REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF r iin 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
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 Accessions No.^.^^f^ Shelf No. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
 THE LAW OF LOVE, AND LOVE AS A LAW; 
 
 OR, CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 A New Edition, with Important Additions, I2mo, $1.75. 
 
 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN; 
 OR, THE BODY AND MIND IN ONE SYSTEM. 
 
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THE 
 
 SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN 
 
 Lectures 
 
 GIVEN BEFORE THE 
 
 THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS AT PRINCETON 
 
 ON 
 
 THE Z. P. STONE FOUNDATION 
 
 BY 
 
 MARK HOPKINS D. D. 
 
 M 
 
 01 THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1883 
 
V L 
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 By CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 a. ^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 \ 
 
 SOME eight years since I gave six lectures before 
 the students in the Theological Seminary at New 
 Haven. Those lectures were repeated at Chicago 
 and at Oberlin, and portions of two of them were 
 published in the "Princeton Review." As now pub- 
 lished, they were delivered last March before the 
 students of the Theological Seminary at Princeton. , 
 They have been modified, and to some extent rewrit- 
 ten, partly to meet changing phases of thought, and 
 partly to avoid publishing again what had been al- 
 ready published, though portions of that have been 
 retained when required by the connection. They 
 are now published in accordance with the desire of 
 the professors of the Seminary by whom I was in- 
 vited to give them, and in the hope that they may 
 be of service, not only to theological students, but to 
 those, now increasing in number, who are interested 
 in the subjects of which they treat. 
 
 M. H. 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE, June, 1883. 
 

CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 MAN CREATED i 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 MAN CREATED IN THE. IMAGE OF GOD. i. IN KNOWLEDGE 24 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 IN KNOWLEDGE continued. 2. IN FEELING. 3. IN FREE- 
 DOM. 4. IN CAUSATIVE POWER ..... 50 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 THE MORAL NATURE . . * 74 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 i. MAN CREATED WITH DOMINION. 2. MAN, MALE AND 
 
 FEMALE 98 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 i. MAN IN HIS PRESENT STATE. 2. THE MAN CHRIST 
 JESUS . 121 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE 
 
 SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 I. 
 
 MAN CREATED. 
 
 OF the first man the Scriptural idea is that he was 
 created in the image of God. " So God created man 
 in his own image, in the image of God created He 
 him." This, if we connect with it the immediately 
 following endowment of dominion over the earth, 
 is the highest, the grandest, the most inspiring and 
 ennobling idea and description of man ever given. 
 There is in it essentially the idea of sonship, and so, 
 of the fatherhood of God. In its fullness this was 
 first revealed by Christ, but it was the Scriptural idea 
 from the beginning. Without the image there is no 
 sonship. With it, we have all that is implied in that, 
 though the depth and fullness of the love of God as a 
 Father could never have been apprehended except 
 through Christ. 
 
 The image of God here spoken of is not the image 
 of a god, such as man might form by personifying 
 the objects or forces of nature, but of the God of the 
 
2 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 first chapter of Genesis, the One God, the Creator 
 of the heavens and the earth and of man himself. 
 Between the attributes of such a God and those of 
 man the differences are as great as they can be, and 
 leave the possibility that man should be in the image 
 of God. 
 
 Here then we have, in the most ancient book 
 \kriown, an idea of God a One, and as the Creator. 
 We have also an idea of man as immediately created 
 by Him and in his image, that is not only consonant 
 with the whole transcendent revelation of which it 
 forms a part, but is at its basis. We have at the very 
 beginning of the Old Testament a being worthy of 
 the redemption revealed in the New Testament. 
 Between man in the image of God, in personal rela- 
 tions with Him, spoken to, and intrusted with do- 
 minion over his world, and the provision made for 
 his redemption when he had fallen and for his eter- 
 nal life, there is a congruity essential to the unity of 
 the Scriptures, and that could have been found in no 
 other way. 
 
 Of man as thus in the image of God, the first 
 thing that is asserted is, that he was created. " So 
 God created man." 
 
 The word " create " may mean the absolute origi- 
 nation of material. This is its highest sense. It 
 may also mean the formation, out of given materials, 
 of something that did not exist before. This is a 
 lower and secondary sense. That man was immedi- 
 ately formed out of material already existing the 
 Bible asserts. Did that material always exist ? or 
 
MAN CREATED. 3 
 
 have we reason to believe that the very material out 
 of which he was formed was previously originated, 
 so that, if we trace it back, man was, in the fullest 
 sense, created by God ? If the material had an inde- 
 pendent existence, it might, and probably would be, 
 refractory, so that any one using it would be obliged 
 to accommodate himself to the nature of the mate- 
 rial ; but if it was originated for a purpose, it would 
 be adapted to that purpose, wholly flexible to the will 
 of Him who originated it. 
 
 I know of no reason, a priori, why matter may not 
 have existed always. I know of no law of interpre- 
 tation that can make the word, " beginning," in the 
 first verse of the Bible, more absolute than it is when 
 Christ, speaking of marriage, says that " in the be- 
 ginning it was not so." Nor do I know of any law 
 of interpretation by which the word " created," in 
 that verse, means an absolute origination more than 
 it does when it is said that God created great whales, 
 or created man. 
 
 But however this may be, with our present knowl- 
 edge of matter it seems more rational to believe in 
 its absolute origination. The argument is that from 
 design, as in any other case. If we find in the quali- 
 ties and quantities of the different kinds of matter, 
 and also in their possible adaptation, evidences of de- 
 sign similar to those we find in the collocation and 
 movements of matter, then we have the same kind of 
 evidence that matter itself was originated, or, at 
 least, did not always exist as matter, as we have that 
 its collocations or movements were originated. And 
 
4 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 this evidence we do have in connection with every 
 kind of matter. A single example will suffice. Ox- 
 ygen is a kind of matter essential on this planet, but 
 not necessarily existing everywhere. It has been 
 said not to be in the sun, and if there at all, it is in a 
 quantity relatively small But look at the quantity 
 here. There must have been, at first, just enough 
 to combine chemically with the metallic bases, which, 
 as oxides, constitute so large a part of the solid por- 
 tion of the earth, and with hydrogen to constitute 
 the water, and then to have just enough left free to 
 mix with the nitrogen and form the atmosphere. 
 This could not have been by chance, for in no medi- 
 cal prescription can exactness of quantity be more 
 essential. Then look at its properties that fit it thus 
 to combine and to form this mixture, and to be the 
 vital element in the air and the supporter of combus- 
 tion, and then, after having been the supporter of 
 life, to be the agent in decomposing its structures 
 and resolving them into their original elements. Of 
 other substances, as of carbon, the adaptations are 
 not less numerous. Again, if, instead of quality, we 
 look at quantity alone, in its widest extent, as the 
 kinds and systems of matter are related to each other, 
 we shall be led to say that He " weighed the moun- 
 tains in scales and the hills in a balance.'* We think 
 it, therefore, more rational to suppose that these dif- 
 ferent kinds of matter were originated than that they 
 existed from eternity, and with just such possible 
 adaptations and quantities. 
 
 But you say it is inconceivable to you that a sub- 
 
MAN CREATED. 5 
 
 stantive being that did not exist before should be 
 originated. Yes, but conceivability is not the limit 
 of credibility. That is insisted on by Mill, in his 
 Logic. It is not rational to suppose that we can con- 
 ceive of any power or mode of its manifestation, un- 
 less we ' possess, in some degree, a similar power. 
 The fact that such a power exists we may know ; the 
 mode of it we cannot know. A man wholly destitute 
 of the organ of sight from the first, can neither con- 
 ceive of what sight is nor of the mode of it. If, then, 
 you know enough of the resources of an Infinite Being 
 to know that He could not cause that to be which 
 was not before, to know that it would be either an 
 absurdity or a contradiction, then you must deny 
 the fact of an original creation. But if you do not 
 know so much, and I am sure I do not, then, 
 aside from revelation, it seems to me that the hypoth- 
 esis of the origination by mind, of what we call mat- 
 ter, in some way inconceivable to us, involves fewer 
 difficulties than any other. 
 
 But whether created or not, the material being 
 given, did man come to be man by' the special act of 
 
 Creator, or by evolution, or, which means the same 
 thing, by development ? This question, in view of 
 recent speculations, we are bound to consider. In 
 doing this, let us first understand our terms. In their 
 strict meaning, solution implies something that had 
 been z'/zvolved, and development something that had 
 been ^veloped, in which each part of the now evolved 
 or developed whole had a previous and separate ex- 
 istence. Such* literal evolution as this is not claimed, 
 
6 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 but the doctrine of Professor Tyndall so approximates 
 it that we shall understand ourselves if we call it a 
 doctrine of evolution. That doctrine assumes the 
 existence of the matter in the solar system in a neb- 
 ulous state, and that there was in that matter " the 
 promise and potency of all that now exists." Hence, 
 his doctrine is, that the origin of man is from below, 
 through the agency of forces inherent in matter, 
 that these forces have been working upwards through 
 vast periods, and that man is their highest product. 
 Hence, " humanity" is the grand etre of Compte, 
 and the only proper object of worship. Here the 
 result is due to forces inherent in matter, and a sys- 
 tem affirming this may be understood and accepted 
 as a system of evolution. A result due to the super- 
 intending or contriving agency of a being that has an 
 existence apart from the matter, and uses it, is not 
 due to evolution, and can be said to be only by a use 
 of the word that is misleading. 
 
 To a certain extent the language and statements 
 of the Bible favor the doctrine of evolution as now 
 stated. It is the earth that brings forth grass and 
 herb and fruit tree ; the waters that bring forth the 
 moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that fly 
 above the earth ; and the earth again that brings 
 forth cattle and creeping things. This is the lan- 
 guage of evolution. But then we are told that God 
 commanded the earth and the waters to do what they 
 did, and we are also told expressly that He made 
 everything that was made. Again, the Bible is in 
 accord with evolution in revealing an upward move- 
 
MAN CREATED. 7 
 
 ment, and through long periods. It is not in accord 
 with it in saying that that movement was continuous ; 
 and it differs wholly from it in that we find at every 
 point the agency and control of a personal God. All 
 this is true of everything below man, but in the Bible 
 account of his creation there is nothing that indicates 
 any affinity with evolution. Then God did not call 
 upon the earth or the waters, but simply said, " Let 
 us make man." 
 
 Was man, then, created by God ? or was he evolved 
 from matter by forces inherent in that ? That man 
 was not thus evolved appears from the fact that, if 
 he had been, the writer of the book of Genesis, the 
 most ancient book known, 1 could not have had at 
 that time, if at any time, ideas of God and of man 
 congruous with what claims to be a revelation reach- 
 ing on till the end of time, which has given to the 
 nations accepting it the leadership in civilization, 
 and which comprises a destiny for man the highest 
 and grandest of which we can conceive. The con- 
 ception of the unity of God, and so of Monotheism, 
 in a system of worship, could not have been reached. 
 How could it ? The great argument for the unity of 
 God, and the only argument within the reach of a 
 being thus coming up from below, is from the unity 
 of his works. But that unity was not then known. 
 There was no science, and, looking at the diversity of 
 nature both in her structures and tendencies, and at 
 the seeming differences between the earth and the 
 
 1 The current doctrine on this subject is assumed, but is not essen- 
 tial. 
 
8 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 ocean and the heavens, we do not see how it would 
 have been possible for man to reach the conception 
 of the unity of the Author of nature, except through 
 long processes of scientific observation. Equally dif- 
 ficult is it, if man came up from below, to see how 
 the writer of the first chapter of Genesis could have 
 had the idea of him as in the image oi-suck a God. 
 Those who hold that man did thus come up also hold 
 that the first man was but slightly above the ape. 
 They admit of no leap in the processes of nature 
 At what point, then, or by what process, could the 
 idea have come into the mind of the race, or of any 
 one of them, that the first man was made in the image 
 of the God who created the heavens and the earth, or 
 that he had had directly deputed to him by that God, 
 " dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of 
 the air and over every living thing that moveth upon 
 the earth ? " That a being creeping up by insensible 
 degrees from apehood, should ever have reached, and 
 especially at that early period, the conception of him- 
 self as in the image of such a God, and as rightfully 
 endowed with such a dominion, is impossible. 
 
 Again, place man thus coming up from an ape, or 
 with any given powers, in the midst of an order of 
 nature already established and it must have been 
 established when man appeared and how could he 
 have the conception of a primitive chaos out of which 
 the order came? How of a being who could speak 
 such a chaos into order by a word ? It is only since 
 the invention of the telescope and of the later dis- 
 coveries in astronomy, geology, and chemistry, that 
 
MAN CREATED. 9 
 
 science has come, or could come, to the idea of a 
 primitive chaos. For me it is impossible to account 
 for the idea of a primitive chaos in the mind of the 
 writer of Genesis without revelation, and whether it 
 would have occurred to scientific men even now, but 
 for the Bible, may be doubted. 1 
 
 In speaking further on this subject it may be 
 observed, in a preliminary way, that evolution does 
 not account for the origin of anything. It does not 
 claim to, nor has it any advantage in the assump- 
 tions it must make. In assuming, as it does, the ex- 
 istence of nebulous matter, it puts itself on a level 
 with those who assume the existence of a personal 
 God. This, I say, because the whole difficulty lies in 
 supposing the original and independent existence of 
 anything. That anything should be, must forever 
 remain a mystery, and the mystery that underlies 
 one form of being is as great as that which underlies 
 any other form of being. How being of any kind 
 came to be, or that there should be being that never 
 did come to be, we cannot comprehend. This is well 
 expressed by Coleridge in his rhapsodical way : "Hast 
 thou," says he, "ever raised thy mind to the consid- 
 eration of EXISTENCE in and by itself as the mere act 
 of existing ? Hast thou ever said to thyself thought- 
 fully, IT is ! heedless in that moment whether it were 
 a man before thee, or a flower, or a grain of sand ? 
 Without reference, in short, to this or that particular 
 mode of existence ? If thou hast indeed attained to 
 this, thou wilt have felt the presence of a mystery 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note A. 
 
IO THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAM 
 
 which must have fixed thy spirit in awe and wonder. 
 The very words, There is nothing ! or, There was a 
 time when there was nothing ! are self-contradictory. 
 There is that within us which repels the proposition 
 with as full and instantaneous a light, as if it bore evi- 
 dence against the fact in the right of its own eternity. 
 NOT TO BE, then is impossible. To BE, incompre- 
 hensible." 
 
 That all men must thus know being is clear, but 
 how far they all consider it thoughtfully, and attain 
 to the wonder spoken of by Coleridge, is not so clear. 
 To the brute, and also to many persons, the mere fact 
 of being is a matter of course. If they are surprised, 
 or wonder, it is not that anything is, but that some- 
 thing is different from what it has been accustomed 
 to be. To be surprised at what is new has its use in 
 the mechanism of a being related to time. It puts it 
 on the alert to guard against possible dangers in new 
 combinations, but a capacity to wonder at BEING, of 
 necessity coeval with a past that had no beginning, 
 can have no relation to the wants of time. Such 
 wonder could not be in a being evolved from an ape. 
 It must belong to one capable of apprehending in- 
 finity, and who, if not related to that duration which 
 has had no beginning, is yet ready to be swept on in 
 the current of that which has no end. 
 
 Of this philosophical wonder it should be observed, 
 because it bears on our ground of belief, that its ten- 
 dency is not, like that of ordinary wonder, to diminish 
 through familiarity, but rather the reverse. Awak- 
 ened by the fact of being, necessarily involving the 
 
IVIES ITT 
 
 MAN CREATED.'* II 
 
 ~ "ti^fr*/ 
 idea of being uncreated ; also by the discovery of the 
 
 immensity, and order, and movements, and adapta- 
 tions of that around us which we call the cosmos, it 
 increases as its object is dwelt upon till it becomes 
 utter bewilderment. Whoever, therefore, recognizes 
 all this, and accepts it as a reality, ought to have no 
 difficulty on account of its strangeness merely, in ac- 
 cepting any form of the manifestation of being that 
 may claim his acceptance. That there should, for 
 instance, be a future life under a different form can- 
 not be more strange than that there should be the 
 present life under its present form. That there should 
 be a heaven hereafter cannot be more strange than 
 that there should be a happy family here. That there 
 should be spiritual existence cannot be stranger than 
 is material existence. That there should be a per- 
 sonal God, infinite and holy, cannot be more strange 
 than that we should be personal beings, as we are, 
 and that there should be this multiform universe in 
 which we find ourselves. r Indeed, I think we may 
 say, that live as long as we may during the eternal 
 ages, go where we may into the depths of infinite 
 space, we shall never find a scene of things more 
 strange and wonderful than we are in now.j 
 
 Plainly, then, if we go back to the origin of things 
 the evolutionist has no advantage over others. We 
 have, at least, as much ground for assuming the ex- 
 istence of a personal God as he has for assuming that 
 of nebulous matter. There is not a single difficulty 
 that stands in the way of one assumption that does 
 not stand in the way of the other, while the difficul- 
 
12 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAM 
 
 ties that follow from the assumption of matter are 
 immeasurably greater than those that follow from the 
 assumption of a personal God. In one case the pri- 
 mary assumption solves everything, in the other it 
 not only solves nothing, but requires constantly either 
 new assumptions of origin, or a violation of the law 
 of causality. 
 
 This will be seen if we concede to the evolutionist 
 his nebulous matter as having had an independent 
 existence. We then ask, Whence came life ? Was 
 it inherent ? Did it remain diffused through the 
 matter during those vast sweltering periods while 
 the mass was cooling, or was it newly originated ? 
 Then, giving him life thus diffused, or newly origi- 
 nated, whence the organism ? Or, giving him what 
 Professor Tyndall assumes, "A low organism vaguely 
 sensitive all over," whence the necessary environ- 
 ment, the light, the warmth, the food ? Whence the 
 organs by which these are appropriated ? These, we 
 are told, are differentiated. But by what ? We are 
 told again, by differentiation. * The organs, as the 
 stomach and liver, the eye and the ear, are differen- 
 tiated by differentiation! which is, of course, satis- 
 factory. Or, if any one would know more particularly 
 how the eye was formed originally, let him read the 
 account of it by Professor Tyndal, in which he says, 
 the formation was begun by the rays of light falling 
 upon "pigment cells," in an organization vaguely 
 sensitive all over ! But again, given such an organ- 
 ism, how could it be propagated ? Whence the sex- 
 ual relation, so universal in its presence, and so 
 
MAN CREATED. 13 
 
 diversified in its forms ? How, through so wide a 
 range of vegetables and animals, could two individ- 
 uals of opposite sexes be evolved through those long 
 ages so as to come to perfection at the same time ? 
 How could the individuals have been preserved until 
 that time? Or, if we suppose all the above to be 
 given, whence that upward tendency to which both 
 geology and the Scriptures testify ? That tendency 
 involves a law, not of evolution, but of upbuilding. 
 It involves a law of the forces and products of this 
 universe that enters into its whole construction. It 
 is the law of the conditioning and conditioned, in 
 accordance with which the universe is built up by a 
 constant increase as we go up of the number of forces 
 at work, and a constant diminution of the sphere 
 within which they work. Of course, at each upward 
 step we must have a new force, and one so far supe- 
 rior to all below as to be able to control them. Such 
 higher force is, indeed, revealed only as it controls 
 the lower. It comes by addition, and can be sup- 
 posed to have come from below only by supposing 
 that a higher and controlling force can come out of 
 one that is lower and controlled. This necessitates 
 a process of upbuilding from without in which that 
 which is below is a condition, but not a cause of that 
 which is above. Such a law would secure the upward 
 tendency, but could not produce evolution or be pro- 
 duced by it. 
 
 There is, I know, an attempt made to account for 
 the upward tendency by what is called the law of the 
 survival of the fittest. This does not account for it, 
 
14 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 for, first, it does not apply to that upward movement 
 by which lower forms of life and inferior races are 
 succeeded in the order of time by higher forms, and 
 superior races. According to geology, as well as the 
 Scriptures, the lower orders of animals are the most 
 ancient, and man, the highest of all, has been intro- 
 duced at a comparatively recent date. Man did not 
 survive ; he came. And if he came as man, naked, 
 weaponless, relatively feeble, with the prolonged help- 
 lessness of infancy, he was of all creatures least fitted 
 to survive. With no experience and no determinate 
 instinct, such as avails the animal for self-preserva- 
 tion, it is difficult to see how he could have survived. 
 No law of the survival of the fittest could, therefore, 
 have had anything to do with his coming and place. 
 He came latest, because those conditions of the earth 
 and of the animals that were needed by him were 
 latest reached. We see, therefore, that the law of 
 the survival of the fittest has no relation to the great- 
 est and most important part of the upward move- 
 ment. Nor, except by an equivocal use of the word 
 " fittest," can this law account for any upward move- 
 ment among contemporaneous plants and animals. It 
 is simply the law of the survival of the strongest with 
 no reference to the usefulness or value of that which 
 survives. It is the tautological proposition of the 
 survival of that which is fittest to survive. Sow 
 wheat and Canada thistles together, and let them 
 fight their own battle, and which will survive ? Over 
 the larger portion of the earth, if not the whole of it, 
 leave those grains and fruits that nourish man to an 
 
MAN CREATED. 15 
 
 unaided struggle and they will be destroyed. The 
 weeds, the thorns, the thistles, are fittest to survive, 
 and it is by this very law that the sentence originally 
 pronounced on man, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt 
 thou eat thy bread/ 1 is carried into execution. It is 
 only by the sweat of the brow that the survival of 
 that which is fittest for man is secured. So too with 
 animals. The stronger and more fierce, the lions, 
 and tigers, and wolves, are fittest to survive, and 
 nothing but a law which no evolution can account for, 
 that the weaker animals shall be more prolific, can 
 secure the survival of those weaker and fittest for the 
 service of man. Nothing, then, but the agency of 
 man, and a law of fertility that could have originated 
 only from a comprehensive prevision, has caused the 
 survival of the plants and animals that are fittest for 
 the use of man. Evolution cannot account for the 
 tendency and movement upward, and makes no pro- 
 vision for it. 
 
 It is generally supposed that the doctrine of Dar- 
 win, on the origin of species, gives support to the 
 theory of evolution. It tends in that direction, and 
 may do it on two conditions. The first is, that there 
 be produced at least one well-established instance of 
 the origin of one species from another. That has 
 not been done. Varieties within a species, as of 
 pigeons, there are without limit ; but there is no 
 instance of the change of a pigeon into an eagle, or 
 of any tendency in that direction. The second con- 
 dition is, that it shall be shown that, if such a change 
 were possible, it must be from lower to higher. This 
 cannot be shown. Species often degenerate. 
 
1 6 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 On the whole, then, I think we may now say that 
 evolution, in the form in which we have now spoken 
 of it, is not only atheistic, for it is that of course, but 
 that it does not account for the origin of man. 
 
 But is the evolution above spoken of that which is 
 now commonly known as evolution? Is it that of 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer ? 
 
 Mr. Spencer speaks of a power unknown and un- 
 knowable, by which the results ascribed to evolution 
 are brought about. Does he, or does he not, say that 
 this power is inherent in matter so as to be one of 
 its constituents ? If he does say that, he is properly 
 an evolutionist. If he does not say it, but says that 
 the results are due to the action of a being, knowable 
 or unknowable, that is separate from matter arid uses 
 it, then he is not properly an evolutionist. 1 That 
 there has been, through long periods, a process of 
 change from simpler to more complex forms, or, in 
 the language of Mr. Spencer, from homogeneity to 
 heterogeneity, the Bible asserts. To account for 
 this, we may either say that there has been what I 
 have called evolution, or the agency of a personal 
 God ; and in either case we understand ourselves and 
 can use words with a definite meaning. But if we 
 introduce between these a power that is claimed to 
 be distinct from matter, and yet is unknown and un- 
 knowable, it is easy to see what complications and 
 misleading use of terms will be sure to follow. The 
 way is, then, open for each person to know as much or 
 as little of this unknowable being as may be conveni- 
 1 See Appendix, Note B. 
 
MAN CREATED. 17 
 
 ent in any discussion, and for as great differences be- 
 tween evolutionists as there are among theologians. 
 
 That Mr. Spencer does not only admit but affirm 
 the existence of a power distinct from matter and 
 that uses it, I suppose is true. It certainly is if we 
 accept as a fair exposition of his system the elabo- 
 rate and careful account of it by Professor Fiske at 
 the dinner given in New York, last winter, in honor 
 of Mr. Spencer. Professor Fiske is among the ablest 
 disciples of Mr. Spencer in this country, and I sup- 
 pose his speech may be fairly taken as representing 
 the system. In that system we have the prevalent 
 form of what calls itself evolution. This, it was 
 claimed in New York, is already established and tri- 
 umphant, and as the account given by it of the origin 
 of man differs so essentially from that of the Bible, 
 we may not pass it without notice. 
 
