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 INAUGURATION 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM BRENTON GREENE, JR., D.D., 
 
 STUART PROFESSOR 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 
 TO THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH 
 & COMPANY, 
 
 (incortorated) 
 
 182 FIFTH AVENUE. 
 
 1893. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The Rev. William Brenton Greene, Jr., D.D., was 
 elected Stuart Professor of the Relations of Philosophy and 
 Science to the Christian Religion in Princeton Theological 
 Seminary, in the autumn of 1892, and assumed the duties of 
 the chair provisionally from January, 1893. His formal in- 
 duction into the chair was postponed until his election to it 
 could be duly reported to the Gen eral Assembly. It took 
 place on Friday, September 22, 1893, at 11.30 o'clock, in the 
 First Presbyterian Church of Princeton. The order of exer- 
 cises on this occasion was as follows : 
 
 Hymn. 
 
 Prayer, by the Rev. Dr. Willis Green Craig, Professor in McCor- 
 mick Theological Seminary, Moderator of the General Assembly. 
 
 Administration of the Pledge to the New Professor, by the 
 Rev, Dr. A. Gosman, President of the Board of Directors. 
 
 The Charge, by the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, D.D., Pastor of the 
 
 Big Spring Presbyterian Church, Newville, Pa. 
 The Inaugural Address, by Professor Greene. 
 
 Hymn. 
 
 Benediction, by the Rev. Dr. James McCosh, ex-President of the 
 College of New Jersey. 
 
 The Charge and Inaugural Address are here published by order of 
 the Board of Directors. 
 
THE CHARGE. 
 
 THE REV. EBENEZER ERSKINE, D.D. 
 
CHARGE. 
 
 My Dear Brother: 
 
 In the performance of the duty assigned me in connection 
 with these Inaugural services, allow me at the outset to con- 
 gratulate you and all the friends of this venerable school of 
 sacred learning, in view of the favorable auspices under which 
 you enter formally upon the duties of the chair into which 
 you have just been inducted, and with which this new term 
 of the Seminary now opens. A little more than a year ago 
 all our hearts were greatly saddened by reason of the ravages 
 of death among the teaching force of this institution, no less 
 than three members of the Faculty having been thus removed 
 in one year. To-day we are permitted to rejoice in seeing 
 these vacancies all filled, the Faculty enlarged, our curriculum 
 of study broadened, the endowments preserved, a new and 
 most commodious dormitory completed and ready for occupa- 
 tion, and a larger number of students assembled than ever 
 before at the opening of any Seminary year. In this connec- 
 tion I may be permitted further to say, that to me, as a 
 member of the Board of Directors, the guiding and overruling 
 hand of God has seldom appeared more visible than it has in 
 the filling of the chairs of this Seminary. With respect to 
 your own individual selection for the chair you now occupy, 
 I may say that it was a matter of the most careful delibera- 
 tion. The committee in charge of the nomination canvassed 
 the whole field of the Church for months in quest of the right 
 man for the place, and after long and patient inquiry came to 
 an unanimous agreement to present your name as that of the 
 one in their judgment best qualified for the position. Their 
 nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Board of 
 Directors, and met with a like concurrence upon the part of 
 the Faculty. And now, your appointment having been ap- 
 
8 Charge. 
 
 proved by the General Assembly, we are here to-day for its 
 final ratification by these inaugural solemnities. Your elec- 
 tion having thus received the cordial sanction of all your 
 brethren charged with the care of the sacred interests of this 
 institution, and also that of the whole Church, we have good 
 reason to hope and believe that it has also the approval of 
 the Church's Great Head. Under these circumstances it gives 
 me great pleasure to welcome you to this high and responsible 
 position, and to express to you the sincere desire of all our 
 hearts that you may, by the blessing of God, be eminently 
 successful in the discharge of its duties. Having already 
 entered upon your work for a season, and realized the ex- 
 pectations of all concerned, your future acceptance and use- 
 fulness as an instructor in your department can scarcely be 
 regarded as an experiment. 
 
 In any such recognition of the prosperity of this Seminary 
 as has been made, or inquiry into the sources of it, we must 
 take into consideration not only the eminent abilities and 
 learning of the professors who have successively occupied the 
 several chairs, but more especially the gracious care of God, 
 whose favor has rested upon this institution from the begin- 
 ning, and the spirit of genuine piety which has characterized 
 its entire administration. While this Seminary has sought 
 to keep fully abreast of the Biblical learning and scholar- 
 ship of the age, it has at the same time given special care to 
 the cultivation of the personal piety of the students, and 
 never exalted speculative theology at the expense of personal 
 religious experience. Its entire history has been characterized 
 no less by a diligent cultivation of a spirit of humble evan- 
 gelical piety than it has by an inflexible adherence to sound 
 doctrine. Here is the secret of its growth and prosperity. 
 And this Seminar}', in my judgment, was never better equipped 
 for its great work, nor more worthy of the confidence of the 
 Church at large, than it is at this present time. 
 
 In addressing you in relation to the importance, duties, and 
 responsibilities of your chair, my time will only allow a hasty 
 glance at these points. You are doubtless aware that you are 
 
Charge. 9 
 
 entering upon your work at a period of great theological un- 
 rest ; at a period when the very foundations of Christian belief 
 are being violently assailed ; a time when truths long accepted 
 are brought into debate; a time when the very principles 
 upon which the certitude of belief rests are called into ques- 
 tion. Everything in your department is disputed. Every 
 position heretofore held is challenged ; every principle is 
 questioned, and every conclusion denied. In the estimation of 
 some of our most learned men, among whom may be mentioned 
 the venerable father of our own Board, the Rev. Dr. James 
 McCosh, who has rendered such signal service in behalf of a 
 sound Intuitional philosophy, things are in a most unsettled 
 condition. All subjects of human speculation require a re- 
 discussion with a view to determine what are the first and 
 ultimate principles of truth.* 
 
 Be this as it may, while your chair is denominated "The 
 Relations of Philosophy and Science to the Christian Religion," 
 it covers the whole department of Apologetics. The work of 
 the Apologist was never more urgent or more important than 
 now. Your department in reference to the more advanced 
 and much extended curriculum of theological study here 
 pursued may be said to be introductory and preparatory. In 
 a certain sense yours is a work of exploration and discovery. 
 You start out from first principles, from self-evident truths, 
 from truths intuitively seen and generally admitted — and 
 assuming the trustworthiness of sense-perceptions and of the 
 facts of consciousness and mental operations; relying thus 
 upon those principles which are not acquired by experience, 
 but which are implanted in the constitution of our nature ; 
 having this ground on which to stand, and these implements 
 with which to work, you start out and advance step by step, 
 according to the most approved scientific method, to find 
 your way, first, to God — to the knowledge and belief of an 
 extramundane, Personal God ; and, then, from God to a written, 
 inspired, divine revelation. 
 
 ♦ Scottish Philosophy, p. 460. 
 
lo Charge, 
 
 You are not set here as a teacher of theology or as an inter- 
 preter of Scripture. It is for you to show that "the invisible 
 things of God, even His eternal power and Godhead, are to 
 be clearly seen from the things which are made," and that 
 God has manifested His being and attributes in the works of 
 nature, in history, in man, as well as in His Word, and in the 
 Incarnation, life, and doctrines of Jesus Christ, His Eternal 
 Son. In doing this it will devolve upon you to prove the 
 existence of mind as distinct from matter, to establish the 
 reality of the supernatural in order to the possibility of a 
 divine revelation — in other words, to establish the existence 
 of a Personal God, and the possibility, probability, necessity, 
 and reality of a written, plenarily inspired divine revelation, 
 and to marshal the evidences, external and internal, of its 
 divine origin. Apologetics is that one of the theological dis- 
 ciplines which vindicates the right of Christianity to exist. It 
 is the defence of the Christian Religion against all forms of 
 anti-Christian speculation. The Christian apologist has to do 
 chiefly with two questions: i. Is there a Personal God who 
 can be known ? 2. Is Christianity what it claims to be, a 
 supernatural communication from God to men? As all 
 theology roots itself in the idea of a Personal God, there can 
 be no theology, no divine revelation, if there be no such 
 God. Christianity is founded upon the presupposition of the 
 divine existence, and upon the possibility of a divine revela- 
 tion. The divine existence must therefore be either assumed 
 or proven before you can advance to the consideration of a 
 divine revelation. 
 
 By reason of an arrangement which had been adopted prior 
 to your election, the question of Theism, one of the great 
 questions of the present age, is assigned to Dr. Francis L. 
 Patton as its able teacher and defender. You are therefore 
 happily relieved of the responsibility of this important ele- 
 ment of Apologetics. Assuming therefore the divine existence, 
 you are permitted to advance at once to the great work of 
 vindicating the Bible as a divine revelation, and to showing 
 the defensible character of Christianity against the assaults of 
 
Charge. 1 1 
 
 all who would deny its supernatural origin, refuse it recogni- 
 tion as of divine authority, or acknowledgment as the ulti- 
 mate, the universal, and the exclusive religion from God for 
 men. 
 
 I take it to be the general object of your chair to vindicate 
 Christianity as that system of religious faith and worship 
 which rests upon the authority of the sure word of God, and 
 to defend it against all forms of doubt and skepticism ; and its 
 more specific object to be the consideration of the " Relations 
 of Philosophy and Science to the Christian Religion." In 
 these times of great laxity of religious views and abounding 
 worldliness among those who profess and call themselves 
 Christians, when so much passes under the Christian name 
 that is vague, nominal, and spurious, — to say nothing of what 
 is held in the higher realms of philosophical skepticism and 
 practical unbelief, — it is very necessary to define what the 
 Christian religion means for us. It must ever be held to be a 
 religion divinely revealed through authentic agents, duly ac- 
 credited divine messengers, and a system of grace for the sal- 
 vation of sinful men. A religion that recognizes neither sin 
 nor salvation is not the religion of the Bible. Nor is it enough 
 to say that it provides a way whereby men may worship God 
 through Jesus Christ. Very diverse forms of religions profess 
 to do this. It should mean at least what Dr. Patton, the first 
 incumbent of this chair, was pleased to say it meant for him, 
 "the full and true expression of the mind of God respecting 
 faith, worship, and obedience." Religion may exist in the 
 form of reverence, love, and trust toward God, or it may take 
 the shape of a thoroughly digested system of divine truth in 
 the mind. In the cases of De Wette and Dr. Chalmers, the 
 scientific form preceded the spiritual and the practical. 
 
 The natural tendency of the mind to classify its knowledge, 
 of whatever kind, impels it to arrange its religious beliefs in 
 systematic order, and to examine into the foundations of those 
 beliefs. It wants to know what arc the proofs of the divine 
 existence, and what arc the evidences of a divine revelation. 
 Apologetics has for its object a scientific answer to these in- 
 
1 2 Charge. 
 
 quiries. The two burning questions of our times are, the real- 
 ity of the supernatural, and the divine origin and trustworthi- 
 ness of the Sacred Scriptures. The Apologist's work is to es- 
 tablish the one and vindicate the o*^her. 
 
 Theology may begin with a Theistic theory of the universe, 
 or with divine revelation, which assumes the divine existence. 
 Philosophy, which covers the whole range of human intelli- 
 gence, begins with the primitive and more remote facts of 
 mind and matter, from which it argues the existence of God 
 and the possibility and authority of divine revelation. It calls 
 for accurate and valid knowledge of those facts, which are the 
 foundation both of philosophy and theology. "Apologetics 
 puts reason and revelation in their true relations. Reason 
 states the problems, and revelation gives the solution." * The 
 denial of the divine existence leaves the problem of the uni- 
 verse unsolved and unsolvable. 
 
 In the light of these statements, yours is the work of the 
 Christian philosopher. It is for you to find out whether a 
 Theistic conception of the universe has a valid basis of facts, 
 and a valid knowledge of those facts on which to rest. " The 
 Bible appeals to the intelligence of man for its acceptance, 
 subjecting to rational tests not only its evidences, but also its 
 teachings. The full breadth of the argument in exposition 
 and defence of Christianity is seen only by starting from the 
 position that all religion, whatever its form, rests on a rational 
 basis." t Philosophy is thus the handmaid of religion, and 
 not necessarily a rival or hostile system. In getting your 
 theory of the universe, you must combine the facts of revela- 
 tion with the facts of consciousness; for it is only through 
 consciousness that we can have a knowledge of either. " We 
 stand," as has been said, " between God and the world, and 
 we must interpret both by mind. And, in order to such in- 
 terpretation, we must have a philosophy of mind." % It is in 
 
 * H. B. Smith's Apologetics. 
 
 t Science and Religion, Calderwood, p. 27. 
 
