UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Dr. ERNEST C. MOORE
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH?
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 
 AN ATTEMPT TO ELUCIDATE 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES IN BELIEF 
 
 BY I. GREGORY SMITH, M.A. (Hon. LLD.Edin.) 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " KAITH AND PHILOSOPHY," " ARISTOTKLIANISM," " CHARACTERISTICS 
 OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY " (THE BAMPTON LECTBRK8, 1872) 
 
 "HISTORY or CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MUKttAY, ALBEMAKLE STKEET, W. 
 
 1905
 
 111 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE suggestions they are little more may 
 perhaps be not without some use to honest 
 seekers after truth in the present day. 
 
 It is my aim to enforce some vital principles, 
 which underlie all moral and spiritual questions 
 and which are not always borne in mind. These 
 * are, especially, that, as the greatest of psycho- 
 logists taught long ago, the knowledge attainable 
 by man is only relative, not absolute ; that right- 
 being is more than even right-doing ; the effort, 
 the energy, more than the thing done ; that the 
 (f motive is what really makes the action right or 
 wrong ; and truths beyond the reach of 
 Aristotle that religion is based on morality, 
 and that the essence of morality is to be un- 
 selfish. 
 
 " Chacun de nous" (Souvestre) "rassemble 
 au vieux systeme de Ptolemee et veut que 
 1'univers entier tourn' autour de mi." And yet
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 there is a latent, irrepressible consciousness, 
 which asserts itself in our saner moments, that 
 pure unselfishness is, after all, not merely the 
 thing most to be loved, but the strongest force in 
 the world. So far as results, if discerned clearly, 
 go, the selfish theory of virtue, the theory in 
 vogue during the Eighteenth Century, that virtue 
 is regulated self-love, coincides with the unselfish ; 
 e.g., " Honesty is the best policy " : but the one is 
 diametrically opposed to the other in motive. 
 
 There is no need for the present purpose to 
 have recourse to Ontology. The conclusions of 
 Transcendental Metaphysic are and ever must be 
 very precarious. The "Humanistic" aspect of 
 philosophy brings philosophy more into touch 
 with life and character. 
 
 As far as possible, I have avoided a technical 
 phraseology. The term " reason " is used here, 
 not in a Kantian sense, but simply as equivalent 
 to intellect. 
 
 It was said of Sion in the old time, "Her 
 foundations shall be cast down." This can never 
 befall the spiritual Sion, for it is founded " upon 
 the Rock." But Christians must not be forget- 
 ful of the foundations of their hopes, lest their 
 Christianity degenerate into a tepid, conventional 
 assent to stereotyped traditions. More than
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 others at the present time, Bishop Gore has done 
 a great service for all who love the truth, in 
 probing deep problems to their first principles. 
 It is a Pascal that is needed insight, not mere 
 erudition. Exoriare aliquis ! " 
 
 I. GREGORY SMITH. 
 
 HORSELL, WoKING, 
 
 February, 1905. 
 
 My thanks are due to the Editors of The 
 XlXth Century, The Guardian, and other 
 periodicals, and to the Editorial Secretary 
 of the S.P.C.K., for leave to use essays pub- 
 lished by me under their auspices.
 
 CHAP. 
 
 INTRODUCTION ..... xi 
 
 I. THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL ... 1 
 
 II. BELIEF AND CONDUCT . . . .17 
 
 III. MODERN SCEPTICISM . . . .26 
 
 IV. AGNOSTICISM . . , . .50 
 V. MIRACLES . . . . .58 
 
 VI. WHAT is THE BIBLE ? . . .72 
 
 VII. THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY . . .101 
 
 VIII. CONFESSIO CREDENTIS . . . .113 
 
 APPENDIX A. MYSTICISM AND MORALITY . .127 
 
 B. MIRACLES. THE RESURRECTION OF 
 
 CHRIST . . . 130
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 "The establishment of rules of right and wrong on a 
 scientific basis is a pressing need." 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 THE landscape seen in twilight wears a strangely 
 different appearance when scanned in the broad 
 light of day. The friend, whom one knows 
 familiarly, stands out in a new aspect under the 
 stress of an extraordinary crisis. Yet landscape 
 and friend are the same as they were : the 
 change is not in them, but in the observer's 
 standpoint. 
 
 Believers in Christianity, as well as un- 
 believers, are sometimes startled when it pre- 
 sents itself to them in a new light, the standpoint 
 for observation having been shifted in course of 
 time. Surely this is indeed one of the vouchers 
 for the truth of Christianity, this manysidedness, 
 this power of adapting itself to the varying 
 phases of the life of man. In every age the 
 
 xi
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Christian Faith appeals to man's reason ; * but 
 the character of this reasonableness varies. 
 St Paul, Augustine of Hippo, and Christian 
 Apologists generally, in the early centuries 
 appealed to Jew and Gentile on ethical grounds 
 mainly. " The Gospel comes from heaven," they 
 urged, "because it is light and healing for the 
 sorrows and sins of men." When barbarism 
 swept like a flood over the ruins of Eoman 
 civilisation, the Church asserted her authority 
 over the chaos and confusion, and for centuries 
 the ultimate appeal was simply to the authority 
 of the Church. The revolt of Northern Europe 
 against Rome in the sixteenth century substi- 
 tuted the authority of Scripture for the authority 
 of the Church. Later developments of thought 
 and knowledge drive back the believer in Christ 
 to the bedrock of his faith, the surest credential 
 of it, the truths of morality. More and more, as 
 the years go on, men recognise that, when all 
 has been said for and against Christianity, the 
 ultimate question is, the practical bearing 
 of it on life and conduct. "The beauty 
 of holiness" incarnate in the Person of Jesus 
 
 * See Illing worth's profound and eloquent Reason and 
 Revelation, Chapter I. I had not seen his books, till this., my 
 own, was finished.
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 Christ, in His teaching, life, death, resur- 
 rection, ascension, is the Rock on which the 
 Church is built ; this is the real essence * of 
 Christianity. 
 
 In every clause of the creeds of Christianity, 
 there is a moral and spiritual meaning behind 
 the historic fact. To accept the bare historic 
 fact only (or primarily) is not the "faith that 
 overcomes the world," that transforms and 
 transfigures the character. If there were no 
 righteousness in the dogma, where would be sin 
 in rejecting it? Might not the requirement 
 of its acceptance be deemed arbitrary and 
 capricious? A Christian believes what would 
 otherwise be incredible, because it is related of 
 One whose absolute self - devotion prepares 
 us to believe Him to be God the Son incar- 
 nate. There must be a willingness to trust 
 and love this unique goodness ; there must 
 be an appreciative sympathy with it and 
 veneration for it.t 
 
 As the individual, so should the community 
 grow " in stature and wisdom," even as on earth 
 
 * "Das Wesen" Harnack. 
 
 t It is noticeable, in the Ministry of Christ on earth, that 
 the practical precepts on the Mount precede the dogmas of 
 theology.
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 He grew, " the Author and Finisher " of all that 
 is of any worth in man. It is well to recognise 
 distinctly, that religion is based on morality ; 
 that the Kingdom of Christ is essentially "a 
 kingdom of righteousness " ; that Christianity, 
 while confirming, enhancing the sense of moral 
 rectitude, and while alone able to impart fully 
 the capacity for it, still looks to conscience as to 
 the supreme court of appeal for the guarantee 
 and sanction of this authority. Men have 
 sought and seek in vain from Pope or Book an 
 infallible guidance, such as may relieve them of 
 the responsibility of affirming or denying for 
 themselves. But conscience speaks imperatively,* 
 if free to speak, to all, learned and unlearned, 
 who will give ear. 
 
 The paramount considerations to be kept in 
 view are these : 
 
 Morality is the only sure footing for man 
 with quicksands under his feet. If we except 
 pure mathematic, a science without any practical 
 influence on life and character, not touching 
 them on any side, what kind of knowledge can 
 he grasp for certain? In physic, metaphysic, 
 art, history, everywhere the assurance of to-day 
 
 * Kant's "Categorical Imperative." Cf. Leibnitz, 
 " sceptical otherwise, but on morality dogmatic."
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 is apt to be rudely shaken by the experience of 
 to-morrow, in the perpetual ebb and* flow of 
 opinion. But that there is a right and a wrong 
 in everything done, said, thought, wished, willed, 
 is no ephemeral opinion, but a conviction deeply 
 rooted in man ; not indeed, universally admitted 
 (for it is impossible to find any truth beyond the 
 range of numerals admitted universally), but 
 attested generally by the adhesion and concur- 
 rence of the nations and the individuals most t 
 qualified to judge, most entitled to deference. 
 If a more complete, a more irresistible, con- 
 sent than this could be attained, our life 
 on earth would cease to be the probation 
 that it is. Comparatively with other depart- 
 ments of knowledge, morality affords the surest 
 footing. 
 
 Again, as morality is the surest criterion of 
 the truth of a creed, so it is the only real 
 criterion of sincerity in those who profess the 
 creed. Faith (it cannot be repeated too often) 
 is not the mechanical assent of the intellect to 
 certain doctrines, as if the articles of the Creed 
 were propositions of Euclid. Were it so, a 
 clever, cultured intellect would have an unfair 
 
 * " Trdvra pti " Heraclitus. 
 
 t 01 cTTrouSouos, 01 TreTTcuSeu/xevoi Aristotle, Ethica Nicomach.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 advantage over others less fortunate. Faith is 
 practical, not theoretical merely. It is the 
 trustful, loving surrender of the Will, the Inten- 
 tion, the Self to Christ, because He is holy and 
 merciful. "I know," says the Apostle, "in 
 whom I have believed." Just as duty involves 
 the conception of some one to whom the debt, 
 the obligation is due, so faith implies a person 
 worthy to be trusted. The two essential quali- 
 fications for being trusted are, as Aristotle has 
 said, willingness and ability to help. That Christ 
 is able and willing to save men from their baser 
 selves, is recorded not only in the pages of the 
 New Testament, but in the experience of the 
 innumerable believers, who have found Him 
 trustworthy. 
 
 Faith is no hvsterical ebullition of sentiment, 
 
 
 
 such as comes and goes, evaporating in air, 
 leaving no permanent trace behind it. Faith, 
 unless it obeys, is a name only, not a reality. 
 Emotion may supply the impulse, but reason 
 guides the choice, when the Will consents to 
 believe. 
 
 " If ye love Me, keep My commandments." 
 It is deeply interesting to notice how the 
 onward march of science coincides with this 
 shifting of the standpoint, from which to estimate
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 Christianity. A clearer psychology is a great 
 help to the right understanding of the ethical 
 principles, on which Christianity rests. The 
 study of psychology indicates more and more 
 clearly, how powerful an influence is exercised 
 by the material part of man's being over the 
 spirit* within him, which is his very self, and 
 how his thought and emotion move, to say the 
 least, on lines parallel to his physical organisa- 
 tion. But, after all, Determinism cannot show 
 that the Will of man is a mere slave, spellbound 
 by the determining forces which surround it. 
 Were that so, there would be an end to aspira- 
 tions, religious or moral. Very potent, and 
 at times almost overwhelming, may be these 
 forces extraneous to the Will; yet it is the 
 man himself, not his environment, that has 
 the inalienable responsibility of saying the final 
 "Yes" or "No," of pronouncing the decisive 
 " Fiat." 
 
 The reasonableness of the Christian's faith 
 shines out most unequivocally, when it is clearly 
 understood what are the composite parts of 
 man's nature, and how they work together ; in 
 short, what he is made of. There is no need to 
 invent a new faculty, a "spiritual sense" for 
 
 * " Divinae particula aurae." Horat.
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 apprehending things spiritual. It is unreason- 
 able to imagine other faculties, perceptive or con- 
 ceptive, acting independently of the reason, that 
 is, of the intellect or intelligence. The rational 
 faculties, inherent in sane persons, if prompted by 
 purified emotions and directed by a Will devoting 
 itself to God, are equipment enough, supposing 
 the temperament to be such as makes a mystic, 
 for soaring to heights trodden by Sister Theresa 
 and other devotees. A good child, a pious peasant, 
 has really a share in this blissful communion 
 with heaven. In their prayers and praises they 
 have a vision of the unseen identical in kind 
 with the visions of the ascetic. The difference 
 is only in degree. 
 
 But, and this is the main thing, the Evangelic 
 precepts of self-sacrifice for God and for our 
 fellows must be kept more steadily in view than 
 they are ordinarily by Christians. These precepts 
 are not to be explained away by smooth con- 
 ventionalities. In spirit * they must be put into 
 practice all round. Self-love must be exorcised 
 so far as it conflicts with the love due to God 
 and to others. If Christians would really live 
 up to the "Sermon on the Mount," if they 
 
 * The moral essentiality of the Intention is the key to the 
 right understanding of these seemingly "hard sayings."
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 would realise by self-denial in daily life, as 
 Christians did in the beginning, the fatherhood 
 of God in Christ, the brotherhood in Christ of 
 mankind, it would be the rejuvenescence of the 
 world.
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 "The metaphysics of one age become the ethics of the 
 next." S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it 
 bears fruit." BROWNING. 
 
 "MiND and Body": "Mind and Matter " :- 
 these are phrases of long standing. Because 
 the mind operates invisibly, because mental pro- 
 cesses seem, superficially, to be independent of 
 material causes, because, in brief, thoughts cannot 
 be measured nor weighed, therefore it has too 
 often been taken for granted, that mind and 
 matter move in spheres separated the one with 
 the other. But this assumption is undermined 
 by the discoveries of physical science. More and 
 more it becomes evident, that our thoughts as 
 well as our emotions depend very largely on the 
 
 1 A
 
 2 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 organism of the body ; that they trace their origin 
 to the circumstances which elicit and suggest 
 them ; that they follow one another across the 
 retina of our consciousness with the mechanical 
 punctuality of the tickings of a clock or the 
 pulsations of a steam engine. 
 
 Does this mean that man is a machine merely ? 
 Or is there a driver, and is that driver the man's 
 real Self ? Surely this is the question of questions 
 for everyone who thinks at all. Are we free 
 agents, or are we merely motor cars very ingeni- 
 ously put together? If machines and nothing 
 more, there can be no use any longer in trying to 
 steer in any direction ; better far it would be to 
 face the fact and succumb to it. Duty and glory, 
 the watchwords severally of England and France, 
 have no longer any significance, or, at most, only 
 so much as a vivid dream. If I am simply the 
 creature of my surroundings, if I really cannot 
 help myself, why should I try ? Why waste time 
 and trouble on a vain and fruitless endeavour ? 
 If we are swayed solely and entirely by the 
 operation of agencies working with the ruthless 
 regularity of a cleverly constructed engine, we 
 are doomed to drift onward, like a log, whether 
 the stream on whicli we float is bearing us to joy 
 or sorrow, weal or woe : and if things in our life
 
 THE INDUCTIVE METHOD 3 
 
 here seem hopelessly adverse, nothing is left for 
 us but hellebore or mandragora. 
 
 For the immediate purpose the question is 
 not, " What says Revelation as to the freedom of 
 man's Will," about that there can be no doubt 
 but only, " What says Reason unaided by Revela- 
 tion ? " And if the answer shall be, that the 
 Will, the true Self, is free to accept or to refuse 
 what the intellect, prompted by the emotions, 
 suggests, still it must never be forgotten that these 
 forces, external to the Will yet closely associated 
 with it, can put a tremendous pressure on it for 
 good or for evil. It is only when he claims for 
 them the final determination that the determinist 
 oversteps the line. 
 
 The only sure method of philosophy, what- 
 ever may be the subject, is the inductive method, 
 which the patient seeker after truth pursues in 
 his laboratory. He tries suppositions one after 
 another till he finds the one which reconciles in 
 itself all the jarring facts to be taken account of. 
 He lays aside as useless key after key, till one 
 fits all the wards of the lock ; but he tries each 
 key in the belief for the moment that it is the 
 right one. So far surely the Positivist is not 
 wrong. In this spirit the question of Free Will 
 or Determinism must be handled.
 
 4 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 If the Will is only the result and product of 
 causes which can be gauged, it will not be impos- 
 sible to calculate beforehand what this result will 
 be in any particular instance. Given, in the case 
 of any person, the intellectual and emotive 
 character, together with the external circum- 
 stances, the action, if there can be no inter- 
 ference from the Will, follows inevitably as a 
 matter of calculation. The sum may be difficult, 
 but it is not impossible. Given a knowledge of 
 the laws which regulate cerebration, emotion, 
 etc., as well as of the amount and tendency of the 
 pressure on these from without, you shall be able 
 to estimate adequately, if Will is eliminated, 
 what anyone shall do in any contingency. Is 
 this so actually? The contrary is notorious. 
 The wisest people do at times the most foolish 
 things ; the fool surprises those who know him 
 by rising above the occasion ; the prudent man 
 upsets all his antecedents by a freakish indis- 
 cretion ; those who are apt to yield evince 
 unlooked-for obstinacy ; natures timid and 
 shrinking act heroically ; the strong-minded and 
 fearless betray irresolution. Gauge ever so 
 accurately the temperament of your adversary in 
 a campaign or in a game of chess, and the 
 motives most apt to sway him, still you cannot
 
 INDICATIONS THAT THE WILL IS FREE 5 
 
 predict absolutely what he will choose to do. 
 The scales are duly poised, the preponderance 
 this way or that way seems unquestionable ; 
 but, after all, if the Will throws itself, as Brennus 
 threw his sword, into the lighter scale, the 
 heavier kicks the beam. As the "wind blows 
 where it lists," so is the human Will, the spirit 
 of man, volatile and capricious. It may permit 
 itself to be swayed hither and thither by the 
 forces extraneous to itself, just as the Czar of 
 all the Eussias is hampered by the camarilla 
 round him, and yet, all the time, like the Czar 
 (unless it abdicates), it is an entity with a function 
 of its own. Doubtless, the Will of man, like 
 all the universe, spiritual as well as material, is 
 obedient to laws. But what those laws are, who 
 can say ? 
 
 Again, if the Will is merely a part of the 
 mechanism of the body, and therefore acts 
 mechanically, when motives equally cogent are 
 urging it from opposite sides, the result of these 
 conflicting pressures must be to do nothing at 
 all. Two billiard balls driven with equal force 
 from opposite sides of the table, and meeting 
 half way, become motionless by the collision. 
 Similarly (unless there is indeed a something in 
 man distinct from his other organisation), when
 
 6 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 motives are equally balanced, he will move 
 neither in one direction nor in the other; he 
 must, like the fabled ass between bundles of hay, 
 the one as attractive as the other, die of inani- 
 tion. It is not so ; however difficult may be the 
 choice, man makes it. The tippler sees on one 
 side of the road the bright, warm tap-room ; on 
 the other, his wife and children waiting for him 
 in his home ; and though he pauses for a moment, 
 drawn hither and thither by the conflict within 
 him, he chooses home or the drink-shop at last. 
 
 How is it, again, that strength of Will seems 
 as a fact to be altogether separable from strength 
 either of the intellect or the affections? A 
 strong Will can co-exist with a feeble intellect, 
 with weak passions : there may be (as in dear 
 Hartley Coleridge) high intellectuality and a 
 lovable disposition with lamentable weakness 
 of Will. If the Will is merely a reflex of what 
 is going on in the body, how can this be 
 explained ? Can any theory which denies the 
 freedom of Will account satisfactorily for this 
 phenomenon.* 
 
 Again, if the Will moves mechanically, how 
 are Kemorse and Self-gratulation to be accounted 
 
 * There is a wide difference between wishing and irilling, 
 says Cardinal Retz, speaking of a Due d'Orleans.
 
 REGRETS AND SELF-GRATULATIONS 7 
 
 for? A watch that goes well is not elated 
 thereby ; nor is it depressed because of losing or 
 gaining. But human beings, however stoically 
 inclined, however apathetic, are apt continually 
 to praise or blame themselves when they review 
 their past. If anyone will take the trouble to 
 analyse carefully the regrets which at times 
 torment him, he will find that the real source of 
 his vexation is, because, with all his trying, he 
 cannot succeed in "white-washing" himself, in 
 justifying to himself his own share in what has 
 annoyed him, the part which he himself has 
 played in the affair. Nor can it be denied, that 
 when you look back with a glow of satisfaction 
 on what has taken place, you are sensible to the 
 flattering thought, that you did well. What 
 does all this mean, if what you did you were 
 absolutely doing in chains ? 
 