 Professor Fiske is distinct and full in his affirma- 
 tion of the existence of an unknowable power dis- 
 tinct from matter. The power is said to be unknow- 
 able, but he knows it to be. So much he knows and 
 affirms, though how he knows it, except as we know 
 the being of a personal God, does not appear. He 
 says further, quoting Matthew Arnold, that this 
 power is "a power, not ourselves, that makes for 
 righteousness." He knows, further, that to this 
 power u no limit in time or space is conceivable," and 
 that "all the phenomena of the universe, whether 
 they be what we call material, or what we call spirit- 
 ual phenomena, are manifestations of the infinite and 
 eternal Power," He further knows that this eternal 
 
J8 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 Power that thus manifests itself in every event of 
 the universe, "is, in the deepest possible sense, the 
 author of the moral law." He also speaks, in connec- 
 tion with this power, of " a divine sanction for holi- 
 ness " and a "divine condemnation of sin/ 1 He 
 further knows that this infinite and eternal being is 
 capable of an effort, and an enormous effort, through 
 untold ages. He says, " When you say of a moral 
 belief or a moral sentiment, that it is a product of 
 evolution, you imply that it is something which the 
 universe, through untold ages, has been laboring to 
 bring forth, and you ascribe to it a value proportion- 
 ate to the enormous effort that it has cost to produce 
 it." Here we have the whole universe, the infinite 
 and eternal being included, laboring, " through untold 
 ages," to bring forth a moral sentiment, and bringing 
 it forth with ENORMOUS effort ! Of course there was 
 in the universe, during those long ages, no moral sen- 
 timent. The infinite and eternal being did not have 
 any, and we may well inquire whether it knew what 
 was coming, and what it thought of it when it did 
 come. The truth is, that, on this theory, a moral 
 sentiment was a creation. The evolutionist may say 
 what he will about its having lain, during these untold 
 ages, enveloped in the universe, it was really a thing 
 absolutely new, and unless there were a previous be- 
 ing who knew what moral sentiment is, its appear- 
 ance in man can be accounted for in accordance with 
 no law of causation that we know anything about. 
 
 And as evolutionists of this class thus know some 
 things about what this unknowable being is and does, 
 
MAN CREATED. 1 9 
 
 so also do they know some things that it is not and 
 does not do. These things it did not come in the 
 way of Professor Fiske to state, but it is well under- 
 stood that evolutionists know that this being is not 
 a person. They never apply to it the personal pro- 
 nouns. Of course they know that it has no self- 
 consciousness. They also know that this being does 
 not contrive. Evolutionists scout the idea that those 
 numberless and marvelous adaptations and adjust- 
 ments which men generally have attributed to a con- 
 triving mind are any evidence of contrivance at all. 
 
 So much evolutionists of this class know of what 
 this unknowable being is and does : and so much 
 they know of what it is not and does not do ; and 
 this knowledge they do not have as " dogmas handed 
 down by priestly tradition, but as scientific knowl- 
 edge." I have thus stated it that you may know 
 what this system is which gives us an account of the 
 origin of man so different from that of the Bible, and 
 also to call your attention to two things. The first, 
 already alluded to, is the indefinite and misleading 
 use of terms that must follow the introduction of 
 such an unknowable, intermediate, indefinite element 
 into our discussions. In connection with such a be- 
 ing and with such a genesis of moral sentiments, 
 what place have we for such terms as sin and holi- 
 ness, moral law and divine sanctions ? And yet they 
 are used as the livery of heaven to clothe evolution 
 in, while such words as redemption, repentance, for- 
 giveness, salvation, are wholly unknown. 
 
 The second thing to which I call your attention is 
 
2O THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 the attempt of Professor Fiske and others to recon- 
 cile what they call science with religion. And by 
 science here is meant this form of evolution, for we 
 are expressly told that the knowledge that the un- 
 knowable being is, and the knowledge of what it does, 
 is science. This reconciliation Professor Fiske thinks 
 he has accomplished to such an extent that " that 
 phantom of the hostility between religion and science 
 which has been the abiding terror of timid and super- 
 ficial minds, is exorcised now and forever." What, 
 then, does this reconciliation amount to ? To a rec- 
 onciliation with Christianity ? Certainly not. Chris- 
 tianity affirms that God can be known, and that to 
 know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He 
 hath sent, is eternal life. This science, if we must 
 call it so, says of the infinite and eternal power, that 
 it is unknown and unknowable ; and it was hardly 
 ingenuous in Professor Fiske to say that Mr. Spencer 
 meant by his unknowableness pretty much what the 
 Scriptures mean when they say of God that we are 
 unable "to find Him out." Christianity says, 
 precious and glorious truth, that God is a Father, 
 and clothes Him with the attributes of a Father. 
 This science says that its power is not a person, and 
 denies to it every attribute of a father. Christianity 
 comes to us as a direct revelation from God, and as 
 confirmed by miracles. Evolution says that such rev- 
 elation is impossible, and a miracle preposterous. It 
 knows scientifically that the Infinite and Eternal 
 Power could not make a revelation or work a mira- 
 cle. Christianity says that God hears prayer. Evo 
 
MAN CREATED. 21 
 
 lution denies it, and pities those who believe it. They 
 lack scientific insight. Christianity says that God is 
 to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Evolution 
 denies that. An impersonal being cannot be wor- 
 shipped. Christianity says that God is to be loved. 
 Evolution wholly rules out this highest and trans- 
 scendent expression of our spirits in their relation to 
 God. It says that the Infinite and Eternal Power 
 does not love us, and is not an object of love. Evi- 
 dently, then, Evolution can be reconciled with Chris- 
 tianity only by destroying it. Can it, then, be recon- 
 ciled with any other religion ? No. No system that 
 denies a personal God can have an object of worship, 
 or be rationally made the basis of "a religion. If this 
 is the way the phantom is to be exorcised, I fear that 
 " timid and superficial minds " will be haunted for 
 some time to come. 
 
 Having thus spoken of the prevalent objections to 
 the Scriptural statement of the origin of man, we 
 now pass to that. 
 
 That statement is, that man, so far as he is phy- 
 sical, was created out of matter previously existing. 
 Around this statement peculiar mystery is supposed 
 to gather. But does it? 1 Possibly our difficulty in 
 regard to the act or process of creation may arise in 
 part or wholly from our not perceiving that there is 
 really equal mystery connected with that to which we 
 are accustomed, and to which custom alone blinds us. 
 Here is a man of full stature and perfect in form. 
 Twenty-six years ago he did not exist. The materi- 
 als of which his body is composed existed, but they 
 1 See Appendix, Note C. 
 
22 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAM 
 
 were as wide asunder as the poles. The lime was in 
 the earth, the water in the ocean, the carbon and the 
 nitrogen were floating in the air, perhaps over the 
 Rocky Mountains or the Himalayas. By some pro- 
 cess or power these materials have been brought to- 
 gether and fashioned into bones and muscles and the 
 organs of the senses, and here the man is. And no- 
 body wonders at it ! It is a matter of course. The 
 evolutionist, making no distinction between evolution 
 and growth, so radically different, says the man has 
 been evolved. Evolved ! when not one particle of 
 matter or a lineament of form now in him was in the 
 cell from which his growth began ; when, in fact, 
 there was no cell ! Evolved ! No, he grew, and by 
 a power and process of which philosophers and sci- 
 entists know as little as Topsy did when she said, 
 " I 'spect I growed ; " as little as they do of the power 
 and process by which the same materials might have 
 been brought together in an act or process of crea- 
 tion. Keeping in mind the distinction already made 
 between common and philosophic wonder, the bring- 
 ing together of these materials in a moment, and 
 giving them life by an original act or process that 
 might be called creation, would be no more strange 
 than the bringing of them together in twenty-six 
 years by an act and process of growth. We know as 
 much of one as we do of the other. 
 
 I have taken man as an instance. He is of slow 
 growth, and perhaps the illusion connected with time 
 would be less if we were to look first at an acre of 
 land perfectly bare on the first day of April, and 
 
MAN CREATED. 23 
 
 then again on the first day of July, when it is covered 
 with four tons of organized matter in the shape of 
 clover, every stalk and leaf and blossom perfect. 
 Where were those four tons of matter on the first 
 day of April ? And what do you know of the process 
 by which it has been brought together and fashioned 
 into its forms, when you pronounce the word growth ? 
 Life and organization we know did not always exist 
 on this planet. There must, therefore, have been a 
 beginning to both. No matter how far you go back, 
 only do not get bewildered in the mists of those long 
 periods. Time has nothing to do with causation. 
 There must have been a beginning, and that begin- 
 ning could not have been after the mode of genera- 
 tion and growth which we now see. It must have 
 been a creation. It may have been by an act or a 
 process. The method is wholly unknown to us, but 
 if we had been accustomed to see bodies originated 
 by an immediate creation it would have been no more 
 surprising to us than it now is to see them originated 
 by the method of growth. Admitting this, as I think 
 we must, we gain nothing, philosophically or in any 
 way, by limiting the range of the creative energy and 
 method. We need, therefore, find no difficulty in 
 accepting the statement of the Bible, " So God cre- 
 ated man." 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
II. 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 THE Scriptural proposition, that God created man, 
 we have considered. We now proceed to consider 
 the further proposition, that He created him in his 
 own image. 
 
 In what did this image consist ? If we would get 
 the Scriptural idea we must go to the record. Doing 
 this, we observe, in the first place, the prominence 
 and significance given to the creation of man by the 
 form of the narrative. Everything below him had 
 been finished and pronounced good, but now the 
 work was to be completed. The great work, the 
 crowning work, the light upon the top of the light- 
 house, that towards which all the rest had looked 
 forward and converged, was now to be done, and 
 nothing could better indicate the greatness of this 
 work than the arrest in the progress of the narrative, 
 and the grandeur of the characteristic to be given to 
 it. What had before been done manifested the attrib- 
 utes of God unconsciously, but now there was to be a 
 being in his very image, capable of gathering up and 
 consciously expressing the inarticulate praise of all 
 that was below him. 
 
 Looking further at the narrative, the plain impres- 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 2$ 
 
 sion from it is, that the image of God to be thus 
 created was not anything incidental, or that could be 
 separated from man, but must consist in something 
 so essential to him that if he should lose it he would 
 cease to be man. " And God said, Let us create man 
 in our image," the idea of the image evidently enter- 
 ing in as an element in the conception of the creative 
 act, so that when the creative act was completed, and 
 before Adam had acted in any way, he was in the 
 image of God. If not, it cannot be said that God cre- 
 ated man in his image. If we suppose, as we must, 
 that there was a time when God completed his work, 
 and gave the man over to his own control, it must 
 follow, if God created him in his image, that that 
 image was completed at that moment, and as it had 
 not existed previously in anything that had been 
 created, it must have consisted in the essential dif- 
 ference or differences between man and the creatures 
 below him. These differences are found mainly, first, 
 in the intellect of man regarded as rational ; second, 
 in his moral and spiritual nature; and third, in his 
 freedom, including the great fact that man is, and the 
 brute is not, a proper and responsible cause. God 
 is a proper cause, and if man were not, he could not 
 be in his image. So long, therefore, as man continues 
 to be rational, moral, and free, and hence capable of 
 knowing God, he will be in his image ; and when he 
 ceases to be rational, moral, and free, he will be no ^ 
 longer man. 
 
 This point needs attention, because it has been sup- 
 posed by some that the image of God here spoken of ** 
 
26 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 Y consisted in knowledge and moral character, or holi- 
 ness, rather than in the substantive being, or in 
 the powers with which man was endowed. By the 
 fall man lost the moral character by which he was in 
 the image of God, but the Scriptures do not give us 
 the impression that he lost that image of God in 
 which he was created. This appears, because the 
 presence of that image, as still remaining, is assumed 
 in the reason given in Genesis for the death penalty : 
 " He that sheddeth man's blood by man shall his 
 blood be shed, for in the image of God created He 
 him." It is implied also in that wonderful and en- 
 dearing appellation by which our Saviour has taught 
 0/us to draw nigh to God, saying, " Our Father." This 
 term I suppose He intended to authorize all men to 
 use, and that in the use of it, with the full under- 
 standing of its import, there is implied that image of 
 God in which he was created. It is in this image of 
 God, too, that we find the ground of that love of God 
 to the race which expressed itself in giving his Son 
 to die for it. It is the fact that man has dignity and 
 value, as in the image of God, that accounts for and 
 justifies that great transaction. Not towards a being 
 that was in his image as holy was his love shown, for 
 " God commendeth his love towards us in that, while 
 we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," but towards 
 a being whom He still permits to call him Father, 
 on the ground of that image in which He created 
 him. In this image it is that we find the ground of 
 our respect for the race, and for our appeal to men to 
 forsake what is low and base, and to enter upon a 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 2/ 
 
 pilgrimage that shall bring them to their Father's 
 house. 
 
 But however this may be, if man was made in the 
 image of God in knowledge, he must have been made 
 in his image in the powers through which the knowl- 
 edge came to be. What powers of knowledge, then, 
 and what kinds of knowledge, has man ? Here we 
 have the powers and their products, but as we know 
 the powers only through the products we will speak 
 of these first. 
 
 Of the infant mind in what must have been its 
 nebulous condition we know, and can know, but little ; 
 but the first thing that must be assumed and affirmed 
 by one who would carry on an intelligent intellectual 
 process must be his own existence. This he must 
 affirm and be sure of before he can have the right to 
 affirm anything else. The claim to be an absolute 
 agnostic is an absurdity. It involves intellectual 
 suicide. As I have said elsewhere, if a man is to 
 have the right to begin at all he must begin with 
 certainty. For if he were to say, I am not certain 
 that I exist, I doubt it, he might be asked, Are you 
 certain that you doubt ? If he were to say, Yes, that 
 would be to begin with certainty. If he were to say 
 No, we should ask him what right he has to be 
 troubling people with his doubts before he is cer- 
 tain he has them. We should certainly require him 
 either to keep on doubting till he should be certain 
 of his doubts, or to hold his peace. Except on the 
 assumption and implied assertion that a man exists 
 he cannot think, or feel, or act. He cannot say, /. 
 
28 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 It is so involved in all that he does that he can have 
 no right to do anything without it. We are thus 
 compelled to assume that we exist. It is not a mat- 
 ter of choice or of will. If we claim to doubt or 
 deny it, the doubt or denial assumes it. We thus 
 have the test of necessity, which I hold to be the 
 only adequate test. 
 
 Having thus by necessity, and with no interven- 
 tion of the will, a knowledge that we exist, what else 
 do we know in the same way ; or if not in the same 
 way, with equal certainty ? We know with equal cer- 
 tainty all those things in regard to which a distinc- 
 tion can be made between the order of time and the 
 order of nature, and which are first in the order of 
 nature. Thus, in knowing our own existence we 
 know first in the order of time our thought, or some 
 affection of the mind, and then we know that in the 
 order of nature our existence must have been before 
 our thought. The thought we know directly, exist- 
 ence, or ourselves as existing, we know in knowing 
 the thought. There is no inference. Both are known 
 in one concrete act. It is thus that we know space 
 in knowing body, time in knowing succession, and 
 cause in knowing events. With the ideas thus given 
 there are truths immediately connected ; as, that 
 every body must be in space, and every event must, 
 not may, but must, have a cause. These we believe 
 by necessity. We are so constituted that we must 
 believe them. 
 
 These ideas and truths are a class by themselves. 
 The ideas are given and the truths affirmed by what 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 29 
 
 is called the reason, and are essentially different from 
 single truths immediately known by sense or intui- 
 tion. By Reid they were called principles of com- 
 mon sense, and by Dugald Stewart fundamental laws 
 of human belief. By some they have been called 
 transcendental ideas and truths, and there is in them 
 all there is that is solid in the nebulous transcenden- 
 talism that has been in our sky for the last fifty years. 
 These ideas and truths are involved in our several 
 mental processes as mathematical axioms, and mere 
 intuitions are not. Hence they are a different logical 
 element, are of much greater importance, and should (/ 
 be ranked as first truths. 
 
 The truths of this class, and the same may be said 
 of mathematical axioms, are first seen in some par- 
 ticular instance, but pass at once into a general form. 
 They do so by a process of what may be called exten- 
 sion, but it is so elementary that it has not received 
 a name. Naturally, and almost universally, the terms 
 generalization, and induction, have been applied to 
 processes in which these ideas and truths are in- 
 volved, but they are misleading. The logical princi- 
 ple is not the same. In generalization and induction 
 the underlying principle is resemblance, and through 
 them absolute certainty cannot be reached. But here 
 the underlying principle is identity, and we are as 
 certain of the general, as of the particular truth. As 
 soon as we understand the terms we know at once, 
 with no repetition of instances, that every body must 
 be in space as certainly as we know that one body is 
 in space. And so of causation. We are as certain 
 
30 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 that every event must have a cause as we are that 
 one event has a cause. By applying generalization 
 and induction in this connection we either give to 
 those processes a validity that does not belong to 
 them, or cast suspicion upon a process that gives 
 certainty. 
 
 Of the truths now mentioned the test, as I have 
 said, is necessity. Not only do all men believe them, 
 but they must. Here is a truth which man is forced 
 to believe by the constitution of his mind. No pas- 
 sion, or bias, or influence of will can intervene ; and 
 if we may not rely on a result thus reached, our 
 faculties are not reliable, and we are landed in uni- 
 versal skepticism. This test of necessity is decisive 
 of itself, but it involves, of course, self-evidence and 
 universality, while they do not involve it. What is 
 necessarily believed must be universally believed, and 
 must have self-evidence. That universality of belief 
 is a sufficient test of truth no one claims. It was 
 once universally believed that the heavenly bodies 
 move round the earth. The difficulty with self-evi- 
 dence as a sufficient test is, not only that it does not 
 include the others, but especially that we have no 
 test of a self-evident truth. What is self-evident to 
 one man may not be so to another. It is said that 
 the larger part of the propositions in the first book of 
 Euclid were self-evident to Sir Isaac Newton. They 
 are not so to most men. To Dr. McCosh, as stated 
 in his Criteria, it seems self-evident that two straight 
 lines cannot enclose a space. John S. Mill says in 
 his logic, that " it is an induction from the evidence 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 31 
 
 of our senses." We have also for the class of truths 
 now in question two tests which do not apply except 
 to them as necessary, and which enable us to deal 
 effectually with perverse and uncandid men. One is, 
 that though a man may deny one of these truths in 
 words he is compelled to act as though he believed 
 it. He cannot deny his own existence, or that a body 
 must be in space, and move at all, without acting as 
 if he believed those truths. The other test is, that, 
 deny them as vehemently as he may, we have yet a 
 right to treat him as though he believed them. If a 
 man who is sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes 
 well laid on would escape by affirming that he does 
 not exist, we might comfort him with the assurance 
 that in that case it would not hurt him, but we should 
 still lay them on. In no other case is it allowable to 
 impute to men opinions or beliefs which they dis- 
 avow. To many men it may appear self-evident that 
 deceit is always wrong, yet if a man were to say that 
 it does not appear so to him he would neither be 
 compelled to act as if it did so appear, nor should we 
 have a right to treat him as if it did. 1 
 
 Here then we have a class of truths fully authenti- 
 
 1 On this point of necessity as a test of truth, as also on the use of 
 generalization and induction in connection with these truths, I am 
 compelled to differ from Dr. McCosh in his Criteria of Diverse 
 Truths, recently published. He there objects to necessity as a test, 
 because it " sounds too much like fatality to be agreeable to the free 
 spirit of man." It may not be agreeable to the free spirit of man to 
 be under the necessity of existing ; but if he must be, as he is, under 
 that necessity, I see no objection to his being under the necessity of 
 believing that he exists. 
 
32 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 cated. Between them and truths simply intuitive or 
 self-evident, the line is distinct. When the question 
 is brought before a man whether two straight lines 
 can inclose a space, it may be self-evident that they 
 cannot. He may even be necessitated to believe it, 
 as I thinL a man always is necessitated to believe an 
 intuitive truth, but he may live a lifetime without 
 having the question brought before him. Not so 
 with any one of the truths of reason. He cannot live 
 at all without knowing his own being, his personal 
 identity, and his causative power, and so of others. 
 Intuitive or self-evident truths he may know ; the 
 truths of reason he must know. 
 
 Man then, knowing himself to be, and having these 
 truths thus authenticated and incorporated into his 
 very being, is able to turn his gaze inward upon him- 
 self, to know himself as distinct from all other beings, 
 and to say /. This is a great thing, this finding of 
 himself. It is what no being below man can do. 
 Thus doing, he finds among the ideas and truths thus 
 given all those by which he is constituted a person, 
 and made in the image of God. 
 
 Of discussions concerning the ideas and truths now 
 spoken of, three things are to be said. The first is, 
 that if those ideas and truths are what they claim to 
 be, mankind do not really differ concerning them. 
 All men must not only have the ideas and believe 
 the truths, but they must be essentially, in their rela- 
 tions and processes, the same to all. The second is, 
 that the more intimately these ideas and truths are 
 wrought into our very being, the more difficult they 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 33 
 
 are of correct apprehension and statement. The third 
 thing is, that when they are once clearly stated they 
 seem the simplest and plainest of all truths, and what 
 every man has known all his life. From this it will 
 follow that we have encouragement to endeavor 
 bring these ideas and truths into full light; and, also, 
 that in doing so, the difficulty must be largely in an 
 ambiguous and unsteady use of terms. Having my- 
 self been perplexed by the use made of terms in this 
 department, quite as much, perhaps, as by the subject 
 itself, I doubt if I can serve you better than by turn- 
 ing aside for a little to call your attention to it in 
 some particulars. "Words are things." They are 
 not only the product, but the instrument of thought, 
 and these act and react on each other. It is, there- 
 fore, of prime importance that you should have, both 
 in your thinking and speaking, precision and uni- 
 formity in the use of these terms, which must be 
 involved in all your speculations as ministers, and 
 enter largely into the staple of your discourses. 
 
 Instead of being a form of knowledge, the truths I 
 have spoken of are represented as being something 
 different from it. They are said to underlie it. In 
 speaking of this I must refer to Dr. Calderwood. In 
 doing so, and in differing from him on certain points, 
 I wish to express my high appreciation of him in 
 every respect, and especially of the courtesies shown 
 me by him. "All knowledge/' says Dr. Calderwood, 
 " rests on faith." l In illustrating this he says: "In 
 the very exercise of its powers of knowledge the 
 
 1 Philosophy of the Infinite, chap. iii. 
 3 
 
34 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 mind rests on the belief that our senses and con- 
 sciousness are trustworthy, and not deceptive wit- 
 nesses. In contemplating and comparing objects all 
 knowledge is accepted and arranged on the convic- 
 tion that a thing cannot be, and not be, at the same 
 time. Through all the varieties of thought, feeling, 
 and volition, we believe in our own identity." 
 
 In this passage we have the four words to which I 
 call your attention : knowledge, belief, faith, and con- 
 sciousness. And first, of the first three. In the 
 passage quoted we have faith identified with belief, 
 as is constantly done by Hamilton, Mansel, and others 
 of that school. They identify faith with belief, and 
 then knowledge is made to rest upon it. But to one 
 using terms in their ordinary sense what can be more 
 confusing than this ? By all ordinary usage knowl- 
 edge is a stronger word than belief, and yet the 
 stronger is made to rest on the weaker. I know what 
 happened yesterday ; I yet do not know that I am 
 the same person to-day that I was yesterday. I know 
 there is such a city as New York, and yet I do not 
 know that it is impossible for a thing to be and not 
 to be at the same time. That I only believe. Again, 
 it is said by Dr. Calderwood that "The province of 
 faith is much more extensive than that of knowl- 
 edge." "Belief," he goes on, "affords a foundation 
 for knowledge, and at the same time stretches far 
 / beyond it." In its ordinary sense belief does indeed 
 stretch far beyond knowledge, but only as it gathers a 
 shade of uncertainty, whereas, as used by Dr. Calder- 
 wood, belief can stretch far beyond knowledge only 
 
as it is more certain. With this view of Dr. Calder- 
 wood many philosophers coincide. Sir William Ham- 
 ilton says : " In the order of nature belief always pre- 
 cedes knowledge." Professor Christlieb says : " All 
 knowledge is in the last instance conditioned by faith, 
 and faith (that is, an act of belief) is the preliminary 
 and the medium of every act of intelligence." l To 
 illustrate this he says : " It is by the direct testimony 
 of our own minds that we are convinced of the fact 
 that we exist, think, walk, and dream ; and this fact 
 neither needs nor is capable of proof. We merely 
 believe it. The certainty of our thinking depends 
 simply on an act of belief." He goes further and 
 becomes mystical. "Faith," he says, "from the in- 
 visible world in which it lives, must bring the truths 
 unattainable by Reason and impart them to her." 2 
 
 Now, it seems to me that in all this these great 
 men have greatly perplexed a simple subject. For 
 what is it ? I agree with President Porter, that to 
 know is to be certain of something. I stick a stake 
 there. I insist upon it that we must have certainty 
 to begin with, or we can never have a right to begin. 
 If therefore to know is to be certain, then whatever 
 gives us certainty gives us knowledge, and nothing 
 else does. We know only so far as we are certain. 
 So far as we are certain we know. That there are ^ 
 different modes of attaining certainty I agree. We 
 may be certain of our personal identity, or that a 
 thing cannot be and not be at the same time, by the 
 
 1 Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, p. 124. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 127. 
 
