LITEEATUBE AND DOGMA
 
 LITEEATUEE & DOGMA 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 TOWARDS A BETTER APPREHENSION 
 OF THE BIBLE 
 
 MATTHEW^ARNOLD 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1903 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 " quam, inagna multitudo dulcedinis TUCK, Domine, gwam abscondisti 
 timentibus Te !" PSALM xxxi. (xxx. in Vulgate) 19. 
 
 " La tendance a I'ordre ne peut-elle faire une partie essentielle de nos 
 inclinations, de notre instinct, comme la tendance a la conservation, a la 
 reproduction ? " SENANCOUR. 
 
 " And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet under- 
 stood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, it must be in the same way 
 as natural knowledge is come at: by the continuance and progress of 
 learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing, 
 and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked 
 and disregarded by the generality of the world. Nor is it at all incredible 
 that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should 
 contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena 
 and the same faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries 
 in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were 
 equally in the possession of mankind several thousand years before." 
 
 BUTLER. 
 
 " If a great change is to be made, the minds of men will be fitted to it, 
 the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every 
 hope, will forward it ; and then they, who persist in opposing this mighty 
 current, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than 
 the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse 
 and obstinate."
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 AN inevitable revolution, of which we all recognise 
 the beginnings and signs, but which has already spread, 
 perhaps, farther than most of us think, is befalling the 
 religion in which we have been brought up. In those 
 countries where religion has been most loved, this 
 revolution will be felt the most keenly ; felt through 
 all its stages and in all its incidents. In no country 
 will it be more felt than in England. This cannot be 
 otherwise. It cannot be but that the revolution should 
 come, and that it should be here felt passionately, 
 profoundly, painfully ; but no one is on that account 
 in the least dispensed from the utmost duty of con- 
 siderateness and caution. There is no surer proof 
 of a narrow and ill-instructed mind than to think 
 and uphold that what a man takes to be the truth on 
 religious matters is always to be proclaimed. Our 
 truth on these matters, and likewise the error of 
 others, is something so relative that the good or harm 
 likely to be done by speaking ought always to be 
 taken into account. " I keep silence at many things," 
 says Goethe, "for I would not mislead men, and am 
 well content if others can find satisfaction in what 
 gives me offence." The man who believes that his
 
 vi LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 truth on religious matters is so absolutely the truth, 
 that say it when, and where, and to whom he will, 
 he cannot but do good with it, is in our day almost 
 always a man whose truth is half blunder, and wholly 
 useless. 
 
 To be convinced, therefore, that our current theology 
 is false, is not necessarily a reason for publishing that 
 conviction. The theology may be false, and yet one 
 may do more harm in attacking it than by keeping 
 silence and waiting. To judge rightly the time and 
 its conditions is the great thing ; there is a time, as 
 the Preacher says, to speak, and a time to keep silence. 
 If the present time is a time to speak, there must be 
 a reason why it is so. 
 
 And there is a reason ; and it is this. Clergymen 
 and ministers of religion are full of lamentations over 
 what they call the spread of scepticism, and because 
 of the little hold which religion now has on the masses 
 of the people, the lapsed masses, as some call them. 
 Practical hold on them it never, perhaps, had very 
 much, but they did not question its truth, and they 
 held it in considerable awe. As the best of them 
 raised themselves up out of a merely animal life, 
 religion attracted and engaged them. But now they 
 seem to have hardly any awe of it at all, and they 
 freely question its truth. And many of the most 
 successful, energetic, and ingenious of the artisan class, 
 who are steady and rise, are now found either of 
 themselves rejecting the Bible altogether, or following 
 teachers who tell them the Bible is an exploded 
 superstition. Let me quote from the letter of a
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 working-man, a man himself of no common intelli- 
 gence and temper, a passage that sets this forth very 
 clearly. "Despite the efforts of the churches," he 
 says, " the speculations of the day are working their 
 way down among the people, many of whom are 
 asking for the reason and autJwrily for the things they 
 have been taught to believe. Questions of this kind, 
 too, mostly reach them through doubtful channels ; 
 and owing to this, and to their lack of culture, a 
 discovery of imperfection and fallibility in the Bible 
 leads to its contemptuous rejection as a great priestly 
 imposture. And thus those among the working class 
 who eschew the teachings of the orthodox, slide off 
 towards, not the late Mr. Maurice, nor yet Professor 
 Huxley, but towards Mr. Bradlaugh." 
 
 Despite the efforts of the churches, the writer tells us, 
 this contemptuous rejection of the Bible happens. 
 And we regret the rejection as much as the clergy and 
 ministers of religion do. There may be others who do 
 not regret it, but we do. All that the churches can 
 say about the importance of the Bible and its religion 
 we concur in. And it is the religion of the Bible that 
 is professedly in question with all the churches when 
 they talk of religion and lament its prospects. With 
 Catholics as well as Protestants, and with all the sects 
 of Protestantism, this is so ; and from the nature of 
 the case it must be so. What the religion of the 
 Bible is, how it is to be got at, they may not agree ; 
 but that it is the religion of the Bible for which they 
 contend they all aver. " The Bible," says Dr. Newman, 
 " is the record of the whole revealed faith ; so far ali
 
 viii LITERATURE AND DOGMA, 
 
 parties agree." Now, this religion of the Bible we 
 say they cannot value more than we do. If we hesitate 
 to adopt strictly their language about its oZZ-importance, 
 that is only because we take an uncommonly large 
 view of human perfection, and say, speaking strictly, 
 that there go to this certain things, art, for instance, 
 and science, which the Bible hardly meddles with. 
 The difference between us and them, however, is more 
 a difference of theoretical statement than of practical 
 conclusion. Speaking practically, and looking at the 
 very large part of human life engaged by the Bible, 
 at the comparatively small part unengaged by it> we 
 are quite willing, like the churches, to call the Bible 
 arid its religion aZ/-important. 
 
 All this agreement there is, both in words and in 
 things, between us and the churches. And yet, when 
 we behold the clergy and ministers of religion lament 
 the neglect of religion and aspire to restore it, how 
 must we feel that to restore religion as they under- 
 stand it, to re-inthrone the Bible as explained by our 
 current theology, whether learned or popular, is ab- 
 solutely and for ever impossible ! as impossible as to 
 restore the feudal system, or the belief in witches. 
 Let us admit that the Bible cannot possibly die ; but 
 then the churches cannot even conceive the Bible with- 
 out the gloss they at present put upon it, and this gloss, 
 as certainly, cannot possibly live. And it is not a 
 gloss which one church or one sect puts upon the 
 Bible and another does not ; it is the gloss they all 
 put upon it, and call the substratum of belief common 
 to all Christian churches, and largely shared with
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 them, even by natural religion. It is this so-called 
 axiomatic basis which must go, and it supports all the 
 rest If the Bible were really inseparable from this 
 and depended upon it, then Mr. Bradlaugh would 
 have his way and the Bible would go too ; since this 
 basis is inevitably doomed. For whatever is to stand 
 must rest upon something which is verifiable, not un- 
 verifiable. Now, the assumption with which all the 
 churches and sects set out, that there is "a Great 
 Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the universe," and that from him the 
 Bible derives its authority, cannot at present, at any 
 rate, be verified. 
 
 Those who " ask for the reason and authority for 
 the things.they have been taught to believe," as the 
 people, we are told, are now doing, will begin at the 
 beginning. Eude and hard reasoners as they are, 
 they will never consent to admit, as a self-evident 
 axiom, the preliminary assumption with which the 
 churches start. But this preliminary assumption 
 governs everything which in our current theology 
 follows it ; and it is certain, therefore, that the people 
 will not receive our current theology. So, if they are 
 to receive the Bible, we must find for the Bible some 
 other basis than that which the churches assign to it, 
 a verifiable basis and not an assumption; and this, 
 again, will govern everything which comes after. This 
 new religion of the Bible the people may receive ; the 
 version now current of the religion of the Bible they 
 never will receive. 
 
 Here, then, is the problem : to find, for the Bible,
 
 r LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 a basis in something which can be verified, instead oi 
 in something which has to be assumed. So true and 
 prophetic are Vinet's words: "We must" he said, 
 " make it our business to bring forward the rational 
 side of Christianity, and to show that for thinkers, 
 too, it has a right to be an authority." Yes, and the 
 problem we have stated must be the first stage in the 
 business. With this unsolved, all other religious dis- 
 cussion is idle trifling. 
 
 This is why Dissent, as a religious movement of 
 our day, would be almost droll, if it were not, from 
 the tempers and actions it excites, so extremely irre- 
 ligious. But what is to be said for men, aspiring to 
 deal with the cause of religion, who either cannot see 
 that what the people now require is a religion of the 
 Bible quite different from that which any of the 
 churches or sects supply ; or who, seeing this, spend 
 their energies in fiercely battling as to whether the 
 Church should be a national institution or no ? The 
 question, at the present juncture, is in itself so 
 absolutely unimportant ! The thing is, to recast 
 religion. If this is done, the new religion will be the 
 national one ; if it is not done, separating the nation^ 
 in its collective and corporate character, from religion, 
 will not do it. It is as if men's minds were much 
 unsettled about mineralogy, and the teachers of it 
 were at variance, and no teacher was convincing, and 
 many people, therefore, were disposed to throw the 
 study of mineralogy overboard altogether. What 
 would naturally be the first business for every friend 
 of the study? Surely, to establish on safe grounds
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 the value of the study, and to put its claims in a new 
 light where they could no longer be denied. But if 
 he acted as our Dissenters act in religion, what would 
 he do 1 Give himself, heart and soul, to a furious 
 crusade against keeping the Government School of 
 Mines ! 
 
 Meanwhile, however, there is now an end to all 
 fear of doing harm by gainsaying the received theology 
 of the churches and sects. For this theology is itself 
 now a hindrance to the Bible rather than a help. 
 Nay, to abandon it, to put some other construction 
 on the Bible than this theology puts, to find some 
 other basis for the Bible than this theology finds, is 
 indispensable, if we would have the Bible reach the 
 people. And this is the aim of the following essay : 
 to show that, when we come to put the right construc- 
 tion on the Bible, we give to the Bible a real experi- 
 mental basis, and keep on this basis throughout; 
 instead of any basis of unverifiable assumption to 
 start with, followed by a string of other unverifiable 
 assumptions of the like kind, such as the received 
 theology necessitates. 
 
 And this aim we cannot seek without coming in 
 sight of another aim, too, which we have often and 
 often pointed out, and tried to recommend : culture, 
 the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been 
 known and said in the world, and thus with the 
 history of the human spirit. One cannot go far in 
 the attempt to bring in, for the Bible, a right con- 
 struction, without seeing how necessary is something 
 of culture to its being admitted and used. The cor-
 
 xii LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 respondent we have above quoted notices how the 
 lack of culture disposes people to conclude at once, 
 from any imperfection or fallibility in the Bible, that 
 it is a priestly imposture. To a certain extent, this 
 is the fault not of people's want of culture, but of the 
 priests and theologians themselves, who for centuries 
 have kept assuring men that perfect and infallible the 
 Bible is. Still, even without this confusion added 'by 
 his theological instructors, the homo unius libri, the 
 man of no range in his reading, must almost inevitably 
 misunderstand the Bible, cannot treat it largely 
 enough, must be inclined to treat it all alike, and to 
 press every word. 
 
 For, on the one hand, he has not enough experience 
 of the way in which men have thought and spoken, 
 to feel what the Bible -writers are about; to read 
 between the lines, to discern where he ought to rest 
 with his whole weight, and where he ought to pass 
 lightly. On the other hand, the void and hunger in 
 his mind, from want of aliment, almost irresistibly 
 impels him to fill it by taking literally and amplifying 
 certain data which he finds in the Bible, whether they 
 ought to be so dealt with or no. Our mechanical and 
 materialising theology, with its insane licence of 
 affirmation about God, its insane licence of affirmation 
 about a future state, is really the result of the poverty 
 and inanition of our minds. It is because we cannot 
 trace God in history that we stay the craving of our 
 minds with a fancy-account of him, made up by putting 
 scattered expressions of the Bible together, and taking 
 them literally ; it is because we have such a scanty
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 sense of the life of humanity, that we proceed in the 
 like manner in our scheme of a future state. He that 
 cannot watch the God of the Bible, and the salvation 
 of the Bible, gradually and on an immense scale dis- 
 covering themselves and becoming, will insist on seeing 
 them ready-made, and in such precise and reduced 
 dimensions as may suit his narrow mind. 
 
 To understand that the language of the Bible is 
 fluid, passing, and literary, not rigid, fixed, and scien- 
 tific, is the first step towards a right understanding 
 of the Bible. But to take this very first step, some 
 experience of how men have thought and expressed 
 themselves, and some flexibility of spirit, are necessary; 
 and this is culture. Much fruit may be got out of the 
 Bible without it, and with those narrow and material- 
 ised schemes of God and a future state which we 
 have mentioned ; that we do not deny, but it is not 
 the important point at present. The important point 
 is, that the diffusion everywhere of some notion of the 
 processes of the experimental sciences, processes 
 falling in, too, very well with the hard and positive 
 character of the life of "the people," the point is 
 that this diffusion does lead " the people " to ask for 
 the grownd and authority for those precise schemes of 
 God and a future state which are presented to them, 
 and to see clearly and scornfully the failure to give it. 
 The failure to give it is inevitable, because given it 
 cannot be ; but whereas in the training, life, and 
 sentiment of the well-to-do classes there is much to 
 make them disguise the failure to themselves and not 
 insist upon it, in the training, life, and sentiment of
 
 xiv LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 the people there is next to nothing. So that, as fai 
 as the people are concerned, the old traditional scheme 
 of the Bible is gone ; while neither they nor the so- 
 called educated classes have yet anything to put in 
 its place. 
 
 And thus we come back to our old remedy of 
 culture, knowing the best that has been thought and 
 known in the world ; which turns out to be, in another 
 shape, and in particular relation to the Bible : getting 
 the power, through reading, to estimate the proportion and 
 relation in what we read. If we read but a very little, 
 we naturally want to press it all ; if we read a great 
 deal, we are willing not to press the whole of what 
 we read, and we learn what ought to be pressed and 
 what not Now this is really the very foundation of 
 any sane criticism. We have told the Dissenters that 
 their " spirit of watchful jealousy " is wholly destruc- 
 tive and exclusive of the spirit of Christianity. They 
 answer us, that St. Paul talks of "a godly jealousy," 
 and that Jesus Christ uses severe invectives against 
 the Scribes and Pharisees. The Dissenters conclude, 
 therefore, that their jealousy is Christian, because 
 covered by Jesus Christ's use of invective. 
 
 Now, there can be no doubt whatever, that in his 
 invectives against the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus 
 abandoned the mild, uncontentious, winning, inward 
 mode of working (He shall not strive nor cry /) which 
 was his true characteristic, and in which his charm 
 and power lay ; and that there was no chance at all 
 of his gaining by such invectives the persons at whom 
 they were launched. The same may be said of the
 
 PREFACE. xv 
 
 cases where St. Paul lets loose his "godly jealousy," 
 and employs objurgation instead of the mildness which 
 was Jesus Christ's true means, and which Paul, 
 though himself no special adept at it, nevertheless 
 appreciated so worthily, and so earnestly extols. St. 
 Paul certainly had no chance of convincing those 
 whom he calls "dogs," the "concision," utterers of 
 " profane and vain babblings," by such a manner of 
 dealing with them. 
 
 What may, indeed, fairly be said is, that the 
 Pharisees against whom Jesus denounced his woes, 
 or the Judaisers against whom Paul fulminated, 
 were people whom there could be no hope of gaining ; 
 and that not their conversion, but a strong impression 
 on the faithful who read or heard, was the thing 
 aimed at, and very rightly aimed at. And so far at 
 any rate as Jesus Christ's use of invective against the 
 Pharisees is concerned, this may be quite true ; but 
 what a criticism is that, which can gather hence any 
 general defence of jealousy and objurgation as Chris- 
 tian ! For, in the first place, such weapons can have 
 no excuse at all except as employed against individ- 
 uals who are past hope, or against institutions which 
 are palpably monstrosities. They can have none as 
 employed against institutions containing more than 
 half a great nation, and therefore a multitude of 
 individuals good as well as bad. And therefore we 
 see that Jesus Christ never dreamed of assailing the 
 Jewish Church ; all he cared for was to transform it, 
 by transforming as many as were transformable of 
 the individuals composing it. In the second place, 
 
 VOL. v. b
 
 XVi LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 when such means of action have a defence, they are 
 defensible although violations of Jesus Christ's estab- 
 lished rule of working, never commendable as exem- 
 plifications of it. Mildness and sweet reasonableness 
 is the one established rule for Christian working, and 
 no other rule has it or can it have. But, using the 
 Bible in the mechanical and helpless way in which 
 one uses it when one has hardly any other book, men 
 fail to see this, clear as it is. And they do really 
 come to imagine that the Dissenters' " spirit of watch- 
 ful jealousy," may be a Christian temper ; or that a 
 movement like the Liberation Society's crusade against 
 the Church of England may be a Christian work. 
 And it is in this way that Christianity gets dis- 
 credited. 
 
 Now, simple as it is, it is not half enough under- 
 stood, this reason for culture : namely, that to read 
 to good purpose we must read a great deal, and be 
 content not to use a great deal of what we read. We 
 shall never be content not to use the whole, or nearly the 
 whole, of what we read, unless we read a great deal. Yet 
 things are on such a scale, and progress is so gradual, and 
 what one man can do is so bounded, that the moment 
 we press the whole of what any writer says, we fall into 
 error. He touches a great deal : the thing to know 
 is where he is all himself and his best self, where he 
 shows his power, where he goes to the heart of the 
 matter, where he gives us what no other man gives 
 us, or gives us so well. In his valuable Church History, 
 Dr. Stoughton says of Hooker : " The Puritan prin- 
 ciple of the authority and unchangeableness of a
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 revealed Church -polity Hooker substantially admits. 
 Although this deep thinker sometimes talks perilously 
 of altering Christ's laws, he says : ' In the matter of 
 external discipline itself, we do not deny but there 
 are some things whereto the Church is bound till the 
 world's end.'" Dr. Stoughton does not see that to 
 use his Hooker in this way is entirely fallacious. 
 Hooker, this " deep thinker," as Dr. Stoughton truly 
 calls him, one of the four chief names of the English 
 Church, is great by having, signally and above others, 
 or before others and when others had not, the sense, 
 in religion, of history and of historic development 
 So, too, Butler is great by having the sense of philo- 
 sophy, Barrow by having that of morals, Wilson that 
 of practical Christianity. But if Hooker spoke, as he 
 did, of Church-history like a historian, and exploded 
 the Puritan figment, due to a defective historic sense, 
 of a revealed Church -polity, a Scriptural Church - 
 order, if Hooker did this, this was so new that he 
 could not possibly do it without reservations, limita- 
 tions, apologies. He could not help saying : " We do 
 not deny there may be some external things whereto 
 the Church is eternally bound." But he is truly 
 himself, he is the great Hooker, the man from whom 
 we learn, when he shatters the Puritan figment, not 
 when he uses the language of compliment and cere- 
 mony in shattering it. 
 
 In like manner that eloquent orator, Mr. Liddon, 
 looking about him for authorities which commend 
 the Athanasian Creed, finds Hooker commending it, 
 and quotes him as an authority. This, again, is to
 
 xviii LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 make a use of Hooker which has no soundness in it 
 Hooker's greatness is that he gives the real method 
 of criticism for Church -dogma, the historic method. 
 Church-dogma is not written in black and white in 
 the Bible, he says : it has to be collected from it ; it 
 is, as we now say, a development from it. This and 
 that dogma, says Hooker, "are in Scripture nowhere 
 to be found by express literal mention, only deduced 
 they are out of Scripture by collection." And he 
 assigns the one right criterion for determining whether 
 a dogma is justly deduced, and what Scripture means, 
 and what is its true character : the criterion of reason. 
 He assigns this with splendid boldness : " It is not the 
 word of God itself," says he, " which doth, or possibly 
 can, assure us that we do well to think it his word ; " 
 no, it is reason, much-reviled reason. Surely this is 
 enough for a sixteenth-century divine to give us in 
 theology, the very method of true science ! without 
 our expecting him to make the full application of it, 
 without expecting him to say that the Church-dogmas 
 of his time, the dogma of the Athanasian Creed 
 among the rest, which were not seriously in question 
 yet, on which the Time-Spirit had not then turned 
 his light, were false developments; without wondering 
 at his saying, that they were developments " the 
 necessity whereof is by none denied!" This is all 
 that Hooker's warranty of the Athanasian Creed 
 really comes to, or can come to. To fix the method 
 by which that Creed must finally be judged was the 
 main issue for him; to judge the Creed by that 
 method was a side-issue, whereon he never really
 
 PREFACE. XIX 
 
 entered nor could enter, but treated the thing as 
 already settled. Therefore Hooker is no real authority 
 in favour of the Athanasian Creed ; though we might 
 think he was, if we read him without discrimination. 
 And to read him with discrimination culture is 
 necessary. 
 
 Luther, again, Mr. Liddon cites as a witness on 
 the question of the Athanasian Creed ; and he might 
 as well cite him as a witness on the question of the 
 origin of species. Luther's greatness is in his revival 
 of the sense of conscience and personal responsibility, 
 and in the fresh vigorous power which this sense, joined 
 to his robust mother-wit, gave him in using the Bible. 
 He had enough to do in attacking Romish develop- 
 ments from the Bible, which by their practical side 
 were evidently, to a plain moral sense and a plain 
 mother- wit, false developments, without attacking 
 speculative dogma, which had no visible bad effects 
 on practice, which had all antiquity in its favour, on 
 which, as we say, the Time-Spirit had not then 
 turned his light, of which, so Luther might say, like 
 Hooker, " the necessity was by none denied." All 
 this high speculative dogma he could not but affirm, 
 and the more emphatically the more he questioned 
 lower practical dogma. But his affirmation of it is 
 not one of those things we can use; and whoever 
 reads in the folios of Luther's works without passing 
 lightly over very much, and, amongst it, over this, reads 
 there ill. And without culture, without the use of so 
 many books that he can afford not to over-use and mis- 
 use one, ill a man is likely to read there.
 
 XX LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 We can hardly urge this topic too much, of so 
 great a practical importance is it, and above all at 
 the present time. To be able to control what one 
 reads by means of the tact coming, in a clear and fair 
 mind, from a wide experience, was never perhaps so 
 necessary as in the England of our own day, and in 
 theology, and in what concerns the Bible. In every 
 study one has to commence with the facts of that 
 study. To get the facts, the data, in most matters of 
 science, but notably in theology and Biblical learning, 
 one goes to Germany. Germany, and it is her high 
 honour, has searched out the facts and exhibited 
 them. And without knowledge of the facts, no 
 clearness or fairness of mind can in any study do 
 anything ; this cannot be laid down too rigidly. 
 Now, English religion does not know the facts of its 
 study, and has to go to Germany for them. This is 
 half apparent to English religion even now, and it 
 will daily become more and more apparent. And so 
 overwhelming is the advantage given by knowing the 
 facts of a study, that a student, who comes to a man 
 who knows them, is tempted to put himself into his 
 hands altogether ; and this we in general see English 
 students do, when they have recourse to the theologians 
 of Germany. They put themselves altogether into 
 their hands, and take all that they give them, con- 
 clusions as well as facts. 
 
 But they ought not to use them in this manner j 
 for a man may have the facts and yet be unable to 
 draw the right conclusions from them. In general, 
 he may want power / as one may say of Strauss, for
 
 PREFACE. XXI 
 
 instance, that to what is unsolid in the New Testa- 
 ment he applies a negative criticism ably enough, but 
 that to deal with the reality which is still left in the 
 New Testament, requires a larger, richer, deeper, 
 more imaginative mind than his. But perhaps the 
 quality specially needed for drawing the right con- 
 clusion from the facts, when one has got them, is best 
 called perception, justness of perception. And this no 
 man can well have who is a mere specialist, who has 
 not what we call culture in addition to the knowledge 
 of his particular study ; and so many theologians, in 
 Germany as well as elsewhere, are specialists ! After 
 we have got all the facts of our special study, justness 
 of perception to deal with the facts is still required, 
 and is, even, the principal thing of all. 
 
 But in this sort of tact, the German mind, if one 
 may allow oneself to speak in such a general way, 
 does seem to be even by nature somewhat wanting. 
 In the German mind, as in the German language, 
 there does seem to be something splay, something 
 blunt-edged, unhandy and infelicitous, some positive 
 want of straightforward, sure perception, which tends 
 to balance the great superiority of the Germans in 
 special knowledge, and in the disposition to deal 
 impartially with knowledge. For impartial they are, 
 as well as learned ; and this is a signal merit. While 
 M. Barthelemy St-Hilaire cannot translate Aristotle 
 without intermixing platitudes in glorification of the 
 French gospel of the Eights of Man, while one English 
 historian writes history to extol the Whigs and another 
 to execrate the Church, German workers proceed in a
 
 xxii LITEEATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 more philosophical fashion. Still, in quickness and 
 sureness of perception, in tact, they do seem to fall 
 somewhat short. 
 
 Of course in a man of genius this shortcoming is 
 much less observable ; but even in Germans of genius 
 there is something of it Goethe even, for instance, 
 had less of quick, keen tact, one must surely own, than 
 the great men of other nations whom alone one can 
 cite as his literary compeers : Shakespeare, Voltaire, 
 Cicero, Plato. Whether it be, as we have elsewhere 
 speculated, 1 from race ; or whether this quickness and 
 sureness of perception comes, rather, from a long 
 practical conversance with great affairs, and only those 
 nations which have at any time had a practical lead 
 of the civilised world, the Greeks, the Eomans, the 
 Italians, the French, the English, can have it ; and the 
 Germans have till now had no such practical lead, 
 though now they have got it", and may now, therefore, 
 acquire the practical dexterity of perception ; however 
 this may be, the thing is so, and a learned German 
 has by no means, in general, a fine and practically sure 
 perception in proportion to his learning. Give a 
 Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman, the same 
 knowledge of the facts, removing from him, at the 
 same time, all such disturbing influence as political 
 partisanship, ecclesiastical antipathies, national vanity, 
 and you could, in general, trust his perception 
 more than you can the German's. This, I say, shows 
 how large a thing criticism is ; since even of those 
 from whom we take what we now in theology most 
 1 On the Study of Celtic Literature, pp. 73, 74.
 
 PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 want, knowledge of the facts of our study, and to 
 whom therefore we are, and ought to be, under deep 
 obligations, even of them we must not take too much, 
 or take anything like all that they offer ; but we 
 must take much and leave much, and must have tact 
 enough to know what to take and what to leave. 
 And an Englishman with the necessary knowledge 
 has in other respects the training likely to give this tact; 
 but without knowledge and culture we cannot have it. 
 For a right understanding of the Bible itself, the 
 discriminative experience, so much required in all our 
 theological studies, is particularly indispensable. And 
 to our popular religion it is especially difficult ; because 
 we have been trained to regard the Bible, not as a 
 book whose parts have varying degrees of value, but 
 as the Jews came to regard their Scriptures, as a sort 
 of talisman given down to us out of Heaven, with all 
 its parts equipollent And yet there was a time when 
 Jews knew well the vast difference there is between 
 books like Esther, Chronicles, or Daniel, and books 
 like Genesis or Isaiah. There was a time when 
 Christians knew well the vast difference between the 
 First Epistle of Peter and his so-called Second Epistle, 
 or between the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistles 
 to the Eomans and to the Corinthians. This, indeed, 
 is what makes the religious watchword of the British 
 and Foreign School Society : The Bible, the whole Bible, 
 and nothing but the Bible ! so ingeniously (one must say) 
 absurd ; it is treating the Bible as Mahometans treat 
 the Koran, as if it were a talisman all of one piece, 
 and with all its sentences equipollent.
 
 xxiv LITEBATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 Yet the very expressions, Canon of Scripture, Canon- 
 ical Books, recall a time when degrees of value were 
 still felt, and all parts of the Bible did not stand on 
 the same footing, and were not taken equally. There 
 was a time when books were read as part of the Bible 
 which are in no Bible now ; there was a time when 
 books which are in every Bible now, were by many 
 disallowed as genuine parts of the Bible. St. Atha- 
 nasius rejected the Book of Esther, and the Greek 
 Christianity of the East repelled the Apocalypse, and 
 the Latin Christianity of the West repelled the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews. And a true critical sense of relative 
 value lay at the bottom of all these rejections. No 
 one rejected Isaiah or the Epistle to the Romans. 
 The books rejected were such books as those which 
 we now print as the Apocrypha, or as the Book of 
 Esther, or the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the so-called 
 Epistle of Jude, or the so-called Second Epistle of St. 
 Peter, or the two short Epistles following the main 
 Epistle attributed to St. John, or the Apocalypse. 
 
 Now, whatever value one may assign to these works, 
 no sound critic would rate their intrinsic worth as 
 high as that of the great undisputed books of the 
 Bible. And so far from their finally getting where 
 they now are after a thorough trial of their claims, 
 and with indisputable propriety, they got placed there 
 by the force of circumstances, by chance or by routine, 
 rather than on their merits. Indeed, by merit alone 
 the Book of Esther could have no right at all to be 
 now in our Canon while Ecclesiasticus is not, nor the 
 Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter rather
 
 PREFACE. XXV 
 
 than the First Epistle of Clement. But the whole 
 discussion died out, not because the matter was sifted 
 and settled and a perfect Canon of Scripture deliber- 
 ately formed ; it died out as mediaeval ignorance 
 deepened, and because there was no longer knowledge 
 or criticism enough left in the world to keep such a 
 discussion alive. 
 
 And so things went on till the Eenascence, when 
 criticism came to life again. But the Church had now 
 long since adopted the Vulgate, and her authority 
 was concerned in maintaining what she had adopted. 
 Luther and Calvin, on the other hand, recurred to the 
 old true notion of a difference in rank and genuineness 
 among the Bible -books. For they both of them 
 insisted on the criterion of internal evidence for 
 Scripture: "the witness of the Spirit." How freely 
 Luther used this criterion we may see by reading 
 in the old editions of his Bible his prefaces, which 
 in succeeding editions have long ceased to appear. 
 Whether he used it aright we do not now inquire, but 
 he used it freely. Taunted, however, by Eome with 
 their divisions, their want of a fixed authority like the 
 Church, Protestants were driven to make the Bible 
 this fixed authority ; and so the Bible came to be 
 regarded as a thing all of a piece, endued with talis- 
 manic virtues. It came to be regarded as something 
 different from anything it had originally ever been, or 
 primitive times had ever imagined it to be. And 
 Protestants did practically in this way use the Bible 
 more irrationally than Rome practically ever used it ; 
 for Eome had her hypothesis of the Church Catholic
 
 XXVI LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 endued with talismanic virtues, and did not want a 
 talismanic Bible too. All this perversion has made a 
 discriminating use of the Bible-documents very difficult 
 in our country ; yet without it a sound criticism of 
 the Bible is impossible ; and even, as we say, the very 
 word Canon, the Canon of Scripture, points to such a use. 
 
 But, indeed, there is hardly any great thing per- 
 verted by men which does not in some sort thus 
 indicate its own perversion. The idea of the infallible 
 Church Catholic itself, as we have elsewhere said, 1 is 
 an idea the mosj; fatal of all possible ideas to the 
 concrete, so-called infallible, Church of Eome, such as 
 we now see it. The infallible Church Catholic is, 
 really, the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming of 
 things to come ; the whole human race, in its onward 
 progress, discovering truth more complete than the 
 parcel of truth any momentary individual can seize. 
 Nay, and it is with the Pope himself as with the 
 Church Catholic. That amiable old pessimist in St. 
 Peter's Chair, whose allocutions we read and call them 
 impotent and vain, the Pope himself is, in his idea, 
 the very Time-Spirit taking flesh, the incarnate " Zeit- 
 Geist !" man, how true are thine instincts, how 
 over-hasty thine interpretations of them ! 
 
 But to return. Difficult, certainly, is the right 
 reading of the Bible, and true culture, too, is difficult 
 For true culture implies not only knowledge, but right 
 tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by 
 and with knowledge ; without this tact it is not true 
 culture. Difficult, however, as culture is, it is necessary. 
 1 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 131.
 
 PREFACE. XXVli 
 
 For, after all, the Bible is not a talisman, to be taken 
 and used literally ; neither is any existing Church a 
 talisman, whatever pretensions of the sort it may 
 make, for giving the right interpretation of the Bible. 
 Only true culture can give us this interpretation ; so 
 that if conduct is, as it is, inextricably bound up with 
 the Bible and the right interpretation of it, then the 
 importance of culture becomes unspeakable. For if 
 conduct is necessary (and there is nothing so necessary), 
 culture is necessary. 
 
 And the poor require it as much as the rich ; and 
 at present their education, even when they get educa- 
 tion, gives them hardly anything of it. Yet hardly 
 less of it, perhaps, than the education of the rich gives 
 to the rich. For when we say that culture is : To 
 know the best that has been thought and said in the world, 
 we imply that, for culture, a system directly tending 
 to this end is necessary in our reading. Now, there 
 is no such system yet present to guide the reading 
 of the rich any more than of the poor. Such a 
 system is hardly even thought of ; a man who wants 
 it must make it for himself. And our reading being 
 so without purpose as it is, nothing can be truer than 
 what Butler says, that really, in general, no part of 
 our time is more idly spent than the time spent in 
 reading. 
 
 Still, culture is indispensably necessary, and culture 
 is reading ; but reading with a purpose to guide it, and 
 with system. He does a good work who does anything 
 to help this : indeed, it is the one essential service 
 now to be rendered to education. And the plea that
 
 LITEBATUKE AND DOGMA, 
 
 this or that man has no time for culture will vanish 
 as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to 
 examine seriously our present use of our time. It 
 has often been said, and cannot be said too often : 
 Give to any man all the time that he now wastes, not 
 only on his vices (when he has them), but on useless 
 business, wearisome or deteriorating amusements, 
 trivial letter -writing, random reading, and he will 
 have plenty of time for culture. " Die Zeit ist wnend- 
 lich lang," says Goethe ; and so it really is. Some of 
 us waste all of it, most of us waste much, but all of 
 us waste soma
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ..... 1 
 
 I. RELIGION GIVEN .... 9 
 
 II. ABERGLAVBE INVADING ... 55 
 
 III. RELIGION NEW-GIVEN .... 71 
 
 IV. THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY ... 97 
 V. THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES . . -105 
 
 VI. THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . . 134 
 
 VII. THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 164 
 
 VIII. THE EARLY WITNESSES . ' . . .220 
 
 IX. ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING . . .249 
 
 X. OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE . . 281 
 
 XI. THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 306 
 
 XII. THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY . 328 
 
 CONCLUSION 345
 
 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MR. DISRAELI, treating Hellenic things with the 
 scornful negligence natural to a Hebrew, said the 
 other day in a well-known book, that our aristocratic 
 class, the polite flower of the nation, were truly 
 Hellenic in this respect among others, that they 
 cared nothing for letters and never read. Now, there 
 seems to be here some inaccuracy, if we take our 
 standard of what is Hellenic from Hellas at its highest 
 pitch of development. For the latest historian of 
 Greece, Dr. Curtius, tells us that in the Athens of 
 Pericles "reading was universally diffused;" and 
 again, that " what more than anything distinguishes 
 the Greeks from the barbarians of ancient and modern 
 times, is the idea of a culture comprehending body 
 and soul in an equal measure." And we have our- 
 selves called our aristocratic class Barbarians, which 
 is the contrary of Hellenes, from this very reason : be- 
 cause, with all their fine, fresh appearance, their open- 
 VOL. V. & B
 
 2 LITEKATUEE AND DOGMA. 
 
 air life, and their love of field-sports, for reading and 
 thinking they have in general no great turn. But no 
 doubt Mr. Disraeli was thinking of the primitive 
 Hellenes of north-western Greece, from among whom 
 the Dorians of Peloponnesus originally came, but 
 who themselves remained in their old seats and did 
 not migrate and develop like their more famous 
 brethren. And of these primitive Hellenes, of Greeks 
 like the Chaonians and Molossians, it is probably a 
 very just account to give, that they lived in the open 
 air, loved field-sports, and never read. And, explained 
 in this way, Mr. Disraeli's parallel of our aristocratic 
 class with what he somewhat misleadingly calls the 
 old Hellenic race, appears ingenious and sound. To 
 those lusty northerners, the Molossian and Chaonian 
 Greeks Greeks untouched by the development which 
 contradistinguishes the Hellene from the barbarian, 
 our aristocratic class, as he exhibits it, has a strong re- 
 semblance. At any rate, this class,- which from its 
 great possessions, its beauty and attractiveness, the 
 admiration felt for it by the Philistines or middle class, 
 its actual power in the nation, and the still more con- 
 siderable destinies to which its politeness, in Mr. 
 Carlyle's opinion, entitles it, cannot but attract our 
 notice pre-eminently, shows at present a great and 
 genuine disregard for letters. 
 
 And perhaps, if there is any other body of men 
 which strikes one, even after looking at our aristo- 
 cratic class, as being in the sunshine, as exercising 
 great attraction, as being admired by the Philistines 
 or middle class, and as having before it a future still
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 more brilliant than its present, it is the friends of 
 physical science. Now, their revolt against the tyranny 
 of letters is notorious. To deprive letters of the too 
 great place they have hitherto filled in men's estima- 
 tion, and to substitute other studies for these, is the 
 object of a sort of crusade with a body of people im- 
 portant in itself, but still more important because of 
 the gifted leaders who march at its head. 
 
 Keligion has always hitherto been a great power 
 in England ; and on this account, perhaps, whatever 
 humiliations may be in store for religion in the future, 
 the friends of physical science will not object to our 
 saying that, after them and the aristocracy, the 
 leaders of the religious world fill a prominent place 
 in the public eye even now, and one cannot help 
 noticing what their opinions and likings are. And it 
 is curious how the feeling of the chief people in the 
 religious world, too, seems to be just now against 
 mere letters, which they slight as the vague and 
 inexact instrument of shallow essayists and magazine- 
 writers ; and in favour of dogma, of a scientific and 
 exact presentment of religious things, instead of a 
 literary presentment of them. " Dogmatic theology,'' 
 says the Guardian, speaking of our existing dogmatic 
 theology, " Dogmatic theology, that is, precision and 
 definiteness of religious thought." " Maudlin sentimen- 
 talism," says the Dean of Norwich, " with its miser- 
 able disparagements of any definite doctrine ; a nerveless 
 religion, without the sinew and bone of doctrine." 
 The distinguished Chancellor of the University of 
 Oxford thought it needful to tell us on a public
 
 4 LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 occasion lately, that " religion is no more to be severed 
 from dogma than light from the sun." Every one, 
 again, remembers the Bishops of Winchester 1 and 
 Gloucester making in Convocation their remarkable 
 effort "to do something," as they said, "for the 
 honour of Our Lord's Godhead," and to mark their 
 sense of " that infinite separation for time and for 
 eternity which is involved in rejecting the Godhead 
 of the Eternal Son." In the same way: "To no 
 teaching," says one champion of dogma, "can the 
 appellation of Christian be truly given which does not 
 involve the idea of a Personal God." Another lays 
 like stress on correct ideas about the Personality of 
 the Holy Ghost. " Our Lord unquestionably," says 
 a third, " annexes eternal life to a right knowledge of 
 the Godhead," that is, to a right speculative, dogma- 
 tic knowledge of it. A fourth appeals to history and 
 human nature for proof thut " an undogmatic Church 
 can no more satisfy the hunger of the soul, than a 
 snowball, painted to look like fruit, would stay the 
 hunger of the stomach." And all these friends of 
 theological science are, like the friends of physical 
 science, though from another cause, severe upon 
 letters. Attempts made at a literary treatment of 
 religious history and ideas they call " a subverting of 
 the faith once delivered to the saints." Those who 
 make them they speak of as " those who have made 
 shipwreck of the faith ; " and when they talk of " the 
 poison openly disseminated by infidels," and describe 
 the " progress of infidelity," which more and more, 
 1 The late Bishop Wilberforce.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 according to their account, " denies God, rejects 
 Christ, and lets loose every human passion," though 
 they have the audaciousness of physical science most 
 in their eye, yet they have a direct aim, too, at the 
 looseness and dangerous temerity of letters. 
 
 Keeping in remembrance what Scripture says 
 about the young man who had great possessions, to 
 be able to work a change of mind in our aristocratic 
 class we never have pretended, we never shall pretend. 
 But to the friends of physical science and to the 
 friends of dogma we do feel emboldened, after giving 
 our best consideration to the matter, to say a few words 
 on behalf of letters, and in deprecation of the slight 
 which, on different grounds, they both put upon 
 them. But particularly in reply to the friends of 
 dogma do we wish to insist on the case for letters, 
 because of the great issues which seem to us to be 
 here involved. Therefore of the relation of letters to 
 religion we are going now to speak ; of their effect 
 upon dogma, and of the consequences of this to 
 religion. And so the subject of the present volume 
 will be literature and dogma. 
 
 IL 
 
 It is clear that dogmatists love religion ; for else 
 why do they occupy themselves with it so much, and 
 make it, most of them, the business, even the pro- 
 fessional business, of their lives 1 And clearly religion 
 seeks man's salvation. How distressing, therefore, 
 must it be to them, to think that " salvation is un-
 
 6 LITEEATUKE AND DOGMA. 
 
 questionably annexed to a right knowledge of the 
 Godhead," and that a right knowledge of the Godhead 
 depends upon reasoning, for which so many people 
 have not much aptitude ; and upon reasoning from 
 ideas or terms such as substance, identity, causation, 
 design, about which there is endless disagreement ! 
 It is true, a right knowledge of geometry also depends 
 upon reasoning, and many people never get it ; but 
 then, in the first place, salvation is not annexed to a 
 right knowledge of geometry ; and in the second, the 
 ideas or terms such as point, line, angle, from which 
 we reason in geometry, are terms about which there 
 is no ambiguity or disagreement. But as to the 
 demonstrations and terms of theology we cannot 
 comfort ourselves in this manner. How must this 
 thought mar the Archbishop of York's enjoyment of 
 such a solemnity as that in which, to uphold and 
 renovate religion, he lectured lately to Lord Harrowby, 
 Dean Payne Smith, and other kindred souls, upon 
 the theory of causation ! And what a consolation to 
 us, who are so perpetually being taunted with our 
 known inaptitude for abstruse reasoning, if we can 
 find that for this great concern of religion, at any 
 rate, abstruse reasoning does not seem to be the 
 appointed help ; and that as good or better a help, 
 for indeed there can hardly, to judge by the present 
 state of things, be a worse, may be something which 
 is in an ordinary man's power ! 
 
 For the good of letters is, that they require no 
 extraordinary acuteness such as is required to handle 
 the theory of causation like the Archbishop of York,
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 or the doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son 
 like the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester. The 
 good of letters may be had without skill in arguing, 
 or that formidable logical apparatus, not unlike a 
 guillotine, which Professor Huxley speaks of some- 
 where as the young man's best companion ; and so 
 it would be, no doubt, if all wisdom were come at by 
 hard reasoning. In that case, all who could not 
 manage this apparatus (and only a few picked crafts- 
 men can manage it) would be in a pitiable condition. 
 
 But the valuable thing in letters, that is, in the 
 acquainting oneself with the best which has been 
 thought and said in the world, is, as we have often 
 remarked, the judgment which forms itself insensibly 
 in a fair mind along with fresh knowledge ; and this 
 judgment almost any one with a fair mind, who will 
 but trouble himself to try and make acquaintance 
 with the best which has been thought and uttered 
 in the world, may, if he is lucky, hope to attain to. 
 For this judgment comes almost of itself ; and what 
 it displaces it displaces easily and naturally, and 
 without any turmoil of controversial reasonings. The 
 thing comes to look differently to us, as we look at it 
 by the light of fresh knowledge. We are not beaten 
 from our old opinion by logic, we are not driven off 
 our ground ; our ground itself changes with us. 
 
 Far more of our mistakes come from want of fresh 
 knowledge than from want of correct reasoning; and, 
 therefore, letters meet a greater want in us than does 
 logic. The idea of a triangle is a definite and ascer- 
 tained thing, and to deduce the properties of a
 
 8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 triangle from it is an affair of reasoning. There are 
 heads unapt for this sort of work, and some of the 
 blundering to be found in the world is from this 
 cause. But how far more of the blundering to be 
 found in the world comes from people fancying that 
 some idea is a definite and ascertained thing, like the 
 idea of a triangle, when it is not ; and proceeding to 
 deduce properties from it, and to do battle about 
 them, when their first start was a mistake ! And 
 how liable are people with a talent for hard, abstruse 
 reasoning, to be tempted to this mistake ! And 
 what can clear up such a mistake except a wide and 
 familiar acquaintance with the human spirit and its 
 productions, showing how ideas and terms arose, and 
 what is their character? and this is letters and history 
 not logic. 
 
 So that minds with small aptitude for abstruse 
 reasoning may yet, through letters, gain some hold 
 on sound judgment and useful knowledge, and may 
 even clear up blunders committed, out of their very 
 excess of talent, by the athletes of logic.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELIGION GIVEN 
 
 WE have said elsewhere 1 how much it has contributed 
 to the misunderstanding of St. Paul, that terms like 
 grace, new birth, justification, whicli he used in a fluid 
 and passing way, as men use terms in common 
 discourse or in eloquence and poetry, to describe 
 approximately, but only approximately, what they 
 have present before their mind, but do not profess 
 that their mind does or can grasp exactly or ade- 
 quately, that such terms people have blunderingly 
 taken in a fixed and rigid manner, as if they were 
 symbols with as definite and fully grasped a meaning 
 as the names line or angle, and proceeded to use them 
 on this supposition. Terms, in short, which with St. 
 Paul are literary terms, theologians have employed as 
 if they were scientific terms. 
 
 But if one desires to deal with this mistake 
 thoroughly, one must observe it in that supreme 
 term with which religion is filled, the term God. 
 The seemingly incurable ambiguity in the mode of 
 employing this word is at the root of all our religious 
 1 Culture and Anarchy, p. 137.
 
 10 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 differences and difficulties. People use it as if it 
 stood for a perfectly definite and ascertained idea, 
 from which we might, without more ado, extract 
 propositions and draw inferences, just as we should 
 from any other definite and ascertained idea. For 
 instance, I open a book which controverts what its 
 author thinks dangerous views ahout religion, and I 
 read : " Our sense of morality tells us so-and-so ; our 
 sense of God, on the other hand, tells us so-and-so." 
 And again, "the impulse in man to seek God" is 
 distinguished, as if the distinction were self-evident 
 and explained itself, from " the impulse in man to 
 seek his highest perfection." Now, morality repre- 
 sents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascer- 
 tained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated 
 in a certain manner. Everybody, again, understands 
 distinctly enough what is meant by man's perfection : 
 his reaching the best which his powers and circum- 
 stances allow him to reach. And the word " God " is 
 used, in connection with both these words, morality 
 and perfection, as if it stood for just as definite and 
 ascertained an idea as they do ; an idea drawn from 
 experience, just as the ideas are which they stand 
 for ; an idea about which every one was agreed, and 
 from which we might proceed to argue and to make 
 inferences, with the certainty that, as in the case of 
 morality and perfection, the basis on which we were 
 going every one knew and granted. But, in truth, the 
 word " God " is used in most cases as by no means a 
 term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of 
 poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak,
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 11 
 
 at a not fully grasped object of the speaker's con- 
 sciousness, a literary term, in short; and mankind 
 mean different things by it as their consciousness 
 differs. 
 
 The first question, then, is, how people are using 
 the word; whether in this literary way, or in a 
 scientific way. The second question is, what, sup- 
 posing them to use the term as one of poetry and 
 eloquence, and to import into it, therefore, a great 
 deal of their own individual feelings and character, 
 is yet the common substratum of idea on which, in 
 using it, they all rest. For this will then be, for 
 them, and for us in dealing with them, the real sense 
 of the word; the sense in which we can use it for pur- 
 poses of argument and inference without ambiguity. 
 
 Strictly and formally the word " God," we now 
 learn from the philologists, means, like its kindred 
 Aryan words, Theos, Deus, and Deva, simply shining or 
 brilliant. In a certain narrow way, therefore, this is 
 the one exact and scientific sense of the word. It 
 was long thought, however, to mean good, and so 
 Luther took it to mean the best that man knows or can 
 know; and in this sense, as a matter of fact and 
 history, mankind constantly use the word. This is 
 the common substratum of idea on which men in 
 general, when they use the word God, rest ; and we 
 can take this as the word's real sense fairly enough, 
 only it does not give us anything very precise. 
 
 But then there is also the scientific sense held by 
 theologians, deduced from the ideas of substance, 
 identity, causation, design, and so on ; but taught,
 
 12 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 they say, or at least implied, in the Bible, and on 
 which all the Bible rests. According to this scientific 
 and theological sense, which has all the outward 
 appearances, at any rate, of great precision, God is 
 an infinite and eternal substance, and at the same 
 time a person, the great first cause, the moral and 
 intelligent governor of the universe ; Jesus Christ 
 consubstantial with him ; and the Holy Ghost a 
 person proceeding from the other two. This is the 
 sense for which, or for portions of which, the Bishops 
 of Winchester and Gloucester are so zealous to do 
 something. 
 
 Other people, however, who fail to perceive the 
 force of such a deduction from the abstract ideas 
 above mentioned, who indeed think it quite hollow, 
 but who are told that this sense is in the Bible, and 
 that they must receive it if they receive the Bible, 
 conclude that in that case they had better receive 
 neither the one nor the other. Something of this 
 sort it was, no doubt, which made Professor Huxley 
 tell the London School Board lately, that "if these 
 islands had no religion at all, it would not enter into 
 his mind to introduce the religious idea by the agency 
 of the Bible." Of such people there are now a great 
 many ; and indeed there could hardly, for those who 
 value the Bible, be a greater example of the sacrifices 
 one is sometimes called upon to make for the truth, 
 than to find that for the truth as held by the Bishops 
 of Winchester and Gloucester, if it is the truth, one 
 must sacrifice the allegiance of so many people to the 
 Bible.
 
 L] RELIGION GIVEN. 13 
 
 But surely, if there be anything with which meta- 
 physics have nothing to do, and where a plain man, 
 without skill to walk in the arduous paths of abstruse 
 reasoning, may yet find himself at home, it is religion. 
 For the object of religion is conduct ; and conduct is 
 really, however men may overlay it with philosophical 
 disquisitions, the simplest thing in the world. That 
 is to say, it is the simplest thing in the world as far 
 as understanding is concerned ; as regards doing, it is 
 the hardest thing in the world. Here is the difficulty, 
 to do what we very well know ought to be done ; 
 and instead of facing this, men have searched out 
 another with which they occupy themselves by pre- 
 ference, the origin of what is called the moral sense, 
 the genesis and physiology of conscience, and so on. 
 No one denies that here, too, is difficulty, or that the 
 difficulty is a proper object for the human faculties to 
 be exercised upon ; but the difficulty here is specula- 
 tive. It is not the difficulty of religion, which is a 
 practical one ; and it often tends to divert the 
 attention from this. Yet surely the difficulty of 
 religion is great enough by itself, if men would but 
 consider it, to satisfy the most voracious appetite for 
 difficulties. It extends to Tightness in the whole 
 range of what we call conduct; in three -fourths, 
 therefore, at the very lowest computation, of human 
 life. The only doubt is whether we ought not to 
 make the range of conduct wider still, and to say it is 
 four-fifths of human life, or five-sixths. But it is better 
 to be under the mark than over it ; so let us be content 
 with reckoning conduct as three-fourths of human life.
 
 14 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 And to recognise in what way conduct is this, let 
 us eschew all school-terms, like moral sense, and voli- 
 tional, and altruistic, which philosophers employ, and 
 let us help ourselves by the most palpable and plain 
 examples. When the rich man in the Bible-parable 
 says : " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 
 years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry!" 1 
 those goods which he thus assigns as the stuff with 
 which human life is mainly concerned (and so in 
 practice it really is), those goods and our dealings 
 with them, our taking our ease, eating, drinking, being 
 merry, are the matter of conduct, the range where it 
 is exercised. Eating, drinking, ease, pleasure, money, 
 the intercourse of the sexes, the giving free swing to 
 one's temper and instincts, these are the matters 
 with which conduct is concerned, and with which all 
 mankind know and feel it to be concerned. 
 
 Or, when Protagoras points out of what things we 
 
 (/, C***^ are, from childhood till we die, being taught and 
 
 ' iy ll ' ^ admonished, and says (but it is lamentable that here 
 
 - /fauLiF* h ave n k at hand Mr. Jowett, who so excellently 
 
 ^tintroduces the enchanter Plato and his personages, 
 
 ^^ but must use our own words) : "From the time he 
 
 L^/p^an understand what is said to him, nurse, and mother, 
 
 and teacher, and father too, are bending their efforts 
 
 to this end, to make the child good ; teaching and 
 
 showing him, as to everything he has to do or say, 
 
 how this is right and that not right, and this is 
 
 honourable and that vile, and this is holy and that 
 
 unholy, and this do and that do hot;" Protagoras, 
 
 1 Lukexii. 19.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 15 
 
 also, when, he says this, bears his testimony to the 
 scope and nature of conduct, tells us what conduct is. 
 Or, once more, when M. Littr6 (and we hope to 
 make our peace with the Comtists by quoting an 
 author of theirs in preference to those authors whom 
 all the British public is now reading and quoting), 
 when M. Littr6, in a most ingenious essay on* the 
 origin of morals, traces up, better, perhaps, than any 
 one else, all our impulses into two elementary instincts, 
 the instinct of self-preservation and the reproduc- 
 tive instinct, then we take his theory and we say, 
 that all the impulses which can be conceived as deriv- 
 able from the instinct of self-preservation in us and 
 the reproductive instinct, these terms being applied 
 in their ordinary sense, are the matter of conduct. It 
 is evident this includes, to say no more, every im- 
 pulse relating to temper, every impulse relating to 
 sensuality ; and we all know how much that is. 
 
 How we deal with these impulses is the matter of 
 conduct, how we obey, regulate, or restrain them; 
 that, and nothing else. Not whether M. Littr6's theory 
 is true or false ; for whether it be true or false, there 
 the impulses confessedly now are, and the business of 
 conduct is to deal with them. But it is evident, if 
 conduct deals with these, both how important a thing 
 conduct is, and how simple a thing. Important, 
 because it covers so large a portion of human life, and 
 the portion common to all sorts of people ; simple, 
 because, though there needs perpetual admonition to 
 form conduct, the admonition is needed not to deter- 
 mine what we ought to do, but to make us do it
 
 16 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 [cbA 
 
 And as to this simplicity, all moralists are agreed. 
 "Let any plain honest man," says Bishop/cutler, 
 " before he engages in any course of actton " (he 
 means action of the very kind we call conduct], " ask 
 himself: Is this I am going about right or is it 
 wrong 1 is it good or is it evil ? I do not in the least 
 doubt but that this question would be answered 
 agreeably to truth and virtue by almost any fair man 
 in almost any circumstance." And Bishop Wilson says : 
 "Look up to God "(by which he means just thds: 
 Consult your Conscience) " at all times, and you will, 
 as in a glass, discover what is fit to be done." And 
 the Preacher's well-known sentence is exactly to the 
 same effect : " God made man upright ; but they have 
 sought out many inventions," 1 or, as it more 
 correctly is, "many abstruse reasonings." Let us hold 
 fast to this, and we shall find we have a stay by the 
 help of which even poor -weak men, with no preten- 
 sions to be logical athletes, may stand* firmly. 
 
 And so, when we are asked, what is the object 
 of religion 1 let us reply : Conduct. And when we 
 are asked further, what is conduct 1 let us answer : 
 Three-fourths of life. 
 
 IL 
 
 And certainly we need not go far about to prove 
 that conduct, or "righteousness," which is the object 
 of religion, is in a special manner the object of Bible- 
 religion. The word " righteousness " is the master- 
 word of the Old Testament. Keep judgment and do 
 1 Ecclesiastes vii. 29.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 17 
 
 righteousness ! Cease to do evil, learn to do well ! l these 
 words being taken in their plainest sense of conduct. 
 Offer the sacrifice, not of victims and ceremonies, as the 
 way of the world in religion then was, but : Offer the 
 sacrifice of righteousness ! 2 The great concern of the 
 New Testament is likewise righteousness, but right- 
 eousness reached through particular means, righteous- 
 ness by the means of Jesus Christ. A sentence 
 which sums up the New Testament and assigns the 
 ground whereon the Christian Church stands, is, as 
 we have elsewhere said, 3 this : Let every one that 
 nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity / 4 If 
 we are to take a sentence which in like manner sums 
 up the Old Testament, such a sentence is this : ye 
 that lave the Eternal, see that ye hate the thing which is 
 evil ! to him that ordei'eth his conversation right shall be 
 shown the salvation of God. 5 
 
 But instantly there will be raised the objection that 
 this is morality, not religion ; morality, ethics, conduct, 
 being by many people, and above all by theologians 
 carefully contradistinguished from religion, which is 
 supposed in some special way to be connected with 
 propositions about the Godhead of the Eternal Son, 
 or propositions about the personality of God, or about 
 election or justification. Eeligion, however, means 
 simply either a binding to righteousness, or else a 
 serious attending to righteousness and dwelling upon 
 it. Which of these two it most nearly means, dependa 
 
 1 Isaiah Ivi. 1 ; i. 16, 17. 2 Psalm iv. 5. 
 
 8 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 134. 4 2 Timothy ii. 19. 
 
 6 Psalm xcvii. 10 ; 1. 23. 
 VOL. V. C
 
 18 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 upon the view we take of the word's derivation ; but 
 it means one of them, and they are really much the 
 same. And the antithesis between ethical and religious 
 is thus quite a false one. Ethical means practical, it 
 relates to practice or conduct passing into habit or 
 disposition. Eeligious also means practical, but 
 practical in a still higher degree; and the right 
 antithesis to both ethical and religious, is the same as 
 the right antithesis to practical : namely, theoretical. 
 
 Now, propositions about the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son are theoretical, and they therefore are 
 very properly opposed to propositions which are moral 
 or ethical ; but they are with equal propriety opposed 
 to propositions which are religious. They differ in 
 kind from what is religious, while what is ethical 
 agrees in kind with it But is there, therefore, no 
 difference between what is ethical, or morality, and 
 religion 1 There is a difference ; a difference of degree. 
 Religion, if we follow the intention of human thought 
 and human language in the use of the word, is ethics 
 heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling ; the passage 
 from morality to religion is made when to morality is 
 applied emotion. And the true meaning of religion is 
 thus, not simply morality, but morality t(wched by emotion. 
 And this new elevation and inspiration of morality is 
 well marked by the word "righteousness." Conduct is 
 the word of common life, morality is 'the word of philoso- 
 phical disquisition, righteousness is the word of religion. 
 
 Some people, indeed, are for calling all high 
 thought and feeling by the name of religion ; accord- 
 ing to that saying of Goethe : " He who has art and
 
 l.J RELIGION GIVEN. 19 
 
 science, has also religion." But let us use words aa 
 mankind generally use them. We may call art and 
 science touched by emotion religion, if we will ; as we 
 may make the instinct of self-preservation, into which 
 M. Littre" traces up all our private affections, include 
 the perfecting ourselves by the study of what is 
 beautiful in art; and the reproductive instinct, into 
 which he traces up all our social affections, include 
 the perfecting mankind by political science. But 
 men have not yet got to that stage, when we think 
 much of either their private or their social affections 
 at all, except as exercising themselves in conduct; 
 neither do we yet think of religion as otherwise exer- 
 cising itself. When mankind speak of religion, they 
 have before their mind an activity engaged, not with 
 the whole of life, but with that three-fourths of life 
 which is conduct. This is wide enough range for one 
 word, surely ; but at any rate, let us at present limit 
 ourselves in the use of the word religion as mankind do. 
 And if some one now asks : But what is this appli- 
 cation of emotion to morality, and by what marks 
 may we know it 1 we can quite easily satisfy him ; 
 not, indeed, by any disquisition of our own, but in a 
 much better way, by examples. " By the dispensation 
 of Providence to mankind," says Quintilian, " goodness 
 gives men most satisfaction." 1 That is morality. 
 " The path of the just is as the shining light which 
 shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 2 
 That is morality touched with emotion, or religion. 
 
 1 "Dedit hoc Providentia hominibus munus, ut honesta magis 
 juvarent." a p roy erbs iv. 18.
 
 20 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 "Hold off from sensuality," says Cicero; "for, if you 
 have given yourself up to it, you will find yourself 
 unable to think of anything else." l That is morality. 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart," says Jesus Christ, "for 
 they shall see God." 2 That is religion. "We all want 
 to live honestly, but cannot," says the Greek maxim- 
 maker. 3 That is morality. " wretched man that I 
 am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death !" 
 says St. Paul. 4 That is religion. "Would thou wert 
 of as good conversation in deed as in word!" 5 is 
 morality. " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, 
 Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he 
 that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven," 6 
 is religion. " Live as you were meant to live ! " r is 
 morality. "Lay hold on eternal life !" 8 is religion. 
 
 Or we may take the contrast within the bounds of 
 the Bible itself. " Love not sleep, lest thou come to 
 poverty," is morality ; but, " My meat is to do the 
 will of him that sent me, and to finish his work," is 
 religioa 9 Or we may even observe a third stage 
 between these two stages, which shows to us the 
 transition from one to the other. " If thou givest thy 
 soul the desires that please her, she will make thee a 
 laughing-stock to thine enemies ;" 10 that is morality. 
 
 1 "Sis a venereis amoribus aversus ; quibus si te dedideris, 
 non aliud quidquam possis cogitare quam illud quod diligis." 
 Matthew v. 8. 
 
 Q\o/j.fi> KaXuJs ffiv T&vTes, d\X' ov dwdfifQa. 
 Romans vii. 24. 
 
 EiO' f/ffOa ffdxppuv epya rots \6yois taa. 
 Matthew vii. 21. 7 Zijffov Kara <f>v<ra>. 
 
 I Tim. vi. 12. 9 Prov. xx. 13 ; John iv. 34. 
 
 10 Ecclesiasticus xviii. 31.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 21 
 
 "He that resisteth pleasure crowneth his life;" 1 
 that is morality with the tone heightened, passing, or 
 trying to pass, into religion. "Flesh and blood 
 cannot inherit the kingdom of God;" 2 there the 
 passage is made, and we have religion. Our religious 
 examples arc here all taken from the Bible, and from 
 the Bible such examples can best be taken ; but we 
 might also find them elsewhere. "Oh that my lot 
 might lead me in the path of holy innocence of 
 thought and deed, the path which august laws ordain, 
 laws which in the highest heaven had their birth, 
 neither did the race of mortal man beget them, nor 
 shall oblivion ever put them to sleep ; the power of 
 God is mighty in them, and groweth not old !" That 
 is from Sophocles, but it is as much religion as any 
 of the things which we have quoted as religious. 
 Like them, it is not the mere enjoining of conduct, 
 but it is this enjoining touched, strengthened, and 
 almost transformed, by the addition of feeling. 
 
 So what is meant by the application of emotion to 
 morality has now, it is to be hoped, been made clear. 
 The next question will probably be : But how does 
 one get the application made t Why, how does one 
 get to feel much about any matter whatever? By 
 dwelling upon it, by staying our thoughts upon it, by 
 having it perpetually in our mind. The very words 
 mind, memory, remain, come, probably, all from the 
 same root, from the notion of staying, attending. 
 Possibly even the word man conies from the same ; 
 HO entirely does the idea of humanity, of intelligence, 
 1 Ecclesiasticus xix . 5. - 1 Corinthians xv. 50.
 
 22 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 of looking before and after, of raising oneself out of 
 the flux of things, rest upon the idea of steadying 
 oneself, concentrating oneself, making order in the 
 chaos of one's impressions, by attending to one im- 
 pression rather than the other. The rules of conduct, 
 of morality, were themselves, philosophers suppose, 
 reached in this way ; the notion of a whole self as 
 opposed to a partial self, a best self to an inferior, to 
 a momentary self a permanent self requiring the 
 restraint of impulses a man would naturally have 
 indulged; because, by attending to his life, man 
 found it had a scope beyond the wants of the present 
 moment. Suppose it was so; then the first man 
 who, as "a being," comparatively, "of a large 
 discourse, looking before and after," controlled the 
 native, instantaneous, mechanical impulses of the 
 instinct of self-preservation, controlled the native, 
 instantaneous, mechanical impulses of the reproductive 
 instinct, had morality revealed to him. 
 
 But there is a long way from this to that habitual 
 dwelling on the rules thus reached, that constant 
 turning them over in the mind, that near and lively 
 experimental sense of their beneficence, which com- 
 municates emotion to our thought of them, and thus 
 incalculably heightens their powers. And the more 
 mankind attended to the claims of that part of our 
 nature which does not belong to conduct, properly so 
 called, or to morality (and we have seen that, after 
 all, about one-fourth of our nature is in this case), the 
 more they would have distractions to take off their 
 thoughts from those moral conclusions which all races
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 23 
 
 of men, one may say, seem to have reached, and to 
 prevent these moral conclusions from being quickened 
 by emotion, and thus becoming religious. 
 
 IIL 
 
 Only with one people, the people from whom we 
 get the Bible, these distractions did not happen. 
 
 The Old Testament, nobody will ever deny, is 
 filled with the word and thought of righteousness. 
 " In the way of righteousness is life, and in the path- 
 way thereof is no death;" "Righteousness tendeth to 
 life;" "He that pursue th evil pursueth it to his OAVTI 
 death;" "The way of transgressors is hard;"- 
 nobody will deny that those texts may stand for the 
 fundamental and ever -recurring idea of the Old 
 Testament. 1 No people ever felt so strongly as the 
 people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, 
 that conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest 
 concern. No people ever felt so strongly that 
 .succeeding, going right, hitting the mark in this great 
 concern, was the way of peace, the highest possible 
 satisfaction. " He that keepeth the law, happy is he ; 
 its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths 
 are peace; if thou hadst walked in its ways, thou 
 shouldst have dwelt in peace for ever !" 2 Jeshurun, 
 one of the ideal names of their race, is the upright ; 
 Israel, the other and greater, is the wrestler with God, 
 he who has known the contention and strain it costs 
 to stand upright. That mysterious personage by 
 
 i Prov. xii. 28 ; xi 19 ; xiii. 15. 
 
 J Prov. xxix. 18 ; iii. 17. Baruch iii. 13.
 
