mi 
 
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 L I B R ^ Ti Y 
 
 (IK IIIK 
 
 Theological Seminary 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 BK 115 .C8 S44 1876 
 
 ('as 
 
 Shairp, John Campbell, isi 
 
 1885. 
 
 ""I'^'f Culture and relink 
 

 i 
 
CULTURE AND RELIGION. 
 
CULTURE AND RELIGION 
 
 IN SOME OF THEIR RELATIONS. 
 
 J. C.^SHAIRP, 
 
 PIUNCIPAL OP THE UNITED COLLEGE OP ST. SALVATOB AND SX LSONARD, 
 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 [Reprinted from the Edinburgh Edition.] 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY KURD AND HOUGHTON. 
 
 1876 
 
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 When I first sent these Lectures to the 
 press I had no expectation that they would 
 awaken so much interest as they seem to 
 have done. This interest, I know, is mainly 
 due to their attempting to deal A^dth what 
 an honored correspondent calls " the sub- 
 ject of the day." Still I am not insensible 
 to the kind way in which they have been 
 noticed in many pubhc prints — not to men- 
 tion approvals of private persons, worthy of 
 all regard. Valuable such testimonies are, 
 when sincerely and spontaneously given. It 
 is something more to have learnt that there 
 are young men, here and there, who, need- 
 ing help, have thought they found some in 
 this small book. 
 
 Though the pubhc criticisms passed on it 
 have been, in the main, commendatory, per- 
 haps beyond its desert, one or two objections 
 
6h PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 have been urged against it, on which I 
 should wish to say a word ; for these, if 
 made in a fair spirit, are always suggestive. 
 A vtriter in the last number of the " North 
 British Review " (alas ! that it should have 
 been the last) charges me with having mis- 
 represented Professor Huxley. And in proof 
 of this charge he quotes from some other 
 portion of that eminent writer's works, words 
 which seem to modify, if not contradict, the 
 view I have given of his opinions. In an- 
 swer, I have to say that my second lecture 
 — the one which deals with Professor Hux- 
 ley's theory — was delivered, and, if I mis- 
 take not, pubHshed, before the fuller expo- 
 sition of his views contained in his "Lay 
 Sermons " was given to the world. I had be- 
 fore me but one isolated lecture by Professor 
 Huxley which had appeared in " Macmil- 
 lan's Magazine." This, and this only, I pro- 
 fessed to examine ; and I submit that the ac- 
 count I have given of that lecture is a fair 
 representation of it, and no distortion. If 
 the author has by other writings modified the 
 view set forth in the lecture which I criti- 
 cised — this is just what might be expected, 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 6c 
 
 when a writer of so wide and varied ability, 
 combining in so rare measure metaphysical 
 with physical knowledge, came to reflect on 
 the other sides of the large problem, which 
 the lecture in question had settled in too 
 exclusive and peremptory a way. But with 
 these other writings I was not concerned, 
 even had they been, when I wrote, accessi- 
 ble. I should certainly greatly regret and 
 try to amend what I have written, if it could 
 be shown that I have done injustice to that 
 one portion which alone I professed to ex- 
 amine. 
 
 The writer in the " North British " says 
 that it is not fair to treat Professor Huxley 
 as a MateriaUst. I am not aware that I have 
 done so. Indeed, I never attempted to set- 
 tle under what " ism " he should be ranked, 
 because I cannot see that such modes of clas- 
 sifying men in any way forward the ends of 
 candid inquiry. And had I wished to clas- 
 sify him in such a way, I had not the means 
 of determining what class he belonged to. 
 
 A Saturday Reviewer takes the same ob- 
 jection as the writer in the " North British." 
 Here, again, my reply is, that I was exam- 
 
66? . PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 ining one lecture, not the whole works of 
 Professor Huxley, and that in my examina- 
 tion I have given a fair account of all I at- 
 tempt to deal with. I desire to repeat that 
 I have not called, and had no right to call 
 Professor Huxley a Materiahst. 
 
 The Saturday Reviewer further charges 
 me with want of clearness in my conception 
 of the scope and aims both of Culture and 
 Religion, — with confounding rather than 
 discriminating their relative spheres. It 
 may be that my views on this matter are 
 not so clear as they might be, or at least not 
 so clearly brought out, but I must confess 
 that two or three careful perusals of the Re- 
 viewer's somewhat lengthy remarks have 
 not made my views any clearer. As I have 
 looked in vain for some newer light from 
 the remarks both of the North British and 
 the Saturday Reviewer, I feel constrained 
 to abide by the definitions and distinctions 
 of Culture and Rehgion which I have given 
 in my lectures until a better expositor ap- 
 pears. 
 
 Both these writers agree in the remark 
 that Culture is a religion for this world, and 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 6« 
 
 Religion a culture for the next. This is one 
 of those gnomes which sound wise, but are 
 really hollow. Even if this world were all, 
 there are many, and these the liighest and 
 lovehest things, which Culture without Re- 
 ligion could never engender. Purity, disin- 
 terestedness, reverence, — these, the finest 
 fruits of the Spirit, could not come to full 
 maturity in any soul but one which lived 
 habitually as in the Divine presence, and 
 under the power of the world to come. And 
 are not these the qualities which are needed, 
 not only to fit a man for the next world, but 
 even to make him all that it is best to be 
 even in this world ? If this is so — if man 
 cannot be what he ought to be, even for 
 this, without taking account of a future 
 life, — does not this prove that all attempts 
 to divide these two by any sharp demarca- 
 tion are futile? And is there not here a 
 strong argument for the reality of a future 
 life, when we find that the best cannot be 
 attained in this life if we lose faith in that 
 other ? The highest qualities of the human 
 Boul cannot be based on a behef which is a 
 delusion. 
 
6/ PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 In the fourth lecture something has been 
 said on the difficulty which the trained log- 
 ical mtellect, used to form clear, distinct 
 notions of things, finds in reconciling it- 
 seK to the dimness and indistinctness that 
 necessarily belongs to the deepest rehgious 
 ideas. To know our own ignorance, both 
 that which comes from our individual weak- 
 nesses, and that arising from the necessary 
 limits of human thought, is a very whole- 
 some knowledge. It may no doubt be used 
 as an argument to stifle honest search and 
 to cover mental indolence. Forgetfulness of 
 it, on the other hand, leads to at least as 
 great evils of an opposite kind, — self-con- 
 ceit, shallowness, irreverence. And it is to 
 this side that the pendulum swings at pres- 
 ent. Amid man's triumphant achievements 
 in the world of sense, there is at present 
 little feeling of man's necessary ignorance 
 with regard to the things that far more 
 nearly concern him — little of the fruits 
 which naturally accompany such a feeling — 
 ''humiUty, sobriety, resignation." In the 
 Bo-called intellectual world, such qualities 
 are regarded as belonging to a bygone age, 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. Qg 
 
 fit only for old women and children. " Man 
 the measure of all things " seems the motto 
 of modern thought, as truly as ever it was 
 of old Protagoras. And so we see many 
 applying this measure to all subjects, and as 
 though they had dropped their plumb-line 
 to the bottom of the universe, denying that 
 it has anywhere a place for Miracle. In 
 the moral and rehgious sphere of things 
 the same tendency is everywhere apparent. 
 Men, making themselves, their own feelings, 
 needs, aspirations, intuitions the centre, by 
 these proceed to measure the nature of God, 
 his deaUngs with man, his revelation of 
 Himself. Hence it quickly comes that what- 
 ever does not fit into our nature, whatever 
 truth of Revelation, or even of Natural Re- 
 ligion, does not make a direct appeal to our 
 understanding, feelings, or conscience, and 
 produce some manifest effect on these, is 
 discarded. All mystery is rejected ; what- 
 ever seems to us isolated, disjointed, or in- 
 explicable is pared away ; and all relig- 
 ious truth is rounded off into an intelligible 
 fiystem, of which man and his needs are the 
 interpreting key. Tried by this measure, it 
 
8^ PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 may be doubted whether even the truths of 
 so-called Natural Religion would remain. 
 For our best notions of right and wrong, 
 even our finest feelings, are as inadequate to 
 explain the facts of God's Providence which 
 we see, as they are to measure the greatest 
 mysteries of Revelation which we do not 
 see. He who in religious things desires to 
 think truly, .not to say reverently, cannot 
 too soon learn that he must be content to 
 see in part and to know in part, — to find a 
 true link here, and another there, but must 
 not expect in this life to comiect them into 
 one completed chain. This is a very old 
 truth, so old that it sounds a commonplace. 
 It is not the less a truth which some of the 
 voices loudest at the present hour are doing 
 their best to preach down. So ineradicable, 
 however, is it m the nature of thmgs, that, 
 though forgotten, it cannot be destroyed, 
 and must soon or late reassert itself. 
 
 Nothing said in these Lectures is intended 
 to deny, that it is well that the whole fron- 
 tier where rehgious beUef meets with the 
 methods and results of science, and with the 
 results of criticism, should be resurveyed, 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 6« 
 
 and, where there is need, readjusted. It 
 cannot, however, be that the essence of oui 
 religion must, as some speak, be remoulded 
 and reconstructed at the bidding of these 
 modern methods. 
 
 To hear some speak, it would seem as if 
 the time had come when the God in whom 
 Christians have hitherto believed must now 
 give place to a system of laws, or to one 
 great universal Law, and Christ Himself to 
 some subhmated essence of morality. As 
 one reads or hears such things there comes 
 to mind the words read long ago, which Ne- 
 ander quoted from the letters of Niebuhr, 
 " Again and again have I said that I know 
 not what to do with a metaphysical God ; 
 and that I vdll have no other but • the God 
 of the Bible, who is heart to heart. Who- 
 ever can reconcile the metaphysical God with 
 the God of the Bible may try it ; but he who 
 admits the absolute inexplicabihty of the 
 main point, which can only be approached 
 by asymptotes, will never grieve at the im- 
 possibiHty of possessing any system of rehg- 
 ion," — words more needed in this country 
 now than when they first appeared more 
 than thirty years since. 
 
6y PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Perhaps the main point which these Lec- 
 tures have tried to show may be said to be 
 this, — that in forming a true judgment on 
 rehgious subjects, it is before all things nec- 
 essary that a man be in some real measure 
 religious. Whatever other knowledge may 
 be or may not be present, this one must be, 
 if the judgment formed is to be worth any- 
 thing. The absence of this requirement in 
 a man renders his religious judgments of no 
 account, however great his powers and how- 
 ever large his knowledge. 
 
 It may perhaps be said this is a vicious 
 circle. To form true religious judgments, 
 you say a man must first be religious. But 
 before he can be religious, must he not first 
 have found right religious beliefs ? And 
 this implies patient inquiry and laborious 
 thought. But all who are used to moral 
 inquiries know that the occurrence of such 
 seemingly vicious circles is no strange thing 
 in that region of thought. Aristotle said, 
 To form virtuous habits you must first per- 
 form wtuous actions ; and yet he also held 
 that in order to do a virtuous act you nuist 
 be abeady in the same degree virtuous. 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 6ife 
 
 It is then true that the man who would 
 think truly on spiritual things must first be 
 spiritually-minded. And to be so, to rise 
 above the absorption in things seen, the 
 tyranny of the world's ways, and the heart's 
 natural averseness to seK-denying godliness, 
 this is not easy. If it takes much and long 
 labor for a man to be a good physicist, or 
 critic, or philosopher, it surely requires not 
 less, though a different kind of endeavor, to 
 become really Christian in aim and spirit. 
 But to hear many speak it would seem as if 
 to be a philosopher or critic was the hard 
 thing, to be the Christian was easy and nat- 
 ural, and came, as it were, by instinct. As 
 against this common view, and at the risk 
 of being accused of sermonizing, it must be 
 said, that he who would attain to religious 
 truth and Ufe must be prepared for much 
 severer and more continued effort in the 
 spiritual, than this world's learning demands 
 in the intellectual region. Men of learning 
 and study are forever tempted to begin at 
 the intellectual side of things, and from that 
 to try to work their way to the possession of 
 full-formed Christian convictions. It is a 
 
6Z PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 vain dream, though, perhaps, nothing but 
 trial and faihire will convince most men that 
 it is so. 
 
 But when all has been thought and said, 
 this is the issue to which it comes. Are we 
 to make modern thought and feeling our 
 fixed standard, and to pare down the words 
 of Christ and his Apostles to fit into this ? 
 Or are we to make Christ's words, and those 
 of his Apostles, spiritually apprehended, our 
 centre and standard, and in the Hght of these 
 to look at all things, by these to try the 
 modern world, and all its ways ? There axe 
 but these two alternatives, and one cannot 
 doubt which of them the true Christian will 
 choose. 
 
 St. Andrews, Uth February, 1872. 
 
a 
 
 PEEFAOE. 
 
 This little book is a small contribution to 
 great subject. The five Lectures which it 
 contains were delivered, on five successive 
 Saturdays of last Winter Session, to as many 
 of the Students of the United College and 
 others as chose to attend. They were orig- 
 inally written with a view solely to immedi- 
 ate delivery. The publication of them is an 
 afterthought. It is needless to explain my 
 reasons for publishing them, for these could 
 neither increase nor diminish their value, 
 whatever that may be. One object, how- 
 ever, which I hope may be gained by publi- 
 cation is to place them in a permanent form 
 before those for whom they were originally 
 intended. As lectures, meant to be under- 
 stood on first hearing, they are naturally in 
 a style more popular and diffuse than might 
 have beseemed a regular treatise. They are 
 
VIU PREFACE. 
 
 printed almost as they were spoken., with the 
 exception of the Fifth Lecture, to which 
 some passages have been added. 
 
 It need hardly be said that no attempt is 
 here made at systematic, much less at ex 
 haustive, treatment of the subject. To have 
 aimed at this within the space and in the 
 form to which I have restricted myself, 
 would have been impossible. All I have 
 wished to do is to set forth certain views, 
 which seem to me true in themselves, and 
 yet likely to be passed over too lightly, or 
 set aside too summarily, by the intellectual 
 temper of the time. No satisfactory adjust- 
 ment of the questions here entertained can, 
 I believe, be reached without assio-nino; to the 
 spiritual side of man's being and of truth a 
 prominence and an importance, which do not 
 seem to have entered into the thoughts of 
 some of the ablest advocates of Culture. 
 Indeed, to many, and these not the most fool- 
 ish of mankind. Culture seems then only to 
 be worthy of serious regard when it minis- 
 ters to faith, — when it enables men to see 
 spiritual things more truly and deeply. If 
 it obstructs or dims the vision of these things, 
 
PREFA CE. It 
 
 as sometimes it does, it then ceases to have 
 for them any value. 
 
 In handling subjects on which all men 
 have some thoughts, it is impossible exactly 
 to determine where one's own end and those 
 of others begin. Where, however, I have 
 been aware that any thought or expression 
 of thought has been suggested to me by an- 
 other writer, I have tried to acknowlege it, 
 either by quoting in the text some of the 
 author's Avords, or by giving a quotation from 
 his works in the Notes. Of tlie passages 
 printed in the Appendix, some were directly 
 suffffestive of the thought in the text, others 
 are merely adduced as confirmations of it. 
 It would have been easy to have increased 
 the number of the Notes, but they were 
 drawn out at a place remote from libraries, 
 and were taken only from those books which 
 happened to be at hand. J. C. Shairp. 
 
 September 1, 1870. 
 
CONTEH'TS. 
 
 PAOI 
 
 I. The Aim. of Culture — its Relation to Re- 
 ligion 13 
 
 II. The Scientific Theory of Culture . . 45 
 
 III. The Literary Theory of Culture . . 74 
 [V. Hindrances to Spiritual Growth . . 104 
 V Religion combining Culture with Itself . 133 
 
 Notes 179 
 
CULTUEE A^D EELIGIOK 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE AIM OF CULTURE — ITS RELATION TO RB« 
 LIGION. 
 
 When one is called, following the prac- 
 tice of former Principals, to lecture to the 
 students of this College on some branch of 
 thought or knowledge, and when, with a 
 single restriction, it is left undefined what 
 the subject shall be, the selection might nat- 
 urally be supposed to give rise to some em- 
 barrassment. But two conditions are at 
 hand to restrict and determine the lecturer's 
 choice. One is, that he must choose some 
 subject with which his past studies or ex- 
 perience have made him in some degree 
 familiar ; the other is, that the subject should 
 be such as he may reasonably hope will 
 either interest or benefit his hearers, — if 
 possible, do both. 
 
 It seemed to me not unfitting that, on this 
 
14 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 first occasion of my lecturing to you in a new 
 capacity, I should speak on some subject of 
 wide and general interest, which commands 
 a view, not so much of any one department 
 of study, as of the last and highest ends of 
 all study. 
 
 Other opportunities may be given for tak- 
 ing up some one definite subject, historical or 
 other, and dealing with it in detail. 
 
 For this year I shall be well content if, 
 without pretending to overtake, much less 
 exhaust, the wide subject which I bring be- 
 fore you, I shall be enabled to offer a few 
 suggestions, which may be of use to some 
 who hear me, on matters which veiy nearly 
 concern them. The questions I shall have 
 to touch on might easily be made to land us 
 in the most abstract and speculative investi- 
 gations. It shall, however, be my endeavor, 
 as far as possible, to keep clear of these, and 
 to put what I have to say in a concrete and 
 practical shape. This I shall do both for 
 other reasons, and especially from the convic- 
 tion that we in Scotland, by getting hold of 
 all subjects by the metaphysical end of them, 
 often contrive to squeeze out of them what- 
 ever vital sap they contain. 
 
 The question what it is we aim at in men- 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 15 
 
 tal cultivation, and what relation this latter 
 bears to religion, cannot be said to be out of 
 place here ; for in considering these ques- 
 tions we are brought to contemplate steadily 
 what is the end of university life, and in 
 what relation university life stands to the 
 ultimate ends of life taken as a whole. If a 
 University like this exists for any purpose, I 
 suppose it is to promote mental culture, that 
 is, the cultivation not merely of certain tech- 
 nical and professional faculties, but, over and 
 above these, of the whole man. A few years 
 ago there would have been no need to utter 
 a truism like this ; but we live at present in 
 a time of intellectual revulsions. What were 
 till lately held to be first principles are now 
 from time to time made the butts for edu- 
 cational reactionists to jeer at. We have 
 lately heard it asserted by men speaking 
 with some authority that universities and all 
 other places of education exist for one pur- 
 pose only, — to train men for their special 
 crafts or trades. If they do this well, they 
 are useful ; if they do not, they are good for 
 nothing. The belief in any ulterior end be- 
 yond this is denied and ridiculed. Yet, in 
 spite of the utilitarian logic of Mr. Lowe, 
 and the more humorous banter of our pres- 
 
16 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 ent Lord Rector, I must still believe that, 
 above and beyond special professional train- 
 j ing, there is such a thing as mental culture 
 f and enlargement, and that this is an excel- 
 \ lent gift in itself, apart from any gain it may 
 bring, and that it is one main end of uni- 
 versities to foster the desire and further the 
 attainment of it. The man, I must still hold, 
 is more than his trade. The spirit that is in 
 each man craves other nourishment than the 
 bread he wins. 
 