 Once more Take such a quality as courage. 
 The poet says wisely : 
 
 " The brave man is not he who feels no fear, 
 For that were stupid and irrational." 
 
 On the contrary, the truly brave are they who, 
 like the hero in the story,* conquer their fears, 
 who see clearly enough the danger, realise all 
 
 * The Four Feathers.
 
 8 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 that it involves, shrink from it naturally, and yet 
 control all this and keep it down. What is it 
 that controls their apprehensions and enables 
 them to keep down the instinctive repugnance 
 to pain ? Some selfish motive, it may be replied, 
 dislike of being blamed and disgraced (for 
 instance), counteracting and outweighing the 
 physical dislike to pain. But if the motive, 
 which nerves the arm, is purely unselfish, the 
 hope of defending, of saving another, to what 
 ingredients in the physical composition of 
 man's nature can this be referred? Can 
 this be resolved into the action of chemical 
 affinities? Anyhow, there is a deliberate act of 
 choice. 
 
 In short, all else that the Determinist con- 
 tends for, may and must in fairness be conceded, 
 if only he stops short of the ultimate decision. 
 Almost overpowering, nay, in some extraordin- 
 ary occasions, quite overpowering, may be the 
 pressure on the Will of imaginations, called up 
 by the senses and intensified by the passions ; 
 still, after all, the final "yes" or "no" is the 
 man himself. It is noteworthy that the keenest 
 of all analysts of human nature, whose delinea- 
 tion of the exquisitely complex elements of 
 man's nature can never really be superseded,
 
 PSYCHOLOGY 9 
 
 makes the supreme act of volition* the main 
 thing, in his psychology, although he never 
 names the Will. 
 
 Apart from this decisiveness of the Will, can 
 the rest of man's organism be resolved into what 
 is merely material ? There is no occasion for 
 philosophy of the impalpable cloudland, where 
 time and space are not; no need even of the 
 Kantian distinction between Reason and Under- 
 standing. It is a question rather for accurate 
 observation than for subtle theories; the 
 psychology of Locke t is more helpful than 
 that of Hegel. Let any thoughtful person 
 trace back his mental or emotional develop- 
 ment so far as he can to its source; stripping 
 off whatever is adventitious ; analysing the 
 processes of thought and emotion into their 
 simplest elements. He will not find there any 
 trace of "innate ideas," true or false, only a 
 capacity (coincident with the perception of self 
 and non-self) of perceiving likeness or unlikeness, 
 and a capacity of being drawn to or repelled by 
 what he likes or dislikes. "This is that 
 
 * YJ Trpoaip&ris, Ethica Nicomach. Cf. Illingworth's Reason 
 and Revelation, pp. 79, 81. 
 
 t Perhaps the " obsolete " philosophy, as Dr Illingworth 
 terms it, of Locke, may outlive the elusive theories, which 
 confound the percipient with the theory perceived. 
 
 B
 
 10 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 This is not that" these are the embryo of all 
 the complex reasonings ever evolved by the wit 
 of man. "This I like This I dislike "here 
 is the initial stage of all that war of passions, 
 which produces what we mean by "character." 
 The intellect by itself, as Aristotle has said, 
 "moves nothing." It supplies the food which 
 the emotive tendrils clutch at or push away. 
 And this material for the emotions to feed upon 
 the intellect takes in primarily through sensation. 
 Abstract reasonings, however abstruse, all have 
 their origin here ; their generalisations are, after 
 all, the product of what the senses reported 
 from the outer world about things one by one. 
 The appetites are sublimated by experience into 
 desire, touch into thought. From the first scene 
 to the last, till the life-drama is played out, the 
 intellect, at the prompting of the emotions, writes 
 down its day-by-day record on what was at first 
 a " clean white page." To the Will is reserved 
 the judicial responsibility of admitting or exclud- 
 ing the paragraph, of retaining it or blotting it 
 out for ever. 
 
 No one who watches the onward progress of 
 physical science will refuse to admit that the 
 dependence of thought and emotion on the 
 material organism, if not yet completely demon-
 
 GENESIS OF THOUGHT AND EMOTION 11 
 
 strated, is far on the way to be. Roughly 
 speaking, the throbs of the brain, the beatings 
 of the heart, the quiverings of the nerves, 
 dominate these processes. Anyone can see that 
 his moods vary according to his digestion, the 
 pace of the blood in his veins, and other similar 
 causes ; science day by day explains more and 
 more certainly the " how " of these things. The 
 succession of ideas obeys a mechanical law of 
 association ; and, though the word " mechanical " 
 may seem out of place if applied to what is so 
 quick to change as an emotion, yet here too can 
 be detected, by careful observation, a close and 
 intimate dependence of our likings and mis- 
 likings on the temperament of the body till 
 the Ego intervenes. Was Sir Walter Raleigh 
 altogether wrong in the cynical lines which he 
 penned in prison, his cry of resentment against 
 an unsympathetic world ? Was Carlyle wrong 
 in making the stomach a factor in what we 
 think and feel? Even on the surface are 
 obvious instances of materiality in the genesis 
 of thoughts and emotions. Unconscious cere- 
 bration suggests how the wheels are busily 
 revolving in the workshop, even while the 
 workman is unaware of it. The lawyer or the 
 scientist puts aside some hard problem to be
 
 12 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 reconsidered by and by ; and when he takes 
 it up again, he finds that without any conscious 
 complicity on his part, his mind has been at 
 work and has disentangled the knot. Perhaps 
 what looks at present inexplicable in telepathy 
 may some day be explained by physical laws 
 akin to those which govern wireless telegraphy. 
 Unaccountable aversions and prepossessions are 
 another exemplification of this mechanical pro- 
 cedure. To call them " instinctive " is no 
 sufficient answer. They come from tempera- 
 ment, and temperament is the result of what 
 goes on in the body. Take, again, Here- 
 dity. What has been ascertained inductively 
 about hereditary tendencies can be reconciled 
 with our traditional beliefs as to right and 
 wrong, only if the moral responsibility of 
 each person is for the right exercise of the 
 Will. 
 
 But it may be replied, Are we then to think 
 of Shakespeare's Plays and Pascal's PensJes as 
 merely the product of a happy predisposition in 
 his bodily equipment, a certain physical confor- 
 mation in the man? Napoleon's strategy and 
 statesmanship, were they due simply and solely 
 to a peculiarly shaped brain, in combination with 
 good digestion, healthy circulation of the blood,
 
 SUZERAINTY OF THE WILL 13 
 
 etc. ? * That would be to exalt the machinery 
 into a sphere which does not belong to it as if 
 the motor-car could guide itself without the 
 guiding hand of the driver. There may be in 
 a man (it is a truism which daily experience 
 confirms) the ability, which is a pre-requisite for 
 great achievement as well as the eager desire to 
 achieve, but unless the Will gives the word of 
 command articulate and resonant, nothing comes 
 of it all. There must be the resolution, the 
 labor improbus, the strenuous effort which 
 nothing daunts. What is this but the word, 
 which the Will utters, and which must be obeyed 
 at all costs ? Sic volo, sic jubeo. 
 
 It may be asked, if the personality of a man 
 is not his mind, nor his emotions, but his voli- 
 tion, and if his affections as well as his thoughts 
 are only a temporary adjunct of the real self; is, 
 therefore, the ideal self independent of them ? 
 In a final stage of development, is the human 
 being conceivable without thought, without 
 affection ? The question comes from a confusion 
 of knowing with the laborious and tedious 
 
 * The definition of Genius as "an infinite capacity for 
 taking pains " puts the result as the cause. Genius is the 
 predisposition, the " bent " in this or that direction, impel- 
 ling to infinite pains in that direction.
 
 14 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 process of reasoning, a confusion of love with 
 passion. Wordsworth (in Laodamia) is wiser : 
 
 " He spake of love, such love as spirits feel, 
 
 In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; 
 No fears to beat away, no strife to heal, 
 
 The past unsigned for, and the future sure ; 
 Worlds which the sun, which sheds the brightest ray 
 Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey." 
 
 Passion may add fuel to the flame ; but the 
 flame itself, the pure perennial flame of Love, is 
 in the Will, sacrificing Self for another. To 
 work out a difficult problem by the ingenuity 
 and perseverance of the reasoning faculties, like 
 the delight of hunting, enhances the joy of 
 knowing, as man is constituted now ; but it is 
 transient and accidental ; it is only the enjoyment 
 which a skilful artisan has in using clever tools. 
 
 Of course the Will is itself shaped and 
 coloured by its corporeal environment ; this con- 
 tact is indeed the discipline, the probation of life 
 to every one. The Will becomes day by day 
 better or worse, by assenting to the impulses, 
 good or evil, which press upon it; and at the 
 last the man himself is what he is, good or bad, 
 great or inglorious, foul or beautiful, in short, 
 selfish or unselfish, according to good or bad 
 influences which he has chosen to assent to.
 
 EXTRANEOUS INFLUENCES 15 
 
 They grow into him, they become a part of him. 
 Of course, influences even more extraneous than 
 these must be taken into account. The circum- 
 stances of a man's life, the events, the person- 
 ages in it, cannot but tell for good or for evil 
 on the man himself. Often there is in these as 
 in the disposition which any one is born with 
 an amount of excuse for aberration, which 
 Omniscience alone can estimate rightly. Excep- 
 tional lives there are, unquestionably, which 
 seem like a driveiiess steam-engine, obedient 
 only to the hand of the pointsman. Still, after 
 making full allowance for exceptions, the Will is 
 arbiter of each man's destiny, if not outward 
 success, but the inward perfecting of Self is the 
 thing aimed at : and the inherent weakness of 
 man's Will can be made strength by the divine 
 Spirit co-operating, Spirit with spirit. 
 
 It is hardly possible to form any conception, 
 consistent with equity, of a future existence, if 
 the mental and emotional equipment allotted to 
 him in this life is to remain an integral part of 
 a man's personality for ever. Those who are 
 ill-equipped at present would of necessity be 
 handicapped in the life to come. But if these 
 things are only the furniture of the house, not 
 the indweller, only the apparel which the man
 
 16 THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 
 
 wears for a time, not the man himself, this 
 unfairness vanishes. The naturally stupid 
 person who is true to his responsibilities, or the 
 person naturally ill-disposed, who conquers his 
 faults, stands on the same level as he who 
 starts in the race endowed with qualities 
 amiable and brilliant. Like the bodily sensa- 
 tions, whence they have "their birth and their 
 beginning," the mental and emotional elements 
 in man's being will be no longer needed, when 
 they have done their part hi the chiselling 
 of the Self. Those who believe that a Power 
 unseen deigns to co-operate with man in his 
 strivings after perfections, can realise that this 
 is the action of Spirit on spirit; the spirit 
 which is in man, his very Self, yielding itself to 
 the guidance of the divine Influence, so that 
 the man may guide rightly the various faculties 
 of his being. The old saying of Descartes, 
 " Cogito, ergo sum" surely should rather be 
 " Volo, ergo sum" After all, Intention, in the 
 true sense of the word, is everything.* 
 
 * These psychologic questions are discussed more fully in 
 my Aristotelianurm (S.P.C.K.), and in my Characteristics of 
 Christian Morality (Parker). M. Taine, following Hobbes, 
 could not have denied the possibility of a scientific study of 
 Psychology so long as the Will is supposed to be free, if he 
 had distinguished the operation, seemingly lawless, of the 
 Will from the mechanical operation of Thought and Emotion.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 BELIEF AND CONDUCT 
 
 " Belief or Unbelief 
 
 Bears upon life, determines its whole course, 
 Begins at the beginning." 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 IN considering the relation of Christianity to 
 morality, it is well to preclude in limine 
 some grave misrepresentations. A Gospel, 
 which, if it means anything, is in its very 
 essence strict and exacting in its moral pre- 
 cepts, not only as to deeds and words but also as 
 to secret thoughts and wishes, has been accused 
 of encouraging laxity and vice, because it 
 encourages sinners to repent and be forgiven.* 
 A Gospel, which heralds peace and forgiveness, 
 and which, whatever else it may be said to 
 omit, certainly lays a paramount stress on 
 inward holiness of intention, has been described f 
 
 * Supernatural Religion. 
 
 t XlXth Century, cxxxiv. (Sir Leslie Stephen). See also 
 subsequent quotations. 
 
 C
 
 18 BELIEF AND CONDUCT 
 
 as "bullying men to act as if they were good." 
 The God of the Christian is spoken of as a 
 "jealous, arbitrary, revengeful tyrant, to be 
 pacified or enraged by mysterious charms," as 
 "taking sheer pleasure in the torment of a 
 sinner," as "exacting a savage and vindictive 
 punishment." That which in the New Testa- 
 ment is a subordinate motive, a counterweight 
 to the terribly alluring seductions of vice, a help 
 towards realising the greatness of the deliver- 
 ance, is made to be the very core of the evangelic 
 teaching ; as if it were the main message of the 
 Gospel, that "all sins lead to infinite sufferings." 
 The self-sacrifice on the Cross, and the love 
 which prompted the guiltless One to identify 
 Himself with the guilty, are summed up in a 
 stereotyped phrase about "God punishing the 
 innocent." Surely this cannot seriously be 
 accepted as an adequate description of Chris- 
 tianity. It is a travesty, a caricature. 
 
 It is surprising, also, to find from a writer of 
 high calibre the assertion which, whatever may 
 have been the errors of theologians, it would not 
 be easy to substantiate even from the testimony of 
 historians inimical to Christianity, that " theology 
 has been opposed to the innovations which 
 contain all possible germs of improvement."
 
 MISREPRESENTATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 19 
 
 And it really seems as if a clever man may be 
 conversant with other subjects, and yet be 
 unconscious of what is going on in regard to 
 religion, when in an age notoriously prolific of 
 religious sects and of religious controversies we 
 read that " the creeds of to-day are not vigorous 
 enough to throw off heretical branches " (p. 372) ; 
 and that " the most intelligent part of the world 
 has ceased to believe." 
 
 Again, and this is of scarcely less importance, 
 it is surely a misstatement of the whole question, 
 to speak as if believers in Christianity claim, that 
 the truth of what they believe can be demon- 
 strated, as if " the demonstrable truth of a 
 religion " were possible, as if the correctness of 
 faith in unseen verities could be proved with the 
 precision of a problem in mathematics. A 
 Christian is represented as saying, "I am 
 absolutely certain that the ultimate cause (of 
 things) is the existence of a Being, of whom I 
 know nothing; it should be, "I have reason 
 sufficient practically for believing (not for being 
 scientifically certain) in the existence of a Being, 
 of whom I know all that I need know for this 
 life." 
 
 On the questions more particularly of the 
 relation of religion to morality, there is often the
 
 20 BELIEF AND CONDUCT 
 
 same apparent inability to appreciate the real 
 standpoint of advocates of Christianity. They 
 are represented as affirming that "morality is 
 caused by a belief in Christianity " ; that " morality 
 dropped from the clouds about 1800 years ago"; 
 that "morality is the product of a particular 
 creed " ; that " Christianity is the ultimate cause 
 of goodwill towards mankind." 
 
 This is to attach an exaggerated meaning to 
 the dependence of morality upon religion. Rather, 
 to say that morality depends upon religion, means 
 not only that, speaking generally, morality finds 
 in true religion the support and the sanction 
 which are needed, but that (as even adversaries 
 must allow) morality is elevated, purified, 
 ennobled by the teaching of Christianity.* 
 
 The creed does not create the consciousness 
 of a distinction between right and wrong, but it 
 enlightens and develops it. It brings out clearly 
 and fully the characters traced, as it were, in 
 invisible ink ; it emphasises and expands man's 
 surmisings about duty and God. In this sense 
 it may fairly be maintained that morality depends 
 upon theology. 
 
 The converse of the proposition is true. 
 
 * " Altruism " is the foster-child, though sometimes 
 unconsciously, of Christianity.
 
 21 
 
 Religion depends upon morality, inasmuch as the 
 strongest appeal which religion makes is an 
 appeal to the enlightened conscience of mankind. 
 Nor is this a " vicious circle of argument," for 
 where the subject-matter is hypothetical and 
 experimental, there must of necessity be recourse 
 to what is nothing more nor less than a mutual 
 corroboration. After all, for practical purposes, 
 if the ethical excellence of Christianity is granted, 
 there is a probability of the dogma being true as 
 well as the precept. To a certain degree this is 
 admitted. " The fact that a creed has long 
 satisfied the intellectual and moral wants of 
 mankind, is a conclusive proof that it has some 
 value," and may serve as a "verification." It 
 would seem to follow that if the ethics of Chris- 
 tianity are unique in their excellence, the creed 
 of which they are an integral part holds a posi- 
 tion, which is unique in its claim to be believed. 
 But it is argued (and paradoxical as it may 
 sound, it is not an argument to be dismissed 
 lightly) that the moral excellence of a religion 
 may, from one point of view, become an argu- 
 ment against the credibility of that religion. 
 " The reasonableness of a belief " may be regarded 
 as that which accounts for its existence. In one 
 sense this is indisputable. " The wish is often
 
 22 BELIEF AND CONDUCT 
 
 father of the thought ; " and if a religion merely 
 formulates what people are ready to acknowledge 
 without its aid, it brings no credentials of this 
 kind worth noticing. But is it so in regard to 
 Christianity? Theologians, it is true, insist on 
 the suitability of the Gospel to the circumstances 
 in which it appeared, that it " was adapted to the 
 various wants of the time." But before proceed- 
 ing to infer that the Gospel was therefore merely 
 the product of the age, it is to be observed that 
 the Gospel was, without question, on many 
 points of great importance diametrically antago- 
 nistic to the age in which it made its appearance. 
 It came sympathising tenderly and profoundly 
 with the needs of humanity, but as every student 
 of history knows, it confronted the inveterate 
 prejudices and prepossessions of the world with- 
 out fear and without favour. It pandered to no 
 selfishness in high nor low. Generally, indeed, 
 "the quality produces the institution" as much 
 as the " institution the quality "; but in the advent 
 of Christianity the antecedents are wanting 
 which could produce it. No theory of evolution 
 can explain the origin and growth of Christianity, 
 if the character of its surroundings is counted in. 
 To infer from the moral loveliness of a creed 
 that the creed is true, is not to say that we
 
 "PIOUS FRAUDS 11 23 
 
 ought to accept the creed whether true or false. 
 We must not believe because we wish it. The 
 advocates of Christianity are accused of this 
 sophism. "The old creed," the advocates of 
 Christianity are made to say, " whether true or 
 false, is so beautiful, so consoling, so edifying, 
 that a world from which it had decayed would 
 be intolerable. 
 
 No one who cares for truth would try to prop 
 up Christianity in this way. The conscience 
 would be killed by the very effort to save it. 
 "A lie as to my religious belief, though 
 dictated by amiable motives, is a lie." "Pious 
 frauds " are abominable. But all this involves a 
 misapprehension. Christians say not, The results 
 of Christianity are so beautiful that we will hold 
 it fast whether truth or fiction ; but, The results 
 of Christianity confirm our faith that Christianity 
 is true. 
 
 The real question underlying all other ques- 
 tions about belief and conduct, is briefly this, 
 Why do we, who call ourselves Christians, 
 believe as we do? " Eight belief," it is said 
 rightly, " is determined by a clear perception of 
 facts." What, then, are the facts on which the 
 belief in Christianity rests ? Why do Christians 
 believe in Christianitv ?
 