36 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 necessary action of our faculties. Than this no cer- 
 tainty can be greater, and if we do not know these, 
 what, I ask, do we know ? There may also be cer- 
 tainty through the senses, and through the operation 
 of the understanding ; but however it may come, I 
 hold that certainty reached by a rational being in 
 any way constitutes knowledge, and that any faith, 
 or belief, or conviction, short of certainty, is not 
 >/ knowledge. In the operations of the intellect I 
 admit of no mysticism. The results of those opera- 
 tions, whether necessary, or under the control of the 
 will, I divide into two classes. Of some I am certain, 
 and in that certainty is knowledge. Of others I am 
 not certain, and then I have belief, or opinion, with 
 its varying shades. If I am certain, I am bound as a 
 rational being to know the ground of that certainty, 
 and I may not rest and say I am certain till the 
 ground is sufficient. If I hold an opinion or belief, I 
 9 am bound to know the ground of the opinion or belief. 
 That is the whole of it. I admit of no province of 
 faith in the sense in which Dr. Calderwood uses that 
 word, that is, as he says, much more extensive, or any 
 more extensive than that of knowledge. I admit of 
 no faith " that lives in the invisible world and brings 
 truths unattainable by Reason, and imparts them to 
 her." If truths are to be brought from the invisible 
 world it must be by some being, and not by faith, and 
 must be received, if received at all, on the ground of 
 adequate evidence. Faith, belief of any kind re- 
 garded as mere belief, except as based on evidence, - 
 what is it but weakness and folly ? 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 37 
 
 I regard it as specially unfortunate that fait/t, a 
 term so central and vital in our religion, should be 
 used in senses so different from that in which it is 
 used in the Scriptures. And this is the more disas- 
 trous, because the term seems, often at least, to be 
 used in this way with an entire unconsciousness that 
 there is any difference. Thus Sir William Hamilton, 
 after saying that faith is the organ by which we ap- 
 prehend what is beyond our knowledge, adds : " In 
 this all divines and philosophers worthy of the name 
 are found to coincide." l In his chapter on the prov- 
 ince of faith and of reason, Dr. Calderwood says : 
 "It is necessary to premise that in treating at present 
 of the province of faith, I refer exclusively to that 
 exercise of faith which is found in the consciousness 
 of our primary or fundamental beliefs." "Such be- 
 liefs," he adds, "if they have any value at all, are 
 nothing less than the foundation and guarantee of all 
 our thoughts. " Here Dr. Calderwood identifies faith 
 with beliefs, and makes it consist of those primary 
 beliefs that are given by what Hamilton calls the 
 Regulative Faculty. True he says : " Faith may also 
 find exercise in connection with the facts of expe- 
 rience, or with inferences drawn from these." But 
 this is not true of faith except as the meaning of the 
 word is changed, and of that he gives no intimation. 
 The faith that finds exercise in connection with the 
 facts of experience is wholly a different thing under 
 the same name, and neither is at all the faith of the 
 Bible. How wholly the faith now spoken of differs 
 
 1 Metaphysics, p. 531. 
 
38 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 from that of the Bible will be readily seen if we com- 
 pare the two. The one is involuntary and necessary ; 
 the other voluntary and may be commanded. " Have 
 faith in God." One admits of no degrees; the other 
 does. u Lord, increase our faith." One belongs to 
 all men ; the other does not. " All men have not 
 faith." One implies no previous belief ; the other 
 does. In the one there is no element of confidence 
 in a person ; in the other there is, and the faith can- 
 not be rational unless the confidence be well founded. 
 The faith of the Bible always rests on a person as its 
 object or ground, and has in it a voluntary element. 
 It manifesrs itself in belief, in obedience, and in com- 
 mitment ; in believing what a person says because he 
 says it in doing what he commands because he com- 
 mands it, and in committing to him without reserve 
 all that he offers himself to us for. Abraham believed 
 God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. 
 That was faith. When commanded to go out from 
 his own country, not knowing whither he went, he 
 obeyed. That was faith. And when Paul committed 
 his soul to Christ, knowing whom he believed, and 
 that He was able to keep it against that day, that was 
 faith. Here we have constantly trust in a person 
 and the voluntary element. How different all this is 
 from any primitive and necessary belief that is part 
 of our nature I need not say. The two are, indeed, 
 in different spheres. They involve logical elements 
 wholly different, and that they should be treated of 
 under the same name, and be so far identified as they 
 constantly are, wholly so, as it seems to me, by Sir 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 39 
 
 William Hamilton, is an evil that ought, if possible, 
 "to be remedied. 
 
 We thus see that the faith of the Bible is a princi- 
 ple wholly rational and practical. It is no non- 
 descript " organ," by which we apprehend what is 
 beyond our knowledge. Nor is it a principle by 
 which we apprehend the invisible. There are those, 
 as Dr. Christlieb, who say that we have a principle 
 by which we apprehend the invisible, and call that 
 faith. But if we apprehend the invisible at all, as 
 we do certainly we apprehend invisible magnetism 
 we apprehend it as we do anything else, either 
 directly, or by inference, and we do it with the ordi- 
 nary powers of apprehension which God has given 
 us. We need for this no new organ or principle 
 called faith. No mere power of apprehension, call it 
 what you may, has, or can have, any moral character ; 
 nor can it be properly identified or even classed with 
 the faith required in the Bible. 
 
 Knowledge, belief, faith, these we have consid- 
 ered, and now pass to the third word mentioned, 
 consciousness. As this has been used, and is now, 
 it has, perhaps, been productive of more confusion 
 than either of the others. 
 
 According to Sir William Hamilton, consciousness 
 cannot be defined. " It is," he says, " the general 
 form of all our mental operations, and so there is no 
 higher genus under which it can be brought." l " It 
 is," he says, " an actual and not a potential knowl- 
 edge ; an immediate and not a mediate knowledge." 
 
 1 Metaphysics, lect. xi. 
 
40 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 He says, also, which looks much like a definition, 
 that " the most general characteristic of conscious- 
 ness is the recognition by the thinking subject of its 
 own acts or affections/' 1 Also, that consciousness 
 gives us not only a knowledge of the acts and affec- 
 tions of the thinking subject, but also of its existence 
 and individuality, and continuous identity. Also, 
 that it testifies to the existence of an external world, 
 inasmuch as we know that there is an external world, 
 and if we are conscious of the knowledge, we must 
 be also of the thing known. The authority of con- 
 sciousness, as thus defined or described, he says can- 
 not be denied unless we deny the possibility of phi- 
 losophy, because "philosophy is only a scientific 
 development of the facts which consciousness re- 
 veals." l He says, of course, that consciousness is 
 not a separate faculty dependent for its action on 
 the will, but always acts in connection with the 
 action of each faculty. If the intellect acts in the 
 way of knowing, then consciousness acts in knowing 
 that we know. If the sensibility acts in the way 
 of feeling, then consciousness acts by necessity in 
 knowing that we feel. With these statements Presi- 
 dent Porter agrees in general, but he says there is a 
 primary and a secondary consciousness, the first pos- 
 sessed by all men, the second attained only by a few. 
 This division he makes on the ground of increased 
 attention, and he may well make it if, with Hamilton, 
 he makes attention a form of consciousness. Pri- 
 mary consciousness, he defines with Hamilton as 
 
 1 Metaphysics, lect. xi. 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 41 
 
 " the power which the mind naturally and necessa- 
 rily possesses of knowing its own acts and states." 
 Dr. Mansel says, " It is by consciousness alone that 
 we know that God exists, or that we are able to offer 
 Him any service." l He also speaks of the relig- 
 ious consciousness, and tells how it is built up. In 
 his " Philosophy of the Infinite/' speaking of the ca- 
 pacity of man to know that God is and also what He 
 is, Dr. Calderwood, the successor of Sir William 
 Hamilton, says, " In this, as in every other philo- 
 sophical question, the inquiry is restricted exclusively 
 to an examination of consciousness." Again, " The 
 method of inquiry is nothing more than a careful 
 interpretation of consciousness." "This method," 
 he continues, " Sir William Hamilton has not fol- 
 lowed, and therefore his theory is, as it seems to me, 
 in many of its parts a misrepresentation of con- 
 sciousness." 
 
 Here we have a word as elastic as the tent in the 
 Arabian Nights, that could serve for a single man 
 and be carried in his pocket, or be stretched over an 
 army. Now consciousness is the general form of all 
 our mental operations, and now it is the actual and 
 immediate knowledge by the mind of its own acts 
 and affections. Now, again, it is a knowledge, and 
 they all agree in this, not of the acts and affections 
 of the mind, but of its existence and individuality 
 and continued identity, a form of knowledge that lies 
 wholly in a different sphere. Now it is a knowledge 
 not only of the states of the mind, but also of the ex- 
 
 1 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 64. 
 
42 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 ternal world. Now it simply takes cognizance of a 
 single mental fact, and now it is that on which de- 
 pends our knowledge of God. Now this knowledge 
 is immediate and direct and authoritative, and now 
 it needs to be interpreted, and this interpretation is 
 so difficult that Sir William Hamilton himself failed 
 and misinterpreted consciousness. All this and more 
 of the kind is said of consciousness by these able 
 men at the same time that they claim that it ac- 
 companies all our mental operations, that it is not 
 a separate faculty, as subject to the will, and never 
 deceives us. But if consciousness thus gives immedi- 
 ate knowledge and never deceives us, how is it that all 
 do not agree respecting its deliverances ? Sir William 
 Hamilton says we are conscious of an external world, 
 as of the table on which we write. With this Pro- 
 fessor Fisher, certainly one of the ablest thinkers of 
 the age, agrees, 1 while Professor Calderwood, as I 
 happen to know, does not, and, if I may mention my- 
 self in such a connection, I do not. If the question 
 be how many objects we can think of at once, Dugald 
 Stewart says but one ; Hamilton says six ; and this 
 certainly is a question to be determined by conscious- 
 ness. If the question be whether there is a separate 
 volition for every step in walking, Dugald Stewart 
 says, Yes, others say, No. If the question be what a 
 man can evolve out of his inner consciousness, we 
 need not go to Germany for strange answers. 
 
 With such diversity of function and of meaning in 
 this fundamental word, how is a beginner in these 
 
 1 See Princeton Review for July, 1882. 
 
MAN' IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 43 
 
 studies to find his way ? Can anything be done to 
 aid him ? Perhaps not, but a trial may be made. 
 
 Going back to the beginning of intelligence in us, 
 whenever that was, there must have been involved 
 in that the certainty of our own existence. Implic- 
 itly at least that existence was known, and it is now 
 generally agreed that in the knowing of it there was 
 a simultaneous knowledge of some modification of 
 the Ego by act or affection, and of the Ego itself. 
 The " Cogito ergo sum " of Descartes is not a logical 
 process, but a mode of stating the simultaneous 
 knowledge by one concrete act of two things, one of 
 which was first in the order of time and the other in 
 the order of nature. We know and must know the 
 being, in knowing the modification. Here, then, we 
 have the knowledge of a modification of our being 
 together with a knowledge of that being, and thus 
 a consciousness. There is a knowing by the mind 
 of itself as the subject of its own operations at the 
 same time that it knows, and in knowing, those ope- 
 rations. 
 
 In consciousness as thus found, and in that only, 
 do we have the three characteristics that are gen- 
 erally claimed for it. The first of these is, that it 
 must accompany and form a part of every recognized 
 mental act. That consciousness as now defined does 
 this we cannot doubt. Man cannot run away from 
 himself ; whatever his thought or feeling or modifica- 
 tion may be, he must refer it to himself as its sub- 
 ject. He must know himself as knowing, or feeling, 
 or in some way modified. The second characteristic 
 
44 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 claimed for consciousness is, that it is infallible. It 
 never deceives us. And certainly there can be no 
 fallibility or deception in the reference by a man of 
 his own states to himself. There is, indeed, a suppo- 
 sition lately made, that perhaps I ought to mention, 
 which would render such a reference deceptive : it is 
 that the modifications are the man, and all the man 
 there is. But this is too absurd to require further 
 notice. The third characteristic claimed for con- 
 sciousness is, that it is not a separate faculty. This, 
 again, is obviously true of consciousness as above 
 defined ; not, as Sir William Hamilton says, because 
 it is inclusive of ail the faculties, but because it is 
 not subject to the will, and is equally present in the 
 operation of them all. It is a common consciousness, 
 the same to all men. 
 
 yr Knowing thus by consciousness ourselves as exist- 
 ing, what next ? Evidently the knowledge of our- 
 selves as continuing to be the same beings at suc- 
 cessive times. Do we know this by consciousness ? 
 Yes, says Sir William Hamilton, and others of his 
 school. To me it seems clearly not. We know it by 
 the joint action of consciousness and memory. We 
 know it immediately and necessarily, but not by the 
 action of consciousness alone. Knowing ourselves 
 thus as existing, and as existing permanently, we go 
 on to the truths of reason already mentioned, which 
 all men believe by necessity; and we hold any would 
 be skeptic who would deny them in our grip, by the 
 fact that he must affirm them in action ; and by not 
 hesitating to treat him as if he believed them. We 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 45 
 
 next pass to simple intuitions. By these we know 
 truths immediately by what Dr. McCosh calls self- 
 evidence, but the subjects of them are not so incor- 
 porated into our constitution that we must believe 
 and act upon them. When attention is called to the 
 question, whether two straight lines can inclose a 
 space, we know at once, that is, it is self-evident, that 
 they cannot ; but a man may live a lifetime and not 
 have the question brought before him. Then we 
 come to knowledge from observation. And here we 
 have two great fields, or worlds, the external and 
 the internal. Of the external we gain knowledge only 
 through the senses. This is the knowledge we are 
 commonly said to gain by observation. Of the inter- 
 nal we also gain our knowledge by what is properly 
 observation, but here our language is at fault. Locke 
 said we gained it by reflection. Hamilton says by 
 ^^consciousness, thus making no difference between 
 his consciousness and this. He also speaks of an 
 inner sense, which is better. Generally, however, we 
 are now said to gain this knowledge by consciousness, 
 that being defined to be a knowledge by the mind of 
 its own acts and affections. This is the common 
 meaning of the word, and as thus commonly used it 
 is useless to object to it ; but it should be understood 
 that the external and the internal field are equally 
 fields of observation, that in both facts are to be 
 noted, compared, and classified, that in doing this 
 the faculties are employed in both under the direc- 
 tion of the will, so that we are liable, and perhaps 
 equally in both, to mistakes; and that in both we 
 
46 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 reach only classified science as the result of observa- 
 tion. It is a weak point with consciousness as it is 
 now used that it claims a clearness and certainty that 
 many times not only cannot be attained in the field to 
 which it is assigned, but in which there is often the 
 greatest uncertainty and difference of opinion. We 
 hear constantly of the clear light of consciousness, of 
 its infallibility; but if we ask Dr. Mansel how we 
 know that God exists, he says it is by consciousness. 
 Dr. McCosh says, "I have my doubts whether, from a 
 mere idea or principle in the mind, we can argue the 
 existence of the living God. It should proceed, I 
 reckon, mainly in the joint inductive and deductive 
 method." And I agree with Dr. McCosh. Some 
 things in this inner field we know certainly, as we do 
 some things in the outer, but in many things there is 
 in both the greatest uncertainty. If consciousness 
 were what it is claimed to be, the IVc>0i o-eavroV of 
 the ancient oracle would amount to nothing. This is 
 true whether we suppose the oracle had in view men- 
 tal science, or that knowledge of motives which is 
 sought for in Christian self-examination. The infalli- 
 bility claimed for consciousness would give at once, 
 and of course, all the material needed for mental 
 science, and all the motives needed for the deter- 
 mination of character. If this doctrine had been 
 held in ancient times the prophet would not have 
 put forth, in regard to the deceitful and desperately 
 wicked heart, the despairing question : " Who can 
 // know it ? " The truth seems to be that the two de- 
 partments of knowledge in the one of which we 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. A 7 
 
 know by necessity, with no act of the will, and with a 
 certainty from which we cannot escape, and that in 
 which we know through attention that may be more 
 or less, and through the voluntary use of our faculties 
 that may or may not be withheld are so different 
 in their processes and results that the one word con- 
 sciousness cannot cover both without perplexity and # 
 confusion. In connection with some modification of 
 ourselves consciousness may tell us that we are, and 
 the affirmation may accompany us, in connection 
 with whatever modification there may be, through 
 our whole lives ; but to know what we are, through a 
 knowledge of these changing modifications, is wholly 
 another thing. We may know that there is a modi- 
 fication, and know ourselves through that, without 
 knowing what the modification is as distinguished 
 from others. At this point lies the mistake of those 
 who hold to the infallibility of consciousness, and yet 
 define it as a knowledge by the mind of its own opera- 
 tions. They seem to hold that if the mind knows 
 itself in knowing a modification of itself, it must 
 also know distinctively what that modification is. It 
 might seem so, but nothing can be further from the 
 truth. President Porter and Hamilton both say, that 
 in all operations of the mind, intellect, sensibility, and 
 will act together. Perhaps so, but I am not sure of 
 it, as I should be if this doctrine of consciousness / 
 were correct. Who shall decide ? It seems, there- 
 fore, almost like mockery to claim infallibility for the 
 organ of knowledge in a department, the special 
 scandal of which has been its uncertainty. 1 /v 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note D. 
 
48 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 What then have we found ? First a being, and the 
 knowledge of his own existence by a being who knows 
 himself to be, and can say /. This knowledge of him- 
 self, which is to accompany him through his whole 
 existence, is his starting point, and places him at 
 once above all material objects, however great, and 
 above the animal creation. It involves personality. 
 He can say, I am. ' I have being, and know myself as 
 having it. In this is consciousness. In this he is 
 in the image of God, who knows Himself as having 
 being, and who reveals Himself as the I A M, and the 
 / AM that 7 AM, the being that I know myself to 
 be. All that belongs to personality is involved in 
 this, and will necessarily be revealed when the occa- 
 sion shall come. He will have a knowledge of rights 
 and of obligation, and so of himself as a moral being ; 
 he will have the power of intuition, that is, of rational 
 insight ; he will have the power of scientific classi- 
 fication and arrangement, and so the power of bring- 
 ing all things into a system ; and he will have the 
 power of comprehension, of comprehending ends 
 as subordinate, ultimate, and supreme, even his own 
 end. In all this, so far as a finite being can be, he 
 will be intellectually in the image of God. So far as 
 he is thus in his image he will be able to know Him, 
 to enter into sympathy with Him in his purposes, 
 and to work together with Him for their accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 In a being thus intellectually constituted and thus 
 able to sympathize with God and to work together 
 with Him, we have, as I think, the Bible idea of man 
 as intellectually in the image of God. 
 
MAN IN IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. 49 
 
 In differing thus radically from the current philos- 
 ophy, in regard to consciousness, I cannot hope to 
 reform either that philosophy or the language. These 
 must take their course. My object has been to aid 
 you, gentlemen, in your studies, by presenting for 
 your consideration a simpler and more definite work- 
 ing apparatus than the one now generally adopted. 
 
 i 
 O* 
 7ERSITY: 
 
III. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE CONTINUED. FEELING. FREE CAUSA- 
 TION. 
 
 MAN was made to know the truth. It is the Scrip- 
 tural idea of man that he is not only to know neces- 
 sary truth, as in the image of God, but that he is also 
 to seek for truth that it costs him labor to obtain. 
 He is to " buy the truth and sell it not." It may be 
 well, therefore, before we pass from the consideration 
 of man as endowed with intellect, and in the image 
 of God through that, to look at some considerations 
 that may guide us in adopting those beliefs that are 
 based on a balance of probabilities, but carry with 
 them a conviction short of certainty. This is the 
 more desirable because it is upon such beliefs that 
 the conduct of life mainly depends. What are the 
 grounds on which we may not, or may, in any case 
 whatever, found a rational belief of this kind ? 
 
 And first, we may not and cannot believe a contra- 
 diction or an absurdity. 
 
 A contradiction may be made by two propositions 
 mutually opposed, and then we cannot believe both ; 
 or by a single proposition that asserts a union of qual- 
 ities that we know to be incompatible. We cannot 
 believe that it both rains and does not rain at the same 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. $ I 
 
 time and place, or that the same figure can be both 
 round and square. From the imperfection of Ian- 
 guage, it is not always easy to distinguish between a 
 contradiction and a paradox. When the Apostle 
 Paul says of himself that he had nothing and yet 
 possessed all things, it seems to be a contradiction, 
 and yet there is a sense in which it is true. We 
 need, therefore, before pronouncing a proposition to 
 be a contradiction, to be sure that we fully under- 
 stand the subject, and also that the words, in the 
 connection in which they are used, are susceptible of 
 but a single meaning. 
 
 An absurdity is any proposition that is opposed 
 either to a first truth, or to a mathematical axiom or 
 demonstration. No one can believe there can be a 
 body that is not in space, or that the whole is not 
 equal to the sum of its parts. 
 
 Second. We are not to believe a proposition un- 
 less it is more rational to believe it than not to be- 
 lieve it. 
 
 To the extent implied in this proposition I am a 
 rationalist. Rationalist is a good name perverted. 
 As now used, it involves a claim by those who adopt 
 it to be more fully guided by reason than others, and 
 that we do not allow. I believe in reason. I say 
 with Bishop Butler, " Let reason be kept to, but let 
 not such poor creatures as we are go on objecting 
 against an infinite scheme that we do not see the ne- 
 cessity or usefulness of all its parts, and call that 
 reasoning." I believe in the capacity and duty of 
 reason to judge of anything claiming to be a revela- 
 
52 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 tion from God. Also, that reason has the capacity 
 to judge, and ought to judge, what is the meaning of 
 anything thus claiming to be a revelation. But when 
 anything has been accepted as a revelation, and its 
 meaning ascertained, then I hold that it is the busi- 
 ness of reason, as reason, to believe it. This I hold 
 on the ground that confidence in the God who gave 
 us our faculties ought rationally to be as great as in 
 the faculties themselves. Certainly, if we cannot 
 trust Him, we cannot trust the faculties given by 
 Him. But this rationalism does not say, and I hold 
 that, in saying it, we are more rational than ration- 
 alism. As some of old, "professing themselves to 
 be wise, became fools," so we think that rationalists, 
 professing themselves to be rational, become irra- 
 tional. 
 
 Third. We are not to believe what we do not un- 
 derstand. 
 
 By this I mean here, that, in order to assent to a 
 proposition, we must know its meaning. This may 
 seem self-evident, but needs to be stated as a guard 
 against nonsense and an indefiniteness that amounts 
 to the same thing. Too often ignorance conceals 
 itself and puts on an air of profoundness, by the 
 use of indefinite terms or of terms in such relation 
 that they convey no definite meaning. When Hegel 
 says, and makes it the starting-point of his system, 
 " thought and being are identical," the words are 
 familiar and the sentence is simple, but it conveys no 
 meaning whatever to my mind. To me, the thinker 
 is, and must be, one thing, and the thought another. 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. - CA USA TION. 5 3 
 
 So, too, when Mr. Herbert Spencer says " Life is a 
 continuous adjustment of internal relations to exter- 
 nal relations," and asks me if I believe that, I say 
 to him that the boiling of water in a tea-kettle is a 
 continuous adjustment of internal relations to exter- 
 nal relations, and ask him if he believes that. The 
 trouble with this definition, which is equally applica- 
 ble to hearing or seeing, I suspect to be that it does 
 not mean anything at all, and so can neither be be- 
 lieved nor disbelieved. The words are familiar, they 
 are put together grammatically, and so they are 
 when I say that internal relations are to external re- 
 lations as four to six, but no one can get any mean- 
 ing from them. If it be said that there is an adjust- 
 ment of things to things, I understand what is meant ; 
 but I do not understand what is meant by an adjust- 
 ment of relations to relations, nor how an adjustment 
 of these tenuous abstractions can constitute that, 
 whatever it may be, which distinguishes the vast 
 realm of organized from unorganized being. In- 
 deed, I do not understand what is meant by internal 
 relations or external relations, unless it be the rela- 
 tion of internal and external things ; and then the 
 definition of life would be a continuous adjustment 
 of the relations of internal things to the relations of 
 external things, a proposition which I am unable 
 either to believe or to disbelieve. Passages of this 
 kind might be given indefinitely. I will simply add 
 the definition by Hegel, of " the essence as such," as 
 it is given by Schwegler, in a translation by Presi- 
 dent Seelye, which secures its accuracy : " The es- 
 
54 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN'. 
 
 sence as reflected being "is the reference to itself 
 only as it is the reference to something other." It 
 would be a great gain if writings that claim to be 
 philosophical and profound could be freed from this 
 class of propositions. 
 