 I do not, in saying this, forget that we 
 have each our special work in the world to 
 do, — as lawyers, physicians, teachers, minis- 
 ters, and the like, — and that it tasks all our 
 streno;th and knowledo;e to do it. All men, 
 or almost all, are bound to throw themselves 
 vigorously into some one of the known pro- 
 fessions, and this not for food and raiment 
 only, but as a necessary part of their moral 
 discipline. Few, very few, there are who, 
 even if their circumstances admit it, can dis- 
 pense with the wholesome yoke of a profes- 
 sion, and yet live to any good purpose. But 
 while fully acknowledging not only the ne- 
 cessity, but the advantage of being harnessed 
 to some regular profession, and that to suc- 
 ceed in this the finest edge of faculty and 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 17 
 
 the most accurate technical training must be 
 soucrht, I still believe there is something 
 more than this, and greater, which must 
 never be lost sight of, if we desire to become 
 not mere useful machines or instruments, but 
 complete men. The professional man who, 
 over and above his daily duties and business 
 relations, has learned to feel that he has 
 other relations, wider and more permanent, 
 with all his fellow-beings in all ages, — that 
 he is a debtor for all he has and is to a wider 
 circle of things than that he outwardly comes 
 in contact with, — that he is an heir of all 
 the great and good who have lived before 
 him, — is not on that account a worse Avork- 
 man, and is certainly a higher and better 
 man. 
 
 It is not, then, a mere dream, but a very 
 real aim, which they propose who urge us to 
 seek " a fuller, more harmonious develop- 
 ment of our humanity, greater freedom from 
 narrowness and prejudice, more width of 
 thought, more expansive sympathies, feelings 
 more catholic and humane, a high and un- 
 selfish ideal of life." These are the quali- 
 ties which university training, if it had its 
 perfect work, might be expected to generate 
 and foster. And it does this by bringing 
 
18 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 young minds, while they are still plastic, into 
 contact with whatever is best in the past his- 
 tory of the race, — with the great deeds, the 
 high thoughts, the beautiful creations which 
 the best men of former times have be- 
 queathed to us. To learn to know and sym- 
 pathize with these is the work not of one or 
 two years, but of our whole lives. Yet the 
 process may be said to begin here, and in a 
 special way to belong to the university. For 
 here, if anywhere, it is that the avenues are 
 first opened up which lead to the great store- 
 house of foregone humanities, — here that 
 our apprehension of these things is first 
 awakened. But a small portion of all this 
 richness we can take in durino^ our short 
 university course, — not much, it may be, in 
 a whole life-time. But it is something to 
 have come to know and feel that these 
 things exist, — exist, too, for us, in as far as 
 we can appropriate them, and to have had 
 our thoucrhts and desires directed thitherward. 
 When the perception of these things and the 
 love of them have been evoked, culture has 
 begun, and the university life is the natural 
 time for it. If this desire does .not begin 
 here, it is not often awakened afterwards. 
 But what do we mean by this fine word 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. IS 
 
 Culture, so much in vogue at present? 
 What the Greeks naturally expressed by 
 their TraiSeta, the Romans by their humanitas^ 
 we less happily try to express by the more 
 artificial word Culture. The use of it in its 
 present sense is, as far as I know, recent in 
 our language, forced upon us, I suppose, by 
 the German talk about '-Bildung." And the 
 shifts we have been put to, to render that 
 German word, seem to show that the thing 
 is with us something of an exotic, rather than 
 native to the soil. When applied to the hu- 
 man being, it means, I suppose, the ''educ- 
 ing or drawing forth all that is potentially in 
 a man,'* the training all the energies and ca- 
 pacities of his being to the highest pitch, and 
 directino; them to their true ends. The 
 means that it employs to attain these ends are 
 manifold and various, as manifold as are the 
 experiences of life. But one of the most pow- 
 erful and characteristic instruments of culture 
 is, as I have said, to bring young and plastic 
 minds into contact with all that is best and 
 greatest in the thoughts, the sentiments, the 
 deeds of past generations of men, in order 
 that these may melt into them and mould the 
 character. But culture is not a product of 
 mere study. Learning may be got from 
 
20 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 books, but not culture. It is a more living 
 process, and requires that the student shall at 
 times close his books, leave his solitary room, 
 and mincrle with his fellow-men. He must 
 seek the intercourse of living hearts as well 
 as of dead books, — especially the companion- 
 ship of those of his own contemporaries whose 
 minds and characters are fitted to instruct, 
 elevate, and sweeten his own. Another 
 thing required is the discipline which must 
 be carried on by each man in himself, the 
 learning of self-control, the forming of habits, 
 the effort to overcome what is evil and to 
 strengthen what is good in his own nature. 
 But to enumerate all the means of culture 
 would be impossible, seeing they are wide as 
 the world, and the process begins with the 
 cradle, and, we may well believe, does not 
 end with the grave. What, then, is the re- 
 lation in which a university stands to this 
 great life-process ? It may be said to be a 
 sort of microcosm, — a small practical abridg- 
 ment of an unending book, — a compend of 
 the past thought and cultivation of the race, 
 reduced to the shape and dimensions best 
 fitted to be taken in. And this abridgment 
 or summary of the past experience of the 
 race is applied to young minds just at the age 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 21 
 
 whicli is most susceptible to receive impres- 
 Bions deeply, and retain them permanently. 
 
 Every one must observe to what a large 
 extent the advocates of education nowadays, 
 of the lowest as well as of the highest, agree 
 in urging it for the moral fruits it produces. 
 Remove ignorance, say the advocates of pri- 
 mary education, and you put an end to crime. 
 And though we may doubt the necessity of 
 the alleged sequence, we gladly accept their 
 testimony to the moral aim which all educa- 
 tion should imply. The Culturists, again — 
 by which term I mean not those who esteem 
 culture, (as what intelligent man does not?) 
 but those, its exclusive advocates, who rec- 
 ommend it as the one panacea for all the ills 
 of humanity, — the Culturists are never done 
 insisting that it is not for its utilitarian results, 
 not for the technical skill and information it 
 implies, nor for the professional success it may 
 secure, that they value culture, but for its 
 effect in elevating the whole man. They tell 
 us that men, in the last resort, are not formed 
 by rules or precepts, no, nor by what are 
 called moral principles, — that men's lives 
 and characters are determined mainly by their 
 ideal, that is, by the thing they lay to heart 
 and live by, often without themselves being 
 
22 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 aware of it, by that which they in their in- 
 most souls love, desire, aim at, as the best 
 possibility for themselves and others. By the 
 ideal, therefore, that a man loves, and by his 
 persistency in cleaving to it, and working for 
 it, shall you know what he really is. This 
 ideal, whatever it be, seen and embraced, 
 and melting into a man, constitutes his true 
 and essential nature, and reveals itself in all 
 he thinks and does. They tell us, and truly, 
 that it is not the educated and refined only 
 who have their ideal, — that every man, even 
 the most illiterate, has an ideal, whether he 
 knows it or not ; that is, every man has some- 
 thing which forms the ruling thought, the 
 main desire, of his life. The beggar in his 
 rags is not without his ideal, though that 
 probably does not go beyond plenty to eat 
 and drink, and a comfortable house to live in. 
 If he be advanced a little above abject want, 
 then perhaps his ideal is to become wealthy, 
 respected of all men for his riches. These, 
 though material aims, are yet none the less 
 ideals to those who entertain them. The 
 Culturists, then, go on to say that, since every 
 man must have his ideal, — material and self- 
 ish, or unselfish and spiritual, — it lies mainly 
 with culture to determine whether men shall 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 23 
 
 rest content with grosser aims or raise their \ 
 thoughts to the higher ideals. These lat- 
 ter, they remind us, are manifold : there is 
 the ideal poetical, the ideal scientific, the 
 ideal political, the ideal philanthropic: and 
 that which of these, or other such like, a man 
 shall set before him must be determined by 
 his inborn bias and temperament, his natural 
 gifts, and his outward circumstances. There 
 are diversities of gifts, and to every man his 
 own gift. The kind and measure of gifts 
 each man has will shape and modify the ideal 
 which is proper to him. And each man's 
 practical wisdom consists in truly discover- 
 ing the ideal which naturally belongs to him- 
 self, and in so dealing with the facts and cir- 
 cumstances in which his lot is cast, as to 
 reconcile by a true adjustment his inward 
 aspiration and his outward surroundings. 
 
 If, then, it be true that every man must 
 have an ideal of some sort, and that this, be 
 it base or lofty, rules his whole being, the 
 Culturists tell us that it is the business of 
 culture to waken men to the consciousness of 
 some ideal, and to set .before them true and 
 lofty standards ; for the young especially to 
 open up, through the manifold obstructions 
 of sense and outward things, avenues by 
 
24 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 which the soul may catch some glimpse of the 
 true beauty, the real good, ''of that light 
 which being compared with the light is found 
 before it, more beautiful than the sun, and 
 above all the orders of the stars." ^ 
 
 They further tell us that it is the business 
 of culture not only to set before men the vis- 
 ion, but to impart to them the cunning hand 
 which shall impress on outward things the 
 pattern of the things seen in the mount. 
 This culture does, by training them in the 
 best knowledge of tlie time, by imbuing them 
 with as much of the sciences and arts as they 
 can take in and use. Without such practical 
 training of the faculties and the hand, a man, 
 however true his ideal, will become a mere 
 dreamer, powerless to effect anything. And 
 life is so complex, the materials we have to 
 deal with so various and intractable, that it 
 needs long and severe discipline of the facul- 
 ties to give a man the chance of working his 
 way towards his ideal through the numberless 
 hindrances that surround him. 
 
 We see, then, that culture, according to 
 the claim put in for it by its most ardent ad- 
 vocates, is said to do two things : first, it sets 
 before a man a high ideal end to aim at, 
 1 Note I. 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 25 
 
 Vvhicli shall enter into and control liis life ; 
 
 secondly, it trains all the faculties, all the in- 
 ward powers and outward instruments, — 
 hand, eye, ear, — so as to enable him in some 
 measure to realize that ideal end, and over- 
 come the obstructions that lie between him 
 and it. Such is the claim which is put in by 
 the Culturists. And, after what I have said 
 at the commencement, you will believe that 
 I shall not gainsay it. True as far as it 
 goes, it is, however, far enough from being 
 an adequate account of the whole matter. 
 
 Before quitting this subject, let me but add 
 one w^ord in defense of those who speak of 
 ideal aims. Very practical or cynical persons 
 are fond of sneering at these. They make 
 merry, as it is easy to do, with those who, in 
 their phrase, keep vaporing about ideals. 
 What have we, or most men, they say, to do 
 with ideals ? Let us leave them to the rapt 
 poet, the recluse thinker, the dreaming vis- 
 ionary. It is the actual, the hard facts of 
 life that we have to deal wuth ; to push our 
 way in the world, maintain the struggle for 
 existence, immersed in the tangible and ma- 
 terial, hemmed in by, often nigh crushed be- 
 neath, imperious circumstances. Enough 
 for us if we can battle through them, without 
 
26 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 being overpowered. Ideals ! let us leave 
 them to those who have wealth and leisure ; 
 they are among the luxuries, not the necessi- 
 ties of life. For us we have enough to do to 
 make something of the real. 
 
 To make something of the real ! Yes, 
 that's it. But how are we to make anvthinc" 
 of the actual unless we have some aim to direct 
 our efforts, some clew to c^uide us throuMi its 
 labyrinths ? And this aim, this clew, is just 
 what is meant by the Ideal. You may dislike 
 the word and reject it, but the thing you can- 
 not get rid of, if you would live any life above 
 that of brutes. An aim, an ideal of some 
 sort, be it material or spiritual, you must 
 have, if you have reason, and look before 
 and after. True, no man's life can be wholly 
 occupied with the ideal, not even the poet's 
 or the philosopher's. Each man must ac- 
 quaint himself with numberless details ; must 
 learn the stuff that the world is made of, and 
 how to deal with it. Even Phidias and 
 Michael Angelo must study the nature of the 
 rough block they have to hew. Not even 
 the most ethereal being can live wholly upon 
 sunbeams, and most lives are far enoucdi 
 removed from the sunbeams. Yet sunshine, 
 light, is necessary for every man. And 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 27 
 
 though most are immersed in business, oi 
 batthno; all life through with touMi conditions, 
 yet, if we are not to sink into mere selfish 
 animality, we must needs have some mastei 
 light to guide us ; " something that may 
 dwell upon the heart, though it be not named 
 upon the tongue." For if there be some- 
 times a danger lest the young enthusiast, 
 through too great devotion to an abstract 
 ideal, should essay the impossible, and break 
 himself against the walls of destiny that hem 
 him in, far more common is it for men to be 
 so crushed under manhood's burdens, that 
 they abandon all the high aims of their youth, 
 and submit to be driven like gin-horses — 
 
 "Round the daily scene 
 Of sad subjection, and of sick routine." 
 
 The Culturists, then, speak truly when they 
 tell us that every man must have some ideal, 
 and that it is all-important that, while the 
 mind is plastic, each should form some high 
 aim which is true to his own nature, and 
 true to the truth of things. It has been well 
 said that youth is the season when men are 
 engaged in forming their ideals. In mature 
 age they are engaged in trying to impress 
 them on the actual world. And culture pro- 
 fesses to effect that men shall fix their aims 
 
28 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 high and true, and be equipped with the 
 loiowledge, skill, aptitudes, required for car- 
 rying them out successfully. 
 
 But the question now occurs, which has 
 probably suggested itself ere now to some 
 who hear me. What does religion say to all 
 this ? We had thought it had been religion 
 which set forth the ends of life, and supplied 
 the motives and the power for striving to- 
 wards them. But now it seems that there is 
 some rival power, called Culture, which claims 
 for itself these architectonic functions which 
 we had hitherto thought belonged of right 
 to Religion. In the language of Aristotle, 
 which of these two is the architectonic or 
 master-art which prescribes to all the other 
 arts and occupations of life their functions, as 
 the master-builder prescribes their duties to 
 his workmen ? Or are Culture and Religion 
 really rival powers ? are they to be regarded 
 as in any way antagonistic to each other? 
 And if not, what are their mutual relations ? 
 in what way do they meet and act on each 
 other ? 
 
 This is the question with which I shall 
 have to deal more or less, now leaving it, 
 now returning to it, throughout these 
 Lectures. 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 29 
 
 One thing is obvious, that, however much 
 the end of life, as laid down by religion, may 
 diverge fi'om the view taken by culture, yet 
 relio-ion will have nothing to say against the 
 assertion that life must be ruled by an aim 
 which shall be ideal. For what can be more 
 ideal than that which religion sets before us ? 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of God." " Be 
 ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is 
 perfect." 
 
 Let this, then, be clearly understood, that 
 whether we look at life from the side of 
 Culture or from that of Religion, in either 
 case we must be guided by an ideal light, 
 which is, indeed, the only real and powerful 
 guidance. 
 
 Now as to the relation in which these two 
 stand to each other : — 
 
 Culture proposes as its end the carrying 
 of man's nature to its highest perfection, the 
 developing to the full all the capacities of our 
 humanity. If, then, in this view, humanity 
 be contemplated in its totality, and not in 
 some partial side of it. Culture must aim at 
 developing our humanity in its Godward as- 
 pect, as well as its mundane aspect. And it 
 must not only recognize the religious side of 
 humanity, but if it tries to assign the due 
 
30 TEE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 place to each capacity, and assign to all tlie 
 capacities their mutual relations, it must con- 
 cede to the Godward capacities that para- 
 mount and dominating place which rightfully 
 belongs to them, if they are recognized at all. 
 That is, Culture must embrace Religion, and 
 end in it. 
 
 Again, to start from the side or point of 
 view of religion : — The ground of all relig- 
 ion, that which makes it possible, is the rela- 
 tion in which the human soul stands to God. 
 This relation is the root one, and determines 
 what a man really is. As a Kempis says, 
 "What thou art in the sight of God, that 
 thou truly art." The practical recognition 
 of this relation as the deepest, most vital, 
 most permanent one, as that one which em- 
 braces and regulates all others, this is relig- 
 ion. And each man is religious just in pro- 
 portion as he does practically so recognize 
 this bond, which binds him to his Maker. 
 
 If, then, religion be this, it must embrace 
 culture : first, because it is itself the culture 
 of the highest capacity of our being; and 
 secondly, because, if not partial and blind, it 
 must acknowledge all the other capacities of 
 man's nature as gifts which God has given, 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGIOX. oi 
 
 and given that man may cultivate tliem to 
 the utmost, and elevate them by connecting 
 them with the thought of the Giver, and the 
 purpose for which He gave them. 
 
 We see, then, that religion, when it has its 
 perfect work, must lead on to culture. If 
 this view be true, culture and religion are 
 not, when rightly regarded, two opposite 
 powers, but they are as it were one line with 
 two opposite poles. Start from the manw^ard 
 pole, and go along the line honestly and 
 thoroughly, and you land in the divine one. 
 Start from the divine pole, and carry out all 
 that it implies, and you land in the manward 
 pole, or the perfection of humanity. Ideally 
 considered, then, culture must culminate in 
 religion, and religion must expand into cul- 
 ture. So it ought to be, — so, we sometimes 
 imagine, it might be. But it requires little 
 knowledge of history, and a very small ob- 
 servation of men, to convince us that so it 
 has not been in the past, so it is not now. 
 Goethe, the high-priest of culture, loathes 
 Luther, the preacher of righteousness. The 
 earnestness and fervor of the one disturb and 
 offend the calm serenity which the other 
 
 loves. And Luther, likely enough, had he 
 seen Goethe, would have done him but scant 
 
 justice. 
 
32 THE AUf OF CULTURE. 
 
 Mr. Arnold figures to himself Virgil and 
 Shakespeare accompanying the Puritan Pil- 
 grim Fathers on their voyage to America, 
 and asks if the two poets would not have 
 found the company of such men intolerable. 
 If, however, the two poets instead of the Pu- 
 ritan exiles had been thrown into tlie society 
 of St. Paul and St. John, would they liave 
 found their society much more to their 
 mind ? These sharp contrasts suggest some 
 questions not easy to answer. It is no use 
 smoothing them over by commonplaces about 
 the one-sidedness of all men, and the limita- 
 tions of our nature. When, however, Ave 
 think over it, we can see some reasons whicli 
 make the combination of the two things dif- 
 ficult, so difficult that it is only in a few, and 
 these rarely gifted natures, that they have 
 both coexisted in anvhio-li degree. Take the 
 case of a man who has not had a religious 
 home and childhood, but has begun with cul- 
 ture. It is easy to see that such a one, 
 when from his scientific investio-ations and 
 philosophical reasonings, or aBsthetic ideals, he 
 turns his thoughts for the first time towards 
 religious truth, will come in contact witli an 
 order of things that is alien to the ways of 
 thought and repugnant to the modes of feel- 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 33 
 
 ing engendered in liim by culture. The 
 practical thought of God is something so dif- 
 ferent from the apprehension of any truth of 
 science or philosophy, and puts the mind 
 into such a different posture from any to 
 which these have accustomed it, that the 
 mere man of culture will feel that for such 
 contemplation he either requires new facul- 
 tiesj or must make a new use of the old, and 
 likely enough he will give it up in despair. 
 Again, the account which Christianity gives 
 of human nature, even if we avoid all exag- 
 geration, is not one that readily falls in with 
 the habits either of the scientific or of the 
 poetic mind. The mystery of evil, as its 
 working is described in the Epistle to the 
 Romans, and man's need of redemption, his 
 helplessness until succored by a strength 
 hi2:her than his own : these are truths that 
 do not easily find a place in any system of 
 ordered evolution such as science delights to 
 trace, — rather they are yawning gaps that 
 come in .to baffle and perplex all the scien- 
 tific methods. Nor are they less alien to im- 
 aginations that have been fed on the great 
 poetic creations, for these lend themselves 
 readily to the pantheistic idea of evil as a 
 necessary step on the road to good, rather 
 
34 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 than to the Christian view of sin. In short, 
 the transition from the objects on which cul- 
 ture dwells to those on which religion dwell* 
 is the passage from a region in which hu- 
 man thought, human effort, human self-de- 
 velopment, are paramount, to a region in 
 which man's own powers are entirely subor- 
 dinate, in which recipiency, not self-activity, 
 is the primary law of life, and in which the 
 chief worker is not man, but God. 
 
