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THE
GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
(Eambtfoge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
THE
GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION:
THOUGHTS ON ITS RELATION TO
REASON AND HISTORY.
BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, B.D.
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FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. ,
Ronton antr ©ambrfoge:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1 866.
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TINEI0E TPAnEZITAI AOKIMOI.
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PREFACE.
'EaN OMOAOpHCHC €N TtO CTOMATl' COY KypiOM 'Ih-
COfN KAI niCTCyCHC €N TH KApAlA COY OTI 6 960C
AYTON HreipeN 6K NeKpCON, CCO0HCH.
HHHE present Essay is an endeavour to consider
■*■ some of the elementary truths of Christianity
as a miraculous Revelation from the side of His-
tory and Reason. There seems to be a growing
impression, for it is too vague to be called a belief,
that such a fact as the Resurrection cannot be
brought into harmony with what we see of the
life of the world or what we feel of the laws of
individual thought. The opponents of Christi-
anity tacitly assume that a miracle must be ex-
plained away ; and its defenders neglect to notice
the manifold lines of culture and thought which
converge towards the central lessons of the Gos-
pel and again start from them with the promise
of richer fruitfulness. If the arguments which t
vi Preface.
are here adduced are valid they will go far to
prove that the Resurrection, with all that it in-
cludes, is the key to the history of man, and the
complement of reason. At least they will shew
that the supposed incompatibility of a devout be-
lief in the Life of Christ with a broad view of tne
course of human progress and a frank trust in the
laws of our own minds, is wholly imaginary. In-
deed it is not too much to assert that the fact of
the Resurrection (as the typical miracle of the
Gospel) becomes more natural as we take a more
comprehensive view of history, and more harmo-
nious with reason as we interrogate our instincts
more closely. A conviction of the certainty of the
facts of the Gospel seems to be best gained either
by the most general or by the most personal view
of their import. They fill up the most critical
place in the great record of the progress of man-
kind ; and they satisfy wants which each man feels
for himself. Christianity has many sides ; and
those are by no means the least noble which are
thus opened to the student of life and thought.
The object which I proposed to myself neces-
sarily involved a mode of treatment wholly un-
Preface. vii
theological. Many topics consequently are dealt
with otherwise than they would be dealt with in
1 a doctrinal exposition ; and many are wholly omit-
ted which would have found a place in such a work.
But while I have endeavoured to avoid technical
language, I trust that no word in the Essay will
be found at variance with the fulness of Catholic
truth.
He who has long pondered over a train of rea-
soning becomes unable to detect its weak points.
It is so, I am conscious, with what I now offer to
the criticism of others. But the only desire which
he can have who writes on such a subject must
be to learn the truth fully that in turn he may
speak it. The questions which are raised are mo- ^
mentous and personal If we believe that the
answers which I have given are true or like the
truth, our modes of thought and our lives must
bear witness to our Faith.
And it seems impossible not to acknowledge
that the recognition of the Resurrection as a fact
which has moulded the thoughts of Christians and
yet retains the fulness of its vital power, is less
spontaneous and instinctive among us than it
1)2
viii Preface,
ought to be in a Christian age. Nay more, its
teachings are not so much neglected as absolutely
unperceived in popular estimates of what Christi-*
anity claims to be and is. Two passages from
recent works, which have perhaps nothing else in
common, will illustrate my meaning. 'There is
1 no hope/ we are told, ( of a good understanding
' with Orientals [i. e. Muslims] until Western Chris-
'tians can bring themselves to recognize what
'there is of common faith contained in the two
1 religions ; the real difference consists in all the
1 class of notions and feelings (very important ones,
'no doubt) which we derive not from the Gospels
' but from Greece and Rome, and which are alto-
1 gether wanting here [in the East]/ And again :
' Christian morality (so called) has all the charac-
' ters of a re-action ; it is, in great part, a protest
' against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather
' than positive : passive rather than active : Inno-
cence rather than Nobleness: Abstinence from
' Evil rather than energetic Pursuit of Good; in its
1 precepts (as has been well said) " thou shalt not "
* predominates unduly over " thou shalt "
' It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of
Preface. ix
'hell as the appointed and appropriate motives to
' a virtuous life Even in the morality of pri-
1 vate life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-
* mindedness, . personal dignity, even the sense of
'honour, is derived from the purely human, not the
' religious part of our education, and never could
' have grown out of a standard of ethics in which
1 the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of
' obedience* Now, apart from all other criticism,
to which these statements lie open, it is not too
much to say that they absolutely could not have
been written if their authors had realized that
Christianity is emphatically the Gospel of the
Resurrection, in which fact lies a spring of human
dignity and social fellowship infinitely deeper and
fuller than anything which was anticipated in
classical teaching.
During the passage of the Essay through the
press I have been indebted to many friends, and
especially to one, for important suggestions and
criticisms. Of some I have been able to make
use: others, if an opportunity be given me, I shall
hope to use hereafter; for all I render them my
sincere thanks. And the deepest obligation whicli
x Preface.
any reader can confer upon me will be to point out
whatever seems obscure or faulty or erroneous in
what is here advanced. For writer and- for reader
Truth is the common aim. The subject is not a
vain thing for tis : it is oar life.
B. F. W.
Cambridge,
Dec. i6th, [865.
CONTENTS.
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION . pp. i— u
The Resurrection as the central truth of Christianity (§§ I— 3) ;
either true or false : no mean (4).
Morally a Revelation (5).
Historically a Fact (6).
A religion of the world necessarily historical (7).
The history essentially moral (8).
Preliminary questions (9).
INTRODUCTION.
IDEASOFGOD,NATURE,MIRACLES. pp.13— 43
The difficulties of Christianity essentially included in common
HMIi),
which offers mysteries insoluble by us (2),
reducible to the final antithesis of finite and infinite (3),
xii Contents.
I. Christianity assumes the existence of
An Infinite Personal God,
A finite human will (4).
Explanation of the terms (5).
Hence we gain some conceptions of
(o) Nature in relation to God (6).
The idea of Succession belongs to our apprehension of
God's action and not to His action in itself (7).
(p) Laws of Nature : Simply laws of human observation (8),
which include the operation of an unknown force (9),
and cannot therefore be absolute (10).
Indeterminate powers in Nature (11, 12).
I I. Christianity claims to be miraculous (13).
The idea of a miracle (14).
A miracle not impossible (15),
nor unnatural (16).
(a) In relation to God
A miracle not an afterthought (17),
nor due to a material cause (18).
(/3) In relation to man
A miracle generally involves an indeterminate element
(19),
and is predominantly subject to moral conditions (20).
Why a scientific age is incredulous of miracles (21).
Yet instinct is not conquered by science (22).
Miraculous records not antecedently incredible (24).
The alternative (25).
Contents. xiii
CHAPTER I.
THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY.
pp.44— 1 18
•
Christianity claims to restore harmony to all creation (§1).
A historical Progress observable in the physical (2, 3) and moral
worlds (4, 5).
With which Christianity is intimately connected (6), accord-
ing to the teaching of the Apostles (7), whether the ad-
vance was realized among the Jews or Gentiles (8).
And Christianity itself is a history (9), and has been de-
veloped historically (10).
In this lies its distinguishing characteristic (n), which cen-
tres in faith in the Person of Christ (12).
If therefore the circumstances of its origin were unique, so
also may have been the phenomena which it included
I. Christianity in connexion with Universal History.
(a) The relation of Christianity to pre-Christian history (16).
(a) Jewish History. Characteristics of the history of
the Jews (17 — 20).
(1) The discipline of Egypt (21).
Sinai (22).
The Conquest (23).
The Kingdom (24, 25).
The Captivity (26).
The Dispersion (27, 28).
(2) The development of the idea of a Deliverer (29).
The doctrine of Messiah (30).
The Word (31).
Contrast of the two doctrines (32).
xiv Contents.
(b) Gentile history (33).
(1) , Greek literature and thought (34).
(2) Roman statesmanship and law (35).
The crisis (36).
(j8) The relation of Christianity to post • Christian history (37).
General outline of its progress (38, 39).
(a) The Church of the first centuries. Orthodox (40).
(b) The mediaeval Church. Catholic (41).
(c) The Church of Modern Europe. Evangelical (42).
The divisions mark a real but not final advance (43, 44).
II. The special evidence for the Resurrection (45).
(a) The testimony of St Paul (46).
Conclusive as to the universal and definitely ex-
pressed belief of Christians within ten years
afterwards that the event was historically true
(47—49).
03) The character of the event
(a) Excludes the possibility of delusion (50).
(6) Not anticipated by any popular belief (51).
(c) Contrary to the Messianic expectations of the
Jews (52),
to the ideas of the Apostles (53).
(7) The effects of the event
(a) On the character of the Apostles (54),
(b) On the Apostolic view of the Person of Christ (55),
(c) Especially on St Paul's teaching on the Death of
Christ (56, 57), and our relation to Him (58).
(5) The relation of the belief in the event to other parts of
Christian doctrine.
The return of Christ (59).
The Holy Sacraments (60).
Summary (61).
Contents. xv
CHAPTER II.
THE RESURRECTION AND MAN pp. 1 19— 167
The final elements of every moral question : God, the World,
Self (§2).
The individual 'self ('I') felt at present to bo twofold (3),
and the antithesis which it includes is essential to our
personality (4).
Hence arise the questions
I. Will our Personality be preserved after
death?
II. What is the future relation of Self to
God?
III. What is the relation of Self to the
World?
I. Personality, as far as we can see, depends upon the special
limitation (body) through which the soul acts (6).
(a) Keason can shew that we survive death by shewing
either that
(a) The soul will itself have a personal existence ;
or that
(b) It will act through an organism corresponding to
its present one.
But (a) On principles of Reason there is no reason to
think that the individual soul is personal (8).
(i) The judgment of Aristotle (9, 10).
xvi Contents.
(2) The arguments adduced in support of the
belief apply to the past as well as to the
future (11).
(3) Plato's teaching based on instinct not
reason (12).
(b) We have no ground for supposing that the soul
can take to itself any organization soever (13).
Thus there remains a final conflict between Instinct
and Reason as to our future Personality (14).
(ft) The doctrine of the Resurrection preserves the idea of
our Personality completely (15).
The Lord's Body the same (16, 17),
yet changed (18).
After death the whole complex nature of man is en-
nobled (19).
II. The final relation of man to God depends upon the reality
and issues of sin (20).
(a) What reason teaches of sin.
(a) The possibility of sin included in the idea of
a finite, free being (21).
(b) Its realization not required for moral develop-
ment, though in some forms it may be subser-
vient to it (22 — 26).
(c) It is indeed essentially foreign to our nature,
and yet when once realized permanent in its
effects (28, 29).
Thus there remains an Instinct which looks for for-
giveness of sin, and Reason which points to the
inexorable sequence of the results of action (30).
Contents. xvii
(/3) The light which the Resurrection throws on the
forgiveness of sin (31).
In what way the Lord's Suffering and Triumph
belong to us (32 — 38).
III. The relation of Self to the World.
This is indicated by the dignity assigned to the body
(39), which is the seed of that which shall be (40).
Effects of the doctrine:
I. Morally as to the individual and society (41 — 43).
II. Physically in relation to the outer world (44, 45).
Summary (46 — 48).
CHAPTER III.
THE RESURRECTION AND THE CHURCH
pp. 168 — 216
Various images under which the Christian society is described
(a) A Kingdom (§§ 1, 1).
03) A Temple (3, 4).
(y) A Body (5).
How these images are seen in the light of the Resurrection.
(a) A spiritual kingdom: a new heaven and a new
earth (7, 8).
(/3) A structure reared through many ages and hal-
lowed by One Spirit (9).
(7) The visible Body of the Risen Christ (10).
xv in Contents.
Contrast between the fundamental idea of Christianity as the
basis of a society and those of
Paganism (13),
Judaism (14).
The principle of unity (16, 17)
Illustrated by the Resurrection (18).
The principle of life (19).
I. The essential unity of the Church does not require external
unity (21),
nor one visible centre of authority such as was for a time
established at Jerusalem (22), or
Rome (23).
The extent of variation consistent with sub-
stantial unity not to be determined antece-
dently (24);
illustrated by the history of the Jewish
Church (25).
The admission of the necessity of variations in
the Church does not sanction sectarianism
(26, 27).
Progress itself implies antagonism (28) and in-
dividuality (29).
II. The essential unity of the Church seen in its historic deve-
lopment (30, 31).
This development one of organization (32)
not of doctrine absolutely (33),
corresponding to the general progress of civili-
zation (34), and the complexity of the Chris-
tian Body (35).
Contents. xix
Hence it includes many partial and transitional de-
velopments, which are set aside when their work
is done (36).
How far this development is due to human imperfec-
tion (37).
Scripture the unchanging test of development (38).
Our age presents an epitome of all past ages (39).
Churches l redeem each other ' (40).
Grounds of hope in the midst of the contradictions of
modern life (41, 4a).
Conclusion (44).
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION.
KaXbv t6 dOXov Kal 77 iXirls fieyaXf].
PLATO.
j TEAN PAUL, in one of his magnificent ^ate
*J Dreams, has endeavoured to present question.
to the mind an image of the infinite extent and
fulness of the Universe. He represents his dis-
embodied Spirit as carried by thought from sys-
tem to system through the starry skies under the
conduct of some Angel of light. Wearied at
length and bowed down with the overwhelming
sense of his littleness as he traverses the desolate
intervals between world and world, he prays that
he may go no further : * I am lonely in creation :
1 lonelier in these wastes. The full world is great ;
'but Vacancy is greater/ And the answer came
1 In the sight of God there is no Vacancy. Even
' now, child of man, let thy quickened eye be-
• hold, and thy dreaming heart embrace the depths
' of Being which are around thee/ Then his eye
was opened and a sea of light filled all the spaces
which had seemed desolate before, and his heart
1
2 The Resurrection is the
felt the presence of an unspeakable power, swell-
griQj, ing in varied forms of existence around him.
Suns and planets were seen to float as mere
specks in the vast ocean of life which was re-
vealed to him. For a time he was conscious of
no pain. Immeasurable joy and thanksgiving
tilled his soul. But in this glorious splendour his
guide had vanished. He was alone in the midst
of life, and he yearned for some companionship.
' Then there came sailing onwards/ he continues,
'from the depth, through the galaxies of stars, a
' dark globe along the sea of light; and a human
'form, as a child, stood upon it, which neither
'changed nor yet grew greater as it drew near.
'At last I recognised our Earth before me, and on
'it the Child Jesus, and He looked upon me with
'a look so bright and gentle and loving, that I
awoke for love and joy/
± The thought which inspires this grand
LOB is that which I wish now to develope and
confirm. It is my object to shew that a belief in
the Resurrection of our Lord is not indeed the
solution (for that we cannot gain), but the illu-
mination of the mysteries of life : that in this
fact the apparent contradictions of the immensity
and insignificance of the individual are harmo-
nized i that in this lies an end to which pre-
8
central truth of Christianity. 3
Christian history converged, a spring from which ^^ E -
post- Christian history flows: that in this man question.
finds the only perfect consecration of his entire
nature : that in this there is contained a promise )
for the future which removes, as far as may be,
the sense of isolation which belongs to our finite
nature, and unites our world again to the absolute
ml eternal. That in this, to sum up all briefly,
we may contemplate Christianity in relation to
history, to man, and to the future, not as a vague
idea, or as a set of dogmas, or even as a system,
but as the witness to actual events, in the sub-
stantial reality of w T hich lies all its power and all
its hope.
3. At the outset it is important to define the
field within which the foundation of our inquiry
lies, and to close it within the narrowest limits.
It includes only the Cross and the Sepulchre.
It is open to the full light of day. The Death,
the Burial, and the Resurrection of Christ, claim
to be facts exactly in the same sense, to be sup-
ported by evidence essentially identical in kind,
and to be bound together indissolubly as the
groundwork of the Christian Faith. If they are
true, then they will be seen to form the centre
round which other truths group themselves, not
less real, nor less significant, though they are not
1—2
•i The Resurrection
state- equally capable of being directly subjected to
question, historical tests. If they are not true, then 'is our
1 faith vain/ Christianity is a name and nothing
more, a sentiment, an aspiration, the expression
and not the satisfaction of human need.
4. The natural indistinctness of common lan-
guage seems to leave room for a vague impression
that in this case there is some mean between
truth and falsehood: that though the Resurrec-
tion was not a fact (as the Crucifixion was a fact),
yet it was something more than a fiction: that
it expressed (it may be) an intuition or a divine
belief. Yet it is obvious that the power of the
Resurrection, as the ground of religious hope, lies
in the very circumstance that the event which
changed the whole character of the disciples was
external to them, independent of them, unex-
pected by them. We are speaking here, of course,
of things as they present themselves to the senses,
and in this light the Resurrection claims to have
been of the same order as the Burial of the Lord.
Its objectivity is essential to its significance. A
conviction that a particular person had risen again,
when he had not, is simply false, however it may
have been produced. And if the conviction em-
bodies itself in a circumstantial narrative of facts
intended to establish the imaginary event, the
true or false : no mean. 5
narrative is simply a falsehood and nothing more. SMSS
There are cases where fictitious or unreal details quIst?o E n
convey a true idea of the whole, and it might
be so with the details of the Resurrection; but
here it is the whole and not the details which,
on such a supposition, is imaginary. The Resur-
rection then is either a fact in itself wholly in-
dependent of those who w r ere witnesses to it,
or it is a fiction — it matters not whether designed
or undesigned — on which no belief can be found-
ed. It is a real link between the seen and the
unseen worlds, or it is at best the expression of
a human instinct. Christ has escaped from the
corruption of death ; or men, as far as the future
is concerned, are exactly where they were before
He came. Whatever may be the civilizing power
of Christian morality, it can throw no light upon
the grave. If the Resurrection be not true in
the same sense in which the Passion is true, then
Death still remains the great conqueror. As far
as all experience goes, no pledge has been given to
us of his defeat. A splendid guess or a vague
desire alone have sought to pierce the darkness
beyond the tomb, if Jesus has not (as we believe)
borne our human nature into the presence of
God.
5. When once we grasp clearly the momen-
G The Resurrection
W£jg tons interests which are involved in the belief in
1!! N the Resurrection, we shall be prepared to under-
stand how it formed the central point of the
Apostolic teaching; and yet more than this, how
the event itself is the central point of history.
It often seems indeed as if we do not realize the
vastness of the consequences which it brings.
An influential Christian teacher has sail that
the Resurrection belongs to the teaching on
Scripture rather than to the teaching on the
Person of Christ, forgetting that faith in Christ
the Saviour did not precede but follow it.
Even, those who hold most firmly to a faith in
the Resurrection are tempted to regard it as a
doctrine rather than as a fact, as an article of
belief rather than as a sensible ground of hope.
Gradually we have been led to dissociate faith
in the resurrection of the body from the actual
Resurrection of Christ, which is the earnest of it.
And not unfrequently we substitute for the ful-
ness of the Christian creed the purely philosophic
conception of an immortality of the soul, which
destroys, as we shall see hereafter, the idea of
the continuance of our distinct personal existence.
But according to the divine instinct of the first
age, the message of the Resurrection sums up in
one fact the teaching of the Gospel. It is the
one central link between the seen and the un-
J
morally a Revelation. 7
We cannot allow our thoughts to be vague state
or undecided upon it with impunity. We must A§bstk)S
place it in the very front of our confession, with/
all that it includes, or we must be prepared to
lay aside the Christian name. Even in its ethi-
cal aspect Christianity does not offer a system of I
morality, but a universal principle of morality
which springs out of the Resurrection. The ele-
ments of dogma and morality are indeed insepa-
rably united in the Resurrection of Christ ; for the
same fact which reveals the glory of the Lord,
reveals at the same time the destiny of man and
the permanence of all that goes to make up the
felnesa of human life. If the Resurrection be
not true, the basis of Christian morality, no less
than the basis of Christian theology, is gone.
Thus the issue cannot be stated too broadly.
To preach the fact of Resurrection was the first
function of the Evangelists; to embody the doc-
trine of the Resurrection is the great office of
the Church; to learn the meaning of the Resur-
rection is the task not of one age only, but of
all. Yet there seem to be times when the truth
has a special significance: times, like our own,
when the spirit of material progress tends to con-
fine the thoughts of men within the limits of its
own domain, and the sense of the infinite vastness
(so to speak) of our present finite being turns
8 The Resurrection as a fact
the sou] away from its natural aspirations towards
the absolute and the unseen.
6. This is one aspect of our subject. The
Resurrection is a revelation, so far as sucli a
revelation is possible, of the spiritual world and
of our own connexion with it. But it has also
another aspect as a fact in the common history
of the world. Its essentially objective character
is not less important than its divine message.
For we may notice that every religion which is
to move the world must be based on a history.
A religion drawn solely from the individual con-
sciousness of man can only reflect a particular
form of intellectual development. Its influence
is limited by the mould in which it is cast. Its
applicability is confined to those who have at-
tained to a special culture. Even to the last it
is essentially of the mind and not of the heart or
of the life. This is obvious equally from the
record of the speculations on Natural Theology,
and from the history of all those religions which
have had any power in the world. A subjective
religion brings with it no element of progress
and cannot lift man out of himself. A historical
revelation alone can present God as an object of
personal love. The external world answering to
human instinct suggests the conception of His
the basis of Christianity. 9
eternal power, but offers nothing which justifies \ ^[atk
in us the confidence of ' sons/ Man is but one question.
of the many elements of creation and cannot
arrogate to himself any special relationship with
his Maker. Pure Theism is unable to form a \
living religion. Mahommedanism lost all reli-
gious power in a few generations. Judaism sur-
vived for fifteen centuries every form of assault
in virtue of the records of a past deliverance on
which it was based, and the hope of a future
Deliverer which it included.
7. It is possible that individual exceptions
may be found to the general truth of these state-
ment8. Faith is indeed without question the
spring of all progressive or universal religion;
and the essence of faith lies in the transference
of trust to something outside the believer. Yet
on the other hand 'some great souls appear to
have an immediate perception of isolated truths,
so that in their case a thought becomes a dis-
tinct reality, contemplated, as it were, apart from
the thinker. For such men faith in a thought is
possible, and is the source of all that approaches
most nearly to a new creation in human history.
These solitary heroes can in some measure at
least live as seeing the unseen by the force of
their innate power; but for the mass faith needs
10 The fact and the idea
some outward pledge to rest upon, and some
question, outward fact to call it into action. Exactly in
proportion as the popular idea of religion is sepa-
rated from the personal relation of the worshipper
to the Deity, attested (or supposed to be attested)
by historical manifestations, the worship itself
degenerates into a discipline or a form. Even
Christianity is capable of such a degradation;
but we need only to go back to the Evangelists
to regain a pure conception of its majesty. As
it is seen in their narratives it satisfies equally
the wants of the few and of the many; and that
most signally in the message of the Resurrection,
wind i was the assurance of the establishment of
the kingdom of God. The facts of the visible
Life of Christ are for all time a living Gospel ;
and the doctrine which they include meets and
carries forward the boldest speculations of philo-
sophy.
8. For it is evident that the events recorded
by the Evangelists while they are most truly his-
torical are not merely history. Their significance
is not in the past only or even chiefly. And so
also the evidence by which they are supported is
l not simply that of direct testimony. The au-
thority of testimony is supplemented by that of
the instinct within us which recognises the har-
necessarily combined. 11
mony of a Revelation claiming to be divine with s ™™-
the essential wants of man. And thus in d is- -question.
ring the truth of the Resurrection as a fact it-'
is impossible not to take into consideration its
moral significance. Evidence which would be
felt to be insufficient to prove the occurrence of
a prodigy, may be amply sufficient to establish
the objective reality of a fact which is found to
r to circumstances or conditions of our
nature. Nay more, it may be affirmed that no
external evidence alone could ever establish more
tli.ii an 'otiose* belief in the occurrence of an
isolated or seemingly arbitrary miracle in a dis-
tant age, while the combination of external and
internal evidence is capable of producing a mea-
sure of conviction which is only less certain than
an immediate intuition.
9. But in order to estimate the spiritual
significance of the Resurrection we must first
take into account the relation in which it stands
to many elementary thoughts which lie at the
very foundation of our ordinary life. "Above all
it is necessary that we should set down clearly
what must be taken for granted and not proved :
what is the conception which we form of Nature,
and of miracles : what are the limits within which
human speculation is confined. Till these points
12 Outline of the plan.
WAf£ are determined, as far as they seem to admit of
KENT ' J
question, determination, all further discussion must be
fruitless. If, for example, a miracle is inherently
incredible, it is idle to reason about a fact which
in the end must be explained away. If on the
other hand we hold that miracles are, in certain
cases, as credible as ordinary events generally, it
is necessary that we should shew how this belief
is reconcileable with the ideas which we entertain
of an Infinite God and of the constancy of natural
laws. These fundamental questions will form the
subject of the Introduction ; and afterwards we
shall be in a position to consider the Resurrection
in itself and in its application to History, to the
Individual, and to Society.
INTRODUCTION.
Tptyourai iravres ol avOpumivoi v6[xot vtt6 tv6$ rod Oelov'
Kpartei yap tojovtov 6k6jov ZOtXei ko.1 t^apKe'ei wdaiv ical
it epty Literal.
ffEJL4CJ.rr is.
1. HPHE simplicity of the Gospel is not due introbuc-
J- to the absence of difficulties, but to the
coincidence of the difficulties which it involves
With the inherent difficulties of human existence,
when existence is taken as a subject of specu-
lation. Christianity does indeed involve many
difficulties, but it does not create them. Thv
difficulties themselves beset us in our daily life ;
but as long as they take a practical form, they
receive a practical answer. Christianity, however,
which reveals the significance of life makes us
also feel its mysteries. It brings out what was
ill-defined before, like the light which does not
make the shadows, though they are seen by
contrast with it. The truth involved in this dis-
tinction is of vital importance towards the under-
standing of its claims. An imperious instinct
14 The difficulties of Christianity
;; 'duo- commands us to look beyond or beneath the
phenomena of physical life. We cannot acquiesce
in ignorance; and that religion necessarily claims
our allegiance which answers most completely to
all the conditions of our nature. If it could be
shewn that Christianity introduces some idea into
life wholly alien from its common tenor, or assumes
principles which we do not act upon, or asserts
consequences at variance with the natural reason
of men, we might pause before receiving its teach-
ing. But if on the contrary its mysteries rest on
fundamental mysteries of our finite being; if it
kes its stand on human nature as it is and
interprets ii if it carries on thoughts
of which we feel the beginnings within ourselves,
and opens gleams of hope where we acknowledge
that our prospect is clouded ; then it cannot but
be monstrous to reject it for reasons on which we
might with equal justice declare life itself to be
impossible.
2. For instance, the existence of matter, the
relation of soul and body, the existence of evil,
existence absolutely, and in time and space, indi-
vidual freedom and general laws of sequence, are
all fundamental and final mysteries from which
we can never escape. They are taken account of
and dealt with in the doctrines of Christianity,
difficulties of Life. 15
but Christianity does not make them. It will be IN ^5 UC *
seen hereafter how they are dealt with, but for
the present it is enough to notice that the rejec-
tion of the mysteries of Christianity will not
eliminate the element of mystery from life. The
very idea of life involves the antithesis of finite
and infinite, and the special difficulties which
have been enumerated simply represent the
various forms which this one fundamental diffi-
culty assumes when contemplated in connexion
with the physical world pr with human action.
3. This antithesis of the finite and the infi-
nite which meets us as soon as we lift our thoughts
above single phenomena is the final basis of all
religion. It is apprehended more or less sharply
in different ages or races, but the essence of wor-
ship even in its lowest form necessarily includes
the tendency towards a true perception of it. In
this respect Christianity differs from all other
religions, not in principle, but in virtue of the
absolute clearness with which the idea of the
antithesis is laid down. The two terms are re-
garded in their most complete separation and
then they are combined in One Person. But
in saying this we are anticipating what will
appear more natuTally afterwards. It is not
necessary yet to consider how Christianity re-
16 Fundamental
introduc- solves or harmonizes the antithesis on which it,
equally with all religions, is founded. That which
is essential to our argument is that the antithesis
If is not brought into being by Christianity,
but is the clear expression 'of an instinct, which
has sought at all times to embody itself in reli-
gious thought and worship — in thought as well as
in worship: for the mind which strives to e
bl isli its own relation to the unseen by the wor-
ship of a God, is always led at the same time to
ponder on the relation of the world to the same
Power.
4. Christianity therefore as the absolute re-
ligion of man assumes as its foundation the exist-
ence of an Infinite Personal God and a finite
human will. This antithesis is assumed and not
proved. No arguments can establish it. It is a
primary intuition and not a deduction. It is
capable of illustration from what we observe
around us; but if either term is denied no reason-
ing can establish its truth. Each man for him-
self is supposed to be conscious of the existence of
God and of his own existence. We can go no
further. If he has not, or says he has not
this consciousness, he must be regarded as one
whose powers are imperfect. It would be as vain
to reason with him on religion as to reason on
Assumptions, 17
the phenomena of light with a blind man. No ^Tggg 17 ^
proof can establish the existence of that within
a man of which he alone has the final cognizance.
Practically every one is found to act as if he
believed that he had a will, and also as if he were
justly accountable for his actions : he is conscious
of satisfaction within himself, and awards praise
or blame to others; but whether this be univer-
sally true or not is of no real moment to us. It
is taken for granted that religion is possible ; and
if so the conceptions which are involved in the
fundamental antithesis on which it reposes are
also assumed to be true, though they do not
admit of a formal proof. If they are not axioms
we claim them as postulates.
5. But though we appeal to the individual
consciousness for the recognition of the truth of
the assumptions which have been made, the lan-
guage in which one term of the antithesis is ex-
pressed requires explanation. We speak of God
as Infinite and Personal. The epithets involve
a contradiction, and yet they are both necessary.
In fact the only approximately adequate concep-
tion which we can form of a Divine Being is
under the form. of a contradiction. For us per-
sonality is only the name for special limitation
exerting itself through will ; and will itself im-
2
18 Nature in
IX noN. UC " plies the idea of resistance. But as applied to
God the notions of limitation and resistance are
eluded by the antithetic term infinite. For us
again infinity excludes the conception of special
action: it belongs to the nature and not to the
manifestation of being. But as applied to God
it is necessarily connected with action and with
phenomena, because it is only through these that
personality, so far as we observe it, can shew
itself. Thus it follows that by speaking of God as
Infinite we simply mean that none of the deduc-
tions which can be drawn from corresponding
attributes or powers, or the uses of power in man,
(in b* tyr&nsfarred to Him. It would be false
for instance to argue from the usual sense of the
terms employed that what He 'does' or 'pur-
poses ' is in itself bound by time and space. And
on the other hand by speaking of Him as Perso-
nal we wish to express that He rules and creates
if it were by will, with a purpose towards
which all things are guided. So only can we
guard against the representation of God as the
Absolute simply, whether the Absolute be re-
garded as the Unchangeable which lies beneath
the changing phenomena of the world, or as the
sum of all that ' is/
6. This conception of the Divine Being,
relation to God.
which, it must be remembered, is not peculfcr to introdic-
^^v TION.
