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FAITH AND ITS 
 PSYCHOLOGY 
 
FAITH AND ITS 
 PSYC H O LO GY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM RALPH INGE 
 
 LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1913 
 

 * «.*• ^*-*«<« 
 
 %;';'^:V^O 
 

 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 TO THE SERIES 
 
 Man has no deeper or wider interest than theology ; 
 none deeper, for however much he may change, he 
 never loses his love of the many questions it covers ; 
 and none wider, for under whatever law he may live 
 he never escapes from its spacious shade; nor does 
 he ever find that it speaks to him in vain or uses a 
 voice that fails to reach him. Once the present 
 writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame 
 as a statesman and a man of letters, and he said, 
 'Every day I live. Politics, which are affairs of 
 Man and Time, interest me less, while Theology, 
 which is an affair of God and Eternity, interests me 
 more.' As with him, so with many, though the many 
 feel that their interest is in theology and not in dogma. 
 Dogma, they know, is but a series of resolutions 
 framed by a council or parliament, which they do 
 not respect any the more because the parliament was 
 composed of ecclesiastically-minded persons ; while the 
 theology which so interests them is a discourse touch- 
 ing God, though the Being so named is the God man 
 conceived as not only related to himself and his world 
 but also as rising ever higher with the notions of the 
 self and the world. Wise books, not in dogma but in 
 theology, may therefore be described as the supreme 
 
 281428 
 
GENERAL TNTRODUCTION 
 
 need of our day, for only such can save us from much 
 fanaticism and secure us in the full possession of a 
 sober and sane reason. 
 
 Theology is less a single science than an ency- 
 clopaedia of sciences; indeed all the sciences which 
 have to do with man have a better right to be called 
 theological than anthropological, though the man it 
 studies is not simply an individual but a race. Its 
 way of viewing man is indeed characteristic ; from this 
 have come some of its brighter ideals and some of its 
 darkest dreams. The ideals are all either ethical or 
 social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating 
 fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a 
 goodly sisterhood ; the dreams may be represented by 
 doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the 
 will of God on the other. But even this will cannot 
 make sin luminous, for were it made radiant with 
 grace, it would cease to be sin. 
 
 These books then, — which have all to be written by 
 men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light, 
 — though without having either their eyes burned 
 out or their souls scorched into insensibility, — are in- 
 tended to present God in relation to Man and Man 
 in relation to God. It is intended that they begin, not 
 in date of publication, but in order of thought, with a 
 Theological Encyclopaedia which shall show the circle 
 of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology, 
 though all will be viewed as related to its central or 
 main idea. This relation of God to human know- 
 ledge will then be looked at through mind as a com- 
 munion of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship 
 
GENERAL INTEODUCTION 
 
 with concrete man. On this basis the idea of Revela- 
 tion will be dealt with. Then, so far as history and 
 philology are concerned, the two Sacred Books, which 
 are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar, 
 who is also a divine, views them; in other words, 
 the Old and New Testaments, regarded as human 
 documents, will be criticised as a literature which 
 expresses relations to both the present and the future ; 
 that is, to the men and races who made the books, 
 as well as to the races and men the books made. 
 The Bible will thus be studied in the Semitic family 
 which gave it being, and also in the Indo-European 
 families which gave to it the quality of the life to 
 which they have attained. But Theology has to do 
 with more than sacred literature; it has also to do 
 with the thoughts and life its history occasioned. 
 Therefore the Church has to be studied and presented 
 as an institution which God founded and man ad- 
 ministers. But it is possible to know this Church 
 only through the thoughts it thinks, the doctrines 
 it holds, the characters and the persons it forms, the 
 people who are its saints and embody its ideals of 
 sanctity, the acts it does, which are its sacraments, 
 and the laws it follows and enforces, which are its 
 polity, and the young it educates and the nations it 
 directs and controls. These are the points to be pre- 
 sented in the volumes which follow, which are all to be 
 occupied with theology or the knowledge of God and 
 His ways. 
 
 A, M. F. 
 *0.' 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The main objects of this volume are threefold. 1 Firstly, 
 to vindicate for rehgious Faith its true dignity as 
 a normal and healthy part of human nature. Next, 
 to insist that Faith demands the actual reality of its 
 objects, and can never be content with a God who is 
 only an ideal. Lastly, to show in detail how most of the 
 errors and defects in rehgious behef have been due to a 
 tendency to arrest the development of Faith prematurely, 
 by annexing it to some one faculty to the exclusion of 
 others, or by resting on given authority. The true 
 goal is an unified experience which will make authority 
 no longer external. This scheme has compelled me to 
 state, far too briefly and dogmatically, my grounds of 
 disagreement with certain religious opinions which are 
 widely held, such as the infallibility of * the hving voice 
 of the Church,' and the finality of the appeal to Holy 
 Scripture, and also with those religious philosophies which 
 make religion exclusively an affair of the will, or the in- 
 tellect, or the aesthetic sense. My criticisms of these various 
 theories are all intended to show the errors which result 
 from a premature synthesis. Faith claims the whole man, 
 and all that God's grace can make of him. If any part of 
 ourselves is left outside our religion, our theory of Faith 
 is sure to be partly vitiated by the omission ; and con- 
 versely, an inadequate theory of Faith is likely to be 
 reflected in one-sided or distorted practice. 
 
 When we try to analyse the contents of Faith, after 
 claiming for it this very comprehensive range, we must 
 
a FAITH 
 
 be prepared for the criticism that we have given only 
 bare outlines, or else that we have left rival constructions 
 side by side in the form of patent inconsistencies. Foi 
 we cannot hope to understand and co-ordinate all the 
 highest experiences of the human spirit. And our own 
 generation, it seems to me, is not called upon even to 
 attempt any ambitious construction. We must be 
 content to clear the site for a new building, and to get the 
 materials ready. The wise master-builder is not yet 
 among us. ' Revivals ' are only a stop-gap ; they create 
 nothing. They recover for us parts of our spiritual heritage 
 which were in danger of being lost, and having achieved 
 this, they have done their work. The words CathoUc 
 and Protestant are much Uke the words Whig and Tory 
 in politics. They are the names of obsolescent distinc- 
 tions, survivals of old-world struggles. When the next 
 constructive period comes, it will be seen that the spiritual 
 Latin empire and the Teutonic revolt against it belong 
 to past history. Already the crucial question is, not 
 whether Europe shall be Catholic or Protestant, but 
 whether Christianity can come to terms with the awakening 
 self-consciousness of modem civilisation, equipped with 
 a vast mass of new scientific knowledge, and animated for 
 the first time by ideals which are not borrowed from 
 classical and Hebrew antiquity. 
 
 The great danger in our path, I venture to think, comes 
 from the democratisation of thought, which has affected 
 religion, ethics, philosophy, and sociology — in fact, almost 
 every department of mental activity except natural 
 science. We see its results in hysterical sentimentalism, 
 which is the great obstacle in the way of using organised 
 effort for social amelioration. We see them in the frank 
 adoption of materialistic standards, such as the pleasure 
 and pain calculus, as soon as we leave the region of abstract 
 speculation. And in philosophy it is impossible to miss 
 the connection between the new empiricism, with its 
 
PREFACE Tii 
 
 blatant contempt for idealism, whether of the ancient 
 or modem type, and the democratic claim to decide all 
 things in heaven and earth by popular vote. It is possible 
 to sympathise thoroughly with the spread of education, 
 and yet to be aware of the enormous dangers to civilisation 
 which the false theory of natural equality brings with it. 
 It has bred a dislike of intellectual superiority, and a 
 reluctance to allow reason and knowledge to arbitrate on 
 burning questions. Everywhere we find the praises of 
 feeling or instinct sung, and the dangers of intellectualism 
 exposed. Now instinct is the tendency in humanity to 
 persistence, reason is the tendency to variation. Most 
 variations, we are reminded, fail to establish themselves ; 
 instinct is therefore the safer guide. But the tendency 
 to variation is just what has raised man above the lower 
 animals ; it is the condition of progress. And in civilised 
 man reason has largely displaced instinct, which is no 
 longer so trustworthy as in the brutes. Since this process 
 is certain to go further, distrust of reason is suicidal, and 
 to exclude it from matters of Faith must be disastrous. 
 I believe that the Kantian antithesis between the specula- 
 tive and practical reason is wholly fallacious, a residuum 
 of the dualism which Kant found dominant in philosophy 
 and failed to overcome. If this dualism is abandoned, the 
 contrast between Faith and knowledge falls with it. And 
 yet the temptation to ' heal slightly ' the wounds of 
 religion by reverting to this separation of Faith from fact 
 has proved irresistible to very many, and I beUeve that it 
 is a main source of the notorious inefficacy of our apolo- 
 getics. The intellectual difficulties raised by science are 
 not popular, and we are tempted to override them because 
 the masses are still ignorant and superstitious ; but I 
 beheve that here is still our great problem, and that we 
 shall do well to agree with our adversary quickly, while 
 we are in the way with him. 
 
 This is not the kind of intellectualism which paralyses 
 
vui FAITH 
 
 action. To escape this, it is only necessary to remember 
 that, in the hfe of man, thought and action are equally 
 important. The normal course of all experience is ex- 
 pansion followed by concentration. Ideals are painted 
 by imaginative thought, but realised only in action. 
 Character is consolidated thought. Action and contem- 
 plation must act and react upon each other ; otherwise 
 our actions will have no soul, and our thoughts no body. 
 This is the great truth which the higher religions express 
 in their sacraments. A sacrament is more than a symbol. 
 The perception of symbols leads us from the many to the 
 one, from the transitory to the permanent, but not from 
 appearance to reality. This belongs to the sacramental 
 experience, which is symbolism retranslating itself into 
 concrete action, returning to the outer world and to 
 mundane interests ; but in how different a manner from 
 our earlier superficial experience ! The formula ' From 
 symbol to sacrament ' completes and Christianises the 
 Platonic (or Plotinian) scheme, and gives the mystic a 
 rule of life. * Are we not here to make the transitory 
 permanent ? ' asks Goethe. ' This we can only do if 
 we know how to value both.' There are two essential 
 movements in the spiritual life : one which finds God in 
 the world, mainly through thought and feeling ; the 
 other which re-finds the world in God, mainly through 
 moral action. The former reaches permanence through 
 change, the latter change through permanence. So the 
 spiral goes on, in ever- diminishing circles (gyrans gyrando 
 vadit Spiritus), till in heaven, we may be sure, the dis- 
 harmony between thought and action is finally attuned. 
 
 Note. — ^This book is an expansion of ten lectures which 
 were delivered in London on the Jowett Foundation, in 
 the early months of this year. For this reason, the form 
 of lectures has been adhered to throughout. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 'faith' as a religious term, 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FAITH AS A RELIGIOUS TERM — Continued, , ... 24 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 I THE PRIMARY GROUND OF FAITH, . , , . , .41 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FAITH AS PURE FEELING, 55 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH, . , , , ,72 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF F AlTH—COntinuedj ... 87 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH — Continued, . . . 107 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 I AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST, 124 
 ■ ■ 
 
Z FAITH 
 
 PAOl 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL, 140 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FAITH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS — MODERNISM, . , . 161 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 FAITH AND REASON, 178 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THB .fiSTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH, 203 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FAITH AS HARMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT, . • • 223 
 
 BIBLIOQRAFUY, ••••••••• 243 
 
 INDEX, .•••••. t t • • 245 
 
FAITH AND ITS PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 •faith* as a religious term 
 (a) In the Bible 
 
 PROPOSE to consider the first of the theological virtues, 
 in order to determine, if possible, in what it consists. I 
 will not begin by attempting a definition of ' Faith ' ; but 
 a brief indication of the sense in which the word will be 
 used in the course of the discussion seems desirable. 
 Broadly speaking, when we use the word Faith, without 
 special reference to religion, we mean, either the holding 
 for true of something which is not already verified by 
 experience or demonstrated by logical conclusion,^ or con- 
 fidence in the wisdom and integrity of a person. In the 
 former sense, the corresponding verb is * believe,' in the 
 latter it is * trust.' In the former sense, the conception 
 of Faith is independent of the character or quality of the 
 thing believed. I may believe in a God or in a devil ; in 
 the habitability of Mars or in the man in the moon ; or I 
 may believe that if I make one of a party of thirteen at 
 dinner it will be a good speculation to insure my life. The 
 grossest superstition might be called Faith in this sense. 
 But in religious language, to which the word more properly 
 belongs, Faith has a more limited and a more dignified 
 meaning. * It is the general expression for subjective 
 religion.* ^ It is used for conviction as to certain ultimate 
 
 1 Cf. Fechner, Die drei Motive und OrUnde des Olaubens, p, 1, 
 • Dorner. 
 
i FAITH [CH. 
 
 facts relating to the order of the universe and our place in 
 it. And we shall see in the sequel that this conviction is 
 not the result of a purely intellectual Judgment, but has a 
 more vital origin. It involves an eager and loyal choice, a 
 resolution to abide by the hypothesis that the nature of 
 things is good, and on the side of goodness. That is to 
 say, Faith, in the religious sense, is not simply belief ; it 
 is inseparable from the sister virtues of hope and 
 love.^ 
 
 After this preliminary statement about the meaning of 
 the word, I will proceed to sketch the historical growth of 
 * Faith * as a theological concept. For it is a complex idea 
 and has a history. 
 
 Let us take first the history of the Greek words Trio-rts and 
 7n<TT€V€Lv. Iii(TTLS mcaus thc trust which we place in any 
 person or thing, and the conviction, or persuasion, which we 
 hold about any subject.^ Less frequently, it means fidelity, 
 and so the pledge of fidelity, acquiring the meaning of 
 'promise, security. ^Eschylus {Frag. 276) has ovk dv8ph<s 
 opKoi ttiVtis, a a. a.' opKwv av-qp \ and TrtVTts became a 
 common technical term for * proof.' * The word first 
 
 occurs in Hesiod — Trio-rtis yap rot o/iws koI diria-Tiai wAco-ai/ 
 avBpas, i.e. * in money matters be neither confiding nor 
 suspicious ' ; while Theognis has learned by experience 
 that it is safest to trust nobody : ttiVtci xprniar' oAeo-o-a, 
 diTLQ-riy 8' tVawo-a. Li the first-mentioned sense it is 
 opposed to knowledge, and is thus almost a synonym of 
 So^a, though TTto-Tis could never (like 86^a) be contrasted 
 
 with dX-jOeta, or v6r](TLS, but only with cttio-tt^/xi^, or yvQa-is. 
 
 Very instructive is Plato {Rep. 10. 601) ; tov avrov dpa 
 
 (TKevov^ 6 pL€V 7rotrjTY)s triu-TLV opOrjv e^ei Trepl /caAXovs t« Kai 
 rrovrjpta^^ ^vv(i)v tQ eiSori Kal dvayKalo/xevo^ (Jkouciv irapa tov 
 
 1 On the connection between Faith and Hope, cf. Newman, Lectures on 
 Justification, p. 256 n. ' Luther and Calvin both virtually grant that faith 
 and hope are inseparable, or parts of one thiu^, though Luther (and perhapa 
 Calvin) denies this of faith and love.' Cf. p. 16. 
 
 • Cremer, Bxblico-Theologieal Lexicon, p. 495. 
 
 * Lightfoot, GcUatians, p. 156. 
 
l] 'FAITH' AS A KELIGIOUS TEEM 9 
 
 €t8oTos, o Se xpcofxevos lirKTTrnx'qv (* though the implement is 
 the same, the maker will have only a correct belief about 
 the beauty or badness of it . . . whereas the user will 
 have knowledge '). IltcrTtg is not necessarily weak con- 
 viction, but it is unverified conviction. As, however, 
 all conviction should seek to verify itself, it may be called 
 incomplete science. Plato {Rep. 6. 511 ; 7. 533) gives us 
 two divisions of the mind, intelligence (voiyo- is) and opinion 
 (So^a), each having two subdivisions. The four divisions 
 thus produced are science(€7rto-T7J/x7^),understanding(Stavoia), 
 belief (or faith or persuasion — ttio-tis), and the perception of 
 images (etKao-ia). And he says that as being is to becom- 
 ing, so is intelligence to opinion ; and as intelligence is to 
 opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to the 
 perception of images. Faith, for Plato, is a mental condi-\ 
 tion which still takes the visible and opinable for true ; \ 
 though it possesses a higher degree of clearness than eiKaa-ia. \ 
 It is a stepping-stone to true knowledge. I 
 
 Ilto-Tts is used in classical Greek of belief in the gods ; 
 generally {e.g. Eur. Med. 414) of confidence in them rather 
 than of belief in their existence ; but examples of the other 
 sense are not wanting. By the time of Plutarch, Greek 
 thought was already familiar with the idea of ' Faith ' as 
 that which guards a traditional deposit of divine truth. 
 
 Cf. Mor. 756 B. : dpKel rj TrdrpLos Kal iraXaid ttlo-tls, ^S ovk 
 ecTTtv eLTretv ov8' dvevpeiv T€KnypLov kvapykdTepov. * The ancient 
 
 ancestral Faith is sufficient, than which it is impossible to 
 mention, or to discover, anything clearer. If [he continues] 
 this common foundation for the pious life is disturbed and 
 shaken at any point, the whole becomes insecure and 
 suspected.' 
 
 The verb Trto-rcveii', when used in relation to persons, 
 seems to have expressed a somewhat stronger emotion 
 than the substantive Trto-rts, and accordingly it was not 
 much used in classical Greek of mere belief in the existence 
 of gods. For this belief vop-i^av was the regular word, 
 
4 FAITH [cm. 
 
 indicating acceptance of statutory beliefs rather than any 
 warmer sentiment. At the beginning of the Memorabilia, 
 Socrates is accused of not ' believing in ' (i^o/xi^eu ) the gods 
 whom the city worships, and Xenophon replies that 
 since he certainly trusted in the gods, how can it be true 
 that he did not believe in them ? So a distinction is recog- 
 nised which is of great importance in the history of 
 Faith. 
 
 In the later Platonists, we have a doctrine of Faith 
 which closely resembles that which I shall advocate in 
 these lectures. The nature of God, says Plotinus, is diffi- 
 cult to conceive and perhaps impossible to define. But 
 we are sure of His existence, because we experience, in our 
 inmost being, expressible and definable impressions when 
 we come near to Him, or rather when He comes near to 
 us. The ardent desire with which we turn towards Him 
 is accompanied by a pain caused by the consciousness of 
 something lacking in ourselves ; we feel that there is 
 something wanting to our being. It must be by His 
 presence in our souls that God reveals Himself to us, for 
 we have no means of knowing things except by something 
 analogous to contact. The light of God's presence is 
 brighter than the light of science or reason. But none can 
 see it who is not made like to God, and whose being is not, 
 like that of God, brought to an inner unity. Elsewhere, 
 Plotinus explains Faith as a kind of spiritual perception, 
 as opposed to demonstration (aTroSeiJis), which is the result 
 of reasoning.^ 
 
 'in Hebrew, the verb * trust ' or ' believe ' is connected 
 with words meaning ' support ' and ' nourish ' ; and the 
 fundamental idea is stability, trustworthiness. * Whatever 
 holds, is steady, or can be depended upon, whether a wall 
 which securely holds a nail (Isa. xxii. 23, 25), or a brook 
 which does not fail (Jer. xvi. 18), or a kingdom which is 
 firmly established (2 Sam. vii. 16), or an assertion which has 
 I Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, v. 5, 11 ; vi. 7, 24-26 ; vi. 9, 4. 
 
I 
 
 I.] 'FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 5 
 
 been verified (Gen. xlii. 20), or a covenant which endures 
 for ever (Ps. Ixxxix. 28), or a heart found faithful (Neh. 
 ix. 8), or a man who can be trusted (Neh. xiii. 13), or God 
 Himself who keeps covenant (Deut. vii. 9), is * faithful.' ^ 
 The difference between ' believing in ' (placing trust in) 
 and simple credence is marked in the Old Testament by 
 different prepositions following the verb. It cannot be 
 said that the verb is very common in the Old Testament 
 in a religious sense ; and there is in Biblical Hebrew no 
 substantive properly meaning ' Faith ' in the active sense. 
 Accordingly, the Revised Version only admits the sub- 
 stantive Faith in two places (Deut. xxxii. 20, and Hab. ii. 4). 
 These are not translations of the same Hebrew word. In 
 Deut. xxxii. 20, the words are : ' they are a very froward 
 generation, children in whom is no Faith.' Here one may 
 doubt whether the meaning is not simply, * they cannot be 
 trusted.' In Habakkuk, however, the active sense is 
 apparently intended : ' the just shall live by his faith ' ; 
 but even here the sense is disputed, and the margin of the 
 Revised Version has ' in his faithfulness.' I think, however, 
 that the marginal rendering, though more in accordance 
 with the usage of the word, gives a less satisfactory sense, 
 because the context shows that a contrast is being drawn 
 between the arrogant self-sufficiency of the Chaldaean and 
 the humble trust in God of the ' just.' We may perhaps, 
 then, hold that in this one passage of the Old Testament 
 we have the word Faith used in something like its full 
 Christian or Evangelical meaning, as an enduring attitude 
 of the mind and heart towards God. 
 
 The notion of Faith, or rather, faithfulness, in the Old 
 Testament is largely determined by the idea of a covenant 
 between God and His people. Faith, trust, or faithfulness 
 belongs to the parties to a covenant ; it has no meaning 
 outside that relation. The covenant was made between 
 God and His people collectively ; individuals were parties 
 
 1 Warfield in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, s. v. Faith. 
 
6 FAITH [CH. 
 
 to it as members of the favoured nation.^ Faith, or faith- 
 fulness, is the observance of a right attitude towards the 
 covenant with God — it is the conscientious observance of 
 the human side of the covenant, the divine side of which 
 is grace and mercy. We may trace a development in the 
 Jewish ideas about this covenant. With the decay of the 
 national fortunes Faith became more spiritual and more 
 individualistic. It became finally the mental attitude of 
 those who ' waited for the consolation of Israel,' trusting 
 in promises which seemed every year further from their 
 fulfilment. 
 
 The Septuagint was not able to preserve the distinction, 
 above referred to, between ' to trust to ' and ' to trust in.' 
 It usually renders both by Trta-TeveLv with the dative. Nor 
 can the Greek reproduce all the meaning of the Hebrew 
 words. It wavers in translating the Hebrew word for 
 
 * trustworthiness,' the nearest equivalent to Faith, and the 
 corresponding adjective, rendering them sometimes by 
 dXrjOeia, dkrjdLvos, and somctimes by Trto-rts and kindred 
 adjectives. In Isa. vii. 9, there is a kind of play on words. 
 
 * If ye be not firm * (in Faith), ' ye shall surely not be made 
 firm ' (in fact) ; or, * If ye hold not fast, ye shall not stand 
 fast.' This is lost in translation. In the important verse, 
 Hab. ii. 4, the Septuagint manifestly misunderstands the 
 original, translating 6 SiKaios €k iria-Tem fxov ^vJ(r€Tai = * the 
 just shall live through my faithfulness (to my covenant).' 
 Still, the word jna-Tiveiv is satisfactory, as it has the right 
 association with moral trust, as well as with what may 
 be called the earlier Greek associations of Trto-Tts, as opposed 
 to iTTicrrriixri. 
 
 Philo's notion of Faith is characteristic of his position as 
 a mediator between Jewish and Greek thought. As a Jew, 
 he emphasises trust as determining Faith ; but his philo- 
 sophy leads him to single out the unchangeableness of God 
 almost exclusively as the ground and object of Faith. 
 
 > A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament, p. 280. 
 
I.] * FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 7 
 
 There is not a great deal about Faith in his writings : what 
 there is, is chiefly with reference to the standard case of 
 Abraham's Faith. ' Abraham,' he says, ' saw into the 
 unfixedness and unsettledness of material being, when he 
 recognised the unfaltering stability which attends true 
 being, and to which he is said to have completely trusted.' 
 * He anchored himself firmly and unchangeably on true 
 being alone.' * The only thing stable is Faith toward 
 God, or toward true being.' ^ Philo's ' Faith ' is thus a 
 steady reliance on the eternal and unchangeable ideas of 
 truth and righteousness, which lie behind the fleeting shows 
 of phenomenal existence. The active sense has fairly' 
 established itself, but Faith for Philo differs rather widely 
 from the Christian virtue in that it is the prize ^ and not 
 the starting-point of the race, standing at the end, not at 
 the beginning, of the religious life. 
 
 Sanday and Headlam ^ have a valuable note on the use 
 of the word Faith in the apocryphal literature. In the 
 Psalms of Solomon it is attributed to the Messiah Himself ; 
 in the other books it is characteristic of his subjects. Thus 
 4 Esdras vi. 28, ' florebit fides et vincetur corruptela ' ; 
 vii. 34, ' Veritas stabit et fides convalescet.' In the 
 Apocalypse of Baruch we have, ' incredulis tormentum 
 ignis reservatum.' In other places we have ' Faith and 
 works ' in combination, indicating that the discussion of 
 their relative merits did not originate in the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 We now come to the New Testament. I think that for 
 our purposes it will be most convenient to take the Synoptic 
 Gospels first, as a record of our Lord's actual teaching 
 about, and attitude towards, Faith ; the Pauline con- 
 ception of Faith next ; the Epistle to the Hebrews third ; 
 
 1 Cf. E. A. Abbott, Johannine Vocabulary. 
 
 * Philo, De Praem. et Poen., ii. p, 412, 5t8aKTiKy XPV^^^M-^^^^ ipery rpdf 
 TcKelwffiv AdXov alpeTrai rV irpbs tov Qebp TricrTir. 
 
 * On Eomaus i. 17. 
 
8 FAITH [cH. 
 
 and the Johannine interpretation of our Lord's teaching 
 last. This order is not intended to imply any disparage- 
 ment of the Fourth Gospel as a historical document ; but 
 St. John certainly wrote for his own generation, and it is 
 possible to speak of a Johannine doctrine of Faith, which 
 must not be taken out of its chronological place. 
 
 The Triple Tradition does not agree in any saying of 
 Christ containing the verb Trto-revctv ; and in the use of the 
 substantive ttio-tis the only verbatim agreement is ' thy 
 faith hath saved thee,' of the woman with the issue of 
 blood. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that our Lord 
 spoke of ' Faith ' and * believing ' in the technical religious 
 sense which is characteristic of the New Testament as a 
 whole. There seems to be no objection on linguistic 
 grounds. Not only did the Hebrew word acquire an 
 active meaning in Rabbinical literature, but in the Aramaic 
 dialect (according to Lightfoot on Galatians, p. 154), an 
 active form had been developed. How far this language 
 was original with Him, it is difficult to say. It is extremely 
 probable that the words were often on the lips of the simple 
 folk in Palestine who ' waited for the kingdom of God.' We 
 have seen that all was ready for the richer doctrine of Faith 
 which was part of Christ's message. The devout country 
 people among whom He was brought up had not much to 
 learn about confidence in God, about conviction of the 
 reality of the unseen, or about patient waiting for the 
 consolation of Israel. 
 
 In the Synoptic Gospels, Faith generally means con- 
 fidence in Christ's power to perform some particular thing. 
 It would be superfluous to enumerate the cases in which 
 Faith is mentioned as the condition of miracles of healing. 
 In these instances. Faith is simply the psychological state 
 which alone makes the patient susceptible to cures of this 
 kind. There are, however, many passages, especially if 
 we add the uses of the verb iria-Tevav to those of the sub- 
 stantive, in which the wider sense of trustful self-surrender 
 
I.] « FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 9 
 
 to Christ, or to God, is clearly indicated. There is only- 
 one place in the Synoptics, I think (Matt, xxiii. 23), in 
 which TTio-Tt? means ' integrity ' ; and so strong have its 
 theological associations already become, that it is never 
 used of man's faith in man. When it has an object, that 
 object is in the genitive, as St. Mark xi. 22, ' have faith in 
 God ' ; not with a preposition {ev, ei?, tt/oos, eVt) as in the 
 Epistles. But in the large majority of cases, it is used 
 absolutely. When ' Faith ' is primarily expectation of a 
 miracle, a deeper thought is sometimes present. In the 
 case of the paralytic, remission of sins precedes the physical 
 cure (Matt. ix. 1-8) : and in Luke vii. 50 the characteristic 
 words, ' thy Faith hath saved thee,' are used of forgiveness 
 only, when there has been no miracle. Our Lord must 
 have spoken much of the moral force of Faith, of what is 
 now sometimes called the dynamic of religion. In the 
 figurative and even hyperbolical language which He often 
 used in popular teaching. He said that Faith, though no 
 larger than a grain of mustard-seed, can remove mountains 
 (Matt. xvii. 20), a phrase which became familiar to Chris- 
 tians (1 Cor. xiii. 2) at a very early date. Cf. also Mark 
 ix. 23 : * If thou canst believe, all things are possible to 
 him that believeth.' That this Faith ought to be but is 
 not always an abiding state is shown by the words to 
 Peter (Luke xxii. 32), * I have prayed for thee, that thy 
 Faith fail not.' There are some who ' for a while believe, 
 but in time of temptation fall away ' (Matt. xiii. 20). In 
 Matt. xvi. 17, * These signs shall follow them that believe,' 
 we have an approximation to the use of the participle as a 
 designation of the Christian society, ' the believers,' which 
 we find in the Acts.^ 
 
 One passage in the Synoptists seems to me to stand quite 
 alone — Luke xviii. 8. * When the Son of Man cometh, shall 
 
 1 It is worth while also to call attention to Matt, xxiii. 23. 'justice, mercy 
 and faith.' Cf. Micah ri. 8 of which these words may be a reminiscence. 
 The third virtue, Faith, is added by Christ. 
 
10 FAITH [cH. 
 
 He find Faith * (or, the Faith) ' on the earth ? * I am unable 
 to understand these words except in the sense that though 
 God will avenge his saints ' speedily * (see the preceding 
 verse), yet the time will appear so long before the second 
 coming that the love of many will have waxed cold. 
 ' Faith,' or * the Faith,* will hardly be found on the earth. 
 1 must confess that the words sound more like an expres- 
 sion of the discouragement which we know to have been 
 felt by the second and third generations of Christians, when 
 * hope deferred ' of the Trapova-ia was * making the heart 
 sick,' than what we should have expected to have from 
 the lips of our Lord. If the words are authentic, we must 
 take ' Faith ' (with the best orthodox commentators) in 
 the less natural sense of ' the necessary Faith,' or * the 
 Faith that perseveres in prayer.' 
 
 To sum up : * Faith,' and ' to believe,' in the Synoptic 
 Gospels, means a spirit of simple receptiveness towards the 
 Messiah and His message, a state of mind which, unlike 
 the righteousness of the Pharisees, requires no previous 
 jcourse of discipline in meritorious actions. ' Faith ' is the 
 primary motion of the human spirit when brought into 
 contact with Divine truth and goodness. Its fruits are 
 loyal self-devotion, even unto death, complete renunciation 
 of all earthly ties, in so far as these could come between 
 the disciple and his Master, untiring energy in service, and 
 an enthusiastic temper, full of love, joy, and peace. This 
 is really the whole content of Faith, as preached by Jesus 
 to the simple folk whom He gathered round Him in Galilee. 
 
 We next turn to St. Paul's Epistles. I do not wish to 
 discuss the more technical theological problems connected 
 with the Pauline doctrine of Faith, but only to determine 
 what the word means for him. One of the most significant 
 passages is Gal. iii. 23, 7r/o5 rod kXddv rrjv ttio-tli', 'before 
 the coming of [the] Faith.' This expression proves that 
 the Christians felt their * Faith ' to be something new in 
 the world ; as new as their ' Love,' for which they required 
 
I.] * FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 11 
 
 an almost new word in the Greek language, their * Hope,' 
 which the pagans conspicuously lacked (Eph. ii. 12), and 
 their * Joy,' which no man could take from them. The 
 coming of Christ was the coming of [the] Faith. The Acts 
 of the Apostles shows that the disciples soon began to call 
 themselves * Believers ' ; it was one of the earliest names 
 of the Christian society.^ Whether, as Lightfoot suggests,^ 
 the name indicates ' The Trusty ' as well as ' The Trustful,' 
 is uncertain ; the active meaning certainly predominates. 
 The name was familiar to friends and foes in the time of 
 Minucius Felix, who shows that it had been Latinised — 
 * pistorum prsecipuus et postremus philosophus ' ^ — since 
 ' credulus ' was impossible. The pagans in the time of 
 Celsus employed it as an opprobrious term for their oppon- 
 ents. In other places St. Paul uses ' the Faith ' almost as 
 equivalent to the whole body of Christian doctrine and 
 practice (Gal. i. 23 ; vi. 10, tovs oikciovs ttjs irt(rTca>s= 
 the Church ; Rom. xii. 3, 6 ; Eph. iv. 1 3.) 
 
 The coming of Christ was the beginning of the dispensa- 
 tion of Faith, and the new virtue had found a name both 
 in Greek and Aramaic. For the Jews, a bridge was found 
 in the text about ' faithful Abraham,' which, as we have 
 seen, was made to support a heavy superstructure of 
 doctrine even by Philo, and was discussed with equal 
 eagerness in the Rabbinical schools.* The meaning of 
 Faith was being defined by controversy, and the concept 
 was as yet so fluid that St. Paul and St. James can flatly 
 contradict each other in words without differing much in 
 meaning. 
 
 St. Paul's theology, we are now beginning to see, must 
 be interpreted by what we know of his personal religious 
 experiences, which he naturally expounds by the help of 
 current theological ideas and conceptions. Put very 
 
 1 Harnack, Expansion of Christianity^ ii. 6, 
 ' Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 157. 
 
 • There is a play on words here, between pistus and pistor. See the con- 
 text, Octavius, 14. * Lightfoot, Qalatians, p. 159. 
 
12 FAITH [CH. 
 
 shortly, his doctrine of justification by Faith was arrived 
 at somewhat in this way. Jewish thought knew of two, 
 and only two, roads to salvation. One was by natural 
 descent from Abraham. This belief was discredited for 
 various reasons. It was unethical ; it was falsified by 
 history ; and it was contradicted by religious experience. 
 The other was by righteousness. This St. Paul had tried 
 and found wanting. Justifying righteousness was un- 
 attainable ; the verdict against the claimant was a fore- 
 gone conclusion. The good news of the Gospel was the 
 assurance of a free pardon to all who would ' believe.' 
 God will reckon their ' Faith ' as righteousness. Remem- 
 bering the other and older theory as to the title to salvation, 
 descent from Abraham, he represents this saving grace also 
 as * adoption * to sonship, through faith in Christ Jesus 
 (Gal. iii. 26). The true Israel, then, are the adopted ' chil- 
 dren of Abraham,' and their faith in Christ is accepted 
 instead of the impossible requirement of legal righteousness. 
 The Christian, therefore, has a double title to salvation : 
 he is a son and heir by adoption, and, by the free grace of 
 God through Christ, he is accounted to have fulfilled the 
 law of righteousness. The one condition is ' Faith.' Now 
 what is this Faith ? Not the mere fiducia (subjective 
 assurance) of Lutheranism, even if this theory can support 
 itself plausibly by certain expressions in St. Paul's writings. 
 We*'must remember that at this time Faith involved the 
 open acceptance of Christianity, adhesion, in the face of 
 the world, to a persecuted sect. St. Paul never even con- 
 templated an inner state of confidence in God's mercies 
 through Christ that did not exhibit itself in this overt, 
 decisive, initial step. * If thou shalt confess with thy 
 mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that 
 God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be 
 saved.' ^ And assuredly Faith included also a changed life 
 
 » Rom. X. 9. 
 
I.] 'FAITH' AS A KELIGIOUS TERM 13 
 
 as a member of the new society.^ In short, we must 
 beware of forgetting the very different terms on which a 
 subjective confidence in the merits of Christ's death may 
 be held now and in St. Paul's time. What St. Paul dreads, 
 and protests against in his Epistles to the Romans and 
 Galatians, is a baptized Pharisaism which would remain in 
 all essentials pre-Christian. He is determined that Faith 
 shall not lose its new active meaning, as a decisive moral 
 act of trust ; he dreads that it may become again Jewish 
 and passive, a mere fidelity to the terms of a covenant. 
 He is fighting for the new content of the word Faith, as a 
 Christian virtue. But it is as a Christian virtue bound 
 up inextricably with the other Christian virtues, and 
 especially with Love, which is its proper activity or 
 €i/6/oycia (Gal. V. 6), that he claims such importance 
 for it. 
 
 This consideration, that ' Faith ' in St. Paul includes not 
 only subjective trust in Christ's promises, but all that such 
 trust necessarily led to, in an honest and consistent man, 
 at that time, that is, that it included public relinquish- 
 ment of paganism or Judaism, and adhesion to the Chris- 
 tian Church at a time when the Christians were regarded 
 as the scum of the earth (1 Cor. iv. 13), will help us to 
 understand, in particular, what Faith in the atoning blood 
 of Christ meant for St. Paul. I will not now discuss the 
 sacrificial aspect of Christ's death. But it is right to insist 
 that the key to the whole of St. Paul's Christology is the 
 doctrine of the mystical union of the believer with his Lord, 
 which is for him the necessary fulfilment of the life of^ 
 Faith. To understand the Pauline doctrine of justifica- 
 tion by Faith as summed up in such ideas as ' resting in 
 the finished work of the Redeemer,' or any other detach- 
 ment of Christ for us from Christ in us, is an unfortunate 
 
 1 Dobschiitz {Christian Life in the Primitive Church, p. 368 seq.) has justly 
 •mphasised the remarkable standard of moral purity which was demanded 
 and, on the whole, attained in the primitive Church. 
 
14 FAITH [CH. 
 
 mistake. The * whole process of Christ ' must be ro- 
 enacted in the experience of the beUever, and the culmina- 
 tion of the whole is spiritual crucifixion and resurrection. 
 
 * The new and significant peculiarity,' says Pfleiderer,^ 
 
 * in Paul's conception of Faith, is the mystical union with 
 Christ, the self-identification with Christ in a fellow- 
 ship of life and death. In this unreserved, self-forgetting 
 surrender of the whole man to the Saviour, in which 
 the revelation of the Divine love, as well as the embodi- 
 ment of the ideal for man, is beheld as a personal life, 
 the believer feels himself to be ' a new creature. . . . That 
 is expressed in the fine saying : " It is no longer I that live, 
 but Christ that liveth in me ; and the life that I now live 
 in the flesh I live in the Faith of the Son of God, who loved 
 me and gave Himself for me." Life in the Faith means the 
 same as " Christ liveth in me." * 
 
 In Romans xiv.. Faith is represented as a graduated pro- 
 gress in the mind of Christ. ' Weakness in the Faith ' 
 shows itself by anxiety to keep formal rules, by super- 
 stition, in fact. * Faith to eat all things ' is a strong Faith. 
 So in Colossians, feasts and fast-days are ' shadows of things 
 to come.' This chapter contains also the declaration 
 (v. 23), * whatever is not of Faith, is sin ' ; which has been 
 taken out of its context and made to support the conten- 
 tion that * the virtues of the heathen were splendid vices,' 
 or that ' all works done before Justification are sinful.' 
 St. Paul, however, appears only to mean that in matters 
 of abstinence or indulgence we ought to have a clear 
 conscience. The half - superstitious man is likely to 
 wound his conscience, whether he keeps his fast or 
 breaks it. J 
 
 In the well-known words, * We walk by Faith, not by 
 
 sight ' (2 Cor. v. 7), St. Paul means, as the context shows, 
 
 that the form (crSos) of the exalted Christ is hidden from 
 
 us. Faith is the condition of our present life (Sid Trio-Tecus 
 
 1 Primitive Christianity, vol. i. p. 347. 
 
1.] * FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 15 
 
 vipiTraTovnev), as ' seeing face to face ' will be our condition 
 in the future life. Then Faith will not be abolished, but 
 will become eternal (1 Cor. xiii. 13). 
 
 Faith, for St. Paul, blends with hope, and is almost 
 identified with it (Rom. xv. 13 ; iv. 18-21 ; viii. 24). Hope 
 adds joy and peace to believing ; it has a moral basis, and 
 may even be identified with the Christ in us (Col. i. 27). 
 
 One other important aspect of Faith in St. Paul's 
 Epistles must be mentioned before we pass on to the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. In Faith, as St. Paul understands 
 it, lie the roots both of new ethical power and of a deeper 
 knowledge of God.^ Practical and theoretical Christianity 
 are both contained in it. The Christian stands fast in the A 
 Faith (1 Cor. xvi. 13), but also grows in Faith, and attains ' 
 the stature of the perfect man by coming ' unto the unity 
 of the Faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God ' 
 (Eph. iv. 13). Behind the Rabbinical subtleties, which we 
 find here and there in St. Paul's Epistles, we can trace 
 plainly enough a sublime and profound conception of 
 Faith, which may well be our guide in our coming 
 investigation. 
 
 The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has done for 
 Faith what St. Paul has done for Love in 1 Cor. xiii. The 
 eleventh chapter of the Epistle is a hymn in honour of 
 Faith. It begins with the famous definition 4'o-Ttv Se ttlo-tis 
 
 ek-jn^ofievcov virocTTao-LSj TTpay/xoLTiov €X€y\os ov fSXiTrofieviov. 
 
 * Now Faith is the assurance of [or, the giving substance to] 
 things hoped for, the proving [or, test] of objects not 
 seen.' (R.V.) HtcrTts has here no article. This is signifi- 
 cant ; for in this Epistle Faith is not the Christian Faith, 
 but a psychological faculty. In this sense it is as wide as 
 the human mind, and even Rahab may be adduced as 
 an example of it. The meaning both of vTroo-Tao-is and of 
 IAeyxo5 is disputed. For the former, the Revised Version 
 gives the preference to * assurance,' a meaning which is 
 
 1 Pfleiderer, ibid., p. 350. 
 
16 FAITH [CH. 
 
 also assigned to it, probably rightly, in iii. 14, * We are 
 become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of 
 our confidence {rrjv apx^jv rrj^ vTrocTTacrcws) firm unto the 
 end.' The Greek Fathers say that 17 dpxrj Trj<s vTroo-Tao-cw? 
 is Faith, as the ' beginning of our true nature,' that which 
 causes us to become what we in truth are.^ (The paradox 
 
 is indicated by the tenses yeyovafiev, kavrnp Karao-xw/ici'.) 
 
 This is a very interesting interpretation, and the thought 
 is a fine one ; but since the use of vTroo-rao-i? in the sense 
 of ' assurance ' or * resolution ' is well established in later 
 Greek, it seems more natural to take it so in this place. 
 But we are not therefore obliged to take viroa-Taa-L's as 
 
 * assurance' in ch. xi. 1. In i. 3 it has the meaning of 
 
 * substance ' or ' reality ' ; and all through the Epistle the 
 distinction between heaven and earth, between spirit and 
 flesh, is conceived Platonically as that between substance 
 and shadow, truth and appearance, pattern and copy. 
 Moreover, the passages quoted to justify the translation 
 'assurance' do not convince me that the unquestioned 
 late-Greek meaning, ' firm endurance,' ' steadfastness,' is 
 sufficient authority for translating eXirL^oixkytav viroarTaa-Ls 
 
 * assurance with regard to what is hoped for.' Such an 
 explanation seems not to have occurred to any com- 
 mentator before Luther, and the Greek Fathers are not 
 lightly to be set aside in such a case. Chrysostom's 
 note is : * For whereas things that are matters of hope 
 seem to be unsubstantial. Faith gives them substance ; 
 or rather, does not give it, but is itself their being. For 
 instance, the resurrection has not taken place, and is not 
 in substance, but Faith gives it reality {vf^La-Trja-iv) in our 
 soul.' If we take it so, the writer says that Faith gives 
 substance, or reality, to things which we hope for, but 
 which have not yet taken place. It does so by raising us 
 above the categories of time into those of eternity, so that, 
 
 1 The reader should consult Bishop Westcott's edition of the Epistle to tht 
 Sebreios for a fuller discussion of this passage. 
 
I.] 'FAITH' AS A KELIGIOUS TERM 17 
 
 even as Faith shows us that Christ offered Himself to God 
 ' through an eternal Spirit ' (ix. 14), in the world of timeless 
 reality, so to the eye of Faith the future is as real as the 
 present. "EAeyxos must correspond in meaning to 
 vTrocrraa-Ls, and probably means * proof,' ' test,' that which 
 establishes (or rejects) the reality of unseen objects. Thus 
 the full meaning of this noble definition — I cannot agree 
 with Westcott's inference from the order eo-rti/ Se Trto-ns 
 that ' the object of the writer is not to give a formal 
 definition ' — is that Faith is the faculty which makes real 
 to us the future and the unseen, and moreover enables us, 
 in this region, to discern the true from the false. ' Things 
 which in the succession of time are still hoped for, have 
 a true existence in the eternal order ; and this existence 
 Faith brings home to the believer as a real fact.' (West- 
 cott.) When we remember that Plato distinguishes know- 
 ledge (yuaxTLs) from opinion (Soja), as being concerned 
 with reality and not with appearance, we may say that 
 this Epistle claims for Faith the rank of potential Gnosis, 
 instead of allying it with opinion, as the classical usage of 
 TTtcTTts tended to do. 
 
 Dr. Du Bose is in substantial agreement. ' Beneath or 
 behind the things that are seen and are temporal there is 
 an Eternal Unseen. What is it ? The Word of God. If 
 that answer is not true, there is no object or function of 
 Faith, and no religion. Suppose it to be true, and that not 
 only is the Word of God as the reality of things the true ob- 
 jective matter of Faith, but that Faith is the true subjec- 
 tive apprehension and possession of that objective reality, 
 does the fact without us produce the intuition of it within 
 us ; or is the intuition itself the proper prius and reality ? 
 Does hypostasis mean objective substance or subjective 
 assurance ? I ask simply to bring out this fact, that in 
 the divine and absolute religion of Jesus Christ Faith and 
 fact are treated as having been made one, as being now 
 identical. Faith is not only assurance ; it is the present 
 
 B 
 
18 FAITH [CH- 
 
 possession, the very substance and reality of its object. 
 Assurance is substance, Faith is fact, promise is fulfilment, 
 hope is possession and fruition — all not so much through 
 any inexplicable virtue in Faith itself, as because Faith is 
 the laying hold of and uniting itself with that Word of 
 God which is at once the substance of all reality and the 
 light of all truth.' ^ 
 
 This notable chapter contains other important dicta 
 about Faith. ' Without Faith it is impossible to please 
 Him ; for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, 
 
 / and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek 
 
 I Him' (v. 6). Faith demands the existence of its Object ; 
 
 / God is a fact, not an ideal. Faith also demands that its 
 Object shall be active — that God shall be experienced, and 
 not merely thought of as existing. Again, Faith is ex- 
 plained to be ' a seeing of the invisible ' (v. 27). ' The 
 invisible ' is God, as the gender shows. Faith is seeing 
 
 VjGod during our earthly pilgrimage. Augustine's comment 
 is true and fine. ' Errabant quidem adhuc et patriam 
 quaerebant ; sed duce Christo errare non poterant. Via 
 illis fuit visio Dei.'' ^ 
 
 The doctrine of Faith in this Epistle is not at variance 
 with that of St. Paul, but it is liberated from the Rabbinical 
 form which is the result of St. Paul's Jewish education. 
 The idea that Faith consists in accepting the free gift of 
 the righteousness of God, has no place in this Epistle. 
 On the other hand, the notion of Faith as exalting us above 
 the trammels of our life in time, enabling us to view history 
 as a whole, and to assume a heroic attitude in face of tem- 
 poral sufferings by regarding events sub specie ceternitatis, 
 is peculiar to this Epistle, and is a most inspiring thought. 
 It has affinities to Philo's conception of Faith, and is, no 
 doubt, a line of thought natural to Alexandrian idealism. 
 The Epistle of St. James contains an energetic protest 
 
 1 Du Bose, High Priesthood and Sacrifice, pp. 224-6 (abridged). 
 » Augustine, Ad 1 J§h., Tract. 7 ; Westcott on Heb. xi. 27. 
 
I.] 'FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 19 
 
 against the notion that ' Faith,' whether understood as 
 mere fiducia or mere orthodoxy, is of any saving value 
 without * works ' — consistency of hfe. He uses ' Faith ' 
 in a narrower sense than St. Paul, and insists passionately 
 on what to St. Paul would have been a truism, that Faith 
 must be known by its fruit. St. James was a moralist, and 
 would have agreed with Matthew Arnold that conduct is 
 all but an insignificant fraction of human life. The protest 
 was needed, but it does not touch St. Paul or his teaching. 
 It is not even certain that the author of this epistle, who- 
 ever he was, was thinking of St. Paul's teaching on the 
 subject. The relation of Faith and works was a standing 
 thesis for discussion in Jewish schools, and naturally was 
 also debated by Christians.^ But though there is no 
 contradiction between St. Paul and St. James, the protests 
 of the latter do touch some post-Reformation teaching 
 about Faith. We cannot be surprised either at Luther's 
 contemptuous judgment of this epistle, or at his subse- 
 quent acknowledgment that he had spoken too hastily. 
 
 St. James's real meaning is well brought out by the 
 eloquent Julius Hare,^ whose discourses on Faith ought 
 never to be forgotten by English theologians. ' Faith" 
 without works is a dead Faith, not a living, a nominal 
 Faith, not a real, the shadow of Faith, not the substance. 
 And why is this, except because Faith, if it be living, if it 
 be real, if it be substantial, is a practical principle, a 
 practical power ; nay, of all principles, of all powers, by 
 which man can be actuated, the most practical ; so that 
 when it does not show forth its life by good works, we may 
 reasonably conclude that it is dead ; just as we infer that 
 a body is dead when it has ceased to move, or that a tree 
 is dead when it puts forth no leaves.' ^ 
 
 1 See Lightfoot, Oalatians, p. 157 seq. ; Sanday and Headlam, RomanSt 
 pp. 104-6. The Jewish discussions were based on Gen. xv. 6. 
 
 ' Hare, The Victory of Faith and oth^ Sermons, p. 36. 
 
 • The use of irl<ms in 1 and 2 Peter, and in Jude, is not important for this 
 discussion. See Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 36. 
 
20 FAITH [cH 
 
 In the Acts of the Apostles, Trto-Tis and Tna-reviLv occur 
 very frequently. With the definite article, ttlo-tis means 
 ^the Christian faith (ch. vi. 7 ; xiii. 8 ; xvi. 5 ; xxiv. 24). 
 On the other hand, TrX-qpr^s TriVrew? means ' full of enthu- 
 siasm and strength based on Faith in Jesus Christ ' (vi. 5 ; 
 xi. 24). ' Faith in the Lord Jesus,' in the Acts, involves 
 mainly belief in His resurrection and exaltation, and in 
 * the forgiveness of sins ' (v. 30, 31). Profession of this 
 Faith is followed at once by baptism (xvi. 31-33) . Sanctify- 
 ing Faith (xv. 2 ; XX vi. 18) must be distinguished from this 
 first impulse to become a believer. Contrast the past 
 tense in xiv. 23 ; xviii. 27 ; xix. 2 with the present in 
 ii. 44 ; xxii. 19. 
 
 It remains to consider the teaching of the Fourth Gospel 
 about Faith. Let us assume that this treatise was written 
 between 100 and 120 a.d., and that, though it is based on 
 genuine recollections or traditions of our Lord's teaching, 
 it was written with the special design of offering a certain 
 presentation and doctrine of the Person of Christ, as a 
 solution of doubts and controversies which pressed for 
 settlement at the beginning of the second century. 
 
 We have seen that the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews has his own presentation of Faith to offer to the 
 world. Steeped in Alexandrian philosophy, which called 
 men to * flee hence to our dear country,' he conceives of 
 Faith as life in the eternal order, in the heaven which is 
 all around us if we could only see it, and dilates on the 
 heroism which should be the fruit of this heavenly vision. 
 The writer was a scholar and thinker, and he has written 
 for the scholars and thinkers of all time. St. John (I will 
 keep the traditional name without raising the question 
 of Authorship) writes for a wider circle. The Church at 
 the end of the first century was already distracted by the 
 beginnings of the movement known as Gnosticism. It is 
 true that the great Gnostics of the first half of the second 
 century were outside the Church, and only half Christian. 
 
l] 'FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 21 
 
 But within the Christian societies a party of knowledge 
 and a party of Faith contended against each other. St. 
 Paul's enthusiastic praises of growing knowledge (eVtyvwais) 
 had encouraged the professors of knowledge * falsely so 
 called ' {xfevSiovvi^os yvioais, 1 Tim. vi. 20) to graft their 
 barbarised Platonism on Christianity, even in the lifetime 
 of the Apostle (Col. ii. 6-9). On the other side, the party 
 of bare Faith {xpiXr) TrtVris) had already come to deserve 
 the taunts of the educated pagans. Faith, for them, was 
 not a moral, but an anti-intellectual principle. They said, 
 as Celsus tells us about the Christians of his own generation, 
 
 *Do not inquire, only believe' (/xr; eJeVafe, dWaTTLa-reva-ov). 
 
 And their belief was of a childish, apocalyptic character, full 
 of miracles and dreams of a coming reign of the saints. In 
 fact, the situation which St. Paul already discerned was 
 now clearly defined. * The Jews require miracles ; the 
 Greeks metaphysics.' St. John, even more fully than St. 
 Paul, presents both with ' Christ the power of God and the 
 wisdom of God ' (1 Cor. i. 22-24). 
 
 St. John studiously avoids the two catchwords yrwons 
 and 7rto-Ti9, and uses only the verbs, which really agree 
 better with the essentially dynamic character of Faith and 
 knowledge in his theology. He tells us frankly that his 
 object in writing is that his readers may ' believe ' that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they 
 may have life through His name. Faith in the Person of 
 Christ is everywhere central in this Gospel ; and he teaches 
 us, by various indications, what Faith is. He uses Tna-TeveLv 
 with five constructions. It is used absolutely ; with the 
 dative ; with ds ; with €is to ovofia ; and with 6tl. 
 Oiigen distinguishes * believing on the name of Christ ' as a 
 lower grade of Faith than believing on Christ Himself. 
 This sounds over-subtle, but is probably correct. To 
 believe on the name of Christ has special reference to the 
 public confession of Faith at baptism. * They that believe 
 on His name ' (i. 12 ; ii. 23) practically means * baptized 
 
22 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Giristians.' ^ The office attributed to the Holy Ghost in 
 our catechism — that of ' sanctifying all the elect people of 
 God ' — is quite Johannine. In ch. i. 7 we have, ' John 
 came to bear witness to the Light, that all men through 
 him might believe.' This shows that Faith is the trust 
 of those who see things as they are, and not blind credulity. 
 Nathaniel ' believes ' that Christ is the Son of God and 
 King of Israel, through a sign : Christ promises him a more 
 spiritual basis for a higher kind of belief. In iii. 16-21, the 
 evangelist's comment on the discourse with Nicodemus, 
 we have Faith opposed to rebellion or disloyalty (for this 
 is the Biblical sense of dTrtt^eii), and thus we get a nearer 
 determination of Faith as including obedience and loyalty. 
 In the discourse about the Bread of Life, in ch. vi., the 
 persistent demands of the Jews for a sign are rebuked by our 
 Lord : ' Ye have seen Me, and yet believe not ' ; and their 
 question, ' What must we do, that we may work the works 
 of God ? ' is met by the remarkable declaration, ' This is 
 the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He sent.' 
 Personal devotion includes the ' works of God,' and these 
 works will never be done without it. In xii. 44 Christ 
 says, ' He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but 
 on Him that sent Me.' Faith in Christ and Faith in God 
 are identical ; but the former is the way to the latter. 
 Those who seek ^glory ' one from another, instead of the 
 glory that cometh from the only God (v. 44), cannot be- 
 lieve. In the last discourses there is less about believing, 
 and more about the peace and joy to which Faith conducts. 
 In ch. xvii. Christ does not pray that His disciples may 
 * believe,' but for higher things. Lastly, in the all-import- 
 ant concluding words of ch. xx., Faith without sight 
 receives the last beatitude. 
 
 If we compare all the places where Trto-rcvetv is used in 
 St. John, we shall conclude, I think, that the two meanings 
 of intellectual conviction and moral self-surrender are 
 1 Abbott, Johannine Vocdbvicury, 
 
I.] * FAITH ' AS A RELIGIOUS TEEM 23 
 
 about equally emphasised. Faith is allegiance to Jesus / 
 Christ, and as such a condition of eternal life (i. 6 ; vi. 40), 
 which latter is also a progressive stage, depending on know- 
 ledge (xvii. 3) as well as Faith. ' Believing is not a con- 
 summation or a goal, but a number of different stages, by 
 which different individuals pass towards the one Centre, in 
 whom they are to have life.' ^ Thus the rival claims of 
 Faith and Knowledge are reconciled, by lifting both into 
 a higher sphere, and fixing both on the Person of Christ. 
 
 In this short review of the development of the concept 
 * Faith ' in the Bible, I have tried to show how here, as in 
 other cases, there was a fusion of Jewish and Hellenic 
 modes of thought. At the end of the first century we find \ 
 Faith established as a characteristic Christian virtue or j 
 temper, with a full and rich meaning. The Christians \ 
 called themselves ' Believers,' and spoke of ' the Faith ' 
 without further specification of what they believed or 
 trusted in. But they were conscious that the word 
 included moral devotion and self-surrender to Christ, a 
 firm conviction that by uniting themselves to Him they 
 would find remission of sins and eternal salvation, and j 
 intellectual conviction that certain divinely revealed facts / 
 are true. 
 
 1 Abbott, Johannine Vocahularjf^ 
 
24 FAITH 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FilTH AS A RELIGIOUS TERM — continued 
 
 (b) In the Church 
 
 In order to form an adequate judgment on the meaning 
 of ' Faith ' in Christian theology, we must pursue our 
 investigation into the writings of Christian theologians. 
 