 24 BELIEF AND CONDUCT 
 
 The very name supplies the answer, too 
 often missed. Because we trust Him who is the 
 Christ. Too often in controversies about Chris- 
 tianity this seems to be lost sight of. And yet, 
 everything really turns on this. Have we or 
 have we not reason for trusting Him whose life 
 on earth, death, resurrection, and ascension are 
 recorded in the Bible ? The Christian answers, 
 Yes ; because there never has been one like Him, 
 nor can be, perfect in holiness.* If I can elimi- 
 nate sin from my calculations ; if there is no such 
 thing in the world as sin, or if I do not care 
 whether there is or not ; if there is any other than 
 Christ who can help me as effectually to over- 
 come evil with good in myself, in others ; then the 
 argument for me is worth nothing. But if I 
 really long, as did Saul of Tarsus, to conquer this 
 baneful influence corroding, destroying all that is 
 fair and good, and if I cannot find elsewhere 
 what I want to make me able, then the argument 
 draws me to the Christ irresistibly. Difficulties, 
 perplexities, mysteries, there will be still, such as 
 are inherent in a limited intelligence environed 
 by almost limitless experiences, the existence of 
 
 * Apart from all external evidences of the veracity of 
 the Gospel narrative, there is the improbability, or rather 
 impossibility, of a character such as the Character of Christ 
 having been invented.
 
 TRUST IN A PERSON 25 
 
 evil, the compatibility of man's free will with 
 God's omnipotence, and so forth.* But just as 
 men trust a friend, proved a friend, so they 
 trust Christ ; and because they trust Him, they 
 accept all that emanates from Him, doctrine and 
 precept, and they are Christians. Other evi- 
 dences may be subsidiary, but the question, 
 Christian or infidel, must turn on this Is 
 Christ Jesus worthy or not of credence ? 
 
 * What is called "Natural Religion" can at best only 
 make guesses at problems about God, the soul, immortality ; 
 and the attempt to draw from nature a scientific answer to 
 such questionings is futile. But, credence once given to 
 Christ, the answer is provided from His lips. 
 
 D
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 " What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 "THE truth of the Gospel is more widely 
 doubted in Europe than at any time since the 
 conversion of Constantine." A statement like 
 this claims attention, especially if it come, not 
 from an avowed assailant, but from an apparently 
 friendly quarter ; it is a note of warning not to 
 be disregarded by those whose post exposes 
 them to the first shock of the assaults of 
 infidelity. It is their duty patiently to take into 
 account the obstacles which lie in the way of a 
 right belief, and diligently to remove them by 
 solving, to the best of their power, the per- 
 plexities of the age reasonably and with candour. 
 Nor is the statement devoid of truth. No 
 one conversant even slightly with the present 
 literature of England or of Europe can fail to be
 
 CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM 27 
 
 aware how largely it is imbued with a spirit 
 of scepticism. The counter-statement is indeed 
 equally true ; or, rather, the half-truth requires 
 to be complemented from another point of view. 
 Never since the days of Constantine was the 
 Christian faith held with a more intelligent 
 appreciation, with a more matured and de- 
 liberate conviction ; for doubt is the probation of 
 belief. Still, it remains unquestionable, that 
 Christianity is now undergoing a keener trial 
 that any recorded in its history, a strain on its 
 powers of endurance far more severe than ever 
 it experienced from the persecutions of Roman 
 emperors, or even from the subtle questionings 
 of Eastern theosophies. The fact in itself is 
 nothing to excite surprise. Those who observe 
 the connection of cause and affect are prepared 
 to see, as the inevitable consequence of advanc- 
 ing civilisation, less of ready acquiescence in 
 received truths, more of inquisitive research into 
 the reasons for believing. The change is in part 
 intellectual, a result of the advance of inductive 
 knowledge, by which a habit is engendered of 
 appealing from the decisions of the past even in 
 matters which are really untouched by the 
 progress of physical science ; in part moral (and 
 in that respect a change for the worse), a result
 
 28 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 of the self-indulgence and self-confidence which 
 are fostered by civilisation, and which alike 
 shrink from the stern denial of self exacted by 
 the doctrines of the Cross. Such a state of 
 things is accepted by the devout Christian as one 
 of the successive dispensations of Providence, 
 slowly sifting and perfecting the world for the 
 coming of its Lord; and he recognises the 
 fulfilment of a Divine promise in the intenser 
 conflict between good and evil which marks the 
 close of the era. 
 
 The emphatic words which have been quoted 
 on the prevalence of scepticism occur in an Essay 
 which has attracted general notice, not only by 
 its ability, but as indicating the tendencies of 
 thought in this day. Certain difficulties are 
 alleged in the received account of the origin of 
 the three first Gospels ; and an answer is impera- 
 tively demanded on behalf of the laity from those 
 whose province is the study of theology. The 
 object of these pages is not so much to attempt 
 an answer in detail to the objections which are 
 raised, as to show that, whether valid or not, they 
 are not really of such moment as may appear at 
 first sight. A complete investigation of these 
 and similar points may well be left for more 
 elaborate treatises. Meanwhile, it may be of
 
 LONGING FOR LIGHT 29 
 
 service to the cause of truth to show that, even 
 after conceding for the sake of the argument far 
 more than need fairly be conceded, the faith of 
 the Christian Church stands unimpaired, un- 
 shaken, and unaffected by the controversy. 
 
 In these days every thinking person, whether 
 among the laity or clergy, is irresistibly forced to 
 ask himself, " Why do I believe ? " It is of the 
 utmost importance that this question be answered 
 rightly. Those who see clearly what the founda- 
 tion of their Christian faith really is, and how 
 indissolubly the whole superstructure, from base 
 to pinnacle, coheres together, will be com- 
 paratively indifferent to controversies, whether 
 about the Old or even the New Testament, which 
 complicate the question, but are really extraneous 
 to it. The prayer of Ajax for light which may 
 dispel the rolling clouds of scepticism is felt, if 
 not uttered, by many thinkers. There would 
 not be so many who believe in Christianity with 
 only a timid, partial, dubious belief, or who, as 
 Carlyle has expressed it, " only believe that they 
 believe" not so many who are panic-stricken 
 whenever a new theory of scepticism starts into 
 existence, if the great essentials of the faith 
 were grasped more firmly. There would be no 
 need of new "Declarations of Faith," nor of
 
 30 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 new definitions of mysteries, if the ancient 
 creeds were appreciated as they ought to be. 
 Those who are content to hold fast the truth 
 as it comes from Christ and His Apostles, pre- 
 served in the formularies of the Church 
 Catholic, not as fossil-remains but in all the 
 freshness of vitality, need not be alarmed 
 though the waves of controversy surge high 
 round them, for they stand on a rock, "and 
 that rock is Christ." In the great fact of the 
 Incarnation, involving as it does the other 
 articles of the Creed, they have a sure foun- 
 dation which cannot be moved, under their 
 feet, even though the ground on every side 
 round them heave and quake with convulsive 
 throes. 
 
 Before considering the objections which 
 "modern criticism" arrays against the received 
 authorship of the synoptical Gospels, it is 
 important to note the influence of ideas, now 
 widely prevalent, which prejudice the mind 
 against an impartial hearing of the case on its 
 own merits. Faith and Reason are spoken of, 
 not for the first time, as in direct if not violent 
 opposition, as antagonistic to each other. They 
 are opposed not only as abstract qualities, but 
 practically, as respectively characterising separate
 
 REASON AND FAITH 31 
 
 classes of persons. By a broad and arbitrary 
 streak of demarcation, some periods in history 
 are distinguished as " ages of faith " ; while 
 our own, it is implied, is, as the infidels of the 
 eighteenth century called it, the "Age of reason." 
 Similarly, while persons of strong intellect are 
 grouped together on the side of reason, weaker 
 or less mature minds, as those of women and 
 children, are relegated to that of faith. Accord- 
 ingly, a presumption is raised that in this 
 scientific age reason will demolish what faith 
 has constructed in the past. 
 
 There is a great fallacy, and more than one, 
 in such a mode of reasoning. Reason and faith 
 are indeed distinct actions of the mind ; but, far 
 from being contradictory, they are invariably 
 co-existent and inseparably connected. The act 
 of assent, by which the mind embraces any 
 statement proposed for its acceptance, is indeed 
 posterior in time to the act of reasoning ; but it 
 necessarily presupposes the preliminary process 
 to have been performed, more or less correctly. 
 Belief, it matters not whether of spiritual 
 mysteries, of material science, or of the most 
 trivial matters in daily life, there cannot be, 
 except in consequence of reasons sufficient to 
 approve themselves, whether rightly or not, to
 
 32 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 the judgment which pronounces on them. These 
 reasons may be derived from many sources : 
 from the senses, from inductive or deductive 
 processes of thought, from authority ; or from 
 more than one of these sources : the chain of 
 argument which connects the first and last link 
 in the chain may be concise or lengthy, direct or 
 tortuous, compactly welded or insecure and 
 inconsecutive, logically sound or full of flaws, but 
 some reasons for belief, and those of sufficient 
 weight to turn the scale of judgment, there are 
 and must be in every instance. In spiritual 
 questions the faith of St Paul or of Pascal is as 
 truly belief as that of the child ; it rests on a 
 similar foundation, on reasonings deeper and 
 wider, but not more conclusive to the person 
 concerned. The belief of Huxley and of a 
 ploughboy in anything which belongs to the 
 material world is the same act of assent in both, 
 and in both depends on a process of reasoning, 
 although that process may be far more scientific 
 in the one case than in the other. This co-opera- 
 tion of reason and faith is not only invariable, 
 but incessant and continual : for belief is the 
 attitude into which the mind falls naturally, the 
 only position in which it can be at rest. 
 Disbelief is in reality an act of belief: for it
 
 THE ASSENT OF THE INTELLECT 33 
 
 accepts the direct negative of the statement 
 proposed. Even that apparent suspension of 
 judgment which neither affirms nor denies, is a 
 form of belief : for it accepts, as an intermediate 
 proposition, the possibility of either affirming or 
 denying. The infidel believes : for of two pro- 
 positions he embraces that which asserts that 
 certain doctrines are false. Even the Pyrrhonist 
 believes : for he holds that nothing is credible. 
 The opposition, therefore, is in reality not 
 between belief and unbelief, but between belief 
 and misbelief ; not between faith and reason, but 
 between those processes, whether true or false, 
 of the reason, by which the mind makes its 
 decision. Supposing the reasoning faculties to 
 be sound, and to have all necessary information 
 at command, they attain the truth with the 
 regularity of a machine : unless, as happens too 
 often, there is some extraneous hindrance, some 
 interference from the emotive element in human 
 nature, perverting the judgment. All error is 
 the growth either of imperfect knowledge, of 
 imperfect ratiocination, or of some obliquity in 
 the moral nature. Belief will be right or wrong, 
 just as the reasonings on which it depends are 
 good or bad ; but, plainly, far from being in any 
 
 case incompatible with reason, it is, not the 
 
 E
 
 34 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 antithesis of reason, but the necessary sequence 
 and result of it. 
 
 There is no force at all, therefore, in this 
 imaginary distinction between an age of faith 
 and an age of reason ; nor in the consequent 
 assumption that the progress of time is likely to 
 reverse the judgment of former ages, unless it 
 can be shown that time has brought an accession 
 of knowledge bearing on the points in question, 
 or has considerably improved the mental facul- 
 ties, or has removed some moral hindrances 
 which formerly perverted the judgment. When 
 we speak of some persons as being more scepti- 
 cal than others, we mean either that their 
 reasoning faculties, being more developed, require 
 naturally to be more fully enlightened before 
 being convinced, or, as is only too often the case, 
 that excessive self-confidence, indisposing them to 
 receive the testimony of others, or some other 
 moral infirmity, revolting from the truth pro- 
 posed, makes them unwilling to believe.* In the 
 same way, one century may be more credulous 
 than another, either from its faculties for reason- 
 
 * Accession of knowledge does not of necessity make one 
 more sceptical may act vice versd ; e.g., the King of Siam 
 was incredulous about water frozen, till he knew hoic cold 
 acts on fluids.
 
 SELF-RENUNCIATION 35 
 
 ing being more limited, or from a moral pre- 
 disposition towards believing any particular 
 doctrines ; but not otherwise. When it is 
 argued that the nineteenth century, because it 
 is more scientific, is therefore likely to cancel 
 and supersede the faith of the preceding eighteen 
 centuries, it must be shown that in those days 
 there was either an irrational eagerness to em- 
 brace the doctrines of Christianity, or an inade- 
 quacy of information on the subject ; for it cannot 
 be seriously maintained that, apart from the 
 action of these causes, there is any appreciable 
 disparity in the reasoning powers of this and 
 those generations. 
 
 Now it is inconceivable that in any age there 
 should be a proclivity or predilection, in opposi- 
 tion to the dictates of reason, towards doctrines 
 so self-renouncing as those of Christianity. To 
 affirm this of a religion the very essence of which 
 is the complete and continual sacrifice of self, is 
 too paradoxical to require an answer. Nor can 
 it be said that the advance of scientific know- 
 ledge affects the question. For this advance is 
 not in pari materia; it is chiefly, if not solely, 
 in that department of knowledge which, though 
 apt to arrogate to itself exclusively and un- 
 warrantably the name of "science," is bounded
 
 36 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 by the hard confines of the material world ; it 
 is only in knowledge which can be enlarged and 
 corrected by induction, and in which conse- 
 quently the widened observation and additional 
 experience of a later century count for every- 
 thing. But Christianity is no system of geology 
 or of chemistry; its tenets are undisturbed by 
 their discoveries. In the regions of immaterial 
 science in ethic, for instance, or metaphysic 
 it is not so evident that any real progress has 
 been made, except indeed such as may be 
 indirectly traced to Christianity itself. But 
 what if there has been progress here also ? 
 Christianity was not given as a philosophical 
 theory on the soul or on virtue, but for the 
 practical guidance of life. As the revelation of 
 the true relations, inaugurated by itself, between 
 man and the Deity, it is unaffected by the 
 onward march of time. It is vain* to argue, 
 that because certain mediaeval superstitions 
 have crumbled into nothing at the touch of 
 modern science, therefore the work of destruc- 
 tion will be carried further indefinitely. Physical 
 causes may be brought to light, sufficient in 
 themselves to account for this or that circum- 
 stance which was reputed miraculous in the 
 
 * The old " Sorites " fallacy.
 
 REVELATION AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 37 
 
 Middle Ages ; but this is not to prove an 
 universal negative on the subject of miracles. 
 Nor can any conceivable advance of science 
 account for the transcendent truths of a moral 
 and spiritual nature, which are no excrescence 
 to be pared away by the knife, but the very 
 life of Christianity. Let it be granted, for the 
 argument's sake, that modern geology, pre- 
 carious and fluctuating as are its guesses at 
 present, disproves conclusively the Mosaic 
 account of creation ; or, that minute researches 
 into the Judaic history detect undeniable in- 
 accuracies there ; or, that " modern criticism " 
 applied to the Gospels refutes the traditionary 
 account of their authorship ; or that modern 
 science, by elucidating the apparently uniform 
 action of the laws which regulate the universe, 
 places miracles in a new light for revelation 
 does not vouchsafe any theory of the modus 
 operandi manifesting them to be in harmonious 
 accordance with the laws* of the Divine 
 economy, rather than an arbitrary violation of 
 them ; still, amid all these and other vicissi- 
 
 * Some confusion arises in the use of the terms " natural " 
 and " material." That which is a violation of a material law 
 may be in perfect accordance with a law of nature in the 
 larger sense of that term. 
 
 215035
 
 38 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 tudes of thought, the articles of the Christian 
 faith, based as they are on the Word and 
 Person of Christ, as of One proved by His 
 life and death to be the Son of God, would 
 remain the same as before. The vaunt of 
 progress, if closely scrutinised, dwindles into 
 insignificance. It amounts, in fact, to scarcely 
 more than this, that, as time goes on, some 
 phenomena relating to the physical conditions, 
 past and present, of man's life on earth are 
 rescued here and there from the vast surround- 
 ing darkness, as children snatch a few shells 
 and stones from the wave as it recedes from 
 the shore ; while on the frail basis of these 
 scanty phenomena new theories are reared, 
 too often, like the sand castles of the little 
 architects, only to be swept away by the next 
 wave as it rushes in. At all events, if in the 
 knowledge of the material universe progress 
 has been made, there is no reason for the 
 assumption that Christianity is in danger of 
 being confuted, or even modified, by the dis- 
 coveries of modern science. 
 
 History abounds with illustrations of this 
 great truth, often strangely overlooked, that 
 progress of a moral and spiritual kind is not of 
 necessity co-ordinate with progress in material
 
 PROGRESS OF TWO KINDS 39 
 
 knowledge, nor even with that enhanced subtlety 
 of the intellect which accompanies material 
 civilisation. Among the nations before the 
 Christian era, Egypt, China, India, were eminent 
 in the cultivation of material arts and sciences, 
 but not proportionately in their ideas of God 
 and morality. Their debasing superstitions 
 show that in these they were far surpassed by 
 the comparatively inartistic and unscientific 
 tribes of the Hebrews. The Greeks of the day 
 of Pericles were far more advanced than their 
 ruder forefathers in material refinement and 
 intellectual culture ; but their gross and puerile 
 mythology is a declension from that nobler faith, 
 the grand outlines of which loom dimly, because 
 fast fading away, through the tragedies of 
 ^Eschylus. In the history of the world, as in 
 the growth of each individual mind, progress is 
 but another word for increased experience, and 
 is therefore of necessity confined to those 
 subjects our knowledge of which is enlarged by 
 experience. 
 
 The testimony, therefore, of Christendom 
 (during nineteen centuries), or, in other words, 
 of those nations which have proved themselves 
 in moral qualities the foremost in the world 
 during that period, cannot be set aside as of
 
 40 MODERN SCEFPICISM 
 
 little value among the evidences of Christianity ; 
 for the inferiority of those centuries in the 
 physical sciences cannot invalidate their testi- 
 mony on other and higher subjects. Their 
 testimony is valuable also as showing, in point 
 of fact, -what are, and what are not, the 
 doctrines historically transmitted as the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 But it is asserted that the " Anglican " Com- 
 munion (as it is the somewhat pedantic fashion 
 to call it) cannot legitimately make use of this 
 argument; that, owing to the dissensions and 
 disruptions of Christendom, it does not, and 
 cannot fairly, reason from authority in calling on 
 its members to believe. Now it is true, of 
 course, that the English Church does not pro- 
 pound authority as the ultimate reason for 
 belief; it cannot say, as if claiming infallibility, 
 that this or that doctrine must be taken for 
 granted simply on the authority of the Church. 
 But beyond this the assertion has no meaning. 
 So far as the doctrines of the English Church are 
 common to all Christian communities and in 
 this point of view the concurring testimony even 
 of those communities which have separated 
 themselves from the Church Catholic is of weight 
 this unanimous consent is a valid argument.
 
 THE ARGUMENT FROM AUTHORITY 41 
 
 So far as the doctrines are distinctively peculiar 
 to itself, there is the appeal to the earliest 
 Christian centuries ; and on no other ground than 
 this can answer be made adequately to those 
 who dissent from these doctrines on either side. 
 That what is new in spiritual matters, is not 
 likely to be true, and that the old ways are best, 
 are as much axioms of the English Church now 
 as before the sixteenth century, and may be used 
 now with more consistency. The very instance 
 often quoted to the contrary is really an instance 
 to this effect. The doctrine of a material change 
 in the consecrated elements is rejected, because 
 it is believed to be an innovation on the faith 
 transmitted from Apostolic times. This is 
 invariably the test which the English Church 
 applies to any doctrine, its guiding principle in 
 accepting or disallowing it. The great character- 
 istic of the English Prayer-book is, that it is 
 essentially derived from the ancient symbols and 
 formularies of the Church. There are other and 
 deeper reasons for believing in Christianity, 
 reasons which underlie this argument from 
 authority, that is, from the testimony of former 
 generations. But it is this argument which for 
 all persons presents itself to the mind first in 
 order of time ; for the poor and unlearned this is 
 
 F
 
 42 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 the only argument within reach, except that 
 greatest of all arguments which rises from the 
 practical assent of the conscience. As determin- 
 ing historically what the Christian faith really 
 was in apostolic and sub-apostolic times, this 
 argument is, so far as it can be ascertained, con- 
 clusive for Christians. In both senses, whether 
 as historical evidence to prove what are really 
 the doctrines of Christianity, or as one of the 
 cumulative evidences for the truth, the Church of 
 England, notwithstanding her isolated position, 
 can fairly use it; for on the cardinal points of 
 the faith the appeal is made to the consent of the 
 Christian world, on points in dispute to that of 
 Christian antiquity. In neither sense is the force 
 of the argument from authority in danger of 
 being weakened by modern discoveries. 
 