 X Strong's Philosophy and Religion, pp. 3, 4. 
 
Charge. 1 3 
 
 vain, therefore, to decry all philosophy. It was the study of 
 Aristotle that made theology a science, and the minted coin 
 of Calvin's Institutes such an advance upon the massive ore of 
 Augustine. It was the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle that 
 disciplined the forces of theology, and made them systematic. 
 And " still these sceptred kings of abstract thought control 
 the minds of men, and rule us from their urns." 
 
 A true knowledge of mind is necessary to a true knowledge 
 of God and of revelation. The Christian believer, however, 
 who accepts the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments 
 as the very Word of God, cannot allow any system of philoso- 
 phy which is the mere product of human intelligence to 
 dominate the teachings and authority of Holy Scripture, or 
 his interpretations of the same. But, availing himself of the 
 aid of philosophy within its own sphere, he can accept its as- 
 sistance in the consideration of the evidences which go to cer- 
 tify that what Christianity claims for itself is true ; and when 
 well satisfied of this, he can still further invoke its aid — in de- 
 pendence upon the aid of the Holy Spirit — in order that he 
 may, in an humble, reverent, and teachable spirit, ascertain 
 the true sense of Scripture. But, while philosophy is a good 
 servant to theological inquiry, it is often a bad master. 
 
 In philosophy, all consciousness involves duality of concep- 
 tion : conception of matter, and conception of mind. Desire 
 for unity impels the mind to seek to combine these differing 
 conceptions, and either to accept the one and deny the other, 
 or to combine both in one, declaring both to be only differing 
 forms of one and the same substance. While to do this in- 
 volves the denial of the most palpable facts, yet one scheme 
 of philosophy after another has been built up in this way, on 
 one or other of these two elements, the other being wholly ig- 
 nored. In all knowledge there is a real unity, yet this passion 
 for unity has its limitations. The facts of consciousness must 
 determine the nature of this unity, and set bounds to its con- 
 trolling influence. 
 
 By reason of the great advances made in the physical sciences 
 and the much wider sphere over which human philosophy 
 
t4 Charge. 
 
 ranges, and the antagonisms developed between them and di- 
 vine revelation, it is the prerogative of Apologetics to keep 
 them in their respective spheres and in their true relations. 
 As the Being of God and the claims of divine revelation have 
 been especially assailed by scientists and philosophers of our 
 time, it is incumbent upon those who are set for the defence 
 of the Christian religion to show the harmony which, of neces- 
 sity, exists between all true science and all sound philosophy 
 and divine revelation. In the prosecution of this high en- 
 deavor, you will be obliged to discriminate sharply between 
 the pretensions of science, falsely so called — against which we 
 are warned in the Scriptures — and science which is based on 
 facts carefully ascertained ; between mere hypotheses and laws 
 which are the logical deductions from facts adequately ob- 
 served. By reason of the increased facilities for investigation, 
 a wider range of knowledge, and better results gathered under 
 carefully tested scientific methods, there has been great ad- 
 vance in the physical sciences. But such an advance does not 
 necessarily unsettle any well-founded religious convictions. 
 The war between hypothesis and dogma has been almost un- 
 ceasing in these modern times ; but, where any real ground 
 for conflict existed, it was because one or the other, or both, 
 were unfounded. 
 
 In the consideration, therefore, of the relation of the sciences 
 to the Christian religion, especially the physical sciences, it is 
 a sufficient guarantee of peace between them for all concerned 
 to be duly informed that each has its own sphere, and that the 
 boundaries between them admit of being clearly defined ; and 
 that, so long as each one restricts itself to its own territory, 
 there need be no strife between them. The physical sciences 
 have to do with observed facts and the laws which govern 
 them. Christianity does not enter on this sphere, nor in any 
 way question the legitimacy of these processes, and is in no 
 wise endangered by any legitimate scientific progress. This fact 
 should be proclaimed from all our housetops, as well as from the 
 chair of Apologetics. All apprehensions on this score upon 
 the part of Christian people should be put to rest as groundless. 
 
Charge. 1 5 
 
 Christianity, however, refuses to be restricted to such ex- 
 ternal observations, or to be tied down to mere sense-percep- 
 tions, and has no controversy with science in her diligent in- 
 quiry into the facts and secret laws of nature ; but is ever 
 ready to rejoice over every legitimate conquest which is thus 
 made. This is only saying, as Prof. Calderwood has so well 
 observed, " that love of truth, and submission to the laws of 
 evidence, are characteristics of all disciplined intelligence." 
 The simple question at issue between the theological and sci- 
 entific world is: Is there any real ground for conflict between 
 the historical facts and revealed truths of Scripture, as under- 
 stood and accepted by those who profess and call them- 
 selves Christians, and the well-ascertained facts and laws of 
 nature? 
 
 Much has been said about conflict between science and the 
 Christian religion, but little has been done in the way of 
 pointing out precisely where this conflict lies, or in determin- 
 ing exactly in what it consists. 
 
 There has been conflict between the false pretences of 
 science and the solid claims of true religion, and there has 
 been conflict between true advances made by science and 
 wrong interpretations of the divine revelation. The chief con- 
 flict between science and religion " has been due to diversities 
 of interpretation and application alike among the upholders 
 of Christianity, and among the expounders of science." Such 
 diversities are the necessary accompaniments of freedom of 
 thought, and essential conditions of any true progress in 
 knowledge, whether in science or religion. It has been ac- 
 knowledged with regret that, hitherto, most of the noise of 
 conflict between science and religion has arisen from a too 
 hasty disposition to charge rationalistic or skeptical conclu- 
 sions as the necessary result of certain scientific hypotheses, 
 and, on the other hand, from a like too great readiness to infer 
 that certain newly recognized facts must prove damaging to 
 Christian faith. By the one side, certain scientific theories 
 have been assailed with needless apprehension and severity; 
 by the other, there has been too great eagerness to interpret 
 
1 6 Charge, 
 
 scientific theories as adverse to Christian doctrine, and to do 
 so with an undisguised hostile feeling.* 
 
 Christianity rests her claims upon an authoritative divine 
 revelation, duly recorded in the inspired books of the Jewish 
 and Christian canons of Scripture. Natural science cannot le- 
 gitimately enter the domain of divine revelation and attempt 
 to deal with the problem of the origin of the universe, or deny 
 the supernatural. To do so, it cannot afifirm, as some do, that 
 there are no facts but those of external observation, and that 
 there are no legitimate inductions of truth save those which 
 are derived from the sense-perceptions. Philosophy may chal- 
 lenge the reality of the supernatural, and call for the facts 
 which go to sustain it, but the natural sciences have no ground 
 to stand upon when they attempt to do so. 
 
 While this is plainly true, it is undeniable that this has not 
 been the uniform attitude of certain leaders in the natural 
 sciences. Christianity has been especially assailed, as Prof. 
 Calderwood puts it, " from the region of scientific inference." 
 By saying so, he meant to discriminate between its being as- 
 sailed by science, which he holds to be impossible, and by sci- 
 entific men — men distinguished in their respective depart- 
 ments of science, who yet go out of their way to draw in- 
 ferences unfriendly to Christianity. 
 
 This brings us on to the great battlefield of the age — the 
 battle ground where the great thinkers of our times divide 
 and are arrayed in open, earnest conflict on the great question 
 of the reality of the supernatural. He who goes into this 
 arena will need to look well to his equipment and to the 
 sources of his strength. He will need to have an intelligent 
 and well-grounded faith in the foundation principles of his 
 system ; a thorough conviction of its defensibility and a cor- 
 rect theory of defence. " He must be prepared to follow 
 when the battle leads, as lead it will, into the fundamental 
 question of the philosophy of belief." The field swarms with 
 all manner of assailants of the supernatural, with scientists, 
 
 * See Prof. Calderwood 's Science and Religion, pp. 20, 21. 
 
Charge. 1 7 
 
 historical critics, and with the representatives of the various 
 schools of the materialistic philosophy, and especially with 
 the adherents of the revived system of Comte, and its affir- 
 mation " that we know nothing but the phenomena of matter, 
 and that mind, if there be such a thing, lies wholly out of the 
 reach of direct observation," and its " denial of causes, both 
 efficient and final,"* which leads necessarily to materialism, 
 pantheism, and atheism. The battle is being waged with the 
 utmost skill and vigor. Messengers are flying here and there 
 over the field bearing despatches as to the weakest points for 
 assault and the strongest positions of defence. The enemy is 
 bold and defiant. It is signalled far and wide " that belief in 
 God has been disintegrated by the widening of knowledge, 
 and that accordingly belief in a supernatural order of things 
 has passed away." 
 
 You need not, my dear brother, tremble at the noise of the 
 conflict, " nor mistake the boasting of those who are putting 
 on the armor for the shout of final victory." No effective 
 battle can here be given by natural scientists. It is with the 
 critics and the adherents of a false philosophy that you will 
 chiefly have to do. The essential principle of these anti- 
 Theistic and skeptical schools is to be seen in their attitude to- 
 ward truth and knowledge. They refuse to believe in God 
 and spiritual things, and base their refusal on the allegation, 
 ** that the human mind is inherently and constitutionally in- 
 capable of knowing whether there is a God and spiritual 
 things or not." This is the arbitrary assumption on which 
 their system rests. " They deny the trustworthiness of the 
 human mind in regard to its normal perceptions, and affirm 
 that its natural and necessary laws are not to be depended 
 on." They ignore the fundamental condition of all knowledge. 
 The older and more ordinary forms of infidelity rested upon 
 the allegation of inadequate evidence for valid belief. But 
 these schools of unbelief base their dissent on the ground that 
 the mind is incapable of deriving probable certainty from all 
 
 ♦Augustus H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, pp. 9, 10. 
 
1 8 Charge. 
 
 the evidences presented. It is not so much against all forms 
 of knowledge that this materialistic philosophy is applied in 
 our day. Its whole force is turned chiefly against the super- 
 natural and the spiritual, as pertaining to the unknown and 
 unknowable. 
 
 I have thus dwelt on these things for the purpose of em- 
 phasizing the great need of a thorough and accurate training 
 of our candidates for the ministry and all other educated 
 young men, at least in the essential principles of mental and 
 moral science and in the laws and methods of sound scientific 
 reasoning. And as students are coming to this Seminary from 
 all quarters of the globe, and with every variety of previous 
 mental discipline, and with most defective habits of thought 
 and modes of reasoning, I beg to suggest whether a brief sum- 
 mary of the fundamental principles of these sciences, after the 
 manner of Dr. Archibald Alexander, fifty years ago, is not a 
 necessity, seeing how certain principles of mental philosophy, 
 whether sensational or intuitional, are dominating the religious 
 thinking of the age. 
 
 Three things are absolutely necessary in this connection : a 
 true doctrine of belief, a true doctrine of knowledge, and a 
 true doctrine of evidence. To protect the young men from 
 the baleful influence of a materialistic philosophy, they must 
 be taught to pay a due regard to the facts of consciousness, 
 to first principles, to the constitution and laws of the mind, 
 and to the laws of correct reasoning. There is nothing, after 
 all, absolutely new in all this agnostic school of thought, as has 
 been shown by Professor Flint. Sir William Hamilton's and 
 Dean Mansel's doctrine, " that the infinite cannot be known," 
 and " that God is therefore not an object of knowledge, but of 
 faith," has been traced to Kant's theory of knowledge. In 
 like manner it has been shown that Herbert Spencer's system 
 is rooted in Mansel's and Hamilton's doctrine of the infinite 
 and in Hume's doctrine of experience. Good service has been 
 rendered in this connection to the Church at large by Dr. 
 Howard Osgood, of Rochester, N. Y., in showing how these 
 boasted schools of modern doubt are given to the work of 
 
Charge. 19 
 
 refurbishing old weapons of infidel warfare, and to brandishing 
 them before the world as something new and of transcendent 
 strength and brilliancy. The fact developed that, after a 
 period of one hundred and thirty years, Kuenen and his 
 followers, as seen in the latest productions of Dr. Driver, of 
 Oxford, England, and Dr. Cornill, of Konigsberg, Germany, 
 have only reproduced the methods and results of Reimarus, 
 of Hamburg, of 1767 — and that these methods and results 
 were not new with him, he having derived them largely from 
 Voltaire, while Voltaire borrowed them from the English 
 Deists and French atheists near the beginning of the last 
 century, and from J ulian, Porphyry and Celsus, of the third and 
 fourth centuries, Julian having been with him a favorite 
 author : — when it has thus been shown that the same methods 
 had been pursued by Reimarus and his skeptical predecessors 
 as in these Introductions of Professors Driver and Cornill, 
 with parallel results, it reveals the audacity of such statements 
 for us then to be told by the biographer of Kuenen, " that 
 he (Kuenen) has with singular boldness shaken the tradition 
 of Christian piety free from every trace of supernaturalism 
 and implied exclusiveness"; that "he has forced the absolute 
 surrender of the orthodox dogmatics and of the authority of 
 the Scriptures"; and that it has been shown from history 
 " that the only claim which Jesus of Nazareth has to our 
 affections and gratitude is for what he as a man has been 
 and has done for men." 
 