 The ' Apostolic Fathers ' do not yield us much in the 
 way of illustration, until we come to Ignatius. This writer 
 employs {Ep. ix.) a curious metaphor : * Ye were drawn 
 up on high by the cross of Christ, using the Holy Spirit as 
 a rope, while your faith was the means by which you 
 ascended, and your love the way which led you up to God.' 
 Here Faith is the motive force, love a kind of inclined plane. 
 In ch. xiv. of the same epistle he says : * Faith and love 
 towards Christ Jesus are the beginning and end of life. 
 The beginning is Faith, and the end is Love.' ^ We shall 
 find this delimitation of the provinces of Faith and Love 
 repeated more than once by Clement of Alexandria. Cf. 
 especially Strom, vii. 10 : ' Christ is both the foundation 
 and the superstructure, through whom are both the begin- 
 ning and the end. Faith is the beginning. Love the end.* 
 And ib. ii. 13 : ' Faith leads the way ; Fear edifies ; 
 Love perfects.' There are signs even in the New Testa- 
 ment that this was an accepted maxim in the Church : in 
 2 Pet. i. 5-7, Faith and Love begin and end the list ; and 
 in 1 Tim. i. 5 we have, ' the end of the commandment is 
 Love.* So Hermas (iii. 8) has the following scheme: 
 
 * Cf . also Smyrn. 6, ' Faith and love are everything. ^ 
 
II.] < FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 25 
 
 * From Faith arises Self-restraint ; from Self-restraint, 
 Simplicity ; from Simplicity, Guilelessness ; from Guile- 
 lessness, Chastity ; from Chastity, Intelligence ; and from 
 Intelligence, Love.' The pedigree is silly enough ; but 
 the positions of Faith and Love are evidently fixed.^ 
 
 The writer of the Epistle to Diognetus has (ch. viii.) : 
 
 * He has manifested Himself through Faith, to which alone 
 it is given to behold God.' Theophilus (i. 8) uses Faith as 
 equivalent to Trust, and argues that without Faith almost 
 all action would be impossible. In the Clementine Recogni- 
 tions (ii. 69), Peter is made to say, ' It is not safe to commit"^ 
 these things to bare Faith without Reason, since truth ■ 
 cannot be without reason. He who has received truthsj j 
 fortified by reason, can never lose them ; whereas he who 
 receives them without proofs, by simple assent, can neither 
 keep them safely, nor be sure that they are true. The more 
 anxious any man is in demanding a reason, the more secure 
 will he be in keeping his Faith.' This language reminds us 
 of the Cambridge Platonists, especially of Benjamin, 
 Whichcote, who says, ' When the doctrine of the Gospel 
 becomes the reason of our mind, it will be the principle of 
 our life.' 
 
 More interesting and important is the doctrine of Faith 
 in Clement of Alexandria, whom I have already quoted.^ 
 
 * Faith,' he says [Strom, ii. 2), ' which the Greeks disparage 
 as futile and barbarous, is a voluntary anticipation, the 
 assent of piety — the substance of things hoped for, the 
 evidence of things not seen, as the inspired Apostle says. 
 Others have defined Faith to be an uniting assent to an 
 unseen obje3t. If then it be choice, the desire is in this 
 case intellectual, since it desires something. And since 
 choice is the beginning of action, Faith is the beginning of 
 action, being the foundation of rational choice, when a 
 
 1 Cf. a similar list in Hermas, ix. 15. 
 
 * The second book of the Stromateis contains a fall and very instructive 
 discussion of Faith. 
 
26 FAITH [ctt 
 
 man sets before himself, through Faith, the demonstration 
 which he anticipates. Voluntarily to follow what is useful 
 is the beginning of understanding it. Unswerving choice, 
 therefore, gives a great impetus towards knowledge. The 
 exercise of Faith at once becomes knowledge, built on a 
 sure foundation.' 
 
 The followers of Basilides, he proceeds, regard Faith as 
 a natural endowment, defining it as ' finding ideas by in- 
 tellectual comprehension without demonstration.* ' The 
 Valentinians assign Faith to us simple folk, but claim that 
 knowledge arises in themselves (who are saved by nature) 
 through the advantage of a germ of higher excellence, 
 saying that it is as far above faith as the spiritual is above 
 the animal.' To this Clement objects, as making Faith an 
 innate faculty and not a matter of rational choice. We 
 cannot justly be punished for lacking a power which is 
 given or withheld by external necessity ; and if this is the 
 true account, he who has not Faith cannot hope to acquire 
 jt. 
 
 ^ First principles are incapable of demonstration. The 
 First Cause of the Universe can be apprehended by Faith 
 alone. For knowledge is a state of mind resulting from 
 demonstration ; but Faith is a grace which from what is 
 not demonstrable leads us to what is universal and simple. 
 
 We can learn nothing without a preconceived idea of 
 what we are aiming at ; Faith is such a preconception. 
 This is what the prophet meant when he said, ' Unless ye 
 believe, ye will not understand,' and what Heraclitus 
 meant when he said, ' If you do not hope, you will not find 
 ^what is beyond your hopes.' 
 
 X— The Basilidians (ch. vi.) define Faith to be the assent of 
 the soul to any of those things that are not present to the 
 senses. This assent is not supposition, but assent to some- 
 thing certain. Faith is the voluntary supposition and 
 anticipation of comprehension. 
 
 Faith must not be disparaged as simple and vulgar. ' If 
 
 J 
 
il] 'FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM £7 
 
 \ 
 
 it grow, and there is no place where it is not, then I affirm 1 
 that Faith, whether founded in love or (as its disparagers J 
 assert) in fear, is something divine. Love, by its aUiance 
 with Faith, makes men beUevers ; and Faith, which is the 
 foundation of Love, in its turn introduces the doing of 
 good. Faith is the first movement towards salvation ; 
 after which fear and hope and repentance, in company with 
 temperance and patience, lead us on to love and knowledge.' 
 Knowledge (ch. xi.) is founded on Faith. But Faith is 
 also founded on knowledge, which may be defined as 
 * reason, producing Faith in what is disputed [by arguing] 
 from what is admitted.' There are two kinds of Faith, 
 one resting on science, the other on opinion. (Therefore, 
 it would seem. Faith is the condition of attaining know- 
 ledge, and knowledge, so far from superseding Faith, gives 
 it back transmuted into a higher form.) Obedience to the 
 commandments, which implies Faith or trust in God 
 (o ccTTt TTto-Teveiv Tw dew),^ is a mode of learning : and ' Faith 
 is a power of God, being the strength of truth.' (That is 
 to say. Faith is essentially progressive and dynamic ; it 
 has its proper activity in a certain energy of thought, will, 
 and action, which issues in an assurance of the truth, 
 based on knowledge and experience.) N 
 
 * Fear is the beginning of love (ch. xii.). Fear develops j 
 into Faith, and Faith into love.' (This is a remarkable 1 
 echo of the well-known * Primus in orbe deos fecit timor ' of 1 
 Statins and Petronius.) ' But I do not fear my Father as \ 
 I fear a wild beast ; I fear and love Him at once. Blessed, \ 
 therefore, is he who has Faith, being compounded of love^ 
 and fear.' 
 
 In the fifth book of the Stromateis he returns to the 
 subject of Faith. What follows is an abridgment of his 
 argument. It is incorrect to say that Faith has reference 
 to the Son, and knowledge to the Spirit. We cannot so 
 
 1 So Clement of Borne makes the faith of Abraham consist in obedience 
 (ch. 10). 
 
28 FAtTH [cB, 
 
 separate either the Persons of the Trinity, or Faith and 
 Knowledge. 
 
 * Faith is the ear of the soul.' It admits of growth, as is 
 shown by Rom. i. 11, 17 ; Luke, xvii. 5. We must not, 
 with Basilides, regard it as * a natural endowment, dis- 
 pensing with the rational assent of the self-determining 
 soul,' for then we should not have needed a Saviour. But 
 we do need revelation, and Faith accepts it. Nevertheless, 
 Faith always goes hand in hand with inquiry. 
 
 In the seventh book he speaks of Faith as a short cut 
 to perfection, by which the unlearned and ignorant may 
 outdistance him who is learned in the philosophy of the 
 Greeks. * Faith is a compendious knowledge of essentials, 
 while knowledge is a sure and firm demonstration of the 
 things received through Faith, carrying us on to unshaken 
 conviction and scientific certainty. There is a first kind 
 of saving change from heathenism to Faith, a second from 
 Faith to knowledge ; and knowledge, as it passes on into 
 love, begins at once to establish a mutual friendship be- 
 tween the knower and the known. Perhaps he who has 
 reached this stage is * equal to the angels * (tVayyeAo?, 
 Luke XX. 36.) Faith is preceded by admiration (ch. xi. § 60), 
 which is thus the beginning of Faith, as Plato says it is the 
 beginning of philosophy. Compare the words attributed 
 to Christ : * He who wonders shall reign, and he who reigns 
 shall rest,' and Wordsworth's, * We live by admiration, 
 hope, and love.' 
 
 I have dwelt on Clement's doctrine of Faith at what may 
 seem disproportionate length, because I believe that he is 
 the one of the Christian Fathers who deals with the relations 
 of Faith and knowledge m the most enlightened and illumin- 
 ating way. We at any rate feel that we can understand 
 and sympathise with his point of view, because the problems 
 with which he had to deal were in many ways very similar 
 to our problems. Clement had to steer between the un- 
 qualified intellectuaUsm of the Greek Gnostics, and the 
 
 I 
 
II.] 'FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 29 
 
 obscurantism of the simpUciores, with their watchword of 
 ' Faith only ' {xpiXrj ttiottis). When Clement speaks of Faith, 
 he has often in view the Faith of these simple Christians. 
 And his main object is to show what are the true relations 
 of this simple belief to the Gnosis of which cultivated 
 Christians were so proud. Faith, he maintains all through, 
 is the foundation, Gnosis the superstructure. There is no 
 generic difference between them. The true Gnostic is 
 merely the man of Faith come to maturity, a Christian 
 who has drawn out of his faith all that it virtually con- 
 tained from the first. Faith is an immanent, implicit good 
 (e'l/Sta^eros), which Gnosis renders explicit. It is the 
 condition of all knowledge of God ; there is no royal road 
 for the philosopher, through the intellect alone, to divine 
 knowledge. All alike must begin with Faith, which de- 
 mands a ^eoo-e/Seias (rvyKaTd6€(ri<i, a personal assent to 
 an attitude of adoration, an act of piety. But since it is 
 the nature of Faith to develop into knowledge, the door 
 cannot be shut upon inquiry. The way is open for a 
 Christian philosophy. So Clement refutes the obscurantism 
 of Tertullian, who wishes to break altogether with Greek 
 philosophy and science. 
 
 But Faith is not only the condition of knowledge. It is 
 the condition of the moral life of the Christian, even at the 
 highest stage. ' All the virtues are daughters of Faith.' 
 Faith and knowledge, as concurrent activities of the soul, 
 are the principles of its growth, and also of its consistency 
 and stability. ' Faith and knowledge prepare the soul 
 which chooses to live by them, making it self-consistent and 
 stable.' 
 
 Clement goes still further, making Faith the foundation 
 of knowledge in general. I will not trouble you with his 
 theory of knowledge, which has no great philosophical 
 value, being a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism ; but by 
 putting Faith in the place of the Stoic n-poXynJ/is, and know- 
 ledge in the place of their KardXi^yfis, he has hit upon a 
 
30 FAITH [CH. 
 
 profounder truth than he knew. He half sees that at the 
 origin of thought itself, as of will, there is an unconscious 
 act of Faith.i 
 
 Clement was not a great philosopher, and does not 
 altogether escape the inconsistencies which beset the 
 eclectic thinker ; but he makes out a good case for his 
 main thesis, which he thus sums up : ttio-t^ toCvw rj 
 yvujcTLs, yvaycTTr) Se -q rriaTL's, In fact I know no other 
 author, ancient or modem, who has written so well upon 
 our subject. 
 
 Of the obscurantism of Tertullian I have already spoken. 
 For him Faith is a sacred deposit, to be accepted and 
 handed on intact. Faith is practically identified with the 
 regula fidei. I need not give you any quotations to illustrate 
 this familiar attitude, except the characteristic ' adversus 
 regulam nil scire omnia scire est.^ The famous ' credo 
 quia dbsurdum ' (not an exact quotation) does Tertullian 
 and his disciples injustice. They do not believe a thing 
 because it is absurd ; but its absurdity is no reason, to 
 them, for not believing it. Authority for them is a primary 
 principle of Faith. It is accountable to no other tribunal ; 
 it reigns supreme and alone. Such was the immediate 
 result of translating Trto-ns into Latin. ' The language of 
 the Roman people,' says Heine, ' can never beUe its origin. 
 It is a language of command for generals ; a language 
 of decree for administrators ; an attorney language for 
 usurers ; a lapidary speech for the stone-hard Roman 
 people. Though Christianity with a true Christian 
 patience tormented itself for more than a thousand years 
 with the attempt to spiritualise this tongue, its ejfforts 
 remained fruitless ; and when Tauler sought to fathom the 
 awful abysses of thought, and his heart overflowed with 
 reUgious emotion, he was compelled to speak German.' ^ 
 
 My object in this lecture is to illustrate the meanings of 
 
 1 De Faye, CUinent dPAlexandrie,j3. 198. 
 
 • Quoted by Allen, Continuity qf Christian Thought, p. 249. 
 
II.] *FAITH' AS A KELIGIOUS TERM '»1 
 
 Faith, as a theological concept, in the Church. I need not, 
 I think, quote at length from other Fathers, with whom 
 the meaning and scope of Faith is a less prominent part 
 of their teaching than it was with Clement. TertuUian's 
 conception grew in favour. We hear more and more of 
 the regula fidei, though it is admitted that grace, which 
 is only the divine side of Faith, is fettered by no rules. 
 
 St. Augustine's writings contain some noteworthy sayings 
 about Faith. ' Faith is not only knowledge in the intellect 
 but also assurance {fiducia) in the will.' He recognises 
 three elements in Faith — notitia, assensus, fiducia {Confes- 
 sions, iii. 183). ' There are three classes of things credible : 
 those which are always believed and never understood, sicut 
 est omnis historia, temporalia et humana gesta percurrens : 
 those which are understood as they are believed, sicut sunt 
 omnes rationes humance : and those which are first believed 
 and afterwards understood, such as those about divine 
 matters, which cannot be understood except by the pure 
 in heart ; and this condition comes from keeping the moral 
 law ' {De Div, Qucest., Ixxxiii. qu. 48). ' Fides qucerity 
 intellectus invenit ' {De Trin., xv. 2). 
 
 Anselm's famous ' credo ut intelligam ' was changed by 
 Abelard into intelligo ut credam ; and henceforth Faith and 
 knowledge appear, in the Schoolmen, as principles which 
 may not always work together harmoniously.^ 
 
 A very brief summary of the teaching of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas about Faith must suffice, as a specimen of the 
 doctrine of the Schoolmen. Divine truth, he says, is 
 divided, not in itself, but in its relation to our knowledge. 
 Part of it can be known by human reason, part only by 
 revelation.2 Revelation is necessary for some truths 
 
 i Bernard's most characteristic utterance about Faith is rhetorical and 
 auti -rationalist : * Fides attingit inaccessa, deprehendit ignota, compre- 
 hendit imraensa, apprehendit novissinia, ipsam denique aeternitatem suo 
 illo sinu vastissirao quodam modo circumcludit. Beatam trinitatem quam 
 non intelligo credo, et fide teneo quam non capio mente.' — Serm. in Cant.f 
 76. > Contra Gentiles, i. 3. 
 
32 FAITH [cH. 
 
 which entirely transcend human knowledge, but it is not 
 confined to what is essentially beyond our faculties. 
 There are truths, such as the existence of God, which are 
 capable of demonstration, but only by a course of reason 
 which few have brains enough to follow ; and therefore 
 God has revealed them. The distinction between reason 
 and revelation corresponds to the distinction between 
 knowledge and Faith. Faith comes between opinion and 
 knowledge ; it involves an act of the will. ' The intellect,' 
 he says, ' assents to a thing in two ways, in one way because 
 it is moved to assent by the object itself, which is known 
 by itself, or by something else ; in the other way the 
 intellect assents to a thing, not because it is sufficiently 
 moved to assent by the object itself, but by a certain 
 choice, by which it voluntarily inclines to one side rather 
 than the other. If this choice is made from doubt and 
 fear of the alternative, it is opinion ; if with certainty and 
 without fear, it is Faith.' ^ He also says that the objective 
 ground of Faith is authority, of knowledge, reason. And 
 since the authority is divine truth, it may be said that 
 Faith has a greater certainty than knowledge, which 
 relies on human reason.^ Since, however, the objects of 
 Faith are less fully apprehended, being above the intellect 
 of man, knowledge from another point of view is more 
 certain than Faith. The certainty of Faith, on one side, 
 comes from the will, which is guided by ' Veritas prima sive \ 
 Deus.* Faith, however, is not an act of arbitrary choice.f; 
 it presupposes some knowledge : ' cognitio fidei proBSupponit 
 cognitionem naturalem siciU et natura gratiam.^ Faith 
 cannot demonstrate what it believes ; else it would be 
 knowledge and not Faith ; but it does investigate the 
 grounds by which a man is led to believe — e.g. that the 
 words were spoken by God.* 
 
 1 Be Veritate, Quaest. xiv., art. 1. 
 
 • SumTna TheoL, 2. 2, qu. 4, art. 9, 
 
 * De Veritate, Quaest. xiv., art. 9. 
 < SumTna Theol., 2. 2, qu. 1, art. 4. 
 
II.] * FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 83 
 
 It is plain from these passages that Faith, for St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, necessarily involves both an intellectual and a 
 moral act ; and also, I think, that he has shrunk from 
 subjecting the basis of Church authority to a searching 
 scrutiny. The practical question which we all have to 
 face is whether we ought to allow ' the will to believe ' to 
 influence us in our choice of authorities — e.g. whether we 
 may choose to follow the authority of the Church m pre- 
 ference to that of a naturalist or metaphysician. St. 
 Thomas Aquinas says that the will is guided by ' the 
 primary Truth, which is God.' If so, Faith would seem 
 to be only the human side of divine grace, immanent 
 in the human mind ; and it must be ultimately independent 
 of and superior to all external authority, even that of the 
 Church, The authority of the Church can only be ac- 
 cepted as final on the further assumption that the donum 
 veritatis belongs to one institution and one only. 
 
 With the Reformation, controversy about the meaning 
 of Faith became, for the second time in the historj?- of the 
 Church, acute. Every one knows that * Justification by 
 Faith ' was the corner-stone of Luther's doctrinal system. 
 His own account of the process by which he found the light 
 is as follows. When he first read the words of the Epistle 
 to the Romans, iustitia Dei in eo revelatur^ he said to him- 
 self, ' Is it not enough that WTetched sinners, already 
 damned for original sin, should be overwhelmed by so 
 many calamities by the decrees of the Ten Command- 
 ments, but God must threaten us, even in His Gospel, 
 with His justice and anger ? ' But at last, he says, * I 
 perceived that the justice of God is that whereby, with 
 God's blessing, man fives, namely, Faith. Thereupon I 
 felt as if bom again, and it seemed to me that the gates of 
 heaven stood wide open.' It is not easy to see how the 
 justice, or righteousness, of God can be identified with 
 Faith, if Faith has a human side at all ; but Luther found 
 ineffable peace in the thought that those who, through 
 
34 FAITH [cH, 
 
 Faith in Christ as the revelation of God's righteousness, 
 have accepted Him, are clothed with a righteousness not 
 their own — with the righteousness of Christ imputed to 
 them. The form of this doctrine is derived chiefly from 
 the Epistle to the Romans, studied in Latin with St. 
 Augustine's commentary. In the sixteenth century, how- 
 ever, it was a crucial question, What is the proper instru- 
 ment of justification ? This ' justification ' (to ' justify ' 
 means to pronounce righteous,^ by judicial decree, but with 
 no suggestion of a legal fiction) was regarded as the applica- 
 tion of the merits of Christ to the individual, which applica- 
 tion, it was agreed on all hands, must be through an instru- 
 ment divinely appointed. An important passage, often 
 appealed to, in Clement of Rome,^ says : ' We also are 
 not justified by ourselves, neither by our own wisdom or 
 knowledge or piety or any works which we did in holiness 
 of heart, but by that Faith in which God Almighty has 
 justified all men from the beginning.' 
 
 Both sides were also agreed that Faith justifies. But 
 the Catholics distinguished between fides informis, inert 
 opinion, and fides formata, which is perfected by the love 
 and good works which spring from it. Among the proposi- 
 tions anathematised by the Council of Trent were : that a 
 man may be justified without grace : that man is justified 
 only by the imputation of the justice of Christ, or only by 
 the remission of sins, without inherent grace, or charity : 
 that justifying Faith is nothing but confidence in the 
 mercy of God, who forgives sins for the sake of Christ : 
 that man is absolved and justified because he firmly 
 believes that he is absolved and Justified. 
 
 On the other hand, the Reformers held that Faith is the 
 one principle which God's grace uses for restoring us to 
 His favour. We need a radical change, which change is 
 
 1 As in Clirysostom's comment : ' When a just judge's sentence pronounces 
 us just {SiKalovs 6,To<palvei) what signifies the accuser?' — Horn, in Ep. ad 
 Rom. 16. « Clem. i. 32. 
 
II.] * FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 36 
 
 called Justification from God's side, and regeneration on 
 our side. It is initiated by the secret influence of the 
 Holy Ghost, co-operating, as a rule, with the Word of God, 
 or some other means of grace ; and it appropriates salva- 
 tion, leading to a feeling of absolute peace and confidence 
 that our sins are forgiven. ' Justification,' according to 
 this theory, ' is a change in God's dealings with us ; and 
 Faith means trust.' ^ 
 
 This is clearly an attempt to narrow the meaning of 
 Faith, by excluding from it some of the elements which it 
 had been made to contain ; and accordingly the Reformers 
 defined Faith largely by negations. It is not intellectual 
 behef, e.g. in the fact of the Incarnation ; it is not know- 
 ledge and acceptance of any dogmas ; it is, in itself, quite 
 separate from charity or any good works ; if it must be 
 defined, it is a trust in Christ's merits for salvation. From 
 this trust, all the fruits of the Spirit are said to flow. 
 Melanchthon, the Confession of Augsburg, and the more 
 moderate Lutherans generally, defined Faith as ' fiduciary 
 apprehension ' of Gospel mercy. Faith in itself has no 
 virtue, the meritorious cause of Justification being the 
 death and satisfaction of Christ, which Faith appropriates. 
 Faith is to be defined rather by what it does than by what 
 it is : this is a favourite answer to the objection that Faith 
 is certainly not only fiduciary apprehension, which may be 
 destitute of any moral element. A real apprehension of 
 Christ, they say, must necessarily be beyond explanation. 
 But if so, it is not adequately explained as being ' fiduciary 
 apprehension.' The word ' apprehension,' moreover, needs 
 definition. It is an ambiguous term, which tends to con- 
 fuse the reception of news with the appropriation of a 
 gift. 
 
 As for the exclusion of love and good works from Justify- 
 ing Faith, the question seems to be fittle more than a 
 scholastic dispute of no great practical interest. Faith 
 
 1 Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 6. 
 
36 FAITH [CH. 
 
 from our point of view, is in its earliest stage a vague and 
 undifferentiated apprehension of God, the first stirring of 
 divine grace, which is an active principle working in and 
 through the natural faculties. It is intended to develop 
 and find explicit expression in all parts of our nature. If 
 we must answer the question whether Faith or love is the 
 formal cause of Justification, we can only say that Faith 
 is the beginning, love the crown, of the spiritual fife, and 
 that those who put love first, in time as well as in dignity, 
 are in error. The Catholic doctrine is that Faith, as a 
 disposing condition, is prior to justification, and that 
 caritas is posterior to it. The only antecedent of Faith 
 is a bona volurUas, a pia affectio. This accords with the 
 view taken in these lectures. 
 
 Melanchthon recedes considerably from the rigour of 
 Luther's doctrine of justification by Faith only. He 
 explains that it only means that we must renounce the 
 merit of the good works which are undoubtedly associated 
 with Faith ; and he calls justification by Faith ' Paulina 
 figura.* Nothing can show Melanchthon's position more 
 clearly than the following passage from his Directions for 
 Visitors, sanctioned by Luther. * Although, there are some 
 who think that nothing should be taught before Faith, 
 and that repentance should be left to follow from and after 
 Faith, so that the adversaries may not say that we retract 
 our former doctrine, yet the matter must be thus viewed : 
 Because repentance and law belong alike to the common 
 Faith (for one must believe of course that there is a God 
 who threatens and commands) let it be for the man of 
 degraded character that such portions of Faith [Luther 
 had taught that Faith has no portions] are allowed to 
 remain under the names of precept, law, fear, etc., in order 
 that they may understand more discriminately the Faith 
 in Christ which the Apostles call justifying Faith, i.e. which 
 makes just and cancels sin, an effect not produced by 
 Faith in the precept and by repentance, and that the man 
 
II.] * FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 87 
 
 of low character may not be misled by the word Faith and 
 ask useless questions.' ^ 
 
 The English Reformers attempted no definition of Faith, 
 and no definition is to be found in our Articles. But in the 
 Homilies we read : ' A quick and living Faith is not only 
 the common belief of the Articles of our faith, but it is also 
 a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, and a steadfast hope of good things 
 to be received at God's hand.' The Homily goes on to say : 
 * Dead Faith is not the sure and substantial Faith that 
 saveth sinners. Another Faith there is in Scripture, which 
 is not idle, unfruitful, dead, but worketh by charity, as 
 St. Paul declareth.' ^ Elsewhere : ' There is one work in 
 the which be all good works ; that is, Faith that worketh 
 by charity. If thou have it, thou hast the ground of all 
 good works : for the virtues of strength, wisdom, temper- 
 ance, and justice, be all referred to this same Faith.' ^ This 
 is a popular statement of a sound doctrine of Faith. 
 
 The difference between the CathoUc and the Protestant 
 view of Faith may be made clearer if I quote a few sen- 
 tences in which Newman sums up his own view of Faith, in 
 opposition to that of the Reformers. * Justifying Faith is 
 Faith developed into height and depth and breadth, as if 
 in a bodily form ; not as a picture but as an image ; with a 
 right side and a left, a without and a within ; not a mere 
 impression or sudden gleam of light upon the soul, not 
 knowledge, or emotion, or conviction, which ends with 
 itself, but the beginning of that which is eternal, the 
 operation of the indwelling Power which acts from within 
 us outwards and round about us, works in us mightily, so 
 intimately with our will as to be in a true sense one With 
 it ; pours itself out into our whole mind, runs over into 
 our thoughts, desires, feelings, purposes, attempts, and 
 
 1 Harnack, History of Dogma^ vii. p. 255. 
 * Sermon of Faith, Part I. 
 » Of Good Works, Part L 
 
38 FAITH [cH. 
 
 works, combines them all together into one, makes the 
 whole man its one instrument, and justifies him into one 
 holy gracious ministry, one embodied lifelong act of Faith, 
 one sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is his 
 reasonable service. Such is Faith . . . existing indeed 
 in feelings, but passing on into acts, into victories of what- 
 ever kind over self. . . . These acts we sometimes call 
 labours, sometimes endurances, sometimes confessions, 
 sometimes devotions, sometimes services ; but they are 
 all instances of self-command, arising from Faith seeing the 
 invisible world, and Love choosing it.' ^ 
 
 Now hear Luther. Perhaps you will think that the 
 difference is after all mainly one of emphasis. ' Faith is a 
 divine work in us, through which we are changed and 
 regenerated by God. Oh, it is a Uving, busy, active, power- 
 ful thing, this Faith, so that it is impossible for it not to 
 do us good continually. Neither does it ask whether good 
 works are to be done, but before one asks it has done 
 them, and is doing them always. But any one who does 
 not such works is an unbelieving man, who gropes and 
 looks about him for Faith and good works, and knows 
 neither what Faith is nor what good works are. Faith is 
 a living, deliberate confidence in the grace of God, so certain 
 that for it it could die a thousand deaths. And such 
 confidence and knowledge of divine grace makes us joyous, 
 brave, and cheerful towards God and all creation.' ^ 
 / In the nineteenth century, and at the present time, 
 there has been and is much controversy about the meaning 
 of Faith. In the popular teaching of the Roman Church 
 there is a disastrous tendency to regard it as an act of 
 violence exercised by the will upon the intellect, in obedi- 
 ence to external authority. The quotations from St. 
 Thomas Aquinas, though they contain nothing to which 
 we could object, show how easily this view might be taken. 
 
 1 Newman, Lectures on Justificati&n, p. 302. 
 
 2 Luther, Preface to Epistle to the Romuns. 
 
n.] 'FAITH' AS A RELIGIOUS TERM 39 
 
 But the Thomist philosophy was an honest attempt to 
 place theology on a rational basis. At the present day, 
 even so liberal a Romanist as Father Tyrrell can define 
 Faith as ' voluntary certainty,' and as ' an actively free 
 behef.' ' Under the force of evidence,' he says, ' our mind 
 is passive and receptive like a mirror ; but in the case of 
 free assent, Uke Faith, we have to assert ourselves. A 
 certain sense of unreality, one might almost say of pretence, 
 is the normal and natural accompaniment of these freely 
 chosen beliefs.' * The difference between this and mere 
 fictions or working hypotheses is that in the case of Faith 
 we hold to the belief in obedience to the command of God 
 as made known to us by the voice of conscience. But all 
 this will not prevent that seeming black to us, which God 
 tells us, and which we sincerely believe, to be white. 
 Therefore a certain sense of unreality is part of the trial 
 of Faith.' ' The great mass of our beliefs are reversible, 
 and are dependent for their stability on the action or 
 permission of the will.' I shall deal with this strange theory 
 of Faith in a later lecture. Here I merely wish you to 
 note its existence. It has had two logical and inevitable 
 developments. With the help of the Kantian philosophy, 
 or later systems based on Kant, the intellectual aspect of 
 things has been disparaged, and the * will- world ' exalted 
 to supremacy. All mere ' facts ' being thus discredited 
 in advance. Faith can create its own world with consider- 
 able independence. On the other side we see the larger 
 and stronger party in the Roman Church scorning and 
 prohibiting all attempts to accommodate dogmas to modem 
 discoveries, and falling back upon implicit, unquestioning 
 obedience to whatever the Church has chosen to declare. 
 
 We have now sketched the career of this remarkable 
 word during the two thousand years of its life. IltcrTis — 
 Fides — Glaube — Faith : they are not exact equivalents ; 
 each has had a history of its own. The conception has 
 been narrowed in various ways — now into bare assent, 
 
40 FAITH TcH. 
 
 now into bare trust and confidence in a divine Person ; 
 now into a subjective assurance which claims to be its 
 own evidence ; now into vague feeUng ; now into a cheer- 
 ful optimistic outlook upon the world ; now into implicit 
 obedience and submission to authority. It will be my 
 object in these Lectures to do justice to the partial truth 
 contained in these various one-sided views, while exposing 
 their limitations. 
 
III.] THE PEIMARY GROUND OF FAITH 41 
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 
 THE PRIMARY GROUND OF FAITH 
 
 We have sketched the history of the word Faith and its 
 cognates in the Bible and in the Church, and have shown how 
 from the first it has been, for Christians, the accepted term 
 for the rehgious temper traced back to its source. Faith, 
 Hope, and Love, with Faith at the beginning, Hope in the 
 middle, and Love at the end, as the crown and fulfilment 
 of the other two — this is Christianity in a nutshell. And 
 we have seen how the two meanings of intellectual con- 
 viction and moral trust, which both legitimately belong 
 to the words ttlo-tls, fides, Faith, and to the Christian virtue 
 which they describe, were brought together in the New 
 Testament, never again to be divided, but also never, as 
 history shows, to work quite smoothly together. In this 
 lecture I wish to approach our subject from a very different 
 side — the psychological — and ask. What is the primary 
 ground of Faith, as a human faculty or state of conscious- 
 ness ? 
 
 What is_the seat of Fa ith ? Does it spring from the 
 intellectual side of our nature ? ]^ we attain to Faith by 
 caj:efully weighing the evidence for the existence of God, 
 for a future life, for the Resurrection of Christ, or the Virgin 
 Birth, or the historical accuracy of the narratives in the 
 Old Testament ? Or shall we, still within the province 
 of the intellect, agree with Fichte that * we are saved, not 
 by history, but by metaphysics,' and base our Faith on the 
 conclusions of some philosophical system ? Or, with 
 
42 FAITH [en. 
 
 orthodox Romanism, shall we maintain that the main 
 facts of religion, the foundations of theistic belief, have 
 been demonstrated by the scholastic philosophy, confirming 
 and supplementing the divine revelation which has also 
 been given us ? Or shall we, with Schleiermacher, abandon 
 rationalism, both orthodox and unorthodox, and make 
 religion a matter of pure feeling ? Or, with some of the 
 mystics, shall we affirm the existence of direct intuition, 
 through a special organ, which puts us into immediate 
 connection with God and the spiritual world ? Or shall 
 we follow the voluntarists, and make Faith an affair of 
 choice, an act of the will ? Or are the pragmatists right 
 in treating it as a working hypothesis, determined by 
 practical needs, and to be accepted, if we choose, ' at our 
 own risk ' ? Or, lastly, is it founded solely on external 
 revelation, a body of divine knowledge and precept dropped 
 from the sky ? These alleged grounds of Faith will all 
 have to be considered in turn, though not in the order in 
 which I have just named them. But I am constrained to 
 regard them all as, at best, only secondary grounds of 
 Faith. . None of them singly, nor all of them collectively, 
 are adequate to the idea of Faith. Faith is something 
 deeper, more universal, more fundamental, than anything 
 that can be assigned to the independent activities of the 
 intellect, will, or feelings. Behind all these determinations 
 lies the deep-seated religious instinct or impulse. 
 
 This iimate instinct or impulse arises in the psycho- 
 logical necessity which obliges us to assign values to our ex- 
 perience.^ It is our nature to pass judgments, to call some 
 things good, others bad, to acquit and condemn, accept 
 and reject. We rearrange our world according to what we 
 consider the worth of its ingredients to be. Objects, after 
 passing through our minds, are no longer all on the same 
 
 1 So Lotze says, ' Faith is the feeling which is appreciative of value.' But 
 I shall show that Faith is not only feeling, if 'feeling' excludes the will and 
 intellect. 
 
III.] THE PRIMARY GROUND OF FAITH 43 
 
 level. They are ranked and classified ; a hierarchy of 
 values is established. 
 
 It is impossible for the human mind to inhibit this native 
 propensity to assign values. We may try to force ourselves 
 to regard nature objectively, as a concatenation of facts 
 upon which we forbear to pass judgment. But the most 
 rigorous and detached scientist, unless he confines himself 
 to pure mathematics, which are independent of existential 
 truth, cannot abstain from some kind of valuation. (There 
 are other values besides ethical values, as we shall shortly 
 explain.) However rigidly we may confine ourselves to 
 quantitative categories in the course of our investigations, 
 we have set before ourselves a purpose — to establish the 
 general laws to which the changes of phenomena conform ; 
 and we could never embark on such an enterprise unless we 
 believed that the knowledge of general laws has either an 
 intrinsic or a practical value. In most cases the assumed 
 value is intrinsic ; the man of science seeks truth for its 
 own sake. It is sometimes worth while to prove to the 
 materialist (for the creed is not extinct, though the name 
 is disavowed) that he has imported into his system a great 
 deal that on his own principles he has no right to touch ; 
 that all sympathetic interest in the results of molecular 
 movements is an intrusion of the value-judgment into a 
 field from which it has been by hypothesis excluded ; that 
 he has no right to talk about ' progress,' or ' degeneration,' 
 or ' the survival of the fittest.' For the truth is, that to 
 investigate the purely quantitative aspect of things with- 
 out reference to the qualitative, to discard all reference to 
 meaning, interest, or value, is to attempt an abstraction 
 which is impossible to the human mind. These are aspects 
 of reality which we cannot keep out of sight, even when 
 we wish to ignore them.^ 
 
 1 Cf. Miss Benson's Venture of Rational Faith: — 'There is nothing in the 
 scientific aspect of phenomena which can make anything in any possible way 
 worth while ; for even the idea of ' * worth " does not enter into the concep- 
 tions of science, and thus the essential nature of everything we care Jor is 
 
44 FAITH [CH. 
 
 The world, then, has values as well as existence. And I 
 do not mean only values for ourselves, but intrinsic values 
 — or, if this phrase be objected to, values which for all who 
 can apprehend them are ends in themselves, not means to 
 something else. We do not create or imagine these values ; 
 they are as much given to us as the existential aspect of 
 things. We cannot prove that the world exists ; and we 
 cannot prove that our valuation is anything more than 
 subjective ; but Faith accepts these values, not as assigned 
 by ourselves, but as objectively real. Somewhere, some 
 day, or somehow, the real world is arranged according to 
 their pattern. 
 
 Faith has usually connected this realm of values with 
 the name of God. God — whether the God of theism, 
 pantheism, agnostic monism, or deism — is the self- existent 
 . summum gemis in whom we believe that our highest ideals 
 ^^re realised. Those who deny or doubt the existence of 
 God, while retaining the conception of God as a regulative 
 idea or ideal, seem to me to be, strictly speaking, non- 
 religious.^ If the idea of God is only a device, empirically 
 discovered to be serviceable for strengthening our wills 
 and straightening our aims — just as a man might use a 
 pair of spectacles to correct his faults of vision, or a pair 
 of dumb-bells to increase his muscular strength, — God is 
 lowered to the position of an instrument ; and this is an 
 
 entirely outside it. Science can analyae the production of sound, and ignore 
 the Boul of music ; it can show the cause of colour, and miss the joy of 
 beauty ; it can show the genesis of all manner of social institutions, and miss 
 the heart of love ; it may even find the conditions of life, but cannot ask 
 what life is ; it may sweep the heavens with its telescope, and fail to find 
 God.' 
 
 ^ This limitation does not exclude Buddhism, though that religion believes 
 in no personal God. For in Buddhism the ' Nothing ' to which all is reduced 
 is (in spite of its name) a positive conception. 'It is the absolute world- 
 ground, the fact behind the illusions of the world ; the absolute being, the 
 static basis of all phenomena ; it is the absolute world-aim, after which the 
 world-process strives and in which it finds its deliverance ; the bearer and 
 producer of the religious and moral world-order, which brings out what 
 alone is true and enduring in illusion, and turns the illusory world-process 
 into an actual salvation-process.' — Hartmann, Rdigion de$ Oeiates, p. 5. 
 Baddhism is not atheism ; it only deifies the ' a-privative.' 
 
III.] THE PRIMARY GROUND OF FAIT» 45 
 
 irreligious Faith in God. Faith, we may perhaps say, is a 
 realist, as ascribing reality to ideas, but an idealist, since 
 it is ideas to which it ascribes reality. 
 
 Now on what principles do we construct our world of 
 values ? Why do we prefer some things above others ? 
 What qualities give or involve intrinsic worth ? Our 
 answers to these questions will determine the whole char- 
 acter of our Faith, and our whole judgment as to the mean- 
 ing and content of Faith generally. 
 
 The simplest and lowest standard of valuation is that 
 of pleasure and pain. This has very little to do with Faith, 
 because it is almost entirely subjective and particular. 
 Sensuous perceptions do not point to any universal beyond 
 themselves. We are conscious of no contradiction, no 
 problem clamouring for solution, when we acknowledge 
 that * tastes differ ' — even when they differ so much that 
 one man's meat is another man's poison. We cannot 
 argue with any confidence from pleasure and pain to the 
 objective value or nature of things. All we can say is 
 that pleasure is the frequent (not the universal) accompani- 
 ment of right action and of a healthy condition, and pain 
 of wrong-doing and disease. Pleasure and pain have thus 
 (in Kantian language, though in opposition to Kantian 
 theory) some degree of regulative value ; they have not a 
 constitutive value. And their regulative value, their use- 
 fulness in apprising us whether we are doing well or badly, 
 is not that of an infallible criterion. 
 
 If we reject the pleasure and pain calculus, not as worth- 
 less, but as belonging to an inferior, subsidiary class, we 
 shall find, I think, that there are three attributes of things 
 which have an absolute, intrinsic value. They are constitu- 
 tive, not regulative principles of reality regarded as 
 spiritual. 
 
 First, we value what is universal^j^ fmc AttI W^- arrange 
 our experience in order of value, according as it illustrates, 
 more or less, universal truth. We value law above acci- 
 
46 FAITH [CH. 
 
 dent, or what we call accident ; we value the rule abowi the 
 exception ; more decidedly, we value fact above fiction, 
 our waking life above our dreams. Our thoughts are 
 valuable, or worthless, according as they correspond with, 
 or contradict, the actual nature of things. A theory is 
 valuable if it explains or accounts for a great number of 
 phenomena. A religion or philosophy is valuable if it 
 gives an intelligible explanation or a plausible theory of the 
 constitution of the universe and the laws of human nature. 
 Whenever we succeed in establishing the correspondence of 
 idea with fact, we feel that we are enriched ; we have 
 gained something which is valuable for its own sake. 
 
 I shall have, in the course of these lectures, to defend 
 this conception of truth against the sceptical subjectivism 
 which denies that our thoughts can ever convey to us 
 genuine knowledge of reality external to ourselves. I will 
 not argue the question in this place, but will only say that 
 my position is a ' moderate realism.' I believe that we are 
 in contact with external reality, and that we may trust our 
 faculties when they tell us (as they do with the utmost 
 emphasis) that our knowledge is not merely of our own 
 mental states, but of facts which exist independently of 
 our mental states. At the same time, I hold that this 
 confidence is a matter of reasonable Faith, and can never, 
 from the nature of the case, be anything more. 
 ! Secondly, we attach an absolute, intrinsic value to what 
 we call moral goodness. However we came by it, we are 
 in possession of the category of the ought-to-be, the partly 
 unrealised supplement of given experience. The greater 
 part of our experience is capable of being arranged on a scale 
 of ethical values. We may, if we choose, for the sake of 
 greater clearness in ethical study, abst-act from other 
 aspects of reality, and regard the world simply as a place 
 where some things are morally good, and others morally 
 bad. We may picture to ourselves human life as simply 
 and solely a school of character, a place of moral discipline. 
 
r. 
 
 III.] THE PRIMAEY GEOUND OF FAITH 47 
 
 And if we are asked, ' Why is this or that called good ? ' 
 we must not answer, ' Because it promotes the interest of 
 the whole,' or * Because it leads to the greatest happiness,' 
 or anything of that kind. If we do, the Positivist will 
 prove to us that the ' Good ' is, by our own admission, 
 only a means to an end, or only relative, or only determined 
 by public opinion. The Good cannot be made an instru- 
 ment of pleasure and pain, though utilitarianism has sub- 
 jected it to this degradation ; nor can it be subordinated 
 to the True and the Beautiful, any more than they to it. 
 The form of the moral standard, ' You must,' is essential 
 as well as the content. It is clearly a law of our being ; 
 we point to it as a magnetic needle points to the North. 
 
 In a later lecture I shall have to deal with the exclusive 
 authority attached by some philosophers to the moral 
 sense. I do not agree that the * categorical imperative ' 
 belongs to moral judgments only, in such a way as to make 
 a generic difference between them and intellectual or 
 aesthetic judgments. The peremptory command, ' You 
 must take account of this,' is not always the voice of con- 
 science. It is the mark of all reality, and it compels our 
 attention to the true and the beautiful in the same master- 
 ful tone as to the ethical demand. The contrary impression 
 has arisen from the fact that the moral imperative usually 
 prompts to some external act, which for a superficial vie^v 
 is more ' real ' than a change of mind or feeUng. 
 
 The third order of values, which, though with the 
 majority of men it holds a subordinate place, is quite in- 
 capable of being reduced to subjection to either of the other 
 two, is the quality of Beauty. When we say that a thing 
 is beautiful, we mean that it is objectively, universally 
 beautiful, not that it gives us pleasure to look at it. 
 The aesthetic sense is more than an instrument of pleasure.. 
 We cannot speak of pleasure or pain withoAit immediate 
 reference to individual feelings, from which there is no 
 appeal, but we regard it as a defect in others if they cannot 
 
48 FAITH [cH. 
 
 Bee beauty in what we admire. We believe that the laws 
 of beauty reign in the real world ; and this for the Theist 
 implies that the Creator values beauty for its own sake. 
 In natural history, we see that aesthetic perceptions deter- 
 mine choice in the case of creatures quite low down in the 
 scale ; Darwin and others have shown what elaborate and 
 exquisite adornments Nature provides for beasts, birds, 
 and insects, decorations which have no other object than 
 to attract mates by appealing to their highly developed 
 sense of beauty. Personally I have no doubt that many 
 of the unsatisfactory features in our civilisation are due 
 to the fact that we see nothing wrong in unnecessary 
 ugliness, and so continually affront the Creator by dis- 
 regarding one of His primary attributes. 
 
 The essence of beauty seems to be the suitableness of 
 form to idea. A beautiful object is perhaps always valued 
 as the just translation of an idea into expressive form. 
 When Aristotle said that the primary necessity for a poet 
 is to be good at metaphors (using ' metaphor ' in the 
 widest possible sense), he spoke the truth. There is a low 
 but positive degree of beauty in mere symmetry, which 
 is a symbolical expression of the order, proportion, and 
 uniformity of Nature — the ra^ts and Tre/aas which, according 
 to Plotinus's scheme, we are to begin by learning, through 
 the study of Nature. Subtler harmonies, which express 
 and interpret, we know not how, the deeper and more 
 complex secrets of hfe, have a higher value as beautiful 
 things. A beautiful face and person attract us because they 
 are the index of a healthy body, a sound mind, and a fine 
 character. Rising higher still, there is beauty of thought, 
 of feeling, and of action. A man's Hfe may, as Milton says, 
 be a true poem. And ugliness is always, I think, essen- 
 tially discord between form and idea. The ugUest thing 
 in Nature, a human face distorted by evil passions, is 
 hideous because the face is that of a man made in the 
 image of God, a sharer in the humanity redeemed by Christ. 
 
r 
 
 III.] THE PRIMARY GROUND OF FAITH 49 
 
 The discord here becomes revolting. The ugliness of vul- 
 garity, in all its forms, is caused by the inappropriateness of 
 form to content, or the juxtaposition of incompatibles. It is 
 the misuse of symbols by those who do not understand them. 
 
 We have, then, three schemes of value, — truth, goodness, 
 and beauty, which cannot be reduced to each other. They 
 are the three aspects under which the life of God is known 
 to us.^ They are not independent of each other ; beauty 
 cannot fall entirely out of relation to truth or goodness 
 without ceasing to be beautiful, as the history of decadence 
 in art has proved again and again. Neither can morality 
 wholly forget the claims of truth or beauty, as the history 
 of Jesuitism and of Puritanism respectively should have 
 taught us. Neither can metaphysics despise the ethical 
 and aesthetic ideals without falling into falsehood ; for 
 though science may rightly and honourably accept limita- 
 tions and consent to a partial and one-sided view, since it 
 does not profess to guide us to absolute truth, philosophy, 
 which is the quest of universal truth, is bound to leave 
 nothing out. 
 
 ~ I hope you will agree with me in regarding these three 
 lines of revelation as distinct without being separate, and 
 as constituting, collectively, what we may call natural 
 revelation. 
 
 So the poets have taught us. Goethe (translated hy 
 Carlyle) thus asserts their triune harmony : — 
 
 As all nature's myriad changes 
 
 Still one changeless power proclaim, 
 So through thought's wide kingdom ranges 
 
 One vast meaning, e'er the same : 
 This is Truth — eternal Reason — 
 
 That in Beauty takes its dress, 
 And, serene through time and season, 
 
 Stands complete in Righteousness. 
 
 1 Lotze says that they are giren intnitirely, and thus hare a certainty 
 which cannot belong to mental concepts. 
 
 D 
 
50 FAITH [CH. 
 
 And Tennyson says that 
 
 Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are three sisters 
 That dote upon each other, friends to man. 
 Living together under the same roof, 
 And never can be sundered without tears. 
 
 These three have, each of them, the marks of the spiritual 
 world. That is : Firstly, they claim to exist in their own 
 right, and will not be made means or instruments to any- 
 thing else, nor to each other. Secondly, they take us out 
 of ourselves : they are not our tools, but we are rather 
 their instruments. Thirdly, they are, each in its own 
 manner and degree, a permanent enrichment of our life — 
 a fund of inaHenable spiritual wealth. The mark of 
 spiritual wealth as opposed to the other goods of life is that 
 spiritual wealth is unlimited in quantity, being manifestly 
 free from such mechanical laws as the conservation of 
 energy. In the spiritual world one man's gain is not 
 another man's loss. The spiritual wealth of the world is 
 capable of indefinite increment. 
 
 We are confronted, then, with a world of existence, and 
 a world of values. The former, when contemplated in a 
 barely abstract way, and stripped of all extraneous im- 
 portations from the world of values, consists simply of 
 brute facts, unclassified, unappraised, and even unrelated. 
 The latter, when viewed in an equally abstract way, con- 
 sists of the whole contents of the moral, intellectual, and 
 artistic consciousness. What is the relation between them ? 
 
 The relation of the world of values to the world of exist- 
 ence is a problem, perhaps we should say the problem, of 
 philosophy. And what is sometimes called the Venture of 
 Faith is the assumption that not only are the two related, 
 but that all existence is capable of being truly stated and 
 arranged in terms of value, and all value in terms of 
 existence. Faith assures us that truth, goodness, and 
 beauty, which are attributes of the eternal order, are alsd 
 
HI.] THE niBIAEY GROUND OF FAITH 51 
 
 attributes of the world of existence, so that in Hving for and 
 in these eternal ideas, so far as we can do so here, we are 
 living in accordance with the fundamental laws of the world 
 in which we are placed. I do not say that all Faith could 
 be correctly described in the words of the last sentence ; 
 obviously it could not. But I think I am right in saying 
 that all Faith consists essentially in the recognition of a 
 world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the 
 world of natural phenomena. 
 
 If this be granted, it will be plain that there are several 
 states of mind which are incompatible with Faith. There 
 is the merely dull and stupid temper, which takes each day 
 as it comes, eats, drinks, and sleeps, and never thinks about 
 the meaning of things. There is the pessimistic temper, 
 which sees behind phenomena only an alien and hostile 
 power. There is the sceptical temper, which refuses to 
 admit that any clear revelation of God has been made to 
 us through truth, beauty, and goodness. There is the 
 ironical, indiflFerent temper, of which Renan sometimes 
 poses as an exponent. There is the grumbling and rebel- 
 lious temper, which leads either to acedia ^ or to reckless 
 impatience. * By far the largest part of human misery 
 is the work of human impatience and discontent. By 
 impatience of thought we pervert or set aside the evidence 
 before us, that we may give ourselves licence to believe 
 what pleases us better than truth. By impatience of 
 action we rush at something we like better than right and 
 goodness, pushing our neighbours out of the way, and, if 
 need be, tyrannising over them. In a more passive dis- 
 content we cherish our grievances against the order of 
 things, and fill our hearts with bitterness.' " Lastly, there 
 is the selfish temper, which by attending to nothing and 
 noticing nothing but what promotes or thwarts our own 
 
 1 One of the 'seven deadly sins' — a compound of gloom, sloth, and 
 irritation — St. Paul's 'sorrow of the world that worketh death.' See the 
 interesting discussion in Bisbop Paget's Spirit of Discipline. 
 
 2 Professor Gwatkin, The Knowledge o/Ood, i. p. 130. 
 
62 FAITH [CH. 
 
 private interests, becomes wholly blind to whatever of 
 truth, beauty, or goodness God has spread before us for our 
 delight and edification.^ 
 
 It is plain, then, that Faith requires certain personal 
 qualities. If we are too stupid to ask for any meaning in 
 our experience, too self-absorbed to be interested in any- 
 thing that does not concern our petty affairs, too frivolous 
 to care seriously for what can only be cared for seriously, 
 too gloomy to hope, or too wilful to learn, we are labouring 
 under fatal disqualifications for the experience of Faith. 
 This is the meaning of the words of Christ : * If any man 
 is willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine,' 
 and ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' 
 
 What distinguishes Faith from existential knowledge is 
 the recognition of an objective, external, and ideal standard 
 of value — of an idea, or system of ideas, of goodness, truth, 
 and beauty, by which things given in experience may be 
 judged and classified. It is an essential part of Faith 
 that this standard should be appUed to given experience, 
 and it is also requisite that experience should be appealed 
 to in verification of the claims of Faith. This last point 
 is important ; and it leads us to recognise a pecuHarity 
 of the conditions under which Faith is exercised. The 
 verification to which Faith appeals can never be complete 
 while we live here. Truths of the eternal order seem to be 
 always broken and refracted as they reach us. They mani- 
 fest themselves to concrete experience in an oppositional, 
 bipolar form, so that we continually find ourselves con- 
 fronted by an obstinate negation. Truth, we may almost 
 say, is a spark which is only generated by friction. This, 
 it may be, is a necessary condition of the world of becoming. 
 
 1 The word * selfishness ' must here be extended to cover all purely self, 
 regarding motives. Faith must have an object outside self. Theoretical 
 self-knowledge, egoism, refined or otherwise, the desire of self-improvement 
 as an absolute end, are outside the religious sphere. Religious attention to 
 one's own character, knowledge, or circumstances has always reference to an 
 objective standard, and derives its s unction from a principle outside the self. 
 Cf, Hartmann, Religion des Geistes, p. 4. 
 
III.] THE PEIMARY GROUND OF FAITH 53 
 
 One reason why Faith cannot verify itself is that the 
 world is still in the making. In the words of St. Paul, 
 * we see not yet all things put under ' the Son of God, ' in 
 whom (nevertheless) all things consist.' In all probability 
 humanity (even if, with the latest authorities, we push 
 back the beginnings of civilisation ten or fifteen thousand 
 years) is still a child, and will scale heights yet undreamed 
 of. It would indeed be strange and, to a thoughtful man, 
 disquieting, if our experience were symmetrically rounded 
 off, so that no further growth in knowledge could be ex- 
 pected. Faith, then, ' transcends experience ' ; it ap- 
 pears as a constructive activity. It employs the imagina- 
 tion to fill out what is wanting in experience. Faith en- 
 deavours to find harmony in apparent discord, and to 
 anticipate the workings of the divine purpose. In a sense, 
 all thought may be said to ' transcend experience,' if by 
 experience we mean sense-perception ; and Faith, as we 
 have seen, is not merely a function of thought, but a basal 
 energy of the whole man. It includes an element of will ; 
 and the office of will is not to register experience, but to 
 make it. 
 
 Faith, therefore, always contains an element of risk, of 
 venture ; and we are impelled to make the venture by the 
 affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves (through 
 the infusion, as Christians believe, of a higher light and life 
 from above) to those eternal principles which in the world 
 around us appear to be only struggling for supremacy. 
 
 So far we have maintained that the primary ground of 
 Faith is a normal and ineradicable feeling, instinct, or 
 attraction, present in all minds which are not disqualified 
 from having it by peculiarities which we should all agree, 
 probably, in calling defects, a feeling or instinct that be- 
 hind the world of phenomena there is a world of eternal 
 values, attracting us towards itself. These values are 
 manifested, and exercise their attraction, in and through 
 phenomena, though the section of the world which we know, 
 
54 FAITH fcH. 
 
 and from which we generalise, is an inadequate receptacle 
 for them. Further, these values have been classified as 
 ideas of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, a threefold cord 
 which is not quickly broken. This is the most general 
 description possible of the objects and contents of Faith, 
 and it is, I beUeve, all that this primary ground of 
 Faith gives us. It contains vast implications, which 
 can only be unravelled by the full experience of life, 
 developing our personality along the lines of thought, 
 will, and feeling. These three faculties have a natural 
 connection with the ideals of the true, the good, and the 
 beautiful respectively, though we must avoid most 
 carefully the error of separating things which can never 
 exist independently of each other. 
 
FAITH AS PURE FEELING 65 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FAITH AS PURE FEELING 
 
 In my last lecture I tried to keep to the most imiversal 
 and primary aspects of Faith. But I have gone further 
 in differentiating its activities and aspirations than some 
 would wish to follow me. There are some who wish to keep 
 the Faith-feeling uncoiltaminated by thought and will ; 
 who desire that it should remain a vague, mysterious 
 apprehension of the infinite, an immediate intuition of the 
 ineffable. 
 
 It would be a mistake to include all the mystics under 
 this class. The greatest mystics have not made the mis- 
 take of identifying the primary ground of Faith with 
 feeling, if by feeling is meant the faculty which psycho- 
 logists recognise as constituting, together with thought 
 and will, our psychical life. The differentia of mysticism 
 is an intense inner life ; the drama of the mystic's spiritual 
 ascent, his struggle after purification, illumination, and 
 unity with the Divine, is played out within his mind and 
 not on the stage of history. But whatever may be his 
 notion of the perfect state, when he shall have attained 
 the Beatific Vision, his life is by no means one of pure 
 emotion ; it is characterised by intense striving, and often 
 by profound thought. The mystics with whom we are 
 concerned in this lecture are the Quietists — those whose 
 favourite maxim is, ' Be still then, and know that I am 
 God * ; and we have also to deal with emotional theism, 
 which is not quite the same as mysticism. 
 
