pLAY MlAcCaUI.EY 
 
 CUPiiSTlA.MTY IN HISTORY 
 
 It in the hiHtoriesil task of Christianity to assume with every 
 t^uccoeding age a fresh metamorphosis, aiul to he for 
 ever spiritualizing more and more her under- 
 standing of the Christ. 
 
 IR'nri Frederic Amid. 
 
 1891 
 
 9081r;
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. ML'DD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHKAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR.JOHN R. HAYNKS WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES K. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F.SARTORI 
 
 /o lk» 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The first three of the following articles are, 
 
 with some changes, letters written by me to 
 
 the " Japan 3Iail" at intervals during the past 
 
 few weeks, in reply to a sermon preached in 
 
 Tokyo, by the Bishop of the Church of 
 
 ^England in Japan. Dr. Bickersteth, Avith 
 
 ^especial intent to guard Christian believers 
 
 2 against what he designates " the assaults to 
 
 which Christianity is now exposed" in Japan, 
 
 ^ classed among the assailants of Christianity, 
 
 ro the bod}' of religious believers and workers 
 
 &-■ called Unitarians. I should not, however, 
 
 have felt it incumbent upon mo to take public 
 
 notice of Dr. Bickersteth's discourse, had he 
 
 not, in this exercise of his episcopal functions, 
 
 and by newspaper imblication, pronounced two 
 
 judgments of grave import upon those who 
 
 bear the IJjiitarian name : 
 
 First, that Unitarians are not entitled to the 
 name Christian ; 
 
 Second, that Unitarians no longer maintain 
 that the New Testament teaches Uuitariauism.
 
 ii I'lir.FACE. 
 
 Moreover, tlio utterances of an ecclesiastic 
 so lii^'li in (lif^nity and authority as Dr. 
 Bickerstotli, may not, under present circum- 
 stances, be ignored. Under present circum- 
 stances, I say, for the episcopal sermon Avas 
 but the decisive act in a scries of events of a 
 like kind from several sources. My reply 
 therefore was directed to the Bishop of the 
 Cliurch of England chiefly as representing a 
 number of the Orthodox Christians of Japan. 
 It is my earnest wish that, once and for al- 
 ways, if possible. Unitarians and the Orthodox 
 Christians of Japan may understand one 
 another, and be understood by the Japanese 
 people. 
 
 In writing the letters, I believe I was 
 wholly free from " hatred and malice and all 
 uucharitableness." I appreciate — no one, I 
 think, appreciates more really, cheerfully or 
 gratefully — the Christian truth embodied in 
 the orthodox creeds, and the profound religious 
 faith held, and beneficent work done, under 
 Orthodox Christianity. The odium iheologicinn, 
 so deplorable in religious coutrovers}', there- 
 fore did not move me. It was my intention 
 simply to give so clear a presentation of 
 certain characteristics of Unitarianism, that, at 
 least, misunderstandings and misstatements 
 about it might not be truthfully made current
 
 PREFACE. iii 
 
 or be confirmed, among those who should read 
 "what I wrote. 
 
 As a lover of peace, as a seeker after union 
 among the members of the Church universal, 
 and for the sake of harmony in the Christian 
 intluences exerted upon the people of this 
 empire, I deprecate the disturbing effects of 
 even apparent dissension among those who 
 profess to be animated b}' the sjiirit of Christ ; 
 but, after all, personal desire may not outweigh 
 the claims of justice, nor should fear of arous- 
 ing uncertainty and disquiet in others, prevent 
 the setting right of a published wrong. 
 
 Since the letters were published, it has 
 occurred to me that, Avere they supple- 
 mented b}' a sketch of the evolution and 
 metamorphoses through which Christianity has 
 passed from its beginnings, the}^ might still 
 better serve their original purpose, and, 
 i^ossibly, be of some permanent worth to 
 Japanese students of Christian doctrine. Such 
 additional matter has been prepared, and, 
 Avitli the original letters, is here oiTered to the 
 public. In the illustrative quotations from 
 authorities concerning Modern Unitarianism, 
 I have drawn but little from the works of 
 living writers, for the reason, that I have, at 
 present, access to but few of the many books 
 needed to make a representative summarj'.
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 This is tlio explanation of tlio absence from 
 tliG.SG pa'^C'S of tlie testimony of several well 
 known scholars and representative Unitarians. 
 
 A few words here, to make the position of 
 Unitarianism yet more intelligible to those 
 who may read what I have written, may not be 
 out of place by way of preface to this reply. 
 
 Unitarianism is a religious movement, 
 Christian in origin and history, but it is 
 specifically distinguished among other forms 
 of Christianity by the reliance of its advocates, 
 for final authority in matters of faith and 
 practice, upon the great Protestant principle of 
 personal and private judgment. Also, to Uni- 
 tarians, Christian truth lies not only in sacred 
 tradition but in p)resent thought and life. 
 The enlightened and reverent reason, they 
 believe, discloses ever growing revelation. By 
 the exercise of free historical inquirj-, moreover, 
 they have come to the conclusion that, 
 fundamental in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 was faith in the Fatherhood of God and the 
 Brotherhood of Man ; that, essential in the 
 life of Jesus, was a sublime realization of 
 this faith. The true Christianity, they there- 
 fore hold, is in the enlarging and deepening 
 consciousness of this faith and in its wider 
 and purer realization in life, wherever manifest 
 in the course of the history of mankind. In
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 fact, mauj Unitarians have accapted, as only 
 adequate, a definition of Unitarianism as the 
 free and progressive development of Christi- 
 anity which aspires to to be synonymous witli 
 universal ethics and universal religion. 
 
 The mission of the American Unitarian 
 Association to Japan has been established for 
 the purpose of presenting to the Japanese 
 people, Christianity, as the universal Gospel 
 of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood 
 of Man, apprehended and realized in the faith 
 and life of Jesus the Christ, illustrated and 
 extended by Divine Providence in History, 
 and confirmed by maturing Philosophy and 
 Science. 
 
 In the preparation of this little book, I 
 have gathered material from many stores, 
 most of which have been acknowledged by 
 name. I am especially indebted to the writ- 
 ings of Dr. Joseph H. Allen formerly of the 
 Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass., 
 Prof. Alexander, V, G. Allen of the Episcopal 
 Theological School of Harvard Universit}', 
 Prof. Crawford H. Toy of the Harvard Divinity 
 School, and Dr. James Martineau of England, 
 for several facts and suggestions uncredited. 
 
 With the hope that these pages may serve, 
 not only to guard Unitarianism from mistaken 
 criticism, but, also, to make clear the foru-ard
 
 vi I'liKI'WCi:. 
 
 movement of Cliristianity in History, par- 
 ticularly in its successively hifjlier expressions 
 of that which has been called the " Faith of 
 the Incarnation," I commend what is here 
 ■written, to the people of Japan. 
 
 Clay MacCauley. 
 
 rxiTARiAX Mission, 
 
 Tokyo, Jai'an. 
 
 Bvc. 15. 1891.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE 
 
 
 AND CHURCH. 
 
 
 
 Pace. 
 
 IXTROIU'CTORY 
 
 1 
 
 I. 
 
 
 The C'iiristolocy of the New Testament . . .• 4 
 
 11. 
 
 The t'liKisTOLoiiY of the Xew Testament; '1'iie Lo(;os 
 
 DOCTHINE 10 
 
 III. 
 
 The ('iii:isToi.o;;v of Unitarianism Ifi 
 
 II. 
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE EVOLUTION 
 
 AND METAMORPHOSES OF 
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 THE FIRST CENTURY. 
 
 1, riiiMiTivE Christianity in Coxtemporary History. 
 
 Tacitus. A. D. .o4— 117 2',» 
 
 2, The Bechnxings of Christiaxitv. .Iesls of 
 
 N.u.vreth. The Synoptic Ciospels: The Acts 
 
 of the Apostles. A. D. 30— r2."> ? '2<.)
 
 11 CONTENTS. 
 
 Pagk. 
 .■{. TirK (;i,(Jl<IKIKIJ MksSIAH OF IsitAKI,. TllC Dil}' of 
 
 Pentecost. About A. I). ;U» 31 
 
 4. The Bai'tismal Formula. A. D. 30 — 125 32 
 
 ."). Thk Christ of the Spirit. The Pauline Epistles. 
 
 A. D. 53— G3 32 
 
 (). The Epistle TO THK irEi'.HKWs. A. D. CO — TO.... 35 
 
 7. ("iJvMKXT OF IJo.MK. A. I ). 05 30 
 
 TIIH SECOND CENTURY. 
 
 1. The Apostolic Fathers. Poljcarp, C9 — 140?.. 37 
 
 2. Christ, the Divine Logos. The Fourth Gospel, 
 
 130—150 37 
 
 3. Conflict of Opinions ; the Genesis of Creeds. 
 
 The Fathers of the Church 38 
 
 4. Christ, the Universal Rea.son. Justin, mar- 
 
 tyred 1G5 3!) 
 
 5. The Germ of the Doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 Athenagoras, 176 41 
 
 G. The Germ of the Doctrine of the Supremacy 
 
 OF TTiE Church. Irenaeus, 175 — 202 42 
 
 THE THIRD CENTURY. 
 
 1 . Beginnings of Emphasis upon Person.\l Con- 
 
 sciousness of Sin. Tertullian, died 220 43 
 
 2. Further Evolution of the Logos Doctrine. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 189—220 44 
 
 3. The Doctrine of the Logos, and the Etern.\l 
 
 Generation of the Son. Origen, 186 — 254. ... 44 
 
 4. The Doctrine of the Trinity taking Shape. 
 
 Xovatian. 250 45 
 
 TUE FOURTH CENTURY. 
 1. The Orthodox Creed formul.vted and authoriz- 
 ed. The Council at Nica?a, 325 46
 
 CONTENTS. Ill 
 
 Page. 
 
 2. Basis of tiik '• Ai'osti.es','' Cref.d. The Creed of 
 
 Marccllus, 33G 48 
 
 3. The Fol'xdkr ok Christian- Catholicity. 
 
 Atliaiiasius, 296—373 49 
 
 THE FIFTH CEXTUIIY. 
 
 The Dooma of Original Sin and of Sacramental 
 ({race. The I'ise of the Church of Rome as 
 !>[ediator between Christ and Max. August- 
 ine, 355—430 51 
 
 THE .MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 1. I I.TIM ATE Statement of tiik OirriioDox I)o('trine 
 
 of the Trinity. Autocracy in We.stern 
 Christendom of the Papal Church. The 
 " Athauasian " Creed, 809 o.*? 
 
 2. The Medieval Theolocy . . 5(> 
 
 3. Scholasticism. Reason consecrated to tlie 
 
 Service of Dogma 60 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CEXTritY. 
 
 The Renaissance. I'liilosophv seitarated from 
 Dogma. Reason placed above Cliurch 
 Authorit}- 02 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. Tiik Reformation. Protest against the Au- 
 
 tocrac}" of the Church. Restoration of the 
 ]5ible to Private Judgment ')3 
 
 2. The Tiieoi.ocy of the Reformation: sihsta.n- 
 
 TiALLY A Reaffirmation of Medieval 
 DOCTHINR <J4
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 .'{. Links ok EvoLrTiox ok tiik IIkkokmkd 'l'in:oi,o(;v. 
 
 Luther, 1483— 1540. Culviii, ]. 509—1504. Ar- 
 
 miuius, 15G0— IGOD 05 
 
 4. Development of Ratioxai.ism. Giordano Bruno, 
 
 1548—1600. Boehm, I5T.5— 1024. Lord Bacon, 
 
 1561—1626. Descartes, 1596—10.50 07 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH f'ENTniV. 
 
 1. FfRTHER DEVEI.OrMEXT OF Batioxai.ism. Ilatioii- 
 
 alistic Interpretation of the Bible. English 
 Arianism : Puritanism : Platonisni : Skeptic- 
 ism : Deism. Locke, 1632 — 1704. ililton, 
 1608—1674. Cromwell, 1599—1658. Cud- 
 worth, 1617—1688. Ilobbes, 1588—1679. 
 Lord Herbert, 1582—1648 70 
 
 2. E.MAXCIPATED PuiLOSOPHIC RaTIOXALISM IX GeR- 
 
 MAXY. Restoration of the Idea of the rnity 
 
 of the Universe. Spinoza, 1632 — 1677 73 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. Deyelopmext of Deistic axd Skeptical Ratiox- 
 
 ALISM IX EXGLAXD. ThE EvAXGELICAL ReVIVAL. 
 ExTEXSIOX OF ArIAX AXD SoCINTAX UxiTAKI- 
 
 AxisM. Hume, 1711 — 1776. Wesley, 1703 — 
 1791. Priestley, 1733—1804 75 
 
 2. Preparation for a New Advaxce ix the Evolu- 
 
 tion OF Christiaxity. German Illuminism. 
 Moravian Pietism. Lessing, 1729 — 1781. 
 
 Count Zinzendorf, 1700 — 1760 77 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 1. A New Advaxce of Christianity throcoh the 
 Reunion of Philosophic Rationalism and 
 Christian Faith. Schleiermacher, 1768 — 
 1834 79
 
 CONTENTS. V 
 
 Pa(;e. 
 
 .MODKKX UXITAIMAXIS.M. 
 
 I'lRTiiKK Development ok the Pkotest acaixst 
 THE Rekormed Tiieoi,o(;v. Tlic Moral Reac- 
 tion ill America from Calvinism. Ethical 
 Idealism. William Ellery Clianninii;. 1781 — 
 1842 83 
 
 American Transcendentalism, riiilosopliic Ra- 
 tionalism and Religious Intuition. Pure 
 riiristianit}-, the Absolute Religion. Con- 
 tinuity of Faith and Doctrine in the Evolution 
 of the Church Universal. Raljih ^Valdo 
 Emerson, 1804—1882. Theodore Parker, 1810 
 — 18G0. FredericITenryUcdge, 1805— 1890. 89 
 
 Christian Faith in union not only with Philoso- 
 phic Rationalism, but with the Philosophy 
 OF Science. Present Unitarianism among the 
 I'^orccs proiilietic of a Form of Christianity, 
 ■which shall realize for ^lankind the full Reli- 
 gious Consciousness of .Jesus Christ, and, 
 therein. Satisfaction of Plan's Longing for 
 Tnioii witli (lod 9!)
 
 AVc liad not walked 
 But for Tradition. We walk evermore 
 To higher paths hj- brightening Reason's lamix 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 There shall rise from this confused sound of voicci? 
 
 A firmer faith than that our fathers knew, 
 A deep religion which alone rejoices 
 
 In worship of the Infinitclj- True ; 
 Not built on rite or portent, but a finer 
 And purer reverence for a Lord diviner. 
 
 Levis Morris.
 
 I. 
 
 THE PEKSOX OF JESUS IX 
 BIBLE AND CHURCH.
 
 The Chriat Chnstendom worships is no piii-e historic 
 person, but in part a creation of the human mind. Glory of 
 Greek myth through John's Gospel flows in to fill out the 
 Synoptic figure of the other Evangelists into sublimity, and 
 Paul is so entranced with the ideal Saviour of inward revelation 
 that he does not want to see the actual one of flesh and blood. 
 The Christ was born of wedded Greek and Jewish mind. I 
 doubt not the depths of that immense Personality would justify 
 more than all we can say. But the Personality is not coustruct- 
 ible from any partic\alars of the story, without imaginative help. 
 Christ is tlic increment of Jesus— the individual expanding 
 an ideal. 
 
 Br. Cyrus A. Barlol
 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE 
 AND CHUllCII. 
 
 nr^HE Bishop of the Church of Eug;land in Japan, 
 -*- ill liis receut sermon on "The Faith of the 
 Incarnation," withdrew from Unitarians the name 
 Christian, asserting, as his reason for so doing, 
 that Unitarians "deny that which alone makes 
 the Christ to be the liope of men." ''Thiiih not" 
 ho urged, " to inchide within tlie Christian name 
 those who deny the verities of the Faith." 
 
 What are these "verities of the Faith ""? 
 
 " Even the belief that, at a definite term in his- 
 tory after long preparation by the Divine Provi- 
 dence, in a chosen nation and Holy Family, through 
 her willing obedience on whom had rested the 
 divine choice, ' the word was made Flesh and 
 dwelt among us,' and that ' of His Fulness all 
 we received.' 
 
 Consider these two principal statements sepa- 
 rately. (1) 'The Word was made Flesh." The 
 Eternal Son of God who had lived dnriu-' a past 
 forever within the si)here of the Divine Being, a 
 Person — for before creation person ilityal<>ne was — 
 the Son of the Father's love, who perfectly rcllected 
 and returned the love of which He was the object. 
 Himself too the Divine Wisdom and lleason, in 
 whom had been seen and imaged the thoughts of 
 God about the things and men which were to be, 
 so loved the Avorld that at the fulness of the itme
 
 2 rilUISTIVNITV IN HISTOnv. 
 
 Ho took our nature in its completeness, Body and 
 Soul and Sj)irit, into His own, and Lecame very 
 God, very Man. His Deity indeed Avas veiled 
 during the 3'ears of His Life on earth, and the 
 use of its powers voluntarily foregone, in order 
 that wholly like us, Avithiu the limitations of our 
 nature, in perfect s\ibmission to the will of God 
 the Holy Ghost, and like His own prophets, work- 
 ing even His miracles by the Spirit's power. He 
 ini"ht live and be temj)ted and suffer and die. 
 Thus His life became our example and his present 
 sympathy springs out of a true human experience; 
 but none the less for this condescension was He 
 essentially divine — not a man raised to the rank 
 of Deity, but God who has stooj)ed to assume 
 humanity. 
 
 (2) " This is the first i^art of the truth, and the 
 other words which I have quoted are its due com- 
 plement — ' of His Fulness all we received.' Not 
 for Himself alone, though the world shows forth 
 His glory, did He create it. Not for Himself alone, 
 though it were in the execution of an eternal pur- 
 pose, did He assume our nature. The Church is 
 the extension of the Incavnation, the Body of 
 Christ. By that Holy Spirit, in and through -whom 
 He lived His earthl,y life, He has united it to Him- 
 self, and in Himself to the Father. ' Of His Ful- 
 ness all we received,' says S. John, looking back 
 to the quiet baptismal hour in which each of those 
 around him — from the old man who had spent 
 long _years in the Master's service, to the youngest 
 Christian child in the congregation at Ephesus — 
 had been received with the same sacred rite and 
 words into the fellow.ship of Christ. And we may 
 repeat w^ithout fear the same words to-day. as has 
 each generation since, 'of His Fulness all we re- 
 ceived.' All possess, all may use, if they will, the 
 powers of the now regenerate life, which is theirs
 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CHURCH. 6 
 
 in Christ. All are united by tbe bond of a com- 
 mon nature and new spiritual being 'with their 
 one Lord. All, if they are true to Him, strive to 
 reproduce the lineaments of character, the prin- 
 ciples of tlie conduct, of which His own biogra- 
 phies are the record. All tind new springs of 
 strength in fellowship with Him and in Him with 
 one another. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of our Lord's Incarnation 
 and of its immediate j^urpose and issue." 
 
 What are the grounds of this Faith? 
 
 " First of all we believe it because we were taught 
 it as the Church's Creed, and the first though not 
 in all cases the last dut}' of men is to believe what 
 they have been taught on sufficient authority. To 
 hold a traditional Faith, a Faith which has come 
 down to you, is no reproach in itself, though there 
 are cases in which it becomes such. But with us it 
 should be strong proof indeed -which shook our 
 hold Oil any article of the Faith which we have re- 
 ceived. For what is the Creed but an epitome of 
 tlio truths through the possession and belief of 
 which the Church first came into being, and what is 
 the Church regarded even externally but the great 
 school of righteousness and goodness in the world, 
 which uses as its instrument in the attainment of 
 their greatest end, the truths with Avhicli it was 
 entrusted? When, then, we Christians say that 
 we believe our Creed because we were taught it, 
 ours is no indolent plea in favour of our convic- 
 tions l)eing let alone, but rather it means this, that 
 by God's kind Providence we find ourselves mem- 
 bers of a gi-eat Society, through which we have 
 learnovl Ihc Faith, which it has lield since its foun- 
 dation, and which proves itself to us as it has to 
 all who have preceded us, to be light and life. 
 The burden of disproof does not lie with satisfied 
 believers.
 