 24 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 whom their history first touches the hill of Sion, is 
 Melchisedek, the righteous king. Their holy city, 
 Jerusalem, is the foundation, or vision, or inheritance, 
 of that which righteousness achieves, peace. The 
 law of righteousness was such an object of attention 
 to them, that its words were to " be in their heart, 
 and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, 
 and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine 
 house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when 
 thou liest down, and when thou risest up." 1 That 
 they might keep them ever in mind, they wore them, 
 went about with them, made talismans of them . 
 " Bind them upon thy fingers, bind them about thy 
 neck; write them upon the table of thine heart!" 2 
 " Take fast hold of her," they said of the doctrine of 
 conduct, or righteousness, " let her not go ! keep her, 
 tor she is thy life I"* 
 
 People who thus spoke' of righteousness could not 
 but have had their minds long and deeply engaged 
 with it ; much more than the generality of mankind, 
 who have nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the 
 notion of morals or conduct And, if they were so 
 deeply attentive to it, one thing could not fail to 
 strike them. It is this : the very great part in 
 righteousness which belongs, we may say, to not 
 ourselves. In the first place, we did not make our- 
 selves and our nature, or conduct as the object of 
 three-fourths of that nature ; we did not provide that 
 happiness should folloAv conduct, as it undeniably 
 
 1 Deuteronomy vi. 6, 7. 2 Prov. vii. 3 ; iii. 3- 
 
 3 Prov. iv. 13.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 25 
 
 does ; that the sense of succeeding, going right, hit- 
 ting the mark, in conduct, should give satisfaction, 
 and a very high satisfaction, just as really as the 
 sense of doing well in his work gives pleasure to a 
 poet or painter, or accomplishing what he tries gives 
 pleasure to a man who is learning to ride or to shoot ; 
 or as satisfying his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a 
 man who is hungry. 
 
 All this we did not make ; and, in the next place, 
 our dealing with it at all, when it is made, is not 
 wholly, or even nearly wholly, in our own power. 
 Our conduct is capable, irrespective of what we can 
 ourselves certainly answer for, of almost infinitely 
 different degrees of force and energy in the perform- 
 ance of it, of lucidity and vividness in the perception 
 of it, of fulness in the satisfaction from it ; and these 
 degrees may vary from day to day, and quite incal- 
 culably. Facilities and felicities, whence do they 
 come 1 suggestions and stimulations, where do they 
 tend ? hardly a day passes but we have some experi- 
 ence of them. And so Henry More was led to say, 
 that " there was something about us that knew better, 
 often, what we would be at than we ourselves." For 
 instance : every one can understand how health and 
 freedom from pain may give energy for conduct, and 
 how a neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it It does 
 not depend on ourselves, indeed, whether we have 
 the neuralgia or not, but we can understand its im- 
 pairing our spirit. But the strange thing is, that with 
 the same neuralgia we ma}' find ourselves one day with- 
 out spirit and energy for conduct, and another day with
 
 26 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [OHAP. 
 
 them. So that we may most truly say : " Left to 
 ourselves, we sink and perish ; visited, we lift up our 
 heads and live." 1 And we may well give ourselves, in 
 grateful and devout self-surrender, to that by which 
 we are thus visited. So much is there incalculable, 
 so much that belongs to not ourselves, in conduct ; and 
 the more we attend to conduct, and the more we 
 value it, the more we shall feel this. 
 
 The not ourselves, which is in us and in the world 
 around us, has almost everywhere, as far as we can see, 
 struck the minds of men as they awoke to conscious- 
 ness, and has inspired them with awe. Every one 
 knows how the mighty natural objects which most 
 took their regards became the objects to which this 
 awe addressed itself. Our very word God is a remini- 
 scence of these times, when men invoked "The 
 Brilliant on high," sublime hoc candens quod inwcent 
 omnes Jovem, as the power representing to them that 
 which transcended the limits of their narrow selves, 
 and that by which they lived and moved and had 
 their being. Every one knows of what differences of 
 operation men's dealing with this power has in 
 different places and times shown itself capable ; how 
 here they have been moved by the not ourselves to a 
 cruel terror, there to a timid religiosity, there again 
 to a play of imagination ; almost always, however, 
 connecting with it, by some string or other, conduct. 
 
 But we are not writing a history of religion ; we 
 are only tracing its effect on the language of the men 
 
 1 "Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero erigimur et 
 rivimus."
 
 r.] RELIGION GIVEN. 27 
 
 from whom we get the Bible. At the time they 
 produced those documents which give to the Old 
 Testament its power and its true character, the not 
 ourselves which weighed upon the mind of Israel, and 
 engaged its awe, was the not ourselves by which we get 
 the sense for righteousness, and whence we find the help 
 to do right. This conception was indubitably what 
 lay at the bottom of that remarkable change which 
 under Moses, at a certain stage of their religious 
 history, befell the Hebrew people's mode of naming 
 God. * This was what they intended in that name, 
 which we wrongly convey, either without translation, 
 by Jehovah, which gives us the notion of a mere 
 mythological deity, or by a wrong translation, Lord, 
 which gives us the notion of a magnified and non- 
 natural man. The name they used was : The Eternal. 
 Philosophers dispute whether moral ideas, as they 
 call them, the simplest ideas of conduct and righteous- 
 ness which now seem instinctive, did not all grow, 
 were not once inchoate, embryo, dubious, unformed. 2 
 That may have been so; the question is an interesting 
 one for science. But the interesting question for 
 conduct is whether those ideas are unformed or 
 formed now. They are formed now ; and they were 
 formed when the Hebrews named the power, out of 
 themselves, which pressed upon their spirit: The 
 Eternal. Probably the life of Abraham, the friend oj 
 God, however imperfectly the Bible traditions by 
 
 1 See Exodus iii. 14. 
 
 1 "Qu'est-ce-que la nature ?" says Pascal: "peut-Stre une 
 premiere coutume, coinme la couturae est une seconde nature. "
 
 28 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, 
 
 themselves convey it to us, was a decisive step for- 
 wards in the development of these ideas of righteous 
 ness. Probably this was the moment when such 
 ideas became fixed and ruling for the Hebrew people, 
 and marked it permanently off from all others who 
 had not made the same step. But long before the 
 first beginnings of recorded history, long before the 
 oldest word of Bible literature, these ideas must have 
 been at work. We know it by the result, although 
 they may have for a long while been but rudimentary, 
 In Israel's earliest history and earliest literature, 
 under the name of Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty, there 
 may have lain and matured, there did lie and mature, 
 ideas of God more as a moral power, more as a power 
 connected, above everything, with conduct and right 
 eousness, than were entertained by other races. Not 
 only can we judge by the result that this must have 
 been so, but we can see that it was so. Still their 
 name, The Mighty, does not in itself involve any true 
 and deep religious ideas, any more than our name, 
 The Shining. With The Eternal it is otherwise. For 
 what did they mean by the Eternal ; the Eternal 
 what? The Eternal cause? Alas, these poor people 
 were not Archbishops of York. They meant the 
 Eternal righteous, who loveth righteousness. They had 
 dwelt upon the thought of conduct and right and 
 wrong, till the not ourselves which is in us and all 
 around us, became to them adorable eminently and 
 altogether as a power which makes for righteousness , 
 which makes for it unchangeably and eternally, and 
 is therefore called The Eternal.
 
 i.] RELIGION GIVEN. 29 
 
 There is not a particle of metaphysics in their use 
 of this name, any more than in their conception of the 
 not ourselves to which they attached it Both came to 
 them not from abstruse reasoning but from experience, 
 and from experience in the plain region of conduct. 
 Theologians with metaphysical heads render Israel's 
 Eternal by the self-existent, and Israel's not ourselves by 
 the absolute, and attribute to Israel their own subtleties. 
 According to them, Israel had his head full of the 
 necessity of a first cause, and therefore said, The 
 Eternal ; as, again, they imagine him looking out into 
 the world, noting everywhere the marks of design 
 and adaptation to his wants, and reasoning out and 
 inferring thence the fatherhood of God. All these 
 fancies come from an excessive turn for reasoning, 
 and a neglect of observing men's actual course of 
 thinking and way of using words. Israel, at this 
 stage when The Eternal was 'revealed to him, inferred 
 nothing, reasoned out nothing; he felt and experi- 
 enced. When he begins to speculate, in the schools 
 of Rabbinism, he quickly shows how much less native 
 talent than the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester 
 he has for this perilous business. Happily, when The 
 Eternal was revealed to him, he had not yet begun to 
 speculate. 
 
 Israel personified, indeed, his Eternal, for he was 
 strongly moved, he was an orator and poet. Man 
 never knows how anthropomorphic he is, says Goethe, and 
 so man tends always to represent everything under his 
 own figure. In poetry and eloquence man may and 
 must follow this tendency, but in science it often leads
 
 30 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 him astray. Israel, however, did not scientifically 
 predicate personality of God ; he would not even have 
 had a notion what was meant by it. He called him 
 the maker of all things, who gives drink to all out of 
 his pleasures as out of a river ; but he was led to thia 
 by no theory of a first cause. The grandeur of the 
 spectacle given by the world, the grandeur of the sense 
 of its all being not ourselves, being above and beyond 
 ourselves and immeasurably dwarfing us, a man of 
 imagination instinctively personifies as a single, mighty, 
 living and productive power ; as Goethe tells us that 
 the words which rose naturally to his lips, when he 
 stood on the top of the Brocken, were : " Lord, what is 
 man, that thou mindest him, or the son of man, that 
 thou makest account of him ?" x But Israel's confess- 
 ing and extolling of this power came not even from his 
 imaginative feeling, but came first from his gratitude 
 for righteousness. To one who knows what conduct 
 is, it is a joy to be alive ; and the not ourselves, which 
 by bringing forth for us righteousness makes our 
 happiness, working just in the same sense, brings 
 forth this glorious world to be righteous in. That is 
 the notion at the bottom of a Hebrew's praise of a 
 Creator; and if we attend, we can see this quite 
 clearly. Wisdom and understanding mean, for Israel, 
 the love of order, of righteousness. Righteousness, 
 order, conduct, is for Israel at once the source of all 
 man's happiness, and at the same time the very 
 essence of The Eternal. The great work of the 
 Eternal is the foundation of this order in man, the 
 1 Psalm cxliv. 3.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 31 
 
 implanting in mankind of his own love of righteous- 
 ness, his own spirit, his own wisdom and understanding ; 
 and it is only as a farther and natural working of 
 this energy that Israel conceives the establishment 
 of order in the world, or creation. " To depart from 
 evil, that is understanding ! Happy is the man that 
 findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understand- 
 ing. The Eternal by wisdom hath founded the earth, by 
 understanding hath he established the heavens;" 1 and so 
 the Bible-writer passes into the account of creation. 
 It all comes to him from the idea of righteousness. 
 
 And it is the same with all the language our 
 Hebrew religionist uses. God is a father, because the 
 power in and around us, which makes for righteous- 
 ness, is indeed best described by the name of this 
 authoritative but yet tender and protecting relation. 
 So, too, with the intense fear and abhorrence of 
 idolatry. Conduct, righteousness, is, above all, a 
 matter of inward motion and rule. No sensible forms 
 can represent it, or help us to it ; such attempts at 
 representation can only distract us from it. So, too, 
 with the sense of the oneness of God. " Hear, 
 Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord." 2 People 
 think that in this unity of God, this monotheistic 
 idea, as they call it, they have certainly got meta- 
 physics at last. They have got nothing of the kind. 
 The monotheistic idea of Israel is simply seriousness. 
 There are, indeed, many aspects of the not ourselves ; 
 but Israel regarded one aspect of it only, that by 
 which it makes for righteousness. He had the 
 1 Prov. ill 13-20. 3 Deut. vi. 4.
 
 32 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 advantage, to be sure, that with this aspect three- 
 fourths of human life is concerned. But there are 
 other aspects which may be set in view. " Frail and 
 striving mortality," says the elder Pliny in a noble 
 passage, "mindful of its own weakness, has dis- 
 tinguished these aspects severally, so as for each man 
 to be able to attach himself to the divine by this or 
 that part, according as he has most need." 1 That is 
 an apology for polytheism, as answering to man's 
 many-sidedness. But Israel felt that being thus 
 many-sided degenerated into an imaginative play, 
 and bewildered what Israel recognised as our sole 
 religious consciousness, the consciousness of right. 
 " Let thine eyelids look right on, and let thine eyelids 
 look straight before thee ; turn not to the right hand 
 nor to the left ; remove thy foot from evil !" 2 
 
 For does not Ovid say, 3 in excuse for the immorality 
 of his verses, that the sight and mention of the gods 
 themselves, the rulers of human life, <3ften raised 
 immoral thoughts 1 And so the sight and mention of 
 all aspects of the not ourselves must. Yet how tempt- 
 ing are many of these aspects ! Even at this time of 
 day, the grave authorities of the University of Cam- 
 bridge are so struck by one of them, that of pleasure, 
 
 1 " Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista digessit, infir- 
 mitatis suse memor, ut portionibus coleret quisque, quo maxims 
 indigeret." Nat. Hist. ii. 5. 
 
 2 Prov. iv. 25, 27. 
 8 Tristia ii. 287 : 
 
 " Quis locus est templis augustior ? haec quoque vitet 
 
 In culpam si qua est ingeniosa suam. " 
 Sae the whole passage.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 33 
 
 life and fecundity, of the hominum divomque voluptas, 
 alma Venus, that they set it publicly up as an object 
 for their scholars to fix their minds upon, and to 
 compose verses in honour of. That is all very well 
 at present ; but with this natural bent in the authori- 
 ties of the University of Cambridge, and in the Indo- 
 European race to which they belong, where would 
 they be now if it had not been for Israel, and for the 
 stern check which Israel put upon the glorification 
 and divinisation of this natural bent of mankind, this 
 attractive aspect of the not ourselves? Perhaps going in 
 procession, Vice-Chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars, 
 and all, in spite of their Professor of Moral Philosophy, 
 to the temple of Aphrodite ! Nay, and very likely 
 Mr. Birks himself, his brows crowned with myrtle 
 and scarcely a shade of melancholy on his countenance, 
 would have been going along with them ! It is Israel 
 and his seriousness that have saved the authorities of 
 the University of Cambridge from carrying their divini- 
 sation of pleasure to these lengths, or from making 
 more of it, indeed, than a mere passing intellectual 
 play; and even this play Israel would have beheld 
 with displeasure, saying : turn away mine eyes lest 
 they behold vanity, but quicken Thou me in thy way/ 1 
 So earnestly and exclusively were Israel's regards 
 bent on one aspect of the not ourselves : its aspect as a 
 power making for conduct, righteousness. Israel's 
 Eternal was the Eternal which says : " To depart from 
 evil, that is understanding ! Be ye holy, for I am 
 holy/" Now, as righteousness is but a heightened 
 
 1 Psalro cxix. 37. 
 VOL. V. D
 
 34 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 conduct, so holiness is but a heightened righteousness; 
 a more finished, entire, and awe-filled righteousness. 
 It was such a righteousness which was Israel's ideal ; 
 and therefore it was that Israel said, not indeed what 
 our Bibles make him say, but this : " Hear, Israel ! 
 The Eternal is our God, The Eternal alone." 
 
 And in spite of his turn for personification, his 
 want of a clear boundary-line between poetry and 
 science, his inaptitude to express even abstract notions 
 by other than highly concrete terms, in spite of these 
 scientific disadvantages, or rather, perhaps, because of 
 them, because he had no talent for abstruse reasoning 
 to lead him astray, the spirit and tongue of Israel 
 kept a propriety, a reserve, a sense of the inadequacy 
 of language in conveying man's ideas of God,*Svhich 
 contrast strongly with the licence of affirmation in 
 our Western theology. "The high and holy One 
 that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy," 1 is 
 far more proper and felicitous language than "the 
 moral and intelligent Governor of the universe," 
 just because it far less attempts to be precise, but 
 keeps to the language of poetry and does not essay 
 the language of science. As he had developed his 
 idea of God from personal experience, Israel knew 
 what we, who have developed our idea from his 
 words about it, so often are ignorant of : that his 
 words were but thrown out at a vast object of con- 
 sciousness, which he could not fully grasp, and which 
 he apprehended clearly by one point alone, that it 
 made for the great concern of life, conduct. How 
 1 Isaiah Ivii. 15.
 
 r.] RELIGION GIVEN. 35 
 
 little we know of it besides, how impenetrable is the 
 course of its ways with us, how we are baffled in our 
 attempts to name and describe it, how, when we 
 personify it and call it "the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the universe," we presently find it not to 
 be a person as man conceives of person, nor moral as 
 man conceives of moral, nor intelligent as man con- 
 ceives of intelligent, nor a governor as man conceives 
 of governors, all this, which scientific theology loses 
 sight of, Israel, who had but poetry and eloquence, 
 and no system, and who did not mind contradicting 
 himself, knew. " Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, 
 that thou art righteous ?" 1 What a blow to our ideal 
 of that magnified and non-natural man, "the moral 
 and intelligent Governor !" Say what we can about 
 God, say our best, we have yet, Israel knew, to add 
 instantly : " Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but how 
 little a, portion is heard of him/" 2 Yes, indeed, Israel 
 remembered that far better than our bishops do. 
 " Canst thou by searching find out God ; canst thou 
 find out the perfection of the Almighty 1 It is more 
 high than heaven, what canst thou do ? deeper than 
 hell, what canst thou know ?" 3 
 
 Will it be said, experience might also have shown 
 to Israel a not ourselves which did not make for his 
 happiness, but rather made against it, baffled his 
 claims to it? But no man, as we have elsewhere 
 remarked, 4 who simply follows his own consciousness, 
 is aware of any claims, any rights, whatever; what 
 
 1 Job xxii. 3. 2 Job xxvi. 14. 3 Job xi 7, 8, 
 
 4 Culture and Anarchy, p. 165.
 
 36 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 he gets of good makes him thankful, what he gets of 
 ill seems to him natural. His simple spontaneous 
 feeling is well expressed by that saying of Izaak 
 Walton : " Every misery that I miss is a new mercy, 
 and therefore let us be thankful." It is true, the not 
 ourselves of which we are thankfully conscious we 
 inevitably speak of and speak to as a man ; for 
 " man never knows how anthropomorphic he is." 
 And as time proceeds, imagination and reasoning 
 keep working upon this substructure, and build from 
 it a magnified and non-natural man. Attention is 
 then drawn, afterwards, to causes outside ourselves 
 which seem to make for sin and suffering ; and then 
 either these causes have to be reconciled by some 
 highly ingenious scheme with the magnified and non- 
 natural man's power, or a second magnified and 
 non-natural man has to be supposed, who pulls the 
 contrary way to the first. So arise Satan and his 
 angels. But all this is secondary, and comes much 
 later. Israel, the founder of our religion, did not 
 begin with this. He began with experience. He 
 knew from thankful experience the not ourselves 
 which makes for righteousness, and knew how little 
 we know about God besides. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The language of the Bible, then, is literary, not 
 scientific language ; language thrown out at an object 
 of consciousness not fully grasped, which inspired 
 emotion. Evidently, if the object be one not fully 
 to be grasped, and one to inspire emotion, the
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 37 
 
 language of figure and feeling will satisfy us better 
 about it, will cover more of what we seek to express, 
 than the language of literal fact and science. The 
 language of science about it will be below what we 
 feel to be the truth. 
 
 The question, however, has arisen and confronts 
 us : what was the scientific basis of fact for this 
 consciousness 1 When we have once satisfied our- 
 selves both as to the tentative, poetic way in which 
 the Bible-authors used language, and also as to their 
 having no pretensions to metaphysics at all, let us, 
 therefore, when there is this question raised as to the 
 scientific account of what they had before their minds, 
 be content with a very unpretending answer. And in 
 this way such a phrase as that which we have formerly 
 used concerning God, and have been much blamed for 
 using, the phrase, namely, that, " for science, God is 
 simply the stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the 
 law of their being," may be allowed, and may even 
 prove useful. Certainly it is inadequate; certainly 
 it is a less proper phrase than, for instance : " Clouds 
 and darkness are round about him : righteousness and 
 judgment are the habitation of his seat." 1 But then 
 it is, in however humble a degree and with however 
 
 1 Ps. xcvii. 2. It has been urged that if this personifying 
 mode of expression is more proper, it must also be more scienti- 
 fically exact. But surely it must on reflection appear that this 
 is by no means so. Wordsworth calls the earth ' ' the mighty 
 mother of mankind," and the geographers call her "an oblate 
 spheroid ;" Wordsworth's expression is more proper and ade- 
 quate to convey what men feel about the earth, but it is not 
 therefore the more scientifically exact.
 
 38 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 narrow a reach, a scientific definition, which the other 
 is not. The phrase, " A Personal First Cause, the 
 moral and intelligent Governor of the universe," has 
 also, when applied to God, the character, no doubt, 
 of a scientific definition ; but then it goes far beyond 
 what is admittedly certain and verifiable, which is 
 what we mean by scientific. It attempts far too 
 much. If we want here, as we do want, to have 
 what is admittedly certain and verifiable, we must 
 content ourselves with very little. No one will say, 
 that it is admittedly certain and verifiable, that there 
 is a personal first cause, the moral and intelligent 
 governor of the universe, whom we may call God if 
 we will. But that all things seem to us to have what 
 we call a law of their being, and to tend to fulfil it, is 
 certain and admitted; though whether we will call 
 this God or not, is a matter of choice. Suppose, 
 however, we call it God,' we then give the name of 
 God to a certain and admitted reality ; this, at least, 
 is an advantage. 
 
 And the notion of our definition does, in fact, 
 enter into the term God, in men's common use of it. 
 To please God, to serve God, to obey God's will, 
 means to follow a law of things Avliich is found in 
 conscience, and which is an indication, irrespective of 
 our arbitrary wish and fancy, of what we ought to 
 do. There is, then, a real power which makes for 
 righteousness ; and it is the greatest of realities for us. 1 
 
 1 Prayer, about which so much has often been said unad- 
 visedly and ill, deals with this reality. All good and beueficiaJ 
 prayer is in truth, however men may describe it, at bottom
 
 1.1 RELIGION GIVEN. 39 
 
 When St. Paul says, that our business is " to serve the 
 spirit of God," "to serve the living and true God;" 1 
 and when Epictetus says: "What do I want? to 
 acquaint myself with the true order of things, and 
 comply with it," 2 they both mean, so far, the same, in 
 that they both mean we should obey a tendency, which 
 is not ourselves, but which appears in our consciousness, 
 by which things fulfil the real law of their being. 
 
 It is true, the not ourselves, by which things fulfil 
 the real law of their being, extends a great deal 
 beyond that sphere where alone we usually think of 
 it. That is, a man may disserve God, disobey indi- 
 cations, not of our own making, but which appear, if 
 we attend, in our consciousness, he may disobey, I 
 say, such indications of the real law of our being, in 
 other spheres besides the sphere of conduct. He 
 does disobey them, when he sings a hymn like : My 
 Jesus to know, and feel his blood flow, or, indeed, like 
 nine-tenths of our hymns, or when he frames and 
 maintains a blundering and miserable constitution of 
 society, as well as when he commits some plain 
 breach of the moral law. That is, he may disobey 
 them in art and science as well as in conduct. But 
 he attends, and the generality of men attend, only to 
 the indications of a true law of our being as to conduct; 
 
 nothing else than an energy of aspiration towards the eternal 
 not ourselves that makes for righteousness, of aspiration to- 
 wards it, and of co-operation with it. Nothing, therefore, can 
 be more efficacious, more right, and more real. 
 
 1 Philippians iii. 3 (in the reading of the Vatican manu- 
 script) ; 1 Thessalonians i. 9. 
 
 * rl 0oij\ofj.a.i ; Kara/j-aOfTv rty (fn'iffiv ical TauTg Zi
 
 40 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 and hardly at all to indications, though they as really 
 exist, of a true law of our being on its aesthetic and 
 intelligential side. The reason is, that the moral side, 
 though not more real, is so much larger ; taking in. 
 as we have said, at least three-fourths of life. Now, 
 the indications on this moral side of that tendency, 
 not of our making, by which things fulfil the law of 
 their being, we do very much mean to denote and to 
 sum up when we speak of the will of God, pleasing God, 
 serving God. Let us keep firm footing on this basis of 
 plain fact, narrow though it may be. 
 
 To feel that one is fulfilling in any way the laAv of 
 one's being, that one is succeeding and hitting the 
 mark, brings us, we know, happiness ; to feel this in 
 regard to so great a thing as conduct, brings, of 
 course, happiness proportionate to the thing's great 
 ness. We have already had Quintilian's witness, how 
 right conduct gives joy. 'Who could value knowledge 
 more than Goethe 1 but he marks it as being without 
 question a lesser source of joy than conduct. Conduct 
 he ranks with health as beyond all compare primary. 
 "Nothing, after health and virtue," he says, "can give 
 so much satisfaction as learning and knowing." Nay, 
 and Bishop Butler, at the view of the happiness from 
 conduct, breaks free from all that hesitancy and de - 
 pression which so commonly hangs on his masterly 
 thinking. " Self-love, methinks, should be alarmed ! 
 May she not pass over greater pleasures than those 
 she is so wholly taken up with 1" And Bishop 
 Wilson, always hitting the right nail on the head in 
 matters of this sort, remarks that, "if it were not
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 41 
 
 for the practical difficulties attending it, virtue would 
 hardly be distinguishable from a kind of sensuality." The 
 practical difficulties are indeed exceeding great. Plain 
 as is the .course, and high the prize, we all find our- 
 selves daily led to say with the Imitation : " Would 
 that for one single day we had lived in this world as 
 we ought !" Yet the course is so evidently plain, 
 and the prize so high, that the same Imitation cries 
 out presently : " If a man would but take notice, 
 what peace he brings to himself, and what joy to 
 others, merely by managing himself right!" And 
 for such happiness, since certainly we ourselves did 
 not make it, we instinctively feel grateful ; according 
 to that remark of one of the wholesomest and truest 
 of moralists, Barrow : " He is not a man, who doth 
 not delight to make some returns thither whence he 
 hath found great kindness." And this sense of grati- 
 tude, again, is itself an addition to our happiness ! So 
 strong, altogether, is the witness and sanction happiness 
 gives to going right in conduct, to fulfilling, so far as 
 conduct is concerned, the law indicated to us of our 
 being. Now, there can be no sanction to compare, 
 for force, with the strong sanction of happiness, if it 
 be true what Bishop Butler, who is here but the 
 mouthpiece of humanity itself, says so irresistibly : 
 "It is manifest that nothing can be of consequence 
 to mankind, or any creature, but happiness." But 
 we English are taunted with our proneness to an 
 unworthy eudsemonism, and an Anglican bishop may 
 perhaps be a suspected witness. Let us call, then, a 
 glorious father of the Catholic Church, the great
 
 42 LITEEATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Augustine himself. Says St. Augustine: "Act we 
 must in pursuance of what gives us most delight; quod 
 amplius nos delected, secundum id operemur necesse est. :> 
 
 And now let us see how exactly Israel's perceptions 
 about God follow and confirm this simple line, which 
 we have here reached quite independently. First : 
 "It is joy to the just to do judgment." 1 Then : "It 
 becometh well the just to be thankful." 2 Finally: "A 
 pleasant thing it is to be thankful." 3 What can be 
 simpler than this, and at the same time more solid 1 
 But again : " The statutes of the Eternal rejoice the 
 heart." 4 And then : "I will give thanks unto thee, 
 Eternal, with my whole heart ; at midnight will I 
 rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous 
 judgments!" 5 And lastly: "It is a good thing to 
 give thanks unto the Eternal; it is a good thing to 
 sing praises unto our God!" 6 Why, these are the 
 very same propositions as the preceding, only with a 
 power and depth of emotion added ! Emotion has 
 been applied to morality. 
 
 God or Eternal is here really, at bottom, nothing 
 but a deeply moved way of saying conduct or righteous 
 ness. "Trust in God" is, in a deeply moved way of 
 expression, trust in the law of conduct : " delight in 
 the Eternal " is, in a deeply moved way of expression, 
 the happiness we all feel to spring from conduct. 
 Attending to conduct, to judgment, makes the at- 
 tender feel that it is joy to do it. Attending to it 
 
 1 Prov. xxi. 15. 2 Ps. xxxiii. 1. 
 
 3 Ps. cxlvii. 1. 4 Ps. xix. 8. 
 
 5 Ps. cxxxviii. 1; cxix. 62. 6 Ps. xcii. 1; cxlvii. 1.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 43 
 
 more still, makes him feel that it is the commandment 
 of the Eternal, and that the joy got from it is joy 
 from fulfilling the commandment of the Eternal. The 
 thankfulness for this joy is thankfulness to the Eter- 
 nal; and to the Eternal, again, is due that further joy 
 which comes from this thankfulness. "The fear of 
 the Eternal, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil, 
 that is understanding." 1 " The fear of the Eternal" 
 and " To depart from evil " here mean, and are put to 
 mean, and by the very laws of Hebrew composition 
 which make the second phrase in a parallelism repeat 
 the first in other words, they must mean, just the 
 same thing. Yet what man of soul, after he had 
 once risen to feel that to depart from evil was to 
 walk in awful observance of an enduring clue, within 
 us and without us, which leads to happiness, but 
 would prefer to say, instead of "to depart from evil," 
 " the fear of the Eternal ? " 
 
 Henceforth, then, Israel transferred to this Eternal 
 all his obligations. Instead of saying : " Whoso 
 keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul," 2 
 he rather said, " My soul, wait thou only upon God, 
 for of him cometh my salvation!" 3 Instead of say- 
 ing : " Bind them (the laws of righteousness) continu- 
 ally upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck ! " 4 
 he rather said, " Have I not remembered Thee on my 
 bed, and thought upon Thee when I was waking ?" 5 
 The obligation of a grateful and devout self-surrender 
 to the Eternal replaced all sense of obligation to one's 
 
 1 Job xxviii. 28. 2 Prov. xix. 16. 3 Ps. Ixii. 5, 1. 
 4 Prov. vi 21. * Ps. Ixiii. 7.
 
 44 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, 
 
 own better self, one's own permanent welfare. The 
 moralist's rule : " Take thought for your permanent, 
 not your momentary, well-being," became now: 
 " Honour the Eternal, not doing thine own ways, nor 
 finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own 
 words." 1 That is, with Israel religion replaced 
 morality. 
 
 It is true, out of the humble yet divine ground of 
 attention to conduct, of care for what in conduct is 
 right and wrong, grew morality and religion both ; but, 
 from the time the soul felt the motive of religion, it 
 dropped and could not but drop the other. And the 
 motive of doing right, to a sincere soul, is now really 
 no longer his own welfare, but to please God ; and it 
 bewilders his consciousness if you tell him that he 
 does right out of self-love. So that, as we have said 
 that the first man who, as "a being of a large 
 discourse, looking before' and after," controlled the 
 blind momentary impulses of the instinct of self- 
 preservation, and controlled the blind momentary 
 impulses of the sexual instinct, had morality revealed 
 to him ; so in like manner we may say, that the first 
 man who was thrilled with gratitude, devotion and 
 awe at the sense of joy and peace, not of his own 
 making, which followed the exercise of this self-con- 
 trol, had religion revealed to him. And, for us at 
 least, this man was Israel. 
 
 Now here, as we have already pointed out the 
 falseness of the common antithesis between ethical and 
 religious, let us anticipate the objection that the 
 1 Isaiah Iviii. 13.
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 45 
 
 religion here spoken of is but natural religion, by 
 pointing out the falseness of the common antithesis, 
 also, between natural and revealed. For that in us 
 which is really natural is, in truth, revealed. We 
 awake to the consciousness of it, we are aware of it 
 coming forth in our mind ; but we feel that we did 
 not make it, that it is discovered to us, that it is what 
 it is whether we will or no. If we are little con- 
 cerned about it, we say it is natural ; if much, we say 
 it is revealed. But the difference between the two is 
 not one of kind, only of degree. The real antithesis, 
 to natural and revealed alike, is invented, artificial. 
 Religion springing out of an experience of the power, 
 the grandeur, the necessity of righteousness, is 
 revealed religion, whether we find it in Sophocles 01 
 in Isaiah. " The will of mortal men did not beget it, 
 neither shall oblivion ever put it to sleep." A sys- 
 tem of theological notions about personality, essence, 
 existence, consubstantiality, is artificial religion, and 
 is the proper opposite to revealed ; since it is a religion 
 which comes forth in no one's consciousness, but is 
 invented by theologians, able men with uncommon 
 talents for abstruse reasoning. This religion is in no 
 sense revealed, just because it is in no sense natural. 
 And revealed religion is properly so named, just in 
 proportion as it is in a pre-eminent degree natural. 
 
 The religion of the Bible, therefore, is well said to 
 
 be revealed, because the great natural truth, that 
 
 " righteousness tendeth to life," l is seized and exhibited 
 
 there with such incomparable force and efficacy. All, 
 
 1 Prov xi. 19
 
 46 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 or very nearly all, the nations of mankind have 
 recognised the importance of conduct, and have attri- 
 buted to it a natural obligation. They, however, 
 looked at conduct, not as something full of happiness 
 and joy, but as something one could not manage to 
 do without. But: "Sion heard of it and rejoiced, 
 and the daughters of Judah were glad, because of thy 
 judgments, Eternal ! " l Happiness is our being's 
 end and aim, and no one has ever come near Israel 
 in feeling, and in making others feel, that to righteous- 
 ness belongs happiness/ The prodigies and the mar- 
 vellous of Bible-religion are common to it with all 
 religions ; the love of righteousness, in this eminency, 
 is its own. 
 
 V. 
 
 The real germ of religious consciousness, therefore, 
 out of which sprang Israel's name for God, to which 
 the records of his history adapted themselves, and 
 which came to be clothed upon, in time, with a 
 mighty growth of poetry and tradition, was a con- 
 sciousness of the not ourselves which makes for righteous- 
 ness. And the way to convince oneself of this is by 
 studying the Bible with a fair mind, and with the tact 
 which letters, surely, alone can give. For the thing 
 turns upon understanding the manner in which men 
 have thought, their way of using words, and what 
 they mean by them. And by knowing letters, by 
 becoming conversant with the best that has been 
 thought and said in the world, we become acquainted 
 1 Psalm xcviL 8.
 
 I.) EELIGION GIVEN. 47 
 
 not only with the history, but also with the scope and 
 powers, of the instruments men employ in thinking 
 and speaking. And this is just what is sought for. 
 
 And with the sort of experience thus gained of the 
 hjstory of the human spirit, objections, as we have 
 said, will be found not so much to be refuted by 
 reasoning as to fall away of themselves. It is ob- 
 jected : " Why, if the Hebrews of the Bible had thus 
 eminently the sense for righteousness, does it not 
 equally distinguish the Jews now?" But does not 
 experience show us, how entirely a change of circum- 
 stances may change a people's character; and have 
 the modern Jews lost more of what distinguished 
 their ancestors, or even so much, as the modern 
 Greeks of what distinguished theirs ? Where is now, 
 among the Greeks, the dignity of life of Pericles, the 
 dignity of thought and of art of Phidias and Plato 1 
 It is objected, that the Jews' God was not the endur- 
 ing power that makes for righteousness, but only 
 their tribal God, who gave them the victory in the 
 battle and plagued them that hated them. But how, 
 then, comes their literature to be full of such things 
 as : " Shew me thy ways, Eternal, and teach me 
 thy paths ; let integrity and uprightness preserve me, 
 for I put my trust in thee ! if I incline unto wickedness 
 with my heart, the Eternal will not hear me?" 1 
 From the sense that with men thus guided and going 
 right in goodness it could not but be well, that their 
 leaf could not wither and that whatsoever they did 
 must prosper, 2 would naturally come the sense that 
 1 Ps. xxv. 4, 21 ; Ixvi 18. 2 Ps. L 3.
 
 48 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 in their wars with an enemy the enemy should be put 
 to confusion and they should triumph. But how, out 
 of the mere sense that their enemy should be put to 
 confusion and they should triumph, could the desire 
 for goodness come ? 
 
 It is objected, again, that their " law of the Lord " 
 was a positive traditionary code to the Hebrews, 
 standing as a mechanical rule which held them in awe ; 
 that their " fear of the Lord " was superstitious dread 
 of an assumed magnified and non-natural man. But 
 why, then, are they always saying : " Teach me thy 
 statutes, Teach me thy way, Show thou me the way 
 that I shall walk in, Open mine eyes, Make me to under- 
 stand wisdom secretly!" 1 if all the law they were 
 thinking of stood, stark and written, before their eyes 
 already 1 And what could they mean by : " I will 
 love thee, Eternal, my strength !" 2 if the fear they 
 meant was not the awe-filled observance from deep 
 attachment, but a servile terror ? It is objected, that 
 their conception of righteousness was a narrow and 
 rigid one, centring mainly in what they called judg- 
 ment : " Hate the evil and love the good, and establish 
 judgment in the gate!" 3 so that "evil," for them, did 
 not take in all faults whatever of heart and conduct, 
 but meant chiefly oppression, graspingness, a violent 
 mendacious tongue, insolent and riotous excess. 
 True ; their conception of righteousness was much of 
 this kind, and it was narrow. But whoever sincerely 
 attends to conduct, along however limited a line, is on 
 
 1 Ps. cxix. 12 ; Ixxxvi 11 ; cxliii. 8 ; cxix. 18 ; li. 6. 
 2 Ps. xviii. 1. * Amos v. 15.
 
 I.] . RELIGION GIVEN. 49 
 
 his way to bring under the eye of conscience all con- 
 duct whatever; and already, in the Old Testament, 
 the somewhat monotonous inculcation of the social 
 virtues of judgment and justice is continually broken 
 through by deeper movements of personal religion. 
 Every time that the words contrition or humility drop 
 from the lips of prophet or psalmist, Christianity 
 appears. 
 
 It is objected, finally, that even their own narrow 
 conception of righteousness this people could not 
 follow, but were perpetually oppressive, grasping, 
 slanderous, sensual. Why, the very interest and im- 
 portance of their witness to righteousness lies in their 
 having felt so deeply the necessity of what they were 
 so little able to accomplish ! They had the strongest 
 impulses in the world to violence and excess, the 
 keenest pleasure in gratifying these impulses. And 
 yet they had such a sense of the natural necessary 
 connection between conduct and happiness, that they 
 kept always saying, in spite of themselves : To him 
 that ordereth his conversation right shull be shoivn the sal- 
 vation of God ! l 
 
 Now manifestly this sense of theirs has a double 
 force for the rest of mankind, an evidential force 
 arid a practical force. Its evidential force is in keep- 
 ing before men's view, by the example of the signal 
 apparition, in one branch of our race, of the sense for 
 conduct and righteousness, the reality and naturalness 
 of that sense. Clearly, unless a sense or endowment 
 of human nature, however in itself real and beneficent, 
 
 1 Psalm 1. 23. 
 VOL. V. E
 
 50 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 has some signal representative among mankind, it 
 tends to be pressed upon by other senses and endow- 
 ments, to suffer from its own want of energy, and to 
 be more and more pushed out of sight. Any one, for 
 instance, who will go to the Potteries, and will look 
 at the tawdry, glaring, ill-proportioned ware which 
 is being made there for certain American and colonial 
 markets, will easily convince himself how, in our 
 people and kindred, the sense for the arts of design, 
 though it is certainly planted in human nature, 
 might dwindle and sink to almost nothing, if it were 
 not for the witness borne to this sense, and the pro- 
 test offered against its extinction, by the brilliant 
 aesthetic endowment and artistic work of ancient 
 Greece. And one cannot look out over the world 
 without seeing that the same sort of thing might very 
 well befall conduct, too, if it were not for the signal 
 witness borne by Israel. 
 
 Then there is the practical force of their example ; 
 and this is even more important. Every one is aware 
 how those, who want to cultivate any sense 01 
 endowment in themselves, must be habitually con- 
 versant with the works of people who have been 
 eminent for that sense, must study them, catch 
 inspiration from them. Only in this way, indeed, 
 can progress be made. And as long as the world 
 lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness 
 will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people 
 who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing 
 and strongest ; and in hearing and reading the words 
 Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 51 
 
 a glow and a force they could find nowhere else. As 
 well imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not 
 cultivating it by the h,elp of the remains of Greek art, 
 or a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by 
 the help of Homer and Shakspeare, as a man with a 
 sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the 
 Bible ! And this sense, in the satisfying of which we 
 come naturally to the Bible, is a sense which the 
 generality of men have far more decidedly than they 
 have the sense for art or for science. At any rate, 
 whether this or that man has it decidedly or not, it 
 is the sense which has to do with three-fourths of 
 human life. 
 
 This does truly constitute for Israel a most extra- 
 ordinary distinction. In spite of all which in them 
 and in their character is unattractive, nay, repellent, 
 in spite of their shortcomings even in righteousness 
 itself and their insignificance in everything else, 
 this petty, unsuccessful, unamiable people, without 
 politics, without science, without art, without charm, 
 deserve their great place in the world's regard, and 
 are likely to have it more, as the world goes on, 
 rather than less. It is secured to them by the facts 
 of human nature, and by the unalterable constitution 
 of things. " God hath given commandment to bless, 
 and he hath blessed, and we cannot reverse it; he 
 hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and he hath not 
 seen perverseness in Israel ; the Eternal, his God, is 
 with him I" 1 
 
 Any one does a good deed who removes the stumb- 
 1 Numbers xxiii 20. 21.
 
 52 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 ling-blocks out of the way of feeling and profiting by 
 the witness left by this people. And so, instead of 
 making our Hebrew speakers mean, in their use of 
 the word God, a scientific affirmation which never 
 entered into their heads, and about which many will 
 dispute, let us content ourselves with making them 
 mean, as matter of scientific fact and experience, what 
 they really did mean as such, and what is unchal- 
 lengeable. Let us put into their "Eternal" and 
 " God " no more science than they did : the enduring 
 power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. They 
 meant more by these names, but they meant this ; 
 and this they grasped fully. And the sense which 
 this will give us for their words is at least solid ; so 
 that we may find it of use as a guide to steady us, 
 and to give us a constant clue in following what they 
 say. 
 
 And is it so unworthy 1 It is true, unless we can 
 fill it with as much feeling as they did, the mere 
 possessing it will not carry us far. But matters are 
 not at all mended by taking their language of approxi- 
 mate figure and using it for the language of scientific 
 definition ; or by crediting them with our own 
 dubious science, deduced from metaphysical ideas 
 which they never had. A better way than this, 
 surely, is to take their fact of experience, to keep it 
 steadily for our basis in using their language, and to 
 see whether from using their language with the 
 ground of this real and firm sense to it, as they them- 
 selves did, somewhat of their feeling, too, may not 
 grow upon us. At least we shall know what we are
 
 I.] RELIGION GIVEN. 53 
 
 saying ; and that what we are saying is true, however 
 inadequate. 
 
 But is this confessed inadequateness of our speech, 
 concerning that which we will not call by the negative 
 name of the unknown and unknowable, but rather by 
 the name of the unexplored and the inexpressible, 
 and of which the Hebrews themselves said : It is 
 more high tJian heaven, what canst thou do ? deeper than 
 hell, what canst thou know? 1 is this reservedness of 
 affirmation about God less worthy of him, than the 
 astounding particularity and licence of affirmation of 
 our dogmatists, as if he were a man in the next 
 street? Nay, and nearly all the difficulties which 
 torment theology, as the reconciling God's justice 
 with his mercy, and so on, come from this licence 
 and particularity ; theologians having precisely, as it 
 would often seem, built up a wall first, in order after- 
 wards to run their own heads against it. 
 
 This, we say, is what comes of too much talent for 
 abstract reasoning. One cannot help seeing the 
 theory of causation and such things, when one should 
 only see a far simpler matter : the power, the grandeur, 
 the necessity of righteousness. To be sure, a percep- 
 tion of these is at the bottom of popular religion, 
 underneath all the extravagances theologians have 
 taught people to utter, and makes the whole value of 
 it. For the sake of this true practical perception one 
 might be quite content to leave at rest a matter where 
 practice, after all, is everything, and theory nothing. 
 Only, when religion is called in question because of 
 1 Job a. 7.
 
 54 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. L 
 
 the extravagances of theology being passed off aa 
 religion, one disengages and helps religion by showing 
 their utter delusiveness. They arose out of the talents 
 of able men for reasoning, and their want (not through 
 lack of talent, for the thing needs none ; it needs 
 only time, trouble, good fortune, and a fair mind ; 
 but through their being taken up with their reasoning 
 power), their want of literary experience. By a sad 
 mishap the sphere where they show their talents is 
 one for literary experience rather than for reasoning. 
 This mishap has at the very outset, in the dealings 
 of theologians with that starting-point in our religion, 
 the experience of Israel as set forth in the Old Testa- 
 ment, been the cause, we have seen, of great 
 confusion. Naturally, as we shall hereafter see, the 
 confusion becomes worse confounded as they proceed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AEERGLAUBE INVADING. 
 
 WHEN people ask for our attention because of what 
 has passed, they say, "in the Council of the Trinity," 
 and been promulgated, for our direction, by " a 
 Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the universe," it is certainly open to any 
 man to refuse to hear them, on the plea that the very 
 thing they start with they have no means of proving. 
 And we see that many do so refuse their attention ; 
 and that the breach there is, for instance, between 
 popular religion and what is called science, comes from 
 this cause. But it is altogether different when people 
 ask for our attention on the strength of this other 
 first principle : " To righteousness belongs happi- 
 ness;" or this: "There is an enduring power, not 
 ourselves, which makes for righteousness." The more 
 we meditate on the starting -ground of theirs, the 
 more we shall find that there is solidity in it, and the 
 more we shall be inclined to go along with them and 
 to see what will come of it. 
 
 And herein is the advantage of giving this plain, 
 though restricted, sense to the Bible-phrases : " Blessed
 
 56 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 is the man that feareth the Eternal !" and : "Whoso 
 trusteth in the Eternal, happy is he I" 1 By tradition, 
 emotion, imagination, the Hebrews, no doubt, came 
 to attach more than this plain sense to these phrases. 
 But this plain, solid, and experimental sense they 
 attached to them at bottom, they attached originally ; 
 and in attaching it they were on sure ground of fact, 
 where we can all go with them. Their words, we 
 shall find, taken in this sense have quite a new force 
 for us, and an indisputable one. It is worth while 
 accustoming ourselves to use them thus, in order to 
 bring out this force and to see how real it is, limited 
 though it be, and insignificant as it may appear. 
 The very substitution of the word Eternal for the 
 word Lord is something gained in this direction. 
 The word Eternal has less of particularity and palpa- 
 bility for the imagination, but what it does affirm is 
 real and verifiable. 
 
 Let us fix firmly in our minds, with this limited 
 but real sense to the words we employ, the connection 
 of ideas which was ever present to the spirit of the 
 Hebrew people. In the way of righteousness is life, and 
 in the pathway thereof is no death; as righteousness 
 tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his 
 own death ; as the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no 
 more, but the righteous is an everlasting foundation ; 
 here is the ground idea. 2 Yet there are continual 
 momentary suggestions which make for gratifying 
 our apparent self, for unrighteousness ; nevertheless, 
 
 1 Ps. cxii. 1 ; Prov. xvi. 20. 
 
 2 Prov. xii. 28 : xi. 19 ; x. 25.
 
 II.] ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 57 
 
 what makes for our real self, for righteousness, is 
 lasting, and holds good in the end. Therefore : 
 Trust in the Eternal with all thine heart, and lean not 
 unto thine own understanding ; tJiere is no wisdom, nor 
 understanding, nor counsel against the Eternal ; there is 
 a way that seemelh right unto a man, but the end thereof 
 are the ways of death ; there are many devices in a man's 
 heart, nevertheless, the counsel of the Eternal, that shall 
 stand. 1 To follow this counsel of the Eternal is the 
 only true wisdom and understanding : The fear of the 
 Eternal, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is 
 understanding. 2 It is also happiness : Blessed is every 
 one that feareth the Eternal, thai walketh in his ways; 
 liappy shall he be, and it shall be well with him / 3 
 taste and see how gracious the Eternal is ! blessed is the 
 man that trmteth in him.* Blessed is the man whose 
 delight is in the law of the Eternal; his leaf shall not 
 wither, and whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper. 5 And 
 the more a man walks in this way of righteousness, 
 the more he feels himself borne by a power not his 
 own : Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, 
 saith the Eternal. 6 Eternal, I know that the way of 
 man is not in himself/ all things come of thee; in thy 
 light do we see light ; man's goings are of the Eternal , 
 The Eternal ordereth a good man's going, and maketh his 
 way acceptable to himself. r But man feels, too, how far 
 he always is from fulfilling or even from fully per- 
 
 1 Prov. iii. 5 ; xxi. 30 ; xiv. 12 ; xix. 21. 
 
 2 Job xxviii. 28. 3 Ps. cxxviii. 1. 4 Ps. xxxiv. 8. 
 5 Ps. i. 1, 2, 3. 6 Zechariah iv. 6. 
 
 7 Jeremiah x. 23 ; 1 Chronicles xxix. 14 ; Ps. xxxvi. 9 ; 
 I'rov. xx. 24 ; Ps. xxxvii. 23.
 
 58 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 ceiving this true law of his being, these indications of 
 the Eternal, the way of righteousness. He says and 
 must say : / am a stranger upon earth, Oh, hide not thy 
 commandments from me ! Enter not into judgment with 
 thy servant, Eternal, for in thy sight shall no man living 
 be justified/ 1 Nevertheless, as a man holds on to 
 practice as well as he can, and avoids, at any rate, 
 " presumptuous sins," courses he can clearly see to be 
 wrong, films fall away from his eyes, the indications 
 of the Eternal come out more and more fully, we are 
 cleansed from faults which were hitherto secret to 
 us : Examine me, God, and prove me, try out my reins 
 and my heart ; look well if there be any way of wickedness 
 in me, and lead me in the way everlasting ! 2 cleanse 
 thou me from my secret faults! thou liast proved my 
 heart, thou hast visited me in the night, thou hast tried me 
 and shaltfind nothing* And the more we thus get to 
 keep innocency, the more we wonderfully find joy and 
 peace : how plentiful is thy goodness which thou hast 
 laid up for them that fear thee / thou shalt hide them in 
 the secret of thy presence from the provoking of men.* 
 Thou wilt show me the path of life, in thy presence is the 
 fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for 
 evermore.^ More and more this dwelling on the joy 
 and peace from righteousness, and on the power which 
 makes for righteousness, becomes a man's consolation 
 and refuge : Thou art my hiding-place, thou shalt preserve 
 me from trouble ; if my delight had not been in thy law, 1 
 
 1 Ps. cxix. 19 ; cxliii. 2. 2 Ps. xix. 13 ; cxxxix. 23, 24. 
 3 Ps. xix. 12 ; xvii. 3. 4 Ps. xxxi. 19, 20. 
 
 8 Ps. xvi. 11.
 
 II.) ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 59 
 
 should have perished in my trouble. 1 In the day of my 
 trouble I sought the Eternal ; a refuge from the storm, a 
 shadow from the heat / 2 lead me to the rock that is 
 higher than If 3 The name of the Eternal is as a strong 
 tower, the righteous runneth into it and is. safe. 4 And the 
 more we experience this shelter, the more we come 
 to feel that it is protecting even to tenderness : Like as 
 a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Eternal 
 merciful unto them that fear him. 5 Nay, every other 
 support, we at last find, every other attachment may 
 fail us, this alone fails not : Can a woman forget her suck- 
 ing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of 
 her womb I Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget 
 thee. G 
 
 All this,' we say, rests originally upon the simple 
 but solid experience : " Conduct brings happiness," 
 or, " Eighteousness tendeth to life." r And, by making 
 it again rest there, we bring out in a new but most 
 real and sure way its truth and its power. 
 
 For it has not always continued to rest there, 
 and in popular religion now, as we manifestly see, it 
 rests there no longer. It is important to follow the 
 way in which this change gradually happened, and 
 the thing ceased to rest there. Israel's original per- 
 ception was true : Eighteousness tendeth to life ! 8 It 
 was true, that the workers of righteousness have a 
 covenant with the Eternal, that their work shall be 
 blessed and blessing, and shall endure for ever. 
 
 1 Ps. xxxii. 7 ; cxix. 92. 2 Ps. Ixxvii. 2 ; Isaiah xxv. 4. 
 3 Ps. Ixi. 2. 4 Prov. xviii. 10. 6 Ps. ciii. 13. 
 
 Isaiah xlix. 15. ' Prov. xi. 19. 3 Prov. xi. 19.
 
 60 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 But what apparent contradictions was this true 
 original perception destined to meet with ! what vast 
 delays, at any rate, were to be interposed before its 
 truth could become manifest ! And how instructively 
 the successive documents of the Bible, which popular 
 religion treats as if it were all of one piece, one time, 
 and one mind, bring out the effect on Israel of these 
 delays and contradictions ! What a distance between 
 the eighteenth Psalm and the eighty-ninth ! between 
 the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes ! 
 A time some thousand years before Christ, the golden 
 age of Israel, is the date to which the eighteenth 
 Psalm and the chief part of the Book of Proverbs 
 belong. This is the time in which the sense of the 
 necessary connection between righteousness and happi- 
 ness appears with its full simplicity and force. The 
 righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more 
 the vncked and tJie sinner/, is the constant burden of 
 the Book of Proverbs ; the evil bow before tlie good, and 
 the wicked at the gates of the righteous ! l And David, 
 in the eighteenth Psaltn, expresses his conviction of 
 the intimate dependence of happiness upon conduct, 
 in terms which, though they are not without a certain 
 crudity, are yet far more edifying in their truth and 
 naturalness than those morbid sentimentalities of Pro- 
 testantism about man's natural vileness and Christ's 
 imputed righteousness, to which they are diametrically 
 opposed. " I have kept the ways of the Eternal," he 
 says ; " I was also upright before him, and I kept 
 myself from mine iniquity ; therefore hath the EternaJ 
 1 Prov. xi. 31 ; xiv. 1.
 
 II.] ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 61 
 
 rewarded me according to my righteousness, according 
 to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed 
 me ; great prosperity showeth he unto his king, and 
 showeth loving -kindness unto David his anointed, 
 and unto his seed for evermore." That may be called 
 a classic passage for the covenant Israel always thinks 
 and speaks of as made by God with his servant David, 
 Israel's second founder. And this covenant was but 
 a renewal of the covenant made with Israel's first 
 founder, God's servant Abraham, that "righteousness 
 shall inherit a blessing," and that " in thy seed all nations 
 of the earth shall be blessed" * 
 
 But what a change in the eighty-ninth Psalm, a few 
 hundred years later! " Eternal, where are thy former 
 loving-kindnesses which thou swarest unto David? thou 
 hast abhorred and forsaken thine anointed, thou hast 
 made void the covenant ; O remember how short my 
 time is !" 2 " Tlie, righteous shall be recompensed in the 
 earth/" the speaker means; "my death is near, and 
 death ends all ; where, Eternal, is thy promise 1" 
 
 Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward travail to 
 which, in the six hundred years that followed the age 
 of David and Solomon, the many and rude shocks 
 befalling Israel's fundamental idea, Righteousness 
 tendeth to life, and he that pursueth evil pursueth it to 
 his own death, gave occasion. "Wherefore do the 
 wicked live," asks Job, " become old, yea, are mighty 
 in power 1 their houses are safe from fear, neither is 
 the rod of God upon them?" 3 Job himself is righteous, 
 
 1 1 Peter iii. 9 ; Genesis xxvi. 4. 
 Psalm Ixxxix. 49, 38, 39, 74. 3 Job xxi. 7, 9.
 
 62 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 and yet : "On mine eyelids is the shadow of death, 
 not for any injustice in mine hands." l All through 
 the Book of Job the question, how this can be, is 
 over and over again asked and never answered ; 
 inadequate solutions are offered and repelled, but an 
 adequate solution is never reached. The only solution 
 reached is that of silence before the insoluble : "I will 
 lay mine hand upon my mouth. " 2 The two percep- 
 tions, Righteousness tendeth to life, and, The ungodly 
 prosper in the world, are left confronting one another 
 like Kantian antinomies. 3 " The earth is given unto the 
 hand of the wicked!" and yet: "The counsel of the 
 wicked is far from me; God rewardeth him, and he shall 
 know it/"* And this last, the original perception, 
 remains indestructible. The Book of Ecclesiastes has 
 been called sceptical, epicurean; it is certainly without 
 the glow and hope which animate the Bible in general. 
 It belongs, probably, to the fourth century before 
 Christ, to the latter and worse days of the Persian 
 power; with difficulties pressing the Jewish com- 
 munity on all sides, with a Persian governor 
 lording it in Jerusalem, with resources light and 
 taxes heavy, with the cancer of poverty eating into 
 the mass of the people, with the rich estranged from the 
 poor and from the national traditions, with the priest- 
 hood slack, insincere, and worthless. Composed under 
 such circumstances, the book has been said, and with 
 justice, to breathe resignation at the grave of Israel, Ite 
 author sees " the tears of the oppressed, and they 
 
 1 Job xvi. 16, 17. Job xl. 4. 
 
 Prov. xi 19 ; Ps. Ixxiii 12. * Job ix. 24 ; xxi. 16, 19-
 
 II.] ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 63 
 
 had no comforter, and on the side of their oppressors 
 there was power ; wherefore I praised the dead which 
 are already dead more than the living which are yet 
 alive." 1 He sees "all things come alike to all, there 
 is one event to the righteous and to the wicked." 2 
 Attempts at a philosophic indifference appear, at a 
 sceptical suspension of judgment, at an easy ne quid 
 nimis: "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make 
 thyself overwise ! why shouldst thou destroy thy- 
 self?" 3 Vain attempts, even at a moment which 
 favoured them ! shows of scepticism, vanishing as 
 soon as uttered before the intractable conscientious- 
 ness of Israel! For the Preacher makes answer 
 against himself : " Though a sinner do evil a hundred 
 times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know 
 that it shall be well with them that fear God ; but it 
 shall not be well with the wicked, because he feareth 
 not before God." 4 
 
 Malachi, probably almost contemporary with the 
 Preache^-, felt the pressure of the same circumstances, 
 had the same occasions of despondency. All around 
 him people were saying : " Every one that doeth evil 
 is good in the sight of the Eternal, and he delighteth 
 in them ; where is the God of judgment ? it is vain 
 to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept 
 his ordinance?" 5 What a change from the clear 
 certitude of the golden age : " As the whirlwind 
 passe th, so is the wicked no more ; but the righteous 
 
 1 Eccles. iv. 1,2. 2 Ecclcs. ix. 2. 
 
 8 Eccles. vii. 16. Eccles. viii. 12, 13. 
 
 6 Malachi ii. 17 ; iii. 14.
 
 64 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 is an everlasting foundation !" l But yet, with all the 
 certitude of this happier past, Malachi answers on 
 behalf of the Eternal : " Unto you that fear my name 
 shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in 
 his wings!" 2 
 
 Many there were, no doubt, who had lost all living 
 sense that the promises were made to righteousness ; 
 who took them mechanically, as made to them and 
 assured to them because they were the seed of 
 Abraham, because they were, in St. Paul's words : 
 " Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption and the 
 glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and 
 the service of God, and whose are the fathers." 3 
 These people were perplexed and indignant when the 
 privileged seed became unprosperous; and they looked 
 for some great change to be wrought in the fallen for- 
 tunes of Israel, wrought miraculously and materially. 
 And they were, no doubt,, the great majority, and of 
 the mass of Jewish expectation concerning the future 
 they stamped the character. With them, however, 
 our interest does not for the present lie ; it lies with 
 the prophets and those whom the prophets represent. 
 It lies with the continued depositaries of the original 
 revelation to Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life ; who 
 saw clearly enough that the promises were to righteous- 
 ness, and that what tendeth to life was not the seed of 
 Abraham taken in itself, but righteousness. With this 
 minority, and with its noble representatives the pro- 
 phets, our present interest lies ; the further develop- 
 ment of their conviction about righteousness is what 
 1 Prov. x. 25. 8 Malachi iv. 2. 3 Rom. ix. 4, 5.
 
 II.] ABEKGLAUBE INVADING. 65 
 
 it here imports us to trace. An indestructible faith 
 that the righteous is an everlasting foundation they had ; 
 yet they too, as we have seen, could not but notice, 
 as time went on, many things which seemed apparently 
 to contradict this their belief. In private life, there 
 was the frequent prosperity of the sinner. In the 
 life of nations, there was the rise and power of the 
 great unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen, the 
 unsuccessfulness of Israel; although Israel was un- 
 doubtedly, as compared with the heathen, the deposi- 
 tary and upholder of the idea of righteousness. 
 Therefore prophets and righteous men also, like the 
 unspiritual crowd, could not but look ardently and 
 expectantly to the future, to some great change and 
 redress in store. 
 
 At the same time, although their experience that 
 the righteous were often afflicted, and the wicked often 
 prosperous, could not but perplex pious Hebrews ; 
 although their conscience felt, and conld not but feel, 
 that, compared with the other nations with whom they 
 came in contact, they themselves and their fathers had 
 a concern for righteousness, and an unremitting sense 
 of its necessity, which put them in covenant with the 
 Eternal who makes for righteousness, and which 
 rendered the triumph of other nations over them a 
 triumph of people who cared little for righteousness 
 over people who cared for it much, and a cause of 
 perplexity, therefore, to men's trust in the Eternal, 
 though their conscience told them this, yet of their 
 own shortcomings and perversities it told them louder 
 still, and that their sins had in truth been enough to 
 VOL. v. F
 
 66 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 break their covenant with the Eternal a thousand 
 times over, and to bring justly upon them all the 
 miseries they suffered. To enable them to meet the 
 terrible day, when the Eternal would avenge him of 
 his enemies and make up his jewels, they themselves 
 needed, they knew, the voice of a second Elijah, 8 
 change of the inner man, repentance. 1 
 
 H. 
 
 And then, with Malachi's testimony on its lips to 
 the truth of Israel's ruling idea, Righteousness tendeth 
 to life ! died prophecy. Through some four hundred 
 years the mind of Israel revolved those wonderful 
 utterances, which, even now, on the ear of even those 
 who only half understand them and who do not at all 
 believe them, strike with such strange, incomparable 
 power, the promises of prophecy. Through four 
 hundred years, amid distress and humiliation, the 
 Hebrew race pondered those magnificent assurances 
 that " the, Eternal's arm is not shortened," that "righteous- 
 ness sliall be for ever," 2 and that the future would prove 
 this, even if the present did not. "The Eternal 
 fainteth not, neither is weary ; he giveth power to 
 the faint. 3 They that wait on the Eternal shall 
 renew their strength; the redeemed of the Eternal 
 shall return and come with singing to Zion, and ever- 
 lasting joy shall be upon their head ; they shall repair 
 the old wastes, the desolations of many generations ; 
 
 > Malachi iii. 17 ; iv. 5. 2 Isaiah lix. 1 ; li 8. 
 
 Isaiah xl. 28, 29.
 
 II.] ABEEGLAUBE INVADING. 67 
 
 and I, the Eternal, will make an everlasting covenant 
 with them. 1 The Eternal shall be thine everlasting 
 light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended ; 
 the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the 
 brightness of thy rising, and my salvation shall be for 
 ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished." 2 
 
 The prophets themselves, speaking when the ruin 
 of their country was impending, or soon after it had 
 happened, had for the most part had in prospect the 
 actual restoration of Jerusalem, the submission of the 
 nations around, and the empire of David and Solomon 
 renewed. But as time went on, and Israel's return 
 from captivity and resettlement of Jerusalem by no 
 means answered his glowing anticipations from them, 
 these anticipations had more and more a construction 
 put upon them which set at defiance the unworthiness 
 and infelicities of the actual present, which filled up 
 what prophecy left in outline, and which embraced 
 the world. The Hebrew Amos, of the eighth century 
 before Christ, promises to his hearers a recovery from 
 their ruin in which they shall possess the remnant of 
 Edom ; the Greek or Aramaic Amos of the Christian 
 era, whose words St. James produces in the conference 
 at Jerusalem, promises a recovery for Israel in which 
 the residue of men shall seek the Eternal? This is but 
 a specimen of what went forward on a large scale. 
 The redeemer, whom the unknown prophet of the 
 captivity foretold to Zion, 4 has, a few hundred years 
 
 1 Isaiah xl. 31 ; xxxv. 10 ; Ixi. 4. 8. 
 
 2 Isaiah Ix. 20, 3 ; li. 6. 
 3 Amos ix. 12 ; Acts xv. 17. * Isaiah lix. 20.
 
 68 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 later, for the writer whom we call Daniel and for his 
 contemporaries, become the miraculous agent of Israel's 
 new restoration, the heaven-sent executor of the 
 Eternal's judgment, and the bringer-in of the kingdom 
 of righteousness the Messiah, in short, of our popu- 
 lar religion. " One like the Son of Man came with 
 the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of 
 Days, and there was given him dominion and glory, 
 and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages 
 should serve him; and the kingdom and dominion 
 shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most 
 High." 1 An impartial criticism will hardly find in 
 the Old Testament writers before the times of the 
 Maccabees (and certainly not in the passages usually 
 quoted to prove it) the set doctrine of the immortality 
 of the soul or of the resurrection of the dead. But 
 by the time of the Maccabees, when this passage of 
 the Book of Daniel was written^ in the second century 
 before Christ, the Jews have undoubtedly become 
 familiar, not indeed with the idea of the immortality 
 of the soul as philosophers like Plato conceived it, 
 but with the notion of a resurrection of the dead to 
 take their trial for acceptance or rejection in the Most 
 High's judgment and kingdom. 
 
 To this, then, has swelled Israel's original and 
 fruitful thesis : Righteousness tendeth to life ! as the 
 whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the right- 
 eous is an everlasting foundation ! ~ The phantasma- 
 gories of more prodigal and wild imaginations have 
 mingled with the product of Israel's own austere 
 1 Daniel vii. 13, 14, 27. 2 Prov. xi. 19 ; x. 25.
 
 n.] ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 69 
 
 spirit ; Babylon, Persia, Egypt, even Greece, have 
 left their trace there ; but the unchangeable substruc- 
 ture remains, and on that substructure is everything 
 built which comes after. 
 
 In one sense, the lofty Messianic ideas of "the 
 great and notable day of the Eternal," " the consola- 
 tion of Israel," "the restitution of all things," 1 are 
 even more important than the solid but humbler idea, 
 righteousness tendeth to life, out of which they arose. 
 In another sense they are much less important. They 
 are more important, because they are the development 
 of this idea and prove its strength. It might have 
 been crushed and baffled by the falsification events 
 seemed to delight in giving it ; that, instead of being 
 crushed and baffled, it took this magnificent flight, 
 shows its innate power. And they also in a wonder- 
 ful manner attract emotion to the ideas of conduct 
 and morality, attract it to them and combine it with 
 them. On the other hand, the idea that righteousness 
 tendeth to life has a firm, experimental ground, which 
 the Messianic ideas have not. And the day comes 
 when the possession of such a ground is invaluable. 
 
 That the spirit of man should entertain hopes and 
 anticipations, beyond what it actually knows and can 
 verify, is quite natural. Human life could not have 
 the scope, and depth, and progress it has, were this 
 otherwise. It is natural, too, to make these hopes 
 and anticipations give in their turn support to the 
 simple and humble experience which was their original 
 ground. Israel, therefore, who originally followed 
 1 Acts ii 20 ; Luke ii. 25 ; Acts iii. 21.
 