 We cannot be surprised that many have supposed that 
 
56 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Faith is a pure feeling. For our feelings seem to us to be 
 the deepest and most vivid of our experiences. Thought 
 never shows us what a thing is in itself, but only how it 
 is related to other objects. Feeling, especially those most 
 characteristic feelings, love and hate, goes deeper, As 
 Tennyson says in that wonderful poem, The Ancient 
 Sage: — 
 
 For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake 
 That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there. 
 But never yet hath dipt into the abysm, 
 The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within 
 The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth. , • , 
 
 Religion, too, in its various moods is intimately con- 
 nected with the emotions. Fear, humility, love, trust, 
 remorse, the joy of reconciliation, the pain of estrange- 
 ment, are all emotional states. Moreover, there is a vast 
 and half-explored background of vague feeling which fades 
 away into the subconscious, a reservoir of life behind 
 consciousness, which seems as if it might be the very soil 
 out of which Faith springs and grows. If we could tap 
 this subliminal self, and force it to give up its secrets, 
 should we not find our Faith definite, explicit, and self- 
 sufficing ? So the mystic wishes to interrogate this dark 
 background, to bring it into the Hght. He does not wish 
 to contaminate it with infusions from his surface con- 
 sciousness, but to see what the twilight conceals. 
 
 Now the genuineness of the pure mystical experience — 
 the feeling which the devout mystic interprets as the 
 immediate presence of God — is proved beyond cavil. I 
 am not speaking now of that rare trance which Plotinus 
 enjoyed four times and Porphyry once, but of something 
 much more familiar — those * consolations * which almost 
 all religious people enjoy at times during their devotions. 
 There is reason to beheve that the majority of people who 
 beUeve in God do so because they consider that they have 
 
IV.] FAITH AS PURE FEELING 67 
 
 had immediate experience of Him. An American psycho- 
 logist found that out of seventy-seven persons whom he 
 questioned on the subject no less than fifty-six rested 
 their Faith on the experience of immediate communication 
 with God.^ I am surprised, indeed, that the proportion 
 was not even larger. For who that has prayed regularly 
 has failed to have at times an intensely vivid experience 
 that his prayers are being heard and answered ? The 
 following description is typical. ' Times without number, 
 in moments of supreme doubt, disappointment, dis- 
 couragement, unhappiness, a certain prayer-formula, 
 which by degrees has built itself up in my mind, has been 
 followed in its utterance by quick and astonishing rehef. 
 Sometimes doubt has been transformed into confident 
 assurance, mental weakness utterly routed by strength, 
 self-distrust changed into self-confidence, fear into courage, 
 dismay into confident and brightest hope. These transi- 
 tions have sometimes come by degrees — in the course, say, 
 of an hour or two ; at other times they have been instan- 
 taneous, flashing up in brain and heart as if a powerful 
 electric stroke had cleared the air.' ^ 
 
 I will not now dispute with those who would remind me 
 that what the devout person calls God may be only a deeper 
 or higher state of his own consciousness. Perhaps the very 
 deepest and highest state of our own consciousness is 
 nothing else but beholding the face of God and hearing 
 His voice ; but that is not my point just now. What is 
 the rank and value, in the rehgious fife, of this very common 
 feeling of the presence of God ? Is it a great enough thing 
 to be the complete satisfaction of Faith, so that we need 
 go no further, but may rest content with the statement 
 that Faith is an immediate feeling or consciousness of God's 
 presence ? 
 
 In order to do justice to this conception of Faith I will 
 give you some extracts from Schleiermacher (1 768- 1 834), 
 
 1 Pratt, Psychology of Edigious Beli^, p. 245. « Jd. p. 276. 
 
58 FAITH [cm. 
 
 who may be taken as one of the best representatives of the 
 religious type which we are considering in this Lecture. 
 You will observe that in this writer the object of Faith is 
 not analysed even so far as I analysed it in my last 
 Lecture. It is not determined as the triune ideal of the 
 Good, the True, and the Beautiful. It is the vague 
 Infinite. The religious instinct is fixed in its primary 
 form ; it is identified with feeling, instead of being the 
 common ground of our intellectual, moral, and emotional 
 activities. 
 
 Schleiermacher is the theologian among the German 
 romanticists. He conducted a campaign against the so- 
 called ' Enlightenment ' (Aufkldrung) , with its crude and 
 self-satisfied rationaUsm. We shall meet with this poor 
 type of intellectualism in a later chapter. It encouraged 
 a cold, common-sense view of life, and despised enthusiasm. 
 The romantic movement rushed to the opposite extreme. 
 Its first principle was to value immediate impressions 
 above reflection and reason. In the sphere of religion 
 this means that emotional experience, devout feeling, is 
 the sole foundation of religious behef. * Why,' Schleier- 
 macher asks, ' do you not fix your eyes on the religious life 
 itself, and in particular on those pious elevations of the mind 
 in which all other activities are checked or almost sus- 
 pended, and the whole soul fused in an immediate feeling 
 of the infinite and eternal, and of her own union with it ? ' 
 
 * Religion resigns at once all claims on anything that 
 belongs to science and moraUty.' (This energetic repudia- 
 tion is directed, firstly, against the rationalism of the 
 eighteenth-century Deists, who held that Faith is related 
 to knowledge only as probability to certaipty, being an 
 intellectual judgment based on examination of evidence ; 
 and, secondly, against the austere moralism of Kant.) 
 
 * The contemplation of the pious is the immediate conscious- 
 ness of the universal existence of all finite>^lhings in and 
 through the Infinite, and of all temporal Things in and 
 
IV.] FAITH AS PURE FEELING 69 
 
 through the Eternal. J Religion is to have and know life 
 only in immediate feeling, as existing in the infinite and 
 eternal. Where this is found, religion is satisfied ; where 
 it hides itself, she is in anguish and disquietude. Religion 
 is not knowledge or science, either of the world or of God. 
 The pious man, as pious, knows nothing about ethical 
 science. It is the same with action itself. While morality 
 always appears as manipulating, as self-controlling, piety 
 appears as a surrender, a submission to be moved by the 
 Whole that stands over against man. The pious man may 
 not know at all, but he cannot know falsely. His nature 
 is reality which knows reality. True religion is a sense 
 and taste of the Infinite. If a man is not one with the 
 Eternal, in the unity of intuition and feeling which is 
 immediate, he remains for ever apart.' Schleiermacher 
 reserves his keenest scorn for those who make religion 
 ancillary to morality. ' A high praise it would be for the 
 heavenly one, if she could only look after the earthly affairs 
 of men in this poor fashion ! Great honour for her, to 
 quicken men's consciences a little, and make them more 
 careful ! What is loved and valued only for an advantage 
 that lies outside it is not essentially necessary, and a reason- 
 able man will put no higher price upon it than the value 
 of the end for which it is desired. And I cannot attach 
 much importance to the wrong acts which it prevents in 
 this way, nor to the right acts which it is said to procure. 
 What I maintain is that piety springs up, necessarily and 
 spontaneously, from the inward parts of every better soul, 
 that she has in the heart a province of her own, where she 
 bears unobstructed sway, and that she is worthy to be 
 welcomed and acknowledged by the noblest and most 
 excellent, for her own inner nature's sake.' ^ 
 Faith, theik, for Schleiermacher, is a spontaneous, im- 
 
 1 The English reader will find a useful and characteristic selection from 
 Schleiermacher's writings in Caldecott and Mackintosh, Selections from the 
 Literature of Theism, pp. 256-304. 
 
60 FAITH [CH. 
 
 mediate feeling of the Infinite and Eternal, with which the 
 human spirit identifies itself. The feeling must be wholly 
 general and undifferentiated. He bids us to ponder on 
 our own experiences, but not to analyse them. ' You must 
 know how to listen to yourselves before your own con- 
 sciousness. What you are to notice is the rise of your own 
 consciousness, and not to reflect upon something already 
 there. As soon as you have made any definite activity ^f 
 your soul an object of contemplation, you have begun to 
 separate. The more your own state sways you, the paler 
 and more unrecognisable the image becomes.' * Ideas and 
 principles are all foreign to religion.' ' Religion by itself 
 does not urge men to activity at all.' Doctrinal proposi- 
 tions, he came to believe and to teach, are only descriptions 
 of pious states of consciousness. They are secondary 
 products. 
 
 These quotations will give you an idea of what this 
 conception of Faith or Religion as immediate intuition of 
 the Infinite means. It not only finds but leaves us ex- 
 tremely vague as to the contents of Faith. Whether a man 
 represents the Infinite Being as personal or impersonal 
 depends, says Schleiermacher, on whether his tendency is 
 towards a voluntaristic or an intellectual view of things. 
 He himself, it would appear, believed neither in a personal 
 God nor in individual immortafity, though he expresses 
 himself very cautiously on both subjects. 
 
 Another classical example of Intuitionism is Jacobi 
 (1743-1819), who, being more of a philosopher than a 
 theologian, advocates the emotional ground of religion 
 from an external and (one might almost say) an intellec- 
 tualist standpoint. He has been called ' a pantheist in 
 head and a mystic in heart ' ; but it appears to me th^t 
 he maintains intuitionism largely from a perception of its 
 strategic advantages in controversy. It is hard to refute 
 a man who declares that he has received private and 
 authentic information that what he says is true. Jacobi 
 
FAITH AS PURE FEELING 61 
 
 holds that Just as we apprehend the sensible world by our 
 bodily senses, so we apprehend the spiritual world by 
 another organ, to which he gives different names.^ God 
 requires no proof, for His existence is more evident to us 
 than our own. * If God were not immediately present to 
 us through His image in our hearts, what is these which 
 could make Him known to us ? A revelation through 
 external phenomena can at best only stand in the same 
 relation to that which is internal and original, as that in 
 which speech stands to reason. Just as man feels himself, 
 and pictures himself to himself, so, only with greater power, 
 he represents to himself the Godhead.' It is plain that for 
 Jacobi the only source of our knowledge of God is an 
 intense inner consciousness, unaided by reflective thought, 
 by moral effort, or by knowledge of the external world. 
 He is not afraid to deduce from this self-consciousness, 
 not only the existence of a transcendent God, but the other 
 two dogmas which to Kantians are fundamental — freedom 
 and immortality. How these truths can be proved by 
 immediate feeling he nowhere tries to explain, nor, I fear, 
 is any explanation possible. 
 
 Jacobi, as I have said, gives different names to the faculty 
 by which we apprehend supersensual truth. Sometimes 
 he calls it the Reason. It is not easy to classify intuition- 
 ists who claim an immediate, a priori knowledge which is 
 different from feeling ; but perhaps this is the best place 
 to deal with them. This position has been taken by several 
 well-known writers, among whom we may name the 
 American divine, Theodore Parker. It is * refuted,' under 
 the name of ' ontologism,' by the very able Jesuit philo- 
 sopher, Boedder.2 The claim of ' ontologism ' is that the 
 mind of man, by its very nature, has a certain direct con- 
 
 1 E.g, * Glatibenskraft iiber die Vernunft ' : 'Geistesgefiihl.' 'Reason, 'he 
 says elsewhere,/ is the faculty of assuming the absolutely True, Good, and 
 Beautiful, -with the full persuasion of the objective validity of this assump- 
 tion.' 
 
 * Boedder, Ifattvral Theology, pp. 12-29. 
 
62 FAITH [cH. 
 
 sciousness of the existence, and of some of the attributes, 
 of God. If this were true, no effort, it would seem, could 
 be needed to realise God's presence in relation to His 
 creatures ; for it is in relation to His creatures that the 
 alleged consciousness belongs to us. It is difficult to under- 
 stand the grounds of a ' rational certainty ' which can give 
 no account of itself. The certainty of the ' ontologist,' 
 which he calls immediate apprehension, has the appearance 
 rather of ' voluntary certainty,' pure choice, in which case 
 he classifies himself wrongly, or of a mixture of will and 
 feeling illegitimately used to establish matters of fact (the 
 Ritschlian value-judgment intruding into metaphysics). 
 In short, immediate certainty, which does not rest upon 
 feeling, is Uttle more than a refusal to listen to arguments 
 on the other side. The error of * ontologism,' from the 
 standpoint of these lectures, is its refusal to admit the 
 necessity of an act of Faith. The Beatific Vision which we 
 hope for will be an immediate perception of God, and 
 Faith confidently anticipates this consummation ; but 
 neither feeling nor any ill-defined and mysterious special 
 faculty can make Faith superfluous by giving us at once 
 the immediate apprehension which is to be our final reward. 
 
 A more recent example of Intuitionism is to be found 
 in the philosophy of Lotze, with whom it is a desperate 
 expedient to escape the pure subjectivity and phenomenal- 
 ism in which his theory of knowledge threatens to land 
 him. Like many other German thinkers he appears to 
 confound the feeling of value with the judgment of value. 
 There can be no judgment of any kind without an intellec- 
 tual process. Wherever the ' feeling of value ' has any 
 well-defined contents, the intellect has been at work. 
 
 In France, A. Reville holds that ' Religion rests on a 
 sentiment, sui generis and spontaneous.' He follows 
 Schleiermacher, but insists very rightly that this * senti- 
 ment ' is not merely a feeling of dependence, but a feeling 
 of 7anity. This sentiment, he says, gives a certain valua- 
 
IV.] FAITH AS PUEE FEELING 63 
 
 Hon, which * imagination and thought ' translate into the 
 idea of God. De Pressense postulates a ' Verbe Interieur ' 
 as the source of ' religious sentiment.' 
 
 The theology of pure Feeling has not been largely repre- 
 sented in this country, which has generally been distrustful 
 of sentiment. The great eighteenth-century mystic, 
 William Law, approaches this type, in consequence of his 
 distrust of ' Reason,' ^ but he does not belong to it, because 
 he has a very firm grasp of the truth that Faith must be 
 lived into. When he became a mystic he did not forget 
 the austere morality of the Serious Call. ' The truth of 
 Christianity,' he says at the end of his treatise on The Way 
 to Divine Knowledge, ' is the Spirit of God hving and work- 
 ing in it ; and where the Spirit is not the life of it, there 
 the outward form is but like the outward carcase of a 
 departed soul. For the spiritual fife is as much its own 
 proof as the natural life, and needs no outward or foreign 
 thing to bear witness to it.' 
 
 Robert Browning, in later life, seems to preach a purely 
 emotional theism. Such hnes as : — 
 
 Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust 
 As wholly love allied to ignorance ; 
 or : — 
 
 ^ So let us say — not, Since we know, we love, 
 'But rather, Since we love, we know enough, 
 
 are indeed startling from the most learned of our poets. 
 
 1 Examples of Law's /iiaoKoyla (the only blot on his fine and manly religious 
 writings) may be found in The Way to Divine Knowledge, e.g. , p. 51. ' Reason 
 is so far from being able to help man to that knowledge, which his nature and 
 condition wants, that it can only help his ignorance to increase and fructify 
 in doubts, fictions, and absurd debates. And the thing cannot be otherwise . 
 Man must walk in a vain shadow, so long as Reason is his guide. . . . He 
 who turns to his reason, as the true power and light of his nature, betrays 
 the same ignorance of the whole nature, power, and oflice of reason, as if he 
 was to try to smell with his eyes or see with his nose. For reason has only 
 its one work or power, which it cannot alter nor exceed ; and that one work 
 is to be a bare observer and comparer of things that manifest themselves to 
 it by the senses,' etc. Law cannot be confounded with the anti-mystical 
 moralists ; his rejection of reason, therefore, implies a reliance on pure in- 
 tuition, though it is a progressive intuition, conditioned by growth in grace. 
 
64 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Such an attitude can only be explained as a resolute ad- 
 herence to moral and emotional optimism, in spite of 
 a growing intellectual pessimism.^ 
 
 We may now attempt to answer our question, What is 
 the rank and value of this immediate feeling of the Divine, 
 which psychologically, at any rate, is a well-estabUshed 
 fact of experience ? 
 
 Schleiermacher tells us that this feeling is present * in 
 almost every better soul.' This, I think, is true ; for it is, 
 as I have said, an essential part of prayer. All religious 
 people pray ; and all, I suppose, have a vivid conscious- 
 ness, at times, that prayer is not merely a soliloquy, but a 
 form of intercourse with a higher Being. But it is surely 
 significant that the mystics, with one consent, tell us that 
 these * consolations ' — this vivid consciousness of the 
 presence of God — are most common at the beginning of the 
 spiritual ascent. The young aspirant after holiness may 
 expect them at first, but he must also expect that after a 
 time they will be withdrawn. The best spiritual guides 
 warn their consultants not to attach too much importance 
 to them. This fact, so contrary to what might have been 
 expected and desired, seems to indicate that immediate 
 feeling of the Deity is characteristic of an early and un- 
 developed stage of the religious life.^ Its very emptiness 
 gives it a mysterious attractiveness, bom of awe and 
 curiosity ; but in the normal course, the purely mystical 
 intuition partially loses itself for a time in the multipUcity 
 of the tasks which it enjoins, and only draws together 
 again when its work is near its close. 
 
 Nevertheless, we must not forget that there have been 
 many religious geniuses in whom this immediate * feeling 
 and taste * of the Eternal, to use Schleiermacher's phrase, 
 has been the most intense experience of their lives, persist- 
 
 1 Cf. my Studies of English Mystics, pp. 224-5. 
 
 2 The strict Quietists, however {e.g. Molinos), regard the withdrawal of 
 these consolations as a call to ascend into a still more rarefied atmosphere. 
 C/. The SpvrUxuU Guide, passim. 
 
IV.] FAITH AS PURE FEELING 66 
 
 ing through all stages of their spiritual growth. A large 
 collection of evidence on this subject has been made by a 
 Canadian writer, Dr. Bucke, in a very queer book called 
 Cosmic Consciousness. The author maintains that Cosmic 
 Consciousness is a higher degree of perception which is 
 being slowly evolved in the progress of the race, just as the 
 sense of colour is a recent acquisition, which was possessed 
 only in a rudimentary manner by the ancient Greeks and 
 the authors of the Indian sacred literature. At present, 
 the feeling is weak and fitful, and manifests itself in an 
 almost infinite range of intensity. Very many can go no 
 further, from their own experience, than to endorse the 
 well-known lines of Browning : — 
 
 Oh, we 're sunk enough here, God knows ! 
 
 But not quite so sunk that moments, 
 Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, 
 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 
 And apprise it if pursuing 
 Or the right way or the wrong way, 
 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 Or, as suggested by Wordsworth's famous Ode, they may 
 remember a time when the vision, which has now faded 
 into the light of common day, was frequently with them. 
 
 But this higher faculty, so our author thinks, has begun 
 to appear sporadically, in the most advanced specimens 
 of the race, as an assured possession, and it is becoming 
 more frequent as the centuries go on. Out of many 
 hundreds of cases, which he considers authentic, he selects 
 thirteen which are * so great that they can never fade from 
 human memory.' This odd list consists of Buddha, Jesus 
 Christ, St. Paul, Plotinus, Mohammed, Dante, Las Casas, 
 St. John of the Cross, Shakespeare (whom he chooses to 
 call Bacon), Bohme, Blake, Balzac, and Walt Whitman. 
 The book, in spite of the author's critical vagaries, is full 
 of interest to the psychologist, and I am not disposed to 
 
 B 
 
66 FAITH [cH, 
 
 dispute the main thesis, that if the conditions of civilised 
 life ever promote the improvement of the race, instead of 
 its deterioration, as I fear they do at present, the man of 
 the future may be able to live habitually and consciously 
 in a larger air than is possible to any except the most 
 favoured spirits at the present time. 
 
 But the important question for us now is, whether this 
 immediate perception of the Eternal is capable of forming 
 the contents of Faith, or whether in fact it has any con- 
 tents at all until it has been translated into thought, will, 
 and action. ' Pure feeling,' says Professor Flint curtly but 
 truly, ' is pure nonsense.' Schleiermacher's conception of 
 Faith is anything but ' simple feeling ' ; it is a highly 
 elaborate product of the peculiar ideas of his age. And 
 even so, it is very empty. I have already mentioned the 
 hlankness of the picture, which is insisted on by Schleier- 
 macher. This, as is well known, is a common feature of 
 mystical literature. The pure mystical state (which even 
 William James says is identical with the Faith-state) is 
 without form and void. But ideas must be given through 
 something ; there can be no purely internal revelation, 
 just as there can be no purely external revelation. Some 
 mystics have claimed that they have got beyond forms and 
 differences, which are the mark of the transitory pheno- 
 menal world, and that the undifferentiated feeling which 
 they prize so much is an intuition of the unity which under- 
 lies all difference. Others only lament that they cannot 
 utter what they have seen and felt : — 
 
 O could I tell, ye surely would believe it ! 
 
 O could I only say what I have seen ! 
 How should I tell, or how can ye receive it, 
 
 How, till He bringeth you where I have been.^ 
 
 But there is all the difference between a Unity which 
 excludes all difference, and a Unity which includes all 
 
 1 Myers, St. Paul. 
 
IV.] FAITH AS PURE FEELING 67 
 
 difference. And I cannot doubt that many mystics have 
 beheved themselves to have completed their journey 
 when in reality they have not even begun it. Faith, which 
 Philo, as we have seen, puts at the end of the journey, 
 should, as Christian theology has always maintained, be 
 placed at its beginning. Faith and Love, says Clement, 
 are not taught or teachable (ra a.Kpa ov StSao-Kcrai) ; but 
 between Faith, which is the starting-point of the Christian 
 race, and the perfect Love that casteth out fear, which is its 
 end, there is a long series of lessons which have to be learned. 
 
 Feeling is the mirror which reflects ideas and ideals. 
 It has been defined as the ' passive echo in consciousness 
 of the unconscious psychical process.' ^ It creates nothing ; 
 it seems to project ideas and ideals, because it reflects 
 unconscious motions of thought and will. Feeling in itself 
 is neither good nor bad, true nor untrue.^ It is simply a 
 fact of the soul-life. Its truth depends on the truth of the 
 idea which determines it ; its goodness on the goodness of 
 the motive which is bound up with it. Schleiermacher, 
 in his later editions of Eeden uber die Religion, smuggles in 
 Anschauung, the most primitive form of ideation, into his 
 conception of Feeling ; in the earlier he admits Anschauung 
 by the side of Feeling, as a religious function. This 
 enables him to speak of the ' truth of Feeling,' determined 
 by the truth of the contents of the idea. But ' pure 
 Feeling ' does not include any form of ideation. 
 
 In fact, religious feeling (much feeling is not religious) 
 is only aroused by religious ideas of objective truth and 
 value. ' Mere dependence ' is nonsense, unless there is a 
 known object on which to depend. 
 
 It is, therefore, in my opinion, a mistake to regard the 
 primary ground of Faith, the immediate feeling of an 
 eternal world, as sufficient. Feeling is formless and life- 
 
 1 Von Hartiuann. 
 
 2 So Hegel says : ' That anything is in our feeling proves nothing good 
 about the thing itself. The most royal flower blooms there side by side 'witli 
 the most mischievous weed.' 
 
68 FAITH [cH. 
 
 j less ; it gives us no definite beliefs, and prescribes no 
 I definite duties. Even the three aspects which I have 
 I mentioned, the good, the true, and the beautiful, are, 
 I strictly speaking, products of reflexion on the spontaneous 
 / instinct ; they are the first applications of it to life. And 
 inoreover, the affirmations of this primary instinct, wrongly 
 identified with feeling, need sifting and testing ; they are 
 not all ready to take shape as determinations of the good, 
 the true, and the beautiful. The world into which the 
 Cosmic Consciousness, to use Bucke's word, admits us, 
 is not purely a better world, though it is a larger one. 
 It is hell as well as heaven. This the mystics who have 
 tried to fix the immediacy of feeling as the basis of their 
 moral and spiritual life, have found to their cost. The 
 great problem which has confronted them has been how to 
 distinguish between the genuine irruptions of the Divine 
 into their consciousness, and what they were constrained 
 to regard as diabolical imitations. For those who denied 
 themselves the aid of the discursive intellect, of the will, 
 and of practical tests, there was no satisfactory solution 
 of this problem, and they were frequently tormented 
 through life by doubts whether their most intimate spiritual 
 experiences were not sometimes wiles of the Evil One for 
 their undoing. 
 
 In primitive reHgions, even more than in the discipline 
 of the mystics, deliberate attempts are made to fix this 
 immediacy of rehgious feeling, without analysing or 
 developing it, and to render it more intense by various 
 artificial means, empirically discovered. I do not include 
 prayer among these means, because I doubt whether this 
 highest of our privileges can be resorted to, even in an 
 ignorant manner, without some real gain. But fasting, 
 and other ascetical exercises, have been and are used with 
 the object of intensifying vague religious emotion, without 
 unravelling or transmuting it. The self-induced trance 
 of quietistic mysticism, procured by such methods as 
 
IV.] FAITH AS PUKE FEELING 69 
 
 gazing intently at a luminous chink or even on some part 
 of one's own body (the navel among the monks of Mount 
 Athos, the tip of the nose with some Indian contemplatives), 
 is one method of hypnotisation. Religious music and 
 orgiastic dancing are also very potent methods of achieving 
 this result. I will quote part of Rohde's description of the 
 Thracian worship of Dionysus.^ ' The rite was performed 
 on hilltops, in the darkness of night, by the doubtful light 
 fof torches. Amid the sound of music, the clashing of 
 brazen cymbals, the rolling thunder of a great drum, and 
 the deep note of the flute *' enticing to madness," the band 
 of worshippers danced over the hillside in a whirling, 
 raving, rushing circle. When their emotions were raised 
 to the highest pitch, they hurled themselves upon the 
 beast chosen for sacrifice. This powerful intensification 
 of feeling had a religious meaning, in that only through 
 such overstrain and expansion of his being did man feel 
 
 I^^able to come into touch with the god and his attendant 
 ^■spirits.' ' Emotion carries its own credentials with it ' ; ^ 
 and by such methods the undifferentiated primary emotion 
 of Faith may be stimulated to a pitch which may leave 
 abiding traces on the mind. 
 
 This is one of the most important empirical discoveries 
 about the religious emotion which man has made. The 
 result of employing it is to arrest the development of Faith 
 at a very early stage. This kind of religion may be 
 Intense ; it may become the predominant interest in life ; 
 but it can hardly produce any of the proper fruits of Faith : 
 it is an abortive Faith, a monstrosity and a perversion. 
 The undifferentiated Faith-state was not given us to use 
 or enjoy in this way. It must be developed, rendered 
 explicit, unravelled, as it were, through will, thought an^ 
 appropriate action. 
 
 The result of deliberately playing upon the emotions in 
 
 1 Rohde, Psyche, ii. pp. 18-20. 
 
 • Pratt, Psychology of Religious Belief, p. 62. 
 
70 FAITH [CH. 
 
 the manner described is often seen in terrible reactions. 
 If the joys of the ecstatic state are (as is said by some who 
 have experienced them) too great to be described, so also 
 are the miseries of ' dereliction,' and the hallucinations of 
 religious melancholy. Every fanatical ' revival * produces 
 a crop of insanity. The normal development of religion 
 is calm and self-collected, though deep and strong. Re- 
 ligious feeUng, if not abused, pricks us with a sense of our 
 imperfection, and forces us to seek, through thought and 
 will, for the cause of our disquiet and for a means of 
 satisfying our need. 
 l' The normal history of religious feeling is summed up in 
 \rthe words, Fear, Dependence, Love. Assuredly none of 
 rthe three is ' pure feeUng ' ; but I am protesting all through 
 these lectures against separating our faculties in this way. 
 Love is the crown of the soul's victory, and love, though 
 it contains intellectual and moral elements, is primarily 
 an emotion. Christianity has seemed to many to give the 
 last word to the affections or emotions, by its exaltation 
 of love as the only gift that * never faileth ' ; and certainly 
 love is the only virtue which we can imagine as persisting 
 without much change in the eternal world, when faith 
 shall have become sight, hope been turned into satis- 
 faction, and knowledge into contemplation. 
 ^'''^Love is implicit in Faith from the first. As aesthetics is 
 ya power of recognising beauty practically inseparable from 
 the love of beauty ; as ethics is a power of recognising the 
 morally right practically inseparable from the love of right, 
 so the aim of theology is an intellectual recognition of God 
 practically inseparable from the love of God. And so 
 Augustine is right when he says that a man's spiritual state 
 may be best gauged not by what lie knows, but by what he 
 loves.^ 
 
 J Pascal's ' Human things need only be known in order to be loved, but 
 divine things must first be loved in order to be known,' is valuable, but needi 
 safeguarding, as making the acquisition of dirine knowledge too independent 
 of rational thought 
 
FAITH AS PURE FEELING 71 
 
 But if Faith thus loses itself at last in Love, Love must 
 not, like mere feeling, be immediate at a level below dis- 
 tinction and relation. The religion of feeling cannot be- 
 come true till it has passed through the crucible of the will 
 and the intellect. Our problem is to find the intellectual 
 and volitional equivalents of this vague religion of feeling, 
 certainly not to regard it as a third stage, destined to 
 override the intellect.^ 
 
 In the following lectures I shall try to consider in what 
 manner, and under what limitations, the activities of the 
 will and intellect, brought to bear upon the spontaneous 
 Faith-state, which Professor Baldwin calls ' reality-feeling ' 
 as opposed to self-conscious belief, may conduct us towards 
 a unified spiritual experience, in which the contradictions 
 and divisions which analysis brings to light may be par- 
 tially reconciled. But there is one other principle, besides 
 the intellectual and practical, which is of immense import- 
 ance. This is the principle of Authority, the effect of which 
 as a secondary ground of Faith, determining its form and 
 content, can hardly be overestimated. Rehgion is a racial 
 afiFair, and authority is the principle of continuity, the 
 memory of the race. I think, therefore, that a discussion 
 of authority in relation to Faith should take precedence 
 even of the practical and intellectual grounds of behef. 
 * As {e.g.) Pratt does in his Psychology 0/ Religious Bdi^. 
 
FAITH [cH. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ; AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 
 
 ,'To class Authority as a secondary ground of Faith is »- 
 procee ding which needs some defence. For it is certain that 
 in individual experience Authority is the earUest ground 
 of behef . We are none of us born with a behef in God ; 
 but we are all bom with a tendency to believe what we 
 are told. A child can be made to believe almost anything. 
 He does not believe because he wishes to beheve, or 
 because the things presented to him for acceptance appear 
 to him to be useful or beautiful or desirable in any way. 
 He is quite as ready to believe in ghosts and hobgoblins as 
 in angels and good fairies. As he began to speak by parrot- 
 talk, so he begins to think by accepting facts without 
 criticising them, and assumes that whatever he hears and 
 understands has a place in the world of reality. It is only 
 after sad experience of the deceitfulness of appearances 
 that he unlearns his first confidence, and begins to doubt 
 and question and disbelieve. 
 
 This natural tendency to believe what we are told 
 remains with us, though more or less impaired by experi- 
 ence, through life. Some may protest that no one except 
 a young child believes anything merely because he is told, 
 without any thought of the trustworthiness of the author- 
 ity ; but I am convinced that this is a mistake. A great 
 many grown persons will accept almost any statements 
 put before them (not on all subjects, of course, but on some 
 subjects) from pure inertia, because it is easier for them to 
 believe than to disbefieve. Some popular superstitions, 
 
T.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 73 
 
 which show such astonishing vitaHty, must be trans- 
 mitted and accepted in this lazy fashion. Such notions 
 as that it is unlucky to walk under a ladder, or to be 
 married in May, could not survive a moment's thought 
 about the value of the evidence in their favour. They 
 are simply taken at their face value, with no questions 
 asked. 
 
 If pure credulity is an actual cause of belief, even in 
 cases where disproof is possible and easy, we cannot be 
 surprised that it is largely instrumental in forming beliefs 
 about the unseen world, where no contradiction from 
 experience is possible. Among savages, myths about gods 
 and spirits are handed down from father to son, and 
 believed implicitly. They become part of the mental 
 capital of the tribe or nation, and any attempt to damage 
 their credit is visited with great indignation. This is quite 
 natural. When an * old master ' has been in a family for 
 generations, the owner is not likely to be grateful for being 
 told that it is a sham. Or if he has acquired it himself 
 without asking questions, and has frequently spoken of it 
 as undoubtedly genuine, he will be at least equally un- 
 willing to admit that he has been deceived. As a general 
 rule, we say a thing for the first time because we have heard 
 some one else say it, and stick to it because we have said 
 it ourselves. 
 
 It follows that the diffusion and persistence of a belief 
 is not always a presumption in favour of its truth. Many 
 beliefs, which are purely silly and destitute of any founda- 
 tion, have been kept alive by mere credulity, even in 
 Europe, for thousands of years. When a superstition once 
 establishes itself, it does not become any more respectable 
 by growing old. Its antiquity gives it a sort of prestige 
 which helps to keep it alive, but adds nothing to its weight. 
 For instance, all housemaids everywhere believe that you 
 can make a fire burn by tilting a poker against the bars. 
 I dare say this curious manoeuvre was originally an attempt 
 
74 FAITH [cii. 
 
 to make the sign of the cross, and so conjure the fire to 
 burn ; but for centuries it has been a purely irrational 
 superstition. Or take the cock-and-lion story, solemnly 
 told by Aristotle — that the lion is afraid of the cock. This 
 superstition lasted till Cuvier at last thought of putting a 
 cock into a lion's cage, with results fatal to the cock. Intel- 
 lectual indolence has perpetuated a great many bits of 
 antiquated science. The history of popular quack remedies 
 supplies a mass of instances of a highly instructive kind ; 
 for the same mental attitude which leads uneducated 
 people to resort to quacks when they are ill makes them 
 victims of religious imposture when they are in trouble 
 about their souls. 
 
 Excessive reverence for tradition, deference to the 
 opinions of our forefathers, * who had more wit and wisdom 
 than we,' must be distinguished from mere credulity. This 
 reverence for the supposed wisdom of the past, which we 
 find everywhere in primitive societies, must have been very 
 useful in the early stages of civilisation, when the difficulty 
 of preserving the hardly-won gains of humanity was far 
 greater than at present. The tendency to put the golden 
 age in the past may have been caused partly by a con- 
 sciousness of the real sacrifices which civilisation entails. 
 The fruit of the tree of knowledge, as I have said elsewhere,^ 
 always expels us from some paradise or other, even if it 
 be only the paradise of fools. And when the art of writing 
 was discovered, a superstitious veneration for the written 
 word was universal, and so persistent that I do not think 
 it is extinct yet. If the words of wisdom were enshrined 
 in verse, that made the glamour even more potent. The 
 old Greek sentiment about the inspiration of poets sur- 
 vived to the end of the classical period. ' To the poets 
 sometimes,' says Dion Chrysostom, — ' I mean the very 
 ancient poets — there came a brief utterance from the 
 Muses, a kind of inspiration of the divine nature and truth, 
 i Truth and Falsehood in Religion, p. 158. 
 
v.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 75 
 
 like a flash of light from an unseen fire.' ^ It was thus 
 that the belief in an infallible literature grew up, of which 
 I must say more in a later lecture. To-day my subject is 
 Authority in general, its meaning and significance for 
 Faith. And I have to Justify my classification of it as a 
 secondary ground of behef . 
 
 Authority is defined by Professor Gwatkin ^ as ' all 
 weight allowed to the behefs of persons or the teachings of 
 institutions beyond their reasonable value as personal 
 testimony.' The phrase ' reasonable value ' raises at once 
 the question as to the relation of authority to reason. 
 ' Reason ' is one of those ambiguous words which have 
 been the cause of endless controversies, because the com- 
 batants have not been careful enough to define their terms. 
 It is a pity, I think, that we have not accepted Coleridge's 
 distinction between reason and understanding, correspon- 
 ding to the German words Vernunft and Verstand, and 
 (less exactly) to the Greek vovs and Stdvota as used by 
 Platonists. ' Reason ' would then be used for a philosophy 
 of life based on full experience, a synthesis doing Justice to 
 the claims of the moral and aesthetic consciousness, while 
 ' understanding ' would be reserved for logical reasoning 
 of a more abstract kind. We should then have been 
 spared such confused arguments as are found, for example, 
 in Mr. Balfour's Foundations of Belief (in which, as Leslie 
 Stephen said, the foundations are ingeniously supported 
 by the superstructure), or Mr. Kidd's Social Evolution. 
 
 It is by no means certain that we are right in looking 
 for the ' Foundations of Belief.' The metaphor may be 
 a misleading one. Some things have no foundations. An 
 organism, for instance, has no foundations. Perhaps 
 rational Faith may prove to be part of the life of the 
 universe, in which case we need not look for its foundations 
 outside of itself. Perhaps there is no ' elephant ' to hold 
 
 i Dion Chrysostom, Orat. 36, vol. ii. p. 59; Hatch, Hibbert Lectv/res, p. 61. 
 2 Gwatkin, The Knowledge of Ood, vol. i. p. 3. 
 
76 FAITH [CH. 
 
 up the world of ideas, and no ' tortoise ' to support the 
 elephant.^ 
 
 Mr. Kidd is anxious to prove that there is * no rational 
 sanction for progress,' and he chooses to regard ' reason ' 
 as a shortsighted, selfish faculty, which has nothing to do 
 with any existence but the present, which, it insists, it is 
 our duty to ourselves to make the most of.^ Professor 
 Wallace, usually the most courteous of critics, is for once 
 goaded into using a sharp expression. ' It is simply 
 impossible to allow any one thus to play the fool with 
 language.' ^ Similarly for Mr. Balfour, authority is called 
 
 * the rival and opponent of reason.' Authority ' stands 
 for that group of non-rational causes, moral, social, and 
 educational, which produces its results by psychic processes 
 other than reasoning.' * To authority, he considers, we 
 owe the order and stability of the moral world ; by it the 
 operations of reason are ' coerced to a fore-ordained issue ' ; 
 it generates ' psychological climates ' (like the ' atmosphere ' 
 of Church schools, I suppose, about which we heard so 
 much two years ago), that is, habits of belief which reason 
 has no power to influence. Indeed, * it is from authority 
 that reason itself draws its most important premises.' * To 
 authority, in the main, we owe, not religion only, but ethics 
 and politics.' ' Reasoning is a force most apt to divide 
 and disintegrate.' 
 
 This is a return to a long discredited method of apolo- 
 getics. In the Middle Ages John of Salisbury wrote : 
 
 * As both the senses and human reason frequently go 
 astray, God has laid in Faith the first foundation for the 
 knowledge of truth.' So Bayle, the French Encyclopaedist, 
 says, not very sincerely, perhaps : ' Human reason is a 
 principle of destruction, not of construction ; it is capable 
 solely of raising questions, and of doubling about to make 
 
 1 Cf. Professor H. Jones in nvbhert Journal (Jan. 1906), p. 301. 
 
 > Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 73. 
 
 » W. Wallace, Lectures and Essays, p. 104. 
 
 ♦ Balfour, Foundations of Belief, p. 219. 
 
v.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 77 
 
 a controversy endless. The best use that can be made of 
 philosophy is to acknowledge that it can only lead us 
 astray, and that we must seek another guide, which is the 
 light of revelation.' ^ 
 
 I shall have occasion to show that religious belief is 
 largely affected by ' psychic processes other than reason- 
 ing.' But why these should be grouped together under 
 the name ' authority,' I cannot imagine. We believe, as 
 I shall show, partly on practical grounds, because we find 
 that a certain mental attitude towards the unseen and 
 unknown works, helps us to live as we wish to live, and 
 since we believe that the world is all of one piece, it is 
 reasonable to assume that what is true for us is true for 
 all ; and partly also (in many cases) on aesthetic grounds, 
 since order and beauty seem to be part of the Creator's 
 design, and ends in themselves. 
 
 These may be called non-rational grounds of belief 
 (using rational in the lower sense), because reason (in the 
 higher sense) has to find room for them, and cannot pro- 
 nounce them invalid. Irrational they are not. And they 
 have nothing, so far as I can see, to do with authority. 
 The passage about ' coercing the operations of reason to a 
 fore-ordained issue ' seem^ to be a dignified phrase for the 
 operation which schoolboys call ' fudging ' their sums. 
 Unless the world is purely irrational, such a manoeuvre is 
 a wilful deception practised at our own expense or at that 
 of others. There is nothing more harmful to the cause of 
 truth than a lip-service to logic or science, when we have 
 predetermined in our own minds the conclusion at which 
 we mean to arrive. If we have decided to accept our 
 opinions at second-hand, it is most candid to say so, and 
 abstain from arguments which have nothing to do with our 
 position. 
 
 If by all this opposition of authority and reason it is 
 simply meant that there are some things which we dis- 
 1 Quoted by Rickaby, First Principles, p. 191. 
 
78 FAITH [cH. 
 
 cover for ourselves, and other things which we accept 
 because we have every reason to beUeve that our inform- 
 ants are trustworthy, or because we have not the leisure or 
 ability to test them for ourselves, that is a very obvious 
 truism. I accept the fact that Buenos Ayres is the capital 
 of the Argentine Republic because the evidence for the 
 statement seems to me sufficient, because there is nothing 
 intrinsically improbable in it, because I can think of no 
 reason why there should be a conspiracy to deceive me on 
 such a point, and because there is no testimony on the 
 other side. I accept without question anything that a 
 distinguished mathematician tells me about the higher 
 mathematics because I am incapable of following his 
 calculations, and because I have generally found mathe- 
 maticians honourable men. But acceptances of this kind 
 are really intellectual processes. I have my reasons for 
 believing, or disbeUeving, in each case. This is, as I have 
 said, psychologically quite different from bare credulity, 
 which is a thoughtless condition. 
 
 Once more, I may accept certain traditions, principles, 
 and maxims as embodying the stored wisdom of the race, 
 the racial instinct. But this, I contend, is again accept- 
 ance on intellectual grounds. My studies of sociology and 
 biology, we will suppose, have led me to attach a great 
 importance to these traditions, as embodying a deeper 
 practical wisdom than mankind has been able to make 
 explicit and justify by argument, or, at any rate, deeper 
 than I could hope to arrive at by my own wisdom and 
 experience ; and therefore I submit to the authority of the 
 race as exercised in these social or religious traditions. This 
 is a very wise and respectable line to take, but it is purely 
 intellectual and reasonable, and to class it as non-rational 
 betrays a mere confusion of thought. 
 
 Nor is there anything non-rational in the respect and 
 homage which we pay to men of deep spiritual insight. 
 * Our weak Faith may at times be permitted to look 
 
AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 79 
 
 through the eyes of some strong soul, and may thereby 
 gain a sense of the certainty of spiritual things which before 
 we had not, and which we lose when we return within 
 ourselves.' ^ We do not pay this deference unless we have 
 reason to think that our guide has indeed ' a strong soul ' ; 
 and this is why personal influence is so potent in religion. 
 Our reason tells us that much religious eloquence is mere 
 professional advocacy ; we do not trust our guide until we 
 feel that we know him. 
 
 But now suppose that the tradition relates to some fact 
 in the past or future, for which the personal testimony of 
 my teacher is obviously an insufficient warrant, and which 
 is not recommended to me by any of the considerations 
 just mentioned. Is it unreasonable for me to believe it ? 
 The answer is No, if I believe that the doctrine in question 
 was supematurally imparted, or that it is supernaturally 
 guaranteed. 
 
 If I accept a theological proposition as supernaturally 
 revealed, then I am really believing on authority — Divin e, 
 authority^ The question is, whether Divine authority is 
 or can be independent of what we have called the primary, 
 ground of Faith,_the^igner, personal attraction towards the 
 good, the true, and the beautiful. 
 
 A purely external revelation of truths, which are not 
 related in any way to our own consciousness, would of 
 course be impossible. You cannot teach a blind man by 
 showing him pictures, nor a deaf man by talking to him, 
 because there is no communication with him through the 
 sense which he has lost. And we may say reverently that 
 God could make no revelation in such a way to man, with- 
 out breaking the laws under which He governs the universe. 
 Revelation must be either of truths which are at present 
 unknown to us, but which when imparted to us are intel- 
 ligible, and carry conviction with them by their agreement 
 with the rest of our experience ; or else, there must be an 
 
 1 Stanton, The Place of Authority in I^diyioua Beli^, p. 32. 
 
80 FAITH [CH. 
 
 inward revelation, parallel to the outward, and assuring 
 us of its trustworthiness. 
 
 Now any revelation of facts which, though they are 
 within our com^.rehension, are unverifiable, must be guaran- 
 teed in some way. This obviously applies to all historical 
 facts which are presented to us as having a significance 
 for Faith. No inner light can re-create the past. Lessing, 
 like many others since, found this difficulty insurmoimtable. 
 * Contingent truths of history,' he said, * can never be made 
 the proof of necessary truths of reason. That is the ugly 
 ditch which I cannot get over, though I have often and 
 earnestly attempted the leap.' We are not, however, 
 called upon to attempt this salto mortale. It is enough if 
 the historical facts fall naturally into their place in the 
 scheme of the world as it reveals itself to Faith. 
 
 Now, what kinds of guarantee are possible, when a 
 prophet comes to me, saying, ' Thus saith the Lord ' ? 
 What credentials is it possible for him to produce ? 
 
 The most primitive kind of prophet seems generally to 
 say : * God is the Lord of nature, and makes its laws bend 
 to His will. Through His power, I will do the same ; and 
 then you will know that He has sent me. I will call down 
 rain by my incantations, or I will smite an unbeliever with 
 grievous sickness.' But if God does not act in this way, 
 if He does not suspend or interfere with the operations of 
 nature by way of giving signs to men, this proof is wholly 
 worthless. And it remauis wholly worthless even if rain 
 does follow the prophet's prayer, and if the sceptic goes 
 home sick unto death. 
 
 Or the prophet may seek to establish his credit by pre- 
 dicting the future. Maeterlinck has argued that it is one 
 of the most mysterious things about human nature that 
 we cannot predict the future — that, while the past is partly 
 open to us, the future is a closed book. No doubt it is 
 strange, but such do seem to be the limitations of our 
 nature ; and there is no evidence at all convincing to the 
 
v.] AU.THORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 81 
 
 modem mind that those who are entrusted with a message 
 by God have any supernatural powers of foretelling future 
 events. The old Jewish prophets no doubt had a very 
 clear insight into the issues of national policy. They saw 
 that Egypt was likely to prove a broken reed, and that the 
 cruel and barbarous empire of Assyria could not long 
 terrorise the continent of Asia. But it is an inexcusable 
 obscuring of issues to confound this kind of penetration 
 with the old idea of prophecy, which made it possible to 
 accept a verse in which Cyrus is mentioned by name, as 
 having been written generations before the birth of that 
 prince. 
 
 The famous arguments from miracles and prophecy are 
 in principle condemned by our Lord, whose warnings against 
 seeking after a sign have been preserved by the candour 
 of His biographers, though they themselves attached great 
 value to such evidence. They are no longer arguments 
 for us. 
 
 It remains that the prophet should commend his 
 message to us by awaking a response in our own hearts. 
 This is in reality the only way in which a revelation is or 
 can be made to us. The revelation comes to us with 
 authority from outside, as the voice of God. The true 
 prophet at any rate believes sincerely that God is speak- 
 ing through his mouth ; and those who hear him are 
 constrained to believe it too. Our hearts leap out to 
 meet his words ; we recognise that this is what we wanted ; 
 that here is the truth which we could not find for ourselves, 
 the good news which we should not have dared to believe. 
 We recognise in the prophet himself a man of God. We 
 trust him instinctively ; when he speaks to us about the 
 unseen world, we feel that he knows what he is speaking 
 about, that he ' has been there ' himself. When we read the 
 words of Jesus Himself, our hearts tell us that even this 
 language is inadequate. 
 
 This will show why I regard prophetical authority as\ 
 
88. FAITH Urn. 
 
 f 
 
 a secondary ground of Faith. It is not independent of 
 
 the primary ground, the inward tribunal which accepts or 
 rejects it. It is this primary ground which alone makes 
 belief on authority a religious act. Without it, belief in 
 authority is inert opinion, or lazy acquiescence, or blind 
 partisanship ; and none of these things has anything to 
 do with Faith. 
 
 Revelation is wholly within the sphere of religion. 
 Nothing can be revealed to an irreligious mind, and nothing 
 can be revealed to the religious mind that falls outside 
 the sphere of religious truth. Neither can the natural 
 man discern the things of the Spirit of God, nor can the 
 spiritual man claim the inspiration or guarantee of the 
 Spirit of God for beliefs which belong to the scope of 
 the natural man. 
 
 This, however, is a restriction of the province of authority 
 which has not been generally accepted in practice. 
 Authority, by those who appeal to it, is usually treated 
 as the final court of appeal. Belief on authority, thus 
 understood, has a psychological affinity to intuitivism, 
 and is in fact often held in conjunction with it. The 
 mystic who refuses to analyse or criticise his intuitions is 
 often baffled by the emptiness or formlessness of his 
 religious conceptions, and so tends to fall back upon the 
 clearly defined images or symbols which his church pro- 
 vides. He accepts these on authority, since he is not 
 interested in the proof of them, and would even value 
 them less if they were based on ordinary evidence. 
 Whether consciously or not, he only needs them as helps 
 to his imagination. But they may easily become so 
 indispensable to him that he will be as stiff a dogmatist 
 as if his Faith really rested on external authority ; and he 
 will often protest vehemently that external authority, 
 in the form of supernaturally revealed doctrines, is in 
 truth the basis of his Faith, which would fall in ruins if 
 this support were withdrawn. Just because the dogmas 
 
AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 83 
 
 of his church are accepted uncritically, as outside dis- 
 cussion, they are capable of being used as external supports 
 of a Faith which in reality sprang up independently of 
 them, and only requires them to give form and colour to 
 its vague intuitions. The typical dogmatist is a confused 
 half -mystic, whose intuitive Faith is neither strong enough 
 nor clear enough to bring him strength or comfort. He 
 accordingly fortifies himself by calhng in the help of an 
 external authority, whose credentials he would think it 
 impious to investigate, and willingly accepts its guidance 
 whenever the inner light bums dim. 
 
 This is the most rudimentary and crudest form of 
 working Faith ; since we have found that reliance upon 
 undifferentiated feeling does not provide a working Faith 
 at all. It is the working Faith of the simple orthodox 
 beUever ; and however unsound it must appear to the 
 philosopher, it works fairly well in practice. It is a 
 wholesome safeguard against rash individualism ; since 
 the doctrines which are supposed to be externally revealed 
 by God are in truth supported, in part at least, by the 
 legitimate authority of the collective religious conscious- 
 ness, the value of which can hardly be overestimated. 
 If a ' universal Church ' really existed, and if its Judg- 
 ments were articulately represented by its official spokes- 
 men, it would be rash indeed for an individual to dis- 
 regard its authority. Even under the present state of 
 things, ' orthodoxy ' provides a well-balanced view of 
 hfe, and a safe guide in ordinary cases. But it remains 
 true that the simple believer places the seat of authority 
 wrongly, and allows authority to throw her shield over 
 various beliefs relating to particular events, some of 
 which may be untrue, while others have no religious 
 significance. This kind of belief on authority, therefore, 
 may be a source of danger to Faith, by loading it with 
 burdens which it is unable to bear. 
 
 Those who lean heavily on authority soon discover 
 
84 FAITH [cH. 
 
 if they allow themselves to think seriously, that it pro- 
 vides no solution of the enigmas of Faith. Just as, in 
 considering the hypothesis of Faith as immediate per- 
 ception of divine truth, we found that the devout mystic 
 is haunted by nightmares, contrefacons diaboliques of 
 his most precious visions, which he has denied himself 
 the means of testing, and cannot possibly test without 
 being false to his principle that divine truth is communi- 
 cated immediately; so the believer on authority is dismayed 
 to find that authority is not all of one mind.^ Not only 
 are his senses confused by the clamour of rival teachers, 
 all equally confident that their prophecy is the true 
 word of the God of truth, but his intellect, conscience, and 
 feelings are touched on different sides by appeals which 
 are sharply antagonistic to each other. Unless he 
 shuts his ears tight to all advocates except one (a very 
 common but rather undignified way of deciding a case 
 to one's own satisfaction), he will find that the rival 
 authorities give him no peace, and that he must somehow 
 decide among them, weighing his authorities against each 
 other, and thereby abandoning the attitude of unques- 
 tioning submission. Now these rival claims cannot be 
 settled offhand, by an intuitive method ; we cannot go 
 back for external authority to pure mystical experience, 
 which answers no questions about particulars. It is 
 thus that we are driven to admit the necessity of those 
 other secondary grounds which will form the subject of 
 my later lectures — the practical principle, the intellectual 
 principle, and the aesthetic principle. Without them 
 we cannot say what kind of facts can be guaranteed by 
 authority, and which voices it is safe to trust. 
 
 I am trying to arrive at a conclusion as to what Faith 
 ought to be and may be, not as to what in the majority 
 of cases it actually is. I have already said that the 
 
 1 Alanus of Lille (thirteenth century) said wittily: 'Auctoritas cereum 
 liabet nasum ; id est, in diversum potest flecti sensum.' 
 
AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 85 
 
 great mass of religious people stop short at this second 
 stage, which the medieval Church called fides impUcita, 
 and which the German reformers called * charcoal-burner's 
 faith.' In the case of these simple believers the contents 
 of their creeds — nearly the whole concrete body of their 
 beliefs — are determined by pure accident. The authority 
 to which they pin their Faith is that under which they 
 were brought up. It matters little that a Protestant may 
 have a mind naturaliter Catholica ; he will rarely change 
 his profession. Somehow or other, his religious instincts 
 will find expression in the church or denomination to 
 which he belongs. If he has been brought up as a Catholic, 
 he will find grace and help in the Sacraments ; if as a 
 Methodist, he will expect and generally experience the 
 crisis which is known in those circles as sudden conversion, 
 and which is supposed to occur usually between the ages 
 of fifteen and twenty-one. The means of grace suggested 
 to men and women by their teachers may not be, and in 
 fact are not, equally wholesome and good in all cases ; 
 there may be, and in fact is, spiritual loss in belonging to a 
 religious body whose tenets are meagre, defective, and out 
 of correspondence with some of the ingredients of a rich 
 spiritual nature. But when the driving force, the religious 
 instinct, is strong, it is able to stretch inadequate dogmatic 
 theories to a very considerable extent. They become 
 merely pegs on which the believer hangs his best thoughts. 
 Clement of Alexandria called Faith (and it was precisely 
 this common kind of religious belief — the belief of the 
 average church-goer — which was in his mind),' compendious 
 knowledge ' {o-vvto/xos yvwo-is). It is a kind of short cut to 
 divine knowledge, for those who have not yet had enough 
 spiritual experience, or who have not the leisure, or the 
 intellectual ability, to ' beat out the music ' of their Faith 
 for themselves. It is a working principle for all (Clement ^^ 
 w*ould say) until they have attained to philosophical ^ 
 truth. This is obviously true. The average Christian 
 
86 FAITH [CH. 
 
 possesses, in the tenets of his Church, a much richer Faith 
 than he could have found for himself, a much more com- 
 plete scheme of beliefs than individually he has any right 
 to call his own. It is not possible for him to suspend his 
 judgment until he has balanced the claims of rival 
 authorities. He feels that his wisest course is to admit 
 and accept the claims of the authority under which he 
 finds himself, to be a divine revelation, and to make this 
 the mould, as it were, into which he can pour the treasures 
 of his religious experience. The treasure is in earthen 
 vessels, no doubt, and he is very helpless if called upon 
 to give a reason for the Faith that is in him ; but he has 
 a receptacle for his religious emotions, a rule of belief, 
 and a rule of life. 
 
 I have now perhaps shown sufficiently the partial 
 justification, and the necessary limitations, of that kind 
 of Faith which passively accepts the body of orthodox 
 beliefs, as a man has learnt orthodoxy at school, or at his 
 mother's knee. In my next lectures I must consider the 
 chief historical forms which the beUef in authority has 
 taken. 
 
vl] authority as a GEOUND of faith 87 
 
 p 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FMTIL— continued 
 
 Authority in religion, as I showed in my last lecture, 
 means Divine authority ; and to rest one's Faith on 
 Authority means to act on the belief that information about 
 divine things has been communicated to mankind, immedi- 
 ately and unmistakably. I have shown that this belief 
 is held by most religious people, and that they for the 
 most part accept unexamined, and maintain through life, 
 the forms of Faith which were first presented to them, 
 refusing even to contemplate any change. I have ad- 
 mitted the necessity of this naive, childlike Faith ; but 
 I have shown that its forms are determined by the 
 accidents of early surroundings, and that by excluding 
 self-criticism it is condemned to stationariness in the 
 midst of a changing world. 
 
 In this lecture and the next I wish to consider the 
 historical forms which the belief in authority has 
 taken. 
 
 The chief of these are the theories of the InfalHble 
 Church, and of the Infallible Book. But there is another 
 form of supernatural authority, which is historically prior 
 to these, and which even in the history of the Christian 
 Church comes before them. I mean belief in the super- 
 natural inspiration of individual men, prophets, seers, 
 visionaries, and the like. I have already mentioned this 
 as the most typical form of religious authority properly 
 so called. 
 
 The prophet conceives himself to be the mouthpiece of 
 
88 FAITH [CH. 
 
 God, and his utterances as prophet are held to convey 
 du-ect information about the will and purposes of the 
 Almighty. This is a case of belief on authority, in the 
 true sense. It differs from the intuitivism which we 
 discussed the other day, in that the prophet regards his 
 message as something special and miraculous. He is 
 merely the vehicle, not the organ of the revelation. Other 
 men accept his utterances as coming straight from God. 
 They have lost nothing, it is thought, by passing through 
 a transparent medium. 
 