Christianity, except in the distinctness of its enunX^
ciation, clears the way to our apprehension of the
course and phenomena of Nature. For we can-
not contemplate Nature apart from God. Hence
it is against all reason to press the results of our
observation of phenomena to consequences in-
consistent with our conception of His infinite and
personal Being. Two errors are specially to be
guarded against which are most fruitful of fallaci-
ous issues. The one is the transference of the
phenomena of succession and gradual growth and
slow sequence, which are necessarily part of our
observation of nature, to Nature as the expression
of the Divine will. The other is the supposition
that 'laws' have in themselves (so to speak) a
motive force : that the law, which declares the
mode in which phenomena present themselves to
us, has some virtue by which the phenomena are
absolutely; or, in other words, that the Law not /
only declares how we see things, but makes them
such as we see them. Each of these misconcep-
tions will require to be noticed a little more in
detail.
7. The only idea which we can form of
Nature, that is of the sum of all phenomena, in
relation to an Infinite Mind is as one thought.
2—2
£0 Succession not true for God.
^moh 110 " ^ or ^ 0D a ^ * s one an( ^ a ^ oncel - He * s cognizant
(if we may so say) of things themselves, and not,
as we naturally think and reason, of our percep-
tions of them. He sees them as they are and not
as we observe them. Indeed, if we reflect, there
is something strangely absurd in applying to the
Pivine Power conclusions which are based on
human apprehensions of things. We must, be-
cause we are finite, conceive of things as hap-
pening in time; and in the same way we must
conceive of God as acting, whenever He acts,
in time ; but it is equally clear that we must not
argue as if time belonged really to the Di
ition to the world, or as if God acted at this
time and that, or at every moment, one after
another. Any conclusion which rests on this
supposition as a premiss is radically false. The
statement that 'God acts' is true at all times
1 The reader will be glad to recal the thought as it is worke4
out in Tennyson's noble words :
To your question now,
Which touches on the workman and his work.
Let there be light and there was light : 'tis so ;
For was, and is, and will be, are but is ;
And all creation is one act at once,
The birth of light : but we that are not all,
As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that,
And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make
One act a phantom of succession : thus
Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time.
Laws of Observation. 21
in regard to our human conception of Him. in ™on UC ~
We can say justly that He acts now, that He
acted then, that He will act at some future mo-
ment; but when we reason on the human element
in these statements, that is on the temporal limi-
tations, it is obvious that this process of reason-
ing can give us no conclusion with regard to the
action of God.
8. Again, a 'law of nature* can mean no- «
thing else than the law of the human apprehen- '
sion of phenomena. We are forced to regard j
things under conditions of time and space and
the like, and the consequence is that phenomena
are grouped together according to certain rules.
We find that for us (such is the constitution of
our powers) the sequence of phenomena is this
and not that. Partial sequences are compared
and combined and thus more general sequences
are discovered. But however far we may go we
never go beyond ourselves. The law at last is ,
a law for men: its form depends on limitations
which are characteristic of men. We have not
the least reason for supposing that it has any
absolute existence. For it is obviously a very
different thing to say that things when observed
by men will be observed by them under such and
such limitations* and therefore according to such
-- Laws presuppose Force
ni »M? ,ro \ am * suc ^ ^ aws> ^ rom sa y m s suca an( ^ sucn are tne
laws of things in themselves and for all intelli-
gent beings. And if we know nothing of the
laws of things in themselves, how can we know
anything of things in relation to God ?
— i* / 9. From what has been said it is evident
that a law, which expresses nothing more than
the result of our observation of phenomena, can-
not make phenomena what they are. It is no
explanation of how the phenomena came to be
or continue to be. It would have appeared to be
insisting on a truism to dwell on this, were it not
for the general idea which seems to find currency,
that when a law (as of gravitation) is laid down
nothing more remains to be explained. The law
may afterwards (it is admitted) be found to be
part of one much wider and more comprehensive,
l>ut, as far as it goes, this satisfies all our inqui-
ries. In reality it tells us that something pro-
duces results (as far as we are concerned) in such
and such a way. But obviously if the knowledge
were within our reach our chief desire would be
to know what produces the results ? What brings
about the phenomena according to the law ? We
can shew that if a body be projected in a certain
direction and acted upon by a central force vary-
ing in a particular way it will describe an orbit
and cannot be absolute. 23
like that of the earth round the sun. But to go I *Sg5 U0 '
no further, What projected the earth ? It would
be easy to follow up this question by others ; but
this alone is sufficient to shew that in the sim-
plest phenomena we are face to face with a power
of which observation can tell us nothing but the
fact of its existence.
10. There is then nothing absolute in laws
of nature. They are relative to man, and do
not explain either the origin or the preservation
of things. It is quite possible for us to conceive
that the unknown power through which pheno-
mena are produced in this way might have caused
them to be produced in another way wholly differ-
ent. The belief in the immutability of the ob-
served law springs wholly from ourselves, and is
simply a special expression of the axiom that the
same power will produce the same results under
the same circumstances. But we have no right
to assume that the circumstances will always be x
the same. The range of our observation is bound
within very narrow limits. And if, as we have
supposed, the divine thought of the world leaves
room for the exercise of free human will, it is
antecedently likely that we should be enabled
in some way to be made sensible of what we call
by a figure the Divine wilL We may expect from
24 1 1 power*
time to time in the evolution of the whole scheme
of creation to be made aware of the presence of a
Personal Power, not by the suspension of the laws
of sequence which we commonly observe, but by
the action of some new force. Or to put the sub-
ject in another light; as changed circumstances
would lead to different results under the action of
the same power, so we must allow that there are
many cases in which the exertion of the free
human will must modify not indeed the Divine
ion in itself, but the phenomena in which the
results of it are presented to us. The building of
a city, for example, which depends on the free
action of individuals, may modify to an alii
indefinite extent the physical character of its im-
mediate neighbourhood, and so more or less of all
other districts, in a manner which we can gene-
rally follow out ; and thus also we can conceive
that the natural though unseen action of God
may make itself felt with varying distinctness in
the course of ages, though in this case the law of
sequence is undiscoverable by us. At least gene-
rally it is undeniable that if we believe in the
existence of a Personal God by whose influence
we are affected, there is no more difficulty in
admitting the reality of His action in various ways
and degrees on the physical world, than in recog-
nizing it (as we do) in our own souls. Indeed the
in Nature. 25
difficulty in the latter case is greater; for it is per- IN I££P UC ~
haps impossible for us to conceive how the Infinite
Divine will can act on the human will (as it is
felt to do) without destroying the freedom of man.
11. Further, it is evident from what has been
said as to the extent of creation, of which we
see but the least fraction, and of the connexion of
its parts one with another, and of the presence
about us of forces which we are wholly incompe-
tent to estimate, that we are absolutely unable to
judge, whether we may not from time to time
be capable of calling into action ourselves or
otherwise coming under the influence of powers
which are usually dormant. Every one must
have felt at critical moments that he has a fund
of physical strength and also a capacity for mov-
ing others bv vigour of will of which under ordi-
O v O
nary circumstances he is wholly unconscious. The
crisis brings out the gift, and when the crisis is
over we fall back again into our usual state. Nor
is this the case with individuals only. History
shews that there are epochs of extraordinary, and
as we should say, who live in calmer times, of
unnatural activity and power in societies and
nations. A city or a race under the pressure of
some great passion works wonders. Above all
religious enthusiasm, whether in men or in bodies
26 Christianity
1N tiu.\ UC °^ Inen, * s ^P^le °f producing results which
under ordinary circumstances would be regarded
as impossible. It seems as if the idea of an imme-
diate intercourse with a spiritual world, quite
apart from the special form which it takes, were
al»le to quicken mans powers with a marvellous
energy and in some degree work out its own ac-
complishment.
12. Thus in contemplating nature from its
moral side we find ourselves in the presence of
two indetenni n.it t forces. Not only are we forced
to admit that there is room in the whole scheme
of the world (of which we are poor and imperfect
judges) for changed conditions which necessarily
include changed results; but also we find that
men and mankind generally are possessed of facul-
ties capable of vast and indefinite energy. We
( ai mot measure, as we cannot explain, the influ-
ence which one mind can exercise on another, or
which the mind can exercise on the body. The
in H in -nee is obvious, but what are the springs and
what the limits of it we cannot tell. In such a
case even past experience is no final judge. And
this reflection brings us to another fundamental
assumption of Christianity.
13. Christianity assumes, as we have seen,
essentially Miraculous. 27
the existence of an Infinite Personal God and of a IN1 ^}^ U0 "
finite human will : it claims also to be miraculous.
It takes for granted that 'miracles' are recognized
modes of Divine action. From the conception
which we are necessarily led to form of the rela-
tion of Nature to the Creator it has been shewn
that exceptional action in its course is not only
not excluded by the laws which we base on ob-
servation, but even antecedently likely. Chris-
tianity affirms that this exceptional action does
actually take place. And in doing this it only
affirms what every other historical religion must
affirm ; for all alike appeal to an immediate reve-
lation as their original basis. It follows then
that all religion which can influence the mass of
men (p. 8, § 6) is declared to be impossible if
such an exceptional manifestation of God is in-
conceivable or unaccomplished. Nothing remains
but a faith which begins and ends within the in-
dividual. But not to dwell on this, it is evident
that if the claim to be a miraculous religion is
essentially incredible apostolic Christianity is
simply false. If Christ did not rise again — the
words cannot be too often repeated — then is our
faith vain. Something may be left — a system of
morals or the like — but that is not Christianity.
The essence of Christianity lies in a miracle ; and
if it can be shewn that a miracle is either im-
-8 The idea of a Miracle.
possible or incredible, all further inquiry into the
details of its history is superfluous in a religious
point of view. The rise of Christianity will still
furnish a historical or philosophical problem of
surpassing interest, but the data which it presents
will contain nothing on which to found the faith
of a world. Thus we are forced to consider whe-
ther the difficulties which are supposed to lie in
the conception of a miracle are a fatal hindrance
to the literal acceptance of the Gospel.
W-. By a miracle (using the word in its
test sense) we mean a phenomenon which
either in itself or from the circumstances under
which it is presented, suggests the immediate
working of a personal power producing results
not explicable by what we observe in the ordi-
nary course of nature. Thus some facts are in
(heir essential character miraculous, as the Re-
surrection; others, again, are perfectly natural in
themselves, but miraculous from the circum-
ices under which they occur, as the miraculous
draught of fishes, or to take a different example,
the true prediction of a special event. But they
have this in common, that they lead us to recog-
nize the action of some personal power: they in-
volve, as a general rule, an appeal to or a decla-
ration of divine strength. Some facts again, as
Miracles not impossible. 29
many of the cases of healing, may be regarded as 1N ™^ UC "
natural or miraculous, according as we look at
them as resulting from powers already existing in
man and evoked, or as immediate acts of divine
blessing. This indeed is a mere question of
interpretation. The principle is attested in a
single case. He who believes in the Resurrec-
tion will feel no anxiety as to the exact limits
within which the divine working is to be con-
fined. Probably he will see it everywhere and in
the same sense, for the difference or identity of
mode will seem to him to depend on causes which
he cannot investigate.
15. From what has been already said it will
be seen that a miracle cannot be declared impos-
sible by any one who believes in a Personal God.
Nature is the expression of His will, and ante-
cedently to experience we could not have deter-
mined that it would be manifested in one way
rather than in another. Nor again can all con-
ceivable experience give us a complete knowledge
of the conditions which may affect its manifesta-
tion to us so as to exclude variety. On the con-
trary under particular circumstances which may
happen if God reveals Himself to men, miracles
are as probable as ordinary phenomena under
common circumstances. If the result is different,
30 i not
the power being the same, we suppose that the
conditions are different; and conversely if the
conditions are different, we suppose that the
result will be changed. Nor, again, in speaking
of a fact as a miracle do we offer any explanation
of its being or becoming. The mystery as to how
God acts is left untouched. Whether He acts as
He ordinarily does (naturally), or in an extraor-
dinary way (miraculously), this fundamental diffi-
culty remains absolutely the same. It is neither
nor less in the one case than in the
other. The power which produces the pheno-
iin n.i is iiid. t< lininate and indeterminable. Thus
while it Mould be impossible that two and two
should ever make five, because the law on which
the result depends lies wholly within us; yet it is
not impossible that an (unknown) power which
as far as our observation reaches has always pro-
duced (say) four phenomena of a particular kind,
should on a particular occasion produce five such
phenomena.
1G. Yet further it will appear that a miracle
is not unnatural that is contrary to and not
only different from the observed course of phe-
nomena. It would be unnatural only if it were
supposed that the miraculous and the ordinary
result were both produced by the same force
unnatural. 31
acting under the same conditions. Or, if for a introduc-
° TION.
moment we may use common language, if it
were supposed that the same law could produce
different effects. But on the other hand it is dis-
tinctly laid down that in the case of a miracle
a new force is introduced, or rather, as the source
of all force is one, that the force which usually
acts freely in a particular way now acts freely in
another. Or, to continue to use popular lan-
guage, the law is not suspended, but its natural
results are controlled. The law produces its full
effect, but a new power supervenes, and the final
result represents the combined effect of the two
forces. Let it once be seen that the law neces-
sarily involves the idea of a power acting accord-
ing to the law, and acting freely [ for the law is
evidently subsequent to and not essentially regu-
lative of the action,7and there will be no more
difficulty in feeling that the miraculous action of
God is as truly natural, that is in accordance with
what we may expect from a consideration of the
whole scheme of nature, as His ordinary action.
To affirm that miracles are unnatural is to consti-
tute general laws of observation into a fate supe-
rior to God, or to deny His personal action. And
it must be observed that the denial of His per-
sonal action in the physical world involves the
denial of His action on the hearts of men; for
\
Miracles not an afterthought ; nor
oduo- there is not the least reason to suppose that what
is seen is less immediately dependent upon Him
than what is unseen, or that it can be affirmed
beforehand that He is more likely to act on one
part of that which He has created than on another.
In other words, if miracles are unnatural, thru
we are hopelessly enclosed within the barriers of
material laws and absolutely shut off from all
intercourse with the Infinite. But this is against
the fundamental axiom of religion.
4 o*
17. It may however be objected thai this
view of miracles as occasional manifestations of
i he power of God is a conception unworthy of His
Majesty: that it represents Him (so to speak) as
dependent on time and circumstance. The objec-
tion, as far as it has any force, would lie equally
against all action of God among men. It
indeed, a mystery wholly beyond our comprehen-
sion how an Infinite Being can reveal or in any
way manifest Himself to finite creatures. But
in obedience to an instinct which we cannot qu<
tion we have taken it for granted that he doea
so. And yet further the iuvidiottshess of the
objection lies in the transference to God of those
ideas of time and succession which as we have
seen (§ 7) are proper only to men. There is no
' occasion ' to God. The world and all its history
necessarily due to a material cause. 33
is for Him necessarily one. His action which we introduc-
J TION.
contemplate now in one (general) mode, and now
in another (exceptional) mode, is not in itself
divided, though we are forced so to regard it.
The principle (if we may so speak) which accord-
ing to His wisdom directs the form of the general
action and the principle which directs the form of
the exceptional action, are not separated, so that
the one is subsequent to and corrective of the
other, but simultaneous or coincident. What is
unfolded to us in a gradual process of ' becoming '
in relation to an infinite mind simply 'is/ We
are obliged to speak of • the purpose of God's will/
and so we are obliged to speak of His 'Special
Providence ' or miraculous working ; but the ori-
ginal phrase and the adaptation of the phrase to
facts are both accommodations ; and we must care-
fully guard against any deductions based upon
the human element in them (§ 5).
18. Nor yet again can it be said that mate-
rial results involve a material cause. We know
absolutely nothing of cause. We know nothing
of the power manifested in material results (§ 9).
And unless we believe in the eternity of matter,
(which is an absolute contradiction,) some material
results must have had an immaterial cause. More-
over we experience daily the influence of will in
3
34 Mir!
1NI ni».\ l c ourse l ves - And it nas teen assumed that our
finite will is a real power and potentially free,
for otherwise religion is as completely destroyed
as by denying the personality of God.
19. There is yet another aspect in which we
may regard Miracles. Viewed from the human
Bide, when man himself is looked upon as the
centre of the power by which they are wrought,
they fall into distinct groups, corresponding to the
subject-matter (so to speak) on which they are
wrought. Tli us man may be conceived as acting
upon the external world absolutely, where the
general law is modified by his interference, as if
he were to walk on water or control the move-
ments of the heavenly bodies : or he may act upon
the external world in immediate relation to him-
self or to those about him, as if he were to modify
die perception of external phenomena in particu-
lar cases : or he may act upon man directly, either
himself or others, as in the removal of disc ,
Now in the two latter cases an indeterminate
element is introduced, the influence of man upon
man, or the working of spirit upon spirit and
matter in limited relation to itself ; and prior to
observation it is impossible to determine what
varying effects may be produced by its opera-
tion. Experience alone can determine in each
in relation to Man. 35
instance what phenomena may be produced by introduc-
human will; and the vast range of the power of
will and the unknown depth of its relations, sug-
gest the possibility of an almost infinite variety
of results produced by its action under new con-
ditions. From time to time we are startled by
occurrences which reveal a power of one mind
over another, or of the mind over the body which
seems to be practically indeterminate. In these
cases then there is (it may be said) a natural open-
ing for miracles: they have a point of contact with
what we observe in the course of life. In the first
case, on the contrary, this 'natural* conception of
A miracle is inadmissible. We can understand
how the individual will can affect other individuals
upon whom it can work immediately, but we can-
not see how it can act upon the external world
with which it has, as far as we know, nothing
homogeneous, or, which would come to the same
thing, upon the universal perception of men.
Thus in miracles of this kind we are face to face
with a final difficulty. Yet even here the miracle
has a corresponding phenomenon in life. Special
prayer is based upon a fundamental instinct of
our nature. And in the fellowship which is esta-
blished in prayer between man and God we are
brought into personal union with Him in whom
all things have their being. In this lies the pos-
2— 2
36 Moral limitation
"^jfggjf 5 ' ability of boundless power; for when the con-
nexion is once formed, who can lay down the
limits of what man can do in virtue of the com-
munion of his spirit with the Infinite Spirit?
But in one respect all three cases are alike.
Whether man works upon nature or upon his
fellow-men, it is in virtue of a trust in the unseen.
Personal faith is the condition of effectual action;
and where God is supposed to act immediately
the same condition is satisfied in the recognition
of His working.
20. It follows that the moral element in mi-
racles is both essential and predominant. There
is ilways a natural relation between the acts and
those for whom or by whom they are wrought.
They must be therefore (generally speaking) a
function of the age in which they are wrought.
That which at one time would suggest the idea of
God working would not do so at another. The
miracles of one period or state of society might be
morally impossible in another. It seems certain
that knowledge limits faith. For instance, when
any particular physical phenomena are appre-
hended as subject to a clear law, which is felt to
be a definite expression of the Divine Will, it is
inconceivable that faith could contemplate an
interference with them, not because it would be
of Miracles. 37
impossible, but because the prayer for such an in- IN lj,Ronuc-
terference would itself be disloyal. For example, it
would be positively immoral for us now to pray
that the tides or the sun should not rise on a par-
ticular day. The corresponding act is represented
in the Gospels as suggested by the Tempter. But Matt. iv.
as long as the idea of the physical law which rules 5 ~~ ' '
them was unformed or indistinct, the prayer would
have been reasonable, and (may we not suppose)
the fulfilment also. We cannot act when we feel
that our influence is excluded; and may not the
converse also be true ? May not all things be
possible for us which we firmly hold to be possible,
if at least the result would be such as to convey
the idea of the personal action of God ? An age
records only what it believes; but, in a certain
sense also, it does what it believes.
21. These reflections serve to explain the
real force which lies in two remarks on miracles
which have at present gained a very wide cur-
rency. It is said that ' a belief in miracles de-
creases with the increase of civilization'; and,
further, that ' our age in virtue of its advanced
\ civilization is essentially and inevitably incredu-
' lous of miracles/ Within certain limits both ob-
servations are undoubtedly true, but the limits
within which their truth is circumscribed exclude
38 Aspect of Miracles
ggyc- the <h Auctions which are drawn from tliem. The
sense of the antecedent likelihood of a miracle
proceeds from a comprehensive view of all nature,
moral and physical, according to the full develop-
ment of the mutual relations of its parts, as con-
m i tuting a scheme for us practically infinite. But
the necessary condition of all scientific inquiry,
arid the progress of science is here assumed to be
the test of the progress of civilization, is to put out
of sight the indeterminate element in nature, and
thus to untamiliarize the mind with those aspects
of the world in Which the miracle finds its proper
place. And not only so, but the requirements of
exact science bind the attention of each student
to some one small field, and this little fragment
almost necessarily becomes for him the measure
of the whole, if indeed he has ever leisure to lift
his eyes up to the whole at all. The more inti-
mately we are acquainted with any one subject,
and the more sensible we become of the fulness of
thought which it contains, the less we are fitted to
take a due measure of its proper relations to other
subjects, or to acknowledge instinctively that the
conditions under which we contemplate it are not
in themselves absolute. Thus in an inductive
laws of observation are treated, and with a view
to the immediate results which are sought, treated
rightly, as laws of nature. If the moral element
in a Scientific age. 39
of life — the idea of personality — be neglected, we XNT ^Jg5 uc "
cannot of necessity take account of any results
which are not entirely physical. For the physical
student as such (i. § 10), and for those who take
their impressions of the universe solely from them,
miracles can have no real existence. Nor is this
all: not miracles only, and this is commonly for-
gotten, but every manifestation of will is at the
same time removed from the world: all life falls
under the power of absolute materialism, a con-
clusion which is at variance with the fundamental
idea of religion, and so with one of the original
assumptions on which our argument is based,
22. While then we admit that the tendency
of a scientific age is adverse to a living belief in
miracles, we see that this tendency is due not to
the antagonism of science and miracle, but to the
neglect and consequent obscuration by science of
that region of thought in which the idea of the
miraculous finds scope. And even here the power
of general feeling makes itself most distinctly felt
against the power of abstract reason. Exactly
when material views of the universe seem to be
gaining an absolute ascendancy, popular instinct
finds expression now in this form of extravagant
credulity, and now in that. Arrogant physicism
is met by superstitious spiritualism ; and there is
40 Records of Miracles
IN ti!! T \ UC " ri S ht on botn sides - Th e harmony of a true faith
finds a witness to its fulness in the independent
assertion of the antithetic elements which it tem-
pers and reconciles.
23. It is however foreign to our purpose to
consider what may be the causes which impress a
very distinct character on different cycles of mira-
cles, and on the form which the belief in the mira-
culous assumes at different periods. The investi-
gation itself is full of interest, and contributes in
a remarkable degree to illustrate the progrc^
forms of revelation. But for the present we are
concerned simply with the possibility of a miracle,
which is seen to be included in the idea of a Per-
sonal God. Whether the possibility has been
realized in the Resurrection still remains for con-
sideration ; but the consideration is now open.
2 1 . For if miracles are neither impossible,
nor unnatural, it follows that the records of them
cannot be inherently incredible. But on the other
hand in proportion as an event is rare, we are
s< -ni] m Inns in examining the evidence by which the
truth of its occurrence is established; and the
more so, if the event itself is such as to be easily
misapprehended or referred to wrong causes, or
connected with false antecedents or consequents.
not antecedently incredible. 41
Cases of healing, for example, except under *$iy ihtboduo.
peculiar circumstances, cannot be alleged as cer-
tainly miraculous (§ 14). Other events are un-
equivocal in this respect. The Resurrection is
either a miracle or it is an illusion. Here there
is no alternative: no ambiguity. It is not an
accessory of the Apostolic message, but the sum
of the message itself. Its unique character is
the very point on which the first teachers of
Christianity support all their arguments. It
claims to be the opening of a new life to the
world. It cannot then.be rightly contemplated
by comparing it with the events of common his-
tory. It is, according to the original interpre-
tation of it, as singular in the history of the whole
race of men as birth is in the existence of the
individual. In dealing with the evidence adduced
in confirmation of such a fact, it is therefore
necessary to take into account its relation to
preceding and subsequent history ; for it may
well happen that the presumption in its favour
gathered from the preparation which found its
fulfilment in it, and from the results which
flowed out of it, will more than counterbalance
the natural distrust which is raised at first sight
by its exceptional character. On a comprehensive
survey of all nature, as far as we can judge from
the results which are obtained by a faint approxi-
42 A belief in Miracles
iktkobuo- mation to such a view, the Resurrection of our
Lord, including, as it does, the resurrection of
man, may be as natural as events like birth and
death, which are accepted as natural, not because
we can explain them in any way, but because
the range of our experience includes the obser-
vation of their constant recurrence.
25. So far then we have cleared the ground
for our inquiry. If we grant the two assumptions
which Christianity makes as being a religion for
man, there is nothing antecedently improbable in
the Apostolic Gospel of the Resurrection considered
as miraculous. The same principles which would
exclude as impossible a belief in such a miracle
as the Resurrection, would equally exclude a belief
in anything beyond ourselves and the range of
present physical observation. Thus the question
practically is not simply Is Christianity true? but
Is all hope, impulse, knowledge, life, absolutely
bounded by sense and the world of sense? Is the
present and the finite the definite limit (not only
of the mode but) of the object of human thought?
Is each individual personality bounded on both
sides 1 Is life as well as science of phenomena
only? Is the spirit as well as the understanding
confined by present laws of observation not only
in the embodiment of ideas but in intuition? Or
and the alternative. 43
can the soul reach forward to fuller forms of being, in 5Iq2 xjc "
not so much future as absolute? Can it, with a
consciousness of its divine destiny, look beyond the
limits of time? Can it rejoice in feeling what is
the glorious part which it has to play in the whole
economy of the universe, and regard as its proper
heritage a future appearance in the fulness of a
glorified humanity before the presence of God?
CHAPTER I.
THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY.
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CLEMEXS ALEX.
(hap. 1. 1. TT is the common object of all religion to
-*- establish or realize a definite relation be-
tween the worshipper and the Divine Being whom
he approaches. Christianity goes much further
and proposes to reveal the relation between man-
kind, or more fully between the world and God,
and to restore the original harmony of all crea-
John i. 29. tion. It addresses not the individual only, but
the race ; its effects are declared to extend not to
Epb. i. 10. man only, but to 'all things which are in heaven
FhiLiuio anc ^ wn * cn are on earth.' It is universal before it
Rom. viii. j g particular. Just as Aristotle taught that the
Rot. v. 13. State is prior to the Man, so Christianity claims
to address the World before it addresses the Indi-
vidual. To use two common phrases, it contains
a Philosophy of History, as well as a Philosophy
Life of the World. \&fip
of Salvation. It disregards nothing in the rich chap. t.
development of human life. It takes account
alike of the evil and of the good. It refers to final
principles — final, that is, for our present powers —
the progress which we can observe in societies and
nations, and the moral and spiritual education of
men,
2. For all creation is progressive. It is a
law as well in the moral as in the physical world
that nothing is lost. All that has been modifies
all that is and all that will be. The present
includes all the past and will itself be contained
in the future. Each physical change, each indi-
vidual will contributes something to the world
to come. The earth on which we live and the
civilization which fashions our conduct is the
result of immeasurable forces acting through vast
periods of time. There are crises in the his-
tory of nature and in the history of man, periods
of intense and violent action and again periods
of comparative repose and equilibrium, but still
the continuity of life is unbroken. Even when
the old order is violently overthrown the new
order is built in part out of its ruins and not only
upon them.
3. The conception of a life of the universe,
4G Life of the World.
chap. i. of a general law which unites and directs the
successive forms of all organized beings, is ne-
cessarily of modern growth. It could not be
formed till History had called Geology to her
aid, and men were familiarized to some extent
with the vast space covered by the records of
the ancient world. Even now the researches of
science are far too limited to do more than sug-
gest the idea and mark some salient points in its
realization. Yet it is impossible not to feel that
it falls in with our general notions of the working
of God from whatever source they may be derived ;
whether they lie in the original conception of a
Divine Being, or are suggested by what we observe
in the noblest forms of human action. There
is something soothing and elevating in the thought
of a scheme of Divine government reaching through
all time and space thus opened to our contempla-
tion. So far from obscuring the presence of the
Creator it enlarges and strengthens our faith in
His operation. It teaches trust and hope when
we are inclined to be dismayed at what we reckon
as immobility or waste in the moral world. The
sea- worn cliffs which are once again fashioned
before our eyes into records of a new order by
the same power through which they were first
built up, teach patience with a silent eloquence
which would be irresistible if we could enter into
Life of Mankind. 47
its force. Surely we can afford to wait when God chap, i.
works thus slowlv.
4. The belief in a common life of mankind is
of far older date. This is the result of intuition
and not of science. It was the teaching of the
prophet first and not of the philosopher. If it
was permitted to a later generation to see the
pledge of a personal immortality in a covenanted Matt. xxii.
relation which God granted to the patriarchs, it 3l ~~ 33 '
must have been equally clear at an earlier time
that all men who are ' the offspring of God ! were
in some degree under His government and work-
ing out His will. The exclusiveness of the Jews
was something wholly different from the exclu-
siveness of the Greeks or Romans. It was based
essentially on moral and not on political or social
differences. It was religious and not national.
The privileges of Judaism were offered to him
who accepted the responsibilities and claims of
Judaism. The Jew was taught to look forward
to the time when all the nations of the earth
should worship his God. The triumph towards
which he was to strive, was to win fellow-wor-
shippers and not to raise himself as a lord
over enslaved peoples. Hence the later pro-
phets were led to regard 'the kingdoms of the
'world' in their relation to 'the kingdom of God/
4S Connexion of Christianity
chap, l* of which the Jewish Church was the figure and
seed.
