LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ( ;IKT c >K Received Accessions NO..I Shelf A 7 o. y < (. rr /^t X / ^?*K -z/, '2W PHILOSOPHY AND BELIGION PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION A SERIES OF ADDRESSES, ESSAYS AND SERMONS DESIGNED TO SET FORTH GREAT TRUTHS IN POPULAR FORM BY AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STKONG, D. D. PRESIDENT AND PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 714 BROADWAY 1888 COPYRIGHT, BY AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG, 1888. PRINTED BY EZRA R. ANDREWS, ROCHBSTKB, H. T. TO JOHN D. KOCKEFELLEK, ESQ., THE FRIEND AND HELPER OF EVERY GOOD CAUSE, THROUGH WHOSE LIBERALITY THE AUTHOR IS ENABLED TO PUT THESE ESSAYS INTO PRINT, THE VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. PKEFACE. THIS book is printed by way of testimony. It is a confession of faith a long one indeed, yet none the less sincere. The author can say: "I believed, therefore have I spoken." In this day when skepticism is so rife, and when even Christian teachers so frequently pride themselves that they believe, not so much, but so little, it seems to him that nothing is more needed than uncom- promising assertion of faith in the existence of God, the world, and the soul. "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the c-arth ?" For himself, and for more than seven thousand others who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of brute force and imper- sonal law, the author desires to answer in the affirmative. The volume takes its title from the first Essay. and the title is fairly descriptive of the book. It aims to present truth in popular form ; most of the Essays contained in it have been written for public address ; some of them .date back to a time when the author's rhetoric was more exuberant than now, for all this he makes no apology. He would fain hope that what Fox said of Burke's exuber- ance of fancy may be counted true of himself : " Reduce his language, withdraw his images, and you will find that he is more wise than eloquent ; you will have your full weight of metal, though you melt down the chasing." Yet, if any reader still demand abstract statement instead of the oratorical method, the author takes the liberty of referring him to the "Systematic Theology" of which this is the companion-volume, where he will find much of the same truth put in more philosophical form. It needs to be stated, however, that much of the present book is new, or at least has never before appeared in print. The Essays on yiii PREFACE. " Modern Idealism" and on " The New Theology," on " Dante and' the Divine Comedy," and on "Poetry and Kobert Browning," have- been written for this volume. The author has included in it certain tributes to the memory of the dead, not only because the departed were his friends, but because in speaking of them he could also- express his views of the work they sought to do. The personal element is not wholly lacking, in many cases its elimination would have required the entire reconstruction of the discourse, in general, the author would have the several addresses judged in the light of the special occasions for which they were prepared. The author would disclaim any expectation that his book will be widely read. It is not published at the request of friends, indeed, the author is not aware that any friends desire to read what he has written. His chief aim has been to put himself on record. If any choose to read, well, here is opportunity for the curious investi- gator to say : "Sic cogitavit." But if none choose to read, it is also well, the author, at least, has delivered his soul. He commits his work to God and to his providence sowing his seed and withholding not his hand, though he knows not which shall prosper, whether this or that. He prays that his errors, if he has erred, may be uprooted and exposed ; and that any truth he has discovered or uttered may somewhere, and at some time, be made fruitful for good. But, whatever may befall him or his work, CHRISTO DEO GLORIA, SALVATORI OMNIPOTENTI ! It remains only to say that the author's grateful acknowledge- ments are due to the Eeverend Robert Kerr Eccles, M. D., of Salem, Ohio, for the care and faithfulness which he has shown in correct- ing errors of the press and in preparing the Index. It is certain that in this case, as in the case of the author's Systematic Theology^ every thoughtful reader will regard himself as Dr. Eccles's debtor. ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, ROCHESTER, APRIL 1, 1888. TABLE OF CONTENTS. I. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION, An Address before the Alumni of the Rochester Theological Seminary, at their annual meeting, May 20th, 1868, and printed in the Baptist Quarterly, 2 : 393 sq., .._ 1-18 n. SCIENCE AND RELIGION, An Address delivered at the Commencement of the Medical College, Cleveland, Ohio, February 18, 1867, 19-30 in. MATERIALISTIC SKEPTICISM, An Essay printed in the Examiner, New York, October 2, 1873, 31-38 IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION, An Address delivered before the Literary Societies of Colby University, Waterville, Maine, Tuesday evening, July 23, 1878, 39-57 V. MODERN IDEALISM, Printed in the Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1888, 58-74 VI. SCIENTIFIC THEISM, An Essay read before " The Club," Rochester, February 16, 1875, . . 75-89 vn. THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL, Printed in the Baptist Review, 1880 : 527-550, and 1881 : 30-47,.. 90-113 vni. MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN, Printed in the Baptist Review, April, 1883, - - 114-128 x TABLE OF CONTENTS. IX. THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OB, MIRACLES AS ATTESTING A DIVINE REVELATION, An Essay read before the Baptist Pastors' Conference of the State of New York, Bingharapton, October 23, 1878, and printed in the Baptist Review, April, 1879, - . 129-147 X. THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION, Printed in the Examiner, New York, October 7, and October 14, 1880, 148-155 XI. CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM, Preached at Vassar College, February 28, 1886, as a Sermon on the text, John 21 : 21, 22" What shall this man do ? .... What is thattothee? Follow thou me, " 156-163 XII. THE NEW THEOLOGY, Printed in the Baptist Quarterly Review, January, 1888, 164-179 XIII. THE LIVING GOD, Originally prepared as a Sermon upon the text, Jer. 10 : 10 "The Lord is the true God ; he is the living God, and an everlasting King,". 180-187 XIV. THE HOLINESS OF GOD, Originally prepared as a Sermon upon the text, Ex. 15 : 11 " Glorious in holiness," and preached in the Chapel of the University of Roch- ester, on the Day of Prayer for Colleges, January 31, 1878 ; subse- quently printed as an article in the Examiner, January 26, February 9, and February 22, 1882, 188-200 XV. THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST, Preached in Sage Chapel, Cornell University, May 25, 1884, as a Ser- mon on the text, Matt. 22 : 42 "What think ye of the Christ ? Whose son is he ?" 201-212 XVI. THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT, A Sermon upon the text, Luke 24 : 26" Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things ? " 213-219 TABLE OF CONTENTS. x j XVII. THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH CHRIST, Printed in the Examiner, June 12, 1879, 220-225 xvni. THE BAPTISM OF JESUS, Originally prepared as a Sermon upon the text, Matt. 3 : 15" Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness," and preached before the Cincinnati Baptist Union ; printed in the Examiner, February 12, and February 19, 1880, 226-237 XIX. CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS, An Address delivered before the American Baptist Publication Society, at its annual meeting in New York City, May, 1868, 238-244 XX. UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS OF COMMUNION POLEMICS, Printed in the Examiner. January 21 , 1875, 245-249 XXI. THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER, A Sermon preached before the Sunday School Convention, Boston, May 20, 1877, on the text, 2 Cor. 3 : 6 "Able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit," 250-258 XXII. COUNCILS OF ORDINATION: THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES, Printed in the Examiner, January 2, and January 9, 1879 259-268 xxm. THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY ON YOUNG MEN IN COURSES OF PREPARATORY STUDY, An Address written for the Anniversary of Peddie Institute, Rights- town, N. J., June 17, 1875, XXIV. SOURCES OF SUPPLY FOR THE MINISTRY, An Address before the Rhode Island Baptist Social Union, Provi- dence, May, 1877 ; printed in the Watchman, Boston, October, 1878, 281 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXV. THE LACK OF STUDENTS FOB THE MINISTRY, An Address delivered at the annual meeting of the New York Baptist State Convention, Buffalo, October 25, 1883, 289-293 XXVI. EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY : ITS PRINCIPLES AND ITS NECESSITY, An Address delivered at the annual meeting of the Monroe Baptist Association, West Henrietta, N. Y. , October 2, 1872, 294-301 XXVII. EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY: ITS IDEA AND ITS REQUISITES, An Address delivered at the Dedication of RockfellerHall, Rochester Theological Seminary, May 19, 1880, 302-313 xxvni. TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP, An Address delivered at the Dedication of the Theological Hall, Hamilton Theological Seminary, Hamilton, N. Y., June 16, 1886, 314-318 XXIX. ARE OUR COLLEGES CHRISTIAN? Printed in the Examiner, New York, July 19, 1883, 319-323 XXX. NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION, A Charge to the Candidate, at the Ordination of Mr. Ernest D. Burton, Acting Professor-elect in Newton Theological Institution, Roch- ester, June 22, 1883, 324-329 XXXI. A GREAT TEACHER OF GREEK EXEGESIS, An address at the Funeral of Professor Horatio B. Hackett, D. D., in the Second Baptist Church, Rochester, November 5, 1875, 330-336 xxxn. CHURCH HISTORY, AND ONE WHO TAUGHT IT, An Address at the Funeral of Professor R. J. W. Buckland, D. D., in the Second Baptist Church, Rochester, February 1, 1877,.. 337-343 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlii XXXIII. LEAKNING IN THE PROFESSOR'S CHAIE, Remarks at the Funeral of the Rev. V. R. Hotchkiss, D. D., in the First Baptist Church, Rochester, January 7, 1882, 344-346 XXXIV. THE DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT, A Sermon on the death of President Garfield, preached at the Central Presbyterian Church, Rochester, Sunday morning, September 25, 1881, on the text, 2 Samuel 2 : 23 "And it came to pass that as many as came to the place where Asahel fell down and died, stood still," 347-357 XXXV. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND ITS COMING, A Sermon before the Judson Society of Missionary Inquiry, Brown University, Providence, R. I. , August 31 , 1869, 358-367 XXXVI. LEAVING THE NINETY AND NINE, A Sermon before the American Baptist Missionary Union, at its annual meeting, Indianapolis, May 22, 1881, on the text, Matt. 18 : 12 "Doth he not leave the ninety and nine?"... 368-377 XXXVII. THE ECONOMICS OF MISSIONS, An Address before the Baptist Congress, Brooklyn, November 14, 1882, 378-386 XXXVIH. THE THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS, An Address of Welcome, at the meeting of the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance, Rochester, October, 1885, .. 387-390 XXXIX. THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE CHERUBIM, A Sermon upon the text, Genesis 3 : 24 " So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree oflife/'.- ..-- 391 - 3 " XL. WOMAN'S PLACE AND WORK, A Sermon preached in the First Baptist Church, Rochester, July 21, 1878, on the text, Genesis 2 : 18 "And the Lord God said : It is not good that the man should be alone ; I will make him an help , , . 400-409 meet for him, - - Xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS. XLI. WOMAN'S WORK IN MISSIONS, An Address before the Annual Convention of the American Women's Baptist Missionary Society, delivered in the First Baptist Church, Rochester, April 18, 1883, 410-417 XLII. THE EDUCATION OF A WOMAN, An Address delivered at the Annual Commencement of the Granger Place School, Canaudaigua, N. Y. , Tuesday morning, June 20, 1882, 418-430 XLIII. RE-MARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE: THE LAW OF THE STATE AND THE LAW OF SCRIPTURE, Printed in the Examiner, February 17, and February 24, 1881, 431-442 XLIV. CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY, A Lecture before the Pennsylvania Ministers' Institute, Chester, Pa., June, 1871, 443-460 XLV. GETTING AND SPENDING, An Address at the "Ladies' Meeting" of the Baptist Social Union, Delmonico's, New York, November 1 , 1883, 461-467 XL VI. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EAST, A Lecture before the Robinson Rhetorical Society of the Rochester Theological Seminary, February 25, 1878, ... 468-483 XL VII. THE CRUSADES, An Essay read before " The Club," Rochester, February 15, 1876,... 484-500 XLvm. DANTE AND THE DIVINE COMEDY, A Lecture delivered at Vassar College, February 21 and 22, 1888 ; printed in the Standard, Chicago, November, 1887, 501-524 XLIX. POETRY AND ROBERT BROWNING, A Lecture delivered at Wellesley College, May, 1886 ; printed in the Examiner, December, 1887, 525-543 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV L. ADDRESSES TO SUCCESSIVE GRADUATING CLASSES OF THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINABY, 1 ' The Three Onlies ", 544-546 Truth and Love, 546-548 Manhood in the Ministry, 548-551 Work and Power, 552-554 Courage, Passive and Active, 554-557 True Dogmatism, 557-560 God's Leading* 560-562 Self-Mastery, 562-566 Mental Qualities Requisite to the Pastor, 566-569 Adaptation, 569-572 Faith the Measure of Success, 572-575 Habits in the Ministry,.... 575-577 The Preacher's Doubts, 578-580 High-Mindedness, 580-583 Zeal for Christ. . 583-586 "Wo ZWEI HYPOTHESEN GLEICH MOGLICH BIND, DIE EINE UBEREINSTIM- MEND MIT MORALISCHEN BEDtJRFNISSEN, DIE ANDERE MIT IHNEN STREITEND, KANN NICHT8 DIE WAHL ZU GUN8TEN DER LETZERN LENKEN." LOTZE, MEDICIN. PSYCH., 36. Blensrs py rtz b/mz larac b aoXafcofajv dta rrfi (pdoffcupiaz xae z dndryz xara ryv napd&WHV ra>v dvdpamfov, xara ra aroiyzia. roD xofffjtou xac ou xara Xfuarbv ore Iv abrw xarotxe? nav TO xtojp&fta rrfi SSOTT^TO^ Gtoimrtxcoz, xat Iffre Iv aurw ne7rtypaffjt&we 9 8? larw jj xsafy xdayz d t o%yz xai iqouaia^. PAUL, COLOSS., 2: 8-10. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION/ On the last page of " Tom Brown at Rugby " there is a vivid and soulful picture of Tom's return, years after his school-days are ended, to the scene of his early scrapes and triumphs. He enters the chapel and once more takes his seat on the lowest bench, in the very place he occupied as a little boy on his first Sunday at Rugby. On the oaken paneling he sees scratched the name of the youngster who sat that day by his side. Upon the great painted window the same shadows of the trees seem dancing that drew his thoughts from service and sermon long ago. The chapel is empty now. No rows of boys fill the benches. The solid English face that burned with such inten- sity of love for truth and such noble scorn of moral cowardice looks down no longer from the pulpit. "The Doctor," the great Arnold, sleeps now under the stone pavement of the chapel-floor. As Tom Brown meditates, there seem to rise before him the forms of the living and the dead whom lie once met there many of them braver and purer than he, yet scarcely known till now. Now, for the first time, he comprehends his debt to them and to him whose commanding spirit bound them all together. The lofty teachings of that sacred place assume an aspect of ideal grandeur that awes, inspires and rebukes him. Humbled in spirit, and melted to grateful tears, he kneels before the altar, at the grave of Arnold, and renews his vows of consecration to that greater Master to whom Arnold led him. The day of our return to these haunts of our early learning, brethren of the Alumni, is in like manner a day of mingled sorrow and joy. There is a reverent regard for those at whose feet we sat which makes these scenes sacred to us, though in the presence of the living it finds only a faint expression in words. There is thankfulness of spirit, as we gather from different parts of the great harvest-field and rejoice together over the bless- ing that has followed our labors. Though the sheaves we bring are not so many nor so large as we had hoped, and "old Adam has proved too strong for young Melancthon," yet there is a confidence within us, which we never could have had without these years of experience, that old Adam is not too strong for Christ. Before us too there rise the faces of some whose work is all complete and whose souls have entered into rest. A little musing, a little forgetfulness of the sights and sounds around us, and " The forms of the departed Enter at the open door; The beloved, the true hearted, Come to visit us once more. * An Address before the Alumni of the Rochester Theological Seminary, at their -annual meeting, May 20th, 1868, and printed in the Baptist Quarterly, 2 : 393 sq. 2 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. They, the young and strong, who cherished Noble longings for the strife, By the roadside fell and perished, Weary of the march of life." In the presence of these memories we are subdued and yet exalted. Our noblest resolves are strengthened by the thought that ' ' such as these have lived and died." But a more than mortal presence is here also. Christ is here the same Christ into whose hands we gave our lives as we went out into the world's great strife. His truth remains the same truth of which we gained glimpses during those early years of preparation, but which now fills a larger arc of our vision. It would seem that the only fitting employ- ment for such an hour as this must be the consideration of some one of those great relations which affect our success as ministers of Christ, and which have to do with the defense and propagation of the faith. I am sure that no preacher who has received his training here will deem me unpractical when I propose as the theme of the evening : PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. I ask your attention to three separate divisions of my subject : first, the debt of religion to philosophy; secondly, the dangers of philosophy the dangers of religion also; and thirdly, an impartial philosophy essential to the perfect triumph of religion. Religion may be viewed in two aspects, according as we look upon its speculative or its practical side. It may exist in the mind of a child, in the shape of reverence, love, and trust towards God, long before the child has given any conscious account to itself of its faith. It may exist, on the other hand, in the mind of the scientific theologian, in the shape of a thoroughly digested doctrinal system, though the system may not yet have melted the heart and run the activities of the life into its moulds. Let it never be forgotten, however, that either one of these sides of religion tends to complete itself by the production of the other. Like positive and negative electricity, the one* attracts the other, and without the other cannot be made perfect. The child, for example, grows to maturity of years. Every step of that growing maturity is marked by an increasing habit of introspection. The faith that once seemed intuitive assumes definite form and order to the reason. The truths once held by the intellect in a state of solution are precipitated and crystallized about some centre. As the nebular hypothesis supposes a revolving fire-mist diffused throughout the universe, which con- denses as it whirls, until the worlds are thrown off with their harmonious movements and their perfect beauty, so the child's faith, once vague and unreasoning, cannot exist forever in the form of nebula, but turns and seethes and solidifies, until it comes to be a little solar system for interde- pendence and order. And, in like manner, the student of scientific theology must shut his ears continually to the voices that fill the air of that lofty region of thought, if he would prevent the religion of the intellect from becoming a religion of the heart. Both Chalmers and De Wette were men with whom the scientific interest became at last a practical interest, and who found theology a school-master to lead them to Christ. Now religion, as a scientific system, rests upon a basis of philosophy. The inevitable tendency of the mind to form to itself a definite and con- nected scheme of knowledge impels it, not only to bring its religious beliefs into connection and order, but to search for the foundations of those beliefs. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 3 It cannot content itself with theology proper. Besides giving to the truths of revelation a scientific form, it desires to know what are the proofs of reve- lation, and what are the evidences that a God exists from whom a revelation might come. There can be no peace to the logical understanding until these questions are answered ; but the answer to them is impossible without phi- losophy. For, this is the difference between theology and philosophy : Theology begins with the revelation of God and the consciousness of God, and from these, by a synthetic method, constructs her system. Philosophy, on the other hand, begins with those underlying facts of mind and matter from which we argue the existence of a God, and the authority of revelation. Pursuing an analytic method, it asks whether we have any real knowledge of these facts ; it seeks to give an accurate and complete account of these facts ; it aims to determine whether these facts warrant the erection upon them of so vast a superstructure. Any one who has traveled in Holland will remember those marvelous cities that have risen from the beds of ancient marshes, supported upon myriads of piles driven into the yielding soil. Many a church is towerless there, because the foundations cannot be trusted to bear a greater weight. Many a wall on private streets is cracked from top to bottom by the settling of the piles beneath it. Many a grain-merchant, with tons of golden corn stored in his granary, passes his days and nights in fear, lest some unusual weight may reveal a weakness in the supports beneath. Let it be whispered that the foundations of the Town-Hall of Amsterdam are sinking, and there is no quieting the town until men of experience have examined those foundations, and found them sure. Now it is a most serious question whether religion, so far as it is a scientific system, is like one of those immense structures in the Netherlands that are built upon the sand, and may, some years from now, give way and tumble to the ground; or whether, like St. Peter's at Borne, its foundations go down to the everlasting rock. And philosophy is the science of foundations. It busies itself with the examination of the grounds of faith. It seeks to determine whether religion has a safe basis and support in the facts of con sciousness. There is still another service which philosophy renders to religion, namely, that of defining and correlating the great primary conceptions of revelation. The ideas of conscience, virtue, liberty, providence, God, are given to us by revelation in the concrete. Philosophy seeks either to analyze them or to show that they are incapable of analysis, and having ascertained their intrinsic significance, aims to set them in reconciliation with the remaining facts of our mental constitution, and with our observation, of the world. So far as theology argues from the mental constitution of man, indeed, she must get her facts from philosophy. Her doctrine of the will, and her determination of the limits of the human faculties, her application of realism to the unity of the race, and her theory of the true end of being, must all be ultimately given her by the prior philosophy with which she sets out in her investigations. Both in her account of the universe and in her account of God, theology is obliged to combine with the facts of revelation the facts of consciousness, since only through consciousness have we any personal knowledge of either. We stand between God and the world. We must interpret matter by mind, and God by mind, and that interpretation is 4 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. impossible without a philosophy of mind. Upon the front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, Plutarch declares that the two Greek letters Epsilon Iota were inscribed. It was the word " Thou art !" and this, John Howe, in his preface to the "Living Temple," interprets to be an assertion of the eternal existence of the god. But upon that same temple-front, according to an old tradition, was another inscription, this namely: " Know thyself !" May it not be that the Puritan divine gave the Epsilon Iota a wrong inter- pretation, and that both the inscriptions had one common object to admonish him who entered the sacred fane that all knowledge of divinity must proceed from self-knowledge ? " Thou art, O soul ! Know then thy- self ! Understand first thine own existence and attributes, so shalt thou best know the divine, of which thou art the image." So at the gate of the temple of Theology the inscription might well be placed : ' ' Thou art ! Know thyself !" for a true knowledge of mind is indispensable to a scientific exposition of religion. I do not forget, however, that something more than abstract reasoning is needed, to set forth convincingly the debt which religion owes to philosophy. Let me ask you for a moment to look at the matter in the light of history. Have you ever reflected upon the remarkable difference in form that exists between Augustine and Calvin, between the massy ore of Augustine's theologizing and the stamped and minted coin of Calvin's Institutes ? Both held the same great fundamental doctrines, but Calvin has put them into a scientific order and organized them into a comprehensive system which would have been utterly impossible in Augustine's day. No one can fail to see that between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries theology has made a great- advance in arrangement, in compactness, in logical force, in practical power. And to what shall we attribute this advance ? To nothing more or less than the influence of that Aristotle, whom Luther called "an accursed, mis- chief-making heathen. " It was the study of Aristotle which first made theol- ogy a science, and rendered possible a Calvin. That mighty movement of the human mind which we call Scholasticism, with its noble attempts to define and prove every doctrine of religion on principles of reason, and its rich results for modern philosophical theology, was a child of Aristotle's logic. By it, the matter of theology, received from Augustine, and full therefore of his Platonic realism and soaring contempt for matter, was worked up into new shape for the uses of the coming times. Thus both the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies, one at heart though different in method, have disciplined the forces of theology and made them available. And their influ- ence is felt the moment we compare Augustine, in whose works the truths of religion lie scattered about like raw recruits bivouacked for the night, with Calvin, who draws up those same truths like soldiers in line of battle, ready on the instant for attack or defense. Men may decry philosophy, but it is only by ignoring what philosophy has wrought. Still those sceptred kings of abstract thought control the minds of living men, and rule us from their urns. Take away the influence of Plato and Aristotle, and you put a scien- tific theology where John of Damascus found it eleven centuries ago. There is little time to mention the services of modern philosophical thinkers to religion. Who can overestimate the magnificent contribution to our knowledge of the ethical nature of God which Bishop Butler made, when PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 5 lie propounded and demonstrated his celebrated doctrine of the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man ? What but the works of Coleridge, splendid even in their incompleteness, rescued the theological thinking of England from the slough of utilitarianism and materialism into which Locke and Paley had led it, and by setting it upon the rock of a true spiritual philosophy, gave it a foothold and vantage-ground from which to contend against the incoming flood of German pantheism ? The mere men- tion of these facts is sufficient to show that there is no possibility of under- standing the history of theology without a previous study of philosophy. Nor is the effect of philosophy confined simply to the modification of systems of abstract theology. Whatever affects theology comes ultimately to affect the practical experience and working of Christianity. Through its influence on theology, philosophy exercises the most potent influence upon the whole religious life of the church. I find Bancroft, himself no theologian, depict- ing in these words the influence of Jonathan Edwards' speculations with regard to the nature of virtue and the freedom of the will. "Edwards," he says, " makes a turning-point in the intellectual, or as he would have called it, the spiritual, history of New England. The faith condensed in the symbols of Calvinism demanded to be subjected to free inquiry, and ' without dodging, shuffling, hiding, or turning the back,' to be shown to be in har- mony with reason and common sense. In the age following, the influence of Edwards is discernible upon every leading mind. He that will trace the transition of Calvinism from a haughty self-assertion of the doctrine of election against the pride of oppression, to its adoption of love as the central point of its view of creation and the duty of the created, he that will know the workings of the mind of New England in the middle of the last century, and the throbbings of its heart, must give his days and nights to the study of Jonathan Edwards." Thus a single philosophic mind may change for the better the style of religion for a whole generation, or a whole century. The number influenced consciously and directly by him may be few ; the great mass of men who come after him, may be quite unaware of his existence ; still his power over them is no less sure. There is a slow movement of the glaciers in the Alps by which the snow that fell years ago upon the summit of Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau comes down at last in the shape of solid ice to the valleys far below, and by its melting furnishes a refreshing draught to the tired laborer in the meadows as he throws himself upon the earth for his noonday meal. It is so with the speculations of abstract thinkers. Con- ceived upon the very mountain-tops of thought they may be, yet by a law as irresistible as that of gravitation they find their way downwards, through subordinate interpreters, and by a thousand channels of the printed page and the spoken word, until they reach the homes and hearts of common men. I have thus indicated the debt which religion, both as a system and a life, owes to philosophy. It cannot have escaped your notice that the same weapon which has struck such stout blows for Christianity has often been used against her. And this brings me to the second division of my theme, namely this : The dangers of philosophy are the dangers also of religion. I say the dangers of philosophy, for I cannot conceal from myself the fact that through the whole history of speculation there has been a constant tendency to one or the other of two extremes. The great principle, which Eobertson so 6 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. remarkably illustrated in the better portion of his teachings, that truth is made up of two opposite propositions and is not found in the via media between the two, is a principle which both philosophy and theology have quite too often neglected. Theology, for example, has two factors given to her, both indisputably true, yet logically irreconcilable with one another I mean, divine sovereignty and human freedom. Between these two poles the world of theologic thought has been swinging for ages like a pendulum. And yet how often has an inveterate and unregulated passion for unity led the theologian to construct his system about one of these poles as its centre, while the other was virtually ignored or forgotten. So, in philosophy, all consciousness involves duality. There are two things different in kind matter and spirit. To accept the veritable existence of the one, and to deny the other, is to falsify the most palpable of facts. Yet an overweening logic has sought, in every age, to build a scheme of knowledge upon a single one of these two elements, while the other has been pared down to fit into some odd niche in the temple where its twin-brother was the sole object of worship. Thus have risen systems of Idealism, declaring virtually that matter is spirit ; systems of Materialism, declaring that spirit is matter ; and then for those who could not find either of these schemes to their taste, systems of Absolute Identity, declaring that both matter and spirit are but forms of one substance which underlies both, a sort of substantia una et unica. All of these systems, as has been well said, are seductive from their seeming sim- plicity, but are simple only through mutilation. Let us acknowledge that there is not only a passion for unity, which is native to the mind, but that there must be in all science a real unity of which that same mind furnishes us the type ; but let us never fail to allow the facts of consciousness to decide the nature of that unity. Let the modern chemist, like Youmans, believe if he will that all the elements of matter which have hitherto been considered simple are merely modifications of some one ultimate substance which exists in forms even more unlike each other than the black charcoal and the glit- tering diamond ; let him insist, as much as he pleases, that science already proclaims this to be her belief by expressing the atomic weights of all her elements in multiples of hydrogen, and by her hypothesis that heat, motion, light and electricity are all forms of some one ultimate force into which they are mutually convertible, but there let him stop. When he goes further and asserts that mind is but this same force liberated and transformed by chemical changes in the brain ; when he declares that this search for unity is so irresistible a feature of our mental constitution that we cannot believe in the existence of spirit and matter, but must by a necessity of mind resolve one into the other, or both into one, he is simply throttling the facts of mind, with the hope that, as dead men tell no tales, he can build up a complete system solely upon the facts of matter. Such a manipulation of facts to suit a preconceived theory falsifies the very principle of induc- tion upon which all science is based. To dispose of half the facts of con- sciousness by denying that mind is essentially distinct from matter is to achieve unity at the sacrifice of all our knowledge. Such a method of solv- ing the great problem of the universe reminds us of that grim familiar tale of the cannibal-chief who professed conversion, but was informed by the missionary that he must renounce polygamy by giving up his second wife, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 7 before he could receive the ordinance of baptism. On the return of the missionary the following year, the chief presented himself with smiles for the holy rite, and on being interrogated as to what he had done with his wife, he replied with a glow of satisfaction : " Me eat her ! " Any theory of philosophy which is based upon a monistic hypothesis, and which denies the facts of either matter or mind, must exert a deadly influ- ence upon theology and religion. The ultimate conclusion must be that <3k>d is the universe or that the universe is God in other words, there is no God separate from the soul or the world. And in the precise propor- tion to which the view of mind leans to one or the other extreme, will the religious thinking of the individual and the age lean towards Materialism or Pantheism. There are two men who have figured largely in theological con- troversy whose opposite conclusions may illustrate this two-fold danger. There is John Henry Newman apparently concerning himself but little with philosophy, yet having his whole theology and life dominated by a purely metaphysical notion. In his " Apologia Pro Vita Sua," he tells us that from his very boyhood he carried with him a certain constitutional frame of mind resembling the Berkeleian Idealism. " All the external universe" (I quote from a late writer), " seemed to him a deception, an angelic extravaganza, a spangled phantasmagory of zodiacal signs and hieroglyphics, a vivid envi- ronment of sacramental symbolisms and picture-writings, speaking to him of a Great Being, besides whom and his own soul there was no other. Dwelling long within the blazing cabalistic ether of this cosmological con- ception, till his soul had learned its language and could think in no other, but tenacious of a principle which had also strongly possessed him from an early age, that of the necessity of dogma, Dr. Newman passed on gradually but logically to his peculiar ecclesiasticism, and became what he has become " one of the most unquestioning adherents and advocates of the Romish faith. And there, on the other hand, is Joseph Priestley beginning with a tendency precisely the opposite, fixing his faith on nothing which had not the evi- dence of sense impressed upon it, and unable even to conceive of a spiritual idea until he had cast it into a material mould. As you watch his mental progress you perceive him getting his notions of mind from retorts and electrical machines, until Hartley's theory of vibrations, with slight modifi- cations, seems to include and explain all the facts of our mental constitution. And from this sensational philosophy what theology was evolved ? Nothing more nor less than a bald Socinianism which ignored all the profounder truths of revelation, left nothing in Christ which could be worshiped, and reduced Christian experience to a mere matter of the reason. Newman and Priestley are examples of the pernicious influence upon theology of a phi- losophy which, without avowing it, leans to one of the two extremes of Idealism or Empiricism. I surely do not need to point you to the malign influences which have been exerted on a wider scale by whole systems of philosophy. The Sensationalism of Locke, developed and carried to its extremest results by Condillac and the French Encyclopaedists, poured over France like a torrent, sweeping away all belief in man's spiritual dignity, and with the conviction of human accountability and immortality, burying beneath the flood all idea of a God, until the Eevolution came to clear away the rubbish and make room once more for the faiths that had been destroyed. 8 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. And on the other hand the Kantian philosophy, with its extreme subjective- tendencies developed by Schelling and Hegel, declared that man could know all by being himself the All in miniature, even as the drop of water can reflect upon its surface the earth beneath and all the constellations of the cope of heaven. While Empiricism ended in the absolute denial of a God, Idealism found its consummation in a Pantheistic scheme which con- founded the universe with God, and made all human lives and actions but the brilliant bubbles that rise for a moment and then disappear upon the endless current of impersonal and unconscious being. With these systems before us, and with the practical evidence of their power for evil in the pervading tendency and tone of modern Continental theology and religion and in the general skepticism of the French and Ger- man mind, it is vain to ignore the dangers which rise from a false philosophy. Yet I suspect another danger is before us, as great or even greater than any which Christianity has met and conquered. There is a philosophy now rising to power which seems to me more deadly than any other, because it consists in the denial of all philosophy. A philosophy of Nescience is worse than a philosophy of Omniscience. The one still leaves us the reality of mind from which to argue the existence of a God. The other, like Nero, when he wished that all the people of Rome had one neck that he might at one blow behead them all, gathers all the facts of mental consciousness together and by a single stroke puts them out of existence. By that same stroke that destroys all knowledge of the human mind you have destroyed all knowledge of Him who made the mind. In every production of writers of this class, as Lewes and Draper, you seem to hear the jubilant refrain : " Great Pan is dead. The age of Metaphysics has happily ended. Philos- ophy is forever impossible. " A spontaneous vegetative life is substituted for the apprehension of spiritual realities. Mind is but a product of organ- ization and thought is only cerebration. Thus in effect man is bidden to act the part of the wretched miser of Bunyan's dream who bends ever toward the earth, gathering straws with his muck-rake, while all the while a golden crown hangs suspended just above him, unseen and unregarded. God, heaven, freedom, conscience, immortality, are all the diseased imagin- ations of an unscientific age. These are the logical results of a philosophy which starts with the denial of any direct knowledge of the mind. But there are thousands who accept its principles without foreseeing these results. The array of investigators and followers who may be classed as Positivists in philosophy is very great. There are great names among them. Mill and Bain and Spencer in England are minds of rare erudition and acumen. But there are lesser satellites that revolve about these suns of the system and reflect their light. The youthful writers for the London Times quote John Stuart Mill as the only authority in philosophy. There are itinerant lecturers among us who winter after winter deliver, to audiences innocent of all sus- picion of their drift, lengthy tirades against metaphysics, and arguments to show that the observation of our own mental states is as impossible and absurd as to stand still and walk around one's self. There are in all our Sabbath congregations men who drink in this philosophy of Nescience from magazines and scientific periodicals, and who are prepared thereby to look upon the sermon from the pulpit as so much pleasant moonshine for purblind PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 9 intellects that cannot bear the sunlight. There are few of us, I am per- suaded, who realize to what extent this godless philosophy has taken hold of the educated minds of the generation, and has warped their views of religion. You see the results of it in the disposition of certain divines to accept Mr. Huxley as an authority with regard to the creation, and to sit at the feet of Baden Powell for teaching with regard to the possibility of a literal destruction of the world by fire. Outside the ministry it appears in the popular hue and cry against metaphysics, and in the increasing lack of sympathy with the Christian church on the part of those whose pursuits bring them most in contact with physical science. There has been a vast change in this respect in twenty years. Time was when philosophy and history brought the results of their investigations and laid them upon the altar of religion. The tendency now is to deny that there exists such a thing as metaphysical or moral science, and to treat as a weakness of intellect any attempt to interpret the world of matter by the world of mind. I do not need to tell you that the coryphaeus of this new philosophy of Nescience is Auguste Comte. Scarcely recognized as a thinker during his lif etime, he promises, now that he is dead, to be the master of the scientific thought of the next twenty years. His classification of the sciences, though chargeable with many errors, proves him to be one of the leading minds of the age. Every one of the fundamental principles of his philosophy, how- ever, is at war with a sound psychology. As a notable illustration of the necessity of beginning our theological thinking with correct principles of mind, let me point out to you two of the fundamental errors of Positivism, and the results to which they logically lead in our notions with regard to religious truth. Take for example his postulate that we know nothing but the phenomena of matter, and that mind, if there be such a thing, lies wholly out of reach of direct observation. Nothing could more plainly than this contradict the consciousness of men. In the same act by which I know matter, I know myself as distinct from matter and as knowing matter. I can see two things at a time, namely, self and not-self. I have knowledge of my own mental states by memory. I know what I was, as well as what I am. To deny these deliverances of consciousness is to declare that I know nothing ; for I have the same evidence for the existence of my own mental states that I have for the existence of outward phenomena. The mind is just as open to inspection as the world around me. The same rule that excludes as invalid my knowledge of myself must exclude as invalid my knowledge of matter. It is singular, as Mr. Martineau has somewhere said, that certain philosophers take such unconscious delight in knocking out their own brains. Comte seems quite unaware that the same scythe with which he mows down the psychologists cuts off his own legs also. For how can science be built up of the phenomena of matter ? Observation of facts is not science. The mere grouping of facts is not science. Science is a thing of the mind, and not of matter only. Unless there be a mental potency prior to all experience, no experience is possible. A structural pre-equipment of mind is necessary in order to correlate and arrange phenomena. The very idea of unity by which we classify facts must come to us from the unity of our own self-consciousness. Unless the primitive beliefs of substance, resemblance, power, which are a part of the 10 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. original endowment of the mind, and which flash out from latency into liv- ing energy the moment we are brought in contact with the phenomena of the outer world, unless these primitive beliefs by which we mould external facts into shape and clothe them with meaning are just as much objects of knowledge, and have as much validity, as the outward facts which we know through the testimony of the senses, all science is forever impossible. You might as well collect together a heap of arms and legs and heads from a dissecting room and call them living men, as to collect together mere facts and call them science. Science is made up of facts and ideas. If we can- not know anything but facts, if there be no such thing as phenomena of mind, if the mind be not an organism whose workings can be observed in consciousness, then the foundations of all knowledge are swept away, and the whole structure sinks "deeper than plummet ever sounded." In the Arabian Nights, there is a curious story of a mountain of loadstone, which the sailors greet with delight as the sign of some hospitable shore, where they may rest from the tempests of the deep. But as they draw near, the mighty mass of loadstone exerts its magnetic attraction upon every particle of iron in the vessel, until every nail and bolt is drawn from its place, and the ship goes to pieces, a miserable wreck. M. Comte has discovered a mountain of loadstone in this principle that all our knowledge is confined to the phenomena of matter, it draws every fastening from his bark, and brings his new philosophy to total dissolution. A similar absurdity is involved in another great principle of this philoso- phy, namely, the denial of causes, both efficient and final. What we call cause and effect is, it seems, only regularity of sequence. Dr. Hickok has given us an ingenious illustration of the principle of causality which may serve to set forth the precise nature of Comte's denial. Suppose two cog-wheels, with interlocking teeth. Each of these wheels is connected with a steam engine, which moves it. Both engines are working at the same rate of speed, so that the wheels revolve without interfering with each other. Each wheel obeys the impulse of its own engine, and neither is moved by the other. Interlocked though the cogs are, the relation between their motions is simply one of resemblance. But let one of these wheels be detached from the engine that just now moved it. To all appearance, the wheels move as before, yet it is plain that there is a new relation between their motions, a principle of causality has come in, the motion of the one is now the cause of the motion of the other. Now Comte denies the reality of any such notion as cause. He declares that the wheels move together in the one case just as they do in the other there is no new relation established between them when one engine ceases its motion. The simultaneous movement of the wheels in the first case, as in the last, is the sum and substance of the whole. What can be meant by law where is the place for law upon this theory ? Law must be something fixed and not phenomenal something behind phe- nomena which produces phenomena. But the only law which such a theory as this admits is the arbitrary succession of phenomena, without method or cause. In other words, instead of accepting the old axiom, ex nihilo nihil Jit, he seems to insist that ex nihilo omnia fiunL And so the causal judg- ment which we form the moment we observe phenomena, and which is just AS strong in the mind of the child as in the mind of the mature man, is PHILOSOPHY AXD RELIGION. 11 resolved into a persuasion that because we have observed that each event follows some other event, it will probably be so again. It is not too much to say that this confounding of the necessary with the customary is contra- dicted by the consciousness of every man and child upon the planet. By an irresistible law of thought, every change whatsoever is recognized to be the result of some power that effects the change a power behind the phe- nomena and separate from them, a power of which we have the type and proof in every effect which our own wills produce upon our own organism or upon the outward world. The natural result is that Comte has no such thing as an Inductive Logic, and can have none. Where there is no Causa- tion, there can be no law ; where there is no law, there can be no logic. And this is not all. By this same rule which excludes the idea of Causation, all the grandest intuitions of the soul are immolated, for they all rest upon the same evidence. We lose all proof that either spirit or matter exists back of the phenomena open to the senses. We have no wan-ant for believing that matter is anything more than a possibility of sensations, or that mind is anything more than a series of feelings aware of its own existence. Even mathematical truth is purely phenomenal. Two and two, it is true, make four with us, but it is only because we are used to it. In the planet Jupiter, where the customs of society are different, two and two may make five. There is no such thing as absolute truth. Right and wrong themselves are matters of convention. There is no eternal necessity in our nature which makes the right praiseworthy and the wrong condemnable. We have per- ceived the consequences of lying to be bad we call it a vice therefore. But in the star Sirius, or even in the moon, where the consequences are more happy, lying may be a virtue. The universe is a Cosmos no longer. There is no will binding its parts together. The world and its events are but a procession of phantoms without connection or order, of whose origin, significance and destination we know absolutely nothing, a conclusion of absolute skepticism which Lord Neaves justly ridicules in the persons of Mill and Hume, its advocates, by the following humorous lines : 41 Against a stone you strike your toe ; You feel 't is sore, it makes a clatter ; But what you feel is all you know Of toe, or stone, or mind, or matter. Mill and Hume of mind and matter Wouldn't leave a rag or tatter: What although We feel the blow? That doesn't show there's mind or matter. " Had I skill like Stuart Mill, His own position I could shatter; The weight of Mill I count as nil, It Mill has neither mind nor matter. Mill, when minu* mind and matter, Though he make a kind of clatter, Must himself Just mount the shelf, And there be laid with mind and matter." As if these conclusions were not sufficiently absurd, we have the direct denial that there is such a thing as purpose in the Universe. What are called marks of design are only accidental coincidences. Final causes are 12 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. merged in the totality of secondary causes. The sole explanation of the- wondrous adaptations of nature to the good of man is that these are simply the result of mechanical laws. There is no sense in wondering at the order of the heavenly spheres, with the laws that govern nature, how could there be any disorder ? Thus the lofty thought of the classic poet that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair is exchanged for the blasphemous assertion that the heavens declare, not the glory of God, but the glory of the Astronomer. But the followers of Comte convict themselves of folly by their unintentional use of language which implies adaptation in nature. Darwin is obliged to speak continually of the design of such and such a series of arrangements, as for example, that required for the fertilization of orchids. On Comte's own showing, there has been a curious design in the arrangement of all things from the very beginning with reference to the development at last of a true philosophy a wonderful series of adaptations by which, when time was ripe and the world's needs greatest, a Comte was brought forth, and humanity delivered from its metaphysical and theologic folly. Surely a design like this, executed too only through unnumbered subordinate adaptations and arrangements of human character and history, proves a designer of endless wisdom and goodness. But says Maudsley, one of the Positivist camp-followers: " De- sign, according to Spinoza's sagacious remark, would imply imperfection in the designer a necessity of adding something to himself to make up his sum of blessedness and this notion involves you in a self-contradiction, for imperfection of any sort is inconsistent with your very idea of God. " But what sort of a God would be Mr. Maudsley's perfect God ? His only notion of a God must be that of a being not so great or free or active as ourselves an Asiatic Brahma, as "idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. " No, the forthputting of designing wisdom and of creative power is not inconsistent with infinite perfection, since it is voluntary self-limita- tion, for the sake of revealing his glory. God is limited by nothing outside himself, but only by the decrees of his own most free and blessed mil ; and such a self -limitation is only a proof and fruit of infinite perfection. Or again, when the Positivist argues that the imperfection of the design proves the absence of all purpose in the Universe, it is hard to tell which is to be most condemned, the ignorance of the objection or its presumption. It is the old boast of Alphonso of Castile, that if . he had been present with the Almighty when the Universe was planned he could have suggested to him some valuable improvements. The Universe, it seems, can with all its imperfections produce a Comte, but cannot equal his intelligence. Or, if a serious reply must be made to an argument so shallow, we might show that the whole tendency of modern science, nay, the very principle that guides her in all her researches, is to take for granted that there must be adaptations and uses in things whose purpose and design have hitherto been hidden. Increasing knowledge has only taught her that everything is for some end, and even if it were ultimately discovered that there was organic imperfection in the System, it would only prove a deeper adaptation of that system to man's state of conscious moral discord and evil, an adaptation revealing to him the ruin sin has wrought, and exciting in him longings for the deliverance from bondage of the whole creation of God. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 13 The tendencies of a philosophy built upon such principles as these are too manifest to require elucidation. They tear up Philosophy by the roots, and Religion must share the fate of Philosophy. One of Comte's grandest generalizations indeed is this, that theology and metaphysics are relics of the race's infancy, necessary stages in human progress, but to be regarded in these days only as stepping-stones which may be removed, now that we have risen by them from infancy to manhood. Biology is only a part of physiology ; brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile ; man, to use Dr. Holmes' simile, is only "a drop of water imprisoned in a crystal, one little particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe." All his higher ideas of that Universe, its forms of beauty, its divine arrangements, its moral influences, are cast aside as worthless. All his noblest intuitions substance causation, law, freedom, conscience, accountability, immortality are met- aphysical or theological chirnseras. There is no place for sin nor for repent- ance. There is no God to direct the blind, resistless forces of nature, or to hear and answer the cry that rises from the desolate heart of man. In the terrible language of Holyoake, one of the advocates of this Atheistic creed: " Science has shown us that we are under the dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity ; stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death ; too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate ; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save. " With such a picture of the Uni- verse before us, we seem enshrouded by the darkness of Byron's dream : " The bright sun is extinguished, and the stars Do wander darkling in the eternal space, Kay less and pathless ; and the icy earth* Swings blind and blackening in the moonless air. Morn comes and goes and comes, but brings no day, And men forget their passions in the dread Of this their desolation, and all hearts Are chilled into a selfish prayer for light. Tin waves are dead ; the tides are in their grave ; The moon, their mistress, has expired before; The winds are withered in the stagnant air, And the clouds perished ; Darkness had no need Of aid from them She was the Universe." And Comte himself has given us proof, if any such were needed, that the human soul revolts at the picture of a universe without a God, and has an instinct implanted in its very constitution which cannot be satisfied without some semblance of worship. The later speculations of the great Positivist aimed at nothing less than the establishment of a new religion which should dispense with the notion of a Deity or a revelation, a religion of which Comte himself was to be Sovereign Pontiff and Supreme Lawgiver. The object of adoration is Collective Humanity or the totality of all the forces engaged in the perfecting of the race, embracing therefore the solid earth itself which supports this race, the former to be designated as the " Great Being" and the latter as the "Great Fetish." Three hundred and sixty- five of the world's benefactors are chosen to represent humanity as objects of worship, and the statues of all these are set up in the Pantheon of the new religion that each day of the year may have its special saint for com- 14 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION". memoration. For the separate weeks and months there are dii majores, or greater gods, and among them Confucius, Voltaire and Mahomet, though no place is found for Christ. For private devotion, there is the adoration of the mother, the wife, the daughter. An ejaculatory prayer is proposed consisting of the following words: "Love as our principle ; order as our basis ; progress as our end. " Instead of the sign of the Cross, so common in the Romish Church, the three principal cerebral organs are to be thought- fully touched by the finger. For priests there is a College of Savants; for sacraments there are birthday, wedding and funeral rites ; for the last judgment there is a posthumous decision of learned men upon the merits or demerits of the dead ; the fame of this decision stands for immortality, and a civilized earth is made to serve for heaven. Such is the substitute for the religion of the Bible, proposed by the Atheistic philosopher. Re- volting at the childishness of worshiping God, he constructs a religion in which the race shall worship man. With such poetic justice is the truth avenged. With such unconsciousness of its own nature does the wisdom of this world prove itself to be foolishness in the sight of God. What has been said will prepare you for the few words in which I shall present the last thought of my subject. It is this : An impartial philosophy is essential to the perfect triumph of religion. If the universal sway of Christianity is to be brought about in accordance with the common laws of mind, it would seem that a true philosophy must be one of God's chosen weapons for subduing the world to Christ. Christianity has not only noth- ing to fear from a true science of the mind, but she must recognize in such science her indispensable coadjutor and ally. The stress of the argument against Christianity among investigators of physical truth is not so much theological as it is philosophical, and this fact is but the illustration of that wider principle enunciated by Sir William Hamilton, that "there is no difficulty emerging in theology which has not first emerged in philosophy. " In spite of M. Comte, philosophy will exist while the world stands. It i& time for the Christian church and the Christian ministry to understand its power, and instead of deploring its influence or treating it with shallow contempt, to use every effort to bring it into the service of Christ. As the greatest thinker of New England said a century ago : ' ' There is no need that strict philosophical truth be at all concealed from men no danger in contemplation and discovery in these things. The truth is extremely need- ful to be known, and the more clearly and perfectly the real fact is known, and the more constantly kept in view, the better. The clear and full knowl- edge of the true system of the universe will greatly establish the true Christian Scheme of divine administration in the City of God." Let us have done then, once for all, with the notion that metaphysical studies are beside the proper work of the preacher, and by necessity mystify his brain and destroy his practical power. The history of the church has shown that philosophy, instead of weakening the grasp and corrupting the principles of her preachers, has been their great discipline and strength. No man can clearly present or successfully defend the truths of religion without knowing them in their principles. A teacher of religion who sneers at metaphysics, as if it were a fog-bank in which only fools would risk their lives, is simply playing into the hands of infidelity and virtually declaring PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 15 that all true philosophy is on the side of the enemies of religion. To fill his place as a preacher in these days he must know the foundations of his faith in the human consciousness ; must have some proper sense of those grand primitive affirmations of the soul, which, "be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet the master-light of all our seeing." He must be able to show the dabbler in an Atheistic philosophy whither the principles he has ignorantly adopted will lead him ; how completely these principles affront the reason and mock the religious nature of man ; how they are based upon a single primary misconception with regard to the sources of our knowledge ; how a simple confidence in the original intuitions of the mind will restore to us the world, the soul and God ; how that confi- dence is the indispensable basis of all science, while a denial of a single one of these original convictions is like "the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And, ever widening, slowly silence all." It is the business of the preacher to know the false philosophy which threatens to leaven society, in order that in its place he may put the true. And this he can do in a thousand ways. Formal metaphysical disquisitions in the pulpit will never accomplish anything ; but the incidental statement in sermon and correspondence and conversation of the fundamental errors of a false philosophy, accompanied by a simple ?'eductio ad absurdum, will open the eyes of many who have unconsciously imbibed notions hostile to the true faith. The preacher is not only bound by his duty to God never to despair of philosophy himself, but is under obligation to labor and to pray that a true philosophy may uproot the false, and prepare the way for the final triumph of religion. A true philosophy ! It has been the dream and quest of earth's noblest spirits. Bat have they discovered the object of their search ? Must not the world still ask : " Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding ? " We answer both yes and no. There has always been a true philosophy in the world side by side with the false. Side by side with the philosophies of Epicurus and the Stoics, partial in their sources and their results, dwelt for ages the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, both spiritual and both theistic, though differing largely in their methods and their spirit. And between our modern philosophies of Nescience and Omniscience there exists a sober philosophy represented by men like James McCosh, that aims to give to all the facts of human consciousness their proper weight and to maintain the faith of those sublime intuitions by which we cognize the existence of the World, the Soul, and God. As in theology, there are a thousand questions yet to solve, and with regard to many that are fundamental there is still diversity of opinion among the best of thinkers. Yet still the priests of God and the priests of Baal are easy to distinguish from each other, and in philosophy as well as theology the cry may still be echoed : "If the Lord be God, serve him ; but if Baal, serve him ! " Nor was there ever yet a day when the signs of the times were more hopeful for a true philosophy. As error with 16 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. regard to the person of Christ reached its extremest results in both direc- tions and exhausted itself in the first centuries of Christianity, so error in philosophy seems to have rendered this service for the truth, of showing to what heights and depths of folly and ruin a partial philosophy in either direction may lead. The day has dawned already in which philosophic investigation is carried on in the true inductive method and begins with the fundamental facts of consciousness the intuitive knowledge of matter, of mind, of God, and of each as distinct and differing in nature from the others. Let a man hold fast to the deliverance that he has a face-to-face knowledge of the external world, of his own mind, and of the existence and presence of God, and he may defy all the arts of a false philosophy to lead him astray. Just in proportion to the extent to which these fundamental convictions are ignored or obscured does fatal error creep into our reasonings. Phi- losophy is just beginning to settle her debt with Sir William Hamilton, who, with all his splendid contributions to a true science of the mind, still, by his notion of the relativity of human knowledge and his virtual denial of a direct knowledge of matter, left the door ajar for a subtle Idealism to enter and prepared the way for Hansel's resolution of the whole material of our religious faith into sheer contradiction. I know matter as something exter- nal to myself. I may learn a thousand things about it, but my knowledge of its existence can never be more perfect. To say that the external substance furnishes six of the twelve parts of my conception, while the organs by which I perceive it furnish three, and the mind itself three, is virtually to deny that we have any face-to-face knowledge of matter at all. And so to relegate our idea of the divine existence to the realm of faith, because, forsooth, any proper knowledge of God would require an apprehension of the manner in which his infinite attributes coexist to form one object is to deny one of the simplest facts of consciousness. There may be a thousand facts about God, of which I am ignorant, but my mind cognizes his exist- ence and presence for all that. As another has said: " The African on the banks of the Niger may be altogether ignorant of its source and termination, but it would not be right on that account to deny that he has any knowledge of the river, and it would be equally wrong to deny that we can know God, merely on the ground that we do not and cannot grasp his infinite attributes. " To tell me that this knowledge of God, "wherein standeth my eternal life," possesses no external validity, and to inscribe upon the temple of religion the legend, "To the Unknown God," is simply to sweep away the founda- tions of all knowledge. The clearness and power of this intuitive knowledge may be dimmed and blunted by sin. To see God revealed to my soul as distinctly as I see the forms of my fellow-men may belong to me only in those clearer moments to which here and hereafter the pure in heart may come, but still the fact remains that an intuitive knowledge of God, dis- torted, blunted, overlaid with a thousand superstitious fancies though it be, belongs to man as man, revealing itself in his consciousness of the Infinite around him and in his fears of the judgment before him. This conception of God is not the straining forward of the soul into an unknown abyss, as Kant maintained, nor is it a mere negation of all bounds and limits, as Hamilton fancied ; for both these philosophers, in their constant declarations PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 17 thai God is, and that he is a God of truth, declare in effect that, apart from all faith, they have substantial knowledge of God and of certain of his attributes. As "there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding," the very height and glory of his nature is that he may look into the face of God and say : "My Father ! " To waken this intuition into living power and to restore the actual communion of the soul with God, Christ has come, and in him who is "the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person " we who once were so involved in "the dark windings of the material and earthy" that we dared scarcely say, " we have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear," can declare with joy that "now our eye seeth Thee." This grandest intuition of the soul it is ours to interpret, to illustrate, to defend, by voice and pen, in heart and life. Men may mistake it and deny it, but its establishment upon a scientific basis is the test and the goal of a true philosophy. We may eacli do something toward the grand result, not only by the service of the intellect, but by living every day "as seeing Him who is invisible," and from our own certainty of the truth commending it to others. The noble lines with which Wordsworth concludes "The Prelude" set forth the preacher's work no less than the poet's : " Prophets of nature, we to them may speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified My reason, blest by faith ; what we have loved Others will love, and we will teach them how; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells, above this frame of things In beauty exalted, as it is itself Of quality and fabric more divine." Upon the side of the great entrance-hall of the Royal Museum in Berlin is painted a colossal picture of Kaulbach's, which unites more than any other picture in the world the interest of history and poetry, of weird imag- ination and symbolic lore. It represents that last battle between the Romans and the Huns, which decided the fate of European civilization. The story goes that the hosts on either side fought desperately for three long days, until the greater part of the combatants were slain, and the rest, worn out with the conflict, fell to the ground in heavy sleep. But as the night came on, the spirits of the slain, still fierce and restless even in death, rose from their bodies and held a still and awful battle in the air. This shadowy combat Kaulbach has painted. There, on the right, comes Attila, the " scourge of God," borne aloft upon a shield, and leading on his barbarians to death or victory. And there Theodoric, the Roman leader, advances to meet him, with sword in hand and the cross behind. The picture is wonderful for its vivid portraiture of deadly conflict, but far more for its symbolic teaching that the battle which determined the future of Chris- tianity and of the world was not so much a battle of men and spears as a battle between the spirit of two opposing civilizations, a battle in which subtle and shadowy principles contended for the mastery of the world. So, brethren, let us never forget amid the practical noise and strife of our life- work, that above our heads another battle is going on, in which our strug- gling finds its only true significance. The battle of the ages is a battle of 2 18 PHILOSOPHY AND KELIGION". principles, and he who has most possessed himself of the knowledge of that upper warfare will best conduct the fight amid the clang of arms and the shock of opposing battalions. Let us thank God that the issue is not doubtful. Though the armies of error are more subtle and more fierce than those shadowy barbarians that follow after Attila, the hosts of God are stronger still, for the Cross is with them, and by that sign they conquer ! II. SCIENCE AND RELIGION.* The annual festival which brings us together marks the close of another year's professional instruction, and the completion by many before me of their whole preparatory training for the work and business of life. The friendships cemented by common pursuits and aspirations are soon to exist only in memory, and the hard tests of practical life are to decide how much of manly energy and sagacity and principle there is on which to build a per- manent success. It is a noble profession to which you have bound your- selves. There is but one which can rival it in dignity. The three great learned guilds are one in their object, and one in their method of work. All have in view the good of human kind. All base their hope of good upon the study of God's laws. He must be a shallow and unworthy representative of the legal profession whose highest conception of it is that of a money- making trade, and whose mind, with all its matching of precedents and forging of arguments, never once finds in the law the dim reflection of God's eternal justice and truth. And he must be a sorry doctor who never loses sight of selfish comfort or reputation in disinterested service of humanity, and who forgets that in every case of disease that comes beneath his eye are illustrated the highest truths of God's great creation of mind and matter. The physician is brought face to face with the saddest and solemnest aspects of human life he should be a wise and humble man ; he has piteous hands held out t to him for help he should be a man of tender human feeling, while he is yet careful and calm ; he must again and again see the soul hovering between two worlds and at last passing away like the spark of an extinguished taper, he should be a truly religious man. The great German dramatist puts into the mouth of one of his characters the words : " Respect the dreams of thy youth." . I cannot believe that one of those whom I especially address is destitute of some such high ideal of professional beneficence and character. Yet at the same time you will not deem it unkind if I remind you that the dust of our life-struggle often obscures to us the lofty beacon-lights that guide our way ; and that, with all pursuits of natural science. Medicine shares the common danger of forget- ting those spiritual facts which give to its conclusions all their validity and significance. Those whose occupation and principal study of life it is to adjust applications of the great laws of chemistry and dynamics, and who are exercised but little in subjects and fields of thought external to mere nature, come often to be practical unbelievers in anything but nature. Con- *An Address delivered at the Commencement of the Medical College, Cleveland, February 18, 1867. 20 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. tiuually occupied with the phenomena of the body and its effects on the mind, even the physician sometimes finds it hard to admit within his scheme of things anything supernatural or beyond the cognizance of the senses. The theologian is sometimes guilty of the opposite fault, while nature and the supernatural together constitute the one system of God, he ofttimes ignores the results of science and decries her methods. Religion and science will never understand each other, or find terms of harmonious cooperation, until the great truth is recognized by each that observation and conscious- ness are alike sources of knowledge, and that equal validity is to be ascribed to the ascertained results of metaphysical and moral inquiry with that which we ascribe to the processes of natural research. It is my profound convic- tion that neither the scientific man nor the moral philosopher can achieve success in the building up of his own system, or in the symmetrical develop- ment of his own character, so long as either disdains the pursuits of the other. The two systems are complementary to each other, and each without the other is fragmentary and incomplete. The greatest possible heresy on the part of either is to play the empiric by assuming that its system com- prises the whole of truth, and that there is no knowledge but that which comes through its peculiar method. Such partiality and egotism is foreign to the true scientific spirit. I doubt not, therefore, that your training here has favorably disposed you toward the theme which I desire to elucidate, namely, the indissoluble connection between physical and metaphysical in- quiry, or what is much the same thing, the mutual dependence of science and religion. My first proposition is that no system of thought deserves the name of true science which does not recognize the existence and importance of a realm of metaphysical, moral and spiritual truth, side by side with the great fields of physical inquiry. Though many are prone to deny it, there is such a thing as metaphysical science. The observation and classification of phe- nomena do not by any means comprise all that is possible in scientific research. By the word phenomena I mean here the phenomena perceptible to the senses. If used in the larger sense, which embraces all that occurs or reveals itself within the mind as well as without, the word phenomena may include within its scope all the raw material of our knowledge. There are phenomena of mind as well as of matter. Self-consciousness is as valid a source of knowledge as consciousness of the outer world. And it is the merest begging of the question for the Positivist to declare that only the phenomena of sense are to be recognized as of any value in scientific inquiry. The results of intellectual philosophy are just as real and valuable as the results of physical investigation, and to say that accepted moral truth has no other basis than faith, while physical truth is positive in any peculiar sense, is simply to deny the dicta of consciousness. Mental and spiritual facts are just as demonstrable, though by a different kind of evidence, as the facts of the visible and material universe around us.' Let us strip away the mystery and prejudice that envelope that much-abused word, metaphysi- cal. It means nothing but that which is beyond the sphere of the physical. For example, I burn my hand in the flame of this gas-burner. The gas, the flame, the disintegration of the tissues of my hand, are physical facts ; but do these comprise an exhaustive summary of the case ? Some philosophers SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 21 would say so. But I fancy any man of common sense would feel called upon to put down certain other facts, first, namely, a decided conscious- ness on my part that I was burned, and that I was a fool for putting my hand in the blaze. Now this perception of pain, this consciousness of folly, are not physical facts but metaphysical ones, and no one could ever persuade me that here was not a case for metaphysical inquiry. A similar test might be proposed for ascertaining the existence of human freedom and responsi- bility. If any man declares himself a fatalist, and assures you that human life and action are only unalterable links in the great chain of necessitv that fast binds the universe, suppose you knock him down, the consequence is that he immediately rises up convinced of your freedom and responsibility, and considers these metaphysical facts at least, as sufficiently established, to warrant a process of law against you. Upon such metaphysical facts science itself rests, and without them would be impossible. Science cannot proceed a step in her observations or demon- strations without assuming great truths which no experience has ever given her, and which she is obliged to receive by faith before she can set out at all on her voyage of discovery. Faith is a fundamental principle in philos- ophy just as much as in religion. You cannot get out of self to begin any investigation, without first assuming that you are different from the world around you, and that the faculties which assure you of the world's existence are truthful in their deliverances. Yet what evidence have you of these facts ? None whatever, except that you have a nature preceding all your conscious thought, and underlying all your mental action, a nature which your will did not create, a nature which renders it impossible for you not to believe that your primitive cognitions are substantial verities. In the words of Fichte : " We are all born in faith." Faith in our mental powers us the sources of knowledge is a part of our nature. All science rests there- fort 1 , in the last analysis, on faith, not on the deductions of reason ; and the proudest contemner of religious faith builds his whole structure of knowledge on a basis of precisely the same character. And who can say that there may not be dormant in the soul the capacity of a higher faith, which divine infl- euces may wake to activity, just as outward influences first wake to manifes- tation these other primitive intuitions of the mind ? Who has a right to despise the edifice of religious knowledge, which equally with all scientific knowledge rests upon a foundation in the nature itself which all the storms of reasoning can never shake ? . And who will not see something more than mere poetry in those noble words of Tennyson : " Strong- Son of God, Immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith and faith alone embrace, IJelieving 1 where we cannot prove ! " Thou wilt not leave us in the dust ; Thou madest man, he knows not why ; He thinks he was not made to die ; And thou hast made him : thou art just." Take the terms which science most uses, "law," "cause," " order, "- and a slight examination will suffice to show that all their meaning and value consist in conceptions they derive from the realm of the metaphysical and spiritual. Suppose a case of acute disorder in the system comes under 22 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. your notice, let it be a case of poisoning. You instantly inquire the cause, and you proceed to administer some agent to counteract the poison, or expel it from the system. But you could not do either of these without having in mind the idea of causation, an idea which the mere succession of events never can give you, an idea which is derived only from your own conscious- ness of power to produce effects in your physical organism, in other words, from the metaphysical fact of will. And how could we know or love or seek order in the universe, how could we begin to classify facts or reduce them to system, if our own inward experience did not reveal to us a unity of being there, amid a multiplicity of manifestations ? It is only the meta- physical consciousness of the oneness of self that leads us to seek unity in nature, or that enables us to interpret nature as a divinely constituted cosmos or order. The absolute impossibility of ridding ourselves of these metaphysical conceptions is shown again and again in the involuntary slips of the pen by which those who deny the validity of all primitive cognitions are yet com- pelled to testify to their reality and to their silent presence through all the steps of their reasoning. John Stuart Mill, for example, though declaring in one breath that the very idea of cause is a delusion of the imagination and that we know only of the existence of fixed sequences in creation, is notwithstanding forced, when he comes to define "quality," to call it the cause of sensation, thus recognizing involuntarily the very metaphysical conception which he has been combating. And Comte, the French phil- osopher, while denying any validity to consciousness, is yet found saying that "man at first knows nothing but himself" and that "the phenomena of life are known by immediate consciousness. " So impossible is it, if we build at all, to avoid building upon the solid ground of original intuition which underlies all our mental operations. You cannot even conceive of any material object, bounded as it is on every side and separated from other objects, except as existing in space, which is unbounded and includes all objects. You cannot think of any event as transpiring in time without at the same time conceiving of endless duration before and after, in which the event has place. You cannot help believing in infinite space and time, you cannot even conceive of any limitation of them. Yet these infinite realities you never saw with your bodily eyes, the conception came to you from the mind. And so you believe that every change is the result of power exerted somewhere and somehow ; but this idea of causality is not from the world without but from the world within, and "without this action of mind upon its objects, the little world of man's knowledge would be not a cosmos but a chaos not a system of parts having mutual relation to each other but an endless succession of isolated phantoms coming and going one by one. " Thus I would justify my first proposition, that no system of thought deserves the name of true science that does not recognize the existence and importance of a realm of metaphysical, moral and spiritual truth side by side with the great fields of physical inquiry. The facts of the one are just as important as the facts of the other, and however one's natural tastes may lead him to prefer one line of investigation to the other, he yet owes it to science and to himself to complement his knowledge of his own department SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 23 by the acceptance of ascertained results in the other, or at least by the recognition of another sphere whose exploration is as important as that of his own. The tendency of thought in all ages, however, has been toward one of the two opposite poles. Idealism and Materialism have alternately held sway, and the world, in the heat of controversy between them, has forgotten that the rounded globe of truth must have two poles, not one. There is truth in both, but either taken singly is false by defect. And while every man, as has been said, is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist, it is all the more important that the balance should be calmly held between the two. The fatal tendency to merge matter in mind or mind in matter, and so convert the universe into one substance, can only be counteracted by a study of both' Such study teaches us on the one hand that knowledge of external things can never be accounted for by resolving it into self-knowledge, for the latter is just as inexplicable as the former. We know self and we know the world, and we know that self is different from the world, and that is the end of all pan- theistic idealism. But on the other hand the same study teaches us that self-knowledge can never be resolved into a mere phenomenon of matter ; no muscular or nervous vibrations are identical with sensation or perception ; and to call the high achievements of human reason the mere necessary products of blood and brain is beyond measure degrading to pcience and to the soul. Yet to this the study of nature must lead us if it be not balanced by considerations from another department of knowledge. Nature alone gives us no conception of mind or of God, for it is different from mind or God. Let us pity the man whose whole scheme of nature has no room in it for those higher ideas which give nature all her grandeur and glory. ' ' I can conceive a severe science," says F. W. Robertson in one of his letters, " compelling a mind step by step to atheistic conclusions ; and that mind, loyal to truth, refusing to ignore the conclusions or to hide them. But then I can only conceive this done in a noble sadness, and a kind of divine infinite pity towards the race which is so bereft of its best hopes. I have no patience with a self-complacent smirk which says : ' Shut up the prophets ; iv: id Harriet Martineau and Atkinson. Friendship, Patriotism, are mes- merized brain ; Faith, a mistake of the stomach ; Love, a titillatory move- ment occurring in the upper part of the nape of the neck ; Immortality, the craving of dyspepsia ; God, a fancy produced by a certain pressure upon the gray parts of the hasty-pudding within the skull ; Shakespeare, Plato, Caesar, and all they did and wrote, weighed by an extra ounce or two of said pudding.'" This rough-shod criticism of a nobly indignant mind is a rediiftio ad abswdum of those conceptions of nature which would take out from it its very life and soul. When Buckle and Draper exhibit to us a list of statistical averages to prove that certain actions recur with uniform frequency in certain periods of time, they would have us infer that the free will of man is a mere figment of the imagination, and that the limits which are placed around human action reduce it to the law of necessity. They forget that, in the case they bring forward, law does not fetter the individual but only affects men in the mass. This is unlike gravitation, for gravitation acts equally and universally upon all matter. Every apple let go from the hand must fall, but not every man must act so and so. We infer from these 24 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. statistical averages merely that divine foresight has fixed bounds to human-- action, but that action itself is no less free within its sphere. The whole error of these physicists lies in their persistent determination to interpret the phenomena of mind by the conceptions they have received from matter; or in the words of James Martineau, "to push dynamics into the conquest of history and mankind, and to coerce the universe of life and persons into the formulas applicable to things. " While then any monistic theory is false, whether its leanings be toward Idealism or Materialism, and while it is true that both departments of human research must be included in any complete system of science, it becomes a most serious question which of these two co-ordinate realms shall furnish the interpretation for the other. After what I have said you will not be surprised to hear my second and last proposition, namely, that nature must be interpreted by our knowledge of mind, and not mind and its phenomena by our knowledge of nature ; in other words, the governing conception in man must be also the governing conception in nature. Man has been well called a microcosm a little world in himself an image of the great world of matter and mind outside of him. It is this embracing in himself of the two that qualifies him to sit as judge of both ; and his own being must be the measured segment of the arc, by which he triangulates the vast universe of being that stretches away on every side around him. The senses tell him of a physical organism subject to natural laws ; but is this the whole of his nature ? Ah, no ! another inward sense tells him of the possession of endowments totally different in kind from those of matter. He has mind ; there are in him life, knowledge, will, conscience, and nature has none of these. Now, of these two parts of a man, which is the dominant one ? I know that there are men like Emerson to affirm that man is here, not to work, but to be worked upon. I know that there are men like Youmans to suggest that by mere transformation a force, existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness ; and that emotions and thoughts are simply another form of forces which are liberated by chemical changes in the brain. But in reply to this theory, which in its tendencies is purely materialistic and atheistic, we have only to bring forward the evidence of consciousness, that testifies clearly that mind is not subject to the laws of matter, but that it holds sway over these and can bend these to its purpose. Man conquering nature is the very idea of modern civilization. I do not mean that any one of nature's laws can be changed at his caprice, but I mean that man has been endowed with the power to put those laws in new combinations, and so make them his slaves to do his bidding. A single act of man's will may set in motion a train of natural operations which never could have occurred without his agency, and yet which con- tinue working of themselves after he has withdrawn his hand. To use an illustration of Janet's : "I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of ; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other conformably to their laws without a new intervention of the agent, so that an observer who shall study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any special act, and SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 2& jet there is a preconceived plan and combination," and the whole series of effects may be traced back to the action of one mind and will. So Diman has well said that "when laws are conceived of, not as single but as com- bined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but by endlessly varying combinations of invariable forces;" and we may add that while these combinations are to a considerable extent in the hands of man, so that by combining the laws of chemical attraction and combustion he can fire the gunpowder and split the solid rock asunder, these combinations are to an unlimited extent in the hands of God, so that, without suspension of natural laws but rather through these laws, he can interpose to produce providential or even miraculous results in nature, which nature left to herself would never be able to accomplish. What I contend for, then, is simply this : that while nature's laws are rigid, there is a power superior to those laws and exempt from their control, namely, the power of the personal will and that in this will of man we have an instance of an efficient cause in the highest sense of that term, acting among and along with the physical causes of the material world, and producing results which would not have been brought about by any invari- able sequence of physical causes left to their own action. We have evidence, in fine, of an elasticity in the constitution of nature, which permits the influence of human power on the phenomena of the world to be exercised or suspended at will, without affecting in the least the stability of the great system of things. If I throw a stone into the air, its fall is determined by natural laws, but can any man say that my throwing it was the mere result of natural laws ? Nay, my free-will, something above nature, has done it, nor has any law of nature been violated therein. In this conception of personal will we find the only key to the interpreta- tion of nature. We talk about the forces of nature or about the different forms that force takes on magnetism, light, heat, motion, but what do we know about force itself, except by our own consciousness of power exerted in every act of will ? That is the only force of which we have immediate knowledge, and we know it to have its centre and source in our own person- ality. And so when we see a change in nature we instantly attribute it to the exertion of some unseen power, the very laws of our mental constitution forbid us to conceive of that change as blind and causeless. There is force everywhere in nature the moving world in all its successions and changes is bound together by some all-pervading force, which, assuming different forms, produces life and beauty and order. But our minds refuse to rest in this idea of force we cannot even conceive of it except as having its source and centre in a personal intelligence and will analogous to our own. The very same faculties whose veracity guarantees the existence of the outward world guarantee also the existence of One whose wisdom shapes that world and conserves jts being and brings about its regular successions from day to day. The universe is not a great machine self-erected and running its endless courses by virtue of some blind tendency to self-development. There is no real power that has not its seat in mind, and every change in the relations of matter is evidence of the presence of a superintending wisdom and of a divine will that upholds all things by its word. And so. 26 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. instead of asserting with some of our modern physicists that the highest law of all science, the most far-reaching principle that adventuring reason has discovered in the universe, is the conservation of force, we may with greater reverence say that science itself, in its highest sense, points to a principle high above all force and all the laws of force, namely, the personal will of the omnipresent and omnipotent God. We recognize accordingly, in our own consciousness of will-power and in our own experience of its exercise, a clue to the explanation of the world without us, its forces and its origin. But there is another fact in our mental operations which sheds yet further light upon the meaning of nature, and that is our consciousness of purpose. We not only work, but we work toward ends. In ourselves, we recognize not only the principle of cause, but also the principle of final cause. I am myself convinced that the belief that all things have their ends is a primitive and universal one ; that this alone gives a rational unity to the whole system of things; that this alone renders induction possible. I can argue from one thing to another only upon the assumption that things in the universe correspond to each other; in other words, that each has been made to fill its place in the system, that each exists for a purpose. But whether it be a primitive belief or not, it is At any rate a working principle of all science. Science could make no progress, indeed could make no beginnings, if she did not take for granted that there must be adaptations and uses in things whose purpose and design have hitherto been hidden. There are two ways in which this rational interpretation of nature is sought to. be refuted. The older and fortunately now somewhat antiquated method, of which Comte was the representative, is that of denying that there is any such thing as purpose in nature. What once seemed marks of design are called accidental coincidences. Final causes are merged in the totality of efficient causes. But later writers have felt the necessity of recognizing the principle of finality in nature, of ends toward which the universe and its various parts are working ; yet they are unwil- ling to grant that there is a superintending wisdom which at all an- swers to the Christian idea of God. The result has been the announce- ment of the principle of immanent finality, of unconscious intelligence. And to this second interpretation of nature a large part of our modem scientists are inclined to give in their adhesion. They point to the instinct of the bee which builds its hexagons and provides its winter store without consciousness of the end its labor is to subserve. They point to the uncon- scious formation of language a whole people for centuries shaping and perfecting a vehicle for thought yet without consultation with each other or understanding of the harmonious structure which they are rearing. They point to the work of the world's greatest geniuses in music and in literature, and claim that the perfection of art is characterized by spontaneity, absence of forethought, in short, unconscious intelligence. So they would have us believe that the spirit that moves and works in the universe is also an uncon- scious intelligence, and that the marvelous results of order and beauty which we see about us are but the unpurposed ends toward which an impersonal force has been working. There are very many arguments which might be urged against this con- SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 27 ception of nature, but we can notice only one. It loses sight of man. It is the universe that is to be accounted for, and the theory expressly holds that man is a part of the universe. If there were no such thing as conscious freedom and conscious purpose anywhere, if animal intelligence were the highest, then there would be nothing so impossible in the hypothesis that undesigniug creatures were an outgrowth of undesigning intelligence. But the moment that man is taken into the account, we have a problem which this philosophy can never solve the problem how the corfscious is to be explained from the unconscious. It is granted that there is intelligence in nature; it is granted that there is conscious intelligence in man, and that this conscious intelligence is higher than that which is unconscious. We claim that it is more rational to explain the lower by the higher, than it is to explain the higher by the lower more rational to suppose that uncon- scious intelligence has derived its origin from conscious intelligence, than that the conscious has come from the unconscious. If natuie has an intelligent cause, you are bound to get your ideas of the nature of that cause, not from the lowest forms of intelligence you know, but from the highest not from the animal, therefore, but from the man. In our own intelligent purpose we have the simplest explanation of the intelligence of the universe about us. Somewhere or other you must find purpose outside of man to explain purpose in man and when you have found a conscious intelligence that can explain man, you can best explain the unconscious universe by referring that to this intelligence also. An organism working unconsciously toward an end can be best explained by supposing that it is impelled toward that end by another being who is conscious and who has chosen the end. It is only reason to suppose that nature reaches her ends because nature is ruled by a being immanent in nature whose intelligence has determined the ends and whose power realizes them. Leave out man and the universe cannot be rationally interpreted. Include man in your survey, and you are bound to regard nature as the product and working of a mind and will analogous to the conscious soul that inhabits and energizes and directs the human body. I have said that, if we include man in our survey of the universe, we are bound to regard nature as the product and working of a mind and will anal- ogous to the conscious soul that inhabits and energizes and directs the human body. Deny this, and I do not see what is to save you from denying also the fact of conscious intelligence in man. To this the theory I am combat- ing logically tends. We have no physical evidence of the existence of con- sciousness in others. As our fellow-beings are declared destitute of free volition, so they should be declared destitute of consciousness. As the brutes are called automata, so should man be called an automaton. It has well been said that if physics be all, we have no God, but then also we have no man, existing. If we deny that the adaptations in nature are indications of a designing God, we should equally deny that the watch, the aqueduct and the railway are indications of a designing man. "The essential bestiality of man " is a natural and logical conclusion. Into this Slough of Despond, this renunciation of the highest honors of manhood, the philosophy of the day is drifting. "What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature," I quote from a late essay of Mr. Gold win Smith, " what the bear- ing of the automatic theory of human nature would be upon the hopes and 28 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. aspirations of man, or on moral philosophy generally, it might be difficult, no doubt, to say. But has any one of the distinguished advocates of th< automatic theory ever acted upon it, or allowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it, for a moment ? What can be imagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of its own automatic character, reasoning and debating about it automatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the automatic theory of itself is true ?" Tennyson alswers, in effect, the question of Goldwin Smith, and the answer is despair and suicide : " Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of pain, If every man die forever, if all his griefs are in vain, And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space, Motherless evermore of an ever- vanishing race, When the worm shall Imve writhed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead? " Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings ? O yes, For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press, When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon, And Doubt is the lord of this dung-hill and crows to the sun and the moon, Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turn'd into blood. And Hope will have broken her heart, running: after a shadew of good." And so we feel bound to protest against the doctrine that the unconscious is the measure and the source of the conscious, and that final causes are only unphilosophic dreams. Mr. Darwin himself has conceded that upon his view there is no reason why the progress of life upon the planet should be toward higher rather than toward lower forms. Upon this theory there is no explanation of the moral order and sanctions of the individual life, nor of the moral purpose that is visible in human history. Evolution itself, as involving uniform progress, implies an ordaining wisdom. Evolution, indeed, is only a mode of divine action, not in conflict with design, but a new illus- tration of it, a method of securing a result, and so the latest and best proof a designing God. When once we have settled the truth that nature is to be interpreted by our knowledge of mind, and not mind by our knowledge of nature, we have the intellectual foundation of all true religion. Mind, and not matter, pre- sents to us the truest image of God. The universe is governed not by physi- cal so much as by moral laws. Final causes precede efficient causes. There is an end which controls the choice of means. Now we are prepared to see the marks of design which meet the candid eye everywhere in the universe. Now we can see eternal wisdom in every leaf and twig, in every sand-grain, in every breeze, in every sunbeam. No longer do we look upon the system of things as a ship constructed and launched by its builder and now given over to the sailors to navigate. No longer do we feel compelled to banish the great Architect to some far-off corner of his dominions, while the vast structure of the world is left to itself, and the races of men pursue their fated course to glory or ruin. Bather than bear the terrible burden of such a godless universe, " I'd rather be A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ; So might I, standing- on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 29 But better than Paganism is the faith to which a true science leads us. It teaches us that "the universe," in the words of a French philosopher, " is a thought of God." It teaches us that the living presence of God is all around us, and that in the great events of history, as well as in the changes of the natural world, there is a wisdom that sees the end from the beginning, and orders all things with reference to that " one far-off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves. " In one of his hasty dispatches from the field of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington wrote : " The finger of Providence was upon me ! " And there are moments at least in the lives of all of us, when we turn from the iron pressure of the world's unvarying laws with a burden upon us. The gigantic mechanism of the universe cannot soothe or quiet the questionings of the intellect or the agitations of the soul. Trouble and care, the responsibilities and failures of life, make us long to feel that some great divine Heart is at the centre of the sublime system, and that infinite Wisdom and Power can sympathize with us and give us rest. Then it is pleasant to see how nature, interpreted by that which we find within ourselves, gives us assurances of a divine and fatherly care. Pro- fessor Cooke, of Cambridge, has drawn a most ingenious and convincing argument from the nature and adaptation of the chemical elements of which the physical universe is composed. Grant that the world is merely the result of development from a nebulous fire-mist, revolving and condensing and throwing off red hot satellites and suns, still the chemical constituents of that tire-mist oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and all the elementary substances existed then as now, and the evidences of design in their original adaptation to each other are as strong as the evidences of design in the com- pleted creation. God's goodness and wisdom alone can account for even this original constitution of the elements as they existed in chaos. But when we look up to the heavens above us, and see what mighty forces are required to cover a continent with its wintry mantle of snow, and to send the showers of the skies upon the just and unjust, when we look beyond our atmosphere, and consider what vast powers of gravitation must be ever active to keep our planet in its true relations to the solar system and the stellar worlds above, we feel that the presence of God must be as inseparable from the movements of the universe as the figure of Phidias on Minerva's shield, which could not be erased without spoiling the whole composi- tion. And if this be the true conception of nature, then how rational it is to go further and say that this personal Will that moves all and preserves all, is not fettered by nature, but is the master of nature. Nature is but the manifestation of God, and the laws of nature are only the fixed methods of His working. He orders and governs the universe, not for its own sake, but for the revelation of Himself. Beason, love, conscience, purity, these are the ends for which we live, they must be the ends for which God lives. And if we can accomplish our designs, by forming new combinations of natural laws and inserting among them the force of our own personal wills, how elastic and pliable must this constitution of things be in the hand of God ! Miracles are not impossible unless God is impossible, they are not improbable unless we deny his moral attributes, they are not false unless we deny his word, and put beneath our feet all the laws of human testimony. Allow only a sufficient end to be gained by their performance the authenti- 30 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. cation of that very revelation which nature makes only imperfectly and miracles become not only possible but natural. It was fit that the great bell of the universe should sound, when the Author of nature came in human guise to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. As you go out then, graduates of this college, into the great suffering world, to be ministers of mercy to the sick and dying, I would charge you to be something more than devotees of your profession, something more than men of science, I would have you also men of faith. For faith is nothing more than the acceptance of God's testimony on evidence as accessible and as valid as that on which we accept the reality of outward phenomena. Such faith is no infirmity of the soul ; on the other hand, it confers the only title to true symmetry and strength of character, as well as to the broadest and highest attainments in knowledge. Let intellect and heart go together, let physical and moral science be united, let knowledge and religion both com- bine to make character strong and success sure. What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Mere intellectual culture is only a part of the great sum of a perfect manhood. "What is she, cut from love and faith, But some wild Pallas from the brain " Of demons? fiery hot to burst All barriers in her onward race For power. Let her know her place : She is the second, not the first. " A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain ; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child ; 41 For she is earthly, of the mind, But wisdom heavenly, of the soul." MATERIALISTIC SKEPTICISM.