 70 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, u 
 
 righteousness because he felt that it tended to life, 
 might and did naturally come at last to follow it 
 because it would enable him to stand before the Son 
 of Man at his coming, and to share in the triumph ot 
 the saints of the Most High. 
 
 But this latter belief has not the same character as 
 the belief which it is thus set to confirm. It is a 
 kind of fairy-tale, which a man tells himself, which 
 no one, we grant, can prove impossible to turn out 
 true, but which no one, also, can prove certain to 
 turn out true. It is exactly what is expressed by the 
 German word " Aberglaube," extra-belief, belief beyond 
 what is certain and verifiable. Our word " supersti- 
 tion " had by its derivation this same meaning, but it 
 has come to be used in a merely bad sense, and to 
 mean a childish and craven religiosity. With the 
 German word it is not so ; therefore Goethe can say 
 with propriety and truth : " Aberglaube is the poetry 
 of life, der Aberglaube ist die Poesie des Lebens." It 
 is so. Extra -belief, that which we hope, augur, 
 imagine, is .the poetry of life, and has the rights of 
 poetry. But it is not science ; and yet it tends 
 always to imagine itself science, to substitute itself 
 for science, to make itself the ground of the very 
 science out of which it has grown. The Messianic 
 ideas, which were the poetry of life to Israel in the 
 age when Jesus Christ came, did this ; and it is the 
 more important to mark that they did it, because 
 similar ideas have so signally done the same thing 
 with popular Christianity.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 
 
 JESUS CHRIST was undoubtedly the very last sort of 
 Messiah whom the Jews expected. Christian theo- 
 logians say confidently that the characters of humility, 
 obscureness, and depression, were commonly attributed 
 to the Jewish Messiah; and even Bishop Butler, in 
 general the most severely exact of writers, gives 
 countenance to this error. What is true is, that we 
 find these characters attributed to some one by the 
 prophets; that we attribute them to Jesus Christ; 
 that Jesus is for us the Messiah, and that Jesus they 
 suit. But for the prophets themselves, and for the 
 Jews who heard and read them, these characters of 
 lowliness and depression belonged to God's chastened 
 servant, the idealised Israel. When Israel had been 
 purged and renewed by these, the Messiah was to 
 appear ; but with glory and power for his attributes, 
 not humility and weakness. It is impossible to resist 
 acknowledging this, if we read the Bible to find from 
 it what those who wrote it really intended to think 
 and say, and not to put into it what we wish them to 
 have thought and said. To find in Jesus the genuine
 
 72 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [OIIAF. 
 
 Jewish Messiah, or to find in him the Son of Man of 
 Daniel, one coming with the clouds of heaven and 
 having universal dominion given him, must certainly, 
 to a Jew, have been extremely difficult 
 
 Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly in the Old Tes- 
 tament the germ of Christianity. In developing this 
 germ lay the future of righteousness itself, of Israel's 
 primary and immortal concern ; and the incomparable 
 greatness of the religion founded by Jesus Christ 
 conies from his having developed it. Jesus Christ is 
 not the Messiah to whom the hopes of his nation 
 pointed ; and yet Christendom with perfect justice 
 has made him the Messiah, because he alone took, 
 when his nation was on another and a false tack, a 
 way obscurely indicated in the Old Testament, and 
 the one only possible and successful way, for the 
 accomplishment of the Messiah's function : to bring 
 in everlasting righteousness.* Let us see how this was 
 so. 
 
 Religion in the Old Testament is a matter of 
 national and social conduct mainly. First, it consists 
 in devotion to Israel's God, the Eternal who loveth 
 righteousness, and of separation from other nations 
 whose concern for righteousness was less fervent, of 
 abhorrence of their idolatries which were sure .to 
 bewilder and diminish this fervent concern. Secondly, 
 it consists in doing justice, hating all wrong, robbery, 
 and oppression, abstaining from insolence, lying, and 
 slandering. The Jews' polity, their theocracy, was of 
 such immense importance, because reHgion, when 
 1 Daniel ix. 24.
 
 HI.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 73 
 
 conceived as having its existence in these national 
 and social duties mainly, requires a polity to put itself 
 forth in ; and the Jews' polity was adapted to religion 
 so conceived. But this religion, as it developed itself, 
 was by no means fully worthy of the intuition out of 
 which it had grown. We have seen how, in its 
 intuition of God, of that " not ourselves " of which 
 all mankind form some conception or other, as the 
 Eternal that makes for righteousness, the Hebrew race 
 found the revelation needed to breathe emotion int<3 
 the laws of morality, and to make morality religion. 
 This revelation is the capital fact of the Old Testament, 
 and the source of its grandeur and power. But it is 
 evident that this revelation lost, as time went on, its 
 nearness and clearness ; and that for the mass of the 
 Hebrews their God came to be a mere magnified and 
 non-natural man, like the God of our popular religion 
 now, who has commanded certain courses of conduct 
 and attached certain sanctions to them. 
 
 And though prophets and righteous men, among 
 the Hebrews, might preserve always the immediate 
 and truer apprehension of their God as the Eternal 
 who makes for righteousness, they in vain tried to com- 
 municate this apprehension to the mass of their 
 countrymen. They had, indeed, special difficulty to 
 contend with in communicating it ; and the difficulty 
 was this. Those courses of conduct, which Israel's 
 intuition of the Eternal had originally touched with 
 emotion and made religion, lay chiefly, we have seen, 
 in the line of national and social duties. By reason 
 of the stage of their own growth and the world's, at
 
 74 LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, 
 
 which this revelation found the Hebrews, the thing 
 could not well be otherwise. And national and social 
 duties are peculiarly capable of a mechanical, exterior 
 performance, in which the heart has no share. One 
 may observe rites and ceremonies, hate idolatry, 
 abstain from murder and theft and false witness, and 
 yet have one's inward thoughts bad, callous, and 
 disordered. Then even the admitted duties them- 
 selves come to be ill-discharged or set at nought, 
 because the emotion which was the only certain 
 security for their good discharge is wanting. The 
 veiy power of religion, as we have seen, lies in its 
 bringing emotion to bear on our rules of conduct, and 
 thus making us care for them so much, consider them 
 so deeply and reverentially, that we surmount the 
 great practical difficulty of acting in obedience to 
 them, and follow them heartily and easily. There- 
 fore the Israelites, when, they lost their primary 
 intuition and the deep feeling which went with it, 
 were perpetually idolatrous, perpetually slack or 
 niggardly in the service of Jehovah, perpetually 
 violators of judgment and justice. 
 
 The prophets earnestly reminded their nation of 
 the superiority of judgment and justice to any 
 exterior ceremony like sacrifice. But judgment and 
 justice themselves, as Israel in general conceived them, 
 have something exterior in them; now, what was 
 wanted wus more inwardness, more feeling. This was 
 given by adding mercy and humbleness to judgment 
 and justice. Mercy and humbleness are something 
 inward, they are affections of the heart. And even
 
 III.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 75 
 
 in the Proverbs these appear : " The merciful man 
 doeth good to his own soul ;" "He that hath mercy 
 on the poor, happy is he ;" " Honour shall uphold the 
 humble in spirit ; " " When pride cometh, shame 
 cometh, but with the lowly is wisdom." 1 And the 
 prophet Micah asked his nation : " What doth the 
 Eternal require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" adding 
 mercy and humility to the old judgment and justice. 2 
 But a further development is given to humbleness, 
 when the second Isaiah adds contrition to it: "I" 
 (the Eternal) "dwell with him that is of a contrite 
 and humble spirit ;" 3 or when the Psalmist says, " The 
 sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a 
 contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise !" 4 
 
 This is personal religion ; religion consisting in the 
 inward feeling and disposition of the individual 
 himself, rather than in the performance of outward 
 acts towards religion or society. It is the essence of 
 Christianity, it is what the Jews needed, it is the 
 line in which their religion was ripe for development. 
 And it appears in the Old Testament. Still, in the 
 Old Testament it by no means comes out fully. The 
 leaning, there, is to make religion social rather than 
 personal, an affair of outward duties rather than of 
 inward dispositions. Soon after the very words we 
 have just quoted from him, the second Isaiah adds : 
 " If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, 
 the putting forth of the finger and speaking vanity, 
 
 1 Prov. XL 17 ; xiv. 21 ; xxix. 23 ; xi. 2. 2 Micah vi 8. 
 3 Isaiah Ivii. 15. * Psalm 1L 17.
 
 76 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. IOHAP 
 
 and if them draw out thy soul to the hungry, and 
 satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in 
 obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon-day, find 
 the Eternal shall guide thee continually and make fat 
 thy bones." 1 This stands, or at least appears to 
 stand, as a full description of righteousness ; and, as 
 such, it is unsatisfying. 
 
 II. 
 
 What was wanted, then, was a fuller description 
 of righteousness. Now, it is clear that righteousness, 
 the central object of Israel's concern, was the central 
 object of Jesus Christ's concern also. Of the develop- 
 ment and of the cardinal points of his teaching we 
 shall have to speak more at length by and by ; all we 
 have to do here is to pass them in a rapid preliminary 
 review. Israel had said : " To him that ordereth his 
 conversation right shall be shown the salvation of 
 God." 2 And Jesus said : "Except your righteousness 
 exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Phari- 
 sees," that is, of the very people who then passed 
 for caring most about righteousness and practising it 
 most rigidly, "ye shall in no wise enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven." 3 But righteousness had by 
 Jesus Christ's time lost, in great measure, the mighty 
 impulse which emotion gives ; and in losing this, had 
 lost also the mighty sanction which happiness gives. 
 The whole head was sick and the whole heart faint ;" 4 
 the glad and immediate sense of being in the right 
 way, in the way of peace, was gone; the sense of 
 1 Is. Iviii. 9-11. 2 Ps. 1. 23. 3 Matt. v. 20. * Is i. 5.
 
 in.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 77 
 
 being wrong and astray, of sin, and of helplessness 
 under sin, was oppressive. The thing was, by giving 
 a fuller idea of righteousness, to reapply emotion to it, 
 and by thus reapplying emotion, to disperse the 
 feeling of being amiss and helpless, to give the sense 
 of being right and effective; to restore, in short, to 
 righteousness the sanction of happiness. 
 
 But this could only be done by attending to that 
 inward world of feelings and dispositions which 
 Judaism had too much neglected. The first need, 
 therefore, for Israel at that time, was to make religion 
 cease to be mainly a national and social matter, and 
 become mainly a personal matter. "Thou blind 
 Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, that the 
 outside may be clean also I" 1 this was the very 
 ground-principle in Jesus Christ's teaching. Instead 
 of attending so much to your outward acts, attend, 
 he said, first of all to your inward thoughts, to the 
 state of your heart and feelings. This doctrine has 
 perhaps been overstrained and misapplied by certain 
 people since; but it was the lesson which at that 
 time was above all needed. It is a great progress 
 beyond even that advanced maxim of pious Jews : 
 "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable 
 than sacrifice." 2 For to do justice and judgment is 
 still, as we have remarked, something external, and 
 may leave the feelings untouched, uncleared, and 
 dead. What was wanted was to plough up, clear, 
 and quicken the feelings themselves. And this is 
 what Jesus Christ did. 
 
 1 Matthew xxiii. 26. " Proverbs xxi 3.
 
 78 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 "My son, give me thy heart/" says the teacher of 
 righteousness in the golden age of Israel. 1 And 
 when Israel had the Eternal revealed to him, and 
 founded our religion, he gave his heart. But the time 
 came when this direct vision ceased, and Israel's 
 religion was a mere affair of tradition, and of doctrines 
 and rules received from without. Then it might be 
 truly said of this professed servant of the Eternal : 
 "This people honour me with their lips, but have 
 removed their Jieart far from me, and their fear toward 
 me is taught by the precept of men." 2 With little 
 or no power of distinguishing between what was rule 
 of ceremonial and what was rule of conduct, they 
 followed the prescriptions of their religion with a 
 servile and sullen mind, "precept upon precept, line 
 upon line, here a little and there a little," and no end 
 to it all. 3 What a change since the days when it was 
 joy to the just to do judgment!* The prophets saw 
 clearly enough the evil, nay, they even could point to 
 the springs which must be touched in order to work a 
 cure. But they could not press these springs steadily 
 enough or skilfully enough to work the cure them- 
 
 Jesus Christ's new and different way of putting things 
 was the secret of his succeeding where the prophets 
 failed. And this new way he had of putting things 
 is what is indicated by the expression epieikeia, an 
 expression best rendered, as we have elsewhere said, 5 
 
 1 Prov. xxiii. 26. a Isaiah xxix. 13. 
 
 * Isaiah xxviii. 13. 4 Prov. xxi. 15. 
 
 8 St. Paul and Protestantism, preface, p. xix.
 
 in.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 79 
 
 by these two words: "sweet reasonableness." For 
 that which is epidkes is that which has an air of truth 
 and likelihood ; and that which has an air of truth 
 and likelihood is prepossessing. Now, never were 
 there utterances concerning conduct and righteous- 
 ness, Israel's master-concern, and the master-topic 
 of the New Testament as well as of the Old, which 
 sc carried with them an air of consummate truth and 
 likelihood as Jesus Christ's did ; and never, therefore, 
 were any utterances so irresistibly prepossessing. 
 He put things in such a way that his hearer was led 
 to take each rule or fact of conduct by its inward 
 side, its effect on the heart and character ; then the 
 reason of the thing, the meaning of what had been 
 mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon him. The 
 hearer could distinguish between what was only cere- 
 mony, and what was conduct ; and the hardest rule 
 of conduct came to appear to him infinitely reasonable 
 and natural, and therefore infinitely prepossessing. 
 A return upon themselves, and a consequent intuition 
 of the truth and reason of the matter of conduct in 
 question, gave men for right action the clearness, 
 spirit, energy, happiness, they had lost. 
 
 This power of returning upon themselves, and 
 seeing by a flash the truth and reason of things, his 
 disciples learnt of Jesus. They learnt too, from 
 observing him and his example, much which, without 
 perhaps any conscious process of being apprehended 
 in its reason, was discerned instinctively to be true 
 and life-giving as soon as it was recommended in 
 Christ's words and illustrated by Christ's example.
 
 80 LITEUATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Two lessons in particular they learnt in this way, and 
 added them to the great lesson of self-examination 
 and an appeal to the inner man, with which they 
 started. " Whoever will come after me, let him renounce 
 himself and take up his cross daily and follow me/" 1 
 was one of the two. " Learn of me that I am mild and 
 lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls /" 2 
 was the other. Jesus made his followers first look 
 within and examine themselves ; he made them feel 
 that they had a best and real self as opposed to their 
 ordinary and apparent one, and that their happiness 
 depended on saving this best self from being over- 
 borne. To find his own soul, 3 his true and permanent 
 self, became set up in man's view as his chief concern, 
 as the secret of happiness ; and so it really is. " How 
 is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and 
 suffer the loss of himself?" 1 was the searching 
 question which Jesus made men ask themselves. 
 And then, by recommending, and still more by 
 himself exemplifying in his own practice, by the 
 exhibition in himself with the most prepossessing 
 pureness, clearness, and beauty, of the two qualities 
 by which our ordinary self is indeed most essentially 
 counteracted, self-renouncement and mildness, he made 
 his followers feel that in these qualities lay the 
 secret of their best self ; that to attain them was in 
 the highest degree requisite and natural, and that a 
 man's whole happiness depended upon it. 
 
 Self-examination, self-renouncement, and mildness, 
 
 ^ Luke ix. 23. 3 Matthew xi. 29. 
 
 a Matthew xvi. 25. 4 Luke ix. 25.
 
 m.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 81 
 
 were, therefore, the great means by which Jesus Christ 
 renewed righteousness and religion. All these means 
 are indicated in the Old Testament : God reguireth 
 truth in the inward parts ! Not doing thine own ways, 
 nor finding thine own pleasure / Seek meekness/ 1 But 
 how far more strongly are they forced upon the 
 attention in the New Testament, and set up clearly 
 as the central mark for our endeavours ! Thou blind 
 Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup that the outside 
 may be clean also 7 2 Whoever will come after me, let him 
 renounce himself and take up his cross daily and follow 
 me / 3 Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in heart, 
 and ye shall find rest unto your souls/ 4 So that, although 
 personal religion is clearly recommended in the Old 
 Testament, nevertheless these injunctions of the New 
 Testament effect so much more for the extrication and 
 establishment of personal religion than the general 
 exhortations in the Old to offer the sacrifice of righteous- 
 ness, to do judgment, 5 that, comparatively with the 
 Old, the New Testament may be said to have really 
 founded inward and personal religion. While the 
 Old Testament says: Attend to conduct! the New 
 Testament says : Attend to Hie feelings and dispositions 
 whence conduct proceeds I And as attending to conduct 
 had very much degenerated into deadness and for- 
 mality, attending to the springs of conduct was a 
 revelation, a revival of intuitive and fresh percep- 
 tions, a touching of morals with emotion, a discovering 
 
 1 Psalm li. 6 ; Isaiah Iviii. 13 ; Zephaniah ii 3. 
 8 Matthew xxiii. 26. 3 Luke ix. 23. 
 
 4 Matthew xi. 29. 5 Ps. iv. 5 : Is. Ivi. 1. 
 
 VOL. V G
 
 82 LITEEATURE AND DOGMA. ICHAP. 
 
 of religion, similar to that which had been effected 
 when Israel, struck with the abiding power not of 
 man's causing which makes for righteousness, and 
 filled with joy and awe by it, had in the old days 
 named God the Eternal. Man came under a new 
 dispensation, and made with God a second covenant 
 
 III. 
 
 To rivet the attention on the indications of personal 
 religion furnished by the Old Testament ; to take the 
 humble, inward, and suffering "servant of God" of 
 the prophets, and to elevate this as the Messiah, the 
 seed of Abraham and of David, in whom all nations 
 should be blessed, whose throne should be as the days 
 of heaven, who should redeem his people and restore 
 the kingdom to Israel, was a work of the highest 
 originality. It cannot, as- we have seen, be said, that 
 by the suffering servant of God, and by the triumphant 
 Messiah, the prophets themselves meant one and the 
 same person. But language of hope and aspiration, 
 such as theirs, is in its very nature malleable. Criti- 
 cism may and must determine what the original 
 speakers seem to have directly meant. But the very 
 nature of their language justifies any powerful and 
 fruitful application of it ; and every such application 
 may be said, in the words of popular religion, to have 
 been lodged there from the first by the spirit of God. 
 Certainly it was a somewhat violent exegetical pro- 
 ceeding, to fuse together into one personage Daniel's 
 Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, the
 
 III.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 83 
 
 first Isaiah's " Branch out of the root of Jesse," who 
 should smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and 
 reign in glory and peace and righteousness, and the 
 second Isaiah's meek and afflicted Servant of God 
 charged with the precious message of a golden future; 
 to fuse together in one these three by no means 
 identical personages ; to add to them the sacrificial 
 lamb of the passover and of the temple-service, which 
 was constantly before a Jew's eyes ; to add, besides, 
 the Prophet like to himself whom Moses promised to 
 the children of Israel ; to add, further, the Holy One 
 of Israel and Redeemer, who for the prophets was 
 the Eternal himself ; and then to say, that the com- 
 bination thence resulting was the Messiah or Christ 
 whom all the prophets had meant and predicted, and 
 that Jesus was this Messiah. To us, who have been 
 formed and fashioned by a theology whose set purpose 
 is to efface all the difficulties in such a combination, 
 and to make it received easily and unhesitatingly, it 
 may appear natural. In itself, and with the elements 
 of which it is composed viewed singly and impartially, 
 it cannot but be pronounced violent. 
 
 But the elements in question have their chief uso 
 and value, we repeat, not as objects of criticism; they 
 belong of right to whoever can best possess himself of 
 them for practice and edification. Simply of the Son 
 of Man coming in the clouds, of the Branch of Jesse 
 smiting the earth with the rod of his mouth, slaying 
 the wicked with his breath, and re-establishing in 
 unexampled splendour David's kingdom, nothing 
 could be made. With such a Messiah filling men's
 
 84 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 thoughts and hopes, the real defects of Israel still 
 remained, because these chiefly proceeded from Israel's 
 making his religion too much a national and social 
 affair, too little a personal affair. But a Messiah who 
 did not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and afflicted 
 without opening his mouth, who worked inwardly, 
 obscurely, and patiently, yet failed not nor was 
 discouraged until his doctrine made its way and 
 transformed the world, this was the Messiah whom 
 Israel needed, and in whom the lost greatness of 
 Israel could be restored and culminate. For the true 
 greatness of Israel was righteousness ; and only by an 
 inward personal religion could the sense revive of 
 what righteousness really was, revive in Israel and 
 bear fruit for the world. 
 
 Instead, then, of "the Eoot of Jesse who should 
 set up an ensign for the nations and assemble the 
 outcasts of Israel," 1 Jesus Christ took from prophecy 
 and made pre-eminent " the Servant whom man de- 
 spise th and the people abhorreth," but "who bringeth 
 good tidings, who publisheth peace, publisheth salva- 
 tion." 2 And instead of saying like the prophets : 
 " This people must mend, this nation must do so and 
 so, Israel must follow such and such ways," Jesus 
 took the individual Israelite by himself apart, made 
 him listen for the voice of his conscience, and said to 
 him in effect : " If every one would mend one, we 
 should have a new world." So vital for the Jews 
 was this change of character in their religion, that 
 the Old Testament abounds, as we have said, in 
 1 Isaiah xl 10, 12. 2 Isaiah xlix. 7 ; lit 7.
 
 III.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 85 
 
 pointings and approximations to it ; and most truly 
 might Jesus Christ say to his followers, that many 
 prophets and righteous men had desired, though un- 
 availingly, to see the things which they, the disciples, 
 saw and heard. 1 
 
 The desire felt by pious Israelites for some new 
 aspect of religion such as Jesus Christ presented, is, 
 undoubtedly, the best proof of its timeliness and 
 salutariness. Perhaps New Testament witnesses to 
 the workings of this desire may be received with 
 suspicion, as having arisen after the event and when 
 the new ideal of the Christ had become established. 
 Otherwise, John the Baptist's characterisation of the 
 Messiah as " the lamb of God that taketh away the 
 sins of the world," 2 and the bold Messianic turn 
 given in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew to the 
 prophecy there quoted from the forty-second chapter 
 of Isaiah, would be evidence of the highest importanca 
 " A bruised reed breaketh he not," says Isaiah of the 
 meek servant and messenger of God, " and a glimmer- 
 ing wick quencheth he not; he declareth judgment 
 with truth; far lands wait for his doctrine." 3 "A 
 bruised reed shall he not break," runs the passage in 
 St. Matthew, " and smoking flax shall he not quench, 
 until he send forth judgment unto victory : in his name 
 shall the Gentiles trust." 4 The words, until he send 
 forth judgment unto victory, words giving a clear Mes- 
 sianic stamp to the personage described, are neither 
 in the original Hebrew nor in the Greek of the 
 
 1 Matthew xiii. 17. a John i. 29. 
 
 Isaiah xlii 8, 4. Matthew xii. 20, 21.
 
 86 LITEKATUEE AND DOGMA. [OHAP 
 
 Septuagint. Where did the Gospel-writer find theml 
 If, as is possible, they were in some version then 
 extant, they prove in a striking way the existence 
 and strength of the aspiration which Jesus Christ 
 satisfied by transforming the old popular ideal of the 
 Messiah. But there are in any case signs of the 
 existence of such an aspiration, since a Jewish com- 
 mentator, contemporary, probably, with the Christian 
 era but not himself a Christian, assigns to this very 
 prophecy a Messianic intention. And, indeed, the 
 rendering of the final words, in his name shall the 
 Gentiles trust, 1 which is in the Greek of the Septuagint 
 as well as in that of St. Matthew, shows a similar 
 leaning in the Jews of Alexandria some two centuries 
 before Christ. 
 
 Signs there are then, without doubt, of others 
 trying to identify the Messiah of popular hope, the 
 triumphant Root of David, the mystic Son of Man, 
 with an ideal of meekness, inwardness, patience, and 
 self-denial. And well might reformers try to effect 
 this identification, for the true line of Israel's progress 
 lay through it ! But not he who tries makes an epoch, 
 but he who effects ; and the identification which was 
 needed Jesus Christ effected. Henceforth the true 
 Israelite was, undoubtedly, he who allied himself with 
 this identification; who perceived its incomparable 
 fruitfulness, its continuance of the real tradition of 
 
 1 These words are imported from an undoubtedly Messianic 
 passage, the famous prediction of the "rod out of the stem of 
 Jesse " in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah. Compare, in the 
 Septuagint, Isaiah xi. 10 with Isaiah xlii. 4.
 
 in.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 87 
 
 Israel, its correspondence with the ruling idea of the 
 Hebrew spirit : Through righteousness to happiness ! or, 
 in Bible -words : To him that ordereth his conversation 
 right shall be shown the salvation of God/ 1 That the 
 Jewish nation at large, and its rulers, refused to 
 accept the identification, shows simply that want of 
 power to penetrate through wraps and appearances to 
 the essence of things, which the majority of mankind 
 always display. The national and social character of 
 their theocracy was everything to the Jews, and they 
 could see no blessings in a revolution which annulled it. 
 It has often been remarked that the Puritans are 
 like the Jews of the Old Testament; and Mr. Froude 
 thinks he defends the Puritans by saying that they, 
 like the Jews of the Old Testament, had their hearts 
 set on a theocracy, on a fashioning of politics and 
 society to suit the government of God. How strange 
 that he does not perceive that he thus passes, and 
 with justice, the gravest condemnation on the Puri- 
 tans as followers of Jesus Christ ! At the Christian 
 era the time had passed, in religion, for outward 
 adaptations of this kind, and for all care about 
 establishing or abolishing them. The time had come 
 for inwardness and self -reconstruction, a time to last 
 till the self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It was 
 the error of the Jews that they did not perceive this ; 
 and the old error of the Jews the Puritans, with- 
 out the Jews' excuse, faithfully repeated. And the 
 blunder of both had the same cause, a want of 
 tact to perceive wha.t is really most wanted for the 
 1 Psalm L 23.
 
 88 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHA*. 
 
 attainment of their own professed ideal, the reign oj 
 righteousness. 
 
 When Jesus appeared, his disciples were those who 
 did not make this blunder. They were, in general, 
 simple souls, without pretensions which Jesus Christ's 
 new religious ideal cut short, or self -consequence 
 which it mortified. And any Israelite who was, on 
 the one hand, not warped by personal pretensions 
 and self-consequence, and on the other, not dull of 
 feeling and gross of life like the common multitude, 
 might well be open to the spell which, after all, was 
 the great confirmation of Christ's religion, as it was 
 the great confirmation of the original religion of 
 Israel, the spell of its happiness. "Be glad, ye 
 righteous, and rejoice in the Eternal," the old and 
 lost prerogative of Israel, Christianity offered to 
 make again a living and true word to him. 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 For we have already remarked how it is the great 
 achievement of the Israel of the Old Testament, 
 happiness being mankind's confessed end and aim, to 
 have more than any one else felt, and more than any 
 one else succeeded in making others feel, that to 
 righteousness belongs happiness. Now, it will be denied 
 by no one that Jesus, in his turn, was eminently 
 characterised by professing to bring, and by being felt 
 to bring, happiness. All the words that belong to his 
 mission, gospel, kingdom of God, saviour, grace, peace, 
 1 Psalm xxxii. 11 ; xcvii. 12.
 
 Hi.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 89 
 
 living water, bread of life, are brimful of promise and 
 of joy. " I am come," he said, " that ye might have life, 
 and that ye might have it more abundantly ;" "Come 
 to me, and ye shall find rest iwlo your souls /" " I speak, 
 that my disciples may have my joy fulfilled in them- 
 selves." l That the operation, professed and actual, of 
 this " son of peace " 2 was to replace his followers in 
 "the way of peace," 3 no one can question. The 
 only matter of dispute can be, how he replaced them 
 there. 
 
 Now, this we have indicated in what has been said 
 already. But that we may show it more clearly, let 
 us return for a moment to what we said of conduct ; 
 of conduct, which we found to be three-fourths, 
 at least, of human life, and the object with which 
 religion is concerned. We said of conduct, that it 
 is the simplest thing in the world as far as knowledge 
 is concerned, but the hardest thing in the world as 
 far as doing is concerned. It is an affair, we said, of 
 conscience, which speaks plainly enough if we will 
 only listen to it; but we have to listen to it, and 
 then we have to follow it. If we follow it, we shall 
 have the sense of going right, succeeding, in the man- 
 agement of our conduct. We added, that going right, 
 succeeding, in the management of this vast concern, 
 gave naturally the liveliest possible sense of satisfac- 
 tion and happiness ; that attending to it was naturally 
 the secret of success ; that attachment made us attend ; 
 and that whatever, therefore, made us love to attend 
 
 1 John x. 10 ; Matthew xi. 28, 29 ; John xvii. 13. 
 Luke x. 6. Luke i. 79.
 
 90 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [OHAP. 
 
 to it must inspire us with gratitude. Let us take, to 
 guide ourselves in the New Testament, the help of 
 the clue furnished by all this. 
 
 First, as to the extreme simplicity of the matter 
 concerned; a matter sophisticated, overlaid, and 
 hidden in a thousand ways. The artless, unschooled 
 perception of a child is, Jesus says, the right organ 
 for apprehending it : " Whosoever does not receive 
 the kingdom of God as a little child, cannot enter 
 therein." 1 And yet it is so difficult of attainment 
 that it seems we cannot obtain it of ourselves : " No 
 man can come to me unless it be given him of my 
 Father." 2 The things to be done are so simple and 
 necessary that the doctrine about them proves itself as 
 soon as we do them : " Whoever will do God's will, 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." 3 
 Only it is indispensable to do them. Speculating and 
 professing are absolutely useless here, without doing : 
 " Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
 that I say?" 4 The great and learned people, the 
 masters in Israel, have their authoritative version of 
 what righteousness and the will of God is, of what 
 the ideal for the Jewish nation is, of the correct way 
 to interpret the prophets. But : " Judge not accord- 
 ing to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment;" 
 "beware of insincerity;" "God sees the heart/" 
 " Avhat comes from within, that defiles us." 5 The new 
 covenant, the New Testament, consists in the reign of 
 
 1 Mark x. 15. 2 John vi. 44, 65. 
 
 3 John vii. 17. 4 Luke vi. 46. 
 
 8 John vii. 24 ; Luke xii. 1 ; 1 Samuel xvi. 7, and Luke xvi. 
 15 ; Mark vii. 15.
 
 in.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 91 
 
 this very inwardness, in a state of things when God 
 " puts his law in the inward parts and writes it in 
 the heart," l in conscience being made the test. You 
 can see, Jesus says, you can see the leading religionists 
 of the Jewish nation, with the current notions about 
 righteousness, God's will, and the meaning of prophecy, 
 you can see them saying and not doing, full of fierce 
 temper, pride, and sensuality ; this shows they can 
 be but blind guides for you. The saviour of Israel is 
 he who makes Israel use his conscience simply and 
 sincerely, who makes him change and sweeten his 
 temper, conquer and annul his sensuality. Such a 
 saviour will make unhappy Israel happy again. The 
 prophets all point to such a saviour, and he is the 
 Messiah, and the promised happiness to Israel is in 
 him and in his reign. He is, in the exalted language 
 of prophecy, the holy one of God, the son of God, 
 the beloved of God, the chosen of God, the anointed 
 of God, the son of man in an eminent and unique 
 sense, the Messiah and Christ. In plainer language, 
 he is "a man who tells you the truth which he has 
 heard of God ;" who came not of himself and speaks 
 not of himself, but who "came forth from God," 
 from the original God of Israel's worship, the God of 
 righteousness and of happiness joined to righteousness, 
 " and is come to you." 2 Israel is perpetually talk- 
 ing of God and calling him his Father ; and " every 
 one," says Jesus Christ, "who hears the Father, 
 conies to me, for I know Him, and know His will, 
 
 1 Jeremiah xxxi. 33, 34 ; Hebrews viii. 8-12. 
 2 John viii. 40, 42 ; xvi. 27, 28.
 
 92 L1TEKATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 and utter His word." 1 God's will and word, in the 
 Old Testament, was righteousness. In the New Testa- 
 ment, it is righteousness explained to have its essence 
 in inwardness, mildness, and self-renouncement. This is, 
 in substance, the word of Jesus which he who hears 
 "shall never see death;" of which he who follows it 
 "shall know by experience whether it be of God." 2 
 
 But as the Israel of the Old Testament did not 
 say or feel that he followed righteousness by his own 
 power, or out of self-interest and self-love, but said 
 and felt that he followed it in thankful self -sur- 
 render to "the Eternal who loveth righteousness," and 
 that "the Eternal ordereth a good man's going and 
 maketh his way acceptable to Himself"* so, in the 
 restoration effected by Jesus, the motive which is of 
 force is not the moral motive that inwardness, mild- 
 ness, and self-renouncement make for man's happiness, 
 but a far stronger motive, full of ardent affection and 
 gratitude, and which, though it really has its ground 
 and confirmation in the fact that inwardness, mildness, 
 and self-renouncement do make for man's happiness, 
 yet keeps no consciousness of this as its ground. For 
 it acquired a far surer ground in personal devotion to 
 Jesus Christ, who brought the doctrine to his disciples 
 and made a passage for it into their hearts; in be- 
 lieving that he was indeed the Christ come from God ; 
 in following him, loving him. And in the happiness 
 which thus believing in Jesus Christ, following him, and 
 loving him, gives, it found the mightiest of sanctions. 
 
 1 John vi. 45 ; viii. 29, 16. 3 John viii. 51 ; vii. 17- 
 
 3 Psaliu xi. 7 ; xxxvii 23.
 
 Hi.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 93 
 
 V. 
 
 And thus was the great doctrine of the Old Testa- 
 ment : To righteousness belongs happiness ! made a true 
 and potent word again. Jesus Christ was the Mes- 
 siah to restore the all things of Israel, 1 righteousness, 
 and happiness with righteousness ; to bring light and 
 recovery after long days of darkness and ruin, and to 
 make good the belief written on Israel's heart : The 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation ! 2 But we have 
 seen how in the hopes of the nation and in the 
 promises of prophecy this true and vital belief of 
 Israel was mixed with a quantity of what we have 
 called Aberglaube or extra-belief, adding all manner of 
 shade and circumstance to the original thought. The 
 kingdom of David and Solomon was to be restored on 
 a grander scale, the enemies of Israel were to lick the 
 dust, kings were to bring gifts ; there was to be the 
 Son of Man coming in the clouds, judgment given to 
 the saints of the Most High, and an eternal reign of 
 the saints afterwards. 
 
 Now, most of this has a poetical value, some of it 
 has a moral value. All of it is, in truth, a testimony 
 to the strength of Israel's idea of righteousness. For 
 the order of its growth is, as we have seen, this : " To 
 righteousness belongs happiness; but this sure rale is 
 often broken in the state of things which now is; there 
 must, therefore, be in store for us, in the future, a 
 state of things where it will hold good." But none of 
 it has a scientific value, a certitude arising from prooi 
 1 Matthew xvii. 11 ; Acts iii. 21. 8 Prov. x. 26.
 
 94 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 and experience. And indeed it cannot have this, for 
 it professes to be an anticipation of a state of things 
 not yet actually experienced. 
 
 But human nature is such, that the mind easily 
 dwells on an anticipation of this kind until we come 
 to forget the order in which it arose, place it first 
 when it is by rights second, and make it support that 
 by which it is in truth supported. And so there had 
 come to be many Israelites, most likely they were 
 the great majority of their nation, who supposed 
 that righteousness was to be followed, not out of 
 thankful self -surrender to "the Eternal who loveth 
 righteousness," 1 but because the Ancient of Days was 
 to sit before long, and judgment was to be given to 
 the saints, and they were to possess the kingdom, 
 and from the kingdom those who did not follow right- 
 eousness were to be excluded. From this way of 
 conceiving religion came naturally the religious condi- 
 tion of the Jews as Jesus at his coming found it ; and 
 from which, by his new and living way of presenting 
 the Messiah, he sought to extricate the whole nation, 
 and did extricate his disciples. He did extricate these, 
 in that he fixed their thoughts upon himself and upon 
 an ideal of inwardness, mildness, and self-renounce 
 ment, instead of a phantasmagory of outward grandeur 
 and self-assertion. But at the same time the whole 
 train of an extra - belief, or Aberglaube, which had 
 attached itself to Israel's old creed : The righteous is 
 an everlasting foundation ! transferred itself to the new 
 creed brought by Jesus : / am the door ; by me, if any 
 1 Psalm xi. 7.
 
 ill.] RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 95 
 
 man enter in, he shall be saved! 1 And there arose, 
 accordingly, a new Aberglaube like the old. The mild, 
 inward, self-renouncing and sacrificed Servant of the 
 Eternal, the new and better Messiah, was yet, before 
 the present generation passed, to come on the clouds 
 of heaven in power and glory like the Messiah of 
 Daniel, to gather by trumpet-call his elect from the 
 four winds, and to set his apostles on twelve thrones 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The motive of 
 Christianity, which was, in truth, that pure souls 
 " knew the voice " 2 of Jesus as sheep know the voice 
 of their shepherd, and felt, after seeing and hearing 
 him, that his doctrine and ideal was what they wanted, 
 that he was "indeed the saviour of the world,'* 3 
 this simple motive became a mixed motive, adding to 
 its first contents a vast extra-belief of a phantasma- 
 gorical advent of Jesus Christ, a resurrection and 
 judgment, Christ's adherents glorified, his rejectors 
 punished everlastingly. 
 
 And when the generation, for which this advent 
 was first fixed, had passed away without it, Christians 
 discovered by a process of criticism common enough in 
 popular theology, but by which, as Bishop Butler says of 
 a like kind of process, " anything may be made out 
 of anything," they discovered that the advent had 
 never really been fixed for that first generation by the 
 writers of the New Testament, but that it was foretold, 
 and certainly in store, for a later time. So the 
 Aberglaube was perpetuated, placed out of reach of all 
 
 1 Prov. x. 25 ; John x. 9. 3 John x. 4. 
 
 John iv. 42.
 
 96 LITERATURE AND DOGMA, [CHAP. in. 
 
 practical test, and made stronger than ever. With 
 the multitude, this Aberglaube, or extra-belief, inevit- 
 ably came soon to surpass the original conviction in 
 attractiveness and seeming certitude. The future and 
 the miraculous engaged the chief attention of Chris- 
 tians ; and, in accordance with this strain of thought, 
 they more and more rested the proof of Christianity, 
 not on its internal evidence, but on prophecy and 
 miracle.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 ' ABERGLAUBE is the poetry of life." That men should, 
 by help of their imagination, take short cuts to what 
 they ardently desire, whether the triumph of Israel or 
 the triumph of Christianity, should tell themselves 
 fairy-tales about it, should make these fairy-tales the 
 basis for what is far more sure and solid than the 
 fairy-tales, the desire itself, all this has in it, we 
 repeat, nothing which is not natural, nothing blame- 
 able. Nay, the region of our hopes and presentiments 
 extends, as we have also said, far beyond the region 
 of what we can know with certainty. What we reach 
 but by hope and presentiment may yet be true ; and 
 he would be a narrow reasoner who denied, for 
 instance, all validity to the idea of immortality, 
 because this idea rests on presentiment mainly, and 
 does not admit of certain demonstration. In religion, 
 above all, extra-belief is in itself no matter, assuredly, 
 for blame. The object of religion is conduct ; and if 
 a man helps himself in his conduct by taking an 
 object of hope and presentiment as if it were an 
 VOL. V. H
 
 98 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 object of certainty, he may even be said to gain 
 thereby an advantage. 
 
 And yet there is always a drawback to a man's 
 advantage in thus treating, when he deals Avith 
 religion and conduct, what is extra-belief and not 
 certain as if it were matter of certainty, and in mak- 
 ing it his ground of action. He pays far it. The time 
 comes when he discovers that it is not certain ; and 
 then the whole certainty of religion seems discredited, 
 and the basis of conduct gone. This danger attends 
 the reliance on prediction and miracle as evidences of 
 Christianity. They have been attacked as a part of 
 the "cheat" or "imposture" of religion and of 
 Christianity. For us, religion is the solidest of 
 realities, and Christianity the greatest and happiest 
 stroke ever yet made for human perfection. Predic- 
 tion and miracle were attributed to it as its supports 
 because of its grandeur, and because of the awe and 
 admiration which it inspired. Generations of men 
 have helped themselves to hold firmer to it, helped 
 themselves in conduct, by the aid of these supports. 
 " Miracles prove" men have said and thought, " that 
 the order of physical nature is not fate, nor a mere 
 material constitution of things, but the subject of a 
 free, omnipotent Master. Prophecy fulfilled proves 
 that neither fate nor man are masters of the world." 1 
 
 And to take prophecy first. " The conditions," it 
 is said, " which form the true conclusive standard of 
 a prophetic inspiration are these : That the prediction 
 be known to have been promulgated before the event ; 
 
 1 Pavison's Discourses on Prophecy ; Discourse ii. Part 2.
 
 IV.] THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 99 
 
 that the event be such as could not have been foreseen, 
 when it was predicted, by an effort of human reason ; 
 and that the event and the prediction correspond 
 together in a clear accomplishment. There are pro- 
 phecies in Scripture answering to the standard of an 
 absolute proof. Their publication, their fulfilment, 
 their supernatural prescience, are all fully ascertained." 1 
 On this sort of ground men came to rest the proof of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Now, it may be said, indeed, that a prediction 
 fulfilled, an exhibition of supernatural prescience, 
 proves nothing for or against the truth and necessity 
 of conduct and righteousness. But it must be allowed, 
 notwithstanding, that while human nature is what it 
 is, the mass of men are likely to listen more to a 
 teacher of righteousness, if he accompanies his teach- 
 ing by an exhibition of supernatural prescience. And 
 what were called the " signal predictions " concerning 
 the Christ of popular theology, as they stand in oui 
 Bibles, had and have undoubtedly a look of super- 
 natural prescience. The employment of capital letters, 
 and other aids, such as the constant use of the future 
 tense, naturally and innocently adopted by interpreters 
 who were profoundly convinced that Christianity 
 needed these express predictions and that they must 
 be in the Bible, enhanced, certainly, this look ; but the 
 look, even without these aids, was sufficiently striking. 
 
 Yes, that Jacob on his death -bed should two 
 1 Discourses ix and xiL
 
 100 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 thousand years before Christ have " been enabled," as 
 the phrase is, to foretell to his son Judah that " the 
 sceptre shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh (or 
 the Messiah) come, and unto him shall the gathering 
 of the people be," l does seem, when the explanation 
 is put with it that the Jewish kingdom lasted till the 
 Christian era and then perished, a miracle of predic- 
 tion in favour of our current Christian theology. 
 That Jeremiah should during the captivity have 
 " been enabled " to foretell, in Jehovah's name : " The 
 days come that I will raise unto David a righteous 
 Branch ; in his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel 
 shall dwell safely ; and this is his name whereby he 
 shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS !" 2 
 does seem a prodigy of prediction in favour of that 
 tenet of the Godhead of the Eternal Son, for which 
 the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so 
 anxious to do something. For unquestionably, in the 
 prophecy here given, the Branch of David, the future 
 Saviour of Israel, who was Jesus Christ, appears to 
 be expressly identified with the Lord God, with 
 Jehovah. Again, that David should say : " The Lord 
 said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I 
 make thy foes thy footstool," does seem a prodigy of 
 prediction to the same effect. And so long as these 
 prophecies stand as they are here given, they no 
 doubt bring to Christianity all the support (and with 
 the mass of mankind this is by no means inconsider- 
 able) which it can derive from the display of super- 
 natural prescience. 
 
 1 Gen. xlix. 10. a Jer. xxiii. 5, 6.
 
 iv.] THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY* 101 
 
 But who will dispute that it more and more 
 becomes known that these prophecies J cannot stand 
 as we have here given them? Manifestly, it more 
 and more becomes known, that the passage from 
 Genesis, with its mysterious Shikh and the gathering 
 of the people to him, is rightly to be rendered as 
 follows: "The pre-eminence shall not depart from 
 Judah so long as the people resort to Shiloh (the national 
 sanctuary before Jerusalem was won) ; and the nations 
 (the heathen Canaanites) shall obey him" We here 
 purposely leave out of sight any such consideration as 
 that our actual books of the Old Testament came first 
 together through the piety of the house of Judah, and 
 when the destiny of Judah was already traced ; and 
 that to say roundly and confidently: "Jacob was 
 enabled to foretell, The sceptre shall not depart from 
 Judah," is wholly inadmissible. For this considera- 
 tion is of force, indeed, but it is a consideration drawn 
 from the rules of literary history and criticism, and 
 not likely to have weight with the mass of mankind. 
 Palpable error and mistranslation are what will have 
 weight with them. 
 
 And what, then, will they say as they come to 
 know (and do not and must not more and more of 
 
 1 A real prediction of Jesus Christ's Godhead, of the kind 
 that popular religion desires, is to be found in Benjamin's 
 prophecy of the coming, in the last days, of the King of Heaver 
 to judge Israel, "because when God came to them in the flesh 
 they did not believe in him as their deliverer." But this 
 prediction occurs in an apocryphal Christian writing of the end 
 of the first century, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 
 See Fabricius, Codex Pseiidepigraphus Veteris Testamenti, vol 
 il p. 745.
 
 102 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 them come to know it every day?) that Jeremiah's 
 supposed signal identification of Jesus Christ with the 
 Lord God of Israel : " I will raise to David a righteous 
 Branch, and this is the name whereby he shall be 
 called, THE LORD OUB, RIGHTEOUSNESS," runs really: 
 " I will raise to David a righteous branch ; in his days 
 Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely; 
 and this is the name whereby they shall call them- 
 selves: The Eternal is our righteousness!" The prophecy 
 thus becomes simply one of the many promises of a 
 successor to David under whom the Hebrew people 
 should trust in the Eternal and follow righteousness ; 
 just as the prophecy from Genesis is one of the many 
 prophecies of the enduring continuance of the great 
 ness of Judah. " The Lord said unto my Lord," in 
 like manner ; will not people be startled when they 
 find that it ought instead to run as follows : " The 
 Eternal said unto my lord the king," a simple 
 promise of victory to a royal leader of God's chosen 
 people ? 
 
 IIL 
 
 Leslie, in his once famous Short and Easy Method 
 with the Deists, speaks of the impugners of the current 
 evidences of Christianity as men who consider the 
 Scripture histories and the Christian religion " cheats 
 and impositions of cunning and designing men upon 
 the credulity of simple people." Collins, and the 
 whole array of writers at whom Leslie aims this, 
 greatly need to be re-surveyed from the point of view 
 of our own age. Nevertheless, we may grant that
 
 rv.J THE PROOF FKOM PEOPHECY. 103 
 
 some of them, at any rate, conduct their attacks on 
 the current evidences for Christianity in such a 
 manner as to give the notion that in their opinion 
 Christianity itself, and religion, is a cheat and an 
 imposture. But how far more prone will the mass of 
 mankind be to hearken to this opinion, if they have 
 been kept intent on predictions such as those of which 
 we have just given specimens ; if they have been kept 
 full of the great importance of this line of mechanical 
 evidence, and then suddenly find that this line of 
 evidence gives way at all points 1 It can hardly be 
 gainsaid, that, to a delicate and penetrating criticism, 
 it has long been manifest that the chief literal fulfil- 
 ment by Jesus Christ of things said by the prophets 
 was the fulfilment such as would naturally be given 
 by one who nourished his spirit on the prophets, and 
 on living and acting their words. The great pro- 
 phecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah are, critics can easily 
 see, not strictly predictions at all; and predictions 
 which are strictly meant as such, like those in the Book 
 of Daniel, are an embarrassment to the Bible rather 
 than a main element of it. The "Zeit-Geist," and 
 the mere spread of what is called enlightenment, super- 
 ficial and barren as this often is, will inevitably, 
 before long, make this conviction of criticism a 
 popular opinion held far and wide. And then, what 
 will be their case, who have been so long and sedu- 
 lously taught to rely on supernatural predictions as a 
 mainstay ? 
 
 The same must be said of miracles. The substitu- 
 tion of some other proof of Christianity for this
 
 104 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 accustomed proof is now to be desired most by those 
 who most think Christianity of importance. That old 
 friend of ours on whom we have formerly commented, 1 
 who insists upon it that Christianity is and shall be 
 nothing else but this, " that Christ promised Paradise 
 to the saint and threatened the worldly man with 
 hell -fire, and proved his power to promise and to 
 threaten by rising from the dead and ascending into 
 heaven," is certainly not the guide whom lovers of 
 Christianity, if they could discern what it is that he 
 really expects and aims at, and what it is which they 
 themselves really desire, would think it wise to 
 follow. 
 
 But the subject of miracles is a very great one ; it 
 includes within itself, indeed, the whole question 
 about "supernatural prescience," which meets us 
 when we deal with prophecy. And this great subject 
 requires, in order that we may deal with it properly, 
 some little recapitulation of our original design in this 
 essay, and of the circumstances in which the cause of 
 religion and of the Bible seems to be at this moment 
 placed. 
 
 1 St. Paul and Protestaiitisni, p. 1351.
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 
 
 WE have seen that some new treatment or other the 
 religion of the Bible certainly seems to require, for it 
 is attacked on all sides, and the theologians are not 
 so successful as one might wish in defending it One 
 critic says, that if these islands had no religion at 
 all, it would not enter into his mind to introduce 
 the religious and ethical idea by the agency of the 
 Bible. Another, that though certain commonplaces 
 are common to all systems of morality, yet the Bible- 
 way of enunciating these commonplaces no longer 
 suits us. And we may rest assured, he adds, that by 
 saying what we think in some other, more congenial, 
 language, we shall really be taking the shortest road 
 to discovering the new doctrines which will satisfy 
 at once our reason and our imagination. Another 
 critic goes farther still, and calls Bible-religion not 
 only destitute of a modern and congenial way of 
 stating its commonplaces of morality, but a defacer 
 and disfigurer of moral treasures which were once in 
 better keeping. The more one studies, the more, 
 says he, one is convinced that the religion which calls
 
 106 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 itself revealed contains, in the way of what is good, 
 nothing which is not the incoherent and ill-digested 
 residue of the wisdom of the ancients. To the same 
 effect the Duke of Somerset, who has been affording 
 proof to the world that our aristocratic class are not, 
 as has been said, inaccessible to ideas and merely 
 polite, but that they are familiar, on the contrary, 
 with modern criticism of the most advanced kind, 
 the Duke of Somerset finds very much to condemn 
 in the Bible and its teaching ; although the soul, he 
 says, has (outside the Bible, apparently) one unassail- 
 able fortress to which she may retire, faith in God. 
 All this seems to threaten to push Bible-religion 
 from the place it has long held in our affections. 
 And even what the most modern criticism of all 
 sometimes does to save it and to set it up again, can 
 hardly be called very flattering to it. For whereas 
 the Hebrew race imagined that to them were com- 
 mitted the oracles of God, and that their God, " the 
 Eternal who loveth righteousness," 1 was the God to 
 whom " every knee shall bow and every tongue shall 
 swear," 2 there now comes M. Emile Burnouf, the 
 accomplished kinsman of the gifted orientalist Eugene 
 Burnouf, and will prove to us in a thick volume 3 that 
 the oracles of God were not committed to a Semitic 
 race at all, but to the Aryan ; that the true God ia 
 not Israel's God at all, but is "the idea of the 
 absolute " which Israel could never properly master. 
 This " sacred theory of the Aryas," it seems, passed 
 
 1 Psalm xi. 7. 2 Isaiah xlv. 23. 
 
 8 La Science des Religions : Paris, 1872.
 
 V.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 107 
 
 into Palestine from Persia and India, and got posses- 
 sion of the founder of Christianity and of his greatest 
 apostles St. Paul and St. John ; becoming more per- 
 fect, and returning more and more to its true character 
 of a "transcendent metaphysic," as the doctors of the 
 Christian Church developed it. So that we Christians, 
 who are Aryas, may have the satisfaction of thinking 
 that " the religion of Christ has not come to us from 
 the Semites," and that "it is in the hymns of the 
 Veda, and not in the Bible, that we are to look for 
 the primordial source of our religion." The theory 
 of Christ is accordingly the theory of the Vedic 
 Agni, or fire. The Incarnation represents the Vedic 
 solemnity of the production otfire, symbol of force of 
 every kind, of all movement, life, and thought. The 
 Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit is the Vedic Trinity 
 of Sun, Fire, and Wind; and God, finally, is "a 
 cosmic unity." 
 
 Such speculations almost take away the breath of 
 a mere man of letters. What one is inclined to say 
 of them is this. Undoubtedly these exploits of the 
 Aryan genius are gratifying to us members of the 
 Aryan race. The original God of the Hebrews, M. 
 Burnouf says expressly, "was not a cosmic unity;" 
 the religion of the Hebrews "had not that trans- 
 cendent metaphysic which the genius of the Aryas 
 requires;" and, "in passing from the Aryan race to 
 the inferior races, religion underwent a deterioration 
 due to the physical and moral constitution of these 
 races." For religion, it must be remembered, is, in 
 M. Burnouf 's view, fundamentally a science; " a meta-
 
 108 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 physical conception, a theory, a synthetic explanation 
 of the universe." Now "the perfect Arya is capable 
 of a great deal of science ; the Semite is inferior to 
 him." As Aryas or Aryans, then, we ought to be 
 pleased at having vindicated the greatness of our 
 race, and having not borrowed a Semitic religion 
 as it stood, but transformed it by importing our own 
 metaphysics into it. 
 
 And this seems to harmonise very well with what 
 the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester say about 
 " doing something for the honour of Our Lord's 
 Godhead," and about "the infinite separation for 
 time and for eternity which is involved in rejecting 
 the Godhead of the Eternal Son, Very God of Very 
 God, Light of Light;" and also with the Athanasian 
 Creed generally, and with what the clergy write to 
 the Guardian about "eternal life being unquestionably 
 annexed to a right knowledge of the Godhead." For 
 all these have in view high .science and metaphysics, 
 worthy of the Aryas. But to Bible-religion, in the 
 plain sense of the word, it is not nattering; for it 
 throws overboard almost entirely the Old Testament, 
 and makes the essence of the New to consist in an 
 esoteric doctrine not very visible there, but more fully 
 developed outside of it. The metaphysical element is 
 made the fundamental element in religion. But, 
 "the Bible -books, especially the more ancient of 
 them, are destitute of metaphysics, and consequently 
 of method and classification in their ideas." Israel, 
 therefore, instead of being a light of the Gentiles and 
 a salvation to the ends of the earth, falls to a place
 
 T.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 109 
 
 in the world's religious history behind the Arya. He 
 is dismissed as ranking anthropologically between the 
 Aryas and the yellow men ; as having frizzled hair, 
 thick lips, small calves, flat feet, and belonging, above 
 all, to those "occipital races" whose brain cannot 
 grow after the age of sixteen ; whereas the brain of a 
 theological Arya, such as one of our bishops, may go 
 on growing all his life. 
 
 But we, who think that the old Testament leads 
 surely up to the New, who believe that, indeed, 
 "salvation is of the Jews," 1 and that, for what 
 concerns conduct or righteousness (that is, for what 
 concerns three-fourths of human life), they and their 
 documents can no more be neglected by whoever 
 would make proficiency in it, than Greece can be 
 neglected by any one who would make proficiency in 
 art, pr Newton's discoveries by whoever would com- 
 prehend the world's physical laws, we are naturally 
 not satisfied with this treatment of Israel and the 
 Bible. And admitting that Israel shows no talent 
 for metaphysics, we say that his religious greatness 
 is just this, that he does not found religion on meta- 
 physics, but on moral experience, which is a much 
 simpler matter ; and that, ever since the apparition 
 of Israel and the Bible, religion is no longer what, 
 according to M. Burnouf, to our Aryan forefathers in 
 the valley of the Oxus it was, and what perhaps it 
 really was to them, a metaphysical theory, but is 
 what Israel has made it. 
 
 And what Israel made, and how he made it, we 
 1 John iv. 22.
 
 110 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 geek to show from the Bible itself. Thus we hope to 
 win for the Bible and its religion, which seem to us 
 so indispensable to the world, an access to many of 
 those who now neglect them. For there is this to be 
 said against M. Burnouf's metaphysics : no one can 
 allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want 
 of metaphysics being applied to it. Metaphysics are 
 just what all our theology runs up into, and our 
 bishops, as we know, are here particularly strong. 
 But we see every day that the making religion into 
 metaphysics is the weakening of religion; now, M. 
 Burnouf makes religion into metaphysics more than 
 ever. Yet evidently the .metaphysical method lacks 
 power for laying hold on people, and compelling them 
 to receive the Bible from it ; it is felt to be incon- 
 clusive as thus employed, and its inconclusiveness 
 tells against the Bible. This is the case with the old 
 metaphysics of our bishops, and it will be the case 
 with M. Burnouf's new metaphysics also. They will 
 be found, we fear, to have an inconclusiveness in their 
 recommendation of Christianity. To very many per- 
 sons, indeed to the great majority, such a method, in 
 such a matter, must be inconclusive. 
 
 IL 
 
 Therefore we would not allow ourselves to start 
 with any metaphysical conception at all, not with the 
 monotheistic idea, as it is styled, any more than with 
 the pantheistic idea ; and, indeed, we are quite sure 
 that Israel himself began with nothing of the kind.
 
 V.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. Ill 
 
 The idea of God, as it is given us in the Bible, rests, 
 we say, not on a metaphysical conception of the ne- 
 cessity of certain deductions from our ideas of cause, 
 existence, identity, and the like ; but on a moral 
 perception of a rule of conduct not of our o\ra making, 
 into which we are born, and which exists whether we 
 will or no ; of awe at its grandeur and necessity, and 
 of gratitude at its beneficence. This is the great 
 original revelation made to Israel, this is his "Eternal." 
 
 Man, however, as Goethe says, never knows how 
 anthropomorphic he is. Israel described his Eternal in 
 the language of poetry and emotion, and could not 
 thus describe him but with the characters of a man. 
 Scientifically he never attempted to describe him at 
 all. But still the Eternal was ever at last reducible, 
 for Israel, to the reality of experience out of which 
 the revelation sprang ; he was " the righteous Eternal 
 who loveth righteousness." They who " seek the 
 Eternal," and they who "follow after righteousness," 
 were identical; just as, conversely, they who "fear 
 the Eternal," and they who "depart from evil," were 
 identical. l Above all : " Blessed is the man that feareth 
 the Eternal ;" "it is joy to the just to do judgment ;" 
 "righteousness tendeth to life;" " the righteous is an 
 everlasting foundation. " 2 
 
 But, as time went on, facts seemed, we saw, to 
 contradict this fundamental belief, to refute this faith 
 in the Eternal ; material forces prevailed, and God 
 appeared, as they say, to be on the side of the big 
 
 1 Isaiah li. 1 ; Prov. iii 7. 
 
 Pa. cxil 1 ; Prov. yxi 15 ; xL 19 ; x. 26.
 
 112 LITEEATTJRE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 battalions. The great unrighteous kingdoms of the 
 world, kingdoms which cared far less than Israel for 
 righteousness, and for the Eternal who makes for 
 righteousness, overpowered Israel. Prophecy assured 
 him that the triumph of the Eternal's cause and 
 people was certain : Behold, the Eternal's hand is not 
 shortened, that it cannot save. * The triumph was but 
 adjourned through Israel's own sins : Your iniquities 
 have separated between you and your God. 2 Prophecy 
 directed its hearers to the future, and promised them 
 a new, everlasting kingdom, under a heaven-sent 
 leader. The characters of this kingdom and leader 
 were more spiritualised by one prophet, more mate- 
 rialised by another. As time went on, in the last 
 centuries before our era, they became increasingly 
 turbid and phantasmagorical. In addition to his 
 original experimental belief in the almighty Eternal 
 who makes for righteousness, Israel had now a vast 
 Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief, not experimental, 
 in an approaching kingdom of the saints, to be 
 established by an Anointed, a Messiah, or by "one 
 like the Son of Man," commissioned from the 
 Ancient of Days and coming in the clouds of heaven. 
 Jesus came, calling himself the Messiah, the Son 
 of Man, the Son of God ; and the question is, what is 
 the true meaning of these assertions of his, and of all 
 his teaching ? It is the same question we had about 
 the Old Testament Is the language scientific, or is 
 it, as we say, literary? that is, the language of 
 poetry and emotion, approximative language, thrown 
 1 Isaiah lix. 1. * Isaiah lix. 2.
 
 v.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 113 
 
 out, as it were, at certain great objects which the 
 human mind augurs and feels after, but not language 
 accurately denning them 1 Popular religion says, we 
 know, that the language is scientific; that the God 
 of the Old Testament is a great Personal First Cause, 
 who thinks and loves (for this too, it seems, we ought 
 to have added), the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the universe. Learned religion, the metaphysical 
 theology of our bishops, proves or confirms this by 
 abstruse reasoning from our ideas of cause, design, 
 existence, identity, and so on. Popular religion rests 
 it altogether on miracle. 
 
 The God of Israel, for popular religion, is a mag- 
 nified and non-natural man who has really worked 
 stupendous miracles, whereas the Gods of the heathen 
 were vainly imagined to be able to work them, but 
 could not, and had therefore no real existence. Of 
 this God, Jesus for popular religion is the Son. He 
 came to appease God's wrath against sinful men by 
 the sacrifice of himself; and he proved his Sonship 
 by a course of stupendous miracles, and by the 
 wonderful accomplishment in him of the supernatural 
 Messianic predictions of prophecy. Here, again, 
 learned religion elucidates and develops the relation 
 of the Son to the Father by a copious exhibition of 
 metaphysics; but for popular religion the relation- 
 ship, and the authority of Jesus which derives from 
 it, is altogether established by miracle. 
 
 Now, we have seen that our bishops and their 
 metaphysics are so little convincing, that many people 
 throw the Bible quite aside and will not attend to it, 
 
 VOL. V. I
 
 114 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 because they are given to understand that the meta- 
 physics go necessarily along with it, and that one 
 cannot be taken without the other. So far, then, the 
 talents of the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, 
 and their zeal to do something for the honour of the 
 Eternal Son's Godhead, may be said to be actual 
 obstacles to the receiving and studying of the Bible. 
 But the same may now be also said of the popular 
 theology which rests the Bible's authority and the 
 Christian religion on miracle. To a great many 
 persons this is tantamount to stopping their use of 
 the Bible and of the Christian religion ; for they 
 have made up their minds that what is popularly 
 called mirade never really happens nor can happen, 
 and that the belief in it arises out of either ignorance 
 or mistake. To these persons we restore the use of 
 the Bible, if, while showing them that the Bible- 
 language is not scientific, but the language of common 
 speech or of poetry and eloquence, approximative 
 language thrown out at certain great objects of con- 
 sciousness which it does not pretend to define fully, 
 we convince them at the same time that this language 
 deals with facts of positive experience, most moment- 
 ous and real. 
 
 We have sought to do this for the Old Testament 
 first, and we now seek to do it for the New. But 
 our attempt has in view those who are incredulous 
 about the Bible and inclined to throw it aside, not 
 those who at present receive it on the grounds 
 supplied either by popular theology or by metaphy- 
 sical theology. For persons of this kind, what we say
 
 v.J THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 115 
 
 neither will have, nor seeks to have, any constraining 
 force at all; only it is rendered necessary by the 
 want of constraining force, for others than themselves, 
 in their own theology. How little constraining force 
 metaphysical dogma has, we all see. And we have 
 shown, too, how the proof from the fulfilment in Jesus 
 Christ of a number of detailed predictions, supposed to 
 have been made with supernatural prescience about 
 him long beforehand, is losing, and seems likely more 
 and more to lose, its constraining force. It is found 
 that the predictions and their fulfilment are not what 
 they are said to be. 
 
 Now we come to miracles, more specially so called. 
 And we have to see whether the constraining force 
 of this proof, too, must not be admitted to be far less 
 than it used to be, and whether some other source of 
 authority for the Bible is not much to be desired. 
 
 III. 
 
 That miracles, when fully believed, are felt by 
 men in general to be a source of authority, it is 
 absurd to deny. One may say, indeed : Suppose I 
 could change the pen with which I write this into a 
 penwiper, I should not thus make what I write any 
 the truer or more convincing. That may be so in 
 reality, but the mass of mankind feel differently. In 
 the judgment of the mass of mankind, could I visibly 
 and undeniably change the pen with which I write 
 this into a penwiper, not only would this which I 
 write acquire a claim to be held perfectly true and
 
 116 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 convincing, but I should even be entitled to affirm, 
 and to be believed in affirming, propositions the most 
 palpably at war with common fact and experience. 
 It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of 
 the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and 
 to seek for miracles as evidence; or the extent to 
 which religion, and religion of a true and admirable 
 kind, has been, and is still, held in connection with 
 a reliance upon miracles. This reliance will long 
 outlast the reliance on the supernatural prescience of 
 prophecy, for it is not exposed to the same tests. To 
 pick Scripture-miracles one by one to pieces is an 
 odious and repulsive task ; it is also an unprofitable 
 one, for whatever we may think of the affirmative 
 demonstrations of them, a negative demonstration of 
 them is, from the circumstances of the case, im- 
 possible. And yet the human mind is assuredly 
 passing away, however slowly, from this hold of 
 reliance also ; and those who make it their stay will 
 more and more find it fail them, will more and 
 more feel themselves disturbed, shaken, distressed, 
 and bewildered. 
 
 For it is what we call the Time-Spirit which is sap 
 ping the proof from miracles, it is the " Zeit-Geist " 
 itself. Whether we attack them, or whether we 
 defend them, does not much matter. The human 
 mind, as its experience widens, is turning away from 
 them. And for this reason : it sees, as its experience 
 widens, how they arise. It sees that, under certain 
 circumstances, they always do arise; and that they 
 have not more solidity in one case than another.
 
 V.] THE PROOF FEOM MIRACLES. 117 
 
 Under certain circumstances, wherever men are 
 found, there is, as Shakspeare says : 
 
 " No natural exhalation in the sky, 
 No scape of nature, no distemper'd day, 
 No common wind, no customed event, 
 But they will pluck away his natural cause, 
 And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, 
 Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven. " 
 
 Imposture is so far from being the general rule in 
 these cases, that it is the rare exception. Signs and 
 wonders men's minds will have, and they create them 
 honestly and naturally ; yet not so but that we can 
 see how they create them. 
 
