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JAN 22 1901 
 
 IRISTIAN 
 FE AND 
 lEOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California 
 
 Received , i^ . 
 
 Accession No. 3» <4 C> oL - Class No. ^ o ^ 
 
 — -¥7: 
 
 FOSTER 
 
Stone Lectures, 1900 
 Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 Christian Life & Theology 
 
 or 
 
 The Contribution df 
 Christian Experience 
 to the 
 System of Evangelical Doctrine 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK HUGH FOSTER, Ph. D., D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE PACIFIC THEOLOGICAL 
 SEMINARY 
 
 New York Chicago T<ironto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/christianlifetheOOfostrich 
 
Christian Life and Theology 
 
 XmrVERSITT 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Fundamental Ideas 
 of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Explained and discussed for 
 Protestants and Catholics 
 
 izmo, cloth, $1.7$ 
 
Stone Lectures, 1900 
 Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 Christian Life & Theology 
 
 or 
 
 The Contribution of 
 Christian Experience 
 to the 
 System of Evangelical Doctrine 
 
 BY 
 FRANK HUGH FOSTER, Ph. D., D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE PACIFIC THEOLOGICAL 
 
 SEMINARY 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature 
 
Copyright 1900 
 by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Many years ago I saw in a shop window in 
 Gottingen a book with the title : " System of 
 Christian Certainty ". I did not read it ; but the 
 title proved the fruitful seed of a course of 
 thought which led me into substantial agreement 
 with its author, F. H. R. Frank. Subsequently I 
 embodied the results of my reflection in an arti- 
 cle in the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1883 under the 
 title : " The Argument from Christian Experience 
 to the Inspiration of the Bible ". When, there- 
 fore, I was honored by Princeton Theological 
 Seminary with an invitation to deliver a course 
 of lectures upon the Stone foundation, I turned 
 naturally to this long followed line of thought as 
 constituting my present message to my times. 
 
 It has not been my purpose to present the sub- 
 ject exhaustively or minutely. Besides the limi- 
 tation of time which would have prevented this, 
 the courtesies of the occasion as a doctrinal dis- 
 cussion by a member of one school of theology 
 in the representative institution of another school 
 forbade the introduction of matters upon which 
 considerable divergence of view might have de- 
 veloped. Hence no attempt has been made to as- 
 iii 
 
IV 
 
 Preface 
 
 certain the testimony of experience to a large 
 number of theological theories upon which it 
 doubtless has something to say. The general 
 reader will find this to accrue to his advantage. It 
 has, no doubt, also assisted to lift the discussion 
 upon higher planes and to give it greater breadth. 
 
 With still greater emphasis I desire to say that 
 it has not been my intention either here or any- 
 where to advocate experience as a substitute for 
 the Scriptures as a source of Christian doctrine, 
 to lift it to the chief place as the primary source, 
 or to make exclusive claims for it of any sort. 
 Personally I prefer the experiential method of in- 
 troducing the study of Systematic Theology and 
 employ it in my own instruction as, upon the 
 whole, the best; but I do not deny that other 
 methods of approach are legitimate, nor that they 
 have certain advantagfes which must be sur- 
 rendered to. gain the greater advantages of the 
 experiential approach. 
 
 What I have positively sought to do is to pro- 
 mote the accurate study of Christian experience. 
 Under the name of the Christian consciousness it 
 has received great attention of recent years, but 
 most that has been said about it has been so care- 
 less and vague as to be of little value. It should 
 be treated with accuracy, as it may be. 
 
 Two incidental services I have sought to ren- 
 der. One is the development in a new form of 
 the old Protestant argument for the Scriptures 
 from the " Testimony of the Spirit ". It is, I be- 
 
Preface v 
 
 lieve, an argument peculiarly suited to meet the 
 difficulties of the present day. I call attention 
 to it in order to solicit searching examination of 
 its vahdity and scope. If it can be invalidated, 
 this will be a service to Christian thinking. If 
 it cannot, it will remain a bulwark of faith in the 
 questionings of our day. Then again, I have 
 sought to secure by theoretical discussion and to 
 exhibit by practical examples the true place of 
 church history in the determination of the voice 
 of experience. The results of a critical history 
 of doctrine have their place among the materials 
 of Christian doctrine. The current histories of 
 doctrine do not seem to be aware^ for the most 
 part, that there are any such things as " results " 
 of their work ; and few, if any, modern attempts 
 to construct systems of doctrine make any dis- 
 tinct use of historical materials. Even Principal 
 Fairbairn in his great book, admirably furnished 
 as he is with historical knowledge, has been una- 
 ble in the constructive part of his work to use the 
 materials he has collected and himself augmented 
 in the historical part. But the history of Christian 
 doctrine should not be a collection of mere an- 
 nals: it should be a genetic history tracing the 
 true development of the Christian system; and 
 its results ought not to be a collection of learned 
 lumber, but materials for assisting men and as- 
 certaining the mind of the Spirit and the truth of 
 God. Thomasius remains almost alone as an 
 historian of the higher aspects of Christian doc- 
 
vi Preface 
 
 trine. He ought to have a successor who could 
 in our day take the additional material brought 
 together by the labors of Harnack and his school 
 and draw the lessons of history in a form to be 
 used by the Christian thinker. It has been my 
 hope to do something to inspire and guide such 
 an undertaking. 
 
 The lectures, after delivery at Princeton, were 
 repeated at Crozer Theological Seminary (Bap- 
 tist), Chester, Pa., and at the United College 
 (Congregational), Bradford, England. Lecture 
 V. was repeated at Hartford Theological Semi- 
 nary ( Congregational). 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ....... I 
 
 Theme stated. Object not historical but con- 
 structive. Historical sketch of discussions of 
 experience since Schleiermacher. The principle 
 of the investigation to be found in consciousness. 
 Value of this. The ultimate element of Chris- 
 tian experience, found in the permanent choice 
 of duty as such. Analysis of this ultimate ele- 
 ment, yielding the ideas of duty, responsibility, 
 and sin. Christian view of the world as a king- 
 dom of evil. Summaries. 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE ORIGINATING SOURCE OF THE NEW BIRTH . . 4I 
 
 Source of the New Birth not the mere power of 
 choice. Not the world. Not the sinner him- 
 self. An objective power, personal, holy, be- 
 nevolent, infinite. The doctrine of God, the 
 first contribution. Characteristics of the proof. 
 Consequent doctrines of justification, and pre- 
 venient grace. Kaftan's criticisms as to the 
 desirability and the possibility of this line of <lis- 
 cussion. 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 SOURCES OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE OF THE 
 
 INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN . . . .87 
 
 The experience of the original group of apostles 
 vii 
 
viii Contents 
 
 and their associates. The New Testament the 
 primitive record of Christianity. Has the Bible 
 authority? Criticism of Ritschl and Kaftan. 
 The testimony of the spirit. Extension and 
 completion of this argument. How far the ar- 
 gument reaches. History of Doctrine as a 
 source of experience. Methods of historical de- 
 velopment. Criteria of a sound development. 
 Creeds. Historical argument not ultimate. 
 Kaftan's objection. The Holy Spirit and the 
 development. 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE PERSON OF CHRIST 133 
 
 The motives leading to conversion come from 
 Christ. Divine gifts bestowed by him. Divine 
 attributes manifested. Christ proved by experi- 
 ence to be God. The testimony of the New Tes- 
 tament. The course of historical development 
 from the apostolic age to Nice. Critical estimate 
 of the development. The trinity. Ritschl's 
 criticism that these are matters of no interest. 
 Kaftan's great advance upon Ritschl. 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE WORK OF CHRIST l8S 
 
 The work of revelation. Biblical authority. 
 Authority in religion in general. The work 
 of atonement. Christ's work effects something 
 for us which we could not effect for ourselves. 
 What experience sees in the sacrificial death. 
 Relation to guilt, condemnation, and law. The 
 biblical testimony. " Ransom " and "propitia- 
 tion". The history of the doctrine. Criticism 
 of the development. Kaftan's contribution to 
 the discussion. 
 
Contents ix 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE CHURCH 238 
 
 The experience of sanctification. The church 
 its sphere. " Where the Spirit is, there is the 
 church." The primitive church a fellowship of 
 believers. Change to the Roman conception. 
 This a " degeneration ". Reformation defini- 
 tions of the church. The Spirit truly in the 
 Reformation churches. This experience against 
 the exclusive claims of Rome. Equally against 
 every form of the doctrine of " apostolical suc- 
 cession ". Laud and the Puritans. Wesley. 
 Edwards. The Spirit to-day with the non-pre- 
 latical churches. The further problem as to 
 experience. The certainty of Faith. 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Evangelical doctrine constitutes a true sys- 
 tem. Theologies, of course, are systematic, for it 
 is their great purpose to adjust Christian doctrines 
 to one another, to explain their mutual relations, 
 and to defend them before the bar of all human 
 reason. The distinction is made between theology 
 and doctrine, by which the former term designates 
 the element of explanation and adjustment, the 
 latter the element of fact which has thus to be ex- 
 plained. Doctrine is then in a degree independent 
 of the particular theology which a man may hold, 
 just as the observed facts of the heavens will be 
 the same whether the astronomer hold the Ptole- 
 maic or the Copernican system of theoretical 
 astronomy. It is true that the view of the facts 
 themselves will be facilitated or hindered by the 
 theory of their relations which any observer may 
 hold ; and hence it must be admitted that the dis- 
 tinction here drawn between theology and doc- 
 trine is not one which can be carried through with 
 the accuracy with which we may speak of distinc- 
 tion between fact and theory in biology. But in a 
 degree the distinction is true, and useful ; and em- 
 I 
 
ft Christian Life and Theology 
 
 ploying it for what it is worth, it is the purpose of 
 this course of lectures to direct itself rather to the 
 doctrine than to the theology of Christianity, and 
 to discuss the contribution which has been made in 
 the construction of the doctrinal system by ex- 
 perience. 
 
 When it is affirmed that there is a system in 
 evangelical doctrine, it is meant that the doc- 
 trines of Christianity fall easily into an order of 
 mutual dependency and consistency. Given one 
 or two of the leading features of this system, the 
 rest follow at once. Break the system by denial 
 at any principal point, and you will have subse- 
 quent denial at others or at all, if the thinker pro- 
 ceeds in a logical manner. It is further meant 
 that the system is the same in all the great ag- 
 gressive and fruitful churches of the centuries, 
 and that, wherever it has been held in varying 
 degrees by them, their degree of loyalty to it, and 
 to the Bible as its source, has been the measure of 
 their fruitfulness. Christendom is by no means 
 one in its theologies ; and^ were we to discuss them, 
 we should find ourselves carried far from ex- 
 perience into regions of speculation and of debate 
 often remote from the actual life of any church. 
 But as the earth, which is viewed by different 
 men in different ways as they consider it from 
 the point of view of the artist, the scientist, or the 
 plain man of affairs who has to wrest his living 
 from it, is nevertheless the common home of us 
 all and carries us in its motherly bosom without 
 
Introductory 3 
 
 much regard to our differing affection or our 
 schemes of exploitation, so there is a broad under- 
 lying system of Christian doctrine, which sustains 
 us all, in which we have our home, and to w,hich 
 every biblical Christian is bound by the ties of an 
 experiential connection. Its influences have de- 
 scended into his very bone and marrow; and as 
 apprehended truth, it has largely proceeded out of 
 the solemn processes of the soul when this has 
 been breathed upon by the Divine Spirit and has 
 felt within itself the motions of a new life. It is 
 a great universal human fact ; not, it is true, in the 
 sense that all men indiscriminately know it or ap- 
 preciate it, but in the sense that in every age it 
 has guided a multitude of souls from darkness to 
 light and from the power of sin into the liberty of 
 the children of God. It is this underlying and 
 all-sustaining body of common Christian faith, 
 found in all lands, in all ages, and among the di- 
 verse conditions of universal humanity, and every- 
 where the same, that is the object of our present 
 study. 
 
 It will be presupposed, without special effort at 
 justification, that experience has contributed to 
 this body of doctrine. Historically speaking, ex- 
 perience has given birth to various doctrines, as 
 to that which is the foundation of our Protestant 
 system. When Luther taught that the believing 
 sinner is freely forgiven simply for Christ's sake, 
 it was because such had been his own experience, 
 the fulness of the evangelical method of salvation 
 
4 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 receiving emphasis from the poverty and ineffec- 
 tiveness of methods of meriting salvation ex- 
 haustively tested by him through long months. 
 Yet the purpose of our present study is not pri- 
 marily historical. We shall be concerned mainly 
 with the logical contribution of experience to the 
 system, with what it can contribute rather than 
 with what it has contributed, with endeavoring to 
 ascertain, first, what Christian experience really 
 is, and then what naturally flows from it in the 
 way of fundamental views as to God, man, and 
 salvation. Experience has to do with facts, but it 
 is also a fact in itself. Men have always argued 
 from it to certain conclusions. Our question now 
 is, how justly have they argued, and what, in all its 
 circumference, does experience really teach. Re- 
 stricted as the discussion will be by the brief hours 
 of these few lectures, it may be that some sub- 
 stantial answer can be made to that question. 
 
 The time seems peculiarly ripe for such a 
 study. The old century now just closing, has 
 been characterized by a series of strenuous efforts 
 to deepen theology and bring to it the proof 
 drawn from the newly opened fountain of the 
 specifically Christian life. These efforts were be- 
 gun by .Schleiermacher who stands at the divid- 
 ing point of the eighteenth and nineteenth centu- 
 ries, and who became the agency by which a pas- 
 sage was effected from the dry and shallow unbe- 
 lief of the former into the enlarging and deepen- 
 ing earnestness of the latter. He found Chris- 
 
Introductory 5 
 
 tianity confounded with the things of the world, 
 a prey to small philosophies and flippant criti- 
 cisms, an object of rejection and of contempt to 
 men who supposed themselves to have risen by 
 means of their high education far above it, but 
 who had never in fact drunk of the waters of gen- 
 uine culture, and were ignorant of the real mean- 
 ing of what they despised. He sought, there- 
 fore, to set forth Christianity in its distinctive es- 
 sence and character ; and he made this to consist 
 in an experience, in a consciousness, the imme- 
 diate consciousness of God, designated by him the 
 " feeling of dependence." This feeling, when the 
 soul lay passively open to all the in-streaming in- 
 fluences of the universe, became " absolute," that 
 is, unmodified by any feeling of corresponding 
 power and mastery on the soul's part; and thus 
 the soul felt God. This, said Schleiermacher, 
 was the central and vital point of the Christian 
 life, and in view of it every doctrine of the Chris- 
 tian system had to be formulated. His " System 
 of Faith " was therefore principally an attempt to 
 restate the traditional doctrines of orthodoxy un- 
 der the guidance of this principle. 
 
 The defects of Schleiermacher as a theologian 
 are too well understood to require any prolonged 
 review at this time. He did not succeed fully in 
 emancipating himself from the pantheism which 
 almost necessarily follows from his form of con- 
 ceiving of the ultimate Christian consciousness. 
 His Christology provides neither for the pre-ex- 
 
6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 istence nor the sinless perfection of Christ. His 
 view of the Scriptures reduces them to the posi- 
 tion of a secondary testimony to the truth, the 
 primary being always afforded by consciousness. 
 With such great determinative defects his discus- 
 sions of the subordinate themes could not prove 
 successful. But his positive affirmations fur- 
 nished the problem and determined the course of 
 subsequent theology to a very large degree. He 
 maintained religion's independence of both mor- 
 als and philosophy, and thus claimed for theology 
 a sphere of its own in which it was to be unham- 
 pered by the antagonisms of any other form of 
 culture whatever, — in our own day, that is, of 
 scientific and even historical criticism. Christian 
 truth authenticates itself on Schleiermacher's ba- 
 sis, because it is at bottom a matter of immediate 
 consciousness. He spiritualized also the concep- 
 tion of faith by making it essentially the imme- 
 diate communion of the soul with God. He dis- 
 tinguished between faith and the faith, between 
 the saving attitude of the soul and the forms of 
 intellectual conception of the truth embodied in 
 the dogmas and creeds of the church. And yet, 
 while thus emphasizing the spiritual and ethical, 
 he did not forget the historical elements of Chris- 
 tianity, for he laid a new emphasis upon the his- 
 torical Christ, and by his practical attitude toward 
 the New Testament and his more sensible meth- 
 ods of exegesis did much to overcome objections 
 to the gospels which had accumulated during the 
 
Introductory 7 
 
 rationalistic epoch. In a word, he changed the 
 entire aspect of the dispute between belief and 
 unbelief, and introduced a new era of faith by ex- 
 hibiting to men the certainty of spiritual verities 
 now illuminated before their spiritual vision and 
 made vivid to their reawakened susceptibilities. 
 Schleiermacher was followed by a series of 
 men who in various ways took up the problem he 
 set and sought to bring it to a more satisfactory 
 solution. One of these was Thomasius, the his- 
 torian and dogmatician of Erlangen. His dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic was a deep and ardent 
 devotion to his divine Master, so that, as has been 
 often remarked by different pupils and readers, 
 intercourse with him made " the heart burn " 
 within one, much as did the hearts of the disci- 
 ples on the way to Emmaus. He was more in- 
 fluenced in the department of formal reasoning 
 by Hegel than by Schleiermacher. His " History 
 of Dogmas " bristles with Hegelian terminology 
 and perhaps distorts the true course of events 
 somewhat to meet the demands of the Hegelian 
 method. But from Schleiermacher he derived 
 the great principle that theology flows out of life, 
 that Christian faith comes first, introducing the 
 man into a new realm of experience, and that 
 then, and only then, is he led by the demands of 
 the mind for an intellectual understanding of 
 these experiences as well as by the necessity of 
 defending his faith before opposition and of ex- 
 plaining it to the inquirer, to the successive for- 
 
8 Christian Lifeand Theology 
 
 mulation of one principle of doctrine after an- 
 other. Christian history passes through a gen- 
 uinely logical development, according to Thoma- 
 sius — this was the Hegelian element, — ^but this 
 development is the constantly advancing appro- 
 priation of the truth by the church under the 
 teaching of the indwelling Spirit — this is the 
 Schleiermacherian element, made more correct 
 and evangelical than Schleiermacher had made it 
 by the greater definiteness of Thomasius' concep- 
 tion of the fundamental Christian consciousness. 
 Thomasius was followed at Erlangen by Frank 
 who may be called pre-eminently the experien- 
 tial theologian of the century. He followed 
 Schleiermacher in maintaining a distinct sphere 
 for religion, and in reducing it to one funda- 
 mental element, a matter also of ultimate con- 
 sciousness and hence of immediate certainty, not 
 a mere feeling or a passive consciousness, but an 
 act, the determinative act of Christian committal 
 of one's self to the Redeemer, the act of faith. 
 Upon this he built up a " System of Christian 
 Certainty," which embraced in successive degrees 
 of diminishing immediacy the " immanent " facts 
 of sin and forgiveness, the " transcendent " ob- 
 jects of faith, God and Christ, and the " tran- 
 seunt " objects, the church and the world. In 
 this system the main doctrines of Christian the- 
 ology are established by a process of logical de- 
 velopment from the facts involved in the New 
 Birth; whereupon Frank proceeds to construct 
 
Introductory 9 
 
 his " System of Christian Truth," in which the 
 main positions are assumed to have been already- 
 proved in the " Certainty," and the effort is made 
 to bring them into their proper relations and to 
 set them forth with the requisite fulness. Of 
 this system in its two parts it is not necessary to 
 speak now at length, since the discussions of the 
 subsequent lectures begin at the same point and 
 agree with Frank's main results. In a word the 
 two " Systems " may be summarized as a resolute 
 and elaborate attempt to found Christian theol- 
 ogy upon experience as its sole and sufficient 
 basis. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that this line of 
 developing orthodoxy following the great princi- 
 ples suggested by Schleiermacher has been per- 
 mitted to hold undisputed possession of the field. 
 The most virile and influential theological move- 
 ment in Germany, itself also building on Schleier- 
 macher and on Kant, has contested the methods 
 and the results of the orthodox experiential 
 school. I refer to the school of Ritschl. Ritschl 
 was himself a theologian of the Christian expe- 
 rience, only, in distinction from Frank and also 
 from Schleiermacher, he took his stand on the 
 collective experience of the Christian community, 
 apart from which, in his deep aversion from me- 
 diaeval pietism, he was prepared to admit no gen- 
 uine experience. This collective experience he 
 saw embodied in the New Testament, and was 
 accordingly primarily an exegetical theologian, 
 
lo Christian Life and Theology 
 
 though his exegesis was often arbitrary and 
 marred by the controlling influence of certain 
 ideas. Still he remained an experiential theolo- 
 gian. His eye was ever directed to the Christian 
 life, and he judged the value of every dogmatic 
 proposition by its " interest " to the Christian, 
 that is, by its tendency to promote that life. His 
 defects, which were many, and which will neces- 
 sarily find frequent discussion in the following 
 hours, arose from two principal reasons, from 
 his failure to understand the fundamental fact of 
 experience, the New Birth, and from the over- 
 whelmingly apologetic tendency of his theological 
 labors. He failed to understand the person and 
 sacrifice of Christ because he failed to compre- 
 hend the work of regeneration in each individual 
 soul. And he felt the objections against mira- 
 cles, the trinity, the incarnation, and other doc- 
 trines so keenly that he was constantly tempted to 
 meet these by declaring the doctrines irrelevant, 
 pertaining to matters of no " interest," and hence 
 outside the true sphere of the theologian. He thus 
 failed to give attention to many of the great con- 
 ditions lying underneath facts of the Christian 
 life, without which these facts cannot be. But he 
 uttered with what power these detractions left 
 him his plea for the independent sphere of theol- 
 ogy and for the reality and incomparable signifi- 
 cance among human phenomena of the Christian 
 life. 
 
 Ritschl has now given place to Kaftan, Profes- 
 
Introductory 1 1 
 
 sor of Theology in the University of Berlin, who 
 possesses an equal importance in the theological 
 world, and is the leading present representative 
 of the general theological position originated by 
 Ritschl. He also is a theologian of experience. 
 In his early professional life he occupied much 
 the same position as Frank, but has now aban- 
 doned it. Like Ritschl he lays great emphasis 
 upon revelation as the source of Christian theol- 
 ogy. Yet he speaks perpetually of the Christian 
 faith (Glaube) and of what is held by it, and he 
 even conducts his discussion of theology in the 
 " Dogmatik " so as largely to avoid formal proof, 
 adducing as evidence that such and such a posi- 
 tion is the Christian position only the somewhat 
 vague suggestion that it is the deliverance of 
 this " faith." Faith comes from revelation, 
 which is the personal contact of the divine Spirit 
 with the human and from which the obedient soul, 
 thus coming to know God personally, gains a 
 knowledge of truth. In other words, the Chris- 
 tian life is a definite thing, leading naturally in 
 the case of every true believer to distinct general 
 views of truth, based upon a definite understand- 
 ing of the Bible, which views it is the task of the- 
 ology to set forth in their purity and general con- 
 sistency, untrammeled by the artificial shackles 
 of a worldly and false philosophy. 
 
 The movement begun by Schleiermacher and 
 continued by many other theologians besides the 
 ones whose names have been so briefly men- 
 
12 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tioned here, has thus endured to the present time. 
 A quantity of rich material has been gathered 
 which ought to be available for theology. A 
 number of misleading by-ways have been desig- 
 nated and pitfalls have been marked. It may be 
 that something better can now be done than has 
 yet been done to define precisely and to use intel- 
 ligently for theological purposes the rich treas- 
 ure of the accumulated Christian experience of 
 nineteen centuries. Indeed, the last named rep- 
 resentative of the experiential theology. Kaftan, 
 seems to be of this opinion, for he introduces his 
 own work by a criticism of his predecessors, de- 
 voting at one point brief but trenchant criticism 
 to Frank. Frank, he says, teaches that the Chris- 
 tian gains a certainty as to his faith quite parallel 
 to that which he has as to the facts of the natural 
 consciousness, and that dogma then enters the 
 arena of discussion as the production of the 
 Christian church by normal and necessary Chris- 
 tian processes from the facts of its faith. Now, 
 says Kaftan, this method cannot withstand criti- 
 cism, for it cannot compel assent, since the facts 
 of experience upon which it bases its argument 
 are not accessible to every one ; and then, it has no 
 " principle," as he styles it, or fundamental and 
 germinal idea out of which everything flows. 
 This criticism we may dismiss at once by saying 
 that " compulsion " belongs to mathematics and 
 not to theology, even Kaftan failing to "com- 
 pel " many, for he does not seem to lack critics. 
 
Introductory 13 
 
 As to the " principle," Frank thought he had one 
 in the New Birth, and it may be possible to show 
 that he was right. But Kaftan pushes his criti- 
 cism further still. His most serious objection to 
 Frank's method, probably furnishing the deci- 
 sive reason why he himself abandoned it, is that 
 dogma does not in fact arise in the way supposed. 
 Frank does not truly work from a sound basis by 
 legitimate processes to a sound result, and that 
 result the dogma of the church; but he presup- 
 poses the dogma, and could never guide the 
 course of his argument as he does, were not this 
 goal consciously in his eye from the first. Kaf- 
 tan stigmatizes this attitude as " Catholic," or as 
 we put it in English, Romanizing, since it erects 
 the formulated dogma into a mysterious " object 
 of piety." Dogma is not " the common expres- 
 sion by the church, through formal act, of the 
 contents of its faith," as Thomasius had phrased 
 it, but is derived in Kaftan's view from philoso- 
 phy. The " supernatural guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost" in the formulation of dogma is an illusion. 
 They who defend this view can neither explain 
 the gap yawning between the New Testament 
 and the earliest beginnings of dogma-making, 
 nor tell why they reject the further labors of the 
 eighteenth century rationalists, who proceeded by 
 the same laws and in the same direction as their 
 orthodox predecessors. It remains, says Kaftan, 
 that the church dogmas as such are artificial prod- 
 ucts, containing intermingled truth and error, 
 
14 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 and are themselves objects of legitimate criti- 
 cism.^ 
 
 We are not specially concerned with defending 
 Frank against this criticism, but we need to learn 
 the lesson taught us by Kaftan for the advan- 
 tage of our own investigation. We may, without 
 elaborate discussion, at once and freely admit 
 that, if Christian experience is to be worth any- 
 thing for theological purposes, it must have a 
 "principle," and that it must develop the conse- 
 quences of that principle according to the laws 
 prescribed by the subject itself, and not in the in- 
 terest of any foregone conclusions. Philosophy 
 undoubtedly plays its part in the construction of 
 doctrinal definitions, and this is as evident in 
 Ritschl and Kaftan as in Athanasius and Augus- 
 tine. But to maintain the real contents of the 
 Christian faith uncontaminated by the philoso- 
 phy, — that is the supreme problem of the theo- 
 logian in very truth. 
 
 Our task has been essentially lightened by one 
 author in our own country, the late Professor L. 
 F. Stearns, of Bangor Theological Seminary. In 
 his " Evidence of Christian Experience " he has 
 had chief reference to apologetics, but he has an- 
 alyzed fundamental Christian experience with 
 great care, has often traced its influence in deter- 
 mining Christian doctrine, and has added in the 
 course of this labor a number of very valuable 
 
 * See " Die Wahrheit der Christlichen Religion," erster 
 lAbschnitt, fiinftes Kapitel. 
 
Introductory 15 
 
 contributions to the specific theme before us. 
 Conscious and no doubt unconscious indebted- 
 ness to this greatly lamented teacher will be found 
 on many pages of these lectures. May they carry 
 forward in some degree his labors, as he was in 
 his last days girding himself to do!^ 
 
 With this brief review of the history of the ex- 
 periential theology, we may advance at once to 
 the more positive discussion of our theme. Ac- 
 ceding to Kaftan's demand that all theology, in- 
 cluding a theology of experience, should begin 
 
 'In a private letter to the lecturer under the date of 
 April 29th, 1891, Prof. Stearns wrote : — 
 
 " For the purpose of apologetics it is sufficient that 
 we should have a true and first hand knowledge of the 
 Christian facts; it is not needful that we should have 
 an infallible knowledge of them. We are concerned in 
 knowing that they are rather than what they are. But 
 in systematic theology we aim at a more exact knowl- 
 edge. The Christian experience of the individual is im- 
 perfect, and so far as it is mingled with sin, it has 
 elements of error in it. The Christian experience of the 
 church, taking it in its whole history and in its best 
 forms, may contain less error; but still, we Protestants 
 would not claim any infallibility for it. So we are 
 thrown back upon the infallible revelation, as it is re- 
 corded in the inspired Scriptures, for the correction of 
 Christian experience, whether individual or general. It 
 is true that only the regenerate man can so interpret the 
 Bible as to discern its truth, but his experience will al- 
 ways lag behind the Bible, as that of the church has 
 always done. Then, experience has not an equal value 
 for all parts of the system. Its value in eschatology is 
 slight as compared with its value in christology." 
 
1 6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 with a " principle/' we begin our study with the 
 search for some ultimate element of Christian 
 experience from which all the rest is derivable by 
 the processes of legitimate analysis. Since we 
 are studying experience, the most central and im- 
 portant of which must evidently be the experi- 
 ence of consciousness, we begin by asking wheth- 
 er there is any fact of consciousness which lends 
 itself to our purpose; and we are thus silently 
 presupposing certain things about consciousness 
 itself to which we need first to pay a more ex- 
 plicit attention. 
 
 First of these, consciousness is a reliable source 
 of knowledge. By consciousness I mean here 
 simply the knowledge which the mind has of its 
 own activities. There is such a knowledge. To 
 think, and to know that I think, are one and the 
 same indivisible act of the soul. And hence, 
 when I say, " I am now thinking," I say what I 
 must be able to say if I am thinking, and what I 
 know with all the certainty of which I am capa- 
 ble. It has often been remarked that conscious- 
 ness is an uncertain source of self-knowledge be- 
 cause our memory of what has occurred within 
 us, even but a moment since, is often astray from 
 the fact; and because many things take place 
 amid such a whirl of perceptions and emotions 
 that our powers of self-observation are too se- 
 verely taxed. All this is true. And it is further 
 true that self -observation is exposed to most of 
 the infirmities that attend any observation, aris- 
 
Introductory 17 
 
 ing from inexperience, haste, seizure upon some 
 misleading detail, lack of time and permanence 
 in the phenomena, etc., etc. Yet, as other obser- 
 vation is on the whole, and under the proper pre- 
 cautions, the source of reliable knowledge, — yes, 
 the source of the most of our reliable knowledge, 
 so is self-observation. As Prof. James well re- 
 marks : " The only safeguard is the final con- 
 sensus of our farther knowledge about the thing 
 in question, later views correcting earlier ones, 
 until at last the harmony of a consistent system 
 is reached. Such a system, gradually worked 
 out, is the best guarantee the psychologist can 
 give for the soundness of any particular psycho- 
 logic observation he may report." And, we may 
 further say, it is the best guarantee that humanity 
 can have. 
 
 Another presupposition involved in our search 
 for our principle in consciousness is that made by 
 psychology and many another science, that any 
 man by knowing himself knows men in general. 
 If we ask for an ultimate element of the Chris- 
 tian life found in consciousness, every one of us 
 must consult his own consciousness. But, some 
 objector will interpose, however much certainty 
 consciousness may give any one as to himself, it 
 gives him none as to Christianity in general. We 
 reply that men are alike. What is true of one, 
 individual idiosyncracies aside, will be true of all 
 others. So we assume in psychology, and find 
 our assumption confirmed by every subsequent 
 
1 8 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 test we are able to apply ; and so we may assume 
 in Christianity, for the Christian is still a man, 
 and what is true of him would be true of any 
 other man if he were in exactly the same circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Another presupposition, — the consciousness of 
 the Christian will differ from that of other men 
 only in its objects, not in its nature. The Chris- 
 tian possesses no faculties that do not belong to 
 every other man. He may have to do with facts 
 which other men pass by, and may assume a pe- 
 culiar attitude towards them. The chemist con- 
 siders facts that the common man knows nothing 
 about, and becomes more or less unintelligible to 
 his fellows in language, range of thought, intel- 
 lectual interests, and view of practical matters. 
 But every one knows that, if he would attend to 
 the same facts, he would be led through the same 
 paths of thought and become like the chemist, 
 understanding his language and thinking much 
 as he does. And so with the Christian. Differ- 
 ent as his tone of thought may seem to be from 
 that of others, the difference is not essential. 
 Given the same facts of experience and the same 
 consciousness, and the same theology would re- 
 sult. If the utterances of Christian experience, 
 based upon certain asserted spiritual facts, stand 
 the tests to which other utterances of conscious- 
 ness are subjected, then the non-Christian must 
 admit that a Christian experience is a possible 
 thing. The only question can be whether it is 
 
Introductory 19 
 
 actual. As to this the testimony of Christians is 
 worth more than all the conjectures of a world. 
 
 Our search for a " principle," for the ultimate 
 fact of Christian experience, may therefore now 
 begin. We are to ask the question. What makes 
 a man a Christian, so that, having this he is a 
 Christian, whatever else he may lack, and lacking 
 this, he is not a Christian, whatever else he may 
 have. In all the ramifications of qualities and 
 courses of conduct which we find in him, how 
 are we to discern the trunk from which they 
 spread, and follow this to the central tap-root 
 which nourishes and supports the whole ? 
 
 Few Christians would hesitate over the answer 
 to this question. The common nomenclature of 
 our Christian experience, founded upon biblical 
 expressions and incorporated in the current 
 language of the church, traces the beginning of 
 the Christian life both historically and logically 
 to the act of faith in Jesus Christ. We do not 
 all pass through the same experience, and not 
 every one can point to the precise hour when he 
 put forth this act, and thus consciously " passed 
 from death unto life." It may be buried in the 
 oblivion which surrounds the earliest childhood. 
 The process of change in other cases may have 
 been so prolonged and the approach to the end so 
 gradual that no one moment can be assigned 
 when we first definitely recognized ourselves as 
 believers. But malre the passage we did, wheth- 
 er with the feeble step and the scanty knowledge 
 
ao Christian Life and Theology 
 
 of infancy, or in the hesitation of a slowly ripen- 
 ing youth coming by almost unconscious degrees 
 to the knowledge of himself, or by the prompt de- 
 cision of the mature man, confessing sin, seeking 
 pardon, and then ranging himself by deliberate 
 and irreversible act upon the side of his Redeem- 
 er ; and when it was made, then we became Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 But if it is thus easy to isolate the ultimate fact 
 of Christian experience, it is less easy to interpret 
 it. Faith is a mystery to most Christians and a 
 greater mystery to other men. It has so many 
 phases that to express it in any one simple form 
 may seem to be to ignore or deny some other as- 
 pect equally important. It gathers about the per- 
 son of our Lord Jesus Christ, and thus ordinarily 
 presupposes a considerable body of knowledge 
 about his nature and work. It often involves 
 many doctrines as to human duty and destiny 
 which are largely taken upon trust. It arises 
 from certain sentiments of admiration, gratitude, 
 loyalty, fear, and love, and gives birth to others. 
 It is simple, confiding trust, repose of the soul, 
 submission to the care of a perfect Redeemer, 
 the attitude of passive receptivity ; or it is enlist- 
 ment in a service, as when a warrior girds on his 
 arms and takes his place with firm purpose amid 
 the dangers and terrors of battle. It is like a seed 
 thrown into the earth, capable of growth, produc- 
 ing deeper thoughts, a more enlarged horizon of 
 life and duty, warmer feelings, more profound 
 
Introductory 21 
 
 resolutions, longer and more consistent trains of 
 action, than seemed at all possible from a view 
 of its outward form or magnitude. But as faith 
 is the ultimate thing in the Christian life, so it is 
 itself ultimately one thing, which given, all the 
 rest will develop, which wanting, nothing else can 
 flourish. It is the permanent choice of duty as 
 such. Jesus calls to duty embracing both God 
 and man; and conscience affirms obligation and 
 ultimately defines it in the same way. Man in 
 response must take the right attitude towards ob- 
 ligatory duty. When he does, the mental gaze, 
 fixed steadily by conscious effort upon it, acquires 
 new knowledge of its abstract relations and con- 
 crete contents. Thus the intellect is enriched. 
 But more, the affections are enriched, for they 
 cannot fail to be stirred by the contemplation of 
 the chosen object, so that duty becomes the cen- 
 ter about which gather deep feelings of devotion. 
 Duty cannot omit the relations which we sustain 
 to the chief teacher in holy things whom we pos- 
 sess, and thus the attitude of trust in the Re- 
 deemer must develop from it. Loving contem- 
 plation of him will necessarily follow, and all that 
 concrete piety which has from the beginning 
 gathered about his person will in due time arise, 
 except some malign influence interfere to thwart 
 the orderly progress of Christian growth. 
 
 The ultimate fact in the Christian life is, then, 
 the New Birth, which upon its merely human side 
 is the permanent choice of duty. As such it is 
 
a 2 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 a matter of immediate consciousness, and so of 
 absolute certainty. As a conscious act, its pre- 
 suppositions lie in consciousness, its subject is the 
 conscious self, and its immediate consequences 
 are also matters of consciousness. In a wide 
 range of fact it is therefore at once seen to be an 
 affair as to which the most unquestionable cer- 
 tainty of which man is capable may be enter- 
 tained, the certainty, namely, of this immediate 
 consciousness. 
 
 Analysis yielding us this result, we are fur- 
 nished with a speedy justification of these presup- 
 positions which we made and noticed at length a 
 few moments since. The ultimate element of 
 this consciousness being a choice, it is, of course, 
 first known; second the same for every man; 
 third like every other choice except in the thing 
 chosen ; and hence, fourth, an altogether possible 
 experience, and deniable by any critic only in the 
 sense that he does not believe it to occur. Let 
 any man have the idea of duty, as every man has, 
 and he is able to choose it as the law of his life. 
 If he chooses it, he knows that he so chooses with 
 an inexpugnable certainty; and he knows every 
 result which follows from it in the sphere of con- 
 sciousness. If, then, this choice be found, by a 
 genuinely logical analysis, led by no " dogma de- 
 rived from an alien source " and guided to no 
 previously determined goal, to be productive of a 
 system of principles worthy to be called an evan- 
 gelical body of doctrine, then we shall have 
 
Introductory 23 
 
 gained that "principle" which Kaftan rightly 
 demands a Christian system should have. 
 
 We turn therefore now to the attempt by care- 
 ful analysis to bring out the things involved in 
 this ultimate fact of Christian experience, the 
 New Birth. 
 
 The first element we have already unwittingly 
 introduced by the remark that " every man has 
 the idea of duty." Choice of duty certainly pre- 
 supposes the idea of duty, for nothing can be 
 chosen which is not before the mind as an object 
 of choice. The Christian finds, therefore, that 
 he had a conception of duty long before he yield- 
 ed to it ; and further reflection upon his part con- 
 vinces him that he was never without it. He did 
 not always have that full and imperative sense 
 which he now has. Duty seemed restricted to 
 certain specified objects and relations, and 
 strangely absent from others. Its outline was 
 uncertain before the mental vision, and that vi- 
 sion sometimes strangely perverted, so that the 
 " worse appeared the better reason." But some 
 idea of duty and some responsiveness to its ap- 
 peals he always had. 
 
 In this idea, now, there were involved four 
 things at least, all of them of importance for our 
 present theme. First, the supremacy of the fac- 
 ulty which deals with duty, the conscience, among 
 the faculties of the soul. As there is only one 
 voice in man which prescribes action, saying, 
 Thou shalt, while all the others record facts, tes- 
 
24 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tifying in various ways as to what is, so in man 
 and in the world with which man has to do, the 
 moral element is supreme, moral interests above 
 every other, the ideal world only that in which 
 right and duty triumph, or rather reign in un- 
 questioned pre-eminence. I do not know that 
 anybody disputes this at the present time, and 
 therefore we may spare ourselves the labor of 
 further discussion of the thought. We need only 
 to ask, Is the thought logically and correctly de- 
 veloped from the ultimate Christian experience; 
 and here, for one, I see no defect in the analysis 
 and expect no unfavorable criticism from others. 
 
 The second thing involved in the idea of duty 
 is the conception of responsibility. Something 
 is to be done; and, if it is not done, something 
 more is to be said than that one has fallen short 
 of this or that standard. The delinquent is re- 
 sponsible for this shortcoming, he, and not some 
 one else. He holds himself to this standard as 
 something of the greatest importance for him, 
 from which in fact he cannot conceive himself to 
 be free either now or at any other time, even if 
 eternity itself be brought into the consideration, 
 whatever minor changes of detail in the concep- 
 tion of duty may occur in the infinite hereafter. 
 
 This element of our analysis, again, we may 
 set down as fulfilling Kaftan's entirely proper de- 
 mand that it shall be logically correct, according 
 to the " inner logic " of the subject. Remarka- 
 ble as it will appear, it is true that every school of 
 
Introductory 25 
 
 ethics holds to responsibility and tries in some 
 way to give it a satisfactory foundation in some 
 part of the explanation of things. When philos- 
 ophies of the will have been adopted which might 
 seem to make this difficult, it has nevertheless 
 been ultimately clear that, however unsuccessful- 
 ly, their upholders made the attempt, satisfactory 
 to themselves, to maintain responsibility. Even 
 Spencer, whose theories have been so often em- 
 ployed by Philistines to evacuate the moral facul- 
 ty of all authority, insists upon '' rights " as 
 strongly as any one, and holds men responsible 
 for their conformity to the moral standard which 
 he sets up, — no one more earnestly or unceasing- 
 ly. And if a philosoph}^ which teaches the evolu- 
 tion of our moral faculties by slow modifications 
 from original sensations of pleasure and pain, 
 can at the end be so strenuous in its moral tone, 
 surely the plain deliverance of the common 
 Christian conscience can be trusted, that man is 
 responsible for his bearing towards the law of 
 duty. 
 
 I have purposely left the statement of respon- 
 sibility incomplete. There is another element in 
 it, the element of self-condemnation in view of de- 
 parture from the standard of duty. Men say of 
 themselves, when they have transgressed the law 
 of duty, I am guilty. What they mean by this 
 is plainer to the reflecting mind by its own 
 knowledge than it can be made by any verbal def- 
 inition. Guilt is not the same as deformity; it 
 
26 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 is desert of moral condemnation. The ugly 
 dwarf, born misshapen and repulsive in outward 
 appearance, is deformed, and may abhor himself 
 as an object from the contemplation of which he 
 shrinks with loathing; but this is not moral con- 
 demnation. The diseased and broken drunkard 
 is equally ugly; but his view of himself contains 
 an element not in the mind of the dwarf, for he 
 views himself as responsible for his condition, he 
 not only abhors but condemns himself, because 
 he has brought this ugliness upon himself by his 
 own transgression. He is guilty, not merely un- 
 fortunate as the dwarf is. He condemns himself 
 in the forum of his own Conscience. The idea of 
 duty involves this element, and the awakened 
 soul, who has been brought to moral reflection 
 upon the great things of his nature by the new 
 and radical experiences of the New Birth, as- 
 cribes to men in general the same responsibility 
 before the law which he recognizes for himself. 
 
 The Christian's analysis now proceeds a step 
 further. He has got the idea of duty and has 
 embraced it ; and now he recognizes that his pre- 
 vious state was a state of sin. He was not fol- 
 lowing the law of duty. He may be unable to 
 recognize any law or system in his conduct. He 
 may find it all disorder. Now he was following 
 the impulse of appetite; now the leading of bad 
 example ; now principles of conduct which he rec- 
 ognizes, in the new light which has at last come 
 to him, as wrong. He was drifting on a track- 
 
Introductory 127 
 
 less sea, carried by currents and impelled by 
 winds from unknown quarters, towards a goal 
 utterly uncertain to him except as having no se- 
 curity of good or repose. He did many things 
 which he recognized as transgression: this was 
 positive sin. He neglected many a bidding of 
 duty: this was negative but real sin. 
 
 Examining himself still further, he finds noth- 
 ing in himself which was not sin. Did he ever 
 fully obey the voice of conscience as such? Did 
 he ever view anything, not pleasurable nor in 
 accord with his general course of life, simply as 
 duty and respond to it as such? Even the fail- 
 ure to respond would be a true response, if it 
 arose from dread of some vague danger, from 
 compliance with custom, or from a desire to 
 maintain an outward respectability. He was 
 called upon to do that, perhaps otherwise unac- 
 ceptable, which appealed to him as duty, for 
 duty's sake alone. Did he ever do it? He re- 
 calls no example. He judges, therefore, that he 
 was a sinner and wholly a sinner. 
 
 It may be a question whether this is the actual 
 analysis of Christian experience or falls under 
 Kaftan's criticism and requires a previous knowl- 
 edge of the church dogma of entire human sinful- 
 ness and inability as the condition of its perform- 
 ance. Kaftan himself will not deny the correct- 
 ness of the analysis, for he lays down, in perfect 
 conformity with its result, the following positions 
 as to sin in his " Dogmatik ": — 
 
a 8 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 " The being and life of man, of the individual 
 as well as of humanity at large, is sinful by na- 
 ture, since it knows nothing of God's law, but, in 
 antagonism with the divine will, is governed and 
 controlled by the law of sin, viz., to seek self, its 
 desires and its honor. More precisely, it is a 
 course of life in actual antagonism not only with 
 the will of God but with his eternal essence, mak- 
 ing the natural life a life of sin. Even that which 
 is relatively good participates, on account of the 
 connection in which it stands, in the character of 
 sm. 
 
 So Kaftan. But the question may return, if 
 not from him, Is the analysis correct? and it is 
 only to be finally answered when the result of 
 the analysis is found to be justified before the bar 
 of the Christian conscience. Was the sinner who 
 is now a Christian wholly a sinner in that unre- 
 generate period of his life, as he thinks, so that, 
 as Kaftan puts it, " the relatively good," such as 
 honesty in the common relations of life, partook 
 of the " character of sin " ? 
 
 We are to remember that the answer is before 
 the insistent demand of conscience that a' man 
 shall perform his duty. The question is not 
 whether honesty is not " relatively good," that is, 
 good in the common parlance of men, and im- 
 measurably preferable to dishonesty. It is sim- 
 ply whether such honesty satisfies conscience. If 
 a man is honest because he has never been tempt- 
 ed to dishonesty, although subsequent experience 
 
Introductory 19 
 
 is to show that he will fall as soon as tempted, is 
 he truly honest? Is honesty genuine which en- 
 dures because men are watching one, and so long 
 as they are watching only ? Is it genuine when it 
 is practised because it is believed to be the best 
 policy? These questions answer themselves. 
 Nothing is honesty but that which does the hon- 
 est thing because it is right, at the behest of duty 
 recognized as supreme and obeyed as such. How- 
 ever much better for society a merely conven- 
 tional honesty may be, so long as it can be pre- 
 served, nothing is honesty before conscience, and 
 nothing possesses any virtue there which is not 
 governed by a supreme allegiance to duty solely 
 as such, for itself, — an allegiance unchangeable 
 and conscious. Now this supreme allegiance to 
 duty was just what the Christian knows he lacked 
 before his new birth; and hence he knows that 
 there was nothing in his life which possessed the 
 character of true virtue. In this sense, negative- 
 ly when not positively, all was sin. 
 
 Out of this view, by farther analysis of the 
 facts of conscience, develops the Christian's view 
 of the world apart from such saving experiences 
 as he has himself had. As he studies his own 
 nature, he learns the extent and significance of 
 the law of habit. He recalls with perfect dis- 
 tinctness the consciousness of struggle and diffi- 
 culty, of inability to obey the recognized law, 
 with which his earliest efforts to do right were 
 accompanied; or, if he does not recall them, he 
 
30 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 finds them repeated in his present unsanctified 
 self, so that he is often now a contradiction to 
 himself, desiring to obey the law after the inward 
 man, but finding a law in his members warring 
 against the law of his mind. Habit, he finds, 
 tends towards the automatic. Let anything be- 
 come habitual, and it will tend to be done when 
 we exert no positive volition in reference to it, as 
 we walk without attention or purpose, each mo- 
 tion followed by its appropriate counterpart by 
 the operation of an internal machinery which re- 
 quires no attention from the central controlling 
 consciousness. And thus the Christian finds old 
 courses of action persisting when they have been 
 once formally renounced, because they depend 
 upon a disorder in him produced by the law of 
 habit. 
 
 So much introspective personal observation 
 gives the thinker. It is against this background 
 that his predominant choice is displayed, and he 
 sees the background as he sees the choice. But 
 the Christian thinker is not thus isolated or com- 
 pelled to draw all his knowledge from himself, 
 any more than the psychologist, and he considers 
 other men and learns as much from them as from 
 himself. They, as well as he, are under the law 
 of habit. Habit is racial and transmissible, prop- 
 agated with human nature itself, intensified by 
 bad example, hardened into nature. 'Prevailing 
 corruption, general evil tendencies, universal sin, 
 a network of evil with innumerable ramifications, 
 
Introductory 31 
 
 an organized, determinative evil in the world 
 from which no man seems to escape and which 
 results in bringing all men, until the moment 
 when the new birth changes everything, under 
 the dominion of a sin which leaves no action pure 
 and no aspiration entirely untainted, — this is 
 what man sees as he studies humanity under the 
 light of his own spiritual experience of renova- 
 tion. 
 
 A large view of history leads to the same result. 
 We find the remnants of buried civilizations in 
 Nineveh, Egypt, and Rome. Empires have risen 
 only to fall; and the cause of fall has been, 
 broadly stated, moral corruption. Whatever may 
 have been true of more elevated individuals here 
 and there, the evidences in painting and sculp- 
 ture, in written word, in archaeological remains, 
 of corrupting and dominating wickedness as 
 characteristic of ancient civilizations, are too 
 clear to be denied by any. Our experience with 
 men of the past through their remains is the same 
 as that with men of the present, and it is one of 
 contact with dominating evil. We thus recognize 
 in the world a force, if we may thus personify 
 what reveals itself to us in innumerable single 
 manifestations, a dominating force making for 
 evil. It is resisted, its reign disputed, its right 
 denied, its influence counteracted, its damage re- 
 paired by another force of which the Christian 
 has become conscious in his own regeneration; 
 but apart from this other force, the world is in the 
 
32 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 control of evil. It is a kingdom of evil, a system, 
 a network, as I have said, of evil, proceeding from 
 a center, having a dominating tendency, as if it 
 had a real king, and as if that king were the enemy 
 of conscience and of the right and of all they 
 carry with them and involve. 
 
