 
 disciplined will can secure release from the attachments of earth : 
 and whether the higher insight consists (with Vedantism) in the 
 recognition of what we might call the identity of the individual 
 with the universal Spirit, or (with early Buddhism) in the 
 perception that there is no permanent spirit at all, either in the 
 individual or the world, it matters not. Both demand essentially 
 the same thing, the conquest of evil, the victory over self. But 
 I have already remarked that the later Buddhism of the Great 
 Vehicle accepted precisely those ontological realities which 
 Gotama had himself so peremptorily rejected; and when once 
 the Buddha had been recognised as the Eternal and the Self- 
 'Subsistent, a way of divine fellowship was open which had 
 hitherto been closed. Was that to be attained through philo- 
 sophical insight or through moral endeavour ? There was a third 
 answer possible, and it was at last discovered : deliverance was to 
 be realised by faith. The schools indeed differed widely, and as the 
 centuries passed, fresh sub-divisions tended continually to arise, 
 especially where Buddhism was still active, as in China and 
 Japan. Already in the second century of our era the worship 
 of a particular form of Buddha had been introduced into China, 
 under the double name of Amitabha and Amitayus, ' Infinite 
 Light ' and ' Infinite Life.'^ The origin of this remarkable cultus 
 is unknown. It expressed itself in one of the most gorgeous of 
 the Buddhist apocalypses, the exuberant delineation of the ' Pure 
 
 1 The first translation of the Amitayus Sutra is known to have been made 
 between 148 — 170 a.d., but it was subsequently lost. Eitel, Handbook of 
 Chinese Buddhism, 2nd ed. p. 8. 
 
19 
 
 Land/ where there is * no idea of self or others/ and hence no 
 ' inequality, strife, or dispute ' : where the blessed are * without 
 envy because they do not hanker after the happiness of others/ 
 and being * full of beneficent and tender thought/ by the light of 
 wisdom shine more brightly than the sun.^ 
 
 This book became the foundation of the Pure Land Sect of 
 Japan under Genku in 1175 A.D. Birth in that world, in the 
 eternal presence of the Buddha, is not, however, the reward of 
 the believer's works. It is due, on the other hand, to an act of 
 faith, which expressed itself in the invocation of the sacred name.^ 
 This exercise, however, still carried with it some idea of merit : 
 and though the Blessed One, at the moment of the believer's death, 
 arrived with a heavenly escort to conduct him to the Land of Bliss, 
 he still needed even there long service of righteousness ere he 
 was ripe for the true goal of Buddhahood. It was reserved 
 for Genku's disciple Shin-ran, often (though, in my judgment 
 quite erroneously) called the Luther of Japan, to carry the 
 principle of faith still further, to abandon all reliance on personal 
 merit, Ji-riki or ' self -power,' and rely solely on the Ta-riki, the 
 ' other power' of Amitabha's original Vow.^ On this conception 
 of ' salvation by faith ' arose the so-called ' True Sect,' the most 
 vigorous and wealthy of the Buddhist sects in Japan. The 
 historical Buddhism of Gotama of the Sakya clan has disappeared. 
 The crowd of other Buddhas who had become competitors for 
 the homage of the faithful, is dispersed. Shin-ran forbade all 
 worship to any but Amida. The laborious and difficult exertions 
 of self-conquest were abandoned. Thankful remembrance of the 
 mercies of Amida summed up the Teaching (the Law, dharma). 
 As the creed of Shonin {ob. 1473) expressed it two centuries 
 later: 'Kejecting all religious austerities and all other action, 
 giving up all idea of self-power, we rely upon Amida Buddha 
 
 * See Prof. Max Miiller's translation, S.B.E. xlix. p. 55 ff. 
 2 Genku is said to have uttered it 60,000 times a day. 
 ^ This was the Vow of universal deliverance which was the foundation of 
 salvation through Amitabha: S.B.E. y xlix., pp. 12 — 24. 
 
.20 
 
 with the whole heart for our salvation, .... believing that 
 at the moment of putting our faith in Amida Buddha our 
 salvation is settled. From that moment the invocation of his 
 name is observed as an expression of thankfulness for Buddha's 
 mercy. Moreover, being thankful for the reception of this 
 doctrine from the founder and succeeding chief -priests, whose 
 teachings were so benevolent and as welcome as light in a dark 
 night, we must also keep the laws which are fixed for our 
 duty during our whole life.'^ There is no antinomianism here. 
 But the Shin-Shu teaching approaches closely to Christian 
 Evangelicalism (as contrasted with the sect of the Pure Land) 
 by declaring that the advent of Amida to the believer is not 
 postponed till death ; it is present and immediate. In this life 
 he receives the assurance of his salvation. In other words, the 
 Buddha dwells in his heart by faith, and in lowly reliance on his 
 mercy he is already one with his heavenly Lord. It is for that 
 reason that he may worship no other ; and for the same cause 
 all, prayer for temporal blessings is forbidden. No charms or 
 spells may be employed to avert evil. Calamity has its root in 
 the misdeeds of a past birth : the moral order cannot be turned 
 aside by the possession of a talisman. No help may be sought 
 from Amida save for spiritual deliverance. ' Tiiere is no 
 miracle,' says a Shin -Shu writer, ' so great as that oft-recurring 
 one, that those who are so sinful can become Buddha by a single 
 thought of relying upon Amitabha.'^ The modern Shin-Shu 
 tract might have come straight from some evangelical depot. A 
 little boy of pious parents lies dying at the age of eight. His 
 weeping relatives stand beside the bed. * Do not weep,' says the 
 child, * I shall soon be with Amida in paradise, and there I shall 
 wait for you. Tell my brother to be a good boy ; I want him to 
 be with us there.' The unbelieving doctor is of course immediately 
 converted, and joins the True Sect. Do you think this is a 
 