5. Something of the same notion lies in the
Eastern representation of the successive ages of
the world, which was borrowed by the earliest
Greek poets, and again adopted by the writers of
the so-called Sibylline books shortly before the
Christian era. But the vastness of the scale on
which this thought was moulded, deprived it of
all practical importance. When transferred to
life it expressed at most the contrast which we
find in the New Testament between 'this age'
and 'the age to come/ Its units, so to speak,
were periods, dispensations, as we call them, and
not nations. It expressed a far-reaching faith in
the general advance of ' the ages ' through distress
and disorder towards a glorious end, but it had no
connexion with the progress or development of
the ■ age ' itself in which we live.
6. The view which is thus opened to us of
the course of history throws a fresh light on the
position of Christianity. It is not an isolated
system, but the result of a long preparation.
According to the teaching of the Apostles, Christ
came when all things were ready, and the
measure of the appointed seasons was accom-
with the past. 49
pi i shed. Christianity cannot then be regarded cuw i
alone and isolated from its antecedents. It is
part of a whole which reaches back historically
from its starting-point on the day of Pentecost
for nearly two thousand years. It professed to
be itself the fulfilment and not the abolition of
that which went before : to reveal outwardly the
principle of a Divine Fatherhood by which all
the contradictions and disorders of life are made
capable of a final resolution ; and to possess
within it that universal truth which can trans-
figure without destroying the various character-
istics of men and nations. It is then possible
that what we feel to be difficulties in its his-
toric form are removed or lessened if we place
it in its due relation to the whole life of man-
kind ; and, on the other hand, the obvious fitness
with which it carries on and completes a long
series of former teachings will confirm with sin-
gular power its divine claims.
7. Again: though the birth of Christianity
was comparatively late in time, yet in fact # it
claims to have existed from the beginning as part
of the Divine Counsel. We have seen that we
are obliged to regard the purposes and acts of God
as following one another, though in themselves all
the results of creation simply are, without dis-
4
50 Connexion of Christianity
i -map. i. tinction of succession. But even thus the apostles
expressly caution us against supposing that the
mission of our Lord was in any way an after-
thought consequent upon creation. Without touch-
ing upon the abstract truth of the absence of tem-
poral limitations in the Divine Mind, they teach,
what is in this case the practical equivalent, that
Ki>h. i. 4 . 'before the foundation of the world' God had fore-
lPetl - 20 - ordained the coming of Christ. "We do not at
present demand more for this statement than a
recognition of its significance. At least it places
before us what the first exponents of Christianity
believed it to be. It was according to their in-
terpretation eternal in its essence, as well as uni-
versal in its application.
>
8. It follows necessarily from this view of
Christianity that it must have been intimately
connected with the divine discipline of the world
in former ages. As we cannot conceive of the
world as abandoned by God, and as the coming of
Christ is declared to be the complete expression of
]Jis love, Christianity must have gathered up and
ratified either implicitly or by a direct sanction
whatever men had truly hoped or learned of
Him in earlier times. And this is exactly what
our Lord and His apostles professed to do. They
came not to destroy but to fulfil: — to lay open
with previous History. 51
and enforce the spiritual meaning of the Law and chap. r.
the Prophets, in which the Jews 'thought that
1 they had eternal life;' and to declare to the Gen-
tiles the God whom they ' ignorantly worshipped.'
They appealed to all history and to the experience
of all men in support of the Gospel. Christ came,
so St Paul teaches, in the fulness of time, when
the due measure of the appointed seasons was ac-
complished, each of which was charged with the
realization of some part of the Divine Will. God
spoke at last to us in the person of a Son (so it Heb.i. 1,2.
is written) when He had spoken of old time to
our fathers in the prophets, revealing His Counsel
gradually (in many parts), as men were able to
bear it, and variously (in many ways), as they
could best enter into its purport. There have I
been attempts in all ages to separate Christianity
from Judaism and Hellenism; but to carry out
Mich an attempt is to construct a new religion,
and not to interpret Christianity. It was bound
up (so the Apostles said) with promises and bless-
ings by which the Jewish people had been mould-
ed through many centuries. It answered to wants
of which the Gentiles had become conscious
through long periods of noble effort and bitter
desolation. It came not at an arbitrary moment,
but at a crisis when ' all things were now ready/
If it was divine in its essence, it was no less
4—2
52 Christianity a
chap. i. human in the form of its embodiment, and in the
circumstances of its reception.
9. Christianity was connected at its origin
with a vast history — with the history of the whole
ancient world — and it is also a history itself. It
is a history so far as it is a revelation; and it is
a history also so far as it is the informing power
of modern society. The doctrines of Christianity
flow from alleged facts. The belief in the historic
event precedes the belief in the dogma. The Life
of Christ (if we may use this illustration) comes
first, and then the teaching of the Spirit. The
substance of our Creed lies in what Christ was
and what He did, and not in what He taught.
Or, to put the same idea in another way, His
teaching was in His Person and in His Life, and
not in His words only or chiefly. It is impossible
to resolve Christianity into sentiment or morality.
The sentiment which it involves springs out of a
historical union of man and God : the morality
which it enforces is based on the reality and sig-
nificance of Christ's Death and Eesurrection.
I
10. And yet more than this. From the time
of the first preaching of the Apostles, Christianity
has been a power in the world acting upon society
and acted upon by it. It conquered the Roman
History itself. 53
Empire, and remained unshaken by its fall. Tt chap. i.
sustained the shock of the Northern nations, and
in turn civilized them. It suffered persecution
and it wielded sovereignty. It preserved the trea-
B u res of ancient thought and turned them to new
uses. It inspired science, while it cherished
mysteries with which science could not deal. It
assumed the most varied forms and it moulded
the most discordant characters. And all this was
done and borne in virtue of its hisj^ric^founda-
tion. For its strength lay not in the zeal of a
hierarchy who were the depositaries of hidden
doctrines, but in the open proclamation of a
Divine Saviour. The Cross has remained in
every age the symbol and the monument of its
power.
11. These characteristics of Christianity by
which it is distinguished from every other religion,
even if they are considered only in their most
obvious and indisputable form, sufficiently prove
that its origin was an event wholly unique and
unparalleled in the history of the world. There
have been conquerors who in the course of a life-
time have overrun half the world and left lasting
memorials of their progress in cities and king-
doms founded and overthrown. There have been
nionarchs who have by their individual genius
54* Christianity centres in the
chap. i. consolidated vast empires and inspired them with
a new life. There have been teachers who through
a small circle of devoted hearers have rapidly-
changed the modes of thought of a whole genera-
tion. There have been religious reformers who
by force or eloquence have modified or recon-
structed the belief of nations. There have been
devotees whose lives of superhuman endurance
have won for them from posterity a share of divine
honour. There have been heroes cut off by a
sudden and mysterious fate, for whose return their
loyal and oppressed countrymen have looked with
untiring patience as the glorious and certain sign
of dawning freedom. There have been founders
of new creeds who have furnished to later gene-
rations in the image of their work the ideal
of supreme good. But in all the noble line of
the mighty and the wise and the good, in the
great army of kings and prophets and saints and
martyrs, there is not one who has ever claimed
for himself or received from his followers the title
of having in any way wrought out salvation for
men by the virtue of his life and death, as being
in themselves, and not only by the moral effect of
their example, a spring of divine blessings. It
is of comparatively little moment how and by
whom the Christian religion was first propagated,
wonderful and exceptional as that may seem.
doctrine of the Person of Christ. 55
The one absolute mark by which its establishment chap. i.
is distinguished from that of all other systems lies
in its very essence. The Gospel differs from every
message delivered as from God to men, in that its
substance was contained in what befel a Teacher
to Whom the Apostles had listened, in what He
did and suffered. Christ was Himself the Word
and the Truth which He announced.
12. For us Christianity is so naturally iden* /_
tified with abstract statements of doctrine and
ecclesiastical arrangements, that we are in danger
of losing sight of the essentially personal basis on
which it rests. It requires an effort to realize
with any distinctness the sublime originality of a
faith not in the might and goodness and love of a
Prophet, but in the inherent power and virtue of
the Person and Death of a Saviour. The concep-
tion of such a faith was equally novel and un-
equivocal in the apostolic age. The relation of
the Lord to men, viewed simply historically, was
set forth as something wholly singular and mar-
vellous. Within thirty years after the death of
Christ, if we adopt the most extreme views of
chronologers, He was habitually mentioned to-
gether with the Father as the source of spiritual
grace. We need only place any other name for
a moment in the same position, if our soul does
56 The origin of Christianity unique,
chap. i. not revolt from the thought, to feel what must
have been the intuitive consciousness of a divine
presence which enabled the Apostles to adopt such
a formula and to consecrate it for universal use.
And the effort is comparatively easy for us, which
for them (till it was hallowed by some unquestion-
able sanction of God) must have been blasphe-
/ mous. We are familiarized in theory with the
idea of God dwelling as man with men, but a Jew
had no such belief to soften the awful grandeur
of the truth which he acknowledged.
13. Exactly in proportion as we apprehend
the exceptional (but not unnatural) character of
Christianity, we shall be better able to judge of
all the phenomena by which (as we believe) it
was attended. If it was — and this cannot be
denied — wholly original in its fundamental idea,
if it effected a revolution in the popular concep-
tion of the relation of man to God, if it came to a
world prepared to receive but not to create it, if
it was bound up with a long anterior history, and
has been in turn the life of modern nations, then
we may expect to find that the circumstances
which attended its origin were themselves also
exceptional but not unnatural. The reality of the
Resurrection is an adequate explanation of the
significance which was attached to the Death of
and so the circumstances of its origin. 57
3t. It seems impossible to discover anything cuap. i.
else which can be.
14. Nothing, indeed, can be more unjust than
the common mode of discussing the miracles of
the first age. Instead of taking them in connexion
with a crisis in the religious history of the world,
disputants refer them to the standard of a period
of settled progress. The epoch at which they are
said to have been wrought was confessedly crea-
tive in thought, and that in a sense in which no
other age ever has been, and there seems a posi-
tive fitness in the special manifestation of God in
the material as in the spiritual world. The cen-
tral idea of the time which, dimly apprehended at
Rome and Alexandria, found its complete ex-
pression in the teaching of the Apostles, was the
union of earth and heaven, the transfiguration of
our whole earthly nature; and the history of
ancient speculation seems to shew that nothing
less than some outward pledge and sign of its
truth could have led to the bold enunciation of
this dogma as an article of popular belief. If, as
we have seen, miracles are not in themselves
either unnatural or incredible, in this case there is
even an antecedent presumption for their reality.
15. It has been said, and said rightly, though -'
58 Historic tests of Miracles.
chap. i. the statement has been strangely misunderstood,
that science can take no cognizance of miracles.
Science deals simply with the ordinary working of
God, with what experience shews to be for us
laws of nature. It represents the power according
to its general action and then assumes it to be
. immutable. It cannot from its very nature deal
with exceptions which are so rare as not to be
capable of being grouped according to our present
knowledge. But while miracles do not belong to
Science, they belong to History; and if they are
not to be rejected without examination, the
simple question in each case when they are al-
leged is What is the evidence in their favour i Is
there anything in the character or work of the
time which leads us to expect that God should
reveal Himself outwardly as He does inwardly?
Is there anything which thus makes miracles in
some degree natural events according to the
larger sense of the word ? And then Is the special
evidence for the miraculous fact as clear as we
should be content to act on in ordinary cases ?
This is all which we can require; for the neces-
sary presumption against a miracle, as an excep-
tional occurrence, is removed by an affirmative
answer to the former question; and religion is
essentially a practical matter.
The Apostolic Age. 59
16. The position which the apostolic age occu- chap. i.
3 with regard to the development of ancient
life has often been investigated. Yet even thus
there are many points in the historic bearing of
Christianity which are commonly neglected. It
is true that tue can see how the lines of Jewish
and Gentile progress converge towards it. It 18
true that we can see how it satisfies instincts which
found expression more or less vague in earlier )
times. It is true that the Gospel was preached
first at an epoch when the organization of society
more favourable to its spread than at any
other. But this is not all; nor indeed are these
essentially the most important features of the
preparation by which the Advent was preceded.
If this were a complete statement of the case it
might be said that Christianity was a natural pro-
duct of the concurrence of Rome and Greece and
Palestine : that the anticipations of men after
periods of eager expectation fashioned for them-
selves an imaginary fulfilment : that the circum-
stances of the age offer an explanation of the suc-
cess of a mere creation of enthusiasm. A full
view of the character of the preparation for the
Gospel excludes such interpretations of its signifi-
cance. There was a tendency towards the central
truth of Christianity, but there was no tendency
to produce it. Religious speculations had branched
60 The Apostolic Age.
chap, i. out in so many ways that nothing short of the
coming of Christ could have harmonized the vari-
ous results to which they led ; but till He came
the results were simply conflicting and irrecon-
cileable, and even after He came the solution
which He brought to the riddles of earlier life
was long misunderstood. Philosophers and mora-
/ lists had variously discussed the destiny of man
\ and the grounds of right and duty and knowledge,
/ but the debates had ended practically in exhaus-
tion and despair. The records of their specula-
tions shew at once their power and their weak-
ness : they reveal what man aspires to know and
confess his inability to gain the knowledge for
himself. The combination of various nationalities
I in the Roman Empire necessarily made broader
views of the union of men possible ; but at the
same time the triumph of imperialism tended to
suppress every independent power. The material
advantages which it offered for free intercourse
were more .than counterbalanced by the depressing-
influence of its overwhelming might. The time
was marked by the simultaneous existence of
countless adverse powers then first forced into
contact, but Christianity bears no trace of any
temporal or local character. It came as some-
thing wholly new to a world whose course was
already run. It belonged to no time and to no
Characteristics of Jewish History. Gl
place. It was a beginning even more than it was chap i
an end. And as there are periods in the indivi-
dual life when the exceptional becomes natural,
it may be so with that vast and complex pro-
gress of humanity, which we are forced equally
by instinct and experience to regard under the
form of a common life.
17. The very conception of the history of
humanity as a life, which is now an axiom with
the conflicting schools, was due (as we have
already seen) in the first instance to the Jews.
In spite of the exclusiveness of their natural re-
ligion they faithfully maintained the belief in a
real unity of the human race, out of which the
idea of a common life of humanity springs. The
Romans had partially witnessed to the truth when
they acknowledged the inherent supremacy of
Greece in art : the Stoics had taught it as part of
their stern theory of the world ; but the Jews held
it, however imperfectly, as lying at the very foun-
dation of their religion. The promise to which
they looked for the pledge of their divine election
extended at the same time a heavenly blessing to
all nations. The history of Israel was a continual
advance towards the realization of this fellowship
of nations. Each crisis left the chosen people
nearer to that kingdom of heaven of which they
62 Jewish Character
chap. i. were the sign and the prophets. And the typical
prophet of the Captivity looking upon the great
powers of the world portrays them at once in
Dan.ii.vii. their organic unity, and in the separate complete-
ness of their distinctive energies. In this respect
it is of no consequence how we interpret the
visions of Daniel, or to what date we assign the
book which bears his name. The idea of a life of
mankind, of a law binding together different mo-
narchies and states is there; and from the time
when the book became current this idea has been
part of the heritage of men. The book of Daniel
is (on its human side) the first philosophy of
history, even as the book of Genesis is the pledge
that such a philosophy is possible.
18. The long continuance and varied for-
tunes of the Jewish nation enabled it to be be-
yond any other nation the messenger of unity and
progress. And more than this, the purely intel-
lectual defects with which the Semitic character
is charged fitted the people to perform this their
appointed work. The forms of literature which
our western training leads us to regard as the
highest, the Epic and the Drama, found no place
( among the Jews. The free culture of art among
them was forbidden. Or, in other words, they
were led to dwell upon the indeterminate and
and History. 63
infinite and not upon the fixed and limited in the chap, l
world. For them all separate histories and lives
and embodiments of beauty were incomplete.
They were unwilling and unable to see every-
where one formula reproducing itself. The whole
history of mankind was for them an Epic, a
dj — the one Epic, the one Tragedy, of
which the fortunes of generations or families or
men were but scattered fragments. They looked
upon history as a life directed by will, and not as
catastrophes ruled by destiny or phenomena pro-
duced by law.
19. Thus it is that the work of the Jews
is written on their character. But it is yet more
legibly written in their history. It is difficult to
say whether their national integrity or their
power of assimilation is more surprising. One
catastrophe after another overwhelmed them and
they rise the same yet nobler from the fire in
which they were purified. The old spirit re-
mained, but it clothed itself in a new form. The
conqueror lived in the conquered. The people
fell beneath each of the great forms of ancient
civilization and received from each the choicest
treasures which it could bestow.
20. Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome — the
64? The Discipline
chap. i. great powers of the East and West — contributed
to discipline the mind and further the work of
the Jews. The hopes of the people were kindled
by times of triumph and chastened by times of
captivity. A theocracy, a monarchy, a hierarchy,
brought out in succession various sides of their
complex character and gave to it solidity and
completeness. Meanwhile the spiritual teaching
of the nation was carried on from stage to stage,
so that while nothing was lost which could serve
for the training of the simplest, something was
ever added which might elevate the faith of those
wlio saw deepest into the divine truth. When
the Law, fixed and external, failed to satisfy all
the wants which were called out by the manifold
growth of a high social civilization, the prophets
laid open its inner meaning and drew the outlines
of a spiritual kingdom. This new creative period
itself came to a close, and the learned diligence
of priests and scribes then framed out of the
materials which it provided a system which gave
definiteness and consistency to the noblest belief
of the past throughout a scattered and tributary
people.
21. We are often reminded that the fore-
father of the Jews was an Arab Sheikh. Abra-
ham, it is true, was a Sheikh, but he was much
°f Egypt- W
more. His true representative was not the Be- chap. i.
d on in Esau, but Jacob, in whom lay the promise
of a nation. The fulfilment of this promise was
first prepared in Egypt. Without entering in
detail into the various influences of Egypt upon
the Jews, we may notice this the greatest of
all: the descendants of Jacob were there bound
together into one body by prosperity alike and
by suffering. Every power which goes to con-
solidate and unite a people was brought to bear
upon them. The recollection of a noble descent,
the consciousness of a high destiny, the presence
of a hostile nation, common occupations, practical
isolation in life and worship, combined to create
and keep alive a feeling of fellowship and mutual
dependence among the growing host. The sense
of unity and nationality may have been degraded,
though it could not be destroyed, by the con-
ditions of ancient slavery. In this aspect the
circumstances of the Exodus are seen in their
true light. The voice of the God of their fathers
quickened again the true life of the children of
Abraham; and the faith which was called out
by the sight of terrible judgments on their ene-
mies, was deepened with awful intensity by a
lonely sojourn in the wilderness in the very pre-
sence of the Lord their Saviour.
66 The discipline of Sinai:
ohap. i. 22. The Jews left Egypt a host of fugitives:
they entered the promised land a conquering
army. But an entire lifetime lay between the
two events. A new generation grew up in the
wilderness to whom the Lord revealed Himself
as King. Henceforth the people never wholly
forgot their divine allegiance. They were the
people of the Lord even when they most fatally
misinterpreted the meaning of their title. The
majesty of Sinai rests on the whole of their later
history. The sense of a personal relation of each
I Jew to his God gave strength to the nation
/ and dignity to the citizen. Moses made use,
we must believe, of 'the wisdom of the Egyp-
* tians/ of their skill in science, in art, in organi-
zation, even in sacred symbolism; but the con-
****9 / stitution which he frameo^was infinitely nobler
than that of Egypt. It was based on the word
sJL^L 5 / ' of God addressed to all : it was free from the
v » j degradation of caste : it included the possibility
of progress. Egypt made the body of the nation,
so to speak ; Sinai infused into it its spirit.
Egypt united the race : Sinai inspired each man
with the consciousness of his own direct covenant
with the Lord who had redeemed His people.
f Each individual life, in all its parts, no less than
/ the life of the nation, was consecrated to God.
of the period of the Judges. 67
To realize the kingdom of heaven — the perfect chap. r.
Sovereignty of the Lord among men — was from
this time the acknowledged mission of the Jew.
23. After the conquests of Joshua and the
first settlement of the tribes followed times of
disruption and disaster. The nation was not yet
disciplined sufficiently by common trials to trust
in an unseen Power. Hitherto heroic leaders
had represented to them the personality of the
Theocracy, and momentous crises had called out
their utmost energy. But all was changed when
they once entered on their inheritance. In times
of distress they still remembered that God was
their king; but they forgot Him in times of peace.
The lessons of the wilderness were not at once
applicable to the course of common life. The
people acknowledged a spiritual deliverer, but
they were not ripe for a spiritual sovereignty.
This was indeed the end of their hopes, but the
time was not yet. To lead them to look on-
ward, to reveal the inherent weakness of domi-
nion based on external might, even though the
might was from God, to prepare the way for a
more gradual training, based upon the instinctive
feelings of the nation — in respect of this progres-
sive development the type of all nations — was,
as it appears, the use of the troubled period of
5—2
68 The discipline of the Kingdom:
chap. i. the Judges. The free uncentralized government,
and the moveable Tabernacle, shewed by no un-
certain symbols the nature of the kingdom which
God designed for His people : arbitrary authority
and unhallowed sanctuaries shewed that they
were not yet prepared to submit to its sway. The
idea of the Theocracy, if the phrase may be al-
lowed, was presented at the outset of the national
life ; and experience proved that it could only be
realized by a long season of discipline.
24. Thus the establishment of the kingdom
was in the truest sense a defection from God, and
yet, humanly speaking, it was a necessary de-
fection. An earthly king fell infinitely short of
the type of divine government represented by
Moses, or Joshua, or Samuel ; but he was at once
a definite centre and a clear sign of something
greater than himself. If he presented the spiritual
idea in a fixed and limited form, he also gave dis-
tinctness to the conception of the present moral
sovereignty of God, and furnished imagery under
which the prophets could construct a more glorious
picture of the future.
C
25. The establishment of the kingdom was
necessarily connected with the building of the
Temple. And the Temple occupied the same
of the Captivity. 69
place with regard to the Tabernacle as the mon- CITAP - L
archy with regard to the Theocracy. Both were
earthly and partial, though at the time necessary,
representatives of something greater and more
spiritual. In both we see the attempt to give a
limited and permanent shape to that which was,
in its original revelation, divine in essence and
transitory in its embodiment. But even as God
was pleased to use the monarchy for the exhibition
of higher truth, so also He used the Temple ; and
we cannot see now how else the lessons conveyed
through it to the Jews and to us could otherwise
have been realized.
26. The kingdom and the Temple were de-
stroyed when they had fixed indelibly upon the
heart of the nation the idea of the unity of the
sovereignty and worship of God which they sym- .
bolized. The Captivity then spiritualized by the
teaching of facts, as the prophets by word of
mouth, the lessons which had been taught in a
material form. The people came up from Egypt
a united nation: they returned from Babylon a
small colony to form the centre of a religious
commonwealth. A great revolution had been
wrought in their national hopes, in their social
organization, in their spiritual creed. They were
no longer outwardly bound together by civil ties.
70 The Discipline
i. Subject to different monarchs, they even served
in adverse armies. Their hereditary sovereignty
was lost. But political separation did not de-
stroy true fellowship. The unity of a church suc-
ceeded to the unity of a nation ; and the scattered
members of the religious society looked forward
in common to the eternal kingdom of a future
Son of David. At the same time the service of
the synagogues grew up around that of the
S Temple. A hierarchy whose power was derived
from education and not from descent, grew up,
and more than rivalled the power of the priests.
The labour of these scribes witnessed to the ces-
sation of prophecy, and jealously guarded the
heritage which it had left. As a necessary conse-
quence religion assumed a more distinctly per-
sonal character. The place of prayer and the
. skilled teacher brought it close to the home of
each Jew. Exile had taught men, removed from
their holy place, the full blessing of spiritual com-
munion with God. In the strength of this faith
they were allowed to gaze upon the conflicts of
good and evil in a higher world; and the enemy
of God was seen at length in his personal power.
27. Thus Persia wrought out its work upon
the Jews, and when the discipline was ended the
people were prepared to meet the new influences
of the Dispersion. 71
of Greece. The most abiding monument of the <WAF i.
triumphs of Alexander was the city which he
chose to bear his name in the border land of
the East and West ; and the spirit of Alexandria
nowhere found a truer expression than in the
Jewish colony which from the first formed an
important element in its population. The Alex-
andrine Jews penetrated deeply into the specula-
tions of Greek philosophy, and their national faith
gained breadth without losing its individuality.
Nor was the influence of Greece upon Judaism,
which was strong at Alexandria, confined to that
centre. It was spread from the first more or less
throughout Asia Minor and Syria. The policy
of conquerors and the instinct of commerce scat-
tered the Jews over the whole civilized world.
The dispersion, which was begun on the return
from Babylon, was extended. Judaism adopted a
new language for its ancient doctrines. A people
who had once been bound by the strictest ritual-
ism within the narrow limits of one land were
found throughout all nations witnessing to the
spiritual truths which they had inherited and
preparing the way for a universal faith. The
Hellenists were thus • at once missionaries and
prophets. They proclaimed a purer creed to the
heathen, who gathered round the synagogue with-
out formally taking upon themselves the cove-
72 The Growth of the
ciiai\ i. nant of Israel; and they lifted the thoughts of
their countrymen to the prospect of a spiritual
law limited by no requirements of season or place.
28. One special feature of the growth of Hel-
lenism among the Jews demands a passing notice.
The spirit of independent thought led to the
foundation of sects. The conflicting tendencies
which coexist everywhere in religious societies
found separate embodiments. Freedom, ritual-
ism and asceticism found a characteristic expres-
sion in Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. The
whole breadth and depth of the national faith, so
to speak, was tested. Nor was a fiery trial want-
ing when the elements of truth and error were in
danger of being fatally confounded. The Macca-
bsean conflict restored the Law to its true supre-
macy while it left untouched all that was nobler
in the lessons of Greek art and culture. A final
struggle fixed the limits of the teaching of the
ancient prophets, and founded the stability of the
nation on the victorious profession of its completed
faith.
29. Meanwhile through these vicissitudes of
disaster and triumph one faith grew in many
fashions and in many parts. The Jews never lost
the sense of the blessing which was to come
doctrine of Messiah 73
through them to all the nations. Up to the chap. i.
giving of the Law no personal trait of the pro-
mised Redeemer is found. Hope was centered in a
narrower circle at each great crisis in the spiritual
history of mankind, in a race, in a nation, in a
tribe. For the first time the work of Moses fur-
nished occasion to a special portraiture of Mes-
siah's office. He was to be the mediator of a new
Law. To establish an abiding covenant between
God and man was declared to be the substance of
his work. The Law alone was unable to train
bhe Jews to their appointed work. A kingdom
was established, and with it a new conception of
siah was added The king who gave unity
and security to the nation was but a type of
the Son of David whose kingdom should extend
in eternal blessings over all the world. The
earthly sovereignty of the line of David fell. The
chosen people passed into captivity, and under the
pressure of national disaster learnt from the teach-
ing of prophets to see in their promised Messiah
' the Son of Man/ who should sympathize with
the sufferings of those whom He came to save as
well as to govern. Thus the central belief, in
virtue of which Judaism lived, was providentially
shaped in the progress of the history of the chosen
people. Nothing was lost as the conception of
the Redeemer was gradually completed. Each
7'J? The doctrine of Messiah :
chap. i. period added something which belongs essentially
to the fulness of the conception. And so at last
the Lawgiver, the King, the Prophet, the Priest,
the Man, are all included in the Christ whom
the Gospels present to us.
30. Two characteristic doctrines which be-
longed in their completest forms respectively to
Palestine and Alexandria summed up this na-
tional belief at the time of the Lord's Coming.
The expectation of a Messiah ' who should redeem
1 Israel/ and the belief in a Divine Word by whom
God could reveal Himself to mankind at large.
The first hope found expression in a series of
so-called apocryphal writings which generally
agree in describing a period of intense suf-
fering, followed by the advent of a triumphant
Conqueror, who should bring beneath his sceptre
and the Law all the nations of the earth. The
process of the consummation is variously pictured
according to the position in which the several
writers stood. At one time an era of blessing, at
another an era of vengeance fills the imagination
of the seer. But the earth is the scene of both.
) The purification of the soul through suffering, the
end of the great tragedy of human life, finds no
fitting place in the schemes of outward aggran-
dizement. ' The master of Israel' was startled at
of the Word. 75
the seeming paradox of a second birth. In pro- chat, i
portion as the teaching of the prophets was made
more definite, its traits were exaggerated and
externalized. But in spite of error and prejudice
the hope of the Palestinian Jew was in a Person,
a Saviour. The deliverance for which he con-
fidently looked was to be wrought out among
men. It was to be historical in its foundation
and not moral only or intellectual. He through
whom it should be accomplished was recognized
as ' the Son of God,' but none the less its* end was
to be the restoration of the kingdom.
31. At the same time when this external
conception of Messiah was gaining definiteness
ami strength, wider views of the general action
of God were gradually opened. Religious think-
ers, especially in Egypt, pondered on the way in
which we may conceive an Infinite Being in con-
nexion with the finite. The result was a wide-
spread doctrine of a Divine Word through whom
God was supposed to be revealed in action and in
utterance. In Palestine this Word was regarded
chiefly as the medium of outward communica-
tion, like the angel of the Pentateuch: at Alex-
andria as the power in virtue of which a fellow-
ship between God and man is rendered possible.
'The one doctrine tended towards the recogni-
7G The doctrine of the Word,
chap. i. tion of a divine Person subordinate to God: the
other to the recognition of a twofold personality
/ in the divine nature/ In Greek writers, like Philo,
the conception of the Word was further enlarged by
the ambiguity of the term Logos, which was used
to express it. As this might be taken for ' Word '
or 'Reason/ so the corresponding idea fluctuated
between the objective manifestation of the Divine
will and the subjective correlative, whether in the
mind of God in which the primal thought lay, or
in the mind of man by which he apprehends the
revelation. Each varying notion has obvious
points of connexion with Christian dogma, and
just as the Jewish belief in Messiah preserved
the belief in a historic Saviour, so the Jewish
belief in the Word prepared the way for a larger
view of a revelation of God in man and through
32. The two complementary conceptions of a
Saviour manifested on earth and of an eternal om-
nipresent Word thus existed side by side, but they
were absolutely unconnected. ' Philo may have
conceived of the Word as acting through Messiah,
but not as one with Him. The lines of thought
which pointed to the action of a second Person in
the Godhead, and to the victories of some future
conqueror, was not even parallel but divergent/
The preparation of the Gentile world. 77
It was reserved for St John to unite the antithetic chap ;.
truths in one divine phrase, which could not have
entered into the mind of Philo. ' The Word was J° hn *•
* God,... and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
1 among us/
33. But the preparation of Judaism was not
the only preparation for Christianity. In another
sense the Gentile world were making all things
ready for the advent. The vast monarchies of
the East, the intellectual culture of Greece, the
civil organization of Rome, each fitted men in
some peculiar way for the reception of the message
of the Gospel. The spirit of the East made itself
felt directly through the Jewish nation while
prophets yet spoke to interpret its lessons. The
teaching of Greece was reflected more or less
clearly in the common version of the Sacred
Books and in the speculations of an influential
school of Jewish teachers, both in Palestine and
in the Dispersion. The material unity and order
of the Roman Empire prepared the way for the
spread of a new Faith. But it is not our purpose
now to consider the relative effects of Greece or
Rome on Judaism or Christianity, but rather to
estimate generally what ancient life in its noblest
forms was in itself as a step in the progress of
humanity.