 We live, my brother, in what has been styled the analytical 
 and critical age of the Church. We lay great stress upon the 
 right of private judgment, and too little upon what Prof. 
 Flint calls the correlative truth " of judging rightly." The 
 right of private judgment and independent action, while the 
 essential conditions of true freedom of thought and progress 
 in knowledge, yet, if left unrestrained by sound principles of 
 conduct and rightful authority, tends to rash assaults upon 
 long-established systems of belief, and to violent revolutions 
 in civil and social order. True progress is not mere change 
 of opinions, or the uprooting of the foundations of verified 
 
20 Charge. 
 
 knowledge. If truth has been once adequately established, it 
 is to be held fast as of imperishable value, and never to be 
 relinquished. 
 
 The new science of comparative religions will also claim 
 your attention. You know its origin and its results. It was 
 a reaction from the natural theology of Palcy, Butler, and 
 Chalmers. Its contributions, however, to natural theology, 
 like those of natural history to anthropology, have been of 
 little value. At the same time, this historical survey of the 
 natural religions of the world has borne good fruit, in that it 
 has given testimony to certain well-known and generally 
 admitted truths: i. To the fact that man is a religious being; 
 2. To man's need of God, and to his having sufficient capacity 
 to know something of Him ; 3. To the fact that a capacity to 
 know God, and actual knowledge of Him, are things very 
 different. 
 
 The argument derived from this science agamst Christianity, 
 to the effect that all these religions have professed to be 
 founded upon divine revelations, and have claimed super- 
 natural sanctions, is of no force. It is one thing to set up 
 such claims, and another thing to establish them. 
 
 No amount of assumption or pretension is sufficient to 
 justify the rejection of the well-founded claims of Christianity 
 to a divine origin, with all its credentials and evidences, which 
 are to be determined on their own merits. Over against all 
 such claims are to be arrayed the sources and evidences of 
 Christianity, its possibility, historical character, and necessity 
 in order to the religious life and salvation of men, its actual 
 intrusion into history as a divine force, and the production of 
 a new and divine life in the experience of mankind, culminat- 
 ing in the Person and life of the Lord Jesus Christ as the per- 
 fect revelation of God. 
 
 You take your chair, therefore, as an accredited defender of 
 Christianity against all who would deny its divine origin, its 
 supernatural revelations, its inspired records, and its exclusive 
 claims to acceptance among men. While the Bible is its own 
 best defence, and carries on its face the marks of its own high 
 
Charge. 21 
 
 origin; while the Holy Spirit is the greatest Apologist and 
 witness to the truth of God ; and while the faith of God's 
 people rests chiefly upon historical facts and spiritual intui- 
 tions : yet, if we are to go into the arena of debate, and expect 
 to make headway with unbelievers, we must go prepared to 
 conduct the discussion on the basis of reason and common 
 objective evidence. For the individual believer the saving 
 apprehension of the truth, and the inward witness of the Holy 
 Spirit, may be and are sufficient. But this is testimony which 
 unregenerate men are capable neither of giving nor of receiv- 
 ing. Christianity has its independent evidences. It is a divine 
 revelation, as real as that of the kingdom of nature, proved, 
 independently of its self-evidencing light, by its own external 
 evidences, by experience, and by history. We must show its 
 defensible character, and exhibit its credentials of miracle and 
 prophecy, or else it will be in vain for us to call upon the na- 
 tions to receive it, or hold it fast when received. At the same 
 time, the great means of its propagation is the faithful preach- 
 ing of the Gospel by divinely called and regenerated men, 
 thoroughly trained and duly ordained to the work of the 
 ministry. 
 
 Bear with me, I beg you, for a few moments longer, and al- 
 low me to close this address — already too long — with the re- 
 cital of a personal reminiscence bearing on the subject before 
 us. Some twenty-five or twenty-six years ago, when I was en- 
 gaged in editorial work at Chicago, on my way eastward I 
 stopped at Pittsburgh for the purpose of having a conference 
 with our late lamented friend, Dr. A. A. Hodge, then Profes- 
 sor in the Western Seminary. I found him in his study, 
 wrestling with Herbert Spencer's /7>.y/ Principles in Philosophy; 
 wrestling as only he, with his wonderfully acute intellect and 
 powerful, analytical mind and versatile genius, could wrestle. 
 After the usual salutations, telling me what he was doing, he 
 said to me in tones of most intense, of almost agonizing earn- 
 estness: " Either our old-school theology is the very truth of 
 God, or else this man Herbert Spencer, one of the greatest in- 
 tellects of the age, is right. The truth is upon the one side 
 
22 Charge. 
 
 or the other." This, allow me to say, was before Spencer's 
 great thesis, " that the provinces of science and religion are 
 distinguished from each other as the known, and the unknown 
 and unknowable," and the arguments by which he sought to 
 sustain it — viz.: i. "That human intelligence is incapable of 
 any absolute knowledge," and 2. " The relativity of all knowl- 
 edge," — had been analyzed, and their two elements shown to 
 be inconsistent, contradictory, and irreconcilable, as they have 
 since been here in Princeton and on the other side of the water, 
 by Prof. Flint, Principal Caird, and others.* Dr. Archibald 
 Hodge was then doing original thinking upon the subject. 
 His father's great chapter on the Knowledge of God had not 
 then been written. 
 
 And so, my brother, as you take hold of the great questions 
 of your department, you will be called to grapple with some 
 of the greatest thinkers of the age, and to sound the depths 
 of some of the profoundest and most subtle reasoning of our 
 times ; and, as you go into the contest with these trained ath- 
 letes in argument, you will need to strip and train for the con- 
 flict, and to be sure to take no uncertain position, make no 
 hasty concessions, and be well persuaded that at every advance 
 you make you plant your foot on solid ground, as much so as 
 if you were climbing the Alps, and that every blow you give is 
 impelled by a clear head and prompted by a warm heart ; the 
 one as enlightened by the very truth of God, and the other as 
 dominated by the Holy Spirit. This Seminary, dear brother, 
 has now stood for over fourscore years for the Bible as the 
 plenarily inspired Word of God, and for the Westminster 
 Confession of Faith and Catechisms as the Church's accepted 
 and authorized interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. May 
 this institution ever be in the future, as it has been in the 
 past, the same faithful teacher and able defender of the Re- 
 formed theology as formulated in these symbols of our faith. 
 
 And finally, my brother, while Apologetics is the general 
 subject of your chair, yet of this you have not a monopoly. 
 
 * See Principal Caird 's Philosophy of Religion, pp. 13, 14. 
 
Charge. 23 
 
 Apologetics defends the truths of Christianity, as well as vin- 
 dicates Christianity itself. Each of the other chairs vindicates 
 the truth of God when assailed, and especially that portion of 
 it confided to its care. Very good — yea, I may add, very 
 heroic — service has been rendered along this line, especially 
 from the departments of Old Testament Literature, New Tes- 
 tament Exegesis, and Systematic Theology, in defence of the 
 integrity, authenticity, plenary inspiration, and trustworthi- 
 ness of the Holy Scriptures, which the Board of Directors, as 
 well as the Church at large, gratefully recognizes and highly 
 appreciates. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE REASON IN 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 WILLIAM BRENTON GREENE, JR., D.D. 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of 
 Directors : 
 
 In entering formally on the duties of the chair to 
 which you have invited me, let me express my apprecia- 
 tion of your confidence in me. 
 
 A professorship in one of our theological seminaries 
 is no ordinary trust. Its chief function is to teach and 
 to train preachers of the Gospel. Because, therefore, it 
 has "pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to 
 save them that believe," the position of a theological 
 professor must be as much more serious than that of the 
 preacher as the work of the medical professor is than that 
 of the physician. The theological teacher cannot fail 
 largely to determine the spiritual health of all the congre- 
 gations of all his pupils. The low slate of practical re- 
 ligion in Germany is due to no cause so much as to the 
 cold rationalism that has prevailed so generally in the theo- 
 logical faculties of her universities. Moreover, peculiar 
 responsibility rests on the theological professor because 
 of his relation to the theological seminary. It repre- 
 sents a system which is on trial. The world opposes 
 its training as too scholastic. It educates its students 
 away from the masses that it will be their business to 
 try to save. The church is beginning to criticise its 
 curriculum as too extended. The preacher ought not 
 to give so much time to the study even of the Word of 
 
28 The Ftuiction of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 God, when the nations are perishing through ignorance 
 of it. The theological professor, therefore, must vindi- 
 cate the educational plan with which he is identified. If 
 his pupils do not become conspicuously able ministers, 
 more than his own fitness to teach will be questioned. 
 The standing, in the church no less than in society, of 
 our whole system of theological training will be weak- 
 ened, a system which has produced the most blessed re- 
 sults, a system which is the choice fruit of the counsels, 
 the labors, the prayers, and the sacrifices of many of the 
 noblest of God's people, and a system which expresses 
 "the mind of the Spirit." 
 
 The professorship of the Relations of Philosophy and 
 Science to the Christian Religion is one of no ordinary 
 scope and importance. It deals with the relations of 
 things, and these are always more difficult of apprehen- 
 sion and more practical when apprehended, than is the 
 knowledfje of the thino^s themselves. The nature of the 
 soul or of the body is not so mysterious as is the rela- 
 tion of the one to the other; and the question as to 
 what mind or matter is in itself derives its chief interest 
 from the light that it would throw on the relation be- 
 tween them. It is this that is of vital consequence. 
 Still further, this professorship deals with the relations 
 to Christianity of the things most vitally related to her. 
 The history of philosophy is almost the history of re- 
 ligion, and specially of Christianity, in its intellectual 
 character. At how early a time the doctrines of the 
 Bible began to be shaped by the theosophies of the 
 East! In the scholastic age did not the logical forms 
 of Aristotle mould every truth of the Gospel ? Nor 
 has the relation of philosophy to Christianity been less 
 intimate since. Descartes largely determined the method 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 29 
 
 of not a few theological treatises of the second half of 
 the seventeenth century. Even Locke's Essay on the 
 Hu77ian Under standi7ig regulated the defences of re- 
 ligion during the last century. The critical philosophy 
 of Kant and the intuitionalism of Schleiermacher, the 
 two being often mixed incongruously, may be traced in 
 almost every theological work coming out in Germany, 
 and are appearing in the writings of not a few British 
 and American divines. A large party in the Church 
 of England owes almost its existence to " the airy 
 spirit of Coleridge"; and even among us many of our 
 ministers, and some of them the most useful, are known 
 as Coleridgeans. Nor need we go beyond the sea for 
 examples of the influence of philosophy on Christianity. 
 The epitaph on the tomb of our own Edwards speaks 
 of him, not unjustly either in the sphere of metaphysics 
 at least, as " secundus neniijti niortalium "/ and we 
 know that for two or three generations New England 
 theology was controlled, as the soundest of it still is in- 
 fluenced, by his metaphysics. It could not be other* 
 wise. As Sir William Hamilton, who himself gave the 
 most powerful impulse to one of the chief tendencies 
 of the religious thought of our day, has remarked : " No 
 problem has emerged in theology which had not pre- 
 viously emerged in philosophy." The latter, therefore, 
 must shape the former. 
 
