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 1 fm Princif, das Bestektnde zu erkalten, Revtfatioitaren vvtubeugen, 
 ttititme ith ganz tnit aen Monarchists tiberfin; nur nicnt in den Mitteln 
 daxv. Sit Hdmlich ru/en die Dummheit v*d die Finstetniss zu HUlfe, Uk 
 den. Verttand und das Licht.' GOETHE. 
 
 1 In the principle, to preserve what exists, to hinder revolutionists from 
 having their way, I am quite at one with the monarchists ; only not in tha 
 means thereto. That is to say, they call in stupidity and darkntss to aid, 
 I reason and light.'
 
 GOD AND THE BIBLE 
 
 A SEQUEL TO LITERATURE AND DOGMA' 
 
 BY 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 POPULAR EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 [The right of translation is reserved}
 
 2>S 
 
 s\v 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE present volume is a sequel to the popular edition of 
 Literature and Dogma published last year. It is meant to 
 reproduce, in a somewhat condensed and much cheaper 
 form, a work, God and the Bible, which the objections to 
 Literature and Dogma called forth. 
 
 Literature and Dogma had altogether for its object, and 
 so too has the present work, a work which clears, develops 
 and defends the positions taken in Literature and Dogma, 
 to show the truth and necessity of Christianity, and also its 
 charm for the heart, mind, and imagination of man, even 
 though the preternatural, which is now its popular sanction, 
 should have to be given up. To show this, is the end for 
 which both books were written. 
 
 For the power of Christianity has been in the immense 
 emotion which it has excited ; in its engaging, for the 
 government of man's conduct, the mighty forces of love, 
 reverence, gratitude, hope, pity, and awe, all that host of 
 allies which Wordsworth includes under the one name of 
 imagination, when he says that in the uprooting of old 
 thoughts and old rules we must still always ask : 
 
 Survives imagination, to the change 
 Superior? Help to virtue does she give? 
 If not, O moitals, better cease to live !
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 Popular Christianity has enjoyed abundantly and with 
 profit this help from the imagination to virtue and con- 
 duct I have always thought, therefore, that merely to 
 destroy the illusions of popular Christianity was indefensible. 
 Time, besides, was sure to do it ; but when it is done, the 
 whole work of again cementing the alliance between the im- 
 agination and conduct remains to be effected. To those who 
 effect nothing for the new alliance but only dissolve the old, 
 we take once more our text from Wordsworth, and we say : 
 
 Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
 The years to bring on the inevitable yoke, 
 Thus blindly with man's blessedness at strife? 
 Full soon his soul will have its earthly freight ; 
 
 soon enough will the illusions which charmed and aided 
 man's inexperience be gone ; what have you to give him in 
 the place of them? 
 
 At the present moment two things about the Christian 
 religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his 
 head. One is, that men cannot do without it ; the other, 
 that they cannot do with it as it is. 
 
 Christianity enabled, or professed to enable, mankind to 
 deal with personal conduct, with an immense matter, at 
 least three-fourths of human life. And it seems strange 
 that people should even imagine, either that men will not 
 demand something enabling them to do this, or that the 
 spread of physical science, and knowing that not the sky 
 moves but the earth, can in any way do it And so the 
 Secularists find themselves at fault in their calculations ; 
 and the best scientific specialists are forward to confess, 
 what is evident enough, both that religion must and will 
 have its claims attended to, and that physics and religion
 
 t*j^ 
 
 PREFACE. 5x 
 
 have, as Joubert says, absolutely nothing to do with one 
 another. Charlatans may bluster ; but, speaking in defence 
 of the genuine men of science, M. Re*ville declares of them 
 that ' they willingly recognise the legitimateness of the re- 
 ligious element in the human spirit, but they say that to 
 provide the satisfaction due to it is not a business with 
 which they are competent to deal.' ' 
 
 It is true, all men of science are not thus sober-minded. t 
 Thus we find a brilliant professor of mathematics, IQO early 
 losL-to us, launching invectives which, if they are just, would 
 prove either that no religion at all has any right to man- 
 kind's regard, or that the Christian religion, at all events, 
 has none. Professor Clifford calls Christianity ' that awful 
 plague which has destroyed two civilisations and but barely 
 failed to slay such promise of good as is now struggling to 
 live amongst men.' He warns his fellow men against show- 
 ing any tenderness to 'the slender remnant of a system 
 which has made its red mark on history and still lives to 
 threaten mankind.' ' The grotesque forms of its intellectual 
 belief,' he sternly adds, by way of finish, 'have survived the 
 discredit of its moral teaching.' 
 
 But these are merely the crackling fireworks of youthful 
 paradox. One reads it all, half sighing, half smiling, as the 
 declamation of a clever and confident youth, with the hope- 
 less inexperience, irredeemable by any cleverness, of his age. 
 Only when one is young and headstrong can one thus prefer 
 bravado to experience, can one stand by the Sea of Time, 
 and instead of listening to the solemn and rhythmical beat 
 
 1 Us reconnaissent volontiers la legitimit de 1'element religieux 
 de 1'esprit humain ; mais ils disent qu'il ne rentre pas dans leur 
 Competence de lui fournir les satisfactions qu'il reclame.
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 of its waves, choose to fill the air with one's own whoopings 
 to start the echo. But the mass of plain people hear such 
 talk with impatient indignation, and flock all the more 
 eagerly to Messrs. Moody and Sankey. They feel that the 
 brilliant freethinker and revolutionist talks about their 
 religion and yet is all abroad in it, does not know either 
 that or the great facts of human life ; and they go to those 
 who know them better. And the plain people are not 
 wrong. Compared with Professor Clifford, Messrs. Moody 
 and Sankey are masters of the philosophy of history. Men 
 are not mistaken in thinking that Christianity has done 
 them good, in loving it, in wishing to listen to those who 
 will talk to them about what they love, and will talk of it 
 with admiration and gratitude, not contempt and hatred. 
 Christianity is truly, as I have somewhere called it, 'the 
 greatest and happiest stroke ever yet made for human 
 perfection.' Men do not err, they are on firm ground of 
 experience, when they say that they have practically found 
 Christianity to be something incomparably beneficent 
 Where they err, is in their way of accounting for this, 
 and of assigning its causes. 
 
 And here we reach our second point : that men cannot 
 do with Christianity as it is. Something true and beneficent 
 they have got hold of in it, they know ; and they want to 
 rely upon this, and to use it. But what men rely upon and 
 use, they seek to give themselves account of, they seek to 
 make clear its right to be relied upon and used. Now, the 
 old ways of accounting for Christianity, of establishing the 
 ground of its claims upon us, no longer serve as they once 
 did. Men's experience widens, they get to know the world 
 better, to know the mental history of mankind better ; they
 
 PREFACE. x! 
 
 distinguish more clearly between history and legend, they 
 grow more shy of recourse to the preternatural. I have 
 quoted in the present volume the saying of Pascal : ' In 
 good truth, the world is getting mistrustful, and does not 
 believe things unless they are evident to it' l But no one 
 can more set this consideration at defiance than does Pascal 
 himself in his account of Christianity. Glearrio of astonishing 
 insight he has, as well as bursts of unsurpassable eloquence ; 
 there is no writer on the Christian religion who more than 
 Pascal deserves a close study. But the basis of his whole 
 system is the acceptance, as positive history and literal 
 matter of fact, of the story of Adam's fall The historical 
 difficulty of taking this legend seriously, for us so decisive, 
 Pascal hardly saw at all ; but he saw plenty of other diffi- 
 culty. Nothing, he observes, can be ' more contrary to the 
 rules of our miserable justice than to damn eternally a child 
 born now for a crime committed six thousand years before 
 he came into being.' Nevertheless Pascal accepts the story, 
 because ' without this mystery, the most incomprehensible 
 of all mysteries, we are incomprehensible to ourselves.' 
 That is, he sees no other way of explaining the mixture of 
 grandeur and infirmity which he finds in man, of desire for 
 happiness and of inability to reach it So that, if we put 
 ourselves under Pascal's guidance, rhe necessary approach 
 to our use of the salvation offered by the Christian religion 
 is to believe the story of Adam's fall to be historical, and 
 literally true. And his famous figure of the wager is used 
 by Pascal to reconcile us the better to this belief. The 
 chances are such, he says, that we shall do well at all events 
 
 1 En verite, le monde devient mefiant, et ne croit les choses que 
 quand 11 les voit.
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 to lay our stake in favour of the story's truth. If we say we 
 cannot believe it, let us set to work to attain belief as others 
 have attained it and how was this ? ' By acting just as if 
 they did believe it ; by taking holy water, having masses 
 said, &c. Quite naturally, that will make you believe, and 
 render you stupid I l But that is just what I am afraid of. 
 And why ; what have you to lose ? What harm will come 
 to you from taking this course ? You will be faithful, honest, 
 humble, grateful, charitable, sincere, a friend whom men 
 can trust ? ' 
 
 Did ever a great reasoner reason so madly ? And this 
 is the man who saw that the world no longer believes things 
 unless it has evidence of them ! In the first place, there 
 is no evidence that man is only comprehensible on the 
 assumption that the story of Adam's fall is true. But even 
 if it were so, man must still ask himself : Is the story true ? 
 And if it is not true, then the conclusion must be simply 
 that man is not comprehensible. Now, sooner or later, as 
 our experience widens, we must see that the story is not 
 true ; we must inevitably come to say to ourselves : 'It is 
 all a legend ! it never really happened, any of it ! ' It is no 
 more real history than the Peruvian account of Manco Capac 
 and Mama Ocollo, the children of the Sun, ' who appeared 
 on the banks of the Lake Titiaca, sent by their beneficent 
 
 1 Naturellement mtme tela vous f era croire et vous abttira. The 
 Port Royal editors suppressed this wonderful sentence, and indeed the 
 whole passage which follows the words and h&v was this ? What 
 Port Royal substituted was the following : 4 Imitez leurs action? 
 exterieures, si vous ne pouvez encore entrer dans leurs disposition* 
 interieures ; quitter ces vains amusements qui vous occupent tout 
 entier.' Pascal's words were not restored until M. Cousin reverted to 
 the original manuscript. See M. Havet's careful and valuable edition 
 of Pascal's Pcnsees, vol. i, pp. 152, 158.
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 parent, who beheld with pity the miseries of the human race, 
 to instruct and to reclaim them.' 1 For a little while, even 
 for a generation or two perhaps, man may, after he has 
 begun to doubt the story's truth, still keep himself in the 
 belief of it by 'taking holy water, rendering himself stupid;' 
 but the time comes when he cannot. That a story will 
 account for certain facts, that we wish to think it true, nay, 
 that many have formerly thought it true and have grown 
 faithful, humble, charitable, and so on, by thus doing, does 
 not make the story true if it is not, and cannot prevent men 
 after a certain time from seeing that it is not. 
 
 And on such a time we have now entered. The more we 
 may have been helped to be faithful, humble and charitable 
 by taking the truth of this story, and other stories equally 
 legendary, for granted, the greater is our embarrassment, no 
 doubt, at having to do without them. But we have to do 
 without them none the less on that account. We may feel 
 our hearts still vibrate in answer to the Old Testament 
 telling us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
 wisdom, and to the New telling us that Jesus Christ saves 
 his people from their sins. But this fear of the Lord, and 
 this safety through Jesus Christ, can have Adam's fall for 
 their fundamental basis and explanation no longer. 
 
 Cardinal Manning narrates the miraculous resuscitation 
 of the Virgin Mary, and his argument for believing it is that 
 the story is a beautiful one, and that it is a comfort and help 
 to pious souls to think it true. Both may be freely con- 
 ceded to him ; but really as much may be said for the 
 miraculous apparition of Cinderella's fairy godmother. The 
 story is pathetic and beautiful, and it is a pleasure to kind 
 1 Robertson's History of America, book vi.
 
 rir PREFACE. 
 
 souls to see the tables turned by enchantment in favour of 
 the poor little good Cinderella. But this does not make the 
 story true. And if a' story is unsubstantial in its foundation 
 and character, no connecting of it with our affections, or 
 with what does us good, can in the end prevent people from 
 saying : ' But it is not true ! it never really happened, any 
 of it ! ' 
 
 I heard Mr. Moody preach to one of his vast audiences 
 on a topic eternally attractive, salvation by Jesus Christ 
 Mr. Moody's account of that salvation was exactly the old 
 story, to which I have often adverted, of the contract in the 
 Council of the Trinity. Justice puts in her claim, said Mr. 
 Moody, for the punishment of guilty mankind ; God admits 
 it. Jesus intercedes, undertakes to bear their punishment, 
 and signs an undertaking to that effect Thousands of years 
 pass ; Jesus is on the cross on Calvary. Justice appears, 
 and presents to him his signed undertaking. Jesus accepts 
 it, bows his head, and expires. Christian salvation consists 
 in the undoubting belief in the transaction here described, 
 and in the hearty acceptance of the release offered by it 
 
 Never let us deny to this story power and pathos, or 
 treat with hostility ideas which have entered so deep into 
 the life of Christendom. But the story is not true ; it never 
 really happened. These personages never did meet together, 
 and speak, and act, in the manner related. The personages 
 of the Christian Heaven and their conversations are no more 
 matter of fact than the personages of the Greek Olympus and 
 their conversations. Sir Robert Phillimore seeks to tie up 
 the Church of England to a belief in the personality of 
 Satan, and he might as well seek to tie it up to a belief in 
 the personality of Tisiphone. Satan and Tisiphone are alike
 
 PREFACE. xv 
 
 not real persons, but shadows thrown by man's guilt and 
 terrors. Mr. Moody's audiences are the last people who 
 will come to perceive all this ; they are chiefly made up 
 from the main body of lovers of our popular religion, the 
 serious and steady middle class, with its bounded horizons. 
 To the more educated class above this, and to the more 
 free class below it, the grave beliefs of the religious middle 
 class in such stories as Mr. Moody's story of the Covenant 
 of Redemption are impossible now ; to the religious middle 
 class itself they will be impossible soon. Salvation by Jelsus 
 Christ, therefore, if it has any reality, must be placed some- 
 where else than in a hearty consent to Mr. Moody's story. 
 Something Mr. Moody and his hearers have experienced 
 from Jesus, let us own, which does them good ; but of this 
 something they have not yet succeeded in getting the right 
 history. 
 
 Now, if one feels impatience with people who, like Pro- 
 fessor Clifford, lightly run a-muck at an august thing, so a 
 man who is in earnest must feel impatience with those 
 who lightly allege this or that as the true foundation of it. 
 People who offer us their stories of the contract in the 
 Council of the Trinity, or of the miraculous resuscitation of 
 the Virgin, are just like Mr. Ruskin telling us in his assured 
 way : 'There is not a moment of any day of our lives, when 
 nature is not producing picture after picture, and working 
 still upon such exquisite and constant principles of such 
 perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for 'us, and 
 intended for our perpetual pleasure.' It is not quite certain, 
 we have not a particle of certainty about it, and to say 
 that it is certain is utterly fantastic. But whoever pro- 
 duces certainties to us, at any rate on the grave subject of
 
 xvl PREFACE. 
 
 religion, is bound to take care that they are serious ones ; 
 and yet on no subject is this less regarded. 
 
 There is no doubt that we touch here on a real fault 
 both in Christians and in Christian theology; and that at 
 Christianity's very first start in the world the heathen 
 philosopher Celsus hit this fault, when he remarked on the 
 Kov<f>6rr]<; TWV Xpwrriavwv. We must not translate KOU^OT^S 
 simply levity, for the seriousness of Christianity in morals has 
 been its charm and its power. *O<ra o-e/Ava ! as St. Paul says, 1 
 whatever things are nobly serious ! may here well stand 
 for its motto. But the KOV^OTT/S Celsus meant was a want 
 of intellectual seriousness ; and the reproach of this was not 
 altogether undeserved by the first Christians, while it has 
 been abundantly deserved by Christian theology since. The 
 first Christians misunderstood Jesus and had the multitude's 
 appetite for miracles, the multitude's inexact observation 
 and boundless credulity. They it v/as who supplied the 
 data which Christian theology took from them without 
 question, and has ever since confidently built upon. 
 But trained, critical, indifferent minds, which knew what 
 evidence was and what popular beliefs were, could not but 
 be struck with the looseness in the joints of the Christian 
 belief, with the slightness of evidence for its miraculous 
 data. They were struck with them ; and if the old civilisa- 
 tion had not been on the wane, if a supply of instructed, 
 critical, cool, indifferent minds had continued. Christianity 
 could not have established itself in the precise forrn it did. 
 
 For its establishment in that form the extinction of the 
 old civilisation was necessary ; to flood and drown all 
 which this civilisation was, and thought, and knew, with 
 
 s, iv, 8.
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 the barbarian nations of the north, men of infantine and 
 untrained mental habit. The infancy of the world was 
 renewed, with all its sweet illusions ; and on this new 
 world the popular Christian belief could lay hold freely. 
 Professor Clifford execrates Christianity as an ' awful plague,' 
 because its success thus involved the rum of Roman civili- 
 sation. It was worth while to have that civilisation ruined 
 fifty times over, for the sake of planting Christianity through 
 Europe in the only form in which it could then be planted 
 there. Civilisation could build itself up again; but what 
 Christianity had to give, and from the first did give in no 
 small measure, was indispensable, and the Roman civilisa- 
 tion could not give it And Christianity's admixture of 
 popular legend and illusion was sure to be cleared away with 
 time, according to that profound saying of Jesus himself : 
 ' There is nothing covered which shall not be uncovered, 
 and hidden which shall not be known.' l 
 
 But the miraculous data supplied by the first Christians 
 became, in the ruin of Roman civilisation, speedily con- 
 secrated; the looseness of the evidence for them soon 
 escaped scrutiny. Theology, the exhibition of Christianity 
 in a scientific and systematic way, took these data as an 
 assured basis. Many theologians have been very able men, 
 and their reasonings and deductions have been very close 
 and subtle. Still they have always had the defect of going 
 seriously upon data produced and admitted with a want of 
 intellectual seriousness. But science makes her progress, not 
 merely by close reasoning and deduction, but also, and 
 much more, by the close scrutiny and correction of the 
 present commonly received data. And this scrutiny is just 
 
 ' Matthew, x, 26. 
 
 a
 
 xviii PREFACE. 
 
 what theological science has never seriously given ; and to 
 listen to it, therefore, is, as we said in Literature and Dogma^ 
 like listening to Cosmas Indicopleustes the Christian cos- 
 mographer, or any other early Christian writer in a depart- 
 ment of science, who goes upon data furnished by a time of 
 imperfect observation and boundless credulity. Whatever 
 acuteness the writer may manifest, yet upon these data he 
 goes. And modern writers in other departments of science 
 have now corrected their old data in them from top to bot- 
 tom ; half of these data they have clean abandoned, and the 
 other half they have transformed. But theologians have not 
 yet done so in their science of theology, and hence their 
 unprofitableness. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone complains that objectors to the Atha- 
 nasian Creed seem to forget, most of them, ' that theology 
 is a science, and that it therefore has a technical language 
 which is liable to be grossly misunderstood by those who 
 have never made it the subject of study.' And this is a 
 very usual complaint from our theologians. But the fact is, 
 that their science is a science going gravely and confidingly 
 upon the uncorrected data of a time of imperfect observa- 
 tion and boundless credulity, and that, therefore, the more 
 formal and technical it gets, the more hollow it is. And the 
 hollowness of the results exhibited by theologians is more 
 apparent than the reason thereof; and a clear-headed man 
 can often perceive that what the theologians say is futile, 
 although he may never have been led to see that the untrust- 
 worthiness of their miraculous data is the real cause. 
 
 Protestantism has the same want of intellectual serious- 
 ness as Catholicism, its advantage being, however, that it 
 more possesses in itself the means of deliverance. But
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 on this, the advantage of Protestantism, we do not at the 
 present moment insist ; we rather point out the weakness, 
 common to it and to Catholicism, of building confidently 
 upon miraculous data lightly admitted. True, Catholicism 
 has more levity in admitting new miraculous data ; but Pro- 
 testantism admits unreservedly one set of miraculous data 
 and builds everything on them, because they are written in 
 a book which, it says, cannot err ; and this is levity. At 
 the stage of experience where men are now arrived, it is 
 evident to whoever looks at things fairly that the miraculous 
 data of the Bible have not this unique character of trust- 
 worthiness ; that they, like other such data, proceed from a 
 medium of imperfect observation and boundless credulity. 
 The story of the miraculous birth and resuscitation of Jesus 
 was bred in such a medium ; and not to see this, to build 
 confidently on the story, is hardly more serious than to 
 admit the story of the miraculous birth and resuscitation of 
 the Virgin because it is so beautiful 
 
 It is of the utmost importance to be perfectly honest 
 here. M. de Laveleye l is struck, as any judicious Catholic 
 may well be struck, with the superior freedom, order, stability, 
 and religious earnestness, of the Protestant nations as com- 
 pared with the Catholic. But at the present moment the 
 Protestant nations are living partly upon their past, partly 
 upon their powers of self-transformation ; great care is 
 required to consult and use aright the experience which they 
 offer. True, their religion has made them what they are, 
 and their religion involved severance from Rome and in- 
 volved the Protestant theology. But it would be a grave 
 
 1 See his excellent pamphlet : Le Protestantisme et U Catholicisms, 
 Brussels, MuquardU 
 
 Bi
 
 xx PREFACE. 
 
 mistake to suppose that the secret of the Protestant nations 
 lies in severance from Rome and in the received Protestant 
 theology; or that, in now merely adopting those from them, 
 a modern nation could find freedom, order, stability, and 
 religious earnestness. The true force of Protestantism 
 was its signal return to the individual conscience, to the 
 method of Jesus. This strengthened the man, this founded 
 him on rock, this invigorated his action upon all lines. 
 It induced, too, separation from Rome (so far as this was 
 not due to causes political), and it induced the received 
 Protestant theology. But a man's conscience does not 
 necessarily tell him right on all points all at once; and now 
 the conscience of the Protestant nations is beginning to tell 
 them that in their theology of the sixteenth century it did 
 not tell them right. Conscience told them right in asserting 
 its own general supremacy as ultimate court of appeal ; it 
 did not tell them right in its particular decision that the 
 sixteenth century theology was the true one. The secret of 
 Protestantism's strength is undoubtedly its religion ; but it 
 has not at this moment a science of religion, or theology, to 
 give to the Catholic nations, for it is working out its own 
 anew. What it has to give them is the sincere, uncom- 
 promising return to the method of Jesus, with the deep and 
 firm sense of reality which this return inspires. But if it 
 gives them this, it will have given to the Catholic nations 
 what enables them to do the rest for themselves. 
 
 It is the habit of increased intellectual seriousness, bred 
 of a wider experience and of a larger acquaintance with 
 men's mental history, which is now transforming religion in 
 our country. Intelligent people among the educated classes 
 grow more and more sceptical of the miraculous data which
 
 PREFACE. xxi 
 
 supply the basis for our received theology. The habit is a 
 conquest of the advancing human race ; it spreads and 
 spreads, and will be on the whole and in the end a boon to 
 us. But many and many an individual it may find unpre- 
 pared for it, and may act upon him injuriously. Goethe's 
 saying is well known : ' All which merely frees our spirit, 
 without giving us the command over ourselves, is dele- 
 terious.' 1 It is of small use by itself alone, however it may 
 be indispensable, this one single current of intellectual 
 seriousness ; of small use to those who are untouched by 
 the great current of seriousness about conduct. To a 
 frivolous and materialised upper class, to a raw and sensual 
 lower class, to feel the greater current may be more than a 
 compensation for not feeling the lesser. They do now feel 
 the lesser current, however ; and it removes them farther 
 than ever from the influence of the greater. 
 
 For fear of losing their religious convictions, the pious 
 part of our people would fain shut off from themselves the 
 intellectual current, which they fear might carry them away 
 to shores of desolation. They may succeed for a longer or 
 a shorter time. Their love of the old, and their fear of the 
 new, alike give them energy ; and we have repeatedly said 
 that the nature of the debate as to the miraculous ground 
 in Christianity is such, that the conviction of its unsound- 
 ness must form itself in a man's own mind, it cannot be 
 forced upon him from without. It is true, what apologists 
 are always urging, that there is no other example of such a 
 success as that of the Christian religion, where the suc- 
 cessful religion had an erroneous belief in miracles for its 
 
 1 Alles was unsern Geist befreit, ohne uns die Heitschaft liber uns 
 selbst zu geben, ist verderblich.
 
 xxti PREFACE. 
 
 foundation. It is also true, what was well pointed out in 
 the Guardian, that the rich crop of non-Christian miracles 
 contemporary with the rise of Christianity, and which is 
 often brought as proof of the hollowness of the Christian 
 miracles, may naturally have been called up by the miracles 
 of Christianity. The answer, no doubt, is, that no other 
 religion with an unsound foundation of miracles has suc- 
 ceeded like Christianity, because no other religion had, in 
 close conjunction with its unsound belief in miracles, such 
 an element of soundness as the personality and word of 
 Jesus. And the suggestion of non-Christian miracles by 
 the Christian ones only proves a superior force somewhere 
 in the Christian religion ; and this it undoubtedly had, but 
 not from its miracles. However, a religious man may still 
 shut his eyes to all this, and may keep fast his old faith in 
 Ihe Christian miracles. But before very long the habit of 
 intellectual seriousness will reach him also, and change him. 
 Not a few religious people are even now gained by it against 
 their will, and to their deep distress and bewilderment. So 
 that, whether we look about us at the religious world or at 
 the irreligious, the conclusion is the same : people cannot 
 any longer do with Christianity just as it is. 
 
 The reader whom a work like the present has in view is 
 not, I have often said, the man still striving to be content 
 with the received theology. With him we do not seek to 
 meddle. Neither is it intended for a frivolous upper class 
 in their religious insensibility, nor for a raw lower class in 
 their religious insensibility, nor for Liberal secularists at 
 home or abroad, nor for Catholics who are strangers, or 
 very nearly so, to the Bible. Some or all of these may per- 
 haps come to find such a work useful to them one day, and
 
 PREFACE. xxiil 
 
 after they have undergone a change; but it is not directly 
 addressed to them. It is meant for those who, won by the 
 modern spirit to habits of intellectual seriousness, cannot 
 receive what sets these habits at nought, and will not. try to 
 force themselves to do so ; but who have stood near enough 
 to the Christian religion to feel the attraction which a thing 
 so very great, when one stands really near to it, cannot but 
 exercise, and who have some familiarity with the Bible and 
 some practice in using it. 
 
 Of such persons there are in this country, and in America 
 also, not a few. The familiarity with the Bible, the habit 
 of using the Bible, extends in Protestant countries through- 
 out those large, those very large, classes which have been 
 religiously brought up, and is invaluable to them. It is the 
 excellent fruit which Protestantism gained by its return at the 
 Reformation to the individual conscience, to the method 
 of Jesus. The Bible itself was made the standard, and what 
 the Bible really said. It matters not that the Protestant's 
 actual interpretation of the Bible has hitherto been little 
 better than the Catholic's ; he has still been conversant with 
 the Bible, has felt its grandeur, has conceived the just idea 
 that in its right use is salvation. M. Sainte-Beuve, the finest 
 critical spirit of our times, conceived of the Bible so falsely, 
 simply from not knowing it, that he could cheerfully and 
 confidently repeat the Liberal formula : ' Unless we mean to 
 prefer Byzantinism to progress we must say goodbye aux 
 vieilles Bibles^ to the old Bibles.' Liberals, who think that 
 religion in general is an obstacle to progress, may naturally, 
 however, be ignorant of the virtue there is in knowing one's 
 Bible. But Catholics, although they may love religion, are 
 for the most part in like case with its Liberal foes in not
 
 xxiv PREFACE. 
 
 being aware what virtue there lies in knowing the Bible. 
 And therefore a Catholic, who has once come to perceive 
 the want of intellectual seriousness in what his Church lays 
 down, and in what he has been told of her infallibility, 
 thinks that there the thing ends, and that the Christian 
 religion itself has as little intellectual seriousness as the 
 dogmas of his Church. So we see how many Catholics 
 break violently with religion altogether, and become its 
 sworn enemies. And even with Catholics who have been 
 so near to it that they cannot help feeling its attraction, 
 what they feel is merely, when the dogmas of their Church 
 have lost credibility for them, a vague sentiment at variance 
 with their reason ; capable, perhaps, of making them view 
 with dislike all who raise questions about religion, but not 
 capable of affording them any sure stay. Therefore Niebuhr 
 might well say that 1517 ought to precede 1789; and 
 even the fanaticism of Exeter Hall can hardly assert too 
 roundly that the Catholic nations will never really improve 
 until they know the Bible better. For easily and always 
 does a religious Protestant remain aware that religion is not 
 at an end because the dogmas of a Church cannot stand. 
 He knows that the Bible is behind ; and although he may 
 be startled at for the first time hearing that what creeds and 
 confessions have for centuries been giving as the sum and 
 substance of the Bible is not its sum and substance, yet he 
 knows the vastness and depth of the Bible well enough to 
 understand that, after all, this may very likely be quite true. 
 For such a reader is the present work meant ; for a 
 reader who is more or less conversant with the Bible, who 
 can feel the attraction of the Christian religion, but who has 
 acquired habits of intellectual seriousness, has been revolted
 
 PREFACE. xxv 
 
 by having things presented solemnly to him for his use 
 which will not hold water, and who will start with none of 
 such things even to reach what he values. Come what may, 
 he will deal with this great matter of religion fairly. 
 
 It is the aim of the present volume, as it was the aim 
 of Literature and Dogma, to show to such a man that his 
 honesty will be rewarded. Plenty of people there are who 
 labour solely for the diffusion of habits of intellectual 
 seriousness, at whatever cost. Perhaps they do well, 
 perhaps ill ; at all events I do not, in the present volume 
 and in its predecessor, write as one of them. I write to 
 convince the lover of religion that by following habits of 
 intellectual seriousness he need not, so far as religion is 
 concerned, lose anything. Taking the Old Testament as 
 Israel's sublime establishment of the theme : Righteousness 
 is salvation ! taking the New as the incomparable elucida- 
 tion by Jesus of what righteousness is and how salvation is 
 won, I do not fear comparing the power over the soul and 
 imagination of the Bible, taken in this sense, a sense 
 which is at the same time solid, with the like power in the 
 old materialistic and miraculous sense for the Bible, which 
 is not. 
 
 The solidity itself is indeed an immense element of 
 grandeur. To him thatordereth his conversation right shall be 
 shown the salvation of God I Or conversely, and in modern 
 phrase, the same doctrine : Nations and men, -whoever is ship- 
 wrecked, is shipwrecked on conduct/ In vain do philosophical 
 Radicals devise fine new programmes which leave it out ; in 
 vain does France trumpet the ideas of '89 which are to do 
 instead. Whoever leaves it out of his programme, whoever 
 fancies that anything else will do instead, is baffled and
 
 xxvf PREFACE. 
 
 confounded by the sure event ; experience keeps again and 
 again sending him back to learn better, like a school -boy 
 with an ill-got lessoa France, which was in such terror of 
 Byzantinism and so resolved to have done with 'the old 
 Bibles,' France, with all her eminent social instincts and 
 gifts, is she not, in her countless editions of M. Adolphe Belot's 
 novels, or M. Zola's, faring towards the real Byzantinism, a 
 Byzantinism from which 'the old Bibles,' perhaps, can alone 
 save her? For, as it is true that men are shipwrecked on 
 conduct, so it is true that the Bible is the great means for 
 making men feel this, and for saving them. It makes them 
 feel it by the irresistible power with which Israel, the Seer 
 of the Vision of Peace, testifies it; it saves them by the 
 method and secret of Jesus. 
 
 Neither then in respect of the grandeur of the Bible and 
 Christianity, nor in respect of their world-wide importance, 
 will the lover of religion, who brings habits of intellectual 
 seriousness to bear upon them, find that he has to change 
 his notions. Nor will he even have to revolutionise his 
 phraseology. He will become aware, indeed, that of the con- 
 stitution of God we know nothing ; and that those who, like 
 Christian philosophers in general, begin by admitting this, 
 and who add, even, that ' we are utterly powerless to con- 
 ceive or comprehend the idea of an infinite Being, Almighty, 
 All-knowing, Omnipotent, and Eternal, of whose inscrutable 
 purpose the material universe is the unexplained manifesta- 
 tion,' 1 but who then proceed calmly to affirm such a Being 
 as positively as if he were a man they were acquainted with 
 in the next street, talk idly. Nevertheless, admitting that 
 all this cannot be affirmed about the God of our religion, 
 
 1 Mr. R. A. Proctor, in the Contemporary Review.
 
 PREFACE. xxvti 
 
 but only that our God is the Eternal not ourselves that 
 makes for righteousness, we yet know also that men in- 
 evitably use anthropomorphic language about whatever 
 makes them feel deeply, and the Biblical language about 
 God we may therefore freely use, but as approximative and 
 poetical merely. To seek to discard, like some philosophers, 
 the name of God and to substitute for it such a name as the 
 Unknowable, will seem to a plain man, surely, ridiculous. 
 For Unknowable is a name merely negative, and no man 
 could ever have cared anything about God in so far as he is 
 simply unknowable. 'The unknowable is our refuge and 
 strength, a very present help in trouble,' is what would occur 
 to no man to think or say. Men cared about God for the 
 sake of what they knew about him, not of what they did not. 
 And they knew about him that he was the Eternal not our- 
 selves that makes for righteousness, and as such they gave 
 him the name, God. It adds, indeed, to our awe of God 
 that although we are able to know of him what so greatly 
 concerns us, we know of him nothing more ; but simply to 
 be able to know nothing of him could beget in us no awe 
 whatever. 
 
 Finally, he who most seizes the real significance of the 
 Bible and of Jesus, will be least disposed to cut himself off 
 in religion from his fellow-men, to renounce all participation 
 in their religious language and worship. True, this language 
 is approximative merely, while men imagine it to be 
 adequate ; it is thrown out at certain realities which they 
 very imperfectly comprehend. It is materialised poetry, 
 which they give as science ; and there can be no worse 
 science than materialised poetry. But poetry is essentially 
 concrete \ and the moment one perceives that the religious
 
 xxvUi PREFACE. 
 
 language of the human race is in truth poetry, which it 
 mistakes for science, one cannot make it an objection to 
 this language that it is concrete. That it has long moved 
 and deeply engaged the affections of men, that the Christian 
 generations before us have all passed that way, adds im- 
 mensely to its worth as poetry. As the Catholic architecture, 
 so the Catholic worship is likely to survive and prevail, long 
 after the intellectual childishness of Catholic dogma and 
 the political and social mischiefs of the Roman system have 
 tired out men's patience with them. Catholic worship is 
 likely, however modified, to survive as the general worship 
 of Christians, because it is the worship which, in a sphere 
 where poetry is permissible and natural, unites most of the 
 elements of poetry. 
 
 Everything turns on its being at realities that this worship 
 and its language are aimed. And its anthropomorphic lan- 
 guage about God is aimed at a vast, though ill-apprehended, 
 reality. So is its materialistic language about the death, 
 the rising again, and the reign of Christ. The language is 
 aimed at a true and inexhaustibly fruitful idea, the idea of 
 death and resurrection as conceived and worked out by 
 Jesus. Baptized into Chrisfs death, if by any means we 
 might attain to the resurrection from the dead, 1 is the true, 
 the just, the only adequate account of a Christian and his 
 religion. The importance of the disciples' belief in their 
 Master's resurrection lay in their believing what was true, 
 although they materialised it Jesus had died and risen 
 again, but in his own sense not theirs. The strength of the 
 Christian religion lies in its being founded on a truth ; on a 
 truth which hitherto Christendom has been able to appre- 
 
 1 Romans, vi, 3; Philifpians, iii, II.
 
 PREFACE. xxix 
 
 hend only by materialising it, but which it will one day 
 apprehend better, and which men could come to apprehend 
 better, only by passing through a materialistic stage. We 
 can use their language because it is thrown out at an 
 admirable truth ; only it is not, as they suppose, their sense 
 for their own language which is real while our sense is 
 figurative, but it is our sense which is real, and theirs is merely 
 figurative. 
 
 The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the 
 next, and the Christian world will certainly learn to trans- 
 form beliefs which it now thinks to be untransformable. 
 The way will be found. And the new Christianity will call 
 forth more effort in the individual who uses it than the old, 
 will require more open and instructed minds for its recep- 
 tion ; and this is progress. But we live at the beginning of 
 a great transition which cannot well be accomplished without 
 confusion and distress. I do not pretend to operate a 
 general change of religious opinion, such as can only come 
 to pass through the operation of many labourers working, 
 all of them, towards a like end, and by the instrumentality, 
 in a very considerable degree, of the clergy. One man's life, 
 what is it ? says Goethe ; but even one man in his short 
 term may do something to ease a severe transition, to 
 diminish violent shocks in it and bitter pain. With this end 
 in view, I have addressed myself to men such as are happily 
 not rare in this country, men of free and active minds, who, 
 though they may be profoundly dissatisfied with the received 
 theology, are yet interested in religion and more or less ac- 
 quainted with the Bible. These I have endeavoured to help ; 
 and they, if they are helped, will in their turn help others. 
 To one people and race, and to one sort of persons in it,
 
 soot PREFACE. 
 
 and to one moment in its religious history, have I addressed 
 myself ; and if the attempt thus confessedly partial has even 
 a partial success, I am enough rewarded Can even a partial 
 success of this kind be won ? A calmer and a more gradual 
 judgment than that of the immediate present will decide. 
 But however the ultimate judgment may go, whether it pro- 
 nounce the attempt here made to be of solid worth or not, 
 I have little fear but that it will recognise it to have been an 
 attempt conservative, and an attempt religious.
 
 c 
 
 ifi 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 I. THE GOD OF 
 
 ONTENTS. 
 
 r.'.- -. 
 
 MIRACLES 
 
 6 
 
 II. 
 
 THE 
 
 GOD OF 
 
 METAPHYSICS . . . 
 
 26 
 
 III. 
 
 THE 
 
 GOD OF 
 
 EXPERIENCE . . . 
 
 59 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE 
 
 BIBLE-CANON .... 
 
 . 96 
 
 V. 
 
 THE 
 
 FOURTH 
 
 GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT . 
 
 135 
 
 VI 
 
 THE 
 
 FOURTH 
 
 GOSPEL FROM WITHIN . 
 
 . 162 
 
 CONCLUSION . 
 
 i 
 
 230
 
 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 INTROD UCTION. 
 
 MODERN CRITICISM will not allow us to rely either on the 
 Epistle of Polycarp, or on the narrative of his martyrdom, 
 as certainly authentic. Nevertheless, a saying from the 
 latter we will venture to use. As Polycarp stood in the 
 amphitheatre at Smyrna just before his martyrdom, with the 
 heathen multitude around crying out against him as an 
 atheistical innovator, the Roman proconsul, pitying his great 
 age, begged him to pronounce the formulas which expressed 
 adherence to the popular religion, and abhorrence of Chris- 
 tianity. ' Swear,' said he, ' by the fortune of Caesar ; cry : 
 Away with the atheists!' Whereupon Polycarp, says the 
 letter of the Church of Smyrna which relates his martyrdom, 
 looking round with a severe countenance upon the heathen 
 clamourers who filled the amphitheatre, pointed to these 
 with his hand, and with a groan, and casting up his eyes 
 
 B
 
 2 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 to heaven, cried : ' Away with the atheists ! ' This did not 
 give satisfaction, and Polycarp was burnt. 
 
 Yet so completely has the so-called atheism of Polycarp 
 prevailed, that we are almost puzzled at finding it called 
 atheism by the popular religion of its own day, by the wor- 
 shippers of Jupiter and Cybele, of Rome and the fortune of 
 Caesar. On the other hand, Polycarp's retort upon these 
 worshippers, his flinging back upon their religion the name 
 of atheism, seems to us the most natural thing in the world. 
 And so most certainly will it be with the popular religion of 
 our own day. Confident in its traditions and imaginations, 
 this religion now cries out against those who pronounce them 
 vain: Away -with the atheists I just as the heathen populace 
 of Asia cried out against Polycarp. With a groan, and 
 casting up his eyes to heaven, the critic thus execrated might 
 well, like Polycarp, point to his execrators and retort: Away 
 with the atheists ! So deeply unsound is the mass of tradi- 
 tions and imaginations of which popular religion consists, so 
 gross a distortion and caricature of the true religion does it 
 present, that future times will hardly comprehend its audacity 
 in calling those who abjure it atheists ; while its being stig- 
 matised itself with this hard name will astonish no one. 
 
 Let us who criticise the popular theory, however, show a 
 moderation of which our adversaries do not always set us the 
 example. To retort upon those who have attacked Literature 
 ^Z><?7//aasanti-christianand anti-religious, to recapitulate 
 their hard words and to give them hard words in return, is
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 not our intention. It is necessary, indeed, to mark firmly 
 and clearly that from our criticism of their theology, that 
 grotesque mixture, as we have called it, of learned pseudo- 
 science with popular legend, their outcry does not make us 
 go back one inch ; that it is they who in our judgment owe 
 an apology to Christianity and to religion, not we. But 
 when this has once been clearly marked, our business with 
 our assailants is over. Our business is henceforth not with 
 them, but with those for whose sake Literature and Dogma 
 was written. 
 
 These alone we have in view in noticing criticisms of 
 that book, whatever may be their nature. And there have 
 appeared criticisms of it very different from those blind and 
 angry denunciations of which we have spoken, those denun- 
 ciations from the point of view of popular and official theo- 
 logy. There have been criticisms deserving our high respect 
 and our careful attention. But nothing is more tiresome to 
 the public than an author's vindication of his work and reply 
 to his critics, however worthy they may be of attention; and 
 certainly nothing of this kind should we in most cases think 
 of proposing to ourselves. To weigh what his critics say, to 
 profit by it to the best of his judgment, and either to amend 
 or to maintain his work according to his final conviction, is 
 the right course for a criticised author to follow. It is in 
 general all that the public want him to do, and all that we 
 should wish to do ourselves. 
 
 But let us recall the object for which Literature and 
 
 4
 
 4 GOD AND THE BITiLE 
 
 Dogma was written. It was written in order to win sure 
 and safe grounds for the continued use and enjoyment of the 
 Bible. The Bible has long been widely used, deeply enjoyed, 
 and powerfully influential ; its summons to lay hold of eternal 
 life, to seek the kingdom of God, has been a trumpet-call 
 bringing life and joy to thousands. They have regarded 
 the Bible as a source of life and joy, and they were right in 
 so regarding it ; we wish men to be able so to regard it still 
 All that we may say about the Bible we confess to be a 
 failure, if it does not lead men to find the Bible a source of 
 life and joy still. 
 
 Now, into the hands of not a few readers has Literature 
 and Dogma fallen, both here and abroad, who have found 
 it of service to them. They have been enabled by it to use 
 and enjoy the Bible, when the common theology, popular 
 or learned, had almost estranged them from it. 
 
 But then the critics interpose. Grave objections are 
 alleged against the book which many readers have found 
 thus serviceable. Its conclusions about the meaning of the 
 term God, and about man's knowledge of God, are severely 
 condemned j strong objections are taken to our view of the 
 Bible-documents in general, to our account of the Canon of 
 the Gospels, to our estimate of the Fourth Gospel What 
 are the readers, who believed they had derived benefit from 
 our book, to think of these objections to it, or at least of 
 the more important among them ? what weight are they to 
 attach to them ? Are they to go back from the way of read
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 ing and interpreting the Bible which we had counselled 
 them to follow, and which they had begun to find profit in, 
 or are they still to pursue it steadfastly? Puzzled and 
 shaken by some of the objections we may suppose them to 
 be ; and yet, if they give ear to the objections, if they do 
 not get the better of them and put them aside, they will lose, 
 we believe, all sure hold on the Bible, they will be more 
 and more baffled, distressed, and bewildered in their deal- 
 ings with religion. 
 
 To the extent, therefore, necessary for enabling such 
 readers to surmount their difficulties, and to enjoy the Bible, 
 we propose to deal with some reproaches and objections 
 brought against Literature and Dogma.
 
 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. 
 
 To people disposed to throw the Bible aside Literature 
 and Dogma sought to restore the use of it by two con- 
 siderations : one, that the Bible requires for its basis no- 
 thing but what they can verify ; the other, that the language 
 of the Bible is not scientific, but literary. That is, it is 
 the language of poetry and emotion, approximate language 
 thrown out, as it were, at certain great objects which the 
 human mind augurs and feels after, and thrown out by men 
 very liable, many of them, to delusion and error. This has 
 been violently impugned. What we have now to do, there- 
 fore, is to ask whoever thought he found profit from what 
 we said, to examine with us whether it has been impugned 
 successfully ; whether he and we ought to give it up, or 
 whether we ought to hold by it firmly and hopefully 
 still. 
 
 First and foremost has been impugned the definition 
 which, proceeding on the rule to take nothing as a basis for 
 the Bible but what can be verified, we gave of God. And of 
 this we certainly cannot complain. For we have ourselves 
 said, that without a clear understanding in what sense this 
 important but ambiguous term God is used, all fruitful dis- 
 cussion in theology is impossible. And yet, in theological 
 discussion, this clear understanding is hardly ever cared for, 
 but people assume that the sense of the term is something 
 perfectly well known. ' A personal First Cause, that thinks
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. ^ 
 
 and loves, the moral and intelligent governor of the uni- 
 verse,' is the sense which theologians in general assume to 
 be the meaning, properly drawn out and strictly worded, of 
 the term God. We say that by this assumption a great deal 
 which cannot possibly be verified is put into the word ' God ' 
 and we propose, for the God of the Bible and of Christianity, 
 a much less pretentious definition, but which has the advan- 
 tage of containing nothing that cannot be verified. The 
 God of the Bible and of Christianity is, we say : The 
 Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. 
 
 Almost with one voice our critics have expostulated with 
 us for refusing to admit what they call a personal God. No- 
 thing would be easier for us than, by availing ourselves of 
 the ambiguity natural to the use of the term God, to give 
 such a turn to our expressions as might satisfy some of our 
 critics, or might enable our language to pass muster with the 
 common religious world as permissible. But this would be 
 clean contrary to our design. For we want to recommend 
 the Bible and its religion by showing that they rest on some- 
 thing which can be verified. Now, in the Bible God is 
 everything. Unless therefore we ascertain what it is which 
 we mean by God, and that what we mean we can verify, we 
 cannot recommend the Bible as we desire. So against all 
 ambiguity in the use of this term we wage war. Mr. 
 Llewellyn Davies says that we ourselves admit that the most 
 proper language to use about God is the approximative 
 language of poetry and eloquence, language thrown out at 
 an object which it does not profess to define scientifically, 
 language which cannot, therefore, be adequate and accurate. 
 If Israel, then, might with propriety call God ' the high and 
 holy one that inhabiteth eternity,' why, he asks, may not the 
 Bishop of Gloucester with propriety talk of 'the blessed 
 truth that the God of the universe is a person ' ? Neither 
 the one expression nor the other is adequate ; both are
 
 8 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 approximate. We answer : Let it be understood, then, that 
 when the Bishop of Gloucester, or others, talk of the blessed 
 truth that the God of the universe is a person, they mean to 
 talk, not science, but rhetoric and poetry. In that case our 
 only criticism on their language will be that it is bad rhetoric 
 and poetry, whereas the rhetoric and poetry of Israel is 
 good. But the truth is, they mean it for science ; they mean 
 it for a more formal and precise account of what Israel 
 called poetically 'the high and holy one that inhabiteth 
 eternity ; ' and it is false science because it assumes what it 
 cannot verify. However, if it is not meant for science, but 
 for poetry, let us treat it as poetry ; and then it is language 
 not professing to be exact at all, and we are free to use it or 
 not to use it as our sense of poetic propriety may dictate. 
 "But at all events let us be clear about one thing : Is it 
 meant for poetry, or is it meant for science ? 
 
 If we were asked what in our own opinion we had by 
 Literature and Dogma effected for the benefit of readers of 
 the Bible, we should answer that we had effected two things 
 above all First, that we had led the reader to face that 
 primary question, so habitually slurred over, what ' God ' 
 means in the Bible, and to see that it means the Eternal not 
 ourselves that makes for righteousness. Secondly, that we 
 had made him ask himself what is meant by ' winning Christ,' 
 knowing Christ/ ' the excellency of the knowledge of Christ,' 
 and find that it means laying hold of the method and secret 
 and temper of Jesus. And of these two things achieved by 
 us, as we think, for the Bible-reader's benefit, the first seems 
 to us the more important. Sooner or later he will find the 
 Bible fail him, unless he is provided with a sure meaning for 
 the words ' God,' ' Deity.' Until this is done, and to keep 
 steadily before his mind how loosely he and others at present 
 employ the word, we even recommend him to allow to the 
 word ' Deity ' no more contents than by its etymology it has,
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. g 
 
 and to render it ' The Shining.' Archbishop Whately blames 
 those who define words by their etymology, and ridicules 
 them as people who should insist upon it that sycophant 
 shall mean ' fig-shewer ' and nothing else. But etymological 
 definition, trifling and absurd when a word's imported mean- 
 ing is sure, becomes valuable when the imported meaning is 
 unfixed. There was at Athens a practice, says Festus, of 
 robbing the fig-orchards ; a law was passed to check it ; 
 under this law vexatious informations were laid, and those 
 who laid them were called sycophants^ fig-informers, or, if 
 Archbishop Whately pleases, fig-shewers. Then the name 
 was transferred to vexatious informers or to calumniators 
 generally, and at last to cheating impostors of other kinds. 
 The wider new meaning thus imported into the word was 
 something quite clear, something on which all were agreed j 
 and thenceforward to insist on limiting sycophant to its 
 old etymological sense of fig-informer would have been 
 ridiculous. 
 
 But the case is different when the fuller meaning im- 
 ported into a word is something vague and loose, something 
 on which people are by no means agreed. It is then often 
 an excellent discipline to revert to the etymology ; and 
 to insist on confining ourselves to the sense given by this, 
 until we get for our word a larger sense clear and certain. 
 'The Shining is our hope and strength.' 'O Shining, thou 
 art my Shining, early will I seek thee ! ' ' My soul, wait 
 thou only upon The Shining, for my expectation is from 
 him ! ' ' The fool hath said in his heart : There is no 
 Shining ! ' * This will not give us satisfaction. But it will 
 thereby stimulate us all the more to find a meaning to the 
 word ' God ' that does give us satisfaction ; and it will keep 
 vivid in our minds the thought how little we ourselves 01 
 others have such a meaning for the word at present. 
 1 Psalm xlvi, I ; Ixiii, I ; Ixii, 5 ; xiv, I.
 
 io GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 The late Lord Lyttelton published in the Contemporary 
 Review a disquisition on ' Undogmatic and Unsectarian 
 Teaching,' which signally illustrates the utility of this etymo- 
 logical discipline. Lord Lyttelton is very severe upon those 
 whom he calls ' the shallow sciolists and apostles of modern 
 Unsectarianism ; ' and very favourable to dogma, or the de- 
 termined, decreed and received doctrine of so-called ortho- 
 dox theology. He draws out a formal list of propositions 
 beginning with : ' God is, God made the world, God cares 
 for men, God is the Father of men,' and ending with : ' The 
 Deity of God is in one sense One in another Threefold, God 
 is One in Three Persons.' He defies any one to show where 
 in this list that which is universal ends and that which is 
 dogmatic begins. And his inference apparently is, that 
 therefore the last propositions in the series may be freely 
 taught. But if he had examined his thoughts with atten- 
 tion he would have found that he cannot tell where the cha- 
 racter of his propositions changes because he has been using 
 the word ' God ' in the same sense all through the series. 
 Now, the sense given to this word governs the sense of each 
 and all of his propositions, but this sense he omits to furnish 
 us with. Until we have it, we may agree that his latter pro- 
 positions are dogmatic, but we cannot possibly concede to 
 him that his earlier propositions have universal validity. Yet 
 the whole force of his series of propositions, and of the argu- 
 ment which he founds upon it, depends on this : whether his 
 definition of God, which he does not produce, is unchallenge- 
 able or no. Till he produces it, his readers will really best 
 enable themselves to feel the true force ot Lord Lyttelton's 
 propositions by substituting for the word Deity its bare ety- 
 mological equivalent Shining, the only definition to which, 
 until the fuller definition is produced and made good, the 
 word has any right. The propositions will then run : ' The 
 Shining is, The Shining made the world, The Shining cares
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. II 
 
 for men, The Shining is the Father of men ; ' and so on to 
 the final and fantastic proposition : 'The Shining is One in 
 Three Persons.' That entire inconclusiveness, of which we 
 are by these means made fully aware, exists just as much 
 in Lord Lyttelton's original propositions, but without being 
 noticed by himself or by most of his readers. 
 
 Resolutely clear with himself, then, in using this word 
 ' Deity,' ' God,' we urge our reader to be, whatever offence 
 he may give by it. When he is asked in a tone of horri- 
 fied remonstrance whether he refuses to believe in a per- 
 sonal God, let him steadily examine what it is that people 
 say about a personal God, and what grounds he has for 
 receiving it. 
 
 People say that there is a personal God, and that a per- 
 sonal God is a God who thinks and loves. That there is an 
 Eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness and is 
 called God, is admitted ; and indeed so much as this human 
 experience proves. For the constitution and history of 
 things show us that happiness, at which we all aim, is de- 
 pendent on righteousness. Yet certainly we did not make 
 this to be so, and it did not begin when we began, nor does 
 it end when we end, but is due, so far as we can see, to an 
 eternal tendency outside us, prevailing whether we will or no, 
 whether we are here or not. There is no difficulty, therefore, 
 about an Eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness, 
 and to which men have transferred that ancient high name, 
 Deus, the Brilliant or Shining, by which they once adored 
 a mighty object outside themselves, the sun, which from the 
 first took their notice as powerful for their weal or woe. 
 
 So that God is, is admitted ; but people maintain, be- 
 sides, that he is a person, and thinks and loves. 'The 
 Divine Being cannot,' they say, 'be without the perfection 
 which manifests itself in the human personality as the highest 
 of which we have any knowledge.' Now, ' the deeper ele-
 
 12 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 merits of personality are,' they add, ' existence, consciousness 
 of this existence and control over it' These therefore, they 
 eay, God must have. And that the Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness has these, they account (though their language 
 is not always quite consistent on this point) a fact of the 
 same order and of as much certainty as that there is an 
 Eternal that makes for righteousness at all. ' It is this power 
 itself,' says M. Albert Rdville, ' this not ourselves which makes 
 for righteousness, that constantly reveals to us the fact that 
 it is a Spirit, that is to say, not merely an influence, but life, 
 consciousness, and love.' Religion, it is affirmed, religion, 
 which is morality touched with emotion, is impossible unless 
 we know of God that he is a person who thinks and loves. 
 * If the not ourselves which makes for righteousness,' says 
 M. Re*ville, ' is an unconscious force, I cannot feel for it that 
 sacred emotion which raises morality to the rank of religion. 
 Man no longer, worships powers of which he has discovered 
 the action to be impersonal.' All this sort of argumentation, 
 which M. Re"ville manages with great delicacy and literary 
 skill, is summed up in popular language plainly and well by 
 a writer in the Edinburgh Review. ' Is the Power around 
 us not a person ; is what you would have us worship a thing ? 
 All existing beings must be either persons or things ; and no 
 sophistries can deter us from the invincible persuasion which 
 all human creatures possess, that persons are superior to 
 things? 
 