* The unbelief of the present day is a stream with many eddies, but its general drift and direction are plain. Twenty years ago, the transcendental idealism of Hegel threatened to sweep away the faith of the world. By a natural and perfectly explicable reaction, this has given place to the mechanical philosophy of Feuerbach and Biichner. Or to put it more accurately, the change from Hegel to Biichner in Germany is but the type of a universal change in the tendency of skeptical thought. It needs no long search to discover occasions and helpers of this change. The growth of material interests in these modern days, the progress of physical research, the inventions that have opened new mines to industry and new lands to trade, have disposed the unreligious to a Sadduceeisrn which holds this world to be all, and believes in neither angel nor spirit. Not that materialism is always openly avowed. It constitutes the staple of thought in many a professed description of physical facts, and in many a literary work whose apparent aim is simply to depict life and the develop- ment of character. The philosophy of Comte and Bain and Herbert Spencer, the natural researches of Darwin and Tyndall and Huxley, the historical studies of Buckle and Taine, and the romances of Auerbach and George Eliot, alike, though in different degrees, reveal this materialistic spirit and show how widely diffused and how dangerous it is. It not only gives color to a large part of the literature of the day, but it too often tinges the thinking of medical men, and enters as an unconscious element into demands for radical reform in our methods of education. It gets possession even of philanthropists and theologians, leading the latter to make out of Providence and Redemption only one vast system of natural law, and leading the former to confound evangelization with civilization, and to deny the possibility of permanently changing, except by physical means, the innate and persistent types of character in either individuals or nations. It is this general tendency of modern literature and life which Christianity must now meet and, if possible, correct. The danger is great only so long as it is undefined. We may define the danger, by defining the system which gives rise to it. Materialism is that method of thought which would make all things, even intelligence and volition, to be mere phenomena of matter. It holds that the universe can be explained without bringing in the notion of a designing mind without bringing in the notion of any immaterial principle at all explained from the mere natural properties of * Printed in the Examiner, October 2, 1873. 31 "32 MATERIALISTIC SKEPTICISM. the atoms and forces which constitute it. Stripped of the hazy rhetoric in which it is so frequently enveloped, and reduced to a bare definition, materialism loses its novelty as well as its beauty. We descry in it the features of an error long since slain and buried. Five hundred years before Christ it was propounded by Democritus, and two centuries later all its essential principles were elaborately set forth in that Epicurean philosophy which the great apostle met and overthrew on Mars' Hill. What a history this theory of the universe has had ! Rising evermore in periods of national and social declension, it has been the product and the sign of spiritual and moral decay an ignis fatuus which springs from death, and which lures to death. No nation in its sturdy youth has ever had any other than a spiritualistic philosophy. No age given over to mater- ialism has ever shown creative genius or noble statesmanship. Epicurus marks the time of Greek corruption and debasement, when the deepening darkness was making negative preparation for the rise of Christ's new light upon the world. Condillac and Diderot, D'Alembert and D'Holbach, repeating the Epicurean philosophy in the 18th century, mark in like man- ner that time of godless passion and sensual idolatry which culminated in the French Revolution. But every prevalent and plausible falsehood has its grain of verity. Let us give materialism its rights, and allow the small truth which it contains, else we shall not understand it nor its power ; much less be able to frame a radical and conclusive answer. Materialism does right in insisting upon the substantive existence of the properties of matter and upon the persistence of natural forces. It utters a useful, though not the most successful, protest against the Idealism which would deny the objective existence of the exter- nal world, and the semi-pantheism which would make all force to be the simple volition of God. Let us acknowledge, then, once for all, the existence and the powers of matter these we cannot deny without denying our senses and intuitions alike. The universe is not a drama whose shifting scenes display only one actor God; other powers have been ordained and other agents created by him ; there are physical powers as well as mental, blind forces as well as intelligent ; and the observer of nature, as he looks upon the complicated movements and relations of elements and worlds, need never for a moment fancy them a deceptive show they are a sublime reality. But then they are not the sublimest of realities. It is the fundamental error of materialism to think them so. To the view of a true philosophy, there lies back of all these a superior energy, an originating cause, a designing intelligence, an upholding power, whose greatness and wisdom they dimly reflect, but can never fully express; in other words, the existence and working of the material elements is not an ultimate fact which furnishes its own explanation ; much less can this explain the higher forms of life which appear upon the planet; reason can never be satisfied without postulating an immaterial existence and a personal power in which these inhere, and from which they derive their being an existence and a power infinitely higher, yet analogous in nature to that which we find in our own minds and wills the existence and the power which we call God. Materialism may be refuted by considerations drawn from three different sources, the facts of matter, the facts of organization, the facts of mind. MATERIALISTIC SKEPTICISM. 33 Let us look at these in their order. First, then, matter furnishes no proper 1 Ration. The first is a question about right : What is the historical origin of the feeling of obligation ? The second has to do with law : What is the rational ground of obligation ? The third concerns itself with conscience : What is the psychological faculty which determines obligation ? And the fourth is conversant with will : What power is there to discharge obligation ? To the first of these questions Mr. Spencer replies that the feeling of obli- gation is the result of ancestral experiences of utility. Right is adaptation of constitution to conditions. Action unfitted to its surroundings has devel- oped a generic repugnance to similar action in future, and accumulated impressions of this unfitness have become transformed into an instinct so strong and persistent that it is at last independent of conscious experience, and is worthy the name of an intuition. Now we readily grant that an instinctive appetency for certain courses of action, and a blind aversion to certain others, might be plausibly accounted for in this way. We object to the theory that it fails to account for the very thing to be accounted for, namely, the feeling that the latter are reprehensible and the former obligatory. In short, right is confounded with advantage, and wrong with mere unfitness or inutility. All the languages of mankind distinguish between these two ideas and put an immeasurable gulf between them. The awkward country- man at a full-dress reception has a crushing sense of his unfitness to his surroundings, but who would call his feelings those of remorse ? I look back with satisfaction to some past right action ; do I mean when I call it right, that it was an action that brought me pleasure or advantage ? No, the moral feelings are of a wholly different sort they affirm not advantage but obligation. The peculiarity of these feelings is that they refer action, not to an external standard of utility, but to an inward standard of right. The words " I ought ! " have in them an imperativeness which is wholly 54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIOX. absent when I am calculating what self-interest may be. The old Associa- tionalism accounted for the sentiment of obligation by calling it the result of education or of human enactment. It was well replied : If the sense of right comes from education, whence did the first educator, that is, the first man, derive it ? And can it come from law, when law is founded upon obli- gation and simply expresses it ? But Mr. Spencer has discovered a more excellent way. The sense of right is but the transformed feeling of utility or fitness. If this be so, there must have been a first time when utility or fitness was seen to be right ; in other words, when useful or fit action was seen to be obligatory. Now, he who knows what snow is, and what white is, may affirm that snow is white. But the man who had no notion of snow, or of white, could never affirm the one of the other. So he who first per- ceived that the useful was obligatory must have brought this notion of the obligatory with him, instead of getting it from the utility he was scrutiniz- ing. In other words, the idea of right is not inherent in things or actions, but is brought to them by the mind. It does not come from experience, but is an intuition. And Mr. Spencer's attempt to account for the right, by calling it an outgrowth from the useful, labors under the same fatal difficulty which we saw attending his explanation of the other intuitions. In the very first recognition of right on the part of any human being we have neces- sarily involved a fact of intuition, the judging according to an inward standard that transcends all experience, the evolution of a knowledge that conies from some higher source than mere nature. So we pass to the second of the questions with regard to the moral aspects of the system. What is its view of law ? In what is this recognized obliga- tion grounded ? Mr. Spencer's answer is, by implication, already before us. An action is right, not only as it is useful, but because it is useful. The foundation of moral obligation is in utility, and this utility is to be found in happiness in the last analysis, the happiness of the individual. It is enough to say that the common judgment of mankind reverses this order, and declares an action to be useful because it is right, and not right because it is useful. To be virtuous for the sake of the happiness that is to come thereby is not to be virtuous at all. Supreme regard for our own interest is not virtue, but is selfishness, the opposite of all virtue. In truth, it is a most serious mistake to regard happiness in any sense, even the happiness of the universe including God himself, as the highest good or as the ground of duty. For this is to say that virtue is not a good in itself, but is good only for the sake of happiness, good only as a means to an end. It is to say that in eternity past, before creation began, God was holy only for the sake of the happiness that holiness would bring in other words, that holiness has no independent existence in his being, and that he might be unholy if greater happiness would come thereby. This is to merge all his moral attributes in a profound and overmastering self-love, or what is the same thing, to deny them altogether. So the theory that the general well-being is the highest end proves itself to be only a refined form of the utilitarian view God is righteous only because of what he can make by it. Let those who maintain the good of being in general to be the ground of obligation ask themselves, why they are bound to seek the general good. That ques- tion demands an answer. The only answer will be because God has so made THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. 55 us. We are created in his image, and we reach the end of our being only by conforming to his character. In short, the moral character of God, in whose image we are made, and not the good that will come from right action, is the true ground of moral obligation. How far from this view Mr. Spencer is, we have sufficiently seen. All virtue is reduced to the slippery calcula- tion of our personal interest, and unselfish action for right's sake and for God's sake is not only excluded from the category of morality, but is ren- dered logically impossible. We do not need to answer at length our third and fourth questions. We asked what upon this theory was conscience. The only reply is that con- science is simply the mind's power of comparing utilities. No intuitional element enters into it. With no hold upon God's law or God's nature to steady it, it is simply the record of shifting human opinion. There is no immutable morality for it to echo, and conscience has no power to echo it, if there were. What seem to be the impulses of a higher power, commanding obedience to the right, are only misinterpreted instincts to secure our own advantage ; what seem to be the threats of a coming judgment upon wrong doing, are but base-born and cowardly fears of ill success. A faculty that cognizes the right as distinct from the agreeable, and that affirms its ever- lasting obligatoriuess, a faculty that adds its sanction to all subordinate judgments as to right which are formed by the intellect, and invests them with its own indefeasible authority such a faculty as this cannot well be evolved out of mere pleasurable and distasteful sensations. But such a faculty conscience really is, and because it is such a faculty there is no room for it in the system of Mr. Spencer. And it is just so with will, the last sub- ject of our questioning. Free-will the executive faculty of the soul, the power of discharging obligation how can this find place in a scheme of blind material development? Nothing can come out at the end but what goes in at the beginning. Without freedom in the Creator, you can have no freedom in the creature. What seems to be freedom, therefore, is but a show. Man's will is necessitated in its action by his external circumstances and conditions. He is not a moral agent. History is a fatalistic develop- ment. In short, Ethics is only another name for Physics. Cicero is reported to have said, with regard to the first of these moral questions, that he who confounded the honestum with the utile, or the right with mere advantage, deserved to be banished from society. Since his judgment can hardly have been due to theological bigotry, it may well be commended to the consideration of all thorough-going evolutionists. We agree with Cicero in fearing the influence of such a system upon practical life. For, abstract and lofty as speculations like these may seem, like water from the clouds falling upon well-nigh impervious rock, they filter their way after a while to the lowermost strata of society. A system of monism like Mr. Spencer's, with its delusive simplicity, has an inexpressible fascination for those whose intellectual pride cannot brook the perpetual tyranny of pressing but unsolved problems. Especially is such a system attractive t that great multitude of men whose inmost moral feeling is one of dislike to the idea of a God who imposes moral law, and who will execute penalty upon those who are unlike him in moral character. And besides these will be numbers who are carried away unawares by the popular current of opinion, 56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION". and who accept this philosophy simply because they know no other. To all these, the breadth of its generalizations, the novelty of its solutions of per- plexing questions, and the wealth of scientific knowledge displayed in its illustrations, will make it seem a new gospel of science for mankind. I believe that this system will be destructive to morality, because history has abundantly shown that life follows doctrine. The denial of God's moral being and governorship takes away the practical authority of conscience. When the solemn voice of duty is hushed, and right is regarded as only an imposing name for utility or pleasure, there is no longer any question whither men's passions and ambitions will lead them. The descent to the pit of rapacity and sensuality is sure, and none the less for the philosophical composure with which the descent began. The philosopher himself may not reach the depths to which his followers are plunged. Early influences of habit and culture, and above all the Christian principles that by a sort of endosmosis have been unconsciously imbibed from the surrounding atmos- phere, still keep the thinker outwardly pure and inwardly satisfied. But the very basis of morality is gone from the system, and they whose educa- tion is conducted under its influence, and whose principles of living are derived wholly from it, will have no care for truth or love or duty for truth's or love's or duty's sake, and will learn to be false without self-re- proach, and to be vicious without fear. Crime is but a name for the ill-repute of crime ; make immorality reputable and it ceases at once to be ; the new Paul and Virginia, on their island, find that with their advanced ideas of obligation as grounded in the greatest happiness, they can do just what they please. I do not wonder that certain of the representatives of this school are already discussing, with some anxiety, in their Symposia, the question whether belief in a God is not after all necessary to morals. The signs of the times might teach them. Art has begun to feel the poisonous breath of the new philosophy, and the heroic and religious in both painting and sculpture have sensibly withered under it. Pictures for the boudoir have taken the place of pictures for the altar, and a broad immodesty or a piquancy of evil suggestion largely supplants the pure simplicity and lofty purpose of an earlier day. And literature how vast the change since the transcen- dental and ideal poetry of Wordsworth gave way to the pagan sensuousness of Algernon Swinburne. All these things are signs of moral decadence under the influence of the general philosophical spirit of our day a spirit of which Mr. Spencer's system is the most conspicuous and typical example. Let us remember that Epicurus and Lucretius were genial philosophers, but the results of their fatalism in practice are seen in the shamelessness of the Pompeian frescoes, and in the atrocities of the Eoman gladiatorial shows under the empire. Thus, with the loss of a God who can be known and obeyed, we lose every true interest of man. To oppose a philosophy which results in so great disaster is therefore the duty of every lover of his kind. It is a congeries of fallacies and of assumptions, but the most vital point at which it may be attacked is its denial of the divine creatorship. There is the first root-falsehood of the scheme ; for, without creatorship, God cannot be sovereign over the universe, but must ever fill the subordinate place of a fashioner of intractable material made ready to his hand ; indeed, without creatorship, God cannot be personal now that the universe exists, for a God THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. 57 necessarily bound to a self -existent universe is no longer self -determining or free. The Christian philosopher or theologian who grants the eternity of matter plays unconsciously into the hands of the enemy. The very book-revelation that is so denounced and contemned bears on its forefront the one and only solution to the problem of the universe : "In the begin- ning God created the heaven and the earth." The Sabbath, the weekly memorial of creation, revenges itself on its violators, by proclaiming with all its multitudinous bells the personality of God, manifested not only in the first creation of the universe, but in the new creation of humanity at the resurrection of Christ. And with the Bible and the Sabbath every heart that has been brought into living, loving relation to the heavenly Father, gives in its testimony, not only that God is, and that he can be known, but that this is eternal life that we might know him. To this crowd of witnesses let us join ourselves. For I am persuaded that in this day, when the popular currents of the scientific world are running toward a theory of atheistic evo- lution which would sweep away the very foundations of knowledge, break down the principles of morality, degrade man to the level of the brute, and hurl almighty wisdom and love and justice from its throne, we can have set before us no nobler task than that of leading the van of a return movement to the old faith in man, the truth, and God. V. MODERN IDEALISM: The method of thought which I purpose to consider regards ideas as the only objects of knowledge and denies the independent existence of the ex- ternal world. It is the development of a principle found as far back as Locke. Locke derived all our knowledge from sensation. If any object to this account of Locke's system, and insist that he recognized reflection also as a source of knowledge, we reply that this reflection is with Locke only the mind's putting together of ideas derived from the senses or from its own operations about them.f The mind brings no knowledge with it, has no original power ; it is merely the passive recipient and manipulator of ideas received from sensation, finding in its own operations no new material, but only the reflection of what originally came from sense. I do not mean that Locke is always consistent with himself ; this he could not be, for, with all his effort to derive knowledge from the senses, there were objects, such as substance and cause, right and God, which persistently refused to be explained in this way. To Locke's statement "There is nothing in the intellect which was not beforehand in the sense," Leibnitz well replied : "Nothing but the intellect itself." But this reply recognized original powers of the mind, and the mind's cognition, upon occasion of sensation, of realities not perceived by sensation or derived from sensation. Locke's denial of such original powers and cognitions opened the way to the exclu- sive sensationalism of the French Condillac and Baron d'Holbach. So his system led to utilitarianism in morals and to skepticism in religion ; for how could the ideas of right or of God be derived from sense ? and, if they did not come from sense, what right had they on this theory to exist at all ? Bishop Berkeley, alarmed at what he thought the necessarily materialistic implications of Locke's philosophy, attempted to save the idea of spirit by giving up the idea of matter ; or, to speak more accurately, by maintaining that we have no evidence that matter exists except in idea. The sensations which lead us to infer the existence of an outer world are themselves the direct objects of our knowledge why postulate external matter as causing them ? They may be caused directly by God, whose omnipresent intelli- gence and power are capable of producing uniform and consistent impres- sions in or upon the minds of his creatures. This thought, existence, or ideal existence, Berkeley would say, is the only existence of the outer world worth contending for. An existence like this being assumed, materialism is vanquished, for the cause of ideas is to be found not in matter but in spirit, not in a self -existent nature but in a living God. No one who has * Printed in the Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1888. t Essay, book ii. chap. xii. MODERN IDEALISM. 59 read Berkeley's "Principles of Human Knowledge" can fail to admire the spirit and aim of its author. That his theory can be held side by side with the profoundest belief in special divine revelation is plain, not only from the fact that Berkeley so held it, regarding his view as a bulwark of reli- gious faith, but from the fact that it was also the philosophy of Jonathan Edwards. Hume, however, regarded Berkeley's application of the principle as only a partial one. Berkeley had said that externally we can be sure only of sensations cannot, therefore, be sure that a world independent of our sensations exists at all. Hume carried the principle further, and held that internally also we cannot be sure of anything but phenomena. We do not know mental substance within, any more than we know material substance without. John Stuart Mill only follows Hume, when he makes sensations the only objects of knowledge ; defines matter as "a permanent possibility of sensation," and mind as "a series of feelings aware of itself." Thomas Huxley follows Hume, when he calls matter " only a name for the unknown cause of states of consciousness." Spencer, Bain and Tyndall are also Humists. All these regard the material atom as a mere centre of force the hypothetical cause of sensations. In their view, matter is a manifesta- tion of force ; while, to the old materialism, force is a property of mat- ter. Unlike these later thinkers, Berkeley held most strenuously to the existence of spirit for of spirit he thought we had direct knowledge in ourselves. The supposition of an unperceivable material substance was inconsistent with common sense ; but the recognition of a personal and self- determining ego was a part of our common sense.* Yet Berkeley in certain passages verges towards Hurnism, as, for example, where he says: "The very existence of ideas constitutes the soul. Mind is a congeries of percep- tions. Take away perceptions, and you take away mind. Put the percep- tions, and you put the mind."t All we can say of Hume, therefore, is that he logically and consistently developed a principle which in germ, at least, is found in Berkeley himself. And the agnostic and materialistic idealism of the present day is lineally descended from Locke, through Berkeley. It defines matter and mind alike in terms of sensation, and regards both as opposite sides or manifestations of one underlying and unknowable force. So, as Sydney Smith says, "Bishop Berkeley destroyed the world in one volume octavo, and nothing remained after his time but mind, which expe- rienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737." It is easy to see how mischievous must be the effect of such a system as this. If matter be only a permanent possibility of sensations, then the body through which we experience sensations is itself nothing but a possi- bility of sensations. If the human spirit be only a series of sensations, then the divine spirit also can be nothing more than a series of sensations. There is no body to have the sensations ; and no spirit, either human or divine, to produce them. Kant, in Germany, revolted from these skeptical conclusions, and sought to reclaim philosophy by an examination of the sources of human knowledge. He went back to Locke, and showed that * Mansel, Letters, Lectures and Reviews, p. 382. f- Works, vol. iv., p. 438 quoted in Frazer's Berkeley, p. 72. 60 MODERN IDEALISM. all sense-perception involves elements not derived from sense, elements rather which are presupposed by sense. "Synthetic conceptions or judg- ments a priori " space, time, cause, for example are the conditions of all our intellectual operations. We cannot cognize the outer or the inner world, without finding these conceptions woven into the fabric of our knowledge. So far Kant did good service to science. He vindicated the intuitions, and showed that without them no knowledge is possible. But he erred in not going far enough. He claimed for these intuitions only a subjective existence and validity they are necessities of our thinking, but they cannot be shown to have objective existence or validity. They are regulative principles merely whether space, time, cause, substance, God, exist outside of us, mere reason cannot determine. But we reply that when our primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative they will cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature. The mind does not, like the glass of the kaleidoscope,* itself furnish the forms ; it recognizes these as having an existence external to itself. Kant failed to see that, in cognizing the qualities of objects, the mind equally cognizes a substance to which the qualities belong ; failed to see that the testimony of the reason to the existence of noumena is just as valid as the testimony of sense to the existence of phenomena. Substance is knowable to God and also to man ; and, in and with our knowing phenomena, substance is actually and equally known. Just this failure of Kant led Fichte to reduce all knowledge to the knowl- edge of self ; for, if our own ideas are the sole objects of knowledge, it is only by making the outer world a part of ourselves that we can rescue it from the category of the unknown. Schelling could find no medium between self and the world, or between self and God ; hence he assumed a direct intuition of both ; it was an intuition, however, which merged the ego in the Absolute, as Fichte had merged the Absolute in the ego ; there is identity between them. But if identity, how can the One ever become the many ? Here we have the impulse to the system of Hegel, in which subjective idealism becomes complete. Hegel explains the development of the One into the many by saying simply that the laws of thought require this development, and that thought and being are one. So, without giving any explanation of the origin of these laws, life becomes logic, and logic becomes life. The Rational is the Real. All things are but forms of thought, and not only man and the world, but God himself, are made intelligible. If it were not for the fact of sin, and for personal wills that war against the rational and involve themselves in death, the scheme of Hegel would be very attractive. We need only set against it the lines of Wordsworth, which Frazer quotes : t " Look up to heaven ! the industrious sun Already half his race hath run ; He cannot halt nor go astray, But our immortal spirits may." Thus Hegel revives, and carries to its extremest conclusions, the idealis- tic principle whose development it was Kant's purpose to check. As Berke- * Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884, p. 13. t Frazer's Berkeley, p. 205. MODERN IDEALISM. 61 ley had declared that things are only thoughts, Hegel declared that think- ing thinks. So there can be thinking without a thinker, thoughts that are not thought. It seems to us that in his system there are two fundamental errors, first, that of assuming a concept without any mind to form it ; and, secondly, that of assuming that a concept can work itself out into reality without any will to execute it. Thoughts take the place of things, both as to cause and effect all resting on the prior assumption that identity is causality, i. e. , that the constituent elements of a thought are necessarily the cause of the thing which the thought represents. Yet the system of Hegel has had a strong influence upon later philosophy. Its monistic basis gratifies the speculative intellect. Its easy reduction of the facts of the uni- verse to logical order satisfies the aspiring spirit of man. We may even grant that its omniscient idealism has been a valuable counter- weight to the agnostic materialism of our day. Together with the evolutionary hypothe- sis of the origin of the world, it has found able advocates in Caird, Green and Seth, in Great Britain, and in Harris, Bowne and Royce in America. Unfortunately it requires of its consistent defenders, though fortunately its defenders are generally not consistent, a rejection of the facts of history and of our moral nature. Sin is a necessity of finiteness and progress. Even Jesus, as he was a man, must be a sinner. The sense of remorse and the belief in freedom are alike illusions. It can hold no view of God which regards him as a veritable moral personality, or as the author of a supernat- ural revelation. Conscience with its testimony to the voluntariness and the diinmableness of sin, as it is the eternal witness against Pantheism, is also the eternal witness against the Idealism of Hegel. We may believe that the utter inability of Hegelianism to explain or even to recognize the eth- ical problems of the universe is the chief reason for the recent cry, ' 'Back to Kant ! " by which the younger thinkers are summoned to return to the feet of a master who at least recognized a moral law and a God who vindi- cates it. As it is these younger thinkers whose position is matter of most present interest, I desire to retrace my steps for a moment, and to go back to Eng- land and to those who came after Hume. As Kant in Germany thought to set up a barrier to Hume's skepticism by pointing out the a priori elements in all knowledge, so Reid in England maintained against Hume the prin- ciples of the Philosophy of Common Sense. Reid, though with some inac- curacies of statement, held to the doctrine of Natural Realism, reducing perception to an act of immediate and intuitive cognition. The notion of representative ideas as the object of perception was excluded. The mind comes directly in contact with external things. How it knows them we do not know, but we know as little how it can perceive itself. The knowledge of the external world is not made explicable, it is rather made inexplicable, by assuming that the direct object of perception is a representative idea, which we have no means of comparing with the object which it represents. Reid did not distinguish between original and acquired perceptions, and he sometimes made sensation the occasion of suggesting, rather than the con- dition of perceiving, extended externality ; yet his services to Natural Real- ism were great, and philosophy will never cease to be his debtor. Sir William Hamilton sought to remedy the defects of Reid, and to re- 62 MODERN" IDEALISM. duce the doctrine of common sense to a consistent system. He showed the absurdity of the scheme of representative perception, which declares the external world to be real, while yet it makes ideas to be the only objects of which we are conscious. Either we must " abolish any immediate, ideal, subjective object, representing ; or we must abolish any mediate, real, objective object, represented. " * And yet even Hamilton was not self -con- sistent. Our knowledge of an external object is made up, he says of three factors, of which, if the total be represented by the number twelve, the ob- ject may be said to furnish six, the body three, and the mind three. Here an ideal element is admitted which may so vitiate the result as to render it impossible to say that we correctly apprehend the object at all. The sec- ondary qualities of matter, such as color, sound and smell, he grants to be "not objects of perception at all, being only the unknown causes of sub- jective affections in the percipient, and therefore incapable of being imme- diately perceived. " t Even the primary qualities of matter in external objects we do not apprehend directly, but only through "the consciousness that our locomotive energy is resisted, and not resisted by aught in the or- ganism itself. For in the consciousness of being thus resisted is involved, as a correlative, the consciousness of a resisting something. " Porter also remarks that Hamilton does not explain how, in the necessity of finding for this effect an extra-organic cause, this " correlative, " "resisting something '' must be shown to be also extended. ' ' The agent, the ego, as percipient and actor, is not extended ; why may not the extra-organic agent and non- ego be non-extended, or why must it be extended ? " \ If we add now to this statement of Hamilton's doctrine the fact that in his view "sensation proper has no object but a subject-object, " in other words, an affection of the animated organism, we shall see that his Natural Realism limits itself to a knowledge of primary qualities in our own organ- ism. If we go further and consider his concessions to Idealism, we shall be able to narrow down the controversy still more. In that remarkable table of systematic schemes of external perception which he has appended to his edition of the Works of Reid, he has defined Idealists as those who view the object of consciousness in perception as ideal, that is, as a phenomenon in or of mind. As denying that this ideal object has any external proto- type, they may be styled Absolute Idealists. The chief merit of Hamil- ton's classification, however, is to be found in his subdivision of Absolute Idealists into two subordinate classes, according as the Idea is, or is not, considered a modification of the percipient mind. We have then the two schemes of Egoistical and Non-egoistical Idealism. The former is, in gen- eral, the scheme of the German thinkers ; the latter the scheme of the Eng- lish thinkers, notably of Berkeley. Of the former we have already said all that is needful ; with regard to the latter we wish to point out a fact that is not so generally understood, namely, that this form of Idealism regards the Idea not as a mode of the human mind. While it is not a mode of the mind, it may yet be in the mind infused into it by God ; or it may not * Dissertations on Reid, note C, pp. 816, 817. t Porter, Human Intellect, p. 237. $ Porter, Human Intellect, pp. 184, 185. Note C, p. 817. MODERN IDEALISM. 63 be in the perceiving mind itself, but in the divine Intelligence, to which the perceiving mind is intimately present, and in which the perceiving mind views it. Lotze, of all the Germans, seems to hold to this latter form of Idealism. The world to him is a series of phenomena, without value in itself, and having value only as its meaning is valuable ; and the mind of man is "like a spectator who comprehends the aesthetic significance of that which takes place on the stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing essen- tial if he were to see, besides, the machinery by means of which the changes are effected on the stage. " * Bishop Berkeley in his earlier writings seemed to regard all knowledge as conversant with the affections of the percipient mind. He hardly dis- tinguished between the idea as an object and the idea as an act. The first statements seem, therefore, to be statements of subjective idealism. ' ' Sense- percepts differ from the ideas of the imagination only in degree, not in kind ; and both belong to the individual mind. " t But in later years Berkeley saw what some of his followers have not seen, namely, that things are not mere possible sensations these would afford no explanation of the permanent existence of real objects. He came, therefore, to regard exter- nal things as caused in a regular order by the divine will, and indepen- dently of our individual experience. When we look at external things, we look at ideal existences in the divine mind archetypes of which sense- experience may be said to be the recognition and realization in our intelli- gence. So Berkeley's later statements are statements of objective, as dis- tinguished from subjective, idealism. The world without has the best guar- antee for its reality and permanence in that it is the constant expression of an omnipresent and eternal Mind. The non-ego, in fact, is God, mani- festing his intelligence and his will. As we live, move and have our being in God physically, so we live, move and have our being in God mentally. Even self-consciousness has its basis in God's ideas of us ; and memory i only the reading of our past, in God's record-book. The existence of the inner as well as the outer world in God, while it is an ideal existence, is yet the most secure and permanent that can possibly be conceived. Here then we have an objective Idealism which is free from some of the objections to which the common German Idealism is exposed. It is inter- esting to note how gently Sir William Hamilton treated it. In a foot-note to the last-mentioned of his Dissertations he says : "The general approximation of thorough-going Eealism and thorough- going Idealism here given may, at first sight, be startling. On reflection, however, their radical affinity will prove well-grounded. Both build upon the same fundamental fact that the extended object immediately per- ceived is identical with the extended object actually existing ; for the truth of this fact, both can appeal to the common sense of mankind ; and to the common sense of mankind Berkeley did appeal, not less confidently, and perhaps more logically, than Eeid. Natural Bealism and Absolute Idealism are the only systems worthy of a philosopher ; for, as they alone have any foundation in consciousness, so they alone have any consistency in themselves. " * Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics (Ladd), p. 152. t Adamson on Berkeley, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 64 MODERN IDEALISM. And in his reply to the Berkeleian, T. Collyns Simon, Hamilton expressly says : * "If Berkeley held that the Deity caused one permanent material universe (be it supposed apart or not apart from his own essence), which universe, on coming into relation with our minds through the medium of our bodily organ- ism, is in certain of its correlative sides or phases, so to speak, external to our organism, objectively or really perceived (the primary qualities), or deter- mines in us certain subjective affections of which we are conscious (the sec- ondary qualities) ; in that case I must acknowledge Berkeley's theory to be virtually one of natural realism, the differences being only verbal. But again, if Berkeley held that the Deity caused no permanent material uni- verse to exist and to act uniformly as one, but does himself either infuse into our several minds the phenomena (ideas) perceived and affective, or determines our several minds to elicit within consciousness such appre- hended qualities or felt affections, in that case I can recognize in Berkeley's theory only a scheme of theistic idealism, in fact, only a scheme of per- petual and universal miracle, against which the law of parcimony is conclu- sive, if the divine interposition be not proved necessary to render possible the facts. " Hamilton here seems to grant that Absolute Idealism, if it be non-egois- tical, and if it regard the ideal object as not in the mind itself, is virtually the same with Natural Realism. Whether this was the philosophy of Berkeley may be matter of question ; but it is at any rate along this line ' that our younger thinkers in philosophy are working. A world of ideas, indistinguishable by us from external realities, constituting in fact the only external realities, is open to our minds by virtue of our living, moving, and having our being, in God. In our investigations of nature as well as in our examination of our own consciousness, we are only, as Kepler said, " think- ing of God's thoughts after him, " or rather perceiving the ideal realities of God's being. Such a conception is not necessarily merely logical, like Hegel's : God may be heart, as well as mind ; may be conscience and will, as well as intellect. But creation, on this view, is an ideal process ; the world, before finite intelligences existed, had only an ideal existence in God's mind, even as it now exists only in the minds of God and of his creatures. There is a reason for this increasing prevalence of Idealism. Science has resolved the sensible universe into various modes of motion. Smell, sound, color, equally with pleasure and pain, are subjective sensations. The causes of them are not like in nature to the effects they are only vibrations of some external medium, " What sees is Mind, what hears is Mind ; The ear and eye are deaf and blind. " What is true of the so-called secondary qualities of matter is equally true of the primary. Even extension and impenetrability can be conceived of only in relation to some sentient being which experiences resistance to its locomotive energy or which resists some locomotive energy from without. In fine, "matter can be defined only in terms of sensation; yet without Veitch, Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, p. 346, MODERN IDEALISM. 65 miud sensation is impossible." Hence the idealist concludes that all that we know of matter is ideal. Certain sensations in ourselves comprise the whole of our knowledge. The causes of these sensations are unknown. Vibrations, motions, molecules, atoms, aye, even force itself, are but names for the unknown causes of our subjective states. Here is the refutation of materialism ; for matter can have no meaning except in connection with percipient mind. Materialism can never explain the nature of atoms ; they can be conceived of neither as indivisible nor as infinitely divisible. Even the materialistic conception of law involves the idea of mind as ordering the arrangements of the universe. The cause of our sensations does not need to be material it may be spiritual instead. What we call the world out- side of us may be the constant product of a divine activity working upon our own minds ; better still, it may be a constant ideal divine presentation to our minds. There are many considerations once urged against Idealism which we must pronounce invalid against this new form of idealistic doctrine. It has been said that ideas, as given, presuppose an objective reality as cause. The new idealism accepts the dictum, but declares the world of ideas, as neither in the mind nor a modification of the mind, to be just such an ob- jective reality. In other words, objective idealism declines any longer to be treated as subjective idealism ; it regards ideas as something distinct from the cognition of them ; it may even hold that these ideas are them- selves extended, and that they have all the qualities which we now attribute to the material and external object. May not God suggest ideas to me, which are not in me nor of me ? Do we not, by words, suggest such ideas to one another ? It may seem strange to hear of ideas which are not of the mind ; but the idealist would regard such ideas as actually constituting the objective reality which we perceive. Of such a sort he would regard even the extended matter which we see. It is an ideal object, existing only for intelligence, and as inseparable from intelligence as the pleasure or pain we feel in viewing it. The apple, for example, exists for mind and only for mind ; yet it has an objective existence to the mind, and is not a mere mode of the mind. The best illustration of the theory, however, is derived from the mind's relation to abstract truth. This truth exists by virtue of the minds that perceive it ; yet it is neither in nor of the human mind alone. While it is objective to man, it is subjective to God. So, it may be argued, does the universe exist. God's ideas constitute its reality, its permanence, its stability. It is as little the product of the finite individual mind, as is the law of gravitation, or the existence of space, or the truth that right is obligatory. And yet it exists only in intelligence, and for intelligence ; for, whether man is or is not, all things subsist eternally in God. Here is the theory which claims, equally with natural realism, that objects are perceived directly. The objection has frequently been made to the theory of representative perception, that either in spite of the idea objects remain unknown, or by means of it they become known, in which case there must be a comparison of ideas with their objects a comparison which can have no meaning or value except upon the hypothesis that the objects are known already. But the theory we are considering is a theory of presenta- tive, and not of representative, idealism. In this theory the ideas are them- 5 66 MODERN IDEALISM. selves the objects, and the only objects ; as such they are perceived directly, and there can be no talk about comparing them with any reality beyond . Over against this simplest form of Idealism we desire to put the simplest form of Natural Realism, in order that we may compare the merits of the two. This simplest form of Natural Realism holds only that we know some- thing in space and time, something distinguishable from God as well as from ourselves, something which has permanent power to produce sensa- tions in us, something which continues to exist whether we perceive it or not. In short, Natural Realism holds to the existence of a somewhat inter- mediate between God and the soul, even though this somewhat be nothing more than force. God and the soul are not the only entities. The world exists not only ideally but also substantially, and this substantial world ex- ists in the form of extended externality. The first consideration which suggests itself in comparing these two op- posing views is that Objective Idealism rests upon the exceedingly precari- ous assumption that the mind is capable of knowing only Ideas, while Natural Realism has in its favor the universal belief of mankind that we know thing.? as well. Certainly the presumption is that the universal belief of mankind is a correct one ; and this belief is not to be surrendered until it be shown self -contradictory. To say that things are ideas, is to common sense a yet greater absurdity. Men in general make a perfectly clear dis- tinction between thoughts and external objects, and they cannot be per- suaded to confound the one with the other. They may be persuaded to ac- cept a thousand vagaries with regard to the ultimate constitution of matter ; they may believe in ultimate atoms and vortex-rings ; even the fourth dimension of space may come to seem credible to them ; but to dissolve the external world into a dream, even though that dream be a permanent one and the very image of reality, is beyond the utmost stretch of their cre- dulity. Idealism is inconsistent with itself. It is compelled to admit that in know- ing ideas the mind knows self. We cannot know ideas except by projecting them as it were from the mind. * Thus we cannot know the non-ego, even in the shape of ideas, without also knowing the ego that has the idc;is. Self -consciousness then is a witness to the existence of a permanent some- what underneath all ideas, and which all ideas presuppose. But this per- manent somewhat which manifests itself in mental phenomena and is the subject of them, which in fact is known in and by the same concrete act in which we know our ideas, cannot possibly be conceived in any other way than as an indivisible, identical entity. It cannot itself be an idea, or a combination of ideas, for the very first idea presupposes it. It cannot be a mere succession of feelings, for the mind never knows itself as a succession of feelings if it could do so, it would know itself as that which was not I. It cannot be simply a relation, for relation is inconceivable unless there ar<> things or ideas to be related, and these things or ideas must go before the relation, whereas self is known not as the product of ideas but as producing ideas. So idealism is forced to grant the existence of something before ideas, and more than ideas, namely, the self. But this permanent some- * J. Clark Murray, Hand-book of Psychology, p. 279. MODERN IDEALISM. 6? what which we call self is just such an entity as we designate by substance ; and the concession of the existence of mental substance logically carries with it the concession that material substance may exist also. Idealism of the objective sort tries in vain to maintain the purely ideal character of the external world, and at the same time to declare that the object perceived is different from the act of perception. But if the object perceived be different from the act of perception in other words, if objective idealism be not resolved into subjective idealism, if non-egotistic idealism be not resolved into egotistic idealism then the existence of the object cannot be dependent upon the percipient act, its esse cannot be per- cipi. Its intellectual existence, if we may so speak, is contingent upon the existence of a perceiving intellect. But this is only to say that it cannot be known without knowledge, cannot be apprehended without mind, cannot fulfil its purpose without being perceived, either by God or man. The error of the theory is in confounding intellectual existence, or the existence of the object as known, with its real existence. As Professor Knight has said : " That the object perceived has a relation of intellectual dependence on the percip- ient subject is obvious, so far as his cognition extends ; but if the object perceived be different from the act of perception, it cannot be in any sense dependent on it, or oil a similar act, for its existence." And so we agree with Veitch, when he says that Hamilton granted too much to Berkeley, in saying that a non-egotistical idealism is hardly distinguishable from natural realism.* Idealism gives no proper account of the distinction between the non-ego in the shape of ideas and the non-ego in the shape of our bodily organism ; in other words, it ignores the difference between body and the idea of body. Nothing can be plainer to the common mind than that it knows something outside of itself and different from itself, something extended, something in space, something which causes ideas but which is not itself ideas. The mind not only distinguishes itself from the body it inhabits, but it distinguishes its ideas of body from the body of which it forms ideas. It ascribes to the body externality and extension. These properties cannot be conceived as belonging to ideas. The idea of body and the actual body are no less distinct than are the idea of a house and the actual house. Body is apprehended as something permanent and independent of our perception of it ; but, more than this, it is apprehended as existing over against the percipient mind, as capable of measurement by the mind, as having spatial relations in a way that the mind has not. This belief in the existence of a real in distinction from a merely ideal body, a body that is extended and external to the mind, is the most primary and important fact of sense- perception. Idealism, by failing to explain this belief, fails at the most critical point of all. It attempts to confound outness with distance, whereas distance is only a peculiar degree of outness, and itself presupposes outness. And, as Veitch has well shown, the externality of the object of sense is no more unintelligible than is the externality of one mind to another mind, or to God.t Here we are persuaded that Natural Kealism has a stronghold from which no speculative Idealism can ever dislodge it. Reduce the * Veitch's Hamilton, p. 178. t Veitch's Hamilton, pp. 186-188. 68 MODEKN IDEALISM. problem to its simplest terms if you will put on the one side an objective idealism of divine ideas independent of our causation and perceived as something permanent and separate from our perceiving minds put on the other side a natural realism, holding that we perceive an actually extended object in space, at least in our own organism, whose existence, as real, we distinguish from any possible ideal existence and we must decide that the latter represents the facts of our experience, while the former contradicts them. Idealism finds in self the ground of unity for mental phenomena. It should find in material substance the ground of unity for material phenom- ena. Not that this knowledge of mental or material substance, as the case may be, is reached in either case by any process of inference or argument. It is the inevitable and universal judgment of the reason, in connection with self-consciousness, on the one hand, and of sense-perception on the other. When we recognize thoughts, we recognize the self as thinking ; when we perceive qualities of matter, we perceive that they belong to some- thing which they qualify. The qualities and the substance qualified are known in the same concrete act ; though we ascribe to sense the cognition of quality, to reason the cognition of substance. Without this cognition of substance the impressions of sense could have no unity and could give us no knowledge of things. Sensation brings us in contact only with points. These points would be heterogeneous and disconnected if they were not recognized by some power as related to each other. Our knowledge of an object is not a knowledge of these points, but rather of a whole which these points manifest ; these points can be related to each other, and fused into a whole, only by the recognition of a somewhat to which they belong and of which they are phenomena. The soul's judgment that there is a material substance, in which material qualities inhere and which gives these quali- ties their ground of unity, is just as inevitable an act of reason as that other judgment which accompanies the thoughts within and finds for them a ground of unity in the cognition of a mental substance which we call the conscious self. Idealism confounds the conditions of external knowledge with the objects of knowledge. What is the object of knowledge in sense-perception ? This theory replies: "The object of sense-perception is sensations or ideas;" and it propounds the dilemma: "Either the object is unknown tmd the mind knows only ideas, or ideas are known and there is no need of assuming the existence of any other object whatever. " But the same rule should work equally well, or ill, when applied to the world within. We should then be compelled to say : ' ' Either the ego is unknown and the mind knows only ideas, or the ideas are known and there is no need of assuming the existence of any ego at all." The majority of idealists will not say this. Berkeley would have denied it, for he strenuously held to the existence of spirit and to our consciousness of its existence. But it was by an inconsistency in his logic that he so held, and Hume remorselessly exposed this inconsistency. In self-consciousness we have the key to the problem. Mysterious as it might speculatively seem that mind should know self in knowing its own thoughts, it is still a fact that mind does thus know self ; and to say that the thoughts are the only objects of knowledge MODERN IDEALISM. 69 is to confound objects of knowledge with conditions of knowledge. So, in the external world, we cannot know matter except through sensations and ideas; but to make sensations and ideas the only objects of knowledge is here also to confound objects of knowledge with conditions of knowledge. In sense-perception, my ideas and sensations are mere conditions of knowl- edge. In and through them I cognize that which is beyond, that which produces in me the ideas and sensations, namely, external objects, at least in my own organism objects which by analysis I see to include both sub- stance and quality. I see the moon in like manner through the telescope ; the telescope is the means or condition of my seeing the moon. I may, it is true, turn my attention exclusively to the telescope and make that the object of my thought ; yet he would talk very absurdly who should say that either the moon is unknown and I know only the telescope, or the telescope is known and there is no need of assuming the existence of any moon beyond it. The truth is that I cognize the moon through the telescope ; if I choose I can think of both telescope and moon together; but the absurdest of all things is to say that, in looking through the telescope, I see the telescope only and not the moon. So Idealism confounds the condi- tions of knowledge with the objects of knowledge. That through ideas and sensations we have knowledge of things, is one of the most indubitable facts of consciousness. The Idealist cannot be consistent without denying the existence of any other intelligent being besides himself. He claims that the mind can know only ideas. What we call the external world is only a succession or combi- nation of ideas, and hence no material substance can be known. But what we call our fellow-beings are not they also only successions or combina- tions of ideas in wlu\ch by the same rule no mental substance can be known ? Self-consciousness compels the Idealist to recognize a self which is the permanent basis and habitat of his own ideas ; but why should he recognize the existence of other people ? If material things are nothing but ideas, then our fellow-men are nothing but ideas. If my neighbor's body exists only in idea, then his soul must also exist only in idea. The mere fact that the highway robber, when he attacks me, seems to be a conscious personality, must not blind me to the fact that he, like the club which he carries, is but a series or combination of ideas. I shall be a very inconsistent Idealist if I regard that series of ideas as responsible or guilty ; for responsibility and guilt imply something more than a series or combina- tion of ideas they imply a subject, a mind, a permanent self, endowed with conscience and free will. In short, we must become solipsists, believ- ers only in our own existence. But we cannot stop even here. The solip- sist cannot long believe even in the existence of himself, if by "himself he means a permanent, identical, substantial soul. And as a matter of fact the new Psychology in Germany the psychology of Wundt and Fechner, describes itself as "psychology without a soul." The new Idealism seeks to avoid the solipsistic conclusion by taking refuge in the consciousness of God, and by making that the guarantee for the objective existence of our fellow-men. It is a vain resource. The same rule which deprives us of all guarantee for the existence of our fellow-men deprives us also of all guarantee for the existence of God. If we know only 70 MODERN IDEALISM. ideas in the case of our fellow-men, we can know only ideas in the case of God. And if God is only a series or combination of ideas, what possible meaning is there in the phrase "consciousness of God," the utterance of which seems such a relief to the Idealist ? A consciousness, with no being to be conscious ; consciousness without a self ; universal thinking without a thinker ah, it is our old Hegelian acquaintance: "thinking thinks!" Notice how completely this philosophy merges the affectional and the volitional elements of the divine Being in the merely intellectual, and then transmutes even that into the vague phrase "universal consciousness." It is the God without personality or moral character, without love or will, which the purely speculative intellect ever seeks to substitute for the living God, the God of holiness who denounces and punishes sin, the God of love who redeems from sin by his own atoning sacrifice. Did I say that this theory gave us a non-moral God a stone in place of bread? It does not even give us this a consistent idealism can give us no God at all, it can give us only the idea of him. If we know only ideas, we can have no more guarantee that God or man objectively exists than we can have for the objective existence of matter. Idealism is monistic in its whole conception of the universe. It claims to be a "one-substance" theory, although it should in consistency call itself a " no-substance " theory instead. It repudiates the doctrine of two substances, matter and mind, because it cannot understand how mind should ever in that case be able to know matter. Materialism declares that mind knows matter because mind is matter ; idealism declares that mind knows matter because matter is mind. The one is just as much an arbitrary assumption as is the other. Both are argumenta ad ignorantiam. Because we cannot explain how we know that which is other than ourselves, shall we deny that we do know things and beings other than ourselves ? It is not essential to knowledge that there be identity or even similarity of nature between the knower and the known. God can know what sin is aye, only God can fully know the nature of evil. It is just as much a prob- lem how we can know ourselves, as it is how we can know the external world. " The primitive dualism of consciousness " is just as inexplicable as the primitive dualism of substance. ' ' The mental act in which self is known implies, like every other mental act, a perceiving subject and a per- ceived object. If then the object perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives ? or, if it is the true self which thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of ? " But this very consciousness of personality, this very cognition of self of which Herbert Spencer speaks, in the words I have quoted, he declares in the next sentence to be "a fact beyond all others the most certain, " * and in spite of his subsequent attempts to explain it away, we may take his testimony as to the universal fact of its existence. But if man knows a non-ego in his own thoughts, he may know a non-ego in other beings or in the world outside of him ; and our inability to explain the mode of this knowledge should not for a moment shake our confidence in the fact. Idealism is compelled to recognize an action of the ivill upon matter, * First Principles, p. 65. MODERN IDEALISM. 71 why should it not with equal readiness recognize an action of the intellect upon matter ? If I can move something outside myself, why can I not know something outside myself ? It seems absurd to suppose that I pro- duce effects only upon an ideal world when I exert my powers of volition, why is it not equally absurd to suppose that I know only an ideal world when I exert my powers of sense-perception ? I come in contact with real things and real beings when I use my will, what right have I to say that I come in contact only with ideas when I use my mind ? And, when we rise to the consideration of God's relation to the world, what right have we to say that God's power exhausts itself in mere thinking, or that God is capa- ble of no creation but the creation of ideas ? Man can make a thing whose existence continues after his own act upon it has ceased, cannot God do the same? Man can give his thoughts objective shapes Phidias and Praxiteles put their ideas into form and make them live forever, cannot God give substantive expression to his thoughts also ? Must God be shut up to an eternal process of thinking, without the power to create substances other than himself which shall in their various degrees reflect his wisdom and his love ? Berkeley believes that God is himself a Spirit, and that he creates finite spirits of a different substance from himself. Why cannot he who has thus in finite spirits disjoined from himself a certain portion of spiritual force and given to it a relative independency, why cannot he also and just as easily in material substance disjoin from himself a certain por- tion of physical force and give to it a relative independency ? I have thus far treated Modem Idealism from a philosophical point of view, and I have endeavored to show that even from this point of view it possesses no advantages over the doctrine of Natural Realism. But we are bound to look further, and to judge the new system by its probable influ- ence upon Christian faith. Is it consistent with the things "which have been fully established among us " the accepted teachings of Scripture? I do not now ask whether noted Christian thinkers here and there have or have not held to the idealistic scheme. Here I have to do, not with the actual results, but with the logical tendencies of the system, while at the same time it may be well remembered that in the long run these logical ten- dencies make themselves practically felt. The first of these tendencies which I notice in the new philosophy is the tendency to merge all things in Ood. Dr. Krauth * very properly calls it the weakness of idealism that it finds unity not in the harmony of the things that differ, but in the absorp- tion of the one into the other. Instead of tracing all things to one source, it prefers the shorter and easier method of asserting that all things are but forms of one substance. The conception of a God who is all, seems to it preferable to that of a God who creates aU. In this, the doctrine runs directly counter to the Scripture teaching that " in the beginning God cre- ate.! the heaven and the earth, " and so removes the barrier which God him- self has set up against a pantheistic confounding of himself with his works. But further than this, idealism destroys all distinction between the possible and the actual. A possible universe, as already in God's thoughts, is already an actual universe ; and, vice versa, an actual universe, as only in * R.-rkeley's Principles of Knowledg-e, Krauth's Prolegomena, p. 130. 72 MODERN IDEALISM. God's thoughts, is nothing more than a possible universe. The whole geo- logic and astronomic history of the universe before man came upon the planet was only a thought-history, events, aside from God's thought of them, there were none. Such as they were, they always were ; and the universe is as eternal in the past as is God's thought of it, for God's thought is the universe. And since the future universe exists only in God's thought it is existent now as much as it will ever be. Preservation is only continu- ous creation ; continuous creation is nothing but God's thinking ; and God's thinking is from eternity to eternity. Second causes do not exist ; for, as things are but the ideas of God, all changes in these things are but the direct effects of a divine efficiency. All causal connections between different objects of the universe are at an end . No such things as physical forces exist. Nature becomes a mere phantom, and God is the only cause of all physical events. Science becomes at once, not the study of nature, but the study of God. I have said that Idealism destroys all distinction between the possible and the actual ; I must go further, and say that it destroys all distinction between truth and error. It holds that ideas alone are the objects of knowl- edge ; the world without and the world within are alike ideas ; these ideas constitute the world ; and the existence of these ideas is due directly to the causative intelligence of God. But if ideas are the reality, how can man have false ideas ? Is it not beyond dispute that we have ideas which do not correspond to the objective truth ? Are these realities also ? and is God the author of them ? Men have selfish, sensual, murderous thoughts ; they hate and malign God ; they slander and destroy his creatures. Are these lying ideas and representations eternal truths and realities also ? Have wr not here the proof that the divine ideas must differ from sense-ideas in us, and that our ideas are not the realities but only individual interpretations of reality, born of our wilfulness and moral perversion ? Berkeley seems at times aware that there is a difficulty in identifying our ideas with the divine archetypes ; but the fear of recognising in these divine archetypes a new sort of "things in themselves" seems to have prevented him from making further explanations. Is it not plain that no explanation is possible that identifies the idea with the object ? Does not this abolish the distinction between truth and error, and make both our right and our wrong the direct product of the divine will ? Why should not Idealism go further, and declare that God is the only cause in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of matter ? If Idealism be not logically self -contradictory, it must do this. If my body, so far as it is objective to me, may be a mere idea of God, then my soul, so far as it is objective to me, may be a mere idea of God also. All my ideas are ideas of God, and God causes them. What becomes of my personal identity? What is to prevent Jonathan Edwards, as he does, from basing identity upon the arbitrary decree of God, and from declaring that God, merely by so decreeing, makes Adam's posterity one with their first father and respon- sible for his sin ? What is to prevent the necessitarian from declaring that, since all motives are ideas, and all ideas are due to direct divine causation, the soul has no permanent existence of its own and no freedom that can furnish the slightest basis for responsibility ? What we call the moral law MODERN IDEALISM. 73 is nothing but the presentation of a sublime divine idea ; and what we call sin is nothing but the presentation of another divine idea which is given us simply to contrast with, and to emphasize, the first. Both evil and good are purely ideal. Not our wills but our thoughts are to be purged, and that by imparting to us both the good thoughts and the evil thoughts that are in the mind of God. The freedom to choose the good and to refuse the evil this does not exist ; for this would imply the existence of a substance separate from that of God. God is equally the source of evil and of good, the morally pure and the morally impure are both alike to him. What we have usually regarded as the greatest of blasphemies is only simple fact, for God is not only the author, but the sole author, of sin ; he is not only the sum and source of all good, he is also the sum and source of all evil. All this is to deny the testimony of conscience, and to strike at the roots of all morality. It is easy to see how the whole Christian doctrine of redemption goes by the board, when once sin is regarded as a natural neces- sity, and ideas are held to be the only real objects of knowledge. It is no longer necessary to believe in an external revelation of God's will. Internal revelation, Christian consciousness, the direct presentation to our minds of new ideas from God, takes the place of outward Scripture, or assumes coor- dinate importance and authority with it. It is no longer necessary to make a clear distinction between ideal characterization and real history. Jesus Christ, with his resurrection from the dead, his atoning death and ascen- sion to the Father, can now be conceived of after an ideal fashion. These things never were, as they are pictured to be ; but that makes little differ- ence, the object is attained namely, the fostering of an idea in our minds. Historical testimony becomes of little account when it contradicts a preconceived theory ; the idea is better than the fact for the fact itself is only an idea. And if it be suggested that to the man who thus turns God's facts into mere ideas, by denying the record that God gives of his Son, there will come the sure and certain punishment of his unbelief, the reply is easy, that since punishment can come only in idea, and ideas, so far as we know, end with this life, there is little to fear, for since this life is but a dream, immortality is something still less substantial even the dream of that dream. With the evidence of personal identity the evidence of personal immortality is lost also. So the Idealism of the present day tends to Solipsism which is mere self- deification on the one hand, or to Pantheism which is the abolition of all moral distinctions on the other. It is the natural recoil from Materialism, and yet it contains in itself germs of as great evil as did that foe with which the last generation so stoutly fought. It is the drift of our current philoso- phy, and the antagonist with which Christianity has to cope, and which Christianity will surely conquer, in the few decades to come. Sir William Hamilton opposed Idealism simply because he believed that it contradicted our consciousness and so destroyed the foundation of all knowledge and of all faith. And yet I know of no process of mere argument which to an idealistic sceptic will demonstrate that material substance exists. I can tell him that in his very perception of quality he intuitively cognizes substance ; but he may deny it. I can tell him that his ideas of the external world require a cause ; but he may refer me to God as their cause. I may say, 74 MODERN IDEALISM. with Aristotle, that " things are not born of concepts; " but he may reply that to him this is the most intelligible explanation of the universe. When I come to the results of his doctrines in ethics, I may have greater hope of convincing him ; but even here I can make little progress, if he has blunted his conscience and schooled himself into a belief in determinism. Prac- tically I know of no better remedy for his disease than the acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is remarkable how the submission of the will to him as a divine Teacher, Savior, and Lord, results in a renewal and recre- ation of the will, how the man who previously regarded himself as a victim of necessity, a mere waif swept upon the current, when once he has received the Savior into his heart, finds that he is now a free man, and becomes con- scious of his substantial manhood. For the first time he knows that he has a soul. And as at the ^Reformation those who had become sceptical of the existence of objective truth and righteousness, aye, even of the existence of God himself, when they once found by believing in Christ that they had God sure, proceeded to the discovery and recognition of objective realities outside of them and opened the way to the progress of modern science ; so now, in the individual heart, again and again, the reception of Christ, giving the first sense of reality within, leads the soul outward to the recog- nition of a real world and of a real morality outside of it. So Christ is the way and the truth and the life, and he whom the Son makes free becomes free indeed. * * Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, pp. 18, 19. VJ. SCIENTIFIC THEISM: It is iny aim in this paper to discuss the possibility of a scientific theism, or in other words, the nature of our belief in the existence of God, the sufficiency of the grounds upon which it rests, and the adequacy of this belief for the purposes of science. Mr. Huxley, if I mistake not, has discoursed pleasantly upon the absurd- ity of devoting any great share of our attention to lunar politics. But against selenology, or the science of lunar physics, he would probably urge no serious objections. The possibility of such a science he would admit to depend upon three things, first, the actual existence of such a body as the moon ; secondly, the fact that the human mind has powers which fit it for knowing the moon ; and thirdly, the provision of means by which the moon is brought into contact with the mind. The eye, or the telescope, or both, may bridge the gulf, and give us actual knowledge where there was only the possibility of knowledge before. A synthesis of the facts thus discovered, and the exhibition of them in their relations as parts of a system, might justly be called selenology. I use this illustration, not by any means to indicate the nature of our knowledge of God, but only to point out the natural conditions of it. As in the case just mentioned, a scientific theism is possible only upon condi- tion, first, that such a Being as God exists ; secondly, that the human mind has capacities for knowing God ; and thirdly, that God has been brought into intelligible contact with the human mind by revelation. If this revela- tion be an external one and assure us of facts which exist independently of our consciousness of them, we have in them the proper material for science ; and theology, in this department of it, does nothing more than put these facts in their appointed places, as the builders of Solomon's temple took the stones made ready to their hand and put them, without the sound of saw or hammer, into the places for which they had been designed by the architect. It is to the first of these conditions of a scientific theism, and to the first only, that I wish at present to direct attention. Does God exist ? We find ourselves compelled at the very outset to define the term we use. What do we mean by God ? By that name we designate not the abstract Absolute or Infinite of the metaphysicians, nor the necessarily developing life-principle of nature, to which the Pantheist holds, but rather the absolutely perfect Being a Being whose very perfection involves a power of self -limitation a Being who is absolute, not in the sense that he exists in no relation, but that he exists in no necessary relation ; a Being who is infinite, not in the * An essay read before " The Club, " Rochester, February 1(5, 1875. 75 70 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. sense of excluding all coexistence of the finite, but as constituting the ground and condition of the finite, so that nothing exists beside himself except by his sufferance or under his control. God is not all things, finite as well as infinite, material as well as spiritual, foolish as well as wise, unholy as well as pure. In one sense he is the most limited being in the universe, since he can never be otherwise than he is. But whatever limita- tions there are to his nature are imposed from within, never from without. That he cannot lie, or cease to be, is a part of his infinite perfection. God is the absolutely perfect Being, but more than this must go to our definition, before it answers to our conception or becomes of practical use in our inquiry. By God, we mean not only a being who may exist in relation to the universe and to us, but a being who does exist in such relation. This Being, whose perfection answers to and transcends our high- est conceptions, and to whom we are notwithstanding so closely related, we recognize in three aspects : first, as a power above us upon which we are dependent ; secondly, as an authority which imposes law upon our moral natures ; and thirdly, as a personality which we may recognize in prayer and worship. As we reflect upon the matter, we perceive that the spiritual energy of such a Being must be inexhaustible ; trying to find its bounds, we become speedily convinced that it reaches on and on forever ; immature- thought may set limits here and there, or conceive of other like powers and personalities ; but more thorough investigation into the contents of our own conception assures us that this Being, whom we name God, is both infinite and one. The belief that such a Being as this exists, a Being upon whom we are dependent, to whom we are morally bound, whom we may address in prayer a Being who, as Author, Lawgiver, End, answers to our highest notions of perfection is in itself a remarkable fact. The idea of God, if it should be found in a single human mind, would deserve all attention. But it is- found in many human minds in so many human minds that we may characterize human nature, and difference it from the lower orders of intelligence, by its possession of this idea of God, just as truly as by its possession of the ideas of right and wrong. As this, however, is an impor- tant link in the discussion, and as it has been matter of controversy, let us ask explicitly to what extent, and in what sense, the belief in God's existence prevails among men. We are all aware that there are certain truths which men universally accept without thinking of putting them into words, and without always being able to understand them when propounded in scientific form. Men who have no notion what you mean when you say that there is a principle of causality, that every action implies an agent, every change an efficiency that produced it, still show their practical belief in the law of cause and effect, by their language, actions and expectations. The formal denial of certain truths does not by any means prove that men do not believe them. Deniers of freedom like necessitarians, of substance like idealists, of their own existence like nihilists, all practically acknowledge what they specula- tively deny. In the case of the fatalist, all that is needed to show this is the knock-down argument. The fatalist, knocked down, rises to vow vengeance or sue for damages that is, he holds his assailant responsible that is, he SCIENTIFIC THEISM. 77 recognizes, in practice, that the assailant's action is not necessitated but free. In judging of the evidence that the knowledge of God's existence is univer- sal, it is not necessary to require that each human being should, on interro- gation, respond that he knows that God exists. Though he may never have formulated his belief, he may still show by the language he employs, the actions he performs, and the expectations he cherishes, that he has the idea of a power above him on which he is dependent, an authority that binds his moral action, a personality whom he may address in prayer and worship. Certain beliefs, moreover, which belong to man as man, are not developed in the earliest stages of the mind's growth, and that simply because the objects with which they have to do cannot be apprehended until the mind has reached a certain degree of intelligence. The moral ideas, for example, are apparently slumbering in the mind of the young child, but only because the notion of intelligent and voluntary action is not yet fully formed. The moment that conception in formed, you have with it another knowledge of right and wrong, derived, not from any experience of utilities, but from an original cognitive power of the mind. And even when once awakened, these beliefs are capable of indefinite education. They grow in strength and clearness. But the germ was there at the very beginning of the mental history, just as the full-grown apple existed in embryo even before the blossom had fallen from the tree. \V. should not therefore be warranted in denying the universality of the knowledge of God's existence, simply because we found that this knowledge existed in children and savages in a rudimentary and undeveloped form. The mere fact that the perfection ascribed to the Being above them does not answer to our ideas of perfection, or the range assigned to the divine attributes to our ideas of infinity, proves only that the child and the savage have not yet expounded to themselves the contents of their own notions, it does not prove that they have no real idea of God. So long as there does exist the idea of a Being above, of greatness and perfectness answering to the highest conceptions of which the mind is at the time capable, the rudimentary nature of this knowledge should not blind us to the fact that it exists, With these precautionary suggestions, let us ask what is the exact state of the evidence with regard to the belief in God's existence. This is a matter of testimony. We find it to be simple historical fact, not only that the vast majority of men have actually believed in a God, but that there never has been an atheistic age or an atheistic people. Men in the mass have every- where and always recognized a power, perfection, personality above them, though they have often clothed that power with wrong attributes. The race has bowed to priests more than it ever has to kings. The instinct of relig- ion has been stronger than the instinct of either government or society ; for religious ideas have dominated in the formation and progress of both. Deprive men of one religion, they seek another. Abandoning the old gods, they seek new. Even Comte and Mill cannot be content without something to worship, and the one must deify a woman, and the other universal humanity. Quatrefages, the French anthropologist, who has made this subject a mat- ter of special study, says distinctly that, " obliged as he has been, to pass 78 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. in review the race of men, he has sought for atheism in the lowest and in the highest, but has nowhere met it except in an individual or at most in some isolated school of philosophers ; everywhere and always," he says, "the masses of the people have escaped it." It is true that now and then reports are printed with regard to some savage tribe, like the Andaman Islanders, declaring that at last a people has been found who know no God. But closer examination has in most cases proved that those who seem at first sight destitute of such a knowledge do really possess it. Ignorance of the language and of the mental and moral habitudes of a people very frequently leads to these superficial and incorrect judgments. Moffat, the missionary to Africa, declared that he had found tribes who had no religious rites and no belief in a power above them. But his son-in-law and successor, upon further investigation, showed that Moffat's judgment was based upon imperfect knowledge, and that these tribes had both ; Livingstone declares plainly, in so many words, that ' ' the existence of a God and of a future Life are universally recognized in Africa. " It would be easy to multiply witnesses, but there is no need. We are mainly concerned with the exceptional cases. In what way shall we account for the fact that individuals are not rare who profess atheism ? Or, granting that some tribe like the Andaman Islanders were to prove destitute of any clear conception of a supreme Being, how should we explain this ? Upon the principles already laid down. Either they practically admit what they speculatively deny, or their minds are yet in a state like that of childhood, in which the intellectual faculties are not yet sufficiently developed to permit the awakening of this consciousness of God's existence. David Hume was a professed skeptic, yet, when walking in the fields with his friend Ferguson on a starlit night, he exclaimed, "Adam, there is a God!" Even the degraded tribes which we have mentioned do indirectly manifest in various ways the existence in their minds of the idea of God, and its positive influ- ence over them. The sense of responsibility, the notion of right and wrong, the reproaches of conscience, these are but reflections in the human soul of the authority and presence of God. Wherever there is fear after wrong doing, there is an implicit, if not explicit, recognition of the existence of One who hates the wrong and will punish the wrong. So far as explora- tion has yet gone, no tribe has been discovered that is utterly destitute of conscience. Until we learn of such, we must maintain that all men have, at least in germ and capable of development, the knowledge of the existence of God. And this knowledge is certain to be developed so soon as the proper occasions and conditions present themselves, that is, so soon as the mind devotes the requisite attention to the considerations which demand the idea of God for their explanation. In contemplating existence as finite, there is inevitably suggested to the mind the idea of an infinite Being. In danger, men instinctively cry to God for help. When we speak of this belief as being universal, we do not assert that the existence of God is a truth always present before the mind. It is possible to engross the mind with objects which do not call forth the belief. Men naturally avoid the occasions which suggest it. What we claim is simply this, that everywhere and always, when the proper occasion comes, and the facts which require it for their SCIENTIFIC THEISM. 7 complement are presented to the mind, the knowledge of God's existence leaps forth from latency into power, a storm at sea and the approach of death have dissipated many an atheistic delusion. It is this universal, though often unacknowledged, faith in the existence of a cause, a law, an end, above the merely transient and bounded beings which we see about us, that constitutes man's capacity for religion. Without this faith, there would be , nothing to which religion could appeal. When we say that man is by nature a religious being, we offer the strongest proof that the knowledge of God's existence is universal. He who has not this knowledge, either potential or actual, may be idiot or brute, he is not man. For this knowledge, universal in the sense we have mentioned, we have to account. What is its origin ? By what process have men everywhere acquired it ? In attempting an answer to this question, it will be useful to review the various theories, and to pass rapid judgment upon them. First comes the theory which holds that the source of all our knowledge of God is external revelation, communicated to us either through the Scriptures or through tradition. It might be a sufficient reply to the first form of the theory that which holds that we believe in a God because Scripture certifies us of his existence to say that the belief in a God prevails to-day, and has prevailed for ages, where the Scriptures were never known. But it is a more vital objection still that the theory presupposes and takes for granted the very thing to be proved, namely, that God exists. Why do I believe in a God ? Because the Bible tells me that he exists. Why do I believe the Bible ? Because I believe that a God exists who speaks authori- tatively in it. The Bible can be no authority to me, unless I have previous knowledge of the existence of a God from whom such a revelation can come. .lust as a miracle cannot establish the divine existence, because it presup- poses it, so the Scriptures cannot establish the divine existence, because they presuppose it. And especially so with a revelation handed down from gen- eration to generation by word of mouth, it can have no power to convince me of God's existence, unless I have from some other source a previous knowledge of a God from whom such a revelation might come. To believe in God's existence upon the ground of revelation, and then to believe in rev- elation upon the ground of God's existence, is to argue in an incurably vicious circle. And yet to just this, amount all attempts to account from external influences for the belief in God. " Eeligion in the world is a delu- sion inspired and fostered by priests." "Fear produced the gods." But a uniform fact requires a uniform cause. Something in the nature of man leads him to religion else there is nothing for education, culture, priest- craft to work upon. Without such a demand in the nature, the religions of the world could never have been devised, received, believed, propagated. Some knowledge of a higher power must be presupposed to make either true or false priests possible. Or shall we say that the knowledge of God comes from experience, in the sense of Locke's philosophy ? Locke, we remember, held that all our ideas came directly or indirectly from the senses. They were either notions of sensible and material objects, or, combinations of these formed by the mind itself. Can sense-perception or reflection, then, account for the idea of God ? We must answer in the negative, for the idea of God is not that of a "80 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. sensible or material object, nor is it a combination of such ideas. Since the spiritual and infinite are the direct opposites of the material and finite, no experience of the latter can account for our idea of the former. Does it help the matter to say that we know the existence of God from conscious- ness ? No, because consciousness is only a con-knowing, an accompanying knowledge a knowing of the mind's acts and states as its own. We are not properly conscious of facts or beings out of the mind. To say that we* are conscious of the existence of God is simple tautology. It can mean only that we are conscious of knowing that God exists ; and the question as to the origin of this knowledge comes up as before. The Germans, indeed, use the term Gottesbewuastsein, without being guilty of this tautology ; but only because this Gottesbewusstsein means, not ' consciousness of God,' but 'knowledge of God.' Bewusstsein is, not a ' con-knowing,' but a 'be- knowing. ' Does the knowledge of God's existence, then, arise from reasoning? Since it is very frequently maintained that our belief has its source in argu- ment, it will be necessary to consider this view somewhat more at length. We may appeal here to our own mental history, while we confidently affirm that the rise of this knowledge in the great majority of minds is not the result of any conscious process of reasoning. We say, in the great majority of minds. Some unquestionably do have this conviction wakened within them in the course of argumentative investigation, but even then the investiga- tion is commonly reckoned as the occasion, not the cause, of the new knowl- edge. Among men who reason about God, the majority do not rest their belief in his existence upon argument, any more than they rest upon argu- ment their belief in right and wrong. On the other hand, upon occurrence of the proper conditions, in hearing the thunder or being brought face to face with a past transgression, the conviction of God's existence flashes upon the soul with the quickness and force of an immediate revelation. If the belief in God's existence were the product of reasoning, it would seem that the strongest reasoners should be men of the strongest faith. But we all know that the strength of men's faith in that existence is not propor- tioned to the strength of the reasoning faculty. On the other hand men of greatest logical power are often inveterate sceptics, while men of unwaver- ing faith are found among those who cannot even understand the theistic arguments. Ask the mass of Christian people what is the foundation of their belief in God, and whatever else they may or may not say, they will refer its origin to anything but reasoning. The mass of Christians can no more follow the a priori or a posteriori arguments, than they can appre- ciate the demonstrations of a great physical truth like the shape of the moon's orbit, or the distance of the earth from the sun. Yet this does not prevent their having a knowledge of God. John, with his insight, has more faith than logical Thomas. And the converted barbarian has often a stronger conviction of God's existence than the undevout philosopher. But it is time to examine the arguments themselves. It is possible for us to overrate the value of mere argument, even to the minds that comprehend and conduct it. I believe that a careful review of the chief arguments for the existence of God will convince us that, valuable as they are for purposes to be shown hereafter, they are not sufficient of themselves to demonstrate SCIENTIFIC THEISM. 81 the existence of the Being whom we call God. The arguments are four. Let us begin with the argument commonly called the Cosmological. This is not properly an argument from effect to cause ; for the proposition that every effect must have a cause is simply identical, and means only that every caused event must have a cause. It is rather an argument from the contingent to the necessary, and may be stated as follows : Everything begun, whether substance or phenomenon, owes its existence to some pro- ducing cause. The universe is a thing begun, and owes its existence to a Cause which is equal to its production. And this mighty Cause must be God. Now the chief difficulty with this argument is in the minor premise. It cannot be shown that the universe, so far as its substance is concerned, has had a beginning. Hume urged, with reason, that we never saw a world made. Science knows nothing of the origin of substance. Creation is purely a truth of revelation. It is " through faith " that "we understand the worlds wore made by the word of God, so that things that are seen are not made of things which do appear." But we cannot use Scripture in our argument. Aside from the Scriptures, we do not know that the world ever had a beginning. Many philosophers besides Hume, in Christian lands, and the prevailing opinion of ante-Christian times, have held that matter is eternal. Or do we mistake the principle of causality ? Does that teach us, not that every begun thing, but that every thing, must have a cause ? Then God himself must have been caused. No. Our principle is right. A cause is to be postulated only for what has clearly a beginning ; but the universe, so far as its substance is concerned, has no known beginning. But have the phenomena of the universe a beginning? Yes, we see HiMiiges which come and go with every passing day. Do they not require a cause ? Yes, but even here it is difficult to show that any other cause is requisite than a cause within the universe itself a cause such as the Pan- theist supposes. The Pantheist holds all change to be only modification of one universal, necessary, self-existent, eternal substance ; and the Cosmo - logical Argument alone cannot refute it. Or, if we grant that the universe has had a cause outside of itself, it is difficult to show that this cause has not itself been caused that is, that it consists of an infinite series of dependent causes. And, if the cause of the universe has not itself been omsed, it is impossible to show that this cause is not finite like the universe itself . We are warranted in assigning only a cause just sufficient to produce the effect. But what we know of the universe is finite. To say that it is infinite is pure assumption, and it is of little use to assume an infinite to prove an infinite. From a finite effect, therefore, we can argue only a finite cause ; and a merely finite cause cannot be God. The value of the Cosmological Argument is therefore simply this it proves the existence of some Cause of the universe indefinitely great ; when we go beyond this, and ask whether this cause is a cause of being or merely a cause of change to the universe, whether it is a cause apart from the uni- verse or one with it, whether it is an eternal cause or a cause dependent upon some other cause, whether it is intelligent or unintelligent, infinite or finite, one or many, this argument cannot assure us. Let us consider, next in order, the Teleological Argument. This is not 6 82 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. properly an argument from design to a designer ; for that design implies a designer is simply an identical proposition. It may be more correctly stated as follows : Order and useful collocation, pervading a system, prove the existence of intelligence and purpose as the author of this order and collo- cation. Since order and useful collocation pervade the universe, there must exist an Intelligence adequate to the production of this order, and a Will adequate to direct this collocation to useful ends. This Intelligence and Will must be divine. There are certain common objections to the premises of this argument which are clearly invalid, for example, the objection that order and useful collocation may exist without being purposed ; for we are compelled by our very mental constitution to deny this, where the order and collocation pervade a system. Nor is the objection that order and useful collocation may result from the operation of mere physical forces and laws any the more tenable, for the operation of physical forces and laws does not exclude but implies an originating intelligence and will. Before evolution, there must be involution. If anything is to come out, something must first be put in, and if there is to be any certain progress to cosmos, instead of to chaos, there must be a guiding wisdom all along the line. That order and useful collocation do pervade the universe is assumed in science. The physical investigator could not proceed for a day without taking it for granted that the methods of nature are rational methods, that the properties and qiialities of matter are uniform, that all things have their uses. Let science busy herself with the what, as much as she may ; it is the why, and the prudens quwstio with regard to it, that have been her most useful clues to nature's labyrinth ; and the scientific imagination which Prof. Tyndall lauds, is nothing else than insight into the thought and purpose of which nature is the embodiment. We have evidences of this order and us- f ul collocation in the correlation of the chemical elements to each other ; sweep away all the proofs of intelligence in the existing universe ; pass over all the intervening history, go back to the nebula if you will ; yet even here, an atom of oxygen is an atom of oxygen an atom of hydrogen is an atom of hydrogen ; and in the fitness of both to combine, with results s< > wonderful, you have proof of a designing intelligence. And this same intelligence appears in the fitness of the inanimate world to be the basis and support of life ; in the typical forms and unity of plan apparent in the organic creation ; in the existence and cooperation of natural laws ; in cos- mical order and compensations the precessions and retrograde movements that from age to age secure the safety of the system, even while they seem to threaten it. It does not invalidate the argument for intelligence to say that we often misunderstand the end actually subserved by natural events and objects; for the principle is, not that we necessarily know the actual end, but that we necessarily believe that there is some end, in every case of systematic order and collocation. Nor does it invalidate the argument to say that the order of the universe is manifestly imperfect ; for this/ if granted, would argue,, not absence of contrivance, but some special reason for imperfection, either in the limitations of the contriving intelligence itself, or in the nature of the end sought. And just here Mr. Mill, in his posthumous essay on Theism, plants himself, and recognizing the blights and cruelties and devastations SCIENTIFIC THEISM. S3 of nature, the hurricanes that destroy the fruits of man's labor, the beasts that live only by torturing and devouring others weaker than themselves, the thousand blossoms that perish for the one that brings forth fruit, he declares that, if nature proves a God, it proves one who lacks either love or power ; and, since there are signs of love, he who rules the universe must be a God in fetters working with intractable material bearing uphill a heavy burden that more than taxes his utmost strength. But Mr. Mill's conclusion is not the only one. The Pantheist's conclu- sion is just as logical as his. So long as there is such a thing as impersonal intelligence, and we see the bee building her hexagons and storing for the winter, yet without self -consciousness or freedom, but bound to lines of necessitated action by its very physical structure and conditions, why, says the pantheist, may not the whole universe be only the unconscious work of :i sublimer impersonal intelligence, that fashions forms of beauty and adaptation of means to ends, by an inexorable law of its own nature ? And we must confess that either Mr. Mill's theory, or the theory of the pantheist, is logically consistent, and cannot be successfully combated upon the ground of the Teleological Argument alone. Leave out of the estimate entirely the self -consciousness, moral ideas, and free will of man and we cannot prove, either that God is absolute sovereign of the universe, or that an impersonal intelligence may not suffice for its production. And as this sirgument cannot prove personality or sovereignty in God, so it cannot prove unity, creatorship, eternity, or infinity. What then is its exact value ? Simply this. It proves, from certain use- ful collocations and instances of order which have clearly had a beginning, or, in other words, from the present harmony of the universe, that there exists an intelligence and will adequate to its contrivance. But whether this intelligence and will are personal or impersonal, creative or fashioning, one or many, finite or infinite, eternal or owing their being to another, this argument cannot assure us. In it, however, we take a step forward. The causative Power, which we have proved by the Cosmological Argument, has now become an intelligent Power. The third argument is commonly called the Moral, though we should prefer to call it the Anthropological Argument. It is an argument from the mental and moral constitution of man to the existence of a divine Author, Lawgiver, and End. Man's intellectual and moral being have had a beginning upon the planet. Material and unconscious forces do not afford a sufficient cause for his reason, conscience, and free will. As an effect, therefore, man can be referred only to a cause possessing self-consciousness and a moral nature, or in other words, personality. This is the first part of the argument. It is held to prove a divine Author of man's higher being. But there is a second part which argues from the existence of man's moral nature to the existence of a holy Lawgiver and Judge. Conscience recognizes the existence of a moral law which has supreme authority. Known violations of this moral law are followed by feelings of ill desert and fears of judgment. But this moral law, since it is not self-imposed, and these threats of judgment, since they are not self-executing, respect- ively argue the existence of a holy Will that has imposed the law, and of a punitive Power that will execute the threats of the moral nature. 