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Bought with the income of the
Edward Wells South worth
Fund, 19lS

Swartbmore Xecturc
1915.

SWARTHMORE LECTURES.
Cloth boards, is. net each.
1908. — Quakerism : A Religion of Life.
By R. M. Jones, M.A., D.Litt. (AI«o in
paper covers, 6d. net.)
Z909. — Spiritual Guidance in the Ex
perience of the Society of Friends '
By William C. Braithwaite, LL.B.
1910. — The Communion of Life.
By Joan M. Fry.
1911. — Human Progress and the
Inward Light.
By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L.
1912. — The Nature and Purpose of a
Christian Society.
By T. R. Glover, M.A.
1913. — Social Service : Its Place in
the Society of Friends.
By Joshua Rowntree.
1914. — The Historic and the Inward
Christ.
By Edward Grubb, M.A.
1915.— The Quest for Truth.
By Silvanus P. Thompson, F.R.S.

Swartbmore Xecture

The Quest for Truth

BY
SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, F.R.S.

Published for the Woodbrooke Extension Committee
BY
HEADLEY BROTHERS
140, BISHOPSGATE, E.C.
I915

HEADLEY BROTHERS,
PRINTERS,
BISHOPSGATE, E.C. ; AND ASHFORD, KENT.

SwZg

Ipreface
The Swarthmore Lectureship was established
by the Woodbrooke Extension Committee, at a
meeting held December 9th, 1907 : the minute
of the Committee providing for " an annual
lecture on some subject relating to the Message
and Work of the Society of Friends." The name
" Swarthmore " was chosen in memory of the
home of Margaret Fox, which was always open
to the earnest seeker after Truth, and from
which loving words of sympathy and substantial
material help were sent to fellow-workers.
The Lectureship has a two-fold purpose :
first, to interpret further to the members of the
Society of Friends their Message and Mission ;
and secondly, to bring before the public the
spirit, the aims and the fundamental principles
of the Friends.
The previous lectures of the series have been
as follows : —
1908 : " Quakerism a Religion of Life," by
Rufus M. Jones, M.A., D.Litt., of
Haverford College, Pa.

6 preface
1909 : " Spiritual Guidance in the Experience
of the Society of Friends," by
William Charles Braithwaite,' B.A.,
LL.B.
1910 : " The Communion of Life," by Joan
Mary Fry.
1911 : " Human Progress and the Inward
Light," by Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L.
1912 : " The Nature and Purpose of a
Christian Society," by T. R. Glover,
M,A.
1913 : " Social Service : its Place in the
Society of Friends," by Joshua
Rowntree.
1914 : " The Historic and the Inward Christ,"
by Edward Grubb, M.A.
The above lectures have been delivered on
the evening preceding the assembly of the
Friends' Yearly Meeting in each year.

Contents.

PAQE

Introduction. What is Truth ? — Corres
pondence between fact and word — Violation
of that correspondence is untruth, and is
condemned in the court of conscience ii
Veracity. The moral obligation of truth-
speaking .... - 12
EQurvocATioN AND CASUISTRY. Opinions of
Lecky, Ruskin and George Tjnrrell - - 17
Intellectual Integrity. Conventional lies —
Truth for its own sake — The habit of truth
fulness - - - - 19
The Use of Words. How words change their
meanings — Disputations over words — The
misuse of words - - - 24
Confusions in the Use of Phrases. The
difference between categorical and ana
logical statements — Error arising from
confusion as to the nature of a statement - 31
Hindrances to the Quest for Truth. Over-
respect for authority — Dislike of suspense —
Neglect to use discrimination — Inexactitude
of language .... 34
The Quest for Truth in History. The beset-
ments of Historians — Carelessness in
selection — Unwarranted guesses — Modern
methods of testing history - - - 36

8 Contents PAGE
The Quest for Truth in Science. Verification
by experiment — Numerical precision —
Meaning of a proof — Inviolable correspon
dences called natural laws — Danger of
determinism— Hypotheses and their
verification — Independence of authority - 41
The Quest for Truth in Religion and
Morals. Danger of casuistry — Influence
of education and environment — Avoidance
of superstition - - - 54
Pious Frauds. The lapse from truthfulness
allowed by some Early Fathers — Pious
frauds approved in ecclesiastical literature
— Lecky's stern reproof - - 57
Parables. Their use and abuse - - - 65
Legends of the Saints. Pious legends are folk
lore and not history — Not to be condemned
as lying— Froude on their origin - - 67
History and Folklore. The natural growth
of adoring legends — The doctrine of the Fall
— Accretions gathered round Truth - - 71
Adventitious Aids to Truth. Miracle-working
supposed to demonstrate truth of proposi
tions. — The Oriental state of mind —
Veneration of relics - - - - 76
The Gospel Narratives. Degree of historicity
— The conclusions of competent scholarship 82
The Fulfilment of Prophecy. Meaning of
" prophecy " and " fulfilment " — Rabbinic
mode of thought — Detection of anachro-
misms - - .... 84
Certitude and Truth. Mental states that
lead to certitude — Discrimination must be

Contents 9
PAGE
used — Tests of what is true — The appeal to
persistence — The test of pragmatism —
Postulates of science ; principles that
cannot be denied without intellectual
confusion — Postulates of ethics and religion
— Authority and the imposition of dogma —
True authority and the method of intuition 92
Intuition and Truth. Intuition in scientific
discovery — A supra-rational faculty —
Bergson's philosophy .... 106
The Inner Light. Immediate spiritual
experience, " That of God in you " —
Experiences of Fox, Penn and Penington
— Fox's assumption — The synthesis of
internal and external witness — The test
of spiritual experience .... 108
Individual Experience and Corporate
Control. The unorganized but real
control of environment and of spiritual
influences of the past and the present - 115
Experience and Conviction. The sharing
of convictions and confirmation of experi
ence by experience — The Resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead - - - 118
Reconstruction. Changes of belief —
Growth in enlightenment - - - - 120
Courage and Truth. Many views of truth —
Difficulty of reconciling and correlating
isolated convictions — System-mongering
the besetment of theologians — Jesus
Christ revealed no comprehensive scheme
of theology ; He bestowed words of Eternal
Life — He propounded no theories — His
methods were spiritual and interior — His
witness for the Truth - - - - 123

" For this cause came I into the world, that I should
bear witness unto the truth." — John xviii. 37.
" Strive for the truth unto death, and the Lord shall
fight for thee." — Ecclesiasticus iv. 28.
" Happy is he whom truth teacheth by itself, not by
figures and words that pass, but as it is in itself."
" De Imitatione Christi," I., iii.
" Truth emerges more quickly from error than from
confusion." — Francis Bacon.
" It makes all the difference in the world whether we put
truth in the first place, or in the second."
Archbishop Whately.
" It is only by virtue of the opposition which it has
surmounted that any truth can stand in the human mind."
Archbishop Trench.
" The longest Sword, the strongest Lungs, the most
Voices, are false measures of Truth."
Benjamin Whichcote.
" Truth is like a torch : the more 'tis shook, the more
it shines." — Sir William Hamilton.
" The more readily we admit the possibility of our own
cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more
vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become."
John Ruskin.
" Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you
the truth?" — Paul (Galatians iv. 16).
" Blame not before thou hast examined the truth ; under
stand first, and then rebuke." — ^Ecclesiasticus xi. 7.

^be (aueet for ZTrutb

INTRODUCTION
In the age-long quest after Truth, men have
sought far and wide. They have questioned
the starry heavens ; they have dug into the
bowels of the earth ; they have rifled the treasures
of the antique world ; they have consulted the
reputed oracles of human wisdom ; they have
sought for truth in the depths of their own
consciousness ; they have looked for some divine
Revelation. Has any one — ^the wisest.the purest,
the riiost enlightened of them — found the answer
to the age-long enigma : What is Truth ?
Yet from the dawn of human history men
have known as by some divine instinct the vital
difference there is between fact and not-f act, and
have despised the man who should say the thing
that is not. They have learned to discriminate
between the man who unwittingly says that which
is not, and they have styled his untruth as error ;
and him who wittingly and of deliberate piupose
says that which is not, and they have branded
his untruth as a lie. Perhaps it has been easier

12 Swartbmore Xecture
to define the negative, untruth, than to define
the positive, truth. But whether positively
defined, or negatively, man has ever possessed a
consciousness of the difference between them.
At whatever stage of prehistoric development
man attained the endowment of speech, he has
instinctively expected and required a correspon
dence between the fact and the word which
expressed it ; and has been conscious that if that
correspondence were violated some wrong has
been done to him ; and he has resented that
violation. Untruth, then, jn its most
elementary form consists in a violation of
the correspondence between fact and word ;
and truth, in its essence, consists in the strict
observance of the correspondence between word
and fact. Any violation of that correspondence,
whether accidental through carelessness or
ignorance, or purposed through malevolent
intention, leads to confusion. When discovered,
it offends against the instinctive sense of
right and wrong, and is condemned in the
court of fionscience.
VERACITY.
And here we must distinguish between that
which is, and a man's conception of that which

tCbe diuest for ZTrutb 13
is. If a man honestly expresses in speech, or
in action, that which he conceives to be the
fact, we credit him with being veracious, even
if what he conceived to be the fact should after
wards turn out to be a mistaken or imperfect
conception of the real fact. He has not lied ;
and yet what he spoke may after all not have
been the truth. Veracity, which is always a
commendable quality, implies a correspondence
between what a man believes and thinks on the
one hand, and what he says, and acts upon, and
does on the other hand. But Truth is much
more than mere veracity. The quest for truth
demands much more than following the habit
of veracity. It implies the effort — ^the continued,
intelligent, honest effort — ^to bring one's
conception of things into accurate corres
pondence with things as they really are ; so that
one's speech shall not merely voice empty or
confused or untrue opinions or impressions,
but shall express, so far as possible, the thing
that is. The ascertainment of truth, and
its discrimination from error and falsehood,
is therefore a different process and a much
more exacting one than mere truth-speaking.
Veracity is quite compatible with honest error ;
may co-exist with confusion of thought and

14 Swartbmore Xecture
ignorance. Yet deliverance from confusion
or ignorance cannot be expected to be brought
about through anyone of whom veracity is
not the habitual practice.- The discovery of
truth is not for him who is careless of truth
in speech, or deed, or in habit of mind. Neither
is it for him whose thinking apparatus is in a
state of confusion.
This is not the place or time to enter upon the
abstract question sometimes raised, as to why
we ought to speak the truth, or why moralists
in all ages' have insisted on truthfulness as
the necessary foundation of all the other
virtues. ¦ In ancient Egjrpt, we find Truth set forth as amongst
the highest titles of God. In the Book of the Dead
(ch. xiii. and xliv.) we read :
" God is Truth ; he lives through Truth ; he is
nourished on Truth ; he is King of Truth ; and Truth
he erects over the world."
And the verdict prononuced on the soul of the
justified person runs :
" He lives in Truth, nourishes himself on Truth."
Socrates was pre-eminent in Greece for his stern and
outspoken love of truth. Blackie, in his Four Phases
of Morals (pp. 19-34) lis-s thus written of him : —
" Socrates, therefore, was right, not only for Greece
in the fifth century B.C., but for England at the present
moment, and for all times and places, when he pro
claimed on the house-tops that the first and most
necessary wisdom for all men is not to measure the
stars, or to weigh the dust, or to analyse the air, but,
according to the old Delphic sentence to know them
selves, and to realize in all tbe breadth and depth of its

Ube (Siuest for TTrutb 15
In the dialogues of Plato there is a very
remarkable passage in which that sage gives
a vision of souls choosing their lives* before
significance what it is to be a man, and not a pig or a
god. . . . Truth, therefore, unadulterated truth
in thought and act, was the pole-star of his navigation."
Plato, in the Republic, declares a lie to be a thing
naturally hateful both to gods and men.
The Zoroastrians also had strong perceptions of
Truth. In their conception of the universe there were
two great conflicting principles of good and evil, personi
fied as Ormuzd and Ahriman. CM Ormuzd they said :
" He is the Truth." The power of Ahriman is " in the
lie." One of their legends states that Yima, the fallen
spirit, fell through a lie : " His glory {i.e., the truth)
was seen leaving him in the likeness of a beautiful bird."
' The passage occurs in the Republic, ch. x., 617, and
is worthy of being quoted at greater lengfth.
" But first of all there came a prophet who arranged
them in order ; then he took from the knees of Lachesis
lots and samples of lives, and having mounted on a high
pulpit, spake as follows : ' Hear the word of Lachesis,
the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new
cycle of life and mortality. Your genius wiU not be
allotted to you, but you will choose your genius ; and let
him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the
life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is
free, and as a man honours or dishonours her, he will
have more or less of her ; the responsibility is with the
chooser — God is justified.' . . . ' A man must take
with him into the world below an adamantine faith in
truth and right, that there too he may be undazded by
the desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil,
lest, coming upon t)?rannies and similar villainies, he do
irremediable wrongs to others and suffer yet worse
himself.' ' Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely,
and wiU live diligently, there is appointed a happy and
not undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses
first be careless, and let not the last despair.' "
Jowett's Dialogues 0* Plato, Vol. III., pp. 334-6.

i6 Swartbmore Xecture
they enter the world of men, and puts as the
first qualification for the momentous issue
this : — " A man must take with him into the
world below an adamantine faith in truth and
right." That is, he must cherish truth-speaking
and right-doing as cardinal points of conduct
in this life.
I need not dwell upon this moral obligation
to speak the truth, or on the ethical reasons
that have been assigned for it by different writers.
For us, at least, the obligation may be put on
the highest grounds. We have the words of
Christ,' " Let your communication be. Yea,
yea ; Nay, nay ; for whatsoever is more than
these cometh of evil." But we have also, in
the words of Paul,* what seems to be the real
reason why, " putting away lying," we should
" speak every man truth with his neighbour,"
namely this : — " for we are members one of
another." The solidarity of human life requires
of us that we should use our words so that they
correspond to the thing that is, and so
abuse not the gift of speech. " The great
basis," said Babbage.s "of virtue in man, is truth
' Matthew v. ^.
» Ephesians iv. 2^5r
3 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher," p. 404.

Zbc CJuest for tlrutb 17
— ^that is, the constant application of the same
word to the same thing." There is, as Professor
Jacks has declared,' " no surer road to a state of
alienation from what is best in modem life,
and to the forfeiture of good men's confidence,
than that of a careless handling of the standard
of truth."
EQUIVOCATION AND CASUISTRY.
The casuists have immemorially raised the
question whether one is bound at all times and
in all circumstances to speak the truth ; whether
under stress of personal danger, or under threat
of violence, one is not justified in deliberate
untruth ; whether in dealing with madmen
or criminals one is debarred from using a lie
in the interests of truth ; whether a physician
is permitted to conceal the truth from a patient
in a critical state of health ; whether an ad
vocate may plead for the innocence of a client
whom he knows to be really guilty. Little
good can come from arguing out casuistical
cases* on a priori grounds. Everyone will
' Hibbert fournal, Oct., 1906.
' Lecky, in his History of Rationalism (Vol. I., p. 394),
has stated the position as follows : —
"Whatever may be the foundation of the moral
law, it is certain that in the eyes of the immense majority

1 8 Swartbmore Xecture
agree that the less of casuistry there is in the
world the better ; that every departure from the
standard of truth, however excusable it may
seem in the stress of difficult circumstances, is
in itself evil and debasing to the moral sense.
Still less would one care to defend or justify
the perversions of truth that pass current almost
unrebuked in many departments of life. No
one has denounced more clearly the evils of
prevarication, of the false insinuation, than
John Ruskin. Hear him as he speaks in the
Seven Lamps : —
" Do not let us lie at all. Do~not think of one falsity
as harmless, and another as slight, and. another as
of mankind there are some overwhelming considerations
that will justify a breach of its provisions. If some
great misfortune were to befall a man who lay on a sick
bed, trembling between life and death ; if the physician
declared that the knowledge of that misfortune would
be certain death to the patient, and if concealment
were only possible by a falsehood, there are very few
moralists who would condemn that falsehood." . . .
" It is not very easy to justify these things by argument,
or to draw a clear line between crimii^ and innocent
falsehood ; but that there are circumstances which
justify untruth has always been admitted by the common
sentiment of mankind, and has been distinctly laid down
by the most eminent moralists." Lecky quotes Jeremy
Taylor and other divines in support of this temporizing
view. A careful statement of the Roman doctrine of
Equivocation will be found in a letter, dated from
Stonyhurst, October 5th, 190 1, by Rev. Father Canning,
S. J., printed as Supplementum VI., on p. 287, of H. H.
Spink's book, The Gunpowder Plot (1902).