78 The development
chap. i. 34. Something, indeed, has been said already
of the direct influence of Greece upon Jewish de-
velopement. But the independent progress of
classical thought and life had in itself, though
indirectly, a more important bearing on the con-
summation of the crisis of human life at the time
when Christ came. In a word, it may be said
that the history of the ancient world is generally
the history of the gradual separation of man from
God, so far as the original relation was the ground-
work of faith and personal devotion. The idea of
Imperialism is the human antithesis to the Ho-
meric sovereignty of Zeus. It would be easy to
trace out the necessary progress of this elimination
of the heavenly, externally religious, element from
Gentile life in society, literature, and thought.
The instinct from which this element derived its
origin and strength could not bear a rigid analy-
sis, nor meet the manifold difficulties of a com-
plex polity. Step by step the patriarchal com-
munities, in which the ruler and the priest were
one, passed into the great republics, where a so-
lemn ceremonial witnessed to a feeling of reli-
gion, powerful only as an instrument to rule the
masses. A single century, but that a century
which ranks in the richness and variety of its
mental results only after the first and sixteenth,
saw the passage from the pious theocratic history
of Greek life. 79
of Herodotus to the self-reliant, human analysis chap. i.
of national fortunes in Thucydides, from the aw-
ful questionings on fate and foreknowledge, and
future punishment in ^Eschylus, which sound like
echoes of a Hebrew prophet, to the self-complacent
intellectualism of Euripides, from the rude choric
song, m which still lingered some sense of the
personal bounty of a God of gladness, to the con-
ventional portraiture of an artificial life in the
comedies of Menander. The advance of philoso-
phy was scarcely less rapid. The discussions on
being, which occupied the earliest thinkers, passed
into discussions on knowing. Aristotle sums up
tlio results of all who had gone before him with
stern impartiality, and a school of scepticism fol-
lowed. Thenceforth philosophy was content to
treat of duty and to abdicate the higher preroga-
tives which it had once claimed.
35. The growth of the Roman Empire is the
noblest spectacle of the natural triumph of human
power, as it was based upon the surest of human
affections. But like Greek philosophy the Roman
constitution contained essentially in itself the
seeds of its own ruin. The conception of the
family bound together by a common worship on
which the state was built was unequal to meet
the difficulties of enlarged dominion. First arose
80 The development
chap. i. the divisions in the capital itself when the pater-
nal authority of those who had been once fathers
in act as well as in name was unable to satisfy the
wants of the multitude who had placed themselves
under their protection. Next the policy of iso-
lation and civil independence, by which the early
republic had sought to keep in contented loyalty
her subject states, was inapplicable to the wider
dominion of later times. The idea of the family
and with it that of religion was lost; and when
Rome had conquered the world, it was felt on
every side that one irresponsible will could alone
wield the resources of the state. The soul was
gone when the body had reached its full develop-
ment. Yet even thus the influence of Rome upon
Christianity was not less than that of Greece. If
the speculations of Greek thinkers had raised
problems and fashioned a language which could
aid Christian teachers in unfolding the doctrine of
the Divine Nature, the determinations of Roman
jurists were equally powerful in preparing for the
exhibition of the relation of man to God, whicli
was the office of the Latin Church. But this work
was still future and unperceived. For the pre-
sent even the splendours of the reign of Augustus
were a sign of failure. Greek speculation had
ended in scepticism. The constitutional liberty
of Rome had issued in Imperialism. The pro-
of Roman life. 81
mise which the Jew had inherited from his fathers chap. i.
alone awaited for an accomplishment, which each
change seemed to bring nearer.
36. Thus the fulness and the exhaustion of
hope met at the epoch of Chrises coming. The
hope of an external deliverance which had been
gradually moulded through a long history was
waiting its fulfilment. The hope which man had
formed of working out his own way to truth and
freedom was wellnigh quenched. Old forms of
belief, old modes of government, were passing
away. It was felt that the world's great age was
even then to begin anew. Carried away by this
belief, Romans saw in the rise of Imperialism the
promise of a Golden Age. But the imagery of
the Augustan poet, who described the advent of
this glorious time, was borrowed from the East,
and it was to the East that many still looked for
the great Conqueror. So firm and so widespread
was this expectation that nearly seventy years
afterwards Vespasian was thought to have ful-
filled the prophecy by passing from Syria to the
throne of the Caesars. It is needless however to
dwell upon this instinctive homage of the age to
the Lord whom it knew not. It may have been
a mere echo of Jewish hopes, or one of those
intuitive interpretations of a great crisis which
6
82 Revealed Religion
chap. i. seem to rise simultaneously in the hearts of na-
tions. So much at least is clear to us now that
the Coming of Christ coincided with the beginning
of a new life in mankind, with a new development
of history which is not yet completed ; and, yet
more than this, that the principles of this life are
found in their simplest form in the Gospels.
37. Judaism had existed in the face of every
form of antagonistic religion, but it had not sub-
dued them. It had the power of life, but not the
power of conquest. The life of Christianity lay
in progress. It was essentially aggressive and es-
sentially human. Christ was the Son of Man as
well as the Son of David. And thus through the
Apostles first all the treasures of the East were
brought to the western nations in a form which
they could appreciate and accept. The strength
of modern civilization lies in the combination of
faith and reason — to use the shortest phrase —
which was the issue of their message. The power
of their Gospel was felt far beyond the range of
its acknowledged influence. The old philosophies
were quickened with a new life. Christianity had
revealed the seat of their weakness, and enthusi-
astic teachers endeavoured to supply what was
wanting in them. Classical paganism itself was
made to assume a new dress, and the bitterest
progressive. 83
enemy of the faith acknowledged its inherent ciiap. i.
power by a vain endeavour to transfer its spirit
to the polytheistic creed.
38. It has been said that while science is
progressive religion is stationary. The modes of
advance in the two are certainly not the same,
but the advance in science is not more real than
the advance in religion. The advance in religion
is not measured by an addition to a former state,
which can be regarded in its fulness separately,
but by a change : it is represented not by a com-
mon difference but by a common ratio. Viewed in
this light, we can trace on a great scale the triple
division of post-Christian history as marked by
the successive victories of the Faith. The fact
of the Resurrection is its starting point, the real-
ization of the Resurrection is its goal. The ful-
ness of the Truth is once shewn to men, as in
old times the awful splendours of the Theocracy,
and then they are charged to work out in the
slow struggles of life the ideal which they have
been permitted to contemplate. Thus it is that
we can look without doubt or misgiving upon
the imperfections of the sub-apostolic Church or
the corruptions of the middle ages or the excesses
of the Reformation. Even through these the
divine work went forward. The power of the
6—2
84 Religion progressive.
chap. i. Resurrection was ever carried over a wider field.
At first Christianity moved in the family, hallow-
ing every simplest relation of life. This was the
work of the primitive Church. Next it extended
its sway to the nation and the community, claim-
ing to be heard in the assemblies of princes and
in the halls of counsellors. This was the work of
the mediaeval Church. Now it has a still wider
mission, to assert the common rights and fellow-
ship of men, to rise from the family and the nation
to humanity itself. To accomplish this is the
charge which is entrusted to the Church of the
Present ; and no vision of the purity or grandeur
of earlier times should blind us to the supreme
majesty of the part which is assigned to us in
the economy of faith.
39. It is at once obvious that these great
divisions of Christian history, or even more truly
speaking of the post- Christian world, answer in a
remarkable degree to the periods of Jewish his-
tory which have been already marked out. The
law of progress is the same in both. But if his-
tory repeats itself, it is, at least in this case, on
an ampler field and with more momentous issues.
The discipline of a nation is replaced by the dis-
cipline of a world; and (as we believe) an Advent
of Triumph answers to an Advent of Redemp-
The Greek Period: Orthodox. 85
tion. Without following out this parallel further, chap. I
though it seems to include many unexpected har-
monies in things old and new, we must yet notice
a progress in Christianity itself corresponding
with this progress in its work. The three words
which by common consent characterize the great
representative churches of the different periods
describe the successive stages into which it
may be divided, Orthodoxy, Catholicity, Evangeli-
calism.
40. At first the Christian Faith was simply
historic. As long as its work was confined in the
narrow limits of the family or the small commu-
nities scattered throughout the Empire, consider-
able latitude in interpreting the fundamental
facts on which it rested was natural or even ne-
cessary. The principles of Truth were held firm,
but no deductions from them were authorized.
The rapid spread of Christianity through every
rank made this state of things impossible for any
great length of time. Philosophers became Apo-
logists and they reasoned in turn upon the truths
which they defended. Yet even thus heresy was
long active in every direction laying down false
conclusions before the Church assumed the peril-
ous function of defining the Truth. But the
work was done by those who by natural gifts
8G The Greek Period,
chap. i. and intellectual training were best fitted for its
accomplishment. It was the glory of the Greek
Church to win the title of Orthodox. But the
work of the Orthodox Church though necessary
was full of danger. There is a strange fascination
in reasoning on mysteries. As the argument pro-
ceeds men are unwilling to limit their conclu-
sions, and they end too often by measuring Being
by our conceptions of it. But yet more than
this : Doctrine itself is external to us. There is
no right doctrine which ought not to affect con-
duct, but as doctrine it has no necessary effect
on life: no conquering or transforming power.
The Orthodox Church is the least inclined of all
churches to missionary work. Orthodoxy as such
is the translation of facts into a dialectic form;
but the life remains in the facts. Unhappily the
Greek Church from the time when its great mis-
sion was fulfilled was united with Imperialism.
Its potential dangers were thus realized, and
Mohammedanism conquered the East. It has
been said that the Byzantine Empire died of
Christianity: it would be more just to say that
the Byzantine Empire sought to imperialize
Christianity and perished in the attempt, for
Greek Christianity was strong enough only to
rescue itself and not the State from the ruins of
the judgment which followed.
The Soman Period: Catholic. 87
41. But meanwhile a greater Church had chap, l
risen. When Constantine transferred the dignity
of Empire to his new capital he was unable to
bear away to Byzantium the ancient glory and
name of Rome. The majesty which had grown
round the City during a thousand years remained
undisturbed as the prize of the power which
should prove worthy to claim it. And the Roman
Church was alone able to bear the weight of
sovereignty, for she alone had life amidst the
shadows which lingered round the ancient seats
of honour. From the first, if we can interpret
rightly its fragmentary records, the Roman Church
had adopted something of the policy of the
State. It had regarded ecclesiastical problems
from the point of view of society. Its character-
istic was breadth rather than precision. In pro-
portion as it embodied more and more openly
the style and power of the Caesars Catholicity
became more conspicuously its ruling principle.
Its aim was to incorporate rather than to assi-
milate the people who were brought under its
control. The Republic received the gods of con-
quered nations within its Pantheon, and the
Church accepted under new titles whatever po-
pular belief or superstitions could be clothed in
a Christian dress. From its position and from its
inherent character the Roman Church became a
88 The Roman Period.
chap, l sovereign power. At Constantinople the attempt
was made to imperialize the Church: at Rome
the Church became an Empire. The transforma-
tion was subservient if not essential to the fulfil-
ment of its work. By the glory of its name and
the strength of its organization it conquered the
northern tribes and preserved the treasures of
ancient civilization for a nobler use. Its function
with regard to discipline was as needful as that
of the Greek Church with regard to Truth. But
at the same time the traditional policy which
was its strength prepared the way for its corrup-
tion. When the Church became nobler outwardly
it engrossed more completely the devotion of its
members, and conversely it became more de-
pendent on popular opinion. At last the Chris-
tian was in danger of losing his sense of a per-
sonal connexion with Christ; and the simplicity
of Truth was hidden beneath the accretions of
centuries. The spirit of Northern Europe, which
had never been completely Romanized, had in
the meantime gained maturity, and claimed in
the full consciousness of life to hold communion
with God face to face.
42. Thus a third development of the Church
began corresponding to a new period of life; but
it differed from those which preceded by the fact
7%6 Evangelical Period, \W* 9 ' #£
that it was manifold and not one. It was eS^n- - CUAr - r
tially the expression of individual faith and no^Q^VIii.
of common belief. Its ecclesiastical forms fol-
lowed from the concurrence of private convictions,
and did not underlie and mould the societies
which arose. Its strength lay in the confident
affirmation of two great principles, that the Chris-
tian is continuously in direct spiritual intercourse
with God through Christ, and that he is throughout
continuously responsible to Him for his judgment
in divine matters. Personal vitality was infused
into religion. Faith claimed the homage of free
reason. Individuality was added to Catholicism.
43. It would be easy to point out the weak-
ness of the Eeformation in itself as a power of
organization. Its function was to quicken rather
than to create, to vivify old forms rather than to
establish new. But however we may grieve over
its failure where it arrogated the office not of re-
storation but of reconstruction, it was a distinct
advance in Christian life. Where it failed, it failed ■
from the neglect of the infirmities of man and
of the provisions which have been divinely made
to meet them. On the other hand, the lessons
which it taught are still fruitful throughout
Christendom, and destined, as we hope, to bring
forth a still more glorious harvest. What that
90 The successive periods
chap. i. may be as yet we cannot know, but all past
history teaches us that the power of the Gospel
is able to meet each crisis of human progress,
and we can but look forward with trust to the
fulfilment of its message to our age. The advance
towards that perfection of Christian fellowship
which we can all imagine, and to look forward to
which is our noblest hope, may be slow, but it is
slow only in the same sense in which the life of
nations is slow. Generations are the days by
which it is measured, but in the end it will not
fail. The parable of nature is fulfilled in the
history of the Church.
44?. The student of history will readily see
that the great forms of Christian progress which
have been marked out correspond in a remarkable
manner with other great periods in art and litera-
ture and science. The divisions are neither arbi-
trary nor partial. The final result of each was a
permanent advance, and the life by which each
was animated was drawn from the Gospel. If the
fact of the Kesurrection be in itself, as it confess-
edly is, absolutely unique in all human experi-
ence, the point which it occupies in history is
absolutely unique also. To this point all former
history converges as to a certain goal : from this
point all subsequent history flows as from its life-
mark an advance. 91
giving spring 1 . If the Resurrection were alleged to CHAP - l -
have occurred abruptly in the middle of a series of
events which passed on slowly to their consumma-
tion unaffected by its interruption ; if it stood in
no definite relation to the past, as in some sense a
solution of the riddle which had baffled exhausted
nations : if its significance had not been witnessed
to at once by the rise of a new and invincible
power which fashioned the development of all
aftertime : then we might have paused in doubt
before so stupendous a miracle, and pleaded the
uniformity of nature against the claims of such an
event upon our belief. But now the testimony of
nature itself is in favour of the fact. We form
our notions of a result from what we know of the
conditions under which the forces act, no less
1 Tert. de Yirg. Vel. I. Nihil sine aetate est: omnia tempus
expectant.... Aspice ipsam creaturam paulatiin ad fructum, pro-
moveri. Granum est primo, et de grano frutex oritur, et de
frutice arbuscula enititur. Deinde rami et frondes invalescunt,
ct totum arboris nomen expanditur : inde germinis tumor, et
flos de germine solvitur, et de flore fructus aperitur. Is quoque
rudis aliquamdiu et informis paulatim aetatem suam dirigens
eruditur in mansuetudinem saporis. Sic et justitia (nam idem
Deus justitiae et creaturae) primo fuit in rudimentis, natura
Deum metuens. Dehinc per legem et prophetas promo vit in
infantiam. Dehinc per evangelium efferbuit in juventutem.
Nunc (the words admit a Catholic interpretation) per Paracletum
componitur in maturitatem ... I should despair of rendering the
words adequately into English. As a master of rhetorical lan-
guage the ■ barbarian ' Tertullian has few rivals.
92 The Special Evidence
chap. i. than from what we know of the forces themselves.
If the force is the same we are sure that it must
act differently under varied circumstances. If
the circumstances are absolutely singular in all
experience we conclude that an event will occur
without a parallel. If a long train of occurrences
before and after lead us to expect that the event
would be of some specific kind, then its singu-
larity is an argument in favour of its credibility
and not against it. On a large view of the life of
humanity the Resurrection is antecedently likely.
So far from being beset by greater difficulties
than any other historical fact, it is the one fact
towards which the greatest number of lines of
evidence converge. In one form or other pre-
Christian history is a prophecy of it and post-
Christian history an embodiment of it.
45. If we next turn to consider the direct
evidence for the Resurrection, we shall find in it
several elements of singular force. These are the
more deserving of attention, because the narrative
of the event itself in the Gospels, is in no wise dis-
tinguished from the narrative of any other ordi-
nary fact which they record. The Evangelists
treat the Resurrection as simply, unaffectedly,
inartificially, as everything else which they touch.
The miracle to them seems to form a natural part
for the Resurrection. 93
of the Lord's history. They shew no conscious- CHAP - '•
ness that it needs greater or fuller authentication
than the other events of His life. Their position
and office indeed excluded such a thought. They
wrote not to create belief but to inform those
already believing. A knowledge of the chief events
in the Lord's ministry, including the Resurrec-
tion, and a general conviction of their reality
and significance, is everywhere assumed in the
apostolic writings. The existence of a Christian
society is the first and (if rightly viewed) the
final proof of the historic truth of the miracle on
which it was founded (§§ 49, 50). It may indeed
be said that the Church was founded upon the
belief in the Resurrection, and not upon the
Resurrection itself: and that the testimony must
therefore be limited to the attestation of the be-
lief, and cannot reach to the attestation of the
fact. But belief expressed in action is for the
most part the strongest evidence which we can
have of any historic event. Unless therefore it
can be shewn that the origin of the Apostolic
belief in the Resurrection, with due regard to
the fulness of its characteristic form, and the
breadth and rapidity of its propagation, can be
satisfactorily explained on other grounds, the be-
lief itself is a sufficient proof of the fact. We
shall be in a position to consider whether such an
94 The witness
chai\ i. explanation is possible when we have examined
the form in which the outward record of the be-
lief has come down to us.
46. The letters of St Paul are amongst the
earliest, if not actually the earliest writings in the
New Testament. Of these one important group
has been recognized as certainly genuine even
by the most sceptical critics. No one doubts that
the Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and
Eomans were composed by St Paul, and addressed
to the Churches whose name they bear. Nor is
there much uncertainty as to the date at which
they were written. The most extreme opinions
fix them between A.D. 52 — 59, that is under no
circumstances more than thirty years after the
Lord's death (A.D. 30 — 33). There can then be
no doubt as to the authority of their evidence as
expressing the received opinion of Christians at
this date, and there can be no doubt as to the
opinion itself. In each of the Epistles the literal
fact of the Resurrection is the implied or ac-
knowledged groundwork of the Apostle's teaching.
The very designation of God is ' He who raised
c up the Lord from the dead/ In this miracle lay
the sum of the new revelation, the sign of Christ's
Sonship. To believe this fact and confess it was
the pledge of salvation. On many points there
of St Paul 95
was a diversity of judgment among the Apostles, CIIAP - L
and a wider discrepancy of belief among their
professed followers, but on this there is no trace
of disagreement. Some, indeed, questioned the
reality of our own resurrection, but they were
met by arguments based on the Resurrection of
Christ which they acknowledged. Whatever else
was doubted this one event was beyond dispute.
47. Moreover the fact itself was treated histo-
rically and not ideally. It was not regarded as the
embodiment of a great hope, or as a consequence
of some pre-conceived notion of the Person of
Christ. On the contrary, the hope was expressly
rested on the fact; and the apostolic view of the
nature of Christ is deduced from His rising again.
(§§ 56 ff.) In one place St Paul has given an
outline of ' the Gospel ' by which men ' were saved/ i Cor. xv.
1 1 delivered unto you first of all that which I also
1 received, how that Christ died for our sins accord-
ing to the Scriptures, and that He was buried,
1 and that He rose again the third day, according
'to the Scriptures: and that He was seen of Ce-
'phas, then of the twelve. After that He was
1 seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of
' whom the greater part remain unto this present,
■ but some are fallen asleep. After that He was
1 seen of James; then of all the Apostles. And last
96 The witness
chap. i. ( of all He was seen of me also, as of one born
'out of due time... Therefore whether I or they,
1 so we preach, and so ye believed.' Nothing can
be more simply historic. What we call the mira-
culous facts are placed beside the others without
any difference. The Resurrection of the Lord,
and His appearances after the Resurrection, are
taught as events of the same kind essentially, and
to be received in the same way as His Death and
Burial. Together they formed 'the Gospel;' and
in this respect, whether it was ' the Three/ or St
Paul who preached, the substance of their preach-
ing was the same.
48. Of 'the five hundred' to whom Christ
appeared many were still alive when St Paul
wrote. So too were most of the Apostles, who
were their fellow-witnesses, as well as St Paul
himself. Thus we stand, as it were, in the direct
presence of the immediate witnesses of the fact.
But it has been said that the very circumstance
that St Paul reckons the appearance revealed to
himself in the same list with the other appear-
ances, shews that he did not insist on their ob-
jective reality: they may have been merely sub-
jective visions as this is assumed to be. The
exact converse is, however, the true explanation
of the fact. St Paul believed, and always acted
of St Paul 97
as if he believed, that the Lord did appear in chap. i.
His human nature as really to him as to the
other witnesses of the Kesurrection. He asserts
that all the appearances were equally actual, that
is, external manifestations of the Lord, but not
that they were all like in circumstances. There
was an objective reality in the revelation of Christ
made to him no less than in the revelations to
others; but this objective reality was not limited
to one outward shape. It was apprehended (as it
appears) variously by various minds. Thus we
find that the forms of the Lord's manifestation
were, according to the Evangelists, most varied
(n. § 17). A marvellous change had passed over
Him. He was the same and yet different. He
was known only when He revealed Himself.
He conformed to the laws of our present life, and
yet He w r as not subject to them. These seeming
contradictions were necessarily involved in the
moral scope of the Resurrection. Christ sought
(if we may so speak) to impress on His disciples
two great lessons, that He had raised man's body
from the grave, and that He had glorified it.
Nor can we conceive any way in which these
truths could have been conveyed but by appear-
ances at one time predominantly spiritual, at an-
other predominantly material, though both were
alike real For the same reason we may suppose
7
98 The witness
chap. i. that the Lord took up into His glorified Body
the material elements of that human body which
was laid in the grave, though, as we shall see
(ii. § 6), true personality lies in the individual
law which rules the organization in each case,
and not in the actual but ever changing organi-
zation, which may exist at any moment 1 . The
resumption of the Crucified Body conveyed to
ordinary minds a conception which could not
otherwise easily be gained, while at the same
time it brought the fact of the Resurrection
within the reach (as far as could be) of continuous
observation. For us the appearance to St Paul
would certainly in itself fail to satisfy in some
respects the conditions of historic reality — it
might have been an internal revelation — but for
him it was essentially objective and outward 2 ;
and when taken in connexion with his life and
the other appearances which he records, it lays
1 This consideration will help to explain a difficulty which
has been felt as to the appearances of the Lord after the Resur-
rection. His dress (it has been said) must have been purely sub-
jective. But a little reflection will shew that the special outward
forms in which the Lord was pleased to make Himself sensibly
recognizable by His disciples were no more necessarily connected
with his glorified Person than the robes which he wore.
It is important to observe that on another occasion St
Paul notices the doubt which he felt as to the objective charac-
ter of the revelation which he received : u Cor. xii. i ff.
of the Apostles. 99
open something more of the Divine fulness of the chap, i
exalted Manhood of the risen Saviour.
49. It is unnecessary to dwell longer on St
Paul's direct testimony to the "Resurrection, which
is thus carried up to the time of his Conversion,
that is to a date not more, at most, than ten
years after the Lord's death. No one probably
will deny that the Resurrection was announced
as a fact immediately after the Passion. No-
thing else will explain the origin of the Chris-
tian Church. We may go even further, and take
for granted that the Apostles who announced it,
believed in its reality. The life of St Paul may
be considered conclusive on this point; and even
if his life were explicable on any other theory
than that of a faith which he claimed to share
with the other Apostles, it is long since a critic
has been found to maintain that the miraculous
narrative was an intentional fiction of those by
whom it was promulgated. It remains then, if
the Resurrection be unhistoric, that they were
deceived, and if so, that they were predisposed to
a credulous and ill-grounded belief, either by
their own character, or by the popular expecta-
tions of the time.
50. Before examining whether this was so
7—2
100 No predisposition to
chap. i. we may observe how incredible it is from the
nature of the testimony alleged that the Apostles
could have been deceived. The sepulchre in which
the Lord had been laid was found empty. This
fact seems to be beyond all doubt, and ia one
where misconception was impossible. On the
other hand, the manifestations of the Risen Sa-
viour were widely extended both as to persons
and to time. St Paul, and in this his record is
in exact accordance with that of the Evangelists,
mentions His appearances not only to single wit-
nesses, but to many together, to 'the twelve*
and to 'five hundred brethren at once/ One
person might be so led away by enthusiasm as to
give an imaginary shape to his hopes, but it is
impossible to understand how a number of men
could be simultaneously affected in the same
manner 1 . The difficulty of course is further in-
1 It must be observed that the question here is not as to
the propagation of a belief in a statement through a large num-
ber of men, but as to the simultaneous perception by many of
an alleged phenomenon. The former is intelligible even if the
belief be in fact unfounded : the latter is not intelligible un-
less the phenomenon be really objective. In this connexion too
it is most instructive to notice that the report of the Lord's
Resurrection was in each case disbelieved. Nothing less than
sight convinced those who had the deepest desire to believe the
tidings ; and even sight was not in every case immediately con-
vincing (Matt, xxviii. 17). See [Mark] xvi. 9—11, 13, 14.
Luke xxiv. 11, 13, 22—24. John xx. 25. In St Matthew the
believe in the Resurrection. 101
creased if we take account of the variety as well chap. i.
as of the number of the persons who were ap-
pealed to as witnesses of the fact during their
lifetime; and of the length of time during which
the appearances of the Lord were continued.
It is stated in the Acts that the necessary quali-
fication of an Apostle was that he should be a
personal witness of the Resurrection; and St
Paul admits the qualification, and shews that it
was fulfilled in bis case. Every avenue of delu-
sion seems to be closed up. For forty days Christ
was with the disciples talking with them of the
things pertaining to the kingdom of God. If we
cannot believe that the Apostles deceived others,
it seems (if possible) still more unlikely that they
were the victims of deception.
51. For there was no popular belief at the
time which could have inspired them with a faith
in an imaginary Resurrection. There was, it is
true, a popular belief that Elijah, or some other of
the old prophets, should be sent from heaven, whi-
ther they had been specially withdrawn ; but this
promised sight of the Lord is the message of joy which the
women are to carry to the disciples: xxviii. 7, 10. In St Luke
the contrast between the effects of the report of the appearance
of the Lord and the sight of Him is vividly given: xxiv. 34, 35,
compared with 36 ff.
102 The Resurrection not
' I:u> % belief had no real connexion either in its ground
or in its scope with the Resurrection of Christ, as
preached by the Apostles. It centred in a direct
mission from God and not in a rising from the
grave to a new life : it culminates in the accom-
plishment of a work among men, and not in the
elevation of humanity to heaven. After the death
of John the Baptist, again, some said 'that he
1 was risen from the dead ' when they heard of the
works of Christ, but this was simply the interpre-
tation of a report in connexion with the opinion
that John was indeed Elias. Nothing was based
upon the conjecture. Others, again, in the course
of the Lord's ministry were, according to the
Evangelists, restored to life, but this restoration
was to a mortal and not to an immortal life.
Such a resurrection, so far from being a parallel
to the Resurrection of Christ, is the very opposite
to it. The belief in the resuscitation of the dead
to the vicissitudes of ordinary life would indispose
for the belief in a rising to a life wholly new in
kind and issue. And such is the life of the Risen
Lord which is portrayed in the Gospels. Thus
while we admit all the records of resuscitation
contained in the Scriptures, there is absolutely
not the slightest anticipation in all earlier his-
tory of such a Resurrection as that of Christ.
The conception as expressed by the Evangelists
anticipated by popular belief . 103
and Apostles has itself the characteristics of a chap, i
Revelation.
52. But it may be said that the idea was in-
cluded in that of Messiah. There were it is true
very vivid anticipations of a coming Messiah, of
some triumphant King who should restore the old
glories of the house of David, but the path which
was marked out for Him by common consent was
that of victory and not of defeat and death.
There is no evidence that the Jews in our Lord's
time had formed any conception of a suffering
Messiah. If Christ spoke of His Passion as the
Son of Man, they could only ask with wonder,
Who this Son of Man was ? If the Prophet de-
scribed a deliverer, despised and afflicted, the
question rose to their lips whether ' He spoke
\ of himself or some other.' And if the idea of
Messiah's death was unknown, so also was that of
the Resurrection, which is the complement of it.
53. Nor were the disciples in this respect
more far-seeing or better instructed than their
countrymen. On this point the Gospels are an
unexceptionable authority; and nothing is more
striking than the apparent inability of the Apo-
stles, who were nearest to the Lord, to lay aside
the hopes in which they had been reared. When
104- The effects of the Resurrection
chap. i. the Lord was raised from the dead they under-
stood at last what He had said to them, but not
Matt xvi. before. The thought of His death was one which
ai — 23.
they felt ought to be cast aside as a temptation to
Luke xxiv. distrust. And when at last He died, their hope
* as gone. There is not a word to indicate that
this catastrophe led them to any truer view of
His work. Those who loved him most devotedly
came to embalm his corpse. The first tidings of
His Resurrection seemed as 'idle talk;' and the
Evangelists paint in vivid colours, the strangeness
of whieli proves them to be faithful, 'the slow-
1 ness' and ' hardness of heart/ which hindered the
disciples from believing a fact which brought
with it a revolution of their ancient faith.