 Now, before going farther, we have one important remark 
 to make upon all this. M. ReVille talks of those who have 
 discovered the action of God to be impersonal In another 
 place he talks of denying conscious intelligence to God. 
 The Edinburgh Reviewer talks of those who would have us 
 worship a thing. We assure M. Re\ille that we do not 
 profess to have discovered the nature of God to be im- 
 personal, not do we deny to God conscious intelligence.
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. 13 
 
 We assure the Edinburgh Reviewer that we do not assert 
 God to be a thing. All we say is that men do not know 
 enough about the Eternal not ourselves that makes for 
 righteousness, to warrant their pronouncing this either a 
 person or a thing. We say that no one has discovered the 
 nature of God to be personal, or is entitled to assert that 
 God has conscious intelligence. Theologians assert this and 
 make it the basis of religion. It is they who assert and 
 profess to know, not we. We object to their professing to 
 know mere than can be known, to their insisting we shall 
 receive it, to their resting religion upon it. We want to rest 
 religion on what can be verified, not on what cannot. And 
 M. ReVille himself seems, when he lets us see the bottom of 
 his thoughts, to allow that a personal God who thinks and 
 loves cannot really be verified, for he says : ' It is in vain to 
 ask how we can verify the fact that God possesses conscious- 
 ness and intelligence.' But we are for resting religion upon 
 some fact of which it shall not be in vain to ask whether we 
 can verify it However, the theologians' conception of God 
 is represented as a far more satisfying one in itself than ours, 
 and as having, besides, much to make its truth highly pro- 
 bable, at any rate, if not demonstrable. And the reader of 
 Literature and Dogma may think, perhaps, that we have 
 been over-cautious, over-negative ; that we are really, as 
 M. Reville says, ' decidedly too much afraid of the idea of 
 the personality of God.' He may think, that though we 
 have given him as his foundation something verifiable 
 and sure, yet that what we have given him is a great deal 
 less than what the theologians offer, and offer with such 
 strong and good reasons for its truth, that it becomes 
 almost certain if not quite, and a man is captious who will 
 not accept it. 
 
 Descartes, as is well known, had a famous philosophical 
 method for discovering truths of all kinds ; and people
 
 14 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 heard of his method and used to press him to give them the 
 results which this wonderful organ had enabled him to 
 ascertain. Quite in a contrary fashion, we sometimes flatter 
 ourselves with the hope that we may be of use by the very 
 absence of all scientific pretension, because we are thus 
 obliged to treat great questions in such a simple way that 
 any one can follow us, while the way, at the same time, 
 may possibly be quite right after all, only overlooked by 
 more ingenious people because it is so very simple. 
 
 Now, proceeding in this manner, we venture to ask the 
 plain reader whether it does not strike him as an objection 
 to our making God a person who thinks and loves, that we 
 have really no experience whatever, not the very slightest, of 
 persons who think and love, except in man and the inferior 
 animals. I for my part am by no means disposed to deny 
 that the inferior animals, as they are called, may have 
 consciousness, that they may be said to think and love, 
 in however low a degree. At any rate we can see them 
 before us doing certain things which are like what we do 
 ourselves when we think and love, so that thinking and 
 loving may be attributed to them also without one's failing 
 to understand what is meant, and they may conceivably be 
 called persons who think and love. But really this is all the 
 experience of any sort that we have of persons who think 
 and love, the experience afforded by ourselves and the 
 lower animals. True, we easily and naturally attribute all 
 operations that engage our notice to authors who live and 
 think like ourselves. We make persons out of sun, wind, 
 love, envy, war, fortune ; in some languages every noun is 
 male or female. But this, we know, is figure and personifica- 
 tion. Being ourselves alive and thinking, and having sex, 
 we naturally invest things with these our attributes, and 
 imagine all action and operation to proceed as our own 
 proceeds. This is a tendency which in common speech
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. 15 
 
 and in poetry, where we do not profess to speak exactly, we 
 cannot well help following, and which we follow lawfully. In 
 the language of common speech and of poetry, we speak of 
 the Eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness, as if 
 he were a person who thinks and loves. Naturally we speak 
 of him so, and there is no objection at all to our so doing. 
 
 But it is different when we profess to speak exactly, and 
 yet make God a person who thinks and loves. We then 
 find what difficulty our being actually acquainted with no 
 persons superior to ourselves who think and love brings us 
 into. Some, we know, have made their God in the image 
 of the inferior animals. We have had the God Apis and 
 the God Anubis ; but these are extravagances. In general, 
 as God is said to have made man in his own image, the 
 image of God, man has returned the compliment and has 
 made God as being, outwardly or inwardly, in the image of 
 man. What we in general do is to take the best thinking 
 and loving of the best man, to better this best, to call it 
 perfect, and to say that this is God. So we construct a 
 magnified and non- natural man, by dropping out all that in 
 man seems a source of weakness, and by heightening to the 
 very utmost all that in man seems a source of strength, such 
 as his thought and his love. Take the account of God 
 which begins the Thirty-nine Articles, or the account of 
 God in any Confession of Faith we may choose. The 
 same endeavour shows itself in all of them : to construct 
 a man who thinks and loves, but so immensely bettered 
 that he is a man no longer. Then between this magnified 
 man and ourselves we put, if we please, angels, who are 
 men etherealised. The objection to the magnified man 
 and to the men etherealised is one and the same : that we 
 have absolutely no experience whatever of either the one or 
 the other. 
 
 Support, however, is obtained for them from two
 
 Jf> GOD AND THE BIBLE, 
 
 grounds ; from metaphysical grounds, and from the ground 
 of miracles. Let us take first the ground said to be given 
 by miracles. Interferences and communications of such a 
 kind as to be explainable on no other supposition than that 
 of a magnified and non-natural man, with etherealised men 
 ministering to him, are alleged to have actually happened 
 and to be warranted by sure testimony. And there is some- 
 thing in this. If the alleged interferences and communica- 
 tions have happened, then by this supposition they may 
 fairly be explained. If the progress of the natural day was 
 really stopped to enable the chosen people to win a great 
 victory over its enemies, if a voice out of the sky really said 
 when Jesus was baptized : This is my te/ored Son,- -then the 
 magnified and non-natural man of popular religion, either 
 by himself or with angels, etherealised men, for his ministers, 
 is a supposition made credible, probable, and even almost 
 necessary, by those incidents. 
 
 Thus we are thrown back on miracles ; and the question 
 is, are we to affirm that God is a person who thinks and 
 loves because miracles compel us? Now, the reader of 
 Literature and Dogma will recollect that perhaps some 
 half-a-dozen pages of that book, and not more, were taken 
 up with discussing miracles. The Guardian thinks this 
 insufficient. It says that solid replies are demanded to solid 
 treatises, and that I ought to have taken Dr. Mozley's 
 Bampton Lectures on Miracles, and given, if I could, a 
 refutation to them. It tartly adds, however, that to expect 
 this ' would be to expect something entirely at variance 
 with Mr. Arnold's antecedents and with his whole nature.' 
 Well, the author of Supernatural Religion has occupied 
 half a thick volume in refuting Dr. Mozley's Bampton
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. tJ 
 
 Lectures. He has written a solid reply to that solid 
 treatise. Sure I am that he has not convinced the 
 Guardian^ but that journal ought at least to be pleased with 
 him for having so far done his duty. For my part, although 
 I do justice to Dr. Mozley's ability, yet to write a refutation 
 of his Bampton Lectures is precisely, in my opinion, to do 
 what Strauss has well called ' going out of one's way to 
 assail the paper fortifications which theologians choose to set 
 up.' To engage in an d priori argument to prove that 
 miracles are impossible, against an adversary who argues 
 d priori that they are possible, is the vainest labour in the 
 world. So long as the discussion was of this character, 
 miracles were in no danger. The time for it is now past, 
 because the human mind, whatever may be said for or 
 against miracles d priori, is now in fact losing its reliance 
 upon them. And it is losing it for this reason : as its 
 experience widens, it gets acquainted with the natural 
 history of miracles, it sees how they arise, and it slowly 
 but inevitably puts them aside. 
 
 Far from excusing ourselves for the brevity and modera- 
 tion with which the subject of miracles is in Literature and 
 Dogma treated, we are disposed to claim praise for it. It 
 is possible to spend a great deal too much time and mental 
 energy over the thesis that miracles cannot be relied on. 
 The thesis, though true, is merely negative, and therefore of 
 secondary importance. The important question is, what 
 becomes of religion, so precious, as we believe, to the 
 human race, if miracles cannot be relied on ? We ought 
 never so to immerse ourselves in the argument against 
 miracles, as to forget that the main question lies beyond, 
 and that we must press forward to it As soon as we satisfy 
 ourselves that on miracles we cannot build, let us have done 
 with questions about them and begin to build on something 
 surer. Now, it is in a much more simple and unpretending 
 
 c
 
 IS COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 way than controversialists commonly follow that we satisfy 
 ourselves that we cannot build upon miracles. 
 
 For it is possible, again, to exaggerate untruly the 
 demonstrative force of the case against miracles. The 
 logical completeness of the case for miracles has been 
 vaunted, and vaunted falsely ; some people are now dis- 
 posed to vaunt falsely the logical completeness of the case 
 against miracles. Poor human nature loves the pretentious 
 forms of exact knowledge, though with the real condition 
 of our thoughts they often ill correspond. The author 
 of Supernatural Religion asserts again and again that 
 miracles are contradictory to a complete induction. He 
 quotes Mr. Mill's rule : 'Whatever is contradictory to a 
 complete induction is incredible,' and quotes Mr. Mill's 
 account of a complete induction : ' When observations or 
 experiments have been repeated so often and by so many 
 persons as to exclude all supposition of error in the observer, 
 a law of nature is established ; ' and he asserts that a law of 
 nature of this kind has been established against miracles. 
 He brings forward that famous test by which Paley seeks 
 to establish the Christian miracles, his 'twelve men of 
 known probity and good sense relating a miracle wrought 
 before their eyes, and consenting to be racked and burned 
 sooner than acknowledge that there existed any falsehood 
 or imposture in the case,' and he asserts that no affirmation 
 of any twelve men would be sufficient to overthrow a law of 
 nature, or to save, therefore, the Christian miracles. 
 
 Now, these assertions are exaggerated and will not serve. 
 No such law of nature as Mr. Mill describes has been or 
 can be established against the Christian miracles ; a 
 complete induction against them, therefore, there is not. 
 Nor does the evidence of their reporters fail because the 
 evidence of no men can make miracles credible. The 
 case against the Christian miracle is that we have an in-
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. 19 
 
 duction, not complete, indeed, but enough more and more 
 to satisfy the mind, and to satisfy it in an ever increasing 
 number of men, that miracles are untrustworthy. The case 
 against their reporters is, that more and more of us see, and 
 see ever more clearly, that these reporters were not and 
 could not be the sort of picked jury that Paley's argument 
 requires, but that, with all the good faith in the world, they 
 were men likely to fall into error about miracles, to make a 
 miracle where there was none, and that they did fall into 
 error and legend accordingly. 
 
 This being so, we have no inclination, even now, either 
 to dwell at excessive length on the subject of miracles, or 
 to make a grand show of victoriously demonstrating their 
 impossibility. But we have to ask ourselves, if necessary, 
 again and again, whenever anything is made to depend upon 
 them, how their case really and truly stands, whether there 
 can be any prospect, either for ourselves or for those 
 in whose interest Literature and Dogma was written, of 
 returning to a reliance upon them. And the more we 
 consider it the more we are convinced there is none ; and 
 that the cause assigned in Literature and Dogma as fatal 
 to miracles, that the more our experience widens, the 
 more we see and understand the process by which they 
 arose, and their want of solidity, is fatal to them indeed. 
 The time has come when the minds of men no longer put as 
 a matter of course the Bible-miracles in a class by themselves. 
 Now, from the moment this time commences, from the 
 moment that the comparative history of all miracles is a 
 conception entertained and a study admitted, the conclusion 
 is certain, the reign of the Bible-miracles is doomed. 
 
 3- 
 
 Let us see how this is so. Herodotus relates, that, 
 when the Persian invaders came to Delphi, two local heroes 
 
 C2
 
 30 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 buried near the place, Phylacus and Autonous, arose, and 
 were seen, of more than mortal stature, fighting against the 
 Persians. 1 He relates, that before the onset at Salamis the 
 vision of a woman appeared over an ^Eginetan ship, and 
 cried in a voice which all the Grecian fleet heard : 'Good 
 souls, how long will ye keep backing ? ' a He relates, that at 
 Pedasus, in the neighbourhood of his own city Halicarnas- 
 sus, the priestess of Athene had a miraculous sprouting of 
 beard whenever any grievous calamity was about to befall 
 the people around ; he says in one place that twice this 
 miraculous growth had happened, in another, that it had 
 happened thrice. 3 Herodotus writes here of times when he 
 was himself alive, not of a fabulous antiquity. He and his 
 countrymen were not less acute, arguing, critical people 
 than the Jews of Palestine, but much more. Herodotus 
 himself, finally, is a man of a beautiful character and of 
 pure good-faith. 
 
 But we do not believe that Phylacus and Autonous 
 arose out of their graves and were seen fighting with the 
 Persians ; we know by experience, we all say, how this sort 
 of story grows up. And that after the Crucifixion, then, 
 many dead saints arose and came out of the graves and 
 went into the holy city and appeared unto many, is not this 
 too a story of which we must say, the moment we fairly put 
 it side by side with the other, that it is of the same kind 
 with it, and that we know how the sort of story grows up ? 
 That the phantom-woman called to the ^Eginetan crew at 
 Salamis, How long will ye keep backing ? we do not believe 
 any the more because we are told that all the Grecian fleet 
 heard it We know, we all say, by experience, that this is 
 just the sort of corroboration naturally added to such a 
 story. But we are asked to believe that Jesus after his 
 death actually cried to Paul on his way to Damascus : // 
 1 Herodotus, viii, 38, 39. 2 Herod., viii, 84. * Herod., viii, 104.
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. 21 
 
 hard for thee to kick against the pricks, because the bystanders 
 are said to have heard it, although to be sure in another 
 place, with the looseness natural to such a story, the 
 bystanders are said not to have heard this voice. That the 
 Salamis story and the Damascus story are of one kind, and 
 of what kind, strikes us the moment that we put the two 
 stories together. 
 
 The miraculous beard of the priestess of Pedasus, again, 
 is really just like the miraculous dumbness of Zacharias, the 
 father of John the Baptist. The priestess of Pedasus, 
 however, is said by Herodotus in one place to have twice 
 had her marvellous beard, in another to have had it thrice ; 
 and the discrepancy proves, we all say, how loose and un- 
 historical this kind of story is. But yet when Jesus is in 
 the Second Gospel said to have healed as he departed from 
 Jericho one blind man who sate by the wayside, and in the 
 First Gospel to have healed as he departed from Jericho 
 two blind men who sate by the wayside, there is here, we 
 are asked to believe, no discrepancy really at all. Two 
 different healings are meant, which were performed at two 
 different visits to Jericho. Or perhaps they were performed 
 at one and the same visit, but one was performed as Jesus 
 entered the city, and the other as he left it. And the 
 words of St. Mark : ' And he came to Jericho ; and as he 
 went out of Jericho blind Bartimaeus sate by the wayside/ 
 really mean that Bartimseus sate there as Jesus went in to 
 Jericho, and two other blind men sate by the wayside as he 
 went out. How arbitrary, unnatural and vain such an 
 explanation is, what a mere device of our own to make a 
 Eolid history out of a legend, we never feel so irresistibly as 
 when we put the Jericho story by the side of others like it
 
 22 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 4- 
 
 It is this impossibility of resting religion any more on 
 grounds once supposed to be safe, such as that the Gospel 
 narratives are free from mistake and that the Gospel miracles 
 are trustworthy, which compels us to look for new grounds 
 upon which we may build firmly. Those men do us an ill 
 turn, and we owe them no thanks for it, who compel us to 
 keep going back to examine the old grounds, and declaring 
 their want of solidity. What we need is to have done with 
 all this negative, unfruitful business, and to get to religion 
 again ; to the use of the Bible upon new grounds which 
 shall be secure. The old grounds cannot be used safely 
 any more, and if one opens one's eyes one must see it. 
 Those who inveigh against us could see it, if they chose, as 
 plainly as we do ; and they ought to open their eyes and 
 see it, but they will not. And they want us to go on trusting 
 foolishly to the old grounds as they do, until all tumbles in, 
 and there is a great ruin and confusion. Let us not do so. 
 Let those, who have read Literature and Dogma with satis- 
 faction, be sure that what is in that book sa ; d against 
 miracles, kept though it be within the narrowest limits 
 possible, is indispensable, and requires so little space just 
 because it is so very certain. Let them accustom themselves 
 to treat with steadiness, with rigorous simplicity, all the 
 devices to save those unsaveable things, the Bible miracles. 
 
 To reduce the miraculous in them to what are thought 
 reasonable dimensions is now a favourite attempt. But if 
 anything miraculous is left, the whole miracle might as well 
 have been left ; if nothing, how has the incident any longer 
 the proving force of a miracle ? Let us treat so absurd an 
 attempt as it deserves. Neander supposes that the water 
 at the marriage-feast at Cana was not changed by Jesus into 
 wine, but was only endued by him with wine's brisk taste
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES* 23 
 
 and exhilarating effects. This has all the difficulties of the 
 miracle, and only gets rid of the poetry. It is as if we were 
 startled by the extravagance of supposing Cinderella's fairy 
 godmother to have actually changed the pumpkin into a 
 coach and six, but should suggest that she did really change 
 it into a one-horse cab. Many persons, again, feel now an 
 insurmountable suspicion (and no wonder) of Peter's fish 
 with the tribute-money in its mouth, and they suggest that 
 what really happened was that Peter caught a fish, sold it, 
 and paid the tribute with the money he thus got. This is 
 like saying that all Cinderella's godmother really did was to 
 pay a cab for her godchild by selling her pumpkins. But 
 then what becomes of the wonder, the miracle ? Were there 
 ever such apologists as these ? They impair the credit of the 
 Evangelists as much as we do, for they make them trans- 
 form facts to an extent wholly incompatible with trustworthy 
 reporting. They impair it more ; for they make them trans- 
 form facts with a method incompatible with honest simplicity. 
 Simple, flexible common-sense is what we most want, in 
 order to be able to follow truly the dealings of that sponta- 
 neous, irregular, wonderful power which gives birth to tales of 
 miracle, the imagination. It is easy to be too systematic. 
 Strauss had the idea, acute and ingenious, of explaining the 
 miracles of the New Testament as a reiteration of the miracles 
 of the Old. Of some miracles this supplies a good expla- 
 nation. It plausibly explains the story of the Transfigura- 
 tion, for instance. The story of the illumined face of Jesus, 
 Jesus, the prophet like unto Moses, whom Moses foretold, 
 might naturally owe its origin to the illumined face of Moses 
 himself. But of other miracles Strauss's idea affords no 
 admissible explanation whatever. To employ it for these 
 cases can only show the imperturbable resolution of a Ger- 
 man professor in making all the facts suit a theory which he 
 has once adopted.
 
 24 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Every miracle has its own mode of growth and its own 
 history, and the key to one is not the key to others. Such 
 a rationalising explanation as that above quoted of the money 
 in the mouth of Peter's fish is ridiculous. Yet a clue, a 
 suggestion, however slight, of fact, there probably was to 
 every miracle ; and sometimes, not by any means always, this 
 clue may be traced with likelihood. 
 
 The story of the feeding of the thousands may well have 
 had its rise in the suspension, the comparative extinction, of 
 hunger and thirst during hours of rapt interest and intense 
 mental excitement. In such hours a trifling sustenance, 
 which would commonly serve for but a few, will suffice for 
 many. Rumour and imagination make and add details, 
 and swell the thing into a miracle. This sort of incident, 
 again, it is as natural to conceive repeating itself, as it is 
 unnatural to conceive an incident like the clearance of the 
 Temple repeating itself. Or to take the walking on the Sea 
 of Galilee. Here, too, the sort of hint of fact which may 
 have started the miracle will readily occur to every one. 
 Sometimes the hint of fact, lost in our Bibles, is preserved 
 elsewhere. The Gospel of the Hebrews, an old Gospel 
 outside the Canon of Scripture, but which Jerome quotes 
 and of which we have fragments, this Gospel, and other 
 records of like character, mention what our Four Gospels 
 do not : a wonderful light at the moment when Jesus was 
 baptized. No one, so far as we know, has yet remarked 
 that in this small and dropped circumstance, a weird light 
 on Jordan seen while Jesus was baptized, we not im- 
 probably have the original nucleus of solid fact round which 
 the whole miraculous story of his baptism gathered. 
 
 He does well who, steadily using his own eyes in this 
 manner, and escaping from the barren routine whether of 
 the assailants of the Bible or of its apologists, acquires the 
 serene and imperturbable conviction, indispensable for all
 
 THE GOD OF MIRACLES. 25 
 
 fruitful use of the Bible in future, that in travelling through 
 its reports of miracles he moves in a world, not of solid 
 history, but of illusion, rumour, and fairy-tale. Only, when 
 he has acquired this, let him say to himself that he has by 
 so doing achieved nothing, except to get rid of an insecure 
 reliance which would inevitably some day or other have cost 
 him dear, of a staff in religion which must sooner or later 
 have pierced his hand. 
 
 One other thing, however, he has done besides this. He 
 has discovered the hollowness of the main ground for making 
 God a person who thinks and loves, a magnified and non- 
 natural man. Only a kind of man magnified could so make 
 man the centre of all things and interrupt the settled order 
 of nature in his behalf as miracles imply. But in miracles 
 we are dealing, we find, with the unreal world of fairy-tale. 
 Having no reality of their own, they cannot lend it as founda- 
 tion for the reality of anything else.
 
 26 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 
 
 THERE remain the grounds for asserting God to be a person 
 who thinks and loves which are supplied by metaphysics. 
 ' Continue auditse voces, vagitus et ingens.' 
 
 At the mention of that name metaphysics, lo ! essence, 
 existence, substance, finite and infinite, cause and suc- 
 cession, something and nothing, begin to weave their eternal 
 dance before us ; with the confused murmur of their com- 
 binations filling all the region governed by her, who, far 
 more indisputably than her late-born rival, political economy, 
 has earned the title of the Dismal Science. Yet even into 
 this region we ask the reader of Literature and Dogma, if he 
 does not disdain an unsophisticated companion, to enter with 
 us. And here, possibly, we may after all find reason to retract, 
 and to own that the theologians are right. For metaphysics 
 we know from the very name to be the science of things 
 which come after natural things. Now, the things which 
 come after natural things are things not natural. Clearly, 
 therefore, if any science is likely to be able to demonstrate 
 to us the magnified and non-natural man, it must be the 
 science of non-naturals. 
 
 2. 
 
 Professor Huxley's interesting discourse at Belfast drew 
 attention to a personage who once was in the thoughts of 
 everybody who tried to think, Rene" Descartes. But in this
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 27 
 
 great man there were, in truth, two men. One was the 
 anatomist, the physicist, the mechanical philosopher who 
 exclaimed : ' Give me matter and motion, and I will make 
 the world !' and of whom Pascal said that the only God he 
 admitted was a God who was useless. This is the Descartes 
 on whom Professor Huxley has asked us to turn once more our 
 eyes ; and no man could ask it better or more persuasively. 
 
 But there is another Descartes who had of late years 
 been much more known, both in his own country and out of 
 it, than Descartes the mechanical philosopher, and that is 
 the Descartes who is said to have founded the independence 
 of modern philosophy and to have founded its spiritualism. 
 He began with universal doubt, with the rejection of all 
 authority, with the resolve to admit nothing to be true which 
 he could not clearly see to be true. He ended with declaring 
 that the demonstration of God and the soul was more com- 
 pletely made out than that of any other truth whatever ; nay, 
 that the certitude and truth of every science depended solely 
 on our knowledge of the true God. 1 
 
 Here we have the Descartes who is commonly said to 
 have founded modern philosophy. And who, in this our 
 day of unsettlement and of impatience with authority, con- 
 vention, and routine, who, in this our day of new departures, 
 can fail to be attracted by the author of the ' Mdthode,' and 
 by his promises ? ' Je rfadmets rien quine soit necessairement 
 vrai ; I admit nothing which is not necessarily true.' f je 
 irfeloigne de tout ce en quoi je fourrais imaginer le moindre 
 doute ; I put aside everything about which I can imagine 
 there being the smallest doubt' What could we, who 
 demand that the propositions we accept shall be propositions 
 we can verify, ask more ? // rfy a que les choses queje consols 
 clairement et distinctement qui aient la force de me persuader 
 
 1 Je reconnais tres clairement que la certitude et la verite de toute 
 science dependent de la seule connaissauce du vrai Dieu.
 
 28 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 entrerement ; je ne puts vie tromper dans les jugements dontje 
 connais dairement les raisons ; Only those things which I 
 conceive clearly and distinctly have the power thoroughly to 
 persuade me ; I cannot be mistaken m those judgments of 
 which I clearly know the reasons.' What can be better ? 
 We have really no other ground for the certainty of our con- 
 victions than this clearness. 
 
 The rule of Descartes, therefore, not to receive anything 
 as true without having clearly known it for such, is for us 
 unchallengeable. How vain and dangerous did we find 
 Butler's proposal that we should take as the foundation of our 
 religion something for which we had a low degree of proba- 
 bility ! In this direction, assuredly, Descartes does not err. 
 'Inasmuch as my reason convinces me,' says he, 'that I 
 ought to be as careful to withhold my belief from things not 
 quite certain and indubitable as from those which I plainly 
 see to be false, it will be a sufficient ground to me for re- 
 jecting all my old opinions if I find in them all some open- 
 ing for doubt.' Certainly this is caution enough ; to many 
 it will even seem excess of caution. 
 
 It is true, the doubts which troubled Descartes and 
 which have, troubled so many philosophers, doubts, 
 whether this world in which we live, the objects which strike 
 our senses, the things which we see and handle, have any 
 real existence, are not exactly the doubts by which we 
 ourselves have been most plagued. Indeed, to speak 
 quite frankly, these are doubts by which we have never 
 been tormented at all. Our trouble has rather been 
 with doubts whether things which people assured us really 
 existed or had really happened, but of which we had no 
 experience ourselves and could not satisfy ourselves that 
 anyone else had had experience either, were really as those 
 people told us. Descartes could look out of his window at 
 Amsterdam, and see a public place filled with men and
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 29 
 
 women, and say to himself that he had yet no right to be 
 certain they were men and women, because they might, after 
 all, be mere lay figures dressed up in hats and cloaks. This 
 would never have occurred, perhaps, to the generality of 
 mankind ; to us, at any rate, it never would have occurred. 
 But if this sort of scrupulosity led Descartes to establish his 
 admirable rules : ' I admit nothing which is not necessarily 
 true ; ' ' Only those things which I conceive clearly and dis- 
 tinctly have the power to convince me ; ' we cannot regret 
 that he was thus scrupulous. Men, all of them, as many as 
 have doubts of any kind and want certainty, find their need 
 served when a great man sets out with these stringent rules 
 to discover what is really certain and verifiable. And we 
 ourselves accordingly, plain unphilosophical people as we 
 are, did betake ourselves once to Descartes with great zeal, 
 and we were thus led to an experience which we have never 
 forgotten. And perhaps it may be of use to other plain 
 people, for the purpose of the enquiry which at present 
 occupies us, the enquiry whether the solid and necessary 
 ground of religion is the assurance that God is a person who 
 thinks and loves, to follow over again in our company the 
 experience which then befell us. 
 
 Everyone knows that Descartes, looking about him, like 
 Archimedes, for a firm ground whereon he might take his 
 stand and begin to operate, for one single thing which was 
 clearly certain and indubitable, found it in the famous ' Cogito, 
 ergo sum ; I think, therefore I am.' If I think, said he, I 
 am, I exist ; my very doubting proves that I, who doubt, am. 
 ' After thinking it well over and examining it on all sides, to 
 this conclusion I cannot but come ; 1 cannot but consider it 
 settled that this proposition, / am, I exist, is necessarily true 
 every time that I pronounce it or that I conceive it in my 
 mind.' The discovery of this axiom appears to have filled 
 Descartes with a profound sense of certitude and of satis-
 
 30 G01} AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 faction. And the axiom has been hailed with general 
 approval and adopted with general consent. Locke repeats 
 it as self-evident, without taking the trouble to assign to 
 Descartes the authorship of it : 'If I doubt of all other things, 
 that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence and 
 will not suffer me to doubt of that.' Thinker after thinker 
 has paid his tribute of admiration to the axiom ; it is called 
 the foundation of modern philosophy. 
 
 Now we shall confess without shame, for to the prick of 
 shame in these matters, after all the tauntings and mockings 
 we have had to undergo, we are by this time quite dead, 
 we shall confess that from this fundamental axiom of Des- 
 cartes we were never able to derive that light and satisfac- 
 tion which others derived from it. And for the following 
 reason. The philosopher omits to tell us what he exactly 
 means by to be, to exist. These terms stand for the most 
 plain, positive, fundamental of certainties, which is esta- 
 blished for us by the fact that we think. Now what to think 
 means we all know ; but even if we did not, Descartes tells 
 us. ' A thing which thinks,' says he, ' is a thing which 
 doubts, which understands, which conceives, which affirms, 
 which denies, which wishes, which declines, which imagines 
 also, and which feels.' So far so good. But Descartes does 
 not tell us what those other terms be and exist mean, which 
 express that fundamental certainty established for us by the 
 fact of our thinking ; and this we do not so clearly know of 
 ourselves without being told. Philosophers know, of course, 
 for they are always using the terms. And perhaps this is 
 why Descartes does not trouble himself to explain his termc, 
 I am, I exist, because to him they cany an even more clear 
 and well-defined sense than the term, I think. But to us 
 they do not; and we suspect that the majority of plain 
 people, if they consented to examine their minds, would find 
 themselves to be in like case with us.
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 31 
 
 To get a clear and well-defined sense for the terms, I 
 am, I exist, in the connexion where Descartes uses them, we 
 are obliged to translate them at a venture into something of 
 this kind : ' I feel that I am alive.' And then we get the 
 proposition : ' I think, therefore I feel that I am alive.' This 
 asserts our consciousness to depend upon our thinking 
 rather than upon anything else which we do. The assertion 
 is clear, it is intelligible, it seems true ; and perhaps it is 
 what Descartes meant to convey. Still, it is disappointing 
 to a plain man, who has been attracted to Descartes by his 
 promises of perfect clearness and distinctness, to find that 
 his fundamental proposition, his first great certainty, is some- 
 thing which we cannot grasp as it stands, but that we have to 
 translate it into other words in order to be able to grasp it. 
 
 Perhaps, too, this translation of ours does not, after all, 
 represent what Descartes himself meant by 'I am, I exist,' 
 Perhaps he really did mean something more by the words, 
 something that we fail to grasp. We say so, because we 
 find him, like philosophers in general, often speaking of 
 essence, existence, and substance, and in speaking of them 
 he lays down as certain and evident many propositions 
 which we cannot follow. For instance, he says : ' We have 
 the idea of an infinite substance, eternal, all-knowing, all- 
 powerful, the creator of all things, and with every possible 
 perfection.' Again, he says : ' The ideas which represent 
 substances to us are undoubtedly something more, and 
 contain in themselves, so to speak, more objective reality, 
 that is to say, they partake by representation in more 
 degrees of being or perfection, than those which represent 
 to us modes or accidents only.' 'Undoubtedly,' says he, 
 this is so ; he introduces it, too, with saying : ' It is evident/ 
 So our guide, who admits nothing which is not necessarily 
 true, and puts aside everything about which he can imagine 
 there being the smallest doubt, lays down that we have the
 
 3* COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 idea of an infinite substance ; and that of substances we have 
 ideas distinguished from ideas of modes or accidents by 
 their possessing more being, and this is equivalent to possess- 
 ing more perfection. For when we assert that one thing is 
 more perfect than another, this means, Descartes informs us, 
 that it has more reality, more being. 
 
 All this, I say, our guide finds certain and not admitting 
 of the least doubt It is part of the things which we con- 
 ceive with clearness and distinctness, and of which, there, 
 fore, we can be persuaded thoroughly. Man is a finite 
 substance, that is, he has but a limited degree of being, 
 or perfection. God is an infinite substance, that is, 
 he has an unlimited degree of being, or perfection. 
 Existence is a perfection, therefore God exists ; thinking 
 and loving are perfections, therefore God thinks and 
 loves. In short, we have God, a perfect and infinite 
 Being, eternal, all -knowing, all-powerful, the creator of all 
 things, and having every perfection we can think of for him. 
 And all this turns upon the words is, being. Infinite being, 
 necessary being, being in itself, as opposed to our own finite, 
 contingent, dependent being, is something, says Descartes, 
 that we clearly conceive. Now something cannot come from 
 nothing, and from us this infinite being could never have 
 come; therefore it exists in itself, and is what is meant by God. 
 
 Not Descartes only, but every philosopher who attempts 
 a metaphysical demonstration of God, will be found to pro- 
 ceed in this fashion, and to appeal at last to our conception 
 of being, existing. Clarke starts with the proposition that 
 something must have existed from eternity, and so arrives at 
 a self-existent cause, which must be an intelligent Being ; in 
 other words, at God as a person who thinks and loves. 
 Locke lays it down that ' we know there is some real being, 
 and that nonentity cannot produce any real being,' and 
 so brings us to an eternal, powerful, knowing Being ; in
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 33 
 
 other words, God as a person who thinks and loves. Of the 
 God thus arrived at, Locke, like Descartes, says that ' the 
 evidence is, if I mistake not, equal to mathematical certainty.' 
 St Anselm begins with an essential substantial good and 
 great, whereby, he says, it is absolutely certain, and whoever 
 likes can perceive it, that all the multifarious great and good 
 things in the world get their goodness and greatness ; and 
 thus again we come to a one Being essentially great and 
 good, or Divine Person who thinks and loves. 
 
 Now here it is, we suppose, that one's want of talent for 
 abstract reasoning makes itself so lamentably felt. For to 
 us these propositions, which we are told are so perfectly 
 certain, and he who will may perceive their truth, the pro- 
 positions that we have the idea of an infinite substance, that 
 there is an essential substantial good and great, that there is 
 some real being, that a self-existent cause there must have 
 been from eternity, that substances are distinguished in 
 themselves and in our ideas of them from modes or acci- 
 dents by their possessing more being, have absolutely no 
 force at all, we simply cannot follow their meaning. And 
 so far as Descartes is concerned, this, when we first became 
 aware of it, was a bitter disappointment to us. For he had 
 seemed to promise something which even ive could under- 
 stand, when he said that he put aside everything about 
 which he could imagine there being the smallest doubt, and 
 that the proof of things to us was in the perfect clearness 
 and distinctness with which we conceived them. 
 
 However, men of philosophical talents will remind us 
 of the truths of mathematics, and tell us that the three angles 
 of a triangle are undoubtedly equal to two right angles, yet 
 very likely from want of skill or practice in abstract reason- 
 ing we cannot see the force of that proposition, and it may 
 simply have no meaning for us. And let us suppose this 
 may be so. But then the proposition in question is a 
 
 D
 
 34 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 deduction from certain elementary truths, and the deduction 
 is too long or too hard for us to follow, or, at any rate, we 
 may have not followed it or we may have forgotten it, and 
 therefore we do not feel the force of the proposition. But 
 the elementary assertions in geometry even we can appre- 
 hend ; such as the assertion that two straight lines cannot 
 enclose a space, or that things which are equal to the same 
 are equal to each other. And we had hoped that Descartes, 
 after his grand promises of clearness and certainty, would at 
 least have set out with assertions of this kind, or else with 
 facts of the plainest experience ; that he would have started 
 with something we might apprehend as we apprehend that 
 three and two make five, or that fire burns. Instead of this, 
 he starts with propositions about being, and does not tell us 
 what being is. At one time he gives us hopes we may get 
 to know it, for he says that to possess more being is to 
 possess more perfection ; and what men commonly mean 
 when they talk of perfection, we think we can discover. But 
 then we find that with Descartes to possess more perfection 
 means to possess, not what men commonly call by that 
 name, but to possess more being. And this seems to be 
 merely going round in a circle, and we have to confess 
 ourselves fairly puzzled and beaten. 
 
 So that when even Fenelon says, that most attractive of 
 theologians : ' It is certain that I conceive a Being, infinite, 
 and infinitely perfect,' that is to say, infinitely being, we 
 have to own with sorrow and shame that we cannot conceive 
 this at all, for want of knowing what being is. Yet it is, we 
 repeat, on the clearness and certainty of our conceptions of 
 being, that the demonstration of God, the most sure, as 
 philosphers say, of all demonstrations, and on which all 
 others depend, is founded. The truth of all that people 
 tell us about God, turns upon this question what being is. 
 Philosophy is full of the word, and some philosophies are
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 35 
 
 concerned with hardly anything else. The scholastic philo- 
 sophy, for instance, was one long debate about being and its 
 conditions. Great philosophers, again, have established 
 certain heads, or ' categories ' as they call them, which are 
 the final constitutive conditions of things, into which all 
 things may at last be run up ; and at the very top of these 
 categories stands essence or being. 
 
 Other metaphysical terms do not give us the same diffi- 
 culty. Substance, for example, which is the Latin translation 
 of essence or being, merely means being in so far as being is 
 taken to be the subject of all modes and accidents, that 
 which stands under them and supplies the basis for them. 
 Perhaps being does really do this, but we want first to know 
 what being is. Spirit, which they oppose to matter, means 
 literally, we know, only breath, but people use it for a being 
 which is impalpable to touch as breath is. Perhaps this may 
 be right, but we want first to know what being is. Existence, 
 again, means a standing or stepping forth, and we are told 
 that God's essence involves existence, that is, that God's 
 being necessarily steps forth, comes forth. Perhaps it does, 
 but we require first to know what being is. 
 
 Till we know this, we know neither what to affirm nor 
 what to refuse to affirm. We refused to affirm that God is a 
 person who thinks and loves, because we had no experience 
 at all of thinking and loving except as attached to a certain 
 bodily organisation. But perhaps they are not attached to 
 this, but to being, and we ourselves have them, not because 
 we have a bodily organisation, but because we partake of 
 being. Supreme being, therefore, being in itself, which is God, 
 must think and love more than any of us. Angels, too, there 
 may be, whole hierarchies of them, thinking and loving, and 
 having their basis in being. All this may be so ; only we 
 cannot possibly verify any of it until we know what being is ; 
 and we want to rest religion upon something which we can 
 
 D2
 
 36 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 verify. And we thought that Descartes, with his splendid 
 promises, was going to help us here ; but just at the very 
 pinch of the matter he fails us. 
 
 After all, plain, simple people are the great majority of 
 the human race. And we are sure, as we have said, that 
 hundreds and thousands of people, if their attention were 
 drawn to the matter, would acknowledge that they shared 
 our slowness to see at once what being is, and, when they 
 found how much depended on seeing it, would gladly ac- 
 company us in the search for some one who could give us 
 help. For on this we ourselves, at any rate, were bent : to 
 discover some one who could tell us what being is. And 
 such a kind soul we did at last find. In these days we need 
 hardly add, that he was a German professor. 
 
 3- 
 
 But not a professor of logic and metaphysics. No, not 
 Hegel, not one of those great men, those masters of ab- 
 struse reasoning, who discourse of being and non-being, 
 essence and existence, subject and object, in a style to 
 which that of Descartes is merely child's play. These sages 
 only bewildered us more than we were bewildered already. 
 For they were so far advanced in their speculations about 
 being, that they were altogether above entertaining such a 
 tyro's question as what being really is. 
 
 No, our professor was a mere professor of words, not of 
 ontology. We bethought ourselves of our old resource, 
 following the history of the human spirit, tracking its course, 
 trying to make out how men have used words and what they 
 meant by them. Perhaps in the word being itself, said we to 
 ourselves, there may be something to tell us what it at first 
 meant and how men came to use it as they do. Abstracta 
 ex concretis, say the etymologists ; the abstract has been 
 formed out of the concrete. Perhaps this abstract being, also,
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 37 
 
 has been formed out of some concrete, and if we knew out 
 of what, we might possibly trace how it has come to be used 
 as it has. Or has indeed the mystic vocable no natural 
 history of this sort, but has dropped out of heaven, and all 
 one can say of it is that it means being, something which 
 the philosophers understand but we never shall, and which 
 explains and demonstrates all sorts of hard problems, but 
 to philosophers only, and not to the common herd of man- 
 kind ? Let us enquire, at any rate. 
 
 So, then, the natural history of the word was what we 
 wanted. With a proper respect for our Aryan forefathers, 
 first we looked in Sanscrit dictionaries for information. 
 But here, probably from our own ignorance and inexperience 
 in the Sanscrit language, we failed to find what we sought. 
 By a happy chance, however, it one day occurred to us to 
 turn for aid to a book about the Greek language, a language 
 where we were not quite so helpless as in Sanscrit, to the 
 ' Principles of Greek Etymology,' by Dr. George Curtius, of 
 Leipsic. 1 He it was who succoured a poor soul whom the 
 philosophers had driven well-nigh to despair, and he 
 deserves, and shall have, our lasting gratitude. 
 
 In the book of Dr. Curtius we looked out the Greek 
 verb eimi, eis, esti, the verb which has the same source as 
 the English verb is. Shall we ever forget the emotion with 
 which we read what follows : ' That the meaning, addressed 
 to the senses, of this very old verb substantive was breathe, is 
 made all but certain by the Sanscrit as-u-s, life-breath, asu- 
 ra-s, living, and the Sanscrit ds, mouth, parallel with the 
 Latin os. The Hebrew verb substantive haja or hawa has, 
 according to M. Renan (De I'Origine du Langage, 4th ed., 
 p. 129), the same original signification. The three main 
 meanings succeed one another in the following order: 
 
 1 Grundziige der Griechisctun Etymologie, von Georg Curtius ; 3rd 
 edit., Leipzig, 1869.
 
 38 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 breathe, live, be' Here was some light at last ! We get, 
 then, for the English is, the French and Latin est, the Greek 
 estin or esti, we get an Indo-European root as, breathe. 
 
 To get even thus much was pleasant, but what was our 
 joy to find ourselves put by Dr. Curtius, in some words 
 following those we have quoted, on the trace of a meaning 
 for the mysterious term being itself? Dr. Curtius spoke of a 
 root synonymous with as, the root bhu, in Greek <v, and 
 referred his readers to No. 417. To No. 417 we impatiently 
 turned. We found there the account of the Greek verb <uo>, 
 <f>vofj.ai, I beget, I grow. This word is familiar to us all in 
 our own vtords future and physics, in the French /us, in the 
 Latin fui. All these are from an Indo-European root bhu, 
 'be,' which had primarily that sense of 'grow,' which its 
 Greek derivative has kept ' The notion be attaches to this 
 root,' says Dr. Curtius, ' evidently on the foundation only of 
 the more primitive grow.' If the root as, breathe, gives us 
 then our is, essence, the root bhu, grow, gives us our be, being. 
 This was indeed a discovery. Is, essence and entity, be and 
 being, here we have the source of them all! as in another 
 Indo-European root, sta, stand, we have, as everybody knows, 
 the source of our words existence, substance. Our composite 
 verb substantive in English, like the verb substantive in Latin, 
 employs both the root as and the root bhu ; we have is and be, 
 as the Latin has est and fui. The French verb substantive 
 manages to employ, so M. Littr in his admirable new 
 dictionary points out, the roots as, bhu, and sta, all three. 
 
 Now then it remained for us to ask, how these harmless 
 concretes, breathe, grow, and stand, could ever have risen 
 into those terrible abstracts, is, be, and exist, which had 
 given us so much torment. And really, by attending to the 
 natural course followed by the human mind, to men's ways 
 of using words and arriving at thoughts, this was not so very 
 hard to make out Only, when once it was made out, it
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 39 
 
 proved fatal to the wonderful performances of the meta- 
 physicians upon their theme of being. However, we must 
 not anticipate. 
 
 Men took these three simple names of the foremost and 
 most elementary activities in that which they knew best and 
 were chiefly concerned with, in themselves, they took 
 breathing, growing, standing forth, to describe all activities 
 which were remarked by their senses or by their minds. So 
 arose the verb substantive. Children, we can observe, do 
 not connect their notions at all by the verb, the word ex- 
 pressing activity. They say, ' horse, black,' and there they 
 leave it. When man's mind advanced beyond this simple 
 stage, and he wanted to connect his notions by representing 
 one notion as affecting him through its appearing or operat- 
 ing in conjunction with another notion, then he took a figure 
 from the activity that lay nearest to him and said : ' The 
 horse breathes (is) black.' When he got to the use of 
 abstract nouns his verb still remained the same. He said : 
 ' Virtue breathes (is) fair ; Valour growing (being) praise- 
 worthy.' Soon the sense of the old concrete meaning faded 
 away in the new employment of the word. That slight 
 parcel of significance which was required had been taken, 
 and now this minimum alone remained, and the rest was 
 left unregarded and died out of men's thoughts. 
 
 We may make this clearer to ourselves by observing 
 what has happened in the French and Dutch words for our 
 common word but. But is in French mats, the Latin magts, 
 our word more ; in Dutch it is maar, our word more itself. 
 Mais and maar were originally used, no doubt, with the 
 sense of their being a check, or stop, given to something 
 that had been said before, by the addition to it of something 
 fresh. The primitive sense of addition faded away, the 
 sense of check remained alone. And so it was with as and 
 M#, the primitive breathe and grow. Whatever affected us
 
 40 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 by appearing to us, or by acting on us, was at first said by a 
 figure to breathe and grow. The figure was forgotten ; and 
 now as and bhu no longer raised the idea of breathing and 
 growing, but merely of that appearance or operation, a kind 
 of shadow of breathing and growing, which these words as 
 and bhu had at first been employed to convey. And far 
 breathing and growing other words than as and bhu were 
 now found, just as, in French, mats now no longer means 
 more, but for more another word has been found : the word 
 plus. Sometimes, however, as in the case of the Greek verb 
 yiyvo/wu, lyevopyv, we see the same word continuing to 
 be used both in its old full sense and in its new shrunk 
 sense ; yeveV&u may mean both to be born and to be. But 
 the user employed it, probably, in the two different accep- 
 tations, as if he had been employing two different words ; 
 nor did its use as hardly more than a copula necessarily 
 raise in his mind the thought of its originally fuller signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Nor indeed were these primitive verbs, as and btnt, used 
 only as a copula, to connect, in the manner we have de- 
 scribed, the attribute with its subject They were also used 
 as themselves expressing an attribute of the subject. For 
 when men wanted strongly to affirm that action or operation 
 of things, that image of their own life and activity, which 
 impressed itself upon their mind and affected them, they 
 took these same primitive verbs and used them emphatically. 
 Virtue t's, they said ; Truth does not cease to be. Literally : 
 Virtue breathes ; Truth does not cease to grow. A yet 
 more emphatic affirmation of this kind was supplied by the 
 word exist. For to exist is literally to step forth, and he 
 who steps forth gives a notable proof of his life and activity. 
 Men said, therefore : Duty exists. That is, according to the 
 original figure: Duty steps forth, stands forth. 
 
 And the not ourselves, mighty for our weal or woe, which
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 41 
 
 so soon by some one or other of its sides attracted the notice 
 of man, this also man connected with whatever attributes he 
 might be led to assign to it, by his universal connective, his 
 now established verbs as and bhu, his breathe and grow with 
 their blunted and shadowy sense of breathing and growing. 
 He said : God breathes angry ; our God breathes a jealous 
 God. When he wanted to affirm emphatically that this 
 power acts, makes itself felt, lasts, he said: God exists. In 
 other words : God steps forth. 
 
 Israel conceived God with a solemnity and a seriousness 
 unknown to other nations, as, ' The not ourselves that makes 
 for righteousness.' ' When I speak of this unique God of 
 Israel,' asked Moses, 'how shall I name him?' And the 
 answer came (we will give it in the words of the literal Latin 
 version, printed under the Hebrew in Walton's noble Poly- 
 glot Bible): 'Dixit Deus ad Mosen: Ero qui ero. Etdixit: 
 Sic dices filiis Israel: Ero misit me ad vos.' ' 1 'will breathe 
 hath sent me unto you ; ' or, as the Arabic version well 
 renders this mystic name : The Eternal, that passeth not. 
 For that this is the true meaning of the name there can be 
 no doubt : The / will go on living, operating, enduring. 
 'God here signifies of himself,' says Gesenius, ' not simply 
 that he is he who is, for of this everyone must perceive the 
 frigidity, but he signifies emphatically that he is he who is 
 always the same, that is, the Immutable, the Eternal.' To 
 the like effect Dr. Kalisch, in his valuable Commentary, 
 after reciting the series of more fanciful and metaphysical 
 interpretations, rests finally in this, the simple and the 
 undoubtedly true one : ' He that changeth not, and that 
 faileth not.' 
 
 ' / will breathe hath sent me unto you ! ' Still the old 
 sensuous image from the chief and most striking function of 
 human life, transferred to God, taken to describe, in the 
 height and permanency of its beneficent operation, this
 
 42 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 mighty not ourselves, which in its operation we are aware of, 
 but in its nature, no. 
 
 And here is, indeed, the grand conclusion to be drawn 
 from this long philological disquisition, from our persistent 
 scrutiny of the primitives as and bhu, breathe and grow : 
 that by a simple figure they declare a perceived energy and 
 operation, and nothing more. Of a subject, as we call him, 
 that performs this operation, of the nature of something out- 
 side the range of plants and of animals who do indeed 
 grow and breathe, and from whom the figure in as and bhu 
 is borrowed, they tell us nothing. But they have been 
 falsely supposed to bring us news about the primal nature of 
 things, to declare a subject in which inhered the energy and 
 the operation we had noticed, to indicate a fontal category 
 or supreme constitutive condition, into which the nature of 
 all things whatsoever might be finally run up. 
 
 For the original figure, as we have said, was soon for- 
 gotten ; and is and be, mysterious petrifactions, remained in 
 language as if they were autochthons there, and as if no one 
 could go beyond or behind them. Without father, without 
 mother, without descent, as it seemed, they yet were omni- 
 present in our speech, and indispensable. Allied words in 
 which the figure was manifest, such as existence and sub- 
 stance, were thought to be figures from the world of sense 
 pressed into the service of a metaphysical reality enshrined 
 in is and be. That imposing phrase of the metaphysicians 
 for summing up the whole system of things, substance and 
 accident, phenomena, and that which stands under phe- 
 nomena and in which they inhere, must surely, one would 
 think, have provoked question, have aroused misgivings, 
 people must surely have asked themselves what the that 
 which stands under phenomena was, if the answer had not 
 been ready : being. And being was supposed to be some- 
 thing absolute, which stood under all things. Yet being was
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 43 
 
 itself all the while but a sensuous figure, growing, and did 
 not of necessity express anything of a thing's nature, ex- 
 pressed only man's sense of a thing's operation. 
 
 But philosophers, ignorant of ,this, and imagining that 
 they had in being a term which expressed the highest and 
 simplest nature of things, stripped off (to use a phrase of 
 Descartes), when they wanted to reach the naked truth of a 
 thing, one of the thing's garments after another, they stripped 
 away this and that figure and size for bodies, this and that 
 thought and desire for mind, and so they arrived at the final 
 substances of bodies and of mind, their being or essence, 
 which for bodies was a substantial essence capable of infinite 
 diversities of figure and size, for mind a substantial essence 
 capable of infinite diversities of thought and desire. And 
 that for bodies and for mind they thus got a highest reality 
 merely negative, a reality in which there was less of reality 
 than in any single body or mind they knew, this they did 
 not heed, because in being or essence they supposed they had 
 the supreme reality. 
 
 Finally, in considering God they were obliged, if they 
 wanted to escape from difficulties, to drop even the one 
 characteristic they had assigned to their substance, that of 
 admitting modes and accidents, and thus to reduce, in fact, 
 their idea of God to nothing at all. And this they themselves 
 were much too acute, many of them, not to perceive ; as 
 Erigena, for instance, says : ' Deus non immerito nihilum 
 vocatur ; God may be not improperly called nothing.' But 
 this did not make them hesitate, because they thought they 
 had in pure being, or essence, the supreme reality, and that 
 this being in itself, this essence not even serving as substance, 
 was God. And therefore Erigena adds that it is per excel- 
 hntiam, by reason of excellency, that God is not improperly 
 called nothing : ' Deus per excellentiam non immerito nihilum 
 vocatur?
 
 44 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 To such a degree do words make man, who invents 
 them, their sport ! The moment we have an abstract word, 
 a word where we do not apprehend both the concrete sense 
 and the manner of this sense's application, there is danger. 
 The whole value of an abstract term depends on our true 
 and clear conception of that which we have abstracted and 
 now convey by means of this term. Animal is a valuable 
 term because we know what breathing, anima, is, and we 
 use animal to denote all who have this in common. But the 
 tire of Descartes is an unprofitable term, because we do not 
 clearly conceive what the term means. And it is, moreover, 
 a dangerous term, because without clearly conceiving what it 
 means, we nevertheless use it freely. When we at last come 
 to examine the term, we find that etre and animal really mean 
 just the same thing : breather, that which has vital breath. 
 
 How astounding are the consequences if we give to ttre 
 and its cognates this their original sense which we have dis- 
 covered ! Cogito, ergo sum, will then be : ' I think, therefore 
 I breathe.' A true deduction certainly ; but Comedo, ergo 
 sum, ' I eat, therefore I breathe,' would be nearly as much 
 to the purpose ! Metaphysics, the science treating of ttre 
 and its conditions, will be the science treating of breathing 
 and its conditions. But surely the right science to treat of 
 breathing and its conditions is not metaphysics, but physio- 
 logy ! ' God is,' will be, God breathes ; exactly that old 
 anthropomorphic account of him which our dogmatic theo- 
 logy, by declaring him to be without body, parts, or passions, 
 has sought to banish ! And even to adore, like those men 
 of new lights, the French revolutionists, haters of our dog- 
 matic theology, even to adore, like Robespierre, the Etre 
 Supreme, will be only, after all, to adore the Supreme 
 Animal ! So perfidiously do these words is and be, on 
 which we embarked our hopes because we fancied they 
 would bring us to a thinking and a loving, independent of
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 45 
 
 all material organisation, so perfidiously do they land us in 
 mere creature- worship of the grossest kind. Nay, and per- 
 haps the one man who uses that wonderful abstract word, 
 essence, with propriety, will turn out to be, not the meta- 
 physician or the theologian, but the perfumer. For while 
 nothing but perplexity can come from speaking of the essence 
 or breathing of the Divine Nature, there is really much 
 felicity in speaking of the essence or breathing of roses. 
 
 4- 
 
 Dismayed, then, at the consequence of a rash use of 
 being and essence, we determined henceforth always to subject 
 these vocables, when we found them used in a way which 
 caused us any doubt, to a strict examination. Far from re- 
 maining, as formerly, in helpless admiration of the philoso- 
 phers, when upon the foundation of these words they built 
 their wonderful cloud-houses and then laughed at us for not 
 being able to find our way about them, we set ourselves to 
 discover what meaning the words, in men's use of them, 
 really did and could contain. And we found that the great 
 thing to keep steadily in mind is that the words are, as we 
 have shown, figure. Man applied this image of breathing 
 and growing, taken from his own life, to all which he per- 
 ceived, all from which he felt an effect ; and pronounced it 
 all to be living too. The words, therefore, which appear to 
 tell us something about the life and nature of all things, do 
 in fact tell us nothing about any life and nature except that 
 which breathing and growing go in some degree to constitute ; 
 the life and nature, let us say, of men, of the lower animals, 
 and of plants. Of life or nature in other things the words 
 tell us nothing, but figuratively invest these things with the 
 characters of animal and vegetable life. But what do they 
 really tell us of these things ? Simply that the things have 
 an effect upon us, operate upon us.
 
 4 6 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 The names themselves, then, being and essence, tell us 
 something of the real constitution of animals and plants, but 
 of nothing else. However, the real constitution of a thing 
 it may happen that we know, although these names convey 
 nothing of it and help us to it not at all. For instance, a 
 chemist knows the constitution, say, of common ether. He 
 knows that common ether is an assemblage of molecules 
 each containing four atoms of carbon, ten of hydrogen, and 
 one of oxygen, arranged in a certain order. This we may, 
 if we please, call the being or essence, the growing or breathy 
 of common ether. That is to say, to the real constitution 
 of a thing, when we know it, we often apply a figurative name 
 originally suggested by the principal and prominent pheno- 
 mena of our own constitution. 
 
 This in the case of bodies. When we speak of the being 
 or essence of bodies, it may be that we know their real con- 
 stitution and give these names to it But far oftener men 
 say that bodies have being, assert that bodies are, without 
 any knowledge, either actual or implied, of the real constitu- 
 tion of the bodies, but merely meaning that the bodies are 
 seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelt by us, affect our senses 
 in some way or other. And to bodies, thus acting upon us 
 and affecting us, we attribute being or growing, we say that 
 they are or breathe, although we may know nothing of their 
 constitution. But we apply to their action a figurative name 
 originally suggested by the principal and prominent activities 
 of our own constitution. 
 
 And we proceed just in the same way with what are not 
 bodies. Men come by abstraction to perceive the qualities 
 of courage and self-denial, and then talk of the being of 
 the qualities at which they have thus come ; they say that 
 courage and duty have growing or being, they assert that 
 courage and duty breathe or are. They apply to the work- 
 ing of thfir abstraction figurative names, drawn originally
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 4? 
 
 from the principal and prominent workings of their own 
 life. 
 