XCbe (Stuest for Urutb 19
unintended. Cast them all aside ; they may be light and
accidental ; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke
of the pit, for all that ; and it is better that our hearts
should be swept clean of them, without over care as to
which is largest or blackest. Speaking truth is like
writing fair, and comes only by practice;, it is less a
matter of will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion
can be trivial which permits the practice and formation
of such a habit. To speak and act truth with constancy
and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as
meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or
penalty." " And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that do the
largest sum of mischief in the world. But it is the
glistening and softly spoken lie ; the amiable fallacy ;
the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the
politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful
lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to him
self, that cast that black mystery over humanity,
through which we thank any man who pierces, as we
would thank one who dug a well in a desert."
" There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some
errors slight in the estimate of wisdom ; but truth
forgives no insult, and endures no stain."
Hear again the late Father George Tyrrell : —
¦ ¦ " There is something worse than deliberate lying,
and that is the habit of gratuitous assertion ; of saying,
not what we know to be untrue, but what we do not
know to be true. Nine-tenths of our untruthfulness
is of this sort ; and it is fostered by the credulity or the
indifference of our hearers."
INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY.
Experience of life brings home to us the
desirability of keeping out of deceptions, of

20 Swartbmore Xecture
avoiding the disaster that follows on dwelling
in the false security of illusions. It seems
indeed strange that men willingly live on the
lower planes of truthfulness, rather than
on the higher. In every rank we find con
ventional lies taking the place of truth. Each
man, wherever he is placed, has to contend,
not only against the outward falsities, but
against the temptation to say to others the
things that seem pleasant, and things service
able for the hour, rather than the things
that are. Every class has to fight with its
own misleading prepossessions, every age has
to meet its own falsehoods. In an environment
where men are careless of truth, it is easy to
slip into inexactitudes of speech. The habit
of looking at things carelessly begets in men
the inability to see things truly. They cannot
read aright the things that are. And this, the
saddest, if not the most wicked, form of lying,
eats as a canker into the character ; it is what
Francis Bacon called " the lie that sinketh
in." There are some who imagine that it is
an easy thing for a man to speak the truth ;
that even after lapse of exercise the faculty
remains unimpaired. But he who supposes that
truth-speaking is a casual function, which after

XTbe Ciuest for Urutb 21
habitual neglect may be at any time resumed,
has never gone to the root of the matter. It
seems deplorable, but after many years I have
come to the conclusion, that the majority of
men do not want to know the truth about things.
They will admit that truth is many sided ;
but they want to hear one side' only. They
do not want the truth, but only that particular
aspect of it which suits them.
" Am I become your enemy because I
tell you the truth ? " was the question
directed by the great Apostie of the Gentiles
to some of his subverted followers. It was
ever thus ; men, even though veracious and
honest in speech, are not by nature lovers
of truth, anxious to know the thing as it is.
Rather they wish to believe the thing as it seems
in their imaginations. They are lovers of their
fancies, their own cherished prejudices*. To
' How many men make a practice of reading both
sides of even passing politics ? They prefer to hear
the organs of one party only. In religious matters, how
many men read the views of those who differ from them ?
How many subscribers to the Christian World read also
the Inquirer or the Tablet ? How many readers of the
Inquirer read also the Guardian, or the Church Times,
or the Dublin Review ?
' " In the same way all those superficial and
inadequate, too often also harsh and severe, judgements
which we see and read daily amongst men in the common

22 Swartbmore Xecture
become lovers of truth for its own sake they
need to undergo a moral, and in many cases
an intellectual, regeneration ; to be baptized
into the truth.
And this is truly sad, that some of the best
of men think that truth is endangered if that
side of it which they call particularly theirs is
submitted to scrutiny. As though truth could
not endure enquiry, or were unable to stand
the test of examination. Nay, it may almost
be said that everything that has been established
as true has been established by being contested,
and having stood the test.
No one has spoken of truth in relation to
men's preconceived opinions more wisely than
Dr. Whately in the second series of his Essays.

converse of life, are the result of a habitual carelessness
as to truth, of which habit only too efficiently conceals
the grossness. And under the bitter inspiration of
ecclesiastical and political warfare, men, when speaking
of their adversaries, will not only lightly excuse them
selves from using any special care in testing the facts
which it suits their purpose to parade, but they will
even consciously present a garbled statement con
structed upon the principle of pushing into prominence
everything that is bad, and keeping out of view
everything that is good, in the character of the person
whom it may suit the use of the moment to vilify. And
in this way even the sacred-sounding columns of an
evangelical newspaper may become a systematic
manufactory of lies." — Blackie, Four Phases of Morals,
P- 44-

XTbe Ciuest for ZTrutb 23
" Every one must, of course, be convinced of the truth
of his own opinion, if it be properly called his opinion ;
and yet the variety of men's opinions furnishes a proof
how many must be mistaken. If anyone then would
guard against mistake as far as his intellectual faculties
will allow, he must make it, not the second, but the first
question in each case, 'Is this true ? ' It is not enough
to believe what you maintain ; you must maintain what
you believe ; and maintain it because you believe it ;
and that on the most careful and impartial review of
the evidence on both sides. For any one may bring him
self to believe almost any thing that he is inclined to
believe, and thinks it becoming or expedient to maintain.*
It makes all the difference, therefore, whether we begin
or end with the inquiry as to the truth of our doctrines.
To express the same maxim in other words, it is one thing
to wish to have Truth on our side, and another thing to
wish sincerely to be on the side of Truth. There is no
genuine love of truth implied in the former." (p. 31).
Harmful as preconceived notions may be,
they are perhaps less harmful to ourselves than
confusions of thought. Take this as an illus
tration. To denounce gout as a sin would be
a confusion of thought. Doubtless gout is
often the result of bodily excesses, and excess
is not merely a vice ; it is a sin against light.
But gout is not always the result of excess. To
? Some persons accordingly who describe themselves
— in one sense correctly — ^as "following the dictates of
conscience," are doing so only in the same sense in which
a person who is driving in a carriage may be said to
follow his horses, which go in whatever direction he
guides them.

24 Swartbmore Xecture
denounce it as a sin is, first, to confuse effect
with cause, and, secondly, to confuse causes
that are sinless with causes that are sinful.
The quest for truth, then, in whatever field
we are seeking it, implies a frame of mind that
shall be fundamentally sincere, and frank.
Sincere : that it shall seek the truth for its
own sake and without fear ; frank : that it
will neither be blinded by prejudice nor let itself
be warped by ulterior aims. Truthfulness is
a thing of habit even more than of will. In
this respect there is a oneness about it which
pervades it, whether in the great or the small,
whether in things sacred or things secular.
He that would be faithful in the great must
be faithful in the small. Whether we seek truth
in religion, or in history, or in science, sincerity
and frankness are equally essential ; while
carelessness in what may seem matters of little
moment insensibly leads to carelessness in matters
of vital and eternal importance.
THE USE OF WORDS.
Amongst the things which make for sincerity
in the quest, one of the most important is the
right use of words.
" Words," said Jowett, " want constant

XCbe duest for tTrutb 25
examination and analysis ; for words tend to
outrun facts. They become symbols of ideas.
Thus they dominate the mind and prevent
it from seeing facts as they are."
Every student of the science of language knows
full well how words, in passing as the current
coin of thought from man to man, slowly change
their meaning, so that to one generation they
convey a slightly different implication from
that which they conveyed to the preceding
generation. Yet in one and the same age
a word may mean very different things to
different minds, even when the word itself
is used carefully and in an accepted
meaning. That language may change in the
course of a century or two, may be seen by
very simple examples from our own Authorized
Version, in words which have altered their
meanings since the time of King James. The
" compass " which Paul and his companions
" fetched " from Sjnracuse when sailing to
Rhegium', was not the useful instrument of
navigation that now goes by that name. When
Christ " prevented " Peter*, as we read in the
account of the payment of the tax, the word,
' Acts xxviii. 13.
' Matthew xvii. 25.

26 Swartbmore Xecture
as used in the seventeenth century meant
" anticipated," and did not mean " hindered "
as it now does. Words are in many instances
fossil expressions of thought, which we do not
understand until we have examined the signi
ficance they bore at the time when they were
used. The philosophical Greeks in the period
when Greek literature flourished were much
more precise in defining and using words than
were the later Greeks, including the writers of
the New Testament. Yet even they were
not- always agreed as to the meanings attached
to terms. Men who were careless about settling
definitions left legacies of confusion to after
ages. Half the theological disputes which raged
in the Church from the third to the fifth century
really turned upon the meanings of words ; and
anathemas were pronounced against men of
piety because of misunderstandings of language.
The theologians who were responsible for drawing
up the three orthodox Creeds sinned greatly
against the generations to come, by their morbid
word-battlings respecting such words as
"person" and "substance," sometimes main
taining that - their signification was the same,
sometimes contending that they were essentially
different.

XLbc (Siuest for XTrutb 27
Orthodox theologians are most emphatic
that it is a heresy either to confound the three
"persons" of the Trinity or to divide its "sub
stance " into three. Yet the Council of Nicsea
decided that " person " and " substance " are the
same. Dean Stanley, discussing' that decision
quotes J. H. Newman as saying : " its language
is so obscure that even theologians differ
about its meaning." Dogmas, once the ex
pression of ardent and living piety, have largely
shrunk to mere formulas. It has dawned upon
mankind that they were mostly merely verbal
fortifications against the intellectual difficulties
of a bygone age. No longer can they preserve
their significance when it is seen that their
validity rested upon assumptions of historicity
that had never been verified, and upon verbal
definitions that had never been established.
" And thus the child imposes on the man."
Now we cannot get rid of this difficulty about
the change in meaning of words by merely
preserving them in a dead language. There
is a body caUing itself the " Catholic Truth
Society," which issues controversial pamphlets
to prove the rightness of the teachings of the
Roman Church, and the wrongness of all the
' Athanasian Creed, p. i8.

28 Swartbmore Xecture
other Churches. One of these pamphlets,*
issued a few years ago, is headed : " Why in
Latin ? " It is in the form of a dialogue, defending
the practice of saying the Mass in Latin. From
this I take the following passage :
" The first duty of the Society which Our Lord founded
must be to keep the Truth which our Lord has taught ;
exactly the same Truth. Christianity changed is not
Christianity ; Christianity added to, or taken from, is
not the Christianity of Christ. The care of the Truth is
tbe great and first duty of the Society of Christ."
With all my heart I agree. But the priest
who wrote these words seems to think that it
is compatible with them to adopt all the vast
accretions with which the Church of Rome has,
overlaid the simple truth which qur Lord
taught. Then he goes on with the diedogue :
" But what has that to do with Latin ? "
" This to do with it : — a dead language is far better
for this end than a living one."
" Why so ? "
" Because the meaning of its words is fixed, and cannot
alter. Latin, as I said, is dead in one way . . . the
meaning of the words cannot change. What Cicero
meant when first he spoke the words in the parliament of
Rome — ^what SS. Jerome and Augustine meant, and the
writers who went before and came after, that same is
meant to-day, and will be meant when the world ends."
' Why in Latin? By Rev. G. Bampfylde (The
Catholic's Penny Library). Published by the Catholic
Truth Society.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 29
The argument is utterly fallacious ; the bad
non-Ciceronian Latin written by St. Jerome
has been notorious for centuries, and was even
the subject of jest between humanist ecclesi
astics in the Renaissance. And if there were
any importance in preserving the letter of Christ's
teaching in a dead language, that language
should surely be either Greek, or Aramaic which
Christ spoke ; not Latin, which He did not
sp^ak. We do not know of one single word
of Latin being ever spoken by Christ.
In passing, let me remark upon the change
of meaning that has in the course of centuries
come over the adjective " catholic." Originally
signifying "all embracing" or "inclusive," it
has come to signify almost the opposite.
Perhaps the most glaring and persistent
misuse of words that has occurred in our time
is to be found in the writings of the late Mrs.
Eddy, who throughout her teaching uses words,
either ignorantly or wilfully, in senses different
from their accepted meaning. I do not condemn
that which she calls " Christian Science " so much
for its puerile philosophy as for its verbal
equivocations and insincerities of language.
To use words in misleading significations is to
poison the fountain of truth.

30 Swartbmore Xecture
The misuse of language with intent to
mislead is merely a clever form of lying.
The misuse of language through carelessness
of expression, though less culpable, not only
leads to fruitful error but harms the speaker.
" Be assured of this, most excellent Crito," said
Socrates, " that to use words in an improper
sense is not only a bad thing in itself, but it
generates a bad habit in the soul."
One other caution is needed. All human
language is imperfect, and fails to convey the
highest thought, simply because it has grown up
to express our own limited experience. When
we try to express in words the nature of God
Himself, and attribute to Him qualities such
as good, or just, or merciful, we are applying to
Him phrases derived from human experience, and
from our experience of the best we know in man :
the highest we can think of. Or perhaps we
try to intensify their meaning by putting on
a prefix and calling Him aW-good, all-]ust, all-
merciful. But if we thus do the best we can,
" we may not, therefore," as Professor Percy
Gardner (to whom the preceding remark is due)
says,' " use these phrases as counters in a game
of theological speculation on the divine nature."
' Expioratio Evangelica, p. 51.

trbe (Sluest for TTrutb 31
Half the weary disputes of Christology have
arisen from failure to understand the limitations
of language ; and the combatants who fought
so strenuously through long centuries, for what
they imagined to be sacred truth, were largely
occupied with what the Apostie Paul dismisses
as logomachies — " doting about ,questions and
strifes of words."
CONFUSIONS IN THE USE OF PHRASES.
Another point in which the use of words
may lead to error is the confusion which exists
in many persons between a categorical and an
analogical statement. The commonest verb —
" is " — is used in more than one way. It
sometimes implies identity. If I say " Sir
Oliver Lodge is the principal of Birmingham
University," no one doubts that this is a
statement of identity of the person who is
mentioned by name and the person who holds a
particular office. It would be equally true
if it were turned round, and stated that " TheJ
Principal of Birmingham University is Sir
Oliver Lodge." The statement is categorical.
But if I say " Murder is sin," the statement
is not one of an identity, as may be seen at once
by transposing it into the different statement

32 Swartbmore Xecture
" Sinismurder." Apply this test to the familiar
declaration from i John iii. 5: "God is Light."
No one doubts its essential truth, but it is not
categorically true ; it is not an identity. Turn
it roimd and it becomes " Light is God," which
means a very different thing. The two concepts
connoted by the two words thus joined, cover,
as it were, different areas of thought, and cannot
be equated or identified with one another. Con
sider the statement of Galatians iv. 24, " For
this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia." In what
sense can it be true that Agar, the slave wife
of Abraham, is the same as Mount Sinai ?
Clearly it is categorically untrue, and is true
only by remote analogy ; is only metaphorically
true. Or again, Paul says, i Cor. x. 4 : "for
they [our fathers] drank of the spiritual rock
that followed them ; and that rock was Christ."
Obviously the statement is analogical,' not
categorical. But more important still in the
present consideration is the statement of Jesus
» The statement is evidence of a survival in the mind
of Paul of that curious Rabbinical tradition that the
rock which Moses struck followed the Israelites in
their wilderness wanderings, to afford them siipplies of
water in the desert. In the complex mentality of Paul,
Rabbinical tradition played a much more considerable
part than is commonly recognized. His identification
of the traditional rock with Christ is not the least
significant of the clues we have to his modes of thought.

XTbe (Jiuest for XCrutb 33
at the Last Supper, where He took the cup
(Matt. xxvi. 28 ; Mark xiv. 24) and said to the
disciples, " this is My blood." Was the state
ment true categorically or analogically only ?
The orthodox theologians of Rome say it was
categorically true, and with perfect logic hold
the dogma of transubstantiation. Protestant
theologians hold that it was only true by analogy.
Confusions between the categorical and
analogical use of phrases have, alas, led to
confusion in many other directions.
We all are familiar with the statement that
Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd who gives
His life for His sheep. It is a supremely
beautiful statement, and supremely true. We
are also familiar with the other statement
that Jesus is our Passover, the Lamb slain for
men's sins. This also is a supreme and beauti
ful truth. But put the two statements together
and we at once encounter the difficulty that
they cannot, except as analogical statements,
be both true at once. The man who gives
his Ijfe rather than let his sheep be lost cannot
in the same breath be the sheep that is slain
instead of men, or for the sake of men. If
they are put forward as categorical statements
they cannot both be true, one or both must 3

34 Swartbmore Xecture
be false. They can only both be true if they
are (or if one of them is) true as an analogy
only. This is not the place to decide whether
either of them, or which, is categorically true.
I merely point out that they cannot both be so.
Much confusion of thought has prevailed through
the unwisdom of good men in attributing cate
gorical values to things only analogically true.
Another example is afforded by setting side
by side the two statements of Jesus found in
the Fourth Gospel ; " I am the true vine, and
My Father is the Husbandman." " I and
My Father are one." Since the vine and the
vinedresser who prunes it cannot possibly be
the same, it is evident that one or both of these
statements must be analogical only, and not
categorically true.
To take an analogical truth and found
a dogma upon it, and argue about it as
though it were categorically true, is an
illicit process which will end in confusion. Yet
the dogma which claims supremacy for the see
of Rome is based upon an analogical statement.
HINDRANCES TO THE QUEST FOR TRUTH.
Let us return to the quest for truth, and
consider the things that militate against it — the

XCbe (Siuest for TTrutb 3S
feelings and preoccupations which tend against
enquiry. (i) First, there is over-respect for venerated
authority ; the excessive deference to those
whom we rightly revere, and to the sanctions
of long-established custom.
(2) Secondly, there is a false humility which
blinds men from exercising any independent
judgment. (3) Thirdly, there is in many minds an aversion
from doubt ; they dislike to have their judge
ment kept in suspense. They want to have
their minds made up, even if the materials
for arriving at a sound judgement are wanting.
(4) Fourthly, there is a tendency to temporize ;
to accept the expedient, rather than share the
toil of investigating the evidence. This is
inertia rather than timidity; but if allowed
to sway the individual its consequence is in
evitable. Habitual neglect of the faculty of
discriminating the false from the true, the
doubtful from the well-established, will bring
atrophy of the power of discrimination.
(5) Fifthly, and happily rare, is that opposi
tion to truth which arises from the craving for
originality. But unfortunately there are men

36 Swartbmore Xecture
who will be zealous for truth only so long as
it is discovered by themselves.
(6) Carelessness of phrase, inexactness in
the habitual use of language, want of precision
and clarity of thought, all militate against the
apprehension of truth. Overstrained meta
phors' also cause confusion, even when it is plain
that they are intended to be metaphorical
only.
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH IN HISTORY.
Having said this much, let us turn to the
consideration of the quest of truth in history.
History deals with the events of the past ; with
the recorded words of bygone chroniclers, with
the remains left by former generations of builders
and craftsmen; with the ebb and flow of
peoples ; with the rise and fall of civilizations ;
with the customs and traditions of times
gone by. Out of these materials the historian
tries to piece together the past, and to place
it in narrative before us in the present. And
in his case the question, what is truth ? can
» In a recent book of religious verse, containing
contributions by the late poet Francis Thompson, and
some of the younger Meynells, occurs this phrase :
" White as a lamb's blood." Tbe phrase is as untrue
to fact as it is puerile.