 This is the Christian view of the unregenerated 
 world. It was expressed in the earliest circles 
 of Christians by the epithet " lost," applied both 
 to men and to the world in which they live. One 
 early saint wrote : *' The whole world lieth in the 
 evil one." He described it as " darkness," and 
 said it was under " condemnation," a word taken 
 up by another who said that for the regenerate 
 there was " no more condemnation." Our 
 analysis has brought us into agreement with the 
 church, apostolic and later, in the view of the 
 guilt, depth, universality, and organized power of 
 sin in the world. And the analysis has been di- 
 rect, correct, without prejudice and previous as- 
 sumptions, as I think may be fairly claimed. 
 
 We have been casting our glance backwards 
 from the moment of the new birth to the previous 
 condition of the Christian. We are now about to 
 direct our consideration to another quarter, and 
 seek the source of those influences which operate 
 upon the will and lead it to the great and deci- 
 sive choice of duty as the law of life. But before 
 we do this, it will be well for us to pause and 
 review briefly our course to see what light has 
 now been thrown upon the nature of Christian 
 
 I 
 
Introductory 23 
 
 experience and on the probability of its furnish- 
 ing us any very valuable contributions to the sys- 
 tem of evangelical doctrine. 
 
 1. We based our whole effort, then, upon the 
 actuality of a distinctive Christian experience in 
 the world. We assumed it. We did not seek to 
 prove it, holding that a form of life which has 
 given rise to the institutions and civilization 
 which have proceeded from Christianity would 
 be readily conceded by the most determined op- 
 ponent of its highest claims to possess a distinc- 
 tive character, however he might dispute its 
 value. 
 
 2. We found the central element and ultimate 
 fact in the Christian life in the new birth, which, 
 on its experiential side, was defined as the su- 
 preme choice of duty as such. By successive 
 analyses we found involved in this experience 
 fundamental Christian principles. Thus — 
 
 3. We derived the supremacy of obligation and 
 of the moral faculties in man. 
 
 4. The idea of duty was seen to convey the 
 principle of responsibility. 
 
 5. The fact of sin, that is, of failure to obey 
 conscience and perform duty, was seen to create 
 guilt, or liability to moral self-condemnation. 
 
 6. Sin was perceived to be universal in human- 
 ity and unrelieved in the individual by holiness. 
 
 7. The world, as the seat and the active origi- 
 nator of universal sin, was seen to be a kingdom 
 of evil, and lost. 
 
34 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 Now here already, at the very threshold of 
 our subject, where we might expect the outcome 
 of our studies to be meager and should be pre- 
 pared to content ourselves with the promise of 
 future results in the absence of present perform- 
 ance, we have found a very considerable body of 
 doctrine of the most vital and fundamental char- 
 acter, flowing from Christian experience. If our 
 analysis has been correct and our positions can 
 be maintained against all comers, we may fairly 
 claim that the main question. Whether Christian 
 experience can yield material exact and definite 
 enough for the purposes of theology, is already 
 settled; and from this point we should be justi- 
 fied in waiving all polemical discussion and ad- 
 vancing to the exclusively constructive labors of 
 the positive theologian. We shall not, however, 
 do this, for we shall gain by the specific reply to 
 objections farther on constant confirmation of re- 
 sults already attained, — and no proof in theology 
 is so strong as to dismiss Hghtly that corrobora- 
 tion of verification which is sought carefully by 
 natural science to its great advantage. 
 
 As we assumed at the beginning of our discus- 
 sion that there was a Christian experience, so 
 again, we embarked upon its study without a def- 
 inite definition of the term; and, as a matter of 
 fact, we have employed it in several different sig- 
 nifications which need to be separated from one 
 another. Otherwise we shall be likely to fall into 
 confusion in our own minds, and may be found 
 
 J 
 
Introductory 35 
 
 guilty of those logical fallacies which are always 
 committed when ideas are not sharply discrimi- 
 nated in the mind of the reasoner. Note, then, 
 the following forms in which Christian experi- 
 ence has already appeared : — ■ 
 
 1. The experience of immediate consciousness, 
 as when we discussed the choice of duty, the fact 
 and implications of obligation, and the fact of 
 sin as characteristic of the pre-regenerate life of 
 him who is now a Christian. 
 
 2. Remembered experience. Thus pre-regen- 
 erate sin is to the unregenerate man a matter of 
 immediate consciousness, but as investigated by 
 the Christian it is no longer present, no longer 
 immediate consciousness, but remembered expe- 
 rience. This class of experience is, of course, 
 open to all the dangers which attend the use of 
 memory elsewhere, and might be of compara- 
 tively little value in the present investigation, ex- 
 cept for the fact that man has continued expe- 
 rience of sin, even after conversion, and hence 
 has present knowledge of facts which acts by the 
 law of association to strengthen the memory and 
 render it accurate. As in psychology, the mem- 
 ory is essential in processes of religious introspec- 
 tion, and, if carefully employed, will produce here 
 as there valuable results. 
 
 3. Facts of consciousness lying outside the ex- 
 clusively religious sphere, as when we considered 
 the law of habit. 
 
 4. Observation of the world, as when we 
 
^6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 viewed the character of men in general and the 
 world as a whole, and pronounced it in fact un- 
 der the dominion of sin. This observation was, 
 however, conducted by a Christian and from the 
 Christian standpoint ; and was hence entirely dif- 
 ferent from that kind of observation which we 
 have of the processes of material nature, to 
 which we must always remain outsiders. The 
 course of secular history can scarcely be called a 
 part of Christian experience, as such, — the rise 
 and fall, for example, of Nineveh, Egypt, and 
 Rome. Yet there is a Christian judgment upon 
 such events, the judgment, that is, which Chris- 
 tian men form in consequence of their Christian 
 principles; and this may be employed to throw 
 light upon the meaning and scope of those prin- 
 ciples. It is this Christian judgment which is 
 reckoned in the body of Christian experience. 
 
 5. The experience of the original group of 
 Christians has been briefly employed by reference 
 to the New Testament Scriptures in which it is 
 recorded. It has been employed here merely in 
 confirmation of the analysis of present day expe- 
 rience, since it is seen to yield the same general 
 view of the world as the Christian forms now 
 in the light of his great renovating experience. 
 But if valuable for confirmation, it must be also 
 valuable for original development of the contents 
 of the experience, for it can only confirm when it 
 is capable of giving the same result with the expe- 
 rience confirmed by processes entirely independ- 
 
Introductory 37 
 
 ent of that experience. Hence there is opened 
 here a prospect of still larger use of the New Tes- 
 tament. What that larger use ought to be is still 
 a matter of so much controversy that we must 
 subject it to a careful consideration at a later 
 point. Enough here to call attention to its nec- 
 essary place in the development of Christian ex- 
 perience, — a place so necessary that it has inci- 
 dentally, we might almost say inevitably, intro- 
 duced itself in the beginning of our investigation, 
 uninvited and unexpected. 
 
 6. Specifically Christian history has been em- 
 ployed for the same purpose of confirmation, and 
 with the same suggestion of further place and 
 necessary employment in the development of ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Christian experience is thus various in its 
 forms. Is it not various also in its evidential 
 value? In reply to this question a concluding 
 series of remarks needs to be made, and then we 
 shall have gathered up the results of our present 
 study and be prepared for the transition to the 
 next stadium. 
 
 1. The certainty given by the Christian expe- 
 rience which is a matter of immediate conscious- 
 ness, is the highest attainable by human beings. 
 Such certainty pertains to the facts of regenera- 
 tion, duty, sin, and holiness. 
 
 2. There might be a circle of truths gained 
 from experience by inference; although nothing 
 of this sort has as yet been introduced. This 
 
38 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 truth would have a secondary degree of certainty, 
 and within this degree would vary in clearness 
 according to the more or less perfect character of 
 the logical processes of inference. 
 
 3. Certainty as to the facts of observation, 
 since observation is dependent upon a great vari- 
 ety of co-operating elements, and these lie for the 
 most part outside of the sphere of consciousness^, 
 will have a still inferior degree of certainty, — a 
 tertiary degree, if you choose, but still certainty. 
 
 4. There might be thus developed by more del- 
 icate analysis a longer series of descending grades 
 of certainty that might finally fade into complete 
 uncertainty. Such an analysis would serve, how- 
 ever, no useful purpose, and we may now content 
 ourselves with the very important remark that 
 not every deliverance of the Christian experience 
 is of equal evidential value. To Christian expe- 
 rience as a whole no infallibility is to be ascribed. 
 Indeed, since it is wholly subjective in its best and 
 most valuable form, it is peculiarly unfitted to 
 claim for itself the prerogatives of an infallible 
 standard of faith. It is always open to denial, 
 and never has the power of compelling more than 
 an acknowledgment of its possibility. It is of 
 varying value, from the highest to the lowest, 
 under varying circumstances. Enough that its 
 value is real. What that value is in any case 
 must be determined from the case itself. 
 
 5. Some value belongs even to the impressions 
 and general positions of Christians at large, with- 
 
Introductory 39 
 
 out regard to the grounds, correct, incorrect, or 
 lacking, upon which they are founded. Great 
 bodies of men, scattered over many lands and 
 ages, do not come to common conclusions even of 
 this indefinite character without real reasons, 
 though these may be too inarticulate to receive 
 any appreciable expression. The emotions of 
 general Christianity also deserve respect. When 
 a given doctrine is found profoundly to stir the 
 Christian heart, generation after generation, and 
 to promote piety, it receives thereby an element 
 of substantiation which cannot be safely neg- 
 lected. 
 
 It is, then, to be our problem to use this mul- 
 tifold Christian experience according to its own 
 inner logic, ever mindful of its nature, observant 
 of its limitations, not exaggerating or diminish- 
 ing the degree of certainty it affords, as a source 
 of Christian doctrine. Our object is primarily 
 intellectual; but, as one of the great theological 
 teachers of the present day has forcibly taught, 
 we are dealing with matters which have no intel- 
 lectual value in separation from their direct re- 
 lation to the ethical nature of man. To know 
 must be to do. In fact, knowing in any large 
 and fruitful way is conditioned upon doing. To 
 appreciate the unfolding demonstration of relig- 
 ious truth from the new birth, we must ourselves 
 experience the new birth. I therefore close the 
 discussions of this hour with the remark that to 
 the full understanding of the processes of analysis 
 
40 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 to be attemped in these lectures is requisite on the 
 part of my audience that each perform them with 
 me by means of the careful examination of the 
 actual contents of his own experience; and that 
 further, to analyze the Christian experience, it is 
 necessary, first, to possess it. Before an audience 
 of professed Christians like this, a speaker may 
 properly presuppose the possession of a Chris- 
 tian experience upon their part. But it is, neith- 
 er here nor anywhere, superfluous to emphasize 
 the evident principle that none can safely rest in 
 any such presupposition if he finds a living ex- 
 perience lacking when he begins the process of 
 self-examination and analysis. If this course of 
 lectures can serve to give new intensity to the 
 Christian experience of my hearers and to en- 
 large its extent, and if new certainty can be added 
 to the grasp by which they hold those things 
 which we assuredly profess and believe, then, as 
 doctrine is found to flow from life, so life will 
 flow from doctrine, grace respond to knowledge, 
 and the men of God be more perfectly furnished 
 for every good work. Unto the attainment of 
 such a result, I humbly invoke upon these hours 
 of common study, the constant blessing of Al- 
 mighty God. 
 
((UNIVERSITY J 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE ORIGINATING SOURCE OF THE NEW BIRTH 
 
 The studies of the last hour left us face to face 
 with an urgent problem. We had been survey- 
 ing the world with the eyes of the regenerated 
 man, who from the elevation of a new experience 
 had looked backwards upon the world out of 
 which he had come and had recognized in it a 
 kingdom of evil. He saw himself to have been 
 bad, and the world like himself ; he perceived the 
 connections of evils and their ramifications and 
 interwoven relations ; he realized the combination 
 and system existing in society, making for the 
 perpetuation and intensification of evil ; and, had 
 he not himself experienced liberation from evil's 
 thraldom, he would have believed its forces too 
 strong, its vigilance too great, its hostility to ev- 
 ery good motion in the heart too intense, to leave 
 possibility of escape by any. Yet he had escaped, 
 and like Lot upon the mountain top could look 
 back upon the cities of the plain ; but, unlike Lot, 
 he found himself not alone, nor merely surround- 
 ed by a few isolated individuals, but one of a 
 great company, which on its part was organized, 
 had constructed a kingdom of good, set over 
 41 
 
42 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 against that kingdom of evil, already engaged in 
 manifold conflict with it, and already having 
 many a token of victory upon its banners. 
 Whence this liberation, this organization of souls, 
 this co-operating activity, this large result? Is 
 there a power at work in the world, but not of 
 it? What can it be, if there is such a power? Of 
 what character, and from what source? 
 
 This is the quest for the origin of the new 
 birth; and it may be answered, as it often has 
 been, by a simple reference to the powers of man. 
 It is a choice, as we have seen, on its conscious 
 side, and it may be said that this fact explains it. 
 A man chooses duty just as another man chooses 
 self-gratification, or as one chooses a profession. 
 The origination of such a choice in the gloom of 
 the kingdom of evil is thus no more remarkable 
 than the coming of the day after the night. 
 
 But is the answer as easy as all this ? Does the 
 suggested illustration confirm it? Is the com- 
 ing of day nothing remarkable, requiring no ex- 
 planation, entirely obvious and simple ? The ref- 
 erence of the critical change by which a man 
 abandons his environment in the kingdom of evil 
 and becomes a new man, to the powers of his na- 
 ture explains nothing. Mere powers are no ex- 
 planation of anything. The tree has the power 
 of absorbing the water of the earth carrying in 
 solution the mineral substances necessary to its 
 growth, but it dies. Two youths sit side by side 
 on the benches of the school-room, possessed both 
 
The New Birth 43 
 
 of the powers of acquisition and thought, but the 
 one becomes a scholar and the other wastes his 
 time in play. One might as well say that the 
 power of perception is all that is required to ex- 
 plain the idea which I have at this moment of the 
 paper from which I read and of the characters 
 traced upon it, as to say that a definite choice is 
 explained by the mere power of choosing. When 
 a man makes a bad choice, when a boy well edu- 
 cated, the child of good parents, trained in good 
 habits, chooses to plunge into drunkenness, and 
 when in drunken frenzy he murders an inoffen- 
 sive neighbor who is trying to serve him, we do 
 not say that his power of choice explains all this ; 
 but we answer the agonized cry of friends and 
 companions for its cause by revealing the evil in- 
 fluences about him, and the slow approach 
 through the series of foregoing evil choices to the 
 moment when the gratification of the desire for 
 brute exhilaration was more powerful than the 
 conviction of duty or the sad reproaches of 
 friends or the fear of the consequences of the loss 
 of self-control. A good choice, especially one 
 revolutionary in its effect upon the character, 
 needs an explanation equally. 
 
 That explanation is not to be derived from the 
 world about the new-born man. That world is 
 the kingdom of evil, shot through, no doubt, like 
 cloth of gold, with gleams of good, but itself evil, 
 its tendencies downwards, its influence not in 
 behalf of the supreme choice of duty. The 
 
44 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 Christian need not deny this " good," claimed for 
 our modern civilization, which may be said to 
 possess a tendency to elicit a good choice from 
 the will, nor need he undertake the difficult at- 
 tempt to prove to others what he assumes for him- 
 self, that it is all the effect upon the kingdom of 
 evil of the progressing kingdom of light. It is 
 enough to ask the question whether such tenden- 
 cies are adequate ; whether influences in behalf of 
 duty sufficient to lead the sinner to its supreme 
 choice can come from men none of whom makes 
 such a choice for himself. Now the fact of the 
 Christian choice divides humanity into two 
 classes, those who have it and those who have it 
 not, just as the oath of allegiance separated our 
 army in the year 1861 into the loyal and the dis- 
 loyal. From those who choose duty supremely 
 good influences must necessarily radiate with the 
 directness of light and the kindling efficiency of 
 the solar heat. Placed in public office they make 
 for faithfulness and honor, in business for indus- 
 try and honesty, in private life for gentleness and 
 unselfishness. But these are not " the world," 
 not the kingdom of evil, for their choice of the 
 good needs explanation, — is, indeed, the very 
 thing we seek now to explain. Could these oth- 
 ers produce it in them? This is the question; 
 and it can only be answered. No ! It is absolute- 
 ly unthinkable. If my influence is for honesty in 
 business I may help my associates keep them- 
 
The New Birth 45 
 
 selves honest; but shall I help them to the su- 
 preme choice of duty if they know that I am in- 
 different to right in the other relations of life, 
 mendacious or licentious or drunken? The good- 
 ness of such a man is not true goodness at any 
 point. Even when he does what is objectively 
 right, such as the restoration of borrowed money, 
 he does not do the subjective right, the right for 
 the sake of the right alone, the right as such ; else 
 he would do it always and everywhere. The mor- 
 als of the world at large are confessedly founded 
 on custom and expediency, not on right. The total 
 influence of such a world is and remains evil, 
 against the right as such, and forever as incapa- 
 ble of generating genuine and predominating 
 goodness in any soul as a dynamo electricity 
 when no electricity has been applied to it. A 
 bad man can no more make another man good 
 than the eclipsed sun can make a noon-day ! To 
 attract towards an ideal of goodness that ideal 
 must be held up conspicuously and constantly, in 
 purity and perfection. Even then the effort to 
 generate goodness may fail. But the bad man 
 never holds up that ideal, and hence never attracts 
 towards the good. 
 
 It seems to be imagined in certain quarters 
 that the evolution of humanity throughout the 
 long course which antedates and follows the 
 dawn of history is sufficient to explain the rise of 
 holy choices in some souls and so in all in whom 
 
46 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 they may actually be found. Mr. Spencer's the- 
 ories^ would be consistent with this idea. The 
 origin of all well regulated conduct, and thus ulti- 
 mately of that conduct which we call right and 
 wrong, he teaches, is the blundering effort to 
 satisfy our cravings. Men are thus viewed, in 
 strict analogy with what goes on in the animal 
 kingdom, as learning entirely by experience what 
 tends to promote individual good, to propagate 
 the race, and maintain the social organism. That 
 conduct is at last termed right which accomp- 
 lishes these ends. Now, evidently, upon this the- 
 ory, whatever is perceived to promote the good 
 instinctively desired will be chosen, and the de- 
 gree of approximation by any individual to the 
 normal standard of conduct will be measured by 
 the degree of intelligence which he possesses. 
 Bad conduct is simply the result of ignorance. 
 Just as light increases will good conduct increase, 
 and the rise of a supreme choice of duty 
 in a kingdom of evil would be totally ex- 
 plicable, if the course of that kingdom, as a prog- 
 ress of evil, were experimentally found to limit 
 the acquirement and possession of good, whether 
 individual or collective. Such a choice would 
 be simply the recognition of the fact that 
 self-centered and irregular pursuit of hap-haz- 
 ard delights was injurious and a source of the 
 prevention of the attainment of preponde- 
 rating desires. Such knowledge must arise in 
 * " Data of Ethics ", chaps. II. and III. 
 
The New Birth 47 
 
 some minds in the course of time by the operation 
 of the law of variation, and thus, out of the evolv- 
 ing process, because it was a kingdom of evil, 
 would come knowledge of the evil and the renun- 
 ciation of the same in the interest of those goods 
 which are essential, in the last analysis, to the 
 mere preservation of humanity. For, it may be 
 said in explanation of this possibly questionable 
 phrase, upon the evolutionary hypothesis associ- 
 ation and the social virtues are essential to the 
 progress of humanity ;^ and its progress is essen- 
 tial to its preservation. Thus the kingdom of 
 evil, far from being an obstacle to the rise of the 
 good choice, and thus constituting the puzzle and 
 creating the inquiry upon which we have em- 
 barked, is the very source of the good choice. 
 The appearance, here and there, of persons mak- 
 ing this great choice as perception shall arise, 
 here and there, of the true tendency of things, 
 was to be expected. 
 
 We might admit the explanation as long as it 
 were confined to the pre-human history of the 
 world, or as long as, in the period of human his- 
 tory, the gratification of physical wants and not 
 the fulfillment of a moral ideal were the good 
 sought. Yet, even here, there is an ideal held 
 up before the mind, for brute and man are seek- 
 ing " fulness of life," as in various phrase we are 
 informed. Such an ideal is thus a confessed ne- 
 
 * F. H. Giddings, " Principles of Sociology ", Bk. III., 
 chap. I. 
 
48 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 cessity, and evolution differs from Christian 
 philosophy at this point only in the source from 
 which the ideal is derived, making it the instinct- 
 ive tendency of nature brought into concrete def- 
 inition by the contacts of life. Arising upon oc- 
 casion of various experiences, it must still ante- 
 date those experiences, or it could never serve in 
 their interpretation and in the selection of the ele- 
 ments of the good. But in the sphere of human 
 history as we know it, in this actual world stand- 
 ing now at the threshold of the new age, facts 
 by no means conform to the theory presented. 
 This is not a world where men always follow 
 their knowledge of moral relations or even of the 
 mere physical connection of certain courses with 
 well-being. Men choose what they know to be 
 both wrong and injurious. They default in the 
 discharge of their duty. To use the phrase of 
 the evolutionists, they choose the gratification of 
 the immediate demands of appetite even when 
 they know that the perfection of their own indi- 
 vidual life and their relations to the life of the 
 race both forbid it. The supposed explanation of 
 the rise of good choices is only possible when it 
 deals with a world where there is no such thing 
 as sin in the Christian sense of the word, where 
 evil is still nothing but blundering, and men are 
 always following their best knowledge, in short, 
 where the law of necessity reigns. But sin has 
 entered, it has become dominating in history, it 
 has constituted a kingdom, and hurled the moral 
 
The New Birth 49 
 
 ideal into the dust to set upon its vacated throne 
 self -gratification, and has thus made perverse 
 wrong-doing the rule in the world. In such a 
 world the rise of holy choices does demand an 
 explanation by the exhibition of an adequate 
 cause from without. The attempt to explain it 
 from within can only succeed by denying the ex- 
 isting world itself, with the facts of sin and moral 
 degradation. It fails because the exemplifica- 
 tions of freedom cannot be explained by a theory 
 of necessity. 
 
 We return therefore to our proposition that 
 the new choice of duty in the Christian's soul did 
 not come from the world. 
 
 Neither did it come from himself. It may 
 seem so. There are forces of nature which tend 
 towards the emphasis of duty and might con- 
 ceivably lead to its choice. All those percep- 
 tions of advantage which the theory just re- 
 viewed details, tend, when the mind is elevated to 
 some eminence from which they are in full view, 
 to recommend the right; for right is beneficial 
 and perceived utility is often an index of what 
 is right. The sinner has a conscience, and it of- 
 ten speaks with perfect plainness in specific junc- 
 tures of life. Nor are his emotions and affec- 
 tions all so depraved as to afford no help in these 
 regards. Certainly, if we were reasoning in an 
 entirely abstract sphere, and handling these facts 
 of human nature as so many algebraic quantities 
 whose real magnitude and denomination were en- 
 
50 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tirely unknown to us, we might say that the union 
 of perceived interest, of commanded duty, and of 
 the desire of good were enough to explain the 
 choice of that upon which they unite. But the 
 experience of the Christian gives concrete con- 
 tents to the a, h, and c of the moral equation 
 He knows that his perceptions were clouded, his 
 conscience weak, his emotions and affections per- 
 verted. Life is so intricate a network of influ- 
 ences that duty is scarcely isolated in such a way 
 as to enable these varied lights to be equally fo- 
 cussed upon it together. A partial duty may be 
 thus recognized and chosen. But duty, general 
 and comprehensive duty, all-embracing and im- 
 perative duty, — with what reception will that meet 
 in a world where men know themselves to be 
 choosing and fast grasping a multitude of things 
 with which their interests and pleasures and even 
 their safety have been suffered to become in- 
 volved till to choose plain and simple duty as such 
 would be to revolutionize life? No! Man has a 
 fundamental, settled bad will ; and to the chang- 
 ing of that none of these feebler forces, fitfully 
 tending towards the right, will ever prove itself 
 adequate, nor even any possible combination of 
 them. 
 
 Not only experience of himself, but the expe- 
 rience gained in the Christian's history, confirms 
 this position. He has reasons, as we shall soon 
 see more at length, to ascribe the initiative in his 
 conversion to something exterior to himself; and 
 
The New Birth 51 
 
 he knows that he did not even co-operate with 
 that gracious and beneficent visitor, because he 
 remembers how he struggled against him as with 
 the violence of the madman. In fact he was mad, 
 mad with sin. He recapitulated in himself per- 
 haps the experience of Paul, finding himself an- 
 other " captive to the law of sin and death," and 
 crying at last, " O ! wretched man that I am ! " 
 The real, practical slavery to sin, whatever it may 
 be metaphysically, forbids to his experience the 
 entertainment of the idea that freedom came from 
 within. It is no function of jailors to set prison- 
 ers free! 
 
 Not from the world, not from himself, did this 
 holy choice of duty come. Whence did it? In- 
 terest accumulates upon the question, and already 
 presentiments of a great discovery seem to attend 
 its self-suggesting solution. But let us not has- 
 ten or leap with the bound of an intuitive faculty 
 to the answer. Let us patiently follow each mi- 
 nutest element of the developing reply. 
 
 It was mediated, probably, by finite agencies, 
 by men who had themselves experienced the 
 same change. Not the kingdom of evil is its 
 origin but the kingdom of light! What theolo- 
 gians have generally called " the means of grace," 
 the Scriptures, the public preaching of the word, 
 private ministrations of good men, with the pray- 
 ers of friends, and the discipline of life among 
 men, were the occasion of our perceiving our 
 duty and turning away from our sin. Yet these 
 
52 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 things were all " means " as they are rightly 
 termed, and we seek that of which they are the 
 instrumentalities, the grace itself, the ultimate ex- 
 planation which shall account for the first orig- 
 ination of a good choice in any man, and for the 
 existence of any kingdom of light, as well as for 
 the shining of that light in our own souls. 
 
 When I search my own history before I chose 
 duty, if that choice is a definite and well remem- 
 bered event in my life, I find that it was the cul- 
 mination of a considerable series of previous 
 events, and no doubt connected with many others 
 which I do not remember. There was the pa- 
 tient training of a religious mother, the instruc- 
 tions of faithful teachers, the hearing of the gos- 
 pel, the experience of transgression, culminating 
 in a deep sense of personal sinfulness and a long- 
 ing desire for the forgiveness and the favor of 
 God. It may be that I displayed a peculiar hard- 
 ness, and was broken by a great terror springing 
 out of a definite and shocking fall, and the vision 
 of merited punishment on its way to seize me. 
 It may be that at the moment of my chief anxiety, 
 when I was melted in sorrow and just then ac- 
 cessible to well adapted words from some skillful 
 adviser, a gentle ministrant of warning and con- 
 solation was sent to me who could speak the pre- 
 cise message I required. Or, I may have been 
 snatched out of bad companionships and corrupt- 
 ing occupations and brought to a place of leisure 
 and solitude, where my mind was susceptible to 
 
The New Birth 53 
 
 new impressions, and where the Christian life 
 commended itself to my newly opened receptive- 
 ness by unanticipated examples of its sweetness 
 and power, and where I speedily yielded. Or, I 
 was led by repeated falls before some special 
 temptation, recognized and dreaded, and by the 
 repeated failures of partial reformations, and by 
 accumulating despair, to grasp suddenly amid my 
 engulfing sorrows at some rescuing truth cast 
 out by no visible human agency from the imper- 
 sonal Bible.^ In view of such considerations I 
 feel the irresistible impression that there was 
 higher intelligence presiding among all these low- 
 er ones, co-ordinating their efforts and combining 
 their influences upon the vital point of action 
 within me and eliciting my final choice. And 
 when I reflect upon my life since, when I see 
 where I am and what I am doing in the world, 
 how I have been led to this point, where I have 
 turned half unconsciously, or wholly so, away 
 from avenues to wealth and honor, how my eyes 
 have often been shut to possibilities, and often 
 opened to hopes that still remain only hopes, how 
 arguments determinative to other men have gli- 
 ded over me without impression and others usual- 
 ly brushed aside with contempt have seemed to 
 me great and decisive, and how all have con- 
 verged upon the present moment and work, mak- 
 ing me fit for this and unfit for that other lot 
 
 ^To all these epitomes of individual experience his- 
 toric names might be attached. 
 
54 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 which some companion of my youth has come to 
 fill, I recognize in all this plan and guidance ; and 
 I see with tenfold clearness now that there was 
 therefore plan, agency, personally guided forces 
 in that original choice by which I gave myself to 
 the good and from which all the rest has come. 
 
 I venture to say that such, with infinite varia- 
 tion of degree of definiteness and of detail in in- 
 dividual cases, is the verdict of every Christian in 
 the review of his personal history, if that have 
 been marked enough to invite analysis and if he 
 be possessed of the requisite analytical power to 
 form a correct conclusion. I have selected the 
 example of some one who in the years of his ma- 
 ture manhood has made a definite decision for 
 right as a typical case by which all less clear cases 
 may be rightly judged. But the supposition of 
 typical cases is not necessary to the argument. 
 Every mature Christian can follow the plan in his 
 own life more or less fully, and can no more 
 doubt it than he can the existence of plan in the 
 outcome of the process by which his physical 
 frame has resulted from the first contact of two 
 simple cells through all its marvellous history of 
 growth. Plan in the physical world, and plan 
 in this inner, spiritual world of the Christian's 
 distinctive experiences, rest on the same analysis 
 of analogous facts; and as the argument from 
 the one to intelligence in the universe is simple, 
 direct, and conclusive, so it is in the other. A 
 person, above the means operating in my conver- 
 
The New Birth 55 
 
 sion and presiding over their adaptation and ap- 
 plication, is the only adequate explanation of that 
 event. 
 
 I come thus in conversion in contact with a 
 Person. Just as I have contact and know other 
 personalities through the total of impressions 
 which they make upon me, so I know this Person 
 through what I receive from Him. We often 
 suppose ourselves to be in much more real and 
 tangible contact with men than with God. But 
 is it so ? What is even " tangibility " but the ca- 
 pacity of finally affecting my mental self in some 
 definite way ? Ultimately all the " contact " of 
 finite personalities is through the ideas received 
 in the soul. In this sense I come literally in " con- 
 tact " with God ; and is it any wonder that at 
 times the impression made by his agency should 
 be so direct and person-like that men should 
 have what they called a " consciousness " of his 
 presence ? Is it not such, if there is ever the con- 
 sciousness of any presence? And what is it but 
 a natural objectification of real inner processes 
 when some such men have seemed to hear the in- 
 ward and God-given thoughts of their souls borne 
 to them upon the words of audible speech from 
 the divine presence? Christian experience in its 
 more pronounced and remarkable forms thus of- 
 ten testifies to a consciousness of the divine which 
 is to be respected as the intensified degree of that 
 which every Christian virtually has in the expe- 
 riences of the new birth. 
 
^6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 Thus the exterior cause of conversion has be- 
 come to the Christian apprehension a Person. 
 But the analysis of the fundamental Christian ex- 
 perience cannot stop here. The character of the 
 result at which the persuasive influences assem- 
 bled and applied by this Person were directed, 
 and of the object upon which they were expend- 
 ed, reveals something of his own character. Two 
 aspects immediately attract us, the one, that the 
 action promoted by them is holy action, the choice 
 and consequent performance of the good in its 
 clearest and highest known form, as recognized 
 duty; and the other, that there was no merito- 
 rious cause in the unrepentant and still rebellious 
 sinner why this exalted Person should have thus 
 initiated a saving process in his soul. As aiming 
 at the production of holiness, he must himself be 
 holy; and as coming self-moved to bestow the 
 greatest conceivable favor on the undeserving, 
 he must be determined by a love which is impar- 
 tial and embraces all men, since it asks for no 
 reason in the man, but breaks over the obstacle 
 of sin, and brings salvation to him who has no 
 merit. It is only the further explication of the 
 implications of the history of conversion as al- 
 ready traced, when it is added that this holy Per- 
 son must also be conceived as unlimited, since in 
 his government over the history of individuals 
 by which he guides their lives towards conver- 
 sion, is involved his government over the world 
 and all the universe ; for no event can be so small 
 
The New Birth 57 
 
 but that it might imperil the result in any or every 
 case of salvation, if only it were permitted to take 
 its way undirected and unrestrained. 
 
 I hint at these courses of argument rather than 
 fully develop them, because they are nothing new 
 in form, having been long used by the great theo- 
 logians in the derivation of the idea of God from 
 the facts of the material world. They apply with 
 equal cogency to the facts of the spiritual world 
 of inner experience, for the arguments differ in 
 no respect but in the matter with which they are 
 concerned. Thus familiar in form and cogent in 
 substance, they have brought us to the recogni- 
 tion, in the characteristic and initial experiences 
 of the Christian life, of an infinite and holy Per- 
 son as their cause ; and to this Person, loving and 
 gracious, we assign the name GOD. 
 
 I would emphasize thus the regularity and co- 
 gency of this proof of God's being because I wish 
 to emphasize still more strongly the fact that it 
 is a peculiarly Christian proof. It begins in facts 
 which no one but a Christian knows, and thus 
 could originate with no one else. Historically, 
 also, it is the Christian proof; for, beginning 
 with Abraham, there developed in his family and 
 through long generations among the people of 
 Israel, the great outlines of this proof, under the 
 guidance of a living experience. Jacob learnt 
 God's omnipresent providential care by what he 
 experienced at Bethel, David among the rocks of 
 Engedi, Hezekiah in the deliverances of his sick- 
 
58 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 bed, the people as a whole in the Exodus and the 
 Captivity. The proof came to its culmination in 
 the teachings of our Master, who first distinctly 
 declared " God is a Spirit " and condensed the 
 gospel in the sentence, " God so loved the world 
 that he sent his only Son." And, further, it is 
 found nowhere else than in the circle of Hebrew- 
 Christian religious experience. Even Plato, 
 whose conception of God rises confessedly high- 
 est among heathen writers, never quite makes him 
 the sole ultimate cause of all things,^ nor in all 
 his ascriptions to him of beneficent regard for 
 men rises quite to the height of true benevolence,* 
 so as to give him the moral character ascribed to 
 him by the Christian experience of unmerited 
 grace. The Christian idea of God as the infinite 
 and personal First Cause whose character is love 
 stands alone in the history of human thought, 
 lifting itself, Shasta-like, in the dazzling brilliance 
 of its perfect crown of eternal purity above all 
 the grovelling practices of heathenism, and above 
 all the feeble efforts of the untaught soul to for- 
 mulate the supreme excellence for itself. It is 
 thus — let the point be well marked — it is thus not 
 only derivable from Christian experience by the 
 processes of reflective thought, but it has actually 
 
 * There is always the dualistic matter out of which the 
 world is formed, even when it fades into the fir} or, 
 which has, in spite of its name, some shadowy exist- 
 ence. 
 
 ' See Jowett's Plato, introduction to the Timaeus, § 3. 
 
The New Birth 59 
 
 been so derived, and is therefore the first great 
 contribution of Christian experience to the theol- 
 ogy of the church and to the speculations of the 
 world. For, when speculation has attempted 
 critically to ground the idea of God in reason, as 
 in the days of Kant, she has uniformly pre-sup- 
 posed the exclusively Christian ideas of causality 
 and goodness in the Divine^, historically derived 
 from Christianity, or she has lapsed with Hegel 
 into a pantheism which has been the negation of 
 God. 
 
 It would be a pleasant task, here anticipating 
 the whole work of Christian reflection upon the 
 fundamental ideas of God gained in the experi- 
 ence of salvation, to trace the development of the 
 divine attributes, till the idea of God was attained 
 in its fulness ; and, particularly, to trace the fruits 
 of the knowledge of God in Christ from the hour 
 when the Master said, " He that hath seen 
 me hath seen the Father," till Paul knew 
 God as the " Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," 
 and John said, " Herein is love, not that we loved 
 God, but that he loved us and sent his Son," in 
 both of which expressions is embosomed the idea 
 of the divine love. But we must impose upon 
 ourselves the limitations for space's and topic's 
 sake that the conditions under which this study 
 is conducted demand; and, now, having reached 
 the first great conclusion from the initial expe- 
 
 * See Ritschl, " Rechtfertigung und Versohnung ", 
 vol. III., p. 184, first edition. 
 
6o Christian Life and Theology 
 
 riences of the new birth, go on to draw still oth- 
 er immediate conclusions ere we advance to fur- 
 ther discussions. One remark as to the degree 
 of certainty attained through experience as to the 
 being of God. The facts of a fundamental choice^ 
 of motives operating upon me and eliciting it, of 
 subsequent harmony introduced into my soul, are 
 all matters of the immediate consciousness, and 
 thus as certain to me as my own existence. The 
 existence of God is evidently certain with a sec- 
 ondary degree of certainty, as the product of a 
 rational process of inference. I know it medi- 
 ately, through facts which are not identical with 
 it, through what God himself does for me. It is 
 not therefore uncertain ; but it is secondarily cer- 
 tain, — certain still, but not immediately and pri- 
 marily so. We thus pass on our way towards 
 truths which are certain by still inferior degrees 
 of certainty, as was premised at the close of the 
 first lecture ; and clearness of thought, as well as 
 the demands of the practical use of our certainty, 
 requires that we should constantly mark the vary- 
 ing degrees as we proceed. In this way, while 
 claiming much for Christian experience, we shall 
 not claim too much. 
 
 But, now, still lingering in the region of the 
 immediately certain, we remark the consequences 
 for the Christian, of the change through which 
 he has passed in conversion. The first is what 
 we ordinarily call forgiveness, but which we must 
 now designate, since we are describing what is 
 
The New Birth 6i 
 
 accurately the experience of the Christian, and 
 not even that experience in its secondary ele- 
 ments, as a sense of harmony and freedom of 
 soul. There was self-condemnation for con- 
 scious sin, the resistance of the will against the 
 urgent motives for holiness, the abnormal excite- 
 ment of the desires for unworthy objects, and all 
 the turmoil of that war in the members, the out- 
 lines of which do not require retracing here. Now 
 comes harmony, self-approval in place of con- 
 demnation, the glad acquiescence of the will with 
 perceived duty, the stilling of unruly emotions 
 and desires, and the cessation of the tumult of 
 inner war. And, if not every inner conflict seems 
 permanently set at rest, it is perceived now that 
 all the higher and purer and more normal ele- 
 ments of the man are at perfect harmony with his 
 new and governing choice. 
 
 This is essentially salvation. If the powers of 
 a man can be always in harmony, if he can al- 
 ways choose the right, if he finds high ideals set 
 before him, and if he always responds to them 
 and goes forward in harmony of soul to their 
 successive incorporation in his being, and if in 
 all this he is in contact with God and is the object 
 of the divine guidance and love, this is " life," 
 and " eternal life." It would have the highest 
 subjective value to the man who knew nothing 
 outside of himself, for it would be for him, 
 though he vStood in perfect isolation from other 
 moral beings, that fulness of life which evolution 
 
62 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 teaches all living things desire. But when he is 
 known to be a member of a moral community, 
 every other member of which will bestow upon 
 him the same moral approval in his present atti- 
 tude of allegiance to duty, its value is enhanced ; 
 and when he has learned to view himself as un- 
 der the guidance of God in this new spiritual 
 development, he ascribes to the divine mind the 
 same moral judgment which human agents form 
 in reference to him. Then first his subjective 
 experiences obtain a true objective validity, and 
 the internal harmony of the human soul becomes 
 the forgiveness of God.^ 
 
 Thus we reach a second great contribution of 
 
 * One thing is certain. The sense of peace is not an 
 act of the soul forcing itself into some artificial state, or 
 even voluntarily and intentionally producing any state 
 whatever, natural or unnatural. Forgiveness often comes 
 unexpectedly, contrary to prejudice, while the soul still 
 believes itself unconverted, often by what seem to be 
 inexplicable outward phenomena, especially in the case 
 of the illiterate who are little used to self-examination. 
 The Christian reasoning is simple. Here is an effect 
 which bears the marks of an objective result of certain 
 spiritual conditions. Those conditions originate in 
 divine action; therefore we conclude that the result is 
 of divine origin. Or viewed independently, these ex- 
 periences are the bringing of the soul to a harmony for 
 which it would seem to be designed, but which it has 
 not had before. The result is conformity to what seems 
 to be the original plan of the soul. It is itself, therefore, 
 not accidental, not merely natural in distinction from 
 supernatural, but originates in the same source with the 
 plan itself, that is, with God. God truly forgives sin. 
 
The New Birth 63 
 
 Christian experience to evangelical theology, the 
 doctrine of justification by faith. Subjectively, 
 justification can be nothing but forgiveness. The 
 Christian by exercising faith, that is, in tlie com- 
 plete surrender which throws his soul wholly 
 upon God for salvation, experiences forgiveness. 
 He requires nothing else, whether mediation of a 
 priesthood or performance of good works. He 
 is justified by faith alone. 
 
 This is the logical proof of the doctrine from 
 experience, and it is complete. But, historically 
 speaking, it was experience that gave the church 
 the doctrine. Careful study of Luther's career^ 
 
 * Luther says once, in commenting upon Galatians 
 (chap, iii. v. 2) : " So we also at this day, convicted by 
 the testimony of our own conscience, are constrained 
 to confess that the Holy Ghost is not given by the law 
 but by the hearing of faith. For many heretofore in the 
 papacy have gone about with great labor and study to 
 keep the law, the decrees of the Fathers, and the tradi- 
 tions of the Pope; and some, with painful and continual 
 exercises in watching and praying, did so weary and 
 weaken their bodies that afterwards they were able to 
 do nothing ; whereby, notwithstanding, they gained noth- 
 ing else but that they miserably afflicted and tormented 
 themselves. They could never attain to a quiet con- 
 science and peace in Christ but continually doubted of 
 the good will of God toward them. But now, since the 
 gospel teacheth that the law and works do not justify, 
 but faith alone in Jesus Christ, hereupon followeth a 
 most certain knowledge and understanding, a most joy- 
 ful conscience, and a true judgment of every kind of life, 
 and of all things whatsoever." This is, as it were, a 
 history of his own religious life, and exhibits how the 
 
64 Christian Life and Theolagy 
 
 will illustrate how completely his convictions 
 rooted in his experience, and how he derived 
 from it that glowing eloquence, that irresistible 
 torrent of mingled feeling and logic, which swept 
 away all the opposition of his adversaries and im- 
 parted to those he won a large measure of his 
 own rock-like certainty. And I think we may 
 say that historically it is Christian experience 
 which has sustained this doctrine in the various 
 Protestant communions. It is not enough that 
 the Scriptures are so clearly for it, for in the pe- 
 culiar struggle which Protestant evangelical the- 
 ology has had to fight, she has been confronted by 
 a foe which claimed the sole power to interpret 
 the Scriptures and met every argument from ex- 
 egesis by one from authority. But when Rome 
 put forward her priesthood as essential to the 
 procurement of forgiveness from God, the Prot- 
 estant community could answer that without a 
 " priesthood " she found herself in the possession 
 of the spiritual presence and favor of God, and 
 without an infallible earthly guide, she found her- 
 self acquainted with the way of salvation.^ To 
 Rome's assertion of impossibility she opposed the 
 fact. Had she not known with the immediate 
 
 new conceptions of salvation had entered into the in- 
 most consciousness of the times. 
 
 * I take the liberty to refer to another work by my- 
 self, " The Fundamental Ideas of the Roman Catholic 
 Church ", pp. T>> and 189, for further development of 
 this thought. It is also resumed in the sixth lecture 
 below. 
 
The New Birth 65 
 
 certainty of the direct experiences of the soul, the 
 claims of an ancient and imposing institution, the 
 weakness of courses of reasoning founded upon 
 propositions which were themselves objects of 
 dispute, and the natural influence on the mind of 
 the terrible struggle at arms and the immense 
 sacrifices required to sustain Protestant liberties 
 for a full century, would surely have led to final 
 surrender. But because of her knowledge this 
 was impossible. Successive leaders re-exempli- 
 fied the same fundamental truths. Gustavus 
 Adolphus was as clear and firm in the Protestant 
 principles as Luther himself ; and thus it came to 
 pass that he " rescued at Breitenfield " — as others 
 had done elsewhere — " religious freedom for the 
 world."' And to-day, because of the continued 
 testimony of experience, this doctrine maintains 
 its place without noteworthy opposition as the 
 fundamental doctrine of the evangelical system. 
 We have already arrived by analytical develop- 
 ment at the activity of God as the ultimate ground 
 of the conversion of the Christian. God moves, 
 when this decisive moment of the individual life 
 draws near, to elicit its determinative choice. 
 Christian reflection has sharpened this statement 
 to the further one, that he always thus initiates 
 the train of influences leading to conversion, and 
 
 *The inscription on the Breitenfeld monument near 
 Leipzig : — 
 
 " Rettete am Breitenfeld 
 Glaubensfreiheit fiir die Welt." 
 
66 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 that this great choice has not only its ultimate oc- 
 casion but its originating source in the divine 
 activity. Man never comes self-moved to repent- 
 ance; but God always moves him. This is the 
 doctrine styled in theological nomenclature, " pre- 
 venient grace." 
 
 Its main contention, that God moves man to re- 
 pentance, is clearly the voice of experience, as we 
 have already abundantly seen, and no further 
 proof is here required. The only occasion of 
 question will be the addition of the word " al- 
 ways " in the formulation of the doctrine. Does 
 man never move first towards God ? Granted that 
 my own experience is that I was divinely guided 
 in my choice, can I say that no man, coming to a 
 sense of himself as a sinner, just as men come to 
 know that they are Europeans or Africans, ever 
 turned away from sin and sought God ? Can ex- 
 perience render any such proof till every man 
 that was ever converted has been interrogated, 
 and all have said, " I did not come self-moved to 
 God " ? And can it be claimed that such would 
 be the universal answer when Pelagius and the 
 Pelagians of every age, some of them doubtless 
 good men, and presumably speaking under the 
 illumination of their own experience, have denied 
 the doctrine of prevenient grace ? 
 
 We may grant at once that experience, if it is 
 to include everything that has been felt or uttered 
 on the subject, cannot prove the doctrine before 
 us. We may go further than that and admit, 
 
The New Birth 67 
 
 yes, even advance and emphasize the principle 
 that mere experience can never give us a strictly 
 demonstrated universal proposition. We seek 
 only the general rule, the practically universal 
 proposition, the great religious fact of immediate 
 and practical value and of unspeakable import- 
 ance, that God is the originating cause of the new 
 birth. Experience can certainly give us general 
 rules in religion, as she can in physics or in chem- 
 istry ; and, it may be, she can suggest more. 
 
 Experience, then, has something more to say 
 than simply that I, the subject whose experience 
 is demanded, refer my new life to God as its sole 
 origin. Such is my testimony, but I found my 
 opinion as to my own case on grounds that apply 
 to others also. I have examined my own self, 
 and I see no effective tendencies either of will or 
 of emotion towards the commands of conscience 
 and the highest intellectual perceptions of my in- 
 terest, which would explain my final action. In 
 fact, conversion was the direct reversal of con- 
 stant previous courses of choice. If sin can be 
 properly called consistent, I was a consistent and 
 persistent sinner. And so were other men. It 
 is, therefore, not simply because I actually came 
 to God under the guidance of his providence that 
 I judge others always to do so ; but I come to the 
 perception of the fact that I was thus personally 
 led by divine providence, guided by specific rea- 
 sons which are general in their application and 
 compel me to infer the necessity of the same 
 
68 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 leadership for all men. I did not merely receive, 
 I required this leadership ; and so do all. Not a 
 piece of chance good fortune is it that has befal- 
 len me, but a divine condescension to my bitter 
 and completest necessity that has rescued me ; and 
 the same necessity encompasses every one born 
 with the nature and amid the surroundings which 
 belong to this world-wide kingdom of evil. 
 
 But, now, this analysis of experience is for us 
 who make it entirely subjective. It will be nec- 
 essary for us ere we have advanced many steps 
 further in this study to enlarge the scope of inves- 
 tigation so as to include more objective elements ; 
 and it may be that some of you will require for 
 your best progress that we should make this ad- 
 vance now. I may be perfectly certain for my- 
 self, you say, that given experiences admit of only 
 one interpretation; but when I hear others give 
 another interpretation, as different from mine as 
 the color red from green, I begin to wonder 
 whether I am not suffering under a spiritual color 
 blindness. True, knowledge about myself is 
 knowledge about man ; but I begin to think it as 
 necessary to test my spiritual, as it would be un- 
 der similar circumstances to test my physical eye- 
 sight, by the standard of the general verdict of 
 humanity. What have Christians in general 
 taught, therefore, about the matter of prevenient 
 grace ? 
 
 There are many ways of arriving at such gen- 
 eral testimony of Christians as to their experi- 
 
The New Birth 6g 
 
 ence ; but one of them is specially suggestive and 
 valuable for the topic which is now before us. It 
 is that derived from the historic creeds. It has 
 the advantage among methods of eliciting the 
 voice of general experience that it cannot be 
 charged with" unduly exalting emotional and pos- 
 sibly momentary utterances to an undeserved 
 rank as exponents of permanent experiential con- 
 viction. Creeds have been formed deliberately, 
 and when not drafted, as has generally been the 
 case, by some representative body, they have 
 maintained themselves only because they gained 
 the common consent of the church which received 
 them, and so have universally spoken for more 
 than their individual authors. 
 
 Now, it is a remarkable fact that the voice of 
 all the great creeds, Roman, Greek, and Protest- 
 ant, is for the doctrine of prevenient grace. 
 Nearly all of them teach it with great clearness, 
 only the Greek creeds, which ground predestina- 
 tion on the foreknowledge of the faith of the pre- 
 destinate, being indistinct.^ We read, however, 
 in the " Confession of Dositheus " of a " preven- 
 ient grace " bestowed " like light in darkness " 
 
 * Thus the " Orthodox Confession " of Mogilas can 
 scarcely be said to do more than leave a place for pre- 
 venient grace, quest, xxvii., end (Schaff, Creeds of 
 Christendom, vol. XL, p. 308) ; but the " Longer Cate- 
 chism " speaks, somewhat ambiguously, of " preparatory 
 grace", quest. 123 (Schaff, ibid., p. 465), and refers 
 " spiritual life " to the Holy Spirit, quest. 240 (Schaff, 
 p. 481). 
 