 In the New Testament this individual inspiration is 
 spoken of as being ' filled with the Holy Ghost.' The 
 religious instinct, which is the foundation of true Faith, 
 was justly traced to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of 
 God. But there is a right and a wrong view of individual 
 inspiration. In St. Paul, the action of the Holy Spirit 
 is looked for in all that goes to make up character in its 
 widest sense, and it appears in all religious experience. 
 The Holy Ghost is the guide of prayer, the illuminator 
 of the intellect, the kindler of love, the inspirer of every 
 noble deed and work. But the operation of this Spirit is 
 not wholly miraculous, wholly foreign to their own true 
 nature. It is, in truth, their own best nature. * God in 
 them is the fulfilment of the best that they have it in 
 them to become. The higher nature begotten in them is 
 the first-fruits of the Spirit, with promise of ever richer 
 fruition. The groanings which cannot be uttered, with 
 which the Spirit comes in on our behalf, are identical with 
 the groanings which we ourselves utt^r in the longing for 
 a fuller experience of God (Rom. viii. 23-27). And so the 
 light within is the light of God, as we allow Him to become 
 one with us.' ^ But St. Paul's contemporaries could not 
 all rise to this conception. They traced the operation of 
 the Spirit rather in fitful and unaccountable manifesta- 
 tions of religious enthusiasm. The more strange and 
 1 Grubb, Authority and the Light Within, p. 62. 
 
VI.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 89 
 
 wild these were, the more sure they were that there was 
 something divine in them. In the various charismata y 
 especially, they found unmistakable evidence of an 
 influx of the supernatural. The ' pneumatic ' or spiritual 
 man was one who spoke with tongues or prophesied. 
 This undisciplined enthusiasm was discouraged, and in 
 the end suppressed or expelled by the Catholic Church, 
 though it lived on in a different form, in the strange belief 
 in visions. TertuUian, writing about a.d. 200, has the 
 startling and very significant statement that * the 
 majority of men derive their knowledge of God from 
 visions.' ^ In the following centuries, the visions of the 
 monks and nuns were the chief sources of supposed in- 
 formation about the life after death. All the horrors of 
 the medieval Inferno were thus guaranteed, and a great 
 part of the terrible pictures of hell, which seem to us so 
 grotesque and wantonly cruel, was the direct result of 
 the supernatural authority attributed to the nightmares 
 of holy men. 
 
 In our own day, the belief in directly inspired prophets 
 among our contemporaries has practically disappeared, 
 as it disappeared in Palestine between Malachi and John 
 the Baptist. But the belief in supernatural guidance 
 vouchsafed to individuals survives both in its true and 
 in its more dubious form. 
 
 The distinguishing mark of this belief in individual 
 illumination is the acceptance of the supposed divine 
 communication simply and without question. A man, 
 for instance, will hesitate about accepting an appointment 
 until he feels a distinct ' leading ' to say yes or no ; then 
 he will act at once, putting aside any self-questionings 
 as to his fitness for the post. 
 
 I must try to indicate what measure of truth and error 
 I consider to reside in this Faith in direct inspiration. 
 
 1 See the interesting note in Harnack, History of Dogma^ yol. i. p. 63 
 (Engllsli translation). 
 
90 FAITH [oh. 
 
 Assuredly all good men are guided in various degrees by 
 the Spirit of God who dwells, St. Paul says, in all but the 
 reprobate. We have within us a tribunal before which 
 it is our right and our duty to bring every doubtful case. 
 And in this ' discerning of spirits ' we may hope that we 
 are guided not by our own unaided wisdom, but by the 
 divine gift of grace which is only the other side of the 
 human virtue of Faith. In trusting miraculous ' leadings,' 
 the error is in supposing that we can accept any mental 
 suggestion, without question, as coming from God. The 
 suggestion may come to us in a mysterious manner — in a 
 vivid dream, or associated with a strange coincidence, or 
 in some other way unlike our usual mental processes. 
 But these are no necessary tokens of divine inspiration ; 
 it is superstition, not religion, to suppose that they are. 
 Divine guidance is given us ; but the degree of it is deter- 
 * mined by our spiritual and mental condition, and it is 
 not communicated in a magical manner, so as to save 
 us the trouble of further inquiry. If the man who, when 
 he has been offered an appointment, waits for some 
 ' leading,' and does not try to weigh the pros and cons 
 fairly, were to consider the reasons for and against 
 acceptance, prayerfully, but with the best use of his 
 reason, he would be more likely to be guided aright in his 
 decision. In short, the error is in trying to fix the 
 immediacy of special inspiration, as Quietists try to fix 
 the immediacy of general, diffused inspiration. Special 
 guidance in emergencies comes to us through our ordinary 
 faculties if it comes at all. Sanctity does not confer the 
 power of divination. 
 
 The theory of individual inspiration, if pushed to its 
 logical conclusion, is too absurd to be widely held. It 
 would result in making each Christian, who believed him- 
 self inspired, his own church and his own Bible. But 
 even in a democratic age it would seem ridiculous to 
 apply the theory of * one man one vote ' to rehgion. This 
 
I 
 
 AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 91 
 
 type of Faith can be studied in its most favourable form 
 in the writings of the earUer Quakers. In the words of a 
 living member of the Society of Friends, whom I have 
 already quoted in this lecture, ' they made the inner light 
 something wholly alien to man's nature. It was not an 
 attribute of man, but a substance entirely separate from 
 man's own being. " The light of which we speak," says 
 Barclay, " is not only distinct but of a different nature 
 from the soul of man and its faculties." It is not to be 
 identified with the conscience any more than a candle 
 is the same as the lantern that holds it.' ^ The error 
 here, which, as this passage shows, is fully admitted by 
 modem ' Friends,' is substantially the same as that of 
 quietistic mysticism. 
 
 This extreme form of individualism has not been very 
 prominent in the history of Christianity. The authorities 
 which in history have swayed the destiny of nations have 
 been more external and more august. They have spoken 
 to man, not within him. 
 
 Let us first consider the historical evolution of the idea 
 of the Church, as the divinely inspired source of authority. 
 
 I have already shown that the conception of Faith as a 
 body of doctrine, supematurally accredited and therefore 
 to be accepted in its entirety, is primitive. The guiding 
 idea of Catholicism began to establish itself as soon as 
 there was a Church for it to grow in. * The Catholic 
 theory of apostolic tradition,' says Sabatier,^ who writes 
 from a Protestant standpoint, * is found clearly defined 
 and established as an infallible and sovereign law in the 
 times of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus.' The 
 concentration of power in the hands of the Roman Church, 
 as the authoritative interpreter of this tradition, advanced 
 as if by an automatic process. To quote Sabatier again : 
 ' The future centre of the Catholic Church appeared from 
 
 1 Grubb, Authority and the Light Within, p. 81. 
 
 • Sabatier, Le$ Meligions cPAutoriii et la Religion de VMsjprit, 
 
92 FAITH [ctt 
 
 the commencement of the second century,' and in the year 
 194, ' for the first time a bishop of Rome, Victor, speaks 
 as master to the other bishops, presents himself as inter- 
 preter and arbiter of the universal Church, acts as 
 universal bishop, and proclaims heretical the churches 
 that would resist his authority.' In Cyprian's time the 
 bishops were all theoretically equal. Yet such is the 
 interior logic of the system that Cyprian himself laid the 
 foundation of a new evolution which was to produce from 
 the body of bishops that episcopus episcoporum against 
 whom he had tried to guard himself. The trend of the 
 Catholic polity towards a centralised despotism went on 
 irresistibly and inexorably. 
 
 When once the Roman primacy is recognised, all later 
 developments of the papal prerogative, down to our own 
 times, are only the logical conclusion of the CathoHc con- 
 ception of the Church. The infallibility which was the 
 attribute of the universal Church was gradually con- 
 centrated in the Roman Church, and thence passed to the 
 Roman bishop. When the Pope was held to be the head 
 and voice of the Church, the infallibility of the Church 
 could not express itself through another mouth. 
 [ Roman Catholicism is a religion of authority. When 
 a man who has been a Protestant becomes a Roman 
 Catholic, he must learn a kind of submission that we in 
 England, or America, know nothing of in any other relation 
 of life, unless we are soldiers on a campaign. Where 
 the Church has spoken, the loyal Catholic must obey 
 without question. Nor is this authority confined to 
 religious matters. ' That authority,' says Cardinal 
 Newman, ^ * has the prerogative of an indirect jurisdiction 
 on subject-matters which lie beyond its own proper 
 limits, and it most reasonably has such a jurisdiction. 
 It could not properly defend religious truth without 
 claiming for that truth what may be called its pomoeria, 
 1 Development of Christian Doctrine. 
 
VI.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 93 
 
 or, to take another illustration, without acting as we act, 
 as a nation, in claiming as our own not only the land on 
 which we live, but what are called British waters. The 
 Catholic Church claims, not only to judge infallibly on 
 religious questions, but to animadvert on opinions in 
 secular matters which bear upon religion, on matters of 
 philosophy, of science, of hterature, of history, and it 
 demands our submission to her claim. It claims to 
 censure books, to silence authors, and to forbid discussions. 
 It must, of course, be obeyed without a word, and perhaps, 
 in process of time, it will tacitly recede from its own 
 injunctions.' How like this is to the history of the growth 
 of the Roman world-empire ! Each new province demands 
 a further annexation to secure its frontier ; and nothing 
 short of military discipline and military organisation will 
 keep the vast dominion together. 
 
 But we must examine more closely the claims of a 
 theory which has so august a history. It rests entirely 
 on the theory of a clearly distinguishable special divine 
 revelation, as does the Protestant theory of an infallible 
 book. At the close of this discussion we must consider 
 how far this distinction is valid. According to the 
 Catholic theory, the Church is not simply a divinely 
 founded establishment which continues to administer the 
 trusts committed to it by its Founder, but it is in its 
 corporate capacity a direct continuation of the Incarna- 
 tion, permanently and fully inspired by the Holy Ghost, 
 who, in accordance with the promise of Jesus Christ, 
 made while He was on earth, was to take His place as a 
 Divine Presence among men, until His coming again. 
 It is true that God had never left Himself without witness, 
 even in heathendom ; but from the first Whitsunday He 
 he^s had ' a special abode, an organised and visible agency 
 for distributing a higher and supernatural order of grace,' * 
 a guidance differing in kind from natural wisdom and 
 1 Martineau, Seat 0/ Authority in Religion, p. 130. 
 
94 FAITH [CH. 
 
 goodness. If we ask how we are to know that one 
 particular corporation, and no others, has the privilege 
 of being the sole trustee of this supernatural revelation, 
 we are referred to four marks, the famous ' notes ' of a 
 true Church, viz. Unity, Sanctity, UniversaUty, and 
 Apostolicity. 
 
 We are bound to ask, whether, as a matter of historical 
 fact, the Roman Church, or the Catholic Church, which 
 is so defined as to include all Episcopalian bodies having 
 the * Apostolic Succession,' but no others, can claim to 
 exhibit these marks. If it fails to do so, it will be un- 
 necessary to ask the further question, whether these four 
 notes, if they were established, would be sufiicient founda- 
 tion for so tremendous a claim. The first note. Unity, 
 used to be understood to mean that there have been no 
 changes in the teaching of the Church since Apostolic 
 times. / Dogma is unchangeable — immobilis et irrefor- 
 mabilis. This theory, as we shall see presently, has been 
 abandoned by the Liberal school of Catholic apologists in 
 favour of the doctrine of natural and necessary develop- 
 ment. It is, indeed, only by completely rewriting Church 
 history that the mutability and mutations of dogma can 
 be disputed. The Roman CathoHcs have made a 
 legitimate point against their Anglican opponents by 
 proving that the germs of modem CathoHcism can be 
 detected even in the sub-Apostolic age. But they have 
 not proved, and cannot prove, that there have been no 
 important changes. 
 
 The verdict of history has been pronounced decisively 
 against the theory that the supernatural character of the 
 Church can be demonstrated by the miraculous and 
 unparalleled ' stability ' of its teaching.^ 
 
 It would not be in accordance with the plan of those 
 lectures to give detailed examples of the mutability of 
 dogma and culture. Martineau has given some clear 
 
 1 Ct Burkitt, Early Christianity outside the Roman Empire, p. d. 
 
VI.] AUTHOEITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 95 
 
 examples in his Seat of Authority in Religion y and any fairly 
 written Church history will supply abundant evidence. 
 
 The exclusive claim to Sanctity can hardly be taken 
 seriously. We have no means of determining who are 
 God's true saints, and we are expressly forbidden to 
 attempt to do so. If sanctity is an occult quality, known 
 to God alone, it obviously cannot be appealed to as a 
 * note.' It is useless to offer evidence which, from the 
 nature of the case, cannot be produced. But so far as 
 we have the means of forming an opinion, it would appear 
 that men and women of the highest character have 
 appeared in nearly all religious bodies, and that, though 
 the Roman communion may claim to have been exception- 
 ally rich in saints, it is also true that among the most 
 odious scoundrels who have disgraced humanity have 
 been found some of the most highly placed ecclesiastics 
 of the Roman Church. ^ 
 
 The third ' note,' Universality, is interpreted to mean 
 that Catholics everywhere profess the same Faith. It is 
 difficult to see what argument can be based on such a 
 fact, were it true. The Tariff Reform League every- 
 where professes the same faith, because those who h. ppen 
 to be free-traders do not subscribe to it. But in point 
 of fact, divergences of belief have never ceased to show 
 themselves in the Catholic Church, in spite of the prompt 
 amputations to which she has always been ready to resort. 
 
 The fourth note, Apostolicity, is a simple begging of the 
 question as between Catholicism and other bodies. For 
 
 1 A good example of the manner in which history must be written to satisfy 
 the demands of the Catholic theory is furnished by a recent biographical 
 work : Chronicles of the House of Borgia by Frederick, Baron Corvo. 
 'Alexander vi., as earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ, merits our reverent admira- 
 tion. His personal piety was simple, diligent, and real. He greatly revered the 
 Deipara, the Blessed Virgin Mary. In her honour he ordained the bell which 
 rings at sunset, sunrise, and noon, for the Angelus Domini in memory of the 
 Incarnation. On his deathbed he said, W« have always had a singular affection 
 for the most holy Vigin.' This singular affection for the Virgin was testified, 
 among other ways, by having one of his mistresses painted as the Madonna 
 with the infant Saviour. 
 
96 FAITH [CH. 
 
 all Christian bodies claim spiritual descent from the 
 Apostolic Church. Whether a particular method of 
 devolution is essential or not is the main point at issue 
 between them. 
 
 The four ' notes,' then, completely break down, and a 
 theory of Church authority which has no better arguments 
 than these to rely upon must be in a very precarious 
 position. In truth, the legitimate claim of authority in 
 matters of Faith is grievously weakened by these attempts 
 to narrow its sphere. It is assumed that if there is such 
 a thing as a Church, it must be the Roman Church ; and 
 the religious consciousness of Europe is naively assumed 
 to have sanctioned not only the divinity of Christ, but 
 the apotheosis of Mary and the cult of the saints. 
 
 At the present time, however, the most interesting 
 feature in Roman Catholicism, from our point of 
 view, is the growth of a dynamic theory of Church 
 authority. This is, at least for Catholics, the most 
 Important practical question as to the nature of authority 
 in matters of Faith. In order to understand it, it will be 
 necessary to contrast the static and dynamic theories of 
 revelation, outside the Roman Church, as well as within 
 its borders. 
 
 By a static view of revelation, as opposed to a dynamic, 
 I mean the theory that a supernatural revelation was at 
 some past time granted to mankind, which now persists 
 only in its effects. The date when the authoritative and 
 infallible revelation began, and when it ceased, may be 
 fixed anywhere, the limits being purely arbitrary. Accord- 
 ing to the old-fashioned high Anglican theory, we can 
 only rely with certainty on the pronouncements of the 
 undivided Church. The seven general councils may 
 claim infallibility. After the schism between East and 
 West, the supernatural guidance of the Holy Ghost went 
 into abeyance among the different Churches, which had 
 excommunicated each other, exactly as an old English 
 
VI.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH »7 
 
 peerage goes into abeyance when a peer leaves two or more 
 daughters, and no sons. None of the daughters may take 
 the title, which accordingly is erased from the roll of the 
 peerage : but if the descendants of all the daughters 
 except one die out, or if the head of one clan of cousins 
 marries the head of the only other remaining clan, the 
 eldest representative of the family may claim the title, 
 and the series is resumed where it left off. Just so, if all 
 except one of the divided Churches which have the Apostoli- 
 cal Succession were to disappear, or if they would resume 
 communion with each other, and would agree to hold an 
 eighth general council, that council would be infallibly 
 guided in its decisions, in spite of the absence of non- 
 episcopal schismatical bodies, which are neither churches 
 nor integral parts of the one Church. This fantastic theory 
 is not often heard of by the younger generation, but it 
 was part of the foundations of the Tractarian position. 
 It is, in effect, a static view, because the conditions of in- 
 fallible guidance ceased to exist long ago, and there is no 
 likelihood of their being revived. The Church can never 
 modify its constitution, because the only body which could 
 legalise changes is a body which can never meet. It is 
 much as if no Act of Parliament were valid until it had 
 been passed by a joint session of the House of Commons 
 and the American Congress. The theory is well adapted 
 to support the old Anglican * appeal to antiquity.' If no 
 further developments of doctrine, or practice, which have 
 taken place since the seventh general council, can claim any 
 authority, modem Romanism and theological Liberalism, 
 and anything that is new in Protestantism, are alike con- 
 demned. 
 
 Another essentially static theory of revelation, which 
 at present shows more vitality than the old-fashioned 
 Anglican theory, is that which is usually called after the 
 name of Albrecht Ritschl, of Gottingen (died 1889). I 
 shall have occasion, later in this course, to consider the 
 
 6 
 
86 FAITH [CH. 
 
 theory of value-Judgments which is the most famous part 
 of his philosophy. Here I must only refer to his theory 
 of revelation. This is a curious blend of Schleiermacher's 
 view of Faith as pure feeling, with an old-Protestant 
 insistence on preaching * Jesus only.' In order to under- 
 stand Christianity, he holds, we must go back at every 
 point to the historical revelation once given in the Person 
 of Jesus Christ. And this revelation was definitely closed 
 at the time of the Crucifixion. He will have nothing to do 
 with the Pauline doctrine of communion with the glorified 
 Christ. ' Christ brings us to God ' ; but only by the im- 
 pression made upon us by the study of the Synoptic 
 Gospels. This position is as untenable as the old Anglican 
 theory, though for different reasons. The obvious and 
 fundamental fallacy in Ritschl's theory is the supposition 
 that Faith in a historical fact can be based on grounds 
 which are altogether independent of historical judgment. 
 For Ritschl wUl not allow us to base our Faith in Christ 
 on intellectual conviction that the narratives about Him 
 are trustworthy. Judgments of fact, of this kind, seem 
 to him irrelevant in religion. And yet religion, he says, 
 must be before all things * historical.' So glaring is this 
 inconsistency that some of the ablest of the so-called 
 Ritschlian school, such as Kaftan, lay great stress on 
 * the exalted Christ,' though they still refuse any respect 
 to the Logos-Christology. 
 
 Church history, written under the influence of this 
 static theory of revelation, must needs be a depressing 
 record of deterioration and corruption. Even Hamack's 
 great History of Dogma, (though Hamack is too inde- 
 pendent a thinker to be called without qualification a 
 Ritschlian), takes the standpoint that later developments 
 were a 'secularisation' and * depotentiation ' of the 
 original Gospel. We are always to look back, not forward, 
 for our inspiration. 
 
 The older Roman Cathofic apologetic did not differ very 
 
AUTHORITY AS A GEOUND OF FAITH 99 
 
 much from Anglicanism or Protestantism in the re- 
 spect which it paid to primitive authority. The chief 
 difference is that Scholasticism, as represented by St. 
 Thomas Aquinas, give's a larger place to human reason 
 in corroborating revelation. The authorised Catholic 
 apologetic does not rest everything on authority. On the 
 contrary, St. Thomas maintains that the being and chief 
 attributes of God might be demonstrated, even apart i 
 from revelation, by ordinary reason. There is therefore 
 in his system no disparateness between reason and authority. ^ 
 [Authority supplements reason, and reason interprets autho- 
 rity. But the Nominalists who followed Duns Scotus cut 
 authority loose from its moorings, and erected it into a 
 wholly independent principle of belief. Duns Scotus him- 
 self, and still more Occam and Alexander of Hales, are as 
 sceptical of the old proofs of God's existence as Kant 
 himself, and unlike Kant they fall back not on the practical 
 reason, but on bare authority. Occam declares that 
 monotheism is, on intellectual grounds, only a more pro- 
 bable theory than polytheism. God's will, according to 
 Scotus, cannot be ascertained from our moral sense ; it 
 is imparted to us only in revelation. Thomas Aquinas 
 had himself abandoned the position of Bonaventura and 
 Albert the Great, who had undertaken to prove the beginning 
 of the world in time. The Creation, and the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, must be believed, he says, ' by Faith alone.' 
 This was a dangerous concession, which the Nominalists 
 made the most of, carrying the same principle over to other 
 dogmas. It was not intended, I think, by any of the 
 Schoolmen to cut authority loose from the past, as well 
 as from reason ; but the Nominalist theory gave the 
 Church a free hand to order anything to be believed. The 
 privilege of interpreting tradition infallibly is not far 
 from the privilege of determining it. The time came when 
 Pio Nono could say, ' I am tradition.' 
 
 The recognition of development, of the ' dynamic ' 
 
100 FAITH [cH. 
 
 principle as it is called in contrast with the * static ' theory 
 that dogma can undergo no change, is modem in apolo- 
 getics. It laid strong hold on Newman when he had freed 
 himself from the false position in which he had remained 
 for some years. He set himself to prove that Catholic 
 theology is a legitimate development, and not a corruption, 
 of the primitive Faith. Now, what are the tests of a legi- 
 timate development ? The first test, Newman tells us, is 
 the preservation of the type ; the second, the continuity 
 of principles. Thirdly, doctrines must have the power 
 of assimilation, like living organisms. They will also 
 show anticipations of further development, to be fully 
 exhibited hereafter. Next, they will show logical sequence, 
 not that political evolution proceeds logically, but when 
 it is accomplished, we can see that a kind of unconscious 
 logic has determined its course. Next, the new doctrines 
 must tend to establish and illustrate, not to contradict, 
 the original creed. Lastly, it bears the test of time. 
 ■^ Heresies flourish and then disappear ; the truth continues. 
 
 We cannot help feeling how far superior this is to the 
 static theory of revelation. Nothing is more clear about 
 our Lord's ministry than that He designed to give mankind 
 not a code of legislation, but a standard of values ; that 
 He laid down principles which future ages were to apply 
 and work out, not a fixed rule to which the religious future 
 of the race was to be forced to conform. The whole con- 
 ception of the office and work of the Holy Ghost which 
 we find in the New Testament, especially in the Fourth 
 Gospel, involves the clearest grasp of the principle of 
 development which had up to that time been contemplated. 
 
 Nor can we find fault with the argument that the 
 collective inspiration of a great society is an easier thing 
 to believe in and to defend than the inspired private 
 judgment of individuals. Authority may claim to be 
 the right of the race against the individual ; it may claim 
 to be the conscience or the intelligence of the race, which 
 
VI.] AUTHORITY AS A GEOUND OF FAITH 101 
 
 develops indeed in a natural and legitimate manner from 
 generation to generation, and from century to century, 
 but stores up and hands on the acquisitions of the past 
 in a way which is not possible to the private inquirer 
 who will take nothing for granted. If Christ promised 
 that the Holy Spirit would be always present to guide 
 the Church, may we not assume that He would have 
 prevented the Church, in her corporate capacity, from 
 taking any serious false steps ? 
 
 The weak point of Newman's argument is very apparent 
 to all who are not Roman Catholics, though within his 
 own communion it is less obvious, because of the aristo- 
 cratic contempt which prevents its members from paying 
 any attention to other forms of Christianity. ' Catholi- 
 cism,' says Dom Cuthbert Butler, in an article in the 
 Hihhert Journal intended for the religious public generally, 
 'Catholicism, and, for Western Europe, Roman Catholi- 
 cism, is the religion into which, as a matter of fact, the 
 religion of Christ and His Apostles has grown.' It was 
 this assumption that lent so great a weight to the words 
 securus iudicat orhis terrarum, which seemed to Newman 
 decisive against Anglicanism and in favour of Rome. 
 But how strangely narrow the outlook which sees no 
 alternative except between atheism and the Vatican ! 
 Newman's orbis terrarum is, as I have said elsewhere, a 
 dwindling and harassed minority in a few countries round 
 the Mediterranean sea. It comprises, broadly speaking, 
 the Latinised part of the Roman Empire ; and within 
 those limits, though it has been fairly successful in 
 suppressing other forms of Christianity, it has not 
 succeeded in retaining either the masses or the ' intel- 
 lectuals.' If then the ultimate test of a creed is its 
 vitality, the argument recoils with fatal force on 
 Newman's own head. 
 
 Newman is not insensible to the fact that this very 
 argument has led many to reject Roman Catholicism, 
 
102 FAITH [oh. 
 
 because history seems to prove that it is not compatible 
 with social and intellectual progress beyond a certain 
 stage. He meets this objection by rejecting modem 
 civilisation as a huge mistake. He would prefer, he says, 
 to see people much more bigoted and superstitious than 
 they are, for a dishonest Irish beggar woman, who is 
 chaste and goes to Mass, is better than an honourable 
 Enghsh gentleman whose ideals are, after all, secular. 
 It is enough to say in reply to this, that it is a complete 
 abandonment of his test. He begins by saying, ' The 
 great world shall judge ' ; and ends by saying, ' If the 
 world decides against Rome, so much the worse for the 
 world.' 
 
 Newman is claimed as one of the inspirers of the modem 
 Liberal movement in the Roman Church, though he 
 would have recoiled in horror from the critical conclusions 
 of Loisy and his friends. One passage will be enough to 
 prove this. * First of all,' writes the Cardinal, many 
 years after joining the Roman Church, * ex abundanti 
 cautela [that is, as something almost too obvious to need 
 stating], every CathoUc holds that the Christian dogmas 
 were in the Church from the time of the Apostles ; that 
 they were ever in their substance what they are now.' ^ 
 There is an essential difference between this theory of 
 apparent development which excludes real changes and 
 the Modernist theory of an idea clothing itself in new 
 forms from age to age. 
 
 That movement rests partly on a dynamic conception of 
 authority, carried to the pitch of admitting the right and 
 power of the Church to change its creed and dogmas if 
 necessary, and partly on the agnostic position that human 
 reason caimot go beyond phenomena, from which the 
 corollary is drawn that whatever helps souls may be taken 
 as true, or as near the truth as we can get. This latter 
 contention belongs to a later chapter of our inquiry — viz. 
 1 Quoted by Bishop Gore, Bampton Lectures, p. 186. 
 
Fi.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 103 
 
 the practical, or pragmatic, ground of Faith, and I will 
 try to give you a fair account of the position of the 
 Liberal CathoUcs when we come to that branch of our 
 subject. Here I am dealing with the claim of one branch 
 of the Christian Church to be the sole trustee of a 
 definite supernatural gift — the power of pronouncing 
 infallibly and authoritatively on matters of Faith. And 
 our conclusion is that there never has been, and never 
 will be, any corporation which can decide such questions 
 ex cathedra. I am not disputing the right of any society 
 to impose its own conditions of membership ; that is 
 quite a different thing ; but there is nowhere any man 
 or institution which can impose silence upon the moral 
 and LQtellectual protests of the human mind, in the name 
 of some still higher authority. There is nowhere any 
 dogma which is exempt from examination, because it is 
 guaranteed to be de fide. 
 
 The Modernist position with regard to authority may 
 be thus summarised. ' Religion, like everything else that 
 lives, is subject to the law of growth, which involves 
 change. The God of the Old Testament differs widely 
 from the Father whom Christ preached, and the formulas 
 of our day differ in meaning, if not in form, from the 
 regula fidei of the early Church. Jesus Himself believed 
 in an approaching *end of the age,' a catastrophic in- 
 auguration of a ' kingdom of God ' upon earth. It is 
 therefore impossible to suppose that He meant to organise 
 and legislate for the coming centuries. In the Gospels, 
 as in the rest of Scripture, the letter killeth, but the 
 spirit giveth life. But this law of change is not incon- 
 sistent with the authority of behef. For though truth is 
 changeless, its image as reflected in human minds con- 
 tinually alters. The living Faith i§ the important thing ; 
 the forms which it employs in the vain attempt to be 
 articulate are mutable and imperfect.' The Catholic 
 Modernist differs from such Protestant writers as Hamack 
 
104 FAITH [CH. 
 
 and Sabatier, with whom, in other ways, he has much in 
 common, in that he has no wish to discard the luxuriant 
 growth of dogma and return to a fabled 'primitive 
 simplicity.' He does not find in the historical Jesus the 
 basis for a working faith ; he cannot admit that the inter- 
 pretation of His life and teaching given by German 
 Protestantism is historically true ; but he is content with 
 the incontestable fact that a great institution has come 
 into existence, and flourished for nearly two thousand 
 years, which has created a series of dogmas, the products 
 of its ' faith and love,' dogmas which have been necessary 
 for its existence, and which therefore are valid until they 
 cease to perform their office. This is really opportunism 
 in excelsis. The seat of authority is the verdict of history, 
 and in history no judgment is final. ' The visible Church,' 
 writes Mr. Tyrrell in his Much-abused Letter, ' is but a 
 means, a way, a creature, to be used where it helps, to be 
 left where it hinders. . . . Who have taught us that the 
 consensus of theologians cannot err, but the theologians 
 themselves ? Mortal, fallible, ignorant men like our- 
 selves. . . . Their present domination is but a passing 
 episode in the Church's history. , . . May not history 
 repeat itself [as in the transition from Judaism to 
 Christianity] ? Is God's arm shortened that He should 
 not again, out of the very stones, raise up children 
 unto Abraham ? May not Catholicism, like Judaism, 
 have to die in order that it may live again in a greater 
 and grander form ? Has not every organism got its 
 limits of development, after which it must decay and be 
 content to survive in its progeny ? Wine-skins stretch, 
 but only within measure ; for there comes at last a 
 bursting-point when new ones must be provided.' In 
 a note to justify this startling passage he explains : * The 
 Church of the Catacombs became the Church of the 
 Vatican ; who can tell what the Church of the Vatican 
 may not turn into ? ' 
 
AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 105 
 
 The spectacle presented by the Modernist movement is 
 a very interesting one. The principle of authority as the 
 custodian of primitive tradition, which was so admirably 
 successful in maintaining discipline and unity, ended in 
 binding the Roman Church hand and foot in chains of 
 her own forging. And so the Pope claimed the right to 
 declare and interpret ' tradition ' in his own way. Thus 
 authority turned against itself ; and the liberty of the 
 Papacy has let loose the unbounded licence of the 
 Modernists. ' The differences between the larval and 
 final stages of many an insect,' says Mr. Tyrrell again, 
 * are often far greater than those which separate kind from 
 kind.' And so this chameleon of a Church, which has 
 changed its colour so completely since the Gospel was 
 preached in the subterranean galleries of Rome, may 
 undergo another transformation and come to believe in 
 M. Loisy's God, who is ' never encountered in history.' 
 The warning against putting new wine into old wine-skins 
 is somewhat rashly introduced into such a programme ! 
 
 We are, then, able to see in the Roman Church of to-day 
 the bankruptcy of the old theory of authority. The 
 theory of a ' static ' revelation given to the Church long 
 ago has been proved to be untenable, both historically and 
 politically. And if, abandoning this old position, the in- 
 spiration of the Church is explained to mean the continuous 
 inspiration of its earthly head, the questions cannot fail to 
 be asked. Is autocracy the divinely ordained government 
 for the Church ? Is it so certain that the Holy Spirit 
 speaks only through the mouth of the Bishop of Rome ? 
 With this doubt disappears the possibility of confident 
 reliance on the authority of the Church, as a primary 
 ground of Faith. 
 
 The true ' Church,' as the depositary of inspiration in 
 matters of belief and practice, is the whole body of men 
 and women who have any enlightenment in such matters. 
 This Church has no accredited organ, and claims no finality 
 
106 FAITH [CH. 
 
 for its utterances. It does homage to the past, not to 
 fetter its own future, but to preserve the knowledge and 
 experience already gained, which are easily lost through 
 carelessness or presumption. Ideally, this Church is the 
 Divine Spirit immanent in humanity. This identification 
 of the Church with the indwelling Holy Spirit is ancient, 
 but it is far too great a privilege to be claimed by any 
 ecclesiastical corporation. 
 
 But though we cannot for a moment admit that infalli- 
 bility resides in the decisions of any man or any council, 
 present or past, it would not be easy to overestimate the 
 advantages of venerable traditions in matters of Faith. 
 Each age is liable to be carried away by some dominant 
 idea, which soon becomes a superstition, as ' progress ' did 
 in the nineteenth century. Authority has a steadying 
 influence, forbidding as to ignore doctrines which for the 
 time are unpopular, and preserving, to some extent, * the 
 proportion of Faith.' In these high matters the dead as 
 well as the living have a right to speak ; and respect for 
 authority is the courtesy which we pay to the voices of 
 * famous men and our fathers that begat us.* 
 
vii.J AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH X07 
 
 P AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH — Continued 
 
 In this lecture I wish to consider further the relations of 
 Faith and Authority. We have considered the theory of 
 an infallible authority vested in the Church, and have 
 shown how, just as in the Roman Empire authority became 
 more and more centralised until the emperor became 
 a sultan, so in the Roman Church authority has come to be 
 vested in one man. When this one man says, ' I am tradi- 
 
 1^^ tion,' the last restrictions on autocracy have been removed, 
 ^P for the ' living voice of the Church ' is independent of the 
 past. Thus the principle of authority, in completing its 
 evolution, turns against and destroys itself. At the same 
 time, the regula fidei, in the hands of some bold reformers, 
 has become independent of existential fact. The only 
 authority is the course of history, and the Church is a 
 Proteus who justifies each metamorphosis in turn by the 
 plea II faut vivre. These two developments may be said 
 to constitute a reductio ad absurdum of Church authority 
 as an independent ground of Faith. 
 
 We have now to consider the Protestant alternative 
 to the infallible Church— the infallible Book. * The Bible,' 
 said Chillingworth, * is the religion of Protestants.'^ 
 
 Plato long ago exposed the necessary limitations of the 
 written word as a guide. * When they are once written 
 down,' he says, * words are tumbled about anjrwhere 
 
 1 The words are written on his tombstone, but they do not deserve to be 
 perpetuated, for they are false. Protestantism is the democracy of religion. 
 Not tlie Bilile, but belief in the inspiration of the individual is the rehgion of 
 Protestants. 
 
 s^ 
 
108 FAITH [cH. 
 
 among those who may or may not understand them, and 
 know not to whom they should reply, to whom not ; and 
 if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to 
 protect them ; and they cannot protect or defend them- 
 selves.' ^ There is another kind of writing, he goes on, 
 graven on the tablets of the mind, of which the written 
 word is no more than an image. This kind is alive ; it 
 has a soul ; and it can defend itself. The wisdom of these 
 utterances has been amply proved by the history of the 
 doctrine of Inspiration in the Christian Church.^ 
 
 It was not till lo ng after the Captivity that the_ rfiUgion. 
 of Israel became the religion of a Book. . While prophetism 
 flourished^ liEe' living word of the prophet was more than 
 the written scroll ; but no sooner had the fount of 
 prophecy began to run dry than rigid and mechanical 
 views of inspiration began to be applied to the sacred 
 literature. The canonisation of the Law, which began in 
 621, was accomplished for all time in 444 B.C. The histori- 
 cal books, called the ' former prophets,' obtained nearly 
 their final form during the exile, but the text was not 
 inviolable till long afterwards. The list of prophetical 
 books, the 'latter prophets,' was closed about 200 B.C., 
 according to Comill.^ The third section of the Canon 
 contains second century writings, but they were all 
 supposed to be much earlier. The Canon was practi- 
 cally settled more than a century before the birth of 
 our Lord.* It excluded certain books, like Ecclesi- 
 asticus, which revealed their late origin, while admitting 
 the pseudonymous Daniel and Ecclesiastes. The Book of 
 
 1 Plato, Phaedrus, p. 275. 
 
 2 There is a remarkable echo of this passage in Milton {Christian Doctnne 
 i. p. 30). * It is diflBcult to conjecture the purpose of Providence in committing 
 the writings of the New Testament to such uncertain and varying guardian- 
 ship, unless it were to teach us that the Spirit which is given to us ii a more 
 certain guide than Scripture, whom therefore it is our duty to follow.' 
 
 » Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old Testament, p. 476. Cf. 
 also Encyclopoedia Biblica, p. 665. 
 < So Bishop Ryle thinks j but no certainty has been arrived at. 
 
vii.] AUTHOKITY AS A GKOUND OF FAITH 109 
 
 Wisdom can have been excluded only because it was 
 written in Greek. The scribes seem to have acted on the 
 belief that the age of inspired prophecy was now past, 
 and not to have purposely admitted any recent work. 
 The grandson of the son of Sirach does not dare to claim 
 for his grandfather's book so much inspiration as the latter 
 clearly believed himself to have possessed. The Canon 
 was being closed. 
 
 But the rigid doctrine of inspiration was not formulated 
 at once, as is shown by the state of the text of the LXX.^ 
 Only by degrees were the other Scriptures raised to the same 
 position as the Law. 
 
 Meanwhile, the allegorical method of interpreting 
 Scripture was at once making the written word more 
 august, and removing objections to belief in its divine 
 character. Hatch has shown that this method is Greek 
 in its origin, and goes back as far as the fifth century b.c.^ 
 Plato deprecates it. * It would take a long and laborious 
 and not very happy lifetime,' says Socrates, to find the 
 allegorical value of all the old myths. It was, however, 
 pursued by apologists for the Pagan legends ; and when 
 the Alexandrian Jews adopted Greek culture, they found 
 the same method serviceable in meeting objections to 
 their own sacred literature. Philo is our great instance of 
 this, which he calls ' the method of the Greek mysteries.' 
 In his hands ' every living figure who passes across the 
 stage of Scripture ceases for all practical purposes to be 
 himself, and becomes a dim personification. Moses is 
 intelligence ; Aaron is speech ; Enoch is repentance ; ^ 
 Noah righteousness. Abraham is virtue acquired by 
 learning ; Isaac is innate virtue ; Jacob is virtue obtained 
 by struggle ; Lot is sensuality ; Ishmael is sophistry ; 
 Esau is rude disobedience ; Leah is patient virtue ; Rachel 
 innocence.' ^ Thus the whole Bible becomes an insipid 
 
 1 Sanday, Inspiration, p. 262. 2 Hihhert Lectures, 1888, p. 59. 
 
 * Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 145. 
 
no FAITH [cH. 
 
 ethical and metaphysical romance, the interpretation of 
 which is either an arbitrary fancy or a learned science. 
 
 The Apostolic Fathers are almost equally absurd in their 
 exegesis ; but they propound no theory of inspiration. 
 Justin Martyr is the first to use the figure of a man playing 
 on a harp, which he says, is like the manner in which the 
 Divine Spirit uses righteous men, to make what sound he 
 will.^ The use of allegory was first elaborated (with reference 
 to Christian literature) by the Gnostics, and is opposed by 
 Tertullian. But it took firm root in Alexandria ; and this 
 was one of the most characteristic differences between the 
 Alexandrian school and that of Antioch which discouraged 
 allegorism. Irenaeus advocates the most mechanical 
 view of inspiration; Tertullian lays more stress on the 
 character of the medium chosen.^ Origen's principles of 
 exegesis permit him to acknowledge many discrepancies 
 in the New Testament. There are many incidents in 
 the Gospel, he says plainly, which are not literally true. 
 As the evolution of Catholicism proceeded, the authority 
 of the Church, and of the ' tradition ' guarded by the 
 Church, grew steadily at the expense of the Bible. The 
 authority of the latter was not disputed, but it was 
 ignored ; the majority had small opportunities of even 
 knowing what the Scriptures contained. The Schoolmen 
 improved upon Origen's allegorism by finding a fourfold 
 sense in Holy Scripture — Hteral, moral, allegorical, and 
 anagogical. Their subservience to Patristic exegesis is quite 
 Talmudic. Alcuin says that he has written ' cautissimo stylo 
 providens ne quid contrarium Patrum sensibus porter em. ^ 
 
 So matters stood when the Reformation came. By the 
 Reformers allegorism was attacked at once, especially in 
 England. Tyndale writes very sensibly : ' We may 
 
 1 Athenagoras, Leg. 9, uses the same figure. Hippolytus, too, retains it» 
 but guards it against the error that the prophet loses his senses while under 
 inspiration. 
 
 2 Cf. Bethune Baker, Chnstian Doctrine, p. 46. 
 
VII.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH HI 
 
 borrow similitudes or allegories from the Scriptures, and 
 apply them to our purposes ; which allegories are no 
 sense of the Scriptures, but free things besides the 
 Scriptures altogether in the liberty of the Spirit. Such 
 allegory proveth nothing ; it is a mere simile. God is a 
 Spirit, and all His words are spiritual, and His literal 
 sense is spiritual.' ^ So Colet says : ' The New Testament 
 has for the most part the sense that appears on the surface ; 
 nor is one thing said and another meant, but the very 
 thing is meant which is said, and the sense is wholly 
 hteral.' 
 
 In Germany, Luther also pronounced against allegorism, 
 and with his habitual intemperance of language described 
 allegory as mere ' monkey- tricks,' ' dirt ' or ' scum.' We 
 may follow St. Paul's example, he says, and occasionally 
 use allegories as spangles and pretty ornaments, but 
 that is all. 
 
 This return to sane methods of interpretation was 
 dearly purchased. The allegorical method had become 
 very futile in the hands of the schoolmen ; but for Origen 
 it was a means of accommodation by which moral and 
 other difficulties in Holy Scripture could be set aside. 
 The theory of verbal inspiration was far less difficult 
 under medieval Catholicism than for a modem Pro- 
 testant, for the literal sense could be disregarded in 
 favour of some fanciful, but edifying interpretation. 
 The combination of the literal sense with verbal in- 
 spiration first appeared at the Reformation ; ^ and it 
 has been the great weakness of Protestantism ever since. 
 Of course, the system could not be consistently applied. 
 Luther himself, very naturally but very inconsistently, 
 introduced a new allegorism. His six rules of hermen- 
 eutics are : — (1) necessity of grammatical knowledge ; 
 (2) importance of taking into consideration times and 
 
 1 Farrar, History of Inter/)retaHon, p. 300. 
 
 * Cf. Hamack, History of Dogma, vol. vii. p. 247. 
 
112 FAITH [oh. 
 
 circumstances ; (So St. Augustine says very well : 
 
 * distingue tempora et concordabis Scripturas.') (3) neces- 
 sity of observing the context ; (4) need of Faith and 
 spiritual illumination ; (5) need of keeping the ' proportion 
 of Faith ' ; (6) all Scripture must be explained with refer- 
 ence to Christ.^ This last canon comes in very oddly, and 
 necessitates feats of exegesis that are quite worthy of Philo, 
 Origen, or the Rabbis. Even so, he could not find Christ 
 equally in all the books ; and in consequence he adopted a 
 very bold tone in respect to some of them, not only refusing 
 to believe that Solomon wrote the Canticles, but stigma- 
 
 ^ tising St. James as ' a right strawy epistle.' TLe Apoca- 
 lypse he believed not to be inspired, and Jude to be a late 
 second-hand document. This fearless criticism contrasts 
 oddly with his reverence for the letter of Scripture,^ and 
 points to the construction of a new Canon, composed on 
 critical grounds. The Pentateuch he of course accepted, 
 but doubted the Mosaic authorship, and regarded this part 
 of the Bible as of very little authority for Christians. ' We 
 will neither see nor hear Moses ; for Moses was only given 
 to the Jewish people, and does not concern us Gentiles and 
 Christians.' In fact, we can only describe Luther's atti- 
 tude towards the Scriptures as a mass of inconsistencies. 
 His theory of inspiration was mainly a residuum of his 
 Catholic training. On the other hand, his view of Faith 
 is really independent of this belief, (being based on the 
 subjective assurance of the Christian consciousness\ This 
 consciousness is therefore a parallel authority with the 
 Scriptures. The Word of God is to be found partly in the 
 Bible, partly in the consciousness of the Christian. He 
 really cares little for any part of the Bible which cannot be 
 
 * referred to Christ.' 
 
 Calvin is a much greater expositor than Luther ; but his 
 
 1 Farrar, p. 332. 
 
 * * One letter of Scripture,' he said, * is of more consequence than heaven or 
 earth.' 
 
VII.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 113 
 
 view of the authority of Scripture is even more ambiguous. 
 He seems to admit of no difference in value between the 
 various parts of Scripture, while at the same time he asserts 
 verbal inspiration, and yet rejects with scorn the whole 
 ceremonial law. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Council of Trent was defining its theory 
 of Inspiration. It is a remarkable fact that up to this 
 time the Canon had never been fixed. Not only were the 
 books of the Apocrypha included in the Old Testament, in 
 disagreement with the Hebrew Canon, to which the Re- 
 formers reverted, but other books, such as the Shepherd 
 of Hermas, were included in some manuscripts in use. The 
 Council rejected these, but rehabilitated the Apocrypha, 
 and declared that Hebrews was written by St. Paul. With 
 regard to the authority of Holy Scripture, the Council 
 declared : ' That truth and discipline are contained in the 
 books of Scripture and in unwritten traditions, which, 
 having been received from Christ's own lips by the Apostles, 
 or transmitted as it were manually by the Apostles them- 
 selves, under the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come 
 down to us.' Thus Scripture and tradition are put side 
 by side as parallel authorities. This was a new thing, and 
 was no doubt devised to defeat the Protestants. The 
 authority of the Church is not mentioned in this sentence, 
 but assuredly is not forgotten. It was enacted that ' every 
 one shall be obliged to adhere to the sense of Holy Scripture 
 to which the holy mother Church adheres, to whom it 
 belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of 
 Holy Scripture, and no one shall dare to set himself up 
 against the unanimous consent of the Fathers.' It was not 
 said how the opinion of mother Church is to be arrived at : 
 the time was not come for openly proclaiming that the 
 Pcpe is the Church. 
 
 The history of the Roman Church since the Reformation 
 has been a record of the constantly growing weight ascribed 
 to tradition, at the expense of the written word. A fully 
 
 H 
 
114 FAITH [CH. 
 
 developed traditionalism has no need of an inspired book, 
 which might, indeed, have been very inconvenient but for 
 the prerogative claimed by the Church, that is, by the Pope 
 and his Council, of interpreting the Bible exactly as they 
 pleased, free from any questioning of their decisions. But 
 this gift of infallible interpretation is not often needed, 
 for the Scriptures are too Uttle known, and too Uttle valued, 
 in the modem Roman Church, to enter into serious com- 
 petition with Catholic tradition. - 
 
 ^^ It might be supposed that the Roman Church would 
 have seen and utiHsed the immense advantage which their 
 system possesses, as compared with those of the Protestant 
 bodies, in being independent of any theory of inspiration. 
 It might be supposed that they would have granted to 
 their students a liberty in dealing with problems of Biblical 
 criticism greater than has been generally conceded in 
 Protestant Churches ; and that they would thus have been 
 able to claim that Catholicism, on this side, puts far less 
 strain on the intellect than orthodox Protestantism. They 
 might have taken this course without in any way endanger- 
 ing the real foundations on which the authority of their 
 system rests. Such, however, has not been their policy. 
 Since the accession of the present Pope, the most uncritical 
 notions about the Bible have been reaffirmed and made 
 binding on all Catholics. The books of the Bible, it is 
 declared, were all written by their traditional authors. 
 The Pentateuch did not gradually grow into its present 
 form. The Patristic expositors were superior in learning 
 and piety, and in their methods of exegesis, to the scholars 
 of the nineteenth century. No concession whatever is 
 made to ' Modernism ' on this side, any more than on any 
 other. 
 
 The Pope's advisers are perhaps not so ill-advised as 
 most EngUshmen think. The expostulations of the intellect 
 have already been so thoroughly trampled on in that Church 
 that a small additional burden is not worth considering ; 
 
VII.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 115 
 
 while if Liberalism is allowed to gain a foothold anywhere, 
 it may be difficult in the future to say, ' Thus far shalt thou 
 go and no further.' In any case the result is that in the 
 Roman Church, though no independent authority remains 
 to the Scriptures, its members are tied to an even more 
 rigid and irrational theory of inspiration than that which 
 has prevailed in the Reformed Churches. 
 
 Among the German Protestants the comparative free- 
 dom of Luther's own teaching about the Bible soon gave 
 way to an iron, or wooden, scholasticism. In their contro- 
 versy with Rome they needed a rival oracle, and found it 
 in the Bible. Bibliolatry was soon in full flood. To speak 
 of solecisms in the style of the New Testament writers was 
 blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Hellenistic Greek 
 was not poor Greek ; it was holy Greek — a form of speech 
 peculiar to God.^ The vowel points and accents of the 
 Hebrew Bible were directly inspired. Not a single word 
 of the Gospel narrative comes short of absolute accuracy. 
 Moreover, magical powers came to be attributed to the 
 Bible. Just as some humanists had consulted scyrtes 
 Vergiliance, so both the Wesley brothers advocated this 
 mode of divination with a Bible when in difficulty. 
 
 The Lutheran mystics, Frank and Weigel, protested in 
 vain against this bibliolatry. ' It is an abuse and super- 
 stition,' says Frank, ' to treat Scripture as every one is in 
 the habit of doing, to make it into an oracle, as though we 
 were no longer to ask counsel of the Holy Spirit, no longer 
 to resort to God about anything, but only to Scripture.' 
 And Weigel wrote : ' Knowledge must well out from with- 
 in, and must not be introduced merely by a book, for this 
 is in vain. It is the most mischievous deception when that 
 which is most important is rejected. We put out a person's 
 own eye, and then try to persuade him that he ought to 
 see with some one else's eye.' ^ 
 
 1 Farrar, p. 374. 
 
 * Cf . Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, i. p. 11. 
 
116 FAITH [cH. 
 
 So Protestantism rapidly fell back under the tutelage of 
 the weak and beggarly elements, and became, like its rival, 
 a religion of authority. The nemesis has been severe. Our 
 false views of inspiration gave us many searchings of heart 
 during the last half of the nineteenth century ; they 
 survive to cripple the usefulness of the noble Evangelical 
 party, which in this country still shows an unfortunate 
 antipathy to modem Biblical scholarship ; and they have 
 alienated an incalculable amount of devotion and energy 
 which ought to have been at the service of the Church. 
 
 The theory of verbal inspiration is indeed more incapable 
 of defence than the theory of an infallible Head of the 
 Church. The writers of the sacred literature certainly 
 make no such claim for themselves ; nor can their in- 
 errancy be proved by internal evidence. The Bible, in 
 fact, needs another authority to guarantee its authority ; 
 and where can Protestants find such a guarantee ? In the 
 Roman Church, as we have seen, the Canon was not finally 
 fixed till the Council of Trent, and the Vatican now is 
 content to enjoin the acceptance of current traditions as 
 to authorship, etc., with a contemptuous disregard for the 
 weight of evidence. In earlier times it was necessary to 
 use one's private judgment, giving due weight to authority. 
 Augustine says : ' In regard to the Canonical Scriptures 
 let him follow the authority of as many as possible of the 
 Catholic Churches, among which, of course, are those 
 which are of Apostolic foundation, or were thought worthy 
 of having Epistles addressed to them. He will therefore 
 follow this rule as to the Canonical Scriptures, to prefer 
 those which are accepted by all the Catholic Churches to 
 those which are accepted only by some ; and among those 
 which are not accepted by all to prefer those which the 
 greater and morj important Churches accept to those 
 which are accepted by fewer Churches, or those of less 
 authority.' ^ At this period, authenticity was rightly re- 
 * Augustine, De Doctr. Christi, ii. p. 8. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 AUTHOKITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 117 
 
 garded as of small moment. Jerome says that it does not 
 matter who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, since in any 
 case it is the work of a Church- writer, and is constantly 
 read in the Churches.^ The acceptance or rejection of 
 doubtful books was largely determined by their agreement 
 or disagreement with the beliefs of the Church, and with 
 undisputed Canonical writings. 
 
 The Reformers could not accept the living Catholic 
 Church as the authority for Biblical inspiration, nor did it 
 occur to them to have recourse to the verdict of the un- 
 divided Church — that distinctively Anglican theory. To 
 judge the Bible ' like any other book ' would have been fatal 
 to the position in which they wished to place it, as an 
 oracle to be obeyed without question. Accordingly, they 
 fell back, for the most part, on what they called the testi- 
 monium Spiritus Sancti, which for them was not the voice 
 of the Church, but the feeling of assurance and comfort 
 awakened in the heart of the believer by the perusal of the 
 sacred pages. The Westminster Confession thus states 
 the grounds for believing in the authority of Scripture : 
 * We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the 
 Church to a high and reverent esteem of Holy Scripture, and 
 the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, 
 the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the 
 scope of the whole (which is to give glory to God), the full 
 discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, 
 the many other incomparable excellences, and the entire 
 perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abun- 
 dantly evidence itself to be the Word of God ; yet notwith- 
 standing, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible 
 truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward 
 work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the 
 word in our hearts.' 
 
 Now this is an admirable statement of what revelation 
 through the Bible really is. The ' testimony of the Holy 
 
 1 Sanday, Inspiration, p. 52. 
 
118 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Spirit ' is the response of our inmost personality to the 
 external stimulus supplied by the inspired literature. This 
 testimony I have argued to be the primary ground of 
 Faith. It is ' God working in us,' and working through 
 concrete experiences of various kinds, as it appears that He 
 always does work. But this is not a theory of inspiration 
 which can either erect Scripture into an oracle for deter- 
 mining off-hand difficult matters of conduct, or which can 
 cut the knot of critical problems. The Holy Spirit testifies 
 that the character and teaching of Jesus Christ are divine, 
 and that we may follow Him and believe in Him with 
 perfect confidence. It certainly does not testify that the 
 Mosaic account of creation is scientifically correct, or that 
 the book of Daniel was written in the sixth century B.C. 
 
 The theory of a written oracle is, in fact, another instance 
 of the almost universal tendency to arrest the normal 
 development of Faith at a certain point. We need a light 
 to show us our way, and it is granted to us ; but then, 
 instead of using it, we shut our eyes and ask to be led like 
 blind men. Clement saw this very clearly when he defined 
 Faith as o-vito/xos yvioa-is, and spoke of it as an expedient 
 for * men in a hurry.' That definition would disparage 
 Faith, if he had not added that knowledge is ttio-tk 
 iirKTTrjfioviKTJ. It is true that we must act before we know, 
 but knowledge will come by acting, if we keep our eyes 
 open. If Faith meant belief in the efficacy of magic, it 
 would not lead to knowledge. 
 
 The theory of verbal Inspiration is essentially static. It 
 assumes that revelation is permanent only in its effects. 
 Also, it admits of no degrees in inspiration. Nothing can 
 be more contrary either to the modem way of reading 
 history, or to the opening words of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews : ' God, having of old time spoken unto the 
 fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers 
 manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in 
 His Son.* Revelation is gradual, progressive, and admits of 
 
AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 119 
 
 degrees. It is personal. It is given through men who are 
 able to receive it, and in proportion as they are able to 
 receive it. Prophecy is conditioned by the spiritual 
 capacity of the prophet, not by the arbitrary choice of God, 
 selecting no matter whom as His mouthpiece. The true 
 prophet is not inspired when in a state of frenzy or ecstasy, 
 like the Delphic oracle. (We find in the early Church a 
 very decided dislike of ecstatic prophecy ; it is discouraged 
 already by St. Paul.) The inspired man is he who sees the 
 world — the world of his own knowledge and experience — 
 more nearly as God sees it than other men do. He inter- 
 prets events according to their deepest meaning. We may 
 say, if we choose, that he sees what he sees suh specie 
 aeternitatis. He certainly so interprets what to him is the 
 present as to throw a flood of light on what to him is the 
 future. But plenary inspiration has never been given to 
 any mere man. Inspired writers see further into the nature 
 of things than other men ; but they have their limitations. 
 The reporters of Jesus Christ are obviously unable to under- 
 stand all that He wished to impart ; He is driven again 
 and again to remonstrate with those who heard Him. 
 ' fools and slow of heart ! ' ' Are ye so without under- 
 standing ? ' We are driven every now and then to criticise 
 even the Gospels from themselves, or rather from our know- 
 ledge of Christ and His Gospel ; e.g. it is not likely that, 
 after declining to give the * sign ' which the multitude 
 demanded. He at once proceeded to refer to Jonah and the 
 whale, and promised to give them a sign of the same order. 
 It is not likely that He ever said, ' Tell it unto the Church,' 
 when no Church existed. He can hardly have used the 
 expression, * From the days of John the Baptist until now,' 
 when He Himself lived in the days of John the Baptist. 
 No ; there is no infallibility of this kind about the sacred 
 records. The men were inspired, but they were not raised 
 above the intellectual limitations of their times and of 
 their own endowments. Christ never intended to shut up 
 
120 FAITH [CH. 
 
 His Gospel in a book. The Spirit of Truth was to be the 
 main factor in the Faith of the Church. He was to inter- 
 pret and call to remembrance the deposit of oral teaching 
 enshrined in the Gospels, but also to develop it in a manner 
 which would have been uninteUigible to the first disciples. 
 The Christian view of inspiration, so long as it is true to the 
 intentions of Christ, is dynamic ; and this involves a 
 continuous moral and intellectual activity on the part of 
 those who receive the revelation. 
 