Ube (Sluest for Urutb 37
only be satisfactorily answered if he faithfully
observes the canon of truthfulness in all his
works. But this involves an integrity of
purpose which few historians have been able to
preserve unblemished. I speak not of honest
historians who have had insufficient access to
the data of the times concerning which they
wrote, but of those who were not single in their
aim, and wrote with some ulterior purpose to
serve. If a man writes a history in order to
prove some particular doctrine, he becomes
a controversialist whose mind is warped by
some ulterior aim other than that of pure history.
Can such a one write that history with scrupu
lous fidelity to fact untinged with a con
troversial colouring ? The true historian, if
he would tell his story so as to be true to life,
must set it out in the words and deeds of those
who acted it out ; he must nothing extenuate,
nor set down aught in malice. He must conceal
nothing and distort nothing if his work is to
endure. He must strive against the beset
ment of negligence in selecting his material ;
he must abstain /from inventing details in order
to fill up gaps, or to add to the picturesqueness
of the narrative. The father of historians, the
Greek Thucydides, himself a model of unbiassed

38 Swartbmore Xecturc
accuracy, was fully aware of the first of these
temptations ; for he wrote' : —
" Irksome to the many is the quest for truth,
and they betake themselves rather to the readiest
resource." As for the second temptation, it is common
to many minds. Froude, in his essay on the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, tells us that
in perusing modem histories he " has been
struck dumb with wonder at the facility with
which men will fill in chasms in their information
with conjecture ; will guess at the motives
which -have prompted actions ; will pass their
censures, as if all secrets of the past lay out
on an open scroll before them." He adds that
wherever in tracing historical difficulties in
English history he had been fortunate to dis
cover an authentic explanation, he very rarely
found that explanation to confirm any conjecture
either of his own or of any other modem writer.
" The true motive has almost invariably been of a
kind which no modem experience would have
suggested." The incalculable human element
' AraXalTrapos toU iroWots r; f^Tijirts ttjs dX^fffuij, Kal M
t4 h^OL/ui iia\\ov rpiirovTai. Thucydides, Bk. I., 20.
Freely translated this is : — " The multitude takes
little trouble about getting at tbe truth, and prefers a
superficial view of things."

XLbc (Stuest for Urutb 39
in all history defies invention. History does
not repeat itself ; its phenomena are as
unpredictable as earthquakes, not recurrent,
like tides or eclipses. The ages of the past
are truly, in the words of Faust, a book sealed
with seven seals. They can only be re-
constmcted by the historian after the most
diligent and minute research. At. the best,
history is a record pieced together from
very imperfect data — " beyond all question
honeycombed with false statements which must
go for ever uncorrected," says a modern writer,
rather bitterly. Even contemporary history
is full of statements that are the subject of
controversy and denial. How then shall the
historian recover the truth and winnow it from
the accretion of error ? By what test shall he
try the miscellaneous material that comes to
hand ? He cannot cross-examine the witnesses,
who died long ago. He cannot recover the
original manuscripts of centuries past. How
shall he discern, in tradition and legend, the
germ of truth from which they sprang ? What
he can do, and what all practised historians
have done, is to apply the test of criticism.
He can compare dates to see whether they concur
or contradict one another. He can collate

40 Swartbmore Xecture
manuscripts to ascertain their various readings.
He can train himself to detect interpolations
or anachronisms. He can study hand-writings
and styles of composition. He may hunt out
the origins and sources from which some early
writer derived his information. The whole
science and apparatus of historical criticism
has been marvellously extended during the
last hundred years. This seems perhaps like
the development of a destructive process ; but
the casting-out of error is a very necessary
step in the advancement of truth. It at least
clears the way for the letting-in of more light.
It is of littie use for the historian to make
his history a mere collection of bare facts ; he
must present them in an intelligible setting.
A mere collection of bare facts may be very
misleading, though every fact set down may
be true'. The historian must select, and
' A curious illustration of this is afforded by some of
the plates in James Tissot's Life of Our Saviour. Tissot,
who first gained fame as an artist by painting Parisian
boulevard scenes, broke, at the age of fifty, from these
associations, and spent some years in Palestine, wander
ing with true devotion from place to place, carefully
observing scenes and characters, and endeavouring with
the utmost care to reconstruct by art the picture or
panorama of the earthly life of Christ. The expensive
volumes which he produced render what he saw with
the utmost fidelity of his powers. But this very fidelity
to facts results in one remarkable anachronism : for he

trbe (Jiuest for Urutb 41
generalize, and make the dry bones live. We
must not condemn the innumerable historians
who, from Xenophon to Dr. Johnson, have
thrown their history into the form of imaginary
speeches. That is, or used to be, one of the
recognized conventions of the historian's art.
He was expected to state the facts in that form.
He might adopt this convention, and yet not
be guilty of lying, though the modem scientific
spirit in history eschews so doubtful a practice.
The conventions of historical picture-painting
are equally understood, and equally doubtful.
They may be shams : but they are frank shams
that deceive no one.
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH IN SCIENCE.
In the physical sciences the quest for truth
has, during recent centuries, and particularly
in the last, made great advances. And these
advances seem to possess a greater intrinsic
importance, perhaps, than their real magnitude
warrants, because scientific discoveries, unlike
discoveries in history or morals, possess the
reproduces amongst the plants that flourish in Sj^rian
scenery the Opuntias (prickly pears) and Yuccas, Agaves
and Aloes, which have been introduced in recent
centuries, and are natives of America — ^plants which
Jesus never saw.

42 Swartbmore Xecture
precious property that they are capable of in
dependent verification by experiment. For
that very reason a training in scientific methods
possesses a special value of its own. In science,
far more than in history or philosophy, it is
possible to arrive at something like real cer
tainty. The scientific fact once discovered
requires no citation of authority to pro
cure its acceptance : it can be demonstrated
over again' by an independent observer. In
history, when confronted by an alleged fact, one
must ask who or what is the authority for this. In
physical science the demonstrated fact is its own
authority. The circumstance that many facts in
physical science are of a numerical kind-;-as
for example the fact that mercury freezes at a
temperature of forty degrees below zero — or
the fact that gold is nineteen-and-a-third times
as heavy as an equal bulk of water — gives a
' As I write the discovery is announced, April, 1915,
of a ninth satellite of Jupiter. It is excessively minute,
probably not more than ten miles in diameter, travelling
along an orbit with a sweep of some fourteen million
miles. It is so small as to be invisible not only to the
unaided eye, but invisible even to the eye when aided
by the most powerful telescopes ; having been detected
by the photographic image it left on a sensitive plate
after prolonged exposure. Yet there is no reason to
distrust the reality of the discovery. At other observa
tories the observations will be repeated and tested by
independent observers.

Ube (Sluest for Urutb 43
precision to scientific thought that is lacking
in other departments. Unlike the facts in
history,' the facts of science, or most of them,
can be verified by repetition, and measured
quantitatively. Hence in physical science the
seeker acquires a definiteness of grasp, a clear
ness of view of the relation between cause and
effect not otherwise attainable. He learns in
the physical sciences, as he leams in no other
department of knowledge, what is meant by
a rigid proof. The distinction between a thing
definitely proven, and a thing that, though
possibly tme, has not been really proved to be
so*, is one that impresses itself upon his mind.
His thought is cleaner-cut, and the demonstrated
facts are to him more sharply demarcated, than
would be possible to one who had no
acquaintance with science and its methods.
¦ Some numerical statements handed down in
history it is now impossible to test ; as for example
the number of ships given by Homer as attacking Troy,
or the number of fishes stated in John's Gospel to have
been taken in the miraculous draught.
» Euclid's propositions were true before he found the
proofs for them. They were no more true after he had
proved them than they were before. But the difference
lies here. His demonstration had garnered them into
the storehouse of definitely ascertained geometrical
facts. Men knew not only that they were true, but that
they had been proved to be so. Further, they had
learned what sort of demonstration it is that constitutes
a rigid proof.

44 Swartbmore Xecture
The oldest of the exact sciences were arithmetic,
geometry and astronomy. At what age in
prehistoric times the multiplication table was
discovered is unknown. Probably it was re
garded as a divine revelation in its day. Plato
wrote over the door of his academy at Athens :
" Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here."
It was his mode of requiring that his pupils
should have at least some training in exact
thinking and in the use of abstract ideas.
The invention of the calendar, the discoveries
of the periodic movements of the planets, the
perception that the tides depended on the moon,
the discovery that eclipses recurred in definite
cycles that could be predicted, are all amongst
the early advances in the quest for scientific
truth. The definite conquest of the principles
of mechanics by Archimedes, Galileo, and Newton
came later. It is in the study of the physical
sciences that men have learned of the existence
of persistent relations, inviolable correspon
dences between fact and fact, which go by the
name of natural laws. The relations which
they express appear to have been imposed by
the Creator from the beginning, to be inherent
in the very nature of things, and to be in cease
less operation. They existed ages before man

XTbe (Siuest for Urutb 45
discovered them, and since their discovery by
man there is no evidence that they have for
one instant ceased to operate or been suspended.
Time goes on ; the planets circle round the
sun, the moon revolves in her course, the earth
spins steadily on her axis. Man did not make
these laws, nor can he break them. Neither
his virtues nor his crimes have influence on
them. Neither his fears nor his prayers have
the slightest relation to them. He cannot stop
an eclipse by conjuration. He cannot change
the multiplication table by prayer or fasting.
The great generalizations of science have been
discovered by patient observation and experi
ment, by classification and inference, by framing
and testing hypotheses, by rejection of the
inadequate and verification of the valid. They
have resulted from the long continued efforts
of many minds. In the inorganic world we
have amongst the chief discoveries the law
of conservation of matter, the law of universal
gravitation, the law of the conservation of
energy, the law of the absolute velocity of light
in space, the laws of chemical combination and
equivalence. In the organic world the great
laws of heredity and descent, of development
and evolution, though not capable of being

46 Swartbmore Xecture
formulated in the same quantitative terms
as the laws of inorganic matter, have been the
result of no less zealous and careful search.'
Where the old method of syllogistic reasoning
failed as an implement to discover new traths,

' In the descriptive sciences, botany, geology, zoology,
and the like, patient industry and intelligent examina
tion of facts have jrielded no less remarkable results.
Darwin was pre-eminent as a naturalist of transparent
honesty, rather than as a philosopher. Yet his
wonderful insight into the relations between things
led him to a generalization that has profoundly changed
the foundations of philosophic thought. Through the
middle part of the nineteenth century the advance in
geology created burning controversies, because its
indisputable conclusions as to the age of the globe
clashed with the preconceptions of theologians, much in
the same way as the astronomical advances of Copernicus
and Galileo had clashed with the dicta of scholastic
theology two centuries previously. Men refused in the
nineteenth century to acquaint themselves with the
testimony of the rocks, and the evidence of the fossil
remains, lest they should seem to countenance any doubt
of the inspiration of the Old Testament ; just as in the
seventeenth century certain ecclesiastics refused to look
through the telescope lest they should see the spots on
the sun and so discredit the writings of Saint Thomas
Aquinas. But geology won acceptance because the
plain evidence of the facts could not be burked. Even
so recently as a hundred and fifty years ago it was
generally believed that fossils were mere accidental
concretions of mineral matter imitating animal forms.
Voltaire seems to have seen that this was utterly unlikely,
yet he continued to hold this explanation. Fearing,
however, lest the occurrence of fossil fishes in the rocks
of the Alps would lend support to the Biblical account
of the Deluge, which he disbelieved, he suggested that
they were the remains of fishes^brought there by pilgrims
in time past I

Ube Ciuest for Urutb 47
the modem method of enquiry by experiment
and inference, by inductive generalization and
subsequent verification, has been amazingly
fruitful in the better understanding of physical
nature. But the very precision of its intellectual
processes and the inevitableness of the garnered
results are sometimes urged against it as tending
to cramp or warp the perception of other kinds
of trath. It is charged sometimes with leading
men to reject or despise other kinds of truth
which have not been discovered by the same
sort of process, and which cannot be verified
by experiment, weighed in the balance, or
analysed in the test-tube. Doubtless there is
some ground for this reflection. In any depart
ment of human activity the too-exclusive
exercise of any one faculty or set of faculties
tends to bring about a one-sided development ;
and the neglect of any faculty tends to its atrophy.
Perhaps the worst that can be said against
devotion to the discovery of truth in the physical
sciences is that it tends to impose a necessitarian
or determinist view of existence. When we find in
physics that through all there runs an inescapable
relation of cause and effect ; that nothing happens
except that which follows from antecedent causes ;
we are apt to conclude — ^though quite erroneously

48 Swartbmore Xecturc
— that the whole world is ruled by fate, by
fixed and determinate necessity, affording
no scope for free-will or for the operation of
moral forces. Such a view' would reduce
the universe to a mere mechanism and remove
all moral responsibility* from man ; a view
to be stemly repelled.
It was remarked above that part of the
scientific method in ascertainment of truth
is the framing and testing of hypotheses.
When observation or experience has shown a
number of facts, one is desirous of drawing
' In Baron Friedrich von Hiigel's wonderful book
on The Mystical Element in Religion, there is a section
(Vol. I., pp. 40 seq.) devoted to the meaning of science
for the religious temper, in which he sets down three
characteristics of the scientific spirit. These he regards
as (i) a passion for clearness ; (2) the great concept of
law prevailing amongst phenomena, which, however, he
regards as leading to determinism ; (3) a vigorous
Monism, by which he means that view which conceives
that " our sources of information are but one — ^the
reasoning, reckoning intellect, backed up by readily
repeatable, readily verifiable experiment. The resultant
information is but one — the Universe, within and without,
a strict unbroken mechanism." Contenting myself
with modestly denying that all (or most) scientific men
are so iiorn$ in their views, I rejoice to note that in a
later passage (Vol. II., p. 373) Baron von Hiigel quotes
with approval the sentiment, " For Religion also.
Science is a bath of purification."
' A very excellent chapter on the scientific spirit is
to be found in Dr. R. F. Horton's essaj^ entitled Grtat
Issues (1909).

Ube (Sluest for Urutb 49
inferences from them to elicit either some
general correlation between them or some
additional facts. It may be that some of the
observations are incorrectly made ; or they
may so diverge from one another that any
inference is doubtful. What the scientific
enquirer does is to hazard a number of hypo
theses, some of them probable, others quite
improbable, and to test them one by one to
see which is right,' or which of them is nearest
to the truth. For every hypothesis that tums
out correct he may have to frame a score that
prove invalid. Persons who do not under
stand this mode of arriving at truth often regard
this as a very shaky procedure, and condemn
it as trpng to arrive at truth by means of
error. But it is really an every-day process of
' Pasteur insisted strongly on the importance of this
process. " On ne fait rien sans id6es prficonfues ; il
faut avoir seulement la sagesse de ne croire X leurs
d^uctions qu'autant que I'experience les confirme.
Les id^es prficongues, soumises au controle s6v6re de
I'expferimentation, sont la flamme vivante des sciences
d'observation : les id6es fixes en sont le danger."
Pasteur, Histoire d'un Savant, p. 28.
This may be rendered : " One achieves nothing
without preconceived ideas ; only one must have the
wisdom not to believe in any deductions from them
except so far as experience confirms them. Preconceived
ideas, submitted to the severe test of experiment, are the
Uving flame of the sciences of observation ; fixed ideas
are its danger."