70 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 upon all, which some " obey " and are saved.' In- 
 deed, most of the creeds teach the doctrine of 
 election, which is the consistent formulation sub 
 specie eternitatis of prevenient grace. Thus, of 
 course, the Calvinistic creeds, such as the Eng- 
 lish (the Anglican Articles, the Irish , Articles, 
 and the Westminster Confession), the Scotch, 
 French, and Dort creeds, teach it plainly with re- 
 markable agreement of phraseology; but, it de- 
 serves especial notice, the anti-Calvinistic creeds 
 have either affirmed election (as the Formula of 
 Concord) or have contented themselves with 
 omitting it (as the Articles of Wesley)." In no 
 case, either at the time of the Reformation or 
 more recently, has any creed belonging to an ec- 
 clesiastical body which could be properly called 
 evangelical, positively denied even election, much 
 less prevenient grace. Further than this, the 
 creeds that have omitted the doctrine of election 
 have all explicitly declared the doctrine of pre- 
 venient grace in the sense in which it is derived 
 from experience, that the initiative in conversion 
 is given by the gracious activity of God. The 
 symbolical expression of Christian experience is 
 
 *See Schaff, op. cit., p. 404. 
 
 •Thus the Arminian Articles (1610) and the Society 
 of Friends (1675) ; while, of modern creeds, the follow- 
 ing affirm it, — Auburn Declaration ; Evang. Free Church 
 of Geneva; Free Church of Italy; Moravian Easter Lit- 
 any; Cong'l Union of England and Wales; Cong'l 
 Creed of 1883, U. S. ; Reformed Episcopalian. 
 
The New Birth 71 
 
 thus' but one, that the originating cause of re- 
 generation is God. 
 
 Our analysis of our experience which has 
 seemed so clear and certain to us as we have 
 traced it, is 1 therefore not merely subjective and 
 . exposed to the error which an abnormal subjec- 
 tivity may introduce. We have brought our 
 vision to the test of the universal vision and have 
 •found it correct. So clear, so universal, so un- 
 mistakable have been the features of the simplest 
 Christian experience at this point that Chris- 
 tendom has united in the substantial acceptance 
 of that favorite aphorism of Augustine's " Every 
 good thing is either God or from God." 
 
 We have thus our complete answer to the ob- 
 jections of that philosophy which, ascribing the 
 new birth itself to the gradual operations upon 
 the developing mind of the evolutionary process, 
 would go on thence and rob us of every religious 
 doctrine and finally of all ultimate truth. There 
 remain still rejoinders from that quarter which 
 demand the attention of the Christian apologist. 
 The outcome of that philosophy is materialism as 
 to nature and man, and at best agnosticism as to 
 God. But the contest has been now so well fought 
 out in the arena of public discussion that we shall 
 be justified in omitting any repetition of the 
 Christian arguments here. Enough to remark 
 that several of the most prominent advocates of 
 Mr. Darwin's theories have come clearly to see, 
 
72 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 with Prof. Romanes, that causes in nature do not 
 evacuate the necessity of a cause of nature. 
 Among the latest of these clearly to express him- 
 self may be mentioned Mr. John Fiske. The 
 course of evolution itself demands a superintend- 
 ing Intelligence, working " immanently," as Prof. 
 Le Conte phrases it, but not less really and intel- 
 ligently for that. The cause of the world is a 
 Person, when the last word of evolution has been 
 spoken. 
 
 But we are still upon disputed ground, and 
 need to protect ourselves against criticism from 
 another quarter, if we wish to make our progress 
 perfectly secure. Professor Kaftan, as was 
 earlier remarked, is himself in a sense a theolo- 
 gian of experience; but he has repudiated the 
 stand-point which he occupied in his earlier 
 theological career, and sharply criticizes those 
 who, like Frank, derive the dogmatic system of 
 the church from religious experience. He would 
 have many an objection to urge to the line of rea- 
 soning which we have now pursued. I deem it 
 important to devote special attention to him not 
 merely because he is one of the foremost of liv- 
 ing theologians, and the leader of that general 
 tendency of thought which goes by the name 
 of Ritschlianism, but even more because his ob- 
 jections may seem to be suggested by his superior 
 opportunities of judging of the real value of the 
 experiential argument. His personal devout- 
 ness and the great theological advance made by 
 
The New Birth 73 
 
 him upon Ritschl add to the reasons for special 
 attention to whatever he may have to say. 
 
 The proof already delineated conforms entirely 
 in one general aspect to the most important un- 
 derlying principles of Kaftan. He lays great and 
 due weight on the fact that the divine revela- 
 tion is not, in the first instance, a revelation of 
 truths, but the revelation of a person, the mani- 
 festation of God himself to man. Upon this, he 
 says, must follow credence on the part of man, 
 and then obedience by which man yields himself 
 to the self-revealing God. In this conscious in- 
 tercourse of obedience between God and man 
 there springs up a knowledge of divine things, 
 first among which is the knowledge of God him- 
 self. And Christian doctrine, says Kaftan, is at 
 bottom the doctrine of God. 
 
 Now, that is precisely the method of gaining 
 the idea of God adopted in the analysis of Chris- 
 tian experience which we have just completed. 
 In the new birth the soul comes in contact with 
 God who reveals himself to it in the regenerat- 
 ing act. The soul responding is brought by 
 " obedience to the heavenly vision " into a new 
 relation with God, and meditating on that rela- 
 tion, it comes to find by simple analysis that God 
 is manifested there, and what he is manifested to 
 be; and thus it comes to believe in him as the 
 holy. Infinite, and loving Person, a God who is 
 truly a Father. 
 
 But Kaftan would not pause in his criticism at 
 
74 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 this point. He would detect a grave error 
 heralded by the entire structure of our argument 
 in its evident attempt to gain a definite and for- 
 mulated knowledge of God by methods of the 
 understanding. His objection goes very deep 
 into the underlying problems of theology, and its 
 due consideration will lead us far afield. But 
 we shall be rewarded, when we have returned to 
 the main course of our discussion again, by the 
 •conviction that little is likely to be brought 
 against us at any later point more far-reaching or 
 thorough-going in its antagonism to our princi- 
 ples. 
 
 The objection may be reduced to two brief 
 expressions : 
 
 I. We do not really want the knowledge we 
 seek. 
 
 What, asks Kaftan, is the highest good? Is 
 it knowledge ? So many have thought, especially 
 the Greeks, whose philosophy culminated in 
 Plato, and exercised a powerful influence upon 
 the early church. It so modified the course of 
 Christian thinking that the final outcome was 
 that tendency which has reached its full develop- 
 ment in Roman Catholicism, to exalt knowledge 
 into the place of an essential element of salvation, 
 — a good in itself. It was thus severed from 
 right conduct, and religion was made to consist 
 in the acceptance of dogmas and the performance 
 of ceremonies which had no connection with the 
 plain doing of our duty in the ordinary relations 
 
The New Birth 75 
 
 of life. A chasm was thus opened between re- 
 Hgion and morahty, between the religion, that is, 
 of this erring church and the religion of Jesus 
 Christ, which consisted in the exercises of the 
 heart and the consequent performance of the 
 life, in loving God supremely and our neighbor 
 as ourselves. The longer this Greek conception 
 of the highest good is studied, says Kaftan, the 
 more it will be clear that it is erroneous and 
 harmful to every department of thought and life. 
 What, then, is in truth the highest good for 
 which men should seek? The history of the 
 world is the history of struggle after the satis- 
 faction of wants. Man has his desires, chief 
 among which is that for fulness of life, the com- 
 plete and perfect satisfaction of all his natural 
 wants and the exercise of all his powers. The 
 supreme good he seeks can be nothing less than 
 this, for nothing else can give unity and consist- 
 ency to history. ** But there is nothing in the 
 world which can afford this satisfaction. Every- 
 thing here is relative and conditioned. This is true 
 both of our knowledge and of everything in 
 which we seek the satisfaction of our vital needs. 
 True, we commonly think that some day the dis- 
 illusionment which dogs us will come to an 
 end." ^ But none, great or small, find themselves 
 satisfied, or can. Now, two alternatives are thus 
 
 * I quote in this whole context, sometimes accurately 
 and oftener loosely, from Kaftan's " WaHrheit der 
 christlichen Religion " , p. 509 ff . 
 
76 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 presented to man. On the one hand, he can de- 
 spair of the world and embrace the philosophy 
 of pessimism; but that is no solution of the dif- 
 ficulties of history, since it in fact declares that 
 they are insoluble. Or, on the other hand, he can 
 reach out towards another world in which the 
 good which cannot be attained in this world may 
 be sought. 
 
 But what shall this supermundane, highest 
 good be? The need of it is developed in the his- 
 tory of man, and it must hence be such that 
 human history shall be the positive means of 
 bringing it into existence. Hence it can be only a 
 moral good, a product to be gained by means of 
 the real secret of human progress, by the dis- 
 tinctive element of human history, by the moral 
 development which is the main achievement of 
 the course of human affairs. Historical develop- 
 ment creates conscience; and hence conscience 
 must have part in this highest good. Conscience 
 demands general love of men by which they are 
 knit together in a society regulated by love as its 
 law. The good of the individual must be stead- 
 ily subordinated to the good of the whole. But 
 such a society is not to be found in this world. 
 And hence the religious element must be added 
 to the other elements constituting the highest 
 good, for we must believe in the existence some- 
 where of that which we cannot find upon earth. 
 The highest good is thus both religious and 
 
The New Birth 77 
 
 ethical. And these elements are united in the 
 Christian conception of the kingdom of God. 
 
 This is a highly subjective process of construc- 
 tion, as we shall at once remark, and Kaftan him- 
 self candidly admits. Is it anything more than 
 this? Can it give any proof of being objective 
 also? Yes, says Kaftan, for it is the result at 
 which the human race as a whole, and in the 
 actual outcome of its development, has arrived. 
 It is the universal human idea of the highest 
 good, for history shows there can be no society 
 and no high civilization, no culture, no progress, 
 where men do not steadily subordinate the in- 
 dividual to the general good. 
 
 And yet it may be, for all that, a mere ideal. 
 What proof has it of reality? And how can we 
 say that there is a kingdom of God, a society be- 
 yond this present world, in which God, from whom 
 the world came forth, has placed the culmination 
 of the world's history, and where the law of love 
 perfectly prevails? Kaftan's answer is that such 
 a kingdom must exist if history is to be rational, 
 and it is therefore " postulated." But this postu- 
 late involves another ; for if there be a God and a 
 divine moral order, then that fact must be made 
 known by a divine act of self-revelation, or a 
 revelation is to be postulated. And thus are given 
 to us what he calls the elements of the " highest 
 knowledge," God as the cause of the world and 
 the kingdom of God as its goal. It is a " knowl- 
 
78 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 edge " (Erkennen) obtained by an act of faith. 
 No man can be compelled to believe it. But be- 
 lieving it, every man finds it rational. There- 
 fore, says Kaftan, we do not want the knowledge 
 (Wissen) at which the present lectures are evi- 
 dently aiming, built up by the careful use of the 
 categories of the understanding. 
 
 With much of this reasoning we are immedi- 
 ately at one. It is a great and most significant 
 fact which Kaftan elaborates, that the moral de- 
 velopment is the heart of the historical develop- 
 ment of humanity, and that the conscience is the 
 highest element of the moral development. Take 
 ethics, — nay, take Christianity, out of the tower- 
 ing growth of European civilization, and Hke an 
 oak whose heart has been burned out by light- 
 ning, it rots and falls. But we need something 
 more than a mere postulate of the reality of the 
 kingdom of God in which is included the reality 
 of God himself. We are to commit ourselves to 
 God, to sacrifice for him, " to venture all ", as 
 Kaftan elsewhere expresses it, " our life and our 
 dearest possessions ", on his existence and his 
 fatherly providence; and there must be knowl- 
 edge before there is such a committal of the man 
 by the act of his will. The will moves in view of 
 motives, and these approach it by the avenues of 
 the emotions and the intellect. If God is not 
 known as an object of trust, trust cannot be ex- 
 ercised in him. 
 
 Kaftan more than half acknowledges this when 
 
The New Birth 79 
 
 he proceeds to postulate revelation. God must 
 make himself known; and this revelation must 
 be believed to be in history, or else it is all unin- 
 telligible. So says Kaftan. Rather, say we, 
 this revelation must be received, and the self- 
 revealing object be known through the experi- 
 ence. It will never satisfy the world to tell them 
 that here is a truth which, if one sees it so, is so, 
 but which one may refuse to see and which, so far 
 as he is concerned, will then not be! And it 
 will never satisfy the Christian to tell him that 
 his certainty is a certainty of mere belief. He 
 needs, and, as I think we have abundantly shown, 
 he possesses, a knowledge which is a ground of 
 faith as well as the offspring of faith, and not 
 merely a simple faith. He need not strive to 
 content himself with a " knowledge " (Erken- 
 nen) which is no knowledge (Wissen). 
 
 But, says Kaftan — and this is his other point — 
 2. However much we may want such knowl- 
 edge (Wissen), we cannot have it. 
 
 Your reasoning in the above derivation of the 
 existence of God from the experiences involved 
 in the new birth, he says, is not a mere analysis 
 of the facts and a consequent recognition of the 
 self-revelation of God in those experiences, but 
 it is an argument conducted on a false basis, 
 for you are arguing from effect to cause and 
 are thus employing the principle of causality be- 
 yond the sphere of its legitimate application. It 
 is restricted by its nature to the sphere of ex- 
 
8o Christian Life and Theology 
 
 perience, and can never prove the existence of a 
 cause beyond experience for the phenomena 
 within experience. 
 
 This sounds quite like Kant, and we begin to 
 summon from their hiding places those old argu- 
 ments by which sound philosophy long ago dis- 
 posed of Kant's limitation of causality to phe- 
 nomena, — a limitation which he could not him- 
 self consistently maintain. But Kaftan is not 
 building exactly upon Kant's foundations. He 
 derives far more from a philosopher whom, in 
 the town where James McCosh lived and taught, 
 I may claim without fear of contradiction, Eng- 
 lish philosophy has long since refuted, — I mean 
 John Stuart Mill. Causation, says Kaftan, is an 
 idea which we arbitrarily impose upon phenom- 
 ena for our own convenience in gaining domina- 
 tion over the world. All that we perceive is 
 succession in events. We wish to know what 
 successions we can depend upon in order that 
 we may subject nature to our control for our 
 own selfish purposes. We are conscious of 
 causality in the spiritual sphere of our own inner 
 life, and we project this arbitrarily upon phe- 
 nomena, and say that so and so is the cause of 
 so and so, that we may the more distinctly mark 
 the reliable certainty with which one phenome- 
 non succeeds another. Further than that there 
 is no causality in the world; and to think that 
 we are actually gaining a real knowledge of the 
 world by the application to it of this principle, 
 
The New Birth 8i 
 
 is a great error. Atoms, and evolutionary hy- 
 potheses, and the much vaunted " laws of na- 
 ture " are likewise mere matters of our own con- 
 venience, arbitrarily attributed to things, and 
 have no reality in themselves and no value beyond 
 their use in enabling man to dominate nature 
 and employ it for his own purposes. 
 
 We shall all have two things to say in reply, 
 I think. First, this is a very low and false view 
 of the object of natural science. Doubtless it 
 has its practical bearings, and to a large extent is 
 intended to promote man's dominion over nature ; 
 but it has also higher objects, principal among 
 which is the knowledge of truth. Kaftan be- 
 lieves in God as the cause of the world. Is it 
 conceivable that he should be this, and not have 
 left imprinted upon every page of the world and 
 ready for the reading of qualified minds, the 
 record of his methods, which will also be the rec- 
 ord of his own nature ? Certainly, men are study- 
 ing nature in order to "think God's thoughts after 
 him ", as Kepler said ; and they have thought that 
 from that despised theory of evolution which 
 Kaftan dismisses almost with a sneer, they 
 gained new views of the grandeur, perfection, 
 and wide-spreading efficiency of the divine plan. 
 I think we may increasingly say that, if the " un- 
 devout astronomer is mad ", the undevout biolo- 
 gist, who is permitted to linger in the very 
 sanctuaries where life is evolving and to watch 
 it with the microscope, that eye which modern 
 
82 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 science has given him and which beholds the 
 very ultimates of Hfe, the cells, — who may thus 
 almost see the hand of God at work as he fash- 
 ions life, — ^the undevout biologist must be in- 
 capable of reverence. No! the highest service 
 of science is that it gives us, not dominion over 
 the world, but insight into it, and insight into 
 the processes of eternity and the ways of God, — 
 in a word, knowledge, which Kaftan says we 
 cannot gain. 
 
 Kaftan seems to see this, for he has one pas- 
 sage in which he tries to lift this low conception 
 of science upon a higher level. '' This practical 
 aim of science is before all things spiritual domin- 
 ion over the world, which we must in some de- 
 gree possess in order to become and to be spirit- 
 ual persons. It is the position of the race of man 
 in the universe which enables it to lift itself 
 above the world and to direct its gaze upon an 
 eternal goal. There is therefore not the slight- 
 est depreciation of science or derogation from 
 its dignity when it is viewed as a means to this 
 end." ^ Yes, if science helps us thus, it teaches 
 us of God. But can it, under Kaftan's ideas of its 
 methods? Can it, if the great principle of caus- 
 ality is nothing but a fiction, a short way of ex- 
 pressing to ourselves that we expect a certain 
 thing to-morrow when a given antecedent shall 
 be put in motion, because it followed the same 
 to-day, an " arbitrary " application of idea to 
 
 ^*'Wahrheit", p. 325. 
 
The New Birth 83 
 
 phenomena, introducing an " illusion " ( Tdusch- 
 ung), a "naive" transfer of facts of our own 
 nature to the external world, making that world 
 " a complicated web of artificial causes and ef- 
 fects " ? ^ In truth. Kaftan's idea of natural sci- 
 ence remains a low one and altogether unworthy 
 of the great structure of human knowledge which 
 has been erected by its skilful labors. 
 
 Second, we say that Kaftan's idea of causation 
 is not the one with which natural science operates. 
 The youngest and most " naive " student ascribes 
 to causality the idea of power; and the ultimate 
 results of scientific study lay emphasis on force 
 as operative in phenomena. It is by the study of 
 forces, in fact, that science has come to its great- 
 est generalizations and its greatest contributions 
 to human thought. 
 
 But this subject has been thoroughly discussed 
 among English-speaking philosophers and theo- 
 logians in connection with the writings of that 
 eminent man, who has become among us, in spite 
 of his real eminence and genuine services to 
 thought, metaphysically considered, a rejected 
 and now almost forgotten leader. Prof. Kaftan 
 cannot expect us to take very seriously his at- 
 tempt at this late date to revive the authority 
 of J. S. Mill. We put it down as the self-evident 
 basis of Kaftan's labors as well as of our own, 
 that man is made for knowledge; that the fun- 
 damental principles which he must employ in the 
 
 » Ibid., p. 333. 
 
84 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 search for knowledge are necessary to him be- 
 cause they have their counterpart in the reality 
 which he is to know; and that hence the marks 
 of necessity and universality that are upon them 
 are evidences of their applicabihty to the entire 
 world of possible thought. Even Kaftan carries 
 causality beyond the world of experience, for he 
 " postulates " a Cause of the eternal kingdom of 
 good beyond this world ; and what is that " postu- 
 lating " but the utterance of the fact that such a 
 kingdom, and any rational outcome of the his- 
 tory of a finite and dependent being like man, 
 demands a Power to establish and conduct it? 
 Even Kant had a "' Ding-an-sich " which was the 
 cause of phenomenal reality. 
 
 But we are in danger, as I hinted, of being led 
 too far afield. I shall therefore pass over the 
 other features of this strange theory of knowl- 
 edge upon which Kaftan has seen fit to base 
 his employment of the Scriptures as the sole 
 source of Christian theology, to the intended and 
 emphatic exclusion of experience. I can only 
 mention the remarkable turn which he gives to 
 the reply to his adversaries on innate principles of 
 knowledge. He conceives them as citing Mathe- 
 matics against him as a wholly a priori and yet 
 absolutely certain science. His answer at least 
 does not lack boldness. " The propositions of 
 Mathematics ", he says, " are truths only in an 
 hypothetical manner, that is, under the supposi- 
 tion that there are things to which they can be 
 
The New Birth 85 
 
 applied " ! ^ And he follows Mill in the ab- 
 surd statement that the ideal forms of geometry 
 are derived from the approximate circles, etc., 
 of nature by exaggeration of certain qualities! 
 Why did he not complete the catalogue of Mill's 
 absurdities here by approving his supposition 
 that upon the planet Jupiter, for example, parallel 
 lines prolonged would meet, and two and two 
 make five? I therefore abruptly break off the dis- 
 cussion at this point. We shall return to Kaf- 
 tan's positions at a later time, and review in 
 another connection certain ob lections which he 
 might urge against the use of creeds and of 
 history in general both in this and in the follow- 
 ing lecture. 
 
 We have thus completed our survey of the first 
 cycle of truths falling under our theme, viz., those 
 resulting from the fact of the new birth as experi- 
 enced by the individual Christian. We are now 
 to pass to other elements of his experience, less 
 central to it and often yielding a certainty of an 
 inferior degree. But before we go we should 
 pause to remark that the elements of doctrine al- 
 ready secured carry with them the entire system 
 of doctrine commonly called evangelical by their 
 logical implications and by the necessities of any 
 thinking which proceeds upon the supposition of 
 the unity of all truth and of its consistency both 
 with itself and with the laws of thought. It will 
 be the office of all the following discussion to sub- 
 
 ^"Wahrheit",p. 369. 
 
86 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 stantiate this remark, and it will therefore be un- 
 advisable to attempt to display now the necessary 
 connection of the doctrines of the sin and ruin 
 of the world, of the preveniency of grace and jus- 
 tification by faith, with the other doctrines of the 
 system. But this observation should be made; 
 that no historical communion has held these doc- 
 trines without holding the rest, and none has 
 denied the others and succeeded in maintaining 
 these. Indeed, the circle might be contracted 
 upon its center, and it might be said that with the 
 maintenance of the doctrine of prevenient grace 
 the evangelical system stands or falls. It was 
 not without an inner logical necessity that Rome, 
 departing from the evangelical system at other 
 points, pelagianized at this. And at the other 
 extreme, those communions which have rejected 
 the Trinity and the eternity of the judgment 
 awards have felt no sympathy with the Augus- 
 tinian theology that all good comes from God. 
 
 We have thus already gained the central point 
 of our study and laid bare the central and deter- 
 minative elements of that Christian system which 
 is to develop from it. What we shall hereafter 
 do, will, therefore, have the double character of 
 an enlargement and a confirmation of what has 
 gone before. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 SOURCES OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE OF 
 THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN 
 
 I FEAR that I must to-day make an especial de- 
 mand upon the patience and the powers of my 
 audience. Having analyzed Christian experience 
 and found there the great fundamental doctrines 
 of the divine existence and the divine agency in 
 the renewal of men, you will be anxious, if the 
 discussion has already gained that hold upon your 
 interest which its intrinsic importance deserves, 
 to press on to a further examination of the posi- 
 tive doctrinal contributions of experience. But 
 we shall be compelled to turn aside from the di- 
 rect development of our theme for the considera- 
 tion of formal matters, of questions of source and 
 value, and for enquiry and criticism. We shall 
 not thereby depart from the object which we have 
 set before us. This was methodological as well 
 as constructive, to determine, first, that Christian 
 experience could contribute to doctrine, and how 
 its voice was to be arrived at, and only then to 
 ask what it had thus actually contributed. We 
 may therefore be content to gird up our minds to 
 a strenuous effort at this time, knowing that if 
 our path seems to lie in less pleasant regions, it is 
 87 
 
88 Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 yet leading us forward, and that our labor is es- 
 sential to secure the soundness of our processes 
 and results. And, I may add, to keep our faint- 
 ing spirits in courage by the way, that even these 
 less attractive moments will serve to add a new 
 and very important contribution to the system of 
 truth from experience which could be attained by 
 no shorter method. 
 
 Christian experience, as we have been consid- 
 ering it up to the present point, has been princi- 
 pally a matter of the individual consciousness. 
 We have consulted it by the simple process of in- 
 trospection, each for himself. On one occasion, 
 however, we were led to recognize the possibility 
 of subjective error as to what might be genuine 
 Christian experience at any point, and we made 
 our appeal to the general experience of Christians 
 by an examination of the expressions of the great 
 creeds upon the topic in hand, which was pre- 
 venient grace. We justified our course then with 
 the simple remark that the creeds, as products of 
 common action or as securing general assent in 
 some important communion, might well serve to 
 indicate the crystallization of sentiment among a 
 considerable number of Christians as to the points 
 they cover. We are now to pass out of the sphere 
 of the immediate consciousness of the Christian 
 into the less restricted sphere of his larger life, 
 and the word experience is now to take on the 
 wider signification of the entire verification of 
 
Christian Experience 89 
 
 Christian truth in all the complex tests which life 
 applies to it. The more remote experience thus 
 becomes from our own immediate consciousness, 
 the less direct are our means of determining what 
 it is and the greater the difficulty in giving it a 
 sufficient and accurate examination. And, if the 
 danger of subjective error grows less in one re- 
 spect as we leave our own personality in the back- 
 ground, it becomes greater in another as we come 
 into the region where the fancies and fallacies 
 of other minds may exert an undue influence over 
 us. We begin the critical study thus thrust upon 
 us, of the sources of information as to experience 
 and the canons by which we are to decide what its 
 true deliverances are, with a recurrence to the 
 historical origin of the Christian religion. 
 
 The first, and incomparably the most important 
 experience of Christian truth which was ever had 
 was that which was enjoyed by the twelve disci- 
 ples who gathered about our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and among all the influences exerted by his im- 
 mediate presence, and, when that had been with- 
 drawn, under the promised guidance of the Spirit 
 of Truth, incorporated in their spiritual natures 
 the teachings they had received from the Son of 
 God. Not less remarkable and scarcely less im- 
 portant was the experience of that other apostle 
 who, as " one born out of due time ", received 
 his gospel " not from man, nor through man, but 
 through Jesus Christ ". The experience of this 
 group of first possessors and witnesses to Chris- 
 
90 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tian truth has been handed down to us in their 
 own and other writings, embodied for us in the 
 New Testament. The first, and ever the su- 
 preme source of Christian experience outside of 
 the individual consciousness will therefore be the 
 New Testament, or, since the New is not fully in- 
 telligible without the Old, and since some ele- 
 ments of Christian experience are elements of 
 a more general experience, and actually antedate 
 the coming of our Lord in the history of God's 
 people, we may say, more fully, the Bible. 
 
 We thus first come in contact with the Bible in 
 this study as a record of the earliest Christian 
 experience. As such, it is at once to be received 
 as in a large degree normative in discussions of 
 Christianity according to the historical canon first 
 emphasized in recent times by Ritschl, that in an 
 historical movement its purest form will be found 
 represented in the documents in which it was set 
 forth at the beginning. 
 
 I know that this canon will be immediately dis- 
 puted by the advocates of a merely evolutionary 
 philosophy. They will say that the truest form 
 of any historical movement lies at the end, not at 
 the beginning. The beginning is often small, 
 poor, little indicative of what is to come; while 
 the end, the finished product, embodies most per- 
 fectly the real forces at work from the first, but 
 incapable of revealing themselves fully in their 
 first undifferentiated exercise. That may be 
 true of a merely natural process ; but we have al- 
 
\ ^ n A R y 
 
 "UNIVERSITY 
 
 Christian Experience 91 
 
 ready shown that Christianity is not a purely nat- 
 ural process. It begins in any individual soul 
 with the touch of God. In history at large it 
 must have begun thus, for all Christians are made 
 such in the same way, and only as there were a 
 number of Christians, of exceptionally vigorous 
 experience, produced together, could Christianity 
 have begun its historic course. Something like 
 a day of Pentecost is demanded as the beginning 
 of any such thing as Christianity has proved it- 
 self to be. The supernatural origin of Christian- 
 ity, therefore, justifies the canon in this case. Its 
 original form will be pure. In this sense, though 
 with deeper justification than Ritschl gave, do we 
 accept his canon. 
 
 The Bible, then, is an original and very import- 
 ant witness to Christian experience. Simply on 
 this ground, if on no other, its words are to be 
 treated by us with the greatest respect. But, as 
 soon as we begin to consider it more closely, we 
 find its utterances varied in their character and 
 requiring some discrimination in their use. It 
 contains records of experiences lying in the 
 sphere of immediate consciousness, such as the 
 conversion of Paul or the repentance of Peter; 
 and here we have evidently testimony which is 
 not of essentially different character from that 
 given to-day by Christians who pass through sim- 
 ilar experiences. It contains also records of ob- 
 served facts, such as the life of our Lord, " corus- 
 cating with miracles, succumbing to injuries"; 
 
92 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 the progress of the church under the gift and 
 gliding presence of the Holy Spirit; and ac- 
 counts further, of what I may call divine facts, 
 which, if known at all, could only be known by 
 communications from God, such as the pre-exist- 
 ence of Christ and the awards of the judgment 
 day. Then explanations of these things are add- 
 ed, sometimes by communicating other divine 
 facts, as when the pre-existence of Christ is ex- 
 plained by the eternal existence of the Logos with 
 God, and sometimes by suggestions of great prin- 
 ciples, as when the death of Christ is referred to 
 his priestly office by which he is both priest and 
 victim, and this office to eternal considerations 
 lying in the nature and law of God. Thus there 
 comes to be taught a vast body of doctrine, some 
 of which is remote from the utterances of any 
 human consciousness, but all of which belongs in 
 some degree, nearer or remoter, to the experience 
 of these first disciples and is a part of their pre- 
 cious gift to the church. And, finally, there are 
 multitudes of recorded impressions and of sug- 
 gestions and glimpses of truth, of confessed lim- 
 itations, of astonishing and well-nigh unbounded 
 claims, which are part of the general impression 
 which the disciples gathered as they passed on in 
 the Christian course, and which have value in 
 varying degree for us. All of these elements add 
 complexity to the testimony of the Bible to the 
 contents of Christian experience and present to 
 the investigator the important question as to what 
 
Christian Experience 93 
 
 he is to regard as a genuine portion of original 
 Christian experience and how far he can use it 
 in the determination of what is true. In other 
 words, the criticism of the contents of Christian 
 experience begins as soon as the enquirer passes 
 the hmits of his own consciousness. Other criti- 
 cism might be included here, as for example, the 
 historical criticism of the age, origin, integrity, 
 and internal reliability of the New Testament 
 books ; but this the limitation of our time compels 
 us to leave unexamined. We may leave it the 
 more readily because there is a sufficiently gen- 
 eral acceptance of the picture given of our Lord 
 in the four gospels as correct and a sufficiently 
 complete view of the theology of Paul in the four 
 undisputed epistles. Minor matters we are not 
 concerned with. In the face of so much agree- 
 ment as we may presuppose on the New Testa- 
 ment itself, our sole question is. What shall we 
 do with this New Testament as a document of 
 Christian experience ? The simple canon that the 
 New Testament will be found a source of Chris- 
 tian experience, and in some large degree a nor- 
 mative source, proves insufficient in view of the 
 actual multiplicity of the phenomena. What is 
 experience here, and what something else? Is 
 all of equal value? And, particularly, in respect 
 to matters in which my experience fails, has the 
 Bible anything of value to teach me? and does it 
 there, or anywhere, possess a true authority in 
 the religious sphere ? 
 
94 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 Ritschl's canon will be found incapable of an- 
 swering these questions. The Ritschlian school 
 exercises a constant criticism on the experiential 
 and doctrinal contents of the New Testament so 
 as well nigh to deprive it of all doctrinal author- 
 ity. In the sphere of what is delivered by the 
 immediate consciousness there is less question, 
 since there can be little, although even here the 
 appreciation of the Scripture is hindered by 
 Ritschl's failure to recognize distinctly the new 
 birth as the ultimate Christian fact. On such a 
 doctrine, for example, as the pre-existence of 
 Christ, Ritschl himself preserves a reticent atti- 
 tude, on the ground that pre-existence is a matter 
 of no " interest " to the Christian ; but Beyschlag, 
 who may be reckoned for substance of doctrine to 
 the Ritschlian school, seeks to evacuate Jesus' 
 own words recorded by John by explaining them 
 as figurative ways of expressing the conception 
 that he was in perfect accord with God. Paul's 
 clear statements of pre-existence are said to be 
 his private theoretical explanations of the fact of 
 Christ's exaltation and reign. We shall, no 
 doubt, have occasion to recur to the details of 
 these exegetical peculiarities later; enough now 
 to remark that they are a denial of all authority 
 on the part of the New Testament writers to 
 teach us the truth of God, or even to give an un- 
 questioned account of the original Christian ex- 
 perience. When they tell us something which 
 can be corroborated from our own experience. 
 
Christian Experience 95 
 
 they are to be followed, in this view; otherwise 
 not. They are, in fact, rendered almost super- 
 fluous. 
 
 In spite of all this, Ritschl laid great emphasis 
 upon the idea of revelation, and deserves the 
 credit of having set forth with more clearness 
 than most of his contemporaries the fact that 
 Christianity is distinctly a religion of revelation. 
 Kaftan's position upon this point has been already 
 stated. Revelation is the second of his funda- 
 mental " postulates " and an essential element of 
 the knowledge gained through the exercise of the 
 practical reason. He has the advantage over 
 Ritschl of much less arbitrariness of method and 
 of far greater faithfulness to the objective results 
 of careful exegesis. As the best representative 
 of the present point attained by the school of 
 Ritschl, he may justly claim a larger share of our 
 attention. 
 
 In the " Dogmatik " Kaftan treats the topic of 
 revelation in the introductory chapters.^ With 
 much that he says evangelical theologians will 
 most heartily agree. Revelation is not the com- 
 munication of abstract truths in the form of sci- 
 entific propositions, but the contact of God with 
 the soul. The Bible is therefore not an abstract, 
 external authority apart from all spiritual recep- 
 tivity in the Christian. Yet there is in the Bible 
 an element of instruction in truth, and this is an 
 " essential element." It contains a " revelation of 
 
 * I quote here more or less exactly from pages 31 ff. 
 
g6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 the will and essence of God ". And it is, further, 
 essential to Christianity that the revelation of 
 God should become individual to the single Chris- 
 tian, or that, in some way, that original revelation 
 made of God through Jesus Christ and now for 
 us comprised in the Bible should be communica- 
 ted to the individual as a living and personal con- 
 tact of God with him afresh. This is effected by 
 the gift of the Holy Spirit, who vivifies the scrip- 
 tural record and applies it, so that the awakened 
 soul comes to an understanding of it and finds 
 God in it. Hence the order of spiritual events is : 
 (i) the historical revelation of God by Jesus of 
 Nazareth; (2) The individual application of this 
 in inner revelation by the Holy Spirit; (3) faith; 
 (4) obedience; (5) knowledge of the truth.^ 
 
 Now, this " faith " is faith in Jesus Christ, who 
 is the person in whom the revelation, thus applied 
 by the Holy Spirit, is made. " Revelation and 
 faith," says Kaftan,^ " belong together. The in- 
 tended object of revelation is faith, and faith in 
 the religious sense of the word can come into 
 being only when some real or supposed revelation 
 of God is found. Also, the understanding of the 
 one term is to be gained only from the other; 
 and we have to take our departure from the idea 
 of faith since this is the nearer, the more directly 
 known. Now, Christian faith is present when- 
 ever a man passes through those experiences 
 
 * Op. cit., p. 38,cf. pp. 23, 25, 31. 
 *lbid., p. 41. 
 
Christian Experience 97 
 
 which center about the two facts of the atonement 
 and the kingdom of God. It is from these expe- 
 riences that the Christian's knowledge of the es- 
 sence and the will of God comes And 
 
 when we analyze faith, we find that, according to 
 its own inner logic, revelation is the preceding 
 and constitutive of the two facts. . . . Faith 
 arises through the word of revelation in which 
 the Spirit works, therefore it arises as an effect 
 produced by the Spirit." And later he adds: 
 " Revelation and faith have an inner relation to 
 one another, but we must now bring into the 
 treatment of the topic the significance of the 
 Scriptures. It is the revelation of God witnessed 
 in the Scriptures of which all the above is true. 
 If revelation is cause and faith effect, revelation 
 must precede faith and be independent of it. 
 This is secured by referring to the Holy Scrip- 
 tures as the word of God, in which and through 
 which the Spirit of God works faith in men from 
 time to time, and so brings the revelation to in- 
 dividual men." Thus at last, though not prima- 
 rily and directly, the Bible brings knowledge of 
 divine things to men. 
 
 It will thus be seen that Kaftan fully accepts 
 the reality of revelation in Jesus Christ and of 
 the Bible as the great medium of bringing that 
 revelation to us, and that he also accepts, though 
 somewhat haltingly, the authority of the Bible in 
 matters of Christian knowledge. His defective 
 theory of knowledge, which we have examined 
 
pS Christian Life and Theology- 
 
 earlier, prevents him from gaining all from this 
 position which he should. His theological 
 method is to employ the Bible as determinative in 
 respect to the great controlling ideas of the faith 
 and then seek by an independent analysis of these 
 to arrive at a consistent body of truth. Minute 
 biblical justification of his ideas he does not aim 
 at. He has the decided merit of having held fast 
 to the idea that the authority of the Bible is to 
 be approached from the side of experience; but 
 he has failed to develop this argument and so to 
 afford any ground for its authority essentially 
 better than his original " postulation " of the 
 reality of revelation. While in his results he has 
 passed far beyond Ritschl, he has made little gain 
 in giving us a sound foundation for a doctrine 
 of the authority of the Scriptures. 
 
 We must therefore proceed in our investiga- 
 tion of our question without much help from 
 Kaftan. Have the Scriptures authority in mat- 
 ters of doctrine ? The true question at issue here 
 is one of the most fundamental. Taking as our 
 example that doctrine already mentioned, the pre- 
 existence of Christ, the question whether the 
 plain meaning of Christ's own words is to be ac- 
 cepted as true, or rejected, as by Beyschlag, by 
 means of violent exegesis which makes them the 
 expression of the conception that beneath his per- 
 sonality, as its ultimate ground, was the very be- 
 ing of God, — this is a question emphasized rather 
 than answered by Kaftan. If it is the New Tes- 
 
Christian Experience 99 
 
 tament Scriptures which the Holy Spirit applies 
 to man, furnishing him thereby such knowledge 
 of the essence and will of God as leads him to 
 faith and the new life, and if the same Holy Spirit 
 employs the same New Testament in the further 
 development of Christian piety, then God speaks 
 to-day through this book; and when God speaks, 
 he speaks with authority. Kaftan does not oc- 
 cupy the hesitant or negative position of Ritschl 
 and Beyschlag as to the pre-existence of Christ. 
 He recognizes it as an element of truth used in 
 the edification of Christians, if not in the original 
 development of their faith. But, after all, he 
 gives us no ground, no precise and adequate 
 ground, for biblical authority. It still remains a 
 problem rather than an established fact. 
 
 The question is therefore forced upon us, Can 
 anything better be done for this theme than has 
 been done by these two great men who have 
 sought with new earnestness to found Christian- 
 ity and Christian' theology upon revelation? In 
 reply, we first raise the question as to the possi- 
 bility of any revelation at all, for this is the fun- 
 damental question. 
 
 Now, this general question is already settled 
 for the Christian by the deliverances of his pri- 
 mary experience. When he comes to know God 
 as personally operative in the world for his salva- 
 tion, he has the certainty that any personal opera- 
 tion of God which may be necessary for the spir- 
 itual good of man is both possible and probable. 
 
lOO Christian Life and Theology 
 
 As he knows God more fully, and recognizes in 
 him the Creator of the Universe, he sets no 
 bounds to the divine power, as he cannot to the 
 divine benevolence. Any form of the supernat- 
 ural is therefore to be granted possible because 
 of the nature and character of God. Certainly 
 God, who made the world, has not fallen a victim 
 to his own contrivances, nor are his laws, the es- 
 tablished method of his operation, objective en- 
 tities which control his action, and render other 
 ways of operating impossible. If Jesus Christ 
 claims to be a pre-existent being come from 
 heaven for man's salvation, the only attitude 
 possible for one who has learned the initial les- 
 sons of experience is that of inquiry as to the 
 tokens offered in substantiation of so great a 
 claim, not of immediate and irremovable scepti- 
 cism as to its possibility. 
 
 But the greater thing will not be done if the 
 less is not. If there is no such thing as revela- 
 tion to apostles and prophets, there will be no 
 coming of a pre-existent Christ. The question, 
 therefore, resolves itself, as already implied, into 
 one as to the reality of all revelation. Upon this 
 experience has a direct word to say. The Chris- 
 tian knows that God led him personally to 
 thoughts and feelings resulting in a great change 
 of will at the beginning of his religious life. 
 More than this, he recognizes divine leading at 
 many critical junctures of life. When great de- 
 cisions are to be made, or a great truth must be 
 
Christian Experience loi 
 
 conceived if his course is still to be right and di- 
 vinely led, the same train of argument from the 
 assemblage of facts and events about him as was 
 reviewed when we were considering the funda- 
 mental crisis of his life, leads him to the conclu- 
 sion that God personally teaches and guides him 
 now. Pious men have felt this in business, in 
 invention, in statesmanship, in the affairs of the 
 church, and have gratefully acknowledged the 
 divine hand in their thoughts as well as in their 
 acts. This is the essence and irresolvable ele- 
 ment of all revelation. Revelation is the personal 
 communication of thought to the soul by God. 
 Let the objective method be never so clear and 
 impressive, yet the subjective perception must 
 follow, or the revelation is not made. When en- 
 tire uncertainty broods over the method, the fact 
 may be quite clear. The Christian apologist who 
 was contending only for the ultimate essentials, 
 and was ready to concede every unessential ele- 
 ment that he might the more vigorously defend 
 the essential, might declare himself contented if 
 after every objective channel of revelation, — 
 voice, vision, or miraculous sign, — had been ex- 
 plained as the projection upon the screen of 
 sense of the image of that which had its only ex- 
 istence in the secret center of the soul, this was 
 left undisputed, that God might personally guide 
 men's thoughts to things otherwise impercepti- 
 ble to them, and that they might recognize the 
 personal Presence through the character of the 
 
102 Christian Life and Theology- 
 thought conveyed by it, or through the method of 
 its approach. When the first thought came to 
 some Hebrew singer that the wrath of God 
 against Israel was but another side of his mercy, 
 that disaster was not an unmixed evil, and not 
 even the captivity an utter desertion of the nation 
 by God, that the covenant was indeed an ever- 
 lasting covenant, and the recovery of Israel the 
 work of God and not the clever achievement of 
 man ; that profound thought, shining by its own 
 light, illuminating the recesses of a mysterious 
 past, exalting the soul to new faith and devoted 
 exertion, and opening vistas along which the ful- 
 fillment of promises made of old to Abraham 
 might be seen already advancing, needed little 
 from without to convince the thrilled prophet that 
 he was in the presence of a self-revealing God. 
 And even if Paul had seen no objective vision 
 and heard no objective voice on the way to Da- 
 mascus, if the truth simply were that his obsti- 
 nate mind, bent on persecution, and occupied by 
 no gentle meditations upon the Man of Galilee, 
 was suddenly seized by an invasion of tumultuous 
 thought, that fact after fact and proof after proof 
 that Jesus was the Messiah were arrayed before 
 his reflection, till the conclusion that he whom 
 he persecuted was truly Christ and Lord burst 
 out of the storm-laden and murky atmosphere of 
 his Jewish prejudices in a flash of blinding illu- 
 mination, that would have been for him a thought 
 of no subjective origin, derived in no degree from 
 
Christian Experience 103 
 
 his environment, but divine in its source as in its 
 nature. 
 
 The actual limitations put by the Ritschlian 
 school on the voice of the New Testament wit- 
 ness to Christian experience are therefore unnec- 
 essary. But they are inconsistent with what is 
 actually admitted to be reliable, as all such subjec- 
 tive criticism is in danger of being because of its 
 necessarily arbitrary character. If the New Tes- 
 tament is the primitive record of Christian ex- 
 perience, and thus of prime importance in its in- 
 terpretation, then every element of the testimony 
 must be given its appropriate weight, apart from 
 the suggestions of a false and anti-Christian phi- 
 losophy. To permit the apostles to testify to the 
 facts of the life of Christ and to be the vehicles to 
 us of some of the most vital religious truths, 
 which have since revolutionized the world, but to 
 refuse them all opportunity to express their con- 
 victions as to the meaning of those facts and to 
 deny their declaration of the divine origin of just 
 those doctrines which have proved most effective 
 in the production of the historical revolution, such 
 as the Incarnation, is to play fast and loose with 
 the book and the original Christian experience it- 
 self. Kaftan, as we have seen, has mended much 
 of this. Merely as an historical document, much 
 more as what it is, the New Testament deserves 
 better treatment. 
 
 But it is more than an historical document, and 
 more than what Kaftan has found it to be. We 
 
I04 Christian Life and Theology- 
 have seen that a better foundation is needed for 
 the authority of the Scriptures than he succeeded 
 in providing, and now it becomes incumbent upon 
 us to seek ourselves to provide it. 
 
 The Bible, we say, is more than merely an his- 
 torical document ; it partakes of the divinity of its 
 doctrines. This follows so: — 
 
 The Christian has acquired through his Chris- 
 tian experience insight into the character of this 
 book. He recognizes its divinity. He has him- 
 self learnt by experience the great truths of sin 
 and consequent ruin, of repentance and faith in 
 Jesus Christ, of the prevenient grace of God, and 
 of justification by faith. Those doctrines are not 
 only true and divine but divinely conveyed to 
 him, because all his experience is divinely 
 wrought experience. He judges that only on the 
 path of a divinely wrought experience can the 
 knowledge of these truths come to him or any 
 one. They cannot be so delivered from one man 
 to another that he shall be able in consequence to 
 utter them with knowledge. But the Bible has 
 them, and holds them with the perfect certainty 
 of indisputable conviction. It knows; and its 
 knowledge, like that of the modern Christian, is 
 God-given. God speaking in the experience of 
 the writers of the Bible, speaks in the book itself. 
 It is God's word. 
 
 This is an argument not reduced by the com- 
 mon Christian, nor always by the trained theolo- 
 gian, to logical form. The Reformers, face to 
 
Christian Experience 105 
 
 face with the vaunted testimony of the church to 
 the Scriptures, called it the testimony of the 
 Spirit (testimonium Spiritus Sancti inter- 
 num)'^ But it is easily brought under the cate- 
 gories of logic. It is an argument from identity 
 of effects, the doctrines of experience and the doc- 
 trines of the Bible, to identity of cause, the same 
 God in the Bible through experience as in my 
 own conscious experience. As such, it is an ar- 
 gument applying with different force to different 
 elements in the Bible. For the central doctrines 
 of the Bible, which are the same as those whose 
 
 * I have been criticised for saying elsewhere that the 
 argument here presented is the Reformation doctrine of 
 the " testimony of the Spirit ". It has been said that 
 that was the doctrine that Christians under the illumina- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit were enabled to perceive at once 
 the divinity of the Bible. The Spirit rectified the organs 
 of spiritual vision so that Christians could now see the 
 tnith. That is a correct statement of the Reformers* 
 position. But the Reformers stated the doctrine without 
 giving any hint of its rationale, probably without under- 
 standing what the rationale is. Their utterances are all 
 figurative and need explanation. There is, in fact, 
 nothing here like " vision ". The truth of doctrines can 
 be perceived only by the perception of their agreement 
 with other truth already known. Hence the doctrine 
 needs to be brought to a better statement than the Re- 
 formers gave it; and this statement, I think, has been 
 given in the text. This doctrine is the Reformation 
 doctrine in the sense that it puts in a reasonable and in- 
 telligible form what the Reformers put in a figurative 
 and unintelligible form. Compare Stearns, " Evidence 
 of Christian Experience ", pp. 303, 304. 
 
io6 Christian Life and Theology- 
 genesis in experience we have already followed, 
 it is of the most direct application and the 
 most cogent character. The Bible in its central 
 and determinative elements is the word of God, 
 that is, the channel by which he still speaks to 
 men. So much the proof directly and positively 
 covers. 
 
 But it covers still more in consequence of the 
 natural implications of what has been thus gained. 
 The elements of its doctrine already reviewed 
 have been called determinative; and they are so. 
 They constitute the peculiar Christian view of the 
 world as the creation of a good God, debased to 
 become a kingdom of evil, in which God in his 
 love is erecting the kingdom of heaven by saving 
 processes set in motion by his personal activity. 
 Such ideas must be dominating. Let any think- 
 er have them, and we shall know what the rest of 
 his philosophy of divine things will be. If right 
 here, the Bible may be assumed to be right every- 
 where, and this by a reasonable assumption, not 
 liable to be subsequently overthrown. 
 
 But there is another argument, which must 
 wait for a full presentation till we have carried 
 our study farther, but which, by an anticipation 
 to be made good later, we may now introduce for 
 the sake of completeness. We are soon to come 
 to matters of Christian doctrine also known to the 
 Christian experimentally though possessing a de- 
 gree of certainty inferior to that possessed by the 
 elements already developed. These are also 
 
Christian Experience 107 
 
 found in the Bible ; and the argument is the same. 
 Identity of effect proves identity of cause. God- 
 wrought experience proves a God-wrought Bible. 
 Some of these truths are also determinative, as 
 the divinity of Christ; and hence their proving 
 force as to the Bible reaches further than the 
 parts of it in which they are found. The argu- 
 ment grows as experience grows till at last there 
 remains very little in the Bible that is not quite 
 directly covered by it. The Bible as a whole is 
 the word of God, the effective channel conveying 
 his truth. 
 