 Fourth, and positively. It is rational to believe, 
 on evidence, facts the causes and the mode of which 
 we do not understand. 
 
 This is what some suppose they mean when they 
 say they will not believe what they do not under- 
 stand ; but they cannot mean that, for there is no 
 man who understands the causes and mode of the 
 larger part of the facts which he believes. No one 
 hesitates to accept the fact of an earthquake or of the 
 aurora borealis who simply knows the fact and noth- 
 ing more. He does not know the cause or the mode 
 of the fact, but he knows no reason why the fact 
 might not be. 
 
 But, fifth. There are facts in connection with 
 which the element of mystery comes in. This comes 
 in in connection with facts which seem inconsistent 
 with all we have previously known. To a child one 
 thing is as wonderful and mysterious as another. He 
 does not know enough to wonder. But when a course 
 of nature has been recognized, and anything occurs 
 that conflicts with our experience, and so conflicts 
 that its cause and mode are inconceivable to us, there 
 is mystery. Here, again, men say they will not be- 
 lieve what they do not understand ; but no man can 
 rationally say this if he means that he will not believe 
 on evidence a fact thus related to his understand- 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. 5 5 
 
 ing. To any man who lived fifty years ago the cause 
 and mode of a communication passing from New 
 York to London in a second or less would be incon- 
 ceivable, and yet he might have such evidence of the 
 fact that it would be folly not to believe it. So it is 
 with all cases of mystery and of facts not in accord- 
 ance with what we have known of the order of cau- 
 sation. Any fact that is possible may have such evi- 
 dence that it would be folly not to believe it ; and the 
 men who undertake to say, a priori, what facts are 
 and what are not possible in such a universe as this 
 may find, as has happened in some signal instances, 
 that the fact is accomplished while they are demon- 
 strating its impossibility. 
 
 Once more. Each of two propositions may be 
 so supported by evidence that it may be rational to 
 believe both, though we cannot reconcile them with 
 each other. 
 
 Two statements are made to a man not an astron- 
 omer. One is, that the north star is fixed, and that, 
 as he knows by observation, the pole of the earth 
 either does or seems to point equally to it at all sea- 
 sons of the year. The other statement is, that the 
 earth moves in its orbit round the sun, its axis being 
 parallel with itself, a hundred and eighty millions of 
 miles, the distance being measured in a straight line 
 from one extremity of the orbit to the other. But if 
 this be true, the pole of the earth must be directed at 
 one time in its orbit to a point in space a hundred 
 and eighty millions of miles distant from that to which 
 it was directed at another point, and that would ren- 
 
56 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 der it apparently impossible that it should either 
 point, or seem to point, equally in all parts of its 
 orbit to one fixed point. With these two statements 
 before him what is the man to do ? Is he to say, as 
 I once heard a man who was so far forth a rational- 
 ist, say, "The astronomers are mistaken. The star 
 moves, and its motion corresponds to that of the 
 earth. It must be so." Or is he to accept both state- 
 ments as true on the testimony of astronomers, and 
 suppose that there may be an element in the case of 
 which he is ignorant ? In the broadest sense of the 
 word rational, taking into view the strength of the 
 testimony that might be brought, the limitation of 
 his faculties in their relation to a subject so vast, 
 and his lack of previous study, it would be rational 
 to accept both statements and wait till some one 
 should explain to him the effect of distance on paral- 
 lax, and then he would not only believe both facts, 
 but see how they could be reconciled. This instance 
 is taken from natural science, but occasions for the 
 application of this rule are more frequent in connec- 
 tion with the truths of revelation. Men do not see 
 the consistency of the foreknowledge, or purposes, or 
 decrees of God with human freedom ; and so, instead 
 of seeking candidly for the evidence of each, they 
 reject one or the other. They do not see the con- 
 sistency of the doctrine of the Trinity with the divine 
 Unity, and so they reject one or the other, more com- 
 monly that of the Trinity, but sometimes, virtually 
 at least, that of the Unity. Coming up as we do from 
 entire ignorance into a universe so vast and complex 
 

 KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. 5 7 
 
 as this, we ought to expect, it is folly not to expect, 
 that the evidence for single facts which are so far 
 removed from all we have known before as to be in- 
 conceivable to us, and also for each of two facts which 
 we cannot reconcile with each other, may be such 
 that the only rational course will be to accept the 
 facts, and leave the mode of the facts and of their 
 reconciliation to the ampler knowledge of the future. 
 It is more especially in connection with the last 
 two mentioned propositions that men say they will 
 not believe what they do not understand, meaning by 
 that, that they will not believe a fact the mode of 
 which they cannot conceive of, or which they are 
 unable to reconcile with some other fact. But in 
 saying this they fail to distinguish the processes of 
 the mind when the question, What is ? is asked, from 
 those when, How it is ? is asked. When the ques- 
 tion, What is ? is asked, the mind should be governed 
 wholly by evidence. To this there is no limitation, 
 except the avoidance of contradiction or absurdity. 
 Whoever is sure he so comprehends the whole sub- 
 ject that the fact or statement in question can be 
 seen to involve a contradiction or an absurdity can- 
 not believe that statement or fact. Short of that, he 
 is to be governed wholly by evidence. But in strict- 
 ness the term, understand, does not apply when we 
 deal with evidence of what has been or is, as it does 
 when we inquire how it came to be. Was my house 
 entered last night ? Yes, I have evidence of it, and 
 know it from the absence of my overcoat, and from 
 tracks on the floor; but how it could have been 
 
58 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 entered I do not understand. If, then, we apply, 
 as we should, the term know, to facts as proved by 
 evidence, and the term understand to modes and 
 causes, there is a sense in which a man may prop- 
 erly say he will not believe what he does not under- 
 stand, in which, indeed, he cannot believe it. The 
 fact he knows ; the evidence for it he knows ; of the 
 mode of it he knows nothing and believes nothing. 
 
 It ought to be added that if there be modes of 
 being or of action in this universe which we do not 
 share, it would not be rational to suppose that we can 
 conceive of them, much less understand their modes or 
 causes. This we all know is true, even of the senses. 
 If, therefore, there be as there may be, and doubt- 
 less are, in angels or in God modes of being or 
 perception which we do not share, the fact may be 
 made known to us by testimony ; but to suppose that 
 we can conceive of or comprehend them would be 
 opposed to all the laws of thought. 
 
 But if we are to believe nothing which it is not more 
 rational to believe than not to believe, what becomes 
 of the conflict between reason and faith ? There is 
 no such conflict, there never was, and nothing but 
 perverseness or the most marvelous stupidity could 
 have led to the supposition that there is. The faith 
 required by Christianity is not credulity, it is not 
 belief without evidence. It is wholly rational, and 
 that minister of the gospel who fails to represent it 
 so, is false to his trust. That faith is not simple 
 belief. It is confidence in a person, involving an act 
 of the will, and the belief and confidence involved 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELTNG. CA USA TION. 59 
 
 are never required, except on sufficient and rational 
 grounds. "Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the 
 Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." Paul knew 
 whom he had believed, and therefore he believed 
 Him. He was persuaded that He was able to keep 
 that which he had committed to Him against that 
 day, and therefore he committed it to Him. 
 
 We can now see our ground. As endowed with 
 intellect we have necessary knowledge, and in that 
 all the guard against skepticism that is possible. Not 
 accepting it, man cannot act, or speak, or even think, 
 without a contradiction. It is knowledge that we 
 have, and not mere faith or belief. Does any one 
 inquire for the ground of this knowledge ? We say 
 that that ground is the authority of the faculties so 
 revealed that we must know it to be their authority. 
 This we also say is the highest authority that we 
 can conceive even God to give. For, look at it : 
 unless we are to accept the authority of our facul- 
 ties unequivocally expressed, we could never be sure 
 of a revelation, however made, as from God. Having 
 thus necessary knowledge, always coming without 
 effort, we have also knowledge that is gained by 
 effort. Here we may have certainty, or we may have 
 mere belief or opinion resting on a preponderance of 
 evidence. In all the operations of the intellect here 
 there is large room for the exercise of the will, and it 
 is a part of the probation of men, with some a large 
 part, to see that there is perfect candor throughout 
 the whole process of reaching such opinions and 
 beliefs. In the exercise of such candor we are to 
 
60 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN'. 
 
 receive on all subjects whatever presents itself as 
 truth or fact for which there is sufficient evidence, 
 and we are to reject, or hold in doubt, everything 
 claiming to be a fact or a truth for which there is not 
 sufficient evidence. In this way the harmony of all 
 truth will follow as fast as truth shall be ascertained 
 and accepted. It can follow in no other way. 
 
 We now proceed to inquire in what, besides his 
 intellect, man is in the image of God. 
 
 Inseparably connected with the exercise of our 
 intellect we have, generally, if not always, feeling. 
 Are we in this in the image of God ? Yes. Nothing 
 can be more opposed to the Scriptural idea of God 
 than the conception of Him as without feeling. Bud- 
 dhists, Brahmins, Pantheists, may conceive of what 
 they call God as without feeling; philosophers may 
 speculate about the Infinite and the Absolute, and 
 call it God, and say that feeling is incompatible with 
 these ideas ; but the Bible knows of no God without 
 feeling. Without that there is no fatherhood, no love, 
 
 r no compassion or mercy ; there is no righteousness, 
 or holiness, or justice, no complacency or moral in- 
 dignation, no moral government. In the Bible idea 
 
 C| of God we have feeling as commensurate with his 
 other attributes, and it is a little remarkable that 
 those who speak of infinity, as excluding the idea of 
 feeling, do not see that in excluding that they also 
 exclude the idea of infinity. The same is true of per- 
 sonality which involves other attributes than that of 
 feeling. Personality they speak of as the highest 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. 6 1 
 
 conceivable form of being, and yet as incompatible 
 with infinity, because, as they conceive of it, it im- 
 plies limitation. But what kind of an infinite being 
 is it that can exist and not manifest himself in the 
 highest conceivable form of being? No idea of limi- 
 tation can be more incompatible with that of infinity 
 than the absence from it of personality, including the ., 
 attribute of feeling. In our powers of knowledge we 
 are in the image of God, because we are able in some 
 things and to some extent to know as He knows. 
 And so in feeling we are in his image, because in 
 some things, and to some extent, we are capable of 
 feeling as He feels. Does God love ? So can we. 
 Love is more than feeling, but we can have the feel- 
 ing that enters into that. Does He feel pity, or com- 
 placency in goodness, or moral indignation? So, in 
 our measure, can we, and thus, through that capacity 
 of feeling which is among the primitive revelations of 
 a man to himself, are we in the image of God. 
 
 Feeling is so incorporated into every form of our 
 activity as to enter into every conception of ourselves. 
 It reveals itself in our capacity for both enjoyment 
 and suffering, and probably the capacity for the one 
 always corresponds to that for the other. The rela- 
 tion of feeling to the will is peculiar. It can never be 
 made the immediate object of choice or volition, and 
 yet there would be no choice or volition without it. 
 If there were no feeling, we should never eat ; and 
 yet, in eating, our choice and volition have for their 
 immediate object the food and not the feeling. The 
 feeling is the immediate result of our activity from 
 
62 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 our being constituted as we are, and never of an act of 
 choice or of will. According to the threefold division 
 now universally prevalent in psychology, feeling is the 
 product of the sensibility. This division, being thus 
 fully accepted, should be fully carried out. This has 
 not been done, and much misapprehension has been 
 the consequence. The system of morals, as I have 
 presented it, has been misapprehended from this 
 cause. Making this distinction fully, so as to refer 
 all feeling to the sensibility, we shall see that a good, 
 without some conception of which the will could not 
 act, is the normal product of the sensibility, and that 
 nothing is a good that is not the product of that. 
 Let us see. We study. In connection with the ac- 
 tivity of the intellect in that way we have enjoyment, 
 that is, a good, not because we willed it, but because 
 we are so constituted that, on the condition of our 
 studying, the enjoyment will come without our willing 
 it. In our study we have knowledge for our object, 
 and not enjoyment or a good ; but if there were no 
 enjoyment either in the study or from the use of the 
 knowledge acquired, none either for ourselves or 
 for others, we should not continue to study. Of 
 course, the enjoyment is originally known through 
 spontaneous or instinctive activity, and afterwards 
 becomes, though not the immediate object of the 
 activity, yet a condition without which it would not 
 be voluntarily entered upon. From this intimate re- 
 lation of feeling to activity, it is not strange that they 
 should have been so far identified as to be called by 
 the same name, especially when the element of feel- 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. 63 
 
 ing predominates. In study this is not apt to be 
 done. We readily separate our activity in study from 
 the feeling and enjoyment that comes from it. The 
 study, the activity itself, we do not call a good ; the 
 feeling, the enjoyment, we do. But as feeling in- 
 creases, the two become more blended and difficult of 
 separation. Hence, while there is really the same 
 distinction in all forms of virtue and holiness, they 
 being radically forms of activity of the will, they are 
 said to be not only good, but a good, and the denial of 
 this is thought to indicate a theory of morals that is 
 to be looked down upon as low, if not to be abhorred 
 as wicked. The sole difference, however, is that 
 while one blends the activity and its result under 
 the one name holiness, and calls that a good, the 
 other separates the two, and calls the result only a 
 good. We thus see how men may seem to be 
 strongly opposed to each other who are yet substan- 
 tially agreed. 
 
 We thus see what feeling is, and its place in our 
 constitution. It may come to us from the action of 
 others, but as the direct result of our own activity 
 and the indirect result of our wills, it becomes a mo- 
 tive to action or a deterrent from it. If the normal 
 result of the activity be one of pleasure, satisfaction, 
 happiness, enjoyment, blessedness, it is a good. It 
 has value in itself, an absolute value. It can be 
 neither exchanged, nor bought, nor sold. It has no 
 utility. It is good for nothing. It is simply a good. 
 
 In claiming, as we do, affinity with God, through 
 feeling, caution is needed, because there is a wide 
 
.64 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MA AT. 
 
 range of feeling that we have in virtue of our being 
 in the image of that which is below us. It is only 
 through the feelings connected with our moral and 
 spiritual nature that we are, as having feeling, in the 
 image of God. 
 
 We now pass on. Having, as we have seen, 
 powers of knowledge, and a sensibility embracing 
 under it the whole range of feeling, what more does 
 man find revealing itself as an essential part of his 
 being, and by which he is in the image of God ? 
 
 He that is, the man, the ego is essentially 
 active, and, if intelligently so, he must choose, and 
 put forth effort to obtain the object of his choice. In 
 doing these, man is revealed to himself as having a 
 personal will, as free, and as a cause. FREEDOM and 
 CAUSATIVE POWER, in both of these man is in the 
 image of God. 
 
 In choice and volition we have the two factors of 
 the will, the constituents of man as a free agent. In 
 the choice he is free, and in the carrying out of the 
 choice, that is, in volition, he is an agent, so, &free 
 agent. This act of choice, in which, if anywhere, 
 freedom is to be found, is one the conditions and na- 
 ture of which it is of special interest that the minis- 
 ter of the gospel should understand. It is an act in 
 the spiritual realm revealing itself only to the man 
 himself and to God, producing no outward effect, 
 nor, as yet, any effect, except in its reaction on the 
 agent; yet by this act he may put himself in an atti- 
 tude toward God or his fellow-men from which may 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. C^/A 77OA^ 65 
 
 flow the efforts of a lifetime, or, 
 from making effort, his position morally will be the 
 same as if he had done so. The act is simple, and 
 enters as an element into man's life as necessarily as 
 thought. As between two things, he may be free to 
 choose either, but he is not free whether he will 
 choose. He may say he will not choose either of 
 those things, but he can say that only by a choice to 
 choose neither. We may, therefore, say that a choice 
 is necessitated, but that the choice is free. As sim- 
 ple, the act of choice cannot be defined. No one 
 who has not done it can be told what it is. As sim- 
 ple, too, and immediate, it is done without means, 
 and therefore no one can tell another how to do it. 
 He may tell him which of two objects to choose, but 
 if the man says he does not know how to perform the 
 act of choice, he cannot tell him that. The inquiry, 
 How ? always has reference to the use of means. If 
 there be no means there can be no how. An excuse, 
 too, for not doing a required act always lies in the 
 region of means. An absolute want of means for an 
 act requiring them is a valid excuse, but if the man 
 have the means, the only reason that can be given 
 for not doing it is that he did not choose to do it ; 
 and that, if the required act was a duty, is no excuse. 
 It involves and necessitates a direct conflict of will 
 with the authority requiring the act. 
 
 By thus placing freedom, and so moral responsi- 
 bility, in a region where no means are required, God 
 has secured two things. The first is that the char- 
 acter, and so the destiny, of every man is so put into 
 5 
 
66 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 his own hands that no human power can reach or in- 
 terfere with it. Here we have the possibility and 
 grandeur of a rational martyrdom. The choice to 
 obey God rather than man abides. The flames can- 
 not reach it, and the moment of their conquest over 
 the body is the moment of the martyr's conquest over 
 all the powers that earth can bring to shake his alle- 
 giance to God and to duty. The second thing se- 
 cured by placing freedom where no means are re- 
 quired is the impossibility of any excuse before God 
 for not obeying any of his commands. His com- 
 mand is to love, and as the central act of love is 
 choice, there can be nothing but a want of will in 
 the way, and so no excuse. 
 
 The condition or prerequisite of choice is an alter- 
 native presented. This may be between two objects, 
 either but not both of which he may have, or between 
 two courses of action, either but not both of which 
 he may take. This limits the range of human free- 
 dom. Practically, the range of choice, and so of free- 
 dom for man, is limited to those things which it is 
 possible for him to attain or to do. A man may 
 choose between walking and riding, but not between 
 walking and flying. Freedom is also practically lim- 
 ited by the alternatives presented. Having the offer 
 of his expenses and a journey to Europe, a young 
 man may choose whether he will accept it, but 
 whether he shall have the offer is not a matter of 
 choice. 
 
 But whatever may be the conditions or limitations 
 of choice they do not affect its freedom. The knowl- 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. 6/ 
 
 edge of this by man I place on the same basis in re- 
 gard to certainty as the knowledge of his existence. 
 This I do, because the idea of freedom is a necessary 
 product of his faculties in connection with choice, 
 and the fact of freedom in choosing is necessarily 
 known. It is so known, because the man cannot 
 deny it in words without contradicting it in action ; 
 because, if a man do deny it in words we treat him, 
 and have a right to treat him, as if he believed it ; and 
 because the fact of freedom can no more be proved 
 by anything plainer than itself than the fact of our 
 existence. 
 
 As choice and freedom are wholly in the spiritual 
 realm, and need not express themselves outwardly, 
 nothing can interfere with them unless it be some- 
 thing in that realm that precedes them. That which 
 precedes them is what have been called motives, and 
 the controversy, in regard to freedom, has turned 
 chiefly on the influence of these. Man, it has been 
 persistently said, is under a necessity of choosing in 
 accordance with the strongest motive, and such neces- 
 sity is, of course, incompatible with freedom. If this 
 be so, there can be no freedom for either God or man, 
 since there can be no choice or freedom unless there 
 be an alternative with what are called motives on 
 each side. Perhaps we have no more signal instance 
 of the reaction of words upon thought than is found 
 in these-two motive and strongest. The words are 
 unfortunate. There is in them, or rather in the things 
 signified by them, neither motive power nor strength. 
 The plain statement of the case, and all that can be 
 
68 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 said about it, is that grounds, inducements, reasons 
 for action in different directions are placed before 
 men, that they deliberate respecting these, and then 
 choose. They act, and nothing else does. They move 
 themselves, and there is no strength or moving power 
 out of themselves. Certainly there is nothing, either 
 out of themselves or in themselves, that is not neces- 
 sary as a condition of freedom. 
 
 Choice being a free act suffices to reveal character 
 before God. " Forasmuch as it was in thine heart," 
 said God to David, " to build me an house, thou didst 
 well that it was in thine heart." The choice, the will, 
 was accepted for the deed. But man would not be as 
 fully as now in the image of God if he had not the 
 power to carry out his choices in action, and to real- 
 ize in outward form those conceptions and ideals on 
 which the choices were based. This he does by voli- 
 tion, the second factor of what is called will. Through 
 this it is that he reveals both character and causative 
 power to his fellow-men. There may be choice with- 
 out volition, but not volition without choice ; for, how- 
 ever long the choice may abide, holding the volition, 
 or executive act, in abeyance, yet that act can never 
 be without an immediately preceding choice. But 
 while volition may be thus separated from choice, 
 they are naturally conjoined, and are originally known 
 as a single act. It is through them, as thus conjoined, 
 that I suppose we have by necessity the idea of causa- 
 tion, and of ourselves as causes. Without energy 
 put forth by us, followed by results, and immediately 
 known by us as cause and effect, I do not see how it 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TIOJST. 69 
 
 would be possible for us to have tne conception of 
 anything in the ongoing of nature, but of antecedent 
 and consequent. The search for causes which, has 
 been so universal could never have been thought of, 
 and all the philosophy possible would have been what 
 Comte conceived it to be, the discovery and record of 
 a stated order. This would, of course, apply to mind 
 as well as to matter, and would reduce everything to 
 mere mechanism and fatalism. 
 
 As the idea of a cause and of causation thus neces- 
 sarily arises in the putting forth of energy by us, it 
 seems to me both unphilosophical and unfortunate 
 to bring in other elements as going to constitute the 
 idea. An agent putting forth power, with results fol- 
 lowing, is what every one understands. He is a cause, 
 and the results are effects ; and to call anything a 
 cause that has not in it this original element of 
 energy, is simply to make the word ambiguous. A 
 cause is that which so puts forth energy as to pro- 
 duce a change. That is a cause, and nothing else is. 
 Of course, the word has secondary meanings. It may 
 also be allowed, but is undesirable, that it should be 
 used in another sense, with an adjective prefixed, as 
 final cause, in which there is no resemblance or anal- 
 ogy to a cause in its original meaning; but when 
 cause is defined, as by Hamilton, as involving "the 
 absolute tautology between the effect and its causes," 
 the idea of energy becomes simply that of transmu- 
 tation, and pantheism must inevitably follow. There 
 could be no such thing as sin unless it had been 
 eternal. Besides, in some of its applications, this 
 
/O THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 doctrine that there can be nothing in the effect that 
 was not in its causes becomes unintelligible. Ice is 
 melted by heat. Does it mean anything to say 
 that the melting was in the heat ? Is the drunken- 
 ness caused by rum in the rum ? Is the destruction 
 caused by a tornado in the tornado ? Was there de- 
 struction there before it struck its object ? There 
 was in it power, energy, force ; that we know, and it 
 is all that we know. There is no tautology. That 
 which originally gave the idea of causation is neces- 
 sarily there, and nothing else is. We should natu- 
 rally suppose that there would be in that which orig- 
 inally gives us the idea, all there is that is essential 
 in the idea. And so it is. It is with this as with all 
 products of similar origin. The same idea of being 
 that was originally given accompanies us in all our 
 thinking ; also the same idea of personal identity ; 
 and so of causation, and of ourselves as causes. If, 
 as Hamilton holds, this idea or principle of causation 
 was an original datum of our constitution, this, as it 
 seems to me, must be so. 
 