 Or, again, they become aware of a law of nature, as it is 
 called, of a certain regular order in which it is proved, or 
 thought to be proved, that certain things happen. To this 
 law, to the law, let us suppose, of gravitation, they attribute 
 being ; they say that the law of gravitation is, exists, breathes, 
 steps forth. That is, they give to the regularly ordered 
 operation which they perceive, figurative names borrowed 
 from the principal and prominent functions of their own life. 
 
 Or, finally, they become aware of a law of nature which 
 concerns their own life and conduct in the highest degree, 
 of an eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness. 
 For this is really a law of nature, collected from experience, 
 just as much as the law of gravitation is ; only it is a law of 
 nature which is conceived, however confusedly, by very many 
 more of mankind as affecting them, and much more nearly. 
 But it has its origin in experience, it appeals to experience, 
 and by experience it is, as we believe, verified. Men become 
 aware from experience, that source of all our knowledge, 
 they become aware of a law of righteousness. And to this 
 law they attribute being. They say that the law of conduct, 
 the eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness, is, 
 exists, breathes, steps forth. That is to say, they give to the 
 stedfast, unchanging, widely and deeply working operation 
 which they perceive, figurative names borrowed from the 
 principal and prominent operations of their own life. 
 
 Being and essence men in this way attribute to what they 
 perceive, or think they perceive, to be a law of nature. 
 But often, long before they perceive it as a law of nature, 
 they are conscious of its working ; they feel its power by 
 many a sharp lesson. And imagination coming in to help, 
 they make it, as they make everything of which they 
 powerfully feel the effect, into a human agent, at bottom
 
 4 S GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 like themselves, however much mightier, a human agent 
 that feels, thinks, loves, hates. So they made the Sun 
 into a human being ; and even the operation of chance, 
 Fortune. And what should sooner or more certainly be 
 thus made into a human being, but far mightier and more 
 lasting than common man, than the operation which affects 
 men so widely and deeply, for it is engaged with conduct, 
 with at least three-fourths of human life, the not ourselves 
 that makes for righteousness ? 
 
 Made into a human being this was sure to be, from its 
 immense importance, its perpetual intervention. But this 
 importance does not make the personifying, anthropomor- 
 phic process, the less the explanation of the attributed 
 human qualities in this case, than it is the explanation of 
 them in others. Yet we will have it, very many of us, that 
 the human qualities are in the one case really there and 
 inherent, but in all the other cases they are the mere work 
 of man's plastic and personifying power. What was the 
 Apollo of the rdigion of the Greeks ? The law of intel- 
 lectual beauty, the eternal not ourselves that makes for 
 intellectual beauty. By a natural and quite explicable 
 working of the human spirit, a heightened, glorified human 
 being, thinking and loving, came to stand for the operation 
 of this power. Who doubts this ? But the thinking and 
 loving Apollo of the Greeks, and every other example of 
 the like kind except one, this natural working of the human 
 spirit is supposed to explain ; only the thinking and loving 
 Jehovah of the Hebrews shall not be explained by this 
 working, but a person who thinks and loves he really is ! 
 
 To return, then, to our much abused primitives. They 
 were supposed to give us for conscious intelligence, for 
 thinking and loving, a basis or subject independent of bodily 
 constitution. They do in fact give us nothing beyond 
 bodily phenomena ; but they transfer by a figure the
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 49 
 
 phenomena of our own bodily life to all law and operation. 
 On a fine and subtle scale they still carry on that personifying 
 anthropomorphic process, native in man and ineradicable, 
 which in all the early religions of the world we can see 
 going forward on a scale gross and palpable. 
 
 So it appears, that even when we talk of the being of 
 things, we use a fluid and literary expression, not a rigid 
 and scientific one. 
 
 5- 
 
 Armed with this key of the real signification of our two 
 poor little words, is and be, let us next boldly carry the war 
 into the enemy's country, and see how many strong fortresses 
 of the metaphysicians, which frown upon us from their 
 heights so defiantly, we can now enter and rifle. For is 
 and be, we have learnt, simply mean, in reality, breathe and 
 grow, while in mankind's use of them they simply mean 
 operate, or appear to man to operate. But when the 
 metaphysicians start with their at least certainly knowing 
 that something is, they always have in their minds : 
 'Something thinks which neither breathes nor grows, and 
 we know of a subject for thinking which neither breathes 
 nor grows, and that subject is being, ttre.' They are 
 unaware that being, tre, are two words which in reality 
 simply mean breathing and growing. And then, with two 
 supposed data of a cogitative substance and an incogitative 
 substance, the metaphysicians argue away about the neces- 
 sary mutual relations of these two in the production of 
 things, and form all manner of fine conclusions. But all 
 the knowledge they do really set out with in their something 
 is amounts to this : ' \Ve are aware of operation.' And this 
 neither tells them anything about the nature and origin 
 of things, nor enables them to conclude anything. 
 
 Now, if we keep this in mind, we shall see the fallacy 
 
 E
 
 50 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 of many reasonings we meet with. The Edinburgh 
 Review says : ' All existing things must be persons or 
 things ; persons are superior to things ; do you mean to 
 call God a thing ? ' But he who pronounces that God must 
 be a person or a thing, and that God must be a person 
 because persons are superior to things, talks as idly as 
 one who should insist upon it that the law of gravi- 
 tation must be either a person or a thing, and should lay 
 down which of the two it must be. Because it is a law, is 
 it to be pronounced a thing and not a person, and therefore 
 inferior to persons ? and are we quite sure that a bad critic, 
 suppose, is superior to the law of gravitation ? The truth 
 is, we are attempting an exhaustive division into things and 
 persons, and attempting to affirm that the object of our 
 thought is one or the other, when we have no means for 
 doing anything of the kind, when all we can really say of 
 our object of thought is, that it operates. 
 
 Or to take that favourite and famous demonstration of 
 Anselm and Descartes, that if we have the idea of a perfect 
 being, or God, that is to say, of an infinite substance, 
 eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, the creator of all things, 
 and with every possible perfection, then this perfect being 
 must exist. Existence, they argue, is a perfection, and 
 besides, our imperfect finite being could never have given 
 to itself the idea of a perfect infinite being. But we have 
 this idea, they say, quite clearly and distinctly, and therefore 
 there must exist some other being besides ourselves from 
 whom we must have received it. All this, again, tumbles 
 to pieces like a house of cards the moment we press it 
 The ambiguity lies in the words perfect being, infinite sub- 
 stance. Of a not ourselves we are clearly aware ; but a 
 clear idea of an infinite substance, a perfect being, knowing 
 and thinking and yet not breathing and growing? And this 
 idea we could not have given to ourselves, because it is a
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 51 
 
 dear idea of an infinite substance, full of perfection ; and 
 we are a finite substance, full of imperfection? But '. the 
 idea which men thus describe is not a clear idea, and it is 
 an idea which, in the only state wherein they really have it, 
 they may perfectly well have given to themselves. For it 
 is an idea of a man hugely magnified and improved. 
 
 The less and more in ourselves of whatever we account 
 good, gives us a notion of what we call perfection in it 
 We have degrees of pleasure, and we talk of perfect, infinite 
 pleasure ; we have some rest, and we talk of perfect, infinite 
 rest ; we have some knowledge, and we talk of perfect, 
 infinite knowledge ; we have some power, and we talk of 
 perfect, infinite power. What we mean is, a great deal of 
 pleasure, rest, knowledge, power ; as much of them as we 
 can imagine, and without the many lets and hindrances to 
 them which we now experience. Our idea of a perfect 
 being, all-knowing, all-powerful, is just like that idea of a 
 myriagon, of which Descartes himself speaks somewhere. 
 Of a pentagon, or five-sided figure, we have a distinct idea. 
 And we talk of our idea of a myriagon, or ten-thousand- 
 sided figure, too ; but it is not a clear idea, it is an idea of 
 something very big, but confused. Such is our idea of an 
 infinite substance, all-knowing, all-powerful. Of a bounded 
 man, with some knowledge and some power, we have a dis- 
 tinct idea; of an unbounded man, with all knowledge and all 
 power, our idea is not clear we have an idea of something 
 very wise and great, but a confused idea. And even granting 
 that clear ideas prove themselves, this alleged clear and 
 distinct idea of an infinite substance, all-knowing and all- 
 powerful, is one of those cases where an idea is fancied to 
 be clear and distinct when it is not. 
 
 But people still insist that our truly perfect ideas, at any 
 rate, must have being quite independently of us and our 
 experience, and must inhere, therefore, in a source, a sub- 
 
 B 2
 
 52 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 ject, an infinite substance, which is God. For we have, say 
 they, the idea of a perfect circle ; yet this idea cannot be 
 given us by experience, because in nature there is no such 
 thing as a perfect circle. We have the idea of a perfect 
 good ; yet this idea cannot be given us by experience, be- 
 cause in nature there is no such thing as a perfect good. 
 But let us ask ourselves whether even the circle and the 
 triangle were first, probably, pure conceptions in the human 
 mind, and then applied to nature ; or whether these forms 
 were not first observed in nature, and then refined into 
 pure conceptions ? And was perfect good, in like manner, 
 or perfect beauty, first a pure conception in the human 
 mind, and then applied to things in nature ? or were things 
 more or less good and beautiful first observed in experience, 
 and goodness and beauty then refined into pure conceptions? 
 Because, in that case, our ideas of a perfect circle and a 
 perfect good are simply the imagination of a still rounder 
 circle and a still better good than any which we have yet 
 found in experience. But experience gave us the ideas, 
 and we have no need to invent something out of experience 
 as the source of them. 
 
 Finally, let us take the grand argument from design. 
 Design, people say, implies a designer. The ambiguity lies 
 in the little termination er, by which we mean a being who 
 designed. We talk of a being, an fare, and we imagine that 
 the word gives us conscious intelligence, thinking and loving, 
 without bodily organisation ; but it does not It gives us 
 one of two things only ; either it gives us breathing and 
 growing, or it gives us effect and operation. Design implies 
 a designer ? Human design does ; it implies the presence 
 of a being who breathes and thinks. So does that of the 
 lower animals, who, like man himself, breathe, and may be 
 said to think. A very numerous class of works we know, 
 which man and the lower animals make for their own pur-
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. c 3 
 
 poses. When we see a watch or a honeycomb we say : It 
 works harmoniously and well, and a man or a bee made it. 
 But a yet more numerous class of works we know, which 
 neither man nor the lower animals have made for their own 
 purposes. When we see the ear, or see a bud, do we say : 
 It works harmoniously and well, and a man or one of the 
 lower animals made it ? No ; but we say : It works har- 
 moniously and well, and an infinite eternal substance, an 
 all-thinking and all-powerful being, the creator of all things, 
 made it. Why ? Because it works harmoniously and well. 
 But its working harmoniously and well does not prove all 
 this j it only proves that it works harmoniously and well. 
 The well and harmonious working of the watch or the 
 honeycomb is not what proves to us that a man or a bee 
 made them ; what proves this to us is, that we know from 
 experience that men make watches and bees make honey- 
 combs. But we do not know from experience that an 
 infinite eternal substance, all-thinking and all-powerful, the 
 creator of all things, makes ears and buds. We know 
 nothing about the matter, it is altogether beyond us. When, 
 therefore, we are speaking exactly, and not poetically and 
 figuratively, of the ear or of a bud, which we see working 
 harmoniously and well, all we have a right to say is : It 
 works harmoniously and well 
 
 6. 
 
 We besought those who could receive neither the 
 miracles of popular theology nor the metaphysics of learned 
 theology, not to fling away the Bible on that account, but to 
 try how the Bible went if they took it without either the one 
 or the other, and studied it without taking anything for 
 granted but what they could verify. But such indignant 
 and strenuous objection was made in the religious world to 
 this proposal, and in particular it was so emphatically asserted
 
 54 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 that the only possible basis for religion is to believe that 
 God is a person who thinks and loves, that the readers of 
 Literature and Dogma who had taken our advice and had 
 begun to find profit from it, might well be supposed to feel 
 alarm and to hesitate, and to ask whether, after all, they 
 were doing well in following our recommendation. So we 
 have had to look again at the reasons for laying down as the 
 foundation of religion the belief that God is a person who 
 thinks and loves. And we found reasons of two kinds 
 alleged : reasons drawn from miracles, and reasons drawn 
 from metaphysics. But the reasons from miracles we found, 
 after looking at miracles again, that we could not rely on, 
 that fail us sooner or later they surely must. And now 
 we find the same thing with the reasons drawn from 
 metaphysics. 
 
 The reasons drawn from miracles one cannot but dismiss 
 with tenderness, for they belong to a great and splendid 
 whole, a beautiful and powerful fairy-tale, which was long 
 believed without question, and which has given comfort and 
 joy to thousands. And one abandons them with a kind of 
 unwilling disenchantment, and only because one must. 
 
 The reasons drawn from metaphysics one dismisses, on 
 the other hand, with sheer satisfaction. They have con- 
 vinced no one, they have given rest to no one, they have 
 given joy to no one. People have swallowed them, people 
 have fought over them, people have shown their ingenuity over 
 them ; but no one has ever enjoyed them. Nay, no one has 
 ever really understood them. No one has ever fairly grasped 
 the meaning of what he was saying, when he laid down pro- 
 positions about finite and infinite substance, and about God's 
 essence involving existence. Yet men of splendid ability 
 have dealt in them. But the truth is, the reasons from 
 metaphysics for the Divine Personality got their real nourish- 
 ment and support out of the reasons from miracles. Through
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 55 
 
 long ages the inexperience, the helplessness, and the agita- 
 tion of man made the belief in a magnified and non-natural 
 man or men, in etherealised men, in short, in preternatural 
 personages of some sort or other, inevitable. And, the pre- 
 ternatural having been supposed to be certainly there, the 
 metaphysics, or science of things coming after natural things 
 and no longer natural, had to come in to account for it. 
 But the miracles proving to be an unsubstantial ground of 
 reliance, the metaphysics will certainly not stand long. 
 Now, an unsubstantial ground of reliance men more and 
 more perceive miracles to be ; and the sooner they quite 
 make up their mind about it, the better. But if it is vain 
 to tamper with one's understanding, to resist one's widening 
 experience, and to try to think that from miracles one can 
 get ground for asserting God to be a person who thinks and 
 loves, still more vain is it to try to think one can get ground 
 for this from metaphysics. 
 
 And perhaps we may have been enabled to make this 
 clear to ourselves and others, because we, having no talent 
 for abstruse reasoning and being known to have none, were 
 not ashamed, when we were confronted by propositions 
 about essence and existence, and about infinite substance 
 having undoubtedly more objective reality than finite sub- 
 stance, we were not ashamed, I say, instead of assenting 
 with a solemn face to what we did not understand, to own 
 that we did not understand it, and to seek humbly for the 
 meaning of the little words at the bottom of it all ; and so 
 the futility of all the grand superstructure was revealed to us. 
 If the German philosopher, who writes to us from Texas re- 
 proaching us with wasting our time over the Bible and 
 Christianity, 'which are certainly,' says he, 'disappearing 
 from her.rt and mind of the cultured world,' and calling us 
 to the study of the great Hartmann, will allow us to quote 
 the Bible yet once more, we should be disposed to say that
 
 56 GOD AND THE BIBLE 
 
 here is a good exemplification of that text : ' Mansutti 
 delectabuntur ; The meek-spirited shall be refreshed.' 
 
 But to our reader and to ourselves we say once again, as 
 to the metaphysics of current theology, what we said as to 
 its miracles. When we have made out their untrustworthi- 
 ness, we have as yet achieved nothing, except to get rid of 
 an unsafe stay which would inevitably have sooner or later 
 broken down with us. But to use the Bible, to enjoy the 
 Bible, remains. We cannot use it, we cannot enjoy it, more 
 and more of us, if its use and enjoyment require us first to 
 take for granted something which cannot possibly be veri- 
 fied. Whether we will or not, this is so ; and more and 
 more will mankind, the religious among them as well as the 
 profane, find themselves in this case. ' In good truth,' said 
 Pascal to the Jesuits, ' the world is getting mistrustful, and 
 no longer believes things unless they are evident to it.' In 
 the seventeenth century, when Pascal said this, it had already 
 begun to be true ; it is getting more widely true every day. 
 Therefore we urge all whom the current theology, both 
 popular and learned, dissatisfies (for with those whom it does 
 not dissatisfy we do not meddle), we urge them to take as 
 their foundation in reading the Bible this account of God, 
 which can be verified : ' God is the eternal power, not our- 
 selves, which makes for righteousness,' instead of this other : 
 ' God is a person who thinks and loves,' which cannot. We 
 advise them to eschew as much as possible, in speaking 
 about God, the use of the word Being, which even strict 
 thinkers are so apt to use continually without asking them- 
 selves what it really means. The word is bad, because it 
 has a false air of conveying some real but abstruse know- 
 ledge about Gcd's nature, while it does not, but is merely a 
 figure. Power is a better word, because it pretends to 
 assert of God nothing more than effect on us, operation. 
 With much of the current theology our unpretending
 
 THE GOD OF METAPHYSICS. 57 
 
 account of God will indeed make havoc ; but it will enable 
 a man, we believe, to use and enjoy the Bible in security. 
 Only he must always remember that the language of the 
 Bible is to be treated as the language of letters, not science, 
 language approximative and full of figure, not language 
 exact. 
 
 Many excellent people are crying out everyday that all 
 is lost in religion unless we can affirm that God is a person 
 who thinks and loves. We say, that unless we can verify 
 this, it is impossible to build religion successfully upon it; 
 and it cannot be verified. Even if it could be shown that 
 there is a low degree of probability for it, we say that it is a 
 grave and fatal error to imagine that religion can be built on 
 what has a low degree of probability. However, we do not 
 think it can be said that there is even a low degree of pro- 
 bability for the assertion that God is a person who thinks 
 and loves, properly and naturally though we may make him 
 such in the language of feeling ; the assertion deals with 
 what is so utterly beyond us. But we maintain, that, start- 
 ing from what may be verified about God, that he is the 
 Eternal which makes for righteousness, and reading the 
 Bible with this idea to govern us, we have here the elements 
 for a religion more serious, potent, awe-inspiring, and pro- 
 found, than any which the world has yet seen. True, it will 
 not be just the same religion which prevails now ; but who 
 supposes that the religion now current can go on always, or 
 ought to go on ? Nay, and even of that much-decried idea 
 of God as the stream of tendency by which all things seek to 
 fulfil the law of their being, it may be said with confidence 
 that it has in it the elements of a religion new, indeed, but 
 in the highest degree hopeful, solemn, and profound. But 
 our present business is not with this. Our present business 
 is with the religion of the Bible ; to show a new aspect of 
 this, wherein it shall appear true, winning, and commanding.
 
 58 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 And if our reader has for a time to lose sight of this 
 aspect amid negations and conflicts, necessary negations 
 conflicts without which the ground for a better religion 
 cannot be won, still, by these waters of Babylon, let him 
 remember Sion ! After a course of Liberal philosophers 
 proposing to replace the obsolete Bible by the enouncement 
 in modern and congenial language of new doctrines which 
 will satisfy at once our reason and imagination, and after 
 reading these philosophers' grand conclusion that there is 
 little indeed in the history and achievements of Christianity 
 to support the claim made on its behalf to the character of 
 a scheme divinely revealed for the salvation of the human 
 race, a man may of a truth well say : ' My soul hath dwelt 
 among them that are enemies unto peace /' and may with long- 
 ing remember Sion. But we will not quarrel with him if 
 he says and does the same thing after reading us, too, when 
 we have kept him so long at the joyless task of learning 
 what not to believe. But happily this part of our business 
 is now over. In what follows, we have to defend ourselves, 
 and secure him, against the Liberal philosophers who accuse 
 us of teaching him to believe too much.
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 
 
 AMONG German critics of the Bible, a sort of criticism 
 which we may best, perhaps, describe as a mechanical 
 criticism, is very rife. For negative purposes this criticism 
 is particularly useful It takes for granted that things are 
 naturally all of a piece and follow one uniform rule; and that 
 to know that this is so, and to judge things by the light of 
 this knowledge, is the secret for sure criticism. People do 
 not vary ; people do not contradict themselves ; people do 
 not have under-currents of meaning ; people do not divine. 
 If they are represented as having said one thing to-day and 
 its seeming opposite to-morrow, one of the two they are 
 credited with falsely. If they are represented as having said 
 what in its plain literal acceptation could not hold good, 
 they cannot have said it If they are represented as speak- 
 ing of an event before it happened, they did not so speak of 
 it, the words are not theirs. Things, too, like persons, must 
 be rigidly consistent, must show no conflicting aspects, must 
 have no flux and reflux, must not follow a slow, hesitating, 
 often obscure line of growth. No, the character which we 
 assign to them they must have always, altogether, and un- 
 alterably, or it is not theirs. 
 
 This mechanical character strongly marked a certain 
 review of Literature and Dogma of which the line was as 
 follows : * Israel's first conception of God was that of an
 
 60 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 unseen but powerful foe, whose enmity might be averted by 
 the death of victims ; ' therefore the God of Israel cannot 
 have been, as we represent him, the Eternal which makes for 
 righteousness. ' The original and current idea of righteous- 
 ness in Israel was largely made up of ceremonial ob- 
 servances ; ' we must not say, therefore, that to Israel was 
 revealed the Eternal that loveth righteousness. We, again, 
 had said that the world cannot do without the Bible, and 
 we desire to bring the masses to use the Bible. But no ! 
 Israel went to ruin, and Christendom is far from perfect ; 
 therefore the Bible cannot be ot much use. 'Take,' says 
 the reviewer, ' the commentary afforded by Israel's history 
 on the value of the Bible ! The Bible failed to turn the 
 hearts of those to whom it was addressed ; how can it have 
 an efficacy for the regeneration of our masses ? ' In a like 
 strain the author of Supernatural Religion : ' There is little, 
 indeed, in the history and actual achievements of Christianity 
 to support the claim made on its behalf to the character of a 
 scheme divinely revealed for the salvation of the human 
 race.' 
 
 On persons and their sayings this sort of criticism does 
 execution in very short and sharp fashion. Jesus said of 
 the daughter of Jairus : ' She is not dead, but sleepeth.' 
 Well, then, ' we have here, by the express declaration of 
 Jesus, a case of mere suspension of consciousness.' Jesus 
 said, sleepeth ; and how, then, can the girl have been more 
 than asleep ? If Jesus is reported to have said : ' Before 
 Abraham was, I am,' or to have said : ' Therefore doth my 
 Father love me because I lay down my life that I may take 
 it again,' these speeches must have been invented for him 
 after his death, when the Resurrection had become a matter 
 of Christian belief, or when the dogma of the Godhead of 
 the Eternal Son wanted proving. That they should have 
 arisen in any other way is ' wholly inexplicable.' Men do
 
 THE COD OF EXPERIENCE. 61 
 
 not foresee their own death, or conceive the virtue in them- 
 selves as operating long before they were born. It is ' wholly 
 inexplicable ' to this kind of criticism that Jesus should have 
 both said of the Gentile centurion : ' I have not found so 
 great faith in Israel,' and also said to the Canaanitish 
 woman : ' It is not meet to take the children's bread and 
 cast it to the dogs,' because the two sayings show a different 
 tendency, and the same man does not utter two sayings show- 
 ing a different tendency. Either the first saying must have 
 been put into the mouth of Jesus by a Pauline universalist, 
 or the second by a Judaic particularist. If Jesus speaks of 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, then the speech must have 
 been invented for him after Jerusalem was destroyed ; for 
 it is 'wholly inexplicable' that a man should speak of a 
 thing before it happens. To suppose otherwise, to 
 suppose, as we do, that Jesus foretold to his disciples that 
 they should see Jerusalem destroyed, that he varied his line 
 according to the occasion and the hearer, that he foresaw 
 his own death, and that he dealt with the terms living and 
 dying in a profound manner easily misapprehended, to 
 suppose all this is to ' invest Jesus with attributes of pre- 
 science and quasi-omniscience which we can only charac- 
 terise as divine,' and is therefore inadmissible. 
 
 One of the many reproaches brought against Literature 
 and Dogma is, that its conception of the development of 
 our religion is wanting in vigour and rigour. Certainly the 
 sort of criticism we are now noticing does not err by 
 want of vigour and rigour. It has abundance of both, 
 and does its work with great thoroughness. The only 
 thing to be said against it is, that the growth of human 
 things, and above all of immense concerns like religion, 
 does not exactly proceed with vigour and rigour; rather 
 it follows an order of development loose and wavering. And 
 to impose, therefore, on the growth of religion and
 
 62 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Christianity a method of development of great vigour and 
 rigour, to criticise its productions and utterances with the 
 notion that we shall reach the truth about them by applying 
 to them such a method, is most probably to criticise them 
 all wrong. 
 
 And it would not be difficult to show that this method 
 is, in fact, fallacious in each of the points where we have 
 been just now seeing it draw its conclusions. But we are 
 here solely concerned with whatever may be supposed to 
 check and disconcert the reader of Literature and Dogma 
 after that book had seemed to put him in a way of reading 
 the Bible with profit. Now certainly nothing could check 
 and disconcert him so much as to find that the God of 
 Israel, the God of the Bible, cannot be taken to be the 
 Eternal that loveth righteousness. For in place of the 
 magnified and non-natural man given by miracles and 
 metaphysics, but who cannot be verified, we had advised 
 our reader to take as the God of the Bible, and the founda- 
 tion of the whole matter of his Christianity, the Eternal 
 that loves righteousness, makes for righteousness. This 
 Eternal can be verified indeed, but now we are told that he 
 is not the God of the Bible. Or, at any rate, he is not the 
 God of Israel and of the Old Testament ; the God of Israel 
 and of the Old Testament is something quite different. 
 This objection then, we must deal with, and we must 
 establish against it, if we can, our assertion that the God 
 of Israel and of the Bible is the Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness. 
 
 2. 
 
 The above-mentioned reviewer objects to us that ' Israel 
 must have hid a faculty for abstract thought quite un- 
 paralleled if his conception of a God came to pass as 
 Mr. Arnold describes it. A people in a very early stage
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 6j 
 
 of civilisation is so deeply absorbed in the study and 
 practice of morality that they discover that there is a law 
 which is not themselves, which makes for it, which law they 
 proceed to worship! Can improbability go further! ' This, 
 says the reviewer, is the d priori argument against 'the 
 opinion that Israel's God was not a person, but the deifica- 
 tion of a natural law.' But certainly we do not opine, and 
 the reader of Literature and Dogma will hardly have 
 supposed us to opine, that Israel's God was the conscious 
 deification of a natural law. To attack, therefore, the im- 
 probability of this, is merely to tilt against a phantom of 
 one's own creating. Unquestionably, that Israel, as we see 
 him in the earliest documents of the Old Testament, 
 should have been likely to sit down and say to himself : ' I 
 perceive a great natural law, the law of righteousness, ruling 
 the world ; I will personify this law as a God, the one and 
 only God; I will call it Jehovah, build a sanctuary for it, 
 and invent a worship for it '; that this should have happened 
 is utterly improbable. One can almost as well conceive 
 Israel saying that he was aware of the law of gravitation, 
 and felt disposed to deify it and to erect a temple to it. 
 
 But if one has certain facts before one, one naturally 
 asks oneself how they can have come about. Israel is 
 always saying that in the Eternal he puts his trust, and that 
 this Eternal is righteous, and loves righteousness. He is 
 always saying that among the gods of other people there is 
 no God like the Eternal, none that can do what the Eternal 
 does, and that whoever runs after another God shall have 
 great trouble. These are his ruling thoughts. Where did 
 he get them ? They were given him, says popular theology, 
 by a magnified and non-natural man, who was in constant 
 communication with him, walked in the garden where he 
 was, talked to him, showed him even, on one occasion, his 
 bodily parts, and worked miracle after miracle for him.
 
 64 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 And this is Israel's own account of the matter. But how 
 many other religions aiso, besides Israel's, present us with 
 personages of this kind ! And we hold that the personages 
 are not real, but have their origin in the play of the human 
 imagination itself. How, then, did the God of Israel, with 
 the special characters that we find in him, actually arise ? 
 
 Now, it may be contended either that these special 
 characters, which we assign to him, are not really there ; 
 or that they have come there by chance, and nothing can be 
 inferred from them ; or, finally, both that the characters are 
 there, and that it was their pressure upon the mind of Israel 
 which made him give to his religion, and to his Eternal, that 
 unique type which we profess to find in them. Let us 
 examine these alternatives, so important to the reader of 
 Literature and Dogma. 
 
 We must go to Sir John Lubbock or to Mr. Tylor for 
 researches concerning what is called ' pre-historic man,' 
 human nature in its inchoate, embryo, and as yet unformed 
 condition. Their researches concerning this are profoundly 
 interesting. But for our present business we have not to go 
 back higher than historic man, man who has taken his ply, 
 and who is already much like ourselves. With inchoate, 
 pre-historic man, the great objects of nature and the pleasure 
 or pain which he experienced from them may probably 
 enough have been the source of religion. In those times 
 arose his name for Deity : The Shining. So may have 
 originally commenced the religion of even the most famous 
 races, the religion of Greece, the religion of Israel. But 
 into the thoughts and feelings of man in this inchoate stage 
 we cannot, as we now are, any longer fully enter. We 
 cannot really participate in them; the religion of man in 
 this stage does not practically concern us. Man's religion 
 practically concerns us from that time only when man's real 
 history has commenced; when moral and intellectual concep-
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 65 
 
 tions have invaded the primordial nature-worship, have, in 
 great measure, superseded it and given a new sense to its 
 nomenclature. The very earliest Bible-religion does not go 
 higher than a time of this kind, when already moral and 
 intellectual conceptions have entered into religion. And no 
 one will deny, that, from the first, those conceptions which are 
 moral rather than intellectual, the idea of conduct and of the 
 regulation of conduct, appear in Bible-religion prominently. 
 To bring out this, let us for a moment leave Bible- 
 religion, and let us turn to the people who, after the 
 Hebrews, have had most influence upon us, to the Greeks. 
 Greek history and religion begin for us, as do the religion 
 and history of the Hebrews, at a time when moral and 
 intellectual ideas have taken possession of the framework 
 given originally, it may be, by nature-worship. The great 
 names of Hellenic religion, Zeus and Phoebus, come, as 
 every one knows, from the sun and air, and point to a 
 primordial time of nature-worship. But Greek history and 
 religion begin with the sanctuaries of Tempe and of Delphi, 
 and with the Apolline worship and priesthood which in 
 those sanctuaries under Olympus and Parnassus established 
 themselves. The northern sanctuary of Tempe soon yielded 
 to Delphi as the centre of national Hellenic life and of 
 Apolline religion. Now, we all are accustomed to think of 
 Apollo as the awakener and sustainer of genius, as the 
 power illuminating and elevating the soul through intel- 
 lectual beauty. And so from the very first he was. But in 
 those earliest days of Hellas, Apollo was not only the nourisher 
 of genius, he was also the author of every higher moral 
 effort. He was the prophet of his father Zeus, in the 
 highest view of Zeus, as the source of the ideas of moral 
 order and of right For to this higher significance had Zeus 
 and Phcebus, those names derived merely from sun and 
 air, by this time risen. They had come to designate a 
 
 F
 
 66 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Father, the source of the ideas of moral order and of right ; 
 and a Son, his prophet, purifying and inspiring the soul with 
 these ideas, and also with the idea of intellectual beauty. 
 
 But it is with the ideas of moral order and of right 
 that we are at this moment concerned. These ideas are in 
 human nature; but they had, says the excellent historian of 
 Greece, Dr. Curtius, 'especially been a treasure in the 
 possession of the less gay and more solitary tribes in the 
 mountains of Northern Greece.' These were Delphi's first 
 pupils. And the graver view of life, the thoughts which 
 give depth and solemnity to man's soul, the moral ideas, 
 in short, of conduct and righteousness, were the main 
 elements of early Greek religion. Soberness and righteous- 
 ness, to which the words written up on the temple at Delphi 
 called all comers, 1 were thus the primal rule of Hellenic 
 religion. For a long while, in the great poets of Hellas, 
 the power of this influence shows itself. From Pindar, 
 ^Eschylus, and Sophocles, may be quoted sentences as 
 religious as those which we find in Job or Isaiah. And 
 here, in this bracing air of the old religion of Delphi, this 
 atmosphere of ideas of moral order and of right, the 
 Athenians, Ionian as they were, imbibed influences of 
 character and steadiness, which for a long while balanced 
 their native vivacity and mobility, distinguished them pro- 
 foundly from the lonians of Asia, and gave them men like 
 Aristeides and Pericles. 
 
 Every one knows, however, that this archaic severeness 
 of Hellenic religion, this early pre-occupation with conduct 
 and righteousness, did not last. There were elements of 
 mobility and variety in men's dispositions which proved fatal 
 to it The manner in which this came about we have not 
 here to trace ; all we are now concerned with is the fact that 
 
 1 See Plato, Erastce, cap. vii. TOUT' &pa, ws toiKt, rb Iv 
 veTai avoavvrfl> ance'tv xal SiK
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. tj 
 
 it was so. It had come to be so even by the time when, 
 with the Persian War, the brilliant historic period of Greece 
 begins. Even by this time the living influence of Delphi 
 had ceased. Bribes had discredited its sanctity ; serious- 
 ness and vital power had left it. Delphi had come to be 
 little more than a name, and what continued to exist there 
 was merely a number of forms. The predominance, for 
 Hellas, of a national religion of righteousness, of grave 
 ideas of conduct, moral order, and right, outweighing all 
 other ideas, disappeared with the decline of Delphi, never to 
 return. Still, indeed, these ideas inspired poetry ; and 
 Greek poetry was now more religious than Greek religion, 
 and partly supplied its place. Finally, they ceased even to 
 inspire poetry, and took refuge with philosophic thinkers. 
 
 We by no means say that they disappeared from life. 
 They are, we repeat, in human nature ; they cannot dis- 
 appear wholly. But a religion founded on them, a religion 
 of soberness and righteousness, ceased to be set up before 
 the eyes of all men, ceased to stand in the minds of all 
 men for the great primary concern of human life, as it had 
 stood before the minds of the grave forefathers of Hellas in 
 the shadow of their Parnassian sanctuary. And to this 
 extent, of course, the ideas were weakened and effaced in 
 Greek life ; that they were no longer impressively presented 
 as life's first concern by a national religion, itself the great 
 and solemn centre of men's thoughts. We by no means, 
 again, say that for this there were no compensations. Other 
 aspects of life presented themselves than the aspect in 
 which life appears exclusively concerned with soberness and 
 righteousness. Many a line of activity did these new 
 aspects suggest to the Hellenic genius, and with what 
 brilliant success it followed them we all know. Still, the 
 fact remains, that in Greece, as the national history went on, 
 the all-importance of conduct and righteousness pressed no 
 
 V 2
 
 68 GOD AND THE BIBLE, 
 
 longer upon the Hellenic spirit and upon Hellenic religion 
 as their omnipresent and central idea. In the later days oi 
 the national life of Hellas, it was a religious solemnity, wit- 
 nessed by the public with transport, and celebrated by the first 
 artist of the time, to see the courtesan Phryne enter the sea 
 at Eleusis, and represent there, to an innumerable multitude 
 of spectators, Venus Anadyomene, Venus issuing from the 
 waves. l To this had come the religion of Delphi and the art 
 of Olympia. And it was at Eleusis that this happened, the 
 old seat of the mysteries ; those highest means possessed by 
 Greek religion for deepening and ennobling men's thoughts 
 about life and death. The time had been when the religious 
 solemnities at Eleusis were of a character to draw from 
 Pindar a strain such as we now call Biblical, a strain like 
 that of Job, or Isaiah, or the Psalms. ' Blessed is the man 
 who hath beheld these things before he goeth under the 
 earth ! he knoweth the end of man's life, and he knoweth its 
 God-given beginning.' 
 
 3- 
 
 Not long after Phryne's religious performance at Eleusia 
 came the last days, too, of the national life of the Jews, 
 under the successors of Alexander. The religious con- 
 ceptions of the Jews of those days are well given by the 
 Book of Daniel. How popular and prevalent these con- 
 ceptions were, is proved by their vitality and power some 
 two centuries later at the Christian era, and by the large 
 place which they fill in the New Testament. We are all 
 familiar with them ; with their turbid and austere visions of 
 the Ancient of Days on his throne, and the Son of Man 
 coming with the clouds of heaven to give the kingdom to 
 the saints of the Most High, and to bring in everlasting 
 righteousness. Here, then, is the last word of the religion 
 1 See Athenaeus, lib. xiii, p. 590.
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 69 
 
 of the Hebrews, when their national life is drawing to an 
 end, when their career has been, for the most part, run ; 
 when their religion has had nearly all the development which, 
 within the limits of their national life, belonged to it. This, 
 we say, is its last word : To bring in everlasting righteousness.^ 
 
 Let us now go back to the commencement of Hebrew 
 history. The beginnings of Hebrew national life may not 
 inaptly be paralleled with the beginnings of Greek national 
 life, with that epoch when the infant Hellenic tribes met 
 in federation under the religious shadow of Tempe or 
 Delphi, and set before their eyes the law of ' soberness and 
 righteousness.' Such an epoch in the career of the Hebrew 
 race is well given by the history of Abraham. The religion 
 of Abraham, this founder and father of the Hebrew people, 
 is a religion, as King Abimelech says, of ' integrity of heart 
 and innocency of hands.' 2 The God of Abraham has 
 chosen Abraham and his race, because, God says : ' I know 
 Abraham, that he will command his children and his house- 
 hold after him, and they shall keep the way of the Eternal 
 to do righteousness and judgment.' 3 So that the Hebrew 
 people and Hebrew history, when they begin, begin, like the 
 Hellenic people and like Hellenic history, with a religion of 
 soberness and righteousness. And the after-decline of this 
 religion in Greece we have seen. But in Judaea, at the 
 close of the national history, what do we find to be the con- 
 dition of this religion ? Has it weakened, has it grown 
 obsolete, has it fallen out of sight and out of mind ? So far 
 from it, that it has grown into an enthusiasm, turbid, 
 passionate, absorbing and all-pervasive, to bring in everlast- 
 ing righteousness. 
 
 How was the long intervening period filled between the 
 call of Abraham at the beginning of Israel's national history, 
 and the Book of Daniel at its close ? Let us lake, as a mid- 
 
 1 Daniel, ix, 24. a Genesis, xx, 5. * Ccn., xviii, 19.
 
 70 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 point, that wonderful collection, ranging over so many years, 
 reflecting so many experiences, contributed by so many 
 voices, and answering so profoundly to the religious con- 
 sciousness of Israel : the Book of Psalms. Two things are 
 equally manifest, on the very face of the Book of Psalms, 
 Israel's attachment to his religion, and that religion's 
 character. One may dip into the Psalms where one will, 
 and be sure to find them not far off. 
 
 First, as to the attachment and strong reliance with 
 which Israel's religion inspired him. ' In the Eternal put I 
 my trust,' l is the constant burden of his song. ' My hope 
 hath been in thee, O Eternal ; I have said, Thou art my 
 God ! ' ' Blessed are the people whose God is the Eternal ! ' 
 ' They who run after another God shall have great trouble.' 2 
 
 And then as to the character, expressed briefly and 
 generally, of this God of Israel, this Eternal. There is really 
 no doubt about it ' The Eternal loveth the thing that is 
 right \ ' 3 Ten thousand variations are played on the one 
 theme, but the theme is that. ' The Eternal alloweth the 
 righteous, but the wicked his soul hateth,' 4 says David. 
 ' Unto the ungodly saith God : Why dost thou take my 
 covenant in thy mouth, whereas thou hatest to be reformed?'* 
 ' My help cometh of God, who preserveth them that are true 
 of heart.'* ' I will wash my hands in innocency^ O Eternal, 
 and so will I go to thine altar.' 7 As in the days of Abime- 
 lech, so it was still ; the relig'on of the Hebrew people was 
 a religion of integrity of heart and innocency of hands. 
 This is the essential character of Israel's Eternal: to love the 
 thing that is right) to abhor that which is evil. 
 
 Do we want a somewhat fuller account of what right is, 
 that we may be sure it does not mean a mere performance 
 
 1 Ps. xi, I. 2 Ps. xxxi, 14 ; xxxiii, 12 ; xvi, 4. 
 
 ft. xxxvii, 28. * Ps. xi, 5. * Ps. 1, 16, 17. 
 
 Ps. vii, 10. 7 Ps. xx vi, 6.
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 71 
 
 of ceremonies ? Here it is : ' Come, ye children, and 
 hearken unto me ; I will teach you the fear of the Eternal. 
 Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no 
 guile ; eschew evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it' l 
 Or of what evil is, what is the course of those who do not 
 * understand and seek after God ; ' that we may be sure evil 
 does not mean a mere omission of ceremonies, or a sparing 
 to smite God's enemies who happen to be also one's own ? 
 ' Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are 
 swift to shed blood, destruction and unhappiness is in their 
 ways, and the way of peace have they not known.' 2 In a 
 plain way, all this points well enough, and with perfect 
 clearness, to just what we universally mean by right and 
 wrong, good and evil. It points to morals, conduct ; to a 
 man's behaviour, way and walk in life. And this was what 
 Israel meant by religion: to attend to one's way and walk in 
 life, and to regulate them according to the commandments 
 of the Eternal that loveth righteousness. ' I called mine own 
 ways to remembrance,' he says, 'and turned my feet unto Thy 
 testimonies.' 3 And they who do so, maintains he, ' shall 
 want no manner of thing that is good.' 4 ' That shall bring 
 a man peace at the last.' 5 ' To him that ordereth his con- 
 versation right shall be shown the salvation of God.' 6 
 
 But our reviewer says that we are not to rely much on 
 what comes from prophets and psalmists, 'on the most 
 spiritual utterances of the most spiritual part of the nation, 
 of men who were at once reformers and poets.' 'They 
 were,' says he, ' innovators, unorthodox free-thinkers.' What 
 they alleged about righteousness by no means proves that 
 righteousness was the religion of Israel. 
 
 1 Ps. xxxiv, n, 13, 14. 
 
 a Ps. xiv (Prayer Book Version), 6, 7 ; and Rom. t iii, 14-1 7. 
 
 8 Ps. cxix, 59. 4 Ps. xxxiv, 10. 
 
 Ps. xxxvii, 38. 1's. 1, 23.
 
 72 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 And perhaps this sort of argument can, in some cases, be 
 used fairly enough. Pindar may have lofty passages about 
 the end and the God-given beginning of man's life. Socrates 
 and Plato may have their minds still bent on those ideas of 
 moral order and of right which were the treasure of the 
 primitive and serious tribes of early Hellas. They may harp 
 still upon the old-fashioned doctrines recommended from 
 the temple at Delphi. Yet, if the Greek nation and its 
 religion have taken quite another line, these utterances of 
 philosophers and poets will not justify us in saying that the 
 religion of Greece was a religion of righteousness. But we 
 have a right to give Israel the benefit of the utterances of its 
 prophets and psalmists. And why? Because the nation 
 adopted them. So powerfully did the inmost chords of its 
 being vibrate to them, so entirely were they the very truth it 
 was born to and sought to find utterance for, that it adopted 
 them, made them its standards, the documents of that most 
 profound and authentic expression of the nation's conscious- 
 ness, its religion. Instead of remaining literature and 
 philosophy, isolated voices of sublime poets and reforming 
 free-thinkers, these glorifications of righteousness became 
 Jewish religion, matters to be read in the synagogue every 
 Sabbath-day. So that while in Greece it was a religious 
 solemnity to behold a handsome courtesan enter the sea, in 
 Judaea it was a religious solemnity to hear that 'the righteous 
 Eternal loveth righteousness.' 
 
 What we claim, then, for Israel, when we say that he 
 had the intuition of the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness, when we say that to him our 
 religion was first revealed, is this : that the ideas of moral 
 order and of right, which are in human nature, which appear 
 in a recognisable shape, whatever may be their origin, as 
 soon as man is sufficiently formed for him to have a history 
 at all, to be intelligible to us at all, to stand related to us as
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 73 
 
 showing a like nature with ourselves, that these ideas so 
 laid hold upon Israel as to be the master-element in his 
 thoughts, the sheet-anchor of his life. It matters nothing 
 that Israel could give no satisfying and scientific account of 
 the way in which he came by these ideas ; that he could only 
 give legendary and fanciful accounts of it. It matters 
 nothing that the practical application he gave to these ideas 
 was extremely crude and limited, that they were accom- 
 panied in him by gross imperfection. It matters nothing 
 that there may be shown to have hung about them any 
 number of waifs and strays from an earlier and unripe stage, 
 survivals from a time of nature- worship, or of any other pas- 
 sage which preceded, with Israel, the entrance upon his real 
 history. If from the time he was formed, and distinguish- 
 able, and himself, if from one end of the Bible to the other, 
 we find him, far more than any other race known to us 
 impressed, awe-struck, absorbed by the idea of righteous- 
 ness, whatever alloys he may mix with it, and however blindly 
 he may deal with it ; if we find him, and it is indisputable 
 that we do find him, thus fascinated, it is enough, and he 
 has the intuition, the revelation. 
 
 Our reviewer will now, perhaps, understand what we 
 mean by saying that the Hebrew people had the revelation 
 and intuition of the Eternal that makes for righteousness. 
 We do not mean that this people had a clear and adequate 
 idea of Tightness in conduct as a law of nature, that they then 
 proceeded to personify this law and deify it, and that they 
 deified it in their Jehovah. If this were what we meant, all 
 the criticisms of the reviewer upon the shortcomings of 
 Jehovah and Jahvism in the Old Testament would take 
 effect. We do not mean it, however. But perhaps our saying
 
 74 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 that Israel had the revelation of the Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness is the stumbling-block. Let us try, then, so 
 to draw out what we mean by this, that to the reviewer 
 and to others it may appear as simple and certain as it does 
 to ourselves. 
 
 For let us now conceive man, so far as this is possible for 
 us, just as the investigation of his beginnings and the actual 
 observation of the state of certain savages shows him to us, 
 in his inchoate, pre-historic, almost pre-human condition. 
 In this time of ignorance his gods have their origin. We 
 are accused of introducing in the not ourselves which presses, 
 we say, upon man's spirit, a refined metaphysical conception. 
 It is so far from this, that it is one of the first pieces of 
 man's experience, and dates from the most primitive time. 
 It is whatever appears to man as outside himself, not in his 
 own power, and affecting him whether he will or no. Now, 
 the more helpless and inexperienced man is, the greater is 
 the number to him of things not in his own power. Who 
 can trace or divine all the possibilities of hope and fear in 
 this wide field ? But we know and can easily understand 
 how on certain great and prominent objects of nature, exer- 
 cising a powerful influence on human life, such as the sun, 
 for instance, hope and fear fastened, and produced worship. 
 And we know, too, and can well understand, how by a 
 natural impulse men were moved to represent in a human 
 form like their own, the powers which attracted their hope 
 fear, and worship ; as Xenophanes says that if horses, oxen, 
 and lions could paint or model, they would certainly make 
 gods in their own image, horses in that of horses, oxen in 
 that of oxen, lions in that of lions. And even when men did 
 not represent their gods in human form, they still supposed 
 in them human thoughts and passions. 
 
 In those times arose names like Eloah, Elohim, The 
 Mighty j or Deva, Deus, The Shining. And then, too, in
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 75 
 
 those days of bounded view and of apprehensive terror, grew 
 up and prevailed 'the conception of God,' to use our 
 reviewer's words, ' as a foe whose enmity might be averted 
 by the death of victims.' Such, he asserts, was Israel's first 
 conception of God ; and although here he speaks positively 
 of things beyond the ken of any certain knowledge, yet we 
 are not concerned to dispute the probability of his conjecture, 
 that with the inchoate and primordial Israel it may have 
 been so. For ' the gods,' as Xenophanes again says, ' did 
 not from the first show to men all things ; but in time, by 
 searching, men came to a discovery of the better.' 
 
 Such a ' better ' was reached at a point where human 
 history and human religion, in the only sense which our race 
 can now attach to the word religion, first began. It was 
 reached when the ideas of conduct, of moral order and of 
 right, had gathered strength enough to declare and establish 
 themselves. Long before, indeed, during man's chaotic and 
 rudimentary time, these ideas must have been at work ; and 
 as they were no conscious creation of man's will, but solicited 
 him and ripened in him whether he would or no, we may 
 truly and fitly call them the Spirit of God brooding over 
 chaos, moving silently upon the human deep. Then these 
 ideas found and took possession of the framework of the 
 older, and, for so we may call them, the as yet irreligious 
 religions. 
 
 From these older religions were handed on ceremonial 
 and rite, which have, in truth, their proper origin, not in the 
 moral stirrings of man's nature at all, but in the stirrings 
 which we call aesthetic. Many practices, even, were not at 
 once dropped, which had their proper origin in darkness and 
 disease of the moral feelings, in blind and pusillanimous 
 terror. Of this kind were human sacrifices, such as 
 Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. Nevertheless God, by the 
 very cradle of Hebrew history, the God of Abraham, the
 
 76 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 God of ' integrity of heart and innocency of hands,' is no 
 longer ' a foe whose enmity might be averted by the death 
 of victims.' The God of Abraham is a friend; and the in- 
 tended sacrifice is no longer an act of selfish terror to avert 
 a powerful foe's enmity, it is an act of faithful devotion to 
 the supposed will of an all-wise and all-good friend. To 
 this extent in its very cradle did the one true religion, Israel's 
 religion, the religion of righteousness, succeed in trans- 
 forming the baneful and false usage which clung to it from 
 the times of darkness out of which it emerged, until the day 
 came for the disappearance of the usage altogether. 
 
 In a like ' better ' did the history and religion of Hellas 
 also, as we have seen, take their rise ; a ' better ' brought 
 about by the ideas of moral order gathering strength and 
 making themselves felt Then the nature-deities of ruder 
 times, Zeus and Phoebus, became the Father of judgment 
 and of right, and his Prophet-Son. At that moment, there- 
 fore, the Eternal who makes for righteousness, the God of 
 Israel, who is, as St. Paul said to the Athenians, not far 
 from every one of us, seemed offering to reveal himself to 
 Greece also. But it was for a moment only. Other aspects 
 of life than the moral aspect came into view and into favour 
 with the Greeks ; other tendencies than the tendency which 
 disposes men to preoccupy themselves with conduct, and 
 with its divine sanctions, prevailed. 'They did not like,' 
 says the Hebrew Paul austerely, 'to retain God in their 
 knowledge, and so God gave them over to a reprobate 
 mind.' 1 This is, no doubt, a stern sentence. What the 
 Greeks were and what they accomplished, and how brilliant 
 a course they ran after their religion had passed out of its 
 brief moment of accord with that of Israel, we know ; and 
 with that knowledge we shall not be forward to utter against 
 them harsh censures. But thus much, at least, we may say, 
 1 Horn., i, 28.
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 77 
 
 notwithstanding all the glory and genius of Greece, not- 
 withstanding all the failure and fanaticism of Israel ; 
 thus much we may well say, whenever we contrast the 
 heart and mind of the Graeco- Roman world in its maturity 
 with the interior joys of Israel : They that run after another 
 God shall have great trouble. 
 
 Israel advanced from the God of Abraham, the Mighty 
 who requires integrity of heart and innocency of hands, to 
 the God of Moses, the Eternal who makes for righteous- 
 ness unalterably. Then the law in its primitive shape, an 
 organism having for its heart the Ten Commandments, 
 arose. It formulated, with authentic voice and for ever, 
 the religion of Israel as a religion in which ideas of moral 
 order and of right were paramount And so things went on 
 from Moses to Samuel, and from Samuel to David, and 
 from David to the great prophets of the eighth century and 
 to the Captivity, and from that to the Restoration, and 
 from the Restoration to Antiochus and the invasion of 
 Greek culture, to the Maccabees and the Book of Daniel, 
 and from thence to the Roman conquest, and from that to 
 John the Baptist ; until all the wonderful history received 
 its solution and consummation in Jesus Christ Through 
 progress and backsliding, amid infectious contact with 
 idolatry, amid survival of old growths of superstition, of the 
 crude practices of the past ; amid multiplication of new 
 precepts and observances, of formalism and ceremonial ; 
 amid the solicitation of new aspects of life ; in material 
 prosperity, and in material ruin ; more and more the great 
 governing characteristics of the religion of Israel accen- 
 tuated and asserted themselves, and forced themselves on 
 the world's attention : the God of this religion, with his 
 eternal summons to keep judgment and do justice ; the 
 mission of this religion, to bring in everlasting righteous- 
 ness.
 
 7? GOD AND THE BIBLE, 
 
 And this native, continuous, and increasing pressure 
 upon Israel's spirit of the ideas of conduct and of its 
 sanctions, we call his intuition of the Eternal that makes 
 for righteousness, the revelation to him of the religion of 
 this Eternal. Really, we do not know how else to account 
 for the evident fact of the pressure, than by supposing that 
 Israel had an intuitive faculty, a natural bent for these 
 ideas ; that their truth was borne in upon him, revealed to 
 him. How else are we to explain their pressure on him ? 
 We put aside all the preternatural ; a magnified and non- 
 natural man, walking in gardens, speaking from clouds, 
 sending dreams, commissioning angels. We give an ex- 
 planation which is natural But we say that this natural 
 explanation is yet grander than the preternatural one. 
 
 Some people, however, when they have got rid of the 
 preternatural in religion, seem to think that they are bound 
 to get rid, as much as they can, of the notion of there being 
 anything grand and wonderful in religion at all ; at any 
 rate, to reduce this element of what is grand and wonderful 
 to the very smallest dimensions. They err. They impede 
 the acceptance of even the real truths which they have to 
 tell the world, because the world feels that on the main 
 matter they are wrong. They act imprudently, therefore ; 
 but they really fail, besides, to appreciate and explain their 
 facts. We have already, in Literature and Dogma, men- 
 tioned Professor Kuenen's explanation of the morality in 
 Bible-religion from the simple and severe life of the 
 primitive Beni-Israel as nomads of the desert. But who- 
 ever will read in M. Caussin de Perceval's Arabian History 
 the Moallacas of the poets among the Arabs before 
 Mahomet, will find this poetry extremely licentious, in spite 
 of the nomad life led in the desert by the Arab tribes. 
 And the reformation of Mahomet is undoubtedly a reforma- 
 tion largely inspired by the Bible of the Beni-Israel. On
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 79 
 
 the other hand, we find Semitic people without the nomad 
 life, the Semitic people of great cities, developing a 
 worship such as Herodotus has described to us in that of 
 Mylitta. l 
 
 Professor Kuenen's excellent History is now published 
 rn English. We may all read there of a religious revival in 
 Hebrew religion under Samson and Samuel, and how by 
 degrees Jahvism grew in spirituality, and the age of ecstasy 
 and of the Witch of Endor gave place to the prophets of 
 the eighth century, conscious of a real inner call. Well, but 
 what is the reason of all this advance, this ' development of 
 monotheism,' as people call it ? Professor Kuenen thinks 
 that it is largely due to ' the influence of the war between 
 Baal and Jahveh upon the minds of those who had 
 remained loyal to Jahveh.' So, we are told, arose the deep 
 gulf of separation between Jahveh and the heathen ' non- 
 entities,' as the Hebrew prophets call them. 
 
 So ? but how ? Not out of mere blind obstinacy, not 
 from having fought for a God called Jahveh, against a God 
 called Baal, so long and so hard that his champions grew 
 bent on sticking to Jahveh and found out all manner of per- 
 fections for him. Israel adhered to Jahveh for the same 
 reason which had at first made him take to the worship of 
 Jahveh: that Jahveh was the Eternal Power that makes 
 for righteousness, was the centre and source of those ideas 
 of moral order and of conduct which are, we repeat, in 
 human nature, but which pressed on Israel's spirit with 
 extraordinary power. This alone gives us a natural, intel- 
 ligible clue to the development of the religion of the Bible. 
 
 5- 
 
 But now, as if it were not enough to have one vigorous 
 and rigorous reviewer on our hands, there comes a second 
 
 s Herod., i, 199.
 