 Roman Catholics fancy that Bible -miracles and 
 the miracles of their Church form a class by them- 
 selves; Protestants fancy that Bible-miracles, alone, 
 form a class by themselves. This was eminently the 
 posture of mind of the late Archbishop Whately : 
 to hold that all other miracles would turn out to be 
 impostures, or capable of a natural explanation, but 
 that Bible-miracles would stand sifting by a London 
 special jury or by a committee of scientific men. No 
 acuteness can save such notions, as our knowledge 
 widens, from being seen to be mere extravagances, 
 and the Protestant notion is doomed to an earlier 
 ruin than the Catholic. For the Catholic notion 
 admits miracles, so far as Christianity, at least, is 
 concerned, in the mass; the Protestant notion 
 invites to a criticism by which it must before long 
 itself perish. When Stephen was martyred, he 
 looked up into heaven, and saw the glory of God and
 
 118 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHA.P 
 
 Jesus standing on the right hand of God. That, says 
 the Protestant, is solid fact. At the martyrdom of 
 St. Fructuosus, Babylas and Mygdone, the Christian 
 servants of the Roman governor, saw the heavens 
 open, and the saint and his deacon Eulogius carried 
 up on high with crowns on their heads. That is, 
 says the Protestant, imposture or else illusion. St 
 Paul hears on his way to Damascus the voice of Jesus 
 say to him : "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" 
 That is solid fact. The companion of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas hears a voice from the crucifix say to the pray- 
 ing saint : " Thou hast written well of me, Thomas ; 
 what recompense dost thou desire ? " That is imposture 
 or else illusion. Why ? It is impossible to find any 
 criterion by which one of these incidents may establish 
 its claim to a solidity which we refuse to the others. 
 
 One of two things must be made out in order to 
 place either the Bible -miracles alone, or the Bible- 
 miracles and the miracles of the Catholic Church with 
 them, in a class by themselves. Either they must be 
 shown to have arisen in a time eminently unfavourable 
 to such a process as Shakspeare describes, to amplifica- 
 tion and the production of legend ; or they must be 
 shown to be recorded in documents of an eminently 
 historical mode of birth and publication. But surely 
 it is manifest that the Bible-miracles fulfil neither of 
 these conditions. It was said that the waters of the 
 Pamphylian Sea miraculously opened a passage for 
 the army of Alexander the Great. Admiral Beaufort, 
 however, tells us that, " though there are no tides in 
 this part of the Mediterranean, a considerable depres-
 
 V.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 119 
 
 sion of the sea is caused by long -continued north 
 winds, and Alexander, taking advantage of such a 
 moment, may have dashed on without impediment." * 
 And we accept the explanation as a matter of course. 
 But the waters of the Eed Sea are said to have 
 miraculously opened a passage for the children of 
 Israel ; and we insist on the literal truth of this story, 
 and reject natural explanations as impious. Yet the 
 time and circumstances of the flight from Egypt were 
 a thousand times more favourable to the rise of some 
 natural incident into a miracle, than the age of 
 Alexander. They were a time and circumstances of 
 less broad daylight. It was said, again, that during 
 the battle of Leuctra the gates of the Heracleum at 
 Thebes suddenly opened, and the armour of Hercules 
 vanished from the temple, to enable the god to take 
 part with the Thebans in the battle. Probably there 
 was some real circumstance, however slight, which 
 gave a foundation for the story. But this is the 
 most we think of saying in its favour; the literal 
 story it never even occurs to one of us to believe. 
 But that the walls of Jericho literally fell down at 
 the sound of the trumpets of Joshua, we are asked to 
 believe, told that it is impious to disbelieve it. Yet 
 which place and time were most likely to generate a 
 miraculous story with ease, Hellas and the days of 
 Epaminondas, or Palestine and the days of Joshua 1 
 And of documentary records, which are the most 
 historical in their way of being generated and pro- 
 pagated, which the most favourable for the admission 
 1 Beaufort's Karamania, p. 116.
 
 120 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 of legend and miracle of all kinds, the Old Testa- 
 ment narratives with their incubation of centuries, 
 and the New Testament narratives with their 
 incubation of a century (and tradition active all 
 the while), or the narratives, say, of Herodotus or 
 Plutarch ? 
 
 None of them are what we call critical. Experi- 
 ence of the history of the human mind, and of men's 
 habits of seeing, sifting, and relating, convinces us 
 that the miraculous stories of Herodotus or Plutarch 
 do grow out of the process described by Shakspeare. 
 But we shall find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or 
 later, to extend the same rule to all miraculous stories; 
 nay, the considerations which apply in other cases, 
 apply, we shall most surely discover, with even greater 
 force in the case of Bible-miracles. 
 
 IV. 
 
 This being so, there is nothing one would more 
 desire for a person or document one greatly values, 
 than to make them independent of miracles. And 
 with regard to the Old Testament we have done this ; 
 for we have shown that the essential matter in the 
 Old Testament is the revelation to Israel of the 
 immeasurable grandeur, the eternal necessity, the 
 priceless blessing of that with which not less than 
 three-fourths of human life is indeed concerned, 
 righteousness. And it makes no difference to the 
 preciousness of this revelation, whether we believe 
 that the Ked Sea. miraculously opened a passage to
 
 ir.] THE PKOOF FROM MIRACLES. 121 
 
 the Israelites, and the walls of Jericho miraculously 
 fell down at the blast of Joshua's trumpet, or that 
 these stories arose in the same way as other stories of 
 the kind. But in the New Testament the essential 
 thing is the revelation of Jesus Christ. For this too, 
 then, if one values it, one's great wish must in like 
 manner be to make it independent of miracle, if 
 miracle is a stay which one perceives, as more and 
 more we are all coming to perceive it, to be not solid. 
 Now, it may look at first sight a strange thing to 
 say, but it is a truth which we will make abundantly 
 clear as we go on, that one of the very best helps to 
 prepare the way for valuing the Bible and believing 
 in Jesus Christ, is to convince oneself of the liability 
 to mistake in the Bible- writers. Our popular theology 
 supposes that the Old Testament writers were miracu- 
 lously inspired, and could make no mistakes; that 
 the New Testament writers were miraculously in- 
 spired, and could make no mistakes ; and that there 
 this miraculous inspiration stopped, and all writers on 
 religion have been liable to make mistakes ever since. 
 It is as if a hand had been put out of the sky present- 
 ing us with the Bible, and the rules of criticism which 
 apply to other books did not apply to the Bible. 
 Now, the fatal thing for this supposition is, that its 
 owners stab it to the heart the moment they use any 
 palliation or explaining away, however small, of the 
 literal words of the Bible ; and some they always use. 
 For instance, it is said in the Eighteenth Psalm, that 
 a consuming fire went out of the mouth of God, so 
 that coals were kindled at it The veriest literalist
 
 122 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [OHA.P. 
 
 will cry out : Every one knows that this is not to be 
 taken literally ! The truth is, even he knows that 
 this is not to be taken literally ; but others know that 
 a great deal more is not to be taken literally. He 
 knows very little ; but, as far as his little knowledge 
 goes, he gives up his theory, which is, of course, 
 palpably hollow. For indeed it is only by applying 
 to the Bible a criticism, such as it is, that any man 
 makes out that criticism does not apply to the 
 Bible. 
 
 But suppose that the Bible itself put forth (which 
 it does not) this theory, and made its own value all 
 depend on the truth of it, then the result would be, 
 at the best, not firmer conviction, but utter puzzle 
 and bewilderment. Contradictions would meet us, 
 and we should have no means of escape from them. 
 There would grow up an irresistible sense that the 
 belief in miracles was due to man's want of experience, 
 to his ignorance, agitation,- and helplessness ; and yet 
 we should have a book, which if true was precious, 
 staking all its truth and value upon its having been 
 put out of the sky, upon its being guaranteed by 
 miracles, and upon their being true. Then it is that 
 the cry, Imposture ! would more and more, in spite of 
 all we could do, gather strength, and the book be 
 thrown aside more and more. 
 
 But when we convince ourselves that, in the New 
 Testament as in the Old, what is given us is words 
 thrown out at an immense reality not fully or half fully 
 grasped by the writers, but, even thus, able to affect 
 us with indescribable force ; when we convince our-
 
 ir.j THE PROOF FROM MIEACLES. 123 
 
 selves that, as in the Old Testament, we have Israel's 
 inadequate yet inexhaustibly fruitful testimony to 
 tlie Eternal that makes for righteousness, so we have in 
 the New Testament a report inadequate, indeed, but 
 the only report we have, and therefore priceless, by 
 men, some more able and clear, others less able and 
 clear, but all full of the influences of their time and 
 condition, partakers of some of its simple or its 
 learned ignorance, inevitably, in fine, expecting 
 miracles and demanding them, a report, I say, by 
 these men of that immense reality not fully or half 
 fully grasped by them, the mind of Christ ; then we 
 shall be drawn to the Gospels with a new zest and 
 as by a fresh spell. We shall throw ourselves upon 
 their narratives with an ardour answering to the 
 value of the pearl of great price they hold, and to the 
 difficulty of reaching it. 
 
 So, to profit fully by the New Testament, the first 
 thing to be done is to make it perfectly clear to one- 
 self that its reporters both could err and did err. 
 For a plain person, an incident in the report of St. 
 Paul's conversion, which comes into our minds the 
 more naturally as this incident has been turned 
 against something we have ourselves said, 1 would, 
 one would think, be enough. We had spoken of the 
 notion that St. Paul's miraculous vision at his con- 
 version proved the truth of his doctrine. We related 
 a vision which converted Sampson Staniforth, one of 
 the early Methodists ; and we said that just so much 
 proving force, and no more, as Sampson Staniforth's 
 1 St Paul and Protestantism, p. 54.
 
 124 LITERATURE AND DOGMA, [CHAP. 
 
 vision had to confirm the truth of anything he might 
 afterwards teach, St. Paul's vision had to establish his 
 subsequent doctrine. It was eagerly rejoined that 
 Staniforth's vision was but a fancy of his own, 
 whereas the reality of Paul's was proved by his com- 
 panions hearing the voice that spoke to him. And 
 so in one place of the Acts we are told they did ; but 
 in another place of the Acts we are told by Paul him- 
 self just the contrary : that his companions did not 
 hear the voice that spoke to him. Need we say that 
 the two statements have been " reconciled'"! They 
 have, over and over again ; but by one of those pro- 
 cesses which are the opprobrium of our Bible-criticism, 
 and by which, as Bishop Butler says, anything can be 
 made to mean anything. There is between the two 
 statements a contradiction as clear as can be. The 
 contradiction proves nothing against the good faith 
 of the reporter, and St. Paul undoubtedly had his 
 vision; he had it as Sampson Staniforth had his. 
 What the contradiction proves is the incurable loose- 
 ness with which the circumstances of what is called 
 and thought a miracle are related ; and that this 
 looseness the Bible-relaters of a miracle exhibit, just 
 like other people. And the moral is, what an unsure 
 stay, then, must miracles be ! 
 
 But, after all, that there is here any contradiction 
 or mistake, some do deny; so let us choose a case 
 where the mistake is quite undeniably clear. Such a 
 case we find in the confident expectation and assertion, 
 on the part of the New Testament writers, of the 
 approaching end of the world. Even this mistake
 
 V.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 125 
 
 people try to explain away ; but it is so palpable that 
 no words can cloud our perception of it. The time is 
 short. The Lord is at hand. The end of all things is at 
 hand. Little children, it is the final time. The Lord's 
 coming is at hand ; behold, the judge standeth before the 
 door. 1 Nothing can really obscure the evidence fur- 
 nished by such sayings as these. When Paul told 
 the Thessalonians that they and he, at the approach- 
 ing coming of Christ, should have their turn after, 
 not before, the faithful dead : " For the Lord himself 
 shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the 
 voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, 
 and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which 
 are alive and remain shall be caught up together with 
 them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air," 2 - 
 when he said this, St. Paul was purely simply mistaken 
 in his notion of what was going to happen. This is 
 as clear as anything can be. 
 
 And not only were the New Testament writers 
 thus demonstrably liable to commit, like other men, 
 mistakes in fact ; they were also demonstrably liable 
 to commit mistakes in argument. As before, let us 
 take a case which will be manifest and palpable to 
 every one. St. Paul, arguing to the Galatians that 
 salvation was not by the Jewish law but by Jesus 
 Christ, proves his point from the promise to Abraham 
 having been made to him and his seed, not seeds. 
 
 1 1 Cor. vii. 29 ; Phil. iv. 5 ; 1 Peter iv. 7 ; 1 John ii. 18 ; 
 James v. 8, 9. We have here the express declarations of St 
 Paul, St. Peter, St. John, and St. James. 
 
 2 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17.
 
 126 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHA? 
 
 The words are not, he says, "seeds, as of many, but as 
 of one; to thy seed, which is Christ." 1 Now, as to 
 the point to be proved, we all agree with St. Paul ; 
 but his argument is that of a Jewish Rabbi, and is 
 clearly both fanciful and false. The writer in Genesis 
 never intended to draw any distinction between one 
 of Abraham's seed, and Abraham's seed in general. 
 And even if he had expressly meant, what Paul says 
 he did not mean, Abraham's seed in general, he would 
 still have said seed, and not seeds. This is a good 
 instance to take, because the Apostle's substantial 
 doctrine is here not at all concerned. As to the root 
 of the matter in question, we are all at one with St. 
 Paul. But it is evident how he could, like the rest 
 of us, bring a quite false argument in support of a 
 quite true thesis. 
 
 And the use of prophecy by the writers of the 
 New Testament furnishes really, almost at every 
 turn, instances of false argument of the same kind. 
 Habit makes us so lend ourselves to their way of 
 speaking, that commonly nothing checks us; but, the 
 moment we begin to attend, we perceive how much 
 there is which ought to check us. Take the famous 
 allegation of the parted clothes but lot-assigned coat 
 of Christ as fulfilment of the supposed prophecy in 
 the Psalms : " They parted my garments among them, 
 and for my vesture did they cast lots." 2 The words 
 of the Psalm are taken to mean contrast, when they 
 do in truth mean identity. According to the rules 
 of Hebrew poetry, for my vesture they did cast lots is 
 1 Gal. iii. 16. * Psalm xxii. 18.
 
 v ] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 127 
 
 merely a repetition, in different words, of they parted 
 my garments among them, not an antithesis to it The 
 alleged "prophecy" is, therefore, due to a dealing 
 with the Psalmist's words which is arbitrary and 
 erroneous. So, again, to call the words, a bone of him 
 shall not be broken, 1 a prophecy of Christ, fulfilled by his 
 legs not being broken on the cross, is evidently, the 
 moment one considers it, a playing with words which 
 nowadays we should account childish. For what do 
 the words, taken, as alone words can rationally be 
 taken, along with their context, really prophesy? 
 The entire safety of the righteous, not his death. 
 Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the Eternal 
 deliver eth him out of all ; he Jceepeth all his bones, so that 
 not one of them is broken. 2 Worse words, therefore, 
 could hardly have been chosen' from the Old Testa- 
 ment to apply in that connection where they come ; 
 for they are really contradicted by the death of Christ, 
 not fulfilled by it. 
 
 It is true, this verbal and unintelligent use of 
 Scripture is just what was to be expected from the 
 circumstances of the New Testament writers. It was 
 inevitable for them ; it was the sort of trifling which 
 then, in common Jewish theology, passed for grave 
 argument and made a serious impression, as it has in 
 common Christian theology ever since. But this does 
 not make it the less really trifling; or hinder one 
 nowadays from seeing it to be trifling, directly we 
 examine it. The mistake made will strike some 
 people more forcibly in one of the cases cited, some 
 1 See John xix. 36. 2 Psalm xxxiv. 19, 20.
 
 128 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 in another, but in one or other of the cases the mistake 
 will be visible to everybody. 
 
 Now, this recognition of the liability of the New 
 Testament writers to make mistakes, both of fact and 
 of argument, will certainly, as we have said, more 
 and more gain strength, and spread wider and wider. 
 The futility of their mode of demonstration from 
 prophecy, of which we have just given examples, will 
 be more and more felt. The fallibility of that 
 demonstration from miracles to which they and all 
 about them attached such preponderating weight, 
 which made the disciples of Jesus believe in him, 
 which made the people believe in him, will be more 
 and more recognised. 
 
 Reverence for all, who, in those first dubious days 
 of Christianity, chose the better part, and resolutely 
 cast in their lot with " the despised and rejected of 
 men!" Gratitude to all, who, while the tradition 
 was yet fresh, helped by their writings to preserve 
 and set clear the precious record of the words and 
 life of Jesus ! And honour, eternal honour, to the 
 great and profound qualities of soul and mind which 
 some of these writers display ! But the writers are 
 admirable for what they are, not for what, by the 
 nature of things, they could not be. It was superi- 
 ority enough in them to attach themselves firmly to 
 Jesus; to feel to the bottom of their hearts that 
 power of his words, which alone held permanently, 
 held, when the miracles, in which the multitude 
 believed as well as the disciples, failed to hold. The 
 good faith of the Bible-writers is above all question, it
 
 V.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 129 
 
 speaks for itself ; and the very same criticism, which 
 shows us the defects of their exegesis and of their 
 demonstrations from miracles, establishes their good 
 faith. But this could not, and did not, prevent them 
 from arguing in the methods by which every one 
 around them argued, and from expecting miracles 
 where everybody else expected them. 
 
 In one respect alone have the miracles recorded 
 by them a more real ground than the mass of miracles 
 of which we have the relation. Medical science has 
 never gauged, never, perhaps, enough set itself to 
 gauge, the intimate connection between moral fault 
 and disease. To what extent, or in how many cases, 
 what is called illness is due to moral springs having 
 been used amiss, whether by being over-used or by 
 not being used sufficiently, we hardly at all know, 
 and we too little inquire. Certainly it is due to this 
 very much more than we commonly think ; and the 
 more it is due to this, the more do moral therapeutics 
 rise in possibility and importance. 1 The bringer of 
 light and happiness, the calmer and pacifier, or 
 invigorator and stimulator, is one of the chiefest of 
 doctors. Such a doctor was Jesus ; such an operator, 
 by an efficacious and real, though little observed and 
 little employed agency, upon what we, in the language 
 of popular superstition, call the unclean spirits, but 
 which are to be designated more literally and more 
 correctly as the uncleared, unymrified spirits, which 
 
 1 Consult the Charmides of Plato (cap. v. ) for a remarkable 
 account of the theory of such a treatment, attributed by Socrates 
 to Zamolxis, the god-king of the Thracians. 
 
 VOL. V. K
 
 130 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 came raging and madding before him. This his 
 own language shows, if we know how to read it 
 "What does it matter whether I say, Thy sins are 
 forgiven theef or whether I say, Arise and walkJ*' 1 
 And again : " Thou art made whole ; sin no more, lest 
 a worse thing befall thee." 2 His reporters, we must 
 remember, are men who saw thaumaturgy in all that 
 Jesus did, and who saw in all sickness and disaster 
 visitations from God, and they bend his language 
 accordingly. But indications enough remain to show 
 the line of the Master, his perception of the large 
 part of moral cause in many kinds of disease, and his 
 method of addressing to this part his cure. 
 
 It would never have done, indeed, to have men 
 pronouncing right and left that this and that was a 
 judgment, and how, and for what, and on whom. 
 And so, when the disciples, seeing an afflicted person, 
 asked whether this man had done sin or his parents, 
 Jesus checked them and. said : "Neither the one nor 
 the other, but that the works of God might be made 
 manifest in him." 3 Not the less clear is his own 
 belief in the moral root of much physical disease, and 
 in moral therapeutics; and it is important to note 
 well the instances of miracles where this belief comes 
 in. For the action of Jesus in these instances, how- 
 ever it may be amplified in the reports, was real ; 
 but it is not, therefore, as popular religion fancies, 
 thaumaturgy, it is not what people are fond of 
 calling the supernatural, but what is better called the 
 non-natural. It is, on the contrary, like the grace of 
 
 * Matthew ix. 5. 2 John v. 14. 3 John ix. 3
 
 V.] THE PKOOF FEOM MIRACLES. 131 
 
 Raphael, or the grand style of Phidias, eminently 
 natural; but it is above common, low-pitched nature; 
 it is a line of nature not yet mastered or followed out. 
 
 Its significance as a guarantee of the authenticity 
 of Christ's mission is trivial, however, compared with 
 the guarantee furnished by his sayings. Its import- 
 ance is in its necessary effect upon the beholders and 
 reporters. This element of what was really wonderful, 
 unprecedented, and unaccountable, they had actually 
 before them ; and we may estimate how it must have 
 helped and seemed to sanction that tendency which 
 in any case would h&ve carried them, circumstanced 
 as they were, to find all the performances and career 
 of Jesus miraculous. 
 
 But, except for this, the miracles related in the 
 Gospels will appear to us more and more, the more 
 our experience and knowledge increases, to have but 
 the same ground which is common to all miracles, 
 the ground indicated by Shakspeare; to have been 
 generated under the same kind of conditions as other 
 miracles, and to follow the same laws. When once 
 the " Zeit-Geist " has made us entertain the notion of 
 this, a thousand things in the manner of relating will 
 strike us which never struck us before, and will make 
 us wonder how we could ever have thought differently. 
 Discrepancies which we now labour with such honest 
 pains and by such astonishing methods to explain 
 away, the voice at Paul's conversion, heard by the 
 bystanders according to one account, not heard by 
 them according to another; the Holy Dove at Christ's 
 baptism, visible to John the Baptist in one narrative,
 
 132 LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 in two others to Jesus himself, in another, finally, to 
 all the people as well ; the single blind man in one 
 relation, growing into two blind men in another ; the 
 speaking with tongues, according to St. Paul a sound 
 without meaning, according to the Acts an intelligent 
 and intelligible utterance, all this will be felt to 
 require really no explanation at all, to explain itself, 
 to be natural to the whole class of incidents to which 
 these miracles belong, and the inevitable result of the 
 looseness with which the stories of them arise and are 
 propagated. 
 
 And the more the miraculousness of the story 
 deepens, as after the death of Jesus, the more does 
 the texture of the incidents become loose and floating, 
 the more does the very air and aspect of things seem 
 to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after hia 
 resurrection not known by Mary Magdalene, taken 
 by her for the gardener ; appearing in another form, 
 and not known by the two disciples going with him 
 to Emmaus and at supper with him there ; not known 
 by his most intimate apostles on the borders of the 
 Sea of Galilee; and presently, out of these vague 
 beginnings, the recognitions getting asserted, then the 
 ocular demonstrations, the final commissions, the 
 ascension ; one hardly knows which of the two to 
 call the most evident here, the perfect simplicity and 
 good faith of the narrators, or the plainness with 
 which they themselves really say to us : Behold a 
 legend growing under your eyes ! 
 
 And suggestions of this sort, with respect to the 
 whole miraculous side of the New Testament, will
 
 V.] THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 133 
 
 meet us at every turn ; we here but give a sample of 
 them. It is neither our wish nor our design to 
 accumulate them, to marshal them, to insist upon them, 
 to make their force felt. Let those who desire to keep 
 them at arm's length continue to do so, if they can, and 
 go on placing the sanction of the Christian religion 
 in its miracles. Our point is, that the objections to 
 miracles do, and more and more will, without 
 insistence, without attack, without controversy, make 
 their own force felt ; and that the sanction of Chris- 
 tianity, if Christianity is not to be lost along with its 
 miracles, must be found elsewhere.
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 Now, then, will be perceived the bearing and gravity 
 of what we some little way back said, that the more 
 we convince ourselves of the liability of the New 
 Testament writers to mistake, the more we really 
 bring out the greatness and worth of the New Testa- 
 ment. For the more the reporters were fallible and 
 prone to delusion, the more does Jesus become inde- 
 pendent of the mistakes they made, and unaffected by 
 them. We have plain proof that here was a very 
 great spirit ; and the greater he was, the more certain 
 were his disciples to misunderstand him. The depth 
 of their misunderstanding of him is really a kind of 
 measure of the height of his superiority. And this 
 superiority is what interests us in the records of the 
 New Testament ; for the New Testament exists to 
 reveal Jesus Christ, not to establish the immunity of 
 its writers from error. 
 
 Jesus himself is not a New Testament writer ; he 
 is the object of description and comment to the New 
 Testament writers. As the Old Testament speaks
 
 CHAP, vi.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 135 
 
 about the Eternal and bears an invaluable witness to 
 him, without yet ever adequately in words defining 
 and expressing him ; so, and even yet more, do the 
 New Testament writers speak about Jesus and give 
 a priceless record of him, without adequately and 
 accurately comprehending him. They are altogether 
 on another plane from Jesus, and their mistakes are 
 not his. It is not Jesus himself who relates his own 
 miracles to us ; who tells us of his own apparitions 
 after his death ; who alleges his crucifixion and 
 sufferings as a fulfilment of the prophecy : The Eternal 
 Tceepeth all the bones of the righteous so that not one of them 
 is broken ; l who proves salvation to be by Christ alone, 
 from the promise to Abraham being made to seed in 
 the singular number, not the plural. If, therefore, 
 the human mind is now drawing away from reliance 
 on miracles, coming to perceive the community of 
 character which pervades them all, to understand 
 their natural laws, so to speak, their loose mode 
 of origination and their untrustworthiness, and is 
 inclined rather to distrust the dealer in them than to 
 pin its faith upon him ; then it is good for the 
 authority of Jesus, that his reporters are evidently 
 liable to ignorance and error. He is reported to deal 
 in miracles, to be above all a thaumaturgist. But the 
 more his reporters were intellectually men of their 
 nation and time, and of its current beliefs, the more, 
 that is, they were open to mistakes, the more certain 
 they were to impute miracles to a wonderful and half- 
 understood personage like Jesus, whether he would or 
 1 Psalm xxxiv. 20.
 
 136 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 no. He himself may, at the same time, have had quite 
 other notions as to what he was doing and intending. 
 Again, the mistake of imagining that the world was 
 to end, as St. Paul announces, within the lifetime 
 of the first Christian generation, is palpable. But the 
 reporters of Jesus make him announcing just the same 
 thing : " This generation shall not pass away till they 
 shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with 
 great power and glory, and then shall he send his 
 angels and gather his elect from the four winds." 1 
 Popular theology can put a plain satisfactory sense 
 upon this, but, as usual, through that process described 
 by Butler by which anything can be made to mean 
 anything; and from this sort of process the human 
 mind is beginning to shrink. A more plausible 
 theology will say that the words are an accommoda- 
 tion; that the speaker lends himself to the fancies 
 and expectations of his hearers. A good deal of such 
 accommodation there is in this and other sayings 
 of Jesus ; but accommodation to the full extent 
 here supposed would surely have been impossible. 
 To suppose it, is most violent and unsatisfactory. 
 Either, then, the words were, like St. Paul's announce- 
 ment, a mistake, or they are not really the very words 
 Jesus said, just as he said them. That is, the 
 reporters have given them a turn, however slight, a 
 tone and a colour, a connection, to make them comply 
 with a fixed idea in their own minds, which they 
 unfeignedly believed was a fixed idea with Jesus also 
 Now, the more we regard the reporters of Jesus as 
 1 Matthew xxiv. 30. 81, 34.
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 137 
 
 men liable to err, full of the turbid Jewish fancies 
 alrout "the grand consummation" which were then 
 current, the easier we can understand these men 
 inevitably putting their own eschatology into the 
 mouth of Jesus, when they had to report his discourse 
 about the kingdom of God and the troubles in store 
 for the Jewish nation, and the less need have we to 
 make Jesus a co-partner in their eschatology. 
 
 Again, the futility of such demonstrations from 
 prophecy as those of which we have given examples, 
 and generally of all that Jewish exegesis, based on a 
 mere unintelligent catching at the letter of the Old 
 Testament, isolated from its context and real meaning, 
 of which the New Testament writers give us so much, 
 begins to disconcert attentive readers of the Bible 
 more and more, and to be felt by them as an embar- 
 rassment to the cause of Jesus, not a support. Well, 
 then, it is good for the authority of Jesus, that those 
 who establish it by arguments of this sort should be 
 clearly men of their race and time, not above its futile 
 methods of reasoning and demonstration. The more 
 they were this, and the more they were sure to mix 
 up much futile logic and exegesis with their presenta- 
 tion of Jesus, the less is Jesus himself responsible for 
 such logic and exegesis, or at all dependent upon it. 
 He may himself have rated such argumentation at 
 precisely its true value, and have based his mission 
 and authority upon no grounds but solid ones. 
 Whether he did so or not, his hearers and reporters 
 were sure to base it on their own fantastic grounds 
 also, and to credit Jesus with doing the same.
 
 138 LITEKATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 In short, the more we conceive Jesus as almost as 
 much over the heads of his disciples and reporters 
 then, as he is over the heads of the mass of so-called 
 Christians now, the more we see his disciples to have 
 been, as they were, men raised by a truer moral sus- 
 ceptiveness above their countrymen, but in intellectual 
 conceptions and habits much on a par with them, all 
 the more do we make room, so to speak, for Jesus to 
 be a personage immensely great and wonderful ; as 
 wonderful as anything his reporters imagined him to 
 be, though in a different manner. 
 
 II. 
 
 We make room for him to be this, and through the 
 inadequate reporting of his followers there breaks and 
 shines, and will more and more break and shine the 
 more the matter is examined, abundant evidence that 
 he was this. It is most remarkable, and the best 
 proof of the simplicity, seriousness, and good faith 
 which intercourse with Jesus Christ inspired, that 
 witnesses with a fixed prepossession, and having no 
 doubt at all as to the interpretation to be put on 
 Christ's acts and career, should yet admit so much of 
 what makes against themselves and their own power 
 of interpreting. For them, it was a thing beyond all 
 doubt, that by miracles Jesus manifested forth his 
 glory, and induced the faithful to believe in him. 
 Yet what checks to this paramount and all-governing 
 belief of theirs do they report from Jesus himself ! 
 Everybody will be able to recall such checks, although
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT EECORD. 139 
 
 he may never yet have been accustomed to consider 
 their full significance. Except ye see signs and wonders, 
 ye mil not believe/ 1 as much as to say: "Believe on 
 right grounds you cannot, and you must needs believe 
 on wrong !" And again : "Believe me that I am in 
 the Father and the Father in me ; or else believe for 
 the very works' sake /" 2 as much as to say : " Acknow- 
 ledge me on the ground of my healing and restoring 
 acts being miraculous, if you must ; but it is not the 
 right ground." No, not the right ground ; and when 
 Nicodemus came and would put conversion on this 
 ground (" We know that thou art a teacher come from 
 God, for no one can do the miracles that thou doest except 
 God be with him "), Jesus rejoined : " Verily, verily, I 
 say unto thee, except a man be born from above, he can- 
 not see the kingdom of God !" thus tacitly changing 
 his disciple's ground and correcting him. 3 Even 
 distress and impatience at this false ground being 
 taken is visible sometimes : " Jesus groaned in his spirit 
 and said, Why doth this generation ask for a sign ? 
 Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given to 
 this generation !" 4 Who does not see what double 
 and treble importance these checks from Jesus to the 
 reliance on miracles gain, through their being reported 
 by those who relied on miracles devoutly 1 Who does 
 not see what a clue they offer as to the real mind of 
 Jesus ? To convey at all to such hearers of him that 
 there was any objection to miracles, his own sense of 
 the objection must have been profound; and to get 
 
 1 John iv. 48. 2 John xiv. 11. 
 
 3 John iii. 2, 3. * Mark viii. 12.
 
 140 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 them, who neither shared nor understood it, to repeat 
 it a few times, he must have repeated it many times. 
 Take, again, the eschatology of the disciples, their 
 notion of the final things, and of the approaching 
 great judgment and end of the world. This consisted 
 mainly in a literal appropriation of the apocalyptic 
 pictures of the book of Daniel and the book of 
 Enoch, and a transference of them to Jesus Christ 
 and his kingdom. It is not surprising, certainly, that 
 men with the mental range of their time, and with so 
 little flexibility of thought that when Jesus told 
 them to beware of "the leaven of the Pharisees," 1 or 
 when he called himself " the bread of life " and said, 
 He that eateth me shall live by me, 2 they stuck hopelessly 
 fast in the literal meaning of the words, and were 
 accordingly puzzled or else offended by them, it is 
 not surprising that these men should have been incap- 
 able of dealing in a large spirit with prophecies like 
 those of Daniel, that they should have applied them 
 to Jesus narrowly and literally, and should there- 
 fore have conceived his kingdom unintelligently. 
 This is not remarkable ; what is remarkable is, that 
 they should themselves supply us with their Master's 
 blame of their too literal criticism, his famous sen- 
 tence : "The kingdom of God is within you !" 3 Such 
 an account of the kingdom of God has more right, 
 even if recorded only once, to pass with us for Jesus 
 Christ's own account, than the common materialising 
 accounts, if repeated twenty times ; for it was mani- 
 
 1 Matthew zvi. 6-12. 2 John vL48, 57. 
 
 3 Luke xvii 21.
 
 VI. J THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 141 
 
 festly quite foreign to the disciples' 'own notions, and 
 they could never have invented it. Evidence of the 
 same kind, again, evidence borne by the reporters 
 themselves against their own power of rightly under- 
 standing what their Master, on this topic of the 
 kingdom of God and its coming, meant to say, is 
 Christ's warning to his apostles, that the subject of 
 final things was one where they were all out of their 
 depth : " It is not for you to knmv the times and seasons 
 which the Father hath put in his own power." 1 
 
 So, too, with the use of prophecy and of the Old 
 Testament generally. A very small experience of 
 Jewish exegesis will convince us that, in the disciples, 
 their catching at the letter of the Scriptures, and 
 mistaking this play with words for serious argument, 
 was nothing extraordinary. The extraordinary thing 
 is that Jesus, even in the report of these critics, uses 
 Scripture in a totally different manner ; he wields it 
 as an instrument of which he truly possesses the use. 
 Either he puts prophecy into act, and by the startling 
 point thus made he engages the popular imagination 
 on his side, makes the popular familiarity with pro- 
 phecy serve him ; as when he rides into Jerusalem on 
 an ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and sellers. 
 Or else he applies Scripture in what is called "a 
 superior spirit," to make it yield to narrow-minded 
 hearers a lesson of wisdom ; as, for instance, to rebuke 
 a superstitious observance of the Sabbath he employs 
 the incident of David's taking the shewbread. His 
 reporters, in short, are the servants of the Scripture- 
 1 Acts i. 7.
 
 142 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 letter, Jesus is its master; and it is from the very 
 men who were servants to it themselves, that we 
 learn that he was master of it. How signal, therefore, 
 must this mastery have been ! how eminently and 
 strikingly different from the treatment known and 
 practised by the disciples themselves ! 
 
 Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the rule was, 
 undoubtedly, that men "believed on Jesus when 
 they saw the miracles which he did." * Miracles were 
 in these reporters' eyes, beyond question, the evi- 
 dence of the Christian religion. And yet these same 
 reporters indicate another and a totally different evi- 
 dence offered for the Christian religion by Christ him- 
 self. Every one that heareth and learneth from the Father 
 cometh unto me. 2 As the Father hath taught me, so I 
 speak; 3 he that is of God heareth the words of God;* if 
 God was your Father, ye would have loved me/ 5 This is 
 inward evidence, direct evidence. From that previous 
 knowledge of God, as " the Eternal that loveth right- 
 eousness," which Israel possessed, the hearers of 
 Jesus could and should have concluded irresistibly, 
 when they heard his words, that he came from God. 
 Now, miracles are outward evidence, indirect evidence, 
 not conclusive in this fashion. To walk on the sea 
 cannot really prove a man to proceed from the Eternal 
 chat loveth righteousness ; although undoubtedly, as 
 we have said, a man who walks on the sea will be 
 able to make the mass of mankind believe about him 
 almost anything he chooses to say. But there is, 
 
 1 John ii. 23. 2 John vi. 45. 
 
 John viii. 28. * John viiL 47. 5 John viii. 42.
 
 nj THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 143 
 
 after all, no necessary connection between walking on 
 the sea and proceeding from the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness. Jesus propounds, on the other hand, 
 an evidence of which the whole force lies in the 
 necessary connection between the proving matter and 
 the power that makes for righteousness. This is his 
 evidence for the Christian religion. 
 
 His disciples felt the force of the evidence, indeed. 
 Peter's answer to the question "Will ye also go 
 away ?" " To whom should we go ? thou hast the words 
 of eternal life /" l proves it. But feeling the force of 
 a thing is very different from understanding and pos- 
 sessing it. The evidence, which the disciples were 
 conscious of understanding and possessing, was the evi- 
 dence from miracles. And yet, in their report, Jesus 
 is plainly shown to us insisting on a different evidence, 
 an internal one. The character of the reporters gives 
 to this indication a paramount importance. That 
 they should indicate this internal evidence once, as 
 the evidence on which Jesus insisted, is more signifi- 
 cant, we say, than their indicating, twenty times, the 
 evidence from miracles as the evidence naturally con- 
 vincing to mankind, and recommended, as they thought, 
 by Jesus. The notion of the one evidence they would 
 have of themselves ; the notion of the other they could 
 only get from a superior mind. This mind must have 
 been full of it to induce them to feel it at all ; and 
 their exhibition of it, even then, must of necessity be 
 inadequate and broken. 
 
 But is it possible to overrate the value of the ground 
 John vi. 68.
 
 144 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CIIAP. 
 
 thus gained for showing the riches of the New Testar 
 ment to those who, sick of the popular arguments 
 from prophecy, sick of the popular arguments from 
 miracles, are for casting the New Testament aside 
 altogether ? The book contains all that we know of 
 a wonderful spirit, far above the heads of his reporters, 
 still farther above the head of our popular theology, 
 which has added its own misunderstanding of the 
 reporters to the reporters' misunderstanding of Jesus. 
 And it was quite inevitable that anything so superior 
 and so profound should be imperfectly understood by 
 those amongst whom it first appeared, and for a very 
 long time afterwards ; and that it should come at last 
 gradually to stand out clearer only by time, Time, 
 as the Greek maxim says, the wisest of all things, for he 
 is the unfailing discoverer. 
 
 Yet, however much is discovered, the object of 
 our scrutiny must still be beyond us, must still 
 transcend our adequate knowledge, if for no other 
 reason, because of the character of the first and only 
 records of him. But in the view now taken we have, 
 even at the point to which we have already come, 
 at least a wonderful figure transcending his time, 
 transcending his disciples, attaching them, but trans- 
 cending them ; in very much that he uttered going 
 far above their heads, treating Scripture and prophecy 
 like a master while they treated it like children, 
 resting his doctrine on internal evidence while they 
 rested it on miracles ; and yet, by his incomparable 
 lucidity and penetrativeness, planting his profound 
 veins of thought in their memory along with their
 
 iv.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 145 
 
 own notions and prepossessions, to come out all 
 mixed up together, but still distinguishable one day 
 and separable ; and leaving his word thus to bear 
 fruit for the future. 
 
 III. 
 
 Surely to follow and extract these veins of true 
 ore is a wise man's business; not to let them lie 
 neglected and unused, because the beds where they 
 are found are not all of the same quality with them. 
 The beds are invaluable because they contain the ore ; 
 and though the search for it in them is undoubtedly 
 a grave and difficult quest, yet it is not a quest of the 
 elaborate and endless kind that it will at first, per- 
 haps, be fancied to be. It is a quest with this for its 
 governing idea: Jesus was over the heads of his reporters; 
 what, therefore, in their report of him, is Jesus, and what 
 is the reporters ? 
 
 Now, this excludes as unessential much of the 
 criticism which is bestowed on the New Testament, 
 and gives a sure point of view for the remainder. 
 And what it excludes are those questions as to the 
 exact date, the real authorship, the first publication, 
 the rank of priority, of the Gospels; questions which 
 have a great attraction for critics, which are perhaps 
 in themselves good to be entertained, which lead to 
 much close and fruitful observation of the texts, and 
 in which very high ingenuity may be shown and 
 very great plausibility reached, but not more ; they 
 cannot be really settled, the data are insufficient 
 And for our purpose they are not essential Neither 
 
 VOL. V. L
 
 146 LITER ATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 is it essential for our purpose to get at the very 
 primitive text of the New Testament writers, deeply 
 interesting and deeply important as this is. The 
 changes that have befallen the text show, no doubt, 
 the constant tendency of popular Christianity to add 
 to the element of theurgy and thaumaturgy, to increase 
 and develop it. To clear the text of these changes, 
 will show the New Testament writers to have been 
 less preoccupied with this tendency, and is, so far, 
 very instructive. But it will not, by re-establishing 
 the real words of the writers, necessarily give the 
 real truth as to Jesus Christ's religion ; because to 
 the writers themselves this religion was, in a con- 
 siderable degree certainly, a theurgy and a thau- 
 maturgy, although not quite in the mechanical and 
 extravagant way that it is in our present popular 
 theology. 
 
 For instance, the famous text of the three heavenly 
 witnesses 1 is an imposture, and an extravagant one. 
 It shows us, no doubt, theologians like our bishops 
 already at work, men with more metaphysics than 
 literary tact, full of the Aryan genius, of the notion 
 that religion is a metaphysical conception ; anxious 
 to do something for the thesis of " the Godhead of 
 the Eternal Son," or of " the blessed truth that the 
 God of the universe is a person," or, as the Bishop 
 of Gloucester writes it, "PERSON," and so on. But 
 something of the same intention is unquestionably 
 visible, never, indeed, in Jesus, but in the author of 
 the Fourth Gospel. Much of the conversation with 
 1 1 John v. 7-
 
 vt.] THE NEW TESTAMENT KECORD. 147 
 
 Nicodemus is a proof of it ; the forty-sixth verse of 
 the sixth chapter is a signal proof of it. One can 
 there almost see the author, after recording Christ's 
 words : Every one that heareth and learneth of the father 
 cometh unto me, take alarm at the notion that this looks 
 too downright and natural, and, sincerely persuaded 
 that he " did something " for the honour of Jesus by 
 making him more abstract, bring in and put into the 
 mouth of Jesus the 46th verse : Not that any one hath 
 seen the father, except he that is from God, he hath seen 
 the father. This verse has neither rhyme nor reason 
 where it stands in Christ's discourse, it jars with the 
 words Avhich precede and follow, and is in quite 
 another vein from them. Yet it is the author's own, 
 it is no interpolation. 
 
 Again, Unitarians lay much stress on the prob- 
 ability that in the first words of St. Mark's Gospel : 
 " The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son 
 of God," the Son of God is an interpolation. And, no 
 doubt, if the words are an interpolation, this shows 
 that the desire to prove the dogma of Christ's God- 
 head was not so painfully ever-present to the writer 
 of the Second Gospel as it became to later theologians. 
 But it shows no more ; it does not show that he had 
 the least doubt about Jesus being the Son of God. 
 Ten verses later, in an undisputed passage, he calls 
 him so. 
 
 Again, in the last chapter of the same Gospel, all 
 which follows the eighth verse, all the account of 
 Christ's resurrection and ascension, is probably an 
 addition by a later hand. But the resurrection is
 
 148 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 plainly indicated in the first eight verses ; and that 
 the writer of the Second Gospel stops after the eighth 
 verse, proves rather that he was writing briefly than 
 that he did not believe in the resurrection and ascen- 
 sion as much as, for instance, the writer of the Third 
 Gospel; unless, indeed, there are other signs (for 
 example, in his way of relating such an incident as 
 the Transfiguration) to show that he was suspicious 
 of the preternatural But there are none; and he 
 plainly was not, and could not have been. 
 
 Again ; it seems impossible that the very primitive 
 original of the First Gospel should have made Jesus 
 say, that " the sign of Jonas " consisted in his being 
 three days and three nights in the whale's belly as 
 the Son of Man was to be a like time in the heart of 
 the earth. 1 It spoils the argument, and in the next 
 verse the argument is given simply and rightly. 
 Jonas was a sign to the Jews, because the Ninevites 
 repented at his preaching and a greater than Jonas 
 stood now preaching to the Jews. But whether the 
 words are genuine (and there seems no evidence to 
 the contrary) in that particular place or not, to get 
 rid of them brings us really but a very little way, 
 when it is plain that their argument is exactly one 
 which the Evangelists would be disposed to use, and 
 to think that Jesus meant to use. For so they make 
 him to have said, for instance : Destroy this temple, and 
 in three days I mil raise it up ! 2 in prediction of his 
 own death and resurrection. 
 
 In short, to know accurately the history of x>ur 
 1 Matthew xil 40. a John ii. 19.
 
 VI. J THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 149 
 
 documents is impossible, and even if it were possible, 
 we should yet not know accurately what Jesus said 
 and did ; for his reporters were incapable of rendering it, 
 he was so much above them. This is the important thing 
 to get firmly fixed in our minds. And the more it 
 becomes established to us, the more we shall see the 
 futility of what is called rationalism, rationalism proper, 
 and the rationalistic treatment of the New Testament ; 
 of the endeavour, that is, to reduce all the super- 
 natural in it to real events, much resembling what is 
 related, which have got a little magnified and coloured 
 by being seen through the eyes of men having certain 
 prepossessions, but may easily be brought back to 
 their true proportions and made historical and reason- 
 able. A famous specimen of this kind of treatment is 
 Schleiermacher's fancy of the death on the cross 
 having been a swoon, and the resurrection of Jesus a 
 recovery from this swoon. Victorious indeed, what- 
 ever may be in other ways his own shortcomings, is 
 Strauss's demolition of this fancy of Schleiermacher's ! 
 Like the rationalistic treatment of Scripture through- 
 out, it makes far more difficulties than it solves, and 
 rests on too narrow a conception of the history of the 
 human mind, and of its diversities of operation and 
 production. It puts us ourselves in the original 
 disciples' place, imagines the original disciples to have 
 been men rational in our sense and way, and then 
 explains their record as it might be made explicable 
 if it were ours. And it may safely be said that in 
 this fashion it is not explicable. Imaginations so little 
 creative, and with so substantial a framework of fact
 
 150 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 for each of their wonderful stories as this theory 
 assumes, would never have created so much as they 
 did ; at least, they could not have done so and 
 retained their manifest simplicity and good faith. 
 They must have fallen, we in like case should fall, 
 into arrangement and artifice. 
 
 But the original disciples were not men rational in 
 our sense and way. The real wonderfulness of Jesus, 
 and their belief in him, being given, they needed no 
 such full and parallel body of fact for each miracle as 
 we suppose. Some hint and help of fact, undoubtedly, 
 there almost always was, and we naturally seek to 
 explore it. Sometimes our guesses may be right, 
 sometimes wrong, but we can never be sure, the range 
 of possibility is so wide; and we may easily make 
 them too elaborate. Shakspeare's explanation is far 
 the soundest : 
 
 "No natural exhalation in the sky, 
 No scape of nature, no distemper'd day, 
 No common wind, no customed event, 
 But they will pluck away his natural cause, 
 And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, 
 Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven. " 
 
 And it must be remembered, moreover, that of 
 none of these recorders have we, probably, the very 
 original record. The whole record, when we first get 
 it, has passed through at least half a century, or more, 
 of oral tradition, and through more than one written 
 account. Miraculous incidents swell and grow apace ; 
 they are just the elements of a tradition that swell 
 and grow most. These incidents, therefore, in the
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 151 
 
 history of Jesus, the preternatural things he did, the 
 preternatural things that befell him, are just the parts 
 of the record which are least solid. Beyond the 
 historic outlines of the life of Jesus, his Galilean 
 origin, his preaching in Galilee, his preaching in 
 Jerusalem, his crucifixion, much the firmest element 
 in the record is his wards. Happily it is of these that 
 he himself said : " The wards that I speak unto you, 
 they are spirit and they are life." l But in reading 
 them, we have still to bear in mind our governing 
 idea, that they are words of one inadequately compre- 
 hended by his hearers, men though these be of pureness 
 of heart, discernment to know and love the good, 
 perfect uprightness of intention, faithful simplicity. 
 
 What they will have reported best, probably, is 
 discourse where there was the framework of a story 
 and its application to guide them, discourse such 
 as the parables. Instructive and beautiful as the 
 parables are, however, they have not the importance 
 of the direct teaching of Jesus. But in his direct 
 teaching we are on the surest ground in single sen- 
 tences, which have their ineffaceable and unforgettable 
 stamp : My yoke is kindly and my burden light ; Many 
 are called, few chosen ; They that are whole need not a 
 physician, but they that are sick; No man having put his 
 hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit far tlie kingdom 
 of God. 2 The longer trains of discourse, and many 
 sayings in immediate connection with miracles, present 
 much more difficulty. Probably there are very few 
 
 1 John TL 63. 
 - 1 Matthew xi. 30; xxii. 14 ; ix. 12 ; Luke ix. C2.
 
 152 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 sayings attributed to Jesus which do not contain what 
 he on some occasion actually said, or much of what 
 he actually said. But the connection, the juncture, is 
 plainly often missed ; things are put out of their true 
 place and order. Failure of memory would occa- 
 sionally cause this with any reporters ; failure of 
 comprehension would with the reporters of Jesus 
 frequently cause it. The surrounding tradition in- 
 sensibly biases them, their love of miracles biases 
 them, their eschatology biases them. All these three 
 exercise an attraction on words of Jesus, and draw 
 them into occasions, placings, and turns, which are 
 not exactly theirs. The one safe guide to the 
 extrication and right reception of what comes from 
 Jesus is the internal evidence. And wherever we 
 find what enforces this evidence or builds upon it, 
 there we may be especially sure that we are on the 
 trace of Jesus ; because turn or bias in this direction 
 the disciples were more likely to omit from his dis- 
 course than to import into it, they were themselves so 
 wholly preoccupied with the evidence from miracles. 
 
 IV. 
 
 This is what gives such eminency and value to the 
 Fourth Gospel. 1 The confident certainty with which 
 
 1 Some critics object that the Fourth Gospel has been proved 
 by Baur to be entirely unhistorical, and to give for sayings of 
 Jesusj wherever it does not follow the synoptics, the free 
 inventions of some Christian dogmatist of late date. So little 
 do I think Baur to have proved this, that I hold adherence to his 
 thesis to be a conclusive sign of the adherent's want of real
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 153 
 
 Ewald settles the authorship of this gospel, and assigns 
 it to St. John, is an exhibition of that learned man's 
 weakness. To settle the authorship is impossible, the 
 data are insufficient ; but from what data we have, 
 to believe that the Gospel is St. John's is extremely 
 difficult. But, on the other hand, the stress which 
 Ewald, following Luther, lays on this Gospel, the 
 value which he attributes to it, is an exhibition of 
 his power, of his deep, sure feeling, and true insight, 
 in the essential matters of religious history; and of 
 his superiority, here, to the best of his rivals, Baur, 
 Strauss, and even M. Renan. " The true evangelical 
 bread," says Strauss, "Christians have always gone 
 to the three first Gospels for!" But what, then, 
 means this sentence of Luther, who stands as such a 
 good, though favourable, representative of ordinary 
 Christianity: "John's Gospel is the one proper Head- 
 Gospel, and far to be preferred to the three others"? 
 Again, M. Eenan, often so ingenious as well as elo- 
 quent, says that the narrative and incidents in the 
 Fourth Gospel are probably in the main historical, the 
 discourses invented. Reverse the proposition, and it 
 would be more plausible ! The narrative, so meagre, 
 and skipping so unaccountably backwards and for- 
 wards between Galilee and Jerusalem, might well be 
 thought, not indeed invented, but a matter of infinitely 
 
 critical insight. To discuss controversially in the text the date, 
 mode of composition, and character of the Fourth Gospel would 
 be quite unsuitable to the design of the present work. But I 
 have noticed objections, and amongst them this as .to my use 
 of the Fourth Gospel, elsewhere. See God and the Bible: A 
 Review of Objections to literature and Dogma.
 
 154 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 little care and attention to the writer of the Gospel, a 
 mere slight framework in which to set the doctrine 
 and discourses of Jesus. The doctrine and discourses 
 of Jesus, on the other hand, cannot in the main be 
 the writer's, because in the main they are clearly out 
 of his reach. 
 
 The Fourth Gospel delights the heart of M. 
 Burnouf. For its writer shows, M. Burnouf thinks, 
 signal traces of the Aryan genius, has much to favour 
 the notion that religion is a metaphysical conception, 
 and was perhaps even capable, with time, of reaching 
 the grand truth that God is a cosmic unity ! And 
 undoubtedly the writer of the Fourth Gospel seems 
 to have come in contact, in Asia or Egypt, with 
 Aryan metaphysics whether from India or Greece; 
 and to have had this advantage, whatever it amounts 
 to, in writing his Gospel. But who, that has eyes to 
 read, cannot see the difference between the places in 
 his Gospel, such as the introduction, where the writer 
 speaks in his own person, and the places where Jesus 
 himself speaks 1 The moment Jesus speaks, the meta- 
 physical apparatus falls away, the simple intuition 
 takes its place; and wherever in the discourse of 
 Jesus the metaphysical apparatus is intruded, it jars 
 with the context, breaks the unity of the discourse, 
 impairs the thought, and comes evidently from the 
 writer, not Jesus. It may seem strange and incredible 
 to M. Burnouf that metaphysics should not always 
 confer the superiority upon their possessor ; but such 
 is the case. 
 
 Who, again, cannot understand that the philo-
 
 vi.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 155 
 
 sophical acquirements of the author of the Fourth 
 Gospel, like the rabbinical training and intellectual 
 activity of Paul, though they may have sometimes 
 led each of them astray, must yet have given each of 
 them a range of thought, and an enlarged mental 
 horizon, enabling them to perceive and follow ideas 
 of Jesus which escaped the ken of the more scantily 
 endowed authors of the synoptical Gospels? Plato 
 sophisticates somewhat the genuine Socrates ; but it 
 is very doubtful whether the culture and mental 
 energy of Plato did not give him a more adequate 
 vision of this true Socrates than Xenophon had. It 
 proves nothing for the superiority of the first three 
 Gospels that their authors are without the logic of 
 Paul and the metaphysics of John (by this commonly 
 received name let us for shortness' sake call the author 
 of the Fourth Gospel), and that Jesus also was with- 
 out them. Jesus was without them because he was 
 above them; the authors of the synoptical Gospels 
 because they were (we say it without any disrespect) 
 below them. Therefore, the author of the Fourth 
 Gospel, by the very characters which make him 
 inferior to Jesus, was made superior to the three 
 synoptics, and better able than they to seize and 
 reproduce the higher teaching of Jesus. 
 
 Does it follow, then, that his picture of Christ's 
 teaching can have been his own invention? By no 
 means ; since Christ's teaching is as plainly over his 
 head (at that time of day it could not have been 
 otherwise) as it is over theirs. He deals in miracles 
 as confidingly as they do, while unconsciously indica-
 
 156 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 ting, far more than they do, that the evidence of 
 miracles is superseded. In those two great chapters, 
 the fifth and sixth, where Jesus deals with the topics 
 of life, death, and judgment, and with his thesis : He 
 that eateth me shall live by me / l invaluable and full of 
 light as is what is given, the eschatology and the 
 materialising conceptions of the writer do yet 
 evidently intervene, as they did with all the disciples, 
 as they did with the Jews in general, to hinder a per- 
 fectly faithful mirroring of the thought of Jesus. 
 We have already remarked how his metaphysical 
 acquirements intervene in like manner. In the dis- 
 course with Nicodemus in the third chapter, from the 
 thirteenth verse to the end, phrases and expressions 
 of Jesus of the highest worth are scattered ; but they 
 are manifestly set in a short theological lecture inter- 
 posed by the writer himself, a lecture which is, as a 
 whole, without vital connection with the genuine 
 discourse of Jesus, and needing only to be carefully 
 studied side by side with this for its disparateness to 
 become apparent. 
 
 But a failure of right understanding, which will 
 be visible to every one, occurs with this writer in his 
 seventh chapter. Jesus, with a reference to words of 
 the second Isaiah, 2 says here : " He that believeth on 
 me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water." 3 The thought is plain ; it 
 
 1 John vi. 57. 
 
 2 Chap. Iviii. 10 ; where it is promised to the righteous : 
 "Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of 
 water, whose waters fail not." 3 John vii. 38.
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 157 
 
 belongs to the same order as the thought of the 
 saying : " If any thirst, let him come unto me and 
 drink;" or of the words to the woman of Samaria: 
 "If thou hadst known the gift of God, and who it is 
 that talketh with thee, thou wouldst have asked of 
 him and he would have given thee living water." It 
 means that a man, receiving Jesus, obtains a source 
 of refreshment for himself and becomes a source of 
 refreshment for others ; and it means this generally, 
 without any limitation to a special time. But the 
 reporter explains : " Now this he said concerning the 
 Spirit (Pneuma) which they who believed on him 
 should receive; for Pneuma was not yet, because 
 Jesus was not yet glorified." l A clearer instance of a 
 narrow and mechanical interpretation of a great and 
 free thought can hardly be imagined ; and the words 
 of Jesus himself enable us here to control the inade- 
 quacy of the interpretation, and to make it palpable. 
 So that the superior point of view in the Fourth 
 Gospel, the more spiritual treatment of things, the 
 insistence on internal evidence, not external, cannot, 
 we say, be the writer's, for they are above him ; and 
 while his gifts and acquirements are such as to make 
 him report them, they are not such as to enable him 
 to originate them. The great evidential line of this 
 Gospel : " You are always talking about God, and 
 about your founder Abraham, the father of God's 
 faithful people ; here is a man who says nothing of 
 his own head, who tells you the truth, as he has 
 learnt it of God ; if you were really of God you would 
 1 John vii. 39.
 
 158 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 hear the words of God ! if you were really Abraham's 
 children you would follow the truth like Abraham !" 
 this simple but profound line, sending Israel back 
 to amend its conventional, barren notions of God, of 
 righteousness, and of the founders of its religion, 
 sending it to explore them afresh, to sound them 
 deeper, to gather from them a new revelation and a 
 new life, was, we say, at once too simple and too pro- 
 found for the author of the Fourth Gospel to have 
 invented. Our endless gratitude is due to him, how- 
 ever, for having caught and preserved so much of it 
 And our business is to keep hold of the clue he has 
 thus given to us, and to use it as profitably as possible. 
 
 V. 
 
 Truly then, some one will exclaim, we may say 
 with the "Imitation:" Magnet, ars est scire conversari 
 cum Jesu ! And so it is. To extract from his reporters 
 the true Jesus entire, is even impossible ; to extract 
 him in considerable part is one of the highest con- 
 ceivable tasks of criticism. And it is vain to use that 
 favourite argument of popular theology that man 
 could never have been left by Providence in difficulty 
 and obscurity about a matter of so much importance 
 to him. For the cardinal rule of our present inquiry 
 is that rule of Newton's : Hypotheses non fmgo ; and 
 this argument of popular theology rests on the 
 eternal hypothesis, of a magnified and non-natural 
 man at the head of mankind's and the world's affairs. 
 And a further answer is, that, as to the argument
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 159 
 
 itself, even if we allowed the hypothesis, yet the 
 course of things, so far as we can see, is not so ; they 
 do not proceed in this fashion. Because a man has 
 frequently to make sea-passages, he is not gifted with 
 an immunity from sea-sickness ; because a thing is of 
 the highest interest and importance to know, it is not, 
 therefore, easy to know ; on the contrary, in general, 
 in proportion to its magnitude it is difficult, and 
 requires time. 
 
 But the right commentary on the sentence of the 
 " Imitation " is given by the " Imitation " itself in the 
 sentence following : Esto humilis et pacificus, el erit 
 tecum Jesus ! What men could take at the hands of 
 Jesus, what they could use, what could save them, he 
 made as clear as light; and Christians have never 
 been able, even if they would, to miss seeing it. No, 
 never; but still they have superadded to it a vast 
 Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief of their own ; 
 and the Aberglaube has pushed on one side, for very 
 many, the saving doctrine of Jesus, has hindered 
 attention from being riveted on this and on its line 
 of growth and working, has nearly effaced it, has 
 developed all sorts of faults contrary to it. This 
 Aberglaube has sprung out of a false criticism of the 
 literary records in which the doctrine is conveyed ; 
 what is called "orthodox divinity" is, in fact, an 
 immense literary misapprehension. Having caused 
 the saving doctrines enshrined in these records to be 
 neglected, and having credited the records with exist- 
 ing for the sake of its own Aberglaube, this blunder 
 aow threatens to cause the records themselves to be
 
 160 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 neglected by all those (and their numbers are fast 
 increasing) whom its own Aberglaube fills with im- 
 patience and aversion. Therefore it is needful to 
 show the line of growth of this Aberglaube, and its 
 delusiveness ; to show anew, and with more detail 
 than we have admitted hitherto, the line of growth 
 of Jesus Christ's doctrine, and the far-reaching 
 sanctions, the inexhaustible attractiveness, the grace 
 and truth, with which he invested it. But the 
 doctrine itself is essentially simple; and what is 
 difficult, the literary criticism of the documents 
 containing the doctrine, is not the doctrine. 
 
 This literary criticism, however, is extremely diffi- 
 cult. It calls into play the highest requisites for the 
 study of letters ; great and wide acquaintance with 
 the history of the human mind, knowledge of the 
 manner in which men have thought, of their way of 
 using words and of what they mean by them, delicacy 
 of perception and quick tact, and, besides all these, a 
 favourable moment and the "Zeit-Geist." And yet 
 every one among us criticises the Bible, and thinks it 
 is of the essence of the Bible that it can be thus 
 criticised with success ! And the Four Gospels, the 
 part of the Bible to which this sort of criticism is 
 most applied and most confidently, are just the part 
 which for literary criticism is infinitely the hardest, 
 however simple they may look, and however simple 
 the saving doctrine they contain really is. For 
 Prophets and Epistlers speak for themselves ; but in 
 the Four Gospels reporters are speaking for Jesus, 
 who is far above them.
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 161 
 
 Now, we all know what the literary criticism of the 
 mass of mankind is. To be worth anything, literary 
 and scientific criticism require, both of them, the 
 finest heads and the most sure tact; and they require, 
 besides, that the world and the world's experience 
 shall have come some considerable way. But, ever 
 since this last condition has been fulfilled, the finest 
 heads for letters and science, the surest tact for 
 these, have turned themselves in general to other 
 departments of work than criticism of the Bible, this 
 department being occupied already in such force of 
 numbers and hands, if not of heads, and there being 
 so many annoyances and even dangers in freely 
 approaching it As our Eeformers were to Shak- 
 speare and Bacon in tact for letters and science, or as 
 Luther, even, was to Goethe in this respect, such 
 almost has on the whole been, since the Kenascence, 
 the general proportion in rate of power for criticism 
 between those who have given themselves to secular 
 letters and science, and those who have given them- 
 selves to interpreting the Bible, and who, in con- 
 junction with the popular interpretation of it both 
 traditional and contemporary, have made what is 
 called " orthodox theology." It is as if some simple 
 and saving doctrines, essential for men to know, were 
 enshrined in Shakspeare's Hamlet or in Newton's 
 Principia (though the Gospels are really a far more 
 complex and difficult object of criticism than either) ; 
 and a host of second-rate critics, and official critics, 
 and what is called " the popular mind " as well, threw 
 themselves upon Hamlet and the Principia, with the 
 VOL. v. M
 
 162 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 notion that they could and should extract from these 
 documents, and impose on us for our belief, not only 
 the saving doctrines enshrined there, but also the 
 right literary and scientific criticism of the entire 
 documents, A pretty mess they would make of it ! 
 and just this sort of mess is our so-called orthodox 
 theology. And its professors are nevertheless bold, 
 overweening, and even abusive, in maintaining their 
 criticism against all questioners; although really, if 
 one thinks seriously of it, it was a kind of imperti- 
 nence in such professors to attempt any such criticism 
 at all 
 
 Happily, the faith that saves is attached to the 
 saving doctrines in the Bible, which are very simple ; 
 not to its literary and scientific criticism, which is 
 very hard. And no man is to be called " infidel " for 
 his bad literary and scientific criticism of the Bible ; 
 but if he were, how dreadful would the state of our 
 orthodox theologians be.! They themselves freely 
 fling about this word infidel at all those who reject 
 their literary and scientific criticism, which turns out 
 to be quite false. It would be but just to mete to 
 them with their own measure, and to condemn them 
 by their own rule ; and, when they air their unsound 
 criticism in public, to cry indignantly : The Bishop of 
 So-and-So, the Dean of So-and-So, and other infidel lec- 
 turers of the present day ! or : That rampant infidel, the 
 Archdeacon of So-and-So, in his recent letter on the Atha- 
 nasian Creed/ or: "The Rock," "The Church Times" 
 and the rest of the infidel press/ or: The torrent of 
 infidelity which pours every Sunday from our pulpits/
 
 VI.] THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 163 
 
 Just would this be, and by no means inurbane ; but 
 hardly, perhaps, Christian. Therefore we will not 
 permit ourselves to say it; but it is only kind to 
 point out, in passing, to these loud and rash people 
 to what they expose themselves, at the hands of 
 adversaries less scrupulous than we are.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 
 
 WE have said, and it cannot be repeated too often, 
 that what is called orthodox theology is, in fact, 
 an immense misunderstanding of the Bible, due to 
 the junction of a talent for abstruse reasoning with 
 much literary inexperience. It cannot be repeated 
 too often; because our dogmatic friends seem to 
 imagine that the truth of their dogma is conceded on 
 all hands, and that the only objection is to the harsh 
 or over-rigid way in which it is put. Dr. Pusey and 
 the Church Review assume that what the Athanasian 
 Creed, for instance, does, is " to take up the admitted 
 fads of Christian faith, and arrange them sentence 
 after sentence ; " and then they ask us why we 
 should be so squeamish about "letting the Prayer 
 Book contain once, at least, the statement that Chris- 
 tian faith is necessary to salvation." Others, we 
 know, talk of the contest going on between " definite 
 religion," " religion with the sinew and bone of doc- 
 trine," and " indefinite religion," " nerveless religion," 
 "vague, negative, and cloudy religion;" and Lord 
 Salisbury, as we have seen, declares that " religion is
 
 OHAP. vii.] TESTIMONY OP JESUS TO HIMSELF. 165 
 
 no more to be severed from dogma than light from 
 the sun." 
 
 To be sure, to make this maxim of Lord Salisbury's 
 indisputable, it ought to run : " Eeligion is no more 
 to be severed from the true doctrine of religion than 
 light from the sun." And dogma and the true doctrine 
 of religion are not exactly synonyms. Dogma means, 
 not necessarily a true doctrine, but merely a doctrine 
 or system of doctrine determined, decreed, received. Lord 
 Salisbury, however, takes it as in this case another 
 word for truth, and so do the other speakers. And 
 they accordingly represent their opponents as either 
 secret enemies of the truth of religion, men who are, 
 as the Hock says in a Biblical figure addressed to the 
 Dean of Westminster, " the degenerate plant of a 
 strange vine bringing forth the grapes of Sodom and 
 the clusters of Gomorrah;" or, at best, as amiable, 
 soft-headed people, afraid of clear thought and plain 
 speech, and requiring with their light a very unneces- 
 sary dose of sweetness. 
 
 We, however, try to keep our love of sweetness 
 within reasonable bounds ; and the Rock will hardly 
 call us a Gomorrah vine, when we agree to say heartily 
 after it. as we do, that " Christian faith is necessary 
 to salvation." But what is Christian faith? Is it 
 " the admitted facts taken up and arranged, sentence 
 after sentence, in the Athanasian Creed?" Are these 
 facts admitted ? the whole question is here. So far 
 from these facts being admitted, or from the enumera- 
 tion of them being the emimeration of the facts of the 
 Christian faith, we say that they are deductions from
 
 166 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, 
 
 the Bible of matters which are not the real matters 
 of Christian faith at all; and that, moreover, they 
 are false deductions from the Bible, blunders arising 
 from a want of skill and experience in dealing with a 
 very complex literary problem. 
 