 4: CmtlSTIAMTY IN IIISTOKY. 
 
 Alul if we wish to f>-() i'uvthor in stidiii;^,'' ilio 
 grounds of (Hir Ijclief, uo should probably next be- 
 take ourselves to the familiar records of the words 
 and works of our Lord himself. The claim Mhich 
 the Ciospels make is })ractically no longer disputed. 
 Uid)(:lief has recognized it as well as faith. Uni- 
 tarians no longer maintain, as a few years since, 
 that the New Testament teaches Uuitarianism." 
 
 This, then, is the statement by the Bishop of the 
 Church of England in Japan, of what constitute 
 "the verities of the Faith," and the grounds upon 
 which they are to be accepted. 
 
 How far this statement is justified, b}' either 
 Church history or the Christian records, I jn'opose 
 to examine. It Avill become evident, I believe, 
 that neither authority supports it, in the sense in 
 which it is here given ; that it consequently does 
 not fullj' express " the verities of the Faith ;" and 
 that in the disproof Unitarians may mike of this 
 statement, thej^ are not thereb}' separating them- 
 selves from either Christ or the Christian Church. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Chuistology of the New Testambtnt. 
 
 But first, concerning the charge that Unitarians 
 no longer maintain that the New Testament teaches 
 the faith which gives them their dominational 
 name, I wish to say, Dr. Bickersteth has been 
 misinformed, or, he wholly misunderstands the 
 writings of our representative scholars. I am well 
 acquaiiited with Unitarian literature, and do not 
 know of one of its writers who admits that, either
 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CIIVliCH. O 
 
 the doctrine of the Trinity or of tlie Deity of Jesus 
 Christ, consitlerecl us Gotl the Sou, differentiated 
 from and yet co-equal with God the Father, is 
 taught or even supported by the Christian script- 
 ures. The representatives of Unitarian scholar- 
 ship are en rapport with the mo.st exact and devout 
 Biblical criticism and exegesis. They are dedicat- 
 ed to the service of the truth. The}' are conse- 
 crated to discovering as far as can be knowu, just 
 Avhat may be held as Christian doctrine. But their 
 work has not yet induced one of them to give 
 over the teachings of the New Testament to 
 Trinitarianisjn. Our critic A\ill, of course, admit 
 that the Unitarian scholars of former days were 
 anti-trinitarian as Biblical interpreters. The at- 
 titude of their successors of the present daj', sup- 
 port(>d by a more intelligeiit and thorough inter- 
 pretation of the Christian records, has uot been 
 changed. 
 
 I could (juote the testimony of maiw expositors 
 among us, but it will suffice for me to summarize 
 their conclusions. 
 
 The New Testament, composed of records of the 
 origin and beginnings of the " Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ," is concentrated around the person and 
 work of Jesus. These records are demonstrated 
 to have l)een not c intem[)oraneous ; nor are they 
 homogeneous in the purport of their contents. 
 They present the Person of Jesus as modified by 
 contact with the varving modes of thought of wide-
 
 G CHUISTIAMTV IN lUSXOltY. 
 
 ly separated and differently circumstanced bodies 
 of disciples, through a period extending over more 
 than a century. Those presentations of the per- 
 sonality of Jesus of Nazareth appear in a gradation 
 of dignity from that of the esteem of the Jew for 
 a Ilabl)i, to that of the divine ascription in the 
 Proeia to the Fourth (lospel. But, nowhere among 
 them, do Unitarian scholars discover the elevation 
 of Jesus, even as the Christ, to Deity as the Second 
 Person in an Eternal Trinity. That was an act of 
 faith subsequent to the writing of any of the books 
 of the Bible. 
 
 Unitarian exegetes, in common with other scienti- 
 fic interpreters of the Scriptures, find in the New 
 Testament, at least four sej)arable, and, in large 
 part, sepai'ated, theories of the Person of Jesus 
 of Nazai'eth. 
 
 1. — Humanity, endowed with wonder-worL-ing 
 power. 
 
 2.- — Humanit}-, divinely ordained and exalted as 
 Messiah of the Jews. 
 
 3.— Humanit}', in which the Son of God, as spirit- 
 ual Messiah, had appeared, and which, after death, 
 had been by divine power raised again to life, and 
 transferred to Heaven as " the Last Adam," and 
 Head of a new and divine Humanity. 
 
 4th. — Humanity, in which the Divine Logos had 
 become incarnate. 
 
 The first two of these theories were character- 
 istic of the popular Judaism of Galilee and Judea.
 
 THE PERSON' OF JESUS IX BIBLE AND CHURCH. 7 
 
 They were prevalent throughout the life of Jesus. 
 The secoud of them received its consummate ex- 
 pression in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. 
 
 1. — The lirst theory Avas that of the fellow 
 townsmen of Jesus and of the Jews generally. It 
 was embodied in such inquiries as, "Whence hath 
 this man this wisdom and these mighty works? 
 Is not this the carpenter's son ? is not his mother 
 called Mary? Whence then hath this man all 
 these things?," and in the declaration of the 
 multitude at the time he made his triumphal 
 entrance into Jerusalem, just before his cruci- 
 fixion, "This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth." 
 
 2. — Among the chosen disciples of Jesus, how- 
 ever, belief in him as a man was noticeably more 
 and more modified by a long held, absorbing, na- 
 tional Messianic hope. With wavering fidelity 
 they concentrated this hope upon him during his 
 life. After his death it persisted among them, at 
 first feebly, but with increasing strength and trans- 
 figured meaning, until on the Day of Pentecost it 
 received full endorsement in the notable address 
 of the Apostle Peter, and became thenceforward 
 the distinguishing faith of the Judaic Christians. 
 This second theory of the Person of Jesus, as set 
 forth in the Pentecostal address, is, "Yemen of 
 Israel hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a 
 man approved of God among you by miracles and 
 wonders and signs which God did by flim : Him 
 bein^- delivered bv the determinate counsel and
 
 8 CIIRISTIAMTY IN IIISTOI.Y, 
 
 foi'ol<noAvlfgo of God, ye liavc talvoi ami 1)}' kick- 
 ed liaiids liave cruciCiod and slain ; ^vllonl (lod hath 
 raii-cd up. Therefore being I)}' the ri;,dit hand of 
 God exalted — let all Israel hnow assuredly that God 
 haili made that same Jesus "whom 3'e have cruci- 
 fied, l)oth Lord and Christ." This theory pervades 
 and dominates the first throe Gospels. Examin- 
 ing these records, we find that, from the time of 
 the journey of the Magi to the manger at Bethlehem 
 to see " Him who was Lorn King of the Jews," to 
 the very last moment of the Christ's intercourse 
 ■with his disciples at the '" Ascension "' Avhen the 
 Apostles asked Him, "Lord wilt thou at this time 
 restore again the Kingdom to Israel?"' this theory 
 was the controlling force of apostolic discipleship. 
 And even after the "Ascension" the apostles waited 
 in expectation of a speed}' return of the ascended 
 ]\Iessiali to place them on " twelve thrones to judge 
 the twelve tribes of Israel," in the Kingdom from 
 Heaven. 
 
 3. — But, the New Testament records are not con- 
 fined to setting forth the Palestinian doctrine of 
 the Person of Jesus. Christianity at length came 
 to have a larger reach than Judaism and the 
 JeAvisb Messianic hope. An ideal for all huma- 
 nity, issuing from faith in Jesus Christ, sprang 
 into being and found a fervent advocate in a 
 Hellenistic Jew, Saul of Tarsus, who, as Paul the 
 Apostle, made the Christ known to the world. 
 The Pauline theory of the Christ shapes a large
 
 THE PEHSOX OF JESUS IN BIliI.E AND CHUr.CII. 9 
 
 part of the Christian scriptures. It is no longer 
 that of " the Son of Man." This plirase does not 
 occur once in Paul's writings. In these, Jesus has 
 become the glorilied Lord in lieaven, who " born 
 of the seed of David according to the flesh, had 
 been declared to be the Son of God with power, 
 according to the spirit of lioliuess by the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead." Yet more than this was em- 
 bodied in the Pauline Christology. Jesus Christ 
 was the Son of God in the spirit, descended among 
 men, a " Last Adam," the progenitor of a new order 
 of Humanit}', or rather the " first born among 
 many brethren,"' who after his work on the earth 
 had been done had returned to the Heaven whence 
 he had been seat. " God sent forth his Son, born 
 of a woman, born under the law, that He might 
 redeem them that were under the law." "Christ 
 Jesus, who being in the form of God, counted it 
 not a prize to be on an equality with God, but 
 emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, 
 being made in the likeness of men." The earthly- 
 life of Jesus was thus looked upon as but an 
 event in his existence. The Pauline theolog}' 
 culminated in such i)assages as thi.s, " To us there 
 is one God, the Father, of whom are all things and 
 Ave unto Him, and one Lord Jesns Christ through 
 whom arc all things and wo tlirougli Hiin." 
 
 I need not amplify these three theories of the 
 Person of Jesus whiL-h Unitaiiau and most scientific 
 Biblical students of the present day, find in the
 
 10 CHKISTIANITY IN HIHTOUV. 
 
 New Testament. It is evident, however, that none 
 of these doctrines is Trinitarian in content or 
 tendency. In none of them is Jesus set forth 
 as God the Son. In the Petriue theory of the 
 Christ, a man is ordained to, and is elevated to, 
 kingl}^ and celestial power and glory. In the 
 Pauline theory, the Son of God, " the first born of 
 evex'y creature," takes upon himself human nature, 
 that thereby an old and outworn order of human 
 life might be destroyed and that mankind might, 
 by means of their connection with Christ, rise 
 through the death of the flesh, redeemed spirits, 
 children of God with Christ, their Elder Brother. 
 
 n. 
 
 The Cheistology of the New Testa:\ient : the 
 Logos Doctrike. 
 
 Unitarian scholars see a fourth theory' of the 
 Person of Jesus Christ enshrined in the New Tes- 
 tament. It is that w4iose fullest expression is made 
 in the Fourth Gospel, the theory of Christ as the 
 incarnate Divine Logos. Bishop Bickersteth's 
 Sermon had for its motive, the texts, " The Logos 
 was made flesh," and " of his Fulness all we 
 received," both passages quoted from the first 
 chapter of the "Gospel according* to S. John." 
 To Dr. Bickersteth, the first of these passages 
 sets forth the orthodox faith, that God the eternal 
 Son, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, 
 assumed human nature in the man Jesus of Naza- 
 reth. This faith he presents as the fundamental
 
 THE PERSON 01" JESUS IN BIDLE AND CHUECU. 11 
 
 verity of Christianity. This, he asserts, Unitarians 
 deny, thereby severing themselves from Christ's 
 name and from Christ's body, the Church. This, 
 he claims. Unitarians acknowledge to be the true 
 New Testament doctrine, thereby surrendering the 
 Christian scriptures, as no longer a stronghold 
 for their own defense. 
 
 I reply : Unitarians do not accept the Christ- 
 ology of Trinitarianism ; but, in not accepting it, 
 they in no measure admit that the}" deny any 
 fundamental verity of Christian faith ; and they 
 see no reason whatever for deserting the New 
 Testament as no longer untrinitarian in its teach- 
 ings. 
 
 I cannot admit that the passage which Bishop 
 Bickersteth selected as the motive to his appeal, 
 weakens the position Unitarians have taken. Uni- 
 tarian Biblical expositors do not ignore the doc- 
 trine of the Christ as the incarnate Divine Logos. 
 On the contrary, they have studied it long and 
 reverently, only to come to the conchision, how- 
 ever, that the Logos becoming flesh, is very dif- 
 ferent from the incarnation of the Second Person 
 of a Triune God. 
 
 4. — What is the New Testament doctrine of the 
 incarnate Logos? It is the culmination of that 
 process of the idealization of the Person of Jesus 
 Christ, which took place in the Christian conscious- 
 ness during the first century after the death of 
 Jesus. The successive degrees of this idealization
 
 12 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY. 
 
 arc quite clearly set forth in the Now Testament. 
 I have iijclicated ^vhat they were. We have seen 
 how the man Jesus of Nazareth became identified 
 in the minds of the Palestinian, Jewish Christians 
 with the divinely' ord.nined Messiah, lonj^- lioped 
 for hy the nation. This is the Christ of the first 
 three Gospels. AVe have seen, too, how the man 
 Jesus was transfigured, as the Son of God sent 
 from Heaven, to he the spiritual ]Messiah for both 
 Jew and Gentile, and who had become through 
 death and resurrection, "the Last Adam," the 
 Head of a ne\v and divine Humanity. This is the 
 Christ of the Pauline ej^istles and of many Hellen- 
 ized Jews. But still another, higher, degree was 
 possible for the advancing Christology, before the 
 writings which were at length included in the 
 Kew Testament were all composed, the sul)lime 
 faith of the Fourth Gospel ; Christ set forth as the 
 Logos incarnate. 
 
 XInitarians, with most of the scientific historians 
 and Biblical critics of modern times, can see 
 plainly how the Logos doctrine, the highest theme 
 of the theological speculations of the Alexandrian 
 Jews of the first Christan century, became associa- 
 ted with the spreading faith in the " glorified 
 Christ."' To understand this doctrine and the use 
 made of it in shaping Christian faith, is to under- 
 stand the consummation of the faith of early 
 Christendom in the Person of Jesus, so far as the 
 Christian scriptures are concerned. What occur-
 
 THE PEESON OF JESUS IN BIBLK AND CUUKCII. 13 
 
 red farther in the clevelojiineiit of the doctrine of 
 Christ's Person, iis, for example, his incorporation 
 into a Divine Trinity as its Second Person, is a 
 theme in the study of Church Plistory, not of Xew 
 Testament exegesis. 
 
 What, then, was the Logos doctrine? "We shall 
 glance at its central contents. Pliilo, an Alexandri- 
 an Jew, born just before the Christian era, who be- 
 came the representative of the Logos doctrine as 
 it was received into Christianity, taught, under 
 the inliuencc of a speculation quite common at 
 the time in both the Greek and Roman philoso- 
 phies, that God is absolute spirit, having no 
 contact with matter, and that intermediary be- 
 tween Hijn and the world is the Word, the Logos. 
 Philo's wide reaching w^ork was the application of 
 this spocnlation to the Jewish theology, and to 
 Old Testament history. He profoundly inlluenced 
 Jewish thought outside of Palestine, especially 
 that of Northern Egypt and of Southern Asia 
 IMinor. To many Jews the idea gradually' became 
 familiar and commonplace, that, between the 
 absolute God and jnan and the world, there is, 
 and in their national history had been, an in- 
 termediarj' being, the Logos, the Word of Jehovah, 
 the onl}'- begotten Son, the image and agent of 
 the only true God aiul Fatlier, in contact with 
 both extremes, the Divine and the Human. 
 
 Philo did not identify tlie Logos with Jesus 
 Christ or Avith any man. That was nut done until
 
 14 CIIKISTIAMTY IN IIISTOUY. 
 
 the growing" Church had come under the influence 
 of the Alexandrian philosophy, or that of Alexan- 
 drian Jews who had become Christian believers. 
 Towards the end of the first hundred years after 
 the death of Jesus the Logos doctrine appeared 
 in Christian writings. We see it in certain New 
 Testament books, the Epistles to the Ephesians, to 
 the Colos-iians and to the Hebrews. It reached 
 its full declaration, however, in the Fourth Gospel. 
 Excepting its association with the Person of 
 Christ, the Logos doctrine of this Gospel is sub- 
 stantially that of Philo. Philo taught that the 
 Logos is from the beginning, not eternal in the 
 sense that God is eternal, but deriving his being 
 from God his Father ; the only begotten Son ; the 
 divine manifestation of God ; Maher and Lord of 
 all things, 3'et always under the control of the only 
 one God ; the Son having the glorj- of the Father; 
 the one source of life and salvation. These ascrip- 
 tions might as easily be taken from the Fourth 
 Gospel and the Logos epistles, which are ascribed 
 to the Apostle Paul, where Christ is presented as 
 the image of the invisilile God ; the one through 
 whom all things were made and by whom they 
 consist ; in whom dwells all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily, and who is seated at the right 
 hand of God. 
 
 Now, granting all that may be legitimateh- 
 claimed for the transcendent exaltation of the 
 Jewish Logos, evidently the distinction of superior
 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CHURCH. 15 
 
 and suborcliuate steadily persists between the 
 absolute God and Him. Unitarian Biblical stu- 
 dents see a like rolationsliip between the Father 
 and Christ the Word. We cannot surrender the 
 Christian Scriptures to Trinitarianisiii. I refer by 
 Avay of illustration of our position, to two repre- 
 sentative writers, Prof. T03' of Harvard University 
 in America, and Dr. James Martineau of England. 
 Prof. Toy is not denominationally a Unitarian ; as 
 for intellectual attitude, however, he stands just 
 where we are. 
 
 Prof. Toy says : " The New Testament, with all 
 the grandeur of character and function that it as- 
 cribes to Christ, maintains the unique supremac}^ 
 of the One God. The demand for a mediating 
 power between God and Humanit}^ is pushed to 
 the farthest point which thought can occupy, con- 
 sistently with the maintenance of the absolutene-;s 
 of the one supreme Deity." Dr. Martineau, speak- 
 ing of the incarnate Logos, says: "The So]i, 
 whether originated in time or not, is intrinsically 
 subordinate to the Father. The initiation is ever 
 with the Father as absolute Cause, the effect only 
 with the S')n as agent relatively to the world. 
 The divine ' Word ' cannot speak .save what the 
 divine thought may give Him to say. He does 
 not come of himself, but is no less sent into llie 
 world than the disciples whom He commissions as 
 His ambassadors in turn. Even in this high and 
 mystic doctrin;', tlie co-equality variously gives
 
 K; ciikistiamty in iiistouv. 
 
 way. Tlie voliilioii (of F;itlicr and Son) cannot be 
 turned round ; and tliou^'li the Son is of the Su- 
 preme essence, tlie Father preoccupies and forever 
 keeps, the nainc of tlie 'true God' and is the 
 invif^ible perfection which the Word is coiuniission- 
 ed to manifest.'" 
 
 But I have said enough, I think, to make it clear 
 that Bishop Bickersteth thoroughly misunder- 
 stands Unitarians when he asserts that they long 
 ago gave up the Christian scriptures to anti-uni- 
 tarianisni arid orthodox Christiauit}-. The Clirist- 
 iair scriptures are an heritage which Unitarianism 
 has received in common with all Christendom. 
 Our effort to understand these scriptures is as 
 earnest and as reverent as that of any other body 
 of Christian disciples. Our Unitarianism is in 
 large part a direct elfect of this study. To many 
 of us it is scarcely credible that an unprejudiced 
 mind can find the doctrine of the Trinity in the 
 Bible, even by implication. History shows how 
 and when the doctrine of the Trinity api)eared in 
 Christendom. We know that it appeared long after 
 the Sa(;red Canon had closed. It was the final 
 act of the idealizinj,' faith of the early Church, the 
 steps of ^\hich, to the theory of the incarnation of 
 the Logos, are plainly marked in the New Testa- 
 ment, and have been pointed out here. 
 
 III. 
 
 Thf. Cukistology of Unit.\ki.\.ni><m. 
 There remains to me the duty of making a state-
 
 THE PERSOX OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CHURCH. 17 
 
 meut of the theoiy of the Person of Jesus Christ, 
 commonly held by Unitarians. "When, however, I 
 say '"commonly held," I do not mean either uni- 
 versally, or always, held. The theories of Christ's 
 Person advocated by Unitarians, are the same uni- 
 versally and have always been the same, only in 
 their denial of the doctrine that in Jesus Christ, 
 the Second Person of a Divine Trinity was incar- 
 nate. In the history of our denomination we find 
 as many differing theories of the Person of Jesus 
 of Nazareth as there are in the New Testament 
 scriptures, from the simple humanitarianism of the 
 village associates of Jesus, to the transcendent 
 Logos incarnation dominant among the philoso- 
 phic Christians of Alexandria. At the present day 
 this same wide range of opinion may be found 
 among the members of our churches. I5ut it is 
 also true, that among those who may be now con- 
 sidered representative teachers, who are most in- 
 tlueiitial in directing Unitarian thought, there is 
 an increasing harmony of 02)inions concerning 
 Jesus, of so Avide an inclusion, that we may say it 
 expresses the Christology commonly held among 
 us. 
 