 Time fails fully to buttress and defend this ar- 
 gument now ; but enough must be taken for two 
 objections, which will be unfailingly put: — 
 
 I. It may be said: Christian experience is 
 formed by the Bible. Of course, therefore, it 
 agrees with the Bible; but its agreement is no 
 proof of the Bible's truth. Dependent on it, ex- 
 perience must agree with it, right or wrong. We 
 reply. No! Experience is occasioned by the Bi- 
 ble, called forth, elicited by the Bible: but it is 
 independent. Descartes may have called my at- 
 tention to the argument for my existence from 
 the fact of thought ; but when I say : " I think, 
 therefore I am," I know my existence not by gift 
 of Descartes, but by the independent testimony of 
 my own consciousness. Whatever occasioned 
 the new birth in my soul, if I have it, I know it, 
 and I know what is involved in it independently 
 of all other beings and things. And I reason in 
 
io8 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 the above delineated argument from this inde- 
 pendent knowledge. 
 
 2. It may be objected again: Your argument 
 has proving force only so far as experience goes, 
 and hence can never prove the authority of the 
 whole Bible, or give any true authority. True, 
 we reply, there can be no result in the conclu- 
 sion which was not in the premises, and these be- 
 ing experiential, tell nothing about what is be- 
 yond experience. But the argument does cover 
 the Bible as a whole, if not the whole Bible ; and 
 it gives it this degree of authority, that the Bible 
 is true as far as I can test it, and is therefore to 
 be believed still further, if there is no contrary 
 evidence. Is not that authority? 
 
 We shall recur to this last objection again. For 
 the present we pass on to remark: Such is the 
 Bible which experience gives us. The line of ar- 
 gument here followed is not the only line that can 
 be followed, and not necessarily the best. Let us 
 not claim for it more than it will bear, and let us 
 not descend to comparisons and contentions. But 
 now, the serious question will be put, Has not 
 experience by creating a biblical authority de- 
 posed itself as a source of doctrine ? 
 
 Kaftan abandoned experience as a source of 
 theology in favor of the authority of revelation. 
 " Theology," he says, " has only to unfold a 
 given truth," not to discover it, and not to defend 
 it. With this better derivation of the biblical 
 authority, must not the Bible be made the source 
 
Christian Experience 109 
 
 of theology to the exclusion of experience ? Why- 
 draw from a fountain which confessedly may be 
 tainted with subjectivism when the untainted 
 fountain of God's word is pouring forth so abun- 
 dantly its crystal purity? 
 
 We reply that, so far as this argument is con- 
 cerned, experience, as already said, needs to be 
 pushed much further before the argument is com- 
 plete. To pause here with experience because 
 experience has given you a perfect source of doc- 
 trine in the Bible would be to pause before expe- 
 rience has accomplished that task. We must re- 
 member that we have " anticipated " the argu- 
 ment, which still waits for its actual justification. 
 And, again, we are not asking whether experi- 
 ence is a source of doctrine of higher or lower 
 value, better or worse than the Bible. Enough 
 that it is a source : let us see what it gives us. " In 
 the multitude of counsellors there is safety." It 
 may be of value to have another witness beside 
 the Bible, even if this is unimpeachable. 
 
 We have thus gained, as was intimated at the 
 beginning of the discussion we should, more than 
 we sought. We sought to know whether the Bi- 
 ble was a source of Christian experience upon 
 which we might rely for the correction of our in- 
 dividual aberrations. We have gained an answer 
 to this question and more. We now know that 
 the experiential utterances of the Bible must be 
 normative, for they were the product of the oper- 
 
no Christian Life and Theology 
 
 ation of God upon the minds of holy men. But 
 we also recognize the Bible as the word of God, 
 and thus have derived the doctrine of biblical au- 
 thority. This is a new and a very important con- 
 tribution of experience to the system of doctrine. 
 We mark the contribution as we proceed in our 
 study. 
 
 We must still linger in the region of the for- 
 mal, but it will be for but one cycle of investiga- 
 tion more. We shall then be able to proceed 
 steadily with the remaining portions of our con- 
 structive work. 
 
 There is one great source of Christian experi- 
 ence remaining, and as we pass to it we shall be 
 struck immediately with the contrasts which it 
 presents to the Bible, by which the worth of the 
 Bible will be indefinitely magnified. This source 
 is the experience of the church, which is the as- 
 sembly of those in whom Christianity has been at 
 work and through whom it has produced its ef- 
 fects upon the world since the New Testament 
 period. It forms with the Bible that general 
 body of Christian experience to which, we have 
 already seen, appeal must be made to guard 
 against the possible errors of a purely subjective 
 investigation. It is for our present purpose em- 
 bodied in the results of the critical history of 
 Christian theology. 
 
 The history of doctrine is a source of the testi- 
 mony of Christian experience because doctrine 
 
Christian Experience iii 
 
 grows out of experience as thought grows out of 
 life. 
 
 When we pass out of the New Testament into 
 the earliest Christian writers, we become con- 
 scious, as just suggested, of the lower level on 
 which the thought is moving. As the twelve dis- 
 ciples could not rise to the full understanding or 
 appreciation of their Master, the members and 
 leaders of the first churches could not maintain 
 the level of the inspired apostles. Their thought 
 is less lofty, less consistent, less broad in its range, 
 less profound. The first of them, the writer of 
 the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles ", deals 
 with ethical and liturgical questions, and with 
 matters of church order; but all is simple, con- 
 crete, untheological. Ignatius, the martyr who 
 travelled from Antioch to Rome and recorded his 
 thoughts as he went in letters to various churches, 
 has no proper theology. Even so important and 
 immediately practical a doctrine as justification 
 by faith may be clearly expressed upon one page 
 and obscured or denied upon another by any one 
 of these writers, as is actually done by Clement of 
 Rome. There is abundant evidence of evangeli- 
 cal piety in all these earliest literary productions 
 of the church, which element is undoubtedly the 
 reason why they have been preserved. Ignatius 
 could die for his Master, and recognizes his lord- 
 ship by many phrases of profound significance. 
 Polycarp could refuse to deny him. Even the 
 
112 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 " Teaching " breathes the Johannine atmosphere. 
 But piety has not yet flowered into theology. 
 Christian thinking is still rudimentary and incon- 
 sistent, its various elements are unadjusted, and 
 it needs the fire of some great emergency to fuse 
 its separate truths into an harmonious system. 
 The unity of the Christian life, from the moment 
 when Peter preached repentance to the multitude 
 at Pentecost in Jerusalem to the time when the 
 old man met Justin by the sea and directed his at- 
 tention to the Scriptures, is plainly exhibited ; but 
 the grounds of that unity are not set forth, and 
 evidently not theologically understood. 
 
 But Christian piety tended from the beginning 
 towards theological statement. We trace three 
 distinct lines of influence operating in this direc- 
 tion; one, the influence of the intellectual nature 
 of man which, driven by its native springs of ac- 
 tion, seeks to analyze all its knowledge and re- 
 duce it to first principles ; a second, the practical 
 necessity to the propagation of the faith that mis- 
 sionaries should themselves understand what they 
 seek to communicate to others ; and a third, the 
 intellectual crisis introduced by the first contact 
 of the church with Greek thought when it was 
 seen to be necessary to justify before the think- 
 ing of the world that system which as surely 
 sought to dominate the mind of man as it did his 
 will. Christianity could neither maintain itself 
 before the world nor in the forum of its own con- 
 sciousness except it gained a consistent view of 
 
Christian Experience 113 
 
 its intellectual principles, unless, in other words, 
 it developed a theology. 
 
 When one glances down the vista of this de- 
 veloping Christian thought, he is impressed with 
 the fact that there are many successive critical 
 points in the history. As the inrushing tide ad- 
 vances from the ocean in successive waves, so 
 successive masses of doctrine are borne in from 
 the great infinite of the divine truth upon the re- 
 cipient soul of man. About the persons of Atha- 
 nasius, Leo, Augustine, Luther and others, cen- 
 tered discussions which added materially by their 
 outcome to the treasure of articulated Christian 
 knowledge. While these discussions differed as 
 to their subject matter, and as to their importance 
 to Christian theology, they were alike in the great 
 features of formal development. In every case 
 they had their roots in the remotest past, and es- 
 pecially in the teachings of the New Testament ; 
 they were preceded by a period in which every 
 element of the final outcome may be traced, sus- 
 pended, as it were, in solution, or, to speak more 
 literally, unadjusted to other elements, and often 
 uncomprehended in its necessary implications; 
 they were conducted by a controversy in which 
 different parties represented different theoretical 
 explanations of admitted facts or different as- 
 pects of truth often with the passion of men who 
 thought that with them and their doctrine the 
 church " stood or fell " ; they resulted each in a 
 settlement, substantially by the common consent 
 
114 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 of the participating church, though sometimes 
 formally by the influence of some overshadow- 
 ing personality or assembly; and they were al- 
 ways followed by a period of appropriation, in 
 which their results were slowly incorporated in 
 the thinking of the great universal church. In 
 all the process so described we perceive the state- 
 ly operation of innate vital forces, the evolution 
 of opinion upon the significance of facts long 
 since known, through the process of comprehen- 
 sive intellectual examination by a multitude of 
 minds. 
 
 The element of succession is not without a 
 marked significance. Doctrines not only come 
 after doctrines, but the subsequent doctrines are 
 built upon the preceding. It might be said, the 
 later are unfolded from the earlier. Each 
 strengthens the proof of the preceding, and each 
 when accepted becomes a fresh starting-point for 
 the development of all that follow. There is 
 therefore a genuine evolution of doctrine out of 
 doctrine, and of all the doctrines out of life. The- 
 ology leads to Christology, Christology to An- 
 thropology, and Anthropology to Soteriology, as 
 each becomes a living question to the living 
 church. 
 
 How now are the utterances of " Christian ex- 
 perience " to be derived from such a history ? 
 Precisely speaking, we get here, of course. Chris- 
 tian convictions, the products of experience in va- 
 rying degrees and ways, and not the experience 
 
Christian Experience 115 
 
 itself. Some of these convictions are derivable 
 by very short processes from veritable experi- 
 ences, while others require longer trains of rea- 
 soning, and are therefore less certain. They are, 
 however, the verdict of Christians in general on 
 the points touched, and thus the final testimony of 
 the general church as to Christian truth, com- 
 pounded of immediate experiences, of the rea- 
 sonable explanation of perceived facts, of the log- 
 ical adjustment of differing ideas, and of the re- 
 sult of experiment with supposed truth. And 
 when we distinguish between the various convic- 
 tions which we find recorded in history, when we 
 ask for that verdict which has Christian history 
 for it, and which may therefore be called the true 
 historical verdict of Christendom, we are asking 
 for the legitimate outcome of the historical de- 
 velopment. 
 
 We must, therefore, ask at some point before 
 we begin to make use of Christian history as a 
 source of information as to experience, what are 
 the criteria of a sound historical development? 
 Cardinal Newman, who sought in his famous 
 book upon " The Development of Christian Doc- 
 trine " to use the idea of development in defence 
 of the dogmas of the Roman church^, propound- 
 ed seven criteria : First, preservation of the type, 
 as a child develops into a man, and not into some 
 animal ; second, continuity of principle, by which 
 
 * I here repeat a few sentences from " Fundamental 
 Ideas of the Roman Catholic Church ", p. 233 ff. 
 
1 1 6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 is meant some determinative idea, such as the 
 principle of private judgment in Protestantism; 
 third, power of assimilation, or, as it might be 
 stated, adaptability to and harmony with other 
 truth ; fourth, logical sequence ; fifth, anticipation 
 of the future, or the fact that hints of an idea to 
 be fully developed later will be likely to be found 
 at an early point ; sixth, conservative action upon 
 the past; seventh, chronic vigor, or, in simpler 
 phrase, duration, the power of survival. With 
 all the Cardinal's real abuse of these canons in 
 his practical application of them to the various 
 Roman dogmas, they are well conceived and af- 
 ford a sufficient means of deciding on the " his- 
 torical verdict " upon any point of doctrinal in- 
 quiry. But they may be more conveniently sta- 
 ted thus : first, the development must begin from 
 a germ actually present in the recorded instruc- 
 tion of Jesus Christ and his apostles; second, it 
 must proceed according to the laws of logical se- 
 quence; third, it must agree with other estab- 
 lished Christian doctrines (assimilation) ; fourth, 
 its developed form must agree with its original in 
 substance and vital portion (conservation of the 
 past), or, it must not contradict sound biblical 
 exegesis. 
 
 First, the development must begin from a germ 
 actually present in the recorded instructions of 
 Jesus Christ and his apostles. This is more than 
 a merely historical canon, like that of Ritschl al- 
 ready reviewed. It would have a sufficient justi- 
 
Christian Experience 117 
 
 fication in the fact that Christianity is an histori- 
 cal religion, if we were engaged in a simple his- 
 torical investigation. But we are now seeking 
 truth, and must admit, for argument's sake, at 
 least, that there may have entered in elements of 
 error into the edifice of truth, and that it is con- 
 ceivable that this should have happened at the be- 
 ginning. It is therefore necessary to observe that 
 this canon for the determination of experience is 
 substantiated by the results already derived from 
 experience. The recognition of the divine ori- 
 gin of the Bible through the " testimony of the 
 Spirit " affords a broad basis for the assumption 
 that there will be nothing vital to Christianity 
 omitted from its formative beginning. Were 
 Christianity not a divine product in the believer's 
 experience, and did he not see evidence of the 
 divine presence in the Bible itself, had he no rea- 
 son for going on thence to the larger recognition 
 of the divine presence in Christian history where- 
 by all its course must be conceived as proceeding 
 under the guiding and over-ruling providence of 
 God, then he might say that essential elements 
 were lacking in its first period. Even then, as 
 there was true revelation to Israel before the ad- 
 vent of Christ which was only partial, it might be 
 conceived that new and vital elements were su- 
 peradded to the New Testament doctrine, as this 
 was superimposed ort that of the Old Testament, 
 if there were any books subsequent to the Bible 
 which received the same " testimony ". But the 
 
Ii8 Christian Life and Theology- 
 Bible remains unique. Whatever other books 
 later than it receive the parallel testimony, as Lu- 
 ther's Commentary on the Galatians certainly 
 does, that it was produced in a mind moved by 
 God, and so is in a measure a word of God, they 
 are all manifestly dependent upon the Bible, as, 
 in the example chosen, commentary is dependent 
 upon text, or as a stream is dependent upon the 
 fountain from which it proceeds. The Bible 
 alone receives the full force of this testimony ; and 
 it alone is the word of God. As such it can give 
 valid elements of Christian experience for our 
 inquiry, and none not derivable from it in some 
 sense, having not even a germ or suggestion to 
 present in its behalf from the Bible, has any 
 prima facie evidence in its favor. Rather, the 
 prima facie case is against it, and it must bring 
 from some other quarter more abundant and co- 
 gent reasons, if it can, before the cautious en- 
 quirer, bent on establishing every position firmly 
 before advancing to others, could justify himself 
 in reckoning it among the utterances of the uni- 
 versal Christian experience. 
 
 The second canon is that the development must 
 proceed according to the laws of logical sequence. 
 The more fundamental positions must be estab- 
 lished before those which are built upon them, 
 the trinity following the establishment of one su- 
 preme God, and Christology following the Trini- 
 ty, not the reverse. The proofs for the accepted 
 doctrines must possess a universal validity and 
 
Christian Experience 119 
 
 be as cogent to-day as at the beginning. Not 
 that the full argument for every doctrinal posi- 
 tion should have been advanced or even com- 
 prehended at the beginning, nor the ancient argu- 
 ments be incapable of better statement now, or of 
 receiving supplementation, or entirely new ele- 
 ments ; but that soundness and convincing power 
 must attend the process and abide with the result. 
 The third canon demands that every new doctrine 
 should agree with every old ; or that the process 
 should have that mark of truth which lies in inner 
 consistency. It seeks in other words to empha- 
 size the ultimate criterion by which we know all 
 truth; for, ultimately, truth is harmony, consis- 
 tency, a coherent system of ideas. The fourth 
 canon is that the developed form of a doctrine 
 must agree with its original form in substance 
 and vital portion. The form may change, or a 
 logical form may develop from the formless sug- 
 gestions of earlier times, but in substance there 
 can be no change. The doctrine of the Trinity, 
 for example, could not be regarded as a legiti- 
 mate development of Christian thinking if its 
 vital substance were as absent from the New Tes- 
 tament as is the technical word " consubstantial- 
 ity " by which its central definition is expressed. 
 It did undoubtedly come to many a reflective 
 Christian as something quite new, when the re- 
 sult of the Council of Nice was communicated to 
 him, and required an elaborate explanation be- 
 fore he could understand it. It gained its con- 
 
l!20 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 vincing proof when it was seen to explain such 
 texts as " The Word was God ;" and had it been 
 against the general drift and total final impres- 
 sion of the New Testament, not all the councils 
 which have been held since could have legitimated 
 it in Christian thinking, any more than the Vati- 
 can council has been able to impose the doctrine 
 of papal infallibility upon the Christian world. 
 
 With these fundamental canons one of Cardi- 
 nal Newman's suggestions may be associated as 
 helpful. That " chronic vigor ", or power of sur- 
 vival, of which he speaks is certainly a most im- 
 pressive indication that any church doctrine ex- 
 presses the mind of the Spirit. If the Christian 
 who has duly analyzed his own experiences need- 
 ed any further proof of the prevenience of con- 
 verting divine grace, the survival of the doctrine 
 after eighteen centuries of discussion, formal and 
 informal, would be its sufficient confirmation. 
 Found implicitly contained in the whole piety of 
 the ancient church by which they commended all 
 their labor for souls to the blessing of God, it 
 met its first shock of declared contradiction when 
 Pelagius came to Rome and began to propound, 
 as early as 405, his denial of the necessity of su- 
 pernatural grace to any true service on the part 
 of man to God, and of the transmission of a fault 
 or corruption of nature. The contest, which Au- 
 gustine took up, was severe, but in spite of the 
 vagueness with which the Orientals expressed 
 themselves, it terminated in the general acknowl- 
 
Christian Experience 121 
 
 edgment of prevenient grace. Then came the 
 pelagianizing era of the Roman church, against 
 which the Reformation was a protest, by which 
 natural corruption and prevenient grace were 
 placed again among the great essentials of the 
 Christian scheme of the world and of salvation, 
 although the pelagianizing tendency reappeared 
 among the Protestants themselves. In our own 
 countr)^ we had the same issue raised in the early 
 years of the present century, in the Unitarian 
 controversy of New England, which had its root 
 not in the doctrine of the abstract simplicity of 
 the divine nature, but in views of the dignity of 
 man and of the nature of regeneration which 
 were nothing but a revivified Pelagianism; and 
 again, the aggressive, evangelizing church of 
 Christ rejected the proposed modifications of doc- 
 trine and reaffirmed the depravity of man and the 
 necessity of regenerating grace. Many other ex- 
 amples might be mentioned, with the same out- 
 come. A doctrine thus possessed of the power of 
 survival, thus reappearing at different epochs of 
 the church, thus associating itself with forward 
 movements of aggressive Christian power and al- 
 lying itself with other elements of the gospel to 
 produce strong Christian effects, has for it the 
 repeated, the deliberate, the permanent voice of 
 Christian conviction that it is, in fact, the truth 
 of God. Few minds are so constituted as to deny 
 the proving cogency of such a consideration. 
 Prof. F. H. Giddings has some suggestions as 
 
122 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 to the place of survival in the sociological pro- 
 cess which, with modifications, may illuminate the 
 idea of survival as a criterion of theological truth. 
 He says^ : — 
 
 " The science of ethics examines critically the 
 elements that enter into the conception of good- 
 ness, and the criteria that are applied to experi- 
 ences, objects, actions, and relations, in order that 
 it may arrive at a true notion of the ideal good. 
 Sociology must examine them historically and in- 
 ductively, — in their evolutionary aspect, — as a 
 part of its study of social choice. 
 
 " Elements and criteria of the ideal good are of 
 two widely contrasted kinds. Some are subjec- 
 tive ; they are states of mind or qualities of con- 
 duct or character that are regarded as inherently 
 excellent. Others are objective; they are rela- 
 tions of adaptation to an external world. Pleas- 
 ure, for example, is a subjective element of the 
 ideal good ; survival is an objective criterion. . . . 
 
 " The present social arrangements are survi- 
 vals. Thousands of different arrangements have 
 disappeared because their usefulness to men was 
 transient or slight. They did not profit the tribes 
 or peoples that used then sufficiently to save either 
 peoples or institutions from extinction. The so- 
 cial arrangements that live as a part of the life of 
 virile communities are arrangements that make 
 communities virile. Directly or indirectly they 
 help to make a better social man, keener in mind 
 
 *" Principles of Sociology," pp. 403 ff. 
 
Christian Experience 123 
 
 and more adept in co-operation. But among all 
 possible social choices in law and institution mak- 
 ing, which will bring these results? What 
 choices, merely as choices, will natural selection 
 prefer ? 
 
 " The answer that sociology gives is very cer- 
 tain. The law is unmistakable. Those subjec- 
 tive values will survive which are component 
 parts in a total or whole of subjective values that 
 is becoming ever more complex through the in- 
 clusion of new interests, and at the same time 
 more thoroughly harmonious and coherent." 
 
 In analogy with this it may be said that under 
 the providence of God the doctrines of the evan- 
 gelical system are survivals; that they have sur- 
 vived in the estimation and belief of the church 
 because they have been found by successive gen- 
 erations of Christians to contribute to the most 
 vigorous Christian life; and that they are com- 
 ponent parts in a whole that is becoming ever 
 more complex through the inclusion of new doc- 
 trines, and at the same time more thoroughly har- 
 monious and coherent. Their mere survival is a 
 proof of their truth, as social survival is a proof 
 of social normality; and they tend ever to form 
 a definite and articulated system. 
 
 One cannot be surprised that the thought of a 
 magnificent system of truth developing through 
 the ages should have made a deep impression 
 upon the mind of one who, like Cardinal New- 
 man, was keenly susceptible to impressions of 
 
124 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 beauty and grandeur, even if too imaginative and 
 idealizing in his tendencies to form accurate and 
 reliable judgments upon delicate and profound 
 questions of doctrine. As the cathedral grows 
 through the centuries, built by successive genera- 
 tions of workmen from plans prepared by an un- 
 known architect, each group of workmen adding 
 something to the rising walls, or erecting some 
 new row of columns, or elaborating the carving 
 of capitals and stalls and screens, or stretching 
 up buttresses and arches towards the stone fir- 
 mament above, or building lantern and tower and 
 spire piercing heaven with its tracery of petrified 
 lace; so has the edifice of Christian doctrine 
 grown. It has fetched its materials from distant 
 quarries of the mind where obscure delvers have 
 prepared materials they knew not for what ; it has 
 stirred the profound interest and secured the de- 
 voted labors of the princes of human thought; 
 men have gladly perished that they might place 
 in its walls what they deemed some specially rare 
 and beautiful stones of truth or add to its adorn- 
 ment some blazing window of illuminating argu- 
 ment ; the plan has been forgotten, and barbarous 
 hands have made unhallowed additions, which 
 better instructed laborers have torn away and re- 
 placed with the original designs of the architect ; 
 silence and forgetfulness have supervened for 
 centuries of ignorance and decay; but, in it all, 
 under an unseen guidance, after the plans of the 
 Master Builder, it has been rising, expanding, 
 
Christian Experience 125 
 
 beautifying, ennobling, till at last it stands beside 
 the ancient, historic river of God's ever-flowing 
 grace, a temple fit for the habitation of God 
 through his Spirit. It is not strange that men 
 worshiping in it and forming sacred associations 
 with every feature of it, finding this chapel the 
 fit place for consolation in some great affliction, 
 that tower the eminence from which some view 
 of distant peaks and mountain ranges of divine 
 providence can be gained, hearing nothing but 
 God's praises in its choir, and truth proclaimed 
 from its pulpits, should ascribe to it something of 
 the perfection of God himself. It has that per- 
 fection; and yet it is built, like the cathedral, of 
 the stone, wood, and iron of human conceptions 
 and human limitations. The divine is in it; but 
 it is not itself divine. 
 
 Against this view, however, the school of 
 Ritschl has made strenuous objection. Theolo- 
 gians who hold it have been called " romancers " 
 by Harnack, by which he apparently meant to 
 imply that they were indebted to their imagina- 
 tions for their theories if not for their facts. With 
 whatever modifications here and there, the gen- 
 eral impression given by Ritschl and his col- 
 leagues in the movement he initiated as to the 
 early history of the church, doctrinal or practical, 
 is that it was a period of gross corruption, that 
 its good was almost hidden beneath its evil, and 
 that the church lost its deposit of truth in conflict 
 
126 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 with' the errors of the time, which speedily con- 
 quered it, " Hellenized " it, and converted it into 
 that great system of mediaeval error from which 
 Luther scarcely rescued it. Thus these theolo- 
 gians are by no means indifferent to church his- 
 tory as a source of instruction as to Christian 
 doctrine. Ritschl gained his earliest and some of 
 his most abundant laurels in this field. Harnack 
 stands confessedly at the apex of German histori- 
 cal scholarship to-day. Nothing has ever been 
 written in the department of doctrinal history 
 more learned, original, thorough, and compre- 
 hensive, than Harnack's " Dogmengeschichte ". 
 But after all, they exhibit little docility in their 
 use of history. Kaftan, adopting the words of 
 Strauss, says: "The subjective criticism of the 
 individual is like the aqueduct that any boy can 
 stop for a time, but the criticism which gradually 
 gathers in the course of centuries is a roaring tor- 
 rent against which no gates or dams avail 
 anything." And compressing into a single sen- 
 tence the criticism of the school upon the view of 
 history which I have presented above, Kaftan 
 first defines the view thus : " That the dogma of 
 the church has been formed under the guidance of 
 the Holy Spirit as the necessary, and in the main 
 the permanent and standard expression of Chris- 
 tian truth ; " and then adds : " That is Roman 
 Catholicism."^ As the latest criticism of our po- 
 sition, and by the most influential school of dis- 
 
 * Compare the "Wahrheit", pp. 234 if. 
 
Christian Experience 127 
 
 tinctively modern thought, the objection demands 
 our consideration. It may demand this the more 
 because we have given essential approval to the 
 historical canons of a Roman Catholic, Cardinal 
 Newman. 
 
 Yet it may be well to lay upon ourselves injunc- 
 tion against haste in interpreting or answering 
 Kaftan, for he may not have meant all that he at 
 first seems to mean. Selecting our steps, there- 
 fore, carefully, we note that his opposition to the 
 view begins with his conception of the influence 
 of Greek thought in emphasizing the intellectual, 
 to the exclusion of the practical element of theol- 
 ogy. The theological center of gravity, accord- 
 ing to the Greeks, was in the intellectual form of 
 truth, while pure Christianity placed it in the 
 obedience of the heart. We have already dis- 
 cussed this point of objection at length, and while 
 agreeing with Kaftan in the relative importance 
 of the two elements, we cannot follow him in his 
 complete rejection of knowledge as a legitimate 
 object of theological search. 
 
 But, this point aside, Kaftan continues that the 
 church dogma, as every one now confesses, can- 
 not be found in the Scriptures in the form in 
 which it is expressed in the creeds. It can be re- 
 garded at best only as the necessary continuation 
 of the initial elements found in the Scriptures. 
 The objection to that would be that the Bible 
 thereby becomes merely the first link in the chain 
 of development, no longer being the source and 
 
128 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 standard of theology. But not so much as this, 
 he says, can be granted to the historians. The 
 tendency of the thought in the Bible is entirely 
 different from that of the church dogma. The 
 contents are also different; and to bring dogma 
 and Bible into harmony it is necessary to inter- 
 pret Bible by the dogma, having first ascribed to 
 the latter a supernatural character and origin, — 
 and that is Catholicism. 
 
 Some degree of justification to this objection 
 we are prepared at once to admit. It is right to 
 bring every dogma as rigidly to the test of the 
 Bible as if there were no historical development ; 
 for this is our first canon, that the doctrine must 
 originate in a New Testament germ, and our 
 fourth, that it must agree with the New Testa- 
 ment origin. It is true also that there is a point 
 in the development of dogma where Romanizing 
 influences begin, and that the system of the pres- 
 ent church of Rome can only be justified by as- 
 suming that it was complete substantially in its 
 present form at the beginning, and interpreting 
 that beginning in the light of the end.^ But 
 whether that is true of the whole system of dog- 
 ma, including those positions which the Protes- 
 tant churches have taken up into their system, is 
 a possible question, to which, for our part, we 
 answer. No ! Of this more later. 
 
 * For fuller illustrations of this point, I may refer to 
 the " Fundamental Ideas of the R. C. Church ", pp. 55, 
 308, 329, 352. 
 
Christian Experience 129 
 
 We shall do better if we follow from this point 
 Kaftan's own personal view. Two things, he 
 says,' are to be kept in mind in any historical in- 
 vestigation, first, the leading thought, the princi- 
 ple of the development, second, the historical 
 facts. " In general terms, this leading thought 
 can be nothing but belief in the government of 
 the divine Spirit in the church, in the develop- 
 ment of Christendom. No other view would do 
 justice to the general relations of the Christian 
 
 faith and the Christian theology But our 
 
 view of this development must be further deter- 
 mined by the specifically Christian faith in revela- 
 tion; and, as revelation came into being in a cer- 
 tain way, so must the further divine guidance of 
 history be understood in the same way." And 
 particularly, " the divine revelation [through his- 
 tory] in the world can only be made in constant 
 struggle with human weakness and perversion; 
 there must come real catastrophes; it cannot be 
 made in the form of a regular development, in a 
 straight line, but only as a movement advancing 
 by successive steps ". There is the Israelitish 
 Exile, the tragedy of Calvary, etc. Hence, while 
 we believe firmly in the divine guidance in all the 
 development of the church, " we cannot expect 
 that there will be continuously pure, unmingled 
 results in any department, not even in that of 
 doctrine, designed to be esteemed permanently as 
 possessing divine authority ". History will be a 
 
 ^"Wahrheit", p. 249 ff- 
 
130 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 " continuation of the divine revelation " [this in 
 the sense of a continued contact between God and 
 his people through the Holy Spirit] ; but " not in 
 the sense that the perfect revelation [in Christ] 
 will ever be surpassed, or ever cease to be the 
 pure norm of everything later". 
 
 With this " leading thought " most of us, I 
 suppose, certainly I myself, for one, can be per- 
 fectly content. It is precisely what we ourselves 
 mean when we affirm that there is normal and 
 abnormal development in history and that all is to 
 be subjected to criticism according to certain 
 canons. Kaftan here, as in many places, marks 
 the gain which has been made by the Ritschlian 
 school over the extremes exhibited by Ritschl 
 himself and by Harnack. The best refutation of 
 original Ritschlianism is this modified, present- 
 day Ritschlianism. 
 
 When he comes to the second thing to which 
 particular attention was to be paid, the historical 
 facts, it is evident that if Kaftan accepted the 
 church dogma of the " two natures in the one 
 person of Christ ", for example, as biblical and 
 correct, he would feel differently at that point in 
 respect to the value of the historical development. 
 We may pass this particular for the present, 
 since we shall be brought back to it in the prog- 
 ress of our study when we come to the teachings 
 of experience as to the person of Christ. The 
 main, and at all events the most striking, " fact " 
 to which he calls attention is the fact of German 
 
Christian Experience 131 
 
 rationalism in the last century, which he declares 
 followed the method of Protestant dogmatics, and 
 really destroyed the system, not however its 
 Christian but its Catholic elements, for it was still 
 Catholic in its method. Here we meet again the 
 doctrine of " knowledge ", of which enough has 
 been said above. 
 
 Our contention with Kaftan is therefore not 
 over his principles of interpreting history but 
 over the details of judgment as to definite points. 
 But he may well teach us to be careful and bibli- 
 cal in such criticism, and to hold ourselves ever 
 ready to reject or amend whatever we do not find 
 " in accord with the beginning of Christian his- 
 tory, with the New Testament ". Under his forms 
 of statement the Ritschlian criticism becomes a 
 confirmation of our position. Christian history 
 can teach us much. It often presents the results 
 of the most careful and prolonged study of the 
 truth. It has repeatedly passed such a judgment 
 upon truths that they may be said to have in their 
 favor the combined verdict of Christians, the 
 voice of general Christian experience. When 
 this is so, the truths in question are not demon- 
 strated thereby, or proved independently of ques- 
 tions of exegesis, or rendered infallibly certain; 
 but, only, they have gained one argument, and 
 that an important one, in their favor. The Chris- 
 tian cathedral of doctrine is a temple of God and 
 a structure of his own building, though by means 
 of human hands and with many a resulting im- 
 
132 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 perfection. Its great elements are not errors, 
 nor as Kaftan implies, too exclusively formed 
 under the influence of an abnormal thirst for an 
 unobtainable and undesirable " knowledge ", but 
 were formed by the heart as well as the head of 
 the church, and are found sustained by the voice 
 of a universal Christian experience, ancient, it is 
 true, but also modern and, we believe, destined 
 to endure forever. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE PERSON OF CHRIST 
 
 In the analysis of Christian experience we have 
 hitherto moved somewhat in the realm of ab- 
 stractions. For the sake of sharpness of analysis 
 and independence of treatment we have defined 
 the ultimate Christian fact of experience, the new 
 birth, as the supreme choice of duty. It is thus 
 an act of allegiance to the abstract right. From 
 the point of theory it may be thus defined; but 
 practically it seldom, and among such a group of 
 Christians as this is, perhaps never, assumes so 
 abstract a form. It is a most concrete act for the 
 generality of Christians. It is faith, rather than 
 mere naked choice, faith in a person, our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and the tender of allegiance to him 
 as personal King, Example, and Guide, yes, as 
 infinite Benefactor to the soul. Our abstract dis- 
 cussion has had the advantage of advancing from 
 the simplest facts of our experience to sound and 
 unquestionable positions which supply us a firm 
 basis for our subsequent inquiries ; but we should 
 fail to reap fully the advantage thus gained, did 
 133 
 
134 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 we not now leave the abstract, and begin the 
 study of the concrete, the real forms of Christian 
 experience. And as that ultimate act of choice 
 is in its concrete form the definite choice of Jesus 
 Christ as King, we must begin with the inquiry 
 what experience has to teach us as to Christ. 
 
 The Apostle Paul determined not to know 
 " anything " among the Corinthians " save Jesus 
 Christ and him crucified." Christian preaching 
 has been since that time the preaching of the Re- 
 deemer. Not only we, who sit here to-day, in this 
 far-away place and time, but the listening crowds 
 at Pentecost, in Lystra and Derbe, at Philippi, 
 Corinth, Rome, by the Rhone, in the forests of 
 Germany, and over the plains of Britain, all first 
 heard of God as he was revealed in Christ, of the 
 divine Father who was such a Father as was man- 
 ifested in all the doctrine and work of the Prophet 
 of Galilee and the Victim of Calvary. Christian 
 experience of God is historically involved in ex- 
 perience of Christ. 
 
 How comprehensively this is true is to be seen 
 first, by a careful re-examination of the steps al- 
 ready trodden in our analysis. 
 
 When those motives first began to press upon 
 us which led to the surrender of ourselves to duty, 
 they were motives which proceeded directly and 
 recognizably from Christ. In choosing duty, we 
 chose him ; and the motives proceeding from the 
 idea of duty were motives originating in him. 
 These motives were, first, the idea of duty itself ; 
 
The Person of Christ 135 
 
 but the voice which quickened conscience into the 
 emphatic assertion of obligation was that insist- 
 ent preaching of obligation which began with 
 Jesus' recognition of obligation for himself, 
 " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him 
 only shalt thou serve ". He ever enforced duty 
 by his preaching, from the Sermon on the Mount, 
 " Love your enemies and pray for them that per- 
 secute you ", to his summary of all duty, quoted 
 from the ancient law, " Thou shalt love th^e Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as 
 thyself ". No voice presents duty in more pun- 
 gent phrase or exclusive aspect than his, as when 
 he said, " He that loveth father or mother more 
 than me is not worthy of me. . . . He that doth 
 not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy 
 of me ". Not life itself is to be preferred to the 
 new allegiance, for " he that findeth his life " — by 
 any base denial — " shall lose it ". But the lesson 
 was taught more powerfully by his example than 
 by his words. His personal attitude of entire 
 submission at every point of his career to the will 
 of the Father involved the sacrifice of Calvary, 
 " for which cause he came into the world ". The 
 complete vindication of duty's demands when at 
 their hardest in the glorious outcome of his tri- 
 umph by way of the cross, so that for every 
 Christian the via crucis has become the via lucis, 
 this illumination of duty shining into the dark- 
 ness of the soul's struggles and confusion, is that 
 which disclosed hidden and forgotten duty and 
 
136 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 awakened the response of every faculty to its 
 demands. 
 
 But duty as presented by Jesus Christ was 
 neither abstract duty nor mere duty. Fundamen- 
 tal duty is to love God ; and God is " our Father ". 
 The question of duty begins to receive definite 
 contents of worship, submission, glad service ; and 
 with the perception of what God is, as Jesus 
 preaches him, the emotions are kindled as well as 
 the mind informed. He is the Creator and boun- 
 tiful Benefactor from whom we have received all 
 that we have and all that we are. But he is our 
 Father ; and by this phrase, the Redeemer, antic- 
 ipating his own work of propitiation, and putting 
 himself in thought already within that kingdom 
 of heaven which he came to found, and which 
 without his final sacrifice could never have en- 
 tered in, declared God to be already reconciled 
 and ready to receive the penitent sinner into the 
 infinite heart of his love. The prophetic words 
 of the ancient seer receive their full meaning in 
 the preaching of Jesus, " All day have I stretched 
 forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying 
 people ". And, as no man at all stirred with a 
 sense of sin and perception of his obligation to 
 God, can listen to the parable of the Prodigal 
 Son without the deepest emotions as he hears the 
 father interrupt the son in the midst of his con- 
 fession and thrust back unuttered the petition just 
 trembHng on the poor penitent's lips, " Make me 
 as one of thy hired servants ", with the glad cry, 
 
The Person of Christ 137 
 
 " Bring forth the best robe and put it on him ", so 
 no awakened soul can listen to what Jesus here 
 and everywhere teaches about God, without the 
 most tender and powerful sense of profound grat- 
 itude, drawing him towards the injured Father 
 who offers full forgiveness out of his boundless 
 and eternal goodness. But not even this ex- 
 hausts the teaching of Christ as to the Father. It 
 is the " way of the cross " which is the way of 
 light". The love of Christ himself is self-sac- 
 rificing, and it needs no long argument to point 
 the lesson to any man that " greater love hath no 
 man than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
 friends ". But in this Christ shows us the Father. 
 If Christ so loved the world as to die for it, God 
 is said by him to have " so loved the world as to 
 send his only Son " ; and in that text the father 
 heart in humanity has recognized the divine sac- 
 rifice in the cross. Nothing has been left un- 
 painted in the picture of the divine love which 
 could attract the enthusiasm and stir the grati- 
 tude of the soul or lift it, by the elevating force 
 of its highest ideals, towards complete self-sur- 
 rendering and self-submitting worship. 
 
 But the catalogue of motives eliciting the fun- 
 damental act of the soul is not yet completed. 
 Jesus holds up God before the soul and most pow- 
 erfully attracts it to him. He also holds up sin 
 before it, and thus furnishes another group of 
 powerful motives, repelling the soul from evil 
 and so impelling it towards good. How hateful 
 
138 Christian Life and Theology- 
 some ebullition of bad temper has appeared to any 
 of us who may have encountered the wondering 
 and pained gaze of some man whom we knew to 
 live in the serene light of a great and deep love 
 for men ! And how have all of us " gone out and 
 wept bitterly " when in the midst of our denials 
 we have seen the Master " looking " upon us ! 
 The Pharisee, as he stands thanking God that he 
 is not as other men are ; the Jews, as they thrust 
 light from them and surround the gentle teacher 
 with the atmosphere of calumny and hatred ; Ju- 
 das, as he adds envy to avarice, and treachery to 
 envy, and suicide to treachery ; the shallow fields 
 which send up thorns to choke the good seed ; the 
 niggardly charity of a Dives who has an heir of 
 heaven languishing unrecognized at his door ; the 
 young man who goes away sorrowing; the un- 
 faithful servants; the cruel husbandmen who 
 would not render the fruits of the vineyard; all 
 these show under varied lights the meaning and 
 deep unworthiness of what men call peccadillos, 
 but the voice of Jesus sets forth as sin. And 
 deeper shadows fall upon it when its end is seen, 
 when the " worm that dieth not ", and the " fire 
 that is not quenched '\ when the judgment seat 
 with its throng of flippant sinners and their self- 
 assertive defence of sin, and its " everlasting " 
 punishment of those on the left hand, when 
 " eternal death ", shroud it in the darkness of 
 hopeless and remediless ruin. 
 
 In a sense, Christ is the source of those further 
 
The Person of Christ 139 
 
 motives to conversion which at first seem to come 
 exclusively from our fellows. They have their 
 origin not in " the world ", but in the world as it 
 is already in a degree the sphere of the kingdom 
 of heaven. Historically they are to be traced to 
 the preaching performed by our Saviour, since 
 they are only possible in that community which 
 has proceeded from his instructions. But it is 
 not necessary to expand this thought. Enough 
 has now been said to bring before us the fact that 
 that whole assemblage of motives which led the 
 Christian to the supreme choice of duty, and 
 which, on account of their nature and the charac- 
 ter of their operation upon him, he is compelled 
 to ascribe logically to the Supreme Personality, 
 is historically to be ascribed to Jesus Christ. He 
 begins in the light of this reflection to see that 
 Christ represents God to him at this most vital 
 point of his experience. And this perception 
 suggests other thoughts. 
 
 It is the marked peculiarity of Jesus Christ 
 among the religious leaders of the world, true 
 and false, to demand belief in himself. The 
 culmination of sin is " to believe not on him ". 
 That faith which we are studying, and which we 
 are bringing from the abstract sphere into the con- 
 crete, is pre-eminently faith in Jesus as a Saviour. 
 Not his doctrines, but his person is here meant. 
 We are to " commit ourselves to him ", to take 
 his promise of eternal life to those who believe 
 in him as the pledge of our salvation, to make 
 
140 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 him our King, to believe in the forgiveness of 
 our sins, to center our service about him as its 
 object. This is the peculiar type of piety which 
 he demands and which the church has always 
 cherished from the beginning. In it alone is to 
 be found the full meaning of the appellation be- 
 stowed upon the church at Antioch, of Chris- 
 tians. When, now, the Christian actually begins 
 the new life, it is under this form. He believes 
 in Christ, performing in this manner his great 
 surrender to duty. I do not now say that he 
 must, for I am not now in the realm of theological 
 abstractions: I simply call attention to the fact 
 that in the great mass of people who are called 
 Christians and who constitute what is called the 
 church of Christ, in all lands and in all ages, 
 the distinctive and ultimate Christian act has 
 taken place in this form. The Christian submits 
 himself to God in Christ, and then something 
 wonderful occurs. His trust is not met by silence, 
 vacancy, and irresponsiveness, plunging him into 
 the despair of those who worshiped the dumb 
 idols of heathenism; but to his humble submis- 
 sion a truly divine answer is given. From Christ 
 he actually receives those gifts which he refers 
 and must refer to God, the forgiveness of his sins 
 and the sanctification of his soul. He experiences 
 upon this surrender as a condition, that internal 
 harmony of soul, which by the process of thought 
 already outlined in the second lecture, he rec- 
 ognizes as the forgiveness of God. 
 
The Person of Christ 141 
 
 Further, we obtain, as already noted, our clear- 
 est and loftiest views of God from the revelatioii 
 made of him by Christ. God's highest attributes 
 are his spiritual attributes, and they all culminate 
 in his love. As we receive the revelation, we 
 find that to devout contemplation those divine 
 attributes appear exemplified in the revealer, 
 Jesus, himself. If God is love, so is Christ; if 
 God comes in condescending love to seek and 
 save a race of sinners, Christ does precisely this : 
 If God is long-suffering, if he hates iniquity and 
 avenges the oppressed, so does Christ; if he is 
 our Judge, so is Christ ; if God is a tender friend, 
 the most loving accents which ever fell from 
 human lips were spoken by him who washed the 
 feet of the disciples and called them his friends ; 
 if God is perfect holiness, so that the highest ideal 
 of the mind only faintly reflects his excellence, 
 so is Christ, the perfections of whose character 
 have remained the unsurpassed ideal of human- 
 ity. Whatever view we form of God in the 
 sphere of moral attributes, Christ is the living 
 exemplification of it, so that humanity has found 
 what Christ himself said to be the unexhausted 
 and inexhaustible fact of the Christian centuries, 
 that "he who hath seen him, hath seen the Fa- 
 ther ". 
 
 Thus Christ is for the Christian, that is, in 
 his experience, God. From Christ there come to 
 him what he recognizes as the influences of God, 
 the controlling influences which have led him to 
 
142 Chsritian Life and Theology 
 
 the loftiest act which any mortal can perform. 
 And when he looks for the source of the great- 
 est gifts which he has received, of the greatest 
 any created spirit can receive, and which, again, 
 he ascribes to God, he beholds that source in 
 Christ. All that he knows of God he knows 
 through the ministering of Christ. Christ identi- 
 fies himself to the Christian with God by being 
 and doing what God is and does. 
 
 I state this positively as Christian experience. 
 Every one of you must test it by your own ex- 
 perience. If you have come to God by some 
 other path; if you find Christ unable to confer 
 salvation upon you ; if you have an ideal of excel- 
 lence higher than that which he taught and was • 
 then the proof avails nothing for you. But even 
 then you will find instruction in the fact that uni- 
 versal Christian experience speaks for the deity 
 of Christ. You may both test and enrich your 
 own experience by tracing this larger experience. 
 
 For the universal Christian experience we 
 turn, first, to the New Testament. Two of its 
 writers represent in an especial degree the the- 
 ology of experience, John and Paul, and to them 
 we shall direct our chief attention, while not 
 neglecting others. John begins his first epistle, 
 which must be our principal authority for his ex- 
 perience, since it is not occupied, as is the gospel, 
 in recording events and reporting the teachings 
 of the Master, but with the independent expres- 
 sion of his own thoughts, — he begins this epistle 
 
The Person of Christ 143 
 
 by emphasizing the fact of his own personal 
 knowledge of Christ. " That which we have seen 
 with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our 
 hands handled, concerning the Word of life," it 
 is his object to declare. All that he says is thus 
 founded on personal experience. As we read 
 the pages of the epistle one after another, we can- 
 not fail to find the constant evidence of experi- 
 ential knowledge. All the forms in which 
 Christ appears before the converting sinner and 
 exerts divine influence upon him, are indicated 
 here. It was from Christ that the disciple heard 
 that God was " light ", convincing of sin by the 
 contrast of men's lives with him in whom was 
 " no darkness at all ". The ideal of perfect 
 purity was conveyed to him by Christ;^ and the 
 revelation of the love of God, which was a con- 
 stant wonder to the apostle,^ was made in the 
 hour when Jesus " laid down his life for us ", 
 for then God " manifested " his love, and indeed 
 declared it to be his nature, — " for God is love ", 
 — a love which anticipated our love, for we, im- 
 mersed in sins, " did not love God, but he loved 
 us and sent his Son to be the propriation for our 
 sins ". When Jesus made those astonishing ex- 
 clusive claims for himself which are reported by 
 all the evangelists,^ by which he identified the 
 
 *l Jn. iii. 3, "iKEivo^r 
 *i Jn. iii. I, ''itotait-nvy 
 
 "Cf. with Jn. iii. t8 and xvi. 9, Matt. x. 32, 33, 37" 
 39. Mk. XV. 24-38. 
 
144 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 honor of God with his own honor, John fully re- 
 produced them in the words, " Whosoever de- 
 nieth the Son, the same hath not the Father " ; 
 and this, no doubt, because of his experience of 
 the divine power of salvation proceeding from 
 Jesus, whom he " bore witness " the Father had 
 sent " to be the Saviour of the world ", having 
 learnt that he possessed the secret of victory over 
 the world (i. 5). 
 
 More marked than any other feature of this 
 epistle, as it seems to me, is its exuberant ex- 
 pression of confidence by the word " know ", the 
 true word for expressing experiential certainty. 
 It has a lower meaning in various passages, as 
 when it signifies knowledge obtained by infer- 
 ence from facts, such as the knowledge of our 
 spiritual state from the concrete features of our 
 spiritual lives (ii. 3, 6. iii. 14. v. 2. cf. ii. 18), 
 or a firm conviction (iii. 19. v. 13, 15), or even 
 knowledge of a mere historical fact (v. 20) ; but 
 its predominant meaning is another. It signifies 
 the certainty of personal acquaintance with 
 Christ (ii. 13, v. 20) and with God (ii. 13, iv. 6, 
 7) ; of moral intuition by which great principles 
 of the spiritual life, such as this, '' that every 
 one that doeth righteousness is begotten of him " 
 (ii. 29, cf. iv. 16, iii. 2, 6, 15, v. 18), are directly 
 perceived; of the witness of the Spirit which is 
 the work of the Spirit in the soul (iii. 24, iv. 13) ; 
 culminating in the certainty of salvation in the 
 present possession of communion with God (v. 
 
The Person of Christ 145 
 
 19). With this knowledge he "knows" Jesus 
 Christ (i. 1-4, of. Phil. iii. 10), and recognizes 
 in him " the true God " (v. 20). 
 
 We mark here the same path of experiential 
 advance towards the doctrine of the divinity of 
 Christ which we have already traced in common 
 Christian experience. It is not necessary to sup- 
 pose that John traversed this path consciously. 
 He might have done so. But more probably, it 
 was under the growing evidence of the marvel- 
 lous works of Christ (the Gospel, x. 25) ; of his 
 positive teaching in regard to himself, that he 
 came down from heaven (iii. 13), was himself 
 eternal (viii. 58), the light of men (viii. 12), the 
 way, the truth, and the life (xiv. 6) ; of his con- 
 stant reference of the salvation of men to him- 
 self (vi. 35) ; of his own association of himself 
 with God in honor (v. 23, cf. Phil ii. 9, 10, 11), 
 and his teaching that he was the power of resur- 
 rection (vi. 40, xi. 25) and the final Judge (v. 
 22) ; that John came to recognize and believe his 
 true deity as the eternal Word (i. i), who was 
 God, by whom all things were made, and who, 
 come in the flesh, was full of grace and truth 
 as the only begotten of the Father (i. 14). It 
 was with this apostle as with most of us, — ex- 
 perience and instruction went hand in hand. In- 
 struction called forth experience; but experience 
 following, interpreted, brought home the con- 
 vincing argument, added the final and essential 
 inner confirmation. Then the apostle " knew ", 
 
146 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 and his testimony was of one who had handled 
 the Word of Life ! He " beheld the glory ", and 
 the argument was swift : this was the " only be- 
 gotten of the Father ". 
 