 And if the influence of science on religion cannot be 
 traced so clearly, it is not because it has been less; it is 
 only because it has been general rather than definite. 
 Did this occasion afford the opportunity for the analy- 
 sis and criticism required, it would be easy to show that 
 to such scientists as Bacon and Newton, and many 
 others whom we may not mention, but among whom 
 
30 The Ftinctio7i of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 there ought to be named, in this their home, our own 
 Henry and Guyot, Christianity owes, for her confir- 
 mation and illustration, a debt which she has not yet 
 appreciated and which it will be late before she has re- 
 paid. Even in the long controversy between science 
 and religion, in itself so unnecessary and consequently 
 so wrong, God has " made the wrath of man to praise 
 Him." In seeking to turn nature against Christianity 
 they have also but opened to her a new arsenal for her 
 defence, a new treasury for her enrichment. This is 
 not strange. It is the Holy Spirit who i;ays : " The in- 
 visible things of God since the creation of the world are 
 clearly seen, being perceived through the things that 
 are made, even His everlasting power and divinity." 
 Thus the natural is a true, though partial, revelation of 
 the Supernatural. The natural will, therefore, be essen- 
 tial to the higher revelations of Him in the Written 
 Word and in the Incarnate Word; for God knows the 
 end from the beginning, and each step in His plan of 
 self-revelation supposes those that preceded. If we do 
 not see His handiwork in nature, we cannot recognize 
 His voice in the Scriptures, or in Christ the glory of 
 His grace. Hence, the unique importance to Chris- 
 tianity of science, the interpreter of nature. In so far 
 as she discharges this her true function, even though 
 she denies Christianity, she must unfold the earlier 
 revelation with which Christianity is in harmony and 
 on which it is based. The chair, therefore, to which you 
 have invited me may be said to be fundamental to all 
 the others. The Bible, the truths of which it is the 
 chief aim of them all to present, does not teach either 
 philosophy or science in itself; but it recognizes true 
 science as of divine authority and necessity in its own 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 3 1 
 
 sphere, and it assumes and so stamps as divine a very 
 definite system of philosophy. If, then, "science falsely 
 so called" or "vain philosophy" became dominant, it is 
 not too much to say that even " the Word of God " 
 would lack a foundation essential to it and regarded by 
 itself as such. 
 
 This professorship that we are considering has in this 
 Seminary been held by no ordinary men. It was created 
 for Dr. Francis L. Patton, and after his acceptance of 
 the Presidency of the University it was taken by Dr. 
 Charles A. Aiken. Dr. Patton is so favorably known, 
 not only to you, but also to the whole thinking world, 
 that anything that I could say with reference to him 
 would be both superfluous and inadequate. My rejoic- 
 ing is that he still retains a connection with his former 
 chair, and my hope is that so long as I shall be its in- 
 cumbent he will continue to lay the foundation for it in 
 his admirable lectures on Theism. I could scarcely ac- 
 cept his place did I not feel that he would thus help me 
 to try to fill it. 
 
 Of Dr. Aiken I must speak, even though what I shall 
 say should be superfluous and inadequate. He is with 
 us no more. He was my instructor in the subjects of 
 this chair so far as they were then taught in this Semi- 
 nary. He will stand before me as my ideal of the equal 
 union of the scholar, the gentleman, and the Christian. 
 Nor may I pass over his attainments in this department. 
 It would not have been his choice had he chosen his 
 w^ork. He has left a series of lectures on Pentateuchal 
 Criticism, which show clearly where his ability lay and 
 how high it was. And yet his courses on Apologetics 
 and Ethics, while evidently not specially congenial to 
 him, were marked by the accurate learning, the elegant 
 
32 The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 culture, and the beautiful spirit which characterized all 
 his work ; and I am bound to add that, after consult- 
 ing many and more ambitious books, I have often 
 found in his old Syllabus their best summary. Surely 
 you can see that the position made by such professors 
 as Dr. Patton and Dr. Aiken must be peculiarly re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 This, too, is no ordinary occasion in the history of 
 the Seminary. We are passing through a crisis unex- 
 ampled, probably, in the career of any similar institution. 
 Of the seven professors who first welcomed me here as 
 a student sixteen years ago, but one remains ; so terrible 
 have been the ravages of death in that unequalled Fac- 
 ulty. The solemn, the oppressive question, therefore, 
 confronts us, their successors and pupils : Shall the 
 work which they did so well go forward ? Do you 
 wonder that your new professor, as he finds himself in 
 the place of those whom he revered and on whom he 
 depended, and charged with developing what they be- 
 gan, is awed by a sense of loneliness and responsibility? 
 He could not have accepted your invitation had he not 
 heard in it God's call. He could not go on with his 
 work, if he had not experienced the heartiest co-opera- 
 tion and the kindest sympathy from his colleagues in 
 the Faculty, and if he did not feel sure of your indul- 
 gence and specially of your earnest and constant prayers. 
 
 The subject which I have chosen for this inaugural 
 address is 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF THE REASON IN CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I have been led to this choice by three considerations. 
 Twelve years ago Dr. Patton at his inauguration defined 
 the scope and vindicated the importance of this chair. 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 33 
 
 For me formally to do it would, therefore, be useless, 
 if not presumptuous. Moreover, as the characteristic 
 of this department is that, while in all the others the 
 appeal is to the Bible first, in this it is to the reason 
 alone : as the question is, not. What do the Scriptures 
 say? as in Exegetical Theology; nor. What are the 
 order and the form in which their truths are developed ? 
 as in Biblical Theology ; nor, What is the system in- 
 volved in these truths? as in Systematic Theology; nor. 
 How can this system be best applied to the regenera- 
 tion of society ? as in Practical Theology; nor even. 
 What have been the effects throughout the ages of such 
 application ? as in Historical Theology ; but. What is 
 true in religion on the ground of reason simply? — it 
 would seem that in discussing the Function of the Reason 
 in Christianity we should, in fact, be defining the limits 
 of this chair and showing its importance. This depart- 
 ment cannot go beyond reason, and it can have no 
 higher value than belongs to reason. Then, too, the 
 tendencies of our age and the controversies in our 
 church render the theme selected specially pertinent. 
 These have been quite as much the result of the abuse 
 or non-use of the reason as of a wrong doctrine of the 
 " Word of God." Indeed, the former has been the 
 root of the latter. 
 
 What, therefore, do we mean by the reason ? — Some- 
 times it stands for that faculty of the mind by which we 
 reason or draw inferences. Its exercise is reasoning, 
 and it itself is known as the Understanding. Again, 
 reason denotes the mental power which sees necessary 
 truth at once, without an intermediate process of reason- 
 ing. As thus contrasted with the understanding, it is 
 called Intuition. Once more, by certain English writers 
 
34 ^/^^ Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 reason is used in a general sense for that aggregate of 
 mental and moral qualities by which man is distinguished 
 from the brutes. Very often it is a comprehensive term 
 for intelligence, or for the cognitive powers of man. 
 Thus in the words of Charles Hodge, it is the "cog- 
 nitive faculty, that which perceives, compares, judges, 
 and infers." This is the sense in which it will be used 
 in this address, except when its employment otherwise 
 is distinctly noted. The question, then, which is before 
 us is, Plas our faculty of perceiving, comparing, judg- 
 ing, and inferring any function in ascertaining and veri- 
 fying religious truth ? and, if so. What is its function ? 
 and, more particularly, What is its function in these re- 
 spects as related to the religious feeling, the conscience, 
 the Church and the Scriptures ? 
 
 I. The reason has a function in religion. Within its 
 own sphere it may be a source and ground and measure 
 of relijrious truth. 
 
 That this is so appears, first of all, in the untenable- 
 ness of the positions from which the contrary is argued. 
 These are, in the main, three. 
 
 I. That of the Agnostic. He holds that knowledge 
 is impossible in the sphere of religion. His creed is 
 that "it is the glory of God to conceal a thing." He 
 worships " an unknown God," so long as he worships. 
 He appears in every age. You meet him to-day, per- 
 haps, more frequently than ever. He appeals specially 
 to Sir William Hamilton, to Mansel, to Herbert Spen- 
 cer, thinkers who have had few equals in our time and 
 few superiors in any other. Nor may it be denied that 
 he stands for an important truth and because of it. In 
 a most real sense God must ever be "the Great Un- 
 known." " Canst thou by searching find out God ? 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 35 
 
 Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" 
 The error of the Agnostic is not the affirmation that 
 God can never be known fully; it is the assertion that 
 He cannot be known at all. This denial, so far as it 
 claims to be philosophical, is based, and may be exposed, 
 on one or on all of three grounds. 
 
 It proceeds, first, on a false theory of the nature of 
 knowledge. This is, that to know anything we must 
 know it in its essence and be able to define it itself. 
 Hence, as the finite cannot know the essence of the in- 
 finite God, and as He is, because infinite, that is with- 
 out limits, indefinable; we cannot know Him. Would 
 not this reasoning, however, bear equally against our 
 most common knowledge ? We discern no limits to 
 the ocean. Yet does that keep us from knowing so 
 much of it as comes within our vision ? We do not 
 know even a blade of grass absolutely or in its essence. 
 The little child will ask with reference to it questions 
 that the profoundest scientist cannot answer. Do we, 
 then, know nothing concerning the blade of grass ? Is 
 it impossible that knowledge should be partial and yet 
 true so far as it goes ? If it is, only God can know any- 
 thing ; for only God can know everything. Thus the 
 Agnostic's theory of knowledge must land him in uni- 
 versal skepticism. If he is consistent, he cannot but 
 say with Arcesilaus, " We can know nothing, not even 
 this itself, that we know nothing." 
 
 Again, the denial that God can be known at all pro- 
 ceeds on a false theory of the condition of knowledge. 
 This theory is the identity of the subject knowing 
 with the object known. As Mansel puts it, " Qiia^itum 
 sumus scimus "and " Si?nile siniili cognoscitur!' H ence, 
 as we are not a part of God, as we do not hold to 
 
36 The Fu7iciion of the Reasoii in Christianity. 
 
 Pantheism ; we cannot know God, we must hold to 
 nescience. This theory, however, is manifestly false. 
 Knowledge does require a capacity, a kinship. We 
 could not know God if we were not spiritual and so 
 akin to Him. But knowledge does not depend on 
 identity of nature. If it did, all knowledge, except 
 self-knowledge, would be impossible. To know that 
 space is boundless, we should have to be boundless ; for 
 we can know only so far as we are. To know the non- 
 ego, the ego would have to be the non-ego ; for like is 
 known only to like. 
 
 Once more, the denial that we are considering pro- 
 ceeds on a false definition of God as the infinite or the 
 absolute. By the infinite is meant the all ; and by the 
 absolute the unrelated. In either aspect, consequently, 
 God cannot be known. As the infinite or the all, He 
 cannot be known : for to know is to distinguish the ob- 
 ject known from others ; and so if God could be known, 
 He would not be the all or the infinite. To try to 
 know Him, therefore, is like the attempt to take hold 
 of something which must go to pieces if you take hold 
 of it. In like manner, God cannot be known as the 
 absolute : for we can know only what is related to us 
 just as we can see only what is presented to our eye ; 
 and so if God could be known. He would not be the 
 unrelated or the absolute. To endeavor to know Him, 
 consequently, would be like the effort to see what must 
 lie beyond the range of vision. 
 
 This reasoning, however, though flawless in itself, 
 fails because it is based on false premises. There is no 
 such infinite, there is no such absolute. 
 
 There need not be. The absolute does not neces- 
 sarily mean the unrelated. It may mean that which 
 
The Function of the Reason i7i Christianity, t^j 
 
 stands in no such relation to anything outside of itself 
 as to depend on it or be constrained by it. An abso- 
 lute sovereign is not one who sustains no relations to 
 his subjects ; he is one who sustains only such relations 
 as he himself pleases. The infinite need not mean the 
 all because it signifies unlimited. We may have an in- 
 finite line, an infinite surface, an infinite solid. Space 
 may be infinite without being duration, and duration 
 may be infinite without being space. Hence, a spirit 
 may be infinite and yet be distinct from physical forms 
 of existence and even from finite spirits. All that is 
 necessary to his being infinite is that no limit can be 
 assigned to him as a spirit. That is, when anything is 
 said to be infinite all that need be meant is, not that it 
 is not limited in the sense of being distinguished from 
 other things, but that no limit is possible to it as so dis- 
 tinguished. Hence, when we say that God is infinite, 
 it does not necessarily imply that He is the sum of all 
 things, and so unknowable ; it may as well mean that 
 He is a spirit or person to whose being and attributes 
 as such a spirit or persoji no limit is possible. Though 
 he embraces nothing but himself, that self is boundless. 
 Again, not only need there not be any such infinite 
 or absolute as the philosophical Agnostic supposes ; 
 there cannot be. The phenomenal or relative universe 
 demands the absolute as its ground ; and because it is 
 its ground, the absolute must have come into relation 
 to it. So, also, the infinite cannot be the all. The two 
 are and must be radically distinct. The infinite is a 
 term of quality; the all is a term of quantity. The in- 
 finite is the not-finite; the all is the sum of the finite. 
 Hence, the one cannot be the other. They are mutu- 
 ally exclusive as goodness and space. 
 
38 TJie Fti7iction of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 And all this is confirmed by consciousness. Its 
 clearest and strongest testimony, a testimony that must 
 be accepted if we are to be justified in thinking, is to 
 our personality. That is, consciousness insists that the 
 infinite does not embrace us, and so that it is not the all ; 
 and thus it exposes the untenablenessof the last ground 
 on which the Agnostic would take his stand. 
 