 What is the Christolog}' of Modern Unitarianism? 
 It is not that of the Roinan Catholic and of 
 Orthodox Christians, nor that of the Fourth Gos- 
 l)el, nor that of the Pauline Epistles, nor that even 
 of the Synoptic Gospels. Yet it is in no degree 
 inferior to anv of these. As the Christian con-
 
 18 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY. 
 
 sciousness of each succcding century in early 
 Christian history, Avas impelled to define the Per- 
 son of Jesus Christ anew, so has it been in this 
 Modern Age. Among Unitarians, the advancing 
 apotheosis of Jesus as the Christ, has been carried 
 yet farther forward, and, possibly, to an ultimate 
 position. 
 
 All Unitarians would agree with Bisop Bicker- 
 steth's answer to his question, "What is it that 
 the most devout and religious minds in all times 
 and lands have longed for, and striven to reach 
 and grasp? Is it not some true, some satisfying 
 mode of union with and likeness to God ?" The 
 record, in so large part, of patient, earnest, often 
 vehement and passionate, search of Unitarian 
 Christians for God ; a search, often persisted in 
 through persecution, shame and death, for one 
 who shall be known to be " God with man," shows 
 how deeply this longing of the ages has been felt 
 among them. They make a radical mistake, who 
 say that we seek to destroy any real bond by 
 which faith has brought God and man together. 
 Unitarianism has come not to destroj' but to fulfill. 
 AVe have denied the doctrine of the incarnation, in 
 Jesus of Nazareth, of the Second Person of a Divine 
 Trinity. But we have denied it for, substantially the 
 same reason as that by which the Church Fathers 
 of the third and the fourth centuries, the creators 
 of the Christian Trinity, were compelled to deny 
 the doctrine of the incarnation of the divine Logos
 
 THE PEBSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CUURCU. 19 
 
 which they had inherited from the Church of the 
 second century ; "vve have denied it in the same 
 spirit with Avhich the earlier Church rose above the 
 Christology of the Apostle Paul to that of the 
 Logos doctrine; for the same reason as that by 
 which the Apostle Paul advanced his thought of 
 the Christ beyond that of the Apostle Peter and 
 of the Jerusalem Jews ; the reason, namely, that 
 the irrepressible longing of the human soul for 
 immediate, conscious union Avith God, was not 
 yet satisfied. 
 
 "But Unitarianism is Humauitarianism, ' it will 
 be charged in rex^ly. " To Unitarians, Jesus Christ 
 is not God but man." Yet, to us, he is no more 
 really a man than he is in Trinitarian Christology, 
 properly understood and taught. In all orthodox 
 creeds Jesus Christ is prescaited as, in a true 
 sense of the word, human. It is one of the 
 memorable achievements of the Catholic and 
 Orthodox theology, that it has invariably taught 
 the proper and complete humanity of Jesus. The 
 repeated struggles of the early Christian Church 
 to preserve this article of faith, are among the 
 most instructive of its records. The Manichaean 
 lieres}', that of Apollinaris, and that of Eutiches, 
 which were condemned b}' general councils in the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, because they taught, 
 respectivel}', that the humanity of Jesus was a 
 mere illusion, that Jesus had no human soul, and 
 that the divine nature in Christ wholly absorbed
 
 20 CHUISTIAMTY IN IIISTOnV. 
 
 the Imman, are significant illustrations of the 
 faitlifuluess of the Church to the reality of the 
 humanity of Jesus. The Orthodox creed sets forth 
 the doctrine of the incarnation of God the Son 
 in Jesus, but it teaches, as clearly as Unitarians 
 teach, Jesns Christ's real nature as man. 80 far 
 as belief in the man Jesus is in question, Orthodox 
 Christians and Unitarians stand together. 
 
 "But Unitarianism is mere Humanitarianism, ' 
 it may be answered. "To Unitarians, God was 
 not incarnate in the man Jesus. " Yet, we claim 
 that the mark of Christian discipleship is the faith 
 of the incarnation. Unitarians find their deepest 
 inspiration, their sublimest hope in this faith. The 
 real difference between Orthodox and Unitarian 
 Christians arises from the difference beween two 
 definitions or explanations of the same idea. Back 
 of the Orthodox and the Modern Unitarian con- 
 ceptions of the Incarnation, lie fundamentally 
 nnlike thoughts of Deity, and of God's relation to 
 man and the world. Orthodoxy had its source in 
 a thought of God which assumed a separation 
 between Deity and man and nature, not only by 
 spiritual essence, but also by distances of space. 
 To illustrate ; the Christianity of the Apostolic 
 Church started from the Jewish popular notion 
 that God had, from the distant heavens, ordained 
 Jesus to be the Messiah of His chosen people, and 
 had endowed him with superhuman powers by 
 His Spirit, to complete the Messianic mission.
 
 THE PEKSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CHURCH. 21 
 
 But, when Christianity was carried be30ud the 
 bounds of Jewish life and thought, the Christian 
 mind, under a i;)rofounder theology than that of 
 the Palestinian disciples, began a struggle con- 
 cerning the Person of Christ, which continued with 
 deepening intensity' for more than four hundred 
 years. The Pauline Christology, which set forth 
 Jesus as the incarnation of the Son of God, the 
 first born of all the creation, was a great advance 
 upon the faith which had preceded it. The 
 Apostle himself was influenced b}' the contem- 
 porary Greco-Roman speculation, which affirmed 
 that there is an essential connection between God 
 and man, the God "in whom we live and move and 
 have our being," yet the Christology of Paul's 
 epistles was not wholly freed from the current 
 dualistic conceptions of Judaism. The Logos 
 doctrine of the Fourth Gospel was still farther a 
 movement towards emancii:)ation of Christian faith. 
 But it Avas not until the Fathers of the Church of 
 the third and fourth centuries had wrought the 
 enlarging and deepening faith in the Christ into 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, that the real doctrine 
 of the God- man, the " true God " who had assumed 
 human nature, became a part of Christian con- 
 sciousness. The doctrine of the Trinity itself bears 
 witness to the struggle in the Christian Church 
 for a satisfying statement of the Incarnation. In 
 substance, it is a product of the Greek philosophic 
 conviction, that '"the true God" is immanent in
 
 22 CIIIUSTIANITV IN HISTOKY. 
 
 the world and in miiu. In form, as Father, Son, 
 and Holy Spirit, although set forth as One God 
 in throe Persons, it bears the marks of the antece- 
 dent, unsatisfying faiths whose place it had taken. 
 Dr. James Freeman Clarke said, "No doctrine of 
 Orthodoxy is so false in its form, and so true in 
 its substance, as this." Again, speaking of the 
 doctrine of the deification of Christ, as embodied 
 in Orthodox creeds, this same writer remarked, 
 "We cannot but think this doctrine far truer 
 than the Arianism which so long struggled in the 
 Church for supremacy." 
 
 The development of the theory of Christ's Per- 
 son, however, received, soon after the confirmation 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity, a check which lasted 
 for more than a thousand years. With the esta- 
 blishment of the Roman Papacy, and the domina- 
 tion of the Augustinian theology, the influence of 
 the Greek idea of the immanence of God in man 
 and the world gave wa}'. Christian thought was 
 thenceforward shaped by dogma based upon the 
 notion of God's absolute transcendence in relation 
 to the human soul. The doctrine of the Trinity 
 remained, but it lost its real motive and reason 
 for being. The humanity of Christ practically dis- 
 appeared, obscured by his awful Deity. 
 
 No change for the better in the theory' of 
 Christ's Person took place until the Renaissance 
 had made the thought of Christendom free again. 
 A large number of the Reformed churches perpet-
 
 THE PERSOX OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CHURCH. 23 
 
 uated in Calvinism, the Augnstinian theology and 
 Cbristology, but man}' earnest Christians protested 
 against the continued dominance of the Medieval 
 dogmas. The Unitarian protests, Avhich soon fol- 
 lowed the Reformation, were a return to one or 
 another of the New Testament theories of Christ's 
 Person. The Socinian struggles of the seventeenth 
 century and later, were often made in the interests 
 of a barren humanitarianism; nevertheless tjiey 
 were aroused by a legitimate claim upon the hu- 
 manity of Christ, which had been practically taken 
 from Christian faith. The Socinians did a much 
 needed work in clearing the way for the advance 
 of a truer Christology. 
 
 During the present centur}' a large x^art of Pro- 
 testant Christendom has been brought, by a free 
 philosophy and science, under the influence of a 
 mode of thought very like that of the Greek Fa- 
 thers of the fourth century. In many directions 
 Christian theology has thereby been becoming 
 more and more satisfying to both intellectual and 
 spiritual needs. The doctrine of the Trinity is 
 still a fundamental tenet of Orthodox Christian 
 faith, but it has been brought back from the iso- 
 lation it had in the jMiddle Ages, and, in one or 
 another form, been put into vital connection with 
 Christian faith. At least, what is vital in the 
 doctrine of the Trinity has been put into intimate 
 contact with Christian faith. The sermon of 
 Bishop Bickersteth, which has called forth this
 
 24 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY. 
 
 reply, is, itself, an ilhistiation of my meaning. 
 
 Modern Unitarianism, as I have said, does not 
 seek to peri^etuate the Patristic Trinity, or the 
 Ohristology involved in it. We see great beauty 
 and truth in a doctrine of Father, Son and Holy 
 Spirit, but, to us, there is ouly " one God, the Fa- 
 ther." Modern Unitarianism is guided by the 
 conviction that there is only one God, and that 
 God is immanent in the Universe; its Source, 
 Power, Life, Providence, and End. Our Ohrist- 
 ology therefore is, that so far as God was incar- 
 nate in Jesus, He was incarnate in him, in no way 
 essentially different from that of his incarnation in 
 all human souls. Whatever difference there was 
 between Jesus and other men, we believe, was in 
 the degree of the divine communion with him, 
 not in its kind. To the faith of most of us, the con- 
 sciousness of God in Christ reached an intensity- 
 a dignity, a sublimity, which has made him the 
 chief among men to whom we may turn as our 
 Way, our Truth, our Life. It matters not that the 
 Christian records vary in their concex^tion and 
 portrayal of the Man of Nazareth. Jesus, we be, 
 lieve, still stands before the world as the greatest 
 of all the prophets of the soul. It has been well 
 said that " only a Christ could invent a Christ." 
 It is not the historic Christ who has ruled the 
 Church, who now receives the homage of men's 
 souls, and who will guide mankind hereafter. It 
 is the ideal Christ, the result of the impression
 
 THK PERSON OF JESUS IN BIBLE AND CHURCH. ZO 
 
 which Jesus made upon his coutemporaries, and 
 of the transtiguration of that impression by those 
 who have drawn inspiration from the New Testa- 
 ment records. Dr. F. H. Hedge Avrote, "If the 
 Christ of the Church, of Christian faith, is an ideal 
 being, it was Jesus of Nazareth who made the 
 ideal. The ideal in him is simply tlie result of 
 that disengagement from the earthl}' vcstiture, 
 Avhicli death and distance work in all wlio live in 
 history. By the very necessity of its function 
 history idealizes. We misread the Gospel and 
 reverse the true and divine order, if we suppose 
 the ideal Christ to be an essence distilled from 
 the historical. On the contrary, the ideal Christ 
 is the root and ground of the historical; and with- 
 out the antecedent idea inspiring, commanding, 
 the history would never have been." 
 
 From what has been given to the world of the 
 career of Jesus of Nazareth, there has been evolved 
 for many earnest minds the personality of one 
 in whom the consciousness of God, the Father, 
 became supreme ; of his God who is also our God, 
 of his Father who is also our Father; and Avho 
 thereby gave to man " a true, satisfying mode of 
 union with and likeness to God." "In the very 
 constitution of the human soul," says Dr. Martin- 
 eau, "there is provision for an immediate appre- 
 hension of God. But often in the transient lights 
 and shades of conscience we pass on and know not 
 wlio it is; and not until we see in another the victory
 
 2G CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY. 
 
 ■which shames our defeat, and are cuught up by an 
 enthusiasm for some realized heroism or sanctity, 
 do the authority of right and the beauty of holiness 
 come home to us as an appeal literally Divine. 
 The train of the conspicuously righteous in their 
 several degrees are for us the real angels that pass 
 to and fro on the ladder that reaches from earth to 
 heaven. And if Jesus of Nazareth in virtue of 
 the characteristics of his spirit, holds the j)lace of 
 Prince of Saints and perfects the conditions of the 
 pure religious life, he thereby reveals the highest 
 possibilities of the human soul and their dependence 
 on habitual communion between man and God." 
 
 The Christology of XJnitarianism, therefore, 
 directs us to the Man of Nazareth, not as dominated 
 by an indwelling celestial, or super-angelic, spirit, 
 nor even as possessed b}^ the eternal Son of God, 
 incarnate in him, made thereby the bond between 
 a separated Humanity and Deity, but as so con- 
 scious of "the true God" -within, that he is the pro- 
 totype of a Divine Humanity; illuminatiug by his 
 faith and life, the essential Fatherhood of God, and 
 anticipating the possible consious divine childship 
 of everv human soul.
 
 II. 
 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 AND META3IORPHOSES OF 
 
 CHRISTIANITY.
 
 Historically itguidccl, Jesus is uplifted ou the great wave 
 formed by the confluence of three main courses of ancient life 
 and thought, the Hebrew, Oriental, and Greek,— all embraced 
 in the imperial sway of Rome. His life, as the fulfillment of 
 Hebrew Messianic prophecy, becomes the central and i)ivotal 
 fact in the annals of mankind. However it be interpreted, the 
 doctrine of the Church remains, that in it met all the separate 
 threads of human development : so that, religiously regarded, 
 it becomes the great revelation of God in human life. 
 
 Br. Joseph 11. Alien. 
 
 What we call Christianity is a vast ocean, into which liuw a 
 number of spiritual currents of distant and various origin ; 
 certain religions, that is to say, of Asia and Europe, the great 
 ideas of Greek wisdom, and especially those of Platonism. 
 WTiat is essential and original in it is the practical demonstra- 
 tion that the human and the divine nature may co-exist, may 
 become fused into one sublime flame. 'WTiat is speciflc in 
 Christianity is Jesus— the religious consciousness of Jesus. The 
 sacred sense of his absolute union with God, through ^oerfect 
 love and self-surrender, this profound, in%-incible, and tranquil 
 faith of his has become a religion. 
 
 Henri Frederic Am iel.
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE EVOLUTION 
 
 AND METAMORPHOSES 
 
 OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 THE FIRST CENTURY. 
 
 /. Pvhnitive Christktiiity in Conteni- 
 porary History. Tacitus. A.D. 51-117.— The 
 Roman historian Tacitus, who, it is said, ranks 
 " beyond dispute in the highest place among 
 men of letters in all ages," -was born about the 
 middle of the first century of the Christian Era. 
 In his Annals, he speaks of the attempt of the 
 emperor Nero, to divert from himself the odium 
 which befell him as the suspected cause of the 
 great lire in Rome, by accusation of the new and 
 increasing religious sect, "commonly known as 
 Christians." 
 
 " The originator of this name," wrote Tacitus, 
 " was one Christus, who was put to death as a 
 criminal, under the procurator Pontius Pilate, in 
 the reign of Tiberius." 
 
 2. The Beyinniuyfi of Christianity. 
 tTcSHS of Xa.vareth. The Synoptic Gosjjcls; The 
 Acts of the Ajiostles. A.D. 30-125 ?— Within the first 
 hundred aud twenty five years after the birth of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, what arc now known as the 
 Synoptic Gospels, — Matthew, ]\Iark, and Luke, —
 
 30 CHIJISTIANITV IN IIISTOHY. 
 
 and the Acts of the Apostles, caine into existence. 
 According to thtm, the first explicit public claim 
 which Jesus made concerning himself, "was in 
 the synagogue at " Nazareth where he had been 
 brought up." There he "stood up for to read. 
 And there was delivered unto him the book of the 
 jn-ox^het Esaias. And when he had ojoened the 
 book, he found the place where it was Avritten, 
 ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 
 hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the 
 poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted* 
 to preach deliverance to the captives, and recover- 
 ing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
 that are bruised ; to preach the acceptable year of 
 the Lord." 
 
 "And he began to say unto them, 'This day is 
 this Scripture fulfilled in j'our ears.' And all bore 
 him witness and wondered at the gracious words 
 which proceeded out of his mouth. And they 
 said, 'Is not this Joseph's son?' '" (Luke 4:16-22). 
 Upon this announcement at Nazareth Jesus devot- 
 ed himself to a public ministry of religious teaching 
 and of wonderful deeds in Galilee and Judea, con- 
 tinuing for from one to three years. 
 
 At last, betrayed by one of his chosen followers, 
 Jesus Avas arrested at Jerusalem, and taken before 
 the Jewish Council, where he was asked, " If thou 
 art the Christ, tell us. But he said, 'If I tell 
 you, ye will not believe.' And they all said. ' Art 
 thou then the Son of God ? ' And he said, ' Ye
 
 EVOLUTION AND MKTAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. 31 
 
 say that I am.' And the whole company of them 
 rose up and brought liim before Pilate," where he 
 was accused of having called himself, " Christ, 
 an anointed king." "And Pilate asked him, 'Art 
 thou the king of the Jews ? ' He answered ' Thou 
 sayest.' " 
 
 JesLis was crucified as, "The King of the Jews." 
 (Luke 22, and 23). 
 
 3, The Glorified 3f€ssiah of Israel, 
 
 The Day of Pentecost. About A.D. 30.— In the "Acts 
 of the Apostles," it is recorded that the disciples of 
 Jesus, and devout Jews " from every nation under 
 heaven," came together on the Da}' of Pentecost, 
 not long after the crucifixion. At that time the 
 Apostle Peter "stood up with the eleven,' and 
 inade tliis proclamation ; — 
 
 "Ye men of Israel, hear these words : Jesus of 
 Nazareth, a jnan approved of God unto you by 
 mighty works and wonders and signs, which God 
 did by him in the midst of you, even as ye j'our- 
 selves know ; him being delivered up by the de- 
 terminate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye 
 by the hand of lawless men, did crucify and slay. — 
 This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are 
 witnesses. Being therefore at the right hand of 
 God exalted, and having received of the Father 
 the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath poured 
 forth this, which ye see and hear. — Let all the 
 house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that 
 God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this
 
 32 CHIUSTIAMTy IN HISTOUY. 
 
 Jesus wliom ye cruciticcl." 
 
 4, The Baptismal Formula . A.D. 30-125. 
 —At the close of the Peutecostal address, so the 
 record runs, many " were pricked in their heait> 
 and said nnto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, 
 Men and brethren what shall we do ?" The answer 
 was, " Repent and be baptized every one of yon in 
 the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, 
 and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. " 
 
 Throughout the first century, baptism "in the 
 name of Christ," or "in the name of the Lord" 
 (Acts 10: 48), or "in the name of the Lord Je.sus" 
 (Acts 10: .5), or "into Christ" (Gal. 3: 27), wa.s, 
 ai)parently, the one simple formula used for 
 entrance into membership in the Christian Church- 
 It is supi^osed that one of the notable marks of an 
 early metamorphosis of the Person of Jesus, lies 
 in the baptismal formula embodied in the closing 
 words of " the Gospel according to S. Matthew," 
 where the ascending Jesus declai'es to the eleven ; 
 "all authority hath been given unto me in heaven 
 and on earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples 
 of all nations, baj)tizing them into the name of 
 the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." 
 (Mat. 28: 19). By the time the SynoiDtic Gospels 
 had received their permanent form, about k. D. 
 100-125?, the historic Christ had thus already be- 
 come transformed and idealized. 
 