 It is characteristic of the exaggerated im- 
 portance attached to the sometimes crude theo- 
 risings of modern scepticism, that the effect 
 produced through Europe by M. Renan has 
 been compared to the electric shock of Luther's 
 writings in the sixteenth century. Certainly 
 Luther's fellow-countrymen would not admit 
 the comparison. The rationalists of Germany 
 repudiated M. Kenan's rhapsodies. Even in 
 Paris, where the social atmosphere is such as
 
 THE NEOLOGY OF RENAN 43 
 
 to predispose men to welcome an attack on 
 Christianity under the guise of a sentimental 
 enthusiasm, and where logical precision with 
 symmetry of method and elegance of style go far 
 to outweigh deeper considerations, even in Paris 
 his influence has been only transient. His specu- 
 lations are not likely to gain even a momentary 
 ascendancy where, as in England, there is an 
 instinctive repugnance to unreality in every 
 shape. 
 
 Such theories as those of Strauss and Renan 
 carry in themselves their own refutation. They 
 contain an admission of all that the advocate of 
 Christianity need require as the postulates of 
 his belief. The conclusions at which the sceptic 
 arrives are often strangely inconsistent with the 
 premises which he cannot altogether exclude 
 from his scheme. There these admissions 
 remain, an unacknowledged and unintentional 
 evidence for the very truths against which he is 
 contending. Thus when he allows, as M. Kenan 
 does, the authenticity, even in the barest and 
 most general sense, of the narrative comprised 
 in the Gospels, he encounters an insuperable 
 difficulty. He cannot explain that narrative in 
 any intelligible manner except on the supposi- 
 tion which is the basis of the Christian faith
 
 44 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 without either an absolute denial, or a palpable 
 distortion equivalent to denial, not of particular 
 details here and there, but of all which is dis- 
 tinctive in the narrative, of that which pervades 
 it from beginning to end, of that which alone 
 gives life and coherence to its parts. ' L'Evangile 
 selon Kenan,' as it has been termed, differs from 
 the Gospel of the New Testament, not in this 
 or that particular, but throughout, in substance, 
 in character, in essence. It is only necessary to 
 place the two narratives side by side : the 
 unlikeness is self-evident. 
 
 For the Christ of this neology is not in any 
 true sense the Christ of the Gospels. It is a 
 being different not in degree but in kind. The 
 Christ of the neo-evangels is a man, gifted indeed 
 in greater or less measure with qualities that win 
 affection and respect, but with more or less of 
 alloy in his composition ; at the best only a 
 man. The Christ of the Gospels is presented to 
 us as of unique excellence, as the incarnation of 
 Deity. On the theories of Strauss and Kenan it is 
 simply impossible to account for the idea of Christ 
 which confronts us in every page of the Gospels, 
 as of a Person divine though wearing the form 
 and nature of men. What has been often said 
 as to the impossibility of the character of Christ
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST 45 
 
 having been a mere invention of any human 
 imagination, is true of that character as we find 
 it in the Gospels, and as we do not find it in 
 these humanising versions of them. L'inventeur 
 en serait plus etonnant que le he'ros. For the 
 Christ pourtrayed in the Gospels is a Being, 
 sinless, though tempted, without moral frailty or 
 infirmity, holy and wise in a superhuman degree. 
 The difference between Christ so depicted and 
 others, the best and wisest of the human race, 
 is not the difference between persons more or 
 less faulty, not between good men and one who 
 is better, but between One who is without 
 the least moral blemish and others who are all 
 more or less imperfect. For, though described 
 in the Gospels as sharing in all the ordinary 
 physical conditions of man's nature, Christ is 
 there without taint or speck of moral evil. His 
 teaching and His life both bear this impression 
 of perfection. His teaching is marked by a 
 sublimity of moral and spiritual wisdom which 
 far transcends the highest attainments of the 
 Jewish or Gentile world ; by precepts and 
 doctrines new to those who heard them, but 
 recognised at once, when uttered, in their innate 
 sovereignty over the conscience ; by great truths 
 not dimly adumbrated as by the lips of Jewish
 
 46 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 seers, nor evolved to a hesitating and faltering 
 conclusion by a laborious process of guesses and 
 surmises as in the Platonic Dialogues, but 
 enounced clearly and " with authority," in all the 
 fullness of insight, in a tone and with a manner 
 which, while thrilling the depths of man's nature, 
 is yet majestically calm and composed, and 
 perfectly free from superficial excitement. No 
 wonder that those who heard Him said that " He 
 spake as never man spake." And of whom else 
 could it be said without reserve, " He hath done 
 all things well ? " What other life has ever been 
 marked in its every aspect, in each word and 
 deed, without even a momentary shadow of 
 inconsistency, by that which is the principle of 
 all moral excellence, pure and unalloyed un- 
 selfishness, manifested in the unresting activity 
 of its benevolence, in its entire resignation under 
 suffering, in its complete devotion of self in 
 order to do good to others and to do the will of 
 Heaven ? What other life in respect of truth and 
 purity will bear a close and microscopic inspec- 
 tion but this ? What other is marked by a width 
 of benign sympathy co-extensive with the whole 
 human family, yet tenderly discriminative for 
 eacli individual ; by a simplicity and gracious 
 dignity of demeanour (very unlike the undignified
 
 CHRIST IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 47 
 
 grotesqueness of the great moralist of Athens) 
 never lost for a moment ; by an unerring insight 
 into the hearts of men ; by the unvarying serenity 
 of an unclouded conscience, and of the most 
 intimate communion with His Heavenly Father 
 in short, by qualities not one of which in 
 anything like perfection can be descried even 
 singly in the recorded life of any saint, hero, or 
 philosopher, but which are all in their combined 
 perfections to be seen in Him ? * It cannot be 
 disputed that this, and far more than this, is the 
 representation of Christ in the Gospel ; nor that 
 the Christ of neologians is something very far 
 short of this. Such a development of human 
 nature as this, and in the person of a poor 
 Galilean of the age in which Christ lived, is 
 superhuman and divine. 
 
 Whence, then, has this conception of Christ, 
 this image of perfect humanity, found its way 
 into the Gospels except from reality ? That 
 the followers of Christ should have been led, 
 even by the wildest fanaticism or by the most 
 shameless audacity of imposture, to assign 
 divine attributes at all to such a person as He 
 
 * The argument for the divinity of Christ from his char- 
 acter on earth is well enforced at length in The Christ of 
 History, by J. Young, LL.D. (Allan).
 
 48 MODERN SCEPTICISM 
 
 was according to the Vie de Jesus, is highly 
 improbable. But it is simply impossible that 
 they should have been able to imagine or invent 
 a character so ineffably worthy of love and 
 reverence, so far transcending the highest 
 examples to be found in history or fiction. 
 The result of all these futile attempts to 
 eliminate the divine element from the person 
 of Christ is to leave, on the one hand, as 
 historical, a narrative inconsistent with itself, 
 unmeaning, and palpably unreal, and, on the 
 other hand, a faultless character which appeals 
 to all that is good in man's nature more per- 
 suasively and commandingly than the noblest 
 utterances of Greek philosophy as the inven- 
 tion either of the Evangelists, whose names the 
 Gospels bear, or of others in a literary point 
 of view as obscure as they. These neological 
 theories confute themselves. It is inexplicable 
 that One, who lived and died a Galilean peasant, 
 should have been even what they allow Him 
 to have been, unless He were indeed something 
 far greater. It is inexplicable, again, that the 
 divine features, which they expunge from His 
 life, should ever have been imputed to any one, 
 and, most of all, to one in those circumstances, 
 unless they actually existed. The evangelic
 
 CHRIST AS MAN PERFECT 49 
 
 narrative, with the whole superstructure of the 
 Creeds of Christendom, rests on the foundation 
 of truth, purity, and love ; in other words, on 
 the perfect wisdom and goodness embodied in 
 the Person of Christ Jesus. 
 
 G
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 "'Ev Be (f>aei KCU oAtoxroi/." 
 
 IT is often alleged by those who have called 
 themselves " Agnostics," that observation is the 
 basis of all knowledge, and that this basis is 
 wanting to Christianity.* Is this allegation 
 true? 
 
 Let it be granted at once that observation 
 is primary, paramount, indispensable in acquir- 
 ing knowledge. How the "I" touches that 
 which is not "I," how the brain works, are 
 curious topics for physiology and psychology ; 
 but, however these questions may be answered, 
 the solid fact remains, that observation is the 
 
 * See, particularly, the late Professor Huxley's Essay on 
 the "Foundations of Belief" in The XlXth Century, March, 
 1895. In Professor Huxley was a rare combination of 
 literary as well as of scientific excellence, and a brilliant 
 instance how a specialist can survey the horizon, and a 
 scientist can be also a philosopher. 
 
 50
 
 KNOWING COMES FROM OBSERVING 51 
 
 first and last test of truth and falsehood. Call 
 it experience, perception, induction, what we 
 will, observation alone is a sure basis for the 
 processes of reason. 
 
 But this basis of all knowing is not the 
 observation of the individual observer only ; it 
 is the sum total of the observation of all who 
 have bequeathed a trustworthy record of actual 
 experience. If he is reasonably sure that this 
 testimony may be relied upon, the student 
 to-day avails himself of this legacy from the 
 past, at any rate till it is corrected by fresh 
 experience still more convincing. Whether in 
 the trivial doings of daily life or in the more 
 exacting requirements of the study and the 
 laboratory, we all build continually on the 
 foundations laid by others, and we accept their 
 conclusions, unless superseded by evidence more 
 cogent and more complete. Possibly the 
 observation which comes to me second-hand, 
 though to me personally impalpable, may be 
 better than my own (for experience by hearing 
 is experience), if I am assured that it is the 
 result of honest, competent observation, and 
 has not been impaired in transmission. Other- 
 wise induction, except the narrowest, would be 
 impossible, and the onward march of science
 
 52 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 would be paralysed, for each successive student 
 would have to begin his task anew, where his 
 predecessors began. The isolated toilers of 
 each generation would work on single-handed 
 to the end. Men would be like the lower 
 animals, incapacitated for co-operation. 
 
 But observation must be taken in its full 
 sense. Man's faculty of observing is not limited 
 to the perception of material objects, though all 
 knowledge in its rudimentary stage seems to 
 start from the senses. The phenomena of the 
 moral as well as of the material world are within 
 the scope of his observation in the pages of 
 history, and in the daily experience of life. 
 Indeed, the phenomena resulting from and bear- 
 ing witness to character are, in one aspect, when 
 ascertained, more to be relied upon than material 
 phenomena, inasmuch as there is nothing within 
 the range of man's intelligence less uncertain 
 than the existence of right and wrong morally. 
 Observation takes note of these ethical character- 
 istics in the life, death, teaching of Jesus Christ, 
 and finds therein a reasonable justification for 
 giving credence to Him. There are many cor- 
 roborating lines of thought ; and yet, after all, 
 the Personality of Christ is enough in itself to 
 justify His claim to be what He claims to be.
 
 OBSERVATION MUST BE TRUSTWORTHY 53 
 
 If, then, the informant or teacher is credible, 
 and if he deals with the topics, about which he 
 may be trusted, it is not unreasonable to accept 
 his teaching. If Faraday, Herschel, Huxley, 
 tell us what they know, their knowledge becomes 
 ours, so far as we are capable of receiving it. If 
 the Teacher on the Mount tells us of right and 
 wrong, of duty and conscience, of the happiness 
 which is inward, intrinsic, inalienable, we ought 
 to listen, for, being unique in holiness, He speaks 
 of what He knows. If the Christ taught of 
 gravitation or electricity, if He elaborated a 
 philosophy of ethics, we might demur. But 
 when He tells men, as none other has ever 
 told them, how to overcome the evil in 
 themselves and around them, it is reasonable 
 to give credence to One, who is alone with- 
 out flaw or imperfection of all the sons of 
 men. 
 
 So much will be granted by some, at least, of 
 those who reject Christianity. The perfectly 
 good man, they allow, is privileged to speak of 
 goodness,* of right and wrong, of the meaning 
 and motive of morality. Unicuique in arte sud 
 
 * The question of the genesis of morality is separate from 
 the question whether or not there is such a thing as morality. 
 There is evolution here, as in the material world.
 
 54 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 credendum. They listen with reverence to the 
 Sermon on the Mount ; they demur when Christ 
 speaks of God and heaven. Man's knowledge of 
 God, they say, is essentially different in kind 
 from material science. 
 
 In reply it may be urged reasonably, that 
 goodness is connected very closely, if not inex- 
 tricably, with the idea of God. For every duty 
 implies a person, to whom it is due ; and the 
 highest conception of duty implies the highest of 
 Personalities. The almost universal consent of 
 mankind connects the notion of sin with the 
 notion of a God. If man needs forgiveness and 
 amendment, the convictions of conscience lead 
 him to look to God. Therefore, when the 
 Perfect Man tells us that He is the Eternal 
 Son of God, He is not diverging from His 
 own specialty. By parity of reasoning, He is 
 entitled to our belief about this as about con- 
 duct in our lives. Unicuique in arte sud 
 credendum. 
 
 Waiving this, however, the perfect holiness of 
 Christ in another way accredits His teachings, 
 even when they are to us transcendent and 
 mysterious. For His sincerity is not questioned ; 
 it is an inseparable property of goodness. He 
 cannot deceive intentionally. Nor can it be
 
 CUIQUE IN SUA ARTE CREDENDUM 55 
 
 objected reasonably in His case, that even good- 
 ness may err, outside its own sphere, through 
 unreasonable enthusiasm. For the self-imposed 
 limitations of Christ in teaching are very re- 
 markable. If He taught what is to be learnt 
 through human investigation, His authority on 
 things spiritual would be less. But even on His 
 own domain Christ limits His scope carefully, 
 on the one hand propounding no theoretical 
 scheme of morality, founding no school of 
 philosophy ; on the other hand refusing to 
 arbitrate on the application of the law or of the 
 principle in particular cases.* Because He 
 disclaims authority in other things, He is all the 
 more entitled to it when He claims it. If a 
 friend shows himself worthy of credence, 
 while speaking of things within my compre- 
 hension, as of truth, purity, kindness, it is no 
 unreasonable presupposition that he is right, 
 when speaking of things which transcend my 
 reason. 
 
 There are, no doubt, many other evidential 
 lines of thought converging in Christianity, 
 accumulative and corroborative of the faith of a 
 Christian. But, after all, the reason of reasons 
 is Christ Himself. By this test the faith of His 
 
 * " Who made Me a judge or divider among you? "
 
 56 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 followers must stand or fall. At the present 
 time, more than ever, this is recognised by 
 adherents and opponents alike. It is a reason- 
 able test for all who do not deny that there is a 
 right and wrong morally. It is not for the 
 clever or cultivated only, but for all. It is a 
 practical test, for unless I am conscious of a 
 defect in myself, which none but He can 
 supply, unless I appreciate the beauty of His 
 holiness, unless I hunger and thirst to become 
 better than I am, unless I am grateful for 
 love passing imagination, the call "Come 
 unto Me" falls on my ears meaningless and 
 inane. 
 
 There cannot be demonstrative evidence 
 of Christianity. Demonstration would exclude 
 faith. The willing surrender of self to the 
 Holiest would be compulsory and mechanical. 
 In theory, " a state of mind between knowledge 
 and no-knowledge " may be " a nonentity philo- 
 sophically." * In theory, "the merest glimmer 
 is as much non-darkness as broad sunlight." t 
 When St Paul says, "I know in whom I have 
 believed," the word may be in theory indefen- 
 sible, if "to know" means the certitude of an 
 exact science. But for all practical purposes 
 
 * Huxley. See before. f Ibid.
 
 PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE 57 
 
 the word is true. For in the twilight of our life 
 here other knowing cannot be; St Paul knew 
 the trustworthiness of the Christ, that He is 
 able and willing to " save to the uttermost" all 
 who come to Him. 
 
 H
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MIRACLES 
 " Law in the universe is irrefragable." Sin OLIVER LODGE. 
 
 THE standpoint in theology (as in all depart- 
 ments of thought) is not the same in England 
 now as it was sixty years ago. How can it be ? 
 Every succeeding generation presents to itself 
 its thoughts about things invisible with a differ- 
 ent environment, as the waves of advancing 
 knowledge overtake one another. We are not 
 at the end of the process yet. After all, if 
 that which is essential and vital remains, the 
 environment matters not very much. Indeed 
 it is gain, if, as is the law in the evolution of 
 things, the standpoint shifts continually more 
 and more from the innocent wonderment of 
 childhood to a more intelligent appreciation. 
 A clever* disputant can prove easily enough 
 that the authority of Paley and Butler is not 
 
 * XlXtk Century, No. cccxx. " Religious Apologetics."
 
 TRUTH, IDEAL AND ACTUAL 59 
 
 what it was in their own period. Can he show 
 that Christianity is therefore exploded ? 
 
 It would be, to say the least, a rather hasty 
 way of generalising to class Butler with Paley 
 as an "Old Bailey advocate" for Christianity. 
 Butler's reasoning is built too much on " natural 
 religion," which is certainly an insecure founda- 
 tion, although not so regarded by Butler's 
 opponents, the Deists. Still, with this limita- 
 tion, Butler's is quite another kind of argument 
 from Paley's way of putting the apostles into 
 the witness-box and cross-examining them, in 
 order to extract the truth from their lips. 
 Perhaps there is rather too much of the " Old 
 Bailey advocacy" in the peremptory demand 
 for eye-witness of the Resurrection and the 
 Incarnation. 
 
 The truth that is what every honest thinker 
 wants to find. But there are two meanings of 
 the word, and it is of importance not to confuse 
 them nor to put the lower before the higher. 
 I am not speaking of the subjective meaning 
 of the word,* which is what we call " sincerity," 
 but of truth objective so far as man can grasp 
 it. There is truth actual, and there is truth 
 ideal. We want Plato again among us, to 
 
 * Truth, "what each man troweth" Home Tooke.
 
 60 MIRACLES 
 
 remind us which of these two aspects of truth 
 is to take precedence.* The mere archaeologist 
 will probably say, Give me facts, figures, names. 
 Those with a deeper insight and a wider survey 
 of man and his capacities, know that the truths 
 which transcend others are not ponderable nor 
 measurable, nor can be tested by the fallacious, 
 treacherous experience of the senses. Try to 
 ascertain precisely what took place on any 
 occasion, in private life or public, and even 
 from trustworthy witnesses you get statements 
 conflicting one with another. But the funda- 
 mental laws of right and wrong have a general, 
 if not a universal, consent, which even a 
 Pyrrhonist cannot put aside as of no account. 
 To know the exact distance of our planet from 
 the sun is like the answer to an amusing 
 riddle. To know that it is worse to cheat than 
 to be cheated is a step onward in the growth 
 of a race or of an individual. Unless the 
 controversies about religion start from ethical 
 principles, they are merely "beating the air." 
 
 Before taking for granted that " miracles are 
 discredited" and that the "supernatural" must 
 be ruled out of court, it is well to define what is 
 
 * Those who prefer it can read Plato now in Jowett's 
 translation.
 
 "MIRACULOUS" MEANS "WONDERFUL" 61 
 
 meant by these terms. Probably there are very 
 few educated persons now who regard an alleged 
 " miracle " as an arbitrary interruption of a law 
 of nature. The word itself tells its own story ; 
 it is something wonderful. The same pheno- 
 menon which nowadays is clearly explained by 
 physical causes may be a wonder, a sign, a 
 portent to men in other ages or in other countries. 
 It served its purpose if it startled the careless 
 and fixed their attention on what might 
 otherwise have been disregarded. So far as a 
 " miracle " is the outcome of an extraordinary 
 combination and adjustment of ordinary forces 
 as when in an emergency the east wind drives 
 back the waters* it is objectively as well as 
 subjectively a miracle, for to effect this combina- 
 tion and adjustment is beyond the power of man. 
 But obviously the thing is quite as truly 
 "miracle" if at the time and in given circum- 
 stances it seems inexplicable although it shall be 
 resolved into the operation of natural laws as 
 physical science moves on. 
 