54. But the revolution was accomplished. If
we compare the portraiture of the Apostles as
given in St Luke's Gospel with that in his book
of the Acts, we cannot but feel that we are look-
ing on the same men, but transfigured in the
latter case by the working of some mighty in-
fluence. There are the old traits of individuality,
but they are ennobled. The relation in which
the disciples stand to their Lord is not less per-
sonal, but it is less material. He is regarded
as their Saviour as well as their Teacher. What
was before vague and undecided is defined and
on the character of the Apostles. 105
organized. Those who when Christ was yet with chap. i.
them wavered in spite of their love for Him,
mistook His words, misunderstood His purpose,
forsook Him at His Passion, after a brief interval
court danger in the service of a Master no longer
present, proclaim with unfaltering zeal a message
hitherto unheard, build up a society in faith on
His Name, extend to Samaritans and Gentiles
the blessings which were promised to the people
of God. However we explain it the change is
complete and certain. Their whole moral nature
was transformed. As far as we can see there was
no spring of hope within them which could have
had such an issue. The anticipations which they
shared with their countrymen and those which
the immediate presence of Christ had awakened,
were dissipated by His death. Whatever new
impulse moved and animated them must have
been from without, clear, and powerful It must
have been clear, to make itself felt to men who
were in no way predisposed to yield to it : power-
ful, to remould once and for ever their notions
of the work of Messiah. The Resurrection satis-
fies both conditions. As a fact with which the
disciples were familiarized by repeated proofs it
was capable of removing each lingering doubt : as
a Revelation of which the meaning was finally
made known by the withdrawal of Christ from
10G The effects of the Resurrection
tli, it opened a new region and form of
life, the apprehension of which would necessarily
influence all their interpretations of the Divine
promises. If the crucified Lord did rise again, we
can point to effects which answer completely to
what we may suppose to have been the working
of the stupendous miracle on those who were
the first witnesses of it: if He did not, to what
must we look for an explanation of phenomena
for which the Resurrection is no more than an
adequate cause ?
65. In nothing is the spiritual transformation
Of the Apostles more striking than in their view
of the Person of Christ. The words in which He
spoke of the atonement which He should make
necessarily fell unheeded by those who could not
realize the fitness of His Death. There is nothing
in the Gospels (and for this we may fairly quote
them) to shew that personal deliverance from sin
and corruption — the transfiguration of all man's
natural powers — was ever connected with His work
Johnxii. by those who heard Him. ' These things,' it is
Luke xviii. emphatically said, 'understood not His disciples
94- < at the first/ He received sinners, it is true, but
it was not felt that their restoration was a type
of the restoration of all men. Still less, if possi-
ble, is there any indication that the Apostles un-
on the belief of the Ajiostles. 107
derstood before the Resurrection that the Blood
of Christ should ratify a new Covenant to be em-
bodied in a Universal Church. The meaning of
the Last Supper was hidden from them, as subse-
quent events shewed, till after the Lord's Death.
But then, from some source or other, a flood of
light is seen to have been poured on all which
they had regarded with silent and hesitating
wonder. The first invitation which they addressed
to those who had joined in the Crucifixion was
' to be baptized into the name of Jesus Christ for
'the remission of sins/ The day of Pentecost
sealed the testimony of Easter. And from that
time forth union with Christ by baptism was the
first condition of Apostolic fellowship. His name
was declared to be the 'only name under heaven
'given among men whereby we must be saved.'
His Passion was acknowledged as part of the di-
vine counsel. His Return was set forth as the
certain object of the believers hope. Nor are we
left in doubt as to the power which had wrought
the change. The ground on which the Apostles
rested their appeal was the Resurrection : the
function which they claimed for themselves was
to bear witness to it; Their belief was not an
idle assent, but the spring of a new life. And
the belief itself was new in kind. It was not
like that affectionate credulity with which an
108 The fact of the Resurrection
oppressed state or party believes in the reappear-
ance of a lost leader. It was a confession of error
before it was an assertion of faith. It involved
a renunciation of popular dogmas in which those
who held it had been reared. It proclaimed a
truth altogether new and unlike any which men
had held before (§51). If ever the idea of de-
lusion can be excluded, it must be in a case when
it is alleged to explain a conviction which trans-
formed at once the cherished opinions of a large
body of men of various character and power, and
forced them to a painful and perilous work for
which outwardly they had no inclination or
advantages.
56. If we look a little deeper at the Apostolic
-faith we shall feel still more strongly the effect of
the belief in the Resurrection. To do this we
must turn to the Epistles of St "Paul, as the
earliest memorials of Christian teaching addressed
to Christians; for hitherto we have noticed only
the simple message addressed to mixed and un-
believing hearers. In many respects, as we might
naturally expect, there is a wide difference be-
tween the contents of these two forms of the Gos-
pel; but their groundwork is identical. The fuller
and more developed doctrine of St Paul is as essen-
tially historical as the first address of an Evange-
XX.
as the basis of St Paul's teaching. 109
list to Jews or Gentiles. This has been pointed
out already (§§ 44 ff.) ; but one most important ele-
ment of faith which St Paul brings out from the
history remains yet to be considered. In the first
addresses of the Apostles reported in the Acts the
Death of Christ is treated rather as a difficulty to
be explained, than as a spring of blessing. If we
realize the circumstances under which they spoke,
it could not be otherwise, and this peculiarity
alone justifies us in assuming that the narrative
is in the main authentic. But St Paul in writing
to Christians (and no less in speaking to Chris- c.^. Acts
tians) treats this fact very differently. The Death
of Christ — the mode and the issue of that Death
— is the centre round which all his doctrine turns;
for to the Christian the Death of Christ involves
the Resurrection. 'I determined not to know
1 anything among you/ he says to the Corinthians,
i save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified/ ' God for-
'bid/ he writes in another place 'that I should
1 glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ/
And the reason is obvious; since the Death of
Christ for the Christian includes the whole mys-
tery of the Redemption. The Resurrection is
necessarily involved in it, when we acknowledge
that He who died was the Son of God. Thus the
great Epistles to which we confine ourselves
abound with such passages as the following:
110 The fact of the Resurrection
9HAP. i. 'Christ gave Himself for our sins/ 'We are not
Gal. i. 4. < our own . we we re bought with a price/ ' If
so, 'one died for all, then all died... Behold all things
i* t 18. ' 'have become new. But all things are of God,
'who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus
Rom. v. 8, 'Christ/ 'God commendeth His love towards us,
' in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
'us. Much more then, being now justified by
' His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through
'Him/
57. With these passages are connected others
which present the same truth in different points
1 Cor. viii. of view. Thus : 'To us there is one God, the
'Father, of Whom are all things, and we unto
' Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom
Rom.xii.5. 'are all things, and we through Him/ And
again : ' We being many, are one body in Christ,
Gal.iii.s6, 'and every one members one of another/ We
' are all the children of God by faith in Christ
'Jesus... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there
'is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
' nor female : for (we) are all one in Christ Jesus/
Or, in other words, Christ, as He is revealed to
us, in His Life, His Death, His Resurrection, is
the One Mediator by Whom every blessing comes ;
the one all-containing Presence by Whom men
are bound together. In His Person every differ-
as the basis of Christian teaching. Ill
ence of race, of station, of nature, is done away. chap, i,
i In Christ/ to use the favourite phrase of the Rom. vii.
r 2 ; i Cor. 1.
Apostle, our whole life and being and work are 30; Rom.
centred.
58. Long familiarity with such words has
made it very difficult for us to realize the magni-
tude of the revelation which they convey. The
fitness of the doctrine to satisfy the wants of men
makes us inclined to believe that it is natural.
But if we place on the one side the outward cir-
cumstances of Christ's Death, and on the other
these interpretations of its significance : if we
measure what seemed to be the hopeless ignominy
of the catastrophe by which His work was ended,
and the Divine prerogatives which are claimed for
Him, not in spite of, but in consequence of that
suffering of shame ; we shall feel the utter hope-
lessness of reconciling the fact and the triumphant
deduction from it without some intervening fact
as certain as Christ's Passion and glorious enough
to transfigure its sorrow. For we must ever bear
in mind that the Apostles do not deal with ab-
stract doctrine, but with doctrine centred in facts.
They do not teach a redemption to be wrought
out by each man for himself, after the example of
Christ, but of redemption wrought for each by
Christ, and placed within their reach. They do
112 The fact of the Resurrection
chap i. not teach merely an original union of men, but a
union accomplished in the Person of Christ. They
do not teach a liberty which sets aside the dis-
tinctions and duties of society, but a liberty which
springs from the transformation of every claim oi
life into a spontaneous act of filial love through
the revelation of the Father in His Son. They
do not teach an immortality of the soul as a con-
sequence flowing from any conceptions of man's
essential nature, but a resurrection of the body
not only historically established in the rising again
of Christ, but given to us through Him who is
1 the Resurrection and the Life/ If Christ rose,
to repeat the alternative which we have proposed
ImIoiv, all this is intelligible. The miracle was aa
ft Hew-birth of humanity. If Christ did not rise,
we have not only to explain how the belief in His
Resurrection came to be received without any pre-
vious hopes which could lead to its reception;
I but also how it came to be received with that in-
tensity of personal conviction which could invest
the Life and Person of Christ with attributes never
before assigned to any one, and that by Jews, who
had been reared in the strictest monotheism.
59. There is yet one other aspect in which
we may see the power of the early faith in the
Resurrection. Next to the fact that Christ rose
witnessed by the constitution of tlie Church. 113
from the dead, the topic most frequently insisted CIIAP - l -
on in the Apostolic writings is that He will come
again from heaven. It would be out of place to
discuss the form which this belief took, or the in-
terpretation of the passages of the Epistles in
which it is enforced. One point only may be
noticed. The material imagery in which the be-
lief was popularly embodied shews in what sense
the Resurrection itself was understood. In pro-
portion as the Return of Christ was apprehended
in a definite outward shape, so also must His
Departure have been held to have taken place
in the same manner. The two events were com-
pletely correlative. The fact of the Resurrection
explains the confident expectation of Christ's
Second Coming in the mode in which the early
Christians looked for it.
60. The same also may be said of the Apos-
tolic interpretation of the Sacraments. It has
been frequently argued that the Christian doc-
trine of the Sacraments corresponds with the
Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It could
be shewn that it is equally closely connected,
though the correspondence is necessarily less
complete, with the fact of the Resurrection. Rut
it does not fall within our scope to examine the
essential conception of a Sacrament. It is enough
8
Hi Tlie witness of the Sacraments.
chap. i. to observe that the external forms in which the
conception was realised witness to the transform-
ing power of the belief in the fact of Christ's
rising again. The belief in the Resurrection
which was the groundwork of the Church . pene-
trated every part of its faith and worship. The
Bam. Ep. earliest Christians kept 'the eighth day for joy,
I5 ' 'as that on which Jesus rose from the dead;'...
and the two rites which were of universal ob-
servance commemorated not obscurely the same
central fact. The celebration of the Holy Eu-
charist is absolutely unintelligible without faith
i Cor. xi. in a risen Saviour. ' As often as ye eat this bread
' and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death
'till He come/ The rite was not a memorial
of death simply, but of death conquered by life.
Rom. iv. The seal of the efficacy of the death of Christ
** was given in the Resurrection; and the limit of
the commemoration of His Passion w r as looked
for in His Return. Baptism, again, was regarded
as embodying the teaching of the same facts:
Rom. vi. 4. 'We are buried with Him by baptism unto death:
' that like as Christ was raised up from the dead
' by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
'walk in newness of life/ So thoroughly was
the faith in the Resurrection of Christ inwrought
into the mind of the first Christians that the
very entrance into their society was apprehended
Summary. 115
under the form of a resurrection. The fact was CHAP - V
not an article of their creed, but the life of it.
It was confessed in action as well as in word.
And no evidence of the power or reality of a
belief can be less open to suspicion than that
which is derived from public services contempo-
raneous with its origin and perpetuated through-
out the body which holds it.
61. To sum up briefly what has been said.
It has been shewn that the Resurrection is not an
isolated event in history, but at once the end and
the beginning of vast developments of life and
thought ; that it is the climax of a long series of
Divine dispensations which find in it their com-
plement and explanation : that it has formed the
starting-point of all progressive modern societies,
ever presenting itself in new lights according to
the immediate wants of the age. It has been
shewn that in the character of the fact there is
nothing which can appear incredible or, in such
a connexion, even improbable to any one who
believes in a Personal God. It has been shewn
that the direct evidence for the event is exactly
of the same kind which we have for the other
events in the Life of Christ ; that St Paul appeals
to his own experience and to the experience of the
Apostles for the certainty of its literal accomplish-
8—2
116 Summary of the
chap. i. ment ; that it is incontestable that the Apostles
acted from the first as if they believed it, and
that their sincerity cannot be doubted ; that the
nature of the outward proof alleged seems to
render it impossible that they could have been
victims of a delusion ; that the substance of their
belief was something wholly novel, removed
equally from the belief in a phantastic vision, and
from the belief in a restoration to a corruptible
life ; that the effects of it were such upon them-
selves that the conviction must (so to speak) have
been forced upon them by overwhelming power,
capable of changing their personal character, of
transforming their hereditary faith, of inspiring
them with new thoughts and hopes; that the
Christian Church was founded upon the belief,
and embodied it in rites coeval with its founda-
tion. Nothing has been said of the testimony of
St John, and St Peter, and the first three Evan-
gelists, lest exception might be taken to their au-
thority. Every conclusion has been rested upon
documents which criticism has never assailed.
But at this point we may take account of the
evidence from other sources. The common con-
tents of the Synoptic Gospels can be shewn (I
believe) to be anterior to the Epistles of St Paul,
and to contain the sum of the earliest Apostolic
preaching in Judaea; if this be so we have in
evidence for the Resurrection. 117
them the testimony not of one witness only, but chap. i.
the common testimony of most of those who saw
the Lord after He rose again. The authenticity
of the first Epistle of St Peter cannot be ques-
tioned without the most arbitrary neglect of ex-
ternal evidence, and in that the Apostle to whom
Christ first shewed Himself speaks of Him as
' foreordained before the foundation of the world, l Peter l -
20, 21.
'but (made) manifest in these last times for
' (those) who by Him do believe in God, that
'raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him
1 glory ; that (their) faith and hope might be in
' God.' The Gospel of St John, again, seems to
me an indubitable work of the disciple whom
Jesus loved; and after recounting some of the
appearances of the Lord after His Resurrection,
the Evangelist completes his Gospel, as it stood
originally, with the words : ■ Many other signs John xx.
1 truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, '
1 which are not written in this book ; but these
' are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is
'the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing
'ye might have life through His name/
Indeed taking all the evidence together, it is
not too much to say that there is no single his-
toric incident better or more variously supported
than the Resurrection of Christ. Nothing but
the antecedent assumption that it must be false
118 Summary.
chap. i. could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the
proof of it. And it has been shewn that when it
is considered in its relation to the whole revela-
tion of which it is a part, and to the conditions of
the divine action, which we have assumed, this
miraculous event requires a proof in no way dif-
fering in essence from that on which the other
facts with which it is associated are received as
true. In a word, the circumstances under which
God is said to have given a revelation to men in
the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus were such as
to make the special manifestation of power likely
or even natural; and the evidence by which the
special Revelation is supported is such as would
in any ordinary matter of life be amply sufficient
to justify our acting in the full belief of the con-
clusion to which it leads.
If we next turn from History to the Individual
man, it will appear that the Resurrection throws
as much light on the mysteries of personal life as
it does on the whole progress of mankind.
CHAPTER II.
THE RESURRECTION AND MAN
C'est un des grands principes du Christianisme, que tout ee qui
est arrive & Jssus-Christ doit se passer dans Vdme et dans le
corps de chaque Chretien.
PASCAL.
1. "1 JITHERTO we have considered the Resur- cn.\r
J--L rection simply as a fact, the central point
of universal history, the outward cause of revolu-
tions in thought and in society. It still remains
to analyse the essential meaning of the fact in re-
ference to the individual, to discover, if it may be,
what are the special lessons as to our nature and
destiny of the Revelation which it contains. Some
of these we have indeed already touched on in
considering the views of our Lord's Person and
Work which were presented by the Apostles after
He rose from the dead (i. §§ 55 ff.). But we may go
yet further, and consider the relation of the Resur-
rection, accepted as a fact, to some of the great
problems of life, apart from the earliest historical
interpretation of its teaching.
120 Final elements of Life.
chap. ii. 2. That we may do this in any way satisfac-
torily, it is necessary that we should go back for
a moment to take account of the simplest elements
to which the questions which are involved in the
discussion can be reduced. It appears then that
we are conscious of three distinct existences, Self,
the World, and God. We cannot prove the real-
ity of these existences as we have already seen
(Intr. § 4) ; but on the other hand in some form
or other all our life testifies to our conviction that
they are. It is impossible to hold that Self is
the only true being or self-existent : it is equally
impossible to hold that Self is the only manifes-
tation of the Being on which it depends. Thus
we are forced to accept that mystery as final,
which represents as essentially distinct, yet for
us in inseparable juxtaposition, on one side the
Creator, on the other Creation, of which the in-
dividual l Y is a part.
3. If again we look at that which we each
call /, it will be seen to be essentially twofold.
There is an organism, and something which acts
through the organism. There is a unity of will
with a multiplicity of functions. There is an ele-
ment of permanence in the midst of constant
change. There are laws and a power which
makes itself felt in accordance with these laws.
The constitution of the Individual. 121
The organism, with all its variety of sense, its chap, n
capacity for service, its laws of decay and assimi-
lation, we call the body: the self-moving power,
which originates and controls action we call the
soul. And this twofold being is naturally influ-
enced by a twofold affinity. On the one side,
through the 'body,' it is connected with the
world: on the other, through the 'soul/ with
God. Or in other words the body is inherently
finite, the soul aspires at least towards the infi-
nite. To sum up what has been said briefly:
consciousness reveals to us in ourselves indivi-
dually a fundamental antithesis corresponding to
the antithesis which we are forced to recognize
without us.
4. Yet more the I consists in this antithesis.
Nothing is more common than to hear it assumed
that the ' soul' is the real self. Yet nothing can
be more clear upon reflection than that the only
'self of which we are conscious is made up of
'soul* and 'body.' The workings of these two
are absolutely inseparable. We cannot contem-
plate the independent action of either for an
instant. If we try to do so, we find at the outset
the presence of some condition or power which is
due to the complementary part in our whole
nature. One remarkable proof of this duality (so
122 The problems of human life.
chap. ii. to speak) in our life — of all that we are, as far as
we can observe ourselves — may be found in the
fact that some speculators have seen in life nothing
but the manifestation of the one element, and
others nothing but the manifestation of the other,
since the demonstrable presence on every occa-
sion of either taken alone seemed to exclude the
presence of the other. Nor is there, indeed, any
possible refutation of the 'materialist' or 'spi-
ritualist' systems except in the appeal to the in-
dividual consciousness.
5. Thus we find ourselves face to face with
two great personal problems : What' is the perma-
nent relation of soul and body? and next What is
the relation of the complex self to God ? in which
latter question is included the mystery of sin. To
these may be added one other question, not per-
sonal but yet inevitable to man: What is the
relation of the individual self to the world ? In
other words Shall we be hereafter? and, if so,
What shall we be? and What is the destiny of
creation generally ? Round these three ques-
tions the noblest thoughts of the ancient world
turned: to these the most daring speculations
of later times have been addressed. What light
is thrown upon them by faith in the Resurrec-
tion?
Elements of Personality. 1 23
G. Our present personality, as we have seen chap. ii.
(§ 3), involves the antithesis of soul and body.
One element is not more needful to it than the
other. Indeed, the clearest conception which we
can form of a person is the special limitation of
a self-moving power. The mode of the limita-
tion, including the original laws by which it is
governed, and the special acts by which the effects
of these laws are modified, expresses the differ-
ences of personality, and presents to the mind an
easy method of conceiving of the change of cha-
racter in the same person, and likewise of the
continuous effect of soul and body upon one an-
other while the body is in constant flux. For
us the body is the outward expression of the
limitation in each particular case. For we cannot
understand by body simply a particular aggre-
gation of matter, but an aggregation of matter
as representing in one form the action of a par-
ticular law. The specific law of assimilation and
combination is that which is really essential and
permanent. The same material elements may
enter into a thousand bodies, but the law of each
body, as explained above, gives to it that which
is peculiar to and characteristic of it. To take
an illustration from Chemistry. The same ele-
ment, pure carbon for instance, can exist in forms
wholly different. This difference we represent to
124 There is no reason to suppose that the
chap. ii. ourselves under the idea of some peculiar law of
arrangement of the similar particles in each case.
And conversely we can conceive how if the con-
stituent element were changed the action of the
different laws of arrangement (supposed to con-
tinue) would produce substances truly answering
to those which resulted from their action before.
In other words we can understand how the law
which at present rules the formation of our body
may find its realization hereafter in some other
element (so to speak), while the new body will
be essentially the same as the old one, as express-
ing the corresponding action of the same law in
relation to the new sphere in which it may be
supposed to be placed. All the forms of being
would thus be changed and each body would be
changed harmoniously with the remainder and in
due proportion to the whole.
7. This consideration will help us in exa-
mining on grounds of simple reason the question
of the permanence of our personality after death.
This, as far as we can see, can happen only in
two ways. It may be argued that the soul after
death will itself have a personal existence; or
that it will continue to act through an organiza-
tion (where the word is used in its widest sense)
which is itself the expression of the same law as
Soul separate from the Body is x>ersonal. 125
moulds all that we now call our body. These cn.uv u
alternatives must be considered separately.
8. First then on principles of reason there
seems to be no ground whatever for supposing that
the soul as separate from the body is personal 1 .
There is indeed an imperious instinct which
affirms that we shall survive death, but this in-
stinct does not attempt to analyse our being, or
deal with its constituent elements. It teaches
simply that the dissolution of which our present
senses are cognizant is net the destruction of our-
selves; but it does not define, nor even tend to
define, in what the I consists, further than this.
Personality implies special limitation, and this
limitation (as far as we can see) is conveyed per-
fectly by our bodies. It is conceivable that the
soul may have some individual inner limitation
(so to speak), but of this we have and can have
naturally no knowledge. Doubtless • the soul is
limited by general laws, which circumscribe its
powers and capacities, for otherwise it would not
only have an affinity with the infinite, but be
infinite; but these general laws do not constitute
1 Nothing is here said of the intermediate state of the soul
after death and before the "Resurrection ; and probably there is
something wholly deceptive in our use of words of time (' before'
and ' after') in such a connexion.
126 The Judgment
chap, i r. individual personality. Again: if souls are ori-
ginally the same at their connexion with the
body we cannot shew how they can be so affected
by it as that they should bear away, when wholly
dissociated from it, the various results of the con-
nexion. Nor if they are originally different can
we see how the original differences would be
modified; while the assumption of the original
difference introduces a fresh difficulty into the
question, unless we supplement the assumption
by the assertion of the previous existence of
souls.
9. Popular language and belief are so strong
in the assertion of the personal immortality of
the soul in our post-Christian times, that it is
very difficult for us to realize the true state of the
problem. The firmness of Christian faith, even
where its presence is least suspected, influences
the conclusions if not the processes of indepen-
dent reasoning. Happily, the noble speculations
of the Greek philosophers are a monument of
what thought alone could do on this and kindred
topics. Yet even here instinct will make itself
felt ; and again and again the sequence of an
argument is broken by the independent assertion
of the truth which instinct and not reason fore-
sees or feels. One writer, however, follows the
of Aristotle. 127
guidance of his logic to its last conclusions. In -chap. ir.
his formal treatise On the Soul Aristotle has
examined with the most elaborate care the vari-
ous elements included in it, and their mutual
relations. He seems to watch the process which
he guides as one wholly unconcerned in its issue.
Sternly and pitilessly he states the last conclusion
on man's natural hope of immortality as tested
by reason ; and the very coldness of his words
give them an undescribable pathos.
' In every natural object there are/ he says, J>t Animd
1 two elements, the one the characteristic matter
' (so to speak), which includes potentially all the
' manifestations of the object, and the other the
' causative and active principle. These differences
'therefore must exist essentially in the soul; an4
1 the rational part of man is necessarily twofold.
' On the one side is the " reason" which is to be
'so called in virtue of its becoming everything ;
'on the other that which takes its name from
' making everything, in the manner in which (to
'take an example) light does; for in a certain
'sense light makes colours existing potentially,
' to be colours actually. And this latter reason —
' that is, the active reason which has an absolute
'existence — is separable and impassive and un-
' mixed in essence.' [It is not dependent in any
sense on the present organism of man; it is not
128 The arguments reach
chap. ii. affected by the changes which it reveals ; it is not
modified in any manner by the connexion in
which it is placed. It is independent of a union
which is begun and ended in time], 'and when
' separated it is that alone which it is essentially.'
[It carries with it no trace of its temporary
combination with the passive "reason"]; 'and
'this alone — this impersonal and unchangeable
'reason — is immortal and eternal.' [It has been
and we are unconscious of the past. It will be
and we shall be unconscious of the present].
'We have no recollection' [of any former exist-
ence, and we shall have none hereafter of our
life on earth,] 'because this [eternal reason which
alone survives] 'is impassive, while the passive
' and susceptible reason ' — the reason which is the
seat of all personal feeling and emotion and im-
pression — ' is corruptible, and without the eternal
' reason is incapable of thought or consciousness.'
10. One very important reflexion will illus-
trate the force and bearing of Aristotle's judg-
ment. We commonly interrogate the soul only
as to the future : it can speak equally w r ell of the
past. Every argument for the soul's permanence
based upon its essential character, tells equally in
favour of its preexistence. Keason cannot take
into account the idea of its creation ; and all the
backward as well as forward. 129
presumptions drawn from what we can observe of chap n.
its nature and action to shew that it will be, shew
equally that it has been. The idea of ? conti-
nuance' is equally applicable to the beginning
and the end of the life which falls under our ob-
servation. In other words, the logical arguments
which are supposed to prove that the soul is
immortal, prove that it is eternal ' ; and the legiti-
1 In this aspect the opening chapter of the Analogy is a
most instructive lesson in the weakness of pure reason to esta-
blish that instinctive hope of a future life, which has existed more
or less in every period. Here only, perhaps, Bp. Butler has
been unable to cast off the influences of the time in which he
lived, and adopted the narrow methods of popular argument
which were current in a mechanical age. Throughout he assumes
that the * living being' or 'agent,' of which he gives no definition,
is separable from our present organization and in itself per-
sonal. And again he never notices the application of his argu-
ments to a prior as well as to a future existence. This is the
more remarkable as he considers with remarkable candour and
wisdom the objection urged from the extension of his reasoning
to the life of brutes. From whatever cause the defects arose,
and it seems most likely that the thoughts which he failed to
meet were wholly foreign to the speculations of the time, the
fact remains that he assumes the two great principles which
above all others he ought to prove, the possibility of conceiving
our personality apart from our present bodies, which, though
changeable, are yet changeable according to observed laws ; and
next that what is true if we look back to the first origin of our
present life is not true if we look forward to its close. How
momentous the latter assumption is may be seen at once if any
one will substitute 'birth' for ' death,' and 'origin' for 'destruc-
tion' in the earlier arguments of the chapter. The former as-
sumption is even more obviously the assumption of the chief
point in the conclusion.
9
130 The teaching
chai\ ii. mate deduction is, that as we are now unconscious
of any previous existence, and cannot in any way
connect our present circumstances and characters
in this world with our conduct in another former
world, so, if we survive in any future state, we
shall be equally unconscious of this through which
we are now passing, and not recognise any retri-
butive justice in the conditions under which we
shall exist. At least any presumption that we
shall be conscious hereafter of our present life
while we are not conscious of that which we have
passed through before, could only be drawn from
the observation of a corresponding difference be-
tween the conditions and circumstances of our
present and past lives which obviously lies wholly
without the range of our faculties. For us, as far
as the teaching of nature goes, this life stands
absolutely alone. The application of the experi-
ence which it gives is confined within the limits
of its duration.
11. The judgment of Aristotle sums up the
final result of Greek Philosophy on the soul, as a
subject of pure speculation. From his time phi-
losophy became essentially practical. The great
questions of being and knowledge were merged in
those of morals, -in which instinct has a legitimate
exercise. Later writers therefore furnish nothing
of Plato. 131
of importance to the exact discussion of the hope cii-vr. n
of immortality ; but it is impossible not to com-
pare the conclusions of Aristotle with those of
Plato. The master is as confident and sanguine
as the scholar is sceptical and passionless. But
the method of Plato is as full of instruction as the
results of Aristotle. Plato is sure of his belief
beforehand. His arguments are merely to justify
it. And when he feels that these — though
strengthened by the bold proposition that we do
bring with us to earth traces of our former exist-
ence — are unequal to support the weight of his
conclusion, he makes, as he expresses it, a bold
venture, and presents the substance of his faith
in one of those magnificent myths, by which he
endeavours to bridge over the chasm between the
seen and unseen worlds. His "Republic" closes
with the noble legend of Er the son of Armenius,
who saw in a trance the judgment of the dead,
and the hidden glories of the world. For once,
he tells us, a soul was allowed to return to the
body without drinking the waters of Forgetfulness. Plat. iiesp.
And so 'this story was saved and not lost, and it x * 621
will save us/ he adds, 'should we listen to its
' teaching ; and then we shall happily cross the
1 river of Lethe and not defile our souls ; but
' deeming that the soul is immortal and capable
1 of bearing every evil and winning every good,
9—2
132 The soul has no power
.hap. ii. < we shall keep close to the upward path, and
* practise in every way justice and wisdom, that
'we may be friends to ourselves and friends to
g* 'the gods/ 'To confidently affirm that [the fate
114. 'of souls] is such as I have described/ Socrates
'says at the end of the "Phsedo," 'becomes no
' reasonable man. But I do think that it becomes
' him to believe that it is either this or like this,
' if at least the soul is shewn to be immortal ;
' and that it is worthy of him to face peril boldly
' in such a belief, for the peril is glorious ; and
'such thoughts he ought to use as a charm to
1 allay his own misgivings, in which spirit I have
t. ' myself dwelt thus long upon the story.' For in
such questions the really brave man ' will either
' learn or discover the truth, or if this be impos-
' sible he will take at any rate the best of human
1 words and that which is most irrefragable, and
1 carried on this as on a raft sail through life in
' perpetual jeopardy, unless one might make the
'journey on a securer vessel, some divine word if
' it might be, more surely and with less peril/
12. If then pure reason cannot suggest any
arguments to establish the personality of the soul
when finally separated from the body, and for us
personality is only another name for existence,
still less can it shew any grounds for supposing
icedo, 85
to make an organization for itself. 133
that it possesses in itself the power of assuming at chap. n.
death another organization corresponding to our
present body whereby its personality may be pre-
served. Our present body is not in any way, as
far as we can see, due primarily to the action of
the soul, which acts through and upon it; and
when the body is dissolved, the only action of the
soul of which we can have naturally any know-
ledge ceases. It may have some inherent energy
in virtue of which it manifests itself throughout
the ages, now in this form, now in that. It may,
but that seems harder to conceive, have gained on
earth the means of realizing a personal existence
hereafter. It may, as many thought even among
God's ancient people, go back to Him who gave
it and continue to exist only as part of His Infi-
nite Being. Our utter incapacity of forming a
clear conception of any mode of existence differing
in essence from our own, and not simply in extent
of similar powers, forces us to contemplate these
and other alternatives, and to withhold our judg-
ment till we gain some new light. If we look
within or without we have absolutely no analogy
to carry our thoughts one step onward into a
realm wholly unknown: none to shew that the
soul will exert a power there which has been un-
developed or dormant here. Every change which
we can follow is simply of the earth. Faith, or
13-fc The conflict of Instinct and Reason
chap. ii. love, or instinct, may cross the dark river, but
they go alone : reason cannot follow them. Nay
more : reason shews that the visions which they
see are mere shadowy projections of what we see
and feel now.