 J. TJie Ch risf of the S2)h'it. The Pauline 
 E23is(lrs. A.D. 53-G3.— In the epistles of Paul, we
 
 h\OLUTION AND I^tETAMOiltHOSKS OF (HHISTIAMIV. o'} 
 
 have, in original and completed form, the earliest 
 of the Christian records. In doctrine, excepting- 
 the ]jux>tismal formula at the close of Matthew, there 
 is in these epistles a much higher Christology than 
 we find in the Synoptic Gospels. Paid Avrote his 
 most important letters, within thirty years after 
 the Crucifixion. 
 
 While called Saul of Tarsus, " breathing threat- 
 ening and slaughter against the disciples of the 
 Lord," commissioned by the high priest to bring 
 bound to Jerusalem an}' of the Damascus Jews 
 •'that were of the Wa}'," Paul became, himself, a 
 Christian disciple, and '-'straightway," among those 
 whom he had been persecuting, "proclaimed 
 Jesus that He is the Son of God." (Acts 9 : 20). 
 Thenceforth, Paul, consecrated his life to the 
 Gospel of the Christ, and did more than any other 
 one man to make Christianity a religion of the 
 Spirit, and a faith and life for mankind. But it 
 was not the Jesus of Nazareth " who went about 
 doing good," to whom Paul consecrated his great 
 poAvers. It was to the "Son of God," "born of 
 the seed of David according to the flesh and 
 declared to be the Son of God with power accord- 
 ing to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection 
 of the dead." (Rom. 1:1-C). '■ AVe preach Christ 
 crucified," (1 Cor. 1: 23), Paul announced, "deter- 
 mined not to know anything, save Jesus Christ 
 and him crucified." (1 Cor. 2 : 2). "Even though 
 we have known Christ after the flesh, vet now we
 
 Si CMIUSTIANI'IY IN ]fIST.JKV. 
 
 IvHow ]iiin so uj more. If any man is in Christ 
 ho is a new creature.' (2 C(jr. 5: 10). 
 
 In the Pauline Christology the Jewish Messiah 
 disappeared. "Tons there is one God, the Fa- 
 ther, of whom are all things and Ave nnto Him : 
 and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through Avhom are 
 all things and Ave through Hiin. (1 Cor. 8: G). 
 
 To the Apostle to the Gentiles a spiritual 
 Messiah had been revealed. '■ As in Adam all die, 
 so also in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor. 
 15:22). "The first man Adam became a living 
 soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 
 The first mau is of the earth, earthy : the second 
 man is of heaA-en." (1 Cor. 1-5 : 45-48). To Paul's 
 faith, through the coming of the Son of God into 
 the Avorld a conscious divine humanity, a humanity 
 of the Spirit, had been created. " God sent forth 
 his Son, born of a Avoman, born under the law, 
 that he might redeem them Avhicli were under the 
 law, that AA-e might receiA-e the adoption of sons. 
 And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit 
 of his Son into onr hearts, crAdng, Abba Father." 
 (Gal. 4: 4-7). A ncAv covenant of God with mau 
 had been made, " not of the letter but of the 
 spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giA-eth 
 life." "Ye died and 3'our life is hid with Clirist 
 in God." (Col. 3: 3). 
 
 Once Paul associated in an apostolic act, God, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost; in the 
 benediction Avith which his Second Eijistle to the
 
 KVOLUTIOX AND METAM0UPH03ES 01' CHUISTI VNI IV. 35 
 
 Corinthians closed. 
 
 Tlie culmination of the Pauline Chiistology is 
 reached in the introduction to tlie Epistle to the 
 Colo.ssians, which, whether or not from the i)en 
 of the Apostle, is thorouj^'hly in harmony with 
 the tendency and steady development of his 
 thought. — "Thanks unto the Father," he writes, 
 " wlio delivered us out of the power of darkness 
 and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of 
 his love, who is the image of the invisible (lod, 
 the first born of all creation ; for in him wore all 
 things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, 
 things visible and things invisible, whether thrones 
 or dominions or principalities or powers; all things 
 have been created through him, and unto him ; 
 and he is before all things, and in him all things 
 consist. It was the good pleasure of the Father 
 that in him should all the fulness dwell." 
 
 If, as is supposed, the letter to the Colossians 
 was written in the year 02, Jesus of Nazareth, 
 who on the Day of Pentecost had been proclaimed 
 "a man approved of God," and exalted to a heav- 
 enly seat as the Lord and Christ of Israel, had, 
 within less than a generation afterwards, become, 
 to a part of the growing Church, an incarnated 
 superangelic spirit, God's agent in all Creation, 
 Providence and Destiny. 
 
 a. The Ep'i^th' to the Hehi'i'wa. A.D, 
 00-70. — A yet farther degree in the New Testa- 
 ment metamorpliosis of the Person of Christ was
 
 3G CHKISTIANITV IN HISTORY. 
 
 reacbed. Competent critics are inclined to the 
 opinion that this ej)istle was not written by Paul, 
 but by some one who bad accepted the Pauline 
 Cbristology, and, by it, sought to exalt the Christ 
 ideal among the Jewish Christians to a like level 
 with that presented to the Gentiles. In the 
 opening of the " Epistle to the Hebrews, ' we read, 
 " God having of old time spoken unto the fathers 
 in the prophets b}- divers portions and in divers 
 manners, hath at the end of these days sj)okeu 
 unto us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of 
 all things, through whom also he made the 
 worlds: Avho being the effulgence of his glory, 
 and the ver^' image of his substance, and up- 
 holding all things b^- the word of his power, sat 
 down on the right hand of the Majesty on high ; 
 having become by so much better than the angels, 
 as he hath inherited, a more excellent name than 
 they." 
 
 Just when this epistle was written Ave do not 
 know. Cbristologically however it brings us to 
 the boundary, to cross which discloses the sublime 
 vision with which the Fourth Gospel opens. 
 
 7. Clement of Home, A.D. 95.— One other 
 voice speaks to us from the first century, as the 
 centur}' closes, that of the bishop of the Church 
 at Kome. It has not the rapt, mystic tone of the 
 figed Paul, longing to depart and be with Christ, 
 but it exalts before the Church at Corinth, "The 
 sceptre of the majesty of God, our Lord Jes»us
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHKLSTIANITY. :57 
 
 Christ, who came not in the show of piitle ami 
 arrogance, though he coukl have clone so ; but 
 with humility, as the Holy Ghost had before 
 spoken concerning him." 
 
 THE SECOND CENTURY. 
 
 /. The Apostolic F4tthevs. I'ulycarp, (i'J- 
 liO ■? — With the exception of the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, from the pen of Clement of Rome, 
 there is but one other Avriting of the Churcli 
 Fathers who liad been contemporary with an}' 
 of the Apostles, which can now be accepted as 
 genuine, — the letter of Polycarp to the Philip- 
 pians. Polycarp's ideal of the Christ, however, 
 hardly rises to the level of that of the Apostle 
 Paul. He believes "on Him that raised up our 
 Lord Jesus Christ from the dead and hath given 
 him glory and a throne at his right hand." He 
 had often talked " with John and the rest who 
 had seen the Lord." Poh'carp is .supposed to have 
 been born in the year 09. He suffered martyrdom 
 near the middle of the second century. 
 
 .?. Chi'ist the JJivhir Lofjos, Hie Fourth 
 (lospel, 130-lo0. — Towards the middle of the 
 second century appeared the most momentous, — 
 considered in its Christolog}-, — of all the Avritings 
 which at last formed part of the Canon of the New 
 Testament, " the Gospel according to S. John." 
 This is a record of the life of Jesus, and is one 
 of the four '• Gospels ' of the Christian scriptures. 
 
 O Q 1 **
 
 38 CHKIS'ilAMTY IN lIISTOIiY. 
 
 Lilt, Avliilc it is grouped Avith " Matthew, ^Mark 
 and Luke,' it stands apart from them with an 
 individuality which can not be ignored, or con- 
 cealed. It is the embodiment of a new thought 
 of Christ and his Gospel. It is the vision of the 
 everlasting Logos incarnate. 
 
 " In the beginning was the Word, and the AVord 
 was with God and the "Word was God. The same 
 was in the beginning with God. 
 
 " And the "Word became flesh, and dwelt among 
 ns (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only 
 begotten from the Father) full of grace and truth. 
 
 " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only 
 begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, 
 he hath declared him." 
 
 As the visible life of Jesus drew to its close, 
 "Philip saith unto him ' Lord shew us the Father, 
 and it sufficeth ns ! ' Jesus saith nnto him, ' Have 
 I been so long time with you, and dost thoxi not 
 know me, Philip ? he that hath seen me hath seen 
 the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the 
 Father and the Father in me ? the words that I 
 say unto you I s^^eak not from myself, but the 
 Father abiding in me doeth his works.'"' 
 
 The Fourth Gospel closes with the words, 
 " These are written that ye may believe that Jesus 
 is the Christ the Sou of God ; and that believing 
 ye ma}' have life in his name. " 
 
 />. Coiijiicf of Opinions; the Genesis of 
 Creeds. The Fathers of the Ch urch.— The first four
 
 KVOLUTION AND rMETAMOliPHOSES OF CHRISTIAMTV. 39 
 
 centuries of the Christian Era were the scene of a 
 violent struggle among the rtcipicnts of Christian 
 tradition, over the question of what is true or false 
 doctrine. It is not the purpose here, however, to 
 attempt an exhibit of the complex contest. At 
 times it was a struggle of all the churches against 
 the world. At times it was the clash of party Avitli 
 party within the sacred fellowfchip. Opinion was 
 many sided in its variety. It gathered chiefly 
 about the Person of Christ. From the middle of 
 the second century onward for two hundred years, 
 there was no rest or steady progress in formulating 
 doctrine. Faith was driven hither and thither 
 under the impulses of contending sects, whose 
 name was legion. To review this conflict would 
 distract too nuich our attention. We shall notice 
 in it, especially, the successive signs of the devel- 
 opment of that doctrine Avhich came at length 
 to express for Christendom the Orthodox and 
 Catholic faith concerning the Person of the Clirist. 
 This development had a substantial continuity, 
 although at times it was arrested and seemingly 
 also, for a period, turned l)ackwurd. By means of 
 quotations from contemporary literature we shall 
 gain instructive glimpses of tlio process. 
 
 4, Christ the Uitirrrsal Lo(/(ps, or !!<((- 
 soil. Justin, maiiyred 1()5. — About the middle of 
 the second century, Christianity apjieared distinctly 
 in contemporary' history, riiilosophors and other 
 men of repute became interested in Christian doc-
 
 40 CHRISTIANITY IX lIIS'lOliY. 
 
 trine. Dr. J. H. Alien, says, " Clearly throughout 
 ihe New Testament, the leading idea is that Jesus 
 was the Messiah of the Jews, in however spiritual 
 fashion this office might be interpreted ; and, so 
 long as the Jewish nation existed, however feeble 
 a remnant it might a})peav, the deliverance and 
 glory of the chosen people under its Divine 
 Leader would remain the central point of faith, 
 at an}' rate with a large proportion of the 
 disciples. — The Jewish nation was bloodil}' ex- 
 tinguished under Hadrian, in 135. V]} to that 
 date, it seems quite certain that there was a sect 
 of Palestinian Christians w-ho looked distinctly to 
 see a restoration of the " Kingdom unto Israel," 
 under the risen and triumphant Messiah. After 
 that date, this hope Avas definitely blotted out, 
 and the independent growth of Christian doctrine, 
 as distinct from a more or less altered and 
 spiritualized Judaism, may be said to have begun. 
 The year 135 is to be taken, then, as the crisis 
 which established Christian doctrine as an inde- 
 pendent force in shaping the religious opinions of 
 mankind.' 
 
 Whether or not Justin wrote independently of 
 the Fourth Gospel, we do not know, but what 
 he said of the Logos was "probably (he jirM 
 attempt at a formal statement of the Logos- 
 doctrine as a cardinal point in Christian theology ; 
 the Proem to the Fourth Gospel being an 
 eloquent and noble religious expression of the
 
 KVOIil'riON AKD MKTVM0RPH03ES OF CHRISTIAXIXr. 41 
 
 same general thought." " Justin's doctrine of the 
 Word completes and follo-\vs out Paul's doctrine 
 oi' tlie Spirit." 
 
 " Before all created thiug.s," wrote Justin in 
 1-40 ('?), " God begot from himself a certain mights- 
 Word, which is also called Holy Spirit, or Glor}' 
 of the Lord, sometimes Son, sometimes Wisdom, 
 somctiines Angel, sometimes God, and sometimes 
 Lord or Word." " One article of our faith there 
 is," he wrote again, " that Christ is the first be- 
 gotten of God, and we have already proved him to 
 be the very Logos, (or universal Reason), of which 
 mankind are all partakers ; and therefore those 
 who live according to the Logos are Christians, not- 
 withstanding they may pass with you for atheists." 
 A more definite statement of his faith, one in 
 wdiich there is a noticeable juxtaposition of objects 
 of worship was as follows : — ' AVe worship and 
 adore Him, (God), and the Son who came forth 
 from Him and taught us lliese things, and the 
 host of (jther angels who follow and are made 
 like him, and the prophetic Spirit." Justin's 
 Logos doctrine did not rcacli tlie sole exaltation 
 to which in after decades it was carried, but it 
 indicates the upward movement of Christian faith. 
 Justin is thought to have l)een rather closer to 
 the Jewish Roman line of thought than to the 
 Greek. 
 
 J. The (rcrin of tin- Dtntiim' (*f the 
 Tl'iuitiJ. Jlli'^nagoras, 170. — Athenagoras was an
 
 42 CHKISTIANITV IN HISTOliY. 
 
 Athenian pliilnsopher, wlio •wrote an Apology for 
 the Christians, addressed to the Emperor ^Marcus 
 Aurelius. He made this noteworth}- decLaration, 
 "The Son is in the Father and the Father is in the 
 Son, by oneness and power of tlie Spirit. The Son 
 of God is the Mind and Reason of the Fatlier." 
 
 a. TJif Germ of the Doctrine of the 
 Suiyreniacy of the Chnrch. Irenaeu.^, 175- 
 202. — Before the authority of the councils, assem- 
 bled from the churches, was established, Christian 
 thought Avas as individual and free as it is to-day. 
 Each Christian writer legitimateh' supported his 
 own doctrines, and had equal right with his fellow 
 believers to a hearing from all. Irenaeus, how- 
 ever, ascribed supreme authority to the Church at 
 Rome, as the true deposit of Apostolical succession, 
 and of Christian faith. A glimpse through his 
 writings at the growing faith, at least in the 
 Western Churches, is given in his confession of 
 belief, in " One God Almight}-, of whom are all 
 things, and in the Son of God, Jesus Christ our 
 Lord, by whom are all things, and His dispensa- 
 tions by which the Son of God became man ; also 
 a firm trust in the Spirit of God who hath set 
 forth the dispensations of the Father and the Sou, 
 dwelling with each successive race of men. as the 
 Father willed."
 
 EVOLITION AND MKTAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTXAMTY. 43 
 
 THE THIRD CENTURY. 
 /. Thi' Jiefjfimi tiffs of JCmjthasis niton 
 J*('t'soitoJ Consri<tt(sn('ss itf Si n. TiTlullian, 
 
 d'u'd 220. A converted Roinan lawyer, impressed 
 by a vivid sense of the supremacy of law, Tertullian, 
 at the opening of the third century, when national 
 disasters of many kinds had made the popular 
 inood morl)id and despondent, gave especial atten- 
 tion to the fact of evil and the need of redemption. 
 Yet, Neander says, "The same Tertullian who of all 
 the Christian Fathers in the primitive age has most 
 emphatically testified of the evil adhering to hu- 
 man nature and its need of redemption, has also 
 expressed in the strongest terms the conscionsuess 
 of the original ineffable alliance to the divine in 
 human nature." '• "What notion the soul is able to 
 form respecting its original Teacher," wrote this 
 Father, "it is in th}* power to judge from that 
 soul that is within thee. ' 
 
 Tertullian's confession of faith is a clear mark 
 of the rapidly defining Church Syndjol. '■ The 
 rule of faith is indeed altogether one, irremovable 
 and irreformable; — One only God, omnipotent, the 
 Maker of the Universe; and His Son Jesus Christ, 
 born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius 
 Pilate, raised again from the dead on the third 
 day, received in the heavens, sitting now at the 
 right hand of the Father, about to come to judge 
 the quick and the dead, through the resurrection 
 of the flesh as well (as of the spirit).
 
 44 rHmsTiANi'i'y in iiistohy. 
 
 V. Ftii'ther Involution o/ tlie Xof/o.s 
 iJftrfrhH', Clemenl of Alexandria, 189-220. — Coii- 
 teinpoiay Avitb Tevtulliaii at Rome, was Clement 
 at Alexandria, the "Father of Greek Theology." 
 Uppermost in his thought, was Justin's idea of the 
 immanence of the Divine Word in the world and in 
 the human soul. Redemption, to him is the result 
 of the education of the human race 1^,y the nniversal, 
 indwelling Teacher. " The Teacher of ours, O my 
 children, is like to His Father, the God, of whom 
 He is tlje sinless Son, — God unpolluted thongh in 
 human form, the Divine "Word, He that is in the 
 Father, He that is on the right hand of the Father 
 and in His form divine." '• Naturally is man dear 
 to God, seeing that he is His haudywork. Man, 
 He wrought by His own hands, and infused into 
 him something that belongs to Himself." "All 
 men are his. Some with the consciousness of what 
 He is to them, others not as j^et; some as friends, 
 others as faithful servants ; others barely as ser- 
 vants." Faith in the indwelling God, as the in- 
 carnate Logos, is the source of all of Clement's 
 hope for man's future, here and hereafter. 
 
 />. Tlw TJoctvinc of the Loffos^ (imT the 
 JBternal Generation of the Son. Orlf/<',i, 
 186-254. — Whatever other contribution to the 
 Patristic theology this successor of Clement made, 
 he, certainly, carried the doctrine which became 
 that of the Trinity, yet farther toward its full 
 definition, by his attempt to reconcile his faith in
 
 I:;\0LITI0X AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHEISTIANITV. 45 
 
 " the original and indestructible Unity of God," 
 and his faith in "the essential divinity- of the 
 Logos." He evolved the doctrine of of the neces- 
 sary eternal generation, by the divine Subject, 
 the Father, of a divine Object, the eternal Son, 
 tlie Logos. The speculations he thus started were 
 epoch nialdng for the next century and longer. 
 Yet, as showing the changes which took place in 
 his own mind, Origen at one time wrote:— -'He 
 who is God, of himself, is the God ; for which rea- 
 son he says in his prayer to the Father, that they 
 may know Thee, the only true God; but whatever 
 is God besides Him, being God only by a com- 
 munication of his divinity, cannot so properly be 
 called 'The God,' but rather 'A God.'" 
 
 4. The Doeti'ine of the Trhiitif tdJ^'iitff 
 S/Kfpc. Numtian, 250.— From the middle of third 
 century to the time of the Council of Nicaea, the 
 struggle concerning the permanent form, which 
 Christian faith should take, grew more and more 
 absorbing. That which became the Orthodox 
 Creed was beset by heresies. The power of the 
 Church at Rome steadily' increased in the midst 
 of the universal civil disorders then precipitated. 
 From this period there remains, in a work on the 
 " Trinity " by a Roman presbyter, who afterwards 
 became an antipope, Novatian, the fragments of 
 a creed which show how far, at Rome at least. 
 Christian faith had been formulated. It required, 
 "Faith in God the Father and Lord omnipotent
 
 4() CHUlSTIANITy IN HISTORY. 
 
 the most perfect Maker of all things ; also in the 
 Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord God, but Son 
 of God ; also in tlie H0I3' Spirit." 
 
 THE FOURTH CENTURY. 
 