 But there is another definition of cause given by 
 Hamilton, in which he and Mill are agreed ; and as 
 Voltaire said of an Englishman and a Frenchman, 
 that when they agree in anything we may be sure 
 they are right, so we should suppose it might be 
 said of Hamilton and Mill, generally so antagonistic. 
 The definition is this : " By cause I mean everything 
 without which the effect could not be realized." This 
 definition has been adopted and defended by able 
 thinkers in this country, but to me it seems not only 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA T/OM 7 1 
 
 incompatible with the fact, that the principle of causa- 
 tion is an original datum of our constitution, always 
 going with us, so that we cannot move or speak with- 
 out involving it, but also incompatible with clear- 
 ness of thought, or precision of language. According 
 to this, the battle-field and the sunlight without which 
 the battle could not have been fought, are a part of 
 the cause of the battle; the ocean is a part of the 
 cause of the falls of Niagara. But for the bush, be- 
 hind which he was concealed, and his gun, the assas- 
 sin could not have committed the murder ; and so 
 the bush and the gun were a part of the cause, and 
 might be called on to share the responsibility. Who 
 but a philosopher ever supposed that the foundation 
 of a house was a part of the cause of the house ? The 
 common people and common language make a dis- 
 tinction between the foundation of a house and its 
 builder. The one they call a condition, or prereq- 
 uisite, and the other a cause, and they are right. 
 Who can suppose that space is a cause, or part of the 
 cause, of motion ? The doctrine, as stated by Hamil- 
 ton, and especially by Mill, with whom it seems to 
 have originated, amounts to this : that the possibility 
 of an event is in all cases a part of the cause of that 
 event. The possibility that a man should lift a weight 
 is a condition of his lifting it ; but to make it a part 
 of the cause would not only be contrary to usage, 
 which gives law to language, but would give an ex- 
 tension to the word, cause, that would unfit it for use 
 in philosophical discussions. The condition of any 
 event being its possibility, everything involved in 
 
72 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 that possibility will be a part of the condition, and 
 so of the causes. According to that, the cause of our 
 being here to-day could not be ascertained without 
 going back at least to the discovery of this country 
 by Columbus. All change requires a cause. As I 
 have said, any exertion or manifestation of energy 
 that' produces a change is a cause, and, as I think, 
 nothing else should be so called. It is here, as in 
 consciousness. The inwrought element of our con- 
 stitution, with its necessitated product, by which we 
 are in the image of God, has become blended with 
 others of a different origin, so that it is impossible to 
 argue, or even to think successfully, with a word that 
 carries in its meaning elements so diverse. 
 
 As free then, and as a cause, man is in the image 
 of God. He is as free as a rational being can be con- 
 ceived to be. Does he, when an alternative is pre- 
 sented, with reasons on either side, choose in view of 
 those reasons? Does he do it ? If so, he is free. If 
 not, freedom is impossible. Does he, again, when any- 
 thing is to be done, understandingly, and with refer- 
 ence to an end, originate motion ? If so, he is a 
 cause, and a first cause. A second cause is necessi- 
 tated by a previous one. A first cause originates the 
 movement. If man has not the power to originate 
 his own movements, if it is not he who originates the 
 movement of his lips when he speaks, then he is not 
 a cause at all. 
 
 Having thus freedom and the power of causation, 
 there is a sense in which man is in the image of God 
 as a creator. Place a being thus free, having the 
 
KNO WLEDGE. FEELING. CA USA TION. 73 
 
 power of causation, and with intelligence, in the 
 midst of a fixed ordr of things so that he can fore- 
 know what the consequences of his acts will be, and 
 it is plain that he can purposely and intelligently 
 create, or cause to be, a future that, but for him, 
 would not have been. Feeble as is this image of the 
 creative power of God, it yet indicates for man a 
 place in this universe higher than that of suns and 
 stars. He is not wholly as the driftwood on the 
 stream or the atom in the whirlwind, atom though he 
 be, but he has a will that goes for something in that 
 which is to be. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE MORAL NATURE. 
 
 INTELLECT, Sensibility, Will, these we have found 
 in the necessitated revelation of man to himself, but 
 we have not yet found all that is thus necessarily re- 
 vealed, nor all by which we are in the image of God. 
 We have not found all that is requisite for person- 
 ality. For that, and for the full image of God, we 
 need the Moral Nature. Whether there could be 
 Intellect, Sensibility, and Will without that, I do not 
 know, but certainly there could not be personality. 
 A being without rights, and not under obligation, 
 could not be a person. 
 
 Rights and Obligation, in these we find the 
 primitive manifestations of the Moral Nature. We 
 have Rights first, and Obligation as the reciprocal of 
 Rights. These inhere in the person, and are neces- 
 sarily known in connection with conduct that relates 
 to the well-being of ourselves or others. A man as 
 necessarily knows that he has a right to himself in 
 the unobstructed use of his faculties, when he does 
 not interfere with the rights of others, as he knows 
 his personal identity. With the same necessity he 
 knows, when he comes into intelligent relation to 
 other beings, that he is under obligation to do some 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 75 
 
 things and to abstain from doing others. This must 
 be so if man has a moral nature, because we mean by 
 a nature that which, in given circumstances, will 
 produce a uniform result. Uniformly, the conditions 
 being given, men have a knowledge of Rights and of 
 Obligation, and so may properly be said to have a 
 Moral Nature. 
 
 This nature, with its revelations and results in the 
 sensibility, is central, and, as central, is the last ele- 
 ment to be revealed. It is the blossom at the centre 
 of the palm tree, to the guarding and unfolding of 
 which all the other parts conspire, and through which 
 alone we reach a knowledge of its highest possibili- 
 ties, and so of its end. The highest end of man is to 
 be found in and from a full display of intelligent 
 agency in connection with his rights and his obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 In considering our causative power, we found it 
 revealing itself in two branches. By the one, which 
 we call the power of choice, we are able to produce 
 changes within ourselves, and to place ourselves in 
 new moral relations ; by the other, which we call vo- 
 lition, we are able to produce changes in the external 
 world. So, also, do we now find the Moral Nature 
 revealing itself in two branches, the one relating to 
 ourselves as having rights, the other relating to oth- 
 ers as having not only rights, but capacities for well- 
 being and the reverse. As having his own rights 
 which he is to guard, and as the appointed guardian 
 of the rights of those under him, man was created in 
 the image of God. God has rights. He guards 
 
76 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 them. He violates no right, and suffers no right to 
 be violated without an expression of his displeasure. 
 In this is his perfect righteousness. 
 
 And not only has man rights, he is also under ob- 
 ligation. He is under obligation to others, not only 
 as they have rights, and as obligation is the recipro- 
 cal of rights, but as they have capacities for well-being 
 which he is bound to promote. He is thus in the 
 image of God as having a capacity for holy love. 
 
 Rights and obligation, as I have said, pertain to 
 the person. Right pertains to actions and to conduct. 
 As thus used, the word right has two senses. In the 
 one it means conducive to the end in view, whether 
 that be good or bad. In the other it means morally 
 right. In the first sense the word indicates a quality 
 inherent in the thing to which it is applied, as the 
 right road, the right rule. The road, the rule, the act, 
 the conduct, is conducive to the end in view. In the 
 second sense the word is wholly figurative and does 
 not express a quality in the thing to which it is ap- 
 plied. This we see the moment we analyze our 
 thought, and yet there has been a general and most 
 misleading impression that acts and conduct have in- 
 herent in themselves a moral quality. But evidently 
 there is no more a moral quality in what is called a 
 moral act than there is a criminal quality in what is 
 called a criminal court, or a joyful quality in what is 
 called a joyful occasion. The morality, the criminal- 
 ity, the joyfulness, can be only in persons. Hence, 
 while the meaning of the word right, in its first 
 sense, expresses the quality of an act as conducive to 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 77 
 
 an end to which we look forward, its meaning in the 
 second sense is expressive, not of any quality in the 
 act itself, but of the source of the act to which we 
 look back. There is, then, and can be, no moral 
 quality in an act, or in conduct, or in things, or in 
 the nature of things. Morality has to do wholly 
 with persons, and hence, in speaking of man as hav- 
 ing a moral nature, I have spoken of rights and of 
 obligation which enter into our conception of his 
 personality rather than of an abstract idea of right 
 that can belong only to the intellect, or to right 
 which can belong only to conduct, and that in a figu- 
 rative way. 
 
 As a condition for the fundamental ideas of rights 
 and of obligation, and, indeed, of any moral idea, 
 there must be a Sensibility that will give us, in some 
 form, a good. A good is that which has value in it- 
 self. It must be subjective. Nothing without us 
 can have other than a relative value, can be a 
 good. Pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, joy, blessed- 
 ness, these and their equivalents are all from the 
 sensibility. Each is a good, has value in itself, 
 small, it may be, but still, value. Without the idea 
 of a good in some form the will could not rationally 
 act. Generally the will acts in view of something 
 regarded as good, rather than as a good, because, as 
 I have shown, a good can never be the direct object 
 or product of an act of the will ; but if there were not 
 a good, there could be nothing good with reference 
 to which the will could act. Without this idea, rights 
 can have no meaning. A right cannot attach itself 
 
78 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 to anything that has not value, real or supposed, ab- 
 solute or relative, actual or possible, and value has 
 no significance except with reference to a good of 
 ourselves or some one else. And as rights have re- 
 lation to our own capacity for good, so does obliga- 
 tion to others have relation to their capacity for good. 
 If they had no capacity for good of any kind, they 
 could have no rights, and we could not be under ob- 
 ligation to them. 
 
 The fact, just noticed, that the Moral Nature ap- 
 pears later in the order of time than the Sensibility, 
 and is conditioned upon it, does not indicate its infe- 
 riority, but the reverse. In all the upbuilding of 
 nature the conditioning is lower than that which is 
 conditioned upon it. 
 
 We have now found the elements involved in per- 
 sonality. We have found man in the image of God 
 as capable of knowledge and of rational comprehen- 
 sion. According to his measure he knows as God 
 knows. We have found him in the image of God in 
 his capacity for feeling, and for the same order of 
 feelings that God has. We have found him in the 
 image of God as capable of choosing freely between 
 different principles of action, and so, different ends, 
 and of carrying out his choices intelligently and pur- 
 posely so as, in an important sense, to create a future. 
 We have also found him in the image of God as a 
 moral being, as having rights, and as capable through 
 the law of obligation of becoming a law unto himself. 
 Through these it is that man comes to the knowledge 
 of himself as a person ; as having dignity and worth, 
 
THE MORAL NA TURE. 79 
 
 and a capacity for worthiness, and that he is able, in 
 the fullness of its meaning, to say 7. These are not 
 the 7, the Ego, the person. They are phenomena 
 through which the person is known to himself as a 
 person, but he is more than they. They are phe- 
 nomena ; he is Being. 
 
 Now, in thus constructing the person, we have, as 
 I think, a distinct field of knowledge that requires to 
 be more fully separated from others than it has been, 
 and more fully explored if we are to cultivate those 
 others with success. The field is separate as rela- 
 ting to the constitution of the being who is to know 
 all things else. Before we can have science or logic 
 we must have, not only the material, but a being 
 capable of the processes they involve ; and I hold 
 that a knowledge of those essential powers, by which 
 such a being is revealed to himself, and without which 
 he would not be a person, must be immediate and 
 necessary, gained by no intervention of the will, and 
 so by nothing that can properly be called a faculty. 
 The man may not be able to discriminate these 
 powers perfectly, or to state them explicitly, may 
 even deny their existence in words ; but they are so 
 inwrought into the texture of his being that his ac- 
 tions must affirm them, and that we shall have a right 
 to treat him as having them. In this knowledge we 
 have nothing that can properly be called science. We 
 have no logic, no induction or deduction. We have 
 the fixed point, or rather centre, in the whirlwind of 
 conflicting theories and logical formulas, which is not 
 the whirlwind, but without which that could not be. 
 
80 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 What name we may give to the power by which we 
 thus know the essential powers and characteristics of 
 our being as persons, is not so important. Some may 
 think, and perhaps justly, that it would be better to 
 extend the term consciousness over this whole field . 
 of necessary knowledge rather than limit it, as I have 
 suggested, to the knowledge of our own existence. 
 To this I now see no objection, and in it some ad- 
 vantages. I see no objection to saying that in know- 
 ing my own being through the operation of those 
 powers that constitute my personality, I must know, 
 implicitly at least, those operations and powers as 
 distinguished from others. 
 
 Of the person as thus found the aspects are three. 
 The first is, that of a knower. The second is, that of 
 a doer, an intelligent, comprehending chooser and 
 doer. The third is, that of a being doing what he does 
 under moral law. A being not having these character- 
 istics would not be man. They are the elements which 
 fit man for agency and dominion, and give us, not the 
 whole of the Scriptural idea of man, but a part, the 
 spiritual part, of that double nature which the Scrip- 
 tures recognize. " For I delight/' says the Apostle 
 Paul, "in the law of God after the inward man." 
 Here we have the I, the person, as distinct from the 
 law and delighting in it by approval, as all men must. 
 This law is the law of righteousness and of holiness, 
 of which I have spoken, and which springs directly 
 from that knowledge of rights and of obligation 
 which we have by necessity. In this law that was 
 after the inward man, the Apostle delighted ; but he 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 8 1 
 
 goes on to say : " I see another law in my members 
 warring against the law of my mind, and bringing 
 me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my 
 members." Here we have the recognition by a being 
 who is fitted to govern, and who calls himself /, of a 
 law within him by which he ought to be governed, 
 and also of a law of sin in his members which is op- 
 posed to this law. What then are these members ? 
 What was it in the original constitution of our nature 
 that needed to be governed ? 
 
 Man having been fully constituted, that in him 
 which needed to be governed was his spontaneities 
 of thought, of feeling, of impulses, and active princi- 
 ples. By some, spontaneity and choice have been 
 confounded. They are wholly different. Spontaneity, 
 that is, original spontaneity, is from the nature, and 
 is without deliberation or choice. Hence we are re- 
 sponsible only for its control. " Be ye angry and sin 
 not." The anger is spontaneous, but, take care. The 
 spontaneities that we now need to consider are the 
 impulses and principles of action, as the appetites 
 and desires. They involve feeling, without which 
 there could be no motive to action. They are re- 
 vealed to us, not so much as going to constitute the 
 person, but rather as that which the person, being 
 constituted, is to govern. Still they are so a part of 
 the whole man, that without them the person would 
 have no sphere of action. They are as the subjects 
 in a government. As subjects they are no part of 
 the government, but there could be no government 
 without them. They are of different orders. Some 
 6 
 
82 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 are dependent on the body ; some, like the lower 
 branches of the pine that are destined to drop off as 
 the tree rises, are adapted only to the relations of 
 time ; and some are fitted for a being capable of an 
 endless existence, and of harmonious relations with 
 God and his whole intelligent universe. 
 
 Having these we have the whole man. We have 
 an intelligent agent, under moral law, with freedom 
 of choice, with principles of action between which he 
 is to choose, and with power of outward control. 
 
 We now reach a point of transition. Man thus 
 constituted is to act, and our next inquiry is, How ? 
 This inquiry is answered in the Scriptures, but we 
 wish to know if there is any indication in the struc- 
 ture of his powers, and in their relation to each other, 
 of the mode in which he ought to act. Is there so 
 far an analogy between his structure and a machine 
 that we can see what relation of its parts was in- 
 tended by its Maker, and would produce the best 
 results ? This is the next inquiry in order ; but be- 
 fore proceeding to it, I ask your attention to the differ- 
 ence between a principle of action and a law of action. 
 This I do, because the conscience which gives the 
 law of action has been almost universally placed 
 among the principles of action, and has been re- 
 garded as differing from them only as having a dif- 
 ferent object, and as being higher and more authori- 
 tative. 
 
 A principle of action is that which leads us to act. 
 It supposes an object set over against it which cor- 
 responds to it, and in the attainment and possession 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 83 
 
 of which it becomes satisfied, or, at least, finds a 
 good. Hunger is such a principle, having food set 
 over against it as its object, and leading to activity 
 in its pursuit, with scope for choice among differ- 
 ent kinds of food. The desire for knowledge is such 
 a principle, having knowledge for its object, and 
 leading to activity in its pursuit, with scope for choice 
 among the different departments of knowledge. The 
 man must therefore act sometimes, in choosing, be- 
 tween different principles of action, one that shall be 
 paramount ; or, having ahosen this principle, in 
 choosing particular objects or lines of action under 
 it. Now, it is among these principles of action that 
 conscience is supposed to have its place, and over 
 against it, as its object, is placed the idea of right. 
 As I have said, conscience is supposed to be the 
 highest and most authoritative of these principles, 
 and the choice of that as supreme to be the sum of 
 duty and the highest form of human action. 
 
 A principle of action being thus that which leads 
 us to choose and to act, a law of action should be, 
 and I suppose is, that which directs us how to choose 
 and to act. And as conscience is that from which the 
 law proceeds, and as law can be addressed only to a 
 person, it follows that conscience, instead of having 
 an object before it with reference to which it can act 
 and find its satisfaction, must act directly on the will, 
 or, rather, on the man himself, directing him how to 
 choose and to act. It presupposes grounds of choice 
 and of action. In all cases of moral action, and as a 
 condition for it, there must be an alternative, with 
 
84 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 grounds for choice and action on either side. A 
 choice may then be made, either between two princi- 
 ples of action, or between two objects or courses of 
 action under the same principle. Here it is, as I sup- 
 pose, that the voice of conscience comes in, uttered 
 directly to the person, the agent, the man himself, 
 with its imperative ought, or ought not, thou shalt, or 
 thou shalt not. It does not itself present or find an 
 object, but comes in with its imperative, by a voice 
 as from behind and from above, directing us how to 
 choose, saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." 
 
 We now proceed to the question, How is man to 
 act ? and the answer to this may possibly enable us 
 to reconcile conflicting views. 
 
 In answering this question, philosophers have sup- 
 posed it necessary for him to choose between dif- 
 ferent ends of action, but they have differed as to 
 what the end ought to be. Some have said perfec- 
 tion, some virtue or right, some worthiness, some 
 happiness, some blessedness, some the glory of God. 
 Whewell, for example, says, "The supreme object of 
 human action is happiness. Happiness is the object 
 of human action contemplated in its most general 
 form and approved by reason." This he says though 
 he did not regard himself and is not regarded as be- 
 longing to the utilitarian school. But this is spoken 
 of by a large class of writers with scorn, as com- 
 promising the dignity of our nature. Hear Carlyle: 
 " There is in man a higher than love of happiness. 
 We can do without happiness, and instead thereof 
 find blessedness. Was it not to preach forth this 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 8$ 
 
 Vv / C 
 
 same higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the 
 priest, in all times have spoken and suffered, bearing 
 testimony through life and through death to the god- 
 like that is in man, and how in the godlike only has 
 he strength and freedom ? " In the same way Dr. 
 Charles Hodge opposes happiness to good. He says, 
 " This whole theory is founded on the assumption that 
 happiness is the highest end, and that the desire of 
 happiness is the ultimate spring of all voluntary ac- 
 tion. As both these principles are abhorrent to the 
 great mass of cultivated and especially of Christian 
 minds, as men act from other and higher motives than 
 a desire to promote their own happiness, there are few 
 in our day who will adopt the doctrine that the will 
 is as the greatest apparent good as thus expounded. 
 If, however, the word good be taken in a more com- 
 prehensive sense, as including everything that is 
 desirable, whether as right, becoming, or useful, then 
 the doctrine is no doubt true. The will, in point of 
 fact, always is determined in favor of that which, un- 
 der some aspect, or for some reason, is regarded as 
 good. Otherwise, men might choose evil as evil, 
 which would violate a fundamental law of all rational 
 and sensuous natures." Carlyle would permit us to 
 pursue blessedness, and Dr. Hodge good, in some 
 form. The latter says we must do that if we are to 
 act at all, but they both reject strongly, and I sup- 
 pose Whewell would also, the pursuit of one's own 
 happiness as a paramount principle of action. 
 
 Whether the real disagreement here and in similar 
 cases would be as great as it seems if the terms were 
 
86 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 understood alike, may be questioned. I think not. 
 But if the distinction drawn between principles of 
 action and a law of action be correct, we shall be led 
 to inquire what those principles are, how they are 
 related to each other, and whether our choice should 
 not be made rather between principles of action than 
 between ends of action. Possibly, in doing this, con- 
 flicting views may be reconciled. 
 
 We have, then, first, what are called the impulsive 
 principles of action. These are the Appetites, the 
 Instincts, the Desires, and the Natural Affections. 
 These act spontaneously on the presentation of their 
 objects, with no intervention of the Intellect or the 
 Will. These principles do not take the name of their 
 object, as their action is called forth by specific ob- 
 jects. Originally, the appetite in us, as in the brute, 
 seeks some single object, not food. That is a gen- 
 eral term, of which the brute could know nothing. 
 So the desire of property is primarily the desire of 
 some particular thing ; but by combination with the 
 Intellect, it takes its general form, and in that form 
 becomes intensified. That these principles should 
 have acted spontaneously was necessary, for other- 
 wise their objects could never have become motives 
 to us. 
 
 The rational principles of action are a regard for 
 rights, self-love, and moral love. These are condi- 
 tioned on those that are spontaneous. They involve 
 a comparison of the different principles of action and 
 forms of good possible to us, and a choice between 
 them of that which seems best, on the whole, for 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 8/ 
 
 ourselves and others. The difference between these 
 and the spontaneous principles of action is that the 
 spontaneous act without the intellect and without 
 choice, whereas, in these, both are involved. Except 
 through a comprehension of different forms of good, 
 and through a choice between them, it is impossible 
 that there should be either self-love or a rational and 
 moral love of others. 
 
 These principles of action are higher and lower, 
 according to the law of conditioning and conditioned. 
 That is a test of their rank, but the knowledge of 
 that rank cannot be from the intellect alone, through 
 a knowledge of the law. There is connected with it 
 a sentiment that is immediate and intuitive. This, 
 some as Mr. Martineau attribute to the Moral 
 Nature, but to me it seems a prerequisite to the ac- 
 tion of that nature. As I have said elsewhere, " It is 
 only by the possession and exercise of noble faculties 
 that man comes to a sense of dignity, and in such 
 exercise he comes to it intuitively. No one who has 
 not come to it thus can tell another, or be told, what 
 it is. And as the sense of dignity is thus known, so 
 is the relative dignity of the different powers and of 
 their products. This intuitive perception of an order 
 of the powers [and the same may be said of the 
 principles of action] as higher and lower, and of the 
 corresponding quality of the good from them, is pe- 
 culiar to man, and is a marked distinction between 
 him and the brutes." 
 
 Of these principles, each is good in its place, and, 
 in its normal action, gives us a good corresponding 
 
88 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 in its quality to the rank of the principle. If the 
 principle be one common to us and the brutes, the 
 good from it will be similar to theirs. If it be from 
 one common to us and the angels, the good will be 
 similar to theirs. What the normal action of each 
 of these principles is will be determined by the Law 
 of Limitation. It must be such as will best pro- 
 mote the normal activity of all that is above it. This 
 will be so till we reach the highest principle, and 
 then, as there is nothing above that to limit it, it 
 cannot be in excess. Of course there will be from 
 this the highest quality of good, and the quantity 
 will be in proportion to the activity. The lowest 
 principle of action is Appetite, the highest is Moral 
 Love. 
 
 As each of these principles is good in its place, it 
 is not selfish to act from any one of them under the 
 Law of Limitation. The appetites are not selfish. 
 None of the impulsive principles are. They are 
 constitutional principles, and may be made subservi- 
 ent to benevolence as readily as to selfishness. In 
 the only sense in which any act can be disinterested 
 there may be disinterested hate as well as disinter- 
 ested benevolence. Disinterestedness does not im- 
 ply that we are uninterested, but only that our inter- 
 est terminates directly in the good of others. If, 
 however, any one of these principles, lower than the 
 highest, is made supreme, it will involve radical self- 
 ishness, will necessitate selfishness in action, and will 
 lead on to any form and degree of wickedness that 
 may be necessary to secure its end. 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 89 
 
 Of these principles it is necessary that some one 
 should be held as supreme at any given moment. 
 When any one is thus held permanently it deter- 
 mines the character. He who permanently holds, as 
 supreme, the love of money is a miser. That is his 
 character. He who thus holds the love of power is 
 ambitious ; and he who thus holds the love of God 
 and his neighbor is religious. This choice of a prin- 
 ciple of action as supreme is what is called a generic 
 choice, as it draws after it a great number of par- 
 ticular choices. Those who choose the same active 
 principle, as supreme, are similar in their character; 
 though, from the diversity of lines of action possible 
 under the same active principle, they may be seem- 
 ingly most diverse. 
 
 With these principles, thus arranged, we have con- 
 science revealing and affirming obligation. In all 
 cases of conflict between two of these principles of 
 action, conscience affirms obligation to choose the 
 higher. It also affirms obligation to make the high- 
 est supreme. 
 