 To put the matter forcibly, let me quote 
 the words of a venerable writer still living ; ^ 
 " It is impossible," he says, " to look into 
 the Bible with the most ordinary attention 
 without feelino' that we have 2;ot into a moral 
 atmosphere quite different from that which 
 we breathe in the world, and in the world's 
 literature. In the Bible God is presented as 
 doing everything, and as being the cause and 
 end of everything ; and man appears only as 
 he stands related to God, either as a revolted 
 creature or as the subject of Divine grace. 
 Whereas in the world, and in the books which 
 contain the history of the world, according to 
 its own judgment, man appears to do every- 
 thincr, and there is as little reference to God 
 as if there were no such Being in the uni- 
 verse." 
 
 1 See Note II. 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 35 
 
 These words point to a great but real op- 
 position, to a vast hiatus not to be gainsaid 
 or passed by, — the (h'fference between the 
 point of view of tlie Bible and of ordinary lit- 
 erature, — the opposed aspects that life wears, 
 according as we accept the religious interpre- 
 tation of the workl or the secular interpreta- 
 tion of it. No doubt it is the great end of 
 Christianity to heal this loncr-standincv discord, 
 to do away the ancient opposition between 
 things divine and things human, to reconcile 
 all true human learning, not less than human 
 hearts, to God. That in every age Christian- 
 ity has done so in some measure, history is 
 the witness. That it has yet much to do, 
 vast tracts of thought to reclaim and spiritu- 
 alize, before the reconcihatlon is complete, if 
 it is ever to be complete, — this is but too 
 apparent. 
 
 It may help to make the whole matter 
 clearer, if, before concluding, we cast our eye 
 backward to tlie sources whence first issued 
 these two great streams of tendency that 
 long since, more or less combined, and now 
 compose the main current of civiHzation. 
 
 Of culture in its intellectual side, of those 
 mental gifts which have educated the civil- 
 
36 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 ized world, and moulded thought to what it 
 is, Greece, you all know, is the birth-land. 
 It was there that these gifts sprang to light, 
 and were matured before they were spread 
 abroad and became the inheritance of the na- 
 tions. The first father, the Apostle of civil- 
 ization, as he has been called, was Homer. 
 For several centuries the poems of the old- 
 minstrel floated about orally, intrusted only to 
 men's memories. But when the Athenian 
 prince gathered together his scattered frag- 
 ments, and reduced them to writing, " the 
 vagrant ballad-singer " was, as it were, en- 
 throned as the king of minstrelsy, and " in- 
 vested with the office of forming the young 
 mind of Greece to noble thoughts and bold 
 deeds." ^ Henceforth to be read in Homer 
 became the first requirement of an educated 
 gentleman. And as time went on there fol- 
 lowed in due succession all the order of the 
 poets. Didactic, lyric, tragic, comic poetry, 
 each of these in Greece first came to licj;ht, 
 and there, too, found its consummate form. 
 Hesiod, Pindar, jEschyhis, Sophocles, Aris- 
 tophanes, — these followed in the train of 
 Homer, and, though subordinate to him, be- 
 came likewise the teachers of the Greek 
 
 1 Note III. 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 37 
 
 youth. On poetry followed history, — with 
 Herodotus for the father of pictorial, Thu- 
 cydides of philosophic, history. And as his- 
 tory came from the consciousness of political 
 life, so also did oratory, which Avas one of its 
 younger products. 
 
 And when all these intellectual forms had 
 nearly completed themselves, last of all, as 
 the maturest creation of Hellenic mind, came 
 philosophy, — philosophy with its countless 
 names and variety of phases, but with Socra- 
 tes, Plato, and Aristotle standing in the fore- 
 front, for all time " the masters of those who 
 know." 
 
 No one who looks back on that marvelous 
 fertility, that exhaustless variety of the rarest 
 gifts of thought, the product of so small a land 
 and so few centuries, the wonder of which 
 only increases the more we contemplate it, 
 can believe that it was intended to begin and 
 end in the land which gave it birth, — that 
 these words of sayers and thinkers had ful- 
 filled the end they were designed for when 
 they had delighted or instructed only the 
 men who first heard them. No; the idea 
 must force itself on every one who really re- 
 flects on it that this inexhaustible richness 
 was riven to Athens, that she might be the 
 
a» THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 intellectual mother of the world, — that lieJ 
 thoughts might be a possession for all ages. 
 
 Just as we see that the long geological 
 epoch, which stored up the vast coal meas- 
 ures, was evidently preparing those material 
 resources which were not only to minister to 
 the physical comfort, but to create the phys- 
 ical civilization of great nations yet to be, 
 even so this exuberance of intellectual 
 wealth seems, in the design of the world, 
 to have been so marvelously matured in 
 Greece, that it might be as a treasure-house 
 from which not so much the Greeks them- 
 selves as all future generations might be 
 schooled, elevated, and refined. 
 
 With regard to the action of Hellenic 
 thought, however, two remarks are to be 
 made. The first is, it was not so much im- 
 mediately and directly, as by creating Latin 
 literature and reaching modern thought 
 through the medium of the Latin language, 
 that Greece has propelled European civiliza- 
 tion. It was not till the revival of letters in 
 the fifteenth century that Greek thouglit 
 came face to face with the modern world, 
 and infused itself directly into western cul- 
 ture. Of course it is an old remark that in 
 Hterature Rome produced little original, and 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 39 
 
 mainly imitated Greece. But wlien we look 
 at it, there is more in this than at first 
 appears. It is, as has been well said, " a 
 proof of the sort of instinct which has guided 
 the course of civilization. The world was to 
 have certain intellectual teachers, and no 
 others. Homer and Aristotle, with the poets 
 and philosophers who circle round them, 
 were to be the schoolmasters of all o-enera- 
 tions ; and therefore the Latins, falling into 
 the law on which the world's education was 
 to be carried on, so added to the classical 
 library as not to reverse or interfere with 
 what had been already determined." 
 
 The second remark I would offer is, that 
 whatever else Greece has given to the world, 
 however much she may have educated men 
 to clear and subtle thouo;ht, and to the deli- 
 cate sense of beauty, and to the highest forms 
 of abstract thinking, it is not Greece that has 
 awakened and satisfied the relio^ious lono-Inors 
 of humanity. Indeed, it is a very noteworthy 
 fact, that before Hellenic thought became 
 cosmopolitan, it dropped the native ethnic 
 religion, and left it behind in the place of its 
 oirth as a residuum that could not live else- 
 where. What was purely intellectual, that 
 was catholic and fitted for all time ; what 
 
40 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 was religious, that was local, temporary, and 
 doomed to perish. Connected with this fact 
 is the divorce in Greece between religion and 
 morality, in all but a very few of her highest 
 minds. Indeed, it is observable how, as the 
 moral sense of the Hellenic race grew deeper 
 and wider, the original religion of Homer 
 fell off from it as felt to be inadequate. 
 
 Greece, then, was the source of intellectual 
 culture ; but we must look to a remoter and 
 more eastern land to find the original source 
 of religious knowledge. " Jerusalem," as 
 has been said, " is the fountain-head of re- 
 ligious knowledge to the world, as Athens is 
 of secular." The ancient w^orld contained 
 these two, and only these two, centres of 
 illumination, separate and independent, to 
 which the modern world is indebted for the 
 highest gifts of human learning and the life- 
 giving powers of divine grace. Greece, 
 while it enlightened and delighted the intel- 
 lect, left the conscience and spirit of man un- 
 satisfied. To meet the wants of these, to 
 reach man in the deepest seats of his being, 
 it required something more inward, more 
 penetrating, more vital. It required the sim- 
 ple yet profound truths of that revelation 
 which began and was perfected in Judaea. 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 41 
 
 With regard to the teaching of that revela- 
 tion, I will note but two things. One is, 
 that to the Hebrew mind the thought of mo- 
 rality and the thought of God were never sep- 
 arate, but were ever essentially at one. That 
 word belono-s to the oldest record of the He- 
 brew race, '' Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right ? " And this interpenetration 
 of morality and religion, which pervades the 
 teachings alike of lawgiver, psalmist, and 
 prophet, finds its perfect consummation in 
 Him in whom the revelation culminated and 
 closed. The other thing I would remark is 
 the striking fact that it was from amidst a 
 people hitherto the most isolated and exclu- 
 sive of all known peoples, — a nation shut 
 off from all the world by the most narrow 
 restrictions and prejudices, — • that there 
 arose, in all the force of living conviction, a 
 faith the most unrestricted, the most expan- 
 sive, and all-embracing which the world had 
 hitherto known or ever can know. 
 
 When we think on these two separate 
 centres of illumination, — '' the grace stored 
 in Jerusalem, and the gifts which radiate 
 from Athens," — the thought cannot but 
 occur, How do these two stand related to 
 3ach other ? In that expression, *' when the 
 
42 THE AIM OF CULTURE, 
 
 fullness of the time was come," no thoughtful 
 student of history can fail to recognize, 
 along with the preparations that had gone on 
 in Judaea, some reference to the work which 
 Greece and Rome had done on the earth. 
 You remember that superscription which 
 was written in letters of Greek, and Latin, 
 and Hebrew. That superscription seems to 
 symbolize the confluence of powers which 
 thenceforward were to rule the minds of 
 men. That central grace and truth which 
 came by Jesus Christ was to go forth into 
 the world embodied in the language which 
 had been lono; since fashioned bv Homer and 
 Plato, and that Hellenic tongue in its last 
 decadence was to be made " the vehicle of 
 higher truths and a holier inspiration than 
 had ever haunted the dreams of bard or sage 
 in old Achaia." And not less, in order that 
 the glad tidings might spread abroad, was 
 needed the political action of Rome. The 
 world had first to be leveled down into one 
 vast empire, and the stern legionaries, — 
 " those massive hammers of the whole earth," 
 — as they paved the great highways from 
 the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules, 
 were, though they knew it not, fulfiUers of 
 Hebrew prophecy, and preparing the way 
 
ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 48 
 
 of the Lord and making straight in the desert 
 a highway for our God. So it was that Ju- 
 daea, Greece, and Rome combined to make 
 possible the new creation. Not in Judaea 
 alone, but in the other two countries also, 
 there had been sohio; on, as has been well 
 said, " a moral and spiritual expansion, which 
 rendered the world more capable of appre- 
 hending the Gospel than it would have been 
 in any earlier age." If there is anything 
 providential at all in human history, tliis con- 
 vergence of influences to bring about " the 
 fullness of the time " must be regarded as 
 such. 
 
 The agencies which in those past ages 
 combined to form Christendom have their 
 points of contact and cohesion ; they have 
 also their points of divergence and repulsion. 
 During some epochs the harmony of their 
 working has been conspicuous ; in other 
 epochs, for a time at least, they have seemed 
 rather to be divergent. But however much, 
 in certain turning-points of human thought, 
 these great influences, or their modern repre- 
 sentatives, may seem for a time to collide, 
 and though in the collision many individuals 
 may suffer grievous loss, one cannot but be- 
 lieve that out of the conflict of earnest 
 
44 THE AIM OF CULTURE. 
 
 though one-sided convictions, there will at 
 length arise, as there has done in past ages, 
 a revivified faith, a harmony of elements, 
 more simple, more all-embracing, more spir- 
 itual than any that has yet been. 
 
LECTURE n. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF CULTURE. 
 
 I ENDEAVORED in my last lecture to bring 
 before you the meaning of culture as under- 
 stood by those who most warmly advocate it, 
 the ends it jjroposes, the means by which it 
 seeks those ends. There was less need to 
 dwell at length on the nature of religion, as 
 this, we may assume, is more commonly un- 
 derstood. We saw that these two, though 
 distinct in their nature, and starting from 
 different points of view, are not really op- 
 posed. For culture, if thoroughly and con- 
 sistently carried out, must lead on to religion, 
 that is, to the cultivation of the spiritual and 
 heavenward capacities of our nature. And 
 religion, if truthful and wise, must expand 
 into culture, must urge men who are under 
 its power to make the most of all their 
 capacities, not only for the worth of these 
 capacities in themselves, but because they are 
 gifts of God, and given for this purpose, that 
 
46 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 we may carefully cultivate them. And no 
 doubt culture, pursued under sucli a feeling, 
 would acquire a new worth ; it would be 
 purified from egotism and unhealthy self- 
 consciousness, would be informed by a more 
 chastened, reyerential spirit, which w^ould 
 add to it a new excellence. If w^e could 
 but attain and keep the highest and truest 
 point of yie-w, and regard " humanity as 
 seen in the light of God," all good gifts of 
 nature and of art would fall into their risht 
 place, for they would assume in our thoughts 
 that place which they have in the creative 
 thought of the Giver. 
 
 So it is in truth ; but so we saw^ it has not 
 been in fact. We saw that often it has hap- 
 pened that culture has taken account of all 
 man's capacities but the highest, and so has 
 become Godless ; on the other hand, that 
 often sincere religion has thought it was 
 honoring things spiritual by depreciating the 
 cultivation of the lower but yet essential ca- 
 pacities of man, and so has narrowed itself, 
 and cut itself off from reality. 
 
 I then glanced at the two historical centres 
 of illumination, from the one of which the 
 world had received its spiritual, from the 
 
OF CULTURE. 47 
 
 other its intellectual light, and I noted how 
 these two had providentially combined to 
 bring in the new creation of Christianity. 
 At the close I was led to remark that while 
 these two mighty influences had combined, 
 and doubtless were intended to combine, to 
 bless mankind, one could not but perceive 
 that as they contain elements which draw to 
 each other and tend to coalesce, so they con- 
 tain other elements which may tend, and at 
 certain epochs have tended to divergence, or 
 even to collision. 
 
 Such an epoch was that wakening of the 
 European mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, known as the revival of letters. 
 When the fall of Constantinople had sent 
 crowds of Greek exiles westward, bearing 
 -with them their Greek learning into Italy, — 
 when the printing press, newly invented, 
 was pouring forth year by year fresh editions 
 of Greek and Latin classics, — when the 
 discovery of another hemisphere had opened 
 a boundless horizon for enterprise and civili- 
 zation, — the minds of men, long hide-bound 
 in scholastic logic and theology, sprang for- 
 ward, as from a musty prison-house, into a 
 fresh world of light. In Florence, then the 
 fountain-head of the revived learning, the 
 
48 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 recoil from the outworn paths drove many 
 minds not only from scholasticism, but even 
 from Christianity. They fancied they could 
 find something better, wider, more human in 
 a semi-pagan philosophy. Intoxicated, as 
 was not unnatural, by the fascinations of 
 the new learning, they imagined that in it 
 alone they had found an all-sufficient por- 
 tion. 
 
 Again, about the beginning of last century, 
 the same tendency to discard religion, at least 
 revealed religion, and to make the products 
 of human learning take its place, set in, 
 though in another form. After the religious 
 wars, as they are called, of the seventeenth 
 century had been fought out ; after the 
 strong Puritan movement had spent itself, 
 there came on a period of active philosophiz- 
 ing, but of philosophy unaccompanied by 
 spiritual insight. As you read the works of 
 Bishop Butler, you seem to hear the voice of 
 a great and earnest thinker crying in the 
 wilderness, and pleading with a suffering 
 generation to believe that there is a deeper 
 moral tendency in things than at first sight 
 appears. It was a sifting, active-minded 
 age, analyzing all things and believing in 
 
OF CULTURE. 49 
 
 nothing which it could not analyze ; an age 
 whollv over-mastered by the understanding, 
 judging according to sense. 
 
 So it was for the greater part of last cen- 
 tury. But Germany before the French Rev- 
 olution, and our own country after it, startled 
 by the conclusions to which the Sense-phi- 
 losophy had led in all departments of life, 
 and the devastation it had made among all 
 man's chiefest instincts and most cherished 
 faiths, awoke to think over again those great 
 problems which the past age had settled and 
 dismissed so complacently. The human 
 mind plunged down as it were to a deeper 
 layer of thought and feeling than that which 
 had satisfied the age of the Aufklarung, as it 
 is called. The philosophy of Voltaire and 
 Hume could hold it no longer. This recoil 
 manifested itself in Germany by the rise of 
 the Kantian philosophy and the succession of 
 great idealistic systems that followed it. In 
 this country it was seen in here and there an 
 attempt at a deeper metaphysic than that of 
 Locke and Hume, but much more in the in- 
 creased depth and compass of the poetry and 
 literature of the first fifty years of this cen- 
 tury. Everywhere that literature is per- 
 vaded by greater reach of thought, increased 
 
60 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 tenderness, more reverence, finer aspiration. 
 In most of its greater poets there is some- 
 thing of the 
 
 " Tendebautque manus ripae ulterioris amore," — 
 
 the stretching forth the hands in yearning 
 for a farther shore. It is clear that when 
 culture is in such a phase, it more readily 
 allies itself with religion than when it is 
 sense-bound, unenthusiastic, and analytic 
 mainly of the more obvious phenomena. 
 
 The years about 1840 may be taken as the 
 time when the spiritual flood-tide had reached 
 the full. It is always very difficult to esti- 
 mate the age in which you are living, yet I 
 think we seem to have come in durino; the 
 last twenty years for the ebb of that spiritual 
 wave. Wordsworth, in his day, complained 
 that — 
 
 "Plain living and high thinking are no more." 
 
 Of our day it may be truly said that high liv- 
 ing and plain thinking are the all in all. In 
 an age of great material prosperity like the 
 present, when the comforts and conveniences 
 of physical life have greatly increased, and 
 science is every day increasing them, this 
 world is a^ t to seem in itself a " satisfying 
 
OF CULTURE. 61 
 
 abode," quite irrespective of any hope be- 
 yond. The spread of knowledge is doing so 
 much to remove many of the surface ills of 
 life, that vague and exaggerated hopes are 
 apt to be fostered of what it may yet do for 
 the heahng of the deepest disorders. To 
 minds that have got themselves intoxicated 
 with notions of material progress, this world, 
 as I have said, is apt to seem enough, and 
 man to appear a satisfying object to himself 
 quite apart from God. 
 
 This tendency, I think, manifests itself, as 
 in other thino-s, so also in some theories of 
 culture which have lately been propounded. 
 In these we see the attempt made either to 
 substitute for religion the last and highest 
 results of knowledge and culture, or to bring 
 religion down from its supremacy, and give 
 the highest place to culture. 
 
 The first view which I shall bring before 
 you, and which will occupy the rest of our 
 time to-day, is that which is taken by the 
 advocates of a rigorous and exclusively 
 scientific culture, by those who would make 
 the scientific method our only guide in life, 
 not merely in things belonging to the phys- 
 ical order, but not less in the highest con- 
 
62 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 cerns of the human spirit. As tendencies 
 are best seen in an extreme instance, I shall 
 take as the sample of this tendency an in- 
 auonral lecture delivered about two years 
 ago by Professor Huxley, at the South Lon- 
 don Working Men's College, of which he 
 was then President. It is entitled " A Lib- 
 eral Education, and where to find it." There 
 is this advantage in taking the instance I 
 have chosen, that it presents in a strong and 
 easily understood form a way of thinking 
 which in less aggravated degree pervades 
 very widely the intellectual atmosphere of 
 our time. 
 