 8o GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 such reviewer besides, and strikes his blow at Literature and 
 Dogma. After some animadversions on our weak reasoning 
 faculty, which no doubt are just, and some compliments to 
 the clearness of our diction, which we hesitate to accept, 
 because it is the very simplicity of our understanding that 
 incapacitates us for the difficult style of the philosophers, 
 and drives us to the use of the most ordinary phraseology, 
 after these preliminaries, this second reviewer says that 
 we have no right to call our ' enduring power, not ourselves, 
 which makes for righteousness,' a verifiable fact at all, or to 
 talk of Israel's intuition of it. And why? 'Because,' says 
 the reviewer, ' many doubt whether the origin of the moral 
 perceptions is due to intuition, but the origin of the moral 
 perceptions in man is assigned by some to intuition, by 
 others to education, and by Mr. Darwin to a social instinct, 
 arising out of evolution and inheritance.' 
 
 Let us assure this reviewer that, for our purpose, 
 whether a man assigns the origin of the moral perceptions 
 to intuition, or to education, or to evolution and inheritance, 
 does not matter two straws. And really we are almost 
 astonished at having to explain this, so clear does it seem to 
 us. For surely, because we may choose to say that the 
 English people have an intuitive sense for politics, we are 
 not therefore to be understood as settling the question about 
 the origin of political perceptions, whether they proceed 
 from intuition, or from education, or from evolution and 
 inheritance. Nay, and we thought that on this very point 
 we had said in Literature and Dogma all that was 
 necessary ; but we find it is not so. We find a great many 
 people imagining that if Mr. Darwin is right in assigning the 
 origin of the moral perceptions to evolution and inheritance, 
 in that case everything we have said about an enduring 
 power which makes for righteousness, and about Israel's 
 recognition of this power, must necessarily fall to the
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 81 
 
 ground. Come, then, let us make it clear to the reader 
 of Literature and Dogma, that these imaginations are 
 quite vain, and that he would do very ill to be moved by 
 them. 
 
 So let us take Mr. Darwin's doctrine and see how in- 
 nocent it is, and how entirely unaffected religion is by it. 
 But we will not take it from the mouth of that illustrious 
 philosopher himself, because to many religious people he 
 is a bugbear. Neither will we take it from M. Littre", as we 
 did in Literature and Dogma, for the sake of softening a 
 little the stern hearts of the Comtists ; for M. Littre"'s name 
 is not more acceptable to the religious world than Mr. 
 Darwin's. No, we will take it from one of the clearest of 
 thinkers, and one of the most religious of men, Pascal. 
 * What is nature ? ' says Pascal. ' Perhaps a first habit, as 
 habit is a second nature.' Qu'est-ce que la nature ? Peut- 
 Gtre une premiere continue, comme la coutume est une seconde 
 nature. Here, briefly and admirably expressed, is the 
 famous doctrine of Mr. Darwin. 
 
 And now suppose that our moral perceptions and rules 
 are all to be traced up, as evolutionists say, to habits due to 
 one or other of two main instincts, the reproductive instinct 
 and the instinct of self-preservation. Let us take an example 
 of a moral rule, due to each instinct. For a moral rule 
 traceable, on our present supposition, to the instinct of self- 
 preservation, we cannot do better than to take 'the first 
 Commandment with promise : ' Honour thy father and thy 
 mother. We say that it makes not the smallest difference to 
 religion whether we suppose this commandment to be thus 
 traceable or not. 
 
 For let it be thus traceable, and suppose the original 
 natural affection of the young to their parents to be due to a 
 sense of dependence upon them and of benefit from them ; 
 and then, when the dependence and benefit end, when the 
 

 
 82 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 young can shift for themselves, the natural affection seems 
 in the lower animals, as they are called, to pass away. But 
 in man it is not thus evanescent. For at first, perhaps, there 
 were some who from weakness or from accident felt the de- 
 pendence and received the benefit longer than others, and 
 in such was formed a more deep and strong tie of attach- 
 ment And while their neighbours, so soon as they were of 
 adult vigour, heedlessly left the side of their parents and 
 troubled themselves about them no more, and let them 
 perish if so it might happen, these few remained with their 
 parents and grew used to them more and more, and finally 
 even fed and tended them when they grew helpless. Pre- 
 sently they began to be shocked at their neighbours' callous 
 neglect of those who had begotten them and borne them, 
 and they expostulated with their neighbours, and entreated 
 and pleaded that their own way was best. Some suffered, 
 perhaps, for their interference ; some had to fight for their 
 own parents, to hinder their neighbours maltreating them j 
 and all the more fixed in their new feelings did these primi- 
 tive gropers after the Fifth Commandment become. 
 
 Meanwhile this extending of the family bond, this con- 
 quering of a little district from the mere animal life, this 
 limiting of the reign of blind, selfish impulse, brought, we 
 may well believe, more order into the homes of those who 
 practised it, and with more order more well-doing, and with 
 both more happiness. And when they solicited their more 
 inhuman neighbours to change their ways, they must always 
 have had to back them the remembrance, more or less alive 
 in every man, of an early link of affection with his parents ; 
 but now they had their improved manner of life and height- 
 ened well-being to back them too. So the usage of the 
 minority gradually became the usage of the majority. And 
 we may end this long chapter of suppositions by supposing 
 that thus there grew at last to be communities which hon-
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 83 
 
 oured their fathers and mothers, instead of, as perhaps, if 
 one went back far enough, one would find to have been the 
 original practice, eating them. 
 
 But all this took place during that which was, in truth, a 
 twilight ante-natal life of humanity, almost as much as the 
 life which each man passes in the womb before he is born. 
 The history of man as man proper, and as distinguished from 
 the other animals, the real history of our race and of its 
 institutions, does not begin until stages such as that which 
 we have been describ-ng are passed, and feelings such as that 
 of which we have been tracing the growth are already formed. 
 Man and his history begin, we say, when he becomes distinctly 
 conscious of feelings which, in a long preparatory period of 
 obscure growth, he may have been forming. Then he calls 
 his habit, acquired by a process which he does not recollect, 
 nature, and he gives effect to it in fixed customs, rules, 
 laws, and institutions. His religion consists in acknowledg- 
 ing and reverencing the awful sanctions with which this right 
 way for man has, he believes, been invested by the mighty 
 not ourselves which surrounds us ; and the more emphatically 
 he places a feeling under the guardianship of these sanctions, 
 the more impressive is his testimony to the hold it has upon 
 him. When Israel fixed the feeling of a child's natural 
 attachment to its parents by the commandment: Honour thy 
 father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land 
 which the Eternal thy God giveth thee, he showed that he had 
 risen to regard this feeling, slowly and precariously acquired 
 though by our supposition it may have been, as a sure, 
 solid, and sacred part of the constitution of human nature. 
 
 But as well as the supposition of a moral habit and rule 
 evolved out of the instinct of self-preservation, we are to take 
 the supposition of a moral habit and rule evolved out of 
 the reproductive instinct. And here, indeed, in the relations 
 between the sexes, we are on ground where to walk right is 
 
 C2
 
 ?4 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 of vital concern to men and where disaster is plentiful Who 
 first, in the early and tentative up-struggling of our race, who 
 first discerned them, this peril of disaster, this necessity for 
 taking heed to one's steps? Who was he that, amid the 
 promiscuous concubinage of man's commencements, if we 
 are to suppose that out of the sheer animal life human life 
 had to evolve itself and rise, who was he who first, through 
 attachment to his chance companion or through attachment 
 to his supposed offspring, gathered himself together, put a 
 bridle on his vague appetites, marked off himself and his, 
 drew the imperfect outline of the circle of home, and fixed 
 for the time to come the rudiments of the family ? Who 
 first, amid the loose solicitations of sense, obeyed (for create 
 it he did not) the mighty not ourselves which makes for moral 
 order, the stream of tendency which was here carrying him, 
 and our embryo race along with him, towards the fulfilment 
 of the true law of their being? became aware of it and 
 obeyed it ? Whoever he was, he must soon have had imi- 
 tators ; for never was a more decisive step taken towards 
 bringing into human life greater order, and with greater order 
 greater well-doing and happiness. So the example was fol- 
 lowed, and a habit grew up, and marriage was instituted. 
 
 And thus, again, we are brought to the point where history 
 and religion begin. And at this point we first find the He- 
 brew people, with polygamy still clinging to it as a survival 
 from the times of ignorance, but with the marriage-tie 
 solidly established, strict and sacred, as we see it between 
 Abraham and Sara. Presently this same Hebrew people, 
 with that aptitude which, we say, characterised it for being 
 profoundly impressed by ideas of moral order, placed in the 
 Decalogue the marriage-tie under the express and solemn 
 sanction of the Eternal, by the Seventh Commandment : 
 TJiou shalt not commit adultery. 
 
 Now, we might jump at once from here to the end of
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 85 
 
 Jewish history, and show Jesus Christ renewing by his 
 method the Seventh Commandment, as he did also the 
 Fifth, renewing them and extending them, clearing casuistry 
 and formalism away from them, and making them look as 
 fresh and impressive in this new light as in their old light 
 they had in Israel's best days looked to him. But let us 
 first, after hearing Israel in the Decalogue on the relation of 
 the sexes, take Israel in the middle of his career, as the Book 
 of Proverbs discovers him to us. There the author touches 
 on that great and often-arising theme in what our philoso- 
 phers call ' sociology ' : the strange woman. And this is his 
 sentence on the man who is bewitched by her : He knows 
 not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the 
 depths of hell. 1 
 
 Now, we ask cur reviewer to consider this saying of the 
 Book of Proverbs, led up to by the Seventh Commandment 
 in the earlier days of Israel's history, and consummated by 
 such things as the review of the Seventh Commandment by 
 the well-known sentence of Jesus in the later. 2 Religion, 
 we know, arises when moral ideas are touched with emotion. 
 And this may be the case with moral ideas from whatever 
 source they were at first derived. And that people, amongst 
 whom it is the case eminently, are the chosen people of 
 religion. We have granted the supposition that moral per- 
 ceptions and habits in what concerns the relation of the 
 sexes may have been originally formed for Israel, and 
 for everybody else, by evolution and inheritance. We will 
 grant, besides, that religious worship and many of its names 
 and ceremonies arose out of ignorant hope and fear in man's 
 rudimentary time. But, for us now, religion is, we say, 
 
 1 Proverbs, ix, 18. 
 
 * Matth., v, 2"j, 28. Compare : ' Not in the lust of concupiscence, 
 as the Gentiles who know not God ; ' ' The time past may suffice us to 
 have wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lascivious- 
 ness,' &c. I T/iessalonians, iv, 5 ; I Peter, iv, 3.
 
 86 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 morality touched with emotion, lit up and enkindled and 
 made much more powerful by emotion. And when morality 
 is thus touched with emotion, it is equally religion, whether 
 it have proceeded from a magnified and non-natural man in 
 the clouds, or arisen in the way we have supposed. And 
 those in whom it appears thus touched with emotion most, 
 are those whom we call endued with most bent for religion, 
 most feeling, most apprehension ; as one man and one race 
 seem to turn out to have mere gift, without any conscious 
 intending and willing of it, for one thing, and another man 
 and another race for another. Now such a bent, such a 
 feeling, when it declares itself, we call an intuition. And 
 we say that Israel had such an intuition of religion, that he 
 shows it in the matter with which we are now dealing, and 
 in other matters of like kind, and that this people is, therefore, 
 the chosen people of religion. 
 
 For how does a special bent or feeling of this kind for 
 moral perceptions declare itself, when it has grown strong 
 enough to declare itself? It declares itself by the accent 
 and power with which its utterances are made ; the accent 
 of conviction in the speaker himself, the power of im- 
 pressiveness on those who hear him. Moral perceptions, 
 and rules securing and establishing them, take, on the 
 supposition we are here following, a long while to build up. 
 There is a backwards and forwards with them ; often it 
 looks as if they would never have strength to get established 
 at all. However, at last there comes some one like Israel, 
 and lays down a sentence like the Seventh Commandment, 
 and reinforces it by such deliverances as that of the Book of 
 Proverbs, and that of the Sermon on the Mount. He thus, 
 we say, takes a lead in what vitally concerns conduct and 
 religion, which for ever remains to him and for ever is 
 proving its reality. 
 
 For, again, a moral perception does not always, and for
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 87 
 
 all persons, retain the vividness it had at the moment when 
 it established itself in a rule like the Seventh Commandment. 
 Human nature has many sides, many impulses ; our rule 
 may seem to lose ground again, and the perception out of 
 which it grew may seem to waver. Practice may offer to it a 
 thousand contradictions, in what M. Taine calls the triste 
 defile, the dismal procession of the Haymarket, and in what 
 a sage or a saint might, perhaps, in like manner call the 
 dismal procession of the Bois de Boulogne. Not practice 
 alone is against the old strictness of rule, but theory ; we 
 have argumentative systems of free love and of re-habilitation 
 of the flesh. Even philosophers like Mr. Mill, having to 
 tell us that for special reasons they had in fact observed the 
 Seventh Commandment, think it right to add that this they 
 did, 'although we did not consider the ordinances of society 
 binding on a subject so entirely personal.' So arises what 
 these same philosophers would call a disintegration of that 
 moral perception on which the Seventh Commandment is 
 founded. What we have to ask, then, is : Was this percep- 
 tion, and the rule founded on it, really a conquest for ever, 
 placing human nature on a higher stage ; so that, however 
 much the perception and rule may have been dubious and 
 unfounded once, they must be taken to be certain and 
 formed now ? And whatever now makes the perception or 
 the rule fluctuating, does it tend, so far, not to emancipate 
 man, but to replace him in the bondage of that old, chaotic, 
 dark, almost ante-human time, from which slowly and pain- 
 fully he had emerged when the real history and religion of 
 our race began? And whatever, on the other hand, re- 
 invigorates the perception, does it tend to man's freedom, 
 safety, and progress ? Because, if this is so, the incomparably 
 impressive accent of clear and decisive conviction in Israel's 
 comment on the theory of Free Love marks him as a seer 
 and divinely inspired guide, gives him a lead in religion.
 
 88 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Here, then, let us summon the most naturalistic, the 
 freest, the calmest of observers on these matters, Goethe, 
 He is speaking to the Chancellor von Miiller against over- 
 facility in granting divorce. He says : ' What culture has 
 won of nature we ought on no account to let go again, at 
 no price to give up. In the notion of the sacredness of 
 marriage, Christianity has got a culture-conquest of this 
 kind, and of priceless value, although marriage is, properly 
 speaking, unnatural.' Unnatural, he means, to man in his 
 rudimentary state, before the fixing of moral habits has 
 formed the right human nature. Emancipation from the 
 right human nature is merely, therefore, return to chaos. 
 Man's progress depends on keeping such 'culture-conquests ' 
 as the Christian notion of the sacredness of marriage. And 
 undoubtedly this notion came to Christianity from Israel. 
 Such was Israel's genius for the ideas of moral order and 
 of right, such his intuition of the Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness, that he felt without a shadow of doubt, and 
 said with the most impressive solemnity, that Free Love 
 was, to speak, again, like our modern philosophers, fatal 
 to progress. He knows not that the dead are there, and that 
 her guests are in the depths of hell. 
 
 And now, perhaps, our second reviewer will suffer us to 
 speak of Israel's ' intuition ' of the Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness, even though moral perceptions and habits 
 may have originally been evolved as Mr. Darwin supposes. 
 And our first reviewer will let us repeat that the word of 
 this Eternal concerning Israel, as distinguished from every 
 other nation of antiquity, is true, in spite of Israel's sacrifices 
 and polygamy : You only have I known of all the families of 
 the earth? 
 
 1 Amos, iii, 2.
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 89 
 
 6. 
 
 Again, a third and very Biblically disposed reviewer is 
 at one with our first and anti-Biblical reviewer in denying 
 the possibility of basing on experimental grounds the claim 
 of the Bible and of its religion to our acceptance. 'The 
 Power making for righteousness,' says this third reviewer, 
 ' the Secret of Jesus, are not really experimental notions 
 which any man can verify. The contrary is true. The 
 Secret and the Power are objects of faith only. Experience 
 offers every day abundant contradictions to the reality of 
 the Power.' 
 
 Now on this point it is certainly indispensable that the 
 reader of Literature and, Dogma should be in no doubt. 
 For the fundamental thesis of that book is, that righteous- 
 ness is salvation verifiably, and that the secret of Jesus is 
 righteousness verifiably ; and that the true faith which the 
 Bible inculcates is the faith that this is so. But un- 
 questionably the common notion among religious people is 
 our reviewer's : that experience is altogether against the 
 saving power of righteousness or of the secret of Jesus, but 
 that their saving power will be proved to a man after he is 
 dead by a great judgment, and by a system of rewards and 
 punishments in accordance with them ; and that faith is the 
 belief that this will really happen. And unquestionably all 
 this is taken from Israel himself, who in his latter days 
 consoled himself, as we can see in the Book of Daniel, by 
 the idea of a resurrection, judgment, and recompence of 
 this sort, and for whom faith came to be the belief that it 
 all would certainly happen. 
 
 But Jesus Christ, we say, made it the great object of his 
 teaching to clear and transform this extra-belief oi his country- 
 men. Upon that, however, we will not insist now. Neither 
 will we now set about proving that experimentally righteous-
 
 90 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 ness is salvation, and experimentally the secret of Jesus is 
 righteousness, independently of the soundness or unsound- 
 ness of the extra-belief of Jews or Christians. On the 
 experimental character of these truths, which are the 
 undoubted object of religion, we have elsewhere said what 
 is necessary. But they are the matter of an immense 
 experience which is still going forward. It is easy to 
 dispute them, to find things which seem to go against them ; 
 yet, on the whole, they prove themselves, and prevail more 
 and more. And the idea of their truth is in human nature, 
 and everyone has some affinity for them, although one man 
 has more and another less. But if any man is so entirely 
 without affinity for them, so subjugated by the conviction 
 that facts are clean against them, as to be unable to enter- 
 tain the idea of their being in human nature and in ex- 
 perience, for him Literature and Dogma was not written. 
 
 We suppose, therefore, the reader of Literature and 
 Dogma to admit the idea of these truths being in human 
 nature and in experience. Now, we say that the great use 
 of the Bible is to animate and fortify faith in them, against 
 whoever says that 'experience offers every day abundant 
 contradictions to their reality.' The truth that righteousness 
 is salvation has double power upon mankind through the 
 inspiration of the sublime witness borne to it by Israel in 
 his best days. This is why these Scriptures are truly said to 
 be ' written for our learning, that we through patience and 
 comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.' ' True, in his 
 later days Israel had taken refuge in an ideal world to 
 ensure the triumph of righteousness ; had imagined his 
 apocalyptic Ancient of Days to be necessary, and his Son 
 of Man coming in the clouds ; his crisis, his anastasis, and 
 his Messianic reign of the saints. All this was, in a certain 
 way, a testimony to the ideas of moral order and of right. 
 1 Rom., xv, 4.
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 91 
 
 But Israel's best, his immortal testimony to them, is the 
 testimony borne in his earlier days and in his prime, when 
 his <aith is in the triumph of the ideas themselves, not in a 
 phantasmagoric restitution of all things to serve them. As 
 the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the 
 righteous is an everlasting foundation. As righteousness 
 lendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own 
 death. 1 
 
 This imperishable faith of the true Israel, clouded in 
 his later days, resumed and perfected by Jesus Christ, but 
 from the first only half understood and mixed with natural 
 errors by his disciples, makes the glory and the grandeur of 
 the Old Testament. It has an answer, a far better answer 
 than any we could give, to every objection of our third 
 reviewer. 'The power making for righteousness is not 
 really,' says this reviewer, 'an experimental notion, which 
 any man can verify; the contrary is true.' Let Israel 
 answer. / have been young and now am old, and yet saw 1 
 never the righteous forsaken. I have seen the wicked in great 
 power, and flourishing like a green bay-tree; I went by, and 
 lo, he was gone \ 2 For anyone who believes that the saving 
 power of righteousness is a profound law of human nature, 
 Israel's faith in it during his best days opens a boundless 
 source of joy, courage, and enthusiasm ; and it is a source 
 such as no other people of antiquity offers. So that here, 
 again, is confirmation of that unique rank emphatically 
 assigned to Israel by the Eternal that makes for righteous- 
 ness : You only have I known of all the families of the 
 earth. 
 
 7- 
 
 Another reviewer asks : ' How are we to know that 
 Israel's words had any solidity when he pronounced right- 
 
 1 Prov., x, 25; xi, 19. f t's. xxxvii, 25, 35, 36.
 
 92 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 eousness to be salvation, if we contend that they have no 
 solidity when he brings in God talking, thinking, and loving? ' 
 Surely because m the one case he is on ground of experience 
 where we can follow him, but in the other he is not. There- 
 fore, when he says : There ariseth light for the righteous? his 
 words present no difficulty, and we can take them as they 
 stand; but when he speaks of God walking in a garden, we 
 are driven to find for the words some other origin than his 
 actual experience. And whoever attends to the history of 
 the human spirit, will soon see that such an origin is not hard 
 to find. 
 
 The same reviewer asks, again, where in Wordsworth, whose 
 personifying language about nature we produced to illustrate 
 Israel's personifying language about God, we can point to 
 language which speaks of nature in the ' mood of real expec- 
 tation and confidence common in the Psalms.' Why, where 
 Wordsworth says : Nature never did forsake the heart that 
 loved her. Or where, asks the reviewer, can we find language 
 which 'treats distrust in the promises of nature as a sin?' 
 Why, in plain prose, without going to the poets for it at all; 
 in one of the profoundest and most impressive passages to 
 be found in Butler, in his sermon on The Ignorance of 
 Man. 'If things afford to man,' says Butler, 'the least 
 hint or intimation that virtue is the law he is born under, 
 scepticism itself should lead him to the most strict and 
 inviolable performance of it ; that he may not make the 
 dreadful experiment of leaving the course of life marked out 
 for him by nature, whatever that nature be, and entering paths 
 of his own, of which he can know neither the danger nor the 
 end? What can be more solemn and grand ? it is grand with 
 the grandeur of Greek tragedy. But Israel had more than 
 a hint or intimation that virtue is the law man is born under. 
 He had an irresistible intuition of it Therefore he break* 
 1 Ps. xcvii, II.
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 93 
 
 into joy, which Butler and Greek tragedy do not Never- 
 theless, the greatness of Butler, as I have elsewhere shown, 
 is in his clear perception and powerful use of a ' course of 
 life marked out for man by nature, whatever that nature be.' 
 His embarrassment and failure is in his attempt to establish 
 a perception as clear, and a use as powerful, of the popular 
 theology. But from Butler, and from his treatment of nature 
 in connexion with religion, the idea of following out that 
 treatment frankly and fully, which is the design of Literature 
 and Dogma, first, as I am proud to acknowledge, came to 
 me; and, indeed, my obligations of all kinds to this deep and 
 strenuous spirit are very great. 
 
 Finally, from our use of the proof from happiness, accusa- 
 tions have been brought against us of eudsemonism, utilita- 
 rianism. We are reproached by a foreign critic with utilita- 
 rianism, with making, 'conformably to the tradition of the 
 English school, self-interest the spring of human action.' 
 Utilitarianism! Surely a pedant invented the word; and oh, 
 what pedants have been at work in employing it ! But that 
 joy and happiness are the magnets to which human life in- 
 evitably moves, let not the reader of Literature and Dogma 
 for a moment confuse his mind by doubting. The real 
 objection is to low and false views of what constitutes 
 happiness. Pleasure and utility are bad words to employ, 
 because they have been so used as to suggest such views. 
 But joy and happiness, on the whole, have not We may 
 safely say, then, that joy and happiness are the magnets to 
 which human life irresistibly moves. The men of positive 
 experience are for us here, but so are the chief men of reli- 
 gion too. St. Augustine : ' Act we must in pursuance of 
 that which gives most delight.' Pascal : * However differ- 
 ent the means they employ, all men without exception tend 
 towards one object, happiness.' Barrow : ' The sovereign 
 good, the last scope of our actions, the top and sum of our
 
 94 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 desires, happiness.' Butler : ' It is manifest that nothing 
 can be of consequence to mankind, or any creature, but 
 happiness.' This truth cannot be gainsaid; and to reject 
 the truth itself, because of frequent perversions of it, is a 
 fatal error. 
 
 8. 
 
 The objections most likely to make an untoward impres- 
 sion on the reader of Literature and Dogma we have now, 
 we believe, noticed, and done our best to remove. On 
 others we will not linger, because they can hardly occasion 
 any real difficulty. A reviewer complains of our talking of 
 the secret of Jesus, because, says the reviewer, Jesus made no 
 secret of it himself. Neither did the Eternal make a secret 
 to Israel of righteousness, and yet Israel talks of the secret 
 of the Eternal. The truth which its holder is supposed 
 alone or in especial to have the clue to and to deal in, men call 
 his secret. Again, we are told that we must not suppose an 
 element of genuine curativeness in the exorcising of unclean 
 spirits by Jesus, because the Jewish thaumaturgists are repre- 
 sented exorcising them also. But what ? because there are 
 charlatans who play upon the nervous system for their own 
 purposes, can there be no doctor who plays upon it benefi- 
 cently? Again, we have said that it can be verified that 
 Jesus is the son of the Eternal that makes for righteousness, 
 and a reviewer objects that ' to say that any man is the son 
 of a natural law is absurd.' But the Bible never speaks of 
 the Eternal as a natural law, but always as if this power 
 lived, and breathed, and felt Speaking as the Bible speaks, 
 we say that Jesus is verifiably the Son of God. Speaking as 
 our reviewer speaks, and calling God a natural law, we say 
 that of this natural law Jesus is verifiably the offspring or 
 outcome. 
 
 We pass to a quite different line of objection with another 
 reviewer, who lays it down that the weakest part of Literature
 
 THE GOD OF EXPERIENCE. 95 
 
 and Dogma is its reliance on sayings of Jesus from the 
 Fourth Gospel. On his death-bed Baur pleasantly re- 
 marked that to his Tubingen school, so often reported 
 vanquished, might with truth be applied the words of St. 
 Paul : As dying, and behold we live. Well might Baur say so. 
 He and his school live, above all, in the strong and growing 
 acceptance of their criticism of the Fourth Gospel. Already 
 Liberal reviewers in this country begin to treat that criticism 
 as certain. Discussions of it have hitherto not been frequent 
 amongst us, but the vogue for such discussions will certainly 
 increase. What I think of this class of questions, and of 
 its fundamental character, I have said in Literature and 
 Dogma. But to return for a little to the subject, to treat it 
 a little more closely, may be well Probably, too, the reader 
 of Literature and Dogma will expect us to make good our 
 free use, in that work, of the Fourth Gospel. Although the 
 method, the secret, and the epieikeia or temper of Jesus are 
 independent of the Fourth Gospel, still from that Gospel 
 they receive most important illustration. 
 
 But the question concerning the Fourth Gospel raises the 
 whole question concerning the Canon of the New Testament, 
 and, indeed, concerning the Canon of Scripture generally. 
 On this larger question also, then, we cannot but touch; we 
 shall, however, particularly address ourselves to considering 
 the Fourth Gospel, and the criticisms which have been 
 directed against it. To invalidate it two tests are employed: 
 the test of external evidence, and the test of internal evi- 
 dence. We will, after saying what seems needful on the 
 general question of the Canon of Scripture, proceed to take 
 first the external evidence in the case of the Fourth Gospel, 
 the questions of dates and of texts. But the internal evidence, 
 the test of literary criticism, is above all relied on as decisive 
 by Baur and his school. So we will, finally, try the Fourth 
 Gospel by that test too. Casarem appellasti, ad Casarein 
 ibis.
 
 96 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BIBLE -CANON. 
 
 WE said in Literature and Dogma, that all our criticism 
 of the Four Evangelists who report Jesus had this for its 
 governing idea : to make out what, in their report ofjestis, is 
 Jesus, and what is the reporters. We then went on to speak 
 as follows : ' Now, this excludes as unessential much of 
 the criticism which is bestowed on the New Testament. 
 What it excludes is those questions as to the exact date, the 
 real authorship, the first publication, the rank of priority of 
 the Gospels, on which so much thought is by many bestowed, 
 questions which have a great attraction for critics, which 
 are 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 really be 
 settled, the data are insufficient And for our purpose they 
 are not essential.' And we concluded by saying : ' In short, 
 to know accurately the history of our documents is impossi- 
 ble ; 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? 
 
 As to the character of the documents, however, we added 
 this : ' It must be remembered that of none of the re- 
 corders have we, probably, the very original record. The 
 record, when we first get it, has passed through at least half
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 97 
 
 a century, 01 more, of oral tradition, and through more than 
 one written account.' 
 
 Nevertheless, we thought that in the Fourth Gospel we 
 found, after all these deductions had been made as to the 
 capacity of the Gospel-reporters and the quality of the 
 Gospel-documents, a special clue in one most important 
 respect to the line really taken by Jesus in his teaching. A 
 Gospel-writer, having by nature his head full of the external 
 evidence from miracles, would never, we said, have of his 
 own invention insisted on internal evidence as what, above 
 all, proves a doctrine. ' 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 
 discourse than to import into it, they were themselves so 
 wholly preoccupied with the evidence from miracles.' But 
 we find in the Fourth Gospel a remarkable insistence upon 
 the internal evidence for the doctrine promulgated by Jesus. 
 Here then we certainly come, we said, upon a trace, too 
 little marked by the reporters in general, of the genuine 
 teaching of Jesus ; and this gives a peculiar eminency and 
 value to the Fourth Gospel 
 
 All this is contested ; some of it by one set of critics, 
 some of it by another. Some critics will not allow that Jesus 
 was over the heads of his reporters. The author of Super- 
 natural Religion, far from thinking that the Fourth Gospel 
 puts us in a special way on the trace of Jesus, declares that 
 it ' gives a portrait of Jesus totally unlike that of the Synop- 
 tics,' contrasts ' the dogmatic mysticism and artificial dis- 
 courses of the one ' with ' the sublime morality and simple 
 eloquence of the other,' assigns, in short, the entire supe- 
 riority to the Synoptics. On the other hand, the critics in 
 the opposite camp, critics of so-called orthodox views, will 
 by no means allow that in our Four Gospels we have not 
 
 H
 
 98 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 the very original record ; or that they went through the 
 period of incubation and of gradual rise into acceptance 
 which we suppose. From the end of the first century of our 
 era there was, according to these critics, a Canon of the 
 New Testament, and our Four Gospels formed the Gospel 
 part of it 
 
 But, above all, it is contested, and in the most practical 
 way possible, that inquiries as to the exact date, the real 
 authorship, the first publication, the rank of priority, and so 
 forth, of our Four Gospels, can with any truth be called, as 
 we have called them, unessential, or that the data are insuf- 
 ficient, as we have said they are, for ever really settling such 
 questions. Whoever reads German will know that there 
 exists a whole library of German theological works addressed 
 to these questions ; and that, far from being treated as 
 questions which cannot really be settled, they are in general 
 settled in these works with the greatest vigour and rigour. 
 Gradually these works are getting known here, partly by 
 translation, partly by their influence upon English writers. 
 The author of Supernatural Religion has nourished him- 
 self upon them, and has thrown himself with signal energy, 
 and with very considerable success, into that course of 
 inquiry which these works pursue. He occupies a volume 
 and a half with this line of inquiry, and he has at any rate 
 succeeded, one can see, in giving unbounded satisfaction to 
 the Liberal world, both learned and unlearned. 
 
 What, then, is the reader of Literature and Dogma to 
 think? That on these points, which we treated as not 
 admitting of complete settlement, one can, on the contrary, 
 attain full and absolute certainty ? That the Fourth Gospel, 
 which we treated as affording a special clue to the line of 
 evidence insisted on by Jesus, is, on the contrary, a guide 
 utterly misleading? And, finally, that the investigations 
 which we treated as unessential, are, on the contrary, all.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON, 99 
 
 important, and that it behoves him to go eagerly into 
 them? 
 
 In determining his answer to these questions, he will do 
 well to keep in mind what is the one object we set before 
 him in the present inquiry : to enjoy the Bible and to turn it 
 to his benefit. Whatever else he may propose to himself in 
 dealing with the Bible, this remains his one proper object 
 In another order of interest, the poetry of Homer supplies 
 here a useful illustration for us. Elaborate inquiries have 
 been raised as to the date, authorship, and mode of compo- 
 sition of the Homeric poems. Some writers have held, too, 
 and have laboriously sought to prove, that there is a hidden, 
 mystical sense running all through them. All this sort of 
 disquisition, or at any rate some department of it, is nearly 
 sure to catch at one time or other the attention of the reader 
 of Homer, and to tempt and excite him. But, after all, the 
 proper object for the reader of the Homeric poems remains 
 this : to enjoy Homer, and to turn him to his benefit In 
 dealing even with Homer, we say, this is found true, and 
 very needful to be borne in mind ; with an object where 
 yet the main interest is properly intellectual. How much 
 more does it hold true of the Bible ! where the main interest 
 is properly not intellectual, but practical. 
 
 Therefore our reader has still his chief work with the 
 Bible to do, after he has settled all questions about its mode 
 of composition, if they can be settled. This makes it un- 
 desirable for him to spend too much time and labour on 
 these questions, or indeed on any collateral questions what- 
 ever. And he will observe, moreover, that as to the rules 
 with which he starts in setting himself to feel and apply the 
 Bible, he is practically just in the same position when he has 
 read and accepted our half dozen lines about the composi- 
 tion of the Gospels, as when he has read the volume and 
 a half devoted to it in Supernatural Religion. For the 
 
 n 2
 
 loo COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 result is the same : that the record of the sayings and doings 
 of Jesus, 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. So, too, a man is practically in 
 the same position when he has read and accepted our half 
 dozen pages about miracles, as when he has read the half 
 volume in which the author of Supernatural Religion 
 professes to establish a complete induction against them. 
 For the result reached is in both cases the same: that 
 miracles do not really happen. And we suppose our reader 
 to be ready enough to admit what we say both of miracles 
 and of the condition in which the Gospel-record reaches us. 
 For our book is addressed to those inclined to doubt the 
 Bible-testimony, and to attribute to its documents and 
 assertions not too much authority, but too little. 
 
 When, however, our reader has accepted what we say 
 about the untrustworthiness of miracles and the looseness of 
 the Gospel-record, his real work has still to begin. His 
 work, in our view, is to learn to enjoy and turn to his 
 benefit the Bible, as the Word of the Eternal. It would be 
 inexcusable in us, therefore, to give him more preliminary 
 trouble than we can help, by the elaborate establishment of 
 conclusions where he is with us already, or which he is 
 quite disposed to take from us on trust 
 
 No; for the reader whom Literature and Dogma has 
 in view, learned discussions of the date, authorship, and 
 mode of composition of this or that Bible-document, 
 whether complete certainty can be attained in them or 
 whether it cannot, are, as we called them, unessential. 
 Even the question of the trustworthiness of the Fourth 
 Gospel is not an essential question for him. For the value 
 of the Fourth Gospel, as we think, is that whereas Jesus was 
 far over the heads of all his reporters, he was in some 
 respects better comprehended by the author of this Gospel
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. i ol 
 
 than by the Synoptics ; the line of internal evidence which 
 Jesus followed in pressing his doctrines is better marked. 
 But still the all-important thing to seize in Jesus is his 
 method, and his secret, and the element of mildness and 
 sweet reasonableness in which they both worked; and these 
 are perfectly well given in the Synoptics. If we lose the 
 Fourth Gospel, we do not lose these. All we lose is a little 
 lifting up of that veil with which the imperfection of the 
 reporters, and their proneness to demand miracles, to rely 
 on miracles, have overspread the real discourse and doings 
 of Jesus. 
 
 2. 
 
 Nevertheless, according to the buoyant and immortal 
 sentence with which Aristotle begins his Metaphysics, All 
 mankind naturally desire knowledge. When discussions 
 about the Canon of the New Testament are so rife, the 
 reader of Literature and Dogma may well wish to know 
 what he may most reasonably think touching the origin and 
 history of those documents to which he is so often referred 
 by us. More particularly may he wish to know this about 
 that wonderful document which has exercised such a potent 
 fascination upon Christendom, the Fourth Gospel Luther 
 called it ' the true head-gospel : ' it is hardly too much to 
 say that for Christendom it has been so. The author of 
 Supernatural Religion speaks contemptuously of its dog- 
 matic, mysterious, and artificial discourses ; but its chief 
 opponents have spoken of it with more respect. Strauss is 
 full of admiration of the Fourth Gospel for the artistic skill 
 of its composition ; Baur, for its spiritual beauty. The 
 reader of Literature and Dogma cannot but be interested 
 in getting as near as he can to the truth about such a 
 document, the object of criticisms so diverse. 
 
 We will take him, then, by the same road which we
 
 102 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 travelled ourselves, when we sought to ascertain how stood 
 the truth about the New Testament records, so far as it 
 could be known. We shall suppose him to come to this 
 inquiry as we did ourselves ; absolutely disinterested, with 
 no foregone conclusion at the bottom of one's mind to start 
 with, no secondary purpose of any kind to serve ; but with 
 the simple desire to see the thing, so far as this may be 
 possible, as it really is. We ourselves had not, indeed, so 
 much at stake in the inquiry as some people. For whenever 
 the Gospels may have been written, and whether we have in 
 them the very words of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or 
 not, we did not believe the reporters of Jesus capable, in 
 either case, of rendering Jesus perfectly; he was too far 
 above them. 
 
 In England the evidence as to the Canon of the Gospels 
 ought to be well judged, if it be true, as Sir Henry Maine 
 thinks, that the English law of evidence by its extreme 
 strictness has formed English people to be good judges of 
 evidence. Two things, however, must everywhere, if they 
 are found present, impede men in judging questions of 
 evidence well. One is, a strong bias existing, before we try 
 the questions, to answer them in a certain manner. Of 
 Biblical criticism with this bias we have abundance in 
 England In examining the evidence as to the literary 
 history of the New Testament, our orthodox criticism does 
 not, in fact, seek to see the thing as it really is, but it holds 
 a brief for that view which is most convenient to the 
 traditional theology current amongst us. We shall not 
 blame this criticism. The position of the critic, the circum- 
 stances under which he writes, are perhaps such as to make 
 his course inevitable. But his work, produced under such 
 conditions, cannot truly serve men's need, cannot endure 
 long; it is marked with death before it is born. 
 
 The other obstacle to a sound judgment of the evidence
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 103 
 
 respecting the Canon arises when people make too much of 
 a business of such inquiries, give their whole life and 
 thoughts too exclusively to them, and treat them as if they 
 were of paramount importance. One can then hardly resist 
 the temptation of establishing certainties where one has no 
 right to certainty; of introducing into the arrangement of 
 facts a system and symmetry of one's own, for which there 
 are no sufficient data. How many a theory of great vigour 
 and rigour has in Germany, in the Protestant faculties of 
 theology, been due to this cause! A body of specialists is 
 at work there, who take as the business of their lives a class 
 of inquiries like the question about the Canon of the 
 Gospels. They are eternally reading its literature, reading 
 the theories of their colleagues about it; their personal 
 reputation is made by emitting, on the much-canvassed 
 subject, a new theory of their own. The want of variety 
 and of balance in their life and occupations impairs the 
 balance of their judgment in general. Their special subject 
 intoxicates them. They are carried away by theorising; 
 they affirm confidently where one cannot be sure; and, in 
 short, prove by no means good and safe judges of the 
 evidence before them. 
 
 In France and England people do not, certainly, in 
 general err on the side of making too great a business of 
 this particular specialty. In general we too much neglect 
 it, and are in consequence either at the mercy of routine, or 
 at the mercy of the first bold innovator. Of Biblical 
 learning we have not enough. Yet it remains true, as we 
 have said already, and a truth never to be lost sight of, that 
 in the domain of religion, as in the domain of poetry, the 
 whole apparatus of learning is but secondary, and that we 
 always go wrong with our learning when we suffer ourselves 
 to forget this. The reader of Literature and Dogma will 
 allow, however, that we did not there intrude any futile
 
 104 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 exhibition of learning to draw off his attention from the one 
 fixed object of that work religion. We did not write for 
 a public of professors ; we did not write to interest the 
 learned and curious. We wrote to restore the use and en- 
 joyment of the Bible to plain people, who might be in 
 danger of losing it We hardly subjoined a reference or 
 put a note; for we wished to give nothing of this kind 
 except what a plain reader, busy with our main argument, 
 would be likely to look for and to use. Our reader will 
 trust us, therefore, if we now take him into this subject of 
 the criticism of the Canon, not to bury him in it, not to 
 cozen him with theories of vigour and rigour, not to hold 
 a brief for either the Conservative side or the Liberal, not 
 to make certainties where there are none ; but to try and 
 put him in the way of forming a plain judgment upon the 
 plain facts of the case, so far as they can be known. 
 
 Let us, then, come to the Canon. And as the New 
 Testament follows the Old and depends upon it, and since 
 about the Old Testament, too, we had in Literature and 
 Dogma a great deal to say, our reader will wish, perhaps, 
 before going into the question of the New Testament, to see 
 brought together first, in the shortest possible summary, what 
 he may reasonably think of the Canon of the Old. 
 
 The Law and the Prophets are often mentioned in the 
 New Testament. But we also find there a threefold division 
 of the Old Testament Scriptures : Law, Prophets, Psalms. 1 
 And the Greek translator of the lost Hebrew book of the 
 Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, or, as we call it, Ecclesiasticus, 
 who writes in the latter half of the second century before Christ, 
 
 1 Luke, xxiv, 44. rd yfypafififva ir ry v6p.tf VicDUfftvs Kal TOIS
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 105 
 
 speaks of the law, and the prophecies, and the rest of the books. ' 
 Here we have the Bible of the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 And, indeed, the writer calling himself Daniel, whose date 
 is between the translator of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, and 
 this translator's grandfather, who composed it, in a passage 
 wrongly translated in our version, designates the body of 
 Old Testament Scriptures by a word answering to our very 
 word Bible? Can we trace, without coming down below the 
 Christian era to late and untrustworthy Jewish traditions, 
 how this Bible came together ? 
 
 We can. In the second Book of the Maccabees, dating 
 probably from much the same time as our Greek Ecclesias- 
 ticus, the writer, telling the Egyptian Jews of the purification 
 of the Temple at Jerusalem after the Maccabean victories, 
 and of the revival of Jewish religion, says that Nehemiah, 
 who with Ezra had accomplished the famous restoration of 
 Jewish religion three centuries before, that Nehemiah, as 
 was related in his writings and commentaries, founding a 
 library, brought together in addition the things concerning the 
 kings and prophets, and David's things, and letters of kings 
 about offerings.* Offerings to the Temple are here meant, 
 such as those of King Seleucus which the Maccabean his- 
 torian mentions in his next chapter. 4 At the rebuilding 
 of the Temple, gifts of this kind from friendly foreign kings 
 had a peculiar importance. The letters concerning them 
 could not, however, merit a permanent place in the Bible, 
 and they dropped out of it. But the other writings which 
 Nehemiah is said to have ' brought together in addition ' to 
 
 1 & v6fj.os, Kal at vpo<f>riTftai, Kal ret A.OITT& riav /3(/3AiW. Prologue 
 to Ecclesiasticus, in the Septuagint. 
 
 2 Daniel, ix, 2. 
 
 8 KaTa^a\\6fievos fri$\iof)T]KTit>, tirHrvvfiyayf rck irepl rStv 
 Kal irpo<$>tiT<av, KO.\ rck rov Aoin'5, /col ifitrr6\as /3acnAeW irtpl bv 
 II Maccabees, ii, 13. 
 
 4 II Maccabees^ iii, 3.
 
 io6 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 the stock of already recognised Scriptures, that is, to the 
 La\v, answer to that second instalment of Scriptures, which 
 did really, from Nehemiah's time onwards, obtain authority 
 at Jerusalem. They comprise the Books of Judges, Samuel, 
 and Kings, for the ' things concerning the kings;' the Books 
 of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets, 
 for 'the prophets;' and the collection of the Psalms, called 
 in general after the famous name of the royal Psalmist, 
 David, for ' David's things.' 
 
 But the Maccabean historian then proceeds : ' In like 
 manner also Judas (Maccabeus) brought together in addition 
 all the things that were lost by reason of the war we had, 
 and they remain with us.' 1 Now, this further addition to 
 the stock of recognised Scriptures corresponds to the third 
 instalment of Scriptures, some of them of then recent date, 
 like the Book of Daniel, others much older, like the Book 
 of Job, which was received and authorised at Jerusalem. It 
 comprehended exactly the same books, and no more, that 
 our Bibles add to the books said to have been ' brought 
 together' by Nehemiah, and to the Pentateuch and the 
 Book of Joshua. But the order of the later books in the 
 Hebrew Bible was by no means the same as it is in ours, and 
 to this we shall return presently. 
 
 The Law itself, the Thora, the first of the three great 
 divisions of the Hebrew Bible, whom shall we call as evi- 
 dence for it ? The founder of the second division, Nehe- 
 miah himself. He has told us how at Jerusalem, after the 
 restoration, ' the people gathered themselves together as one 
 man into the street that was before the water-gate, and they 
 spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of 
 Moses ; and Ezra the priest brought the law, and he read 
 therein from the morning until mid-day, before the men and 
 
 1 II Maccabees, ii, 14. faffafous 5* KO! 'lovSoy rcfc StaireirrcaKSra 
 iroXfjjLov rbv yfyov6ra ^fuf iviffw^yayf irdv-ra, cal tffnv trap' rif
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 107 
 
 che women and those that could understand; also day by 
 day, from the first day unto the last day, he read in the book 
 of the law of God.' l This book was Israel's history from 
 its first beginning down to the conquest of the Promised 
 Land, as this history stands written in the Pentateuch and 
 the Book of Joshua. To that collection many an old book 
 had given up its treasures and then itself vanished for ever. 
 Many voices were blended there; unknown voices, speaking 
 out of the early dawn. In the strain there were many pas- 
 sages familiar as household words, yet the whole strain, in 
 its continuity and connexion, was to the mass of the people 
 at that time new and affecting. ' All the people wept when 
 they heard the words of the law.' 2 And the Levites, in 
 stilling them, gave in one short sentence the secret of Israel's 
 religion and of the religion of the Bible : ' Mourn not, nor 
 weep,' they said ; ' the joy of the Eternal is your strength? 3 
 Now, this revival of religion in Jerusalem, under Ezra 
 and Nehemiah, had had its counterpart in a former revival, 
 two centuries earlier, under King Josiah. In Josiah's dis- 
 covery of the book of the law, and his solemn publication 
 of it to the people, we have the original consecration of a 
 written historic record embodying the law; we have the 
 nucleus of our existing Bible. In repairing the Temple, 
 ' Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord by 
 the hand of Moses. Then Hilkiah delivered the book to- 
 Shaphan ; Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying : Hilkiah 
 the priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read it 
 before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had 
 heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes. And 
 the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men 
 of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests 
 and the Levites, and all the people great and small, and he 
 
 1 Nehemiah, viii, I, 2, 3, 18. 2 Nehem., viii, 9. 
 
 * Nehem., viii, 9, 10.
 
 io8 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant 
 that was found in the house of the Lord. And he caused 
 all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to 
 it* l The centre-piece of Josiah's reading was, in all proba- 
 bility, a new book, Deuteronomy ; as an edifying summary, 
 from the point of view of the time then present, 8 of the 
 chosen people's early history and of its covenant with God. 
 Around Deuteronomy the rest of the Pentateuch and the 
 story of Joshua's conquest gathered. Many old books of 
 the Hebrew nation contributed, as we have said, their 
 contents to them. Of some of the books we have still 
 the names ; but when once their substance had been secured 
 for ever in the Thora, their function was at an end, and they 
 perished. Among the devout Jews of the Captivity, severed 
 from the Holy Land and the Temple services, this first 
 instalment of the Bible, this ' volume of the book ' of which 
 a Psalmist of the exile speaks, 3 became firmly established. 
 It came back with them at the Return, a consecrated autho- 
 rity; and from this book it was that Ezra read to the people. 
 Do we inquire for the original nucleus of the Thora 
 itself, for the Law as in its earliest written form it existed, 
 in the primitive times when writing was scarce and difficult, 
 and documents were short, and readers were few? This 
 also we can find. It was the ' Book of the Law,' consisting 
 probably of the Decalogue, and of some other portions 
 besides the Decalogue of what we now find in Exodus, ' put 
 
 1 II Chronicles, xxxiv, 14, 15, 18, 19, 30, 32. See also II Kings, 
 xxii, xxiii. 
 
 " Chapters xxxi and xxxii of Deuteronomy, if we read them with 
 attention, tell us the book's date. They belong to the revival under 
 Josiah in the seventh century, nearly a hundred years after the ruin and 
 captivity of the house of Israel, and with ' the line of Samaria and the 
 plummet of the house of Ahab' threatening also Jerusalem and the 
 coyal house of Judah. 
 
 1 Pt. zl. 7.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 109 
 
 in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord.' ! The 
 'testimony ' thus laid up before the Lord and guarded by 
 the priests and Levites, was given to the kings at their ac- 
 cession and solemnly accepted by them.' 2 
 
 The arrangement of the Hebrew Bible corresponds with 
 this its history and confirms it. Only we must add, that 
 from each of the two earlier collections the last book was 
 taken, and was employed to serve as an introducer to the 
 collection which followed. Thus the Pentateuch, or five 
 books of Moses, stood alone as the 'Thora.' This first 
 great instalment of the Bible Samaria, as is well known, 
 received from Jerusalem, but would receive nothing more. 
 The Book of Joshua stood at the head of the second instal- 
 ment of the Bible, the eight books of Prophets, ' Nebiim/ 
 as they were called. For, indeed, prophecy and the prophet 
 were the force and glory of Israel's religion ; and the Books 
 of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, which we call his- 
 torical, were at Jerusalem prized chiefly as the records of 
 many a word and deed of prophets anterior to the age of 
 literary prophetic compositions, and went by the name of 
 Earlier Prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the book 
 of the Minor Prophets, were called the four Later Prophets. 
 
 The third division of the Bible, received from the time 
 of Judas Maccabeus onward, had the name of ' Ketubim/ 
 translated by Jerome Hagiographa, but simply meaning 
 Writings, Scriptures. These are ' the rest of the books,' 
 mentioned by the translator of Ecclesiasticus. They were 
 nine in number, and the twenty-two books of the now com- 
 pleted Canon thus answered to the twenty-two letters of the 
 Hebrew alphabet. At the head of the nine was placed the 
 last book of the second formation of authorised Scriptures, 
 ' the things of David,' the Psalms. This admirable book with 
 
 1 Deuteronomy, xxxi, 26. 
 1 II Kings i xi, 12 j Deut. t xvii, 18
 
 I io GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 its double merits, merit prophetic and religious, and merit 
 poetic and literary, might well serve to usher in and 
 commend a series of mixed character. Early works of the 
 highest poetical value, not hitherto included in the Canon, 
 such as the Book of Job, this series adopted and saved ; 
 early works, also, of the highest ethical value, such as the 
 Book of Proverbs. It adopted contemporary works also, 
 like the Book of Daniel; works which reflected and power- 
 fully engaged, as we can see by the prominence of the Book 
 of Daniel at the Christian era, the feelings of the time. 
 It adopted works like the Book of Ezra, which glorified 
 Jerusalem, and deeply interested the Temple-hierarchy 
 whose sanction made the books canonical. But in gravity 
 and indispensableness for the proper religion of the Old 
 Testament, this late instalment of ' the remaining writings,' 
 * the rest of the books,' cannot, after we leave the Psalms, 
 in general quite rank with the two earlier instalments 
 of Law and Prophets. Simply to recite the last names in 
 the Hebrew Canon is to mark sufficiently this somewhat 
 inferior character of the final gleanings. The last books in 
 the Hebrew Bible are not, as in ours, the Minor Prophets ; 
 they are Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. 
 
 During the two centuries between Judas Maccabeus and 
 the fall of Jerusalem, materials for a fourth instalment of 
 Scriptures accumulated. In the deep spiritual agitation of 
 those times, religious books which met the needs of the 
 moment, and which spoke a modern language easy to be 
 read and to be understood, were greatly in request Par- 
 ticularly was this the case among the Greek Jews, and at a 
 distance from Jerusalem. The hierarchy at Jerusalem had 
 its authorised list ; but at Alexandria or in the provinces 
 additional Scriptures were freely read and became popular. 
 The additions to Daniel and Esther, the Book of Baruch, 
 the Book of Tobit, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, almost all the
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. in 
 
 books which we find in our Apocrypha, were Scriptures of 
 this class. Into the Greek Bible, the Bible for the great 
 world and in the then universal language, they made good 
 their entrance. Other new Scriptures, which did not make 
 their way into the Greek Bible, we find elsewhere. The 
 ^Ethiopian Bible preserved the Book of Enoch. Some of 
 these books were earlier than books admitted to the Hebrew 
 Canon. Some, like the Book of Wisdom, were very late, 
 and existed in Greek only. But they answered to the 
 wants of their time, and they spoke its language. Resur- 
 rection, the great word of the New Testament, never appears 
 in the canonical books of the Old ; it appears in the Apo- 
 crypha. Many of these works were edifying and excellent 
 We can trace in the New Testament their popularity and 
 their strong influence ; indeed, the Book of Enoch is quoted 
 in the New Testament as a genuine Scripture. 1 At the 
 Christian era, then, these books were knocking, we may say, 
 for admission into the Hebrew Canon. And, undoubtedly, 
 if Christianity had not come when it did, and if the Jewish 
 state had endured, the best of them would have been (and 
 with good reason) admitted. But with Christianity came 
 the end of the Jewish state, the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
 and the door was shut 
 
 For the stronghold on Mount Moriah was now gone; 
 the Bible of the ancient people remained the one strong- 
 hold of its religion. It is well known with what rigidity 
 Rabbinism established itself in this stronghold. At first it 
 even bethought itself of sacrificing what might seem weak 
 points in the received Scripture, like the Book of Eccle- 
 siastes and the Song of Solomon. They were retained, 
 however, and the worship of the letter of Scripture, which 
 then set in with full force, was extended to them also. 
 But that worship extended not to Scriptures outside the 
 1 Epistle of Jude, verse 14.
 
 Ill GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Hebrew Canon, as this Canon had been for the last time 
 formally approved in the days of Judas Maccabeus. The 
 enlarged Greek Bible was the Bible of Christians, and Greek 
 was the language of Christianity. Rabbinism now deplored 
 the day when the Bible had been translated into Greek. It 
 retranslated it into Greek in an anti-Christian sense; it 
 sternly rejected the Greek additions; it mocked at the 
 ignorant Christians who received them. But the Greek 
 Bible, with all its books, had become dear to Christians, 
 and was by the Christian Church preserved. Learned men, 
 like Origen and St. Jerome, knew well the difference 
 between the books of the Apocrypha and the books of 
 the Hebrew Canon. But this difference was by the mass 
 of Christians unregarded or unknown, and the Latin Bible 
 inevitably reproduced the books of the Greek. The African 
 Synods, at the end of the fourth century, mark the time 
 when the distinction between the Apocrypha and the 
 Hebrew Canon had become so generally obliterated in 
 the West, that the books of both were stamped by the 
 Church as having one and the same canonical authority. 
 
 At the Reformation, Protestantism reverted to the He- 
 brew Canoa But the influence of the Latin Vulgate, and 
 of the Greek Bible, still shows itself in the order of the 
 books. The Greek, and the Vulgate following it, had 
 adopted, in place of the old and significant tripartite divi- 
 sion into Law, Prophets, and Writings, a division into prose 
 books and poetical books, the prophets being counted with 
 the latter ; and in arranging the books of each class, the 
 order of date was followed. 1 This innovation our Bibles 
 retain ; and therefore our Old Testament ends with the last 
 of the poetical books, Malachi, instead of ending with the 
 last of the Ketubim, Chronicles. 
 
 1 The Maccabees only, though a prose book of history, is in the 
 Vulgate printed by itself at the end of the poetical books.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 113 
 
 Thus we have summarised, for the benefit of the reader 
 of Literature and Dogma, the history of the Canon of that 
 Old Testament to which we are so often sending him. The 
 points in the history of the Canon of the New Testament 
 require to be treated with more of detail, for our positions 
 have here to be made good against objectors. 
 