 We have thus Impulsive principles of action, Ra- 
 tional principles, and a Moral imperative. What we 
 need further is the efficient power. This is the man 
 himself, the Person, with freedom and dominion. In 
 a sense the man may be said to be constituted by his 
 powers ; but, as I have said, he is more than they. 
 He is a being possessed of powers. He is possessed 
 of Intellect, and Sensibility, and Will, and a Moral 
 nature. He is capable of standing above them, and 
 of comprehending and controlling them. Harm has 
 
90 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 been done by speaking of the faculties, and especially 
 of the Will, abstractly, as if the Will had a separate 
 existence and was an agent. There is no agent, and 
 no governing power but man. He is the king, capa- 
 ble of ruling, and bound to rule his own spirit. He 
 is also capable of giving himself up to be ruled by the 
 impulsive principles of action. He can choose, in 
 opposition to the counsels of reason and to the com- 
 mands of conscience, and can give himself up to the 
 commission of wickedness. 
 
 Our next inquiry is, What would be the individual 
 and social results if man, knowing himself to be thus 
 constituted, would adopt the highest principle of ac- 
 tion as supreme, and would act from the others in 
 accordance with the law of limitation ? 
 
 In determining this we need to know how a good 
 of any kind comes to us, and the different forms of it 
 of which we are capable. 
 
 A good, being always subjective, must be the result 
 of some form of activity. If there be no activity, 
 there can be no knowledge, no virtue, no pleasure or 
 pain, no fatigue or rest, no good or evil. Absolute 
 inactivity is death. 
 
 The forms and kinds of a good possible to us are 
 as many as the forms and kinds of activity of which 
 we are capable. By the beneficence of God there 
 is connected, as its result, with every legitimate form 
 of activity, a good. Of the general forms of activity, 
 from which a good may thus result, there are four. 
 The first is from vital action, the involuntary activity 
 of our physical organism. We have from this, when 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 91 
 
 in perfect health, and so far as we are in health, a 
 nameless good which is not a specific sensation, but 
 is better than that, and which is the result of har- 
 monious organic action. It is an undertoned accom- 
 paniment of health that constantly speaks of physical 
 well-being. 
 
 A second form and quality of good is by a move- 
 ment from without inward through what are called 
 the afferent nerves. This gives us simple sensation 
 when the object appropriate to the sense is present 
 to it. This comes through each of the five senses, 
 and the form of good thus coming is commonly called 
 pleasure. "It is a pleasant thing to behold the sun." 
 But simple sensation is the least part of the good that 
 comes to us through the senses. There is in the 
 objects presented by some of them, order, proportion, 
 beauty, harmony, grandeur, and thus external nature, 
 with its land and water, mountain and valley, its sun- 
 settings and its sun-risings, and the vault of heaven, 
 is made tributary to our good. In the same way we 
 receive pleasure from the fine arts. The good is 
 from that which enters through the senses, but it 
 needs to be carried up to the Intellect before it can 
 be appreciated and enjoyed. There is no appeal to 
 the conscience or the will. We may or may not 
 need the will to bring us into right relation to the 
 objects, but being in that relation the good comes of 
 itself. What shall we call this good, together with 
 that from simple sensation? It is a just complaint, 
 made by Sir William Hamilton, that the terms in our 
 language to express the forms and results of the 
 
92 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 Sensibility are indefinite and inadequate ; but I think 
 that, to express the good now spoken of, the term 
 pleasure is commonly used. It is used more widely, 
 but generally, I think, for a form of good that comes 
 by an action that is from without inward, so that in 
 the enjoyment we are relatively passive. Rightly 
 subordinated, the good that may be thus received is 
 great, and is to be thankfully accepted. 
 
 The third form of good is from the activity of the 
 impulsive principles of action, as the Desires and the 
 Natural Affections. The objects of these can be ob- 
 tained only through the activity of the will, causing 
 a movement from within outwards, by means of the 
 efferent nerves. When the will causes a movement 
 from within outward, if the principle of action, what- 
 ever it may be, a desire or an affection, comes to rest 
 in the possession of its object, there is a good that is 
 commonly called happiness. Whoever attains by ac- 
 tive effort the objects that call into play his natural 
 principles of action is said to be successful and happy. 
 As thus used, the word happiness expresses a good 
 that is the immediate outcome of the unobstructed 
 and successful activity of the powers in the pursuit 
 and possession of their appropriate objects. It is dif- 
 ferent in its quality from pleasure, and is higher than 
 that. 
 
 A fourth form of good will be that in which the 
 Will is brought into activity through the rational 
 principles of action and the conscience. If we sup- 
 pose that to be done, and the Will, or the Man, to act 
 in accordance with these, he must choose the highest 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 93 
 
 principle of action, whatever that may be, as supreme, 
 and subordinate the others in accordance with the 
 law of Limitation. He can never suffer one that is 
 lower to act except in subordination to that which is 
 higher, and having now a law in the supremacy of the 
 highest, he can never suffer a higher to act so as to 
 encroach on the legitimate province of one that is 
 lower. What the highest principle is, is to be found 
 by a fair analysis of the constitution of man. Let 
 that analysis be made as searching as it may, and I 
 have no doubt it will be found to be the utterance of 
 the constitution no less than of the word of God, that 
 that principle is the Love of God with all the heart, 
 and of our neighbor as ourselves. Thus do we iden- 
 tify philosophy with religion. 
 
 Let now a man obey his conscience in adopting 
 this principle of action as supreme, and in applying 
 it in the several relations in life, and we shall readily 
 see how his whole nature, as active, will be brought 
 into play, and what the result will be. There will be 
 full scope for the activity of every lower principle of 
 action in its place. There will be the voice of reason 
 and of conscience requiring that act of choice which 
 is central in moral love, and there will be volition 
 bringing into activity the whole man for the attain- 
 ment of the end proposed by love. Let then the end 
 be attained, and there will be a rational joy from the 
 congruity between the powers and their objects when 
 attained. There will be the approval of conscience, 
 also the consciousness of dignity and worth in the 
 possession and exercise of such powers for such an 
 
94 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 end ; and also an ineffable sense of spiritual well- 
 being, analogous to that of physical well-being, from 
 perfect health. Taken together these will constitute 
 blessedness. The godlike in it is from the rational, 
 and especially from the Moral Nature. 
 
 The blessedness thus attained will be modified by 
 the character of the beings loved, and by the result 
 of our efforts in their behalf. There is a prevalent 
 impression that love is a mere feeling, drawn out by 
 the excellence of the being loved, but that is not the 
 love commanded in the Bible. The centre of that 
 love is in the Will. It is never consummated, never 
 comes to be, till there is a supreme act of choice by 
 which we commit ourselves to labor, and suffer, if 
 need be, for the good of others. Those others may 
 have excellences of character, or they may not, but 
 they must have capabilities. There must be to them 
 a possibility of good. Having this, want of excellence 
 will not destroy the obligation to love them. So 
 God loves us. So we are to love our enemies. We 
 are not only to love the happy and the good, but also 
 those who are the proper objects of both pity and 
 blame. Loving such, and even failing in our efforts 
 for them, there will still be blessedness, but not that 
 which is perfect. That can be only when the objects 
 of love are of perfect excellence, so that the love of 
 a perfect complacency shall blend with a perfect 
 moral love. This is the highest conceivable form of 
 activity, and from it there must come the highest 
 conceivable form of good. 
 
 And here we may see, as we need to see, just how 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 95 
 
 it may come to pass through disorder in our own 
 nature, and in the world around us, that if we would 
 attain blessedness it must be by a struggle, and that 
 to attain it may require a rejection of all the lower 
 forms of good. Selfishness in ourselves must be elim- 
 inated, and, in sympathy with Christ, we must carry 
 on an aggressive warfare with all evil. To do this 
 faithfully must bring self-denial ; it may bring mar- 
 tyrdom ; but, so doing, if we lose our lives, we shall 
 save them. This is the one thing that we need, and 
 if any are seeking a lower end, and misfortunes lead 
 them to seek blessedness, they will be blessings. This 
 is what Carlyle says in the passage immediately fol- 
 lowing that quoted in the former part of this lecture. 
 Speaking of the doctrine that in the godlike only 
 has man strength and freedom, he says : " Which God- 
 inspired doctrine art thou too honored to be taught, 
 oh, heavens ! and broken by manifold merciful afflic- 
 tions, even till thou become contrite and learn it. 
 Oh, thank thy destiny for these ; thankfully bear what 
 yet remains ; thou hast need of them ; the self in 
 thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever 
 paroxysms is life rooting out the deep-seated chronic 
 disease, and triumphs over death. On the roaring 
 billows of time thou art not ingulfed, but borne 
 aloft into the azure of eternity. Love not pleasure ; 
 love God. This is the everlasting yea, wherein all 
 contradiction is solved ; wherein whoso walks and 
 works it shall be well with him," with all which I 
 agree, so far as I understand it, and bating that affec- 
 tation of style, and of Germanism, into which it is a 
 pity Carlyle ever fell. 
 
g6 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 So far, I have spoken only of results to the indi- 
 vidual. To him those results must be blessedness, 
 together with so much of the lower forms of good as 
 is compatible with that. Of the social results, this is 
 not the place to speak at large. Suffice it to say, that 
 it is too obvious to need proof that we should thus 
 have, as in no other way, the material for a perfect 
 society. 
 
 Having thus seen what would follow from choos- 
 ing, as supreme, the highest principle of action rather 
 than an object of action, we inquire how far we should 
 thus attain each of the objects proposed by philoso- 
 phers, and so harmonize their systems. Take per- 
 fection. Can we conceive of that in man, except as 
 he obeys his conscience in taking the highest princi- 
 ple of action, as supreme, and duly subordinates all 
 others ? Is the man perfect who loves God with all 
 his heart, and his neighbor as himself ? Is any one 
 perfect who does not ? Take virtue. What higher 
 conception of that can we have than that, at every 
 point of a man's life, his conscience should demand, 
 and he should render, that love which is the fulfilling 
 of the law? How, but by such obedience to con- 
 science and such love, can a man attain more of 
 worthiness? How, except from the activity of our 
 highest principle of action in conformity with the law 
 of our being, is blessedness possible ? How, with such 
 activity, can it fail to be? How, except in connection 
 with such blessedness, can we expect either pleasure 
 or happiness that will be permanent ? 
 
 Shall we then say, turning from the speculations of 
 
THE MORAL NATURE. 97 
 
 philosophers, that simply by adopting rationally and 
 conscientiously, as supreme, the principle of action 
 required by the Scriptures, all the ends proposed 
 by those philosophers, whether individual or social, 
 would be gained ? So it would appear, and so do we 
 harmonize their systems. 
 
 It only remains to say, that as we get the Scrip- 
 tural idea of man, as in the image of God through the 
 powers given us by Him that are like his own, so 
 do we get the Scriptural idea of him as in the moral 
 image of God through the activity of those powers 
 in accordance with his law, which is also their law. 
 Thus was Adam, and thus is every man, capable of 
 being in the image of God "in righteousness and 
 true holiness." 
 
 7 
 
V. 
 
 MAN AS HAVING DOMINION. AS MALE AND FEMALE. 
 
 MAN was made in the image of God, by the crea- 
 tive act of God. "In the image of God made He 
 him." He was in that \mage when he was created. 
 Of course, all true conceptions of God, so far as man 
 is in his image, must be anthropomorphic. 
 
 The powers in virtue of which man is in the image 
 of God are his rational and moral powers, and free- 
 dom, or the power of rational choice. These are in 
 their order as lower and higher, but all are essential 
 to personality. 
 
 The rational powers include not merely intelli- 
 gence in a single line, but comprehension. They 
 include the power to comprehend systems as the 
 parts are related to each other and to the whole, and 
 as the whole is related to ends. This is a necessary 
 condition for rational choice, but would not be suffi- 
 cient as a condition for the highest form of freedom. 
 It would not furnish an alternative in kind. For that 
 we must have a moral nature. A moral nature in- 
 volves obligation, but obligation is obligation to 
 choose as between higher and lower ends. When- 
 ever the alternative is presented of a choice between 
 a higher and a lower end, a moral nature must affirm 
 
MAN AS HA VING DOMINION. 99 
 
 obligation to choose the higher, and the alternative 
 in kind will present itself when the question is 
 whether we will follow that impulse which the moral 
 nature sanctions, or whether we will be governed by 
 some stronger impulse or passion which the moral 
 nature does not sanction. In such a case, if the man 
 were to be governed by the impulse sanctioned by 
 his conscience it would commonly be said that he 
 was governed by his conscience. In a sense he is, 
 but only indirectly. He is directly governed by 
 some natural principle of action other than con- 
 science, but calls upon conscience to decide which it 
 shg^l be. 
 
 When a rational being is brought to the point of 
 choice between two principles of action different in 
 kind, he knows that he has power to choose in either 
 direction, and cannot avoid feeling responsible for 
 his choice. 
 
 It was by these powers, thus related and acting 
 thus, that man was in the image of God ; and the 
 first result, as stated in Genesis, of the possession by 
 him of these powers, was that he should have domin- 
 ion. -Dominion this is the first result mentioned in 
 the Bible of man as fully constituted, and this we are 
 now to consider. That the powers mentioned, and 
 these only, would fit man for dominion is evident, 
 because these, and these only, legitimately used, 
 would give him wisdom and righteousness, which are 
 the essential qualifications for dominion. 
 
 But the image of God was not all that was needed 
 to fit man for dominion. He needed also to be in 
 
IOO THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 right relations with that over which he was to have 
 dominion. This, also, was provided for. ] His crea- 
 tion in the image of God did not preclude his crea- 
 tion in the image of all that was below him.^ ' The 
 Bible represents him as the last and highest of a se- 
 ries, and as such it was to be expected that he should 
 be in harmony with that series^ It is upon his rela- 
 tions to what is below him, and his harmony with 
 that, that naturalists have chiefly fixed their atten- 
 tion, while theologians and moralists have chiefly 
 fixed their attention on him as related to what was 
 above him. The object of the one class has been 
 and is to show the resemblances between man and 
 the brutes, and thus to bring them as near as pos- 
 sible together, making, in fact, no essential differ- 
 ence between them. The object of the other class 
 has been and is to show the differences between 
 them, and thus to separate them as widely as possi- 
 ble. ! The truth will be found, and not only that, but 
 the fitness of man for dominion, by looking candidly 
 at both the resemblances and the differences^ 
 
 Marvelous is the correspondence between man 
 and nature ; so marvelous that there is a broad basis 
 for the doctrine of correspondencies as set forth by 
 Swedenborg and his followers. This doctrine is 
 true, and has been too much neglected by us. Man 
 strikes his roots into nature. She is his mother ; he 
 is a part of her. ' Born into her uniformities and on- 
 goings, he finds himself at home among them. ] There 
 is not an aspect in which she shows herself in the 
 changes of day and night and of the seasons, in re- 
 
MAN AS HAVING DOMINION. IQI 
 
 pose and movement, in sublimity and beauty, with 
 which he does not sympathize. These are for im- 
 pression. Through these she is related to the emo- 
 tions; but in her regular movements and uniform 
 structures she furnishes ground for classification and 
 appeals to thought. r No arrangement can be con- 
 ceived better fitted to awaken the emotions and to 
 call out and train the intellect. 
 
 Nor, if we turn from unconscious nature to the 
 animal creation, is the correspondence less striking. 
 It is more so. A It is this correspondence that has 
 been specially studied of late, and has given plausi- 
 bility to the theory that man was developed from the 
 brute. This correspondence is seen not only in the 
 sympathy there is between some animals and man 
 and in the analogy of their faculties, but also in the 
 extent to which the qualities of animals are ascribed 
 to man. 
 
 This correspondence of man with what is below 
 him, whether unconscious or sentient, is perhaps best 
 seen in the history and structure of language. It is 
 supposed that all words expressive of mental opera- 
 tions originally signified some analogous physical act 
 or condition. When Christ says, " Walk in the light 
 while ye have the light lest darkness come upon 
 you," we have no thought of literal walking, or of 
 literal light or darkness. When He called Herod a 
 fox, or the scribes and Pharisees a generation of vi- 
 pers, or said that salt was good, no one failed to com- 
 prehend Him. 
 r We are not, then, to think of man as created arbi- 
 
102 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 trarily, with no reference to what had gone before, j 
 but are to see in this intimate relationship one of 
 those provisions by which he became fitted to exer- 
 cise the prerogatives which belonged to him as made 
 in the image of God. ^Evidently, the more perfectly 
 man could reflect in his emotions the aspects of na- 
 ture, and comprehend by his intellect her structures 
 and movements, and embody in his language her sig- 
 nificance, and the more fully he could take up into 
 himself and so sympathize with the animal creation, 
 the more perfectly would he be fitted to be the king 
 and priest of this lower worldg Without the image 
 of God, the more any being in the form of man should 
 be identified with nature the less would he be fitted 
 to have dominion over itj; r with that image so re- 
 vealed as to enable him to put nature under JhisJFeet, 
 the more he should be identified with it the more 
 would he be fitted to rule over it and to mediate as a 
 priest between nature and God, offering up intelli- 
 gent sacrifices of praise, j Kingship and priesthood, 
 these are the two offices for which man is fitted 
 by being in the image of God. His priesthood is not 
 mentioned in Genesis, but is recognized throughout 
 the Bible. He can recognize, and he only, the mani- 
 festation of the attributes of God in nature, and can 
 give intelligent expression of adoration and praise in 
 view of such manifestation ; and this the more per- 
 fectly the more fully he understands nature and is in 
 sympathy with it. 
 
 And here we find a beautiful analogy between the 
 mode in which man was fitted to become the king 
 
MAN AS HAVING DOMINION. 103 
 
 and priest of nature and the mode in which Christ 
 became fitted to be the king and priest of man. 
 Christ became fitted to be our king and priest by as- 
 suming our nature, and the more fitted the more per- 
 fectly He partook of it, so as to be in all points like 
 us, except sin, while yet He could be our king and 
 priest only as He had also a nature higher than ours. 
 In the same way, man could not have been fitted to 
 be the king and priest of all below him, except by 
 being a partaker of it all, while yet his kingship was 
 not from that, but from the image of God superin- 4 
 duced upon that and united with it. 
 
 Let the naturalist, then, bring man into as close 
 affinity with nature and with animals as he pleases ; 
 the closer the better, if it be but distinctly seen that 
 he is capable of dominion and of priesthood. Give 
 us these, or the possibility of these, in man, and we 
 ask for no wider ground of separation between man 
 and the brutes ; for of dominion, in the proper sense 
 of that word, dominion over itself, over nature, or 
 over its fellows, no brute can know anything, nor 
 can it know anything of an intelligent mediation be- 
 tween nature and God. Being destitute of rational 
 and moral elements, the brute cannot have the first 
 dawning of either of these ideas. The idea of do- 
 minion implies a comprehension and choice of ends, 
 and a direction of ourselves or others towards the 
 ends which we choose. It supposes a double nature 
 in man, and ends higher and lower. It supposes 
 freedom, for if man were under the same law of ne- 
 cessity as nature and the brutes, any conception of 
 dominion would be impossible. 
 
IO4 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 This is a point which I wish to emphasize, because 
 it shows that the Scriptural idea of man is that of a 
 free being lifted above those fixed laws of necessity 
 by which nature and the animals are governed, and 
 not only lifted above them, but able, by a varying 
 adjustment among themselves of unvarying laws, to 
 exercise dominion. This he can do only as he is 
 free. It is self-evident that no being, under the law 
 of necessity, can have dominion. It is in this idea 
 of freedom, liberty of choice with an alternative in 
 kind by a being who comprehends ends, and in the 
 dominion through intelligence and will consequent 
 upon that, that we find the culmination of our idea 
 of man as possessed of natural endowments, and, in- 
 deed, the culmination of our idea of God himself. 
 This liberty or freedom is not spontaneity. It is not 
 automatic or unconscious obedience to law. Nor is 
 it lawlessness. A being having liberty is still under 
 law. He is morally bound to choose according to the 
 law of his being, but is not necessitated to choose 
 thus. In choosing thus, he is both virtuous and wise, 
 and in carrying out his choices he finds, scope accord- 
 ing to his capacity, for intelligence and will in each 
 of the spheres in which dominion can be exercised. 
 
 These spheres are three. The first he finds in him- 
 self. According to what has been said he has in him- 
 self nature and all the animals, and his dominion must 
 begin by a thorough rule over these as a part of him- 
 self. Hence, because he has the animals in himself, 
 among most primitive people men have been named 
 from animals, and some of those names are still re- 
 
MAN AS HAVING DOMINION. 105 
 
 tained. Thus, we have among us Lions spelt with a 
 y, and Foxes, and Wolfs, and Lambs, and Bulls, and 
 Colts, and Hoggs, and Oysters. The birds are not so 
 well represented, but we have Hawks and Doves, Rob- 
 ins, Wrens, and Martins. But other animals are in 
 man besides those whose names are attached to them. 
 Our Saviour called men serpents and vipers ; an apos- 
 tle said : " Beware of dogs ; " and if we may believe 
 men as they sometimes speak of each other, they 
 are dogs, and puppies, and asses, and even skunks. 
 Clearly, then, the first thing requisite is for a man, not 
 to eradicate, but to rule over all that is in him that is 
 natural and animal. He who does not exercise full 
 dominion here is unfitted for any other. 
 
 The second sphere of man's dominion is over na- 
 ture and the animals as he finds them outside of 
 himself. In this sphere his dominion is evidently 
 most limited and imperfect compared with what it 
 would have been if he had not lost dominion over 
 himself. What that would have been, I suppose we 
 see in Christ, and in his dominion over nature. He 
 was a man in perfect sympathy with God, and for 
 such a man, what we now call miraculous power, 
 would, I suppose, be a matter of course. 
 
 The third sphere of man's dominion is, that over 
 his fellow-men, as they are placed under him through 
 the natural relations of parent and child, and of civil 
 government. In this sphere, too, there has been great 
 imperfection and disorder, but great as these have 
 been, they have sprung wholly from the original fail- 
 ure of man to retain dominion over himself. 
 
106 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 Thus it is that through this idea of dominion, as 
 growing out of the image of God, we are able to find 
 the place of man, and to see how it is that he is con- 
 nected, both with that which is below him, and with 
 that which is above him. Most intimately is he con- 
 nected with all that is below him. It is a part of his 
 nature. From all that is below him he is at the 
 same time most widely separated. The connection 
 is through the law of the conditioning and the condi- 
 tioned, since he is conditioned on all that is below 
 him. The separation is through the addition from 
 without and from above, of that which is capable of 
 dominion. I say from without and from above, be- 
 cause it is impossible that freedom should be devel- 
 oped from necessity, or that a capacity for dominion 
 should be developed out of that over which the do- 
 minion is to be exercised. 
 
 Thus do we harmonize different views by suppos- 
 ing that the creation was built and not developed ; 
 that the advancing movement was not by develop- 
 ment from within, through the agency of an uncon- 
 scious power, but by additions from without and from 
 above, through the agency of an intelligent builder. 
 This view gives to the naturalist in the controversy 
 that is now going on all the time that he needs, and 
 also the affinity between man and the lower animals ; 
 and it gives to the spiritualist all that he claims in a 
 controlling and wise agency from without. 
 
 After the image of God, and dominion from that, 
 the next feature of the Scriptural idea of man is that 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. 107 
 
 our one common humanity was created male and 
 female. "And God said, Let us make man in our 
 image, after our likeness, and let them have domin- 
 ion." " So God created man in his own image, in the 
 image of God created He him, male and female cre- 
 ated He them." In both these passages the word 
 " them " is evidently put in apposition with the word 
 "man," so that here, as elsewhere, the word man, 
 used generically, includes woman. The creation of a 
 man without a woman would not have been the crea- 
 tion of man. 
 
 This feature of the Scriptural idea is among the 
 most marvelous connected with the race, and more 
 than upon anything else that is earthly, does the well- 
 being of the race depend upon the right apprehen- 
 sion and adjustment of the relation constituted by it 
 What we need to know is the Scriptural, that is, the 
 divine idea of this relation, and of the social arrange- 
 ments and duties that should result from it. If man 
 would use his limbs or faculties aright he must use 
 them for the ends designed by God, and in a manner 
 adapted to secure those ends; and if a social state 
 was to be constituted, and the race perpetuated, and 
 civil society and governments established through 
 the sexual relation, we should expect that this would 
 be done with success only as men should recognize 
 and conform to the divine idea. Here, as everywhere, 
 it is the business of man to find the divine idea, and 
 work according to that. " For see, said He, that thou 
 make all things according to the pattern showed to 
 thee in the mount." 
 