 Therefore we can honestly tell our dogmatic friends 
 that we agree with them in disliking an indefinite 
 religion, in preferring a definite one. Our quarrel 
 with them is, n6t that they define religion, but that 
 they define it so abominably. And to the eloquent 
 and impetuous Chancellor of Oxford, who cannot 
 away with a hazy amiability in religious matters, and 
 brandishes before us his dogma, not vague, he says, 
 but precise ; " Precise enough," we answer, " precisely 
 wrong!" And having thus, we hope, put ourselves 
 right with our adversaries as to the real question 
 between us and them, we will proceed with our 
 endeavour to free the Bible, by showing that it is 
 not science but literature, by following it continuously 
 and by interpreting it naturally, to free the Bible 
 from the serious dangers with which their advocacy 
 threatens it. Because, when the bishops talk of 
 "doing something for the Godhead of the Eternal 
 Son," they are doing nothing, we say, for the Bible, 
 they are endangering it. For their notions about 
 the Godhead of the Eternal Son, and what it is, 
 cannot possibly stand ; and yet these notions they 
 have drawn, they tell us, from the Bible, they impute 
 them to the Bible. But they have drawn them 
 wrongly, and the Bible is to be made answerable for 
 no such doctrine. And we have now come to that
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 167 
 
 point where we may see, clearer than we were in a 
 position to see before, what is rightly to be drawn 
 from the Bible on this matter, and what the doctrine 
 of Jesus himself about his own Godhead really is. 
 
 n. 
 
 ' Following the Bible continuously and interpreting 
 it naturally, we saw the people of " the Eternal that 
 loveth righteousness," and that "blesseth the man 
 that putteth his trust in Him," l we saw Israel con- 
 founded and perplexed by the misfortunes of God's 
 people and the success of the unrighteous world 
 construct a vast Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief, 
 according to which there should come about, in no 
 distant future, a grand and wonderful change. God 
 should send his Messiah, judge the world, punish the 
 wicked, and restore the kingdom to Israel. For 
 Israel's original revelation and intuition had been : 
 The Eternal loveth righteousness ; to him that order eth his 
 conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God. 2 
 And the natural corollary from this was : As the 
 whirlmnd passeth, so is the wicked no more; but the 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation. 3 
 
 Both the revelation and the corollary from it were 
 true ; but the virtue of both, for Israel, turned upon 
 knowing what righteousness and righteous meant. And 
 this indispensable intuition Israel is always repre- 
 sented as having once had, and with time in great 
 
 1 Psalm xi 7 ; xxxiv. 8. Psalm xi. 7 ; 1. 23. 
 
 3 Proverbs x. 25.
 
 168 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 measure lost. " Stand ye in the ways and see," says 
 Jeremiah, "and ask for the old paths, where is the good 
 ivay, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your 
 souls. 1 The prophets may be seen trying to reawaken 
 in Israel this intuition, by inculcating inwardness, 
 humbleness, sincerity. But the mass of people 
 naturally inclined to place righteousness rather in 
 something mechanically to be given or done, in 
 being endowed with the character of God's chosen 
 people, or in punctually observing a law full of minute 
 observances. And the promises to righteousness 
 they in like manner construed as promises of things 
 material : a mighty Jewish kingdom, God's people 
 "shepherding the nations with a rod of iron," 2 the 
 heathen licking the dust. 
 
 This material conception of the promises to right- 
 eousness fell in with the mechanical conception of 
 righteousness itself, and each heightened the hurtful- 
 ness of the other. Between them both, a type of soul 
 more and more hard, impervious, and impracticable, 
 was formed in the Jewish people ; and the intuition, 
 in which their greatness began, died out more and 
 more. There still remained of it so much as this : 
 that of all the nations of the world they were the only 
 one that felt the all-importance of righteousness, and 
 the eternity of the promises made to it. But what 
 righteousness really was they knew not; and their 
 situation, when Jesus Christ came, is admirably 
 summed up in these two verses of prophecy, which 
 every one who wishes for a clear sense of the Jews 
 
 1 Jeremiah vL 16. a Rev. xix. 15 and Psalm ii 9-
 
 Vli.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 169 
 
 relations with Jesus would do well to write as a 
 reminder on the blank page of his Bible between the 
 Old Testament and the New : 
 
 "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their 
 mouth, and loith their lips do honour me, but have removed 
 their heart from me, and their fear towards me is taught 
 by the precept of men ; 
 
 "Therefore, behold, I mil proceed to do a marvellous 
 work among this people, even a marvellous work and a 
 wonder ; for the wisdom of the wise man shall perish, and 
 the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid." 1 
 
 Meanwhile, the Jews were full of their Aberglaube, 
 their added or extra-belief in a Messianic advent, a 
 great judgment, a world-wide reign of the saints ; and 
 it is well to have distinctly before us the main texts 
 which they had gathered from the Old Testament in 
 support of this belief, and which were in everybody's 
 mind and mouth. They are all indicated to us by 
 the New Testament. Moses had said : " The Eternal 
 thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the 
 midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto 
 him shall ye hearken." 2 In the Psalms it was written : 
 " The Eternal hath sworn a faithful oath unto David : 
 Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy seat ; thy seed 
 will I stablish for ever, and set up thy throne from one 
 generation to another" 3 Isaiah had said : " There shall 
 come forth a Eod out of the stem of Jesse and a 
 Branch shall grow out of his roots ; and the Spirit of 
 the Eternal shall rest upon him, and he shall smite 
 
 1 Isaiah xxix. 13, 14. - Deut. xviii 15. 
 
 8 Psalm cxxxii. 11 ; Ixxxix. 4.
 
 170 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 the earth with the breath of his mouth, and with the 
 breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked." l Finally, 
 Malachi, the last prophet, had announced from God 
 " Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the 
 coming of the great and dreadful day of the Eternal." 2 
 These may stand, perhaps, as four fundamental 
 texts forming the ground for popular Jewish Aber- 
 glaube as it developed itself ; and it will be seen of 
 what largfe and loose construction they admit. But 
 the ground-plan thus given was filled out from later 
 and inferior scriptures, full of the spirit of the time, 
 grandiose, but turbid and phantasmagoric, such as 
 the Book of Enoch and the Book of Daniel The 
 Book of Daniel is in our Bibles; we can all verify 
 there the elements which constituted, when Jesus 
 Christ came, the popular religious belief and expecta- 
 tion of the Jews. It may be hoped that we ourselves, 
 most of us, read other parts of the Bible far more than 
 the Book of Daniel ; but we know how, in general, 
 those who use the Bible most unintelligently have a 
 peculiar fondness for the apocalyptic and phantasma- 
 goric parts of it. The Book of Daniel gave form and 
 body to the Prophet of Moses, the seed of David of the 
 Psalms, the great and dreadful day of Malachi; it 
 enabled the popular imagination to see and figure 
 them. " A time of trouble such as never was since 
 there was a nation to that time ! The Ancient of 
 days did sit, whose garment was white as snow and 
 the hair of his head like the pure wool ; his throne 
 was like the fiery flame ; the judgment was set and 
 1 Isaiah xi. 1, 2, 4. 2 Malachi vi. 6.
 
 Vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 171 
 
 the books were opened. And behold, one like the 
 Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and 
 came to the Ancient of days, and there was given him 
 dominion and glory, that all people, nations, and 
 languages should serve him ; his dominion is an ever- 
 lasting dominion which shall not pass away. And 
 judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, 
 and the time came that the saints possessed the king- 
 dom. At that time the people of God shall be 
 delivered, every one that- shall be found written in the 
 book; and many of them that sleep in dust shall 
 awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame 
 and everlasting contempt." l 
 
 Other figures which laid hold on men's imagina- 
 tions the Book of Enoch supplied. It told how, in 
 the great visitation : " They shall rise up to destroy 
 one another, neither shall a man acknowledge his 
 friend and his brother, nor the son his father and 
 his mother." It told how: "Ye shall enter into the 
 holes of the earth and into the cliffs of the rocks ; " 
 and how, finally, the proud rulers of the world "shall 
 see the Son of Man sitting on the throne of his 
 glory." The Book of Enoch described this Son of 
 Man, also, as " The Son of Man, living with the Lord 
 of Spirits;" "The Elect One, whom the Lord of 
 Spirits hath gifted and glorified." Both books gave 
 him the name of "Son of God" and of "Messiah." 
 
 It was of all this that the heart of the Jews was 
 full when Jesus Christ came; it was on this that 
 their thoughts fed and their hopes brooded. The 
 1 Daniel xii. 1 ; vii. 9, 13, 14, 22 ; xii 1, 2.
 
 172 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 old words, God, the Eternal, the Father, the Redeemer, 
 were perpetually in their mouths; but in this con- 
 nection. The goal of their lives was still, as of old, 
 " the salvation of God ; " but this was what they 
 understood the salvation of God to be. They had 
 lost the intuition, and they had thrown themselves, 
 heart and soul, upon a great extra-belief, or Aberglaube. 
 
 HI. 
 
 Now, if we describe the work of Jesus Christ by 
 a short expression which may give the clearest view 
 of it) we shall describe it thus : that he came to 
 restore the intuition. He came, it is true, to save, and 
 to give eternal life ; but the way in which he did this 
 was by restoring the intuition. 
 
 This we have already touched upon in our third 
 chapter. We there passed in brief review the teaching 
 of Jesus. But there the objection met us, that what 
 attested Jesus Christ was miracles, and the preter- 
 natural fulfilment in him of certain detailed predic- 
 tions made about him long before ; and that such is 
 the teaching of Jesus Christ himself and of the Bible. 
 We had to pause and deal with this objection. And 
 now, as it disperses, we come in full view of our old 
 point again : that what did attest Christ was his 
 restoration of the intuition. Jesus Christ found Israel 
 all astray, with an endless talk about God, the law, 
 righteousness, the kingdom, everlasting life, and no 
 real hold upon any one of them. Israel's old, sure 
 proof of being in the right way, the sanction of joy
 
 m.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 173 
 
 and peace, was plainly wanting ; and this was a test 
 which anybody could at once apply. "0 Eternal. 
 blessed is the man that putteth his trust in thee," 1 
 was a corner-stone of Israel's religion. Now, the 
 Jewish people, however they might talk about putting 
 their trust in the Eternal, were evidently, as they 
 stood there before Jesus, not blessed at all; and they 
 knew it themselves as well as he did. " Great peace 
 have they who love thy law," 2 was another corner- 
 stone. But the Jewish people had at that time in 
 its soul as little peace as it had joy and blessedness ; 
 it was seething with inward unrest, irritation, and 
 trouble. Yet the way of the Eternal was most 
 indubitably a way of peace and joy; so, if Israel 
 felt no peace and no joy, Israel could not be walking 
 in the way of the Eternal Here we have the firm 
 unchanging ground on which the operations of Jesus 
 both began, and always proceeded. 
 
 And it is to be observed that Jesus by no means 
 gave a new, more precise, scientific definition of God, 
 but took up this term just as Israel used it, to stand 
 for the Eternal that loveth righteousness. If therefore 
 this term was, in Israel's use of it, not a term of 
 science, but, as we say, a term of common speech, of 
 poetry and eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of 
 consciousness not fully covered by it, so it was in 
 Jesus Christ's use of it also. And if the substratum 
 of real affirmation in the term was, with Israel, not 
 the affirmation of " a great Personal First Cause, the 
 moral and intelligent Governor of the universe," but 
 1 Ps. Ixxxiv. 13. Ps. cxix. 165.
 
 174 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 the affirmation of "an enduring Power, not ourselves, 
 that makes for righteousness," so it remained with 
 Jesus Christ likewise. He set going a great process 
 of searching and sifting ; but this process had for its 
 direct object the idea of righteousness, and only touched 
 the idea of God through this, and not independently of 
 this and immediately. If the idea of righteousness was 
 changed, this implied, undoubtedly, a corresponding 
 change in the idea of the Power that makes for right- 
 eousness; but in this manner only, and to this extent, 
 does the teaching of Jesus re-define the idea of God. 
 
 But search and sift and renew the idea of righteous- 
 ness Jesus did. And though the work of Jesus, like 
 the name of God, calls up in the believer a multitude 
 of emotions and associations far more than any brief 
 definition can cover, yet, remembering Jeremy Taylor's 
 advice to avoid exhortations to get Christ, to be in Christ, 
 and to seek some more distinct and practical way of 
 speaking of him, we shall .not do ill, perhaps, if we 
 summarise to our own minds his work by saying, that 
 he restored the intuition of God through transforming 
 the idea of righteousness ; and that, to do this, he 
 brought a method, and he brought a secret. And of 
 those two great words which fill such a place in his 
 gospel, repentance and peace, as we see that his 
 Apostles, when they preached his gospel, preached 
 "Repentance unto life" 1 and "Peace through Jesus 
 Christ," 2 of these two great words, one, repentance, 
 attaches itself, we shall find, to his method, and the 
 other, peace, to his secret, 
 
 1 Acts XL 18. 2 Acts x. 36.
 
 ni.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 175 
 
 There was no question between Jesus Christ and 
 the Jews as to the object to aim at " If thou wouldst 
 enter into life, keep the commandments," said Jesus. 1 
 And Israel, too, on his part, said: "He that keepeth 
 the commandments keepeth his own soul." 2 But what 
 commandments 1 The commandments of God ; about 
 this, too, there was no question. But: "Leaving 
 the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of 
 men; ye make the commandment of God of none 
 effect by your tradition," said Jesus. 3 Therefore the 
 commandments which Israel followed were not those 
 commandments of God by which a man keeps his 
 own soul, enters into life. And the practical proof 
 of this was, that Israel stood before the eyes of the 
 world manifestly neither blessed nor at peace ; yet 
 these characters of bliss and peace the following of 
 the real commandments of God was confessed to give. 
 So a rule, or method, was wanted, by which to deter- 
 mine on what the keeping of the real commandments 
 of God depended. 
 
 And Jesus gave one : " The things that come from 
 within a man's heart, they it is which defile him ! " 4 
 
 We have seen what an immense matter conduct 
 is; that it is three-fourths of life. We have seen 
 how plain and simple a matter it is, so far as know- 
 ledge is concerned. We have seen how, moreover, 
 philosophers are for referring all conduct to one or 
 other of man's two elementary instincts, the instinct 
 of self-preservation and the reproductive instinct. It 
 
 1 Matt. xix. 17. 2 Prov. xix. 16. 
 
 3 Mark vii 9, 13. 4 Matt xv. 18 ; Mark vii. 20, 21,
 
 176 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 is the suggestions of one or other of these instincts, 
 philosophers say, which call forth all cases in which 
 there is scope for exercising morality, or conduct. 
 And this does, we saw, cover the facts well enough. 
 For we can run up nearly all faults of conduct into 
 two classes faults of temper and faults of sensuality; 
 to he referred, all of them, to one or other of these 
 two instincts. Now, Jesus not only says that things 
 coming from within a man's heart defile him, he 
 adds expressly what these things that, coming from 
 within a man, defile him, are. And what he enume- 
 rates are the following : " Evil thoughts, adulteries, 
 fornications, murders, stealings, greeds, viciousnesses, 
 fraud, dissoluteness, envy, evil-speaking, pride, folly." 1 
 These fall into two groups : one, of faults of self- 
 assertion, graspingness, and violence, all of which we 
 may call faults of temper ; and the other, of faults of 
 sensuality. And the two groups, between them, do 
 for practical purposes cover all the range of faults 
 proceeding from these two sources, and therefore all 
 the range of conduct. So the motions or impulses to 
 faults of conduct were what Jesus said the real com- 
 mandments of God are concerned with. And it was 
 plain what such faults are; hut, to make assurance 
 more sure, he went farther and said what they are. 
 But no outward observances were conduct, were that 
 keeping of the commandments of God which was the 
 keeping of a man's own soul and made him enter into 
 lifa To have the heart and thoughts in order as to 
 certain matters, was conduct. 
 
 1 Mark vii. 21, 22.
 
 TII.J TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 177 
 
 This was the " method " of Jesus : the setting up 
 a great unceasing inward movement of attention and 
 verification in matters which are three -fourths of 
 human life, where to see true and to verify is not diffi- 
 cult, the difficult thing is to care and to attend. And 
 the inducement to attend was because joy and peace, 
 missed on every other line, were to be reached on this. 
 
 " Keep judgment and do righteousness ! " l had not 
 been guidance enough. The Jews found themselves 
 taking " meats and drinks and divers washings " for 
 judgment; taking for righteousness "gifts and sacri- 
 fices which cannot perfect the worshipper as to his 
 conscience" 2 (here is the word of Jesus!); tithing 
 mint, anise and cummin ; 3 saying to a father or 
 mother, when filial succour was claimed, It is Corban/* 
 evil disposed, and not at all blessed. But: "As 
 to all wherein what men commonly call conduct is 
 exercised, eating, drinking, ease, pleasure, money, 
 the intercourse of the sexes, the giving full swing to 
 one's tempers and instincts, as to all this, watch 
 attentively what passes within you, that you may 
 obey the voice of conscience ! so you will keep God's 
 commandment and be blessed;" this is the new and 
 much more exact guidance. " The things that come 
 from within a man's heart, they defile him ! cleanse the 
 inside of the cup ! beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, 
 which is insincerity/ judge not after the appearance, 
 but judge righteous judgment !" 5 this, we say, is the 
 
 1 Isaiah Ivi. 1. 2 Hebrews ix. 9, 10. 
 
 3 Matthew xxiii. 23. * Mark vii. 11. 
 
 6 Matthew xv. 18; xxiii. 16; Luke xii. 1; John vii. 24. 
 VOL. V. N
 
 178 LITEEATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 "method" of Jesus. To it belongs his use of that 
 important word which in the Greek is " metanoia." 
 We translate it repentance, a groaning and lamenting 
 over one's sins; and we translate it wrong. Of 
 " metanoia," according to the meaning of Jesus, the 
 bewailing one's sins was a small part. The main 
 part was something far more active and fruitful 
 the setting up an immense new inward movement for 
 obtaining one's rule of life. And " metanoia," accord- 
 ingly, is : A change of the inner man, 
 
 Mention and recommendation of this inwardness 
 there often was, we know, in prophet or psalmist. 
 But to make mention of it was one thing, to erect 
 it into a positive method was another. Christianity 
 has made it so familiar, that to give any freshness to 
 one's words about it is now not easy ; but to its first 
 recipients it was abundantly fresh and novel. It was 
 the introduction, in morals and religion, of the famous 
 know thyself of the Greeks ; and this among a people 
 deeply serious, but also wedded to moral and religious 
 routine, and singularly devoid of flexibility and play 
 of mind. For them it was a revolution. Of course 
 the hard thing is, not to say, " Cleanse the inside of 
 the cup," but to make people do it. In morals and 
 religion, the man who is "founded upon rock" is 
 always, as Jesus said, the man who does, never the 
 man who only hears. 1 To say, "Look within," was 
 therefore not everything; yet we none of us, probably, 
 enough feel the power which at first resided in the 
 mere saying of it as Jesus said it. And this is 
 1 Matthew vii. 24.
 
 Til.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 179 
 
 because his words have become so trite to us, that 
 we fail to see how powerfully they were all adapted 
 to call forth the new habit of inwardness ; and if we 
 want to see this, we must for a time either re-translate 
 his words for ourselves, or paraphrase them. And not 
 only the words he employed, but also the words he 
 occasioned ; the words which the effect produced by 
 him made men use about him. Just as it is well to 
 substitute Eternal for Lord, and the good news for the 
 gospel, so we must put new words in the place of the 
 now hackneyed repentance, truth, grace, spirit, if we wish 
 at all to know how these words worked originally. 
 " Metanoia," we have seen, is a change of the inner 
 man. Repentance unto life was a life-giving change of 
 the inner man. "Aletheia" is not so well rendered 
 truth, which is often speculative only, as it is reality. 
 "Charis" is the boon of happiness* Instead, then, 
 of : " Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ," 
 let us say : " Happiness and reality came through 
 Jesus Christ." Instead of: "To know the grace of 
 God in truth," let us say : " To know the happiness of 
 God in reality." Even though the new rendering be 
 not so literally correct as the old, not permanently to 
 be adopted, it will prove of use to us for a while to 
 show us how the words worked. 
 
 Above all is this true in regard to the word spirit, 
 made so mechanical by popular religion, that it has 
 come to mean a person without a body, which is the 
 
 1 Professor F. Newman has truly remarked that this rendering 
 is not closely accurate. But see what I have said in the next 
 sentence but one. The most literal rendering of a word such 
 as charts ia not, in the present case, what we want.
 
 180 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [oHAP. 
 
 child's definition of a ghost. This word, specially de- 
 signed by Jesus to serve in restoring the intuition, and 
 in bringing Israel's religion face to face with Israel's 
 inward consciousness, is rather influence. " Except a 
 man be born of cleansing and of a new influence, he 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 1 Instead of 
 proclaiming what the Bishop of Gloucester calls " the 
 blessed truth that the God of the universe is a 
 PERSON," Jesus uttered a warning for all time against 
 this unprofitable jargon, when he said : " God is an 
 influence, and those who would serve him must serve 
 him not by any form of words or rites, but by inward 
 motion and in reality ! " No rendering can too 
 strongly bring out the original bent to inwardness 
 and intuition in language of this kind, which has now 
 become almost formal to us. 
 
 Just the same bent appears in Jesus taking, as 
 the rule for a man's action in regard to another's 
 conduct, simply and solely the effect on the actor's 
 own character. This is what is so striking in the 
 story of the woman taken in adultery. " Let him that 
 is without fault cast the first stone ! and they were all 
 convicted by their conscience." And who is without 
 fault, and where is the judge whom the conviction 
 of conscience might not thus paralyse 1 Punishment, 
 then, is impossible ; and, with punishment, govern- 
 ment and society! But punishment, government, and 
 society, are all of them after-inventions ; creations of 
 assemblages of men, and not matter of the individual's 
 intuition. Jesus regarded simply what was primary, 
 
 1 John iii. 5.
 
 Til.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 181 
 
 the individual and the intuition. And in truth, if 
 the individual and the intuition are once reached, the 
 after-inventions may be left to take care of themselves. 
 And if conscience ever became enough of a power, 
 there would be no offenders to punish. This is the 
 true line of religion ; it was the line of Jesus. To 
 work the renovation needed, he concentrated his 
 efforts upon a method of inwardness, of taking counsel 
 of conscience. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But for this world of busy inward movement 
 created by the method of Jesus, a rule of action was 
 wanted; and this rule was found in his secret. It 
 was this of which the Apostle Paul afterwards pos- 
 sessed himself with such energy, and called it "the 
 word of the cross," l or, necrosis, " dying." The rule 
 of action St. Paul gave was : " Always bearing about 
 in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of 
 Jesus may be made manifest in our body !" 2 In the 
 popular theurgy, these words are commonly referred to 
 what is called "pleading the blood of the covenant," 
 relying on the death and merits of Christ, in pur- 
 suance of the contract originally passed in the Council 
 of the Trinity, to satisfy God's wrath against sinners 
 and to redeem us. But they do really refer to words 
 of Jesus, often and often repeated, and of which the 
 following may very well stand as pre-eminently 
 representative : " He that loveth his life shall lose it, 
 
 1 '0 \6yos 6 TOV ffravpov.l Cor. i. 18. 
 2 2 Cor. iv. 10 (according to the Vatican manuscript).
 
 182 LITEEATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto 
 life eternal. Wliosoever will come after me, let him renounce 
 himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." l 
 
 These words, or words like them, were repeated 
 again and again, so that no reporter could miss them. 
 No reporter did miss them We find them, as we 
 find the "method" of conscience, in all the four 
 Gospels. Perhaps there is no other maxim of Jesus 
 which has such a combined stress of evidence for it, 
 and may be taken as so eminently -his. And no 
 wonder. For the maxim contains his secret, the secret 
 by which, emphatically, his gospel " brought life and 
 immortality to light." 2 Christ's "method" directed 
 the disciple's eye inward, and set his consciousness to 
 work ; and the first thing his consciousness told him 
 was, that he had two selves pulling him different 
 ways. Till we attend, till the method is set at work, 
 it seems as if "the wishes of the flesh and of the 
 current thoughts " 3 were to be followed as a matter 
 of course ; as if an impulse to do a thing must mean 
 that we should do it. But when we attend, we find 
 that an impulse to do a thing is really in itself no 
 reason at all why we should do it ; because impulses 
 proceed from two sources, quite different, and of 
 quite different degrees of authority. St. Paul contrasts 
 them as the inward man, and the man in our mem- 
 bers ; the mind of the flesh, and the spiritual mind.* 
 Jesus contrasts them as life, properly so named, and 
 
 * John xiL 25 ; Luke ix. 23. 2 2 Tim. i. 10. 
 
 8 TA fleXij/wmi rrjs <ra/>K6s Kal ruv diavoiwv. Ephesians ii. 8. 
 
 4 Romans chap. viii.
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 183 
 
 life in this world. 1 And the moment we seriously 
 attend to conscience, to the suggestions which concern 
 practice and conduct, we can see plainly enough from 
 which source a suggestion comes, and that the sug- 
 gestions from one source are to overrule those from 
 the other. 
 
 But this is a negative state of things, a reign of 
 check and constraint, a reign, merely, of morality. 
 Jesus changed it into what was positive and attrac- 
 tive, lighted it up, made it religion, by the idea of 
 two lives. One of them life properly so called, full of 
 light, endurance, felicity, in connection with the 
 higher and permanent self; and the other of them 
 life improperly so called, in connection with the lower 
 and transient self. The first kind of life was already 
 a cherished ideal with Israel (" Thou wilt show me 
 the path of life/") ; 2 and a man might be placed in 
 it, Jesus said, by dying to the second. For it is to 
 be noted that our common expression, " deny himself," 
 is an inadequate and misleading version of the words 
 used by Jesus. To deny one's self is commonly 
 understood to mean that one refuses one's self some- 
 thing. But what Jesus says is : " Let a man disown 
 himself, renounce himself, die as regards his old self, 
 and so live." Himself, the old man, the life in this 
 world, meant following those " wishes of the flesh and 
 of the current thoughts" which Jesus had, by his 
 method, already put his disciples in the way of sifting 
 
 1 John xil 25. The strict grammatical and logical connec- 
 tion of the words tv T$ K&fffu? Tofot? is with 6 fuaCiv, but the 
 sense and effect is as given above. 2 Ps. xvL 11.
 
 184 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 and scrutinising, and of trying by the standard of 
 conformity to conscience. 
 
 Thus, after putting him by his method in the way 
 to find ivliat doing righteousness was, by his secret 
 Jesus put the disciple in the way of doing it. For 
 the breaking the sway of what is commonly called one's 
 self, ceasing our concern with it and leaving it to perish, 
 is not, Jesus said, being thwarted or crossed, but living. 
 And the proof of this is that it has the characters of 
 life in the highest degree, the sense of going right, 
 hitting the mark, succeeding. That is, it has the 
 characters of happiness; and happiness is, for Israel, 
 the same thing as having the Eternal with us, seeing 
 the salvation of God. "The tree," as Jesus said, 
 and as men's common sense and proverbial speech 
 say with him, "is known by its fruits;" 1 and Jesus, 
 then, was to be received by Israel as sent from God, 
 because the secret of Jesus leads to the salvation of 
 God, which is what Israel most desired. The word of 
 the cross, in short, turned out to be at the same time 
 the word of the kingdom? And to this experimental 
 sanction of his secret, this sense it gives of having the 
 Eternal on our side and approving us, Jesus appealed 
 when he said of himself : " Tlierefore doth my Father 
 love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take 
 it again." 3 This, again, in our popular theurgy, is 
 materialised into the First Person of the Trinity 
 approving the Second, because he stands to the con- 
 tract already in the Council of the Trinity passed. 
 
 1 Matthew xii. 33. 
 
 8 '0 \6yos r?)j ^aeriXf/os. Matt. xiii. 19. 3 John x. 17
 
 TH.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 185 
 
 But what it really means is, that the joy of Jesus, of 
 this "Son of peace," 1 the "joy" he was so desirous 
 that his disciples should find " fulfilled in themselves," 2 
 was due to his having himself followed his own 
 secret. And the great counterpart to : A life-giving 
 change of the inner man, the promise : Peace through 
 Jesus Christ / 3 is peace through this secret of his. 
 
 Now, the value of this rule that one should die to 
 one's apparent self, live to one's real self, depends 
 upon whether it is true. And true it certainly is ; a 
 profound truth of what our scientific friends, who 
 have a systematic philosophy and a nomenclature to 
 match, and who talk of Egoism and Altruism, would 
 call, perhaps, psycho-physiology. And we may trace 
 men's experience affirming and confirming it, from a 
 very plain and level account of it to an account 
 almost as high and solemn as that of Jesus. That an 
 opposition there is, in all matter of what we call 
 conduct, between a man's first impulses and what he 
 ultimately finds to be the real law of his being ; that 
 a man accomplishes his right function as a man, fulfils 
 his end, hits the mark, in giving effect to the real law 
 of his being; and that happiness attends his thus 
 hitting the mark, all good observers report. No 
 statement of this general experience can be simpler 
 or more faithful than one given us by that great 
 naturalist, Aristotle. 4 "In all wholes made up of 
 parts," says he, "there is a ruler and a ruled; 
 throughout nature this is so ; we see it even in things 
 
 ] Luke x. 6. 2 John xvii. 13. 
 
 3 Acts xi. 18 ; x. 36. 4 Politics i. 5.
 
 186 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 without life, they have their harmony or law. The 
 living being is composed of soul and body, whereof 
 the one is naturally ruler and the other ruled. Now 
 what is natural we are to learn from what fulfils the 
 law of its nature most, and not from what is 
 depraved. So we ought to take the man who has 
 the best disposition of body and soul ; and in him we 
 shall find that this is so; for in people that are 
 grievous both to others and to themselves the body 
 may often appear ruling the soul, because such people 
 are poor creatures and false to nature." And 
 Aristotle goes on to distinguish between the body, 
 over which, he says, the rule of the soul is absolute, 
 and the movement of thought and desire, over which 
 reason has, says he, "a constitutional rule," in words 
 which exactly recall St. Paul's phrase for our double 
 enemy : " the flesh and the current thoughts. " So 
 entirely are we here on ground of general experience. 
 And if we go on and take this maxim from Stobseus : 
 "All fine acquirement implies a foregoing effort of 
 self-control;" 1 or this from Horace: "Rule your 
 current self or it will rule you ! bridle it in and chain 
 it down!" 2 or this from Goethe's autobiography: 
 " Everything cries out to us that we must renounce ;" 3 
 or still more this from his Faust: "Thou must go 
 without, go without ! that is the everlasting song which 
 every hour, all our life through, hoarsely sings tc 
 
 1 Havrbs /caXoO KT-^/JMTOS TT&VOS irporjyeiTat 6 /car' eyKpa.rei.av. 
 
 2 ". . . . Animum rege, qui nisi paret 
 Imperat ; hunc fraenis, hunc tu compesce catenis. " 
 
 3 " Alles ruft uns zu, dass wir entsagen sollen."
 
 rn.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 187 
 
 us!" 1 then we have testimony not only to the 
 necessity of this natural law of rule and suppression, 
 but also to the strain and labour and suffering which 
 attend it. But when we come a little further and 
 take a sentence like this of Plato : " Of sufferings 
 and pains cometh help, for it is not possible by any 
 other way to be ridded of our iniquity;" 2 then we 
 get a higher strain, a strain like St. Peter's : "He 
 that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin ;" 3 
 and we are brought to see, not only the necessity of 
 the law of rule and suppression, not only the pain 
 and suffering in it, but also its beneficence. And this 
 positive sense of beneficence, salutariness, and hope, 
 come out yet more strongly when Wordsworth saya 
 to Duty : " Nor know we anything so fair as is the 
 smile upon thy face ;" or when Bishop Wilson says : 
 " They that deny themselves will be sure to find their 
 strength increased, their affections raised, and their 
 inward peace continually augmented;" and most of all, 
 perhaps, when we hear from Goethe : " Die and come 
 to life ! for so long as this is not accomplished thou 
 art but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom !" 4 
 
 1 "Entbehren sollst du ! sollst entbehren ! 
 Das ist der ewige Gesang, 
 Den unser ganzes Leben lang 
 Tins heiser jede Stunde singt." 
 
 * Ai' d\y>j56i'wv /col 65vviav ylyvfrai ij wQlXeia ' ov y&p otbi 
 Tf dEXXws aOLKias &ira\\a.TT<rOcu. 
 8 1 Peter iv. 1. 
 
 * " Stirb und werde ! 
 
 Denn, so lang du das nicht hast, 
 Bist du nur ein triiber Gast 
 Auf der dunkeln Erde 1 "
 
 188 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [OHAI- 
 
 But this is evidently borrowed from Jesus, and 
 by one whose testimony is of all the more weight, 
 because he certainly would not have become thus a 
 borrower from Jesus, unless the truth had compelled 
 him. 
 
 .And never certainly was the joy, which in self- 
 renouncement underlies the pain, so brought out as 
 when Jesus boldly called the suppression of our first 
 impulses and current thoughts : life, real life, eternal 
 life. So that Jesus not only saw this great necessary 
 truth of there being, as Aristotle says, in human 
 nature a part to rule and a part to be ruled ; he saw 
 it so thoroughly, that he saw through the suffering at 
 its surface to the joy at its centre, filled it with 
 promise and hope, and made it infinitely attractive. 
 As Israel, therefore, is "the people of righteousness," 
 because, though others have perceived the importance 
 of righteousness, Israel, above every one, perceived 
 the happiness of it; so self -renouncement, the main 
 factor in conduct or righteousness, is " the secret of 
 Jesus," because, although others have seen that it 
 was necessary, Jesus, above every one, saw that it was 
 peace, joy, life. 
 
 Now, we may observe, that even Aristotle (and it 
 is a mark of his greatness) does not, in the passage 
 we have quoted from him, begin with a complete 
 system of psycho-physiology, and show us where and 
 how and why in this system the rule of renouncement 
 comes in, and draw out for us definitively the law of 
 our being towards which this rule leads up. He says 
 that the rule exists, that it is ancillary to the law oi
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 189 
 
 our being, and that we are to study the best men, in 
 whom it most exists, to make us see that it is thus 
 ancillary. He here appeals throughout to a verifying 
 sense, such as we have said that every one in this 
 great but plain matter of conduct really has ; he does 
 not appeal to a speculative theory of the system of 
 things, and deduce conclusions from it. And he 
 shows his greatness in this, because the law of our 
 being is not something which is already definitively 
 known and can be exhibited as part of a speculative 
 theory of the system of things ; it is something which 
 discovers itself and becomes, as we follow (among other 
 things) the rule of renouncement. What we can say 
 with most certainty about the law of our being is, 
 that we find the rule of renouncement practically 
 lead up to it. In matters of practice and conduct, 
 therefore, an experience like this is really a far safer 
 ground to insist on than any speculative theory of 
 the system of things. And to a theory of such sort 
 Jesus never appeals. Here is what characterises his 
 teaching, and distinguishes him, for instance, from the 
 author of the Fourth Gospel. This author handles 
 what we may call theosophical speculation in a beau- 
 tiful and impressive manner ; the introduction to his 
 Gospel is undoubtedly in a very noble and profound 
 strain. But it is theory ; an intellectual theory of the 
 divine nature and the system of things, which was 
 then, and is still at present, utterly irreducible to 
 experience. And therefore it is impossible even to 
 conceive Jesus himself uttering the introduction to 
 the Fourth Gospel; because theory Jesus never touches,
 
 190 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 but bases himself invariably on experienca True, 
 the experience must, for philosophy, have its place in 
 a theory of the system of human nature, when the 
 theory is perfect; but the point is, that the experience 
 is ripe and solid, and to be used safely, long before 
 the theory. And it was the experience which Jesus 
 always used. 
 
 Undoubtedly, however, attempts may not impro- 
 perly be made, even now, by those, at least, who 
 have a talent for these matters, to exhibit the 
 experience, with what leads to it and what derives 
 from it, in a system of psycho -physiology. And 
 then, perhaps, it will be found to be connected with 
 other truths of psycho-physiology, such as the unity 
 of life, as it is called, and the impersonality of reason. 
 Only, thus exhibited, it will be philosophy, mental 
 exercitation, and will concern us as a matter of science, 
 not of conduct. And, as the discipline of conduct is 
 three-fourths of life, for our aesthetic and intellectual 
 disciplines, real as these are, there is but one-fourth 
 of life left ; and if we let art and science divide this 
 one-fourth fairly between them, they will have just 
 one-eighth of life each. 
 
 So the exhibition of the truth : " He that lovetli his 
 life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world 
 shall keep it unto life eternal," in its order and place aa 
 a truth of psycho-physiology, concerns one-eighth of 
 our life and no more. But Jesus, we say, exhibited 
 nothing for the benefit of this one-eighth of us ; this 
 is what distinguishes him from all moralists and 
 philosophers, and even from the greatest of his own
 
 vn.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 191 
 
 disciples. How he reached a doctrine we cannot say; 
 but he always exhibited it as an intuition and practical 
 rule, and a practical rule which, if adopted, would 
 have the force of an intuition for its adopter also. 
 This is why none of his doctrines are of the character 
 of that favourite doctrine of our theologians, "the 
 blessed truth that the God of the universe is a 
 Person ; " because this doctrine is incapable of appli- 
 cation as a practical rule, and can never come to have 
 the force of an intuition. But what we call the secret 
 of Jesus : " He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that 
 hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal," 
 was a truth of which he could say : " It is so ; try it 
 yourself and you will see it is so, by the sense of 
 going right, hitting the mark, succeeding, living, which 
 you will get." 
 
 And the same with the commandment, " Love one 
 another," l which is the positive side of the command- 
 ment, "Renounce thy self "^ and, like this, can be drawn 
 out as a truth of psycho-physiology. Jesus exhibited 
 it as an intuition and a practical rule ; and as what, 
 by being practised, would, through giving happiness, 
 prove its own truth as a rule of life. This, we say, 
 is of the very essence of his secret of self-renounce- 
 ment, as of his method of inwardness ; that its truth 
 will be found to commend itself by happiness, to prove 
 itself by happiness. And of the secret more especially 
 is this true. And as we have said, that though there 
 
 1 John xiii 34. 
 
 * " We know that we have passed from death to life," how I 
 " because we love the brethren." See 1 John iii. 14.
 
 192 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 gathers round the word " God " very much besides, 
 yet we shall in general, in reading the Bible, get the 
 surest hold on the word " God " by giving it the 
 sense of the Eternal Power, not ourselves, which makes for 
 righteousness, so we shall get the best hold on many 
 expressions of Jesus by referring them, though they 
 include more, yet primarily and pointedly to his 
 " secret," and to the happiness which this contained. 
 Bread of life, living water, these are, in general, Jesus, 
 Jesus in his whole being and in his total effect; 
 but in especial they are Jesus as offering his secret. 
 And when Jesus says : " He that eateth me shall live 
 by me I" 1 we shall understand the words best if we 
 think of his secret. 
 
 And so again with the famous words to the woman 
 by the well in Samaria: "Whosoever drinketh of 
 this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh 
 of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, 
 but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a 
 fount of water springing up unto everlasting life." 2 
 These words, how are we to take them, so as to reach 
 their meaning best 1 What distinctly is this " water 
 that I shall give him " 1 Jesus himself and his word, 
 no doubt ; yet so we come but to that very notion, 
 which Jeremy Taylor warns us against as vague, of 
 yetting Christ. The Bishop of Gloucester will tell us, 
 perhaps, that it is "the blessed truth that the Creator 
 of the universe is a Person," or the doctrine of the 
 consubstantiality of the Eternal Son. But surely it 
 would be a strong figure of speech to say of these 
 1 John vi. 57. * John iv. 13, 14.
 
 Vli.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 193 
 
 doctrines, that a man, after receiving them, could 
 never again feel thirsty ! See, on the contrary, how 
 the words suit the secret: "He that loveth his life 
 shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world 
 shall keep it unto life eternal." This "secret of 
 Jesus," as we call it, will be found applicable to all 
 the thousand problems which the exercise of conduct 
 daily offers ; it alone can solve them all happily, and 
 may indeed be called " a fount of water springing 
 up unto everlasting life." And, in general, wherever 
 the words life and death are used by Jesus, we 
 shall do well to have his " secret " at hand ; for 
 in his thoughts, on these occasions, it is never far 
 off. 
 
 And now, too, we can see why it is a mistake, and 
 may lead to much error, to exhibit any series of 
 maxims, like those of the Sermon on the Mount, as 
 the ultimate sum and formula into which Christianity 
 may be run up. Maxims of this kind are but appli- 
 cations of the method and the secret of Jesus ; and 
 the method and secret are capable of yet an infinite 
 number more of such applications. Christianity is a 
 source; no one supply of water and refreshment that 
 comes from it can be called the sum of Christianity. 
 
 V. 
 
 A method of inwardness, a secret of self-renounce- 
 ment ; but can any statement of what Jesus brought 
 be complete, which does not include that element of 
 mildness and sweetness in which both these worked 1 
 
 VOL. V.
 
 194 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 To the representative texts already given there is 
 certainly to be added this other : " Learn of me that 1 
 am mild and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unio 
 your souls 7" 1 Shall we attach mildness to the method, 
 because, without it, a clear and limpid view inwarda 
 is impossible 1 Or shall we attach it to the secret ? 
 the dying to faults of temper is a part, certainly, of 
 dying to one's ordinary self, one's life in this world. 
 Mildness, however, is rather an element in which, in 
 Jesus, both method and secret worked ; the medium 
 through which both the method and the secret were 
 exhibited. We may think of it as perfectly illustrated 
 and exemplified in his answer to the foolish question, 
 Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? when, 
 taking a little child and setting him in the midst, he 
 said : " Whosoever receives the kingdom of God as a 
 little child, the same is the greatest in it." 2 Here 
 are both inward appraisal and self -renouncement ; 
 but what is most admirable is the sweet reasonable- 
 ness, the exquisite, mild, winning felicity, with which 
 the renouncement and the inward appraisal are applied 
 and conveyed. And the conjunction of the three in 
 Jesus the method of inwardness, and the secret of self- 
 renouncement, working in and through this element 
 of mildness produced the total impression of his 
 " epieikeia," or sweet reasonableness ; a total impres- 
 sion ineffable and indescribable for the disciples, as 
 also it was irresistible for them, but at which their 
 descriptive words, words like this "sweet reasonable- 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 29. 
 ' Matt, xviii. 1-4 ; Mark ix. 15,
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 195 
 
 ness," and like "jull of grace and truth" are thrown 
 out and aimed. 1 
 
 And this total stamp of "grace and truth," this 
 exquisite conjunction and balance, in an element of 
 mildness, of a method of inwardness perfectly handled 
 and a self-renouncement perfectly kept, was found in 
 Jesus alone. What are the method of inwardness 
 and the secret of self-renouncement without the sure 
 balance of Jesus, without his epieihia? Much, but 
 very far indeed from what he showed or what he 
 meant; they come to be used blindly, used mechani- 
 cally, used amiss, and lead to the strangest aberrations. 
 St. Simeon Stylites on his column, Pascal girdled with 
 spikes, Lacordaire flogging himself on his death-bed, 
 are what the secret by itself produces. The method by 
 itself gives us our political Dissenter, pluming himself 
 on some irrational " conscientious objections," and not 
 knowing, that with conscience he has done nothing 
 until he has got to the bottom of conscience, and 
 made it tell him right. Therefore the disciples of 
 Jesus were not told to believe in his method, or to 
 believe in his secret, but to believe in him; they were 
 not told to follow the method or to follow the secret, 
 but they were told : "Follow me /" For it was only 
 by fixing their heart and mind on Jesus that they 
 could learn to use the method and secret right; by 
 "feeding on him," by, as he often said, "remaining in 
 him." 
 
 1 Bossuet calls him le dtbonnaire J&us ; Cowper speaks of 
 his questioning the disciples going to Emmaue " with a kind, 
 engaging air. "
 
 196 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 But this is just what Israel had been told to do as 
 regards the Eternal himself. " I have set the Eternal 
 always before me;" "Mine eyes are ever toward the 
 Eternal;" "The Eternal is the strength of my life;" 
 " Wait, I say, on the Eternal I" 1 Now, then, let us go 
 back again for a little to Israel, and to Israel's belief. 
 
 VI. 
 
 We have seen how the Jews, at the coming of 
 Jesus Christ, had their thoughts full of a grand and 
 turbid phantasmagory ; a vision of God judging the 
 world, sending the Son of Man on the clouds of 
 heaven, taking vengeance on the wicked, restoring 
 the kingdom to Israel. And we marked the line of 
 texts which this expectation followed : from the 
 "Prophet" of Moses to the victorious "Rod out of 
 the stem of Jesse " of Isaiah, and thence to the " Son 
 of Man," the " Son of God," of the Book of Daniel, 
 and to the " Messiah." 
 
 But there was another line of texts pointing to a 
 servant and emissary of God, besides the line pointing 
 to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the princely and con- 
 quering Root of David. It stood written: "Behold 
 my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my 
 soul delighteth ! I have put my spirit upon him ; he 
 shall declare judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not 
 strive nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the 
 street; he shall declare judgment with truth. He shall 
 not fail nor be discouraged, until he set judgment in 
 xvi. 8 ; xxv. 15 ; xxvii. 1, 14.
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 197 
 
 the earth ; far lands wait for his law." l Who is 
 this? 
 
 And again : " He was despised, and we esteemed 
 him not ; but he was wounded for our transgressions, 
 he was bruised for our iniquities. All we like sheep 
 were gone astray, we were turned every one to his 
 own way ; and the Eternal hath laid on him the 
 iniquity of us all. And he made his grave with the 
 wicked, although he had done no violence; yet it 
 pleased the Eternal to bruise him. When he hath 
 made his life an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, 
 he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the 
 Eternal shall prosper in his hand ; he shall see of the 
 travail of his soul and shall be satisfied!" 2 Who, 
 again, is this 1 ? 
 
 Is it the " Prophet " like great Moses 1 Is it the 
 brilliant " Branch " out of the root of Jesse, smiting 
 the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the 
 breath of his lips slaying the wicked ; with his 
 dominion stretching from the one sea to the other, 
 all things falling down before him, all nations serving 
 him; with his seed to endure for ever, and his throne 
 as the days of heaven ? This " Branch " it was, whom 
 Israel identified with the Messiah coming in the clouds 
 of heaven to give the kingdom to the saints of the 
 Most High, with the Son of Man sitting on the throne 
 of his glory. Was the afflicted and lowly servant at the 
 same time the Branch, and therefore the Messiah, the 
 Son of God, and the bringer of the kingdom 1 Israel 
 never identified them. Here and there he made 
 
 1 Isaiah xlii. 1-4. 2 Isaiah liii. 3, 5, 6, 9-11.
 
 198 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 guesses and snatches at the truth. Momentary eleva^ 
 tions of it there were, faint approaches towards con- 
 necting the two ideals, isolated tentatives; but the 
 Jewish people at large had never grasped the idea of 
 the identification, and it had never been so presented 
 to them that they could grasp it. 
 
 And, as we have already said, it was an extraor- 
 dinary novelty, although the profound and the only 
 true solution of Israel's wonderful history, when this 
 identification was by Jesus boldly made. "A little 
 while," the Jews were saying, " and the God of heaven 
 shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed." 1 
 "Nay," answered Jesus, "the time is fulfilled and the king- 
 dom of God is close here ! change the inner man, and believe 
 the good news/" 2 "But," said the Jews, " Elias must 
 first come." 3 Jesus replied : " Elias has come already ; 4 
 John the Baptist, my precursor, who preached a 
 change of the inner man as I do !" "But there shall 
 be a time of trouble," the Jews urged, " such as never 
 was since there was a nation to that time; abomination 
 and desolation ; a, fiery stream issuing from before the 
 throne of the Ancient of days ; one like the Son of Man 
 coming with the clouds of heaven/" 5 Jesus surveyed 
 the fierce and impracticable people before him, with 
 their inevitable future : " Fear not," he answered 
 mournfully, " where the carcase is, there will the eagles be 
 gathered together/ 6 soon enough you will have the 
 affliction such as was not from the beginning of the 
 
 1 Dan. ii. 44. 2 Mark i. 15. 3 Mark ix. 11. 
 
 Matt. xvii. 12. 6 Dan. xii. 1, 11 , vii. 10, 13. 
 
 6 Matt. xxiv. 28. See the whole chapter, and Luke xxi. 20
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 199 
 
 world to this time, the Son of Man coming, Jerusalem 
 encompassed with armies, abomination and desola- 
 tion, not one stone of the Temple left on another." 
 " But the judgment shall sit ! " said the Jews, " and at 
 that time the people shall be delivered, every one 
 that shall be found written in the book!" 1 "And 
 the judgment is coming," Jesus answered, " the world- 
 judgment of Jerusalem's ruin ! 2 but, moreover, to 
 this outward crisis shall correspond an inward judg- 
 ment, the new crisis of conscience. The hour is 
 coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice 
 of the Son of God; and he who heareth shall live ! 3 
 Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice; 4 
 the word that I speak, the same shall judge him." 6 
 "But the righteous," the Jews said, "shall awake to 
 everlasting life/" Q " If a man keep my word," 
 answered Jesus, "he shall never see death; 7 but it 
 shall be in him a fount of water, springing up unto 
 everlasting life." s "But God's Messiah, "finally rejoined 
 the Jews, " shall shepherd the nations with a rod of iron, 9 
 shall slay the wicked with the breath of his lips/ 10 his 
 throne shall endure for ever, and his dominion shall be from 
 the one sea to the other/ the Gentiles shall be given to him/" 11 
 " Ye know not what spirit ye are of ! " said Jesus : 
 "He is mild, and lowly in heart;' 12 he breaJcs not the 
 bruised reed and quenches not the smoking flax; ls he 
 
 Dan.,Yii. 10; xii. 1. 2 Matt, xxiii. 36-39 
 
 John v. 25. 4 John xviii. 37. 6 John xii. 48. 
 
 Dan. xii. 2. 7 John viii. 51. 8 John iv. 14. 
 
 Ps. ii. 9. 10 Isaiah xi. 4. 
 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 4 ; IxxiL 8 ; ii. 8 ; and Isaiah liv. 3. 
 
 Matt. xi. 29. 1S Matt. xii. 20.
 
 200 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 must suffer many things and be rejected of his generation. 1 
 Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die, it 
 abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit ; 2 
 and /, if I be lifted up from the earth, mil draw all men 
 unto me/" 3 Then, turning to the disciples : " Fear 
 not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure 
 to give you the kingdom/* And other sheep I have, 
 not of this fold ; they also shall be brought ! and there 
 shall be one flock, one shepherd ! " 6 
 
 By a line like this did Jesus identify the two ideals, 
 the ideal of popular Aberglaube and his own. And 
 this is why the phrases of the popular Aberglaube come 
 so often from his lips. He was for ever translating it 
 into the sense of the higher ideal, the only sense in 
 which it had truth and grandeur. It was hopeless 
 that the Jews should go along with him. The best 
 of his disciples went along with him but imperfectly, 
 and popular Christianity has fallen far behind the best 
 of his disciples. The hour is coming, and now is, when 
 the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they 
 who hear shall live ! 6 this saying could not lift the 
 Jews out of their Aberglaube into the ideal of Jesus, 
 with its new meaning for the words life and death. 
 But neither has it lifted popular Christianity ; which 
 out of this and other like sayings has fashioned for 
 itself an Aberglaube precisely corresponding to that 
 of the Jews. 
 
 Yet Jesus could not but use the dominant phrases 
 of the Jewish religion, if he was to talk to the Jewish 
 
 1 Luke xvii. 25. 2 John xii. 24. 3 John xii. 32. 
 
 4 Luke xii. 32. B John x. 16. 6 John v. 25.
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 201 
 
 people about religion at all. And we have now seen 
 that he did use them, and how. And this leads us 
 further, and explains his way of using such words as 
 the Christ or Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God. 
 For, as the Jews were always talking about the 
 Messiah, so they were always talking, we know, 
 about God. And they believed in God's Messiah 
 after their notion of him, because they believed in 
 God after their notion of him; but both notions 
 were wrong. All their aspirations were now turned 
 towards the Messiah ; whoever would do them good, 
 must first change their ideal of the Messiah. But 
 their ideal of God's Messiah depended upon their 
 notion of God. This notion was now false, like their 
 ideal of the Messiah ; but once it had been true, or, 
 at least, true comparatively ; once Israel had had 
 the intuition of God as the Eternal that loveth righteous- 
 ness. And the intuition had never been so lost but 
 that it was capable of being revived. To change their 
 dangerous and misleading ideal of God's Messiah, there- 
 fore, and to make the Jews believe in the true Messiah, 
 could only be accomplished by bringing them back 
 to a truer notion of God and his righteousness. By 
 this it could, perhaps, be accomplished, but by this only. 
 And this is what Jesus sought to do. He sought 
 to do it in the way we have seen, by his " method " 
 and his "secret." First, by his "method" of a 
 change of the inner man. " Do not be all abroad, do 
 not be in the air," l he said to his nation. " You look 
 for the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is 
 1 Mr) fjxTewplea0e. Luke xii. 29.
 
 202 LITEKATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 the reign of righteousness, God's will done by all 
 mankind. Well, then, seek the kingdom of God ! 
 the kingdom of God is within you ! l And, next, by his 
 " secret " of peace. " Renounce thyself, and take up thy 
 cross daily and follow me/" 2 " He that loveth Us life shall 
 lose it, and lie that hateth his life in this world shall keep 
 it unto life eternal." 3 And the revolution thus made 
 was so immense, that the least in this new kingdom 
 of heaven, this realm of the " method " and the 
 " secret," was greater, Jesus said, than one who, like 
 John the Baptist, was even greatest in the old realm 
 of Jewish religion. 4 And those who obeyed the 
 gospel of this new kingdom came to the light; 5 
 they had joy ; 6 they entered into peace ; 7 they ceased 
 to thirst ; the word became in them a fount of water 
 springing up unto everlasting life. & But these were the 
 admitted tests of righteousness, of obeying the voice of 
 the Eternal who loveth righteousness. " There ariseth 
 light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright 
 in heart ; 9 he that feareth the Eternal, blessed is he !" 10 
 Now, the special value of the Fourth Gospel is, 
 not that it exhibits the method and secret of Jesus, for 
 all the Gospels exhibit them, but that it exhibits 
 the establishment of them by mean's of Israel's own 
 idea of God, cleared and re-awakened. The argument 
 is : " You are always talking about God, God's word, 
 righteousness; always saying that God is your Father, 
 
 1 Luke xvii. 21. 2 Luke ix. 23. 3 John xii. 25. 
 
 Matt. xi. 11. B John iii. 21. 6 John xvii. 13. 
 
 ' John xvi. 33. 8 John iv. 14. Ps. xcviL 11. 
 
 10 Ps. cxii, 1.
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 203 
 
 and will send his Messiah for your salvation. Well, 
 he who receives me shows that he talks about God 
 with a knowledge of what he is saying ; he sets to his 
 seal that God is true. 1 He who is of God heareth the 
 words of God ; 2 every one that heareth and learneth of the 
 Father cometh unto me* and ye have not his word abiding 
 in you, because, whom he hath sent, him yelelieve not; 4 
 if any one will do God's will he shall know of the doctrine, 
 whether it be of God." 5 This, therefore, is what Jesus 
 said : " I, whose message of salvation is: If a man 
 keep my word he shall never see death/ 6 am sent of 
 God ; because he who obeys my saying : Denounce 
 thyself and follow me/ 7 shall feel that he truly lives, 
 and that he is following, therefore, Israel's God, of 
 whom it is said : Thou wilt sJww me the path of life." 8 
 
 The doctrine therefore is double: Renounce thy- 
 self, the secret of Jesus, involving a foregoing exercise 
 of his method ; and, Follow me, who am sent from God / 
 That is the favourite expression : Sent from God. 
 " I come forth from the Father ; the Father hath sent 
 me ; God hath sent me." 9 Now this identified Jesus 
 and his salvation with the Messiah whom, with his 
 salvation, the Jews were expecting. For his disciples 
 therefore, and for Christendom after them, Jesus was 
 and is the Messiah or Christ. This, we say, his dis- 
 ciples, and Christendom after them, have compre- 
 hended and accepted : his identification of himself 
 
 1 John iii. 33. 2 John viii. 47. 3 John vL 45. 
 
 4 John v. 38. B John vii. 17. 6 John viii. 51. 
 
 7 Matt. xvi. 24. Pu. xvi. 11. 
 
 8 John xvi. 27, 28, 30 ; vL 57 ; vii. 29 ; viii. 42 ; xvii. 8.
 
 204 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 with the Messiah. On the other hand, his -fruitful 
 and profound harmonisation of the two ideals, the 
 mild and suffering Servant of God, and the Anointed 
 Prince conquering the earth in the cause of righteous- 
 ness and giving the kingdom to the saints, was not 
 understood and accepted. At least, only so far as 
 this was it accepted : that the turbid Aberglaube, with 
 which the Jews had surrounded this latter ideal, was 
 by the disciples of Jesus borrowed and transferred 
 wholesale to their Master and his future advent. 
 
 Meanwhile, as with the word God, so with the 
 word Christ. Jesus did not give any scientific defini- 
 tion of it, such as, for instance, that Christ was the 
 Logos. He took the word Christ as the Jews used 
 it, as he took the word God as the Jews used it. 
 And as he amended their notion of God, the Eternal 
 who loveth righteousness, by showing what righteousness 
 really was, so he amended their notion of the Messiah, 
 the chosen bringer of God's salvation, by showing what 
 salvation really was. And though his own application 
 of terms to designate himself is not a matter where 
 we can perfectly trust his reporters (as it is clear, for 
 instance, that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was 
 more metaphysical than Jesus himself), 1 yet there is 
 no difficulty in supposing him to have applied to 
 himself each and all of the terms which the Jews in 
 any way used to describe the Messiah, Messiah or 
 
 1 It is to be remembered, too, that whereas Jesus spoke in 
 Aramaic, the most concrete and unmetaphysical of languages, 
 he is reported in Greek, the most metaphysical. What, in the 
 uiouth of Jesus, was the word which comes to us as no
 
 VII. J TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 205 
 
 Christ, God's Chosen or Beloved or Consecrated or Glori 
 fied One, the Son of God, the Son of Man ; because his 
 concern, as we have said, was with his countrymen's 
 idea of salvation, not with their terms for designating 
 the bringer of it. But the simplest term, the term 
 which gives least opening into theosophy, Son of 
 Man, he certainly preferred. So, too, he loved the 
 simple expressions, "God sent me," "The Father hath 
 sent me;" and he chose so often to say, in a general 
 manner, " I am He," l rather than to say positively, 
 "I am Christ" 
 
 And evidently this mode of speaking struck his 
 hearers. We find the Jews saying : " How long dost 
 thou make us to doubt ? if thou be Christ, tell us 
 plainly/" 2 And even then Jesus does not answer 
 point-blank, but prefers to say : " I have told you, 
 and ye believe not." Yet this does not imply that 
 he had the least doubt or hesitation in naming him- 
 self the Messiah, the Son of God ; but only that his 
 concern was, as we have said, with God's righteousness 
 and Christ's salvation, and that he avoided all use 
 of the names God, and Christ, which might give an 
 opening into mere theosophical speculation. And this 
 is shown, moreover, by the largeness and freedom, 
 almost, one may say, indifference, of his treatment 
 of both names ; as names, in using which, his hearers 
 were always in danger of going off into a theosophy 
 
 (only begotten) ? Probably the simple Aramaic word for uniqut, 
 only. And yet, in the Greek record, even the word fMvoyevw 
 is not, like only-begotten in our translation, reserved for Christ ; 
 see Luke vii. 12 ; viii. 42 ; ix. 38. 
 
 1 John iv. 26 ; viii. 24, 28. a John x. 24.
 
 206 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 that did them no good and had better occupy them 
 as little as possible. "/ and my Father are one/' n 
 he would say at one time ; and " My Father is greater 
 than I/" 2 at another. When the Jews were offended 
 at his calling himself the Son of God, he quotes 
 Scripture to show that even mere men were in Scrip- 
 ture called Gods; and for you, he says, who go by 
 the letter of Scripture, surely this is sanction enough 
 for calling any one, whom God sends, the Son of God/ 3 
 He did not at all mean, that the Messiah was a son of 
 God merely in the sense in which any great man 
 might be so called ; but he meant that these questions 
 of theosophy were useless for his hearers, and that 
 they puzzled themselves with them in vaia All they 
 were concerned with was, that he was the Messiah they 
 expected, sent to them with salvation from God. 
 
 It is the same when Jesus says : " Before Abraham 
 was, I am ! " 4 He was baffling his countrymen's 
 theosophy, showing them how little his doctrine was 
 meant to offer a field for it " Life," he means, " the 
 life of him who lays down his life that he may take it 
 again, 5 is not what you suppose. Your notions of 
 life and death are all false, and with your present 
 notions you cannot discuss theology with me ; follow 
 me ! " So, again, to the Jews in the rut of their 
 traditional theology, and haggling about the Son of 
 David ; Jesus, they insisted, could not be the Christ, 
 because the Christ was the Son of David. Jesus 
 answers them by the objection that in the Psalms 
 
 1 John x. 30. 2 John xiv. 28. 3 John x. 34-36. 
 
 4 John viii 58. * John x. 17.
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 207 
 
 (and the Scripture cannot be broken !) David calls 
 the Christ his Lord ; and " if he call him Lord, how 
 is he then his son 1 ?" 1 The argument as a serious 
 argument is perfectly futile. The king of God's 
 chosen people is going out to war, and what the 
 Psalmist really sings is : " The Eternal saith unto the 
 king's majesty, Thou shall conquer/" St. Peter in 
 the Acts gravely uses the same verse to prove Jesus 
 to be Christ: "God," says he, "tells my Lord, Sit 
 thou upon my right Jiand ! Yet David never went up 
 into heaven." 2 Now, this is exactly of a piece with 
 St. Paul's proving salvation to be by Christ alone, 
 from seed, in the promise to Abraham, being in the 
 singular, not the plural. 3 It is merely false criticism 
 of the Old Testament, such as the Jews were full of, 
 and of which the Apostles retained far too much. 
 But the Jews were full of it, and therefore the objec- 
 tion of Jesus was just such an objection as the Jews 
 would think weighty. He used it as he might have 
 used a crux about personality or consubstantiality with 
 the Bishops of Winchester or Gloucester; to baffle 
 and put to rout their false dogmatic theology, to 
 disenchant them with it and make them cast it aside 
 and come simply to him. " See," he says to the 
 Jewish doctors, " what a mess you make of it with 
 your learning, and evidences, and orthodox theology ; 
 with the wisdom of your wise men and the understanding 
 of your prudent men / You can do nothing with them, 
 your arms break in your hands. Fling the rubbish 
 away, cease from your own wisdom, 4 and throw your- 
 i Matt. xxii. 42-45. 2 Acts ii. 34. 3 Gal. ill 16. * Prov. xxiii. 4,
 
 208 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CUAP. 
 
 selves upon my method and secret, upon me! 
 Believe that the Father hath sent me, ; lie that receiveth 
 me receiveth Him that sent me. If any man will do His 
 mil, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or 
 whether I have invented it/" 1 
 
 And no grand performance or discovery of a man's 
 own to bring him thus to joy and peace, but an 
 attachment ! the influence of One full of grace and 
 truth! An influence, which we feel we know not 
 how, and which subdues us we know not when ; 
 which, like the wind, breathes where it lists, passes 
 here, and does not pass there ! Once more, then, we 
 come to that root and ground of religion, that element 
 of awe and gratitude which fills religion with emotion, 
 and makes it other and greater than morality, the 
 not ourselves. We did not make the order of conduct, 
 or provide that happiness should belong to it, or dis- 
 pose our hearts to it. Man's goings are of the Eternal, 
 as Israel said ; Eternal, I know that the way of man is 
 not in himself/* Neither did we invent Jesus, or 
 make the " grace and truth " of Jesus, or provide that 
 happiness should belong to feeling them, or dispose 
 our hearts to feel them. No man can come to me, as 
 Jesus said, except the father, which sent me, draw him / 3 
 So the revelation of Jesus Christ in the new Testa- 
 ment is like the revelation of the God of Israel in the 
 Old, in being the revelation of "the Eternal not ourselves 
 which makes for righteousness." It is like it, and has 
 the same power of religion in it 
 
 J John xii. 44 ; xiii. 20 ; viL 17. 2 Prov. xx. 24 j Jer. x. 2* 
 3 John vi. 44.
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 209 
 
 VIL 
 
 Now, then, we see what the doctrine, / came forth 
 from God, 1 really means. We see how far it has any 
 kinship with that doctrine of the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son, for which our two bishops are so anxious 
 to "do something." We see how far the pseudo- 
 scientific language of our creeds, about persons, and 
 substance, and godhead, and co-equal, and co-eternal, and 
 created, and begotten, and proceeding, has anything at 
 all to do with what Jesus said or meant. We see how 
 impossible it is that one should concede to our 
 clerical friends what they assume to be beyond dis- 
 pute : that the so-called Athanasian Creed " takes the 
 facts of Christian doctrine, and just arranges them 
 sentence after sentence." We see how wide of the 
 mark is that metaphysical clergyman, who writes to 
 the Guardian that " Our Lord unquestionably annexes 
 eternal life to a right knowledge of the Godhead," in 
 imagining that when Jesus said, " This is life eternal, 
 to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
 whom thou hast sent," 2 Jesus had in view anything 
 at all like the " facts " which the Athanasian Creed 
 " arranges, sentence after sentence." But we see more 
 than this. We see how much a very common use of 
 the word faith, which gives rise to false notions like 
 that of this clergyman, needs amending. 
 
 For it is constantly assumed that there is an 
 opposition between faith and reason ; and that those, 
 
 1 John xvi. 27, 28, 30. 2 John xvii. 3. 
 
 VOL, V. P
 
 210 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 whom Jesus Christ calls to believe in him, he calls to 
 receive a doctrine puzzling to the reason, but which, 
 if adopted, will gradually become clear. It is obvious 
 how well this notion of faith suits the recommenders 
 of such doctrine as that which the Athanasian Creed 
 " arranges, sentence after sentence," which is certainly 
 very puzzling to the reason. But this is of the 
 essence of faith, it is said : to take on trust what 
 perplexes the reason. Only adopt the doctrine which 
 perplexes the reason, be a Christian, and afterwards 
 "you shall know of the doctrine whether it be of 
 God." And with this is connected what is so often 
 said in the Bible about " receiving the kingdom of God 
 as a little child," about " babes seeing what is hidden 
 from the wise and prudent." 1 The unlettered believer 
 is, in fact, according to this version of what the Bible 
 means to say, represented in the Bible as a better 
 judge about a thing which perplexes the reason than 
 the philosopher. And this explains the disdain with 
 which the possessors of gospel-truth, as it is called, are apt 
 to treat art, and literature, and science. These happy 
 men are supposed to have, by faith, a certainty in 
 matters perplexing in the highest degree to the reason, 
 which the vaunted exercise of the reason can never 
 attain to. And as with faith in Christ, so with 
 faith in God : it is taking on trust something per- 
 plexing to the reason. Texts like : They that seek 
 the Eternal understand all things, 2 and : / have more 
 understanding than my teachers, for Thy testimonies are 
 my study ; I am wiser than the aged because I keep Thy 
 Mark x. 15 ; Matt. xi. 25. 2 Prov. xxviii. 5,
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 211 
 
 commcmd'ments, 1 mean, that we are better off and sea 
 clearer than men of study and experience, if, in spite 
 of its puzzling the reason, we accept in faith, and they 
 do not, some truth like the " blessed truth that the 
 God of the universe is a PERSON." 
 