13. Thus we are placed before a final con-
tradiction. On the one side instinct clings to the
belief in the continuance of our personality after
death : on the other reason points to death as a
phenomenon absolutely singular which closes life,
as far as we know it, and takes away the con-
ditions of our life. But if experience can shew
that these conditions are not destroyed, but sus-
pended as far as we observe them, or modified
by the action of some new law : that what seems
to be a dissolution is really a transformation :
that the soul does not remain alone in a future
state, but is still united with our body, that is
with an organism which in a new sphere ex-
presses the law which our present body now ex-
presses in this ; then reason will welcome the
belief in our future personality no less than in-
stinct. For the truth is not against reason but
beyond it. Reason shews simply that what we
commonly see, and what we can learn from the
analysis of our own nature lends no support to
the conclusion which we cannot abandon. But
solved by the Resurrection, 135
let some new fact come in, and all will be changed, chap. ii.
if that reveals to us something of the character of
life after death.
14. Such a fact is the Kesurrection. In one
sense no event can be more natural than this, so
far as it answers to a craving for knowledge of
the unseen world, which by its intensity indicates
that it was intended to be satisfied, as much as
any other original instinct of man. In another
sense nothing can be more beyond nature, for it
introduces us to a new phase of being, of which
we feel even in the presence of this revelation that
we can know only a part darkly. For the Resur-
rection is not like any one of the recorded miracles
of raising from the dead. It is not a restoration
to the old life, to its wants, to its special limita-
tions, to its inevitable close. It is not an exten-
sion of an existence with which we are acquainted,
but the manifestation of an existence for which we
hope. It is not like any of the fabled apotheoses
of the friends of gods, whose spirits purified by
the funeral fire from the stains of earth, were
carried to the immediate presence of those whom
they had loved. It is not a withdrawal from men
or a laying aside of humanity, complete, final, and
immediate. It is not the putting off of the body,
but the transfiguration of it. It is not like any
136 The character of
chap. ir. of the dreams in which earlier poets had endea-
voured to convey to others the hope which they
cherished. Its teaching is conveyed in a series of
facts. Now one incident and now another brings
out some aspect of the whole truth, as far as we
can apprehend it. No vision is opened of glory
or suffering. No display is made of fresh powers.
No overpowering exhibition of majesty strikes
unwilling conviction into the hearts of those who
were before unbelieving 1 . The Lord rose from
1 It has been objected that our Lord revealed Himself only
to believers or to those inclined to believe. If we regard the
Resurrection as a revelation of a new life it is obvious that it
could not have been otherwise. In order to establish the belief
in the reality of this new existence it was necessary that some
power should exist in the witnesses to apprehend it. There was
a spiritual side to the manifestation of the Risen Christ which
could only be discerned spiritually. If it had been necessary
merely to shew the restoration of the Lord to the condition of
an ordinary human life, as in the case of Lazarus, the testimony
of indifferent spectators would have been adequate. But if the
appearances were designed to be a revelation of a glorified
human life, then the manifestation to unbelievers would not only
have been contrary to the usual method of the Providence of God,
but also, as far as we can see, unavailing. For if the Lord
had appeared to them as a man simply, their evidence would
have gone to establish a false view of His Risen Person : if He
had appeared to them under new conditions of being, they
would have been unable to acknowledge the reality of His mani-
festation. The believer who had familiarly known Christ and
felt His power could alone grasp and harmonize the two modes
of the Revelation of His Person. Afterwards, when the idea
of the Risen Christ was fully established, we find an appearance
the appearances of the Lord.
the grave ; and those who had known Hi:
knew that He was the same and yet chang<
15. In this respect the narratives of the
Resurrection are unparalleled. The Evangelists 1
record the miracle so calmly, looking solely, as
we must think, at its historic aspect, that in read-
ing of it, we lose sight of its stupendous signifi-
cance from the natural simplicity of the details
in which its lessons are conveyed. The mani-
festations of the risen Saviour are mixed with
scenes of fear, of misgiving, of unbelief. He ap-
peared in Galilee and at Jerusalem : now at night,
and again in the early morning: in the upper
room and under the open sky: in an assembly
gathered, as it would seem, for religious exercise,
and to men busy with their ordinary work.
Nothing is (if we may so speak) farther from the
thoughts of the Evangelists than to give a doc-
trinal view of the mystery which they declare.
Christ was the same and yet changed. That was
different in kind granted to St Paul, which carried with it
immediate conviction to an unbeliever; but till this idea was
established, as far as we can judge, such an appearance would
have been without effect.
1 At this point I shall use the writings of the New Testa-
ment without reserve. If the Resurrection is admitted on other
grounds to be a fact, no one will (I believe) question the general
veracity of the Evangelists.
138 The Lord the same
chap. ii. i n substance what the}' had to tell ; and in that
lies the full answer to the first great question
before us. The body is not destroyed by death.
Its union with the soul is for a time (as we are
forced to conceive of it, though perhaps quite
wrongly) interrupted but not closed. Our specu-
lative doubts are met, as they could only be met,
by a fact.
16. It is unnecessary to dw T ell on the various
details by which the identity of the Lord's human
body is brought out in the Gospels. It is obvious
from a mere enumeration that they meet each
John xx. misgiving. The body which the disciples had laid
in the sepulchre was no longer to be found when
they looked for it. The marks of the Passion were
made sensibly present in the Risen Saviour to him
who would not otherwise believe. Nay more,
Christ Himself offered this very proof to those
Luke xxiv. who ' supposed that they had seen a spirit/ ' Be-
1 hold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself :
1 handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh
Comp. 'and bones, as ye see me have '../And He took
John xx. c r mea ^i an( j d^ ea t before them/ And it can
Comp. hardly be without reference to this incident that
johni.ii. St John in his Epistle reckons this 'handling'
last among the various revelations which God
had given of His Son. The length of time too
yet changed. 139
during which the appearances were extended fa- chap. ii.
miliarized the disciples (so to speak) with the
mystery which had at first filled them with terror.
For forty days He ' shewed Himself alive to them Acts i. 3.
1 by many infallible proofs, being seen of them and
1 speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom
'of God/
17. But this Body which was recognized as
essentially the same Body, had yet undergone
some marvellous change, of which we can gain a
faint idea by what is directly recorded of its mani-
festations. Under a physical image that change is Luke xxiv.
presented to us by our Lord Himself in the ab- ^ 9 ' h
sence of blood, the symbol and seat of corruptible
life. The significance of the omission must have
been at once intelligible to Jews, accustomed to
the provisions of the Mosaic ritual, and nothing
would have impressed upon them more forcibly
the transfiguration of Christ's Body. We find
moreover that His Person was not recognized
directly by those who saw Him. However firm
their conviction was afterwards that they had
'seen the Lord,' they knew Him first when He
was pleased to make Himself known. Human
sense alone was not capable of- discerning Who He
was. It could not be otherwise if His Body was
glorified, for our senses can only apprehend that
140 The Resurrection the pledge of the
< hap ir. Avliich is of kindred nature with themselves. At
: ■ one time it was by a word of general or per-
John xx. S onal tenderness, that Christ awakened the faith
io, 19.
by which sense was quickened : at another time
Lukexxiv. by the celebration of that holy rite which He
John xxi. nac l instituted before His death : at another by
a mighty act which symbolized the blessing of
the apostolic work.
18. And as Christ's Body was no longer
necessarily to be recognized, so also it was not
bound by the material laws to which its action
was generally conformed. He is found present,
no one knows from whence. He passes away,
no one knows whither. He stands in the midst
John xx. of the little group of the Apostles 'when the
Luke xxiv. ' doors were shut for fear of the Jews/ ' He
31 * 'vanished out of the sight* of those whose eyes
were opened that they knew Him. And at last
Acts i. 9. ' while they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud
1 received Him out of their sight.' It is impossible
not to feel in reading the narratives that we are
regarding a form of existence human, indeed, yet
indefinitely ennobled by the removal of needs and
limitations to which we are at present subject.
It is vain for us to speculate on the nature of
that transformed human Body. We can form no
clear positive conception which is not shaped by
the present laws of thought. Negatively we can
transfiguration of our whole being. 141
only say that it was not bound by those laws of chap. ii.
space (for example) which necessarily enter into
all that we think or do. The life which is re-
vealed to us is not the continuation of the pre-
sent life, but a life which takes up into itself
all the elements of our present life, and trans-
figures them by a glorious change, which we can
regard at present only under signs and figures.
19. Thus the Resurrection answers as com-
pletely as it can be answered the first great question
by which we are met. In the Person of Christ
we see the whole of man, his body and soul,
raised together from the grave. No part is left
behind. The whole complex nature is raised and
glorified. It is not that the soul only lives; nor
yet that the body, such as it was, is restored to
its former vigour. The Saviour, as far as we
regard His Manhood, is not unclothed, to use St
Paul's image, but clothed upon. Nothing is taken
away, but something is added by which all that
was before present is transfigured. * The corrup-
1 tible puts on incorruption : the mortal puts on
1 immortality/
20. This thought brings us to the second
question, the final relation of man to God, of man,
that is, as subject to the consequences of sin.
142 The idea of Sin.
chap. ii. And here it will be necessary to consider somewhat
carefully the idea which lies at the root of sin,
lest it may seem that we are dealing with a mere
phantom. But still we may leave out of our
investigation some questions which have been
connected with it. Our inquiry does not extend
to the obstacles which material nature places in
the way of man, of whatever form they may be,
nor yet to the mutual relations of animals to one
another or to man. We are obviously wholly
incapable of knowing any thing of the position in
ay 1 rich any beings except ourselves stand towards
God, or of their latent powers, or of their future
destiny. It is quite conceivable that what ap-
pears to us in the light of suffering and decay in
beings wholly unlike ourselves may to a higher
intelligence assume a different aspect; or (and this
seems even from a view of nature far more pro-
bable) the fate of the physical and animal crea-
tion may be bound up by some mysterious influ-
ence with that of man. At least, we can see the
difference between what we call evil in inorganic
or brute nature, and evil (moral evil) in man
which involves the operation of a free will, and
an acknowledged relation between the person of
the sinner and God. Whether these conditions
of action can exist in the case of other creatures
or not we are wholly unable to determine ; but it
Sin not necessary for mans development 143
is at least remarkable that as soon as the pheno- chap. ii.
mena of free will are observable in animals (as in
the case of those which have been long associated
with man) we attribute to them a measure of
responsibility by according praise and blame.
21. The possibility of sin is necessarily in-
cluded in the creation of a finite, free being ; for
the simplest idea which we can form of sin, is the
finite setting itself up against the infinite. Self-
ishness, which exists potentially as soon as 'self'
exists is the ground of all sin. Hence we can see
how a perfect finite being may yet be exposed to
temptation, for the sense of limitation brings
ay i th it the thought, or the possibility of the
thought, of passing the limit.
22. And not only is a perfect finite being in
this way necessarily under a moral probation, but
the actual existence of sin is not required for his
moral development. It is necessary to dwell on
this point, for if it could be shewn that sin belongs
essentially to the idea of individual human pro-
gress as one of the conditions of its realization, we
might at once dismiss as vain the obstinate ques-
tionings with which we ponder over its future
issues. It is only if sin is an intrusive corruption
of our nature that we need feel anxious about the
! I I Evil may he the occasion
chap. ii. permanence of its results. But it follows from
the final analysis of sin which has been given that
man, though he had not sinned, might yet have
practised some (at least) essentially human vir-
tues : all indeed which are comprised in self-
control and the recognition of dependence. No-
thing therefore can be more false than to say that
* moral good and moral evil — as distinguished
from the possibility of good and evil — came into
being together.' A command implies the possi-
bility of obedience and disobedience, but obedience
is no less real though disobedience in fact never
takes place. Love, again, the centre of all social
virtues, and truth the centre of all intellectual
virtues, are both wholly independent of the pre-
sence of evil among men.
23. But it may be said, that if moral evil
were removed from the world ' life would be im-
poverished.' So indeed it appears at first sight
to us who are habituated to the startling con-
trasts of life : for us shadow is a necessity of dis-
tinct vision. Yet it would be difficult to shew
that the more splendid qualities which are brought
out (for instance) by war are better, in any sense,
than their correlatives which need no such field
for their display : that the heroic forgetfulness or
contempt of danger or suffering, which springs
but not the condition of good. 1 1 •">
from a great passion or a generous impulse in chap. ii.
the midst of a fierce conflict or under the sense of
a deep wrong, is better than that rational self-
control which we have seen can exist in the high-
est degree without the presence of evil. We are
too apt to think that virtue which is seen on a
larger scale is itself magnified. On the other hand
it may be allowed that evil itself serves as part
of our discipline : that it gives occasion for the
exercise of special virtues, and by antagonism calls
them into play; yet this is only to say that it
has been so ordered that evil shall in some de-
gree minister to its own defeat.
24. And while we grant that in society evil
may be the occasion of good, it is by no means
clear that this is true in the individual As far as
we can see, the presence of evil, that is the wilful
transgression of limit as distinguished from the
original limitation, is neither the occasion, nor
the condition of good, nor on the narrow stage of
human life the preliminary to it. The highest
conception of active virtue — duty — is absolutely
untouched by it both in its origin and in its ful-
filment, even when evil is regarded under the ex-
treme form of pain.
25. Moreover it must be observed that evil
10
146 Sin foreign to our natiwe, and yet
chap. ii. while it may be the occasion of good, is never
transmuted into good. Evil remains evil to the
last in whatever form it may shew itself. Sin
remains sin : pain remains pain : ignorance (so
far as it is culpable) remains ignorance : though
sin and pain and ignorance may call forth efforts
of love and fortitude and patience.
26. Nor can it be said that sin realized, and
not merely the possibility of sin by the action of
a free will, is the necessary condition of human
virtue, and consequently of human happiness.
For if this were true, then it would follow either
that evil itself will be eternal, or that human life
in its true sense will cease to be. Whatever may
be the function of evil in the social discipline of
men whose powers are already impaired by sin,
we have no reason to think that it could find any
place for giving occasion to new or higher good in
a society of men animated by those active and
personal virtues which have been seen to be
wholly independent of it (§§ 22, 24) ; not to speak
of the possibility of other forms of virtuous cha-
racter inconceivable in our present mixed state ;
for the permanence of the antitypes or perfections
of our present virtues in another state by no
means excludes the possibility of the existence of
other virtues as yet unknown, which may come
to Reason its results seem permanent. 147
into play from the manifestations of new relations CIIvr n
between ourselves or of ourselves to other intelli-
gent beings.
27. It follows then that sin — moral evil as
involving the action of will — is in fact something
wholly foreign to human nature : that in its essen-
tial character it remains always evil even when
it is the occasion of good : that it is not a lower
form of goodness or a necessary condition for its
exercise, but the conscious transgression of limit :
that in the individual it leads to no good: that
even in society at large its disciplinary power only
effects by sacrifice and imperfectly what the ob-
servance of the true bounds of nature would effect
perfectly. It is then a foreign element in our*
nature, and absolutely abhorrent from our proper
destiny. But it is also, as far as reason can trace,
permanent.
28. It is this fact which gives to the idea
of sin its most terrible significance. As far as
we can conceive by the help of reason the effects
of every action must be infinite, and in regard to
the agent (whatever they may be to others) cor-
responding to and like the action. But all sin (as
such) necessarily involves the idea of suffering to
the person who commits it; for selfishness, the
10—2
148 Suffering no expiation.
0HAF. P- final element of sin, is the contrary of love, and
therefore when set against Infinite Love must
bring the misery of unavailing desire and isolation*
Hence punishment (for all consequences must at
at last be referred to the Will of the Personal
Creator), or (in another light) suffering as the
natural consequence of selfishness, must exist as
long as sin exists ; and so in any particular case
the past sin must still work its full effect in sepa-
r.iting the sinner from God without end, unless
some new power be interposed.
29. For it must be noticed that suffering has
in itself no power or tendency to remove or ex-
piate sin, the consequences of which are best con-
ceived as evolved (so to speak) naturally and cen-
tering in the changed character of the guilty, and
not imposed externally according to any fixed
ndard. Nor again has it in itself any power
to produce repentance, by which in the inter-
course of man and man the effects of wrong-doing,
as far as their mutual relations are concerned,
may be removed. But even in this latter case no
repentance can cancel the consequences of the
wrong action, either without the doer or within
him. These throughout life and (as far as we can
see) beyond it are inwrought into the world and
into his nature. Future punishment is a conclu-
Conflict of Instinct and Reason. 149
sion of reason, if we grant the future continuance chap, it
of our personality. The mystery which reason
cannot of itself apprehend is that this punish-
ment can be stayed. Thus if we approach the
subject from this side it is the forgiveness, or
rather the ' washing away ' of sins and not their
punishment, which is the real subject of Revela-
tion. If on the other hand we confine our view
to this life, the idea of a Supreme Being tempering
suffering with a view to repentance answers to an
instinct of man and not to any logical process ;
and Scripture first teaches us to believe that the
instinct is true.
30. For just as there is an instinct within us
which claims the inheritance of a future life, so
we feel that after sin repentance is still possible
and efficacious, and that our Heavenly Father can
do away our sins. But Reason which deserted us
before equally deserts us now. It tells us from
the observation of what we see around and from
the conception which we are forced to make of
the dependence of the future on the past, that
we must be for ever, in relation to God, what
we are, and bear about with us the scars and
wounds which sin has inflicted upon us.
31. Here again the fact of the Resurrection
150 The Resurrection in connexion
chap. u. meets our doubts with a new Revelation. If
we look at our Blessed Lord simply as He was
seen outwardly, He bore in Himself all the con-
sequences of sin. ■ He was tempted in all points
'like as we are' except by personal sin. He took
our flesh with its liabilities to hunger, and fatigue,
and pain upon Him : He shared the emotions of
anger, and sorrow, and affection : He bore death
with its most terrible accompaniments, the last
issue of sin, and that sense of utter isolation from
God, which is its complete punishment. What-
ever sin could work He took upon Himself;
and when all was ended God raised Him up
'for our justification/ and the Lord Jesus bore
our human nature, over which sin had no longer
power, to the immediate presence of the Father.
32. But it will be said that the Lord's suffer-
ings were not the result (as ours are) of personal
sin, and consequently that we can draw no com-
fort from His triumph over death. To this objec-
tion it is in part an answer to reply that the
sufferings of Christ were as though they were due
to Himself. How this could be in regard to the
more general consequences of sin, as want or
grief, is sufficiently intelligible from the fact that
He was truly man. But how He could take sin
upon Him is a mystery which we cannot solve,
with tlie forgiveness of Sin. 151
though in fact it is only a mystery of the same chap. ii.
kind as His taking upon Him our nature. Yet
even here so much at least we can see, that in the
Agony and on the Cross He suffered, yet with
an intensity which we cannot appreciate, even as
those do who bear the consequences of personal
sin. ' He offered up prayers and supplications Heb. v. 7.
1 with strong crying and tears unto Him that was
' able to save Him from death, and was heard in
! that He feared/
33. The complete answer lies somewhat
deeper, as has been already indicated, in the
recognition of our Lord's Divine Person. It is
impossible to understand the Resurrection com-
pletely apart from the Incarnation. It may
indeed be said that the Resurrection is the his-
toric seal of the Incarnation, which remains for
ever a mystery removed from all witness. And
it was in this sense that the first teachers of
Christianity understood and interpreted it. After
the Resurrection, as we have seen (1. §§ 55 &.),
they saw in Christ a Saviour of boundless power.
His Life and Death were contemplated in their
atoning virtue : His Name was given as that
whereby men might be saved : in Him was Life.
The contrast between that which was appre-
hended, if with the deepest reverence, we may so
152 How the 11 ' >n of Clirist
chap. ii. speak, as personal discipline and redeeming power,
Heb. ii. was placed in its broadest light. ' It became' God
'to make Him perfect through suffering/ and
even thus ' He tasted death for every man.' He
. i. 4 . was 'declared to be the Son of God with power,
' according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resur-
Heb. v. 8, ' rection from the dead/ And ' Though He were
9- * a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things
1 which He suffered ; and being made perfect, He
' became the author of eternal salvation unto all
'them that obey Him.'
34. Apart from this faith in the Divinity of
Christ, His Resurrection loses its highest signifi-
cance. It has in itself and absolutely no direct
and immediate connexion with ourselves. It is
an isolated incident in the history of mankind,
glorious and full of hope but not the new birth of
humanity. It answers to that view of the Lord
which represents Him as a Teacher simply, and
does not, according to the apostolic pattern, bring
out into chief prominence .what He did and what
He was. If Christ was only man, such as we are
in nature, then His triumph over death is no
Gospel for those who are bowed down with the
John xiv. weight of guilt. In Him we can feel that ' the
1 Prince of this world when he came had nothing:'
Death could not hold Him. For ourselves, 'we
includes our Resurrection. 153
'receive' in corruption 'the due reward of our chap, n
Lul
41.
1 deeds : but this man hath done nothing amiss/
35. On such a theory no hope like that of
St Paul could repose. But once introduce the
belief in Christ's divine nature, and His Death
and Resurrection are no longer of the individual
but of the race. Nor in doing this are we taking
refuge in an arbitrary assumption to help our
argument. On the contrary, we simply repeat
the interpretation which the Apostles placed on
the whole work of the Saviour. It was on this
belief that the Church was founded and built up.
The belief was not indeed always drawn out with
exact prepision, yet it was always implied in the
relation which the believer was supposed to hold
to God in Christ. The formula of Baptism, which
has never changed, is unintelligible without it.
The Eucharist is emptied of the blessing which
every age has sought in that Holy Sacrament, if
it be taken away.
36. If Christ took our nature upon Him (as
we believe) by an act of love, it was not that of
one but of all. Mankind are (so to speak) orga-
nically united with Him. His acts are in a true
sense our acts, so far as we realize the union : H i -
death is our death : His Resurrection, our Resur-
1 8 I The acts of Christ belong
(hap. ir. rection. Nothing can be plainer than the asscr-
i Cor. vi. tion of this doctrine. Our ' bodies are members
of Christ ;' and conversely a Christian society is
i Cor. xii. ' a body of Christ/ * I have been/ St Paul says,
Gal. ii. 10. ' crucified with Christ/ ' If we died with Christ,
he writes to the Romans, 'we believe that we
' shall also live with Him Reckon ye also
* yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but living
'unto God in Christ Jesus/ And yet more
Eph. ii. 5, plainly, ' When we were dead in sins [God] quick-
1 ened us together with Christ, and raised us up
1 together, and made us sit together in the hea-
Col. ii. ii, t venlv realm in Christ Jesus/ 'In whom also ye
'were circumcised with the circumcision made
'without hands, in putting off the boojy of the
Us of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ,
'buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye
'were raised with Him through faith in the opera*
' tion of God who raised Him from the dead/ So
i Pet. 1.3. again St Peter speaks of God ' who begat us
1 again to a living hope through the resurrection
' of Jesus Christ from the dead ; ' and his final
1 Pet. v. salutation is, ' Peace be with you all who are in
' Christ Jesus/
37. The ground of these and similar state-
ments is found in the words of our Lord, which
first receive through them their full significance.
'4
to the whole Body of Christ loo
* Abide in me and I in you ... I am the Yine ; ye chap. ii.
'are the branches. He that abideth in me and I °, nxv
4» 5*
' in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for
' without (apart from) me ye can do nothing/ And
again, in His last great prayer for His disciples, He
says : ' For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they
' also may be sanctified in truth. Neither pray I
'for these alone, but for them also which shall
1 believe on me through their word ; that they all
' may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in me and I
'in Thee, that they also may be one in us... I in
1 them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made
'perfect in one/
38. The full doctrine of the Resurrection can-
not be understood without constant reference to
these deeper revelations of Christ's Person ; nor
again is the Apostolic doctrine of the Person of
Christ intelligible without the light of the glorious
manifestations of Himself which He made to His
disciples after He was risen from the dead. But
it is not our object now to follow out the mutual
relations of these two elements of our Creed, or to
trace them both back to the Incarnation. It is
enough to have indicated in what way we can
conceive that the efficacy of the Resurrection is
extended to those for whom Christ died; and
having done this we may next notice how the
L56 The personal significance
niAP. ii. teaching of the Resurrection on the dignity of
the body tends to explain the relation of the
individual self to the world.
39. The noblest of the ancient moralists
looked upon man's body as a hopeless burden and
fatal hindrance to the soul; and in this they
have been followed by the noblest non-Christian
moralists in every age. The famous thanksgiving
of Plotinus that 'he was not tied to an immortal
'body* expresses the common feeling of all who
have not felt the power of the Resurrection. But
Christianity transfigures what philosophy would
destroy. It shews that the corruption by which
we are weighed down does not belong to our
proper nature, and is not necessarily bound up
with it for ever. It lays open with a deeper and
more searching criticism than a system of morality
could direct, the internal struggles to which the
'flesh' must give occasion, and the inevitable de-
feats which we must suffer in our efforts towards
the divine life. Plato does not describe more
sadly than St Paul the afflictions by which we are
Philiii.ii. beset while yet oppressed by 'the body of humi-
1 liation.' Or to take an example from a different
sect and age, M. Aurelius does not express more
keenly than St John a sense of the evils of the
present life. But there is an immeasurable chasm
of the Resurrection of the Body. 1-57
between the Apostles and Platonists or Stoics, chap. ii.
1 We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being
1 burdened,' St Paul writes : ' not for that we would 2 Cor - v - 4-
'be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality
' may be swallowed up by life.' The better change
for which he longed was not the destruction but
the ennobling of his body, so that it might 'be Phil.iii.21.
' fashioned like unto [Christ's] body of glory, ac-
' cording to the working whereby he is able even to
' subdue all things unto Himself/ And the power
by which this transformation should be effected
was the simple contemplation of Christ in His
essential majesty. Nay, in some sense the change
is already begun on earth, so far as that we can
look forward with full hope to its accomplishment ;
for 'we all, with open face beholding as in a glass 2C0r.iii.18.
' the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same
' image from glory to glory/ ' Beloved, now are we 1 John Hi.
' the sons of God,' such are St John's words, ' and
' it doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we
' know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like
' Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'
40. In a word our present body is as the \j
seed of our future body. The one rises as naturally
from the other as the flower from the germ. ' It J Cor - xv -
'is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorrup-
' tion : it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory :
158 The moral significance
ciiap. ii. ' it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power : it
'is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual
1 body/ We cannot, indeed, form any conception
of the change which shall take place, except so
far as is shewn in the Person of the Lord. Its
fulfilment is in another state, and our thoughts
are bound by this state. But there is nothing
(^against reason in the analogy. Every change of
life which we can observe now must be from one
material form to another equally falling under our
senses ; but such a change may help us to under-
stand how a form at present sensible may pass
through a great crisis into another, which is an
expression of the same law of life, though our
present senses cannot naturally take cognizance
of it (i. § 1). If the analogy were to explain the
passage of man from an existence of one kind
(limited by a body) to ;m existence of another
kind (unlimited by a body), it would then be
false; but as it is, it illustrates by a vivid figure,
the perpetuity of our bodily life, as proved in the
Resurrection of Christ.
41. The moral significance of such a doctrine
as the Resurrection of the body cannot be over-
rated. Both personally and socially it places the
sanctions if not the foundations of morality on
a new ground. Each sin against the body is no
of the Resurrection of the Body. 159
longer a stain on that which is itself doomed to chap. ii.
perish, but a defilement of that which is con-
secrated to an eternal life. To injure another, is
to injure one with whom we are bound by the
closest ties through a common fellowship in
Christ. * The body is not for fornication, but for i Cor. vi.
1 the Lord ; and the Lord for the body. And God
' both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us
* by His power. Know you not that your bodies
'are the members of Christ V 'Speak every man Eph.iv.25.
' truth with his neighbour : for we are members one
' of another/ Each Christian society is ' a body of
' Christ/ of which the members are charged with
various functions; and these 'bodies' again are
' members' of other ' bodies' wider and greater, and
these at last 'members' of that universal Church
which is the 'fulness of Christ,' its heavenly
Head.
42. In this way the doctrine of the Resur-
rection turned into a reality the exquisite myth
of Plato, in which he represented tyrants and
great men waiting for their final sentence from
the judges of Hades, with their bodies scarred and
wounded by lust and passion and cruelty. And at
the same time the notion of civic union in which
lay so much of the strength and virtue of classical
life, is freed from the dangers of party and class
1G0 The moral 'nee
(ii\r. ii and extended to the utmost limits of a human
brotherhood. The earliest religious instinct of
men taught them to regard each class, each guild,
each city, each state, as standing in a corporate
connexion with some particular deity, and enjoy-
ing his protection: Christianity satisfies the in-
stinct, and harmonizes the idea of a special re-
lationship to a Divine Lord with that of catholic
union in Him. It gives the largest range to the
sympathies and obligations of men at the very
time when it lays the greatest weight on the
distinct importance and eternal issues of every
isolated human action.
43. The perfect reconciliation of the claims
and duties of the individual and of the society
is no less characteristic of the teaching of Chris-
tianity than the hallowing (so to speak) of the
mutual relationship of soul and body; and both
doctrines alike find their historical basis and the
pledge of their realization in the Kesurrection.
In prae-Christian times the individual was either
sacrificed to the state, or contemplated wholly
apart from it. The Platonist, in theory, regarded
the man in a perfect society as simply living for
it, and having independently no personal worth.