 In this sense it would be rash to say that 
 miracles are "discredited," or to prophesy that 
 they ever will be. "Wonders never cease." 
 The horizon recedes as science advances. That 
 
 * E.g., Exodus x. 19; xiv. 21.
 
 62 MIRACLES 
 
 the miracle no longer holds so prominent a place 
 in the thoughts of believers in Christianity as in 
 patristic, mediaeval post-Reformation periods, is a 
 truism. When a missionary lands on a far-away 
 island, hitherto unvisited by Europeans, the fact 
 that he comes across the ocean in a ship 
 commands the reverence of savages. He seems 
 miraculous, and they are predisposed to hear 
 him. But this is only the preface to the book. 
 What he has to tell them must appeal to the 
 conscience, which responds, however faintly, in 
 everyone to such an appeal. So it is, so it has 
 been, in the history of the world. It is the 
 message itself that concerns mankind. The 
 credentials of the messenger are merely prefatory. 
 A very able lecturer,* speaking recently of 
 miracles, gave " four possible categories " to one 
 or other of which any alleged miracle is to be 
 assigned: "(i.) An orderly and natural though 
 unusual portent; (ii.) a disturbance due to 
 unknown . . . capricious agencies; (Hi.) a utilisa- 
 tion by mental or spiritual power of unknown 
 laws; (iv.) direct interposition of the Deity." If 
 by "capricious agencies" are meant the fairies or 
 wizards of Demonology, the second of these 
 hypotheses need not be taken into account 
 
 * Sir Oliver Lodge at Birmingham, November, 1904.
 
 MIRACLES REGARDED SUBJECTIVELY 63 
 
 seriously. The first and third may be taken 
 together as signifying an extraordinary result 
 produced by laws known to us or unknown, and 
 the fourth as signifying an arbitrary interference 
 of the Deity with the order of the universe. For 
 those, then, who believe that all things move by 
 law, and who believe also in an omniscient and 
 omnipotent Lawgiver, directing all things, the 
 question is simply : Is the alleged miracle, 
 supposing the fact to have been ascertained, an 
 apparent violation of law or not ? The supreme 
 Ruler of the world can so control the action 
 of His laws by adjusting and regulating their 
 coincidence, as to produce a result, such as 
 human ingenuity cannot, by the concurrence of 
 various forces. 
 
 The lecturer spoke of a possible explanation 
 of a miracle as " a utilisation of unknown laws 
 by mental or spiritual forces." The word mental 
 is hardly needed here, if physical science indicates 
 more and more clearly that mental processes can 
 be resolved into physical, and that in reality the 
 Will is the only spiritual energy. Anyhow, the 
 utilisation of laws known or unknown so as to 
 produce a " portent " seems the true explanation 
 of what is meant by " miracle " or " miraculous." 
 The very term speaks for itself; it is a some-
 
 64 MIRACLES 
 
 thing wonderful, awful, portentous. Instead of 
 ontological guessings, what we have to do is, to 
 regard the miraculous in its bearing on those 
 who are affected by it. The relativity of things, 
 as Aristotle affirmed,* is what we are concerned 
 with, unless our philosophy is to lose itself in the 
 clouds. This is within our cognisance ; the 
 other is not. The effect of a miracle is obvious. 
 It arrests attention, it startles indifference, it 
 wakens the dormant consciousness otherwise 
 impervious to the Message ; it opens the way for 
 truth which might otherwise fail to win a hear- 
 ing. "Law in the universe is irrefragable." 
 But by coming to men as abnormal, a miracle 
 quickens and incites. An essential test of the 
 miraculous is, the congruity of it or the incongruity 
 with what the general consent of mankind deems 
 to be right ethically. Here at least we have sure 
 footing ; this at least we can know, even if other 
 things by their perpetual flux and reflux baffle 
 and elude our knowledge. 
 
 If, then, miracles are to be regarded subjec- 
 tively rather than objectively, it follows, that 
 what is miraculous at one time, in one place, to 
 one set of persons, may be explicable in itself 
 as with time advances experience. Thus the 
 
 s, not a.TrX.ios Ethica Nicomach.
 
 LAW AND LAWGIVER 65 
 
 miracles of one age may be no miracles to 
 another. If at the time when it occurred the 
 incident was awe - striking, because inexpli- 
 cable, to those who were aware of it, it was 
 miraculous, even though a wider, deeper insight 
 can discover that it followed the operation of 
 natural laws. Fuller knowledge discloses more 
 and more the modus operandi in things ; and, 
 if not in this life, yet beyond it, the incessant 
 permeance of law and the unsleeping vigilance 
 of the Lawmaker through all the wonders of 
 the universe will surely manifest themselves 
 completely. 
 
 The crucial question is, whether we are to 
 believe in a stupendous machine self-working, 
 or in a machine guided and controlled by the 
 machinist. To this, questions of detail are 
 altogether subordinate. The origin of life, for 
 example, "on this planet" whether it was by 
 instantaneous Fiat or by slow, patient, develop- 
 ment matters little. If the progress of physical 
 science shows that the word "creation" in its 
 popular use is a misnomer, this involves no 
 contradiction between Science and Religion. 
 Rather the forethought implied by evolution 
 is more consonant with the attributes of Omni- 
 science. The wisdom which can evolve by the
 
 66 MIRACLES 
 
 interaction of many conflicting laws a result 
 unattainable by the wisdom of man, is super- 
 human. The revelation, from outside himself, 
 which man needs, and which comes to him in 
 proportion to his need, is not of what he can 
 discover for himself by his investigations, but a 
 revelation of God in His power, holiness, love, 
 and of man in his actual limitations, his potential 
 illimitability. And this revelation is found, not 
 in the surmises of Natural Religion, but in the 
 Person of Christ. 
 
 An intelligent Christian accepts what is 
 incomprehensible to him in Christianity, because 
 he has ethical reasons for giving credence to 
 Christ, for trusting Him. He does not base 
 his faith in Christ on miracles alleged of Him, 
 though these may have helped to gain a 
 hearing for the Gospel in the first promulgation 
 of it. Satisfied reasonably of the trustworthiness 
 of the Person who claims his allegiance, he is 
 content to take on trust what he cannot 
 explain. 
 
 The real question then is, Are the moral 
 credentials of the Christ adequate ? Do they 
 justify the surrender of Self to Him? By this 
 test Christianity must stand or fall. This is a 
 question which modern criticism even of the
 
 UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST 67 
 
 New Testament does not touch. The Person- 
 ality of Jesus is unique. It cannot have been 
 invented. Whatever uncertainty there may be 
 as to the names and dates of the writers or 
 compilers of the several narratives, whatever 
 inaccuracies may be detected in this or that 
 paragraph, the ethical character of the Teacher 
 and of His teaching stands above these minutiae. 
 Of none else in the world's history could it be 
 truly predicated, "He hath done all things 
 well"; "No man ever spake like this Man." 
 
 The objection that we have only a portion, 
 a fragment of His life, is hardly to be considered. 
 As Owen or Cuvier could construct the extinct 
 mammal from the foot only, or the thigh, so from 
 what has been preserved in the record of Chris- 
 tianity, it is easy to see the rest. Indeed, the 
 silence of the life preparatory to the ministry and 
 the self-effacement in Nazareth, some thirty 
 years, are more eloquent than words. Had He 
 come into the world to assert Himself, it might 
 have been otherwise. He came to save. 
 
 The old objection is repeated again and 
 again against the incidents of the swine in 
 Decapolis, and the barren fig- tree. The old 
 answer might suffice, that those two incidents 
 stand alone ; that, as destructive, they are the
 
 68 MIRACLES 
 
 notable exceptions to the law of beneficence 
 exemplified in the dealings of Christ, and that 
 by their very contrast they serve to emphasise 
 the love which manifested itself on other occasions. 
 It might be enough to leave these incidents 
 unexplained and inexplicable, on the ground that 
 the confidence placed in the Christ (for valid 
 reasons) is strong enough to justify doing so. 
 In the case of a friend who has proved himself 
 in other ways worthy of our loyalty, we are not 
 alarmed even though some things in his conduct 
 seem inexplicable. The misgiving is outweighed 
 and stilled by other prevailing considerations. 
 But, surely, to those who realise what sin is, 
 there is no need to go far in search of an 
 explanation of this apparent severity. In both 
 Gadara and Bethany there is, for those who care 
 to see it, an object-lesson, more telling than 
 language, of the awfulness of submission to evil. 
 This it is which underlies all questions of the 
 credibility of Christianity. Leave this out, and 
 the Gospel is not, cannot claim to be, what the 
 word denotes ; the " good tidings " are not worth 
 having, the whole narrative is a tissue of im- 
 possibilities. But if any one knows the need 
 for forgiveness, if anyone hungers and thirsts to 
 be set free from the tyranny of evil, then the
 
 NON-CHRISTIAN ETHICS 69 
 
 appearance on earth of a " Son of Man," 
 altogether sinless, who comes to rescue man from 
 an evil power too strong for him unaided, is 
 the master-key to problems of life otherwise 
 insoluble ; and if His presence on earth brings 
 with it much that is to finite capacity incompre- 
 hensible, this is the inevitable accompaniment 
 and sequence of His coming. The life and 
 death of Christ are evidence of the marvels of 
 Bethlehem, of the Sepulchre, and of Mount 
 Olivet. 
 
 Of course it is easy to cite other instances of 
 high ethical teaching and, what is more, of high 
 practice from other lives. The conscience of 
 mankind, sometimes feebly remonstrating, some- 
 times upbraiding boldly, is for ever making its 
 protest for right against wrong, ever aspiring 
 upwards, a flame that cannot be kept down. 
 But sin is selfishness, and the perfect unalloyed 
 unselfishness of the Christ in life as in teaching 
 is a thing different from the self-annihilation of 
 Buddha or the self-elaboration for Self's sake 
 of the philosophy which culminates in the lofty 
 but sterile ethics of M. Aurelius. Let it once 
 be realised that self-seeking, however dressed 
 up in almost countless disguises, is the essential 
 quality of sin ; and that self-sacrifice for others'
 
 70 MIRACLES 
 
 sake is the training of man for his most complete 
 development, and the enigma of life is solved. 
 The pain and suffering on earth which seem 
 superficially irreconcilable with a just and kind 
 providence are the probation for perfection. 
 
 Nor is it only within the four corners of the 
 New Testament that this moral testimony 
 supports the claim of the Christ to be the " Son 
 of God made man." The subsequent influence 
 of Christianity on the world, what it has done 
 and does in every age, in every land, must be 
 counted in. Prescription by itself is nothing : it 
 may be cited for any and every abuse ; even the 
 permanency* in the world of Christianity, its 
 endurance through all the vicissitudes of time, in 
 spite, too, of monstrous inconsistencies in those 
 who have professed it, cannot be insisted on as 
 irrefutable. But the practical fruit of Christianity 
 in the lives, however sparse, of those who have 
 made it real, is an argument which cannot be 
 resisted, so long as the antagonism is recognised 
 between vice and virtue. Such a career as that 
 of Saul of Tarsus is an evidence in itself for the 
 truth of the Gospel. What drew him over to 
 the side of Christ from the front rank of 
 
 * The Permanence of Christianity. Bampton Lectures, 1868. 
 Rev. Canon J. R. T. Eaton, M.A.
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF SAINTS 71 
 
 opponents was the very motive which is the 
 root of all real Christianity, a longing for perfect 
 holiness in a world, to say the best, of a very 
 mixed character. Men and women like Xavier 
 and Elizabeth Fry, books like the Imitatio, the 
 Christian Year, the Pilgrim's Progress, will be, 
 to the end of time, impregnable against cavillings, 
 however ingenious, about the precise accuracy of 
 the sacred records. Can any other teacher (asks 
 one * of the profoundest thinkers of any age) say, 
 " Come unto Me and I will give you rest " ? The 
 inherent power of Christianity to raise the fallen 
 is the greatest miracle in the world. 
 
 * Augustine of Hippo.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 i PINDAR. 
 
 " THE Bible at the present time is studied more 
 than ever by the few, while by the many it is 
 apparently less read than half a century ago." 
 Yet, if the saying is true, that "Christ Jesus 
 came into the world to save sinners," and if this 
 saying is indeed "worthy of all men to be 
 received," the Book which tells about Him is for 
 all. It is mainly through forgetting that Christ 
 Jesus is really the subject of the books compos- 
 ing the Bible that the Bible is too often left on 
 the shelf. The word of Christ to His Book, as 
 to His Church, is, "Be witness of Me." Of the 
 older Scriptures, the Jewish Scriptures, He 
 has said, " They testify of Me." So long as men 
 look into the Bible for what they can find as well 
 or better elsewhere, so long they turn from it
 
 THE MESSAGE IN THE BOOK 73 
 
 disappointed and perplexed. But as the revela- 
 tion to men of God in Man, it is indeed the 
 voice of the Holy Spirit to the conscience of 
 men. For the Incarnation of God the Son is 
 not merely the revelation of the Triune God in 
 Christ Jesus ; it is in this very act a revelation 
 of man to himself, of man's capacity for being 
 made one with God, and, alas ! (for the light 
 deepens the shadows) of man's capacity for 
 growing into the likeness of devils.* The 
 Incarnation is the foundation of the creeds of 
 Christendom and of the Christian's daily life. 
 
 If, as Christians believe, God lived and died 
 on earth, and rose again, for the sake of men 
 some two thousand years ago, this fact tran- 
 scends in importance all else that ever occurred 
 among men. All other events, actual or even 
 within the compass of a reasonable imagination, 
 are nothing in comparison with this. The 
 Christian era is not one among other waymarks ; 
 as mankind marches on, it is unique and 
 absolute. Babylon, Athens, Rome, with all 
 their magnificent associations, can never be 
 what Bethlehem and Calvary are. That which 
 
 * This was written before I had the advantage of read- 
 ing Dr Lock's Essay on the Old Testament in Oxford House 
 Papers. 
 
 K
 
 74 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 men try to express by the word Incarnation is 
 at once strangest of conceivable mysteries and 
 most intensely practical of facts. How and 
 why it came about, that, so far as we know, 
 the Supreme One condescended thus on this 
 small planet only, may be a curious problem 
 for an inquisitive mind ; but is scarcely more 
 relevant to men practically than an inquiry into 
 the laws of gravitation to a fly on the leaf of 
 a tree. 
 
 This advent of God to dispel the black 
 shadow of sin and death brooding over the 
 brightness of the earth concerns all men, for it 
 touches the welfare of all very nearly. To 
 know about it cannot be the privilege of the 
 learned, the clever, the people of leisure. It 
 speaks for itself to all, though in varying tones. 
 To all alike the essential guarantee, that Jesus 
 Christ is indeed "Emmanuel," "God with 
 us," is His perfect freedom from sin, as He is 
 portrayed in the memoirs of His life on earth ; 
 and that this portraiture is true there is assur- 
 ance, apart from more elaborate evidence, 
 because a character so perfect could not be 
 invented. Other things may arrest attention 
 and prepare the way for the acceptance of this 
 disclosure of God in Christ, as previous
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE OF REALITY 75 
 
 announcements fulfilled in Him, works of mercy 
 and power done by Him, the history of His 
 Church : all these are corroborative. But the 
 essential proof of His being what He claims 
 to be, God the Son in the nature of man, is 
 something which all can appreciate, if they 
 will, and which all ought to appreciate, if there 
 is an immutable law of moral right and wrong. 
 There is no need of the learning of the scribe 
 to recognise Him through the disguise of His 
 humiliations, to love and to revere His un- 
 paralleled holiness. This appeals to all ; it is a 
 practical test, a touchstone of reality for all. 
 " Believe in Him " is no arbitrary requirement ; 
 for it means the preference of light to dark- 
 ness, of virtue to vice, of God to self.* 
 
 Thus in Christ Himself, in His personality 
 as man, in His words and life, is the assurance 
 that the Incarnation is no figment, no dream. 
 Because He bore no witness to Himself in the 
 ordinary sense, therefore the witness in Himself 
 is all the more persuasive. Incredible otherwise, 
 the Incarnation becomes more than credible, 
 even a necessity for man, if once in His self- 
 sacrifice men grasp the awful realness of sin 
 and love of sin in its horrors, of love in its 
 
 * Cf. St John iii. 13 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3 ; 1 St John ii. 22, v. 5.
 
 76 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 illimitability. Without this conviction men will 
 not be persuaded, though "one rose from the 
 dead " ; for the barren assent of the intellect is 
 not the willing surrender of self and of every- 
 thing to the Deliverer. With this conviction 
 the life, which would otherwise be a hopeless 
 enigma to him, is made intelligible to man by 
 the Incarnation. 
 
 The Person of Jesus Christ is the " Rock " on 
 which the Christian faith rests, the foundation 
 of the edifice.* He bears a silent witness to 
 Himself intrinsically, which appeals to every 
 conscience, the witness of a life perfect in un- 
 selfishness from first to last, in spite of all the 
 machinations of the powers of evil. All that is 
 above our comprehension in the narrative the 
 Birth, for instance, or the Resurrection takes 
 its proper place there, as, of course, for all who 
 realise who and what He is. All that seems to 
 clash with our preconceptions may pass unchal- 
 lenged, if the eyes are fixed on Him. "What 
 think ye of Christ ? " Is there for you in Him 
 the "beauty of holiness," "that ye should desire 
 Him " ? The answer to these questions is for all 
 time the only sure foundation of belief in the 
 Bible and in Christianity : " Thou art the Son of 
 * Cf. St Matt. xvi. 18; 1 Cor. iii. 11.
 
 THE INCARNATION 77 
 
 God." His perfect holiness attests the credi- 
 bility of the record of His miracles. We believe 
 that He was able to do these, because we are 
 assured that His will, as Man, was in constant 
 unison with the will of His Father in Heaven. 
 
 The Bible is the written record of this 
 unique revelation of God to man* in Christ 
 Jesus. Though composed of many books differ- 
 ing widely in date, in style, in material, the Bible 
 is one book in regard to this. It is this which 
 gives cohesion to the separate books. The later 
 portions relate the fact and the consequences of 
 the Incarnation; the earlier, the preparation of 
 the world for it. 
 
 The reason for accepting this record is, 
 because it makes known to a sinning, suffering 
 world the only healer in the Person of the 
 Sinless Man, God the Son incarnate. It is the 
 record of the Life on earth, " divinely beautiful, 
 yet truly human " of the Saviour of the world, t 
 The investigations of the learned may be helpful 
 
 * Differentiated in character and circumstances from 
 mythical manifestations of a similar kind. The incarnate 
 God of Christianity is not like the Apollo Belvedere a demi- 
 god, "too fair to worship, too divine to love." While on 
 earth He, for man's sake, "lays His glory by." 
 
 t Epitome of the Life of Our Blessed Saviour Introduc- 
 tion. Rivington.
 
 78 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 for the learned, as evincing the genuineness and 
 authenticity of the record ; but something else is 
 wanted generally ; nor is the mere assent of the 
 intellect worth much without a real " hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness." The testimony even 
 of eye-witnesses only hardened the antagonism of 
 the Pharisees. But when conscience realises 
 that in Christ Jesus "all fulness dwells,"* that 
 He alone is Man "made perfect through suffer- 
 ings," t that without Him is no escape from the 
 bondage of evil habits ; then all that is miracu- 
 lous in the narrative is easy of acceptance. The 
 wondrous birth, resurrection, ascension, the 
 healings of the sick, the revocations of the dead 
 to life, are to be expected in the earthly pilgrim- 
 age of the soul, always in perfect, uninterrupted 
 accord with the will of the Father and of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 This, then, is the message of God to man in 
 the Bible, the revelation of the Invisible One in 
 the visible form of the man Christ Jesus, emanci- 
 pating men from their enemy, the powers of 
 darkness. What this book has to say is not 
 archaeology, not dates and names in history, not 
 geology, not physical science of any sort, nothing 
 which can be disinterred by the skill and industry 
 * Col. i. 19. t Heb. ii. 10.
 