 Revelation and inspiration are the same thing viewed 
 from different standpoints.^ Revelation is the word we 
 use when we view the matter from the side of God, inspira- 
 tion when we view it from the side of man.^ And both 
 must be regarded as living, active processes. It is not 
 possible to receive revelation passively, whether it comes 
 through a book or in any other manner. And in order to 
 receive it actively, in such a way as to make it our own 
 and respond to it, we must bring to it the best of ourselves, 
 the reasonable service of all our faculties. The more 
 certain we are that the revelation is divine, the more 
 convinced we ought to be that it makes an exacting demand 
 upon us to understand and profit by it. God does not 
 throw His best gifts at our heads, nor does He give us any- 
 thing to save us the trouble of finding it. At the same 
 time, we are not given conundrums to guess in matters of 
 vital importance. We may accept Chrysostom's maxim 
 {Comm. in 2 Thess.) that ' all necessary things are clear * 
 (Trai'Ta ra dvayKala 8yj\a), though certainly not the pre- 
 ceding word that * everything in Scripture is clear and 
 straightforward.' And we shall miss much if we are 
 satisfied with the * plain, necessary things.' Erasmus's 
 
 1 Gwatkin, The Knmuledge of God, vol. i. p. 168. 
 
 • Dr. Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 496 seq., reverses this. 
 *God inspires, man reveals. Inspiration is the process by which God gives ; 
 revelation is the mode or form in which man embodies what he has received.' 
 This is to use ' revelation ' in a forced and unusual sense, which even the 
 authority of Martineau can hardly justify. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 VII.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 121 
 
 advice for the study of the Bible is good. ' Adsit pia 
 curiositas et curiosa pietas.' 
 
 The desire for an infaUible guide is so strong in the 
 human heart that it often causes distress and disappoint- 
 ment to show that the inspired records were drawn up by 
 falhble human beings ; that the selection of the Canonical 
 Books was made by fallible men, who, in certain cases in 
 the Old Testament, and in at least one case (that of 2 
 Peter) in the New Testament, appear to have been deceived 
 by documents which claimed a greater antiquity and 
 authority than they possess ; and lastly that unless 
 the reader of the Bible is also infallible and miraculously 
 protected against human infirmity, there is no guarantee 
 that he may not entirely misunderstand what he reads. 
 But those who feel distress cannot have understood the 
 nature of Faith. An infallible oracle would destroy the 
 possibihty of Faith, or at least would finally arrest its 
 growth at the point where the revelation was made. The 
 ' Bible of the race ' ^ is not yet fully written ; and our 
 powers of understanding all that is aheady written are 
 limited. And we must not forget that an exaggerated 
 view of the infallibility of Holy Writ depresses and de- 
 prives of authority all the other channels through which 
 we are justified in believing that the divine will is made 
 known to us. I do not refer only- to the writings of great 
 and good men outside the Canon, and even outside the 
 Christian Church, to whom a minor degree of inspiration 
 may be attributed without any disrespect to the Bible, 
 but to divine revelation through science, through art, 
 through the beauties of nature, through the course of 
 history, and so forth. Make any one of these infalHble 
 and exclusive, and the rest lose their value. 
 
 Our conclusion then is, that, as in the case of the infallible 
 Church, so in the case of the infallible Book, the attempt 
 to make authority a primary ground of Faith has failed. 
 * Lowell : * Slowly the Bible of the race is writ.' 
 
122 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Revelation and inspiration, being really two aspects of 
 t he same process, can never be separated from each other. 
 Revelation, like inspiration, is a process, not a static con- 
 dition. There are adequate reasons for putting the Bible 
 in a class by itself, above all other books ; but not for 
 regarding it as the primary ground of Faith. The only 
 word that our Lord ever wrote, so far as we know, was 
 traced with His finger on the unrecording ground. It was 
 not His will that His religion should be, like Islam, the 
 religion of a book. He wrote His message on the hearts 
 of a few faithful men, where it was not to be imprisoned 
 in Hebrew or Greek characters, but was to germinate 
 like a seed in fruitful soil. 'The words which I have 
 spoken to you,' says the Johannine Christ, * they are spirit 
 and they are Hfe.' 
 
 The office of authority in religion is essentially educa- 
 tional. Like every good teacher, it should labour to make 
 itself superfluous. The instructor should not rest content 
 till his pupil says, ' Now I believe, not on thy saying, but 
 because I see and know for myself.' 
 
 Theology is the most conservative of the sciences, and 
 among other tendencies of bygone days it has retained 
 a timid and superstitious reverence for the written word, 
 whether it be text or commentary. Too many theologians 
 persist in looking back, though the people are looking for- 
 ward. They look back, and they pay the penalty for doing 
 so, like Lot's wife. The deserts of theological literature are 
 strewn with these dreary pillars of salt. Commentaries 
 on the Old and New Testaments, full of palpably absurd 
 explanations borrowed from the Fathers ; books on dog- 
 matic theology constructed on the same principles ; anxious 
 researches into the liturgies and ritual of the Middle Ages 
 with a view to careful imitation — all alike show how 
 potent the dead hand is in matters of religion. The 
 scribe who is instructed to the Kingdom of Heaven, said 
 our Lord, is like a householder who brings out of his 
 
1_ 
 
 ■ 
 
 VII.] AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH 123 
 
 treasure things new and old. The wise scribe does not, 
 however, bring forth some things that are new and other 
 things that are old, but he gives a new life to things 
 that are old (for indeed we cannot truly beUeve in 
 our authority unless we believe with it — the truth 
 must be bom anew in the heart of every behever), 
 and he discerns the ancient, eternal truth of what seems to 
 be new. In part, our objection to orthodox dogmatism 
 is that it does not go back far enough. ' Res ipsa, quae 
 nunc Christiana religio nuncupatur, erat apud antiques, 
 nee defuit ah initio generis humani, quousque ipse Christus 
 veniret in came, unde vera religio, quae iam erat, coepit 
 appellari Christiana."^ ^ 
 
 The ultimate authority, which alone is infallible, is the 
 eternal and living Truth. 
 
 1 Aogastine, Retract, i. 13, 9, 
 
124 FAITH fcH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 
 
 We have discussed two great historic attempts to make 
 Faith rest on external authority. We have investigated 
 ' the claims of the infallible Church and of the infallible 
 '1 Book, and have found them both defective. At the same 
 time we have found that each contains a true principle. 
 The authority of the Church, rightly understood, is the 
 authority of the redeemed race, the elect — the stored 
 spiritual experience of humanity. The authority of the 
 Book, rightly understood, is the authority of the records 
 of revelation, the testimony of those who have been in- 
 spired, to whom truth has been revealed. Neither 
 authority is, or can be, absolute or infalUble ; for there 
 is no way of escape from the objection that an infallible 
 authority requires infallibility in the recipient as well 
 as in the author of the revelation. If such infalUbility 
 were in the possession of any man or any institution, there 
 would be no room for Faith. 
 
 My subject in these lectures is Faith, not the Christian 
 Faith. But I have naturally taken my examples from 
 our own religion, and as my aim in choosing this subject 
 is not purely speculative, but also practical, I have felt 
 no scruple in approaching each department of it mainly 
 from the side which is familiar to thoughtful persons in 
 our own age and country. And having said so much 
 about the Catholic Church and the Bible, as the alleged 
 seats of authority in matters of Faith, I feel that I cannot 
 
VIII.] AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 125 
 
 leave the subject without considering, however cursorily 
 and inadequately, what for very many Christians, and in 
 a sense for all Christians, is the ultimate court of appeal, 
 viz. neither the Church nor the Bible as a whole, but the 
 recorded utterances of Jesus Christ, and, in matters of 
 conduct, what those records tell us of His example and 
 character. 
 
 I shall maintain that there is a sense in which every 
 Christian must own the authority of Christ as the primary 
 ground of his faith. It is not enough even to say that 
 Christ is our primary authority, leaving it open to admit 
 other grounds of Faith besides authority. But it will be 
 necessary to explain how this is consistent with my thesis 
 that the primary ground of Faith is an instinct or faculty 
 which impels us to seek and find God. We must also 
 remember that, in connecting the name of Christ with what 
 is primary and essential in Faith, we must be careful not 
 to do less than justice to what is true and spiritual and 
 genuinely religious in non-Christian ages and countries, and 
 in high-minded Agnostics among ourselves. I hope, before 
 the end of these lectures, to deal with both these difficulties. 
 
 What kind of authority did Christ Himself claim, so far 
 as we can judge from the Gospels ? We know that it was 
 a distinguishing feature of His teaching, that He taught ' as 
 one having authority, and not as the Scribes.' The doctrine 
 of the Scrit^es was founded on documents, traditions, 
 responsa prudentum ; that of Christ was fresh from the 
 mint ; it wasifall at first hand, clean-cut and unhesitating. 
 He also required that His disciples should adopt a definite 
 attitude towards His Person. They were to ' take up the 
 cross and follow Him.' For His sake and the Gospel's, 
 they were to be ready to sacrifice all earthly goods, and 
 life itself. They were never to be ashamed of Him and 
 His words, on pain of bemg disowned at the great day. 
 An action done in His name is meritorious ; a friendly act 
 done to Him has the same value as an act done for God 
 
126 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Himself, who sent Him. That man is blessed, who shall 
 not be offended in Him. He is the stone on whom whoso- 
 ever shall fall shall be broken, and on whomsoever it shall 
 fall, it shall scatter him as chaff. These sayings are all 
 from the Sjmoptics. In the Fourth Gospel this personal 
 claim is even more dominant and all-embracing. 
 
 In His teaching He calmly sets aside even the revered 
 law of Moses in one particular after another. ' Ye have 
 heard that it was said to them of old time . . . but I say 
 unto you ' — something quite different. ' Ye call Me 
 Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am,' He tells His 
 disciples. In spite of His meekness and gentleness He 
 rebukes sharply any one, no matter whom, who presumes to 
 offer Him advice. Two of the severest rebuffs recorded in 
 the Gospels are inflicted upon His Mother and the fore- 
 most of His disciples for attempting to suggest to Him 
 what He should do. So far as we can judge from our 
 records He claimed absolute obedience, unquaUfied trust 
 and confidence. He taught and acted ' with authority ' 
 in the fullest sense of the word. 
 
 And yet there is another side. In the Fourth Gospel, 
 no less than in the other three, Christ always declares that 
 ' the Word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's 
 which sent Me.' ' I came not to do Mine own will, but the 
 will of Him that sent Me.' It is, after all, His cause rather 
 than His Person, the Revelation rather than the Revealer, 
 on which He desires to fix men's thoughts, and for which 
 He claims their homage. He will resent no personal 
 affronts, avenge no private injuries. The Samaritan village 
 which refuses to receive Him remains unpunished. He 
 declares that a word spoken against the Son of Man would 
 find forgiveness : it is only blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost that is unpardonable. He never sought to be any- 
 thing of Himself as man, but only as the vehicle of re- 
 demption and salvation. 
 
 This combination of unlimited claims with unlimited 
 
VIII.] AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 127 
 
 self-abnegation is the key to the understanding of Christ's 
 authority. He came in the Father's name ; and the Holy 
 Spirit was to continue His work. The former linked His 
 mission with the past ; the latter with the future. The 
 Faith in Himself and His Person which He demanded was 
 not a homage which obliged the Jew to renounce his past, 
 nor the Gentile his future. He came not to destroy the 
 Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. He placed Him- 
 self in the line of historical evolution. The law and the 
 prophets were until John. At that point — with the appear- 
 ance of the last and greatest of the prophets, His own 
 immediate forerunner — the old dispensation had fulfilled 
 its historical task of a TratSaywyos. The time had now 
 arrived for humanity to come of age and live the freer, fuller, 
 more responsible life of manhood. ' Ego sum cibus 
 grandium,' as Augustine heard Christ say to him. But the 
 God of the prophets was His Father, and it was as His 
 envoy that He came to the people of His choice. 
 
 And it is equally certain that the Galilean ministry was 
 not intended to be the last stage in God's active dealings 
 with men. Nothing was further from Christ's intentions 
 than to leave a code of legislation for all future generations. 
 Neither the substance of His teaching, nor the manner in 
 which He chose that it should be transmitted, is com- 
 patible with any such intention. His teaching lays down 
 all-embracing principles ; it gives few or no rules. The 
 difference between it and the Old Testament legislation 
 differs not only in the often-noticed fact that the latter is 
 chiefly negative in form, the former positive. There is an 
 even greater difference, in that the Law is dead, the Gospel 
 alive. The Law, like all other sacrosanct codes, must end 
 in cramping and fettering the growth of those who are 
 subject to it. The Gospel looks forward, ^ and has in itself 
 a principle of growth and development which, so long as 
 
 i This IS true, whatever views may have been entertained by the disciples a» 
 to the approaching Parousia. 
 
128 FAITH [CH. 
 
 His Cliurch was true to itself, could never leave it behind 
 the true progress of civilisation towards the realisation of 
 all the highest potentialities of mankind. ' I have still 
 many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth is come. He 
 will guide you into all truth ; for He shall not speak of 
 Himself ; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He 
 speak ; and He will show you things to come.' 
 
 The action of the Father, of the Incarnate Word, and of 
 the Holy Spirit are thus indissolubly linked together. The 
 Son comes to reveal the Father, the Holy Spirit to reveal 
 the Son, or the Father through the Son. There is no 
 question of a dynasty in three reigns ; but there is a Trinity 
 of dispensations, that of the Father before the Incarnation, 
 that of the Son during the earthly life of Christ, that of 
 the Spirit ever since. The third period may Justly be 
 called the ' reign ' of the Son, but assuredly not as super- 
 seding that of the Father, nor as looking forward to a later 
 reign of the Spirit. 
 
 There is, no doubt, a difference between the mode of 
 action of the Incarnate Christ, and that of the Spirit. The 
 former was external, the latter internal. The Incarnate 
 Christ addressed Himself to all who came in contact with 
 Him ; the Paraclete is a principle of spiritual hfe in the 
 hearts of beUevers, on whom He acts directly and without 
 intermediary. But the New Testament writers are far more 
 concerned to identify the indwelling Spirit with the exalted 
 Christ than to separate them. Bengel's words, * Conversio 
 fit ad Dominum ut Spiritum,' are thoroughly PauHne. St. 
 Paul speaks quite indifferently of the Spirit, the Spirit of 
 God, the Spirit of Christ, and Christ. In one passage he 
 formally identifies the exalted Christ with the Spirit, at 
 least as regards their functions. 'The Lord is the Spirit ; 
 and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' 
 
 If we are guided by the New Testament, we must dis- 
 possess ourselves of the idea that the Incarnation came to 
 
AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 129 
 
 an end within a few weeks of our Lord's last Passover on 
 earth. When Christ said, ' I will not leave you orphans, 
 I will come to you,' He was not using a metaphor, but 
 making a real promise. ' Lo, I am with you all the days, 
 even to the end of the world.' 
 
 You will see at once how this bears on the question of the 
 authority of Christ as a primary ground of Faith. To 
 those who share the religious philosophy of St. Paul and 
 St. John there is no difficulty — or rather, there is an ab- 
 solute necessity — in identifying the mainspring of religion 
 in the heart of man with the action of the Second Person 
 of the Trinity. If any philosophy has a right to call itself 
 the philosophy of the Christian religion, it is that which 
 won the intellect of the ancient world for Christianity in 
 the third and fourth centuries, which shaped our Creeds, 
 and which has satisfied the deepest Christian thinkers from 
 that time to our own day. According to this philosophy, \ 
 there is an unbroken chain uniting the creative Logos, 
 through whom all things were made, with the historical 
 Jesus of Nazareth, and with the mysterious Power which 
 works unseen in every human soul^ The universe, as 
 Bishop Westcott says, is the hymn of the Word to the 
 glory of the Father. This World-Spirit was once incar- 
 nated in a human Ufe. That Hfe is the expression of 
 the meaning of the world, so far as the meaning of the 
 world can find expression in a human life. Christ re- 
 vealed to us that God is the Father of His creatures ; 
 that God is Light, Life, Love, and Spirit (I will not now 
 stop to draw out the meaning of these pregnant utter- 
 ances) ; and above all. He revealed to us in word and 
 deed the law of sacrifice, of fife through death, which is'C 
 the master-key to the understanding of the universe. We 
 are quite right in calling this revelation final ; but we must 
 remember that it was the inauguration of a new dispensation 
 of revelation, not the termination of an era of direct divine 
 intercourse with mankind ; and also that this new dispensa- 
 
 I 
 
130 FAITH [cH. 
 
 tion is characterised by inwardness — by the action of the 
 Spirit of Christ bearing witness with our spirit. The 
 primary ground of Faith may be identified with the 
 authority of Christ, if by Christ we mean * Christ that died ; 
 nay, rather that is risen again.' It is not strictly correct 
 to say that the historical Jesus of Nazareth, whose mission 
 terminated when He ceased to walk and teach in Gahlee 
 and Judaea, is the primary ground of Faith. To say so 
 would be to adopt a static and not a dynamic view of 
 Faith. It would rivet our gaze on the past instead of on 
 the future. It would commit us to a pessimistic view of 
 the course of history. It would fill us with disquieting 
 doubts ; for how can we base our Faith on the shifting 
 sand of historical tradition, which leaves us at the mercy 
 of the good faith of reporters about whom we know little or 
 nothing ? Those who think otherwise are compelled to 
 choose between the apologetics of the evidential school, 
 of whose methods we may surely say that by them * nothing 
 worth^ proving can be proven, nor yet disproven ' — at any 
 rate within the religious sphere, or, as an alternative, they 
 must rest their religion on the mere subjectivity of feel- 
 ing, which we have found to be so utterly inadequate and 
 treacherous a ground for a living Faith. 
 
 I wish, however, to give you as fair an account as I can 
 of the attempts which have been made to arrest Faith at 
 this stage — to fix it as consisting of devotion to a historical 
 figure which was finally withdrawn from any further 
 direct influence upon human affairs nearly nineteen hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 In speaking of the Lutheran treatment of the Bible I 
 said that, though Holy Scripture as a whole was elevated 
 to a primary authority in matters of Faith, the real centre 
 was found in the Person of Christ, roimd which all the Old 
 Testament, as well as the New, was made, by forced and 
 unnatural exegesis, to revolve. 
 
 Modem Lutheranism, as represented by the Ritschlian 
 
VIII.] AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 131 
 
 school, does not follow Luther in this new Scholasticism. 
 Indeed, Ritschl boldly affirms that ' the ideas of the 
 Reformation were more concealed than disclosed in the 
 theological works of Luther and Melanchthon.' But the 
 language of Ritschlians about the * historical Christ' is 
 very similar to that of Luther. It is part of their theory 
 that the Christian Church began to go wrong from the very 
 first, i.e. as soon as Greek influences began to modify the 
 Palestinian gospel. Forgetful of the essentially quiet and 
 unemotional character of Christ's teaching, they find true 
 Christianity in the enthusiastic revivaUsm of St. Paul's 
 Corinthian converts, and complain (as Hamack does) 
 that Christianity was ' secularised ' when ' what made 
 the Christian a Christian was no longer the possession of 
 charisms, but . . . the performance of penance and good 
 works.' They can see Httle but progressive decline be- 
 tween St. Paul and the Reformation, and the Reforma- 
 tion, it appears, has never yet rightly understood itself. 
 * History,' for Faith, begins and ends, according to them, 
 with the ministry of Christ in Palestine. 
 
 Dislike of Greek metaphysics has much to do with this 
 view. It is part of the movement against speculative 
 intellectualism, which swept over Germany and almost 
 destroyed the once tyrannical power of Hegel's philosophy. 
 Of the rigorous moralism and theoretical agnosticism of 
 the neo-Kantians I must speak later. Here I wish to 
 consider only their Christology, and especially the real sig- 
 nificance of their maxim, ' Back to the historical Christ.' 
 
 It goes without sayiug that the orthodox Church doctrine 
 of the Trinity, and of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, 
 is condemned by this school as part of Greek metaphysics. 
 They do not object to our speaking of the ' Godhead ' of 
 Christ, if we add that this statement is only a judgment of 
 value, not of fact. (I shall discuss the validity of this anti- 
 thesis in a later lecture.) This is no arbitrary view ; it belongs 
 to the logic of the system. If metaphysics, that is to say 
 
132 FAITH [ca 
 
 the quest of ontological truth, is ruled out as having 
 nothing to do with reHgion ; if, moreover, a theory of know- 
 ledge is held which confines us to phenomena and puts 
 absolute truth wholly out of our reach ; if all mysticism, in- 
 cluding of course the Pauline doctrine of the unio mystica, 
 is rejected as ' Catholic piety ' ; what have we left but a 
 Christ who for us somehow * has the value of God ' ? If 
 the Ritschlian is pressed further as to what he means by 
 this phrase, he probably answers : First of all, Christ is 
 the perfect revelation of God to men. He manifests to us 
 the will and character of God. He who knows Christ, 
 knows the Father also. Secondly, He completely identi- 
 fied Himself with God's will and purpose. Instead of the 
 orthodox union of natures, we have a complete harmony 
 of wills, which, from the peculiar standpoint of this school, 
 is a greater thing. Thirdly, they say, He manifests a com- 
 plete supremacy over the world, in the sense of inward 
 independence of it. This is a characteristic .survival of 
 Luther's own thought, that the Christian is essentially 
 the world's master. It is not an idea which has any pro- 
 minence In a well-balanced Christianity, but it is extremely 
 popular in German Protestantism. ^ As the result of these 
 qualities in Jesus Christ we are allowed to say that He has 
 for us the value of God, and are forbidden to ask any more 
 questions about this Divinity. As for His present con- 
 dition, we are given to understand that He is living some- 
 how and somewhere in glory, but this belief is carefully 
 and jealously deprived of any religious significance by the 
 reiterated warning that the exalted Christ is hidden from 
 us, and cut off from any direct contact with us, even in 
 the life of prayer. Thus the mystical Christology, which 
 was the root and source of all St. Paul's personal religion, 
 and the inspiration of his life, is repudiated absolutely. 
 The Incarnation lives only in its effects. ' The work of 
 Christ in the state of exaltation must be represented by 
 
 I Orr, The Ritschlian Theology ^ p. 128. 
 
VIII.] AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 133 
 
 the permanent effect of His historical appearance.' ^ This 
 Christology is closely akin to the theology of the Deists, 
 according to whom God created the world, and then left it 
 to itself. The exalted Christ of Ritschlianism is a roi 
 faineant, politely ushered, like the Epicurean gods, into 
 some astral limbo where He is comfortably out of the way. 
 It is not clear why these men do not say plainly that He 
 passed finally out of existence on Good Friday ; for the 
 logic of their system has no further use for Him. Ritsch- 
 lianism in fact has no eschatology. In place of the 
 Christian doctrine of eternal life, we have phrases like the 
 following curious sentence : ' Man compares himself with 
 the whole natural system, since in his spiritual self-feeling 
 he apprehends himself as a being who in greatness stands 
 near to the supra-mundane God, and makes the claim 
 to live, notwithstanding the experience of death.' Whether 
 this * claim ' is allowed or disallowed we are not told, 
 though the matter is presumably of some interest to man- 
 kind. The truth is, that according to the logic of the 
 system there is no room for a future life. * The world's 
 master,' when removed from the world, is a king without 
 a kingdom. 
 
 There are many German theologians who are in partial 
 sympathy with Ritschl, but who accept the Resurrection, 
 the continued activity of the living Christ, and the future 
 life. Herrmann, the author of the little book Communion 
 with God, which has a great popularity in his own country, 
 and has been translated into English, occasionally indulges 
 in language about the exalted Christ which is in flat con- 
 tradiction with his principles, and in consequence, in 
 spite of his violent tirades against mysticism, he has been 
 accused by more logical Ritschlians of falling himself into 
 the error of the mystics. ^ Kaftan, one of the ablest of the 
 school, fairly breaks away from it in his Christology, and 
 
 1 Ritschl, quoted by Orr, p. 134. 
 » Orr, p. 223. 
 
134 FAITH [CH. 
 
 says : * Even Christ has become to us, in this age, a 
 distant historical appearance. The sole means of removing 
 this impression is a powerful and immediate faith in, and 
 communion with, the exalted Christ.' Compare this with 
 Herrmann's : ' Of a communion with the exalted Christ 
 there can be no question.' 
 
 Another point in which the position of Ritschl has 
 obviously become untenable, even to his disciples, is the 
 virtual denial of any other channel of revelation except 
 the historical Christ. Instead of forcing Christology into 
 the Old Testament, like Luther, the Ritschlians denied 
 the latter any value at all. Nor was any value attached to 
 revelations coming from secular history, science, or art. 
 The vigour and rigour of this position have been found 
 impossible to maintain. 
 
 My object, however, in this lecture, is not to criticise 
 any particular school of theology, but to arrive at a clear 
 idea of what is meant by saying that for us Christians 
 Christ is our primary authority. 
 
 According to the view which I uphold, and which has 
 been that of the best Christian philosophy from the first, 
 there is an original, natural bond between God and the 
 human soul. This innate * tendency to God,' as Robert 
 Browning calls it, may be explained or expressed in very 
 various language. To the psychologist, who rightly dis- 
 claims the intention of establishing ultimate truth by means 
 of mental science, it is simply a fact of consciousness to be 
 taken note of and analysed as it stands. He will give no 
 answe • to the question whence it comes, or whether it 
 is in correspondence with any objective external reality. 
 He will not attempt to determine whether its source is 
 human or divine, whether it belongs to ourselves or is 
 imparted by God. The scholastic mystics had their own 
 names for it. They often called it by the queer name 
 irvvTrjprja-iSf the origin of which is obscure. They explain 
 it as a faculty which never consents to evil, a sort of divine 
 
VIII.] AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 135 
 
 core of the soul, by which it can come into touch with what 
 is akin to it, the divine nature. It is much the same 
 as the K€VTpov ^vxrjs of Plotinus, and the Funkelein of 
 Eckhart. According to the Logos-Christology, this can 
 only be the operation of the creative and indwelling Logos 
 which ' became flesh ' in Jesus Christ. Put away, if you 
 will, all that is fanciful and arbitrary in these figures. But 
 do not lightly surrender the belief which they try to express: 
 that there is in the human soul a potential God-conscious4 
 ness, which was antecedent to the historical revelation, \ 
 and was a necessary condition of it. For the mystics 
 are surely right in holding that like can only be known by 
 like. ' If there were not something akin to the sun in us, 
 we could never behold the sun.' If this is denied — if 
 there is no such inner bond between human nature and the 
 divine, it is very diffiqult to show how the two can ever be 
 brought together. And so we find that the revelation of 
 Jesus Christ, for the school which we have been considering, 
 is not so much a reconcihation of man with God, as a \ 
 reconciliation of man with the world. If we reject and ^ 
 put out of court all that this school means by Mysticism, 
 and also all that they mean by Natural Theology, what 
 channel of revelation is left ? God does not act directly 
 upon the human soul, according to them ; how then does 
 He reveal Himself ? ' Through Jesus Christ ' is their 
 answer ; but how was the revelation made to Him ? The 
 apologists of this school seem to take refuge in the word 
 'mystery,' which is the usual expedient of a theologian 
 when caught in an awkward dilemma. There is no mystery 
 about it. Either Christ must have received the revelation 
 by direct personal union with God, or the knowledge of 
 God possessed by Christ must be only the intellectual 
 concomitant of that right direction of the will which 
 Christ exhibited in a pre-eminent degree. The former 
 alternative is excluded by the whole principles of the 
 school. For if the unio mystica is a reality between God 
 
136 FAITH [cH. 
 
 and the human Christ, why are no traces of it to he allowed 
 between God, or Christ, and the Christian ? And the 
 latter alternative deprives the testimony of Christ of its 
 authoritative character.^ For remember that the unique- 
 ness and solitariness of the revelation through Christ is 
 one of the points which are most insisted on. 
 
 If there is no essential kinship between God and man, no 
 revelation of God to man could ever take place. This seems 
 to be an irrefragable truth. And it follows that if Christ 
 was divine, as the Church teaches, and in the sense which 
 the Church teaches, His revelation cannot have been 
 purely external or purely historical and static, but must 
 be given to and through the Christ-like element in our 
 consciousness. In fact, it seems to me that the doctrines 
 of the divinity of Christ and of the indwelling Spirit of 
 Christ stand or fall together. 
 
 You will now see in what sense only I think we can 
 accept the statement that the authority of the historic 
 Christ is primary for Christians. Strictly, it is the in- 
 dwelling Christ who is the primary authority ; but assur- 
 edly I do not wish to separate the two, and postulate comme 
 deux Christs with M. Loisy. The difference between my 
 view and that which I have been criticising is important 
 because my view makes revelation dynamic : it gives room 
 for further growth ; it gives a reason and justification for 
 the long history of the Church, seeing that only through 
 long experience, much suffering, and many mistakes could 
 the dispensation, begun at the Incarnation, fulfil its 
 course and attain its end. 
 
 Some of you will suspect, I am afraid, that I am mini- 
 mising the historical facts connected with the Incarnation 
 — whittling away the significance of our Lord's life, making 
 it only a stage in the evolution of humanity. Well, let us 
 ask ourselves what a fact means — whether it is just the same 
 as a phenomenon, or whether it means something more. 
 
 1 Orr, p. 261. 
 
AUTHORITY BASED ON JESUS CHRIST 137 
 
 The distinction between fact and phenomenon has never 
 been better explained than by that very interesting philo- 
 sopher, Rudolf Eucken. The essential function of a fact, 
 he says, is to yield its living meaning to the present in some 
 imperishable form, and therefore the fact must itself first 
 own and exercise the Hfe which it communicates. No 
 atomic conception of a ' fact ' is possible. The ' fact ' 
 must be what Eucken calls a Lebens-system, a systematised 
 whole of Hfe. * Isolated events are not facts, but abstractions 
 from them. The '* fact " must have a certain independence 
 and capacity for development according to its own nature. 
 If it has less than this, it is only a mutilated and fractional 
 fact. ... A fact of history must be some historic move- 
 ment with at least a beginning and a middle, even if it lack 
 a finish. So understood, a historical fact is a true historical 
 unit, and the essential significance of " unit " is " unity." 
 A historical fact is a historical unity. Such unities do not 
 lie on the surface of life. ... It requires spiritual insight 
 to pass from phenomenon to fact.' ^ It is, then, a false 
 abstraction to isolate the events of three or thirty years 
 as is sometimes done. So isolated, they are degraded from 
 a fact to a phenomenon. The plan of the Incarnation was 
 to initiate a movement which in its entirety was to consti- 
 tute a theophany in the life of humanity itself. The 
 Christian revelation embraces, or rather is, the whole of 
 that movement, by far the greater part of which is, for us, 
 in the unknown future. 
 
 It appears to me, then, that this attempt to isolate the 
 records of the Galilean ministry as closing for ever the 
 revelation of God to man, is only another example of the 
 tendency which we have found in other cases, to arrest 
 the natural development of Faith at a certain point, in 
 order to gain the convenience of an unchangeable standard 
 of belief and conduct. It is nearer the truth than belief 
 
 1 Boyce Gibson, Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life, p. 41 ; and cf. 
 Eucken's latest book, The Life of the Sjpirit. 
 
138 FAITH [cH. 
 
 in an infallible Pope or an infallible Bible ; but it is open 
 to very grave objections, which I hope I have made clear 
 to you. 
 
 In practice, it may lead to an uncritical appeal to this 
 or that precept in the Gospels, and, on the other hand, to 
 a regretful repudiation of Christ's authority, on the ground 
 that some of His precepts are manifestly inappHcable, if 
 taken literally, to present conditions. Our Lord unques- 
 tionably used hyperbole in His teaching. He was accus- 
 tomed, like other teachers who wish to impress their 
 points on a popular audience, to make without qualifica- 
 tion statements which need qualification, and to supply 
 the necessary correction on another occasion. In plain 
 words, they occasionally contradict themselves ; and such 
 formal contradictions occur in the Gospels. It follows 
 that in order to understand them we must use reason and 
 common sense, and consider particular sayings in the light 
 suppUed by the teaching as a whole. This, and not the 
 attitude of a suppliant consulting an oracle, is the proper 
 way to consult the authority of Christ. We have also to 
 face the possibiUty that we have not got always the exact 
 Greek equivalents of the words used by the Divine Speaker ; 
 and the strong probability that some of His sayings are 
 out of their places, placed by His biographers in a wrong 
 setting, or, in a few cases, perhaps, even wrongly put into 
 His mouth. All this would be disquieting if the Christ of 
 the Gospels were our sole primary authority. It is not 
 disquieting if we may interpret particular words by the 
 known drift of His teaching, by the witness of His Spirit 
 in our hearts, and, to some extent, by other sources 
 of revelation. 
 
 Lastly, I am not following those modem Roman Catholic 
 apologists who depreciate the authority of the earthly 
 Christ in order to exalt that of the Church speaking in His 
 name. That is an error which we have already considered 
 and rejected. The Church is to grow up into Christ in all 
 
VIII.] AUTHOEITY BASED ON JESUS CHKIST 139 
 
 things, not out of Him into something very different. He 
 is very much more than the historical Founder of a great 
 institution with a very chequered record. Nor could we 
 possibly confine His activities since the Ascension to the 
 supervision of one religious body, however august. But 
 the Catholic apologetic has this great advantage over the 
 Protestant that it accepts development, and looks forward. 
 It does not worship a dead Lord. 
 
 I have now finished that part of my course which deals 
 with authority. I have shown, I hope, that external 
 authority, in whatever form, cannot be a primary ground 
 of Faith, and that the authority of Jesus Christ, for the 
 well instructed Christian, is not external, but is a voice 
 which speaks within us as well as to us. The complete 
 autonomy of the human spirit would be identical with 
 perfect obedience to Christ ; His service, as the Collect 
 says, is perfect freedom. 
 
 As a matter of experience, this way of thinking about 
 Christ does not dehumanise Him into a cosmic principle. 
 Rather, we find with Robert Browning, that 
 
 That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
 
 Or decomposes but to recorapose, 
 
 Become my universe that feels and knows.^ 
 
 That face, explained the poet to a friend, is the face of 
 Christ. 
 
 1 Robert Browning, DramcUis Personae, Epilogut, 
 
140 FAITH (cH. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 
 
 In my last lecture I considered the proper place of authority 
 in matters of Faith, and came to the conclusion that no 
 authority can claim to be primary except the clear affirma- 
 \tions of Faith itself — those spontaneous assertions of the 
 basal personality which religion calls the voice of God within 
 us, and which philosophy, in more cumbrous phrase, might 
 describe as the self-revelation of the objective in our 
 subjectivity. This voice, as I have said, speaks through, 
 rather than to, the human heart and conscience and 
 intellect, nor is it possible to separate the divine and 
 human elements in any act of Faith. To-day I pass to 
 another branch of our subject, one of great interest and 
 importance. We have resisted the temptation to arrest 
 and fix the development of Faith in the region of undiffer- 
 entiated feeling. We have found that reliance on external 
 authority, of whatever kind, is at best only a makeshift, a 
 substitute for a full and manly Faith. We have decided 
 that Faith must operate through our natural faculties. 
 But which of our faculties is the chosen organ of Faith ? 
 Is it the will, or the intellect, or that specialised feeling 
 which creates aesthetic judgments ? We must consider 
 the claims of these faculties in turn. And first. What is 
 the relation of Faith to the will ? Is Faith simply and 
 solely a moral postulate, an act of choice ? Is the ground 
 of Faith our moral decision to believe ? 
 
XX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 141 
 
 The proverb that the wish is father to the thought 
 assuredly calls attention to a fact which we cannot afford 
 to forget. People do, as a matter of fact, believe things 
 because they wish to believe them. Hobbes declared that 
 
 * even the axioms of geometry would be disputed if men's 
 passions were concerned in them ' ; and we have only to 
 contrast a page of Euclid with a political or theological 
 harangue, in order to realise how differently we reason 
 when we are dealing, not with mathematical symbols having 
 a fixed connotation, but with living ideas and disputable 
 values. People believe what they wish to be true, both 
 voluntarily and involuntarily. They will say without 
 shame, ' I like to think so and so,' as a reason why they do 
 think so. And they will not change their opinions because 
 they are beaten in argument. 
 
 He that complies against his will 
 Is of the same opinion still. 
 
 Moreover, without intending it, we often listen to the 
 flattering tale which hope tells. Charlatans of all kinds 
 trade on this weakness of human nature. Without it, a great 
 many popular follies, such as betting on horse-races, and 
 gambling at Monte Carlo or on the Stock Exchange, would 
 come to an end. The dry hght of reason would generally 
 convince the gambler that he stands to lose ; but he throws 
 his desires into the scale, and vaguely hopes that ' luck will 
 be on his side.' 
 
 In matters of practice, when any end is being pursued, 
 the advantages of a sanguine temperament are so obvious 
 that men look very indulgently on the self-deceptions 
 which it produces. ' If you do not hope,' said Heraclitus, 
 
 * you will never find that which is beyond your hopes.' In 
 many cases, a strong will has the power to bring about the 
 realisation of that which it desires, and the refusal to limit 
 hopes by the evidence of probability brings its own reward 
 and justification. 
 
142 FAITH [CH 
 
 • None without hope e'er loved the brightest fair, 
 I But love may hope where reason might despair.^ 
 
 We encourage the wilful optimist, the dogged struggler 
 who cannot see when he is beaten, because this temper so 
 often achieves great things. 
 
 How far are we to approve of the same temper when it 
 is applied to our religious beliefs ? There is no doubt at 
 all that by determining to believe a doctrine, by deliberately 
 refusing to dwell on arguments on the other side, by refusing 
 to listen to objections or read books by opponents, above 
 all, by making, so to speak, a personal wager by acting as 
 if it were true, and incurring loss should it be false — by 
 these methods we can make ourselves believe many things 
 against the weight of evidence. As Clough puts it : — 
 
 A-ction will furnish belief, — ^but will that belief be the 
 
 true one ? 
 That is the point, you know. However, it doesn't much 
 
 matter. 
 What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the 
 
 action 
 So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the 
 
 true one. 
 
 There is no doubt that this is an effective and practi- 
 cable method of determining and fixing our beliefs. The 
 will to believe is, as Professor William James and his 
 friends maintain, a real and actual ground of belief, 
 whether such a belief deserves the name of Faith or not. 
 However, the question is (and I do not agree with Clough 
 that it doesn't much matter), not whether men do form 
 their beliefs in this way, but whether they ought to do so. 
 This question is the subject of my lecture to-day. 
 
 One fact is indisputable. Wherever we find great 
 emphasis laid on the practical support given by Faith as a 
 reason for believing, there we find also intellectual scepti- 
 1 Lord Lyttelton, 1709-1773. 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 143 
 
 cism. The argument would never be advanced by any 
 one who (to use a phrase of Eenan) ' beHeves heavily.' At 
 the same time, it does not imp y such complete distrust in 
 human faculties as is implied by reliance on external 
 revelation. Writers like Mansel are complete sceptics/ 
 whose choice of orthodoxy instead of agnosticism seems 
 to be almost a matter of chance. Herbert Spencer was 
 able to accept all Hansel's arguments, while rejecting his 
 conclusion. The school which we are now to consider 
 base their religious Faith not on external authority but on 
 the affirmations of the * practical reason,' which is at any 
 rate part of our endowment as human beings. They are 
 intellectual sceptics, but moral believers. 
 
 Periods of ambitious construction in philosophy are 
 regularly followed by periods of doubt and discouragement. 
 The imposing thought-palace, which was to incorporate in 
 its fabric every kind of truth, betrays unsoundness in its 
 foundations. The invulnerable Achilles is discovered to 
 have an unprotected heel ; and forthwith scepticism 
 threatens to engulf everything. But scepticism can always 
 be turned against itself ; and unwilling scepticism welcomes 
 its own discomfiture. Faith, we will suppose, finds itself 
 menaced by natural science. But on what grounds, men 
 soon begin to ask, is science made a judge and ruler over 
 us ? Is not science, as well as theology, the product of 
 human thought and of human instincts ? Her conclusions 
 are not infallible, her fundamental assumptions are still 
 disputable and disputed. Her chief dogma, the uniformity 
 of nature, is admitted to be a matter of Faith. Why is 
 Faith to be allowed an entrance at this one point and here 
 only ? Why may we not have Faith in the practical reason 
 as well as in the speculative ? Might it not even be 
 plausibly maintained that the theoretical reason is more 
 
 1 So far, at least, as any philosopher can be a complete sceptic. The 
 absolute sceptic does not construct a philosophy out of scepticism — he does 
 not philosophise at alL 
 
144 FAITH [CH. 
 
 fallible than the practical ? Almost every paradox has 
 been plausibly maintained by philosophers. Havrl Ao-yc^ 
 Xoyos dvrLK€Lraij as Aristotle said ; and the greater the 
 intellect, the greater may be the blunder. 'There 
 are errors which lie out of the reach of an ordinary mind' :^ 
 magna magnorum deliramenta doctorum, says St. Augustine. 
 Further, psychology has proved that desires and emotions 
 do influence belief. Pure reasoning is a pure figment ; no 
 man was ever guided by pure reason. Again, what is the 
 test of truth to which the rationalist or intellectualist refers 
 us ? Has he any ultimate criterion of knowledge ? If 
 not, may not what he calls superstition be as respectable 
 as what he calls truth ? If the so-called superstitions 
 work, they Justify and verify themselves. They may 
 claim to be * protective organs,' or something of the kind ; 
 and what more are the rationalist's reasons ? Lastly, 
 these new apologists tell us that the bases of our intellectual 
 constructions are not axioms but postulates ; i.e. we reject 
 the alternative propositions, not because they are, on the 
 face of them, ridiculous, but because we have * no use for 
 them.' The will and the understanding are both instru- 
 ments of living, and the will is the more efficient of the 
 two. If we still desiderate some proof that the claims of 
 our will are ontologically true, we may be reminded (as a 
 concession to our weak-minded and benighted ' absolu- 
 tism ') that even though the ground of our beUef in certain 
 heories lies in the fact that we need them, we did not 
 create the circumstance that we need them. Either the 
 nature of things, which is responsible for the fact that we 
 need them, is irrational, ' which is absurd,' or our needs 
 must be founded on the real constitution of the world. 
 The school which we are now considering deliberately 
 s amalgamates will and feeling — thus getting a broader basis 
 for its constructions, though discursive thought is excluded 
 as a sort of pariah. This fusion of will and feeling seems to 
 
 1 Balmez, quoted by Eickaby, First Principles, p. 116. 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 145 
 
 me psychologically untenable ; it leads to an extension of 
 the use of * will,' which is contrary to earlier usage, and very 
 misleading. These writers set out to prove the primacy 
 of will, and then smuggle into the idea of * will ' a great 
 deal that does not belong to it. But they are strong on 
 the empirical side. The influence of a steady determina- 
 tion on the formation of character is undeniable ; and the 
 phenomena of faith-healing, hypnotism, and suggestion 
 point to a hitherto unsuspected potency residing in the will, 
 and capable, at least under some conditions, of being 
 utilised. These obscure psychical energies have been 
 more studied and more exploited in America than in any 
 other country ; and I believe that this fact has had much 
 to do with the revolt against intellectuaUsm in philosophy, 
 which is now so powerful in the United States. Not only 
 do these phenomena seem to present a practical refutation 
 of Spinozism, and of its modem representative the theory 
 of psycho-physical parallelism, but the present condition of 
 psychology seems to demand a modest hesitation in laying 
 down any limits to the possible action of mind upon matter. 
 It is felt that we are only at the beginning of what may be 
 a new epoch in mental science, and that when our know- 
 ledge has been extended and systematised, the bogey of 
 determinism may be laid once for all, and science may be 
 compelled to take a much humbler attitude towards 
 religion and ethics. 
 
 This line of thought is very welcome to many, who have 
 long felt that the mechanical theory, which reduces men 
 and women to the condition of cunningly devised automata, 
 is fatal to moral freedom, to human dignity, and to religious 
 hope. It is also very convenient to the conservative apolo- 
 gist, anxious to vindicate divine interventions in history. 
 
 It will be well first to give a short historical account 
 of the growth of ' pragmatist ' tendencies in religious 
 philosophy. 
 
 The first serious attempt to exalt the will above the 
 
 K 
 
14« FAITH [CH. 
 
 intellect as an instrument of religious belief was made by 
 the Nominalist opponents of Thomas Aquinas. With the 
 doctrine of the primacy of the will came the adoption of a 
 practical or empirical criterion of truth instead of a theo- 
 retical one.^ This cleavage appeared even among the 
 mystics, the followers of the Platonic and Augustinian 
 tradition insisting on the knowledge of God as the con- 
 comitant or condition of spiritual progress, while there were 
 others who maintained that a complete dedication of the 
 will was sufficient. The latter teaching, with mystics, led to 
 quietism, while the former was accused of tending towards 
 speculative pantheism. The Theologia Germanica repre- 
 sents a moderate quietism ; Eckhart is a stronger example 
 of the pantheistic tendency. Among the scholastics 
 proper, the school of Thomas Aquinas represented the 
 speculative tendency, while William of Occam was 
 the chief champion of the will and practical reason. 
 Nominalism was at first suspected, but was afterwards 
 encouraged, when realism was seen to favour determinism 
 and pantheistic mysticism. NominaUsm could also do a 
 great service to the Papacy by deciding that, since reason 
 cannot arrive at the truth, we ought to bow absolutely to 
 the authority of the Church. The doctrine of fides impli- 
 cita, which practically means blind obedience, was de- 
 veloped. But after a very short reign nominalism itself 
 decayed, when Plato (the real Plato this time) was redis- 
 covered. 
 
 Among modem philosophers before Kant who laid great 
 stress on the prac ical ground of Faith, we need only 
 mention Spinoza. This writer sees the religious value of 
 dogmas not in their actual truth, but in their power of 
 moving to action. We are allowed and encouraged to state 
 
 1 The following brief statement of the epistemology of Nominalism will show 
 its close affinity with Kantianism and American pragmatism. ' Theologia nos! ra 
 nnllatenus specnlativa est, sed simpliciter practica. Theologiae objectum 
 non est speculabile sed operabile. (^>uidquid in Deo est practicum est respectu 
 nostri.' (Frassen.) 
 
I 
 
 IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 147 
 
 our dogmas in the form which suits us best. The end of 
 Faith, he says, is obedience and piety. In this theory of 
 Faith he prepared the way for thinkers who were strongly 
 opposed to his philosophy as a whole. 
 
 Kant's attack upon the scholastic * proofs of God's 
 existence,' and upon intellectualism generally in matters 
 of Faith, is well known. There is, according to him, 'a 
 deep gulf between thought and being, which nothing can 
 overcome. Things in themselves ai'e the condition of 
 all thought; but what exists we cannot know.' If we 
 say that God, or the Absolute, must be self-consistent 
 and all-embracing, we are told that the logical law of 
 contradiction ^ is concerned, not with real things, but only 
 with the concepts which we form about them. Logical 
 laws are only laws of thought, not laws which bind reality. 
 The result of this assumption is that he separates our 
 theoretical and moral judgments as they are never separ- 
 ated in experience, and gives us first an abstract intellectual 
 scepticism in the Critique of Pure Reason, and then an 
 abstract moraHstic deism in the Critique of Practical 
 Reason. But it is a pure assumption that because the law 
 of contradiction is a logical law, it must be only a logical 
 law and nothing more. Indeed it is meaningless to talk 
 about a law which is ' only a law of thought.' When we 
 say that we cannot think of A as being at once B and not 
 B, we are not laying down a law for psychology. Experi- 
 ence suggests that many people are quite capable of holding 
 two contradictory propositions simultaneously. WTiat we 
 mean is that if we think in this way, we are not thinking 
 truly, or, in other words, we are not thinking of things as 
 they really are. We cannot speak of ' mere logical laws ' 
 without falling into the extreme of scepticism. If necessary 
 thought is no criterion of objective truth, how can we know 
 
 1 The * law of contradiction ' is that a thing cannot at the same time be both 
 B and not B ; or, ' It is impossible at the same time to affirm and deny. ' Cf. 
 Clarke, Logic, pp. 33-42. 
 
148 FAITH [oh. 
 
 anything ? It is strange that Kant treats with neglect, 
 and almost with contempt, the hypothesis on which all men 
 .act, namely, that the forms of knowing and being corre- 
 spond because they are manifestations of the same 
 intelligent principle.^ He did not distinguish this very 
 reasonable belief from the ' pre-estabhshed harmony ' of 
 Leibnitz, a theory which may be said to have died with its 
 author. 
 
 According to this philosophy, we reach solid rock only in 
 the moral consciousness, which Kant supposes to be given 
 to us immediately. This and this only is vouched for by 
 Faith — ' I must, and therefore I can.' Morality thus con- 
 ceived is as empty of contents as it is inexplicable in its 
 origin. Kant excludes the happiness or welfare of the 
 subject as a legitimate motive, and but for an obvious 
 inconsistency would have equally excluded the happiness 
 and welfare of others. For we cannot morally desire for 
 others what we regard as indifferent for ourselves. The 
 motive for moral action must, according to him, be simply 
 reverence for moral law as such. But this is not a suffi- 
 cient motive for a rational being. We cannot do our life's 
 work like convicts at a crank, whose task is simply to 
 expend a prescribed quantity of muscular energy. We 
 act in order to produce something which we regard as 
 worth producing, and the empty idea of right gives us 
 no intelligible guidance. To make religion merely a tran- 
 scendental projection from morals is to invert their true 
 relationship. The abstract moral sense is a pure illusion. 
 There is no such fixed and known code of morals as Kant 
 postulates. There is hardly a crime or vice that has not 
 at some time and place been enjoined in the name of 
 morality and religion. Nor is morality ' unconditional,' 
 as Kant supposed. Apart from the question whether 
 pleasure and pain can be excluded from consideration, 
 
 1 In the Critique of Judgment there are hints of this solution, but they 
 are not developed. 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 149 
 
 as Kant demands, we have already seen grounds for\ 
 believing that truth and beauty exercise a co-ordinate 
 authority with goodness as attributes of the divine mind, 
 and refuse to be subordinated to morality. 
 
 The later Kantians have for the most part modified or 
 abandoned the moral rigorism of their master, and they 
 have also allowed the rationalistic side of Kant's thought 
 to fall into the background. It must be remembered that 
 the rift which turns Kant's philosophy into a dualism is 
 
 ■ still, according to him, a rift within the reason. If the 
 ^practical and theoretical reason could make up their 
 quarrel, or rather get into contact with each other, the 
 problem would be solved. His philosophy is truly described 
 as ' critical rationalism * ; and he cannot justly be classed 
 with the thorough-going voluntarists who followed him. 
 And yet on one side he is the father of modern anti- 
 intellectualism. For there is only one reason, not two ; and 
 ' the ' practical reason,' when set in opposition to the theoret- 
 ical, and exalted above it, is after all only another name 
 ' for the irrational will. This has become clear in the 
 development of the neo-Kantian philosophy, in which war 
 is frankly declared against the theoretical or speculative 
 reason. Against this disruption of the human mind, which 
 if pressed to its logical conclusion is fatal to all scientific 
 knowledge, Herbert Spencer protests in language which 
 Christian philosophy can adopt without hesitation. ' Let 
 those who can, believe that there is eternal war between 
 our intellectual faculties and our moral obligations. I 
 for one can admit no such radical vice in the constitution 
 of things.' 
 
 My plan in this lecture is to consider first the recent 
 
 developments of voluntarism and pragmatism in philosophy 
 
 generally — of course only in bare outline — and then to deal 
 
 v^ with the influence of this tendency upon Protestant and 
 
 IK Catholic theology and apologetics. (It will be convenient 
 
 I"""""'"**" 
 
150 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Ritschlianism preceded in time the Modernist movement 
 in the Roman Church.) 
 
 Neo-Kantianism in Germany has for the most part been 
 either connected with the school of Protestant theology 
 called after Ritschl, and so falls under the second of my 
 three headings, or else, as with Lange, it has built on a 
 sceptical or despairing view of the existing world an 
 aesthetic superstructure, in which religion plays its part 
 along with poetry and the arts, as an ideal embellishment 
 of the actual. This latter attempt to build an imaginative 
 structure on a Kantian basis does not belong to our 
 present enquiry. We are now dealing with those who wish 
 to base philosophy, and with it, reUgious beliefs, on free 
 choice, directed only by the practical requirements of life in 
 the world. This now popular unmetaphysical philosophy, 
 which is commonly called pragmatism, has far more 
 disciples in America than in any other country. Its pro- 
 tagonist is Professor William James of Harvard, who has a 
 group of disciples at Oxford, and a very large following 
 in his own land. 
 
 The word irpayfiaTiKo^y from which pragmatism is de- 
 rived, meant in ancient Greek ' practical,' or ' businesslike.' 
 In the political history of medieval and modem times, 
 a ' pragmatic sanction ' has meant an inviolable compact. 
 Kant uses the adjective in the sense of ' prudent,' of action 
 directed to a purpose. Bismarck's poUcy was described 
 as pragmatic, the meaning being that he was determined 
 to achieve his ends quocumque modo. Such are the ante- 
 cedents of the word, as now used in philosophy. Kant's 
 use of it has probably had most to do with determining 
 its present signification. In current philosophy, prag- 
 matism is the theory that * all our beliefs are really rules 
 for action ' ; and that ' to develop a thought's meaning, 
 we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to pro- 
 duce ; that conduct is for us its sole significance.'^ From 
 
 1 Professor W. James, Pragmatism, p. 46 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 151 
 
 this it is made to follow that the ' true is the name of what- 
 ever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good 
 too for definite assignable reasons.' ^ 
 
 Professor James is so uncompromising an advocate of 
 the practical principle as the ground of Faith that he brings 
 all the limitations and errors of anti-intellectualism into 
 the light of day. His philosophy, indeed, is in parts an 
 admirable reductio ad absurdum of sceptical opportunism 
 as a principle of thought and action. He and his school 
 are so determined to safeguard human personality and the 
 freedom of the will that they give us a God who is ' limited 
 by all other beings in the universe ' — a very constitutional 
 President in a society of free and independent spirits — 
 (unless indeed they prefer, as some of them do, to make the 
 Absolute ' a society,' which is either atheism or polytheism); 
 they deny that there are any * laws of nature ' within the 
 sphere of the will ; they refuse to acknowledge any unity 
 in experience, or any evidence that the universe (which 
 one of them suggests should be called the * multi verse ') 
 is a systematic whole. * Not unfortunately,' says Professor 
 James, ' the imiverse is wild ; nature is miracle all.' * We 
 must leave surprises even for God,' as another writer of 
 the same school says. This seems a high price to pay 
 for free-will. A ' wild universe,' where anything or every- 
 thing may happen, and which ^ its unaccountable be- 
 haviour administers a series of shocks even to its Creator, 
 would seem to be a fit abode only for a very wild man, the 
 kind of person, in fact, whom we do not permit to be at 
 large. 
 
 I will not discuss further this philosophy (if it deserves 
 the name) of personal atomism. In proclaiming the 
 bankruptcy of science it proclaims its own bankruptcy. 
 From the religious point of view it has the fatal defect of 
 denying divine immanence ; for a personal independence 
 which rests on exclusion forbids all communion between 
 1 Professor W. James, Proffmaiismf p. 76. 
 
152 FAITH [CH. 
 
 God and man, as well as between man and the world. This 
 objection, it seems to me, applies not only to the extreme 
 pragmatists, Hke Professor James, but to the ' personal 
 idealists ' who are not willing to follow him all the way. 
 They have proved that it is possible to pay too dearly for 
 the assurance of personal freedom. That freedom is not 
 yet ours. Personality, like all else that is imperfect and 
 y an unrealised ideal, must die in order that it may live. 
 The way to save our ^^x^i — to ' find it unto hfe eternal ' 
 — is not by claiming that it is lord of the creation, but 
 by being willing to ' lose ' it in the service of grander and 
 wider aspects of reality. 
 
 Nevertheless, the ethical side of religion is so important 
 that we cannot altogether blame those who have no eyes 
 for any other order of truth. They think that what they 
 call intellectualism or rationalism means in practice natural- 
 ism — that is, acceptance of the mechanical order as divine, 
 and a Stoical worship of the blind giant Nature, who 
 cares only for the preservation of her types, and knows 
 nothing of justice or mercy. The nineteenth century 
 witne ;sed a series of reactions against the supposed tyranny 
 of natural law ; even Huxley, in his famous Romanes 
 lecture, could speak of the duty of * resisting the cosmic 
 process.' But this is to accept a Manichean view of 
 nature. It is to admit an irreconcilable dualism, handing 
 over the world to some non-moral agency, while separating 
 man from his environment. A truer solution is, not to 
 discredit natural law, but to remember that science can 
 admit no exceptions to its sway. Natural law, from the 
 point of view of science, is universal, or it is nothing. It 
 includes the highest principles which actuate the best of 
 men, as well as the blind movements of inanimate things. 
 This consideration may lead us to find spiritual law in the 
 natural world, a far more satisfactory discovery than the 
 notion that man can successfully defy the order of the 
 universe. The fault, however, was largely that of some 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 153 
 
 scientists of the older generation, who wrote as if molecular 
 physics could prescribe rules for human action, thus ex- 
 plaining the highest and most complex forms of life by the 
 simplest and lowest. We are not powerless in the grip of 
 natural forces, to which we ourselves contribute. This is 
 a good world because it needs us to make it better. If 
 Bacon was right in saying that nature is only conquered by 
 obeying her, it is equally true that she is only obeyed by 
 conquering her. 
 
 The school which we are now considering also accuses 
 modem rationalism, and the later Greek philosophy too, 
 of teaching that reality is ' ready made and complete from 
 all eternity.' This view deprives the time-process of all 
 value and meaning, and makes activity a delusion. Prag- 
 matists insist, on the other hand, that the world is 
 still in the making, and that to a large extent we have 
 the making of it. It is quite true that the dynamic 
 aspect of reality has been unduly neglected by some 
 thinkers, and we owe a debt of gratitude to those who 
 have revived the Aristotelian doctrine that * the end is 
 an action, not a quality ' (t5 tcAos irpa^Ls tis eo-rtv ov ttoioti^?). 
 Aristotle, however, never disparages the intellectual 
 life, as this school habitually does. In him, contem- 
 plation is the highest kind of action, and spiritual activity 
 as * practical ' as manual labour. The pragmatists are 
 fond of quoting ^idvota avrij ovSkv Kivel (* the intellect by 
 itself moves nothing ') as an expression of anti-intellec- 
 tualism. But all that Aristotle means is that intellect 
 energising in vacuo is a false abstraction. 
 