The Stoic stood apart in proud loneliness, and
looked on the turmoil of statemanship and war
of the resurrection of the Body. 161
with the stern indifference of despair or resig- chap. ii.
nation. In practice both were more or less un-
faithful to their creed. Socrates found problems
of life which were so absorbing that till he had
solved these, he affirmed that he could not inter-
fere with politics. M. Aurelius, while he steeled
himself against the future by steadfastly affirming
the existence of a fated cycle of human destinies,
yet laboured with a faithful will to discharge the
offices of the empire. But neither had any prin-
ciple to justify the combination of the conflicting
elements of action and thought. Instinct only
was stronger than logic. But the Apostles could
declare that the sanctity of the man rests on the
same fact as the sanctity of the society : that the
dignity of personal action is not in conflict, but
in absolute harmony, with that of social action:
that duties to self and to others are simply dif-
ferent expressions of the same belief in one abso-
lute unity. No power which has ever effectually
stirred men to heroism or self-devotion is lost,
but all are seen in one source.
44. The glorious view which is thus opened
of the one life 'fulfilled in many ways' which
animates mankind, potentially at least, does not
exhaust the prospect which Christianity offers to
the eye of faith. Glimpses are given of a yet
11
162 The doctrine of the Resurrection
chap. ii. wider harmony and a vaster change. Eeference
has been made already to the passages in which
the apostolic writings notice the fellowship of
nature in the blessings of Redemption (i. § 1). It
is evident from our ignorance of the forces at
work in the outer world, of which we can ob-
serve only some effects according to our limited
powers of perception, that we are quite unable
to form any notion of ' a new heaven and a new
' earth.' Yet the fact of the Resurrection of the
body suggests most forcibly the literal truth of
Acts iii. 1 1. that 'restitution of all things' which was an-
nounced from the first by St Peter. The enno-
bling of our material organization contains, as
it were, the promise of a more complete transfi-
guration of Nature. It is possible that the change
lies nearer to us than we are apt to imagine. It
may perhaps be the case that what appear to us
to be imperfections and evils in the physical or
animal world may derive the character which
we attribute to them from the incompleteness of
our own faculties; and that this transfiguration
(relative to us) may lie within us and not with-
out.
45. Whether this view is true or not it con-
tains an important element of truth which is
commonly neglected. What we call ' laws of
in relation to our perception of Nature. 163
'nature' are, as has been seen (Introd. § 8), no-
thing more than laws of our present observation
of nature. They are a resultant, so to speak, of
some unknown force without and our own powers
of sensation and thought. The permanence of
the law depends on the permanence of these two
elements: if either is changed the resultant is
also changed. If then our bodily powers are
transfigured, as we see in the Resurrection of the
Lord, our powers of observation and the limitations
(as of space or time and the like) according to
which we class phenomena, will undergo a pro-
portionate change. Thus for us the 'law* will
be changed while the power whose working we
notice and describe by it is itself unchanged.
But still there is no abruptness, no arbitrary re-
volution, in this new aspect of Nature. The new
law must be conceived as springing out of our
new powers, just as the present law springs from
our present powers, when they are turned to the
objects which fall under them. If our present
body is the germ of that which will be, so is the
present law of that which will hereafter regulate
our perceptions. Thus to the Christian the laws
of Nature are not laws only, but prophecies. In
the light of the Resurrection they are symbols
of something broader and more glorious beyond
them. They do not confine hope but guide it.
11—2
164 Summa
chap, ii 46. The line of thought which has been just
opened leads to the Christian solution — as far as
a solution is possible — of the last question which
arises out of the simplest views of life, our rela-
tion to the world; but the fuller discussion of
this must be reserved for a separate section.
Meanwhile we have gained some insight into the
doctrinal significance of the Resurrection in rela-
tion to the fulness of our future personal exist-
ence and to our hope of restoration before God.
It has been seen that our present self is essen-
tially twofold; and that we cannot in any way
conceive that we can remain the same if either
of the elements of which it is made up wants its
proper representative. The doctrine of the ■ im-
•' mortality of the soul* is therefore wholly insuffi-
cient to satisfy that desire for a life hereafter for
which man naturally craves. In confirmation of
this conclusion it has been shewn that Aristotle
and Plato, while approaching the subject from
very different points, equally indicate that no
arguments of pure reason can establish the future
personal existence of the soul, as a conscious con-
tinuance of our present existence. Aristotle de-
nies the conclusion on the strength of a direct
analysis: Plato clothes his instinctive hope in the
form of a story, confessing, as it were, that his
logical process fails him. Yet further the argu-
Summary. 165
merits which point forward, point backward also, ohap. ii.
and thus fail to establish the conscious depend-
ence of the future on the present. Introduce the
belief in the Resurrection and each difficulty
disappears. In the Person of the Lord we see
how we can hereafter be the same and yet indefi-
nitely ennobled : how our souls and bodies may
be for ever united, so that the individual self
remains, while the body is transformed by a glo-
rious change.
47. In the next place it has been shewn that
while the possibility of sin is necessarily included
in the existence of a free finite will, actual sin
is wholly alien from the perfection of man's na-
ture: that in itself and in the individual sin is
inherently and immutably bad, though it may
give occasion to good by antagonism: and that
while it is such it must bring with it suffering,
which has no virtue to remove sin or the conse-
quences of sin, of which it is itself one. Naturally
then we cannot see how the evil of which we are
conscious can ever cease to work out torment,
though at the same time we instinctively turn to
God as a Father ready to forgive and also (but
how we know not) wash away sin. Again the
Resurrection presents to us the fulfilment of
man's triumph in Christ over the issues of sin,
166 mmary.
chap. ii. wliich culminate in death. But here the full sig-
nificance of the Resurrection, and our personal
share in it was seen to be bound up with the
Apostolic teaching on the Person of Christ as un-
folded in His Life and ^scension, on which the
Church was founded, and in which we find all our
hopes fulfilled, in virtue of a fellowship potential
for the race and actual by faith for the individual.
€ In Christ ' we can stand without fear in the very
presence of God.
48. Further we were led to notice some of
the moral consequences of a belief in the Resur-
rection: how it revealed a majesty in the body
which philosophers had denied, and the conse-
quent importance of every human action : how it
hallowed with a new sanction the idea of society
at the same time and in the same way as it raised
the dignity of the individual : how it harmon-
ized by the faith in the gathering together of all
humanity in Christ, claims which before were
thought to be contradictory in their origin and in
their fulfilment : how finally it casts a light over
the destiny of the world and helps us to under-
stand how our perception of nature will be indefi-
nitely raised, even if nature itself is unchanged,
by the ennobling of our own faculties and the re-
moval, or proportionate transformation of those
Summary. 167
limitations by which they are at present con- chap. ii.
fined.
It remains to consider more in detail some of
these thoughts as illustrating what may be called
the social aspects of the Resurrection, so far as it
contains a revelation of our relation to the world
around us, and of the character of that Church
which is the divine witness and embodiment of
its truth.
CHAPTER III.
THE RESURRECTION AND THE CHURCH.
WilUt du ins Unendliche schreiten,
Oth nur im Endlichen nack alien Seiten.
chap. iii. 1. '"PHE first announcement of the Gospel con-
-*- nects it with the establishment of a society.
Matt. iv. It is emphatically • the Gospel of the Kingdom.'
13 ' ■ The Kingdom of heaven is at hand ' was equally
the message of the Baptist and of Christ Himself
Matt. xi. at the beginning of His teaching. At one time
xvii 21 C ^ s Kingdom is contemplated as still future, at
another as already present. We are taught to pray
for its 'coming/ and encouraged to press as it
were by force and claim by violent effort a share
Matt. xiii. in its immediate blessings. Its origin, its growth,
the manner of its reception, the perils to which it
would be exposed, the variety of elements which
it would include, are portrayed under a rich
Luke xxii. variety of parables. ' I appoint unto you a King-
1 dom ' were among the last words which the Lord
The Church a Kingdom. 169
addressed to His disciples ; and after His Resur- chap. hi.
rection, during the forty days, He spoke ' of the
1 things pertaining to the Kingdom of God/ The
idea which was thus prominent during the minis-
try of Christ was included in the groundwork of
the Apostolic preaching. The first address of St
Peter on the day of Pentecost declared 'Jesus to
1 be the Lord and Christ ' Whom God had promised
1 to raise up to sit on the throne of David/ The
first record of a mission beyond the limits of Ju-
daea describes Philip 'preaching the things con-
1 cerning the Kingdom of God/ The definite charge
which was brought against St Paul when he first
preached in Europe was that he did ' contrary to Acta xvii.
' the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another J^ 2™ p *
1 King, one Jesus/
2. It is unnecessary to consider the various
misconceptions to which this proclamation of
Christ's 'Kingdom* was exposed. Even to the
time of the last manifestation of the Lord on
earth, the Apostles seem to have confounded 'the
' Kingdom of God ' with that which was its figure, Acts i. 3, 6.
'the Kingdom of Israel/ But there is not the
least trace that the Christian idea of a heavenly
kingdom was ever mixed up with direct political
aims. The very bitterness with which the Jewish
zealots at the time of their rising persecuted the
170 The Church a Kingdom.
chap. in. Christians, is a sufficient proof that these ' chil-
1 dren of the Kingdom ' were as far as possible re-
moved from schemes of temporal ambition. The
Christian belief did away with the bitterness of
civil bondage, and substituted a higher hope for
the dreams of national enthusiasm. But none
the less the Kingdom whose coming believers
were charged to hasten, was regarded as a society
truly answering to the name, though its establish-
ment was referred to the action of Divine Provi-
dence, and not to human design. The kingdoms of
the earth were types of this kingdom which should
be on earth though not of the earth. In other
words the glorious society in which the Gospel
was to find its outward embodiment would have a
Sovereign, of whose Personal Rule His subjects
would be conscious and by Whose Will they would
be guided, an organization, by which the relative
functions and duties and stations of those included
within it would be defined and sustained, a com-
mon principle of action, and common rights of
citizenship. This was the earliest form under
which the establishment of a Christendom, at first
militant and then triumphant (though this dis-
tinction was but faintly perceived), was realized.
The old Kingdom of God whose history could be
traced in the Old Testament furnished the lan-
guage in which it was described, and the wide-felt
The Church a Temple. 171
presence of the Eoman Empire gave distinctness chap. hi.
to the broader traits of universal dominion and
unity.
3. But the idea of a Kingdom was not the
only one under which the Church — the whole
society of Christians — was regarded. 'Thou art
'Peter {Petros)' our Lord said, in answer to the
confession which the great Apostle had made,
'and on this Rock (Petra, the living rock, from
' which the Petros is hewn or taken) I will build
' my Church/ This then is a second figure : the
church is a building, or more specially a house
or temple. And it is worthy of notice that
St Peter, in his first Epistle, brings out this con-
ception into the clearest light. ' Ye/ he writes, i Pet. ii. 4,
- o
'coming to the Lord, a living stone,... as living
'stones are built up a spiritual house/ of which
' the stone which the builders disallowed is made
' the head of the corner/ And St Paul yet more
in detail follows out the structure of this Chris-
tian sanctuary. Reckoning up the blessings of
the Gentile converts, he tells them that they are
now 'fellow-citizens of the saints... since they have Eph. ii.
'been built upon the foundation of the apostles ' 9 ~
' and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
' corner-stone, in whom every part of the build-
' ing, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy
172 The Church a Kingdom.
chap. in. 'temple in the Lord; in which ye also are builded
' together for an habitation of God in the Spirit/
It is, however, to be observed that the same image
which is used of the society is used also of the
Heb. Hi. 6 ; individuals. We are ' Christ's house/ * God's build-
\ cor/vi?' * m g>' <tne temple of the living God/ w r here the
l6, words are used of the many to whom or in whose
person the Apostle is speaking ; and on the other
hand he asks, 'Know ye not that your body' (in
each separate case ; or better perhaps, according
to another reading, your bodies) ' are a temple of
1 the holy Spirit which is in you/
4. This figure of a Temple has several points
in common with that of a Kingdom, from which
it is distinguished in its essential scope. In both
there is the design of the whole to which the
parts are subordinated, a variety of office and po-
sition in the constituent elements, a central power
on which the stability of all depends. But there
is no necessary connexion between the Temple
and Him Who dwells within it, such as is implied
in the reciprocal duties of governor and governed.
The house may be defiled or desolated, while the
occupant seeks some other abode ; but the King
is such in virtue of his special sovereignty. Briefly
the Temple prefigures the Church in its outward
fabric, in its splendour, in the vastness of its plan,
The Church a Body. 173
in the variety of materials of which it is con- ohap. hi.
structed, in the consecration of all which men l G £ T ' lu#
ion.
have to God by men and so through God by His
Presence. It is the material as contrasted with
the moral type of the Christian society.
5. But there is yet another image under
which St Paul presents the relation of the Church
to God. It is not only His Kingdom, and the
Temple of the Holy Spirit : it is also the Body of
Christ. Our Lord indicated this vital connexion
between Himself and His disciples in the parable
of the Vine and the branches; and after His
Death and Resurrection the truth thus signified
grew plainer and more prominent. It was seen
that Christians had not only severally works to
do, but different works : they were felt to be not
branches merely, but members of Him from whom
they drew their life. So it is that this idea of the
Church as the Body of Christ includes in itself
both the idea of the Kingdom and that of the
Temple. Sovereignty and organization are im-
plied in the Headship of Christ, and in the
mutual action and dependence of the members :
external structure and multiformity and consecra-
tion, in the framework of the body, and in the
variety of its parts, and in the relation of the
whole to the vital Spirit by which it is informed
174 The images of the Church
chap. in. But it also adds much to the ideas which it thus
harmonizes. The connexion of life is substituted
for that of government or occupancy. We live in
Christ, and He in us. We grow in Him ; and He
is seen more and more perfectly in the society of
Christians. The government of a society shews
something of the character of the ruler : the fabric
of a building something of our conception of him
for whom we rear it ; but the body reveals in part
the very person of him whose it is, and is the
organism by which alone his acts can be mani-
fested or fulfilled.
6. We are not perhaps justified in pressing
the details of these three images in an examina-
tion of the general characteristics of the Christian
Church, but so much at least is evident that they
mark it as ruled by a personal Governor, possessed
of an outward organization, inspired by an imme-
diate divine life. What light then, it may be
asked, does the Resurrection throw upon the
nature of this Kingdom of God, this Temple of
the Holy Spirit, this Body of Christ, for it is with
this subject only that we are immediately con-
cerned. Yet it must be observed that the ideas
are by no means always kept distinct. Language
borrowed from one is used in the development of
9 . '.another. 'Ye... are built up a spiritual house...
in relation to the Resurrection. 175
' ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an chap. hi.
1 holy nation, a peculiar people/ The gifts which
Christ has variously distributed among men are
'for the building up of His body/ 'Know ye not Epb.iv.12.
'that your bodies are members of Christ?... Know 15, 19.
■ ye not that your body is (or bodies are) a temple of
1 the Holy Spirit which is in you ?' One relation
runs into the other, just as in all other cases
we stand in threefold connexion with Him who
created, redeemed and sanctified us.
7. ' My Kingdom/ our Lord said, in answer to
Pilate, 'is not of this world/ And yet He added
presently, ' Thou sayest [rightly] that I am King.
'For this purpose have I been born, and for this
' cause have I come into the world that ;1 may
'bear witness to the Truth. Every one who is
'of the Truth heareth my voice/ The Kesurrec-
tion was the passage to the proper realm of truth
— of that which really is ; and in the contempla-
tion of the Resurrection the Christian learns some-
thing of things as they are in the sight of God.
The Resurrection is a new birth : to realize it as
an actual fact with the consequences which it in-
volves, is to share in it ; and thus we gain the full
meaning of Christ's words to the Teacher who
seemed to boast of the insight into spiritual things
which his training had given him : 'Verily, verily, John iii. 3.
176 A spiritual realm opened to us.
chap. in. < I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he
1 cannot see the kingdom of God* — he will have no
faculties to apprehend that which it contains.
Plato, in one of his grandest myths, has repre-
sented the progress of unembodied spirits in the
train of the gods in the face of all that is. When
they fall to earth, as their powers fail them in
their course, their destiny is determined by the
clearness and extent of the impressions which they
retain. These recollections form the basis of all
that men know of truth. The Christian reverses
the idea. He is going to a kingdom of absolute
Truth, and is not fallen from one. The Resurrec-
tion is the bridge by which the passage to the
unseen is effected. Resting on that he looks out
to the heavenly state of which he is a citizen : he
feels the constraining force of his allegiance to a
spiritual King: he apprehends something of the
divine hierarchy to a fellowship with which he is
admitted, and according to whose laws he works :
he sees the enemies against whom he has to con-
Eph.vi. i2. tend, 'principalities, and powers, and rulers of the
1 darkness of the world, and spiritual wickedness
'in the heavenly realm/ The order, the scene,
the persons, the objects of this spiritual kingdom,
answer to what we see now on earth, but no
more. A new heaven and a new earth await the
manifestation of Christ, even as men themselves
The building of the Church. 177
will be transfigured by His presence (n. §§ 44, chap. hi.
45).
8. It is obvious that there is great danger in
dwelling exclusively on this royal aspect of the
Church. It is likely that either the relations and
duties of men on earth will be neglected and dis-
paraged, or conflicts and differences here will be
absolutely confounded with those which are essen-
tially spiritual. History furnishes many examples
of both errors. 'The kingdom of God* has been
the watchword equally of those who have cast
aside the restraints and claims of life, and of those
who have sought to mould its form by the most
merciless fanaticism. And it was perhaps in part
due to their vivid anticipation of Christ's Return
with kingly majesty that the early Christians
took so little interest in civil affairs. Yet it must
also be remembered that in the Roman Empire
politics, as we understand the word, had no place;
and Christianity, as such, has no special relation
to any one form of government. In the long run
it tends to certain results, but in virtue of its
universality it is capable of the highest develop-
ment under any outward circumstances.
9. But the Church is not a kingdom only.
It is a structure complex and multiform. The
12
178 The manifold building of the Church.
chap. in. society, as a whole is a dwelling-place of the
Holy Spirit. It is reared from age to age by the
i Cor. iii. accumulated efforts of all who serve God. Each
brings that which he has of special worth and it
is built into the fabric. All work is not the same,
yet all which can bear the presence of God is
equally employed in some or other of its parts.
If the notion of a Kingdom suggests the essential
majesty of the Church, this of a Temple brings
out the human interest of its progress. The
Church is itself the record of its history: it is a
monument and a shrine. Each race, each nation,
each century, nay each faithful workman, has left
some mark upon it. Time gradually harmonizes
parts which once seemed incongruous. Additions
which were at first thought to mar the symmetry
of the plan are felt at a later period to increase
its rich&esa One Spirit hallows all, and that
Spirit is a gift consequent on the Resurrection.
The local withdrawal of Christ from among men
in the one limited form in which they had known
Him, and the transfiguration of that form ' by the
1 glory of the Father/ were the conditions through
which they could realize His unseen presence
John xvi. through the Spirit ' It is expedient for you that
* I go away/ the Lord said to His disciples on the
eve of His Departure ; ' for if I go not away, the
1 Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart,
The Church the visible body of Christ 179
* I will send Him unto you/ He first wakened chap. hi.
their souls to the perception of His new Life, and
then removed all which might still seem to con-
fine its manifestation. ' Cling not to me/ was the John xx.
loving reproof to her whose eyes he had opened R om . vi 4.
by a familiar word, 'for I am not yet ascended
1 to my Father/ No love, however true, which
sought to keep Him as He was seen on earth,
could know the fulness of Christ's majesty. The
Ascension was the necessary completion of His
work. So only could men trust in His abiding
power ever testing, and receiving and consecrat-
ing the many offerings of every generation, and
using all in due measure for the service of that
society in which He was pleased to dwell.
10. So far we have touched upon those
aspects of the Church which represent its eternal
constitution and its temporal growth. The Re-
surrection gives force and distinctness to both.
But it is more especially in the last figure of the
Church, as the Body of Christ, that it finds its
peculiar application. The idea which it expresses
springs indeed properly out of the belief in a
Risen Saviour. Anticipations of the idea are
found in the later discourses of Christ which have
been already noticed; and elsewhere He spoke of
His continual Presence among men in the per-
12—2
180 The fundamental idea of Christianity
ciiAr. in. sons of the poor and of His ministers. But th<
and other intimations of like kind fall far short of
the full grandeur of the conception which St Paul
l.i vs open. Nor can it be without significance
that the revelation is made to us through him
iCor.v. 1 6. who was resolved not to know 'a Christ according
4 to the flesh/ and to whom the Lord was first ma-
nifested in the majesty of His divine glory. The
Church is (if we may so speak) the visible Body
of the Risen Christ: it is through this that He
still works, in this that He still lives.
11. Three principal relations are included in
this conception of the Gfctrcb as the Body of
Christ. Christians as such are essentially united
together in virtue of their relation to Christ, and
that irrespective of any feeling or will of their own.
Next they are bound to one another by the obli-
gation of mutual offices, the fulfilment of which is
necessary for the wellbeing of the whole. And
lastly, all alike derive their life from their Head
Who is in heaven. The Body is one : it is multi-
form ; and it is quickened by a power which is not
of itself but from above. Now this element in its
constitution, now that, is brought into prominence,
but none can be neglected if we wish to form an
adequate notion of its power and functions. For
the present it will be enough to consider a little
in relation to that of Paganism, 181
more exactly the principle of unity, and that in chap. hi.
which the unity consists, the principle of life. The
multiformity of Christendom will be noticed suffi-
ciently while we endeavour to establish its unity.
12. Before doing so however it may be well
to notice how the fundamental idea of Christianity
as the basis of a society is related to the corre-
sponding ideas of Judaism and Paganism. It has
been frequently argued that modern civilization
has lost some essential element of good which
ancient civilization possessed. It has been said
that we are less self-reliant than the nations of
classical antiquity: less conscious of a Divine Pre-
sence than the Jews. Without pausing to inquire
whether this is so in fact or not we may be con-
tented to ask whether there is anything in Chris-
tianity itself which tends to produce such a result :
whether the evil or loss if it be actual is also
necessary.
13. The noblest lesson of Paganism is with-
out doubt the revelation which it makes to us of
the inherent dignity of human nature : of the
powers of endurance and self-denial and faith : of
the perceptions of beauty and truth : by which
the soul is at all times capable of asserting its
divine relationship. The work of Paganism was,
182 The idea of Christianity in relation
iap in. W e are led to believe, the complete exhibition of
these natural faculties, in their strength and in
their weakness. The nobility of man as man and
as standing apart from God is that portion of its
teaching by which it still appeals most forcibly to
the sympathies of our own time. There is a dark
side to the picture which we are apt to forget, but
still there is an abiding grace and manliness in
classical life as it is seen in history and literature
and art. Unaffected interest in every human
feeling, manysided culture, stern and indomitable
will, claim our respect and awaken in us respon-
sive efforts. But so far as we admire Paganism
there is nothing in Christianity antagonistic to it.
Paganism closed its eyes to suffering and death.
Christianity takes account of the whole nature of
man, of its good and its evil, and justifies in the
face of the contradictions of life the instinct which
affirms its dignity. It looks death face to face
not as an inevitable necessity but as a final conse-
quence of sin, and yet realizes even now more than
a victory. It lays bare, what each one must feel
for himself, our natural infirmity, and yet ad-
dresses us as ' partakers of the divine nature/ It
represents life as a struggle, and yet as a struggle
only to realize the blessings which are already
won for man and within his reach. It claims
his entire homage, but at the same time it con-
to those of Paganism and Judaism. 183
secrates to its own service the natural exercise of chap, hi
every power which he possesses, and the fulfilment
of every situation in which he is placed. It looks
upon the world as suffering with him, but it
regards it no less as destined to share his glorious
future. It differs from Paganism as a whole dif-
fers from a part. It takes up into itself and har-
monizes with the rest of our experience the.
isolated truths to which Paganism bears witness.
14. This is equally true of the relation in
which Christianity stands to Judaism. If Pa-
ganism is a testimony to the self-assertion and
independence of man, Judaism is the confession of
his dependence. In the first we contemplate man
in himself : in the other man as the creature of
God. In Paganism, at least when it reached its
full development, an appeal is made to a com-
mon conscience, or to necessary laws of thought,
or to history : in Judaism the binding message is
' the Word of the Lord/ In the one men obey
because they recognize the essential justice of the
command or submit to a stronger force : in the
other the statutes of right are not primarily based
on intuitions or suggested by experience, but em-
bodied in a Law which is absolute, not in virtue
of its inherent character but as coming from Je-
hovah. The one, if we look to the principle by
181 The principle of unity
chap in. which it lived, is a witness to human freedom: the
other to Divine sovereignty. And as the principles
which they respectively embody are eternal, so are
the spirit of Paganism and the spirit of Judaism.
The history of Christianity is little more than the
history of the approximate harmonization of the
two. Now the solution turns in this direction
and now in that according as the spirit of Greece
or of Rome prevails — the theology of Athanasius
or of Augustine — but apostolic Christianity recog-
nizes and hallows both elements. The coming of
the Lord invests humanity, even as it is, with a
more awful majesty than man could have claimed
for himself ; and at the same time connects the
realization of that majesty with the direct revela-
tion of the Divine Will. Paganism proclaims the
grandeur of man : Judaism the supremacy of God.
Christianity accepts the antithesis and vindicates
by the message of the Resurrection the grandeur
of man in and through God.
15. This then is the work of Christianity,
first to establish the common dignity of men as
m<m, and to place on a sure basis all purely human
virtues ; and next to connect the life of men
with its source and consummation and bring it
into fellowship with God. Both these results are
grounded on the historic facts of the Gospel.
in Christianity. 185
The unity of the Christian Society, to which cuap. hi.
potentially all men belong, depends not on any
personal feeling but on a common relation in
which men as belonging to the society stand to
God. And the reality of this divine fellowship is
at once the seal of th£ nobility of man and the
pledge of the possibility of its final perfection.
16. 'As the body is one/ St Paul writes, " Cor - *«•
12, 13.
'and hath many members, and all the members
' of the 1 body being many are one body: so also is
• Christ. For in one Spirit we all were baptized
'into {i.e. by baptism incorporated in) one body,
* whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether we be
■ bond or free ; and were all made to drink 2 one
1 Spirit.' Here the unity is seen to spring out of a
definite outward act, and the participation in a
spiritual blessing consequent upon it. No other
conditions are added. Yet it must be observed that
according to the formula which Christ Himself en-
joined, Baptism includes a profession of faith, such
as has been connected with it in all ages, in which
the historic facts of the Lord's Life are plainly
set forth. Hence in another place St Paul says
more fully : ' There is one body, and one spirit, E ph- It. 4-
1 even as ye were called in one hope of your calling :
1 one Lord, one faith, one baptism.' The act once
1 Omit one. 2 Omit into.
f86 The principle of unity
chap. in. done brings with it, in virtue of Christ's work, fel-
Roiu. vi. 3, lowsliip with Him, in which lies unity. 'Know ye
1 not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
1 Christ, were baptized into His death ? Therefore
1 we were buried with Him by baptism into death;
1 that like as Christ was raised up from the dead
* by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
4 walk in newness of life/ Here the issue is viewed
from the human side. It is ours to realize in
action the fulness of the heavenly life of which
we are made partakers. Elsewhere it is viewed
in relation to God, and in this aspect all is accom-
Eph. ii. 5, plished once for all. 'When we were dead in
'sins [God] quickened us together with Christ,
1 and raised us up together [with Him] and made
us sit together in the realms of heaven in Chris!
1 Je>
17. The participation in Christ's Death and
Resurrection through Baptism is then the final
condition of unity : to work out the Resurrection
in life the means and measure of its preservation.
For unity is not uniformity. Differences of race,
class, social order obviously have no influence
upon it. They are of earth only. But more than
this, it is consistent with serious differences in
the apprehension of the common faith on which
it reposes. St Paul naturally insists on the re-
in Christianity. 187
moval of the partition between Jew and Gentile chap. in.
by the Death of Christ, whereby He 'made ofEpK.fi. 15.
' twain one new man/ Primarily without doubt he
regarded the contrast as it was before the Gospel;
but it seems equally certain that he included
within the scope of Christ's reconciliation those
diversities of opinion by which the Jewish and
Gentile Churches were separated. The Apostles GaL ii. 7 ff.
of the circumcision recognized in him the aposto-
late of the uncircumcision ; and he gladly received
from them 'the right hand of fellowship.' The
divergences of practice between the teachers, and
of belief to a certain extent between the disciples
of the two schools, were not sufficient to destroy
their true unity. Love still found its expression
among them in acts of charity. It was only Gal. ii. 10
when the attempt was made to enforce, one partial
system as universal that the unity of the whole
was endangered. The first serious effort to estab-
lish uniformity threatened to end (as it did after
the time of the Apostles) in a schism.
18. It may not, indeed, be a mere fancy to
regard the manifold appearances of the Lord after
His Resurrection as prefiguring in some way the
varieties which should exist in after time in His
Church. The unity of His Person was not in any
way impaired, and yet He shewed Himself to His
188 The principle of life
chap. in. disciples in different 'forms/ And it may be still
Mark xvi. that the faithful eye can see a Body of Christ
where His Presence is hidden from others. For
even in the one body, there are many bodies ;
and as the whole Church is sometimes contem-
plated in its completeness as distinct from Christ,
Kj.li. v. 27. though most closely bound to Him, as His bride;
Anoc xxi
2, 9. so also is the same true of separate Churches. ' Ye
1 ( «>r. xii. \ are a body {not the body) of Christ, and members
'in particular' St Paul says to the Church of
Corinth. The definite article destroys the force
of his argument. And so again in his second
1 Cor. xi. Epistle : ' I espoused you ' — the congregation to
which he is writing — 'to one husband, that I may
'present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.' Thus
the whole is not only relatively complete but it is
made up of parts (so to speak) similar to itself.
And this is true if we regard even the ultimate
members of which it is composed. The individual
i hristian — a temple of the Holy Spirit as well as
a living stone of a more glorious Temple — is like
the special Church of which he is a member, even
this is like that Universal Church in which it
discharges some special function.
19. But while the Christian, the separate
Churches, and the Universal Church have seve-
rally, in some sense, a completeness in themselves,
2.
in Christianity. 189
yet their real life is solely in their connexion with chap. hi.
Christ ' the Head of the man/ and * the Head of i Cor. xi. 3.