 /. The Ofthodooc Creed forniuhited 
 and (Hithovh^ed, The Council at Nicaea, 325. — 
 As the fourth century oj^ened, the faith of the 
 churches was profoundly disturbed by the con- 
 tention of two powerful parties within the 
 churches, known now as Sabellians and as Arians. 
 The maturing faith in the Trinity was assailed 
 on the one hand, by the advocates of a mystical 
 belief in the Father, Son and Holj^ Spirit, as 
 a trinity of divine attributes or mauifestations, 
 set forth by Sabellius. On the other hand, to save 
 the Person of Chri^it from being thus absorbed in 
 the Deit}', Arius and his followers contended ve- 
 hementl}' for the Christ's essential iudividuality. 
 and His subordination to God, admitting, however, 
 that Christ was of like substance with the Father, 
 The Emperor Constantine, made emperor in 324, 
 and having declared the empire Christian, deter- 
 jniued, if possible, to put an end to this disastrous 
 struggle, and to bring peace to the State and to 
 the churches. He therefore summoned the first 
 (Ecumenical Council, which met the next year at 
 Nicaea, near Constantinople. 
 
 The result of the debates in that Council, was 
 the promulgation of a Creed which is tha b.xsis
 
 EVOLrXIOX AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 of what is now known as the '' Catholic '' and 
 '• Orthodox"' faith. lu its original form it read as 
 follows: — 
 
 " We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, 
 Maker of all things, both visible and invisiljle ; and 
 in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begot- 
 ten of the Father, (only begotten that is to sa}' of 
 the substance of the Father, God of God) and 
 Light of Light, very God of ver}^ God, begotten 
 not made, being of one substance with the Father, 
 by whom all things were made, (both things in 
 heaven and things on earth) ; who for us and for 
 our salvation, came down and was made llesh, 
 made man, sufiEered and rose again on the third 
 da}-, went up into the heavens and is to come 
 again to judge the quick and the dead ; and in the 
 Holy Ghost." 
 
 To this confession were added various anathe- 
 ]uas of Ariau doctrines, namely, that before the 
 Christ " was begotten He was not ;" that, " He 
 came into existence from Avhat was not ;" and that, 
 "He is of different Person or substance" from 
 the Father. 
 
 But this creed did not bring the hoped for 
 peace. For a half century afterwards, what is 
 known as the " Arian Controversy " was waged 
 riercel}'. 
 
 Among the Orthodox adherents, the doctrine of' 
 the Holy Spirit was long a subject of l)itter con- 
 tention. The Nicene Creed declared faith simply
 
 48 CHIilSTIAMTY IN HISTOllV. 
 
 "in the Holy Ghost." But whence came the Holy 
 Ghost? At Constantinople, in B81, it was es- 
 tablished that, He " proceeded from the Father." 
 At the same time the faith was confirmed, that 
 the Holy Ghost, " with the Father and the Son," 
 are worshipped and glorified. Belief also in 
 " one Catholic and Apostolic Church; one baptism 
 for the remission of sins ; and expectation of the 
 rcsurection of the dead: and the life of the world 
 to come," Avere made standard doctrine. 
 
 The ISicene Creed did not receive its finished 
 form until in 589, when a council at Toledo in 
 Spain, added the words "and the Son,' to complete 
 the Catholic doctrine of the procession of the 
 Holy Ghost. This addition was never accepted 
 by the Greek Church. But the Roman Church at 
 length made it authoritative, and, in 1054, both the 
 Greek and the Roman Churches excommunicated 
 each other on account of their antagonism over 
 this " Filio-que " clause. 
 
 2, The Basis of the ''Ajmsfles' '' Creed. 
 
 The Creed of 3IarceUus, 336.— Where and when the 
 so-called Creed of the Apostles, came into being, 
 is not known. In ideas it antedates the Niceue 
 confession, but its unquestionable existence does 
 not aj)pear before the middle of the eighth 
 centur^^ It may, however, be taken as a fair 
 embodiment of the faith which was formulated in 
 the Roman churches of the early centuries, in 
 contradistinction to the faith of the churches of
 
 L\01ATIoN AND J! KTAMORPUnSliS Of CHlilSlIAMTV. 49 
 
 the Greek couimunioii. The cdiifessiou of Mar- 
 cellus to the lushop of Uoiuo, is the euilie.-5t 
 systenuitic approximation to the "Apostles' Creed. " 
 Marcelliis had labored earnestly at Nicaa for the 
 Orthodox partj'. Afterwards he opposed the 
 Arians so strongly, that he was accused of 
 Sabellianisnr. He was deposed, and, in hclf- 
 juslitication, presented to the Head of the Roman 
 Church, the following- Credo : — 
 
 '■I believe in God, the Father Almighty ; and in 
 Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, 
 who was born of the Holy CJhost and the Virgin 
 Mary, who, under Pontius Pilate, was crucitied 
 and buried, and on the third day rose from the 
 dead, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the 
 right hand of the Father, whence He is coming to 
 judge the quick and the dead ; and in the Holy 
 Ghost; the Holy Church ; the remission of sins; 
 the resurrection of the flesh ; everlasting life," 
 This faith, ISfarcelhis said, " he learnt ami was 
 taught from the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 />. The I^ouiidci' of Christ id n Oithol- 
 
 icitj/. ^Uliaim.-'iiis, 29(j-373, — A true successor of 
 Clement and of Origen, Athanasius rested his 
 Christian faith on the immanence of God, and His 
 manifestation as the eternal Reason. "This divine 
 Logos," he wrote, " a being incorporeal, expands 
 Himself in the universe as light expands in the air, 
 l^enetrating all, and all entire, everywhere. He 
 gives Himself without losing anything of Himself,
 
 50 CHRISTIANITV IN IIISTOUY. 
 
 and Avith Him is given the Father who makes all by 
 Him, and the Spirit Avho is His energy. In order 
 to know God, He must be looked for witliin the 
 soul. In order to know the way which leads to 
 God and to take it with certainty, we have no need 
 of foreign aid, but of ourselves aloiie. The king- 
 dom of God is within us." 
 
 Aj)plying this universal principle of the Divine 
 Immanence to Christian tradition, Athanasius 
 found the onl}' satisfying solution for the problem 
 before the Church, in the Unity in Trinity, of 
 Fathei*, Son and Holj^ Spirit. 
 
 In this conviction, finally, the demands of the 
 philosophy of the age, and the elements of 
 Christian tradition, coalesced and issued in faith 
 in a Triune God. The ideal of the Christ, as the 
 Second Person of the Godhead, assumed into 
 itself the Person of the Jesus of the Gosj^els. 
 Christianity was thenceforth to unify both reason 
 and tradition. Faith in the Sou of God, and the 
 principle of the Divine Immanence, were presented 
 to the Church as in perfect harmony. Athanasius, 
 when the work at Nicaea was finished, exultingly 
 exclaimed; — "The Word of the Lord which was 
 given in the OEcumenical Council of Nicaea re- 
 maineth forever."
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHUISTIAMTV. ol 
 
 THE FIFTH CENTURY. 
 1, The D(Uf}na of On'ffhifil Sin (ind of 
 Sucrameutal Gvffce. The Hise of the 
 C/mt'ch of Home as MciJhttov hctwrcn 
 Christ and Man. Augustine, 355-430. — As 
 "we enter tliis century we see Christianity under- 
 going yet another trausfornmtion, which, in the 
 end, was almost farther reaching in its effects, 
 than the postulation of the Trinity of the (lod- 
 head. There appeared as advocate of the Catholic 
 faith, Augustine, a converted disciple of Mani- 
 chtcan Dualism. He was eminently orthodox in his 
 Christology. " Thy years are one da^-; Thy to-day 
 is Eternity; therefore didst Thou beget the Co- 
 eternal, to whom Thou saidst ' This day have I 
 begotten Thee.' " But, oppressed by a personal 
 sense of sinfulness, and more or less prejudiced 
 by his antecedent Manichsean conceptions of evil, 
 evil, the origin of evil, and redemption, became 
 the absorbing themes of his study and writings. 
 In the Pelagian controversy, his emphasis upon 
 the natural spiritual inability of man, confirmed, if 
 it did not oiiginate, a theory of human nature in 
 which Christianity thitherto had had practicall}' no 
 interest, and which, thereafter, began to oppress 
 Christendom. No other one mind has so pro- 
 foundly pervaded the Christian Church, and shaped 
 its views of the mutual relations of God and the 
 soul. What was gcrminant with TertuUian became 
 full grown and fruitful in Augustine's idea of
 
 52 CHRISTIAMTV IN lUSTOKV. 
 
 huiuau nature. In liis dogma of original dopiuvitj, 
 "humanity is absolutely separated from God. iu 
 consequence of Adam's sin;" the divine image in 
 man is gone. To Augustine, redemption concerns 
 but a part of mankind and depends upon the 
 unconditioned divine choice. The work of redemp- 
 tion lies with the Church. By the rite of baptism 
 the divine image is recreated. Even infants who 
 have not been baptized are lost. Thus the office of 
 the Church was magnitied, and, by the merits he 
 ascribed to the otlier sacraments, Augustine 
 contributed iu largest measure to the later 
 supremacy of the Church ; to its supremacv not 
 only in spiritual, but iu secular' affairs Princi- 
 pal Tulloch says ; " Like his great disciple in 
 a later age, — Luther — Augustine was prone to 
 emphasize the side of truth which he had most 
 realized iu his own experience, and, in contradis- 
 tinction to the Pelagian exaltation of human 
 nature, to depreciate its capabilities beyond 
 measure." Prof. A. V. G. Allen writes, "No point 
 more clearly illustrates the degradation which 
 Christian theology underwent at the hands of 
 Augustine than his doctrine of grace. Christ as 
 the invisible teacher of humanity, whose presence 
 in the world, in the reason and the conscience of 
 man, is the power by which men are delivered from 
 sin and brought into the liberty of the children of 
 God, gives way, in the sj'stem of Augustine, to an 
 impersonal thing or substance which is known as
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMOIJPUOSES OF CHIUS'l'l VNITV. 53 
 
 grace. TMiiit is sometimes called the sacramental 
 theology is based upon tlie Augustiiiian notion 
 of grace, — the principle that man is built up in 
 the spiritual life by a subtle quality conveyed to 
 him from without through material agencies, 
 rather than by evoking the divine that is within. 
 Augustine was groat in tliat he may be said to 
 have made possible the career of the Latin 
 Church. For a thousand years those who came 
 after him did little more than reaffirm his teach- 
 ing, and so deep is the hold which his long 
 sujiremacy has left upon the church that his 
 opinions have liecome identified with divine 
 revelation, and are all that the majority' of the 
 Christian world yet know of the religion of 
 Christ. " 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 1, Ulfhufite Stafcmrnf of the Orfho- 
 (lojr Dorfrfnc of the Truiffj/: the Auto- 
 craci/ in Western Cliristendoin. of the 
 Pajidl Chnreh. The '\Wianasian" Creed, S09. 
 — Christianity, from the fifth to the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, metamorphosed by the blended Nicene and 
 Augustinian theology working through a SA'stem 
 of sacraments, administered by an autocratic 
 hierarchy, held sway over Western Christendom. 
 During this period the perfected formulation of 
 the Trinitarian theory of Christ's Pei'son came into 
 existence, under the name of the great Nicene 
 Father, Athanasius. Just when, and bv whom, thi.s
 
 54 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTullV. 
 
 S3'iii1k>1 was composed is not known. The vecorcls 
 of the Churcli, however, show that at Fiiuli, in 796, 
 the president of a council liekl there, Paulinas, 
 said, "In the i-ecords of some synods it is laid 
 down that no one may lawfully teach or frame 
 another symbol of our faith (than the Niceue). 
 Far be it from us, to frame or teach another 
 symbol or faith, or in another manner, than they 
 (the Nicene Fathers) aj^iJointed. But, according 
 to their meaning, we have decreed to deliver in 
 exposition, those matters, which haply on account 
 of the brief statement of the truth are less under- 
 stood by the simiDle and unlearned than they 
 ought to be.'" Within lifty years after this ad- 
 dress, the so-called " Athanasian " Creed was in 
 existence, recognized as an authoritative exposition 
 of the Papal doctrine of the Trinity and the In- 
 carnation. In parts it reads as follows : — 
 
 " Whosoever will be saved, before all things it 
 is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith ; which 
 faith except ever}- one do keep entire and inviolate, 
 without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. 
 
 Now the Catholic faith is this — that we worship 
 one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. 
 
 Neither confounding the persons, nor dividing 
 the substance. 
 
 And in this Trinity there is nothing before or 
 after, nothing greater or less, but the whole thi'ee 
 Persons are co-eternal to one another, and co-equal.
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMOUl'HOSES OF I'HRISTIANITV. OO 
 
 He therefore, that will be saved, must thus 
 think of the Trinity. 
 
 Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salva- 
 tion, that he also believe rightly the incarnation 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now the right faith is, that we believe and con- 
 fess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
 is both God and Man. 
 
 He is God of the substance of his Father, be- 
 gotten before the world ; and he is Man of the 
 substance of his mother, born in the world. 
 
 Perfect God and perfect Man ; of a rational 
 soul, and human flesh subsisting. 
 
 Equal to the Father according to his Godhead, 
 and less than the Father according to his Man- 
 hood. 
 
 One Christ, one not by. the conversion of the 
 Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of the 
 Manhood unto God. 
 
 ********* 
 
 This is the Catholic faith, which except a man 
 believe faithfully and steadfastly, he cannot be 
 saved." 
 
 The theory concerning the Church is embodied 
 in a " Papal Rule," from which we learn, with 
 many other decrees, — 
 
 1. " That Christ has established a Church upon 
 earth, and that this Church is that wliich holds 
 communion with the see of Home, being one, holy, 
 catholic, and apostolical.
 
 5(5 CHUISTIANITY IN HISTOUV. 
 
 2. That we ave obliged to hear this Church ; 
 and, therefore, that she is infallible, by the 
 guidance of Almighty God, in her decisions re- 
 garding faith. 
 
 3. That the pope or bishop of Rome, as suc- 
 cessor to St. Peter, has always been, and is at 
 present, by divine right, Head of this Church." 
 
 AVith this creed, and this assumption of Divine 
 right and power for the Church, Christianity, as 
 the evolution of the revelation of a transcendent 
 Triune Deity, entrusted to and interpreted by an 
 infallible human Agent, reached a consnmmato 
 expression and its ultimate limit. 
 
 2. The MedfevffJ Theohufij,— The best 
 authoritative summar\- of Christian doctrines in 
 the Middle Ages, is eml)odied in the decrees of 
 the Council of Trent. This council met in the 
 sixteenth century for the i)urpose of counteracting 
 the influence of the Protestant Reformation, but its 
 decrees were only a specific reiteration of the 
 articles of faith which had reached full authoriza- 
 tion before the j'ear 1300, the year of the great 
 Jubilee, Avhen Pope Boniface VIII. caused to be 
 celebrated, the absolute sovereignty, in Western 
 Europe, of the Papal Church. The opening para- 
 graph of the Tridentine decrees is a repetition and 
 reaffirmation of the tenets of the Nicene Creed. 
 Ulion this introduction, folloAV dogmas and in- 
 terpretations, many fold larger than the ffmdah 
 mental Creed, the result of the work of the Church
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. oT 
 
 of tlie Empire during its growth to its position 
 as the imperial Church. From these decrees it 
 appears that the Medieval Theology means, 
 besides the confessions of the Xicene Creed, 
 all the Apostolical, Patristic and other traditions 
 authorized by tlse Church. They teach that the 
 Hoi}' Scriptures, are infallihly true and binding 
 upon faitli ; that the Bi1)]e is true according to the 
 sense in Avhich the Holy Church holds it ; and 
 that it is never to be interpreted otherwise than 
 in accordance with the unanimous agreement of 
 the Fathers. A large part of the utterances of the 
 Trideutine Council is devoted to tlie doctrine of 
 Human Nature and the work of Christ. It is 
 explicitly taught in tliem, that manldnd are totally 
 ruined, ns the effect of Adam's fall, and that there 
 is no salvation for an}' one upon Avhom the merits 
 of Christ's work have not been bestowed, and 
 who has not accepted them. Further, the decrees 
 declare that there nre seven sacraments necessary 
 to human salvation, although not all of them ai-e 
 necessary for every one. Baptism is the first of 
 these sacraments. This is absolutely necessary for 
 all mard<ind. The other sacraments are contirma- 
 tion, the eucharist, jienance, extreme unction, holy 
 orders and matrimouy. The center of ^ledieval 
 Theology is the doctrine of the Eucharist or the 
 Lord's Supper, namely, " In the mass there is 
 offered to God, a true, proper and propitiatory 
 sacrifice for the living and the dead, and in the
 
 58 flllUSTIAMTV IN HIST ;KV. 
 
 Most Holy S icniiacnfc of the Eucharist there is 
 truly, really and substantially, the body and blood, 
 together with the soul and divinity of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; and that a change is made of the 
 whole essence of the bread into the body, and of 
 the whole essence of the wine into the blood, and 
 that partaking of either bread or wine, the com- 
 municant receives Christ whole and entire." 
 Among the sacraments, penance is set forth as of 
 great importance. Confession must be made, pen- 
 ance suffered and absolution received, under decree 
 of the divinely authorized Church. The doctrine 
 of Purgatory is declared to be true, and "souls in 
 Purgatory detained, are helped by the suffrages of 
 the faithful." The saints reigning with Christ are 
 to be honoreil and invoked ; they offer up pra^'ers 
 for men ; their relics are to be hold in veneration. 
 The images of Christ, and of the perpetual Virgin, 
 the Mother of God, and also of other saints, ought 
 to be had and retained and honored and revered. 
 The Power of Indulgence, it was claimed, had 
 been left to the Church by Christ, and the use of 
 it is most wholesome to Christian people. The 
 Tridentine decrees close, by acknowledging the 
 Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church as the 
 Mother and Mistress of all Churches ; and by 
 swearing obedience to the Bishop of Rome, as 
 the successor of St Peter, Prince of the Apostles 
 and Vicar of Jesus Christ. 
 
 It should be constantly kept in mind, in glancing
 
 EVOLUTION AND JIETAMOUl'HOSES OF CHIilSTlAMTY. 59 
 
 at tins stui^endous structine of the Christian 
 Church of the Middle Ages, that, underneath its 
 teaching.^, is the fundamental notion inherited 
 from a far past, that God and the world and man 
 are not essentially connected except through 
 Christ. ''God created all things ont of nothing," 
 was the doctrine of the Church. In the decrees 
 of the Vatican Council of 1870, we read; — "The 
 one only true God to manifest his perfection, with 
 absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing, 
 from the very first being of time, both the spiritual 
 and corporeal creatures, and afterwards the human 
 creature as partaking in a sense of both, consist- 
 ing of soul and body." In the Middle Ages, the 
 philosophic servants of the Church, the Scholastics, 
 labored hard to prove the absolute eternity and 
 infinity of God, and the process of the universe 
 from God, and, at the same time, the undivineness 
 and essential separateness of creation from God. 
 By the Schoolmen, it was held that the human 
 soul can be called divine, only in the sense that it 
 is God's creature. Essential divinity for man, is 
 to be found only in that union of man with God 
 which is secured by man's receiving the substance 
 of the God-man, Christ. Hence, in the Medieval 
 Theology the awful importance of the celebration 
 of the Lord's Supper, at which, the essential Deity, 
 through transubstantiated bread and wine, is 
 believed to be received into, and assimilated by, 
 the human soul.
 
 GO cnuismNiTY IN msnjitv. 
 