 Mr. Huxley lays down as his first principle, 
 that education, in its largest and highest 
 sense, — the education not merely of schools 
 and colleges, but that education which the 
 human spirit is receiving uninterruptedly 
 from birth till death, — that this process con- 
 sists solely in learning the laws of nature, 
 and training one's self to obey them. And 
 w^ithin the laws of nature which we have to 
 learn he includes not only the physical laws, 
 but also those moral laws which govern man 
 and his ways. We must set ourselves there- 
 fore to acquire a knowledge not only of the 
 laws that reo-uUte matter, but also of the 
 
OF CULTURE. 5b 
 
 moral laws of the universe. These moral 
 laws Mr. Huxley holds to be as rigid and self- 
 exacting as the physical laws appear to be. 
 This view of the condition of our existence 
 here, and of the part which man bears in it, 
 Mr. Huxley set§ forth in a startling, not to 
 say daring, figure. " Suppose it were per- 
 fectly certain," he says, " that the life and 
 fortune of every one of us would, one day or 
 another, depend upon his winning or losing 
 a game of chess, don't you think that we 
 should all consider it to be a primary duty 
 to learn at least the name and moves of the 
 pieces ; ' to have a notion of a gambit, and a 
 keen eye for all the means of giving and 
 getting out of a check ? Do you not think we 
 should look with a disapprobation amounting 
 to scorn upon the father who allowed his 
 son, or the state which allowed its members, 
 to grow up without knowing a pawn from a 
 knight ? 
 
 " Yet it is a very plain and elementary 
 truth that the life, the fortune, and the hap- 
 piness of every one of us, and, more or less, 
 of those connected with us, do depend on 
 our knowing something of the rules of a 
 game infinitely more difficult and compli- 
 cated than chess. It is a game which haa 
 
54 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 been played for untold ages, every man and 
 woman of ns being one of the two players 
 in a game of his or her own. The chess- 
 board is the world, the pieces are the phe- 
 nomena of the universe, the rules of the 
 game are what we call the laws of nature. 
 The player on the other side is hidden from 
 us. We know that his play is always fair, 
 just, and patient. But we know, to our 
 cost, that he never overlooks a mistake or 
 makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. 
 To the man who plays well the highest 
 stakes are paid with that overflowing gener- 
 osity with which the strong shows delight in 
 strength. And one who plays ill is check- 
 mated, without haste, but without remorse. 
 My metaphor," Professor Huxley proceeds, 
 " will remind some of you of the famous pic- 
 tm^e in which Retzsch has depicted Satan play- 
 ing chess with a man for his soul. Substitute 
 for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, 
 strong angel, who is playing for love, as we 
 say, and would rather lose than win, and I 
 should accept it as an image of human life. 
 Well, what I mean by education is learning 
 the rules of this mighty game. In other 
 words, education is the instruction of the intel- 
 lect in the laws of nature, under which name 
 
OF CULTURE, 65 
 
 I include not merely things and their forces, 
 but men and their ways, and the fashioning 
 of the affections and the will into an earnest 
 and loving desire to move in harmony with 
 these laws. For me education means neither 
 more nor less than this." 
 
 Now, painful as such a view of life must 
 be to those who have been trained in a de- 
 vouter school, it is well that we should look 
 at it steadily, and try to understand and in- 
 terpret it fairly. For it is a strong exposi- 
 tion of a way of thinking very prevalent at 
 the present time, which contains a peculiar 
 fascination for many minds which, impatient 
 of mystery, long, before all things, to attain 
 and hold a clearly cut and systematic view. 
 Definiteness is with them the test of truth, 
 and this theory is so definite. However, let 
 us first get Professor Huxley's whole state- 
 ment. After setting it forth in that startling 
 metaphor, he goes on to remark that nature 
 begins the education of her children before 
 the schools do, and continues it after. She 
 takes men in hand as soon as they are born, 
 and begins to educate them. It is a rough 
 kind of education, one in which " ignorance 
 is treated like willful disobedience, incapacity 
 
bQ TEE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 is punished as a crime. It is not even a 
 word and a blow, but the blow first without 
 the word. It is left to you to find out why 
 your ears are boxed." Now here man comes 
 in, and takes up the process which nature 
 has begun. And the aim of the artificial 
 education which he gives in schools and col- 
 leges is, or ought to be, to make good the 
 defects in nature's methods, to prepare the 
 child to receive nature's teaching, and tc 
 perfect it. All artificial education should be 
 an anticipation of nature's education ; and a 
 liberal education is an artificial education, 
 one which has prepared a man, not only to 
 escape nature's cuffs and blows, but to seize 
 the rewards which she scatters no less 
 lavishly. 
 
 Then Mr. Huxley gives us the following 
 picture of what he conceives an educated 
 man to be, as the result of a truly liberal 
 education : — 
 
 " That man, I think, has had a liberal 
 education who has been so trained in youth 
 that his body is the ready servant of his will, 
 and does with ease and pleasure all the work 
 that, as a mechanism, it is capable of ; whose 
 intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with 
 all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth 
 
OF CULTURE. 67 
 
 working order ; ready, like a steam-engine, 
 to be turned to any kind of work, and spin 
 the gossamers as well as forge the anchors 
 of the mind ; whose mind is stored with a 
 knowledo-e of the great and fundamental 
 truths of nature, and of the laws of her op- 
 erations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full 
 of life and fire, but whose passions are 
 trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, 
 the servant of a tender conscience ; who has 
 learned to love all beauty, whether of nature 
 or art, to hate all vileness, and to respect 
 others as himself." 
 
 This, whatever defects it may have, must 
 be allowed to be, in many ways, a high ideal 
 of education. Though it gives the chief 
 promise to physical nature, and the scien- 
 tific knowledge of it, yet the moral side of 
 man is by no means forgotten. Mr. Hux- 
 ley's ideally-educated man is to have his pas- 
 sions trained to obey a strong will ; this will 
 is to be the servant of a tender conscience ; 
 he is to love beauty, to hate vileness, to re- 
 spect others as himself. I would have you 
 mark these things, both that we may do full 
 justice to this view, and that we may the 
 better understand the radical defect under 
 which this whole theory of the world labors. 
 
68 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 The first remark I would make is, that it 
 takes for granted and founds on that theory 
 of knowledge which is known as pure and 
 exclusive phenomenalism. Phenomenalism, 
 you know, is that philosophy which holds 
 that all existences, all possible objects of 
 thought, are of two kinds only, external and 
 internal phenomena ; or sensuous objects, 
 such as color, shape, hardness, or groups of 
 these, and the unsensuous ideas we have of 
 sensuous objects. If, however, we add that 
 there is a third kind of existence, or object 
 of thought, not included in either of those 
 classes already named, but distinct and dif- 
 ferent from these, namely, " the unsensuous 
 percipients, or spirits or egos, which we are 
 each of us conscious that we ourselves are," 
 then we turn the flank of this philosophy ; 
 the inadequacy of the theory on which Mr. 
 Huxley's view is based becomes at once ap- 
 parent. But into this matter, pertinent 
 though it is to our discussion, I will not 
 enter. For, as I have already said, I wish 
 in these lectures to enter as little as possible 
 into questions purely metaphysical.^ 
 
 The second remark I would make is, that 
 this so-called scientific theory of life implies 
 
 1 Note IV. 
 
OF CULTURE. 59 
 
 that, though probably there is some power 
 behind the phenomena, we have no means of 
 ascertainino; what mind and character it is of 
 what purpose it has in creating and upholding 
 this universe, if indeed it did create and does 
 uphold it. I think I am not misinterpreting 
 Professor Huxley when I assume that he 
 holds that our only means of conjecturing 
 what is the mind of the great chess-player 
 he figures, lie in the scientific investigation 
 of the facts of the world. Now, Hume long 
 ago observed that if we judge merely by the 
 facts of the world, we cannot infer any fixed 
 character in the Divine Being ; but, if we in- 
 fer character at all, it must be a two-sided, in- 
 consistent character, partly benevolent, partly 
 the contrary. 
 
 As it has been well expressed, the theory 
 comes to this, that " we, as intelligent, think- 
 ing beings, find ourselves in a universe which 
 meets us at all points with fixed laws, which 
 encompass us about externally, and rule us 
 also within ; fixed laws in the region of mat- 
 ter, fixed laws in the region of mind ; that, 
 therefore, knowledge for us is knowledge of 
 laws, and can be nothing more ; and that 
 wisdom in us is simply the skill to turn the 
 knowledge of these laws to the best account, 
 
60 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 conforming ourselves to them, and availing 
 ourselves of them to appropriate to ourselves 
 all the good they bring within our reach." 
 A dreary prospect it would be if science 
 really shut us up to this. Well may it be 
 said that '' men of keener hearts would be 
 overpowered with despondency, and would 
 even loathe existence, did they suppose them- 
 selves under the mere operation of fixed laws, 
 powerless to excite the pity or the attention 
 of Him who appointed them." If, however, 
 truth compelled us to admit it, we might try 
 to bear up under it as best we could. But is 
 it truth, or only a one-sided philosophy, that 
 shuts us into this corner ? That it is not 
 truth, the following considerations will, I hope, 
 help to convince us. 
 
 Observe, then, that while Professor Hux- 
 ley's ideal man is to respect others as him- 
 self, we are not told how or whence this most 
 desirable habit of mind is to be engendered. 
 As a man of science. Professor Huxley is 
 bound to take note of facts before all things, 
 and to pass over none. In this very lecture 
 he declares himself to have the greatest re- 
 spect for all facts. Now, if there is one fact 
 about human nature more certain than an- 
 other, it is that men do not naturally re- 
 
OF CULTURE. 61 
 
 spect the welfare of others, — rather that 
 " all men seek their own," not the things 
 which belong to their fellow-men. It takes 
 much moral discipline to overcome this in- 
 born propensity. Experience has, I believe, 
 proved that it cannot be overcome except by 
 a man being taken out of self as his centre, 
 and finding a new centre out from and above 
 himself, on which he can rest, to which all 
 men stand equally related, on which all can 
 rest even as he. But Professor Huxley's 
 theory supplies no such centre. If life were 
 really such a game as he describes, — if men 
 were once convinced that they had to do with 
 only such a hidden chess-player as he pic- 
 tures, would they not more than ever be 
 driven inward, would not the natural selfish- 
 ness be tenfold more concentrated and inten- 
 sified ? 
 
 To bring a man near the Christian require- 
 ment, to love his neighbor as himself, takes 
 the whole weight of Christian motive ; noth- 
 ing less will avail. Assuredly the considera- 
 tion of the evil consequences that will come 
 to one's self from an opposite line of conduct, 
 — which seems to be the moral theoiy rec- 
 ognized in this lecture, — will be powerless 
 to do so. We conclude, therefore, and say 
 
62 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 that the merely scientific view of Culture 
 will not work for want of a lever. It postu- 
 lates as one of its ingredients respect for 
 others, yet it provides no means for securing 
 the presence of that ingredient. 
 
 Again, another element which it postulates 
 is " a vigorous will, the servant of a tender 
 conscience." Now, a tender conscience, a 
 true and quick sense of right, and the habit 
 of obeying it, are not born in men ready- 
 made and full formed. The elements, in- 
 deed, of such a conscience lie in all men, but 
 it requires long, careful, and delicate train- 
 ing to bring them to maturity. Mr. Huxley 
 has not told us what resources his theory sup- 
 plies for maturing such a conscience. If the 
 world were to come to recognize no other 
 moral sanctions than those which utilitarian- 
 ism insists on, would its morality continue to 
 be even as high as it now is ? I think not. 
 Certainly if men were once convinced that 
 they were placed in such a world as Profes- 
 sor Huxley pictures, — that their relations to 
 its Ruler were such as he describes, — a ten- 
 der conscience would be the last thing which 
 would be engendered by such a conviction. 
 We know how children grow up who are 
 
OF CULTURE. 63 
 
 reared in homes where no kindness is, but 
 where the only rule is a word and a blow. 
 The rule of terror, whether by parents or 
 teachers, does not generally result in a ten- 
 der conscience, but in hardness, suspicious- 
 ness, deception. If the universe were 
 believed to be such a home or school on a 
 larger scale, would the result be different ? 
 In other words, would a tender conscience 
 be produced by the mere study of the laws of 
 the game ? 
 
 But again, let us suppose such a conscience 
 to exist, and to be active in a man. Such a 
 one, in proportion as the moral nature in him 
 was true and strong, would desire the right 
 to prevail in his own life and in the life of all 
 men, — the desire of his heart would be to 
 see the reign of righteousness established. 
 How would such a man feel, what would be 
 his position, confronted with the Hidden 
 Player, who moves the phenomena of the 
 universe, in whose hand he knows his own 
 life and the life of all men are ? — the man 
 loving right, and desiring to see it prevail, 
 the Great Automaton with whom he has to 
 do, being either regardless of it, or affording 
 to men no evidence that he does regard it. 
 
64 THE SC/EVTIFJC THEORY 
 
 In such circumstances would not the tender 
 conscience be a most inconvenient posses- 
 sion ? Would not he who had it feel that 
 it put him out of harmony with the universe 
 in which he was placed ? For his best en- 
 deavors would find no sympathy, no response 
 in the purpose of Him who rules the uni- 
 verse. What would remain to such a man 
 except either to rid himself of this sensitive 
 conscience, which he found to be no help but 
 rather a hindrance to successful playing of 
 the game, or to desire to get out of a world, 
 as soon as may be, in which the best part of 
 his nature found itself strange and out of 
 place. 
 
 But again, this leads me to observe that 
 Professor Huxley's theory either goes too far 
 or not far enough, to be consistent. He 
 ouo-ht either to have excluded moral consid- 
 erations entirely, and to have confined his 
 view wholly to visible and tangible issues ; 
 or, if he once introduced moral elements into 
 his theory, these necessitated his going fur- 
 ther. Indeed, if we once bring in the higher 
 or spiritual issues of the game, these put 
 an end to the aptness of the similitude, and 
 destroy all its illustrative force. For con- 
 sider. Each move in the game, that is, each 
 
OF CULTURE. Q^ 
 
 human action, has two sides, — a double as- 
 pect ; it has its visible and tangible result ; 
 it has also its invisible and moral character.^ 
 And this last, though not recognized by sense, 
 and even when wholly disregarded by men, 
 still exists as really as the seen result. If 
 we regard the moves solely in their first as- 
 pect, a man may contrive so to play the 
 game of life as to secure a large amount of 
 visible success, to get for himself most of the 
 good things of this world, health, riches, rep- 
 utation of a sort, long life, Avithout any very 
 tender conscience. To do this requires only 
 worldty wisdom, only an average stock of 
 market morality. For this kind of success a 
 higher, more sensitive morality is so far from 
 being necessary that it is actually a hin- 
 drance. But look at the moves on their 
 spiritual side, weigh success in a moral bal- 
 ance, and our whole estimate is chano-ed. 
 He who is soonest checkmated, he who, 
 judging by what is seen merely, comes by 
 the earliest, most disastrous defeat, may in 
 reality have won the highest moral victory. 
 Such are they who in each age have jeop- 
 arded their lives for the truth, those who 
 have been willing to lose life that they might 
 
 1 Note V. 
 5 
 
66 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 find it, who against the world have stood for 
 right, and in that contest have sacrificed 
 themselves, and by that sacrifice have made 
 all future generations their debtors. They 
 were losers, indeed, of the visible game, but 
 they were winners of the invisible and 
 spiritual one. They had for their reward 
 not what the world calls success, but the 
 sense that they were servants of the truth, 
 doers of the right, and that in doing it they 
 had the approval and sympathy of Him with 
 whom 
 
 " A noble aim, 
 Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed, 
 In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed." 
 
 This view of things, however, takes into ac- 
 count a fact which Mr. Huxley has failed to 
 recognize, that there is an open path between 
 the soul and God. The thought of this re- 
 lation, the sense of His approval, forms no 
 part of the success which the mere worldly 
 player aims at. But other men of finer 
 spirit have, in the very crisis of earthly fail- 
 ure, felt the sense of this approval to have 
 been an over-payment for all they suffered. 
 
 Indeed, the longer we reflect on the aim 
 which Professor Huxley's theory assigns to 
 human existence, the more will it be seen te 
 
OF CULTURE. 67 
 
 contradict, I will not say the best aspirations, 
 but the most indubitable facts of man's liigher 
 nature. If life were indeed nothing more 
 than such a game, who would be truly reck- 
 oned the most successful players ? Not the 
 select spirits of the race, but the men of 
 merely average morality, those whose guide 
 in life was mere prudence, a well-calculated 
 regard to self-interest; while the nobler 
 spirits, those who sought to raise themselves 
 and others to purer heights of being, would 
 find that they were mere irrelevant creatures. 
 All that was best and purest in them would 
 be objectless, an anomaly and disturbance, 
 in such a universe. For it would contain 
 nothing which could so much as warrant 
 their finer perceptions to exist. Or again, 
 look at this other fact, or perhaps it is the 
 same fact put in another light : there is at 
 the core of all men something which the 
 whole world of nature, of science and of art, 
 is inadequate to fill. And this part of man is 
 no mere adjunct of his nature, but his very, 
 most permanent, highest self. What this 
 i.imost personality craves is sympathy with 
 something like itself, yet high above it, — a 
 will consubstantial with our better will, yet 
 transcending, supporting, controlling it. Thig 
 
68 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 longing is, I believe, latent in all men, though 
 they may not be aware of it. But in the 
 best men it not only exists in latency, but 
 is paramount, — the animating principle of 
 their lives. Of them that ancient word is 
 literally true, " their soul is athirst for God." 
 The desire to have their will conformed to 
 His will, the hope that they shall yet be 
 brought into perfect sympathy with Him, is 
 what in their estimate makes the chief P'ood 
 of existence. They believed that they could 
 know something of the character of God, 
 and that they might reasonably aspire to 
 grow in likeness to that character. This be- 
 lief has been the root out of which has grown, 
 I will not say all, but certainly much of, the 
 finest flower of morality that has bloomed on 
 earth. It is not easy to believe that what 
 w^as so true and excellent had its root in a 
 delusion ; yet tliis is the conclusion to which 
 the chess-playing theory, if true, would 
 force us. 
 
 But there is a further fact regarding these 
 men which we must not pass over : they have 
 left it on record that their seeking to know 
 God and find rest in Him was not in vain, 
 but that in proportion as they sought in 
 
OF CULTURE. 69 
 
 singleness of will to know Him, not with the 
 understanding only, but with their whole 
 spirit, they did really grow in that knowledge. 
 They have told us that, darkly though they 
 here saw, and imperfectly, yet the vision 
 they had was better than anything else they 
 knew of, that compared with it earthly suc- 
 cess and merely secular knowledge seemed 
 to them of but little moment. And as to 
 the laws of nature, these, they have told us, 
 had for them a new meaning and a higher 
 value when they saw in them a discipline 
 leading up to the knowledge of Him who 
 ordained them, and as being in their order 
 and marvelous adaptations a reflection of 
 His wisdom and will. 
 
 This is the witness they gave of them- 
 selves, and the lives they lived and the 
 works they did confirm that witness. Their 
 lives and deeds, making allowance for human 
 infirmity, were in keeping with what they 
 declared respecting themselves. With rea- 
 son, I think, we may trust them, when they 
 add that the things they did on earth they 
 were enabled to do by a strength which was 
 not of themselves, but which, when they 
 sought it from a source above themselves, 
 they found. 
 
70 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 My examination of the theory which has 
 to-day engaged ns has led me to observe two 
 things ; — 
 
 Firsts That of the moral elements of hu- 
 man nature which that theory postulates, it 
 gives no sufficient account ; it provides noth- 
 ing which shall insure their presence. 
 
 Secondly^ That it leaves out facts of man's 
 nature which are as certain, though it may be 
 not so apparent, as gravitation, or any other 
 fact which science reg-isters. These facts are 
 indubitable ; and the truly scientific spirit 
 would lead man to give heed to them, and 
 ask what they really mean. The spiritual 
 facts of human nature to which I have ad- 
 verted, no doubt imply, as their support, 
 other facts which are above nature, — an 
 outcoming of the Divine will in a special 
 way, manifesting itself among the phenomena 
 it has made, for the purpose of reaching the 
 human wills which are dependent on it. But 
 this, and all the wonderful economy it im- 
 plies, I have refrained from speaking of to- 
 day, that I might fix attention all the more 
 clearly on those moral facts which are part 
 of our own exp erience, but which are apt to 
 be disregarded in comparison with other 
 facts more obvious, but not more real. 
 