 The Apostle Paul began his Christian life in 
 quite another way. He had no personal acquaint- 
 ance with Jesus upon earth, and in his mind 
 there were no results of direct communications 
 of truth from a living and visible human teacher. 
 Up to the moment of the vision upon the way to 
 Damascus, Paul was in sharpest conflict with 
 the followers of Jesus and in no respect inclined 
 to grant to him a higher title than false prophet 
 or to ascribe to him any powers but those which 
 belong to a dead man. By this most sudden and 
 overwhelming event he was led utterly to change 
 his mind. He viewed Christ now as Messiah and 
 Lord. He recognized Christ's immediate agency 
 in this change and in all that came from it. He 
 never thereafter could look upon Christ in any 
 aspect which should obscure that in which he 
 appeared as an exalted king, exercising an ex- 
 tended sovereignty over men and things for the 
 benefit of his kingdom upon earth.^ The glori- 
 ous, living and reigning Christ eclipsed in his 
 
 *Martineau (Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 483) 
 says : '* What is called the * mystic ' language of the 
 Apostle, of * living in Christ * and * Christ living in 
 him ', of ' Christ being formed in his disciples *, is 
 hardly even figurative to him, but expresses a fact of 
 experience as understood by himself." 
 
The Person of Christ 147 
 
 eyes and almost banished from his thought* the 
 prophet of GaHlee. And so Paul becomes the 
 biblical example of that sort of conversion which, 
 in these lectures we have been considering as 
 typical amid all the examples of other, less plain 
 but essentially identical, conversion. The critics 
 will deny the objective character of the Damas- 
 cus vision, ascribing it to the objectifying ten- 
 dency of powerful impressions in an abnormally 
 excitable mind. But, waiving the whole contro- 
 verted question, Paul was a convert in mature 
 years, under powerful motives, to the Christian 
 cause; and as such he stands forth as a perma- 
 nent example of a change which has been occur- 
 ring ever since. 
 
 We should therefore expect, if Christianity has 
 " preserved its type ", and if modern Christian 
 experience is truly normal in its characteristic 
 manifestations, that Paul would be found to fur- 
 nish examples of the same experiences and lines 
 of reflection and to arrive at the same conclusions 
 reached by Christians to-day. Essentially this is 
 so. We trace in the personal touches found in 
 his exceptionally personal epistles the great lines 
 of thought we have just seen in John and had 
 previously found in ourselves. The seventh and 
 eighth of Romans, in particular, are so vivid in 
 
 ^ But not quite, see Ro. ix. 5, i, 3. i Cor. xi. 23. 
 2 Cor. V. 21. I Cor. xv. 21. Ro. v. 15, cf. Acts xvii. 31. 
 Ro. viii. 3. 2 Cor. xiii. 4, and Heb. ii. 10, 17, 18 and 
 like. 
 
148 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 their description of the progress of an awakened 
 soul through the struggle with the " law of sin 
 in the members " out into the liberty of the sons 
 of God through the deliverance wrought in 
 Christ that we cannot doubt it is a picture drawn 
 by the artist of himself. That process of con- 
 viction is introduced by " the law ", but else- 
 where he refers the beginning of the Christian 
 life to the election of God " in Christ ", so that 
 to his enHghtened vision Christ was the source 
 of the conviction, as manifestly of the culminat- 
 ing deliverance, wrought by personal revelation 
 of himself. This may be less evident to some 
 of you than it appears to me; but how clear is 
 the experience Paul gained of divine power pro- 
 ceeding from Christ and working Hberation from 
 the "law of death"! "Who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death ? " he cries, only to 
 find the swift answer, no doubt as it was brought 
 into the physical darkness of blindness which 
 had supervened upon the spiritual darkness of 
 despair, " I thank God, [I am delivered] through 
 Jesus Christ, our Lord ". He delineated the 
 steps of the deliverance, so that there can be no 
 doubt left that he had received from Christ an 
 impartation of divine gifts. The " weakness " of 
 the law is replaced by a " fulfilling of the ordi- 
 nance ", — the definite, concrete, homely details 
 commanded, — " of the law ". The " mind of the 
 flesh " is succeeded by the " mind of the spirit ", 
 and this is found to be " life and peace " — ^just 
 
The Person of Christ 149 
 
 that harmony which the Christian finds in his 
 soul, originating in his conversion. Men come 
 to be " in the spirit ", and this is " the Spirit of 
 Christ ", which is a spirit of Hfe, quickening even 
 the " mortal body ". For " bondage " comes 
 "adoption", and for "enmity", "heirship". 
 And all this springs from " the love of Christ " 
 towards us, from which " neither death nor life, 
 nor angels nor principalities, nor things present 
 nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor 
 depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
 separate us ". It is a history of salvation in 
 which Christ becomes experientially " the power 
 of God and the wisdom of God ". 
 
 The same experience underlies Paul's doctrine 
 of justification. On its objective side it cannot, 
 of course, be a matter of experience. Paul pre- 
 sents it almost Hke a drama (Ro. iii. 19-26), 
 viewing all men as brought guilty before the bar 
 of God, able to plead nothing in their defence; 
 God setting forth his Son, in his blood, as a 
 propitiation, to show his righteousness ; and then 
 the gift of God, the righteousness provided by 
 him bestowed upon believers and their acquittal 
 freely by God's grace. But it is also a subjective 
 process, an experience of the soul, and this also 
 Paul sketches (Ro. v. i-ii). The objective act of 
 God performed, " peace " springs up in the soul, 
 from which develops other Christian blessings, 
 hope of glory ascending out of tribulations upon 
 the golden ladder of patience and probation, and 
 
150 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 incapable of putting us to shame because it is a 
 work of the love of God conferred upon us and 
 made operative in us by the Holy Ghost, — and 
 joy in God. The work of God is thus experienced 
 by the apostle, and it is inextricably involved in 
 and united with the work of Christ, so that 
 their work is the same work and God appears to 
 the apostle " through " Christ. And, as with 
 John, it is through Christ that we come really to 
 know God, in learning through his death what, 
 in its depth of meaning, the love of God is. Such 
 is Paul's experience of the divine power pro- 
 ceeding from Christ, when his own soul believed 
 on him; and he expects to find it repeated in 
 every other believer's soul. He speaks in the 
 passage just in review always in the plural: 
 " we " have peace, joy, hope, and reconciliation. 
 Nor is all this, in his view, a mere subjective no- 
 tion, a conception of amiable origin and pleasant 
 appearance, but of no value in the exigencies of 
 life: it is a subjective fact, an experience, some- 
 thing knowable and known, and hence objec- 
 tively valuable. He therefore proceeds upon one 
 very critical occasion to make it the basis of an 
 argument, and to rest upon it nothing less than 
 the great contention of his life and his whole 
 apostolic mission. When the emissaries of the 
 Jews had " bewitched " the Galatian Christians, 
 he appealed to them thus : " This only would I 
 learn from you, Received ye [as an actual fact, 
 in your remembered experience] the Spirit [so 
 
The Person of Christ 151 
 
 as to come into the conscious freedom of the 
 Christian man] by the works of the law, or by 
 the hearing of faith ? " And, doubting nothing 
 what their answer must be, he proceeds " Are ye 
 so fooHsh? Having begun [as ye know ye did] in 
 the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh ? " 
 
 Thus Paul's argument for the true deity of 
 Jesus Christ was not one derived alone from the 
 manifestation of his heavenly glory made in the 
 way to Damascus, but from that and other revela- 
 tions of his divine nature, interpreted and re- 
 enforced by experiences of his present divine 
 operation. No Apostle, therefore, more empha- 
 sizes the present reign of Christ upon the throne 
 of the universe than he. He goes back to the 
 creation of the world and ascribes this to Christ, 
 views its whole progress as taking place under 
 his sustaining and directing power, and makes 
 its goal the glory of Christ.^ Out of this original 
 divine form he came when he emptied himself 
 and took the form of a servant that he might 
 endure the death of the cross; and from that 
 depth of humiliation he has been exalted and has 
 received the ineffable name and come to be far 
 above all rule and authority and power, all 
 
 ^ Col. i. 15 flf. Note that, like John, he makes Christ 
 the medium rather than the ultimate original of creation , 
 using the same preposition as he, Std, (Col. i. i6 cf. 
 Jn. i. 3). The identity of the Christology of these two 
 apostles will appear more evident the more careful the 
 study given to them. 
 
152 Christian Life and Theology- 
 things being in subjection under his feet, where 
 he shall reign in divine glory till redemption is 
 accomplished and the mediatorial kingdom shall 
 come to an end.' 
 
 Could we pause long enough, sufficient proof 
 might be gained, even from the brief suggestions 
 of the New Testament, that the experience of the 
 rest of the apostolic group was the same. Na- 
 thaniel, when he first met Jesus, recognized in 
 him the " King of Israel " ( Jn. i. 49) ; hesitating 
 but devoted Thomas hailed him as " Lord and 
 God " ( Jn. XX. 28) ; Peter preached his exaltation 
 and lordship" ; ascribed to him the guidance of 
 the ancient prophecy (i Peter i. 11), and made 
 him the living and present agent of divine ef- 
 fects (Acts ii. 33) ; Stephen saw him rising from 
 his throne to receive the martyr's soul (Acts 
 vii. 56) ; Paul's pupil who wrote the Hebrews, 
 made him creator, preserver, exalted king (i. 1-4), 
 eternal spirit (ix. 14), author of salvation (ii. 10) ; 
 and James calls him "Lord of glory" (ii. i). 
 Our first appeal to the general experience of the 
 church, made to its first repository in the original 
 documents of our religion, which contain the rec- 
 ord of what was felt and learned by those who 
 were in immediate connection with Jesus Christ 
 and wrought in the formative period of the newly 
 established church, has, therefore, resulted in the 
 
 *PhiI. ii. 5-1 1, compared with Eph. i. 20-23, i Cor. xv. 
 24-28. 
 • Acts ii. 33, 36. I Pet. iii. 22. Cf . 2 Pet. iii. 18. 
 
The Person of Christ 1 53 
 
 confirmation of our own experience. It is the 
 testimony of the apostolic era, as of our own, that 
 Christ is God. 
 
 This is our appeal to the New Testament rec- 
 ord of Christian experience. We are now to make 
 a second appeal, viz., to the experience of the 
 church since the apostolic days, to the final ver- 
 dict of Christian doctrinal history. We shall in- 
 cidentally get another and in some respects more 
 irrefutable answer to the objection considered at 
 an earlier point, since it will appear that Chris- 
 tian experience is not founded upon the Bible in 
 the sense that it is the blind acceptance of some- 
 thing given from without by a merely external 
 authority, but that it has ever been an assimilat- 
 ing process, reflecting upon communicated truth, 
 viewing it on many sides, and receiving it after 
 abundant independent tests and after the confir- 
 mation of proved adaptation to the spiritual life 
 which it was expected to nourish. It is like hu- 
 man testimony to the goodness of a food, eaten 
 because offered by friendly hands, but pro- 
 nounced good because found to assimilate with 
 the body easily and to sustain health and strength. 
 
 No one familiar with the forms of New Testa- 
 ment piety can open the earliest post-canonical 
 writings without immediately perceiving the close 
 relation of the one to the other. It is not a rela- 
 tion of identity, for the plane on which the apos- 
 tolic fathers stand is lower than that of the apos- 
 tles; but a relation of derivation of material as 
 
154 Christian Life and Theology- 
 yet not fully comprehended, and in one sense, the 
 purely intellectual and abstract sense, not com- 
 prehended at all. Still, as the purpose of the 
 apostolical writings was practical and the audi- 
 ence to which they were addressed was of the 
 common, uneducated mass of humanity, the dif- 
 ference of form is not so great as that of depth 
 of thought, range of theme, and breadth of hori- 
 zon. In respect to the person of the Redeemer, 
 there are sufficient hints in the earHest of these 
 postapostolic writers to show complete agree- 
 ment with the New Testament in regarding him 
 as God; and yet the chief argument for this 
 statement is not what is expressly said, but what 
 is implied in the general attitude and form of 
 piety towards him. In the eucharistic liturgy of 
 the " Teaching " we read " Hosanna to the God 
 of David " ; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God^ 
 — " begotten and unbegotten, God come in the 
 flesh "^ — speaking once of " the blood of God " 
 (Eph. i.) in evident allusion to Acts xx. 28; the 
 Epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words 
 and calls him the " architect and world-builder 
 by whom [God] created the heavens ", and 
 names him "God" (chap, vii) ; Hermas speaks 
 of him as " the holy pre-existent Spirit, that crea- 
 ted every creature "' ; which style of expression is 
 
 *Ephesians xviii., Romans, introduc, iii.; Smjrrneans, 
 
 X. 
 
 * Eph. vii ; cf. xix. 
 
 " Shepherd, Similitude, V., vi. 
 
The Person of Christ 155 
 
 followed by Justin, who calls him " God " (Dial. 
 56), and also by all the later great writers, as it 
 is unnecessary to encumber the argument by 
 proving. Many of the early church derived this 
 view from the New Testament circle and con- 
 sciously rested, no doubt, upon that authority di- 
 rectly and exclusively, though not without a 
 sense of experiential confirmation of all the God- 
 like greatness that was ascribed to the Redeemer. 
 It is certainly identical in its principal features 
 with the New Testament view.^ But occasion- 
 ally we find evidence of the influence of experi- 
 ence in the formation of opinion, and sometimes 
 that the early church followed more or less clear- 
 ly that precise line of thought, beginning with the 
 experience of salvation, which we have ourselves 
 traced to-day. For example, at the beginning of 
 the so-called Second Epistle of Clement, a homily 
 dated by Harnack somewhere in the interval be- 
 tween 130 and 160 A. D., we find this remarka- 
 ble passage : — 
 
 " Brethren, it is fitting that you should think 
 of Jesus Christ as of God, — as the judge of the 
 living and the dead. And it does not become us 
 to think lightly of our salvation [as we should if 
 we failed to perceive from it that he is God] ". 
 And now the argument takes a homiletic direc- 
 
 ' Harnack strongly opposes this view. I have done 
 what I can to answer him, I hope with success, in the 
 Bihliotheca Sacra for April, 1892, to which I take the 
 liberty to refer for a fuller discussion. 
 
156 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tion, to return shortly to its abandoned course — 
 " for, if we think little of him, we shall also hope 
 
 to obtain but Httle For, indeed, how great 
 
 are the benefits which we owe to him! He has 
 graciously given us light ; as a father [still spoken 
 of Christ] he has called us sons ; he has saved us 
 
 when we were ready to perish We were 
 
 deficient in understanding, worshiping stones 
 and wood and gold and silver and brass, the 
 works of men's hands; and our whole life was 
 nothing else than death. Involved in blindness 
 and with such darkness before our eyes, we have 
 received sight and through his will have laid aside 
 that cloud by which we were enveloped. For he 
 had compassion upon us and mercifully saved us, 
 observing the many errors in which we were en- 
 tangled, as well as the destruction to which we 
 were exposed, and that we had no hope of salva- 
 tion except it came to us from him. For he called 
 us when we were not, and willed that out of noth- 
 ing we should attain a real existence 
 
 Thus also did Christ desire to save the things 
 which were perishing, and has saved many by 
 coming and calling us when hastening to destruc- 
 tion. Since, then, he has displayed so great 
 mercy towards us, and especially in this respect, 
 that we who are living should not offer sacrifices 
 to gods which are dead or pay them worship, but 
 should attain through him to the knowledge of 
 the true Father, whereby shall we show that we 
 do indeed know him but by not denying him 
 
The Person of Christ 157 
 
 through whom this knowledge has been obtained 
 [that is, by * thinking of him as of God ']?... 
 Let us then not only call him Lord. . . [but] let 
 us confess him by our works."^ 
 
 In this remarkable passage, remarkable for the 
 clearness of its argument as well as the depth and 
 comprehensiveness of its view of the work of 
 Christ in the experience of the Christian, we 
 have the fuller expression of what recurs else- 
 where in less perfect form. In the Epistle to 
 Diognetus it is, however, scarcely less perfect. 
 The writer argues the vanity of idols from their 
 complete inability to help in any way. " Are 
 they not destitute of feeling ? Are they not inca- 
 pable of motion ? '' His argument for the divin- 
 ity of Christ, which he presents in the fullest ex- 
 pression yet found in this literatijre, is substan- 
 tially that of the homily's and the converse of the 
 refutation of idols, though put in the form. Since 
 he was God he did these God-like things. He 
 writes accordingly, " As a king sends his son who 
 is also a king, so sent he him ; as God he sent him, 
 as to men he sent him ; as a Saviour he sent him, 
 and as seeking to persuade, not to compel us ; for 
 violence has no place in the character of God. 
 As calling he sent him, not as vengefully pursu- 
 ing us; as loving us he sent him, not as judging 
 us. For he will yet send him to judge us, and 
 
 * After the translation of the Christian Literature 
 Company's Edition of the " Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. 
 IX., p. 251 f. 
 
158 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 who shall endure his appearing? Do you not 
 see them [Christians] exposed to wild beasts, 
 that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and 
 yet not overcome ? Do you not see that the more 
 of them are punished, the greater becomes the 
 number of the rest? This does not seem to be 
 the work of a man: this is the power of God; 
 these are the evidences of his manifestation "^ 
 It is the gentleness, persuasiveness, and God-like 
 love in which the Saviour appears, and the spirit- 
 ual power against sin and against the greatest 
 of terrors, that of sudden and awful death, which 
 he imparts, that prove him to be God. 
 
 Specific reflection upon the nature of Christ 
 early began. The apostolic fathers were engaged 
 in the most direct and practical conflict with the 
 sin of the pagan world. The source of their 
 hope, the ground of their salvation, and their God 
 they found in Jesus Christ. By faith in him 
 they received forgiveness, and this was founded 
 upon the great features of his redeeming work. 
 These few doctrinal elements were enough to en- 
 able them to maintain the great conflict they were 
 waging, and beyond them their thoughts did not 
 generally go. Ignatius has a phrase or two 
 which suggest later discussions'; but it was in 
 
 ^Ibidem, vol. I., p. 27 f. 
 
 * " Begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible ", 
 Eph. vii.; "who was before the eternities with the Fa- 
 ther", Mag. vi.; "Christ his Son, who is his Logos, 
 proceeding from silence", Mag. viii.;cf. Smyrn.i. and 
 Eph. xviii. 
 
The Person of Christ 159 
 
 general left to the apologists to begin the long 
 series of studies upon this theme which was to 
 result in the Chalcedon doctrine of perfect divin- 
 ity and perfect humanity in the unity of one per- 
 son. 
 
 The general course of argument in both apolo- 
 gists and polemics is from the Scriptures as an 
 objective authority, and ordinarily excludes ap- 
 peals to experience. Yet hints of a similar line 
 of thought to that above drawn out are not en- 
 tirely lacking. For example, in Irenaeus III. 
 xix. I, the argument for the superhuman charac- 
 ter of Christ is from the " freedom " which the 
 Christian has, lacking which men, of course, do 
 not see what Christ is. Again, IV. xiii. 2, the lib- 
 eration wrought by the Word produces " piety 
 and obedience due to the Master of the house- 
 hold " ; and in V. xvii. 3, the argument is from 
 the remission of sins by Jesus to his divinity, 
 which could scarcely have been made, had there 
 been no subjective experience of forgiveness, al- 
 though the proof adduced that he did forgive 
 sins is the gospel record (Matt. ix. 2, 6). 
 
 Following, therefore, the line of more objec- 
 tive discussion, the apologists first develop the 
 argument suggested by the Fourth Gospel, and 
 thus advance the doctrine of the Logos. " When 
 the race was sunk in sin and misery ", says the 
 Epistle to Diognetus, for substance, " God for a 
 time endured this, that men might learn how 
 impossible it was for them to save themselves. 
 
i6o Christian Life and Theology 
 
 Out of his infinite goodness he had, however, al- 
 ways determined to save men. This he did by 
 revealing his purpose in his Son. He, the all- 
 Ruler and all-Creator, did not send an angel or 
 inferior being, but the very architect and builder 
 of the whole, by whom he created the heavens. 
 This was in fulfillment of a plan formed in eter- 
 nity and communicated, in consequence of the re- 
 lationship subsisting between them, to the Son, 
 who was the Logos, who, speaking openly, re- 
 vealed the truth. By him is the church enriched, 
 from him comes all its instruction, through him 
 is the tradition of the apostles preserved, and 
 each individual teacher taught.'' 
 
 Justin and the other apologists under his lead 
 advance a little upon this elementary and still 
 quite biblical statement in the direction of certain 
 theoretical elements designed to add something 
 of a rationale. Their doctrine may be summarily 
 stated in the following form: — God, who had 
 from eternity wisdom in himself, before his 
 works and as a beginning of the same, begat of 
 himself by an act of his will a Son, who was an- 
 other God, numerically distinct and yet not sep- 
 arate from himself. By this Son God created the 
 worlds, revealed himself in the prophets and the 
 Scriptures, appeared unto the patriarchs and 
 others in the theophanies, was graciously present 
 in all men, and produced everything good in the 
 world, till at last this Son was miraculously born 
 
The Person of Christ i6i 
 
 of a virgin and as our Saviour lived and died in 
 our behalf. 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out the elements of 
 confusion in this brief summary, the ineffectual 
 efforts to maintain the eternity of the Logos while 
 ascribing to him generation, and to make him 
 " another " from God that he might be a true 
 agent in the work of creation and salvation while 
 preserving the indivisible and unchangeable char- 
 acter of divinity. Such confusion belongs to the 
 beginning of thinking on any obscure and com- 
 plicated theme. Enough to say that from this 
 point the thinking of the church steadily ad- 
 vanced under successive leaders. We may say 
 that the divinity of Christ was questioned by no 
 party in the church, not even primarily by those 
 who ended in denying it. The one question all 
 were seeking to answer was. What is this divine 
 which is in Christ, and what its relation to the 
 Father? The monarchians were jealous for the 
 unity of God and sought such an answer as 
 should harmonize with this ultimate and unsur- 
 rendered fact ; and they finally said, some of them, 
 Christ is a mere man, others. The divine in him 
 is the divinity of the Father, appearing now un- 
 der the form of the Son. Tertullian rather stuck 
 close to Justin's form of thought and called the 
 Son another person but not another being (alius 
 not aliud) and emphasized his subordination, 
 vacillating however in his forms of expression 
 
1 62 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 and leaving unremoved obscurities of idea. Or- 
 igen sought to gain a point of view from which 
 the evident subordination of the Son and his per- 
 fect and true divinity might be reconciled, by de- 
 claring the eternity of the generation, thus dis- 
 tinctly advancing upon Justin; and yet, because 
 the word " God " was for him an ambiguous 
 word, and because he did not sharply distinguish 
 between the creature and the creator, he could 
 not so state his teaching that it was fitted to be- 
 come a permanent part of the doctrine of the 
 church. Christ was not the *' principle ", nor the 
 ** fountain of deity ", nor 6 0£os, but only e«6j, 
 a " second god ", '* the god who comes after the 
 Father in all things." 
 
 In such a slow progress of thinking, where so 
 many elements of thought are mingled in appar- 
 ently hopeless perplexity and uncertainty, it or- 
 dinarily requires the shock of some one great 
 event to startle men into clear apprehension and 
 final crystallization of their substantial belief. 
 Such a shock was given in this case by the rough 
 and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the 
 conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice fol- 
 lowed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals 
 of ice will sometimes form when the containing 
 vessel receives a blow. Arius sought a real ex- 
 planation of the divine in Christ. It was not 
 what Sabellius had said, the Father himself; it 
 could not be another, and an independent deity; 
 it must therefore be a created being " advanced " 
 
The Person of Christ 163 
 
 to deity because of the perfection of its charac- 
 ter and its infinitely valuable work of redemption. 
 The Council became clear under the lead of Ath- 
 anasius, that this was a false solution and finally 
 settled upon that form of stating Christ's divinity 
 which has ever since maintained its place, that he 
 is " consubstantial " with the Father. 
 
 As to this conclusion certain things ought to be 
 noted. First, the character of Christian thinking 
 for completeness and logical accuracy ought to 
 be emphasized. Every possible logical solution 
 of the problem was suggested and all rejected for 
 various good reasons except the one finally adop- 
 ted^. On the side of logical accuracy the discus- 
 sion, therefore, leaves nothing to be desired, and 
 has never been surpassed in the annals of 
 thought. Again, the Council of Nice was in fact 
 ahead of its age, and what it thus successfully set 
 forth could not at once be received. It was 
 therefore followed by a series of discussions, ex- 
 
 * The different solutions advanced may be arranged by 
 exhaustive dichotomic division as follows : — 
 
 The Divine in Christ was 
 
 Truly God, Not God. 
 
 I I 
 
 The Father, Not the Father. Christ a mere man. Not man [and 
 {Sabellius). I {Paul of Samos- not God], the 
 
 j ata etc.) [created] Lo- 
 
 j i gos. 
 
 Subordinate CONSUBSTANTIAL (Artus). 
 
 (.Tertullian, Origen^ {Nice). 
 
 We see thus, at a glance, that no other suggestion is 
 logically possible. 
 
164 Christian Life and Theology- 
 tending over the following fifty-six years, in 
 which every illogical as well as every logical form 
 of solution was discussed. But from this fuller 
 and often passionate discussion, the church re- 
 turned to accept finally at Constantinople what 
 had been affirmed at Nice, and to carry it on un- 
 changed to Chalcedon after seventy years more, 
 whence it has been brought down still unchanged 
 to us. 
 
 What then has careful historical criticism to 
 say upon the soundness of this development, — 
 for development there is here, from the simple 
 biblical form of Ignatius' expressions, through 
 all the confusion of Justin, to the highly techni- 
 cal expressions of the two great councils. Does 
 the doctrine that Christ is God " begin in a germ 
 actually present in the recorded instruction of 
 Jesus Christ and his apostles " ? Most emphat- 
 ically we must say. Yes; the proof having been 
 already drawn out at length. Again, Does it 
 " proceed according to the laws of logical se- 
 quence " ? In the broadest meaning of this en- 
 quiry we must at once answer. Yes ; for we have 
 seen that the discussion exhausted the field of 
 logical possibilities. In the narrower sense, 
 whether the arguments used to support the Ni- 
 caean thesis were valid to our present thinking, 
 we shall have something more to say shortly ; but 
 we may now answer, Yes ; for the assent of Chris- 
 tian thinkers is still given to-day to this thesis, 
 and we have ourselves seen that it accords with 
 
The Person of Christ 165 
 
 that particular style of argument which we are 
 here considering, the experiential. Thirdly, 
 Does it agree with other doctrines? This we 
 may leave till we come to those doctrines in the 
 progress of discussion, except as we may even 
 now remark that it is confessedly the fundamen- 
 tal doctrine on which the " evangelical system " 
 is built, and must therefore be consistent with the 
 successive features of that system. And, finally. 
 Does it agree with sound biblical exegesis? Our 
 answer must be that consubstantiality alone can 
 satisfy the demands of Jn. i. i : " the Word was 
 with God [' con ' a difference of some sort], and 
 was God [the substance, deity, being common to 
 both] '\ and of all those passages which predicate 
 of Christ the reception of divine attributes and 
 offices, creation, judgment, etc. 
 
 Thus we say, the voice of general Christian ex- 
 perience, as expressed by the deliberate results of 
 Christian thinking is for that doctrine for which 
 our own individual experience speaks, the God- 
 head of Christ. And we confirm our analysis 
 of history by that other canon of Newman^s, 
 " chronic vigor ", for the doctrine has survived 
 till this day. 
 
 The churches of New England, at any rate, 
 have evidence to give as to its survival. One 
 hundred years ago a movement was begun there, 
 which soon gained control of polite society, or 
 professional life, of the principal ancient 
 churches, and of the university, that wrote upon 
 
1 66 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 its banners as its distinguishing sign and battle- 
 cry the denial of the true deity of the Son. It 
 seemed as if the ancient theology had received its 
 death blow, for what could the remaining 
 churches promise of strength or courage or stren- 
 uous contest or final victory when they had lost 
 their leaders, their prestige, and apparently the 
 most valuable portion of their membership, when 
 to every other taunt this was added that they were 
 groping in the darkness of mediaeval obscurities 
 and of still more ancient ignorance and supersti- 
 tion, when all the light and progress of the mod- 
 ern era were declared against them? But they 
 rallied ! Their churches now number in the orig- 
 inal seat of the controversy, the State of Massa- 
 chusetts, as many as the churches of the defection 
 in the whole country, and it is by these churches, 
 confessing both the Father and the Son, that the 
 American work of foreign missions was begun 
 and a large part of American home missionary 
 labor has been performed. The theology of Nice 
 proves itself to have vital power to-day as of 
 old! There is now no strong and aggressive 
 Christian church, full of good works, and histor- 
 ically deserving the name first given the disciples 
 at Antioch, which is not established upon the Ni- 
 cene foundation. 
 
 Before we leave the Council of Nice one thing 
 more needs to be noted. In a sense the strength 
 of the Council itself, as of the long and bitter con- 
 troversy thereafter, centered in the person of Ath- 
 
The Person of Christ 167 
 
 anasius. We have at hand fortunately the 
 means for determining the grounds upon which 
 Athanasius rested his beHef, for he not only be- 
 came the central figure at Nice but the principal 
 disputant upon the side of the Council in subse- 
 quent years, and his voluminous writings enable 
 us to follow the course of his thought minutely. 
 His predecessor Alexander, seems both to have 
 received the results of previous thinkers* labor as 
 a tradition and to have arrived by his own reflec- 
 tion at mature and settled results ; for he was at 
 once ready to meet the Arian proposals with a 
 counter statement which leaves little to be desired 
 for clear presentation of the true deity of the 
 Son. Athanasius was trained therefore in an at- 
 mosphere where the main proposition, that Christ 
 was God, was taken as a fundamental Christian 
 truth, not itself open to further questioning and 
 furnishing the standard by which other dcictrine 
 was to be tested. He became remarkably famil- 
 iar by his own study with the Scriptures and 
 gained his chief and decisive arguments in favor 
 of the orthodox position from them. The " Ora- 
 tions against the Arians " are one continuous ex- 
 egetical argument, and none can say that on the 
 whole the exegesis does not reproduce the true 
 meaning of the Bible. There are faults of in- 
 terpretation arising from the defects of exegetical 
 science in those days, such as the introduction of 
 irrelevant texts, and the free employment of alle- 
 gory ; but the latter mode of treatment was forced 
 
1 68 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 on Athanasius by his adversaries in respect to 
 Proverbs viii. 22 ff: "The Lord created [LXX. 
 cKTide] me a beginning of his ways, for his 
 works " ; the text in reference to which his chief 
 exegetical sins are committed, and the use of ir- 
 relevant texts is sometimes the result of the con- 
 viction that the divinity of Christ, being in Scrip- 
 ture, is reflected or suggested at many points 
 where it is not strictly proved, so that such texts 
 have a bearing, even if not capable of serving as 
 primary proofs. Yet the argument in form and 
 in spirit is a refutation of error, rather than the 
 fresh and original establishment of a truth. That 
 truth for Athanasius is already established. He 
 is now concerned in showing how every sugges- 
 tion of the Arians, instead of helping to interpret 
 or defend the truth, corrupts or destroys it. The 
 Lord Jesus Christ is " God and Son of the Fa- 
 ther ", and the decisive question is " Which of 
 these two theologies [the orthodox or the Arian] 
 sets him forth thus " (i. 9) ? He charges upon 
 his opponents error in method, that they begin 
 with the humanity and strive to rise to deity, 
 whereas they should begin with the other, since 
 the deity admits of no question (iii. 29 ff. and 35). 
 Then they make Christ a creature so that he 
 cannot be God, whereas he is God and therefore 
 cannot be a creature. Of such arguments there 
 are many ; but they are not the sole or the funda- 
 mental arguments, however much the exigencies 
 of the debate may compel their amplification and 
 
The Person of Christ 169 
 
 reiteration. Thus Athanasius, says Thomasius, 
 " does not delay upon the more dialectical replies, 
 he goes to the root of the antagonism, to the in- 
 consistency of Arianism with the Christian con- 
 sciousness of redemption, and emphasizes this 
 with striking power. The proposition to which 
 Arianism, in spite of all its turnings and evasions, 
 always comes back finally, the proposition that 
 the Son is a creature, absolutely annihilates 
 Christianity. Christianity is essentially on the 
 one hand redemption from sin and death, on the 
 other reunion of fallen humanity with God. 
 * Such redemption and restoration no creature is 
 able to effect but only he who is at once man and 
 in essence one with God. Only the incarnate 
 God can redeem man from sin and curse and 
 death, only God can unite the creature with God 
 [hence the necessity of incarnation, death, and 
 resurrection]. If the Son were a creature, he 
 could not have taken away sin and the curse of 
 sin, conquered death, and communicated life; we 
 should still be lying in death, under the old curse, 
 still unclothed with immortality, not glorified with 
 Christ. Had he become man as a creature, man 
 had remained what he was before, not united 
 with God; for how could a creature be united 
 with the Creator by a creature, or what help 
 could come from like to like, since it needed it- 
 self like help ? How could the Logos, if he were 
 a creature, undo God's sentence and remit sin, 
 since this is the prerogative of God alone ? In a 
 
lyo Christian Life and Theology- 
 word, how could a transitory being forgive sin? 
 But the Lord forgave it and thereby shewed that 
 he was in truth the one Logos and the image of 
 the Father who alone judges and forgives sin. 
 For man had not been deified if joined to a crea- 
 ture, or unless the Son were very God; nor had 
 man been brought into the Father's presence, un- 
 less he had been his natural and true Word who 
 had put on the body. And as we had not been 
 deHvered from sin and the curse unless that 
 which the Word put on had been by nature hu- 
 man flesh (for we should have had nothing com- 
 mon with what was foreign), so also man had 
 not been deified unless the Word who became 
 flesh had been by nature from the Father and true 
 and proper to him. For the union was of this 
 kind in order that he who is man bv nature might 
 become one with him who is God by nature, and 
 thus his salvation and deification might be made 
 sure \"^ 
 
 Few of us will probably sympathize with the 
 details of Athanasius* arguments. His realism, 
 and his consequent thought of a union with God 
 effected for humanity by the incarnation as a 
 physical fact, of a change essentially ethical ef- 
 fected without the action of the moral nature of 
 man, are not to-day very acceptable, — from my 
 own point of view altogether erroneous. But his 
 
 ^" Dogmengeschichte," I., p. 211. The quotations are 
 somewhat freely put together from Contra Ar., II., 67- 
 70, cf. III., 33' 
 
The Person of Christ 171 
 
 main thought is a simpler one, which we shall 
 find reproduced in all our minds, the conviction 
 that the depth of our necessity is too great for 
 any being to explore except God himself. It is 
 essentially the argument which gives us our 
 Christian doctrine of God. We know the world 
 and we know ourselves ; only a divine Saviour is 
 sufficient for us. 
 
 We should pause to note that, sharply as Kaf- 
 tan and the Ritschlians criticize the ancient doc- 
 trine for its realistic and physical aspects, at this 
 vital point in the development of Christian doc- 
 trine they all, even Harnack, concede its correct- 
 ness. Much as Harnack disagrees with and dis- 
 likes Thomasius, he agrees with him in his esti- 
 mation of the " immortal service " (Thomasius, 
 op. cit., p. 219) rendered by Athanasius, who, he 
 says, " saved the Christian church " (Harnack, 
 Doggsch., II., p. 221). He thinks that Atha- 
 nasius saved " religion ", that is personal relation 
 to God in redemption, which Arius would have 
 buried beneath a philosophical cosmology that 
 would have converted Christianity into a mere 
 system of intellectual speculation. At this point, 
 then, the thirst for " knowledge " did not corrupt 
 Christian doctrine. 
 
 We have thus found the doctrine of the divin- 
 ity of Christ founded in our personal experience 
 of grace and in the universal experience of the 
 church, both primitive and later. But the Coun- 
 cil at Nice did more than declare that the Son 
 
172 Christian Life and Theology. 
 
 was God, being consubstantial with the Father. 
 The Nicseno-Constantinopolitan creed formula- 
 ted a doctrine of the Trinity, for it confessed its 
 belief in the Father, in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life. 
 This doctrine is not so immediately derived from 
 Christian experience as the other; but it will be 
 worth our while to see in what respects experi- 
 ence both prepares for and confirms it. 
 
 To solve this problem we retrace our steps and 
 begin again at the beginning of all Christian life, 
 with the original and ultimate fact of the new 
 birth. That event emphasizes in consciousness 
 the idea of law, and associates with God, as he 
 appears before the soul in the process of its re- 
 flection upon its experiences, the attribute of law- 
 giver; for conscience which creates the convic- 
 tion of law for us, is the work of our Creator, and 
 must utter his voice and not any merely subjec- 
 tive imagination of our own. And those further 
 experiences and moral intuitions and convictions, 
 of responsibility and guilt and condemnation, the 
 soul also projects into the objective world and 
 concludes that God recognizes the personality and 
 responsibility of every sinner, and will visit every 
 such one with his displeasure. 
 
 But, now, God appears in a second aspect, 
 which is in no way derivable from this first as- 
 pect alone. This speaks condemnation and testi- 
 fies of justice and involves separation and dis- 
 tance between Creator and creature, Law-giver 
 
The Person of Christ 173 
 
 and law-breaker. No one could infer from such 
 a fact as to God that he would move out of that 
 isolated and severe sphere of condemnation and 
 opposition and begin a work of regeneration in 
 sinful souls by assembling about them the infinite 
 motives of the divine love leading to self-recogni- 
 tion and self-condemnation, to repentance and to 
 submission. But God does thus reveal himself, 
 and it is upon the shining path furnished by the 
 rays of such illuminating and kindling light that 
 the soul actually ascends to the knowledge of 
 God. Moreover the revelation of God does not 
 stop here; for now a third thing not merely un- 
 expected but paradoxical occurs. This second 
 aspect of God, however impossible to infer from 
 the first, does not appear contradictory of it and 
 thus seem paradoxical. If there can be any end 
 conceived, it does not diminish the justice of God 
 that he should move the sinner towards repent- 
 ance. But when he forgives, when he reverses 
 justice, when he causes self-condemnation to 
 cease within the Christian's soul, when he ap- 
 pears as Saviour, then he has done something 
 which experience does not explain. It accepts it ; 
 but it does not understand it. And so God ap- 
 pears in three distinct relations before the soul in 
 its first living contact with him ; relations so dis- 
 tinct that they appear to reflection first unexpect- 
 ed, and then in part contradictory. 
 
 But Christian experience does not stop with 
 the new birth. This is the ultimate, but it is the 
 
174 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 initial fact of the Christian life, a fact followed 
 by others as germination is followed by growth 
 of stem, leaf, branch, and flower. This growth 
 discloses many things. Christ once accepted as 
 God, many revealing activities get associated with 
 him. " Cosmology ", as Harnack styles it, has 
 no religious interest to him as a merely scientific 
 theme, but as the beginning of salvation the crea- 
 tion of the world by Christ becomes of great in- 
 terest to him, as well as the primal revelation an- 
 tecedent to the advent, whether by theophany or 
 prophecy. Preserver of all things and goal of 
 the universe, the exalted King displays new sides 
 of the character of him who was in the beginning 
 with God. But none of these or other relations 
 or activities in which Christ is found to stand or 
 manifest himself are in any way inconsistent with 
 the primal office of the " expression of God's per- 
 son, and the radiance of his glory ". And fur- 
 ther^ there is a continuation of the work of regen- 
 eration in sanctification. On one side, these 
 works are identical; for, as regeneration is the 
 persuasive application of motives to the will lead- 
 ing it to the initial step of conversion, so there is 
 a constant persuasive activity of God in main- 
 taining the faltering Christian life by the con- 
 tinued presentation of incitements to resist evil 
 and do good. And so the divine Spirit appears 
 as awakener, teacher, inspirer, medium of com- 
 munion with God (Ro. viii. 15, 26), and sancti- 
 fier. Thus there are three ever enlarging rela- 
 
The Person of Christ 175 
 
 tions in which the Christian soul stands with 
 God; but further than these three, Father, Son, 
 and Holy Spirit, no distinct divine agencies ap- 
 pear operative in any Christian experience. 
 
 We say " any ". There are no more in the 
 Scriptures. While there is no developed doctrine 
 of the trinity in the Bible expressed in the forms 
 of Nice, or in other theological formulations, the 
 attitude of the New Testament writers is evident- 
 ly that which we have found as we have traced 
 the developments of our own experience. They 
 refer all these separate offices which we have re- 
 ferred to the Son and the Spirit, to the same, and 
 in the same way. They mention no others. And 
 when apostles wish to supplicate the fulness of 
 the divine blessing for some beloved church, for 
 Corinth, or Philippi, or Rome, they can ask only 
 for the love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. 
 Thus are exhausted both the fulness of the divine 
 blessing and the number of the divine persons. It 
 is the doctrine of the trinity in simple experiential 
 expression. It is the outflow of the primal intui- 
 tion of the Christian that everything about our 
 salvation, both in its inception and in all its long 
 development and perfection, comes from God and 
 has its eternal ground in his nature. 
 
 The modern German school of experiential the- 
 ologians originated by Albrecht Ritschl will ob- 
 ject strongly to the course of our argument and 
 to our result. All these themes have no " inter- 
 
176 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 est " to the Christian, that is, in no way contrib- 
 ute to his Christian Hfe. It is true, there is an 
 economical trinity, for God does sustain the three 
 relations of Father, Redeemer, and Spirit, or 
 manifests himself in three ways. But as for the 
 " ontological relations " of these personal ex- 
 pressions of God, for the pre-existence of Christ, 
 etc., they are of no " interest " to us, and do not 
 belong in Christian theology, whatever may be 
 true about them or not true. As we look at 
 Christ we behold God in the only sense in which 
 it is of any importance that we should know him, 
 as coming to us in forgiving love. Christ has 
 divine attributes, because he has perfect love, and 
 is unchangeably superior to the world; and he 
 exemplifies these divine attributes in his per- 
 fect loyalty to his calling as the messenger 
 of reconciliation, even when this involves 
 submission to death. He is a being " filled 
 with divine contents ". All this is of the utmost 
 importance to us. Christ excites towards God, 
 the Father, and towards himself the liveliest feel- 
 ings of confidence, affection, and loyalty. He 
 does this because of his manifested character. 
 But his pre-existence is of no importance to us. 
 It separates between him and us rather than 
 unites us with him, for it carries him away into a 
 sphere where we know nothing of him and come 
 in no contact with him. And thus, to say the 
 least that can be said, it is, in the Ritschlian view^ 
 altogether outside the true sphere of Christian 
 
The Person of Christ 1 77 
 
 theology. Ritschl himself, according to his son 
 Otto, believed as truly in the deity of Christ as in 
 the existence of God ; but it remained for him an 
 unexplained paradox, like the co-existence of di- 
 vine sovereignty and human freedom, and when 
 he made any positive affirmation as to the nature 
 of Christ, it was always this, A mere man with 
 divine contents.* 
 
 But this is all an exaggerated subjectivism. 
 One might as well go a little further and say that 
 the existence of God himself is of no '' interest " 
 to us, that nothing is required to constitute a 
 genuine religious experience but the recognition 
 of duty and the voluntary assumption of its ob- 
 ligations. God himself we can never see ; and if 
 we view him as existing in eternity, we " sepa- 
 rate him from us rather than bring him near," 
 because we create the impassable gulf between 
 him and us which necessarily separates the in- 
 finite from the finite. If man recognizes the law 
 of his being and obeys it, that is enough. So we 
 might say, and so theoretical atheists and modern 
 agnostics have often said; but they have never 
 carried the assent of Christian thinkers. 
 
 We need not only subjective experience of 
 which we are perfectly certain as subjective, but 
 also an objective ground for the same. Chris- 
 
 * For more detailed criticisms see Dr. James Orr's 
 book upon the Ritschlian theology, and articles upon 
 Christology in the Bihliotheca Sacra by the lecturer in 
 the volume for the year 1896. 
 
178 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tian thinking demands this by the unavoidable 
 law of the human mind. We pass from the phe- 
 nomena of the soul and the world to God, and by 
 a similar and equally necessary process of reason- 
 ing we pass from what we know of Christ, from 
 his work in our souls, and from the attributes he 
 manifests in human history, from his " divine 
 contents ", to his own divinity. We ascribe real- 
 ity to this divinity, and then we ask, What con- 
 ception of that divinity is necessary to form a 
 consistent view of God and of Christ? And the 
 answer to that question, the only possible answer 
 under the conditions imposed by Christian think- 
 ing, is his consubstantial divinity. 
 
 This result, we maintain in opposition to 
 Ritschl, is of the utmost " interest " to the Chris- 
 tian. He cannot sustain that attitude of perfect 
 reliance upon Christ which Christian piety ac- 
 tually demands nor look to him for the divine 
 gifts of forgiveness and sanctification unless he 
 believes him to be truly God, not merely a man in 
 moral harmony with God. We cannot join the 
 pagans of Greece and Rome in deifying men. We 
 cannot trust ourselves to a mere man however 
 good. The person we believe in, that very man 
 Jesus Christ, must be somehow, in some reality 
 of his being, the personal God. As such he must 
 have the attributes of God, he must be eternal. 
 It is only as we view Christ as eternal that we 
 view him at all as God. A temporal, temporary 
 Christ is not God. And when he manifests " su- 
 
The Person of Christ 179 
 
 periority to the world ", as Ritschl says he must, 
 capable of imparting itself to me, I must know 
 whether it is a real " superiority ", amounting to 
 a " dominion ", whereby he is able to take me un- 
 der his almighty protection and secure my salva- 
 tion, or whether it is only ideal, and merely means 
 that he could die for duty's sake. So can I, and 
 so have thousands who had no Christian hope to 
 sustain them. But what I need is real, objective, 
 almighty, world-controlling and universe-govern- 
 ing, truly divine, dominion. That is what ex- 
 cites my " interest ", moves my " feelings of 
 pleasure '\ and gives me the hope of eternal life. 
 But in a mere god-like man, who in himself can 
 only die, I have no such interest, in fact, I view 
 the mere ideal, when it is presented to me as my 
 Saviour, with positive pain and apprehension. If 
 that is my only hope, I am, " of all men, most 
 miserable ". 
 
 How utterly Ritschl failed to understand the 
 demands of Christian piety and how differently 
 the universal church views its Lord, Jesus Christ, 
 may be seen, as by a single glance of the eye, in 
 the hymns which have found an universal cur- 
 rency. That most majestic hymn, the Te Deum 
 Laudamus, which might well be styled the uni- 
 versal hymn of the modern as of the ancient 
 church, praises God as Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost ; and when it bursts into its fullest harmo- 
 nies it is to sing : " Thou art the King of Glory, 
 O Christ, thou art the everlasting Son of the Fa- 
 
i8o Christian Life and Theology 
 
 ther." And in the Gloria in Excelsis, it is to the 
 " only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Lord God, 
 Lamb of God, Son of the Father," that the prayer 
 for forgiving mercy goes up. These hymns have 
 thrilled the Christian generations, and no Chris- 
 tian to-day can hear them with an intelligent ap- 
 prehension of their meaning without profound 
 emotion. They not only bear on their wings the 
 petitions of a praying church and are intrinsically 
 fit to do so; but represent that vital element, the 
 removal of which would clip the wings of soaring 
 praise and aspiration, stifle the voice of supplica- 
 tion, chill the emotions of the Christian heart, and 
 leave the struggling soul undefended in the temp- 
 tations of the world; for, in varying figure, ar- 
 mor, vital heat and light, golden chains lifting up 
 towards heaven and binding the soul to the feet 
 of God, and more, is the belief of the Christian in 
 Christ as truly God. We face a revived Gnosti- 
 cism in this new agnostic subjectivism of the 
 Ritschlians, against which we must join with the 
 Polemics of the third century in confessing Je- 
 sus Christ " truly " God and " truly " come in 
 the flesh. 
 
 We may expect that the Ritschlian school in 
 general will abandon the position of Ritschl, as 
 Kaftan has clearly done. In the Dogmatik 
 (page 438 ff.) he says: "What Ritschl main- 
 tains, that Christ is not revealed to us in the inner 
 equipment of his nature, and that he possesses 
 importance for us not as a developing character. 
 
The Person of Christ 1 8 1 
 
 but as one complete, is correct But it 
 
 does not follow therefrom that dogmatics need 
 not concern themselves with these questions. On 
 the contrary, consequences arise here which form 
 essential elements in that view of history and of 
 the world which results from Christian faith. We 
 cannot fail to draw them, because faith assumes 
 that its doctrines possess objective truth. With- 
 out drawing these conclusions the knowledge 
 (Erkenntniss) of the faith would seem to lack 
 reality." He then goes on to say that the Trin- 
 ity embraces the truth as to the very essence 
 (Wesen) of deity. " God would not be what he 
 is without revelation in the Son and communica- 
 tion through the Holy Spirit." No " ideal " pre- 
 existence of Christ can meet the necessities of the 
 case. " We can formulate the truth," he adds, 
 " only in some such way as this : Jesus is, accord- 
 ing to his godhead, eternally in God; and we 
 must admit the concept of his pre-existence as the 
 sensuous expression for this truth, confining it, 
 however, strictly within the proper limits." 
 