IO8 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 This is of the more consequence, because organiza- 
 tions on a false basis perpetuate themselves with a 
 downward tendency, and fall into complications and 
 corruptions from which there has hitherto been no 
 escape except through convulsion and blood. The 
 material interests of men become dependent on such 
 organizations, children grow up in them, their asso- 
 ciations become conformed to them, and thus, how- 
 ever iniquitous and disastrous, they may not only 
 come to have the sanction of established usage, but 
 may even be held sacred. When this is the case, if 
 individuals are to be reached and elevated, it must 
 be at a great disadvantage ; and if a reformer arise 
 with a clear apprehension of the divine ideal, and 
 would seek to bring society and its usages into con- 
 formity with that, he must do it at the peril of his 
 reputation, and often of his life. It is in this way 
 that society falls into what were called in the time of 
 the anti-slavery agitation organic sins ; and the re- 
 sult of these, when they once become fairly imbedded 
 in society, generally is that they go on till 'the evil 
 becomes so great that, as was said by Livy of the 
 evils of his day among the Romans, they can be 
 neither cured nor endured.^ 
 
 And here I may be permitted to say that perhaps 
 we do not sufficiently appreciate the advantage our 
 fathers had in beginning anew on this continent, 
 where they were compelled to look to the future 
 rather than to the past, where they were invited to 
 form new ideals, and where intelligence and the spirit 
 of freedom might have scope to cast new moulds into 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. IOQ 
 
 which society should be run. And sure I am, that 
 we are not sufficiently aware of the danger we are in 
 of having the work of our fathers, in their apprehen- 
 sion of higher ideals, and in the formation of better 
 moulds, overflowed and swamped by a steady and un- 
 modified current of emigration. 
 
 But, as the relation of the sexes is at the founda- 
 tion of the family, and so of all other institutions, it 
 is especially desirable that our conception of the 
 divine idea concerning that should be correct. 
 
 The first characteristic to be noticed is the pecul- 
 iar unity of which I have already spoken, by which 
 man and woman are equally constituents and factors 
 of a common humanity. Each is essential and equally 
 essential, both to the full idea of the race, and to its 
 perpetuity. The conception of the race is not com- 
 pleted by masculine qualities, either physical or men- 
 tal.j The strength and executive ability of man are 
 no more needed for a complete idea of humanity than 
 the beauty and tenderness of woman. Each was, 
 therefore, created with such reference to the other 
 as to constitute a unity in one race ; each was equally 
 blessed of God, and to each equally was dominion 
 given. " So God created man in his own image, in 
 the image of God created He him ; male and female 
 created He them. And God blessed them ; and God 
 said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish 
 the earth and subdue it ; and have dominion over the 
 fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over 
 every living thing." So perfectly were the first man 
 and woman regarded by God as constituting a unity 
 
IIO THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 of race, that He gave them but one name. a 'The name 
 given by Adam to the woman was Eve, " because she 
 was the mother of all living," but the name given her 
 by God, and the only name, was Adam./ Thus, we 
 read, "In the day that God created man, in the like- 
 ness of God made He him. Male and female created 
 He them, and called their name Adam in the day 
 when they were created." s Not in virtue of being 
 married to Adam, but of being created as Adam was, 
 and in the unity of a common nature, did Eve share 
 with him a common name. 
 
 But this unity in diversity of beings of the same 
 race was only preparatory to the higher union of man 
 and woman in marriage. In this we have the second 
 and great characteristic of the Scriptural idea of man 
 as a race. It comprises all that is involved in mar- 
 riage, and in the perpetuation of the race through the 
 union of one man with one woman. That the union of 
 one man with one woman in a true marriage, through 
 such mutual admiration and affection that the coolest 
 reason would sanction the most ardent feeling, would 
 lay the best foundation for the happiness of the two 
 sexes, and would furnish the best condition for con- 
 tinuing, and educating, and elevating the race, there 
 can be no question. This all history shows. It 
 would exclude, on the one hand, licentiousness in its 
 irregular forms, together with concubinage and polyg- 
 amy, and on the other hand celibacy inculcated as a 
 system, and claiming peculiar sanctity.^ But this is 
 precisely the provision for the happiness of the race 
 involved in the Scriptural idea of man. Let us look 
 at this. 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. ill 
 
 That the Scriptures require in marriage the union 
 of one man with one woman it would be superfluous 
 to show, but it may be well to see how this is pro- 
 vided for, and insisted on. r lt was provided for in 
 the first^ instance by the creation of but a single 
 woman^ This is a strong point. "And did not He," 
 says the prophet Malachi, "make one ? " " Yet had 
 He the residue of the Spirit." He might have made 
 any number. "And wherefore one ? That He might 
 seek a godly seed." On this point our Saviour in- 
 sisted repeatedly in opposition to the permission of 
 Moses, and to the spirit and practice of the time, in- 
 somuch that his disciples were astonished, and were 
 led to question whether marriage would be desirable 
 under such restrictions ; and He made the basis of 
 his teaching this original constitution by God. It is 
 wonderful how decided and authoritative He was. At 
 that time, and on that subject, only a divine teacher 
 could have been so. "And the Pharisees came to 
 Him and asked Him, Is it lawful for a man to put 
 away his wife ? tempting Him. And He answered and 
 said unto them, What did Moses command you ? And 
 they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorce- 
 ment, and to put her away. And Jesus answered 
 and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart 
 he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of 
 the creation God made them male and female. For 
 this cause shall a man leave his father and mother 
 and cleave to his wife ; and they twain shall be one 
 flesh ; so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 
 What, therefore, God hath joined together let not 
 
112 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 man put asunder." Than these, perhaps the same 
 number of words were never uttered that have affected 
 the social condition of the world more widely, or more 
 beneficially. To this teaching of Christ the Apostles 
 fully conformed^ 
 
 But the Scriptural idea of marriage was spoken of 
 not only as the idea of one man with one woman, 
 but as a union based on affection. How is that indi- 
 cated ? It is indicated, first, by the mode in which the 
 woman was created. She was not taken from the 
 common earth, but from a part of man. " Not," as 
 Matthew Henry says, "out of his head to top him, 
 nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him ; but out 
 of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be 
 protected, and near his heart to be beloved." This 
 Adam understood, for he said when she was brought 
 to him, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of 
 my flesh." No words more expressive of the closest 
 union, and of the strongest affection, could have been 
 used.j "Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh." 
 And it is in harmony with this when that is immedi- 
 ately added, which is quoted and sanctioned by our 
 Saviour, " Therefore shall a man leave his father and 
 his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ; and they 
 shall be one flesh." A paramount affection would be 
 the only one consonant with a union so intimate. In 
 accordance with this is the teaching of Paul, who 
 says, " So ought men to love their wives as their own 
 bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself." 
 
 What then, for we are now prepared to see that, is 
 the whole Scriptural idea of man regarded as male 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. 113 
 
 and female ? It is first the idea of a unity of race, 
 and then of a unity in the marriage of one man with 
 one woman which is to be for life, and is to be based 
 on a paramount affection. This was Adam's idea, 
 "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," and it 
 has not been improved upon since. Here was the 
 most delicate and complex relation of all time, one 
 involving all human interests, and yet no statesman 
 or philosopher has been able to improve upon the 
 ideal of it that Adam had and expressed when God 
 first brought his wife to him.j Men have invented 
 spinning jennies and telegraphs, and have made prog- 
 ress in many things, r but in a right apprehension of 
 the underlying relation of society they have not gone 
 beyond Adam. He struck the key-note of social har- 
 mony for all time. j 
 
 In speaking of man and woman, as a unity, we are 
 to distinguish between unity and a unit, and also be- 
 tween that and union. A unit has no parts. A unity 
 is a whole made up of parts that are complemental of 
 each other. Union may exist where there is no whole 
 and no unity, as between men who unite for a com- 
 mon object. The human body is a unity, and it is so 
 because it is a whole that is complete through the 
 right position and ministration of every part. Mar- 
 riage is a union, but the peculiarity of it is that it is 
 a union between those who are capable of becoming 
 a unity, and are not only capable of it, but are so 
 preconformed to it in their whole being that their 
 full development and highest life cannot be reached 
 without it._. This is the general rule, though there 
 8 
 
I 14 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 are doubtless individual exceptions. In this view of 
 it the problem in every marriage will be to form a 
 union that will constitute a perfect unity.- This im- 
 plies that neither the man nor the woman, regarded 
 as an individual, is a whole, and that there is in each 
 that which is complemental of the other. ' Hence the 
 most perfect unity will require, not similarity, nor op- 
 position, but correspondence, and the whole which 
 each will equally constitute, and in which both will 
 find their common sphere, for really it is but one, is 
 the family and the home. 
 
 But if the family and the home be a common 
 sphere, on what principle are its duties and responsi- 
 bilities to be allotted ? Where the Scriptural law of 
 marriage has been observed, this has always regu- 
 lated itself in accordance with the indications of the 
 male and female constitution, and with those senti- 
 ments of homage and devotion which a true man will 
 always feel towards a true woman, 4 and which, next 
 to religion, have done more than anything else to 
 purify and elevate the race.^ r Under these conditions, 
 the husband has always provided for his own, with 
 the aid of the wife, and the wife has guided the house 
 with the aid of her husband. 
 
 r The diversity in unity of which I have spoken as 
 much requires that there should be a head of the 
 family as that there should be a head of the body ; 
 and on this point the teaching of the Scriptures is 
 unequivocal. They make the man the head of the 
 family. 'This is in accordance with the analogy of 
 nature below man, and so with the responsibilities 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. 115 
 
 which belong to him from his constitution. Uni- 
 formly among animals the male is the leader and pro- 
 tector.^ It is not because a flock of wild geese are 
 geese that they are always led by a gander ; it is be- 
 cause it is in accordance with a law of the animal 
 creation. But while the Scriptures make man the 
 head of the family, they make him its head as Christ 
 is the head of the church. ' The headship is one of 
 love and protection. ' Nor does it follow that the su- 
 periority implied in headship is not counterbalanced 
 by other forms of superiority, so that equality, on the 
 whole, is preserved. \ If we use the words head and 
 heart, with reference to the individual, either literally 
 or metaphorically, who can say which is superior ? 
 They are mutually dependent, and each is admirable 
 and best in its place. 
 
 The family thus constituted, with its head for di- 
 rection and its heart for love, suffices to itself. It 
 constitutes a peculiar society, into which children 
 are born, of which they become a part not by their 
 own choice but by the ordinance of God, and on 
 which they so depend that no man comes into life as 
 an isolated individual. The theory which regards 
 society as originally founded by equals unrelated and 
 independent, and as deriving its obligations and au- 
 thority from a compact between them, has no foun- 
 dation in fact. Man is, and with the exception of 
 the first pair, who were created into it, always has 
 been, born into the family. This may and ought to 
 be a society that shall furnish adequate conditions 
 for the well-being of man, both here and hereafter. 
 
..' 
 
 Il6 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 It must have done so to Adam and Eve for many 
 years. They did not begin their married life by 
 boarding, and there was no club-house or bar-room 
 to which Adam could go. The family constituted 
 the one sphere of social life, for the perfection and 
 results of which the presence and efforts of the hus- 
 band and wife were equally necessary, for which they 
 were equally responsible, and into which the children 
 would naturally and imperceptibly grow, as sharing 
 its pleasures and assuming its duties and responsi- 
 bilities. In doing this they would have the best ad- 
 vantages possible for fitting them for their future 
 positions as heads of families, and for being trained 
 to the self-denials and restraints required by civil so- 
 ciety, when that should become necessary. 
 
 The family is the first society established by God. 
 It is especially legislated for in the ten command- 
 ments. It is the seed-plot of civil society. It not 
 only gives it its materials, but determines their char- 
 acter. Let the father and the mother both give their 
 best efforts to the family, and the home and civil so- 
 ciety will readily adjust itself in its form to the de- 
 mand of the times, and will be easily administered. 
 I desire, therefore, to magnify the family as a sphere 
 complete in itself, and admitting of no contrast with 
 any other that would imply that the husband and the 
 wife are not equally responsible for the results.^ I still 
 hold, and strongly, that the family is the unit of civil 
 society, and that free governments for such society 
 must be representative ; but whether its representa- 
 tives shall be men only, or both men and women, so 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. 1 17 
 
 that they shall be equal factors in political life, is to 
 be decided/ not by inquiring whether the family is 
 properly and fully the sphere of man, but whether 
 government, as the agent of civil society, is properly, 
 and should be made fully, the sphere of woman.j 
 
 r l dwell on this subject because it is one of present 
 interest, and because the efforts at reform do not 
 seem to trend towards the Scriptural idea, but the 
 reverse/ The Scriptural idea is that every man is to 
 have his own wife and every woman her own hus- 
 band, who is to love her with a paramount affection 
 as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. So was 
 it with Adam and Eve. This was one element of the 
 Paradisaical state, and the true reform would be in or 
 towards the realization of this. A true reform would 
 intensify the unity there is in marriage, it would mag- 
 nify the family, and it would insist more upon duties 
 than upon rights. ' But what now calls itself reform 
 tends towards separation rather than unity. ^ It seeks, 
 not so much interdependence, as individual independ- 
 ence, especially the independence of woman, and it 
 insists more upon rights than upon duties. Where 
 duties are recognized and rightly met, there can be 
 no need of contending about rights ; r and in relations 
 where affection and courtesy ought to rule that can- 
 not be the happiest condition in which rights are 
 gained and held only as they are contended for.j 
 
 That there are evils demanding a remedy there can 
 be no question. These have arisen partly from laws 
 that have ignored the rights of women when those 
 rights needed legal protection ; they have arisen 
 
Il8 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 more from a want of affection and of right principle 
 that would have prevented any question about rights, 
 and especially have they arisen from a violation of 
 other laws of God that have no direct relation to 
 marriage. There is a solidarity in the laws of God 
 by which the breaking of one brings derangement 
 into the whole moral life and into all social relations, j 
 It is by war, and by emigration in a way that puts 
 the desires, especially the desire of property, as an 
 element of happiness above the affections, that a 
 state of things has come about, both in this country 
 and in Europe, that seems to justify the efforts of 
 professional agitators ; for which, as exceptional, per- 
 haps special modifications should be made, but for 
 which no adequate remedy is possible till society 
 shall obey the laws of God in other respects. 
 V For the marriage of one ma?n with one woman, ac- 
 cording to the pattern set in Eden, God made pro- 
 vision by an excess in the number of male children 
 sufficient to cover the loss from the greater exposures 
 incident to the life of man, just that and no more. 
 When, then, men are slain in war by the half million, 
 as they were in the wars of Napoleon I., or in the 
 Franco-Prussian war, or in our own civil war, or 
 when they are slain in the prime of their life, as 
 they have been in all wars, it becomes impossible 
 that every woman should have her own husband, and 
 a home which she can make happy.^ It is to be said, 
 also, that standing armies and camp and garrison life 
 involve conditions that render marriage and the proper 
 relations of the family impossible, and, if they do not 
 
AS MALE AND FEMALE. 119 
 
 necessitate, yet insure those relations of the sexes 
 that are wholly incompatible with the Scriptural 
 idea.j r ln this respect England has been peculiarly 
 unfortunate ; for, in addition to her wars and stand- 
 ing armies, she has had distant colonies that have 
 drained away her young men, so that the excess of 
 women in her population is very great. * And so 
 chronic and hopeless has this become that I recently 
 saw it stated that there is growing up there a class 
 of women who repudiate marriage, and in whom the 
 instinct towards it seems to have been lost.j ' So, also, 
 from the combined influence of the late war and of 
 emigration, is it in a measure in New England. The 
 social elements are not rightly adjusted. 
 
 Here there is an evil and a wrong, but it is one 
 which no amount of agitation or legislation can re- 
 move. Like all chronic evils, it can be removed only 
 by time and by a return to those principles through 
 a violation of which the evil has come. Meantime, 
 if there is to be a large number of women unmarried, 
 and not set in families as God intended they should 
 be, so that they are to come into the same relations 
 to men that men do to each other, then as far and as 
 fast as they come into the same relations and share 
 the same responsibilities, they should have the same 
 rights, and especially should everything possible be 
 done to open to them all those lines of employment 
 upon which they are fitted to enter and through 
 which they may gain an honorable independence. 
 
 But while there may thus be palliations, while the 
 agitation itself is to many a palliation, like taking a 
 
I2O THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 remedy that does no good except from the feeling that 
 something is being done, let not men or women sup- 
 pose that the deep wants of our nature can be thus 
 met, or that the true remedy lies in this direction.^ 
 No, it lies in the direction of the Scriptural idea of 
 the marriage of one man with one woman, who shall 
 be "bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh." 
 
UNIVERSIT 
 
 VI. 
 
 MAN IN HIS PRESENT STATE. " THE MAN CHRIST 
 JESUS." 
 
 HITHERTO we have considered man, as the Scrip- 
 tures represent him to have been in his original state. 
 What do they say of him in his present state ? 
 
 In his present state they represent him as both 
 sinful and corrupt. He still retains the image of 
 God in his natural attributes so far that God is his 
 Father and yearns over him, but he has lost the moral 
 image of God, and no language can be stronger than 
 that of the Scriptures to express the guilt and danger 
 of his condition. "They are all under sin." "There 
 is none righteous ; no, not one." "They are all gone 
 out of the way, they are together become unprofit- 
 able ; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." 
 " They say unto God, Depart from us, we desire not 
 a knowledge of thy ways."; ' " There is no fear of God 
 before their eyes." "Corrupt are they, and have 
 done abominable wickedness." r These representa- 
 tions are confirmed by the history of the race. That 
 history is largely, and, when men have been left to 
 themselves, chiefly, one of war, of slavery, of cruelty, 
 of lust, of fraud, of gain by ministering to degrading 
 appetites, of hypocrisy, of superstition, of perversion 
 
122 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MA AT. 
 
 of the material gifts of God, and especially of perse- 
 cution, and of fiendish cruelty in the very name of 
 the religion of peace and good willj No contrast 
 can be greater than that between the actual history 
 of this world and what that history might have been, 
 and would have been if man had obeyed the physical 
 laws of his constitution and the moral laws of God.j 
 
 I have said that the Scriptures represent man as 
 both guilty and corrupt. Between guilt and corrup- 
 tion a distinction may be made if we refer guilt to 
 the action of the will or spiritual powers, and cor- 
 ruption to the action of those involuntary powers of 
 the mind which are analogous to the involuntary 
 powers of the body. What it is that originally sets 
 in motion that involuntary current of the mind which 
 the will certainly did not originate, and which it can- 
 not stop, no one can tell. Perhaps no one can tell 
 what determines the particular thoughts and feelings 
 that it presents ; but it is conceivable that it might 
 present only what would be acceptable to an enlight- 
 ened reason and a pure conscience ; and, also, that it 
 might ^resent thoughts and feelings wholly the re- 
 verse. ! We all know with what force and persistency 
 thoughts of evil and temptations will sometimes come 
 to us.^ What is possible in this direction may be seen 
 in those cases of madness in which the voluntary 
 power wholly loses its control, and the utterances 
 express whatever is presented by the involuntary 
 power. When this is the case those utterances are 
 sometimes nothing but a continuous stream of shame- 
 less indecencies and appalling blasphemies. This is 
 
MAN IN HIS PRESENT STATE. 12$ 
 
 utter corruption, and there may be corruption analo- 
 gous to this to almost any degree while the personal 
 power retains its control. Sin is the admission and 
 acceptance by the person of anything that is opposed 
 to reason and conscience, and the law of God. Temp- 
 tation does not imply either sin or corruption. The 
 temptation may come from without. Nor would I 
 say that all temptation through our own nature im- 
 plies corruption, but only that which comes after sin. 
 The voluntary and involuntary powers act and react 
 upon each other, and r when once the man has sinned 
 the quality of the involuntary movements of the mind 
 becomes changed, they become corrupt. 
 
 And here, in the way that sin and corruption come 
 into the spiritual realm, we find one of those analo- 
 gies to what takes place in the lower forms of being 
 that show the unity of the system throughout. All 
 disintegration and corruption of matter is from the 
 domination of a lower over a higher force or law. 
 The body begins to return to its original elements as 
 the lower chemical and physical forces begin to gain 
 ascendency over the higher force of life. In the same 
 way all sin and corruption in man is from his yielding 
 to a lower law or principle of action in opposition to 
 the demands of one that is higher. 
 
 Seeing thus what it is to be sinful, and what to be 
 corrupt, we say that the Scriptures represent man as 
 both sinful and corrupt. They represent the race as 
 universally yielding to a lower principle of action 
 rather than to that love of God with all the heart, 
 and of the neighbor as himself, by which they say he 
 
124 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 ought to be governed, and^hich can be shown by a 
 fair analysis to be the highest law of his being.j Of 
 the two generic kinds of character heretofore spoken 
 of, they represent man as universally forming that 
 one which makes supreme some impulsive principle 
 of action, or self-love, rather than one that recognizes 
 and accepts and seeks to maintain the supremacy of 
 that law of God which commands us to love, and that 
 authority of conscience over the will by which the 
 command is enforced. The sin of Adam was, that he 
 rejected God as a guide and portion, and chose him- 
 self as a guide and the world as a portion ; and this, 
 account for it as we may, his descendants uniformly 
 do. r They do not submit themselves to God. They do 
 not love Him supremely, and in thus choosing some 
 principle of action, lower than the highest, they take 
 an attitude which would infallibly lead them, when 
 carried consistently to its results, to crucify Christ 
 and to dethrone God himself.^ If God will provide 
 for them, and let them have their own way, they will 
 be conscious of no opposition to Him ; but if He deal 
 with them in a way to show that He has a contro- 
 versy with them an opposition will be awakened, and 
 one that must continue till the question of authority 
 shall be settled. 
 
 And here it may be remarked, that we find in this 
 opposition of man to God, and in his consequent deg- 
 radation, an evidence of his high origin scarcely less 
 conclusive than in that original image of God in 
 which he was created. In that prerogative of man, 
 by which he can either accept or reject the law of his 
 
MAN IN HIS PRESENT STATE. 125 
 
 being, he differs wholly from any mere animal. No 
 animal can approximate anything of the kind. It lies 
 in a sphere and region of which it knows nothing. 
 We have here, indeed, a fundamental, perhaps the 
 most fundamental difference, between man and the 
 brute. ' By accepting the law of his being man is 
 capable of rising to a height of knowledge, of good- 
 ness, of dominion, which show that in him which 
 must be wholly different in its origin from anything 
 in the brute^ 'Also, by rebelling against God and re- 
 jecting the law of his being, he is capable of sinking 
 to a degradation so far below the brute, as to show 
 equally ^that they could not have had a common 
 origin. A No brute is any more capable of rebelling 
 against God than of serving Him, is no more capable 
 of sinking below the level of its own nature than of 
 rising to the level of the nature of man.^ No brute 
 can be either a fool or a fiend. The Scriptural idea 
 of man then, in his present state, is that of a being 
 capable of an indefinite progress, either upward or 
 downward, and of choosing which it shall be. 
 
 We have now considered the Scriptural idea of man 
 as created ; as in the image of God in knowledge ; 
 in feeling ; in his moral nature ; and in dominion. 
 We have also considered the Scriptural idea of man 
 as he is in his present state. But all the capabilities 
 of man and his possible relations, as the Scriptures 
 represent them, can be known by us only as we con- 
 sider " The Man Christ Jesus? 
 
 And here the first thing to be noticed is, the im- 
 
126 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 possibility that Jesus Christ, as He stands before us 
 in the Gospels, should have been the product of his 
 age. Any supposition that He could have been de- 
 veloped, or evolved from anything in that, or, indeed, 
 in any age, can arise only from a failure to appreciate 
 the elevation, the isolation, and entire originality of 
 his character and work. He was wholly separated 
 from his age in his object in the standard of great- 
 ness He established, and in his method. 
 
 His object was a change of character in men that 
 should fit them for citizenship in a kingdom of right- 
 eousness, over which He was to reign after His death 
 and resurrection. It is spoken of by the Apostle 
 Peter, as "the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ." Except incidentally and indi- 
 rectly, that kingdom had nothing to do with the inter- 
 ests of this world, and yet it had everything to do with 
 them, since the character needed for citizenship in 
 the future kingdom is just the character, and the only 
 character, that can give peace, and prosperity, and a 
 permanently progressive civilization here. This king- 
 dom He made in no respect exclusive. He did not 
 base it at all, as Jewish bigotry would have prompted, 
 on race or nationality, but solely on character ; and 
 He made citizenship in it equally free to all the world. 
 Think, then, what it was for a young man, a Jew, one 
 of a conquered people, without learning, or wealth, or 
 power, despised as a Jew by other nations, and re- 
 jected by his own, to assert persistently that He was 
 a king, a king of a kingdom not of this world, to 
 assert it when a prisoner, bound and sentenced to 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. I2/ 
 
 death, and to abate no whit of his claim under the 
 mockery of a purple robe, and of a reed for a sceptre, 
 and of a crown of thorns ! Was this madness ? Was 
 it even extravagance ? Let that kingdom of love, of 
 which Napoleon spoke, and over which Christ now 
 reigns, answer. Let the facts that the conception is 
 the grandest possible, and that we find in it the only 
 satisfactory solution of the problem of this world, 
 answer. And was He who had such an object, and 
 who bore Himself in a manner corresponding with it, 
 and over against whose life and death such results 
 and such possibilities stand, the product of such 
 an age as that ? Of any age ? 
 