 2. There is the position of the Mystic. To him God 
 is not incognizable as to the Agnostic, but is cognizable 
 only by an organ other than reason. We believe in 
 God, though we cannot prove His existence. We feel 
 and realize spiritual truth, though in terms and proposi- 
 tions we cannot express it. In a word, religion resides, 
 not in the reason or cognitive powers, not even in the 
 will or active powers, but in the sensibility. Such was 
 the principle with which Schleiermacher overcame the 
 rationalism of Germany. Such, with modifications, was 
 the teaching of Theodore Parker and the New England 
 Transcendentalists. Such, too, is the root of the tend- 
 ency now so widely apparent to exalt the Christian 
 consciousness as the discoverer and the test of truth, 
 and to decry the importance of everything like system- 
 atic or reasoned theology. 
 
 While admitting that those who have thus empha- 
 sized the importance of feeling in religion have in doing 
 so done good service to it, we are bound to deny that 
 religion is wholly, or even chiefly, a matter of feeling. 
 
 In the first place, feeling is impossible without the 
 exercise of reason. Feeling presupposes intelligence. 
 As Bovven says, " It is a state of mind consequent on 
 the reception of some idea." Schleiermacher's feeling 
 of absolute dependence on God implies some knowledge 
 of Him. How could we feel dependence on that of 
 
The Ftinction of the Reason in Christianity, 39 
 
 which we knew nothing ? Could a child feel thus to- 
 ward his father if he did not first become aware of his 
 father and of the relation between them ? Were this not 
 so, religious feeling could not be discriminated as such. 
 Within the sphere of feeling proper we are conscious 
 only of pleasure or pain. Here the rapture of the 
 sensualist and the devout elevation of the saint are on 
 a level. Of the nature of its object feeling itself gives 
 not the least intimation. As it is its object that arouses 
 it, so it is its object that determines its character; and 
 an object cannot be such unless it be known. " All 
 feeling must be able to justify itself to some idea." 
 Hence, the Mystic in making religion begin with feel- 
 ing shows only that he does not know what feeling is. 
 
 Nor is the position of the Mystic true even so far as 
 this, that there is no place in religion for the logical 
 faculty, the understanding. Because some of the truths 
 of religion are intuitive, it does not follow that all are. 
 The idea of God is innate ; the Bible makes no attempt 
 to prove His existence ; many claim that the arguments 
 of theology fail to prove it. Still, it will not result that 
 all the truths involved in our relations to Him are also in- 
 tuitive. Personality is a fact of consciousness ; we cannot 
 demonstrate it. The relations of the world about us 
 to our personality, however, are not, in the main, facts 
 of consciousness. These have to be ascertained by 
 observation and reasoning. Thus because religion is 
 partly a matter of intuition it does not follow that it is 
 wholly so. Analogy would seem to suggest that even 
 in it there might be a place for reasoning. 
 
 This may be shown to be so even in the case of those 
 religious ideas which are clearly innate. Take the idea 
 of God. We believe in Him because we were consti- 
 
40 The Ftuictio^i of the Reaso7i in Christianity. 
 
 tuted to do so. Admit, if you please, that in the last 
 analysis we are conscious of Him. Still, we are all 
 aware that there are arguments for the existence of 
 God, and that the profoundest thinkers have been and 
 are yet elaborating them. Thus the fact shows that 
 we can reason concerning even that which is intuitive 
 in religion. It has been done; it is being done. More- 
 over, the result proves that it is well that it should be 
 done. These arguments are useful as replies to skep- 
 tics. They are yet more useful in developing our in- 
 nate idea of God. If they do not make it more certain 
 that there is a God, they do make it much clearer what 
 God is. There is thus both a place for reasoning in re- 
 ligion, and it is well that reasoning should be in its 
 place. It will be. We are so made that we cannot 
 help endeavoring to systematize and reconcile the facts 
 which we admit to be true. The question is not whether 
 there shall be theology, but what shall be the system of 
 the theology. Schleiermacher may claim to begin 
 with feeling, but his development is by logic. Even 
 extreme Mysticism is itself the refutation of its preten- 
 sion. Its feeling depends on reason, and it reasons 
 while it feels. 
 
 3. There is the position of the Indifferentist and Ex- 
 clusionist. It is with the understanding only, and not 
 with reason as denoting the cognitive powers in general, 
 that he has his quarrel. He argues from the sacredness 
 of Christianity as a divine revelation. " It were pre- 
 sumption, it were impiety," he holds, "to reason with 
 reference to a 'Thus saith the Lord.' We ought simply 
 to listen and obey. Admit that what He says is above 
 reason, or even that it is contrary to reason ; it is enough 
 that God has spoken." I have called such objectors 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 41 
 
 Indifferentists, since indifference is commonly the root 
 of their objection. Numerous in all our churches, they 
 do not prize spiritual things sufficiently to care to reason 
 with reference to them ; more especially as it is hard 
 work to reason closely, and particularly in the sphere 
 of reli^jion because of the grandeur and spirituality of 
 its truths. 
 
 There are those, however, who make the same plea, 
 but with a different motive. We may call them Ex- 
 clusionists. They are profound thinkers, as G. H. 
 Lewes ; and some of them are also sincerely religious 
 men, as Michael Faraday. They would regard reason 
 and revelation as independent and even as mutually 
 exclusive authorities. Hence, the latter may be true, 
 though above the former or even though contrary to 
 it ; and so there can be no place for reasoning in re- 
 ligion. This is beyond its sphere. 
 
 This view, we must admit, contains much more than 
 a grain of truth. When God has spoken we cannot 
 listen too reverently. It is true, but in another sense 
 it is far from true, that the Bible should be treated just 
 as other books. The question, however, is. Could it be 
 honored, if its teachings were considered contrary to 
 reason or even above reason ? — No. Take the case of 
 " contrary to reason." A revelation that was such we 
 could not respect. We may believe a royal proclama- 
 tion simply because it is a royal proclamation. We 
 will not do so, however, until we have discerned on it 
 the king's seal, or until reason has been otherwise satis- 
 fied that it is a royal proclamation. In like manner, 
 though reason be not called on to try the contents of a 
 supernatural revelation, it must decide as to the evi- 
 dence that it is from God. Indeed, as there must be 
 
42 The Function of the Reasofi in Christianity. 
 
 some test of this, so, until the revelation has been 
 proved to be supernatural, reason is the only test avail- 
 able. This, however, implies that the contents of the 
 revelation are rational as truly as is its evidence. 
 Otherwise, we should have reason proving the un- 
 reasonable, and so stultifying itself. In a word, a reve- 
 lation justifying to reason, as it must do before in any 
 event it may be received, a right to teach what is con- 
 trary to reason, is an impossible conception. 
 
 It is the same in the case of " above reason." In one 
 sense, of course, this phrase suggests an important 
 truth. There is much in religion, as in nature, that we 
 cannot comprehend. There are doctrines of the Bible 
 of which it is specially true that we can know them 
 only " in part." They are too large for us. Though 
 w^e can see into them, we are not able, and we never 
 shall be able, to reason through them. "The riches of 
 Christ" are, indeed, "unsearchable." This, however, 
 is not what is always meant by the phrase, "above rea- 
 son." Since Leibnitz it has been used by many apolo- 
 gists to suggest that while nothing can be accepted as 
 revealed which contradicts reason, yet revelation may 
 communicate to us what in its nature, and not merely 
 in its extent, transcends reason. The difficulty is not 
 that the truth is too large for reason to comprehend ; 
 it is that it is of a sort different from what reason can 
 apprehend. That the ocean is above human vision be- 
 cause it is too broad to be taken in by the eye, illustrates 
 the true sense of " above reason." That oxygen gas 
 is above human vision because it is too ethereal to be 
 its object, illustrates the meaning of above reason in 
 the theory that we are criticising. Now this view is 
 open to the same objection that we noted in the case 
 
The Function of the Reason ifi Christianity. 43 
 
 of " contrary to reason." Indeed, what is above reason 
 in tiie sense tiiat we are considering is contrary to 
 reason. We would not speak even of the vast stretches 
 of the ocean that we do not see as invisible. Its nature 
 is such that it can come into relation to the eye, thouf^h 
 its extent is such that most of it lies beyond our vision. 
 We would, however, speak of oxygen gas as invisible. 
 Its nature is such that it cannot come into relation to 
 the eye ; it is not simply beyond vision, it is contrary to 
 vision. In like manner, there are truths so far-reachinji, 
 so manifold in their connections, that they will always 
 be beyond the comprehension of our reason ; but if 
 there were truths whose nature was such that they could 
 not come into relation to reason at any point, they 
 would not merely be beyond it, they would be con- 
 trary to it. Between them and it, as between sight 
 and the invisible, there would be and could be only 
 contradiction. Nor may we urge that, as what is con- 
 trary to sight may still be found true by some other 
 test, for chemistry can detect the invisible oxygen ; so 
 what is contrary to reason might yet be shown to be 
 true by higher revelation. The analogy does not hold. 
 In physical nature there are many tests of truth, and so 
 what cannot come into relation to one of them may do 
 so to another: but in spiritual nature there is only one 
 test, there is but one reason, we can conceive of no 
 other; and thus what cannot come into relation to it 
 so that reason can begin to construe it must be to us 
 utterly unknown, indeed a nonentity. Even a special 
 revelation could not be believed, because it could not 
 be accepted, if there were no side of it that reason 
 could recognize as rational. Faith, as we shall see here- 
 after, is and must be rational. Indeed, it is reason. It 
 
44 The Fujictioii of the Reason {71 Christianity. 
 
 is reason acting on the most rational of all grounds, 
 divine testimony. Its object, consequently, the subject 
 of that testimony, cannot differ in kind from the object 
 of reason proper. Therefore, to say that the Bible can 
 be " above reason " in the sense that its truths belong to 
 a sphere which reason cannot enter, is as absurd as to 
 say that it can be true though "contrary to reason." 
 Both suppositions are identical, and so the former as im- 
 possible as the latter. Nor does all this imply the Dog- 
 matism of Wolf, that the doctrines of the Bible should 
 be accepted only so far as they have been demonstrated. 
 It is rather the position of that master Apologist, Henry 
 B. Smith, that every doctrine has its philosophical as- 
 pect and, therefore, that that only is true faith which 
 reason introduces and which even the understanding 
 can and ought to follow, though it may sometimes have 
 to do so at an infinite distance. 
 
 Such, then, are the three grounds on which it is 
 denied that reason has a function in religion : that of 
 the Agnostic, that of the Mystic, and that of the In- 
 differentist and Exclusionist ; positions the manifested 
 untenableness of which seems to show that reason has 
 a function in religion. When the adversary cannot 
 make his point, it is a strong presumption that the case 
 is gained. 
 
 We will turn now to the positive considerations which 
 prove this to be so. 
 
 Observe, therefore, that Christianity is very stimu- 
 lating intellectually. The influence of the Bible is not 
 confined to rendering men "wise unto salvation." Be- 
 yond all other books it has made thinkers. It cannot 
 fail to do so. The intellect is enlarged chiefly in pro- 
 portion to the truths on which it is exercised, and where 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 45 
 
 can we find truths which for sublimity and profundity 
 can be compared with those of the Scriptures, " the 
 deep things of God"? Now may it be supposed that 
 Christianity has no place for the reason which she, more 
 than all else, has thus developed ? As well might we 
 think that a father would give his children their best 
 training in judging for themselves, if he did not mean 
 them to do so. 
 
 Again, Christianity demands and, since true, is en- 
 titled to, the active service of the reason. We are 
 required to present even our bodies "living sacrifices" 
 to God. In view of what He is and what we are, it is 
 but just that we should. Hence, the system of truth in 
 which God has personally revealed His highest glory is 
 outraged, if respect even of the lowest sort is wanting 
 to it. Therefore, though the assent of the reason to 
 the truths of Christianity is not so exalted as faith's 
 consent to them, still, it is an assent which is indispen- 
 sable, because it is an assent which is due. He who is 
 satisfied merely to believe Christianity to be from God, 
 who does not try also to understand why and how this 
 is, insults the God on whom he professes to believe. 
 Anselm has well said : '* Negligeiitia mihi videttcr, si 
 postquam confirmati suinus 171 fide, nan studemus quod 
 credimiis intelHzere" 
 
 That this must be so appears from the nature of faith. 
 It is complex. It is the consent of the will to the as- 
 sent of the reason. It begins with reason in the general 
 sense of cognition ; for it must have an object, and the 
 object to be such must be known. It develops itself 
 with the help of reason in the sense of the logical 
 faculty; for it consents to what rests on testimony 
 which it understands that it is rational for it to receive. 
 