 Again, we cannot but be grateful to be reminded that 
 the will and feelings must be constantly exercised in the 
 endeavour to reahse facts and to work out our convictions. 
 The struggle for the higher hfe is so hard that we tend 
 either to leave ourselves behind, merely thinking and talking 
 about the truth, like those of whom Aristotle says that 
 they ' take refuge in words and think that they are philo- 
 
154 FAITH [CH. 
 
 sophers,' ' or we construct a premature synthesis of reality, 
 on the basis of our still disordered selves. The danger of 
 purely speculative thinking has been often exhibited, and 
 is not diminished by the counter warning that a mixture 
 of ethics and metaphysics results in a bad philosophy. The 
 evil effects of one-sidedness must be recognised, and also 
 the extreme difficulty of taking a comprehensive view 
 without incoherence and self-contradiction. The meta- 
 physician who determines to follow the argument whither- 
 soever it leads him, ignoring practical problems, and not 
 even trying to make a practical religion for himself out of 
 his speculations, is likely to produce a more consistent 
 intellectual system than one who all the time regards 
 metaphysics as a handmaid of ethics, and will advocate no 
 principles which he is not prepared to make the standard 
 of his own conduct. Hume is, I venture to think, far 
 more free from contradictions than Kant ; and Hume, as 
 we know from his private correspondence, protested against 
 the assumption that his speculative views about reUgion 
 made it more difficult for him than for beUevers in Chris- 
 tianity to bear a bereavement. * In these matters,' he 
 wrote, * I do not think so differently from the rest of the 
 world as you imagine.' ^ Thus that fearlessly honest 
 thinker was obHged in practice to be faithless to his own 
 intellect, and to testify to the half-truth of pragmatism 
 as well as to the inadequacy of scepticism as a working 
 creed. In the case of Schopenhauer we iBnd an equally 
 independent intellectual Hfe, which apparently had no 
 influence in elevating his moral character. Like Circe's 
 human swine, his higher nature only made him miserable, 
 while it left him to wallow in the mire of cowardly selfishness 
 and sensuahty. But even from the speculative stand- 
 point, the consistency of a philosophy which has turned its 
 back on experience is dearly purchased. It escapes contra- 
 dictions by refusing to consider some essential aspects of 
 » Aristotle, Ethict, ii. 3. « Cf. Burton's Life qfHume, vol. L p. 294. 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 166 
 
 the problem ; and in consequence its conclusions have 
 only an abstract and hypothetical truth. They are not 
 true of the real world, or at any rate they have not been 
 shown to be so. 
 
 The demands of our ethical nature point to the objec- 
 tive existence of a hierarchy of values, and these must 
 be included in any intellectual system which claims to 
 represent the whole truth. The difficulty of harmonising 
 this valuation with the existential aspect of things proves 
 to us, not that we cannot know reaUty at all, but that we 
 know it only in part. An imperfect experience cannot 
 construct a consistent philosophy. 
 
 Let us now consider the results of what we may call 
 ethical idealism in Protestant theology. We shall find our 
 documents mainly in the German Ritschlian school. 
 
 The foundation of the Ritschlian teaching is the assertion 
 of the primacy of the ethical sense. With Lotze, whom 
 he greatly admired, Ritschl held that the foundation of 
 metaphysics is to be found in ethics : we are to seek in 
 what ought to be the ground of what is. Like Lotze, he 
 recognises in man a faculty of forming value- judgments y 
 which is of greater importance than the * merely intellec- 
 tual ' view of the world. These ' value-judgments ' take, 
 in Ritschl's philosophy, the same place which Schleier- 
 macher gives to undifferentiated feeling. They are the 
 ultimate seat of authority. Both maintain that the final 
 court of appeal is subjective experience, which is not to be 
 checked by reference to the outer world of phenomena ; 
 but while Schleiermacher's appeal was to a vague senti- 
 ment, Ritschl's is narrowed and made more definite — ^his 
 supreme court is the ethical demand. In order to preclude 
 any disputes as to the authority of this one faculty to 
 decide everything, * metaphysics,' which include all 
 ' judgments of fact,' are declared to have nothing to do 
 with rehgion. * Religion and theoretic knowledge are 
 distinct functions, which even when applied to the same 
 
156 FAITH [CH. 
 
 object do not even partially coincide, but go totally 
 asunder.' ^ So harsh and intractable a dualism is only 
 tolerable if we resolve to treat one of the two sides as a 
 neghgible quantity. And this is the treatment which 
 Ritschlianism metes out to existential truth.^ The proper 
 philosophical position corresponding to this view of the 
 world is subjective idealism, which some have thought the 
 logical conclusion from Lotze's premisses. 
 
 A little more must be said about the famous doctrine of 
 value- judgments. According to Ritschl, the judgments 
 which we form on moral and religious subjects are ' in- 
 dependent judgments of value.' They set forth, not the 
 objective nature and relation of things, but only their 
 value for v^ — their fitness to satisfy some want of our own 
 nature. Religion, therefore, has nothing to do with ob- 
 jective fact ; truth, in this sphere, is purely pragmatic and 
 teleological. Ritschl, however, shrank from the logical 
 conclusion which has been drawn by some of the modern 
 psychological school, that God Himself has no objective 
 existence, or that if He has. His objective existence is 
 irrelevant to religion. He somehow regards the existence 
 of God, and one or two other dogmas which he prized, to be 
 guaranteed by the faculty of ' value-judging.' But this 
 is a manifest trespass. On his principles, judgments of 
 fact and judgments of value can never come in conflict, 
 because they are * independent ' of each other. But to 
 assert the existence of God is to make a judgment of 
 fact, not a judgment of value. Or if we say that value 
 guarantees existence, that is a judgment of fact, and the 
 whole character of the philosophy is changed by the 
 transit from idealism to realism. On Ritschl's principles, 
 there is no escape from pure phenomenalism and sub- 
 
 1 Quoted by Orr, p. 61. 
 
 2 I'he school of Ritschl has split on the theory of knowledge. Herrmann 
 is a Kantian ; Kaftan is an empirical positivist ; Bender was logical enough 
 to proclaim an uncompromising subjectivism, for which his party, after a 
 heated controversy, repudiated him. 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 157 
 
 jectivism except by a patent inconsistency.^ God is, on 
 E/itschlian principles, at best a postulate, arising from the 
 Judgment which the human spirit makes of its own wofth. 
 
 You will gather that in my opinion the whole system is 
 ruined by its attempt to exclude ' judgments of being ' — 
 science and philosophy in fact — from any part in the 
 formation or determination of religious Faith. This is 
 partly the result of a very inexcusable confusion of termin- 
 ology. Just as the Ritschlians extend the province of will, 
 to cover feeling and even unconscious instinct, so they limit 
 reason by regarding it as the faculty which merely observes 
 and reflects on the causes of things. This is psychologically 
 incorrect, and theologically disastrous. The creative Reason) 
 as we learn from St. Paul and St. John, is the immanent 
 cause and end of things. Without Reason the Will is blind 
 deaf and dumb. And the supreme exercise of the human 
 consciousness, which is to energise in concert with this 
 creative Power, assuredly contains an intellectual element 
 I shall show in my next lecture that we need by no means 
 despair of reaching solid ground by means of the intellect. 
 
 Ritschlian theology is generally as orthodox as it can 
 persuade itself to be, and much more so, in words at least, 
 than its principles warrant it in being.^ When set free 
 from dogmatic presuppositions, the school of thought 
 which we are now considering tends sometimes to the 
 metaphysical (or rather epistemological) theory called 
 pragmatism, which we have already discussed so far as 
 seemed necessary for our purpose ; and sometimes to a 
 purely moralistic conception of religion. On the whole, 
 
 1 If, however, any friends of Ritschl wish to remind me that their master 
 has also said the exact opposite, I admit it. In the first edition of his great 
 work {Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, p, 192) he says : * The acceptance of 
 the idea of God is no practical faith, but an act of theoretic knowledge.' 
 In the third edition (p. 214) this disappears, and we read : 'The acceptance 
 of the idea of God is practical faith, and not an act of theoretic knowledge.' 
 The second opinion is more in harmony with the dominant ideas of hia 
 system, which, however, is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. 
 
 2 This is especially true of Herrmann, whose inconsistency is sharply 
 rebuked by Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 202, 203. 
 
168 FAITH [CH. 
 
 this theory of Faith appears in the most favourable light 
 when it is made to support nothing except a system of 
 ethics. The ultimate authority, on which the whole 
 structure rests, is then the ' categorical imperative ' of Kant, 
 the autonomous conscience. ^ The will is king — the will 
 to obey conscience, to do right and make the right triumph. 
 As a theory of Faith, it has seized one side of the truth ; 
 for the fundamental religious instinct does develop, on one 
 very important side, into an imperious desire to shape 
 our surroundings. The religious equivalent of the prag- 
 matist's ' conation which determines truth ' is the thirst for 
 God which bears witness that it is caused by God. Desire 
 does not determine truth, but truth does determine desire, 
 and makes itself known through and as desire. But as in 
 former chapters, we find here too that one-sidedness is 
 fatal. I am certain that one of the great causes of what are 
 called * difficulties ' in the way of Faith is the assumption 
 that the universe was designed simply and solely as a 
 school of moral disciphne and probation for human beings. 
 It appears to me that this is a survival of a pre-scientific 
 view of the universe. It was tenable when geocentric 
 theories prevailed ; it is not tenable now. Our planet, 
 and our species, have no such exclusive importance. And 
 as for the exclusively moral character attributed to the 
 Deity, do we really admire a character which is exclusively 
 moral ? Do we feel much respect for one who is blind to 
 all sense of beauty and willingly ignorant of all facts that 
 cannot at once be converted into moral obUgations ? Is 
 
 1 Note the following definition of Faith by the Ritschlian Herrmann : 
 'Religious Faith in God is, rightly understood, jnst the medium by which the 
 universal demand of the moral law becomes individualised for the individual 
 man in his particular place in the world's life, so as to enable him to recognise 
 its absoluteness on the ground of his self-certainty, and the ideal drawn in it 
 as his own personal end.' Thus God vanishes in the moral order of the world 
 and religion in morality. This however, was not Ritschl's own position : he 
 distinguishes between religion and morals, and conjpares Christianity to an 
 elliptical figure revolving round those two foci. But this part of his system 
 — one of his many illogical concessions — seems to me of very little interest 
 or importance. 
 
IX.] FAITH AS AN ACT OF WILL 159 
 
 it really a worthy or a possible conception of God, that He 
 is interested only in conduct, and is destitute of anything 
 corresponding to what in us are called intellectual and 
 aesthetic interests ? If we wish to beUeve in such a Deity, 
 we are certainly wise to construct a world for ourselves 
 out of our wishes and sentiments, for the real world will 
 contradict our belief at every turn. 
 
 The limitations of exclusive moralism are very apparent. 
 It is an irrational type, since it has no standard except 
 the moral consciousness. It will not even ask why things 
 are right or wrong ; and so it often confounds things in- 
 different with things morally wrong, and erects senseless 
 puritanical tabus. It rejects happiness and beauty as 
 objects, and lays a coarse and heavy hand on the beauti- 
 ful things of the world. It is apt to be hard and 
 unsympathetic, and does not escape a sort of sour 
 worldliness. 
 
 Matthew Arnold calls this type the Hebraic, as opposed 
 to the Hellenic, which represents the intellectual and 
 artistic ideals of Ufe. He accuses his fellow-countrymen 
 of following the Hebrew ideal too exclusively, and neglect- 
 ing the Hellenic. Santayana, in speaking of the typically 
 Protestant civilisation, brings a similar indictment in 
 clever satirical form. * Protestantism is convinced of" 
 the importance of success and prosperity ; it abominates 
 what is disreputable ; contemplation seems to it idleness, 
 solitude selfishness, and poverty a sort of dishonourable 
 punishment. It is constrained and punctilious in righteous- 
 ness ; it regards a married and industrious life as typically 
 godly, and there is a sacredness to it, as of a vacant 
 Sabbath, in the unoccupied higher spaces which such an 
 existence leaves for the soul. It lacks the notes of dis- 
 illusion, humility, and speculative detachment. Its bene- 
 volence is optimistic and aims at raising men to a conven- 
 tional well-being ; it thus misses the inner appeal of 
 Christianity, which begins by renunciation and looks to 
 
160 FAITH [CH. 
 
 spiritual freedom and peace. ... It is a part of Protes- 
 tantism to be austere, energetic, unwearied in some laborious 
 task. The end and profit are not so much regarded as the 
 mere habit of self-control and practical devotion and 
 steadiness. The point is to accompUsh something, no 
 matter what ; so that Protestants show on this ground 
 some respect even for an artist — when he has once achieved 
 success.'^ 
 
 Such are some of the fruits of making Faith exclusively 
 an act of the will, or moral sense. In my next lecture I 
 shall show how the prevailing distrust of theoretical con- 
 structions has given birth to a peculiar kind of empiricism 
 in religion, which has produced rather startling develop- 
 ments in the Romai. Church. 
 
 ( Santajana, Reascm in Religion, p, 114^ 
 
X.1 FAITH BASED ON PEACTICAL NEEDS ICl 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FAITH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS — MODERNISM 
 
 The rulers of the Roman Church have always fully recog- 
 nised the great influence of Faith upon conduct, and have 
 paid careful attention to the formation of beliefs. The 
 whole educational method of Romanism assumes quite 
 frankly that it is desirable to prejudice the minds of the 
 young in favour of certain beliefs, and that it is justifiable 
 to use almost any means to strengthen and confirm them. 
 The mind of the child, under Catholicism, is moulded into 
 a particular shape almost from his cradle ; even in the ele- 
 mentary school-room he is not allowed to breathe a non- 
 Catholic atmosphere ; and in mature life he is forbidden to 
 question, even in thought, what his Church has taught him. 
 In many cases this system is as successful in producing 
 the type of character desired as Sandow's gymnastic 
 course is in producing a muscular frame. The Catholic 
 lives and dies in an untroubled assurance that he has 
 possession of the truth ; he performs a number of actions, 
 some morally estimable, others morally indifferent, some 
 perhaps morally flagitious, in obedience to his directors, 
 and abstains from others. Like a hothouse flower, he 
 blooms luxuriantly when carefully shielded from the 
 rude winds of free thought and free discussion. 
 
 Catholicism is best regarded as an art of holiness. The 
 theory and method of the system are those of all artistic 
 training. The disciplr wishes to acquire certain aptitudes 
 — in this case, a certain kind of character — and he puts 
 himself under the care of trained experts who tell him how 
 
 L 
 
162 FAITH [oh. 
 
 the desired result is to be attained. The young painter 
 does not enquire whether the relation between his pig- 
 ments and the object which he is trying to copy is ' real ' 
 or ' apparent ' ; he is content if he can produce the effect 
 of a tree or river upon his canvas. A sham relic or miracle 
 is as good as a real one in stimulating emotion, if it is 
 believed in. And the promised results do follow. The 
 Catholic discipline does produce peace of mind and self- 
 control ; it economises energy by prohibiting experiments ; 
 it counteracts the effect of individual weakness, and 
 utilises one line at least of racial experience. 
 
 The merits and defects of this system have been already 
 considered under the head of Authority. Here we have 
 only to note its pragmatic character in all that falls outside 
 religious truth. It is so much more important to avoid 
 sin than to have correct opinions on scientific matters, 
 that error and even imposture will often be encouraged 
 in the interest of beHef and conduct. 
 
 And yet Catholicism can never acquiesce in the subjec- 
 tivism and anti-intellectualism of the philosophy which we 
 have just been discussing. Catholic theology is built on a 
 foundation of Greek philosophy, and is intimately connected 
 with the transcendental realism of Plato and Plotinus, 
 modified but not contradicted by the study of Aristotle. 
 The Roman Church has anathematised the Kantian doc- 
 trine which confines our knowledge to phenomena; it asserts 
 that the being and attributes of God may be proved intel- 
 lectually. The active intervention of God in human affairs 
 is rescued from the clutches of the mechanical sciences, 
 not by scepticism about the objective existence of the phe- 
 nomenal world, but by behef in the supernatural. Belief in 
 miracle, not only certain miracles in the past, guaranteed 
 by authority, but in miracle as a part of the constitution of 
 the world, is an essential part of Catholicism. The Catholic 
 view of the world is a modified realism, within which it 
 is possible to distinguish two ' orders/ the natural and the 
 
X.] FAITH BASED ON PKACTICAL NEEDS 163 
 
 supernatural, interacting on the same plane. The Church 
 has left to its philosophers great latitude in attempting to 
 determine the relations of the time-process to eternity, 
 and has never shrunk from crude pictorial images in its 
 exoteric teaching. But it has consistently refused either 
 to accept idealism, in the post-Kantian sense, or to abandon 
 the supernaturalism which forms the connecting link 
 between God and nature. 
 
 Modem science has inflicted a grievous wound upon this 
 system by its denial of the miraculous. The nature of the 
 quarrel between science and Catholic orthodoxy, on this 
 head, is often misunderstood. Apologists are pleased 
 when they find that wonderful cases of * mind-cure ' 
 can be substantiated. But this line of defence can only 
 prove that a few alleged miracles are not miraculous, not 
 that any miracles are true or possible. What is necessary 
 for Catholicism is to prove the intercalation of the genuinely 
 supernatural with the natural, and this would be a refuta- 
 tion of the uniformity of natural law, the working hypothe- 
 sis of all the sciences. The scientific habit of mind, with 
 its exacting rule of testimony, has become so general 
 that belief in miracles grows harder every year. There are 
 still a good many people who are unable or unwilling tdi 
 separate Wahrheit and Dichtung, truth of fact from imagina-i 
 tive representation ; but their number dwindles, and those 
 who retain the old beHefs on aesthetic grounds are less 
 earnest defenders of the faith than the genuinely super- 
 stitious ; their reUgion is little more than a mode of refined 
 enjoyment. This blow has fallen with the greatest 
 severity on the ecclesiastical machinery. The sacerdotal 
 and sacramental system of the Catholic Church is based on 
 supernatural mechanism — on divine interventions in the 
 physical world conditioned by human agency. If these 
 interventions do not take place, almost all tha makes 
 Catholicism attractive to the laity and lucrative to the 
 hierarchy has vanished. 
 
164 FAITH [cH. 
 
 It was only to be expected that intelligent priests in 
 the Roman Church, who understand the gravity of the 
 situation, should endeavour to find a sounder basis for 
 Catholic truth than this discredited theory of supernatural 
 interventions. We have seen that there is much in the 
 CathoHc view of life which is in sympathy with prag- 
 matism, and that the sceptical Nominalists of the Middle 
 Ages came very near to this theory of knowledge. Accord- 
 ingly, it was inevitable that the suggestion should be 
 made that the traditional reahsm of CathoHc apologetics 
 should be abandoned ; and that by reducing the external 
 world to a mere system of instruments, arranged by the 
 human mind for its own purposes, relief might be found 
 for distressed faith. On this hypothesis, there is no sacred- 
 ness or inviolability in natural laws, in and for themselves. 
 They are approximately true, as diagrams of everchanging 
 phenomena, fixed, for purposes of observation, in a series 
 of discontinuous pictures, like the successive scenes of a 
 cinematograph. But even if the theoretical abstractions 
 of the intellect corresponded accurately to concrete fact, 
 which is not the case, what is the understanding but the 
 tool and instrument of the will ? We want to know 
 only in order that we may act and live. These static 
 laws, of which we have made such bug-bears, are of very 
 subordinate importance. The real world is the world of 
 will and feeling, the world of action ; and if religious 
 truths — the dogmas of the Church — are found to belong 
 to this sphere, and not to the inferior order of existential 
 fact, that is only what we should expect and desire to hear 
 about them. 
 
 The philosophical defence of the Modernist position has 
 been conducted mainly by Frenchmen, among whom Le 
 Roy ^ and Laberthonniere ^ may be named. As CathoHcs, 
 
 1 Dogme et Oritique. 
 
 • Le Ji£alisme Chretien et VId4alisine Grec; Essais de phUoaophie religieuse. 
 
X.] FAITH BASED ON PEACTICAL NEEDS 165 
 
 these writers are anxious not to be classed as Kantians, 
 since the name of Kant is obnoxious to the Roman Church ; 
 and in truth they do not define their philosophical position 
 very clearly. In Laberthonniere it takes the form of a 
 revolt against ' Greek idealism,' which, he considers, was 
 occupied with things, while Christianity is occupied with 
 life. The Greek asked, What are things ? The Christian 
 asks. Whence came I, and whither go I ? The Greeks were 
 insatiable in their desire to see and know ; and in conse- 
 quence Greek morahty is only an aspect of metaphysics. 
 For the Greek, evil is ignorance ; good is truth, and truth 
 is the adequate representation of things. To think is 
 everything, because thought is sight par excellence. So 
 came into existence the Greek philosophy of concepts. 
 Plato and Aristotle are agreed in the service which they 
 demand of their ' Ideas.' It is by them that they find the 
 one in the multiple, and the stable in the mobile. These 
 ideas are not our ideas but eternal essences, the determina- 
 tions of which we receive without putting anything into 
 them ourselves. Thus Greek philosophy is an intellec- 
 tuaHsm or rationaKsm. It begins with the desire to think 
 and see, and so it ends with a world of ideas. To enter 
 into the unchanging intelhgible world is salvation. Thought 
 is the beginning, middle, and end of fife. 
 
 The fact of individuafity, says Laberthonniere, always 
 embarrassed the Greek thinkers. The individual was 
 something which ought not to exist. They longed to wipe 
 out all dividing lines. Theirs was a * static ' ideal, good 
 only to contemplate. But an ideal which can be thus 
 contemplated is necessarily an impoverished view of reality, 
 because it is like a photograph of something which is always 
 in motion. It gives us a picture of movement stiffened 
 into unnatural immobility ; we contemplate a picture, 
 which can only give us some aspects, and perhaps not the 
 most significant, of the living, changing reality. Greek 
 philosophy provides us neither with a science of origins 
 
166 FAITH [cH. 
 
 nor a science of ends. It attaches itself to forms only. 
 Hence follows a sovereign indifference to the accidents of 
 life and the events of history ; for whoever can think, can 
 always contemplate ' the ideas ' in their unchanging har- 
 mony and beauty. This indifference, which antiquity 
 praised, is the enemy of charity and of progress. 
 
 After this indictment of the great Greek thinkers, our 
 Modernist proceeds to contrast with * Greek idealism * 
 the genius of Christianity. Christianity is preoccupied 
 with life, not with things. It is not a system of ideas, 
 fixed and unchanging, above the changing reality of the 
 world, but it is constituted by events occupying a place 
 in the time-series. It is itself a history, and the history 
 is itself a doctrine, a concrete doctrine. The Bible 
 explains the facts of history by stating them in their 
 ' dynamic ' relations — e.g. investing the figure of Jesus 
 of Nazareth with the attributes proper to the founder 
 of a great Church, such as He actually did found, though 
 without intending it. The inspired historian * looked 
 higher ' than literal fact ; he narrates history in the Hght 
 of his knowledge of the whole drama, of which he is only 
 giving us the first act. Christ is not simply an object of 
 historic certitude ; he is also an object of Faith. And it is 
 the latter aspect which is of practical importance. 
 
 At this point the Modernists divide ; it is impossible to 
 attribute to them as a body any one doctrine about the 
 historical side of Christianity. They desire, for the most 
 part, that criticism rather than philosophy should be 
 regarded as the starting-point of the movement. The 
 authors of The Programme of Modernism (p. 16) say : ' So 
 far from our philosophy dictating our critical method, it is 
 the critical method that has of its own accord forced us to 
 a very tentative and uncertain formulation of various 
 philosophical conclusions.' But, in point of fact, some 
 members of the school are primarily philosophical tlieo- 
 logians, while others are primarily critics. And it is the 
 
FAirH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS 167 
 
 specialists in Biblical criticism who are the most radical 
 members of the school.^ 
 
 Laberthomiiere sounds an uncertain note ^ on the value 
 of the historical facts narrated in the Gospels. But there 
 is no hesitation or obscurity about M. Loisy's attitude. 
 The Gospels, he says, are hke the Pentateuch, a patchwork 
 of history and legend. Even the Synoptics contradict 
 each other. In Mark the life of Jesus follows a progressive 
 development. The first to infer his Messiahship is Simon 
 Peter at Csesarea Philippi ; and Jesus Himself first declares 
 it openly in His trial before the Sanhedrim. In Matthew 
 and Luke, on the contrary, Jesus is presented to the public 
 as the Son of God from the beginning of His ministry ; 
 He comes forward at once as the supreme Lawgiver, the 
 Judge, the anointed of God. The Fourth Gospel goes 
 further still. His heavenly origin, His priority to the 
 world, His co-operation in the work of creation and 
 salvation, are ideas which are foreign to the other Gospels, 
 but which the author of the Fourth Gospel has set forth in 
 his Prologue, and in part put into the mouth of John the 
 Baptist. The difference between the Christ of the Synoptic 
 Gospels and the Christ of John may be summed up by 
 saying that * the Clirist of the Synoptics is historical, but 
 not God ; the Johannine Christ is divine, but not his- 
 torical.' 
 
 Even Mark, M. Loisy thinks, probably only incorporates 
 an eyewitness document. The Gospel which bears his 
 name was issued, probably about fifteen years later than 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, by a non-Palestinian Chris- 
 tian, who Uved perhaps at Rome. The Gospel of Matthew 
 was written by a non-Palestinian Jew who lived in Asia 
 Minor or Syria, about the beginning of the second century. 
 He writes in the interest of Catholic ecclesiasticism, and 
 may well have been a presbyter or bishop who wished to 
 
 1 Cf. my article on * Modernism ' iu the Quarterly Review foi April 1909, 
 s Compare p. 60 and p. 60 of his H^alisme Chretien. 
 
168 FAITH [CH. 
 
 advocate the monarchic episcopate. The chapters about 
 the birth of Christ seem not to have the sHghtest historical 
 foundation. The story of the Virgin Birth turns on a mis- 
 understood text of Isaiah. Of this part of the Gospel 
 Loisy says, ' Rien n'est plus arbitraire comme exegese, ni 
 plus faible comme narration Active.' The Third Gospel, 
 he proceeds, was probably written in the last decade of the 
 first century ; but the first edition, which traced the descent 
 of Christ through Joseph from David, has been tampered 
 with in the interests of the later idea of a Virgin Birth. 
 As for the Fourth Gospel, it is enough to say that the author 
 had nothing to do with the son of Zebedee, and that he is 
 in no sense a biographer of Christ, but the first and greatest 
 of the Christian mystics. 
 
 We have then, according to M. Loisy, only very corrupt 
 sources for a biography of Christ. And the only chance 
 of reconstructing the actual events lies in forming a mental 
 picture of the Galilean Prophet, and rejecting all that fails 
 to correspond to it. This picture, for M. Loisy, is that of 
 an enthusiastic peasant, ' of Umited intelligence,' who came 
 to fancy Himself the Messiah, and met His death in a fool- 
 hardy and pathetic attempt to proclaim a theocracy at 
 Jerusalem. Any statements in the Gospels which contra- 
 dict this theory are summarily rejected in the name of 
 what the Germans call Wirklichkeitssinn. The guillotine 
 falls upon them and there is an end of it. The Resurrection 
 is of course dismissed as unworthy of discussion. The 
 corpse of Jesus was thrown, with those of the two brigands, 
 into * quelque fosse commune,* and ' the conditions of burial 
 were such that after a few days it would have been im- 
 possible to recognise the remains of the Saviour, if any one 
 had thought of looking for them.' ^ The disciples, however, 
 had been too profoundly stirred by hope to accept defeat. 
 They hardly reaHsed that their Master was dead ; they had 
 fled to their homes before the last scene ; and besides, the.y 
 1 Loisy, Let ivangiles Synoptigues, chap. vii. 
 
X.] FAITH BASED ON PKACTICAL NEEDS 169 
 
 were fellow-countrymen of those who thought it quite 
 possible that Jesus was John the Baptist come to life 
 again. What more natural than that Peter should see his 
 Master one day while fishing on the lake ? ' The impulse 
 once given, the belief grew by the very need which it had 
 to strengthen itself.' Christ soon appeared also to ' the 
 eleven.' So their faith brought them back to Jerusalem, 
 and the Christian Church was bom. 
 
 * The supernatural life of Christ in the faithful and in 
 the Church has been clothed in a historical form, which 
 has given birth to what we might somewhat loosely call 
 the Christ of legend.' * Such a criticism does away with 
 the possibility of finding in Christ's teachiag even the 
 embryonic form of the Church's later theological teaching.' ^ 
 The Christ whom the Church worships is the product of 
 Christian Faith and love. He is a purely ideal figure ; and 
 it betrays a total absence of the historical sense, and a 
 total inability to distinguish between things so essentially 
 different as Faith and fact, to seek for His likeness in the 
 Prophet of Nazareth. 
 
 This new apologetic is likely to take away the breath of 
 the ordinary Christian believer. The Modernist professes 
 himself ready to admit not only all that a sane and im- 
 partial criticism might demand with reference to the 
 Gospel history, but the most fantastic theories of the 
 destructive school. And then, having cheerfully surren- 
 dered the whole citadel of orthodox apologetics, he turns 
 round and says that nothing is lost — that for his part he 
 claims to be treated as a good son of the Church, and 
 wishes to be allowed to recite her creeds and observe 
 her discipline. Let us see how he seeks to justify this 
 position. 
 
 I have already (in speaking of Church authority) said 
 something about the Modernist theory of development. 
 The Church is made to take the place of Christ. It is the 
 
 1 The Programme of Modernism, pp. 82, 83, 90. 
 
170 FAITH [cH. 
 
 life of the Church which constitutes Christianity. This 
 great institution has had to Hve in the world, and to adapt 
 itself, like every other organism, to its environment. ' If,' 
 says M. Loisy, ' Christianity is made to consist in Faith in 
 God as our Father, which is the extreme form of the anti- 
 CathoHc and Protestant idea, all the hierarchical, dogmatic, 
 and ritual development of the Church falls outside true 
 Christianity, and appears as a progressive deterioration of 
 the religion.' ^ But these developments were all necessary, 
 if the Church was to survive ; and since we may presume 
 that Jesus wished His society to survive, we may say 
 that He would have approved whatever was necessary to 
 be done, in order that the Church, in saving itself, might 
 save His Gospel.^ ' To reproach the CathoUc Church with 
 the developments of its constitution is to reproach it for 
 having lived.' ^ It is very unlike the society which Jesus 
 gathered round Him ; but what of that ? When you want 
 to convince yourself of the identity of an individual, you do 
 not try to squeeze him into his cradle.* 
 
 The right of change and self-adaptation is not confined 
 to the externals of government and ritual. Dogmas are 
 only the images of truth, not as it is in itself, but as it 
 appears to our minds. And if they wear out, as they do 
 sometimes, or cease to be helpful, they may be altered 
 without scruple. The value of symbols (and all dogma is 
 symbolic) depends solely on the sense which we attach to 
 them ; in themselves they are nothing. And the sense 
 which we attach to them is above all a practical sense. 
 ' A dogma proclaims, above all, a prescription of practical 
 order ; it is the formula of a rule of practical conduct.' ^ 
 Religion is not an intellectual adhesion to a system of 
 speculative propositions. ' Why then should we not bring 
 theory into harmony with practice ? ' ^ 
 
 » Loisy, L'ivangiU et realise, p. 127. ' I^'d. . p. 138. 
 
 » Ibid., p. 154. « Ibid., p. lea 
 
 ■ Le Roy, Dogme et Critique, p. 25. • Ibid. 
 
JL] FAITH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS 171 
 
 Le Roy gives us some examples of this Catholic prag- 
 matism. When we say, * God is personal,' we mean, 
 ' behave in our relations with God as you do in your rela- 
 tions with a human person.' When we say, * Jesus is risen 
 from the dead,' we mean, * treat Him as if He were your 
 contemporary.' Similarly, the doctrine of the Real 
 Presence means that we should take, in presence of the 
 consecrated elements, the same attitude as we should in 
 presence of the actual Jesus. 
 
 His main theses may be summed up in his own words. 
 * The current intellectualist conception renders insoluble 
 most of the objections which are now raised against the 
 idea of dogma. A doctrine of the primacy of action, on 
 the contrary, permits us to solve the problem without 
 abandoning anything of the rights of thought, or of the 
 exigencies of dogma.' ^ M. Le Roy shows in the sequel 
 that he ' saves ' dogma by separating it entirely from 
 scientific fact. He regards all theological and dogmatic 
 propositions as principles of action, not statements of fact, 
 and then argues that since on every page he proclaims that 
 action is more important than thought, and the dynamic 
 aspect of things of higher worth than the static, he has 
 triumphantly vindicated the claims of dogma against un- 
 believing rationalism. *A dogma,' he says, *is a truth 
 belonging to the vital order ; it presents its object under 
 the forms of the action commanded to us by it, and the 
 obligation to adhere to it concerns properly its practical 
 significance, its vital value.' ^ 
 
 What, then, is the value and meaning of the scientific 
 truth which M. Le Roy is so eager to reduce to its proper 
 insignificance ? It would really seem as if it had none, 
 except what we choose to put into it. * No fact has any 
 existence and scientific value except in and by a theory, 
 whence it follows that strictly speaking it is the savant 
 who makes the scientific facts.' ^ 
 
 1 Le Roy, Dogme et Critique, p. 34. « IMd.t p. 91. « /Md.^ p. 334. 
 
172 FAITH [cH. 
 
 There is a great resemblance between the position of 
 M. Le Roy and that of our leading English Modernist, 
 Mr. Tyrrell. ' The world of appearance,' he says,^ ' is 
 simply subordinate and instrumental to the real world of 
 our will and affections ^ in which we live the life of love and 
 hate, and pass from one will-attitude to another in relation 
 to other wills than our own. . . . Jn this region truth 
 has a practical and teleological sense — it is the trueness 
 of a means to an end, of an instrument to its purpose ; 
 and like these truths it is to some extent conditioned by 
 what we know and believe about its object. . . . Hence 
 the religiously important criticism to be applied to points 
 of Christian belief, whether historical, philosophic, or 
 scientific, is not that which interests the historian, philo- 
 sopher, or scientist, but that which is supplied by the 
 spirit of Christ. Does the belief make for the love of God 
 and man ? Does it show us the Father and reveal to us 
 our sonship ? ' The truth of the creed is a practical or 
 regulative truth. It is serviceable to life, and therefore 
 cannot be a mere fiction, for no he can be serviceable to 
 life on an universal scale. * Beliefs that have been found 
 to foster and promote the spiritual life of the soul must 
 so far be in accordance with the nature and the laws of 
 that will-world with which it is the aim of religion to bring 
 us into harmony : their practical value results from, and 
 is founded in, their representative value.' Our assurance 
 of their truth r^sts on ' the imiversally proved value of the 
 creed as a practical guide — the consensus of the ethical 
 and religious orhis terrarum* * 
 
 * The rule of prayer is the rule of belief.' This means 
 that what alone concerns us is to realise the ' prayer- 
 value ' of the various articles in the creed. For instance, 
 
 1 Tyrrell, Lex Orandi, chap. viii. (abridged). 
 
 • Note the characteristic confusion of the will and the aflfections, 
 
 • An excellent example of the Catholic peiitio principii. The Roman 
 Church constitutes the ethical and religious orhis terrartaii. The Roman 
 Church finds its dogmas practically valuable. Therefore the universal valu« 
 of the dogmas to ethics and religion if proved. 
 
X.] FAITH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS 173 
 
 the belief in God has been fashioned by the religious needs 
 of man's nature.^ The puzzle about free-will means that 
 our will belongs to the world of realities, whereas our 
 understanding can represent things only in terms of the 
 world of appearances. 2 ' The understanding is but an 
 instrument fashioned by the will to serve as a guide to 
 life and action.' ^ ' The doctrine of the Trinity is the 
 creation of love and life.' * ' While Christianity with its 
 Trinity of divine Persons, its God made man, its pantheon 
 of divinised men and women, is open to the superficial 
 charge of being a reversion to the pagan polytheistic type, 
 it is rather to be regarded as taking up into a higher 
 synthesis those advantages of polytheism which had to be 
 sacrificed for the greater advantages of a too abstract and 
 soul-starving monotheism.' ^ The * facts of religious 
 history must, as matters of Faith, be determined by the 
 criterion of Faith, i.e. by their proved religious values.' ^ 
 * A man will be justified in holding to the facts until he is 
 convinced that their religious value is in no way imperilled 
 by the results of historical criticism.' * Mistakings of 
 faith-values for fact-values are to be ascribed to the 
 almost ineradicable materialism of the human mind which 
 makes us view the visible world as the only solid reality.' ^ 
 Enough has now been said to show what form prag- 
 matism takes in the Roman Church. M. le Roy says very 
 truly, that the ordinary Roman Catholic ' lives pragmatism' 
 to a much larger extent than he reahses. He chooses 
 among the doctrines of his Church those which appeal to 
 him, and passively accepts the rest, without making them 
 part of his religion. He may even try experiments at one 
 shrine after another. The Madonna of Lourdes may be 
 kind, though her namesake at La Salette is difficult ; if 
 
 1 Lex Orandi, p. 73. « Ihid. , p. 87. 
 
 8 7&tU,p. 98. * Ibid, -p. 100. 
 
 5 P. 149. This is again a characteristic utterance which shows the vast gulf 
 between Koman Catholicism and other forms of Christianity. 
 « P. 169. 7 P. 191. 
 
174 FAITH [cH. 
 
 St. Anne is not sufficiently attentive to his supplications, 
 he may try St. Joseph. Moreover, the whole Roman 
 Church has, in point of fact, lived and thriven by self- 
 adaptation very much as the Modernists say. Certainly 
 it may seem a strange * note ' of divine assistance, that a 
 Church should be obliged to change like a chameleon in 
 self-defence ; but it is a tenable view that since Rome 
 became less pHant and receptive, she has lost ground 
 everywhere. And pragmatism may be called in to explain 
 accommodations which would otherwise be rather difficult 
 to justify. Nevertheless, I believe this method of apolo- 
 getics to be fundamentally unsound, when applied, as the 
 Modernists apply it, to justify their own position in the 
 Roman Church. It is plain that the * facts of reUgion ' 
 are no facts for them. M. Loisy's Jesus may have been a 
 more respectable Messiah than Theudas, but he belongs to 
 the same category. There has been, after all, a real breach 
 of continuity, and no mere development, in the Church as 
 they conceive it ; and it is a breach which divides the 
 Church from the historical Christ. It is as if one were to 
 trace one's descent from some great man, and to estabhsh 
 every link except the first : — our ancestor was after all 
 wrongly supposed to be the son of the great man ; or the 
 great man was only a myth. It is quite impossible to 
 justify this position by disparaging existential truth. 
 If it does not matter whether the Incarnation was a 
 fact or a legend ; if Faith can create dogmas with the 
 same freedom which Plato's Socrates claims in inventing 
 his myths ; if things exist only as instrimients for the will, 
 and all events are plastic under the hand of the religious 
 imagination ; we are transported into a world where there 
 is no difference between fact and fiction, and where it is 
 difficult to suppose that human conduct can matter much. 
 Such a contempt for actuaUty is far removed from the 
 Christian view of the world. It will of course be said that 
 it is only religious symbols which are thus removed from the 
 
FAITH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS 176 
 
 existential order ; and that it is Just because the Modernist 
 has so great respect for historical accuracy, that he 
 carries his critical apparatus even into the holy places of 
 the Christian origins. But with what object is the his- 
 torical form retained for Faith, when it is rejected as fact ? 
 For whose benefit does the Modernist priest go on praying 
 to the Queen of Heaven, whom he believes to be a purely 
 mythical personage ? Not for his own surely. It would 
 be a strange attitude of mind to be able to offer petitions 
 to a being whom, at the time of praying, one conceived 
 of as non-existent. Then it must be for the sake of the 
 uninstructed laity. But, putting aside the moral objection 
 that might be raised, is it not significant that those who 
 can find comfort and help in such devotions are entirely 
 convinced of the historical facts which the Modernist finds 
 himself unable to accept ? Would any simple Catholic 
 feel that the foundations of his Faith were not assailed by 
 M. Loisy's Les Evangiles Synoptiques ? It may be asserted 
 with confidence, that ' dogmatic symbols ' are only helpful 
 to those who can find in them an actual bridge between the 
 spiritual and material worlds — just that kind of bridge 
 which the Modernists, as critics, reject as impossible. * The 
 historian,' says M. Loisy, * does not remove God from 
 history ; he never encounters Him there.* Now this 
 assumption (for it is of course an assumption to say that 
 God never manifests Himself in history) is absolutely 
 fatal to Catholicism as a living and working Faith. What- 
 ever changes the Roman Church may make, to adjust 
 itself to changing circumstances, it is safe to predict that 
 it will never accept a God who * never intervenes in history.' 
 The whole system of Catholicism — its sacraments, its 
 disciphne, its festivals, its priesthood, is bound up with the 
 belief that God does intervene in history. Those who 
 think otherwise seem to be liable to the reproach which 
 they most of all dislike — that of scholastic intellectual- 
 ism and neglect of concrete experience. 
 
176 FAITH [CH. 
 
 The authors of the Programme of Modernism seem to 
 be right in saying that the philosophy of the movement 
 grew out of its critical studies. There are many intelli- 
 gent priests in the Roman Church who have become keenly 
 alive to the immense difl&culties which historical criticism 
 has raised in the way of traditional beliefs. They can no 
 longer believe what the Church requires them to beheve. 
 And yet they are conscious of no rebellion against the 
 spirit of Catholicism. They are ardently loyal and enthusi- 
 astic Catholics. Their faith is unimpaired, but it no 
 longer rests on the old base, or carries with it conviction 
 that whatever the Church teaches is true. In this dire 
 perplexity (and we must all sympathise with them in an 
 impasse which by no means confronts the Roman Church 
 alone) they turn eagerly to a popular and confident school 
 of philosophy which seems to interpret the situation for 
 them, and to offer them a way of honourable escape from 
 it. The separation of truths of Faith from truths of fact ; 
 the primacy of will and feeling over discursive thought ; 
 the right to believe what we wish to beUeve ' at our own 
 risk ' — what is this but the very solution they were craving 
 for ? And now they find this position maintained by 
 philosophers of repute, who have no personal reason for 
 wishing to justify it. We cannot wonder that voluntarism 
 and pragmatism have made many eager disciples among 
 the liberal clergy. 
 
 And yet they are wrong. This philosophy, which seems 
 to promise them an honourable truce between the old 
 Faith which they love and the new knowledge which they 
 cannot ignore, would in reafity, if followed up seriously 
 and not merely grasped at in controversial straits, lead them 
 far outside Christianity. It rests on a very deep-rooted 
 scepticism — on a psychology which tries to be a self-suffic* 
 ing philosophy, independent of objective truth. It is 
 Kantianism without the moral absolutism which gave Kant 
 a TTou (rrdi. It is a mere experimental opportunism which 
 
X.] FAITH BASED ON PRACTICAL NEEDS V^ 
 
 can never rise to a high spiritual level, because it acknow- 
 ledges no fixed eternal standard to which our actions can be 
 referred. Even God, if the idea of God is retained, can be 
 only an ideal projected by the mind, not an objective fact. 
 The scepticism is of a pecuharly intractable nature, because 
 it involves the instrument of thought. We are hardly 
 allowed to form concepts, because all is in a state of flux, 
 and nothing remains the same while we are thinking about 
 it. 
 
 Such a philosophy would never have attracted Christian 
 priests except at a time of exceptional difficulty and per- 
 plexity. The aid which it briugs is illusory ; it enables 
 a priest to blow hot and cold with the same mouth and feel 
 no qualms, but it offers no solution of the problem ; it 
 leaves the tension between Faith and fact as great as 
 before. The Pope was quite right in condemning Modem- 
 ism ; he could not possibly have done otherwise ; though 
 we may regret that he fails to realise the severity of the 
 crisis, and suggests no way out of it except the impossible 
 one of return to tradition and St. Thomas Aquinas. The 
 treatment of the Modernists is ungenerous ; the total failure 
 of the Vatican to understand the loyalty and distress of 
 these unwilliQg ' heretics ' is not a good omen for the 
 future. 
 ^ The consideration of these current controversies has 
 provided, I hope, an illustration of what is the main sub- 
 ject of these two lectures — the results of the attempt 
 to separate Faith entirely from scientific or theoretical 
 knowledge. The conclusion which I maintain is that Faith 
 is not independent of the intellectual processes, and that 
 whatever form dualism takes — whether, with Kant, we 
 separate the theoretical from the practical reason, or, 
 with Ritschl, judgments of fact from judgments of value, 
 or, with Loisy, the Christ of Faith from the Christ of 
 history — the result is profoundly unsatisfactory. , 
 
 M 
 
1/8 FAITH [cH. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 FAITH AND REASON 
 
 We have now to consider the place of the intellect in 
 religious belief. The view that the subject-matter of 
 religion is a system of facts and laws, which can be studied 
 and known like any other subject of knowledge, is called 
 rationalism. The word is often used by religious people 
 as a synonym for scepticism or infidelity. But in fact 
 rationalism has quite as often been orthodox as heretical. 
 The scholastic (especially the Thomist) theology, which is 
 still officially recognised by the Roman Catholic Church 
 as the philosophy of the Christian rehgion, is mainly ^ 
 rationalistic, within certain prescribed limits. God has 
 revealed certain truths to mankind ; but the authority of 
 the revelation, though not its contents, has been guaranteed 
 by signs offered to the reason. Moreover, the existence of 
 God is not only known by revelation, but can also be 
 demonstrated by reason. Nor does official Rome show any 
 disposition to recede from this position. When Brunetiere, 
 some years ago, announced ' the bankruptcy of the sciences,' 
 and, in the interests of CathoUc orthodoxy, separated Faith 
 from knowledge, the Archbishop of Paris reprimanded him, 
 and referred him to St. Thomas Aquinas, who says that 
 * Faith presupposes natural knowledge, though that which 
 in and for itself can be proved and known may be an object 
 of Faith to those who cannot understand the proof.' A 
 
 1 The Summa Theologiae contains many sound statements about the pro- 
 Tince of the will in determining belief; but St. Thomas does not, like so many 
 moderns, set the will against the intellect in order to disparage th< latter. 
 
XL] FAITH AXD KEASON 179 
 
 Papal decree of 1855 declares that ' rational conclusions 
 can prove with certainty the existence of God, the spiritual 
 nature of the soul, and the freedom of the will.' ^ The 
 Vatican Council of 1870 decreed : ' Si quis dixerit Deum 
 unum et verum naturali rationis lumine certo cognosci non 
 possBy anathema sit.^ The Modernists are blarned for 
 abandoning this position. Again, the evidential school 
 in England, long held in special honour at Cambridge in 
 the person of Paley, is crudely rationalistic. Paley, who 
 expresses his surprise that in Apostolic times more stress 
 was not laid on the arguments from miracle and prophecy, 
 which seemed to him so convincing, is equally confident 
 of the irresistible cogency of the argument from desi^)^, 
 which he thus enunciates. ' The marks of design are too 
 strong to be gotten over. Design must have a designer, ^ 
 That designer must be a Person. That Person is God.' 
 
 Speculative idealism, as a philosophy of religion, gives us 
 examples of intellectualism — one can hardly say of rational- 
 ism — of a very different kind. Speculative ideahsm substi- 
 tutes truth of idea for truth of fact ; or rather, it regards 
 ideas as the real facts. I have already quoted Fichte's^ \^ 
 dictum that we are saved by metaphysics and not by/ 
 history. Hegel's absolute idealism, or Panlogism, as it is 
 sometimes called, the most imposing philosophical edifice 
 ever reared, belongs to this type. But Kant was also a 
 rationahst on one side — the side on which his modem 
 admirers do not follow him. Among Christian apologists 
 Newman is sometimes thoroughly rationalistic in language, 
 as when he says : ' What I mean by theology is simply 
 the science of God, or the truths we know about God, put 
 into a system, just as we have a science of the stars and 
 call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it 
 geology.' 2 This, however, is not Newman's real position. 
 He belongs, like Pascal, to the type of sceptical orthodoxy. 
 
 1 HofFding, The Philosophy of Religion, p. 387. 
 
 • Cf. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 435. 
 
180 FAITH [CH. 
 
 Orthodox rationalism is associated, above all, with the 
 famous * proofs ' of God's existence, which were very 
 roughly handled by Kant, and are at present much out of 
 favour. I wish to indicate, as well as I can in a very brief 
 discussion, what value can, in my opinion, still be attached 
 to them. 
 
 The ontological argument in its scholastic form concludes 
 from the notion of God as the most perfect being, the fact 
 of His existence ; because existence is certainly involved 
 in the idea of perfection. Descartes states it in a form 
 which is scarcely defensible. ' God's existence can no more 
 be separated from His essence, than the idea of a mountain 
 from ' hat of a valley.' ' It is true,' he goes on, ' that I 
 may imagine a winged horse, though no winged horses 
 exist ; but the cases are not ana^ogous, for I can think of 
 a non-existent Pegasus, but I cannot conceive of God 
 except as existing, which shows that existence is inseparable 
 from Him.' In other words, the ontological assertion 
 cannot be claimed for all ideas, but only for necessary 
 ones, such as the ideas of perfection and infinity, that is to 
 say, of God. Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist, states 
 the argument more attractively. ' Our human soul cannot 
 feign or create any new cogitation or conception that was 
 not before, but only variously compound that which is ; 
 nor can it ever make a positive idea of an absolute non- 
 entity — that is, such as hath neither actual nor possible 
 existence ; much less could our imperfect being create the 
 entity of so vast a thought as that of an infinitely perfect 
 being out of nothing ; because there is no repugnancy at 
 all in the latter, as there is in the former. We affirm 
 therefore that, was there no God, the idea of an absolutely 
 perfect being could never have been made or feigned.' ^ 
 
 Kant convicts the ontological argument of two errors. 
 First, the purely logical possibility of the notion of an 
 ens realissimum is transformed into a real possibility, and 
 1 Cudworth, Intellectual Systenif vol. i chap. v. 
 
XI.1 FAITH AND REASON 181 
 
 secondly actual existence is deduced from the notion as 
 one of the attributes implied in it ; which is, he says, much 
 the same as to deduce from the idea of a hundred dollars 
 the existence of that sum in my pocket. 
 
 This obvious criticism, which had been made long before 
 Kant, is only fatal to the crudest form of the ontological 
 proof. Hegel rehabilitated the argument in his own 
 fashion. ' The content is right,' he said ; * it is only the 
 form which is defective.' In his philosophy the idea itself 
 is the absolute, and ' it would be strange to deny to it 
 even the poorest category, that of being.' This, however, 
 is not what religion wants to prove about God. But 
 Hegel also argues that thought, which is a spiritual act, 
 must have its ground in a spiritual principle which is also 
 the ground of nature. The agreement of the ideal laws 
 of thought with the real laws of being, is a fact of ex- 
 perience. There must then be a common ground of both. 
 
 Lotze gave the argument a new and characteristic 
 turn, replacing logical proof by immediate certainty of 
 * living feeling.' It would be * intolerable ' to believe 
 that perfection exists only in our thought, and has no 
 power or being in the world of reality. This removes the 
 argument from its intellectualist basis. God exists, 
 because Faith pronounces it * intolerable ' that He should 
 not. It is intolerable, not unthinkable. It is possible to 
 conceive of such a condition, but only by assuming that 
 the world is bad and meaningless. And we reject such an 
 idea by an act of reasonable Faith. 
 
 Professor Ladd ^ restates the argument in a shape some- 
 what nearer to its earlier form. All beliefs and cognitions, 
 he says, depend upon an ontological proof or postulate. 
 Every argument for every kind of reality presupposes that 
 we are in contact with ontological truth. ' What is so con- 
 nected with our experience of reality that it is essential 
 to explain that experience is believed to be real.' 
 
 1 Philosophy of Religion, vol. i. p. 309. 
 
182 FAITH [CH. 
 
 The real force of the ontological argument lies n the 
 reasonable and stubbornly confident claim of the human 
 spirit to be in some sort of contact with the highest reality. 
 The very conception of objective truth is most reasonably 
 accounted for by supposing it to be a * revelation ' from 
 Him who is the truth. Whence comes our idea of God, 
 if not from God Himself ? Who else could have put it 
 there ? Since then we certainly have an idea of God, and 
 since only God can have put it into our minds, we may 
 infer that God exists. This argument was unfortunately 
 split into two halves in the scholastic period, and took the 
 following unsatisfactory form : (1) The idea of God implies 
 His existence ; (2) Our consciousness of God can only be 
 explained by an external divine revelation. Both these 
 are false, the former for the reasons already stated, and 
 the latter because the existence of an Absolute Spirit 
 could not be revealed in such a manner. But when we 
 say that God only can have implanted in our minds the 
 thought of God, we are, it seems to me, using a good argu- 
 ment. We cannot get behind the conviction that ' all 
 existence rests upon a Being the fountain of whose life is 
 within Himself ; we must ally the fugitive phenomena, 
 which colour the stream of life with ever-changing lives, 
 to an eternal and unchanging existence.'^ It is impossible, 
 if we think honestly, to regard the conception of God as a 
 purely subjective development. * This conception, as 
 human reason has somehow succeeded in framing it, seems 
 to the same reason to demand the reality of God. ' ^ 
 
 The cosmologiccU argument, in its earliest form, as we 
 find it in Aristotle, concludes from the motion in the world 
 to a first mover. Man is dissatisfied with the fragmentary 
 pictures which his experience of the world presents to him ; 
 he wants to find the ultimate causative principle. So he 
 arrives at the idea of a divine first cause. Against this 
 
 1 Fiohte. 
 
 * Ladd, Philosophy of Religion, rol. ii. p. 60. 
 
XL] FAITH AND REASON !» 
 
 time-honoured argument Kant objected that it is useless 
 to search for cause beyond cause in the hope of finding the 
 beginning of the chain ; the law of causality is only valid 
 for the world of phenomena, and cannot lead us to a first 
 cause beyond the world. Also, we have no reason to seek 
 for any cause of the world outside itself. 
 
 We admit readily that the cosmological argument is no 
 longer acceptable in its earlier deistic form, which separates 
 God from the world, and confines His action upon it to the 
 original act of creation. What the reUgious sense of our 
 day demands is not a Prime Mover but an immanent World-, 
 ground. And the demand for an immanent guiding prin- 
 ciple, acting in accordance with fixed laws and with a 
 rational purpose, is itself the cosmological argument. 
 What gave us the idea of such a world ? What impels us 
 to find everywhere evidence of law and reason, to be 
 content when we have found them and dissatisfied until 
 we have done so, unless such is indeed the constitution of 
 the real world ? This is in substance the turn which 
 Lotze gives to this argument. The proof is not directed to 
 anything which belongs to the past, but is made to yield 
 an ever present energy as the source and ground of all 
 cosmical change and happening.^ 
 
 The Ideological argument, or argument from design, is 
 treated by Kant with much greater respect than the two 
 preceding * proofs.' He calls it the oldest, the clearest, 
 and the most rational of the proofs. Nevertheless it shares 
 the fate of the others — that of being implicitly non-suited 
 before the trial begins.^ It has a regulative, not a constitu- 
 tive value. It is a mere introduction to the ontological 
 proof, which he considers himself to have already disposed 
 of. 
 
 The argument, as stated fairly enough by Kant, is as 
 
 1 Caldecott and Mackintosh, SeUctioru from the Literatwre \)f Theism^ 
 p. 206. 
 « Ihid., p. 211. 
 
184 FAITH [CB. 
 
 lollows. We observe in the world manifest signs of pur- 
 pose, executed with great wisdom, and existiag over the 
 whole of its vast extent. This arrangement of means and 
 ends is entirely foreign to the things existing in the world. 
 The nature of things could not of itself tend towards 
 certain purposes ; they must have been chosen and 
 directed by some rational principle, in accordance with 
 certain fundamental ideas. There exists, therefore, a 
 sublime and wise cause, which is free and intelligent. Its 
 unity may be inferred from the harmony existiug between 
 the parts of the world. 
 
 It is quite a mistake to suppose that Darwinism, or 
 modem science generally, has destroyed the teleological 
 argument. The naive teleology of Paley is no doubt to a 
 large extent discredited. It is an inner teleology — a vast 
 network of final purposes continually working themselves 
 out in the inextricably complex processes of natural life — 
 to which we are now directed. The very conception of 
 order and law, so far from contradicting the idea of pur- 
 pose, impUes it. The appearance of mechanism is just what 
 we ought to expect from a tremendous power operating 
 constantly and uniformly. What is really significant is 
 that in spite of this appearance of mechanism, in spite of 
 the enormous waste and apparent recklessness of Nature's 
 method, man cannot renounce the idea, nay, the conviction, 
 that an unceasing purpose runs through it all. It is per- 
 fectly true, as Kant says, that this drives us back upon the 
 ontological argument again. We have to face the objection 
 that this conviction may have a purely subjective origin. 
 But we have already conceded the righteous and reasonable 
 demand of Faith that when our whole personality — will, 
 thought, and feeling — tells us that we are in the presence 
 of objective truth and reality, we shall believe it. 
 
 * There are many proofs of God's existence, but no 
 demonstrations.' ^ Final postulates of thought are in- 
 
 1 Gwatkin, The Knowledge of Godf vol. L p. 9. 
 
FAITH AND KEASON 185 
 
 capable of demonstration. They are hypotheses, which 
 may be said to be ' proved ' if they explain the facts. Some 
 hypotheses, however, are so inwrought with the very 
 texture of rational experience, that to deny them is to 
 destroy experience. Many have thought that we may 
 rest our certainty of God's existence on this ground, and in 
 a sense I agree : but this argument at best only leads 
 half-way to the God of religious Faith. 
 