50 Swartbmore Xecture
thought. If I have mislaid my fountain pen,
I guess the likely places where I may have left
it, and then go to verify my guess. If I guess
wrongly six times before the right guess occurs
to me, I am really all the .while seeking after
truth. It is better to make wrong guesses
than to be in such a muddled state of mind as
to be unable to guess at all. It was some
thought of this kind that made Francis Bacon
say : " Truth emerges more quickly from
error than from confusion," and which led
Babbage in his Bridgewater Treatise to declare :
"It is a condition of our race that we must
ever wade through error in our advance towards
truth : and it may even be said that in many
cases we exhaust almost every variety of error
before we attain the desired goal." Another
aspect of the same matter is expounded by
Lord Acton in his Lectures on Modern History
(p. 21).
" If men of science owe anything to us, we
may learn much from them that is essential.
For they can show how to test proof, how to
secure fullness and soundness in induction,
how to restrain and to employ with safety
hypothesis and analogy. It is they who hold
the secret of the mysterious property of mind

Ube Ciuest for Urutb 51
by which error ministers to truth, and truth
slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is
the logic of discovery, the demonstration of
the advance of knowledge and the develop
ment of ideas, which, as the earthly wants and
passions of men remain almost unchanged,
are the charter of progress and the vital spark
in history. Remember Darwin taking note only
of those passages that raised difficulties in
his way ; the French philosopher complaining
that his work stood still, because he found no
more contradicting facts ; Baer, who thinks
error treated thoroughly nearly as remunera
tive as truth, by the discovery of new object-
tions ; for, as Sir Robert Ball warns us, it is
by considering objections that we often learn.
Faraday declares that ' in knowledge, that man
only is to be condemned and despised who is
not in a state of transition.'"
Let us put beside this word of Faraday's
another, from his Experimental Researches in
Electricity, Art. 3362 : —
" It is better to be aware, or even to suspect,
we are wrong, than to be unconsciously or
easily led to accept an error as right."
The circumstance that scientific enquiry
proceeds by observation and inference and ex-

52 Swartbmore Xecturc
periment, and admits no argument from meta
physics, nor any that appeals to religious
authority, was in the outset often misunder
stood. It was deemed to be irreligious,' because
it did not test its discoveries by any appeal
to the Bible or to the dogmas of the Church
Councils. ' The following extract from Professor F. Gotch's
lecture on Some Aspects of the Scientific Method (Oxford,
1906), shows the nature of such attaclra : —
" Tracts were written fulminating against the Royal
Society (formed in 1661), which was rightly regarded
as the headquarters of the New Philosophy ; attacks
and rejoinders were as thick as leaves in June. Sprat
found it desirable to write a history of the foundation
and work of the Society in order to demonstrate that it
did not exist for the purpose of upsetting Church and
State, but that when fully understood the New Philo
sophy would be found to be a bulwark of Christianity,
not its destroyer. In an article upon the Royal Society,
included in the Quarrels of Authors, the elder Disraeli
gives an interesting account of this literary controversy.
From this it appears that the zeal of the opponents often
outran their discretion ; for not only the aims, but many
of the obvious practical results of scientific inquiry were
inveighed against. Crosse, the vicar of Chew Magna
in Somersetshire, anathematized the Royal Society as
a Jesuiticsd conspiracy against both society and
religion ; he regarded the use of the newly invented
optick glasses as immoral, since they perverted the
natural sight and made all things appear in an unnatural
and, therefore, false light. It was easy, he said, to
prove the deceitful and pernicious character of spectacles,
for take two different pairs of spectacle glasses and use
them both at the same time, you will not see so well as
with one singly ; therefore your microscopes and
telescopes, which have more than one glass, are
impostors. Hostility went further than this ; it was
declared to be sinful to a-ssist the eyes* which were

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 53
But whatever the besetments of the scientific
spirit, it seems incontestable that one feature
of it is its abhorence of all sophistication.
Its one fear is to believe a lie. Writing in
An Englishman's Religion, of those who have
been brought up in families where a regard
for truthfulness was a first consideration,
H. G. Wood says : —
" There is a real connection between this
dislike of the lie and the scientific impulse.
I think it will be found that the ranks of
scientific investigation have welcomed some
of their ablest recruits from men who have
been reared in this atmosphere."
Any one who has the time, and the requisite
training, will find abundant matter dealing
with scientific method, and with its bearing
on philosophy and ethics, in Dr. J. T. Merz's
masterly volumes on The History of European
Thought in the Nineteenth Century. The
Chapters on the Astronomical view of Nature,
the Atomic view of Nature, and the Vitalistic
adapted to the capacity of the individual, whether good,
bad or indifferent. It was argued that society at large
would become demoralized by the use of spectacles ;
they would give one man an unfair advantage over his
fellow, and every man an unfair advantage over every
woman, who could not be expected, on aesthetic and
intellectual grounds, to adopt the practice."

54 Swartbmore Xecturc
view of Nature, to name no others, will well
repay the reader, who cannot but be struck
with the author's breadth and impartiality.
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH IN
RELIGION AND MORALS.
I pass from the quest for truth in the do
mains of history and science to the quest for
truth in the domains of religion and morals.
Here, if anywhere, with insistence, resurges
the question : What is Truth ? How are
we to find it ? How are we to recognize it ?
By what authority are we to test it ?
First, let us make very sure that what we
desire to find is nothing else than the Trath
itself : not some one phase of it that would
be agreeable to us, but the Truth for its own
sake. Let us make very sure that whatever
harm may come to us from error in history
or in science, from accepting as trae the gar
bled history or the sophisticated science, a
thousand-fold harm will come to us if in the
vital issues of faith and morals' we are any
' " The praise belongs to Socrates, of having taught
men, four hundred years before Christ, to be as
scrupulously exact in testing by experience their moral
ideas, as they are now in proving by experiment their
physical theories." — Blackie, Four Phases of Morals,
P- 57.

Ube (Jiuest for Urutb 55
the less scrupulous, or palter with the Truth.
In each domain there exists its own besetting
weakness : in history, the tendency to romance ;
in science, to agnosticism ; in religion, to
credulity. Is it any greater sin to reject a
doubtful thing because it is doubtful, than
to accept a doubtful thing on the off-chance
that it may hereafter' be found true ? Surely
in matters of religious belief we ought to make
it our business to be as clear in vision, as pure
in heart, as cool in head, as we would be in any
other matter. Casuistry is even more deadly
in religion than in history or science. The
caution is necessary because the habitual
ecclesiastical temper is to deprecate all
independent enquiry, and to side^with authority
rather than face the facts.
But, you will say, we are not bound to take
' The acceptance of any revelation or dogma (even
if it should afterwards prove true) which is offered to
us from without, and which is not supported by
evidence that satisfies the reason, is credulity. I
deliberately use the words " from without " for reasons
which will appear in a later section of this lecture.
Flippant unbelief is worse than earnest credulity ;
but flippant (that is undiscriminating) belief is worse
than earnest incredulity, being, in fact, superstition.
" Faith can accept things which are as yet unproved ;
but to cling to what in your heart of hearts you suspect
of being disproved is not faith, but mere delusion."
Canon Streeter, Restatement and Reunion, p. 42.

56 Swartbmore Xecture
the ecclesiastical view : we are free to examine
evidence and make our choice in matters of belief.
No ; we are not free. Not free, because we
cannot escape from the inevitable effect of the
atmosphere and environment in which we
have been reared. Strive as we will, we cannot
rid ourselves, even if we would, of that back
ground of religious life in which we have been
brought up. We are influenced at every end
and turn by the tacit assumptions, the pre
suppositions, the current modes of thought and
expression, the prejudices of education and
habit, no less than by the silent weight of tradi
tion, which, whether we accept it or not, in
fluences our judgement. But if, frankly recog
nizing the presence of this tendency to take
the colour of our environment, we would desire
to regain our healthy freedom from prejudice,
there are surely means that we may adopt to
prevent the spirit of tmthfulness from being
warped by that from which we cannot escape.
Of such steps towards the preservation of
spiritual sanity of judgement the first is this :
The recognition of the principle that it is wrong
to accept as wholly true anything whjch is half-
doubtful. Better reject that which you know to
be half-doubtful than accept it on the chance

Ube diuest for Urutb 57
that it may be partly trae. Better reject the
fruit that is obviously half-rotten than swallow
it because some of it may be good. The "sin of
sophisticating what we can perceive of truth,"
by hope of reward or dread of consequence,
is a very real danger.
The shadow, cloaked from head to foot.
Who keeps the key of all the creeds,
dwells not far from all of us. Her name is
superstition : for it is superstition that binds
men to the trammels of those dark ages
when the living faith was forced into the
artificial bonds of human dogma.
PIOUS FRAUDS.
If we retum to Apostolic times, we see
that even before the consolidation of the then
prevalent beliefs into set forms as creeds, the
spirit of untruth was at work. Or, rather,
shall we say, oriental habits of thought, which
did not exalt truthfulness for its own sake, had
been at work, warping the Apostolic tradition
and sophisticating the simphcity of believers.
Actually in the period between the death of
Christ and the committal into writing of the
Gospels, legend had been adding itself to history
as part of the tradition : and the centuries

s8 Swartbmore Xecture
immediately following witnessed accretions
around the core of truth. The Fathers of the
post-apostolic period had no such single-minded
regard for naked truth as would be now required.
According to St. Jerome, we must distinguish
between what the Early Fathers set down
as truth and what they wrote " dialectically,"
that is argumentatively. They did not hesitate
to postulate in argument matters which
they were conscious could not be main
tained as fact. At a later stage even so
eminent a Father as St. John Chrysostom,
when defending himself against attack, openly
advocated' the lawfulness of lying in a good
' The passage occurs in the work of St. John
Chrysostom On the Priesthood. The three paragraphs
cited are from the English Translation by B. ,(5)wper
Harris, published 1866, p. 19.
§ 58. But if an act be not always wrong, but becomes
bad or good according to the motive of the doer, cease
to accuse me for deceiving, and show me that I devised
it for evil ; for so long as this is not done, it would only
be just that such as desire to be well disposed should
not bring rebukes and accusations upon him that has
practised deceit, but should even express their approval
of him.
§ 59. For deceit, when well-timed and practised
with a right intention, is so profitable that many have
often been punished because they have not circumvented.
§ 63. We may find the use of deceit to be great and
needful, not only in war, but also in peace ; and not in
affairs of state only, but also at home, — by the husband
towards the wife, and by the wife towards her husband,
and by the father towards the son, and by friend towards
friend, and even by children towards a father.

Zbc (Siuest for Urutb 59
cause, and in support quoted from the Old
Testament (i Sam. xix. 12 and i Sam. xx. 11)
deceits practised as stratagems.
In contemplating this lapse from truthful
ness, we cannot forget that already in that age
the doctrine that there was no salvation outside
the pale of the Church had gained acceptance.
Suppose a fanatical priest, who ardentiy be
lieved in this doctrine of exclusive salvation
and who wished to rescue from eternal damna
tion some tmbeheving outsider ; what tempta
tion then would beset him to resort to
stratagems, and pious frauds, and false miracles,
in order to allure the wanderer into the Church ?
If he could " save " the heretic, whether by
downright falsehood or by distortion of the
trath, would he not find the pious temptation
irresistible ?
Chrysostom's doctrine of pardonable deceit for
pious ends was not, however, a solitary instance.
The loss of a sense of the imperative duty
of truthfulness on the part of the theologians
of the third and fourth centuries is one of the
most significant facts in the degeneration that
was creeping over the early Church : and
the tendency grew as corruption spread and
deepened. We have only to read the historian

6o Swartbmore Xecturc
Rufinus (De Adulteratione) to see to what
lengths this lying spirit eventually led them.
There is a remarkable collection of examples
in Hamack's AUchrist. Litt. Geschichten (Vol I.,
pp. xiii., et seq.). Hamack himself says
(History of Dogma, Vol. III., p. 184) :— " Some,
however, went much farther in this matter.
As they did not hold themselves bound to
stick to the truth in dealing with an opponent,
and thus had forgotten the command of the
gospel, so they went on in theology to impute
untrathfulness to the Apostles, citing the
dispute between Paul and Peter, and to Christ
(who concealed His ommiscience, etc.). They
even charged God with falsehood in dealing
with His enemy, the devil, as is proved by the
views held by Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and
most of the later Fathers', conceming re-
' This astounding version of the doctrine of Atone
ment — ^the earliest attempt to frame a logical theory
of that matter, and one which lasted till the time of
Anselm and Abelard — is itself a development from the
teaching of Origen. The following passage from
Harnack {op. cit., Vol. III., p. 307) states the case : —
" He [IrensBUs] iurther insisted that Christ had
delivered us not from a state of infirmity, but from the
power of the devil, redeeming those estranged from God;
and unnaturally imprisoned, not by force, but with due
regard to justice. Origen, however, was the first to
explain the passion and death of Christ with logical
precision under the points of view of ransom and
sacrifice. With regard to the former he was the first

Ube (Stuest for Urutb 6i
demption from the power of the devil. But if
God himself deceived his enemy by stratagem
(fna fraus), then so also might man. Under
such circumstances it cannot be wondered at
that forgeries were the order of the day. And
this was the case."
Theologians who could calmly teach an act
of deceit on the part of God, that they might
thus bolster up the then orthodox doctrine
of the Atonement, were assuredly no safe
guides in their presentation of trath. It is
in the writings of the same historian, Rufinus,
who recorded the prevalence of the lying
spirit amongst the fathers, that we meet with
the story that the Apostles had jointly
composed the document known to us as the
to set up the theory that the devil had acquired a legal
claim on men, and therefore to regard the death of
Christ (or His soul) as a ransom paid to the devil. This
Marcionite doctrine of price and barter was already
supplemented by Origen with the assumption of an act
Of deceit on the part of God. It was, in spite of an
energetic protest, taken up by bis disciples, and after
wards carried out still more offensively. It occurs in
Gregory of Nyssa, who {Catech, 15-27), in dealing with
the notion of God, treats it broadly and repulsively.
We find it in Ambrose, who speaks of the pia fraus ;
in Augustine, and in Leo I. It assumes its worst form
in Gregory I. : the humanity of Christ was the bait ;
the fish, the devil, snapped at it, and was left hanging
on the invisible hook, Christ's divinity. It proves that
the Fathers bad gradually lost any fixed conception of
the holiness and righteousness of God."

62 Swartbmore Xecture
Apostles' Creed ; each Apostle contributing
one of its twelve clauses. Rufinus says that
this opinion cannot be traced earlier than the
middle of the fourth century. A modem
scholar attributes that Creed to the church of
Aquileia. It appears to have been developed
from the " symbol " or confession required of
converts on their baptism, at Rome. It
certainly possesses no Apostolic warrant.
We have travelled a long way from the
hypothetical cases of casuistry discussed on an
easlier page (p. 17) as to the stress of excep
tional circumstances that might excuse a lie.
They involve isolated moral judgments, and are
so rare that they can but be exceptions hardly
affecting the general veracity of the person
betrayed into such a lapse. But between them
and the pious frauds sanctioned by the theo
logians lies a whole horizon of difference ; for
these are elevated into a regular doctrine and
systematized, producing a habit of persistent
deceitfulness. On this matter the historian
Lecky has spoken plainly.'
" The Fathers laid down as a distinct proposition that
pious frauds were justifiable, and even laudable';
¦ History of Rationalism, Vol. I., p. 396.
' Lecky here refers to the passage from St. John
Chrysostom already quoted, p. 58, above.

Ube iSiuest for Urutb 63
and even if they had not laid this down they would
have practised them as a necessary consequence of their
doctrine of exclusive salvation. Immediately all
ecclesiastical literature became tainted with a spirit of
the most unblushing mendacity. Heathenism was to
be combated, and therefore prophecies of Christ by
Orpheus and the Sibyls were forged, lying wonders were
multiplied, and ceaseless calumnies poured upon those
who, like Julian, opposed the faith. Heretics were to
be convinced, and therefore old writings or complete
forgeries were habitually opposed to the forged Gospels,
The veneration of relics and the monastic system were
introduced, and therefore iimumerable miracles were
attributed to the bones of saints or to the prayers of
hermits, and were solemnly asserted by the most
eminent of the Fathers." The tendency was not
confined to those Eastem nations which had been always
almost destitute of the sense of truth ; it triumphed
wherever the supreme importance of dogmas was held.
Generation after generation it became more universal ;
it continued till the very sense of truth and the very
love of truth seemed blotted out from the minds of men.
" That this is no exaggerated picture of the conditions
at which the Middle Ages arrived, is known to all who
have any acquaintance with its literature ; for during
that gloomy period the only scholars in Europe were
priests and monks, who conscientiously believed that no
' Here Lecky refers to J. H. Newman's Apologia pro
vita sua (Appendix, p. 77), where he says : — " The Greek
Fathers thought that, when there was a justa causa, an
untruth need not be a lie. St. Augustine took another
view, though with great misgiving." Obviously a
just cause would include that " zeal for God's honour "
which lighted the fires of the Inquisition, and issued the
Forged Decretals. Well might Augustine exclaim :
" God is thought to be truer than He is pronounced
to be; He is truer than He is thought to be."

64 Swartbmore Xecture
amount of falsehood was reprehensible which conduced
to the edification of the people. Not only did they
pursue with the grossest calumny every enemy to their
faith, not only did they encircle every saint with a halo
of palpable fiction, not only did they invent tens of
thousands of miracles for the purpose of stimulating
devotion — they also very naturally carried into all other
subjects the indifference to truth they had acquired in
theology. All their writings, and more especially their
histories, became tissues of the wildest fables, so
grotesque and at the same time so audacious, that they
were the wonder of succeeding ages. And the very men
who scattered these fictions broadcast over Christendom
taught at the same time that credulity was a virtue and
scepticism a crime. As long as tbe doctrine of exclusive
salvation was believed and realized, it was necessary for
the peace of mankind that they should be absolutely
certain of the truth of what they believed ; in order to
be so certain, it was necessary to suppress adverse
arguments ; and in order to effect this object, it was
necessary that there should be no critical or sceptical
spirit in Europe. A habit of boundless credulity was
therefore a natural consequence of the doctrine of
exclusive salvation ; and not only did this habit natur
ally produce a luxuriant crop of falsehood, it was itself
the negation of the spirit of truth. For the man who
really loves truth cannot possibly subside into a con
dition of contented credulity. He will pause long before
accepting any doubtful assertion, he willcaref ully balance
opposing arguments, he will probe every anecdote with
scrupulous care, he will endeavour to divest himself of
every prejudice, he will cautiously abstain from attribut
ing to probabilities the authority of certainties. These
are the essential characteristics of the spirit of truth,
and by their encouragement or suppression we can judge
how far a system of doctrine coincides with tliat spirit."