46 The Fu7iction of the Reason hi Christianity. 
 
 Its further growth depends much on the effort of the 
 understanding to comprehend its mysteries. Is not 
 such the child's faith, which our Lord has presented as 
 our ideal ? The little one cannot comprehend what 
 his father says, but he believes it, because he knows 
 that his father is worthy of all confidence ; for this very 
 reason he keeps asking the why and the wherefore ; he 
 understands that his father could not teach him that on 
 which it would be vain for him to think : and as by 
 reasoning he advances in the comprehension of what he 
 had received simply on his father's testimony, his belief 
 in him, and consequently his love for him, grow in 
 strength because in intelligence. Hence, Henry B. 
 Smith has fitly written : " He who thinks highly feels 
 deeply. From long meditation on the wonder of the 
 divine revelation, the mind returns with added glow to 
 the simplicity of faith." And, consequently, a wholly 
 unreasoning faith is not merely a weak faith, or a wrong 
 kind of faith ; it is not faith. 
 
 Beyond all this, reason itself is a divine revelation. 
 Human knowledge is not aboriginal and sclf-subsistent, 
 but derived. It issues ultimately from a higher source 
 than the finite intelligence. " Man is able to perceive 
 intuitively, only because the Supreme Reason illumines 
 him." "The Aojo^^' says St. John, "is the light of 
 men ; and coming into the world enlightens every man." 
 Nor is it otherwise with discursive thought. Reason- 
 ing is controlled by laws which God has established and 
 which reveal to us His intellectual nature. "Our 
 thoughts are not God's thoughts"; yet when we really 
 think, it is in accord with the regulative principles of His 
 thought. Logic binds our thinking because God is 
 essentially logical. Besides this, in natural religion, 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christia7iity. 47 
 
 quite as much as in revealed, God is the object of 
 thought. Therefore, He is the author of natural 
 religion, and so it is a revelation from Him as well as 
 of Him ; not only because, as we have just seen, human 
 reason has the ground of its authority in the Supreme 
 Reason, but also because the object generally is the 
 cause of the subjective impression, on account of the 
 connection between subject and object. Thus our con- 
 sciousness of God is not produced by us, but by God 
 who impresses us. Nor is this all. " God is not simply 
 the object of knowledge, He is also an agent who 
 operates on the human mind so that it shall have this 
 knou'ledge of Himself." " In the phrase of St. Paul, 
 God ' reveals' and ' manifests' His being and attributes 
 within the human spirit." There is, therefore, no dif- 
 ference between natural and revealed religion as to the 
 source. Both are equally from God. The difference is 
 as to the record. That of the latter constitutes the 
 Scriptures ; that of the former is written on the expanse 
 of nature and on the tables of the heart. 
 
 Now the question arises. Does the later of these 
 revelations supplant the earlier? Should the voice of 
 reason be disregarded because the voice of prophecy 
 has been heard ? Such is not God's method. He 
 changes the use of things ; He never supersedes them. 
 A revelation still existing, though it had served its pur- 
 pose, would be an anomaly in the universe. He who 
 knows the end from the beginning has no garret in 
 which to store what He needs no longer ; for He 
 created and has permitted no such things. That the 
 revelation in reason continues, and specially that, as we 
 have seen, the revelation in the Scriptures tends only to 
 develop it, would seem to prove that, as ever and more 
 
48 The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 than ever, reason has a function in religion. All this is 
 strengthened by God's method in the written revelation 
 itself. It has been progressive. It consists of succes- 
 sive revelations. The Gospel has followed the Law 
 and has fulfilled it, but it has not superseded it ; it has 
 only changed its use. This is true even of the cere- 
 monial requirements. If their function was to point 
 sinners to "the Lamb of God," now that once for all 
 He has been offered up, their function is to be "the 
 patterns," and in so far forth the interpreters, of the 
 heavenly sacrifice. And precisely so, if God has given 
 in His Word and in His Son a revelation of Himself 
 which goes far beyond that in nature, the analogy even 
 of the supernatural revelation in the Scriptures would 
 indicate, not that reason was no longer to be heeded, 
 rather that in its more elementary but as divine teach- 
 ings we should seek light on the mysteries of grace. 
 
 All this is confirmed by experience. Schiller wrote : 
 " The history of the world is the judgment of the world." 
 He would seem to have meant much what our Lord did 
 when He said : " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 It is so in this case. The history of Christianity proves 
 that reason has a function in relio:ion. 
 
 It does so negatively. Whenever reason has not 
 been recognized in religion, the issue has been evil. If, 
 under such circumstances, faith has not always de- 
 generated into gross superstition, it has at least lost 
 its power to sustain itself. No spiritual movement has 
 promised more than did Pietism. So vigorous was it 
 at first that, as Hurst has said, " Rationalism in Ger- 
 many, without Pietism as its forerunner, would have 
 been fatal for centuries." Yet Pietism lacked " a homo- 
 geneous race of teachers." Its founder, Spener, had. 
 
The Ftcnction of the Reason in Christiaiiity. 49 
 
 blended reason and faith harmoniously. His successors 
 cast off the former and blindly followed the latter. 
 Hence, Pietism fell. The good which it had done con- 
 tinued ; it itself disappeared. 
 
 On the other hand, there is the positive historical 
 argument. Whenever reason has been, as we claim, 
 rightly honored in religion, good has resulted. The 
 Roman Empire would scarcely have become a Christian 
 State without the apologies of Justin, of Origen, and of 
 Tertullian. To the age of faith which succeeded the 
 time of Augustine no single man contributed so much 
 as did this great Bishop of Hippo, and his grand work 
 was that magnificent effort of reason, "The City of 
 God." If the divorce of religion and culture was one 
 of the causes of the Deism of the last century, the de- 
 fence of Christianity by Butler and Paley and their 
 associates had more to do with the revival of faith with 
 which the century closed ; and their defence was alto- 
 gether on grounds of reason. If but lately the school 
 of Tiibingen threatened to banish the supernatural from 
 history and even from the Gospels, the overthrow of 
 its influence has been followed by new spiritual life 
 in Germany; and this overthrow has been effected by 
 German scholarship. This historical connection be- 
 tween reason and faith becomes most significant when 
 we consider the work of the Church or missions. Their 
 greatest advance has been associated with those periods 
 in which reason was duly employed in religion. As 
 your own professor of Church History has well said : 
 " The age which may be called by eminence the age of 
 the Apologists was also the greatest missionary age of 
 the ancient Church "; and " the great apologetic work in 
 England during the last century was accompanied, cer- 
 
50 The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 tainly immediately followed, by the great missionary 
 movement, which from that day to this has been gather- 
 ing strength, and is at this time the most characteristic 
 work of the Church." In a word, we have but to 
 turn to history to read the confirmation of Bacon's 
 remark : " A little philosophy leads a man to atheism, 
 but a good deal to religion." 
 
 Were all that has been said, however, insufficient, the 
 sure testimony of the Word of God would still be for 
 us enough. The Bible establishes the right of reason 
 in religion. Max Muller is correct when he asserts that 
 Christianity is the most philosophical of all religions. 
 The apostles, our Lord Himself, appealed to reason as 
 well as insisted on faith ; and they insisted on faith be- 
 cause they appealed to reason. Life eternal, we are 
 taught, consists in the knowledge of the only true God 
 and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent. If specific 
 statements are required, we have St. Peter's charge "to 
 sanctify in our hearts Christ as Lord : being ready always 
 to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason 
 concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness 
 and fear"; a charge, too, which the general aim of the 
 epistle in which it occurs shows to be addressed, not to 
 ministers only or specially, but to every Christian. 
 
 I have given so much time to proving that reason has 
 a function in religion because at the present day and in 
 the Church this is what needs to be established. Our 
 tendency is not toward the sin and folly of exalting 
 reason unduly in religion ; it is rather toward the folly 
 and sin of acting as if God, who is the supreme reason, 
 could be irrational. Moreover, in demonstrating, as we 
 believe that we have, that reason has a function in re- 
 ligion, we have stated the principles which will enable 
 
The Function of the Reasori in Christianity. 51 
 
 us now easily to answer our second question ; viz., What 
 is the function of the reason in Christianity ? A source 
 and crround and measure of what is to be believed con- 
 cerning God, and as to the duty which He requires of 
 us, to what extent and with what limitations is it so? 
 
 Limitations there must be. 
 
 This is rendered probable by the fact that the great- 
 est thinkers have so supposed. It was the peculiarly 
 wise teacher of the Hebrews who said, " No man can 
 find out the work that God maketh from the beginning 
 to the end." "The Greek sage by emphasis declared 
 that, if he excelled others, it was only in this — that he 
 knew that he knew nothing. It was the avowed object 
 of the sagacious Locke to teach man the length of his 
 tether. Reid labored to restrain the pride of philoso- 
 phy." It was Kant's design to show how little the specu- 
 lative reason can accomplish. Sir William Hamilton 
 sought to prove within what narrow limits the thought 
 of man is confined. The metaphysician par excellence 
 of Oxford has endeavored to undermine the rational 
 theology of both Britain and Germany. Herbert Spen- 
 cer, whose transcendent ability even his opponents must 
 admit, holds that man's highest knowledge of God is 
 that He is unknown and unknowable. These are but 
 specimens. Surely such a consensus of opinion raises a 
 strong presumption. When those who have been most 
 conscious of limitations to the reason are those who 
 have striven most to emancipate it, it would seem that 
 these limitations must be real. 
 
 This also is confirmed by history. Whenever men 
 have "leaned to their own understanding" in religion, 
 spiritual death and moral corruption have been the re- 
 sult. But two examples out of many may be adduced. 
 
52 The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 Gnosticism was an early attempt to blend the philoso- 
 phy of the East, or of Greece, with the doctrines of the 
 Gospel. It would bring the New Testament into har- 
 mony with the speculations of the philosophers. It 
 numbered many noble disciples, and it has given us 
 some noble teaching. It was the Gnostic Basilides who 
 said : " I will assert anything, sooner than I will allow 
 a complaint or a slur to be cast on Providence." Yet 
 Gnosticism is responsible for some of the most danger- 
 ous errors of the present day ; and though the term 
 Gnostic was originally glorious, it became infamous by 
 the idle opinions and dissolute lives of the persons who 
 bore it. They gave reason free course, and it ruined 
 them as well as stultified itself. 
 
 The other example that may be noted is modern Ra- 
 tionalism. Behold it in Germany. Wolf, with whom 
 it began, was Christian in fact as well as by name. It 
 was with a holy purpose that he devoted himself to the 
 study of mathematics ; as he himself said, he would " re- 
 duce theology to incontrovertible certainty." He meant 
 no harm when he assumed as his cardinal principle that 
 doctrine was true, or fit to be taught, only so far as it 
 could be mathematically demonstrated. Nor did the 
 evil of his teaching appear at once in his successors. 
 Even Semler, the author of the famous Accommoda- 
 tion Theory, which has done so much to impair the 
 trustworthiness of Biblical Criticism — even Semler was 
 pure in his private life, and little has been written that 
 is more touching and edifying than is his own account 
 of the death of his daughter. But he was all this in 
 spite of Rationalism. To see its true, because mature, 
 fruit, we must look for it in such men as Bahrdt ; teach- 
 ers who took up the Bible with sacrilegious purpose 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 53 
 
 and made it the plaything of a vicious heart ; men who, 
 in some cases, surrendered themselves to the corruptions 
 of the gambling-room, the beer-cellar, and the house of 
 prostitution ; persons who, though professors of the- 
 ology, were the slaves of passion even more than of 
 doubt. Behold Rationalism in England as exemplified 
 in the Deists. Here, too, it began well, so far as sincerity 
 and nobility of aim were concerned. Lord Herbert wrote 
 to prove that Christianity as a revelation was not 
 needed ; but on bended knee he asked of God a sign 
 whether he should publish his book, and he believed 
 that he received one. To appreciate, however, the awful 
 moral as well as spiritual results of the " religion of na- 
 ture," we have only to remember that Hume taught 
 that self-denial was mischievous; that Bolingbroke said 
 that morality was but selfishness ; and that even Herbert 
 asserted that "lust was to be blamed no more than hun- 
 ger." Behold Rationalism in France as illustrated by the 
 Encyclopedists. Many of them were amiable men ; 
 some of them, at least at first, were estimable men. 
 There were acts of Voltaire as the apostle of tolera- 
 tion which make us exclaim, O si sic omnia/ Hel- 
 vetius dismissed God from the world ; but he was be- 
 nevolent to the poor. More quickly and terribly than 
 elsewhere, however, did the true fruit of their teaching 
 appear. During the four hundred and twenty days of 
 the Reign of Terror ''la sainte guillotine'' destroyed 
 four thousand victims. Doubtless, Voltaire and his as- 
 sociates would have disclaimed these atrocities ; but 
 what did their principles do to hinder them ? These 
 things were done in the name of Reason, and Voltaire 
 and his associates made reason supreme. 
 