 The history of the Aufkldrung, and kindred movements 
 in other countries, is very instructive for a due apprecia- 
 tion of the results of pure intellectualism. If it takes the 
 form of rationaUsm, it tends to slide into naturalistic 
 pantheism. If it takes the form of speculative ideal- 
 ism, it tends to slide into idealistic pantheism. In 
 either case, its final state is to become a cosmological 
 theory, and to fall outside of religion properly so called. 
 A good example in England is John Toland, who in 1696 
 published his once famous book, Christianity not Mysteri- 
 ous, in which he argues that all the doctrines of Christi- 
 anity are in complete agreement with ' the religion of 
 reason,' that is, of educated common sense. * All Faith 
 now in the world,' he writes, * is entirely built on ratiocina- 
 tion.' He does not reject revelation, but holds that 
 revealed doctrine, though we might not have discovered 
 it for ourselves, is now capable of being proved and veri- 
 fied by common sense. Orthodox AngUcan rationalists, 
 like Tillotson and Paley, use much the same language, but 
 lay stress on miracles as signs offered to the understanding 
 in confirmation of the revelation. Tillotson, for instance, 
 says : ' Nothing ought to be received as a divine doctrine 
 and revelation, without good evidence that it is so : that 
 is, without some argument sufficient to satisfy a prudent 
 and considerate man.' ^ Again : * Faith is an assent of the 
 mind to something revealed by God : now all assent must 
 be grounded upon evidence ; that is, no man can believe 
 
 1 Tillotson, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 260, 
 
186 FAITH [cH. 
 
 f anything, unless he have, or think he hath, some reason 
 I to do so. For to be confident of a thing without reason 
 is not Faith, but a presumptuous persuasion and obstinacy 
 \ of mind.' ^ 
 
 It is worth while to contrast these utterances with St. 
 Paul's conception of evangelistic teaching. * My speech 
 and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, 
 but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power ; that your 
 Faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the 
 power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among the per- 
 fect ; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of 
 this world which are coming to nought : but we speak 
 God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath 
 been hidden, which God foreordained before the world 
 unto our glory.' ^ And again : ' By manifestation of 
 the truth commending ourselves to every man's con- 
 science in the sight of God.' ^ Few great religious 
 teachers have attached so much importance to mental 
 enlightenment as St. Paul. But he carefully distinguishes 
 the kind of ' knowledge ' which makes a man ' spiritual ' 
 and capable of discerning spiritual truth, from the prudence 
 and worldly wisdom to which appeal was so frequently 
 made in the eighteenth century. The appeal of the Gospel 
 is not to the logical faculty purged from * enthusiasm.' 
 That is a temper of mind which precludes acceptance of 
 the evidence which Faith brings with it, namely, what the 
 Apostle calls * demonstration of the Spirit and power.' It 
 is the pecuharity of revelation that it brings the mind into 
 contact with higher orders of reality and truth than are 
 accessible to worldly prudence and respectability ; and 
 these new experiences carry with them their own verifica- 
 tion in a new sense of power and spiritual vitality. It is 
 not too much to say that these eighteenth-century divines 
 had quite lost the true meaning of Faith. They regarded 
 
 1 Tillotson, Sermons, voL iv. p. 42. 
 
 « 1 Cor. ii. 4-7. » 2 Cor. It. 2, 
 
n.] FAITH AND REASON 187 
 
 it as ordinary knowledge or opinion concerned with divine 
 matters. But religious truth is not to be won in this 
 manner. Orthodox rationalism became more and more 
 dry and hfeless ; while some of its defenders, like Toland 
 himself, drifted into pantheistic naturalism, in which the 
 religious valuation of the world quite disappeared. 
 
 It is worth noticing how this type of rationalism some- 
 times shows its aflfinity with a cold, hard moralism, and 
 with utiUtarianism in philosophy. When all the poetical 
 and imaginative side of reKgion is rigorously banished, the 
 religious sense, which is still not extinguished, may attach 
 itself firmly to conduct, and may give its sanction to a cool- 
 headed ambition to improve the outward conditions of 
 humanity. In this way many excellent men in the last 
 century found a worthy aim and an adequate task. We 
 must always think respectfully of the utilitarian movement 
 which grew out of eighteenth century rationalism. 
 
 If utilitarian rationaUsm may be claimed as a character- 
 istically English type, speculative idealism has been the 
 typical German product of intellectualism. With Leibnitz, 
 and the Aufklarung generally, Faith in a divine reason, 
 encompassing the world, and the ground of human reason, 
 had been the basis of belief that universally valid truth is 
 accessible to man.^ Spinoza made this cosmic reason 
 immanent, so that it is not so much we who think, as God 
 who thinks in us ; and in order to think divinely, we need 
 only purify our souls from all personal interests and selfish 
 aims. But he never taught, like Kant, that our thought 
 is unrelated to objects existing outside itself. His error 
 was in placing this cosmic nature, which thinks in us, too 
 exclusively in intellectual activity. This limitation arose 
 from his great desire to win detachment from mundane 
 concerns, which seemed to him obstacles in the way of 
 cosmic consciousness. The loss involved in one-sided in- 
 tellectualism was disguised from himself by the mystical 
 
 1 Eucken, T?u Life of the Spirit (translated by Pogson), p. 309. 
 
188 FAITH [oh. 
 
 and genuinely devout side of his own character, which 
 supplied motives and experiences quite alien to the purely 
 speculative nature of his philosophy.^ 
 
 With Fichte and Hegel the thought, which Kant had 
 severed from the world, became the workshop in which the 
 whole of reality is created. Thought produces contra- 
 dictions out of itself and overcomes them, until the whole 
 of existence has been embraced, transmuted, and assimil- 
 ated into one all-embracing, absolute harmony. For a 
 short time it was thought that this ambitious philosophy 
 had solved the ultimate problem. Then followed a reaction 
 which has threatened to sweep away the substantial 
 gains which these great thinkers really secured for human 
 thought. Their disciples in this country now adopt a 
 much more modest tone, as becomes those who are standing 
 on the defensive. A good example of this school is Princi- 
 pal Caird, who, in his Introduction to the Philosophy of 
 Religion, thus vindicates for intellect the place of honour 
 in reUgious Faith : — 
 
 * It is no vaUd objection to the endeavour after a rational 
 knowledge of the contents of our religious beUef, to say 
 that the primary organ of spiritual knowledge is not reason 
 but Faith. That we must begin with intuition is no reason 
 why we should not go on to scientific knowledge. The 
 spontaneous and the reflective tendencies may co-exist. 
 Granting that the act of spiritual apprehension is quite 
 different from intellectual assent, there is still a place left 
 for reason in the province of religion. The science of 
 acoustics is not meaningless because we can hear without 
 it. We act before we reflect ; and rehgion must exist ^ 
 before it can be made the subject of reflective thought. \ 
 But in religion as in morality, art, and other spheres of 
 human activity, there is the underlying element of reason 
 which is the characteristic of all the activities of a self- j 
 conscious intelhgence. To endeavour to elicit and give ' 
 1 Eucken, The lA/eqfthe Spirit (translated by Pogson), p. 812. 
 
XI.] FAITH AND REASON 189 
 
 objective clearness to that element — to infuse into the 
 spontaneous and unsifted conceptions of religious experi- 
 ence the objective clearness, necessity, and organic unity 
 of thought — is the legitimate aim of science, in religion as 
 in other spheres. It would be strange if in the highest of 
 all provinces of human experience, intelligence must 
 renounce her claim. 
 
 i ' What then is the ofi&ce of intelligence in religion ? ^ 
 To purify our intuitions, which often deceive us. Truth\^ 
 is indeed its own witness, but not all that seems to be true. 
 We need intellect in order to distinguish that which has 
 a right to dominate the mind from that which derives its 
 influence only from accident and association. J 
 
 * Moreover, it is the highest task of philosophy to justify 
 those paradoxes and seeming contradictions in which the 
 religious consciousness finds its natural expression. It 
 seeks to lead us to a higher point of view, from which these 
 seeming contradictions vanish.' 
 
 These extracts are not sufficient to make Caird's stand- 
 point clear. His Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 
 should be read carefully. He holds that Thought or self- 
 conscious Mind is the only category under which the 
 Infinite can be conceived by us. ' All other categories 
 are still categories of the finite.' He agrees with the 
 Intuitivists that religion enables us to rise from the 
 finite to the infinite, and to find the ideal become real.^ But 
 he considers that feeling, taken at its face value, gives us 
 no sure foundation. We still have to inquire. Is it true ? -' 
 And to this question thought alone can give an answer. 
 Intuitive knowledge which professes to answer this question / 
 is not really intuitive or immediate, but inferential, and I 
 it is safer to recognise it for what it is. 
 
 Edward Caird's philosophy, though further from ortho- 
 dox Christianity, at any rate in tone, is very similar to his 
 brother's. He is equally confident that the right use of 
 
 * Caldecott, Fhilosqphy of Religion, p. 149. 
 
190 FAITH [cH. 
 
 reason must lead us to religion. He rejects the Ritschlian 
 value-judgment theory, as luring us into the acceptance of 
 the theoretically false in the guise of the practically true.^ 
 The mystics, he thinks, are only wrong in being in too great 
 a hurry. The patient processes of thought would give 
 them all that they are eager to snatch. 
 
 A particularly good and illuminating discussion of the 
 present attitude of reflective thought towards religion, or 
 rather, I should say, of religion and psychology towards 
 reflective thought, may be found in the Hibhert Journal 
 for 1903, in two articles by Professor Henry Jones, of 
 Glasgow. He observes that our possession of the rich 
 inheritance which the nineteenth century has transmitted 
 to us — its store of scientific knowledge and spiritual 
 interests — is threatened by the scepticism which doubts, 
 or even denies, that intellectual inquiry can have any real 
 value in precisely those matters which are best worth 
 knowing. No generation has ever employed intelligence 
 more, or trusted it less, than our own. And yet, as he goes 
 on to say, this is not really a sceptical age. Outside the 
 province of epistemology, which investigates the sources 
 and limits of knowledge, there is no disposition on the part 
 of scientific men to defer to ' authority,' as Mr. Balfour 
 would have us do, nor to appeal to immediate assurance, 
 or direct intuition, or the feelings of the heart, instead of to 
 free inquiry, guided only by observation and reason. In 
 all branches of science alike, we find the same conviction 
 of the uniformity of nature and the universaUty of law. 
 Nor does this faith in the methods of science lead to scep- 
 ticism in morals and religion. This is an age which believes in 
 God, and in the distinction of right and wrong, as grounded 
 in the nature of things. Our great poets, who are the best 
 representatives of the deeper thought of our time, are pro- 
 foundly convinced that the spiritual life of man is based on 
 solid foundations. And yet, among professed philosophers, 
 
 1 Caldecott, Philosophy of Religion, p. 152. 
 
FAITH AND REASON 191 
 
 the tide of anti-intellectualism runs very strong. The 
 tendency to give the will supremacy over the speculative 
 intellect, and to interpret the world in terms of human pur- 
 pose, induces philosophers to use language which if accepted 
 in the world of science would make all science impossible. 
 They assert real discontinuities, uncaused beginnings, and 
 non-logical occurrences in the objective world. Such views 
 are calmly ignored by the scientists ; but they are introduc- 
 ing great confusion and perplexity into religious and philo- 
 sophical thought. Professor Jones maintains that since 
 both reason and religion claim dominion over the whole realm 
 of man's nature, to attempt to temporise between them 
 is to be disloyal to both. There can be no delimitation 
 of frontiers where both claimants think they have a right 
 to the whole territory in dispute. And, as he adds, surely 
 with truth, * No age of the world was ever strong except 
 when Faith and reason went hand in hand, and when man's 
 practical ideals were also his surest truths.' The contra- 
 diction, if there is one, between the heart and intellect 
 has somehow to be worked out. The religious and the 
 intellectual spirit of the age are both sincere, and therefore 
 somewhat intolerant. * There are some things on which 
 the world does not go back, and the right to seek the truth 
 is among the number. The intellectual ardour of the world 
 cannot be damped, far less extinguished, by any theory, 
 blindly advanced in the service of religion, of the radical 
 insecurity of knowledge, or of the incompetence and un- 
 trustworthiness of human reason.' 
 
 Professor Jones than proceeds to deJSne the issue by an 
 observation which penetrates to the heart of the problem. 
 The standpoint of modem scientific thought is cosmo- 
 centric ; that of the new psychology is frankly anthropo- 
 centric. * Instead of explaining nature from the being 
 of man,' says a scientific writer, 'we follow the reverse 
 process, and seek to understand human life from the general 
 laws of nature.' On the other hand the pragmatists have 
 
192 FAITH [CH, 
 
 revived the ancient maxim that ' man is the measure of all 
 things.' 
 
 Now I must own that my own sympathies are with those 
 who hold the cosmocentric view. ' The conception of 
 reality,' says Professor Jones, ' as a single system, in which 
 man occupies his own irrevocable place, has come to stay. 
 To give it up would be to give up philosophy as well as 
 science, and reasoning as well as philosophy.' If the 
 world is ' wild,' as Professor James thinks, we ought to 
 give up thinking ; for connected thought about a dis- 
 connected world must be false. But modem thought can 
 never commit suicide in this fashion. That nature and 
 man are in some way continuous, that man is what he is 
 only in virtue of his ontological relation to the world, apart 
 from which he can have neither being nor meaning, is no 
 longer questionable. And yet, so great is the fear en- 
 gendered by the conception of a cosmos which shuts man 
 up in an iron framework, that we find Lotze reducing 
 natural laws to mere conceptual generalisations, not 
 representing facts in the outer world ; we find Ritschlians 
 warning the intelligence from the domain of religion, thus 
 opening the door wide for any superstition ; we find 
 Professor James and his followers constructing the universe 
 of enigmatical atoms dignified by the name of persons, 
 and rushing into polytheism. 
 
 I have already explained what is the real motive of the 
 attacks upon the intellectual side of our nature which are 
 now so frequently heard. A positive dislike is felt to- 
 wards the attempt to estabhsh a systematic coherence in 
 the world of experience. It is hoped that the attempt may 
 fail. We are told that there is no such universal system, 
 but only finite particular facts and events. jMan, we are 
 reminded, is wider than mere intellect. His moral and 
 religious life falls outside the schematism of the intelligence. 
 It deals with facts ' of another order.* 
 
 This last argument I believe to be false and dangerous. 
 
XI.] FAITH AND REASON 193 
 
 We cannot set up an order of facts which shall be outside 
 the whole intellectual realm. The sphere of the intelli- 
 gence is not limited in the sense that there are provinces 
 of reality which it cannot touch. No doubt there are many 
 things which we do not know. The world as we know it is not 
 a complete system, and, since all reality is interdependent, 
 no object within it is completely known. But this admission 
 does not oblige us to parcel out the kingdom of truth into 
 several ' orders,' each under the charge of one of our 
 faculties. We have already seen what havoc results from 
 maintaining these rifts within our mental life. 1 
 
 The function of thought is not to invent generalisations 
 and fabricate connecting links. The underlying unity is 
 there already. It is utterly impossible to regard th6 
 particular facts as objectively real, and the laws and 
 principles which connect and regulate them as having only 
 a subjective significance. ' Mere ideas ' cannot bind to- 
 gether * real objects.' Or if the particulars also are re- 
 garded as merely subjective, everything disappears at 
 once into dreamland. Nothing can be proved false if 
 nothing is taken as true. The sceptic cannot throw his 
 opponent if his own feet are in the air. 
 
 It seems therefore that a denial of the Absolute means a 
 denial of the relative as well, and that unless we believe 
 that reality is a coherent system, we can say nothing 
 about the particular existences, which ex hypothesi are 
 intrinsically unintelligible. 
 
 The pursuit of the Absolute is no invention of the arro- 
 gant ' intellectualist.' It is a fact that man always has pur- 
 sued the truth, the good, and trusted in a God, who gathers 
 into Himself all the perfections that man is able to conceive. 
 Religion is always a theory of reality. It cannot be sep- 
 arated from the ontological consciousness. Man does pur- 
 sue absolute ideals, however well he may know that they 
 are never fully attained in his life and action ; and in 
 this pursuit his life and his activity consist. He cannot 
 
 N 
 
194 FAITH I^CH. 
 
 escape from this law of his being by denying that there is 
 an Absolute. The opponent of absolutism generally sets 
 up an absolute of his own without knowing it : Kant 
 deifies the moral sense, Schopenhauer the irrational will, 
 Hartmann the unconscious, Spencer the unknowable. 
 Even the principle of relativity becomes, with some of 
 its advocates, a kind of absolute. 
 
 I must not anticipate the subject of my last lecture, 
 which will be devoted to showing how our conflicting 
 ideals may, as I think, be reconciled. But I wish to con- 
 sider rather more fully one or two of the reasons which 
 have put intellectualism out of fashion. 
 
 A consideration which weighs heavily with many 
 thinkers is connected with the conception of change. I 
 have already quoted the Modernists on this point. Scho- 
 lastic theology opposed the unchangeableness of the Deity 
 to the mutability of the world. But is an absolutely un- 
 changing ground of continuous change thinkable ? And 
 if in the real world — in the mind of God — there is no change, 
 what is the use of the time-process ? If nothing is ulti- 
 mately real but general laws, universals, which are merely 
 illustrated by happenings in time, is not the world a useless 
 and irrational thing ? Sub specie aeternitatis, the goal is 
 already attained ; suh specie temporis, it is unattainable. 
 Whichever way we look at it, activity seems to be useless. 
 In the universe of the intellectualist, they say, nothing 
 ever really happens. The eternal laws of God are eluci- 
 dated in a million concrete instances ; but why is all 
 this illustration necessary ? Is it a worthy occupation 
 for the Deity to be perpetually setting Himself easy 
 sums, of which he knows the answer beforehand ? Are 
 we to imagine Him playing an unending succession of 
 games of patience by Himself ? Does the order of the 
 time-series mean nothing ? Might it just as well be read 
 backwards, like a reversed cinematograj^jh ? Intellectual- 
 ism gives us a static universe ; and a static universe, 
 
XI.] FAITH AND REASON 196 
 
 though not unthinkable, is absurd. Beings, such as God 
 has made us, claim to Uve in a world where things really 
 happen, where their energies really count for something 
 and determine something. And if this claim is conceded, 
 the static-intellectualist conception of reality must give 
 way. This claim is made not only in the interests of free- 
 will and morality, but of the rationality of the cosmos. 
 
 The difficulty about change and immutability has been 
 recognised by the clearer thinkers among the old philo- 
 sophers, but has been often forgotten by others who are 
 attracted by the idea of changeless being. Mere flux and 
 mere stationariness are both absurd, and neither can be 
 predicated of reality. The old notion of substance as the 
 unchanging substratum of change gives us no help. Reality 
 must somehow transcend the opposition of crrda-Ls and 
 KLvrj(TL<s. Aristotle tried to do this in his conception of 
 €V€py€ia. For him Ivkpy^ia is a higher conception than 
 ^vvafxiq : it is the actual functioning of a substance whose 
 real nature is only so revealed. He says that KtVr^o-is is 
 imperfect kvkpyna. God's energy involves no * move- 
 ment ' ; it is frictionless activity. ' Change is sweet to 
 us because of a certain defect,' he says : the Divine life 
 is one of unceasing and unchanging activity, which is also 
 an eternal consciousness of supreme happiness. This 
 Aristotle calls eicpyeux oLKLVYja-ia^. It is eternal, because it 
 precludes the conditions of the time-consciousness. For 
 time is the creature of motion (KLnjcrts) : the perfecting of 
 kvkpyeia will thus involve the disappearance of time. Time 
 is the measure of the impermanence of the imperfect, and 
 the perfecting of the time-consciousness would carry us 
 into eternity. This conception of an evepyeia dKivr}a-La<s helps 
 us to overcome a very serious difficulty, which lies at the 
 root of many religious and philosophical perplexities. 
 
 Plotinus also says that in the world of reality, the koct/xo? 
 vo-qros, the opposition of thought and its object, of identity 
 and difference, of motion and stationariness, is transcended. 
 
196 FAITH [CH. 
 
 It is quite untrue to say that he holds a static-intellectuaUst 
 view of reality. His intelligible world is not the world of 
 stationariness as opposed to motion, but the sphere where 
 the two are unified and harmonised. He knows, of course, 
 that discursive thought (5tai/oia) does not effect this 
 reconciliation ; but then he distinguishes voh and Sidvoia, 
 as we ought to do. Thought is more than formal logic ; 
 reason is greater than reasons. In fact, it would be hardly 
 too much to say that the ' intellectuahsm ' of modern 
 voluntaristic polemic is a figment of the pragmatists. It 
 was not reserved for modem psychology to discover that 
 logic is not identical with reahty. And then, having 
 created this bugbear of ' intellectuahsm,' they proceed to 
 * empty out the child with the bath,' as the Germans say, 
 and construct their own system with the intellectual factor 
 contumeliously excluded. 
 
 However, the objections just mentioned are vahd against 
 exclusive intellectualism ; and they show how fatal it is 
 to separate any one of our faculties, and make it, by itself, 
 either the constitutive principle of reality, or the organ by 
 which we apprehend reality. 
 
 It has also been urged against intellectualism that know- 
 ledge cannot be ultimate, because it is always trying to 
 subvert the conditions of its own existence. An absolute 
 conclusion to knowledge would involve the annulling of the 
 distinction between knowing and being, between thought 
 and its object ; and it is precisely that distinction which 
 is the condition of knowledge. 
 
 This argument is admitted by Plotinus and all other 
 philosophical mystics. Discursive thought, seeking to find 
 unity in diversity, ends ideally in perfect knowledge — i.e. 
 in the complete correspondence of thought with its object. 
 To the realist, this does not mean that the distinction 
 between thought and its object has wholly ceased. The 
 eternal world is not a world in which subject and object 
 have devoured each other, any more than it is a world 
 
XL] FAITH AND REASON 197 
 
 where rest and activity have devoured each other. In the 
 eternal world, according to Plotinus, the correspondence 
 of thought and its object is still the One-Many, not the One 
 by itself. It is no doubt true that thought in eternity has 
 passed into a higher mode, in which its objects are present 
 to it as a totality ; and in that sense the process of thought, 
 in completing, has terminated itself. But the same is 
 obviously true of the will, which in achieving any aim 
 thereby takes it out of the sphere of will ; for will requires 
 an unfulfilled end. In heaven, we may say, thought has 
 become knowledge, and morality goodness, though in some 
 way beyond our comprehension both remain activities. 
 In this transformation we may suppose that truth and 
 goodness are at last fully unified. The anti-intellectual 
 objection loses its force if we use intelligence, not of the 
 logic-chopping faculty, but of the whole personality become 
 self-conscious and self-directing, with a full realisation of 
 the grounds of will and feeling. If we must name this 
 highest state, we must call it intelligence rather than will, i^ 
 because will is only conscious of the fact of desire, not of / 
 the reasons for it. 
 
 The real defect of rationalism or exclusive intellectualism 
 lies in its attempt to prove Faith, or, I should rather say, ) 
 in its belief that it has succeeded in demonstrating what 
 cannot be demonstrated. Rationalism tries to find a 
 place for God in its picture of the world. But God, 
 * whose centre is everywhere and His circumference no- 
 where,' cannot be fitted into a diagram. He is rather the 
 canvas on which the picture is painted, or the frame in 
 which it is set. 
 
 /^Reason, in the sense in which the word is used by I 
 rationalists, is part of the material of Faith. ^ They forget 
 that this knowledge falls far short of the * gnosis,' which 
 is the ideal fulfilment and satisfaction of Faith. This 
 true gnosis is not to be attained by thinking only. Julius 
 Hare warns us very well that *the being able to give a 
 
198 FAITH [ch; 
 
 reason for your Faith is a totally different thing from 
 having Faith ; and unless the Faith be really in you, 
 your being able to give a reason for it will only be a witness 
 against you for having it not.' Faith as a practical power 
 can only be strengthened practically. To put the same 
 thing rather differently, the old ' proofs ' of God's existence 
 claimed to have made the opposite view unthinkable or 
 illogical. But atheism is not unthinkable or illogical ; 
 it is only ' absurd,' in Lotze's sense of the word. It is 
 rejected by Faith as a hypothesis which would reduce the 
 world to a chaos, a malignant trick, or a sorry joke. Being 
 ourselves what God has made us, we have a right to call 
 this hypothesis absurd, and to let it go. But this is not 
 the rationalistic idea of proof. 
 
 ^Pure intellectualism of whatever kind ignores the neces- 
 sary place of Faith in religion. It confounds Faith with 
 knowledge. It is easy to recognise this type. Its God is 
 * the One.' He is triumphantly monistic, for that is 
 almost all that is required of Him. His worshippers easily 
 fall into a lofty disdain of the unphilosophic vulgar. This 
 was a weakness of Greek philosophy, and it has reappeared 
 wherever Faith and knowledge have been identified. In 
 the field of practice, we see from the history of the Italian 
 Renaissance how easily intellectual morality becomes 
 Machiavellian, and how, in the region of feeling, intellectual- 
 ism substitutes artistic sensibility for charity and affection. 
 It is never long before this type proves its unsoundness 
 by passing out of religion altogether. Thus the fatal 
 results of one-sidedness are once more brought home to us. . 
 ^And yet some intellectual element is an essential con- 
 dition of the activity of Faith. Faith is a feeling of 
 certitude or positive assurance ; but this feeling cannot 
 exist without some notion, or idea, of that about which 
 certitude is felt. We might as well try to walk in the air, 
 as believe without an idea or thought for Faith to embrace. 
 The nebulous forms of incipient thought hardly deserve 
 
FAITH AND REASON 199 
 
 the name of ideas ; they must be reduced to the semblance 
 of truth by mature reflection and experience. The great 
 end of the intellectual discipline of Faith is the formation 
 of true ideas of the things believed. This requires much 
 self-denial and honesty of purpose. Things are what they 
 are, not what we think them to be, or have made up our 
 minds that they must or ought to be. Faith loses all its 
 practical efficiency when it is associated with false ideas. 
 The true light saves, but the false light destroys. Much 
 depends on the ideas and objects to which we give our 
 love and trust. There is in operation a spiritual law or 
 ' working of error,' of which St. Paul speaks, the inevitable 
 tendency of which is to cause men who hate the truth to 
 believe a lie. | 
 
 It is essential to Faith that we should believe in an 
 objective truth, independent of our thoughts and wishes. 
 It is unfortunately no longer a truism, but a controversial 
 statement, to say that facts are stubborn things, or that 
 things are what they are. But we must hold to this 
 rather obvious truth. The first aphorism of the Novum 
 Organum is that 'Man, the minister and interpreter of 
 Nature, does and understands as much as his observations 
 on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the 
 mind, permit him, and neither knows nor is capable of 
 more.' That is to say, it is not our business to create truth, 
 but to discover it. Faith believes in the independent 
 reality of its objects, and in the knowableness of truth. 
 The demand for internal consistency and correspondence 
 with external fact is peremptory : it cannot be silenced. 
 The belief in truth, and the reverent worship of it, are a 
 large part of religion with many men, and with a few 
 women. ' With certain persons,' says Mr. Bradley, ' the 
 intellectual effort to understand the universe is a principal 
 way of experiencing the Deity.' Spinoza, whose personal 
 character was purely admirable, is a very good example 
 of this type of religion. ' Blessedness,' he says, * consists 
 
200 FAITH [CH. 
 
 in love towards God, and this arises from knowledge. And 
 the mind that rejoices in the divine love or blessedness 
 can control its emotions. The ignorant man is agitated 
 by external causes, and never obtains true peace of soul : 
 whereas the wise man, conscious, by a kind of eternal 
 necessity, of himself, of God, and of things, is always in 
 possession of true contentment.' He concludes, ' The way 
 must be arduous, for its discovery is so rare. If salvation 
 could be discovered without great toil, how could it be 
 neglected by nearly all men ? But all things excellent 
 are as difficult as they are rare.' Compare too, as a typical 
 example of scientific Faith, these words of Huxley : ' Sit 
 down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up 
 every preconceived notion, to follow humbly wherever 
 and to whatever abysses Nature leads you, or you shall 
 learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and 
 peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.'^ 
 This calm cheerfulness and unshakable confidence that 
 the truth is salvation to him who can find it, seems to me 
 more Christian than such a mental attitude as is described 
 by Lecky : ' Young men discuss religious questions simply 
 as questions of truth or falsehood. In later life they more 
 frequently accept their creed as a working hypothesis, 
 as a consolation in calamities, as the indispensable 
 sanction of moral obligation, as the gratification of needs, 
 instincts, and longings which are planted in the deepest 
 recesses of human nature, as one of the chief pillars on 
 which human society rests.' The American Leuba says 
 rather irreverently that most people don't so much believe 
 in God as iLse Him. But God will not be ' used ' for other 
 ult-erior ends — ^He is either the ultimate End, or He is 
 nothing. 
 ( It seems to me that we must expect that if humanity is 
 
 1 So in art, J. F. Millet says : ' We ought to be steeped in Nature, saturated 
 with her, and careful only to thiuk the thoughts whicn she inspires. All you 
 need is intelligence and a great desire. If you abandon yourself to her 
 service, she will give you of her store.' 
 
XL] FAITH AND REASON 201 
 
 progressing, the intellect must play a larger part in the life 
 of Faith in the future than it has done in the past. In the 
 brute creation, instinct does the work of reason — sufficiently 
 for the very simple conditions in which the animal creation 
 lives. And so in the spiritual life, it is natural to suppose 
 that a kind of instinct of the Divine is implanted in the 
 human mind as soon as it becomes human. But as 
 humanity advances to a more complex life, and has to 
 adjust itself to new conditions, instinct becomes unequal 
 to the tasks laid upon it. And then appears the new 
 faculty of reason, which acts at first haltingly and un- 
 certainly enough, often failing us where instinct would 
 have guided us rightly. But we must accept these diffi- 
 culties of adjustment. We cannot choose to continue to 
 be guided by instinct ; for instinct begins to fail and grow 
 weaker, wherever the potentiaHty of reason exists. We 
 see it in the case of the child. The human infant is far 
 more helpless than the young of other animals. Where 
 instinct keeps them alive, it leaves the human child to die, 
 unless it has guardians to take care of it, and bestow upon 
 it an amount of attention which would be utterly impossible 
 in the lower ranks of creation. And yet the human child 
 is destined to advance far beyond the most intelligent of 
 the brutes, by the aid of the faculty of reason, which is so 
 slow to develop, and so unsafe a protector until it is more 
 or less mature. We can trace the same law by comparing 
 civilised man with savages. Our instincts are decidedly 
 weaker and less protective than theirs, though our reason 
 is so much stronger. Is it not likely that the analogy holds 
 good in the spiritual life ? The will may be more * primary ' 
 and more powerful than the intelligence ; it does not 
 follow that we ought to make the will rather than the 
 intelligence our guide. Reason, when it has come into its 
 own, is a far finer instrument than blind will, or instinct. 
 When we know why a certain course is right or wrong ; 
 when we have a clear idea of what we are aiming at in our 
 
202 FAITH [CH. 
 
 actions, we are not less likely to act morally, and we are 
 much more likely not to act foolishly. It seems to me 
 that this has a practical bearing on social morality. The 
 great danger, in this country at all events, is that we are 
 so prone to be guided by sentiment and wilfulness instead 
 of by reason. We may be told that this is a penalty that 
 must be paid for popular government, since the masses 
 will always be swayed by their emotions and desires, and 
 never by their intellect. To this we can only answer that, 
 if so, we are likely to find that we have paid too high a price 
 for a political theory. 
 
 I should also like to remind the Voluntarists that desire, 
 even more than speculative thought, is never for its own 
 continuance, but always for its own satisfaction and conse- 
 quent cessation. Unless, therefore, the will is eternally 
 self-stultifying, eternally and necessarily disappointed — 
 which is the creed of Pessimism — the heaven of the will 
 is always static in respect of its present object. In other 
 words, the will, in seeking its own fulfilment, seeks to pass 
 into that higher sphere where it cannot remain will pure 
 and simple, but must pass into some higher mode of 
 activity. 
 
 The danger of Intellectualism, as of other one-sided ideas 
 of Faith, is that it tempts us to make a premature synthesis, 
 perhaps leaving us in bondage to the lower categories of 
 mechanism. There are very deep antinomies which we 
 must accept as existing for our minds at present, though 
 we know that they are not real or fundamental. We must 
 take no short cuts to self-consistency by suppressing half 
 the truth. God, for us, is both changing and unchanging, 
 blessed and suffering, eternal and becoming. These are 
 just the antitheses which, according to Plotinus, are trans- 
 cended in the intelligible world, but not in the world of 
 our common experience. 
 
 -J 
 
XII.] THE ESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 203 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE ^ESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 
 
 Beauty is a quality which the Creator has impressed, in 
 various degrees, upon nearly all His works ; and the recog- 
 nition of beauty is a faculty with which very many conscious 
 creatures are endowed. We are often surprised at the 
 symmetry and beauty which appear in the constructions of 
 animals — for example, in the nests of birds and the honey- 
 combs of bees ; and the sexual ornaments which many 
 birds and beasts exhibit to win the favour of their mates 
 prove both the important part which aesthetic taste plays 
 in modifying species, and the delicate appreciation of beau- 
 tiful forms and colours which makes these elaborate dec- 
 orations necessary. Examples of ornaments which to our 
 taste are grotesque, such as the bright colours of the male 
 mandrill in the breeding-season, are so rare as to be negli- 
 gible exceptions ; far more significant is the exquisite 
 sheen of the humming-bird's wing, or the glory of the 
 peacock's tail. Nor is the aesthetic sense of the lower 
 animals confined to form and colour. The song of the 
 nightingale proves that some birds are no mean musicians ; 
 and even among insects, some spiders, we are told, have 
 to please the female by an exhibition of elegant dancing. 
 Moreover, inanimate nature is everywhere beautiful. 
 Even decay and corruption, which in the animal world are 
 repulsive, are beautiful in things without sentient life. 
 
 The view taken in these lectures is that Beauty is one 
 of the fundamental attributes of God, which He has there- 
 fore impressed upon His world. I hold it to be a quality 
 
204 FAITH [CH. 
 
 '^ residing in the objects, and not imparted to them by the 
 observer. I hold Beauty to be, Uke Truth and Goodness, 
 an end in itself, for God's creation. If so, it is right and 
 natural for Faith to acknowledge beauty, and to strengthen 
 itself by the contemplation and practice of the beautiful. 
 To this view two objections may be made. First, it 
 has been argued that our enjoyment of the beautiful is 
 nothing more than a pleasant feeling arising from our per- 
 ception of usefulness. For instance, the points of beauty 
 in a human face and figure are all signs of health, strength, 
 intelligence, and character. In the case of a woman, those 
 lines are also thought beautiful which indicate that she is 
 well suited for her special functions. But this theory does 
 not fit the facts. Many of the animal decorations, to which 
 we have just alluded, are apparently ' useless,' except to 
 give pleasure by their form and colour. And the same 
 impossibility of reducing the beautiful to the useful is 
 apparent throughout human experience. Illustrations of 
 this will occur to everybody. Beauty is clearly something 
 sui generis. Secondly, we are told that the enjoyment of 
 beauty is purely subjective. Not only does the beautiful 
 object require a beholder, and one who has a seeing eye, 
 but the beauty is in our own mind, and not in what we see. 
 Now it would be a bold theory that the beauties of a play 
 
 ' of Shakespeare are put there by us his commonplace 
 readers. Is it not even more absurd to suppose that our 
 minds create the beauty of a sunset, or of a glorious action 
 in history ? Again, if the appreciation of beauty is merely 
 subjective, there is no appeal from individual taste. It is 
 
 'then an impertinence to speak of good or bad taste, for 
 
 j there is no standard to which taste can be referred. But 
 no one can seriously maintain that the proverb De gustihus 
 non est disputandum has any validity in the higher regions 
 of art, of natural beauty, or of seemliness and propriety of 
 conduct. Moreover, the strong protest of our own con- 
 sciousness against theories of subjectivity ought to be 
 
THE ESTHETIC GKOUND OF FAITH 205 
 
 given due weight. When we admire anything or anybody, 
 we invariably beheve that the quaUties which we admire 
 are really there, and if we find that we have been deceived, 
 our admiration vanishes at once. * All the objects we call 
 beautiful,' says Reid, * agree in two things, which seem to 
 concur in our sense of beauty. First, when they are per- 
 ceived or even imagined, they produce a certain agreeable 
 emotion or feeling in the mind ; and secondly, this agree- 
 able emotion is accompanied with an opinion or belief of 
 their having some perfection or excellence belonging to 
 them.' ^ The subjective and objective side are both neces- 
 sary ; but assuredly philosophy does not require us to 
 refuse the name of beautiful to natural objects which man 
 has never beheld. 
 
 Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
 The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear. 
 
 Some have even found in this thought an argument for 
 the existence of God, whose eye sees and enjoys what 
 otherwise would be wasted for want of a beholder. 
 
 We may then, I think, assert the independence of the 
 Beautiful as a revelation of the Eternal distinct from other 
 revelations which come to us through science and the 
 moral sense. And since Beauty is thus conceived to have 
 an absolute value, the natural instinct of mankind has led 
 us to connect Beauty with the object and mode of wor- 
 ship. Whatever men have thought most beautiful they 
 have brought and offered to their gods. And since the 
 religious instinct, in all its forms, finds satisfaction in 
 creation and production more than in mere receptivity, 
 art has from the first been consecrated to worship. Paint- 
 ing, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, and ritual are 
 varying expressions of this tendency. The noblest works 
 
 1 Intellectual Powers, Essay viii. ; quoted by Caldecott, The Philosophy oj 
 Religion, p. 55. 
 
206 FAITH [CH. 
 
 of imaginative genius have been either partially or entirely 
 inspired by religious Faith. 
 
 The spirit of worship is somewhat jealous of association 
 / with utility. UtiUty tends to cramp the free exercise of 
 the creative imagination, and forces us to divide our atten- 
 tion between the universal and the particular. Thus 
 religious cultus has always contained ceremonies which 
 have no bearing on practical life, and within the sphere of 
 ordinary conduct religion has usually issued some com- 
 mands and prohibitions which have no rational sanction. 
 Just because the spirit of worship rejects indignantly the 
 limitation of its scope by pragmatic standards, it rejoices 
 in acts which are a revolt against moralism and intellectu- 
 alism alike. The aesthetic instinct is more independent 
 of utilitarian considerations than the intellect, and far 
 more than the moral sense. For this reason, in the form 
 of poetical and religious imagination, it penetrates and 
 illumines regions which are inaccessible to philosophy and 
 ethics. And its reaction upon life has a distinctive quality,- 
 the loss of which cannot be made good from any other 
 source. The mind that is dominated by perception 
 of the beautiful, and by the love of it which can hardly be 
 dissociated from this perception, will certainly carry its 
 habit and its method into every part of Ufe. Among a 
 really artistic people we find a joyful desire to do every- 
 thing well and appropriately. ' What has to be done is 
 > done imaginatively ; what has to be spoken or made is 
 spoken or made fittingly, lovingly, beautifully.' ^ 
 
 Some writers have seen in ' the Sublime ' the link be- 
 tween sesthetical feeling and religion. Kant, in particular, 
 quite forgetful of the limitations which in his Critique of 
 Pure Reason he had laid upon all our faculties, invests 
 the Sublime with a mystical power of uniting the human 
 spirit with the infinite. * We call that sublime which is 
 absolutely great.' ' The sublime is that which cannot 
 
 A Santayana, Reason in Art, p. 16. 
 
THE AESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 207 
 
 even enter our thought without the help of a faculty which 
 surpasses the standard of sense.' ' Nature is sublime in 
 those phenomena which convey an idea of its infinity.' ^ 
 So Longinus says, ' When a writer uses any other resource, 
 he shows himself to be a man ; but the sublime lifts 
 him near to the great spirit of the Deity.' Kant, Uke 
 Burke, whom he probably follows,^ distinguishes the 
 Sublime from the Beautiful, instead of making sublimity 
 a species of beauty. This is perhaps an error. It 
 would be better to extend the meaning of beauty, which 
 has too often been confined to mere prettiness, to cover 
 the grander and more awe-inspiring phenomena of nature. 
 Winckelmann acutely observes that when we gaze over 
 the broad sea, our mind at first appears to shrink and lose 
 itself, but soon returns to itself, elevated by what it has 
 beheld. The perception of the Beautiful, in this wider 
 sense, has seemed to many to be closely akin to mystical 
 intuition.3 This view is put into philosophical terminology 
 by Hegel, who says : ' The Beautiful is essentially the 
 spiritual making itself known sensuously, presenting itself 
 in sensuous concrete existence, but in such a manner that 
 that existence is wholly and entirely permeated by the 
 spiritual, so that the sensuous is not independent, but has 
 its meaning solely and exclusively through the spiritual 
 and in the spiritual, and exhibits not itself but the spirit- 
 ual.' * This belief is the romantic side of Greek philosophy. 
 It finds its classical expression in a famous passage of 
 Plato's Symposium ^ : — ' He who has been instructed thus 
 far in the things of love, and has learned to see the beautiful 
 in due order and succession, when he comes towards the end 
 will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and 
 this was the object of all our toils), a nature which in the 
 
 * From the Critique of Judqimnt. 
 
 * Bosanquet, History of JEsthetic, p. 275. 
 
 » Ladd, The Philosophy of Religion, vol. i. p. 441. 
 
 * Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, vol. ii. p. 8. 
 » Plato, Symposium, pp. 210, 211, 
 
208 FAITH [cH. 
 
 first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, not 
 waxing and waning ; not fair in one point of view and 
 foul in another . . . but beauty absolute, separate, simple 
 and everlasting, which without increase or diminution or 
 any other change is imparted to the ever-growing and ever- 
 perishing beauties of other things. He who, ascending 
 from these under the influence of true love, begins to 
 perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the 
 true order ... is to begiu with the beauties of earth and 
 mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using 
 these as steps only, and going on from fair forms to fair 
 practices, and from these to fair notions, until from fair 
 notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at 
 last knows what the essence of beauty is. . . . What if 
 man had eyes to see the true beauty, the divine beauty, 
 pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollu- 
 tions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human 
 life — looking thither and communing with the true beauty, 
 simple and divine ? In that communion, and in that only, 
 beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be 
 enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but reaUties 
 (for it is the reality and no image that he grasps), and 
 produciug and cherishing true virtue he will become the 
 friend of God, and immortal, if mortal man can be im- 
 mortal.' 
 
 According to this passage, which contains the essence 
 of the poetical and romantic side of Plato's philosophy, 
 the sense of beauty is a joyous witness withui us to the 
 kinship of the human spirit with that source of all spiritual 
 life from which whatever is fair and noble in the world 
 proceeds. Plato is not afraid to trace a high symbolic 
 meaning in the connection of the sesthetical sense with 
 sexual passion. ' All love is of the immortal. Mortal 
 nature seeks as far as possible to be everlastiug and im- 
 mortal ; and since absolute unity in continuance is not to 
 be had, even in the life of the individual, men desire to 
 
XII.] THE ESTHETIC GKOUND OF FAITH 209 
 
 produce a new generation to take the place of the old.' 
 This transmission of life is the human substitute and 
 symbol for the unchanging hfe of Eternity. 
 
 Thus our sense of beauty is an imaginative ^ representa- 
 tion which connects our present experience with the 
 eternal. It is the sesthetical sense which most vividly 
 makes the past and future live in the present. The gift 
 of imagination is thus a psychological intimation of im- 
 mortality. This prophetic office of the imagination has 
 been far too much neglected by rehgious teachers and 
 philosophers. We see the result in the tendency of culti- 
 vated people to turn to the poets for spiritual guidance 
 and sympathy. The poets seem to be nearer to the heart 
 of things than the men of thought or the men of action. 
 They have the advantage of working in the most plastic 
 of materials, and their interpretation of ideal reality may 
 therefore have a higher truth than the somewhat sorry 
 experiments which history records in the field of the actual, 
 and a richer colour than the ' grey ' hues of philosophical 
 theory. It is for this reason that myth and legend have 
 played, and still play, so important a part in reUgion, 
 They are prized, consciously or unconsciously, for their 
 representative value. ' Poetry,' says Aristotle,^ ' is more 
 philosophical and of higher worth than history ; for history 
 records what has actually happened, but poetry describes 
 what may happen ' {i.e. universal truth). 
 
 In spite of this. Faith has always looked upon the 
 sesthetical sense as a somewhat dangerous ally. Being 
 potentially of infinite scope, it endeavours to embrace all 
 experience and classify it according to its own standards. 
 And * of all premature settlements, the most premature is 
 that which the fine arts are wont to establish.' ^ A lovely 
 
 1 'Imaginative' is not the same as 'purely subjective.' There may be an 
 essential connection between the image and reality. 
 
 2 In the Poetics. 
 
 * Santayana, Reason in Art, p. 217. 
 
 
 
210 FAITH [CH. 
 
 dream leaves the world no less a chaos, and makes it seem 
 by contrast even darker than before. Visionary pleasures 
 make the world no better, and generally bring visionary 
 pains and disorders in their wake. As soon as art loses 
 touch with science and morality, it becomes corrupt. Just 
 as morality for morality's sake is (in spite of Kant) im- 
 possible and self-contradictory; just as truth for truth's 
 sake takes us no further than pure mathematics, in which 
 all values are hypothetical, and the connection with the 
 actual world is broken off, so beauty for beauty's sake 
 stultifies itself and ceases even to be beautiful. Our three 
 strands of natural revelation are intertwined; we cannot 
 unravel them. And there seems to be a mysterious law 
 in the spiritual world, that to aim directly at a thing is not 
 the way to hit it. Just as pleasure, according to Aristotle, 
 attends virtue as the bloom upon a young face attends 
 health, but is not the immediate object of moral effort, 
 so beauty regularly appears as a by-product of ethical 
 striving and of intellectual search. Perhaps beauty has 
 an ethereal and evasive quality which belongs only to 
 itself. It is, says Plotinus, the light that plays over the 
 symmetry of things, rather than the symmetry itself. 
 A modern fK>et, William Watson, has expressed the same 
 idea in a fine stanza : — 
 
 Forget not, brother singer, that though Prose 
 Can never be too truthful nor too wise, 
 
 Song is not Truth nor Wisdom, but the rose 
 Upon Truth's lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes. 
 
 Even in art itself, Goethe tells us, the principle is the 
 significant, the result the beautiful. This maxim cuts at 
 the root of artistic dilettantism, such as made the 
 'aesthetic' coterie in Victorian England ridiculous and 
 contemptible; for what does art 'signify' except eternal 
 reality, which is good and true as well as beautiful ? 
 
 The warning furnished by decadent art is indeed valuable 
 
XII ] THE ESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 211 
 
 and instructive. The hero of Huysmans' unpleasant novel 
 A Rebours makes it the object of his life to enjoy everj^ 
 kind of voluptuous thrill of which the sesthetical sense is 
 capable. The result, as might be expected, is spiritual 
 rottenness. Decadent art generally shows its character 
 by over-elaboration of details which have no significance 
 for the whole. This is a symbol of the mental disin- 
 tegration which accompanies it. The decadent is in a state 
 of mind clean contrary to Faith. He despises life, hopes 
 for nothing, and loves nobody. It is no wonder that he 
 loves to sing the praises of death and dissolution. 
 
 Plato, whose hostility to art has surprised so many of 
 his admirers, dreaded its tyranny because he knew its 
 power. Unless it can cover all practice, ennobling action 
 as well as delighting the imagination, he will have none 
 of it. The mere artist, as he knew, is always something 
 less than a gentleman. 
 
 The attitude of Greek thought toward art is often mis- 
 understood. The defects of Greek aesthetic theory were 
 mainly three. First, in accordance with their preference 
 for plastic representation, in which their pre-eminence is 
 undisputed, they attributed too high a value to symmetry as 
 compared with expressiveness. Secondly, they only slowly 
 outgrew the mistaken notion that art directly copies reality 
 and must be judged by its fidelity to some given original. 
 It was this error, in part, which led Plato to disparage art, 
 as further removed from reality than nature. Being a 
 great thinker, he could not state a fallacy of this kind 
 without suggesting a way out of it ; but it was reserved for 
 Plotinus^ to enuntiate the truth that the arts do not 
 simply imitate the visible, but go back to the creative 
 principles {Xoyoi)^ from which nature also derives its 
 
 1 The first clear recognition of imagination {(pauraa-ia), as the creativ*^. 
 faculty in art, is due to Philostratus, who states clearly the principle that we 
 desire in vain to find in Aristotle's Poetics. * It was imagination that pro 
 duced_ these masterpieces, a more cunning artist than imitation. For 
 imitation represents what it has seen, but imagination what it has not seen.' 
 
212 FAITH [CH. 
 
 forms. Natural things themselves, he says, * imitate * 
 something else, namely, these formative principles or types. 
 The arts are not, then, wholly dependent on the actual ; 
 they create much out of themselves, and supply defici- 
 encies in nature from the ideas of beauty which they find 
 in themselves. ' Pheidias did not create his Zeus after 
 any perceived pattern, but made him such as Zeus would 
 appear if he deigned to be visible to mortal eyes.' ^ Thirdly 
 (this is a feature in Greek thought which is often forgotten), 
 the Greeks throughout demanded that serious art shall be 
 morally edifying. A poet is blamed for making his 
 characters worse than the plot demanded. In fact, there 
 was a confused tendency to apply the same moral standards 
 to works of art as to real life. The error here is not in 
 holding that the good and the beautiful are ultimately one, 
 for this is true ; but in imposing our morahty on the ideal 
 world, and * playing providence ' in a region where only 
 the divine wisdom and goodness bear sway. It is not the 
 province of art to solve moral enigmas, least of all by the 
 cheap and facile expedient of inventing a * poetical justice ' 
 which is untrue to experience. Our moral sense is not a 
 limiting sphere for the beautiful, though nothing is beautiful 
 which is really repugnant to the Divine purity and good- 
 ness. Art, when not hampered by the ' moralistic fallacy,' 
 may often be a moral educator. Just as goodness has 
 often an unstudied beauty of a very high order. 
 
 The attitude of Christianity towards art was naturally 
 determined in the first place by the traditions of Jewish 
 and Graeco-Roman culture, which coalesced in the new 
 religion. Hebrew art was symbolic, not pictorial, the 
 
 ^ Enn. V. 8. Bosanquet {History of Esthetic, p. 113) has perhaps given 
 Plotinus too much credit for this. The illustration from the Zeus of Pheidias 
 must have been a commonplace: cf. Cic, Orator, 2: 'Nee vero ille artifex, 
 cum faceret lovis formam aut Minervae, contemplabatur aliquem e quo 
 similitudinem duceret ; sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis 
 eximia quaedam, quam intuens in eaque defixus ad illius similitudinem artem 
 et manum dirigebat.' Also Seneca, Controv. v. p. 36: * Non vidit Phidias 
 lovem. . . . Dignus tamen ilia arte animus et concepit deos et exhibuit.' 
 
m 
 
 THE ESTHETIC GKOUND OF FAITH 213 
 
 Hebrew genius being very deficient in the sense of form. 
 For instance, in the Apocalypse, such images as that of a 
 cubic city show how vaguely the writer visualised even 
 his visions. On the other hand, the sense of the sublime 
 in nature receives a nobler expression in some of the Psalms 
 than in any other ancient Uterature. The grandeur of 
 some of these descriptions has indeed never been sur- 
 assed. We may follow Dean Church ^ in his selection of 
 examples : — 
 
 * The day is thine and the night is thine ; thou hast 
 prepared the light and the sun.' 
 
 * The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
 ment sheweth his handiwork. One day telleth another, and 
 one night certifieth another. . . . Their sound is gone out 
 into all lands, and their words to the ends of the world.' 
 
 ' Praise the Lord upon earth, ye dragons and all deeps : 
 fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfilling 
 his word.' 
 
 Or that noble Psalm, which begins with Gloria in 
 excelsis and ends with In terris pax — the twenty-ninth : — 
 Give unto the Lord, ye mighty, give unto the Lord 
 glory and strength. Give the Lord the honour due unto 
 his name ; worship the Lord with a holy worship. The 
 voice of the Lord is upon the waters ; it is the glorious 
 God that maketh the thunder. The voice of the Lord is 
 upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is mighty in 
 operation. The voice of the Lord is a glorious voice. The 
 voice of the Lord breaketh the cedar-trees ; yea, the Lord 
 breaketh the cedars of Libanus. He maketh them all 
 to skip like a calf ; Libanus also and Sirion like a young 
 unicorn. The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. 
 The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness ; yea, the 
 Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kades. The voice of the 
 Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the 
 |^»forest8 ; in his temple doth every one speak of his glory. 
 
214 FAITH [cH. 
 
 The Lord sitteth above the waterflood ; the Lord remaineth 
 a King for ever. The Lord shall give strength unto his 
 people; the Lord shall give his people the blessing of 
 peace.' 
 
 The distinctive note of Hebrew religious poetry is that it 
 is never pantheistic in its homage to the glories of nature. 
 * The Lord is King, he the people never so impatient; 
 he sitteth above the waterflood, be the earth never so 
 unquiet.' *The Lord is King, the earth may be glad 
 thereof; yea, the multitude of the isles may be glad there- 
 of.' The world is the living garment of God — *God 
 hath put on his apparel, he hath girded himself with 
 strength' — but there is no tendency to deify the non- 
 moral processes of nature. Rather, God's hand is seen in 
 the bounty which giveth food to all flesh, and in the mercy 
 which is over all His works. ' Thou visitest the earth and 
 blessest it, thou makest it very plenteous.' *He healeth 
 those that are broken in heart, and giveth medicine to 
 heal their sickness. He telleth the number of the stars, and 
 calleth them all by their names. ' 
 
 This firm belief in the transcendence of the Creator gives 
 a richer note to the nature-poetry of the Psalms and 
 Prophets, in that the nothingness and vanity of the material 
 creation, apart from Spirit, are recognised as well as its 
 awful magnificence. * Before the mountains were brought 
 forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, 
 even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. For 
 a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it 
 is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou earnest them 
 away as with a flood ; they are as a sleep. In the morning 
 they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning 
 it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut 
 down, and withereth.' 
 
 Later Judaism was prosaic; and the early Christians 
 also do not appear to have entered into the spirit of these 
 glorious hymns. In fact, the Psalms have probably been 
 
XII.] THE .ESTHETIC GKOUND OF FAITH 215 
 
 more appreciated in our own day than in any previous 
 century since they were written. The early Church was 
 not much inspired by the beauty of nature ; and in its 
 attitude towards art, it maintained, on the whole, the 
 distrust which is found in Plato. The utter inadequacy 
 of all sensuous representations of the divine was recognised, 
 (the more fully since the arts were now decaying rapidly), 
 and art was tolerated mainly as picture-writing for the 
 ignorant. Augustine, however, introduces a great deal of 
 Neoplatonic teaching into his theology, on aesthetics as 
 well as other subjects. What this teaching was will be 
 understood better if we quote from Plotinus, the fountain- 
 head, than from Augustine's paraphrases. 
 
 * Just as it would be impossible to speak of sensible 
 beauties if we had never seen them, so we should not be 
 able to speak of the arts and sciences if we were not already 
 in possession of this kind of beauty, nor of the splendour 
 of virtue if we had never contemplated the face of justice 
 and temperance, which are more beautiful than the even- 
 ing and morning star. We must contemplate these beauties 
 by the faculty which our soul has received for seeing them ; 
 then we shall feel much more pleasure, astonishment, and 
 admiration than we do in presence of sensible beauties. 
 Let us consider what it is that men experience when they 
 love beauties which are not corporeal. What do you feel 
 in presence of noble aspirations, good qualities, and all 
 the acts and sentiments which constitute the beauty of 
 souls ? What is the object which causes these emotions ? 
 It is no figure, or colour, or magnitude. It is that invisible i 
 Soul in which one sees the brightness of all the virtues to 
 shine, when one contemplates greatness of character, 
 justice of the heart, pure temperance, and courage with her 
 stem countenance ; dignity, and modesty with her calm, 
 steady, imperturbable bearing, and above all the Intelli- 
 gence, the image of God, blazing with divine light. No one 
 who beholds these things can doubt that he beholds the 
 
21<J FAITH [CH 
 
 very reality. And the very reality is beautiful.' Ugliness, 
 for the soul, consists in intemperance, injustice, and 
 cowardice. The soul contracts these stains by mixing 
 itself with earthly and carnal things. All virtue, therefore, 
 is only 'purification. ' The purified soul belongs entirely 
 to God, in whom is the source of the beautiful and of all the 
 qualities which have affinity with it. The good and the 
 beautiful for the soul is to become like unto God ; for He 
 is the principle of beauty and of being ; or rather being is 
 beauty. And the good and the beautiful are identical. . . . 
 We must ascend then to the Good, for which every soul 
 craves. If any has seen it, he knows how beautiful it is.* 
 ' How shall a man see the ineffable beauty, which dwells 
 in the inner shrine of the temple, and is not brought out to 
 the gaze of the profane ? When he sees the beauty of 
 material objects he must not pursue them, but knowing 
 that they are only images and shadows he must flee to 
 that of which they are the images. He must call into 
 activity a faculty of spiritual vision which all have but 
 few use. What then can the inner eye perceive ? Being 
 newly awakened it cannot at once look upon things wholly 
 bright. First, the soul should be accustomed to look upon 
 beautiful actions, then upon beautiful works (not such as 
 the arts produce, but such as men produce who are called 
 good), and then let it look upon the soul which produces 
 these good works. How then canst thou behold the 
 beauty of a fair soul ? Look within ; and if thou seest 
 thyself to be not yet beautiful, then, just as a sculptor 
 who desires to make a beautiful statue removes this and 
 chisels down that, polishes here and cleanses there, until 
 he brings to view a beautiful countenance in the image, so 
 do thou take away that which is redundant, make straight 
 that which is crooked, cleanse that which is foul ; and 
 cease not to work upon this thine image until the divine 
 beauty of virtue shine forth upon thee.'^ 
 
 1 Flotixkus^ Enneadi I. L 6-9 abxidgedX 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 217 
 
 This beautiful passage shows how the later Platonism 
 reconciled the ascetic and aesthetic strands in Plato's 
 philosophy of the beautiful. Stem discipline is needed 
 to purify the soul from the taint which it has contracted 
 by contact with evil and ugliness. For only the pure in 
 heart can see Grod ; only the purged mind can behold the 
 loveliness of divine reaUty. This is no artificial combinar 
 tion of contradictory theories ; the two parts complement 
 and safeguard each other. This view passed, practically 
 unchanged, into Christianity. St. Thomas Aquinas argues, 
 quite in the manner of Plotinus, that since nature is sym- 
 boUc of the divine mind, and the human mind is the image 
 of God, the human mind, if pure from sin, can behold Grod 
 in nature. 
 