Ube diuest for Urutb 65
AU this is conceded even by modem
theologians. Dean Milman in his History of
Christianity, Vol. iii., p. 358, says : —
" That some of the Christian legends were deliberate
forgeries can scarcely be questioned ; the principle of
pious fraud appeared to justify this mode of working
on the popular mind ; it was admitted and avowed.
To deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service
as to hallow deceit itself."
Canon Mozley, in his Bampton Lectures, when
discussing ecclesiastical miracles, declares : —
" It is but too plain that in later years, as the Church
advanced in worldly power and position, besides the
mistakes of imagination and impression, a temper of
deliberate and audacious fraud rose up within the
Christian body and set itself in action for the spread
of certain doctrines, as well as for the great object of
the concentration of Church power in one absolute
monarchy." (p 226.)
PARABLES.
Far as the poles asunder from any suspicion of
untruth are the parables by which all teachers,
and in particular the Greatest Teacher of all,
have sought to convey spiritual traths to minds
unversed in abstract thinking. Similitudes
chosen from common events andnatural objects
are the surest means of bringing home to the
unsophisticated mind lessons of spiritual
import. The only objection which the sternest

66 Swartbmore Xecture
moralist could urge against the use of parables
is the risk lest the half-educated should mistake
them for history. That this danger is not
imaginary may be illustrated by an anecdote in
Mrs. Jameson's History of Our Lord, vol. i.,
P- 373-
" I know that I was not very young when I enter
tained no more doubt of the substantial existence of
Lazarus and Dives than of John the Baptist and Herod ;
when the Good Samaritan was as real a personage as any
of the Apostles ; when I was full of sincerest pity for
those poor, foolish virgins who had forgotten to trim their
lamps, and thought them — in my secret soul — rather
hardly treated. This impression of the literal sacred
truth of the parables I have since met with in many
children, and in the uneducated but devout hearers and
readers of the Bible ; and I remember that when I
once tried to explain to a good old woman the proper
meaning of the word parable, and that the story of the
prodigal son was not a fact, she was scandalized — she
was quite sure that Jesus would never have told any
thing to the disciples that was not true. Thus she
settled the matter in her own mind, and I thought it best
to leave it there undisturbed."
Has it ever occurred to you whence it is that
the parables derive their peculiar force ? Why
should similitudes drawn from the growth of
plants and the events of life, human and
animal, take a really profound hold upon us ?
Why should they avail to teach us of those
inward and spiritual things that constitute the

Cbe CJuest for Urutb 67
higher trath ? Simply because all life is one ;
and growth and development ran through all.
As we are leaming through scientific investi
gation to understand more fully the physical
world, and to grasp its phenomena, their inter
actions and their ordered sequences, so we are
coming to learn new meanings in their parallels
in the spiritual world. Christ's saj^ing " first
the blade, then the ear " ; His dictum that
" men do not gather grapes of thoms " ; His
likening of the kingdom of Heaven to a ferment
working in the lump, are all illustrations taken
from the physical world, the full significance of
which modem science has greatly deepened.
Read in the light of recent advances in science,
the parables teach us new lessons in the one
ness of trath. Perhaps we shall some day
perceive that the story of the curse on the fig
tree — ^which is a trae parable of the fate over
taking Israel's lack of faith — ^is a parable which
has been mistaken for a narrative. As a
narrative it rings false and purposeless. As a
parable, it is profoundly trae.
LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS.
Remote, too, from the pious frauds of
ecclesiastical schemers are the legends of the

68 Swartbmore Xecture
saints, which grew up like beautiful flowers
around the memories of men and women
who had been venerated when living for their
devotion and good works. If we read them
to-day with a smile for their naive simplicity,
we must also love them for their obvious
sincerity. To turn the pages, for example, of the
Fioretti of Saint Francis of Assisi, is to breathe
the air of that uncritical child-like piety which
the self-denying labours of Francis, and his
spiritual unity with all creation infused into
his unsophisticated followers. They tell how he
preached to the fishes, and was brother to the
birds; what miracles of goodness and healing
he wrought amongst the poor. It is all so lovely
that the obvious lack of critical insight and
defiance of all the laws of evidence do not
offend. But if, in a moment of stemer thought,
we put the question, is it trae ? something rises
up within us to say, no; it is not historically
true ; it belongs to another sphere — ^that of
devout imagination. Within that sphere it
is no more untrue than the Pilgrim's Progress
is untrue. But the Fioretti differs from Pilgrim's
Progress in this respect; Pilgrim's Progress is
a parable which was deliberately written as such,
while the Fioretti is a legend which grew.

Ube (Stuest for Urutb 69
Legends grow, they are not made. They are
not written as history is written, nor may
they take the place of history ; though we find
history and legend often inextricably mixed
as they have been transcribed by undiscrimi
nating pens. But he were a very superficial
moralist who would condemn the pious legend
as a pack of lies. Only remember that in the
interests of trath, we must, in the last resort,
be prepared to divide, as with a sharp dissecting
knife, between the historic fact and the pious
folklore which the unleamed scribe has thus
intertwined. In what way such stories arose, what purpose
they subserved, and how they took form, has
been well told by Froude in words that cannot
be bettered.
" The lives of the saints are always simple, often
childish, seldom beautiful ; yet, as Goethe observed,
if without beauty, they are always good. . . . Wher
ever the Catholic faith was preached, stories like
these sprang out of the heart of the people, and grew and
shadowed over the entire believing mind of the Catholic
world. Wherever church was founded, or soil was
consecrated for the long resting-place of those who had
died in the faith ; wherever the sweet bells of convent or
of monastery were heard in the evening air, charming
tbe unquiet world to rest and remembrance of God, there
dwelt the memory of some apostle who had laid tbe first
stone, there was the sepulchre of some martyr whose

70 Swartbmore Xecturc
relics reposed beneath the altar, of some confessor who
had suffered there for his Master's sake, of some holy
ascetic who in silent self -chosen austerity had woven a
ladder there of prayer and penance, on which the angels
of God were believed to have ascended and descended.
It is not a phenomenon of an age or of a century ; it
is characteristic of the history of Christianity. From
the time when the first preachers of the faith passed out
from their homes by that quiet Galilean lake, to go to
and fro over the earth, and did their mighty work, and
at last disappeared and were not any more seen, these
sacred legends began to grow. Those who had once
known the Apostles, who had drawn from their lips the
blessed message of light and life, one and all would
gather together what fragments they could find of their
stories. Rumours blew in from all the winds. They
had been seen here, had been seen there, in the furthest
comers of the earth, preaching, contending, suffering,
prevailing. Affection did not stay to scrutinize. . . .
So, in those first Christian communities, travellers came
through from east and west ; legions on the march, or
caravans of wandering merchants ; and one had been in
Rome, and seen Peter disputing with Simon Magus ;
another in India, where he had heard St. Thomas preach
ing to the Brahmins, a third brought with him, from the
wilds of Britain, a staff which he had cut, as he said,
from a thorn tree, the seed of which St. Joseph had sown
there, and which had grown to its full size in a single
night, making merchandise of the precious relic out of
the credulities of the believers. So the legends grew,
and were treasured up, and loved, and trusted ; and
alas I all which we have been able to do with them is
to call them lies, and to point a shallow moral on the
impostures and credulities of the early Catholics.
. . . For fourteen hundred years these stories held
their place, and rang on from age to age, from century to

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 71
century ; as the new faith widened its boundaries, and
numbered ever more and more great names of men and
women who had fought and died for it, so long their
histories, living in the hearts of those for whom they
laboured, laid hold of them and filled them ; and the
devout imagination, possessed with what was often no
more than the rumour of a name, bodied it out into life,
and form, and reality. And, doubtless, if we try them
by any historical canon, we have to say that quite
endless untruths grew in this way to be beUeved among
men ; and not believed in only, but held sacred passion
ately and devoutly ; not filling the history books only,
not only serving to amuse and edify the refectory, or
to furnish matter for meditation in the cell, but claiming
days for themselves of special remembrance, entering
into liturgies and inspiring prayers, forming the spiritual
nucleus of the hopes and fears of millions of human
lives." — Short Studies, First Series, Vol. II., pp. 203-206.
HISTORY AND FOLKLORE.
All this is well and wisely said. But it must
be remembered that human nature, though
modified from clime to clime, remains much
the same. Pious legends are growing up
amongst the simple folk to-day, as they grew
around the mediaeval saints, the Fathers, the
Apostles. I have myself seen devout Italian
peasants kneeling reverently before the tomb
of Alessandro Volta, the famous electrician,
evidently treating him as one whose bones
possessed saintly virtures. Around the
memory of Garibajdi a rich crop of legend

73 Swartbmore Xecture
has already sprang up. No age has been free
from like tendencies ; and particularly in the
East there has always been an atmosphere of
vivid colouring ready to condense as a nimbus
around the heads of the great ones. In an age
which treasured up the legendary stories ; which
embroidered the robe of history with uncritical
fancies ; which valued the adoring legend because
it was adoring; there was no wilful untrath
in thus decking out fact with fancy. It is the
natural and spontaneous way of imaginative
children.' The mythical story narrated of
the saint or martyr was no more a lie than the
golden halo which the painter depicted around
his head. Neither was trae as history ; neither
existed in fact ; but devoted hearts would
have been the poorer had both halo and legend
been banished. How naturally such legends
arise may be learned from the thirteenth century
narrative of the speaking cracifix which is said
to have been possessed by Bonaventura, the
origin of which is known to be a conversation
between him and Saint Thomag Aquinas.
' " Primitive men, like very young children, are
hardly capable of formal and conscious lying. They
give out, as of equal value, what they have seen and
what they have imagined. And in some measure the
savage survives in us all." — Father George Tjrrell,
Christianity at the Cross Roads, p. 243.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 73
" St. Thomas asked Bonaventura whence he received
the force and unction which he displayed in all his
works. Bonaventura pointed to a crucifix hanging on
the wall of his cell. ' It is that image,' he said, ' which
dictates all my words to me. ' What can be more simple,
more true, more intelligible ? But the saying of
Bonaventura was repeated ; and in spite of all remon
strances, they insisted that Bonaventura possessed a
speaking crucifix.'' — Max Muller, Lectures on the Science
of Language, Series II., p. 555.
But while we must freely grant that there
was no wilful lying in those legendary narratives,
blossoming among a simple-hearted folk who
devoutly believed them to be true, it is our
duty to say plainly that they are not historic, but
are mythical. However beautiful symbolically,
and trae for their time and place, for us they
are not trae. " To maintain a myth which
we know to be only a myth, with a view
to edification, is a dishonesty to ourselves and
others, which brings with it a heavy retri
bution."' The flaming sword of trath shuts
us out from that garden of devout fancies ; we
in our age may not live therein.
The myth may have had its origin, as Pro
fessor Percy Gardner suggests,* in the search
for truth. In that case there must be
' Dean Inge, in Contentio Veritatis, p. 84.
' Expioratio Evangelica, p. 97.

74 Swartbmore Xecturc
amongst those who invent or repeat m5H;hs a
notion of trath very different from that of the
educated modem world. "But," he adds,
"the modem notion of historic truth is very
recent." Rabbis and theologians have read into the
Bible things that are not there. I have asked,
but hitherto in vain, when, and by whom, was
the doctrine invented that, by the Fall, man
was condemned to eternal death. As I read
Genesis iii., the curse pronounced on Adam
was labour and sorrow until he should return to
dust. Paul's well-known argument " as in Adam
all die, &c.," apparently asserting an accepted
proposition, does not imply either eternal death
or eternal torment. It does not justify the
doctrine of total depravity, with its correlative
dogma of just damnation, whether in the
form held by Augustine or in that preached
by John Wesley. When was that black
doctrine imposed upon the narrative of the
Fall? It has been nothing less than a disaster' for
the world that for centuries ecclesiastical

' The position may be summarized thus ; — Organized
Christianity, holding a doubtful tradition, offers us
doctrines which she declares to be outside the province

Ube dtuest for Urutb 75
Christianity entrenched itself against any
independent quest for evidence conducted by
unbiassed seekers after Truth.
Confidence is shaken by any attempts to
bolster up the doubtful accretions which the
ages of credulity added to the earlier faith.
This point was very well put by the late
Dean Liddon : —
" It will certainly be admitted that round the original
deposit of the Faith there had grown up in process of
time previous to the sixteenth cenutry, partly from a
desire to popularize Christianity, partly from other
causes, an accretion of matter, some of it possibly true,
much that was beautiful and poetic, some certainly
false. Must not the crisp and jealous sense of truth be
impaired when the soul accepts with equal facility that
which is certain, and such portions of the imaginary as
it may conceive to be probable, and when the truths for
which the Apostles gave their lives are practically
correlated with stories which in an age like ours bring
the whole Faith into discredit, and, for too many souls,
into danger ? "
All this is good and apposite, but it goes
further than the good Dean supposed. For
such dogmas as the " Procession " of the
Holy Ghost, the Nicene theory of the " Three

of demonstration by reason, and for which she therefore
offers us miracles instead of proof. But at the same
time she virtually forbids the enquirer to sift the
evidence for the miracles, as an act of impiety.

76 Swartbmore Xecture
Persons," and the legend of Peter having been
the first Pope, are unquestionably no part of
the earliest strata' of the "deposit of Faith"
— a. question-begging term — of which "the
Church" claims to be the guardian. It
remains to be trae that the Councils in
their attempts to settle the canon of Holy
Scripture exercised on the whole a wise dis
cretion in rejecting numerous doubtful Gospels,
which were current in early time, disfigured
as they were with apocryphal stories about the
childhood of Jesus, and other non-historical
matter.
ADVENTITIOUS AIDS TO TRUTH.
In ages not very long past, the minds of men
accepted as being true doctrines and narratives
which they would otherwise not have accepted,
provided the teacher was a miracle-worker,
or was believed to be s\Lch. To the modem
- Nor, indeed, is the dogma of the Virgin Birth.
Not only is it contradicted by the ].edigrees, given in
Matthew, of tl e descent from David, but it was not
believed by Peter (Acts ii. 30), nor by Pail (Rom. i. 3).
The author of the Fourth Gospel, who must have known
of the legend, ignores it, as it would seem intentionally.
Moreover the whole doctrine of the Incarnation as it
is presented in the New Testament is independent
oi it.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 77
mind there does not appear to be any connexion
between the two. That a person is able to do
some marvellous thing that we do not under
stand — ^which therefore seems imaccountable,
miraculous — does not to the modem mind
appear to have any bearing whatever on the
trath or falsity of propositions which he may
lay down. There is no logical connexion
between the working of a miracle and the trath
of any independent allegation the miracle-
worker may make. It is exceedingly difficult
for us to conceive any such connexion. But
undoubtedly in the time of Our Lord that idea
prevailed' amongst the people. We have only
to read John x. 41, where it is recorded that
many resorted to Jesus "and said: John did
no miracle, but all things that John spoke of
this man were trae." The " but " reveals
their attitude of mind. It was an attitude of
mind which Jesus Himself repeatedly rebuked.
" Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not
' The narratives, preserved to us in the Acts of the
Apostles, of Simon Magus (viii. 9), and of the exorcists
at Ephesus (xix. 13) prove to us that reputed magical
powers were in that age thought to confer some
authority on the miracle worker. But they also show
that miracle working could afford, even then, no
guarantee of true doctrine, Nor did the Jews in
Jerusalem suppose so when they gave out that Jesus
cast out demons by Beelzebub, the demon-prince.

78 Swartbmore Xecture
believe," He said. Yet everywhere, even in
the case of false prophets and false teachers,
signs and miracles were regarded as somehow
proving the trath of the doctrines taught. It
was very illogical, no doubt, but it existed
as an ingrained habit of mind. It seemed to
establish an authority for the trath of the
doctrine ; it gave certitude where otherwise
there would havd been hesitation or doubt.
On the modem mind the effect is just the
opposite. If any modem teacher of religion
or morals would propose to establish the trath
of his teachings by showing some unaccount
able marvel — ^by working a miracle in fact —
the sincerity of his teaching would be at once
discredited. We should rank him straightway-
as an impostor. Our belief in the teachings
of Jesus Christ ought to be held by us because
we are convinced of their inherent truth, not because
He is said to have worked miracles.' And,
' Spinoza held that miracles, as contrary to the order
of nature, would tend rather to lead us to doubt the
reality of God. The artificial distinction between what
we call "natural," and what we call "supernatural'
amounts to the denial that nature is also divinely
ordained. That deplorable dualism which regards
God's universe as something inherently undivine and
evil is a legacy from the times of ignorance. It prevents
us from seeing that the greatest " supernatural " event
that ever occurred — the event which we in human

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 79
moreover, whatever the disciples and hearers
of Christ had before them, we have only narra
tives of miracles, not the miracles themselves.
It is impossible to dissever the narratives of
miracles from the back-ground* of their environ
ment. The belief in them was a product of the
age in which their occurrence is recorded. It
was an age when devotion and vivid imagina
tion were creative in their activity. We
'must not conceive these early disciples,
like Western leaders, testing the testimony,
weighing evidence, calculating the conditions
and influences at work, or discriminating
between cause and effect, or practising an
analysis of thought wholly foreign to their
mental constitution. That was not their method.

language call the resurrection of Jesus Christ — was only
so far above our human comprehension that we fail
to understand its true significance. Philosophy, drawn
from limited human experience, has no adequate
language in which to describe it. Words fail to convey
its essential and transcendent truth.
' " It is doubtless the tendency of religious minds to
imagine mysteries and wonders where there are none ;
and much more, where causes of awe really exist, will
they unintentionaUy mis-state, exaggerate and em
bellish, when they set themselves to relate what they
have witnessed, or have heard ; . . and further,
the imagination, as is well known, is a fruitful source of
apparent miracles." — J. H. Newman, Two Essays ,
p. 171.