 We know how the Scriptures of the Old Testament are 
 appealed to in the New. They are appealed to as an 
 authority established and recognised, just as the Bible is 
 now appealed to by us. But when did the New Testament, 
 in that form in which we possess it, come to be recognised 
 as Scripture like the Old Testament? Clearly the docu- 
 ments composing it appeared at different times, and were 
 not first published to the world as one authorised whole 
 called the New Testament. Clearly there was a time when 
 they had not acquired the authority they possessed after- 
 wards ; when people preferred, for instance, to any written 
 narrative, the oral relations of eye-witnesses. One of the. 
 earliest and most important witnesses to the written narra- 
 tives, Papias, is a distinct witness, at the same time, to this 
 preference for oral relations. ' I did not consider,' he says, 
 speaking in the first half of the second century after Christ, 
 about the year 140, ' I did not consider things from books 
 to be of so much good to me, as things from the living and 
 abiding voice.' l And he goes on to mention his communi- 
 
 1 See Papias in Eusebii Historia Ecclesiastica, iii, 39. ov yap ri 
 iic TUV fiift\i<av T0ffovr6v /te u<$>f\eiv vire\dfj.0cu>ov t Sffoi> T&. irapet ^caa"r]S 
 Qcavrjs Kal fj.fvov<ri)s. The latter words are commonly taken to 
 mean merely the voice of living speakers, but they almost cer- 
 tainly contain a reminiscence of I Peter, i, 23, and of Isaiah, xl, 8, 
 and mean speakers who had heard the voice of Jesus. 
 
 I
 
 114 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 actions with those who had actually heard ' the disciples of 
 the Lord.' For Papias, then, there was not yet a body of 
 Scriptures fully answering to our New Testament, and 
 having like authority with the Old ; if there had been, 
 he would hardly have spoken in this fashion. And no man 
 can point to any exact moment and manner in which our 
 body of New Testament Scriptures received its authority. 
 But we can point to a moment after which we find our 
 present New Testament Canon in possession of undisputed 
 authority in the Church of the West, and before which we 
 do not. 
 
 We have mentioned the African Synods. The two 
 Synods of Carthage, the first of them held in the year 397 
 of our era, the second in the year 419, deliver the Canon 
 of the New Testament as we have it now. 1 All its books, 
 and no others, are canonical ; that is, they furnish the rule 
 of faith, they form a class by themselves, they are authorised 
 for public use. And so, as every one knows, they have con- 
 tinued. For the Eastern Church, a similar authoritative 
 enunciation of our Canon of the New Testament is first 
 found in the Festal Letter of St. Athanasius, of which the 
 date is probably A.D. 365. But an absence of fixed consent 
 as- to certain books goes on showing itself amongst Greek 
 Christians for long afterwards. Our present business, how- 
 ever, is with our own Western Christianity. 
 
 St. Jerome died in 420, the year after the second Synod 
 of Carthage. His Biblical labours and learning are celebrated; 
 he knew more about the Bible than any of his contem- 
 poraries. Cavillers he had, as have all men who bring new 
 criticism to disturb old habits ; but his orthodoxy was un- 
 
 1 The earlier Synod mentions the Epistle to the Hebrews apart, 
 though as Paul's ; the second Synod drops this distinction, and speaks 
 of Paul's Fourteen Epistles. ' The New Testament Canon of the 
 two Synods is in other respects the same.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 115 
 
 doubted. His Biblical publications were undertaken at a 
 Pope's request j and the first instalment of them, a corrected 
 Latin version of the Four Gospels, appeared in the year 383 
 with a prefatory letter addressed to the Pope himself. This 
 great churchman has left us his remarks on several of the 
 works which the African Synods were presently to include in 
 the Canon of the New Testament, and which have stood 
 there ever since, possessing in the eyes of Christendom a 
 like sacredness and authority with the rest of the Canon. 
 In reading him, we are to bear in mind the character of the 
 speaker. It is as if Dr. Pusey, with the reputation for learn- 
 ing and orthodoxy which we know him to have, and com- 
 missioned, besides, by the heads of the Church to revise the 
 Bible, were speaking of the Canon. St. Jerome, then, says of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews : ' The custom of the Latin 
 Christians does not receive it among the Canonical Scrip- 
 tures.' l Of the Apocalypse he says : ' The Greek Churches 
 use the same freedom in regard to John's Apocalypse.' 2 Of 
 the so-called Second Epistle of Peter he says : ' It is denied 
 by most to be his.' 3 Of the Epistle of James he says : ' It 
 is asserted to have been brought out by somebody else under 
 his name.' 4 Of the Epistle of Jude he says : ' Inasmuch 
 as the author appeals to the Book of Enoch, which is 
 apocryphal, the Epistle is rejected by most.' 5 Of the three 
 Epistles attributed to St. John, Jerome says : ' He wrote 
 one Epistle which is acknowledged by all churches and 
 
 1 Latinorum consuetude non recipit inter scripturas canonicas. 
 
 2 Nee Grascorum quidem ecclesise Apocalypsin Joannis eadem 
 libertate suscipiunt. 
 
 3 Secunda a plerisque ejus esse negatur. 
 
 4 Ab alio quodam sub nomine ejus edita asseritur. 
 
 5 Quia de libro Enoch, qui apociyphus est, in ea assumit testi- 
 monium, a plerisque rejicitur. 
 
 12
 
 ii6 GOD AND THE BIBLE, 
 
 scholars, but the remaining two are asserted to be by John 
 the Elder.' l 
 
 Now, all Jerome's sympathies were with what was ortho- 
 dox, ecclesiastical, regular. The works on which he has here 
 been remarking seemed to him good and edifying ; they had 
 been much used, and had inspired attachment. The ten- 
 dency in the Church was to admit them to canonicity, as the 
 African Synods did. Jerome wished them to be admitted. 
 He helped forward their admission by arguments in its 
 favour, some of them not a little strained. But what we 
 want the reader to observe is the entire upset which Jerome 
 gives to our popular notion of the Canon of the New 
 Testament ; to the notion of a number of sacred books, just 
 so many and no more, all alike of the most indisputable 
 authenticity, and having equal authority from the very first 
 It is true, they were about to get invested with this character, 
 but through the authority of the Church, and because, 
 while this authority was on the increase, learning and 
 criticism, amidst the miseries of the invasions and general 
 break-up then befalling Europe, languished and died 
 nearly out Already the African Synods, which may be 
 said to have first laid down authoritatively for our Western 
 Europe the Canon of the New Testament, imagined that 
 Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus were by Solomon, although 
 Wisdom was composed in Greek hardly half a century before 
 the Christian era. St. Augustine, who died ten years after St. 
 Jerome, was far too accomplished a man not to know, although 
 his studies had not lain in this special direction, how, in 
 general, the Canon of the New Testament had arisen, and 
 how great was the difference between the evidence for some 
 books and for others. But the authority of the Church was 
 enough for him. In a sentence, which for Paul would have 
 been inconceivable, he shows us how the idea of this 
 1 Reliquae autem duae Joannis presbyteri asseruntur.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 117 
 
 authority had by his time grown : ' / believe the Gospel 
 itselj] he says, 'only upon the authority of the Catholic 
 Church? J The Reformation arrived, and to Protestants the 
 authority of the Church ceased to appear all-sufficient for 
 establishing the canonicity of books of Scripture. Then grew 
 up the notion that our actual New Testament intrinsically 
 possessed this character of a Canon, the notion of its having 
 from the first been one sure and sacred whole as it stands, a 
 whole with all its parts equipollent ; a kind of talisman, as 
 we have elsewhere said, that had been handed to us straight 
 out of heaven. 
 
 Therefore the other day, when there was published for 
 the use of the young a Bible in which some parts of the 
 Scriptures were taken and others left out, the late Dean of 
 Carlisle, Dr. Close, wrote an indignant letter in blame of this 
 audacious attempt, as he thought it, to make distinctions in 
 what was all alike the Word of God. To very many his blame 
 will have seemed perfectly just. Nay, all that mechanical 
 employment of Scripture texts, which is so common in the 
 religious world, and so unhesitating, is due to just such a 
 notion of Scripture as the venerable Dean's. Yet how 
 evidently is the notion false ! Four hundred years after 
 Christ we have the last representative of Biblical learning 
 before the setting-in of mediaeval ignorance, we have the 
 Dr. Pusey of his time, a great churchman, orthodox, learned, 
 trusted, declaring, without the least concealment, the 
 essential difference in authority between some documents in 
 our New Testament and others ! For manifestly the differ- 
 ence in authority is great betv/een a document like the so- 
 called Second Epistle of Peter, rejected by most, and a docu- 
 ment like the Epistle to the Romans, which every churchman 
 accepted. 
 
 1 Ego evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae auctoritas 
 commoveret.
 
 Ii8 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 And the more we ascend to the times before St. Jerome, 
 to the primitive times, as they are called, the more does 
 this difference between the documents now composing the 
 Canon become visible. Churchmen like Eusebius and 
 Origen testify as clearly as Jerome to the non-acceptance, 
 in their time, of books now in the Canon, and do not, as 
 Jerome, plead for their acceptance. So that really, when 
 one comes to look into the thing, the common notion about 
 the Canon is so plainly false, that to take it for granted, as 
 the Dean of Carlisle did, and to found indignant denuncia- 
 tions upon it, will one day be resented as an outrage upon 
 common sense and notorious facts. It is like the Bishop of 
 Lincoln's allegation that ' episcopacy was an institution of 
 God himself; ' an allegation which might make one suppose 
 that in Genesis, directly after God had said Let there be light 
 (or, perhaps, even before it), he had pronounced, Let there be 
 bishops ! There are plenty of true reasons for the existence 
 of bishops without invoking false ones ; and the time will 
 come when thus to invoke the false ones solemnly and 
 authoritatively will shock public opinion. 
 
 As to the Canon of the New Testament, then, we see 
 that consent determined it ; that after the beginning of the 
 fifth century this consent may be regarded as established in 
 favour of the books of our actual Canon ; that before the 
 fifth century it was not yet fully established, and the most 
 eminent doctors in the Church did not hesitate to say so. 
 Consent depended on the known or presumed authenticity 
 of books as proceeding from apostles or apostolic men, from 
 the Apostles of Christ themselves or from their personal 
 followers. Some books of our Canon had not this consent, 
 even in Jerome's time; and of its not being certain in primi- 
 tive times that these books are what they are now commonly 
 said to be, we have thus the clearest evidence. If the Chris- 
 tian Church of the fourth century had believed it to be abso-
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 119 
 
 iutely certain that the Johannine Apocalypse was by the 
 Apostle John, or the second Petrine Epistle by the Apostle 
 Peter, no churchman would have rejected them. Some 
 books, then, in our New Testament Canon there plainly are 
 of which the authenticity is doubtful 
 
 We have given cases in which the want of consent is 
 grave. It is grave when we find it in churchmen ; it has its 
 weight even when it is found in heretics. Marcion did not use 
 St. Paul's Epistles to Timothy and Titus, while he used the 
 others. It is something against the genuineness ofthe Pastoral 
 Epistles that a fervent admirer of St. Paul in the first half of 
 the second century, should not have received them. It is 
 possible that Marcion may have rejected these epistles be- 
 cause they did not suit him. It is possible; but we know that 
 he and his party complained of the adulteration of the rule 
 of Christianity, and professed to revert to what was genuine; 
 it may be, therefore, that Marcion rejected the Pastoral 
 Epistles because he really thought them spurious. Or he 
 may have not used the Pastoral Epistles because they were 
 in his time not yet written. It is a case in which the 
 internal evidence for or against the authenticity of the 
 documents in question becomes of peculiar importance. 
 The Alogi, again, heretics of the second century, rejected 
 the Fourth Gospel. The authenticity of this Gospel, there- 
 fore, cannot be said to have such a security in general con- 
 sent as the authenticity of the First Gospel, which not even 
 heretics challenged. 
 
 Now to be indignant with those who, under such circum- 
 stances, will not take for granted the authenticity of books 
 in the New Testament Canon, is really unreasonable. We 
 have for the books in the Canon, it is sometimes said, as 
 good evidence as we have for the history of Thucydides ; 
 why not require the history of Thucydides to prove its 
 authenticity ? This will not bear a moment's examination.
 
 rso COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 The history of Thucydides tells us itself, in the most 
 explicit way possible, the name of its author, and what he 
 was, and what he designed in writing his work. Its 
 authenticity no one has challenged. To forge it under the 
 name of Thucydides no one had any interest But not one 
 of our Four Gospels says anywhere who its author was. 
 Heretics challenged the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, 
 and we have seen how documents now in the Canon, which 
 purport to be by this or that Apostle, were gravely suspected 
 in the Church itself. St. Paul himself, in the Second 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians, warns his converts not to let 
 themselves be ' troubled by letter as from us' thus indicating 
 that forgery of this kind was practised as to epistles. As to 
 gospels and acts it was practised too. Tertullian mentions 
 a detected case of it, forged Acts of Paul, authorising a 
 woman to baptize. The practice of forgery and interpola- 
 tion was notorious, and the temptation to it was great One 
 explicit witness is as good as twenty, and we will again take 
 for our witness a churchman, the ecclesiastical historian 
 Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, who died in the year 340. He 
 says that Scriptures were current ' put forth by the heretics 
 in the name of the Apostles, whether as containing the 
 Gospels of Peter and Thomas and Matthias, or those also 
 of any others besides these, or as containing the Acts of 
 Andrew and John and the other Apostles.' 1 
 
 The Gospels give us the sayings and doings of Jesus 
 himself, and are therefore of the highest importance. How 
 far back can we certainly carry the chain of established con- 
 sent in favour of our four canonical Gospels ? Let us begin 
 with St. Jerome, whom we have already quoted, and from 
 him let us go backwards. For St. Jerome our canonical 
 
 1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., iii, 25. ypafyks . . . 6v6fj.ari TWV 
 iaco<rr6\(av irpbs TUV alptriKuv irpo<pepofifvas, fjroi is Tlerpov /col oni-i 
 ical MarBla J) /ecu TIVCDV Trapa TOVTOVS t\\tav evayyt\ia x 
 is 'AfSpe'ou Kal 'Itadvvov /col rHiiv &AAw iatoffr6\<av Tpatts.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 121 
 
 four are already established : l Four Gospels whereof the 
 order is this : Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.' l That was at 
 the end of the fourth century. In the earlier part of the 
 same century, for Eusebius likewise, whom we have just 
 now cited to show the existence of spurious gospels, the 
 canonicity of our four was established. Let us follow back 
 the chain of great churchmen to the third century and to 
 Origen. He died A.D. 254. For him, too, our four 
 canonical Gospels are 'alone undisputed in the Church of 
 God upon earth,' 2 Let us ascend to the second century. 
 Irenseus wrote in the last quarter of it, and no testimony to 
 the Four Gospels of our Canon can be more explicit than 
 his. ' Matthew it was who, among the Hebrews, brought 
 out in their own language a written Gospel, when Peter and 
 Paul were preaching in Rome, and founding the Church. 
 Then, after their departure, Mark, the disciple and inter- 
 preter of Peter, he too delivered to us in writing what Peter 
 preached ; and Luke, moreover, the follower of Paul, set 
 down in a book the Gospel preached by Paul Then John, 
 the disciple of the Lord, who also lay on his breast, John 
 too published his Gospel, living at that time at Ephesus, 
 in Asia.' 3 And for Irenseus this number of four, which 
 the Gospels exhibit, has something fixed, necessary, and 
 
 1 Prcefat. ad Damasum. Quatuor Evangelia quorum ordo est iste : 
 Matthseus, Marcus, Lucas, Johannes. 
 
 2 Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., vi, 25. >rS>v rfffcrdpcav 
 fiiayyt \lcov, a Kal /J.6i>a avorrip^rjT< eanv ft TTJ vir'b ri>v ovpavbv 
 iKK\T](Tia TOV 6eov. 
 
 8 Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Ecdes., v, 8. & fiev 8ij WlarQcuos Iv 
 tots 'Epai'o<s TT) 5a avrwv 8iaAsKT<j> Kal ypa^v f^rjffjKev evayye\loi, 
 rov Hfrpov Kul TOV Hav\ov fi> 'PW/J.TI fva~fye\io/j.evcav Kal 0f/j.f\io^VTUti 
 rty lKK\i\aly.v. fjifTa. Se T^V TOVTUV to$oi>, Map/cos 6 /ta07jT^s Kal 
 ipfj.TfivfVT^s flerpov, Kal aurij ret vird Tltrpov K7]pv<Tff6fj.fva iyjpdipws 
 rifuy TrapaSe'ScoKe, *cal Aovxas 5i, 6 aK6\ov6os Tla.6\ov, T& far' txelvov 
 tcr)pvffff6/4fi>ov evayye\iov fv fti&\<f KarfBeTO. fireira 'Icadvmjs 6 jiaOrjTiJs 
 row Kvpiov, 6 Kal eirl TO ffrrjBos avrov avaveffiiiy, Kal ai>T^s f^SiaKe T!) 
 evyyf\toi>, iv 'E^eVy T^J Acrias OMTpifiaiv.
 
 12 J GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 sacred, 'like the four zones of our world, and the four 
 winds.' 
 
 Here then, about the year 180 of our era, we have from 
 a. great churchman the most express testimony to the 
 Four Gospels of our Canon. Higher than this we cannot 
 find a great churchman who gives it us. Ignatius does not 
 give it, nor Polycarp, nor Justin Martyr. But a famous 
 fragment, discovered by Muratori, the Italian antiquary, in 
 the monastery of Bobbio in North Italy, and published by 
 him in the year 1 740, carries us, perhaps, to an age a little 
 higher than that of Irenasus. The manuscript containing 
 this fragment is said to be of the eighth century, and is in 
 barbarous Latin. The monastery at Bobbio was founded 
 by St Columban, and it has been alleged that the barbarisms 
 in our fragment are due to the Irish monks who copied it 
 from the original Others have assigned to these barbarisms 
 an African source ; others, again, have supposed that the 
 fragment is a translation of a Greek original, Greek having 
 been the language of the Roman Church at the time when 
 the author of the fragment lived. However this may be, 
 the important matter is that the fragment, called, from its 
 finder and first publisher, the Fragment of Muratori, the 
 Canon of Muratori, gives us with tolerable nearness its 
 own date. It says that the Pastor of Hermas, a work 
 received as Scripture by many in the early Church, was 
 written ' quite lately, in our own times, while Pius, the brother 
 of Hermas, was filling the episcopal chair at Rome.' Pius 
 died in the year 157 of our era. If we believe what the 
 author of the fragment here tells us, we have only to ask 
 ourselves, therefore, what ' quite lately, in our own time ' 
 means. And the words can hardly, one must allow, mean 
 a time more than thirty years back from the time of the 
 person uttering them. This would give us the year 187 as 
 the latest date possible for the original of the fragment in
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 123 
 
 question ; and as there is no reason why we should put it at 
 the latest date possible, it seems fair to assign it to a time 
 some ten or twelve years, perhaps, before A.D. 187 ; that is, 
 to a date rather earlier than the date of the testimony of 
 Irenseus. 
 
 But the author of Supernatural Religion will not allow 
 the Canon of Muratori to be authentic, any more than he 
 will allow to be authentic two fragments of Claudius Apol- 
 linaris, bishop of Hierapolis, quoted in the Paschal Chroni- 
 cle, which show that Apollinaris, about the year 170 of our 
 era, knew and received the Fourth Gospel The author of 
 Supernatural Religion has a theory that the Fourth Gospel, 
 and, indeed, all the canonical Gospels, were not recognised 
 till a particular time. This theory the Canon of Muratori 
 and the fragments of Apollinaris do not suit ; so he rejects 
 them. There is really no more serious reason to be given 
 for his rejection of them. True, Eusebius gives a list of 
 some works of Apollinaris ; and the work on the Paschal 
 controversy, from which the two fragments are taken, is not 
 among them. But Eusebius expressly says that there were 
 other works of Apollinaris of which he did not know the 
 titles. True, Greek was the language of the Roman Church 
 in the second century ; but must we think a document 
 forged sooner than admit that a single Roman Christian 
 may have chanced to write in Latin, or that a document 
 written in Greek may have got translated ? No ; the one 
 real reason which the author of Supernatural Religion has 
 for rejecting these three pieces of evidence is, that they do 
 not suit his theory. And this leads us to say a word as to 
 the difference between the practice which we impose on our- 
 selves in dealing with evidence, and the practice followed 
 by critics with a theory. 
 
 For we suppose the reader of Literature and Dogma^ 
 for a while suspicious of the Bible, but now convinced that
 
 124 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 (to use Butler's famous phrase with a slight alteration) then 
 is something in it, nay, that there is a great deal in it, we 
 suppose him to find that there is a hot controversy about the 
 age and authenticity of many of the chief documents of the 
 New Testament, and to wish to know what to think about 
 them. Soon he will perceive that the controversy is in 
 general conducted by people who, in the first place, think 
 that for every question which can be started the answer can 
 be discovered, and who, in the second place, have a theory 
 which all things must be made to suit. Evidence is dealt 
 with in a fashion that no one would ever dream of who had 
 not a theory to warp him. In the so-called Epistle of 
 Barnabas, a work of the end of the first century, the words 
 many called, but few chosen, are quoted with the formula, as 
 it is written? implying that they are taken from Scripture. 
 The Greek words are the very same that we find in St. 
 Matthew, and no one without a theory to warp him would 
 doubt that the writer of the epistle quotes, not, indeed, 
 necessarily from our Gospel of St. Matthew, but from a 
 collection of sayings of Jesus. Dr. Volkmar, however, 
 maintains that what is here quoted as Scripture must be 
 a passage of the Apocrypha : There be many created, but few 
 shall be saved? Strauss applauds him, and says that ' beyond 
 all doubt ' this is so. And why ? Because, to cite a third 
 well-known critic, Dr. Zeller, ' if in a work of earlier date 
 than the middle of the second century we find a passage 
 quoted as Scripture, we may be sure that either the quota- 
 tion is not from the New Testament, or else the work is not 
 genuine ; because Scripture is not used for the New Testa- 
 ment till long after the middle of the second century.' 
 That is to say, because the New Testament is not generally 
 called Scripture till after the middle of the second century, 
 that it should occasionally have been called so before is im- 
 
 * II Esdras, viii, 3.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 125 
 
 possible. But the New Testament did not begin in one day 
 to be called Scripture by an Order in Council. There must 
 have been a time when to find it called so was comparatively 
 rare ; a time, earlier still, when it was exceedingly rare. But 
 at no time, after the written sayings of Jesus were first pub- 
 lished, can it have been impossible for a Christian to call 
 them Scripture. 
 
 The innovating critics are certainly the most conspicuous 
 offenders in this way, but the conservative critics are not to 
 be trusted either. Neander rejects, like the author of 
 Supernatural Religion^ a fragment of Apollinaris, and 
 rejects it for the very same reason : that it fails (though 
 from a different cause) to suit him. Bunsen (unaware that 
 by the Epistle to the Alexandrians, named in the Canon of 
 Muratori and stigmatised as apocryphal, the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews is probably meant) lays it down that ' it is quite 
 impossible this Epistle could have been omitted,' and sup- 
 poses that ' there is, in the middle of this barbarous transla- 
 tion or extract of the Greek original, a chasm, or omission, 
 respecting the Epistle to the Hebrews.' What may we not 
 put in or leave out when we take licence to proceed in this 
 fashion ? 
 
 Sick of special pleading both on one side and on the 
 other, the reader of Literature and Dogma, after a brief 
 experience of the impugners of the Canon and of its 
 defenders, will probably feel that what he earnestly desires, 
 and what no one will indulge him in, is simply to be per- 
 mitted to have the fair facts of the case, and to let them 
 speak for themselves. Here it is that we sympathise with 
 him and wish to aid him, because we had just the same 
 earnest desire ourselves after a like experience. And we 
 treat the evidence about the Canon with a mind resolutely 
 free and straightforward, determined to reject nothing be- 
 cause it does not suit us, and to proceed as we should
 
 126 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 proceed in a literary inquiry where we were wholly dis- 
 interested. In the first place, we confess to ourselves that a 
 great many questions may be asked about the New Testament 
 Canon to which it is impossible to give an answer. In the 
 second place, we own that it is something in favour of a fact 
 that it has been asserted, and that tradition delivers it. Men 
 do not, we acknowledge, in general use language for the pur- 
 pose of falsehood, but to communicate a matter faithfully. 
 Of course, many things may be said which we yet must 
 decline to receive, but we require substantial reasons for 
 declining, and not fantastic ones. The second Petrine 
 Epistle calls itself St. Peter's. But we find the strongest 
 internal evidence against its being his ; we know that 
 epistles were forged, and we find that its being his was in 
 the early Church strongly disputed. On the other hand, a 
 writer at the end of the first century quotes words of Jesus 
 as Scripture, and a writer towards the year 175 gives a list 
 of works then received in the Catholic Church as apostolical. 
 We see no strong natural improbability in their having done 
 so ; there is no external evidence against it, no suspicious 
 circumstance. And the criticism which, because it finds 
 what they say inconvenient, pronounces their words spu- 
 rious, interpolated, or with a drift quite other than their 
 plain apparent drift, we call fantastic. 
 
 So we receive the witness of the Fragment of Muratori 
 to the canonicity, about the year 175, of our four canonical 
 Gospels, and of those Gospels only. 1 We receive the wit- 
 ness of Claudius Apollinaris, a year or two earlier, to the 
 same effect He denies that St. Matthew assigns the Last 
 
 1 The Fragment begins with a broken sentence relating to the 
 Second Gospel, and continues : Tertio, evangelii librum secundum 
 Lucam. It gives St. John's Gospel as the fourth, and there can be no 
 room for doubt that it named Mark and Matthew before coming to 
 Luke.
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 127 
 
 Supper and the Crucifixion to the days which the Judaising 
 Christians supposed, and to which St. Matthew, it seems 
 certain, does assign them ; but to make him do so, says 
 Apollinaris, is to make 'the Gospels be at variance.' What- 
 ever we may think of his criticism, let us own that most 
 probably the Bishop of Hierapolis has here in his eye the 
 three Synoptics and St John. 
 
 But he is really our last witness. Ascending to the times 
 before him, we find mention of the gospel, of gospels, of 
 memorabilia * and written accounts 2 of Jesus by his Apostles 
 and their followers. We find incidents given from the life 
 of Jesus, sayings of Jesus quoted. But we look in vain in 
 Justin Martyr, or Polycarp, or Ignatius, or Clement of 
 Rome, either for an express recognition of the four 
 canonical Gospels, such as we have given from church- 
 men who lived later, or for a distinct mention of any one of 
 them. No doubt, the mention of an Evangelist's name is 
 unimportant, if his narrative is evidently quoted, and if we 
 recognise, without hesitation, his form of expression. Euse- 
 bius quotes words about John baptising in ^Enon, near to 
 Salim, and continues his quotation ; ' For John was not yet 
 cast into prison.' Whether Eusebius expressly mentioned 
 the Fourth Gospel or not, we might be sure that here he 
 was quoting from it. But the case is different with ' sayings 
 of the Lord.' These may be quoted either from oral tradi- 
 tion or from some written source other than our canonical 
 Gospels. We have seen from Papias how strong was at 
 first the preference for oral tradition ; and we know that of 
 written sources of information there were others besides our 
 canonical Gospels. Learned churchmen like Origen and 
 Jerome still knew them well ; they mention them, quote 
 
 1 a.irofwijuovfv/j.a.Ta & <f>W virb ruv airoffrd^uv ZVTOV KfiU rwv 
 
 i]o'dvTci>i> <TWTCT(ix0a. 
 ovyypdu/jiara.
 
 123 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 from them. The Gospel of the Hebrews or according to 
 the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the ^Egyptians, the 
 Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles, are thus men- 
 tioned. Again, there were the writings of which we quoted 
 some way back a list from Eusebius. 
 
 The Gospel of the Hebrews was of great antiquity and 
 currency ; it was held to be the original of our St. Matthew, 
 and often confounded with it The Ebionites are said 
 indifferently to receive no Gospel but that of the Hebrews, 
 and to receive no Gospel but that of Matthew. Jerome 
 found in Syria, and translated, an Aramaic version of this 
 old Gospel of the Hebrews, which he was at first disposed 
 to think identical with our St. Matthew ; afterwards, how- 
 ever, he seems to have observed differences. From this 
 Gospel are quoted incidents and sayings which we do not 
 find in the canonical Gospels, such as the light on 
 Jordan at Christ's baptism, already mentioned in our first 
 chapter ; the appearance of the Lord after his resurrection 
 to James, expressly recorded by Paul, but not in our Gospels ; 
 the words of Jesus to his startled disciples after the Handle 
 me and see of our Gospels : ' For I am not a bodiless ghost.' * 
 We know that this Gospel of the Hebrews was used by the 
 first generation of Christian writers after the apostolic age, 
 by Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Hegesippus. From it, or 
 from old gospels attributed to Peter or James, come other 
 sayings and stories strange to our Gospels, but in the 
 earliest times current as authentic. Such a story is that of 
 the birth of Jesus in a cave, mentioned by Justin, and 
 familiar to Christian art ; and such a saying is the saying of 
 Christ, Be ye approved bankers? quoted in the pseudo- 
 Clementine Homilies and the Apostolical Constitutions, 
 
 1 OVK flu), ^atufviov &.ffi&/j.a.TOV. 
 
 * flvftrBe Tpaire^iTat SdKifiot, or ylvta-Bc Si'/nuoi Tpcnrftfrcu. ID 
 Jerome's Latin : ' Estote probati nummularii.'
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 129 
 
 quoted by the Church historians Eusebius and Socrates, 
 and by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose, and 
 Jerome. 
 
 Well, then, how impossible, when the Epistle of Barnabas 
 simply applies the verse of the noth Psalm, The Lord said 
 unto my Lord, as Jesus applied it, or when it quotes simply 
 as ' Scripture ' the words Many called, but few chosen, how 
 impossible to affirm certainly that it refers to our canonical 
 Gospels, and proves that by the end of the first century our 
 Gospel-Canon was established ! Yet this is how Tischendorf 
 proceeds all through his book on the Canon. Wherever 
 he finds words in an early writer of which the substance is 
 in our Canonical Gospels, he assumes that from our canoni- 
 cal Gospels the writer took them, and that our Canon must 
 already have existed. We will not speak of Tischendorf 
 without remembering the gratitude and respect which, by 
 many of his labours, he has merited. But his treatment of 
 the question proposed by him, IVJien were our Gospels com- 
 posed 1 is really, to anyone who reads attentively and with a 
 fair mind, absurd. It is as absurd on the apologetic side, 
 as Dr. Volkmar's treatment of the quotation in the Epistle 
 of Barnabas, Many called, but few chosen, is on the attacking 
 side. Tischendorf assumes that the Epistle of Barnabas, 
 in applying the noth Psalm and in quoting Many called, 
 but few chosen, must needs be referring to our canonical 
 Gospels. But the writer of the Epistle of Barnabas gives 
 no reference at all for his application of the words of the 
 noth Psalm. For the words, Many called, but few chosen, 
 he refers simply to Scripture ; and he elsewhere calls, let 
 us add, the apocryphal Book of Enoch also Scripture. In 
 applying the noth Psalm he may have been going upon 
 oral tradition merely. In quoting Many called, but few chosen, 
 as Scripture, he was certainly quoting some written and 
 accepted authority, but what we cannot possibly say. 
 
 K
 
 130 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 In the times with which we are now dealing, there is no 
 quotation from any one of our Evangelists with his name, 
 such as in Irenseus and from his time forward is usual. 
 There is no quotation from the narrative of any one of the 
 Synoptics in which the manner of relating or tnrn of phrase 
 enables us to recognise with certainty the author. Sayings 
 and doings of Jesus are quoted, but there is nothing to 
 prove that they are quoted from our Gospels. Moreover, 
 almost always, however briefly they may be quoted, they 
 are not quoted quite as they stand in our Gospels. But it 
 is supposed that they are quoted from memory, freely and 
 loosely. The question then arises, is a Canon habitually 
 and uniformly quoted in this way ? If our Four Gospels 
 had existed in the time of Clement of Rome or of Justin 
 Martyr as the canonical Four, of paramount authority and in 
 the state in which we now have them, would these writers 
 have uniformly quoted them in the loose fashion in which 
 now, as is alleged, they do quote them ? 
 
 Here we will give, for the benefit of the reader of 
 Literature and J)ogma, who by this time is convinced, 
 we hope, that we endeavour to let the facts about the 
 Gospel-Canon fairly and simply speak for themselves, we 
 will give for his benefit a piece of experience which on 
 ourselves had a decisive effect The First Epistle attri- 
 buted to Clement of Rome is, as everyone knows, of high 
 antiquity and authority. It probably dates from the end of 
 the first century. Jerome tells us that it was publicly read 
 in church as authorised Scripture. It is included in the 
 Alexandrian manuscript of the New Testament, and one 
 may say that it was within an inch of gaining, and not 
 undeservedly, admission to our Canon. A good while ago, 
 in reading this Epistle with the disputes about the Canon of 
 the Gospels perplexing our mind, we came upon a quotation 
 of the beginning of the fifty-first Psalm. We read on, and
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON. 131 
 
 found that as much as the first sixteen verses, or nearly the 
 whole Psalm, was quoted. The Bible of Clement of Rome 
 was the Greek Bible, the version of the Seventy. ' Well, 
 then, here,' said we to ourselves, ' is a good opportunity for 
 verifying the mode of quoting the canonical Scriptures 
 which is followed by an early Christian writer.' So we took 
 the Septuagint, and went through the first sixteen verses of 
 the fifty-first Psalm. We found that Clement followed his 
 canonical original with an exactness which, after all we had 
 heard of the looseness with which these early Christian 
 writers quote Scripture, quite astonished us. Five slight 
 and unimportant variations were all that we could find 
 variations so slight as the omission of an and in a place 
 where it was not wanted. One knows, from Origen and his 
 labours of reformation, into how unsure a state the text of 
 the Greek Vulgate had in the second century fallen ; so 
 that this exactitude of Clement was the more surprising. 
 
 Now, shortly before we came upon the fifty-first Psalm, 
 we had remarked, in the thirteenth chapter of Clement's 
 Epistle, a cluster of sayings from the Sermon on the Mount. 
 We turned back with eagerness to them, and compared 
 them with the like sayings in St. Matthew and in St. Luke. 1 
 Neither in wording nor in order did the Epistle here 
 correspond with either of these Gospels ; the difference 
 was marked, although in such short, notable sayings, there 
 seems so little room for it. We turned to a longer cluster 
 of quotations from the Sermon on the Mount in Justin 
 Martyr's first Apology. It was with Justin Martyr precisely 
 as with Clement ; the wording and order in what he quoted 
 
 1 We give the passage from Clement, which the reader can com- 
 pare with the counterparts in Matthew and Luke for himself. ^AeeTre 
 'iva. Ae7j0rJT6 cupitrt Iva. a$e0j; fytiV. us iroteire, ovrus voir,Qiifffra.i v/juv. 
 o>y SiSore, OVTQIS So8j](reTa.i vfuv &s KplveTf, ovrcas KpiOfifffrai vjuv. oit 
 fcrQf, ovrtas xf"J <rTev ^ 1 7 ' Tat fyuV* $ n&ptf (JLfTpfiff, tv 
 crtTa.i vftly. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 differed remarkably from the wording and order of the 
 corresponding saying in our Gospels. The famous sentence 
 beginning, Render to Caesar, was quoted by Justin. Words 
 so famous might well have been expected to be current in 
 one form only, and their tallying in Justin with our Gospels 
 would not at all prove that Justin quoted them from our 
 Gospels. But even these words, as he quotes them, run 
 differently from the version in our Gospels. So that these 
 early writers could quote canonical Scriptures correctly 
 enough when they were Scriptures of the Old Testament, 
 but when they were Scriptures of the New they quoted them 
 in quite another fashion. 
 
 We examined a number of other passages, and found 
 always the same result, except in one curious particular. 
 Certain prophetic passages of the Old Testament were 
 quoted, not as they stand in the Septuagint, but exactly, or 
 almost exactly, as they stand in our Gospels ; at least, the 
 variations were here as slight as those of Clement quoting 
 from the Greek the fifty-first Psalm. Thus Justin quotes 
 the passage from Micah, And thou, Bethlehem, &c., almost 
 exactly as it is given in St. Matthew, although in the 
 Septuagint it stands otherwise ; and the passage from 
 Zechariah, They shall look on him wlwm they pierced, as it is 
 given in St John, although in the Septuagint it stands 
 otherwise. But this one point of coincidence, amid genera] 
 variation, indicates only that passages of prophecy where 
 the Greek Bible did not well bring out the reference to 
 Christ, were early corrected among Christians, so as to let 
 the reference appear ; and that the Messianic passages are 
 given in this corrected form both in our Gospels and in 
 Justin. For it is in these passages that a literal, or almost 
 literal, correspondence between them occurs, and in no 
 others. 
 
 This satisfied us, and we were henceforth convinced
 
 THE BIBLE-CANON: 133 
 
 that in the first two centuries, up to about the time of 
 Irenaeus, there existed beyond doubt a body of canonical 
 Scripture for Christian writers, and that they quoted from 
 it as men would naturally quote from canonical Scriptures. 
 Often they quote it literally and unmistakably ; and there- 
 fore their variations from it, though they are sometimes 
 greater, sometimes less, are yet no more than what may be 
 naturally explained as loose quoting, quoting from memory. 
 But this body of canonical Scripture was the Old Testament 
 The variations from our Gospels we found to be quite of 
 another character, and quite inexplicable in men quoting 
 from a Canon, only with some looseness occasionally. And 
 we felt sure, and so may the reader of Literature and 
 Dogma feel sure, that either no Canon of the Gospels, in 
 our present sense, then existed, or else our actual Gospels 
 did not compose that Canon. 
 
 However, the author of Supernatural Religion^ who has 
 evidently a turn for inquiries of this kind, has pursued 
 the thing much further. He seems to have looked out and 
 brought together, to the best of his powers, every extant 
 passage in which, between the year 70 and the year 170 of 
 our era, a writer might be supposed to be quoting one of 
 our Four Gospels. And it turns out that there is constantly 
 the same sort of variation from our Gospels, a variation 
 inexplicable in men quoting from a real Canon, and quite 
 unlike what is found in men quoting from our Four Gospels 
 later. It may be said that the Old Testament, too, is often 
 quoted loosely. True ; but it is also quoted exactly ; and 
 long passages of it are thus quoted. It would be nothing 
 that our canonical Gospels were often quoted loosely, if 
 long passages from them, or if passages, say, of even two or 
 three verses, were sometimes quoted exactly. But from 
 writers before Irenasus not one such passage of our canonical 
 Gospels can be produced so quoted. And the author of
 
 134 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Supernatural Religion, by bringing all the alleged quotations 
 forward, has proved it 
 
 The upshot of all this for the reader of Literature and 
 Dogma is, that our original short sentence about the record 
 of the life and words of Jesus holds good. The record, we 
 said, when we first get it, has passed through at least half a 
 century, or more, of oral tradition, and through more than on& 
 written account.
 
 135 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 
 
 EVIDENCE has three degrees of force : demonstration, 
 probability, plausibility. On very many questions which 
 German critics of the Gospel-record raise, and treat as if 
 they were matter for demonstration, demonstration cannot 
 really be reached at all. The data are insufficient for it. 
 Whether there was one original written Gospel, a single 
 schriftliches Urevangelium, or whether there was a plurality of 
 written sources, zMehrheitvon Quellen-Schriften, a favourite 
 question with these critics, is a question where demonstra- 
 tion is wholly out of our power. Whether the co-existence 
 in the First Gospel of passages which ' bear the stamp of 
 Jewish Particularism,' and of passages which breathe 'another, 
 freer spirit,' is due, as Dr. Schwegler maintains, to an incor- 
 poration of new and later elements with the original Gospel, 
 is a question not really admitting demonstration one way or 
 the other. Whether the Second Gospel, as Dr. Hilgenfeld 
 asserts and Baur denies, is ' an independent Petrine Gospel 
 representing the transition from the strict Judaic Christianity 
 of Matthew to the law- emancipated Paulinism of Luke;' 
 whether, as Dr. Volkmar contends, all our canonical Gospels 
 are ' pure tendence-writings of the at first kept under, at last 
 victorious Pauline spirit, 'can never be settled to demonstra- 
 tion, either in the affirmative or in the negative. Whether, 
 as Baur and Strauss confidently declare, the substitution by
 
 136 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Luke, in reporting a speech of Jesus, of adikia for Matthew's 
 anemia^ r of unrighteousness for iniquity \ ' metamorphoses a 
 Judaic outburst against Paul into a Paulinian outburst 
 against Judaic Christianity ; ' whether Luke's Sermon in the 
 Plain is meant to be opposed to the Sermon on the Mount 
 of Matthew, no one can ever prove, and no one can ever 
 disprove. The most that can be reached in these questions 
 is probability or plausibility ; and plausibility, such a display 
 of ingenuity as makes people clap their hands and cry Well 
 done! but does not seriously persuade them, is not much 
 worth a wise man's ambitioning. 
 
 There remains probability. But the probability of such a 
 thesis as that our four Gospels are ' pure tendence-writings 
 of the at first kept under, at last victorious Pauline spirit,' 
 does not depend on the demonstrable certainty of inferences 
 from any text or texts in them. It depends on considera- 
 tions drawn from experience of human nature, and from 
 acquaintance with the history of the human spirit, which 
 themselves guide our inferences from these texts. And what 
 is the great help for interpreting aright the experience of 
 human nature and the history of the human spirit, for getting 
 at the fact, for discovering what is fact and what is not ? 
 Sound judgment and common sense, bred of much conver- 
 sance with real life and with practical affairs. Now, much 
 may well be said in praise of the lives and labours of 
 German professors. Yet, after all, shut a number of men 
 up to make study and learning the business of their lives, 
 and how many of them, from want of some discipline or other, 
 seem to lose all balance of judgment, all common sense 1 
 
 2. 
 
 We have led the reader thus gradually to the considera- 
 tion of German theories about the Fourth Gospel, because
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 137 
 
 these theories, coming to us without our having any previous 
 acquaintance with their character and their authors, are 
 likely at first, though not in the long run, to make a power- 
 ful impression here. In the first place, they have great 
 vigour and rigour, and are confidently presented to us as 
 certain, demonstrated fact. Now an Englishman has such a 
 respect for fact himself, that he can hardly imagine grave 
 people presenting him with anything as fact when they have 
 absolutely no right to do so whatever. Then, in the next 
 place, the theories are presented and vouched for by English 
 importers ; and they seem to feel no misgivings about them. 
 But then the very last English people to have misgivings 
 about them would naturally be their importers, who have 
 taken the trouble to get them up, translate them, and publish 
 them. Finally, there is a fashion in these things ; and no 
 one can deny that the fashion just now is in favour of 
 theories denying all historical validity to the Fourth GospeL 
 Sooner or later, however, these theories will have to con- 
 front the practical English sense of evidence, the plain judg- 
 ment as to what is proved matter of fact and what is not. 
 So long as the traditional notion about the Bible-documents 
 was accepted in this country, people allowed the conventional 
 defences of that notion to pass muster easily enough. The 
 notion was thought certain in itself, was part of our life. 
 That the conventional defences should be produced was very 
 proper. Whether or not they were exactly right did not 
 much matter; they were produced in favour of what was a 
 certainty already. But the old notion about the Bible-docu- 
 ments has given way. The result is that no theories about 
 them will any longer be allowed by English people to pass 
 muster as easily as the old conventional defences did. All 
 theories, the old and the new, will have to stand the ordeal 
 of the Englishman's strong and strict sense for fact We 
 are much mistaken if it does not turn out that this ordeal
 
 138 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 makes great havoc among the vigorous and rigorous theories 
 of German criticism concerning the Bible- documents. The 
 sense which English people have for fact and for evidence 
 will tell them, that as to demonstration, in most of those 
 cases wherein our critics profess to supply it to us, wide, as 
 Homer says, is the range of words, and demonstration is 
 impossible. As to probability, which in these cases is as 
 much as can be reached, we shall discover that the German 
 Biblical critics are in general not the likeliest people to reach 
 it, and that their theories do, in fact, attain it very seldom. 
 
 Let us take the performance of the greatest and most 
 famous of these critics, Ferdinand Christian Baur, upon 
 the Fourth Gospel ' It is Baur's imperishable glory,' says 
 Strauss, himself in some respects a rival of Baur, ' to have 
 succeeded in stripping the Fourth Gospel of all historical 
 authority.' Baur has proved, it is said, that the Fourth 
 Gospel was composed about the year 170 after Christ, in the 
 heat of a conflict between Jewish and anti-Jewish Christi- 
 anity, and to help the anti-Jewish side. It has a direct dog- 
 matic design from beginning to end. With a profoundly 
 calculated art, it freely treats the Gospel-story and Gospel- 
 personages in the interests of this design. It develops the 
 Logos-idea, and its Christ is a dogma personified. Its form 
 is given by the Gnostic conception of an antithesis of the 
 principles of light and darkness, an antithesis found both in 
 the physical and in the moral world, and in the moral world 
 exemplified by the contrast of Jewish unbelief with true 
 faith. The author does not intend to deliver history, but to 
 deliver his idea in the dress of history. No sayings of Jesus 
 are authentic which are recorded in the Fourth Gospel only. 
 The miracles of the Fourth Gospel are not, like those of the 
 Synoptics, matter given by popular report and legend. They 
 are all, with deliberate art, ' made out of the carver's brain,' 
 to serve the carver's special purposes.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 139 
 
 For example. 1 The first miracle in the Fourth Gospel, 
 the change of water into wine, is invented by the artist to 
 figure Jesus Christ's superiority over his precursor, and the 
 transition and progress from the Baptist's preparatory stage to 
 the epoch of Messianic activity and glory. The change of 
 water into wine indicates this transition. Water is the 
 Baptist's element ; Jesus Christ's element is the Holy Ghost. 
 But in the First Gospel the antithesis to the Baptist's element 
 is not called Holy Ghost only, it is also called fire. In the 
 Fourth Gospel this antithesis is, by means of the Cana 
 miracle, figured to us as wine. 'Why,' asks Baur, ' should 
 not the difference and superiority of Jesus Christ's element 
 be indicated by wine as well as fire ? Get'sf, fire, wine, are 
 all allied notions.' 
 
 Then come Nicodemus in the third chapter, the woman 
 of Samaria in the fourth. They are created by the artist to 
 typify two opposite classes of believers. Nicodemus who 
 holds merely to miracles, is the representative of Judaism, 
 Judaism which even in its belief is unbelieving. The woman 
 of Samaria represents the heathen world, susceptible of a 
 genuine faith in Christ. The same capacity for a true faith 
 is observable in the nobleman of Capernaum; he must 
 therefore be intended by the authoi for a heathen, and not, 
 as is commonly thought, for a Jew. 
 
 We proceed, and come to the healing of the impotent 
 man at the pool of Bethesda. Now the Jesus of the Fourth 
 Gospel is the principle of life and light in contrast to the 
 principle of death and darkness. The healing of the impo- 
 tent man is a miracle designed to exhibit Jesus as the prin- 
 ciple of life. Presently, therefore, it is balanced by the 
 miracle wrought on the man born blind, in order that Jesus 
 may be exhibited as the principle of light. The reader sees 
 
 1 For what follows, see Ktitische Untersuchungen tiler die kano- 
 nischen Evangelien, pp. 114-184.
 
 i4Q GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 what an artistic composition he has before him in the Fourth 
 Gospel. As Baur says, this is indeed a work where all is 
 intention and conformity to plan ; nothing is mere history, but 
 All is idea moulding history ! Everything in the work is strictly, 
 to speak like the artists, motived. To say that anything in 
 the Fourth Gospel is not strictly motived, ' is as good,' says 
 Baur, ' as calling the Evangelist a very thoughtless writer.' 
 
 Here, then, we have a theory of genuine vigour and 
 rigour Already we feel its power, when we read in one of 
 our daily newspapers that ' the author of the Fourth Gospel 
 stands clearly revealed as the partisan and propagandist of a 
 dogma of transcendental theology.' 
 
 Now, Baur himself would have told us that the truth of 
 his theory was certain, demonstrable. But we have seen 
 what these critics call demonstration. That wine may figure 
 the Holy Spirit is with them a proof that in the Cana miracle 
 it does, and that the true account of that miracle is what we 
 have seen. Demonstrably true Baur's theory of the Fourth 
 Gospel is not, and cannot be; but is it probably true? To 
 try this, let us, instead of imposing the theory upon the facts 
 of the case and rejecting whatever facts do not suit it, let 
 us, in our plain English way, take the evidence fairly as 
 it stands, and see to what conclusions it leads us about the 
 Fourth Gospel 
 
 3- 
 
 What is the earliest piece of evidence we can find con- 
 cerning the composition of this Gospel ? It is a piece of 
 evidence given us in the already mentioned Canon of Mura- 
 tori, dating, probably, from about the year 175 after Christ- 
 This fragment says: 'The fourth of the Gospels is by the 
 disciple John. He was being pressed by his fellow disciples 
 and (fellow) bishops, and he said: "Fast with me this day, 
 and for three days ; and whatsoever shall have been revealed
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 141 
 
 lo each one of us, let us relate it to the rest." In the same 
 night it was revealed to the Apostle Andrew that John should 
 write the whole in his own name, and that all the rest should 
 revise it' 
 
 This is the earliest tradition; and in Clement of Alex- 
 andria, who died A.D. 220, we find l the same tradition indi- 
 cated. ' John last,' says Clement, ' aware that in the other 
 Gospels were declared the things of flesh and blood, being 
 moved thereto by his acquaintances, and being inspired by the 
 Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel.' To the like effect 
 Epiphanius, in the latter half of the fourth century, says 
 that John wrote last, wrote reluctantly, wrote because he was 
 constrained to write, wrote in Asia at the age of ninety. 2 
 
 Such is the tradition : that the Fourth Gospel proceeded 
 from the Apostle John ; that it was the last written, and 
 that it was revised by the apostle's triends. The theory, on 
 the other hand, says that the Gospel proceeds from a con- 
 summate artist unknown, who wrote it during or after the 
 Paschal controversy in Asia Minor in the year 170, in order 
 to develop the Logos-idea, and to serve other special pur- 
 poses. Which are we to incline to, the theory or the 
 tradition ? 
 
 Tradition may be false ; yet it is at least something, as 
 we have before remarked, in a thing's favour, that men have 
 delivered it But there may be reasons why we cannot 
 believe it Let us see, then, what there is to make us dis- 
 believe the tradition of Epiphanius, of Clement of Alexandria, 
 and of the Fragment of Muratorl There is the miraculous 
 form of the story, the machinery of dream and revelation ; 
 
 1 In his Hypoty poses, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., vi, 14 : 
 Tbv jjLfiroi 'l(ad.vvi]v taywrov, <rvvi86vTa Sri TO ffcojj.aTi.Ka. Iv raits tvcty~ 
 yf\iois SeSijAajTaJ, vporpairffra virb TUV yvupi/jiw, weiifiari 
 Stvra, rvfvij.aTiK'bv iroirjffai evayyf\iov. 
 
 * See Epiphanii Panarium, Har. LI, 12.
 
 142 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 that, we know at once, cannot be historical. But it is the 
 form in which a matter of fact was nearly sure, under the 
 circumstances of the case, to have got delivered ; and the 
 gist of the tradition, the Fourth Gospel's having its source 
 in the Apostle John, may be matter of fact still. What is 
 there, then, against St. John's authorship of the Fourth 
 Gospel ? 
 
 We shall not touch questions of language, where the 
 reader, in order to be able to decide for himself, must know 
 other languages than his own, and where, if he does not 
 know them, he must take upon trust what is said. Oui 
 points shall be all such that an ordinary reader of plam 
 understanding can form an opinion or them for himself. 
 And we shall not concern ourselves with every point which 
 may be raised, but shall be content with what seems suffi- 
 cient for the purpose in view. 
 
 Now, a plain reader will certainly, when his attention is 
 called to the matter, be struck with the extraordinary way in 
 which the writer of the Fourth Gospel, whom we suppose a 
 Jew, speaks of his brother Jews. We do not mean that he 
 speaks of them with blame and detestation ; this we could 
 quite understand. But he speaks as if they and their usages 
 belonged to another race from himself, to another world. 
 The waterpots at Cana are set 'after the manner of the 
 purifying of the Jews ; ' ' there arose a question between 
 some of John's disciples and a Jew about purifying ; ' l ' now 
 the Jews' Passover was nigh at hand ;' 'they wound the body 
 of Jesus in linen clothes with spices, as the manner of the 
 Jews is to bury;' 'there they laid Jesus, because of the Pre- 
 paration of the Jews. 1 No other Evangelist speaks in this 
 manner. It seems almost impossible to think that a Jew 
 born and bred, a man like the Apostle John, could ever 
 have come to speak so. Granted that he was settled at 
 1 The text followed is that of the Vatican manuscript.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 143 
 
 Ephesus when he produced his Gospel, granted that he 
 wrote in Greek, wrote for Greeks ; still he could never, 
 surely, have brought himself to speak of the Jews and of 
 Jewish things in this fashion ! His lips and his pen would 
 have refused to form such strange expressions, in whatever 
 disposition he may have written; nature and habit would 
 have been too much for him. A Jew talking of the Jew? 
 Passover, and of a dispute of some of John's disciples with a 
 Jew about purify ing 1 It is like an Englishman writing of the 
 Derby as the English people's Derby, or talking of a dispute 
 between some of Mr. Cobden's disciples and an Englishman 
 about free-trade. An Englishman would never speak so. 
 
 When once the reader's attention has been called to this 
 peculiarity in the Fourth Gospel, other things will strike 
 him which heighten it. The solemn and mystical way in 
 which John the Baptist is introduced : ' There was a man 
 sent from God whose name was John,' how unlike the 
 matter-of-fact, historical way in which John the Baptist is 
 introduced by Jewish writers who had probably seen him, 
 like the writer of the First Gospel ; who at any rate were 
 perfectly familiar with him, knew all about him ! ' In those 
 days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of 
 Judaea.' How much more is the Fourth Gospel's way of 
 speaking about John the Baptist the way that would be used 
 about a wonderful stranger, an unknown ! Again : twice 
 the Fourth Gospel speaks of Caiaphas as 'high-priest of 
 that year,' as if the Jewish high-priesthood had been at that 
 time a yearly office, which it was not. It is a mistake a 
 foreigner might perfectly well have made, but hardly a Jew. 
 It is like talking of an American President as ' President of 
 that year,' as if the American Presidency were a yearly office. 
 An American could never adopt, one thinks, such a way of 
 speaking. Again : the disciple who, at the high priest's 
 palace, brings Peter in, is called by the writer of the Fourth
 
 144 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Gospel ' an acquaintance of the high priest.' One of the 
 poor men who followed Jesus an acquaintance of a grandee 
 like Caiaphas ! A foreigner, not intimate by his own expe- 
 rience with the persons and things of Palestine, but seeing 
 through a halo the disciples who were with Jesus in the great 
 tragedy, might naturally have written so. But a Jew, a 
 fisherman of Galilee, who knew quite well the distance and 
 difference between the humble people in the train of Jesus 
 and the rich, haughty, aristocratical priesthood at Jerusalem, 
 could it ever have occurred to him to commit an exaggera- 
 tion, which is like the exaggeration of calling a London 
 working-man, who is in the throng round a police-court 
 during an exciting inquiry and has interest enough to get a 
 friend in, ' an acquaintance of the Secretary of State ' ? 
 
 As the social distinctions of Palestine are confounded, 
 so are its geographical distinctions. 'Bethany beyond 
 Jordan ' ! is like ' Willesden beyond Trent.' A native could 
 never have said it. This is so manifest, indeed, that in the 
 later manuscripts Bethany was changed into Bethabara, and 
 so it stands in our version. But the three earlier and 
 authoritative manuscripts all agree in Bethany, which we 
 may pronounce certainly, therefore, the original reading. 
 Nevertheless, the writer knew of the Bethany near Jerusa- 
 lem; he makes it the scene of the raising of Lazarus. But 
 his Palestinian geography is so vague, it has for him so little 
 of the reality and necessity which it would have for a native, 
 that when he wants a name for a locality he takes the first 
 village that comes into his remembrance, without troubling 
 himself to think whether it suits or no. 
 