 />. S(Jtoh(sttcis}ii. Reason cousfcrated 
 
 to Ihc Scvvicc of Dnffnta. — The three cen- 
 turies, of 450-750, are ciilled the "Dark A<^es." 
 Barbarism, hy force of arms, liad crushed the 
 Roman Empire, and diiriii;^^ tliesc centudes, the 
 Roman Churcli, l>y its spiritual force had in turn 
 conquered barbarism. Tin; teachers of the schools 
 established among" the barl)arians, in the seventh 
 and eighth centuries, Avere called scliokiMtwi. The 
 sclioladici were dominated by Church dogma. 
 They taught l)y the processes of what Avas then 
 known of Aristotle's^ Logic The influence of these 
 logicians rapidly increased, and, from the ninth 
 century, formal logic, as the discoverer and illum- 
 inator of truth, gained practical control of the 
 monasteries and tlie cathedral schools. About 
 that time one fundamental question became the 
 center of Scholastic thought. That was, "Are 
 what are called universal ideas real? Are they 
 things, or names?" Towards the tenth centurj- 
 this question, almost to the exclnsion of other 
 problems, absorbed the intellectual energy of 
 "Western Europe. The general tendency of the 
 Church authorities, was towards the theory that 
 there are nniversal ideas existing really and 
 independently of the separate things. The con- 
 troversy, now known as that of Nominalism and 
 Realism, did not, however, seriously disturb the 
 Church until the eleventh century was Avell ad- 
 vanced, when Roscellin. a Nominalist, so challeng-
 
 EVOLUTION" AND MK rAMOltl'II OSES OF CHIUSTI \NITV. 01 
 
 ed the Realists in a discussion couceniiiig the 
 Trinity, that his views were condemned as hereti- 
 cal. Iloscellin was the iu-st logician who actually 
 came into conliict with the Church, Avhich at 
 that time was rapidly establishing itself as the 
 civil and spiritual dictator of Europe. The chief 
 opponent of Roscellin, and the champion of the 
 Church, was another SchoListic, Anselm. With 
 Anselm, Scholastic Realism, we may say, became 
 the avowed servant of the Church. His dictum, 
 " I believe in order that I may understand," was 
 epoch maldng. Nominalism was condemned, and 
 thenceforward, for three hundred years. Scholas- 
 ticism and Scholastic Realism were identified. 
 The Schoolmen, thenceforward, devoted their in- 
 tellectual energy to putting Medieval Theology 
 into logical forms. Then, for the Roman Catholic 
 Church, the doctrine that Faith directs Reason 
 was established. In the Papal Syllabus of ISlii, 
 we read; ''Those who say that the methods 
 and principles by wliich the scholastic doctoi's 
 cultivated theology, are no longer suitable to the 
 demands of the age and the progress of science, 
 are anathema.'" The m;iin work of Scholasticism 
 was to comprehend revealed truth, and to ratio- 
 nalize the lixed creed of the Holy Catholic Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 But, Schwegler says, ''notwithstanding all this, 
 Scholasticism was not without excellent results. 
 Although completely in the service of the Church,
 
 G2 (■iiiasTivNrry in iiistouy. 
 
 it originated iu a scientific interest, and awoke 
 consequently, the sjiirit of free inquiry and a love 
 of knowledge. It converted objects of Faith into 
 objects of thought ; and even when it sought to 
 establish by argument the authority of Faith, it 
 was really establishing, contrary to its own know- 
 ledge and will, the authority of Reason." 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The Henaissance. I^Jiilosophy sex>a- 
 rated from J)o(fma, Reason placed 
 above CJmrcJi Allthorlfi/. — In the four- 
 teenth century', Nominalism was revived and the 
 foundations of Scholastic dogmatism were de- 
 stroyed. In the fifteenth centur}' occurred the 
 "Revival of Letters."' GradualW, "the free, 
 universal, thinking spirit of antiquity was born 
 afresh." In many directions there was rebirth, — 
 in Philosophy, Science, Art, State, Church, — re- 
 generations threatening general social revolution. 
 In State and Church, Wyclif, Huss, Jerome, and 
 Savonarola, had led revolts against the assumptions 
 of Rome. The art of printing was developed, by 
 which the i)roducts of the new thought were scat- 
 tered everywhere; the hidden Bible was brought 
 to light ; a new Avorld across the seas was dis- 
 covered ; a new maritime path to the Far East 
 was traversed ; a new and true theorj' of the 
 place of the earth among the stars was maturing. 
 A new age for mankind was at hand, styled by
 
 EVOLUTION AND META5I0RPH0SES OF CHRISTIANITY. 63 
 
 MicLelet, " tbe discovery of the Avorkl ami the 
 discover}' of man." 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. The I^e/brmatioH. Protest a f/ai list 
 the Autoci'dcii of tlie Church; Hesto ra- 
 tion of the Bible to Private Jiuhjiiieiit. — 
 
 The Church of Rome never seemed stronger 
 than wlien this century opened. Hitherto, all 
 heretics, the heralds of the new age, had been 
 easily overcome by the Papal Church. But a 
 slight allegiance held a large part of Christendom 
 to the temporal lordship of the Pope of Rome. 
 'V^'hen Luther nailed his theses to the church door 
 in "Wittenberg, in 1517, the avenging hand of the 
 Church found itself stayed by the i:)0Aver of a 
 German State. The break, once begun, did not 
 cease until half of Cbristendom had been severed 
 from the temporal dominion of the Papacy. 
 
 Bunsen, reviewing the Protestant Reformation, 
 found in it five distinguishing marks : — 
 
 1. The Avliole company of faithful people and 
 not the clerg}' alone, constitute the Church. 
 
 2. The whole Church is the deposit of Man's 
 consciousness of God. 
 
 3. The collective community ought to represent 
 a people of God. 
 
 4. There is no difference between religious acts 
 and secular acts. 
 
 5. A personal faith is the condition of inward 
 peace with God. But this personal faith necessarily
 
 ()4 CUIUSTIAMTV IN lllSl'oiJV. 
 
 iuvolvo.s freo convictioji, aud tlioiof'jro free inquiry 
 aud free Bpeculation ou the results thereof, though 
 carried on under a sense of responsibility to God ; 
 and this again presupjioses freedom of conscience 
 
 aud thought. 
 
 ,V?. Tlic Thcolixjij <>/ Hie licfonimtioii: 
 SHhstdntlallij (I Jieajpi'iiKitioit of Medie- 
 val Doctrine. — The leaders of the Keformation 
 were affected by the same forces Avhich had set 
 Stale, Science, Art and many other institutions and 
 agencies of society, free. The religious movement 
 immediately under their direction, however, is not 
 to be considered as inclusive of all the religious 
 emancipation of the time. The men who are known 
 as "the Reformers," limited their right of private 
 judgment by the Bible. The}^ revolted from the 
 Church in order to give perfect allegiance to what 
 they believed was the written word of God. The 
 theolog}' which the"y made their standard was, for 
 the most part, the same- as that under which 
 the}' had been reared, the theology of the Koman 
 Church. They believed : — 
 
 1. In the doctrine of the Trinity, as set forth in 
 the Micene and Athanasian Creeds ; 
 
 2. In the universality of God's eternal purposes, 
 and also the free agency of man ; 
 
 3. In the natural and entire depravity of man ; 
 
 4. In the atonement made by Jesus Christ, 
 through which, alone, human salvation is pos- 
 sible ;
 
 EVOLUTION AND MKTAMOKPHOSES OF CHRISTIANI'l'V. G5 
 
 5. In instantaueous regeneration, by special 
 operation of the Holy Spirit ; 
 
 G. In justification by faith in Christ. 
 
 All the creeds of the Reformed Chnrches received 
 these articles in one or another form, with greater 
 or less modification. They constitute, what may 
 be termed, the Theology of the Reformation. 
 
 For the rest, in forms of Church government, 
 in the number and meaning of the sacraments 
 and in the modes of their administration, and in 
 some less important matter's, the Churches of the 
 Reformation differed from one another, and from 
 the Mother Church. 
 
 f3. The Lines of Evolution of the He- 
 f'oh'nied Theolof/!/. Lutlicr, 14S3-154G ; Calvin, 
 1.50;)-15G4:; Arminiu^, loGO-lGOO.— Itis noti^ossible 
 within our narrow limits to follow the course 
 of the Theology of the Reformation. It covers 
 a period of more than three hundred years. It 
 includes the histories of scores of Christian 
 denominations ; some of them now receiving 
 millions of earnest adherents ; inany of them 
 widely separated from one another by their differ- 
 ences of faith and practice, but all bound together 
 by what they name the Evangelical Orthodox faith, 
 summarized above. 
 
 The Churches which bear Luther's name, have, 
 by profession, departed least, among Protestant 
 bodies, from the faith matured in the Middle Ages. 
 In practice, too, they stand nearest to the Roman
 
 GG CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY. 
 
 Church, by the doctrine of Consubstantiatiou, or 
 the Real Presence of the body and blood of 
 Christ with the bread and wine of the Eucharist. 
 
 The Augsburg Confession, (1530,) it is to be 
 noted in passing, is silent on the doctrine of 
 Predestination. 
 
 The theology formulated by Calvin, was em- 
 bodied in the creeds of so many Protestant 
 Churches, that it is often spoken of as ihe re- 
 presentative Eeformed Theology. The list of 
 Calvinistic creeds is too long to enumerate here. 
 It includes the Westminster Confession, the Heid- 
 elberg Catechism, the Articles of the Synod of 
 Dort, the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of 
 England, and the confessions of various important 
 Independent and Congregational denominations. 
 
 Calvinism is Augustinianism continued with an 
 intensified meaning. Its distinguishing peculiarity 
 lies in its views of Human Nature and of the 
 Divine Decrees. 
 
 1. Human Nature. All mankind by Adam's fall 
 lost communion with God, are under his wrath 
 and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries 
 of this life, to death itself, and to the j)ains of hell 
 forever. 
 
 2. Divine Decrees. Concerning these, Calvin 
 wrote; — "We assert that by an eternal and immut- 
 able counsel, God has once for all, determined 
 both whom lie would admit to salvation and whom 
 he would condemn to destruction. We affirm that
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHKISTIAMTY. 07 
 
 that this counsel, so far as it concenis the Elect, 
 is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irres- 
 pective of human merit ; but that to those whom 
 he devotes to condemnation, the way of life is 
 closed by his own just and irrepreheusible — but 
 incomprehensible — judgment." 
 
 Armiuius was educated a Calviuist, but he 
 gradually came to doubt the truth of Calvin's 
 doctrine of decrees and grace. He taught instead, 
 a conditional election and reprobation, dependent 
 upon divine foreknowledge. The groat INIethodist 
 Episcopal denomination and its branches, are typi- 
 cal Arminian bodies. 
 
 4:, Development of nationalism. Gior- 
 dano Bruno, 1548-1600. Boehm, 1575-1024. Lord 
 Bacon, 1501-1020. Descarles, 1590-1050.— With the 
 decay of Scholasticism, emancipated Reason began 
 a career independent of ecclesiastical dogma. In 
 its relation to the sciences, Reason at length took 
 form in what is known as the Baconian Method. 
 In its application to the human consciousness, it 
 became the source of Modern Philosophy, through 
 the speculations of Descartes. Prophetic of the 
 new dominion of the Reason, there had lived in 
 Italy, the martyr Bruno, He thought of God as 
 the soul of the world. In Germany there had 
 been Jacob Boehm, who anticipated much of the 
 faith of a later day, in his mystic vision of all the 
 world as but a perpetual outflow from the eternal 
 One.
 
 G8 CHKI9TIANITV IN HISTORY. 
 
 The Protestant Reformers, although they had 
 transferred their allegiance from the Church 
 to the Bible, and to the Bible only, were them- 
 selves more or less affected by the growing 
 Rationalism. Luther was noticeably free in his 
 judgments of the relative values of the books of the 
 Bible. His acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity 
 was purely an act of obedience to tradition. 
 "The Trinity" he said "is a heavenly thing which 
 the world cannot understand. The schools have 
 devised many distinctions, dreams and fancies, 
 by which they have tried to set forth the Trinity, 
 and have thus become fools," Melancthon had a 
 f oref eeling of what was coming. " In reference to 
 the Trinity, I have always feared," he wrote, " that 
 these things would break out again. What dis- 
 turbances will be raised in the next age whether 
 the Logos and the Holy Spirit are hj'postases.' 
 Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer, 1484-1531, while 
 orthodox in regard to the Trinit}', declared that, 
 " Religion has not been confined within the 
 boundaries of Palestine, since God did not create 
 Palestine only ; he created the whole world," and, 
 "If the question be put. Did Christ restore the 
 whole human family or only the church of believers? 
 I answer, Christ brought by his salvation as much 
 good into the world, as Adam by his sinning 
 brought evil." Zwingli showed, we are told, a deci- 
 ded tendency towards belief in universal salvation. 
 How far Rationalism had entered the circle of
 
 EVOLUTION AND JIETAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. G9 
 
 those even, who accepted the Bible as the Word 
 of God, may be seeii in the letter of Q^colampadius 
 to Servetus, in 1530; "You do not admit that it 
 was the Son of God who was to come as man, but 
 that it Avas the man who came that was the Son of 
 God." Dr. J. H. Allen writes, of Faustus Socinus, 
 that towards the close of the sixteenth century, 
 " He denied the Trinity, the deit}' of Christ, the 
 personality' of the devil, the native and total 
 depravity of man, the vicarious atonement and the 
 eternity of punishment. His theor}' was, that 
 Christ was a man divinely commissioned, who had 
 no existence before He was conceived by the 
 virgin Mary ; that human sin was the imitation of 
 Adam's sin, and that human salvation was the 
 imitation and adoption of Christ's virtue ; that 
 the Biljle was to be interpreted by human reason." 
 
 Our interest, however, lies chiefly by that move- 
 ment at the close of the Middle Ages, by which the 
 Reason was consciously made the supreme arbiter 
 of religious beliefs. That movement received its 
 first definite and systematic character, in the 
 speculations of Descartes, after whom came 
 Spinoza, to whom directly the chief formative 
 force in what may be styled Modern Theology, 
 as we shall see, may be traced.
 
 70 CHniSTIANITY IN IIISrORV. 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 1, Farther T>evelopiiieut of J!((tion- 
 alisni. TlationfiUstiv. Jiit<'rpi<'ti(tlo}i of 
 the Bible. BuifJislt Anunisai: rnrltaii- 
 isni: Platoufsm: HUepticlsm: Deism. 
 Locke, 1G32-1704. iWllon, 1(;08-1G74. Cromwell, 1599- 
 1658. C»fZwo?-</(, 1G17-1(kS8. HohbeH, 15S8-1G79.— No 
 radical change in recognized Christian theology 
 took place during this century. The characteristic 
 doctrines of the Reformation remained dominant 
 influences. One noticeable sign of the time, how- 
 ever, appeared in England ; an increasing tend- 
 ency among numbers of professed Christians, to 
 criticise traditional theology, wholly upon the 
 basis of an unprejudiced interj^retation of the 
 Scriptures, and to seek to restore to the world 
 primitive Christianity. The representative product 
 of this tendency, was Locke's " Reasonableness of 
 Christianity." It has been said that Locke's 
 " rationalizing temper slid easily to wliat is often 
 claimed as the Unitarian dogma. It was, really, a 
 form of Arianism, like Milton's. And, like his, it 
 was the result of a literal rendering of texts, without 
 any conscious naturalistic bias, or any suspicion of 
 what at this day we should call a rationalizing 
 criticism. The Arianism of Locke had a great 
 and immediate effect on English thought, and 
 is reflected pretty constantly in the Anglican 
 theology for a century or more." Locke's "method 
 of investigation was the very simple and obvious
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMOIU'HOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 
 
 cue, — -which only ueeded that clear, sagacious 
 and honest nuderstanding to suggest — to search 
 the record, and by the canons of plain sense to 
 determine luhat Christianity is. 
 
 "The answer is simple. It is, that Jesus is the 
 Messiah in the precise and literal sense in which 
 he Avas announced to the Jewish people. Only, 
 we must interpret that sense to the understanding 
 of our day. So interpreted, it will mean that he 
 is the Divinely apjiointcd sovereign of human life, 
 especiall}^ of conscience and conduct, whicli are 
 the ultimate thing in human life."' 
 
 Also, in England in this century, Puritanism was 
 at the zenith of its devotion and influence. Rigid 
 as was their hold on the faith of the Genevan 
 Reformer, no body of men ever insisted more on 
 man's right to worship God after the dictates of 
 his own conscience than the Puritans, however 
 little their practice towards differing believers 
 harmonized with their claim. The spirit of the 
 new age was steadily emancipating State and 
 Church. "The Christian Commonwealth" passed 
 through a brief career in England, and was borne 
 aci'oss the sea to America. The Pilgrim Fathers set 
 sail from Holland for the new world of the West, 
 and John Robinson, as they departed, assured 
 them; — "More light is yet to break from God's 
 woi'd. " The Pilgrim Fathers, James Russell Lowell 
 wrote, " had a conception (which those will call 
 grand who regard simplicity as a nccessa-y olcnicnt
 
 72 CHRISTIANITY IN HISTOKV. 
 
 of grandeur) of foundiug a commouwealtli on 
 those hvo eternal bases of Faith and Works ; thej- 
 bad indeed no revolutionary ideas of universal 
 liberty, but yet ■what answered the purpose quite 
 as well, abiding faith in the brotherhood of Man 
 and the Fatherhood of God." It was in this 
 centur}' that Milton, prophetic of the inevitable 
 advance of Christianity to higher and larger forms, 
 declared, " Now once again, by all the concur- 
 rences of signs and by the general instinct of holy 
 and devout men, God is decreeing to begin some 
 new and great period in his Church, even to the 
 reforming of the Reformation itself." The master 
 poet divined better than he intended. 
 
 Along with the struggle in England, between 
 the new Ecclesiasticism of the State Church 
 and the new Protestantism of the Dissenters, 
 "Natural Religion" and a "Skeptical Philosophy" 
 started upon memorable developments. Deism, 
 which Dr. Otto Pfleiderer defines, as " a system. 
 which conceives God as the thinking and willing 
 ' highest being ', and ascribes to the world such 
 an independence of existence and activity as 
 against God, that God comes to stand on the 
 same footing with the finite beings of the world, 
 as a being like them " began with Lord Herbert, 
 the career which so deeply stirred the scholarship 
 and the popular mood of the following century. 
 Thomas Hobbes, by his philosophical specula- 
 tions, led a barren, materialistic empiricism which
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTUNITY. 73 
 
 left English thought for a loug time fifterwards 
 without inspiration. 
 
 In England, in this century also, an unsuccess- 
 ful attempt at the opening up anew of the sublime 
 vision of Plato, was made by Cudworth and 
 More, both ignorant of the "God intoxication" of 
 one mightier and truer than Plato, who was then 
 suffering for his faith in Holland. 
 
 The seventeenth century is especially noteworthy, 
 for the initiation in England, in Religion and in 
 Philosophy, of widely divergent tendencies under 
 the rationalizing spirit of the new age, yet under 
 the influence of Medieval theologic speculation. 
 
 2, Eniancfjxited PhnosopJu'c l\<ition~ 
 alisni In Gcrmfniy. I^evnmnent I{e- 
 storation of the Idea of the Utiittj of the 
 Universe, Spinoza, 1682-1G77. — The seventeenth 
 century is memorable in the history of Christianity, 
 for the permanent recovery of a principle in Philo- 
 soph}', by which Christianity, at length, renewed 
 the development which had been checked at the 
 time Augustinianism mastered the Church of Rome. 
 Spinoza's words, " It is not absolutely necessary to 
 salvation to know Christ after the flesh : but it is 
 altogether otherwise if we sjjeak of the Son of God, 
 that is, the eternal "Wisdom of God, which is man- 
 ifested in all things, and chiefl}' in the human soul, 
 and most of all in Jesus Christ," were prophetic of 
 the future dominant conviction in Christian con- 
 sciousness. Dr. Hedge declared that "the result
 
 74 CHUISTIANITY IN HISTOKY. 
 
 of Spinoza's iuflueuce, — by the friictificatiou of 
 bis idea in the thoughts and feelings of the 
 thinking- and cultured minds of ouv time, — may 
 be summed up, as emancipation from the Dualism 
 and the Anthropomorphism of the old popular 
 faith. Spinoza has given us a God who is not au 
 individual secluded and remote, — a regent en- 
 throned above the sides, — but an all present reality. 
 In his attempt to establish this beneficent verity, 
 he sacrifices the proper personality of God. But 
 this very extreme has contributed more effectually, 
 perhaps, than a more tlieistic view would have 
 done, to correct the opposite error. A.nd this 
 false extreme is not essential, I think, to the 
 central and constitutive principle of the ' Ethica.' 
 Unity of substance is not incompatible with the 
 creation, by self-limitation, of individual ex- 
 istences having sej^arate consciousnesses, and 
 therefore distinct persons ; whereby the person- 
 ality of God is maintained, in the one essential 
 article of a conscious and moral relation to others. 
 The strength of Spinozism is the quickened sense 
 which, by its emancipation from Dualism and 
 Anthropomorphism, it gives us of tlie all pervad- 
 ing and immediate presence of God. The divine 
 Omnipresence, once a cold, unmeaning dogma, it 
 has made a fact of consciousness." Schwegler, 
 oommenting upon Spinoza's thought, wrote, " It is 
 the most abstract monotheism that can possibly 
 be conceived. It is not by accident, that»
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. 75 
 
 Spinoza, a Jew, has, in explanation of the Universe, 
 once more revived the idea of its absolute unity : 
 such idea is, in some sort, a consequence of his 
 nationality, an echo of the East."' 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. Dcistic and Sh'ejftical Development 
 ofTiHfioiifflisni in l^nfjland. The Bvan- 
 (jelivdl lievival. J^.rtension of An'an 
 (Hid Sochi iff n Zhiltdrhnusni. Iltmu; 1711- 
 1776. TlV.s%, 1703-1791. PrieMey, 1733-1804.— 
 Before following the evolution of the idea which 
 has heen operative in the modern metamorphosis 
 of Christianity, — the restored idea of the im- 
 manence of God in the world and in man, — let us 
 glance at the culmination and decline of the unil- 
 lumined rationalism associated with the ^Medieval 
 Theology, and the emotional reaction from it 
 shoAvn in Evangelical Revivalism. 
 