8o Swartbmore Xecture
They were essentially Orientals, though Luke
took evident pains to collect and sift the
traditit)n, when he composed his Gospel.
To see the narratives of miracles in their
trae proportions we have got first to appreciate,
and enter into, that Oriental state of mind'
which with perfect honesty and sincerity, values
the adoring legend because it is adoring, more
than the naked truth because it is trae. To
the Oriental, scientific accuracy stripped of
pious trappings ceases to be trae because it is
stripped. There is the less need to dwell on this phase
of ancient belief, because in the conditions of
modem education, we are in little danger of
being influenced either one way or the other
in our beliefs by any exhibition of thaumaturgic
power irrelevant to the matters in question.
Our Lord Himself, in the parable of the rich
man and the beggar, declared of those who
were not convinced by hearing Moses and the
Prophets — ^neither would they be persuaded
even if one should rise from the dead. We
therefore have His authority for discounting
the evidential value of miracles.
Can it be said that belief in miracles, or in
dogmas' reared upon the support of alleged

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 81
miracles, avails to strengthen the grasp of trath
in the soul of any man whom trath has failed
to convince without their adventitious aid ?
Do the miracle-working relics of the saints,
where such are preserved for the edification
of the pious worshipper, increase his love of
trath, his accuracy of thought, his hold on the
vital facts of the relation between God and the
soul ? Are those countries where veneration
of relics flourishes superior in honesty and
veracity to those where that practice is dis
countenanced ? Is scrupulous care taken to
ensure that no relics are venerated except such
as are well authenticated ? It is notorious
that these things are not so. Some fourteen
years ago it was discovered that the relics at
Bury St. Edmunds, supposed to be those of
Saint Edmund, were spurious. Did that make
any difference in the practice of offering pious
veneration to them ? This is the answer which
was given publicly by Cardinal Vaughan in
The Times, of September loth, 1901 : —
" Some of our friends may now, perhaps, inquire
whether the discovery that the relics [of Saint Edmund]
are not genuine will be a very awkward matter for the
Church. To this I answer at once, " Not at all, . . .
if we should venerate a spurious relic in the belief that
it were genuine, the veneration, being relative and

82 Swartbmore Xecture
personal, would certainly not rest in the inanimate relic
or picture, but simply in the person, whose memory we
have in our mind."
Alas, the ecclesiastical mind seems unable
to understand how trath is dishonoured by
these adventitious aids to piety. Trath needs
not to walk on such cratches.
THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES.
But if the embroidery of fact with pious
fancy is thus found all tlurough the history
of the Christian religion backwards, even to
the Apostolic times, have we any reason to
suppose that it was wholly absent from the
narratives which have come down to us of the
Apostles themselves, and of their Master ?
Have the Gospels, compiled in the very age
that was prolific in pious legends, escaped
miraculously from sharing in the characteristics
of the environment within which they took
form ? To avert such an enquiry by the a priori
assertion that our New Testament being divinely
inspired is miraculously free from all admixture
of error is only to shirk the question. Happily
very few people take this position now.
Are the Gospels history ? If they are, and so
far as they are, then like every other history.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 83
they are subject to the tests of historical criti
cism. You cannot establish their historicity,
en bloc, by saying that the Church at the Council
of Ferrara-Florence in the year 1442, or at any
other Council or S3mod, voted to include them
in the Canon of Holy Scripture. Nor, if you
could do this, would that settle the point,
because we do not know which of the then
existing manuscripts is the authentic one.
There are said to be more than 700 separate
Greek manuscripts of the Gospels existing;
and there are variations between the texts of
them that are not unimportant.' Some of these
show evidences of certain later additions to the
earlier texts from which they themselves were
copied. Not one original exists ; all we have
are more or less faithful copies from older ones.
There were, as we leam from Luke i. i and
Acts viii. 4, as well as from other sources,
other oral Gospels in existence before our four
canonical Gospels were composed. It is a matter
of history that numerous other early Gospels
were in circulation ; and many of these were
rejected by the early Church. The revisions
' On the question of tampering with the text of
Scripture, see F. C. Conybeare, in the Hibbert Journal,
Vol. I.

84 Swartbmore Xecture
which have taken place in our own time attest
the facts that enquiry has been necessary, and
that criticism of the texts has been justified.
The quest for truth compels us to ask that
competent scholars shall at least be free to
undertake the task of enquiry into the histo
ricity of the narratives. It is a question of
competence and of scholarship, not of fervency
in preaching, nor of frequency in prayer. To
determine the historicity of a particular event
or the date and authorship of a document no
doubt needs devotion and honesty ; but some
thing more is needed, for devotion and honesty
cannot take the place of scholarship and train
ing. Few indeed are those fitted for this
particular quest ; and those of us who have
no such qualifications must be humbly content
to be guided by those who have.
Meantime the quest for truth has led to distinct
results in several directions. One of these is
the question of the fulfilment of prophecy ;
another is the detection of glosses or comments
that were originally no part of the manuscrif)t.
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY.
Seeing what stress has been laid upon certain
events being regarded as the fulfilment of

Ube (Huest for Urutb 85
prophecy, or fulfilment of the Scriptures, it is
worth while for a moment to examine what
is the significance of thev word fulfil. This
at first sight may seem a simple matter that
everybody understands ; but a little thought
will show that it is not so simple. There is a
vast difference between the fulfilment of a
prediction, and the mere occurrence of a corres
pondence. If an event has been clearly set
forth beforehand, and then it subsequently
occurs in the way or at the time predicted,
we may well say that the prediction has been
fulfilled. Our almanacks inform us that on
the third day of Febraary, 1916, at 4.21 p.m.,
there will be an eclipse of the sun, visible at
Greenwich. That statement is a clear and
definite prediction, the essential trath of which
no sane person doubts. Supposing that there are
no clouds and the eclipse is seen, should we, or
should we not, regard the event as the fulfilment
of prophecy ? Is a prediction any the less a
prophecy because it expresses the calculable and
deifinable result of ascertained laws of recurrence
of phenomena ? Our almanacs also tell us that
the Royal Academy will be closed on Monday,
August 2nd, 191 5. Now, supposing that the
Academy does actually close on that date, should

86 Swartbmore Xecture
we refer to this event as the fulfilment of pro
phecy ? Do we keep the word " prophecy " to
mean the prediction of some occurrence that
is vague, and indefinite, and unlikely in itself ?
Or do we refuse to employ the word " fulfil "
except in cases where the event could not be
with accuracy foreseen ? Perhaps it is a question
of habit of mind, or of intelligence, as to how
we use our terms. Some persons will regard as
a fulfilment of prophecy some trifling event which
to others suggests no such relation. A well-
known member of our Society narrates how
a good pious lady on going for the first time
in her life to the sea-side, and looking out over
the ocean, exclaimed : Oh, the fulfilment of
prophecy ! — " There go the ships " (Ps. civ. 26).
Now, undoubtedly those words occur in the
hundred-and-fourth Psalm; but whether the
actual seeing of the vessels sailing on the ocean
was the fulfilment of them depends on the
question whether in the first place the words
in question were uttered as a prediction, and
in the second place whether they predicted
that those ships would be going over the sea
at the place and time when they were ob
served. Doubtless you will agree that in
the right usage of the words there was

Ube (Huest for Urutb 87
neither prophecy nor fulfiliiient. There was
"narration," not "prophecy," in the text
quoted ; and there was " recurrence," not
" fulfilment," in the fact observed. Now it
cannot be seriously denied that many of the
matters which have been regarded by the piety
of past ages as " fulfilments " are essentially
of the same character ; being merely the
occurrence or recurrence of a correspondence.
Instances in plenty might be given. But, it
must be remarked, the Hebrews did unquestion
ably use the word and idea of " fulfilment "
in this wider and looser sense. It was part
of the Rabbinical mode of thought. One of
the greatest living Hebrew scholars has told
me that in the view of the Rabbis the whole
scheme of Creation and of the giving of the
law, and of the course of Jewish history, was
present in the Divine Mind before the creation
of the world ; and that therefore every single
event in Jewish history was a " fulfilment,"
and was regarded as a fulfilment of Scripture,
even though the particular passage of Scripture
may have been in fact written long after the
event which is said to establish it. An example
occurs in one of the Rabbinical writings known
as 'Aboth de Rabbi Nathan, (a second century

88 Swartbmore Xecture
treatise or exposition of Mishnah and Mid-
rash writings) i. 5, where the passage rans : —
"It is said that Adam sinned in the seventh
hour from his creation to fulfil that which is
written (Psalm xlix. 12), ' Man cannot live
over a single night in honour.' "'
If we understand this Rabbinical mode of
thought, so strange to us, we shall see how
irrelevant from the modem point of view are
many of the things regarded in the time of
Christ as fulfilments of prophecy. Nor must
we forget that in that country and age, the
' In the Authorised Version it runs : — " Man being
in honour abideth not." In the Revised Version, "A
man abideth not in honour." My friend Professor
Israel Abrahams, whose distinction in Hebrew scholar
ship is beyond challenge, tells me that the Hebrew verb
here translated abide means literally to lodge overnight,
or to spend the night. It is the verb used in the Hebrew
of Ruthiii. 13, " Tayy)/ this night " ; in Genesis xxxii. 21,
" and himself lodged that night " ; also in Exodus 3adii.
18, " neither sh^ the fat of my sacrifice remain until
the morning." All these and many other passages,
says Professor Abrahams, use the same verb as in
Psalm xlix. 12 ; it means to pass the night, and only
metaphorically to ahide. The Hebrew homilist used
the phrase in Psalm xlix. 12, in its literal sense.
It may be remarked in passing that, as under
stood by the Rabbinists, the entire occurrences from
Genesis ii. 7 to iii. 24 — ^the creation of man, the
planting of Eden, tbe creation of Eve, the eating of the
forbidden fruit, and the expulsion from Eden — all
took place in one day — ^the sixth day of creation.
See the Jewish Encyclopaedia, article on 'Aboth de
Rabbi Nathan.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 89
people were accustomed to this habit of referring
all things thus to ' that which was written,"
as their mode,' or at least one of their modes,
of verifying trath. Hence the determined
attempt by Christian teachers of the Apostolic
age and of that which succeeded it, to impress
this line of argument upon the Jews amongst
whom they moved. The whole of the Epistle
to the Hebrews and very many passages in the
Epistles of Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles,
and in the first and fourth Gospels, are instinct
with this idea. The Gospel facts must needs
be presented as the fulfilment of prophecy
or fulfilment of the Scriptures. And, not
understanding the Rabbinical usage of the
term " fulfilment," the majority of later
Christian teachers have accepted as being ful
filments events which were in fact only recur
rences or occurrences, and have often had to
warp the trae meaning of the original text in
' Without doubt the invention of writing threw a
glamour upon all written documents in the centuries
that foUbwed ; and irom the influence of that glamour
the Hebrews were not exempt. Many Eastern people,
particularly Mohammedans, still share this influence.
We know, even in our own day, with respect to the much
more recent invention of printing, what a dispropor
tionate regard ignorant people have for anything that
is printed in a book. Because they have foimd it
printed in a book, it must be true.

90 Swartbmore Xecture
order to make out the later events to be
fulfilments. It is sometimes said that any one who
criticizes a composition thereby puts himself
on a superior plane to that of the author whom
he criticizes. But that is a mistake. A merely
plain man has a perfect right to point out in
consistencies in any printed book — even the
most sacred. Anachronisms for example, may
be detected ' in works of genius by a person of
no pretence to literary ability.
So, when we find expressions of a later age,
such as the baptismal formula in Matt, xxviii. 19,
embedded in the Gospel, we know, even without
any reference to the witness of the manuscripts,
that this was no part * of the original text. So,
again, when_ in Matt, xxiii. 35, in the passage
supposed to be quoted — like the parallel passage
' If we were to find in a reputed drama of Shakes
peare any reference to travelling by railway, or if there
were put into our hands a story said to be by Charles
Dickens in which one of the characters would be rung
up on the telephone, any schoolboy would at once detect
the blunder ; he need not pretend to be superior to
Shakespeare or Dickens.
" Eusebius, quoting this verse in the fourth century,
in his earlier writings omits all the words after the
first seven, showing that the manuscript before him
at that date did not contain the formula. In his later
writings he quotes it as we have it. The two readings
were then competing for acceptance.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 91
in Luke xi. 49-51 — from the lost book called
" The Wisdom of God," we find a reference to
Zachariah the son of Barachias, we know that
there is some historical blunder, since Zachariah
the son of Barachias was murdered in the court
of the Temple in or about the year a.d. 68.
We have travelled far from the time when
an English Dean could declare from the pulpit
of St. Paul's : " Every book of it [the Bible],
every chapter of it, every verse of it, every
word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it,
is the direct utterance of the Most High, fault
less, unerring, supreme." Yet our Bible is to
us more than ever precious. It stands out
more clearly than ever as a unique storehouse
of records of God's dealings with an ancient
people to whom He made known His ways
and His works. It has preserved to us not
oiJy the records of their faith, and of their
strivings after Him, but also of their failures ;
not only of their progress toward righteous
ness, but also of their sins ; not only of
their inspired poetry, but also of their folklore.
Let us frankly admit all this : so has it
become to us all the more helpful and
inspiring. And it is of infinite worth to us in
that it, and it alone, has preserved to us the

92 Swartbmore Xecture
manifestation of Him who had the words of
etemal life. Him of whom we believe and are
sure that He was the Son of the living God.
CERTITUDE AND TRUTH.
But it will be said by some that if faithful,
and patient, and reverent scholarship has shown
in the Holy Scriptures, as they have come down
to us, the existence of interpolations, anachro
nisms, and glosses, we shall not be able to rely
upon them in matters of faith and doctrine.
Perhaps we formerly did so, believing that
their language was infallible. Perhaps we did
not ; and yet relied upon some other infalli
bility. Perhaps we felt certitude because we
rested upon Authority, instead of relying on
Divine guidance. The craving for certitude
is not in all respects a sign of spiritual health.
The very eagemess to be certain tends to vitiate
the search by a temper of impatience. With
many men, certainty is a matter of custom
rather than of conviction. Belief, so far as it
exists in any formulated shape in their minds,
is not the foundation but rather the product
of the creeds they have been taught. Many
have never tested their religious views ; they
were told it was wrong to do so. But no

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 93
thinking man's views are worth much until
he has tested them — ^has gone through the
process of looking them in the face and question
ing their validity, their authority ; until in
fact he has gone through the stage of doubting
them, and has passed from the stage of doubt
to the fuller experience of conviction. "A
man may have taken up second-hand, indolently,
religious views ; may believe them, defend
them vehemently. — Is he a man of truth ?
Has he bowed before the majesty of trath
with that reverential humbleness which is the
mark of those who love her ? " ' Until he has
so done he has no right to certitude ; he is a
creature of the authority which he follows at
second-hand. The quest for trath means going
to the very sources of truth* to leam at first-
hand,—- immediately.
Consider what we understand by certitude.
How, by what process of thought or soul, do we
become certain of anj^thing ? Are we certain
that there is an extemal world around us ?
' F. W. Robertson, Sermons, First Series, p. 338.
' Francis Bacon put it in another way : " For Truth
is well called the daughter of Time, not of Authority.
And so it is not wonderful that these spells of Antiquity,
Authority, and Consent, have so bowed down the power
of man, that he cannot (being as it were bewitched) hold
communication with things themselves."

94 Swartbmore Xecture
Are we certain that we have actually seen and
heard things ; do we rely on the credibility
of our senses ? Are we convinced of the per
sistence of natural law ? Are we sure that
causes actually do produce effects ? Is not
certainty in these things a habit of mind — a
reliance upon generalized experience, experience
of our own in particular and of mankind in
general ? Has authority anything to do with
certainty ? We are certain that two and two
make four ; should we be any more certain
of that fact if we found it to be so declared in the
Bible ; or if an Act of Parliament should so
proclaim it ? There is no logic in all the schools
which can prove to our finite intelligence that
anything is absolutely certain. We take past
experience as a guide to the present and to the
future, as the result of the experience of mankind
(including ourselves) that like causes produce
like effects.' But experience is always imperfect,
limited. We have no logical justification for
pronouncing anything " impossible," even if
it be wildly improbable and outside our
experience, unless it be something that is self-
¦ Huxley {Essay on Possibilities and Impossibilities,
Vol. v., p. 192, of his Collected Works) calls -this " An
Act of Faith " ; but it is equally truly a habit of mind.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 95
destractive,' that is to say, something which
lands us in confusion of thought. Omnipotence
itself cannot make a lie true.
The Apostolic advice : — " Prove all things ;
hold fast that which is good," should be an
incitement to follow the quest. In that pursuit
our business is to demand evidence, to evaluate
its weight, and to be tenacious of that which
has been found to be demonstrably true.
Neglect to follow such advice can never advance
truth. To adopt without discrimination beliefs
that have not been submitted to strict and
impartial scrutiny is to sow the garden of the
soul with weeds. To refuse to submit Truth
to scrutiny, lest it should fail to meet the test,
is cowardice, not faith. Upon each of us rests
the personal responsibility to exercise a faithful
discrimination. But this is the very antithesis
to receiving Trath on any extemal authority,
whether of the Ssmods, or of the philosophers.
Men who are not content that Truth should be
its own authority have sought for something
' It is, for example, impossible that two and two should
ever make five. For " four " is the name that we give
to the result of adding two to two. And if two and
two did not make four, the meaning of the word " four "
would be destroyed. Similarly, it is impossible for
the words "one" and "three" to mean the same
without verbal nihilism.