 Again, that the Man Christ Jesus could not have 
 been the product of his age, is clear from the standard 
 of greatness which He established in that kingdom of 
 which I have just spoken. This was something till 
 then wholly unheard of, and unthought of. It was 
 not physical prowess, or mental superiority, or wealth, 
 or power, or even culture. It was self-sacrificing 
 l OVy service from that. " Whosoever will be great 
 among you, let him be your minister ; and whosoever 
 will be chief among you, let him be your servant. 
 Even as the Son of man came, not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
 many." In simply setting up this standard, and giv- 
 ing this example, He opened a career of greatness, and 
 of the noblest ambition, to the humblest and most 
 obscure of the race. This was something, the reach 
 and significance of which has been even as yet but 
 little appreciated. Looked at from the standard of 
 
128 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 the world, even now, what hope is there of greatness, 
 of distinction of any kind for a poor sewing woman, 
 or for a servant girl, or for him who, by his daily toil, 
 earns his daily bread ? None, none. But in the king- 
 dom of Christ all this may be reversed. There, there 
 are first that shall be last, and last that shall be first. 
 O, thou poor widow making thy way towards the 
 place where gifts are put into the treasury, with thy 
 two mites that are all thy living carefully done up, 
 the passing scribe does not notice thee as these mites 
 fall in, nor the Pharisee with his phylacteries, nor the 
 priest in his robes ; r but there is One, clothed in a 
 seamless coat, who does, and who shall make thee the 
 standard of greatness in giving for all time. j O, thou 
 dweller in some poor cottage who hast given a cup of 
 cold water to a disciple in the name of a disciple, the 
 world has not known thee, it never will ; but there is 
 One who knows thee, and makes thee the example of 
 hospitality in his kingdom. Nor is there any pref- 
 - erence shown to the poon. The rich woman she 
 must have been relatively rich who poured the box 
 of precious ointment on the head of the Saviour shall 
 have her work spoken of wherever this gospel is 
 preached. This standard is clearly the true one for 
 the race, because it is the only one within the reach 
 of all. This is within the reach of all, and no one 
 can estimate its uplifting power, or the changed rela- 
 tions of the race if it could but be fully realized and 
 accepted. Let it but be freely understood, that the 
 welcome, " Well done, thou good and faithful servant, 
 enter thou into the joy of thy Lord," may await the 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 129 
 
 poorest and the humblest, no less than the most dis- 
 tinguished, and there would be a cheer, and a warmth, 
 and a comfort in the heart of the neglected and de- 
 spised that nothing else could give. My friends, 
 Christendom is not Christian yet. Far from it. It 
 will not be till Christ's standard of greatness is fully 
 accepted. What then, let me ask you, was there in 
 that age of grasping selfishness, of unscrupulous am- 
 bition, of Jewish animosity smothered, and of Roman 
 contempt openly avowed, what had there been in any 
 age to suggest such a standard of greatness, or such 
 an opening to the race of a sphere of activity suited 
 to all, and that would be sure, if accepted, ultimately 
 to lift all to the highest point attainable by humanity ? 
 The contrast is great, almost too great for belief ; and 
 yet think what it is for a poor, neglected, dying man, 
 who has been "patient in well-doing," that is the 
 condition, to have whispered into his ear the words : 
 "glory, honor, immortality, eternal life;" but these 
 are the words that Christ whispers into the ear of 
 such. Mock at it if you will, and some will mock 
 at it, but herein is an infinite love, and an infinite 
 hope. 
 
 Again, that Christ was not the product of his age 
 is clear from his method. His method was that 
 which the hero worshipers of this later day have 
 seen to be the true one. Man was not made to be 
 governed by abstract speculations or systems. The 
 discussions of the Academy, the speculations of phi- 
 losophers have had little influence over the masses, 
 except as they have been understood to open the 
 9 
 
1 30 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 door of license. No instance can be given of a peo- 
 ple who have been elevated in that way. \ Men need 
 a leader, an example, a person to whom they can look 
 as a centre of attraction. This has been seen, and 
 so there has been an outcry for the man, the coming 
 man. But the man does not come. He never will. 
 He has come, and they reject him ; and every hero 
 that comes now shrivels on inspection. No system 
 ever stirred the hearts of men, or awakened such 
 enthusiasm as did the person of Napoleon. But, 
 even if he had been the great man he was supposed 
 to be, his person was a possible centre of attraction 
 only to Frenchmen. So has it been with nations and 
 with clans. Their enthusiasm for the person who most 
 fully embodied their special ideas has been intense, 
 and they have been weak without it. Hear Scott 
 when Clan Alpine was attacked, while Roderick Dhu 
 was wounded and a prisoner : 
 
 " Oh, where was Roderick then ? 
 One blast upon his bugle horn 
 Were worth a thousand men." 
 
 When great deeds are to be done, the nation, the 
 clan, need a person as the leader and centre of attrac- 
 tion, and so do the race. As such a leader and centre 
 Christ has come. He claims to be such a centre. 
 The method of his kingdom is the union to himself 
 of his subjects by a paramount love. To this even 
 the most sacred affections were to be subordinated. 
 " If any man come to me and hate not his father, and 
 mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sis- 
 ters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my dis- 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 131 
 
 ciple." "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
 unto me." Here was his method. He was, Himself, 
 in his own person, by the manifestation of his love 
 on the cross, to be the centre of attraction and of 
 union for the race. But what a conception ! How- 
 impossible that a young man, a Jew, with not "where 
 to lay his head," should have conceived that by suffer- 
 ing as a malefactor the most ignominious and painful 
 death then known, He should become the centre of 
 attraction to the race ! And yet, to-day, there is no 
 other being who has ever lived on the earth towards 
 whom so many hearts are drawn. The necessity of 
 such a centre is, as I have said, felt, but wealth, and 
 fashion, and literature, and culture reject Christ. He 
 is to them "a root out of dry ground." They form 
 separate centres and coteries, with common admira- 
 tion of some one, and mutual admiration of each 
 other, but the masses do not know them. Knowing 
 nothing of sin or redemption, the deep wants of 
 humanity are not reached, and they pass. They 
 agree in but one thing, and that is, to either ignore 
 or restrict the influence of Christ. It is now nearly 
 forty years since the first volume of Emerson's Essays 
 was published. That volume I bought and read with 
 pleasure. The second volume I also bought when 
 that appeared, but before reading it much, if at all, I 
 happened to open to this passage : "Jesus would ab- 
 sorb the race ; but Tom Paine, or the coarsest blas- 
 phemer, helps humanity by resisting this exuberance 
 of power." * I immediately closed the book, and did 
 
 1 Essays, Second Series, p. 263. 
 
132 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 not open it again till after the death of Emerson. It 
 seemed to me so dreadful that "the coarsest blas- 
 phemer" should be welcomed as a benefactor of the 
 race if he could only limit the influence of Him who 
 was, and is, to me, the Redeemer of the race, the sec- 
 ond Adam, the man, and whose influence was, for me, 
 the hope of the race. I believe that if this world is 
 ever to be ruled in righteousness the sceptre of power 
 will be held, virtually, if not literally, by the hand that 
 bears the " print of the nails." I believe that He who 
 was once crowned with thorns shall yet be crowned 
 with many crowns. I believe, too, that he who does 
 the most, in whatever form, whether of art, or culture, 
 or what may call itself religion, to obstruct and limit 
 the influence of Jesus, is he who does the most to 
 obstruct the progress of the race. 
 
 Looking, then, at these three particulars only, 
 the object of Jesus, his standard of greatness, and his 
 method, I think we must see that such a phenom- 
 enon as Christ must baffle utterly all theories of grad- 
 ualism or of outgrowth from his age, and that we 
 shall assent to the account of Him given by Himself, 
 "I am from above." 
 
 Having shown that the man Christ Jesus was not 
 the product of his age, my next remark is that He was 
 so man that every man becomes more a man as he 
 becomes more like Him, and that every woman be- 
 comes more a woman as she becomes more like Him. 
 This is presupposed by his method. If, by becoming 
 a Christian, a man does not become more truly man 
 according to God's conception of manhood and as 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 133 
 
 He would have him to be, and if, in becoming a 
 Christian, a woman does not come to be more fully 
 woman according to God's conception of womanhood 
 and as He would have her to be, then Christianity is 
 a failure. This must be so, for Christ being, accord- 
 ing to his method, the man, the centre of attraction 
 to the race, that law of moral assimilation must hold 
 by which moral beings are changed into the image 
 of that which they contemplate with pleasure ; and if 
 there were not that in Christ which would thus bring 
 to its full perfection the proper nature of each, there 
 would be an arrest of progress, and failure. Accord- 
 ingly, as has often been remarked, there was in Christ 
 a combination of masculine and feminine qualities 
 and traits such as has been found in no one else. 
 He had the stronger traits, the higher wisdom, the 
 severer virtues of man, in perfect combination with 
 the more instinctive wisdom, the tenderness, and re- 
 finement of woman. At the same time, He was free, 
 both in his character and in his teaching, from any- 
 thing local or sectional or national, so that He was 
 the only man who has ever lived who could thus be- 
 come a centre of attraction to the race. All may be 
 equally attracted to Him, and through Him to each 
 other, so that in Him there shall be " neither Jew 
 nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor 
 female," but all shall be "one in Christ Jesus." Any 
 other individual of the race, so free from peculiarities 
 of nation and of race that he could become equally a 
 centre of attraction to all, it would be as difficult to 
 find as one free from sin. But the man Christ Jesus 
 
134 THE SCRIPTURAL -IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 claims to be such a person. He claims it not only 
 by demanding paramount affection, but also by say- 
 ing He will draw all men unto Him, and thus making 
 it the method of His kingdom. 
 
 It is pleasing to know that, in our day, the Person 
 of Christ, which He himself thus made central, is be- 
 ing recognized more and more among his followers 
 as their true centre, instead of creeds and forms of 
 church organization. 
 
 This claim that Christ is the centre for the race, 
 and thus the true standard of manhood, needs to be 
 more fully substantiated, and I proceed to do that, 
 first, in one particular in which He could not be our 
 example, and then in some particulars in which He 
 could be and is. 
 
 The first particular is the sinlessness of " the man 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 In the apprehension of some, a sinless man would 
 hardly be a man. But sin is the transgression by a 
 man of the law of his being, and plainly, the nearer 
 a man comes to obedience to the law of his being, 
 the nearer does he come to a full manhood. The 
 Bible account of the first man is, that he was origi- 
 nally, and for a time, sinless. " That Christ made 
 this claim of sinlessness, and that his disciples made 
 it for Him, there can be no doubt. They made it im- 
 pliedly and they made it expressly. Christ said, 
 " Which of you convinceth me of sin ? " that He did 
 always those things that pleased the Father that 
 He was one with the Father. Peter says expressly 
 that He did no sin, that He was the holy one and the 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 135 
 
 just ; and Paul says that He was "holy, harmless, un- 
 defiled, and separate from sinners/' This claim can 
 be accounted for only on the ground of a divine in- 
 sight. It was the most extraordinary ever made, the 
 most difficult to be sustained, wholly original, out of 
 the line of ordinary thought, and in every human 
 point of view superfluous. In carrying out its plans, 
 what does the world care about sin ? How, then, 
 came this element to enter ? to enter as it did, not 
 obtrusively, being scarcely affirmed, but pervasively, 
 being everywhere assumed, as the being of God is in 
 the Bible ? How came the four Evangelists to be so 
 accordant in this ? In not one of them do we find that 
 He repents, or asks forgiveness, or makes an apol- 
 ogy, or expresses regret for anything He said or did, 
 or faltered in any purpose. The reason is, that the 
 claim and the fact on which it was based were essen- 
 tial to the system. If Christ was not sinless, the 
 whole system would collapse. "There is," says the 
 apostle, "one God and one Mediator between God 
 and man, the man Christ Jesus." But if He had 
 been a sinner, He could not have been thus a Medi- 
 ator. He would have needed one for Himself. Nor 
 could He have been the Redeemer. Only the sinless 
 one can redeem from sin. Nor, if He had Himself 
 transgressed the law, could He be the final Judge 
 of the race. But the point here is, that unless the 
 man Christ Jesus had been sinless, He could not have 
 been so the man that all human beings would approx- 
 imate the perfection of their humanity in approxi- 
 mating Him. 
 
136 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 As sinless, Christ cannot be our example, for we 
 have all sinned ; but He can be our standard. We 
 now pass to some particulars in which He is fully 
 our example. In speaking, however, of Christ as our 
 example, it is obvious that He can be so only as He 
 has a perfect humanity, and in those relations into 
 which we may come. With what He was on the God- 
 ward side we have nothing here to do. It is also to 
 be noticed that He cannot be our example in details, 
 but only in his character, only as He adopted cer- 
 tain great principles and manifested certain tempers 
 which we may also adopt and manifest. 
 
 And the first particular we notice is his full ac- 
 knowledgment of the fatherhood of God and his per- 
 fect submission to Him. It has been said that if 
 Christ had done nothing else than to teach men to 
 say " Our Father," He would have conferred on man- 
 kind more benefit than all the philosophers. And 
 this we may well believe if we look at those concep- 
 tions of God which men have had that have led to 
 such multitudes of human sacrifices and to such de- 
 grading rites. To substitute for such conceptions 
 and for such rites the conception of God as a Father, 
 and pure rites of worship, especially as connected 
 with his providential care as taught by Christ, thus 
 displacing terror and devil-worship by reverence and 
 love, would indeed be doing more for the world than 
 philosophy has ever done. Of the recognition of this 
 fatherhood of God by Christ when He was twelve 
 years old, we have an account, and in the whole ac- 
 count given we have such a recognition of it as to 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 137 
 
 make his example perfect for us. He often retired 
 for prayer ; on all solemn occasions He looked up to 
 God, and in the Garden and on the cross his sub- 
 mission to his Heavenly Father was put to the sever- 
 est possible test. Here his example was perfect. 
 We need just such a Heavenly Father, and just such 
 submission and trust. 
 
 A second point to be noticed is the subordination 
 by the man Christ Jesus of this world to another. 
 The future and spiritual world were as real to Him 
 as this, and He estimated them according to their 
 relative importance. He was no cynic ; He did not 
 despise this world or its good things. He came eat- 
 ing and drinking. But he permitted no interest of 
 this world to come between Him and what He owed 
 to another. He assumed that other : never spoke of 
 it as a matter of doubt. The mansions in his Fa- 
 ther's house were spoken of in the same way as man- 
 sions here. He therefore made just the provision 
 needed by Him for his wants in his peculiar position 
 in this world, and no more. He owned no property. 
 That would not have become Him ; but He had pro- 
 vision suited to the wants of one who went about do- 
 ing good. Here, then, we have an example greatly 
 needed in its principle, but not generally applicable 
 in its form. It is fit that men should own property 
 and have where to lay their heads, but the world ab- 
 sorbs them. They idolize it. Their views and 
 wishes and plans are limited by the horizon of time. 
 As a rule, they do not seek first the kingdom of God 
 and his righteousness. They do not lay up treas- 
 
138 THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 ures in heaven. They are anxious about what they 
 shall eat and drink and wear, or they throng the cir- 
 cles of gayety and fashion and pleasure, reckless of 
 the future. Here, then, we have the greatest possi- 
 ble need of the application of the principle of our 
 Saviour's example. 
 
 Once more. The man Christ Jesus set us a per- 
 fect example in choosing as supreme the highest 
 possible principle of action. That that principle was 
 love does not need to be shown at length. It was 
 love in God that sent Him, and love in Him that 
 brought Him. " Greater love hath no man than this, 
 that a man lay down his life for his friend." "He 
 loved us and gave Himself for us/' " Who hath 
 loved us and washed us from our sins in his own 
 blood." In speaking of this love, the Apostle Paul 
 falls into one of those paradoxes in which he abounds. 
 " That Christ," he says, " may dwell in your hearts 
 by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 
 may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is 
 the breadth and length and depth and height, and to 
 know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, 
 that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God." 
 This love, the highest possible principle of action, 
 He adopted, and in this was a perfect example to us. 
 All that the world needs for its renovation is the uni- 
 versal adoption by men of this principle. 
 
 I observe once more, and finally, that the man 
 Christ Jesus so adhered to the principle of action He 
 adopted as to give the highest example of heroism the 
 world has ever known. For what is heroism ? It is 
 
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 139 
 
 a firm, unfaltering adherence to the highest principle 
 of action, self-sustained and under conditions of diffi- 
 culty and hardship. Let the idea be analyzed and 
 purified, and it will be found to be this. Think, then, 
 how solitary and unsustained Christ was in the Gar- 
 den, before the Sanhedrim, before Pilate and Herod, 
 as He bore his cross, as He hung on that cross, as 
 even God forsook Him, and yet He held on unfalter- 
 ingly till He could utter the triumphant cry, " It is 
 finished ! " and expired. O, thou Sun of Righteous- 
 ness, how didst Thou wade in darkness and in blood, 
 that Thou mightest break forth and flood the world 
 with thy light ! Here was heroic, steadfast love, go- 
 ing alone into the darkness, and meeting without 
 flinching a death of agony and of infamy. It was 
 love that demanded it. If it had not been, the suffer- 
 ing would have been wantonness and folly. But not 
 one pang could have been* spared. Here, then, is a 
 perfect example not in its form, but in its princi- 
 ple for all Christians, for ministers, for missiona- 
 ries of the cross. , 
 
 If, then, we look at the Scriptural idea of man as 
 seen in the man Christ Jesus, and in those who are 
 in Him, we find in it something vastly higher than 
 was to be found in Adam, perfect though he was, 
 and in the image of God. We find man, subject in- 
 deed to death, but triumphing over it and entering 
 beyond it upon a condition of security and blessed- 
 ness as much superior to that of Adam as the city of 
 God, the New Jerusalem, is superior to the Garden 
 of Eden. "And I saw a new heaven and a new 
 
I4O THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF MAN. 
 
 earth." "And He that sat upon the throne said, 
 'Behold I make all things new/ ' "He that over- 
 cometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God 
 and he shall be my son." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 THAT Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius had the 
 idea of a chaos is certain, but it is equally certain that it 
 did not originate with them. In addition to the argument 
 in the text from the impossibility that such an idea should 
 have been suggested by an orderly cosmos, I cite the fol- 
 lowing from the seventh chapter of Rawlinson's Ancient 
 Monarchies : 
 
 " The Babylonian legend embodies a primeval tradition, 
 common to all mankind, of which an inspired author has 
 given us the true groundwork in the first and second 
 chapters of Genesis. What is especially remarkable is 
 the fidelity, comparatively speaking, with which the Baby- 
 lonian legend reports the facts. While the whole tone and 
 spirit of the two accounts, and even the point of view 
 from which they are taken, differ, the general outline of 
 thp narrative in each is nearly the same. In both we 
 have the earth at first 'without form and void/ and ' dark- 
 ness upon the face of the deep/ In both the first step 
 taken towards creation is the separation of the mixed 
 mass, and the formation of the heavens and the earth as 
 the consequence of such separation. In both we have 
 light mentioned before the creation of the sun and moon ; 
 in both we have the existence of animals before man ; and 
 
142 APPENDIX 
 
 in both we have a divine element infused into man at his 
 birth and his formation 'from the dust of the ground/ 
 The only points in which the narratives can be said to be 
 at variance are points of order." He adds in a note that 
 "the Chaldee narrative is extravagant and grotesque," 
 while " the Mosaical is without unnecessary marvels, and 
 its tone is sublime and solemn." 
 
 The connection between the tradition and the Hebrew 
 Scriptures we have no means of tracing, but it is reason- 
 able to suppose that it originated from them. 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 In the discussions respecting development two parties 
 seem to have been in a measure at cross purposes. Those 
 who contend that development is consistent with the- 
 ism regard it as simply a process, apart from its cause. 
 It is for them the process by which an intelligent, all- 
 superintending, personal God has brought the present 
 cosmos out of chaos, working all things after the council 
 of his own will. A person believing thus would not be 
 called a developmentist or evolutionist. He believes the 
 fact of development ; he believes in it as a method by 
 which God works, but he is not an evolutionist. 
 
 An evolutionist, on the other hand, is one in whose 
 mind evolution or development is not simply a process 
 apart from its cause, but its cause, as an inherent, uncon- 
 scious, impersonal force working upward, enters in as a 
 part of the conception of evolution, and it is that which 
 makes him an evolutionist. 
 
 As between two parties thus situated the ground of dis- 
 pute, and the only one involving anything of interest, is a 
 question of causation, and not of development. As a 
 process development must have a cause, and the question 
 
APPENDIX. 143 
 
 is whether the present order of things came to be through 
 the agency of an intelligent, personal God wholly separate 
 from the material with which he works and above it, or, 
 of an unconscious impersonal force. 
 
 But besides the above there are those who do not think 
 the present cosmos can be accounted for by any process 
 that can be called development unless that word is used 
 so loosely as to identify it with causation, and growth, and 
 even with change of any kind, thus precluding its use in 
 any profitable discussion. They regard development as a 
 process of unfolding, expansion, enlargement. They think 
 that anything that begins to be must be caused, and must 
 be, before it can be developed. So far from agreeing with 
 the definition that "development is organized causation," 
 or causation at all, they think that disintegration is, or 
 requires, organized causation quite as much. Agreeing 
 with the Scriptures and with science that the present state 
 of things has been reached by successive changes, they 
 do not believe that science, any more than the Scriptures, 
 justifies a belief in that continuity which is involved in 
 development, but rather that the process has been one by 
 successive preparatory steps, as in a building, and that 
 " He that built all things is God." 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 Before experience all possible events and forms of be- 
 ing are alike probable. Hence the boundless credulity 
 of children. We now feel no surprise at a flash of light- 
 ning, or at the sudden formation of a cloud. Just as prob- 
 able beforehand was the sudden formation of a man, and 
 just as little should we have been surprised, if that had 
 been the accustomed order. After experience belief is 
 modified by the uniformities to which we are accustomed, 
 
144 APPENDIX. 
 
 and sometimes so strongly that they become to us the 
 limit of possibility. But scientists make a mistake in sup- 
 posing that, in a universe like this, any uniformity cog- 
 nizable by man can be the limit of possibility. 
 
 When an East Indian prince was visited by an early 
 navigator he received without question the story of Jonah 
 and the whale with others equally marvellous, but dis- 
 missed the narrator at once when he told him that in his 
 country water sometimes became so hard that oxen walked 
 upon it, saying he would have nothing more to do with 
 such a liar. 
 
 NOTE D. 
 
 To the popular definition and common conception of 
 consciousness as " the recognition by the thinking subject 
 of its own acts and affections," there is no objection, pro- 
 vided we do not at the same time make it, as thus defined, 
 infallible, and the basis of an infallible method of philos- 
 ophy. As thus defined, consciousness does sometimes 
 give us certain knowledge, and so do the senses ; but we 
 are liable to misapprehension and delusion through both. 
 My wish has been to find a form of consciousness with 
 such limitations that it must always be present in connec- 
 tion with every other operation of the mind ; that can 
 never deceive us ; and that, as not subject to the will, is 
 not a special faculty. It is sucrji a consciousness alone 
 that can give us a sure basis on which to stand, and so 
 a reliable starting-point. 
 
 As indicating the inadequacy of consciousness as above 
 defined to give the subject of it reliable information, I 
 quote the admirable analysis of the character of Arabi 
 Pacha, as given by Dr. Henry M. Field in his recent work 
 "On the Desert": 
 
APPENDIX. 145 
 
 " He seems to be compounded in about equal parts of 
 three elements, which are the master-passions of his na- 
 ture: hatred of foreigners, religious fanaticism, and per- 
 sonal ambition. These different impulses are so mixed 
 up in him that probably he does not know one from an- 
 other. He does not stop to analyze his motives (the 
 Arab intellect is not given to such fine distinctions), and 
 so he might well think he was acting from one when he 
 was really acting from another. When he was seeking 
 his own ambition, he believed he was seeking the good of 
 his country, and even doing God service." 
 
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