 No one has more insisted on this opposition 
 between faith and reason than a writer whom we can 
 never name but with respect, Dr. Newman. " The 
 moral trial involved in faith," he says, "lies in the 
 submission of the reason to external realities partially 
 disclosed." And again : " Faith is, in its very nature, 
 the acceptance of what our reason cannot reach, 
 simply and absolutely upon testimony." But surely 
 faith is in its very nature (with all deference be it 
 spoken !) nothing of the kind ; else how could Jesus 
 Christ say to the Jews : "HI tell you the truth, why 
 do ye not believe me?" 2 Surely this implies that 
 faith, instead of being a submission of the reason to 
 what puzzles it, is rather a recognition of what is 
 perfectly clear, if we will attend to it. 3 We cannot 
 always attend, all of us ; and here is the not ourselves 
 in the matter, " the grace of God." But attention, cleav- 
 ing, attaching oneself fast to what is undeniably true, 
 this is what the faith of Scripture, "in its very 
 nature," is ; and not the submission of the reason to 
 what puzzles it, or the acceptance, simply and abso- 
 lutely upon testimony, of what our reason cannot 
 reach. And all that the Bible says of bringing to 
 nought the wisdom of the wise, and of receiving the 
 
 1 Psalm cxix. 99, 100. 
 * John viii. 46. 3 TT&VTO. TO. avayKcua dfj\a, says Chrysostom.
 
 212 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 kingdom of God as a little child, has nothing what- 
 ever to do with the believer's acceptance of some 
 dogma that perplexes the reason ; it is aimed at those 
 who sophisticate a very simple thing, religion, by im- 
 porting into it a so-called science with which it has 
 nothing to do. Jewish theological learning, the 
 system of divinity of the Jewish hierarchy, who did 
 not know how simple a thing righteousness really 
 was, and who, when simple souls saw it in Jesus 
 Christ and were drawn to it, cried out : " This people 
 that Jcnoweth not the law are cursed/" 1 it was at these, 
 and at whatever resembles these, that Jesus Christ 
 aimed the words about receiving the kingdom of 
 God as a little child. 
 
 And the " marvellous work and wonder " about 
 the saving truth which the simple receive is, not that, 
 being difficult to the reason, it is yet got hold of by 
 the unlettered and not by the wise ; but that, being so 
 simple, it should yet be so immense, important, indis- 
 pensable ; and that, being so immense, important, 
 indispensable, it should yet" so often be followed by 
 quite unlettered people, and neglected by such very 
 clever ones. The clever are attending to other 
 things, things which do task the reason and intelli- 
 gence, and in which the unlettered have no skill and 
 no voice; these things however are, at most, only 
 one-fourth of life. And this absurdity, for such it 
 really is, we see every day ; people attending to the 
 difficult science of matters where the plain practice they 
 quite let slip. How many people will be now 2 busy 
 1 John vii. 49. 2 Written in 1872.
 
 m.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 213 
 
 with Mr. Darwin's new book, so admirably ingenious, 
 on the natural history of the emotions, who yet are 
 always using their own emotions in the worst possible 
 manner ! They are eager to know how their emotions 
 arose, how these came to express themselves as they 
 do ; yet there the emotions now are, and have for a 
 long time been, and the first thing for any sane man 
 to do is to make a proper use of them, and to know 
 how to make a proper use is not difficult; but all 
 this we never think of, but investigate zealously how 
 they arose ! Such persons are just like those learned 
 inquirers the Cynic laughed at, who were so busy 
 about the strayings of Ulysses, so inattentive to their 
 own. 
 
 And Israel's greatness was that he was so impatient 
 of trifling of this kind, of being busy with one-fourth 
 of life while the three-fourths, conduct, was forgotten. 
 And Israel boldly said : " They that seek the Eternal 
 understand all things;" 1 that is, they are occupied 
 with conduct, righteousness, which truly is, as we 
 have seen, at least three -fourths of life, and which 
 Israel thought the whole of it. They have a hold on 
 three-fourths of life, while it may be that their great, 
 clever, and accomplished neighbours have a hold on 
 only one-fourth, or part of one-fourth, of life. Which 
 is the solid and sensible man, which understands 
 most, which lives most? Compare a Methodist day- 
 labourer with some dissolute, gifted, brilliant grandee, 
 who thinks nothing of him ! but the first deals suc- 
 cessfully with nearly the whole of life, while the 
 1 Proverbs xxviii. 5.
 
 214 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 second is all abroad in it. Compare some simple and 
 pious monk, at Rome, with one of those frivolous 
 men of taste whom we have all seen there ! each 
 knows nothing of what interests the other; but 
 which is the more vital concern for a man : conduct, 
 or arts and antiquities ? 
 
 Nay, and however false his science and Biblical 
 criticism, the believer who applies the method and 
 secret of Jesus has a width of range and sureness of 
 foothold in life, which even the best scientific and 
 literary critic of the Bible, who applies them not, is 
 without; because the first is right in what affects 
 three-fourths of life, and the second in what affects 
 but one-fourth, or even but one-eighth. Each has a 
 secret of which the other, who has no experience of 
 it, does not know the value; but the value of the 
 learned man's secret is ridiculously least. This, I say, 
 is the very glory and marvel of the religion of the 
 true Israel, and what makes this religion, as Jesus 
 called it, "the good news to the poor;" 1 that it 
 covers nearly the whole of life, and yet is so simple. 
 
 The only right contrast, therefore, to set up be- 
 tween faith and reason is, not that faith grasps what 
 is too hard for reason, but that reason does not, like 
 faith, attend to what is at once so great and so simple. 
 The difficulty about faith is, to attend to what is very 
 simple and very important, but liable to be pushed 
 by more showy or tempting matters out of sight 
 The marvel about faith is, that what is so simple 
 should be so all -sufficing, so necessary, and so often 
 i Luke iv. 18.
 
 VH.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 215 
 
 neglected. And faith is neither the submission of the 
 reason, nor is it the acceptance simply and absolutely 
 upon testimony of what reason cannot reach. Faith 
 is : the being able to deave to a power of goodness appeal- 
 ing to our higher and real self, not to our lower and 
 apparent self. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 So we see how unlike is Jesus Christ's own doc- 
 trine of his being the Son of God to the difficult 
 doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son, as the 
 Athanasian Creed "arranges it, sentence after sen- 
 tence," and in the form in which our bishops want to 
 "do something" for it; as unlike as the original 
 revelation to Israel of the Eternal that loveth righteous- 
 ness is to " the blessed doctrine that the God of the 
 universe is a PERSON." And we see how the clergy- 
 men who write to the Guardian deceive themselves, 
 when they imagine that it is to these doctrines of our 
 bishops that Jesus Christ "unquestionably attaches 
 eternal life," and how they are led into this error by 
 having more of turn for abstruse reasoning than of 
 literary experience. They are not conversant enough 
 with the many different ways in which men think 
 and speak, so as to be able to distinguish rightly 
 between them, and to perceive that the Bible is 
 literature ; and that its words are used, like the 
 words of common life and of poetry and eloquence, 
 approximately, and not like the terms of science, 
 adequately. 
 
 And if they fall into mistakes about words applied
 
 216 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 to the Father and the Son, by thus making them 
 scientific, how much more do they fall into mistakes 
 when they extend this treatment to words applied to 
 the Holy Ghost. We have seen how the word 
 Pneuma, just by reason of its inward and infinite 
 character, was much employed by Jesus for his 
 method of inwardness and of deliverance from binding 
 traditions and formulas; and how, since Holy Ghost 
 has become to us a formula, just as God and righteous- 
 ness were to the Jews, to get the force of Christ's 
 use of the word "Pneuma," we ought to retranslate 
 the word for ourselves, and to call it, for a time 
 at any rate, rather influence, intuition, or some such 
 name. 
 
 For it was thus that Jesus himself used it. When 
 Jesus was going away, above all, and his disciples 
 were to be thrown on themselves and left to use his 
 method of inwardness more deeply and thoroughly, 
 not having him to go to, then thej f would find, he 
 said, a new power come to their help; a power of 
 insight such as they had never had before, and which 
 was none of their making, but came from God as 
 Jesus did, and said nothing of itself, but only what 
 God said or Jesus said ; a " Paraclete," or reinforce- 
 ment working in aid of God and Jesus : even the Spirit 
 of Truth. 1 While Jesus was with them, the disciples 
 had lived in contact with aletheia, or reality ; and 
 they were promised now an intuition of reality within 
 themselves. 
 
 Now, will it be believed, that the Athanasian 
 1 John xiv. 16, 17, 26 ; xvi 7-14.
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 217 
 
 Creed, and our bishops, and the clergymen who 
 write to the Guardian, and dogmatic theology in 
 general, should have imagined that Jesus Christ here 
 meant to convey to us the "blessed doctrine" that 
 this Spirit of truth, too, "is a PERSON"? The force 
 of metaphysical talent outrunning literary experience 
 could really, we say, no farther go ! The Muse, who 
 visited Hesiod when he was tending his sheep on the 
 side of Helicon, and "breathed into him a divine 
 voice, and taught him the things to come and the 
 former things," might every bit as well be made, 
 with much display of metaphysical apparatus, "a 
 PERSON." The influence which visited Hesiod was 
 a real one, that is as much metaphysics as we can 
 without error, in a case of this sort, apply. Who- 
 ever applies more, falls into absurdity. 
 
 The spiritual visitant, indeed, which rejoiced the 
 wise poet of Ascra, was not the Paraclete of Jesus. 
 No, it was the Muse of art and science, the Muse of 
 the gifted few, the Muse who brings to the ingenious 
 and learned among mankind "a forgetfulness," as 
 Hesiod sings, "of evils and a truce from cares." 
 The Paraclete that Jesus promised, on the other 
 hand, was the Muse of righteousness; the Muse of 
 the work-day, care -crossed, toil -stained millions of 
 men, the Muse of humanity. To all who live, for 
 all that concerns three -fourths of life, this divine 
 Muse offers "a forgetfulness of evils and a truce from 
 cares." That is why it is far more real, and far 
 greater, than the Muse of Hesiod; not from any 
 metaphysical personality-
 
 218 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 IX. 
 
 But the whole centre of gravity of the Christian 
 religion, in the popular as well as in the so-called 
 orthodox notion of it, is placed in Christ's having, by 
 his death in satisfaction for man's sins, performed the 
 contract originally passed in the Council of the Trinity, 
 and having thus enabled the magnified and non-natural 
 Man in heaven, who is the God of theology and of the 
 multitude alike, to consider his justice satisfied, and 
 to allow his mercy to go forth on all who heartily 
 believe that Jesus Christ has paid their debt for 
 them. Now we have seen how that whole structure of 
 materialising mythology, which the Bible is supposed 
 to deliver, and in which this conception of the Atone- 
 ment, as it is called, holds the central place, drops 
 away and disappears as the Bible comes to be better 
 known. The true centre of gravity of the Christian 
 religion is in the method and the secret of Jesus, 
 approximating, in their application, ever closer to 
 the epieikeia, the sweet reasonableness and unerring 
 sureness of Jesus himself. But, as the method of Jesus 
 led up to his secret, and his secret was dying to " the 
 life in this world " and living to " the eternal life," both 
 his method and his secret culminated in his "perfecting" 
 on the cross, which he himself foresaw and foretold. 
 
 The miracle of the corporeal resurrection ruled the 
 minds of those who have reported Christ's sayings for 
 us; and their report, how he foretold his death, cannot 
 always be entirely accepted. One of them alleges him
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 219 
 
 to have foretold it by pointing to his body and saying : 
 Destroy this temple, and in three days I mil raise it up 7 1 
 Now, here is certainly an instance of the retrospective 
 pressure exercised on words of Jesus by the established 
 belief in the resurrection. He had said of the Temple 
 at Jerusalem : TJiere shall not be left of it one stone upon 
 another? He had said of himself and this much- 
 reverenced Temple : There standeth liere One greater than 
 tJie Temple. 3 He had said he should be put to death, 
 and the death of the worst malefactors, crucifixion. 4 
 This death he had also called his glorification, his 
 perfection. 5 He had said, using a Hebrew form of 
 expression, that this his perfection or glorification 
 should come in three days (that is, very shortly) : / do 
 cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be per- 
 fected. 6 Nothing more was needed. All the elements 
 for a simply miraculous prediction by Jesus of his 
 own death and bodily resurrection were ready to the 
 miracle-maker's hand! Jesus had not only said: They 
 shall crucify me, and the third day I mil rise again." 1 
 He had also said, pointing to his own body : Destroy 
 this temple and in three days I urill raise itwp/ 
 
 In sayings of this kind, the internal evidence is 
 all-important. Now, the sure clue of internal evidence 
 to follow, in tracing any words of Jesus about his death 
 and rising again, is the clue given by the ideal of the 
 
 1 John ii. 19. 2 Matt. xxiv. 2. 3 Matt. xii. 6. 
 
 4 Matt. xx. 18, 19. 6 John xii. 23. 
 
 6 Luke xiii. 32 ; Hosea vi. 3. See also God and the Bible, 
 pp. 265-268. 
 
 * Matt. xvi. 21 ; xx. 19; Mark x. 34; Luke xviii. 33.
 
 220 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 stricken Servant of God in the fifty -third chapter of 
 Isaiah. This ideal, as we have seen, Jesus had adopted 
 and elevated as the true ideal of Israel's Saviour ; he 
 had corrected by it the favourite popular ideals he 
 found regnant. And in this ideal of the stricken 
 Servant of God, the notion of sacrifice is, that this 
 lover of righteousness falls because of a state of 
 iniquity and wickedness which he has had no share 
 in making, and as the only remedy for it. The 
 notion of redemption is, that by endurance to the end, 
 and by his death crowning his life, he establishes all 
 seekers after good in their allegiance to good, enables 
 them to follow it and to reach true life through it. 
 Finally, the notion of resurrection is, that his death 
 makes an epoch of victory for him and his cause, 
 which thenceforward live and reign indestructibly. 
 He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his 
 mouth; he was bruised for our iniquities, the Eternal hath 
 laid on him the iniquity of us all; 1 there is the sacri- 
 fice. With his stripes we are healed;* there is the 
 redemption. But : When he hath made his life an 
 offering for sin, he shall see His seed, he shall prolong his 
 days, and the pleasure of the Eternal shall prosper in his 
 hand; 3 there, to crown all, is the resurrection. 
 
 And just these stages we find again in Jesus, 
 Which of you convicteth me of sin?* he asked the Jews; 
 nevertheless : The Son of Man must suffer many things 
 and be rejected of this generation, 5 the Son of Man must 
 le lifted up / 6 there is the sacrifice. Except a grain oj 
 
 1 Is. liii. 9, 6, 6. 2 Is. liiL 6. 3 Is. liii. 10. 
 
 4 John viii. 46. 6 Luke xvii. 25. John iii. 14.
 
 vn.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 221 
 
 corn fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone ; l the Son 
 of Man came to give his life a ransom for many ; 2 there 
 is the redemption. But : If the grain of corn die, it 
 bringeth forth much fruit ; I, if I be lifted up from the 
 earth, mil draw all men unto me; 3 If I go not away 
 the Spirit of truth will not come unto you, but if I de- 
 part I will send him unto you, and when he is come he 
 will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of 
 judgment; 4 there, there is the resurrection and 
 triumph ! 
 
 The use by Jesus of the words life and death must 
 on no account, however, be limited to this his cruci- 
 fixion and after-triumph, though in these, no doubt, 
 his dying and living culminated. Yet both here, and 
 always in his use of them, they are properly to be 
 referred to his secret : " He that loveth his life shall lose 
 it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it 
 unto life eternal; 5 renounce thyself, and take up thy 
 cross daily, and follow Me/" 6 Long before his signal 
 Crucifixion Jesus had died, by taking up daily that 
 cross which his disciples, after his daily example, were 
 to take up also. "Therefore doth my Father love 
 me," he says, " because I lay down my life that I may 
 take it again"** He had risen to life long before his 
 crowning Resurrection, risen to life in what he calls 
 "my joy," s which he desired to see fulfilled in his 
 disciples also ; " my joy, to have kept my Father's 
 commandment and abide in his love." 9 
 
 1 John xii 24. 2 Matthew xx. 28. 3 John xii. 24, 32. 
 John xvi 7, 8. 5 John xii. 25. 8 Luke ix. 23. 
 
 7 John x. 17. 8 John xvii. 13. 9 John xv. 10, 11.
 
 222 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Nay, and there is no more powerful testimony to 
 Jesus Christ's real use of the words life and death, 
 than a famous text, borrowed from Jewish Aberglaube, 
 which popular Christianity has wrested in support of 
 its tenet of a physical resurrection at the Messiah's 
 second advent. Whatever we may think of the 
 narrative of the raising of Lazarus, we need have no 
 difficulty in believing that Jesus really did say to the 
 brother or sister of a dead disciple : " Thy brother 
 shall rise again ! " and that the mourner replied : " I 
 know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at 
 the last day." 1 For the answer which follows has 
 the certain stamp of Jesus : " I am the resurrection and 
 the life ; he that believeth on me, though he die, shall live, 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die." 2 
 Now, Martha believed already in the resurrection of 
 Jewish and Christian Aberglaube, the resurrection 
 according to the Book of Daniel and the Book of 
 Enoch, the resurrection of the last day, when "they 
 that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some 
 to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
 contempt." 3 But Jesus corrects her Aberglaube, by 
 telling her that her brother is not dead at all ; and 
 his words, out of which the story of the miracle very 
 likely grew, do really make the miracle quite unneces- 
 sary. "He that has believed on me and had my 
 secret," says Jesus, " though his body die to the life 
 of this world, still lives ; for such an one had died to 
 the life of this world already, and found true life, 
 
 1 John xi. 23, 24. 2 Ibid. 25, 26. 
 
 3 Daniel xii. 2.
 
 VII.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 223 
 
 life out of himself, life in the Eternal that loveth 
 righteousness, by doing so." 1 
 
 Just in the same way, moreover, in his promise to 
 see his disciples again after his crucifixion and to take 
 up his abode with them, Jesus corrects, for those who 
 have eyes to read, he corrects in the clearest and most 
 decisive way those very errors, with which our com- 
 mon material conceptions of life and death have made 
 us invest his death and resurrection. "Yet a little 
 while," he says, "and the world seeth me no more; 
 but ye see me, because I live, and ye shall live too. 
 He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, 
 he it is that loveth me; and him that loveth me I will 
 love, and will manifest myself to him" Jude naturally 
 objects : " How is it that thou wilt manifest thyself 
 to us and not to the world V And Jesus answers : 
 " If a man love me, he will keep my word, and my 
 Father will love him, and we will come unto him and 
 make our abode with him" 2 Therefore the manifesta- 
 tion of himself he speaks of is nothing external and 
 material It is, like the manifestation of God to 
 him that ordereth his conversation right, the internal 
 life and joy in keeping the commandments. It is the 
 life for the disciples of Christ, in and with Christ, in 
 keeping the commandments of God ; those command- 
 ments, which had at last in their true scope been 
 made known to men, but solely through Jesus Christ's 
 method and through his secret. 
 
 1 For additional remarks on this miracle ol the raising ol 
 Lazarus, see God and the Bible, pp. 310, 311. 
 
 2 John xiv. 19-23. See also God and the Bible, pp. 258-270.
 
 224 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 Thus, then, did Jesus seek to transform the im 
 mense materialising Aberglaube into which the religion 
 of Israel had fallen, and to spiritualise it at all points; 
 while in his method and secret he supplied a sure 
 basis for practice. But to follow him entirely there 
 was needed an epieikeia, an unfailing sweetness and 
 unerring perception, like his own. It was much if 
 his disciples got firm hold on his method and his 
 secret ; and if they transmitted fragments enough of 
 his lofty spiritualism to make it in the fulness of time 
 discernible, and to make it at once and from the first 
 in a large degree serviceable. Who can read in the 
 Gospels the comments preserved to us, both of 
 disciples and of others, on what he said, and not 
 feel that Jesus must have known, while he neverthe- 
 less persevered in saying them, how things like : 
 "Before Abraham was, I am," 1 or: "I mil not leave 
 you comfortless, I will come unto you," 2 would be mis- 
 apprehended by those who .heard them? 
 
 But, indeed, Jesus himself tells us that he knew 
 and foresaw this. With the promise of the Spirit of 
 truth which should, after his departure, work in his 
 disciples first, then in the world, and which should 
 convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of 
 judgment, and finally transform it, we are all familiar. 
 But we do not enough remark the impressive words, 
 uttered to the crowd around him only a little while 
 1 John viii. 58. 2 John xiv. 18
 
 vii.] TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 225 
 
 before, and of far wider application than the reporter 
 imagined. " Yet a little while is the light with you; 
 walk while ye have the light, lest the darkness overtake you 
 unawares!" 1 The real application cannot have been 
 to the unconverted only ; a call to the unconverted 
 to make haste because their chance of conversion 
 would soon, with Christ's departure, be gone. No, 
 converts came in far thicker after Christ's departure 
 than in his life. The words are for the converted 
 also. It is as if Jesus foresaw the want of his sweet 
 reasonableness, which he could not leave, to help his 
 method and his secret, which he could leave ; as if 
 he foresaw his words misconstrued, his rising to 
 eternal life turned into a physical miracle, the advent 
 of the Spirit of truth turned into a scene of thauma- 
 turgy, Peter proving his Master's Messiahship from a 
 Psalm that does not prove it, the great Apostle of 
 the Gentiles word-splitting like a pedantic Rabbi, the 
 most beautiful soul among his own reporters saddling 
 him with metaphysics; foresaw the growth of creeds, 
 the growth of dogma, and so through all the confusion 
 worse confounded of councils, schoolmen, and confes- 
 sions of faith, down to our own two bishops bent on 
 " doing something " for the honour of the Godhead of 
 the Eternal Son ! 
 
 1 John xii 35. 
 
 VOL. V.
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 THE EARLY WITNESSES 
 
 OUR object in this essay has never been to argue against 
 miracles. Even with Lourdes and La Salette before 
 our eyes, we may yet say that miracles are doomed ; 
 they will drop out, like fairies or witchcraft, from 
 among the matters which serious people believe. Our 
 one object is to save the revelation in the Bible from 
 being made solidary, as our Comtist friends say, with 
 miracles ; from being attended to or held cheap just in 
 proportion as miracles are attended to or are held cheap. 
 
 In like manner, nay far more, our object is not, and 
 never can be, to pick holes in the apostles and re- 
 porters of Jesus. But much which they say cannot 
 stand; our one object is to" hinder people from making 
 Jesus solidary with this, and with his reporters' and 
 apostles' character for infallibility. To this extent, 
 and to this only, we are brought at moments into 
 collision with miracles, into collision with the disciples 
 of Jesus and with the writers of the New Testament 
 We have to show that, the men being what and when 
 and whence they were, the miracles would certainly 
 grow up for them around and in the wake of Jesus. 
 
 How did Jesus Christ's words : " / will see you
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE EAKLY WITNESSES. 227 
 
 again, I go to prepare a place /or you ! " l grow into the 
 legend, so beautiful, and round which have for 
 centuries gathered such sacred feelings and aspirations, 
 yet a legend, of his corporeal resurrection and 
 ascension ? How ? Why, Herod's first words, when 
 after the execution of John the Baptist he heard of 
 Jesus, were : "It is John the Baptist; he is risen from 
 the dead ! " 2 In such an atmosphere of belief were the 
 disciples living, when their loss of Jesus, the greatest 
 loss that ever befel men, happened. All his discourse, 
 when he was with them, had run on life and death, 
 apparent death, enduring life ; and how many are 
 the stories of the survivors, in an atmosphere of 
 belief like that of those Palestine times, refusing to 
 believe in the death of a leader even far less precious 
 to them, full of reports of his reappearance in this 
 place and that place, feeding themselves on the promise 
 of his triumphant return ! How many thousands at 
 this moment, in Persia, refuse to credit the death of 
 the Bab, their Gate of life, executed some years ago ; 
 assert that he will return, that he has been seen, that 
 they have seen him ! 
 
 But the reporters of Jesus were not as others ; they 
 were infallible ? So infallible, that they report them- 
 selves, when Jesus reappeared, after all his labours to 
 transform and spiritualise for them the old Jewish 
 ideal, they report themselves to have met him with 
 the inquiry : Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom 
 to Israel ? 3 But the Holy Ghost had not then been 
 given ? And after the Holy Ghost was given, we find 
 1 John xvi. 22 ; xiv. 2, 3. 2 Matt. xiv. 2. 3 Acts i 6.
 
 228 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 them with one voice asserting that in the lifetime of that 
 generation should come Christ's second advent and the 
 end of the world ; Peter falling back into Judaism, so 
 that Paul had to withstand him to the face because 
 he was to be blamed, and Paul himself proving salva- 
 tion to be by Jesus, from seed, in the promise to 
 Abraham, being used in the singular! That it is 
 impossible the disciples of Jesus should have been, 
 alone of all the disciples in the world, infallible, that it 
 is begging the question to say they were infallible, 
 need not be made out It is conspicuous, on the face 
 of their own showing of themselves, that they were 
 not infallible. And well it is that it should be so. 
 For this favourite Protestant Doctrine of the infalli- 
 bility of the Bible-writers, inherited, indeed, from the 
 Fathers along with that of the infallibility of the 
 Church, but kept and extolled by Protestants as the 
 true single anchor to ride at, whereas the other was 
 rotten, this doctrine involves Christianity in dangers 
 quite as serious as its discarded rival does. 
 
 But it was not for nothing that the Apostles had 
 lived with Jesus; or even," in the case of a great 
 religious spirit like Paul, lived in his time, lived in 
 his country, had his presence and words near and 
 fresh to them. And, untrue and dangerous as is the 
 popular Protestant doctrine of the plenary inspiration 
 of the Apostles, an inspiration making them infallible, 
 but vouchsafed no more to any one after the Apostles 
 were gone, yet it rests on a true perception of the vast 
 distance which separates them from after -writers on 
 Christianity, from the Fathers as from Luther and
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 229 
 
 Calvin, all alike. This they owe to their contact with 
 Jesus ; or, in Paul's case, to their nearness to him. The 
 impression of him was too fresh and vivid, his method 
 and secret still had too firmly the prominence he had 
 given them, the atmosphere of his sweet reasonableness 
 still hung round his disciples too much, to permit of the 
 deep confusions and misunderstandings of after-times. 
 There is no pleasure in proving that the Apostles 
 sometimes made mistakes ; but to trace in the Apostles 
 the reproduction of the method and secret of Jesus, is 
 one of the most delightful of tasks. And since to 
 show such reproduction of Jesus in his followers 
 throws light on what we have said of Jesus himself, 
 and confirms it, we will permit ourselves to do this 
 very briefly. And we will show it, first and above all, 
 in the case of the three great witnesses to him in the 
 New Testament, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the writer 
 who is called, properly or improperly, St. John. 
 
 II. 
 
 To begin with St. Peter. The First Epistle of St. 
 Peter commends itself as much, one may say, as the 
 genuine work of the author whose name it bears, as 
 the Second Epistle bespeaks itself the contrary. And, 
 except for the one strange passage about the spirits in 
 prison and Noah's flood, at the end of the third chapter, 
 where the meaning which was in the writer's mind 
 is probably now irrecoverable for us, there is shed 
 over this whole production more, perhaps, of the 
 epieikeia, or what we call the sweet reasonableness, of
 
 230 LITEKATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Christ, than over any other epistle we possess. Very 
 much this is due to its simplicity, to the unambitious 
 nature of its topics and of its treatment of them ; 
 because, clearly, the application of prophecy, the 
 adjustment of the old ideal of Israel to the new, the 
 management of the ideas of life and death, of justifi- 
 cation and the like, in all of which the epieikeia of 
 Jesus himself shone forth so matchlessly, are much 
 harder to treat with the winning simplicity and limpid 
 intuitiveness which make the charm of epieikeia, than 
 conduct itself is. 
 
 And conduct is what this epistle is concerned with, 
 almost from the first line to the last. "Your good 
 conversation in Christ ; " l " As He who called you is 
 holy, be ye also holy in all your conversation ; " 2 this is 
 the head and front of the matter with the writer. 
 Holiness is but, as we have said, a deep and finished 
 righteousness. And the method for it is the method 
 of Jesus : the inward man awakened, conscience. 
 " Born again through the word of God that liveth and 
 abideth ;" 3 " The hidden man of the heart ; " * " Having 
 a good conscience;" 5 again and again this word 
 " conscience," so strange to the Old Testament, 
 appears. And the two great groups of faults which, 
 in a rough way, do sufficiently comprehend all conduct, 
 are again, as they were by Jesus, marked as the 
 matter to be dealt with : faults of temper and faults 
 of sensuality. " Not conformed to the former lusts of 
 your time of ignorance ; " 6 " The time past may 
 
 1 1 Peter iii. 16. 2 Ibid. i. 15. 3 Ibid. i. 23. 
 4 Ibid, ill 4. B Ibid. iii. 16. 6 Ibid. L 14
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 231 
 
 suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, 
 having walked in dissoluteness, lusts, excess of wine, 
 revellings ; " l " Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war 
 against the soul ; " 2 "Be temperate, be sober ; " 3 this 
 is for faults of sensuality. " Putting away all malice, 
 and all deceit, and insincerities, and envies, and all evil- 
 speakings;"* " Be of one mind, feel ivith one another, love 
 as brethren;" "Be tender-hearted, humble -minded /" 5 
 "The incorruptible of that mild and quiet spirit which 
 is, in the sight of God, of great price;" this is for 
 the faults of temper. 
 
 So far the " method " of Jesus ; and next for his 
 " secret " of self -renouncement, of dying to our appar- 
 ent self, to our "life in this world." "Even though 
 ye suffer for righteousness, happy are ye!" 7 "For 
 to suffering ye are called, because Christ also suffered 
 for our sakes, leaving us an ensample that we should 
 follow his steps:" 8 "As Christ suffered in the flesh, 
 arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he 
 that suffers in the flesh is freed from sin ;'' 9 " Elected of 
 God unto obedience and sprinkling ivith the blood of 
 Christ." 10 And nowhere does the joy, which with 
 Jesus is the great test and sanction of his method 
 and secret, come out fuller and stronger than in this 
 epistle. "But ye are a chosen race, a royal priest- 
 hood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, to tell forth 
 the excellences of Him wJw called you out of darkness 
 into his marvellous light/" 11 
 
 1 1 Peter iv. 3. 2 Ibid. iv. 11. * Ibid. iv. 7. 
 
 4 Ibid. ii. 1. 5 Ibid. iii. 8. Ibid. iii. 4. 
 
 7 Ibid. iii. 14. 8 Ibid. ii. 21. Ibid. iv. 1. 
 
 10 Ibid. i. 2. " Ibid. ii. 9.
 
 232 LITEBATUEE AND DOGMA. [OIIAP. 
 
 The belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and 
 the expectation of his second advent in the lifetime 
 of the generation then living, are signal supports to 
 the writer's mind. But our popular notion of the 
 Atonement, Christ's death represented as a satisfac- 
 tion of God's offended justice, does not yet appear. 
 The governing idea of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, 
 adopted by Jesus himself, is still faithfully preserved. 
 Jesus Christ died for his people "to redeem them 
 from their vain conversation delivered by tradition ; " 
 Jesus Christ suffered, " in order that we, dying to 
 sins, might live to righteousness." 1 
 
 m. 
 
 Next we come to St. Paul ; but elsewhere 2 we 
 have spoken so fully of St. Paul's theology that we 
 shall be very brief here. Need we say that righteous- 
 ness is its ground -thought, real righteousness dis- 
 cerned to be such by means of a change of the inner 
 man 1 " Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision 
 is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments oj 
 God." s Eighteousness is the end and aim. This to 
 begin with ; then, in the words : " I exercise myself 
 to have a conscience void of offence towards God and 
 men continually," 4 we find ourselves in the method 
 of Jesus. "Let every man prove by experience his 
 own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himselj 
 alone and not in another ; " 5 " Prove all things by 
 
 i 1 Peter i. 18 ; ii. 24. - See St. Paul and Protestantism. 
 3 1 Cor. vii. 19. 4 Acts xxiv. 18. s GaL vi 4.
 
 nil.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 233 
 
 experience, keep what is good ; " l " Prove by experience 
 what things are excellent ; " 2 " Able to prove by experif 
 ence what is that good and perfect and acceptable will 
 of God." 3 "All this points to inward appraisal, the 
 method of inwardness, the individual conscience. 
 Jesus has given a new faculty of judging things, light: 
 "All things that are convicted as wrong are shown to 
 be what they really are by the light; for whatever 
 shows things to be what they really are, is light. 
 Wherefore he saith : Awake thou that sleepest, and 
 arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light/* 
 This is the new power of the method of Jesus, of 
 conscience. And no one has so well described as St 
 Paul the working of conscience as first set going by 
 Christianity. " Commending ourselves, by the mani- 
 festing of the reality, to every human conscience/" 5 
 " The hidden things of a man's lieart are made manifest" 
 he says; "all that he hears convicts him, sifts him to the 
 bottom: he falls on his face and worships, declaring 
 that God is indeed here ! " 6 Nor does St. Paul fail 
 to specify again and again the matter wherewith 
 conscience deals : "the works of the flesh," as he calls 
 them ; " fornication, uncleanness, dissoluteness, idol- 
 worship, witchcraft, hatreds, strife, jealousy, angers, 
 contentions, divisions, sects, envies, drunkennesses, 
 revellings, and such like." 7 They are manifest, says 
 
 1 1 Thess. v. 21. 2 Philipp. i. 10. 3 Romans xii. 2. 
 
 4 Eph. v. 13, 14. The Epistle to the Ephesians cannot well 
 be altogether Paul's, but it is full of Pauline things, and this is 
 certainly among them. B 2 Cor. iv. 2. 
 
 6 1 Cor. xiv. 24, 25. 7 Gal. v. 19, 20.
 
 234 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 he, and so they are ; for they roughly cover what all 
 the Galatians, to whom he wrote, understood by 
 conduct, the whole body of faults connected with 
 our two great primary instincts, faults of temper and 
 faults of sensuality. Elsewhere, to the Colossians, he 
 even seems to follow, but still in an informal, 
 approximative manner, such as one uses when one 
 speaks of matters so familiar that to be precise is 
 pedantic, he even seems to actually follow this 
 division, and to throw faults of conduct into two 
 groups which nearly correspond to it. 1 Finally, to 
 the works of the flesh, which are thus evidently 
 conduct wrong, he opposes the fruits of the Spirit, 
 which are as evidently conduct 'right: "Love, joy, 
 peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, 
 self-control." 2 By following the inward method of 
 Jesus, he tells us, we perceive that here is the subject 
 matter of righteousness, that this is what keeping the 
 commandments of God really is. 
 
 And that the "secret" of Jesus was applied to 
 this subject-matter by Paul, who can doubt when 
 that secret is the very heart of Paul's theology, and 
 he came to view the crucifixion and resurrection of 
 Christ altogether in connection Avith it 1 In elevating 
 as his sum of knowledge "Jesus Christ crucified," 3 
 his first thought was to insist on " the scandal of the 
 cross " 4 as the strength, not the weakness, of Chris- 
 tianity ; to enthrone resolutely Jesus Christ's new 
 Messias-ideal of the suffering servant, in opposition to 
 
 ' Colossians iii. 5, 8. 2 Gal. v. 22, 23. 
 
 3 1 Cor. L 23. 4 Gal. v. 11.
 
 Viil.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 235 
 
 the Jews' old Messias-ideal of a triumphing conqueror 
 His second thought was the "secret" It is to be 
 noted that the secret of Jesus takes a twofold form in 
 Paul's wri tings, a simple and a mystic one. The 
 simple form is given in such a passage as this : "If 
 ye live after the flesh ye shall die, but if through 
 the spirit ye mortify the doings of the body, ye 
 shall live. 1 Here is the same easily intelligible play 
 on the ideas of life and death which Jesus himself 
 used. But Paul's favourite form for the secret was 
 a more mystic one, in which Christ's death upon 
 the cross stood for death in general, and his resur- 
 rection for life in general. "If we correspond to 
 his death," says Paul, " into which our baptism 
 buries us with him, we shall correspond also to 
 his resurrection;" 2 that is, in his other and simpler 
 phrase, " we shall live." But of all this we have 
 spoken elsewhere ; let us at present content ourselves 
 with quoting, as Paul's general witness to the secret 
 of Jesus, these three texts, so strong and plain that 
 they may well stand as the great signal-marks point- 
 ing to it : " I am crucified with Christ ;" 3 " If ye die 
 with him, ye shall also live with him ; " 4 " Always 
 bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that 
 the life also of Jqsus may be manifestd in our body." 6 
 The loord of the cross, 6 as he calls it, is his pole-star. 
 By the method and example of Jesus he has become 
 aware of a new principle of choosing and refusing, of 
 going after things and retiring from them. Thia 
 
 1 Rom. viii 13. 2 Rom. vi. 4, 5. 3 Gal. ii. 19. 
 * 2 Tim. ii. 11. 6 2 Cor. iv. 10. 1 Cor. L 18.
 
 236 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAR 
 
 principle acts always in view of a new creature,^ the 
 higher or real self, agreeing with the " will of God," 
 conflicting with the lower or apparent self, or the 
 "wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts." 
 With this new principle, a man's great aim is now 
 " to put off, as regards our former way of life, the old 
 man that perishes by compliance with the misleading 
 lusts ,- 2 and to put on the new man that after God is 
 created in righteousness" And the secret for this is, 
 says Paul, being crucified with Christ, or, being conformed 
 to Christ's death, or, always bearing about in the body 
 the dying of Jesus. z Paul told his converts he was "in 
 travail of them till Christ be fashioned in them," 4 
 the entire Christ, with his method, secret, and sweet 
 reasonableness; but the great stress is laid on the 
 "secret," on dying, because this was Christ's secret, 
 because the heart of the matter is indeed here. And 
 as we shall do well to have always the " secret " 
 in our minds when Jesus talks of " the living water," 
 " the bread of life," so it is of the possession of this 
 same secret that Paul is. specially thinking when he 
 talks of " counting all things but loss for the excellency 
 of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my .Lord ; " 5 or when 
 he says : " God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
 cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is 
 crucified unto me, and I unto the world /" 6 
 
 And the evidence of joy which testifies to the 
 1 2 Cor. v. 17. 
 
 2 Thy ira\a.ibv 8.v6puirov, rbv <f>6eip6/jievov Kara rets eiriOvfjia.^ rfy 
 
 . Eph. iv. 22. 
 
 3 Gal. ii. 19 ; Philipp. iii. 10 ; 2 Cor. iv. 10. 
 
 4 GaL iv. 19. B Philipp. iii. 8. 6 Gal. vi. 14.
 
 viii.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 237 
 
 salvation there is in Jesus and in his secret, and the 
 sense of " not ourselves " which fills this joy with awe 
 and gratitude, and makes it religious to the core, who 
 has rendered them like Paul? "Rejoice evermore!" 
 "Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I say, rejoice/" 
 " Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing!" "As the sufferings 
 of Christ abound with us, so through Christ abounds 
 also the consolation." "The unsearchable riches of 
 Christ!" " IHw shall separate us from tlie love of 
 Christ?" "0 the depth of the riches both of the 
 wisdom and knowledge of God !" " It is God that 
 worketh in you, both to will and to do, of his good 
 pleasure." "He that glorieth, let him glory in the 
 Eternal/" 1 
 
 All this is in Paul. And there is, besides, the 
 Aberglaube, or extra-belief, of the bodily resurrection, 
 of Christ's second advent during the lifetime of men 
 then living; 2 there is the Calvinistical God "willing to 
 show his wrath and to make his power known by 
 vessels of wrath fitted to destruction ; " 3 there is the 
 Rabbinical logic, and the unsound use of prophecy and 
 of the Old Testament. For popular theology the 
 writings of Paul are a fatal rock ; because they are 
 the products of a mind that was constantly growing, 
 and because they affect the forms of logic and science 
 which a complete notional system adopts, while their 
 true character and force is that of an approximative 
 experience. So the mechanical theory of inspiration 
 
 1 1 Thess. v. 16 ; Philipp. iv. 4 ; 2 Cor. vi. 10 ; Ibid. i. 5 ; 
 Eph. iii. 8 ; Rom. viii. 35 ; Ibid. xi. 33 ; Philipp. ii 13 ; 1 
 Cor. i 31. a 1 Thess. iv. 15. 3 Rom. ix. 22.
 
 238 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 makes strange work indeed with Paul's writings. 
 They are, however, to those who can use them 
 aright, inexhaustible, not only in their power of 
 animation and edification, but also in their illustra- 
 tion of the genuine doctrine of Jesus. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The author of the Fourth Gospel passes for the 
 author of the epistle which we call the First Epistle of 
 St. John ; at any rate, the Epistle is written by one 
 who had the ideas of this Gospel moving his mind. 
 We of course, therefore, might expect that the Epistle 
 should tally with the Gospel. And so it does ; only 
 it upholds, one may say, in a certain very important 
 respect, the doctrine of Jesus against the Fourth 
 Gospel itself. 
 
 We have seen how the author of this Gospel had 
 a leaning to metaphysics ; so that he delights M. 
 Burnouf by showing a quite Indo-European turn for 
 making God into a metaphysical source of things, 
 such as is not unworthy, perhaps, of being called a 
 cosmic unity ; and Jesus into the Logos, necessarily 
 related, by some lofty metaphysical law or other, to 
 this cosmic unity. But presently came the Gnostics, 
 still more full of the Aryan genius, and still more 
 admired by M. Burnouf ; full of religion's being a 
 knowing rather than a doing, a metaphysical conception 
 rather than righteousness. And, in fact, as we have 
 said already, it may well seem wonderful that so 
 great a thing as religion should be taken up with so
 
 vin. J THE EAKLY WITNESSES. 239 
 
 simple a thing as conduct ; or that Jesus Christ should 
 say, that he who receives the kingdom of God as a little 
 child, that is, who simply receives it as concerned 
 with this simple matter, the same is the greatest in 
 that kingdom. 1 Jesus Christ does say so, however; 
 and no one who had lived with him, and felt his 
 influence, could doubt that so it was. But the 
 Gnostics, who had not lived with him, did not think 
 thus ; and they naturally imagined that a man who 
 was right about such grand things as the cosmic unity, 
 and the pleroma, and emanation, and personality, and 
 consubstantiality, and the like, must have true reli- 
 gion and be the perfect man. And they naturally 
 imagined, too, that the Christ, the Saviour of the 
 world, could not have been anything so unmetaphy- 
 sical, so unworthy of the cosmic unity, as a mere man 
 with flesh and blood ; and the Docetce, or Appari- 
 tionists, taught accordingly that Jesus had been an 
 apparition or phantom, not a man at all The writings 
 of the Apostles can hardly be understood unless we 
 know that very often they are alluding to these 
 Gnostics and their productions, which had even at 
 that early time their successful beginnings. 
 
 Now, the author of the Fourth Gospel had a turn, 
 as we have seen, for metaphysics, and the author of 
 the First Epistle of St. John shows a conversance 
 with the ideas of the Fourth Gospel. But a man in 
 vital contact with Jesus and cdetheia, knew what 
 reality was, the reality of Jesus, too well, to carry Ilia 
 play of metaphysics into the domain of that reality. 
 1 Matthew xviii. 3, 4.
 
 240 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 And by a sort of compensation, glorious indeed to the 
 writer, still more glorious to the power of Jesua 
 Christ's word, the two great points of that close 
 cousin of the Fourth Gospel, that document which we 
 call the First Epistle of St. John, are these : Jesus 
 Christ come in the flesh ! and : He that- doeth righteous- 
 ness is righteous/ l Jesus is no metaphysical phantom, 
 but a living man having to do with conduct. Eeligion 
 is no intellectualism, but righteousness. Here we 
 have the substratum as Jesus laid it : righteousness. 
 
 And we have also the "method" of conscience, 
 which tells us what righteousness is, and how great it 
 is, and that it is indeed the substratum. " Ye have 
 an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all 
 things; the unction which ye received from him 
 abideth in you, and ye need not that any one should 
 teach you, but his unction teacheth you of all things, 
 and is true and is no lie, and as he taught you, abide 
 ye in him!" 2 
 
 It is characteristic of this beautiful soul, the source 
 of our Epistle, that he does not go into detail and give 
 lists of faults. He has fixed the method, conscience, 
 and the subject-matter of the method, righteousness; 
 and that is enough. It is characteristic, in like 
 manner, that he states and restates the " secret " of 
 Jesus by its positive and loveliest side. The " method" 
 gives us light, and the "secret" gives us the power of 
 "walking in the light;" and, "If we walk in the light, 
 we have fellowship one with another." 3 For to live by 
 
 1 1 John iv. 2 ; iii. 7. 
 * Ibid. ii. 20, 27. 3 Ibid. i. 7-
 
 Tin.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 241 
 
 dying to our life in this world is to transfer the 
 natural love of life from the personal self to the 
 impersonal self, the self that we share with all other 
 men ; so that to die to oneself is to love the brethren^ 
 and by this side is the secret of Jesus always in our 
 Epistle presented. "Let us love one another f" "We 
 know that we have passed from death to life because 
 we love the brethren." 1 
 
 And it agrees with what we have seen in the 
 Fourth Gospel of the author's ear for Christ's pro- 
 founder teaching, that in the Epistle, too, we find the 
 proof of God, of Christ, and of eternal life, made 
 experimental, rested on internal evidence. "No man 
 hath ever yet seen God ; if we love one another, God 
 dwelleth in us." 2 Therefore we must not attempt to 
 define God adequately, or in a way that goes beyond 
 our experience, to say, like our theologians : God is 
 a person/ but we define God approximately, according 
 to our actual experience of him. And as Jesus had 
 said of this infinite not ourselves, " God is an influence," 
 so our Epistler says, "God is love." 3 And he says 
 indifferently, " He that loveth is born of God," and, 
 " He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born 
 of God," 4 because believing that Jesus is the Christ 
 means, mainly, admitting the authority of his message 
 or secret, and his secret is : Love one another I And 
 God's evidence for his Son is this : " The eternal life 
 which God gives us, this life is in his Son." 5 That is : 
 in righteousness we have the sense of being truly 
 
 1 1 John, iv. 7 ; iii. 14. ' Ibid. iv. 12. 
 
 3 Ibid. iv. 16. 4 Ibid. iy. 7 ; v. I. 5 Ibid. v. 11. 
 VOL. V. R
 
 242 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 alive, and through the method, secret, and sweet 
 reasonableness of Jesus, and only through these, we 
 get at righteousness. 
 
 As in the Fourth Gospel, and indeed in all the 
 Gospels, the joy, which is the signal accompaniment 
 of life, is in our Epistle strongly marked : " These 
 things write I unto you, that your joy may be full." 1 
 And the not ourselves, that element wherein religion 
 has its being : " Herein is love, not that we loved God, 
 but that he loved us ; we love, because he first loved 
 us ! " 2 As we did not make the law of righteousness, 
 so we did not, the writer means, make " the fulfilling 
 of the law," which is love. It arises in us from the 
 way the not ourselves affects us. 
 
 In our Epistle, the Aberglaube of the approaching 
 second advent appears, of course, prominently ; not 
 so that of Christ's physical resurrection. On the 
 other hand, there are here launched phrases destined 
 to rank one day as foremost texts for the doctrine 
 of the Atonement : " The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses 
 us from all sin ;" " He is the propitiation for our sins." 3 
 No development is given to them. How much in 
 them is figure, how much is tenet or the commence- 
 ments of tenet, we cannot say ; but there they are, 
 they are launched, and the hint is given to popular 
 religion to materialise and blunder with. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Epistle attributed to St. James, and the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, though not of equal import 
 1 1 John L 4. 2 Ibid. iv. 10, 19. s Ibid. i. 7 ; ii 2,
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 243 
 
 ance with the documents we have been reviewing, 
 suggest, nevertheless, two or three remarks. The 
 zeal of St James for works carries us back to Jesus 
 Christ's sentence : " If thou wouldst enter into life, 
 keep the commandments/" 1 It is the voice of the 
 indestructible sense in the writer that with Jesus 
 righteousness was always the end and aim. The 
 opposition to St. Paul, of which so much has been 
 said, does not really exist; with both Apostles the 
 aim is identical, righteousness. Only Paul observed 
 righteousness to be in danger from men using the 
 Jewish law as a kind of spell which they could con- 
 jure mechanically with, and therefore he elevated the 
 faith by which we get hold of the " secret " of Jesus, 
 of the "doctrine of the cross." James, in his turn, 
 observed righteousness being in danger from men 
 using faith, as it may easily be used, as a spell or 
 charm to conjure mechanically with; and therefore 
 he elevated works, the being a doer, not an idle hearer 
 and talker. But his noble expression, "If a man 
 offend in one point, he is guilty of all ! " and his calling 
 the law which he had in view, "the law of liberty," 2 
 proves sufficiently that in no unsound sense did he 
 elevate works, as Paul in no unsound sense elevated 
 faith. 
 
 The matter whereon the " secret " of Jesus finds 
 exercise, " the wishes of the flesh and of the current 
 thoughts," is well called by St. James : " Our pleasures 
 which war in our members." 3 And when he goes on 
 and says : " Being in with the world is being out with 
 1 Matt. xix. 17. 2 James ii. 10 ; L 25. 3 James iv. 1.
 
 244 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 God ! " l he has on his lips, and in his thoughts too, 
 the very words of the " secret " : " He that hateth his 
 life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." For 
 he means, not as many readers suppose : " He that 
 stands well with the world stands ill with God ; " he 
 means : "He that is in with the pleasures which war 
 in our members, is out with God." 
 
 But we must not dwell at length on this writer, 
 instructive as he is, and ill as he has been often judged. 
 In fineness or richness of spiritual perception his 
 Epistle may be inferior to other Epistles; without 
 undue disparagement of him we can own this. All 
 the more remarkable, as a testimony to what was 
 chiefly striking in Jesus Christ, is his signalling and 
 extolling that character in Christianity into which 
 fineness of perception enters most : epieikeia. " The 
 wisdom from above," says St. James, "is sweetly 
 reasonable." 2 
 
 It is more difficult to limit ourselves in speaking of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews. Almost alone in the 
 Bible, it is, like later theology, a notional work as 
 distinguished from an experimental work. That is, 
 instead of being found to run up, at last, into an 
 experience of the Eternal that makes for righteousness, 
 it will be found to run up into a notion of Jesus 
 being the Logos, with the characters of the Logos as 
 they are stated, for instance, in Philo; and of this 
 being provable from Scripture and putting an end to 
 the old Jewish dispensation. And because of this 
 
 1 'H <f>i\la rov K6ffnov txOpa rod Qeov iarlv. James iv. 4. 
 a James iii. 17.
 
 VIII.] THE EARLY WITNESSES. 245 
 
 notional character, later theology has so much used 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and is really in great part 
 built on it. For later theology is notional, too ; " the 
 blessed truth that the God of the Universe is a 
 PERSON," is just such a notion as the ground-thesis of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Jesus is the Logos of 
 Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy. Eeligion has nothing 
 really to do with either thesis, and that is fortunate ; 
 for neither thesis is demonstrable, and the demonstra- 
 tions attempted are often palpably hollow. For 
 instance, the whole of the first chapter of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews is an allegation of text after text 
 as meaning Jesus, and as therefore establishing the 
 writer's thesis, not one of which texts does really 
 mean Jesus. The seventh chapter, again, is one tissue 
 of clever, learned trifling, all based on the false 
 assumption that " Thou art a priest for ever after the 
 order of Melchisedek ! " was really said to Jesus, 
 whereas it was not. 
 
 Now, just because of this notional character, the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews could not have been St. 
 Paul's; for St. Paul goes upon experience, not notion. 
 And such a work can never have the value and inter- 
 est of Paul's writings, for it is, in truth, all in the air. 
 But a man who puts a hollow notion as the basis of 
 his theology, may yet in treating it give us all kinds 
 of real and valuable experience; of this we have 
 abundant examples in the writings of theologians. 
 And so the Epistle to the Hebrews is full of beautiful 
 things, and things of real religious experience ; but 
 they are independent of the ground -thesis of the
 
 246 LITERATURE AND DOGMA, [CHAP. 
 
 Epistle, their value has another source than the value 
 of the writer's main design, and indeed is often marred 
 by it. Their value is as reminiscences of Jesus, and 
 their witness to Jesus is the more striking because of 
 the medium where they appear. To have survived 
 and appear in such a medium, they must have been 
 originally very strong. 
 
 The sense that in righteousness religion begins 
 and ends, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 has not. He talks of " not laying again the founda- 
 tions," by which he means righteousness, but " going 
 on unto perfection ;" 1 by which he means such things 
 as the doctrine that Jesus Christ is, like the Logos of 
 theosophy, High Priest, and as the demonstration 
 about Melchisedek. All this is of the same order 
 with the " blessed truth that the God of the universe 
 is a PERSON," which our bishops imagine to be the 
 marrow of religion, whereas in truth it is not religion 
 at all. But it is remarkable how frequently the 
 writer of our Epistle has the word of the "method," 
 conscience. Again and again it recurs with him ; 
 nowhere in the Bible does it appear, within equal 
 limits of space, so often. The word has evidently 
 established itself and become a power. 
 
 But most remarkable is the testimony of this 
 writer to the "secret." His view of the sacrifice of 
 Christ as replacing the sacrifices of the Jewish law is 
 all notional, and is really quite independent of Christ's 
 sacrifice as the "secret." Yet the "secret" appears; 
 and in phrases so striking and so much profounder 
 1 Hebrews vi. 1.
 
 VIII.] THE EAKLY WITNESSES. 247 
 
 than the strain of this writer's argument, that one is 
 tempted to see in them a tradition of words, not 
 otherwise preserved, of Jesus himself. " It behoved 
 God, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the leader 
 of their salvation perfect through suffering" 1 Christ 
 " learned obedience from the things that he suffered, and, 
 being perfected, became the author of eternal salvation 
 to all who obey him." 2 Christ, like mankind, partook 
 of flesh and blood, " in order that by death he might 
 deliver them wJw through fear of death were all their life 
 subject to bondage." 3 This is precisely the "secret." 
 The pain and fear and gloom of dying to our appar- 
 ent self, to " the wishes of the flesh and the current 
 thoughts" are so great, that only Jesus and his 
 " secret," lighting the process up with joy by show- 
 ing it to be really life not death, could overcome 
 them, and could enable mankind to overcome them. 
 In like manner the noble phrase, " without shedding of 
 blood is no remission," 4 notional and unfruitful as is its 
 use in the connection where our author employs it, 
 is in itself, perhaps, a reminiscence of actual words of 
 Jesus ; certainly it is a reminiscence of his " secret." 
 In itself it ranks with the beautiful and profound 
 phrase of St. Peter : "He that suffers in the flesh hath 
 ceased from sin." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Finally, in the ardour for martyrdom which followed 
 in the Christian Church a little later, in the passion 
 
 1 Heb. ii. 10 * Heb< iv ^ 9 
 
 3 Heb. ii. 14, 15. Heb. ix. 22.
 
 248 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. TCHAP. VHL 
 
 for seeking out this kind of death, courting it, pro 
 yoking it by every means discoverable, we shall not 
 err if we believe that there is again visible the trace 
 of the "secret." Assuredly many martyrs, in the 
 temper with which they provoked their death, were 
 false to the epieikeia, the sweet reasonableness," of 
 Jesus, and laid themselves open to that sentence of 
 Paul, the sentence which will be the final verdict of 
 religious history on Puritanism also, Puritanism 
 glorying in its resistances : " Though I give my body 
 to be burned, and have not chanty, it profiteth me 
 nothing." 1 And there was nothing to command or 
 advise the repetition, upon every disciple, of the actual 
 bodily execution of Jesus. But Jesus had enjoined 
 dying, taking up the cross, the "secret;" a long 
 inward travail, other, and often much harder, than 
 being once for all executed. Paul still understood 
 what Jesus meant by dying. But the apostolic age 
 passed ; and now the Christian community took the 
 word literally, and Christians vied with each other 
 which should run fastest to the place of execution. 
 The wonderful spectacle accelerated Christianity's 
 conquest of the world; but it was already an evi- 
 dence of failure, in some sort, to follow the mind of 
 Jesus and the teaching of his greatest apostles. Yet 
 a little while is the light with you! walk while ye Jiave the 
 light, lest the darkness overtake you unawares 1 2 
 
 1 Cor. xiii. 3 John xii. 35.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 
 
 So spoke the men who had had the Light with them 
 or near them. Mistakes they made and could not 
 but make. But they still knew, that to believe Jesus 
 to be the Son of God, meant to receive and apply the 
 method and secret of Jesus ; and therefore their word 
 is the Christian's greatest source of instruction and 
 inspiration after the word of Jesus Christ himself. 
 
 But miracles, and the crowning miracles of the 
 Resurrection and Ascension to be followed by the 
 second Advent, were from the first firmly fixed as 
 parts of the disciples' belief, " Behold, he cometh with 
 clouds ; and every eye shall see him, and they also which 
 pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail 
 because of him / !>1 As time went on, and Christianity 
 spread wider and wider among the multitudes, and 
 with less and less of control from the personal influ- 
 ence of Jesus, Christianity developed more and more 
 its side of miracle and legend ; until to believe Jesus 
 to be the Son of God meant to believe the points of 
 the legend, his preternatural conception and birth, 
 1 Revelation i. 7.
 
 250 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 his miracles, his descent into hell, his bodily resurrec- 
 tion, his ascent into heaven, and his future triumphant 
 return to judgment. And these and like matters are 
 what popular religion drew forth from the records of 
 Jesus as the essentials of belief. These essentials got 
 embodied in a short formulary; and so the creed 
 which is called the Apostles' Creed came together. 
 
 It is not the apostles' creed, for it took more than 
 five hundred years to grow to maturity. It was not 
 the creed of any single doctor or body of doctors, but 
 it was a sort of summary of Christianity which the 
 people, the church at large, would naturally develop: 
 it is the popular science of Christianity. Given the 
 alleged charge : " Go ye and teach all nations, baptiz- 
 ing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Spirit," 1 and the candidate for baptism would 
 naturally come to have a profession of faith to make 
 respecting that whereinto he was baptized ; this pro- 
 fession of faith would naturally become just such a 
 summary as the Apostles' Creed. It contains no 
 mention of either the "method" or the "secret," it is 
 occupied entirely with external facts ; and it may be 
 safely said, not only that such a summary of religious 
 faith could never have been delivered by Jesus, but it 
 could never have been adopted as adequate by any of 
 his principal apostles, by Peter, or Paul, or John. But 
 it is, as we have said, the popular science of Christianity. 
 
 Years proceeded. The world came in to Christian- 
 ity ; the world, and the world's educated people, and 
 the educated people's Aryan genius with its turn for 
 1 Matthew xxviii. 19-
 
 ix.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 251 
 
 making religion a metaphysical conception ; and all 
 this in a time of declining criticism, a time when the 
 possibility of true scientific criticism, in any direction 
 whatever, was lessening rather than increasing. The 
 popular science was found not elaborate enough to 
 satisfy. Ingenious men took its terms and its data, 
 and applied to them, not an historical criticism show- 
 ing how they arose, but abstruse metaphysical con- 
 ceptions. And so we have the so-called Nicene 
 Creed, which is the learned science of Christianity, as 
 the Apostles' Creed is the popular science. 
 
 Now, how this learned science is related to the 
 Bible we shall feel, if we compare the religious 
 utterances of its doctors with the religious utterances 
 of the Bible. Suppose, for instance, we compare with 
 the Psalms the Soliloquies of St. Augustine, a truly 
 great and religious man ; and of St. Augustine, not 
 in school and controversy, but in religious soliloquy. 
 St. Augustine prays : " Come to my help, thou one 
 God, one eternal true substance, where is no discre- 
 . pancy, no confusion, no transience, no indigency, no 
 death ; where is supreme concord, supreme evidence, 
 supreme constancy, supreme plenitude, supreme life; 
 where nothing is lacking, nothing is over and above ; 
 where he who begets and he who is begotten of him 
 are one ; God, above whom is nothing, outside whom 
 is nothing, without whom is nothing; God, beneath 
 whom is the whole, in whom is the whole, with whom 
 is the whole . . . hearken, hearken, hearken unto 
 me, my God, my Lord ; open thy door unto me 
 that knock !" And a further Book of Soliloquies,
 
 252 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 popularly ascribed to St Augustine and printed with 
 his works, but probably of a later date and author, 
 shows the full-blown development of all this, showa 
 the inevitable results of bringing to the idea of God 
 this play of the intellectual fancy so alien to the 
 Bible. The passages we will quote take evidently 
 their inspiration from the words of St. Augustine 
 just given, and retain even in some degree his very 
 forms of expression : " Holy Trinity, superadmirable 
 Trinity, and superinenarrable, and superinscrutable, 
 and superinaccessible, super-incomprehensible, super- 
 intelligible, superessential, superessentially surpassing 
 all sense, all reason, all intellect, all intelligence, all 
 essence of supercelestial minds ; which can neither be 
 said, nor thought, nor understood, nor known, even 
 by the eyes of angels !" And again, more practically, 
 but still in the same style : "0 three co-equal and 
 co-eternal Persons, one and true God, Father and Son 
 and Holy Ghost, whb by thyself inhabitest eternity 
 and light inaccessible, who hast founded the earth in 
 thy power, and rulest the world by thy prudence, 
 Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, terrible and 
 strong, just and merciful, admirable, laudable, amiable, 
 one God, three persons, one essence, power, wisdom, 
 goodness, one and undivided Trinity, open unto me 
 that cry unto Thee the gates of righteousness !" 
 
 And now compare this with the Bible : " Teach 
 me to do the thing that pleaseth thee, for thou art my God! 
 let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of righteous- 
 ness / " J That is Israel's way of praying ! that is how 
 1 Psalm cxliii. 10.
 
 IX.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 253 
 
 a poor ill-endowed Semite, belonging to the occipital 
 races, unhelped by the Aryan genius and ignorant 
 that religion is a metaphysical conception, talks reli- 
 gion ! and we see what a different thing he makes 
 of it. 
 
 But, finally, the original Semite fell more and more 
 into the shade. The Aryans came to the front, the 
 notion of religion being a metaphysical conception 
 prevailed. But the doctors differed in their meta- 
 physics ; and the doctors who conquered enshrined 
 their victorious form of metaphysics in a creed, the 
 so-called Creed of St. Athanasius, which is learned 
 science like the Nicene Creed, but learned science 
 which has fought and got ruffled by fighting, and is 
 fiercely dictatorial now that it has won ; learned 
 science with a strong dash of violent and vindictive temper. 
 Thus we have the three creeds : the so-called Apostles' 
 Creed, popular science; the Nicene Creed, learned 
 science; the Athanasian Creed, learned science with 
 a strong dash of temper. And the two latter are 
 founded on the first, taking its data just as they 
 stand, but dressing them metaphysically. 
 
 Now this first Creed is founded on a supposed 
 final charge from Jesus to his apostles : " Go ye and 
 teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost I" 1 It explains 
 and expands what Jesus here told his apostles to 
 baptize the world into. But we have already re- 
 marked the difference in character between the 
 narrative in the Gospels, of what happened before 
 1 Matthew xxviii. 19.
 
 254 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Christ's death and the narrative of what happened 
 after it. For all words of Jesus placed after his 
 death, the internal evidence becomes pre-eminently 
 important. He may well have said words attributed 
 to him, but not then. So the speech to Thomas : 
 " Because thou hast seen me thou hast believed ; 
 blessed are they who have not seen and yet have 
 believed!" 1 may quite well have been a speech of 
 Jesus uttered on some occasion during his life, and 
 then transferred to the story of the days after his 
 resurrection and made the centre of this incident of 
 the doubt of Thomas. On the other hand, again, 
 the prophecy of the details of Peter's death 2 is 
 almost certainly an addition after the event, because 
 it is not at all in the manner of Jesus. What is in 
 his manner, and what he had probably said, are the 
 words given elsewhere : " Whither I go thou canst 
 not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me after- 
 wards." 3 So, too, it is extremely improbable that 
 Jesus should have ever charged his apostles to "baptize 
 all nations in the name of. the Father, the Son, and 
 the Holy Ghost." There is no improbability in his 
 investing them with a very high commission. He 
 may perfectly well have said : " Whosesoever sins ye 
 remit, they are remitted ; whosesoever sins ye retain, 
 they are retained." 4 But it is almost impossible he 
 can have given this charge to baptize in the name of 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; it is by 
 far too systematic, and what people are fond of calling 
 
 1 John xx. 29. 2 John xxi. 18. 
 
 John xiii. 36, 4 John xx. 23.
 
 ix.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 255 
 
 an anachronism. It is not the least like what Jesus 
 was in the habit of saying, and it is just like what 
 would be attributed to him as baptism and its formula 
 grew in importance. The genuine charge of Jesus to 
 his apostles was, almost certainly : " As my Father 
 sent me, even so send I you," 1 and not this. So 
 that our three creeds, and with them the whole of 
 our so-called orthodox theology, are founded upon 
 words which Jesus in all probability never uttered. 
 
 II. 
 
 We may leave all questions about the Church, its 
 rise, and its organisation, out of sight altogether. 
 Much as is made of them, they are comparatively 
 unimportant Jesus never troubled himself with 
 what are called Church matters at all ; his attention 
 was fixed solely upon the individual. His apostles 
 did what was necessary, as such matters came to 
 require a practical notice and arrangement ; but to 
 the apostles, too, they were still quite secondary. The 
 Church grew into something quite different from what 
 they or Jesus had, or could have had, any thought 
 of. But this was of no importance in itself ; and how 
 believers should organise their society as circumstances 
 changed, circumstances themselves might very well 
 decide. 
 
 The one important question was and is, how 
 believers laid and kept hold on the revelations con- 
 tained in the Bible ; because for the sake of these it 
 1 John xx. 22.
 
 256 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 confessedly is, that every church exists. Even the 
 apostles, we have seen, did not lay hold on them 
 perfectly. In their attachment to miracles, in the 
 prominence they gave to the crowning miracles of 
 Christ's bodily resurrection and second advent, they 
 went aside from the saving doctrine of Jesus them- 
 selves, and were sure, which was worse, to make 
 others go aside from it ten thousand times more. 
 But they were too near to Jesus not to have been 
 able to preserve the main lines of his teaching, to 
 preserve his way of using words ; and they did, as 
 we have shown, preserve them. 
 