96 Swartbmore Xecture
that they might treat as such, and so relieve
themselves of the personal responsibility of
exercising their discrimination. Some will say
that man has no right of private judgement ;
that the sole custodian of Divine Truth is " the
Church," and then tjiey will use their own
personal judgement as to which Church is the
rightful and exclusive custodian. Some will
tell you Truth is that which prevails, according
to the proverb " Magna est Veritas et praevdk-
bit." Unfortunately, evil sometimes prevails.
Others will say : Truth is that which persists.
Unfortunately errors also persist ; there is such
a thing as survival of the unfittest through
long ages. A lie is notoriously hard to kill.
The pragmatist holds that Truth is that which
works in practice — a utilitarian doctrine which
conveniently ignores the categorical imperative
and the supreme obligation of doing one's duty
even when the doing of duty seems humanly
impracticable. The command, " Love your
enemies ; do good to them that hate you," is
rejected by the pragmatists as an unpractical
counsel of perfection. It is a counsel of perfec
tion ; but Our Lord's command, which is binding
on us was : " Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect."

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 97
How then, and by what tokens can we attain
to certainty ? Even the most exact of sciences,
goemetry, cannot demonstrate its propositions
without assuming certain axioms or postulates
as self-evident traths, such as that the whole
is greater than its part, or that two straight
lines cannot enclose a space. The negative
axioms are mostiy denials of the admissibility
of something which if admitted would lead to
confusion, or absurdity. Modem science, too,
has its postulates, and some of the most effective
of these are in negative form. Amongst the
most certain of the generalizations of modem
science — a generalization to which no exception
is known, — is the principle of the conservation
of energy. Yet for long no demonstrative basis
for it could be found, until the master-mind
of Von Helmholtz struck on a negative basis,
which has become a postulate of physics, —
" perpetual motion is impossible." Id morals,
also, there are postulates. Huxley tried to deal
with them in his Science and Morals. 'While
not denying them, he demanded " How may a
man be certain that they are true ? " He dis
covered no answer. The real reply, I suppose,
is this — a negative one — ^that if they are not
trae, then there are no such things as moral 7

98 Swartbmore Xecture
laws. Their denial would lead to confusion.
It would be a moral absurdity if the ten com
mandments were valid only six days out of
seven, or if they were binding only in longitudes
West of Suez. Suppose God were to hear
prayers only when they were addressed to Him
in Hebrew, or in Latin, or only when expressed
in irreproachable grammar. These would be
moral confusions indeed. We may be very
sure that God is not the author of confusion.
That is indeed one of the necessary postulates
of an intelligent faith. By universal consent
mankind has an instinct (as well as an interest)
to place confidence in those men whose word
corresponds to the thing that is ; to trust those
teachings which pre-suppose that the govem
ment of the universe is not capricious, or
disorderly, or self-destructive. Perhaps this
was in essence what St. Augustine meant by the
famous dictum Securus judicat orbis terrarum,
often quoted as though it signified much the
same thing as the pagan proposition Vox populi
vox Dei. And, assuredly, truth cannot be
determined by any majority vote, whether
in the House of Commons or in the Council of
Nicsea. " The longest Sword, the strongest
Lungs, the most Voices, are false measures of

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 99
Trath." ' Certainty is not to be attained by
conformity to the vote of the majority ; by
shouting with the crowd. The philosophy
of By-ends is a virtual denial that there is any
quest for truth.
In matters of ethical motive, where conscience,
and duty, and personal devotion are involved,
dependence on authority is absurd. A man
who should cherish his wife with calculated
tenderness because he finds printed in the Bible
the advice, " Husbands love your wives and
be not bitter against them," would be a poor
sort of husband. He has not begun to under
stand that emotions cannot be made to order ;
that no love is pure that is not passionate.
" No one who pretends to make the moral teach
ing of Jesus the rale of life merely from dogmatic
obligation can have understood that morality
at all, or penetrated beyond the mere letter
of its precepts."* Neither can belief be made to
order ; a man believes, not what he is ordered
to believe, nor what he wilfully chooses to
believe, nor yet what he merely desires or hopes
to believe. What he really believes he believes
because he cannot help believing. He believes
' Benjamin Whichcote.
' Supernatural Religion, 'VdL II., p. 485.

loo Swartbmore Xecture
that of which he is convinced, whether by the
coercive logic of evidence, or by the experience
of some inward conviction. The sort of belief
which is merely imposed by Authority carries
no conviction of the Truth. Milton put this
very aptly in the Areopagitica : —
" A man may be a heretick in the truth ; and if he
beleeve things only because his Pastor says so, or the.
Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason,
though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds
becomes his heresie."
But in contradistinction to this view stands
the claim persistently put forward by the Church
to be the sole authority and arbiter of trath.
This claim is baldly stated in words attributed
(perhaps unjustly) to Cardinal Bellarmine :
" True things are true and false things are false ;
but if the Church has declared true things to be false,
and false things to be true.^then false things are true,
and true things are false." '
The words sound like a caricature. But the
course of the Inquisition in persecuting men for
announcing scientific discoveries which were
' Vera sunt vera et falsa sunt falsa ; sed si ecclesia
dixit vera esse falsa et falsa esse vera, falsa sunt vera et
vera sunt falsa. I have been unable to place or verify
the quotation.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb loi
counter to the dicta and authority of the
Church lends ominous support to the pronounce
ment. Galileo was tortured, Giordani Bruno
martyred, for promulgating views condemned
by the tyranny of Authority.
Nevertheless, even the defenders of Authority
have continually been conscious that Authority
needed to be supported by something that
should at least seem like intellectual sanction.
Accordingly, the schoolmen dragged in the
aid of Aristotle and his " method " of applying
logic to the discovery or substantiation of Truth ;
and so the philosophical writings of S. Thomas
Aquinas rale the intellectual training' of the
seminarists down to the present time.
There is a popular notion abroad that the
Fathers discouraged all use of reason and
required unquestioning submission to imposed
• The rigorous study of scholastic philosophy is
doubtless a vast improvement on the crude philosophies
of the earlier centuries. Think of the kind of irrelevant
argument by which the Fathers sought to justify the
accepted views of the Church. According to Irenaaus
there could be only four Gospels, because there were
only four winds of heaven, and four quarters of the earth,
and because the cherubim had only four faces apiece.
Saint Jerome, wishing to clinch the doctrine that the
resurrection would be a bodily one, asked most naively :
If the dead be not raised, how could the damned, after
the Judgement, gnash their teeth in hell ?
Thejpoint is that need was felt of some argumentative
support for the Authority of the Church.

I02 Swartbmore Xecture
beliefs, however unreasonable. Tertullian is
sometimes misrepresented as having said, " I
believe because it is impossible." It is perhaps
worth while to see what he did say. He is
speaking of the paradoxes of faith, which he
sums up in these words : — Natus est Dei filius ;
non pudet quia pudendum est; et mortuus est
Dei filius ; prorsus credibile est quia ineptum
est; et sepuUus resurrexit ; certum est quia
impossibile. ' (De Came Christi. Cap. v. ; see
Migne's Patrologia. Tom. ii. ; Col. 761).
It would be difficult to over-estimate the
harm done by the claim of any organization
to exclusive Authority in matters of faith.
For when a claim to infallibility is coupled with
the prohibition of all independent enquiry
two results * follow — ^bigotry and scepticism :
bigotry in those who cannot think, and scepti-
' After careful thought I conclude the essential
meaning of these words may be rendered thus : —
" The Son of God was born ; He was not ashamed of it,
albeit it is shameful ; and He died [though] Son of
God; in brief it is believable, albeit it is absurd ; and,
having been buried. He rose again ; it is certain, albeit
impossible." " " Let every man who is engaged in persecuting
any opinion ponder it ; these two tlungs must follow :
you make fanatics, and you make sceptics ; believers
you cannot make." — F. W. Robertson, Sermons, First
Series, p. 338.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 103
cism in those who can. Trath must not be
stifled in the miasma of imposed dogmas.
Yet it must not be thought that there is no
place for authority, the reasonable authority
which men rightly attribute to accumulated
experience, and to goodness and wisdom as
they see these qualities incarnate in the lives
of good and wise men. No one can doubt that
it is in the Divine ordering that simple souls
look up with a genuine respect to those whose
lives and words demonstrate daily a close
communion with God, a fidelity to the inner
convictions of their souls, a readiness to put
Trath before aught else, a character moulded
on the pattern of all that is Christ -like. Such
men — and there are such to-day — cannot but
wield, unconsciously to themselves it may be,
a real authority. They are leaders not by virtue
of any office they hold, not because of any
ordination by the laying on of men's hands,
but by virtue of their sincerity and nobility
of soul. We revere them but not because they
are an authority ; they are an authority to us
because we revere them. The opinion and
example of such men counts for more than the
decisions of Councils and the precedents of
antiquity, in shaping the beliefs of the way-

I04 Swartbmore Xecture
faring man. The child must needs be subject
to authority while he lacks experience : but
the day comes when he must put away leading
strings, and walk on his own feet. And when
the day of spiritual enlightenment comes we
say, with the men of Samaria : " Now we believe ;
not because of thy saying, for we have heard
for ourselves, and know."
But why should we spend time on further
discussing extemal authorities when all the
while the key to authority lies in our own
bosoms ? " No religion is trae which con
tradicts our sense of right and wrong." This
is one of the postulates of religious thought.
To think otherwise would be confusion indeed,
since all and any religion, if it be an ethical
religion and not a mere mumbo-jumbo worship,
is based on there being a distinction between
right and wrong. And if man possesse,s' a
¦ Archbishop Trench stated a kindred postulate in
the following terms : — " For all revelation presupposes
in man a power of recognizing the truth when it is
shown him, — ^that it will find an answer in him, —
that he will trace in it the lineaments of a friend, though
of a friend from whom he has been long estranged, and
whom he has well-nigh forgotten. It is the finding of a
treasure, but of a treasure which he himself and no other
had lost. The denial of this, that there is in man any
organ by which truth may be recognized, opens the door
to the giost boundless scepticism, is indeed the denial
of all that is godlike in man." — Notes on Miracles, p. 24.

Ube duest for Urutb 105
fundamental religious perception such as this,
if there be in him an element of the divine to
which righteousness appeals, what need should
there be of resort to any extemal authority ?
" That of God in you " is an interior authority
to which things that are divine appeal. Justice,
mercy, pity, yes, even truth itself, would be
meaningless to man unless he himself were
endowed with some element of those divine
qualities. So if the question be once more
raised, " How or by what means can truth be
attained? " we have abundant answer. Logical
reasoning (the method of philosophy), and
induction from experiment (the method of
science), valuable aids as they may be in the
sifting of ideas and facts, are after all extemal
methods. Neither of them avails to get at
the heart of ultimate realities with the same
assurance of success as awaits the rnethod of
spiritual intuition. We can test by external
methods the accuracy of the perceptions thus
spiritually apprehended, but the extemal
methods neither replace the intemal method
nor challenge its validity. The Kingdom of
God is within you. There is no authority that
can give you the right to be disobedient to the
heavenly vision.

io6 Swartbmore Xecture
INTUITION AND TRUTH.
In the preceding section Intuition has been
spoken of as a means of discovering divine
trath ; we have also spoken of divine trath
being revealed inwardly to us. Discovery
and revelation are but two names for opposite
aspects of the same thing. A discovery is a
discovery only to the man who makes it. If
he informs us of it we do not discover it, but
he discloses or reveals to us what was, until
then, his secret. This is also trae of the dis
closures which we call divine revelations. They
are, in a primary sense, revelations to him only
to whom they are inwardly revealed. But
if, when announced to us, they are found to
evoke a response in our souls, they become
in a secondary sense revelations to us also,
and are apprehended as true.
Here it may be pointed out that, in other
departments of knowledge, intuition is more and
more being recognized as a legitimate mode of
discovering trath. Assuredly this is so in science.
In the branch of mathematical science known
as the integral calculus there are a number
of results which have been arrived at intuitively,
and subsequently verified deductively. Many

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 107
of the sciences, to say nothing of the arts, bear
witness to the efficiency of intuition as a means
of extending knowledge. Many scientific
discoveries, so-called, have been made by in
tuition ; by a sort of inspired guessing which
has led to verifiable results. Trath seems
suddenly to flash across the enquirer immersed
in his research. He becomes aware of some
thing of which a moment before he was not
awaf e. He has not arrived at it by any process
of logical thinking ; but it has dawned upon
him. He proceeds to put the intuition and
its consequences to the test ; and definite know
ledge results. Great scientific discoverers
are men who appear to have a genius for the
intuitive perception of hitherto unknown facts.
It is a supra-rational faculty, neither inductive
nor deductive in its form of operation ; it is
more akin to imagination than to logic, being
creative and spontaneous, independent of the
mental processes of analysis and synthesis which
constitute the ordinary machinery of thought.
Henri Bergson' has definitely admitted the
faculty of intuition into his philosophy. He
calls intuition " knowledge at a distance," and
' See Bergson's I' Intuition philosophique, published
in the Revue de metaphysique et de la morale, November,
1911.

io8 Swartbmore Xecture
regards the relation between intuition and
intellect as analogous to the relation between
vision and touch.
Many things intuitively discovered have
since been found to be demonstrable by reason.
But their origin has been forgotten When they
became recognized as acquisitions of definite
knowledge ; and men have slighted the intuitive
method of seeking truth, deeming the intellec
tual process of reasoning a higher one. Rightly
regarded, the reverse is true ; for logic does
not discover the data with which it works ; the
premises of the syllogism must be known before
the inference can be drawn. Few enquirers
have the patience and simplicity to wait for
the intuition.
THE INNER LIGHT.
We are thus led to the central point in the
distinctive beliefs of the Society of Friends,
the reality of immediate personal revelation ;
the postulate that the human soul possesses
a faculty of intuitive perception of Divine
things ; the belief that God can and does com
municate His will, without any go-between
and apart from all institutional or human
agency, to the individual soul of man. In all

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 109
ages the devout men who feared God, who strove
to work His will and to do the truth, were
broiight by direct spiritual experience into
communion with the most High. The doctrine
of the Inner Light, distinctive of the early
Quakers, is — theological terminology apart —
only another form of the doctrine of immediate
guidance by the Holy Spirit. " That of God
in you," as they expressed it, meant what others
would describe as " the Indwelling Christ," or
" the Christ of experience." 'What the Apostle
Paul indicated when he said " Christ liveth in
me," or when he wrote " Christ in you the hope
of glory," was for Fox, and for Penington, for
Penn, and for Barclay, the same as " the Light
which lighteth every man " of the Johannine
Gospel. In the midst of a dry and wordy
Protestantism, that was the revelation which
came to them. To them, as Fox tells us, the
Gospel was the power of God,' which was
' The following extract from George Fox's Journal
contains an entry of the year 1663 relating to his
service in Cornwall.
" From thence we returned to Redruth, and the next
day to Truro, where we had a meeting. Next morning,
some of the chief of the town desired to speak with me,
amongst whom was Colonel Rouse. I went, and had a
great deal of discourse with them concerning the things
of God. In their reasoning they said, ' The gospel was
the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ' ;

no Swartbmore Xecture
preached before Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John were written. Apostles of the intuitional
view of religion, they rediscovered for them
selves the significance of " that inner still
ness wherein we discover truth at first-hand."
In other words, they set down as of little
account any religious profession which was
based on intellectual notions only, or which
depended on assent to propositions laid down
by authority, and was not founded on some
deep personal religious experience. Experience
of the deep things of God by the faculty of
spiritual apprehension was for them more *
than all creeds ; and the waiting upon God
and they called it natural. I told them, the gospel was
the power of God, which was preached before Matthew,
Mark, Luke, or John were written ; and it was preached
to every creature (of which a great part might never
see nor hear of those four books), so that every creature
was to obey the power of God ; for Christ, the Spiritual
Man, would judge the world according to gospel, that is,
according to hisinvisible power. When they heard this,
they could not gainsay ; for the truth came over them.
I directed them to their teacher, the grace of God,
and showed them the sufficiency of it, which would
teach them how to live, and what to deny ; and being
obeyed would bring them salvation. So to that grace
I recommended them, and left them." (Edition, 1765,
P- 346)
2 Compare J. Drummond, " The highest authority
is found when truths come straight to the soul and
receive that inward response without which religious
truth is dead and useless." {Via, Veritas, Vita, p. 119.)