 "The eighteenth century occupies a large and 
 important place in the history of Christian 
 thought. The traditional theology, as it had 
 developed in the Latin Church, and as it had 
 descended, unchanged in its fundamental aspects, 
 to the Protestant theologians of the seventeenth 
 century, was now compelled to enter into a con- 
 flict with human reason. To some it ai)pcars as 
 if inspired l)y an evil agency for the destruction 
 of the truth ; to others a necessary part in a divine 
 process by which God was taking away the old
 
 70 CHUISTIANITV IN HISTOKY. 
 
 that He might establish the new." The con- 
 troversy cleared the way for a new view of Christ- 
 ianity. It compelled the study of the historical 
 evidences of Christianity and of Biblical intfcrj)reta- 
 tion. Much that had been held in connection 
 with both these studies thitherto, Avas thenceforth 
 made untenable. Associated with, and in large 
 part the result of, the English controversy, was the 
 spread of a calamitous infidelity and materialism 
 in France ; a general loosening of the creedal 
 bonds of the English Established Church ; the 
 enthusiastic affirmation of the direct influence of 
 the Holy Spirit upon the human soul, under the 
 preaching of Wesley and Whitefield ; and the 
 substitution of a serene, unimpassioned Arian and 
 Socinian Unitarianism, for the rigid and severe 
 Calvinism of man}^ Presbyterian and Baptist 
 Churches, under the persuasion of Dr. Priestley 
 and Joseph Lindsey. 
 
 The changes taking place in England extended 
 to other countries. In Amei'ica especially, many 
 men prominent in the organization of the new 
 republic were under the influence of the skeptical 
 rationalism of the Deists. In America, the move- 
 ment started by John Wesley attained a wonderful 
 impetus among the people. And in America, 
 the revived Arianism and Socinianism gained a 
 hold among the ministers and the people of the 
 ehurches of the Puritans and Pilgrims which was 
 maintained well into the present century, when
 
 EVOLUTION" AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. 77 
 
 it gradually yielded to a higher, more ideal 
 Uiiitariau faith. 
 
 2. Pi'ejxu'dtloii for a Xctr Adrfutce In 
 the l^roJaiion of Clirlstidu itij. Gernuai 
 Illwniuisni. Moravian Pietisin. Li\<dnfj, 
 1720-1781. Counl Zinzmdorf, 1700-17G0.— The idea 
 "which Spinoza brought back to i:)hilosoi)hy was not 
 left to perish, or to be ineffective. For a time, it 
 ■was neither honored nor used. But the eighteenth 
 century produced a man who discerned in that 
 idea, the promise and jjower of a truer Christianity 
 than the world had known for many centuries. 
 " Under the influence of Spinoza, Lessing disowned 
 the prevailing theological conception of a God out- 
 side the world." And more than that, Lessing's 
 faith in the Providence of the immanent God, 
 disclosed to him a thought, which, since his time, 
 has become one of the most fruitful truths cherish- 
 ed for both Science and Religion, ' The Education 
 of the Human Race. " " "What education is to the 
 individual, that revelation is to mankind," are the 
 pregnant words with which Lessing opened his 
 creative essay. In Stahr's "Life of Lessing" we 
 read, "Lessing stands for all coming ages as the 
 true hero of the illuminism of his century. 
 
 The mediation between revelation and reason, 
 he discovered in an idea not foreign to the old 
 Church Fathers : in the idea of the realization of 
 the truths of revelation by their gradual trans- 
 formation into the truths of the reason, to fulfil
 
 78 CHUISTIANITY IN IJISTuIlV. 
 
 the divine plan of the education of the human 
 race." How fruitful was the seed sown by this 
 German ilhiniinist, we shall see hereafter. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us turn attention to a small com- 
 miuiitj dwelling in Saxoii}', a people marked Ijy a 
 peculiarly fervent and gentle piety. The}' were 
 known as the " Moravian Brethren," and were under 
 the patronage of a singularly pure minded nohle- 
 mau, Count Zinzendorf. The Moravians were in 
 faith descendants of John Huss, martyred b}^ the 
 Council of Constance for heresy : heresy which 
 arose from his consecration to the Christ of the 
 Gospels, rather than to the authority of the PoiJe. 
 In the preceding century, the "Brethren" had suf- 
 fered Avith Unitarians and other Protestants, in the 
 Roman Catholic persecution which silenced dissent 
 in Bohemia. For a time they had preserved their 
 faith in secret retreats, but later had found refuge 
 upon the estate of the pious German Count. 
 Among other beneficent agencies which the}* con- 
 ducted in their aiew home, were schools in which, 
 with ordinary learning, the deepest and purest 
 religious principles were inculcated. Some Mora- 
 vian missionareis had profoundly affected the 
 career of John Wesle}-. The Moravian schools at 
 Nieskj'- and Barby, were to affect even more pro- 
 foundh', the career of the apostle of a renewed 
 Christianity' in the present century. Freidrich 
 Daniel Schleiermacher, when a child, was placed 
 under the care of the Moravian Brethren.
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIAMTV. 79 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1, A New Advance of Chvisthinitij 
 throuffh the Iteunion of Pliilosophlc li(i- 
 tloudlisni and Faith. Schldermacher, 17G8- 
 1834. — "All tlie profounder schools of religious 
 thought in this century date, it is said, from 
 Schlciermacher." Reviewing his mental character, 
 Dr. Otto Pfleiderer says, "Herrnhutistpietj^ Leib- 
 nizian illumination, Kautiau criticism, Fichtean 
 idealism, Schelling's philosophy of identity, Spi- 
 noza's pantheism and Plato's dialectics, — all 
 entered into Schleiermacher's thought." His 
 father, an army chaplain, a faithful Calvinist in 
 creed, had urged his son, Avhen troubled with 
 speculative questionings, to stud}' Lessing, especi- 
 ally " The Education <<f Ihc Human Rave." During 
 his university course, Schleiermacher Avas an eager 
 and omnivorous student of whatever bore upon 
 religious thought and life. He was rapidly freed 
 from both the popular theology and j^hilosophy 
 of his day. He examined, and Avas dissatisfied 
 with, the old metaphysics. He accepted for a 
 time, Fichte's idealism, hi length, he found in 
 Spinoza, that which his mind needed to give it 
 rest. "Si^inoza's contemplation of all finite ex- 
 istences under the form of eternity and unity, and 
 his willing surrender to the orderly regularity of 
 the universe, brought him freedom from passion 
 and error and the blessedness of intellectual love 
 of God." In his " Discoinscs on RcUpion," Schleier-
 
 80 CIIIUSTIANITV IN HtSTOKY. 
 
 macher paid this homage to the obscure prophet 
 of the higher faith of the emancipated Reason. 
 "Join with me in reverently offering a tribute to 
 the manes of the holy and rejected Spinoza ! Him 
 the lofty world-spirit penetrated, the Infinite was 
 his beginning and end, the universe his only and 
 infinite love. In holy innocence and deej) humility, 
 he reflected himself in the eternal world and saw 
 how he in turn was its chosen mirror. Full of 
 religion was he, and full of the Holy Spirit, and 
 therefore he stands alone and unapproached, — a 
 master in his art, but exalted above the profane 
 herd of those who practise it ; without disciples and 
 without citizenship." The discipleship of Schleier- 
 macher was not however to the letter of Spinoza's 
 doctrine. It was, says Dr. Pfleiderer, " a modified 
 and spiritualized Spinozism, the same that we 
 encounter in Lessing, Herder and Goethe." In 
 Prof. A. V. G. Allen's "Continuity of Cliristian 
 ThoagJit," the value of Schleiermacher's Avork is 
 thus estimated; — "In Schleiermacher we have 
 also, for the first time since the days of Greek 
 theology, a representative theologian of the 
 highest intellectual capacity who had drunk 
 deeply at the sx^rings of Greek philosophy' and 
 culture." "Against the cold idea of Deism he 
 asserted a living, spiritual presence, a God who is 
 with us and in us, who is allied to humanity by 
 an organic relationship. The result of this con- 
 viction of the immanence of God implied the
 
 lOVOLUnOX AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHItlsTIAMTV. 81 
 
 restoration to bupreine place in his theology of 
 the spiritual or essential Christ, Avho is above the 
 conditions of time or space. Christ was the incar- 
 nation of the Divine Consciousness as it exists in 
 its fullness in God." " Schleiermacher contradic- 
 ted the inmost principle of the Medieval or 
 Calvinistic theologies, when he declared that in 
 the earthl}'' life of Christ there was to be seen the 
 glorious exhibition of manifested Deit}'. Calvin 
 had regarded the life of Christ iu this world as 
 the humiliation of the Son of God, in which the 
 divine glory was concealed. Because Schleier- 
 macher had also risen above the dualism of Latin 
 theology, which made tlie human and the divine 
 alien to each other, the Incarnation appeared once 
 more as it had in Greek theology, — the actual 
 manifestation of God in the human, so that Jesus 
 of Nazareth became the revelation of God in His 
 absolute glory. When as by a revelation, in the 
 humble existence of the prophet of Nazareth the 
 unveiled glory of the infinite God was discerned, 
 the thought of ages was reversed."' 
 
 " Another principle which Schleiermacher re- 
 garded in its larger relationships, and restated 
 from a higher point of view, was the doctrine of 
 election." Ho held that "humanity as a whole 
 had been redeemed in Christ, that grace no less 
 than law, was the dispensation under which all 
 men everywhere are living." Lcssing's idea of the 
 education of the human race, Schleiermacher
 
 82 CIIlilSTIAMTY IN IIISTOKV. 
 
 accepted and extended to an indefinite future and 
 beyond the j)resent life. 
 
 What has been here collected interpretative of 
 this eminent German apostle of Faith and Keason, 
 gives but a glance at one or two of tlie characterizing 
 marks of the revolution which has occurred in the 
 modern development of Christianit}'. It, however, 
 well illustrates the ever renewing advance of 
 Christianity from form to form. " As truly as 
 Augustine represented his age, Schleiermacher 
 utters the truth to which all that is highest in 
 modern Christianity continues to respond. His 
 name is held in honor in Germany, as that of one 
 from whom dates a 'new era in the history of 
 theology.' The great German theologians who 
 have come after him have been his disciples. 
 Directl}^ or indirectly, his influence has been 
 telling upon every student of religious truth in 
 America and in England."' The tenets of the 
 Roman Catholic and Orthodox theology, r— the 
 doctrine of the Trinity as ordinarily taught, of 
 total depravity, of the expiatory' sacrifice of Christ 
 and of endless suffering, — Schleiermacher found 
 " neither in the Gospel nor in his heart." He was 
 the prophet of a form of Christianity sure to 
 come, when a true idea of God finds acceptance in 
 devout minds and hearts. Through him, the an- 
 cient Christian doctrine of the Logos, transformed, 
 transfigured, however, by man's maturer thought, 
 had been renewed for the Christian Chiuxh.
 
 KVOLUTION AND MHT.VMOKPHOSliS OF CHKISTIA.NITV. 83 
 
 MODERN UNITARIANISM. 
 
 1. Farther Ucvcloxmient of the Pro- 
 test against the Heformed TlicoTofjy, 
 The Jloral lieacflon in America, from 
 Calvinism, 12th ical Idealism. William 
 Ellery Channing, 1781-18^2. 
 
 The genesis of wliat is kuowu as Moderu Uuitari- 
 anism, is to be traced to the reaction consequent 
 upon the re-affirmation in the Theology of the Ke- 
 formation, of the Augustinian doctrine of Human 
 Nature and of the Divine Decrees. It was from the 
 first, a moral jn-otest, justified by a renewed sense 
 of the inalienable right of the Reason to autonomy, 
 which hatl been aroused in the Church at the time 
 of the Renaissance. The moral protest directed 
 the protest of the intellect. It easily found con- 
 firmation in the words of the restored Bible. In 
 argument, the seventeenth and eighteenth century 
 Unitarians were as Scriptural as those whom they 
 opposed. With perfect confidence in the " reason- 
 ableness of Christianity," as it was originally' 
 instituted, the}- sought to restore to the world the 
 " Christianit}- of Christ." They aimed to do away 
 with the mass of accretions by which, they 
 honestly believed, the original divine simplicity of 
 the Gospel had been concealed. These words of 
 Dr. Priestley concerning Jesus, written towards 
 the end of the eighteenth centur}', may be taken 
 as a fair illusti'ation of the reverent mood of the 
 early Unitarian faith. ' Our allegiance was given,"
 
 84 CUKISTIANITV IN lIISroUY. 
 
 Lo said, '■ to the Saviour whose precepts we have 
 obeyed, whose sj)irit we have breathed, whose 
 rcligiou we have defended and whoso honours we 
 have asserted, Avithout making them to interfere 
 with tliose of his Father and our Father, his God 
 and our God, that supreme and awful Being, to 
 whose will he was always perfectly submissive, and 
 for whose unrivalled prerogatives he always 
 showed the most ardent zeal." 
 
 But the Unitarian movement, while always 
 devoutly Christian, was specifically under the 
 guidance of the moral impulses of human nature 
 and the demands of the Eeason. Gradually, in 
 consequence, the representatives of Unitarian 
 thought became more and more s^-mpathetic with 
 the growing Philosophy and Science of the present 
 age. As in no other body of professed Christians, 
 there is to be seen among them, as the years passed, 
 a reflex of the increasing authority of the Reason. 
 Whether consciously or not, they sought steadily 
 to make a religious application and Christian 
 interpretation of prevailing philosophic and 
 scientific truth. They drew ius^^iration from an 
 abiding confidence in the divine character of the 
 Christian revelation, but this revelation rai)idly 
 disclosed itself to them as a revelation of the 
 spirit rather than of the letter. 
 
 Modern Unitarianism, so known, dates, we may 
 say, from a memorable movement about eighty 
 years ago among the Congregational Churches of
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMOKPHOSES OF CIIKISTIANITY. 85 
 
 America, of which Dr. William EUery Cliainiing 
 became the leading representative. 
 
 Dr. Chanuing Avas reared in a home which was 
 oversliadowed b}' the theology of Calvin and 
 Jonathan Edwards. His religious sense was in- 
 tensely active and aspiring. As a college student 
 he came across the writings of Hutcheson, a 
 prominent oiDponent in the eighteenth century 
 of the influence of Hol)bcs, the leading iitilitarian 
 and materialistic philosopher of the time, in Eng- 
 land. In Hutcheson's treatise on '' limiUy and 
 Virtue," young Channing found "the fountain light 
 of all his day, the master light of all his seeing," — 
 the Dignity of Human Nature. As though by a 
 flash, he received the conviction that the human soul 
 is by nature capable of devotion to absolute and 
 universal good. Under this conviction, Channing's 
 inherited faith was rapidly out-grown. His 
 moral sense led him to rebel against the creed 
 of Edwards and Calvin. He entered the Christian 
 ministrj', and, as years passed, he became known 
 as a leader of the liberal movement which had 
 long been gathering force among the New England 
 Congregationalists. 
 
 As far as Unitariauism took form under Dr. 
 Channing's guidance, it was as an exalted, ethical 
 idealism, finding in Christianity the profoundest 
 inspiration for the moral nature of nian. In Dr. 
 Channing's interpretation of Christianity there was 
 a marked ev<ilution. Tn his earlv writings, he
 
 8G CIIULSTIAMTV IX IlISTOUY. 
 
 believed himself to bo an unquestioning- student 
 of the Christian scriptures, determined to find in 
 thcni, "the will of God and the uncorrupted 
 doctrines of Jesus." God is, in a real sense, the 
 Father of the human soul, he wrote. Man, though 
 sinful, is God's free child. "It might be pre- 
 sumj)tuous, of course, to speak of man as being a 
 partaker of the divine nature, did not the Script- 
 ures employ this bold language, but this divine 
 authority' justifies us in saying that, in the 
 strictest propriety of language, God is our Father." 
 "Love to God is, therefore, but refined filial 
 affection." ' ' Life is God's plan for training human 
 souls, the heirs of his own holiness and bles- 
 sedness, for their inheritance. This truth must 
 be recognized, and we must begin a career of 
 worthy development, conscious of our powers 
 and resolute to use them. Above all other truth 
 is moral truth: it is our highest duty to seek that. 
 Nowhere can that be found so beautiful and pure 
 as in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn 
 to that most affecting evidence of the worth of 
 our nature, God's gift to us of his own Son. See 
 how this only begotten Son, — whose position, 
 though not revealed with precision is evidently 
 one of peculiar intimacy with the Father, — see 
 how he, by his relation to us, is our saviour, friend, 
 guide, and giver of eternal life." In Dr. Channing's 
 relation to the Bible, there developed in later 
 years, a conscious interpretation of its records
 
 EVOLUTION AND ME r.VMOIU'UOSES Of CHIUSTIAMTV. 87 
 
 uuJer the authorit}' of the Reason. "In the Bible 
 are clearly revealed the essential principles of 
 Christianity, such as God's unity and paternal 
 character, the ecpitj' and mercy of his administm- 
 tion, and they accord perfectly* with the discoveries 
 of Nature and the surest dictates of the moral 
 faculties. All passages of the Scriptures, there- 
 fore, are to he interpreted in consistency with 
 these fundamental truths. There must be a ra- 
 tional interpretation of the Scriptures; the success, 
 perhaps the very existence, of Christianity requires 
 this service. Tliei'e is a growing demand for a 
 form of religion which will agree with the clear 
 dictates of conscience and the plain manifestations 
 the universe makes of God." Towards the end of 
 his life, Di*. Channing's emphasis upon personal 
 freedom became extreme. He proclaimed the 
 Divinity of Human Nature. He confessed allegiance 
 to a pure and universal Christianity, only. " What 
 are the central truths to be taught?" he asked. 
 "Is not the character of God as our moral Parent 
 — the truth of truths ? What a quickening thought 
 it is, what a ground of infinite hope, that God has 
 given us a nature like his own, that the Avholo 
 universe is fornicd as a held for its nutriment and 
 growth! What an office is the preacher's, — to 
 awaken the divine in man. In my books, I know 
 I have given utterance to some great truths which 
 were written not from tradition, but from deep 
 conviction, from the depths of nn* soul, — may I
 
 88 CIIUISTIANITV IN HISTOKY. 
 
 not Hay from inspiration? I mean ncjthing- mirac- 
 ulous : does not God speak in us all ? I may 
 sometimes use mystical language in my desire to 
 express strongly tlie connection between man and 
 God. We must look for God in our own souls. 
 In the soul is the fountain of all divine truth. 
 An outward revelation is only possible and in- 
 telligible on the ground of conceptions and prin- 
 cij)les previously furnished by the soul. On what 
 is universal and everlasting in human natures 
 Christianity is founded. For years I have felt a 
 decreased interest in settling Christ's precise rank. 
 The power of his character lies in his moral per- 
 fection. I have attached less importance to the 
 settlement of Christ's rank, since I have learned 
 that all minds are of one family. Human and 
 angelic natures are essentially'- one. Holding 
 this doctrine, the humanitarian system does not 
 shock me." Once Dr. Chauniug in old age, said 
 to a friend, "I have at times experiences of the 
 communion of mind and heart with the eternal 
 Father, which Jesus seems to have had unceas- 
 ingl}', and which gives such unajDproached, — I do 
 not say unapproachable — dignity to his express- 
 ions." 
 