84 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. "But why," says Murphy, " should we suppose conscience to be the voice of a will, or personal authority? Why should we suppose conscience to be anything more than the voice of impersonal reason, when it speaks on the subject of duty ?" And Murphy answers his own question as follows : Because "unlike impersonal abstract reason, conscience speaks with a command. Eeason speaks in the indicative mood ; conscience in the imperative. The intuitions of the reason do not come into consciousness as if made known by a voice, but rather as knowledge coines through the eye, and do not suggest personality in their origin. A voice of command, on the contrary, at least suggests personality in its origin. It is this proof that has had greatest effect on mankind. "The heavens declare the glory of God, " but they declare it only to those who believe in God. The light from the heavens is really the reflected light of conscience, though men often mistake its origin. " But beyond this, and as the third part of the Moral Argument, man's emotional and voluntary nature proves the existence of a Being who can furnish in himself a satisfying object of human affection, and an end which will call forth man's highest activities and ensure his highest progress. Only a Being of power, wisdom, holiness and goodness, and all these indefinitely greater than any that we know upon earth, can meet this demand of the human soul. Such a Being must exist. Otherwise man's greatest need would be unsupplied, and belief in a lie be more productive of virtue than belief in the truth. Such is a strong statement of the Moral Argument. Its defects are that it cannot prove a creator of the material universe ; nor can it prove the infinity of God, since man from whom we argue is simply finite. Its value is that it assures us of the existence of a personal Being, who rules us in righteousness, and who is the proper object of supreme affection and service. Among the arguments for the existence of God, however, we give to this the chief place, since it adds to the idea of causative Power (which was derived from the Cosmological Argument), and of contriving Intelligence (which was derived from the Teleological), the far wider ideas of Personality and righteous Lordship. These arguments are the only ones to which we can assign any logical value as proving the existence of a Being above us whom we can in any sense call God. The Ontological or a priori Argument, from the abstract and necessary ideas of the human mind, has had currency in past ages, but is now generally abandoned. Because I have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being, it does not follow that that Being exists. If it were so, Kant's analogous argument might be valid : because I have a perfect idea of a hundred dollar bill, it would follow that I actually possessed one, which is far from being the case. And so we may come to a conclusion from the arguments as a whole. It appears that the a priori argument is capable of proving only an abstract and ideal proposition, but can never conduct us to the existence of real being. It appears that the arguments a posteriori which we have considered in detail, since they are arguments from merely finite existence, can never demonstrate the existence of the infinite. In the words of Sir Wm. Hamilton : "A demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically absurd ; as, in such a syllogism, we must collect in the SCIENTIFIC THEISM. 85 conclusion what is not distributed in the premises." And the same consid- erations apply to the attempt to explain our knowledge of God as an infer- ence from the facts of nature or of mind, for either this inference is what is called in logic "an immediate inference," and so is a mere restatement in other words of some proposition with regard to the finite and is not a process of reasoning at all, or it is a process of reasoning, and so is only a condensed deductive syllogism, which, because it is condensed, may be expanded into regular syllogistic form. In this case, since it is a process of reasoning, it is open to the objections which have been previously mentioned. But to all arguments for the existence of God, we have a still more radical objection to urge, namely that all reasoning presupposes the existence of God as its logical condition and foundation. Not only does the trustworthi- ness of the simplest mental acts, such as sense-perception, self-conscious- ness and memory, depend upon the assumption that a God exists who has so constituted our minds that they give us knowledge of things as they are ; but the more complex processes, such as induction and deduction, can be relied upon only by presupposing a thinking Deity, who has made the various parts of the universe to correspond to each other and to the investi- gating faculties of man. Upon what warrant do I perform the simplest act of induction, and infer from one or more particular instances a truth universal in its nature ? What right have I to conclude, from two or three facts within my observation, that unsupported bodies always fall, and that tire burns, and arsenic kills? Only upon the ground that the universe is a solidarity, that part corresponds to part, that laws of nature here are also laws of nature there, that there is a thought running through the universe, and that there is a thinker who thinks that thought. In the words of Dr. Peabody : "Induction is a syllogism with the immutable attributes of God for a constant term." Or as Dr. Porter expresses it: "Induction rests upon the assumption, as it demands for its ground, that a personal or thinking Deity exists. " It has no meaning or validity, unless we assume that the universe is so constituted as to presuppose an absolute and uncon- ditioned Originator of its forces and laws." And, as all deduction rests upon previous processes of induction or upon the intuitions of space and time, it follows that every sort and kind of reasoning toward the existence of God actually presupposes that existence, and begs the whole question in the very attempt to prove it. Much new light is thrown from this point back upon our arguments for God's existence. We see that it is impossible to argue from man's wants to a supply, impossible to argue from conscience to a lawgiver, impossible to argue from adaptation in nature to a designing intelligence, without taking for granted that indications do not deceive us that there is a correlation between the human mind and the universe, as well as between the human mind and the divine. Imagine an evil being to sit upon the throne of the universe, and to constitute all things so as to falsify our observations, expectations and reasonings, and all our arguments yield no fruit. It is because we take for granted that God is, that he exists in truth and right- eousness, that the rational methods of the divine mind bear analogy to our own, that we are made in God's image, it is because of these assumptions, 86 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. that any theism or any science is possible. In other words, we cannot demonstrate that God is, but we can show that in order to the existence of any other knowledge, men must assume that God is. But a knowledge thus fundamental, necessary and universal, we call an intuitive knowledge. Of this sort we consider the knowledge of God's existence. We hold God's existence to be a first truth, like the conviction of our own personal existence, or the belief in causality, or the knowledge of substance as the reality in which attributes inhere and find their unity. But we hold this truth to be a deeper and more fundamental truth than any one of the others we have mentioned, and for that very reason the easiest to overlook and the last to be formulated. It is a knowledge which logically precedes all observation and all reasoning, yet only reflection upon the phenomena of nature and of mind occasions its rise in consciousness. There is a prejudice against the doctrine of intuitive knowledge of any kind which arises too frequently from an imperfect conception of what is meant by an intuition. When we say that God is known intuitively, we do not hold that this knowledge will develope itself apart from observation and experience, but only that it will develope itself upon occasion of observation and experi- ence. A first truth is a knowledge, which, though developed upon occasion of sense-perception and reflection, is not derived from these, a knowledge which on the contrary has such logical priority that it must be assumed or supposed to make either sense-perception or reflection possible. Such truths are therefore not recognized first in order of time ; some of them are assented to somewhat late in the mind's growth ; by the great majority of men they are never consciously formulated at all. Yet they constitute the necessary assumptions upon which all other knowledge rests, and the mind has not only the inborn capacity to evolve them so soon as the proper occasions are presented, but the recognition of them is inevitable so soon us the mind begins to give account to itself of its own knowledge. The doctrine of this paper, therefore, is that all men have at the very basis of their being, and as the deepest principle of all their thinking, a knowledge of the existence of God, as a Power upon which they are dependent, a Perfection which imposes law on their moral natures, and a Personality which they may address in prayer and worship. It is a knowl- edge, however, which more than any other has been dimmed and obscured by transgression, and by the loss of that love to God which is the condition of its clearest and strongest exercise. In an unfallen state, we may believe that it manifested itself as naturally and spontaneously as the intuition of self does now. God was seen in all things, and all things were seen in God. With the exercise of this intelligence, there was also the knowledge of affec- tion and communion. But with sin, the knowledge of friendship and man- ifestation ceased, and only the necessary and intuitive remained. There is no longer an extensive knowledge of the divine attributes no longer a seeing God face to face, only the cold, blank apprehension of fear, and the effort to rid the soul of the thought of God. But still in every mind the knowledge remains. It is dim, yet it burns a light ready to flame forth in time of danger, or sinning, or judgment. It is like a choked-up well from which you have only to remove the debris, and the water that has been flowing so long in secrecy and silence can be seen once more and drawn up to quench the thirst. SCIENTIFIC THEISM. 87 And this is the object of God's twofold revelation iii nature and in the 'Scriptures. Arguments drawn from nature and the human mind awaken, -confirm and enlarge a conviction of God's existence, which may have been .slumbering for lack of reflection. Arguments can never conduct us to God, or account for our idea of God. Both ends of the ladder are wanting. The top does not reach to heaven, since argument can give us not the infinite but only the finite. The foot has no firm basis on the earth, since all logic presupposes the existence of God and without this is invalid. Arguments cannot conduct us to God. They are not the bridge itself they are only the guys that steady and strengthen it. Intuition is the great suspension- bridgr that spans the gulf. The arguments are indeed only the efforts of tin- mind that already has a conviction of God's existence to give to itself a formal account of its belief. As such they will always be helps to faith, and means of bringing out into clearer light the deliverances of our inmost nature. This intuitive knowledge the Scriptures always take for granted. They never attempt to prove the existence of God. They address men as already knowing it. They bring a new revelation of the grace of God, and promises of a special work of God's Spirit, to turn this knowledge, which now is only a knowledge of intellect and of fear, into the knowledge of assured friendship and of sacred communion. Only in Christ are we brought back to our lost sonship and made possessors of that saving knowl- edge which is identical with eternal life. But is a knowledge like this adequate to the purposes of science? When we know God by intuition, have we a right to use the materials thus gath- er- d as foundation stones of theology? Herbert Spencer denies it, upon tin- ground that this intuition is, like all the rest, a mere accretion of past experience, a hereditary tendency of thought, a result of multitudes of sense- perceptions ami awe-strieken feelings of past generations trancendental for the individual but empirical for the race, a representation after all of the tran- sient and earthly, a representation that in time may be outgrown. But this theory can l.e maintained only by wholly mistaking the nature and contents of the intuition itself. It is not merely a hereditary tendency, like that of the brutes, for the brutes have no intuitions least of all, the intuition of a God. It is the intuition not of the finite or of the indefinite, but of the 1 -sitively infinite ; and this, as we have seen, can in no manner be derived from experience, either in the present or the past. Just as the idea of right and wrong can be explained by no combination of utilities, and the idea of cause by no combination or uniformity of sequences, and the idea of material or spiritual substance by no succession of sensations, so the idea of the infinite cannot be explained by any combinations or successions of the finite. For the very reason that it is too great an idea for so mean an origin, Herbert Spencer is obliged to reduce its scale in his representations of it, until it is small enough to be reasonably supposed to have emerged from the narrow aperture of sense. In other words, the intuition of God, and all the other intuitions, are explained by simply denying their existence. The trick is too old a one, and too fatal to Mr. Spencer's own system. For, if the validity of causation and of logical laws and of our knowledge of God be denied, what rule can save Mr. Spencer's belief in the Unknowable and in the Persistence of Force, the corner-stones of his philosophy, since these 88 SCIENTIFIC THEISM. are not truths of experience but postulates of the reason ? And whither i&- philosophy tending, if the most fundamental knowledges of all, which it has taken uncounted ages to build up and consolidate, are to be proved utterly- invalid by the latest research ? In this doctrine, we have the reductio ad absurdum of the Spencerian philosophy. Evolution is proved to be a progress from knowledge to ignorance, from certainty to doubt. With the sweeping away of a single intuition, all the rest must also perish, for the mind certifies to none if not to all, and with them Herbert Spencer too, with his philosophy, must be consigned to the abyss of absolute skepticism. There is another denial which we must mention that of Sir William Hamilton. He virtually ruled our conviction of God's existence out of the realm of science by calling it faith, and then denning faith as that organ of the mind by which we apprehend that which is not an object of knowledge. Of course, if God is not an object of knowledge, then science, which is knowledge, cannot have theism for one of its departments. Now we accept the title of faith for the peculiar apprehension which we have of God. Not- withstanding this, we claim that this faith furnishes proper material for science. And that, simply for the reason that faith is not mere opinion or imagination, but a higher kind of knowledge. All physical science rests upon faith, faith in human testimony and in our primitive cognitions, but is not invalidated thereby. And why ? Simply because this faith, though unlike sense-perception or logical deduction, is yet a cognitive act of the reason. Faith, in this lower sense, may be defined as certitude with regard to matters in which verification is unattainable. If the intuition of God is to be excluded from the realm of science because it is faith, then by the same rule must the doctrine of the uniformity of nature and the facts received upon human testimony be excluded from science also. Faith in God's existence is indeed a faith of higher rank than these, but it follows the same rule. The faith which constitutes the source of truth with regard to God is simply a certitude with regard to spiritual realities, upon the tes- timony of our rational nature and ujjon the testimony of God. The only feature that differences it from the lower faiths of science is the fact that it is conditioned upon the presence of a holy affection toward God. Yet even here we are not without analogies. There is a knowledge of the beautiful which is conditioned upon a love for beauty. Only one who loves beauty can ever see it, whether in sunset sky or on the poet's page. There is a knowledge of the morally good which is conditioned upon love for the mor- ally good. Only one who loves moral excellence can recognize it in char- acter, or truly set forth its principle and nature. So there is a knowledge of God which is conditioned upon love for God. Only one who loves God can see God or truly know God. As the sciences of aesthetics and ethics respectively are products of reason, but of reason as including in the one case a power of recognizing beauty practically inseparable from a love for beauty, and on the other hand a power of recognizing the morally right practically inseparable from a love for the morally right, so a scientific theism is a product of reason, but of reason as including a power of recog- nizing God practically inseparable from a love for God. This cognitive act of the reason by which we apprehend God, under the condition of a holy affection toward God, is faith. As an operation of man's higher rational SCIENTIFIC THEISM. 89 nature, though distinct from ocular vision or from reasoning, it is a kind of knowledge, and so may furnish proper material for a scientific theism. A single question yet remains. If this right affection toward God be a condition of all scientific knowledge of him, in what sense can those who have no such affection know God, and what claim can such theism have upon them, since they lack the affectional conditions which alone can enable them to understand it ? We answer that all men have a knowledge of God, dimmed and obscured though it be. A thorough and clear and vivid acquaint- ance with the truth, however, belongs only to those who look through eyes of love, and have their vision purged with the " euphrasy and rue" of divine revelation. But we can better answer by a parable. A certain man afflicted with cataract still perceived faint rays of light piercing the curtain that ever hung before him. He could tell daylight from dark, and the comparative dimness of his dwelling from the brightness of the outer world. One of his sons was an optician, and another was a painter. The father tried to under- stand their work and to help them in it, but he could not. What could the blind man know of lenses or of colors ? At last he began to deny that there was any such thing as optics, or any such thing as painting. His sons vainly argued with him. They urged that the little light that reached his retina should be evidence to him that something existed outside of and beyond his eyes ; that he ought to take their word for it that they saw shape and beauty where none appeared to him ; that whole sciences had been constructed out of simple matters of form and light ; that, with the cataract removed, he might see it all, and know it all, for himself. But the old man had been born blind ; he believed nothing ; he had no trust in oculists, as he had no trust in science ; the veil before him grew thicker and his scepticism more inveterate, till at last with neither eyes nor mind could he see at all. Was there, therefore, no science of painting or of optics ? and had these sciences, no claim upon him ? VII. THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL.* We purpose in this paper to discuss the subject of the Will and its rela- tions to Theology. Philosophy has no more difficult problem than this with which to deal. All agree that consciousness testifies to human freedom. But when this consciousness is to be interpreted, we find division. Some look so exclusively to the uniformities of man's action, that they settle down into determinism ; freedom, to them, is but the seeming self-movement of the summer cloud, which is borne onward by forces external to it, and is driven by atmospheric currents even when it appears to be following an impulse of its own. Others eye so closely the central source of power within us, that they lose sight of the laws under which that power is exerted, and identify freedom with caprice ; to them no act can be free which is the inva- riable sequence of fixed motive, and God cannot be free unless he is able to sin. Fatalism and arbitrariness these are the two extremes between which the pendulum of thought is ever swinging. Both of these extremes are represented in the schools of to-day. And let us frankly acknowledge that each has had its devoted adherents because each is the exaggeration and per- version of a truth. That is an easy philosophy which accepts the one and ignores the other, but it is as shallow and false as it is easy. It is a harder task to analyze both, and, after having set aside their elements of error, to combine what remains of truth into one consistent whole. But something- like this must be done by every thinking man if he would attain to mental quiet, while to the preacher not only a consistent but a correct view of the will is indispensable if he would present the gospel with completeness and power. And yet our method of investigation should not be the method of eclecti- cism. We may be taught by the past to avoid the errors of the past, but a clear and satisfactory result can only be attained by the new examination of the facts of consciousness, with the added help of Christian experience and of Scripture. We are not novices enough to believe that we can clear up all the dark places of this most intricate theme. We do believe, however, that the main features of a right doctrine of the will may be discovered and intel- ligibly set forth. Error has commonly arisen because inquirers have started from a priori and abstract notions of liberty or of law, rather than from induction of the facts of man's actual condition according to conscience and * Printed in the Baptist Review. 1880 : 527-550. and 1881 : 30-47. 90 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY. 91 the Bible. Let our first aim, then, be this, to examine the facts, both as regards the ordinary operations of our willing faculty, and as regards its con- duct in matters of morality and religion. Then, secondly, we may test the results thus obtained by their conformity or non-conformity with certain great general teachings of Scripture respecting God and man. Finally, we may inquire whether the objections frequently urged against our view are of sufficient force to compel its surrender, or can be met by counterbalancing considerations if not by direct refutation. In asking what are the facts of the will's action, the simplest cases are the most typical and the most instructive. The other day I found my little son executing some curious gyrations about the room. "John," I said, " what do you do that for?" "Oh, I do it because I want to, father!" was his reply. Now my question and his answer give a complete formula for a doctrine of the will. I will take them for my text in what follows. The text teaches us that the human mind is the efficient cause of its own action. " I do it." John refers his action to himself as its author. And when we -1 -oak of John's will, we have nothing in mind but John himself, as a person putting forth power. Let us observe a little more closely what John's attributing to himself power involves. It involves a consciousness on his part that his willing is determined by nothing outside himself. He knows that when he turns a somersault, he is not a water-wheel set a going and kept a going by an exter- nal force. It is he, in whom the effort and the motion originate. Here we get a glimpse of the indestructible barrier in human consciousness against all schemes of materialistic necessity. Man is not the product of climate and si i mmndiugs. External things cannot account for his volitions. The spring of action is within. His whole mental being rises up in protest against the doi-triiie that he acts only as he is acted upon, that his mental movement is determined for him l>y causes apart from himself and beyond his control. Ho knows that he is free, in the sense that he determines himself , and is the efficient cause of his own activities. Absence of outward constraint then is only a part, and a small part, of the idea of liberty. Movement from within belongs to it also. John can say : " I do it," not only with regard to his bodily activity but with regard to the inward effort of his soul. His body may be in fetters, but his soul may be five. Even in confinement he may put forth mental powers in longing for deliverance or in planning an escape. The freedom of the will is shown in choice rather than in the execution of the choice. It is indeed this inward ivulm of mental energy to which we need to confine our attention. Not freedom in acting, but freedom in choosing is the inalienable prerogative of will. Take from me the power of originating bodily action, and I am still man, with mind unconquered and directing a thousand operations within. But take from me the power of originating mental action and I cease to be a rational creature, I become as much a prey to influences from without as the stick or the stone. We call this freedom formal freedom, because it 1 elongs to us as the very form of our being. So long as man is man, he cannot be divested of it. Hear John Calvin declare his faith in it: "I acknowledge," he says, "and I will always affirm, that there is a free-will, a will determining itself, and I proclaim any man who thinks otherwise a 92 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, heretic. Let the will be called free, because it is not constrained or impelled irresistibly from without, but determines itself by itself." Thus my son's reply : " I do it," indicates his consciousness that his will,, or his mind willing, is the efficient cause of his inward, and so of his outward, activity. But my question and the remaining words of his answer indicate also another complementary fact in his consciousness. I ask him : " What do you do that for?" He recognizes the propriety of the question, and replies : ' ' Oh, I do it because, " and then follows an assigned reason. Now this shows that while the will is an efficient cause of mental action, it is never an adequate or sufficient cause. In other words, the will never acts without some material to work upon, some reason for its activity, some end in view. This is little more than a repetition of those old maxims in philos- ophy : "An act of pure will is unknown in consciousness ; " " Willing must have some object;" "He that wills must will something." Dr. H. B. Smith has well illustrated the difference between an efficient cause and an adequate cause, by the activity of the laborers in the building of a house. This activity is the efficient cause of the building, but it is not an adequate cause. Besides this there must be a material cause, in the shape of brick and mortar, and a final cause, in the end which the house is designed to .sub- serve. So to call the will an efficient cause is by no means to say that mere will can account for any action whatever. There must be occasion for its activity and reasons for its effort. No power was ever put forth by any will, human or divine, with regard to which we cannot ask the question : "Why ? " and with regard to which we cannot compel from the willing agent the answer : "Because." The real cause of an action is made up of two things : first, the power that did it, and secondly, the reason for which it was done. Or, to put it more philosophically, the adequate or sufficient cause is a combina- tion of two elements : first, the efficient cause ; and secondly, the occasional cause. If the adequate cause of an action or volition be not a simple but a com- plex thing, we can see why one action or volition should be unlike another. The efficient cause, the will, is the same in both, but the occasional cause, the reason or end in view, is different. The fact that I have a will explains the fact of my willing, but it does not explain the fact that I will this rather than that. Particularity in the effect demands particularity in the cause. When I ask what is the cause of the uniformity of evil action in the case of an individual or of the race, it is not enough to tell me that the individual has a will, and that each member of the race has a similar faculty of voli- tions. I demand to know why this faculty acts wrongly with such persist- ent uniformity. When I ask the secret of a pure and consistent life, I feel it an impertinence to be told simply that the man who leads that life chooses to live as he does. The everlasting "why?" comes up again and again until it is answered. And when the advocates of arbitrariness declare that "nothing whatever" causes one man to put forth continuously selfish voli- tions, and another man to put forth continuous efforts of self-sacrifice, I feel myself disingenuously dealt with, and I declare that such a theory of the will wrecks itself upon the solid rock of our primitive conviction that every effect must have an adequate and sufficient cause. My son John not only assents to this principle at once by saying : ' ' Be- AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 93 -cause," but he throws great light upon the nature of human volition, by saying : " Because I want to ! " He asserts implicitly that want, desire, 'dis- position, account for mental act or effort. He declares that while the ego, the will, is the efficient cause of his action, a certain wish, preference, affec- tion of his is the cause which determines the specific character of the action. Now this is simply to say that every volition has its motive ; that no act of will is ever put forth except in accordance with the soul's prevailing desire at the time the choice is made. Certainly, if a man has power to act with- out motives, it is a power which is never exercised, and we can have no sci- entific warrant for claiming its existence. Action without motive is irrational. What dignity or value is there in a wild contingence which may act unin- telligently to its own ruin ? This is caprice and craziness, but not freedom. It is immoral as well as irrational. You require that men shall choose for reasons, not without reason. Only as you assume that there was a motive behind the deed, do you regard the agent responsible. To maintain that inde- terminedness is essential to liberty, to declare that in order to freedom man must have the power of acting contrary to all motives and of doing what on the whole he does not wish to do, is to contradict all experience and con- sciousness. Power to do what one does not desire to do, is not power, but impotence. Power to plunge into the abyss of sin, in spite of all inward tendencies to the good, only indicates that the soul has not yet reached true freedom. Freedom never shows itself except in the choice of what we like. When the love for honor is so strong that a man cannot do a dishonorable act, then he is most truly free. God cannot lie, but the settled love for truth that renders lying forever impossible to him does not abrogate his free- dom. The tmest freedom in God, and in the just made perfect, is identical with necessity. In short, I am free only when I act from motives and do what I want to. But you observe that when John says "Because I want to," the motive of which he speaks is something internal and not external. Unless we stead- fastly maintain this, we shall be avoiding the Charybdis of caprice only to full upon the Scylla of fatalism. Let us remember that all motive, in the last analysis, is witjiin. Suppose you offer to George Washington a million in gold, as the price of betraying his country. Will he accept it ? No. But Benedict Arnold will. The gold is the same in both cases. What makes it n motive in the one case, and not in the other? Why, evidently, the settled preferences, affections and desires, which constitute the character of each. Thus we see that the causes of volitions lie, after all, wholly within the mind. Outward things have value and attractiveness, only as the mind seizes upon them with its desires, only as they are the objects of some want within. What we mean by the strongest motive is simply the bent of the mind, the fundamental and ruling preference. And in matters of morals and religion, this fundamental and ruling preference is of one or another sort, either a supreme love for self or a supreme love for God. Of whichever sort it is, it is the man's inmost condition and character ; in short, it is the man him- self. When his will acts, it acts under the influence of motives, but it is the character that makes the motives, and so we may truly say that the will always manifests the character. The inward affections which consti- tute the character may be so strong and fixed that the acts which take their 94 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OK, direction from them are uniformly good or bad. The immanent preference or moral bias of the soul may be so holy that a being cannot sin, or may be so unholy that a being cannot but sin, and yet this certainty of good or evil action may be the result of no outward constraint whatever. The will may be perfectly free, while yet the direction and form of the volitions sire determined by the inward character. Thus far I have spoken of the will as if it were simply the faculty of voli- tions. I have not thought it expedient to encumber my statement of the elements of the doctrine by anticipating the prof ounder and more unfamiliar phases of the will's activity. When we come to consider the will in its moral and religious aspects, we find that it fills a range of our being very commonly ignored, but far more extensive and important than that of mere volition. John intimates this when he says : "I want to. " That is as much as to say that the person John puts forth another power than that of actual volition namely, a power of wish, preference, desire. There is difference between these and volitions. The latter we are conscious of originating ; we are not always conscious of originating the former. We put forth the volition ; we find ourselves wishing. And yet we use not the passive but the active voice ; we say : " /wish, / want, / prefer." We call our dispo- sitions and affections voluntary, though we never speak of voluntary knowl- edge. The more we think of this underlying region in which motive chiefly originates, the more we see that here is the heart, the true self, here the most intimate going-forth of power. We perceive that there are optative states as well as optative acts, and that we hold others and ourselves respon- sible for them, in a way which would not be possible if the will did not con- sciously or unconsciously enter into them as a constitutive element. In short we come to see that to define will as the mere faculty of volitions is to regard only the most superficial aspects of it, while it is really nothing less than the whole principle of mental movement, conscious or unconscious, the whole impulsive power of man's being, whether latent or developed, and in its moral and religious aspects, the whole tendency and determination of the soul to an ultimate end. Will, then, in the sense of the faculty of volitions, is always backed and preceded by will in the larger and prof ounder sense of the immanent pref- erence of the soul, the moral gravitation of the dispositions and affections, in fine, the character of the man. So that we properly comprehend in the range of the will not only the executive acts, but also the settled appetencies in which the person puts forth power. The desires and longings of the soul are states of the will, and for them as constituting our inmost character, we feel ourselves chiefly responsible. I cannot separate myself from these inner impulsions. I cannot sunder the faculty of volitions from the directive powers beneath, simply because I cannot escape from myself. If these pow- ers are evil in their tendency and product, I accuse myself as thus evil. When I see consummate pride and haughtiness in others, I condemn it because it is a tendency of soul that is wicked, whether originated by the individual's volition or not. There is a congenital and hereditary egotism aud self-assertion, and we reprobate it without respect to its origin, because we feel that the "territory of vice and of virtue," to use the words of another, "is as wide as the mind exercised either voluntary or optatively. '" AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 95* Many of our dispositions and desires are but imperfectly conscious. Some of them we are probably altogether unconscious of, until some unexpected emergency reveals our character in action ; but the whole stream of moral tendency, even apart from and below consciousness, is in the realm of the voluntary, belongs in this large sense to will, and involves responsibility and guilt if it be evil, as it is worthy of love and approbation when good. If you have followed me thus far you will be able to see how freedom of the will may be perfectly compatible with the certainty, in any particular case, of a definite kind of action. The will as a faculty of volitions is an efficient cause, a causa causans, acting from within by a power of its own. But the will in this narrow sense is under law to the will in the larger and deeper sense, and the will in this last sense is a causa causata ; the indi- vidual can never point to a particular volition of his own which caused his character. He causes, and he is caused. He determines, but he finds him- self determined. He acts freely, but the direction of his acts is furnished by a voluntary nature that stretches away beneath his consciousness. He is a swimmer in the stream, but the current is strong, and the current is not something foreign to him it is his real self, as much as his conscious efforts are. While no restraint whatever is laid upon him, there may be the most perfect certainty that he will act in one way rather than in another. The mean person may be incapable of generosity and the truthful person incapable of falsehood, because each freely acts out his character. In each case there is a moral necessity which is perfectly consistent with freedom. The formal freedom of the will, considered as the faculty of volitions, may still subsist, while yet the will considered as the underlying movement and current of the voluntary being is in bondage by reason of perverse and unnatural tendencies and inclinations. And this is the real condition of man formal freedom, but a real necessity of evil a necessity of evil, however, very different from the necessitarianism maintained by the mate- rialist, which has its ground in things external to human nature a neces- sity of evil which has its ground rather in man himself, and in those evil dispositions and desires which are states of his will, and which were caused by human nature itself when it first fell away from God and from holiness. Ernest Naville has well said that man cannot cease to believe in liberty, because it is his true nature, nor can he cease to doubt his liberty, because he does not realize it. Put these two facts together, and you will avoid both the extremes of controversy. The will, as a power of putting forth individual choices, can choose anything not inconsistent with its previous fundamental choice or preference. Hence we grant what the old theologians call civil free- dom. Every man chooses unrestrainedly the method in which he will act out his character. A thousand forms of activity are open to him. In any one of these according to his pleasure he may act or refuse to act. It is with this freedom in secular matters, and with this only, that so many of the moral philosophies of our day concern themselves. They are philosophies of man's original condition of the metaphysical possibilities of his being. But they ignore a whole hemisphere of fact, when they profess to be exhaus- tive accounts of man's voluntary nature. Not man in an ideal abstract state, but man in his present moral state, is the man that we need to know ; and real concrete man can be studied only in his acts and his consciousness. 96 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR. And when we once begin this study either in ourselves or in others, we find that we must set side by side with this consciousness of freedom in volition another consciousness of a malign will beneath, that hinders persistent choice of the right and binds us to a deeper necessity of evil. And so, when we ask the question whether this causative power of the will as the faculty of volitions is equal to the task of permanently reversing the underlying tendency and current of the will considered as the self-deter- mination of the being to an ultimate end, experience must answer : * ' No !" Man has liberty, liberty to enslave himself and to persevere in self-enslavement. His liberty is not ability to change his character at a single volition. Opposed to God and dominated by self-love as he is, he cannot of himself choose God and love holiness supremely. Self-love cannot throttle and slay self-love. The affections and desires remaining what they are, he can- not love God with all the heart. Let him make the effort, and he finds himself as powerless as a man standing upon the surface of the ground over one of those subterranean Kentucky rivers would be to turn back in its course the rushing torrent that flows beneath his feet. So man is at war with himself as well as with God. He has a formal freedom, but he is in real slavery. The error of the philosophy we are combating is therefore the error of dismembering our mental nature, of sundering the powers from each other, and of imagining that will, as the faculty of volitions, can act alone. But man is a complex whole. Whenever he acts, he acts as a whole. In thought we can distinguish between his different powers and speak of their functions and products ; but to suppose that the power of executive choice can some- how put itself outside of the man and secure a KOV CT& from which it may move the man contrary to his character, is an error only a little less gro- tesque than that of personifying the divine attributes and of supposing that Wisdom speaks to Holiness and Holiness to Love. And so we have a method of thought with regard to man's faculty of volitions, which regards it as severed from reason and from affection, fancies that it can act sover- eignly in utter independence and disregard of motives, and believes that arbitrariness and uncertainty are of the very essence of freedom. And this is inseparable from and rests upon a narrow and defective conception of the will itself, which ignores that whole sphere of mental and moral movement which we call the preferences, the affections, the dispositions, the desires, into which we put more of power than we put into our imperative volitions, and which conscience holds us chiefly accountable for, because they consti- tute the real self, the real life, from which our outward acts spring and take their character. I am aware that the philosophy of the will which I am advocating enlarges the sphere of will and of responsibility greatly beyond the bounds assigned to it by superficial thought. But be sure that this philosophy is the phi- losophy of the future. He who can content himself with saying that will is the author of volitions only, and that he can charge himself only with what he has personally and consciously caused, is like the early navigators who described the continent of Africa from what they had learned by touching here and there along the coast. He who, in his explorations of his own nature, has fought his way, like Stanley, through endless jungles and AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 97 malarial swamps and mountainous barriers and savage enemies, will have a sadder but also a grander understanding of what is meant by Will. To such a comprehensive philosophy of will we are coming by slow degrees. Schopenhauer and Hartmann in Germany, with all their pessimism and atheism, are bringing out, in their " Philosophies of the Unconscious," great facts of our nature which were never so clearly understood before. The fundamental thing in the universe, according to their systems, is not the Idea, as Hegel thought, but the Will. Not only is there unconscious cerebration and thought in our walking and in our sleep, but there is also unconscious will and the putting forth of power. The thoughtful and conscientious stiident of his own nature will recognize here the gleams of truth. The will is nothing less than the soul in movement or tending to move. And responsibility is coextensive, not simply with our volitions, but with the whole range of our active being. In a recent French Evangelical Review (Revue Chretienne, Jan. 1878 : 7) I find the following : "We have no initial power of determination. We can only yield to the divine impulse or to the attraction of sin. Our will is the effective cause of our conduct because these impulses solicit without con- straining us. But our liberty does not consist in producing an action of which it is the only source. It consists in choosing between two preexistent impulses. It is choice, not creation, which is our destiny." The doctrine here taught harmonizes perfectly with the view thus far presented, and enables us to make an important application of it. The will has sometimes been called a creative first cause. There is plausibility in such a definition, because the will is a causa causans. But this is only the superficial aspect of the will. It is also a causa causata. The fundamental bias we find born in us. God is only causa causans, never causa causata. Let us then, with all reverence, reserve the title of Creative First Cause for Him who is the only absolute originator, and who can alone call substance, as well as activity, into being. From this point of view we can also perceive the right and the wrong meaning of the current phrase: "the power of a contrary choice." The power of a contrary choice is possible if with the volition you include the motive, if with the act you combine the desire. There is indeed an abstract natural possibility of choosing in either of two ways. But as another has said : " Actual choosing is dependent on motives, opportunities, moral bias, the antecedent state of the will itself. And this generic bias, this moral habit, determines the special volitions until some great crisis comes " comes, we may add, as the result of aid and renewal from without. We say some- times to ourselves : " If I had this to do over again, I would do differently. " Yes, if we could put ourselves back into the past with all the new dispositions and views which experience has given us. But when we ask ourselves whether, if we were put back there with just the views and feelings we had then, we should do differently, we are compelled to answer in the negative. But because we chose for reasons, and would not choose differently, we blame our choice. Our choice was none the less free and responsible because it was the natural sequence of our preceding dispositions. These preceding dispositions were ourselves. The will was in them. Being what we were we could not have chosen differently, but the power to choose as we did not 7 98 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, wish to choose, was not necessary to make our action free. Indeed, if we could have acted in disregard of all motive and reason, the choice would have been devoid of all real freedom. To be free to do what we do not wish to do is no freedom at all. It is to be the blind victim of chance, or to play the part of the madman. The power of a contrary choice, in the sense of a power to decide against one's character and against all motives operating at the time upon the mind, is a power which not only has no existence, but of which we have not even the ability to conceive. The only actual or possible freedom is the freedom to manifest our character in mental action. It has not escaped your notice that we have thus far studiously avoided all reference to Scripture. It has been our aim to build up a doctrine of the will from the simple facts of consciousness. But we do not forget that we have a touchstone by which to determine its truth or error. The Bible does not indeed teach a formal scheme of mental science. Yet certain fundamental views of will are everywhere implied in it. Let us bring our results to the test of Scripture. But first we may in the briefest manner state what these results are. They are, first, that the will as a faculty of volitions is the efficient cause of mental action ; secondly, that this faculty, though an efficient cause, is not an adequate and sufficient cause, but depends for its particular direction upon occasional causes in the shape of objects or reasons for its activity ; thirdly, that these objects or reasons, which we call motives, are always, in the last analysis, internal and not external to the mind ; fourthly, that the internal dispositions and desires which give to motives all their force, are themselves optative states of the soul into which will, as well as sensibility, enters as a constituent element ; fifthly, that will must there- fore be regarded as including not only the faculty of individual choices, but also the states of immanent preference in which the soul puts forth its power ; sixthly, that since the will as an efficient cause is determined as to the char- acter of its action by the will in the larger sense of the soul's fundamental preference, freedom in its executive acts may coexist with certainty and even necessity as to their particular nature ; seventhly, that though man has lib- erty in manifesting his character, he is unable radically to change this char- acter if it be evil, or to reverse the self-determination of his being to an ultimate end, and that, because volition can never sunder itself from char- acter, nor the man escape from himself ; eighthly, that the will's freedom is therefore so limited by the law of its own character and condition, which it did not individually originate, that man cannot justly be called a creative first cause, nor be credited with a power of contrary choice in matters of morals and religion. This view of the will, and the views to which it is directly opposed, we are now to test by the teachings of Scripture. And first, by the teachings of Scripture as to God's foreknowledge. By foreknowledge we mean the knowl- edge of something in the future that is certain to be. We must distinguish it clearly from ideal knowledge, or knowledge of what is merely possible. We can imagine God in eternity past to have had before him a multitude of plans for a universe. They are in his mind as merely ideal plans ; he knows them all in their minutest details. But so long as no one plan is fixed upon and adopted, he cannot be said to/oreknow any of them, or any of the details of any of them. He cannot foreknow any one of these plans, except AX EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 99 when it ceases to be merely an ideal plan, and becomes a certainty of the future, and this certainty that the events included in it will take place can only be the result of his adopting the plan. The Scriptures declare God's absolute foreknowledge of the future. But that foreknowledge presupposes that the future is not simply ideally possible, or contingent, but is a thing of certainty, that is infallibly to be. "But," we are asked, "does not God foreknow what he will adopt, and does not knowledge precede will in the order of nature ? " I answer, knowl- edge of a thing as certain to be, cannot precede the fact of such certainty, for it would then be knowledge of what did not exist, and so would be a falsity and a delusion. And so knowledge of a plan certain to be carried out ciiiinot precede the certainty of that plan, nor can it precede God's adoption of it, for this adoption is all that makes it certain. The knowledge which God has, before he adopts his plan, must be merely ideal knowledge of this plan among a variety of plans ; it cannot be/oreknowledge, for there can be no foreknowledge when there is as yet nothing certain in the future to be foreknown. The true order is therefore this : first, God's knowledge < )f various ideal plans ; secondly, God's adoption of one of these plans and his consequent rendering it a certainty of the future ; thirdly, his foreknowl- edge of the events included in it, as certain to be. So we perceive that the certain future existence of events is the condition and prerequisite of God's foreknowledge. In other words, what is not certain to be cannot be fore- knmvn. Apply this now to the doctrine of the will. If there be no certainty about the future free actions of men, God himself cannot foreknow them. The \ie\\ which we have taken of the will permits us to predicate certainty of man's free actions, because they take their direction from permanent influ- ences in the character. But the view opposed to this denies that there can be freedom where there is such certainty. It declares that the action that is certain cannot be free, and that the very essence of freedom is that the will is able to make an absolutely new beginning, and for the character of this new beginning no cause whatever can be assigned. Absolute uncer- tainty, perfect indeterminedness, on this view, is the only alternative to fatalism. Unless with precisely the same external and internal states and conditions the agent may just as easily make the opposite decision to that which he does actually make, the agent has no liberty at all. Now to this view of the will we simply oppose the Scripture declarations of God's abso- lute foreknowledge of the smallest decisions of his free creatures to the end of time. If he foreknows them, then they are certain to be. Uncertain things cannot be the objects of foreknowledge. ForeknoAvledge is of things to be, not of what may be or may not be. Even intuition cannot see what is not. God cannot foreknow what is not there to be foreknown. If there is nothing certain, then nothing can be foreseen or predicted, except that either this or that will take place, and a contingent foreknowledge is no fore- knowledge at all. Omniscience does not make it possible for God to know things that are not objects of knowledge. Even he cannot tell what the results would be if two and two made five, or what would happen if chance ruled in the universe. But the theory we are opposing enthrones chance in the human will. And to declare that God can foreknow what this chance 100 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OK, will bring about is to declare that lie can know nonsense and self-contradic- tion. Only upon the view that man's free actions are under the law of char- acter, and therefore are out of the category of chance and uncertainty, can even the omniscient God know what they are to be. Many of the advocates of the caprice-theory of the will perceive their view to be inconsistent with belief in God's foreknowledge, and in various ways attempt to justify their surrender of this fundamental article of our faith. One of the most notable among them ( see Hazard on Causation, 213 ) inti- mates that foreknowledge is not essential to the supreme governing Power of the universe, protests his repugnance to the notions of election and decrees, fancies that God may adapt means to ends from moment to moment, and as he becomes aware of the necessities of each case, may draw out from his infinite resources the plan which he had devised to meet such an emer- gency should it ever occur. This writer conceives that the freedom of crea- tures may not have been possible except at the cost of a self-limitation of the divine knowledge, God chose not to know beforehand what his crea- tures would do, lest he should impose fetters on their liberty. Does it occur to him, that upon the theory that the human will is necessarily an alterna- tive power God did not need to limit himself, since he could not surrender what he had not, namely, the power to foreknow as certain that which is essentially uncertain ? To quote once more from Dr. Smith: "God him- self cannot see that to be one and no other, which is essentially and neces- sarily one or another. " It is for this reason that the Socinians, with greater logical consistency, reject altogether the possibility of God's foreknowing free human actions. To Him, upon their view, the fall of Adam and the crucifixion of Christ would have been a surprise, had it not been that " com- ing events cast their shadows before," though even then how divine sagacity itself could have converted chance into probability, is difficult to say. Prophecy is nothing but guess-work. Even God may be disap- pointed, for there is no limiting the absolute uncertainty of the human will. What is this but to discrown the omniscient One, in order that man may have a freedom as wild as that of Bedlam itself ! Every such theory when tested by Scripture is found to contradict the express teachings of revelation. God foreknows all, because it is certain what human action will be. And human action is certain, because all men have character. Human character is not beyond the control of circumstances and influences which God has arranged and appointed. If man, influenced by man, may still be free, then man influenced by divinely appointed cir- cumstances may still be free. Because we know something of the charac- ters of our fellow-men and of the influence of their surroundings upon them, we are able to a certain extent to predict their actions, and statistical averages may be compiled, which shall make known to us beforehand their action in masses. All this witnesses that freedom is not inconsistent with laws and uniformities of action. It is only by observing these laws that we control our own mental powers or induce others to serve us. If we were wise enough, we could predict all human action. Much more is every human being "naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. " How he executes his all-comprehending plan we know not. But we do know that he cannot resign his sovereignty. No creature can be inde- AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 101 pendent of him. Man's freedom cannot wrest the sceptre from his hand nor bandage the eyes of his omniscience. But God's sovereignty and his foreknowledge must both be surrendered, if the certainty of human voli- tions be incompatible with freedom. In the second place, let us test the doctrine we have propounded by the teachings of Scripture as to man's responsibility for his native depravity. That man is depraved by nature and is condemnable for this depravity, the Scripture distinctly asserts when it declares that we are " by nature children of wrath." Nature here can mean only that which is inborn and original in contrast with that which is subsequently acquired. There is a congenital bias of the will toward evil, an unholy bent of the affections away from God, and a supreme preference of self, at the very basis of our moral being, apart from and prior to our consciousness. Upon this original depravity of the soul the wrath of the holy One rests. But God's wrath rests only upon that which deserves it. This nature therefore is justly condemnable and we are responsible for it. We will not multiply passages to prove that this is the teaching of Scripture, although we might show that this is God's own explanation of the universal fact of death, even in the case of those who have not come to moral consciousness, and his explanation likewise of the uniformity of sinful volitions in all men and all ages. Actual sins are the fruit, and actual death is the penalty, of a depravity with which we are born and for which we are notwithstanding held responsible. Nor is this the place to justify the Scripture teaching, although we could adduce weighty confirmations of it from the facts of history and from the testimony of most acute and holy men as to that human nature which in themselves and others they have subjected to so penetrating and pure a scrutiny. We might bring forward a multitude of witnesses from the ranks of law and literature and philosophy, and all of them outside the pale of professed Christianity, who would with one voice declare that they felt within them a fatal necessity of evil, a taint of nature below conscious choice, a moral gravitation to the wrong, which they did not personally originate, and yet for which, strangely enough, they are not able to shake off the sense of blame worthiness. Aris- totle anticipates Paul's account of the evil law in the members, though he is not able, as Paul is, to answer the question : " Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " And Seneca in certain passages seems almost to echo David's words : "Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." Our present purpose is, however, simply to make plain the fact that this Scriptural teaching is consistent with the view of will which we have pre- sented, but is inconsistent with any other. If our view be true, then man may be responsible for his nature, for his nature is will. His whole being, in moral movement or tending to moral movement, is within the sphere of will, and for this current of tendency he is accountable, because it is his inmost self. But the opposing theory denies that there can be such a thing as unconscious will, and, limiting will to the mere faculty of voli- tions, maintains that no man can be responsible for anything that he has not personally and consciously originated. If it take the Pelagian form, it uses the phrase : " Non pleni nascimur," and calls the soul at birth a "tab- ula rasa," void of all evil whatsoever. Or if it take the Arminian form, it 102 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, speaks of a depravity for which we are not responsible except as we by con- scious act appropriate it. The Roman Catholic can exclude concupiscence from the list of sins, because forsooth it is independent of our volitions. Thus nothing but presumptuous choices of evil, with the full consciousness of the law to be violated and a wilful determination to disobey God, is counted by many to be a sin at all. On this view, indeed, the only sin should be the sin against the Holy Ghost. What we wish to point out most plainly is that the view of the will which we are opposing conflicts with Scripture by letting off" the human conscience from the main part of the burden which God lays upon it in his revelation. Who can draw the line between the conscious and the unconscious ? Who can tell what we have originated and what we have not ? Are anger and lust always conscious ? Yet the angry feeling is murder, and the impure look is adultery. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, and the heart from which they come is evil. Sin is not simply an act it is a principle of permanence and power, that reigns in the nature, that exists long before it revives or comes to light in the consciousness. These are the represen- tations of Scripture, and we charge the view of will which regards it as the faculty of volitions alone with obscuring from men's minds these facts of God's word. If sin is only volition, and I can be responsible for nothing else, then sin has but limited range within me and but weak hold upon me. It cannot be so serious a thing as Scripture describes. And just in propor- tion as the sense of sin is blunted, does man cease to feel his need of pardon and renewal. If man is responsible only for what he wills, and will is only his power of individual choices, it follows that God's law requires only what this will can render in the way of obedience. Law ceases to be the perfect transcript of God's holy nature, the ideal and unchangeable standard for all moral beings. It reduces its majesty to the limits of outward enactment and known enact- ment. Nothing that is beyond the apprehension of the blinded intellect or beyond the range of the enfeebled moral powers can be law for any creature of God. Thus law becomes a sliding scale of moral requirement, that low- ers its demands as the sinner becomes more blind and debased and guilty, and gives up its claims altogether when he becomes totally depraved and beyond recovery. But is it true that the law has nothing against the man who has so sunk himself in sin that he has lost all power to obey ? You know such persons ; does God's justice absolve them and let them go free of punishment ? The doctrine that man is responsible only for his acts of volition, and that power to do right is always essential to accountability for doing wrong, comes dangerously near to these conclusions. Those who hold this view of will are compelled to assume a "gracious ability " specially com- municated by God, in order to render men guilty at all, and then to declare that for a great number of irresponsibles, tender in age or weak in mind or limited in opportunities, salvation must be a matter of justice, since they 'have no ability to obey. So there shall be some saved without Christ. Why should the lost suffer penalty when their power to turn to God is gone for- ever ? A system of the will that leads logically to the conclusion that men are guilty only by virtue of "gracious ability," and approved when their sin has taken away all power of good within them, carries with it its own refu- AN" EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 103 tation. It may not inaptly be described as a scheme in which men are damned by grace and saved by sin. It is of course objected to our own view that to hold man responsible for an inborn state of the will which he did not originate is to violate all princi- ples of justice and to expose Christianity to ridicule and contempt. We reply that if this is the teaching of Scripture, we may trust that God will vindicate his own truth. But it is self-vindicated also. A prof ounder phil- osophy of human nature is found to correspond precisely with the ideas which unlettered Christians had drawn from the Bible long before. We must not forget, moreover, that the modern scientific notion of the solidarity of the race is anticipated in Scripture, and furnishes the answer to the ques- tion how we can be responsible for what we have not personally and con- sciously originated. Men are not separate atoms, like grains of sand, or bricks set in a row. They are of one blood and origin, and are bound together in an organic whole. Look down upon the tree from above and you see only the multitudinous leaves in their isolation from each other. But look up from below, and you perceive that each leaf springs from a twi.u:, and each twig from a branch, and each branch from a common trunk, and the great oak is only the product of a single acorn that the foot of an ox trod into the soil a hundred years ago. So the superficial observer regards the human race only as a company of individuals, and he denies all organic connection between them. But they are sprung from a common stock, and a common life is in them. The only explanation of universal depravity is the fall of the whole race when it existed seminally in its first progenitor. We have drawn our life from him, corrupted as it was by his sin. The will of the race apostatized from God when it was concentrated in one man, and of that self -depraved will we partake. So there is an individual responsibil- ity and a race responsibility also, and any theory of will which regards it as the mere faculty of individual volitions must ignore a whole half of the facts and put it forever beyond our power to explain the great problem of our accountability for the depravity which we have in common with every member of the race. We now proceed to consider a third class of Scripture passages which perhaps better than any other tests the truth or falsity of a doctrine of the will. We mean the teachings of the Bible with regard to God's initiative in human salvation. On the one hand, it is declared that man cannot of himself provide a salvation, nor lay hold of it after it is pro- vided. On the other hand, God gives man all the power by which salvation is ever accepted, and from the first step to the last he claims all the glory. Of the first sort are passages like these : " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? Then may ye also do good that are accus- tomed to do evil." " The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. " "No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." And of the latter sort are the following : "Who maketh thee to differ ? What hast thou, that thou hast not received?" It is God that makes us " willing in the day of his power," that "gives repentance," that "deals to every man the measure of faith, " that ' ' creates us in Christ unto good works. " We have not chosen him but he has chosen us. It is he who gives the new heart and the new 104 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, spirit. It is "of him " that we "are in Christ Jesus." We are " saved, not according to our works, but according to his purpose and grace." This sal- vation is "the gift of God not of ourselves, lest any man should boast." It is only "by the grace of God" that we are what we are. No man has freedom but "he whom the Son makes free." Nicodemus asks what he shall do, and Jesus replies that " except a man be born from above, he can- not enter the kingdom of heaven. " Those who believe on Christ's name are " born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. " "So then," says Paul, "it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Thus, in endless variety of phrase, the Bible asserts that man's appropria- tion of salvation is solely of the Lord. And so we pray to God to save men, believing that their hearts are in his hand, and that he can turn them as easily as the tiny rivulets that irrigate the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or foot of the husbandman. We know that no heart is too hard for God to break, no will too obstinate for God to subdne, for nothing is impossible with God ; he who created at the first can recreate at his will. We look back to our own experience and see that instead of helping God's work in us, we only resisted him ; as the untutored Indian convert said : "I fought against him all I could, and God did the rest." We may have seemed to ourselves at the first to be wholly uninfluenced by God when we chose to enter upon his service ; but subsequent experience has taught us that nothing but his power working secretly in our wills could have conquered our perversity and brought us to Christ. We say now of every stage of the process : " Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory ; " and the hymn of Isaac Watts expresses only the truth of our experience : " Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, While thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come? " 'Twas the same love that spread the feast That gently forced me in ; Else I had 'still refused to taste, And perished in my sin ! " And in this mighty grace that not only offered us salvation if we would accept it, but which made us will to accept when otherwise we should have refused, in this mighty grace we place our only hope of personal salvation, our only encouragement to the work of the ministry, and our only assurance of the salvation of the world. All this accords perfectly with the view we have supported, that the human will, with all its formal freedom, is yet in real slavery to evil, and possessed of no outlying and uncorrupted power by which it may separate itself from itself, in order that it may work down upon itself and change its character. If the will is the whole man with all his powers of movement and impulse, and this will is in one perpetual current and tendency toward self -gratification and away from God, then it is vain to speak of man's being saved by natural process of growth or development of some element of good within, or by any choice or cooperation on his part with the grace which comes to him from without. But all this seems foolishness to those who AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 105 maintain the theory 7 of will we have been opposing. To them there must be always in the will the power of a contrary choice, the power of deciding against character. The Pelagian holds that there is no seated disease of the will, and that man may at any moment reverse the current of his wrong volitions and may become holy without help of any sort from without ; while the Arminian, granting that man must have help, still claims that man has power to accept that help or to reject it, and that this acceptance, if it takes place at all, takes place in virtue of a freedom which still remains to him to decide as he will in spite of his character. Here are two men. Their char- acters are the same. Their circumstances are the same. The grace offered them is the same. The one accepts that grace ; the other refuses it. The one is saved ; the other lost. What makes tnem to differ in their decision and their destiny ? Their own free choice, the Arminian replies. And so not to God, but to man, is due the merit and the glory of salvation. Man elects and regenerates himself. Before man's lordly will God himself stands powerless. If we would save men, we must pray to men, not to God. To use a rude metaphor, salvation is a two-horse vehicle, and man draws as much as God. In truth, God will never draw unless man begins. And as man can begin, so he can continue. Entire sanctification is just as completely within his power as is his first turning from sin. Now this is a complete reversal of the true relation between God and man in the work of salvation. Man indeed ^is not passive he is active ; but then he acts because God prompts and sustains his action. No synergistic scheme which regards the human will as taking the initiative, and by its own power laying hold of and appropriating salvation, can find anything but refutation and condemnation in the Scriptures. And yet these false and anti-Biblical conclusions are the logical and necessary result of a theory which holds that will is a power of individual choices only, and that this power can be exercised sovereignly in independence of the man's previous character and condition. These conclusions are as irrational as they are unscriptural. The view that regeneration is the act of man, cooperating with divine influences applied through the truth, provides no way for the begin- ning of holiness. For so long as man's selfish and perverse affections are unchanged, no choosing God is possible but such as proceeds from supreme desire for one's own interest and happiness. But the man thus supremely bent on self -gratification cannot see in God or his service anything productive of happiness ; or, if he could see in them anything of advantage, his choice of God and his service from such a motive would not be a beginning of holi- ness. Man cannot change himself. The depravity of his will, since it con- sists in a fixed state of the affections which determines the character of all the volitions, amounts to a moral inability. Without a renewal of the affec- tions from which all moral action springs, man will not choose holiness nor accept salvation. Surely we must reject a theory of the will which equally denies the plainest facts of experience and of Scripture, and which would rob God of his crowning glory, by making man his own savior. Still another and a last set of passages in the Scriptures is that which asserts the permanence of holy character in God and in the redeemed. There is a certainty of final perseverance and salvation in the case of every true believer. It is the Father's good pleasure to give such the kingdom. 106 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, and none shall be able to separate them from the love of Christ, or pluck them out of Christ's hand. So too, the Bible declares that God cannot lie, and cannot change. We rest upon these declarations as our great comfort and hope for the future. We trust in an everlasting love, and a mighty power, which will keep us through faith unto salvation, and will present us at last faultless, in the presence of the Father's glory, with exceeding joy. With all this agrees the theory of will which we have advocated. Volitions will follow character. No chance rules in the realm of will. Integrity will not lie. Holiness will not sin. Because God is God, and cannot change, he will fulfill his promises, and so confirm in goodness the wills of his saints, that on earth, those who have been renewed by his Spirit shall not fall away from their allegiance, and in heaven the just made perfect shall go no more out forever. Character and its permanence, certainty of good conduct consistent with freedom, possibility of a moral necessity of righteousness these are prin- ciples upon which we base all our confidence in God or man. But chiefly our confidence in God. For, weak and unstable as we are by reason of the two conflicting powers that move and work within us, we see no hope for permanence or rest in anything but God. But the philosophy we have been considering would shatter all our confidence, by persuading us that inde- terminateness is the very essence of freedom, and that no confirmed good- ness is possible. Since the will may always act contrary to motives and to inclinations, to influences and to character, not even God himself can make it certain that we shall not fall. Satan, it is said, had every inducement to maintain his allegiance to God, yet he apostatized. And beyond this lib- erty of indeterminateness, which is evermore upon the edge of the precipice, and is never certain that the next moment may not witness a causeless plunge into the abyss, beyond such liberty as this, the theory declares, there is no other conceivable or possible to God or man. The wild liberty of a Greek democracy is of a higher sort than a liberty regulated by law. May God save me from such liberty as this ; for, if Satan fell and Adam fell, there are ten thousand chances to one that, unkept by God and unconfirmed in goodness, I too, sometime in the infinite range of existence before me, shall fall away from God and perish forever. Indeed I know no reason for confidence, upon this view, that God him- self will continue holy. Holiness is not a matter of nature, but of arbitrary will. There would be no merit or freedom in it, we are told, if God had not the power to be unholy. Dr. D wight * considers that if sin produced as much good as virtue, it would be as commendable as virtue is, in either God or man. There is no certainty that God will abide in righteousness ; for he has free-will, and the essence of free-will is uncertainty. And so we have from Dr. Wliedon such sorry utterances as these that follow : "Whether God could not make himself equally happy in wrong is more than we can say." Nor can we say "whether the motives may not at some time prove strongest for divine apostasy to evil." Ah, how much these philosophers -are willing to sacrifice for a theory ! Would that they could perceive the deeper philosophy that lies under those grand and simple formulas of * Works, 3: 159. AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE AVILL. 107 Augustine. Man was created, he would say, with a posse non peccare. But this was accompanied by a posse peccare also, and so it was only child- like innocence, but not confirmed virtue. Through trial and temptation, his true calling was to transform this freedom to sin or not to sin, into per- fected holiness the non posse peccare which belongs to God and to the elect angels. Then good would have become the law of his being. Holi- ness would have been so inwrought into his character, that freedom of will, for him, would have been identical with the necessity of good. But he fell ; and instead of the blessed non posse peccare, there resulted the dreadful necessity of evil, the non posse non peccare, which is identical with moral slavery and ruin. The scheme of Augustine is profounder and truer and more Scriptural than that of Arminius. The doctrine that man may fall from grace, and God may fall from holiness, however ably it has been sup- ported, and however piously its advocates have lived, does yet tend to the making of weak and unstable Christians, in whom weakness and instability are combined with self-sufficiency and small sense of their dependence upon God. But the true idea of freedom as ability to conform to the divine standard, and the certainty that the believer will attain to it and exemplify it in the perfect state which we are soon to enter, this gives nerve and cheer, and tends to the making of reverent and trustful and humble and persever- ing disciples. But this is not the chief merit of the view that volition is inseparable from character. Its chief merit is that it stands the test of Scripture and proves itself to be the philosophy of the word of God. We have thus expounded our view of will, and have tried it by the standard of revelation. It only remains to mention the most striking objections that have been urged against it, and to show, if possible, that they are insufficient to invalidate the considerations urged in its support. For lack of space, our treatment of them must be very summary-, but we shall endeavor to make it candid and sufficient. First, then, it is urged that the mind must have the power of acting without motives, because men do actually choose between things precisely equal and similar, and because God actuaDy adopts one plan out of many of equal value, and elects one man while he passes by another of no less worth than he. Now I think it will be granted by all, that these cases, if they exist, are rare and exceptional ones, and do not reveal the ordi- nary law of the will's working. They do not therefore overturn our previous reasoning, the aim of which has been to discover the general principles of a theory of the will. Furthermore, we all know that in the case of human action, the instances where motives are apparently evenly balanced are always in matters of utter insignificance ; at any rate, we never act in the weightier affairs of life, without seeing at least some reason for deciding in one way rather than another. But passing these considerations as merely preliminary, we make the general and broad denial that motives are ever, in human affairs, evenly balanced. There is always some preference which the man follows even in touching with his finger one of two squares on the checker-board, or else he chooses to put down his finger without knowing where it will rest. In either case it is absurd to suppose he puts his finger where he does not wish to, and if he does put it where he wants to put it, then he follows some motive, even though it be nothing more than this, that a certain square first strikes his eye or is nearest to his hand. The motive 108 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, is there, though it may be in the man himself, not in the squares, when these do not differ from each other. And so our judgment is that the ass that starved between the two bundles of hay, because the attractions of each were so exactly balanced as to keep him in a state of stable equilibrium between them, was indeed an ass. Thus far we have spoken of man. But the case is not essentially different when we apply the principle to God. We cannot believe that he chose a less worthy plan of the universe in place of a more worthy, for this would deny his benevolence as well as his wisdom. We therefore say that of many plans he chose the present not without reason, but for reasons inscrutable to us. So God chooses one man to eternal life, not because of anything in him, but for reasons which exist only in God and which are unrevealed to us. The reasons why I choose one of two pre- cisely similar gold pieces, are external to the gold pieces themselves. The reasons are in me, in my physical condition or my feelings at the time. But there are reasons, and the choice is never an act independent of motives. So God may choose between plans and between men, for reasons internal to his own nature. To assert that God chooses without reasons is to deny his wisdom. To assert that his reasons must be found in things external to himself, or that these reasons must be comprehensible to us, is to ignore, on the one hand, his likeness to men, and on the other hand, his infinite eleva- tion above them. To deny that God may have reasons within himself even in choosing between things which, considered as merely external to himself, are equals, is to deny the possibility either of external creation or of move- ment of any kind within God's nature. For God is infinite and self- sufficient. He does not create to satisfy any want in himself, for he has no want to be satisfied. He does not create to increase his glory, but to reveal his glory. But if creation and non-creation are equally consistent with his blessedness, then he must create for reasons in himself alone. Any other principle would deny the existence and possibility of any thought or movement whatever in God, and render him as "idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," a veritable Buddha, devoid of all consciousness and personality. We should not be willing to go to these lengths even to save a good theory of the will ; we certainly are not willing to go to these lengths for the sake of saving a bad one. A second and more serious objection to our doctrine is, that upon this view, the first man, since he had a holy disposition, could never have sinned. We must either maintain, it is said, that Adam was created with an already corrupted will, which would throw the blame of his sin upon his Creator, or that he never fell at all, which would contradict our general scheme quite as much as it contradicts Scripture. We acknowledge that here, as well as in the divine permission of moral evil, there is a difficulty which we cannot fully solve. But we claim that the difficulty does not lie where the opponents of our view imagine, and that what difficulty does exist is by no means so vital and perilous as that which attends the scheme which they themselves maintain. We would begin our reply by freely acknowledging that there is a sense in which we must allow that our first father had the power of con- trary choice. He was created pure, and might have maintained his integrity. He actually fell, and so possessed the power of choosing evil. Here were power of good and power of evil in one and the same being. In this sense,. AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 109 Adam had the power of contrary choice had it in a sense in which none of his descendants naturally have it ; if they have it at all, it is as the result of divine grace, which puts side by side with the natural tendencies to sin, other and, on the whole, dominant tendencies to holiness. But this power of contrary choice which Adam possessed was not the nondescript and absurd faculty which our Arminian friends understand by the name. It was not an ability to decide without motives or contrary to all motives. It was not a self -contradictory ability to choose what he did not wish to choose, or to choose what on the whole he did not want. Adam's choice of evil, then, does not prove that he chose without motive or contrary to motive, and so his choice does not in the least help the philosophy of our opponents. The difficulty in the case is not in imagining how Adam could choose without or against motive, but in understanding how sinful motive could have found lodgment in a heart already prepossesed with a concreated disposition to holi- ness. Adam chose evil because he wanted to. How could he want to choose it ? that is the real question. Partial and insufficient explanations of this great fact have been attempted. The fact of Satanic temptation has been urged as accounting for the fall. The adversary, it is said, deceived our first parents, and this deception fur- nished the force needed to counterbalance their natural tendencies to good. But this is rather a hiding of the difficulty than an escape from it. For their yielding to such deception presupposes distrust of God and alienation from him. And then, even if this were a sufficient answer as respects Adam, it would only remove the problem one step further back. For Satan's fall, or at least, the fall of the first created spirit that apostatized, cannot be explained by temptation from without. To say that God creates any finite being with original disposition to evil, is the greatest of blasphemies, for it denies his holiness and makes him the virtual author of sin. Sin is the wilful revolt of the free creature from God. At his own door, and not at the door of God or of any fellow-creature, the blame of it must be laid. A more plausible explanation is that which regards the fall as due to the withholding of supernatural grace, and so to be a demonstration that even free and pure intelligences must have their life in God, and cannot maintain their integrity without him. The grace given to Adam, it is said, was assist- ing grace, which he could use or not, as he willed. The grace given to us is grace that makes us will, and will aright. That only assisting grace, and not overcoming grace, was given to Adam, was not a penalty, but a tribute to his strength and perfection, which was naturally equal to the task before it. Now, grace is omnipotent, because nature is wholly without power. Then, grace was weak, because nature was strong. We recognize a measure of truth in this view. Irresistible grace certainly cannot be claimed as a matter of right by free creatures, perfectly endowed and naturally able to keep God's law. It makes the fall somewhat more intelligible, by its sug- gestion that the first sin was the inward withdrawing of the affections from God and consequent self-isolation of the spirit from the ever-ready influx of divine love and power. But the " why ? " still remains unanswered, and the "how?" is still unexplained. What motive to withdraw from God? And if the motive be assigned, whence could the motive come ? The mere power of choice does not explain the fact of an unholy choice. The fact of natural 110 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR desire for sensuous and intellectual gratification does not explain how this desire came to be inordinate. We must acknowledge that we cannot under- stand how the first unholy emotion could have found shelter in a mind that was supremely set on God, nor how temptation could have overcome a soul in which there were originally no unholy propensities to which it could appeal. But it is somethiug to show that there may be reasons why this matter is beyond our comprehension, and that the difficulty is a greater stumbling- block in the way of the opposite theory of the will than it can possibly be upon our own. Let us remember that the matter in question is the origina- tion not of a single volition, nor of one disposition among many, but of the fundamental bent and determination of the whole moral being. Such revo- lution of the nature, such change in the whole direction of the conscious and unconscious powers, we have no experience of, except in regeneration, when this fundamental bent of the affections and will is reversed. But even of this we can hardly be said to have experience, because it is wrought not by us but by God, and that so secretly and inscrutably, that we know nothing of it except in its results of conversion, or the voluntary turning of the soul, on our part, to God. Even this conversion is a unique thing, never wholly explicable, even to him who turns ; but God's work is all a mystery. And yet, this act of turning back to God, that occurs only once in a lifetime, is the only incident of our experience that affords even the most distant analogue to that first supreme and unique act, by which in our great ancestor, all that there was of human nature turned away from God. It was an apostasy which could occur but once. It occurred in Adam before the eating of the forbidden fruit, and revealed itself in that eating. The subsequent sins of Adam and of ourselves are different in kind. They do not, as that did, determine or change the nature they only show what that nature is, and and bring out more or less distinctly its inner capacities of evil. It was the one leap over the precipice. Once taken, it could never be undone. And because man cannot leap back again to the height from which he has fallen, but must lead his life far below, he finds it impossible to comprehend the nature or the possibility of that act, by which the race once for all left its first estate and gave itself to evil. Therefore we accept the doctrine of the fall without comprehending the method of it. But for the very reason that we do not comprehend it, we refuse to draw from it inferences prejudicial to facts indubitably ascertained from consciousness and from the word of God. We still claim, that however man's evil disposition first arose, there was an evil disposition, not derived from God but originated by man, in spite of holy tendencies with which God endowed him, and that therefore man sinned from a motive which God was able to foresee, and against whose results he was able to provide. Do our opponents, the advocates of a capricious will, know more about the matter than this ? Are they able to show that their theory removes the difficulties of the case ? On the contrary we are persuaded that upon their view there is left no real responsibility for sin at all, and if there were responsibility, no possibility of foreseeing it or providing a salvation from it. For, consider, on the one hand, that this first most dreadful and most damning sin of all, was committed not only without motive but against AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. Ill motive. It was not only an unreasonable but an unreasoning act. There was no aim in view, no object songht, no desire to be gratified, which determined the kind and direction of the sinful volition. We say then that the volition was not sinful. No act is to be condemned, except as it is regarded as originating in, and as symptomatic of, an evil disposition. It is the settled principle of civil law, that crime does not consist alone in the external act. There is no crime, unless with the act, goes an evil motive or intent. We apply this principle to Adam's sin, and we declare, that to call that sin a motiveless and uncaused act, originating in the pure sovereignty and creatorship of Adam's mere faculty of volitions, is to deny that he sinned at all, and to turn the whole momentous transaction upon which the world's fate hung, into mere chance or madness, that could bring no guilt to Adam and no just consequences of sin or misery to the race. Nor could such an act of bare caprice have been foreseen or provided for. If there was no motive, there was no certainty. If there was no certainty, there was nothing to be foreknown. If there was nothing to be foreknown, foreknowledge was impossible. What then means the fitting up of the world with all its dark draperies of storm and suffering, of malformation and of blight, of thorns and thistles, of internecine war among the brute creation, and the feeding of life upon life, that marked the ages before Adam ? This looks as if man's coming and man's sin had been positively foreseen, and an arena had been fitted up, congruous with the great drama that was to be enacted. Above all, what means that revelation of the heart of God before creation, which is given us in those words: "The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world ; " and what mean those declarations that in this Christ we were "chosen before the world was ?" These things indicate that tin- atonement and the application of the atonement w r ere certainties before the curtain of night and chaos rose in the beginning. But if these things were certainties, says the theory, Adam could not have been free. To which we can only reply : So much the worse for a theory of freedom, which regards it as a synonym for caprice, and divorces it from the directing power of motive. We come now to the last objection which needs an answer, this namely, that upon the view which we have set forth, man can do nothing to change his character. The power to alter our dispositions and to improve our prin- ciples of action, it is said, even though we be destitute of God's saving grace, is recognized in all processes of education, whether in the school or the family, and is the presupposition of all systems of civil and criminal admin- istration. Now, in reply to this, it would be enough to say that our theory of the will makes room for the possibility of all these changes, so long as the fundamental motive remains the same. We have granted the fact of civil and secular freedom. Every man has the power of doing as he pleases, and. of acting out in his individual choices the character within him. That char- acter is a self-centred and self-seeking character. But there are a thousand ways of manifesting self-will, and of reaching self-gratification. And as widening knowledge presents new avenues for selfish activity, or more prom- ising means of self -exaltation, the fundamental tendency of the will asserts itself in ever-varying choices. The indolent man, with new prospects of wealth opening to his view, may become a man of industry, and the drunkard, 112 THE WILL IN THEOLOGY, OR, aroused to see the misery that lies before him and his family, may reform and become sober. Nay, we go further, and grant that there may be advances to forms of character of high intellectuality and of vast service to human welfare and progress, while yet the heart is unchanged, and the man is in spirit far from God. The gentleness of the worldly man may even simulate the grace of Christian love, and the steadfastness of worldly integ- rity may be mistaken for Christian principle, yet no power be at work but the self-contained and self -regarding principle that lies at the basis of the natural character. Now all this possibility of growth in good we grant, so long as it is allowed that the human will cannot go further, and change the fundamental affec- tion which constitutes its inmost character. We may grow in moral evil, by natural process, but not into true moral good. For moral good and natural .good are two very different things. Moral good, in the sense in which we use the term, is only the fruit of the truest motive, love to God. And even the first beginnings of moral good are impossible without the inworking of the Holy Spirit. Man can choose between different ways of manifesting his natural disposition and determination ; he may repress certain tendencies to evil, and may secure a growth in useful habit. But all the while, the inner motive of his striving will fail to be the highest motive, and his character will fail to meet the divine approval. This motive and this character, no power but God's can change. But can he not bend his mind to truth, and bring before him the force of outward facts that tend to enlighten and soften and subdue ? Abstractly, yes. Practically, no. He has the natural power of attention, but alas, he will not attend. What is needed is, not new light on the picture, but the removal of the cataract which prevents him from seeing the picture. What is needed is, not volitions, prompted by the old selfish desire for his own interest and welfare, but a new affection towards God, which will make him, in the deepest fountain of his being, conformed to the divine holiness and empowered to the doing of God's will. And this need of a new principle and motive, such as only God can give, is what the theory of will we are opposing, constantly tends to ignore. Would that its advocates could learn the humility and dependence of spirit which would enable them to understand this truth aright ! You remember that when John and James, two brothers dear to our Lord, but not yet taught by the Spirit as they were a little after, came to Christ and besought the high places in his kingdom, Jesus put to them the searching question : " Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " Little did they know of the mighty and awful import of those words the cup of suffering in Gethsemane and on Calvary, and the baptism of death and the grave that was to follow. But the question daunted them not. In their profound ignorance of Christ and of themselves, they said with a light and cheerful sense of independence and of power : " We are able ! " How wonderful it is that Christ's rebuke was so gentle, how wonderful that he accepted even this self -ignorant and self -trustful deter- mination to follow him, and then, taking the will for the deed, by his mighty Pentecostal Spirit made the deed equal to the will, so that James drank gladly the bitter cup of martyrdom, and John's long century life-time was baptized into the spirit of the Savior's death ! But has man nothing to do AN EARLIER VIEW OF THE WILL. 113 then in his own salvation ? Yes, I say ; but it is with the ability that God giveth. God works, not before our working, but in and through our work- ing. And he has shown men what is the work of God, namely, that they believe on Christ, his only begotten Son. This is man's duty, this is man's privilege, the moment the gospel message comes to him. The change of character is wrought by God's power alone, in and through man's trust and submission to the Savior. It is the old story of the withered hand. Was there ability there ? Was the man wholly unresponsible for obedience until his hand was healed ? Should he delay to stretch it forth, until Christ had wrought his cure ? Ah, he might have waited forever without being healed, if he had held a certain theory of the will that we know of. Nay, there was duty there, before there was power ; yet the healing did not follow upon obedience, but communicated the very power to obey. So there are lost men, whose moral nerves are shrivelled and powerless, and their very capa- city of obedience gone. Without a renewal of their wills, they will not, they cannot, accept salvation. Yet we are bicfden to go and preach to them that they turn at once from their iniquities and believe in Christ. Thank God, though they have not the power to change their characters, there is a divine Spirit who can do this work, and who, with our word of command and invi- tation and promise, will energize the impotent will, and will cause it to rouse itself from its slumber of death, and to put forth new and God-given powers of life and spiritual freedom ! 8 VIII. MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN.* What is freedom, and how much of freedom, if any, is left to us in our unregenerate state ? Dr. Shedd has well said that the answer to this ques- tion, more than to any other, determines a man's position in theology. I have become convinced that the theory of Jonathan Edwards, with which Calvinism is so often identified, is in certain respects, too narrow a one to embrace all the facts, and that Calvin himself, as well as Augustine before him, held a somewhat broader and a more Scriptural view of Imman liberty. As I propose, however, to test the subject in my own way, and as Edwards, Calvin, Augustine, and their particular opinions, are of little account except as they may guide us to the truth or warn us of error, I will for the present leave them to themselves and will come at the real subject of investigation from another quarter. We cannot properly estimate man's freedom in his estate of sin without comparing it with some ideal standard. What is man's normal freedom ? In a perfect moral state how will this freedom manifest itself ? Two or three answers at once suggest themselves. The highest freedom is not simply an absence of external or internal constraint of the necessity of willing evil. Nor is it a mere self-determining indecision, evenly balanced between good and evil, and equally ready to walk upon the heights of virtue or to plunge into the abyss of sin. It is rather such an inworking of law into the heart and soul of a man, that there is a spontaneous and infallible choosing of the right. The German poet did well when he rejected every vestige of moral indecision from his notion of freedom : " In vain shall spirits that are all unbound To the pure heights of perfectness aspire ; In limitation first the Master shines, And law alone can give us liberty." No instructed Christian can fail to see, moreover, that the law which is thus inwrought into man's heart and soul must be " the law of the Spirit of life," and not something merely abstract and impersonal. True freedom, in other words, involves an indwelling and inworking of God in man. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there, and there only, is liberty. There is no true freedom of the human spirit but in being the conscious, voluntary executor of the will of the Infinite One ; aye, more than this, in being inter- penetrated, informed and energized by the living God. "Here, "in the language of a noted writer, "is the Christian paradox. I am to feel myself * Printed in the Baptist Review, April, 1883. 114 MODIFIED CALVINISM. 