Ube (Siuest for Urutb m
to hear His still small voice in the soul more
than all liturgies. They found the essence
of Christianity to consist not in holding intellec
tual opinions about the nature and person of
Christ, but in the personal experience of the
Life of God in the soul, effecting a transforma
tion of character into the Christ-like pattern.
William Penn stated the negative side most
clearly. "It is not opinion or speculation, or
notions of what is true ; or assent to, or the
subscription of articles or propositions, though
never so soundly worded, that makes a man
a true believer or a trae Christian." ' Pening
ton, still in the same strain, added a more positive
note : — " By experience they [the Quakers]
know that there is no being saved by a belief
of His [Christ's] death for them, and of
His resurrection, ascension, intercession, etc.,
without being brought into a true fellowship
with Him in His death, and without feeling
His immortal seed of life raised and living in
them." *
A conformity of mind and practice to the
Will of God, " according to the dictates of the
' William Penn, A Key opening the Way to every
Capacity. » Isaac Penington, Examination of the Grounds, etc.

112 Swartbmore Xecture
divine principle of light and life in the soul "
was, according to Penn, that which denoted a
a person to be truly a child of God. The early
Quakers were not concerned with metaphysical
distinctions.' They regarded the theological
differentiations as to the " three persons " and
the " two natures " as attempts to be wise
above that which is written. Christ as a living
personal reality working within them was an
absorbing conception which lifted them above
disputatious notions. 'Whether George Fox
ever attempted any explanation of the process
by which he identified the indwelling Christ
with the historical Jesus of Nazareth, does
not appear ; there is nothing in his Journal —
a truly wonderful document of living experience
— ^to show that any questioning of the identity
ever occurred to him. Penn certainly main
tained the ever-living Christ to be the same
as the Holy Spirit ; while Barclay, though
guarding himself against such a definite state
ment, passed by Christological discussions for
the most part as though not vital, or not nearly
so vital as the inward response of " that of God
in you " to that which is of God. The Logos
' See on this whole question Edward Grubb's
Swarthmore Lecture, The Historic and Inward Christ.
(Headley Bros., 1914.)

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 113
doctiine of John they frankly did not under
stand ; the wisdom of the Alexandrian school
of thought did not touch them. And so they
bequeathed to us little or no contribution to
what some regard as a pressing need, the
synthesis of intemal and external witness into
an organized body of doctrine.
Now it would seem that we, in these days, are
in a happier position than the early Friends,
happier than the thinkers of the preceding
centuries, having the advantage that we live
in a time when the conception of truth has
been enlarged ; when the search for trath for
its own sake has taken newer forms and has
extended over wider areas of thought. It was
the misforttme of earlier theologians, that they
had no independent standards of truth such
as are available by the methods of scientific
investigation. The whole idea of trath as being
verifiable by experiment is relatively modem.
In an earlier part of this essay stress was laid
on the importance of understanding what
constitutes a valid demonstration, and on a
clear distinction between statements that are
categorically and analogically true. In any
synthesis of faith to be hereafter attempted
the training in accurate thought which is afforded

114 Swartbmore Xecture
by the methods of modern scholarship will
be invaluable. But more valuable than all
will be that which rises clear from the study
of early Quaker thought, the recognition that
for any religious doctrine to be of value to any
soul it must be the outcome of personal spiritual
experience,' and such as will evoke a personal
spiritual response.
But when we say personal experience we do
not necessarily mean the experience of one
individual. Collective religious experience is
for us just as real as individual experience.
We know it ; we have found it to be a reality
in our congregations and in our community.
We may have passed through a spiritual ex-
' The late Professor William James, commenting on
some of the experiences narrated in George Fox's
Journal in the following terms : —
" A genuine first-hand religious experience like this
is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet
appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine
prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it
becomes a definite and labelled heresy. But if it then
still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution,
it becomes itself an orthodoxy ; and when a religion
has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over ;
the spring is dry ; the faithful live at second-hand ex
clusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new
church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may
foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in
every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit,
and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from whicli
in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration."
{Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 337.)

Ube (Siuest for Urutb us
perience of which only a portion remains with
us. 'Who shall decide the reality, or even the
accuracy of that which we retain ? Who or
what shall be the faithful custodian and critic
of that of which we may have become possessed ?
We are told to try the spirits to know whether
they be of God ; but how try them except by
that measure of the Divine Spirit which has
been vouchsafed to us ? There is no final
guardian of truth except the spirit of truth
fulness itself ; the guidance of the Holy Spirit
witnessing in our spirits. Our Lord Himself
did not claim that His words should be recog
nized because He said them, but because they
were true. He appealed to His hearers : "If I
say the truth, why do ye not believe Me ? "
(John viii. 46.) In the ultimate resort, then,
after we have done all we can, as in the light of
God, to test and to try our intuitions of truth,
that which remains as trath must, for any one
of us, be a matter of personal experience, or
be confirmed by personal experience.
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE AND
CORPORATE CONTROL.
The question was raised as to how individual
experience may be correlated with the collective

ii6 Swartbmore Xecture
experience of the congregation or community.
On that question depends the further enquiry
how far collective experience can be used as a
corporate conscience to sift and test individual
experiences ; how far the corporate conscience
is a helpful extemal guide. Let us frankly
confess that our Society,, in abstaining from
fully organizing any machinery for giving effect
to the collective experience of the body for the
guidance of the individual, has been defective
in means of expression, as well as weak at times
in the exercise of control.
Nevertheless, there exist very potent ancil
lary means, mostly unorganized, by which
guidance is afforded to the individual. None
of us lives so far detached from his fellows or
from his own past experiences as not to be
continually subject to many constraining in
fluences. It is scarcely needful to enumerate
them. The memory of past association with things
of the highest spiritual moment is not readily
effaced. Written or remembered records of
the past experiences of others cannot be ignored.
The influence of religious books, of religious
exercises, of association in religious communion,
is not lightly escaped. The recurring impress

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 117
of inspired and inspiring personalities ; the lives
of saintly persons whom we have known ; all
the essential nobility and devotion which we have
witnessed in them, mould our personalities and
constrain the workings of our lives. If they
stimulate, yet more do they humble us. And
behind us lies all the weight that rightly attaches
to the past, the historic exercises of religion,
the historic devotion, the historic piety, the
great historic prayers, and all the ministries
of praise and psalm. And surrounding us are
the living philanthropies of to-day, the con
tagion of holy example, the stimulus of religious
association, the great loyalties, the inescapable
sense of the presence of suffering, and sorrow,
and sin, demanding unity of effort. All these
things exercise a control which if informal as
to organization is none the less real. It is a
control partly intemal and partly extemal.
Within the borders of our own community,
control takes the form of a spiritual polity
embodied in a system of eldership, which for
two centuries has continued almost unchanged.
If our Society desires to strengthen the hold
which this corporate polity exercises over in
dividual activities, to secure thereby a surer
extemal guidance, it must see well to it that

ii8 Swartbmore Xecture
the influence of the organized body does not
degenerate into a fossilized authority, conceiv
ing itself to be the sole custodian of truth.
The fountain of truth must be permitted to
flow in a perpetual progression, else, as Milton
warns us, its waters will sicken into a muddy
pool of conformity and tradition.
EXPERIENCE AND CONVICTION.
Moreover the personal experience of Apostles
and disciples and holy men, who passed away
ages ago, lives with us still, and their testimony
is available to bring conviction. It is not
necessary for us to see with our eyes what they
witnessed in order that we should be convinced
of the reality of their convictions, which become
evidential for us, so that in a secondary sense
they become our convictions too. Let one
example — ^the most vital of all — suffice.
It needs no research to discover, what any
one who reads the records with honest eyes
can see, that the disciples believed intensely
and whole-heartedly in the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead. It is the one
fundamental topic that dominates the Acts of
the Apostles, beside which all other beliefs
sink into relative insignificance. It was for

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 119
them as great a certainty as that Jesus had
walked with them in the flesh. The one
qualification required in the claim for election
to Apostleship was that he should have been
an eye-witness of His resurrection. But here
we must, for accuracy, pause on the phrase.
So far as we know, no mortal eye witnessed
the rising of Jesus out of the tomb. Certainly
none of the Apostles did. They went early
in the morning to the tomb, and found it empty.
That of which the Apostles were convinced,
that of which they had no doubt whatever,
was the fact of their own personal experience
of the continuing presence of Christ with them.
They did not spin theories about it to account
for it ; why should they ? There was the joyful
fact before them, within their own knowledge : —
" We have seen the Lord." They called that
fact the resurrection from the dead. That is
simple uncritical language. We may — ^many
of us sincerely do — desire to know exactly
what did occur ; what explanation of facts
there is to account for His continuing personal
presence after that Easter dawn. In the wisdom
of God no such explanation has ever been given ;
and no living soul has any right to invent one
to clear up the mystery. The two facts are :

I20 Swartbmore Xecture
(i) the empty tomb, (2) the subsequent experi
ences of His presence as a living and transcen
dent personality. More than this, we have no
warrant to import into the confession " I believe
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ." It may
be inexplicable — ^but there it is. All specula
tions as to what He did with His material
body, and where His soul was during those
hours when His body lay enshrouded in the
tomb, are beside the mark. There is no
experience behind them.
RECONSTRUCTION.
Before I close I tum to the vexed question
of changes of opinion and belief. Under what
conditions, by what sanctions is it right to
admit changes in the religious beliefs and
views in which we have been reared ? The
question is not an easy one to answer. Certain
it is that in no case can we announce any such
change without giving pain, or offence, which
is worse than pain, to some of those dearest
to us, to those to whom we owe in a religious
sense a great and unending debt of gratitude,
who may be our spiritual fathers or mothers,
who so far surpass us in purity of life and nobility
of soul that we feel ourselves unworthy even to

Ube (Siuest for Urutb lai
touch the hem of their garments. And yet —
and yet — ^we cannot be false to our own con
victions. If there is any doctrine or belief in
which we have been nurtured, which yet after
serious and heart-searching enquiry we find
to be for us no longer trae, what right have we
to pretend that we continue to believe it ? To
believe without adequate groimds is both weak
and dishonest. To feign belief in that of which
we are not convinced is a forfeiture of integrity
of soul. To simulate belief in that which we
no longer believe for fear of paining one of
the saints of God is cowardice, if not hypo
crisy. Yet there are holy and earnest men who
coimsel otherwise. The late Dean Vaughan,
the saintly author of The Book and the Life,
advised that when a view has once been arrived
at as being trae, it should be, as it were, laid
on the shelf and never again looked on as an
open question. Surely such counsel is false.
There are no questions that can be for ever
closed. No man, no Church, has any authority
to close them so that they shall not be freely
examined whenever fresh light arises. Trath
is seldom attained at a stride: progress in
human enlightenment, particularly in regard
to things divine, is only reached gradually by

122 Swartbmore Xecture
painful steps, by paths that lead throughj
stages of imperfection, illuminated by twilight
glimpses, and transient gleams, toward the more
perfect vision. " The best and bravest have
straggled from error into truth, they listened
to their honest doubts, and tore up their old
beliefs by the roots." Remember that
many of the time-hallowed beliefs which have
come down to us from former generations
were but the best that our forefathers were able
to perceive, formulated in language which in
the course of time has inevitably ceased to mean
to us what it meant to them. The intellectual
verdict of their day is not the intellectual verdict
of ours ; truth may compel us to reject it,
even though that rejection involves pain and
unsettlement. But, remember : while ' ' a man may
unsettle the verdict of his intellect, it is at his
peril that he tampers with the convictions of
his conscience." There are beliefs which, being
outworn, must be reverentiy laid aside. New
and more spiritual vievre must be substituted for
the idea of the supposed fulfilment of prophecy ;
new spiritual analogies must be allowed to
replace the artificial " ts^pes and anti-types "
which, in our childhood, confused our heads
and muddled our instincts of right and wrong.

Ube (Siuest for Urutb , 123
COURAGE AND TRUTH.
Let us then with holy courage have the honesty
to confess that truth for us will not include
all that our fore-fathers regarded as trath ;
and that it may include both less and more.
Let us see that it be no whit less earnestly and
sincerely held. He who seeks trath does not
create it ; he can only bear witness to it when
found. Truth is not to be found by refusing
to seek it ; nor in the quest must we count
the cost. There are many ways of arriving
at truth ; many views of trath. There are
other windows opening on to Heaven than those
of the nursery in which we were brought up ;
and some are wider, and some face toward the
dawn. In thus regarding the oneness of truth we shall
also see the promise of fresh traths hereafter to
be discovered. The enquirer into divine trath
will henceforth need to be provided with the
means that have been effective in every branch
of research. If he would know the whole trath
of God conceming the ultimate great things,
life, death, destiny, the trend of the universe,
he must leam the trath of man and of nature,
for trath is one. And if he frames a scheme of

124 Swartbmore Xecture
things, he must leave room in it for the yet
unknown traths that are in store.
A discouragement which besets those who
have found it thus incumbent upon them to
revise any portion of their views of religious
trath is the resultant difficulty of fitting the
newly acquired truth' to the rest of the old.
But why this discouragement ? Half the
difficulties of the theologies, obsolete as well
as current, have arisen from the supposed
necessity of harmonizing all the salient points
into a single self-consistent system. 'While
a man's faith is in the growing stage — and what
thinking man can say that for him all questions
are closed questions? — ^there will necessarily
be beliefs that stand to some degree isolated,
not yet linked up to all his other beliefs; not
woven into a consistent body of doctrine.
System-mongering has been the besetting sin
of all theologians, heterodox as well as ortho
dox, in all ages. Men have always been under
a temptation to trim some of their convictions
to make them square with other beliefs. They
have attempted to generalize from data all
too few and too particular ; and in the sequel
have warped the truth for the sake of supposed
consistency. In a world of imperfect percep-

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 125
tions it is bound to result thus to us, if we act
as though there were no gaps in our knowledge.
But the incompleteness of our spiritual per
ceptions being once admitted, the difficulty
is resolved. That admission constrains us to
acquiesce in the co-existence of unrelated and
apparently incompatible elements in our faith.
We are like men who scan a distant panorama
of mountains and woodland through a mist
which at times rolls apart here and there,
revealing to us partial features, apparently
unrelated to one another and seemingly dis
crepant ; yet assuredly parts of a correlated
whole. The more distinctly the individual
features of these isolated patches appear, the
more difficult does it seem to grasp the unseen
portions, or fit together the parts we have seen.
Any attempt to organize the whole by conjectur
ing the intermediate parts spoils the scene by
substituting arbitary guiding lines.' To force
the composition mars the truth of the features
already seen. That is what theologians have
done in straining to fit the various particular
traths revealed to or discovered by this or that
inspired teacher or prophet, into a logical and
' See J. A. Froude's remarks on patching up gaps in
history, p. 38 above.

126 Swartbmore Xecture
consistent corpus of belief. No man whose
convictions arise really in his own bosom is
convinced at a stroke of an entire and complex
scheme of doctrine. Schemes of doctrine are
things elaborated ; their historical growth is
known ; they are, like many of thie particular
dogmas, compromises. But we are not bound to
manufacture one entire self-consistent theology
out of our detached convictions ; our duty' is
to act out such trath as has been revealed to
us. To hammer out one homogeneous system
of theology is a task far beyond us ; the im
mensity of our ignorance precludes any such
accomplishment. Admitted that to attempt
siich a unification were a noble task, yet it is
one that would be apt sorely to mislead, and
ensnare us into forming a patchwork that could
only be in parts a travesty of the yet-unrevealed
traths of God. Is it not significant that whereas
God has revealed to one and another of His
servants, from age to age, a vision of this and that
truth, in no age, and to no prophet or teacher,
not even through our Greatest Teacher of all,
did He reveal a comprehensive and complete
' " Each noble inconsistency results from some one
fragment of diseipleship, some accepted task of sonship."
(F. J. A. Hort, The Way, the Truth, the Life, p. i68.)

Ube (Siuest for Urutb 127
system of theology ? All the theologies, old and
new, are patchworks framed by the art and
device of man, attempting to unify and reconcile
confficting views of truth. Let us then not be
afraid of this reproach when we in simplicity hold
fast to the particular truths, the vision of which
has been vouchsafed to us. The false pride
which will not accept a particular truth unless
it can be fitted into a whole scheme of things
is sister to the false anxiety which is fostered
in us to be true to our principles rather than
to make sure that our principles are true.
Jesus left no scheme of theology to His disciples ;
but He bestowed upon them " words of Eternal
Life." Consider what Jesus Christ did not say. He
propounded no theories about the redeeming
efficacy of His death. He laid down no dogma
of the Trinity. He did not talk of the enthu
siasm of humanity. He did not speak of the
enlightenment by science, the softening influence
of art, or the elevation of the masses by educa
tion. He was no champion of a new social
Utopia, or advocate of well-laid plans for the
political or social amelioration of the people.
He proposed no general redistribution of wealth,
or organization of charitable effort. Those

128 Swartbmore Xecture
legislative schemes which we propound as noble
ambitions to promote the progress of the race
He never mentioned. Our methods for up
lifting our fellows were not His methods. He
worked on men's hearts from within. His
methods were spiritual and interior. He trans
formed men's lives by renewing a right spirit
within them. He lived amongst men as a fellow
man, and taught them by His own example
the redeeming virtues of self-renunciation and
of love unquenchable by death. He bound
them by no stronger ties than perfect love to
His service. He came into the world that
He might bear witness to the trath. He
inspired men to search for that trath — ^the trath
which makes them free.

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