 Finally, and here, too, the plainest reader will be able 
 
 with a little reflexion to follow us, although to the reader of 
 
 considerable literary experience the truth of what we say 
 
 will be most evident, the lofty strain of the prologue to 
 
 1 John, i, 28.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 145 
 
 the Gospel is nearly inconceivable as the Apostle John's. 
 Neither form nor matter can well have come from him. At 
 least, to suppose them his we must place ourselves in the 
 world of miracle, in the world where one is transported 
 from Bagdad to Cairo by clapping one's hands, or in which 
 one falls asleep, and wakes understanding the language of 
 birds and hearing the grass grow. To this world we do not 
 permit ourselves to have recourse. But in the world of fact 
 and experience it is a phenomenon scarcely conceivable that 
 a Galilean fisherman, changing his country and his language 
 after fifty, should have compassed the ideas of the introduc- 
 tion to the Fourth Gospel, and the style which serves as 
 organ to those ideas, and, indeed, to the Gospel throughout. 
 Paul was a highly educated man, and yet Paul never com- 
 passed ideas and a style of which the cast was Greek. The 
 form in which the Fourth Gospel presents its ideas is Greek, 
 a style flowing, ratiocinative, articulated. The ideas of 
 the introduction are the ideas in which Gnosticism worked, 
 and undoubtedly there were Jewish Gnostics as well as 
 Greek. But the strange and disfigured shape which the 
 genuine Jewish mind, the mind of a Jew with the sort of 
 training of the Apostle John, gave to Gnostic ideas when it 
 worked among them, is well shown in the fragments of the 
 Book of Elxai. 1 Not so are Gnostic ideas handled in the 
 introduction to the Fourth Gospel. They are there handled 
 with all the ease and breadth which we find in the masters 
 of Greek Gnosticism, in Valentinus or Basileides. 
 
 Well, then, the reader will say, the Tubingen critics are 
 right, and the tradition is wrong. The Fourth Gospel has 
 not its source in the Apostle John ; it is a fancy-piece by a 
 Greek literary artist. But stop ; let us look at the tradition 
 a little more closely. It speaks of a revision of what the 
 
 1 See the fragments collected in Hilgenfeld's Novum Testawtntum 
 extra Canonem recejtum, vol. iii, pp. 153-167. 
 
 L
 
 146 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Apostle John produced. It speaks of a pressure put upon 
 him, of his being moved by his friends to give his recollec- 
 tions, and of his friends having a hand in the work which 
 stood in John's name. And if we turn to the Gospel itself, 
 we find things which remarkably suit with this account of 
 the matter. We find things which seem to show that the 
 person who was the source of the Fourth Gospel did not 
 produce his work himself, but that others produced it for 
 him, and guarantee what is said, and appeal to his authority. 
 They say : ' This is the disciple who testified these things 
 and who wrote these things : and we know that his testimony 
 is true.' 1 They say again : ' He who hath seen, hath borne 
 witness, and his witness is true : and that man knoweth that 
 he saith true, that ye may believe.' 2 That man knoweth 
 that he saith true ! surely the actual composer of a work 
 would never refer to himself so strangely. But if we sup- 
 pose that the editors of a work are speaking of the man who 
 supplied them with it, and who stands as their authority for 
 it, the expression is quite natural. 
 
 And then we shall find that all things adjust themselves. 
 In his old age St John at Ephesus has logia, ' sayings of 
 the Lord,' and has incidents in the Lord's story, which have 
 not been published in any of the written accounts that were 
 beginning at that time to be handed about. The elders of 
 Ephesus, whom tradition afterwards makes into apostles, 
 fellows with St. John, move him to bestow his treasure on 
 the world. He gives his materials, and the presbytery of 
 Ephesus provides a redaction for them and publishes them. 
 The redaction, with its unity of tone, its flowingness and 
 
 1 John, xxi, 24. ovr6s t<mv & futBrjTrjs & ical /j-aprvpiav irepi 
 rovruv Kai 6 ypd.tyas raDra, ical ofSajuev ori a\r)d}]s avrov i] ftaprvpia 
 4<rr'tv. 
 
 ? - John, xix, 35. 6 fupcutus fif/j.aprvpijKfv, /caJ a\ri6iv)] avrov tcm* 
 it naprvpia KO.\ i/twos olSer, on a\i)6jj \fytt, Iva. KO) uut'is wiorev7?T.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 147 
 
 connectedness, is by one single hand ; the hand of a man 
 of literary talent, a Greek Christian, whom the Church of 
 Ephesus found proper for such a task. A man of literary 
 talent, a man of soul also, a theologian. A theological 
 lecturer, perhaps, as in the Fourth Gospel he so often shows 
 himself, a theological lecturer, an earlier and a nameless 
 Origen ; who in this one short composition produced a 
 work outweighing all the folios of all the Fathers, but was 
 content that his name should be written only in the Book of 
 Life. And, indeed, what matters literary talent in these 
 cases? Who would give a care to it? The Gospel is 
 John's, because its whole value is in the logia, the sayings 
 of the Lord, which it saves ; and by John these logia were 
 furnished. But the redaction was not John's, and could not 
 be ; and at the beginning of the second century, when the 
 work appeared, many there would be who knew well that 
 John's the redaction was not. Therefore the Church of 
 Ephesus, which published the work, gave to it that solemn 
 and singular imprimatur: * He who hath seen hath borne 
 witness, and his witness is true ; and that man knoweth that 
 he saith true, that ye may believe.' The Asiatic public, to 
 whom the document originally came, understood what this 
 imprimatur meant, and were satisfied. The Fourth Gospel 
 was received in that measure in which alone at that early 
 time, in the first quarter of the second century, any 
 Gospel could be received. It was read with love and 
 respect ; but its letter did not and could not at once acquire 
 the sacredness and fixity of the letter of canonical Scripture. 
 For at least fifty years the Johannine Gospel remained, like 
 our other three Gospels, liable to changes, interpolations, 
 additions ; until at last, like them, towards the end of the 
 second century, by ever increasing use and veneration, it 
 passed into the settled state of Holy Scripture. 
 
 Now, this account of the matter explains a great deal of 
 
 L 2
 
 148 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 what puzzles us when we try to conceive the Fourth Gospel 
 as having its source in the Apostle John. It explains the 
 Greek philosophy and the Greek style. It explains the 
 often inaccurate treatment of Palestinian geography, Pales- 
 tinian usages, Jewish feelings and ideas. It explains the 
 way in which the Jews are spoken of as strangers, and their 
 festivals and ceremonies as things of the Jews. It explains, 
 too, the unsure and arbitrary way in which incidents of the 
 Gospel-story are arranged and handled. Apologists say 
 that the first chapter bears the very stamp of a Palestinian 
 Jew's authorship. Apologists will say anything ; they say 
 that the Fourth Gospel must be St. John's, because it breathes 
 the very spirit of the Apostle of Love, forgetting that our 
 whole conception of St. John as the Apostle of Love comes 
 from connecting him with this Gospel, and has no inde- 
 pendent support from the testimony of writers earlier than 
 Clement of Alexandria and Jerome, for whom the belief in 
 the Johannine authorship was firmly established. In like 
 manner, it is to set all serious ideas of criticism at defiance, 
 to talk of the version of the calling of Peter in the first 
 chapter, any more than the version of the clearing of the 
 Temple in the second, as having the very stamp of a Pales- 
 tinian Jew's authorship upon them. They have not They 
 have, on the contrary, the stamp of a foreigner's management 
 of the incidents, scenes, and order of a Palestinian history. 
 The writer has new logia, or sayings of the Lord, at his 
 disposal ; and he has some new incidents. But his treasure 
 is his logia ; the important matter for him is to plant his 
 logia. His new incidents are not, as Baur supposes, inven- 
 tions of the writer's own, any more than the incidents of the 
 other three Evangelists ; but all his incidents stand looser 
 in his mind, are more malleable, less impose themselves on 
 him in a definite fashion than theirs. He is not so much at 
 home amongst the incidents of his story ; but then they
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 149 
 
 lend themselves all the better on that account to his main 
 purpose, which is to plant his logia. He assigns to incidents 
 an order or a locality which no Jew would have assigned to 
 them. He makes Jews say things and feel things which 
 they could never have said or felt ; but, meanwhile, his logia 
 are placed. As we observed in Literature and Dogma : 
 ' The narrative, so meagre, and skipping so unaccountably 
 backwards and forwards between Galilee and Jerusalem, 
 might well be thought, not indeed invented, but a matter of 
 infinitely little care and attention to the writer of the Gospel ; 
 a mere slight framework, in which to set the doctrine and 
 discourses of Jesus.' 
 
 Now there is nothing which the vigorous and rigorous 
 critics of Germany, and their English disciples like the author 
 of Supernatural Religion, more detest than the endeavour to 
 make two parts in the Fourth Gospel, a part belonging to 
 John, and a part belonging to somebody else. Either reject 
 it all, cries Strauss, or admit it all to be John's ! By what 
 mark, he adds, by what guide, except mere caprice, is one 
 to distinguish the hand of the Apostle from the hand of the 
 interpolator ? No, aver these critics ; the whole Gospel, 
 without distinction, must be abandoned to the demolishing 
 sweep of inexorable critical laws ! 
 
 But that there went other hands as well as John's to the 
 making of the Fourth Gospel the tradition itself indicates, 
 and what we find in the Gospel seems to confirm. True, to 
 determine what is John's and what is not is a delicate ques- 
 tion ; nay, it is a question which we must sometimes be 
 content to leave undetermined. Results of more vigour and 
 rigour are obtained by a theory which rejects the tradition, 
 and which lays down either that John wrote the whole, or 
 that the whole is a fancy-piece. But that a theory has 
 superior vigour and rigour does not prove it to be the right 
 account how a thing happened. Things do not generally
 
 150 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 happen with vigour and rigour. That it is a very difficult and 
 delicate operation to separate the different elements in the 
 Fourth Gospel does not disprove that only by this operation 
 can we get at the truth. The truth has very often to be got 
 at under great difficulty. 
 
 No ; but what makes the strength of those critics who 
 deride the hypothesis of there being two parts, a Johannine 
 part and another, in the Fourth Gospel, is the strange use of 
 this hypothesis by those who have adopted it. The dis- 
 courses they have almost all assigned to John; the dis- 
 courses, and, from its theological importance, the prologue 
 also. The second hand was introduced in order to account 
 for difficulties in the incidents and narrative. With the ex- 
 ception of some bits in the narrative, the whole Gospel is, 
 for Schleiermacher, ' the genuine biographical Gospel of the 
 eye-witness John.' Far from admitting the tradition which 
 represents it as supplementing the other three, Schleier- 
 macher believed that it preceded them all Weisse regarded 
 the prologue as the special work of the Apostle. Ewald 
 supposed that in the discourses we have the words of Jesus 
 transfigured by ' a glorified remembrance,' after lying for a 
 long time in the Apostle John's mind. All this is, indeed, 
 open to attack. No difficulties raised by the narrative can 
 be greater than the difficulty of supposing the discourses of 
 the Fourth Gospel to be St. John's own 'glorified remem- 
 brance ' of his Master's words, or the prologue to be the 
 special work of the Apostle, or the Gospel to be, in general, 
 the record at first hand of pure personal experience (lauter 
 Selbsterhbtes). The separation of elements is not to be made 
 in this fashion. But, made as it should be, it will be found 
 to resolve the difficulties of the case, not in a way demon- 
 strably right indeed (for demonstration is here out of our 
 reach), but in a way much more probably right than the 
 theory of Baur.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 151 
 
 Baur*s theory, however, relies not only on its own internal 
 certainity, but on external evidence. It alleges that there 
 is proof against the existence of the Fourth Gospel during 
 the first three-quarters of the second century. It is unde- 
 niably quoted, and as John's, by Theophilus, Bishop of 
 Antioch, 1 who wrote in the year 180. This, it is said, is the 
 earliest proof of its existence ; and it cannot have existed 
 earlier. 
 
 But why ? Let us put aside the Fragment of Muratori, 
 of which the date and authority are disputed, and let us take 
 facts which are undisputed. There is no doubt that Justin 
 Martyr, in his first Apology, written probably in the year 
 147, says, speaking of Christian baptism and its necessity : 
 * For Christ said, Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven. Now to all men it is manifest 
 that it is impossible that they who are once born should 
 enter into the wombs of them that bare them.' 2 Every one 
 will be reminded of the words to Nicodemus in the Fourth 
 Gospel : ' Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
 kingdom of God ; ' and of the answer of Nicodemus : 'How 
 can a man be born when he is old ? can he enter a second 
 time into his mother's womb and be born ? ' Justin does 
 not quote the Fourth Gospel ; he never expressly quotes 
 any one of our Gospels. He does not quote word for word 
 in such a manner that we can at once say positively : ' He 
 is quoting the passage in our Gospel ! ' But then he never 
 
 1 Ad Autolycum, ii, 22. The first and third verses of the first 
 chapter are quoted, and as John's, and exactly. 
 
 2 /cal yap d Xpiorbs ftvev, *Ai/ /*)) a.va.ytvvfiQriT't, ov p.ij (VeA.07jTe ejj 
 rfyv f$affi\ftav T>V ovpavwv. &TJ -ye KCH a5vva.rov els rcky /t^rpas TWV 
 rfKovffiav rovs &ra jevvocfj-ivovs epfirjvcu, <pavepbv -xaaiv itrrir. Com- 
 pare John, iii, 3, 4.
 
 151 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 does quote in such a manner as to enable us to say this; 
 All a candid yet cautious reader will affirm is, that Justin 
 here has in his mind the same sayings as those given in the 
 conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in our Fourth 
 Gospel. He may have quoted from some other source. 
 Almost certainly, if he is quoting from our present Fourth 
 Gospel, this Gospel was not a canonical Scripture to him r 
 or he would have quoted it more correctly. But to no 
 candid reader will it occur to think that what Justin has 
 here in his eye is not at all the conversation with Nicodemus 
 about being born again and its difficulties, but quite another 
 matter, this passage from the First Gospel : ' Except ye be 
 converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven.' l This is what critics of the 
 Tubingen school advance. But to no plain reader would it 
 ever occur to advance it ; to no one except a professed 
 theological critic with a theory. If our Fourth Gospel is to 
 be a fancy-piece, and a fancy-piece not composed before the 
 year 170, sayings and incidents peculiar to it must pass for 
 inventions of its own, cannot be real traditional sayings 
 known and cited by Justin long before. No j but on the 
 other hand, if they are so known and cited, the Fourth 
 Gospel cannot well be a mere fancy-piece, and we lose a 
 vigorous and rigorous theory. If they are, and to any un- 
 biassed judgment they clearly are, then it is probable, 
 surely, that Justin, who used written records, had in his eye, 
 when he cited the sayings in question, the only written record 
 where we find them, the Fourth Gospel, only this Gospel 
 not yet admitted to the honours of canonicity. But at any 
 rate, it is now certain that all sayings and incidents not 
 common to this Gospel with the Synoptics are not to be set 
 down as pure inventions. 
 
 But we can go back farther than Justin. Some twenty- 
 
 Matth., xviii, 3,
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 153 
 
 five years ago there was published at Oxford, under 
 the title of Origen's Philosophumena, a newly-discovered 
 Greek work. Origen's it is not; but because, besides giving 
 the Philosophumena or doctrines of heathen philosophy, 
 from which all heresies are supposed to spring, the work 
 purports also to be a Refutation of all Heresies, and because 
 Hippolytus, Bishop of the Port of Rome in the early part 
 of the third century, wrote a work with this title, of which 
 the description in Photius well agrees with the so-called 
 Philosophumena, Bunsen and others pronounced that here 
 was certainly the missing work of Hippolytus. Against this 
 we have the difficulty that the Paschal Chronicle, professing 
 to cite textually in reference to the Quartodeciman con- 
 troversy this work of Hippolytus, cites a passage which is 
 not in our Philosophumena, although the Quartodeciman 
 heresy is there refuted. 1 Bunsen is ready with the assertion 
 that ' this passage must have existed in our work,' exactly as 
 he was sure that in the Canon of Muratori the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews must have been mentioned. But this is just the 
 sort of assertion we will not allow ourselves to make ; and 
 we refrain, therefore, from pronouncing the Philosophumena 
 to be certainly the Refutation of all Heresies by Hippolytus. 
 Still the work is of the highest importance, and it gives its 
 own date. The author was contemporary with Zephyrinus, 
 and tells us of having had controversy with him. Zephy- 
 rinus was Bishop of Rome from the year 201 of our era to 
 the year 219. To the heretics and heresies of the second 
 century our author comes, therefore, very near in time, and 
 his history of them is of extraordinary value. 
 
 In his account of the Gnostic philosopher Basileicles, 
 
 who flourished at Alexandria about the year 125 after Christ, 
 
 he records the comments of Basileides on the sentence in 
 
 Genesis, Let there be light, and quotes as follows from 
 
 1 Chronicon Paschalt (edition of Bonn), vol. i, p. 13.
 
 154 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Basileides, whose name he has mentioned just before: 
 * This, says he (Basileides), is that which is spoken in the 
 Gospels : That was the true light which lighteth every wan 
 that cometh into the world? * The words are quoted exactly 
 as they are given in the Fourth Gospel ; 2 and if we cannot 
 pronounce certainly that logia of Jesus are quoted from one 
 of our Gospels because they are to be found there, yet no 
 one will dispute that if we find the reflexions of one of our 
 Evangelists quoted, they must surely have been taken from 
 that Evangelist Therefore our Fourth Gospel, not necessarily 
 just as we have it now, not necessarily yet regarded as 
 canonical Scripture, but in recognisable shape, and furnished 
 with its remarkable prologue, already existed in the year 
 125. 
 
 But this is not all the evidence afforded by the Fhilo- 
 sophumena. The first heresies described are those of 
 Oriental Gnostics, who preceded the Greek. The line of 
 heretics commences with the Naasseni and the Peratas, both 
 of them ' servants of the snake ; ' not the Old Serpent, 
 man's enemy, but 'the Catholic snake,' the principle of 
 true knowledge, who enables his votaries to pass safely 
 through the mutability and corruption which comes of birth. 
 The Naasseni are the Ophites of Irengeus and Epiphanius. 
 Their name is taken from the Hebrew word for the Greek 
 ophiS) a snake and together with other Hebrew names in 
 the account of them indicates, what we might expect, that 
 as Jewish Christianity naturally preceded Greek Christianity, 
 so Jewish Gnosticism preceded Greek Gnosticism. More- 
 over, the author of the Philosophumena, passing from this 
 first batch of Gnostics to a second, in which are Basileides 
 
 1 Philosophumena, vii, 22. We follow, for the passage in St. John, 
 the rendering of our version, although tpx^^fvov probably belongs to 
 <j>us and not to &vQpa>irov. 
 
 2 Tohn, i, 9.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 155 
 
 and Valentinus, expressly calls this second batch of Gnostics 
 the subsequent ones. l So we must take the Naasseni and the 
 Peratae, whom the author of Supernatural Religion dismisses 
 in a line as ' obscure sects towards the end of the second 
 century/ we must take them as even earlier than Basileides 
 and the year 125. 
 
 These sects we find repeatedly using, in illustration of 
 their doctrines, the Fourth Gospel. We do not say that 
 they use it as John's, or as canonical Scripture. But they 
 give sayings of Jesus which we have in the Fourth Gospel 
 and in no other, and they give passages from the author's 
 own prologue to the Fourth Gospel. Both the Naasseni and 
 the Peratse are quoted as using the opening verses of the 
 prologue, though with a punctuation for certain clauses 
 which is different from ours. 2 Both sects know of Jesus as 
 the door. 'I am the door,' one of them quotes him as 
 saying ; the other, ' I am the true gate.' 3 The Peratse have 
 the sentence, ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
 ness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,' with only 
 one slight verbal change. 4 With somewhat more of change 
 they give the saying to the woman of Samaria : ' If thou 
 hadst known,' is their version, ' who it is that asketh, thou 
 wouldst have asked of him and he would have given thee 
 living water springing up.' 5 The Naasseni have, without 
 any alteration, the famous sentence to Nicodemus in the 
 Fourth Gospel: 'The Saviour hath said, That which is lorn 
 of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is 
 
 1 Philos., vi, 6. vvvl 8e /col T&V aKo\o{iduv ras yvwpas ov 
 
 2 & yeyovev is joined to eV avry wrj effrtv, not to oi'Se eV. The 
 Naasseni insert a 8e before yejovev. Philos., v, 8, 16. 
 
 3 PhiZos., v, 8, 17. 
 
 4 %v TpAirov for KaOias. P/itlos., v, 16; compare John, iii, 14. 
 
 5 Philos., v, 9. etpriicev 6 aiariip, E ijStts ris tffriv 6 alrtav, ru &z 
 fjrriffas trap' avrov /col eScoKev &v aoi view ftav v$up aAAo'/xevoj'. Com- 
 pare John, iv, 10.
 
 155 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 spirit? ! Again, they attribute to Jesus these words : 
 ' Except ye drink my blood, and eat my flesh, ye shall not 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. Howbeit, even if ye do 
 drink of the cup which I drink of, whither I go, thither ye 
 cannot enter.' 2 A mixture, one must surely confess, a 
 mixture, with alterations, of the same sayings that we find 
 in the sixth and thirteenth chapters of St. John, and in the 
 twentieth chapter of St. Matthew. 
 
 Any fair person accustomed to weigh evidence, and not 
 having a theory to warp him, will allow that from all this we 
 have good grounds for believing two things. First, that in 
 the opening quarter of the second century the Fourth 
 Gospel, in some form or other, already existed and was used. 
 We find nothing about its being John's, it is not called 
 Scripture, its letter is not yet sacred. It is used in a way 
 which shows that oral tradition, and written narratives by 
 other hands, might still exercise pressure upon its account 
 of Jesus, might enlarge its contents, or otherwise modify 
 them. But the Gospel in some form or other existed. 
 Secondly, we make out that Baur and Strauss go counter to 
 at least the external evidence, when they declare that all 
 sayings of Jesus appearing in the Fourth Gospel, and not 
 appearing in one of the Synoptics also, are late inventions 
 and spurious. The external evidence, at any rate, is against 
 that being so. And this point, to ascertain whether the 
 sayings are genuine or spurious, is the point which mainly 
 interests the reader of Literature and Dogma ; for in that 
 book we assured him that the special value of the sayings 
 of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is, that they explain Jesus and 
 the line really taken by him. This they cannot do if they 
 
 1 Philos., v, 7. Compare John, iii, 6. 
 
 * Philos, , V, 8. ib.v fi.^ irivrjrf nov ri <J]ua ftal QdyyTe pov r)i* 
 rdpKa, o!i fiTj flff(\6rfTf ts TTJV &aot\(ia.v rS>v ovpavuv. aAAa 
 07j<rf, rb iroTT]piov t> tyu irlvu, tiro-j fyui inrdyu, ir.r'i u/xet 
 MvaoBt. Compare John, vi, 53 ; xiii, 33 ; and Matth., xx, 22.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 157 
 
 are spurious ; and here, therefore, is the centre of interest 
 for us in all these questions about the Fourth Gospel. Not 
 whether or no John wrote it, is for us the grand point, but 
 whether or no Jesus said it. 
 
 And that the sayings in the Fourth Gospel, at least the 
 chief and most impressive of them, are genuine logia of 
 Jesus, the external evidence goes to prove with a force, 
 really, of which what we have hitherto said quite fails to 
 give an adequate notion. The Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 which undoubtedly existed at the end of the first century, 
 for it is so much used by Clement of Rome that he has been 
 conjectured to be its author, has the Johannine phrase, 
 ' the shepherd of the sheep.' * Probably the Fourth Gospe 
 did not yet exist when the Epistle to the Hebrews was 
 written ; but what the use of the phrase in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews proves is, that the phrase was early current, 
 and does not, therefore, come from an inventor late in the 
 second century. Other phrases, connected with this one, 
 have also the strongest confirmation of their authenticity. 
 We have already seen how the earliest Jewish Gnostics were 
 familiar with the saying : / am the door. Hegesippus, in 
 the middle of the second century, relates that the Jews 
 asked James the Just : ' What is the door of Jesus ? ' a and 
 it requires a very vigorous and rigorous theory to make a 
 man suppose that the Jews were here thinking of some- 
 thing in the Old Testament, and not of the saying of the 
 Lord : I am the door. We have the testimony of the Canon 
 of Muratori, that Hermas, the author of the Pastor^ was 
 brother to Pius, Bishop of Rome ; and that he wrote his 
 Pastor at Rome, while his brother Pius was sitting in the 
 episcopal chair of the church of that city, 3 that is, between 
 
 1 ffeb. t xiii, 20, 
 
 2 Euseb., Hist. EccZes., ii, 23. 
 
 In urbe Roma Hermas conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae 
 ecchsiae Pio episcopo fratre ejus.
 
 158 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 the year 141 and the year 157. In the Pastor we find it 
 written, that///* new gate was manifested in the last days, 'in 
 order that they which shall be saved might enter into the 
 kingdom of God by it;' and it is added: 'Now the gate is 
 the Son of God.' 1 The pseudo-Clementine Homilies 
 cannot be accurately dated ; but from their mode of 
 quoting New Testament sayings and incidents, which is 
 that of Justin, and never alleges the name of a Gospel- 
 writer, we know that the work must have been written 
 before 170 and the age of Irenseus. In the third Homily, 
 Jesus is quoted as saying : * I am the gate of life; he that 
 entereth by me entereth into life.' 2 Presently, after the 
 saying, Come unto me all that travail, another (a Johannine) 
 saying of Jesus is quoted : ' My sheep hear my voice.' 3 
 Irenseus relies upon the authority of certain ' elders, disciples 
 of the Apostles;' and he says that his elders taught 
 that in the Messianic kingdom the saints should have 
 different habitations in proportion to the fruit borne by 
 them, and that they confirmed this by quoting the Lord's 
 saying : ' In my Father's house are many mansions.' 4 
 
 Finally, everyone has heard of the dispute about the 
 Epistles of Ignatius, martyred in the year 115. Of his seven 
 Epistles, mentioned by Eusebius, there exist a longer and a 
 shorter recension; the longer recension amplifying things 
 much in the same way in which the later manuscripts used 
 for our version of the Gospels have amplified, in the sixth 
 chapter of the Fourth Gospel, Peter's confession of faith into 
 Thou art that Christ the Son of the living God, from the 
 original Thou art the holy one of God preserved by 
 the Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts. But a still shorter 
 Syriac recension of the Epistles of Ignatius was found by 
 
 1 Hermae Pastor, Similitttdo ix, 12. 
 
 * dementis Romani qua feruntur Homilia, Horn, iii, 52. 
 
 dementis Romani qua: feruntur Homilies, Horn, iii, 52. 
 4 Irenseus, Adv. H<zrt:a, v, 36.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 159 
 
 Mr. Cureton, and this recension, besides, gives only three 
 of the seven Epistles mentioned by Eusebius. We will not 
 enter into the question whether the Syriac three do really 
 annul the Greek seven ; for our purpose it is sufficient to 
 take the Syriac three only. For even in these three we have 
 more than once the Johannine expression, the prince of this 
 world}- We have : 'The bread of God I want, which is 
 Christ's flesh, and his blood I want for drink, which is love 
 incorruptible.' 2 We agree that we are not compelled to 
 suppose that Ignatius took these expressions and ideas from 
 the Fourth Gospel ; but that the prince of this world, and 
 the bread which I will give is my flesh, of the Fourth Gospel, 
 are expressions and ideas of Jesus, and not inventions of a 
 Greek literary artist after the year 170, the employment of 
 these ideas and expressions by Ignatius does compel us to 
 suppose. 
 
 Again, Baur maintained that it was impossible to produce 
 testimony outside the Fourth Gospel to a legend of any 
 single Fourth Gospel miracle not common to it with the 
 Synoptics. Soon afterwards the conclusion of the pseudo- 
 Clementine Homilies was discovered; and in the nineteenth 
 Homily, speaking of sins of ignorance, the author says : 
 ' Our Master being asked concerning the man afflicted from 
 his birth and who was restored to sight by him, whether 
 this man sinned or his parents, that he was born blind, made 
 answer: " Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that 
 the power of God should be made manifest through him." ' 3 
 The miracle is clearly the one recorded in the Fourth 
 
 1 Ignatius, Ad Ephesios, xvi ; Ad Romanos, at the end. 
 
 2 Ad Romanes, vii. &proi> 0eo 6e\u, os t<rriv crop! Xpiarrcv, o2 
 rb atfj.a. avrov 6f\ta ir6p.a, '6 (crriv aydirr} a<p6apros. The Greek re- 
 censions, both the longer and the shorter, after 6f\w add aprov ovpdvior 3 
 aprov farjs. 
 
 * Horn, xix, 22 (Dressel's edition). oSrt ovr6s n %/jiapTfv, ofre ot 
 yovfts avrov, a\\' tva 5i' avrov tpavfptaSr rj 5iVo,ais rov Bead Compare 
 John, ix, 2, 3.
 
 :6o COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Gospel, and in the answer of Jesus there is hardly the slightest 
 verbal difference. 
 
 We may say, indeed, if we like, that the pseudo- 
 Clementine Homilies were composed in the third or fourth 
 century. We may say that not one word of Ignatius is 
 genuine, that Irenaeus did not mean to quote his elders, or 
 that he misquoted them ; we may say that the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews stumbled by chance on the ex- 
 pression the great shepherd of the sheep ; that Hermas, author 
 of the Pastor \ was not brother to Pius, Bishop of Rome 
 and did not write the Pastor during his brother's episcopate. 
 All this we may say if we like, and may bring ingenious rea- 
 , sons to support it. But no plain man, taking facts fairly, 
 v ' would ever say so ; only some professor with a theory to 
 establish, a theory of vigour and rigour. 
 
 But if the Johannine sayings are in great part genuine, 
 then a plain man will surely be disposed to accept the tra- 
 dition that the Fourth Gospel is supplementary to the others, 
 and that in John it had its source. The sayings form a 
 class distinct from the sayings of the Synoptics. They must 
 have come from some one who had been with Jesus, and 
 who spoke with authority. Tradition says that they came 
 from John at Ephesus ; and the form of the Johannine 
 Gospel suits well enough, as we have seen, with this tra- 
 dition. To be sure, we have the famous argument that the 
 Fourth Gospel cannot have existed in the time of Papias, 
 between the years 130 and 140 of our era, or Papias would 
 have made mention of it ; and if Papias had made mention 
 of it, Eusebius, from whom we get our knowledge of Papias, 
 would have quoted the mention. Eusebius declares, says 
 the author of Supernatural Religion^ that he ' will carefully 
 intimate ' every early testimony to the Christian Scriptures, 
 both to the Scriptures received and to the Scriptures dis- 
 puted. But in the first place, the words used by Eusebius
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHOUT. 161 
 
 do not mean: / shall carefully intimate* They mean: / 
 shall be glad to indicate ; I shall think it an advantage to 
 indicate. And to suppose that to even as much as is here 
 promised Eusebius would closely stick, because he had 
 promised it, is to know Eusebius very ill Never, perhaps, 
 was there any writer who told us so much that was interest- 
 ing, and told it in so loose a fashion and with so little 
 stringency of method, as the Bishop of Csesarea. In the 
 second place, it is quite certain that another Gospel, the 
 Third, existed in some shape in the time of Papias, for 
 Marcion about the year 140 used it. And yet on the subject 
 of the Third Gospel, as well as the Fourth, Papias as quoted 
 by Eusebius is wholly silent. 
 
 But then, again, there is the vigorous and rigorous theory 
 of Professor Scholten that John never was at Ephesus at all. 
 If he had been, Papias and Hegesippus must have men- 
 tioned it; if they had mentioned it, Irenaeus and Eusebius 
 must have quoted them to that effect. 2 As if the very 
 notoriety of John's residence at Ephesus would not have 
 dispensed Irenaeus and Eusebius from adducing formal 
 testimony to it, and made them refer to it just in the way 
 they do ! Here, again, we may be sure that no one, judging 
 evidence in a plain fashion, would ever have arrived at Dr, 
 Scholten's conclusion ; above all, no one of Dr. Scholten's 
 great learning and ability. It is just an hypothesis for a man 
 professorially bound to accomplish a feat of ingenuity, what 
 the French call a tour de force ; to produce a new theory 
 of vigour and rigour. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, for the internal evidence as to 
 the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 1 See Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., in, 3. vpu&pyov iroi-fiffopai VTTO- 
 
 See Dr. Scholten's treatise in the German translation, DerAfosttt 
 Johannes in Kleinasien (Berlin, 1872) ; pp. 24, 36. 
 
 M
 
 162 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 
 
 To any fair judge of evidence, the external evidence is in 
 favour of the belief that the Fourth Gospel had its source 
 in the Apostle John. But what is relied on, as above all 
 fatal to this belief, is the internal evidence. The internal 
 evidence is supposed to lead us with overpowering force to 
 the conclusion that the Fourth Gospel is a fancy-piece by a 
 Gnostically disposed Greek Christian, a consummate literary 
 artist, seeking to develop the Logos-idea, to cry up Greek 
 Christianity and to decry Jewish, and taking for the govern- 
 ing idea of his composition the antithesis between light and 
 darkness. Everything in the Fourth Gospel, we are told, is 
 profoundly calculated in this sense. So many miracles, 
 \nd in such a graduation, as were proper to bring out fully 
 the contrast between light and darkness, life and death, 
 Greek willingness to believe and Jewish hardness of heart, 
 so many miracles, and no more, does the Fourth Gospel 
 assign to Jesus. The whole history of the Last Supper and 
 of the Crucifixion is subtly manipulated to serve the author's 
 design. Admirable as is his art, however, he betrays him- 
 self by his Christ, whose unlikeness to the Christ of the 
 Synoptics is too glaring. His Christ 'is a mere doctor; 
 morality has disappeared, and dogma has taken its place ; 
 for the sublime and pregnant discourses of the Sea of Galilee 
 and the Mount of Olives, we have the arid mysticism of the
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 163 
 
 Alexandrian schools.' So that the art of our Greek Gnostic 
 is, after all, not art of the highest character, because it does 
 not manage to conceal itself. It allows the Tubingen critics 
 to find it out, and by finding it out to pull the whcle of the 
 Fourth Gospel to pieces, and to ruin utterly its historical 
 character. 
 
 Now here, again, in what these critics say of the internal 
 evidence offered by the Fourth Gospel, the external evidence 
 in some respects makes it hard for a plain man to follow 
 them. The Gnostic author, they say, governed by his idea 
 of the antithesis between light and darkness, assigns to 
 Jesus no more miracles than just what are required to bring 
 out this antithesis. Therefore the last two verses of the 
 twentieth chapter, which speak of the 'many other signs 
 which are not written in this book,' are spurious. Like the 
 whole twenty-first chapter which follows, they are a later 
 edition by some one ignorant of the artist's true design. 
 Well, but in the seventh chapter we find the Jewish people 
 asking: l 'When the Christ comes, will he do more miracles 
 than this man does ? ' and in the sixth chapter it is implied* 
 that the miracles of Jesus were, as the Synoptics represent 
 them, numerous. Did the artist forget himself in these 
 places ; or is it the Tiibingen critics who have forgotten to 
 tell us that in these places, too, the text is spurious ? In the 
 eleventh chapter we have a like oversight on the part of 
 somebody, either the artist or (which one would hardly have 
 thought likely) his German interpreters. The chief priests 
 and Pharisees are, by some mistake, allowed to say: 'This 
 man doeth many miracles.' 3 In the twelfth chapter matters 
 are even worse ; it is there said that the Jews would not 
 believe in Jesus ' though he had done so many miracles be- 
 fore them.' 4 No doubt this is spurious, and in omitting to 
 tell us so the critics fail a little in vigour and rigour. But, 
 
 1 Verse 31. * Verse 2. Verse 47. 4 Verse 37, 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 on the whole, what admiration must we feel for the vigour 
 and rigour which in spite of these external difficulties can 
 see so far into a millstone, and find such treasures of internal 
 evidence there, as to be able to produce a theory of the 
 Fouith Gospel like Baur's? 
 
 The internal evidence, then, is what the rejectors of the 
 Fourth Gospel confidently rely on. But to us the internal 
 evidence seems to point by no means to a speculative 
 genius, a consummate artist, giving to Christianity a new 
 form of his own, adopting a certain number of sayings and 
 doings of the real Jesus from the Synoptics, but inventing 
 for Jesus whatever he did not thus adopt. Much more it 
 seems to us to point to a sincere Christian, a man of literary 
 talent certainly and a Greek, but not a consummate artist ; 
 having traditions from John, having, above all, logia from 
 John, sayings of the Lord, and combining and presenting 
 his materials in the way natural to him. The Evangelist's 
 literary procedure is that of a Greek of ability, well versed 
 in the philosophical speculation of his time, and having the 
 resources of Greek style and composition at his command. 
 But when one hears of a consummate artist, an idealising 
 inventor, when one hears of a gifted writer arranging his 
 hero's life for effect, and freely making discourses for him, 
 one thinks of Plato. Now, the writer of the Fourth Gospel 
 is no Plato. The redaction and composition of this Gospel 
 show literary skill, and indicate a trained Greek as their 
 author, not a fisherman of Galilee. But it may be said with 
 certainty, that a literary artist, capable of inventing the most 
 striking of the sayings of Jesus to Nicodemus or to the 
 woman of Samaria, would have also made his composition 
 as a whole more flawless, more artistically perfect, than the 
 Fourth Gospel actually is. Judged from an artist's point of 
 view, it has blots and awkwardnesses which a master of 
 imaginative invention would never have suffered his work to
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 165 
 
 exhibit. Let us illustrate this by examples, taking, as our 
 rule is, no case which is not clear, and where the plain 
 reader may not be expected, if he will only take the trouble 
 to look carefully for himself at the passages we quote, to 
 follow us without doubt or difficulty. 
 
 2. 
 
 Our Evangelist has, we say, to place and plant records 
 of Jesus supplied to him by John. But he has to place 
 them without a personal recollection of the speakers and 
 scenes, and without a Jew's instinct for what, with such 
 speakers and scenes, was possible and probable. He com- 
 bines and connects, but his connexion is often only exterior 
 and apparent, not real. 
 
 For example. No artist of Plato's quality would have 
 been satisfied with the connexion in the discourse of Jesus 
 reported at the end of the fourth chapter, from the thirty- 
 fifth verse to the thirty-eighth : ' Say not ye, There are yet 
 four months, and then cometh harvest ? behold, I say unto 
 you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are 
 white already to harvest : and he that reapeth receiveth 
 wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that he that 
 soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. For herein 
 is that saying true : One soweth and another reapeth. I sent 
 you to reap that whereon ye have bestowed no labour ; other 
 men have laboured^ and ye are entered into their labours? 
 Surely there are here two parts, of which that one which we 
 have given in italics has a motive quite different from the 
 motive of the other which precedes it. The motive of the 
 first is the ripeness of the harvest and the guerdon of the 
 reapers. The motive of the second is the admission of the 
 disciples to reap what they had not sown. Both have all 
 the character of genuine sayings of Jesus, but there is no
 
 166 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 real connexion between them, only they coincide in pairing 
 a sower with a reaper. Jesus did not make continuous 
 speeches, jointed and articulated after the Greek fashion. 
 He uttered pregnant sentences, gnomic sayings ; and two 
 sets of such sayings, quite distinct from each other, which 
 were among the Greek editor's store of logia, we have here 
 But to this editor the continuous and jointed form of Greek 
 discourse seemed the natural one ; and therefore, caught by 
 the verbal coincidence, he blends the two sets of sayings 
 into one, and claps a for in between them to establish a 
 connexion. It is a matter of no great importance. The 
 two logia of Jesus are safely there, and the real relation 
 between them was sure to be brought out by time and 
 scrutiny. It is only of importance as a gauge of the 
 Evangelist's artistic faculty. A consummate artist, in- 
 venting for Jesus, could not have been satisfied with such 
 a merely seeming and verbal connexion. 
 
 More striking is the artistic failure at the beginning of 
 the tenth chapter. We will remark, that on any supposition 
 of a consummate artist and of perfect motiving, the mode of 
 introducing all the lovely group of sayings about * the good 
 shepherd ' and ' the door ' is quite unaccountable. But let 
 that pass, and let us look at the sayings themselves. Who 
 can doubt that here, again, we have two separate sets of 
 logia of Jesus ; one set which have / am the good shepherd 
 for their centre, and another set which have for their centre 
 I am the door ; and that our Evangelist has thrown the two 
 together and confused them ? Beautiful as are the sayings 
 even when thus mixed up together, they are far more beau- 
 tiful when disentangled. But the Evangelist had a door- 
 keeper and a door and sheep in his first parable; and he 
 had another parable, in which was a ' door of the sheep.' 
 Catching again at an apparent connexion, he could not
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 167 
 
 resist joining the two parables together, and making one 
 serve as the explanation of the other. 
 
 To explain the first parable, and to go on all fours with 
 it, the second ought to run as follows : ' I am the door of 
 the sheep. All that climb up some other way are thieves and 
 robbers ; but the sheep do not hear them. I am the door ; 
 by me if any men enter, he is the shepherd of the sheep! The 
 words in italics must be substituted for the words now in the 
 text of our Gospel ; ! and Jesus must stand, not as the door 
 of salvation in general, but as the door by which to enter is 
 the sign of the true teacher. There can be no doubt, how- 
 ever, that the words now in the text are right, and that what 
 is wrong is the connexion imposed on them. The seventh 
 and ninth verses are a logion quite distinct from what pre- 
 cedes and follows, and ought to be entirely separated from 
 it. Their logion is : ' I am the door of the sheep. I am the 
 door ; by me if a man enter he shall be saved, and shall go 
 in and out and find pasture.' The eighth verse belongs to 
 the first parable, the parable of the shepherd ; not to the 
 parable of the door. It should follow the fifth verse, and 
 be followed by the tenth. Jesus says of the sheep : ' A 
 stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they 
 know not the voice of strangers. All that ever came before 
 me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear 
 them. The thief cometh not but to steal and to kill and to 
 destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that 
 they might have it more abundantly. I am the good 
 shepherd.' 
 
 Piecing his logia together, seeking always a connexion 
 between them, the Evangelist did not see that he was here 
 
 1 See John, x, 8, 9. Instead of %\6ov irpb iftou we must read 
 o.vafiaivovffiv a\\ax6&ei> t instead of iJKovffav we must read a.itovovffiv, 
 and iroifjdiv itrrat TUIV Trpof$d.T<av instead of ffcaB^fffrai cal flfff\fvffercu 
 Hal ef\(v<rtTcu Kat VO/J.TIV fvpf)fffi.
 
 r68 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 injuring his treasures by mixing them. But what are we to 
 think of a consummate artist, inventing freely, and capable 
 of producing, by free invention, such things as the most 
 admirable of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Fourth 
 Gospel ; what are we to think of such an artist, combining 
 in cold blood his invented sayings of Jesus so ill, that any 
 one with eyes in his head can detect a better combination 
 for them ? 
 
 The reader, probably, will follow us without much diffi- 
 culty here. But certainly he will have no difficulty in 
 following us if we take the last words of the fourteenth 
 chapter, Arise, let us go hence, and assert that no con- 
 summate artist, no Plato, would ever have given us that. 
 Beyond all manner of doubt, Jesus never said in one con- 
 nexion : 'As the Father gave me commandment, even so 
 I do ; arise, let us go hence ; I am the true vine, and my 
 Father is the husbandman,' and so on, without the least sign 
 of rising or going away, but with the discourse continuing 
 throughout three more chapters. How the Evangelist could 
 have come to make him say it, is the question. Probably, 
 with the commencement of our fifteenth chapter the writer 
 passed to a fresh set of notes, containing another set of 
 sayings of Jesus ; and he marked the transition by inserting 
 between the end of one set and the beginning of the next 
 the words : 'Arise, let us go hence.' They were traditional 
 words of Jesus, as we see from the ' Rise, let us be going,' J 
 of St. Matthew ; and the composer of the Fourth Gospel 
 may have thought they would come in serviceably at this 
 point. What he thought, we can only conjecture; but that 
 no man freely inventing, not arranging and combining, and 
 above all, that no consummate artist, would ever have 
 dreamed of placing those words at that point, we may 
 affirm with the utmost confidence. Certainly there needed 
 
 1 Matth., xxvi, 46.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 169 
 
 an imaginative intellect not less fine than Plato's to invent 
 for Jesus such a saying as : ' The hour cometh and now is, 
 when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit 
 and in truth.' But conceive a Plato ordering the march of 
 his composition thus: 'Arise, let us go hence; I am the 
 true vine, and my Father is the husbandman ! ' 
 
 To the same category of defects of composition, inex- 
 plicable on the theory of a consummate artist freely invent- 
 ing, but quite intelligible if we suppose a literary arranger 
 sometimes embarrassed in dealing with his materials, for 
 which he has the profoundest reverence, belong those 
 curious jolts in the narrative which are occasioned, as 
 we believe, by the author having John's very words in his 
 memory, and being determined to preserve them. Such a 
 jolt occurs in introducing the dialogue with the woman of 
 Samaria. ' Jesus, tired with his journey, sat thus l by the 
 well ' Thus ? how ? There has not been a word to tell us, 
 and the expression as it stands is incongruous. But the 
 writer, probably, had in his mind John's own words : ' Jesus, 
 tired with his journey, sat, as I have been telling you, by the 
 well ; ' and he could not forbear using them. The same 
 formula appears in two other places, and in both it probably 
 is a relic of John's own narrative. ' He, lying as I am telling 
 you on Jesus' breast, saith unto him : Lord, who is it ? ' 2 
 And again : ' After these things, Jesus manifested himself 
 again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias ; and he mani- 
 fested himself as I am going to tell you.' 3 In these two 
 cases to preserve John's words does not create any awk- 
 wardness ; but the writer still preserves them even when it 
 does. 
 
 He preserves them, again, without duly adjusting the 
 context to them, in the forty-fourth verse of the fourth 
 chapter. 'After the two days he departed thence into 
 1 ofrwy. John, iv, 6. * John, xiii, 25. John, xxi, I.
 
 i70 GOD AND THE BIBLE 
 
 Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no 
 honour in his own country? That was a reason for staying 
 away from Galilee, not for going there. But the writer has 
 John's words about the testimony of Jesus in his mind, and 
 hastens to give them without preparing their way by saying: 
 ' And this he did, notwithstanding his own testimony.' The 
 embarrassed sentences about the return to Capernaum, in 
 the sixth chapter, owe their embarrassment, not improbably, 
 to the same cause : to John's words sticking in the writer's 
 memory, and not being properly fused by him with his own 
 narrative. 
 
 In like manner, who can read without a shock of 
 surprise, in the relation of the feeding of the five thousand 
 among the hills beyond the Sea of Galilee, that abrupt and 
 motiveless sentence : 'Now the passover, the feast of the 
 Jews, was nigh ? ' * The most fanciful and far fetched 
 explanations are offered. But who would not prefer the 
 simple and natural explanation, that the words are a relic of 
 John's original narrative which had been brought in by 
 him to date his story ; that they were fast lodged in our 
 Evangelist's memory, and that he was loath to lose them ? 
 They are a little touch of detail, just like : ' These things he 
 said in the treasury as he taught in the temple ; ' or like : 
 'It was then the feast of dedication at Jerusalem ; it was 
 winter, and Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's 
 porch.' 2 They are exactly the expressions which a man 
 telling a story would be likely to use ; but our author pre- 
 serves them in his regular composition, whether they suit 
 the context or no. And an author such as we suppose our 
 Evangelist to be was likely enough to do this ; but a con- 
 summate artist, freely following his invention, does not do 
 things thus negligently. 
 
 1 John, vi, 4. " John, viii, 20 ; x, 22.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 
 
 These are grounds for the improbability of Baur's 
 theory which suggest themselves from a defectiveness of 
 artistic construction in the Fourth Gospel. Other grounds 
 of improbability are suggested by defects of philosophical 
 grasp. It is alleged that our Evangelist improves on the 
 Jesus of the Synoptics, invents his profoundest things for 
 him. But it can be made as clear as light, to any unbiassed 
 and attentive reader, that this wonderful inventor does not 
 always himself fully understand the very things he is sup- 
 posed to be inventing, obscures them by unintelligent 
 comment on them. One instance of this we have given in 
 Literature and Dogma. Jesus says : ' If any man thirst, let 
 him come unto me and drink.' 1 Then, with a reminiscence 
 of a passage in Isaiah he adds : ' He that believeth in me, 
 as the Scripture saith, there shall flow out of his belly rivers 
 of living water.' Who can doubt that Jesus here meant to 
 say that the believer's faith, the faith of the follower of 
 Christ, should be an eternal source of refreshment ? But 
 the Evangelist proceeds to comment on the saying of Jesus, 
 and to give what is, in his view, the proper explanation of 
 it. And the explanation he gives is as follows : ' But this 
 spake he of the Spirit (Pneuma) which they that believe on 
 him should receive ; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, 
 because Jesus was not yet glorified.' Nothing can be more 
 natural than that a Christian of the first or second century 
 should wish to date all comforts of the Spirit from after the 
 famous effusion of Pneuma subsequent to Christ's death. 
 But surely the true sense of this saying of Jesus is clear ; 
 and it is clear, too, that it is a narrowing and marring of his 
 words to put our Evangelist's mechanical construction upon 
 
 1 John, vii, 37-39. Compare Isaiah, Iviii, II.
 
 I-JZ GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 them. The reporter who puts it fails to grasp the words 
 fully, deals with them unintelligently. And how incredible 
 that a writer should fail to seize rightly the clear sense of a 
 saying invented by himself ! 
 
 Again, take a like case from the eighteenth chapter. 
 Jesus had said of his disciples : ' None of them is lost but 
 the son of perdition.' 1 Then comes the arrest, and the 
 speech of Jesus to the band which arrested him : ' I have 
 told you that I am he ; if therefore ye seek me, let these go 
 their way.' 2 He gives up himself, but puts his disciples 
 out of danger. His speech is just what we might have 
 expected ; but instantly our Evangelist adds that he made 
 it ' in order that the saying might be fulfilled which he spake: 
 Of them whom Thou hast given me have I lost none.' Can 
 anything be more clear than that the two sayings have 
 nothing at all to do with one another, and that it is a 
 mechanical and narrowing application of the second-men- 
 tioned saying which makes it lead up to the first In the 
 second, eternal salvation is the theme ; in the first, safety 
 from a passing danger. And could the free and profound 
 inventor of the second saying have been so caught by the 
 surfaces of things, as to make it the mere prophecy of the 
 first? 
 
 Jesus over the heads of all his reporters ! this idea is for 
 us a constant guide in reading the Gospels. It is, we are 
 convinced, the only safe one. But the Tubingen professors 
 reverse the idea, and say that in the Fourth Gospel it is the 
 reporter who is over the head of Jesus. In the concluding 
 chapters of this Gospel the philosophical author, they say, 
 so frames the discourse of Jesus that his resurrection is pre- 
 sented 'as an internal phenomenon continually being 
 accomplished in the believer's consciousness.' No doubt 
 this view of the resurrection is indicated in the Fourth 
 
 1 John, xvii, 12. * John, xviii, 5-9.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 173 
 
 Gospel, as it is indicated also by St Paul. But the ques- 
 tion is, does it come from Jesus himself, or was it invented 
 by the more spiritual among his followers to give a pro- 
 founder sense to the physical miracle of his resurrection ? 
 We confine ourselves at present to the Fourth Gospel, and 
 we say : ' True, the resurrection of Christ is there suggested 
 as a phenomenon accomplishing itself in the believer's 
 consciousness. The idea is a profound one ; it needed a 
 great spirit to conceive it. If the author of the Fourth 
 Gospel conceived it, we may allow that he carries the 
 significance of the resurrection higher than the Synoptics 
 carry it ; higher than the Jesus of the Synoptics visibly 
 carries it. But if he is the author of this idea, he will 
 present it firmly and clearly. If he presents it confusedly, 
 then he probably got the idea from Jesus, and did not 
 quite understand it How in fact, does he present it ? ' 
 
 All through the discourses of Jesus in the Fourth 
 Gospel, the attentive reader may perceive that there are 
 certain fundamental themes which serve as nuclei or centres, 
 appearing repeatedly and in several connexions, with a 
 form sometimes shorter, sometimes more expanded. It is 
 of great importance to a right understanding of the Fourth 
 Gospel that we should discover in such cases the primitive 
 theme, the original logion of Jesus. Now this, or at least 
 the nearest approach to it, will in general be given by the 
 theme in its shorter and less expanded form. Very likely 
 Jesus may himself have used a theme on several occasions, 
 and himself have sometimes given to it a more expanded 
 form ; still, from the theme in its simplest and shortest 
 form, we probably get our best clue to what was actually 
 said by Jesus. 
 
 Two such primitive themes in the long discourse of 
 Jesus before his arrest are these : I go to the Father? and : 
 
 1 fadya irpbt flv rarfpa, John, xvi, 17. This is probably the
 
 J74 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 I go away, and come again to you. 1 Let us add to these 
 two a third : A little while and ye see me not, and again a 
 little while, and ye shall see me* These three sayings appear 
 and reappear, they come in different connexions, they take 
 forms somewhat varying. But they are primitive themes ; 
 they give us probably the nearest approach now possible to 
 the words actually uttered by Jesus. 
 
 This, then, is what we have : I go to the Father. I go, 
 and come again to you. A little while and ye see me not, 
 and again a little while and ye shall see me. Now it is 
 alleged, and truly, that the Fourth Gospel suggests a view 
 of the resurrection of Jesus as an internal phenomenon 
 accomplishing itself in the believer's consciousness. The 
 basis on which this allegation must rest is supplied by the 
 three logia which we have quoted. 
 
 But the three logia lend themselves either to the an- 
 nouncement of a physical resurrection or to the announce- 
 ment of a spiritual resurrection. Everything depends on 
 their context and connexion. And by piecing things 
 together, by putting these logia in the front, by connect- 
 ing them immediately with other logia given by our 
 Evangelist, by dropping out things he inserts between, we 
 can get at a resurrection announced by Jesus which is 
 clearly spiritual. 'I go to the Father ; I go, and come 
 again to you. A little while and ye see me not, and again 
 a little while and ye shall see me. I will not leave you 
 desolate, I will come to you. Yet a little while and the 
 world seeth me no more ; but ye see me, because I live 
 
 primitive theme ; we have also : {nrdyw irpbs rbv vf^avrd /ue (vii, 33, 
 and xvi, 5) > wp^s r^v irartpa pov inrdyu (xvi, IO) ; o(pi'ij/xi rlv Kkffp."* 
 ical iropevofjiai irptiy rbv irartpa (xvi, 28). 
 
 1 inrdyca /col epxofJ.cu irpbs vu.as. John, xiv, 2%. 
 
 8 fj-ixpoi', Kal ov Bewpetrs M : Kcd *d\iv pujpfr, /col fyfirde u. John, 
 xvi, 17.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 175 
 
 and ye shall live.' A disciple here asks how it is that they 
 shall see him, and that the world shall not. Jesus answers : 
 ' If a man love me, he will keep my word ; and my Father will 
 love him, and I will love him, and we will come to him and 
 make our abode with him. Let not your heart be troubled, 
 neither let it be afraid. I go away and come again to you.' * 
 And this resurrection of Jesus is connected by him with the 
 coming of the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, the new light, 
 who should bring out in the hearts of the disciples the real 
 significance of Jesus and of what he had said. 3 
 
 Thus placed and connected, the primitive Ip^o/iai, tne 
 / come again of Jesus, gives to us, no doubt, the resurrection 
 of Christ as ' an internal phenomenon accomplishing itself 
 in the believer's consciousness.' It gives it to us as being this 
 in Jesus Christ's own view and prediction of it. The same 
 idea is preserved for us by the First Epistle of St. John, an 
 Epistle which cannot well have been written by our Evan- 
 gelist, its style is so unlike his. But the Epistle deals with 
 many of the ideas dealt with by our Gospel ; and it presents 
 the abiding in Jesus, and in his Father, as the accomplish- 
 ment of the promise of eternal life made by Jesus to his 
 followers. 3 
 
 The idea is so fruitful and profound a one, that if our 
 Evangelist had ever fairly grasped it, still more if he had 
 conceived and invented it, he could hardly have so dealt 
 with it as to leave us in doubt whether he himself enter- 
 tained it or not. He could no more do this than Paul could 
 have left us in doubt whether he himself entertained his 
 great idea of the necrosis, of the dying and resurrection of 
 Jesus accomplishing themselves in this life in the believer's 
 personal experience. The mind which, although accepting 
 the physical miracle of the resurrection, could yet discern 
 
 1 John, xvi, 10 ; xiv, 28 ; xvi, 16 ; xiv, 18, 19, 23, 27, 28. 
 * John, xiv, 23-26. * I John, ii, 24,
 
 1/6 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 that the phenomenon, to be made fruitful, must have a moral 
 and a spiritual significance given to it, such a mind would 
 certainly have been impressed deeply by such an idea, and 
 have had it distinct and firm. But our Evangelist so arranges 
 his materials as to make the reference of tp^oyxai and ctyeo-0e 
 to a spiritual resurrection very dubious, to overlay it with 
 other things, and to obscure it ; while their reference to a 
 physical resurrection is brought out distinctly. 'In my 
 Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I 
 would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you, 
 and if I go, I will prepare a place for you. I come again, 
 and will take you unto myself, that where I am ye may be 
 also.' J There can be little doubt that the primitive theme 
 of epxtyuu Trpo? v//.as, / come again unto you, is here so used 
 and connected as to make it point decisively to a physical 
 resurrection. And this key for the whole strain being once 
 given, the impression left by that other primitive theme, 
 fj.iKpov KOI o\j/f<rOe /te, a little while and ye shall see me, is in 
 the main an impression to the same effect ' A little while 
 and ye see me not, and again a little while and ye shall see 
 me. Ye shall weep and lament ; ye shall be sorrowful, but 
 your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Ye have sorrow now ; 
 but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and 
 your joy no man shall take from you.' a Here the whole 
 wording and connexion are such that it seems clear the 
 commentators have rightly interpreted the mind of the 
 Evangelist, when they make this passage, and the theme 
 ftucpov KCU ctyeo-fle /te, a prophecy of the approaching physical 
 resurrection and reappearance of Jesus. 
 