115 passive in the hands of God, yet on that very account the more intensely active. I am to be moved unresistingly by God, like the most inert instru- ment or machine, yet to be for that very reason all the more instinct with life and motion. My whole moral frame and mechanism is to be possessed and occupied by God, and worked by God, and yet through that very work- ing of God in and upon my inner man, I am to be made to apprehend more than ever my own inward liberty and power. This is the true freedom of the will of man, and then only is my will truly free, when it becomes the engine for working out the will of God." If this be the true notion of freedom in man's state of perfection if, even at man's best, there can be no freedom without God can man in his fallen state be less dependent ? We grant that man can work evil without God, but can he work anything which is truly good ? Surely not. In a fallen state man is solely responsible for evil, but not he alone is to be credited with good. That is due to God. Good King Alfred, with laboring quaint- ness of phrase, tried to express this truth more than a thousand years ago : 4 ' When the good things of this life are good, then they are good through the goodness of the good man who worketh good with them, and he is good through God. " But the fountain-head of all this doctrine is in the utter- ance of the Apostle Paul : "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." And yet, if Paul were not an inspired apostle, such an utterance might seem a piece of sublime audacity. Here are two truths, so far as human reason can see, irreconcilable with each other, yet both asserted in the same breath and without the slightest intimation that the apostle is aware of any contradiction between them. Divine sovereignty and efficiency on the one hand, and human freedom and responsibility on the other. God the worker of all good, yet man called upon to work out his own salvation. We are usually content to hold each of these truths at different times, and we are greatly perplexed when we are required to grasp both of them together. We are like the child who tries at the same moment to hold in its little hand two oranges. It can hold one, but so surely as it attempts to take up the other, it is compelled to drop the first. So God's working and man's work- ing are both of them truths, but our intellects are too infantile as yet to be able at once to grasp them both. Cecil once said in substance that the preacher who preached the whole truth of God would sometimes be accused of being a hyper-Calvinist ; and that the. preacher who preached the whole truth of God would at other times be accused of being an out and out Arminian. And F. W. Robertson is but the type of a multitude of candid thinkers, when he tells us that he was in great trouble so long as he sought to discover the bond of connection between God's sovereignty and man's free-agency, and that he found rest only when he finally determined that both were true, and that he would preach them both, but that he would forever give over any attempt to understand or to explain the relation between them. But Paul stands on a loftier height than either Cecil or Robertson. What to us seems contradiction, is to him as if it were not. He seems to discern the inner harmony between the divine and the human activities. He walks 116 MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, with firm and elastic step along the edge of these fathomless abysses of thought, and, as for the depths of mystery, he does not even notice them. For my part I count it a proof of his inspiration. No merely human tongue could thus speak of the problem of the ages without effort to speculate or explain. I cannot understand Paul's calm declaration of the twofold truth without supposing that God lifted Paul up to something like his own divine point of view, and then enabled Paul to speak as the oracles of God. "While the ordinary reader of Scripture has contented himself with hold- ing each of these truths alternately, the makers of theological systems have very often tried to do better, and to embrace both in a rightly proportioned and organic whole. But we have to confess that, owing to the limitations of the human intellect which I have already alluded to, whether these be original and permanent, or superinduced by sin and destined to gradual removal, the success of the systematizers has been far from complete. They have been constantly tempted to purchase a seeming unity by a partial ignoring of the one or the other element of the problem. Many a scheme of doctrine has been built up upon the single datum of human freedom. Freedom itself has been denned as the liberty of indifference, the soul's power to act without motive or contrary to the strongest motive, and such freedom Las been declared to be the measure of obligation. The result has been the denial of all responsibility for our native depi avity, all certainty of man's universal sinfulne : s and dependence upon Christ, all permanence of holy character in the redeemed or of unholy character in the lost, all prede- termination or even foreknowledge by God of human free acts or tinal des- tinies a self-dependent, self-righteous religion, in which the glory is given to man, not to God. And then, on the other hand, many a system has been built upon the single datum of God's sovereignty, and man's freedom has been recognized only in name. Because God works all and in all, man's working has been ignored, and the human will has been made only the passive instrument of the divine efficiency and purpose. The result has been that human individ- ually ha? been lost sight of ; the personality of man has been merged in the totality of the race ; the race itself is but the automatic executor of an eternal decree ; conscience is lulled to sleep ; responsibility becomes a dream ; sin is no longer guilt, but misfortune ; men are saved or lost, no longer because of what they are or what they do, but only because it was so detsrmined from eternity. A faith like this may have in it some grain of truth, and may be far better than no religion at all, but it is dangerously defective. It plays into the hands of modern materialism with its profess- edly scientific refutation of the freedom of the will ; and if it cannot be justly called pantheistic, it is only because the necessitarian element in it is not carried to its logical consequences. Let it have its way unchecked and unchallenged, and Christianity becomes a dead orthodoxy, whose deadness is evinced by indolence and immorality of life. Now it is this last error which in certain quarters is most prevalent, and which it is my present purpose to test by an appeal to Scripture and to con- sciousness. But before I do this, it is important to notice that, in the passage which I just now quoted, the apostle Paul does not urge human duty by denying or undervaluing the divine activity. He does not inculcate man's REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN. 117 work by disparaging God's. Nay, he not only recognizes both, but he bases the duty of the former upon the fact of the latter "Work out your own salvation," he tells us, "for it is God that worketh in you." As between the Calvinistic and the Arminian scheme then, the Calvinistic is much the better, for it presents the more fundamental truth, the truth which human nature tends most to deny, the truth which we need most to recognize. An awe-inspiring view of God's working will nerve the soul, so that inaction will be impossible. It is not true, conversely, that a strong conviction of human power will lead to dependence upon God. The Scotch Covenanters knew what practical religion was. The English Church of the eighteenth century hardly did. And the difference was determined largely by their creeds. To know tha God is at work in us gives hope and courage. All things are possible to himt who believes in this. But to be thrown back upon self and the strength of my unstable will for my security of salvation, this is weakening and depress- ing. Therefore Paul tells us that in our very working we are to recognize already the working of God and the pledge of victory. No synergism here ; no recognition of an equal partnership between man and God, much less of a cooperation to be symbolized by a ' tandem ' team in which man leads and God follows ; nor a " working out," on man's part, of what God, on his part, " works in." All this misses the point entirely. Paul's idea is that God is in all, and man in all, so that man is to go forward joyfully, in the faith that every movement is the revelation of a divine energy within him, and that his success is not by might or power of his own, but by the Spirit of the Lord. Whatever stage of progress he shall reach, he shall know that in some true sense it is God who has wrought all his works in him, that unto these very works he has been created in Christ Jesus, according to the eter- nal ordination of God, and therefore he shall ever cry : "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory ! " Having thus vindicated my position as a genuine Calvinist, I wish to point out certain limitations of this doctrine of divine agency. And the first is that while God is said to be the worker of all good, he is not said to be the worker of all evil. There has been a hyper Calvinism that has practi- cally taught this. It has made God the only actor in the universe. Because all things are included in his plan, it has been supposed that he must work all by his actual efficiency. And when it has been objected that this must make God the direct author of sin in human hearts, and that the responsi- bility of sin is thus transferred from man to God, such men as Hop- kins and Emmons have responded that the moral quality of action does not depend upon its cause, but only upon its nature. It is difficult to find words strong enough to express the instinctive indig- nation of the unsophisticated mind at this slanderous imputation upon God, and at the perverse reasoning with which it is supported. Is it possible to suppose that a human being, created with a will set against holiness and efficiently caused to exercise his evil propensities, would still be responsible for the possession of this will and for the exercise of these propensities ? Yet this must be true, if the moral quality of activity does not at all depend upon its cause. God might make a man evil ; and yet for this evil, not God, but man, might be responsible. This cannot be. We can hold man respon- 118 MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, sible for his evil nature, only upon the assumption that man is himself in some. proper sense the originator of it. I do not now inquire whether there may not be a race-unity and a race-responsibility in virtue of which human- ity is an organic whole, and constitutes one moral person before God. I only claim that no man's evil dispositions can be accounted guilty unless their origin can be traced back to some self-determined trangression, com- mitted either in his individual capacity or in his connection with the race. We are guilty only of that sin which we have originated, or have had a part in originating. * Indeed there is no other sin than this. Sin is never God's work, but always man's. Within the bounds of the human race and of this only we are speaking sin is not caused by beings or by things outside of us. It is due, neither directly to God's efficiency, nor indirectly to the circumstances in which God has placed us. Man's sin comes from himself, and each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. The view just combated, although it strenuously asserts the personality of God, is virtually a system of fatalism. Man's acts are all determined for him from without. Not only the natural power which is used in performing them, but their moral quality itself, is the result of God's efficient agency. Fortunately no extensive body of Christians has ever held this view. But there has been another view almost equally pernicious, and which still has great currency. It is the view that man's acts are all determined from within, so determined by his inborn tendencies and dispositions that his life is noth- ing but a necessary manifestation of inherited character. All action is sim- ply an unfolding of the nature, and cannot be different from that nature in kind. Man's freedom is simply freedom to act conformably to his existing evil inclination. That inclination he has no power to modify or check. This view may be called determinism, as the former view was called fatalism. It grants a freedom to action, but denies a freedom from action. Man does as he pleases, but he cannot please differently. And yet, although the inborn tendencies determine the life by an absolute necessity, man is held respon- sible for his activities because they are determined not from without but from within. Now before indicating the precise point of error in this view, let us test it by certain well known facts of our experience. The theory denies the exist- ence of any power in man to check or to modify his prevailing inclination. The man's volitions must correspond with his evil nature. He has power to manifest his character in action, but he has no power to change his charac- ter. Is this true ? The carnal mind is enmity to God. Must every man therefore commit the sin against the Holy Ghost ? I do not ask whether the commission of this sin may not be expected in the case of every sinner who * Some would prefer to add : " or with the origination of which we have had sympa- thy." But aside from the obvious objection that to be guilty of sympathizing with another's sin is not precisely to be guilty of committing that sin (the two are distin- guished in Rom. 1 : 33), I cannot think that this explanation of the common guilt of the race gives their full and natural meaning to phrases in Rom. 5 : 12-19, such as " for that all sinned " ( aorist, v. 12 ) ; " through one trespass " ( v. 18 ). Compare 1 Cor. 15 : 22 ; 2 Cor. 6 : 14. The vast majority of men have never individually heard of Adam's sin ; how then can they be said to sympathize with it ? Is not this a sinning like Adam, instead of sinning with him ; a fall through individual trespasses, rather than through the " one trespass " of the " one man ? " REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN. 119 continues in wilful rebellion. I simply ask whether this sin against the Holy Ghost is to be expected, in the case of every sinner, at once, or at the beginning of his conscious transgression. You answer in the negative. You grant then that the sinner has power to avoid that sin that in this case at least he has a freedom from, as well as a freedom to. Is this freedom wholly the result of special grace ? Then if, apart from extraordinary influences of the Holy Spirit, this sin against the Holy Ghost would uniformly be com- mitted at the first moment of moral consciousness, are not all moral condi- tions short of that sin solely due to God, and is not every man practically as guilty as if he had already committed it ? But this seems clearly inconsist- ent with the special guilt attaching to its commission. Why is it that, unlike fallen angels, man has yet to commit a sin which will put him beyond the reach of mercy ? We seem compelled to recognize here a remnant of free- dom. Man is not borne on irresistibly by his evil nature, so that apart from the special power of God he must at once and inevitably commit the sin against the Holy Ghost. Apply the principle still further. We must grant that even the unregen- erate man has power to choose a less degree of sin instead of a greater ; he oau refuse altogether to yield to certain temptations ; he can do outwardly good acts with imperfect motives ; he can even seek God from considerations of self-interest. We do not claim that the unregenerate man can do any act, however insignificant, which can fully meet God's approval or answer the demands of his law. Much less do we claim that the unregeuerate man can of himself change his fundamental preference for self and sin into a supreme love for God. But then, while we recognize inborn tendencies to evil and a bent of will contracted by persistent transgression, it is of great import- ance to remember that this is not the whole of the man. There is a residuum of power by which he may render himself more or less depraved. No man will be condemned in the final judgment solely because of what he was born with judgment shall be rendered according to the deeds done in the body. It is not true that the only probation is the probation of the race in Adam. There is an individual probation also, in which each man decides his destiny. Those who are shut out from God's mercy, at the last, will be shut out because they would not come to him that they might have life. Human existence in this world is not a mere spontaneous development of evil. As all men have freedom in thinking as all men can suspend the action of mere asso- ciation and can select the objects of their thought in matters that are merely secular so, in matters of the soul, when God's claims are presented to the intellect, there is a power in every sinner to suspend present evil action and judgment and to fasten attention upon the considerations which urge obedi- ence to God. If we say that in the absence of love for holiness there is no motive for even this slight and preliminary attention to the truth, I answer that there is still a natural propension toward abstract truth, besides the admonitions of conscience and the impulses of self-interest, which may be appealed to in the case of every sinner who has not yet sinned the sin unto death and said with Satan : " Evil, be thou my good ! " And, that this nat- ural self-interest is not in itself sinful, God himself shows when he addresses the warnings and invitations of his word both to men's hopes and to men's fears. 120 MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, In the old Greek tragedy the Furies pursued men to wretched deaths, because these men had unwittingly committed some offense against divine or human law. Oedipus can say that his evil deeds have been suffered rather than done. But Christian ethics is obliged to found responsibility upon freedom. Somewhere we must find an originating act, which we either our- selves committed or in which we had a part. Somewhere we must find a point where we can say : It might have been otherwise. In everything which the conscience recognizes as sin, the plea of absolute necessity bars all guilt, remorse, or punishment. And here is the error of that form of Calvinism which it is my present object to criticize. It is the error of put- ting in the link of necessity between man's fundamental disposition and his individual choices. Volitions are conceived of as mere hands upon the dial, that indicate the internal structure of the clock. Will has no power to react upon the interior mechanism, and so change the direction or kind of its movement. Upon this view there should be no power of suspending evil action in any given case, no power of directing the attention to opposing considerations, no power of summoning up motives to good, no power of seeking help from God. In this respect it seems to me that we are called upon to retreat from Jon- athan Edward's philosophy to the positions of Scripture. Edwards held that volition must always follow inclination, and that an act of will contrary in its nature to the soul's fundamental preference was inconceivable and impossible. * But Adam was created in righteousness and true holiness how was it possible that Adam could ever fall ? The Christian's deepest love is love for God how is it possible that the Christian can ever sin ? Here are cases where the volitions are not mere manifestations of the soul's fun- damental preference. How will Jonathan Edwards explain them ? He does not pretend to explain them. You may look his works through, and find no solution of the problem. These are outlying facts which could not be recon- ciled with his theory of the will, and their existence proves his theory insufficient, however correct in its main features it may be. Both Calvin and Augustine were broader than Edwards. They held that Adam at least had a power of contrary choice not that he could choose good and choose evil at the same time, but that he had power to change his choice of good into a choice of evil a power which he actually exercised in the fall. The race which fell in him has indeed lost the power to change its moral condition by an act of will, but its present state is referable to a free act in which, in the person of its first father, it consciously and wick- * Edwards, it is true, calls this necessity a "philosophical necessity," and insists that he means by the phrase nothing more nor less than certainty ( Freedom of the Will, p. 10 ). But there are passages in his treatise which imply much more than this. For example, he ascribes to future free acts the same necessity that belongs to an act done in the past (p. 77.) Motive is cause, and renders other volition than the one put forth causeless and impossible. Motive acts as inevitably as a mechanical cause, and volition is its effect, passively produced or modified (p. 53). " The will, at the time of that diverse or oppo- site leading act or inclination and when actually under the influence of it, is not able to exert itself to the contrary, to make an alteration in order^to a compliance " a sentence which is either meaningless, or means that a man cannot change any inclination or pur- pose which he has once formed. REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN. 121 edly apostatized from God. Calvin * and Augustine t both recognized, as Edwards never did, that, in spite of this transgression of the race in Adani and the inherited depravity that has resulted therefrom, each individual has a power of his own to check and to modify his evil nature and to make him- self more or less guilty in the sight of God. Man is not wholly a develop- ment of inborn tendencies, a manifestation of original sin. The corrupt tree, says Augustine, may produce the wild fruit of morality, though it cannot produce the divine fruit of grace. There is still left a power to resist depravity and to attend to truth, just as the Christian man has still left a power to put forth evil volitions which contradict the governing disposition of his soul. It is a great gain to doctrine and to conduct when we learn that character does not absolutely bind us. Christian character does not bind the Chris- tian to be holy. Adam's and Satan's originally holy character did not abso- lutely bind them. They had power not only to choose ways of acting out their fundamental choice, but they had power of changing that choice. Not only had they power to choose between different expressions of motive, but they had power to choose between motives themselves. Both in the fall and at conversion there is such a new choice of motive. Motives are not properly causes, but only occasions, of our action. The man himself is the cause. Motives do not compel, they rather persuade, the will. The will acts in view of motives. And so we may give a new definition of free agency, con- sidered as a condition of responsibility, and as distinguished from that spir- itual freedom first-mentioned which is identical with perfect conformity to the divine law. Free agency to give a formula which will apply to all responsible beings, perfect and imperfect, fallen and uufallen is the soul's power to choose between motives, and to direct its subsequent activities according to the motive thus chosen. In secular concerns, this choice between motives is no uncommon thing. We know what it is to choose a profession, and we know that this choice is a very different thing from the following of the profession thus chosen. In religious concerns this choice between motives is the event of a lifetime, whether it be the one decision for good in the life-time of the individual, or the one decision for evil in the life-time of the race. That decision once made, and the motive whether good or evil once chosen, affection and habit will make it harder and harder to change the decision and to reverse the * Calvin, Inst. Rel. Ch., 1 : 15 : 8 " Man was endowed with free will by which, if he had chosen, he might have obtained eternal life. Adam could have stood if he would, since he fell merely by his own will ; but, because his will was flexible to either side and he was not endowed with constancy to persevere, therefore he so easily fell. Yet his choice of good and evil was free ; and not only so, but his mind and will were possessed of con- summate rectitude, and all his organic parts were rightly disposed to obedience, till destroying himself, he corrupted all his excellencies." * * * " It would have been unrea- sonable that God should be confined to this condition, to make man so as to be altogether incapable either of choosing or of committing any sin." t Augustine, De Correptione et Gratia, c. 13 "While all men are evil, they have through free will added [to original sin] some more, some less." De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio. 2: 1 " Added to the sin of their birth sins of their own commission." 2:4 " Neither denies our liberty of will whether to choose an evil or a good life, nor attri- butes to it so much power that it can avail anything without God's grace, or that it can. change itself from evil to good." 122 MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, choice. Evil doing will give rise to a diseased state in which the will is so weak that it is certain never to break its bonds without divine help. He that commits sin becomes the slave of sin, and will never emerge into free- dom until Christ stretches out his hand to deliver. But even this certainty of continuous evil activity is not necessity ; and the fact that this evil activ- ity is self-originated and self-maintained is an all-sufficient ground of responsibility and condemnation both in conscience and before God's bar. In Julius Miiller's " Doctrine of Sin " there is frankly recognized, both in the individual and in the race as a whole, an already existing determination to evil. There is a bent of the will, prior to individual volitions, which can- not be explained as mere habit, and which amounts to an active preference of selfishness and sin. Thus far Julius Miiller grants to determinism an element of truth. But then he declares that this existing determination to evil is partly limited by the will's remaining power of choice, and is partly traceable to a former self-determination. In my judgment the great German theologian has given us the best extant discussion of the subject, and with his conclusions, so far as man's present state is concerned, I substantially agree. I recognize such a thing as character affections set in the direction of wrong or right, and endowed with power to persuade the will and that with infallible certainty because the will itself has made them what they are, and even now cherishes them. Even in the case of congenital bias toward evil we are responsible for the evil affections we inherit, because we are not simply individuals, but also members of a common humanity, which in its first father determined itself against God. But the complementary truth must never be forgotten, that these affections, formed as they are, are still subject in some degree to will, and that will is continually under the necessity either of resisting or of re-affirming them. The man's opportunity to choose between motives is a constant one, and whether he actually change his motive or not, he knows that he is not yet wholly deprived of his power to change it. Of course the objection will be raised that this choice between motives must be a choice without motive, and that such an act of pure will is neither conceivable nor rational. We grant, with Calderwood, that an act of pure will is unknown in consciousness. There is no volition without motive, no putting forth of power without a reason for its exercise. We even dissent from Calderwood, when, very inconsistently with his statement already mentioned, he ascribes to will, in the initial act of attention, a freedom from the influence of motive. We maintain, on the contrary, that everywhere and always the will acts only in view of motives, and that the theory of lib- erty which represents will as existing in an undetermined state, or as deter- mining itself without motive or against the strongest motive, is repugnant both to consciousness and to reason. The choice to attend to considerations prompting a different course from that which we are now pursuing, is never made but for a reason, and that reason may be found both in instincts from within and in incitements from without. Motives are commonly compounded of external presentations and of internal dispositions. In freely choosing between motives, the man is influenced by motives by one motive more than by another ; otherwise motives are a mere impertinence, and the man may make up his decision entirely without them. There can always be found REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN. 123 a reason for changing from one motive to another, aye, even in the case of capricious acts so-called, where the reason is simply the gratification of a lawless independence. A reason, but not a cause. A persuasive influence, but not a constraining power. The cause, the power, are in the free will that chooses. That will infallibly chooses according to motive, but it is not determined by motive. Will is itself the determiner. Here is an act of absolute origination an act inexplicable to the logical understanding. With Sir William Hamilton, we accept the fact that the will is an undetermined cause, upon the simple tes- timony of consciousness. But it may be questioned whether the whole difficulty in the case does not arise from taking the word motive in a mechan- ical sense, and from forgetting that the motive is nothing but the man. All motive is in the last analysis internal. Motive is simply the man in a cer- tain state of feeling or desire. And will is nothing but this same man choosing. The man may have many desires, and therefore many motives, some lower, some higher, but prior to his decision no one of these motives may be stronger than another. It is the soul's choosing to yield to the one rather than to the other that gives that one its strength. It becomes the prevailing motive only by the soul's determining to follow it and identify itself with it. As before choice it may be said that the motive was only the man, so after choice it may be said that the man is nothing but his motive at least until at some new epoch of his experience, he gives himself up to some new impulse that clamors for control. So man is not a creative first cause, for the reason that he only chooses between impulses previously existing a drop of water, as a French writer has said, which chooses whether it will flow into the Bhine or into the Bhone. The forces that bear it onward are not of its own making, any more than the drop of water makes the force of gravitation. Man can choose his direction only, whether toward holiness or unholiness, Satan or God, heaven or hell. Yet, determining what his motive shall be, he determines his character, that is, he determines himself: he is in the highest sense self-determined, and therefore solely responsible, not only for his present character, but for all the executive acts which flow therefrom. * Man is one, and desire and will always go together. They act and react upon each other. The will may strengthen or weaken the desires by direct- ing the attention to or from the objects adapted to excite them. Man may thus to a certain extent change his course and modify his character. The * Since writing the above I find in the Princeton Review for 1856, pp. 514, 515, an extended notice of Wiliiain Lyall's Intellect, Emotions and Moral Nature (Edinburgh, Constable & Co., 1855). From that work the following lines are quoted with approval : " The will follows reasons, inducements, but it is not caused. It obeys, or it acts under inducement, but it does so sovereignly." .... " It exhibits the phenomena of activity in relation to the very motive it obeys. It obeys it rather than another. It determines in reference to it that this is the very motive which it will obey. There is undoubtedly this phenomenon exhibited, the will obeying, but elective, active in its obedience. If it be asked how this is possible, how the will can be under the influence of motive and yet possess an intellectual activity, we reply that this is one of those ultimate phenomena which must he admitted, while they cannot be explained." So we may add that in all fundamental choices the object chosen and the motive for choosing are one and the same thing. 124 MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, desires in turn act upon the will and influence its decisions, without however destroying its power to accept or reject their suggestions. Which comes first, desire or will? It is like asking: "Which comes first, strength or exercise ? In this last case, we should answer : Either may come first. Strength usually comes first, and is the condition of exercise. But there are cases when strength is greatly reduced, and only exercise will restore it. Then exercise comes before strength. So, in the case of our ordinary action, desire seems to precede will ; in the crises of our history, will seems to pre- cede desire. In the cognition of beauty, who can tell which goes before, the intellect- ual apprehension or the state of the sensibility ? Do you say the man must first know, in order to feel ? Chronologically, yes for his feeling must have an object, and this the intellect must furnish. Logically, no for no man can see a beauty which he does not love ; and the taste conditions the intellectual apprehension. So both desire and will are involved in every moral act ; each affects the other. Yet in certain acts the one element may be more prominent than the other, the one may precede the other. Logi- cally, desire may come first ; but chronologically, will. The views presented in this paper are partly intended to constitute a sup- plement and modification of those advocated by the author in the article which precedes this. That there may be no mistake with regard to their nature, let me here sum up what has been said thus far, and distinguish my position as precisely as possible from other schemes with which it might be confounded. As to original sin. The race is organically one. When Adam sinned and fell, all there was of human nature sinned and fell in him. By an act of free will he corrupted his nature, and all his posterity possess by inheritance that nature which corrupted itself in him. Adam's act of will was an act of permanent choice, and we partake of it. The result of that act was a depraving of his affections, and we partake of them. I reject however that division of the human powers which classes affections under the head of will. I would speak of voluntary affections only in the sense that the will has originated, and that the will continues to cherish, these affec- tions. Both in the case of Adam and in the case of his posterity, the settled choice of self as the end of living, and the evil affections which result there- from, involve a moral inability to do right or to obey God, while yet the natural ability remains. Man can change his evil desire, but he has no desire to change. The can-not is simply a will-not ; though, until the Spirit of God deliver him, that will-not is a bondage as terrible and remorseless as any imprisonment behind iron bars. But it is a bondage for which the sin- ner is responsible and guilty, because it consists in nothing but his own active choice of evil. Not all sin then is personal. There was a first race-sin, in which man's will and affections freely and wickedly contracted a perverse bent and incli- nation. Only by identifying ourselves with Adam, can we account for our birth with evil dispositions for which both conscience and Scripture hold us guilty. But now, as to man's remaining freedom. Neither Adam nor his posterity in that first act of sin lost their natural power of will, though they did lose their inclination to will conformably to God's law. There was still in the case of Adam there is still in the case of his posterity a power to REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN. 125 check the manifestations of evil inclination, and at least indirectly and with imperfect motives to seek its reversal. It is \vithin man's power to be more or less corrupt in his outward life, and to use with more or less faithfulness the outward means of grace. Inborn character does not so bind a man that he has no individual probation. He has still the freedom which consists in choosing between motives ; and inasmuch as this choice is not without motive but is made for a reason, there is previous certainty of an evil choice, while yet the soul has perfect power to make a right one. Thus I would exclude both the hyper-Calvinistic determinism which would make the life of each individual simply the evolution of his inherited depravity, and also the Arminian theory of the uncertainty of human action which would make it impossible for God either to foreordain or to foreknow the future. Although the Scriptures teach that God only can give the new heart, sin- ners are exhorted in Scripture to make to themselves a new heart. Regen- eration is plainly not a mechanical work of God, but a work of personal influence upon the sinner's affections. Nor is it an influence exerted only through the truth, as if man were the only agent, and moral suasion were the only method God could employ to change man's will. We repel the notion that the only communication between spirit and spirit is through truth ; for this is a virtual denial of the Christian's union with Christ and of God's personal communion with the human soul. We know of an influence exerted by the orator, which is above and beyond that of the words he speaks. We know of a power of personal influence, that passes that of argument. There is a subtle magnetism in the presence of a noble friend, that disarms objection and opens the heart to his persuasions ere we are aware. There is an atmosphere of purity and truth and love enwrapping some devoted souls, that draws us to them and makes us trust everything they say. Aye, there seem to be subtle laws, only obscurely understood as jet, in accordance with which soul comes into contact with soul, and acts directly upon soul, though sundered far by space, and deprived of all physi- cal intermediaries. So Christ's entrance into the soul and joining himself to it has power to change the heart. The renewing Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and in that new contact of the human spirit with the divine, the soul is transformed into the image of him who first created it. But this personal presence of Christ does not constrain or compel. Rather is there a new consciousness of strength and a new sense of freedom. Lifted up into this new divine companionship, and penetrated with this new divine life, there is a soul-absorbing penitence for sin and submission to the Savior. God's working in the soul to will and to do, has for its result and Accompaniment the soul's working-out of its own salvation. The great change which, looked at from the divine side, we call regeneration, when looked at from the human side, may be called conversion. Regeneration has logical, but not chronological, precedence of conversion. Man turns only as God turns him, indeed ; but it is equally true that man is never to wait for God's working. If he is ever regenerated, it must be in and through a movement of his own will, in which he turns to God as unconstrainedly, and with as little consciousness of God's operation upon him, as if no such operation of God were involved in the change. And, in preaching, we are to press upon men the claims of God and their duty of immediate submission 126 MODIFIED CALVINISM, OR, to Christ, with the certainty that they who do so submit will subsequently recognize this new and holy activity of their own wills as due to the working within them of divine power. So we come back at last to the point from which we set out. The freedom which consists in the power to choose between motives is to be so used under grace that we may through it enter into that higher freedom which consists in the glad surrender of all our powers to God. In the fall man lost the latter, while he retained the former. Only the grace of God can restore that harmony of the human will with the law of holiness, for which man was originally made. Formal freedom, as the Germans call the mere power to put forth single volitions externally conformed to law, is not enough. Man needs real freedom, by which phrase those same Germans designate the power to love God with all the heart, and so, to live according to the idea of man's being. This real freedom, this freedom in the highest sense, is partially restored in regeneration ; it will be perfectly restored when we awake in Christ's likeness. In the case of the saints in heaven, the formal freedom will be merged in the real and will be made the organ for its mani- festation, as it is in the case of God himself, and they shall be perfect even as their Father in heaven is perfect. The highest freedom involves a cer- tainty of holy character and of holy action, for it is a state in which mind and heart and will, all the outgoing powers and all the inner being, are set, without the shadow of a fear or the chance of wavering, in one pure and everlasting fixedness of devotion to duty and of likeness to God. And so, faith leads to freedom. The soul at one with God and inspired by God becomes a centre of force in the universe, an originator and com- municator of holy influence in the highest sense in which this is possible to the creature. In becoming the servants of Christ we become the Lord's freemen, for only he whom the Son makes free is free indeed. But another use of our formal freedom is possible. We may use it to rivet yet more tightly the manacles of sense and sin, so that escape, from being difficult, becomes hopeless. We may make ourselves the slaves of selfishness, the sport of passion, mere waifs upon the roaring sea of circumstance, mere passive and brute tools of the evil one. Now for a time there is possible a turning of the thoughts to God and to the motives for repentance. But the day will come when character will become indurated, when self-interest will be of less account than hatred to God, when there will be no motives longer to which even God can appeal in order to save. So the soul, which was meant to have a potency second only to God's, becomes impotent. In losing God it has lost itself. It has used its remainder of freedom only to reiterate and confirm the first evil choice of humanity and to put real freedom per- manently beyond its reach. While the righteous reign with God, true lords and free, the ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away, helpless, worthless, outcast forever. The current tendency to believe in a probation after death must be con- sidered as a historical judgment upon the erroneous postulates of the so-called New England Theology. That theology is in its innermost principle ato- mistic. The race is nothing the individual is all. Since there is no race- responsibility and no common guilt, a fair probation in the next world is demanded in the case of those who have had no individual or proper proba- REMAINDERS OF FREEDOM IN MAN. 127 tion in this. * This method of reasoning cannot be met except by reaffirming the old truth which the New England theology has denied, namely that of a fair probation of the whole race in Adam, and the universal guilt and condemnation of mankind on account of its common fall in him. Whatever comes to us in the way of opportunity and privilege since that first sin, is of grace, not of debt. Our individual probation gives us more than a fair chance. And since no man has a right to demand this new chance at the hands of God, it is optional with God to how many it shall be extended, and how long it shall continue. As he has provided the redemption, it is for him to settle its terms. Scripture alone can determine when the day of grace shall end. And while Scripture seems to intimate that in the judg- ment none shall be condemned solely on account of the common sin of the race in Adam and that the grace of Christ shall avail to the salvation of all who have not consciously and personally transgressed, it seems to declare with equal plainness that the present is the last scene of probation, that there is a law written on the heart by which all men shall be tried, that even the heathen are without excuse, and that after the opportunities of this mortal state are over, there is a departure of each soul to its own place, whether that be one of sin or holiness, of happiness or misery. Here there are motives presented on either side, and every man has power either to resist the evil and guilty tendencies of the nature, with the certainty that such struggle will be aided and blessed of God, or to confirm the sinful affections, so that no influences which God can consistently use will avail to save. And the decisions of this life are final. Will is not independent of motive, and all motives to good must be furnished by God. The wicked are indeed in the next world subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influ- ences of the Spirit of God it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted after death upon the still impenitent, but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men, is their condition for- ever. After death, comes, not probation, but judgment, and there is a great gulf fixed between the righteous and the wicked, which finite spirits cannot pass, and which the grace of God will not. This then is the new Calvinism which I would advocate. It holds just as strongly as the old to God's initiative and to God's sovereignty in regenera- tion. God does not give the same influences to all, nor to any, all the influences which in his abstract omnipotence he can. There are influences *Dr. G. H. Emerson, a leading Universalist, in his "Doctrine of Probation Exam- ined" points out very forcibly this tendency of the New England theology. "The truth," he says, " at once of ethics and of Scripture, that sin is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must in the logical outcome permanently cast it off." Dr. Newman Smyth, in his introduction to Dorner's Eschatology, suggests that we must either, with Julius Mtiller, find a fair probation in a pre-existent state, or else, with Dorner, grant one after death. Neither Dr. Emerson nor Dr. Smyth could reach their conclusions, of Universalism and of future probation respectively, if they seriously held to the oneness of the race and its common fall in Adam. The doctrine of a fair probation of mankind at the beginning is needed to prevent the inference that there must be a further probation, if not universal salva- tion, in the world to come. 128 MODIFIED CALVINISM. of his Spirit which may be resisted. There are other influences which are sufficient to secure acceptance of Christ, when without them men would persevere in iniquity and be lost. God is not under bonds to give any of these to sinners, nor will he give them, after the short summer of this life is past. When he does give them in any degree, resistance on the part of the sinner involves a new guilt and condemnation. They will become effectual to no man's salvation, unless that man freely yield to the divine persuasion and choose for his supreme motive the love of God. We have emphasized hitherto the divine element in this great fundamental change. Let us not leave men in ignorance of the human element which the Scriptures connect inseparably with it. We have taught that God works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. Let us teach also that men must work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. Only thus will the Christian learn that h*e must by perseverance prove his faith to be true. Only thus will th6 sin- ner learn that the whole guilt of his soul's destruction will rest upon himself. For both the Christian and the sinner are exhorted to work, to strive, to seek. We are responsible not only for all we can do ourselves, but for all we can secure from God. God's work and man's work form one whole. To ignore God's work is to destroy our hope. To ignore man's work is to destroy our responsibility. What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. IX. THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, MIRACLES AS ATTESTING A DIVINE REVELATION.* The Christian religion claims the acceptance and obedience of all men upon the ground that it is a system of truth and duty revealed by God. It professes to give evidence that it is from God. It points to its internal char- actsristics as proof that it has come from God's wisdom ; it points to its external accompaniments as proof that it has come from God's power. By its internal characteristics we mean a supernatural adaptation to human wants, as attested by those who have really received it. By its external accompaniments, we mean a series of supernatural events attending its orig- inal publication, such as only God could work, and such as leave no reason- able doubt that the Author of nature is also the Author of the scheme of doctrine promulgated in his name. Among Christian apologists of the last quarter-century, there has been a tendency to lay the stress of argument upon the internal evidences. Much has been done to show the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching. The unity of revelation, the superiority of the New Testament system of morality, the conception of Christ's person and character presented there, the witness of Jesus to his own divinity and lordship, have all been adduced as proving its divine origin. Bnt while we gratefully accept the results of these recent studies of the book itself, we must still record our belief that the internal evidence of Christianity is necessarily secondary and supple- mentary. Of itsslf and by itself, it is insufficient to substantiate the divine authority of the Christian system. For in the Christian system we include more than the New Testament morality ; we include all that teaching with regard to the divine nature and methods of dealing, in view of which we speak of Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, Regeneration, Judgment, Immortality. Internal evidence might possibly suffice to secure acceptance of the Christian morality, for reason can recognize its sublime elevation ; but the doctrines which chiefly make the Bible what it is a revelation of supernatural and saving truth are all beyond the power of reason to discover, or even to demonstrate, after they have been made known. " Of what use," says Lessing, " would be a revela- tion that revealed nothing ? " But if the Scriptures be in any proper sense a revelation, an unveiling of truth, which isab<>ve and beyond our natural powers, it is necessary that they be accompanied by some external proof * An Essny read before the Baptist Pastors' Conference of the State of New York, IMughamton, Oct. 23, 1878, and printed iu the Baptist Review, April, 1879. 9 129 130 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, that they are from God ; else the very greatness of the truth may only per- plex and affront us. It has been suggested, indeed, that God's testimony to the truth of a reve- lation might be given not externally, but internally, by direct action of hia spirit upon the mind, and that for this reason any external certification by miracles must be regarded as unnecessary. But can we be sure that the method of internal certification is the preferable one ? It labors under cer- tain manifest disadvantages. It cannot in the nature of the case furnish so clear an evidence of its divine authorship. Ifeing internal, how can it be known that it comes from a God external to the soul ? What is needed is absolute certainty on the part of the recipient that the communication is from such a God, and that the truth communicated is not subjective, but independent of the mind's consciousness of it. But it is essential to inward communications that to the person receiving them they appear, at least in the beginning, as original discoveries of his own. Only by reflection can it be determined that they come from without, not from within, and, in the case of doctrines or commands that stagger the reason, some other assurance than mere logic can give is absolutely needed to convince the recipient that these seeming communications from God are not the vagaries of his own brain. Thus we very naturally find Gideon begging for an outward sign that he is not self-deceived. Even in the case of the original recipient of a revelation, outward certification seems to confer an important advantage. But what is- an advantage to the person to whom the revelation is first communicated, is an absolute necessity to the multitude to whom he proclaims his message. If his possession of new ideas of doctrine and duty is not proof even to him- self that these ideas are true, much less is it proof to others. Without some external sign that God has sent him, his mere declaration of the fact is utterly untrustworthy. As a communicator of new truth, of which reason is incom- petent to judge, he needs and he must have divine credentials before his word can bind the moral action of men. Is it said that God can make the same revelation at the same moment inwardly to the mind of each separate individual of the race ? Granting this to be true, as an abstract proposition, is it not manifest that the methods of God's working are actually different from this ? Great secular truths are first made the possession of some favored nation, and of some favored individual in that nation, in order that through the individual they may *be imparted to the nation, and through the nation to mankind. So we may expect religious truths to be directly communi- cated by God, not to all, but to single members of the race, and then indi- rectly through their voice and testimony to the world. There is economy in the use of natural force ; shall there not be also economy of the super- natural ? Shall we have exertions of supernatural power by the thousand million, in the internal life of all of earth's inhabitants, in order to communi- cate the divine ideas ? And then, shall these be supplemented by miracles wrought in the case of each, to convince each that the original communica- tion is from God ? Surely in place of a scheme of internal certification which requires for its execution such a multitude of supernatural acts, we may well prefer the plan of external certification which requires but few. If one act of divine certification will answer the purpose, we may believe that God will not employ a million. But a million are needed if internal evidence alone MIIIACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 131 is admissible, while upon a plan which admits external evidence, we need but a single one. In condescension to human weakness, God may give us more, yet it still remains true that a single miracle like that of Christ's resur- rection may substantiate the divine authority of all his claims and teachings, and bear upon its Atlantean shoulders the weight of Christianity itself. Nor is the defense of the Christian miracles an optional matter with those who accept the internal evidences. For the internal and the external are so inextricably interwoven, that loss of faith in the one involves loss of faith in the other. However impressive the doctrine of Scripture may be, if it be accompanied by falsehood in matters of fact, it is proved thereby to have not a divine but a human origin. But facts are not merely accompaniments here they are the centre and core of its teaching. Its main doctrines claim to be facts as well as doctrines, and to be doctrines only because they are facts. The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ are valuable for purposes of doctrine, only as they are first allowed to be facts of history. But such facts as these are miracles. And therefore Christianity stands or falls with its miracles. As a scheme of faith and a method of salvation it has no claim upon us, unless the supernatural facts which constitute its essence, and by which it declares itself attested, were historical realities. If Jesus did not take human flesh in other than the common method of natural generation, if he did not do works beyond all human or natural powers to accomplish , above all, if he did not rise from the dead, he is a proved impos- tor, his claim to be a teacher commissioned by God is falsified, and Christi- anity, as a system divinely authoritative and obligatory, exists no longer. While we urge, however, the primary importance of these external evi- dences of our religion, we would never sunder them from the internal. There is something of truth in the maxim of Pascal, that the miracles prove the doctrine and the doctrine proves the miracles. The two go together. Miracles do not stand alone as evidences. Power alone cannot prove a divine commission. Purity of life and doctrine must go with the miracles to assure us that a religious teacher has come from God. The miracles and the doctrine mutually supplement each other and form parts of one whole. The absence of either would throw suspicion upon the teacher who failed to produce it. In the case of apparently supernatural works wrought by a teacher of flagrant immorality, any explanation would be preferable to hold- ing that they were wrought by God. We are even willing to grant that over certain minds and certain ages the internal evidence may have greater power than the external. It is probable that men in the present generation are more frequently led from faith in the transforming efficacy of the Christian religion to faith in its outward facts, than through the reverse process. Still we must not be blinded to the fact that the order of chronological apprehen- sion is not necessarily the order of logical connection and dependence. The internal evidences have power to convince, only because the external facts are assumed to be worthy of confidence ; they lose all independent value so soon as the external facts are found to be without historical foundation. While therefore we claim other evidence than that of miracles, we hold that this is logically the prior and the more important. It has been well said that a supernatural fact is the proper proof of a supernatural doctrine, but a super- natural doctrine is not the proper proof of a supernatural fact. 132 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, Nor do we, with these explanations, regard the Christian miracles as a burden rather than a support. To the beginner in geometry the first prop- osition is a burden until he has mastered it ; then it becomes the firm basis and foundation of the second. So we hold that the possibility and proba- bility of miracles may be proved to the candid mind, and that the Christian miracles may be shown to be not incredible, but on the other hand to rest upon evidence sufficient to warrant rational conviction of their historical reality. So much having been done, the miracles will take their place as solid substructions of the edifice of doctrine ; we shall walk the upper floors with confidence because we know the foundation is secure. We are per- suaded that the very prevalent suspicion of the miraculous which so fre- quently prevents the acceptance of Christianity and prejudices even the examination of its records, ought to vanish before a reconsideration and restatement of the doctrine of miracles. That miracles have been in the least discredited is doubtless due in some degree to the partial view of the universe which modern physical science has given us. But other science has made progress likewise. The sciences of mind and of morals have right to be heard also. We are persuaded that one who embraces these as well as the science of matter in his scheme of knowledge, and who regards nature and the supernatural together as constituting the one system of God, ought to find no serious difficulty, either intellectual or practical, in the acceptance of the Christian miracles. But; not to anticipate, let us define at once what we mean by a miracle. We mean an event in nature, so extraordinary in itself, and so coinciding with the prophecy or command of a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction on the part of those who witness it that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader is com- missioned by him. Here are several elements, which, for the sake of dis- tinctness, it may be well to state separately. A miracle, then, is am event in nature. By nature we mean what is not God and what is not made in the image of God in other words, the physical world. The realm of mind and will, inasmuch as this is free and not embraced in the chain of physical causation, is not a part of nature, but belongs to the supernatural. Regen- eration, therefore, as a spiritual work of God, does not occur in the realm of nature, and is not a miracle. A miracle is an event that can be witnessed. There is something in it that is palpable to the senses. In the restoration of sight to the blind, though the method of the wonder is not manifest, the change from blindness to sight is visible. In resurrection of the dead, although the reentrauce of the spirit into its mortal tenement is not matter of observation, the fact that the man was dead, and that now he lives again, is patent to all. But creation is not a miracle, because, among other rea- sons, there was no eye to witness it. Again, the miracle is an extraordinary event in nature. It cannot be explained as part of a series of regularly recurring sequences. It falls under no law of nature in the sense of being referable to any order of known facts. It is exceptional, unique. If there be any law that regulates its occurrence, it is not a law which otherwise manifests itself in the present system of the physical universe. And yet the apparent want of connection with the pres- ent physical order is not so remarkable as the actual connection with another MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 133 and higher domain that of intelligence and will. For the mere description of the unique physical event does not complete the account of the miracle, else the falling of a meteoric stone might be a miracle. The miracle is a combination of two things an extraordinary occurrence in nature, and the coinciding prophecy or command of a religious teacher. Still further, in the case of the miracle, the extraordinariness of the event and the prediction or command of the messenger are so connected, that our intuition of design leaves us no alternative but to infer that God is the author of the coincidence, and that, with the purpose of giving evidence that the messenger has been sent by him. Here we see the difference between mir- acle and special providence. In the latter the connection of the event with the religious purpose to be served thereby is not so close as to render an opposite explanation impossible. Some warrant is furnished for believing it designed for a particular religious end, but not what may be called full warrant. With the miracle it is otherwise. When Christ appeals to his works as evidences that the Father has sent him, and declares that, in still further testimony to this fact, he will rise from the dead on the third day, the believer in his resurrection must also be a believer in his commission from God, or else hold that God could and did work a miracle in support of falsehood. So inevitable is such a conclusion, that we find even Spinoza declaring that he would break his system in pieces and embrace without reluctance the ordinary faith of Christians, if he could once be persuaded of the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. It will be observed that in our definition we take no ground with regard to that much disputed question whether the miracle be a suspension or vio- lation of natural law, nor with regard to that other question as vigorously pressed of late, whether the miracle absolutely dispenses with all physical means and antecedents, and is the result simply of an immediate volition of God. It is our belief that the Christian miracles might be successfully defended, even if both these questions were answered in the affirmative. But on the other hand, it is our belief also, that Christian apologists have here allowed themselves too frequently to fight their battle upon ground chosen by their enemies. It was Hume who first stigmatized the miracle as a violation or suspension of natural law, and the transgression of the order which God had himself appointed was declared to be the greatest of absurd- ities and enormities. But Scripture gives no sign that the miracle is thus conceived of by those who wrote it, nor is there the slightest necessity that we should accept Hume's assumption as to the method in which God must work, if he work at all. Again, it is too often taken for granted that mir- acle is equivalent to divine fiat, reaching its goal with absolute exclusion of natural means. But Scripture compels us to no such view. On the other hand it points to the East wind as the means by which the Red Sea was parted at the Exodus and leaves it not improbable that the sinking of a con- siderable area in Western Asia was the physical cause of the deluge, and a simoom of the desert the physical cause of the destruction of the host of Sennacherib. What was God's method here what was his method in the working of any particular miracle, we do not know. We would have it dis- tinctly understood that we do not have and that we do not think it necessary to have, any particular theory as to the method of them. But when the 134 THE CHRISTIAN" MIRACLES, OR, opponents of the Christian miracles first identify our doctrine with their preconceived notions of it, and then triumph because they have, in their own estimation, proved those notions to be absurd, it is time for us to show that other conceptions are at least possible. Miracles, we claim, may be wrought by God, while yet no physical law is suspended or violated. To sustain this proposition it is only ' necessary to refer to facts within the range of our common experience. We know that lower forces and laws in nature are counteracted and transcended by the higher, while yet these lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihi- lated, but are merged in the higher and made to assist in accomplishing results to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves. Imag- ine, for example, that no forces or laws were in operation except the purely mechanical ones, such as gravitation and cohesion. In such a merely mechan- ical creation, let the reaction of carbonate of lime and sulphuric acid for the first time occur. Here is disintegration and effervescence, such as no merely mechanical law can explain. And why ? Because a new force of a higher sort has begun to act, namely, a chemical force. This accomplishes what gravita- tion and cohesion never could. It counteracts these tendencies to knit together, while it transcends them. But no one will maintain that the laws of gravitation and cohesion are annihilated or suspended or violated in the least degree. They are still active and operative, and influence to a consid- erable extent the disposition of the material particles under the action of the higher force. And yet, to the merely mechanical creation, this same reaction of carbonate of lime and sulphuric acid is a chemical miracle. Again, imagine a world where as yet no forces or laws exist except the mechanical and chemical. In such a world let a seed-corn be planted and begin to grow. Here is a new force that abstracts from the soil and bears aloft to every portion of the organism the moisture and nutriment suited to its needs. Mechanical laws, such as gravitation and cohesion, may say nay ; but they are obliged to yield, and even to help the growing structure and make it strong. Here is a new force that conquers chemistry also, and presses it into service ; for every leaf performs the wonderful feat which man accomplishes only with long art and imposing mechanism the feat of decom- posing carbonic acid, taking the carbon for food and throwing the oxygen away yet performs it so quietly that the leaf is not even stirred by the process. To the merely mechanical and chemical creation this vegetable transformation is a vital miracle. The new force does what gravitation and chemistry never could, to the end of time. But is any mechanical or chem- ical law annihilated, suspended, or violated ? By no means. Both sorts of law are operative all the time. Partly because they are operative, does the plant preserve its balance, maintain its strength, secure its proper sustenance. These are instances drawn from nature only. But we know equally well that an event in nature may be caused by an agent outside of and above nature. The human will can act upon nature and can produce results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. To put this in a clear light, let me remind you of the German philosopher Fichte's illustration of the unchangeableness of natural sequences. He bids us imagine a pebble swept on to a high place upon the beach, by the strongest wave of a stormy day, and then speculates MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION". 135 upon the changes in nature which would have been requisite to land the pebble one foot further upon the sand. The wave must have been of greater volume, the wind that drove it of greater force. The preceding state of the atmosphere by which the wind was occasioned, and its degree of strength determined, must have been different from what it actually was, and the previous changes which gave rise to this particular weather must have been different also. We must suppose a different temperature from that which actually existed, and a different constitution of the bodies which influenced that temperature, not only in distant Africa where the wind took its rise, but in every other country of the globe. In short, the philosopher must sup- pose a different make-up of the whole system of things from the beginning, in order that a single pebble might lie in a different place. So he argues the impossibility of any modification in the existing condition of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences following in some necessary chain of orderly con- nection. But Mansel suggests the answer to Fichte. The answer is as follows: Let us make one alteration in the circumstances supposed. Let us imagine that, after the winds and waves have done their utmost, I go down to the beach, and, lifting the pebble from its place, I deposit it a foot further up upon the sand. Is the student of physical science prepared to enumerate a similar chain of material antecedents which must have been other than they were, before I could have chosen to deposit the pebble on any other spot than that on which it is now lying? In other words, is human thought and will determined in its sequences and conclusions by natural laws ? No one except the fatalist will say this. We know, on the contrary, that while nature's laws are rigid, there is a power superior to these laws, and exempt from their control, namely, the power of the personal will, and that in the will of man we have an instance of an efficient cause in the highest sense of that term, acting among and along with the physical causes of the material world, and producing results which would not have been brought about by any invariable sequence of physical causes left to their own action. We have evidence, in fine, of an elasticity in the constitution of nature, which per- mits the influence of human power on the phenomena of the world to be exercised or suspended at will, without affecting in the least the stability of the great system of things. If I throw a stone into the air, its fall is deter- mined by natural laws, but can any man say that my throwing it was the mere result of natural laws ? Nay, my free will something above nature has done it, nor has any law of nature been violated thereby. An additional illustration will enable us to apply this principle to the sub- ject in hand. Suppose I stand by the side of a swiftly running stream and hold a heavy piece of iron upon my flat, extended palm, in such a wlay that my hand is submerged and the top of the iron is just visible above the sur- face of the water. Why does not the iron sink ? Because my hand is under- neath it. Is the law of gravitation suspended ? No, nothing but the axe is suspended. How do I know that gravitation still operates ? Because the axe has weight. I hold it steadily in its place only by effort. If gravitation were not acting, the axe would be swept away like a straw by the rapid cur- rent. I have counteracted the working of gravitation ; I have pressed it 136 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, into my service, and compelled it to do what left to itself it never would,, namely, keep a piece of iron immovable at the surface of the water ; I have transcended the powers of natural law by bringing in a new force, namely, the force of my own personal will. From the point of view of mere physical nature, here is a miracle of will. Yet no law of nature is annihilated, sus- pended, or violated. And now, if man can do as much as this, cannot God do the same, and, by putting his hand beneath the iron, make the axe to swim at the prophet's word? But it is urged that the analogy is far from complete, for the reason that man's body at least is a part of nature, and that here is a use of means. The hand is put underneath the axe. But God has no hands. We reply that before man puts his hand under the axe, he must move his hand. And in moving his hand, his will comes directly in contact with his own physical organism. We do not know how spirit operates upon matter, but we do know that in the human body this operation is a, fact. Every time I lift my arm, I know that I rule matter and compel it to serve me. I do this freely, and no law is violated or suspended therein. With this constant proof before me, that spirit can act directly upon matter, I must surely believe that the Spirit that is everywhere present can act directly upon matter. And this we can maintain without holding that God is confined to the universe, and finds in it his sensorium ; that he is in nature does not prove that he is not also above nature. What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God dwells in and controls the universe. In other words, if a God be possible, then mir- acles are possible. The same God who created the second causes that exist in nature, can supplement their action when it pleases him. It is no more impossible for him to multiply the five loaves so that they feed five thousand, than to multiply the handful of wheat in the earth so that it produces the harvest. He who provides remedial agents for the diseases of the body, can dispense with these agents, and can heal diseases by his word. He who gives life at the beginning, can say : " Lazarus, come forth ! " Being more directly in contact with nature than is the human will with its physical organ- ism, he can produce new results in nature. The impossibility of the miracle can be maintained only upon principles either of Atheism or of Pantheism either upon the ground that there is no God, or that there is no God except the God that is immanent in nature, a God without consciousness, freedom, or holiness, a God identical with the universe itself. A second question was proposed, this namely : Does the miracle, so far as it is a merely physical fact, necessarily involve an immediate volition of God at the time of its occurrence ? It has been intimated that there are certain of the extraordinary events of Scripture which seem capable of explanation without this hypothesis. The wonders of the Bed Sea, of the deluge, of Sennacherib's destruction, were such. If these were miracles, the immediate act of God may have been simply the communication to the prophet of such knowledge of the event, that he was enabled to foretell or command in virtue of that communication. Archbishop Trench has proposed to set such instances as these by themselves and call them "providential miracles," thus^ intimating that the wonder of them consisted, not in immediate intervention MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 137 or change in the order of nature, but in the providential arrangement of the event and of the prophecy, so that they coincided with one another, and together gave evidence of the divine commission of the prophet who fore- told or commanded them. The outward event may be part of a chain of physical antecedents and consequents, the remarkable and exceptional result of merely natural causes, yet in its connection with the prophetic word it may be a visible token from God. Let us again remind ourselves of the definition of a miracle. A miracle is not simply an extraordinary physical event, but an extraordinary physical event in peculiar connection with the word of a religious teacher or leader. Even if we should grant, therefore, that no divine volition goes to the production of the physical event except what goes to the production of any other event in nature, still we need not deny the direct agency of God in the prophetic announcement with which this event was accompanied. The immediate volition would simply be relegated to the mental and spiritual world and find its sphere of working there. Even if all miracles should be explained in this way, we should not lose the evidence of the divine presence and working in the miracle as a whole. The prophet's knowledge would prove God to be with him, and would completely substantiate his claims. This theory of the miracle was broached by Babbage, in his celebrated Bridgewater Treatise. Babbage, it will be remembered, was the inventor of the great calculating machine to whose construction Parliament made so large appropriations. In his treatise, he illustrates his view of the miracle by the working of his arithmetical engine. It was so constructed that upon setting it in motion, the regular series of whole numbers presented them- selves at an aperture in the front of the machine, one, two, three, four, and so on to ten, eleven, twelve, each successive number consisting of the last preceding with the addition of a single unit, till the hundreds, thous- ands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions were reached. After observing this uniform sequence for days and weeks together, the spectator might not unnaturally conclude that succession by regular addi- tions of one was the law of the machine. But lo ! after the number ten million is reached, there is a sudden leap. We have not ten million and one, but 100,000,000, and thereafter the machine reverts to its former law of succession. Suppose now that the maker declares the provision for this sudden leap to have been made in the original construction of the machine suppose him to foretell the change just before its occurrence. Do you esteem his skill greater, or less, than you would esteem it, if he should directly cause the change by touching a secret spring before your eyes ? Evidently the proof of skill would be the greater, the more clearly it could be shown that the final result was all provided for in the original making. So, says Mr. Babbage, the universe may be a vast machine. It may be constructed in such a way that the general law of it shall be uniform phe- nomena, but with special provision for isolated events which this general law is insufficient to explain. The regular sequences of nature are the suc- cessive appearances of the integral numbers. Miracles are the sudden leaps from ten millions to a hundred millions. But both the regular sequences and the sudden leaps were all ordained at the beginning, the only differ- ence between them being that the former occur according to known law, 138 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, while the latter reveal a law unknown except to the Contriver of the system. Now, to such a view of miracles as this, we would not oppose a direct and universal negative. Certain of the Scripture miracles may be harmonized with this view. That miracles are called "wonders," "signs," "works," "powers," "new things," " wrought by the finger of God," does not dis- prove the theory, for God is said to work all things. "My Father worketh hitherto and I work," said Christ, though here he spoke of his perpetual upholding of nature and government of history. The miracles might be " works of God " par excellence, simply because they waken in men's minds more distinctly the thought of the divine Being who is always present and always active whether men recognize him or not. Miracles on this view would be "unusual, while natural law is habitual, divine action. The natural is itself only a prolonged, and so unnoticed, supernatural. " We could readily grant that that man was a believer in miracles who held this theory, provided he also held to a supernatural communication from God as coincident with it. Perhaps we cannot even demonstrate that this conception of the miracle is incorrect. At the same time we prefer the view which holds to immediate divine operation in the realm of nature as well as in the realm of mind, and that because of its greater fitness to accomplish the object aimed at in the miracle. That object is the giving of a sign. What is needed is the most indubitable proof of the divine intent to attest the commission of the person in connection with whose prediction or command the work is wrought. It is probable that the miracle, if wrought at all, will be so wrought as to secure its own signality. But upon the view here considered, this signality does not seem to be perfectly secured. For it would always be possible for the objector to assert that the so-called prophet had by merely human skill penetrated into the secrets of nature and discovered the law of the machine. There have been navigators who have used their knowledge of an approach- ing eclipse to convince a savage chief that they possessed superhuman powers and were entitled to divine homage, and threats backed up by an immediate darkening of the sun have proved very effectual. In the middle ages the telephone could have been used with great success to simulate a voice from heaven. Now, apart from the accompanying purity of life and doctrine which must distinguish the genuine miracle, we should naturally expect that there would also be such a method of bringing about the outward phenom- enon, that there would be least chance of ascribing the knowledge of it to mere natural or scientific foresight. As Dr. Newman has said : " It is antecedently improbable that the Almighty should rest the credit of his revelation upon events which but obscurely implied his immediate presence. " Still another illustration of this view is given by Ephraim Peabody, and the mention of it may enable us to fix attention more clearly upon still another defect inherent in this method of explaining the miracle. "A story is told of a clock on one of the high cathedral towers of the older world, so constructed that at the close of a century it strikes the years as it ordinarily strikes the hours. As a hundred years come to a close, suddenly, in the immense mass of complicated mechanism, a little wheel turns, a pin slides into the appointed place, and in the shadows of the night the bell tolls a requiem over the generations which during a century have lived and labored MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 139 and been buried around it. One of these generations might live and die and witness nothing peculiar. The clock would have what we call an estab- lished order of its own ; but what should we say, when, at the midnight which brought the century to a close, it sounded over the sleeping city, rousing all to listen to the world's age? Would it be a violation of law? No, only a variation of the accustomed order, produced by the intervention of a force always existing but never appearing in this way until the appointed moment had arrived. The tolling of the century would be a variation from the observed order of the clock ; but, to the artist in constructing it, it would have formed a part of that order. So a miracle is a variation of the order of nature as it has appeared to us ; but, to the Author of nature, it was a part of that predestined order a part of that order of which he is at all times the immediate author and sustainer ; miraculous to us, seen from our human point of view, but no miracle to God ; to our circumscribed vision a violation of law, but to God only a part in the great plan and progress of the law of the universe." Now it is evident that here, as in the illustration from the calculating engine, there is a law of recurrence. What happens with the clock at the end of one century will happen at the end of another. What happens at the ten million and first turn of the machine will happen again with the next series of similar turns. In the matter of miracles, however, such recurrence is wholly unproved. No one miracle is like another ; they do not occur at regular intervals ; both in quality and in quantity they bear all the marks of proceeding from spontaneity and freedom. If, therefore, we are to look to some unknown law of natiire as the immediate physical cause and expla- nation of them, it must be a law which has in each case only one application. The theory would then assert only this, that God has provided in the construc- tion of the universe for isolated and exceptional events along the course of history, isolated and exceptional events which have for their office the confirmation of the claims of teachers sent by him, isolated and exceptional fvt'iits which cannot be brought under the law of the general order, nor under any law of special order among themselves. It is evidently a misuse of the term law, to speak of it as embracing such events as these, for law respects classes of phenomena, not isolated facts. Or if we strain the term law to embrace them, what does it mean more than simple command, the ordaining of an individual result ? And how can this be distinguished from the direct volition of God except in the one respect, that his volition in the former case is executed by the use of means, whereas in the latter he simply speaks and it is done ? But those with whom we argue are the last to claim that even the ordinary operations of nature are carried on without God. The world, while it has a separate existence and a measure of independence, is yet upheld by God's mighty will, so that nothing comes to pass in which he is not active as preserver and maintainer. He who imposed upon the universe the law of miracles must himself supervise its execution. Does such a law as this a law which cannot execute itself differ so essentially from divine volition, to make it worth while to quarrel about the name ? And since we have evidence of the divine will in miracles, but no evidence, in the vast majority of cases, that natural means are employed in the work- ing of them, is it not best to define them from the known rather than from 140 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, the unknown ? We know that they are the result of divine volitions ; in- most cases we have no knowledge of intermediate agencies used in producing them. It seems most accordant with our knowledge, therefore, to regard the miracle, even apart from its coincidence with the word of a religious, teacher, as an event in nature which, though not contravening any natural law, the laws of nature, even if they were fully known to us, would not he competent to explain. That miracles are possible, however, does not prove them to be probable. To this question of the probability of miracles, let us now address ourselves. And here we find too frequently, among apologetical writers, a prior assump- tion that miracles are as probable as other and ordinary events. The attitude of these same apologists towards so-called modern miracles sufficiently shows that this assumption very imperfectly represents the facts. We are com- pelled to grant and we as frankly acknowledge that, so long as we confine our attention to nature, there is a presumption against miracles. The experience of each of us testifies that, so far as our observation has gone, the operation of natural law has been uniform. We perceive the advantages of this uniformity. A general uniformity is necessary in order to make possible a rational calculation of the future and a proper ordering of human life. But while we acknowledge this, we deny that this uniformity is absolute and universal. It is certainly not a truth of reason, that can have no excep- tions, like the axiom that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. Per- haps the most striking instance of belief in the uniformity of nature is that which leads mankind to expect the rising of to-morrow morning's sun. But no one can examine this belief without being convinced that there is no neces- sity about it like the necessity that two and two should make four. Attempt to conceive of two and two making five, and you violate a first principle of reason. But there is no self-contradiction in the thought that to-morrow should see no sunrise. Experience of the past is not experience of the future. Experience of the past gives no absolute certainty of the future. " Like the stern lights of a ship," as Coleridge says, "it illuminates only the track over which it has passed." Hence experience cannot warrant belief in absolute and universal uniformity, except upon the absurd hypothesis that experience is identical with absolute and universal knowledge. Nor is it of any avail to point to the principal of induction as if this bridged the gulf and converted the probable into the necessary ; for induction of observed instances warrants only an expectation of the future it never can prove that future to exist or to be of any definite character. Says Mr. Huxley : " It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been fulfilled in this case of gravitation, by calling the statement that unsupported stones will fall to the ground a law of nature. But when, as commonly happens, we change 'will' into 'must,' we introduce an idea of necessity which has no warrant in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact I know, and law I know ; but what is this necessity, but an empty shadow of the mind's own throwing ? " Any proper account of the inductive process must regard it as presup- posing the uniformity of nature. But this uniformity of nature is not itself an ultimate truth there is a greater truth back of that, namely, universal MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 141 design. From one or more observed instances I can argue to those which have not been observed, only upon the assumption that the universe has been rationally constructed, so that its various parts correspond to one another and to the investigating faculties of man. But this is virtually to nay that the principle of final cause underlies the principle of efficient cause, and that this latter must find its limit in the former. In the words of Dr. Porter : " If efficient causes and physical laws must acknowledge themselves indebted to final causes in order to command our confidence, then they must also confess their subjection to the same and be ready to stand aside and be suspended whenever the principle of final cause shall require. In other words, the order of nature may be broken whenever the principle of final cause shall require ; that is, whenever the claims of the so-called reason of things, or of alleged moral and religious interests, may demand an inroad upon its regularity either in special act? of creation or in exertions of mirac- ulous agency." "The principle of final cause will not only render the service of sustaining our confidence in the stability of the laws of nature under all ordinary circumstances, but will also account for such extraordinary deviations from this order as may be required iu the history of man." The qualifications to be made in the phraseology of Dr. Porter, as to suspension of law, will readily occur to us, after what has previously been said. The substantial truth remains intact that, since we cannot conduct the process of scientific induction at all without assuming that a principle of design per- vades the universe and constitutes it a rational whole, the uniformity which we see about us is a uniformity which has its limitations in this very principle of design, and may be expected to give way when there exists a sufficient reason therefor in the mind of him who made it. If induction itself is founded upon design, then design is greater than induction, and may embrace facts for which mere induction can never account. Not only is it not true that the uniformity of nature is a truth of reason, whidi admits of no exceptions, but it is true that science herself reveals the existence of breaks in this uniformity. The limited explorat'ons of European geologists have given rise to the unif ormitarian theory of the earth's progress. But the later investigations of Clarence King, Superintendent of the United States Survey of the Forty-ninth Parallel, conducted over an extent of terri- tory such as British scientists have never traversed, have apparently demon- strated that cataclysms occurred in the past history of the planet so vast and so tremendous in their influence upon the various forms of life that only the most plastic of these forms survived. The edict went forth to every living creature : ' Change or die ! ' So the geological leaps were accom- panied with biological leaps so great as to be equivalent to new creations. But not only in the changes from one organic frm to another do we see evidence adverse to the theory of perpetually uniform S3quenc98 in nature. The introductions successively of vegetable life, of animal life, of human life, and finally of the life of Jesus Christ, are utterly inexplicable from their respective antecedents. Science knows absolutely m. thing of spon- taneous generation, absolutely nothing of the evolution of the organic from the inorganic, or of man's intellectual and moral powers from those of the brute. The new beginnings I have mentioned cannot be rationally ac- counted for except by the coming down upon nature of a power above 142 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, nature, in other words, by new creations in the absolute sense. When science can produce bacteria from ammonia and water, change any lower creature into a responsible being, construct a Christ out of a man consciously guilty, then and only then can she afford to speak slightingly of miracles. The testimony of nature, then, is simply this : Although there is a presump- tion against miracles, there is nothing in experience or in the primitive ideas of the mind which renders investigation of their claims unnecessary. But there is another world than that of nature. The physical is supple- mented by the moral, and rinds in the moral its explanation and end. It is unscientific to conclude that miracles are improbable, simply upon the testi- mony of the physical universe ; for the reason that the physical universe is but the half, and the lower half, of the great system . What is improbable when judged from the point of view of mere physics, may be eminently probable when judged from the point of view of morals. If then we can show that even the physical universe has relations to the moral, and is made to serve it, we do much to compel a transfer of the controversy from the physical, to the moral, realm. And this we maintain. There is a moral law inlaid in nature. We could conceive a system in which the violation of moral obligation might be accompanied with the highest physical well-being. Pride and even licentiousness might be the path to health. But the present order of the world is different. As the universe is at present constructed, honesty is the best policy. Sin is its own detecter and judge and tormentor. In the very framework of matter and of mind is inwrought the tendency to punish vice and reward virtue. The universe does not exist for itself alone a great dumb show from age to age. The mere circling of world about world, growth and decay, life and death these are not all. The universe has an end beyond and above itself. It is for moral ends and moral beings. So much is made plain to us by the in working of the moral law into the con- stitution and course of nature. And if the universe is made to subserve moral ends, if it exists for the contemplation and use of moral beings, if it is constructed for the purpose of revealing to them God's law, and the God who is the source of law, then it is probable that the God of nature will pro- duce effects aside from those of natural law, whenever there are sufficiently important ends to be served thereby. In short, if the moral ends for which the universe exists are not attained by the operation of natural law alone, it is probable that these ends will be attained by methods beyond and above those of natural law. All that is needed to render miracles probable is a ' dignus vindice nodus,' an exigency worthy of the interposition. Is there such an exigency? We claim that the moral disorder of the world is such an exigency. This moral disorder is not a part of the original creation, nor is it the work of God. If it were, we should not hope for rec- tification. But it is man's work, and results from the free acts of man's will. To deny that man may mar the Creator's handiwork, is to deny conscious- ness and conscience. These testify to man's freedom and sole responsibility for moral evil ; these testify that Godis the hater and punisher of it. If now, through no fault of the maker, the watch has been suffered to get out of order so that it no longer fulfils its end of keeping time, shall any fancied sacredness about its mechanism prevent the rectification of that disorder, and the touch of the regulator by the maker's hand ? In the original design MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 143 of the watch, the winding up and setting of the regulator were provided for. Subsequent repair and readjustment are but the carrying out of the ultimate purpose of the mechanism, that it should correctly mark the hours. And when the moral world, through no fault of its Author, has ceased to fulfil its end of representing and reflecting the divine holiness, shall it be thought improbable that God should make bare the arm which the garment of nature had hid, and make known his power by setting at work new principles of holi- ness and life ? When the lower world has become so sundered from the higher as to forget its true meaning and end, is it strange that the higher should touch the lower, and that changes in this lower should result ? We claim, therefore, that the existence of moral disorder consequent upon the free acts of man's will changes the presumption against miracles into a pre- sumption in their favor, so that, in a tme sense, the non-appearance of mir- acles would be the greatest of miracles. Our judgment with regard to the probability of miracles will depend in great part upon the extent to which we perceive this moral disorder in the world ami in our own breasts. The degree to which we perceive this will depend, iii turn, upon the conception we cherish with regard to God. As Dr. Mozley has intimated, there are two ruling ideas of God. The one gathers round e-nscieuce, the other round a physical centre. The one looks upon God as the supreme mundane Intelligence, penetrating and pervading the physical universe, and manifested in all the tides of the world's life and civ- ili/.ation. The other regards him as the high and holy One the God of infinite moral purity, whose voice conscience echoes, and who is the Gover- nor ami Jtul^e of all human souls. If we take the former view exclusively or even predominantly, the regular order of nature's successions will seem a full and sufficient revelation of the Almighty, and then there is no place for miracles they are an impertinence and a contradiction. But if we take the latter view, then the contrast between the spotless purity of God and the uni- versal sin of the world will unspeakably affect us ; the whole course of nature will seem out of joint, the end of creation unattained, and all things in heaven and earth, man's nature and God's nature as well, will seem to cry out for the world's deliverance and redemption. On this view, miracles have a place, and a fit place, in the whole scheme of things ; they are antecedently prob- able. And therefore the denial of miracles on the part of those who hold the former view of God ought not to perplex us, or to shake our faith. They deny miracles, because they have not the whole evidence before them. The moral argument in favor of miracles has no force to them, because they have no eye for the facts on which it is based. But their not seeing them does annihilate them. The moral wants of the world, once apprehended, render miracles probable, as the accompaniments and attestations of a divine revela- tion. Miracles are probable ; but whether they have actually taken place is a question of evidence. What amount of testimony is necessary to prove a miracle ? We reply : No more than is requisite to prove the occurrence of any other unusual, but confessedly possible, event. Hume indeed argued that a miracle is so contradictory of all human experience that it is more reasonable to believe any amount of testimony false than to believe a miracle to be true. But the argument is fallacious. It is chargeable with 144 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, OR, a petitio principii. It assumes that a miracle is contrary to all human experience. But, by all human experience, Hume can mean only our personal experience. We have not seen a miracle. But others say that they have. To make our own experience the measure of all human expe- rience, would make the proof of any absolutely new fact impossible. Even the evidence of our own senses would be insufficient to prove a miracle ; for what is contrary to our past experience would be incredible. Even if God should work a miracle, he could, on this view, never prove it. What is this general experience of mankind, that is held to render the mir- acle incredible ? It is merely negative experience. When one man testifies that he witnessed the commission of a certain crime, shall it be sufficient in rebuttal to bring a hundred men who were not present and who declare that they never saw any such thing ? Negative testimony can never neutralize that which is positive, except upon principles which would invalidate all tes- timony whatsoever. And how do we know what general experience is? Why, only from testimony. Yet Hume commits the self-contradiction of seeking to overthrow our faith in human testimony, by adducing to the con- trary the general experience of men of which we know only through testi- mony. Moreover, Hume's view requires belief in a greater wonder than those which it would escape. That multitudes of intelligent and honest men should, against all their interests, unite in deliberate and persistent falsehood, under the circumstances narrated in the New Testament record, involves a change in the sequences of the mental and spiritual world far more incred- ible than are the miracles of Christ and his apostles. What have we now proved, and where does the argument thus far leave us ? In our judgment, we have proved that, granting the fact of a revela- tion, miracles are necessary to attest it ; that there is nothing in the relation of miracles to natural law to render them impossible ; that there is nothing in the relation of miracles to the laws of evidence to render them improbable. They can be subjects of testimony, like other facts. Provided the facts are certified by witnesses who in other matters are recognized as competent and credible, there is no more rational warrant for rejecting miracles than for rejecting accounts of eclipses and of darkenings of the sun. But because miracles are possible and probable, it does not follow that we must accept as miracle all that comes to us under that name. We are simply bound to consider without prepossession each case of the apparently mirac- ulous that presents itself, and to decide it upon its own merits. Now we do not propose to take up the New Testament miracles singly and in detail. It will be sufficient to point out the proper course to be pursued in further investigation of the subject. That course, we are persuaded, is to take first of all that great central miracle upon which Christianity rests her claims and to which the church looks back as to the source of her life I mean the miracle of Christ's resurrection. To that miracle we have as witnesses two of the evangelists and the Apostle Paul, each of whom personally saw Jesus after he had risen from the dead, and these witnesses represent the faith of a great body of early believers for whom they speak. "Like banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain range, they represent and are sustained by compact and continuous bodies below." The accounts of these witnesses would have been contradicted if contradiction had been MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 145 possible. That multitudes believed their story, and against all their worldly interests became disciples of Christ, is proof that they believed it to be true. The existence of the church, the existence of Christianity itself, with its doctrines and its ordinances, is inexplicable except upon the hypothesis that what these witnesses believed, was true. The supposition of dream or delusion, of myth or romance, of apparition or imagination, is utterly incom- petent to solve the problem how keen-witted and brave-hearted and truth- loving men became converts to a faith they had bitterly opposed, and went to imprisonment and martyrdom in its defense. It is irrational to suppose that this mighty fabric of Christian faith and life which has so blessed the world has its foundation either in fraud or in self-deception. But the resur- rection of Jesus Christ, once granted, carries with it directly or indirectly all the other miracles of the New Testament. That one miracle proves Jesus Christ to be a teacher sent from God ; proves his words to be a revelation from God to men ; proves his asserted oneness Avith God and equality with God to be a fact. The coming of such a Being into history is the most wonderful of all events. From this point of view, the miracles of his life assume a new aspect. They are fit manifestations of the incarnate Deity, fit accompaniments of the miracles of his coming and his resurrection. But more than this, the miracles of the New Testament carry with them the miracles of the Old. These are the fitting preludes and preparations for the coming of God into the world which he created, fitting signs and prophe- cies to make the world ready for the great event. And so, as a matter of fact, the great epochs of iniiacles are coincident with the great epochs of revelation. About Moses, the giver of the law, about the prophets as inter- preters of the law, there are congeries of miracles. We find them just where we should expect them, the natural accompaniments and attestations of those new communications from God which at successive periods prepared the way for the coming of his Son. And this shows us why they have g- nizes the existence of counterfeit miracles and denominates them 'lying wonders.' These counterfeit miracles, in various ages, argue that the belief in miracles is natural to the race and that somewhere there must exist tin- true. They serve to show that not all supernatural occurrences are of divine origin, and to impress upon us the necessity of careful examination before we give them credence. False miracles may commonly be distinguished from the true, by their acompaniments of immoral conduct or of doctrine contradictory to truth already revealed, as in modern spiritualism ; by their internal characteristics of inanity or extravagance, as in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, or in the miracles of the Apocryphal New Testament ; in the insufficiency of the object which they are designed to further, as in the case of Apollonius of Tyaua, or of the miracles said to accompany the publication of the doctrine of the immaculate conception ; or finally, in their lack of substantiating evidence, as in mediaeval miracle*, which are seldom if ever attested by contemporary and disinterested witnesses. A simple comparison of other so-called miracles with those of Scripture suffices to show the vast superiority of the latter in sobriety, in benevolence, in purpose, in evidence. Mahomet disclaimed all power to work miracles, and appealed to the Koran in lieu of them, so that its paragraphs are called aidt, or ' sign. ' But later legends relate that Mahomet caused darkues- noon, whereupon the moon flew to him, and after going seven times round the Kaaba, bowed to him, then entered his right sleeve, and, slipping out at the left, split into two halves, which after severally retiring to the extreme east and west, were once more united to each other. These were truly signs from heaven, but they make no impression upon us. The fable of St. Alban, the first martyr of Britain, illustrates to us the nature of mediaeval miracles. The saint walks about, after his head is cut off, and, that he may not be wholly deprived of that useful portion of his body, he carries it in his hand. Mediaeval miracles were part of a complicated system of deceit and evil, constructed to further the secular interests of a domineering church. Ante- cedently improbable, from their connection with the organization of which they are the representatives, they fail to pass either of the tests which dis- tinguish the true miracle from the false. But in the New Testament all these tests are met. Here is purity of life in the teachers who work them, accompanied by the proclamation of doctrine not only consistent with God's jjast teachings, but constituting the keystone of the arch of revelation ; here are sobriety and grandeur, benevolence and wisdom, united in every act ; here are objects worthy of divine intervention, the attesting of the divine commission of his Son and the certification that what he teaches is God's authoritative word of life and salvation ; here is evidence of the occurrence of these miracles from eye-witnesses of keen discernment and irreproachable integrity, who had no conceivable motive for dishonesty, and who imperiled their lives by the testimony they gave witnesses who mutually support MIRACLES AS ATTESTING REVELATION. 147 each other without the possibility of collusion, and whose testimony perfectly agrees with collateral facts and circumstances, so far as these can be ascer- tained from the most rigorous investigations into the literature and history of their time. No other religion professes to be attested by miracles at all ; no other miracles of any age present evidence of their genuineness compar- able to these. Indeed, the result of extended investigation is simply this : The Christian miracles are the only series of miracles that have the slightest claim to rational credence, yet no man can rationally doubt that the Christian miracles were wrought by God. Here we might leave our theme. We make but one closing remark. The belief in many fancied manifestations of the supernatural has vanished with the advance of civilization. Sir Matthew Hale and his belief in witches are things of the past. But the belief in the Christian miracles has not vanished : it has not decreased ; it sways a larger number of minds, and minds of higher quality and culture, to-day than ever before. With civilization, the belief in other wonders disappears. With civilization, the belief in the Christian miracles steadily and irresistibly advances. It is an instance of survival of the fittest. It is inexplicable, except by difference of kind between the faith and the superstition. And the faith whose progress is never retrograde, but whose dominion perpetually widens, unless the laws of mind and of history be changed in the interest of unbelief, must some day inevi- tably embrace among its adherents the total race of man. THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION.* Among sincere believers in the all-pervading inspiration of the Scriptures, there are minor differences of opinion. These differences have respect chiefly to the method in which the Holy Spirit wrought upon the sacred writers. Some are unable to conceive of any inspiration which does not involve an external communication and reception. Richard Hooker, the great English Churchman of the sixteenth century, asserts that the authors of the Bible ' ' neither spake nor wrote any word of their own, but uttered syllable by syllable as the Spirit put it into their mouths." We may call this the dictation-theory of inspiration. There are undoubtedly instances in which this method was used by God. When Moses went into the taber- ernacle, he "heard the voice speaking to him from between the cherubim." When John was in the Spirit on the Lord's-day, he was bidden to write cer- tain definite words to the seven churches. But we conceive that this theory rests upon a very partial induction of Scripture facts. It unwarrantably assumes that occasional instances of direct dictation reveal the invariable method of God's communications of truth to the writers of the Bible. There is another far larger class of facts which this theory is wholly unable to explain. There is a manifestly human element in the Scriptures. There are peculiarities of style which distinguish the productions of each writer from those of every other, witness Paul's anacoloutha and his bursts of grief and of enthusiasm. There are variations in accounts of the same scene or transaction, which indicate personal idiosyncrasies in the different writers, witness the descriptions of Mark as compared with those of Mat- thew. These facts tend to show that what they wrote was not dictated to them, but was in a true sense the product of their own observation and thought. They were not simply pens they were penmen of the Spirit. God's authorship did not preclude a human authorship also. It has been sought to break the force of these facts by urging that the omniscient and omnipotent Spirit could without difficulty put his com- munications into all varieties of human speech. Quenstedt, the Lutheran theologian, declared that "the Holy Ghost inspired his amanuenses with those expressions which they would have employed, had they been left to themselves." We are reminded of Voltaire's idea that God created fossils in the rocks, just such as they would have been had ancient seas existed. A theory like this virtually accuses God of unveracity. In nature he has not made our senses to deceive us. Much less in his word has he led our minds astray by tilling it with illusory indications of intellectual activity on the part of prophets and evangelists. * Printed in the Examiner, Oct. 7 and Oct. 14, 1880. 