 But we must hasten on from this to other 
 topics. We pause to call attention briefly to the 
 self-imposed limitations of the argument hither- 
 to, and to the possibility of its indefinite expan- 
 sion, now that the object of that limitation is at- 
 tained. We have drawn our principal arguments 
 upon the subject of this lecture, the Person of 
 Christ, as before, from the immediate conscious- 
 ness of the Christian and from the experiences 
 
1 82 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 arising in, or in immediate connection with, the 
 new birth*. We have gained in soHdity of argu- 
 mentation, but we have lost somewhat in variety, 
 extent, and perhaps to some minds in that co- 
 gency conveyed by an argument from the broader 
 field of the more general and more vividly felt 
 experience of maturer and later years. Our dis- 
 cussion will therefore seek no longer to confine 
 itself to the facts of immediate consciousness, but 
 will now speak with less of accurate discrimina- 
 tion, of Christian experience as the general result 
 in mind and heart of what is known by original 
 perception and what is confirmed, however 
 gained, by the conformity which it proves to have 
 to this more original, and to all other Christian 
 knowledge. And, as 'we turn from our present 
 topic, we linger a moment to remark that the true 
 deity of Christ has one of its most conclusive con- 
 firmations to many minds in its practical useful- 
 ness as a promotive of Christian piety. If, on 
 the one hand, the true humanity of Christ has 
 been the source of strength as the pledge and 
 proof of his knowledge of our human limitations^ 
 and his consequent sympathy with us, so that men 
 have dwelt with edification on his weariness in 
 journeying, his hunger, his agony in Gethsemane, 
 and all his human experiences, still on the other 
 hand the growth of the church in grace has been 
 by the knowledge of his divine perfections. It 
 has been when men have taken every recorded 
 word of his as the utterance of infinite wisdom. 
 
The Person of Christ 183 
 
 and dwelling thereupon have extracted comfort 
 from the fountain of divine perfection, when the 
 critical attitude has been in abeyance and the 
 child-like spirit of the pupil before the unsurpas- 
 sable Master has taken its place, when his spirit- 
 ual intuitions have been recognized as a divine act 
 of his infinite nature and he has been confessed 
 as no mere prophet of truth, but as himself the 
 Truth, as he is the Way and the Life, that saints 
 have arisen in the church whose holy character 
 has excited the mingled reverence and awe of 
 men. Nor have such men lost themselves in the 
 vagaries of mysticism, for the great saints have 
 been the great theologians, — Augustine, Bernard 
 of Clairvaux, Edwards, — as well as the great 
 mystics. The ages of the adoration of Christ 
 have been the ages in which the greatest hymns 
 have been produced, for our greatest hymns are 
 hymns to Christ ; and they have been the greatest 
 ages of missionary advance abroad and of church 
 consolidation at home. The deepest significance 
 attaches to the fact that in the Nicene age, Con- 
 stantine, the founder of a new empire, put the 
 cross before his legions as their sign of conquest, 
 and that our American Nicene age, the beginning 
 of this old and now passing nineteenth century, 
 saw both the most vigorous defence of the true 
 deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most vigorous 
 and successful preaching of salvation by his 
 name, and the inauguration and early triumphs 
 of American missions among the heathen. The 
 
184 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 conquering cross is the sign of every Christian 
 victory. 
 
 But it is the cross. The crown of kingship 
 visible to men was a crown of thorns, the only 
 throne ascended by the king upon earth was the 
 altar of sacrifice. As human worship has gath- 
 ered about Calvary, and the crucified Redeemer 
 been the object of the faith and flaming devotion 
 and adoration of men, so our theme, the person 
 of Christ, is not complete till in the cross we 
 contemplate also his work: which theme shall 
 form the subject of our next lecture. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 Our last lecture brought us before the cross of 
 Christ. The topic thus thrust upon us as the nec- 
 essary completion of the work already underta- 
 ken is, at the same time, the ' next step in our 
 larger task. The work of Christ centers where 
 worship has contemplated it, in the cross ; but we 
 must postpone the direct treatment of this portion 
 of the theme till we have prepared the way by 
 a beginning at a remoter point. 
 
 That point is Christ's work of revelation. He 
 reveals God. This is an objective fact. When 
 the analysis of the motives operating upon the 
 soul in conversion was performed, we saw how 
 they came from Christ, and how the same line of 
 proof which ascribed them to a divine personali- 
 ty, made Christ himself divine. Thus he is God 
 for us, in our experience; and thus the God 
 known by us, the God revealed. His life and 
 words are the revelation of duty. And, as he is 
 more fully known, and in the later experience of 
 the Christian is taken as daily teacher through the 
 written record of his earthly ministry, and 
 through the agency of a present and guiding 
 i8s 
 
1 86 Christian Life and Theology- 
 Spirit, who unfolds to us his meaning (Jn. xvi. 13, 
 14), he reveals to us many things more, the 
 things which " eye hath not seen, .... which 
 God hath prepared for them that love him." 
 Thus is exempHfied — I will not say justified, for 
 it is a justification by experience, a true exempli- 
 fication — the claim to be the Truth itself which 
 our Lord, with either the simplicity of absolute 
 veracity, or with the most astounding blasphemy 
 made for himself. ''Aiit Deus, aut homo non 
 bonus" He speaks with the knowledge of one 
 who came from Heaven (Jn. iii. 31), out of the 
 memories of converse with the Father (iii. 32, 
 v. 20), of what he has known by divine intuition 
 (iii. II, viii. 38), because he himself knows 
 (viii. 40) and is Light (i. 4) and Truth (xiv. 6). 
 He claims most immediate acceptance (iii. 16) 
 and unreserved obedience (xiv.15) for his mes- 
 sage. Nothing is to be preferred to him and his 
 commands (Matt. x. 37). He speaks " with au- 
 thority " (vii. 29), as one requiring no support 
 from others and leaving no room for question and 
 contradiction. No teaching could be more abso- 
 lute or more clothed with the forms and claims 
 of a final authority. And, being what he is to 
 Christian experience, he could teach in no other 
 way. What he himself says is, therefore, in the 
 form in which it is handed down to us in the Bi- 
 ble, God's word, the very truth of the living and 
 present God. 
 
 When the Christian reads the Old Testament, 
 
The Work of Christ 187 
 
 which is, of course, not the record of the teach- 
 ings of the historical Christ, he finds them to be 
 more than the mere teachings of a Moses, a Da- 
 vid, and an Isaiah. Paul saw this, and said that 
 Israel drank in the wilderness of the " spiritual 
 Rock, that followed them, and that Rock was 
 Christ ". We meet in those old pages with what 
 I may call the essential Christ, the eternal Christ, 
 who manifests himself by the character of his 
 shining works, just as he shows what he is in our 
 conversion by the divine beauty and glory of all 
 his operation upon us. In the darkness of a peo- 
 ple just come out of slavery under a pagan civili- 
 zation, beneath the awful rocks of Sinai, we hear 
 the accents of Calvary in that marvellous procla- 
 mation : " Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and 
 gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving 
 kindness and truth; keeping loving kindness for 
 thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression 
 and sin; and that will by no means clear the 
 guilty " (Ex. xxxiv. (i,j). The voice that sum- 
 marizes the law in the two precepts : " Thou shalt 
 love Jehovah thy God, with all thy heart" (Dt. 
 vi. 5), and "thy neighbor as thyself" (Lev. 
 xix. 18), is Christ's whether heard in the Old 
 Testament or the New (Matt. xxii. 37-9). All the 
 preaching of repentance by the prophets is his 
 preaching, whose first sermon in Galilee was, 
 " Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand." And that long prophecy of the Messiah, 
 that gradual rise of the Messianic ideal and con- 
 
1 88 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 sciousness of the people, the successive steps by 
 which the mere earthly descendant of David was 
 replaced by a King of greater splendor than any 
 mere man could wear, and by which the hints of 
 sorrow and the lesson of the discipline of human- 
 ity scattered through the sacred history got their 
 final culmination and interpretation in the fifty- 
 third of Isaiah, with its picture of glory by the 
 way of suffering and kingship through sacrifice, 
 — that exhibits the touch of him who knew the 
 end from the beginning and was the " Lamb slain 
 from the foundation of the world." The " Spirit 
 of Christ in " the prophets " testified " ( i Pet. 
 i. II ), and thus their words are the words of 
 Christ. And in the epistles and prophecy of the 
 New Testament the same thing appears. The 
 promise of the last discourse ( Jn. xvi. 13) was ful- 
 filled so that Paul could say, " We have the mind 
 of Christ"; which mind is clear to the eye of 
 Christian experience in the preeminence which 
 New Testament Scripture, like experience itself, 
 gives to Christ, the central figure both of the re- 
 newal of the soul and of the progress of the 
 Christian life. It is, therefore, not essential to 
 emphasize the claims of apostles and prophets to 
 speak with authority, to lay overmuch weight 
 upon their verbal forms of expression, on their 
 declarations that thus and thus " saith the Lord ", 
 on their anathemas uttered against the preacher 
 of any other gospel, though he were an " angel 
 from heaven ", for these things concern more 
 
The Work of Christ 189 
 
 them whose ears have not been opened. The es- 
 sential teaching of Christ is throughout the Bible, 
 and where the teaching is, there is the essential 
 Christ, there God, and there the authority of God 
 speaking to his creature man, and to his new- 
 created child. 
 
 This is the developed " testimony of the Spirit 
 to the Bible as the Word of God " which has been 
 already adduced as proof of a higher character in 
 the Bible than that of a mere record of Christian 
 experience. The Bible is now seen to be perme- 
 ated with the teaching of Christ, and this teaching 
 possesses divine authority. Thus experience has 
 carried us beyond experience. Experience gives 
 us the authority of Christ, and the authority of 
 Christ is the authority of the vehicle of his pre- 
 incarnate and post-incarnate teaching. 
 
 Our object in these lectures is, however, scien- 
 tific accuracy of reasoning and of statement. Not 
 the popular and general form of definition and 
 proof, but only the close, exact, formal, and justi- 
 fied, can answer our present purpose. We are 
 required, therefore, to scrutinize our position with 
 the eye of a critic possibly hostile to us, and sat- 
 isfy his reasonable demands upon us. 
 
 Our former argument was simple. Certain vi- 
 tal truths were made known to us in the experi- 
 ence of the new birth as indisputably certain. We 
 found our knowledge of them to be grounded in 
 the action of God upon us. We then found the 
 same truths in the Bible as its central and dis- 
 
190 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tinguishing portion. We ascribed to these truths 
 in the Bible the same divine origin they had had 
 in our experience. But now, further analysis has 
 given us further truth and particularly this, of the 
 divinity of Christ. The Bible teaching comes 
 largely from him; therefore, so far as it does, it 
 is divine. And, then, by anticipation of proofs 
 which are yet partly to be delivered, other ele- 
 ments of experience are found to be mirrored in 
 the Bible, till the general inference is drawn that 
 whatever is in the Bible will be found to be di- 
 vine. In fact, the Bible precedes experience; 
 and Christian faith, taking the Bible as its author- 
 ity, and receiving its teaching as true, though 
 their truth may not be at once evident, finds them 
 confirmed by experience, by the perfection with 
 which they adjust themselves to that which has 
 been already accepted and become certain. Thus 
 the natural supposition at any point, that what 
 has so far been found true will be found so still 
 further, is justified, and the Scriptures are re- 
 ceived as authoritative as a whole. 
 
 Now, it may be said, as was briefly noted in an 
 earlier lecture, that such authority is no authori- 
 ty. The argument establishes the Bible as a book 
 of experience, but not as an authority in spheres 
 into which experience does not and cannot enter. 
 Hence I am never brought by it to the position 
 where I am ready to accept what the Bible says 
 simply because it says it, that is, to a recognition 
 of a proper biblical authority. The Bible remains 
 
The Work of Christ 1 9 1 
 
 in some respects as dependent on me as in others 
 I am dependent upon it. We are now prepared 
 for a more thorough and a final treatment of this 
 objection. 
 
 In a large degree the objection must be con- 
 ceded ; and we would concede it immediately and 
 frankly. The argument from experience is not 
 the only argument as to the Scriptures, and it does 
 not profess to cover all the ground or to affirm 
 anything for or against positions which are not 
 involved in its own line of proof. It will still re- 
 main a question, after experience has said all that 
 it has to say, whether scientific and historical 
 matters are, or are not, included in the scope of 
 God's purpose in reference to the Bible and in 
 the consequent authority of the Bible. That 
 question must be left for other times. The ques- 
 tion now is whether in realms where spiritual ex- 
 perience can reach and testify, in the realms of 
 religion and morals, in matters pertaining to God 
 and our duty to him, the Bible has authority. 
 Whatever must be believed as to the origin of 
 man after Genesis teaches he was " created " and 
 science says he was " evolved ", our present ques- 
 tion is another, viz., what is to be believed when 
 Jesus says that the wicked, condemned at the day 
 of judgment, shall go away into " everlasting 
 punishment " ? Now, at this point and others 
 like it, so far as the implications of Christian ex- 
 perience are concerned, the Bible has no author- 
 ity in the sense of being an outward tribunal, con- 
 
192 Christian Life and Theology- 
 firmed as such by some process of installation, as 
 a judge may be set on the bench by royal procla- 
 mation, every word it utters being thus external- 
 ly certified as divinely empowered to teach; but 
 it has the authority of probable truth. Each par- 
 ticular statement is to be believed because it is or- 
 ganically associated with what we know by inde- 
 pendent knowledge ; because it proceeds ultimate- 
 ly from a person whom we recognize as God ; be- 
 cause the Bible has hitherto led us along a path 
 which we found shining with increasing light; 
 and because we may reasonably trust it further. 
 It has all the authority which attaches to matters 
 within the realm of probable reasoning, a very 
 high degree of authority, to which it would be 
 most unreasonable to refuse recognition. In this 
 sense and to this degree, our argument does es- 
 tablish the authority of the Bible. The Christian 
 will continue to bow to it when he cannot see, in 
 the future as in the past. 
 
 A very shallow objection to authority in relig- 
 ion seems to prevail in certain quarters. It seems 
 to be thought that we cannot have authority here 
 at all from the very nature of the case; that I 
 must be able to see conclusively with my own 
 mental eyes everything which I believe, and can- 
 not accept the testimony of any one for what I 
 cannot thus see. Only self-digested and finally 
 evident truth can have any power to elicit my be- 
 lief. It is not necessary to refute this objection 
 at any great length. The practical methods of 
 
The Work of Christ 193 
 
 every science and the experience of every day 
 refute it. None of us here could give proof of 
 the doctrine of gravitation calculated to satisfy 
 the mind of a Newton, who waited years before 
 enunciating it because the moon did not seem to 
 have exactly the orbit the theory required; and 
 yet we believe it. Every scientific observer is 
 daily making use of facts as the basis of his rea- 
 sonings which he has never observed himself but 
 only received by the report of others. A man 
 may certainly believe in the existence of angels 
 upon the testimony of one who credibly claims 
 to have come from the heavenly world, if he can 
 in that of the ornithorhynchous upon the testi- 
 mony of travellers. Neither principles nor facts, 
 the absolute proof of which is beyond me, are 
 thereby debarred from entering into the structure 
 of my knowledge, whether of natural science or 
 of theology. 
 
 But the objection may be put in a more subtile 
 way. It may be said that the witness as to the 
 existence of angels is in no way like him who tells 
 me that there is a duck-billed oviparous quadru- 
 ped in Tasmania the like of which I have never 
 seen. This witness does not pretend to have 
 gone into a region where I could not go. He de- 
 scribes conditions which fit a portion of this 
 earth. He cites the testimony of others, or he 
 proves his general credibility by his characteris- 
 tic conduct. He is a man like myself. Whereas 
 that witness from heaven is unlike me, gives no 
 
194 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 confirmation of his report, and speaks of things 
 which in no way fit into the scheme of things with 
 which I am already famiHar. He must be be- 
 lieved ultimately as a matter of mere authority on 
 his part and of mere belief on mine ; and I cannot 
 thus believe. 
 
 Of course not ; and Christian thinkers make no 
 such demand upon the credulity of any one. 
 There must be verification for the claims of any 
 witness. I must be able to see for myself that he 
 is worthy of credence. He must in some sort be 
 of my kind, speak in a language I can compre- 
 hend, and confirm his claims by facts that I can 
 myself control. But every one of these things is 
 true of Jesus Christ according to the argument 
 sketched in this discussion. He is a man like 
 me; he speaks of spiritual realities in terms ad- 
 dressed to me ; and he confirms his nature by his 
 works in my inmost soul. Therefore I believe 
 him when he speaks of what I cannot so imme- 
 diately test. First of all, I believe him; belief of 
 his words follows thereupon. 
 
 But the Ritschlian objection still remains. Au- 
 thority is of no advantage because only what is 
 seen in the illumination of its own light and 
 thoroughly comprehended can enter into the re- 
 ligious life, since this is, as we ourselves are 
 maintaining, a matter of experience. We meet 
 this position by entire denial. I may in no way 
 see the proofs of gravitation or comprehend it, 
 but if I believe it, even if only in the form that 
 
The Work of Christ 195 
 
 solid bodies have weight, that beUef will have the 
 most important practical consequences for my 
 daily life. And thus, the fear of a future judg- 
 ment accepted on the mere authority of Christ, 
 might have a decisive effect in strengthening 
 and establishing my choice of virtue and my loy- 
 alty to God. It may heighten my view of his 
 character and thus contribute to my love for him, 
 though I may not be able to understand it in all 
 its relations. This contention is against per- 
 ceived facts of the Christian life. 
 
 In antithesis, then, to all these various conten- 
 tions, we have reached a true biblical authority, 
 the conviction derived from Christian experience 
 that the Bible as a whole, in the realms to which 
 alone experience can give testimony, and which 
 alone are of present importance to us, is trust- 
 worthy as a guide to the truth. It is to be be- 
 lieved at any given point because it is generally 
 credible, and until evidence shall be presented 
 that at this point it is not credible; and, experi- 
 ence having as yet found no such error, its entire 
 credibility is enhanced by all the details of the 
 experiential examination. Experience has, there- 
 fore, now led us far beyond our original position 
 that the Bible was valuable as a book of experi- 
 ence. It has given to us a book of instruction; 
 and hence all that it teaches may now be said to 
 be the teaching of Christian experience. Every 
 bibHcal doctrine becomes thus, in a secondary 
 sense, an experiential doctrine. And experience 
 
196 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 coming in, as it does, to support the biblical doc- 
 trines in every case, confirms by the verification 
 obtained through the experimental test what it 
 has by another method already given. The proof 
 of the last statement is the experiential examina- 
 tion of the entire system of evangelical doctrine. 
 
 We turn now from this first branch of the 
 work of Christ, that of revelation, to the second, 
 that of atonement. The paradox involved in for- 
 giveness was perceived by the Christian at the 
 moment of his conversion. He had known God 
 as a lawgiver, condemning sin, and now he found 
 him forgiving sin, and in this seemed to perceive, 
 contradiction. Sometimes in the stress of ago- 
 nized conviction sinners have refused to believe 
 that forgiveness is possible, despairing of the 
 good news of the gospel because it is so good. 
 Their sense of the justice of God outweighs their 
 belief in his goodness. And, however certain the 
 practical solution gained by the experience of for- 
 giveness, the intellectual difficulty remains, and 
 can only be removed by an intellectual process. 
 Hence the problem is one for Christian thought ; 
 but thought here, as well as in other realms which 
 we have traversed, must be illuminated by expe- 
 rience, and will have to engage itself largely with 
 the materials furnished by experience, if it is to 
 give the most satisfactory solution. 
 
 We begin, therefore, this most eminently intel- 
 lectual branch of our theme with the enquiry how. 
 
The Work of Christ 1 97 
 
 in fact, the Christian reposes on the Christ in 
 whom he believes ? In what aspect is this Christ 
 an object of faith and an accepted Saviour? The 
 answer is simple and unquestionable, — Christ is 
 viewed as a Saviour because he is the lamb of Cal- 
 vary. If I were speaking in some circles I might 
 feel called upon to justify this remark, for some 
 in our own day have so modified our inherited 
 theology as to remove the sacrificial death of 
 Christ from the central point it occupies in the 
 biblical account of his work, and their Christian 
 experience may not seem to include the element 
 they have banished from their theology. But for 
 the present this may safely be dismissed as a case 
 of abnormal experience. It is too remote from 
 biblical standards and from the general belief and 
 attitude of the historical church to need very 
 much discussion. Paul's preaching was " the 
 word of the cross " : he presented " Jesus Christ 
 and him crucified " : Christ himself said he " came 
 to give his life a ransom for many " : and John 
 the Baptist when introducing him to the people 
 of Israel summed up his whole character and 
 work in the pregnant phrase taken from the fifty- 
 third of Isaiah, " Behold the Lamb of God which 
 taketh away the sin of the world ". About the 
 cross have therefore centered both the faith and 
 worship of the Christian church. For unnum- 
 bered centuries the Gloria in Excelsis has prayed : 
 *' O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, 
 that taketh away the sins of the world, have 
 
198 Christian Life and Theology- 
 mercy on us " ; and when the Reformers broke 
 away from the ancient church they continued to 
 sing, 
 
 " O sacred Head, now wounded 
 'Tis I deserve thy place; 
 Look on me with thy favor, 
 Vouchsafe to me thy grace " ;* 
 
 and even the Puritan, who was literally as well as 
 figuratively an iconoclast, wrote and sung, as his 
 most beautiful hymn, 
 
 "When I survey the wondrous cross 
 On which the Prince of Glory died".' 
 
 In this work of Christ Christians have always 
 seen something entirely unique, something done 
 for man entirely beyond man's powers, and indis- 
 pensable to his salvation. He becomes our Sa- 
 viour because he does for us that which we cannot 
 do for ourselves. True, in our own day, some 
 have used phrases which carry an implicit denial 
 of this view, as when we are told that we are to 
 do after him what he has done before us ; but one 
 cannot believe that these words are intended to be 
 applied to the sacrificial death of Christ, or at 
 least not in their full meaning. There is, of 
 course, a sense in which the Christian must imi- 
 tate Christ's death, for he is " to take up his cross 
 daily " and follow his Master ; but in its highest 
 meaning and fullest scope the death of Christ is 
 
 *Paul Gerhardt, 1656. 
 "Isaac Watts, 1707. 
 
The Work of Christ 1 99 
 
 no more an object set for our imitation than the 
 creation of the world. Christ is the divine Sa- 
 viour, and nowhere more divine than in the pre- 
 cise work of salvation. He comes for the rescue 
 of the absolutely lost : he does for them that which 
 they are absolutely incapable of doing for them- 
 selves : he lays the foundation for their salvation 
 by his death ; and thus he performs therein a work 
 peculiar to himself and absolutely unique in the 
 whole history of the universe. These are the 
 simplest and most ultimate elements of the Chris- 
 tian's view of his Lord. 
 
 Christian experience thus separates fundamen- 
 tally from those who see no peculiar work 
 wrought by the death of Christ, and sets such a 
 construction aside as entirely un-Christian. It 
 separates as really from all those who see in that 
 great tragedy nothing but the death of a martyr 
 bearing testimony to the truth he had preached. 
 This view has lately gained much currency in 
 certain quarters even among those who think that 
 they still maintain the true deity of Christ; but 
 it is essentially a Unitarian position. If Christ 
 died as a martyr, why did he live as a God? Oc- 
 casionally we hear explanations of his divinity 
 from the advocates of a subjective moral theory 
 of the atonement that he had God in him just as 
 all good men have, except in greater degree. Here 
 the denial of deity has consistently followed the 
 denial of a divine work. It is true that Christ 
 did die as a martyr, as it is that he was a prophet, 
 
200 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 and that the Holy Spirit was given him " without 
 measure " ; but he was also a priest, and at the 
 same time the victim, who came to take away sins 
 by the offering of himself, and he made this of- 
 fering through an Eternal Spirit. With none of 
 these facts can the moral theory be made harmo- 
 nious except by processes of verbal juggling that 
 may have interest for men who enjoy play with 
 words, but have no interest for a great church 
 faced with the awful situation of a perishing 
 world and entrusted with a gospel of salvation. 
 While this church has never forgotten that the 
 most moving display of the divine perfections 
 was made upon Calvary, and thus never ceased to 
 do justice to the truth conveyed by the moral 
 theory, it has always designated the people of 
 Christ as those " redeemed by his precious 
 blood."^ 
 
 If I have failed to carry any of my audience 
 with me in this contention, I must leave the sub- 
 ject for their own meditations, and cannot doubt 
 that if they seriously test their own experience by 
 that of the whole church, they will finally come to 
 the recognition of an objective atonement 
 wrought on Calvary. That test is to be rigor- 
 ously applied in the sequel of the present lecture. 
 For now, therefore, we shall regard our brief re- 
 view of the case sufficient, and lay down, as the 
 foundation of our next discussion, the simple 
 
 * The Te Deum, one of the greatest of the creeds. 
 
The Work of Christ 201 
 
 proposition that Christ does for man in his sacri- 
 fice what man could not do for himself. 
 
 And now, what does Christian experience see 
 in that sacrificial death? 
 
 I must ask you here to look in upon your own 
 souls as I speak. I shall describe what I myself 
 see in the Calvary, and I must rely upon the coop- 
 eration of each one of you for whatever of illumi- 
 nating or convincing power my presentation may 
 attain. Each of you must ask himself, What do 
 I see? What has really imprinted itself upon 
 my soul as the total effect of all my experience 
 and as my view of him when he dies for me ? 
 
 I once came across a picture of the crucifixion 
 by some Spanish artist which had wandered over 
 the ocean to be exhibited at the great Chicago ex- 
 position. It was a realistic picture. There was 
 nothing of the ecclesiastical conventionality of 
 Catholic art about it. It presented the Saviour 
 as he may have looked hanging on the literal 
 cross near twenty centuries ago. On his head 
 was the crown of thorns, and splashes of blood 
 had fallen from its wounds upon his cheeks and 
 shouders and breasts, and lay there in darkening 
 crimson. From the nails through his palms, 
 strained and torn and bloody, his body hung, 
 sunk down in utter exhaustion, drawn and labor- 
 ing for breath. But his head was partially raised, 
 and while his eyes were closed as if their sight 
 failed and about him the shadows of night had 
 already gathered, his mouth was feebly opened 
 
202 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 as if for the scarce articulate cry, " My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " It was a 
 picture to afflict with horror and to fill with awe. 
 But as I looked, I seemed to see certain things. 
 What do you see ? 
 
 I. The Christian sees in the death of Christ 
 the magnitude of the guilt of sin. If Christ were 
 viewed simply as an innocent sufferer, the ques- 
 tion would be borne home upon the mind with 
 great force, Why so gre.at suffering? But when 
 he is viewed as suffering for us, and it is under- 
 stood that our sins nailed him to the tree, the 
 magnitude of the suffering estimated in the light 
 of his person, the greatness of the violence done 
 to him who was not only guiltless and so deserv- 
 ing nothing of pain, but also infinite God and so 
 deserving of every honor and of all holy happi- 
 ness, magnifies the evil for which it was borne. 
 What does God think of sin ? He who would not 
 suffer even his only-begotten Son to come into the 
 world and become involved in its history, though 
 sinless, without being involved also in the penalty 
 of sin, the suffering of death, must have an in- 
 finite disapproval of that which he has thus per- 
 manently and unchangeably marked with pain 
 and loss. Certainly God is not indifferent to sin ! 
 Forgiveness cannot come out of any light esti- 
 mate of it, from any forgetfulness of that law 
 written in conscience, from fickle change of pur- 
 pose, or from anything undivine and unworthy of 
 an infinite and infinitely holy God; for with the 
 
The Work of Christ 203 
 
 forgiveness is thus ever bound up the eternal tes- 
 timony of the cross against sin. 
 
 2. The sight of Calvary intensifies the Chris- 
 tian's self-condemnation. Was this for me? 
 Have I led to all this by my sin? Have 
 I not only set myself against the will of 
 God and spread abroad ruinous influences among 
 men, as I know I have, but have I occasioned 
 such suffering by such a one? Then no words 
 can express my true fault, as none can measure 
 the greatness of this sufferer.^ 
 
 * In Gerhardt's hymn, cited above, which was origin- 
 ally written by Bernard of Clairvaux (iogi-1153), a 
 saint of the Roman Catholic church, we read: 
 
 " What thou, my Lord, hast suffered 
 Was all for sinners' gain; 
 Mine, mine was the transgression, 
 But thine the deadly pain." 
 
 F. W. Faber writes in 1849: 
 
 " O love of God ! O sin of man ! 
 
 In this dread act your strength is tried, 
 And victory remains with love. 
 For Thou our Lord art crucified." 
 
 Another Catholic, Da Todi (1306), as translated by a 
 Presbyterian, J. W. Alexander (1842), writes in the 
 famous Stabat Mater: 
 
 "'Twas our sins brought him from heaven; 
 These the cruel nails had driven; 
 All his griefs for us were borne." 
 
204 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 3. Whatever the obstacle to forgiveness may 
 be, the impression is made by the death of Christ, 
 that here is an adequate remedy. Indeed, the 
 weight of the impression is not on the adequacy 
 of the remedy: of course this is adequate, for 
 greater remedy than the suffering of the innocent 
 Son of God cannot be imagined. The mind 
 views this at once as beyond question, and by 
 reaction spends its entire force of reflection upon 
 the thing remedied, on the greatness of the ob- 
 stacle thus illustrated. In what does that lie? 
 Partly at least, where experience has already 
 found it, in the law of God which threatens a 
 penalty that by forgiveness is ever uninflicted. 
 But this obstacle is abundantly met, for no known 
 object of law, — whether to display God's right- 
 eousness, to prevent the sin of man, or to provoke 
 man to positive deeds of holiness, — could be bet- 
 ter gained than by Calvary when its great event 
 is understood to be connected with the sin of man. 
 Who will sin carelessly that looks upon Calvary ? 
 Who will trifle with a God that afflicts for the 
 sin of man even his own Son? Who doubt the 
 
 A. T. Russell (1851) wrote: 
 
 "Ah, Lord, our sins arraigned thee 
 And nailed thee to the tree." 
 
 And so, with innumerable examples, the position could 
 be made impregnable, if it needed it, that Christians of 
 all ages and churches have seen their own sins in the 
 light of the sacrifice of Calvary. 
 
The Work of Christ 205 
 
 infinite meaning and worth of a law thus sus- 
 tained, and of the holiness it demands ? Thus, if 
 the obstacle be in the law, it is perfectly removed 
 by the suffering of Calvary. Indeed, in some re- 
 spects the law is more highly honored by the 
 death of Christ than it would be by the punish- 
 ment of the guilty. For, if it were possible to 
 suspect that punishment might be inflicted by 
 some mechanical contrivance and in some routine 
 spirit, or in real indifference to the great things 
 the law sets forth, when the punishment fell on 
 the guilty parties who could perhaps not interest 
 God much, on account of their very wickedness, 
 there can be no possibility of doubting God's in- 
 finite earnestness and profound interest in every- 
 thing involved in the law, when instead of letting 
 men who have sinned go free on mere repentance, 
 he has inflicted first, as the price of their redemp- 
 tion, such a chastisement upon his own Son, 
 which is as if he had borne it upon the quivering 
 strings of his own heart, — as without much fig- 
 ure of speech, he may be said truly to have done. 
 4. Thus the sacrifice magnifies righteousness, 
 guilt, penalty, law, love, forgiveness; and thus 
 the Christian experiences a peculiar satisfaction 
 in contemplating his salvation as arising from the 
 cross. Forgiveness is no longer a mere matter 
 of subjective experience or certainty, however 
 well founded these may appear. It has a recog- 
 nizable objective ground. The peace which con- 
 stitutes the Christian's sense of forgiveness now; 
 
2o6 Christian Life and Theology- 
 gains in solidity and permanency, and as the sin- 
 ner puts his trust in Christ as his Redeemer he 
 feel a new joy in his surrender to a Victor who 
 in triumphant death has shown himself " mighty 
 to save ". It is by no means certain that these 
 inward experiences of the Christian could at all 
 take place without their objective ground. We 
 may not be able to say they could not, while 
 speaking from the point of view of mere experi- 
 ence; but we certainly cannot say they could. 
 They have something peculiarly objective about 
 them. ■ They occur though the soul resists. 
 While the sinner still condemns himself, he finds 
 peace; while he still fails to understand that he 
 has complied with the conditions of salvation and 
 supposes himself to be still under the wrath of 
 God, he finds himself calm and filled with joy, un- 
 able, indeed, when he attempts it, to call back his 
 feelings of self-condemnation. That has the ap- 
 pearance of something objective in its origin, 
 though subjective in its experience; and that it 
 could occur without an objective ground — such as 
 is the sacrifice — is beyond the power of experi- 
 ence to declare. But, however this may be, the 
 confirmation and establishment of peace in the 
 sacrifice of him who is " our peace " is the indis- 
 putable experience of the church.^ 
 
 *The following hymns will illustrate this statement. 
 It is a remarkable fact that, taking them as I have from 
 several modern hymn books in common use in American 
 churches, I have found them chiefly not under the head 
 
The Work of Christ 207 
 
 With this primary result of Christian experi- 
 ence already gained, we turn to the Bible for con- 
 firmation or correction. We are to employ it as 
 a document of experience; but now, after its 
 proper authority in the religious sphere has been 
 established, we are to view it as more than this, 
 as a standard of Christian experience, and one not 
 merely such because it contains the original doc- 
 uments of Christianity but because it is the me- 
 dium of revelation. 
 
 Our first recourse shall be to the sacrificial sys- 
 
 of the crucifixion of Christ, as one might imagine, but 
 under the head of " salvation ". We see thus how em- 
 phatically " salvation " is to the Christian salvation by 
 the sacrifice of Calvary. Note also the differing ages, 
 schools of thought, and types of mind suggested by the 
 names of the writers. 
 
 Toplady (Calvinist, 1776) : 
 
 " Nothing in my hand I bring ; 
 Simply to thy cross I cling; 
 Naked come to thee for dress; 
 Helpless, look to thee for grace; 
 Foul, I to the fountain fly: 
 Wash me Saviour, or I die ! " 
 
 Matthew Bridges (Roman Catholic, 1848) : 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God ! 
 Into the sacred flood 
 Of thy most precious blood 
 
 My soul I cast; 
 Wash me and make me clean within. 
 And keep me pure from every sin, 
 
 Till life be past." 
 
2o8 Christian Life and Theology- 
 tern of the Old Testament, for Christ indisputa- 
 bly was the true sacrifice of which the ancient 
 sacrifices were types and prophecy. Recent in- 
 terpretation of this system has been largely in- 
 fluenced and often controlled by the methods of 
 comparative religion. The heathen religions of 
 India, China, and even Egypt have been searched, 
 as well as those of Greece and Rome, for light 
 
 Dr. Bonar (Presbyterian, 1857) : 
 
 " Thy cross, not mine, O Christ, 
 
 Has borne the awful load 
 Of sins that none in heaven 
 
 Of earth could bear but God. 
 To whom save thee, who canst alone 
 For sin atone. Lord, shall I flee? 
 
 Thy death, not mine, O Christ, 
 
 Has paid the ransom due; 
 Ten thousand deaths like mine 
 
 Would have been all too few. 
 To whom, save thee, who canst alone 
 For sin atone, Lord, shall I flee?" 
 
 T. H. Gill (Episcopalian, 1864) ; from the hymn be- 
 ginning " O mystery of love divine " : 
 
 "For thee the Father's hidden face? 
 
 For thee the bitter cry? 
 For us the Father's endless grace. 
 
 The song of victory? 
 Our load of sin and misery 
 
 Didst thou, the sinless, bear? 
 Thy spotless robe of purity 
 
 Do we the sinners wear ? " 
 
The Work of Christ 209 
 
 upon the true nature of sacrifice, and the conclu- 
 sion has generally been reached that sacrifices are 
 gifts for the purpose either of expressing grati- 
 tude or of purchasing favor. And hence it has 
 been frequently argued that the biblical sacrifices 
 were the same, and particularly that they were 
 not substitutionary. Occasionally, it is true, such 
 
 Sir H. W. Baker (Episcopalian, 1875) ; from the 
 hymn " Oh perfect life of love " : 
 
 " And on his thorn-crowned head 
 And on his sinless soul, 
 Our sins in all their guilt were laid, 
 That he might make us whole." 
 
 Joseph Grigg (English Presbyterian, 1765), in the 
 hymn " Behold, a stranger at the door " : 
 
 " But will he prove a friend indeed ? 
 He will; the very friend you need; 
 The Friend of sinners — yes, 'tis He, 
 With garments dyed on Calvary." 
 
 I merely mention Cowper's (Episcopalian, 1779) 
 " There is a fountain filled with blood " ; Wesley's 
 (Methodist, 1750) "Blow ye the trumpet, blow", with 
 its strain, 
 
 *' Extol the Lamb of God 
 The all-atoning Lamb; 
 Redemption in his blood 
 Throughout the world proclaim ; " 
 
 Haweis' (Episcopalian, 1792) " From the cross up- 
 lifted high"; and Montgomery's (Moravian, 1819) 
 " Come to Calvary's holy Mountain, Sinners ruined by 
 the fall ". 
 
2IO Christian Life and Theology 
 
 investigators have seemed to see that the Israel- 
 itish religion was peculiar and that it demanded a 
 study by itself before it could be thus summarily 
 included in the same category with all other re- 
 ligions. The scientific canon that each particular 
 must be carefully examined before generalization 
 formulates the logical conclusion, thus met with 
 some recognition; but the recognition has gener- 
 ally been scant, and its effect upon the outcome 
 inappreciable. The argument has too often re- 
 mained, Because India offered nothing but gifts 
 to its gods, Israel offered nothing but the same 
 to Jehovah. 
 
 Within the confines of the Old Testament it- 
 self a similar process has evacuated its most dis- 
 tinct utterances of their meaning. Because a 
 development in the ideas and symbolic rites of 
 Israel can be traced with more or less certainty, 
 the conclusion has been drawn that the later 
 passages which yield a substitutionary explana- 
 tion of sacrifice were dogmatic and ritual addi- 
 tions to the simpler and more genuine expressions 
 of the original piety of the nation. The obscure 
 has been preferred to the plain, doubtful intima- 
 tions read between the lines to the intended mean- 
 ing of the lines themselves, the early to the late, 
 the rudimentary to the developed. The question 
 has been whether the sacred history could be ex- 
 plained upon the hypothesis of naturalistic evolu- 
 tion ; and when an affirmative answer has been 
 extorted from the documents, then, because the 
 
The Work of Christ 2 1 1 
 
 hypothesis had been assumed from the beginning 
 to be true, the easy results of such a criticism 
 have been proclaimed as the latest scholarship. 
 
 But we have already risen above the plane of 
 this argument by means of the deliverances of 
 experience. The process of revelation is no 
 mere process of materialistic evolution, but a su- 
 pernatural process. Evolution there may be; 
 but it is an evolution under the guidance of a per- 
 sonal God, and its results, its latest ideas as well 
 as its earliest, are the learning of those who were 
 " taught of God ". Viewed as a divine process, 
 the meaning of the Old Testament revelation as 
 to the significance of sacrifices is easy. 
 
 The earliest accounts of ritual which we have, 
 make mention of the imposition of hands upon 
 the head of the victim. That ceremony remains 
 totally unexplained except that, in reference to the 
 great day of atonement, there is an explanation, 
 when by the same gesture and by distinct con- 
 fession the sins of the people were " put upon the 
 head of the goat ", to be borne away into the wil- 
 derness. The same dim intimation that the victim 
 took the place of the sinner was made in the ritual 
 of the blood. It was sacred and could not be 
 used as food because " the life was in it " ; and 
 this vehicle and symbol of life, when the victim 
 had been slain, was to be poured out before the 
 Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of 
 the sinner which should have been rendered up. 
 
 If such facts as these admitted any other ex- 
 
212 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 planation when taken simply by themselves, they 
 admit no other when the great peculiarity of the 
 Old Testament among early religious books is 
 considered, its doctrine of sin. There is no such 
 doctrine in Egypt, India, or Greece. If it began 
 in some confusion of thought between the moral 
 and the ceremonial, it grew in clearness of con- 
 ception and expression, till it was understood to 
 be the breach of a duty, the rupture of a covenant 
 obligation, estrangement of heart from God, the 
 beginning or the fulfillment of every form of evil. 
 Our Christian doctrine of sin has no new ele- 
 ments, though some of them stand out in clearer 
 relief against the revelation of God in Christ. 
 Responsibility, liability to punishment, real guilt 
 and ill desert, — these are its deepest elements, and 
 these call for some real and profound remedy, 
 such as the ofiPering of life for life indicates. 
 
 Old Testament revelation as to the nature of 
 sacrifice reaches its culmination of clearness in 
 one passage in particular, the fifty-third of Isaiah. 
 Here the suflfering servant of Jehovah is said to 
 have been " pierced for crimes that were ours 
 crushed for guilt that was ours " — and " Jehovah 
 made light upon him the guilt of us all." Says 
 George Adam Smith : " Innocent as he is, he 
 gives his life as a satisfaction to the divine law 
 for the guilt of his people. His death was no 
 mere martyrdom or miscarriage of human jus- 
 tice : in God's intent and purpose, but also by its 
 own voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sac- 
 
The Work of Christ 213 
 
 rifice. There is no exegete but agrees to this. 
 By his death the Servant did homage to the law 
 of God. By dying for it he made men feel that 
 the supreme end of man was to own that law and 
 be in a right relation to it, and that the supreme 
 service was to help others to a right relation."^ 
 
 It is from this position, gained by objective 
 methods of interpretation from the Old Testa- 
 ment, that we are to decide on the relations of 
 Israel's religion to those of the great heathen 
 peoples, — and we shall find it a relation of em- 
 phatic contrast. Whatever historical critics may 
 say, " there is no exegete but agrees to this ", 
 that the Old Testament sacrifices are substitution- 
 ary. And when the great sacrifice is considered, 
 that is a substitution such as no " bull or goat '*, 
 and no man or angel could make, for it ic the sub- 
 stitution of the infinite Son of God in the place 
 of a guilty race. 
 
 I add another quotation from Professor Smith, 
 for in a remarkable passage he brings out an im- 
 portant aspect of our theme generally overlooked. 
 He says: — 
 
 " But how did they get this knowledge [viz., 
 that the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.] ? 
 They do not describe any special means by which 
 it came to them. They state this high and novel 
 truth simply as the last step in a process of their 
 consciousness. At first they were bewildered by 
 the Servant's suffering ; then they thought it con- 
 
 * " The Book of Isaiah ", vol. II, p. 364. 
 
a 14 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 temptible, thus passing on it an intellectual judg- 
 ment; then, forced to seek a moral reason for it, 
 they accounted it as penal and due to the Servant 
 for his own sins; then they recognized that its 
 penalty was vicarious and that the Servant was 
 suffering for them; and, finally, they knew that 
 it was redemptive and the means of their own 
 healing and peace. This is a natural climax, a 
 logical and moral progress of thought. The last 
 two steps are stated simply as facts of experience 
 following upon other facts. Now, our prophet 
 usually publishes the truths with which he is 
 charged as the very words of God, introducing 
 them with a solemn and authoritative Thus 
 saith Jehovah. But this novel and supreme truth 
 of vicarious and redemptive suffering, this pas- 
 sion and virtue which crowns the Servant's of- 
 fice, is introduced to us, not by the mouth of 
 God, but by the lips of penitent men; not as an 
 oracle but as a confession, not as a commission 
 of divine authority, laid beforehand on the 
 Servant like his other duties, but as the convic- 
 tion of the human conscience after the servant 
 has been lifted up before it. In short, by this 
 unusual turn of his art, the prophet seeks to teach 
 us that vicarious suffering is not a dogmatic but 
 an experimental truth. The substitution of the 
 Servant for the guilty people and the redemptive 
 force of that substitution are no arbitrary doc- 
 trine for which God requires from man a mere 
 intellectual assent; they are no such formal in- 
 
The Work of Christ 215 
 
 stitutions of religion as mental indolence and su- 
 perstition delight to have prepared for their me- 
 chanical adherence; but substitutive suffering is 
 a great fact of human experience whose outward 
 features are not more evident to men's eyes than 
 its inner meaning is appreciable by their con- 
 science and of irresistible effect upon their whole 
 moral nature."^ 
 
 The New Testament takes up the doctrine 
 where the Old drops it. John the Baptist intro- 
 ducing Jesus to his work, commends him to those 
 who became his chief disciples by the words: 
 " Behold, the Lamb of God ", by which direct 
 reference was made to the fifty-third of Isaiah. 
 When Jesus himself began to speak of his char- 
 acteristic work it was with the phrase " the Son 
 of Man came to minister and to give his life a 
 ransom for many" (Mk. x. 45). The phrase is 
 unexplained by its context. Who is redeemed? 
 From what ? To whom is the price of redemption 
 paid ? No answer is made to such inquiries. We 
 are left long without any indication as to their 
 proper solution, till at the Last Supper our Lord 
 himself again speaks of his death and this time 
 designates his blood as " the blood of the new 
 covenant shed for many unto the remission of 
 sins" (Matt. xxvi. 28). He thus connects his 
 death in thought with the ratification of the cove- 
 nant by Moses before Sinai ; and as that was by 
 propitiatory sacrifice, securing the forgiveness 
 
 * Op. cit., ibid., p. 353 f. 
 
ai6 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 of sins and then dedicating the redeemed peo- 
 ple (Ex. xxiv. 5-8), so was this. Such are the 
 fundamental features of the view of our theme 
 given by the Synoptists. The Fourth Gospel adds 
 definiteness and conclusiveness to their expres- 
 sions. In that early discourse with Nicodemus in 
 which our Lord emphasized the necessity of the 
 new birth, and set forth belief in himself as the 
 condition of eternal Hfe, he pointed to his own 
 death by " lifting up " as the ground of salvation. 
 And the sixth of John, with its emphasis upon 
 eating his flesh and drinking his blood, which 
 phrases must call to mind the ancient form of 
 sacrifice and the participation therein by the of- 
 ferer at the sacrificial meal, confirms this inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 Such was the view which Jesus had of his own 
 death, but, of course, while he still lived, less em- 
 phasis could be laid upon it. Once crucified, 
 the meaning of the crucifixion must become an 
 object of careful consideration by the disciples 
 who found it everywhere flung in their teeth as 
 the great disgrace of their Master and the great 
 stumbling block in the way of accepting his doc- 
 trines. Paul leads the way in this further con- 
 sideration. To him the bloody death of Christ 
 was a " propitiation ". Libraries of discussion 
 have accumulated about this word. Amid all 
 the impossible and extravagant interpretations 
 which have been given to it, the direct and nat- 
 ural one remains this, that something was thereby 
 
The Work of Christ 2 1 7 
 
 done which rendered God indined to pardon 
 the sinner. The unfounded assumption that, if 
 God was not thus inclined without the death of 
 Christ, he must be malignantly disposed towards 
 sinners, has caused every effort to be made to 
 evacuate the word propitiation of this meaning. 
 But they are not " exegetical ". We might say 
 of our interpretation, as Adam Smith said of the 
 interpretation of the fifty-third of Isaiah : " There 
 is no exegete but agrees to this." And the idea 
 is abundantly reenforced in the context. Pun- 
 ishment is the proper treatment of the sinner, for 
 it expresses the abhorrence that God, as a being 
 of goodness and of holy character, feels towards 
 sin. Not to punish is to seem indifferent towards 
 sin, and this is to permit well-grounded attack 
 upon character. Such is the Apostle's represen- 
 tation of a part, at least, of the reason of the 
 propitiation. God is made inclined to forgive 
 sinners by the sacrifice because his righteousness 
 was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of 
 sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in 
 heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. 
 In fact it was he himself who " set forth Jesus " 
 as a propitiation. 
 
 With this apostolic view all the remaining New 
 Testament agrees. Christ is made a " curse " 
 for us, and made " sin ", that is, a sin offering. 
 His reconciliation precedes the cessation of our 
 "enmity" (Ro. v. 10). In the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews in particular the sacrificial, propitiatory 
 
ai8 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 death of Christ is brought out in clearest light as 
 the counterpart and fulfillment of the Old Testa- 
 ment sacrifices as a whole. And John closes the 
 presentation by calling Christ specifically our 
 " propitiation ". 
 
 In this hasty review of the biblical doctrine as 
 to the work of Christ no effort has been made, 
 of course, to be exhaustive, or to formulate a 
 theory of the atonement which should satisfy the 
 full meaning of the biblical passages cited. We 
 have been looking for the answer to a compara- 
 tively simple question. Certain views of the death 
 of Christ suggested by Christian experience have 
 been brought before us — that he died to do a 
 work for us which we are entirely incapable of 
 doing for ourselves, that he thereby magnified the 
 guilt of sin and maintained the honor of God and 
 of his law, and that he thus laid the ground for 
 the forgiveness of the sinner and for the peculiar 
 peace which he feels in the contemplation of the 
 work of Christ as done for him ; — and our ques- 
 tion has been whether these views, elementary 
 and fundamental to the Christian Hfe, as well as 
 to developed Christian thinking, are in the line 
 of universal experience, and first of that de- 
 posited in the Scriptures. Our examination has 
 yielded at least this, that they are found in line 
 with this earliest and normal experience. We 
 may therefore pass immediately to the question 
 whether they are found equally in line with the 
 course of subsequent Christian thinking, and 
 
The Work of Christ 219 
 
 whether they have for them the verdict of Chris- 
 tian history. 
 