 Why the results of Rationalism should be so awful, a 
 
54 The Fu7iction of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 study of the reason reveals. Its own testimony concern- 
 ing itself is that Rationalism is irrational. This is so be- 
 cause of three facts : 
 
 1. The human reason has been vitiated by human de- 
 pravity. Sin has darkened the intellect as well as cor- 
 rupted the heart. "There is not that clear perception 
 of truth which characterizes the angelic intuition, and 
 which was possessed by the unfallen Adam." No one 
 has thought seriously and has not felt that his thinking 
 facult}'' is unnaturally weak, and scarcely anything is 
 more significant than the dependence of clearness of in- 
 tellect on purity of life. Again, sin "gives a bias to the 
 will against the truth." Men do not like to retain even 
 that knowledge of God which they have by nature. The 
 history of religion in general is the proof of this. Once 
 more, " sin weakens the power of intuition itself." Vice, 
 and, though to a lesser degree, sin not so gross, must 
 debilitate the spiritual and rational faculty by strength- 
 ening the sensuous nature. Finally, " as part of the pun- 
 ishment of sin, God withdraws for a time His common 
 grace, so that there is little or no intuitive perception 
 of moral truth." Me " gives over to a reprobate mind " 
 those who " change His truth into a lie." If all this does 
 not apply to those who have been born again " new 
 creatures" in Christ, it still remains true even of them 
 at their best, that they "see through a glass darkly." 
 
 2. Even, however, if the reason of man had not been 
 vitiated by sin, its function would still be limited ; for 
 it itself, like its subject, is finite. As compared with 
 the infinitude of God, ideal man would " be less than 
 nothing and vanity." How presumptuous, then, even 
 for him, it would be to hope to comprehend God, or to 
 "lean to his own understanding" in the legitimate, be- 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 55 
 
 cause necessary, effort to do so. The eye that gazes on 
 the ocean may be perfect, but it would be folly for it to 
 trust itself for what lies beyond the little circle of the 
 horizon. 
 
 3. Were human reason both unimpaired and infinite, 
 it still would not be fitted to solve the deepest problems 
 of religion, or to answer the most pressing questions of 
 human life. For, after all, the one inquiry which will not 
 be suppressed is not, What is God ? or. What is man ? 
 but it is, " How can man be just with God ?" The con- 
 sciousness of guilt is universal ; all religions testify to it. 
 But further than the consciousness of guilt, reason, un- 
 aided, cannot go. She knows that God will " by no means 
 clear the guilty"; she knows also that He will never 
 punish the guilty beyond their deserts ; she knows, in 
 short, that God will be absolutely just. This is involved 
 in His nature as God. Because He is God, we are able 
 to argue that He will always be just ; He would not be 
 God, could He be otherwise. It is not so, however, 
 with reference to His grace. He must be just ; He need 
 not be gracious. Whether He will be or not, depends 
 on His will as well as on His nature. The question, 
 then, is not as to what He must do ; it is as to what He 
 has decided to do. This, of course, can be known only 
 as He shall inform us. Socrates, therefore, — as he 
 could reason merely from God's nature — was right 
 when he remarked in substance that we could not be 
 sure whether God would pardon sin. Tschoop, the Mo- 
 hican chief, was correct when, having come to the Mo- 
 ravians to ask for a missionary for his people, he said : 
 *' Do not send us a man to tell us that there is a God — 
 we all know that; or that we are sinners — we all know 
 that ; but send one to tell us about salvation." On the 
 
56 The Function of the Reason in Christia^tity. 
 
 most important and pressing of all subjects, conse- 
 quently, — viz., redemption — reason can teach us simply 
 the supreme need of it. As to the certainty of it, or as 
 to the method of it, it of itself can say nothing. This 
 is not because the truths of salvation are above reason, 
 in the sense of unrelated to it ; it is because they depend 
 on what is beyond reason's ken until specially revealed 
 by God ; on what is, not necessary with Him, but op- 
 tional with Him. 
 
 Two results of these limitations require to be noted : 
 On the one hand, if religion is to spring — as it must 
 do, to be true — from the reconciliation of God to man 
 and of man to God, reason cannot be the sole measure 
 and ground and source of all religious knowledge and 
 conviction. As has been seen, the most important 
 knowledge lies, in the nature of the case, beyond it. 
 Hence, there must be the light of special revelation as 
 well as that of reason, and the supreme failure of Eng- 
 lish Deism is only one of many proofs of this. Nor, 
 though not the source, can reason be the measure and 
 ground of all religious truth ; so that, though special 
 revelation is admitted, it is accepted as such merely be- 
 cause reason endorses it. This is practically, as before, 
 to make reason the only source of knowledge in 
 religion, at least for the learned ; and that this less 
 extreme form of Deism is no better than the other, 
 is evinced by the fact that it failed as signally. 
 Nor, once more, though neither the source nor the 
 ground, can reason be even the measure of all religious 
 truth ; so that, according to the Dogmatism of Wolf, 
 what has been revealed is to be accepted only in so far 
 as it has been demonstrated. That which is too vast to 
 be seen by us we may not expect to be able to measure. 
 
The Function of the Reason hi Christianity, 57 
 
 Are we to believe in the love of Christ merely so far as 
 we can now explain it ? Is not the essence of its 
 preciousness that, though we can know it in part and 
 are bidden to grow in the knowledge of it, it will always 
 " pass our knowledge " ? As might have been supposed, 
 such dogmatism has invariably developed into lifeless 
 rationalism. He who will admit nothing which trans- 
 cends himself cannot ^row in likeness to Christ. 
 
 On the other hand, then, if reason is to exercise its 
 legitimate function as a source or ground or even meas- 
 ure of truth, there must be some rule by which it itself 
 shall be controlled. Where do we find this rule ? 
 
 In the feelings.? Should the reason, as so many are 
 now holding, be subordinated to the Christian Con- 
 sciousness ? Though we believe in election, should we 
 deny reprobation if our feelings rebel against it ? — No. 
 Our feelings have been corrupted by sin quite as much 
 as our reason has been vitiated. They share in its 
 finiteness. There is not a limitation which it has and 
 from which they are exempt. At best, therefore, they 
 could be only a guide co-ordinate with reason. They 
 might not presume to direct it. But this is not all. In 
 their nature the feelings show that they themselves 
 ought to be controlled by reason. As has been seen, 
 they depend on it. Even their character can be de- 
 termined only by it. It is absurd, therefore, to let the 
 feelings decide for us what is rational, to judge that a 
 doctrine is not true simply because we do not like it. 
 This is as if we were to say that whatever is agreeable 
 to the body is safe. Then a man who is freezing should 
 go to sleep, because he feels drowsy. The fact is that 
 before we can trust our feelings in any sphere we must 
 know whether truth or error has aroused them, and 
 
58 The Functio7t of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 they can determine this in religion no more than the 
 freezing man's drowsy feeling can decide for him that 
 it is a feeling which should be heeded. That we do 
 not like a doctrine may be the very reason why we 
 ought to try to hold it. The heathen "did not like to 
 retain God in their knowledge." Nor may it be urged 
 that this does not apply to Christian consciousness. 
 Though to a less extent, it does ; and it is bound 
 to until Christian consciousness has been perfectly 
 sanctified. Nor will the relation of feelinof to reason 
 be essentially different even then. Feeling will be 
 perfect because it will be perfectly rational. When 
 God glorifies a man He restores, He does not pervert, 
 those relations between his powers, which relations 
 are so divine that even now in his ruin they may 
 be seen to be normal. Were historical proof of this 
 position needed, we should have only to study the sig- 
 nificant connection between mysticism and fanaticism. 
 
 Since, then, the feelings may not be reason's rule, may 
 the conscience ? May our sense of right be the measure 
 of the rational ? May we adopt the view so common that 
 he who means to do right will be right ? — Again, No. Not 
 less than reason or feeling has the conscience been cor- 
 rupted by sin. As in the case of both of them, there- 
 fore, its judgments may not be received without ques- 
 tion. Indeed, the most atrocious crimes are committed 
 for conscience's sake. The Hindoo mother casts her 
 child to the crocodiles because she feels this to be her 
 duty. Paul tells us that he "verily thought with him- 
 self that he ought to do many things contrary to the 
 name of Jesus of Nazareth." With such facts, it is 
 hard to see how any one could, as James Martineau has 
 done, make conscience the seat of authority in religion. 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 59 
 
 Undoubtedly, in all it gives the unique sense of right 
 and consequent obligation ; but, undoubtedly, too, in 
 all it needs to be corrected as to the particulars of right 
 and obligation. Were this not so, however, conscience 
 might not be elevated as the standard for the reason. 
 Though conscience has a cognitive element, its sphere 
 of coirnition is much narrower than that of the reason. 
 The function of the reason is to tell us what is. The 
 function of the conscience is to emphasize among the 
 things that are, merely those which also ought to be. 
 Thus, for example, while conscience only affirms that 
 we ought to obey God, to reason is submitted the 
 broader proposition that God is sovereign. It would 
 seem, therefore, that reason should guide conscience 
 rather than that conscience should determine reason ; 
 that, in the light of the consequences of the fact that 
 God is sovereign, our duty to Him should be developed, 
 rather than that our sense of right should decide as to 
 the truth of His sovereignty. Nor is historical proof 
 wanting, either, for the correctness of this position. No 
 man ever exalted, and probably no man could have ex- 
 alted, morality as did Kant. Yet, in reducing religion 
 to it, he destroyed religion. He allowed public worship, 
 but only for the recitation of moral hymns or hearing 
 of moral discourses. He permitted private prayer, but 
 only as meditation. In summing up all religious truth 
 in the moral law, he denied those saving truths in con- 
 nection with which comes the divine power by which 
 alone the law can be kept. Hence, as might be sup- 
 posed, nothing is taught more plainly by history than 
 this — that the religion of conscience only, or mere mo- 
 rality, ceases at last to be even morality. 
 
 Since, then, neither the feelings nor the conscience 
 
6o The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 can afford the guide that reason needs, shall we find it 
 in the Church ? Because she is under the constant lead- 
 ership of the Holy Ghost, may it not be that reason 
 should submit to her dogmas as to what is and must be 
 rational? Is not the Romish position of the infallibil- 
 ity of the Church, or of the Pope, the true one ? — Again, 
 No. It is difficult to see why the Holy Spirit should se- 
 cure perfect holiness or infallibility in the Church, any 
 more than in the individuals who compose the Church ; 
 and that He does not, is evident from the painful facts 
 that the history of the Church is a record of sin, and 
 that the creeds of the Church have, on many and even 
 important points, often been perplexingly conflicting. 
 Were this difficulty, however, less serious than it is, 
 there would still be a fatal one. Reason lies nearer to 
 us than any other authority, and so no other evidence 
 can be sufficient to overturn its testimony. If you see 
 a tree in front of you, the only thing that can make 
 you really believe even that it may be an illusion, is 
 that other men, with eyes as good as yours, cannot see 
 it. Galileo could have been convinced that the earth 
 did not move round the sun only by astronomers who 
 could prove, by his own mathematics, that he was in- 
 correct. The authority of the Church, because evidence 
 other than that of reason, would weigh with him not at 
 all in such a matter. She might, by her terrors, force 
 him to declare on his knees his detestation of his own 
 doctrine ; but she could not prevent him from saying, 
 at least in an undertone, as he rose, " It does move, for 
 all that!" The only theory, therefore, on which the 
 Church could be claimed as the absolute standard for 
 the reason, would be the Hegelian one — that the divine 
 immanence in the Church made her actually and in all 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 6 1 
 
 respects the divine reason developing itself on earth. 
 Of course, we cannot now discuss Hegelianism; nor 
 would formal refutation of it seem necessary when we 
 remember that it is admitted to involve such beliefs as 
 that "the real at any time is the rational for that time," 
 and that, consequently, " might makes right." Here, 
 as elsewhere, moreover, the judgment of history is de- 
 cisive. Whenever the Church, whether holding this 
 philosophy or not, has been exalted above the individual 
 reason, — not merely as a divinely appointed teacher, 
 which she is in proportion to her scripturalness, but as 
 an absolute authority, — reason, instead of being corrected 
 and developed, has been perverted and dwarfed. The 
 course of Roman Catholicism teaches no plainer or more 
 awful lesson. Even the Church must be judged by 
 reason. 
 