OF CULTURE, 71 
 
 In conclusion, let me note a mental bias 
 against which persons, both of scientific and 
 metaphysical turn, do well to be on their 
 guard. Their habits of inquiry sometimes 
 lead them to demand, in proof of things 
 spiritual, a kind of evidence which the sub- 
 ject does not admit, and to be insensible to 
 the kind of evidence which it does admit. 
 Habits of scientific investigation are excep- 
 tional, and must always be confined to a few. 
 Christianity is meant for all men. It makes 
 its appeal, not to that in which men dlifer, 
 but to that which tliey have in common, -^ to 
 those primary instincts, sentiments, judg- 
 ments which belong to all men as men. 
 Therefore it is no unreasonable demand to 
 make, that the man of science, when judging 
 of the things of the spirit, shall leave his soh- 
 tary eminence, and place himself among the 
 sympathies and needs which he shares with 
 all men, and judge of the claim which religion 
 makes on him, not from the exceptional 
 point of view which he shares only with a 
 few, but from that ground which he occupies 
 in common with his poorest, least scientific 
 brothers. 
 
 In asking: this we are not asking that he 
 should place his higher faculty in abeyance, 
 
72 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY 
 
 and employ a lower in order to weigh and 
 accept religious truth. The logical or scien- 
 tific faculty, that by which we discern logical, 
 mathematical, or scientific relations, is not 
 the hicrhest exercise of reason. The knowl- 
 edire of the hio-hest thino-s, those which most 
 deeply concern us, is not attained by mere 
 intellect, but by the harmonious action of un- 
 derstanding, imagination, feeling, conscience, 
 will, — that is, of the whole man. This is rea- 
 son in its highest exercise, intelligence raised 
 to its highest power ; and it is to this exer- 
 cise of reason we are called in apprehending 
 the things of God. 
 
 It is well that we should be convinced, on 
 rational grounds, that science simply as sci- 
 ence can never reach God. To him who 
 insists on a purely scientific solution of the 
 problem of man's life and destiny, and who 
 will accept no other, there is no solution; 
 and for this reason : the highest concerns of 
 humanity, the greatest objects with which 
 the soul has to do, cannot even be appre- 
 hended by the scientific faculty. If appre- 
 hended at all, it must be by the exercise of 
 quite another side of our being than that which 
 science calls into play. " No telescope will 
 enable us to see God. No finest microscope 
 
OF CULTURE. 73 
 
 will make Him visible, in the act of working 
 No chemistry, no study of physical forces, no 
 search after the one primary force, can bring 
 us one ' hand-breadth nearer God.' Science 
 m the abeyance of our spiritual nature at- 
 tains not to God. No scientific study of the 
 phenomena which imply a reign of law could 
 ever have issued in the discovery of the 
 kingdom of God ; but neither can it issue in 
 any discovery that contradicts that kingdom." 
 These are the words of Dr. M'Leod Camp- 
 bell, whose writings I have found peculiarly 
 suggestive on the questions I have been dis- 
 cussing. 
 
 Therefore it is of no use — indeed, it is a 
 grave error — when those who contend for 
 the religious view of the world attempt to 
 prove to men of science, as if found in sci- 
 ence, that which merely scientific faculty will 
 never find there, but which has been brought 
 thither by their faith. Indeed, scientific 
 men, who are also religious, will be the first 
 to acknowledge that their faith in God they 
 did not get from science, but from quite 
 another source ; although this faith, when ^ 
 once possessed, invested with a new meaning, 
 and illumined with a higher light, all that 
 science taught them. 
 
LECTUKE m. 
 
 THE LITERARY THEORY OF CULTURE, 
 
 A TRUE poet and brilliant critic of the 
 present time, admired by all for his fine and 
 cultivated genius, and to me endeared by 
 never-fading memories of early companion- 
 ship, has identified his name with a very 
 different view of culture from that which I 
 brought before you the last time I addressed 
 you. If Professor Huxley's is the exclu- 
 sively scientific view of culture, Mr. Arnold's 
 may be called the literary or aesthetic one. 
 In discussing the former theory, I attempted 
 to examine it in the light of facts, and to 
 avoid applying to it any words which its au- 
 thor might disown. For mere appeal to 
 popular prejudice should have no place in 
 discussions about truth, and he who has re- 
 course to that weapon in so far -weakens the 
 cause he advocates. If, however, I was con- 
 strained to call attention to some not unim- 
 portant facts of human nature which that 
 theory fails to account for, this should be re- 
 
THE LITERARY THEORY OF CULTURE. 75 
 
 garded not as appeal to unreasoning preju- 
 dice, but as a statement of omitted facts. 
 But whatever might be said of Professor 
 Huxley's view, as leaving out of sight the 
 spiritual capacities and needs of man, the 
 same objection cannot equally be urged 
 against Mr. Arnold's theory of culture. He 
 fully recognizes religion as an element, and 
 a very important one, in his theory ; only we 
 may see cause to differ from him in the place 
 which he assigns to it. Though I believe 
 Mr. Arnold's theory to be defective when 
 taken as a total philosophy of life, yet so 
 large-minded and generous are the views it 
 exhibits, so high and refined are the motives 
 it urges for self-improvement, that I believe 
 no one can seriously and candidly consider 
 what he says without deriving good from it. 
 As a recent writer has truly said, — " The 
 author of this theory deserves much praise 
 for having brought the subject before men's 
 minds, and forced a little unwilling examina- 
 tion on the ' self-complacent but very uncul- 
 tured British public' " 
 
 Many who now hear me may have proba- 
 bly read in Mr. Arnold's several works all 
 his pleadings for culture. To these the re- 
 
76 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 capitulation of his views which I shall give 
 may be somewhat tedious, but I hope those 
 who know his writings will bear with me 
 while I briefly go over his views, for the sake 
 of those of my hearers who may be less ac- 
 quainted with them. 
 
 Those who were present at my first lec- 
 ture may remember that I tried to describe 
 what is meant by culture. That description 
 was not identical with the one I have now to 
 give, but, though different in form, the two 
 will not, I believe, conflict. 
 
 In Mr. Arnold's view, the aim of culture 
 is not merely to render an intelligent being 
 more intelligent, to improve our capacities to 
 the uttermost, but, in words which he bor- 
 rows from Bishop Wilson, " to make reason 
 and the kingdom of God prevail." It is im- 
 pelled not merely by the scientific desire to 
 see things as they are, but rather by the 
 moral endeavor to know more and more the 
 universal order, which seems intended in the 
 world, that we may conform to it ourselves, 
 and make others conform to it ; in short, that 
 we may help to make the will of God pre- 
 vail in us and around i^. In this, he says, 
 
OF CULTURE. 1^ 
 
 is seen the moral, social, beneficent nature 
 of culture, that while it seeks the best knowl 
 edge, the highest science that is to be had, it 
 seeks them in order to make them tell on 
 human life and character. 
 
 The aim of culture, therefore, is the per- 
 fection of our human nature on all its sides, 
 in all its capacities. First, it tries to deter- 
 mine in what this perfection consists, and, in 
 order to solve this question, it consults the 
 manifold human experience that has ex- 
 pressed itself in such diverse ways, through- 
 out science, poetry, philosophy, history, as 
 well as throuMi relimon. 
 
 And the conclusion which culture reaches 
 is, Mr. Arnold holds, in harmony with the 
 voice of religion. For it places human per- 
 fection in an internal condition of soul, in the 
 growth and predominance of our humanity 
 proper, as distinguished from our animality. 
 
 Again, it does not rest content with any 
 condition of soul, however excellent, but 
 presses ever onwards to an ampler growth, 
 to a gradual harmonious expansion of those 
 gifts of thought and feeling which make the 
 peculiar dignity, wealth and happiness of hu- 
 man nature. Not a having and resting, but 
 a growing and becoming, is the true charac- 
 ter of perfection as culture conceives it. 
 
78 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 Again, in virtue of that bond of brother 
 hood which binds all men to each other, 
 whether they will it or not, this perfection 
 cannot be an isolated individual perfection. 
 Unless the obligation it lays on each man to 
 consider others as well as himself is recog- 
 nized, the perfection attained must be a 
 stunted, ignoble one, far short of true per- 
 fection. 
 
 In all these three considerations the aim 
 of culture, Mr. Arnold thinks, coincides with 
 the aim of religion. 
 
 Firsts in that it places perfection not in 
 any external good, but in an internal condi- 
 tion of soul, — " The kingdom of God is 
 within you." 
 
 Secondly^ in that it sets before men a con- 
 dition not of having and resting, but of grow- 
 ing and becoming as the true aim, — " For- 
 ofettino: those things which are behind, and 
 reaching forth unto those things which are 
 before." 
 
 Thirdly^ in that it holds that a man's per- 
 fection cannot be self-contained, but must 
 embrace the good of others equally with his 
 })wn, and as the very condition of his own, — 
 " Look not every man on his own things, 
 but ever;y man also on the things of others." 
 
OF CULTURE. 79 
 
 These three notes belong alike to the per- 
 fection which culture aims at, and to that 
 which religion enjoins. 
 
 But there is a fourth note of perfection as 
 conceived by culture, in which, as Mr. Ar- 
 nold thinks, it transcends the aim of religion. 
 " As an harmonious expansion of all the 
 powers which make the beauty and worth 
 of human nature," Mr. Arnold holds that it 
 " goes beyond religion, as religion is gen- 
 erally conceived among us." For religion, 
 Mr. Arnold thinks, aims at the cultivation of 
 some, and these, no doubt, the highest pow- 
 ers of the soul, at the expense, even at the 
 sacrifice, of other powers, which it regards as 
 lower. So it falls short of that many-sided, 
 even-balanced, all-embracing, totality of de- 
 velopment which is the aim of the highest 
 culture. 
 
 Mark well this point, for, though I cannot 
 stop to discuss it now, I must return to it 
 after I have set before you Mr. Arnold's 
 view in its further bearings. 
 
 After insisting, then, that culture is the 
 study of perfection, harmonious, all-embrac- 
 ing, consisting in becoming something rather 
 
80 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 than in having something, in an inward con- 
 dition of soul rather than in any outward cir- 
 cumstances, Mr. Arnold goes on to show how 
 hard a battle culture has to fight in this 
 country, with how many of our strongest 
 tendencies, our most deep-rooted characteris- 
 tics, it comes into direct, even violent collis- 
 ion. The prominence culture gives to the 
 soul, the inward and spiritual condition, as 
 transcending all outward goods put together, 
 comes into conflict with our worship of a me- 
 chanical and material civilization. The so- 
 cial aspirations it calls forth for the general 
 elevation of the human family conflict with 
 our intense individualism, our " every man 
 for himself." The totality of its aim, the 
 harmonious expansion of all human capaci- 
 ties, contradicts our inveterate one-sidedness, 
 our absorption each in his own one pursuit. 
 It conflicts, above all, with the tendency so 
 strong in us to worship the means and to for- 
 get the ends of life. 
 
 Everywhere, as he looks around him, Mr. 
 Arnold sees this great British people chasing 
 the means of living with unparalleled energy, 
 and forgetting the inward things of our be- 
 ing, which alone give these means their value. 
 We are, in fact, idol- worshippers without 
 
OF CULTURE. 81 
 
 knowing it. We worship freedom, the right 
 to do every man as he chooses, careless 
 whether the thing we choose to do be good 
 or not. We worship railroads, steam, coal, 
 as if the^e made a nation's greatness, forget- 
 ting that — 
 
 " by the soul 
 Only the nations shall be great and free." 
 
 We worship wealth, as men have done in all 
 ages, in spite of the voices of all the wise, 
 only perhaps never before in the world's 
 history with such unanimity, such strength 
 and consistency of devotion, as at this hour, 
 in this land. I must quote the words in 
 which he makes Culture address the mam- 
 mon-worshippers, those who have either got- 
 ten wealth, or, being hot in the pursuit of 
 it, regard wealth and welfare as synony- 
 mous : — 
 
 " Consider," he makes Culture say, " these 
 people, their way of life, their habits, their 
 manners, the very tones of their voice ; look 
 at them attentively, observe the literature 
 they read (if they read any), the things that 
 give them pleasure, the words which come 
 forth from their mouths, the thoughts which 
 make the furniture of their minds ; would 
 any amount of wealth be worth hav^ing with 
 
82 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 the condition that one was to become like 
 these people by having it ? Thus," he says, 
 " culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of 
 the highest possible value in stemming the 
 common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy 
 and industrious community, and which saves 
 the future, as one may hope, from being 
 wholly materiaHzed and vulgarized, if it can- 
 not save the present." Against all this ab- 
 sorbing faith in machinery, whatever form it 
 takes, whether faith in wealth or in liberty, 
 used or abused, or in coals and railroads, or 
 in bodily health and vigor, or in population, 
 Mr. Arnold lifts up an earnest protest. 
 
 It is an old lesson, but one which each age 
 forgets and needs to be taught anew : men 
 forgetting the inward and spiritual goods, 
 and setting their hope on the outward and 
 material ones. Against this all the wise of 
 the earth have, each one in his day, cried 
 aloud, — the philosophers, moralists, and sat- 
 irists of Greece and Rome, Plato, Epictetus, 
 Seneca, and Juvenal, not less than Hebrew 
 prophets and Christian apostles, up to that 
 Divine voice which said, " What shall it 
 profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and 
 lose his own soul ? " 
 
 This same old lesson Mr. Arnold repeats, 
 
OF CULTURE. 83 
 
 but in modern language, and turns against 
 the shapes of idol-worship, which he sees 
 everywhere around him. 
 
 In contrast, then, to all the grosser inter- 
 ests that absorb us, he pleads for a mental 
 and spiritual perfection, which has two sides, 
 or prominent notes, beauty and intelligence, 
 or, borrowing words which Swift first used, 
 and which, since Mr. Arnold reproduced 
 them, have become proverbial, " Sweetness 
 and Light," — " An inward and spiritual ac- 
 tivity having for its characters increased 
 sweetness, increased light, increased life, in- 
 creased sympathy." 
 
 The age of the world in which these two, 
 " sweetness and light," were preeminently 
 combined was, Mr. Arnold thinks, the best 
 age of Athens — that which is represented 
 in the poetry of Sophocles, in whom " the 
 idea of beauty and a full-developed human- 
 itv " took to itself a relio-ious and devout 
 energy, in the strength of which it worked. 
 But this was but for a moment of time, when 
 the Athenian mind touched its acme. It 
 was a hint of what micrht be when the world 
 was ripe for it, rather than a condition which 
 could then continue. In our own countrymen, 
 
84 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 Mr. Arnold believes, partly from the tough- 
 ness and earnestness of the Saxon nature, 
 partly from the predominance in our edu- 
 cation of the Hebrew teaching, the moral 
 and religious element has been drawn out 
 too exclusively. There is amono; us an en- 
 tire want of the idea of beauty, harmony, 
 and completely rounded human excellence. 
 These ideas are either unknown to us, or 
 entirely misapprehended. 
 
 Mr. Arnold then goes on to contrast his 
 idea of a perfectly and harmoniously devel- 
 oped human nature with the idea set up by 
 Puritanism, and prevalent amid our modern 
 multifarious churches. He grants that the 
 church organizations have done much. 
 They have greatly helped to subdue the 
 grosser animalities, — they have made life 
 orderly, moral, serious. But when we go 
 beyond this, and look at the standards of per- 
 fection which these religious organizations 
 have held up, he finds them poor and miser- 
 able, starving more than a half, and that the 
 finest part of human nature. He turns to 
 modern religious life, as imaged in the Non- 
 coriformist or some other religious newspaper 
 of the hour, and asks, What do we find there ? 
 '' A life of jealousy of other churches, dis- 
 
OF CULTURE. 85 
 
 putes, tea meetings, openings of chapels, ser- 
 mons." And then he exclaims, " Think of 
 this as an ideal of human life, completing 
 itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its or- 
 gans after sweetness, light, and perfection ! " 
 " How," he asks, " is the ideal of a life so 
 unlovely, so unattractive, so narrow, so far 
 removed from a true and satisfying ideal of 
 human perfection, .... to conquer 
 and transform all the vice and hideousness " 
 that we see around us ? " Indeed, the strong- 
 est plea for the study of perfection as pur- 
 sued by culture, the clearest proof of the act- 
 ual inadequacy of the idea of perfection held 
 by the religious organizations, — expressing, 
 as I have said, the most wide-spread effort 
 which the human race has yet made after 
 perfection, — is to be found in the state of our 
 life and society with these in possession of it, 
 and having been in possession of it I know 
 not how many years. We are all of us in- 
 cluded in some religious organization or other ; 
 we all call ourselves, in the sublime and as- 
 piring language of religion, children of God. 
 Children of God, — it is an immense preten- 
 sion I — and how are we to justify it ? By 
 the works which we do, and the words which 
 we speak. And the work which we collect- 
 
86 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 ive children of God do, our grand centre of 
 life, our city, is London ! London, with itg 
 unutterable external hideousness, and with 
 Its internal canker, puhlice egestas^ privatim 
 opulentia^ unequaled in the world ! " 
 
 These are severe words, yet they have a 
 side of truth in them. They portray our act- 
 ual state so truly, that, though they may not 
 be the whole truth, it is well we should re- 
 member them, for they cannot be altogether 
 gainsaid. 
 
 I have now done with the exposition of 
 Mr. Arnold's theory. Before going on to 
 note what seems to me to be its radical de- 
 fect, let me first draw attention to two of its 
 most prominent merits. 
 
 His pleading for a perfection which con- 
 sists in a condition of soul, evenly and har- 
 moniously developed, is but a new form of 
 saying, " A man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of the things which he possesseth." 
 You will say, perhaps. Is not this a very old 
 truth? Why make such ado about it, as 
 though it were a new discovery ? Has it not 
 been expressed far more strongly in the Bible 
 than by Mr. Arnold ? True, it is an old 
 truth, and we all know it is in the Bible. 
 
OF CULTURE. 87 
 
 But it IS just these old truths which we know 
 so well by the ear, but so little with the heart, 
 that need to be reiterated to each age in the 
 new language which it speaks. The deepest 
 truths are always becoming commonplaces, 
 till they are revivified by thought. And 
 they are true thinkers and benefactors of 
 their kind who, having thought them over 
 once more, and passed them through the 
 alembic of their own hearts, bring them forth 
 fresh-minded, and make them tell anew on 
 their generation. And of all the old prov- 
 erbs that this age needs applied to it, none is 
 more needed than that which Mr. Arnold 
 has proclaimed so forcibly. 
 
 Again, as to the defects which Mr. Ar- 
 nold charges against our many and divided 
 religious organizations, it cannot be denied 
 that the moral and social results we see 
 around us are far from satisfactory. In this 
 state of things we cannot afford to neglect 
 whatever aid that culture or any other power 
 offers, — to ignore those sides and forces of 
 human nature which, if called into play, 
 might render our ideal at once more com- 
 plete and more efficient. There is much to 
 excuse the complaints which highly educated 
 men are apt to make, that religious minds 
 
88 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 have often been satisfied with a very partia 
 and narrow development of humanity, such 
 as does not satisfy, and ought not to satisfy, 
 thoughtful and cultivated men. The wise 
 and truly religious thing to do is not to get 
 angry at such criticisms, and give them bad 
 names, but to be candid, and listen to those 
 who tell us of our shortcomings, — try to see 
 what justice there may be in them, and to 
 turn whatever truth they may contain to 
 good account, 
 
 Mr. Arnold sets before us a lofty aim, — 
 he has bid us seek our good in something un- 
 seen, in a spiritual energy. In doing this he 
 has done well. But I must hold that he has 
 erred in his estimate of what that spiritual 
 energy is, and he has missed, I think, the 
 true source from which it is to be mainly de- 
 rived. For in his account of it he has placed 
 that as primary which is secondary and sub- 
 ordinate, and made that secondary which by 
 right ought to be supreme. 
 