 79 
 
 of man ; but, before and above all other know- 
 ledge, the knowledge of God, of self, of sin, of a 
 rescuer. When this or that fault is alleged 
 against the Bible, it is because the standpoint of 
 the objector is wrong. He is looking away from 
 that which should rivet his gaze to what is 
 accidental and extraneous, as a commander in a 
 battle who allows himself to be diverted from the 
 real attack by the feint of a cunning strategist. 
 Even the most startling of all difficulties about 
 the Bible, the only real difficulty (for questionings 
 about man's environment are really outside the 
 scope of the Bible), the apparent tolerance of a 
 defective morality* in the Old Testament, is 
 solved, if it is remembered that the Old Testa- 
 ment relates the schooling of mankind for the 
 coming of Christ, and the wonderful patience of 
 the Father in Heaven with very unpromising 
 scholars. 
 
 In this light even the inquiry into the origin 
 and transmission of the Bible sinks into a 
 secondary place. By the providential sequence 
 of events the Bible is what it is. It tells, as no 
 other book can, of One able and willing to rescue 
 man from the tyranny of evil. The book is 
 accredited to the conscience by the message 
 
 * E.g., in the history of Jael and Sisera.
 
 80 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 which it brings. Just as there is no need of 
 argument to prove to men that there is in the 
 world an alloy largely impairing the beauty and 
 happiness of their lives, so there should be no 
 need of argument to compel them to recognise the 
 remedy when it offers itself. After all is said and 
 done, a steady, unbiassed insight into things as 
 they are must acknowledge that there is no real evil 
 in life but sin. All else can be endured, even 
 thankfully, joyfully, as the discipline for becoming 
 perfect. But the ugly stain of guilt, the distor- 
 tion of life's aims and purposes by self-will, the 
 debasing slavery to selfish inclinations, must be 
 got rid of utterly, if man is to become what he 
 knows he can be, and what he aspires to be in 
 his saner moments. The Bible shows how this 
 can be attained, because it points to a Reconciler, 
 such as no thought of man could have dared to 
 devise, God Himself deigning to identify* Himself 
 with His creatures, tempted t as man on every 
 side, yet always victorious. 
 
 It may be instructive to learn how the com- 
 plex arrangements of Providence have shaped 
 and fitted together, and kept intact the com- 
 
 * The objection that the Atonement is an unjust substi- 
 tution of the innocent for the guilty forgets this identifica- 
 tion, t Heb. iv. 15.
 
 BIBLICAL CRITICISM 81 
 
 ponent parts of the Bible ; how men specially 
 equipped and commissioned by the Spirit for the 
 purpose were raised up, one after the other, to be 
 forerunners of Christ, or eye-witnesses of Him, 
 or to disseminate the good news of Him ; how 
 the stubborn tenacity of the Jew guarded 
 jealously the ancient record of the ages looking 
 on to His coming ; how the tongue of the Greek 
 and the iron hand of the Roman conspired to 
 send the Gospel far and wide ; and how the 
 searchings of modern scholarship sift and test 
 the exactness of what is written. But, indepen- 
 dently of all this, the message of the Bible goes 
 straight of itself into the conscience sorrowing for 
 the havoc wrought in the world by sin. It 
 addresses itself to whatever is best in humanity ; 
 and whatever is there, higher and purer than the 
 worship of self, responds at once with the grate- 
 ful dedication of self to the highest of all ideals. 
 The labours of the learned lavished on the 
 critical study of the Scriptures may help not a 
 little to draw out the treasures latent in the 
 great central truth whence, as in Correggio's 
 Nativity (Die Nacht), the light radiates in 
 every direction; and even when these studies 
 have no direct bearing on the Incarnation, they 
 may still have a value of their own. The out-
 
 82 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 posts must be defended though the citadel is the 
 main thing. Even when only "the hem of His 
 garment " is touched, " virtue goes out of Him " * 
 if the touch is loving and reverent. Even when 
 only the fringe is handled of the great question 
 of His personality, much is gained by honest, fear- 
 less, devout investigation. Probably there is no 
 book which has been written about so volumin- 
 ously in one way or another as the Bible. The 
 result of all this thought and study may find its 
 way to the many through the few, and may serve 
 to elucidate and emphasise what might be 
 obscure and questionable.! 
 
 On such topics as geology the attempt to 
 force into agreement the opinions of the day and 
 expressions which occur in the Bible is futile, 
 not merely because science has not yet spoken 
 finally, nor because a book for all time cannot be 
 expected to reflect the opinions about physical 
 science of this or that century, but because these 
 things are not the staple of what the Bible has to 
 say. Physical science excepted, there is large 
 scope in various directions for the Biblical 
 
 * St Mark v. 30. 
 
 t Modern Biblical Criticism has done good incalculable 
 in driving Christians to the "spirit" which the "letter" 
 contains.
 
 HISTORIC INACCURACIES 83 
 
 explorer. The spiritual meaning is best ascer- 
 tained by making sure of the literal ; just as a 
 painter must distinguish the tints of the copse 
 and of the cloud, and the configuration of the 
 foliage, if he would seize the spirit of the land- 
 scape. Many a passage in the Scriptures, Old 
 and New, can be understood rightly only through 
 acquaintance with the manners and customs of 
 the East. The historical accuracy of the narra- 
 tive in the Bible of a battle lost or won may be 
 of no great moment to those who come to the 
 Bible for practical guidance in the daily life, and 
 who know that life and death tremble in the 
 balance ; and yet they are interested when the 
 narrative is verified from some extraneous source, 
 by the discovery, it may be, of coin or monu- 
 ment, of writing graven on the rocks or wrapt in 
 the swathings of a mummy. 
 
 What is called Natural Religion is at best 
 only a guessing at hidden truth ; but, even so, it 
 has its analogies with what Christ reveals. The 
 thinker who patiently, reverently, tries to 
 measure the height and depth of man's being, 
 and who can report what the wisest and holiest 
 seekers after truth, outside as well as inside the 
 pale of Christianity, have surmised about right 
 and wrong, may contribute in no slight degree to
 
 84 WHAT IS THE BIBLE ? 
 
 the ripe understanding of what Christ has re- 
 vealed about man's destiny now and for ever. 
 
 Again, when the student sets himself to 
 compare one part of Scripture with another, 
 text with context, phrase with phrase, word 
 with word, distinguishing in no pedantic spirit 
 the niceties of expression ; for what is true of 
 other books is true especially of this, " Nonnisi 
 ex ipso libro librum intelliges." Indeed, misunder- 
 standings about the Bible are usually due to 
 taking particular verses without regard to the 
 general drift and tenor of the revelation. 
 
 While gratitude and reverence are due to those 
 who devote time and toil to Biblical studies, the 
 vital truth must never be overlaid, that what is 
 essential for all in the Bible is not beyond the 
 reach of any, the revelation of God the Father, 
 His law, His love, by God the Spirit, in God the 
 Son, for the sake of men made Man. Like the 
 sun in the sky, the light evangelic shines for all. 
 
 There is no need of arguments to show that 
 Christ is the keynote of the New Testament. It 
 is obvious even to a careless ear ; while to those 
 who listen more closely, richer, fuller harmonies 
 evolve themselves out of this central theme. It 
 is scarcely conceivable that any one could read a 
 page taken at hazard out of the New Testament
 
 ONE MEANING PARAMOUNT 85 
 
 without perceiving that the coming of Jesus 
 Christ to save, is the message conveyed. Not- 
 withstanding the almost countless controversies 
 about subordinate questions which distract 
 attention, this stands out clearly. The four 
 Gospels give, not indeed a complete biography, 
 but enough to show to all who will attend, what 
 the life on earth was of Jesus Christ. The Book 
 of the Acts relates how, after His departure from 
 earth, the foundations of His kingdom were laid 
 by men trained, and sent by Him, the ordinances 
 of it prescribed, the organisation outlined. The 
 Epistles * show how, on these foundations, the 
 superstructure was raised, and how, through the 
 ministrations which He had ordained, men and 
 women were enabled to begin even here on 
 earth their life in Him. The closing book, 
 whatever else it may be, is a vision of this 
 heavenly life, which He has inaugurated, under 
 images suggested by the fiery trials of a time of 
 persecution. 
 
 Thus, throughout the New Testament, though 
 there is a wide diversity in the points of view, 
 every vista converges on the Person of Jesus 
 
 * St Paul is sometimes said to have invented the 
 doctrines of Christianity. But all his doctrinal teaching is in 
 the Gospels in germ.
 
 86 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 Christ. Each portion of the New Testament is 
 only fragmentary in its presentation of Him : 
 indeed, all the portions together are only so, for 
 the written word has the living tradition as its 
 complement ; but every portion points surely and 
 unmistakably to one central figure, not like a 
 statue of man's devising, with every curve and 
 lineament elaborated by the repeated strokes of 
 the chisel, but with glimpses of more than human 
 beauty and majesty for all to see who will. 
 
 That Christ Jesus is primarily and essentially 
 what the pre-Christian portion of the Bible has 
 to declare is not so obvious at the first glance. 
 But whoever approaches the Old Testament, 
 conscious of his own need of help to be freed 
 from sin, can hardly fail to see Christ there 
 more and more vividly, as he ponders what is 
 written. 
 
 Nor is this tantamount to saying that the 
 Christian faith is merely a creature of the 
 imagination projected by hopes and fears, base- 
 less and unreal. Something in man, his better 
 nature, echoes the voice from heaven ; but 
 the echo cannot be without the voice that 
 awakens it. When the landscape spreads itself 
 before the eye, or the music strikes the
 
 BOOK SPEAKS THROUGHOUT OF CHRIST 87 
 
 tympanum of the ear, there must be an appre- 
 hensiveness in eye, ear, brain, to take in the 
 beauty which presents itself ; but the senses and 
 the sensorium are not creating the scenery, the 
 sound ; they are only responsive to it. When a 
 noble action passes across the retina of a man's 
 cognisance, he appreciates it or not according 
 to his ability to see it as it is ; but the action is 
 there all the same, whether he admires it or not. 
 The old saying of the Greek poet,* that the 
 words spoken speak only to those who can 
 understand, is for ever the burden of the cry of 
 seer and prophet in God's revelation of Himself 
 to man. Only those "that have ears to hear, 
 let them hear." 
 
 The Saviour Himself has taught by His 
 example how to understand the Old Testament. 
 On the way to Emmaus, "He expounded" to 
 His disciples "in all the Scriptures the things 
 concerning Himself, "f 
 
 Some parts of the Old Testament speak of 
 Christ more explicitly than others. There are 
 passages, for instance, of Isaiah which read, it 
 has been well said, more like history than 
 prediction. Even when the evangelic meaning 
 
 * <f>(i)vavTa. (rweTOKri Pindar. 
 t St Luke xxiv. 27.
 
 88 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 is not on the surface of the prophecy or psalm, 
 it underlies the imagery. It is the longing for 
 the Deliverer which dominates the rise and fall 
 of the music, now plaintive, now wildly jubilant, 
 as the seer contemplates in vision the woes or 
 the restored prosperity of Sion. This is the key, 
 for practical purposes, to what is otherwise 
 undecipherable. This runs through the pro- 
 phetic utterances as the clue through a maze. 
 This again is true, as of the word written or 
 spoken, so of the thought embodied in visible 
 form. In what are called types of Christ, 
 the likeness which may seem far-fetched to 
 a careless looker-on reveals itself to those 
 who gaze more earnestly, just as they who 
 know and love can discern in the features 
 of a friend a resemblance which others 
 cannot see. 
 
 The ethical or didactic parts of the Old 
 Testament, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, bear 
 their witness to the promise of Christ's coming, 
 positively and negatively, by what they say 
 and by what they cannot say. Their morality, 
 sounder and purer in many ways than the 
 morality of surrounding nations, is yet far below 
 the law of the Gospel, the law of self- sacrifice. 
 They show that for expediency, and if only for
 
 CHRIST IN THE OLDER TESTAMENT 89 
 
 the sake of good things in this life, the right 
 course is to be preferred to the wrong. By the 
 confession of man's ignorance and frailty if left 
 to himself, by recognising disappointments and 
 uncertainties which beset him in his contact with 
 the world, they point to the coming of a Helper. 
 In God's schooling of mankind the easier, the 
 elementary lesson, must be mastered before the 
 higher teaching is possible. From the lower 
 level of prudential self-regard, man rises to self- 
 abnegation. 
 
 St Paul has shown how those parts of the Old 
 Testament which are, strictly speaking, the Law, 
 are a prelude to the Gospel. This was his 
 special mission. Himself, by idiosyncrasy and 
 training, most expert of legalists, when once the 
 upbraidings of conscience * had wakened in him 
 the love of the Holy One, he saw his Saviour 
 in the very law which a narrow formalism 
 fancied to* be the antithesis of the Gospel. 
 What was in itself a mere routine of antiquated 
 ceremonial, glowed for him with the fire of 
 heavenly self-devotion, as the dry bones in 
 the prophet's vision lived and moved, quickened 
 by the breath from heaven, t Thus what might 
 
 * E.g., Rom. vii. 24. 
 f Ezek. xxxvii. 10.
 
 90 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 be wearisome and repelling, a mere string of 
 minute, meaningless formalities,* speaks from 
 first to last, to all who love Christ, of His pardon- 
 ing, redeeming love. The doves (the thank- 
 offering of the peasant woman), the scapegoat, 
 carrying away into the wilderness, as if out of 
 God's sight, the guiltiness of God's people, the 
 gentle, unresisting lamb, "without spot or 
 blemish," the silver bells, the purple fringe on the 
 robe of the priest, the fragrant incense steaming 
 up to heaven, the endless washings and rinsings, 
 and even details less palpably significant of 
 Christ, are all suggestive of Him, of His holiness, 
 of His love. 
 
 Much of the Old Testament is biography, 
 generally of some one who, when due allowance 
 has been made for the deficiencies incidental to 
 a pre-Christian period with its imperfect develop- 
 ment, serves as an example to the end of time. 
 Each has some distinguishing quality, excels in 
 some special characteristic, all of which are 
 consummated in Christ. The self-surrender of 
 Abraham, the graciousness of Joseph, the 
 patriotism of Moses, the integrity of Samuel, the 
 piety of Hezekiah all these, for instance, speak 
 
 * If St Paul did not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 it probably emanated from him, foremost pupil of Gamaliel.
 
 91 
 
 for themselves indubitably. In characters such 
 as these, any one who thinks about it must 
 recognise the foreshadowing of Christ and His 
 followers, as the ear catches far off the tread of 
 an advancing army. Nor is it difficult to see 
 in Achan, Ahab, Gehazi, and their fellows, that 
 which by force of contrast throws into stronger 
 relief "the Just One," "the Holy One," and 
 His saints. 
 
 But the Bible would not be true to life as it 
 is if, like some works of fiction, it exhibited only 
 saints and sinners in deeply traced light and 
 shade. It is the mixed characters, like Jacob 
 and David, which are at once a stumbling-stone 
 to a superficial reader, and in a special way 
 eminently suggestive of Christ to those who 
 know how weak are the best intentions without 
 His help continually. A selfish, scheming 
 huckster, the sceptic asks, and a voluptuous 
 despot, why are they singled out as if under the 
 special tutelage of Heaven ? But the several 
 careers of Jacob and David declare, as plainly as 
 letters of fire on the wall, that wrong-doing must 
 pay the penalty ; * that even devout trustfulness 
 
 * That God visits (in this life) the sin of the parent on 
 the children (e.g., in the history of David) is surely mercy, 
 not severity, if it deters men from sin.
 
 92 WHAT IS THE BIBLE ? 
 
 and ardent generosity * are no excuse for failing 
 in other ways ; that the unerring Judge of all can 
 discriminate, even if men cannot, between the 
 good and the bad in one and the same person- 
 ality. Thus, by the stern probation of life, God 
 disciplines man, as a father the child whom he 
 loves, to seek perfection where only it can be 
 found in Christ. 
 
 The history in the Old Testament of the 
 chosen people can only be understood rightly in 
 the same way. It is the training of the world 
 for the Messiah. If it is asked, Why should one 
 nation be picked out for this training ? The only 
 answer possible for man's very limited knowledge 
 is, that this seems in accordance with God's 
 method generally, "Who acts individually through 
 one or another, influencing the crowd through 
 the select few, as if to impress on His servants 
 their mutual obligations to one another. 
 Similarly, the nation selected is one of small 
 importance in comparison with greater king- 
 doms, because, it would seem, He would abase 
 self-confidence and teach humility by using 
 means which seem inadequate. Besides, it 
 was a nation which, with all its perversities, 
 
 * A man " after God's own heart " so far, though incon- 
 sistent, in succumbing otherwise to temptation.
 
 PREPARATION OF WORLD FOR CHRIST 93 
 
 was pre - eminently earnest, reverent, God- 
 fearing. 
 
 From first to last the history of the Jews in 
 the Old Testament points to something better 
 still to come. In their darkest days they could 
 cling to this promise, and in their hour of 
 triumph they had this hope to lead their 
 aspirations upward and onward. Slaves in 
 Egypt, wanderers in Arabia, planted in Palestine, 
 exiles by the Great River, God was teaching 
 them to lean not on themselves, but on Him. 
 Too often they were stubborn and refractory, 
 like a wayward child, slow to learn. But all 
 the time the mystery of the Incarnation, " kept 
 secret since the world began,"* and not even 
 to them disclosed in its completeness, was 
 gradually opening itself out, like a blossom 
 ripening to maturity. 
 
 In this way the Old Testament explains 
 itself to believers in Christ. Thus He has taught 
 men to read it. For this purpose He cites it 
 as bearing on Himself, His life, His mission. 
 The Mosaic law He quotes to show that His 
 law, though consonant with the older law, goes 
 far beyond it. Type and prediction He quotes 
 to show that they are fulfilled in Him. Saints 
 
 * Rom. xvi. 26.
 
 94 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 and heroes in days past He refers to as waiting 
 and watching for Him to come. The Apostles 
 and their converts quote from the Old Testament 
 in the same way. The first martyr in his dying 
 words to his fellow-countrymen, St Peter in 
 what has been called the first Christian sermon, 
 St Paul in his frequent appeals to the older 
 Scriptures all alike make this the object of 
 their quotations, that Jewish history before the 
 birth of Christ was simply preliminary* to the 
 advent of the Son of God as man, a shadow 
 on the wall of events to come. Not the route 
 of the Exodus, not the dimensions of the 
 Temple, not the date, the authorship of verse 
 and chapter, are of primary consideration, but 
 the prefiguration of Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."t 
 The historical portions of the Old Testament 
 are not, as Origen thought, an allegory; they 
 are history, with an ethical and spiritual 
 meaning, and the historical accuracy is alto- 
 gether subordinate to this meaning. The 
 Saviour quotes the Psalm + to convince His 
 
 * What St Paul says of "the law " (Gal. iii. 24) is true of 
 the Old Testament generally. It is " the servant who leads 
 the child to the teacher, the pedagogue." 
 
 f 2 Cor. iii. 6. J Ps. ex.
 