 The earlier intellectual activity of the church 
 was directed to other topics than the atoning 
 work of Christ. It was not until late that any 
 one appeared to give careful and specific atten- 
 tion to this doctrine and to set it in its place as 
 one of the great themes of Christian study and 
 chief topics of theology. But it is not difficult 
 to decide what the general attitude of the earlier 
 ages was upon the central element of the doc- 
 trine with which we have now to do. The con- 
 ception that Christ did something for us which 
 we could not do for ourselves, and that he laid 
 in the sacrifice of Calvary the objective founda- 
 tion of our forgiveness, is the undisputed premise 
 from which all that can be styled thought or 
 theory in this period goes forth. Some of these 
 first " theories " border upon the ludicrous, as 
 when the death of Christ is explained as a pay- 
 ment made to the devil, and when it is even 
 added, as by Gregory of Nyssa, that God de- 
 ceived the devil by giving him a being as a ran- 
 som for the sinner which he was not able to hold, 
 on the principle, apparently, that all is fair in 
 war. Athanasius alone of all the early fathers 
 makes any adequate and dignified explanation 
 of Christ's work. He says in substance: Death 
 is the penalty threatened by God against sin. 
 It must be inflicted, or God's truthfulness is not 
 maintained. On the other hand, to inflict it upon 
 
!220 Christian Life and Theology- 
 all sinners would be to destroy the race which 
 God created to bestow his Word upon it. Re- 
 pentance can only effect a change of mind: it 
 cannot release the sinner from the penalty of the 
 law against which he has sinned. Only the 
 Logos, the absolute life, can do this. Accord- 
 ingly, he assumes flesh, endures death, and thus 
 suffers in the place of man the penalty of the 
 law.^ 
 
 These were the last clear words upon this 
 theme till Anselm of Canterbury published his 
 Cur DexLs Homo (1098). The title of the work 
 was not hastily chosen, but reflected the theo- 
 logical necessity of the time. Never yet had the 
 various elements of the developing system — the 
 doctrine of the two natures of Christ, of sin and 
 grace, and the great fundamental doctrine of the 
 trinity — been brought into a perfectly intelligible 
 harmony by the proposal of some principle which 
 should serve as their common explanation and 
 their unifying bond. Anselm found this desider- 
 atum in the necessity of a satisfaction. His 
 theory in few words was this : The honor of God 
 was impaired by the sin of man, since this says 
 that God is not God. To let such a thing stand 
 unpunished would be to make the righteous and 
 the unrighteous equal and to destroy the order 
 of the universe, making God the God of disorder. 
 This God can no more do than he can lie. Hence 
 
 ' 'ETtXtfpov TO 6(pEi\6piEvov iv TO) Bavdvop. Quoted 
 by Thomasius, op. cit., vol. i. p. 389. 
 
The Work of Christ 221 
 
 sin must be punished. But man cannot suffer 
 this due punishment, for that would destroy the 
 race; and yet a man must suffer it, for man 
 sinned. Some infinite being must suffer it, be- 
 cause guih is infinite. Therefore the necessity of 
 the God-man, the question propounded in the 
 title of the tract thus receiving its answer. 
 
 The further development of the theory is of 
 less importance to us than these fundamental 
 thoughts, for it is dependent upon the current 
 Catholic theology elaborated in the confessional. 
 It defines satisfactions, and supererogatory works 
 in terms neither scriptural nor in accord with 
 spiritual Christianity. Anselm, like every other 
 workman, had to employ the tools furnished by 
 his age. But this fundamental Christian thought, 
 which it was all his purpose to attempt to bring 
 out, that there was a great objective necessity 
 calling for the death of Christ as the condition 
 of the forgiveness of sinners, was the legacy 
 which he bequeathed to the awakening spirit 
 which four centuries later introduced the scrip- 
 tural period of Christian theology. He does not 
 even clearly connect the death of Christ with the 
 punishment of sin, since he makes it a supererog- 
 atory work voluntarily done, in consequence of 
 which it is " fitting " that forgiveness should be 
 bestowed upon sinners. But, unsuccessful as the 
 theory is in these and many other respects, it 
 served to hand down to later theologians the 
 great idea of the objective atonement. 
 
222 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 That subsequent age was not without sugges- 
 tions of another kind which it could have 
 adopted, had they seemed true. Abelard, in par- 
 ticular, was rich in suggestions, partly true and 
 partly false, tending on the whole to replace the 
 objective atonement by a subjective one. But the 
 Reformers held fast to the Athanasian-Anselmic 
 idea. The most instructive of them all is Calvin, 
 who in his Institutes, in the last edition, set forth 
 a more consistent form of the doctrine than can 
 be found in any predecessor. 
 
 Calvin will never be understood if he be con- 
 ceived as a scholastic, who adopted some leading 
 principle of theology which he applied with reck- 
 less consistency to all the doctrines of the Chris- 
 tian system. He had, no doubt, his leading the- 
 ological ideas, and he was a consistent thinker; 
 but he was above all else a theologian of Scripture 
 and experience, and his method was that of the 
 interpreter, and hence a posteriori rather than a 
 priori. Consequently in this doctrine he does not 
 start with abstract views of God to deduce a doc- 
 trine of atonement. He is not seeking the 
 " necessity " which Anselm thought he must at- 
 tain. In fact, there is no abstract description of 
 the attributes of God to be found anywhere in his 
 treatise. He begins with the facts of the situation 
 of which the most important and impressive to 
 his thinking is the guilt and ruin of man. He 
 thus begins where Christian experience as al- 
 ready analyzed in these lectures begins, and his 
 
The Work of Christ 223 
 
 whole development of the theme is determined 
 by this beginning. Thus, while the element of 
 the moral influence of the death of Christ in 
 awakening the sinner from his torpor and lead- 
 ing him to repentance, which Abelard had in- 
 troduced, finds abundant place in his pages, as it 
 must in the preaching of every evangelical min- 
 ister, it receives no special consideration when 
 Calvin is discussing the atonement. The holiness 
 of God creates " a perpetual and irreconcilable 
 opposition between righteousness and iniquity ".. 
 so that " he cannot receive us entirely as long as 
 we remain sinners ". This is the permanent and 
 fundamental ethical necessity. Hence the guilt 
 of man must be in some way removed, and the 
 Scriptures present Christ as " receiving and suf- 
 fering in his own person the punishment which 
 by the righteous judgment of God impended over 
 all sinners ". By this act, performed in his vol- 
 untary death, " he has expiated those crimes ", 
 and " by this expiation God the Father has been 
 satisfied and duly atoned ".^ This is, in a nut- 
 shell, Calvin's theory of the atonement. He did 
 not fail to guard his doctrine from possible mis- 
 representations and distortions. While God is 
 " an enemy to men till by the death of Christ 
 they are restored to his favor ", " such modes of 
 expression " he says, " are accommodated to our 
 capacity ", and we are not to obscure the real 
 love of God for rebellious sinners, in whom " he 
 
 1 u 
 
 Institutes", II. xvi. 2, 3. 
 
224 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 yet discovers something that his goodness may 
 love. ... By a pure and gratuitous love 
 towards us he is excited to receive us into fa- 
 vor. . . . Therefore, to remove all occasion 
 of enmity and to reconcile us completely to him- 
 self, he abolishes all our guilt by the expiation 
 exhibited in the death of Christ."^ And, finally, 
 the ultimate ethical root of Calvin's whole doc- 
 trine is clear from the reference which he makes 
 of the effectiveness of the expiation to the " obe- 
 dience " of Christ by which " in its whole 
 course " he rendered God favorable to us. " In- 
 deed ", says Calvin, " his voluntary submission 
 is the principal circumstance even in his death " f 
 which excludes forever the idea "that God was 
 ever hostile to him, or angry with him ". ^ 
 
 Thus Calvin is clearly upon the side of those 
 who have seen in the death of Christ the per- 
 formance in our behalf of something which we 
 could not do for ourselves. But his exaltation 
 of the law of God and of the idea of expiation, 
 especially as sharpened by his successors, and 
 connected with the justice of God as an eternal 
 divine attribute, called forth from Socinus the 
 statement of a contradictory doctrine which So- 
 cinus condensed in the form : " I think and hold 
 to be the orthodox doctrine that Jesus Christ is 
 our Saviour because he has announced to us the 
 
 * Ibidem. 
 
 ' Ibidem, 5 
 
 * Ibidem, II. 
 
The Work of Christ 1225 
 
 way of eternal salvation, has confirmed it, and 
 in his own person both by his example and by 
 rising from the dead manifestly exhibited it, and 
 because he will himself give to us who believe 
 in him eternal life ".^ The " confirmation " is 
 partly, but only partly, by the death of Christ, 
 which thus receives no importance or adequate 
 explanation in Socinianism. In this doctrine, as 
 in his whole system, Socinus proceeded from to- 
 tally different principles from those adopted by 
 Calvin and the generality of Protestants. The 
 sharp discussion which ensued had the ad- 
 vantage, like that of the Nicsean period, of con- 
 sidering all the main arguments bearing upon 
 the theme. Socinus denies the necessity of sat- 
 isfaction to forgiveness ; affirms its impossibility, 
 if sins are to be forgiven; denies its actuality; 
 emphasizes the impossibility of a transfer of pun- 
 ishment, and especially that of our punishment 
 for sin, which is eternal death; denies the bear- 
 ing of the dignity of Christ's person upon the 
 value of his sufferings; affirms the impossibility 
 of vicarious obedience to the law ; and denies im- 
 putation whether of obedience or of guilt, as an 
 impossibility. The true view of the subject 
 springs from correct conceptions of God's jus- 
 tice; and, punitive justice being an "effect of 
 
 ^" De Jesu Christo Servatore", 1. I. To be found in 
 the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, vol. II., p. 115 ff. 
 This topic is more fully discussed in Grotius' " De- 
 fence ", English translation, Andover, 1889. 
 
226 Christian Life and Theology- 
 God's will ", the question on which everything 
 in the topic turns is, What is fitting for God to 
 do? And, since God has promised to forgive 
 repentant sinners, this is fitting, and therefore 
 just. Thus, as he thinks, the foundation of Cal- 
 vin's whole argument has been undermined. 
 
 This theory of Socinus, considered as a sub- 
 jective theory of the atonement, is pecuHarly 
 bare, unspiritual, and unsatisfactory. It is really 
 as formal and repellent as Socinus can have con- 
 ceived the Calvinism of his own day to be. There 
 is almost or quite no reference to the effect of 
 the death of Christ upon the heart of the unbe- 
 liever leading him to repentance. The death is 
 scarcely more than the necessary condition of the 
 resurrection, which " confirms " and " exhibits " 
 salvation. But it essentially covers the points of 
 opposition to the view of Christ's death as pro- 
 pitiation, which have been repeated with more or 
 less variation ever since. This controversy per- 
 formed the service of bringing out one more dis- 
 cussion of the theme from a still different stand- 
 point, when Grotius appeared with his reply to 
 Socinus, in which he changed the presentation of 
 the position of God in the matter of forgive- 
 ness from that found in both Calvinists and So- 
 cinians, by whom he was conceived as " the of- 
 fended party ", to that of Sovereign and Ruler. 
 Grotius accordingly emphasizes the idea of law 
 rather than that of justice, and made the suffer- 
 ings of Christ a legal example and the occasion 
 
The Work of Christ aiy 
 
 of the relaxation of the law, and not the exact 
 and strict penalty demanded by justice. But this 
 view, however it may have been considered, and 
 have served to assist in the clarification of the 
 thinking of the times, met with no general re- 
 ception, and left little trace of itself among those 
 theologians who maintained the line of evangel- 
 ical theological descent. 
 
 The crystallization of the theology of the Ref- 
 ormation upon the atonement may be sufficiently 
 traced for our present purpose in the great creeds 
 which began with its beginning at Augsburg 
 (1530) and reached their completion at the close 
 of the thirty years' war (1648) and of the reign 
 of Charles I. in the Westminster Confession. It 
 would be tedious to repeat here all the definitions 
 of these creeds, so entirely accordant are they 
 with the general result at which Calvin arrived. 
 The Augsburg Confession taught that Christ suf- 
 fered " that he might reconcile the Father unto 
 us " ;^ the Belgic, that he made " satisfaction " in 
 our nature, and bore " the punishment of sin by 
 his most bitter passion and death ", " appeasing 
 the wrath of God by offering himself upon the 
 tree " ;* and the Westminster, which was pre- 
 pared in the full light of all the previous dis- 
 cussions and is demonstrably the lineal descend- 
 ant, through the Lambeth and Irish Articles, of 
 
 * See Schaff's " Creeds of Christendom ", vol. III., p. 
 
 * Ibidem, pp. 404, 405. 
 
228 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 the original English Articles prepared in the year 
 1563, thus summing up the whole course of Prot- 
 estant theology in general, and of English the- 
 ology in particular, — the Westminster affirms 
 that " the Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience 
 and sacrifice of himself, which he through the 
 eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath 
 fully satisfied the justice of his Father, and pur- 
 chased not only reconciliation, but an everlast- 
 ing inheritance in the kingdom of Heaven for all 
 those whom the Father hath given him ".^ 
 
 This, then, seems to be the verdict of history, 
 if we pause in our review at Westminster, as to 
 the great point of our contention, whether Christ 
 does something for us preparing salvation, con- 
 stituting its very possibility, which we could not 
 do for ourselves. It is unmistakably for that 
 contention. We need add but one further re- 
 mark ; but that is a necessary one, for we ought 
 certainly to seek the clearest proof that the de- 
 velopment of doctrine which has here been hastily 
 sketched is a genuine development when judged 
 according to the criteria already laid down. It 
 is genuine; for it conforms to all those criteria. 
 It ( I ) begins in Scripture teaching by our Lord 
 and his apostles; it (2) has proceeded accord- 
 ing to the laws of logical sequence, beginning 
 like all the doctrines in a condition of substantial 
 harmony upon the facts, without scientific for- 
 mulation, coming to such formulation when the 
 
 * Ibidem, p. 621. 
 
The Work of Christ 229 
 
 times demanded it, when the elements of Chris- 
 tian theology required it for their consistent ex- 
 pression, proceeding by full discussion, rejecting 
 alien elements, and attaining general accept- 
 ance; it (3) agrees with other established Chris- 
 tian doctrines, especially with the doctrine of in- 
 carnation unto redemption, and with our ethical 
 necessities, as well as the objective character of 
 forgiveness ; and (4) it, and it alone, accords with 
 objective biblical exegesis. 
 
 I have restricted myself in this review to a con- 
 sideration of the simple thesis which I have de- 
 fined for two reasons, the first, that there is still 
 some dispute among those who eagerly maintain 
 the objective atonement as to the proper formula- 
 tion of the theory of it, and the second, that the 
 most recent forms of attack concern this main 
 point rather than anything less central and funda- 
 mental. We are told in various forms that Christ 
 has simply done before us what we have to do 
 after him; that sacrifice is essential to all forms 
 of soul saving; and that the sacrifice of Christ 
 differs from others only as his own greatness and 
 the greatness of his task as Saviour of Humanity 
 differentiate him from them. The explanation, 
 it is said, must be ethical and spiritual. There 
 is no need of any " transactional basis " for for- 
 giveness, or of anything spectacular: all must 
 be spiritual and real ; and this is the real element, 
 that no one, not even Christ, can save a sinner 
 without entering into his sin and bearing its con- 
 
230 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 sequent pain himself. Now, when such a theory 
 as this is propounded, it may be said, have you 
 not a new outgrowth of Christian experience ? Is 
 there not here a spiritual development? And is 
 not that objective feature of atonement as much 
 a transient, and hence individual, special, ab- 
 normal element of the doctrine as is the ransom 
 paid to the Devil, or any other outlived element, 
 Anselm's supererogatory performance of Christ, 
 for example, which had its origin in the customs 
 and doctrine of the Roman Catholic confessional ? 
 Certainly, Christian experience ought to grow 
 more spiritual with the progress of time, and this 
 explanation, it is said, as more spiritual, has in it 
 the marks of a Christian development. 
 
 Our theme prescribes for us the single line of 
 reply marked out by the form into which these 
 questions have fallen. Do the theories sketched 
 bear the marks of a genuine product of the uni- 
 versal Christian experience? Our answer cannot 
 long hesitate. They ( i ) do not begin in a recog- 
 nizable germ in the recorded teachings of our 
 Lord and his apostles. The course of our exe- 
 getical discussion excludes them at once. But 
 (2) there is in them nothing of " conservation 
 of the past ", nothing of a recognition of the di- 
 vine leading in the previous Christian history, 
 nothing of a deeper and fuller interpretation of 
 acknowledged facts of doctrine which are not 
 to be surrendered. They are professedly a dis- 
 carding of the " unspiritual ", and actually a re- 
 
The Work of Christ 23 1 
 
 jection of the established and Christian. Unless 
 we are to say that Christianity is not of divine 
 origin, and that it is therefore bound to no be- 
 ginning in revelation but is simply like a bark 
 floating upon the tide of general human progress, 
 we cannot acknowledge this proposal as a legiti- 
 mate outgrowth of experience. It departs too 
 widely from the original, constitutive, and stand- 
 ard experience of the apostolic age. 
 
 But we may now say more. Refined Christian 
 feeling may possibly object to the merely external 
 and to the " spectacular " and " transactional ", 
 as it objects to merely external religious author- 
 ity; and we are ready to grant any such conten- 
 tion which can be made. True, there might be 
 so great a spiritualization as to pass beyond the 
 limits of the reasonable, and to deny substan- 
 tially that we are still spirits clothed in flesh and 
 subject to material conditions. Christ did actu- 
 ally die and shed his literal blood. But such a 
 spiritualization as this is surely not intended or in 
 any degree a probable outcome of present dis- 
 cussions. So far as it has this real and substan- 
 tial ground of objection, that the merely spec- 
 tacular is inconceivable in a realm of so serious 
 realities as those which pertain to salvation, it is 
 to be answered by the direct reply that the atone- 
 ment does not involve the merely spectacular. 
 There is a spectacle " to angels and to men " in 
 the death of Christ ; but it is a spectacle involving 
 the deepest spiritual realities. It may carry ob- 
 
232 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 jectively still more ; but it carries to experience by 
 the direct path of the spiritual intuitions a vast 
 burden of important truth. God need not be con- 
 ceived of as commanding Christ to put himself 
 upon the cross as a priest lays a victim on an 
 altar, if this shocks the sensibilities of any (al- 
 though it is the biblical representation, and did 
 not shock the apostles), but the crucifixion may 
 be viewed as wholly the act of wicked men. And 
 yet, if God has so made the world that the purest 
 of all human beings, even the Son of God, could 
 not be permitted to live here and depart hence 
 without incurring hate and submitting to death, 
 and that in its most cruel form, bearing upon 
 guiltless shoulders the ignominy fit only for the 
 most guilty, then the whole cosmic system bears 
 inextricably involved in it the divine connection 
 between sin and pain. The whole system then 
 manifests God's eternal law and the majesty of 
 his unchangeable determination to maintain the 
 right; and this greatest and antecedently incon- 
 ceivable involution of suffering declares it most 
 of all, yes, unspeakably, infinitely. Hence as an 
 objective fact, no sinner can doubt God's holi- 
 ness or despise his law, as historically none ever 
 has, when he looks upon Calvary. All this is 
 the utterance of our moral intuitions and con- 
 stitutes in itself an objective atonement, with- 
 out the addition of further elements. But if there 
 is and must be an objective element in the suffer- 
 ings of Christ, why should it not be made promi- 
 
The Work of Christ i^S 
 
 nent, and why should not the spiritual here be 
 clothed in tangible form as it is elsewhere? If 
 government is of value, and if the divine govern- 
 ment is a spiritual fact, why should not that gov- 
 ernment provide for the escape of the guilty by 
 the imposition of their penalty on other, not un- 
 willing, shoulders ? The " spectacle " thereby 
 created is no mere spectacle but one founded in 
 the nature of God and man; of God, because he 
 will not forget law and holiness and forgive with- 
 out reference to his " righteousness " ; of man, 
 because he needs evidence of God's holiness in the 
 expression of Calvary as much as he needs evi- 
 dence of God's omnipotence in the forms of the 
 world, or of his omniscience in the evolution of 
 the world's inhabitants, or of his love in the 
 teachings of Jesus. In no sphere do we learn 
 about God except as he has revealed himself, or 
 lifted the curtain upon the spectacle wrought by 
 his activity. And if there is a divine law, ob- 
 jectively declared in the objective Bible, and 
 accompanied by the threat of an objective pen- 
 alty, death, why does not the divine veracity and 
 the best good of men (for which the law was 
 given) demand an objective exaction of that 
 penalty ? 
 
 We have repeatedly referred to Kaftan in pre- 
 ceding hours, generally by way of criticism. It is 
 a pleasure to make our last reference to him in 
 quite another way; for Kaftan comes vigorously 
 to the defence of the principle for which I have 
 
234 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 been contending in the foregoing paragraphs. 
 His treatment will add confirmation from another 
 point of view to the analysis of history and the 
 dogmatic construction which have engaged us. 
 After a review of the history of the doctrine of 
 the atonement in which he has summarized its 
 verdict as this, that there is call for a more emi- 
 nently ethical discussion of the doctrine, he says^ 
 that the modern theologians have perceived this, 
 " and they have returned in a decided majority 
 to the old doctrine, generally laying aside the 
 juridical form of the same, and seeking to give 
 an ethical character to its leading thoughts, and 
 thus deepen it. . . . Not the juridical idea 
 of punishment, they say, but the ethical idea of 
 propitiation (Suhne) is to be made the basis. On 
 the contrary, the highest ethical idea of pro- 
 pitiation is just that of punishment. Take this 
 away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the 
 [inferior and unworthy] idea of an appeasing of 
 the wrath of an incensed deity. Precisely the idea 
 of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the 
 idea which must in some way be brought to a full 
 expression for the sake of the ethical conscious- 
 ness. Only it must not remain the leading 
 thought. Above it must be placed the thought 
 that justification and reconciliation are a divine 
 act directed towards the believer, which is taken 
 up and constituted an ethically conditioned ex- 
 perience of the believer by the faith that lays 
 ' " Dogmatik ", p. 491 ff . 
 
The Work of Christ 235 
 
 hold of the death of Christ as the act of revelation 
 by which God establishes the new covenant. 
 . . . What is given us in Christ, specially in 
 his death and resurrection, forms not simply the 
 objective presupposition of salvation, but it is it- 
 self the divine saving act of regeneration and 
 justification, which becomes effective in every 
 case in which the word of Christ awakens faith." 
 So much for Kaftan's criticism of current ways 
 of restating the doctrine of the atonement. He 
 approaches his own treatment of the subject 
 through the topic of justification. This is a 
 " forensic act ", a declaration as to the sinner, — 
 simply and best stated, his forgiveness. But it is 
 ** the death of the Saviour which first gives 
 unambiguous expression to the purpose of his 
 mission. . . . The paternal forgiveness of 
 God is to be sharply distinguished from a mere 
 overlooking which lets sin go. On the contrary, 
 it permits no doubt to arise that sin is sin, it con- 
 vinces the sinner of the whole weight and depth 
 of his guilt, and yet receives him with gentle 
 mercy into the peace of his Father's house and 
 re-establishes the interrupted communion. It 
 judges sin while it forgives the sinner. Thus gen- 
 uine forgiveness is a high, if not the highest, 
 revelation of moral dignity (Wiirde). It unites 
 the judge's punishing severity with the love 
 which seeks the good of the other. Therefore it 
 only takes place when an unmistakable expres- 
 sion is given to the moral dignity of the for- 
 
2^6 Christian Life and Theology- 
 giving God/* Not merely is this so, but "the 
 conscience, awakened by God, can accept no for- 
 giveness which is not experienced as at the same 
 time a condemnation of sin. Otherwise it would 
 feel doubt of the divine origin of the forgive- 
 ness, and so of its worth. . . . Sin and law 
 are correlate conceptions, that is, the moral con- 
 sciousness of the sinner is necessarily controlled 
 by the idea of law. . . The law and its curse 
 were in fact truth, and would have had the last 
 word, if it had not pleased God to have mercy 
 on men through Jesus Christ. That is, without 
 this the result for men would have been the de- 
 served penalty of condemnation. But God has 
 had mercy upon man and sent his Son. And 
 Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved 
 no punishment, took upon himself all the evils 
 which have come into the world as the conse- 
 quence and punishment of sin, even to the shame- 
 ful death on the cross by the hand of sinners. 
 He did this because he could in no other way 
 fulfil his calling and carry into effect the coun- 
 sels of the divine mercy. Consequently, for the 
 good of man, he bore all that which man had de- 
 served, and thereby has man escaped the final, 
 eternal punishment and become a child of God. 
 All this is comprised by the church in that sin- 
 gle expression taken from the words of the 
 ancient prophet, * The chastisement of our peace 
 was upon him, and with his stripes we are 
 healed '." And he adds : " That is not merely a 
 
The Work of Christ 237 
 
 subjective conclusion upon the related facts, but 
 it is as objective and real as anything which faith 
 recognizes and knows." 
 
 Thus we pause in our theme. The objective 
 work of Christ in the blood of the cross as the 
 foundation of the subjective work of salvation, 
 this is the result of experience confirmed by 
 Scripture and Christian history. We have been 
 in the atmosphere of discussion, as about the lit- 
 eral cross on which Jesus died there were gath- 
 ered the Roman soldiers, whose clanging armor 
 and brutal ignorance and indifference and greed 
 for spoil, disturbed the soul and added confusion 
 to grief. But in the greatness and solemnity of 
 the spectacle a solemn stillness finally settled 
 upon the scene, till the Centurion himself ex- 
 claimed : " Truly, this was the Son of God " ; 
 and as we linger there in thought, and now as we 
 go away, we may take upon our lips the words of 
 Montgomery and sing: 
 
 When to the cross I turn mine eyes, 
 
 And rest on Calvary, 
 O Lamb of God, my sacrifice, 
 
 I must remember Thee. 
 
 Remember Thee and all thy pains. 
 
 And all thy love to me; 
 Yea, while a breath, a pulse remains, 
 
 Will I remember Thee. 
 
 And when these failing lips grow dim. 
 
 And mind and memory flee, 
 When Thou shall in thy kingdom come, 
 
 Jesus, remember me. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 We have now arrived at the last lecture of this 
 brief course. The limits set by the passage of 
 time forbid us to enter upon a large number of 
 topics upon which something of interest, and 
 perhaps of importance, might be said. But we 
 may console ourselves with the reflection that 
 the great leading and determinative doctrines of 
 the evangelical system have been reviewed, and 
 •that as a system — a whole of self-consistent 
 thought — the voice of experience has been found 
 to speak for it. Besides, the utterances of Chris- 
 tian experience are not so rich in the remaining 
 portions of the system as in those which have been 
 reviewed. In respect to the theory of the atone- 
 ment, for example, a topic which we have dis- 
 cussed only in its most general form, in the mere 
 aspect of a work objectively done by Christ as 
 the foundation of the sinner's salvation, — ex- 
 perience would have much less to say. True, the 
 evidence of Christian history has a bearing, 
 and the products of the general reflection of the 
 whole church can be gathered up; but evidently, 
 distinctions which divide theologies, as do those 
 238 
 
The Church 239 
 
 between " distributive " justice and " general " 
 justice, do not enter into consciousness strictly 
 so styled. Advocates of the various forms of the 
 so-called moral theory may indeed rightly cite 
 experience for the fact that the cross of Christ 
 is the place of the most powerful exhibition of the 
 infinite love of God — the most moving of all the 
 influences that tend to bring men into harmony 
 with him by breaking down the opposition of 
 their hard hearts. The atonement has this effect, 
 which is undoubtedly a designed effect; but that 
 this is its sole effect, or even its chief effect, ex- 
 perience could never declare. At its utmost it 
 could only say that it knew of no other ; and this 
 is just what it does not say. As to the divine 
 agency in regeneration experience is equally 
 silent. Consciousness embraces the motives that 
 operate upon the will, and follows the path of in- 
 ference traced in another lecture to the conclusion 
 that their source is the personal action of God. 
 But here consciousness stops. How those mo- 
 tives are presented, and whether any such 
 " change in the very substance of the soul " oc- 
 curs as theologians have taught, it cannot say. 
 So, again, the objective divine act of justification, 
 apart from the subjective experience of forgive- 
 ness, does not enter consciousness. The doctrine 
 of future awards of eternal blessedness and pun- 
 ishment has, no doubt, a basis in immediate ex- 
 perience, for guilt and self-condemnation are 
 parts of such experience ; but the nature of those 
 
240 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 awards, and even their eternity, however rea- 
 sonable, capable of adjustment to the remaining 
 portions of the system, and sustained by the 
 larger experience of the church as embodied in 
 standard treatises and creeds, can never derive 
 illustration or confirmation from the immediate 
 experience of Christians who are all still actually 
 confined by the limitations of space and time. 
 We pass these topics by, then, with the less re- 
 luctance. There remains one great department of 
 the system, where experience has much to say, 
 still untouched by all our discussion, but of the 
 most vital importance, the topic of sanctification. 
 It is a topic of frequent debate in our own time, 
 into many interesting forms of which it would 
 be both pleasurable and profitable to enter. If 
 something could be done in the way of dissecting 
 the supposed experiences of perfect sanctifica- 
 tion believed by many pious and earnest, but mis- 
 guided souls to be granted unto them, and of ex- 
 hibiting plainly the delusion involved therein, a 
 real service to religion would be rendered. Per- 
 haps this may be attempted at another time and 
 place. At present the discussion must be limited 
 to one topic, also of the greatest current interest, 
 which embraces in its implications the most im- 
 portant elements of the subject of sanctification, 
 viz., the Church. The Anglo-saxon peoples, with 
 their pre-eminently practical characteristics, have 
 always laid great emphasis upon questions of pol- 
 ity. But to-day the exigencies of life in our own 
 
The Church 1241 
 
 country have attracted fresh attention to the 
 theme, and nothing can be said to be of greater 
 Hving interest than questions as to the unity of 
 the church, its basis, and its methods. The most 
 notable overture made by any of the great his- 
 toric churches on this theme is that made by 
 the Protestant Episcopal. It contains, as one of 
 the essentials to effective Christian unity, the 
 acceptance of the " historic episcopate ", and this 
 in the sense, as has finally been made clear, that 
 the episcopate regularly derived from the Apos- 
 tles, is essential to the being of the church. The 
 first question, then, to be settled before Chris- 
 tian unity is attained or attainable, is the ques- 
 tion. What is the church? And upon that ques- 
 tion Christian experience has a word to say. 
 
 Sanctification has a divine and a human side. 
 As a mere human experience it is a matter of 
 immediate consciousness because it is a matter of 
 choice, sanctification being the exercise of holy 
 choice and progressive sanctification being the 
 intensification of such choice and the multiplica- 
 tion of individual choices of the right till they 
 become, in the final consummation, uninterrupted. 
 Thus all through the process the Christian is 
 conscious of what is going on within him, or he 
 may be. I say " may be ", for it is a fact that 
 the best Christian growth, that is, the best ex- 
 perience of sanctification, is often practically un- 
 conscious, because it is attained by the active do- 
 ing of duty, by which the Christian is absorbed 
 
242 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 not in himself as doing it, but in the duty to 
 which he has given himself. Too great intro- 
 spection is fatal to the best living. Thus there 
 may come great stretches of the Christian's life 
 when, in fact, his power of resistance to evil is 
 constantly developing and his capacity and love 
 of service are constantly enlarging; but he may 
 not know it, just as one is often so happy that 
 he does not know he is happy at all. But if the 
 issue is raised by any fact or event, if the Chris- 
 tian asks himself whether he is maintaining a 
 holy choice, then, of course, the answer must be 
 immediate and certain. In a mind capable of any 
 considerable self-examination, to experience 
 sanctification and to know it are inseparable 
 facts. 
 
 It were easy to prove that the Holy Spirit is 
 the agent of sanctification. The argument is 
 the same as that already traced for the existence 
 of God from the experience of the new birth. In 
 fact, it is in the performance of the sanctifying 
 work that God makes himself known. But we 
 are not now obliged to retrace this proof or to in- 
 sist upon it. It is a plain doctrine of the Scrip- 
 tures, whose authority has been already estab- 
 lished by our argument, that the Holy Spirit is 
 the agent of sanctification, and we may accept 
 it without further inquiry. We draw, however, 
 this important inference, that, since holy choice 
 is itself a matter of immediate certainty and is 
 elicited by the Holy Spirit, any man or any group 
 
The Church 243 
 
 of men may certainly know, by the same direct 
 and indubitable inference as in the case of re- 
 generation, that they are the recipients of God's 
 sanctifying grace, if this is so. The experience 
 of sanctification is a proof of the presence of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Now, out of the experience of sanctification 
 comes the existence of the Christian church ; and, 
 therefore, wherever there is sanctification, there 
 is the church in essence, if not in reality. Noth- 
 ing but the fact of sanctification is requisite to 
 prove the full Christian character of any church 
 in which it is found. This is our contention ; and 
 it is so important that the most careful justifica- 
 tion of it is imperatively demanded. 
 
 It is significant that the first time the church 
 of Christ is spoken of in the New Testament 
 (Matt. xvi. 18: "Thou art Peter, and upon this 
 rock will I build my church "), it is spoken of as 
 something well understood. We are therefore 
 either to suppose that Christ had previously es- 
 tablished it in some discourse not handed down to 
 us, or, as is more probable, that it was thought 
 too obvious to need explanation that his follow- 
 ers, like Israel at large, or the smaller Jewish 
 communities who gathered in their synagogues, 
 would have their " congregation " (Heb. '''^Pt ). 
 It was in the nature of the case certain. The 
 Jews gathered in synagogues because they were 
 interested in the same great truths and duties, 
 and needed confirmation in the way of holiness. 
 
244 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 They gathered because souls interested in the same 
 things always gather together. Even more pow- 
 erful was the tendency among Christians because 
 Christianity is a religion of love, and men who 
 love holiness must love all who share this love. 
 Love of neighbor flows directly out of love of 
 God and no man can have the latter who does 
 not also have the former. Hence Christianity is 
 a religion of association ; or, in modern parlance, 
 a social religion. To be a Christian and not care 
 for other Christians is impossible because such 
 indifference is the denial of the very constitutive 
 element of Christianity, love ; it is the destruction 
 of holy choice, the death of sanctification. Sanc- 
 tification therefore leads necessarily to the 
 church. 
 
 On the other hand, the church is the sphere 
 within which sanctification is carried on by the 
 divine Spirit. Jesus did not contemplate any 
 other sanctification. It was by the church, the 
 group of apostles that had been companying to- 
 gether in Jerusalem, that the word was preached 
 at Pentecost which resulted in the conversion of 
 the first great multitude brought to Christ after 
 his ascension, and they were all baptized and 
 " added " to the church. There is no record of 
 conversions in the New Testament but in the 
 same way and with the same result. And when 
 gifts of the Spirit are spoken of and the evidences 
 of sanctification in works of beneficence are re- 
 
The Church 1245 
 
 counted, it is always within the same circle of the 
 witnessing church. 
 
 The whole New Testament view upon this sub- 
 ject is, then, this, that, given holy processes, that 
 is, sanctification, in human souls, these will at 
 once naturally unite in Christian society, and that 
 such a society is a church ; and again, that, given 
 a church, the Holy Spirit will work through it 
 producing sanctification, so that sanctification is 
 the proof of his presence and the proof of the ex- 
 istence of the church. We cannot better phrase 
 our doctrine than in the words of Irenaeus, — 
 though we need not defend his entire consist- 
 ency, — " Where the church is, there is the Spirit 
 of God ; and where the Spirit of God is, there is 
 the church." To this authority " Catholics " of 
 every name cannot object. We therefore say 
 with large degree of confidence that the true doc- 
 trine of the church must be formulated in ac- 
 cordance with this canon. 
 
 So entirely foreign to the earliest period of the 
 church was the developed ecclesiasticism of Rome 
 that when the " teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
 tles " was written, in the year 100 A. D., or 
 thereabouts, there were many churches existing 
 without bishops or deacons, gathered apparently 
 by travelling evangelists and never provided with 
 officers, — often, no doubt, gathering themselves 
 by the natural attraction of Christian faith. They 
 were " churches ", for they had the Spirit ; but 
 
246 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 they were not organized as they needed to be. 
 That had to come later. But by the year 1517, 
 when the Reformation was introduced by Luther, 
 all this early simplicity had long since passed 
 away. The church, as men then viewed it, com- 
 prised the following essential particulars. It was 
 the ark of salvation, outside of which salvation 
 is impossible; the possessor of the sacraments, 
 which can only be administered by it, and which 
 are the indispensable channels of grace; essen- 
 tially composed of the clergy; its existence se- 
 cured by the hierarchy instituted by the Apostles, 
 which culminates in the Pope. Everything de- 
 pends upon connection with the papacy, both the 
 right organization and validity of the church and 
 the salvation of the individual. 
 
 Here is the most radical change that can be 
 conceived. The idea of the church has been in- 
 verted. What was once primarily the fellowship 
 of believers, and only secondarily the institution 
 established to bestow salvation upon men, has 
 now become primarily the repository of all the 
 gifts of grace, and is in no essential sense at all 
 the fellowship of believers. Men are always in 
 the process of salvation, never saved, to the Ro- 
 man church. And the proof of the Spirit's pres- 
 ence is no longer sanctification, but the " miracle 
 of the altar ", which itself needs other miracles 
 to confirm it. 
 
 Now at this point the polemics of both com- 
 munions will lock horns and fight the fight out 
 
The Church 
 
 247 
 
 to the death. But meantime the student of Chris- 
 tian experience may find a better way of ascer- 
 taining the truth. He may first point out the 
 evident fact that historically this radical change, 
 slowly proceeding through the centuries, bears 
 the most certain tokens of being a " degenera- 
 tion " rather than an example of true develop- 
 ment. The hierarchy was not an institution of 
 the apostolic age, but archbishops, patriarchs, and 
 the papal claims of the bishop of Rome all arise 
 at definite periods and mostly at distinctly as- 
 signable dates. And no trace of the underlying 
 idea of the hierarchy, that of the necessity of a 
 priesthood and of the existence in the church of 
 a true sacrifice, the mass, can be found in the 
 New Testament or in the earHest antiquity. So 
 much for external matters. But that great in- 
 ternal matter, the reversal of the point of empha- 
 sis in the church from a fellowship of saved 
 men to a contrivance to save them, that may also 
 be shown to be a " degeneration ", — a change by 
 the most gradual steps, but by an increasing de- 
 parture from most of the ideas of the church 
 associated with the great primitive thought, — 
 that men gained salvation directly from God who 
 wrought when and where he would (Jn. iii. 8). 
 
 The school of Ritschl, which we have so often 
 had occasion to criticize severely, has rendered at 
 this point a great service to the church. In his 
 " History of Dogma ", Harnack has drawn out 
 the steps of the earliest departures from original 
 
 ■«aT 
 
 
248 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 conceptions of the church in a masterly manner. 
 As he will not be suspected of any special sym- 
 pathy with the fundamental ideas of the present 
 lectures, his testimony is the more noteworthy. 
 I make free quotations from his pages in the 
 following paragraphs. 
 
 " The confessors of the gospel [in the earliest 
 period] belonged to organized communities 
 which stood to each other in an outwardly loose 
 but inwardly firm connection, and every com- 
 munity, by the vigor of its faith, the certainty of 
 its hope, the holy character of its life, as well as 
 by unfeigned love, unity, and peace, was to be 
 an image of the holy church which is in heaven 
 and whose members are scattered over the earth. 
 They were further, by the purity of their walk, 
 and an active brotherly disposition, to prove to 
 those without, that is, to the world, the excellence 
 and the truth of the Christian faith. . . . 
 The church, that is, the totality of all believers 
 destined to be received into the kingdom of God, 
 is the holy church because it is brought together 
 and preserved by the Holy Spirit. It is the one 
 church not because it presents this unity out- 
 wardly, — on earth the members are, rather, scat- 
 tered abroad, — but because it will be brought to 
 unity in the kingdom of Christ, because it is 
 ruled by the same spirit and inwardly united in a 
 common relation to a common hope and ideal. 
 The church, considered in its origin, is the num- 
 ber of those chosen by God, the true Israel, — 
 
The Church 249 
 
 nay, still more, the final purpose of God, for the 
 world was created for its sake.^ . . . The 
 essential character of Christendom in its first 
 period was a new holy life and a sure hope, both 
 based upon repentance towards God and faith in 
 Jesus Christ and brought about by the Holy 
 Spirit. Christ and the church, that is, the Holy 
 Spirit and the holy church, were inseparably con- 
 nected. The church, or in other words, the com- 
 munity of all believers, attains her unity through 
 the Holy Spirit. This unity manifested itself in 
 brotherly love and in the common relation to a 
 common ideal and a common hope. The assem- 
 bly of all Christians is realized in the kingdom 
 of God, viz., in heaven; on earth Christians and 
 the church are dispersed and in a foreign land. 
 Hence, properly speaking, the church herself is a 
 heavenly community, inseparable from the heav- 
 enly Christ. Christians believe that they belong 
 to a real super-terrestrial commonwealth, which 
 from its very nature cannot be realized upon 
 earth. The heavenly goal is not yet separated 
 from the idea of the church; there is a holy 
 church on earth in so far as heaven is her destina- 
 tion. Every individual congregation is to be an 
 image of the heavenly church. Reflections were 
 no doubt made on the contrast between the em- 
 pirical community and the heavenly church whose 
 likeness it was to be; but these did not affect 
 the theory of the subject. Only the saints of God 
 ^ Op. cit., English translation, I., 150-152. 
 
250 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 whose salvation is certain belong to her, for the 
 essential thing was not to be called, but to be, a 
 Christian. There was as yet no empirical uni- 
 versal church possessing an outward legal title 
 that could, so to speak, be detached from the 
 personal Christianity of the individual Chris- 
 tian."* 
 
 This, according to Harnack, was the original 
 condition of the church. But it came out into a 
 world of strife and soon received the most threat- 
 ening attacks itself. Its method of answering 
 them was the necessary outcome of its position, 
 but it brought about insensibly a change whereby 
 the original idea of the church was revolution- 
 ized. For example, the contest with Gnosticism 
 involved an appeal to the New Testament, the 
 canon of which was quite generally settled by 
 this time; but here the church was at a serious 
 disadvantage. The arguments of the Gnostics 
 were quite as good as those of the church leaders, 
 because the exegesis of the church was settled 
 upon no sound foundations; and you cannot 
 combat one allegory by another, since both may 
 be true or both false. Hence the church writers 
 had to appeal to tradition as preserved in the 
 church, and thus to lay an emphasis upon the 
 great seats of tradition, on Alexandria, Corinth, 
 and especially Rome, which gave a new cast to 
 the theory of the church. The merely historical 
 argument proved to be insufficient; hence a 
 
 * Ibid., 11.72. 
 
The Church 251 
 
 change in the dogmatic idea. This new *' idea 
 was that the Elders, i e., the Bishops, had re- 
 ceived ' with the succession of the episcopacy a 
 certain gift of truth ', that is, their office con- 
 ferred on them the apostoHc heritage of truth [a 
 rudimentary infalUbiHty] which was therefore 
 objectively attached to the dignity, as a charism. 
 This notion of the transmissibility of the charism 
 of truth became associated with the episcopal of- 
 fice after it had become a monarchical one, ex- 
 ercising authority over the church in all relations, 
 and after the bishops had proved themselves the 
 strongest supports of the communities against 
 the attacks of the secular power and of heresy. 
 In Irenaeus and Tertullian, however, we only 
 find the first traces of this new theory. The old 
 notion which regarded the churches as possessing 
 the heritage in so far as they possess the Holy 
 Spirit, continued to exercise a powerful influ- 
 ence on these writers, who still united the new 
 dogmatic view with an historical one, at least 
 in controversies with the heretics. . . . 
 Cyprian found the theory already in existence, 
 but was the first to develop it and to eradicate 
 every remnant of the historical argument in its 
 favor. The conception of the church was thereby 
 subjected to a further transformation which com- 
 pleted the radical changes that had been grad- 
 ually taking place from last half of the second 
 century. ... It was taught that Christ re- 
 ceived from God a law of faith, which as a new 
 
2^2 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 lawgiver he imparted to the apostles, and that 
 they, by transmitting the truth of which they 
 were depositaries, founded the one Catholic 
 church. The latter, being guardian of the apos- 
 tolic heritage, has the assurance of possessing the 
 Spirit; whereas all other communities than her- 
 self, inasmuch as they have not received that de- 
 posit, necessarily lack the Spirit and are there- 
 fore separated from Christ and salvation. Hence 
 one must be a member of this church in order to 
 be a partaker of salvation, because in her alone 
 one can find the creed which must be recognized 
 as a condition of salvation. Consequently in pro- 
 portion as the creed became a doctrine of faith, 
 the Catholic church interposed herself as an em- 
 piric power between the individual and salva- 
 tion. She became a condition of salvation; but 
 the result was that she ceased to be a sure com- 
 munion of the saved and of saints."^ 
 
 We need not pursue the historical discussion 
 further. While on the one hand it is not neces- 
 sary to say that the developing tendency towards 
 the strong external monarchy of the papal church 
 was in every respect unfortunate and evil, yet 
 nothing can be more certain or more capable of 
 objective historical proof than the position that 
 the process was at bottom a corruption of the idea 
 of the church or that the demand of the papacy 
 that " every creature should be subject to the 
 Roman Pontiff as a condition of salvation " was 
 
 ^Ibid., II. 89ff . 
 
The Church 253 
 
 absolutely without foundation in the will of God. 
 It was right to seek to establish the church more 
 firmly by organization; right also to maintain 
 that the gifts of God to men are ordinarily 
 through the church; but wrong to say that the 
 Spirit was bound to institutions which are often 
 themselves of doubtful Christian character, the 
 sacraments as administered, the papacy as estab- 
 lished; and a hundredfold wrong, aye, some- 
 thing akin to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, 
 to refuse to acknowledge the work of the Spirit 
 seen in the holy lives of some of those who were 
 " schismatics " in the Roman sense, but in no 
 sense unbelievers or separated from the true body 
 of Christ! 
 
 It is not a matter of much serious question 
 whether the confirmation of Christian experience 
 can be obtained for this Roman development. 
 Doubtless Catholics have often associated their 
 highest religious experiences with the peculiar 
 dogmas and observances of their church. Thus 
 Cardinal Newman has an eloquent passage upon 
 the adoration of the host in the course of daily 
 mass. But in such utterances the polemic and 
 the apologist come too evidently to the front. If 
 those great books of Catholic piety which have 
 been acceptable to Christians of every age and 
 which may therefore be said to reflect the uni- 
 versal Christian experience be carefully exam- 
 ined, it will be found, I think, that they are to- 
 tally independent of the Romanizing dogmatic 
 
a 54 Christian Life and Theology- 
 views which as a fact their authors beHeved. 
 Take, for example, Augustine, a great father of 
 the universal church, as an ecclesiastic the fore- 
 runner of Catholicism, and as a theologian of 
 Protestantism; you will not find him speaking in 
 a Roman sense in his greatest works. As I write, 
 the Pelagian treatises lie open before me. I do 
 not find, as I turn their pages, upon which cer- 
 tainly the deepest convictions and profoundest 
 experiences of Augustine are recorded, nor can 
 I recall from previous prolonged study, a single 
 passage in which distinctly Roman elements con- 
 tribute to his views of doctrine or life in any very 
 special sense. The same is true of his Confes- 
 sions, which might have been written, for the 
 most part, by any repentant sinner of the Prot- 
 estant nineteenth century. Bernard of Clair- 
 vaux, Abbot and mystic, was a favorite author 
 of Calvin's ; but it was surely not a truly Roman- 
 ized piety which endeared him to the great foun- 
 der of French and Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. 
 A careful perusal of the recently issued Life of 
 Cardinal Manning will leave the reader in consid- 
 erable doubt whether this great defender of the 
 authority and even the infallibility of the papacy 
 was much touched in his personal religious life 
 by the peculiarities of Romanism. The thing 
 which has made the religious experience of the 
 great leaders and of the common mass of Cathol- 
 icism has been, after all, the direct work of the 
 Spirit in the soul. In fact, it is because of the 
 
The Church 255 
 
 presence of the Spirit, who has not utterly for- 
 saken Catholicism, that the church is to them the 
 church ; and their experience, rightly interpreted, 
 speaks for nothing more. 
 
 What we have thus endeavored to show is that 
 originally believers composed the church; that, 
 wherever believers were gathered together in or- 
 ganized fellowship, there was the church; and 
 that, accordingly, the sufficient evidence of the 
 church was and is found in the experience of 
 sanctification on the part of those who com- 
 posed it. And we have sought, very briefly, to 
 indicate that this continued to be true in spite of 
 the fact that the organization of the church 
 moved on other lines so as finally to identify the 
 church with the external institution of the hier- 
 archy. 
 
 The Reformation was a time of revolution in 
 the conception of the church. This was, indeed, 
 its chief outward token, proceeding from its chief 
 inward characteristic, that it was profoundly a 
 spiritual movement. Luther found peace with 
 God not only apart from the machinery of the 
 church, but after he had faithfully tried that 
 machinery over long stretches of weary time and 
 found it to fail. Still he might not have realized 
 what this meant for the doctrine of the church 
 had he not been violently excommunicated. Then 
 both he and his followers, if they were to have 
 any church life at all, must find it in some other 
 organization. So he came soon to see. In 1520 
 
256 Christian Life and Theology- 
 he wrote : " Let him who will not err hold fast 
 to this, that the Christian church [Christenheit] 
 is a spiritual assembly of souls in one faith, and 
 that no one is to be regarded as a Christian on 
 account of his body [that is, his visible connection 
 with a visible church] ; so that he may know that 
 the natural, proper, right, essential church 
 [Christenheit] consists in the Spirit and in no ex- 
 ternal thing, whatever it may be called." . . . 
 " The church of Jesus Christ is not seen but be- 
 lieved," that is, cannot be entirely lacking wher- 
 ever the word of God is preached. " Wherever 
 thou seest and hearest the preaching of the gos- 
 pel, and from whatever person, doubt not that 
 the church is there."* 
 
 This was the position taken ten years later 
 when the Augsburg Confession came to be writ- 
 ten. The church was the inward, invisible " com- 
 munion of saints " ; or, as the Apology defined, 
 " the society of faith and of the Holy Spirit in 
 hearts ". But the church has its visible form, 
 and this is to be distinguished by going back 
 again in thought to the spiritual essence. It is 
 produced by the " word of God " ; and hence 
 wherever " the gospel is rightly taught and the 
 sacraments rightly administered ", that is, ad- 
 ministered " according to the gospel ", there is 
 the church, nothing more being necessary to the 
 
 * Quoted by Thomasius, " Dogmengeschichte", II., 
 201, from " Vom Papstthum zu Rom.'* 
 
The Church 257 
 
 " true unity of the church ".^ Zwingli held the 
 same view with more emphasis on the " word " 
 and less upon the " sacraments ". " Wherever ", 
 says Calvin,^ " the word of God is purely 
 preached and heard, and the sacraments admin- 
 istered according to the institution of Christ, 
 there is undoubtedly a church of Christ." As 
 Luther had meant by the phrase " rightly 
 taught " and by the " pure word " that which 
 centered in Jesus Christ, held him up as Saviour, 
 and was operative in souls through his divine 
 power,^ so Calvin did not mean by " pure preach- 
 ing " perfect preaching, but that which embraced 
 the great doctrines of the gospel and was essen- 
 tially correct. The proof of the preaching, and so 
 ultimately of the genuineness of the church, was 
 the work of conversion and sanctification actually 
 performed. 
 