 In English theology also we find the truest appreciation 
 of the beauty of holiness, and of the high religious value of 
 the aesthetic tense, in writers who have passed under the 
 spell of Neoplatonism. The Cambridge Platonists of the 
 seventeenth century are lifted out of scholarly pedantry 
 by the poetic feeling which beautifies their writings. The 
 following extract from John Smith's Sermons may be taken 
 as typical : — 
 
 * Let us inform oar minds as much as may be in the 
 excellency and loveliness of practical reUgion ; that behold- 
 ing it in its own beauty and amiableness we may the more 
 sincerely close with it. As there would need nothing else 
 to deter and affright men from sin but its own ugliness 
 and deformity, were it presented to a naked view and seen 
 as it is ; so nothing would more effectually conmiend 
 religion to the minds of men, than the displaying and un- 
 folding the excellencies of its nature, than the true native 
 beauty and inward lustre of religion itself : neither the 
 evening nor the morning star could so sensibly commend 
 themselves to our bodily eyes, and delight them with their 
 shining beauties, as true reUgion, which is an imdefiled 
 beam of the uncreated light, would to a mind capable of 
 
218 FAITH [cH. 
 
 conversing with it. . . . Religion is not like the prophet's 
 roll, sweet as honey when it was in his mouth, but as bitter 
 as gall in his belly. Religion is no sullen Stoicism, no sour 
 Pharisaism ; it does not consist in a few melancholy 
 passions, in some dejected looks or depressions of mind ; 
 but it consists in freedom, love, peace, life, and power ; 
 the more it comes to be digested into our lives, the more 
 sweet and lovely we shall find it to be. Those spots and 
 wrinkles which corrupt minds think they see in the face 
 of religion, are indeed nowhere else but in their own 
 deformed and misshapen apprehensions. It is no wonder 
 when a defiled fancy comes to be the glass, if you have an 
 unlovely reflection. Let us therefore labour to purge our 
 own souls from all worldly pollutions ; let us breathe after 
 the aid and assistance of the Divine Spirit, that it may 
 irradiate and enlighten our minds, that we may be able 
 to see divine things in a divine light : let us endeavour to 
 live more in a real practice of those rules of religious and 
 holy living commended to us by our ever-blessed Lord and 
 Saviour. So shall we know religion better, and knowing 
 it love it, and loving it be still more and more ambitiously 
 pursuing after it, till we come to a full attainment of it, 
 and therein of our own perfection and everlasting bliss.' ^ 
 
 In the eighteenth century Lord Shaftesbury propounded 
 in attractive style a theory of ethics which is predominantly 
 sesthetical. His philosophy is Uttle more than an easy- 
 going pantheism, but he has won considerable fame as the 
 chief English exponent of this type of theism. Hutcheson, 
 who is usually mentioned with him, claimed that the sense 
 of beauty is universal and immediate, a view which I have 
 maintained in these lectures. 
 
 The English poetry of the nineteenth century has borne 
 noble witness to this side of religion. Shelley and Words- 
 worth, in spite of the vast chasm which divides them, are 
 at one in their insistence on the sacredness of natural beauty. 
 
 1 John Smith, The Nobleness of True Religion, 
 
THE ESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 219 
 
 Both are, in a sense, pantheistic; but while Shelley gives 
 us a kind of non-ethical Platonism, Wordsworth is strong 
 in his severe self-discipline and moral earnestness. No lover 
 of the beautiful has escaped more triumphantly the pitfalls 
 which beset the direct worship of beauty than the great 
 poet of the English Lakes. His purity, unworldliness, and 
 high seriousness give him an exalted rank among religious 
 teachers; and, as has been observed more than once, he 
 stands the practical test of being resorted to, and not in 
 vain, by many troubled spirits. 
 
 Ruskin describes four sources of beauty: the record 
 of conscience; the symbolising of divine attributes in 
 matter; the felicity of living things; and the perfect 
 fulfilment of their duties and functions.^ 'External 
 nature is glorious as a symbol of God's nature; the felicity 
 of animal life is evidence of His kind presence; excellent 
 working is evidence of obedience to His will; and eon- 
 science is His approving voice/ 
 
 Professor Seeley^ points out that science and art are 
 both * religions'; which is the reason why they clash so 
 violently, at times, with what is commonly called religion. 
 In other words, the worship of the true and the beautiful 
 is as much a worship of God as the worship of Him under 
 the form of goodness. This again is in accordance with the 
 view taken in these lectures. Seeley very properly pro- 
 tests against the abuse of the word 'atheism,' which was 
 more common when he wrote than it is to-day. 'Art and 
 science are not of the world, though the world may corrupt 
 them; they have the nature of religion.' 'If we look at 
 the history of the modern theory of culture we shall per- 
 ceive that its characteristic feature is precisely the assertion 
 of the religious dignity of art and science. Goethe and 
 Schiller habitually apply the language of religion to art. 
 ... In their minds beauty, truth, and goodness are of one 
 
 1 Modem Painters, vol. ii. ; Caldecott, The Philosophy of Religion, p. 190. 
 
 2 Natural Religion, passim. 
 
220 FAITH [CH. 
 
 family ; only they oppose the Puritanism which sets good- 
 ness at an unapproachable height above its sisters, and they 
 are disposed rather to give the highest place to beauty.' 
 Seeley gives us no theory of the beautiful ; he only bids 
 us observe that its votaries pursue it in the spirit of the 
 genuine worshipper. 
 
 On the Continent, the philosophers who have laid most 
 stress on the aesthetical ground of Faith are perhaps Fries, 
 Novalis, and Cousin. For the first two I will be content to 
 refer you to histories of philosophy, or to the writers 
 themselves. Cousin (1792-1867) is a good modem example 
 of the type which we are now considering. All natural 
 beauty, he says, is an image of ideal beauty, which is 
 realised only in God. The physically beautiful is the 
 wrapping of the intellectually and morally beautiful. 
 Moral beauty comprises two elements, justice and charity. 
 He who is consistently just and charitable is in his way the 
 greatest of artists. God is the principle of all three orders 
 of beauty, physical, intellectual, and moral. Moreover, 
 the sublime and the beautiful meet and amalgamate in 
 His nature. 
 
 Enough has now been said to show that in the opinion 
 of many great minds the beautiful is one of the chief avenues 
 to the knowledge of God. I beUeve that in this country 
 we have neglected it to our great loss. We have been too 
 prone to throw away one of the chief antidotes to worldli- 
 ness and lowness of aim. Neglect of beauty is stamped 
 on our whole civilisation, which still presents far too many 
 coarse and unlovely features. Commercialism has helped 
 to destroy what might be a source of inexhaustible spiritual 
 wealth. For, like all the best gifts of God, beauty is 
 within the reach of all, and there is no limit to its store. 
 The sesthetical sense refines and gladdens life, making 
 poverty dignified, and wealth no longer vulgar. 
 
 But, more than any other type of reHgion, this needs 
 discipline and true seriousness. * Romanticism ' — the 
 
xri.] THE ESTHETIC GROUND OF FAITH 221 
 
 movement which began with NovaUs and survives in 
 many supporters of the * CathoHc revival ' — is too often 
 a somewhat frivolous mental attitude, a mode of mild 
 sensuous pleasure. It is most agreeable, perhaps, to 
 those who have time on their hands, and who wish 
 to enjoy their religious sensations. The whole romantic 
 movement, on its reUgious side, bears the marks of a 
 revival — an imitation of the past. In its earlier stages 
 the most conscientious ejfforts were made to recover the 
 entire religious atmosphere of the Middle Ages. Just as 
 pseudo-Gothic castles were erected by pacific nineteenth- 
 century squires and retired stockbrokers, so the ecclesi- 
 astical fashions of the centuries before the Reformation 
 were carefully copied, and the beUefs and disciplines of 
 our semi-barbarous ancestors were held up for our accept- 
 ance and imitation. The temporary success of so artificial 
 a creation is a measure of the loss which the human spirit 
 feels when worship is divorced from beauty. 
 
 The deepest service which Christianity has rendered to 
 art is closely connected with the ground of their frequent 
 estrangements. The Incarnation means that the universe 
 shares man's relation to its Creator. As the world is the 
 living vesture of God, so when the Logos, through whom 
 all things were made, assumed human form, in exalting 
 humanity He ennobled also the whole of man's environ- 
 ment. In proclaiming this truth, Christianity introduced, 
 potentially, a new force and freedom into art. Deeper 
 notes were sounded ; discords, formerly ignored, were 
 caught up into a higher harmony. Suffering was recog- 
 nised as divine, and thereby transmuted ; death was faced, 
 welcomed, and conquered. Henceforth the facile grace 
 and symmetry of ancient art were impossible, and each 
 pagan revival has viewed Christianity askance, as intro- 
 ducing ugliness and discord into the new Olympus. But 
 the stone gods can never five again. Beauty is too large 
 and too divine a thing to ignore any part of reality. It was 
 
222 FAITH [ca 
 
 not given us to use as a decorative adjunct to life. Faith 
 bids us go through the whole of our life in the spirit of a 
 worshipper ; and, as in the ancient mysteries, the fairest 
 and fullest visions are reserved for the end of the course. 
 Faith, meanwhile, has to grapple with much intractable 
 ugliness, only secure of her final victory. 
 
wTi.] HAKMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 223 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FAITH AS HARMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 We have now reached the last stage of our inquiry into 
 the nature of Faith. We have found that it is a divine 
 endowment of human nature, which operates through our 
 natural faculties. It emerges into consciousness as a 
 vague instinct — a prompting which impels us to look for 
 a meaning in life — to seek behind the veil of ever-changing 
 phenomena some permanent and solid reality which shall 
 be proof against ' the wreckful siege of battering days,' 
 and which, by setting before us an absolute standard, shall 
 give us the right always to aspire. This instinct is of vary- 
 ing intensity, but at first it is without form and void. It 
 seeks for forms, for a mould which it may enter, and 
 generally finds it in one or other of the creeds which are 
 presented to it as authoritative. But whereas it is potentially 
 rich in varied contents, capable of correspondences which 
 link our complex human nature with the divine, and where- 
 as all these correspondences are at first wrapped up and 
 withdrawn from consciousness, Faith can never come to 
 its own except by being lived into — experienced in a life 
 which should be as full and rich and as many-sided as 
 possible. There are no short cuts to a perfect Faith, 
 though there are many provisional and avowedly prematura' 
 syntheses of which we may and must avail ourselves. 
 
 * Faith is Ufe,' as Mr. Skrine says in his beautiful little 
 book, What is Faith ? ^ ' What to the vine-branch v 
 
 1 P. 30 sq,q. 
 
224 FAITH [ch. 
 
 > living, that to man is believing. We, like the branch, are 
 saved if we abide in the Vine, that is, if we are ahve. If 
 life is the adjustment of the internal relations of a living 
 , thing to the external relations, Faith is the response of the 
 \organism which we name the soul, to that environment 
 'which we call God. Souls are kept in life by their obedience 
 to one law — their true response to all the forces touching 
 \them, which come from God.' * A man's salvation is 
 measured by the degree in which he is alive. Ts he in 
 
 ' definite, full, various, increasing correspondence with God ? 
 Is he alive on the side of mind ? Does the organ, by which 
 he is sensible to the world of fact, adjust its activities to the 
 arrangement of those facts ? Does it mirror things as 
 they are and not as he would wish them to be ? Does it 
 
 <Veave on the magic loom of consciousness the true pattern 
 of the landscape beyond the window of self ? Is he alive 
 on the side of emotion ? Is there an answer of the heart 
 to the relations of that nearest environment, Humanity ? 
 Has he love, which is the response to the fact of a brother- 
 hood encircling him ? Are his sympathies quick, and does 
 a neighbour's grief stir pity in him, and his joy a joy ? Is 
 he alive on the side of action ? Does the movement of the 
 practical order — the thing that is done upon earth — stir a 
 vibration in his will ? Do the things that God doeth Him- 
 self — His works seen in the process of nature and in the 
 state — find him a fellow- worker ? Does he by his activity 
 propel, and by his passivity smooth, the march of better- 
 ment ? To do and be these things is to be aUve ; and to 
 live is to be in Faith.' 
 
 I am glad to quote these eloquent words, which express 
 very well the general view of the normal growth and life 
 of Faith which I have upheld in these lectures. All 
 through I have been deprecating that tendency to snatch 
 at some creed or formula or theory which will save us any 
 more trouble. We have found guides who say to us : 
 Take this vague Faith-consciousness as it is. Intensify it 
 
XIII. HARMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 225 
 
 and enjoy it, but do not analyse it or test it. Or: Tell it 
 to endorse, unexamined, the creed which we present to 
 you. Let Faith back the bill, recklessly, and you will 
 then be happy. Or: Make Faith the sworn ally of your 
 moral sense, which is the most important part of us, and 
 let the rest go. Regard the 'world as will,' and all that is 
 non-moral in it as merely instrumental, even unreal. Or: 
 Pin your Faith to science or philosophy, and let your 
 religion be 'the intellectual love of God.' Or, lastly: 
 Love harmony and beauty within and without. Let your 
 life be a poem in God's honour. These premature syn- 
 theses all leave out some essential part of our nature. 
 We cannot acquiesce in them, just because we are one our- 
 selves, not a collection of independent faculties. We are 
 driven to aim at unifying our outward experience as well as 
 our inward lives. So strong is this craving for unity that 
 it seems to me a faithless act to refuse the quest. 
 
 The belief that Reality must be one does not rest on any 
 fancied superiority of the number One over the number 
 Two, but on the fact that inclusiveness and harmony belong 
 to the idea of reality. If there is such a thing as a Divine 
 Mind, it must be at unity with itself, and it must embrace 
 all things. 
 
 But though our object is to discover the underlying unity 
 of reality, we do not wish to fall into the error attributed 
 by some to Greek philosophy — that of regarding the 
 individual as something to be explained away. We under- 
 stand a thing in proportion as we recognise its unique 
 features, the things which make it different from all other 
 things. If we begin by saying that since all things are 
 one, all dividing lines must be illusory, our minds will be 
 reduced to a blank. It is only in the dark that all colours 
 agree. There is a sense in which the only way to know 
 the whole of reality is to know one part, no matter how 
 small, through and through. This is why the quietistic 
 mysticism, to which I referred in an early lecture of this 
 
 p 
 
226 FAITH [oh. 
 
 course, is so unsatisfactory. It shuns and distrusts all 
 particular truths, and in consequence gives us only a blank 
 sheet of paper, at which we may gaze if we will till we fall 
 into a trance. If any definite form emerges from the 
 trance, it is certain that it was not created by the trance, 
 but that it is a vivid picture of something which we 
 have been taught; probably the product of ages of 
 reflection upon the eternal world. Moreover, the fact that 
 the whole may be known by thoroughly knowing one part, 
 is a principle of great practical importance. For complete 
 all-round self-culture is an impossibility, and we cannot 
 even aim at it without danger of becoming futile dilettanti. 
 We have to limit ourselves strictly and narrowly. We 
 have to be something particular, which excludes the possi- 
 bility of becoming a hundred other particular things. 
 Some real self-sacrifice is a necessary consequence of being 
 members of a body and we must accept it. What we miss 
 in this way we must supply as best we can from authority 
 — by borrowing, that is to say, from others. But the loss 
 is not very great. For all thorough work has an universal 
 I quality about it ; so that the man who can do any one 
 [worthy thing well, is not generally narrow-minded. He 
 knows far more about God, the world, and his own soul 
 V/ than the dabbler who is Jack of all trades, and master of 
 none. This is one of the things which justifies us in holding 
 a reasonably optimistic view about human society. No 
 civilisation is possible without division of labour, and all 
 division of labour involves one-sidedness, and, in a sense, 
 the mutilation of personafity. But as the theologians of 
 the Divine Immanence have insisted that God is not only 
 everywhere, but in omnibus totus, so it appears tJiat faithful 
 devotion to any worthy pursuit does open to us avenues 
 extending to the Infinite. Browning's grammarian found 
 this even in the study of Greek syntax. If this case is 
 historical, some of you will think that no one need despair. 
 
XIII.] HARMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 227 
 
 Every one may follow Emerson's advice and ' hitch his 
 wagon to a star.' ^ 
 
 At the same time this division of labour naturally pro- 
 duces religious difficulties. ' Specialised values/ as Hoff- 
 ding says, ' attain a self-dependence over against that 
 concentration of all values which characterises religion.' 
 The very fact that we have found a measure of universal 
 truth in our chosen pursuit — that it has been a means of 
 grace and revelation to us — makes us jealous of granting the 
 same kind of value to other pursuits which have taught us 
 nothing. If we have made the order of nature, or art, or 
 active social service, the frame for our picture of the Deity 
 (and * every concept of God is,' as Fichte says, * the con- 
 cept of an idol, an etSwAov, not the whole reality), we are 
 apt to regard ourselves as the only true worshippers, and 
 those who have come to the truth from another side as 
 robbers who climb into the fold ' some other way ' instead 
 of through the door. Every exclusive object of interest 
 acquires a spurious universality, which is the progenitor > 
 of intolerance. 
 
 I referred briefly in one of my earlier lectures to 
 what I called the threefold cord — the ideas of truth, 
 beauty, and goodness, which emerge as ideals when Faith 
 becomes conscious of its aims. The life of God, so far as 
 we can apprehend it, is the sphere in which the ideals 
 of wisdom, beauty, and goodness are fully realised and 
 fully operative. I say fuUy realised and fully operative, 
 though the two may seem difficult to harmonise. We'^ 
 think of God under the two modes of essence (or substance) i 
 and existence. Under the first mode He appears as pure 
 Thought, perfect, unchanging, completely victorious over 
 evil. Under the form of existence — the * moving image 
 of eternity ' — He appears as pure Act or Will — involved in 
 
 1 Nevertheless it is true that Christianity, as a social religion, has renounced 
 the Greek aspiration after mirdpKeia, 
 
228 FAITH [cH. 
 
 temporal and spatial inter-relations, in which He energises 
 and * works His sovereign will.' In this second mode the 
 thought of God's action is split up doubly, as it were, (1) into 
 past, present, and future ; (2) into power and resistance. 
 As regards the former, if the time-process is fully real, and 
 if it is the extemalisation of the conscious life of God, we 
 are driven to the hypothesis of a God who is really in a 
 state of becoming, of self-evolution. But this, besides the 
 objection justly taken on the religious side to the con- 
 ception of a God who is not yet fully divine, involves, I 
 believe, a radically unscientific view of progress. Science 
 knows nothing of universal progress, nor of a world-process 
 which is only valuable for the sake of its last term. A 
 truer philosophy holds that there is no development in the 
 life of God Himself, but only in the changing phenomena 
 which represent His thoughts under the form of self- 
 fulfilling activity. The divine in the creation is only 
 adequately represented when the whole of the time-process 
 
 ^is gathered up into its final meaning and purpose, when, in 
 J fact, the mode of becoming is united with the mode of 
 
 ^ being. This I conceive to be the eternal world — not a 
 world of immobility in contrast with a world of change, 
 but a world in which the antinomy of becoming and being, 
 of motion and rest, is transcended. A system of thought 
 without will and action has a merely potential reality ; 
 and on the other hand will and action are nothing without 
 a permanent background which is not in a state of flux. 
 Thus, as I have tried to show, static intellectualism and 
 empirical positivism are both wrong — they are one-sided 
 systems which ultimately destroy themselves. To view 
 things sub specie aeternitatis is not to view them as abstrac- 
 tions, floating in the air, and only illustrated by * the 
 things that are made,' but to penetrate to the inner mean- 
 ing and permanent value of phenomena, giving them their 
 proper rank and spiritual significance, separating that in 
 them which has only a transitory importance, and realising 
 
nH' HABMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 229 
 
 their connection with larger aspects of the divine plan, 
 which stretch out in all directions beyond our ken. And 
 as the object perceived by Faith is neither a pure idea nor 
 a pure activity, but an idea embodied in an activity, an 
 activity expressing an idea ; so the energy of Faith is not 
 thought detached from action, nor action detached from 
 thought, but what St. Paul calls a AoytK^ Aarpeia.i 
 Hartley Coleridge's lines are worth quoting : — 
 
 Think not the Faith by which the just shall live 
 Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven, 
 
 Far less a feehng fond and fugitive, 
 
 A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given ; 
 / It is an affirmation and arf act 
 
 That bids eternal truth be present fact. 
 
 The eye of Faith tries to discern this eternal significance, 
 this absolute value, in all our varied experience. And, as 
 I have said, there are three aspects or attributes of God's 
 nature which glow like a constellation of three stars, whose 
 light is blended, but which remain distinct, not to be fused 
 with each other. 
 
 I wish also to guard against the error of supposing that 
 goodness is solely the affair of the will, truth of the intellect, 
 and beauty of another separable faculty. WiU, thought, 
 and feeling are present in every mental process. By Good- 
 ness I mean a certain disposition of the whole man, which 
 in the intellectual sphere manifests itself as a Just apprecia- 
 tion of moral values, a clear insight in the discerning of 
 spirits, an enlightened conscience. In the sphere of the 
 will it is a sincere and steady purpose to make the moral 
 ideal actual, to favour the positive values and suppress the 
 negative. (Remember that the law of the conservation 
 of energy, precluding any real increase of force, which 
 prevails in the mechanical order, has no validity in the 
 
 1 Cf. E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. ii. 
 pp. 2-5, on the Aristotelian conception of Oeupla as transcending the opposi- 
 tion of theory and practice. 
 
230 FAITH [cH. 
 
 spiritual order. There is no fixed limit to spiritual gains, 
 , which do not involve any corresponding loss in another 
 quarter.) In the realm of the affections, goodness is an 
 emotional attraction to all that is pure and noble and of 
 good report, and (as a necessary correlative) a repulsion 
 from the opposite qualities. 
 
 By Truth or Wisdom I mean the correspondence of 
 thought with fact, external fact, until we have thoroughly 
 mastered it. ' Everything is to be called true according 
 as it has its proper form, which is the copy of the idea in 
 the mind of the great Artificer.' ^ Therefore all things are 
 ' true,' as God sees them, or as they are in reality, and their 
 ' truth ' consists in the fact that they are possible objects 
 of intellectual perception. In the sphere of thought the 
 quest of truth means humble and patient discipleship to 
 the laws which God has made for the universe. In the 
 sphere of will and feeling, it means loyal obedience to them 
 and joyful acceptance of them. Virtue is * truth,' or 
 * reality ' (aA^^cia), in the language of the Fourth Gospel, 
 and sin a lie, as the translation into act of a false idea. 
 Obedience and acceptance do not mean passive resignation 
 to a dispensation which we cannot alter. Stoicism some- 
 times interpreted duty in this way ; but for Christian 
 Faith the choice and worship of the truth is an active 
 co-operation, not a passive acquiescence. The world is a 
 world of Hving beings, whose nature it is to act. We 
 ourselves are actors in the drama, as well as spectators of 
 it. And, being parts of the nature which we are studying, 
 it is our privilege to make, as well as to observe, history. 
 Law is not an external limitation which prevents us from 
 being as free, as good, and as happy as we should be if 
 
 1 St. Thomas Aquinas, using Platonic language. The old definition of truth, 
 adaequatio intellectus et rei, is rejected by Kantians and positirists. But 
 though correspondence between thought and its object is, from the nature of 
 the case, undemonstrable, since thought cannot 'step out and look at itself,' 
 it is a matter of reasonable faith that our highest faculties do not deceive us, 
 and our faculties certainly assure us that there is an objective world closely 
 corresponding to our ideas about it. 
 
xiiij HARMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 231 
 
 there were no law. The Author of nature is one cm servire 
 regnare est. We have only to remember that He is the 
 legislator, not we, and that our ' claims ' are not the 
 measure of all things. 
 
 Beauty, as I have said, seems to consist in the suitableness 
 of form to idea — the just translation of an idea into an 
 appropriate symbolic form. We must not narrow the 
 Beautiful into what we admire in external nature or in art ; 
 whatever is admirable falls within its scope. There is 
 beauty of thought and action as well as in the objects of 
 aesthetic contemplation : we must not forget the fine com- 
 prehensiveness of TO KaAoV to the Greek mind. ^Esthetic 
 Theism regards God as the Creator of Beauty, and as its 
 Beholder. It assumes that Beauty has an absolute value 
 for God, and is not merely a means towards the True or 
 the Good ; and it holds, therefore, that it has an absolute 
 value for us too. 
 
 We are not to suppose that there are three Faiths — that 
 of the scientist, that of the artist, and that of the moralist. 
 We are not to attempt a neat classification by saying that 
 "the scientist worships the true with his intellect, the artist 
 the beautiful with his feeling, and the moralist the good with 
 his will. That would be a lame conclusion, leaving us 
 pulled different ways by our several faculties towards 
 divergent ideals, each claiming divine sanction. The three 
 in that case would only thwart and partially discredit 
 each other, and in default of any faculty which could 
 adjudicate between them, we should be driven back again 
 into scepticism. 
 
 There must be an unifying principle, in which the different 
 activities of our nature are harmonised as activities of one 
 person, directed towards one satisfying end. It is in this 
 unifying experience that Faith for the first time comes 
 fully into its own. It has busied itself with multifarious 
 activities and experiences belonging to time and space : 
 by entering into tliem it has become self-conscious ; it has 
 
232 FAITH [ch. 
 
 learned to know itself and the world. But it is not lost 
 in multiplicity ; it ends by drawing the threads together 
 again, and fixing its gaze on one object — the eternal world. 
 This is the ' simplification ' j(a7rAa)cris) of mysticism, and 
 it gives a new meaning to the injunction about receiving 
 the kingdom of God as httle children. 
 
 Eternity is a mode under which all things in time may 
 be regarded. To view things sub specie aeternitatis is to 
 view them in relation to the eternal ideas of Truth, Beauty, 
 and Goodness. As we come to know more about this 
 eternal world, we apprehend more and more significant 
 facts about existence, not losing or forgetting the lower, 
 but putting them in their right place. Some facts (e.g, 
 local and temporal position) become unimportant. We get 
 rid of the persistent illusion that there is some special 
 degree of reality and importance about the time through 
 which we happen to be passing, which is much as if we 
 supposed that the landscape which we see from the carriage 
 window came into existence at the approach of the train, 
 and faded into nothingness at its departure. We value 
 things according as they seem to participate in the nature of 
 God, as set forth above. That which is isolated, meaning- 
 less, useless, self-discordant, is to that extent unreal and 
 valueless. And I think it is true to say that in proportion 
 as we can rise in heart and mind to this sphere, we perceive 
 the truth and beauty of the good, the goodness and beauty 
 of the truth, and the truth and goodness of the beautiful. 
 
 Some will say that the Good is the supreme category 
 under which all others are subsumed, and will protest 
 against Truth and Bea'Hy being placed on the same level 
 with it. They may appeal to ancient philosophy in support 
 of their contention. The school of Megara put the Good 
 in the place of the ' Being ' of the Eleatics ; and the 
 Platonists identified the One with the Good. * Dionysius 
 the Areopagite ' puts good, as a divine name, before Being, 
 as does Erigena, who even says, ' The things which are 
 
xiil] HAEMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 233 
 
 not are better tlian the things that are, for in transcend- 
 ing Being they approach to the superessential Good,' In 
 Aquinas the ascending scale of ideas is Being, Truth, Good- 
 ness. I think, however, that Goodness is used in sHghtly 
 different senses. When it is paralleled with Truth and 
 Beauty, it is used in a distinctly ethical sense, though I have 
 shown that ethics cannot be separated from devotion to 
 the true and beautiful. But when ' God saw all that He 
 had made, and behold it was very good,' the adjective 
 implies only approval and satisfaction with the result. 
 It is ' good ' that the ideas of truth and beauty should be 
 fully realised. If ' good ' is defined (as it is e.g. by Suarez) 
 as the perfection which exists in anything, goodness is 
 wider than the ethical ideal. 
 
 The faculties of our mind must be really unified beforei/^ ^ 
 Faith can fully come into its own. The wiU, feeling, and^ 
 intellect cannot be driven like the horses in a Russian 
 troika, side by side. This is our great difficulty. This is __ 
 why Faith must be true to its proper temper — that of ^^ 
 patient, confident hopefulness and trust. We must not 
 make a hierarchy of the faculties, as Hegel did, and as many 
 of his opponents have done. The intellect is the latest 
 bom of our faculties, and the finest instrument we have ; 
 there is a very true sense in which it is * king,' as being 
 alone * evident to itself.' ^ But I have already shown that 
 in the life of reason, thus conceived, the moral and 
 the aesthetic consciousness find their full satisfaction, and 
 are not relegated to a lower place. 
 
 This life of reason is the life of the * perfect man ' grown 
 out of the dim mystical consciousness with which religion 
 began. Faith, when perfected, becomes a real spiritual 
 self-consciousness, in which the human spirit and the 
 divine are in free communication with each other. We have 
 all the time been making a false abstraction in considering 
 Faith as a merely human faculty. It is God's gift as much ^ 
 1 pofftXeiis 6 ttoCt—airds 6 Novs ivapy^s airbs ^avrv.— Plotinug. 
 
234 FAITH [ch. 
 
 as man's service ; and the two sides can never be separated. 
 >This is the fundamental truth of mysticism. The mystics 
 have often been in too great a hurry, but they are right in 
 their view of the relation of man to God. Some of them 
 have really found what they sought ; but they have not 
 been able to describe their highest experiences. Those 
 who have stopped half way, content with some hasty 
 synthesis, have often been more lucid and intelligible 
 than those who have followed the rugged path to the end. 
 In Edward FitzGerald's mystical poem, Attar, there is a 
 pretty allegory, which tells how the moths sent mes- 
 sengers to find their idol the flame. The first and second 
 come back with slight and uncertain intelligence, and are 
 rejected. A third goes in their place 
 
 Who, spurred with true desire 
 Plunging at once into the sacred fire 
 Folded his wings within, till he became 
 One colour and one substance with the flame. 
 He only knew the flame who in it burned, 
 And only he could tell who ne'er to tell returned. 
 
 It may be inferred that I find in the idea of personality 
 my ground of confidence that the contradictions of experi- 
 ence will be harmonised. In a sense this is so. And yet I 
 differ strongly from some who have already defended 
 Faith by this argument, among whom the most illustrious 
 is the author of the Grammar of Assent. Newman, in this 
 celebrated book, ranges himself with the * Personafists ' ; 
 his appeal is to the assent of the whole man to rehgious 
 truth, which cannot be estabfished by the intellect only, 
 still less by the sentiments, which, as a basis for Faith, 
 are * a dream and a mockery.' He further rejects 
 the argument from our sense of beauty, which seems to 
 him too trivial ; and his intellectual scepticism, as we 
 have already seen, is deep and far-reaching. His * per- 
 Bonahsm ' is therefore almost exclusively ethical, and his 
 philosophy resembles that of the pragmatists and personal 
 
xiil] harmonious SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 235 
 
 idealists. This is far too narrow a psychological basis for 
 a true philosophy of personality ; and when, after an 
 acute analysis of the process by which beliefs come to be 
 held, he takes us with breathless haste, by a series of leaps 
 and bounds, into the heart of Roman Catholic oHhodoxy, 
 we follow with undiminished admiration of his dialectic, 
 but with no inclination towards conversion. 
 
 The word ' personality ' is in danger of becoming a philo- 
 sophical shibboleth. It has been so much abused that I 
 prefer not to use it. * We do not become personalities by 
 pronouncing the word with unction and emphasis. . . . The 
 thought of personality possesses value only so far as the 
 word is backed by action, and action which involves the 
 building up of a new reality. . . . The modem world, like 
 all others, is especially eloquent and enthusiastic about 
 that in which it is most lacking ; we are in painful want of 
 vigorous and strongly-marked personalities, and we talk 
 incessantly about the value and greatness of personality.' ^ 
 
 It is an unreaHsed ideal — the ideal of Faith. Would 
 Faith be Faith if it were not unrealised ? Faith is the felt 
 unity of unreduced opposites.^ Have we not found that 
 hope and venture are essential parts of Faith ? Every 
 religious doctrine has its inexpUcable side, because it cannot 
 be a religious doctrine unless it stretches out into the 
 infinite. The duaUstic form of consciousness is seemingly 
 ineradicable ; we are condemned to a kind of astigmatism 
 of which we are nevertheless fully aware. This natural 
 limitation has been poetically expressed by William 
 Watson : — 
 
 Think not thy wisdom can illume away 
 The ancient tanglement of night and day. 
 Enough to acknowledge both and both revere ; 
 They see not clearliest who see all things clear. 
 
 1 Eucken, T?ie Life of the Spirit, pp. 385-6. 
 
 » From Bradley, who says less accurately that * Religion is the felt unity/ 
 etc. 
 
S86 FAITH [cH. 
 
 The religious consciousness oscillates between two poles, 
 presenting all the highest truths to us under the form 
 of antinomies. * He to whom time is as eternity, and 
 eternity as time/ says Jacob Bohme, * is freed from all 
 trouble.' No doubt he would be, as the blessed dead are 
 free ; but we have to live in time as citizens of eternity ; 
 that is our practical problem. The certainty that all 
 contradictions are reconciled in the eternal world is ours ; 
 but the how is mainly hidden from us. Meanwhile, as 
 might be expected while we are feeling our way, there is 
 a borderland of half-beliefs, half-fancies, promptings from 
 our sub-conscious Ufe, anticipations of later developments. 
 These vague intimations are neither to be rejected nor 
 superstitiously obeyed, but studied and analysed, and 
 above all brought to the test of action, till they yield 
 something definite. 
 
 The negative movement in all experience is a great 
 mystery, but it is the condition of Faith's existence. There 
 are some remarkable thoughts in the following words of 
 R. L. Stevenson (Virginihus Puerisque, p. 41) : * The true 
 conclusion is to turn our backs on apprehensions, and 
 embrace that shining and courageous virtue. Faith. Hope 
 is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow ; Faith is 
 the grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on 
 ignorance ; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowledge of 
 our life, of the tyranny of circumstance, and* the frailty 
 of human resolution. Hope looks for unquahfied success ; 
 but Faith coimts certainty a failure, and takes honourable 
 defeat to be a form of victory.' This is exactly the lesson 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the New Testament 
 gives Hope a much higher place, as Faith's twin sister. 
 ' The spiritual life, however deep and divine our conception 
 of it may be, is not an oppositionless experience, but shares 
 the essential characteristic of all personal activity — that, 
 namely, of developing through self-diremption and self- 
 return. It is within the spiritual Hfe itself that all opposi- 
 
XIII.] HARMONIOUS SPIKITUAL DEVELOPMENT 237 
 
 tions are at once created and overcome.' ^ Dissatisfaction 
 with the actual is a condition of Faith, and a part of it. 
 We must not conceive of Faith developing apart from the 
 pain and the evil, the ignorance and the ugliness, which it 
 resists. The oppositions which stimulate and perplex our 
 mortality are themselves part of our immortal substance ; 
 the Good, sub specie aeternitatis, is a good which has over- 
 come evil rather than an abstract notion of good which 
 excludes it. 
 
 This is really fundamental, according to my view. Faith 
 rearranges all experience, which is presented to us at first 
 so chaotically, but it leaves nothing out. Every contra- 
 diction must be fairly met and overcome. If we edge 
 round it, if we ignore it or shirk it in any way, we shall 
 enter into life halt and maimed, if we enter at all. Even 
 the claims of piety must give way to the love of truth. 
 To put the needs of the heart before truth is really an act 
 of treason against Faith. 
 
 This unified experience is the perfected state, and the 
 fruition, of Faith. There are not many who can hope 
 to attain to it in this life, though, as Browning says, 
 * moments ' are not ' denied us ' in which * the spirit's true 
 endowments stand out plainly from its false ones.' The 
 common life of the Church, in most cases, brings us nearer 
 to it than we could get as isolated individuals, and this is 
 a truth which I wish to emphasise, as I have been obliged 
 to traverse some of the claims which the greatest of Chris- 
 tian Churches makes for itself. 
 
 Of the object of Faith — God — I have said very little, 
 except that He is known to us in His attributes of perfect 
 Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I do not agree with those 
 philosophers who say that the Absolute is wholly withdrawn 
 from our ken. * The fulness of Him that filleth all in all ' 
 is thoroughly conceivable as an idea, though not cognoscible, 
 and is a possible and legitimate object of adoration. If I 
 1 Boyce Gibson, R. Eucken's Philosophy of Lifef p. 154. 
 
338 FAITH [ca 
 
 am to attempt to clothe my idea of God in philosophical 
 as well as in religious language, I can nearly accept the 
 following statement of Professor Royce {Hibbert Journal, 
 July 1907) — only stipulating that the * will ' which is 
 eternally in possession of its object can no longer be 
 distinguished from thought : — * I mean by the term God 
 the totality of the expressions and life of the world-will, 
 when considered in its conscious unity. God is a con- 
 sciousness which knows and which intends the entire life 
 of the world, a consciousness which views this life at one 
 glance, as its own life and self,^ and which therefore not only 
 wills but attains, not only seeks but possesses, not only 
 passes from expression to expression, but eternally is the 
 entire temporal sequence of its own expressions. God has 
 and is a will, and this will, if viewed as a temporal sequence 
 of activities, is identical with what I have called the world- 
 will. Only, when viewed as the divine will, this world- will 
 is taken not merely as an infinite sequence of will-activities, 
 but in its entire unity as one whole of life. God is omni- 
 scient, because His insight comprehends and finds unified, 
 in one eternal instant, the totality of the temporal process, 
 with all of its contents and meanings. He is omnipotent, 
 because all that is done is, when viewed in its unity. His 
 deed, and that despite the endless varieties and strifes 
 which freedom and the variety of individual finite expres- 
 sions involve. God is immanent in the finite, because 
 nothing is, which is not part of His total self-expression. 
 He is transcendent of all finitude, because the totality of 
 finite processes is before Him at once, whereas nothing 
 finite possesses true totality.* 
 
 The Ufe of Faith admits us to a real, not an imaginary, 
 communion with God. As Faith realises itself in know- 
 ledge or reason, as we understand what that vague yearning 
 
 1 The life of the world is not, even in its totality, the 'self of God, but the 
 expression of His thought and will. Royce does not emphasise quite 
 ■uflBciently (to satisfy me) the transcendence of God. 
 
I 
 
 ■e; 
 
 III.] HARMONIOUS SPIEITUAL DEVELOPMENT 239 
 
 which has been with us so long really means, namely, that 
 there is a God who has made us for Himself, and who has 
 been drawing us towards Himself, not only do all the 
 tangled threads of life begin to straighten, but our hearts 
 glow with a new emotional warmth. We begin to know 
 
 e love of God. And so we are brought back to the fine 
 words of Clement about Faith, Knowledge, and Love, 
 which I quoted in my second lecture. 
 
 Faith is the human side of the religious relation, Grace 
 is the corresponding divine side. The spiritual life is not 
 a work of man himself, but of the whole world-movement 
 drawing him on. The divine in humanity is imfolding 
 itself in us. Spirituality is, as it were, a new stage in the 
 world's life, a new cosmic force. * God,' in the words of 
 St. Paul, * works in us to will and to do of His good plea- 
 sure.' Every religious act is an act of Faith and Grace 
 together. They are the two indissoluble sides of one act, 
 through which the union between God and man becomes 
 actual. The human and divine elements must both be 
 active in Faith ; otherwise we get either rationalism or 
 magical supematuralism. In either case, all real relation 
 between God and man is lost. 
 
 But in the experience of the growing spirit. Faith and 
 Grace are double, and it is because they are not yet fused 
 that the divine side of the relation is projected as super- 
 natural dogma instead of as the personal self-communi- 
 cation of God, and the human as cultus instead of as the 
 free response to that self-communication. Dogma and 
 cultus are the untransparent middle forms of knowledge 
 and action. Faith passes through them, but does not 
 remain shut up in them. 
 
 Revelation is the divine side of intellectual Faith. It is 
 the name given to grace as enlightenment and persuasion 
 of divine truth. All revelation is in part inner and per- 
 sonal : it is never wholly in nature or history. All that 
 can be done from outside is to quicken and confirm the 
 
240 FAITH [CH. 
 
 revelation in the soul. Since revelation speaks to the 
 central and most divine part of the personaUty, it con- 
 veys absolute truth, from which, as I have maintained, 
 we are not excluded, though the forms under which it is 
 conveyed are human and imperfect. 
 
 As revelation corresponds to intellectual Faith, so. 
 redemption corresponds to what we may call heart-Faith. 
 Faith is, on one side, self-surrender. But surrender is only 
 the first stage in the human process which corresponds to 
 redemption ; the second stage is atonement, or recon- 
 ciliation. God redeems man from evil and guilt, and 
 man feels himself reconciled to God. Redemption and 
 atonement are functionally identical, and the feeling of 
 reconciliation is peace. Surrender, reconciliation, peace, 
 are the three stages of heart-Faith, which correspond to 
 the act of grace as ledemption.^ 
 
 The third form of Grace is that which belongs to the will. 
 The religious relation, says Hartmann in the work Just 
 referred to, raises us above relative dependence on the 
 world, to absolute dependence on God, which is freedom. 
 ' Sanctification ' is the name given to both the negative 
 and positive stages of this deliverance and elevation. On 
 the human side the first stage is moral freedom, the second 
 moral energy. Holiness is virtue rooted in the religious 
 relation ; its activities are the actualising of the refigious 
 relation. The distinction between holiness and virtue is 
 qualitative, not quantitative. 
 
 -' But revelation, redemption, and sanctification are closely 
 connected. ' Only the imity of intellectual, affective, and 
 practical Faith embraces the whole conception of Faith, 
 just as only the unity of revelation, redemption, and sancti- 
 fication reaUses the whole conception of grace.'^ 
 
 Hartmann' s treatment of Faith and Grace as the human 
 and divine aspects of the same activity seems to me to 
 
 1 Cf. Hartmann, Religion des Oeistes, 
 * Hartmann, op. cit. 
 
I 
 
 II.] HARMONIOUS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 241 
 
 make it easier to harmonise the static and djmamio aspects 
 of spiritual truth. 
 
 I will conclude these lectures by a quotation from a 
 writer who speaks with high authority. I am glad to find 
 in his words a powerful support for the view of the nature 
 and function of Faith which I have endeavoured to lay 
 before you. --— - 
 
 ' Faith is the faculty implanted in every man made in the 
 image of God, the ally of the reason, the will, the affections, 
 which swiftly discerns and swiftly weighs evidence as to 
 the things of the unseen and eternal order, appealing partly 
 to the intellect and partly to the spirit. The divine gift 
 of reason is educated by the divine gift of Faith ; and 
 Faith is educated by reason. For a while reason and 
 Faith pursue their journey together. At length the time 
 comes when reason acknowledges that there is a bar to 
 further progress, and when Faith must press on alone into 
 the realities of the unseen and the eternal. Faith returns 
 at length from that far journey and submits to reason the 
 assurance she has gained as to the things of God. Reason 
 reviews, harmonises, gives expression to the discoveries 
 of Faith. The will translates them into the activities of a 
 holy life. The heart loves and rejoices in the God and 
 Father of whom Faith witnesses. The reason, the will, 
 the heart, are the allies of Faith. Together, if they have 
 their perfect work, they make the hfe on earth divine. 
 Together they realise that eternal life which lies about us 
 and is in us, but which as yet is hidden from us by the 
 shadows of the seen and the temporal.' ^ 
 
 1 Bishop of Ely (Dr. Chase) at Barrow Church Congress, 1906. 
 
BIBLIOGBAPHY 
 
 Balfour, A. J., Foundations of Belief. 
 
 Barry, Bishop, The Manifold Witness for Christ. 
 
 Benson, Margaret, The Venture of a Eational Faith. 
 
 BoEDDER, Bernard, Natural Theology. 
 
 Caird, John, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 
 
 Caldecott, a., Philosophy of Religion; Selections from the 
 
 Literature of Theism. 
 Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus ; Paedagogus; Stro- 
 
 mateis. 
 Du BosE, W., The Gospel in the Gospels. 
 EucKEN, R., The Life of the Spirit^ and other works. 
 Fechner, G. T., Die drei Motive und Griinde des Glaubens. 
 Green, T. H., Faith. 
 
 Grubb, E., Authority and the Light Within. 
 GwATKiN, M., The Knowledge of God. 
 Hare, Julius, Sermons. 
 Hartmann, E. von. Religion des Geistes. 
 Hebert, involution de la Foi Catholique. 
 Holland, Henry Scott, Essay on Faith in Lux Mundi. 
 Inge, W. R., Faith and Knowledge; Truth and Falsehood in 
 
 Religion. 
 Jastrow, M., The Study of Religion. 
 Kaftan, J., Das Wesen der Religion. 
 Keyserling, Graf H., Unsterblichkeit. 
 Krause, K., The Ideal of Humanity. 
 
244 FAITH 
 
 Ladd, G. T., a Theory of Reality ; Philosophy of Religion. 
 Martineau, J., A Study of Religion; The Seat of Authority in 
 
 Religion. 
 Moore, Aubrey L., Science and the Faith. 
 Newman, Cardinal, Lectures on Justification. 
 O'Brien, Bishop, Sermons on the Nature and Effects of Faith, 
 Pratt, J. B., Psychology of Religious Belief. 
 Rauwenhoff, L., Religionsphilosophie. 
 Romanes, G. J., Thoughts on Religion. 
 
 Sabatier, a., Les Religions d'Autoritd et la Religion de V Esprit. 
 Skrine, J. H., JFhat is Faith ? 
 Stanton, V. H., The Place of Authority in Matters of Religious 
 
 Belief. 
 Starbuck, E. D., The Psychology of Religion. 
 TiELE, C. P., Elements of the Science of Religion. 
 Tyrrell, G., Lex Orandi; Lex Credendi. 
 Upton, C. B., Eibhert Lectures, 1893. 
 Watson, John, The Philosophical Basis of Religion. 
 
INDEX 
 
 JBOTT, B. A., 7, 28. 
 Abelard, 30. 
 Acedia, 51. 
 
 ^Esthetic ground of Faith, 203-22. 
 Alanus of Lille, 84. 
 Alexander of Hales, 99. 
 Allen, A. V. G., Continuity of 
 
 Christian Thought, 30. 
 Anselm, 30. 
 
 Antiquity, appeal to, 96-7. 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 31-3, 39, 178, 217, 
 
 230, 233. 
 Aristotle, 48, 144, 153, 195, 209.^ 
 Arnold, Matthew, 159. 
 Athenagoras, 110. 
 AufkL&rung^ the, 136. 
 Augustine, 18, 30, 70, 112, 116, 123, 
 
 144, 215. 
 Authority, 72-139, 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 153, 199. 
 Baldwin, Prof., 71. 
 Balfour, A. J., 76, 190. 
 Balmez, J., 144. 
 Basilides, 26. 
 Bayle, 76. 
 
 Beauty, 47, 203-22. 231. 
 Bengel, 128. 
 
 Benson, Miss Margaret, 43. 
 Bernard, 31. 
 Bethune-Baker, 110. 
 Bible, the. 107-23. 
 Boedder, Bernard, 61. 
 Bohme, Jacob, 236. 
 Bonaventura, 99. 
 Bosanquet, Bernard, 207, 212. 
 
 Bradley, F. H,, 199, 235. 
 Browning. R., 63, 65, 139. 
 Brunetiere, Ferdinand, 178. 
 Bucke, 65. 
 Buddhism, 44. 
 Burke, 207. 
 Burkitt, F. C, 94. 
 Butler, Dom, 101. 
 
 Caird, E., 189. 229. 
 
 Caird, J.,188. 
 
 Caldecott, A., 59, 183, 190. 
 
 Catholicism, 161. 
 
 Celsus, 21. 
 
 Change and permanence, 194-96. 
 
 'Charcoal Burner's Faith,' 85. 
 
 Chase, Bishop. 241. 
 
 Chillingworth, 107. 
 
 Chrysostom, 16, 34, 120. 
 
 Church, the, as primary authority, 
 
 87-106. 
 Church, Dean, 213. 
 Clarke, 147. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 24-30. 
 Clement of Rome, 27. 
 Clementine Recognitions, 25. 
 Clough, A. H., 142. 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 229. 
 Colet, 110. 
 Cornill, 108. 
 Corvo, Baron, 95. 
 Cousin, Victor, 220. 
 Cud worth, 180. 
 Cyprian, 92. 
 
 Darwin, 48. 
 
246 
 
 FAITH 
 
 Davidson, A. B., 6. 
 
 De Faye, 30 
 
 De Pressensd, 63. 
 
 Descartes, 180. 
 
 Development, 100. 
 
 Diognetus, Epistle to, 25. 
 
 Dion Chrysostom, 74. 
 
 Dionysius the A.reopagite, 232. 
 
 Dobschiitz, 13. 
 
 Dogmas, 170-1, 289. 
 
 Dogmatism, 83. 
 
 Dorner, 1. 
 
 Du Bose, 17, 18. 
 
 ECKHART, 146. 
 
 Emerson, 227. 
 
 English reformers, 37. 
 
 Erasmus, 120. 
 
 Erigena, 232. 
 
 Eucken, R., 137, 187-8, 235. 
 
 Faibbaibn, a. M., 120. 
 Farrar, Dean, 109, 111. 
 Fear, and faith, 70. 
 Fechner, G. T., 1. 
 Feeling, faith as, 55-71. 
 Fichte, 41, 182, 188, 227. 
 FitzGerald, E., 234. 
 Flint, Robert, 66. 
 Frank, Sebastian, 115. 
 Friends, Society of, 91. 
 Fries, J. F., 220. 
 
 Gibson, Botob, 187, 237. 
 
 Gnosis, 197. 
 
 Gnosticism, 20, 21, 28, 29. 
 
 Goethe, 49. 
 
 Goodness, 46, 229. 
 
 Gore, Bishop, 102. 
 
 Gospels, in Modernist criticism, 167. 
 
 Grace, 239-41. 
 
 Greek conception of reality, 165. 
 
 Grubb, E., 88. 
 
 Gwatkin, M., 51, 75, 120, 184. 
 
 Hare, Jultus, 19, 197. 
 Hamack, 11, 89, 98, 111, 131. 
 Hartmann, E. von, 52, 67, 240-1. 
 Hebrew conception of Faith, 4. 
 Hebrews, Epistle to the, 15-18, 117. 
 Hegel, 67. 179, 181, 188, 207. 
 Heine, 30. 
 Heraclitus, 141. 
 Hermas, 24, 25. 
 Herrmann, 133, 158. 
 Hippolytus, 110. 
 Hoffdiug, Harald, 179, 227. 
 Homilies, 37. 
 Hope, 2, 15. 
 Hume, 154. 
 Hutcheson, 218. 
 Huxley, 152, 200. 
 Huysmans, 211. 
 
 Ignatius, 24. 
 Individuality, 225. 
 Inspiration, 88-9, 107-23. 
 Instinct, 201. 
 Intellectualism, 178-202. 
 
 Jacobi, 60. 
 
 James, Epistle of, 18, 19. 
 
 James, Wm., 66, 142, 150-1, 179. 
 
 Jerome, 117. 
 
 John, Gospel of St., 20-23. 
 
 John of Salisbury, 76. 
 
 Jones, Henry, 76, 190-2. 
 
 Justification, 11-13, 33-5. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 110. 
 
 Kaftan, J., 98, 133. 
 
 Kant, 3,9jJ47-9, 162, 176, 179, 180-4, 
 
 206-77^ 
 Kidd, Benjamin, 75. 
 Knowledge, relation of faith to, 27, 
 
 178-202. 
 
 LiABKRTHONNliiRE, Abb^, 164-7. 
 Ladd, G. T., 181-2, 207. 
 Lange, F. A., 160. 
 
INDEX 
 
 247 
 
 Law, William, 63. 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 200. 
 
 Leibnitz, 187. 
 
 Le Roy, 164-7. 171. 
 
 Leasing, 80. 
 
 Leuba, 200. 
 
 * Lex Orandi; lex Gredendi,' 172. 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, 2, 8. 
 
 Logos Doctrine, 129, 135. 
 
 Loisy, A., 102, 167-9. 
 
 Longinus, 207. 
 
 Lotze, 42, 49, 62, 155, 181. 
 
 Love, relation of faitb to, 27, 67, 
 
 70-1. 
 Lowell, 121. 
 
 Lutheranism, 12, 33, 38, 111. 112. 
 Lyttelton, (first) Baron, 142. 
 
 Maeterlinck, 80. 
 
 Mansel, H. L., 143. 
 
 Martineau, James, 93. 
 
 Mechanism, apparent, 184. 
 
 Melanchthon, 35-6. 
 
 Millet, J. F.,200. 
 
 Milton, 48, 108. 
 
 Miracles, 162-3. 
 
 Modernism, 102-5, 114, 161-77. 
 
 Myers, F., 66. 
 
 Mysticism, 55, 67, 68. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 2, 36, 37, 38, 92, 
 
 100-2, 179, 234. 
 Nominalism, 99, 146. 
 ' Notes of the true Church,' 94-6. 
 Novalis, 220. 
 
 Occam, 99. 
 
 Old Testament Canon, 108. 
 
 Ontological argument, 180-2. 
 
 Ontologism, 61-2. 
 
 Origen, 21. 
 
 Orr, James, 132-3. 
 
 Paley, 179. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 61. 
 
 Pascal, 70, 179. 
 
 Paul, St., 10-15, 186. 
 
 Personalism, 234. 
 
 Peter, Second Epistle of, 121. 
 
 Pfleiderer, 14, 15. 115, 157. 
 
 Philo, 6, 7, 109. 
 
 Philostratus, 211. 
 
 Pio Nono, 99. 
 
 Plato, 2, 3, 108-9, 207, 211. 
 
 Pleasure and pain, 45. 
 
 Plotinus, 4, 48, 56, 195, 211, 215. 
 
 Plutarch, 3. 
 
 Pope, the, as infallible, 92. 
 
 Practical needs, faith based on, 161- 
 
 77. 
 Pragmatism, 42, 146, 150-1, 170-1. 
 Pratt, 57, 69, 71. 
 ' Programme of Modernism,' 166, 169, 
 
 176. 
 Prophetigm, 87-91, 119. 
 
 Quietism, 55, 64; 
 
 Rationalism, 178-202. 
 Reason and faith, 178-202. 
 Redemption, 240. 
 Reid, Thomas, 206. 
 Renan, 143. 
 Revelation, 82, 239. 
 Reville, A., 62. 
 Rickaby, Joseph, 77, 144. 
 Ritschl, 97-8, 131-4, 155-7. 
 Rohde, Erwin, 69. 
 Romanticism, 221. 
 Royce, Josiah, 238. 
 Ruskin, 219. 
 Ryle, Bishop, 108. 
 
 Sabatier, a., 91. 
 Sanctification, 240. 
 Sanday, W., 109, 117. 
 Sanday and Headlam, 7, 19. 
 Santayana, George, 159, 206, 209. 
 Scepticism, 143. 
 Schleiermacher, 42, 57-60, 66-7. 
 Schopenhauer, 154, 194. 
 Science and miracles, 163. 
 
248 
 
 FAITH 
 
 Seeley, J. R., 219. 
 
 Shaftesbury, 217. 
 
 Skrine, J. H., 223. 
 
 Smith, John, 217. 
 
 Spencer, H., 143, 149. 
 
 Spinoza, 146, 187, 189. 
 
 Stanton, V. H., 79. 
 
 ' Static* view of reality, 165, 194-6. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 236. 
 
 Stoicism, 29. 
 
 Suarez, 233. 
 
 Superstition, 72-4. 
 
 Synoptic Gospels, faith in, 7-10. 
 
 Teleoloqical argument, 183-4. 
 
 Tennyson, 50, 56. 
 
 TertuUian, 29, 30, 89. 
 
 ' Testimonium Spiritus Sancti,' 117. 
 
 * Theologia Oermanica,' 146. 
 
 Theophilus, 25. 
 
 Tillotson, 185. 
 
 Toland, 185» 187. 
 
 Tradition, 99, 118. 
 Trent, Council of, 113. 
 Truth, 45, 230, 
 Tyrrell. G., 39, 104-5, 172-8. 
 
 Valentinians, 26. 
 Value and existence, 50. 
 Value-judgments, 156. 
 Vatican Council, 179. 
 
 Wallace, W., 104. 
 
 Warfield, 5. 
 
 Watson, William, 210, 235. 
 
 Weigel, 115. 
 
 Wesleys, the, 115. 
 
 Westcott, Bishop, 16, 17, 129. 
 
 Westminster Confession, 117. 
 
 Will, faith as, 140-60. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 28, 65, 219. 
 
 Works, relation of faith to, 13, 8& 
 
 Xenofqon, 4. 
 
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