148 THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION. 149 "We must remember, moreover, that large parts of the Scriptures consist of narratives of events with which the writers were personally familiar. It is inconsistent with any wise economy of means in the divine administration, that the Scripture-writers should have had dictated to them what they knew already, or what they could inform themselves of by the use of their natural powers. That Luke made diligent inquiry as to the facts which he was to record, he expressly tells us in the preface to his Gospel. If, after all this gathering of materials, Luke still required to have his Gospel dictated to him word for word, it is difficult to see the need of the preliminary investi- gations. Why employ eye-witnesses of the Saviour's life, like John ? Might not the Gospel which proceeded from his pen have been equally well written by one who never saw the Lord, nay, by one who lived a thousand years before his coming ? It is sometimes said that these considerations, convincing as they may seem, can weigh nothing against the plain assertion of Paul that he speaks "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teach eth." A careful examination of this passage, however, will show that there is not only no dictation here, but that all such mechanical influence is by implication excluded. In what way are we to suppose that "man's wis- dom teacheth ?" By dictating word for word ? Not at all. It is rather by so tilling the writer's mind, that he uses words addressed to the merely natural tastes and opinions of men. So the speech " taught by the Spirit," or "learned of the Spirit," as we may better translate the phrase, is not the utterance of words dictated one by one by the Holy Ghost, but simply the expression of the thought with which the Spirit has tilled the mind, in words of whose adequateness and appropriateness that same Spirit furnishes the .-_ni!ir;nitee. The passage teaches nothing more than that the general manner of discourse was ordered by God, so that the writers joined to the matter revealed by the Spirit words which they had also learned from the Spirit how to employ. In what precise way the Holy Spirit secured a right use of words we may or may not be able to determine. It is certain that this particular passage does not inform us, much less does it constitute a direct affirmation of the dictation-theory of inspiration. By way of transition to what seems to us a more reasonable conception of the general method of inspiration, we may add to all the preceding objec- tions still one more. The theory of word-for-word dictation contradicts what we know of the law of God's working in the soul. The higher and nobler God's communications are, the more fully is the recipient in posses- sion and use of his own faculties. To Joseph's dullness of perception God speaks in a vision of his sleep, but to Mary the angel of the annunciation delivers his message in her waking hours. We cannot suppose that the composition of the Scriptures, that highest work of man under the influence of God's Spirit, was purely mechanical. On the contrary, it seems plain to us that Psalms and Gospels and Epistles alike bear indubitable marks of having proceeded from living human hearts, and from minds in the most active and energetic movement. But, in order clearly to present our own view of God's method, it will be necessary to say a preliminary word with regard to the general matter of divine and human cooperation. There are those who conceive of God's working and man's working as 150 THE MKTIIOI) OF INSPIRATION. mutually exclusive of each other. They cannot comprehend the possibility of an act's having man for its author in the most complete sense, and yet being in an equally complete sense the work of God. Yet just such coop- eration of God and man is brought to our view in the apostle's injunction : ' * Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. " Even regen- eration and conversion are respectively the divine and the human aspects of a change in which God and man are equally active, although logically speaking the initiative is wholly with God. But the highest and most won- derful proof and illustration of such union of divine and human activities is found in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. There surely the fact that a work is human does not prevent its being also divine, nor the fact that a work is divine prevent its being also human. It is the great service to theology of Dorner, the distinguished German writer, that he has reiterated and emphasized this truth that man is not a mere tangent to God, capable of juxtaposition and contact with him, but of no interpenetration and indwelling of the divine Spirit. Every believer knows that the effect of God's union with his soul is only to put him more fully in possession of his own powers ; in truth, he never is truly and fully himself until God is in him and works through him. Then only he learns how much there is of him, and of what lofty things he is capable. Now in this truth, as we conceive, lies the key to the doctrine of inspiration. The Scriptures are the production equally of God and of man, and are never to be regarded as merely human or merely divine. The wonder of inspiration that which constitutes it a unique fact is in neither of these terms sep- arately, but in the union of the two. Those whom God raised up and providentially qualified, spoke and wrote the words of God, not as from without but as from within ; and that, not passively, but in the most con- scious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of intellect, emotion and will. Inspiration is a unique fact, and in attempting to illustrate our meaning, we run the risk of misleading. But let us run this risk, and trust to subse- quent explanation to correct any false inferences from our illustrations. What dictation is, we know without any example. The merchant dictates a letter by word of mouth, and after it is written reads it over, and if it is correct authorizes the sending of it. It is his letter, though not a word of it is in his handwriting. This is the first method a method employed, as we grant, in Scripture, though, as we also believe, only in rare and excep- tional cases. There is a second method which may conceivably have been employed. In an interview with his confidential clerk, the same merchant may give the clerk a general idea of the letter which he desires to have written, but may leave the words and even the method of treatment in large degree to the clerk's discretion. Still it is the merchant's letter, not the clerk's. In fact, it would be to all intents and purposes his letter, had he given no special directions to his secretary, but had left him to be guided in his writing by what he knew of the general spirit and business methods of his employer, that is, it would be the employer's letter, if it were accepted by that employer and sent forth by one authorized to act in his name. Now it is possible that the Scriptures might be the word of God, even though the THE MKTHOI) OF INSPIRATION. 151 relation between the divine and the human authors should in some cases be u o more close than this. God might raise up men and providentially pre- pare them for this special work ; he might specially call them to it by inward impulse or by the outward certification of miracle, and though there should be no dictation and no suggestion of anything more than the general idea to be expressed, his acceptance of their work and publication of it as his own might constitute it as fully his word, as it would be if he had dictated every part. But let us hasten to say, however, that the method of " general instruc- tions" suggested by the illustration just given seems to us equally insuffi- cient to account for the facts with the method of dictation previously spoken of. The only parts of the Scripture that could with any semblance of probability be thought of as composed in this way would be those portions which most closely resemble secular literature, such as the books of the Chronicles, or certain of the Psalms, or the Acts of the Apostles. But even here, the loftiness of tone, the absolute freedom from all proved historical error, the incidental inculcation of profound doctrine, the important signifi- cance of slight shades of expression, render it impossible for the Christian render to avoid the conclusion that over the whole process of composition a wisdom higher than the wisdom of this world, even the wisdom of the Holy (Hiost, must have presided. While we reject the dictation-theory of inspir- ation as an explanation of the general method in which the Scriptures were written, we reject as entirely and unqualifiedly the theory that God simply put his ideas into the minds of the sacred writers, and then left them, in independence of himself, to the hazardous and stupendous task of furnishing the whole method of treatment and the entire means of expression. Is there a middle ground between these two extremes ? Or rather, is there not a higher point of view from which all the truth which is in each of these theories may be grasped, while the error is excluded? We believe that there is. A third illustration will prepare the way for stating it. There are occasional experiences in the ministry of a faithful preacher of Christ's gospel, when the word of his master seems fulfilled: " It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." After thor- ough and prayerful preparation, he appears before a public audience to utter God's truth with regard to sin and to salvation. As he proceeds in his discourse, the order of thought upon which he had fixed in his study seems like a track illumined with the clear light of heaven. All the surroundings and BUgge0tk>lUi of the hour are lines converging toward his chosen end the impressing of a definite truth upon the minds of his hearers. And that truth takes possession of his very soul; he feels its unutterable greatness, it * supreme claims; he is dying to utter it aye, the struggle of his nature is so great that he almost dies in the uttering of it his very life seems to go out with his words. Such new powers of thought and feeling are roused to action within him, that he wonders at himself ; and as for expression, it seems like the full flowing of an irrepressible fountain words fit themselves to thought with an exactness and grace, a persuasiveness and power, of which he never deemed himself capable. In short, he becomes possessed with the truth, and he proclaims the truth, in a state of insight and exaltation that puts to shame all his common moods, and gives almost a taste of the 152 THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION. knowledge and love and power of seraphs before the throne. And tho^e who hear are moved, at first they know not why ; the speaker seems lost to sight, and God draws near; it is as if, like Moses, they were admitted to the inner sanctuary of the Almighty, and heard his voice from between the cherubim. The sermon is ended, but not the thoughts of the preacher. What are those thoughts ? If he be, as we have supposed, a true man of God, they will be thoughts of the deepest awe and humility. He will say: "God spoke, not I." He will praise God, and wonder that God has so distin- guished him as to make him his mouth-piece and ambassador. But at the same time he will say : " To-day I was myself. I became aware of hitherto undiscovered powers. How great a thing it is to be a man, and to use my whole humanity for him who redeemed me ! " Passivity, loss of conscious- ness and will, absorption in God till the human element becomes a merely selfless instrument and organ of the divine, these are precisely what his experience is not. Now the whole-souled movement of the man under the influence of the indwelling Spirit this seems to us to be the best earthly analogy for the understanding of the fact of inspiration. As we have already intimated, this illumination of the preacher by the Holy Spirit is not itself inspiration, nor at the best does it furnish anything more than a partial illustration of one principal feature of that unique work of God. For inspi- ration may involve revelation of new truth, while illumination is never more than a quickening of man's cognitive powers to perceive the old ; inspiration qualities the subject of it to put God's truth into permanent and written form, while illumination merely enables the man to unfold and utter the word that has been written already ; inspiration gives absolute and final authority, illumination confers an authority that is only subordinate and relative. But the preacher's illumination by the Holy Spirit furnishes a true analogy to inspiration in this one respect, namely, that it involves a complete union of divine and of human activities, in distinction from the independent working of two equal parties on the one hand, or the mere mechanical influence of dictation on the other. The possibility of such working of God in the soul of man can be denied only by those who regard man's soul as a region so sacred and independent that God would not enter it if he could, and could not enter it if he would. There is a striking similarity between their view of inspiration and their view of miracles. In both cases they hold that the laws of nature are sus- pended or violated ; in both cases the second causes are reduced to passivity. The attraction of gravitation must be annulled, in order that Elisha may cause the axe to float upon the surface of the water ; the spiritual life of Paul must come to a temporary stand-still, that he may write the Epistle to Philemon. We consider these views to be based on a radically incorrect conception of the relation of God to the two worlds of matter and of mind. God is in nature and in mind already, he can by special exercise of will transcend the powers of both, while yet these powers are working in full intensity. As gravitation is in operation even while the hand of God keeps the iron from sinking, so all the laws of man's mental and moral nature are in oper- ation at the same time that God uplifts and guides them in inspiration. The opinion which we have been controverting has been cherished by THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION. 153 many excellent men, from a conviction that it alone befitted the majesty of God, and secured the sacred writers from errors arising from their merely human methods of thought and expression. But when we consider that man was originally made to be inhabited and energized by God, it seems more in accordance with God's plan that he should speak through man, than merely to him. The exaggeration of the divine element seems to us as serious an error as the exaggeration of the human. Dorner well calls it the docetic view of inspiration. It virtually holds that not the writers, but only the writings, were inspired. When we lose sight of the real human author- ship of the sacred books, we incur a loss comparable only to that which we should sustain by letting go the human side of our Redeemer's person. A great part of the power of the Bible over us, like the attraction of Christ, arises from its coming to us with the voice and the sympathies of our com- mon humanity. Inspiration took into account this fact. It therefore did not remove, but rather pressed into service, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with their defects of culture and literary style. In fact, every imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may exist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is the " word of God," but we may also say of it, in a peculiar sense, that it is the " word made flesh." It presents t<> us truth in human forms. It is a revelation, not for a select class, but for the common mind. And rightly understood, this very human- ity of the Bible is one of the best proofs of its divinity. Precisely how much of new knowledge and power was added to each particular Scripture writer by the fact of his inspiration, it is not necessary or possible for us to determine. In our judgment, the chief source of error in common treatises on inspiration is the assumption that the Holy Spirit must always have wrought in some uniform measure, or by the use of some uniform means. On the other hand, that seems to us the best definition of inspiration, which defines nothing as to the extent or manner of the influence of the indwelling Spirit. It is enough 4o say that inspiration is that special influence of God upon the minds of the Scripture writers, in virtue of which their productions, apart from errors of transcription and when rightly inter- preted, together constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice. So long as inspiration is regarded as an influence upon the minds, in distinction from the hands, of the writers, we may grant as unlimited variety in the means used by God to enlighten them, as there is in the means he uses for enlightening a sinner at conversion. Inspiration is not to be defined by its method, but by its result. It is a general term, including all those kinds and degrees of the Holy Spirit's influence which were brought to bear upon the minds of the Scripture writers in order to secure the putting into permanent and written form of the truth best adapted to man's moral, and religious needs. Inspiration may often include revelation, or the direct communication from God of truth to which man could not attain by his unaided powers. It may include illumination, or the quickening of man's mind to understand truth already revealed. Inspiration, however, does not necessarily and always include either revelation or illumination. It is simply the divine influence which secures a correct transmission of the truth to the future ; and, according to the nature of the truth to be transmitted, it may be only an inspiration of superintendence, or it may be, at the same time, an inspiration of illumination or of revelation. 154 THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION. This seems to be the meaning of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he tells us that in Old Testament times God spoke to the fathers through the prophets in many parts and in many ways. Inspiration, there- fore, may be best regarded as a bestowment of various kinds and degrees of knowledge and aid, according to need, sometimes suggesting new truth, .sometimes presiding over the selection of preexisting material, though always guarding from error in the final elaboration. It did not always, nor even generally, involve a direct communication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote. Thought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes words. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy Spirit, that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to publish as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of their own minds in the expression of these truths, with this single exception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of wrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspira- tion is therefore verbal as to its result, but not verbal as to its method. Yet in all this work of preparation and composition, although the WTiters of Scripture used their natural powers and opportunities as fully as they would have done in purely secular composition, they were possessed and animated by the Spirit of God. Notwithstanding the ever-present human element, there is an all-pervading inspiration of the Scriptures which consti- tutes these various writings an organic whole. The Bible is in all its parts the word of God. Hence each part is to be judged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part. The Scriptures are not to be inter- preted as so many merely human productions by different authors, but also as the work of one divine mind. In many an expression of prophet or apostle, that divine mind may have intended to communicate more than was present to the consciousness of the human author. Seemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with the whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the life of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is part of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in the New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the Bible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is the person and work of Jesus Christ. This, then, is the sum of what we have said : The Scriptures, except in portions of insignificant extent^ were not on the one hand written from dictation, nor on the other hand composed by men who derived their general ideas from God, while they were left to themselves so far as the expression of those ideas was concerned. Bather must we hold to a possession and enlightenment of the writers in all parts of their work, yet such a possession and enlightenment as left them in the fullest exercise of their natural powers. When they wrote, they wrote in the method and vocabulary of their time, and out of their present conscious experience under the influence of the Spirit. Balaam could not have written the Gospel according to John, nor could Paul have indited the Pentateuch. When they made researches they were guided by God ; when they committed the results of their researches to writing, he kept them back from error either in matter or in expression. Wlien they were called to prophesy of things to come, the Holy Spirit THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION. IT).") opened the future to them ; when they gave directions to the churches, thev did it in the wisdom which only the Holy Spirit could impart. But in all this there was nothing blind, nothing mechanical, nothing passive. They were as truly the authors of what they wrote as was the Holy Spirit. As John Locke said : ' ' When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man. " Two questions need to be answered before this discussion can be regarded as sufficient. The first is this : Are all parts of Scripture inspired ? We reply : All parts of Scripture are inspired in their connection and relation to each other. No statement of the Bible can be taken out from its context, and be called complete truth by itself. We read in Scripture the words : " There is no God ; " but we have no difficulty in holding these to be inspired when we take them as part of the verse : " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." This principle is of universal application, and next to the principle of combined human and divine authorship, we regard this one of the articulated and organic unity of all Scripture as the most important to an understanding of the fact of inspiration. The second question is this : Are there degrees of inspiration ? We answer : There are degrees of value, but not degrees of inspiration. Each part of Scripture is rendered com- pletely true, when interpreted according to its actual meaning, and complete- ness has no degrees. All parts of the human body have life, and all are indispensable to the perfect whole. Yet we should miss the brain more than we should miss the hair that covers it, and the heart more than the hand into which it sends its blood. For all this, he would talk absurdly who should speak of the different parts of the body as having different degrees of life. So the Gospels may be of greater value to us than the minor prophets, and yet the inspiration of the latter be as complete as that of the former. Thus we have endeavored to set forth a connected view of the method of inspiration. We have approached the subject without controversial refer- ence to recent discussions of it with ireuic, rather than polemic, intent. We are convinced that the contemplation of the theme from the point of view which wo have chosen, however imperfect and fragmentary our own treatment may have been, will enlarge our conceptions not only of the mysterious greatness, but also of the genuine reasonableness, of the doctrine of inspiration. XL CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM: Every man has his gift, and he is responsible for that. It was none of Peter's business what John had to do, and Jesus told him so. Peter's busi- ness was to follow Christ himself. Here we are taught the doctrine of Chris- tian individualism. It is not every one who appreciates his individuality. Some people fancy that God creates things in lots ; that he cares only for the species ; that all the members of a race are essentially alike. But they should learn better. The telescope reveals a variety in God's works above us. Stars are of many magnitudes and many colors, single and double, satel- lites and suns. One star differeth from another star in glory, and the heav- ens in ten thousand ways illustrate the manifold wisdom of God. On the earth itself, the naturalist and the botanist find not only an ever-increasing number of species, but within the bounds of each species a greater and greater number of varieties. No two clover-leaves and no two blades of grass are precisely alike. Men of science are beginning to discern a seem- ingly endless versatility in nature. So inexhaustible are the resources of invention displayed, that no man can hope to accomplish anything unless he gives his life to the study of a very limited field. And if the inquirer be devout, he sees God in this variety of the world, and cries with the Psalm- ist : " O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made them all." God's freedom is illustrated by individuality in nature, as his unifying and organizing mind is exhibited in the classes and laws of nature. Diver- sity in unity, and unity in diversity, seems to be his aim. There is no need that any two things should be precisely alike, for the wisdom of God is infinite. And if this is so in the irrational creation, much more is it true of man, whose glory is that he resembles God in freedom. No two faces were ever absolutely alike even twins always differ. The few lines of the human countenance are so manipulated by the divine Artist, that there are ten thousand thousand distinguishable shades of expression. Why then should we think that souls are alike ? In that more delicate and plastic material, the invisible spirit, what an incalculable multitude of differences there must be ! The Germans call Jean Paul Bichter " Der Einzige" " the unique," and the epithet indicates the love they bear him as the communicator of a fresh and peculiar impulse to their literature. But each of us, as well as Jean Paul, is a unique personage. Each " dwells like a star, apart ; " each is solitary, impenetrable to any other. Each has his own gifts, his own tendencies, his own powers, his own capacities for joy and for suffering. * Preached at Vassar College, February 28, 1886, as a sermon on the text, John 21 : 2U 22 " What shall this man do? What is that to thee? Follow thou me." 156 CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM. 157 We do not know ourselves, until some great crisis of our history reveals to us the UD suspected depths of our natures. Then we discover a capacity for almost boundless sorrow, for agonizing remorse, for consuming desire, for overwhelming joy. We see that there is more of us, a hundred times over, than we had ever imagined ; that we are fearfully and wonderfully made ; that there are powers of thought and feeling and will within us that make us immortal ; that we stand over against God with personalities as single and unique as his own. So we step out from the crowd and become con- scious of our manhood or our womanhood ; but with the new sense of our dignity in the creation, we learn for the first time of a responsibility which we must bear, and of a destiny which we must determine. Now from this fact of individuality, which we recognize when once it is stated to us, there follow certain inferences which are not so obvious, but which it is my main purpose this morning to impress upon you, The first is this : If every man is a peculiar being, then every man is guilty of peculiar sins. By this I mean, that in your individual character and life there are certain embodiments and manifestations of sin such as are not to be found anywhere else in the universe. You have not sinned just as other people have. You have had peculiar gifts and opportunities, which have made you capable of a peculiar sort of transgression. No one else could have sinned just as you have, because no one else is just like you. You have not simply repeated the common sin of the race ; for in you there is a new and unique centre of force which does more than express the past : it adds to the past, it makes a character and influence of its own. You have not simply imitated and reproduced the evil examples of others you may have done that, but you have put your own stamp upon every deed. There is .something very solemn in that word "character." It meant originally the mark which the engraver makes upon the metal or the stone. Then it came to mean the collective result of his various chisellings and cuttings. And when we speak of human character, we imply that each human being is, with every act and desire and thought, making a mark upon the imperish- able substance of his soul. And in this artistic work of carving out his char- acter each one of us shows a fearful originality. If you should find in the woods some peculiar species of poisonous plant or venomous reptile, and should be t >ld that it was no descendant from races of the past, but was a new creation, you would start back from it wiih an added horror. Now your sins are just such new creations. Man can create nothing else without God but that, but he can create sin, and he has created it. And you have exercised your mysterious prerogative by bringing into bring acts, and desires, and thoughts of transgression, st:ch as no other being in the universe has ever originated. Being yourself different from every other creature, you have been able to use your will in a course of transgression perfectly individual and unique. There are pejulia- aggrava- tions of your sins, arising from the peculiar light you have had and the peculiar grace you have resisted. Your sins, for this reason, have consti- tuted a peculiar insult to the divine holiness, and they have had a peculiar evil influence over others. There is a peculiar account that you have to render to God. God's righteo;isn -ss could never be vindicated by judging you as one of a mass. You must stand singly and alone before the judgment 158 CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM. seat of Christ. There each shall receive according to the deeds done in hi own body. And there, for me and for you, if we are unsaved, must be an unveiling of the secrets of the heart and the visiting upon each of a pecu- liar guilt, and shame, and condemnation. Ah, when I think of my individual sins, with all their peculiar aggravations, I can see how, in some particulars and aspects, I may be in my unique personality an illustration of the enor- mity and hatef illness of sin such as neither earth nor hell can elsewhere show. And what is true of me is true of you. In virtue of this great fact of individuality, both you and I should call ourselves, as Paul called himself, the "chief of sinners ; " should acknowledge, with the prophet Amos, our "manifold transgressions " and " mighty sins ; " aye, each one of us should cry, as the Publican cried, " God be merciful to me, the sinner," as if there were no other sinner upon the footstool so great as he. A second inference is this : If every man is a peculiar being, then a peculiar wisdom and grace of God are needed to save him. It is not enough for God to decree salvation for the church as a whole. He must set his love upon me and choose me. A merely general election might not include a case so singular as mine has been. It will not do for Jesus to die simply for the race at large. He must die for me, as if there were no other to be saved : for only a most particular and personal sacrifice of the Son of God could reach my case and atone for my sins. And so the believer looks to the cross and says : " My sins gave sharpness to the nails, and pointed every thorn." " The Saviour died for me." " He loved me, and gave him- self for me. " It will not do for Christ to offer a merely general pardon to offenders. No, there is something in every sinner's case, when the Hoi}' Spirit enlightens him, that seems so peculiarly wicked as to go beyond all ordinary bounds of sin, to make him an exceptional case of transgression, and to put him beyond the reach of mercy. The convicted sinner feels like Peter, after he had denied his Master, that though there may be salvation for others, there can be none for him. But just as Christ after his resurrec- tion said : " Go, tell Peter," and so intimated the granting of a special par- don for his particular case, so to every such sinner he sends by his Holy Spirit a special message of forgiveness, and says: "Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee ; go in peace." It is not enough that Jesus should ask blessings for his followers in the mass, now that he has ascended his throne ; for my needs are such as are found nowhere else but in my own soul. He must intercede particularly for me, with my idiosyncrasies and special temptations ; for the grace that saves others will never be sufficient to save me. Christ can say to me, as he said to Peter : " I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." It is not enough that Christ should bestow on me simply the common influences of his Spirit, the same influences which are bestowed upon all. There are peculiar depths of my nature that must be reached ; peculiar and serpentlike convolutions of my wicked heart that must be untwisted ; peculiar intensities of evil ambition and self-exalta- tion that must be subdued, if I am ever to be saved. To convert and to sanctify each sinner, demands a mighty operation and process of the divine Spirit, different from any other that he has ever wrought. It is not enough that God should lead me by his Providence as he leads others. No, "he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out." " He leadeth me,"' CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM. 151) aye, ** he leadeth the blind by a way that they knew not " knew not, because no other soul ever was so led, or could be. Does not this strange fact of our individuality throw light upon our past experience ? You have sometimes asked : ' ' Why hast thou made me thus ? " "Why hast thou so dealt with me ? " Well, it is evident, at least, that there has been a peculiar dealing of God, corresponding to your peciiliar nature. You needed a peculiar care and discipline, and just what you needed God has uiven to you. Is it not a matter of profound gratitude that infinite wis- dom can give a personal attention to you and your salvation, as perfectly as if there were no other to care for in the universe? My friends, we are not saved in a lump. There are peculiar dealings of God with each individual soul. My experience is mine, and yours is yours, and there is no possibility of exchanging them. Just as each separate soldier has an experience of his own in battle, and just as each rescued passenger can tell a different story of shipwreck, so each history of salvation will have a thrilling interest of its own. No other being in all God's universe has been saved just as I have been. The multitude of God's thoughts toward me is more than I can num- ber. In the record of its varied experiences under the mighty influences of God's Providence and God's Spirit, shall be made known by the church, to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, the manifold wisdom of God. Each soul redeemed Mid brought to glory shall have a new name, which no one knoweth but lie that receiveth it the sign manual of God stamped upon him in a way unique and incommunicable. And each soul will sing with an emphasis and meaning all its own : " Ainnxinfr tfruee, how su <<( the sound. That saved a wretch like me ! " There is a third inference : If every man is a peculiar being, then every man hax a peculiar work for God to do. Just as there was a man sent i'roni (lo<> rewarded " according to our works." Not on account of our works, as if by working we could put God under obligation to us, but according to our works in proportion to what we have done and the faithfulness with which we have done it. There is a sense in which the rewards of all ,^hall be the same. The laborers in the vineyard each one received his penny. So in the great future all souls will be equally full of the love and goodness of God full to the utmost measure of their capacity. But then their capaci- ties shall differ, and one shall be able to hold more than another. A small pail can be just as full as a great tub, but the great vessel can hold much more than the small one. And the difference in reward shall be determined CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM. 161 by the peculiarities of the service each man has rendered. He who gives ven the cup of cold water in the name of a disciple shall in no wise lose his peculiar reward. The servant whose pound has gained five pounds shall be rewarded with authority over five cities, and the servant whose pound has gained ten pounds shall be rewarded with authority over ten. But the peculiarity of the reward shall be graduated, not only to the peculiarity of the work that each has done, but to the peculiarity of the nature of him who receives it. Joy shall be the reward of heaven but it shall be in each case a joy with which a stranger intermeddleth not. "Your joy no man taketh from you." It is a joy which the highest archangel cannot share, because it is the vibrating of all the strings of a peculiar nature at the soft touch of the fingers of infinite Love. Power shall be the reward of heaven. The power of complete self-mastery will be a peculiar reward, because no other soul in the universe can know the struggles through which your soul has passed in resisting its peculiar temptations and in subduing its peculiar sins. George Eliot once said that the reward of a duty done is the power to do another. As with every new work for Christ accomplished we pass on to larger and larger achievement, peculiar power of service shall be the reward of the peculiar gifts and endowments which we lay at the Master's feet. Love shall be the reward of the faithful a love that shall admit the great love of God to fill up all the interstices and gaps and empti- nesses of our natures, as water poured into a bowl not only fills it full, but adapts itself to the peculiar form of the vessel that contains it. Holiness shall be the reward of the faithful. There is a mineral called diaphane that becomes transparent only in water. It shall be the blessing of heaven that this being of ours, now so clouded and opaque through the effects of sin, shall be immersed in the divine purity, and in that bath of regeneration shall be made pure as God is pure. God himself shall be the reward of heaven a God who can adapt himself with infinite inventiveness and wisdom to every peculiarity of the beings he has made, can be seen from a different point of view by every separate mind, and can be felt in a different way by each separate heart of all those he has redeemed. Shakspeare has been called the myriad-minded, but there is no end to the sides and aspects of God's being, and no finite mind can know the whole. The great reward of heaven will be that each redeemed soul can say: "O, God, thou art my God ! " So the reward will be peculiar, as the nature, and the sin, and the grace, and the work, are peculiar. The reward will be the raising to the highest power, and the exalting to the intensest activity, of that peculiar faculty and endowment which God imparted to the soul at the beginning. Here is a Christian evolution that passes in grandeur and dignity all that material evolution of which scientific men delight to speak. They tell us of a world thrown off from a fiery revolving nebula, chaotic and formless at the first, but gradually assuming outline and order, and bringing forth a constantly increasing variety of life and beauty. I can hear the sons of God shouting for joy, as God says "Let there be light!" and the ordered sphere goes whirling by ; and I can conceive of those same angelic hosts adoring yet more that wisdom that in the long course of its subsequent history has made the germinal world planted so long ago amid the great spaces of the universe to 11 162 CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM. develope into such beauty and glory of mountain and field and flood. But there is another evolution grander than all this. It is found in the history of a redeemed soul. Springing at its beginning from the creative hand of God, a mere rudimentary germ of life and mind, it passes into the chaos and night of sin, until that same omnipotent Word that called the light out of darkness causes to shine in upon it the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Then the long training of the rescued spirit, through providence and grace, through temptation and affliction, through Christian work and achievement, until the soul reaches a full-orbed manhood in Christ Jesus. On and still on shall the process go, labor becom- ing more and more the highest rest, work becoming more and more reward, every faculty developed to greatness, every peculiar excellence brought to a unique and unexampled beauty, until as the sons of God see this spiritual product of God's wisdom go sweeping by, they shall be compelled to say that it passes in glory all the thrones and dominions and principalities and powers of their celestial hierarchy, that its history illustrates God's might and foreseeing wisdom better than all the material worlds that float in space, that its heights of intellectual and moral greatness are more glorious than the whiteness of Alpine summits when smitten by the first light of the rising sun, that its capacities for loving and expressing God are greater than the depths of ocean when they reflect the untroubled glory of the starlit skies. When I think of the magnificent developments of individuality which the great future shall witness, of the grand array of crowned heads which heaven will present, each one a ruler over his own principality and all of them kings and priests unto God, I look back with horror to the awful perversity of Satan's lie to our first parents : ' ' Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. " Seeking to be a God to himself, all these noble prospects of endless devel- opment were blasted and swept away. But in Christ they are all restored. It is not yet made manifest what we shall be, but we know that if he shall be manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is. Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, what God hath prepared for them that love him. We shall judge angels, and all things shall be ours, because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. It was written of ancient judges : "I said ye are gods." The name of gods was given them, because they were the representatives of God and were filled with his Spirit. So we shall be gods in the world to come, because in this unique and peculiar nature which belongs to each of us God shall dwell and manifest himself. We shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, because we live forever in the light of him who is the one and only Sun. God help us then each one to say : "I am unlike every other soul that God ever made. I have sinned as no other ever has. He has saved me, and led me, in a different way from any other. I owe to him therefore a kind and quality of service such as no other human being has ever rendered. I am bound to have views of truth and of duty such as no other Christian ever had. I am bound to mark out for myself a course of spiritual development and a plan of outward work that shall be as original as the leadings of God. So only can I be a true man in Christ, an independent actor in history, a living force under God in the development of his plans, a king forever in CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM. 163 God's kingdom." It is to this lofty development of Christian individuality that God calls iis to be Christ's lieutenants in the universe. Oh, you who love power ! take the lasting, the eternal power that conies through serving Christ. Use mind, heart and will, your ability to plan and to give, your voice and influence, your capacity to work and your power of getting others to work use all these in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ now and here, and he will not only fill you with his Spirit and make you a master of circumstances and a master of men, but he will perpetuate your power beyond death, and increase it throughout the great hereafter ; for he himself has said : " To him that overcometh, will I give to sit down with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. " XII. THE NEW THEOLOGY: The New Theology, so called, is a theology of exaggerated individual- ism. What this means, and what are the errors and probable results of the system, will appear as we go on. It is well to remember, however, that the new always has its roots in the old, and before describing the phenomenon of the present I wish to mention some of its historical connections in the past. I trace the history of this tendency in theology as far back as to the nominal- ism of Roscelin, Duns Scotus, and Occam. To these philosophers, general conceptions have their source only in the mind ; there is nothing correspond- ing to them in the actual world. Genera and species are mere names ; indi- viduals are the only realities. Upon this view, science is the study only of units : in truth, there can be no science, for science would imply law and the binding of particulars into unity. There is of course a realism equally objectionable the realism which would hold to the independent existence of universals the horse in general, apart from all individual horses. With Dr. H. B. Smith, we "hold to univer- salia in re, but insist that the universals must be recognized as realities, as truly as the individuals are. " There have been two chief applications of this nominalistic principle in theology : the first is its application to the nature of God ; the second, its application to the nature of man. In the former case the result has been either a practical tritheism on the one hand, which denies the possibility of a divine nature without a divine person, and so holds that there must be three Gods because there are three who possess a divine nature ; or on the other hand a practical unitarianism, which holds that as there is but one God, so only one person can possess the divine nature. Nestorianism for a similar reason held that Christ was two persons instead of one, because it could not conceive of human nature in him without independence and indi- viduality. Nominalism has, moreover, conceived of the divine attributes as mere names, with which, by a necessity of our thinking, we clothe the one simple divine essence. It holds that the attributes are not distinct from God's essence or from each other. This is to deny that we can know God at all ; for know- ing is not possible without distinguishing. Set this false tendency to regard God as a being of absolute simplicity has infected much of the post-reforma- tion theology, and is found as recently as Schleiermacher, Eothe, and Ols- hausen. Schleiermacher makes all the attributes to be modifications of power ; Bothe, of omniscience ; and Olshausen attempts to prove that the * Printed in the Baptist Quarterly Review, for January, 1888. 164 THE NEW THEOLOGY. 1(J5 Word of God must have objective and substantial being, by assuming that knowing is equivalent to willing ; whence it would seem to follow that, since God wills all he knows, he must will moral evil. It is only an application of the same principle when we find Horace Bushnell, one of the progenitors of the New Theology, identifying righteousness in God with benevolence, and denying for that reason that any atonement needs to be made to God. Herbert Spencer only carries the principle further when he concludes God to be simple unknowable force. Hence we can adopt the statement of Tho- masius : "If God were the simply One, TO OTT^- kv, the mystic abyss in which every form of determination were extinguished, there would be nothing in the unity to be known." Hence "nominalism is incompatible with the idea of revelation. We teach, with realism, that the attributes of God are objec- tive determinations in his revelation, and as such are rooted in his inmost essence. " More important, however, for our present purpose is the application of nominalism to the nature of man. Mankind upon this view is but a collec- tion of individuals. The race is not an organic whole. Souls are individu- ally created by God, not propagated with the body from a common stock. There is no such thing as an archetypal humanity, of which each man is a natural evolution and a partial illustration. The genus "man" is but a name which we attach to the multitude of individual men. This is the atomistic account of humanity ; individual men have as little organic connec- tion with each other as the sand-grains in a sand-hill. They influence one another as do the bricks which children set up in a row each receives the impact of its next neighbor entirely from without, and there is no living unity between them. Hence there can be no common fall of humanity in its first father each man falls by himself and for himself, just as each angel did. It would seem to follow that there can be no common salvation, and that Christ can be no more the source of a new humanity to believers, than Adam was the source of sin and guilt to the race at large. There is no con- demnation in Adam, there is no justification in Christ ; for there is no real union of humanity with either. Over against this nominalistic conception of humanity, I put the realistic doctrine which I regard as implicitly contained in Scripture. This regards humanity at large as the outgrowth of one germ. Let me illustrate my meaning. Though the leaves of a tree appear as disconnected units when we look down upon them from above, a view from beneath will discern the common connection with the twigs, branches, trunk, and will finally trace their life to the root, and to the seed from which it originally sprang. So the race of man is one, because it sprang from one head. Its members are not to be regarded only atomistically, as segregated individuals ; the deeper truth is the truth of organic unity. Yet we are not realists of the mediaeval sort. We do not believe in the separate existence of universals. Our real- ism only asserts the real historical connection of each member of the race with its first father and head, and such a derivation of each from him as makes us partakers of the character which he formed. Adam was onc"e the race ; when he fell, the race fell ; we have the very nature which transgressed and corrupted itself in him. I may add that the new conceptions of the reign of law and of the principle of heredity which prevail in modern science 166 THE NEW THEOLOGY. are working to the advantage of Christian theology. The doctrine of Adam's natural headship is only a doctrine of the hereditary transmission of char- acter from the first father of the race to his descendants. I do not deny man's individuality and personal responsibility ; I only deny that this is the whole truth. Besides personal sin, there is race-sin. The New Theology is false by defect. It is the theology of nominalism. It regards man simply as an individual. It holds that each human soul is immediately created by God and has no other relations to moral law than those which are individual ; whereas, all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock. The second source to which I trace the New Theology is the idealism of Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, or rather the modern idealism of which these philosophers are earlier and later repre ^entatives. This general method of thought regards the mind as conversant only with ideas. The tendency has its root in Locke's teaching that all the materials of our knowledge come originally from sensation ; the mind only examines and rearranges the impressions received from sense ; carry the principle a little further, and we must maintain that all we know of an external world is these impressions the external world is, in fact, nothing but these impressions, and this of course implies a denial that any such thing as substance is known at all. Here again is exaggerated individualism the reduction of all knowledge to the knowledge of particulars. This individualism, applied to matter, makes things to be only thoughts ; and Berkeley saves the unity of the external world, not by recognizing created substance in which qualities inhere, but by referring the impressions we receive directly to God the Cre- ator. Hume justly thought it a poor rule that would not work both ways, and he applied the rule not only to matter but to mind. The same individ- ualism which denies substance in the outer world must logically deny substance in the inner world ; we need no soul within, any more than we need matter without ; what we call soul is but a series of ideas a string of beads without any string. Hume apparently did not see that the very first "impression " presupposes the existence of something to be impressed, that is, presupposes a soul within ; just as the cognition of quality presupposes something to which the quality belongs, that is, presupposes material sub- stance without. Yet Mill and Spencer have followed along this same line, and are equally with Hume sensational philosophers. It is easy to see how the refusal to recognize the validity of the mind's intuitive cognition of substance should result in the loss of God as well as the loss of the soul. Kant maintained that things conform to cognition, not cognition to things. Things in themselves are unknown. Behind phenom- ena lies a world which human reason cannot penetrate. Compelled to think as we are, we can never know whether or not the reality corresponds to our thought. No wonder that Hegel rebelled against this agnosticism, and went to the opposite extreme of maintaining that the process of thought guaran- teed its own validity ; that thought, in fact, was existence, and existence was thought. Hence in his system we have the merging of reality in a thought- process ; thought thinks ; there is thinking without a thinker. There is no need of postulating any divine essence, any more than there is need of THE NEW THEOLOGY. 167 postulating any substance for the world or for the soul. God becomes a universal, but impersonal, intelligence and will ; an intelligence and will that come to consciousness only in man. It is only fair to say that will, even in man, never reaches a self-determination that can be called freedom ; and intelligence in man never reaches a proper self -consciousness ; for how can either of these be, where there is no real substantial self? Soul is not recognized as anything separate from the whole of which it forms a part, and of which it is the necessary manifestation. So idealism, aiming to save the life of thought, really loses it ; refusing to recognize substance or essence, and confining itself to particulars, it finally gives up the individuality both of man and of God. Not all idealists, however, carry the system to its logical conclusions. Many a modern theologian has adopted idealistic principles without con- sistently applying them. The doctrine of the immanence of God which forms so large an element in the New Theology has been derived from ideal- istic sources, and is distinctly Berkeleian and Hegelian in its spirit. The theology of Elisha Mulford, Theodore T. Hunger, and Newman Smyth, is a theology which tends to make God in the human spirit the only cause. God and man are still recognized as personal, but the life of man is merged to a large extent in the life of God. Internal revelation is substituted for external ; all men are conceived of as more or less inspired ; the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural are broken down. Some recent writers * pride themselves on having discovered anew the thought which made the early church so devoted and yet so active the thought that in God we live and move and have our being, and they ascribe the decline of Christianity to the fact that Augustine and Calvin lost sight of it, and looked upon God, after a deistic fashion, as a mechanical contriver of the universe and a worker upon it from without. As if some of the noblest utterances of this great truth of God's immanence had not proceeded from Augustine's and from Calvin's lips ! t Let us give all proper emphasis tx> the truth of God's immanence ; let us grant that it did not receive sufficient attention in the days of Butler and Paley ; let us welcome the new light that is thrown upon it to-day. But, then, let us equally remember that God not only speaks with the still, small voice in the constitution of man and in the course of human history, but also by outward miracles of healing and resurrection, by the incarnation and death of his Son, and by the external revelations of Scripture. God's immanence is a vast truth ; but we must not let it hide from our eyes the other truth of God's transcendence. He who is "in all," and ' ' through all, " is also ' ' above all " ; and, if he had not by miracle proved his transcendence, we probably should never have believed in his imma- nence. It is mainly, however, through the identity -system of Jonathan Edwards that idealism has influenced the New Theology. To this identity-system, therefore, as its third source, I trace the movement in thought which I am considering. There can be no doubt that Jonathan Edwards was an idealist. We do *See Allen, Continuity of Religvms Thought. + See Augustine's Confessions, I : I. 168 THE NEW THEOLOGY. not know that he ever met Berkeley, during the Bishop's stay in America, or that he ever read a work of Berkeley's, though Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge was published before Edwards's Freedom of the Will. It was probably through Dr. Samuel Johnson, Berkeley's American friend and disciple, and Jonathan Edwards's teacher at Yale College, that Edwards received his tirst bent to idealism.* The latter gives us his own statement of philosophical doctrine, as follows : " When I say the material universe exists only in the mind, I mean that it is abso- lutely dependent on the conception of the mind for its existence ; and does not exist as spirits do. whose existence does not consist in, nor in dependence on, the conceptions of other minds. . . . All existence is mental .... the existence of all exterior things is ideal. . . . That which truly is the substance of all bodies is the infinitely exact and precise and perfectly stable idea in God's mind, together with his stable will that the same shall gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, according to fixed and exact established methods and laws." Jonathan Edwards was no traducian. Yet he was a believer in original sin, and held to such a unity of Adam's posterity with their first father as made them justly responsible for his first sin. This unity was constituted, not by the historical descent of the bodies and souls of Adam's posterity from the body and soul of Adam, but rather by the idea and will of God, which can make any two things to be identical. The radical error in his philosophy was his denial of substance. The past existence of the moon in the heavens is not the cause of its present existence God's will is the cause ; preservation is a continuous creation ; every instant the moon is new-created by God. Similarly, Edwards had no thought of a common humanity, flow- ing by natural generation from Adam to us, ard still less had he the idea of a realistic presence of the race in its first father. A union with Adam in acts and exercises is sufficient, and such a union exists by divine decree. The idea of this unity, in God's mind, itself constitutes the realty. Our sinful acts and exercises are Adam's, and Adam's acts and exercises are ours. So Edwards held that God imputes Adam's sin to his posterity by arbi- trarily identifying them with him identity, on the theory of continuous creation, being only what God appoints. I do not mean that this is a com- plete account of Edwards's doctrine of sin. Since God's appointment did not furnish sufficient ground for imputation, Edwards joined the Placean doctrine to the other, and showed the justice of the condemnation by the fact that man is depraved. He added, moreover, the consideration that man ratifies this depravity by his own act. Thus he tried to combine three views. But all were vitiated by his doctrine of continuous creation, which logically made God the only cause in the universe, and left no freedom, guilt or responsibility to man. He thought too little of sin as a nature, and located responsibility too much in the acts and exercises which we put forth. It is no wonder that his followers repudiated his doctrine of the union of our acts and exercises with Adam's, and denied that sin is in any sense a nature. Baird, in his Elohim Revealed, has remarked that Edwards's idea that the character of an act is to be sought somewhere else than in its cause involves the fallacious assumption that acts have a subsistence and moral agency of their own, apart from that of the actor. This divergence from the truth led to the exercise-system of Hopkins and * Krauth. Berkeley's Principles of Knowledge. Prolegomena, pages 36 and 37. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 169 Emmons, who not only denied moral character prior to individual choices, that is, denied sin of nature, but attributed all human acts and exercises to the direct efficiency of God. Hopkins declared: "All power is in God. This is the proper efficient cause of every event. All creatures which act or move, exist and move or are moved, by him."* Emmons said : "We can- not conceive that even omnipotence is able to form independent agents, because this would be to endow them with divinity. And since all men are dependent agents, all these motions, exercises, or actions must originate in a divine efficiency. " t God therefore creates all the volitions of the soul, and effects by his almighty power all changes in the material world. Accord- ing to this view, the contact of fire with the finger, the stroke of the axe on the tree, are only the occasions divine omnipotence is the cause of the tree's falling and the finger's burning. All causal connections between the different objects of the universe are at an end. No such things as physical forces exist. Nature becomes a mere phantom, and God is the only cause in the universe. It seems plain to me that this doctrine tends to pantheism. If all natural forces are merged in the one all-comprehending will of God, why should not the human will be merged in the will of God also ? Why should not mind and matter alike be the phenomena of one force which has the attributes of both ? Such a scheme makes supernatural religion impos- sible, for the reason that nature is denied, and everything that is to say, nothing becomes supernatural. How shall we save the sense of sin, if every sinful thought and impulse is the result of the divine efficiency ? And, finally, how shall we save the character of God, if he is the direct author of moral evil? It was such difficulties as these which led the main body of New England theologians to reject the exercise-system, with its attribution of all man's states and acts to the divine efficiency. But as they still followed Edwards in his rejection of substance or nature, the result was an almost unmitigated individualism. Snialley, Dwight and Woods were apparently conservative. N. W. Taylor best represents the tendencies of the system. He agreed with Hopkins and Eramons that there is no imputation of Adam's sin or of inborn depravity. He called that depravity physical, not moral. But he made all sin to be personal. He held to the power of contrary choice. Adam had it, and, contrary to the belief of Augustinians, he never lost it. Man "not only can if he will, but he can if he won't." He can, yet, without the Spirit, will not. Yet he did not hold to the Arminian liberty of indifference or contingence. He believed in the certainty of wrong action, yet in power to the contrary. " The error of Pelagius," he says, " was not in asserting that man can obey God without grace, but in saying that man does actually obey God without grace." \ Dr. Park, of Andover, is understood to teach that the disordered state of the sensibilities and faculties with which we are born is the immediate occasion of sin, while Adam's transgression is the remote occasion of sin. The will, though influenced by an evil tendency, is still free ; the evil tendency itself is not free, and therefore is not sin. This doctrine, though less radical than that of Dr. Taylor, is notwithstand- * Hopkins, Works, 1:164-167. t Emmons, Wurks, 4 : 381. Moral Government, 2 : 132. 170 THE NEW THEOLOGY. ing at a vast remove from that of Jonathan Edwards. Here is no union of nature, or union of act, with Adam ; no imputation of Adam's sin or of our hereditary depravity. On the whole, the history of New England theology shows a tendency to emphasize less and less the depraved tendencies prior to actual sin, and to maintain that moral character begins only with indi- vidual choice, most of the New England theologians, however, holding that this individual choice begins at birth. If the reader has followed me thus far, he will be able to recognize in the New Theology many of the traits I have been describing, and to trace them to their sources. Nominalism treats human nature as a mere name. Ideal- ism regards substance as non-existent. The identity-system makes acts and exercises the be-all and end-all of our moral life. All these are features of an exaggerated individualism ; and of this, as I said at the beginning, the New Theology is the latest and most popular theological expression. That this is so will be more fully apparent, if I mention now certain of its more specific ideas. I propose to characterize them in each case by a catch- word, more or less descriptive. I do this mainly for the sake of clearness, and as a sort of mnemonic ; I would therefore have the catch-word inter- preted by the following text, rather than have the text interpreted by the catch-word. The first specific idea of the new theology, then, is that of the Christian consciousness. The new method of thought, while not formally setting aside the Scriptures or assigning to them an inferior authority, sets side by side with them another standard of faith and practice, namely, the intuitions and experience of the believer. It connects itself very naturally with what we may call the illumination-theory of inspiration, which regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the religious perceptions of the Christian, the same in kind, though greater in degree, with the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit ; and which holds, not that the Bible is, but that it contains the word of God not the writings, but only the writers being inspired. Those who hold to this general form of doctrine, as they bring inspiration down to a lower level, would correspondingly bring illumi- nation up, so that both shall walk upon the same plane. It is the idealistic scheme of which we have already spoken. It depreciates the outward rev- elation, with the intent of exalting the inward. The spirit of scientific unity seems to constrain it ; since there is undoubtedly something of the nature of inward revelation, all revelation must of necessity be inward. Christian consciousness becomes the only medium of receiving religious truth. The intuitions of the Christian are the final test. And so we have Christian preachers declaring that they will preach no doctrines which they have not realized in their own experience, and private Christians asserting that what they cannot understand they will not believe. Neither these preachers, nor these Christians, seem to perceive that they are acting upon the essential principle of rationalism, and that, so far as they act upon it, they are not believers at all. If I will accept nothing and preach nothing but what my reason can demonstrate and my intellect comprehend, why call myself a Christian ? As Lessing said so well : " What is the use of a revelation that reveals nothing ?" We get good from the Scriptures, only in proportion as we understand THE NEW THEOLOGY. 171 them. But we are not, for that reason, to keep back from men the Scrip- tures which we do not understand others may understand the truth we speak, better than we do. We have an objective message and communication from God, and this it is our business as ambassadors to deliver, whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear. The Old Testament prophets were not absolved from the duty of publishing God's word, although they themselves searched "what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did point unto, when it testified beforehand the suffer- ings of Christ and the glories that should follow them. " And New Testa- ment prophets are under equal obligation to "declare the whole counsel of God," in spite of their own personal ignorance of its full meaning. We get the good of truth only by understanding it, and we understand it only as the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us. Yet we are to accept the truth, and to publish the truth, whether we understand it or not. What, now, is the relation of Christian consciousness to the Scriptures ? Or, to put the same question in different form : How far, and in what sense, are the experience and judgment of the Christian to be trusted, where Scripture is either ambiguous or silent ? It seems to me that the very word "consciousness," which plays so important a part in this discussion, might teach a good lesson to the advocates of the New Theology. Consciousness, like conscience, is an accompanying knowledge. As those who would make conscience legislative, or would give to it original authority, are untrue to the meaning of the word itself, which intimates that conscience subsumes particular acts or states under a standard previously accepted from some other source, and judges them by or in connection with that standard, so consciousness is a con-knowing ; in mental philosophy, a knowing of my own acts or states, in connection with my knowledge of self ; in the matter we are discussing, a knowing of doctrine or duty, in connection with the permanent standard given us in Scripture. Consciousness is in no case a new or collateral source of truth. Experi- ence is only a testing or trying of truth already revealed. Intuition is not creative ; it only recognizes objective realities that were already there to be recognized. And so all these words, loosely employed as they frequently are, should be kept to their primary meaning. The Christian consciousness is a con-knowing of the things of God, in connection with and by means of his written word. It is not a norma normanx, but a norma normata ; and this it must ever be, at least in our present state, for the reason that sin yet remains to blind us. The spiritual perception of the Christian is always rendered to some extent imperfect and deceptive by remaining depravity. "The ethico-religious consciousness" is by itself utterly untrustworthy; it must ever be rectified, as the judgments of conscience are to be rectified, by comparison with express divine revelation ; where revelation speaks, there Christian consciousness may safely speak ; where that is silent, the latter must be silent: "To the law and to the testimony! If they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them." Equally plain is it that nothing which we know of the work of the Holy Spirit warrants the attribution to the Christian consciousness of authority aside from or co-ordinate with that of Scripture. Despite the claims of 172 THE NEW THEOUHJY. advocates of "the inner light," from George Fox to the latest enthusiast, it still remains true that the Holy Spirit works only by showing us the word ; the " sword " or instrument of the Spirit is "the word of God." The Holy Spirit takes of the "things of Christ," "brings them to remembrance," unfolds the truth " as it is in Jesus." All this indicates not a new, but the revival of a past, revelation ; not the providing of a new reservoir, but dis- tribution from a reservoir already filled ; not communication of new truth, but illumination of the mind to perceive the meaning of truth revealed already. So the Holy Spirit merely turns the outer word into an inner word, and makes its truth and power manifest to the heart. Any other doctrine than this is covert mysticism new communications from God, aside from, or co-ordinate with, those embodied in the Scriptures. We can no more make theology without Scripture, than the Israelites in Egypt could make bricks without straw. The New Theology, in emphasizing the fact of the Holy Spirit's work within, is bringing into needed prominence a fact which has been too much neglected. Thus far I hope for good results from this movement of thought, and rejoice that the third person of the blessed Trinity is recognized as the author of all internal revelation. But all new movements in thought tend to extremes. I fear that the animating principle of the new movement is not so much zeal for the Holy Spirit's work as it is disinclination to recog- nize the outward revelation of God, which the Holy Spirit's work presup- poses ; and therefore that the tendency of it will be not so much to mysti- cism as to naturalism and rationalism. Let us ever remember that, as man can reveal himself by works and words, so can God. Internal revelation proceeds only upon the basis of external revelation ; it presupposes external revelation ; reflects, confirms, and establishes it. As the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal, so Christ is the organ of external, revelation. We must not exaggerate the work of the Holy Spirit, for that is to depreciate the work of Christ. We must not overstate the internal evidence for Christian- ity, for that is to discredit miracles and the supernatural generally. We must not insist on the immanence of God, to the exclusion of the transcend- ence. And yet all these errors the New Theology is ia danger of committing when it elevates Christian consciousness into a source, however subordinate, of Christian doctrine. The moment we exalt Christian experience into an authority, we undermine the Scriptures which constitute the only safe foundation for Christian experience. The logical result will sooner or later be the teaching that the only inspiration is Christian experience, and that all Christian experience is inspiration. We shall then cherish a thousand blind hopes for which revelation furnishes no solid basis ; but with these hopes will come a thousand vagaries of doctrine, and finally both the vaga- ries and the hopes will be succeeded by the uncertainty, the unbelief, and the despair, into which an unbridled rationalism plunges the soul. There is a second specific idea of the New Theology whioh I must now mention. It has to do with the person and work of the second person of the Trinity, as the last had to do with the person and work of the third per- son of the Trinity. I know of no phrase that better expresses the idea than that of the extra-temporal Christ. Of course there is an antithesis intended here. The extra-temporal Christ is not the Christ of our earthly history,. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 173 but the Christ who is beyond present time and space ; the eternal Logos who upholds all things, while at the same time he exists beyond them. Here, too, we must acknowledge that a great truth a truth often ignored is brought out and emphasized. Christ is * ' the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world." "In him all things consist." He is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." The whole physical universe is dependent upon Christ ; but it is equally true that the intellectual and moral world is dependent on him also ; he is "the light that lighteth every man." Let us thank the New Theology for recalling theological thought to this truth. But with its inculcation of this truth there goes too often a tendency to forget that the historical manifestation of Christ is in the Scriptures declared to be the only ground of hope for sinners, and it is this tendency which we must criticise and reprehend. Let me make plain this objection to the New Theology. It substitutes an extra-temporal Christ for the Christ of historic fact, and bases its hopes rather upon Christ's ideal and essential nature than upon his actual mani- festation in humanity. In this I seem to see the influence of Schleiermacher, in whom idealism found its champion, and through whom idealism has infected the religious thinking of Germany. Schleiermacher had little con- fidence in Christianity as an external and historical fact ; even the incarna- tion and resurection of Christ, as literal events, he discredited, by calling them unnecessary to the vindication of our faith ; the Christ within seemed to him much more important than the Christ without ; Christian feelings and not outward facts were made to be the real sources of theology. Schlei- ermacher did noble service in bridging over the gulf between the old ration- alism and the new evangelical faith. He "builded better than he knew," when he declared that Christianity could rest its argument upon the facts of the inner life of the believer. But, as has been well said, he was another Lazarus ; he came forth with the grave-clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps. He did not see that the loftier the structure of Chris- tian life and doctrine, the greater the need that its foundation be secure ; and that the authority of Christ as a teacher of supernatural truth rests upon his miracles, and specially upon the miracle of his resurrection. The inward wonders of the Christian life will not long impress men, if the historical facts of Jesus' incarnation and resurrection are denied. These inward won- ders, like the outward miracles, will be attributed to merely natural causes, and Christianity will be counted only the pleasing dream of the enthusiast. As with Jesus' life and teaching, so with his atonement ; the New Theology tends to substitute the inward for the outward. It has accepted very fully the idea that there is no principle in the divine nature that needs to be pro- pitiated. It is man, not God, who needs to be reconciled. The atonement is subjective, not objective. It has effect, not to satisfy divine justice, but so to reveal divine love as to soften human hearts and lead them to repent- ance ; in other words, Christ's sufferings were necessary, not in order to remove an obstacle to the pardon of sinners which exists in the mind of God, but in order to convince sinners that there exists no such obstacle. We see here again the nominalistic element. Righteousness in God is no distinct attribute ; it is a mere name for benevolence. Hence Dr. Bushnell's vie w that an internal change in man himself is all that is needful ; hence Dr. Park's 174 THE NEW THEOLOGY. view that the cross is not an execution of justice, but only an exhibition of jus- tice a scenic representation of God's regard for law, which will make it safe for his government to pardon the violators of law. All this makes the atone- ment histrionic instead of real, converts it from an objective into a subjec- tive fact, and transfers its place from the court of God's justice to the secret heart of the believer. In short, the theory exalts the Christ in us at the expense of the Christ outside of us, and does this in respect to the atone- ment just as much as it had previously done in respect to revelation in gen- eral. There is an error here so subtle, and yet so fundamental, that we may do well carefully to consider it. It is the error of supposing that because out- ward revelation and atonement are limited by the conditions of space and time, they cannot have in them any infinite or absolute element, and there- fore we must look beyond them for something larger and more spiritual. It is of a piece with the mistake of Philip. Philip would have looked beyond the present historic Christ in order to find the Father. But Jesus' words were a sufficient correction of his error : " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father ; how sayest thou, show us the Father ? " Do we desire an ideal and spiritual Christ ? We shall find him only in the crucified and risen Redeemer. In him is "all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," that is, in bodily form. The Christ of history divinely expresses the eternal Logos, nay, the very mind and heart of the whole Godhead ; for " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. " The outward atonement has compressed into it the whole compass and meaning of redemption God's love, in union with humanity, offering itself as a sacrifice to God's holiness, outraged by human sin. Human symbols only partially express the truth they are intended to convey ; divine symbols express the whole nay, they are the truth and the fact itself, put into the forms of sense and time. Do we wish to know more about the meaning of the outward word ? Then let us not add to it our human speculations ; let us only study more closely what the word itself declares. Do we desire to know more about what Christ will do beyond this present earthly sphere ? Then let us study anew his historical manifestation ; for the historical Christ is the extra-temporal Christ manifested. Eternity will only unfold the truth which we already possess in germ. As omnipresence is the presence of the whole of God in every place, so, in the revelation of God in Christ which we have already, we possess the substance of God's eternal truth. The third and last specific idea of the New Theology may be characterized as that of a second probation. I am aware that the phrase will not be accepted by many of the advocates of the views I am examining, and I grant that it needs qualification. The probation for which they contend is not, they say, a second probation, since those who undergo it have never had, prior to that, any proper probation at all. It is not claimed that a future probation is enjoyed by all, but only that it is enjoyed by those who have had no oppor- tunity here to learn of the historic Christ. I must be allowed to say, how- ever, that the probation claimed is fairly called a second probation, if only those to whom it is granted are moral creatures here ; for a moral creature here, under only the providential government of God and with the mere THE NEW THEOLOGY. 175- light of conscience within, is being tested and tried in character. Whether this probation is a proper probation, is really the question at issue. The advocates of the New Theology declare that for multitudes it is not a proper probation. They say that for the heathen, as well as for infants, the oppor- tunity to decide for or against Christ, since it is not given here, must be given hereafter. The immutable God must deal alike with all. Since Christ has died for all, all must have a chance to accept him as a Savior. For some at least, the work of the Holy Spirit must be done the other side of death. To some, Christ is offered as a Savior in the next world, rather than in this. I wish to point out first of all that this view is but a corollary of the nom- inalistic individualism, which I described in an earlier portion of this essay. The view rests upon an atomistic conception of the race as a mere collection of units. It can be successfully met, only by those who accept the Scriptu- ral doctrine of the organic unity of humanity and its common fall in Adam. New School theology cannot erect any sufficient barrier against it. It can- not find what it regards as a fair and sufficient probation for each individual since the first sin ; and the conclusion is easy, that there must be such a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. So New School theol- ogy inevitably becomes New Theology, and only illustrates the ultimate results of evil that flow from what at first seemed an unimportant deviation from Scriptural doctrines. Let us advise those who take this view to return to the old theology. Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present existence, is matter of pure grace, much more the general provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul. To put my thought yet more clearly : This world is already a place of second probation ; and, since this second probation is due wholly to God's mercy, no probation after death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of God. Since one probation of the race was passed before our conscious experience began, since our present individual life is already a second probation and is wholly a matter of grace, it is pre- sumption itself for any human being to demand in the future life still another and a third probation. But aside from a denial of a common probation and fall in our first father, which the New Theology involves, it commits the yet more palpable error of denying the universal guilt of mankind. I do not mean that this guilt is formally denied, but that it is so explained as to make it equivalent to mere misfortune or disease, and to absolve it from all obligation to suffer punish- ment. Of course no advocate of the New Theology is a believer in the guilt of inborn depravity. Denial of our oneness with Adam in the first trans- gression carries with it a denial of responsibility for the direct consequences of that transgression. Sin consists in sinning, says the New Theology ; and by sinning it means only individual and personal transgression. The vast number of those who never in this world come to conscious moral life can have no sin or guilt to be atoned for ; they need no Christ, and, if they enter heaven at all, they enter it by right of native innocence. Sinful dispositions are sinful, not because they are sin, but because they lead to sin. And,. 176 THE NEW THEOLOGY. since God takes into consideration the degree of light which men enjoy, those who in heathen lands are destitute of knowledge of the gospel are supposed to be in much the same condition as infants or idiots, and it is said of them that " where there is no law, there is no transgression." So our conviction of the guilt of the heathen is weakened, and it is held to be unjust in God to punish them, at least until after they have heard of Christ and have consciously rejected him. Here is the weakness of Dorner's Eschatology, from which, as from an armory, many of the offensive weapons of the New Theology are drawn. Dorner began his great work on Christian doctrine with a just and profound view of sin, as unlikeness to God and self-determination of the will against him. But in the Eschatology this view is exchanged for another which practically ignores the element of guilt, and makes the sinner a mere crea- ture, with just claims to God's pity. All this falls in with the pantheistic tendency of our time to regard sin as a natural necessity, instead of being, as it is, the wilful revolt of the free will from God. Let us take our stand upon that law of God which is a reflection of his holiness and is identical with the constituent principles of being ; that law which demands absolute perfection in thought, desire, word, deed, aye, even in the very substance of the soul ; that law which declares all falling short of this standard as sin and guilt, deserving not pardon but punishment. The heathen can claim nothing from God ; the Scripture expressly declares that they are "by nature children of wrath. " God is under no obligation to them. They are guilty by birth, and guilty by overt transgression. Not one of them has a claim to grace in this present world ; much less has he a claim to grace in the world to come. Does the New Theology believe that the heathen are guilty ? if so, let it cease to argue that the justice of God requires that they should have a chance to accept salvation, either here or hereafter. The fact that Christ, as eternal Logos, exists beyond the bounds of his historic work is often urged to break the force of this argument from the guilt of the heathen. But let us remember that this manifestation of Christ is granted to the heathen even here and now. As he is "the light that lighteth every man," all natural conscience and all religious ideas, so far as they have truth in them, are derived from him. Before his advent in the flesh, patriarchs were saved by believing in him, and the antediluvian world was condemned for rejecting him ; for, whether in believing or rejecting, they had to do with him who is the only revealer of God, of whom, and through whom, are all things. God did not even then leave himself, he does not now leave himself, without a witness. The heathen are without excuse, because "that which is known of God is manifest among them." Missionaries find everywhere the knowledge of law; there is a universal sense of sin ; every man in some way violates conscience, and feels justly condemned. The New Theology speaks of a supra-historic Christ, and prides itself on emphasizing his inward work in human hearts. Let it rec- ognize the fact that Christ is already doing a supra-historic work ; that the revelation of nature is itself a revelation of Christ ; that men do not need to see the cross on which he died, in order to reject him. In short, in this great controversy between God and the sinning children of men, let us put ourselves upon the side of God and not upon the side of his enemies. Let us declare God to be true, though we have to call every man a liar. THE NEW THEOLOGY. 177 If men may accept Christ or reject him, even without knowing of his his- torical manifestation in the flesh, what limits can we put to his work of mercy ? We put no limits but those which his word declares. The patri- archs, though they had no knowledge of a personal Christ, were saved by believing in God so far as God had revealed himself to them ; and whoever among the heathen are saved must in like manner be saved by casting them- selves as helpless sinners upon God's plan of mercy, dimly shadowed forth in nature and providence. But such faith, even among the patriarchs and heathen, is implicitly a faitli in Christ, and would become explicit and con- scious trust and submission, whenever the historic Christ were made known to them. Christ is the word of God and the truth of God ; he may there- fore be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh ; we may hope that "many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." For " God is no respecter of persons ; but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him. " A proud -and self-righteous morality is inconsistent with salvation ; but a penitent and humble reliance upon God as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct is an implicit faith in Christ ; for such reliance casts itself upon God so far as God has revealed himself, and the only revealer of God is Christ. But as the Scriptures intimate that men may be saved by an implicit trust in Christ, so they equally intimate that men may be lost by only implicitly rejecting him. As men can be saved by casting themselves as sinners upon the mercy of a Christ whose very name they do not know, so they can be lost by transgressing the law and resisting the drawings of that same Christ who speaks to them only in nature, in conscience, and in providence. How long his Spirit will strive with man, and when the day of his grace shall end, reason cannot inform us ; the objective word is the only source of knowledge. Since his atonement is a matter of grace, not of justice, it can be applied when and where he pleases. Only he can tell us upon what terms, and for how long, men can obtain salvation. And what saith the Scripture ? Does it hold out the hope that after death, for the heathen or for any others, there may still be opportunities of faith and pardon ? On the other hand, we have the declarations that "they that sin without law shall perish without law ; " we shall all be " manifest before the judgment seat of Christ" not that each may have new opportunity for salvation, but "that each may receive the things done in the body." Of the wicked, it is said that their " end is to be burned." " It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this," not a new probation, but " judgment." In the next world, between the righteous and the wicked there is " a great gulf fixed," impassable to both. "They that have done ill " shall come forth from their graves, not to undergo a new pro- bation, but "unto the resurrection of judgment." All these Scripture pas- sages indicate finality in the decisions of this present life ; and for this reason Protestant churches have never thought it right to pray for the dead. We know that conversion and renewal are the work of the Holy Spirit ; but we have no Scripture evidence that the influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent ; there is abundant evidence, on the con- trary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever. 12 178 THE NEW THEOLOGY. I began rny article by calling the New Theology a theology of exaggerated individualism. I have spoken of its historical connections, and have traced it back to nominalism, idealism, and the identity-system of Jonathan Edwards. I have noted and criticized the most prominent specific ideas of the New Theology, namely, the Christian consciousness, the extra-temporal Christ, and the future probation of those who have not in this life had the gospel preached to them. But there are certain practical results to be appre- hended from this tendency in the theological world, which, as the applica- tion of my subject, I feel compelled, finally, though very summarily, to mention. The theology of exaggerated individualism, will, in my judgment, do much to accelerate that deterioration of family life which has often been pointed out as a sign that Christianity is losing its hold upon the nation. The individualistic theory of the family is an outgrowth of the individual- istic theory of the race. To great masses of our population marriage is but a civil contract, which, so far as the mere right of the thing is concerned, is dissoluble at pleasure. After marriage, as before marriage, the parties are two, not one ; the merging of the two into each other, the constitution of a new organic unity in short, the very idea of the family bond is absent ; the individual is still a law unto himself, instead of being under law to another. Hence the frequent discord which invades the family, and the increasing prevalence of divorce. The same exaggerated individualism appears in the labor- strifes of our day. Every man is for himself, whether he be capitalist or workman. Each thinks of his rights, but thinks much less of his duties. The idea of the organic unity of society, of merging per- sonal interests in the interests of the whole, of thinking not simply of his own things but of the things of others also, this idea is fast dying out. We need to revive and reinforce it by the inculcation of human unity and broth- erhood. The Scriptures furnish us with our doctrine. The family is one ; society is one ; the nation is one ; the race is one. Because one blood flows in our veins and we have one divine Father, we are members one of another. In the life of the church this principle is more important still, and forget- f ulness of it brings results yet more pernicious. There is a vital union with the Redeemer which joins all Christians to one another. In connecting themselves with Christ they become members of a mighty organism per- vaded with the common life of the Head. In a true sense the Christian ceases to be an individual, and merges himself in the body ; he can say : ' For me to live is Christ;" "no longer live I, but Christ liveth in me." And yet how plain it is, that to many Christians there never yet has come this sense of the real meaning of their relation to Christ, and to his body, the church. An exaggerated individualism yet rules them. They have no con- ception of the church as an organism which derives its life from Christ, a living unity into which they have merged themselves. They have no sense of the dignity of their position, as belonging to Christ's body, or as respon- sible for the condition of the whole. " Am I my brother's keeper ? " is still their cry. Surely nothing is so much needed in our church-life as the sub- stitution of the instinct of unity for the spirit of isolation and division. And what better recipe can be given than the inculcation of the Scripture doctrine of union with Christ ? But that doctrine cannot be taken by itself. Side by side with it is the other doctrine of union with Adam. As justitica- THE NEW THEOLOGY. 179 tion comes to all who receive their spiritual life from Christ, so condemna- tion comes to all who receive their natural life from Adam. And so the highest conception of the Christian life, and the highest efficiency of the Christian church, are inseparably bound up with the acceptance of the old doctrine of the organic unity of the race and its common fall in the person of its first father. This subject has a special relation to the ministry and to missions. It has been felt of late that there was a great falling off in the number of recruits ; that the disposition to enter the ministry was waning ; that there was no suf- ficient impulse to prosecute the work. I venture to suggest a reason for this. Christian people are losing out of their thoughts the idea of oneness with the race ; and young men are no longer pressed with the conviction that, as a part of this common humanity, they are bound to do all they can to save it. We are bound to love our neighbor as ourselves, because our neighbor is ourselves. It was because Christ was one with us that he was bound to die. In order to revive the sense of obligation to preach the gospel, we need first to inculcate the organic unity of the race. And what is true of ministers is true of the church at large. The only sufficient incentive to missionary effort is that sense of unity which Christ's teaching and example are calcu- lated to inspire. All that separates the heathen from us, or makes their fate dependent upon the decisions of another world, is a hindrance to missions. We must feel ourselves the brothers of all, and we must feel that their fate is in our hands, if we are ever to put forth the effort necessary to their con- version. Only upon the view that Paul regarded the heathen as lost if they did not in this life learn of Christ and accept him, can we explain his con- suming missionary zeal. Only upon the view that " the heathen perish day by day," can we explain the communication of Paul's spirit to the mission- aries of modern times. If the salvation of the heathen practically depends upon the prayers and gifts and labors of the church, we may hope yet to see Christendom pouring into heathen lands its men and its treasure, in order to bring the nations to the faith of Jesus Christ. But if the heathen are not shut up to this life as their only time of mercy, if a vast future of larger opportunity opens to them beyond death, not only will the Christian world cease to feel their guilt, but it will cease to feel their danger. " The nerve of missionary enterprise will be cut," and the day of Christ's triumph will be postponed, until there rises a new generation with deeper convictions of the sinf ulness of sin, and with deeper compassion for the millions that yearly perish for lack of knowledge. The New Theology exaggerates the principle of individualism, and thinks that it gains thereby a nobler view of man. But it looks only at the individ- ual man ; of humanity as a whole, fallen in Adam and sunk in a common guilt, it has no conception ; hence it can never rise to the sublime concep- tion of a common redemption in Christ and of the common dependence of the race upon the one historical Savior. It needs the idea of man as man, to lift it out of doctrinal inconsistency and practical inefficiency. Not only theoretical considerations but observed effects argue that the well-worn path is the path of safety via trita, via tuta. We have no need of the New Theology, for the old is better. XIII. THE LIVING GOD.* Many of you have been struck with the frequent recurrence in Scripture of the phrase "the living God." If you look carefully you will find this designation in all parts of the Bible, from the Pentateuch, where Israel is said to have "heard the voice of the living God " speaking from Mount Sinai, to the Bevelation, where the flying angel is said to " have the seal of the liv- ing God," and God is spoken of as "he that sitteth upon the throne, who liveth forever and ever." This recognition of God as "the living God " is combined with the mention of all his other attributes and works, and these acquire new lustre from the association, while they in turn reflect light upon the meaning of the phrase with which they are combined. The text explains what I mean. There the fact that God is the one only and true God, and that he exercises from everlasting to everlasting the attributes of kingship, shows that the life of God is an all-originating and all-controlling life, shows in fine that it is life in the highest sense. We need not wonder at finding this lofty view of the divine Being so plainly declared, nor at finding the conception of God as the living God underlying the whole Scripture. The very purpose for which the Hebrew nation existed was to root deeply in human consciousness this idea of the one living and true God. And how deeply it was rooted is shown by the fact that among the Jews all natural forces came to be looked upon as directly under God's hand, and as mani- festing his will, so that the Psalmist, in his description of the storm, leaves out all mention of secondary causes, and says in so many words, " The God of glory thundereth." So completely were the apostles delivered from all conception of God as a dead abstraction, or as capable of a rival, that they almost by instinct besought the worshippers of idols to ' ' turn from these vanities unto the living God. " If we have in any degree lost sight of this truth, we need to get back to it, for a mistake here will vitiate our whole view of Christian doctrine, and may work incalculable injury in our actual lives. Let us first inquire what it means to say that God is the living God, and secondly, what this conception of God involves by way of consequence. First, the meaning of it : Life, in God, must mean much more than it does in man must mean nothing less than an all-originating and all-sus- taining life. Man, in a sense, has life and gives life ; but he knows that what life he has is not originated by himself, but has come to him apart from his own knowledge or will. His reason compels him to infer the existence of another life from which his own originally sprang. He knows that he does not sustain his own life from day to day. The machinery of his frame works * Originally prepared as a sermon upon the text, Jer. 10: 10 "The Lord is the true God; he is the living 1 God, and an everlasting king." 180 THE LIVING GOD. 181 on even in his sleep, some other life keeps all things moving. Indeed, all the life of nature, not originating itself, and not able to account for itself, must be referred back to some higher life that originates and preserves it. And this life in which all other life is grounded, great as it is, and beyond all our efforts to comprehend it, belongs to God. Our first conception of him is that of one who not only has life, but who has it in overflowing fullness, so that he is the source and principle of all other life which the universe con- tains. This is the main thought of the 104th Psalm. With a little altera- tion, I may use the following words of a noted interpreter : "You find there, more than in any other ancient poetry, the distinct recognition of the abso- lute dependence of the universe, as created, upon the Creator. ' He is before all things, and by him all things subsist. ' But this is not all. God's work is not regarded as a thing of the past merely, the universe is not a machine once set going and then left to its fate or to inexorable laws. The great Worker is ever working. The world and all things owe not only their origin but their present form to the operation of God. He who made, renews, the face of the earth. It is the same profound view of the relation of the cos- mos to the Creator which Paul exhibits in his speech on Mars' Hill. He too is careful not to separate the past from the present. God, who made the world in the past, did not leave the work of his fingers : the streaming forth 4 if his omnipotence and love was not checked or stayed; on the contrary, every part of his creation rests at every moment on his hands, ' seeing he giveth ' continually, ' to all, life and breath and all things. ' " God then is the living God, as IK ing the soul which animates a universe that would be dead without him. And yet some who have maintained this truth most earnestly, have declared thai this principle of universal life is itself unintelligent and unconscious, and that the great life of the universe comes to consciousness only in indi- viduals, whether of this or other races. In opposition to this the Scriptures maintain again that this life of God is a life of the spirit, conscious, intelli- gent, self -determining, free ; acting in infinite wisdom for infinitely worthy ends ; and displaying in all its acts the glory of a perfect character a char- acter of holiness and love. If we do not admit this to be a true representation of God, we put God below man the Creator below the creature. Indeed we cannot account for man at all, or for the wonderful adaptations of the universe. There are marks of intelligent design everywhere. Means are fitted to ends. The God who so fitted and adapted one part of his creation to another must be a God of intelligence and purpose and benevolent impulse. There must be a thinking and willing above us, separate from the thinking and willing of the creature, or else the creature could never have been made to think and will. Nothing can produce what is above itself, the offering of the beast is only a beast, not a man. All the universe, if there were no life in it but that of blind natural forces, could not produce anything that was not blind and unintelligent like itself. But man on the other hand, being gifted with the power of thought and will, instinctively reasons that the power that gave him being must think and will also ; otherwise there is no adequate cause for his existence. And David puts the argument in poetic yet unanswerable form when he asks : " He that planted the ear, shall he not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall he not see ? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know ? " 182 THE LIVING GOD. And so our reason drives us to the belief in God as a personal Being distinct from his works and exalted above his works, even while he is mov- ing all the wheels of his great system. And, as man's personality implies a conscious intelligence, a self-determining will, a character, an end, so apply- ing these same ideas to God, when raised to their highest power, we see in God a consciousness that embraces at the same moment all things in the universe and in himself ; a will that ordains either directly or by permission all existences and events ; a character that makes every thought and determi- nation infinitely benevolent and holy ; an end in creation and in his own existence infinitely worthy of himself. But what is the deepest and most central idea of this personal life? I answer, it is the idea of tvill will exercised in all things in infinite freedom and infinite power. Ask yourself what it is that most contributes to make you a living soul, and you find it is yonr freedom, your power under certain limitations to become an originating cause. If man were a mere machine, moved by forces entirely external to himself, he would not be man, he would not call himself alive. But this will within us, which forms decisions, chooses ends, leaps forward towards the objects of its choice, and guides all the enginery of the nature onward with it to the goal, this is our great heritage, this gives us all the substantial existence we have, this constitutes our dignity in the creation. The plant or the brute acts only as it is acted upon ; it chooses no end for which to work ; it has no spontaneity of life. But man stands nearest God by virtue of this faculty which in a certain sense creates, bringing forth new thoughts, desires, and acts, and exerting a force which is felt in its last vibrations in every part of the universe and by God himself. And yet, as I just said, man exerts this living force only under limitations. External circumstances confine him. His own nature binds him. How he came to be what he is, he does not know ; and he can alter himself as little as he can make over again the outward world. And so this will-power" which man exerts, and which constitutes the essence of his life, only feebly reflects the energy of will that exists in God. What must this will be, that consti- tutes the central principle of God's personality that makes him in deed and in truth the living God ? You can see at once that his will has no external restrictions. ' ' None can stay his hand, and say ' what doest thou ? ' ' You can see that, will being essential to his personality, he does nothing without a will no blind action no unconscious action like that of our sleep and our dreams, but wherever God works through the universe and he works everywhere he works in all his personality, works as a living, conscious, moral agent, works with perfect freedom the present decrees of an infinite will. It must be remembered, too, that as the life of God is a self-existent life, so it is sufficient to itself. God does not need the universe, nor any creature, to supplement his existence or render him more happy. He is the ever- blessed God because, independently of the things he has made, he possesses infinite resources of knowledge and communion and joy in his own holy nature. And these are secured to God forever by the fact that in his nature there are distinctions which are revealed to us under the figure of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Before the world was, these existed, so that God in himself had objects of contemplation and of love from eternity THE LIVING GOD. 183 objects infinitely surpassing his after creation, in magnificence and glory. God is the living God, because his life is an absolutely independent and self-sufficient life. And so all his acts and f orth-puttings of power, whether in creation or in providence or in redemption, are free acts, dictated not by necessity but by pure disinterested love. Any other conception than this denies in effect that he is the living God. If there be anything in him which compels him to create or to reveal himself, then he ceases to be free. And the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the most rational of all doctrines, because only by it can the independence of God, or in other words his God- hood, be maintained. The Unitarian view of the absolute simplicity of the divine nature leaves God without an object, without love, without com- munion, unless he finds it in the world. Eternity past, on this theory, must l>e an eternity of desolation ; and, to escape this conclusion, many a Unitarian thinker is driven to believe in the eternity of matter and so to put side by side with God an eternal something which he did not originate, and which determines and limits him. This is to destroy his Deity altogether. And the only refuge from this is the Pantheistic conception of God and nature as one, and of an unintelligent, half-material God that comes to life and consciousness only in individual minds. And, that Unitarianism tends to Pantheism and the denial of all real life in God, is abundantly shown by the history of Mohammedanism and modern Judaism on the one hand, and on the other by the rapid downward progress of New England thought from the cautious Unitarianism of Channing to the half-fledged Pantheism of Theodore Parker and the full-fledged Pantheism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. How much better than all this, how much more rational and how much more safe the Scriptural view of a trinity of persons in the divine nature a view which maintains the absolute perfection of God by declaring his eternal independence and self-sufficiency a view which recognizes in him a fullness of resources that needs no creature and no universe to render it more complete, that provides eternal and infinite objects of con- templation and the means of perfect love and fellowship without going outside of his own nature, and that shows how the eternal existence of these objects of regard can never hamper or limit him, because they are not created objects, but the Son and the Holy Ghost, the equal partakers of his essence and the sharers of his throne. Thus, I have attempted to explain the meaning of the phrase " the living God," and have shown that it involves the ideas, first, of an all-originating and sustaining life, in opposition to the views of the Deist who would ban- ish God from the universe he has made and set a-going ; secondly, of a consciously voluntary life, in opposition to the views of the Pantheist who would entomb God in the great machine and confound him with it ; thirdly, of an eternally independent and self-sufficient life, in opposition to the views of the Unitarian, who would deny the distinction of persons in the Godhead and logically destroy his Deity by making him dependent upon his creation. If you have followed me thus far, you will appreciate two most important and valuable results which flow from this conception of God as the living God. And the first is, that it utterly delivers us from the tyranny of the modern idea of law, which so weakens the faith and oppresses the hearts of many believers. I say the tyranny of the modem idea of law, 184 THE LIVING GOD. and by this I mean the overstraining of the idea so that it encompasses and swallows up all things the universe, freedom, and God himself. How many there are who begin to doubt whether the dominion of fixed law leaves any room for miracles, for answers to prayer, for pardoning grace, for regen- erating power ! Now I think it is easy to see, after what has been said, that these doubts all rest upon a mistaken notion of the nature of law and of its relation to God. Far be it from me to decry the true idea of " the reign of law " which constitutes the strength and inspiration of modern science. I stand for it. I rejoice in it as almost a new revelation of the perfections of God himself. But on that very account I am unwilling to sacrifice that which is its greatest glory its connection with the unseen worker who manifests himself through it. To deify law, and put it in place of God, that is to unmake it, to destroy it. To imagine some blind, unconscious force shaping all things into forms of beauty and regulating all the changes of nature and of history, that is to put ourselves under the awful sceptre of fate, and to turn law into a hideous monstrosity. And from this concep- tion, the revelation of God as the living God delivers us. If he is the all-originating, all-sustaining, all-controlling One, and no force is exerted in the universe without his permission and superintendence, then law assumes a different aspect to us. The laws of nature and the laws of the Spirit are all manifestations of the harmony of his nature and the power of his will. His laws are fixed because his will is infinitely wise and so infinitely unchanging, and the regular sequences of nature are but the orderly methods of his operation. What is law ? Can you give any better definition of it than this a steady will enforced by power? Can you define the phrase "laws of nature " any better than by saying that they are the mani- festations of a present God, enforcing an infinitely wise and changeless will by the exercise of infinite power ? See then how all these laws which we are tempted to look upon as dead material things are revelations of a per- sonal will, a present upholder and mover, in other words, a living God ! However closely these laws may press me or cross me, there is an infinite personality in them. God in all the rectitude and benevolence of his char- acter is present in them, not suffering them to bring wrong or harm to his creatures, but making all things in the universe " work together for good to them that love him." This conception of God as the living God delivers us from the tyranny of the idea of law, moreover, by showing us that God is not confined to the domain of nature's laws, but while he is in them, is also above them, making them serve him. You know how man uses the laws of nature and makes them serve him. As he did not originate them, so he cannot destroy them or dispense with them. If he thinks to override one of them, like the law of gravitation, he comes down with broken bones. But it is wonderful how he can combine them to produce new effects which nature never would have produced of herself. By making use of the expansion of steam and combin- ing this with other known mechanical laws, he can bring in a force which shall counteract the law of gravitation and can lift himself in an elevator from the bottom to the top of a building without breaking his bones at all. And the chemist can so combine the forces of nature as to produce ice in a red-hot crucible. So man, limited as he is, is yet above nature, and by THE LIVING GOD. 185 combining nature's laws in new ways can make them serve his purposes. And now, if man can do this, has the living God less power than man? Cannot he combine the laws of nature in unseen ways to accomplish his plans and to answer the prayers of his people ? Nay, cannot he do more than this, namely, exercise an absolute spontaneity and freedom by making new beginnings in history without any reference to natural law at all ? It is the glory of man that his will is in part an originating force, not wholly determined by the antecedents of his situation, but capable of new decisions unconnected with his former life and for which no laws of nature can account. And cannot God in like manner exercise his infinite freedom of will, insert- ing a new and personal force into nature, and thus working miracles of healing and resurrection and renewing of the soul ? Oh, yes ! Our God is not a dead God, but a living God. Law is not an exhaustive expression of his will. After law has uttered its last word, there is still room for another and more glorious manifestation of God in the merciful, helpful, pardoning, restoring aspects of his character and that manifestation we call grace. Nature is the loose mantle in which he commonly reveals himself ; but he is not fettered by the robe he wears he can thrust it aside when he will and "make bare his arm " in providential interpositions for earthly deliverance, and in mighty movements within the bounds of history for the salvation of the sinner and for the setting up of his kingdom. The other benefit which results to us from this conception of God as the living God, is the new vividness and reality which it gives to all God's deal- ings with our individual souls. So all-pervasive is the false conception of law of which I have spoken, that many Christians have come to think of God's moral attributes and doings as conditioned by it. They have come to expect more from natural causes in their own experience and in the progress of religion in the world than they expect from God. Their God is a God in fetters a God confined and constrained, not only by the laws of his own creation, but by the laws of his own being. And so holiness and love and grace have come to be abstractions to them, and they have "limited the holy One of Israel. " I fear, indeed, that in much of our modern preach- ing this idea has insensibly exerted far too great an influence. Even God's moral law has put on the semblance of a mere law of nature, in which the personality and living will of God is lost sight of. Sin is conceived of as misfortune and weakness, like the misstep that breaks the limb on a dark night, instead of the transgression of command and the opposition to God which the guilty conscience declares it to be. A merely subjective atone- ment that will repair the injury done to itself by the individual soul is said to be all-sufficient, while the offended personality of God and the necessity of satisfaction to his outraged holiness are forgotten. And the punishment of the sinner for rejecting the atonement is made to consist only in the reaction of natural law, instead of consisting also in the just retribution and wrath which a personal God who hates all sin visits upon him who persists in ungodliness and tramples under his feet the blood of Jesus. In fine, a materializing, semi-pantheistic conception of law has risen like a vapor from the lower levels of physical research, and has enshrouded every one of the mountainous truths of revelation that used to stand out so clear in sunlight, till the life and glory of them is all gone. Do you know 186 THE LIVING GOD. the reason ? The sunlight that once gave them splendor and beauty was the light that shone from the face of a personal and living God, and when the sun sets, the mountains must be dark ! Bat this conception of God as the living God gives us back our faith. Divine holiness is no abstraction now, but a living attribute of God, pene- trated through and through with the energy and activity of will. Moral law comes now to be the manifestation, not simply of what God is, but of what he wills and demands. Obedience is recommended now not simply by our needs but by the authority of God it is not only the best policy of the soul to yield itself to him, but it is his bounden duty and disobedience is enmity against the law giver. Now we need an atonement, not only to reconcile us to God, but to reconcile God to us. Now we need a forgiveness which shall bring us as guilty sinners into communion once more with a personal God. And how wonderfully personal on this better view does grace become ; not simply the remanding us to some new work- ing of law, by which all shall be made of us that naturally can be, but the free, unbought extension to us of God's will and purpose of redemption, restoring us to his favor and making us sons of God ! So in redemption, as in creation and providence, we recognize the relation of a personal God t<> our souls, putting into every act and effort of his love the warmth and direct- ness of an infinite, divine affection. So we come into a fellowship with God which would have been utterly impossible if God had been only another name to us for law. We find one who, "in opposition to all dead abstrac- tions, all vague head-notions, is the living Person, the source and fountain of all life, loving and loved in return. " It was this for which the Psalmist longed when he cried: "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God ! My soul thirsteth for God, for the liv- ing God. When shall I come and appear before God ?" " What we want," says Robertson, "is not infinitude, but a boundless One ; not to feel that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose name is Love. For else, if in this world of order there be no one in whose bosom that order is centred, and of whose being it is the expression : in this world of manifold contrivance, no personal affection which gave to the skies their trembling tenderness, and to the snow its purity ; then order, affection, contrivance, wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we are in the dreary universe alone. It is a dark moment when the sense of that personality is lost : more terrible than the doubt of immortality. For, of the two, eternity without a personal God, or God for seventy years without immortality, no one after David's heart would hesitate. ' Give me God for life, to know and be known by Him ! No thought is more hideous than that of an eternity without Him.'" And yet I do not know that we should ever be convinced of this, if God had not shown his will and power in the incarnation. The greatest proof of will and power is self -limitation ; and the self -limitation of God in the person of Christ, the voluntary resigning of his glory, the narrowing of himself to our human conditions, and the taking upon him of our burdens of guilt and penalty, these show personality as nothing else could. Not will alone, but heart also, must go to the making of a man. So he in whose image we are made shows most that he is the living God by the exhibition of his love in THE LIVING GOD. 187 the cross. For " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself ; " and, as Jesus himself said : " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." If we have ever thought that God was a dead God, identical with the wheels and processes of nature ; if we have ever thought of him as only a thinking mechanism, a God of mere Idea and Reason, as cold and emotionless as the white clouds above our heads or the snow beneath our feet ; if we have ever thought of him as mere force or arbitrary will, without care for the creatures who sin and who suffer ; let our eyes be opened to see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There we see that God has heart as well as mind and will, that his nature is tremblingly sensitive to our human griefs and needs, that he has an eye to pity and an arm to pave. The living Christ, in whom God manifests himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life, is the final and conclusive proof that God is the liv- ing God. There are two Scripture sentences which I would leave with you in con- clusion. They suggest more than a thousand admonitions or invitations could. They are both found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the one sounds as if addressed to the children of God, the other as if addressed to those who know not God. The first is this: "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and \\uto the city of the living God. " It suggests the glorious heritage of the Christian with whom God has entered into relations of personal friendship and communion, and the infinite possibilities that lie before him in that future city which the boundless freedom and the inventive mind of God shall fill with wonders of blessing and glory to those who love him. The other text suggests the boundless possibilities of misery and shame and condemnation that lie before the unrepenting sinner, when once he shall see face to face that infinite Being whom he has made his enemy. Ponder this text, O sinner : " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God !" XIV. THE HOLINESS OF GOD.* Have you ever come to the very verge of death, and then been suddenly and unexpectedly delivered ? If you have not, there are some lessons that you have yet to learn. Such times of rescue are full of instruction. The veil that hides the supernatural from us seems withdrawn. God fills the whole horizon of our thought. We cease to regard him as a dream of the fancy or as an appendage of our comfort. We see him as he is the per- sonal and living God, the centre and stay of all things, the only eternal reality. In such hours, too, the conscience speaks, and, in the hush of earthly passion and selfishness, we perceive those moral attributes which chiefly make God to be God. It was such a rescue from imminent destruction that occasioned the utter- ance of the text. It is part of the song which the saved people of Israel sang on the shore of the Bed Sea, after that fearful night in which Pharaoh and his host had perished. They looked back upon the waters through which they had passed in safety, but in which their enemies had been over- whelmed, and depths of God's nature seemed opened to their view that were deeper than the depths of the sea. There was an attribute of God which had never been mentioned in previous revelations, never before had been put into a single word and so expressed to men, but which stood out clear and bright forever from the day that Moses and the children of Israel sang unto the Lord : ' ' Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods ! who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness !" That song, in which the holiness of God was the culminating theme, was not merely the natural expression of a new-born nation's gratitude and wor. ship it was an inspired song also. And the witness of inspiration to God's holiness has never ceased. Beginning here in the Pentateuch it goes on, in an ever-broadening and deepening stream, until we reach the book of Beve- lation. Throughout the Bible, holiness is the attribute insisted on more than any other. Do you say that this is only because in man's state of sin, his first and most pressing need is to be convinced that God is holy ? But in heaven there is no sin, yet in heaven cherubim and seraphim continually do cry : "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty !" Do you say that this prominence is given to holiness only because the revelation of it is adapted to our present stage of progress and capacity ? But look beyond the pres- ent ; see the eternal future portrayed in the Apocalypse ; hear the host of * Originally prepared as a sermon on the text, Ex. 15: 11 "Glorious in holiness," and preached in the Chapel of the University of Rochester, on the Day of Prayer for Colleges,, January 31, 1878 ; subsequently printed as an article in the Examiner, January 26, Feb- ruary 9, and February 22, 1882. 188 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 189 the redeemed upon the shores of another sea, in which the last of God's foes has been overthrown ; there they sing again : "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name ? for thou only art holy ! " Since the greatest thought of the finite is the infinite, and our ruling con- ception of God must make or mar our earthly career and settle our eternal destiny, how important a thing it is that we should have worthy thoughts of the divine holiness ! May the Spirit of holiness enlighten us while we inquire what holiness in God is, how it is distinguished from other attributes, and what place and rank it holds in his nature. The theme which we are to consider is the greatest of themes, and one of the most difficult. The difficulty arises partly from the relation of the divine attributes to the divine essence. But here, at any rate, it is plain that the attributes are not themselves God, nor are they mere names for human conceptions of God. They have an objective existence. They are actual qualities, distinguishable from each other and from the essence to which they belong. As in matter, so in mind, qualities imply a substance in which they find their unity. God is a spiritual substance, and of this sub- stance the attributes are inseparable characteristics and manifestations. Holiness is one of these characteristic qualities of God. We call it an attribute, because we are compelled to attribute it to God as a fundamental power or principle of his being, in order to give rational account of certain constant facts in his self-revelations. The attributes are qualities without which God would not be God. Intellect is an attribute of man, because man would not be man without it. And here arises another difficulty. Every essential attribute of a moral being has both its active and its passive sides. Active truth presupposes passive truth ; truthful speaking, thinking, know- ing, are impossible without truth of being. Otherwise, the attributes of God would be his acts ; his very being would be synonymous with his volition. This cannot be ; although such names as Thomasius and Julius Miiller might be cited as its advocates. If God were primarily will, and the essence of God were his act, it would be in the power of God to annihilate himself, and our primitive belief in God's necessary existence would be a delusion. Behind all the active aspects of God's attri- butes we must recognize the passive. Love is an active principle in God, but it could not be active unless there were a foundation for this activity in its very natiire. And in any thorough analysis of the attributes, either of man or of God, the consideration of the passive side must come first, the thought of the attribute as quality must come before the thought of the attribute as power. Let us now apply what has been said to the attribute of holiness. What is holiness ? I think we shall say at once that it is purity. When we speak of a pure soul, we mean not simply that the acts of that soul show an unde- viating rectitude, that its words are transparently true and just, that its very emotions and thoughts are free from all sensuous or selfish stain, but we mean that the spirit itself, in its inmost substance and essence, is devoid of all tendency or impulse toward the wrong. Among men we know that there is only an approximation to such purity as this. Absolute purity is not even an episode with us. We are never wholly single in our motive. Even when we would do good, evil is present with us, 190 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. and below the surface-stream, which sometimes seems so clear, there are tur- bid undercurrents which God sees even if we do not. Most often two streams, plain even to our own sight, flow on side by side, like the Arve after its junction with the Rhone ; or the Ohio, made up of the Alleghanv and the Monongahela, not yet fully united. The muddy current is the cur- rent of our natural life, but we are compelled to recognize in the clear stream a branch of the river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God. That stream which joins itself to ours to purify and cleanse is clear as crys- tal. It proceeds from deep unfathomable fountains in the being of God, and it flows on and on without change or stint forever. What then must that purity be from which all purity in men or angels is derived, as the trickling rill from the inexhaustible reservoir ! And yet we must not allow ourselves to think of holiness in God as if it were a passive purity only. All God's thoughts and deeds in truth are pure, because they flow from deeper than Artesian sources in his clear and perfect nature. But then we are speaking of a moral nature, even when we use these physical analogies. The purity of God is also a purity that reveals itself in active will. Men ignore this consciously or unconsciously. They conceive of holiness in God as a still and moveless purity, like the unspotted whiteness of the new-fallen snow, or the stainless serenity of the blue sky after a summer rain. They forget that all God's moral attributes are pene- trated and pervaded by will. In God there is nothing inert. He is alive in every part. That mighty will which brought the universe into being, and which unweariedly sustains it from hour to hour that mighty will whose reflection and result we see in the fixed successions of nature, and in the majestic order of science that will is the active element in God's holiness. Holiness is purity, but purity unsleeping the most tremendous energy in the universe eternally and unchangeably exerting itself " that living Will that shall endure, when all that seems shall suffer shock." Holiness, then, is not the passive material purity that is unconscious of itself and indifferent to change or injury. It is purity in conscious and determined movement. All the intensity of human volition, all the com- bined energy of all human wills, is as feebleness compared with that concen- tration of mental and spiritual power which is involved in the holiness of God. Holiness in him is imaged in the sea of glass, of which the book of Be velation speaks. It is of crystal purity, but there is more than that . In it the enemies of God are overwhelmed. It is a "sea of glass mingled with fire ! " I have said that God's holiness is purity exercising will purity willing. What is the object of this willing ? I answer, itself. Holiness in God is purity willing, affirming, asserting, maintaining, itself. In virtue of his holiness, God eternally asserts and maintains his own moral excellence. We have a faint analogue in human experience. There is such a thing as a man's duty to himself. You respect no man who does not respect himself. You revere genuine dignity of character. When the fierceness of slander or of temptation assaults the true man, there is no nobler sight on earth than to see him holding fast his integrity, and asserting his innocence before God and the world. So did Job of old, and within certain limits God justified THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 191 Job's self -affirming righteousness against the cruel accusations of his false friends. Self-preservation is the law of life. Shall it be the law of all the lower creation, teaching the birds and the beasts their arts of defense, and men and nations to be jealous of their rights and liberties, and shall it not be the law of virtue, that highest life of all ? Shall purity not stand for itself and maintain its own existence ? Ah, it is not till men have purity, that they feel their right to live. It is the pure soul that has in it the clear instinct of immortality. Get God's life into you, and it becomes duty to live, and to assert and maintain that life forevermore. Aye, there are times in the experience of the Christian when this new and God-given purity seems lifted up above the strife with sin. For a moment we seem to catch a glimpse of our heavenly freedom. Then we see that holiness is not simply the antithesis to moral evil, so that its existence is dependent upon the existence of that which is its opposite. We see that purity in the soul is a positive thing, and not a negative. Without a glance at the sin that seems for a brief space put beneath our feet, our whole being rejoices that it reflects something of the light which no man hath seen or can see, and that it will reflect that light of the divine purity throughout eternity. These are but faint analogies, but they are real analogies, of something infinitely higher than themselves. There is a self-preserving instinct, a self-maintaining life, a self -asserting purity in man. And is there no instinct of self-preservation in God ? Shall the central life of all life not maintain itself ? Shall the source of all purity not respect itself and assert itself ? We say, " Let justice be done though the heavens fall." Let us rather say, 11 Because justice is done, the heavens do not fall." If God could be unjust to himself, the universe would perish. The purity of God, forever main- taining itself, divine perfection asserting itself as the highest good and the highest end, infinite moral excellence willing its own perpetuity and domin- ion this is the holiness of God. Purity of substance, energy of will, self-affirmation these make up the idea of it. In a word, holiness in God is the self -affirming purity of the divine nature. Let us now, as the second division of our great theme, inquire what relation the holiness of God sustains to other attributes of his being. And first, to justice. The answer easily presents itself. Justice is simply tran- sitive holiness, or holiness exercised toward creatures. The same holiness which exists in God in eternity past, manifests itself as justice, so soon as moral intelligences come into being. Before creation God was holiness, just as he was love and truth. The one God Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is sufficient to himself. As he has in himself an infinite object of knowl- edge, he is the eternal truth. As he has in himself an infinite object of affection, he is the eternal love. And as he has in himself an infinite object of will, he is the eternal holiness. The trinity in unity assures God's inde- pendence, his sovereignty, his blessedness. He does not need to create for his own sake. Because God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is the foundation for intelligence, communion, activity, in the infinite ranges of his own being. If he creates, therefore, it is not to augment his own bless- edness, but to communicate it to others. If he makes the worlds, it is not of necessity, but of grace. 192 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. God is holy, whether creation exists or not. But the moment moral creatures come into being, this holiness of God has relations to them, and holiness in relation to creatures is justice. The self-affirming purity of God demands a like purity in those who have been made in his image. As God wills and maintains his own moral excellence, so all creatures must will and maintain the moral excellence of God. There can be only one centre in the solar system. The sun is its own centre and the centre for all the planets also. So God's purity is the object of his own will, and it must be the object of all the wills of all his creatures also. See how all arbitrariness is excluded here. God is what he is infinite purity. He cannot change. If creatures are to attain the end of their being, then, they must be like God in moral purity. Justice is nothing but the publication and enforcement of this natural necessity. The law of God, therefore, is simply a transcript of God's being the holiness of God in the form of moral requirement. Law can no more be different from what it is, than God can be different from what he is. And justice does not make law it only reveals law. Justice is holiness declaring to creatures, in their own constitution, in conscience, in providence, and in the written word, the fundamental facts of being. In this sense justice is legislative holiness. But justice is executive holi- ness also. God will not only demand purity in his creatures, but he will enforce this demand. That mighty will that asserts the divine purity as the thing of supreme worth, will flow on like an infinite river and bear upon its bosom the whole universe of moral beings. Resist that current, and you are overwhelmed by it. Because God is God, you must perish. That mighty will is the substance and strength of law. When you make your thrust against the law, by transgression, you find that law is elastic ; because the living will of God is in it, there is a counter-thrust that prostrates and destroys you. And so retributive justice, binding moral evil and penal misery together in inevitable and dreadful union, is simply the reaction of God's holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. Punishment is God's holy will maintaining and vindicating the divine purity. Justice itself is legis- lative and retributive holiness ; and God can cease to demand purity and to punish sin, only when he ceases to be holy, that is, only when he ceases to be God. Holiness, in the form of justice, is therefore necessarily the detecter and -condemner and punisher of impurity and selfishness. The whole nature of God is affected with revulsion from moral evil, and not only with revulsion but with abhorrence and indignation. But let us remember that this anger of God against the wicked is not a human anger. In it is no passion or malice. It is the legitimate expression of God's purity, the calm judicial vindication of his righteousness, the exact apportionment of retribution to transgression. God's holiness as much binds him to punish sin, as sin binds the sinner to be punished. Years ago the city of Rochester witnessed a strange scene. Senator Ira Harris, then Judge of the Supreme Court, was to pronounce sentence of death upon a brutal criminal, whose ignorance of the English language made necessary the intervention of an interpreter, even to communicate to him THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 193 the meaning of the words that sealed his doom. Those who knew Judge Harris have not forgotten the large mould of his mind and the correspond- ingly magnificent port of the man. The bearing of the Judge that day seemed the very embodiment of the majesty and impartiality of the law, but coupled with this there was a deep compassion for the miserable being before him. As he addressed the convicted man tears were seen trickling down his cheeks, his voice trembled and broke, he could not go on. The solemn hush of that court-room was like the silence of the grave that was just opening to receive the murderer. Justice paused but justice must be done. With a struggle that shook his whole frame Judge Harris regained his self-control, and the words were spoken that consigned the criminal to a felon's death. Those words were awful, because it was felt that there could be no recall. So God's compassion lingers ere it speaks the sinner's separation from him forever ; but that lingering only makes more remediless the sinner's fate. The justice that has in it no semblance or trace of human caprice, the justice that only makes manifest to the universe the natural relations between the purity of God and the creature's sin, the justice that renders its desert to moral evil even at the cost of its own grief, this is the justice that the sinner has to fear. The very absence from it of all earthly passion is its characteristic mark. And so we represent justice as holding an even scale, and as weighing merit and demerit with bandaged eyes. She is no respecter of persons, and from her decisions there is no appeal. There is one other attribute to which holiness bas an important, but a very different relation. I mean the benevolence or love of God. Let us understand clearly what love is. It is the impulse to self -communication, the attribute in virtue of which God is moved to give, of his own life and blessedness. Love existed in God, before men existed, or before angels were made. " Thou lovedst me, " says Jesus, "before the foundation of the world." From eternity God was love, because from eternity there was the communication of all his fullness to the Son. In Christ and through Christ, God gives of his own life and blessedness to us. Do we not know from our experience of earthly love what this self -giving, self -imparting, self -communication is ? Do we call that love, in which there is no giving, but only demanding, taking, receiving ? Do we believe in a person's love, who fastens himself to us because of the praise we give him or the good of whatever sort he can get from us ? No, there is no true love without self-sacrifice, self-devotion, the merging of my interests in your interests, the giving of myself to you that my life may fill and bless your life. And this is God's love the giving of himself for us and to us in Jesus Christ. " Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us." When the Son of God gives up all for us upon the cross of shame, when he gives himself to us by entering our hearts and uniting himself indissolubly with us, then and then only we see what is the nature and essence of love. We see at once that love cannot be resolved into holiness. Self-imparta- titfti is very different from self-affirmation. The attribute which moves God to pour out is not identical with the attribute which impels him to maintain. SeK-communicating grace is not the same with self -preserving purity. Nor 13 194 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. on the other hand can we resolve holiness into love. The two ideas are a& distinct as the idea of integrity on the one hand and of generosity on the other. One may call holiness God's self-love, if he will, but this gives only a superficial and verbal unity. Self-love is not love at all, for there is in it no element of self -surrender. We cannot turn holiness into love, then, merely by giving it a name into which the word "love" enters as a component part. In truth, holiness is wrongly described as " self-love," even when this term is taken in its proper sense. Self-love is the desire for one's own interest and happiness. But God's holiness is something infinitely nobler than this. The utilitarian element is wholly wanting from it. God wills and maintains his own moral excellence not because of the good which will flow to him thereby, but simply because that moral excellence is in itself the thing of supreme worth. As no man is truly virtuous who loves virtue for what he can make by it, so God has no ulterior motive in being holy, and for this reason holiness can never be defined as God's self-love, or the desire for his own interest and happiness. If holiness, then, is not even God's self-love, much less is it God's love to the universe. It is not a form of benevolence toward his creatures, a mani- festation of desire for their good. It has an independent basis in the nature of God, and so exists before and apart from creation. Yet no error in modern thinking is more prevalent or more pernicious in its results than this one, of making holiness to be a mere exercise of love. See how far-reaching the consequences of this error are ! Holiness in God ceases to be valuable for what it is in itself it becomes valuable only as a means to an end. Happiness is the only good and the only end. If the happiness of the universe required it, God might cease to be holy ; he would be bound to be unholy, if greater good might come thereby. Law is only an expedient for the attainment of happiness, and may be done away when it fails of securing its end. Punishment is only a means of reforming the offender, or of deterring others from following his example. Sin can be pardoned without atonement, and the incorrigible transgressor may be loosed so soon as punishment ceases to be of benefit. And so the foundations of every important doctrine of Christianity are swept away. Law, sin, atone- ment, retribution all these defenses of the faith are untenable, when once the Eedan, the citadel of God's holiness, is surrendered to the foe. How completely opposed to right reason is this view that holiness is a form of benevolence, a means of securing happiness ! If this were so, supreme regard for happiness would be the very essence of all virtue. But we know that to serve God for the mere sake of reward to ourselves, or of happiness to others, is not to serve him at all. Holiness is binding upon us entirely apart from its useful results. God is displeased with unholiness, entirely apart from the effects of misery which follow in its train. His law, like the sun in the heavens, declares and reflects his glory. God must pun- ish the violators of that law, whether the punished are benefited thereby or not. Sin is intrinsically ill-deserving, and must be punished on that account not because punishment will work good to the universe ; indeed, no pun- ishment can be of benefit to the universe that is not just and necessary in itself. THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 195 Justice moreover is something invariable ; it comes equally to all. It cannot be the same as love, for love varies with the moral worth of the object and with the sovereign pleasure of the bestower. It is the very nature of love to choose out the object of its affection. Men choose the ends to which they will devote their charities and we call them benevolent, and God dis- penses his bounty as he will. He gives to one and withholds from another. Poverty and riches, ignorance and intellect, follow no law of merit. But God does not dispense justice thus. That is something which every man may claim from him. Surely this justice that varies not, is not a mere name for love, that has its endless gradations and that declares its freedom in the infinite variety of gifts and conditions which it distributes among mankind. But let us turn to Scripture wholly. Why does the Psalmist pray that God will chasten him not in anger ? Because chastening in anger is differ- ent from chastening in love, and the fatherly chastening of the Lord is the opposite of being condemned with the world. God hates, abhors and destroys the wicked ; hatred, abhorrence and destruction are not love nor forms of love. Many times in Scripture is chastening referred to love : "Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth." But nowhere in the whole range of God's word is punishment referred to love ; many times it is referred to holiness. In the book of Revelation, when the great whore is judged, the company of heaven cry : " True and righteous are thy judgments ! " When the wicked are destroyed, the saints say with one voice : "Who shall not fear thee, for thou only art holy ! " Not from love to the universe does God punish. " I do not this for your sakes," he says, "but for my holy name's sake." The fires that fell from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrha were not acts of mercy to soften hard hearts and bring sinners to repentance. They were manifestations of self- vindicating holiness, visiting indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon persistent wickedness, cutting short the day of grace, removing for- ever the chance of reformation, and ushering the enemies of God not into a world of new opportunities and privileges, but into a world of retribution compared with which, as Jesus himself intimates, the fire and brimstone of the earthly destruction were far more tolerable. God is love indeed, but God is light also ; and because he is moral light, in whom is no darkness at all of impurity or sin, to all iniquity he is a consuming fire. Holiness and love both exist in God. We have seen what holiness is, and how it differs from love. Let us ask last of all, which of these is to be regarded as the primary and fundamental attribute of the divine nature ? We have but two sources of information here, our own moral constitution and the word of God. From our own nature we may learn something of the nature of him in whose image we are made. Let us recall that great discovery of Bishop Butler: "the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man." To conscience every other impulse and affection, voluntarily or involuntarily, has to bow. Happiness and righteousness stand on two very different planes, and righteousness is evermore the higher. The money in my hands may be needed to help a family in distress ; yet, if it is my only means of paying an honest debt, even to a man who needs it not, I am bound to pay my debt, though the family starve. Be just before you are generous, conscience whispers always. 196 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. Now that which is highest in us is highest also in God. As we may be kind, but must be righteous, so God, in whose image we are made, may be merciful, but must be holy. Mercy is optional with him. He was not under compulsion to provide a redemption for sinners. Salvation is a matter of grace, not of debt. He can apply the salvation he has wrought out, to whomsoever he will. " I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," is his word. Love is an attribute which, like omnipotence, God may exercise or not exercise, as he will. But with holiness it is not so. Holiness must be exercised everywhere. We thank God for his mercy for this is the free act of his grace. But we never thank him for speaking the truth for this he must do from the necessity of his own nature. Justice must be done always ; otherwise God would be unjust ; shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? But who of all this world of sinners could complain if God should pardon others, but not pardon him ? Can we doubt then whether love or holiness is the more fundamental in the divine nature ? But look once more to Scripture and the light is clearer still. See there the actual dealings of God. See how holiness conditions and limits the exercise of every other attribute. See how redeeming love, when it would save mankind, can do this only by itself submitting to the rod of justice and suffering in our stead, violated holiness requiring expiation for sin, while love submissively meets and answers its requisitions. See how the eternal punishment of the wicked reveals the holiness of God, even when love can hope for no relief or benefit to the transgressor, the demand of holiness for self- vindication overbearing the pleading of love for the sufferers. Does the word of God teach that there is such a thing as everlasting death ? Does God not only pity the sinner, but abhor and repel him ? Does he press into the conscience with his condemning sentence, frown upon the wrong-doer with an angry eye, drive the wicked from him with a flaming sword, prophesy eternal wrath in the world to come ? Does love hide her head from the finally impenitent, and the mercy of the Lamb change to the wrath of the Lamb ? Then there must be a principle of God's nature, not only independent of love, but superior to love. Even so it is. The mighty will that constitutes the stay and life of the universe is directed toward one thing the maintenance, revelation and diffusion of holiness. Not the holiness of the happy, but the happiness of the holy ; peace to the pure, but to the impure everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord this is the plan 011 which the universe is built. What has been said throws, in my judgment, a new and valuable light upon the great question of future punishment. The common view that holi- ness is a form of love, or is under bonds to love, can justify the penalties of the world to come, only from considerations of utility, to use the words of Mr. Beecher : " I believe that punishment exists both here and hereafter, but it will not continue after it ceases to do good. With a God who could give pain for pain's sake, this world would go out like a candle." So the Universalist holds that "the punishment of the wicked, however severe and terrible it may be, is but a means to a beneficent end ; not revengful, but remedial ; not for its own sake, but for the good of those who suffer its inflic- tion. " * And some, who can see no good to be reaped from punishment by * Art. "Universalism," in Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia. THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 197 the lost themselves, declare that punishment is for the good of the universe. The security of free creatures is to be attained through a gratitude for deliv- erance, " kept alive by a constant example of some who are justly suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." So says Dr. Joel Parker.* Let us ask these writers also : What beneficial effect can these sufferings have upon the universe, unless they are just in themselves ? And if just in themselves, then the reason for their continuance lies not in any benefit to the universe, or to the sufferers, that may accrue therefrom. ' ' If the Univer- salists' position were true, " I quote here from a late English Review, t ' * we should expect to find some manifestations of love and pity and sympathy in the infliction of the dreadful punishments of the future. We look in vain for this, however. We read of God's anger, of his judgments, of his fury, of his taking vengeance, but we get no hint, in any passage which describes the sufferings of the next world, that they are designed to work the redemp- tion and recovery of the soul. If the punishments of the wicked were chas- tisements, we should expect to see some bright outlook in the Bible-picture of the place of doom. A gleam of light, one might suppose, would make its way from the celestial city to this dark abode. The sufferers would catch some sweet refrain of heavenly music, which would be a promise and prophecy of a far-off but coming glory. But there is a finality about the Scripture-statements of the condition of the lost which is simply terrible." The reason for punishment lies in the holiness of God. That holiness reveals itself in the moral constitution of the universe. It makes itself felt in conscience, imperfectly here, fully hereafter. The wrong merits punish- ment. The right binds, not because it is the expedient, but because it is the very nature of God. " But the great ethical significance of this word right will not be known," I quote again from Dr. Patton, " its imperative claims, its sovereign behests, its holy and imperious sway over the moral creation will not be understood, until we witness, during the lapse of the judgment-hours, the terrible retribution which measures the ill-desert of wrong." Is this a doctrine of "pain for pain's sake ? " Ah, no ! God has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. It is a doctrine of pain for holi- ness' sake ; the necessary suffering of the transgressor who spurns God's love ; the inevitable reaction against itself of a human nature that was made for purity, but is now lost to purity ; the involuntary vindication, on the part of the sinner, of the great truth that in the nature of God the two infinites love and holiness are not commensurate, but that holiness is evermore supreme. Triumphant holiness, submissive love, are these then in conflict with each other ? Is there duality, instead of harmony, in the nature of God ? Ah, there would be, but for one fact the fact of the cross. The first and worst tendency of sin is its tendency to bring discord into the being of God, by setting holiness at war with love, and love at war with holiness. And since both these attributes are exercised toward sinners of the human race, the otherwise inevitable antagonism between them is removed only by the aton- ing death of the God-man. Their opposing claims do not impair the divine blessedness, because the reconciliation exists in the eternal counsels of God : * Lectures on Universalism. i Art. by F. L. Patton, in Brit, and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878, p. 137. 198 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. Christ is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." In him and in his cross, long before the Savior came, "mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other." Even Calvary, with its bleed- ing love on the part of the Son, and the darkness and horror of that forsak- ing on the part of the Father, could not have accomplished in those few hours the redemption of the world, if it had not been the drawing-back of the veil that had hid an eternal fact in the nature of God, in other words, if it had not been a revelation of God himself. In the cross, we see the majesty of holiness at one with the self-abnegation of infinite love. That God might still be just, while pardoning the transgressor, the Judge gave himself to death for us. He bore the wrath of violated holiness, that we might be saved from wrath through him. And yet, lat us not imagine that love fails to have proper recognition, when we make holiness supreme. It is only in the light of this holiness of God that we can properly estimate God's love to sinners. When we think of what holiness is, it would indeed at first sight seem to exclude love. The most impossible of all things would seem to be, that this God, whose holi- ness is the fundamental and controlling attribute of his being, should love tho^e who have broken the bonds of his authority and have polluted them- selves with moral evil. Sin is an abomination to him. His purity loathes it ; his judicial sentence condemns it ; his anger burns against it. And yet, wonder of wonders ! he loves the sinner and cannot see him perish. The complex nature of God is strangely capable at once of these two mighty emotions hatred of the sin and love for the sinner ; or, to put it more accu- rately, love for the sinner, as he is a creature with infinite capacities of joy or sorrow, of purity or wickedness, but simultaneous hatred for that same sinner, as he is an enemy to holiness and to God. Except as we scale the heights of God's holiness, we shall never fathom the depths of God's love. Only as we see the inaccessible whiteness of that celestial purity that rises like Alpine summits far- withdrawn, can we begin to appreciate the love that stooped to inconceivable abasement, that it might lift us out of the blackness and hell of our depravity and guilt. Against this solemn back-ground of holiness and judicial indignation, the yearning pity and the melting tenderness of the Godhead seem inexpressibly sweet and fair. The Old Testament must come before the New, the Law before the Gospel, John the Baptist before Christ, or all these last lose their dignity and significance. And what the preaching and the teaching of our day needs most of all is a profound conviction of that holiness of God which will by no means clear the guilty, and which charges guilt upon every impure act, dis- position or state of human soul. A great teacher, as he gave his last counsels to a class of young men in course of training for the active work of life, said to them these words : " Would that upon the naked palpitating heart of each one of you might be laid one red-hot coal of God Almighty's wrath ! " And thus I would say, also, if I could ouly know that love would follow, and would quench that coal with one precious drop of the red blood of Christ. Nay, will love ever follow and heal and deliver, if the sense of wrath has not gone before ? No man in his sins, indeed, can ever enter into the blaze of God's holiness, and live. Yet some sight of it, such as the Spirit gives, is the indispensable condition THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 199 of a lofty Christian life, yes, is an indispensable condition of salvation. From the sight of holiness we need to be led on to the sight of love, or the end will be only remorse and despair. Yet still it is true that there can be no more salutary discipline and preparation, either as respects the learning of doctrine or the doing of duty, than those which are derived from a heart- searching, awe-inspiring apprehension of the divine holiness ; for it is the law, in which that holiness is revealed, that is the appointed school-master, to lead us to Christ. I would fain close this sermon with an appeal to every hearer who is not jet a Christian, and to every Christian whose conceptions of God's purity have hitherto been faint and dull, that he will seek a new knowledge of this attribute of God. May God himself, by his Holy Spirit, be our teacher, that we may see how great and just a God he is with whom we have to deal; how impossible it is without holiness for any man to see the Lord; how deep is the blackness of our sin against the whiteness of his purity; how needful it was that the Son of God should die to save us from it; how instant and imme- diate is the necessity of repentance and renewal; how certain is the doom of the unrepenting transgressor; and how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Why should I not address directly any hearer who is yet unsaved, and say to him : My friend, if you are ever saved, either God must change, or you must. He must either cease to be God by giving up his holiness, or you must cease your rebellion and become pure. Do you think that he will change ? Ah ! he changes not. Make sure then that you change your place and character and life ; for you must change, or die ! For my part I give in my allegiance gladly to this holiness of God. I know that I must bend to the mighty Will that moves and controls all things, whether I will or no. I had rather be the molten iron that runs freely into the mould prepared by the great Designer, than be the cold iron that must be hammered into shape. I know that the whole universe must bow to that holy will at last. I would not be among the spirits that bow in hell. But this is not my reason for giving in my allegiance to holiness. I bow to it because it is the highest, the fairest, the grandest thing of all. I bow to it because it is the only worthy object of homage and love and service in the universe. To be like God, to be pure as God is pure, to be partaker of his holiness, this, to a created being, is the summit of all honor and ambition. Will you not choose this end with me ? Will you not recognize this supreme fact of the universe, and give in your allegiance to the holiness of God ? On the day after the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter, the citizens of Chicago gathered in the vast auditorium in which the National Convention had nominated Abraham Lincoln, to take the oath of allegiance to the gov- ernment and to the Constitution. It was said that twenty thousand men stood under that single roof. They were of all classes and all parties, but it .seemed to me that the spirit of God had made them one. A Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States stood forth and held aloft a Bible, and called upon every man in that vast multitude to hold up his right hand and swear. With a voice that reached the remotest corners of the great enclosure, he repeated the first words of the oath : "We do solemnly swear ! " And like the sounding of the sea, or the breaking 'of thunder from the sky, all that multitudinous host repeated after him: "We do solemnly swear!" 200 THE HOLINESS OF GOD. " To support the Constitution of the United States ! " And still they fol- lowed : " To support the Constitution of the United States ! " And so the oath proceeded till the solemn close : "So help us, God ! " For many a, man, the taking of that oath meant the giving up of property and life ; but it was taken with an intense and exultant enthusiasm, for the cause of the country was felt to be the cause of God. If there were traitors there that day, they made no sign. Rebellion hid itself in fear. There shall be a greater gathering soon. The universe shall assemble to recognize the right of holiness to reign. I hear the multitude that no man can number ciy, as the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying : "Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ! " Will you be among those who give in their allegiance to God's holiness, on that great day ? or will you be among those whose impenitence and rebellion is punished by exclusion from the presence of God and from the society of the holy ? I pray you, avoid that fate, if you are still unreconciled to God, by making your peace with him without delay. Join yourself to Christ by submission and trust, and that God whose purity now seems only to repel and menace will seem "glorious in holiness, " and this attribute of his will become the object of your deepest homage, the pledge of your defense from evil, and the model for a strenuous character and an unspotted life! XV. THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST.* It is the question of the ages. Propounded eighteen centuries ago, it has been a living question ever since, and it was never agitated so much as now. Every year the press brings forth its new life of Christ. The term " Chris- tology " is a coinage of our own generation, and it indicates that the study of Christ's person has become a science by itself. The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wins more readers to-day than any other book in the world. The character of Christ is the standard of all excellence, even by the confession of those who are enemies to his gospel ; and he him- self declares that by our attitude toward him we shall be judged. The question " What think ye of the Christ? " is asked of each one of us to-night ; it will be asked of us when we stand at last before God ; and the answer will determine our eternal destiny. I am glad that the Scriptures enable us to answer it aright. They point us to the two natures of our Lord which united constitute him the ladder from earth to heaven. On the one hand, he is the Son of Man ; on the other hand, he is the Son of God. It is my purpose, first, to show what these phrases mean ; and then, secondly, to draw from them certain important practical lessons. Observe then that Christ is Son of Man. This can mean nothing less than that Christ is true man. It means much more besides, but let us first grasp and insist upon this. Christ is man. The ancient docetic view which held so strongly to his divinity that it left no room for his humanity the view that in the incarnation Deity passed through the body of the Virgin as water through a reed, taking up into itself nothing of the human nature through which it passed this was all an ignoring and a contradiction of Scripture. When the New Testament assures us that Jesus Christ was the Son of David and of the stock of Israel, when it describes him as sitting weary upon Jacob's well, as sleeping upon the rower's cushion, as suffering upon the cross, and as breathing out his soul in death, there is one thing which we cannot mistake and that is that this Son of Man is man. And that not simply as respects the reality of his human body. He had a human mind also, and that mind was subject to the ordinary laws of human development. He grew in wisdom, as well as in stature and in favor with God and man. In his mother's arms he was not the omniscient babe that some have supposed. In his later years he suffered, being tempted, as he could not have suffered,, if all things had been open to his gaze. Even to the last, it would seem that he was ignorant of the day of the end, for "of that day," he tells us, "knoweth no man, neither the angels of God, neither the Son, but the * Preached in Sage Chapel, Cornell University, May 25, 1884, as a sermon on the text,. Mat. 22 : 42- "What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? " 201 THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. Father." Not till his twelfth year, at his interview with the doctors in the temple, does he apparently become fully conscious that he is the Sent of God, the Son of God ; and even then he must learn obedience to parents, and prepare for his public ministry by the gradual growth of mind and heart and will, amid the humble duties of son, brother, citizen, and member of the Jewish Synagogue. There are two pictures by modern artists, the one of which illustrates the false, and the other the true view of Jesus' human development. The first is by Overbeck, the celebrated German painter. It represents the child Jesus at play in Joseph's work-shop. Child as he is, his great future sacri- fice looms up before him continually, and even in his play he is fashioning sticks and blocks into the shape of a cross, and so is rehearsing in his infancy the tragedy of Calvary. I see no indication in Scripture that this concep- tion is true, or that the great future experiences of our Lord were ever thus early anticipated. The second picture is by Holman Hunt, the Englishman. It is entitled " The Shadow of the Cross. " It also represents the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. At the close of a weary day, when the level rays of the setting sun are streaming through the door, Jesus, the carpenter, turns from his toil and stretches out his arms in sheer fatigue. The shadow of those outstretched arms, and of that relaxed and tired form, is thrown upon the opposite wall. There the long upright saw, and the smaller tools ranged transversely, make the rude semblance of a cross, and the shadow of the Savior falls upon it. At one side, Mary, the mother of Jesus, weary of the long delay in the manifestation of her Son, has been trying to revive her faith in those old promises that had accompanied his birth, by opening the casket in which had been kept the gold, frankincense and myrrh, which the wise men from the east had brought. The sudden stopping of Jesus' work startles the mother, and turning to look at the Savior, her eye falls upon that prophetic cross upon the wall and the shadowy form of her Son stretched upon it, and the sword pierces her own heart also. But Jesus does not see the cross ; his face is turned from it. His is still a countenance of youthful energy, weariness and sadness, if you please, but still, not yet of anguish ; his hour is not yet come. Holman Hunt's picture is truer to the gospel nar- rative than Overbeck's. Instead of fashioning crosses, Jesus was far more probably, as Justin Martyr, the old church Father, tells us, making ploughs and yokes, and so by hard manual toil supporting the widowed mother whom Joseph's death had left dependent upon his care. Jesus walked by faith, not by sight. His knowledge was a growing knowledge. His prayers were real prayers full of strong crying and tears. He was made perfect through suffering. And all this testifies that he was one of us a veritable man like ourselves. But was there nothing peculiar about the humanity of Jesus ? Ah yes, he was not only man he was the ideal man. When he is called Son of man, it is intimated that he is man in the highest possible sense, the central, typical man, in whom is realized the perfect idea of humanity as it existed in the mind of God. By this I do not mean that in all respects this glory belonged to him in the days of his flesh. Those were days of humiliation. I do not know that the man Christ Jesus was surpassingly beautiful in his physical form. At first sight, it might seem strange that we have no authen- THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. 203 tic description of Jesus' person. Whether he was great or small of stature, we know not. The passage in Josephus with respect to his appearance is unquestionably spurious, and the portrait said to have been presented to King Abgarus does not date back further than to the seventh century. Was our Lord exceptionally noble, or exceptionally mean, in person ? We cannot say with certainty. Scripture has been cited to sustain each hypothesis. In the synagogue of Nazareth, the "gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth " would almost seem to betoken the noble presence and winning man- ner of the natural orator ; while, on his way to Jerusalem to suffer, there was a majesty of mien which so deeply impressed the disciples that they were amazed and afraid. But then we read in the prophets, that " his visage is more marred than any man ; " "he hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we shoujd desire him." So the Byzantine painters conceived that they had full warrant for representing Christ as emaciated, and aged before his time, did not the people say to this young man : " Thou art not yet fifty years old ? " But on the other hand, the Italian painters represented him as the model of all manly beauty, did not the Psalmist say : "Thou art fairer than the children of men? " Per- haps the truth is midway between the two. Christ joined himself to our average humanity ; so far as personal advantages were concerned, taking that which is neither exceptionally mean nor exceptionally noble. But just as there are persons, undistinguished from the rest, who in times of sorrow seem positively ugly, but through whose plain features at other times of spiritual exaltation the rapt soul seems to shine so gloriously that the poor earthly investiture is transfigured, and you wonder that you ever thought of them as other than beautiful, so it may be that the Son of man, in his common, every-day, working garb of humanity, appeared only as the man of sorrows, while to little children there was a smile that drew them to his arms, to earnest seekers of salvation he was full of grace and truth, and to his trusted followers upon the mountain-top there was the flashing forth of a supernatural majesty and glory. So he teaches us that mere physical endowments are not the noblest, but that if we seek first the kingdom of God even these things shall be added to us, as "the head that once was covered with thorns, is crowned with glory now." Of what temperament was Jesus ? Mercurial or saturnine, lymphatic or phlegmatic, nervous or equable, sanguine or calm ? Who does not perceive, the moment the question is asked, that none of these temperaments pre- dominated in him ? The story of his life gives us illustrations of the best features of them all. He can be swift and direct as the thunderbolt against hypocrisy ; he can be deep and calm as the summer sea, when he comforts his disciples. Who ever thinks of Christ as a Jew ? There was no Jewish grasping or bigotry in him. All the free spirit and aesthetic insight of the Greek, all the Roman reverence for law, all the Hebrew worship of holiness, all the love that breaks down the barriers of the nations and makes all races one all these were in Christ. What woman, though she were the tenderest and most delicate of all, ever thought that Jesus would be more able to sympathize with her if he were woman instead of man ? Chaucer wrote long ago: "Christ was a maid, though shapen as a man." All the spiritual excellences of both the sexes were in him, he possessed the feminine as well 204 THE TWO KATURES OF CHRIST. as the masculine virtues. Indeed, without gentleness and sympathy no high manhood is possible. True manhood is something more than mere mascu- linity. Plato says that each human being is but a moiety of the perfect creature, wandering through the wide and barren earth to find its other half. Shakspeare echoes the thought when he declares that : " He is the half part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such as she ; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fullness of perfection lies in him." And so Tennyson says : " Yet in long- years liker must they grow ; The man be more of woman, she of man ; He gain in sweetness and in moral light, Nor lose the wrestling- thews that throw the world." And the same poet addresses Christ and says : " Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou ; Our wills are ours, we know not how ; Our wills are ours to make them thine." Have we ever reflected that all the qualities which attract our love in men,, aye, eve.n in the dearest object of our earthly affection, exist in Christ in infinitely greater degree and abundance ? All true and noble souls, whether regenerate or unregenerate, are but faint reflections of this glory of him who is original and only light of the world. All the excellencies of character that appear in John, Paul, Augustine, Luther ; the intellectual acumen, the emotional fervor, the power of conscience, the energy of will, that make great thinkers, great friends, great reformers, great men, are only scattered rays, which find their focus in the humanity of Christ. He is no still Thomas a Kempis seraphic in devotion, but holding himself aloft from his age and making little impression on it ; he is no fiery John Knox stern and hard in all his indignant righteousness ; but he has all the good in both of these, with none of their defects, aye, all the good of a thousand others like them melted into one. He includes in himself all objects and reasons for affection and worship, so that love him as we may we never can love too much, but must ever come infinitely short of his desert. He includes in himself all the possible perfections of humanity all the perfections needful to make him our eternal model all the perfections which finite humanity is pro- gressively to realize through the ages that are to come. I have said that Christ is man, and that he is the ideal man. But I must lead you further. Christ is the life-giving man. He not only has human- ity, and perfect humanity, but he gives it to others. He is not simply the bright, consummate flower of the race, the noblest fruit from this human stem, but he is a new beginning and fountain-head of humanity, the second Adam, in whom the race that had been despoiled of its inheritance in the first Adam finds its true source of spiritual life. So absolutely new is this beginning, this inauguration of a fresh and pure humanity within the bounds of the old race, that skeptics have denied the possibility of it, and have called it an effect without a cause. But we are persuaded that the same God who created humanity at the first was perfectly capable of recreating it, when it had apostatized and rebelled. God is a sufficient cause. We do not need THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. 205 to explain Christ by his natural antecedents. We grant that the absence of narrow individuality, the ideal universal manhood which we find in Christ, could never have been secured by merely natural laws of propagation . Much less, without taking into account a recreating act of God, could we explain the existence of man without sin. Here is one, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners ; one who never prays for forgiveness, but who imparts it to others ; one who challenges his bitterest enemies to convince him of the least sin ; one who alone of all mankind can say : "The prince of the world cometh ; and he hath nothing in me " nothing of evil desire or tendency on which his subtlest temptations can lay hold. Now the very idea of such a man as this surpasses all human powers of invention, for men invent characters like their own. The source of it can only be in a real life once lived here upon the earth ; and if that life once was lived, it must have come from God. Corrupted human nature cannot produce that which is uncorrupt. ' ' That which is born of the flesh is flesh. " " Had Christ been only human nature," says Julius Muller, "he could not have been without sin ; but life can draw even out of the putrescent clod materials for its own living. " The new science recognizes more than one method of propagation even in the same species ; and while the supernatural conception of Christ is a mystery to us, it is a mystery that well nigh explains every other mystery. The only explanation of such a humanity as Christ's is that it came from God by a new impulse of that power which created man at the beginning. And so Christ becomes not only the embodiment of all that is noble in the old humanity, but also the fountain-head and beginning < >f a new humanity a new source of life for the race. Here is a new vine, whose roots are in heaven, not on earth, a vine into which the degenerate, half-withered branches of the old humanity may be grafted, so that they may have life divine. " The first Adam was made a living soul ; this last Adam a life-giving Spirit." A new race takes its origin from Christ, as the old race took its start from Adam. " He shall see his seed," he shall be the centre and source of a new humanity. The relation of the Christian to Christ supersedes all other relationships, so that "he that loveth father or mother more than me " that is, values more highly his natural ancestry than he values his new spiritual descent and relationship, "is not worthy of me." Christ's human nature is a human nature that is germinal and capable of self -communication, and it constitutes him the spiritual head and beginning of a new and holy race. O, thou wonderful Savior, who hast not only life in thyself but the power of an endless life, that thou mightest be the first born among many brethren, the founder of a new city and kingdom of God, help us to see how great a thing is that humanity which thou hast taken to thyself, and the glorious possibilities of which thou hast undertaken to set forth before the universe ! Thus we have seen that the phrase "Son of man " intimates that Jesus is man, possessed of all the powers of a normal and developed humanity ; that he is the ideal man, furnishing in himself the pattern which humanity is progressively to realize ; and that he is the self -propagating man, who in the power of the Spirit raises up for himself a new race which shall answer to the idea of humanity as it first existed in the mind of God. But there is more than this in the phrase "Son of man." That phrase intimates also 206 THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. that he is more than man. Suppose I were to go about proclaiming myself "Son of man." Who does not see that it would be mere impertinence,, unless I claimed to be something more. " Son of man ? But what of that ? Cannot every human being call himself the same ? " When one takes the title "Son of man" for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man ; that thia is not his original condition and dignity ; that it is condescension on his part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked "What think ye of the Christ ? whose son is he ? " we must answer, not simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God. Jesus himself was conscious of this divine Sonship. Looking back into the depths of eternity past he could say : " Before Abraham was, I am ;" " O, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." Even here in his earthly life he is not confined to earth; he can speak of "the Son of man which is in heaven," and can say, " I and my Father are one." He exercised divine powers and prerogatives, when he said to the raging sea, " Peace, be still " ; and to the troubled soul, " Thy sins be forgiven thee. " John saw the evidence of Deity when Jesus showed that he "knew what was in man. " Thomas saw the evi- dence of Deity when the resurrection-body of Christ passed through the solid walls of that upper chamber and appeared in the midst of the disciples when the doors were shut. At the beginning of Christ's ministry, Nathanael could say: "Thou art the Son of God, the King of Israel." When that ministry was half finished, Peter could say : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And after its close the beloved disciple could write : ' 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." These testimonies that Christ is the Son of God are drawn from the Scrip- tures. But there is proof nearer at hand, in the experience of every Christian. Every soul redeemed from sin recognizes Christ as an absolutely perfect Savior, perfectly revealing the Godhead, and worthy of unlimited worship and adoration, that is, recognizes Christ as Deity. But Christian experi- ence also recognizes that through Christ it has introduction and reconcilia- tion to God as one distinct from the Son, one who was at enmity with it on account of its sin, but is now reconciled by Jesus' death. In other words, while recognizing Jesus as God, we are also compelled to recognize a distinction between the Father, and the Son through whom we come to the Father. So in like manner, when our eyes are first opened to see Christ as a Savior, we are compelled to recognize the work of a divine Spirit in us, who has taken of the things of Christ and has shown them to us, and thi& divine Spirit we necessarily distinguish both from the Father and from the Son. Thus the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is only a transcript of Christian experience ; and the hymns and prayers of the church addressed in all ages to the Holy Spirit and to Christ, equally with the Father, are witness that this doctrine is the truth of God. Although this experience cannot be regarded as an independent witness to Jesus' claims, since it onlv tests the trnth already made known in the Bible, still the irresistible impulse THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. 207 of every person whom Christ has saved to lift his Redeemer to the highest place, and to bow before him in the lowliest worship, is strong evidence that only that interpretation of Scripture can be true which recognizes Christ's absolute Godhead. There is one other proof that Christ is the Son of God. It is found in Christian history. The essential difference between ancient and modern civilization lies in the changed view of the relation of the individual to the state. In classic times the individual was held to exist for the sake of the state. In modern times the state exists for the sake of the individual. Then the individual had no freedom and no rights he was but an append- age and servitor in the train of the conquering state. Now the state finds its highest glory in protecting the rights, and in securing the development, of the least and lowest of its corporate members. The dignity of woman, and the sacredness of human life, are evidences of a new spirit animating our modern civilization a spirit utterly unknown to the most cultivated nations of antiquity. What has wrought the change ? Nothing but the death of the Son of God. When it was seen that the smallest child and the lowest slave had a soul of such worth that Christ left his throne and gave up his life to save it, the world's estimate of values changed, and modern history began. And so history itself is a testimony to the Deity of Christ ; for unless Christ had been felt to be infinite and divine, this change from the old to the new never could have been wrought. Is it possible that this most beneficent change in history has been the result of belief in a lie? Oh, no ! Christ is the centre of history. Without him history has no order, and no philosophy of history is possible. The scattered events of the world's life-time have no meaning, until they are looked at in their relation to Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Just as the heavens were a maze and tangle till the Ptolemaic system was exchanged for one in which the sun and not the earth was the centre, so human history is an inextricable labyrinth until Christ, the Sun of righteousness, is recognized as the centre around which all persons and events revolve. Heathen and Jewish history respectively were but the negative and positive preparations for his coming. The modern world, so far as it has in it the elements of truth and righteousness, is but the outgrowth of the principles which he introduced in his incarnation, his doctrine, and his death. Nations grow in power, according as they accept his law ; and more and more it is demonstrated that the kingdoms that will not serve him shall perish. For to the Son it has been said : " Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." So we have before us a wonderful twofold being, not only Son of man, but also Son of God. And now, among the lessons of the theme, let us con- sider, first, our need of Christ's humanity. We need a Savior that is truly man, one who will bring down God to our human understanding, one who will give us a brother's sympathy and example, one who has trod the same paths of suffering which we have to tread, one who has been tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. It is not enough for us to have a divine Redeemer. It is not enough for us to have a Redeemer whose human- ity is merely nominal. There was an old patristic notion that Christ's human- ity, in union with his deity, was like a drop of honey mingled with the ocean ; but it was rightly judged heretical, for it was as much as to say that the hu- 208 THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. inanity of Christ is so swallowed up in his deity as to be altogether lost. We need to maintain the unchanged and perfect humanity of our Lord, as much as we do the unchanged and perfect divinity. The ages when the church has lost sight of the humanity have been ages of the greatest declension in doctrine and practice. One of the greatest pictures in the world, Michael Angelo's tremendous fresco of the Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel at Borne, is an illustration of that declension. How well I remember the day when its awful granduer first rose before me ! On the left, I seem still to see the dead rising from their graves and making their way to meet the Judge. Righteous and wicked alike come before him. The martyrs come, bringing the instruments of their martyrdom, as evidences of their love for their Lord. There is St. Sebastian, with the arrows with which he was pierced ; there is St. Catherine with the wheel on which the body was broken. Heavenly messengers bear aloft Christ's crown of thorns, the nails that were driven through his hands and feet, the pillar to which he was chained when they scourged him, the cross upon which he hung during those long hours of agony, all these as pledges of salvation for the saints, but as swift witnesses against the wicked. The wicked come despairing before their Judge ; and, as they receive their doom, they pass downward and are caught by fiends and devils. And who is the Judge ? A wrathful Jupiter, with no trace of human compassion upon his brow, but grasping thunder- bolts and hurling them against his foes. So Michael Angelo pictured Christ ! But the most striking and fearful feature of the picture is the presence of the Virgin Mary, at her Son's right hand, and the turning of her head away from the condemned. That the merciful mother of our Lord should refuse to interfere in their behalf, is the last element in the cup of the misery of the wicked. See what resulted from forgetting the humanity of Jesus ! Men must have a compassionate and tender being, to intercede for them. So they elevated the Virgin to the place of Christ, and made her the only advocate for sinners. To call Christ only God, is as pernicious an error as to call him only man. When men ignore the merciful and faithful High-priest, who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, they fall into the worship of Mary and the invocation of the saints. When men deny the living human Christ, who is with us alway unto the end of the world, they must have some substitute, and they find it oh, how poor and mean ! in the " real presence " of the wafer and the mass. We need Christ's humanity that is the first lesson. But there is a second. It is this : We need Christ's divinity also. For only as Christ is divine, can he make an infinite atonement for us. There is a debt to be paid, which we can never pay ourselves, a reparation to be made, which we can never render. Every soul convinced of sin, feels that none but an infi- nite Bedeemer can ever save it. God must suffer, if man is to go free. He could not suffer, if he were only God. He can suffer, because he is not only God, but also man. Just as my soul could never suffer the pains of fire, if it were only soul, but can suffer those pains in union with the body ; so the otherwise impassible God can suffer mortal pangs, through his union with humanity, which he neve* could suffer, if he had not joined himself to our nature. There is such a union with humanity a union so close that Deity itself is brought under the curse and penalty of the law. Shall we say THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. 309 with John of Damascus, that, as the man who fells a tree does no harm to the subeams that illuminate it, so the blows that struck Christ's humanity caused no pain to his Deity ? On the contrary, it was the very greatness of his Deity that made his agony ineffable. Because Christ was God, did he pass unscorched through the fires of Gethsemane and Calvary ? Ah, rather say, because Christ was God, he underwent a suffering which was abso- lutely infinite. In that infinite suffering, we see the cup of God's just indignation drunk to the very dregs ; the otherwise unappeasable demands of violated conscience satisfied. Christ's flesh is meat indeed, and Christ's blood is drink indeed ! Because Christ is God, his atonement is sufficient. Because he is God, the union which he effects with God is complete. If he were only man or angel, he would still be finite ; the gulf between him and God would still be infinite ; he never could bring us nearer to God than he was himself. But since he is God, he is able to bring us to the very holy of holies, to the very heart of God, to living union with the Father of our spirits ; nay, in him we become partakers of the divine nature, one spirit with the Lord we dwelling in God, and God dwelling in us ; an indissoluble and eternal fellowship with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Ghost. We need his humanity, but ah, what should we do without his Deity ? A human Savior alone can never reconcile nor re-unite me to God. But a divine Savior can. " Jesus, my God ! I know his name, His name is all my trust ; Nor will he put my soul to shame, Nor let my hope be lost." Yes, he has both the human sympathy and the divine power and he lias them now. And here is the third lesson : We need this humanity and this deity perfectly and eternally united in the one person of our Lord. And so it is. Christ did not take human nature, as some of those Indian gods are fabled to have done. The Hindoo avatars were only tempory unions of drity with humanity, and after that humanity had been drawn for a little time into the the brightness of the godhead, it was cast aside, as a worn out garment, and Buddha returned alone to his heaven. How different is the union of humanity with Deity in Christ ! Forever stands our humanity in heaven. It has ascended the throne of the universe. It has entered into the partnership of the Trinity. It is the pledge and earnest of our glor- ification. We too shall reign with Christ; we shall judge angels; "round about his throne," in the striking language of the Bevised Version, "are four and twenty thrones," on which the representatives of the redeemed shall sit ; and all things shall be ours, because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. Let us not lose the blessing of this great truth, that Christ has taken our whole humanity with him, and that there in heaven he still has the pierced hands and feet that were nailed to the bitter cross for us. There he has a human soul, now capable of divine love and intervention in our behalf. There he has a human body, of wonderful beauty and of wonderful powers, the model and the pledge of our resurrection-body. Everything that took place in Christ shall take place in us. He wrought nothing for himself alone, but all for the race of which he became a part. "For he that sancti- fieth, and that they are sanctified are all of one," of one body, I think the 14 210 THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. meaning is, "for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren."" " Therefore our citizenship is in heaven ; from whence also we wait for a, Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself. "" We need his humanity ; we need his Deity ; we need this humanity aud this Deity united in one person. But there is a last lesson : We need to recognize this humanity and this Deity, and to recognize them now. When a beggar girl is taken by a king to be his bride, she does well to reflect, not only upon the greatness of his love, but also upon the return of love she owes to him. How infinite the debt we owe to Christ ! How infinite the honor of serving him ! To be the servant of such a Lord this is to be higher than the kings of the earth ! No human being ever reaches so high a place as when he prostrates himself absolutely at the feet of Jesus, and lays there all that he is and all that he has forever. It is a mark of Paul's prog- ress in Christian experience that in his later epistles he ceases to call him- self "apostle of Jesus Christ," and designates himself simply as " Christ's servant." In his earlier letters, it is "Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ ; " in the later, it is : "Paul, a servant a bond-servant, a slave of Jesus Christ." So he followed Christ's own example, who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister ; not to be served, but to serve. Let us all consecrate ourselves to the same blessed service. When every Christian shall be in reality what the Pope of Borne in one of his titles professes to be "a servant of servants "" for Jesus' sake then the world shall recognize the glory of him who is Son of man and Son of God. " Oh, not to fill the mouth of fame My longing- heart is stirred ; Oh, give me a diviner name, Call me thy servant, Lord ! 4i Sweet title that delighteth me, Name earnestly implored ; Oh, what can reach the dignity Of thy true servant, Lord ! "No longer would my soul be known As self-sustained aud free ; Oh, not my own, oh, not my own Lord, I belong to thee ! " Serve Christ, and he will reveal himself to you. The path of service is the path of knowledge. You shall see this Son of man and Son of God, when you once begin to obey him. For he himself has said : " He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, * * * and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." A few years ago in one of our eastern cities there lived a physician of eminence, whose practice among the sick and the suffering had given him a large experience of the miseries of the world. He was one of those who are sometimes said constitutionally to be doubters, and his doubts turned upon the person and the work of Christ. He could see the beauty of Christ's character, but the possibility of Deity being united with humanity in him he could not see. He could see the attractiveness of the Christian scheme Christ putting his own mighty shoulders under all our load of sin and penalty, and bearing the burden that THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. 211 we might go free but the possibility of this he could not understand. And so he went on, the opportunities for religious service in his profession putting his conscience under a heavier and heavier load of obligation, but his speculative doubts growing thicker and thicker, until it sometimes seemed to him as if all the lights of heaven had gone out. One day he met an evangelical minister in whom he had confidence, and with the first word the trouble of his soul was made known. " I have had the greatest trial of my life this morning." "How so?" replied his friend. "Why, I have just been to the bedside of a poor woman who has but a few hours to live, and as I was standing there it suddenly flashed upon my mind that her soul was in worse case than her body she seemed the very image of conscious guilt and despair. And, do you know ? it seemed to me at that moment that, if I believed as you do in Christ, it would have been a great privilege to kneel down by her bedside and to commend the poor woman to his mercy." "Oh, my friend!" said the minister, "God has put that into your heart. Follow that impulse. We will not stop to settle the question who and what Christ is. You know that somewhere in the universe Christ lives his life did not go out in darkness like an extinguished taper. And he is true he said that he would hear men's prayers, whenever they called upon him. And he is more able now, than he was when he heard the poor blind beggar's cry. Go back to that bedside, and God go with you ! " And the resolve was taken. The physician went once more into that sick room, and there for the first time in all his life he knelt in prayer to Jesus. He prayed Christ to teach that poor woman's soul the way to God. But as he prayed, Christ taught his soul the way to God. The one act of recognizing and obeying Christ was the door through which Christ himself entered into his heart, and in the consciousness that Christ had forgiven his sins and saved his soul he could doubt no longer about Christ's divinity, but he fell at Christ's feet like Thomas, crying " My Lord and my God ! " Oh, friend to whom I speak ! I pray you to recognize Christ now ! This particular message from God will never come to you the preacher you may never see again. 44 We twain have met like ships upon the sea Who hold an hour's converse so short, so sweet ; One little hour, and then away they speed, On lonely paths, through mist and cloud and foam, To meet no more." Ah ! I mistake, we shall meet, not many months and years from now, shall meet before the throne of that once crucified, now crowned and sceptred Savior, once known only in his character as Son of man, then known chiefly in his character as Son of God. Be thankful that it is yet one of the days of the Son of man. Listen to me, while I urge you to rec- ognize him now as Son of God. Now you may think that you do not need him ; but then you will see that you have no other need. Now, death and eternity may seem far away ; but then, they will be the overmastering facts of your experience. When I was a mere child I remember riding from the city of my residence toward the great lake that skirts our State upon the north. I remember the first distant momentary glimpse of its far line of blue, and the feeling of mystery and awe which that glimpse inspired within 212 THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST. me. From the summit of the last hill-top as we pressed onward, I remember the yet more solemn feeling with which I looked upon the great waters that stretched away before me, now so deep and cold, so fathomless and illimit- able. But when we came down to the water's edge and I was led out into the rolling waves, there seemed to be nothing but the sea the solid shore had vanished. I was overwhelmed and lost, but for my father's voice lifted up to encourage, and my father's hand stretched out to hold me up. So as we go in the journey of life, as youth grows into manhood and manhood into age, death and eternity assume larger and larger significance. The first distant glimpse of them may overawe the soul, but the final stepping down into the flood is a unique experience it cannot be anticipated. But to him who has recognized Christ as Son of man and Son of God, death has no terrors ; for Christ himself has said : ' ' When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." Death may be mighty, but Christ is the Conqueror of death, and his pierced right hand can help us through the flood and open to us the gates of Paradise upon the other side. And therefore, in life, in death, on earth, in heaven, this Christ, Son of God and Son of man, is the only hope of me, a sinner ; and to you, my fellow-sinner, bound with me to his judgment seat, I commend this Christ as the one and only Savior, and pray you in his stead that you accept him and be saved . ' ' What think ye of the Christ ? Whose son is he ? " God grant that every one of us may reply : "He is the Son of man and Son of God, my Redeemer and my King ! " Happy, if with my latest breath I may but gasp his name ; Preach him to all, and cry in death : Behold, behold the Lamb ! ' " XVI. THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT.' In these words of our Lord, which I read from the Revised Version, we find plainly asserted the necessity of his atonement. They are still better translated in the Bible Union Version which reads : "Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things ? " Why was it needful that Christ should suffer ? In order that prophecy might be fulfilled ? Yes, but why were Christ's sufferings matters of prophecy ? It must be because they were included in the purpose of God the purpose of God to redeem the world. Why could not the world be redeemed withoiit the sufferings of Christ? There -are two answers to be given to this question. First, because there is an ethical principle in God's nature which demands that sin shall be punished. The holiness of God requires satisfaction for sin, and Christ's penal sufferings furnish that satisfaction. Secondly, because Christ stands in such a relation to humanity that what God's holiness demands, Christ is under obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully, in virtue of his twofold nature, that every claim of justice is satisfied and the sinner who accepts what he has done in his behalf is saved. With regard to the first of these aspects of the atonement its necessity as regards God so much is said in Scripture that little room is left for doubt or ambiguity. In his sacrifice, Christ offers himself through the eternal Spirit without spot to God. He is set forth in his blood as a propitiatory sacrifice, so that God may be just and yet justify him that believes. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission, but the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin, for he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. These passages declare that the righteous- ness of God demands an atonement if sinners are to be saved. It is to the second and more difficult aspect of the atonement its neces- sity as regards Christ himself that I wish to direct special attention. Many who can see how God can justly demand satisfaction, cannot see how Christ can justly make it. The suffering of the innocent in place of the guilty seems to them manifestly unjust. They recognize no obligation on the part of Christ to suffer. I am persuaded that light can be thrown upon this particular point in the great doctrine. We shall understand the neces- sity of Christ's sufferings, when we consider what Christ was, and what were his relations to the race. What were the results to Christ of his union with humanity ? I shall mention three. The first was obligation to suffer for men ; since, being one * A sermon upon the text, Luke 24 : 26 "Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things?" 213 214 THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. with the race, he had a share in the responsibility of the race to the law and the justice of God a responsibility not destroyed by his purification in the womb of the Virgin. There is an organic unity of the race. All that there is of humanity has descended from one common stock. In our first parents that humanity fell from holiness and incurred the great displeasure of God, and each member of the race since that time has been born into the state into which our first parents fell. The universal prevalence of perverse affections, and the universal reign of death, are evidences that the whole race is under the curse. What were the two main consequences of sin to Adam? They were first, depravity, and secondly, guilt. First the corruption of his own nature ; and secondly, obligation to endure the penal wrath of God. What are the two consequences to us of Adam's sin ? Precisely the same : first, depravity ; secondly, guilt. We are born depraved, or with natures continually tending to sin ; we are born guilty, or under God's displeasure and justly bound to suffer. And so because of this race-unity and race- responsibility we bear a thousand ills not due to our individual and conscious transgressions, and even infants, who have never in their own persons vio- lated a single command of God, do notwithstanding suffer and die. Now if Christ had been born into the world like other men, he too would have had both these burdens to bear, first, the burden of depravity, and secondly, the burden of guilt. But with regard to the first, he was not born into the world like other men. In the womb of the Virgin, the human nature which he took was purged of its depravity even at the instant of his taking it, so that it could be said to Mary : " That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God," and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could speak of Christ as "holy, harmless, undefiled, sepa- rated from sinners." With regard to the second consequence of sin, how- ever, Christ was born into the world like other men. The purging away of all depravity did not take away guilt, in the sense of just exposure to the penalties of violated law. Although Christ's nature was purified, his obligation to suffer yet remained. All the sorrows of his earthly life, and all the pains of death which he endured, were evidences that justice still held him to answer for the common sin of the race. The justice of Christ's sufferings has been illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business firm to pay debts which he did not personally contract ; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of his wife ; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume the debts of the province which it purchases. There have been men who have spent the strength of a life-time in clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father long since deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family which made their father's liabilities their own. So Christ recognized the organic unity of the race, and saw that, having become one of the sinning race, he had involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of death, the great penalty of sin. He might have declined to join himself to humanity, and then he need not have suffered. He might have sundered his connec- tion with the race, and then he need not have suffered. But once born of the Virgin, and possessed of the human nature that was under the curse, he was bound to suffer. The whole mass and weight of God's displeasure against the race fell on him, when once he became a member of the race. THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. 