 But at their death the immediate remembrance of 
 Jesus faded away, and whatever Aberglaube the 
 apostles themselves had had and sanctioned was left 
 to work without check. And, at the same time, the 
 world and society presented conditions constantly less 
 and less favourable to sane criticism. And it was 
 then, and under these conditions, that the dogma 
 which is now called orthodox, and which our dogmatic 
 friends imagine to be purqly a methodical arrange- 
 ment of the admitted facts of Christianity, grew up. 
 We have shown from the thing itself, by putting the 
 dogma in comparison with the genuine teaching of 
 Jesus, how little it is this; but it is well to make 
 clear to oneself also (for one can) from the circum- 
 stances of the case, that it could not be this. 
 
 For dogmatic theology is, in fact, an attempt at 
 both literary and scientific criticism of the highest 
 order ; and the age which developed dogma had 
 neither the resources nor the faculty for such a
 
 ix.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 257 
 
 criticism. It is idle to talk of the theological in- 
 stinct, the analogy of faith, as if by the mere occupa- 
 tion with a limited subject-matter one could reach 
 the truth about it. It is as if one imagined that by 
 the mere study of Greek we could reach the truth 
 about the origin of Greek words, and dogmatise 
 about them ; and could appeal to our supposed 
 possession, through our labours, of the philological 
 instinct, the analogy of language, to make our dog- 
 matism go down. In general such an instinct, 
 whether theological or philological, will mean merely, 
 that, having accustomed ourselves to look at things 
 through a glass of a certain colour, we see them always 
 of that colour. What the science of Bible-criticism, 
 like all other science, needs, is a very wide experience 
 from comparative observation in many directions, and 
 a very slowly acquired habit of mind. All studies 
 have the benefit of these guides, when they exist, and 
 one isolated study can never have the benefit of them 
 by itself. There is a common order, a general level, 
 an uniform possibility, for these things. As were 
 the geography, history, physiology, cosmology, of 
 the men who developed dogma, so was also their 
 faculty for a scientific Bible-criticism, such as dogma 
 pretends to be. Now we know what their geography, 
 history, physiology, cosmology, were. Cosmas Indico- 
 pleustes, a Christian navigator of Justinian's time, 
 denies that the earth is spherical, and asserts it to be 
 a flat surface with the sky put over it like a dish- 
 cover. The Christian metaphysics of the same age, 
 applying the ideas of substance and identity to what 
 VOL. V. S
 
 258 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 the Bible says about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, 
 are on a par with this natural philosophy. 
 
 And again, as one part of their scientific Bible- 
 criticism, so the rest. We have seen in the Bible- 
 writers themselves a quite uncritical use of the Old 
 Testament and of prophecy. Now, does this become 
 less in the authors of our dogmatic theology, a far 
 more pretentious effort of criticism than the Bible- 
 writers ever made, or does it become greater? It 
 becomes a thousand times greater. Not only are 
 definite predictions found where they do not exist, 
 as, for example, in Isaiah's / will restore thy judges as 
 at the first, 1 is found a definite foretelling of the 
 Apostles, but in the whole Bible a secret allegorical 
 ^ense is supposed, higher than the natural sense ; so 
 that Jerome calls tracing the natural sense an eating 
 dust like the serpent, in modum serpentis terram come- 
 dere. Therefore, for one expounder, Isaiah's prophecy 
 against Egypt : The Eternal rideth upon a light cloud, 
 and shall come into Egypt, 2 is the flight into Egypt of 
 the Holy Family, and tha light cloud is the virgin-born 
 body of Jesus; for another, The government sJiall be 
 upon his shoulder, 3 is Christ's carrying upon his shoulder 
 the cross ; for another, The lion shall eat straw like the 
 ox,* is the faithful and the wicked alike receiving the 
 body of Christ in the Eucharist. 
 
 These are the men, this is the critical faculty, from 
 which our so-called orthodox dogma proceeded. The 
 worth of all the productions of such a critical faculty 
 
 1 Isaiah i. 26. 
 2 Isaiah xix. 1. 3 Isaiah ix. 6. 4 Isaiah Ixv. 25.
 
 IX.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 259 
 
 is easy to estimate, for the worth is nearly uniform. 
 When the Babbinical expounders interpret : Woe unto 
 them tJiat lay field to field ! l as a prophetic curse on 
 the accumulation of Church property, or : Woe unto 
 them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow 
 strong drink / 2 as a prediction of the profligacy of the 
 Church clergy, or : Woe unto them that draw iniquity 
 with cords of vanity ! 3 as God's malediction on Church 
 bells, we say at once that such critics thus give their 
 measure as interpreters of the true sense of the 
 Bible. The moment we think seriously and fairly, 
 we must see that the Patristic interpretations of 
 prophecy give, in like manner, their author's measure 
 as interpreters of the true sense of the Bible. Yet 
 this is what the dogma of the Nicene and Athanasian 
 Creeds professes to be, and must be if it is to be 
 worth anything, the true sense extracted from the Bible ; 
 for, " the Bible is the record of the whole revealed 
 faith," says Dr. Newman. But we see how impos- 
 sible it is that this true sense the dogma of these 
 creeds should be. 
 
 Therefore it is, that it is useful to give signal 
 instances of the futility of patristic and mediaeval 
 criticism ; not to raise an idle laugh, but because our 
 whole dogmatic theology has a patristic and mediaeval 
 source, and from the nullity of the deliverances of 
 this criticism, where it can be brought manifestly to 
 book, may be inferred the nullity of its deliverances, 
 where, from the impalpable and incognisable character 
 of the subjects treated, to bring it manifestly to book 
 1 Isaiah v. 8. a Isaiah v. 11. 3 Isaiah v. 18.
 
 260 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 is impossible. In the account of the Creation, in the 
 first chapter of Genesis, " the greater light to rule 
 the day " is the priesthood ; " the lesser light to rule 
 the night," 1 borrowing its beams from the greater, 
 is the Holy Eoman Empire. When the disciples of 
 Jesus produced two swords, and Jesus said : "It is 
 enough," 2 he meant, we are told, the temporal and 
 the spiritual power, and that both were necessary 
 and both at the disposal of the Church ; but by 
 saying afterwards to Peter, after he had cut off the 
 ear of Malchus : "Put up thy sword into the sheath," 3 
 he meant that the Church was not to wield the 
 temporal power itself, but to employ the secular 
 government to wield it. Now, this is the very same 
 force of criticism which in the Athanasian Creed 
 " arranged sentence after sentence," that doctrine of 
 the Godhead of the Eternal Son for which the Bishops 
 of Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious to " do 
 something." 
 
 The Schoolmen themselves are but the same false 
 criticism developed, and clad in an apparatus of logic 
 and system. In that grand and instructive repertory 
 founded by the Benedictines, the Histoire Littdraire de 
 la France, we read that in the theological faculty of 
 the University of Paris, the leading mediaeval univer- 
 sity, it was seriously discussed Avhether Jesus at his 
 ascension had his clothes on or not. If he had not, 
 did he appear before his apostles naked 1 if he had, 
 what became of the clothes ? Monstrous ! every one 
 
 1 Genesis i. 16. 2 Luke xxii. 38. 
 
 3 John xviiL 11.
 
 IX.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 261 
 
 will say. 1 Yes, but the very same criticism, only 
 full-blown, which produced: "Neither confounding 
 the Persons nor dividing the Substance." The very 
 same criticism, which originally treated terms as 
 scientific which were not scientific ; which, instead of 
 applying literary and historical criticism to the data 
 of popular Aberglaube, took these data just as they 
 stood and merely dressed them scientifically. 
 
 Catholic dogma itself is true, urges, however, Dr. 
 Newman, because intelligent Catholics have dropped 
 errors and absurdities like the False Decretals or the 
 works of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite, but 
 have not dropped dogma. This is only saying that 
 men drop the more palpable blunder before the less 
 palpable. The adequate criticism of the Bible is 
 extremely difficult, and slowly does the " Zeit-Geist " 
 unveil it. Meanwhile, of the premature and false 
 criticism to which we are accustomed, we drop the 
 evidently weak parts first ; we retain the rest, to 
 drop it gradually and piece by piece as it loosens and 
 breaks up. But it is all of one order, and in time it 
 will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed's damnatory 
 clauses only, but the whole Creed ; not this one Creed 
 only, but the three Creeds, our whole received 
 application of science, popular or learned, to the Bible. 
 For it was an inadequate and false science, and could 
 not, from the nature of the case, be otherwise. 
 
 1 Be it observed, however, that there is an honest scientific 
 effort in the Schoolmen, and that to this sort of thing one 
 really does come, when one fairly sets oneself to treat miracles 
 litnrally and exactly ; but most of us are content to leave them 
 in a half light.
 
 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP 
 
 III. 
 
 And now we see how much that clergyman deceives 
 himself, who writes to the Guardian : " The objectors 
 to the Athanasian Creed at any rate admit, that its 
 doctrinal portions are truly the carefully distilled 
 essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture 
 on the deep mysteries in question, priceless dis- 
 coveries made in that field." When one has travelled 
 to the Athanasian Creed along the gradual line of 
 the historical development of Christianity, instead of 
 living stationary all one's life with this Creed blocking 
 up the view, one is really tempted to say, when one 
 reads a deliverance like that of this clergyman : 
 Sancta simplidtas ! It is just because the Athanasian 
 Creed pretends to be, in its doctrine, " the carefully 
 distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy 
 Scripture," and is so very far from it, that it is worth- 
 less. It is "the carefully distilled essence of the 
 scattered intimations of Holy Scripture " just as that 
 allegory of the two swords Was. It is really a mixture, 
 for true criticism, as it ripens, it is even a grotesque 
 mixture, of learned pseudo- science with popular 
 
 But it cannot be too carefully borne in mind that 
 the real "essence of Holy Scripture," its saving truth, 
 is no such criticism at all as the so-called orthodox 
 dogma attempts, and attempts unsuccessfully. No, 
 the real essence of Scripture is a much simpler matter. 
 It is, for the Old Testament : To him that ordereth hi"
 
 IX.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 263 
 
 .conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God ! 
 and, for the New Testament : Follow Jesus I This is 
 Bible -dogma, as opposed to the dogma of our for- 
 mularies. On this Bible -dogma if Churches were 
 founded, and to preach this Bible-dogma if ministers 
 were ordained, Churches and ministers would have 
 all the dogma to which the Bible attaches eternal life. 
 Plain and precise enough it is, in all conscience ; with 
 the advantage of being precisely right, whereas the 
 dogma of our formularies is precisely wrong. And if 
 any one finds it too simple, let him remember that its 
 hardness is practical, not speculative. It is a rule of 
 conduct; let him act it, and he will find it hard 
 enough. Utinam per unum diem bene essemus conversati 
 in hoc mundo ! But as a matter of mere knowledge it 
 is very simple, it lies on the surface of the Bible and 
 cannot be missed. 
 
 And the holders of ecclesiastical dogma have 
 always, we must repeat and remember, held and 
 professed this Bible-dogma too. Their ecclesiastical 
 dogma may have prevented their attending closely 
 enough to the Bible-dogma, may have led them often 
 to act false to it ; but they have always held it. The 
 method and the secret of Jesus have been always 
 prized. The Catholic Church from the first held aloft 
 the secret of Jesus ; the monastic orders were founded, 
 we may say, in homage to it. And from time to 
 time, through the course of ages, there have arisen 
 men who threw themselves on the method and secret 
 of Jesus with extraordinary force, with intuitive sense 
 that here was salvation; and who really cared for
 
 264 LITERATURE AND DOGMA [CHAP 
 
 nothing else, though ecclesiastical dogma, too, they 
 professed to believe, and sincerely thought they did 
 believe, but their heart was elsewhere. These are 
 they who "received the kingdom of God as a little 
 child," who perceived how simple a thing Christianity 
 was, though so inexhaustible, and who are therefore 
 " the greatest in the kingdom of God." And they, 
 not the theological doctors, are the true lights of the 
 Christian Church; not Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, 
 Butler, but the nameless author of the Imitation, but 
 Tauler, but St. Francis of Sales, Wilson of Sodor and 
 Man. Yet not only these men, but the whole body of 
 Christian churches and sects always, have all at least 
 professed the method and secret of Jesus, and to some 
 extent used them. And whenever these were used, 
 they have borne their natural fruits of joy and life ; 
 and this joy and this life have been taken to flow 
 from the ecclesiastical dogma held along with them, 
 and to sanction and prove it. And people, eager to 
 praise the bridge which carried them over from death 
 to life, have taken this dogma for the bridge, or part 
 of the bridge, that carried them over, and have eagerly 
 praised it. Thus religion has been made to stand on 
 its apex instead of its base. Eighteousness is sup- 
 ported on ecclesiastical dogma, instead of ecclesiastical 
 dogma being supported on righteousness. 
 
 But in the beginning it was not so. Because 
 righteousness is eternal, necessary, life-giving, therefore 
 the mighty " not ourselves which makes for righteous- 
 ness " was the Eternal, Israel's God ; was all-powerful, 
 all-merciful; sends his . Messiah, elects his people.
 
 ix.] ABERGLAUBE HE-INVADING. 265 
 
 establishes his kingdom, receives into everlasting 
 habitations. But gradually this petrifies, gradually 
 it is more and more added to ; until at last, because 
 righteousness was originally perceived to be eternal, 
 necessary, life-giving, we find ourselves " worshipping 
 One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither 
 confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance." 
 And then the original order is reversed. Because 
 there is One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, 
 who receives into everlasting habitations, establishes 
 his kingdom, elects his people, sends his Messiah, is 
 all-merciful, all-powerful, Israel's God, the Eternal, 
 therefore righteousness is eternal, necessary, life-giving. 
 And shake the belief in the One God in Trinity and 
 Trinity in Unity, the belief in righteousness is shaken, 
 it is thought, also. Whereas righteousness and the 
 God of righteousness, the God of the Bible, are in 
 truth quite independent of the God of ecclesiastical 
 dogma, the work of critics of the Bible, critics 
 understanding neither what they say nor whereof 
 they affirm 
 
 IV. 
 
 Nor did the Reformation and Protestantism much 
 mend the work of these critics ; the time was not yet 
 ripe for it. Protestantism, nevertheless, was a stren- 
 uous and noble effort at improvement ; for it was an 
 effort of return to the "method" of Jesus, that 
 leaven which never, since he set it in the world, has 
 ceased or can cease to work Catholicism, we have 
 said, laid hold on the " secret " of Jesus, and stren
 
 266 LITEKATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 uously, however blindly, employed it; this is the 
 grandeur and the glory of Catholicism. In like 
 manner Protestantism laid hold on his "method," 
 and strenuously, however blindly, employed it; and 
 herein is the greatness of Protestantism. The pre- 
 liminary labour of inwardness and sincerity in the 
 conscience of each individual man, which was the 
 method of Jesus and his indispensable discipline for 
 learning to employ his secret aright, had fallen too 
 much out of view ; obedience had in a manner super- 
 seded it. Protestantism drew it into light and 
 prominence again ; was even, one may say, over- 
 absorbed by it, so as to leave too much out of view 
 the "secret." This, if one would be just both to 
 Catholicism and to Protestantism, is the thing to bear 
 in mind : Protestantism had hold of Jesus Christ's 
 " method" of inwardness and sincerity, Catholicism had 
 hold of his " secret " of self -renouncement. The chief 
 word with Protestantism is the word of the method : 
 repentance, conversion ; the chief word with Catholicism 
 is the word of the secret : peace, joy. 
 
 And since, though the method and the secret are 
 equally indispensable, the secret may be said to have 
 in it more of practice and conduct, Catholicism may 
 claim perhaps to have more of religion. On the 
 other hand, Protestantism has more light; and, as 
 the method of inwardness and sincerity, once gained, 
 is of general application, and a power for all the 
 purposes of life, Protestantism, we can see, has been 
 accompanied by most prosperity. And here is the 
 answer to Mr. Buckle's famous parallel between Spain
 
 ix.] ABERGLAUBE HE-INVADING. 267 
 
 and Scotland, that parallel which every one feels to be 
 a sophism. Scotland has had, to make her different 
 from Spain, the " method " of Jesus ; and though, in 
 theology, Scotland may have turned it to no great 
 account, she has found her account in it in almost 
 everything else. Catholicism, again, has had, perhaps, 
 most happiness. When one thinks of the bitter and 
 contentious temper of Puritanism, temper being, 
 nevertheless, such a vast part of conduct, and then 
 thinks of St. Theresa and her sweetness, her never- 
 sleeping hatred of " detraction," one is tempted almost 
 to say, that there was more of Jesus in St. Theresa's 
 little finger than in John Knox's whole body. Pro- 
 testantism has the method of Jesus with his secret 
 too much left out of mind ; Catholicism has his secret 
 with his method too much left out of mind. Neither 
 has his unerring balance, his intuition, his sweet 
 reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, 
 and get from it a great power. 
 
 And many of the reproaches cast by one on the 
 other are idle. If Catholicism is reproached with 
 being indifferent to much that is called civilisation, it 
 must be answered : So was Jesus. If Protestantism, 
 with its private judgment, is accused of opening a 
 wide field for individual fancies and mistakes, it must 
 be answered : So did Jesus when he introduced his 
 method. Private judgment, " the fundamental and in- 
 sensate doctrine of Protestantism," as Joseph de Maistre 
 calls it, is in truth but the necessary " method," the 
 eternally incumbent duty, imposed by Jesus himself, 
 when he said : " Judge not according to the appear-
 
 268 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 ance, but judge righteous judgment." 1 "Judge 
 righteous judgment" is, however, the duty imposed; 
 and the duty is not, whatever many Protestants may 
 seem to think, fulfilled if the judgment be wrong. 
 But the duty of inwardly judging is the very entrance 
 into the way and walk of Jesus. 
 
 Luther, then, made an inward verifying move- 
 ment, the individual conscience, once more the base 
 of operations ; and he was right. But he did so to 
 the following extent only. When he found the 
 priest coming between the individual believer and his 
 conscience, standing to him in the stead of conscience, 
 he pushed the priest aside and brought the believer 
 face to face with his conscience again. This explains, 
 of course, his battle against the sale of indulgences 
 and other abuses of the like kind; but it explains 
 also his treatment of that cardinal point in the 
 Catholic religious system, the mass. He substituted 
 for it, as the cardinal point in the Protestant system, 
 justification by faith. The miracle of Jesus Christ's 
 atoning sacrifice, satisfying God's wrath, and taking 
 off the curse from mankind, is the foundation both of 
 the mass and of the famous Lutheran tenet. But, in 
 the mass, the priest makes the miracle over again and 
 applies its benefits to the believer. In the tenet of 
 justification, the believer is himself in contact with 
 the miracle of Christ's atonement, and applies Christ's 
 merits to himself. The conscience is thus brought 
 into direct communication with Christ's saving act ; 
 but this saving act is still taken, just as popular 
 1 John vii. 24.
 
 IX. J ABERGLATJBE RE-INVADING. 269 
 
 religion conceived it, and as formal theology adopted 
 it from popular religion, as a miracle, the miracle oi 
 the Atonement. This popular and imperfect con- 
 ception of the sense of Christ's death, and in general 
 the whole inadequate criticism of the Bible involved 
 in the Creeds, underwent at the Eeformation no 
 scrutiny and no change. Luther's actual application, 
 therefore, of the "method" of Jesus to the inner 
 body of dogma, developed as we have seen, which he 
 found regnant, proceeded no farther than this. 
 
 And. justification by faith, our being saved by "giving 
 our hearty consent to Christ's atoning work on our be- 
 half," by " pleading simply the blood of the covenant," 
 Luther made the essential matter not only of his own 
 religious system but of the entire New Testament. 
 We must be enabled, he said, and we are enabled, to 
 distinguish among the books of the Bible those which 
 are the best; now, those are the best which show 
 Christ, and teach what would be enough for us to 
 know even if no other parts of the Bible existed. 
 And this evangelical element, as it has been called, this 
 fundamental thought of the Gospel, is, for Luther, our 
 "being justified by the alone merits of Christ." This 
 is the doctrine of "passive or Christian righteous- 
 ness," as Luther is fond of naming it, which consists 
 in " doing nothing, but simply knowing and believing 
 that Christ is gone to the Father and we see him no 
 more ; that he sits in Heaven at the right hand of the 
 Father, not as our judge, but made unto us by God 
 wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ; 3 
 1 1 Corinthians i. 30.
 
 270 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 in sum, that he is our high-priest making intercession 
 for us." Every one will recognise the consecrated 
 watchwords of Protestant theology. 
 
 Such is Luther's criticism of the New Testament, 
 of its fundamental thought. And he picks out, as 
 the kernel and marrow of the New Testament, the 
 Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle by the author of 
 this Gospel, St. Paul's Epistles, in especial those to 
 the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and the First 
 Epistle of St. Peter. Now, the common complaint 
 against Luther is on the score of his audacity in thus 
 venturing to make a table of precedence for the 
 equally inspired books of the New Testament. Yet 
 in this he was quite right, and was but following the 
 method of Jesus, if the good news conveyed in the 
 whole New Testament is, as it is, something definite, 
 and all parts do not convey it equally. Where he 
 was wrong, was in his delineation of this fundamental 
 thought of the New Testament, in his description of 
 the good news; and few, probably, who have followed 
 us thus far, will have difficulty in admitting that he 
 was wrong here, and quite wrong. And this has 
 been the fault of Protestantism generally : not its 
 presumption in interpreting Scripture for itself, for 
 the Church interpreted it no better, and Jesus has 
 thrown on each individual the duty of interpreting it 
 for himself, but that it has interpreted it wrong, and 
 no better than the Church. "Calvinism has borne 
 ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity," 
 says Mr. Froude. Surely this is but a nourish of 
 rhetoric ; for the Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like
 
 IX.] ABEEGLAUBE RE- INVADING. 271 
 
 the Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic dogma, a 
 false criticism of the Bible, an illusion. And the 
 Calvinistic and Lutheran doctrines both of them sin 
 in the same way ; not by using a method which, after 
 all, is the method of Jesus, but by not using the 
 method enough, by not applying it to the Bible 
 thoroughly, by keeping too much of what the tradi- 
 tions of men chose to tell them. 
 
 V. 
 
 The time was not then ripe for doing more ; and 
 we, if we can do more, have the fulness of time to 
 thank for it, not ourselves. Yet it needs all one's 
 sense of the not ourselves in these things, to make us 
 understand how doctrines, supposed to be the essence 
 of the Bible by great Catholics and by great Pro- 
 testants, should ever have been supposed to be so, 
 and by such men. 
 
 To take that chief stronghold of ecclesiasticism 
 and sacerdotalism, the institution of the Eucharist. 
 As Catholics present it, it makes the Church indis- 
 pensable, with all her apparatus of an apostolical 
 succession, an authorised priesthood, a power of 
 absolution. Yet, as Jesus founded it, it is the most 
 anti-ecclesiastical of institutions, pulverising alike the 
 historic churches in their beauty and the dissenting 
 sects in their unloveliness ; it is the consecration of 
 absolute individualism. " This cup is the new covenant 
 in my blood which is shed for you." 1 When Jesus 
 1 Luke xxii. 20.
 
 272 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 so spoke, what did he mean, what was in his mind ! 
 Undoubtedly these words of the prophet Jeremiah : 
 " Behold the days come, saith the Eternal, that I will 
 make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not 
 according to the covenant that I made with their 
 fathers, which covenant they brake ; but this shall be 
 the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel : 
 After those days, saith the Eternal, I will put my law 
 in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and 
 they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and 
 every man his brother, saying : Know the Eternal ! for 
 they shall all knoiv me, from the least to the greatest." 1 
 No more scribes, no more doctors, no more priests ! 
 the crowning act in the " secret " of Jesus seals at the 
 same time his " method," his method of pure inward- 
 ness, individual responsibility, personal religion. 
 
 Take, again, the Protestant doctrine of Justification ; 
 of trusting in the alone merits of Christ, pleading the 
 Blood of the Covenant, imputed righteousness. In 
 our railway stations are hung up, as every one knows, 
 sheets of Bible-texts to catch the passer's, eye; and 
 very profitable admonitions to him they in general 
 are. It is said that the thought of thus exhibiting 
 them occurred to Dr. Marsh, a venerable leader of 
 the so-called Evangelical party in our Church, the 
 party which specially clings to the special Protestant 
 doctrine of justification ; and that he arranged the 
 texts we daily see. And there is one which we may 
 all remember to have often seen. Dr. Marsh asks 
 the prophet Micah's question : " Wherewith shall I 
 1 Jeremiah xxxi. 31.
 
 IX.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 273 
 
 come before the Lord, and bow myself before the 
 high God I" 1 and he answers it with one short sen- 
 tence from the New Testament : " With the precious 
 blood of Christ." This is precisely the popular 
 Protestant notion of the Gospel; and we are all so 
 used to it that Dr. Marsh's application of the text has 
 probably surprised no one. And yet, if one thinks of 
 it, how astonishing an application it is ! For even the 
 Hebrew Micah, some seven or eight centuries before 
 Christ, had seen that this sort of gospel, or good news, 
 was none at all ; for even he suggests this always 
 popular notion of atoning blood only to reject it, and 
 ends : "He hath showed thee, man, what is good ; 
 and what doth the Eternal require of thee, but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God V So that the Hebrew Micah, nearly three 
 thousand years ago, under the old dispensation, was far 
 in advance of this venerable and amiable coryphaeus 
 of our Evangelical party now, under the Christian 
 dispensation ! 
 
 Dr. Marsh and his school go wrong, it will be said, 
 through their false criticism of the New Testament, 
 and we have ourselves admitted that the perfect 
 criticism of the New Testament is extremely difficult. 
 True, the perfect criticism; but not such an elementary 
 criticism of it as shows the gospel of Dr. Marsh and 
 of our so-called Evangelical Protestants to be a false 
 one. For great as their literary inexperience is, and 
 unpractised as is their tact for perceiving the manner 
 in which men use words and what they mean by 
 
 i Micah vL 6. 
 VOL. V. T
 
 274 LITERATUEE AND DOGMA. [UHAP. 
 
 them, one would think they could understand such a 
 plain caution against mistaking Christ's death for a 
 miraculous atonement as St. Paul has actually given 
 them. For St. Paul, who so admirably seized the 
 secret of Jesus, who preached Christ crucified, 1 but 
 who placed salvation in being able to say, / am 
 crucified with Christ / 2 St. Paul warns us clearly, that 
 this word of the cross, as he calls it, is so simple, being 
 neither miracle nor metaphysics, that it would be 
 thought foolishness. The Jews want miracle, he 
 says, and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I preach 
 Christ crucified/ 3 that is, the "secret" of Jesus, as we 
 call it. The Jews want miracle/ that is a warning 
 against Dr. Marsh's or Mr. Spurgeon's doctrine, 
 against Evangelical Protestantism's phantasmagories 
 of the "Contract in the Council of the Trinity," the 
 "Atoning Blood," and "Imputed Eighteousness. " 
 The Greeks want metaphysics! that is a warning 
 against the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, 
 with their Aryan genius (if so ill-sounding a word as 
 Aryan, spell it how one may, can ever be properly 
 applied to our bishops, and one ought not rather to 
 say Indo-European), dressing the popular doctrine 
 out with fine speculations about the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son, his Consubstantiality with the Father, 
 and so on. But we preach, says St. Paul, Christ 
 crucified/ to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular religion 
 a stumbling-block, to the bishops and to learned 
 religion foolishness; but to them that are called, Christ 
 the power of God and the wisdom of God. That is, 
 1 J Cor. i. 23. a Gal. ii. 20. 8 1 Cor. i. 23.
 
 IX.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 275 
 
 we preach a doctrine, not thaumaturgical and not 
 speculative, but practical and experimental ; a doctrine 
 which has no meaning except in positive application 
 to conduct, but in this application is inexhaustible. 
 
 VI 
 
 So false, so astoundingly false (thus one is inclined 
 to say by the light which the " Zeit-Geist " is begin- 
 ning to hold out over them) are both popular and 
 learned science in their criticism of the Bible. And 
 for the learned science one feels no tenderness, be- 
 cause it has gone wrong with a great parade of 
 exactitude and philosophy ; whereas all it really did 
 was to take the magnified and non- natural Man of 
 popular religion as God, and to take Jesus as his 
 son, and then to state the relations between them 
 metaphysically. No difficulties suggested by the 
 popular science of religion has this learned science 
 ever removed, and it has created plenty of its own. 
 
 But for the popular science of religion one has, or 
 ought to have, an infinite tenderness. It is the 
 spontaneous work of nature. It is the travail of the 
 human mind to adapt to its grasp and employment 
 great ideas of which it feels the attraction, but for 
 which, except as given to it by this travail, it would 
 have been immature. The imperfect science of the 
 Bible, formulated in the so-called Apostles' Creed, 
 was the only vehicle by which, to generation after 
 generation of men, the method and secret of Jesus 
 could gain any access; and in this sense we may
 
 276 LITEEATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 even call it, taking the point of view of popular 
 theology, Providential. And this rude criticism is 
 full of poetry, and in this poetry we have been all 
 nursed. To call it, as many of our philosophical 
 Liberal friends are fond of calling it, "a degrading 
 superstition," is as untrue as it is a poor compliment 
 to human nature, which produced this criticism and 
 used it. It is an Aberglaube, or extra-belief and fairy- 
 tale, produced by taking certain great names and great 
 promises too literally and materially ; but it is not a 
 degrading superstition. 
 
 Protestants, on their part, have no difficulty in 
 calling the Catholic doctrine of the mass " a degrad- 
 ing superstition." It is indeed a rude and blind 
 criticism of Jesus Christ's words : He that eateth me 
 shall live by me. But once admit the miracle of the 
 " atoning sacrifice," once move in this order of ideas, 
 and what can be more natural and beautiful than to 
 imagine this miracle every day repeated, Christ 
 offered in thousands of places, everywhere the be- 
 liever enabled to enact the work of redemption and 
 unite himself with the Body whose sacrifice saves 
 him 1 And the effect of this belief has been no more 
 degrading than the belief itself. The fourth book of 
 the Imitation, which treats of The Sacrament of the 
 Altar, is of later date and lesser merit than the three 
 books which precede it ; but it is worth while to 
 quote from it a few words for the sake of the testi- 
 mony they bear to the practical operation, in man) 
 cases at any rate, of this belief. " To us in our weak- 
 ness thou hast given, for the refreshment of mind
 
 IX.] ABEEGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 277 
 
 and body, thy sacred Body. The devout communi- 
 cant thou, my God, raisest from the depth of his 
 own dejection to the hope of thy protection, and 
 with a hitherto unknown grace renewest him and 
 enlightenest him within ; so that they who at first, 
 before this Communion, had felt themselves distressed 
 and affectionless, after the refreshment of this meat 
 and drink from heaven find themselves changed to a 
 new and better man. For this most high and worthy 
 Sacrament is the saving health of soul and body, the 
 medicine of all spiritual languor; by it my vices are 
 cured, my passions bridled, temptations are conquered or 
 diminished, a larger grace is infused, the beginnings of 
 virtue are made to grow, faith is confirmed, hope strength- 
 ened, and charity takes fire and dilates into flame." So 
 little is the doctrine of the mass to be hastily called 
 " a degrading superstition," either in its character or 
 in its working. 
 
 But it is false ! sternly breaks in the Evangelical 
 Protestant. Evangelical Protestant, is thine own 
 doctrine, then, so true? As the Eomish doctrine of 
 the mass, the Eeal Presence, is a rude and blind 
 criticism of : He that eateth me shall live by me; 1 so 
 the Protestant tenet of justification, "pleading the 
 blood of the Covenant," is a rude and blind criticism 
 of : The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for 
 many. 2 It is a taking of the words of Scripture 
 literally and unintelligently. And our friends, the 
 philosophical Liberals, are not slow to call this, too, 
 a degrading superstition, just as Protestants call the 
 1 John vi. 67. 2 Matthew xx. 28-
 
 278 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 doctrine of the mass a degrading superstition. We 
 say, on the contrary, that a degrading superstition 
 neither the one nor the other is. In imagining a sort 
 of infinitely magnified and improved Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, with a race of vile offenders to deal with, whom 
 his natural goodness would incline him to let off, only 
 his sense of justice will not allow it ; then a younger 
 Lord Shaftesbury, on the scale of his father and very 
 dear to him, who might live in grandeur and splendour 
 if he liked, but who prefers to leave his home, to go 
 and live among the race of offenders, and to be put 
 to an ignominious death, on condition that his merits 
 shall be counted against their demerits, and that his 
 father's goodness shall be restrained no longer from 
 taking effect, but any offender shall be admitted to 
 the benefit of it on simply pleading the satisfaction 
 made by the son; and then, finally, a third Lord 
 Shaftesbury, still on the same high scale, who keeps 
 very much in the background, and works in a very 
 occult manner, but very efficaciously nevertheless, 
 and who is busy in applying everywhere the benefits 
 of the son's satisfaction, and the father's goodness ; 
 in an imagination, I say, such as this, there is nothing 
 degrading, and this is precisely the Protestant story 
 of Justification. And how awe of the first Lord 
 Shaftesbury, gratitude and love towards the second, 
 and earnest co-operation with the third, may fill and 
 rule men's hearts so as to transform their conduct, we 
 need not go about to show, for we have all seen it 
 with our eyes. Therefore in the practical working of 
 this tenet there is nothing degrading ; any more than
 
 ix.] ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 279 
 
 there is anything degrading in the tenet as an ima- 
 ginative conception. And looking to the infinite 
 importance of getting right conduct, three-fourths 
 of human life, established, and to the inevitable 
 anthropomorphism and extra-belief of men in dealing 
 with ideas, one might well hesitate to attack an 
 anthropomorphism or an extra-belief by which men 
 helped themselves in conduct, merely because an 
 anthropomorphism or an extra -belief it is, so long 
 as it served its purpose, so long as it was firmly and 
 undoubtingly held, and almost universally prevailing. 
 
 But, after all, the question sooner or later arises 
 in respect to a matter taken for granted, like the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Mass or the Protestant 
 doctrine of Justification : Is it sure 1 can what is here 
 assumed be verified ? And this is the real objection 
 both to the Catholic and to the Protestant doctrine 
 as a basis for conduct ; not that it is a degrading 
 superstition, but that it is not sure; that it assumes 
 what cannot be verified. 
 
 For a long time this objection occurred to scarcely 
 anybody. And there are still, and for a long time 
 yet there will be, many to whom it does not occur. 
 In particular, on those " devout women " who in the 
 history of religion have at all times played a part in 
 many respects so beautiful but in some respects so 
 mischievous, on them, and on a certain number of 
 men like them, it has and can as yet have, so far as 
 one can see, no effect at all. Who that watches the 
 energumens during the celebration of the Communion 
 in some Ritualistic church, their gestures and be-
 
 280 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. ix. 
 
 haviour, the floor of the church strewn with what 
 seem to be the dying and the dead, progress to the 
 altar almost barred by forms suddenly dropping as 
 if they were shot in battle, who that observes this 
 delighted adoption of vehement rites, till yesterday 
 unknown, adopted and practised now with all that 
 absence of tact, measure, and correct perception in 
 things of form and manner, all that slowness to see 
 when they are making themselves ridiculous, which 
 belongs to the people of our English race, who, I 
 say, that marks this can doubt, that for a not small 
 portion of the religious community, a difficulty to 
 the intelligence will for a long time yet be no diffi- 
 culty at all ? With their mental condition and 
 habits, given a story to which their religious emotions 
 can attach themselves, and the famous Credo quia 
 ineptum will hold good with them still. To think 
 they know what passed in the Council of the Trinity 
 is not hard to them ; they could easily think they 
 even knew what were the hangings of the Trinity's 
 council-chamber. 
 
 Arbitrary and unsupported, however, as the story 
 they have taken up with may be, yet it puts them in 
 connection with the Bible and the religion of the 
 Bible, that is, with righteousness and with the 
 method and secret of Jesus. These are so clear in 
 the Bible that no one who uses it can help seeing 
 them there ; and of these they do take for their use 
 something, though on a wrong ground. But these, 
 so far as they are taken into use, are saving.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 MANY, however, and of a much stronger and more 
 important sort, there now are, who will not thus 
 take on trust the story which is made the reason for 
 putting ourselves in connection with the Bible and 
 learning to use its religion; be it the story of the 
 divine authority of the Church, as in Catholic countries, 
 or, as generally with us, the story of the three 
 Lord Shaftesburys standing on its own merits. Is 
 what this story asserts true, they are beginning to 
 ask; can it be verified? since experience proves, 
 they add, that whatever for man is true, man can 
 verify. And certainly the fairy-tale of the three 
 Lord Shaftesburys no man can verify. They find 
 this to be so, and then they say : The Bible takes for 
 granted this story and depends on the truth of it; 
 what, then, can rational people have to do with the 
 Bible 1 So they get rid, to be sure, of a false ground 
 for using the Bible, but they at the same time lose 
 the Bible itself, and the true religion of the Bible : 
 righteousness, and the method and secret of Jesus. 
 And those who lose this are the masses, as they are
 
 282 LITEEATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 called; or rather they are what is most strenuous, 
 intelligent, and alive among the masses, and what 
 will give the signal for the rest to follow. 
 
 This is what every one sees to constitute the special 
 moral feature of our times : the masses are losing the 
 Bible and its religion. At the Eenascence, many 
 cultivated wits lost it ; but the great solid mass of the 
 common people kept it, and brought the world back to 
 it after a start had seemed to be made in quite another 
 direction. But now it is the people which is getting 
 detached from the Bible. The masses can no longer 
 be relied on to counteract what the cultivated wits 
 are doing, and stubbornly to make clever men's ex- 
 travagances and aberrations, if about the Bible they 
 commit them, of no avail. When our philosophical 
 Liberal friends say, that by universal suffrage, public 
 meetings, Church-disestablishment, marrying one's de- 
 ceased wife's sister, secular schools, industrial develop- 
 ment, man can very well live ; and that if he studies 
 the writings, say, of Mr. Herbert Spencer into the 
 bargain, he will be perfect, he will have " in modern 
 and congenial language the truisms common to all 
 systems of morality," and the Bible is become quite 
 old-fashioned and superfluous for him; when our 
 philosophical friends now say this, the masses, far 
 from checking them, are disposed to applaud them to 
 the echo. Yet assuredly, of conduct, which is more 
 than three-fourths of human life, the Bible, whatever 
 people may thus think and say, is the great inspirer ; 
 so that from the great inspirer of more than three- 
 fourths of human life the masses of our society seem
 
 X.] OUR " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE. 283 
 
 now to be cutting themselves off. This promises, 
 certainly, if it does not already constitute, a very un- 
 settled condition of things. And the cause of it lies 
 in the Bible being made to depend on a story, or set of 
 asserted facts, which it is impossible to verify; and which 
 hard-headed people, therefore, treat as either an impos- 
 ture, or a fairy-tale that discredits all which is found in 
 connection with it. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now if we look attentively at the story, or set of 
 asserted but unverified and unverifiable facts, which 
 we have summarised in popular language above, and 
 which is alleged as the basis of the Bible, we shall find 
 that the difficulty really lies all in one point. The 
 whole difficulty is with the elder Lord Shaftesbury. 
 If he could be verified, the data we have are, possibly, 
 enough to warrant our admitting the truth of the rest 
 of the story. It is singular how few people seem to 
 see this, though it is really quite clear. The Bible is 
 supposed to assume a great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the Universe ; a sort of elder Lord Shaftesbury, as 
 we call him, infinitely magnified. This is the God, 
 also, of natural religion, as people call it ; and this 
 supposed certainty learned reasoners take, and render 
 it more certain still by considerations of causality, 
 identity, existence, and so on. These, however, are 
 not found to help the certainty much ; but a certainty 
 in itself the Great Personal First Cause, the God of 
 both natural and revealed religion, is supposed to be.
 
 284 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Then, to this given beginning, all that the Bible 
 delivers has to fit itself on. And so arises the account 
 of the God of the Old Testament, and of Christ and of 
 the Holy Ghost, and of the incarnation and atonement, 
 and of the sacraments, and of inspiration, and of the 
 church, and of eternal punishment and eternal bliss, 
 as theology presents them. But difficulties strike 
 people in this or that of these doctrines. The incar- 
 nation seems incredible to one, the vicarious atonement 
 to another, the real presence to a third, inspiration to 
 a fourth, eternal punishment to a fifth, and so on. And 
 they set to work to make religion more pure and 
 rational, as they suppose, by pointing out that this or 
 that of these doctrines is false, that it must be a 
 mistake of theologians ; and by interpreting the Bible 
 so as to show that the doctrine is not really there. 
 The Unitarians are, perhaps, the great people for this 
 sort of partial and local rationalising of religion ; for 
 taking what here and there on the surface seems to 
 conflict most with common sense, arguing that it 
 cannot be in the Bible and getting rid of it, and pro- 
 fessing to have thus relieved religion of its difficulties. 
 And now, when there is much loosening of authority 
 and tradition, much impatience of what conflicts with 
 common sense, the Unitarians are beginning confi- 
 dently to give themselves out as the Church of the 
 Future. 
 
 But in all this there is in reality a good deal of 
 what we must call intellectual shallowness. For, 
 granted that there are things in a system which are 
 puzzling, yet they belong to a system; and it is childish
 
 x. ] OUR " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE. 285 
 
 to pick them out by themselves and reproach them 
 with error, when you leave untouched the basis of the 
 system where they occur, and indeed admit it for 
 sound yourself. The Unitarians are very loud about 
 the unreasonableness and unscripturalness of the 
 common doctrine of the Atonement. But in the 
 Socinian Catechism it stands written: " It is necessary 
 for salvation to know that God is ; and to know that 
 God is, is to be firmly persuaded that there exists in 
 reality some One, who has supreme dominion over all 
 things." Presently afterwards it stands written, that 
 among the testimonies to Christ are "miracles very 
 great and immense," miracula admodum magna et 
 immensa. Now, with the One Supreme Governor, and 
 miracles, given to start with, it may fairly be urged 
 that that construction put by common theology on the 
 Bible-data, which we call the story of the three Lord 
 Shaftesburys, and in which the Atonement fills a 
 prominent place, is the natural and legitimate con- 
 struction to put on them, and not unscriptural at 
 all. Neither is it unreasonable ; in a system of things, 
 that is, where the Supreme Governor and miracles, or 
 even where the Supreme Governor without miracles, 
 are already given. 
 
 And this is Butler's great argument in the Analogy. 
 You all concede, he says to his deistical adversaries, a 
 Supreme Personal First Cause, the moral and intelli- 
 gent Governor of the universe ; this, you and I both 
 agree, is the order of nature. But you are offended 
 at certain things in revelation ; that is, at things, 
 Butler means, like the story of the three Lord Shaftes-
 
 286 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 burys as theology collects it from the Bible. Well, 
 I will show you, he says, that in your and my admitted 
 system of nature there are just as great difficulties as 
 in the system of revelation. And he does show it : 
 and by adversaries such as his, who grant what the 
 Deist or Socinian grants, he never has been answered, 
 he never can be answered. The spear of Butler's 
 reasoning will even follow and transfix the Duke of 
 Somerset, who finds so much to condemn in the Bible, 
 but " retires into one unassailable fortress, faith in 
 God." 
 
 The only question, perhaps, is, whether Butler, as 
 an Anglican bishop, puts an adequate construction 
 upon what Bible-revelation, this basis of the Supreme 
 Governor being supposed, may be allowed to be ; 
 whether Catholic dogma is not the truer construction 
 to put upon it. Dr. Newman urges, fairly enough : 
 Butler admits, analogy is in some sort violated by the 
 fact of revelation ; only, with the precedent of natural 
 religion given, we have to own that the difficulties 
 against revelation are not greater than against this 
 precedent, and therefore the admission of this prece- 
 dent of natural religion may well be taken to clear 
 them. And must we not go farther in the same way, 
 says Dr. Newman, and own that the precedent of 
 revelation, too, may be taken to cover more than 
 itself ; and that as, the Supreme Governor being given, 
 it is credible that the Incarnation is true, so, the 
 Incarnation being true, it is credible that God should 
 not have left the world to itself after Christ and his 
 Apostles disappeared, but should have lodged divine
 
 x.] OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 287 
 
 insight in the Church and its visible head 1 So pleads 
 Dr. Newman ; and if it be said that facts are against 
 the infallibility of the Church, or that Scripture is 
 against it, yet to wide, immense things like facts and 
 Scripture, a turn may easily be given which makes 
 them favour it ; and so an endless field for discussion 
 is opened, and no certain conclusion is possible. For, 
 once launched on this line of hypothesis and inference, 
 with a Supreme Governor assumed, and the task 
 thrown upon us of making out what he means us to 
 infer and what we may suppose him to do and to 
 intend, one of us may infer one thing and another of 
 us another, and neither can possibly prove himself to 
 be right or his adversary to be wrong. 
 
 Only, there may come some one, who says that the 
 basis of all our inference, the Supreme Governor, is 
 not the order of nature, is an assumption, and not a 
 fact ; and then, if this is so, our whole superstructure 
 falls to pieces like a house of cards. And this is just 
 what is happening at present. The masses, with their 
 rude practical instinct, go straight to the heart of the 
 matter. They are told there is a great Personal First 
 Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent 
 Author and Governor of the universe ; and that the 
 Bible and Bible -righteousness come to us from him. 
 Now, they do not begin by asking, with the intelligent 
 Unitarian, whether the doctrine of the Atonement is 
 worthy of this moral and intelligent Ruler ; they begin 
 by asking what proof we have of him at all. More- 
 over, they require plain experimental proof, such aa 
 that fire burns them if they touch it. If they are to
 
 288 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 study and obey the Bible because it comes from the 
 Personal First Cause who is Governor of the universe, 
 they require to be able to ascertain that there is this 
 Governor, just as they are able to ascertain that fire 
 burns. And if they cannot ascertain it, they will let 
 the intelligent Unitarian perorate for ever about the 
 Atonement if he likes, but they themselves pitch the 
 whole Bible to the winds. 
 
 Now, it is remarkable what a resting on mere 
 probabilities, or even on less than probabilities, the 
 proof for religion comes, in the hands of its great 
 apologist, Butler, to be, even after he has started with 
 the assumption of his moral and intelligent Governor. 
 And no wonder ; for in the primary assumption itself 
 there is and can be nothing experimental and clearly 
 known. So that of Christianity, as Butler grounds 
 it, the natural criticism would really be in these words 
 of his own : " Suppositions are not to be looked upon 
 as true, because not incredible." However, Butler 
 maintains that in matters of practice, such as religion, 
 this is not so. In them it is prudent, he says, to act 
 on even a supposition, if ft is not incredible. Even 
 the doubting about religion implies, he argues, that it 
 may be true. Now, in matters of practice, we are 
 bound in prudence, he says, to act upon what may be 
 a low degree of evidence ; yes, " even though it be so 
 low as to leave the mind in very great doubt what is the 
 truth." 
 
 Was there ever such a way of establishing righteous- 
 ness heard of 1 And suppose we tried this with rude, 
 hard, downright people, with the masses, who for what
 
 x.] OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 289 
 
 is told them want a plain experimental proof, such as 
 that fire will burn you if you touch it. Whether in 
 prudence they ought to take the Bible and religion on 
 a low degree of evidence or not, it is quite certain 
 that on this ground they never will take them. And 
 it is quite certain, moreover, that never on this ground 
 did Israel, from whom we derive our religion, take it 
 himself or recommend it. He did not take it in 
 prudence, because he found at any rate a low degree 
 of evidence for it ; he took it in rapture, because he 
 found for it an evidence irresistible. But his own 
 words are the best : " Thou, Eternal, art the thing 
 that I long for, thou art my hope even from my youth ; 
 through thee have I been holden up ever since I was 
 born. 1 The statutes of the Eternal rejoice the heart ; 
 more desirable they are than gold, sweeter than honey ; 
 in keeping of them there is great reward? The Eternal 
 is my strength, my heart hath trusted in him and I am 
 helped; therefore my heart danceth for joy, and in 
 my song will I praise him." 3 That is why Israel took 
 his religion. 
 
 IIL 
 
 But if Israel spoke of the Eternal thus, it was, we 
 say, because he had a plain experimental proof of him. 
 God was to Israel neither an assumption nor a meta- 
 physical idea ; he was a power that can be verified as 
 much as the power of fire to burn or of bread to 
 nourish : the power, 'not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness. And the greatness of Israel in religion, the 
 
 1 Ps. Ixxi. 5, 6. 2 Ps. xix. 8, 10, 11. 3 Ps. xxviii. 7. 
 VOL. V. U
 
 290 LITEKATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 reason why he is said to have had religion revealed 
 to him, to have been entrusted with the oracles of 
 God, is because he had in such extraordinary force 
 and vividness the perception of this power. And he 
 communicates it irresistibly because he feels it irre- 
 sistibly ; that is why the Bible is not as other books 
 that inculcate righteousness. Israel speaks of his 
 intuition as still feeling it to be an intuition, an 
 experience ; not as something which others have 
 delivered to him, nor yet as a piece of metaphysical 
 notion-building. Anthropomorphic he is, for all men 
 are, and especially men not endowed with the Aryan 
 genius for abstraction ; but he does not make arbitrary 
 assertions which can never be verified, like our 
 popular religion, nor is he ever pseudo-scientific, like 
 our learned religion. 
 
 He is credited with the metaphysical ideas of the 
 personality of God, of the unity of God, and of 
 creation as opposed to evolution : ideas depending, 
 the first two of them, on notions of essence, existence, 
 and identity, the last of them on the notion of cause 
 and design. But he is credited with them falsely. 
 All the countenance he gives to the metaphysical idea 
 of the personality of God is given by his anthropo- 
 morphic language, in which, being a man himself, he 
 naturally speaks of the Power, with which he is con- 
 cerned, as a man also. So he says that Moses saw 
 God's hinder parts; 1 and he gives just as much 
 countenance to the scientific assertion that God has 
 hinder parts, as to the scientific assertion of God'a 
 1 Exodus xxxiii. 23.
 
 x.] OUK " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE. 291 
 
 personality. That is, he gives no countenance at all 
 to either. As to his asserting the unity of God the 
 case is the same. He would give, indeed, his heart 
 and his worship to no manifestation of power, except 
 of the power which makes for righteousness ; but he 
 affords to the metaphysical idea of the unity of God 
 no more countenance than this, and this is none at 
 all. Then, lastly, as to the idea of creation. He 
 viewed, indeed, all order as depending on the supreme 
 order of righteousness, and all the fulness and beauty 
 of the world as a boon added to that holder of the 
 greatest of all boons already, the righteous. This, 
 however, is as much countenance as he gives to the 
 famous argument from design, or to the doctrine of 
 creation as opposed to evolution. And it is none 
 at all. 
 
 Free as is his use of anthropomorphic language, 
 Israel had far too keen a sense of reality not to shrink, 
 when he comes anywhere near to the notion of exact 
 speaking about God, from affirmation, from professing 
 to know a whit more than he does know. " Lo, these 
 are parts of his ways," he says of what he has ex- 
 perienced, " but hmo little a portion is known of him/" 1 
 And again : " The secret things belong unto the Eternal 
 our God ; but the revealed things belong unto us and 
 to our children for ever : that we may do all the 
 words of this law." 2 How different from our licence 
 of full and particular statement : "A Personal First 
 Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the Universe ! " Israel knew, concerning 
 1 Job xxvi. 14. 2 Deut. xxix. 29.
 
 292 LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 the eternal not ourselves, that it was "a power that 
 made for righteousness." This was revealed to Israel 
 and his children, and through them to the world ; all 
 the rest about the eternal not ourselves was this power's 
 own secret. And all Israel's language about this 
 power, except that it makes for righteousness, is approxi- 
 mate language, the language of poetry and eloquence, 
 thrown out at a vast object of our consciousness not 
 fully apprehended by it, but extending infinitely 
 beyond it 
 
 This, however, was " a revealed thing," Israel said, 
 to him and to his children : " the Eternal not ourselves 
 that makes for righteousness." And now, then, let 
 us go to the masses with what Israel really did say, 
 instead of what our popular and our learned religion 
 may choose to make him say. Let us announce, not : 
 " There rules a Great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the Universe, and therefore study your Bible and 
 learn to obey this!" No; but let us announce: 
 " There rules an enduring.Power, not ourselves, which 
 makes for righteousness, and therefore study your 
 Bible and learn to obey this." For if we announce 
 the other instead, and they reply: "First let us verify 
 that there rules a Great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the universe," what are we to answer? We 
 cannot answer. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, they ask : " How are 
 we to verify that there rules an enduring Power, not 
 ourselves, which makes for righteousness?" we may
 
 X.] OUR " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE. 293 
 
 answer at once : " How ? why as you verify that fire 
 burns, by experience / It is so ; try it ! you can try 
 it ; every case of conduct, of that which is more than 
 three-fourths of your own life and of the life of all 
 mankind, will prove it to you ! Disbelieve it, and 
 you will find out your mistake, as sure as, if you dis- 
 believe that fire burns and put your hand into the 
 fire, you will find out your mistake ! Believe it, and 
 you will find the benefit of it!" This is the first 
 experience. 
 
 But then they may go on, and say : " Why, how- 
 ever, even if there is an enduring Power, not ourselves, 
 that makes for righteousness, should we study the 
 Bible that we may learn to obey him ? will not other 
 teachers or books do as well ? " And here again the 
 answer is: "Why? why, because this Power is 
 revealed in Israel and the Bible, and not by other 
 teachers and books ! that is, there is infinitely more 
 of him there, he is plainer and easier to come at, and 
 incomparably more impressive. If you want to know 
 plastic art, you go to the Greeks; if you want to 
 know science, you go to the Aryan genius. And why ? 
 Because they have the specialty for these things; 
 for making us feel what they are and giving us an 
 enthusiasm for them. Well, and so have Israel and 
 the Bible a specialty for righteousness, for making us 
 feel what it is and giving us an enthusiasm for it. 
 And here again it is experience that we invoke: try 
 it ! Having convinced yourself that there is an 
 enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for right- 
 eousness, set yourself next to try to learn more
 
 294 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 about this Power, and to feel an enthusiasm for it. 
 And to this end, take a course of the Bible first, and 
 j "then a course of Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, 
 Jeremy Bentham, and Mr. Herbert Spencer; see which 
 ] I -~yi T'Okas most effect, which satisfies you most, which gives 
 rZySJL most moral force. Why, the Bible is of such 
 * a yX" f r teaching righteousness, that even to those 
 who come to it with all sorts of false notions about 
 the God of the Bible, it yet does teach righteousness, 
 and fills them with the love of it ; how much more 
 those who come to it with a true notion about the 
 God of the Bible ! And this is the second experience. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Now here, at the beginning of things, is the point, 
 we say, where to apply correction to our current 
 theology, if we are to bring the religion of the Bible 
 home to the masses. It is of no use beginning lower 
 down, and amending this or that ramification, such 
 as the Atonement, or the Real Presence, or Eternal 
 Punishment, when the root from which all springs is 
 unsound. Those whom it most concerns us to teach 
 will never interest themselves at all in our amended 
 religion, so long as the whole thing appears to them 
 unsupported and in the air. 
 
 Yet that original conception of God, on which all 
 our religion is and must be grounded, has been very 
 little examined, and very few of the controversies 
 which arise in religion go near it. Religious people 
 say solemnly, as if we doubted it, that " he that
 
 x.] OUR " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE. 295 
 
 cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He 
 is a rewarder of them that seek Him ; " 1 and that " a 
 man who preaches that Jesus Christ is not God is 
 virtually out of the pale of Christian communion." 
 We entirely agree with them ; but we want to know 
 what they mean by God. Now on this matter the 
 state of their thoughts is, to say the truth, extremely 
 vague ; but what they really do at bottom mean by 
 God is, in general : the best one knows. And this is 
 the soundest definition they will ever attain; yet 
 scientifically it is not a satisfying definition, for clearly 
 the best one knows differs for everybody. So they have 
 to be more precise ; and when they collect themselves 
 a little, they find that they mean by God a magnified 
 and non-natural man. But this, again, they can hardly 
 say in so many words ; therefore at last, when they 
 are pressed, they collect themselves all they can, and 
 make a great effort, and out they come with their 
 piece of science : God is a Great Personal First Cause, 
 who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the universe. But this piece of science of theirs we 
 will have nothing to say to, for we account it quite 
 hollow ; and we say, and have shown (we think), 
 that the Bible, rightly read, will have nothing to say 
 to it either. Yet the whole pinch of the matter is 
 here ; and till we are agreed as to what we mean by 
 God, we can never, in discussing religious questions, 
 understand one another or discuss seriously. Yet, as 
 we have said, hardly any of the discussions which 
 arise in religion turn upon this cardinal point. This 
 1 Hebrews xi 6.
 
 296 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [ciiAP. 
 
 is what cannot but strike one in that torrent of 
 petitiones principii (for so one really must call them) 
 in the shape of theological letters from clergymen, 
 which pours itself every week through the columns of 
 the Guardian. They all employ the word God with 
 such extraordinary confidence ! as if " a Great Per- 
 sonal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral 
 and intelligent Governor of the Universe," were a 
 verifiable fact given beyond all question ; and we had 
 now only to disciiss what such a Being would naturally 
 think about Church vestments and the use of the 
 Athanasian Creed. But everything people say, under 
 these conditions, is in truth quite in the air. 
 
 Even those who have treated Israel and his religion 
 the most philosophically, seem not to have enough 
 considered that so wonderful an effect must have had 
 some cause to account for it, other than any which 
 they assign. Professor Kuenen, whose excellent 
 History of the Religion of Israel 1 ought to find an 
 English translator, suggests that the Hebrew religion 
 was so unlike that of any other Semitic people 
 because of the simple and austere life led by the 
 Beni-Israel as nomads of the desert ; or because they 
 did not, like other Semitic people, put a feminine 
 divinity alongside of their masculine divinity, and 
 thus open the way to all sorts of immorality. But 
 many other tribes have had the simple and austere 
 
 1 De Godsdiensi van Israel tot den Ondergang -van den 
 Joodschen Stoat (The Religion of Israel till the Downfall of the 
 Jewish State) ; Haarlem. An English translation has now 
 appeared.
 
 x.] OUR "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 297 
 
 life of nomads of the desert, without its bringing 
 them to the religion of Israel. And, if the Hebrews 
 did not put a feminine divinity alongside of theii 
 masculine divinity, while other Semitic people did, 
 surely there must have been something to cause this 
 difference ! and what we want to know is this some- 
 thing. 
 
 And to this something, we say, the "Zeit-Geist" 
 and a prolonged and large experience of men's expres- 
 sions, and how they employ them, leads us. It was 
 because, while other people, in the operation of that 
 mighty not ourselves which is in us and around us, 
 saw this thing and that thing and man}' things, Israel 
 saw in it one thing only : that it made for conduct, 
 for righteousness. And it does ; and conduct is nearly 
 the whole of human life. And hence, therefore, the 
 extraordinary reality and power of Israel's God and 
 of Israel's religion. And the more we strictly limit 
 ourselves, in attempting to give a scientific account of 
 God, to Israel's authentic intuition of him, and say 
 that he is "the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness," the more real and profound 
 will Israel's words about God become to us, for we 
 can then verify his words as we use them. 
 
 Eternal, thou hast been our refuge from one generation 
 to another ! l If we define the Eternal to ourselves, 
 " a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, 
 the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe," 
 we can never verify that this has from age to age 
 been a refuge to men. But if we define the Eternal, 
 1 Psalm xc. 1.
 
 298 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 "the enduring power, not ourselves, that makes for 
 righteousness," then we can know and feel the truth 
 of what we say when we declare : Eternal, thou hast 
 been our refuge from one generation to another ! For in 
 all the history of man we can verify it. Righteous- 
 ness has been salvation; and to verify the God of 
 Israel in man's long history is the most animating, 
 the most exalting, and the most pure of delights. 
 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Eternal/ 1 is a 
 text, indeed, of which the world offers to us the 
 most inexhaustible and the most marvellous illustra- 
 tion. 
 
 Nor is the change here proposed, in itself, any 
 difficult or startling change in our habits of religious 
 thought, but a very simple one. However, simple 
 as may be this change which is to be made high up 
 and at the outset, it undeniably governs everything 
 farther down. Jesus is the Son of God; the Holy 
 Spirit is the Spirit of truth that proceeds from God. 
 What God? "A Great Personal First Cause, who 
 thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor 
 of the Universe?" to whom Jesus and the Holy 
 Spirit are related in the way described in the Atha- 
 nasian Creed, so that the operations of the three 
 together produce what the Westminster divines call 
 " the Contract passed in the Council of the Trinity," 
 and what we, for plainness, describe as the fairy-tale 
 of the three Lord Shaftesburys ? This is all in the 
 air, but in the air it all hangs together. There stand 
 the Bible words ! how you construe them depends 
 1 Psalm xxxiii. 12.
 
 X.] OUR " MASSES AND THE BIBLE. 299 
 
 entirely on what definition of God you start with 
 If Jesus is the Son of " a Great Personal First Cause,' 
 then the words of the Bible, literally taken, may well 
 enough lend themselves to a story like that of the 
 three Lord Shaftesburys. The story can never be 
 verified ; but it may nevertheless be what the Bible 
 means to say, if the Bible have started, as theology 
 starts, with the " Great Personal First Cause." And 
 the story may, when it comes to be examined, have 
 many minor difficulties, have things to baffle us, 
 things to shock us; but still it may be what the 
 Bible means to say. However, the masses will get 
 rid of all minor difficulties in the simplest manner, 
 by rejecting the Bible altogether on account of the 
 major difficulty, its starting with an assumption 
 which cannot possibly be verified. 
 
 But suppose the Bible is discovered, when its 
 expressions are rightly understood, to start with an 
 assertion which can be verified : the assertion, namely, 
 not of " a Great Personal First Cause," but of " an 
 enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for right- 
 eousness." Then by the light of this discovery we 
 read and understand all the expressions that follow. 
 Jesus comes forth from this enduring Power that 
 makes for righteousness, is sent by this power, is this 
 Power's son ; the Holy Spirit proceeds from this same 
 Power, and so on. 
 
 Now, from the innumerable minor difficulties 
 which attend the story of the three Lord Shaftes- 
 burys, this right construction, put on what the Bible 
 says of Jesus, of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit,
 
 300 LITEKATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 is free. But it is free from the major difficulty also ; 
 for it neither depends upon what is unverifiable, nor 
 is it unverifiable itself. That Jesus is the Son of a 
 Great Personal First Cause is itself unverifiable ; and 
 that there is a Great Personal First Cause is unverifi- 
 able too. But that there is an enduring power, not 
 ourselves, which makes for righteousness, is verifiable, 
 as we have seen, by experience ; and that Jesus is 
 the offspring of this power is verifiable from experi- 
 ence also. For God is the author of righteousness ; 
 now, Jesus is the son of God because he gives the 
 method and secret by which alone is righteousness 
 possible. And that he does give this, we can verify, 
 again, from experience. It is so ! try, and you will 
 find it to be so ! Try all the ways to righteousness 
 you can think of, and you will find that no way 
 brings you to it except the way of Jesus, but that 
 this way does bring you to it ! And, therefore, as we 
 found we could say to the masses : " Attempt to do 
 without Israel's God that makes for righteousness, 
 and you will find out your mistake !" so we find we 
 can now proceed farther, and say: "Attempt to 
 reach righteousness by any way except that of Jesus, 
 and you will find out your mistake ! " This is a 
 thing that can prove itself, if it is so; and it will 
 prove itself, because it is so. 
 
 Thus we have the authority of both Old and New 
 Testament placed on just the same solid basis as the 
 authority of the injunction to take food and rest : 
 namely, that experience proves we cannot do without 
 them. And we have neglect of the Bible punished
 
 X.1 OUR " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE 301 
 
 just as putting one's hand into the fire is punished : 
 namely, by finding we are the worse for it. Only, to 
 attend to this experience about the Bible, needs more 
 steadiness than to attend to the momentary impres- 
 sions of hunger, fatigue, and pain ; therefore it is 
 called faith, and counted a virtue. But the appeal is 
 to experience in this case just as much as in the 
 other ; only to experience of a far deeper and greater 
 kind. 
 
 V. 
 
 So there is no doubt that we get a much firmer, 
 nay an impregnable, ground for the Bible, and for 
 recommending it to the world, if we put the construc- 
 tion on it we propose. The only question is : Is this the 
 light construction to put on it ? is it the construction 
 which properly belongs to the Bible? And here, 
 again, our appeal is to the same test which we have 
 employed throughout, the only possible test for man 
 to employ, the test of reason and experience. Given 
 the Bible-documents, what, it is inquired, is the right 
 construction to put upon them? Is it the construc- 
 tion we propose? or is it the construction of the 
 theologians, according to which the dogmas of the 
 Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and so on, 
 are presupposed all through the Bible, are sometimes 
 latent, sometimes come more visibly to the surface, 
 but are always there ; and to them every word in the 
 Bible has reference, plain or figured 1 
 
 Now, the Bible does not and cannot tell us itself, 
 in black and white, what is the right construction to
 
 302 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 put upon it ; we have to make this out And the 
 only possible way to make it out, for the dogmatists 
 to make out their construction, or for us to make 
 out ours, is by reason and experience. "Even such 
 as are readiest," says Hooker very well, " to cite for 
 one thing five hundred sentences of Scripture, what 
 warrant have they that any one of them doth mean 
 the thing for which it is alleged ?" They can have 
 none, he replies, but reasoning and collection ; and 
 to the same effect Butler says of reason, that "it is 
 indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to judge 
 concerning anything, even revelation itself." Now it 
 is simply from experience of the human spirit and its 
 productions, from observing as widely as we can the 
 manner in which men have thought, their way of 
 using words and what they mean by them, and from 
 reasoning upon this observation and experience, 
 that we conclude the construction theologians put 
 upon the Bible to be false, and ours to be the truer 
 one. 
 
 In the first place, from -Israel's master-feeling, the 
 feeling for righteousness, the predominant sense that 
 men are, as St. Paul says, " created unto good works 
 which God hath prepared beforehand that we should 
 walk in them," 1 we collect the origin of Israel's 
 conception of God, of that mighty " not ourselves " 
 which more or less engages all men's attention, as 
 the Eternal Power that makes for righteousness. This 
 we do, because the more we come to know how ideas 
 and terms arise, and what is their character, the more 
 1 Ephesians ii. 10.
 
 x.] OUK "MASSES" AND THE BIBLE. 303 
 
 this explanation of Israel's use of the word " God " 
 seems the true and natural one. Again, the construc- 
 tion we put upon the doctrine and work of Jesus is 
 collected in the same way. From the data we have, 
 and from comparison of these data with what we have 
 besides of the history of ideas and expressions, this 
 construction seems to us the true and natural one. 
 The Gospel-narratives are just that sort of account of 
 such a work and teaching as the work and teaching 
 of Jesus Christ, according to our construction of it, 
 was, which would naturally have been given by devoted 
 followers who did not fully understand it. And under- 
 stand it fully they then could not, it was so very new, 
 great, and profound ; only time gradually brings its 
 lines out more clear. 
 