 You will remember that when describing 
 his idea of the perfection to be aimed at, he 
 makes religion one factor in it, — an impor- 
 tant and powerful factor no doubt, still but 
 one element out of several, and that not nee- 
 
OF CULTURE. 8S 
 
 essarily the ruling element, but a means to- 
 wards an end, higher, more supreme, more 
 all-embracing than itself. The end was a 
 many-sided, harmonious development of hu- 
 man nature, and to this end religion was only 
 an important means. 
 
 In thus assigning to religion a secondary, 
 however important, place, this theory, as I 
 conceive, if consistently acted on, would an- 
 nihilate religion. There are things which 
 are either ends in themselves or they are 
 nothing; and such, I conceive, religion is. 
 It either is supreme, a good in itself and for 
 its own sake, or it is not at all. The first 
 and great commandment must either be so 
 set before us as to be obeyed, entered into, 
 in and for itself, without any ulterior view, 
 or it cannot be obeyed at all. It cannot be 
 made subservient to any ulterior purpose. 
 And herein is instanced *' a remarkable law 
 of ethics, which is well known to all who 
 have given their minds to the subject." I 
 shall give it in the words of one who has ex- 
 pressed it so well in his own unequaled lan- 
 guage that it has been proposed to name it 
 after him. Dr. Newman's law : — " All vir- 
 tue and goodness tend to make men pow- 
 erful in this world ; but they who aim at the 
 
90 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 power have not the virtue. Again : Virtue 
 is its own reward, and brings with it the 
 truest and highest pleasures ; but they who 
 cultivate it for the pleasure-sake are selfish, 
 not religious, and will never gain the pleas- 
 ure, because they never can have the virtue." 
 Apply this to the present subject. They 
 who seek religion for culture-sake are aes- 
 thetic, not religious, and will never gain that 
 grace which religion adds to culture, because 
 they never can have the religion. To seek 
 religion for the personal elevation or even 
 for the social improvement it brings, is really 
 to fall from faith which rests in God and the 
 knowledge of Him as the ultimate good, and 
 has no by-ends to serve. And what do we 
 see in actual life ? There shall be two men, 
 one of whom has started on the road of self- 
 improvement from a mainly intellectual in- 
 terest, from the love of art, literature, sci- 
 ence, or from the delight these give, but has 
 not been actuated by a sense of responsibility 
 to a Hlo-her than himself. The other has be- 
 gun with some sense of God, and of his rela- 
 tion to Him, and starting from this centre 
 has gone on to add to it all the moral and 
 mental improvement within his reach, feel- 
 ing that, beside the pleasure these things give 
 
OF CULTURE. 91 
 
 in themselves, he will thus best fulfill the 
 purpose of Him who gave them, thus best 
 promote the good of his fellow-men, and at- 
 tain the end of his own existence. Which 
 of these two will be the hio-hest man, in 
 which will be gathered up the most excellent 
 graces of character, the truest nobility of 
 soul? You cannot doubt it. The sense 
 that a man is servino; a Hio;her than himself, 
 with a service which will become ever more 
 and more perfect freedom, evokes more pro- 
 found, more humbling, more exalted emo- 
 tions than anything else in the world can do. 
 The spirit of man is an instrument which 
 cannot give out its deepest, finest tones, ex- 
 cept under the immediate hand of the Divine 
 Harmonist. That is, before it can educe the 
 highest capacities of which human nature is 
 susceptible, culture must cease to be merely 
 culture, and pass over into religion. And 
 here we see another aspect of that great eth- 
 ical law already noticed as compassing all 
 human action, whereby " the abandoning of 
 some lower object in obedience to a higher 
 g.im is made the very condition of securing 
 the said lower object." According to this law 
 it comes that he will approach nearer to per- 
 fection, or (since to speak of perfection in such 
 
92 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 as we are sounds like presumption) rathei 
 let us say, he will reach further, will attain 
 to a truer, deeper, more lovely humanity, 
 who makes not culture, but oneness with the 
 will of God, his ultimate aim. The ends of 
 culture, truly conceived, are best attained by 
 forgetting culture, and aiming higher. And 
 what is this but translating into modern and 
 less forcible language the old words, whose 
 meaning is often greatly misunderstood, 
 *' Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all 
 other things will be added unto you ? " But 
 by seeking the other things first, as we nat- 
 urally do, we miss not only the kingdom of 
 God, but those other things also which are 
 only truly attained by aiming beyond them. 
 Another objection to the theory we have 
 been considering remains to be noted. Its 
 starting-point is the idea of perfecting self; 
 and though, as it gradually evolves, it tries to 
 forget self, and to include quite other ele- 
 ments, yet it never succeeds in getting clear 
 of the taint of self-reference with which it set 
 out. While making this objection, I do not 
 forget that Mr. Arnold, in drawing out his 
 view, proposes as the end of culture to make 
 reason and the kingdom of God prevail ; that 
 he sees clearly, and insists strongly, that an 
 
OF CULTURE. 93 
 
 isolated self-culture is impossible, that we 
 cannot make progress towards perfection 
 ourselves, unless we strive earnestly to carry 
 our fellow-men along with us. Still may it 
 not with justice be said that these unselfish 
 elements — the desire for others' good, the 
 desire to advance God's kingdom on earth 
 — are in this theory awakened, not simply 
 for their own sakes, not chiefly because they 
 are good in themselves, but because they are 
 clearly discerned to be necessary to our self- 
 perfection, — elements apart from which this 
 cannot exist ? And so it comes that culture, 
 though made our end never so earnestly, 
 cannot shelter a man from thouo-hts about 
 himself, cannot free him from that which all 
 must feel to be fatal to high character, — 
 continual self-consciousness. The only 
 forces strong enough to do this are great 
 truths which carry him out of and beyond 
 himself, the things of the spiritual world 
 sought, not mainly because of their reflex ac- 
 tion on us, but for their own sakes, because 
 of their own inherent worthiness. There is 
 perhaps no truer sign that a man is really 
 advancing than that he is learning to forget 
 himself, that he is losing the natural thoughts 
 about self in the thought of One higher than 
 
94 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 himself, to whose guidance he can commit 
 himself and all men. This is no doubt a les- 
 son not quickly learnt ; but there is no help 
 to learnino; it in theories of self-culture which 
 exalt man's natural self-seeking into a spe- 
 cious and refined philosophy of life. 
 
 Again, it would seem that in a world 
 made like ours. Culture, as Mr. Arnold con- 
 ceives it, instead of becoming an all-embrac- 
 ing bond of brotherhood, is likely to be rather 
 a principle of exclusion and isolation. Cul- 
 ture such as he pictures is at present con- 
 fessedly the possession of a very small circle. 
 Consider, then, the average powers of men, 
 the circumstances in which the majority 
 must live, the physical wants that must al- 
 ways be uppermost in their thoughts, and 
 say if we can conceive that, even in the 
 most advanced state of education and civili- 
 zation possible, high culture can become the 
 common portion of the multitude. And 
 with the few on a high level of cultivation, 
 the many, to take the best, on a much lower, 
 what is the natural result ? Fastidious ex- 
 clusiveness on the part of the former, which 
 is hardly human, certainly not Christian. 
 Take any concourse of men, from the House 
 of Commons down to the humblest conven- 
 
OF CULTURE. 95 
 
 tide, how will the majority of them appear 
 to eyes refined by elaborate culture, but not 
 humanized by any deeper sentiment ? To 
 such an onlooker will not the countenances 
 of most seem unlovely, their manners repul- 
 sive, their modes of thought commonplace, — 
 it may be, sordid ? By any such concourse 
 the man of mere culture will, I think, feel 
 himself repelled, not attracted. So it must 
 be, because Culture, being mainly a literary 
 and aesthetic product, finds little in the un- 
 lettered multitude that is akin to itself. It 
 is, after all, a dainty and divisive quality, 
 and cannot reach to the depths of humanity. 
 To do this takes some deeper, broader, more 
 brotherly impulse, one which shall touch the 
 universal ground on which men are one, not 
 that in which they differ, — their common 
 nature, common destiny, the needs that poor 
 and rich alike share. For this we must look 
 elsewhere than to Culture, however enlarged. 
 The view I have been enforcing will ap- 
 pear more evident if from abstract arguments 
 we turn to the actual lives of men. Take 
 any of the highest examples of our race, 
 those who have made all future generations 
 their debtors. Can we imagine any of these 
 being content to set before themselves, 
 
96 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 merely as the end of their endeavors, such 
 an aim as the harmonious development of 
 human nature ? A Goethe perhaps might, 
 and if we take him as the highest, we will 
 take his theory likewise. Hardly, I think, 
 Shakespeare, if we can conceive of him as 
 ever having set before himself consciously 
 any formal aim. But could we imagine St. 
 Paul doing so, or Augustine, or Luther, or 
 such men as Pascal or Archbishop Leighton ? 
 Would such a theory truly represent the 
 ends they Kved for, the powers that actuated 
 them, the ideal whence they drew their 
 strength ? These men changed the moral 
 orbit of the world, but by what lever did 
 they change it ? Not by seeking their own 
 perfection, nor even by making the progress 
 of the race their only aim. They found a 
 higher, more permanent world on wliich to 
 plant the lever that was to move this one. 
 They sought first the advancement of the 
 kingdom of God and truth for its own sake, 
 and they knew that this embraced the true 
 good of man and every other good thing. 
 
 Indeed, of Culture put in the supreme 
 place, it has been well said that it holds 
 forth a hope for humanity by enlightening 
 self, and not a hope for humanity by dying 
 
OF CULTURE. 97 
 
 to self. This last is the hope which Chris- 
 tianity sets before us. It teaches, what in- 
 deed human experience in the long-run 
 teaches too, that man's chief good lies in 
 ceasing from the Individual Self, that he may 
 live in a higher Personality, in whose pur- 
 pose all the ends of our true Personality are 
 secure. The sayings in the Gospels to this 
 effect will readily occur to every one. Some 
 glimpse of the same truth had visited the 
 mind of the speculative Greek poet four 
 hundred years before the Christian era, 
 when he said : — 
 
 t(s Oi5e»' ei to ^r]V fxev ecrrt KarOavelv^ 
 To KarOavelv 6e ^tjv ; 
 
 " Who knoweth whether life may not be death, 
 And death itself be life ? " 
 
 There is but one other thought I would 
 submit to you. Those who build their chief 
 hope for humanity on Culture rather than on 
 Relio-ion would raise men bv brino;incr them 
 into contact and sympathy with whatever of 
 best and greatest the past has produced. But 
 is not a large portion of what is best in the 
 literature and the lives of past generations 
 based on faith in God, and on the reality of 
 communion with Him as the first and chief 
 good ? Would this best any longer live and 
 
98 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 grow in men if you cut them off from direct 
 access to its fountain-head, and confined them 
 to the results wliich it has produced in past 
 ages, — if, in fact, you made the object of the 
 soul's contemplation not God, but past hu- 
 manity ? Are we of these latter days to be 
 content with the results of the communion 
 of others, and not have direct access to it 
 ourselves, — to read and admire the high 
 thoughts of a Kempis, Pascal, Leighton, and 
 such men, and not to go on and drink for 
 ourselves from the same living well-heads 
 from which they drank ? Not now, any 
 more than in past ages, can the most be 
 made of human character, even in this life, 
 till we ascend above humanity, — 
 
 '' Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! " 
 
 I cannot close without expressing a feeling 
 which I dare say has been present to the 
 minds of many here, as throughout this lec- 
 ture they listened to the oft-repeated word 
 perfection. Perfection ! the very word 
 seems like mockery when applied to such as 
 we. For how poor a thing must any per- 
 fection be that is reached this side the grave ! 
 Far truer is that word of St. Augustine, — 
 *' That is the true perfection of a man, to 
 
OF CULTURE. 9& 
 
 find out his own imperfection.'* Yes, tho 
 highest perfection any one will attain in this 
 life is to be ever increasino-ly sensible how 
 imperfect he is. As perfection is put for- 
 ward in the theory I have been examining, 
 one cannot but feel that there is a very in- 
 adequate notion of the evil in the human 
 heart that is to be cured, and of the nature 
 of the powers that are needed to cope with 
 it. And in this respect we cannot but be 
 struck with how greatly Christianity differs 
 from Culture, and differs only to surpass it : 
 its estimate of the disease is so much deeper, 
 and the remedy to which it turns so far 
 transcends all human nostrums. Christianity, 
 too, holds out perfection as the goal. But in 
 doincr so its view is not confined to time, but 
 contemplates an endless progression in far-on 
 ages. The perfection the Culturists speak 
 of, if it does not wholly exclude the other 
 life, seems to fix the eye mainly on what can 
 be done here, and not to take much account 
 of what is beyond. That was a higher and 
 truer idea of perfection which Leighton had : 
 *' It is an union with a Higher Good by love, 
 that alone is endless perfection. The only 
 sufficient object for man must be something 
 that adds to and perfects his nature, to which 
 
100 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 he must be united in love ; somewhat higher 
 than himself, yea, the highest of all, the 
 Father of spirits. That alone completes a 
 spirit and blesses it, — to love Him, the 
 spring of spirits." 
 
 To sum up all that has been said, the de- 
 fect in Mr. Arnold's theory is this : It places 
 in the second and subordinate place that 
 which should be supreme, and elevates to the 
 position of command a power which, rightly 
 understood, should be subordinate and minis- 
 trant to a higher than itself. The relation to 
 God is first, this relation is last, and Culture 
 should fill up the interspace, — Culture, that 
 is, the endeavor to know and use aright the 
 nature which He has given us, and the world 
 in which He has placed us. Used in such a 
 way. Culture is transmuted into something 
 far higher, more beneficent, than it ever 
 could become if it set up for itself and claimed 
 the chief place. 
 
 I might now conclude, but there is a poem 
 of Archbishop Trench's, one of his earliest, 
 and most interesting, which so well embodies 
 mucli that I have said, that I hope you will 
 bear with me while I read a somewhat 
 lengthy passage from it. The lines are 
 
OF CULTURE. 101 
 
 Bimple, not greatly elaborated, but they are 
 true, and they may perhaps fix the attention 
 of some who by this time have grown weary 
 of abstract and prosaic argument, — accord- 
 ing to that saying, — 
 
 "A verse may find him who a sermon flies." 
 
 A youth, a favored child of Culture, when 
 he has long sought and not found what he 
 expected to find in Culture, wanders forth 
 desolate and desponding into the eastern des- 
 ert. The irrevocable past lies heavy on him, 
 — his bafiled purpose, his wasted years, his 
 utter misery. So heart-forlorn is he that 
 he is on the verge of self-destruction. At 
 length, as he sits inconsolable beside a ruined 
 temple in the desert, an old man stands by 
 his side, and asks, " What is your sorrow ? '* 
 The youth, lured by some strange sympathy 
 in the old man's mien and voice, unburdens 
 to him his grief, tells how he has tried to 
 make and keep himself wise and pure and 
 elevated above the common crowd, that in 
 his soul's mirror he might find 
 
 "A reflex of the eternal mind, 
 A glass to give him back the truth," 
 
 how he has followed after ideal beauty, to 
 live in its light, dwell beneath its shadow, 
 but at length has found that this too \% 
 vanity and emptiness. 
 
102 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 "Till now, my youth yet scarcely done, 
 The heart which I had thought to steep 
 In hues of beauty, and to keep 
 Its consecrated home and fane, 
 That heart is soiled with many a stain, 
 Which from without or from withia 
 Has gathered there till all is sin, 
 Till now I only draw my breath, 
 I live but in the hope of death." 
 
 After an interval the old man replies, 
 
 " Ah me, my son, 
 A weary course your life has run ; 
 And yet it need not be in vain 
 That you have suffered all this pain; . . 
 Nay, deem not of us as at strife, 
 Because you set before your life 
 A purpose, and a loftier aim 
 Than the blind lives of men may claim 
 For the most part; or that you sought, 
 By fixed resolve and solemn thought. 
 To lift your being's calm estate 
 Out of the range of time and fate. 
 Glad am I that a thing unseen, 
 A spiritual Presence, this has been 
 Your worship, this your young heart stirred. 
 But 3'et herein you proudly erred, 
 Here may the source of woe be found. 
 You thought to fling yourself around 
 The atmosphere of light and love 
 In which it was your joy to move; 
 You thought by efforts of your own 
 To take at last each jarring tone 
 Out of your life, till all should meet 
 In one majestic music sweet; 
 And deemed that in j'our own heart's ground 
 The root of good was to be found, 
 And that by careful watering 
 And earnest tendance we might bring 
 
OF CULTURE. 
 
 The bud, the blossom, and the fruit, 
 To grow and flourish from that root. 
 You deemed you needed nothing more 
 Than skill and courage to explore 
 Deep down enough in your own heart, 
 To where the well-head lay apart, 
 Which must the springs of being feed. 
 And that these fountains did but need 
 The soil that choked them moved away. 
 To bubble in the open day. 
 But thanks to Heaven it is not so: 
 That root a richer soil doth know 
 Than our poor hearts could e'er supply: — 
 That stream is from a source more high; 
 From God it came, to God returns. 
 Not nourished from our scanty urns, 
 But fed from His unfailing river. 
 Which runs and will run on forevwr.*' 
 
 103 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 
 
 It has often happened that when the sons 
 of a family, after having been for some ses 
 sions at College, have returned to their own 
 homes, bursars, or scholars, or M. A.'s with 
 honors, the family have felt that somehow 
 they were changed, had lost their old simple 
 natures, and for this loss college learning and 
 distinctions seemed but a poor substitute. 
 This, however, may be only a temporary re- 
 sult of severe mental tension and seclusion. 
 When the bow has been for a time unstrung, 
 the unnaturalness passes, and the native, 
 simple self reappears. 
 
 But I have known other stories than these. 
 I have heard of devout and self-denying par- 
 ents, working late and early, and stinting 
 themselves to send their sons to College, and 
 in sending them their fond hope was that 
 these young men would return stored with 
 knowledge and wisdom, and be able to help 
 
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 105 
 
 their parents in those religious subjects on 
 which their hearts were most set. Such 
 hopes, we may trust, have many times been 
 realized. But one has heard of cases which 
 had another issue. A young man has come 
 home, after a college course, acute, loo;ical, 
 speculative, full of the newest views, prating 
 of high matters, scientific and philosophical, 
 a very prodigy of enlightenment. But that 
 on which early piety had fed was forsaken, 
 the old reverence was gone, and the parents 
 saw, with helpless sorrow, that their son had 
 chosen for himself a far other road than that 
 on which they were travelling, and in which 
 they had hoped he would travel with them. 
 
 It is a common tale, one which has often 
 been repeated, but none the less pathetic for 
 that. It brings before us the collision that 
 often occurs when newly awakened intellect 
 first meets with early faith. No one who 
 has observed men ever so little but must 
 know something, either through his own ex- 
 perience or from watching others, of these 
 travail-pangs that often accompany the birth 
 of thouo-ht. 
 