 Since, then, neither the feelings, nor the conscience, 
 nor the Church can afford the standard that reason must 
 have, if it is to discharge its function in religion, where 
 shall we find it? Shall it not be in the Scriptures.? 
 Yes; for they fulfil the two required conditions. In 
 their original form they were throughout, even as to de- 
 tails of every kind, absolutely errorless ; and they were 
 this because they are the inspired word of Him who is 
 the Supreme Reason. The original form Providence 
 has preserved or restored in all respects, save a compara- 
 tively few of the merest unessentials in expression. 
 Thus the Scriptures afford an adequate standard, and a 
 standard of the same kind with reason itself. They are, 
 consequently, what reason itself, in its very nature, de- 
 mands for its true development ; and, hence, nothing 
 can be so rational as for reason to accept the Scriptures, 
 and proceed reverently and humbly, but confidently, in 
 
62 The Function of the Reason in Christianity . 
 
 them, even more than in nature, to think God's thoughts 
 after Him, 
 
 We are, therefore, prepared for our third question, 
 which can now be dismissed with a few concise state- 
 ments ; viz., the inquiry, What is the function of the 
 reason in relation to the Bible, or Inspired Word of 
 God? 
 
 On the one hand, because of what we have seen to be 
 true as to the dignity of the reason, and the importance 
 of its function in religion, we may affirm as follows: 
 
 I. For all that logically precedes the Scriptures, as 
 the being and personality of God, the need of a written 
 revelation, etc., we must go back to philosophy, to reason 
 pure and simple. Even the Romenists admit this. Of 
 the four propositions of the Holy See (December 12, 
 1855) concerning Traditionalism and Rationalism, the 
 third is: "The use of reason precedes faith, and leads 
 men to it with the aid of revelation and grace." This 
 is evidently true. Though reason is not infallible, yet 
 antecedently to revelation, it is, as we have seen, the 
 only instrument of investigation, the only test. Hence, 
 Henry B. Smith has well said : " If we cannot construct 
 the foundations and the outworks of the Christian sys- 
 tem on impregnable grounds; if we cannot show the 
 possibility of miracles, and of a revelation ; if we cannot 
 prove — absolutely prove — the existence of a wise, intel- 
 ligent, personal, and providential Ruler of all things : 
 then we are merged in infidelity, or given over to an 
 unfounded faith. If we cannot settle these points on 
 the field of open discussion, we cannot settle them at 
 all." Here lies the great and the indispensable work of 
 the chair to which you have called me. Nor may it be 
 said that its results cannot be certain, inasmuch as, since 
 reason cannot discover the truths of revelation, she could 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 63 
 
 not prove the necessity of them. There could scarcely 
 he a worse fallacy. A man may he too sick or too igno- 
 rant to find the remedy that he needs, and yet not he too 
 sick or too ignorant to be aware of what he needs. 
 
 2. Reason should judge of the evidence that the 
 Scriptures are the Word of God, and so to be received 
 on His authority. Faith in them as such is irrational 
 and impossible without evidence ; for faith involves 
 assent, and assent is conviction produced by evidence. 
 Yet here for the best results reason must be to such a 
 degree under the influence of the revelation as to be 
 favorable toward its evidence. Otherwise, to what is 
 stronorest it will be blind. One need not be a Christian 
 to be intellectually convinced of the divine origin of 
 Christianity, but one must be illuminated by the supreme 
 reason of the Spirit of Christ, if he is to feel Him to be 
 "God manifest in the flesh." Nor is this strange. 
 Careful investigation may prove to you that a certain 
 statue is a Phidian marble, but only the artist's spirit 
 can cause you to feel that it must be. 
 
 3. Reason should decide as to the actual content of 
 the Scriptures — what it is that their words convey in a 
 fair historico-grammatical interpretation. Exegesis is a 
 rational work. The guidance of the Holy Spirit is in- 
 dispensable in it, but this is that the reason of the 
 exegete may be preserved from error. The right of 
 private judgment of the Bible, one of the foundation- 
 stones of Protestantism, is based on this function of the 
 reason. 
 
 4. Reason should distinguish among the interpreta- 
 tions of the Scriptures between what is above reason in 
 the true sense of beyond it, and what is above reason in 
 the wrong sense of out of relation to it, or contrary to 
 it. That is, as a revelation must evince rationally its 
 
64 The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 right to be believed ; so, as has been seen, it itself can 
 contain nothing irrational or impossible. In deciding 
 what is thus, however, the reason must act rationally 
 and not capriciously. Its judgments must be guided by 
 principles which commend themselves to the common 
 consciousness of men, such as, that that is impossible 
 which involves a contradiction ; that it is impossible that 
 God should do or command what is morally wrong ; that 
 it is impossible that revelation should deny any well- 
 authenticated truth, whether of intuition, experience, or 
 science ; that it is impossible for what reason cannot try 
 to comprehend to be true. All this must be so; for 
 God, who is the Supreme Reason, cannot but be ra- 
 tional and hence self-consistent. 
 
 5. Within the system of truth drawn out of the Scrip- 
 tures, reason — that is, the understanding — must shape 
 the definitions and develop the creed, so as to ward off 
 error and bring out the truth with reference to the par- 
 ticular wants and philosophical attainments of each age. 
 This, as has been said, is a necessity of the mind. Only 
 when we can cease trying to be scientific, can we, with- 
 out inconsistency, decry systematic theology and creeds. 
 The Socinian and Arminian position, therefore, that we 
 should content ourselves with the mere statements of 
 Scripture and not go on and develop the legitimate in- 
 ferences from them, is not only false ; it is also impos- 
 sible, as is evinced by the notorious fact that Socinians 
 and Arminians, as well as Calvinists, have their 
 systematic theolog^y. Indeed, on but one condition is 
 the course which they advocate possible, and that is, 
 that there has been a loss of interest in ''the deep 
 things of God." Hence, the clamor even among us 
 for a short creed to state only the truths indispensable 
 to salvation, is far from reassuring. It would seem to 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 65 
 
 indicate less zeal for the truth as such and to forebode 
 less efficiency in the service of Him who is "the truth." 
 A great Scotch theologian has said : " No mere simpli- 
 fication of a belief has ever conquered, unless the half 
 has burned more brightly than the whole." Nor may 
 it be replied that the fallen understanding is not com- 
 petent to grapple with spiritual realities. The same 
 might be said with reference to the manifold mysteries 
 of nature. All that the reply amounts to is that in the 
 use of the understanding, as of every other power, we 
 should constantly seek the aid of the Holy Spirit ; and 
 the question may well be raised in rejoinder, whether 
 God would have addressed the Scriptures to human 
 reason, and commanded us to "search" them, and 
 promised by His Spirit to guide us, had He not in- 
 tended that even the understanding should make the 
 effort. It is the searching faculty. 
 
 On the other hand, because of the limitations of the 
 reason, we ought to affirm : 
 
 I. Reason may not presume by itself to fathom or 
 reconcile even those of the deep truths of Scripture 
 which it can discern unaided. The fact is, that it has 
 not been able to. As Professor Christlieb has written : 
 " Neither in ancient nor in modern times has it been 
 possible to find in the whole earth a nation which, with- 
 out the revelation recorded in Scripture and by its own 
 powers of thought, has arrived at definite belief in one 
 living personal God ! " And this sweeping statement is 
 emphasized by Plato's well-known complaint, " How can 
 we find out the father and maker of all this universe?" 
 There is a theology of nature and of reason ; but even 
 when most developed, its incompleteness and uncertainty 
 demand the full and clear revelation in the Written 
 Word. 
 
66 The Functio7i of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 2. In particular, reason alone has nothing to say as to 
 either the fact or the method of human salvation. It 
 is even her function, that she may not deceive men, to 
 declare that on this supreme question she of herself 
 knows nothing. When, therefore, God has revealed 
 His grace in the Gospel of His Son, she has but two 
 things to do — to point men to it, and to show them its 
 wondrous harmony with the scheme of nature. The 
 highest function of Philosophy or of Science is to bring 
 men to the cross as to that for which she has ever been 
 seeking but which she could never by herself have 
 found ; and then with them take her place, an expectant 
 reverent learner, before " the wisdom as well as the 
 power of God," and thus herself be made "wise unto 
 salvation." 
 
 Having now outlined the function of the reason in 
 relation to the Scriptures, it would be proper to show in 
 detail how this department, whose special aim is to dis- 
 cuss the various relations of reason in both philosophy 
 and science to religion, underlies all the rest of the 
 departments, and how, in turn, each one of them con- 
 tributes to it. It would also be interesting to consider 
 how this chair should be conducted so as to develop 
 the scholarly apologists who, as every age has needed 
 them, will be demanded, we must assume, by that on 
 which we are entering. To either of these themes, 
 however, an address at least as long as the too long one 
 to which you have listened would have to be given. 
 Let me, therefore, close with simply the briefest state- 
 ment of what, in my judgment, should be the three 
 supremely important practical results of such a course 
 of study as the existence of this chair supposes. 
 
 These results have reference to the actual work of the 
 minister of the Gospel. For the purpose of this 
 
The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 67 
 
 Seminary, we can scarcely repeat too often, is, first of 
 all, evangelistic. Indeed, it is scholastic only for the 
 same reason that caused God to choose for the typical 
 evangelist that one of the apostles of whom alone it 
 could be said, "Thy much learning doth turn thee to 
 madness." These results have special reference — may 
 I not add ? — to the work of the missionary ; for, accord- 
 ing to our Saviour's last and great commission, missions 
 are the evangelistic work and so the business of the 
 Church. It has been the glory of this Seminary that 
 from the beginning she has been mindful of this. May 
 I not express my earnest hope that with growth in the 
 number of students and with the increase of professor- 
 ships this missionary spirit will steadily develop until 
 every influence of this institution shall be concentrated 
 on the evangelization of the nations ? The practical 
 results, therefore, to be expected of this chair should be: 
 
 1. The formation in the rising ministry of a logical 
 habit of mind. We do not need so much philosophical 
 preaching as we have, but we do need more logical preach- 
 ing than some even of what aspires to be philosophical 
 actually is. The Gospel, which is the " Wisdom of 
 God," cannot be justly presented when the laws of 
 thought, of divine as well as of human thought, are 
 violated. Indeed, to be illogical in preaching is to 
 caricature Him whom you would exalt. 
 
 2. The grounding of our ministers in that philosophy 
 which underlies the Word of God and which is assumed 
 by it, and the acquainting them with that "science 
 falsely so called" which antagonizes it. It is not 
 ordinarily necessary that the preacher of righteousness 
 should spend his time in assailing Materialism or Pan- 
 theism, or any other -ism due to human conceit and in- 
 consistency ; but it is necessary that he should be so 
 
68 The Function of the Reason in Christianity. 
 
 aware of the dangers of these, and so skilled in detect- 
 ing the subtle forms in which they are wont to manifest 
 themselves, that he will never dishonor the special 
 revelation of God by unconsciously appearing even to 
 imply that it rests on any such foundation. 
 
 3. And, finally, this chair ought to aim to inspire our 
 ministers and missionaries with such holy and intelligent 
 confidence in both the past and the future of Christianity 
 that they will be abundantly able to vindicate it, and 
 for that very reason will feel that it needs no apology. 
 The true philosophy of religion should convince us that 
 Christianity is "the desire of all nations." The study 
 of her evidences should persuade us that she is divine 
 and her records inspired and throughout infallible, or 
 that nothing is true. The examination of her ethics 
 should prove to us that to behold the " fulfilment of 
 all righteousness " we must turn to the words and works 
 of her Author. The investigation of her sociological 
 applications and achievements should demonstrate to us 
 that the regeneration of society requires no new and 
 artificial scheme of life, but simply the practical recogni- 
 tion in all spheres of the Gospel of Christ. The survey 
 and analysis of the other great religions should establish 
 for us beyond a peradventurc that Christianity is the 
 one wholly true, the one divinely sanctioned, the one 
 authoritative, and the final religion equally for us and 
 for all men. In a word, the entire course of study 
 should so set forth man's need of redemption and the 
 inability of reason unaided to provide or discover it, that 
 it shall be felt that the only rational attitude for any one 
 in religion is that of humble, reverent, adoring inquiry 
 before the cross of Him in whom " the wisdom and the 
 power and the grace of God " are " reconciling the 
 world unto Himself." 
 
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