'the Church/ From him flows that energy by Eph'.iv.i6.'
which every member is enabled to discharge its
function effectually and in due proportion to
the harmonious working of the whole : from Him,
that power of love by which the several parts are
fitted and knit together: from Him that vital
force by which the multiform body 'increaseth
'with the increase of God/ Each phase of this
divine Life is distinctly marked. 'The bread' — Jolmvi.51.
the heavenly manna — 'which I will give/ the
Lord said, ' is my flesh, for the life of the world/
— ' Because I live, ye [my disciples] shall live John xiv.
'also' — 'I am the Resurrection and the Life/ j^' hn xi
'Ye died/ St Paul writes to the Colossians, 'and J?; ...
9 Col. 111. 3, 4.
'your life hath been hidden with Christ in Goi>:
'but when Christ, is manifested, our Life, then
' shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory/
' It is no longer I who live/ he says in another Gal. ii. 20.
place, 'but Christ liveth in me/ 'He that hath \ 2 °
' the Son hath life ; but he that hath not the Son
' of God hath not life/
20. It is then necessary to bear two things
in mind in treating of the Unity of the Church.
The Unity of the whole is consistent with a wide
variety of parts, each having to a certain degree
190 Essential unity does not
chap. in. a corresponding unity in itself. And next, the
essential bond of union is not external but spi-
ritual : it consists not in one organization but in
a common principle of life. Its expression lies in
a personal relation to Christ and not in any out-
ward system. Of the life of the Church part is
open, part is hidden. We can see divisions, dif-
ferences, limitations ; but all that is eternal and
infinite in it, all that controls actions which per-
plex us and harmonizes discords which are un-
resolved to our senses, is not to be perceived on
, earth but is with Christ in heaven.
21. It follows necessarily from what has been
said that external, visible, unity is not required
for the essential unity of the Church. To recur
to the example which has been already used, the
congregations of Jewish and Gentile Christians
were no less One in Christ, though the outward
fellowship between them was imperfect or wanting :
their common life lay deeper than the controversies
which tended to keep them apart. Their isola-
tion was a proof of imperfection, but not of death.
What errors are deadly, it does not fall to our
part to attempt to determine. It is enough to
observe that differences of opinion which were
once thought by many to be fatal to unity were
really consistent with it. The promise of Christ
require external unity. 191
does not reach to the unity of the outward fold cHAr. in.
at any time. ' Other sheep/ He said, ' I have, j h. x. 16.
' which are not of this fold : them also I must
' bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there
' shall become one flock, one Shepherd' — one flock
in however many folds it be gathered, because it
listens to the voice of the One Shepherd.
22. If the true unity of the whole Church,
which is derived from the participation in the
Spirit of Christ, is compatible with the existence
of outward divisions on earth, it is no less com-
patible also with the existence of independent
centres of local and partial authority in its mani-
fold organization. Christ Himself is the One
Head ; and He left no single successor to repre-
sent in outward form the relation in which He
stands to the Body. For a time indeed an idea
seems to have prevailed in one province of Chris-
tendom that the office of Christ (if we may so
speak) and not of the Apostles only was to be
perpetuated. The Jewish Bishops of Jerusalem,
who were taken as long as might be from the
family of the Lord, were held by many to be (even
though they did not claim the title themselves)
His successors. They were ■ bishops of bishops/
Their authority as far as can be learnt now was
supposed to extend over the whole world and not
192 /• external unify
( hap. in. to be confined to a single diocese or district. Tin v
symbolized the idea of an earthly kingdom which
was characteristic of the party who professed to
maintain their opinions. It would be idle to
speculate on the form which this belief might
have taken if Jerusalem had not been destroyed.
As it is, it is impossible not to feel that the effect
of the desolation of 'the Holy City* must have
been to chasten and purify (as soon as they could
bear the discipline) those who had hoped to mould
the Christian Church after the pattern of J u« la ism.
The conception of unity based on a historic and
divine succession in the religious centre of tin
world was proved to be no part of the true idea
of the Church. The thoughts of men were turned
with a deeper faith to that ' Jerusalem which is
'above/ to which from the first St Paul had di-
rected them.
The outward unity whirl i was aimed at
in the early Jewish Church was based upon a
religious idea. The outward unity which after-
wards grew up round the Roman Church sprang
from political influences. The two systems are
essentially distinct in their origin, though finally
they can be traced in theory to the same prin-
ciples. The Roman system became in the end
what the Jewish system was from the first, but
was aimed at. 193
with one remarkable difference. The priesthood chap. hi.
which was in both cases the visible representative
and instrument of the theocracy was limited in
Judaism to a distinct family succession : in Ro-
manism the succession was spiritual and effec-
tually disconnected from hereditary ties. In the
Christian Church of Jerusalem the fleshly descent
was observed for several generations, but there is
no trace of a similar custom at Rome. The idea
of spiritual supremacy seems indeed absolutely to
exclude it. But it must be enough to have in-
dicated the external contrast between systems
essentially similar. This is not the place to follow
out the steps of their parallel but converse de-
velopment. Nor can we dwell on the marvellous
process by which the Roman Church was pre-
pared for the preservation of Christianity on the
dissolution of the Empire. It would be foreign to
our purpose to trace the steps by which the bishop
of the imperial city received one by one the pre-
rogatives of sovereignty, and in due time seated
himself on the vacant throne of the Caesars. It
would be equally out of place to attempt any
estimate of the strength which the mediaeval
Church thus received for the execution of the
work with which it was charged. The facts are
of vast significance, and occupy so large a space
in the history of Christendom that they may not
13
194 The extent of permissible variation
chap. in. lightly be passed over. They formed, as many
will believe, part of the providential scheme of
the historical growth of the Church. But the
unity to which they led was no necessary part of
the constitution of the Church. It answered to
the one Empire of the first age, and not to the
many kingdoms of the maturer life of Europe.
It supplied a bond between the disorganized na-
tions till the state-systems into which they were
formed were firmly consolidated. Under its pro-
tection the Romanic and German elements were
allowed to gather strength till they were ready
to fulfil their independent office. But without
dwelling upon this temporal function of the ex-
ternal unity of the Christian society we can at
least see from the fall of its prototype after the
Jewish Return (i. §§ 27 f.) that the spiritual unity
of the Church is independent of it. The outward
unity arose from historic causes: it was broken
by historic causes. No external organization can
supersede the original relation in which the So-
ciety stands to its Founder. The gift of the Holy
Spirit was the outward sign of the elevation of
humanity to glory at the right hand of God : the
sharing in that gift is the life of the Church : the
absolute oneness of the source from which the gift
flows is the ground of essential unity in the con-
gregations of which the Church is composed.
not to be determined antecedently. 195
24 But though the principle of the unity of chap. hi.
the Christian Church is spiritual and not neces-
sarily connected with uniformity of constitution or
even with intercommunion, it by no means follows
that the outward organization of the whole of the
constituent Churches is a matter of indifference.
On the contrary the direct teaching of the Resur-
rection points to the inherent connexion between
the outward and the spiritual, the organization
and the life. The range of variation in the con-
stitution of the Christian societies must be limited
by their fitness to embody the fundamental ideas
of Christianity. Of this fitness history on a large
scale gives the final j udgment. Whatever may be
the immediate issue of controversy, however false
may be the issues on which it is decided, however
blinding the influences by which its progress has
been modified, in the end it is seen in its true
light, and the final judgment which is ratified by
general practice or belief is commonly the true
one. In this sense history is the arbiter not of
truth but of the right embodiment of truth. The
early records of the Church are little more than the
records of conflicts which once seemed doubtful;
but in each case that which had in it the element
of permanence lived on, and Catholicity stood in
full strength against the broken forms of partial
and erroneous teachings.
13—2
196 Possible divisions illustrated
chap. in. 25. It is possible perhaps to extend this view
of a historic development of Christianity to later
ages. It seems difficult to believe that the Greek
and Latin Churches include the only two great
aspects of Christian truth, so that it remains for
us at present only to recur to the principles on
which they were built, and to strive vainly to re-
produce in another period a transcript of the past.
The vast advances of civilization, the further
growth of national life, the wider range of know-
ledge, which brings with it the recognition of the
importance of special views, seem to force upon
us the conviction that the various Churches of
modern times fulfil under the changed conditions
of society the same functions as could be discharg-
ed in earlier times by a single Church. Even in
the history of Judaism something of the same
kind may be noticed. In no way, as we should
judge, could the possibility of variation, and still
more of division be excluded with greater certainty
than by the institutions of the Jewish Church,
and yet in that outward union was soon broken,
and the rupture (so to speak) sanctioned. The
Temple — the permanent (i. § 25) symbol of unity
— was hardly completed, before a large part of the
nation was shut out from the use of it. The poli-
tical and religious schism of which Israel was a
monument was not passed over without rebuke,
by the history of the Jewish Church. 197
but in spite of that a distinct spiritual work was CHAP - IIL
carried on in Israel, not less blessed by outward
signs than that which was simultaneously accom-
plished in Judah. At a later time the office which
was discharged by the Jews of the Dispersion, and
specially by the Alexandrine Jews, in modifying
and extending their traditional faith, was still
more manifestly recognized by God in the provi-
dential office which He allowed it to fulfil for the
spread of Christianity. Here as elsewhere it seems
as if the sins and wilfulnesses of men gave occasion
to the accomplishment of the Divine plans. The
rebellion of Israel, the schism of Alexandria, the
permanent settlement of Jews throughout the
East and West which involved a violation of large
parts of the Mosaic law, were in themselves evils,
and had their spring in selfishness and disobe-
dience, but none the less they served to work out
a vast counsel, which, as far as we can see, could
not otherwise have been perfected. In the his-
tory of that earlier kingdom of God, which was
essentially outward, we are taught by special ex-
amples not to judge every thing by our own
standard of unity. At least no argument can be
drawn from the circumstances which attend the
rise of any great movement against the impor-
tance of the part which it may have to discharge
in the furtherance of the purposes of God.
198 Tlie admission of variation
chap. in. 26. But it may be said that such a view
sanctions sectarianism. If we are to suppose that
the form of the Christian Church in each nation
will (within certain limits) embody the common
peculiarities of the national character, just as on
a larger scale the Greek Church is Orthodox and
the Latin Church Catholic, differences will still
exist in the body thus formed. Each nation will
include men most widely at variance in their re-
ligious tendencies. Are they then to be held
blameless if they seek to attach themselves to a
communion which expresses most clearly their
own views ? The national character is not reflect-
ed in them; and the same general principle which
justifies the formation of a separate national
Church may be appealed to in support of an in-
definite number of subordinate associations.
27. Disregarding for the present all con-
siderations of ecclesiastical organization, it may be
sufficient for us to answer to such a line of reason-
ing that it applies equally well to all social com-
binations. No one will deny that there is a
tendency in every nation towards the establish-
ment of a government best suited to it. This
tendency which may be latent in the mass, though
really there, will be developed most strongly in
those who are the true leaders of popular thought.
no sanction of Sectarianism, 199
And though various obstacles may hinder or mo- chap. hi.
dify the embodiment of the idea which they re-
present, in the end it finds an adequate expres-
sion. But even then individuals in the state
will find themselves at variance with the consti-
tution. This divergence however will not release
them from the duties of loyal obedience, nor yet
deprive the government of its right to be regarded
as the representation of the national feelings. The
state though made up of individuals has an exist-
ence of its own. The individual will exercise
his full influence in preparing for further changes,
but meanwhile the whole claims a sacrifice of the
part. It is so also in the case of a national Church.
No general principles can be laid down to justify
a schism or a revolution. The future alone can
decide on the sufficiency of the alleged causes
from which they arose. And in many cases the
issue which is sanctioned by experience may have
been occasioned though not caused by selfish
motives.
28. History has in fact sanctioned divisions
in the Christian Church whatever we may think
of the events which first led to them, or of the
actors by whom they were made : however deeply
we may deplore the loss of that outward fellow-
ship which would, if it could have been preserved,
200 Progress implies antagonism
cnAP. in. have increased a thousandfold the power of the
Church upon the world; yet it is impossible not
to feel that God has revealed His purposes and
furthered His work not only in spite of, but even
through the separate societies which have seve-
rally appropriated this or that part of the whole
truth as the characteristic object of their devout
study. And even without regarding the lessons
of the past it is hard to see how the fulness of
Christianity could have been manifested among
men otherwise than by antagonism and conflict.
Antagonism is the preliminary to our apprehen-
sion of anything which is not itself absolutely
bounded by our finite powers. Every spiritual
truth can be followed out to a final antithesis;
and this antithesis finds its most complete ex-
pression in societies rather than in individuals.
29. The same law which holds in all other
fields of human activity, holds also in the noblest.
The condition of advance in the comprehension
of the whole Gospel is the special mastery of its
parts in life. Progress implies a separate deve-
lopment of powers. The tendency to division
grows as knowledge widens. There was a time
when all nature seemed to lie within the range
of one mind. Deeper inquiry has shewn that
each fragment includes phenomena which may
and individuality. 201
occupy a lifetime. And so it is in religion. The chap. hi.
complexity of modern society, which is in part a
creation of Christianity, lays before us endless
problems of right and duty, and opens countless
avenues for the entrance of truth into the mani-
fold life of men which could not have been pre-
sented under simpler conditions of existence. As
a necessar} r consequence of this, each nation, each
association, each man has, in proportion to the
distinctness of character, a tendency to do one
thing; and the tendency to do it springs (as a
general rule and upon a large scale) from the
fitness for doing it. There is thus, in virtue of
the universality of Christianity, a constant ap-
proximation towards the complete manifestation
of its power. And when each age and race and
individual has fulfilled its proper function — and
so far as it fulfils it — a glorious harmony must
result, which is true Catholicity.
30. The recognition of some such historic
development of Christianity vaiying according to
the wants of particular ages or races, as belonging
to its present form, restores to the divided churches
a true unity. One of the earliest images under
which the unity of Christendom was described
was that of many streams flowing from one source.
The longer the streams flow, the greater will be
202 The essential unity of the Church
chap. in. their divergence; but the divergence is due to
progress and does not in any way destroy the
original unity of the waters which pass along the
various courses. But the streams will not always
be divided. They start from one source and they
end in one ocean. They have been united out-
wardly, and they will again be united. Mean-
while the fashion of their currents is moulded by
the country through which they pass, and this in
turn furnishes the peculiar elements which they
bear down to their common resting-place to form
the foundations of a world to come.
31. There is indeed much of human selfish-
ness in the present administration and conduct of
Christian societies, even as there was in their
establishment and organization. It is not argued
that the divisions as we see them are not de-
formed by much that is unchristian. The petty
rivalries of the day are an evil, though they are
an evil which may be borne. But the line of
thought which has been opened leads to a trustful
and reasonable view of Christendom. It enables
us to regard the progress of the Church as we
regard the progress of civil society. It encou-
rages us to extend our sympathies beyond the
limits of our own communion : to look forth with-
out despair upon a world, in part hardly reached
seen in its external development. 203
by the very sound of Christ's message, in part CHAP - m
divided as to the exact meaning of it. It teaches
us to watch with patience the slow and painful
and wavering advance of truth through long ages,
as falling in with what we observe in nature of
the enormous scale and gradual progress of the
accomplishment of His operations (i. §§ 2, 3). The
example of the Jewish Church, the legible chroni-
cle of past centuries, shew that under circum-
stances similar to those which exist now, though
simpler and narrower, God wrought out His work
and used the fruits of man's wilfulness and one-
sidedness for the accomplishment of His designs.
So we trust it will be now, and in confidence we
can fulfil the task which we find ready to our
hands, without distrusting the means placed within
our reach for furthering the coming of the King-
dom of Christ.
32. Some law of development Christianity
must have. The Christianity of the first age,
regarded as a whole, is not the Christianity of
any later age; and no view of the Church can
be complete or satisfactory which does not include
and explain the principle of the change. It is
impossible for a Christian of today to date the
descent of his faith from any critical epoch in
modern times, and neglect ten or fifteen centuries
20-i The development one of
chap, iil as a mere parenthesis in the history of the Ca-
tholic Church. All the past is included in the
present. The Reformation was the fruit of ages
gone by no less than the germ which should
spring to maturity in ages to come. There can
be no suspension in the fulfilment of the divine
promise, however varied may be the forms under
which it is accomplished. The leaven still works
in the manifold mass : the seed advances stage by
stage towards its ripe perfection: the tree grows
under every change of season and climate, and
offers shelter to all who repose beneath its
branches. Each image under which we are taught
to contemplate the function of the Church pre-
sents at once an element of permanence and an
element of change. There is the essential life
by which the whole body is quickened, absolutely
one and immutable, and the organization which
the vital force moulds and by which it reveals
itself, which is mutable and fashioned out of ele-
ments earthly and transitory. But even so the
continuity of the organization is necessary for the
preservation of the complex life.
33. The principle of life is one and immutable.
In this there is no development. The faith which
is written in the facts of the Gospel, and the im-
mediate apostolic interpretation of them, admit
organization not of dogma. 205
of no necessary and authoritative additions. A CHAP 1IL
dogmatic development of Christianity, in the sense
of an increase of the fundamental doctrines of the
faith, is foreign to the whole spirit of the apostolic
writings, and is itself inconceivable without a new
revelation. Such a development would only take
place by the addition of new dogmas in virtue of
the direct action of an adequate power, or by
deductions from existing dogmas. But both me-
thods are excluded by the nature of the case.
Christianity rests essentially on facts. Its ele-
mentary doctrines are presented to us in the
shape of facts ; and thus, even if any central
power existed with absolute dogmatic power, new
facts would be required for the basis of new doc-
trines, for the Apostles declare with unmistakeable
distinctness the full significance of the Incarnation
and the Mission of the Holy Spirit. And again,
the truths which answer to the facts of the Gospel
belong in themselves to a higher form of exist-
ence, and cannot be brought within the domain
of our powers of reasoning. Every process which
we pursue involves necessarily at each step limita-
tions (as, for example, of time and space) to which
the Divine Being is not subject. Every conclu-
sion, therefore, which we form, so far as it is
presented as an absolute truth, must have in it
an element of error. Indeed, on reflection, it
206 The development of the Cliurch corresponds
chap. in. cannot but seem infinitely presumptuous that we
should venture to speculate on that of which, even
in its simplest form, we can give no positive con-
ception. Nor is there any characteristic by which
the apostolic writings are more clearly distin-
guished from the greatest writings of masters of
theology than the absence of secondary deductions
in them from the principles which they enforce.
In this respect they differ equally from the meta-
physical and speculative theology of the East, and
from the moral and legal theology of the West.
They contain a record of facts, and an immediate
application of the facts, but no more : life and
not thought is the object to which they primarily
minister, and so they minister (as no other writ-
ings ever could do) to thought through life.
They set forth with simple distinctness that a fact
or truth is, but not how it is or why it is. What
there is more than this in later speculations, how-
ever beautiful and however precious it may be, is
wholly different in kind. From the first the
difference has been instinctively felt. The records
of the most critical struggle for the truth in the
history of the Church shew how wide-spread was
the unwillingness to introduce into the historic
creed of Catholic Christendom a single word which
was not found in the Scriptures though it was the
necessary exponent of their teaching in opposition
to the general progress of nations. 207
to error : the language of the noblest champion chap. hi.
of orthodoxy shews how far he was willing to
dispense with the acceptance of a word when the
fact which it imperfectly expressed was admitted.
34. But while the principle of life, the record
of the facts of the Gospel, remains the same, the
form in which it is embodied may change. Thus
we naturally turn to history as shewing the con-
ditions and ruling the mode of the development
of Christianity. Here we can see on a large
scale how the same truths are apprehended by
different races, how they are embodied under
different circumstances and according to different
modes of thought, how they conquer, and array
themselves in the spoils of the conquered. No
one would deny that in successive ages special
aspects or parts of Truth are brought out. The
general outline of the history, including both the
history of dogma and the history of practice, has a
necessary connexion with that of civil and intel-
lectual history. The one is, so to speak, a func-
tion of the other. And it follows that as we can
trace in the general condition of man a constant
advance towards a true fulfilment of the capabili-
ties of his nature, so we may hope for a corre-
sponding progress in the Church, towards that
ideal which is held before us in Scripture as its
208 The progress of the whole includes
chap. in. proper consummation. Advance in the first case
is not only consistent with wars, revolutions, iso-
lated action, but (as far as we can judge) is even
dependent on these which we are tempted to call
hindrances in its way. And it may be so with
Christianity. The divisions and rivalries and
heresies and schisms by which the Church is torn
may be means towards the fulfilment of its office.
As we look back we can scarcely doubt that it
is so. The storm no less than the sunshine is
needed that the rainbow, the visible token of
Gods covenant with man, may be seen upon the
cloud.
35. It is indeed impossible to regard the
Church as a body without recognising the neces-
sity of a constant change in its organization.
Growth itself is change ; and in proportion as the
life of the body is complex we may expect the
forms in which it is clothed to be varied. There
are times when the individual is forgotten in the
society, and conversely when the society is for-
gotten in the individual. In the apostolic view
of the future of Christianity there is a distinct
recognition of a progressive work in both. The
life of the Church is continuous even as the life
of the man ; but with this difference (as we have
seen, § 18,) that this life is manifested not in one
transitional developments of parts. 209
outward embodiment, but in many, which are chap. hi.
severally similar to the whole which they combine
to form.
36. It is no part of our task to attempt to
follow out in detail the various phases of the life
of the Christian Churches. But it would not be
difficult to shew that institutions or dogmas have
wrought a most important work for the cause of
Christ in one age, which in another have been
converted into obstacles to the full apprehension
of the Truth. There is always a great danger
that that which has been found of critical use at
one time will be pronounced necessary for all time.
Mistaken gratitude changes the outward means of
deliverance into an idol. The organization through
which the spirit once worked is reckoned holy,
even when the spirit has left it. And thus that
which once was a development of life becomes a
coiTuption, not because it has (in every case)
changed in itself, but because it stands in a different
relation to the whole. The work of the mediaeval
Church (for example) required modes of operation
which could not be retained now without a faith-
less neglect of the lesson which God has taught
us in the last four centuries. The same pheno-
menon meets us at every step in the economy of
individual life. The seed from which rises the
14
210 How far this development
< hap. in. fruit-bearing tree, to which the visible society of
Christendom is likened, gives birth to a thousand
successive organizations, from the seed-leaf to the
flower, which fall away when their peculiar office
is fulfilled. They perish, but their work remains,
and remains because they perish.
37. This consideration brings with it the
answer to a general objection which may be urged
against the belief in a divine historical develop-
ment of Christianity. It may be said that the
development is due to the imperfection of man :
that so far from carrying forward the perception
of the Truth, he lowers the truth to his own level
and confines it in a form borrowed from his own
weakness. The objection is true if it be directed
to any particular point of the development. The
Truth itself is infinite, and it is simply because
the powers of man are imperfect and finite that
any development is necessary. He can only
realize step by step, and by successive efforts,
what is indeed from the beginning. According to
the position in which he finds himself, he takes
now this, now that fragment of the whole, because
it meets his wants. Every embodiment of the
Truth must be wrought out in this way. And the
nearest approximation which we can form to the
complete truth is by the combination of the par-
is due to the infirmity of man. 211
tial realizations of it which history records. The chap, in
imperfection of each stage of the development is
then only perilous when an attempt is made to
transfer the forms of thought or practice of a parti-
cular period to another, without any regard to their
bearing upon the whole life of the time. The
interpretation of ecclesiastical history, like the
interpretation of Scripture, is based upon a pro-
portion. Neither admits a rigid literalism. The
training of the child and of the man will be dif-
ferent, if both are according to the same law ; but
the man may learn still (if he reads them rightly)
from the lessons of the child.
38. It is not denied that there will be a
tendency in man not only to seize that element
in the Truth which he himself needs, but also to
exaggerate its importance, to array it in fancies
of his own, to transmit his embodiment of it as
an inviolable heritage to all who shall come after.
If it w r ere not so, superstition would have no
vitality. But while we look to history for the
record of the continuous growth of the Church,
we carry the Holy Scriptures with us, as the test
whereby to try the essential value of each de-
velopment. The history of the Old Covenant is
enacted afresh in the history of the New. The
fulness of the apostolic writings has not yet been
14—2
212 Scripture the test of true development.
in exhausted in the life of eighteen centuries. The
providence of God is at every stage interpreted by
His Word
39. The same test which is applied to the
past history of the Church, can be applied to the
present. The vast complexity of modern life, the
various degrees of national culture, the broad
differences between class and class in the same
nation, set before us simultaneously, so to speak,
distinct periods of the simpler life of the ancient
world. We live (and the statement is not a mere
figure) in the presence of many ages. We cannot be
prised then if we see around us many Christian
societies distinct, and subserving in virtue of their
• listinctness to distinct types of thought and feel-
ing. Differences which once were found in the
same external body are now seen embodied in
separate societies. We lose something by the
change, but we gain more. We are led to look
for the spiritual basis of unity instead of reposing
in the fact of formal unity. And more than this.
The full development of each part is best secured
by independent action. Division (if we regard
the imperfection of our nature) appears to be
the preliminary of that noblest catholicity, which
will issue from the separate fulfilment by each
part in due measure of its proper function towards
the whole.
Churches 'redeem each other.* 213
40. It has been nobly said that ' nations re- chap. hi.
'deem each other.' One supplies that which an-
other lacks in moral character and purpose ; and
the existence of a deficiency in one place is not
unfrequently the stimulus and the occasion for
the display of the corresponding virtue in another.
At least it is evident that we cannot understand
how with our present powers the full grandeur of
humanity could be exhibited or developed except
by the coexistence of many peoples distinct and
even antagonistic. And that which is true of
humanity in a political or social aspect is true of
it also in a religious aspect. Separate organiza-
tions appear to be as necessary for the complete
manifestation of the many sides of Christian truth
in relation to man, as they are confessedly for the
manifestation of national life. But we do not
rest in the contemplation of a divided humanity
or of a divided Church. Under the varieties of
race and character there exist tokens of an essen-
tial union which may yet be realized and towards
which the current of events is ever turned. There
are indications, faint it may be and often baffling,
of a common life grander than the life of men and
the life of nations, which is struggling to assert
its sovereignty. And in the Church there is yet
more than this, the certainty of the presence of a
Holy Spirit who ' is able to subdue all things unto
'21± Grounds of hope in the
; in. * Himself.' But whether we look to nations or
churches, it is needful that we should pause before
we claim to exercise the prerogatives of a know-
ledge which belongs to a higher sphere. As citi-
zens and Christians we stand in varied relations
to a universe of which we can see but the least
part. This world is not all ; and if we look confi-
dently for a unity of the whole, we dare not at-
tempt to construct it in imagination upon the
little field which is open to us.
41. The forms which present divisions as-
sume are, it is admitted, and must remain causes
for the deepest sorrow. Nothing can be more
grievous than the partial wilfulness with which
Christian men and Christian societies exalt from
time to time with an idolatrous devotion special
fragments of truth, which tend to lose their essen-
tial character by being isolated. But such reflec-
tions as have been suggested, while they leave
the special evils of a divided Christendom just as
they are, yet enable the devout mind to regard
them without despair: nay more to regard them,
. as it would regard the disorders of the physical
world, with quiet confidence and faith. We can-
not yet see how the whirlwind or the earthquake
falls in with an infinitely benevolent system of
nature; but we do not doubt that it does do
midst of antagonisms. 215
so. In looking on human life we have even chap hi.
better grounds for faith. There we can see faint
beginnings of a final harmony, converging tenden-
cies towards a divine order, which will embrace
all the varieties of thought and life in their
richest fulness. When we see what the belief in
Christ and the power of His Resurrection has
done, how it has interpreted and conquered this
and that instinctive feeling, how it has found an
embodiment, natural if not complete, under every
variety of external circumstances, how it includes
in itself a principle of unity capable of combining
whatever there is in these of permanent value,
we can look out upon the conflict of sects without
distrust, and look forward to that golden age to
which and not from which the history of the
Church advances.
42. Nothing is more paralysing than a sense ,
of isolation : nothing is more cheering than a con-
sciousness of fellowship in the combined action of
a great nation or of a great society. Christendom
is weak not only because it is divided but chiefly
because each section is enfeebled by a sense of
the littleness of its power as it measures the tri-
umphs of Christianity by its own peculiar stand-
ard. Our strength will be indefinitely increased
if we believe that God works not only through us
216 Conclusion.
chap. in. or in our way and according to our notions, but
uses us according to the measure of our capacities,
and others with us in the accomplishment of the
designs of His Love. Every energy will be turned
to its proper work as our thoughts rest on the
glory of the Risen Saviour.
43. Wherever we look the first question
which arises is ever: To what purpose is this
waste ? On all sides we see a prodigal wealth of
powers which to us appear to pass away without
effect, of germs of life which never fulfil what we
think to be their proper destiny, of beauty which
gladdens no human eye. In the moral world the
same mystery recurs. One man out of many; one
family of many, one nation of many, one world of
many (if our thoughts dare wander so far), are
centres of blessings of which all are equally capable
of sharing, and we cannot trace the law by which
their influence gradually reaches to the furthest
limits of being, while we see multitudes perish
unconscious of their common heritage. All na-
ture teaches the same lesson. We know in part.
It is enough. If Christ be risen, in that fact lies
Actsiii.21. the pledge of 'the restitution of all things' towards
which men are encouraged to work.
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Trinity College, Cambridge. i8mo. cloth. Uniform with
Macmillan's School Class-Books.
ST PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE
QALATIANS.
A Revised Text, with Notes and Dissertations. By J. B.
Liohtfoot, D.D. Hulsean Professor of Divinity in the
University of Cambridge. 8vo. cloth, ios. 6d.
THE SYNONYMS OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT,
By Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D. Archbishop of Dublin.
New and Revised Edition, in one vol. 8vo. price ios. 6d.
A TREATISE ON THE PASTORAL
OFFICE.
Addressed chiefly to Candidates for Holy Orders, or to those
who have recently undertaken the cure of souls. By the
Rev. John W. Bcbgon, M.A. Vicar of St Mary-the-Vir-
gin's, Oxford, and Fellow of Oriel College. 8vo. 128.
A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE REFORMATION.
By Charles Hardwick, M.A. late Fellow of St Catharine's
College, Divinity Lecturer at King's College, and Christian
Advocate in the University "of Cambridge. Second Edi-
re vised by Francis Procter, M.A. late Fellow of St
Catharine's College, and Vicar of ^Yitton, Norfolk. Two
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each.
By the same AutJtf>r 9
. CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS
A Historical Inquiry into some of the Chief Parallelisms and
Contrasts between Christianity and the Religious Systems
of the Ancient World. Two vols. Crown 8vo. 155.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
By James Brtce, B.A. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. A New
Edition, revised. Crown 8vo.
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