 OLD TESTAMENT QUOTED SPIRITUALLY 95 
 
 opponents, as from their own lips, that the 
 Son of Man is Lord of all, whether David or 
 another wrote the Psalm being irrelevant to 
 this. He speaks of Jonah to illustrate to the 
 Jews from their own books the mystery of 
 the Resurrection, whether the narrative of 
 Jonah is actual or parabolic. An Apostle 
 refers to Balaam rebuked by a dumb creature 
 to show the fearfulness of self-deceit, whether 
 the incident was fact or vision. The safe 
 escape of the people through the Red Sea 
 and their victory in Ajalon * show God's power 
 and mercy in rescuing mankind in holy baptism 
 from their enemy, and in enabling them to 
 overcome him in the battle of life. So St 
 Paul uses the story of Hagar and of the water 
 in the desert spiritually, t Hagar to him re- 
 presents the bondage of the law ; and " that 
 rock was Christ." It is an artifice of the 
 Deceiver to lure men's attention from what is 
 
 * In these and other miracles, even if the effect was pro- 
 duced through the action of the ordinary laws of nature (e.g., 
 "The Lord brought a strong east wind," Exod. xiv. 21), still 
 it was miraculous, if inexplicable, to those for whose sake it 
 was done ; for a miracle is that which, by being inexplicable, 
 excites awe and so arrests the attention, which would not be 
 given otherwise. An event subjectively miraculous is a 
 miracle. f Gal. iv. ; 1 Cor. x.
 
 96 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 practically the gist of the words quoted to what 
 is merely accessory. 
 
 The Bible, then, is above all other books in 
 this, that it speaks, from beginning to end, of 
 the Saviour, God for us made man. Much there 
 is besides in the book to command admiration 
 and reverence. It is in parts among the 
 oldest written records of the past. It draws 
 back the veil, which hides what is behind the 
 affairs of men, and allows a glimpse of the plan 
 on which these things are ordered, indicating in 
 the lives of men and of nations not a blind, 
 resistless fate, but a discriminating, retributive 
 Providence. It contains passages unsurpassed 
 and unequalled in poetry and eloquence, pro- 
 foundest philosophisings, narratives thrilling with 
 human pathos, precepts of prudence and wisdom. 
 But all this cannot make the Bible what it is. 
 It is a book with a meaning, and that meaning 
 is Christ. It claims a hearing, as the utterance 
 of God the Spirit, by the lips and pens of men, 
 to tell a world writhing in the python-coils of 
 evil where to find deliverance. 
 
 That the Bible speaks truly in what it says 
 of this wonderful deliverance, and that the 
 Incarnation which it announces is a reality, the 
 best of all guarantees is Jesus Christ Himself.
 
 "BIBLIOLATRY" 97 
 
 That he was what He is described by the 
 evangelists cannot reasonably be denied, for if 
 other testimony were wanting, it would be 
 testimony enough that the mind of man could 
 not have invented One such as He, consistently 
 perfect throughout in unalloyed unselfishness. 
 The practical question therefore for men is, 
 whether, He being what He is, they will yield 
 themselves to Him in entire trustfulness or 
 not. 
 
 To substitute the Bible for Christ as the 
 object of the Christian's faith is idolatry. Some- 
 times it seems to be thought that Christians 
 believe in Jesus Christ because they read of Him 
 in the Bible, and consequently that any difficulty 
 about anything in the Bible must shake faith in 
 Christ. It is nearer the truth that Christians 
 believe in the Bible because they find Him there. 
 The word to Christian converts in the beginning 
 was not, "Believe in a book," but "Believe in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ."* So in the baptismal 
 covenant the Christian promises to believe "all 
 the articles of the Christian faith " t (the 
 Apostles' Creed) ; and coming to the Holy 
 Communion, he renews the profession of his 
 faith in the words of Niceea and Constantinople. 
 
 * E.g., Acts viii. 37. t The Catechism. 
 
 N
 
 98 WHAT IS THE BIBLE ? 
 
 The message* of forgiveness is spoken day by 
 day in church to those " who believe in Christ's 
 holy gospel." 
 
 Unexceptionable proof of Christianity is out 
 of the question ; for that would be demonstra- 
 tion, as in a proposition of Euclid or in the 
 multiplication table. There would then be no 
 such thing as faith. For faith is trust in a 
 person worthy to be trusted; and this trusting 
 follows, no other impediment intervening, on our 
 sympathy going with what deserves it. Infalli- 
 bility, could it be found anywhere, would save 
 all trouble by precluding all doubt. But in the 
 process it would destroy that, which is not 
 merely the test of moral excellence, but the 
 training for it. We may, if we please, make 
 to ourselves a pontiff who cannot err, or a book 
 in which every syllable and letter have been 
 shaped mechanically by the finger of God. But 
 this would be to get rid of more than half of 
 men's earthly probation. Even so the dilemma 
 arises, on what is this assumed infallibility to 
 rest ? It is the old story of the world resting on 
 the elephant, and the elephant on the tortoise, 
 and the tortoise on space. Infallibility is a drug 
 to silence the questionings, which ought not to 
 
 * The Prayer Book Morning and Evening Prayer.
 
 APPARENT INEXPLICABILITY 99 
 
 be stifled, but to be faced fairly and wisely as an 
 integral part of man's responsibility to heaven. 
 When once a man can say with St Paul, of the 
 Crucified One, " I know whom I have believed," * 
 and "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor 
 life, . . . nor any other creature can separate me 
 from His love," t then difficulties in the revelation 
 no longer terrify. A robust and healthy faith, 
 instead of trying to evade them, to gloss them 
 over, to explain them away, accepts them as for 
 the present insoluble, simply because the trust in 
 Christ Jesus outweighs their apparent incredi- 
 bility, just as with those who really trust a 
 friend all misgivings vanish in his presence. 
 
 About the swine in Gadara,| for instance, a 
 Christian, if perplexed by the incident, is content 
 to wait for an explanation till "the shadows 
 shall flee away " and he " shall know even as he 
 is known " ; and when once a man really believes 
 that Jesus Christ is God made man, then the 
 authoritative teaching of His Apostles, embodied 
 in creeds and sacraments, should be accepted as 
 coming from Him, who is the Truth, in accord- 
 ance with His parting promises to His Church. 
 
 * 2 Tim. i. 12. f Rom. viii. 38, 39. 
 
 J St Luke viii. 32. The late Professor Huxley found this 
 a difficulty.
 
 100 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 
 
 Similarly, out of this belief, that it is indeed God 
 the Son who came to save, should flow, practi- 
 cally, lifelong obedience. His precepts, His 
 example, should be the rule of conduct. If God 
 has indeed identified Himself with man, then 
 man by the aid of the Holy Spirit is to be 
 godlike, is to act, desire, think, as Christ would 
 in any contingency, is to be the dutiful child of 
 the Father in heaven as was Christ on earth. In 
 finding Jesus Christ in the Bible, the Christian 
 finds the foundation of his rule of faith and of 
 his rule of life. 
 
 The Bible is the announcement of the 
 Incarnation.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 " I never sing that song, Sir Knight, 
 But to those who sail with me." 
 
 TRENCH, from the Spanish. 
 
 Is the Christian use of the old Hebrew Psalter 
 affected by the researches and discoveries of 
 modern criticism ? Is the Church right in 
 continuing, as in time past, to apply the Psalms 
 in a Christian sense to the fasts and festivals 
 of the Christian year, to the trials or vicissi- 
 tudes of the Christian life ? Is the Christian 
 doxology, said or sung at the close of each 
 Psalm, still appropriate, or is it meaningless ? 
 
 Possibly some even of those who would not 
 hesitate to reply that the Christian faith is not 
 affected by modern science in any shape, 
 because the foundations of it lie too deep to 
 be stirred by the ruffling of the surface waters, 
 may yet hesitate to say that the Christian use 
 
 101
 
 102 THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the Hagiographa stands where it stood a 
 century ago. 
 
 Cordial thanks are due from all who prize 
 the Christian faith to the students who work 
 at these investigations about the Old and New 
 Testaments. For exactness and accuracy are 
 things to be desired by all lovers of truth. 
 Just as to the naturalist the shapings and 
 shadings of a beetle's wing are not to be 
 despised, so in Hebrew archseology even minutiae, 
 such as the exact spelling of a name or the pre- 
 cise date of a battle, are worth ascertaining, if 
 possible. But there is a proportion to be 
 observed a difference between what is essential 
 to the main purpose of a book and what is not. 
 
 No thoughtful Christian can disparage 
 the value of research, historic and linguistic, 
 into the original meaning of the Psalms. Any 
 one, wishing to understand them devotionally 
 and spiritually may be helped much by learn- 
 ing what was the first occasion of the words. 
 In this way a flood of light streams on dark 
 places. Only, what is of secondary importance 
 must not thrust itself into the highest place. 
 The reference of the words, when first uttered, 
 to a particular framework of circumstances, is 
 quite subordinate to the message which they
 
 QUESTIONS OF AUTHORSHIP 103 
 
 bring to the conscience of mankind always and 
 everywhere. That the Psalmist, whoever he 
 was, cursed his personal or national enemies, 
 need not concern those who know that their 
 "battle of life" is against the powers of evil in 
 the world. 
 
 If the Bible is, essentially, the revelation in 
 Christ of God to man and of man to himself, if 
 the value of the older books in the Bible is to 
 reveal Christ proleptically, as it is of the newer 
 books that they reveal Him historically, then the 
 result of many learned disquisitions which we 
 owe to what is called the "Higher Criticism" 
 is quite irrelevant to the faith and hope of 
 Christians in this life and for ever. For all 
 practical purposes, as regards the helpfulness 
 of the Psalms to beings passing through time 
 into eternity, questions of date and authorship 
 are beside the mark. Though one speaks of 
 the "Psalms of David," as did the Jews in 
 our Lord's time, no one seriously maintains 
 that David wrote them all, just as it is impos- 
 sible that Moses or Samuel penned the narrative 
 of his own obsequies. But if the Psalms are 
 indeed the record of devout communings with 
 the Unseen, if they are the voice of God the 
 Spirit to the soul and man's response, what can
 
 it matter, in that aspect, in what year or from 
 whose lips the Psalm first came into being? 
 
 The great Psalm of obedience, the 119th, is 
 what it is to the believer, whether composed by 
 David at Nob while he hid himself among the 
 priests from the fury of Saul, or by the 
 restored of God's people after the stern and 
 sad experiences in Babylon. In the same way, 
 it cannot concern Christians, except as a 
 "curiosity of literature," what may have been 
 the particular occasion which gave birth to 
 this or that Psalm, in the history of the Jews. 
 Was it some victory won, some triumphal 
 pageant? With the reflex light streaming on 
 it from the Gospel, it is the triumph of Christ 
 for our sake over sin and death. Was it some 
 magnificent Oriental wedding ? It speaks of 
 Christ the Bridegroom and the Church, the soul, 
 His bride " the King's daughter all glorious 
 within." Is it a nation's supplication in dejec- 
 tion and misery, as the De Proftmdisf It 
 becomes for Christians the cry of those who 
 are tempted, a cry as from out of deep waters, 
 a cry for help whence alone it can come. The 
 51st Psalm is our Lenten hymn of penitence, 
 whether or not it was King David's Peccavi; 
 the 23rd expresses a Christian's reliance on the
 
 PARTICULAR OCCASIONS 105 
 
 Saviour, whether or not it was sung on the 
 plain of Bethlehem by the shepherd boy, Jesse's 
 youngest son. The singularly beautiful Psalms 
 which follow the 119th, the Gradual Psalms, 
 were they the songs of the exiles as they 
 inarched in long procession back to their own 
 land, or hymns of priests and Levites going 
 up the white marble steps to the Temple on 
 Mount Sion? This matters not these Psalms 
 are a " Pilgrim's Progress " for all ages. Even 
 the 110th Psalm, wrangled about so often and 
 so hotly among those who should rather see 
 Christ there on their knees, is no exception to 
 the rule, that arch geological details are irrelevant 
 to the Christian faith. To the Son of Man, in 
 His loving self-humiliation for men, the Psalm 
 was "David's," as it was to those among 
 whom He deigned to cast His lot for a time. 
 The scope and meaning of His words are not 
 hinged on the literary question of its author- 
 ship. The mystery of the Incarnation is 
 enshrined in the opening words of the Psalm, 
 whoever wrote it : " The Son of Man " is the 
 " Lord of Man," for He is God made Man. 
 
 Nor has the intention * of the Psalmist any- 
 
 * Dr Cheyne's The Christian Use of the Psalms. Subsequent 
 references are to this learned treatise. 
 
 O
 
 106 THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 thing to do with the Christian's application of 
 the words to himself and to his own surround- 
 ings. Ov&v Trpos Aioi-vo-ov. There are few thoughtful 
 students of the Bible now who would affirm 
 that there was a conscious intention of fore- 
 telling the coming of the Messiah in the mind 
 of the Psalmist, whoever he was, whenever his 
 words speak of Christ. The mechanical expla- 
 nation of the prophecy is passing away, if indeed 
 it has not practically passed away already. 
 Similarly, in regard to human laws and ordinances, 
 it is not what was the intention of the legislator, 
 perhaps in a very remote past, but what is now 
 the animus imponentis which concerns those 
 who wish to keep the law or the rubric. 
 What the words of a Psalm may have been 
 originally intended to say, and whether it is to 
 be labelled "Messianic" or not, are questions 
 for the archaeologist. What the words actually 
 say to English people in this twentieth century 
 is a question for them of life and conduct. It 
 is by God's good providence the words say to 
 each who hears them what they say. 
 
 In one of the Psalms quoted already, the 
 110th, the Psalmist evidently speaks of a 
 victorious army on its march : " He shall 
 drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall
 
 DUAL MEANINGS 107 
 
 he lift up his head." To a believer in Christ 
 the words suggest the refreshing influence of 
 the Holy Spirit bestowed on Christ and on 
 His followers in the weary conflict with evil. 
 The 19th Psalm praises the glory of the sun 
 in the sky ; to the Christian it speaks, also, 
 of Christ, the " Sun of the soul." Addison's 
 metrical paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm, made 
 when he was crossing the mountains of Savoy, 
 rightly brings out the Christian significance 
 latent in the old Hebrew poem. The never- 
 ceasing conflict between good and evil pervades 
 the Psalter from end to end. "Pharaoh" may 
 be a Eameses or some one else ; that is for 
 archaeology to decide ; anyhow, for practical 
 purposes, he stands for the powers of evil, to 
 all who read below the surface ; the conqueror 
 may be Joshua or a Maccabee : at any rate, 
 He is Christ, the Saviour and King. 
 
 The arbitrary assertion that " allegory has no 
 place " in poems such as the Psalms, and that the 
 145th Psalm cannot be at once a prophecy of 
 Jesus Christ and a eulogy of a contemporary 
 earthly king, forgets the essential duality of 
 things, the analogy between visible and invisible, 
 transient and lasting, " the letter and the spirit." 
 In Moore's exquisite song, "When he who
 
 108 THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 adores thee has left but a name," a personal 
 affection is not of necessity excluded, because his 
 " emerald isle " is all the time in the poet's eye. 
 The heart-piercing wail of the opening verses of 
 the Lamentations calls up at one and the same 
 time, to a Christian, the sorrows of Jerusalem, 
 of Christ, of His Church. The researches of 
 criticism may make it probable that this or that 
 Psalm has a reference to "poor and righteous 
 Jews in post-exilic times," and that the Psalmist 
 is often the mouthpiece of his fellow-countrymen ; 
 but all this, if proved, cannot make the Psalm 
 any the less the expression of the aspirations of 
 the Gospel for all time and for all people. The 
 fifty-third chapter of Isaiah speaks, perhaps, of 
 many other persons and things, but paramountly 
 it speaks of Christ bearing our sins. 
 
 The question whether or not the English 
 versions of the Psalter, authorised or revised, 
 translate the words precisely, is of less moment. 
 Granted that here and there inexactness can be 
 detected, the evil of tampering with a time- 
 honoured phraseology, endeared by kindly 
 associations (as Matthew Arnold urged in defence 
 of the old translation of Isaiah) must be taken 
 into account, unless, indeed, the mistake is 
 flagrant, as in Isaiah (ix. 2), "Thou hast not
 
 RUDIMENTARY MORALITY 109 
 
 increased the joy." Is anything gained in substi- 
 tuting "Yahwe" for "Jehovah," "baggage- 
 waggons " for " chariots " ; " human creature " 
 for " man " ? Sometimes, as in Psalms xix., xxi., 
 lv., the new translation offered is so very near 
 the old as to be superfluous. To alter for alter- 
 ing's sake is plainly indefensible. Obvious 
 defects, of course, should be amended, for the 
 sake, especially, of those whose spiritual life is 
 fostered by the devotional use of the Psalms. 
 Beautiful as is the Prayer-book version, it con- 
 tains passages unintelligible. 
 
 The imperfect morality of the Psalm is a 
 more serious difficulty. Are the Psalms which 
 are "imprecatory," the Psalms of cursing, really 
 proper for a Christian congregation, or for the 
 private devotions of a Christian ? The answer is 
 twofold. First, it must be remembered that the 
 light from heaven dawned gradually on mankind 
 till the "fulness of time," when Christ came, and 
 that the ages before His coming, even among His 
 chosen people, were simply a preparation. This 
 exculpates the original purport of the Male- 
 dictions. But, as has been said already, what 
 concerns the Christian is the practical, spiritual, 
 real meaning for him of the Psalms. These 
 imprecations, which strike the hearer as alto-
 
 110 THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 gether alien from the spirit of Christ, express 
 detestation and abhorrence, not of any mortal 
 foes, but of the spirits that tempt him from God. 
 In this sense, the execrations cannot be too fierce, 
 too pitiless. " Ye that love the Lord, see that 
 ye hate the thing that is evil." In like manner 
 the sceptical, even despairing, tone of some 
 Psalms as to a future life unfits them not for 
 those who believe in a risen Christ, and in a 
 future Resurrection, for "life and immortality" 
 came with His coming, not before it. 
 
 This again justifies the description in the 
 Psalms of the Saviour as a terrible One, who 
 shall rule with a "rod of iron," and dash His 
 enemies " in pieces, like a potter's vessel " (Ps. 
 ii.). The latter verses of Psalm xl. are said 
 to be such that they cannot be read or sung 
 in church "without an inward protest." But 
 even in the announcement of the "glad tidings," 
 even in the pages of the New Testament, "the 
 wrath of the Lamb" is spoken of as terrible 
 to the impenitent; and wherever there is in a 
 man the conviction of his own sinfulness and 
 weakness in God's sight, words like these come 
 home to the conscience piercingly. 
 
 Again, how can a Christian use Psalms, it 
 is asked, in which the Psalmist speaks of
 
 SEEKING, FINDING 111 
 
 himself as sinless before God ? "I was 
 uncorrupt (for instance) before Thee"; "Thou 
 shalt find no wickedness in me." Because 
 through the marvellous condescension of the 
 Son of God in the Incarnation a Christian is 
 identified with the sinless Son of Man, and in 
 Him the believer is accepted. Thus, in the 
 same Psalm there is in one verse absolute 
 contrition for guiltiness, in another the abso- 
 lute forgiveness which, through repentance, 
 faith, and love, cleanses the sinner that he may 
 be "whiter than snow." Only they can really 
 understand the Psalms who know and are 
 ready to acknowledge their own faults and 
 follies. It is a forgetfulness of the strange 
 complexities of our nature which is startled 
 by these apparently jarring sentiments or 
 regards these pathetic confessions of unworthi- 
 ness as "very unsuitable for an ordinary 
 individual." 
 
 "Those who seek shall find." When there 
 is real contrition, real longing for holiness, there 
 the Christ of prophecy reveals Himself in the 
 Psalms, while He is of necessity hidden from 
 the self-satisfied complacency which seeks Him 
 not there. As the writer already referred to 
 says very beautifully, it is
 
 112 THE PSALMS AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 "The absorption of a lover in his beloved. 
 Wherever he goes he sees something to remind 
 him of her ; he hears her name in the whisper of 
 the breeze, and he sees her beauty in the 
 flowers. Just so this lover of Jesus sees His 
 name or some feature of His life wherever he 
 looks in His Bible. And we, too, if we are 
 lovers of Jesus shall look for . . . some antici- 
 pation of His heavenly ideal in the best of the 
 pages of the Old Testament. We look, and we 
 venture to believe that, thanks in part at least 
 to the new critical exegesis, we find what we 
 seek." 
 