 The special trial of each spirit lies in that 
 very field in which his strength and activity 
 are put forth. The temptation of the busy 
 
106 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 trader does not consist in mental question- 
 ings, but in the tendency to inordinate love 
 of gain. The assthetic spirit finds its trial, 
 not in coarse pleasures, but in the temptation 
 to follow beauty exclusively, and to turn 
 effeminately from duty and self-denial. And 
 in like manner the student or man of letters 
 will most likely find his trial in dealino 
 rightly with the intellectual side of things^ 
 giving to it its due place, and not more. 
 Wliat are some of the difficulties and temp- 
 tations which the student is apt to meet with, 
 and which may be the best way to deal with 
 them, — this is the subject which will engage 
 us to-day. Before entering on it, however, 
 let me say distinctly that I do not believe 
 that painful questionings and violent mental 
 convulsions are an ordeal which all thought- 
 ful persons must needs pass tlirough. So far 
 from this, some of the finest spirits, those 
 whose vision is most intuitive and penetrat- 
 ing, are the most exempt from such anxious 
 soul-travail. Indeed, I believe that there is 
 no such safe2;uard ao;ainst the worst conse- 
 quences of such perplexities as a heart that is 
 pure, humble, and " at leisure from itself." 
 In the words of a modern divine, one well 
 known at the present time, both as an up- 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 107 
 
 holder of freedom of inquiry, and also as a 
 religious and devoted man, — 
 
 " There are some who are never troubled 
 with doubts at all. They live so heavenly a 
 life that doubts and perplexities fall off tlieir 
 minds Avithout fastening. They find enough 
 in their faith to feed their spiritual life. They 
 do not need to inquire into the foundations 
 of their belief, they are inspired by a powder 
 within their hearts. The heavenly side of 
 all truths is so clear to them that any doubts 
 about the human form of it are either unin- 
 telligible or else at once rejected. They 
 grow in knowledge by quiet, steady increase 
 of light, without any intervals of darkness 
 and difficulty. This is the most blessed state, 
 — that of those who can believe without the 
 evidence either of sense or of labored argu- 
 ment. There are such minds. There are 
 those to whom the inward proof is every- 
 thing]:. Thev believe not on the evidence of 
 their senses, or of their mere reason, but on 
 that of their consciences and hearts. Their 
 spirits within them are so attuned to the 
 truth that the moment it is presented to them 
 they accept it at once. And this is certainly 
 the higher state, the more blessed, the more 
 heavenly." 
 
108 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 These are they who have always rejoiced 
 in a serene, unclouded vision till they are 
 taken home. And we have known such. 
 
 Let none, therefore, pique themselves on 
 having doubts and questionings on religious 
 subjects, as if it were a fine thing to have 
 them, proving them to be intellectual ath- 
 letes, and entitling them to look down on 
 those who are free from them as inferior per- 
 sons, less mentally gifted. For there is a 
 higher state than their own — there is a purer 
 atmosphere, which has been breathed by per- 
 sons of as strong intellect as themselves, but 
 of a finer spirit. But such is not the state 
 of all thoughtful men. There are many who 
 when they reach the reasoning age find 
 themselves in the midst of many difficulties, 
 hedged in with *' perplexities which they can- 
 not explain to themselves, much less to oth- 
 ers, and no one to help them." They are 
 afraid to tell their sad heart-secrets to others, 
 and especially to their elders, lest they find 
 no sympathy. And so they are tempted to 
 shut them up within their own breasts, and 
 brood over them till they get morbid and 
 magnify their difficulties out of all proportion 
 to their reality. In the case of such persons 
 it becomes a serious question how they 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH, 109 
 
 should be advised to treat the difficulties that 
 occur to them. On the one hand, while 
 they are not to make little questions of great 
 consequence, neither must they make grave 
 questions and perplexities of httle conse- 
 quence. They are to be told that vv^hile all 
 doubts are painful, all are not necessarily 
 wrong. For some are natural, born of hon- 
 esty, and, when rightly dealt with, have often 
 ere now become the birth-pangs of larger 
 knowledge, — the straits through which men 
 passed to clearer light. There are, on the 
 other hand, doubts which are sinful, born of 
 levity, irreverence, and self-conceit, or of a 
 hard and perverted conscience. To deter- 
 mine to which class any particular mental 
 perplexities belong is not easy for a man even 
 in his own case ; much more is it difficult, nay 
 impossible, for us to read the mental state of 
 another, and pronounce judgment on it. The 
 fact that some doubts are not sinless, that they 
 may arise out of the state of a man's spirit, 
 suggests to every one cautiousness and self- 
 scrutiny. This is a work which no man can 
 do for his brother. Each man must take his 
 own difficulties into the light of conscience 
 and of God, and there deal with them hon- 
 estly yet humbly, seeking to be guided aright. 
 
110 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 For the spirit of a man is a very delicate in- 
 strument, which, if it be distorted out of its 
 natural course, this way or that, by prejudice 
 or interest or double-dealing on the one hand, 
 or fool -hardiness and self-confidence on the 
 other, may never perhaps in this life recover 
 its equilibrium. 
 
 I should be loath to seem to trespass 
 either on the speculative field of the theolog- 
 ical professor, or on the practical one of the 
 Christian minister. But, without doing 
 either, there is room enough for offering 
 such suggestions as have been gathered from 
 a number of years not unobservant of what 
 has been goino; on in that border land where 
 faith and knowledge meet. To young and 
 ardent spirits the wrestling with hard ques- 
 tions on the very verge of human knowledge 
 has a wonderful fascination. They throw 
 themselves fearlessly into the abyss, and 
 think that they shall be able to dive down to 
 depths hitherto unsounded. Problems that 
 have baffled the world's best thinkers will, 
 they fancy, yield up to them their secret. 
 Yet these thino;s " do take a sober colorinoj " 
 from eyes which have seen too many young 
 men, some of them the finest spirits of our 
 tinie. setting forth in over-confidence in their 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. H] 
 
 own powers, imagining that they were suf- 
 ficient to meet all difficulties, and coming 
 before long to mournful shi]) wreck. When 
 experience has impressed us with the full im- 
 portance of the mental tendencies for good 
 and for evil which often begin at College, 
 who would not be earnestly disposed to turn 
 his experience, if he miglit, to the help of 
 those younger than himself, at that interest- 
 ing time of life when they most need help, 
 and often least find it? But then there 
 comes upon the mind the conviction that this 
 is an issue w^herein, in the last resort, no one 
 can bear his brother's burden. All that we 
 can do is to suo;o;est certain danojers to which 
 the student is from the nature of his occupa- 
 tions peculiarly exposed, and to leave it to 
 each for himself to apply what is said consci- 
 entiously, according as he feels that it bears 
 on his need. 
 
 I. The first hindrance I will notice is one 
 which arises out of the very nature of men- 
 tal cultivation. If there is one thing which 
 more than another distinguishes a well-trained 
 mind, it is the poAver of thinking clearly, of 
 dividing with a sharp line between its knowl- 
 adfje and its iojnorance. One of the best re 
 
112 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 suits of a logical and also of a scientific disci- 
 pline is that It leads us to form definite, 
 clearly cut conceptions of things. Indeed, 
 this power of limiting, defining, making a 
 o/?09 or bound round each object you think of, 
 and thus making them thinkable, is of the 
 very essence of thought. For what is all 
 thought but a rescuing, a cutting off by the 
 mind's inherent power of bounding, objects 
 from out the vague and undefined? But 
 this quality of all thought, which in trained 
 thought is raised to a higher power, while it 
 constitutes mental strength, contains also its 
 own weakness, or rather limitation. Clearly 
 defined knowledge is mainly of things we see. 
 All find it much easier to form definite con- 
 ceptions of objects of the outer sense than of 
 objects of the inner sense, — to conceive 
 clearly things we see, hear, and touch, than 
 those thoughts which have not any outward 
 object corresponding to them. If thouglits 
 are difficult adequately to grasp, much more 
 are emotions, — with their infinite complexitv, 
 their evanescent shades. But each man 
 gains a power of realizing and firmly conceiv- 
 ing those things he habitually deals with, and 
 not other things. The man whose training 
 has lain exclusively in physics, accurately con- 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 113 
 
 ceives physical forces, however subtle, and 
 can lav down tlieir relations to each other ; 
 but then he will probably be comparatively 
 weak in apprehending subtleties of thought and 
 mental relations. Again, the mere logician, 
 while strong to grasp logical distinctions, will 
 generally be found comparatively at sea when 
 lie has to catch the imaginative aspects of 
 things, and fix evanescent hues of feeling. 
 This takes something of the poetic faculty. 
 Each man is strong in that he is trained in, 
 weak in other regions, — so much so that 
 often the objects there seem to him non- 
 existent. 
 
 Now the scientific mind and the logical 
 mind, when turned towards the supersensi- 
 ble world, are apt to find the same difficulty, 
 only in a much greater degree, as tliey find 
 in dealing with objects of imagination, or 
 with pure emotions. Whoever has tried to 
 think steadily at all on religious subjects 
 must be aware of this difficulty. When we 
 look upward, and try to think of God and of 
 the soul's relation to Him, we are apt to feel 
 as if we had stepped out into a world in which 
 the understanding finds little or no firm foot- 
 ing. We cannot present to ourselves these 
 truths adequately, and as they really are. 
 
114 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 Therefore we are under the necessity of 
 *' substituting anthropomorphic conceptions, 
 determined by accidents of place and time, 
 — to speak of God as dwelHng above, to at- 
 tribute a before and an after to the Divine 
 thouo-ht." With these feeble adumbrations, 
 which are the nearest approaches to the re- 
 ality we can make, the devout mind is con- 
 tent, feelincr them to be full of meaning. But 
 the scientific and the logical mind often feels 
 crreat difficulty in being content with these. 
 It craves more exactness of outline, and is 
 tempted to reject as non-existent things which 
 it cannot subject to the laws of thought to 
 which it is accustomed, — in fact, to limit 
 the orb of belief to the orb of exact knowl- 
 edge. Mere adumbrations of spiritual reali- 
 ties are an offense to the mind that will ac- 
 cept only scientific exactness. The falsity of 
 this way of reasoning has been well ex])osed 
 by Coleridge, where he protests against 
 "the application of deductive and conclusive 
 logic to subjects concerning which the prem- 
 ises are expressed in not merely inadequate 
 but accommodated terms. But to conclude 
 terms proper and adequate from quasific and 
 mendicant premises is illogical logic with a 
 veno-eance. Water cannot rise hicrher than 
 its source, neither can human reasoning.'* 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 115 
 
 The fact is, those root-truths, on wlilch 
 the foundations of our being rest, are appre- 
 hended not logically at all, but mystically. 
 This faculty of spiritual apprehension, which 
 is a very different one from those which are 
 trained in schools and colleges, must be edu- 
 cated and fed, not less but more carefully 
 than our lower faculties, else it will be 
 starved and die, however learned or able in 
 other respects we may become. And the 
 means which train it are reverent thouo-ht, 
 meditation, prayer, and all those other means 
 by which the divine life is fed. 
 
 But because the primary truths of religion 
 refuse to be caught in the grip of the logical 
 vice, — because they are, as I said, transcend- 
 ent, and only mystically apprehended, — are 
 thinking men therefore either to give up 
 these objects as impossible to think about, or 
 to content themselves with a vao;ue reliffi- 
 osity, an unreal sentimental ism ? Not so. 
 There are certain veritable facts of conscious- 
 ness to which religion makes its appeal. 
 These the thinking man must endeavor to 
 apprehend with as much definiteness as their 
 nature admits of, — must verify them by liis 
 own inward experience, and by the recorded 
 experience of the most religious men. And 
 
116 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 there are other facts outside of our conscious- 
 ness and above it, which are revealed that 
 they may fit into and be taken up by those 
 needs of which we are conscious. Rightly 
 to apprehend them, so that we shall make 
 them our own inwardly, so that they shall 
 supplement, deepen, and expand our moral 
 perceptions, not contradict and traverse 
 them, this is no easy work. It is the work 
 of the reflective side of the religious life. 
 But Avhen all is done, it will still remain, 
 that in the whole process intellect or the 
 mere understanding is but a subordinate 
 agent, and must be kept so. The primary 
 agent, on our side, is that power of spiritual 
 apprehension which we know under many 
 names, none perhaps better than those old 
 ones, " the hearing ear, the understanding 
 heart." The main condition is that the 
 spiritual ear should be open to overhear and 
 patiently take in, and the will ready to obey, 
 that testimony which, I believe, God bears 
 in every human heart, however dull, to those 
 great truths which the Bible reveals. This, 
 and not lomc, is the wav to grow in religious 
 knowledge, to know that the truths of re- 
 ligion are not shadows, but deep realities. 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. H^ 
 
 II. Akin to the desire for exact concep- 
 tions is the desire for system. The longing 
 to systematize, to form a completely rounded 
 theoiy of the universe, which shall embrace 
 all known facts, and assign to each its proper 
 place, this craving lies deep in the intellec- 
 tual man. It is at the root of science and of 
 philosophy in its widest sense : out of it has 
 arisen the whole fabric of exact and scientific 
 knowledge. But this, like other good ten- 
 dencies, may be overdone, and become rash 
 and one-sided. From this impulse, too has- 
 tily carried out, arise such theories of life as 
 that of Professor Huxley, which was discussed 
 in a former lecture. It is this that gives to 
 Positivism the charm it has for many ener- 
 getic minds. It seems such gain to reach a 
 comprehensive, all-embracing point of view, 
 from which all knowledge shall be seen 
 mapped out, every object and science falling 
 into its proper place, and all uncertainty, all 
 cloudy horizons, rigorously shut out. To 
 many minds, nothing seems too great a price 
 to pay for this. And to secure it, they have 
 to pay a great price. They have to cut off 
 unspairingly all the ragged rims of knowl- 
 idge, to exclude from view the whole border 
 land between the definitely conceived and 
 
118 [IINDRANCES TO 
 
 the dimly apprehended, — the very region 
 in which the main difficulties of thought pe- 
 cuHarly he. They have to shut their eyes 
 to all those phenomena, often the most in- 
 teresting, which they cannot locate. But 
 though such systematizers exclude them 
 from their system, they cannot exclude them 
 from reality. There they remain rooted all 
 the same, whether we recognize them or not. 
 Shut them out as you may, they will, in 
 spite of all theories, reappear, cropping out in 
 human history and in human consciousness. 
 Now it so happens that of these facts which 
 refuse to be systematized, a large part, but 
 by no means all, arise out of man's religious 
 nature. The existence of evil, manifesting 
 itself in man's consciousness as the sense of 
 sin, or estrangement from God, recovery 
 from this, not by any power evolved from 
 man's own resources, but by a power which 
 descended from above, when " heaven 
 opened itself anew to man's long-alienated 
 race," — these, and all the facts they imply, 
 are, and always have been, a stumbling- 
 block to those who are bent on a rounded 
 system. Hence every age, and this age pre- 
 eminently, has seen attempts to resolve 
 Christianity into a natural product. Because 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 119 
 
 it enters into all things human, and moulds 
 them to itself, the attempt is made to account 
 for it by the joint action of those spiritual 
 elements which preexisted in human nature. 
 Such attempts Christianity has for eighteen 
 centuries withstood, and will withstand till 
 the end. The idea of a power coming down 
 from a higher sphere to work in and renew 
 the natural forces of humanity, must always 
 be repugnant to any mode of thought which 
 makes a complete system the first necessity. 
 No doubt the craving for a system is a deep 
 instinct of the purely intellectual man, but it 
 is a very different thing from the craving for 
 lightness with God, Avhich is the prime in- 
 stinct of the spiritual man. When once 
 awakened, the spiritual faculty far outgoes 
 all systems, scientific, philosophic, or theo- 
 logical, and apprehends and lives by truths 
 which these cannot reduce to system. 
 
 III. Again, there is another way in which 
 thouo;ht seems often to o;et cau<]jht in its own 
 meshes, and so fall short of the highest truth. 
 There is a tendency, not peculiar to the 
 present day, though very prevalent now, to 
 rest in Law, whether in the natural or moral 
 world, and to shrink from going beyond it 
 
120 niNDRANCES TO 
 
 up to God. There are those who think that 
 when science has ascended to the most gen- 
 eral uniformities of sequence and coexistence, 
 then knowledge has reached its limit, and all 
 beyond is mere conjecture. To this I will 
 not reply, in the old phrase, about a law and 
 a law-giver, for this to some seems a play on 
 words. But one thing, often said before, 
 must be repeated. This supposed necessity 
 to rest in the perception of ordered phenom- 
 ena, is no necessity at all, but an artificial 
 and arbitrarily imposed limitation, against 
 which thought left to its natural action rebels. 
 It is impossible for any reflective mind, not 
 dominated by a system, to regard the ordered 
 array of physical forces, and to rest satisfied 
 with this order, without going on to ask 
 whence it came, what placed it there. 
 Thought cannot be kept back, when it sees 
 arrangement, from asking what is the arrang- 
 ing power ; when it sees existence, from in- 
 quiry how it came to exist. And the ques- 
 tion is a natural and legitimate one, in spite 
 of all that phenomenalism may say against It, 
 and it will not cease to be asked while there 
 are reasoning men to ask it. 
 
 The same habit of mind is fain, in moral 
 subjects, to rest in moral law. But, if we 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 121 
 
 look closely at reality, what are moral law, 
 moral order, but abstractions generalized 
 from facts felt and observed by all men? 
 They are not self-subsisting entities, such as 
 our own personality is. And a living will 
 would be justified in refusing allegiance to a 
 mere abstraction, however high or seemingly 
 imperative, if there was nothing behind it. 
 It is because moral law is but a condensed 
 expression for the energy of, shall I say, a 
 Higher Personality, or something greater, 
 more living, more all-encompassing, than 
 personality, that it comes home to us with 
 the power it does. 
 
 These are but a few of the more obvious 
 ways in which our intellectual habits may, 
 and often do, become a hindrance instead of 
 a help towards spiritual progress. There 
 are many other ways, more subtle and hard 
 to deal with, some of which I had intended 
 to notice. But for to-day you have probably 
 had enough of abstractions. And what re- 
 mains of our time must be given to more 
 practical considerations. 
 
 Religious men are always trying to set 
 forth in defense of their faith demonstrations 
 which shall be irrefragable. This is natural, 
 nor do I say that it is altogether unwise. 
 
122 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 For as facts and doctrines form the .intellec- 
 tual outworks of faith, historical criticism 
 must make good the one, sound philosophy 
 must so far warrant the other. But when 
 all that argument can do has been done, it 
 still remains true that the best and most con- 
 vincincr grounds of faith will still remain 
 behind unshaped into argument. There is a 
 great reserve fund of conviction arising from 
 the increased experience which Christian 
 men have of the truth of what they believe. 
 And this cannot be beat out into syllogisms. 
 It is something too inward, too personal, too 
 mystical, to be set forth so.^ It is not on 
 that account the less real and powerful. In- 
 deed, it may be said that once felt it is the 
 most self-evidencing of all proofs. This is 
 what Coleridge said, " If you wish to be as- 
 sured of the truth of Christianity, try it." 
 *' Believe, and if thy belief be right, that 
 insight which gradually transmutes faith into 
 knowledge will be the reward of thy belief." 
 To be vitally convinced of the truth of " the 
 process of renewal described by Scripture, a 
 man must put himself within that process." 
 His own experience of its truth, and the con- 
 sent assurances of others, whom, if candid, 
 
 1 Note VI. 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH, 123 
 
 he will feel to be better than himself, will be 
 the most sufficing evidence. But this is an 
 evidence which, while it satisfies a man's 
 self, cannot be brought to bear on those who 
 stand without the pale, and deny those things 
 of which they have not themselves experi- 
 ence. 
 