 Must we then suppose that to a spiritual resurrection such 
 sayings as the three primitive themes which we have quoted 
 
 1 John, v, 2, 3. The text followed is that of the Vatican 
 manuscript. 
 
 * John, xvi, 19, 20, 22.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 177 
 
 do not really refer, but may be made to signify it only as a 
 secondary and after-meaning, brought in for purposes of 
 edification, and originally hidden in them, perhaps, for those 
 purposes ? This, no doubt, will be the character assigned 
 to the words both by official theology and by popular re- 
 ligion. To us, however, it seems certain that to a spiritual 
 resurrection the words primarily and really point, and that 
 our Evangelist has obscured their true scope. 
 
 For him, as for Christendom long after him, Jesus 
 Christ's physical resurrection stood, and could not but stand, 
 a phenomenon fixed, immense, overpowering ; a central sun 
 attracting everything to it. But experience slowly and in- 
 evitably reveals that phenomena of this kind do not actually 
 happen. Romulus does not mount into heaven, Epimenides 
 does not awake, Arthur does not return. Their adoring 
 followers think they do, think they have promised it ; but 
 they do not, have not. We have, then, to account for the 
 firm belief of the first Christians in the physical resurrection 
 of Jesus, when this resurrection did not actually happen. 
 We can only account for it from things really said by Jesus, 
 which led them to expect it. That Jesus was a fanatic, ex- 
 pecting and foretelling his own physical resurrection, de- 
 ceived like his followers, but so filling them with his own 
 belief that it prevailed and triumphed with them when he 
 died, is an explanation which the whole account we have 
 of Jesus, read seriously, shows to be idle. His disciples 
 were misled, therefore, by something Jesus did actually say, 
 which had not really the sense that he should physically rise 
 from the dead, but which was capable of lending itself to 
 this sense, and which his disciples misunderstood and 
 imagined to convey it. 
 
 And, indeed, they themselves as good as tell us that this 
 is what actually happened. Only, what was in truth misunder- 
 standing, they call understanding. They themselves as good
 
 1 78 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 as tell us that they unconsciously exercised a creative pres- 
 sure, long after the time when they were going about with 
 Jesus and hearing him, on sayings and doings of their Master. 
 ' When he was risen from the dead,' they tell us, after re- 
 cording one of his prophetic speeches, * his disciples remem- 
 bered that he had said this.' * Even if one had not known 
 beforehand that from the nature of the case it was impossible 
 for the records of Jesus in our Gospels to have been notes 
 taken down day by day, as by a Saint-Simon or a Boswell, 
 here is an Evangelist himself telling us in so many words 
 that they were not ' These things understood not his dis- 
 ciples at the first,' he tells us again, after relating an incident 
 which afforded a remarkable fulfilment of prophecy, 'but 
 when Jesus was glorified then remembered they that these 
 things were written of him, and that they had done these 
 things unto him** They recorded, then, the sayings of 
 Jesus about his resurrection long after they had been uttered, 
 and when the belief in his physical resurrection was firmly 
 fixed in their minds. 
 
 But even after his death, ' as yet,' they tell us of them- 
 selves, ' they knew not the Scripture that he must rise again 
 from the dead.' 3 This affords the most irrefragable proof 
 that the sayings of Jesus about his resurrection cannot ori- 
 ginally have been just what our Gospels report ; that these 
 sayings, as they now come to us, must have been somewhat 
 moulded and accentuated by the belief in the resurrection. 
 If Jesus had simply said to the Twelve the very words our 
 Gospels report him to have said, the Twelve could have been 
 in no ignorance at all of ' the Scripture that he must rise 
 again from the dead,' and in no doubt at all that they were 
 to count on his rising. ' He took unto him the Twelve, and 
 said unto them : Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all 
 things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son 
 
 1 John, ii, 22. * John, xii, 16. John, xx, 9.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 179 
 
 of Man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered 
 unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully 
 entreated, and spitted on ; and they shall scourge him, and 
 put him to death ; and the third day he shall rise again.' * It 
 is in vain that the Evangelist adds : ' And they understood 
 none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, 
 neither knew they the things which were spoken.' 2 If Jesus 
 had spoken just merely as he is here reported, if what he said 
 had had no peculiar connexion and significance given to it 
 by something else which he also said, if he had simply thus 
 laid down in black and white, as the phrase is, his death and 
 resurrection as going to happen, the disciples could not have 
 helped understanding him. It would have been quite im- 
 possible for them to make that astounding declaration, which 
 yet is evidently the plain truth, that even up to the days 
 which followed his death, ' as yet they knew not the Scripture 
 that he must rise again from the dead.' Something was no 
 doubt said by Jesus not unlike what the Evangelist reports, 
 something which easily adapted itself to the character of a 
 simple and literal prophecy of the resurrection, when that 
 event had, as was believed, taken place. But the precise 
 speech put into the mouth of Jesus, that speech and nothing 
 more at all upon the subject, he cannot have uttered. 
 
 The Third Gospel, which reports the speech just quoted, 
 is the Gospel which guides us to the discovery of what Jesus 
 can have originally and actually said about his rising again 
 on the third day. He was told that if he did not leave 
 Jerusalem Herod would put him to death. He made 
 answer : ' Go ye and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils 
 and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I 
 shall be perfected: ' 3 Having for ever before his mind the 
 
 1 Luke, xviii, 31-33. 2 Luke, xviii, 34. 
 
 s rf) rpl-rri ^ue'pa reAejot^ai. Luke, xiii, 32. The text of the 
 Vatican manuscript is followed, 
 
 ;. 2
 
 i8o GOD AND THE BIBLE 
 
 humble and suffering Servant of our fifty-third chapter of 
 Isaiah, and labouring for ever to substitute this in his dis- 
 ciples' minds as the Messias-ideal instead of the brilliant 
 and triumphing Conqueror of popular Jewish religion, Jesus 
 here, beyond all doubt, following the prophet, 1 spoke of his 
 violent and ignominious end as his perfection and victory. 
 That violent end he, as was natural, could plainly foresee and 
 often predicted. Here he predicts it in this wise : ' On the 
 third day I shall be perfected.' On other occasions he said 
 instead : ' The third day I shall rise again.' What made him 
 say : The third day ? 2 We know how he loved to possess 
 himself of locutions of the prophets and to use them. For 
 instance, in that well-known saying, ' Take my yoke upon 
 you, and learn of me that I am mild and lowly in heart, and 
 ye shall find rest unto your souls,' the concluding phrase, 
 Ye shall find rest unto your souls, is a reminiscence of Jere- 
 miah. 3 And in like manner his phrase, On the third day I 
 shall be perfected, The third day I shall rise again, is a reminis- 
 cence of the prophet Hosea. Amid the ruin of Israel, in 
 the eighth century before Christ, Hosea had said : ' Come 
 and let us return unto the Eternal ; for he hath torn and he 
 will heal us ; after two days will he revive us, on the third 
 day we shall rise again.' 4 * We shall be restored presently,' 
 
 1 See Isaiah, liii, IO, II. 'It pleased the Eternal to bruise him, 
 he hath put him to grief. When he hath made his soul 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 be satisfied.' 
 
 2 He talked, also, of his rising from the dead, without the addition 
 of the words on the third day, or in three days. See Mark, ix, 9, 10, 
 where the disciples are represented as puzzled, and as trvvforowres rl 
 itrnv r!> &e vfKpiav avaffrrivai. 
 
 * Jeremiah, vi, 16. 
 
 4 Hosea, vi, I, 2. In the Greek Bible of the Seventy the words 
 are : Iv rri V*P9 T fl T P^ T P ayaoT^tro/iefla, on the third day we shall rise 
 again. Compare this with the words in Luke : TJJ rplrp
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 181 
 
 Hosea means ; and, ' I shall be perfected presently] is what 
 Jesus means. 
 
 Here we lay our finger, almost certainly, upon the veri- 
 table foundation for the belief that Jesus had himself 
 announced he would rise from the dead on the third day. 
 Let us seek to combine the scattered logia, transposed, some 
 of them, to the time after his death, which in a certain 
 degree enable us, through the cloud of his disciples' inade- 
 quate apprehension and of legend and marvel, to follow the 
 line of light of the Divine Master. 
 
 The root of everything with Jesus is, as we just now said, 
 the effort, the incessant effort, to substitute as the Messias- 
 ideal in the mind of his followers the Servant, mild and 
 stricken, for the regal and vengeance-working Root of 
 David. And he knew, that the victory of this right Messias- 
 ideal his own death, and that only, could found. ' O fools and 
 slow of heart at taking in all that the prophets have spoken! 
 must not the Messiah suffer these things, and enter into his 
 glory ? Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man 
 shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and scribes, and they 
 shall deliver him to the Gentiles to crucify. Nevertheless, I 
 do cures to-day and to-morrow; we must work the works of 
 him that sent me while it is day, the night cometh when no 
 man can work. I must walk to-day and to-morrow and the 
 day following, and the third day I shall be perfected. All 
 things written by the prophets for the Son of Man shall be 
 accomplished. He shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and 
 mocked and outraged and spit upon ; and they shall scourge 
 him and put him to death ; and the third day he shall rise 
 again. Except a grain of corn fall and die, it abideth alone; 
 but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit As Moses lifted 
 up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man 
 
 re\ttovftai; and again, TJJ q/tc'f? T V T P^ T P avoar^o-tTOi. Luke, xiii, 
 32, and xviii, 33.
 
 1 82 COD AND THE BIBLE 
 
 be lifted up ', and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
 draw all men unto me.' l 
 
 Yes, thits it was written that the Christ should suffer, and 
 rise from the dead the third day? Inevitably the disciples 
 materialised it all, wrested it all into a prophesying of bodily 
 reappearance and miracle. And they did the like also with 
 the words: * I go to the Father ; I go away and come again 
 to you ; a little while and ye see me not, and again a little 
 while and ye shall see me.' To these words the disciples 
 gave a turn, they placed them in a connexion, to suit the 
 belief which alone, after the death of Jesus, could reassure 
 and console them ; the belief in his speedy resuscitation 
 and bodily reappearance on earth, his temporary re-with- 
 drawal and ascension into heaven, to be followed soon by 
 his triumphal bodily advent to avenge and judge. 
 
 It could not but be so. // was written that in his name 
 should be preached to all nations repentance unto remission of 
 sins; 3 and only in this way could the work proceed. Only 
 in this way, through profound misapprehension, through 
 many crude hopes, under the stimulus of many illusions, 
 could the method and secret, and something of the temper 
 and sweet reason and balance of Jesus, be carried to the 
 world. Only thus, through natural and national extra-belief 
 reinforcing their real love to their Master and zeal to propa- 
 gate his doctrine, could the weak arm of the disciples acquire 
 energy enough to hold aloft the word of life, set up the 
 
 1 Luke, xxiv, 25, 26 ; Mstth., xx, 18, 19; Luke, xiii, 32 ; John, 
 ix, 4 (in the Vatican manuscript) ; Luke, xiii, 33, and xviii, 31-33; 
 John, iii, 14, xii, 24, and xii, 32. For mocking, see Psalm xxii, 7 ; 
 for scourging and spitting, see Isaiah, 1, 6. The traits used by prophet 
 and psalmist in delineating the stricken Servant are to be conceived as 
 always vividly present to the mind of Jesus. 
 
 2 Luke, xxiv, 46. The Vatican manuscript is followed. 
 s Luke, xxiv, 47.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 183 
 
 kingdom of Christ, found the true Israel, and bring in ever- 
 lasting righteousness. 
 
 But the promises and predictions of their Master were, 
 nevertheless, not what they fancied. He had said : ' Ye 
 shall see me again, because I live and ye shall live ; if a man 
 keep my saying he shall never see death. If ye love me and 
 keep my words, I will come unto you and make my abode 
 with you.' 1 They construed this into: 'Ye shall see me, 
 because I will come again and take you unto myself to reign 
 in the kingdom of the saints in the New Jerusalem.' 2 The 
 genuine promise of Jesus was the promise of a spiritual 
 resurrection ; and this promise his disciples misapprehended, 
 misconnected, and obscured. Only on this supposition is 
 even their own version of the history intelligible. 
 
 Far, therefore, from inventing the idea of the resurrection 
 as an internal phenomenon accomplishing itself in the be- 
 liever's consciousness, the author of the Fourth Gospel 
 transmits the idea, indeed, but obscures it. He saved it for 
 us, as in that second harvest of the logia of Jesus he saves 
 for us so much which is precious. He saved it from being 
 lost, and added it to the indications which survive for us of 
 the line truly taken by Jesus. But from his very mode of 
 delivering it, we can see that he is not an artist inventing it, 
 but a reporter transmitting it imperfectly. 
 
 Furthermore, Baur*s theory of the artistic Greek Christian 
 inventing all things with a deep-laid design to damage Jewish 
 Christianity, and to exalt Christ's divinity, is upset by the 
 admission of things contrary to the alleged design. A free 
 inventor, inventing with the express aim of doing damage to 
 
 1 John, xiv, 19; viii, 51 ; xiv, 23. 
 * John, xiv, 3 ; Matth., xix, 28.
 
 184 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Jewish Christianity, would never have made Jesus say : 
 ' Salvation is of the Jews? * A free inventor, inventing to 
 impair the credit of Peter and the original Apostles, would 
 never have made Peter enter the sepulchre first, or throw 
 himself into the sea, or receive the charge: Feed my sheep? 
 A free inventor, inventing from a zeal to establish the dogma 
 of Christ's personal divinity, would never have made Jesus 
 give the turn to his calling himself the Son of God which 
 is given in the tenth chapter, when Jesus appeals to the 
 authority of the Old Testament for those being called Gods 
 to whom the word of God came, and asks why he too, then, 
 may not call himself the Son of God ? 3 ' Why haggle about 
 words and definitions in these matters?' he in fact asks; 
 ' all you can say about them is approximate merely.' And 
 the whole question of the dogma of Christ's personal divinity 
 is a question of words and definitions in the very sphere 
 where Jesus pronounces such questions to be vain. All 
 these things may be ingeniously explained by Baur now that 
 they stand there in the Gospel, and challenge explanation 
 from him. But, had Baur's theory of the Fourth Gospel 
 been true, they would never have stood there for him to 
 explain. 
 
 Finally, the theory of the consummate artist implies that 
 the Fourth Gospel is a work proceeding from the imaginative 
 intellect. But we deny (and here, too, the attentive reader 
 will not, we think, find it hard to follow us), we deny that the 
 Fourth Gospel has the character of a work proceeding from 
 the imaginative intellect. It has the character of a work 
 proceeding from the soul. It is profoundly and solemnly 
 religious. It is the work of a man who, we grant, like all 
 the reporters of Jesus, understood him but imperfectly; who 
 gives us much which is not Jesus, much which comes from 
 
 1 John, iv, 22. * John, xx, 6 ; xxi, 7, 16. 
 
 John, x, 34-36.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 185 
 
 himself and his time, much which is addition and legend. 
 But it is the work of a man who gives us this seriously and 
 in good faith, and whose attitude of mind is not that of a 
 freely inventing artist. He is too much subjugated by Jesus 
 to feel free to deal with him in this fashion, as a mouthpiece 
 for his own purposes and his own ideas. He does sometimes 
 attribute his own ideas to Jesus, but unconsciously; and 
 when he does, we can perceive that he is doing so. If he 
 had attempted it consciously all through his Gospel, he 
 would have produced something quite different from what 
 we have, and we should easily have found him out. He 
 would have given us a work where Jesus would have spoken, 
 all through, as he now speaks from the sixteenth verse of the 
 third chapter to the twenty-first, a passage in which our 
 theological lecturer evidently lectures us through the mouth 
 of Jesus. For his mind did not hold itself so easily and 
 independently towards Jesus, no serious Christian's did or 
 could, as to suffer him to play freely with Jesus, to throw 
 himself into his character, to use him as a vehicle for saying, 
 but in character and verisimilitude, whatever the user 
 wanted to convey. Plato might do this with Socrates, but 
 the author of the Fourth Gospel could not do it with Jesus. 
 And the safe analogy to take, in considering what for our 
 Evangelist in dealing with his subject could and did happen, 
 is the analogy not of Plato but of Paul 
 
 The old school of apologists was fond of urging that the 
 Fourth Gospel could only have been the work of one of the 
 original chief Apostles, it is so excellent. Baur had no 
 difficulty in replying to this, that in Paul we have a Christian 
 who had probably never even seen Jesus, who was certainly 
 not one of the original chief Apostles ; and who yet is at 
 least equal to any of them, and whose productions surpass 
 theirs. Why, therefore, may we not have, he argued, in the 
 author of the Fourth Gospel a second gifted outsider like
 
 1 86 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Paul, but whose name has remained unknown, because it 
 was essential for his purpose that it should do so, and that 
 his work should point mysteriously to the Apostle John as 
 its author ? 
 
 Certainly we, for our part, feel no backwardness in 
 admitting that outside of the primitive circle of the Apostles 
 there might arise Christians, like Paul, capable of making 
 invaluable contributions to the New Testament. But we 
 think that none of them could have done what Baur's theory 
 supposes the author of the Fourth Gospel to have done. 
 Paul himself could not have done it. The attitude of their 
 minds towards Christianity and its Founder was too earnest 
 and reverential to allow it. When Paul quotes a logion like 
 that exquisite logion quoted by him at Miletus, but not found 
 in any one of our Evangelists, // is more blessed to give than 
 to receive? he is clearly quoting Jesus, as he says he is, not artis- 
 tically inventing for Jesus, not original. His manner when he 
 is original we know, and it is quite different. Imagine SL 
 Paul sitting down to recommend the dogma of justification 
 by faith, through means of a fancy Gospel composed of logia 
 invented for Jesus, and suiting his character as // is more 
 blessed to give than to receive suits his character ! Paul could 
 not have done it; any sound critic will feel that he could not. 
 So, too, with the author of the Fourth Gospel. Where the 
 logia are suited to the character of Jesus, they come from 
 Jesus. Where they are not, there we have the theological 
 lecturer merely expanding a theme given by Jesus, develop- 
 ing or thinking that he develops it But he remains himself 
 in doing so. To possess himself as a dramatist of the per- 
 sonage of Jesus, to fix his sentiments and his whole part for 
 him, as would be implied by inventing the fundamental 
 themes instead of merely developing them, he would not 
 have felt himself free. 
 
 1 Acts> xx, 35.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 187 
 
 The question for us will be, then : Are there funda- 
 mental themes discoverable in the Fourth Gospel, and 
 peculiar to it, which are quite according to the character 
 of Jesus, and to his recognised habit of speech ? Because, 
 if there are, our Evangelist has not invented them, but they 
 must come from Jesus. 
 
 Now that there are logia peculiar to the Fourth Gospel, 
 which entirely suit the character and the habit of Jesus as 
 these are known to us from the Synoptics, we can hardly 
 conceive any one denying ; except, indeed, he have a thesis 
 to make good which constrains him. Let us bring forward 
 a few of them : ' My kingdom is not of this -world. In my 
 father's house are many mansions. The good shepherd giveth 
 his life for the sheep. Other men laboured, and ye are entered 
 into their labours. The night cometh, when no man can work. 
 The servant abideth not in the house for ever, the son 
 abideth for ever. A woman when she is in travail hath 
 sorrow because her hour is come ; but as soon as she is 
 delivered of the child she remembereth no more her anguish, for 
 joy that a man is born into the world? x Except a man be, 
 we say, in the clutches of some tyrannous theory, we can 
 hardly conceive his denying that these logia are as perfectly 
 and naturally in the character of Jesus as are the most 
 characteristic logia found in the Synoptics, such as : Render 
 Casar's things to Ccesar, and God's things to God; or, No 
 man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit 
 for the kingdom of God ; or, Foxes have holes and the birds of 
 the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay 
 his head.' 2 ' 
 
 1 John, xiv, 2 ; x, II ; iv, 38 ; ix, 4 ; viii, 35 ; xvi : 
 a Matth., xxii, 21 ; Luke, ix, 62 ; Matth., viii, 20. 
 
 ii, 35 ; xvi, 21.
 
 1 88 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Yet the Tubingen professors and our Liberal newspapers 
 must surely have something to go upon, when they declare 
 that the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel speaks quite differently 
 from the Jesus of the Synoptics, and propound their theory 
 of the Gnostic philosopher inventing, with profoundly calcu- 
 lated art, his fancy Gospel. No doubt they have. Jesus 
 never can have delivered the long connected harangues, or 
 entered into the formal development of his own nature and 
 dignity, or made the endless repetitions, which are in the 
 Fourth Gospel attributed to him. All this is so absolutely 
 contrary to his manner, which we know both from his 
 sayings in the Synoptics and from express testimony, that 
 every rule of criticism bids us suspect it The sayings in the 
 Synoptics will be present to every one s mind ; two or three 
 of them, indeed, characteristic specimens, we have j ust brought 
 forward. Justin's famous sentence has been again and again 
 quoted : ' Short and concise are the sayings that came from 
 him, for he was no sophist, but his word was power divine.' 1 
 And equally express is the following testimony, perhaps not 
 so familiar, given by the pseudo-Clementine Homilies : 'His 
 wont was to make concise utterances touching the things of 
 concernment to the truth.' 2 A better description of the 
 style of his sayings could hardly be given. They were concise 
 utterances touching the things of concernment to the truth. The 
 character of his parabolic and figured teaching tells its own 
 story, and needs no describing; what distinguished his 
 direct teaching was this its gnomic or maxim-like character. 
 
 irap' avrov \6yoi ytySvaffiv, ov y&p ffo<j>- 
 i', aAAa 5vi>afj.is 6tov 6 \6yos avrov fa. 
 2 Horn, xvii, 6. wipi TUV -ry oAijfltfiy tiia.<t>tp6rruv rum-Spas iia
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 189 
 
 These gnomic sayings of Jesus the Evangelists had to 
 place in their narrative, and to provide for them a setting 
 and a connexion. The Greek editor of the Fourth Gospel 
 provides this setting in a very different style from the 
 Synoptics, just because he is a Greek, a man of literary skill 
 and philosophical acquirements, and with an intellect trained 
 in the Greek fashion. The gnomic form of teaching was 
 not unknown in Greek philosophy, but at the Christian era 
 th-is form was to Greek writers an archaic one. They had 
 come to dovetail their thoughts into each other, to join their 
 sentences by articulations, and so to frame their matter into 
 one continuous discourse, just as we do now with ours ; in- 
 deed, it is from the Greeks that the world has learnt to do it. 
 And in this Greek fashion the Fourth Gospel was composed. 
 
 The author of the First Gospel, on the other hand, was 
 a Hebrew ; and to a Semitic people the gnomic form, the 
 delivering one's thought in detached sentences, was always 
 natural. To the author of the First Gospel, therefore, this 
 form was natural, as it was to Jesus himself. And there 
 can be no doubt, that the form of the utterances of Jesus the 
 First Gospel reproduces more faithfully than the Fourth. 
 Still, it is incredible that the Sermon on the Mount, or the 
 prediction in the twenty-fourth chapter of the final troubles 
 and of the coming of the Son of Man, should have been 
 spoken straight off by Jesus just as they are given in the 
 First Gospel. No sane critic will maintain that they were. 
 In both passages the Evangelist has had a number of logia 
 to place, and has given to them, as well as he could, a setting 
 and connexion in accordance with their subject-matter and 
 with the occasion to which he knew them generally to belong. 
 But he, for the most part, gives them their setting and con- 
 nexion simply by juxtaposing them ; whereas the editor of 
 the Fourth Gospel, having to give this setting and connexion 
 to his logia, gives it by articulating them. Therefore he
 
 190 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 changes the look of the logia which he reports more than 
 either of the three Synoptics changes it. He less faithfully 
 reproduces the fashion in which each separate logion was 
 originally said by Jesus. 
 
 Furthermore, the editor of the Fourth Gospel had to deal 
 with a second harvest of logia, gathered from John after the 
 first harvest of sayings had been reaped and had made men 
 eager for what might yet remain. The mass of the first har- 
 vest was sure to consist of the more picturesque, simple, and 
 practical sayings of the Lord. In the nature of things it was 
 probable that this should be so ; from the character of the first 
 reporters it was certain that it would be so. There remained 
 a number of logia somewhat profounder and more obscure, 
 more over the heads of the disciples than the simpler logia, 
 and therefore less interesting to them. Of this kind were 
 sayings in which Jesus spoke of his relation to the Father, 
 and of life and death in the sense that he loved to give to 
 those words. ' 1 came forth from the Father. The Father sent 
 me. My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. The Father 
 ts greater than I. lean of mine own self do nothing. The 
 Son can of himself do nothing, but only what he seeth the 
 Father doing. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. / 
 and the Father are one. He that believeth on me hath ever- 
 lasting life. If a man keep my word he shall never see death. 
 I am the resurrection and the life* * 
 
 That sayings of this kind were from the first known and 
 reported is proved by our finding in the First Gospel such a 
 logion as the following : ' All things are delivered unto me 
 by my Father, and no one knoweth the Son but the Father, 
 neither knoweth any one the Father save the Son, and he to 
 whomsoever the Son will reveal him.' 2 We need hardly say 
 
 1 John, xvi, 2"j ; xvii, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25 ; vii, 16 ; xiv, 28 ; v, 30 ; 
 v, 19 ; xv, 23 ; x, 30; vi, 47 ; viii, 51 ; xi, 25. 
 
 2 Matth., xi, 27.
 
 TH FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 191 
 
 that here the Tubingen professors smell Tendenz, and affirm 
 that a piece of Greek Gnosticism must have got thrust into 
 the Gospel of the old Jewish Evangelist. But these solutions 
 we do not permit to ourselves ; and the iogion, famous in 
 the history of the criticism of the New Testament text, is 
 given by two out of the three Synoptics, by St Luke l as 
 well as by St. Matthew. We receive it, therefore, as giving 
 clear proof of the existence of sayings of the Lord on that 
 class of subjects which the logia of the Fourth Gospel touch 
 so frequently, subjects such as the relation of Jesus to the 
 Father, and the like. Indeed, we do not see how Jesus 
 could have pursued his design of transforming the popular 
 ideal of the Messiah, who was described by prophecy as the 
 Son of God, without touching on such subjects. And it is 
 in part to the prominence in the Fourth Gospel of sayings 
 on them that the tradition points, when it so early distin- 
 guishes this as the spiritttal Gospel 2 
 
 To the Greek editor of John's materials these logia 
 naturally assumed a transcendent interest and importance. 
 He was plainly a man, as we have said, of philosophical 
 acquirements. True, religion was uppermost with him, not 
 speculation. The tone of his prologue, though from Jesus 
 such a performance is inconceivable, is profoundly religious, 
 penetrated by the grace and truth of the religion of Jesus. 
 Whoever compares it with what remains to us of the great 
 Greek Gnostics, of Basileides or Valentinus, will feel that 
 the difference between them and the writer of the Fourth 
 Gospel lies here : that while they are above all men of 
 speculative thought, he is above all a man of religion. 
 Still, in this world of speculative thought he had lived, 
 in this world of ceaseless questions, as Tertullian says : 
 * Unde malum, et quare, et wide homo et quomodo, et unde 
 
 1 Luke, x, 22. 
 
 eua~yye\inv See Eusebius, Hist, Ecdes, t vi, 14.
 
 192 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Deus? whence and why is evil, and whence and how 
 is man, and whence is God?' Such questions had in 
 his eyes an infinite interest and importance ; sayings of 
 Jesus which bore upon them could not but rivet and 
 fascinate his mind. In his redaction of John's materials 
 we see that he cannot make too much of such logia. He 
 returns to them again and again, and avails himself of every 
 occasion for re-introducing them. 
 
 Well, then, to charge the gnomic form of his fundamental 
 themes, the sayings of Jesus, and to connect these into an 
 articulated and flowing discourse, was a rule, as we have 
 seen, of our Evangelist's redaction, and of itself necessitated 
 a considerable change in his primitive data, A yet further 
 change was caused by affection for certain themes, leading 
 him to present these themes again and again, slightly varied. 
 Moreover, in his whole redaction, in his presentment of 
 sayings of Jesus ris well as of incidents in his life, he 
 laboured, in spite of his superiority to the Synoptics in 
 literary skill and in philosophical thought, under one dis- 
 advantage. He had the disadvantage of a foreigner who 
 presents manners, locutions, localities, not his own, but alien 
 to him. He could not be warned by that instinct which 
 perpetually, on points of detail, keeps a native straight, and 
 makes him feel certain things to be improbable and 
 impossible. 
 
 We have seen that the internal evidence, to be drawn from 
 the Gospel itself, contradicts Baur's theory of the consum- 
 mate artist at the end of the second century freely inventing 
 all the Fourth Gospel. But the internal evidence suits very 
 well with the supposition of a Greek Christian editing a 
 second harvest, for which the materials were furnished by 
 John, of sayings and doings of the Lord, arranging them in his 
 own fashion, and giving to the logia an interdependence and 
 connexion which originally they had not ; moreover, ampli-
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 193 
 
 fying and repeating certain logia, and making developments 
 (from them. Now, the tradition gives us John, in Asia, 
 supplying the materials of this second harvest, but not 
 himself editing them. If another edited them in Asia, for 
 the benefit of the Asiatic Churches, this other was surely a 
 Greek Christian ; and if a Greek Christian edited them, he 
 was likely to proceed in the way alleged, and of which the 
 Gospel bears, surely, strong marks. 
 
 For according to all the rules, we will not say of criti- 
 cism, but of common sense, according to all rules of 
 probability, and of speakers speaking in character, and not 
 violently and unaccountably deserting it, can anything be 
 more incredible than that Jesus should have actually spoken 
 to Nicodemus, or John the Baptist to a disciple, the latter 
 part of the speeches attributed to them in the third chapter 
 of our Gospel ? Let us take first the speech to Nicodemus. 
 It is probable that the real end of the dialogue is to be 
 found in the tenth verse : ' Art thou Israel's teacher, and 
 knowest not these things ? ' But our Evangelist had two 
 other logia of Jesus : ' We speak that we do know, and 
 testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our testimony ; ' l 
 and, ' If I tell you earthly things and ye believe not, how 
 shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things ? ' 2 which 
 admitted of being placed in this connexion. So here he 
 places them. This, we say, is probable ; but what is certain 
 is, that Jesus did not speak the verse which follows these 
 two logia, the thirteenth : ' And no man hath ascended up 
 into heaven save he that came down from heaven, the Son 
 of Man.' That is a variation on a primitive theme of 
 Jesus, I am the bread that came down from heaven? inserted 
 here by our theological lecturer, because he knew that it 
 was a theme dwelt upon by Jesus, and thought that he saw 
 here a natural place for it. A genuine logion of Jesus 
 
 1 John, iii, n. * John, iii, 12. * John, vi, 41. 
 
 O
 
 i<?4 GOD AND THE BIBLE 
 
 follows, bearing every mark of being still quite or almost in 
 its original form, but woven into this context by out 
 lecturer, and owing its connexion with what precedes simply 
 to his conjunction and : ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in 
 the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that 
 whosoever believeth on him may have everlasting life.' 
 Then enters the theological lecturer, and continues (one 
 may almost say) lecturing in his own proper person till the 
 end of the speech, from the sixteenth verse to the twenty- 
 first. For who, that has studied the sayings of Jesus well, 
 can ever believe that Jesus said : ' For God so loved the 
 world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that 
 whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life,' * 
 and the rest ? Our Evangelist does not, however, in these 
 verses, think he is inventing ; for he is going all the time 
 upon three primitive themes of Jesus : He that believeth on 
 me hath everlasting life ; I came not to judge the world, but 
 to save the world ; I am come a light into the world, that 
 whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness? On 
 these genuine logia he is going, and he merely amplifies 
 and repeats them ; developing them, in his own judgment, 
 naturally, and as it was to be supposed Jesus himself did. 
 
 Let us now pass to the speech of John the Baptist, at 
 the end of the same chapter. The real sayings assigned to 
 John the Baptist by our Evangelist's tradition ended, one 
 can hardly doubt, with the words : ' He must increase, but 
 I must decrease.' 3 The rest, down to the end of the 
 thirty-sixth verse, is our theological lecturer. That criticism 
 only which sees no impossibility in Jesus having spoken 
 the sixteenth verse of this chapter will see no impossibility 
 in John the Baptist's having spoken the thirty-sixth. But 
 again our Evangelist is not inventing, but developing. He 
 
 1 The text of the Vatican manuscript is followed. 
 
 * John, xii, 47 ; vi, 47 ; xii, 6. * John, iii, 30.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 195 
 
 has certain genuine logia of Jesus as his basis, the chief of 
 them being that which we have already quoted : ' He that 
 believeth on me hath everlasting life.' * He has these logia 
 with several variations of phrase, indicating that they were 
 used more than once, in more connexions than one, perhaps 
 by more than one speaker. The speech of John the 
 Baptist seems to him a connexion eminently proper for 
 them. The Baptist's real words appear to him to imply 
 their adoption and addition ; it appears to him natural and 
 certain that the Baptist adopted and added them. So we 
 come to have John the Baptist saying : ' He that believeth 
 on the Son hath everlasting life ; but he that believeth not 
 the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God abideth on 
 him. 2 
 
 All that is said of 'the dogmatic mysticism, and arti- 
 ficial, prolix discourses' of the Fourth Gospel, all the 
 complaints of its substituting ' for the sublime and pregnant 
 discourses of the Sea of Galilee and the Mount of Olives 
 the arid mysticism of the schools of Alexandria,' will be 
 found, we think, so far as they are just, to be best met by 
 the supposition of a Greek editor connecting, repeating, 
 and amplifying themes of Jesus ; not by the supposition of 
 a consummate artist inventing the whole Gospel. The 
 kernel of the work, the fundamental themes of Jesus, we 
 maintain to be no 'arid mysticism' at all, but to be in 
 profound unison with ' the sublime and pregnant discourses 
 of the Sea of Galilee and the Mount of Olives.' And we 
 do not see who was capable of uttering them but Jesus. 
 Unless our Evangelist invented them, we do not see from 
 
 1 John, vi, 47. The true sense is given by Jesus in a logion quoted 
 v, 24 : but the theme itself, in its most concise and authentic form, is 
 probably the verse at vi, 47, in the reading of the Vatican manuscript, 
 which omits on me, and has simply, 6 iriffrfviav %x fL CV tu^"ioy. 
 
 * John, iii, 36. 
 
 02
 
 10 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 whom he can have got them, except from Jesus through 
 John; and, indeed, it is not even contended that he got them 
 from anyone else. But it is contended, in defiance of all 
 the tradition, that he himself invented them. But to us it 
 seems incredible, even on grounds of literary criticism solely, 
 that the man who was such a consummate artist as to invent 
 for Jesus the first part of his conversation with Nicodemus 
 should have followed it up by the second. It seems 
 incredible, again, that a dramatic genius capable of invent- 
 ing for John the Baptist : ' He that hath the bride is the 
 bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth 
 and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bride- 
 groom's voice ; this my joy therefore is fulfilled,' ! it seems 
 incredible that such a genius should have finished the 
 Baptist's speech by making him say : ' He that believeth 
 not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth 
 on him.' a And the question, whether this is incredible or 
 no, we would cheerfully consent to submit to the judgment 
 of any competent tribunal ; only the judges constituting 
 the tribunal ought not to be the professors of the theological 
 faculties of Germany, but Germans like Lessing, Herder, 
 and Goethe. 
 
 It seems certain, then, that what is theological lecture 
 in the speeches of Jesus comes not from him or from John, 
 but from John's editor. But a treasure of logia remains, which 
 have all the characters of genuine sayings of Jesus, and which 
 are invaluable as indicating the line really taken by him. The 
 bread of life, the true vine, the good shepherd, the light of the 
 world, are all of them images from the Old Testament, such 
 as the hearers of Jesus were familiar with and gladly heard, 
 such as philosophers like Philo were at that time cooiously 
 employing for their allegorical theology, such as Jesus 
 himself loved naturally and used instinctively, and such as 
 1 John, iii, 29. * John, iii, 36.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 157 
 
 he could and did make admirably helpful to his main 
 design. That design was, it cannot be too often repeated, 
 to change the popular Messias-ideal ; and what stroke 
 towards such an end could be at once more happy and 
 more characteristic of Jesus than when, for example, calling 
 himself the light of the world? he in a moment identified for 
 his followers his ideal of mildness and self-renouncement 
 with the famous world-light of Messianic prophecy: 'It is 
 a small thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up 
 the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel : 
 I will also give thee for a light of the Gentiles^ that my sal- 
 vation may be unto the ends of the earth'* Strokes like 
 these belong essentially to Jesus, and it is an unsound 
 criticism which can think of assigning them to our theo- 
 logical lecturer. 
 
 Many, too, of the objections brought against logia of the 
 Fourth Gospel are frivolous, and merely show the bringer's 
 want of imagination. It is objected that Jesus cannot have 
 said : ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so 
 shall the Son of Man be lifted up,' 3 because he could not 
 have foreseen the manner of his own death. But he fixed 
 on the most miserable kind of death as his fitting and sure 
 climax ; and Plato, following up a supposed sufferer to his 
 climax of misery, fixes, we shall find, upon the very same : 
 'Finally,' says he, 'we will suppose him crucified?* It is 
 objected that Jesus cannot have said to his disciples things 
 like : He that eateth me shall live by tne, 6 because the 
 disciples were certain to misunderstand them, and he would 
 not have said things they must misunderstand. This is a most 
 extraordinary objection. One can account for it only by 
 the strong reluctance of mankind to recognise the gulf 
 between every great spirit and themselves. To this day, 
 
 1 John, viii, 12. * Isaiah, xlix, 6. * John, iii, 14. 
 
 4 Plato, Gorgias, cap. xxviii. * John, vi, 57.
 
 I $3 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 whoever reads a controversy about the Real Presence, will 
 find Christians, and learned Christians, misapprehending 
 the words of Jesus about eating him, even after he himself 
 has supplied the plain explanation of them, 1 as totally as 
 did the Jews ; will find the Christian theologians stumbling 
 and fumbling, just like the Jewish theologians, in their gross, 
 dark, narrow materialism. Half of what any great spirit 
 says is sure to be misapprehended by his hearers ; much 
 more than half of what Jesus said was sure to be misappre- 
 hended by his disciples. If he talked to them at all, he 
 could not but talk to them as he did. And if he talked to 
 them as he did, taking their language about God, the 
 Messiah, bread from heaven, life and death, and translating 
 it into that of his higher ideal, they could not but misunder- 
 stand him. Yet he could not but talk to them, and they 
 could not but reap some benefit from it. What Christianity 
 has done up to this time is the measure of the benefit which 
 Jesus, even imperfectly apprehended, could produce ; and 
 that benefit has been something immense. But such are the 
 necessary conditions on which a great spirit speaks to those 
 who hear his word. They understand him imperfectly; 
 nevertheless they appropriate what they can of him, and get 
 helped along by it somehow. 
 
 Let us look closer at the very logion, the famous legion, 
 last quoted, and observe how in itself it is an entirely 
 probable saying of Jesus, and how its improbability all 
 comes from its editor's treatment of it. The logion is exactly 
 what we call a primitive theme, a nucleus. Our Evangelist 
 composed, of course, his sixth chapter with the institution 
 of the Last Supper full in his view, and with the words, 
 This is my body, This is my blood, ever present to his 
 thoughts. But he had anterior incidents and words to go 
 upon. He had a story from John, how the Jews, with the 
 1 John, vi, 63.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN". 199 
 
 multitude's faith in miracles and desire to get them worked 
 for its benefit, had required Jesus, as the alleged ' prophet 
 like unto Moses,' to feed them miraculously as Moses did. 
 Was it not written in the Scriptures : ' He gave them bread 
 from heaven to eat ? ' * Our Evangelist, we say, had a 
 tradition from John of sayings and answers which this 
 demand of the Jews had called forth. Jesus had said : 
 * Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat 
 that endureth unto everlasting life.' 2 He had said : ' Not 
 Moses gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father 
 giveth you the true bread from heaven.' 3 ' Give us then 
 this bread,' 4 was the Jews' rejoinder. Jesus had answered : 
 'He that believeth hath everlasting life; he that heareth my 
 word, and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life. 
 I am the bread of life ! I am the bread that came down 
 from heaven ! He that cometh to me shall never hunger, 
 and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Not as 
 your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead; 
 he that eateth this bread shall live for ever.' 5 The Jews, 
 with their keen sensuousness, were familiar with the image 
 of God's word as something to feed on, something good to 
 eat and pleasant to taste. It is written in the Psalms : 
 ' How sweet are thy words unto rny taste, yea, sweeter than 
 honey unto my mouth ! ' 6 But they exclaimed, when Jesus 
 called himself the bread from heaven: 'Is not this Jesus 
 the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know ? how 
 saith he that 2 am come down from heaven ? how can he 
 give us his flesh to eat?' 7 Then Jesus had answered : 'As 
 the living Father sent me, and I live by the Father, so he 
 that eateth me, he also shall live by me.' 8 
 
 1 Ps. Ixxviii, 24. * John, vi, 27. 
 
 1 John, vi, 32. * John, vi, 34. 
 
 8 John, vi, 41, 47 (compare v, 24), 48, 58, and 49. 
 Ps. cxix, 103. 7 John, vi, 42, 52. 8 John, vi, 57-
 
 200 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 These we may take as the primitive themes out of which 
 our Evangelist's sixth chapter is built up. Other genuine 
 logia are worked into it But they are worked into it ; they 
 are not its essential elements. Most probably, too, the 
 primitive themes were several times reiterated by Jesus, not 
 without some variation. But we shall hardly err if we take 
 the primitive themes above given, as our nearest possible 
 approach to what Jesus and his interlocutors did actually 
 say. And this substratum being committed to our com- 
 bining and amplifying Greek editor, how natural and expli- 
 cable becomes the apparition, in the chapter, of those sayings 
 which now stagger every serious critic ! It is almost incon- 
 ceivable, if one thinks of it, that Jesus should have actually 
 said in the conversation in question : ' Except ye eat the 
 flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no 
 life in yourselves; he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
 blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up in the 
 last day ; for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is 
 drink indeed.' ! But it is perfectly conceivable that he 
 should have said, the image of the bread from heaven being 
 once started : ' 2 am the bread of life! he that eateth vie shall 
 live by me ! ' 2 and that our editor being such a man as we 
 suppose, and having the words of institution of the Last 
 Supper swaying his mind, should by his mode of com- 
 bining, reiterating and developing these primitive themes, 
 
 ' John, vi, 53-55. 
 
 * John, vi, 48, 57. For the current conception of the word of 
 God as a bread of life, see Jesus himself quoting Deuteronomy (viii, 3) 
 in Matth., iv, 4: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God ; ' and see, too, Philo, 
 in his Sacrarum Legitm Allegoria (Mangey's edit., vol. i, p. 120) : 
 6pas TTjs fyvxv* Tpojtrjv o?a tff-riv ; \6yos 6tov r*r*x4*i COIKWS Sp6crci> 
 K. r. \. Only it is to be observed, in general, that while an allegori- 
 sing theologian, such as Philo, uses images of this kind like a pedant, 
 Jesus uses them like a
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 201 
 
 when he had them to place, have turned them into such 
 speeches of Jesus as now puzzle us. 
 
 For, again, it is almost inconceivable that Jesus should 
 have really said : ' For the bread of God is he that cometh 
 down from heaven, and that giveth life unto the world: ' or 
 that he should have said : ' I am come down from heaven, not 
 to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me ! ' * 
 But it is entirely natural that our editor, having such 
 primitive themes of Jesus as : ' I am the bread that came 
 down from heaven ! I am the bread of life ! I came not to 
 do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me ! ' 2 
 should have combined them and developed them in the way 
 he does. It is almost inconceivable that after saying, ' It is 
 written in the prophets : And they shall be all taught of God! 
 Every one that heareth and learneth from the Father cometh 
 unto me,' Jesus should have subjoined the remark : ' Not 
 that any man hath seen the Father, save he who is from 
 God; he hath seen the Father.' 3 An addition of this kind 
 is inconceivable from Jesus, because both the matter and 
 the manner of it are the clean opposite of his. But it was 
 in entire conformity with our theological lecturer's notion 
 and style, after giving the genuine logia of Jesus, to com- 
 plete and guard the sense of them, as he fancied, by the 
 amplifying clauses. 
 
 6. 
 
 We might go through the Fourth Gospel chapter by 
 chapter, and endeavour to assign to each and all of the 
 logia in it their right character, to determine what in them 
 is probably Jesus, and what is the combining, repeating, and 
 expanding Greek editor. But this would be foreign to our 
 
 1 John, vi, 33, 38. 2 John, vi, 41, 48, 38. 
 
 John, vi, 45, 46.
 
 202 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 object. We seek, not to produce a complete work of in- 
 genious criticism on the Bible, or on any one document in 
 it, but to help readers, sick of popular and conventional 
 theology, and resolved to take the Bible for nothing but 
 what it really is, to help such readers to see what the Bible 
 really is, and how very much, seen as it really is, it concerns 
 them. So we sought to show that the Old Testament is 
 really a majestic homage to the grandeur of righteousness, 
 or conduct, and a sublime witness to its necessity; while the 
 New Testament, again, is really an incomparable elucidation 
 by Jesus Christ of what righteousness in fact and in truth is. 
 And there can be no question that books of which this is 
 the real character do concern men vitally. So, again, we 
 seek to show that of Jesus Christ's incomparable elucidation 
 of what righteousness is, several main elements are really to 
 be found in the Fourth Gospel. In that case it urgently 
 concerns people to study the Fourth Gospel, instead of 
 tossing it aside as a Gnostic forgery, crammed with ' the arid 
 mysticism of the schools of Alexandria.' But to lead men 
 to study it, and to clear out of their way objections which 
 might for ever prevent their studying it, is our aim ; when 
 we have accomplished this, we have accomplished as much 
 as we intend. 
 
 But to restore perfectly the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, 
 or, indeed of any Gospel, is impossible. The data are 
 insufficient, and the alteration, often important though 
 perhaps verbally slight, which his sayings have undergone 
 from the pressure of other minds upon them, is too con- 
 siderable. Our restoration must frequently be conjectural, 
 and we may be wrong in our conjectures. We do not 
 pretend that we could establish as clear and certain our 
 criticism of every passage, or nearly every passage, in the 
 Fourth Gospel, supposing we were to go through it with our 
 reader. And even if we could save him from one or two
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 203 
 
 mistakes by not merely giving him the guiding ideas with 
 which to read the Gospel for himself, but by going through 
 it with him, our object is not to make as faultless a critic of 
 him as possible, but to keep him in contact with a book 
 which will do him good, and to make him study it for him- 
 self. If he thinks it spurious, he is riot likely to study it ; 
 but we try to show him that it is full of genuine things, and 
 to give him the guiding ideas by which to account for the 
 things that made the charge of spuriousness seem plausible, 
 and by which to extricate the things that are genuine. 
 
 Our great point as to the Fourth Gospel is this : the 
 Evangelist is a combiner, not an inventor. It is his forms 
 of connecting and articulating which obscure the gnomic 
 character of the sayings of the Lord in this Gospel ; get rid 
 of those forms, and the gnomic and genuine character 
 reappears. Our Evangelist had a number of logia to plant. 
 He did not, he could not, know their true connexion; and 
 the connexion he imposes on them is not to be depended 
 upon. Often we, studying quietly his work as it lies before 
 us complete, can perceive a better connexion for certain 
 logia than that which he has devised for them. But we can 
 never be absolutely sure of having found the real original 
 connexion for them ; the safe thing is to distrust our 
 Evangelist's connexion, and to take the logia singly. Even 
 where they have a dramatic propriety and beauty as joined 
 together by our Evangelist, it is often very questionable 
 whether Jesus thus joined them, whether we are not more 
 on the trace of Jesus when we take them singly. Nothing 
 can well be finer or more impressive than the speech formed 
 by the series of logia 1 attributed to Jesus after Andrew tells 
 him of the Greeks desiring to see him. But it is highly 
 improbable that Jesus did actually thus deliver these logia as 
 a series, and in one speech, and on one occasion; although 
 
 1 John, xii, 23-26.
 
 204 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 we may grant every logion in the series to be in itself 
 authentic, and of the very highest value. 
 
 Now, it is wonderful how the likelihood of our having as 
 the substance of the Fourth Gospel genuine sayings of Jesus 
 will be found to gain, and the unlikelihood of it to dwindle, 
 the moment we come to disregard our Evangelist's combi- 
 nations, and to suppress his repetitions and lecturings. Let 
 us take the series of chapters against which so much of ob- 
 jection has been brought, the series from the twelfth chapter 
 to the end of the seventeenth. They form almost one con- 
 tinuous speech, and most certainly they were not spoken as 
 such. They contain, also, repetitions which Jesus, to judge 
 from everything that we know of his manner, cannot have 
 made, and some things which he cannot have said at all 
 It is easy to see this, and to reject the whole series of 
 chapters as unauthentic. But a little attention will show us 
 a number of primitive themes, or nuclei, on which our 
 Evangelist is operating ; and that these themes, to judge, 
 again, from everything that we know of the manner of Jesus, 
 have all the marks of being authentic. And we may with 
 profit try to get back to what Jesus can have actually said ; 
 only we must be careful, in attempting this, to distinguish 
 between what is certain, and what can only be called 
 probable. 
 
 That Jesus, however, uttered a great deal of what is 
 attributed to him in the series of chapters from the twelfth 
 to the seventeenth, that he gave the primitive themes which 
 are the basis of them, ihat the combination of the themes is 
 the Evangelist's, and that by the Evangelist Jesus is made 
 to repeat himself over and over again, to connect things as 
 he never connected them, and to say things which he never 
 said, we regard as so probable that it becomes certain. For 
 the primitive themes are in the characteristic manner of 
 Jesus, and we do not see from whom else they can have
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 205 
 
 proceeded. The combination, repetition and development 
 of the themes are in the characteristic manner of the 
 Evangelist. 
 
 In a former part of our argument, we had occasion to 
 single out one or two of the primitive themes. These we 
 showed to be the nucleus of sayings delivering Jesus Christ's 
 own real doctrine about his own resurrection. Other 
 sayings have in like manner their primitive theme. And if 
 the reader simply takes all the sayings belonging to each 
 theme, and puts them together, he will do what is very con- 
 ducive both to a right enjoyment of this series of chapters, 
 and to a right criticism of them. We should like our 
 reader to distribute under heads all the sayings on each 
 theme, and then to judge them for himself. We will, 
 however, taking one or two themes not hitherto touched 
 by us, show at least how true it is that by the process we 
 recommend both objects are served : the right enjoyment of 
 our Evangelist's materials, and the right criticism of them. 
 
 First, as to the enjoyment of what our Evangelist has, in 
 these chapters, saved for us. We will simply put together 
 the scattered logia having for their theme the ' new 
 commandment,' and make the subject begin where it natu- 
 rally does begin, with the sayings of Jesus after he has 
 washed the disciples' feet at the Last Supper. ' Know ye 
 what I have done unto you ? Ye call me Master and Lord, 
 and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Master and 
 Lord, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one 
 another's feet. For I have given you an example that ye 
 also should do as I have done to you. Verily I say unto 
 you, the servant is not greater than his lord, neither is he 
 that is sent greater than he that sent him. A new command- 
 ment give I unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have 
 loved you, that ye also love one another. Hereby shall all 
 men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one
 
 206 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 to another. This is my commandment, that ye love one 
 another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man 
 than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye 
 are my friends, if ye do that which I command you. Ye 
 nave not chosen me, but I have chosen you. Henceforth I 
 call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his 
 lord doeth ; but I have called you friends, for all things that 
 I hear of my Father I make known unto you. These 
 things I command you, that ye love one another.' l All 
 these sentences we may take as genuine logia having the 
 4 new commandment ' for their theme. Relieved from the 
 separation which the Evangelist, for the purposes of this long 
 discourse and its developments, inflicts on them, simply put 
 together again as by their subject they belong together, how 
 their effectiveness and impressiveness increases, how height- 
 ened is our enjoyment of them ! 
 
 And next, as to the right criticism of our Evangelist's 
 mode of procedure. Let us take the sayings on another 
 theme, the primitive theme for all which is said about the 
 disciples' prayers being granted, the words : ' Whatsoever ye 
 shall ask in my name, I will do it' 2 Let us put with these 
 words all the scattered repetitions of this same theme, some 
 of them with a little variation, others in words almost 
 identical with the logion we have quoted. When we see 
 them altogether, we see that by all the repetitions nothing is 
 really added, either in the substance or in the form of 
 expression, to the primitive theme; nothing is gained. 
 The primitive theme, then, alone is from Jesus. The 
 repetitions are our Evangelist's, to enable Jesus to make 
 a long, connected speech, such as Jesus never dealt in, such 
 as is quite alien to his manner. Now, it is argued that the 
 logia proper to the Fourth Gospel are all of them inventions, 
 because they are unmeaningly and vainly repeated. But is 
 1 John, xiii, 12-16, 34, 35 ; xv, 13-17. * John xiv, 13,
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 207 
 
 the ineffective repetition, several times, of a logion, any 
 reason why Jesus should not have given it with effect once ? 
 
 The same with the sayings of Jesus about his glory. It 
 is argued that the frequent and earnest insistence on his glory, 
 particularly in the long prayer of the seventeenth chapter, 
 is not at all in the style of Jesus and cannot be his. As the 
 Evangelist presents and develops it, we will own it cannot. 
 But let us put together all the sayings of Jesus about his 
 glory, going back for this purpose as far even as the eleventh 
 chapter, where is the first apparition of them, and we shall 
 be able to see, both what Jesus may probably have said on 
 the subject, and how the Evangelist has probably dealt with 
 it. To begin with, we find a primitive theme entirely in the 
 style of Jesus, in his exclamation when he heard from 
 Andrew and Philip of the Gentiles, or Greeks, present at his 
 last Passover and desirous to see him: 'The hour is come 
 that the Son of Man should be glorified ! M In all the Four 
 Gospels there is not a saying of Jesus more safe to accept 
 than this, more perfectly in character. To Jesus, these 
 foreigners desiring to see him were the Gentiles, the nations. 
 The Messiah, of whom the Jews had their minds full, he 
 steadfastly identified, we know, with the mild and stricken 
 Servant of prophecy, ' his visage so marred more than any 
 man, and his form more than the sons of men,' 2 and him- 
 self with this Messiah. He knew that the victory of this 
 Messiah and of his cause could only come when he had 
 1 poured out his soul unto death.' 3 What was that victory ? 
 It was the foundation, and henceforth unconquerable insti- 
 tution for the world at large, of the kingdom of God, the 
 reign of righteousness. 'The Eternal will cause righteous- 
 ness and praise to spring forth before all nations ; I will set 
 my glory among the heathen ; from the rising of the sun 
 even unto the going down of the same my name shall be 
 
 John, xii, 23. 2 Isaiah, Hi, 14. 8 Isaiah, liii, 12.
 