 With this result all the Reformers and all the 
 Reformation creeds are in an agreement which 
 seems to me nothing less than wonderful. The 
 First Helvetic Confession reads : " Of the living 
 stones which are built upon this living rock is one 
 holy general church built, the communion and 
 assembly of all saints. . . . and it is assem- 
 bled through the word of God."* The Heidel- 
 
 * Schaff, " Creeds ", vol. III., p. 12. 
 ' Institutes, IV., i, 9. 
 
 'Well put by Harnack, " Dogmengeschichte" (Ger- 
 man), III., p. 705. 
 
 * Schaff, " Creeds ", vol. III., p. 218 f. 
 
258 Christian Life and Theology- 
 berg Catechism reads : " Out of the whole hu- 
 man race . . . the Son of God by his Spirit 
 and word gathers, defends, and preserves for 
 himself unto everlasting life, a chosen commun- 
 ion in the unity of the true faith."^ More dis- 
 tinct and clear yet is the French Confession, 
 originally prepared by Calvin : " The true church 
 . . . is the company of the faithful followers 
 who agree to follow his word and the pure reli- 
 gion it teaches ; who grow in grace all their lives, 
 believing and becoming more confirmed in the 
 fear of God."^ Thus the church is the sphere of 
 sanctification. The English Articles from 1563, 
 through 1 57 1, and in their American form, 1801, 
 read : " The visible church of Christ is a congre- 
 gation of faithful men in which the pure word 
 of God is preached and the sacraments be duly 
 administered according to Christ's ordinance in 
 all those things that of necessity are requisite to 
 the same."^ And Westminister : " Particular 
 churches which are members of the catholic, vis- 
 ible church of Christ, are more or less pure ac- 
 cording as the doctrine of the gospel is taught 
 and embraced, ordinances administered, and pub- 
 lic worship performed more or less purely in 
 them. "* 
 
 This uniformity of confession came out of uni- 
 
 ^ Ibidem, p. 324. 
 " Ibidem, p. 375. 
 
 * Ibidem, p. 499. 
 
 * Ibidem, p. 658. 
 
The Church 259 
 
 formity of experience in the Protestant churches. 
 When the reformation of the church had been set 
 in motion in Wittenberg during Luther's year in 
 the Wartburg, it was found that the spiritual ex- 
 periences which belong to the church were not 
 only still enjoyed but even greatly intensified un- 
 der the new order. Prayer was a greater reality. 
 Approach to God was rendered easier and com- 
 munion with him more intimate when it was 
 separated from the ceremonies of the old church. 
 The Lord's Supper, administered without the 
 mass, and under both kinds, was made a new 
 office and the channel of more abundant grace. 
 Luther himself neither could nor would turn back 
 the evangelical tide. There was a new, great^ 
 deep, religious life in the University and city. 
 The holy church was certainly still surviving be- 
 cause its holy fruits were found on every side. 
 Such is the testimony of the men of Wittenberg. 
 But we are not confined to their testimony. Ob- 
 jective facts remain accessible to us to testify to 
 the presence there in those days of the Spirit of 
 God. The faithful translation of the Scriptures, 
 which was so eagerly welcomed, testifies of the 
 spiritual life of the times. People do not thus 
 produce nor welcome what they do not love ; and 
 to love the Scriptures is to " abide in Christ's 
 word ". The multiplication of Christian schools 
 in humble parishes throughout the land, so that 
 no village was to be so remote from the great 
 centers of influence as to be deprived of the light 
 
26o Christian Life and Theology 
 
 of learning and of the word of the gospel, was 
 a Christian work. Not less the founding of the 
 universities, which has gone on down to our day, 
 where truth and truth alone has been sought, and 
 where Christian truth has received, with all the 
 actual drawbacks, its best defence and greatest 
 extension. The great increase of practical benefi- 
 cence is another objective proof of the presence 
 of the Spirit in these churches. Luther denied 
 the special sacredness of the monastic life and 
 made the " calling " of the Christian to lie in his 
 common daily work, in which by the exercise of 
 the Christian virtues, by honesty and kindness and 
 faithfulness, he was to glorify God. The imme- 
 diate result was not only the diminution of false 
 " good works ", pilgrimages and self-mortifica- 
 tions, but the increase of the positive virtues. 
 Feuds ceased. Oppression of the poor by the 
 rich ceased. General prosperity followed in the 
 wake of better ideas of industry and common la- 
 bor. Everything began to tend upwards. The 
 Dutch were inspired to begin and maintain their 
 eighty years' war with Spain for liberty and re- 
 ligion, and the first and severest blow was given 
 to that cruel world-wide empire, of the like of 
 which it has at length died. Explorations took 
 new life, and where commerce went the church 
 went, or else the church went and commerce fol- 
 lowed, till new nation after new nation had been 
 formed, some of them to burst all the remaining 
 bonds of tyranny and to stand forth at last pre- 
 
The Church 261 
 
 eminently free and Christian in a new and unim- 
 agined degree. The books of those early Protes- 
 tants may now be read, and they speak the Spirit 
 of Christ. " If there be any fellowship of the 
 Spirit " between the Christian ages, and if to-day 
 there is any Christian spirituality among Chris- 
 tian men by profession, then those early writers 
 were Christians and had the Spirit, for his marks 
 are to be found in their words. And, if anything 
 more is needed to close and confirm this long re- 
 cital of accumulating proofs, let one be added to 
 which Rome has always attached the greatest im- 
 portance, the testimony of martyrs who shed their 
 blood willingly for the faith of Jesus. Like Blan- 
 dina, and Perpetua and Felicitas of the early 
 church, so many a maiden, and like Ignatius and 
 Cyprian many a bishop, laid down their lives with 
 joy and with the name of Jesus upon their lips. 
 True, Rome slew them herself; but that fact 
 neither unsays their triumphant confession of 
 faith in Jesus in the hour of death, nor makes 
 them heretics. It rather shows that " holy " 
 Rome, like pagan Rome, has been " drunken with 
 the blood of the saints and with the blood of the 
 martyrs of Jesus." 
 
 The exclusive claims of Rome to be the true 
 church are thus exploded by the force of experi- 
 ence. She has no monopoly of the Spirit and 
 thus no monopoly of the church ; for it is incredi- 
 ble that God should bless Protestant churches 
 with his favor, as he has, if in his purpose and by 
 
262 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 his holy law they are so astray from the right way 
 as the theories of Rome teach. But every form 
 of the doctrine of " apostolical succession ", Hmit- 
 ing the valid church to that episcopally organized 
 and possessing the ** succession ", is equally ex- 
 ploded by experience. This further step of argu- 
 ment we must take before we have answered fully 
 the question set before us by the proposal of the 
 Lambeth conditions of Christian union. The 
 English church, with its American daughter, is 
 the chief representative of this theory. We shall 
 hence discuss it with sole reference to her. 
 
 Among the creeds already quoted for the uni- 
 versal Reformation view of the church are in- 
 cluded the English Articles. Although " Arch- 
 bishops and Bishops " are mentioned in them, and 
 reference is made to the forms of consecration 
 found in the prayer-book, there is nothing in 
 either articles or book to teach anything more 
 than the doctrine held in the English church by 
 multitudes since the Reformation, that the episco- 
 pacy is essential to the well-being, not the being, 
 of the Church. However much the general tone 
 of the church may have favored the exclusive 
 theory of apostolical succession, her official doc- 
 trine has never gone further than this. The gen- 
 eral recognition of the validity of the non-episco- 
 pal orders of the continental churches in Eng- 
 land for a long period confirms the statement 
 here made as to the doctrine of the church. The 
 Anglican leaders could not deny that the churches 
 
The Church 1263 
 
 of the continent organized congregationally or in 
 the presbyterian mode had the Spirit, and so were 
 true churches of Jesus Christ. 
 
 These are matters of history and so of interest. 
 But granting the claims of some high-church 
 leaders of the present day, and admitting that the 
 Church of England has always declined to rec- 
 ognize the validity of the orders of the non-epis- 
 copally organized churches, we maintain that this 
 position is wrong, and we urge our objection by 
 arguments drawn from the history of the same 
 English Church. If anyone will read the history 
 of English Puritanism in the time of Elizabeth 
 and her immediate successors as it is sketched by 
 John Richard Green, for example, he will find 
 what sort of a religious life developed in the most 
 anti-prelatical atmosphere which England ever 
 knew. The new knowledge of the Bible which 
 the people then gained developed the religious 
 spirit among both high and low. Religion, Cal- 
 vinism, and Puritanism all grew together. Par- 
 liament would not transact business upon Sun- 
 day ; ceremonies were abolished till divine service 
 was performed with the greatest simplicity; and 
 interest in theology and religion dominated even 
 the literary life of the people. But best were the 
 fruits of this movement in the department of per- 
 sonal character. " The meanest peasant ", says 
 Green, " felt himself ennobled as a child of God. 
 The proudest noble recognized a spiritual equality 
 in the poorest * saints *. The great social revolu- 
 
264 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 tion of the civil wars and the Protectorate was al- 
 ready felt in the demeanor of English gentlemen. 
 * He had a loving and sweet courtesy to the poor- 
 est ', we are told of one of them, ' and would often 
 employ many spare hours with the commonest 
 soldiers and the poorest laborers \ ' He never 
 disdained the meanest nor flattered the great- 
 est. ' " Of a London housewife of the middle 
 class it was said : " She was very loving and obe- 
 dient to her parents, loving and kind to her hus- 
 band, very tender hearted to her children, loving 
 all that were godly, much misliking the wicked 
 and profane. She was a pattern of sobriety unto 
 many." " Home ", says Green, " as we conceive 
 it now, was the creation of the Puritan." With- 
 out the excesses of austerity into which persecu- 
 tion subsequently drove the Puritans, this early 
 Puritanism gave every evidence of possessing 
 the Spirit of God. 
 
 It was, however, still within the pale of the 
 church. It had grown up under low-church bish- 
 ops. And when, now. Laud appeared, with his 
 fondness for greater ceremony and pomp, greater 
 authority of the bishops, etc., — for all those 
 things, in short, in indissoluble connection with 
 which the papal and the high-Anglican view of 
 the church stands, — spiritual tendencies ought, 
 on the prelatical theory, to have become even 
 stronger. The notorious truth is that the spir- 
 itual elements of church and nation were driven 
 into rebellion, and the outcome was the church of 
 
The Church 265 
 
 the Revolution and the state of Cromwell. Who 
 questions where the Spirit really was, with Laud, 
 his ceremonies and his tyranny, or with the Puri- 
 tans, who with all the unfortunate growth of their 
 hard austerity, were still capable of such a gov- 
 ernment in the state as Cromwell's is now well 
 understood to have been, and of such leaders as 
 Bunyan and Baxter among pastors and of the 
 Westminster divines among theologians? It is 
 too well known to demand proof that the great in- 
 terest of these excommunicated and abhorred 
 schismatics from a papalized church system was 
 concentrated upon the " doctrines of grace ", 
 upon repentance and faith, and upon holy living. 
 They were practical reformers of the most earn- 
 est type. It is Green's testimony that they set 
 in motion public improvements for which Eng- 
 land, which annulled them at the Restoration of 
 the Stuarts, has had since to wait till our own 
 day. They emphasized the deeper elements of a 
 spiritual and practical theology. They put the 
 proof of the Scriptures upon the basis of the " tes- 
 timony of the Spirit " in the first chapter of their 
 Confession, and they emphasized the possibility 
 of " assurance " of salvation, and the *' duty " of 
 " attaining thereunto ". They had the Spirit ; 
 and their church without bishops was a true 
 church of Christ. 
 
 A hundred years later the full effect of the Res- 
 toration, by which the most earnest and pious of 
 the Church of England had been driven from her 
 
266 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 pale, was being sadly felt. The " succession " 
 was with the church, but the life of the church 
 was far from the standards of the Scriptures. The 
 clergy were drunken, sport-loving, formal in their 
 reHgion, unfaithful to their people, and largely 
 tinctured with heresy in their doctrine. The great 
 masses of the people were sunk in irreligion and 
 immorality. But there arose in the bosom of the 
 church itself a reformer, a travelling evangelist, 
 who preached in every part of the kingdom, and 
 brought great multitudes to conviction of sin and 
 to earnest religious lives. The movement ex- 
 tended across the seas to our own continent and 
 has now become world-wide and developed one of 
 the most vigorous of existing religious commun- 
 ions. Although Wesley was a loyal son of the 
 English church and sought to keep his societies 
 fully within the pale of the establishment, they 
 were in fact cast out, and eventually this leader, 
 himself nothing but a common presbyter, was 
 obliged to ordain " bishops " for the American 
 societies. Thus Methodism has no " succes- 
 sion ". But where was the Spirit of God in those 
 early days? With the fox-hunting parson, who 
 sometimes officiated in his hunting boots, and 
 droned the service to empty pews? Or with the 
 Methodist itinerant, consumed with a zeal for 
 souls, and preaching to a multitude gathered upon 
 the village common, of thieves and loose livers, 
 who groaned under the burden of their sins and 
 rose from their knees to be chaste and honest? 
 
The Church 267 
 
 As to the eflfects of Methodism upon the Eng- 
 Hsh nation I quote again from Green. The ef- 
 fects the movement wrought show what it was. 
 " The Methodists themselves," he says, " were 
 the least result of the Methodist revival. Its ac- 
 tion upon the church broke the lethargy of the 
 clergy ; and the * evangelical ' movement, which 
 found representatives like Newton and Cecil with- 
 in the establishment, made the fox-hunting parson 
 and the absentee rector at last impossible. In 
 Walpole's day the English clergy were the idlest 
 and most lifeless in the world. In our own day 
 no body of religious ministers surpass them in 
 piety, in philanthropic energy, or in popular re- 
 gard. In the nation at large appeared a new 
 moral enthusiasm, which, rigid and pedantic as it 
 often seemed, was still healthy in its social tone, 
 and whose power was seen in the disappearance 
 of the profligacy which had disgraced the upper 
 classes and the foulness which had infested liter- 
 ature ever since the Restoration. A new philan- 
 thropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency 
 and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the 
 slave trade, and gave the first impulse to popular 
 education." Truly in such a movement was pres- 
 ent the Spirit of God. 
 
 Shortly before Wesley began preaching in Eng- 
 land, Jonathan Edwards began his labors in 
 Northampton, Massachusetts. Both were revival 
 preachers ; and it is believed that Edwards' " Nar- 
 rative of Surprising Conversions " was one of the 
 
268 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 determinative influences which led to Wesley's 
 career. The evidences that Edwards had the 
 Spirit, and that the community of unprelatical 
 Congregationalists in which he stood was a true 
 church of God is much the same as that furnished 
 by the career of Wesley for the same proposition. 
 Spiritual effects of spiritual preaching were abun- 
 dant. " There were remarkable tokens of God's 
 presence ", says Edwards, " in almost every 
 house. It was a time of joy in families on ac- 
 count of salvation being brought unto them ; par- 
 ents rejoicing over their children as new-born, 
 and husbands over their wives, and wives over 
 their husbands. The goings of God were then 
 seen in his sanctuary, God's day was a delight 
 and his tabernacles were amiable." Multitudes 
 were admitted to the membership of the church, 
 a hundred at a time. The work spread to other 
 communities till it pervaded New England, and 
 spreading thence, finally reached every one of the 
 thirteen colonies in greater or less measure. Or, 
 if we prefer to seek our evidence of the presence 
 of the sanctifying Spirit in more tangible things 
 than exclusively religious exercises, the same ef- 
 fects in the department of good morals attended 
 this work as had Wesley's. The license of be- 
 haviour among the young people of Northamp- 
 ton, amounting to licentiousness, was checked; 
 and they became orderly and sober in their con- 
 duct. New England has always retained much 
 of the Puritan spirit, but it had then suffered 
 
The Church 269 
 
 some eclipse. It was revived. The impulse was 
 given which was sufficient to carry that region of 
 our country through the demoralizations of the 
 War of the Revolution. And when, at the be- 
 ginning of the present century, the revival broke 
 out which brought to an end French infidelity in 
 Yale College and prepared the New England 
 churches for the Unitarian conflict in Massachu- 
 setts, it was a direct consequence of the earlier 
 revival. Timothy Dwight, Nathaniel Emmons, 
 and their co-laborers, were not only men of the 
 spirit of Edwards, but had been trained in his 
 school. Or, if we prefer to pass by every outer ev- 
 idence and get the answer of our question from 
 Edwards himself, his books remain ; and who that 
 reads can doubt his possession of the presence and 
 blessing of the Spirit of God? He exalted God 
 supremely, — even, indeed, sometimes to the eff ace- 
 ment of man — he grounded the proof of the 
 Scriptures in the experience of the soul illumi- 
 nated by the Spirit ; he introduced the work of re- 
 vival by preaching the great spiritual doctrine of 
 Protestantism, that of justification by faith; he 
 exalted the love of God, but did not forget his 
 justice ; and he made the center of his preaching 
 and teaching the person of Christ. This was the 
 " pure preaching " of the Protestant fathers. If 
 they understood the matter at all, the church at 
 Northampton was a true church of Christ. 
 
 We hasten the argument to its conclusion. Is 
 there evidence that the churches outside of th^ 
 
270 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 " apostolical succession " have the Spirit of God 
 to-day? Over against the Roman and Anglican 
 " Catholicism " we set the great mass of Protes- 
 tant churches of every name, and invite compari- 
 son. Have they the Scriptures? So have we. 
 Have they labored in Christian missions for the 
 conversion of the heathen? So have we. Have 
 they developed a Christian literature ? We more. 
 Have they given themselves to the labors of prac- 
 tical philanthropy ? We have labored more abun- 
 dantly than they all. Have they sought to main- 
 tain a high standard of ministerial and private 
 morality ? Nowhere have they succeeded as well 
 as where they have been provoked by sharp com- 
 petition with us. " I speak as a fool ", but I 
 speak of the triumphs of the grace of God through 
 human instrumentalities. 
 
 Take the simple matter of the Scriptures. The 
 collateral studies for their better explanation, 
 which are specially characteristic of our own time, 
 geographical explorations, archaeological investi- 
 gations, the study of Assyriology and Egyptol- 
 ogy, etc., etc., are matters of Protestant scholar- 
 ship rather than Roman, and among the English 
 more of the broad church than of the high. The 
 " Catholic Dictionary " of Thomas Arnold says 
 of Meyer that he is " perhaps the most eminent 
 who has appeared in our time " among New Tes- 
 tament scholars. Granting all the scholarship of 
 the English church and universities to the Cath- 
 olic party, — and such an admission is far from 
 
The Church ayi 
 
 the fact — still it would remain that " schismatic " 
 Germany leads the world of biblical scholarship. 
 
 One of the greatest marks of true spiritual life 
 in our own day is the recently accomp*lished revis- 
 ion of the English translation of the Bible. The 
 result has never been surpassed among biblical 
 translations for consistency and accuracy. Upon 
 it nearly all the great divisions of English and 
 American Protestantism have had representation, 
 and it has not become known to the public that the 
 " non-conformists " fell any whit behind their 
 " catholic " neighbors in zeal or in service. 
 
 Or, if we look at the work of missions, and 
 select as our example that ancient nation just now 
 coming out of the seclusion and darkness of cen- 
 turies of heathenism into the civilization, and, we 
 trust, the Christian faith of the European world, 
 Japan, the facts speak no less emphatically for 
 the presence of the divine Spirit with our simple 
 and non-prelatical churches. I would say noth- 
 ing to diminish the luster of that most remarka- 
 ble fact, the survival of Roman Catholicism in Ja- 
 pan through centuries of oppression under com- 
 plete isolation from other Christian countries. 
 But it is undeniable that Protestant missions, 
 since the opening of Japan to outside influences, 
 have exhibited a vigor and made a degree of 
 progress with which Romanism has nothing to 
 be compared. And of Protestant missions, those 
 prosecuted by Presbyterians and Congregation- 
 alists have proved most successful when tested by 
 
ay^ Christian Life and Theology 
 
 the only test which admits of objective estimation, 
 that of numbers. Or, if we may enter the sub- 
 jective sphere, who that reads the Hfe of Neesima 
 can doubt that he was a holy man, moved by the 
 most profound desire to bring his countrymen to 
 Christ? John Paton in the New Hebrides, Wil- 
 liams and Ashmore in China, Moffat, Grout, and 
 Livingstone in Africa, Rhea among the Nesto- 
 rians, Dwight, Hamlin, Christie in Turkey, and 
 unnumbered heroes elsewhere, have they not man- 
 ifested the same spirit, the creation of the divine 
 Spirit, as Bishops Patteson, Hannington, and 
 Heber, with the Jesuit Xavier, and the thousands 
 of priests and laymen of Catholicism in ancient 
 and modern times? We can claim no monopoly 
 of missionary zeal for the protesting churches; 
 but if such zeal is a token of the Spirit among 
 " Catholics ", is it not also when found, as it un- 
 deniably is and in large measure, among those 
 who have no episcopal ordination of any sort ? 
 
 And what of the reverse? Does episcopal or- 
 dination everywhere and always convey the gift 
 of the Spirit? I let Dr. John Watson answer, 
 as he recently did in the following words: — 
 
 " I take this abject, this poor wretch of a Brazil- 
 ian priest, one of the lowest types under a minis- 
 try of any kind that can be discovered — I take 
 him, ignorant, dirty, evil-living, not intelligent 
 enough either to believe or not believe, I take that 
 creature and I say : Then that is a valid minister 
 of Jesus Christ? Yes! Then I bring in John 
 
The Church 273 
 
 Bunyan. What of him? Was he a minister of 
 Jesus Christ? No; never properly ordained! 
 Had he any right to administer a sacrament? 
 None! Was the sacrament ineffective from his 
 hand ? Yes ! Was he an intruder ? Yes ! Was 
 he an impostor? Yes! Is there any hope for 
 him ? * Uncovenanted mercies ' ! — I remember 
 the sermons he preached, wherein he took sinners 
 in his arms and Hterally carried them up to the 
 mercy seat that they could not escape from the 
 salvation of God. I remember his Hfe in Bedford 
 gaol and all that he suffered for the Lord. And 
 I remember the book wherein he has opened up 
 the deeps below and the heights above, and has 
 made the way luminous for millions that they 
 may enter into the kingdom of heaven. And 
 when I hear that that creature is a minister of 
 Christ and this great prophet is an impostor, then 
 I go down upon my knees and implore God that 
 from this debasing error and superstition he 
 would be pleased to save us and our children after 
 us." 
 
 That word " superstition " is Watson's ; but I 
 will not fail of my duty to take its full burden 
 upon my own shoulders. What less does it de- 
 serve to be called ? 
 
 Thus we have sought to establish our conten- 
 tion (i) that the church is the sphere of sancti- 
 fication, so that " where the Spirit is, there is the 
 church, and where the church is ", the living, vi- 
 tal, true church, "there is the Spirit"; and (2) 
 
274 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 that the non-episcopal churches of the Reforma- 
 tion abundantly possess the Spirit, and so are 
 members of the true visible church of God on 
 earth. To you I leave the decision whether I 
 have interpreted the voice of experience correctly 
 and whether it does thus speak for the contention. 
 
 And thus we have come to the limit of our dis- 
 cussions together of high and sacred themes. I 
 hope the following main positions have been 
 clearly established in the estimation of you all, 
 whatever dissent any of you may have to enter as 
 to minor matters and mere details. If these are 
 secure, I shall have attained the purpose of my 
 labors, — these viz. — 
 
 (i) Christian experience is capable of logical 
 analysis and of rigorously scientific treatment. 
 If it were a matter of mere fancy, a flow of mere 
 feeling, transitory, vague, and shallow, or a se- 
 ries of prejudices and of empirical notions, it 
 would possess no value for the purposes of a so- 
 ber theology. But it is none of these. At bot- 
 tom it is known by the immediate consciousness ; 
 and in all its grades it may be tested by appropri- 
 ate processes by which a reliable and universally 
 valid result may be obtained. Thus our theology 
 is no " theology of the feelings " when that is un- 
 derstood as a jumble of sentimentalities; but, 
 however much it may affect the feelings, a theol- 
 ogy of realities and of reason. 
 
 (2) Thus analyzed, Christian experience speaks 
 
The Church 275 
 
 for the system of evangelical doctrine believed in 
 substance by all the great churches which base 
 their theology upon the Bible. The view we 
 have taken of this system has been confined to its 
 determinative portions and has considered these 
 only in their vital core; but we have developed 
 from experience the Christian view of the sinful 
 world, and the doctrines of God, of regeneration by 
 God, of prevenient grace, of justification by faith, 
 of the divinity of Christ and of the trinity, of the 
 objective atonement, and finally of sanctification 
 by the Spirit and of the church as the sphere of 
 sanctification. If any man believes those doc- 
 trines, he is an evangelical Christian. When he 
 has brought them into orderly and perfect adjust- 
 ment to one another and to all other known truth, 
 he has gained a perfect theology, that theology 
 towards which we all with unequal steps are 
 hastening as we can. 
 
 Our age has thus already performed a certain 
 work in the investigation and interpretation of 
 Christian experience. The elements of the sub- 
 ject have been sufficiently set forth. But there 
 remains still a great work in carrying the sub- 
 ject out into its details, for coming generations of 
 laborers to perform, and among them for you, 
 young men, who hear me to-day. Two great 
 questions, demanding different qualifications in 
 the student need to be investigated upon the larg- 
 est scale. 
 
 ( I ) What particular doctrines are in fact asso- 
 
276 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 ciated in the experience of the Christian church 
 with genuine, pervasive, and active piety? To 
 answer this question the investigator will need a 
 mind of rare candor, able to acknowledge true 
 piety where he sees it, and great patience to gath- 
 er and classify the mass of material that is await- 
 ing him in history and in contemporary life. He 
 must have no prejudices against any people how- 
 ever narrow, crooked, perverse, or superstitious; 
 for from them all, Quaker, Mormon, Romanist, 
 something may be gained, negative when not pos- 
 itive. 
 
 (2) What is it in those doctrines which actually 
 elicits and promotes this ascertained piety ? Here 
 the demand will be for analytical acumen and 
 psychological knowledge. The incompetent in- 
 vestigator will be confused by conflicting claims. 
 The form of a sacrament or a doctrine of real 
 presence may be declared by some Christian to be 
 the eliciting cause of holy exercises, when in fact 
 it is the entire surrender of himself that he made, 
 which would have been equally effective under 
 any other doctrine or form. If there are true 
 piety and wonderful cures at the shrine of St. 
 Anne de Beaupre, what has the doctrine of saint- 
 ly intercession to do with it, and what not? 
 Doubtless, as one has said : " You can produce 
 any kind of Christian experience you want " ; but 
 what is genuine, and what has produced this? 
 Those two questions in all their unlimited rich- 
 
The Church 1277 
 
 ness of detail I hand down to you for your labo- 
 rious solution. 
 
 I hope we may also carry away one impression 
 from these lectures, one feeling which shall per- 
 vade our lives and especially our ministry, a feel- 
 ing of rock-like certainty as to the main things 
 of Christian doctrine. Gladstone has given us 
 a great figure of speech which I would employ in 
 impressing my thought, in his title, " The Im- 
 pregnable Rock of Holy Scripture." There are 
 things that are impregnable. There is a Rock. 
 We discuss much ; and often, for the sake of win- 
 ning puzzled men to clearer views, we concede 
 much. We sometimes say. If there is a God, then 
 so and so. But for ourselves, in the certainty of 
 our own knowledge, there is no such thing as that 
 " if ". We know God. We know also Christ in 
 the deepest and most certain experiences of our 
 souls. In respect to such things as these prima- 
 rily, but truly in respect to all the great main posi- 
 tions of evangelical theology, we know. They 
 are not matters of question for ourselves or for 
 our teaching. There may be an apology in our 
 pulpits in the sense of a defence of the Christian 
 principles against unbelief, but there ought not 
 to be, and, I hope and pray, for us there never 
 shall be the atmosphere of faint-hearted and hes- 
 itating apologizing. Let us " speak that we do 
 know ", as did our divine Master 1 And thus 
 
178 Christian Life and Theology 
 
 shall the witnessing church in the midst of a hes- 
 itating, doubting, despairing world, which has no 
 inward light to receive and interpret the Light 
 that has come into the world, be a messenger of 
 salvation and of certainty. 
 
 I appropriate, to express this aspiration the 
 famiHar stanza: — 
 
 Oh, make thy church, dear Saviour, 
 
 A lamp of burnished gold. 
 To bear before the nations 
 
 Thy true light as of old; 
 Oh, teach thy wandering pilgrims 
 
 By this their path to trace, 
 Till, clouds and darkness ended. 
 
 They see thee face to face. 
 
 OF TMJt 
 
 ■CTNIVERSITT 
 
 "SlCAUFoeJii^ 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abelard on the atonement, 
 
 222. 
 
 Anselm of Canterbury, on 
 the atonement, 220 ; Cath- 
 olic elements in his doc- 
 trine. 221. 
 
 " Apostolical succession ", 
 doctrine of, exploded by 
 experience, 262 ; absurd, 
 272. 
 
 Athanasius, view of the na- 
 ture of Christ, 166; ap- 
 peals to experience, 169; 
 philosophy faulty, 170; 
 his " immortal service ", 
 171 ; on the atonement, 
 219. 
 
 Atonement, by Christ, 196; 
 voice of elementary ex- 
 perience upon. 196; some- 
 thing we could not do for 
 ourselves, 201 ; experi- 
 ential elements of, 201 ; 
 biblical doctrine of, 207; 
 course of Christian his- 
 tory as to, 219 : the creeds, 
 227; verdict of history 
 upon, 228; false theories 
 of, 229; Kaftan's views 
 of, 233. 
 
 Augustine, his experience 
 not a Romanizing one, 
 254- 
 
 Authority of the Bible, 93, 
 104, 108; in religion, 192; 
 final position as to, 195. 
 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, the 
 piety of, not Romanizing, 
 254. 
 
 Bible, a witness to Chris- 
 tian experience, 90; Rit- 
 schl's canon, 90; different 
 elements in, 91 ; criticism, 
 93 ; authority. 93 ; attitude 
 of the Ritschlians as to, 
 94, 103 ; the word of God, 
 104 ; determinative ele- 
 ments of, 10; does not 
 supersede experience, 
 
 108; unique, 117. 
 
 Calvin on the atonement, 
 222; on the church, 257. 
 
 Causation, discussed by 
 Kaftan, 80; true idea of, 
 
 83. 
 
 Certainty, attaching to ex- 
 perience, of different de- 
 grees, 37; of conviction 
 and of preaching neces- 
 sary, 277, 
 
 Christ, doctrine of his per- 
 son, 133 ; himself the ob- 
 ject of faith, 134; experi- 
 ential argument for his 
 divinity. 134-142 ; sum- 
 mary of the argument, 
 141 ; New Testament 
 teaches his divinity, 142; 
 history also for it, 153; 
 Athanasius' view of, 166; 
 Ritschl's view of, 176; 
 
 279 
 
28o 
 
 Index 
 
 doctrine of Christ's work, 
 i8s; revelation by, 185; 
 authority of, 186; in the 
 whole Bible, 187; credi- 
 bility as a witness, 194; 
 work of the atonement. 
 196. 
 
 Christology of John and 
 Paul identical, 151. 
 
 Church, the, 238 ; experience 
 bears upon the question 
 what it is, 241 ; exists 
 where the Spirit is, 243; 
 in the New Testament, 
 243; the church and the 
 Spirit, 245 ; radical change 
 in, 246; degeneration in 
 idea of, 247 ; Roman form 
 of, 252 ; Luther on, 255 ; 
 Zwingli and Calvin on, 
 257; the creeds on, 256; 
 claims of Rome as to, ex- 
 ploded, 261 ; and " apos- 
 tolical succession ", 262. 
 
 Clement of Rome, untheo- 
 logical, III ; Second Epis- 
 tle of, quoted. 155. 
 
 Conscience, supremacy of, 
 23; self-condemnation by, 
 
 25. 
 
 Consciousness, defined. 16: 
 reliable, 16; the individ- 
 ual throws light upon the 
 universal, 17; of the 
 Christian peculiar only in 
 its objects, 18; Christian, 
 must be admitted to be 
 possible, 18; the New 
 Birth a matter of, 22; of 
 God (in looser sense of 
 the word), 55, 
 
 Corruption of human na- 
 ture, 30. 
 
 Creeds, the historic, testi- 
 mony as to prevenient 
 grace, 69; on the work of 
 
 Christ, 227; on the doc- 
 trine of the church, 256. 
 
 Development, historical, of 
 Christian theology, iii; 
 motive forces of, 112; 
 stages of, 113; element of 
 succession, 114; criteria 
 of a sound, 115. 
 
 Diognetus, Epistle to, cited, 
 154; quoted, 157, 159- 
 
 Doctrine distinguished from 
 theology, i ; grows out of 
 experience by a definite 
 process, iio. 
 
 Dogma, rise of according 
 to Kaftan, 13, 127; actual 
 rise of, iii. 
 
 Duty, choice of, 21 ; idea of, 
 23 ; acquires supreme alle- 
 giance, 28; relations to 
 actual life, 50; to Christ, 
 134; embraces faith in 
 Christ, 139. 
 
 Edwards and his North- 
 ampton church had the 
 Spirit, 267, 269. 
 
 Evolution, theories of, can- 
 not explain the New 
 Birth, 45. 
 
 Experience, a source of doc- 
 trine. 3; history, 4; made 
 by Frank the sole basis of 
 theology, 9; employed by 
 Ritschl, 10; earliest con- 
 tributions to doctrine by. 
 SS ; forms in which it ap- 
 pears, 35; certainty at- 
 taching to, 37; possesses 
 no infallibility, ^ 38; 
 sources outside the indi- 
 vidual, 87; larger mean- 
 ing of, 88; deposited in 
 the New Testament, 89; 
 not superseded by the Bi- 
 
Index 
 
 281 
 
 ble, 108 ; embodied in his- 
 tory, no; employed by 
 Athanasius, 169; voice of, 
 on the Trinity, 172; of ef- 
 fects of the doctrine of 
 the divinity of Christ, 
 182; transcended by it- 
 self, 189; does not apply 
 equally to all topics, 238; 
 limitations of, 238; not 
 in favor of Romanizing 
 elements, 253 ; bears on 
 the doctrine of sanctifica- 
 tion, 240; not for Roman 
 elements in development 
 of church, 253; doctrine 
 of church, 259; explodes 
 the doctrine of " apostol- 
 ical succession ", 262 ; 
 summary of conclusions 
 as to, 274; remaining 
 problems as to, 275. 
 
 Faith, saving, Schleimacher 
 on, 6; Frank's conception 
 of, 8; forms of, 19; de- 
 fined, 21. 
 
 Fiske, John, 72. 
 
 Forgiveness, origin of, 60; 
 objective, 62; paradox in- 
 volved in, 173, 196. 
 
 Frank, in; "System of 
 Christian Certainty", 8; 
 Hamack on, 12. 
 
 Generation of the Son, 160, 
 161. 
 
 Giddings, F. H., cited, 47; 
 on " survival ", 121. 
 
 God, proof of his existence 
 from experience, 42-57 ; 
 personality of, 54; holi- 
 ness of, 56; impartial 
 love of, 56; unlimited, 
 56; this proof exclusively 
 Christian, 57 ; certainty 
 
 of his existence, 60; Kaf- 
 tan's form of the proof, 
 'JT, first known through 
 Christ, 134; fully re- 
 vealed only by Christ, 
 141. 
 Good, highest as developed 
 in history. Kaftan's view, 
 
 Green, J. R., quoted, 263, 
 267; cited, 265. 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa, on ran- 
 som to the devil, 219. 
 
 Grotius on the atonement, 
 226. 
 
 Guilt, idea of, 25; magni- 
 tude of, seen at Calvary, 
 202. 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus and 
 evangelical truth, 65. 
 
 Habit, personal, 29; law of, 
 29; racial, 30. 
 
 Harmony of soul conse- 
 quent upon the New 
 Birth, 61. 
 
 Harnack, on the course of 
 church history, 125 ; as to 
 early Christology, 155 ; 
 date of n Clement, 155; 
 agreement with Thomas- 
 ius on Athanasius, 171 ; 
 on the degeneration of 
 the church, 247; cited, 
 
 257. 
 
 Hegel, influence in theol- 
 ogy* 7; idea of God, 59. 
 
 Hermas, cited, 154. 
 
 History, use of in theology, 
 V ; use of secular, 31 ; 
 Christian judgment on 
 historical facts, 36 ; 
 Christian, 37 ; employ- 
 ment of creeds as em- 
 bodying, 69; a great 
 source of Christian ex- 
 
282 
 
 Index 
 
 perience, i lo ; develop- 
 ment off theology in, iii; 
 stages of development, 
 113; criteria of criticism, 
 115; Ritschlian view of, 
 125 ; Kaftan's criticisms, 
 126; doctrine of the per- 
 son of Christ, 153; exam- 
 ple of completeness, 163; 
 application of the criteria 
 to, 164; doctrine of the 
 atonement, 219. 
 
 Holy Spirit and the course 
 of history, 13. 
 
 Hymns of the church, as to 
 the divinity of Christ, 
 179; as to the work of 
 Christ, 197, 203, 206. 
 
 Ignatius, untheological, 
 
 in; quoted, 154, 158. 
 
 Irenaeus, quoted, 159; his 
 canon as to the church, 
 
 24s. 
 Isaiah fifty-third, interpret- 
 ation of, 212; experien- 
 tial element in, 213. 
 
 James, Prof. William, 
 quoted, 17. 
 
 John, experiential ap- 
 proach to the divinity of 
 Christ, 145. 
 
 Jowett. cited, 58. 
 
 Justification by faith, proved 
 by experience, 63; arose 
 historically from experi- 
 ence, 63; Paul's doctrine 
 of, 149. 
 
 Justin Martyr, cited, 155; 
 on the generation of the 
 Son, 160. 
 
 Kaftan, head of the Ritsch- 
 lian school, 10; criticism 
 
 of Frank, 12; on sin, 27; 
 origin of the New Birth, 
 72; on knowledge, 74; 
 proof of God, 77; revives 
 J. S. Mill's theories, 80; 
 on causation, 80; on 
 mathematics, 84; on rev- 
 elation, 95; on church 
 history, 126; abandons 
 Ritschl's position on the 
 Trinity, 180; on the 
 atonement, 233. 
 
 Kant, influences Ritschl, 9; 
 idea of God, 59. 
 
 Kingdom of evil, 32, 42; of 
 good, 41 ; influence of the 
 evil, 43. 
 
 " Know ", use of this word 
 by John, 144. 
 
 Knowledge, not a religious 
 good in itself, 74; Kaftan 
 on " Erkennen " , and 
 "Wissen", 78; "Wis- 
 sen" impossible, 79; the- 
 ory of, 83. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 264. 
 
 Law, its ends met by the 
 atonement, 204. 
 
 Le Conte, immanent causa- 
 tion, 72. 
 
 Logos-doctrine, in Diogne- 
 tus, 159; in Justin, 160. 
 
 Luther, 3; cited, 63; 
 quoted, 63; on the 
 church, 255. 
 
 Manning H. E., Cardinal, 
 but little affected in his 
 religious life by Roman- 
 ism, 254. 
 
 Martineau, quoted, 146. 
 
 Mathematics, Kaftan's view 
 of, 84. 
 
 " Means of grace ", relation 
 of to the New Birth, 51. 
 
Index 
 
 283 
 
 Mill, J. S., his theories re- 
 vived by Kaftan, 80. 
 
 Missions and non-prelatical 
 Christianity, 271. 
 
 New Birth, the ultimate fact 
 of experience, 21 ; a mat- 
 ter of consciousness, 22; 
 matter of certainty, 22; 
 analysis of, 23; originat- 
 ing source of, 41 ; source 
 not the powers of man, 
 42 ; not the world, 43 ; not 
 a product of evolution, 
 45 ; not the sinner him- 
 self, 49; mediated by fi- 
 nite agencies, 51; person- 
 ally guided, 52; from 
 God, 57 ; testimony of the 
 creeds, 69; Kaftan on, 
 ^2.; as a concrete fact, 
 
 133. 
 
 New England testimony to 
 the deity of the Son, 165. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, on cri- 
 teria of a sound histori- 
 cal development, 115; 
 cited, 253. 
 
 New Testament, first use 
 of, 32, 36; a source of 
 Christian experience, 89; 
 normative source, 90 ; 
 authority of, 93. 
 
 Nice, Council of, discus- 
 sions at, and result, 162; 
 subsequent discussions, 
 163; Athanasius at, 166; 
 full result of. 171. 
 
 Origen, his Christology, 
 162. 
 
 Paradox involved in for- 
 giveness, 173; solved by 
 the atonement, 196, 204. 
 
 Paul, experiential ap 
 
 proach to the divinity of 
 Christ, 146; to the doc- 
 trine of justification, 149; 
 appeals to experience, 
 150; identity of his 
 Christology with John's, 
 151. 
 
 Pelagius, 66; history of his 
 doctrine, 120. 
 
 Person of Christ, 133. 
 
 Philosophy, danger from, 
 to theology, 14. 
 
 Piety, promoted by the doc- 
 trine of the divinity of 
 Christ, 182. 
 
 Plan, evident in the orig- 
 ination of the New Birth, 
 54 ; argument therefrom 
 to intelligence in the uni- 
 verse, 54. 
 
 Plato, idea of God, 58. 
 
 Pre-existence of Christ, 5, 
 92, 94, 98, 99, 100, 176. 
 
 Prevenient grace, 65 ; de- 
 fined, 66; universal testi- 
 mony of the creeds to, 
 69; confirmed by surviv- 
 al, 120. 
 
 Principle of a theological 
 system, 12, 14 ; of this in- 
 vestigation, 19; why cor- 
 rect, 22. 
 
 Propitiation by Christ, 
 meaning of, 216, 
 
 Puritanism and the Spirit. 
 2.^2), ^^7- 
 
 Responsibility, idea of, 24; 
 upheld by all thinkers, 
 24; Spencer teaches, 25; 
 and guilt, 25. 
 
 Revelation, Ritschlian con- 
 ceptions of, 95 ; essential 
 elements of, 100; Christ's 
 work of. 185. 
 
 ^ itschl, characteristics of 
 
284 
 
 Index 
 
 his theology, 9; relation 
 to experience, 10; cited, 
 58; canon as to the Bible, 
 90; method with the Bi- 
 ble. 94; revelation, 95; 
 Ritschlian view of his- 
 torical development, 125 ; 
 Ritschl as a historian, 
 126; sees no "interest" 
 in the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, 175; view of the 
 person of Christ, 176; 
 criticised, 177 ; Ritschlian 
 objection to the authority 
 of the Bible, 194. 
 
 Roman Catholic elements 
 in Protestant theology 
 according to Kaftan, 74. 
 126. 
 
 Romanes, G. J., 72. 
 
 Rome has no monopoly of 
 the divine spirit, 261. 
 
 Sacrifice, O. T. doctrine of, 
 208; N. T. doctrine as to 
 Christ's, 215. 
 
 Salvation, definition of, 61. 
 
 Sanctification and experi- 
 ence, 240; and conscious- 
 ness, 241 ; agent of, 242 ; 
 fact of, a proof of the 
 presence of the Spirit, 
 and of the existence of 
 the church, 243; evi- 
 dences of in the Protes- 
 tant churches, 259; the 
 proof of the church. 273. 
 
 Schleiermacher, theologian 
 of experience, 5 ; meaning 
 lof his " feeling of de- 
 pendence ", 5 ; services, 
 S; defects, 5. 
 
 Scriptures, as a source of 
 doctrine, iv; translation 
 of, 259, 271 ; illustration 
 of, 270. See " Bible ". 
 
 Sin, generic idea of, 26; 
 pervasiveness of, 27 ; 
 Kaftan on, 27; universal, 
 31 ; organized power of, 
 31 ; greatness of, seen at 
 Calvary, 202. 
 
 Smith, George Adam, 
 quoted. 212, 213. 
 
 Socinus, on the atonement, 
 224. 
 
 Spencer, insists on respon- 
 sibility, 25; referred to, 
 46. 
 
 Stearns, " Evidence of 
 Christian Experience ", 
 14; quoted, 15. 
 
 Survival, argumentative 
 value of, 120; illustrated 
 from Sociology. 122; ex- 
 amples of, in New Eng- 
 land, 165. 
 
 Subordination of the Son, 
 161. 
 
 System in evangelical doc- 
 trine, 2; whole system 
 involved in the first an- 
 alysis of the New Birth, 
 85. 
 
 " Teaching of the Twelve 
 Apostles ", contents of, 
 III; Johannine atmos- 
 phere of, 112; cited, 154, 
 245. 
 
 " Testimony of the Spirit ", 
 argument from, iv., 104; 
 criticised, 105 ; objec- 
 tions to the argument, 
 107; developed argument 
 embraces the whole Bi- 
 ble, 189; resume of the 
 argument, 189; objection 
 that it gives no true au- 
 thority, 190. 
 
 Texts cited, quoted, or dis- 
 cussed : — 
 
Index 
 
 285 
 
 Exodus xxiv. 5-8, 216. 
 xxiv. 6, 7, 187. 
 Leviticus xvi. 21, 211. 
 xix. 18, 187. 
 Deuteronomy vi. 5, 187. 
 Proverbs viii. 22, 168. 
 Isaiah liii. 5, 6, 212. 
 Matthew iv. 10, 135. 
 iv. 17, 187. 
 V. 44, 135- 
 vii. 29, 186. 
 X. 32, 33, 37- 
 
 39, 143- 
 X. 37, 39, 135 
 X. 47, 186. 
 xvi. 18, 243. 
 xxii. 37, 135, 
 
 187. 
 XXV. 46, 138. 
 xxvi. 28, 215. 
 Mark ix. 48, 138. 
 
 X. 45, 197, 215. 
 XV. 24-38, 143. 
 Luke ix. 23, 198. 
 
 XV. 19, 21, 136. 
 XV. 22, 137. 
 John i. I, 145, 165. 
 i. 4, 186. 
 i. 3, 151. 
 i. S, 32. 
 i. 14, 145, 146. 
 i. 29, 197, 215. 
 i. 49, 152. 
 iii. II, 186. 
 iii. 13, 145. 
 iii. 14, 216. 
 iii. 16, 58, 137, 186. 
 iii. 18, 32, 143. 
 iii. 19, 32. 
 iii. 31, 32. 186. 
 iv. 24, 58. 
 V. 20, 186. 
 V. 22, 23, 145. 
 vi. 35, 40, 145. 
 vni. 12. 58, 145. 
 viii. 38, 40, 186. 
 
 John X. 25, 145. 
 xi. 25, 14s. 
 xiv. 6, 145. 
 xiv. 9, 59, 141- 
 xiv. 15, 186. 
 XV. 13, 137- 
 xvi. 9, 139- 143- 
 xvi. 13, 188. 
 xvi. 6, 13. 14, 186. 
 XX. 28, 152. 
 Acts ii. 33, 3^, 152. 
 ii. 47, 244. 
 vii. 56, 152. 
 xvii. 31, 147. 
 Romans iii. 8, 247. 
 
 iii. 19-26, 149- 
 
 iii. 25, 216, 217. 
 
 v. i-ii, 149- 
 
 v. 10, 217. 
 
 V. 15, 147. 
 
 vii. passim, 148. 
 
 viii. I, 32. 
 
 viii. 3, 147. 
 
 viii. 15-26, 174. 
 
 viii. passim, 148. 
 
 ix. I, 3, 5, 147. 
 
 X. 21, 136. 
 
 1 Corinthians i. 18, 197. 
 
 ii. 2, 134, 
 197. 
 
 ii. 16, 188. 
 
 X. 3, 187. 
 
 xi. 23, 147. 
 
 XV. 21, 147- 
 
 XV. 24, 28, 
 152. 
 
 2 Corinthians i. 3, 59. 
 
 V. 21, 147, 
 
 217. 
 xiii. 4, 147. 
 Galatians i. i, 89. 
 i. 8, 188. 
 i. 12, 89. 
 iii. 2, 63, 150. 
 iii. 3, 150. 
 iii. 13, 217. 
 
286 
 
 Index 
 
 Ephesians i. 20-23, 152. 
 Philippians ii. 5-11, 152. 
 ii, 9, 10, II. 
 
 145. 
 iii. 10, 145. 
 Colossians i. isff, 151. 
 Hebrews i. 1-14, 152. 
 ii. 10, 147, 152. 
 ii. 17, 18, 147. 
 ix. 14, 152. 
 James ii. i, 152. 
 
 1 Peter i. 11, 152, 188. 
 
 iii. 22, 152. 
 
 2 Peter iii. 18, 152. 
 I John i. I, 143. 
 
 i. 1-4, 145. 
 i. 5, 143, 144. 
 ii. 2, 218. 
 ii. 3, 6, 13, 18, 29, 
 
 144. 
 iii. I, 3. 8, 16, 143. 
 iii. 2, 6, 14, 15, 19, 
 
 24, 144. 
 IV. 6, 7, 13, 16. 
 
 144- 
 
 iv. 8, 143. 
 
 iv. 10, 59, 143. 
 
 iv. 14, 144. 
 
 I John V. 2, 13, 15, 18, 
 19, 20, 144. 
 V. 19, 32. 
 V. 20, 145. 
 Thomasius, v ; theologian 
 of experience. 7; quoted 
 on Athanasius, 169, 171. 
 Trinity, development of 
 doctrine of, was sound, 
 119; argument for from 
 experience, 172; Biblical 
 doctrine, 175; Ritschlians 
 on, 175. 
 
 Unitarianism. New Eng- 
 land, root of. 121 ; prepa- 
 ration for, 269. 
 
 Watson, John, illustrates 
 the absurdity of " apos- 
 tolical succession ", 272. 
 
 Wesleyanism and the Spir- 
 it, 265. 
 
 World, Christian view of, 
 31. 
 
 Zwingli, on the church, 257. 
 
ID lo^-'43