 As represented in Dr. Channing's thought, 
 Unitarianism gave to Christianity the character 
 of an ethical ideal, springing out of a conscious- 
 ness of spiritual association, — shall we say essential 
 union ? — with God. This ideal has never been
 
 EVOLUTION AND :\IETAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTI.VNITV. SO 
 
 snrpabsed. Since Dr. CLanniiig's day the Unitari- 
 an movement lias Leen placed fully in touch 
 with maturing Pliihjsopliy and Science, but it has 
 not deserted, or lowered, that ideal. Unitarianism 
 has in recent years accepted the results of modes 
 of thought of which Dr. Chauning could know 
 nothing. It has, by some of its later representa- 
 tives, been l)rought more intimately into contact 
 with the historic consciousness of the Cliurch 
 Universal, but it remains still under the same 
 ethical inspiration of which Dr. Channing was the 
 aspiring prophet. 
 
 *i. Amet'ii'd u TvdnsceudctiinJ ism. 
 Ph i losojjh tc lid tiondl fsm, d 1 1 d lid hj to 1 1 s 
 Intuit iou. Pure Clivisttdtiitij the Ab- 
 solute Jielif/iou. Citutinuitij of Futth 
 dud JJoetriite in the J^rolution of the 
 Church Universal, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
 1804-1882. Theodora Parker, 181U-18G0. Frederic 
 Ilennj Hedge, 1805-1890. — The Transcendental 
 movement brought to New England the influences 
 which flowed over Christendom from emancipated 
 Philosoph}' in Germany. Tlie work of Emerson, 
 Parker and Hedge was their main channel. Sj)!- 
 noza's idea of the Divine immanence, Lesi-;iug's 
 discovery of the education of the human race, 
 Kant's transcendentalism, Schelling's, Fichte's, 
 Hegel's idealism, Schleiermacher's rc-awakened 
 and newl}' inspired Cliristian consciousness, the 
 results of a scientific criticism of the Bible matur-
 
 90 cinusTiANirY in iiistohv. 
 
 ing iu Germany, all were l^orne to America, and 
 there received by some of the leaders of the 
 Unitarian movement. Goethe had found rest in 
 Spinoza's theological vision : — 
 
 " A God my worrfbip may not win, 
 Who leta the M'orld about his finger spin, 
 A thing cxtei-n ; my God must rule within, 
 And whom I own for Father, God, Creator, 
 Hold Nature iu Himself, Himself iu Nature,"— 
 
 wrote the great German poet, and his faith found 
 
 response among some of the leaders of American 
 
 Unitarianism. Coleridge, in England, had caught 
 
 the new inspiration ; — 
 
 " 'Tis the sublime of men, 
 Our uooutide majesty, to know ourselves 
 Parts and propositions of one w'ondroiis whole. 
 
 But 'tis God 
 Diffused throiigh all that doth make all one whole. 
 God all in all. We and our Father one; " — 
 
 and this inspiration was felt b}' many Unitarians 
 to be a living Divine word. Woi'dsworth shared, 
 also, in this discernment of the immanence of 
 God:— 
 
 " I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime, 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and iu the mind of Man ; — 
 
 and Wordsworth's feeling opened the spiritual 
 eyes of many Unitarians to the infinite Presence. 
 In a "3Iemoir " of his father, Eev. William C.
 
 EVOLUTION AND JIKTAMOKPHOSES OF CHRISTIANITV. 91 
 
 Gannett thus describes those who were the agents 
 of these new influences upon Unitarianism: — "The 
 Transcendentalists were simplj- the little New 
 England quota in the great return of thinkers to 
 Idealism after the long captivity to Sensationalism. 
 As a school of critics the}' were the earliest in 
 America, who boklly used the modern historic 
 method in the study of the Bible. As a school of 
 theology they dispensed with Mediation, in order to 
 claim for the soul access direct to its Father. Thej' 
 have been t-redited with bringing the doctrine of 
 the Holy Spirit into the Unitarian ' common sense 
 in religion.' But more than the common doctrine 
 of the Holy Sx^irit, and more than Orthodoxy 
 compassed by its faith in Incarnation and the 
 Helping Grace, their thought really implied. It 
 implied a universal law of access and communion. 
 It affirmed abiding contact of the finite and the 
 Infinite, in virtue of the very nature of the soul 
 and Over-Soul. Inspiration fresh as well as old ; 
 Revelation constant; Miracle but the human spirit's 
 pinnacle of action; God the living God, not a deity 
 then and there announcing himself with evidence 
 of authenticity', but indwelling here and now in 
 every presence." 
 
 Under the deepening intuitions of Tran- 
 scendentalism, Unitarians gradually transformed 
 their conception of Christianity, more and more 
 into a direct consciousness of essential com- 
 munion of the human soul with "the Universal
 
 92 (HIUSTIANITY IN HISTORY. 
 
 Soul." Ralph Waldo Emerson, the guiding 
 voice of the new thought, spoke of this Univer- 
 sal Soul, as the Reason in its most exalted 
 manifestations. "It is not mine or thine or 
 his, but we are its ; we are its property and 
 men. And the blue sky in which the private 
 earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and 
 full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. 
 That which, intellectuall}' we call Reason, con- 
 sidered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit 
 is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself, and man, 
 in all ages and countries, embodies it in his lan- 
 guage, as the Father." Of Jesus, Emerson said, 
 "Alone in all historj', Jesus Christ estimated the 
 greatness of man. He saw that God incarnates 
 himself in man and evermore goes forth anew to 
 take possession of his world. In how many 
 churches, b}' how many prophets, tell me, is man 
 made sensible that he is an inlinite Soul ; that the 
 earth and heavens are passing into his mind ; that 
 he is drinking from the Soul of God." 
 
 Theodore Parker, the Luther of the New 
 Christian Reformation, re-affirmed, with the most 
 emphatic words, the revivified doctrine of the im- 
 manence of God in the Avorld and man, and the 
 permanence thereby' of essential Christianity. 
 "Religion unites man with God till he thinks God's 
 thought which is Truth ; feels God's feeling which 
 is Love ; wills God's will which is eternal Right ; 
 thus finding God in the sense wherein he is not
 
 EVOLUTION AM) MElAMOUPHOStS OF CHIUSTIAMTV. 93 
 
 far from any one of us ; becomiuy one \vitli Him 
 and so partaking of the Divine Nature.' " Come 
 to the plain words of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 Christianity is a very simple thing ; very simple. 
 It is absolute pure Moralit}', absolute pure Ke- 
 ligion ; the love of God acting without let or 
 hindrance. Its sanction is the voice of God in 
 your heart ; the perpetual presence of Him who 
 made us and the stai's overhead ; Christ and the 
 Father abiding in us." 
 
 Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge, however, was the 
 one among the leaders of the New Reformation, 
 who felt most distinctly the nexus of Unitarianism 
 with historic Christianity, and who interpreted it as 
 but a neAv metamorphosis of the evolving Christian 
 Gospel. Dr. Hedge, it has been said, '• was pro- 
 bably the ablest, deepest and most widel}' cultivat- 
 ed intellect that the denomination has embraced. 
 He was essentially' a philosophical student and 
 thinker." The future may show that he pen- 
 etrated more deeply into the meaning of Religion 
 as a historic fact, and saw more clearly the 
 real intent and consequent permanent worth of 
 Christianity, than any other American leader of 
 modern Unitarianism. Dr. Hedge had, in pre- 
 eminence, the liberality Avhich is associated with 
 the most catholic knowledge. His mind absorbed 
 the products of the malurest philoso^diy. Ho was 
 familiar with religious history. He had ability to 
 interpret the knowledge he acquired. He spoke
 
 94 CHmSTIANITY IN IIISTOUY. 
 
 always fioiu a height whence he saw thoughts and 
 events in farther reaching relations than those of 
 their immediate surroundings. 
 
 Under the " Transcendental " enthusiasm, Dr. 
 Hedge kept a middle way and a sure footing. He 
 felt, as we have seen, the strength and confidence 
 which had been brought to religious faith by the 
 restoration to Philosophy, through Sjiinoza, of the 
 idea of the immanence of God in the universe, but 
 he saw too the weakness of this idea, when it was 
 so held as to destroy man's personal individuality. 
 In his judgment, '•' Pantheism and Theism are not 
 contradictory, but complementary, the one to the 
 other." He was confident of the continuity of 
 Religion from age to age, and it was impossible 
 for him to break with Christianity and Christian 
 history. " A truer idea of the Christian dispensa- 
 tion," he said, " is expressed in the word develop- 
 ment. Christianity is not a fixed but a flowing 
 quantity and power. It is not to be found com- 
 plete and entire in any scriptui-e, church or age, 
 but unfolds itself successively through many 
 scriptures, churches, and ages. It is not a totality 
 but a process; a process of which the Church, — that 
 is, Christian society, — is at once medium and ex- 
 ponent, and ecclesiastical history the report." 
 Dr. Hedge's sweep of vision is well shown in the 
 following excerpt from one of his essays: — "Re- 
 ligion begins with the w^orship of things ; from 
 fetishism it advances to personification of natural
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMORPHOSES OF CHRISTIANIXy. 95 
 
 forces, and proceeds in the direction of personism, 
 until some quickened and reflective soul, — in the 
 language of theology some divinely-missioned 
 individual, — through predominance in him of the 
 moral sense, arrives at the truer conception of 
 Deity as moral lawgiver, and adores the God of 
 conscience above all Gods. Then commences, for 
 the age and people in which such prophet appears, 
 the reaction of the inner life ; the soul asserts its 
 supremacy over Nature ; religion becomes internal, 
 reflective, moral, and protestant. Christianity 
 consummated that reaction, completely abolishing 
 the Nature-worship and j)oly theism of the Greco- 
 Roman world. The two main streams of ancient 
 religion, Hellenism and Semitic monotheism, — 
 themselves the debouchures respectively of other, 
 elder, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Persian faiths, — 
 found their confluence in the Christian dispensa- 
 tion. Hellenism was completely merged and lost 
 in it. Semitic monotheism, after delivering its 
 ' tribute wave,' has preserved an independent ex- 
 istence, and still survives in the Judaism of the ' Dis- 
 persion ; ' still flourishes in Mohammedism, one of 
 the most wide spread of existing religions. This, 
 and the elder religious of Central and Southern 
 Asia, — Brahmanism and Buddhism, — still sway the 
 major portion of the human race, but with such 
 fixity, such incapacity of growth or effective 
 reformation, as must needs neutralize their historic 
 influence, if it docs not abridge their duration.
 
 9() cuiuvriAMi'v IN msniKv, 
 
 " Christianit}' is the solvent of otLier religions 
 find may be regarded as the ultimate religion of 
 man. In Protestant Christianity" (Protestant in 
 the largest sense of the term) " religion has 
 reached the extreme limit which divides it from 
 pure Science ; in its latest development it seems 
 to portend the union of the two. Further than 
 this, Religion can not go in the direction of Reason, 
 — in the rational appreliension of spiritual truth. 
 There can be no progress out of Christiauit}- into 
 any new religion ; unless, indeed Ave give that 
 name to some future dispensation of Science, ap- 
 plying ascertained laws and scientific demonstra- 
 tion to the ethical and social relations of man." 
 
 Concerning the Person of Christ, Dr. Hedge 
 wrote, " Nowhere, it seems to me, is the guiding 
 Providence of God in history- more conspicuous 
 than it is in the wording of the final dictum of the 
 Councils respecting the nature of Christ. The 
 Chris tology of the Chui'ch was the growth of 
 centuries. It was Avell for the Church, and well 
 for humanit}', that the Athanasian view prevailed 
 as against the Arian and against the monophysite. 
 The Catholic or Orthodox Christology is precisely 
 that which, by the comprehensiveness and im- 
 partiality of its statement, allows the largest liberty 
 of speculation, and admits of the greatest diver- 
 sity^ of view. It merely affirms what every one 
 believes, who believes in Christianity at all, —that 
 God and man wrought together in Christ for the
 
 EVOLUTION AND MKT.VMORPHOSES OF CUKISTIAMTY. 97 
 
 regeneration of human kind. 
 
 "The Council of Nicoea dates a new era in the 
 history of human thought. God in actual contact 
 with man, — God in man and man in God, — is the 
 underlying idea of the Athanasian dogma ■which 
 asserts that the Son is consubstantial Avilh the 
 Father. Probably, Athanasius did. not perceive 
 the real drift and scope of his doctrine. It was 
 only of the Person of Christ that he aflirmed 
 substantial community with God. * * * * * 
 
 "The fault of the Trinitarian doctrino, is not 
 what it teaches, but what it omits to teach. It is 
 not the assertion of the divinity in Christ, but the 
 limitation of divine humanity to him, the imj^lied 
 exclusion of the rest of mankind from any part 
 or lot in this matter. In the view of the Trinit- 
 arian doctrine, mankind, at large, are separated 
 from Christ, not only in degree but in kind ; they 
 have not that oneness with him which he himself 
 accorded to them in his prayer, ' That they all may 
 be one ; as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, 
 that they may be one in us. They have not that 
 l>art in God which one of the New Testament 
 writers affirms of Christians, at least, — ' Called to 
 be partakers of the divine nature.'" 
 
 In the thought of this clear-sighted thinkei-, 
 Unitarianism was brought into visible and vital 
 connection with the Christian Church Catholic, and 
 appeared as the consummate product of a con- 
 tinuous evolution of the essential ('hristianitv.
 
 UH CmUSTIANITY IN HISTOItY. 
 
 Tlie ancient faith and the emancipated Philosophy 
 of the Modern Age flowed together. The Old and 
 the New had become one. The new Christian 
 Credo, so far as it was uttered in the mind of Dr. 
 Hedge, is embodied in these eloquent words, — 
 
 " I believe in the ever proceeding incarnation of 
 the Spirit of God in human life. I believe in the 
 ever proceeding trausubstantiation of the world 
 into the similitude of the Divine Idea. The 
 Trinitarian doctrine was a crude attejnpt to for- 
 mulate these truths but instead of their exponent 
 became their grave. Trinitarian theology has 
 lost its hold of advancing Christian thought, but 
 the thing it embodied, Divine Humanit}', across 
 all the mists of theology is struggling into light. 
 Thus, practical Christianity fulfills the truth that 
 was hidden in the absolute dogmas of the Church ; 
 and thus, where 'the letter Icilleth, the spirit 
 maketh alive.' " 
 
 Under the influence of the Transcendental move- 
 ment, Christianity as developed in Modern Uuita- 
 rianism became more and more identified with a 
 conscious communion of the soul with the Divine 
 Presence within itself, and with acceptance of 
 Jesus Christ as the prototype of a divine life pos- 
 sible for every man. This faith has never been 
 authorized in a formal Unitarian creed. It has 
 not yet wholly taken the place of so called, and 
 mistakenly called, " Channing Unitarianism," but 
 plaiuh- enough, one can see, it has given a deepen-
 
 EVOLUTION AND METAMOI:l'HOSES OF CHRISTIAM TY. 90 
 
 iug Laimoiiy of tone to the words and writings of 
 those who, in Later years, have coine to be repre- 
 sentative of the Unitarian movement. At the 
 present da}', more than any other one power, it 
 characterizes the implicit Unitarian creed. 
 
 />*. Clwisfifni I^/u'th hi Union, not onlff 
 irith PhUositphU' JitttioiKilism, hut irith 
 the l*liUosop1nj of Science, l^resent 
 UnHfU'Htnfsnt antonff the F'ovecti }n'o- 
 jihetie o/' a I'ornt of Chrlsiiiinitij trhivlt 
 shall rcdllxe for JIanh'ind the full liell- 
 (fions Ctnseionsness oftfestts Christ, ft nd 
 tlierein^ Stitisfaetiitn for Man's Lon(fin<f 
 for Union with God. 
 
 The Transcendental movement is not alone 
 to be taken into the account, in setting forth 
 Christianity as it has taken form among Unitarians. 
 Science as well as Philosophy has been a potent 
 force in guiding the Modern Age. Unitarianism. 
 has not been unmindful of the domain of trutli 
 which Science has opened up in the physical 
 universe. This has been more and more recog- 
 nized, and what it discloses for Religion has been 
 learned and taught. To Uuitarian.s, all truth in 
 divine ; and, to Unitarians, Christianity only the 
 more really fulfills its purpose, when its transfigur- 
 ing spirit embodies itself in all truth. Among 
 Unitarians, therefore, the theology of Christianity 
 has been, continuous)}-, in recent years, enricln «1 
 and magnified bv the revelations of Science, and
 
 100 CHIilSTIANITY IN niSTORY. 
 
 scientific truth has been deepened and spiritualized 
 by Cliristian Theology. Many quotations, from 
 the works of representative Unitaiians might be 
 given to illustrate this fact, but it will suffice, as 
 indicating the thought pervading them, to repeat 
 a few passages from the sennon of Rev. Richard 
 Armstrong, of England, with which, a few months 
 ago, he opened the National Conference of the 
 Unitarian Churches of America. 
 
 "The physical science of our time," he said, 
 "has been unfolding to me her wondrous tale. 
 And I find, as I look out on the world in the light 
 of all this new knowledge, a pressure of God in 
 u^yon consciousness everywhere and always, sur- 
 jxissing any vividness of the God-presence in any 
 particular miracle which legend or myth has ever 
 alleged. My imagination is wholly taken captive 
 by this stupendous revelation of the God-force 
 which modern conceptions of the Cosmos furnish. 
 Through the v.hole beats the one life-force which 
 is God, controlling every molecule in the petal of 
 a daisy, in the meteoric ring of Saturn, in the 
 remotest nebula that outskirts space, as though 
 that molecule were the universe and all the rest a 
 dream. "When I realize that this energy is God, — 
 for by no clear thinking can it be aught else, — 
 God there, holding the stars in their places, God 
 here, moving the sap along the leaf-veins of the 
 maples, the one not great to Him, nor the other 
 small, each worked with the like unbroken am-
 
 EVOLUTION AND MET.VMOnPHOSES OF CHiaSTIANITY. 101 
 
 plitude of care, — then m}' soul i.s bowed down in 
 wonder, and again lifted up in a mighty flood of 
 joy, that God is here, that God is there, that every- 
 where God cares and God attends, that not the 
 vastest things are vast beyond his domination, 
 that not the tiniest things are small beyond his 
 perfect love and care. 
 
 " And when my sj)irit is full of this revelation 
 of surpassing wonder, with a bound, my heart 
 leaps up to the recognition of the yet more 
 glorious thing which it means besides ; that if Ho 
 cares for these things and attends to them, much 
 more must He have care and tendance for every 
 conscious spirit that moves among the hills and 
 plains. 
 
 "The scientific account of the world-sustaining 
 Energy has been the one thing which has given 
 to me confidence, a priori, in that spiritual ap- 
 prehensibility of God, which is the essence and 
 core of Religion, above all, of tlie religion of 
 Jesus of Nazareth." 
 
 With this disclosure of Christianity realizing the 
 faith of Jesus, in union with both the Science and 
 the Philosophy of the present age, we may leave 
 our theme. Evidently Christianity belongs to tho 
 present and future as much as to any part of the 
 past. "The words that I have spoken unt > you 
 are spirit and are life," said the Founder of our 
 Faith. Those words have remained, and, as spirit,
 
 102 CHUISTIANITY IN HISTOliV. 
 
 they Lave Ijeen oniljodicLl, again and again, in the 
 process of hntnan affairs. The soul seeks personal 
 realization of the everlasting gospel of the Father- 
 hood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. Jesus 
 announced that gospel and manifested it in life. In 
 his own Person, he was prophetic of the goal 
 towards which Humanity' is moving. It was by no 
 Chance, that the forces Avhich had thitherto, apart, 
 borne the world's civilization, received at their con- 
 fluence eighteen hundred years ago, the Christian 
 consciousness, and, thenceforwai'd, carried it as 
 their most precious possession, indeed, as their 
 real reason for continued being.
 
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