215 It was this that Jesus chiefly shrank from when he prayed that the cup might pass from him. And when at last God's face was hidden from the sufferer, and he cried in agony : "My God, my God, why hast thou for- saken me ! " there would have been no sting in death if it had not been the wages of sin, justly paid to him who not only stood in the sinner's place, but who was made sin for us in the sense of being guilty of the original sin of the race, while yet he was utterly free from inherited depravity or personal transgression. It has been common enough for theologians to recognize an imputed guilt, .as furnishing an explanation of Christ's sufferings. The poet says : *' My soul looks back to see The burdens thou didst bear When hanging on the accursed tree, And hopes her guilt was there." But this imputation of others' guilt is very difficult to reason, even when helped out by John Miller's hypothesis of Christ's federal relation to the race. The doctrine of the atonement needs something more than this to make it comprehensible. It needs such an actual union of Christ with humanity and such a derivation of the substance of his being by natural generation from Adam as will make him, not simply the constructive heir, but the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. Edward Irving saw this, and he declared therefore that Christ took human nature as it was in Adam, not before the fall, but after the fall. But he ignored the qualification that, in his taking it, that human nature was completely purified by the Holy Spirit, and so he taught that Christ's humanity was depraved. The true doctrine is that the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was derived from Adam through Mary his mother. Christ, then, so far as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and, as Adam's descendant, he was responsible for Adam's sin like every other member of the race ; the chief difference being that, while we inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity but only the guilt. The first effect upon Christ of his union with humanity, then, was that it put him under obligation to suffer for the sins of men. But there was a second effect it was the longing to suffer which perfect love to God must feel, in view of the demands upon the race of that holiness of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself ; which perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing the penalty of man's sin was the only way to save him. I have spoken of Christ's shrinking from suffering and death because it was the penalty of sin. But this is perfectly consistent with an intense longing to pay that penalty, as it was the demand of infinite righteousness. That righteousness he loved, more than he loved the whole universe besides. That righteousness he saw to be the only worthy object of adoration for the universe the only security for the peace of the universe. He understood the requisitions of righteousness, as only one who was per- fectly pure could understand them. And when that righteousness presented its demands to him as a member of the condemned and guilty race, there was that in him which moved him to respond : " Let that righteousness be exalted, though I die ! " 216 THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. Think how urgent the demand of conscience sometimes is, even in the case of sinful men, and you will get some idea of the yearning of Christ's pure heart to offer his great sacrifice. All great masters in literature have recognized it. The inextinguishable thirst for reparation constitutes the very essence of tragedy. Marguerite in Goethe's Faust, fainting in the great Cathedral under the solemn reverberations of the "Dies Irce; " Dimmes- dale in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, putting himself side by side with Hester Prynne, his victim, in her place of obloquy ; Bulwer's Eugene Aram, coming forward, though unsuspected, to confess the murder he had committed, all these are illustrations of the inner impulse that moves even a sinful soul to satisfy the claims of justice upon it. Nor are these cases confined to the pages of romance. That was an unusual and exciting scene in a Plattsburg court-room, near the close of a trial for murder. The murderer was a life-convict who had struck down a fellow-convict with an axe. The jury, after being out two hours, came in to ask the judge to explain the difference between murder in the first, and murder in the second, degree. Suddenly the prisoner arose and said : "This was not murder in second degree. It was a deliberate and premeditated murder. I know that I have done wrong, that I ought to confess the truth, and that I ought to be hanged. " This left the jury nothing to do but to render their ver- dict, and the judge sentenced the murderer to be hanged, as he deserved to be. The other case of Earl, the wife-murderer, is still fresh in public recollection. Earl thanked the jury that had convicted him, declared the verdict just, begged that no one would interfere to stay the course of justice, said that the greatest blessing that could be conferred upon him would be to let him suffer the penalty of his crime. Now, if wicked men can be moved with such desire to suffer, how much more must he desire to suffer whose sym- pathy with the righteousness of God was perfect and complete. For man's sake Christ longed to suffer, because only through his suffering could man be saved. But chiefly for God's sake Christ longed to suffer, for only through his suffering could God's righteousness be vindicated. Hence we see him pressing forward to the cross with such majestic determination that the disciples were amazed and afraid. Hence we hear him saying "With desire have I desired to drink this cup ; " "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it is accomplished." Here is the truth in Campbell's theory of the Atonement. Christ is the great Penitent before God making confession of the sin of the race, which others of that race could neither see nor feel. But, the view which I present is a larger and completer one than that of Campbell, in that it makes this confession and reparation obligatory upon Christ, as Campbell's view does not, and recognizes the penal nature of Christ's sufferings, which Campbell's view denies. There is but one point further. I have shown that Christ's sufferings were necessary, first, because he was under obligation to suffer ; and sec- ondly, because his love to God and man made him long to discharge this obligation. Now, thirdly, I would show, that, being such as he was, he could not help suffering in other words, the obligatory and the desired were also the inevitable. Since he was a being of perfect purity, contact with the sin of the race, of which he was a member, necessarily involved an actual suffering of an intenser kind than we can conceive. There are THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. moments in our own experience when the wickedness of some past misdeed is revealed to us in a light so appalling, that we get some conception of what hell must be to the everlastingly condemned. There are moments when our unbelief and ingratitude seem abhorrent and shocking beyond descrip- tion. There are times when the sin of others to whom we are closely bound, their disregard of Christ and his claims, their grieving of his Spirit, affect us so deeply that the remorse which they ought to feel seems to take posses- sion of us. So the parents feel, whose daughter has gone astray, they identify themselves with her, feel her shame as if it were their own, cannot absolve themselves from the feeling of responsibility. And there are men whose hearts are so large and deep, that they feel thus for the sin and misery of the world. They look upon the bonds of their brethren, and feel bound with them, as Moses identified himself with his suffering people in Egypt. And this suffering in and with the sins of men, which Dr. Bushnell empha- sized so strongly, though it is not, as he thought, the principal element, is notwithstanding an indispensable element, in the atonement of Christ. In the last illness of John Woolman, one of the early members of the Society of Friends, he gave utterance to the following words. They are in the form of an address to God : " O Lord, my God, the amazing horrors of darkness were gathered about me and covered me all over, and I saw no way to go forth ; I felt the depth and extent of the misery of my fellow creatures separated from the divine harmony, and it was greater than I could bear, and I was crushed down under it ; I lifted up my hand, I stretched out my arm, but there was none to help me ; I looked round about and was amazed. In the depths of misery, O Lord, I remembered that thou art omnipotent, that I had called thee Father, and I felt that I loved thee, and I was made quiet in thy will, and I waited for deliverance from thee ; thou hadst pity upon me when no man could help me. I saw that meekness under suffering was showed to me in the most affecting example of thy Son, and thou wast teaching me to follow him, and I said : ' Thy will, O Father, be done.' " He had vision of a " dull, gloomy mass " darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beings, in as great misery as they could be and live ; and he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate being." Sin is self -isolating, and its watchword is : "Am I my brother's keeper?" But love and righteousness have in them the instinct of human unity. Nothing human is foreign to the man who lives in God. We do not know how completely a perfectly holy being, possessed of superhuman knowl- edge and love, may have felt even the pangs of remorse for the condition of that humanity of which he was the central conscience and heart. Such a holy being was Christ. In him all the nerves and sensibilities of humanity met. He was the only healthy member of the race. He could feel the con- dition of humanity, when no other member of the race could feel it. When a man has been exposed to intense cold and his limbs are frozen, he feels no pain, but rather the disposition to sleep, even though he knows this sleep will be the sleep of death. But bring the man to the fire, thaw the frozen limbs, and the first return of circulation is accompanied by exquisite pain. Pain is the very sign of life. So Christ was the only sensitive and healthy member of a benumbed and stupefied humanity. His soul felt all the pangs. "218 THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. of shame and suffering which rightfully belonged to sinners, but which they could not feel, just by reason of the depth and depravity of their sin. Because Christ was pure, therefore he must suffer. Not because of what he was in himself, but because of what the race was to which he had united himself, "it must needs be that Christ should suffer." As he was God, he could be the proper substitute for others ; as he was man, the penalty due to human guilt belonged to him to bear. I have already alluded to the great proof -text which Paul gives us ; let me a little more fully elucidate it. In the Second Epistle to the Corin- thians, the fifth chapter and the twenty-first verse, we read: "Him who knew no sin, he made to be sin on our behalf ; that we might become the righteousness of God in him." The two members of the sentence stand in contrast to each other ; the evident meaning of the one may teach us some- thing with regard to the meaning of the other. * ' Righteousness " here cannot mean subjective purity, for then "made to be sin" would mean that God made Christ to be subjectively depraved. As Christ was not made unholy, the meaning cannot be that we are made holy persons in him. Our "becom- ing the righteousness of God in him " can only mean that we became justi- fied persons in Christ. Correspondingly, Christ's "being made sin" must mean that he is made to be a condemned person "on our behalf." When the text speaks of "him who knew no sin," it declares that Christ was not personally a sinner this was the necessary prerequisite of his work of atone- ment. When the text says he was ' ' made to be sin on our behalf, " it declares also that he was made a sinner, in the^ sense that the penalty of sin fell upon him. But not simply penalty the text declares that guilt was his also. For, justification is not simply the remisson of actual punishment, but is also the deliverance from the obligation to suffer punishment, and as "righteous- ness " means "persons delivered from the guilt as well as the penalty of sin," so the contrasted term "sin" in the text means "a person not only actually punished, but also under obligation to suffer punishment"; in other words, Christ is "made sin," not only in the sense of being put under penalty, but also in the sense of being put under guilt. How was this guilt put upon Christ ? The same text intimates the answer. It was by Christ's becoming one with our race. As Adam's sin is ours only because we are actually one with Adam, and as Christ's righteousness is imputed to us only as we are actually united to Christ, so our sin is impu- ted to Christ only as Christ becomes actually one with the race. He was "made sin," by being made one with the sinners; he took our guilt by taking our nature. He "who knew no sin" came to be "sin for us," by being born of a sinful stock ; by inheritance the common guilt of the race became his. Guilt was not simply imputed to Christ ; it was imparted also. As we become justified persons by taking part in his new and redeemed nature, so he was made guilty for us by taking our condemned nature in the womb of the Virgin. Thus, having our guilt, he can atone ; by virtue of his divine nature, he can exhaust the penalty of sin and be our substitute ; becoming justified himself, he can make all believers partakers of his justi- fication. In this doctrine of the atonement, I see the only vindication of the justice THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. 219 of God. On any theory of mere human martyrdom, on any theory of mere human sympathy, God would seem to be unjust. That the holiest man of all the ages should have been the greatest sufferer, impugns God's justice, and fills me with terror and despair. But if Christ stood in the place of sinners, and bore the guilt of the race to which he had united himself, then in his suffering I see the greatest possible proof of the divine righteousness righteousness that will maintain itself even at the cost of the suffering and death of the Son of God. Yes, in the cross I see the glory of God's right- eousness the Judge himself coming down from his judicial tribunal and taking the sinner's place, rather than that one jot or tittle of the law should fail. If God so honored his own righteousness, how ought we to honor it ! In this doctrine of the atonement I see the only way of escape for the sinner. I once tried to tell a convicted sinner about Christ's power to re- new his heart. But he replied : " That is not what I want there is first a debt that I must pay. I must make up for my past sins." That is the utterance of the unsophisticated heart, when God's Spirit enlightens it. It must have atonement, before renewal. It must see some reparation made, before it can begin the work of reformation. It was a great delight to me to tell that man that his debts had been paid by Christ ; that the reparation had been made upon the cross ; and that now, ' ' nothing, either great or small, remained for him to do," but only to take what Christ had done for him. Yes, it was needful for Christ to suffer, if any sinner was ever to be saved. But now Christ has suffered once for all. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him," and, thank God! "by his stripes we are healed." The worst of sinners, who believes in Jesus, can say in the language of Top- lady's hymn : " From whence this fear and unbelief? Hast thou, O Father, put to grief Thy spotless Son for me? And will the righteous Judge of men Condemn me for that debt of sin Which, Lord, was laid on thee? " If thou hast my discharge procured, And freely in my room endured The whole of wrath divine, Payment God cannot twice demand First at my bleeding Surety's hand. And then again at mine. " Complete atonement thou hast made. And to the utmost farthing paid Whate'er thy people owed ; How then can wrath on me take place, If sheltered in thy righteousness And sprinkled with thy blood ? "Turn then, my soul, unto thy rest The merits of thy great High Priest Speak peace and liberty ; Trust in his efficacious blood ; Nor fear thy banishment from God, Since Jesus died for thee " ! XVII. THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH CHRIST.* It is strange that a doctrine which Dr. J. W. Alexander called " the centra? truth of all theology and of all religion " should receive so little of formal recognition either in dogmatic treatises or in ordinary religious experience. In Dr. A. A. Hodge's Outlines of Theology a brief chapter is devoted to it, to which I am greatly indebted, and to which I refer the reader. The major- ity of printed systems of doctrine, however, contain no chapter or section with the title of the present article at its head ; and the majority of Christians much more frequently think of Christ as a Savior outside of them, than as a Savior who dwells within. There can be little doubt that the compara- tive neglect with which this truth of the believer's union with his Lord is visited, is a reaction from the exaggerations of a false mysticism. It is no less true that there is crying need of rescuing the doctrine from neglect. I attempt the present brief and fragmentary treatment of a vast and sublime theme, from no conceit of my ability to compass it, but from a profound conviction that, ignored though it so commonly is, it is the most important of topics, not only for these times, but for all times. Doctrines which reason can neither discover nor prove, need large support from the Bible. It is a mark of divine wisdom that the doctrine of the Trin- ity, for example, is so interwoven with the whole fabric of the New Testa- ment, that the rejection of the former is the virtual rejection of the latter. The doctrine of Union with Christ, in like manner, is taught so variously and abundantly, that to deny it is to deny inspiration itself. There is figu- rative teaching, and there are direct statements. The union of the believer with his Savior is illustrated from the union of a building and its founda- tion, each living stone in the Christian temple is kept in proper relation to every other, and made to do its part in furnishing a habitation for God, only by being built upon and permanently connected with Christ, the chief corner-stone. It is illustrated by the indissoluble bond that connects hus- band and wife, and makes them legally and organically one. The vine and its branches are used to convey some proper idea of it, as God's natural life is in the vine, that it may give life .to its natural branches, so God's spiritual life is in the vine Christ, that he may give life to his spiritual branches. The members of the human body are united to the head, as the source of their activity and the power that controls their movements, so all believers are members of an invisible body, whose animating and directing head is Christ. The whole race is one with the first man Adam, in whom it fell and from whom it has derived a corrupted and guilty nature, so the whole race of * Printed in the Examiner, June 12, 1879. 220 believers constitute a new and restored humanity whose justified and puri- fied nature is derived from Christ, the second Adam, the atoning Savior. But lest we should regard these striking analogies as mere orientalisms of speech, to be interpreted only as high-flown metaphors, the New Testament asserts in the most direct and prosaic manner the fact of this union. The believer is said to be "in Christ," as the element or atmosphere which sur- rounds him with its perpetual presence, and which constitutes his vital breath; in fact, the phrase "in Christ," always meaning "in union with Christ," is the very key to Paul's Epistles and to the whole Scripture of the new dispensation. Christ is also said to be in the believer, and so to live his life within the believer, that the latter can point to this as the dominating fact of his experience, it is not so much he that lives, as it is Christ that lives in him. The Father and the Son dwell in the believer, for where the Son is, there always the Father must be also. The believer has life by partak- ing of Christ, in a way that may not inappropriately be compared with Christ's having life by partaking of the Father. All believers are one in Christ, to whom they are severally and collectively united, as Christ himself is one with God. So close and complete is this union, that by it the believer is made partaker of the divine nature, and becomes one spirit with the Lord. And yet these are but a few of the statements of this great fact, with which the New Testament abounds. It should not surprise us, if we find it far more difficult to give a scientific definition of this union, than to determine the fact of its existence. It is a fact of lif e with which we have to deal ; and the secret of life, even in its lowest forms, no philospher has ever yet discovered. The tiniest crocus that lifts its head in the spring-time witnesses to two facts : first, that of its relative independence as an individual organism ; and secondly, that of its ultimate dependence upon a life and power higher than its own. So every human soul has its proper powers of intellect, affection and will, yet it lives, moves and has its being in God. Starting out from the truth of the divine omnipresence, it might seem as if God's indwelling in the granite boulder was the last limit of his union with the finite. But we see the divine intelligence and goodness drawing nearer to us by successive stages in vege- table life, in the animal creation, and in the moral nature of man. And yet there are two stages beyond all these : first, in Christ's union with the believ- er, and secondly, in God's union with Christ. If this union of Christ with the believer be only one of several approximations of God to his finite crea- tion, the fact that it is, equally with the others, not wholly comprehensible to reason, should not blind us either to its truth or to its importance. Facts with regard to life, we must often define by negatives. And so it is here. We guard the truth from misconception, and cut off the claims of errorists of many schools, when we declare that this union with Christ of which the Scriptures speak, is not a merely natural union, like that of God with all human spirits, as is generally maintained by rationalists; nor a merely moral union, as Socinians and Arminians declare ; nor a union which destroys the distinct personality and subsistence of either Christ or the human spirit, as many of the Mystics have believed ; nor a union mediated and conditioned by the sacraments of the church as is held by Eomanists, Lutherans, and High Church Episcopalians. But we do not deal in nega- 223 THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH CHRIST. tives alone. We may put our doctrine into positive statement also. The Scripture teaches that, by faith, there is constituted a union of the soul with Christ different in kind from God's natural and providential concurrence with all spirits, as well as from all unions of mere association or sympathy, moral likeness or moral influence a union of life, in which the human spirit, while then most truly possessing its own individuality and personal distinctness, is interpenetrated and energized by the Spirit of Christ, is made inscrutably and indissolubly one with him, and so becomes a member and partaker of that new, regenerated, believing, and justified humanity of which he is the head. Still a few words of explanation are possible and requisite. The union is an organic one. By it we are constituted members of Christ's spiritual body, partakers of his purified and glorified human nature. As every portion of a true organism is reciprocally means and end, so, while Christ the head lives for the members, the members also live for Christ the head. It is a vital union, in distinction from any union of mere juxtaposition or of exter- nal influence. Christ does not work upon us from without, as one separated from us, but from within, as the very heart from which the life-blood of our spirits flows. He is the source, not simply of motives and of moral suasion, but of vital energy and spiritual strength. Such a union, not of natural but of spiritual life, cannot be mediated by sacraments, since sacraments presuppose it as already existing. Only faith receives and retains Christ ; and faith is the act of the soul grasping what is purely invisible and super- sensible, not the act of the body submitting to baptism or partaking of the Supper. Once formed, the union is indissoluble. Since there is now an unchangeable and divine element in us, our salvation depends no longer upon our unstable wills, but upon Him, who has said that none shall pluck us out of his hand. By temporary declension from duty or by our causeless unbelief, we may banish Christ to the barest and most remote room of the soul's house, but he does not suffer us wholly to exclude him, and when we are willing to unbar the doors, he is still there, ready to fill the whole man- sion with his light and love. This union is inscrutable, indeed, but it is not mystical, in the sense of being unintelligible to the Christian or beyond the reach of his experience. If we call it mystical at all, it should be only because, in the intimacy of its communion and the transforming power of its influence, it surpasses any other union of souls that we know, and so can- not be fully described or understood by earthly analogies. Such is the nature of union with Christ, such, I mean, is the nature of every believer's union with Christ. For, whether he knows it or not, every Christian has entered into just such a partnership as this. It is this and this only which constitutes him a Christian, and which makes possible a. Christian church. We may, indeed, be thus united to Christ, without being fully conscious of the real nature of our relation to him. We may actually possess the kernel while as yet we have paid regard only to the shell, we may seem to ourselves to be united to Christ only by an external bond, while after all it is an inward and spiritual bond that makes us his. God often reveals to the Christian the mystery of the gospel, which is Christ in him the hope of glory, at the very time that he is seeking only some nearer access to a Redeemer outside of him. Trying to find a union of cooperation THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH CHRIST. 223 or of sympathy, he is amazed to learn that there is already established a union with Christ more glorious and blessed, namely, a union of life ; and so, like the miners of the Rocky Mountains, while he is looking only for silver, he finds gold. Christ and the believer have the same life. They are not separate persons linked together by some temporary bond of friendship they are united by a tie as close and indissoluble as if the same blood ran in their veins. Yet the Christian may never have suspected how intimate a- union he has with his Savior, and the first understanding of this truth may be the gateway through which he passes into a holier and happier stage of the Christian life. Theology finds its focus in this truth of union with Christ ; and from it,, as from a central mount of observation, the true meaning and relations of all other doctrines may be best discerned. The nature of our relation to Adam, in whom the old humanity as an organic unit fell, can be understood only in the light of our relation to Christ, in whom the new humanity, in its principle and germ, atoned for sin and wrought out a perfect righteousness. The atonement itself, in the aspect of it which is most difficult to reason, the just suffering for others of one who was personally innocent, has more light reflected upon it from this doctrine of our union with Christ than from any other. There is a race-responsibility which belongs to every descend- ant of Adam, and this race-responsibility is distinguishable from personal responsibility. Christ's corporate union with humanity involved him in that race-responsibility, and so, though he was personally pure, law could lay her penalties upon the head of our Redeemer. Christ took our guilt when he took our nature ; he has delivered us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us. But atonement is not enough. The atonement makes full satisfaction to divine justice and removes all external obstacles to man's return to God. But an internal obstacle still remains the evil affections and will, and the consequent guilt, of the individual soul. This last obstacle Christ removes, in the case of all his people, by uniting himself to them in a closer and more perfect manner than that in which he is united to humanity at large. As Christ's union with the race secures the objective reconciliation of the race to God, so Christ's union with believers secures the subjective reconciliation of believers to God. As Christ's union with us involves atonement, so our union with Christ involves justification. The believer is entitled to take for his own all that Christ is and all that Christ has done, and this because he has within him that new life of humanity which suffered in Christ's death and rose from the grave in Christ's resurrection, in other words, because he is virtually one person with his Redeemer. And so Luther declares: "By faith thou art so glued to Christ that of thee and him there becomes as it were one person, so that with confidence thou canst say : ' I am Christ that is, Christ's righteousness, victory, etc., are mine ; ' and Christ in turn can say: 'lam that sinner that is, his sins, his death, etc., are mine, because he clings to me and I to him, for we have been joined together through faith into one flesh and bone.' ' It will be perceived at once that this connection of atonement and of justification with the doctrine under consideration, relieves both of them from the charge of being mechanical and arbitrary procedures. To say that 224 THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH CHRIST. my sin is imputed to Christ while yet there is no tie of life uniting Christ to me, or to say that Christ's righteousness is imputed to me while yet there is no actual union between my soul and Christ, is as absurd and unscrip- tural as to say that Adam's sin is imputed to me while yet there is no natural connection between me and Adam. The Bible gives us a more intelligible theology ; it not only declares that in Adam, that is, in union with Adam, all die, but it declares that all who are justified are justified in Christ Jesus, that is, in union with him. As Adam's sin is imputed to us, not because Adam is in us, but because we were in Adam, so Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, not because Christ is in us, but because we are in Christ, that is, joined by faith to one whose righteousness and life are infinitely greater than our power to appropriate or contain. In this sense we may indeed say that we are justified through a Christ outside of us, as we are sanctified through a Christ within us. In the words of Jonathan Edwards : "The justification of the believer is no other than his being admitted to communion in, or participation of, this head and surety of all believers. " And so we see what true religion is. It is not a moral life ; it is not a determination to be religious ; it is not faith, if by faith we mean an external trust that somehow Christ will save us ; it is nothing less than the life of the soul in God through Christ his Son. Eegeneration is the act by which God brings the dead soul into union with Christ. And faith is the soul's laying hold of this Christ as the only source of life, and so, its only source of pardon and salvation. But it is in the realm of practical life that we seek the ultimate fruit of this doctrine, and by this fruit also we must test it. It will stand the test. No truth of the Christian scheme has in it more of power to cheer or to purify. Such union as this involves the most sacred fellowship, not only the Eedeemer's fellowship with us, so that he is touched by our infirmities and afflicted in our affliction, but our fellowship with the Eedeemer in his whole experience on earth, and in all that was gained by it for mankind. Only upon this principle of union with Christ, can we explain how the Christian instinctively applies to himself the prophecies and promises which were uttered originally and primarily with reference to Christ : "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see cor- ruption. " The Christian seems to himself to be reproducing Christ's life in miniature and living it over again. He knows the power of Christ's resur- rection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death. And with this fellowship there is something better still the trans- forming, assimilating power of Christ's life ; first, for the soul, giving to it the self-sacrificing mind of the Redeemer here, and perfect likeness to his purity hereafter ; and secondly, for the body, sanctifying it, in the present, to be the temple and dwelling of the Lord, and in the future, raising it up in the likeness of the body of Christ's glory. This is the work of Christ, now that he has ascended and taken to himself his power, namely, to give his life more and more fully to the church, until it shall grow up in all things into him, the head, and shall fitly express his glory to the world. To those who know that they are united to Christ there must be assurance of salvation, for in virtue of their union with him, they know that his power, righteousness and love are engaged on their behalf. There must be courage to THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH CHRIST. 225 do or suffer for the Redeemer's sake, with Paul they may say : "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." With this consciousness of our relation to our Lord, we shall be delivered not only from indolence and fear, but also from that half-fanatical and impatient earnestness, that false fervor and restless activity, which are sometimes mistaken for true zeal. There will be patience, when we once know Christ, and rest ourselves and our desires in those unwearied hands that move on silently but surely the wheels of victory and progress throughout the world. And what better argument and encouragement has believing prayer than this, that we are one with him whose kingdom and reign on earth are the very aim and goal of history, and the intercession of whose Spirit within our souls is the unfailing sign and accompaniment of a prevailing intercession before God's throne on high ? And so the loftiest and most fruitf ul religious experience will be that which most perfectly realizes the oneness of our life with the life of the almighty and omnipresent Savior ; which, without any pantheistic confounding of our personality with his, and without any self-deceiving notion of our sinless perfection, has yet the blessed assurance of the con- stant inward presence of Jesus and of his unchangeable love ; which in all humility acknowledges itself so helpless and so dependent on him, that severed from him it can do absolutely nothing and must utterly perish, and which in that conviction gives up every effort of its own, opening the heart to receive Christ's life, and striving to make every act and word and desire the expression of that life within. To such an experience every Christian may aspire for it he should pray. Let him thus lose himself, and he shall find his true self renewed and restored by the indwelling might of Christ's Spirit ; he shall not only trust, but know, that he abides in Christ, and Christ in him. So shall his religion be one not of outward compulsion but of inward power. So shall life lose its harshness, its anxiety, its fear, since for him to live will be Christ, and to die will be gain. A single word remains to be said with regard to the wider effects upon the world which may be expected to follow the full recognition of this doc- trine by the church. All sin consists in the sundering of man's life from God, and most systems of falsehood in religion are attempts to save man without merging his life in God's life once more. Sacramental and external Christianity conceives of man as a mere tangent to the circle of the divine nature, touching it and touched by it only at a single point. The only religion that can save mankind is the religion that fills the whole heart and the whole life with God ; and that aims to interpenetrate universal humanity with that same living Christ who has already made himself one with the believer. Humanity is a dead and shattered vine, plucked up from its roots in God, and fit only for the fires. But in Christ, God has planted a new vine, a vine full of his own divine life, a vine into which it is his purpose one by one to graft these dead and withered branches, so that they may once more have the life of God flowing through them and may bear the fruits of heaven. It is a supernatural, not a natural, process. But the things that are impossible with men are possible with God, and the process shall not cease until he has gathered together in one all things in Christ, and in him has perfectly redeemed and glorified the humanity for which and to which Christ has given his life. 15 XVIII. THE BAPTISM OF JESUS.* I desire to invite attention to what may seem a somewhat new, but what I trust will be esteemed an entirely legitimate, defense of a fundamental article of our denominational faith. I propose to approach the subject of baptism and its symbolism from a single side, and that, not the dogmatic or polemic, but rather the historical. There was such a baptism as the baptism of John ; and Christ himself, the embodiment of Christianity and the pattern for the church, was baptized by John in the Jordan. I am persuaded that the proper understanding of that baptism of Jesus will throw a new and valuable light upon the meaning of baptism in the case of Christ's followers. Let us first, then, try to put ourselves back in those far-off times, and figure to ourselves how the baptism of Jesus came about in the natural order of his life, and expressed the meaning of that life. We shall find doctrinal and practical lessons all along, but at the end we may stand aside, as it were,, and look at the great truths which, like separate colored rays, converge and meet and blend in that scene upon the banks of the Jordan. Let us put ourselves back, I say, back into the times preceding the ministry of John the Baptist, when the gospel of the kingdom was just pre- paring to break in upon the world. The thirty peaceful years of Jesus' early life were past. The vast work, which at the first had appeared dim and distant as a form in the mist, had drawn nearer and nearer, and had now assumed the hard outline and definite proportions of tremendous and inevitable fact. What prophets had foretold, what his own being demanded, that must be. Connected in every fibre of his being with the common nature of mankind, he saw that he must suffer, the just for the unjust. It could not be that human nature should fail of enduring the settled and necessary penalty of its sin. And he not only had a human nature, but in him human nature was organically united as it never had been before except in Adam. If the members suffered, should not also the head ? When he was but twelve years of age, the consciousness of this divine commission had dawned upon him. Sitting as an humble questioner before the doctors of the law, the conviction had become overmastering : " I am he the teacher and prophet promised long ago, the fulfillment of this spirit- ual law which the doctors cannot comprehend, the suffering Messiah against whom their pride rebels ; I am he the Sent of God, the Son of God. " And the eighteen years that followed had made this conviction part and parcel of his very being. Growing with his growth and strengthening with * Originally prepared as a sermon upon the text, Mat. 3 : 15 " Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness," and preached before the Cincinnati Baptist Union ; printed in the Examiner, February 12, and February 19, 1880. 226 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 227 his strength, it had taken up into itself all the energies of his soul, conscious or unconscious, until his life and his work were identical, and he could say : " Lo ! I come to do thy will, O God ! " Can we imagine that such years as these were free from agitations and anxieties ? Can we imagine that the looming-up before him of so grand and yet so terrible a destiny was accompanied by no struggle and no temptation ? We know little, it is true, of those early years. But we know that Jesus was very man as well as very God, and tried in all points like ourselves. Peaceful years these doubtless were when compared with the conflict and agony to come, but only peaceful as years of preparation for that conflict and agony peaceful as the quiet stationing of batteries and filing by of troops on the morning of some day whose sun is to set in blood peaceful as Niagara above the cataract, whose smooth waters, possessed with an irre- sistible gravitation, break at length into rapids as they go, as if in conscious preparation for that final moment when, agitated to their utmost depths and with one consent of majestic self-abandonment, they hurl themselves into the chasm below. But now at last even such peaceful days as these were over. A voice sounded out like a trumpet-call from the mid region near the Jordan, sum- moning the nation to repentance, and proclaiming the speedy approach of the Messiah. It was the voice of John the Baptist, the last and greatest of the prophets, the new Elijah, in his shaggy herdsman's dress of camel's hair, the appointed herald and forerunner of the Kingdom. If the whole land had been a whispering-gallery, the news could not have gone on swifter wings. The all-penetrating power of Luther's theses in Germany was not more wonderful. It roused whatever there was left of patriotic and religious feeling in Judaea and Jerusalem. Sunk as they were in formalism and worldliness, thousands upon thousands flocked from city and country, and were baptized in Jordan, confessing their sins. The voice pierced even to the distant valleys of Galilee, and the villages around Nazareth poured forth their recruits to John's army of penitents. For nine whole months the work went on ; spring, summer, autumn went by, and winter came at last ; the wave of excitement had swept over all Palestine ; the whole land was in a fever of expectation ; every eye was looking for the appearance of that grander Per- sonage, the latchet of whose shoes John was not worthy to unloose. And where was Jesus ? In the carpenter's shop of Nazareth, calm, silent, unrecognized, yet nourishing a world of mighty thoughts, feeling within him a thousand forward-moving impulses, yet waiting in patience and self- restraint the time appointed by the Father. Strong as were the inward impulses that urged him forward to his work, he could not move from his place till John's preparatory ministry had accomplished its purpose. And so, while Nazareth was full of rumors, and scores departed every week for the Jordan, the household of Mary remained undisturbed. Only Jesus recognized in John's work the sign that his time was at hand. There came a day, however, when, just as calmly as he had performed his humble duties of son, brother and citizen, he left these duties forever, left the home of his childhood and the carpenter's bench at which he had worked so many years, to enter upon the labor and struggle and suffering that belonged to him as the world's Eedeemer. It would be matter of intense THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. interest if we could follow each separate step of bis journey as he made his way, humble and unnoticed among the crowd of pilgrims, " to Jordan, unto John. " But we are left to conjecture here. Whether he held himself aloof from the multitude and proceeded in silence, or mingled in the talk and wayside worship of his townsmen, we do not know. But we do know that it was with solemn mind he went. The crisis of his life was just before him. He was to break all the ties that bound him to the past. He was to give himself to the greatest work man ever had to do. He was to receive his final anointing as Prophet, Priest and King. Not in the might and glory of his divinity, but as a lowly and agitated son of man, seeking divine grace to help in time of need, did Jesus come to John to be baptized of him. And here is the first great meaning of his baptism. It was essentially a self -consecration. He came to commit himself to the vast work that was before him. He felt just as you or I feel on the eve of some great enterprise that is to task to the utmost our fortitude and patience and virtue. He felt the weakness of mere human nature, and the need of strengthening it by solemnly and publicly pledging himself before God and angels and men. So if we may compare great things with small so Gustavus Adolphus felt, when, on leaving Sweden to fight for Protestantism in Germany, he assembled the States-General, committed his infant daughter and successor to their care, and before all the magnates of his kingdom vowed to deliver Germany or die. So the disciple of Christ only follows in the footsteps of his Savior, when he strengthens his resolves and commits himself to the service of his Master by publicly and solemnly expressing his allegiance and devotion in his baptism. For there was a human side to every action of Jesus' life. Here, when he came to meet his destiny, and give himself to that mighty work whose distant prospect had been at once so fearful and so grand, we cannot doubt that there was all the natural shrinking and anxiety, all the overwhelming burden of responsibility, that could rest upon the heart of any son of man. And we lose sight of a most important feature of Jesus' baptism if we fail to see that it was a solemn inauguration of his public ministry, in which he strengthened his soul by publicly consecrating him- self to the unmeasured toils and trials which that ministry in its very nature involved. But this was only the first element in its meaning. It was also a symbol of his death. The consecration was a definite consecration a consecration to death, and this was the second thing expressed in his baptism. What baptism meant to Jesus, he himself intimated nearly three years after this, and about four months before his death. He had been speaking of the power of the gospel when his work should be completed and the full glory of it should dawn upon the world. To his imagination, the mighty effects of it could only be compared to those of fire and flame, seizing upon human nature and purifying it in every part, but destroying all that refused to be refined. "I am come to send fire on earth, and what will I? Oh, that it were already kindled ! " But even while he looked forward with longing to that day, the thought came to him that he himself must be baptized in blood before he could baptize with fire ; all the dreadful pains of the cross rose before his eyes ; the gulf of death that was to swallow him up yawned at his feet ; his soul was the scene of an agony and a conflict such as fell on him in THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 229 the temple and in the garden ; he cried in distress : "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished ! " Still another incident in Jesus' life needs to be compared with this, that we may see what idea was in Jesus' mind when he spoke of a future baptism. You recollect the request of the ambitious sons of Zebedee, who desired to sit, the one on his right hand and the other on his left, in his kingdom. It occurred only three or four weeks before Jesus' crucifixion. Examine Jesus' answer to this request of James and John, and you cannot fail to see that the " baptism " he referred to was his death. He told them that the path- way to glory with him must be through a death-suffering like his own. " Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " Here the cup was the cup of suffering which was pressed to his lips in Gethsemane, when he cried to the Father : " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; " and the baptism was the baptism of death on Calvary and of the grave that was to follow. But how could death present itself to his mind as a baptism ? I answer, the being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles ; and to our Savior's mind the dreadful sufferings and bitter death before him seemed like deep sind dark waters, into which he must go down until their heavy floods swept over him and his life was drowned beneath the billows. In the words of the Psalmist, Christ could say : "I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. Then the waters overwhelmed me ; the stream went over my soul ; then the proud waters went over my soul." The suffering and death and burial which were before him presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. So apprehended, there is an untold sublimity in the figure that flashed upon his mind. Death was not poured upon him, it was no sprinkling of suffering which the Savior endured, but a sinking into the mighty waters with which death and the grave overwhelmed him. See the significance of Jesus' baptism in Jordan. It was no merely formal and ritual act there are none such in Christ's religion least of all were there any in the life of Christ himself. All his words and deeds were instinct with life and meaning. There was nothing arbitrary in this transaction which signalized the beginning of his ministry and the public consecration of himself to the work he had to do. No, the essential feature of that work was his death, that was ever in his eyes from the beginning to the end. All his teaching and his suffering was but the prelude to that. The cross, the grave, the resurrection these were the crown and consummation of all, coloring all the events that came before with their own matchless and crim- son light. And so the baptism of Jesus was not only his public consecration of himself to the work before him, but it expressed the essential nature of that work, in other words the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close. Stjp here one moment to mark the incidental proof which this fact gives us of Jesus' understanding, from the very commencement of his public life, the meaning and the end of that life. The final agony and death-struggle, 230 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. when they came, were not, as some skeptics have maintained, unforeseen and surprising contingencies to him, but were the precise events for whicli he had long been preparing, and to the accomplishment of which he had voluntarily and knowingly devoted himself in his baptism. With full knowledge of what was to come, Jesus "gave himself for us." In the words of one of the purest of religious poets : " As at the first, thine all pervading look Saw from thy Father's bosom to the abyss, Measuring- in calm presage The infinite descent, " So to the end, though now of mortal pangs Made heir, and emptied of thy glory awhile, With unaverted eye Thou meetest all the storm." I have spoken of Jesus' baptism, first, as an act of self -consecration, and sec- ondly, as a symbol of the death to which he devoted himself. Let me speak of it now, in the third place, as a proof of Jesus' connection with humanity, with its sin and its desert of death. Jesus' connection with human sin, and his consecration to death for the sins of the world how clearly that stands out in the baptism ! Jesus came to Jordan to submit to John's baptism of repentance. And what was John's baptism of repentance ? Nothing less than the total immersion of the body in water, the plunging of each penitent beneath the swift-flowing current, in token that he who submitted to it " buried himself into death as one laden with guilt and defilement, and rose as a new man to a new and holy life." But Jesus personally, and in every act and thought of his life, was sinless ; upon what possible ground could he undergo this rite which properly belonged to sinners ? And here we come to the greatest mystery of God's grace, the person of Jesus Christ, and his assumption of the common nature of us all. If Jesus had no connection with a sinful and lost humanity, or if that connection with a sinful and lost humanity had been merely a factitious and forensic one, then it would have been the grossest breach of justice, the sheerest insult to purity, the most extravagant of absurdities, that the Lord Jesus should have submitted to an ordinance which was in itself, in some sense, a confession of sin and a dec- laration that this sin deserved nothing less than death. I am persuaded that we can never explain the baptism of our Lord, unless we remember that Jesus was "made sin for us," taking our nature upon him, with all its exposures and liabilities, yet without its hereditary corrup- tion, that he might redeem it and reunite it to God. But this one mighty fact, the taking upon him of our nature, this does explain it. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of cir- cumcision, purification and redemption, appointed by the law, and all of these were rites appointed for sinners. As one with humanity, he was yet to "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. " " Made in the likeness of sinful flesh," he foresaw that the crowning act of his earthly work must be to " descend into death, laden with the guilt of humanity, and as a glorified conqueror rise from the grave, the head of a new and holy race." This was the truth to which he testified in his baptism, that since "without shedding of blood there was no remission," and he had taken to himself the nature that had sinned, he had taken to himself death also, and "it must needs be that THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 231 Christ should suffer. " So Christ's baptism was an emblem of the burial of a sinful humanity into death, that it might rise in him to life and glory. It is in the light of Jesus' participation in our nature and consequent con- nection with human sin, that Jesus' words : ' ' Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness," stand out in their full splendor of meaning. John, you remember, had refused to baptize Jesus. Either from previous acquaintance or from prophetic insight, John had recognized him, at his coming, as the holiest being he had ever known. It seemed to him most unfit that the greater should be baptized by the less. Baptism belonged only to such as were in some way under the power and penalty of sin, how could one who was "holy, harmless and undefiled " testify that he was under sin's curse and misery ? Ah, how dim and imperfect even then were the Baptist's con- ception of Jesus' work ! Not yet had he reached that loftiest summit of Old Testament revelation from which his eyes beheld the cross and he could cry : " Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh, and so taketh away, the sins of the world." It was to remove this very reluctance of the Baptist, that Jesus uttered those memorable words : "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." And what did he mean but this, that only through the final baptism of suffering and death which this baptism of water foreshadowed, could he "make an end of sins," and "bring in everlasting righteousness " to a condemned and ruined world. It is that final baptism which is chiefly, if not altogether, in the Savior's eye when he says : "Thus it becometh us. " The righteousness of which humanity had come short he was to fulfill that which humanity had lost he was to restore. But he could not be "the Lord our Righteousness," the head of a new race and the source of righteousness for all mankind, except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its < \uosures and perfecting it forever. Therefore he came as the lowest and humblest of all that crowd of pilgrims, came as one laden with the guilt of humanity, to submit himself in symbol to the death that was its due. How fully John understood the words of Jesus, we do not know, we only know that " then he suffered him." Those words about " fulfilling all righteous- ness," uttered by one who was himself so righteous, overbore his doubts, and "the Redeemer descended with his forerunner into the rapid waters of the sacred river," and there was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised again in the likeness of his coming resurrection. The coming resurrection, did I say ? Yes, there was a foreshadowing of the coming glory, as well as of the coming sorrow. The events that followed had each their separate meaning. Think with what profound emotion Jesus must have come up from that Jordan-flood. The die was cast ; the step was taken ; henceforth there was no possible retreat ; it was as if the marks of death had already been sealed upon hands and feet and brow. The past was past forever. No longer the isolated meditative days of Nazareth, but a public life of continual struggle and temptation, with the staring eyes of the whole world upon him. And on a little way further were the shame, the agony, the cross", the grave. How shall he enter these shadows, how shall he endure these pains, how shall he perform this work ? I point you to the scene itself for your answer. See the Savior going up that river-bank 232 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. see those uplifted hands see the great soul, unconscious of the crowds that gaze upon him, and only rapt in one intense desire for the comfort and strength of God, beseeching even there the help and blessing of his Father aye, even while his eyes are lifted to the hills whence alone his help can come, see the quick answer from above : " the heavens opened and the Spirit of God," the Spirit of grace and power, of wisdom and comfort and peace, "descending like a dove and lighting upon him " never more to leave him till his work is done, and he receives his crown and his reward. Nor is this all. The Spirit and the Son are there, but this is not enough. About this transcendent scene the lustre, not of one or two, but of all three persons of the blessed Trinity must shine. The Father also speaks from the heavens above : " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." As the descent of the Spirit is the anointing and qualifying of Messiah for his work of Prophet, Priest and King, so the voice from heaven declares the acceptance of his consecration to death, and attests his commission from God as divine Kedeemer of mankind. Jesus not only went forward know- ingly to his final baptism of death, but he went forward in conscious accord with God's eternal plan and as executor of the counsels of heaven. What blessing and relief came to that overburdened heart with this double answer to his prayer, we can but poorly conceive. What assurance must have flooded his soul assurance that in all the dreary road before him, his humanity should never be left to its own native weakness, but should find in God a very present and almighty help in time of trouble ! More than this, the descent of the Spirit was a pledge of victory a pledge of victory grander than ever was vouchsafed to ancient warrior on the eve of battle. It was God's own seal set at the beginning upon Jesus' work the seal of Him whose counsels never fail, and who is omnipotent to execute his pur- pose of salvation. These divine attestations, what do they signify but this, that the descent into the grave should not be forever ; he should rise again triumphant the heavens should be once more opened to receive him ; attended by thousands of angels and with ten thousand times ten thousand coming forth to meet him, he should be welcomed to a seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high, while to all the universe God should say : " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Thus far I have endeavored to set forth, in its historical connections and aspects, that most impressive and sublime act with which Jesus inaugurated his public ministry. I have described his baptism as a self-consecration, as a consecration to death, as a consecration to death for human sin. Let me conclude my presentation of the subject by summing up the symbolic teach- ing of this momentous transaction, and so exhibiting what seems to me its great doctrinal and practical value. I see in the baptism of Jesus, first of all, a vivid representation of the ill- desert and fearful penalty of sin. I recollect a picture of the Deluge by Gustave Dore", in which the rising waters have submerged all but the highest hill-tops. On these, under an angry sky, lit up only by vivid lightnings, are gathered the only survivors from among the wicked. Pale and frantic, they fight with wild beasts and with one another for the topmost place of safety. They hold appealing hands up to the heavens, but the heavens are black and mutter thunder. They look down to the surging waves beneath, but THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 233 these gain upon them every moment, until conquered and despairing they fling themselves upon the bare rocks and there await their dreadful inevi- table doom. A few moments more, and the ravenous waters will engulf them and sweep away their name and memory forever. That picture of Gustave Dore* is a picture of the destiny of the human race, a picture of your destiny and mine, left to our sin and to the judgments which follow in its train. But there is another picture of the desert and end of a sinful humanity, more striking still. The baptism of Jesus, how solemnly that speaks of the floods of divine anger that must envelope a guilty race ! What ! must one who is purity itself, nay, divinity itself, go down into death, merely because he has united himself to my nature ? Then my nature must be under the ban and curse of death. Must Jesus be overwhelmed with suffering, simply because of that which he has in common with all men that have ever breathed ? Then all men must by virtue of that same nature be under the wrath of God. Aye, ten thousand times more than he, for all men have not only inherited this nature, but have wilfully perverted their way and set themselves against the law of God. I see, then, in this sinking of Jesus beneath the waters of the Jordan, the declaration that all mankind are doomed to hopeless burial. If Jesus, personally sinless as he was, found that the taking of human nature involved death, how much more shall we, who are personally guilty and defiled, find that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." Secondly, Jesus' baptism presents to us a picture of human nature deliv- ered from the penalty and power of sin. If it had been God's purpose to set forth simply the death that was due to sin, we should have seen Jesus drowned beneath the waves forever. But this was not all. God purposed also to represent humanity as coming up new-born from the grave where its sin and guilt were buried. I need not only to see an emblem of the death that is due to sin I need also to see that this death has been endured for me. I need not only to see that human nature has borne the penalty I need also to see that human nature has exhausted the penalty, and has risen from it triumphant and free. And this I see depicted in the baptism of Jesus. His sinking beneath the Jordan-current typified a death actually endured by human nature in him. His rising from the stream once more, and his recep' tion of those attestations from on high, typified the resurrection of that same human nature, its deliverance from the last remains of sin, and its new condition as redeemed from the bondage of the law, filled with the Spirit of God, admitted to the honors of sonship in God's family, and' glorified in and with Jesus Christ its Lord. Years ago I saw in a European gallery that masterpiece of Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, Christ and his Apostles. The eye wandered from one to the other of those twelve marble forms, and in each there was some char- acteristic expression that riveted the attention. There was the impulsive boldness in the very lines of Peter's face. The tender melancholy of Thomas, the artless openness of Philip, the seraphic ardor of John, were all imaged in the solid stone. But then each face reminded you also of its possessor's peculiar weakness. Peter's rashness and instability, Thomas's doubting, were there. The more you gazed upon the statues of the apostles, the more you felt a lack here were only fragmentary virtues, and with these virtues 234 ^ THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. were defects and sins. But, standing in a half circle as they were, each form by its attitude or look or gesture seemed to point you to the centre, as if all their hopes and affections gathered there. And there was the figure of the Christ, greater than they in height, and far transcending them in dignity. In that one majestic form all the good in them seemed united, and on that calm commanding brow there was ineffable holiness and peace. How often, as I have vainly sought through the ages for an example of perfectly eman- cipated humanity, have I thought of Thorwaldsen's Christ ! How often, as I have struggled with the forces of evil in my own nature, have I seen in that remembered master-piece of art the mute assurance that there is one who has conquered sin and death for me, and who has lifted human nature up into union with God and likeness to God ! Towering above all the forms of men I see the risen Jesus, and in him my nature ransomed, purified, perfected, glorified. And this sublime fact, this sublime hope of humanity, I see symbolically represented in Jesus' baptism. His rising from that watery grave teaches me that there is now a human nature " without sin," and over which " death hath no more dominion " forever. But some are doubtless saying : ' ' How difficult it is to believe that this external work of Christ has anything to do with us ! Christ's risen and glorified humanity that is not ours that cannot be made ours." Yes, I answer ; yes, it may be made ours it is ours. And this is the third lesson taught us by Jesus' baptism. That baptism affords me a picture also of the method of my personal salvation, by union with the crucified and risen Jesus. I also must die to sin by having Jesus' death reproduced in me. I must rise to a new life by having Jesus' resurrection reproduced in me. I must enter into communion with the death and resurrection of my Lord yes, I must participate in both. The putting away of the sin and guilt of humanity, which was the essential feature of Jesus' work, must take place in me ; and this I must do by having my life incorporated with his life, so that his mighty life within lifts me out of the dominion of sin and death into his own region of life and peace. It was humanity that bore the curse in his death, and all the true life of humanity rose from the dead in his resurrection. Now if I am united to him and participate in this new humanity of which he is the head, I may take for mine not only all that Jesus has done, but all that Jesus is. In other words, my union with Christ must result in a change within me ; and I can never be saved unless I so appropriate the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus that there results within me a corresponding death to sin and resurrection to holiness. Let me illustrate what I mean by a curious tract which I once saw. It was entitled : " The Seven Togethers." It was nothing more nor less than a combination and exposition of seven remarkable passages with regard to the union of the believer with Christ. These " seven togethers " are seven links of a golden chain that binds us indissolubly to the Redeemer. They are : 1st, Crucified together with Christ ; 2dly, Quickened together with Christ ; 3dly, raised together with Christ : 4thly, Seated together with Christ in heavenly places ; Sthly, sufferers together with Christ ; 6thly, Heirs together with Christ ; 7thly, Glorified together with Christ. In these Scrip- ture phrases is the whole essence of the Gospel ; for it is nothing else than union with a personal living Christ that saves us, a union with him by faith, THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 235 such that what he has done in the past becomes ours, and we know in the present ' ' the fellowship of his sufferings, and the power of his resurrection, being made conformable unto his death." And this great truth of salvation for all, upon the simple condition of uniting themselves to Jesus by faith, I see set forth in the baptism of Jesus. I see not Jesus only, going down into the grave and coming up a conqueror, but myself also yes, and every believer, too giving to death the body of the sins of the flesh, and rising in him to life and glory. Finally, we should see in this transaction a picture of the duty of those who have believed in Jesus. To all such there comes the obligation to pro- fess his name before men. And in what way should they profess his name ? If what has been said is true, then the entrance of the soul into the com- munion of Christ's death and resurrection should be signified to the world by a baptism like his. Nothing but the total immersion of the body in water will answer the design of the ordinance, on the one hand, because nothing rise can symbolize the greatness and radical nature of the change effected in regeneration a change from spiritual death to spiritual life. Nothing else will answer the design of the ordinance, on the other hand, because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change from spiritual death to spiritual life is connected with and wholly dependent upon the death and resurrection of Jesus. We owe all to Christ's work for us. Is it too much that we should signify this obligation in the symbol by which we declare our change to the world ? Just here is the reason why we cannot alter the form of the ordinance. We cannot alter it, because we cannot take out of it its reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and to our spiritual death and resurrection with him. As Jesus' baptism pointed forward to his death and resurrection, so the baptism of the believer points backward to the same. And wheresoever baptism is administered, whether by John the Baptist, or by the apostles, or by the later ministers of Christ's church, it points evermore to that great central fact of the Christian scheme, that one death by which we live, the death of the God-man for the sins of the world. Thus "it becomes us" also " to fulfill all righteousness," first, by dying to sin in spirit and rising to a new life of penitence and faith, and then by symbolizing our depend- ence upon Christ's death and our consecration to a life like his, by following in his footsteps who was buried by John beneath the waters of the Jordan. The course which the Savior took is the course for those who profess to f ol- lowliim, for " the servant is not above his master, neither the disciple above his Lord." In this common reference to the death of Christ we have the link which binds the two ordinances of Christ's church together. They both and equally are symbols of the death of Christ. In baptism we show forth the death of Christ as the procuring cause of our new birth into the kingdom of God. In the Lord's Supper we show forth the death of Christ as the sustaining power of our spiritual life after that life has once begun. In the ordinance of baptism we honor the regenerating power of the death of Christ, as in the Lord's Supper we honor its sanctifying power. Thus both the ordinances are parts of one whole setting before us Christ's death for men, in its two great purposes and results. The two ordinances combined constitute a 236 THE BAPTISM OF JESTS. double monument to the historical fact of Jesus' death for the sins of the world. As the children of an Israelitish family, gathered at the Passover festival, asked of the father, who sat at the head of the board, the question : "What mean ye by this service?" and the father answered: "It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover," thus handing down to the coming genera- tion the memory of the great deliverance which God had wrought in old time for their nation, so now the world asks and the church explains what she means by this double service of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper. And her answer, according to the Scriptures, must evermore be this, that in these two ordinances, she preserves a symbol of that great historical fact of her own past deliverance through the shedding of Christ's blood. To change the form of the ordinance of baptism is to break down a mighty monument to the great central fact of the Gospel to break down a monument which God himself has set up, that it may witness to all the world that Christ has died to save it. A form that signifies purification simply, is not sufficient. Baptism symbolizes purification, indeed, but purification in a peculiar and divine way, namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance is this, that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification. In bap- tism we are bound to show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we are bound to show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has once begun. To substitute for the broken bread and poured-out wine of the Communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ, would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention. And in like manner, to substitute for Baptism any form of administration which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy that ordinance. Without immersion, you have baptism no longer, but an ordi- nance of human invention. It is for this reason that we stand for baptism in its integrity not because of the form itself, but for the sake of the unspeakably important truth which the form embodies ; not for the sake of indulging private preference or fancy, but that the church may witness con- tinuously and consistently, in her ordinances as well as in her preaching, to that truth which constitutes the soul of her soul and the life of her life. I have somewhere read that the mortar which cements the stones of the great mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, still retains the fragrance of the musk that was mingled with it when Justinian built the edifice in the sixth century as a temple of the Lord. The infidel Turk has captured and spoiled it ; the worship of Christ has given place to the religion of Mohammed ; the cross has been humbled, and the crescent saems to utter over it from year to year a silent and symbolic boast of growth and conquest ; yet still a keen sense can discern exhaling from the very substance of the structure the imperishable aroma of that early devotion that counted the costliest perfumes none too precious to enrich and sanctify the house of God. The ordinance of baptism is like the church Justinian built, the fragrant spices of Jesus* burial are wrought into its very structure, and yield their perfume from age to age. Through all the vicissitudes of Christian history, its due adminis- THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 237 tration is a visible witness and memorial of the death of Christ, a proof even to the senses of that matchless love that endured the agony and bloody sweat, the cross and passion, and that went down into the darkness of the sepulchre that it might "open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." Wonderful symbol ! combining in one picture all the essential truths of the Christian scheme, expressing not only the fact of death to sin, and resurrec- tion to righteousness, but also the method of that fact through the union of our souls with a dying and a risen Savior ! Let this ordinance in which the believer follows his Master's example of consecration be forever sacred to us. Let us preserve it in its integrity, as the Lord has delivered it to us. Witnessing it, may we ever find it an encouragement to hope and an incite- ment to duty. And as the life and death of Jesus answered to the conse- cration which he made on the banks of Jordan, so let our lives witness that at our baptism we truly died to sin and rose to newness of life ! XIX. CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS.* I have seen it stated that the origin of the American Baptist Publication Society was due to a circumstance as simple as that falling of the apple from the tree which revealed to Newton the law of gravitation. The falling of a little tract from the hat of the Rev. Samuel Cornelius suggested to Noah Davis the idea of a General Tract Society, that should fill the land with a trenchant and succinct denominational literature. It might almost seem that Mr. Darwin's doctrine of * * pangenesis " had found an illustration here, and that this cellule of an idea contained the germs of the whole subsequent structure of this society. I have no notion, however, that either its begin- nings or its after- work can be explained by any mere law of natural develop- ment. There are such things as new creations, not only in geologic history but in the history of the church, and I believe that the starting of tints society into life was one of those new creations. I attribute its origin, not to Noah Davis, who saw the tract fall, nor to Samuel Cornelius, from whose hat it fell, but rather to that all- working Providence which in every century and through agencies utterly insufficient of themselves, summons new moral forces into being to further the progress of his truth. And if this be their origin, then we may dismiss our fears lest these organizations take from the church her honor or her responsibility. They are the appointed servants and helpers of the church, when they work, it is the church that works through them, all their glory is the glory of the church. My only fear is that we forget that these societies hold their commission from God, that they have been raised up as bulwarks and defenses of his truth, and that the demands they make npon us are the demands of Christ himself. I ask your attention to certain considerations which vindicate the claims of this society for help in its great work of furnishing a cheap denominational literature. I maintain that the work of propagating our peculiar views of truth is cor- rect in principle ; that we who hold these views are specially ordained to this work ; and that the methods of which we make use are demanded in these times by a sound Christian expediency. The principle upon which our whole work is based is nothing more nor less than this : Christ's truth is an organic whole, all whose parts have vital connections with each other, so that to stand for any one part of the great system is logically to stand for every other part, to harm any part is to do injury to the whole. We all know something of the organic unity of the human body. Suppose a man comes to me and asks me to let him cut off one joint of my ringer, on the ground that it is a very small part of my body * An address delivered before the American Baptist Publication Society, at its annual meeting in New York City, May, 1868. 238 CHRISTIAN" TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS. 239 1 and that its loss will not be felt, you would think him crazy, and you would think me crazier still to grant his request. To tear one joint from my finger is to maim the whole body, and send horrible pains through every part. God's truth is an organic whole like a human body. Injure it in any one part, however insignificant, and you injure the whole, you sap the life-blood, the blow is felt at the very heart. Just as the law of God is the expression of the will of the One Lawgiver, and therefore he who offends in one part is guilty of all, so Christian doctrine is a reflection of the being and nature of the God of truth, and he who denies or hides any part of it, however small, is, just so far, bringing the Sun of Righteousness into disastrous eclipse, and destroying the symmetry and power of God's revelation of himself to men. Now we believe that our distinctive denominational tenets are part and parcel of this truth of God, and as such are built into the very frame-work of Christianity so that they cannot be torn away without injury to the whole structure. Those grand principles for which our fathers contended even unto death the sole authority of the word of God, the freedom of con- science from all civil domination, the admission of none but baptized believers to the membership and ordinances of the church, the right of every member of the church to a voice in its government and discipline, these principles are not only logically inseparable from one another, but are organically connected with the whole body of revealed truth. Even that tenet of our faith, that nothing is baptism but the immersion of the believer in water in the name of the Trinity, is linked in organic unity to every other part of the Christian scheme. And as this may illustrate what I mean by the organic unity of revealed truth, let me ask you to give a moment's reflection to the relations of baptism, first, to Christian doctrine as a whole and then to the other ordinance of Christ's house, the Holy Supper. Baptism is not a meaningless ceremonial it symbolizes the great central truth of the gospel in its very form it represents a death, burial and resur- rection. "Whose death," do you ask ? The death of Christ, I answer, and the entrance of the believer into communion with that death. We see the death of Christ set forth as clearly and powerfully in Baptism as in the Holy Supper. Baptism signifies purification indeed, but purification only in a peculiar and divine way, namely, through the death of Christ and our per- sonal communion with that death by faith. It is said that in the last century, every rope, great or small, that was used throughout the British navy, had a scarlet thread running through it from end to end ; lost, stolen, sunk beneath the waves though it might be, the smallest vestige of the cordage showed by this simple thread that it bore the King's mark and was the pos- session of the crown. So there is a scarlet thread running through the whole circle of Christian doctrine and practice certifying that all its different parts are one. It is the scarlet thread of the blood of Jesus. That scarlet thread runs through the ordinance of Baptism that reference to Jesus' death reveals to us its divine significance that emblematic declaration that even the beginnings of spiritual life must have their source in the fountain of Jesus' blood, vindicates its place and importance as an indispensable part of Christian doctrine and practice, and gives it all its glory as the initiatory ordinance of the Christian church. But this is not all. Baptism not only 240 CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS. sets forth with all the vividness of sign-language the great central truth of the gospel, but other related truths find expression there as well. That sacred ordinance is nothing less indeed than a pictorial representation of the whole substance of Christianity, an incarnation in symbol of all the essential truths upon which our salvation hangs, a mirroring forth in visible form of the great invisible realities of atonement through Jesus' death, regeneration by the power of the Spirit, union with Christ by a living faith, resurrection with Christ to a new life here and eternal glory hereafter. Thus Baptism is bound up in the organic unity of the Christian scheme. To defend Christ's ordinance from abuse and perversion is not to preach a partial and sectarian gospel, but to stand for the whole system of doctrine which that ordinance sets forth and illustrates. To substitute anything for Baptism which excludes all reference to the death of Christ is to falsify the whole body of Christian truth and break down one of the grand safeguards of Christian doctrine. Observe, too, how this reference of Baptism unites it by a living tie to that other ordinance of Christ's house, the Holy Supper. We know the tenacity with which all branches of the Christian church hold to the sym- bolism of the Communion. There is a so-called Protestant church in this city where the eucharist is weekly celebrated by the light of blazing candles, while incense and procession and genuflexion lend their meretricious attrac- tions to an ordinance which was meant to commemorate the Savior's death, but which has come to be little else than a piece of Romish idolatry. Yet if you were to suggest to these ritualistic Christians that they might substi- tute for the broken bread and poured-out wine of the communion, some other form of administering the ordinance which would leave out all refer- ence to the death of Christ, even they, with all their forgetfulness of its real spirit, would start back in horror of the sacrilege, because in that sacred ordinance they see compacted all the creed, and hold themselves specially commissioned to maintain it inviolate forever, as a visible witness for the central truths of the gospel. To celebrate the Holy Supper in any form which obscures to popular apprehension the mighty sacrifice it was meant to commemorate, is to celebrate not the Holy Supper but some ordinance of human invention. But who has authorized us to empty one ordinance of its meaning, any more than the other ? Even the High Churchman can appreciate the shock which the Christian faith would sustain, if all reference to the death of Christ were taken out of the Communion, for it would be equivalent to declaring that Christian life could be preserved and nourished apart from that one death by which alone we live. But is it any the less a wrong to the whole body of truth to assert in symbol that Christian life and purity can begin in the soul without having its source in the death of Christ ? Yet this is done whenever anything is substituted for baptism which cannot set forth a burial with Christ. The one ordinance is as sacred as the other both are bound together by their common reference to the death of Jesus. Like those twins of whom old Hippocrates wrote, one life and breath seems to animate both, one blood pulsates through their veins, they smile and weep together, their minds are united in electric sympathies, when one suffers the other suffers with it, when one dies, the same hour witnesses the death of the other also. Let baptism degenerate into a half-mystical, half -magical rite, void of all allusion to the sacrifice on Calvary, and administered to CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS. 241 those whose infantile years preclude all conscious communion by faith with the Savior's death, and you have not far to go to see the perversion of the Lord's Supper into a sensuous accessory of ritualistic worship by which in some cabalistic way the communicant is manipulated into the kingdom of heaven, and made partaker of the blessings promised only to the believer. Regard for the integrity of the Lord's Supper, as well as for the great sum of truth of which these two ordinances are constituent parts and appointed emblems, urges us to keep the ordinance of Baptism as it was first delivered to the church, a living symbol of the death of Christ, and of our entrance into communion with that death by faith. But I am asked, what peculiar responsibility have we as Baptists, more than others, in upholding and propagating our distinctive views ? Let me reply briefly to this question by laying down a second principle, of as great practical importance as that first one with regard to the organic unity of Christian truth. It is this : Christ has committed special truths of his great system to special keepers. It has been so through the whole history of man. Both civilization and religion have gone out from centres. Rev- elation was first given to a historic nation, that from them it might be dis- seminated through the world. And in this is the wisdom of God. There were two possible plans, one to give the knowledge of himself in discon- nected parts, to individuals isolated and scattered here and there over the globe, the other to make the revelation in a fixed place, to one people and with historic connection and unity. Any one can see that the last is better than the first, just as the introduction of a new variety of wheat could be better effected by planting it at first in a single field, than by scattering single grains of it here and there over the surface of the world, and thus running the risk of total choking-out and extinction. Just as God has made the great fundamental truths of religion to go out from Judaea and her now stricken and desolate race, so he has made some single branches of his church the special interpreters and defenders of single portions of his truth, and has laid on them the charge of keeping the light of those special truths burning before the nations. I am not one of those who are in anguish of spirit over the multiplicity of sects. Mere unity of external organization may be a deceit and a snare, .as the palmy days of the Roman hierarchy may witness. The only unity worth striving for is that unity in the truth, which the Spirit of God, dwel- ling in all true believers, is working out in the course of the church's his- tory. But that unity in the faith to which we all shall ultimately come is to be promoted only by the fidelity of each body of Christians to the truth as they apprehend it. God's word is a field in which many a treasure still lies hid. When any man or set of men gets hold of a truth that has been hitherto neglected, and finds it full of power and life, the natural tendency, yes, the providential design, is that the new spirit should take to itself a new form, and through a new outward organization, impress upon the world its import- ance and its claims. Christianity is many-sided ; there is a possibility that another, looking at Christ's truth from a different point of view, may embrace within the circuit of his vision something which I cannot see. God bless him in his efforts to make it known to men ! Single Christians and single 16 242 CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS. churches are but partial illustrators and reflectors of the mighty truths of the Bible, " Hither, as to a fountain, Other suns repair, and in their urns Draw golden light." But as the one colorless light, falling upon different objects, loses a part of its rays by absorption, and only blue, red, green or some other color, is reflected to us, so the one light of truth, reflected from different Christian bodies, loses it whiteness, a part of the truth is lost in the transmission, another part is made too prominent, it may be, all the rays of all the sects together, and not of one alone, make up the pure white light of Christian doctrine ; and though we cannot understand the truths which many of these sects are striving to represent, though we have no mental chemistry which can now combine them, we may rejoice that all these scattered rays shall at last be reunited and form a circlet of glory round the Redeemer's brow. For this very reason, therefore, that Christ has given to us certain definite convictions which differ from the views of others, are we bound to be faith- ful to those convictions, and to contend for them until we die, our ray of truth is a part at least of Christ's light, one element will be lacking if we hide that ray or put it out. Let it shine ! Let it shine, and do its work for God, like the lighthouse on some rocky coast, lighting the track of safety to thousands of souls storm-tost and bewildered on the great ocean of con- troversy and speculation. The world needs that light ; God has made us its keepers ; from us it must go forth, if it is to enlighten the nations. Let us not imagine that truth of itself will win its way to victory and universal acceptation. Truth, without a body of believers to hold it forth, and a divine Spirit to make that exhibition effectual, is an abstraction and not a power. The cross that caps the dome of St. Peter's could never look down from its lofty height upon the myriad roofs of the eternal city, if it were not for those gigantic piers far beneath, which Bramante built up in the sixteenth century from the primeval rock. So there is no truth of revelation that has power to hold itself in mid-air alone. The church of the living God has been ap- pointed to be its pillar and ground ; its very historical existence as Christian truth rests on this, that there remains from age to age a company of devoted souls who give themselves to the work of sustaining and preserving it. For this purpose of upholding a portion of Christ's truth, long neglected and despised, God has given us our being as a separate Christian organization. If it be not our duty to use all lawful means for the support and propagation of our faith, then our very denominational existence is an impertinence, and our boasted truth is only schism and heresy. But if, on the other hand, we have built up our denominational faith upon the everlasting rock of God's revealed will, then to give up one inch of our position for the sake of liber- ality, or worldly repute, or wider influence, is simply to give up Christ and in that thing to deny him. To every taunting charge of bigotry, we can only answer as Peter and John answered of old : " Whether it be right, in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." God has appointed that those who believe should speak, and that through their speaking the truth which he has committed to them should bring forth CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS. 243 fruit after its kind, until the world shall be covered with the waving harvest. I have but one other thought to present, and that is that Christ requires us, in the propagation of his truth, to adopt modern measures for modern needs. We must not only defend the points which are most attacked, but must defend them by means suited to the emergency. In the Arabian Nights, there is a strange story of an evil Afrite whom a king's daughter sought to destroy. Perceiving her purpose, the Genie put forth his magic power and changed his shape into that of a roaring lion. But the princess possessed equal powers of enchantment. Plucking a single hair from her waving locks, she turned it in a instant into a glittering sword, and with the sword she cleft her adversary in twain. But the lion's head still had life, and ere she was aware it had become a deadly scorpion. Then she herself became a serpent to pursue him. But he was a scorpion no longer ; transformed into an eagle, he was soaring far beyond her reach. Then she followed him in the shape of a vulture. Metamorphosed into a fish, he found himself chased by a shark, whose form was only the disguise of his relentless foe. Reduced at length to the last resource of depair, he turned into a flame of fire, but his enemy became a greater flame and devoured him. It is an illustration of the protean forms which error assumes, in its conflicts with the truth, and of the vigilance and flexibility with which truth must adapt her weapons of attack to each of them. Of all the auxiliaries of error, there is none which for power can compare with the modern press. Truth must arm herself with the same weapon, if she would counteract its influence and take possession of its strongholds, like David, she must take Goliath's own sword to behead the giant. But why do I speak as if the church were taking the weapon of another, when she used the press ? It is her own, by right divine. The printing of the Bible consecrated it to God forever. Without it, the Reformation would have died in its cradle. It is one of those diversities of operations by which tin- Spirit, in his sevenfold energy, is renewing the face of the world. In the religious literature of the day, we see some glimpses of its power. Who can estimate what it will be in coming days, when history and poetry, science and fiction, shall all become the handmaids of religion, and each shall count it the highest aim of her ambition to receive the laurel from the hand of Christ ! It is the part of a true Christian expediency to bring the press to bear upon those peculiar errors which to our view mar the symmetry of modern Christ- ianity, and hinder the progress of the gospel among men. We are confirmed in this belief by the wondrous blessing which, under God, has attended the printing and dissemination of our denominational literature. What one of us can look at Sweden with its two hundred churches established, and its seven thousand souls converted to God, without rejoicing that a publication of this society led Andreas Wiberg to devote to Baptist missionary work the energies of a consecrated soul ! Witness the mighty progress of pure relig- ion in Germany. See the fifteen thousand baptized believers who labor there for Christ, and then remember that the single grain of seed-corn from which this vast harvest sprang was a little tract of the American Baptist Publication Society, which led Dr. Oncken thirty-four years ago to embrace 244 CHRISTIAN TRUTH AND ITS KEEPERS. Scriptural views of Baptism. And who can tell how many thousands, once dead in trespasses and sins, have read the tracts of this society, and reading them have seemed to touch the bones of some dead prophet, and to be raised thereby to new spiritual life. And this, my friends, is the work your Society is doing. Day by day and year by year, it is sending forth its leaves for the healing of the nations. Through its Sabbath school and tract departments it is reaching thousands upon thousands whom you and I will never see, spreading everywhere the knowledge of Christ and of his commandments. Like the foraminifera, those microscopic "toilers of the sea," each one so small that a hundred and fifty of them, strung together end to end, would form a line only a twelfth of an inch in length, but which, with all their littleness, built up in the geologic ages the enormous masses of the Wealden chalk, and stretches of limestone rock, hundreds of miles in extent and thousands of feet in thickness, these little publications which singly seem so insignificant, sent forth and scattered broadcast through the land, are building up whole continents of truth, and laying foundation for the future which no after storms or cataclysms can ever wear away. Into this work, then, let us put our strength of money and of heart. We have no iron wheel of outward organization, revolving at the bidding of some central despotism, to fill our treasury. Let us demonstrate that the voluntary offerings of Christian love will accomplish more than forced levies can. Let us show that we value our principles, by our zeal and liberality in diffusing them. And while we stand faithful to Christ, and to the truth as he has revealed it to us, let us not fail to adopt for our own the reputed maxim of the noble Persians ever to speak of our opponents in controversy with heartfelt acknowledgment of all that God has wrought in them of good, for, after all, the differences which separate us are far less important than the ties that bind us together ; though we cannot now in all things see alike, we may still rejoice in the inheritance which we possess, as children of one common Father ; though the bars of outward organization render our union imperfect here, we may look forward with all the more of longing to that time when all these divisions of the twilight shall disappear in the sunrise of a fuller knowledge, and it shall be known to all the universe at last that there is but "one flock and one Shepherd." XX. UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS OF COMMUNION POLEMICS.* It is often the serious misfortune of able and honest men, that they unwit- tingly argue upon principles which, when formally stated, they would unhesitatingly repudiate. Many attempts to construct new roads through the tangled wilds of the Communion controversy only result in the discov- ery of the old open-communion thoroughfare ; and the rejoicing of those who make the discovery is partly attributable to the novelty of their situa- tion, and to the fact that they have not yet followed the road through, to its disagreeable and unscriptural terminus. The best service that can be ren- dered to such as have thus lost their way, and have perchance led others into the same error, is to show by map and compass that they are journey- ing in a wrong direction, and that the path they travel conducts them to a very different point from that which they seek. The first of the unconscious assumptions that underlie the arguments to which we allude is this, that the practice of the churches is a sort of com- mon law which, when codified, may supplement or qualify the law of the New Testament. It is true that, in some professedly Baptist churches, the ancient principles of the denomination are not carried out with absolute logical con- sistency. In certain churches, there is a growing tendency to pass lightly over the question of communion-faith in their admission of members, and to refrain from discipline in cases where members practice occasional commun- ion with churches not of our faith and order. We have sometimes known instances where orthodox Baptist deacons have not refused the bread and wine to Pedo-baptist brethren who took upon themselves the responsibility of remaining at an ordinary celebration of the Lord's Supper. These and sundry other irregular and exceptional cases convince our critics that the old bottles of ancient law are not strong enough or large enough to hold the new wine of Christian enlightenment and charity. They therefore proceed to elevate practice itself into law to make irregularity its own voucher to legalize license to turn permission under sufferance into acknowledgment of fun- damental right. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that this is a method the reverse of scientific, evangelical, or Baptist. Here is unconsciously assumed the fundamental principle of all unprotestant ecclesiasticism the principle that not only God, but man also, makes law ; that the church, equally with the Scriptures, is the standard of appeal in questions of duty ; and that the analogy of faith is to be looked to as a primary source of truth, instead of * Printed in The Examiner, Jan. 21, 1875. 245 246 UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS being a secondary source, of value only when it corroborates conclusions drawn directly and at first hand from the word of God. How far such a principle as this might lead, history furnishes sufficient witness. When stated in words, it would be rejected with marked energy by some who are dissatisfied with our common practice. This proves without doubt that they will not speedily go over to Presbyterianism or to Home, but it does not make it any the less certain that their method is fatally incorrect, and that this seeking for the law in human custom and observance, instead of conforming human custom and observance to the law, would slowly, perhaps, but surely, work the ruin of the church of Christ. Bat is there an original, all-comprehending, all-compelling law ? Ah, that is the question ! When our new guides speak of an authoritative order of the ordinances, we can hardly avoid believing that they have some just notion of a divine prescription which makes the yea and nay of men of little account in the comparison. But there is no explaining the conclusions at which they arrive, without allowing that there is a second underlying assump- tion equally erroneous with the first, this, namely, that there is no fixed, complete and binding system of church organization revealed in the New Testament. It is possible to hold to an authority which is merely the authority of rational order. It is possible to believe in a merely germinal New Testament church. It is possible to urge the obligatoriness of church ordinances upon grounds of expediency. Our friends do not do this. But when they urge that impulse may break over this order, and that faith is above law, we seem to see the unconscious influence of some development- theory of the church, that gives to the free spirit power to mould and shape Christ's ordinances, or to dispense with them at its will. There are two logical theories, and two only. Either the law of Christ is adequate, or it is not. Either men may change it, or they may not. Either the New Testament furnishes us with the model of the church, or it does not. If it does, then there are no exceptions to its rule, a divine law is far-seeing, and needs no change. Upon this ground the Baptist brotherhood have stood, and do stand. But there is other ground, not so Scriptural, but yet logically consistent with itself. It is the ground that there is no definite or adequate model of church-organization in the New Testament at least, none that binds the conscience and practice of the church through all time. Upon this theory, a man may unite himself to the Christian church and sub- mit to her ordinances, according as he finds it expedient or convenient. Truth in this matter is entirely subjective. The church, like an ox-yoke, is useful, when its apparent usefulness ceases, let it go. The Christian's individual relation to Christ, this is the only real and binding thing. Churches are chance assemblages of believers. Church organization expresses no living truth, let it follow the customs of the times or the inclination of the moment. Church government, let it be autocratic in Italy , democratic in America, and double-headed in Japan. God has planned a gospel for all men, but he has not planned a church. And then, if the New Testament is not a sufficient authority for practice, what reason is there to believe that it is a sufficient authority for doctrine ? Shall we be Plymouth Brethren, or shall we be Baptists ? Either one of the two we can be, and preserve some show of logical consistency. But to OF COMMUNION POLEMICS. 247 be both at once, that is a riding of two horses which is not only difficult, but for any length of time impossible to a thinking man. And why should we attempt impossible tasks ? We have such a thing as church organization in the New Testament. There are specified qualifications for membership ; there are stated meetings ; there are regularly elected officers ; there is a custom sanctioned and an order enjoined by the apostles ; there are ordi- nances delivered to the care of the church ; there are letters and contributions aim registers ; there is common work to be done ; there is common discipline to be exercised, what more do we need to constitute a thorough organiza- tion ? And if Christ's promise was fulfilled, and the divine Spirit led the Apostles into all truth, in their church- teaching and church-building, then what right have we to admit exceptions to the acknowledged order of God's house ? Our rights in such an organization are not rights they are only privileges, whose enjoyment is conditioned upon obedience ; and faith car- ries with it the privilege of Communion, only as it implies obedience to all things which Christ has commanded. But let us come to a third assumption, still remembering that none of these are acknowledged or could be in words for they are too baldly false for any Baptist openly to acknowledge. It is an assumption, nevertheless, without which the fabric of the new doctrine would topple over for sheer one-sidedness. It is this : The ordinances are purely formal and external, instead of being living expressions of the inmost realities of the Christian faith. Some such postulate as this must be supposed, before we can com- prehend such statements as that the ritual is so subordinate to the spiritual, that no ritual deficiencies can justly prevent the exercise of so called spiritual rights. By what strange confusion is it possible to demand ceremonial privileges without ceremonial qualifications ? Only by forgetting that all ritual of God's appointment is profoundly spiritual, and that disorder in ritual falsifies the truth which the ritual was ordained to symbolize and represent. Why do we hold so strenuously to the duty and privilege of Christian baptism ? Because of the meaning of a Greek word, or an aesthetic fancy for a form ? God forbid ! We hold to baptism, because it is the divinely appointed vehicle and symbol of the great central truth of the Christian scheme the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and our death to sin and resurrection to new life in him. Why do we hold to the invariable precedence of Baptism to the Supper ? Because the ordinance which symbolizes regeneration must go before the ordinance which symbol- izes sanctifi cation, as birth must go before nourishment, and life before its sustenance. Instead of being void of doctrinal significance, these ordinances and their order are doctrines incarnate. Give up immersion, and you destroy one great memorial of the Savior's death and of the radical change which, by communion with that death, is wrought in every believing soul. Alter the order of the ordinances grant that men are qualified to partake of the Lord's Supper without Baptism, and you teach the world that men may be .sanctified without regeneration ; that there can be a holy life without the new-creating power of God. And so the depreciation of the ritual leads to a denial of the spiritual. For the sake of the spiritual we must hold to the ritual. We are as far from believing in a special sacramental grace, communicated after some outward 248 UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS. fashion through the ordinances, as any Swiss Reformer ever was. But all the more sacred do the ordinances and their appointed order seem to us, when we remember that their only power is the power they exert as monu- mental symbols of the saving truth of God. To change them, or to permit their change without protest, is more than to give up a form ; it is to strike a blow at the very heart of the Christian faith. For this reason it seems to us that the indirect apology for violations of the Scriptural order to which we have alluded, and the suggestion that impulse and sentiment may justify a Christian in overriding that order, can have no other foundation than an unconscious assumption that Christ's ordinances are, like some human ordi- nances, mere matters of form, instead of being what they are, full of spirit and life. A last assumption which we must notice is, that the laissez faire, or let- alone principle, will ensure the downfall of error, and the peace and progress of the church. There are a multitude of quiet brethren who, like Erasmus, deplore so great strife about matters so small. Alas, that we should find some of our own brethren among those who count the difference between truth and error, even in the matter of the ordinances, unworthy of the bar- ing of their swords ! Let them deplore it as they will, yet they cannot ignore the fact that the battle would never have raged for centuries around these ordinances, if they had not been the symbols of God's truth and the banners of the church. It is because the family, the State and the church are divine in their origin, that they are so constantly attacked by errorists of every sort. It is because they are endangered, that the ordinances are delivered to the church as a trust to be guarded for her Lord. Nothing will take care of itself in this degenerate world least of all, moral and religious truth. The church is its pillar and ground, if she fail to support it and hold it forth before the world, the truth will go down. As to this specific matter of the order of the ordinances, history negatives the notion that Baptism can maintain itself when the church admits the uubaptized to her communion. If spiritual union with Christ justifies us in coming to the table without Baptism, it equally justifies in coming into the church without Baptism it equally justifies any and every neglect, any and every sin. The religion of sentiment has many a sad illustration in individual transgression. Let the church as a body accept the religion of sentiment, instead of the warrior spirit that gives battle rather than yield one inch of truth, and the serpent she was to have trodden beneath her feet will strangle her within his folds. We have a better hope for the church than this a better hope for our Baptist churches. They have grown to be many and strong, by faithfulness to their convictions. They will grow in future, not by disobeying the organic law of their constitution, nor by welcoming those who disobey it, but by keeping the ordinances as they were first delivered. Upon the assumptions we have mentioned, no proper keeping of the ordinances upon the part of the church is possible. She is to set the table for all who choose to come. She is to baptize without question all who present themselves. If any theory could be devised which would more quickly merge the church in the world, and turn the Holy Place of the Temple into a Court of the Gentiles, we know not what it is. Nor is the simple maintenance of the Scriptural OF COMMUNION POLEMICS 249 order, as we understand it, Eitualism or Ecclesiasticism or Pharisaism. We pass no judgment upon the honesty of Christians of other names. We da not deny to their organizations the title of churches. But we do hold that they are churches irregularly constituted, and that their celebration of the Lord's Supper is a defective one, because they have not obeyed Christ's ordinance of Baptism. We give them fellowship in all else, but we can- not give them fellowship in their church-order and communion without stultifying ourselves, and proclaiming our own denominational existence to be impertinence and schism. Nay, we cannot withhold our protest against these irregularities without being false to Christ and his truth, and imperil- ing the whole future of his church. Necessity knows no law, and David ate the show-bread without disrespect to the Jewish ritual. But impulse and the yearning spirit are under law to Christ. Our love is to abound in knowledge and in all judgment. Because the Sabbath was made for man, we have no warrant for unnecessary labor on that day. That would be to deny that anything was made for man. In short, no such necessity is upon us as will justify a breaking over of Christ's appointed order. Love will not do it, for love will lead to obedience to the Scriptural standards, and even in the pain of sacrificing a ritual enjoyment, will find the evidence of its discipleship, and the assurance of greater near- ness to the heart of Christ than irregular participation of the Supper can ever give. With sorrow we say it but said it must be it is the unfaith- fulness of our Pedobaptist brethren to Christ's order that deprives us of the privilege of communing with them. We must hold them, and not ourselves,, responsible for our loss. And we hold any and every attempt to palliate or ignore this unfaithfulness, to be not a help to peace but a hindrance ; not a contribution to the settlement of differences, but a mere patchwork treaty that leaves unnoticed every main question at issue ; not a synthesis of truths which, in spite of superficial antagonism, have an inner unity, but a for- mulation of essential and irreconcilable contradictions. For this reason we have confidence that Baptists will still stand for purity, and leave God to take care of the peace. Peace will come, not by the love that breaks down and overrides organic law, but by the love that holds and holds forth the truth. XXI. THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER.* This word "ministers" does not designate the class of persons whom we call preachers or pastors. It means simply "servants," "helpers," "pur- veyors. " In this sense every Christian is a minister, for every Christian is a servant of the gospel. I take the text, therefore, as the basis of an address to Sabbath school teachers, and in fact to all who are called to instruct the young or to exert religious influence over others. All such are set in various ways to teach the truth. It is a most serious responsibility. Paul felt it to be so in his own case. In the passage that immediately precedes the text, he likens his teaching to the perfumes scattered to the air, at the triumphal entry of a conqueror. To the victorious soldiery, those floating odors were the signs of freedom and reward after the toils of the campaign ; to the captives whom they guarded, those same odors were the sign that the time had come for them to die. So all teaching of Christian truth is, to those who hear it, a savor of life unto life or of death unto death. It makes a higher heaven for those who are saved, but a deeper hell for those who perish. Every earnest teacher will surely echo Paul's own words : ' ' Who is suffi- cient for these things?" It is well that he can add as Paul does : " But our sufficiency is of God, who has qualified us to be ministers or servants or purveyors of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. " It is the Holy Spirit of whom Paul speaks. Over against the powerless letter of the Old Testament or Covenant, he sees the Spirit of life and power that dis- tinguishes the New. To be the ministers or servants of this New Covenant is to be the ministers or servants of the Holy Spirit. This is the character- istic blessing and strength of every true teacher that he is an assistant or helper of the Holy Spirit, qualified for this service by being filled and guided, illuminated and energized, by the Holy Spirit whom he serves. We are familiar with the thought that the teacher is a minister and servant of Christ. We are not so familiar with the thought that the teacher is a minister and servant of the Holy Spirit. My object to-day is to show that this latter conception of the teacher's vocation is of the greatest doctrinal and practical importance. Not only God's methods and nature, but also man's ignorance and powerlessness, make it indispensable that the teacher should maintain this continuous relation to the Holy Spirit. The text implies all this. When it calls the teacher a minister of the Spirit, it implies two things : first, that he is a receiver from God ; and secondly, that he is a com- * A sermon preached before the Sunday School Convention, Boston, May 20, 1877, on the text, 2 Cor. 3: 6 "Able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit." 250 THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. 251 mnnicator to men of what he has received. Let us consider the teacher's need of the Holy Spirit from each of these points of view. My first proposition then is this : that tne teacher is wholly dependent upon the Holy Spirit, because God's methods and nature are such, that with- out the Holy Spirit's working there can be no reception of any spiritual blessing from God on the part of the teacher himself. Let us appropriate a phrase of recent scepticism to a Christian use. There is "a Power that makes for righteousness. " That Power is no impersonal abstraction, but the personal Holy Spirit. And by this I do not mean that the Holy Spirit is simply the invisible presence of Christ. It is more than that. In a true sense, the work of the Spirit is a separate one from the work of Christ, and we may contrast the two. One feature of the contrast is this : While Christ is the organ of external revelation, the Holy Spirit is the organ or agent of internal revelation. And we learn what this means, by referring to our own inner experience. Christ had come, his cross had been set up, his death had been accomplished, his word had proclaimed salvation, but in spite of this external revelation we saw nothing in him to attract us. In his cross \vt- saw no power to save. The great truths of Christianity were like the features of the landscape long before the sun has risen ; mountain and plain and stream were there, but they were shrouded in darkness, or only half visible through the gloom. But when the Holy Spirit came, with his quick- ening power, it was as if, in an instant, that same landscape were flooded with the light and radiance of the morning sun. What was before hidden or uncertain, now stood out clear and bright and glorious. Mountain and plain and stream were there before ; the light did not create, it only revealed them. So the Holy Spirit was the sunlight that made real to us the truth of Christ truth which existed before, but which was as hidden from us, as if it had not been. Or suppose a blind man led out, in the broad noonday, into the centre of that same landscape, you may describe the beauty of it, but to the blind man your description is but empty words. But now, imagine that some oculist of surpassing skill could, even while the blind man stood there, remove the cataract from his eyes, and perfectly restore the sight. At once the whole glory of the scene bursts upon him. So, until the Holy Spirit works a change within us, Christ and his truth are hid. They are there eternal verities of God, but we have no eyes to see them. Until the Holy Spirit gives spiritual discernment, and so turns the outer word into an inner word, the natural man will never see the truth. This illustrates what I mean by saying that the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal revelation, while Christ is the organ of external revelation. But there is another point of contrast between the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of Christ. It is this : While all forth-putting, outgoing activity of the Godhead is the work of Christ, the returning movement, the drawing back to God, is the work of the Holy Spirit. Consider what this means. All forth-putting, outgoing activity of the Godhead is the work of Christ, whether it be exhibited in nature, in providence or in redemption. It is he through whom the world was created. He upholds and governs all things. Gravitation is the expression of his will. History is the marshaling of his forces. Incarnation and atonement are his comings into time, and creature- fihip, and obligation to law. Again I say, all forth-putting, outgoing activ- 252 THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. ity of the Godhead is the work of Christ. But 011 the other hand, the refluent wave, the returning movement, the drawing back to God, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It 'is through the eternal Spirit that Christ "offered himself without spot to God " ; it is by this "one Spirit" that the church throughout the world has "access unto the Father" ; it is through him that fallen creatures are "convinced of sin," are led to Christ, and are brought back to God. All true worship must be offered "in Spirit and in truth. " All prayer and service, all aspiration and all life, are normal and noble, and worthy of regard from God or man, only as they are parts or results of that great movement of the Holy Spirit, which draws all things t D ward God, their end. Go with me yet one step further. We have been speaking of manifesta- tions, but if the Son and the Holy Spirit are manifestations, they manifest something. Their work in time reveals a secret of eternity. The being of God is disclosed to us. Christ is the Word, spoken before creatures were, and when there was none but God to hear. God expresses himself, and knows himself, only through the Word. As the sun in the heavens is a true sun only as it pours forth its radiance, so God is truly God only as he shines foith in him who is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person. The sunlight is derived from the sun, and yet is as old as the sun itself ; and the Word is derived from God, yet there never was a time when he began to be. In the nature of God from eternity to eternity there is outgoing, expression, self -communication. Christ's " goings forth are from everlasting." So the Spirit, and the work of the Spirit, belong not simply to time but to eternity. In the Spirit, we are to conceive of the divine activity and thought as returning whence it came, and as completing its movement. Here is a ceaseless process of the divine mind ; but there is more than process there is life, fulness of life, the energy of an infinite will, the blessedness of absolute and perfect communion. For it is a personal Spirit, just as it is a personal Word, of whom we speak. God without distinctions of personality would be the living God no longer, he would be a lonely being, dependent upon the unsatisfying association of a finite universe, or an unconscious being, destitute of mind and heart, and identical with the universe itself. If there be one God at all, then that one God must be in some sense three. If we give up the Trinity, we must give up all idea of a living Unity. And so we reach the proper point of view from which to regard the teach- er's relation to the Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is necessary to- human salvation, because it is necessary to God himself. All his being is grounded in this life-movement of the Spirit, as it is grounded iu the life- movement of the Son. Let us not make the finite and the infinite change places, and fancy God to be less than the things which he has made. The: mighty tides of life that ebb and flow on the far shores of the universe, only shadow forth the unseen and unseeable floods that go and return within the bosom of God himself. All finite things together are but the "breath of his mouth," a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment, a "whisper of him," while the "thunder of his power" is heard and understood by none. And all the operations of his grace are only partial manifestations of that transcendent movement which goes on forever in God. By working love. THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. ^53 .tind holiness in us, and drawing us through Christ and in the Spirit unto the Father, he seeks to reproduce in us in our limited measure, the eternal pro- cess of the divine mind. There is One toward whom the whole creation moves, because it partakes of his internal movement toward himself. The Holy Spirit can save men only by drawing them into his own etherial cur- rents of affection and will, and thus bearing them on to the meeting-point of all his blessed winds, in God. If any have been impatient of this peculiar treatment of my theme, as if it were too mysterious and lofty, I 4 cau only urge them to a close study of Scripture, and of their own experience. The teacher who has wearied of his own futile efforts, will not think it impractical or valueless to connect his labor for the recovery of others to their allegiance to God, with the ceaseless divine operation which draws all things, by the celestial gravitation of the Holy Spirit, to himself. The Scandinavian mythology tells of a mor- tal who attempted to drain a goblet of the gods. The more he drank, the more there was to drink. His amazement grew, until he found that the goblet was invisibly connected with the sea, and that to empty it, he must drink the ocean dry. Surely there can be no comfort or strength BO great as this, to flnd that in our labor for the souls of men our work is supervised and supplemented, and energized, by One whose resources are vaster than the ocean, and whose activity is as all-reaching as the tidal wave that sweeps round the world. But my second proposition demands attention now, this namely, that the teacher is wholly dependent upon the Holy Spirit, because without the Spirit's influences, he is utterly powerless to communicate to others the truth of God in such a way as to sanctify or save them. For, mark well the fact, that the teacher is a real communicator of the truth. Divine effi- ciency secures and honors the active exercise of his human powers. The Holy Spirit does not supersede or absorb the earthly means. Mind is to be reached through mind and heart through heart, and, in a just sense, true teaching by true teachers is the salvation of the world. Now the first element of true teaching is a real possession of the truth on the part of the teacher himself. And by the truth I do not mean truth of science, philosophy or history, but that particular truth with regard to God, man, and God's way of saving man, which is made known in Scripture. "The truth as it is in Jesus," the truth adapted to man's religious needs, this is the special truth of which the teacher needs to become possessor, and which is to be the substance of all his teaching. This truth may take as many forms as an element in chemistry. It may be crystalized into the Bible text ; it may be held in solution in the mind ; or it may float about in the shape of airy maxim and unconscious influence. But whatever its form or distinctness, some truth with regard to sin and Christ and salvation is the agency in connection with which the Holy Spirit works every change, whether of conversion or of sanctitication. The Holy Spirit makes sensitive the heart as the photographer prepares his plate. But unless the object to be photographed is set before the camera, and the light from that object is poured in upon the plate, no picture results. And so, in conjunction with the direct work of the Holy Spirit upon the heart, there must go the pres- entation of God's truth in its proper light, if that truth is ever to be impressed upon the heart and to leave its image there. #54 THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. Let us never forget, moreover, that truth with regard to conduct, if it is to have this transforming power, must be incarnated in living persons. Abstract precepts do not move us, they must be translated into life. Therefore it is that he who is the personal Truth came in human form, and lived a human life. One look at the suffering love and the atoning purity of Christ, can do more to melt and mould the hard and the selfish than all the maxims of all the sages. And this same necessity of embodying the truth, leads to the appointment of Christian teachers. They are to speak the truth, and to lend to it, as they speak, the vividness of present reality. They are to exemplify the truth and to show it in its results clarity of thought, purity of emotion, loftiness of aim. If you once think what it is to speak to others the truth with regard to Christ, you will see that, without the help of the Holy Spirit, it is not within the power of man. To speak the truth, one must have the truth and know the truth. No parrot-like repetition of the words of Scripture is true teaching. The words of Christ the real substance of what he spoke were spirit and life. It is the ideas behind the words, that are to be communicated. And to get posser-- sion of these ideas is, to use a German idiom, to think one's self into God's thought ; it is to press through the veil into the inner sanctuary of divine truth ; it is to see it for one's self, as Moses saw the Shekinah-glory, and to come forth from the holy place, to speak it with burning lips and rejoicing heart to others. I do not know how any human being can thus get possession of the truth he is to give to others, without the help of the Holy Spirit. I see the Ethiopian eunuch, on the desert road, wearily and vainly pondering the words of the prophet. " Understandest thou what thou readest ? " "How can I except some one should guide me? " Ah, man needs a guide ! The eunuch needed the guidance of Philip, but Philip could never have guided the eunuch, unless he himself had had the guidance of the Spirit. Only that enabled him to speak as the oracle of God, and to preach Jesus so that the Lord High Treasurer of Can dace's empire was eager at once to profess his faith in the Crucified. I see two other New Testament worthies, making their way into the temple. At the "Beautiful Gate," there crouches the pitiful shape of a life- long cripple. There are few Avords from the apostles. But with the mention of the name of Jesus, that had wrought so many wonders, Peter fastens his eyes steadfastly on the lame man ; he grasps him by the hand to lift him to new vigor and freedom ; the very tone of Peter's voice electrifies the suf- ferer, as he commands him "in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth," to "rise up and walk." The faith of Peter flashes at once into the cripple's soul. He leaps to his feet, and praises God. It is a picture of a second element of all true teaching, namely, the believing utterance of the truth. True teaching is nothing else than a communication of ourselves, an impar- tation of our own life to others. Truth is not truth, unless it is enhaloed and ensphered in this atmosphere of faith. Teaching is not teaching, unless with the intellectual presentation of truth there goes the emotional intensity and fervor which indicate profound conviction on the part of the teacher. But with this element added, the least fragment of truth has power. The single word converts a soul. THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. 255 Do you know any way in which a naturally loveless and apathetic person can be tilled with enthusiasm in view of truth, so that he utters it with bold- ness and irrepressible delight? Contagious zeal the consuming zeal for purity and for right, that like a flame of fire kindles and brightens every- thing it touches have you any recipe for this ? The Bible gives us one. "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." There are little land-locked ponds, along oar New England shore, that are shut away from the sea by heavy bars of sand. Weeks come and go, and the surface of those ponds is scarcely stirred. But on some favored day, a high tide overpasses the bar of sand ; the half- stagnant waters are purified ; the land-locked bay is united once more to its parent flood, and is stirred to its deepest depths by the pulsations of the great, deep sea. So they who in their natural state are sundered from the parent-heart of God, are brought by the Holy Spirit into union with him. What of themselves they could not feel, they feel now. The Spirit of God has communicated to them something of the infinite longing of God's heart, and his infinite love for the perishing. They not only pray with unutterable sighings for the salvation of men, but when they speak to them of God and of his mercy, it is with a confidence and power that none of their adversaries are able to gainsay or resist. And all because it is not they that speak, but the Holy Spirit. True teaching has the truth, and speaks the truth with self-propagating faith. But there is yet a third element in it. Besides this real possession of the truth, and believing utterance of the truth, there is also a wise adapta- tion of the truth to persons and to times. " He that winneth souls is wise." The teacher has a work of spiritual surgery to do. He must lay bare the sore and ugly spots of character, that he may persuade his patient to undergo the divine operation and be healed. He must touch with his scalpel the tenderest part the soul's self-will and pride. Blunt instruments and mis- directed treatment will not do. He must not imitate the mistakes of the apothecary, and administer a composing draught to the already narcotized soul. And on the other hand, "the servant of the Lord must not strive." Unhealthful excitement brings, by necessary law of reaction, a spiritiial stupor exactly proportional to the waste of nervous power. ' What shall I speak ? ' is a difficult question for the conscientious teacher ; ' when shall I speak ?' is a more difficult question still. " There is a time to speak and there is a time to keep silence " and the suppressed anxiety of a faithful friend has often spoken louder than words. To be "instant in season and out of season," and yet to be "courteous to all men;" to "redeem the time," so that no golden opportunity shall run to waste, and yet to give to each, not another's, but his own " portion, in due season," this, in matters of the soul, requires a spiritual discernment that is foreign to mere human nature. But the labyrinth has a clue, the moment the teacher regards himself as a servant of the Spirit. He speaks now "as the Spirit gives him utterance. " He is practically, as well as theoretically, guided into the truth. He is enabled to interpret God's providences, so that they disclose to him his duty. And that, in no mystical way of new revelation apart from Scripture, but in the rational and Biblical way of quickening his intellectual powers, so that he exercises a common sense that is sanctified, and a judgment free 256 THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. from selfish bias. Have you noticed the steady and quiet strength of the man who trusts the Spirit's word : "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that thou shalt go ; I will guide thee with mine eye ? " The Scrip- tures contrast the full tide of rational and satisfied life which fills the breast of the Christian, with the wild excitements and insatiable cravings of him whose dependence is upon physical stimulants. " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. " No, the atmosphere of the Spirit is not one of nitrous oxide, it is the pure, cool air of the mountain- tops of truth, and the more one breathes it, the more he recognizes it as a " spirit of power and of love and of sound mind." A wisdom that is not of this world, becomes his. The Holy Spirit makes him not only a ready but a trained and skilled assistant, in the work of bringing others to Christ. Persons who are not naturally attractive have in these ways been made centres of saving influence. The bent piece of soft iron has no natural power to draw other iron to itself, but attach it to the battery, and it becomes a magnet, that draws to itself everything within its range. Sunder its con- nection with the copper and the zinc, and all power is gone, but thus con- nected, it is its very nature to attract. So let God's Holy Spirit take possession of the teacher and he becomes a magnet, to draw those whom he instructs to God. Virtue goes forth from him. He becomes a living force for good. Borne himself upon the mighty current that sweeps toward the centre and source of all things, he finds that he is not left to go alone. Others are won to commit their barks to this same current, and so to accom- pany or follow him. Even though he may see no outward sign of the movement in himself, or of the power that he has on others, still he may be sure that the Holy Spirit uses him. You remember those Arctic explorers, who day after day with infinite toil and pain, made their way northward, as they thought, only to find at the week's end that their instruments indicated a progress of many miles in the opposite direction. They thought them- selves going away from home and friends, but they found themselves nearer to them at the end than when they began. At last they solved the problem. They were not on solid ground at all, but rather upon an ice-floe of vast extent, and this whole mass, apparently solid as the granite hills, was mov- ing toward the tropics every day upon the bosom of an ocean-current so broad and deep and still as to give no sign whatever of its power. So the teacher may seem to himself to be getting further and further away from the things he loves and the persons for whom he labors. But in spite of all appearances, God is furthering his work by invisible but tremendous opera- tions of his providence and grace. He supplements our efforts, and guides them to ends which his wisdom, and not our skill, has set. Consciously or unconsciously, we are borne onward to the accomplishment of the plans and to the glory of the name of him, "of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things. " Thus I have spoken of our need of the Spirit as grounded, first, in the methods and nature of God, and secondly, in the ignorance and powerless- ness of man. Or to put it in plainer words, we need the Holy Spirit, first, because without him we can receive nothing from God. We need the Holy Spirit, secondly, because without him we can communicate nothing to men. And I have shown you that this last is certain, because only the Holy Spirit THE TEACHER'S GUIDE A^D HELPEK 257 can make us real possessors of the truth, believing advocates of the truth, and wise adapters of the truth to the wants of those we teach. But the Holy Spirit can make us able teachers. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is within our reach* The power to bestow the Holy Spirit, and to make men teachers of his word, was part of the Savior's recompense for his sufferings. He could not give the Spirit, until he was glorified. But now, he sits at the right hand of power, for the express purpose of pouring into us, through the Spirit, the inexhaustible fulness of his divine life. I honor Christ my Lord, not when I hold back, from a sense of my unworthiness, and refuse to believe that so great a gift can be for me ; I honor him only when I take the gift, in the same spirit in which it is offered, and use it gratefully in the service of him who gave it. The decision whether I will have this Holy Spirit, this present Christ, this fulness of power and blessing, rests in a true sense with me. Unless I will to have it, it will never be mine. I must put in the link of connection between my soul and God's efficiency, by the exercise of faith. There is a great reservoir of sweet and limpid water up among the hills, all gathered there by the art of man, for the supply of the thirsty town. Conduits are built, and pipes are laid ; my own house is provided with basin and faucet ; but still the water does not run, and I am dry. What is lacking ? Nothing but the touch of my hand, yet without that, I may go thirsty all the day. My friends, Christ is a reservoir in which all the resources of the Godhead are gathered up, and gathered up for the use of each of us. The Holy Spirit is the conduit through which Christ's fulness comes to us. And yet we shall never be practical possessors of his power, until by a personal act of surrender and of faith, we set the stream to running. Set it running, and let it never stop ! Drinking it, you shall never thirst, and it shall be in you a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. There is only one thing more. Let this water bless others, as well as yourself. Our Lord did not forget this, when he gave his promise. "In that last, that great day of the feast," when he " stood and cried, saying : If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," he added these words : "He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his heart" stirred as it is with new-discovered truth and purified by nobler affections ' ' shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they which believe on him should receive." He only is a true servant of Christ, who receives in order to give. He shall receive abundantly, only in order that he may give abundantly. The spring that has gladdened his own heart shall gladden others. Widening and deepening as they flow, the waters from it, like those of Ezekiel's vision, shall carry life and verdure with thom, until somewhere in the future, near or far, the ultimate result shall be the recovery of all the moral wastes that have been caused by sin. and the recreation of the earth in the beauty of our God. On Easter morning at Jerusalem, the people gather together in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, long before the dawn, all carrying torches not yet lighted. The Archbishop enters the tomb in which tradition relates that the body of Christ was laid, and brings out from it a lighted torch, which he pretends to have been kindled there by supernatural power. One by one the people light their torches from its blaze, and others are lit from 17 258 THE TEACHER'S GUIDE AND HELPER. these, until the darkness of the great church is chased away by the flooding radiance of many thousand lamps. The people carry the sacred fire to their homes, lighting still other torches as they go, until every Christian house in the great city is illuminated. So Christian influence widens and spreads. The fountain of its light and power is in the presence of the Lord not in the sepulchre where his body lay, but in the secret place where the risen and glorified Redeemer meets with his chosen ones, and communicates to them his own life-giving Spirit. But he who has his own soul kindled there, gives light to those he meets, and is not impoverished but enriched by giv- ing. Oh you, to whom is given the work of teaching others in the truth of God, regard the dignity of your vocation and fulfill it well ! Recognize the Holy Spirit as the only source of power, and the Holy Spirit will prosper your labors ! As you have the promise of the Father, put that promise to the test, and receive the Holy Ghost ! So, enlightened and quickened by God himself, you shall be "servants of the Spirit," and successful partici- pants in his great work that work of which nature and history are but the preparation and arena the work of bringing back a revolted humanity to its lost estate of holiness and of communion with God ! XXII. COUNCILS OF ORDINATION: THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES.* In an age like the present, when laxity in doctrine abounds, and when men are not unfrequeutly led by unworthy motives to desire the pastoral office, it concerns the purity and even the existence of our churches to sur- round with all proper safeguards the entrance to the ministry. Such safe- guards may in part be found in Ordaining Councils, provided that those who compose these bodies have proper understanding of their position and responsibilities. It is the object of this paper to present a just view of the powers and duties of such Councils, and to indicate the method of proced- ure best adapted to secure the ends for which they are called. When we speak of the powers of Councils, we do not mean to intimate that these Councils are self -constituted, or that they have original authority. The Council, on the contrary, is called into existence only by the local church, can determine only such questions as that church may submit for its consideration, and has power to advise the church what its action should be, but no power to compel the acceptance of this advice. The so-called Council of Jerusalem certainly gives us New Testament example for one church's seeking advice from other churches, in difficult junctures, but there was, as we may suppose, an element of inspiration in that decree of " the apostles and elders with the whole church," which cannot be claimed for the conclusions of subsequent Councils. While Scripture favors that interdependence of local churches which results from acknowledging the in- dwelling of the Holy Spirit in others as well as in ourselves, and the due value of the public opinion of the churches as an indication of the mind of the Spirit, it still in the last resort throws each church upon its own res- ponsibility of ascertaining doctrine and duty by individual interpretation of the divine providence and word. Interdependence, in short, is but the qualification of a fundamental and inalienable independence. On earth there is no higher authority than that of the local church. No other church, and no union of churches, whether directly or through its representatives, has any rightful jurisdiction over the single local body which Christ has brought into immediate subjection to himself as Lawgiver and King. Yet all the more has the Council, when rightly called and constituted, the power of moral influence. Its decision is an index to truth, which only the gravest reasons will justify the church in ignoring or refusing to follow. If there is a moral obligation to seek its advice, there is also, in all ordinary cases, a moral obligation resting upon the church to take its advice, when * Printed in the Examiner, January 2 and January 9, 1879. 259 260 COUNCILS OF ORDINATION : this advice is given. So much, at least, is assumed when matters of import- ance are committed to the decision of a Council, with no provision for a sub- sequent meeting of the church to review the Council's action. In such case the church virtually constitutes the Council its representative, in effect deputes the Council to act in its place, tacitly accepts the decision of the Council as its own. The fact that the church has always the right, for just cause, of going behind the decision of the Council, and of determining whether it will ratify or reject that decision, shows conclusively that the church has parted with no particle of its original independence or authority. Yet though the Council is simply a counsellor an organ and helper of the church the neglect of its advice may involve such ecclesiastical or moral wrong as to justify the churches represented in it, as well as other churches, in withdrawing from the church that called it their denominational or Chris- tian fellowship. It is but an application of these general principles to a particular case, when we say that it is the church which ordains, aud that in ordination the Council is only the adviser and assistant of the church. In ordination, as in deposition from the ministry, the church may, in extreme cases, proceed without a Council or in spite of the decision of a Council ; the effect, how- ever, being that such ordinance or deposition on the part of the single church has no ecclesiastical validity outside of its own body, and that the church may be even disfeUowshiped by neighboring churches where there is manifest violation of New Testament principles in its procedure. Ordination is an ecclesiastical act so important in itself, and so serious in influence upon other churches as well as upon the church that ordains, that the counsel of others may well be deemed obligatory before the act is con- summated. In the case of deacons, who sustain official relations only to the church that constitutes them, ordination requires no consultation with other churches. Licensure, which points only to a temporary or experimental service, may properly be left to the wisdom of the individual church. But the setting apart of a preacher of the gospel to a permanent work of minis- tration in the churches involves so grave responsibilities and demands such practised judgment, that the ordaining church should never fail, where this is possible, to add to its own the wisdom and experience of other churches of the same faith and order. The Council is called, therefore, not to confer upon the candidate, by superior authority, some special grace without which he could not be denom- inated a true minister of Christ, but to assist the church in two respects : first, in determining whether the candidate has been called and qualified by God's providence and Spirit ; and secondly, in granting to him express authorization to exercise his gifts as pastor or teacher, within certain definite local boundaries of the church or the denomination. The prior call to be pastor may be said, in the case of a man yet unordained, to be given condi- tionally, and in anticipation of a ratification of its action by the subsequent judgment of the Council. In a well-instructed church, the calling of a Council is a regular method of appeal from the church unadvised to the church advised by its brethren, and the vote of the Council approving the candidate is only the essential completing of an ordination of which the vote of the church calling the candidate to the pastorate was the preliminary stage. THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES. 261 It has been proposed of late that the Council of Ordination shall consist only of ministers who have been themselves ordained. The proposition seems to us to contradict not only our denominational usage and principles, but the plain tenor of Scripture teaching. That Timothy is enjoined to commit the things which he has learned to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also, by no means defines the method in which he shall fulfill the commission. The analogy of the choice of Matthias, and of the election of deacons, would indicate that Timothy obeyed the precept by setting apart those who had been previously chosen by the suffrages of the whole body of each church respectively. All this was done by the churches under the advice of one endowed with special divine gifts, and clothed with unique and exceptional authority. But who shall be the advisers of our later churches in this solemn matter of ordination ? This must be determined, not from the example of Timothy, for none have succeeded to his precise place and work, but from the general tenor of apostolic teaching with regard to the duties and responsibilities of all members of the church of Christ. Careful examination will show that there was laid, not solely upon the presbytery or ministry, but upon the whole body of believers, the responsi- bility of maintaining pure doctrine and practice, of preserving and guard- ing the ordinances, of electing their own officers and delegates, and of exer- cising discipline. It is not merely the apostles and elders, but the whole church of Jerusalem, that passed upon the matters submitted to them at the Council, and others than ministers appear to have been delegates. The Scripture intimates that its own simplicity and sufficiency were designed for the very purpose of inducing individual interpretation of its contents, so that each Christian might judge of the correctness with which it was preached. How, then, can it be maintained that, in deciding upon the doc- trinal qualifications of a candidate for the ministry, the laity are to have no voice ? In many an age of church history, as to-day in the Free Church of Scotland, the Scriptural conservatism of the laity has been the most potent influence in preventing the general adoption of lax and erroneous views, to which the ministry have been inclined. Moreover the Council of Ordination is to pass, not only upon matters of doctrine, but upon matters of Christian experience, and of these the unordained church member is often a more sagacious judge than his pastor. As we see no Scriptural warrant for the exclusion of lay delegates from Ordaining Councils, but rather abundant evidence to show its inconsistency with the fundamental principles of a true church polity, so we reject the proposed innovation as having in it the beginnings of a hierarchy. To make the ministry a close corporation is to recognize the principle of apostolic succession, to deny the validity of all our past ordinations, and to sell to an ecclesiastical caste the liberties of the church of God. The very first of the duties devolving upon the member of a Council of Ordination would seem to be the cherishing of a high sense of the dignity and solemnity of his office, and the determination to discharge his functions with independence and judicial fairness as in the sight of God. He has been called to be an adviser of the church of Christ in a matter affecting its very life. He is appointed as representative of another church, because in that other church the Spirit of God is believed to dwell. His businesses to 262 COUNCILS OF ORDINATION : judge of the work of that same Spirit in the heart and mind of one who claims to have been chosen by God to be his ambassador, and he is to reach his decision by comparing the utterances and the manner of the claimant with God's revealed will. Surely no more lofty or serious task was ever set for man to do. Frivolity, party-spirit, favoritism, personal pique or resent- ment, over-anxiety to please in short, the whole brood of worldly impulses and motives what place or right have they at an occasion so pregnant with blessing or disaster to the cause of our Lord ! But it is not enough to have the right spirit. It is a duty to provide against the wrong, and by all needful precautions ensure the issuance of a true intent in wise action. The Council does not come together to ratify the immutable decrees of the local church, but rather to give to the body that called it a sound and candid judgment upon the facts presented before it. The Council should therefore be so numerous and so impartially consti- tuted that no danger remains of its being over-awed or unduly influenced by the hopes or feelings of the community or of the church. It is obliga- tory upon those who call the Council to furnish, in the letter-missive, a list of the churches invited, that the churches summoned may see for themselves that the Council is to be neither so insignificant in numbers as to make pos- sible only a show of deliberation, nor so packed as to make possible only a predetermined verdict. Neither the ministerial nor the lay element should be relatively so numerous as to make it possible for one to override the other, and for this reason each church might well be invited to send only a single lay delegate with its pastor an arrangement all the more valuable if the limitation of the number of delegates from each church should compel the invitation of a wider circle of churches. The church calling the Council should of course be represented by its delegates, but the number of these delegates should not be so great as to give undue weight, in the general dis- cussion and decision, to the church's previously formed opinions. Neither the church nor the Council should permit a prejudgment of the case by the previous announcement of an ordination-service. The ordination-service should never be held or expected upon the same day with the examination of the candidate, for in every case of difficulty such an arrangement unduly curtails the Council's time for deliberation, and brings a pressure to bear from without, which involves danger of a sudden and a wrong decision. Moreover, while the examination of the candidate as well as his own state- ments of faith and experience should be in presence of the whole church, both for the sake of furnishing him the best introduction to their respect and Christian sympathies, and for the sake of furnishing the Council the fullest opportunity of estimating his ability to sustain examination, the Council should always conduct its subsequent deliberations in private session, and that this private session may be held, either the congregation should be dismissed or a withdrawing-room should be made ready for the Council. The suggestions already made are embodied in the following blank form of a Letter-missive, in which it will be observed that the correct view of the church as the ordaining body is expressed in the resolve to ordain in case the counselling brethren approve the candidate after examination. All question with regard to the necessity of a special vote of the church ratify- ing the decision of the Council is in this manner obviated. THEIR POWERS AKD DUTIES. 263 The Baptist church of to the Baptist church of : DEAR BRETHREN : By vote of this church you are requested to send your pastor and one delegate to meet with us in accordance with the following reso- lutions passed by us on the , 188- : WHEREAS, brother , a member of this church, has offered himself to the work of the gospel ministry, and has been chosen by us as our pastor, there- fore, Resolved, That such neighboring churches in fellowship with us as shall be herein designated be requested to send their pastor and one delegate each, to meet and counsel with this church at o'clock M., on , 188-, and if, after examination by the Council, he be approved, that brother be on the next day set apart formally, by public service, to the gospel ministry. Resolved, That the Council, if they approve the ordination, be requested to appoint two of their number to act with brother in arranging the ordi- nation services. Rixnlved, That printed letters of invitation embodying these resolutions, and signed by the clerk of this church, be sent, to the following churches, , , , , , and that these churches be requested to furnish to their delegates an officially signed certificate of their appointment, to be presented at the organization of the Council. Renolved, That Rev. and brethren be also invited by the clerk of the church to be present as members of the Council. Resolved, That brethren , , and , be appointed as our delegates, to represent this church in the deliberations of the Council, and that brother be requested to present the candidate to the Council, with an expression of the high respect and warm attachment with which we have welcomed him and his labors among us. In behalf of the church, , 188-. , Clerk. A just conclusion of the labors of the Council may be either facilitated or hindered by the forms observed in its conduct. Although, in this, individ- ual freedom and local usage must have their influence, yet there are advan- tages in uniformity of action, and it is with a view to promote this uniform- ity that we here suggest certain rules which already, in some portions of the country, have been found practicable and serviceable. Our present methods are too often loose and inefficient. Not unfrequently a moderator is chosen, before it can be told that there exists a Council to be moderated. Persons are counted as members of the Council, upon their mere oral dec- laration that a certain church has appointed them its delegates. Members of the Council are so scattered in the general audience that, in voting, they are indistinguishable from those who are not members. Candidates have been admitted to examination without presenting documentary evidence of membership in the ordaining church, or in any other properly constituted church. Severe scrutiny fails to be given to imperfect or unsatisfactory statements of the candidate, because of an undue anxiety to spare him what might be a salutary mortification. Good brethren refrain from opposing manfully the acceptance of an unsound or incompetent person, because of over-desire to gratify the church. These are ways in which the real purpose of the Council may be either endangered or altogether frustrated. There is a call for moral courage in standing squarely against either hasty or unwar- 264 COUNCILS OF ORDINATION I ranted action. Where differences from the faith on the part of the candi- date are not vital, it maybe duty for a member of the Council to fall in with the general decision of his brethren. There are more serious cases, where dissent should manifest itself in protest and withdrawal. As a safeguard against the irregularities already mentioned, as well as against other and more serious evils that might follow in their train, the fol- lowing would seem to be a useful and proper order of procedure : 1. Reading by the clerk of the church, of the letter-missive, followed by a call, in their order, upon each church and individual invited, to present respon- ses and names in writing each delegate, as he presents his credentials, taking his seat in a portion of the house reserved for the Council. 2. Announcement by the clerk of the church, that a Council has convened, and call for the nomination of a moderator the motion to be put by the clerk after which the moderator takes the chair. 3. Organization completed by election of a clerk of the Council, the offering of prayer, and the invitation of visiting brethren to sit with the Council but not to vote. 4. Reading on behalf of the church, by its clerk, of the records of the church concerning the call extended to the candidate and his acceptance, together with documentary evidence of his licensure, of his present church membership, and of his standing in other respects, if coming from another denomination. 5. Vote, by the Council, that the proceedings of the church and the standing of the candidate warrant an examination of his claim to ordination. 6. Introduction of the candidate to the Council by some representative of the church, with an expression of the church's feeling respecting him and his labors. 7. Vote to hear his Christian experience. Narration on the part of the candi- date, followed by questions as to any features of it still needing elucidation. 8. Vote to hear the candidate's reasons for believing himself called to the ministry. Narration and questions. 9. Vote to hear the candidate's views of Christian doctrine. Narration and questions. 10. Vote to conclude the public examination and to withdraw for private ses- sion. 11. In private session, after prayer, the Council determines by three separate votes, in order to secure separate consideration of each question, whether it is satisfied with the candidate's Christian experience, call to the ministry, and views of Christian doctrine. 12. Vote that the candidate be hereby set apart to the Gospel ministry, and that a public service be held, expressive of this fact; that for this purpose a committee of two be appointed, to act with the candidate in arranging such service of ordination, and to report before adjournment. 13. Reading of minutes by clerk of Council, and correction of them, to pre- pare for presentation at the ordination service and for preservation in the arch- ives of the church. 14. Vote to give the candidate a certificate of ordination, signed by the mod- erator and clerk of the Council, and to publish an account of the proceedings in the journals of the denomination. 15. Adjourn to meet at the service of ordination. It has been seen that ordination is essentially a setting apart, first, by THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES. 265 vote of the church, and secondly, by vote of the advisory Council. These two votes express both a recognition of gifts conferred by God, and an authorization to exercise those gifts within the bounds of the Church and the denomination. These two votes are parts of one whole. They show the candidate to be the choice of the church and of the Council or, which is the same thing, of the church by itself and of the church advised by its brethren. Examination is a prerequisite to the decision of the Council, because if the candidate is to be recognized as a minister by other churches, he must give them proof of his fitness, and that all the more, if he come from a denomination whose doctrine and practice differ from our own. This setting apart by the church, with the advice and assistance of the Council, is all that is necessarily implied in the New Testament words which are translated "ordain," and such ordination by simple vote of church and Council could not be counted invalid. But it would be irregular. New Testament precedent, which is the com- mon law of the church, has, in the general judgment of our churches, made certain accompaniments of ordination not only appropriate but obligatory. A formal publication of the decree of the Council, by laying on of hands in connection with solemn prayer, is the last of the duties devolving upon this advisory body which serves as the organ and assistant of the church. This public service is not the essence of ordination, nor does it convey any new powers, much less any divine grace. Although, in the case of Timothy, there appears to have been a special divine gift bestowed in connection with the laying on of hands, the communication of miraculous or spiritual gifts was not the result of this imposition of hands, nor was it the object for which hands were imposed in his ordination ; for hands were imposed, as in the cases of the deacons and of Paul and Barnabas, where no record exists of the bestowment, through that act, of any spiritual or miraculous gifts at all. The imposition of hands is the symbolic and public side of ordination, just as baptism is the symbolic and public side of regeneration. As the essential thing in salvation is the new birth of the Spirit, yet the entrance of the whole man into the outward as well as inward kingdom of God is not complete until this being born of the Spirit is formally and publicly expressed and symbolized by being born of water also, so the essential thing in ordin- ation is the recognition and authorization by vote of church and Council, yet the duty of the Council is not fulfilled until it has symbolically and out- wardly proclaimed this recognition and authorization by laying on of hands and prayer. Thus the laying on of hands is appointed to be the regular accompani- ment of ordination, as baptism is appointed to be the regular accompaniment of regeneration, while yet the laying on of hands is no more the substance of ordination than baptism is the substance of regeneration. The imposition of hands is the natural symbol of the communication, not of grace, but of authority. If this distinction be only well observed, we conceive that all objection to the retention of the symbol must disappear. The laying on of hands does not make Spurgeon a minister of the gospel, any more than coronation makes Victoria a Queen. What it does signify and publish is formal recognition and authorization, and in this light the continued insist- ance upon the holding of a public service, of which the central feature shall COUNCILS OF ORDINATION : be prayer and the laying on of hands, may well be regarded as the bounden duty of every Council of ordination which, by vote, sets apart a candidate to the ministry. If recognition and authorization be the essential things in ordination, decreed by vote and symbolized by public service, then important light is thrown upon the question whether ministers coming to us from other bodies of Christians should be ordained. The proper inquiries would seem to be these : Have they ever been recognized by the representatives of rightly constituted churches, after examination, as doctrinally and practically quali- fied for the ministry ? Have they ever been authorized, by the vote of such a Council, to exercise their gifts within the bounds of our denomination ? If not, it would seem that they still need ordination. Surely they are not now authorized to do what they have never agreed to do, namely, minister to Baptist churches. The view that we should accept as valid some previous ordination in another denomination proceeds evidently upon the false assumption that action of every ecclesiastical body is valid, not only for churches of its own faith and order, but for all churches of every name. And no line can be drawn the moment we pass our own bounds, Roman Catholic ordination must be valid as well as Presbyterian. Nor does our logic class us with Separatists or extreme Independents. In so far as ordi- nation is an act performed by the local church, with the advice and assist- ance of other rightly constituted churches, we regard it as giving formal permission to exercise gifts and administer ordinances within the bounds of such churches. Ordination is not, therefore, to be repeated upon the trans- fer of the minister's pastoral relation from one such church to another. In ^very case, however, where a minister from a body of Christians not Scrip- turally constituted assumes the pastoral relation in a rightly organized church, there is peculiar propriety in that act of recognition and authoriza- tion which is the essence of ordination. And if it be proper that he be examined and his claims passed upon by vote of Council, it is equally pro- per that he submit to that formal service of laying on of hands and prayer, by which the previous action of the church and Council is simply published and symbolized. We are now ready to state in full that a regular ordina- tion, conducted upon Scriptural principles, and therefore valid among all churches of our faith and order, involves three things : first, the call of a church to the candidate to become its pastor ; secondly, the vote of a Coun- cil to recognize and authorize the candidate to exercise his gifts in the churches as a minister of Christ ; and thirdly, a public service in which, by prayer and imposition of hands, this authority is formally and symbolically conferred. Of these three, the two former are the essentials, the last the regular and appropriate accompaniment. It is to be regretted that the word ordination, which in the New Testament covers the whole process of setting apart in all its three stages, should so frequently, even among us, be inter- preted as referring only to the last. Thus the Council's final and most important vote is often a vote to " proceed to ordination." This intimates that the public service is the essence of ordination. The vote, as we have already intimated, should rather be a vote ' ' that the candidate be hereby set apart to the gospel ministry, and that a formal and public service be held expressive of this fact. " We have derived our denominational principles THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES. 267 from the New Testament, but the language in which we too commonly express these principles comes to us from the usage of denominations which deny them. It will be well for us to conform our terminology to our faith, lest our faith be gradually bent into conformity with our terminology. The true idea of the public service, as simply expressing and formally completing the ordination, will determine to a considerable extent the order and relation of parts in the service. It is evident that the central features should be the prayer of ordination and the imposition of hands. This prayer, instead of being substantially anticipated in the opening invocation, should be reserved to a single brother in the ministry ; and others of the older ministers, as a true presbytery, should, in connection with the prayer, if not during its utterance, lay their hands upon the head of the candidate. The prayer should recognize in the decision of the Council the new evidence that the church has been guided by God in its choice, and should invoke upon the candidate, as he is formally set apart to the sacred office, the bless- ing of God that is needed to render his work successful. These being the chief portions of the service, all the other parts should be arranged with reference to them. The sermon, if one be preached, should be a general presentation of the gospel which the candidate is to proclaim, preparing the way for the solemnity of the ordaining prayer, but not anticipating or super- seding the words of admonition to candidate and church which are to follow it. Before these charges and after the ordaining prayer the brother, now already ordained in the fullest sense, may well be welcomed to the fellow- ship of the Christian ministry, with the presentation of the right hand and a few well-chosen words of Christian congratulation. That these many ser- vices may be impressive, it is important that each should be not only appro- priate but brief, and with this view the musical portion of the services should be confined within narrow limits, and the utmost punctuality secured in the assembling of the audience and the beginning of the exercises. The prac- tical and executive ability of the candidate may find good field for its first exercise, in preparing his church for this service of ordination. Well arranged and carried out, no service of all his after-ministry can be of greater value either to himself or to the people of whom he is the pastor. The following scheme is presented as indicating an appropriate order of exercises, as well as the relative amount of time which may be granted to each participant in a service whose total length shall be two hours : 1. Voluntary five minutes. 2. Anthem five. 3. Reading minutes of the Council, by the clerk of the Council ten. 4. Prayer of Invocation five. 5. Reading of Scripture five. 6. Sermon twenty-five. 7. Prayer of Ordination, with laying on of hands fifteen. 8. Hymn ten. 9. Right hand of fellowship five. 10. Charge to the candidate fifteen. 11. Charge to the church fifteen. 12. Doxology five. 13. Benediction by the newly ordained pastor. It has been intimated that deacons as well as pastors should be ordained. Although in this case, for the reason already given, the church may proceed without the advice of a Council, yet it would seem quite as clear that New Testament precedent requires the ordination of deacons to be accompanied Avith prayer and the laying on of hands, as that pastors should be thus 268 COUNCILS OF ORDINATION. inducted into office. But is ordination confined to pastors and deacons ? Analogy would teach that all whose permanent vocation in life is to be that of expounding the word of God should come under the same law, and should be set apart, in like manner, to this sacred work. This is especially important in the case of those who are to teach the teachers, as in our Theo- logical Seminaries. Theirs is a grave responsibility ; it should be intrusted only to those who, after careful examination, approve themselves as sound in doctrine and Christian in spirit. Every such teacher is to be regarded as a minister of Christ assigned to special service by the church to which he belongs ; he should therefore be ordained with the advice of a Council, not to be pastor, but to be teacher, ordained not by the Theological Seminary, which has no such powers committed to it, but by the local church with which he is connected. In like manner, missionaries to new regions abroad should be accounted ministers of the churches to which they belong, assigned to service in foreign lands ; they should therefore be ordained by these churches. Philip, baptizing the eunuch, is to be regarded as an organ of the church at Jerusalem. Both home missionaries and foreign missionaries are the true New Testament evangelists ; and both, as organs of the home churches to which they belong, are not under obligation ta take letters of dismission to the churches they gather. Their ordinations, like all other ordinations, should be regarded as having no continuous validity after the facts upon which they were based have ceased to exist. Retirement from the office of public religious teacher should work a forfeit- ure of the official character. The authorization granted by the Council was based upon a previous recognition of a divine call. When, by reason of permanent withdrawal from the ministry and devotion to wholly secular occupations, there remains no longer any divine call to be recognized, all authority and standing as a Christian minister should cease also. There are many curious and interesting questions suggested by this dis- cussion, upon which we have not touched, and upon which no general agree- ment has yet been reached among us. We are convinced, however, that the principles which have been laid down afford the true basis for the solution of these questions, and that the correctness of the principles themselves may be either proved by positive Scripture statements or justly deduced there- from. We have attempted to point out certain practical methods of carry- ing out these principles, and of guarding them from misapprehension and neglect. A thorough exhibition of them as centering in the direct subjec- tion of each church, as of each soul, to Christ the Lord, and an application of them to all the practical exigencies of our church and denominational life, is yet a work of the future. XXIII. THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY ON YOUNG MEN IN COURSES OF PREPARATORY STUDY.* Just a hundred years ago this very morning, behind some half-finished earth-works and a rail fence rilled in with new-mown hay, about a thousand undisciplined militia-men undertook to defend Breed's Hill, near Boston, from the attack of two thousand British regulars. It was a hotter day than this has been, and the red-coats, heavily laden with rations for themselves and ball-cartridges for the Yankees, moved slowly up toward the fortifica- tions which these latter had been throwing up during the night. Putnam and Prescott went about among our men, saying : "Aim low; wait till you can see the whites of their eyes ! " That waiting was a test of of courage, it is not easy to wait with a mighty column of troops moving upon you. But the raw recruits did wait till the British were only ten rods away, and then, taking sure and deadly aim, they fired. With that fire, scores of the advancing soldiers fell ; the survivors faltered and began retreat. Their officers drove them back, and even pricked them with their swords to pre- vent their running away ; reinforcing columns advanced ; a second charge was made, but as before, half of the attacking force fell before the withering fire. If the Americans had only been provided with powder, they might have won the day, but one round more exhausted their ammunition, and at the third general advance of the British, our men were obliged to retire. The battle commonly called Bunker Hill had been fought, and the inspira- tion and the lessons of it had become matters of history. Lost though it was, it was as good as a battle gained. It convinced our countrymen that war was upon them, and that they must fight it through. It nerved America for the long and bitter conflict that followed, by proving that British regu- lars were no more than a match for American volunteers. It furnished the type and seed of many after battles and of that final victory, which was gained by patience and fortitude and trust in God and the shedding of pat- riotic blood. Here in these pleasant seats of learning and of religion, and at this quiet hour, there are no counter-signs and sentries and roll-calls after battle, and groans of wounded men, such as were there at Bunker Hill on the evening of that 17th of June, a hundred years ago. But I cannot repress the feeling that we are deciding the future, and planting the seeds of greatness or of shame, as really as they did then. A few men like Warren, who were will- ing to give their lives for their country, determined that day their country's * An address written for the Anniversary of Peddie Institute, Hightstown, N. J., June 17, 1875. 270 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. position among the nations of the earth. And so you, in these preparatory schools, and in these societies that represent and adorn them, stand at the fountain head of coming history. What you are and what you do and what you resolve here, will make its mark not only upon your own lives but upon the character and fate of this and of other generations. We cannot estimate too highly the importance of this early work and of the decisions which are now made. Our philosophers and educators are coming to see that the elementary drill determines the future of the student and of the man. Let the primary instruction be absolutely thorough, and subsequent advancement will be natural and rapid. Let the boy begin his Latin with a listless and indolent and superficial spirit, and all after opportunities will serve him in vain. And so with regard to early impulses and aspirations. The first notions with regard to one's calling in life, and to the honorableness and advantage of the several pursuits in which men's hands and hearts aro engaged, have much to do with the forming of the young man's character and the determining of his after failure or success. And this thought leads me to the subject of my address this evening. I wish to speak to you with regard to one of these pursuits in life, which is seldom formally commended to young men, but in which we all ought to be deeply interested. Standing, as I do, in a place where proper thoughts of it are so much to be desired, both for the sake of those who are planning their life-work, as well as for the sake of the church and the world, I feel called to speak to you for a few moments of the nature of the Christian ministry and its claims upon young men in course of study, as a pursuit worthy in itself, attractive in its sur- roundings, noble in its results. I do not need to say more than a single word with regard to the nature of the Christian ministry. We all agree that there is a class of men set apart to be special representatives and spokesmen for God to make known his will, to vindicate his claims, to proclaim his goodness, to win men to his service and love. There have been false priests and ministers, but they have only been counterfeits of the true, and their success has been possible only because there is an instinct in the human heart that bids it hope and wait for a revelation from God. The world has bowed to priests more than it ever has to kings, and that for the reason that the world has always recog- nized that its highest, grandest interests lay in the unseen and eternal. And now to be a true interpreter of this unseen universe to men who long eagerly to solve its problems, to be the messenger of forgiveness and peace from this dread yet loving God, from whom men know themselves to be exiled and banished by reason of transgression, to be the divinely appointed helper of all righteousness and herald of immortal life to the sorrowing and perish- ing, this is a higher vocation than any other known to men, by as much as it has to do with grander themes and more important destinies. Other callings, however noble, have to do with the finite and temporal, this with the infinite and eternal. He who is honored with this calling is the partner of the living God in that work for the doing of which the floor of the heavens was laid with its mosaic of constellations, and the curtain of night and chaos rose at the creation. But let my position and aim be fully understood. I do not take for granted that it is the bounden duty of all men, or even of all Christian men, THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN" MINISTRY. 271 to be ministers of the gospel. " No man taketh his honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron." The Scripture tells us that "there was a man sent from God whose name was John," and that single sentence, like some painter's first rough sketch of a great picture, expresses, even more vividly than the finished portraiture, the essential secret of his life and work. John the Baptist was great, not only because he was commissioned by God, but because he knew and fulfilled this divine commission. But what was true of John's call may be true also of thousands whose special vocation is different from his. There are other callings, and many of them, in which men serve their generation by the will of God. Indeed, every man is called of God to do some special work for him, whether it be at the car- penter's bench, or on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war, or amid the strifes of the forum, whether by selling goods, or by healing men's bodily diseases, or by extending the area of scientific knowledge. And every man may find out what his calling is, and have the nobleness that comes from working consciously in the line of the divine purposes. Even though you may not be called to public preaching of the gospel, still yon are called. As you value your interests for time and eternity, learn what it is for which God has created you and sent you into the world, and then give yourself body and soul to the work which he has for you to do. But I am persuaded that God's call to enter the ministry is a commoner one than we think, aud that this call is often ignored by those to whom it comes, or if not ignored, at least questioned and resisted. This arises partly from wrong conceptions of the method in which the call is made known. Young men fancy that that call consists in some audible voice, or physical impression, or supernatural conviction of duty. I venture to say that many men are called who have never known any of these. Let us remember that God's Spirit works from within, not from without. The Spirit does not supersede our own faculties, but energizes and works through them. Him- self inaudible and invisible, he makes us hear and see what truth and duty are. But then, if we be naturally timid and distrustful, our convictions of religious duty will partake of this timidity and distrust. We shall have to weigh evidence and act according to the balance of probability. In this matter of determining whether we are called to the ministry, therefore, just as in determining whether we are called to be lawyers or merchants, it belongs to us to consider our endowments and opportunities for culture, our natural and our spiritual tastes, the advice and opinion of judicious friends, the impulses of our hearts when we are most under the influence of the Spirit of God. And as, in the person called, God's work does not exclude but implies a natural process of consideration and judgment, so it does not exclude but implies the cooperation of others. That was a strange notion of divine sovereignty which used to forbid the mother from praying for her own child, or urging him to become a Christian. As if that would interfere with God's work ! God's work in turning the sinner involves our work of warning and kindly invitation. And so God's work of calling men, into the ministry of the gospel involves our work of seeking out young men, and lay- ing before them the needs of the world and the claims of the Christian ministry. Of old, the churches selected fit men and laid upon them this responsibility, and when they fled from it, hunted for them until they found 272 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. them and obtained their submission to the voice of the congregation. And modern times are not without notable instances of men whose first thought of preaching has been suggested by the formal action of the church to which they belonged. Mistakes have sometimes without doubt been made, and the voice of the church is not final and authoritative. There must be the inward feeling of the candidate himself responding to this call, if it does not, indeed, precede it. But this is what I urge not only the privilege but the duty of Christian people to seek out those who have natural gifts for the ministry and who are providentially situated so that they can prepare for it, and to lay upon them the responsibility of considering and deciding whether God does not call them to devote themselves to the work of preaching the gospel to their fellow-men. It is our business to say to such young men, not that it is their duty to preach Christ's gospel, but that it is their duty to consider whether this may not be their duty, and, as a help to such consideration, set before them the real nature of ministerial work and the manifold arguments which incite a lover of Christ to enter upon it. Such influence on my part and yours, is needful to counteract false impres- sions which have become prevalent in our day impressions which work to the prejudice of the ministry, when its claims are considered by young men in course of study. We live in an age when the outward is all-absorbing. In the rush and noise and show of our money-getting time, the pursuits that are intellectual and spiritual constantly tend to be undervalued. Palpable results are sought, and it is deemed a hardship to spend in study the early years that might be employed in learning a trade or in gaining practical acquaintance with business. And so we have thousands of men successful so far as accumulation of property is concerned, who utterly lack the culture which would enable them to enjoy or to use their gains men who know nothing but business and have no mental resources men shriveled and dried lip at fifty, when with early education their minds might be green and bring forth fruit in old age. In this over-active time it is forgotten that precocity of worldly development is really narrowing to the soul. Does the time of preparation for work in the ministry consume many years of youth ? Well, it only prepares for a more vigorous and broad and joyful manhood devel- opes internal resources of knowledge and sympathy opens deeper foun- tains of beneficent and holy influence. You have one only life on earth to live. Take time to make your preparations thorough. You have one only edifice of character and work to build. Take time to lay the foundations solid and strong. Learn a lesson from Jesus. He had the greatest work man ever had to do. Yet he waited calmly till his thirty years of preparation were finished, before he began it. If God had designed you to begin your work before the time set for the finishing of your studies, he would certainly have had you born earlier. Since he has waited so long for your appear- ance upon the stage, he can wait a few years longer till you are fully ready to serve him. There are undoubtedly infelicities in the life of the minister of the gospel, and no man can serve Christ in the ministry without making great sacrifices. The ordinary minister must resign the hope of luxury and ease. Even the most successful will find that success is purchased only by care and labor. But is it different in other pursuits ? Are not the great fortunes won by THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 273 prolonged and excessive toil? And what proportion of those who enter upon the professions or upon trade achieve a competence ? A celebrated Wall Street merchant told me that not one in a hundred that set up business in the street survived the vicissitudes of twenty years. The vast majority lost property and hope. The great money-marts are strewn with wrecks, if we could only see them. While the ministry offers few golden prizes, it does ofi'er as safe and sure a support to a faithful man as business does. As the result of extensive observation it can be said that "they that wait upon the Lord shall not want any good thing." Levi had no portion with the tribes, but the Lord was his inheritance. What David said of the righteous in general is even more true of the ministers of the gospel : " I have not seen them forsaken, nor their seed begging bread." But since there are popular impressions of the sort I have mentioned, it is no more than fair to oppose to these certain undoubted advantages and felicities of the minister's lot. I do this, not to give a rose-colored picture of clerical life, not to influence any man to enter the ministry from worldly motives, but simply to counteract and counterbalance the false notions insensibly received from others. I feel that I can do this from experience as well as from observation, since I know of one ministry begun with many forebodings and with many inward and outward trials, which proved immeas- urably happier than fear had prophesied, and which, now that it is past, fulfils the poet's declaration that "blessings brighten as they take their flight." We may safely compare the work of the ministry with that of other professions, as to the comfort of its outward surroundings, its influence upon the character of him who performs it, the nobility and permanence of its results. I do not know any calling in life that has so attractive an aspect at the start, as that of the ministry. The young physician or lawyer, after com- pleting his preparatory studies, has to enter upon his work as a stranger in the community and a competitor of those who have had the experience and the success of years. He seldom has the support and sympathy of influen- tial friends. He must first struggle for the acquaintance and confidence of others. His first years are happy if he can secure a bare subsistence. Only in middle life does he reach a generous support. Wealth and position belong to advanced years. But the young minister, on the other hand, begins life with sympathizing friends around him, limited in number only by the mem- bership of the church of which he is pastor friends who are considerate and patient and helpful. They cheer him in his despondency and lift him over his failures. He has social position assured to him from the very start access to the most intelligent company which his town affords, and a pecuniary support which suffices for the needs of a man of intellectual tastes. Absolved from worrying cares, and borne along by the consciousness that many a kind Christian heart is praying for him, he throws himself into his work with heart and soul, and gains his first experience of happy and suc- cessful labor in the service of Christ and the church. But mere comfort, whether physical or intellectual, is of little importance, except as it assists the development of character and helps the great aims of life. The attainment of a symmetrical and grandly developed manhood, is there any pursuit more favorable to this than that of the Christian min- 18 x574 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN" MINISTRY. istry ? Consider the variety of circumstances and experiences through which the minister has to pass. He has the life of the study. It is his business to keep his mind full of the best thoughts of the past. To freshen his public discourse, there must of necessity be a constant pondering of the noblest literature. History unrolls her panorama before him. Science opens her secrets. He has opportunities for general investigation and culture, denied to men of other pursuits. The lawyer can hardly give his time to philosophy or science, without prejudicing his success in his chosen calling. But the minister studies these as a part of his calling. He may learn much of polit- ical economy, of geology, of ethics, of art, not only without hindrance to his work as preacher, but with positive advantage to it. And we may safely say that, as a rule, the clergy of the country surpass men of every other pur- suit in the variety of their culture. But, with these intellectual opportunities, there is a peculiar field for the life of the emotions. The minister cannot become a recluse, for he must constantly meet, both in public and private, with hundreds of persons of every age and condition, must know many of their inmost experiences of joy and sorrow, and in this intercourse must have his own sympa- thies drawn out and developed. This wide circle of association, with its practical calls upon the tenderest feelings of his nature, furnishes a large part of the joy and satisfaction of a true minister's life. The world is full of sorrow ; every house has its skeleton. Multitudes of people, even in Christian churches, have no one but the minister whom they can recognize as friend no other to whom they can speak freely with regard to the things which concern them most. The minister needs only the endowment of sincere interest in such persons' welfare, to find himself master of their hearts, he has but to keep open ears and they will tell him their doubts and troubles. And the telling is relief. The minister comes back from his round of pastoral work, thanking God that he is permitted to live, and knowing that, if only that one day's work were all he is permitted to do on earth, he has not lived in vain. The Christian minister is in this way drawn out of himself, and made an open-hearted man. But it is not all a life of sympathy, there is adminis- tration of church affairs to employ him, and the meeting of general needs of the community. The minister is leader of public sentiment on the great questions of the day. His work is to apply the law of God to public and private conduct. The range of his preaching is coextensive with the sphere of human knowledge and of human life. The word of God is inexhaustible, and he is to bring forth from its treasures things new and old. But he is to apply the principles of the word to all human relations. How profound the questions he must discuss ! How grand the fields of investigation opened before him ! How magnificent the influence he may wield, in shaping the thought and life of a whole community ! In the last great war, the northern preachers were chief objects of the curses of the secession press. And the southern press was sagacious. It was northern preachers, quite as much as northern generals, that led us through to victory. They nerved the sol- dier's arm they showed government to be God's ordinance they made defense of country a duty owed to God. Who that remembers those times can ever lend ear to the sneers of those who fancy the ministerial calling one of narrow opportunities for culture and influence ! THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 275 A Christian young man, reflecting upon the claims of the different pro- fessions, must sometimes ask : Which of these professions will be most apt to make me a truly religious man ? The Scripture has a sentence like this : Let not the rich man glory in his riches, nor the mighty man in his might, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he knoweth me that is, knoweth God. To know God, this is better than to know all things else, for the whole universe is but a wreath of vapor formed by the breath of God's mouth, or a drop of dew upon the hem of his garment. What life will bring me nearest to God, and keep me there ? Now we all know that we grow like what we think most of. Which of the professions makes God the most frequent and constant object of thought ? which most drives a man to communion with God ? I do not answer without care. I know of such men as Sir Matthew Hale, the keen-sighted lawyer and the Christian judge. His work upon the bench did not prevent his daily hours of prayer. I remember the story of Havelock, the English general in India, who rose for prayer at four o'clock in the morning when the march began at six, and at three when the march began at five. Yet I think it cannot be denied that in the very necessities of Scripture study, and of preaching to the needs of souls, the minister finds a constant incitement to the cultivation of personal piety, such as no other pursuit in life enjoys. Ministers, indeed, may do their work perfunctorily and without converse with God, but such a course is suicidal ; in this neglect, they cut the very sinews of their strength. If a man regarded prayer as the business of a life, would he serve his purpose best by entering other professions or by entering the ministry ? And should we be far wrong, if we regarded a life hid with Christ in God as prior in importance and order to the outward labors of that life ? Life first, and then work! And what pursuit can be compared with the ministry for keeping ever before the eye this need of converse and fellowship with the living God ? I almost reproach myself with having consumed so large a part of your time with the relations of this subject to the personal culture and growth of the man himself. I know it is not our own advantage that most inspires us. Youth has nobler impulses than this. How may I make the most of myself for others ? how may I best make my mark on the world ? how do most service to mankind ? how bring most honor to God ? these are the decisive questions. And when we come to these, I think many can answer without hesitation : "In the Christian ministry." No other agency can take the place of the ministry. God has appointed it as an indispensable means of perfecting the church and propagating the gospel. No power of civilization or of the press or of the sword can ever accomplish those moral wonders which are brought about, when a man clothed with God's power stands up and pleads with beating heart and living voice that men will be reconciled to God. Who can look upon the vast audiences which in London and New York have recently been moved by the proclamation of the simple gospel, without believing that there are capacities of pulpit power yet undeveloped, and that the calling of the preacher has even a grander future before it than it has seen in the past ? To move men in masses by the power of truth this is the grandest work man has to do. Happy he who is called to engage in it. We may adapt to our purpose the simile of good Archbishop 276 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Leighton, and liken the true minister to Amphion with his harp. Ainphion charmed the beasts by his playing, and so moved the hearts of the very stones that they followed his music and built themselves into a city. But the Christian preacher, as the Archbishop says, builds "the walls of a far more famed and beautiful city, even the heavenly Jerusalem, and in such a manner that the stones of this building, being truly and without fable living, and charmed by the pleasant harmony of the gospel, come of their own accord to take their places in the wall." While I deny that the outward infelicities of the preacher's calling are worthy of serious consideration by the side of the compensatory circum- stances and satisfactions which are granted him, more attention is due to the inward trials of his life. Here I would not conceal one atom of the truth. The ministry is in its very nature a life of self-sacrifice. The minister is a servant by the very meaning of the word first a servant of Christ, and then a servant of the church for Jesus' sake. And the servant is not greater than his Lord. The path he treads is the same path his master trod. His power over men is proportioned to the extent to which he enters into their sorrows and mourns over their sins. He cannot fight the evil of this world without appreciating it and ofttimes being weighed down in spirit by the mass and strength of it. Like John, he will sometimes cry : " The whole world lieth in wickedness." Like Jesus, he will have his Gethsemane anguish over the condition of human nature without God. But all this, my friends, is only evidence that he has entered into the mystery of the universe, and gained a truer, deeper knowledge of the reality of things. He who knows holiness and God must deeply feel the contrasts which this world's life presents to all that is pure and divine. The soul that never has been penetrated with anxieties, and has never felt the pressure of the great problems of existence, has not yet risen from childhood to manhood. As Goethe once beautifully wrote : " Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping- vipon his bed has sate, He knows you not, ye heavenly powers." And so, too, there will be times when to declare God's whole mind and will to men who hate the truth, will task all his nerve and courage. Many a time he shall go into his pulpit, feeling that he takes his life in his hand. Many a time he shall prepare for his preaching by struggle and tears before God. But these are the experiences that make men great. These are the prepa- rations that make men powerful. The thunderings and lightnings of the pulpit, that have stirred men's hearts like the peal and smoke of Sinai, were made possible by these inward conflicts and victories. The moving and melting appeals of the preacher, in which self was lost sight of, and the cross of Calvary filled the whole horizon with its glory and its beauty, were born of humiliation and supplication in the closet. Better a thousand times know these inward trials, than to float in air like the gossamer, and be blown hither and thither by every random breeze of this world's folly. May God make us men, and men of power in our generation, original forces to mould human society and turn the currents of earthly life into the channel of his purposes, and with this end, let him fit us for our work by any discipline THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 277 that he may see to be needful for us. A young and brave Christian heart will find not discouragement but stimulus in this knowledge that the goal of the preacher's life is not to be won without dust and toil. Out from the sorrow and sin of the world there sounds to-day the call for men to proclaim the glad news of salvation. During our late war, the drum was heard through our streets, and the call was uttered from pulpit and platform for men to fight for nationality and freedom. A great wave of enthusiasm swept over the land. Young men were ashamed to stay at home, and gave themselves joyfully to the armies of the Kepublic. We honor them to-day, and put their names side by side with those earlier heroes who fought and suffered and died at Lexington and Valley Forge. But there is a constant call for men to reinforce the thinned ranks of Christ's ministry. A hundred churches of note are looking in vain for fit men to lead them. And we have the word of the Lord himself, as he ascended to his Father : "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" a word addressed to you and me as truly as to those who first listened to it. I remember well the time when I was first brought to consider that call. It flashed upon me that with every young man of suitable gifts and oppor- tunities the presumption ought to be that he was called to be Christ's soldier and servant, and that the question with him, if he was a Christian, was not : "Are there any reasons why I should enter upon this work? " but rather : "Are there any reasons why I should not enter upon it?" "I have given myself to Christ," I said then to myself, " why should I not do that work which will most immediately and directly bear upon the advancement of Christ's kingdom in the world ? I expect to spend an eternity in praising and serving him who died for me, why should not my life in heaven and my life on earth be all of one piece all devoted directly to promote the interests and the honor of God ? One only life have I to live ; can I make that life noble and beneficent in any way so well as by giving it to the min- istry of Jesus Christ ? " Ought not these same considerations, that had weight with me, to have weight with some of you also ? The other day I stood in that grand Memorial Hall which the sons of Harvard have built to keep green and sacred the memories of those alumni and students of the college who fell fighting for the unity of the nation in our great civil war. On marble tablets beneath carven arches I read the names of scores upon scores of good men and true who had died for their country. The great painted window shed a subdued light upon the scene, and I trod softly as if my footsteps might wake some sleeper from his rest. My eye wandered upward and caught the words from the Latin Vulgate : " Qui enim voluerit animam suam salvamfacere, perdet earn; qui autem perdiderit animam suam propter me, inveniet earn." " For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. " Was not the legend true ? And does it not apply to all self- sacrificing labor for Christ and specially to work for Christ in the ministry ? Those young men whose names are now inscribed so grandly on their Alma Mater's roll of honor gave their lives for something grander than life their country's unity and existence and honor. It was faith in freedom and free government that carried them through and these things were invisible realities. But there is another government grander still the kingdom of 278 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. our God a kingdom which shall endure *vhen all earthly governments shall crumble and perish. It is a nobler thing to give our lives to that. Those fallen heroes are joined now, in the nation's gratitude, with others of an earlier day who laid the foundations of our governmental system in their blood. Their reward is fresh and sure. But this reward of human fame is nothing to the reward of him who lives and dies a true soldier of Christ in the min- istry. His is the immortal honor that only God can give and the ever- lasting thanks of fellow-creatures, whose rescue from the corruptions of earth and whose place at God's right hand are due to his faithful service in their behalf. Dear friends, remember that earthly honors fade. Earthly mausoleums cease to be. To have one redeemed and deathless human soul as the monument of our life's work on earth, will be better than all the fame that has been won on all earth's fields of battle. There have been men who have heard God's call and who have refused obedience, but it has been only to lose in character and hope and true success for this world and we know not how much in the world to come. We cannot safely cheat God. He will have his own with usury. There was Erasmus. Great scholar as he was, three centuries and a half ago, in those troublous times when men's minds were seething with new ideas of faith and freedom, he cared more for ease and reputation than he did for truth. He might have wielded a mighty influence in behalf of the rising Reforma- tion, but he declared that he never was cut out for a martyr. And so while Luther was bold as a lion, Erasmus timidly concealed his sentiments and tried to be friends with the Papacy and with those who attacked it too. He sought ease, but both parties suspected him and denounced him, till he found his position of neutrality a bed of thorns instead of a bed of roses. He sought to guard his reputation, but he blackened it forever. Courting the favor of men, in a time when nothing but honest, outspoken decision for the right would do, his name has come to be a synonym for pusillanimity and moral cowardice. He sacrificed all his nobility of character, and what did he gain ? Nothing absolutely nothing. He only demonstrated that he that findeth his life shall lose it. But, says one, I am ready to do God's will, but these feeble powers of mine how can they accomplish anything in a work so grand and holy as you suggest? Let me answer, as God answered Jeremiah, when he protested that he was but a child, and could not take up the work of the prophet which God had laid upon him. " Say not I am a child ; for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. " Do you not remember how Jesus took the five loaves and multi- plied them ? It was a symbol of his methods in using the gifts of his servants. He takes the few talents, and makes them enough in number to feed a mul- titude. He takes the weak, and makes them strong enough to confound the mighty. Be sure that he never sends out a soldier at his own charges. He equips the soldier for the battle. None of us have ever yet begun to imagine how much Christ can make of us for his own glory, if we only put ourselves wholly into his hands. Without him we can do nothing, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthened us. But this address is for all. It may be that the work of preaching Christ's THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 279 gospel, as his chosen aud official representative, is one from which by special circumstances you are shut out. Still you may take the spirit and lesson of this occasion with you. The spirit is the spirit of service, whatever the vocation may be. The lesson is that, giving up our life to God and for God, we find it to our eternal gain. We find it in part in this world. There are precious and sacred moments in the history of the consecrated man, when for a little he seems to have found his true self and to breathe already the atmosphere of heaven. A moment ago, all things seemed dim and unreal, now he sees God and spiritual realities with perfect clearness. I can com- pare it to nothing better than the change which takes place when you sud- denly bring a microscope to a focus. The object is just before you in the centre of the field of view, but your object-glass is not adjusted to it either you do not see it at all, or you see it very dimly. But a slight turn of the screw, and lo ! it comes out before you as clear and bright as if it had been just created. But, you say, such glimpses of truth are so rare ! Well, they they need not be rare. As you go on in the Christian life, the seeing habit will be more and more the habit of your mind you will endure as continu- ally seeing him who is invisible. All labors and trials will become helpers to you, drawing you nearer to God and strengthening your faith . Even the cannon-ball that brings devastation in its track shall open for you, near the spot whereon you stand, some unknown spring of fresh and living water. What a wonderful prayer-meeting that was which the Christian general whom I have already mentioned held in the idol temple at Rangoon ! In the hand of each of the idol gods that lined the sides of the great apartment, his men put a torch, and by the light of these torches in the idols' hands, they held their worship of the Most High. So for all of us who give our lives to the service of God, the dark and trying events that threatened our peace shall be turned into torch -bearers to light up our worship and point out to us his way. But this is but the prophecy of another discovery to come. Only when we reach the city where we need no candle, neither light of the sun, shall we know what it is to " find our life." Christ is our life, and we shall find him, and with Christ we shall find all that we need all that we were made for. Heaven will be the place, and eternity the time, for the manifestation of the sons of God. Oh, how we shall rejoice there, that we were willing to lose the life that was transient and earthly, for the sake of the life that was spiritual and eternal ! Just one thing more I wish to say, and that is, that this life of service to God may be lived by every young person before me. It is the very nature of the Christian life to implant within us virtues which we have not in our- selves, and to develop and strengthen them thereafter, until we and they are inseparable. You may by reason of certain experiences of temptation and transgression have lost all confidence in yourself. Remember that you may still put confidence in Christ. That is a most instructive example of Bishop Cranmer in the reign of Bloody Mary, the persecutor of the Protestants. You recollect how, in a moment of weakness and terror, he abjured the faith, and assented to the doctrines of the Church of Rome ; but you remember also how, when reason and the fear of God returned, he repented of his sin and suffered at the stake, holding out first into the fire the hand that had signed the recantation, till it was entirely consumed. Christ gave his servant 280 THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN" MINISTRY. strength to put away all his fears, and leave evidence to the world of his saving power that will remain to all after ages. So there is no one of you, however weak he may seem to himself to be, that cannot obtain strength from God to stand even single-handed for the Master. "Act then act in the living present, heart within, and God o'erhead," and no man can meas- ure the ultimate results of your influence. When John Knox died, a nobleman at his grave uttered over his coffin this memorable sentence : " Here lies one that never feared the face of man." John Knox's voice had rung out like a trumpet through Scotland. Instead of his fearing the face of man, the wicked, even though they held the highest seats in the kingdom, feared him, as Herod of old feared John the Baptist. And what was the secret of it? Simply this, he feared God so much, that no room was left for fear of man. Let this be my last word to the members of these Societies : "Fear God, and you shall have no other fear. Honor God, and you shall be honored by him. Lose your lives for Christ's sake, and you shall find them to life eternal. And in the great coming day, they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." XXIV. SOURCES OF SUPPLY FOR THE MINISTRY.* I wish to call attention to the fact that the proportion of our thoroughly trained young men who enter the ministry is gradually but seriously dimin- ishing. The deficiency of which I speak is not confined to our own denomi- nation. A few months ago I collected the latest triennial catalogues of our leading colleges, and constructed an elaborate table of statistics, in order to discover the precise proportion of college graduates that chose the ministry as a calling in the earlier and in the later decades of their history. The result was surprising. Yale College in the first years of its history gave seventy-two per cent, of its graduates to the ministry. Fifty years ago, the proportion had already become reduced to thirty-one per cent. During the last ten years of which the triennial gives professional statistics, the propor- tion is only eleven per cent. Fifty years ago, Williams College gave fifty- nine per cent, of its graduates to the ministry, now it gives only fifteen ; Amherst College shows a reduction during the same half-century from sixty-one per cent, to twenty -six per cent. ; Hamilton College from thirty- eight per cent, to twenty-three per cent. ; Brown University from thirty -two per cent, to seventeen per cent. ; and the University of Rochester, which in the first ten years of its history sent forty-six per cent, of its graduates into the ministry, during the last ten years of which we have a record, sends a proportion of only twenty-two per cent, t It is evident that we have before us a general fact of our times which ought to interest us, not only as Baptists, but as Christians. What we see of decline in this respect cannot be due to any special defects of method or administration into which our Baptist colleges have fallen. The evil is common to all our Christian colleges. The greatness of it may be partially appreciated when we consider that the result of averaging the statistics of the six colleges mentioned is to show that, while fifty years ago forty per cent, of our college graduates entered the ministry, we have now reached a time when only seventeen per cent, of those who have received a complete college training devote themselves to the ministry of the gospel. We may * An Address before the Rhode Island Baptist Social Union, Providence, May, 1877 ; printed in the Watchman, Boston, October, 1878. + An article by Rev. George P. Morris, of Montclair, N. J., in the Independent of Jan- uary 12, 1888, brings these statistics down to the date of the present publication, and adds much of interest. The proportion of ministers among the alumni of Harvard Col- lege, from 1642 to 1650, was 55 per cent.; it has regularly diminished, until from 1860 to- 1870, it was 8 per cent., and from 1870 to 1876, it was 1. 2 per cent. At Princeton, from 1748 to 1760, it was 49 per cent ; from 1870 to 1877, it was 18 per cent. At Yale College, from 1870 to 1880, the proportion was 8 per cent. ; at Williams, from 1880 to 1883, it was I'-'. 7 per cent. ; at Amherst, from 1880 to 18H2, it was 13. 5 per cent. These facts demon- strate that, since the above address was written, the decline has steadily continued. 281 282 SOUKCES OF SUPPLY FOK THE MINISTRY. appreciate it yet more fully when we consider that while the absolute num- ber of students in these colleges has increased fifty per cent, during the half -century, the absolute number of their graduates entering the ministry has decreased thirty-three per cent. In other words, while our population has grown immensely in numbers and culture, the supply of ministers fitted by thorough training to meet the intellectual and spiritual demands of the time has not half kept pace with our growth in other respects, and is abso- lutely one-third smaller than it was fifty years ago. The instances I have cited are typical instances of our old and large institutions. Have other sources of supply been opened which might render these unnecessary ? New colleges have certainly been founded, and of their graduates some have chosen preaching as their profession in life. But the new colleges have not made up for the lack of the old ones ; they have had all they could do to secure a foothold ; have not graduated any comparatively great number of students ; above all, have not sent into the fields covered by the old colleges enough men to make any perceptible difference in the result. And in the West and South, the graduates of the younger colleges show no more inclination to devote themselves to the gospel ministry than do the graduates of those which have been longer established, in fact, I think it will be found that the influences which have led at the East to the results I have detailed, have operated yet more powerfully at the West, so that the facts I have stated fairly exhibit the real condition of things throughout the country. It would be some alleviation and comfort if we could believe that, as the supply has decreased in numbers, there had been a counterbalancing increase in the native and acquired ability of those who enter upon the sacred office. But I fear it cannot be argued that better quality has made up for dimin- ished quantity. The average amount of talent in a hundred or a thousand young men is a pretty constant quantity. When you diminish the number, you diminish your chances of finding among the number men of superior ability. We have better schools, better methods, better training, than we had fifty years ago, but these do not compensate for the lack of the best sort of raw material. No amount of grinding or polishing will give a good edge to a tool of soft iron. Schools, however excellent, cannot transform second- rate men into first-rate ministers. And it seems to me that I perceive a marked and increasing disposition on the part of the ablest and most influential men in our college classes to turn away from the ministry to other pursuits, so that the proportion of talent entering the ministry is even less than the proportion of numbers. But are there not a multitude of ministers who can find no pastoral charge ? I am reminded of an anecdote of Daniel Webster. He was asked by a young man who proposed to study law, whether there was any room at the bar. " O, yes," said Mr. Webster, " plenty of room, high up ! " So there might be a minister at every cross-road, and yet a thousand churches be begging in vain for pastors thoroughly fitted for their work. Of this last sort there is no overplus, but a great and constantly increasing dearth. The culture of our communities has proceeded faster than the culture of our ministry. We must provide a more advanced culture, and we must give the best brains of our sons to receive it, or the civilization of the age will run away from the church. SOURCES OF SUPPLY FOR THE MINISTRY. 283 Let us face the problem. We have before us a phenomenon of our times a continually growing tendency among our educated young men to enter upon other vocations rather than the ministry. I wish, if possible, to assign some of the chief causes of this tendency, that we may wisely labor to coun- teract it. It seems to me that we shall not reach the root of the matter unless we grant that for this general phenomenon of our Christianity, which manifests itself in Germany and England as well as in the United States, we must find a subtle, potent and'pervasive cause in the philosophical spirit of