 1 Lloyd, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, xxii. 414. 
 2 Lloyd, op. cit. 420. 
 
21 
 
 parody ? It is perfectly serious, though it may conceivably be a 
 copy. Here, however, is a brief chant from the Buddhist hymnal, 
 whose pedigree goes back to the thirteenth century : — 
 
 ' Shoreless is the sea of misery caused by birth and death. 
 And we for a long time were sunk beneath its waves : 
 But Amida, taking us into the ship of his great mercy, 
 By that, all alone, carries us across safely. 
 Moreover, the great mercy of Amida's prayer. 
 That resides in the ship of the Great Vow, 
 When we were tossing on the sea of birth and death, 
 Puts forth his pity, and takes us on board.' ^ 
 
 So the original ' ethical culture ' of the historical Gotama has 
 been converted into a kind of Unitarian Evangelicalism from 
 which the first Founder has been entirely eliminated ; yet 
 the central conception of deliverance from sin and suffering 
 remains unchanged. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And we are still face to face with the same problem. Around 
 US are dim masses of our people whom the great principles of 
 religion, as we understand them, never touch. I will not disguise 
 from you that the task of the teacher of to-day is weighted with 
 difficulty. The fields of historical enquiry are enormous ; the 
 pathways of religious philosophy are intricate; the social 
 phenomena whose study will (I am convinced) demand more and 
 more of your energy, are infinitely complex ; and you may well 
 be bewildered at the magnitude of the tasks which await you. 
 Be not impatient. It is not God's method to set us short and 
 easy ways to the truth, the righteousness, the love, wherein lie 
 salvation. Do not, however, expect from this College more than 
 it can give. It can open to you the sources of knowledge : it 
 can suggest to you wise means of learning : it may help you to 
 shape the word which the Spirit plants within your soul. But 
 there is no school of prophecy except life ; and the key to life 
 lies in the service of others. The historic study of religion may 
 be one form of that service. That is its only justification : that 
 
 ^ Lloyd, op. cU., xxii., 464. 
 
22 
 
 makes it a high calling : and in the present state of our religious 
 world, I hold it to be a necessary one, — for some. It needs 
 noble gifts, courage and industry, the clear unprejudiced eye, 
 the trained judgment, the heart of lowliness and trust. It may 
 be a means of life. In the broad sense, it is in large measure 
 the spring of that revival of the fundamental ideas of Jesus 
 which, in spite of frequent lapses and discouragements, has been 
 slowly going on among us for a whole generation. You have 
 only to look at one of the great creations of modern Christianity, 
 the Salvation Army, to realise what vital power the Gospel aim 
 ' to seek and to save that which was lost ' may still possess. 
 I may be told that its theology is crude, that its foundation- 
 doctrine of an eternal hell is a ghastly slander on the Father's 
 love, that its discipline is autocratic and tyrannical, that its 
 methods are sometimes childish, and its results uncertain. Make 
 what deductions you please ; you will still (I think) have to 
 admit that through thousands of its devoted officers the Spirit 
 of God has brought new life to the degraded and the fallen. 
 Were any testimony needed to the power of personality in 
 religion, — the splendid and supporting lesson of historical 
 study, — you would find it here before your very eyes. It is part 
 of a great divine law, it would seem, that the Churches which 
 do not care about saving others, shall have considerable difficulty 
 in saving themselves. Hitherto liberal Theology has had so much 
 to do in pleading its own justification, it has had so hard a task 
 to secure any kind of recognition, that it has had little energy to 
 spare for other duties. That day, thank God, is going by — nay 
 gone. But liberal Theology will exercise no vital force until it 
 has become something more than the interest of the student, and 
 issues from collegiate retreats, or solitary churches, as Channing 
 sent it forth more than two generations ago, charged with a 
 message for the regeneration of man. Wide is the field of 
 human life ; gigantic the forces that are arrayed upon it. But, 
 as Emerson somewhere said, ' Thoughts rule the world,' and the 
 
23 
 
 greatest of thouglits, embodied in the immense social conception 
 of ' the kingdom of God/ and summed up in the command ' Be 
 ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect/ are 
 acquiring fresh vigour as they receive new interpretation on a 
 scale such as Jesus himself could never have conceived. Eeserve, 
 then, some weekly hours for refreshment and quickening 
 through the lives of those who in our own day have striven to 
 carry into different spheres of action the spirit of Christ : shall 
 I name three which have recently come within my reach ? — 
 James Legge, missionary and teacher, Father Dolling, ritualist 
 slum-priest, William Eathbone, merchant and legislator. Eemem- 
 ber that you are vowed to the service of man. The way to that 
 service lies for the present through the College class, through the 
 moral and intellectual demands of your studies, through the 
 steadfast cultivation of those habits of body and mind, of heart 
 and will, which alone can give you the mastery over yourselves 
 and your work. I do not invite you, then, to leisured learning 
 or to ways of ease. I call for strenuous effort and laborious days. 
 I bid you remember that your years here are a trust, committed 
 to you by God who is the Author of your being, and by this 
 College which gives you the means to follow the special way of 
 service you have chosen. Be not disheartened that your numbers 
 are few, that the technicalities of study are sometimes dull, that 
 you cannot have new ideas with which to make a new heaven 
 and a new earth every day. These are the fallacies of un- 
 disciplined expectation. Turn your eyes to the high ideal 
 inscribed over the portal of this College. Look up, in your 
 hours of weariness or languor to Truth, to Liberty, and to 
 Eeligion, and you will know that in their fellowship you need 
 never want for strength or joy. 
 
OODV' 
 
 GAYLAMOUNT 
 
 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Manufaeturtd by 
 
 GAYLORO BROS. inc. 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 Stockton, Calif.