 As for the traditional assignment of certain 
 proper Psalms to particular days in the Christian 
 year, it would not be easy, notwithstanding all 
 that the author of The Christian Use of the 
 Psalms has written against it, to substitute a 
 better. Perhaps some day, as Sir William Muir 
 suggested some years ago in an interesting 
 pamphlet, the principle of selecting certain 
 Psalms as appropriate for certain seasons may 
 be extended to the various fasts and festivals 
 generally.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONFESSIO CREDENTIS 
 
 2u rrj e/zy 
 
 AWAY from controversy, in the near presence 
 of death, one asks oneself, "Why am I a 
 Christian ? " Conventional phrases fall away as 
 leaves in frost, with all that is superficial and 
 adventitious. Only what is intrinsic remains, 
 what has been assimilated and made one's own 
 by experience. 
 
 It may be worth while to try to set forth 
 plainly what is the essential character of our 
 faith, and on what foundation it rests really : for, 
 both in attacking and defending Christianity, 
 there is sometimes a kind of unreality from the 
 non-observance of proportion; too often the 
 attention, which should be concentrated on what 
 is vital, is distracted by what are comparatively 
 irrelevancies. 
 
 113
 
 114 CONFESSIO CREDENTIS 
 
 There is no need to go behind the generally 
 acknowledged phenomena of consciousness. It 
 may be taken as granted, that there is a right 
 and a wrong morally ; that in believing the 
 intellect assents, but that this assent is sterile 
 and inoperative without the concurrence of our 
 emotive being, and unless ratified by the will ; 
 and that in the action of the Will, the Holy 
 Spirit, unless we reject His aid, assists our spirit 
 to decide rightly. 
 
 I trust the Christ because I know of none, 
 nor can imagine any, approaching Him in good- 
 ness. As portrayed in the New Testament, 
 as Man, He is not only more true, more kind, 
 more pure than others, but absolutely true, 
 kind, pure ; not merely more unselfish than 
 others, but absolutely unselfish. Therefore, as 
 I trust my fellow-man who proves himself 
 trustworthy, even though he may be not 
 without fault, much more I trust One who is 
 transcendant in holiness. Even were research 
 not able to assure me that the record of His 
 life is authentic, still I should be sure that 
 such a character could not be invented. It 
 would be inconceivable, had it not been. 
 Because He is sinless, therefore it cannot be 
 but that He must rise from the grave ; He is
 
 "ON THIS ROCK" 115 
 
 too " holy " to " see corruption " ; Death can 
 have "no dominion over Him." Because He 
 is sinless, His personal unity with the Father 
 and the Holy Spirit was never interrupted, and 
 He could do wonders. Because He is sinless, 
 only they could see Him risen and glorified 
 who had a longing for holiness. Because He 
 is sinless, I can believe that He was born 
 supernaturally. Therefore this spotless holiness 
 of the Man constrains my assent to His claim 
 to be the Son of God, and I can trust every- 
 thing to Him. On "this rock" my faith rests. 
 "Other foundation can no man lay." His sin- 
 lessness is "the corner stone" of the temple. 
 He is "the Way, the Truth, the Life." I am 
 a Christian because I believe in Christ. 
 
 So far this is assent in the abstract. But 
 conscience, aware of inherent pravity, seeking 
 to be set free from it, responds to Him as the 
 perfect example, teaching by word and deed, 
 and, which is far better, as identifying Himself 
 with me, that He may suffer with me and for 
 me, and identifying me with Himself, that He 
 may impart to me His heavenliness ; by this 
 identification taking our mortal nature, giving 
 His immortal. A Jew, proud, prejudiced, 
 ambitious, but with a latent longing for some-
 
 116 CONFESSIO CREDENTIS 
 
 thing better, saw in the graciousness of a young 
 Christian martyr a reflection of heavenly linea- 
 ments. Longing to be saved from himself, he 
 became the foremost champion of the faith 
 which he had persecuted, and gave up all that 
 he had lived for to give himself to Christ, 
 staking everything on his personal faith in the 
 Person of Christ. Unless in me, as in St Paul, 
 there is sorrow, not simply for the consequences 
 of sin but for the sin, "there is no beauty in 
 Christ that I should desire Him." But if I 
 find in Him alone all that my conscience tells 
 me that I should aim at becoming, and if I 
 find in Him alone, for His sufferings are a 
 gauge of His love, free and full forgiveness, 
 then the heart and the will consent to the 
 judgment of the reason. "Whom have I in 
 Heaven but Thee? And there is none upon 
 earth that I desire in comparison of Thee." He 
 has died for me, and for me He lives for ever. 
 
 Thus faith in Christ is, intrinsically, the 
 surrender of Self to Him, come what may, 
 because He is what He is. But there is much 
 to corroborate my trust in Him. Prophecies 
 which have been accomplished in Him, acts of 
 beneficence in Him evincing a power inex- 
 plicable, the unselfish morality of the Gospel,
 
 "THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD" 117 
 
 the adaptability of the Gospel to all natures and 
 circumstances, the ameliorating tendencies of the 
 Gospel where it has free play, the unexampled 
 progress of Christianity among the foremost 
 races of the world, in spite of the terrible incon- 
 sistencies of Christians ; above all, the testimony 
 of Christians without number, who have found in 
 Christ a peace which nothing else could give 
 all these combine cumulatively to deepen my 
 trust in Him. "I know in whom I have 
 believed." 
 
 The Bible tells me of Christ. It is the 
 gradual unfolding of the Divine purpose, "at 
 sundry times and in divers manners," till in " the 
 fullness of time " the Son of God comes. The 
 light widens and deepens till "the Sun of 
 righteousness" arises, "the true Light," "the 
 Light of the world." The Bible shows the 
 preparation of the world for the Birth in 
 Bethlehem, shows the results which have flowed 
 from that event. It speaks of Christ directly, 
 implicitly, in anticipation, in retrospect. Even 
 passages which seem less spiritual than others, as 
 the history of wars between Israel and Judah, 
 are parabolic to a thoughtful mind of man's 
 unceasing warfare with evil, and display God's 
 overruling Providence preparing the world.
 
 118 CONFESSIO CREDENTIS 
 
 In the Bible God reveals Himself, not merely 
 as we guess of Him in nature, but explicitly, so 
 far as we can bear it. I do not go to the Bible 
 to learn geology, nor astronomy, nor whatever 
 else can be learnt otherwise, but to learn about 
 God and my self. 
 
 The difficulties in the Bible I need not be 
 careful to have solved. The attempt to solve 
 them may be interesting and, sometimes, success- 
 ful. But difficulties are to be expected in a 
 revelation of truths which transcend our faculties. 
 Were there no difficulties in believing, faith 
 would not be exercised fully. If I really trust 
 Christ, Biblical difficulties (for instance, about 
 the Gadarenes, and the swine) dwindle into 
 insignificance. What I seek and find in the 
 Scriptures, in a way not possible otherwise, is to 
 know God revealing Himself in Christ, and to 
 hear the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking even 
 to me. 
 
 There cannot be contradiction between the 
 real discoveries of science * and the real meaning 
 of revelation. Each must be true, and yet the 
 manner of reconciling them may never be found 
 out in this life. We "know in part"; we "see 
 
 * This is well enforced in Illingworth's Reason and 
 Revelation.
 
 EVOLUTION, ETC. 119 
 
 through a glass darkly"; we cannot pour the 
 ocean into a little hole in the sand ; we can wait. 
 Often the attempt to dovetail science and revela- 
 tion into one another is premature, and has to 
 be made over again. Science has not said her 
 last word ; those who quote the Bible against a 
 scientific proposition are often, like the opponents 
 of Galileo, fighting for their own figments, not 
 for a revealed truth. Evolution illustrates the 
 divine prescience more fully than older notions 
 about the creation. The law of gravitation and 
 the law of right and wrong in conduct are both 
 verities ; but they are apprehended through pro- 
 cesses distinct though analogous ; they touch us 
 on different sides of our nature. Religion 
 assures us, what science intimates, that we are 
 not orphans. Christ emboldens us to say, with 
 a promise of being heard, "Abba, Father;" 
 "Our Father, which art in heaven." 
 
 The Church, by the appointment of Christ, 
 through the ages hands down to me the 
 Scriptures, which tell me of Him, and relates 
 how they have been understood by the faithful 
 from the beginning. The Church has "kept" 
 all "the sayings" and doings of her Lord and 
 "pondered them in her heart." That cannot 
 be the right interpretation which is partial in
 
 120 CONFESSIO CREDENTIS 
 
 any way historically, in time or place, or sub- 
 stantially, by not taking in the whole scope of 
 what is written. If it can be proved of any 
 doctrine that it has not been existent throughout 
 Christendom at any period,* or that it has been 
 non-existent from the beginning in any part of 
 Christendom, or that it involves the rejection of 
 any other received doctrine, this doctrine cannot 
 claim adhesion. The Church is a finger-post, 
 where truth and error diverge. Had we the 
 infallible guidance which we are apt to sigh for, 
 faith, hope, and love would be without the 
 ordeal which makes them perfect. We should 
 be under compulsion to believe. If we love 
 our King we love the kingdom which He 
 has founded among men, "the city of our 
 God," the heavenly Sion. It has four special 
 characteristics, "apostolic doctrine, apostolic 
 fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and 
 the prayers."! 
 
 The earliest Christian creed is, "I believe 
 that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." The 
 Ethiopian's profession of faith contained the 
 creeds of the Church in germ. In Christ we 
 have access to the Father by the Spirit; for "in 
 
 * "Quod semper, [aut] ubique, [aut] ab omnibus." The 
 Lerinensian test. t Acts ii. 42.
 
 PROPORTION 121 
 
 Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 
 bodily " ; nor " knoweth any man the Father save 
 the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will 
 reveal Him " ; nor " hath any man seen God at 
 any time : the Only Begotten Son of the Father 
 He hath declared Him " ; and, if we believe in 
 Him, we accept thankfully from Him the two 
 great ordinances which He has bequeathed to 
 His people, with all the truths which have fallen 
 from His lips or which He communicated to His 
 Apostles. Nothing which comes from Him can 
 be unimportant. The devout believer endeavours 
 "to fulfil all righteousness" in doctrine as in 
 practice. But there is a hierarchy in these 
 teachings ; some are in their essence more life- 
 giving than others. There must always be a 
 subjective difference in the manner in which a 
 truth presents itself to this or that person ; even 
 as no two persons see the same object precisely. 
 The more mysterious the doctrine, the greater is 
 the irreverence of an individual dogmatising 
 about it. But to think slightly of Christian 
 doctrine is to disparage Him whence it emanates. 
 If I love Christ, I must " contend earnestly for the 
 faith once [for all] delivered to the saints." Wilful 
 indifference or perversity in regard to doctrine 
 lead to indifference or perversity in practice. 
 
 Q
 
 122 CONFESSIO CREDENTIS 
 
 None is handicapped " in running the race 
 set before us." Earthly distinctions vanish in 
 Christ; in Him there is neither learned nor 
 unlearned. The peasant or the child who 
 yields himself to Him, by the very act accepts 
 implicitly what the theologian accepts explicitly. 
 They have " done what they could " ; they are 
 responsible for "what they have, not for what 
 they have not." Faith, hope, charity, are inde- 
 pendent of the inequalities of mental equipment : 
 these inequalities are not the person, but the 
 dress which he wears. Those who have never 
 heard of Christ, or, hearing of Him, are kept away 
 from Him by accidents, in them or round them, 
 which they cannot control, may be Christians 
 in God's sight, potentially and virtually though 
 not actually. Nothing can " separate us from 
 the love of Christ" but our deliberate rejection 
 of Him with our eyes open. Then we thrust 
 away from us His saving Arm.* 
 
 Is it sin to refuse to believe in Christ? If 
 faith in Christ means the surrender of Self to 
 Him, because in Him, as Man, is personified 
 all that is worthiest of love and reverence, then 
 " whatsoever is " by choice " not of faith is 
 sin " ; for " he that is of God heareth God's 
 
 * G. Herbert.
 
 VIRTUAL CHRISTIANS 123 
 
 words." But " I will not believe is quite 
 another thing from I cannot" If I refuse to 
 believe in Him, because I am biassed by un- 
 worthy motives ; because I prefer following my 
 own wilfulness to obeying His law ; because I 
 love my own gratification more than His 
 " beauty of holiness," " darkness rather than 
 light " ; because I admire myself so blindly and 
 trust so proudly in myself that I will not try 
 to "bring every thought into subjection to the 
 law of Christ " ; because I think that I " have 
 no need of a Physician," a Saviour; because I 
 am self-willed, self-righteous, self-seeking then 
 my unbelief in Him is sin. If I would believe 
 but am hindered by impediments insurmount- 
 able ; if I long for holiness though I am unable 
 from one cause or another, not of my own 
 making, to recognise that perfect holiness is 
 in Christ only ; if I am steadfast in self-renun- 
 ciation for others, even though I fail to see 
 that perfect self-sacrifice is only to be found 
 on Calvary then surely the will is taken for 
 the deed, and such an unbeliever is nearer to 
 Christ and " to the Kingdom of Heaven " than 
 many a nominal Christian.
 
 APPENDICES
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 MYSTICISM AND MOEALITY 
 
 THE Bampton Lectures of 1899 are one of the few books 
 that are really epoch-making. England has been rich in 
 Christian mystics of the best sort, particularly at 
 Cambridge in the eighteenth century. But never before 
 have we had in England a survey of the whole subject 
 from first to last so exhaustive, so discriminating. Mr 
 Inge* distinguishes the healthy mysticism from its 
 parhelion, the ravings and drivellings of the morbid 
 mystic. Sympathising reverently with the devotional 
 ardour and heavenly musings of the true mystic, he is 
 none the less keenly aware of the perils that environ the 
 mystic ; for the old saying about the hermits of the 
 Thebaid holds good of the mystic, "Aid deus, aut bellua." 
 Mysticism is a timely antidote (as Mr Inge says) to the 
 arid Positivism which threatens to make life a desert 
 of Sahara. 
 
 There are two lines of thought, in connection with 
 this subject, which need to be emphasised, both starting 
 from psychology, both converging by routes distinct. 
 
 * Christian Mysticism. The Bampton Lectures, 1899. By William 
 
 Ralph Inge, M.A., etc., etc. Methuen & Co. 
 
 127
 
 128 APPENDICES 
 
 Mysticism is not synonymous with holiness. Its 
 holy raptures are an accident of religion, not the essence 
 of it. They come from a peculiar temperament, an 
 idiosyncratic commixture of the diverse elements which 
 constitute our being. It is not given to every saint to 
 see in thought what George Fox and Sister Theresa 
 believed that they saw. Yet a child, an illiterate peasant, 
 a person to whom Wordsworth's magnificent poem on 
 Tintern Abbey is nothing, may enjoy the bliss of union 
 with God through Christ, which is the foretaste of heaven, 
 if only they surrender their will to Him. The nearness 
 and closeness to God, indicated in the promise, " The pure 
 in heart shall see God," must not be confounded with 
 (for it may well be apart from it and independent of it) 
 the conscious vision of God, the " beatific vision," which 
 solaces and delights the true mystic now and here. All 
 this is implied in the Lectures. Perhaps Mr Inge would 
 say, that there is no necessity to express it categorically. 
 
 The other point is almost, if not quite, of equal 
 importance. Here, too, the lecturer can reply, that it is 
 by no means omitted, nay, that substantially it is recog- 
 nised through the Lectures from beginning to end. 
 Certainly he affirms plainly that Mysticism of the right 
 type is reasonable ; that, far from controverting the laws 
 of our reason, it moves in conformity with them ; that, as 
 St Paul teaches about worship, the mystic must see " with 
 the understanding also." It would be deeply interesting, 
 if one who has gained so remarkable a mastery of his 
 subject, would trace by analysis the process by which our 
 reason, the same faculty surely, by which we note the
 
 APPENDIX A 129 
 
 common things of daily life, can soar so high in its eagle 
 flight, undazzled by the sun. If we call in to aid us 
 "intuition," or any other supposed faculty devised to 
 meet the occasion, we are grasping at shadow. Granting 
 that imagination is the synthesis, the co-ordination of our 
 rational and emotional faculties, may we not say that a 
 highly sensitive imaginativeness, guided by a purified, self - 
 renouncing Will, is what we mean by " mysticism " in the 
 right sense of the word ? Just as our highest and best 
 affections, rising from the appreciation of what is worthy 
 of love and reverence in our fellows to find their home 
 through Christ in God, have their birth in the likes and 
 dislikes of childhood, so the grandest and most heavenly 
 conceptions of the intellect spring embrionically from the 
 perceptions of sense. The transcendental is the develop- 
 ment, the evolution of what is very simple. Eeligion is 
 reasonable, if He, through whom we have the revelation, 
 is trustworthy, though it points the way to mysteries 
 which transcend reason. St Paul sums up the reason- 
 ableness of the Gospel thus : " I know in whom I have 
 believed."
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 MIKACLES 
 
 "Omnia portenta contra naturam dicimus esse. Sed non sunt 
 Quomodo est enim 'contra naturam' quod Dei fit voluntate, quum 
 voluntas tanti utique Conditoris conditae rei cujusque natura sit? 
 Portentum ergo fit, non contra naturam, sed contra earn quce est nota 
 natura." De Civ. Dei, xxi. 8. 
 
 " IT seems more and more likely, that we have before 
 " us a period of controversy which will centre, not merely 
 " about historic incidents, like the Virgin Birth or the 
 " Kesurrection, but about the actual nature of the Person 
 "of Christ Himself. But if the battles of Nicaea and 
 " Chalcedon have to be fought over again, we shall have 
 " the advantage of the experience of fifteen centuries more 
 " of Christian life and faith. And the issue is not 
 "doubtful for us. 
 
 " 1 Cor. xv. 47 speaks of Christ as ' the Lord from 
 " heaven.' 2 Cor. viii. 9 tells us that He was ' rich/ before 
 " He became ' poor ' for our sakes. Now this cannot be 
 " predicated of any period of His earthly life ; and hence 
 " we have passages in the earlier and undisputed Epistles of 
 " Paul which coincide with the teaching of the later Epistles 
 
 130
 
 APPENDICES 131 
 
 "of the Imprisonment, and even anticipate the fullness of 
 " the Johannine doctrine. I venture to think that these two 
 " passages may well be set over against the silence of the 
 " Synoptic Gospels on the subject of His pre-existence, 
 " and show that it was no mere after-thought of St John, 
 " or even of St Paul's later days." 
 
 REV. W. SUMMERS. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION 
 
 THE spiritual Body of the Risen Christ cannot be 
 apprehended by the senses. The words spoken to St 
 Thomas (" Reach hither thy hand," etc.) are as truly part 
 of the heavenly vision as the words spoken to Saul of 
 Tarsus, as he rode to Damascus. 
 
 There must be in the beholder a capacity for seeing. 
 To see the Risen Christ there must be that appreciation 
 of holiness, by which the Will surrenders itself to Him. 
 The Will, able to control in some degree the action even 
 of the senses, is far more potent in controlling the 
 imagination. 
 
 But to say that the vision is subjective, is not to say 
 that it is unreal. The spiritual is more real than the 
 material. The black dogs seen by the mind's eye in 
 delirium tremens, or the ghost imagined by the 
 frightened child, are unreal, because they are the product 
 of a morbid conception. The vision of the Resurrection
 
 132 APPENDICES 
 
 Christ is real, because there is in the beholder a sane 
 conception of the holiness which cannot die. The 
 revelation is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. 
 
 "Although it was the very Body which was laid in 
 the grave, yet it was not raised the same Body, it having 
 undergone the change which we await when the ' sons of 
 God/ who are now subject to the conditions of time and 
 space, shall be relieved of this humiliation, and the sense- 
 perception of phenomena shall give place to the more 
 immediate knowledge which is by the spirit. The 
 phenomenal is temporal ; what remains after the veil of 
 illusion has been rent in twain is the only reality. But 
 when reality presents itself to the spirit, sense and per- 
 ception clothe it in the garb of the phenomenal. Hence, 
 when the Risen Lord in all the reality of His Spiritual 
 Being appeared to His disciples, they saw Him ' flesh and 
 bone,' ' the same Jesus.' " 
 
 REV. E. H. ARCHER-SHEPHERD. 
 
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