 On the other hand, the theologians' notion of 
 dogmas presupposed in the Bible, and of a constant 
 latent reference to them, we reject, because experience 
 is against it. The more we know of the history of 
 ideas and expressions, the more we are convinced that 
 this account is not and cannot be the true one ; that 
 the theologians have credited the Bible with this pre- 
 supposition of dogmas and this constant latent refer- 
 ence to them, but that they are not really there. 
 " The Fathers recognised," says Dr. Newman, " a 
 certain truth lying hid under the tenor of the sacred 
 text as a whole, and showing itself more or less in 
 this verse or that, as it might be. The Fathers might 
 have traditionary information of the general drift of the 
 inspired text which we have not." Born into the 
 world twenty years later, and touched with the breath
 
 304 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 of the " Zeit-Geist," how would this exquisite and 
 delicate genius have been himself the first to feel the 
 unsoundness of all this ! that we have heard the like 
 about other books before, and that it always turns out 
 to be not so, that the right interpretation of a docu- 
 ment, such as the Bible, is not in this fashion. Homer's 
 poetry was the Bible of the Greeks, however strange 
 a one ; and just in the same way there grew up the 
 notion of a mystical and inner sense in the poetry of 
 Homer, underlying the apparent sense, but brought 
 to fight by the commentators ; perhaps, even, they 
 might have traditionary information of the drift of 
 the Homeric poetry which we have not; who knows 1 
 But, once for all, as our literary experience widens, 
 this notion of a secret sense in Homer proves to be a 
 mere dream. So, too, is the notion of a secret sense 
 in the Bible, and of the Fathers' disengagement of it. 
 Demonstration in these matters is impossible. It 
 is a maintainable thesis that the allegorising of the 
 Fathers is right, and that this is the true sense of the 
 Bible. It is a maintainable thesis that the theological 
 dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atone- 
 ment, underlie the whole Bible. It is a maintainable 
 thesis, on the other hand, that Jesus was himself 
 immersed in the Aberglaule of his nation and time, 
 and that his disciples have reported him with absolute 
 fidelity ; in this case we should have, in our estimate 
 of Jesus, to make deductions for his Aberglaube, and 
 to admire him for the insight he displayed in spite of it. 
 This thesis, we repeat, or that thesis, or another thesis, 
 is maintainable as to the construction to be put on such
 
 X.] OUR " MASSES " AND THE BIBLE. 305 
 
 a document as the Bible. Absolute demonstration is 
 impossible, and the only question is : Does experience, 
 as it widens and deepens, make for this or that thesis, 
 or make against it ? And the great thing against any 
 such thesis as either of the two we have just mentioned 
 is, that the more we know of the history of the human 
 spirit and its deliverances, the more we have reason 
 to think such a thesis improbable, and it loses hold 
 on our assent more and more. On the other hand, 
 the great thing, as we believe, in favour of such a 
 construction as we put upon the Bible is, that experi- 
 ence, as it increases, constantly confirms it ; and that, 
 though it cannot command assent, it will be found to 
 win assent more and more. 
 
 VOL. V.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 WIN assent in the end the new construction will, but 
 not at once ; and there will be a passage-time of con- 
 fusion first It is not for nothing, as we have said, 
 that people take short cuts and tell themselves fairy- 
 tales, because the immense scale of the history of 
 " bringing in everlasting righteousness " is too much 
 for their narrow minds. It is not for nothing ; they 
 pay far it. It is not for nothing that they found 
 religion on prediction and miracle, guarantee it by 
 preternatural interventions and the coming of the Son 
 of Man in the clouds, consummate it by a banquet 
 with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city shining 
 with gold and precious stones. They are like people 
 who have fed their minds on novels or their stomachs 
 on opium ; the reality of things is flat and insipid to 
 them, although it is in truth far grander than the 
 phantasmagorical world of novels and of opium. But it 
 is long before the novel-reader or the opium-eater can 
 rid himself of his bad habits, and brace his nerves, and 
 recover the tone of his mind enough to perceive it. 
 Distress and despair at the loss of his accustomed 
 stimulant are his first sensations.
 
 CHAP. XI.] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 307 
 
 Miracles, the mainstay of popular religion, are -^. 
 touched by Ithuriel's.^ spear. They are beginning to 2 
 dissolve ; but what are we to expect during the 
 process? Probably, amongst many religious people, 
 vehement efforts at reaction, a recrudescence of super- 
 stition -, the passionate resolve to keep hold on what 
 is slipping away from them by giving up more and 
 more the use of reason in religion, and by resting 
 more and more on authority. The Church of Rome 
 is the great upholder of authority as against reason 
 in religion ; and it will be strange if in the coming 
 time of transition the Church of Rome does not gain. 
 
 But for many more than those whom Rome attracts, 
 there will be an interval, between the time when men 
 take the religion of the Bible to be a thaumaturgy and 
 the time when they perceive it to be something 
 different, in which they will be prone to throw aside 
 the religion of the Bible altogether as a delusion. 
 And this, again, will be mainly the fault, if fault 
 that can be called which was an inevitable error, of 
 the religious people themselves, who, from the time 
 of the Apostles downwards, have insisted upon it that 
 religion shall be a thaumaturgy or nothing. For very 
 many, therefore, when it cannot be a thaumaturgy, it 
 will be nothing. And very likely there will come a 
 day when there will be less religion than even now. 
 For the religion of the Bible is so simple and powerful 
 that even those who make the Bible a thaumaturgy 
 get hold of the religion, because they read the Bible ; 
 but, if men do not read the Bible, they cannot get hold 
 of it And then will be fulfilled the saying of the
 
 308 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 prophet Amos : " Behold, the days come, saith the 
 Eternal, that I will send a famine in the land, not a 
 famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing 
 the words of the Eternal ; and they shall wander from 
 sea to sea, and from the north even to the east they 
 shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Eternal, 
 and shall not find it." l 
 
 Nevertheless, as after this mournful prophecy the 
 herdsman of Tekoah goes on to say : " There shall yet 
 not the least grain of Israel fall to the earth !" 2 To the 
 Bible men will return ; and why ? Because they 
 cannot do without it. Because happiness is our being's 
 end and aim, and happiness belongs to righteousness, 
 and righteousness is revealed in the Bible. For this 
 simple reason men will return to the Bible, just as a man 
 who tried to give up food, thinking it was a vain thing 
 and he could do without it, would return to food ; or 
 a man who tried to give up sleep, thinking it was a 
 vain thing and he could do without it, would return 
 to sleep. Then there will come a time of reconstruc- 
 tion ; and then, perhaps," will be the moment for 
 labours, like this attempt of ours, to be found useful. 
 For though every one must read the Bible for himself, 
 and the perfect criticism of it is an immense matter, 
 and it may be possible to go much beyond what we 
 here achieve or can achieve, yet the method for reading 
 the Bible we, as we hope and believe, here give. And 
 although, in this or that detail, the construction we 
 put upon the Bible may be wrong, yet the main lines 
 of the construction will be found, we hope and believe, 
 1 Amoa viii. 11, 12. a Amos ix. 9.
 
 XI.] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 309 
 
 right ; and the reader who has the main lines may 
 easily amend the details for himself. 
 
 n. 
 
 Meanwhile to popular Christianity, from those who 
 can see its errors, is due an indulgence inexhaustible, 
 except where limits are required to it for the good of 
 religion itself. Two considerations make this indul- 
 gence right. One is, that the language of the Bible 
 being, which is the great point a sound criticism 
 establishes against dogmatic theology, approximate, 
 not scientific, in all expressions of religious feeling 
 approximate language is lawful, and indeed is all we 
 can attain to. It cannot be adequate, more or less 
 proper it can be; but, in general, approximate language 
 consecrated by use and religious feeling acquires there- 
 from a propriety of its own. This is the first con- 
 sideration. The second is, that on both the "method" 
 and the " secret " of Jesus popular Christianity in no 
 contemptible measure both can and does, as we have 
 said, lay hold, in spite of its inadequate criticism of 
 the Bible. Now, to lay hold on the method and 
 secret of Jesus is a very great thing ; an inadequate 
 criticism of the Bible is a comparatively small one. 
 
 Certainly this consideration should govern our way 
 of regarding many things in popular Christianity ; 
 its missions, for instance. The non-Christian religions 
 are not to the wise man mere monsters ; he knows 
 they have much good and truth in them. He knows 
 that Mahometanism, and Brahminism, and Buddhism,
 
 310 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [OHAP. 
 
 are hot what the missionaries call them j and he 
 knows, too, how really unfit the missionaries are to 
 cope with them. For any one who weighs the matter 
 well, the missionary in clerical coat and gaiters whom 
 one sees in wood-cuts preaching to a group of pictur- 
 esque Orientals, is, from the inadequacy of his criticism 
 both of his hearers' religion and of his own, and his 
 signal misunderstanding of the very Volume he holds 
 in his hand, a hardly less grotesque object in his 
 intellectual equipment for his task than in his outward 
 attire. Yet every one allows that this strange figure 
 carries something of what is called European civilisa- 
 tion with him, and a good part of this is due to 
 Christianity. But even the Christianity itself that he 
 preaches, imbedded in a false theology though it be, 
 cannot but contain, in a greater or lesser measure as it 
 may happen, these three things : the all-importance 
 of righteousness, the 'method of Jesus, the secret of Jesus. 
 No Christianity that is ever preached but manages to 
 cai-ry something of these aLong with it 
 
 And if it carries them to Mahometanism, they are 
 carried where of the all-importance of righteousness 
 there is a knowledge, but of the method and secret 
 of Jesus, by which alone is righteousness possible, 
 hardly any sense at all. If it carries them to Brah- 
 minism, they are carried where of the all-importance 
 of righteousness, the foundation of the whole matter, 
 there is a wholly insufficient sense ; and where religion 
 is, above all, that metaphysical conception, or meta- 
 physical play, so dear to the Aryan genius and to M. 
 Emile Burnouf. If it carries them to Buddhism, they
 
 XI.] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 311 
 
 are carried to a religion to be saluted with respect, 
 indeed ; for it has not only the sense for righteous- 
 ness, it has, even, it has the secret of Jesus. But it 
 employs the secret ill, because greatly wanting in the 
 method, because utterly wanting in the sweet reason- 
 ableness, the unerring balance, the epieikeia. There- 
 fore to all whom it visits, the Christianity of our 
 missions, inadequate as may be its criticism of the 
 Bible, brings what may do them good. And if it 
 brings the Bible itself, it brings what may not only 
 help the good preached, but may also with time dis- 
 sipate the erroneous criticism which accompanies this 
 and impairs it. All this is to be said for popular 
 religion; and it all makes in favour of treating 
 popular religion tenderly, of sparing it as much as 
 possible, of trusting to time and indirect means to 
 transform it, rather than to sudden, violent changes. 
 
 III. 
 
 Learned religion, however, the pseudo-science of 
 dogmatic theology, merits no such indulgence. It is 
 a separable accretion, which never had any business 
 to be attached to Christianity, never did it any good, 
 and now does it great harm, and thickens an hun- 
 dredfold the religious confusion in which we live. 
 Attempts to adopt it, to put a new sense into it, to 
 make it plausible, are the most misspent labour in 
 the world. Certainly no religious reformer who tries 
 it, or has tried it, will find his work live. 
 
 Nothing is more common, indeed, than for religious
 
 312 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 writers, who have a strong sense of the genuine and 
 moral side of Christianity, and who much enlarge on 
 the pre-eminence of this, to put themselves right, as 
 it were, with dogmatic theology, by a passing sentence 
 expressing profound belief in its dogmas, though in 
 discussing them, it is implied, there is little profit. 
 So Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, that unwearying and 
 much-revered exponent of the moral side of the Bible : 
 " It seems difficult," he says, " to conceive that any 
 man should read through the New Testament candidly 
 and attentively, without being convinced that the 
 doctrine of the Trinity is essential to and implied in 
 every part of the system." Even already many 
 readers of Mr. Erskine feel, when they come across 
 such a sentence as that, as if they had suddenly taken 
 gravel or sand into their mouth. Twenty years hence 
 this feeling will be far stronger ; the reader will drop 
 the book, saying that certainly it can avail him no- 
 thing. So, also, Bunsen was fond of maintaining, 
 putting some peculiar meaning of his own into the 
 words, that the whole of. Christianity was in the 
 Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Thus, 
 too, the Bishop of Exeter chooses to say that his 
 main objection to keeping the Athanasian Creed is, 
 that it endangers the doctrine of the Trinity, which 
 is so important. Mr. Maurice, again, that pure and 
 devout spirit, of whom, however, the truth must at 
 last be told, that in theology he passed his life beat- 
 ing the bush with deep emotion and never starting 
 the hare, Mr. Maurice declared that by reading 
 between the lines he saw in the Thirty-nine Articles
 
 XI.] GKEATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 313 
 
 and the Athanasian Creed the altogether perfect 
 expression of the Christian faith. 
 
 But all this is mischievous as well as vain. It is 
 vain, because it is meant to conciliate the so-called 
 orthodox, and it does not conciliate them. Of his 
 attachment to the doctrine of the Trinity the Bishop 
 of Exeter may make what protestations he will, Arch- 
 deacon Denison will still smell a rat in them; and 
 the time has passed when Bunsen's Evangelical 
 phrases could fascinate the Evangelicals. Such lan- 
 guage, however, does also actual harm, because it 
 proceeds from a misunderstanding and prolongs it. 
 For it may be well to read between the lines of a 
 man labouring with an experience he cannot utter ; 
 but to read between the lines of a notion-work is 
 absurd, for it is of the essence of a notion-work not 
 to need it And the Athanasian Creed is a notion- 
 work, of which the fault is that its basis is a chimsera. 
 It is an application of the forms of Greek -logic to a 
 chimaera, its own notion of the Trinity, a notion unestab- 
 lished, not resting on observation and experience, but 
 assumed to be given in Scripture, yet not really given 
 there. Indeed the very expression, tlie Trinity, jars 
 with the whole idea and character of Bible-religion. 
 But, lest the Unitarian should be unduly elated at 
 hearing this, let us hasten to add that so too, and 
 just as much, does the expression, a, Great Personal 
 First Cause. 
 
 Learned pseudo-science applied to the data of the 
 Bible is best called plainly what it is, utter blunder; 
 criticism of the same order, and of which the futility
 
 314 LITERATURE AND DOGMA, [CHAP. 
 
 will one day be just as visible, as that criticism about 
 the two swords which some way back we quoted 
 To try to tinker such criticism only makeb matters 
 worse. The best way is to throw it aside altogether, 
 and forget it as fast as possible. This is what the 
 good of religion demands, and what all the enemies 
 of religion would most deprecate. The hour for 
 softening down, and explaining away, is passed ; the 
 whole false notion-work has to go. Mild defences of 
 it leave on the mind a sense of the defender's hope- 
 less inability to perceive our actual situation ; violent 
 defences read, alas ! only like " a tale told by an idiot, 
 full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 
 
 But the great work to be done for the better time 
 which will arrive, and for the time of transition which 
 will precede it, is not a work of destruction, but to 
 show that the truth is really, as it is, incomparably 
 higher, grander, more wide and deep-reaching, than 
 the Aberglaube and false science which it displaces. 
 
 The propounders of " The Great Personal First 
 Cause, who thinks and loves," are too modest when 
 they sometimes say, taking their lesson from the 
 Bible, that, after all, man can know next to nothing 
 of the Divine nature. They do themselves signal 
 injustice ; they themselves know a great deal, far too 
 much. They know so much, that they make of God 
 a magnified and non-natural man, a sort, as we have 
 said, of infinitely extended Lord Shaftesbury ; and
 
 XI. 1 GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 315 
 
 when this leads them into difficulties, and they think 
 to escape from these by saying that God's ways are 
 not man's ways, they do not succeed in making their 
 God cease to resemble a man, they only make him re- 
 semble a man puzzled. But the truth is, that one may 
 have a great respect for Lord Shaftesbury, and yet be 
 permitted, even however much he be magnified, to 
 imagine something far beyond him. And this is the 
 good of such an unpretending definition of God as 
 ours : the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes for 
 righteousness; it leaves the infinite to the imagina- 
 tion, and to the gradual efforts of countless ages of 
 men, slowly feeling after more of it and finding it. 
 Ages and ages hence, no such adequate definition of 
 the infinite not ourselves will yet be possible, as any 
 sciolist of a theologian will now pretend to rattle you 
 off in a moment. But on one point of the operation 
 of this not ourselves we are clear : that it makes for 
 conduct, righteousness. So far we know God, that 
 he is " the Eternal that loveth righteousness ; " and the 
 farther we go in righteousness, the more we shall 
 know him. 
 
 And as this true and authentic God of Israel is far 
 grander than the God of popular religion, so is his 
 real affirmation of himself in human affairs far grander 
 than that poor machinery of prediction and miracle, 
 by which popular religion imagines that he affirms 
 himself. The greatness of the scale on which he 
 operates makes it hard for men to follow him ; but 
 the greatness of the scale, too, makes the grandeur of 
 the operation. Take the Scripture-promises and their
 
 316 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 accomplishment As the whirlwind passeth, so is the 
 wicked no more ; but the righteous is an everlasting founda- 
 tion. 1 And again : They slwll call Jerusalem the throne 
 of the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gatJiered unto 
 it. 2 It is objected that this is not fulfilled. It is not 
 fulfilled yet, because the whole career of the human 
 race has to bring out its fulfilment, and this career is 
 still going forward. "Men are impatient, and for 
 precipitating things," says Butler ; and Davison, 
 whom on a former occasion we quoted to differ from 
 him, Davison, not the least memorable of that Oriel 
 group, whose reputation I, above most people, am 
 bound to cherish, says with a weighty and noble 
 simplicity worthy of Butler : " Conscience and the 
 present constitution of things are not corresponding 
 terms ; it is conscience and the issue of things which go 
 together. " It is so ; and this is what makes the 
 spectacle of human affairs so edifying and so sublime. 
 Give time enough for the experience, and experi- 
 mentally and demonstrably it is true, that " the path 
 of the just is as the shining light which shineth more 
 and more unto the perfect day." 3 Only the limits 
 for the experience are wider than people think. " Yet 
 a little while, and the ungodly shall be clean gone ! " 4 
 but "a little while" according to the scope and working 
 of that mighty Power to which a thousand years are 
 as one day. The world goes on, nations and men 
 arrive and depart, with varying fortune, as it appears, 
 with time and chance happening unto all. Look a 
 
 1 Prov. x. 25. 2 Jer. iii. 17. 
 
 8 Prov. iv. 18. * Ps. xxxvii. 10
 
 XI.] GKEATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 317 
 
 little deeper, and you will see that one strain runs 
 through it all : nations and men, whoever is ship- 
 wrecked, is shipwrecked on conduct. It is the God of 
 Israel steadily and irresistibly asserting himself ; the 
 Eternal that loveth righteousness. 
 
 In this sense we should read the Hebrew prophets. 
 They did not foresee and foretell curious coincidences, 
 but they foresaw and foretold this inevitable triumph 
 of righteousness. First, they foretold it for all the 
 men and nations of their own day, and especially for 
 those colossal unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen 
 world, which looked everlasting; then, for all time. 
 "As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no 
 more;" sooner or later it is, it must be, so. Hebrew 
 prophecy is never read aright until it is read in this 
 sense, which indeed of itself it cries out for ; it is, as 
 Davison, again, finely says, impatient for the larger scope. 
 How often, throughout the ages, how often, even, by 
 the Hebrew prophets themselves, has some immediate 
 visible interposition been looked for ! "I looked," 
 they make God say, "and there was no man to help, 
 and I wondered that there was none to uphold ; 
 therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me. 
 The day of vengeance is in mine heart, the year of 
 my redeemed is come." 1 long -delaying arm of 
 might, will the Eternal never put thee forth, to smite 
 these sinners who go on as if righteousness mattered 
 nothing ? There is no need; they are smitten. Down 
 they come, one after another ; Assyria falls, Babylon, 
 Greece, Home; they all fall for want of conduct, 
 1 Isaiah Ixiii. 4, 5.
 
 318 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 righteousness. "The heathen make much ado, and 
 the kingdoms are moved ; but God hath showed his 
 voice, and the earth doth melt away." 1 Nay, but 
 Judaea itself, the Holy Land, the land of God's Israel, 
 perishes too, and perishes for want of righteousness. 
 
 Yes, Israel's visible Jerusalem is in ruins ; and 
 how, then, shall men "call Jerusalem the throne of 
 the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gathered 
 unto it ?" But the true Israel was Israel the bringer- 
 in and defender of the idea of conduct, Israel the 
 lifter-up to the nations of the banner of righteousness. 
 The true Jerusalem was the city of this ideal Israel. 
 And this ideal Israel could not and cannot perish, so 
 long as its idea, righteousness and its necessity, does 
 not perish, but prevails. Now, that it does prevail, 
 the whole course of the world proves, and the fall of 
 the actual Israel is of itself witness. Thus, therefore, 
 the ideal Israel for ever lives and prospers ; and its 
 city is the city whereto all nations and languages, 
 after endless trials of everything else except conduct, 
 after incessantly attempting to do without righteous- 
 ness and failing, are slowly but surely gathered. 
 
 To this Israel are the promises, and to this Israel 
 they are fulfilled. "The nation and kingdom that 
 will not serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations 
 shall be utterly wasted." 2 It is so; since all history 
 is an accumulation of experiences that what men and 
 nations fall by is want of conduct. To call it by this 
 plain name is often not amiss, for the thing is never 
 more great than when it is looked at in its simplicity 
 1 Psalm xlvi. 6. 2 Isaiah Ix. 12.
 
 XT.] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 319 
 
 and reality. Yet the true name to touch the soul is 
 the name Israel gave : Righteousness. And to Israel, 
 as the representative of this imperishable and saving 
 idea of righteousness, all the promises come true, and 
 the language of none of them is pitched too high. 
 TJie Eternal, Israel says truly, is on my side. 1 "Fear 
 not, thou worm Jacob, and thou handful Israel ! I 
 will help thee, saith the Eternal. Behold, I have 
 graven thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls 
 are continually before me. The Eternal hath chosen 
 Zion ; pray for the peace of Jerusalem ! they shall 
 prosper that love thee. Men shall call Jerusalem 
 the throne of the Eternal, and all the nations shall be 
 gathered unto it. And he will destroy in this moun- 
 tain the face of the covering cast over all people, and 
 the veil that is spread over all nations; he will swallow 
 up death in victory. And it shall be said in that 
 day : Lo, this is our God ! this is the Eternal, we 
 have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in 
 his salvation." 2 
 
 V. 
 
 And if Assyria and Babylon seem too remote, let 
 us look nearer home for testimonies to the inexhaust- 
 ible grandeur and significance of the Old Testament 
 revelation, according to that construction which we 
 here put upon it. Every educated man loves Greece, 
 owes gratitude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up to 
 the nations of the banner of art and science, as Israel 
 
 1 Psalm cxviii. 6. 
 
 2 Is. xli. 14; xlix. 16; Ps. cxxxii 13; cxxii.6; Jer. iii. 17} 
 Is. KV. 7, 8, 9.
 
 320 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 was the lifter -up of the banner of righteousness. 
 Now. the world cannot do without art and science. 
 And the lifter-up of the banner of art and science 
 was naturally much occupied with them, and conduct 
 was a homely plain matter. Not enough heed, there- 
 fore, was given by him to conduct. But conduct, 
 plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life, while art 
 and science are only two-eighths. And this brilliant 
 Greece perished for lack of attention enough to 
 conduct; for want of conduct, steadiness, character. 
 And there is this difference between Greece and 
 Judaea : both were custodians of a revelation, and 
 both perished ; but Greece perished of otw-fidelity to 
 her revelation, and Judaea perished of under-frdelity to 
 hers. Nay, and the victorious revelation now, even 
 now, in this age when more of beauty and more of 
 knowledge are so much needed, and knowledge, at 
 any rate, is so highly esteemed, the revelation which 
 rules the world even now, is not Greece's revelation, 
 but Judaea's ; not the pre-eminence of art and science, 
 but the pre-eminence of righteousness. 
 
 It reminds one of what is recorded of Abraham, 
 before the true inheritor of the promises, the humble 
 and homely Isaac, was born. Abraham looked upon 
 the vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael, and said 
 appealingly to God : " Oh that Ishmael might live 
 before thee!" 1 But it cannot be; the promises are 
 to conduct, conduct only. And so, again, we in like 
 manner behold, long after Greece has perished, a 
 brilliant successor of Greece, the Renascence, present 
 1 Genesis xvii. 18.
 
 XL] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 321 
 
 herself with high hopes. The preachers of righteous- 
 ness, blunderers as they often were, had for centuries 
 had it all their own way. Art and science had been 
 forgotten, men's minds had been enslaved, their bodies 
 macerated. . But the gloomy, oppressive dream is now 
 over. "Let us return to Nature/" And all the world 
 salutes with pride and joy the Renascence, and prays 
 to Heaven : " Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! " 
 Surely the future belongs to this brilliant new-comer, 
 with his animating maxim : Let us return to Nature ! 
 Ah, what pitfalls are in that word Nature ! Let us 
 return to art and science, which are a part of 
 Nature; yes. Let us return to a proper conception 
 of righteousness, to a true use of the method and 
 secret of Jesus, which have been all denaturalised; 
 yes. But, "Let us return to Nature ;" do you mean 
 that we are to give full swing to our inclinations, to 
 throw the reins on the neck of our senses, of those 
 sirens whom Paul the Israelite called " the deceitful 
 lusts," 1 and of following whom he said "Let no man 
 beguile you with vain words, for because of these 
 things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of 
 disobedience?" 2 Do you mean that conduct is not 
 three-fourths of life, and that the secret of Jesus has 
 no use ? And the Renascence did mean this, or half- 
 meant this ; so disgusted was it with the cowled and 
 tonsured Middle Age. And it died of it, this brilliant 
 Ishmael died of it! it died of provoking a collision 
 with the homely Isaac, righteousness. On the Conti- 
 nent came the Catholic reaction ; in England, as we 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 22. 2 Eph. v. 6. 
 
 VOL. V. Y
 
 322 LITEKATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 have said elsewhere, "the great middle class, the 
 kernel of the nation, entered the prison of Puri- 
 tanism, and had the key turned upon its spirit there 
 for two hundred years." After too much glorification 
 of art, science, and culture, too little ; after Rabelais, 
 George Fox. 
 
 France, again, how often and how impetuously for 
 France has the prayer gone up to Heaven : " Oh that 
 Ishmael might live before thee!" It is not enough 
 perceived what it is which gives to France her attrac- 
 tiveness for everybody, and her success, and her 
 repeated disasters. France is I'homme sensuel moyen, 
 the average sensual man ; Paris is the city of I'homme 
 sensuel moyen. This has an attraction for all of us. 
 We all have in us this homme sensuel, the man of the 
 "wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts;" 
 but we develop him under checks and doubts, and 
 unsystematically and often grossly. France, on the 
 other hand, develops him confidently and harmon- 
 iously. She makes the most of him, because she 
 knows what she is about and keeps in a mean, as her 
 climate is in a mean, and her situation. She does not 
 develop him with madness, into a monstrosity, as the 
 Italy of the Eenascence did; she develops him equably 
 and systematically. And hence she does not shock 
 people with him but attracts them, she names herself 
 the France of tact and measure, good sense, logic. In 
 a way, this is true. As she develops the senses, the 
 apparent self, all round, in good faith, without mis- 
 givings, without violence, she has much reasonableness 
 and clearness in all her notions and arrangements , a
 
 XI.] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 323 
 
 sort of balance even in conduct; as much art and 
 science, and it is not a little, as goes with the ideal of 
 Vhomme sensuel moyen. And from her ideal of the 
 average sensual man France has deduced her famous 
 gospel of the Eights of Man, which she preaches with 
 such an infinite crowing and self-admiration. France 
 takes "the wishes of the flesh and of the current 
 thoughts " for a man's rights; and human happiness, 
 and the perfection of society, she places in everybody's 
 being enabled to gratify these wishes, to get these 
 rights, as equally as possible and as much as possible. 
 In Italy, as in ancient Greece, the satisfying develop- 
 ment of this ideal of the average sensual man is broken 
 by the imperious ideal of art and science disparaging 
 it ; in the Germanic nations, by the ideal of morality 
 disparaging it. Still, whenever, as often happens, the 
 pursuers of these higher ideals are a little weary of 
 them or unsuccessful with them, they turn with a sort 
 of envy and admiration to the ideal set up by France, 
 so positive, intelligible, and up to a certain point 
 satisfying. They are inclined to try it instead of 
 their own, although they can never bring themselves 
 to try it thoroughly, and therefore well But this 
 explains the great attraction France exercises upon 
 the world. All of us feel, at some time or other in 
 our lives, a hankering after the French ideal, a dis- 
 position to try it. More particularly is this true of 
 the Latin nations ; and therefore everywhere, among 
 these nations, you see the old indigenous type of city 
 disappearing, and the type of modern Paris, the city 
 of I'homme sensuel moyen, replacing it La BoMme, the
 
 324 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 ideal, free, pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of 
 Paradise of Ishmaels. And all this assent from every 
 quarter, and the clearness and apparent reasonableness 
 of their ideal besides, fill the French with a kind of 
 ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost fanatical for pro- 
 pagating what they call French civilisation everywhere, 
 for establishing its predominance, and their own pre- 
 dominance along with it, as of the people entrusted 
 with an oracle so showy and taking. Oh that Ishmael 
 might live before thee ! Since everybody has something 
 which conspires with this Ishmael, his success, again 
 and again, seems to be certain. Again and again he 
 seems drawing near to a worldwide success, nay, to 
 have succeeded ; but always, at this point, disaster 
 overtakes him, he signally breaks down. At this 
 crowning moment, when all seems triumphant with 
 him, comes what the Bible calls a crisis, or judgment. 
 Now is the judgment of this world ! now shall the prince 
 of this world be cast out/ 1 Cast out he is, and always 
 must be, because his ideal, which is also that of France 
 in general, however she. may have noble spirits who 
 contend against it and seek a better, is after all a 
 false one. Plausible and attractive as it may be, the 
 constitution of things turns out to be somehow or 
 other against it. And why ? Because the free 
 development of our senses all round, of our apparent 
 self, has to undergo a profound modification from the 
 law of our higher real self, the law of righteousness ; 
 because he, whose ideal is the free development of the 
 senses all round, serves the senses, is a servant. But : 
 1 John xii. 31.
 
 xr.] GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 325 
 
 The servant abideth not in the house for ever ; the son 
 abideth for ever. 1 
 
 Is it possible to imagine a grander testimony to 
 the truth of the revelation committed to Israeli 
 What miracle of making an iron axe-head float on 
 water, what successful prediction that a thing should 
 happen just so many years and months and days 
 hence, could be really half so impressive ? 
 
 VL 
 
 So that the whole history of the world to this day 
 is in truth one continual establishing of the Old 
 Testament revelation : "0 ye tliat love the Eternal, see 
 that ye hate the thing that is evil/ to him that orderethhis 
 conversation right, shall be shown the salvation of God." z 
 And whether we consider this revelation in respect to 
 human affairs at large, or in respect to individual 
 happiness, in either case its importance is so immense, 
 that the people to whom it was given, and whose 
 record is in the Bible, deserve fully to be singled out 
 as the Bible singles them. " Behold, darkness doth 
 cover the earth, and gross darkness the nations ; but 
 the Eternal shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall 
 be seen upon thee ! " 3 For, while other nations had the 
 misleading idea that this or that, other than righteous- 
 ness, is saving, and it is not ; that this or that, other 
 than conduct, brings happiness, and it does not; 
 Israel had the true idea that righteousness is saving, 
 that to wndud belongs happiness. 
 
 1 John viit 35. a Ps. xcviL 10 ; 1. 23. 3 Is. Ix. 2.
 
 326 LITEEATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Nor let it be said that other nations, too, had at 
 least something of this idea. They had, but they 
 were not possessed with it ; and to feel it enough to 
 make the world feel it, it was necessary to be possessed 
 with it. It is not sufficient to have been visited by 
 such an idea at times, to have had it forced occasion- 
 ally on one's mind by the teaching of experience. 
 No : he that hath the bride is the bridegroom; 1 the idea 
 belongs to him who has most loved it Common 
 prudence can say : Honesty is the best policy ; 
 morality can say: To conduct belongs happiness. But 
 Israel and the Bible are filled with religious joy, and 
 rise higher and say: "Righteousness is salvation/" 
 and this is what is inspiring. " I have stuck unto thy 
 testimonies ! Eternal, what love have I unto thy law ! 
 all the day long is my study in it. Thy testimonies 
 have I claimed as mine heritage for ever, and why 1 
 they are the very joy of my heart!" 2 This is why the 
 testimonies of righteousness are Israel's heritage for 
 ever, because they were the very joy of his heart. 
 Herein Israel stood alone, "the friend and elect of the 
 Eternal " He showeth his word unto Jacob, his 
 statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not 
 dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen 
 knowledge of his laws." 3 
 
 Poor Israel ! poor ancient people / 4 It was revealed 
 to thee that righteousness is salvation ; the question, 
 what righteousness is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer 
 of the vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the 
 
 1 John iii. 29. 2 Ps. cxix. 31, 97, 111. 
 
 1 Ps. cxlvii. 19, 20. * Is. xliv. 7.
 
 XL] GEEATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 327 
 
 things which belong unto thy peace ! with that blind- 
 ness thy solitary pre-eminence ended, and the new 
 Israel, made up out of all nations and languages, took 
 thy room. But, thy visitation complete, thy temple 
 in ruins, thy reign over, thine office done, thy children 
 dispersed, thy teeth drawn, thy shekels of silver and 
 gold plundered, did there yet stay with thee any 
 remembrance of thy primitive intuition, simple and 
 sublime, of the Eternal that loveth righteousness ? 
 Perhaps not ; the Talmudists were fully as well able 
 to efface it as the Fathers. But if there did, what 
 punishment can have been to thee like the punishment 
 of watching the performances of the Aryan genius 
 upon the foundation which thou hadst given to it ? 
 to behold this terrible and triumphant philosopher, 
 with his monotheistic idea and his metaphysical 
 Trinity, " neither confounding the Persons nor 
 dividing the Substance ?" Like the torture for a poet 
 to hear people laying down the law about poetry who 
 have not the sense what poetry is, a sense with 
 which he was born ! like the affliction to a man of 
 science to hear people talk of things as proved who 
 do not even know what constitutes a fact ! From the 
 Council of Nicsea down to Convocation and our two 
 bishops "doing something" for the Godhead of the 
 Eternal Son, what must thou have had to suffer I
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 No ; the mystery hidden from ages and generations, 1 
 which none of the rulers of this world knew, 2 the 
 mystery revealed finally by Jesus Christ and rejected 
 by the Jews, was not the doctrine of the Trinity, nor 
 anything speculative. It was the method and the 
 secret of Jesus. Jesus did not change the object for 
 men, righteousness. He made clear what it was, 
 and that it was this : his method and his secret. 
 
 This was the mystery, and the Apostles had still the 
 consciousness that it was. To " learn Christ," to "be 
 taught the truth as it is in Jesus," was not, with them, 
 to acquire certain tenets about One God in Trinity 
 and Trinity in Unity. It was, " to be renewed in the 
 spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man which 
 after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. " 3 
 And this exactly amounts to the method and secret 
 of Jesus. 
 
 For Catholic and for Protestant theology alike, this 
 consciousness, which the Apostles had still preserved, 
 was lost. For Catholic and Protestant theology alike. 
 
 1 Col. i. 26. 2 1 Cor. ii. 8. 3 Eph. iv. 23, 24.
 
 CHAP, xii.] TRUE GEEATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 329 
 
 the truth as it is in Jesus, the mystery revealed in 
 Christ, meant something totally different from his 
 method and secret. But they recognised, and indeed 
 the thing was so plain that they could not well miss 
 it, they recognised that on all Christians the method 
 and secret of Jesus were enjoined. So to this extent 
 the method and secret of Jesus were preached and 
 had their effect. To this extent true Christianity has 
 been known, and to the extent before stated it has 
 been neglected. Now, as we say that the truth and 
 grandeur of the Old Testament most comes out 
 experimentally, that is, by the whole course of the 
 world establishing it, and confuting what is opposed 
 to it so it is with Christianity. Its grandeur and 
 truth are far best brought out experimentally; and the 
 thing is, to make people see this. 
 
 But there is this difference between the religion of 
 the Old Testament and Christianity. Of the religion 
 of the Old Testament we can pretty well see to the 
 end, we can trace fully enough the experimental proof 
 of it in history. But of Christianity the future is as yet 
 almost unknown. For that the world cannot get on 
 without righteousness we have the clear experience, 
 and a grand and admirable experience it is. But 
 what the world will become by the thorough use of 
 that which is really righteousness, the method and 
 the secret and the sweet reasonableness of Jesus, we 
 have as yet hardly any experience at all. Therefore 
 we, who in this essay limit ourselves to experience, 
 shall speak here of Christianity and of its greatness 
 very soberly. Yet Christianity is really all the
 
 330 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, 
 
 grander for that very reason which makes us speak 
 about it in this sober manner, that it has such an 
 immense development still before it, and that it has 
 as yet so little shown all it contains, all it can do. 
 Indeed, that Christianity has already done so much 
 as it has, is a witness to it ; and that it has not yet 
 done more, is a witness to it too. Let us observe how 
 this is so. 
 
 n. 
 
 Few things are more melancholy than to observe 
 Christian apologists taunting the Jews with the failure 
 of Hebraism to fulfil the splendid promises of prophecy, 
 and Jewish apologists taunting Christendom with the 
 like failure on the part of Christianity. Neither has 
 yet fulfilled them, or could yet have fulfilled them. 
 Certainly the restoration by Cyrus, the Second Temple, 
 the Maccabean victories, are hardly more than the 
 shadows of a fulfilment of the magnificent words : 
 " The sons of them that .afflicted thee shall come 
 bending unto thee, and all they that despised thee 
 shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet ; 
 thy gates shall not be shut day nor night, that men 
 may bring unto thee the treasures of the Gentiles, 
 and that their kings may be brought." l The Chris- 
 tian isation of all the leading nations of the world is, 
 it is said, a much better fulfilment of that promise. 
 Be it so. Yet does Christendom, let us ask, offer 
 more than a shadow of the fulfilment of this: "Violence 
 shall no more be heard in thy land ; the vile person 
 1 Is. lx. 14, 11.
 
 Hi.] TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 331 
 
 shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl bountiful ; 
 thy people shall be all righteous ; they shall all know 
 me, from the least to the greatest ; I will put my law 
 in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; 
 the Eternal shall be thine everlasting light, and the 
 days of thy mourning shall be ended V l Manifestly 
 it does not. Yet the two promises hang together; 
 one of them is not truly fulfilled unless the other is. 
 
 The promises were made to righteousness, with all 
 which the idea of righteousness involves. And it 
 involves Christianity. They were made on the imme- 
 diate prospect of a small triumph for righteousness, 
 the restoration of the Jews after the captivity in 
 Babylon ; but they are not satisfied by that triumph. 
 The prevalence of the profession of Christianity is a 
 larger triumph ; yet in itself it hardly satisfies them 
 any better. What satisfies them is the prevailing of 
 that which righteousness really is, and nothing else 
 satisfies them. Now, Christianity is that which 
 righteousness really is. Therefore, if something called 
 Christianity prevails, and yet the promises are not 
 satisfied, the inference is that this something is not 
 that which righteousness really is, and therefore not 
 really Christianity. And as the course of the world 
 is perpetually establishing the pre-eminence of right- 
 eousness, and confounding whatever denies this pre- 
 eminence, so, too, the course of the world is for ever 
 establishing what righteousness really is, that is to 
 say, true Christianity, and confounding whatever 
 pretends to be true Christianity and is not. 
 1 Is. lx. 18 ; xxxii 5 ; lx. 21 ; Jer. xxxi. 33, 34 ; Is. lx. 20.
 
 332 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Now, just as the constitution of things turned out 
 to be against the great unrighteous kingdoms of the 
 heathen world, and against all the brilliant Ishmaels 
 we have seen since, so the constitution of things turns 
 out to be against all false presentations of Christianity, 
 such as the theology of the Fathers or Protestant 
 theology. They do not work successfully, they do 
 not reach the aim, they do not bring the world to the 
 fruition of the promises made to righteousness. And 
 the reason is, because they substitute for what is 
 really righteousness something else. Catholic dogma 
 or Lutheran justification by faith they substitute for 
 the method and secret of Jesus. 
 
 Nevertheless, as all Christian Churches do recom- 
 mend the method and the secret of Jesus, though not 
 in the right way or in the right eminency, still the 
 world is made partially acquainted with what right- 
 eousness really is, and the doctrine produces some 
 effect, although the full effect is much thwarted and 
 deadened by the false way in which the doctrine is 
 presented. Still, the effect produced is great. For 
 instance, the sum of individual happiness that has 
 been caused by Christianity is, any one can see, enor- 
 mous. But let us take the effect of Christianity on 
 the world. And if we look at the thing closely, we 
 shall find that its effect has been this : Christianity 
 has brought the world, or at any rate all the leading 
 part of the world, to regard righteousness as only the Jews 
 regarded it before the coming of Christ. The world has 
 accepted, so far as profession goes, that original 
 revelation made to Israel : the pre-eminence of righteous-
 
 XII.] TKUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 333 
 
 ness. The infinite truth and attractiveness of the 
 method and secret and character of Jesus, however 
 falsely surrounded, have prevailed with the world so 
 far as this. And this is an immense gain, and a signal 
 witness to Christianity. The world does homage to 
 the pre-eminence of righteousness ; and here we have 
 one of those fulfilments of prophecy which are so real 
 and so glorious. " Glorious things are spoken of thee, 
 City of God ! I will make mention of Rahab and 
 Babylon as of them that know me ! behold, the 
 Philistines also, and Tyre, with the Ethiopians, 
 these were born there ! And of Zion it shall be 
 reported : This and that man was born in her ! and 
 the Most High shall stablish her. The Eternal shall 
 count, when he writeth up the people : This man was 
 born there !" 1 That prophecy is at the present day 
 abundantly fulfilled. The world's chief nations have 
 now all come, we see, to reckon and profess themselves 
 born in Zion, born, that is, in the religion of Zion, 
 the dty of righteousness. 
 
 But there remains the question : what righteousness 
 really is. The method and secret and sweet reason- 
 ableness of Jesus. But the world does not see this ; 
 for it puts, as righteousness, something else first and 
 this second. So that here, too, as to seeing what 
 righteousness really is, the world now is much in the 
 same position in which the Jews, when Jesus Christ 
 came. were. It is often said : If Jesus Christ came 
 now, his religion would be rejected. And this is only 
 another way of saying that the world now, as the 
 1 Psalm Ixxxvii. 3-6.
 
 334 LITERATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Jewish people formerly, has something which thwarts 
 and confuses its perception of what righteousness 
 really is. It is so ; and the thwarting cause is the 
 same now as then : the dogmatic system current, the 
 so-called orthodox theology. This prevents now, as 
 it did then, that which righteousness really is, the 
 method and secret of Jesus, from being rightly received, 
 from operating fully, and from accomplishing its due 
 effect. 
 
 So true is this, that we have only to look at our 
 own community to see the almost precise parallel, so 
 far as religion is concerned, to the state of things 
 presented in Judaea when Jesus Christ came. The 
 multitudes are the same everywhere. The chief priests 
 and elders of the people, and the scribes, are our 
 bishops and dogmatists, with their pseudo-science of 
 learned theology blinding their eyes, and always, 
 whenever simple souls are disposed to think that the 
 method and secret of Jesus is true religion, and that 
 the Great Personal First Cause and the Godhead of 
 the Eternal Son have nothing to do with it, eager to 
 cry out : This people that knoweth not the law are cursed ! l 
 The Pharisees, with their genuine concern for religion, 
 but total want of perception of what religion really is, 
 and by their temper, attitude, and aims doing their 
 best to make religion impossible, are the Protestant 
 Dissenters. The Sadducees are our friends the philo- 
 sophical Liberals, who believe neither in angel nor 
 spirit but in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Even the Koman 
 governor has his close parallel in our celebrated 
 1 John vii. 49.
 
 xii.] TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 335 
 
 aristocracy, with its superficial good sense and good 
 nature, its complete inaptitude for ideas, its profound 
 helplessness in presence of all great spiritual move- 
 ments. And the result is, that the splendid promises 
 to righteousness made by the Hebrew prophets, claimed 
 by the Jews as the property of Judaism, claimed by 
 us as the property of Christianity, are almost as 
 ludicrously inapplicable to our religious state now, as 
 to theirs then. 
 
 And this, we say, is again a signal witness to Chris- 
 tianity. Jesus Christ came to reveal what righteousness, 
 to which the promises belong, really is ; and so long 
 as this, though shown by Jesus, is not recognised by 
 us, we may call ourselves Christendom as much as we 
 please, the true character of a Christendom will be 
 wanting to us, because the great promises of prophecy 
 will be still without their fulfilment. Nothing will 
 do except righteousness ; and no other conception of 
 righteousness will do, except Jesus Christ's conception 
 of it : his method and his secret. 
 
 EX 
 
 Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and the impos- 
 ing and impressive attestation of it, if we could but 
 worthily bring the thing out, is here : in that 
 immense experimental proof of the necessity of it, 
 which the whole course of the world has steadily 
 accumulated, and indicates to us as still continuing 
 and extending. Men will not admit assumptions, 
 the popular legend they call a fairy-tale, the meta-
 
 336 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 physical demonstrations do not demonstrate, nothing 
 but experimental proof will go down ; and here is an 
 experimental proof which never fails, and which at 
 the same time is infinitely grander, by the vastness 
 of its scale, the scope of its duration, the gravity of 
 its results, than the machinery of the popular fairy- 
 tale. Walking on the water, multiplying loaves, 
 raising corpses, a heavenly judge appearing with 
 trumpets in the clouds while we are yet alive, what 
 is this compared to the real experience offered as 
 witness to us by Christianity 1 It is like the differ- 
 ence between the grandeur of an extravaganza and 
 the grandeur of the sea or the sky, immense objects 
 which dwarf us, but where we are in contact with 
 reality, and a reality of which we can gradually, 
 though very slowly, trace the laws. 
 
 The more we trace the real law of Christianity's 
 action, the grander it will seem. Certainly in the 
 Gospels there is plenty of matter to call out our feel- 
 ings. But perhaps this has been somewhat over-used 
 and mis-used, applied, as it has been, chiefly so as to 
 be subservient to what we call the fairy-tale of the 
 three Lord Shaftesburys, a story which we do not 
 deny to have, like other products of the popular 
 imagination, its pathos and power, but which we 
 have seen to be no solid foundation to rest our faith 
 in the Bible on. And perhaps, too, we do wrong, 
 and inevitably fall into what is artificial and unnatural, 
 in labouring so much to produce in ourselves now, as 
 the one impulse determining us to use the method 
 and secret of Jesus, that conscious ardent sensation of
 
 xii.] TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 337 
 
 personal love to him, which we find the first genera- 
 tion of Christians feeling and professing, and which 
 was the natural motor for those who were with him 
 or near him, and, so to speak, touched him ; and in 
 making this our first object. At any rate, misem- 
 ployed as this motor has often been, it might be well 
 to forego or at least suspend its use for ourselves and 
 others for a time, and to fix our minds exclusively on 
 the recommendation given to the method and secret 
 of Jesus by their being true, and by the whole course 
 of things proving this. 
 
 Now, just as the best recommendation of the oracle 
 committed to Israel, Righteousness is salvation, is found 
 in our more and more discovering, in our own history 
 and in the whole history of the world, that it is so, so 
 we shall find it to be with the method and secret of 
 Jesus. That this is the righteousness which is salva- 
 tion, that the method and secret of Jesus, that is to 
 say, conscience and self-renouncement, are righteous- 
 ness, bring about the kingdonToftrod or the reign of 
 righteousness, this, which is the Christian revelation 
 and what Jesus came to establish, is best impressed, 
 for the present at any rate, by experiencing and 
 showing again and again, in ourselves and in the 
 course of the world, that it is so ; that this is the 
 righteousness which is saving, and that there is none 
 other. Let us but well observe what comes, in our- 
 selves or the world, of trying any other, of not being 
 convinced that this is righteousness, and this only; 
 and we shall find ourselves more and more, as by 
 irresistible viewless hands, caught and drawn towards 
 VOL. V. %
 
 338 LITERATURE 4.ND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 the Christian revelation, and made to desire more 
 and more to serve it. No proof can be so solid as 
 this experimental proof; and none again, can be so 
 grand, so fitted to fill us with awe, admiration, and 
 gratitude. So that feeling and emotion will now well 
 come in after it, though not before it. For the whole 
 course of human things is really, according to this 
 experience, leading up to the fulfilment of Jesus 
 Christ's promise to his disciples : Fear not, little flock ! 
 for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the king- 
 dom. 1 And thus that comes out, after all, to be true, 
 which St. Paul announced prematurely to the first 
 generation of Christians : When Christ, who is our life, 
 shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. , 2 
 And the author of the Apocalypse, in like manner, 
 foretold : TJie kingdom of the world is become the kingdom 
 of our Lord and his Christ. 3 The kingdom of the Lord 
 the world is already become, by its chief nations 
 professing the religion of righteousness. The kingdom 
 of Christ the world will have to become, it is on its 
 way to become, because the profession of righteous- 
 ness, except as Jesus Christ interpreted righteousness, 
 is vain. We can see the process, we are ourselves 
 part of it, and can in our measure help forward or 
 keep back its completion. 
 
 When the prophet, indeed, says to Israel, on the 
 point of being restored by Cyrus : " The nation and 
 kingdom that mil not serve thee shall perish/"* the 
 
 1 Luke xii. 32. 3 Col. iii. 4. 
 
 * Rev. xL 15. The Alexandrian manuscript is followed. 
 
 * Isaiah Ix. 12.
 
 xii.] TKUE GEEATNESS <DF CHRISTIANITY. 339 
 
 promise, applied literally, fails. But extended to 
 that idea of righteousness, of which Israel was the 
 depositary and in which the real life of Israel lay, the 
 promise is true, and we can see it fulfilled. In like 
 manner, when the Apostle says to the Corinthians or 
 to the Colossians, instructed that the second advent 
 would come in their own generation : " We must all 
 appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ!"* " When 
 Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also 
 appear with him in glory ! " 2 the promise, applied liter- 
 ally as the Apostle meant it and his converts under- 
 stood it, fails. But divested of this Aberglaube or 
 extra -belief, it is true; if indeed the world can be 
 shown, and it can, to be moving necessarily 
 towards the triumph of that Christ in whom the 
 Corinthian and Colossian disciples lived, and whose 
 triumph is the triumph of all his disciples also. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let us keep hold of this same experimental process 
 in dealing with the promise of immortality ; although 
 here, if anywhere, Aberglaube, extra-belief, hope, 
 inticipation, may well be permitted to come in. Still, 
 Rrhat we need for our foundation is not Aberglaube, 
 but Glaube; not extra-belief in what is beyond the 
 range of possible experience, but belief in what can 
 and should be known to be true. 
 
 By what futilities the demonstration of our im- 
 mortality may be attempted, is to be seen in Plato's 
 1 2 Cor. v. 10. 2 Col. iii. 4.
 
 340 LITEKATUHE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 Phcedo. Man's natural desire for continuance, how- 
 ever little it may be worth as a scientific proof of our 
 immortality, is at least a proof a thousand times 
 stronger than any such demonstration. The want of 
 solidity in such argument is so palpable, that one 
 scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon it at all. 
 And even of the common Christian conception of 
 immortality the want of solidity is, perhaps, most 
 conclusively shown, by the impossibility of so framing 
 it as that it will at all support a steady regard turned 
 upon it. In our English popular religion, for in- 
 stance, the common conception of a future state of 
 bliss is just that of the Vision of Mirza : " Persons 
 dressed in glorious habits with garlands on their 
 heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the 
 fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, amid a con- 
 fused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human 
 voices, and musical instruments." Or, even, with 
 many, it is that of a kind of perfected middle-class 
 home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness 
 all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant. 
 " Poor fragments all of this low earth ! " Keble might 
 well say. That this conception of immortality cannot 
 possibly be true, we feel, the moment we consider it 
 seriously. And yet who can devise any conception 
 of a future state of bliss, which shall bear close 
 examination better ? 
 
 Here, again, it is far best to take what is experi- 
 mentally true, and nothing else, as our foundation, 
 and afterwards to let hope and aspiration grow, if so 
 it may be, out of this. Israel had said : "In the
 
 xii.] TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 341 
 
 way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway 
 thereof there is no death." 1 He had said: "The 
 righteous hath hope in his death." 2 He had cried to 
 his Eternal that loveth righteousness: "Thou wilt not 
 leave my soul in the grave, neither wilt thou suffer 
 thy faithful servant to see corruption ! thou wilt show 
 me the path of life ! " 3 And by a kind of short cut 
 to the conclusion thus laid down, the Jews constructed 
 their fairy-tale of an advent, judgment, and resurrec- 
 tion, as we find it in the Book of Daniel Jesus, 
 again, had said : "If a man keep my word, he shall 
 never see death." 4 And by a kind of short cut to 
 the conclusion thus laid down, Christians constructed 
 their fairy-tale of the second advent, the resurrection 
 of the body, the New Jerusalem. But instead of 
 fairy-tales, let us begin, at least, with certainties. 
 
 And a certainty is the sense of life, of being truly 
 alive, which accompanies righteousness. If this ex- 
 perimental sense does not rise to be stronger in us, 
 does not rise to the sense of being inextinguishable, 
 that is probably because our experience of righteous- 
 ness is really so very small. Here, therefore, we 
 may well permit ourselves to trust Jesus, whose 
 practice and intuition both of them went, in these 
 matters, so far deeper than ours. At any rate, we 
 have in our experience this strong sense of life from 
 righteousness to start with ; capable of being developed, 
 apparently, by progress in righteousness into something 
 immeasurably stronger. Here is the true basis for 
 
 1 Prov. xii. 28. 2 Prov. xiv. 32. 
 
 8 Psalm xvi. 10, 11. 4 John viii. 51.
 
 342 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. [CHAP. 
 
 all religious aspiration after immortality. And it is 
 an experimental basis ; and therefore, as to grandeur, 
 it is again, when compared with the popular Aberglaube, 
 grand with all the superior grandeur, on a subject of 
 the highest seriousness, of reality over fantasy. 
 
 At present, the fantasy hides the grandeur of the 
 reality. But when all the Aberglaube of the second 
 advent, with its signs in the sky, sounding trumpets 
 and opening graves, is cleared away, then and not 
 till then will come out the profound truth and 
 grandeur of words of Jesus like these : " The hour is 
 coming, when they that are in the graves shall hear 
 the voice of the Son of God ; and they that hear shall 
 live." l 
 
 V. 
 
 Finally, and above all As, for the right inculca- 
 tion of righteousness, we need the inspiring words of 
 Israel's love for it, that is, we need the Bible; so, for the 
 right inculcation of the method and secret of Jesus, 
 we need the epieikeia, the sweet reasonableness, of 
 Jesus. That is, in other words again, we need the 
 Bible; for only through the Bible -records of Jesus 
 can we get at his epieikeia. Even in these records, it 
 is and can be presented but imperfectly; but only 
 by reading and re-reading the Bible can we get at it 
 at all. 
 
 Now, greatly as the failure, from the stress laid 
 upon the pseudo- science of Church -dogma, to lay 
 enough stress upon the method and secret of Jesus, 
 1 John V. 25.
 
 XII.] TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 343 
 
 has kept Christianity back from showing itself in its 
 full power, it is probable that the failure to apply to 
 the method and secret of Jesus, so far as these have 
 at any rate been used, his sweet reasonableness or 
 epieikeia, has kept it back even more. And the 
 infinite of the religion of Jesus, its immense capacity 
 for ceaseless progress and farther development, lies 
 principally, perhaps, in the line of extricating more 
 and more his sweet reasonableness, and applying it 
 to his method and secret. For it is obvious from 
 experience, how much our use of Christ's method 
 and secret requires to be guided and governed by his 
 epieikeia. Indeed, without this, his method and secret 
 seem often of no use at all The Flagellants imagined 
 that they were employing his secret; and the Dis- 
 senters, with their " spirit of watchful jealousy," 
 imagine that they are employing his method. To be 
 sure, Mr. Bradlaugh imagines that the method and 
 the secret of Jesus, nay, and Jesus himself too, are 
 all baneful, and that the sooner we get rid of them 
 all, the better. So far, then, the Flagellants and the 
 Dissenters are in advance of Mr. Bradlaugh : they 
 value Christianity, and they profess the method and 
 secret of Jesus. But they employ them so ill, that 
 one is tempted to say they might nearly as well be 
 without them. And this is because they are wholly 
 without his sweet reasonableness, or epieikeia. Now 
 this can only be got, first, by knowing that it is in 
 the Bible, and looking for it there; and then, by 
 reading and re-reading the Gospels continually, until 
 we catch something of it.
 
 344 LITEKATUKE AND DOGMA. [CHAP, xu 
 
 This, again, is an experimental process. That the 
 epieikeia or sweet reasonableness of Jesus may be 
 brought to govern our use of his method and secret, 
 and that it can and will make our use of his method 
 and secret quite a different thing, is proved by our 
 actually finding this to be so when we try. So that the 
 culmination of Christian righteousness in the applying, 
 to guide our use of the method and secret of Jesus, 
 his sweet reasonableness or epieikeia, is proved from 
 experience. We end, therefore, as we began, by 
 experience. And the whole series of experiences, of 
 which the survey is thus completed, rests, primarily, 
 upon one fundamental fact, itself, eminently, a fact 
 of experience : the necessity of righteousness.
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 BUT now, after all we have been saying of the pre- 
 eminency of righteousness, we remember what we have 
 said formerly in praise of culture and of Hellenism, 
 and against too much Hebraism, too exclusive a 
 pursuit of the " one thing needful," as people call it. 
 And we cannot help wondering whether we shall not 
 be reproached with inconsistency, and told that we 
 ought at least to sing, as the Greeks said, & palinode; and 
 whether it may not really be so, and we ought. 
 And, certainly, if we had ever said that Hellenism 
 was three -fourths of human life, and conduct or 
 righteousness but one -fourth, a palinode, us well as 
 an unmusical man may, we would sing. But we 
 have never said it. In praising culture, we have 
 never denied that conduct, not culture, is three-fourths 
 of human life. 
 
 Only it certainly appears, when the thing is 
 examined, that conduct comes to have relations of a 
 very close kind with culture. And the reason seems 
 to be given by some words of our Bible, which, 
 though they may not be exactly the right rendering 
 of the original in that place, yet in themselves they 
 explain the connection of culture with conduct very
 
 346 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 well. " I have seen the travail," says the Preacher, 
 "which God hath given to the sons of men to be 
 exercised in it ; he hath made everything beautiful in 
 his time ; also, he hath set the world in their heart." 1 
 He hath set the world in their heart ! that is why art 
 and science, and what we call culture, are necessary. 
 They may be only one-fourth of man's life, but they 
 are there, as well as the three-fourths which conduct 
 occupies. "He hath set the world in their heart." 
 And, really, the reason which we hence gather for 
 the close connection between culture and conduct, is 
 so simple and natural that we are almost ashamed to 
 give it; but we have offered so many simple and 
 natural explanations in place of the abstruse ones 
 which are current, that our hesitation is foolish. 
 
 Let us suggest then, that, having this one -fourth 
 of their nature concerned with art and science, men 
 cannot but somehow employ it. If they think that 
 the three-fourths of their nature concerned with 
 conduct are the whole of their nature, and that this 
 is all they have to attend to, still the neglected one- 
 fourth is there, it ferments, it breaks wildly out, it 
 employs itself all at random and amiss. And hence, no 
 doubt, our hymns and our dogmatic theology. Of our 
 hymns we shall say a word presently; but what is 
 our dogmatic theology, except the mis-attribution to 
 the Bible, the Book of conduct, of a science and 
 an abstruse metaphysic which is not there, because 
 our theologians have in themselves a faculty for 
 science, for it makes one-eighth of them ? But they 
 1 Ecclesiastes iii. 10, 11.
 
 CONCLUSION. 347 
 
 do not employ it on its proper objects ; so it invades 
 the Bible, and tries to make the Bible what it is not, 
 and to put into it what is not there. And this 
 prevents their attending enough to what is in the 
 Bible, and makes them battle for what is not in the 
 Bible, but they have put it there ; battle for it in a 
 manner clean contrary, often, to the teaching of the 
 Bible. So has arisen, for instance, all religious 
 persecution. And thus, we say, has conduct itself 
 become impaired. 
 
 So that conduct is impaired by the want of science 
 and culture; and our theologians really suffer, not 
 from having too much science, but from having too 
 little. Whereas, if they had turned their faculty for 
 abstruse reasoning towards the proper objects, and 
 had given themselves, in addition, a wide and large 
 acquaintance with the productions of the human 
 spirit and with men's way of thinking and of using 
 words, then, on the one hand, they would not have 
 been tempted to mis-employ on the Bible their faculty 
 for abstruse reasoning, for they would have had plenty 
 of other exercise for it; and, on the other hand, 
 they would have escaped that literary inexperience 
 which now makes them fancy that the Bible-lan- 
 guage is scientific, and fit matter for the application 
 of their powers of abstruse reasoning to it, when it 
 is no such thing. Then they would have seen the 
 fallacy of confounding the obscurity attaching to the 
 idea of God, that vast not ourselves which transcends 
 us, with the obscurity attaching to the idea of their 
 Trinity, a confused metaphysical speculation which
 
 348 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 puzzles us. The one, they would have perceived, is 
 the obscurity of the immeasurable depth of air, the 
 other is the obscurity of a fog. And fog, they would 
 have known, has no proper place in our conceptions 
 of God ; since whatever our minds can possess of 
 God they know clearly, for no man, as Goethe says, 
 possesses what he does not understand ; but they 
 can possess of Him but a very little. All this our 
 dogmatic theologians would have known, if they 
 had had more science and more literature. And 
 therefore, simple as the Bible and conduct are, still 
 culture seems to be required for them, required to 
 prevent our mis-handling and sophisticating them. 
 
 II 
 
 Culture, then, and literature are required, even in 
 the interest of religion itself, and when, taking nothing 
 but conduct into account, we make God, as Israel made 
 him, to be simply and solely. "the Eternal Power, not 
 ourselves, that makes for righteousness." But we are 
 not to forget, that, grand as this conception of God is, 
 and well as it meets the wants of far the largest part 
 of our being, of three-fourths of it, yet there is one- 
 fourth of our being of which it does not strictly meet the 
 wants, the part which is concerned with art and science ; 
 or, in other words, with beauty and exact knowledge. 
 
 For the total man, therefore, the truer conception 
 of God is as " the Eternal Power, not ourselves, by 
 which all things fulfil the law of their being;" by 
 which, therefore, we fulfil the law of our being so fai
 
 CONCLUSION. 349 
 
 as our being is aesthetic and intellective, as well as so 
 far as it is moral. And it is evident, as we have before 
 now remarked, that in this wider sense God is dis- 
 pleased and disserved by many things which cannot 
 be said, except by putting a strain upon words, to 
 displease and disserve him as the God of righteousness. 
 He is displeased and disserved by men uttering such 
 doggerel hymns as : Sing glory, glory, glory to the great 
 God Triune I and : Out of my stony griefs Bethels I'll 
 raise I and : My Jesus to know, and feel Ms blood flow t 
 'tis life everlasting, 'tis heaven below ! or by theologians 
 uttering such pseudo-science as their blessed truth that 
 the God of the universe is a PERSON. But it would be 
 harsh to give, at present, this turn to our employment 
 of the phrases, pleasing God, displeasing God. 
 
 And yet, as man makes progress, we shall surely 
 come to doing this. For, the clearer our conceptions 
 in science and art become, the more will they assimi- 
 late themselves to the conceptions of duty in conduct, 
 will become practically stringent like rules of conduct, 
 and will invite the same sort of language in dealing 
 with them. And so far let us venture to poach on 
 M. Emile Burnouf's manor, and to talk about the 
 Aryan genius, as to say, that the love of science, and 
 the energy and honesty in the pursuit of science, in 
 the best of the Aryan races, do seem to correspond in 
 a remarkable way to the love of conduct, and the energy 
 and honesty in the pursuit of conduct, in the best of 
 the Semitic. To treat science with the same kind of 
 seriousness as conduct, does seem, therefore, to be a 
 not impossible thing for the Aryan genius to come to.
 
 350 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 
 
 But for all this, however, man is hardly yet ripe. 
 For our race, as we see it now and as ourselves we 
 form a part of it, the true God is and must be pre- 
 eminently the God of the Bible, the Eternal who makes 
 for righteousness, from whom Jesus came forth, and 
 whose Spirit governs the course of humanity. Only, 
 we see that even for apprehending this God of the 
 Bible rightly and not wrongly, letters, which so many 
 people now disparage, and what we call, in general, 
 culture, seem to be necessary. 
 
 And meanwhile, to prevent our at all pluming our- 
 selves on having apprehended what so much baffles 
 our dogmatic friends (although indeed it is not so 
 much we who apprehend it as the " Zeit-Geist " who 
 discovers it to us), what a chastening and wholesome 
 reflection for us it is, that it is only to our natural 
 inferiority to these ingenious men that we are indebted 
 for our advantage over them ! For while they were 
 born with talents for metaphysical speculation and 
 abstruse reasoning, we are so notoriously deficient in 
 everything of that kind, that our adversaries often 
 taunt us with it, and have held us up to public ridicule 
 as being " without a system of philosophy based on 
 principles interdependent, subordinate, and coherent." 
 And so we were thrown on letters ; thrown upon read- 
 ing this and that, which anybody can do, and thus 
 gradually getting a notion of the history of the human 
 mind, which enables us (the " Zeit-Geist " favouring) 
 to correct, in reading the Bible, some of the mistakes 
 into which men of more metaphysical talents than 
 literary experience have fallen. Cripples in like
 
 CONCLUSION. 351 
 
 manner have been known, now and then, to be cast 
 by their very infirmity upon some mental pursuit 
 which has turned out happily for them ; and a good 
 fortune of this kind has perhaps been ours. 
 
 But we do not forget that this good fortune we 
 owe to our weakness, and that the natural superiority 
 remains with our adversaries. And some day, perhaps, 
 the nature of God may be as well known as the nature 
 of a cone or a triangle ; and then our two bishops may 
 deduce its properties with success, and make their 
 brilliant logical play about it, rightly, instead of as 
 now, wrongly ; and will resume all their advantage. 
 But this will hardly be in our time. So that the 
 superiority of this pair of distinguished metaphysicians 
 will never perhaps, after all, be of any real advantage 
 to them, but they will be deluded and bemocked by 
 it until they die. 
 
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