 2c8 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 great among the Gentiles.' * But to bring in the reign of 
 righteousness, was to bring in the Eternal's glory; and the 
 Servant who brought in this, founded his own by doing so. 
 We may conceive of many and various texts as contributing 
 here. Texts originally proper to the despised Servant, the 
 Messias-ideal of Jesus : ' So shall many nations exult in 
 him; kings shall shut their mouths before him.' 2 Texts 
 originally proper to the renewed Israel : ' The Gentiles 
 shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory.' 3 Texts 
 originally proper to the righteous man in general : ' Thou 
 shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me 
 to glory.' 4 Texts originally proper to the conquering Root 
 of David, the Messias-ideal of the Jews : ' His rest shall be 
 glory.' 5 All these we may conceive as present and contri- 
 butory in the mind of Jesus, when, seeing his death im- 
 minent, and hearing at the same time of the Gentile 
 strangers desirous to see him, he said : ' The hour is come 
 that the Son of Man should be glorified 1 ' 
 
 But once this primitive theme given, how natural that 
 our Evangelist should harp upon it, recur to it, develop it ! 
 The whole seventeenth chapter may be called a develop- 
 ment of this theme. It is as much in character for a 
 disciple to love to prolong the theme of Christ's glory and 
 dilate upon it, as it is little in character for Jesus himself to 
 do so. And the mode of development followed is just the 
 mode tempting to a disciple, Jew or Greek, of Jesus, 
 but never adopted or encouraged by Jesus himself. 
 
 Jesus checked questions of theosophy. He contented 
 himself with taking the conception of God as the Jews had 
 it, and as the Old Testament delivered it, as the eternal and 
 righteous Father ; and with saying of himself : ' I came 
 
 1 Isaiah, Ixi, n ; Ezekiel, xxxix, 21 ; Malachi, i, n. 
 * Isaiah, lii, 15. * Isaiah, Ixii, 2. 
 
 4 Psalm Ixxiii, 24. * Isaiah, xi, 10.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 209 
 
 forth from God,' ' God sent me.' But questions of 
 theosophy had and have, as we see by the history of 
 Gnosticism, and, indeed, by the whole history of religion, 
 an irresistible attraction for the human mind. Men asked 
 themselves, as Tertullian says, Unde Deus ? and they loved 
 to inquire, in like manner, precisely how was Jesus related 
 to his Father who sent him. In a famous passage in the 
 Book of Proverbs, Wisdom says of herself : ' The Lord 
 possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works 
 of old ; I was set up from everlasting. I was by him as one 
 brought up with him, and I was daily his delight' 1 The 
 Book of Wisdom, a late work, but for that very reason more 
 likely to be popular, and of which in the Epistle to the 
 Hebiews we can see the influence, added these striking 
 traits : ' Wisdom is the breath of the power of God, and a 
 pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. She 
 is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted 
 mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.' 2 
 Eagerly did theosophy possess itself of these images, and 
 spin its fancies by the help of two supposed personages, 
 Sophia and Logos, the Wisdom and Word of God. Jesus 
 spoke of himself as uttering the word of God; but that he 
 called himself the Logos, there is neither indication nor proba- 
 bility. There is, however, some trace of his having perhaps 
 called himself the wisdom of God. At least, a saying of the 
 First Gospel, ' Wherefore, behold, / send unto you prophets 
 and wise men and scribes,' 3 is given in the Third Gospel in 
 the following different and remarkable form : ' Wherefore also 
 the wisdom of God said, I will send unto them prophets and 
 apostles.' 4 It is just possible that we have here a trace of 
 
 1 Prov., viii, 22, 23, 30. 
 
 2 Wisdom, vii, 25, 26. Compare ewravya<r/*a Qwrbs aifSiov . . . KO! 
 fiK&iv TTJS aya66rr]Tos O.VTOV, in this passage, with Heb,, i, 3 : 
 yafffia TTJS Sdfrjs /cal x a P aKT ^lP T ^ J faroffrdffews avrov. 
 
 3 Matth., xxiii, 34. * Luke, xi, 4$ 
 
 P
 
 210 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Jesus having really and naturally, on at least one occasion, 
 called himself 'the wisdom of God,' and having to that 
 extent seemed to give countenance to the personifying 
 lucubrations upon these terms Sophia and Logos, the Wis- 
 dom, Reason, or Word, of God, of both Jewish and Greek 
 theosophy. It is just possible I say, that our Evangelist, in 
 developing what Jesus said of his glory, had thus much to go 
 upon. 1 But at any rate, the glory of Jesus was made to 
 accord with that of the Sophia or Logos of theosophical 
 speculation, and with the attributes assigned to them by 
 Scripture. And so we have Jesus made to say : ' And now, 
 Father, glorify thou me beside thine own self with the glory 
 which I had beside thee before the world was.' 2 We have 
 him saying : ' Father, that which thou hast given me, I will 
 that they also be with me where I am, that they may see my 
 glory which thou gavest me because thou lovedst me before 
 the foundation of the world.' 3 These things are not at all 
 in the manner of Jesus. Jesus, as we have said, never theo- 
 sophised. Not thus did he employ Scripture, not thus did 
 he establish his divinity, not thus did he conceive his glory. 
 But it is entirely in the manner of our Evangelist. And this 
 is the good of putting together everything which relates to a 
 primitive theme ; because we then are enabled to perceive 
 clearly, both how simple and characteristic was the original 
 nucleus given by Jesus, and also how naturally the additions 
 to it which perplex us may have arisen from the manipu- 
 lation by the Evangelist of this given nucleus, from his 
 expansions and developments of it. 
 
 1 Probably, however, Jesus was simply referring to a well-known 
 phrase of prophecy : ' I have sent unto you all my servants the 
 prophets, rising up early and sending them ; but ye have not inclined 
 your ear nor hearkened unto me" (see Jeremiah, xxxv, 15), and did 
 not mean either the Wisdom of God or the / to stand for himself. 
 
 * John, xvii, 5. 
 
 * John, xvii, 24. The Vatican manuscript is followed.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 211 
 
 The seventeenth chapter is one where these expansions 
 and developments appear to exceed greatly in amount the 
 original nucleus. This is by no means always the case in 
 our Evangelist's report of the sayings of Jesus. But in his 
 report of miracles, and indeed in all reports of miracles, we 
 may safely take it that the additions exceed the original 
 nucleus of fact very largely. We said in our first chapter, 
 that the suspension or diminution of hunger, when the 
 attention is absorbed and the interest excited, was quite 
 basis enough for the story of the miraculous feeding of the 
 thousands. The answer has positively been hazarded, that 
 no absorption or excitement could enable five thousand 
 people to satisfy themselves upon five loaves and two fishes, 
 and to leave twelve baskets full of fragments. As if the 
 details of a miraculous story had the sort of solidity which 
 would warrant one in thus gravely arguing upon them ! as if 
 any one who has come to distrust miracles trusts all the 
 circumstances related for them and only distrusts the mira- 
 culousness ! It is in the circumstances that the legend con- 
 sists, that the creative power of the imagination shows itself 
 active. Granted that a starting-point and a hint of fact for 
 the miracles related in our Gospels there has nearly always 
 been, yet in nine cases out of ten we shall probably err if we 
 imagine we can now seize even this hint of fact ; it was so 
 slight in the first instance, and has been so buried under the 
 additions. 
 
 We have already remarked how perhaps the sole nucleus 
 of solid fact for the miraculous incidents at Christ's baptism 
 was that weird light on Jordan mentioned in the Apocryphal 
 Gospels. Sometimes the nucleus for a miracle was afforded, 
 not improbably, by some saying of Jesus. Perhaps this is 
 
 P 2
 
 212 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 the true way of accounting for the miracle of the raising of 
 Lazarus. The miracle of the raising of Lazarus has been 
 the theme of endless disquisition; every detail of it has 
 been canvassed with elaborate minuteness. What part of 
 the details is solid we shall never know. But it may safely 
 be said, that, the human mind being what it is, and stories 
 of miracle arising as they do, the juxtaposition of one or 
 two sayings of Jesus is sufficient, to an investigator willing 
 to look at things simply, to account for the whole miracle. 
 Let us try to effect this juxtaposition. 
 
 The crowning moment in the career of Jesus, as Jesus 
 himself construed and connected his own career, had arrived, 
 'the moment for ' the Messiah to suffer and to enter into 
 his glory.' 1 At this moment Jesus is told of the death of a 
 faithful disciple and friend. He says to his followers : Our 
 friend Lazarus sleep eth ; I go to awake him.' 2 ' To the eye of 
 Jesus, the kingdom of God, the reign of the saints, the in- 
 troduction and triumph of everlasting righteousness, that 
 triumph in which re-live all the saints who are dead, and the 
 saints who are yet alive live for evermore, was at this 
 moment beginning. The sisters of the departed are plunged 
 in weeping and lamentation ; Jesus says to Martha : Thy 
 brother shall rise again? Not with the bodily resurrection 
 which Martha and the popular religion of Palestine then 
 expected, and which the popular religion of Christendom 
 expects now ; this materialism Jesus had to transform, as 
 he had to transform the materialism of the Messias-ideal. 
 Martha, however, imagines that Jesus is speaking of the 
 resurrection in the sense of popular religion; but Jesus cor- 
 rects her. Vain gleam of illumination in that moment of 
 early and darkling dawn 1 He corrected her ; but his cor- 
 rection was a gleam of light destined slowly to brighten, not 
 
 1 Luke, xxiv, 26. * John, xi, 1 1. 
 
 1 Joha jci, 23.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN, 213 
 
 of force at that time to pierce the darkness. His words 
 were : I am the resurrection and the life; he who believeth on 
 me, though he die, shall live, and he who liveth and believeth 
 on me shall never die. 1 The logion is of like kind with this 
 other : If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.* 
 
 * If a man uses my method and my secret,' Jesus means, 
 
 * usss them as I do, uses them in me, he cannot die, he is 
 passed from death to life.' But premature and vain, we 
 repeat, was this ray of illumination then. Out of the very 
 logion which thus points to a wholly new ideal of resurrec- 
 tion, out of that logion, passed from hearer to hearer, 
 repeated, brooded over, misapprehended, grew up, not 
 improbably, the story of the great miracle of resurrection 
 according to the old ideal, the miracle of the raising of 
 Lazarus. That logion, together with the saying to Martha, 
 Thy brother shall rise again, together with the saying to the 
 disciples, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, I go to awake him, 
 were the materials out of which was built up a miraculous 
 tale exactly effacing the truth which Jesus wished to convey. 
 
 The developing of miracle out of slight materials is, how- 
 ever, common to our Evangelist with the Synoptics. Baur 
 opposes these to our Evangelist in such a fashion, that one 
 is sometimes tempted to ask whether he supposes, then, that 
 the Synoptics are historical. They have, indeed, over our 
 Evangelist certain advantages already noticed ; but historical 
 they are no more than he is. A creative pressure on in- 
 cidents they all alike exercise. A creative pressure on the 
 sayings, too, of Jesus, the Synoptics as well as our Evangelist 
 exercise, though in a different manner from his. Nay, some- 
 times he is more historical than the Synoptics. If we think 
 of it seriously, for the words spoken by Jesus during his 
 agony in the garden 3 the Synoptics could not possibly have 
 had evidence, since the only companions of Jesus were asleep 
 
 1 John, xi, 25, 26. * John, viii, 51. * Matth., xxvi, 39, 42.
 
 214 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 when the reported words were spoken. Their real source, 
 probably, the Fourth Gospel discovers to us. This Gospel 
 gives us two utterances of Jesus, made, one of them shortly 
 before his arrest, the other at the moment of it ' Now is 
 my soul troubled, and what shall I say : Father, save me 
 from this hour ? But for this cause came I unto this hour.' ' 
 And again : ' The cup which my Father hath given me, 
 shall 1 not drink it ? ' 2 We have here, probably, the true 
 original of the words assigned by the Synoptics to the prayer 
 of agony in the garden. 
 
 Where the Synoptics are more historical than our Evan- 
 gelist is in cases where knowledge of Jewish localities and 
 usages is required. When he varies from them in such 
 matters, however, it is because this sort of knowledge is 
 lacking to him, not because he is warping facts to suit a 
 design. Baur and his Tubingen school are confident that 
 the truth of their theory about the Fourth Gospel is quite 
 established by our Evangelist's account of the Last Supper 
 and of the Crucifixion. Baur found design in the whole of 
 it : design to discountenance any observance of the Pass- 
 over supper by Christians, design to identify the Passover 
 sacrifice with the death of Christ, design to prove the ending 
 of all things Jewish, the coming-in of the reign of Pneuma, or 
 spirit. But how slight are his grounds when we examine them ! 
 True, the Synoptics represent the Last Supper as eaten 
 on the day when the Passover was eaten. This day was 
 ' the fourteenth day of the first month at even,' 3 the i4th of 
 the Jewish month of Nisan; and the Crucifixion the Synop- 
 tics represent as taking place on the day following, the i5th. 
 True, the Fourth Gospel represents the Crucifixion as happen- 
 ing on the very same day on which the Passover was eaten, 
 on the i4th of Nisan, therefore, not on the i5th. On the 
 morning of the Crucifixion, the Jews, says our Evangelist, 
 1 John, xii, 27. 2 John, xviii, II. * Exodus, xii, 18.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 215 
 
 would not enter the Praetorium, ' in order that they might 
 not be defiled, but might eat the Passover ' ; l that Pass- 
 over which, according to the Synoptics, had been eaten the 
 evening before. The Last Supper, then, must, according to 
 our Evangelist, have been eaten on the i3th of Nisan, not 
 on the i4th ; not on the day appointed for eating the Jewish 
 Passover. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the Synoptics, and not our 
 Evangelist, are right, although the growing estrangement 
 from things Jewish caused the Christian Church to explain 
 their testimony away, and to assign the Crucifixion to the 14th 
 of Nisan. Christ did not eat the Paschal Lamb, he suffered 
 as the Paschal Lamb? was the view which prevailed. In the 
 latter half of the second century, we find a keen controversy 
 turning, in fact, upon this, whether the i4th of Nisan was 
 the day on which Jesus ate the Last Supper, as the Passover 
 Supper, with his disciples. The Asiatic Churches contended 
 that he did ; and Polycrates, the aged Bishop of Ephesus, 
 appealed 3 to the practice of the Apostle John, who, he said, 
 had always observed the i4th as the day on which Jesus, 
 keeping the Passover Supper, had eaten his last meal with 
 the Twelve. But the Fourth Gospel put this last meal on 
 the 1 3th. It cannot, then, argues Baur, have proceeded 
 from St. John. It was written by one of the anti-Jewish 
 party, during the Paschal controversy, to put a stop to 
 the identification of the Last Supper with the Jewish Pass- 
 over. 
 
 It is certain that Rome, and the Christian Church at 
 large, adopted the view that the i4th was the day of the 
 
 1 John, xviii, 28. 
 
 2 SeePascAal Chronicle (edition of Bonn), vol. i, p. 12. OVK f<f>ayev 
 rif vofjunbv auvkv Iv e'/ceiVp TTJ rj/J-fpa 6 Kvpios, ctAA.' ainbs firaBev us 
 aA7j0r;s a/j.v6s. 
 
 3 In his letter to Victor and the Church of Rome, quoted by 
 Eusebius, Hist. Ectles., v, 24.
 
 216 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 Crucifixion, not of the Last Supper. There was, however, 
 for the Church one cause of doubt and difficulty in the 
 matter. How could it be that St John, the author of the 
 Fourth Gospel, kept the i4th as the day on which Jesus ate 
 the Last Supper? This difficulty was got over by supposing 
 that John, having to do with a number of Jewish Christians, 
 had accepted, for the sake of peace, their identification of 
 the Last Supper with the Passover, although he knew better 
 all the time. In Bede's History, we find our English St. 
 Wilfrid offering to doubters this explanation. 1 
 
 Nothing can be more improbable than that St John, 
 knowing the observance of the i4th of Nisan as the day of 
 the Last Supper to be an error, should nevertheless have 
 countenanced the error by complying with it in his practice. 
 The tradition that he kept the i4th may well be believed ; 
 but then he must have kept it with the sincere conviction 
 that it was the day of the Last Supper. And so, no doubt, 
 it was. John, then, cannot have written the eighteenth 
 chapter of the Fourth Gospel, cannot have put the Cruci- 
 fixion on the day when the Passover Supper was to be eaten. 
 This we freely concede to Baur. But does the chapter 
 aim, as Baur imagines, at marking, and marking with a con- 
 troversial and anti- Jewish intention, an error of the Synoptics 
 about the respective days of the Last Supper and of the 
 Crucifixion ? Is this the reason why John, who shared the 
 error of the Synoptics if it was an error, cannot have written 
 the chapter ? By no means. St John cannot have written 
 it for the same reason that he cannot have talked of 
 Bethany beyond Jordan, or made the high-priesthood of 
 Caiaphas a yearly office. He cannot have written it be- 
 cause he was a Jew, and exactitude about Jewish days 
 and ceremonies came natural to him. Now, it is simply 
 for want, as it seems to us, of this exactitude, that the 
 1 Bede, Hist. Eccles., hi, 25.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 217 
 
 Fourth Gospel varies from the Synoptics in dating the 
 Last Supper and the Crucifixion ; not from any contro- 
 versial design. 
 
 John's Greek editor knew Jewish usages, and liked to 
 import them into his narrative. But he knew them loosely, 
 as a foreigner, and he sometimes placed them incoherently. 
 He is like Michelet enlivening his account of things English 
 with traits of detail, and meaning to say that at a financial 
 crisis in London there was ' consternation in Change Alley.' 
 That would have been all very well But Michelet says, 
 instead of Change Alley, Alley Change. Perhaps neither a 
 Greek nor a Frenchman could ever bring himself to learn 
 with minute accuracy the details of any civilisation not his 
 own. John's Greek editor knew the Jewish scrupulosity, 
 and that a Jew in a state of defilement could not eat the 
 Passover. He takes the occasion of Jesus being carried before 
 Pilate to exhibit this piece of knowledge, and says that the 
 Jews could not enter the Prsetorium with Jesus, for fear they 
 should be defiled and hindered from eating the Passover, 
 He does not observe that he is thus contradicting the 
 common tradition and the Synoptics, who represent the 
 Passover as being eaten, not on the evening of the day 
 of Christ's Crucifixion, but on the evening of the day 
 before. Yet it may surely be seen, except by people 
 bent on finding mountains in mole-hills, that he does 
 not mean to contradict the Synoptics ; for he calls the 
 day of the Crucifixion the Preparation Day, 1 as they do. 
 The Preparation Day was the day intervening between 
 the 1 4th of Nisan and the Sabbath. If Jesus was cruci- 
 fied on the i4th of Nisan, the day for eating the Pass- 
 over, that day could not at the same time be the Prepara- 
 tion Day, the day subsequent to the day for eating the 
 Passover, and coming between that day and the Sabbath. 
 1 John, xix, 31.
 
 2i8 GOD AND THE B1SLE. 
 
 The truth is, on these topics of Jewish doings and 
 ceremonies, our Greek editor is rather in a haze. Thus 
 he talks of putting a sponge on hyssop 1 where the Syn- 
 optics talk of putting a sponge on a cane? Hyssop is the 
 Hebrew name for a plant something like our maijoram, 
 with a close, bunching head of flowers, which can serve 
 for a mop or a sponge. To talk of putting a sponge on 
 hyssop is, therefore, like talking of putting a sponge on 
 sponge. But our Greek editor knew the connexion of 
 hyssop with ' the blood of sprinkling,' and did not clearly 
 know what hyssop was; so he makes it do duty for the 
 cane of the Synoptics. He has no profound dogmatic 
 design to represent the death of Christ otherwise than as 
 the Synoptics represented it ; but his hold on Jewish 
 details is less firm than theirs, and his use of Jewish details 
 more capricious. 
 
 Again, the whole story of the soldier piercing the side of 
 Jesus with his spear is said by Baur to be an invention of 
 our Evangelist with the design of identifying Jesus with the 
 Paschal Lamb (a bone of him shall not be broken /), and of 
 mystically representing, by the effusion of water and blood, 
 the apparition of the new powers of Logos and Pneuma. 
 No other Evangelist mentions the incident, argues Baur. 
 The quotation from Exodus 3 shows what was in the 
 writer's mind ; and Apollinaris of Hierapolis, taking part 
 in the Paschal controversy soon after the year 170 of our 
 era, marks the figurative character of the incident, identifies 
 Christ with the Paschal Lamb slain on the i4th of Nisan, 
 and the water and blood with Logos and Pneuma* 
 
 1 John, xix, 29. - Matth., xxvii, 48 ; Mark, xv, 36. 
 
 Exod., xii, 46. 
 
 4 77 t5' -rb a.\-r\Qiv'bv TOV Kvpiov ira<rx a > says Apollinaris ; and presently 
 afterwards : & (KXfas 1* TTJS T\fvpas avrov ri Svo TTOL\IV tcaQapffia, vSeao 
 Kal alua, \6yov KO.I irvevfjM.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 219 
 
 Now, the argument, that if an important thing in the 
 Fourth Gospel is not found in the Synoptics also, it must be 
 a mere invention of our Evangelist's, is always pressed by 
 Baur against our Evangelist only. But why is it more 
 incredible that the piercing of the side, though given in the 
 Fourth Gospel alone, should yet really have been matter of 
 tradition, than that the last words of Jesus : Father, into thy 
 hands I commend my spirit, which are in Luke only, l should 
 proceed, not from Luke's own invention, but from a real" 
 tradition ? Nor has the quotation : A lone of him shall not 
 be broken? in all probability the reference alleged. Not 
 Exodus or the Paschal Lamb is probably here in our 
 Evangelist's mind, but one of the Psalms on the preservation 
 of the righteous : Thou keepest all his bones, so that not one 
 of them is broken? The form of the Greek verb corresponds 
 with the form used in this passage from the Psalms, 4 not in 
 the passage from Exodus; which latter runs : 'Ye shall not 
 break a bone thereof.' Besides, the Evangelist is heaping 
 together instances of the fulfilment of predictions made by 
 Prophet and Psalmist, and to suppose him suddenly turning 
 to the Law and its precepts is not natural. 
 
 It is most probable that the side-piercing, followed by 
 the appearance of something thought to resemble blood and 
 water, was really, like our Evangelist's incidents in general, 
 given by tradition. As early as Justin's time, nay, as early 
 as the date of the Apocalypse, the passage from Zechariah, 5 
 which in the Greek Bible was mis-translated to mean : 
 They shall turn their eyes towards me in exchange for their 
 
 1 Luke, xxiii, 46. 2 John, xix, 36. 3 Psalm xxxiv, 20. 
 
 4 ffwrpifMifferaL, and not ffwrpfyfTf. Some later manuscripts of 
 the New Testament show the pressure to connect John, xix, 36, with 
 Exod., xii, 46, rather than with Ps. xxxiv, 20. See in Sabatier, 
 Bibliorum Sacrorum Latincz Versiones Antiqutz, his note on the verse 
 in John. 
 
 5 Zechariah, xii. 10.
 
 220 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 insulting^ had been altered to its true meaning : They shall 
 look on him whom they pierced, as it stands in the Fourth 
 Gospel. 2 This proves, it is true, nothing as to the antiquity of 
 the Fourth Gospel. Passages of the Old Testament which had 
 had a Messianic sense were early, as we have said already, 
 corrected to bring this sense out, if before they obscured it. 
 But it proves the antiquity of some tradition of a piercing 
 which the passage in Zechariah suited. If the piercing had 
 'been merely that of the hands and feet by the nails, as 
 given by one of the Messianic Psalms, the Greek verb of 
 that Psalm would probably have been used for the prophecy 
 of Zechariah also ; now, a different verb is taken. 3 
 
 We do not at all deny that the identification of Christ's 
 sacrifice with the Paschal sacrifice was a conception enter- 
 tained by our Evangelist, who speaks of the Lamb of God 
 that taketh away the sin of the world* It was a conception 
 familiar also to Paul, 5 and a conception just and natural. 
 What we deny is that it has become with our Evangelist, 
 any more than with Paul, the nucleus of a theory for which 
 he combines, arranges, invents. In the Paschal controversy 
 in the latter part of the second century, the idea had become 
 a nucleus of this kind. There is no doubt as to what 
 Apollinaris makes our Evangelist's words mean, any more 
 than there is doubt as to what Baur makes our Evangelist's 
 words mean. But, if our Evangelist had really meant what 
 Apollinaris and Baur find in his words, he would have 
 expressed himself somewhat as they do, he would have 
 shown his intention as they do. But he expresses himself 
 so very differently ! Therefore we cannot credit him with 
 
 1 jri/8A.e'i|/o>'Tat vp6s /J.f avd' Siv KarwpxriffavTO. 
 
 * John, xix, 37. fyovrai (Is tv ^|e/ceVT7j<rcu'. 
 
 * f^fKfinriffcw instead of >pu$ay. See, in the Greek Bible, Psalm 
 xxi, 1 6. 
 
 * John, i, 29. 
 
 * See I Cor., v, 7.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 221 
 
 the mystic meaning and design they suppose for him. ' The 
 1 4th is the true Passover of the Lord,' says Apollinaris : 
 'the great sacrifice, the Son of God in the lamb's stead.' 
 Again : ' His holy side was pierced, and he shed back out 
 of his side the two cleansers, water and blood, word and 
 spirit.'^ There is no uncertainty about the writer's inten- 
 tion, here ; and if our Evangelist had invented his Gospel 
 to serve the same intention, that intention would have been 
 as manifest. Probably, however, what the water and blood 
 figured to our Evangelist's mind was not logos and pneuma 
 at all, but, as the First Johannine Epistle indicates, and as 
 Theophylact interpreted, 2 the union of the human and 
 divine natures in Christ. The water was a kind of celestial 
 ichor, the blood was the blood of mortal man. 
 
 Tried fairly, then, and without a preconceived theory to 
 warp our criticism, the Fourth Gospel comes out no fancy- 
 piece, but a serious and invaluable document, full of in- 
 cidents given by tradition and of genuine ' sayings of the 
 Lord.' 
 
 Sayings are not to be rejected as inventions too easily. 
 They are not to be rejected because they seem strong and 
 harsh, and we do not like them. For example, there is the 
 saying of Jesus to the Jews about their father the devil: 'He 
 was a manslayer from the beginning.' 3 Its violence is 
 
 1 See the fragment of Apollinaris in Otto, Corpus Apologetarum 
 Christianorum Saculi Secundi, vol. ix, p. 487 ; with the notes in that 
 work both to the fragments of Apollinaris and to those of Melito of 
 Sardis. 
 
 * In his Commentary on the Fourth Gospel. His words are: 
 tb p.fv alfj.a ffvufioXov rov elvai &vdpcaitov r'bv ffravpudfvra, rb 5e vSvp 
 inrtp dvOpcairov, TOV flvai Qfov. 
 
 * John, viii, 44.
 
 222 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 objected to. But the Peratoe quote it in substance, and 
 that is an external testimony to its genuineness ; the invec- 
 tives against the scribes and Pharisees in the Synoptics 
 make it a not improbable saying in itself. 
 
 Neither are sayings to be rejected because they are 
 profound, and over their hearers' heads; as, for example, 
 the saying : ' Before Abraham was, I am.' l Ever since 
 man appeared upon earth, the clearing and saving influences, 
 which constitute the very being of Jesus, have been present 
 and at work amongst mankind ; often they have been 
 latent, but they have been always there. And always has 
 this gentle and healing virtue saved, and always has it been 
 sacrificed ; therefore Jesus was well called by Apostle and 
 Seer, and well too might he have called himself : The lamb 
 slain from the foundation of the -world? When he said to 
 the Jews, ' Before Abraham was, I am,' Jesus did but 
 pursue, as he pursued on so many other occasions also, his 
 lofty treatment of the themes of life and immortality, while 
 his hearers stuck fast in their materialistic notions of them 
 and failed to follow his real meaning. In this there is 
 nothing strange or incredible. 
 
 Nor, finally, are sayings to be rejected because they 
 accommodate themselves to the materialism of the disciples. 
 Only under these familiar figures of a bodily resurrection 
 and a visible judgment-assize, of sitting on thrones to try 
 the twelve tribes of Israel, of a heavenly Father's house with 
 many mansions, could Jesus convey the ideas of happiness 
 and recompense to these materialistically trained children 
 of the new birth, whom yet to raise out of their materialism 
 he for ever strove. If he was to say to them nothing but 
 either what they could perfectly follow, or what they could 
 not possibly misunderstand, he could not, as we have more 
 
 1 John, viii, 58. Revelation, xiii, 8 ; I Pet., i, 19, 20.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 223 
 
 than once said, have spoken to them at all. The only 
 sayings we are called upon to reject are those which 
 contradict the known manner and scope of Jesus, as his 
 manner and scope are established for us by the mass of the 
 evidence existing. 
 
 But we do not even require our reader to be so chary 
 as we ourselves have been, about admitting sayings of the 
 Fourth Gospel as genuine. If he finds himself disposed to 
 receive as genuine some sayings of Jesus at which we 
 hesitate, so be it For we have sought merely to establish 
 a minimum of what must be received, not a maximum; to 
 show, that after the most free criticism has been fairly and 
 strictly applied, and all deductions, to the very outside of 
 what such a criticism can require, have been fully made, 
 there is yet left an authentic residue comprising all the 
 profoundest, most important, and most beautiful things in the 
 Fourth Gospel. 
 
 We have found, however, in our study of the Fourth 
 Gospel, nothing to shake our opinion about the canonical 
 Gospels in general and their history, but everything to 
 confirm it. For at least fifty years after its production the 
 Fourth Gospel appears not to have been in the settled state 
 of Holy Scripture. There was a long period during which 
 this Gospel yielded more easily to pressure, whether for 
 altering its first contents or for interpolating additions to 
 them, than it did afterwards. And so with our other three 
 Gospels also. 
 
 The rudiments of all four Gospels were probably in 
 existence and current by the year 120 of our era, at the 
 very latest. As we accept the evidence of Basileides, to 
 show that the Fourth Gospel in some shape or other already 
 existed in the early years of the second century, so we 
 accept the evidence of Marcion to show the same thing foz 
 the Third Gospel, and that of Papias for the Second and
 
 22.J GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 First. 1 True, the description given by Papias does not 
 accurately characterise our present Gospels either of Mark 
 or Matthew. 2 But the hypothesis of other works of theirs 
 being meant is extremely improbable, while it is not at all 
 improbable that between the first appearance of a Gospel 
 and its admission to canonicity it should have undergone 
 alterations. The final admission of a Gospel to canonicity 
 proves that it has long been in men's hands, and long been 
 attributed to a venerable authority; that it has had time to 
 gain their affections and to establish its superiority over 
 competing accounts. To suppose as the originals of our 
 First and Second Gospels such collections by Matthew and 
 Mark as are described by Papias ; to suppose as the original 
 of our Third Gospel (which in its prologue tells us itself 
 that in its present form it is not the work of an eye-witness 
 but ot a writer with two stages, even, between him and the 
 Rye-witnesses 3 ) a work by the same hand from whence 
 proceed those records in the first person which crop out in 
 the Acts ; to suppose as the original of our Fourth Gospel 
 data furnished by John at Ephesus, is at once agreeable 
 to what traditions we have, and also the most natural way 
 of accounting for the facts which present themselves. 
 
 But to suppose that in our present Four Gospels we 
 have the original works as they at first stood, that they were 
 at their first birth formed into a Canon and thereby pro- 
 tected from alteration, is contrary both to the direct evidence 
 we have and to probability. The descriptions of Papias do 
 not, as we have said, at all well describe our present Gospels 
 
 1 See Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., iii, 39. 
 
 z Papias says of Matthew : Ttk \6yia ffweypafyaro. Of Mark he 
 says that he wrote, aKpifiws, ov ^J/TOJ Taei, TO. inrb TOV Xpurrov % 
 \fx6fvra ^ irpax<^Ta. See the chapter of Eusebius just cited. 
 
 ' The first stage is from the writer of our Third Gospel to the 
 wo\\ol, whose StTj-y^a-eiy he criticises ; the second from these 
 to the auTcJwTeu, the original eye-witnesses.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 225 
 
 of St. Matthew and St. Mark. And we see that our Gospels 
 had gradually to establish themselves, because before the 
 time of Irenseus they are hardly ever quoted as Scripture, 
 but after his time constantly. We know, too, that there 
 were several other Gospels besides these, and that works 
 not in our present Canon enjoyed such favour among 
 Christians of the second century that even Irenaeus quotes 
 the Pastor of Hermas as * Scripture,' ! and a so-called 
 Gospel of Peter was publicly read in church with episcopal 
 sanction. 2 We know, above all, that there is no instance, 
 not one, before the age of Irenseus and the last quarter of 
 the second century, of even two or three consecutive verses 
 being anywhere quoted just as we now read them in our 
 Gospels. 
 
 Nay, so little were our Gospels documents sacred from 
 the very first against all change and interpolation, that the 
 habit of interpolation went on long after the Canon was 
 formed, and the difference between the received text and 
 that of the earliest manuscripts shows it. If the Vatican 
 and Sinaitic manuscripts of the Fourth Gospel contain 
 neither the story of the woman taken in adultery nor the 
 account of the angel troubling the water in the pool of 
 Bethesda; if, where the later manuscripts which our received 
 text follows make Peter say : ' Thou art the Christ, the Son 
 of the living God,' the Vatican and Sinaitic make him say 
 merely : 'Thou art the holy one of God;' 3 and if this sort 
 
 1 And in remarkably emphatic language : KaAuJs oZv tlirfv % ypatyii 
 ft \tyova-a, K. r. \. The words of Irenaeus are quoted by Eusebius, 
 Hist. Eccles., v, 8. 
 
 2 The bishop was Serapio, Bishop of Antioch from A.D. 191 to 
 213 ; the church was that of Rhossus in Cilicia. Serapio discovered 
 afterwards that there was Docetism in the gospel of which he had 
 inadvertently permitted the public reading. See Eusebius, Hist. 
 Eccles., vi, 12. 
 
 8 John, vi, 69. 
 
 Q
 
 226 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 of change could befall a Gospel-text between the fourth 
 century and the tenth, while it was Holy Scripture beyond 
 question ; how strong must have been the original bent to 
 additions and interpolations, and how much more must the 
 text have been exposed to them in its earlier and less closely 
 watched period, when the settled stamp of Holy Scripture 
 it as yet had not ! 
 
 To suppose, therefore, that we have in our Gospels 
 documents which can stand as the very original, strictly 
 drawn up, strictly authenticated and strictly preserved 
 depositions of eye-witnesses, is absurd. They arose not in 
 the sort of world where depositions are taken, nor in the 
 sort of world where manuscripts are guarded. They arose, 
 and they passed many years, in the immense, underground, 
 obscure, fluctuating world of the common people. Probably 
 even neighbours and contemporaries never knew, or cared 
 to know, quite accurately, the literary history of a document 
 like one of our Gospels ; and beyond question the know- 
 ledge, if it ever existed, was soon lost irrecoverably. The 
 important inference to be drawn from this is, that the 
 internal evidence must, in sayings and doings of Jesus 
 which are given us in our Gospels, be considered with great 
 care. Jesus was far over the heads of his reporters ; he is 
 not to be held responsible for their notions, or for all that 
 they may make him do or say. And the way in which our 
 Gospels arose and grew up was such, that pressure upon 
 the stock of data furnished by the original eye-witnesses, 
 and additions to this stock, and insertions, were extremely 
 natural and extremely easy. 1 
 
 1 Nothing can be more vain, therefore, than attempts to reconcile 
 jiur Four Gospels with one another, to make one exact, concordant 
 and trustworthy history out of them. Griesbach, to whom the im- 
 provement of the New Testament text owes so much, has, in some 
 remarks directed simply at the chronology of the Gospels, passed an
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 227 
 
 In each of the chief Epistles of St Paul, we have, much 
 more indubitably than in any other New Testament docu- 
 ments, the real original production of the assumed author. 
 Letters like his, with the strong stamp of the author's 
 individuality, and following in general a continuous argu- 
 ment, lend themselves to additions and interpolations far 
 less readily than works like the Gospels. We know, how- 
 ever, that forged epistles, covering themselves with the 
 authority of apostolic names, were early current ; and here 
 too, therefore, the internal evidence must have great 
 weight. The exact literary history of our documents is 
 irrecoverable ; and in the absence of it we cannot but have 
 recourse to the test of internal evidence. But we ought, 
 also, to resign ourselves to be ignorant of much, we ought 
 to be sparing of vigorous and rigorous theories, to allow 
 something to tradition, to dismiss the notion of sheer, 
 designed forgery and imposture, to admit that for each and 
 every Epistle, perhaps, in our Canon of the New Testament, 
 there is something of a genuine basis. 
 
 Striking phrases from apostolic letters or addresses were 
 likely to survive and to float in men's memories, though the 
 context had been lost. Here was the hint and at the same time 
 the defence for an imitator, speaking in an Apostle's name, 
 and, as he imagined, in that Apostle's sense. Everything 
 is against the genuineness of the Second Petrine Epistle as 
 a whole. But things like the phrase : ' Give diligence to 
 make your calling and election sure,' in the first chapter, 1 
 and the passage beginning at the eighth verse of the third 
 
 excellent general criticism on all such attempts. He says : ' Valde 
 dubito, an ex Evangelistarum libellis harmonica componi possit narratio; 
 quid enim, si nullus Evangelistarum ordinem temporis accurate ubique 
 secutus est ; et si sumcientia non adsunt indicia e quibus constare possit 
 quisnam et quibusnam in locis a chronologico ordine recesserit ? 
 Atque in hac me esse haresi fateor," 
 1 II Pst., i 10. 
 
 Q2
 
 228 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 chapter and ending with the words : ' Nevertheless we, 
 according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new 
 earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,' may well have been 
 Peter's, and their incorporation would have, probably, quite 
 served to justify the Epistler both in his own eyes and in 
 those of his public. 
 
 It is easy to be too sweepingly negative in these matters; 
 easy, also, to think we can know more about them, and more 
 certainly, than we can. To me it appears very rash to pro- 
 nounce confidently against the first Johannine Epistle being 
 St. John's. Certainly there is the difficulty of a Galilean 
 fisherman learning to write Greek after the age of fifty ; but, 
 with this exception, almost all the difficulties are absent 
 which make it so hard to think that St. John can have 
 written the Fourth Gospel The style is not flowing and 
 articulated ; the sentences come like minute-guns, as they 
 would drop from a natural Hebrew. The writer moves, 
 indeed, amidst that order of religious ideas which meets us 
 in the Fourth Gospel, and which was that of the Greek 
 world wherein he found himself. He moves amongst these 
 new ideas, however, not with the practised facility of the 
 Evangelist, but with something of helplessness, although the 
 depth and serene beauty of his spirit give to all he says an 
 infinite impressiveness and charm. Save one ambiguous 
 expression of Eusebius, 1 there is nothing to indicate that 
 John's authorship of the First Epistle was in the early 
 Church ever questioned. Papias used the Epistle, 2 and it 
 may fairly be inferred from what Epiphanius says 3 that even 
 
 ^ Hist. Eccles. t vi, 14. /UTjSe rcky diriAe-yo/x/cay irapf\8(6v, r^v 
 Iou5a \y<a nal rcks \onrcks Ka8o\iKcts &r((rroA.as. The word Xoi7rej is 
 not certain, and even if it were, we could not be sure from the sentence, 
 Eusebius being the sort of writer he is, that the First Johannine Epistle 
 was disputed, or that Eusebius meant to say that it was. 
 
 * Hist. Eccles., iii, 39. 
 
 * liar. LI, xxxiv. Epiphanius conjectures that the Alogi tiust
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL FROM WITHIN. 229 
 
 the Alogi received it, although they rejected both the Fourth 
 Gospel and the Apocalypse. 
 
 Of the authorship of the Apocalypse all we can safely 
 assert is what we learn from the book itself, that the author 
 was named John, and wrote in Asia. It was natural that 
 this John in Asia, the recipient of so weighty a revelation, 
 should be identified with the Apostle John; and as early as 
 the middle of the second century we find Justin Martyr thus 
 identifying him. 1 But there was so little sureness about 
 the matter, that for Eusebius, in the fourth century, the 
 Apocalypse was no more than a disputed and doubtful book 
 of Scripture, which a Christian might receive or not as he 
 .thought good. And to us it seems impossible to make out 
 more than that the Apocalypse was written by a John, but 
 by what John there is nothing to show. 2 
 
 have rejected the Epistles because they rejected the Gospel and the 
 Apocalypse. If they had rejected the First Epistle, he would almost 
 certainly have heard of it. 
 
 1 Dialogue cum Try phone t cap. 8l. 
 
 * M. Renan's confident conclusion that the author was the Apostle 
 John is one of the few points in his admirable criticism of the 
 Apocalypse where he fails to carry us with him. His only serious 
 argument is, that no one but an Apostle would have ventured to speak 
 so authoritatively. But surely the recipient of this grand revelation 
 would, as such, have felt himself entitled to be authoritative to any 
 extent in delivering it.
 
 230 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE Canon of the New Testament, then, is not what 
 popular religion supposes ; although, on the other hand, its 
 documents are in some quarters the object of far too aggres- 
 sive and sweeping negations. The most fruitful result to be. 
 gained from a sane criticism of the Canon is, that by satisfying 
 oneself how the Gospel-records grew up, one is enabled the 
 better to account for much that puzzles us in the representa- 
 tion of Jesus, of his words more especially. There were 
 facilities for addition and interpolation, for adding touches to 
 what the original accounts made Jesus do, for amplifying, 
 above all, what they made Jesus say. Evidence such as 
 apologists always imagine themselves to be using when 
 they appeal to the Gospels, the pure, first-hand, well- 
 authenticated evidence of discriminative eye-witnesses, 
 our Gospels are not 
 
 Such evidence is, indeed, remarkably wanting for the 
 whole miraculous side in the doings recorded of Jesus. 
 Sometimes we seem to be near getting such evidence, but 
 it vanishes. Jerome tells us that Quadratus, in the second 
 century, declared that there were yet living in his time 
 persons who had beheld with their own eyes Jesus raise the 
 dead to life, and that he himself had seen them and spoken 
 with them. It happens that the declaration of Quadratus is 
 preserved by Eusebius, in whose History Jerome probably 
 read it. Quadratus undoubtedly says that in his time
 
 CONCLUSION. 231 
 
 there were yet alive those who had witnessed the raising of 
 the dead by Jesus ; but the important addition which alone 
 takes this statement out of the category of hearsay, and 
 makes it personal evidence, the addition that these alleged 
 witnesses he himself had seen and known, Quadratus does 
 not make. The addition is merely & rhetorical flourish of 
 Jerome's. 1 
 
 No doubt this is so ; yet the importance of it all is 
 greatly diminished by one consideration. If we had the 
 original reports of the eye-witnesses, we should still have 
 reports not essentially differing, probably, from those which we 
 now use. Certain additions which improved a miraculous 
 story as it grew, certain interpolations which belong to the 
 ideas and circumstances of a later age, would be absent. 
 But we should most likely not have a miracle the less, and 
 we should certainly find a similar misapprehension of Jesus 
 and of what he intended. The people who saw Jesus were 
 as certain to seek for miracles, and to find them, as the 
 people who lived a generation or two later, or as the people 
 who resort to Lourdes or to La Salette now. And this pre- 
 occupation with miracles was sure to warp their understand- 
 ing of Jesus, and their report of his sayings and doings. The 
 recurrence, so much talked of and recommended, either 
 to the Apostles, or to the first three centuries, for the pure 
 rule of faith and the genuine doctrine of Jesus, is in truth 
 therefore, however natural an expedient, an utterly futile 
 one. There were indeed, as we have shown in Literature 
 and Dogma, certain prominent points in the teaching of 
 Jesus which his immediate followers had not yet lost sight 
 of, and which fell more out of view afterwards. But ths 
 pure and genuine work and doctrine of Jesus neither his 
 
 1 See Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., iv, 3; and Routh, Reliquiae Sacra t 
 vol. i, pp. 71, 74. Routh quotes Jerome, and points out his ex- 
 aggeration.
 
 232 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 immediate followers, nor those whom they instructed, could 
 seize; so immured were they in the ideas of their time and 
 in the belief of the miraculous, so immeasurably was Jesus 
 above them. 
 
 a. 
 
 But our opponents say : ' Everything turns upon the 
 question whether miracles do or did really happen; and you 
 abstain from all attempt to prove their impossibility, you 
 simply assume that they never happen.' And this, which 
 our opponents say, is true, and we have repeatedly admitted 
 it. At the end of this investigation we admit it once more, 
 and lay stress upon it. That miracles cannot happen we do 
 not attempt to prove ; the demonstration is too ambitious. 
 That they do not happen, that what are called miracles are 
 not what the believers in them fancy, but have a natural 
 history of which we can follow the course, the slow action 
 of experience, we say, more and more shows ; and shows, 
 too, that there is no exception to be made in favour of the 
 Bible-miracles. 
 
 Epiphanius tells us, that at each anniversary of the miracle 
 of Cana, the water of the springs of Cibyra in Caria and 
 Gerasa in Arabia was changed into wine ; that he himself 
 had drunk of the transformed water of Cibyra, and his 
 brothers of that of Gerasa. 1 Fifty years ago, a plain 
 Englishman would have had no difficulty in thinking that 
 the Cana miracle was true, and the other two miracles 
 were fables. He is now irresistibly led to class all these 
 occurrences in one category as unsubstantial tales of marvel 
 Scales seem to have fallen from his eyes in regard to miracles; 
 and if he is still to hold fast his Christianity, it must no longer 
 depend upon them. 
 
 1 Epiphanius, ffcer. LI, xxx.
 
 CONCLUSION. 233 
 
 It was not to discredit miracles that Literature and 
 Dogma was written, but because miracles are so widely and 
 deeply discredited already. And it is lost labour, we repeat, 
 to be arguing for or against them. Mankind did not origi- 
 nally accept miracles because it had formal proof of them, 
 but because its imperfect experience inclined it to them. 
 Nor will mankind now drop miracles because it has formal 
 proof against them, but because its more complete experience 
 detaches it from them. The final result was inevitable, as 
 soon as ever miracles began to embarrass people, began to 
 be relegated, especially the greater miracles, to a certain 
 limited period long ago past and ovei. Irenaeus says, that 
 people in his time had arisen from the dead, ' and abode with 
 us a good number of years.' ' One of his commentators, 
 embarrassed by such stupendous miracles occurring outside 
 of the Bible, makes an attempt to explain away this remark- 
 able allegation; but the most recent editor of Irenaeus 
 points out, with truth, that the attempt is vain. Irenaeus 
 was as sure to want and to find miracles as the Bible-writers 
 were. And sooner or later mankind was sure to see how 
 universally and easily stories like this of Irenaeus arose, and 
 that they arose with the Bible-writers just as they arose with 
 Irenaeus, and are not a whit more solid coming from them 
 than from him. 
 
 A Catholic imagines that he gets over the difficulty by 
 believing, or professing to believe, the miracles of Irenaeus 
 and Epiphanius, as well as those of the Bible-writers. But 
 for him, too, even for him, the Zett-Geistor Time-Spirit is 
 gradually becoming too strong. As we may say in general, 
 that, although an educated Protestant may manage to retain 
 for his own lifetime the belief in miracles in which he has 
 been brought up, yet his children will lose it; so to an 
 
 1 See Irenseus, Adv. liar., lib. II, cap. xxxii, 4; with the note on 
 the passage in Stieren's edition.
 
 234 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 educated Catholic we may say, putting the change only a 
 little farther off, that (unless some unforeseen deluge should 
 overwhelm European civilisation, leaving everything to be 
 begun anew) his grandchildren will lose it. They will lose 
 it insensibly, as the eighteenth century saw the gradual 
 extinction, among the educated classes, of that belief in 
 witchcraft which in the century previous a man like Sir 
 Matthew Hale could affirm to have the authority of Scripture 
 and of the wisdom of all nations, spoke of, in short, just as 
 many religious people speak of miracles now. Witchcraft is 
 but one department of the miraculous ; and it was compara- 
 tively easy, no doubt, to abandon one department, when 
 men had all the rest of the region to fall back upon. 
 Nevertheless the forces of experience, which have prevailed 
 against witchcraft, will inevitably prevail also against miracles 
 at large, and that by the mere progress of time. 
 
 The charge of presumption, and of setting oneself up 
 above all the great men of past days, above ' the wisdom of 
 all nations,' which is often brought against those who pro- 
 nounce the old view of our religion to be untenable, springs 
 out of a failure to perceive how little the abandonment of 
 certain long-current beliefs depends upon a man's own will, 
 or even upon his sum of powers, natural or acquired. Sir 
 Matthew Hale was not inferior in force of mind to a modern 
 Chief Justice because he believed in witchcraft. Nay, the 
 more enlightened modern, who drops errors of his fore- 
 fathers by help of that mass of experience which his fore- 
 fathers aided in accumulating, may often be, according to 
 the well-known saying, ' a dwarf on the giant's shoulders.' 
 His merits may be small compared with those of the giant 
 Perhaps his only merit is, that he has had the good sense 
 to get up on the giant's shoulders, instead of trotting con- 
 tentedly along in his shadow. Yet even this, surely, is 
 something.
 
 CONCLUSION. 235 
 
 We have to renounce impossible attempts to receive the 
 legendary and miraculous matter of Scripture as grave 
 historical and scientific fact. We have to accustom our- 
 selves to regard henceforth all this part as poetry and 
 legend. In the Old Testament, as an immense poetry 
 growing round and investing an immortal truth, ' the secret 
 of the Eternal : ' * Righteousness is salvation. In the New, 
 as an immense poetry growing round and investing an 
 immortal truth, the secret of Jesus : He that will save his 
 life shall lose if, he that will lose his life shall save it. 
 
 The best friends of mankind are those who can lead it 
 to feel animation and hope in presence of the religious 
 prospect thus profoundly transformed. The way to effect 
 this is by bringing men to see that our religion, in this 
 altered view of it, does but at last become again that religion 
 which Jesus Christ really endeavoured to found, and of 
 which the truth and grandeur are indestructible. We should 
 do Christians generally a great injustice, if we thought that 
 the entire force of their Christianity lay in the fascination 
 and subjugation of their spirits by the miracles which they 
 suppose Jesus to have worked, or by the materialistic 
 promises of heaven which they suppose him to have offered. 
 Far more does the vital force of their Christianity lie in the 
 boundless confidence, consolation, and attachment, which 
 the whole being and discourse of Jesus inspire. Whatever 
 Jesus, then, himself thought sufficient, Christians too may 
 bring themselves to accept with good courage as enough for 
 them. What Jesus himself dismissed as chimerical, Christians 
 too may bring themselves to put aside without dismay. 
 
 The central aim of Jesus was to transform for every 
 
 1 Pialm xxv, 14.
 
 236 GOD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 religious soul the popular Messias-ideal of his time, the 
 Jewish people's ideal of happiness and salvation ; to dis- 
 engage religion, one may say, from the materialism of the 
 Book of Daniel Fifty years had not gone by after his 
 death, when the Apocalypse replunged religion in this 
 materialism; where, indeed, it was from the first manifest 
 that replunged, by the followers of Jesus, religion must be. 
 It was replunged there, but with an addition of inestimable 
 value and of incalculable working, the figure and influence 
 of Jesus. Slowly this influence emerges, transforms the 
 turbid elements amid which it was thrown, brings back the 
 imperishable ideal of its author. To the mind of Jesus, his 
 own * resurrection ' after a short sojourn in the grave was the 
 victory of his cause after his death and at the price of his 
 death. His disciples materialised his resurrection, and their 
 version of the matter falls day by day to ruin. But no ruin 
 or contradiction befalls the version of Jesus himself. He 
 has risen, his cause has conquered; the course of events con- 
 tinually attests his resurrection and victory. The manifest 
 unsoundness of popular Christianity inclines at present many 
 persons to throw doubts on the truth and permanence of 
 Christianity in general Creeds are discredited, religion is 
 proclaimed to be in danger, the pious quake, the world 
 laughs. Nevertheless, the prince of this world is judged; ' 
 the victory of Jesus is won and sure. Conscience and self- 
 renouncement, the method and the secret of Jesus, are set 
 up as a leaven in the world, nevermore to cease working 
 until the world is leavened. That this is so, that the 
 resurrection and re-emergent life of Jesus are in this sense 
 undeniable, and that in this sense Jesus himself predicted 
 them, may in time, surely, encourage Christians to lay hold 
 on this sense as Jesus did. 
 
 So, too, with the hope of immortality. Our common 
 1 John, xvi, ii
 
 CONCLUSION. 237 
 
 materialistic notions about the resurrection of the body and 
 the world to come are, no doubt, natural and attractive to 
 ordinary human nature. But they are in direct conflict 
 with the new and loftier conceptions of life and death which 
 Jesus himself strove to establish. His secret, He that will 
 save his life shall lose it, he that will lose his life shall save if, 
 is of universal application. It judges, not only the life to 
 which men cling here, but just as much the life we love to 
 promise to ourselves in the New Jerusalem. The immortality 
 propounded by Jesus must be looked for elsewhere than in 
 the materialistic aspirations of our popular religion. He 
 lived in the eternal order, and the eternal order never dies ; 
 this, if we may try to formulate in one sentence the result 
 of the sayings of Jesus about life and death, is the sense in 
 which, according to him, we can rightly conceive of the 
 righteous man as immortal, and aspire to be immortal our- 
 selves. And this conception we shall find to stand us in 
 good stead when the popular materialistic version of our 
 future life fails us. So that here again, too, the version 
 which, unfamiliar and novel as it may now be to us, has the 
 merit of standing fast and holding good while other versions 
 break down, is at the same time the version of Jesus. 
 
 People talk scornfully of ' a sublimated Christianity,' as 
 if the Christianity of Jesus Christ himself had been a 
 materialistic fairy-tale like that of the Salvation Army or of 
 Messrs. Moody and Sankey. On the contrary, insensibly 
 to lift us out of all this sort of materialism was Jesus Christ's 
 perpetual endeavour. His parable of the king, who made a 
 marriage for his son, ends with the episode of the guest who 
 had not on a wedding-garment, and was therefore cast out. 1 
 And here, as usual, the Tubingen critics detect tendence. 
 They see in the episode a deliberate invention of the Evange^ 
 list; a stroke of Jewish particularism, indemnifying itself for 
 1 Matth., xxii, 1-14.
 
 238 COD AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 having had to relate that salvation was preached in the 
 highways. We have disagreed often with the Tubingen 
 critics, and we shall venture finally to disagree with them 
 here. We receive the episode as genuine; but what did 
 Jesus mean by it ? Shall we not do well in thinking, that he, 
 whose lucid insight was so incomparable, and who indicated 
 so much which was to be seized not by the present but by 
 the future, here marked and meant to indicate, although 
 but incidentally and in passing, the profound, the utter in- 
 sufficiency of popular religion ? Through the turbid phase 
 of popular religion his religion had to pass. Gocd and bad 
 it was to bear along with it ; the gross and ignorant were to 
 be swept in by wholesale from the highways; the wedding 
 was to be furnished with guests. On this wise must 
 Christianity needs develop itself, and the necessary law 
 of its development was to be accepted. Vain to be too 
 nice about the unpreparedness of the guests in general, 
 about their inevitable misuse of the favours which they were 
 admitted to enjoy ! What must have been the end of such 
 a fastidious scrutiny ? To turn them all out into the high- 
 ways again ! But the king's design was, that the wedding 
 should be furnished with guests. So the guests shall all stay 
 and fall to; popular Christianity is founded. But pre- 
 sently, almost as if by accident, a guest even more un- 
 prepared and gross than the common, a guest ' not having 
 on a wedding-garment,' comes under the king's eye, and is 
 ejected. Only one is noted for decisive ejection; but ah ! 
 how many of even the remaining guests are as really unapt 
 to seize and follow God's designs for them as he ! Many 
 are called, few chosen. 
 
 The conspicuous delinquent is sentenced to be bound 
 hand and foot, and taken away, and cast into outer darkness. 
 In the severity of this sentence, Jesus marks how fatally 
 those who are gathered to his feast may fail to know him.
 
 CONCLUSION. 239 
 
 The misapprehending and materialising of his religion, the 
 long and turbid stage of popular Christianity, was, however, 
 inevitable. But to give light and impulsion to future times, 
 Jesus stamps this Christianity, even from the very moment of 
 its birth, as, though inevitable, not worthy of its name; as 
 ignorant and transient, and requiring all who would be truly 
 children of the kingdom to rise beyond it. 
 
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