 Many are apt to imagine that a hard head 
 and a blameless deportment make a man 
 free of the inner shrine of Christian truth. 
 When a scholar goes forth from college well 
 equipped with the newest methods, he some- 
 times fancies that he holds the key to which 
 all the secrets of faith must open. And if 
 they do not at once yield to his mental efforts, 
 he is tempted to regard them as untrue. 
 But clear and trained intellect is one tiling, 
 spiritual discernment quite another. The 
 former does not exclude, but neither does it 
 necessarily include the latter. They are en- 
 ergies of two different sides of our being. 
 Unless the spiritual nature in a man is aUve 
 and active, it is in vain that he works at relig- 
 ious truth merely from the intellectual side. 
 If he is not awake in a deeper region than 
 his intellectual, though he may be an able 
 critic or dialectician, a vital theologian or a 
 religious man he cannot be. Not long ago I 
 
124 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 read this remark of the German theoloorian 
 Rothe, — "It is only the pious subject that 
 can speculate theologically. And why? 
 Because it is he alone who has the original 
 datum, in virtue of communion with God on 
 which the dialectic lays hold. So soon as 
 the original datum is there, everything else 
 becomes simply a matter of logic." Or as a 
 thoughtful English scholar and divine lately 
 expressed it : — " Of all qualities which a 
 theologian must possess, a devotional spirit is 
 the chief. For the soul is larger than the 
 mind, and the religious emotions lay hold on 
 the truths to which they are related on many 
 sides at once. A powerful understanding, 
 on the other hand, seizes on single points, 
 and however enlarged in its own sphere, is 
 of itself never safe from narrowness of view. 
 For its very office is to analyze, which im- 
 plies that thought is fixed down to particular 
 relations of the subject. No mental concep- 
 tion, still more no expression in words, can 
 give the full significance of any fact, least of 
 all of a divine fact. Hence it is that mere 
 reasoning is found such an ineffectual measure 
 against simple piety, and devotion is such a 
 safeguard against intellectual errors." Yes, 
 " the original datum," that is the main thing. 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 
 
 125 
 
 And what is this but that which our old Pu- 
 ritan forefathers meant when they spoke of a 
 man *' having the root of the matter in him ? " 
 The devout spirit is not fed by purely intel- 
 lectual processes, — sometimes it is even frus- 
 trated by them. The hard brain-work and 
 the seclusion of the student tend, if uncoun- 
 teracted, to dry up the springs alike of the 
 human sympathies and of the heavenward 
 emotions. It was a saying of Dr. Arnold, 
 certainly no disparager of intellect, that no 
 student could continue long in a healthy relig- 
 ious state unless his heart was kept tender by 
 mingling with children, or by frequent inter- 
 course with the poor and the suffering. 
 
 And this suggests a subject which might 
 occupy a whole lecture or course of lectures, 
 to which, however, now only a few words can 
 be given. It is one main object of all our 
 education here to train the critical faculty. 
 This faculty, educated by scholarship, has an 
 important function to fill in matters bearing 
 on rehgion. With regard to these it has a 
 work to do which ought not to be disregarded, 
 and that work it is at present doing actively 
 enough. To weigh evidence, and form a sound 
 judgment whether alleged facts are really 
 true, whether documents really belong to the 
 
126 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 age and the authors they profess to be of, -^ 
 by trained historical imagination to enter into 
 the whole circumstances and meaning of any 
 past age, — to examine the meaning of the Sa- 
 cred Scriptures, and see '' how far its modes 
 and figures of representation are merely vehi- 
 cles of inner truth, or are of the essence of 
 the truth itself, — to understand the human 
 conditions of the writers, and appreciate how 
 far these may have influenced their state- 
 ments, — to give to past theological language 
 its proper weight, and not more than its 
 proper weight, — to trace the history of its 
 terms so as not to confound human thought 
 with divine faith," — all these processes are 
 essential to the theologian, — some measure 
 of them is required in every educated man 
 who will think rightly on such subjects. I 
 would not underrate the value of this kind of 
 work. It is necessary in the educated, if 
 well-ixrounded religion is to live amono; the 
 people, and faith is not to be wholly dis- 
 severed from intellectual truth. At the same 
 time it is carried on in the outworks rather 
 than in the citadel, it deals with the shells 
 rather than with the kernel of divine things. 
 This vocation of the critic, however useful 
 for others, has dangers for himself. There 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 127 
 
 is a risk that criticism shall absorb his whole 
 being. This is no imaginary danger. We 
 are not called on to believe this or that doc- 
 trine which may be proposed to us till we can 
 do so from honest conviction. But we are 
 called on to trust, — to trust ourselves to 
 God, being sure that He will lead us right, — • 
 to keep close to Him, — and to trust the 
 promises which He Avhispers through our 
 conscience ; this we can do, and we ought to 
 do. Every scholar who is also a religious 
 man must have felt it, — must be aware how 
 apt he is to approach the simplest spiritual 
 truths as a critic, not as a simple learner. 
 And yet he feels that when all is said and 
 done, it is trust, not criticism, that the soul 
 lives by. If he is ever to get beyond the 
 mere outer precinct and pass witliin the holy 
 place, he must put off his critical apparatus, 
 and enter as a simple contrite-hearted man. 
 Not as men of science, not as critics, not as 
 philosophers, but as little children, shall we 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. " There- 
 fore," says Leigliton, speaking of filial prayer, 
 " many a poor unlettered Christian far out- 
 strips your school rabbis in this attainment, 
 because it is not effectually taught in these 
 lower academies." 
 
128 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 These are reflections needed perhaps at all 
 times by those immersed in thought and 
 study, — never more needed than now. 
 Numberless voices, through newspaper, pam- 
 phlet, periodical, from platform and pulpit, 
 are telling us that we are in the midst of a 
 transition age, so loudly that the dullest can- 
 not choose but hear. It is a busy, restless 
 time, eager to cast off the old and reach for- 
 ward to the new. It needs no diviner to tell 
 us that this century will not pass without a 
 great breaking up of the dogmatic structures 
 that have held ever since the Reformation or 
 the succeeding age. From many sides at 
 once a simplifying of the code, a revision of 
 the standards, is being demanded. I will 
 not ask whether this is good or bad, desirable 
 or not. It is enough that it is inevitable. 
 From such a removal of old landmarks two 
 opposite results may arise. Either it may 
 make faith easier by taking cumbrous forms 
 out of the way, — it may make the direct 
 approach to Christ and God simple and more 
 natural, — may, in fact, bring God nearer to 
 the souls of men, — or it may remove Him 
 to a greater distance, and make life more 
 completely secular. Which shall the result 
 be ? This depends for each of us on the way 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 129 
 
 »ve use the new state of things, on the pre- 
 paredness or non-preparedness of heart with 
 which we meet it. Often it is seen that 
 great changes, which in the long-run turn to 
 the good of the community, bring suffering 
 and grievous loss on their way to many an 
 individual. And a time of transition, when 
 tlie old bonds are being broken up, is a time 
 of trial to the spirits of men. At such a time, 
 in anxiety but not in despair, we ask, how is 
 the old piety to live on through all changes 
 into the new world that is to be? If the 
 outward framework that helped to strengthen 
 our fathers is being removed, the more the 
 need that we should cleave to the inward, 
 the vital, the spiritual communion with Him 
 on whom the soul lives. Secular and 
 worldly common sense will discuss in news- 
 papers, literary criticism in magazines, these 
 momentous changes ; but such talk touches 
 only the outside aspect of them, and cannot 
 discern what is essential or what is not. 
 Even refined intellectuality cannot much 
 help us here. That which passes safely 
 through all changes is the tender conscience, 
 the trusting heart, the devout mind. Let 
 us seek these, and the disciplines which 
 strengthen them. College learnincr is srood. 
 
130 HINDRANCES TO 
 
 but not all the learnino; of all the Universi- 
 ties of Europe can compensate for the loss 
 of that which the youth reared in a religious 
 home has learned in childhood at his mother's 
 knee. 
 
 In all the best men you meet, perhaps the 
 thing that is most peculiar about them is the 
 child's heart they bear within the man's. 
 However they have differed in other respects, 
 in their tempers, gifts, attainments, in this 
 they agreed. With those things they were, 
 so to speak, clothed upon, — this was their 
 very core, their essential self. And this 
 child's heart it is that is the organ of faith, 
 trust, heavenly communion. It is a very 
 simple thing, so simple that worldly men are 
 apt either not to perceive or to despise it. 
 And young persons when they first grow up, 
 and enter the world, are tempted to make lit- 
 tle of it. They think that now they are men 
 they must put away childish things, must 
 learn the world, and conform to its ways and 
 estimates of things. 
 
 But the TO. Tov vrjTTLov, the childish things, 
 which St. Paul put away, belong to a quite 
 different side of child-nature from the Tra/Stw, 
 the little child which our Lord recommended 
 for our example. 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 131 
 
 We should try, as we grow up into mau- 
 nood, and get to know the world, to have 
 this simplicity of childhood kept fresh within 
 us, still at the centre. If we allow the world 
 to rob us of it, as so many do, in boyhood, 
 even before manhood begins, we may be sure 
 that the world has nothing equal to it to give 
 us instead. And they who may have for a 
 time lost it, or had it obscured or put into 
 abeyance by contact with men, cannot too 
 soon seek to have it restored within them. 
 And the only way to preserve this good 
 thing, or have it, if lost, renewed, is to open 
 the heart to simple, truthful communion with 
 God and Christ, and try to bring the heart 
 ever closer and closer to Him. 
 
 That this is intended to be our very in- 
 most nature, the way in which we are reared 
 by Providence seems to show. For all the 
 first years of our life He surrounds us with 
 the warm charities of home, — by these He 
 calls out all our earliest, deepest, most per- 
 manent feelings. School, college, the world 
 follow, but their influences, great as they are, 
 never penetrate down, at least in natural 
 characters, so deep as those first affections. 
 And then in mature life, the home of child- 
 hood is generally, if possible, reproduced in 
 
132 HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH, 
 
 a home of our own, in which all the early 
 affections are once more renewed, enhanced 
 bj the thoughtftilness that life has brought. 
 
 Let me close with reading what Pascal has 
 left as his Profession of Faith : — 
 
 " I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved 
 it. I love wealth, because it gives me the 
 means of assisting the wretched. I keep 
 faith with all men. I do not render evil to 
 those who do it to me ; but I desire a state 
 for them like to my own, in which I receive 
 neither evil nor good from the hand of man. 
 I endeavor to be just, truthful, sincere, and 
 faithful to all men ; and I have a tenderness 
 of heart for those to whom God has united 
 me more closely ; and whether I am alone, 
 or in the sight of men, in all my actions I 
 have in sight God, who must judge them, 
 and to whom I have consecrated them all. 
 
 " These are my sentiments, and I bless all 
 the days of my life my Redeemer, who has 
 put them into me, and who, from a man full 
 of weakness, miseiy, concupiscence, pride, 
 and ambition, has made a man exempt from all 
 these evils by the strength of His grace, to 
 which all the glory of it is due, since I have 
 in myself nothing but misery and error." 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 RELIGION COMBINING CULTURE WITH ITSELF. 
 
 The truth which I tried to bring before 
 you in my last lecture, though a very obvious 
 one, is yet sometimes forgotten. It was this : 
 To discern and judge rightly of spiritual 
 truth is not mainly the work of the logical 
 understandino;, nor of rouo;h and round com- 
 mon sense. To do this requires that another 
 capacity be aAvake in a man, — a spiritual 
 apprehension, or, call it by what name you 
 may, a deeper, more internal light, which 
 shall be behind the understanding, as it 
 were, informing and illuminating it. For 
 otherwise the understanding, however pow- 
 erful or acute, attains not to spiritual truth. 
 This power of spiritual apprehension we saw 
 is, though not identical with the moral nature, 
 more akin to it, — belongs more to this side 
 of our being than to the intellectual. It 
 contains the moral nature, and something 
 more than what ordinarily comes under that 
 name. Like every other power in man, it 
 
134 COMBINATION OF 
 
 is capable of growth and cultivation. We 
 can, if we choose, starve and kill it, or we 
 can, by submitting it to its proper discipHne 
 and bringing it into contact with its proper 
 objects, deepen and expand it. Care, watch- 
 fulness, earnest cultivation it requires ; but 
 that cultivation is of a different kind, as its 
 objects are different, from that which trains 
 the intellect and the imagination, and it can- 
 not be directly taught in colleges and schools. 
 The belief that the spiritual faculty is dif- 
 ferent from the logical and scientific faculty, 
 led me to notice some of the hindrances 
 which our habits as students often put in the 
 w^ay of spiritual vision and religious growth. 
 The mental tendencies which I noted were 
 amono- the most obvious, those that meet us 
 at the very threshold. There are several 
 others more recondite, which I should have 
 liked to notice ; but to this branch of the sub- 
 ject enough of time has been given. The 
 more welcome task awaits me to-day of speak- 
 ing for a little, not of the hindrances, but of 
 the helps towards spiritual knowledge. 
 
 The capacity of spiritual apprehension — 
 that is, the power to apprehend spiritual 
 truths — is, I believe, latent in all men. 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 135 
 
 Persons differ in the amount of their ca- 
 pacity, or rather in their readiness to receive 
 or to reject these things ; but that the capacity 
 is in all men, dim, almost dormant it may be, 
 yet really there incipiently, one cannot doubt. 
 Whether these latent elements shall grow 
 and live and become powerful within us, or 
 be stifled, crushed, extinguished, depends in 
 some measure on circumstances which we 
 cannot control, — such as our home training, 
 our companions, our education, our tempta- 
 tions ; but in some large measure also it de- 
 pends on our own choice. 
 
 Since this is so, since so much lies in our 
 power as to what we shall actually become 
 in this the deepest part of our being, it be- 
 comes an important inquiry how we ought to 
 deal each with ourselves, and how we can 
 best help others in this respect. 
 
 First, then, it is quite certain that if from 
 childhood men were to begin to follow the 
 first intimations of conscience, honestly to 
 obey them and carry them out into act, the 
 power of conscience would be so strength- 
 ened and improved within them, that it 
 would soon become, what it evidently is in- 
 tended to be, " a connecting principle be- 
 tween the creature and the Creator." This 
 
136 COMBINATION OF 
 
 light that lighteth every man, if any were 
 to follow it consistently, would soon lead a 
 man up and on to a clear and full knowledge 
 of God, and to the formation of the Divine 
 image within himself. But none do so fol- 
 low these heavenward promptings, all more 
 or less disobey them, thwart them, and so dim 
 and distort their spiritual light. A few there 
 are, however, who, though not free from the 
 inborn obliquity, do begin, earlier than most 
 men, to cherish conscience, and, with what- 
 ever declensions, do on the whole make it 
 their main endeavor to obey it. And these 
 are led on quickly and early to the serener 
 heights whence they see spiritual truths more 
 clearly, vividly, and abidingly than ordinary 
 men. But this is not the case with the most. 
 Even those who may never have fallen into 
 open and flagrant sin, have yet made not duty 
 but inclination their first guide, have tried 
 to strike innumerable compromises between 
 self-pleasing and duty, in which self has had 
 much the best of the bargain, — have at best 
 tried " to please themselves without displeas- 
 ing God." And so by going on in this self 
 deceiving, double-minded way, they have 
 weakened not strengthened, dimmed not 
 brightened, the original light that was with- 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 137 
 
 In them. So conscience has not to them beei. 
 an open avenue of communication upward, 
 a direct access to God. 
 
 Without, however, dwelHng on the innumer- 
 able shades and ways of declension, one thing 
 remains true for all. Whatever our past life 
 may have been, at whatever point of life and 
 progress we may be standing, if we would not 
 destroy what we have still left of spiritual 
 apprehension, if we have any desire to grow 
 in spiritual growth, the first thing to be done 
 is to face conscience, — to be entu-ely honest 
 with ourselves, to cease from excusing our- 
 selves to ourselves, cease from subterfuges 
 and self-deceptions, and bring ourselves, our 
 desires, our past lives, our aims, our charac- 
 ters into the light of conscience and of God, 
 and there desire to have them searched, 
 sifted, cleansed. 
 
 To be thus perfectly single-hearted and 
 candid is, I know, a most difficult attainment. 
 Entire candor and honesty regarding our- 
 selves, instead of being the first, is one of the 
 last and highest attainments of a perfectly 
 fashioned character. But though this is true, 
 it is also the beginning of all well-doing; 
 without some measure of it, even though 
 ^eak and unsteady, no good thing can begin. 
 
138 COMBINATION OF 
 
 We must be honest with ourselves, desire to 
 know the truth about ourselves, desire, how- 
 ever faintly, to be better than we are, or 
 there is no bettering possible for us. But if 
 this desire is in us, it is the germ out of 
 which all good may come. The first honest 
 actinop out of this desire will be to face con- 
 science, as I said, to walk according to the 
 light we have, to do the immediate thing we 
 know to be right, and then more light will 
 follow. We shall desire to get beyond mere 
 notional religion, and to lay a hving hold on 
 living truth. And the way to do this is to 
 take our common thoughts of right and 
 wrono; into the lio;ht of God, and connect 
 them with Him, and act them out in the 
 conviction that they come straight from Him. 
 One of the first results of such an effort to 
 act up to conscience will be the conviction 
 that there is in us something essentially 
 wrong inwardly, which of ourselves we are 
 quite unable to set right, — that to do this is 
 a task to which our own internal resources 
 are wholly inadequate. And the more hon- 
 estly the attempt is made, the more entirely 
 will a man feel that the powers of restoration 
 he needs must lie out of himself, above him- 
 self. Of such powers no tidings reach him 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 139 
 
 from any quarter of the universe, save only 
 from the Revelation that is in Christ.^ 
 
 If, then, this prime essential condition of 
 all spiritual progress be present, namely, 
 an awakened conscience, there are various 
 means by which the life begun can be fed 
 and nourished. Here again I must repeat 
 that I am unwilling to trespass on the duty 
 of the Christian minister, but I trust you will 
 bear with me, if I briefly mention a few 
 things which perhaps you do not usually as- 
 sociate with colle2;e instruction. For other- 
 wise I should not be able to speak the truth 
 on this matter, and I believe that the reality 
 of the things of religion suffers greatly from 
 their being confined solely to the church and 
 pulpits, and being considered unseasonable 
 and out of taste if even alluded to by laymen 
 and at other times. 
 
 1. The first means, then, of spiritual 
 growth is Prayer ; not the repeating of forms 
 merely, nor the saying of words, but the hon- 
 est, sincere, often voiceless prayer, which 
 comes into real contact, heart to heart, with 
 Him to whom we pray. To pray thus is not 
 the easy thing we are sometimes apt to im- 
 agine. It is not learned in a day, but is the 
 
 1 Note VII. 
 
140 COMBINATION OF 
 
 result of many an earnest, devout effort. It 
 requires the whole being to concur, — the 
 understanding, the emotions, the will, the 
 spirit. It is an energy of the total soul, far 
 beyond any mere intellectual act. But to 
 the spiritual life it is as absolutely essential 
 as inbreathing of fresh air is to the lungs and 
 the bodily hfe. 
 
 2. Then there is Meditation, — the quiet, 
 serious, devout fixing of the mind, from time 
 to time, on some great truth or fact of re- 
 ligion, holding it before the mind steadily, 
 silently brooding over it till it becomes warm 
 and vital, and melts into us. This habit of 
 devout meditation is recommended, by good 
 men who have practiced it, as eminently 
 useful. But it is not much in keeping with 
 the tone of the present day. For with all 
 our pretensions to enlightenment, are we not 
 now a talking, desultory, rather than a med- 
 itative generation ? Whatever other mental 
 acquirements we may possess, we are cer- 
 tainly not rich in 
 
 " The harvest of the quiet eye, 
 That sleeps and broods on its own heart." 
 
 And yet, without something of this medita- 
 tive habit, it is impossible to lay living hold 
 if the first truths of morality and religion. 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. l4l 
 
 It were well, therefore, if we should betimes 
 turn aside from life's bustle, and " impose a 
 sabbath " on our too busy spirits, that the 
 things of sense, being for a while shut out, 
 the unseen things may come into us with 
 power. 
 
 3. Again, few things are more helpful 
 than the study of the lives of the most emi- 
 nent Christians from the beginning. The 
 Roman Church has her lives of the saints, 
 some of them of doubtful authenticity. The 
 Universal Church should have a catena 
 of lives of the best men of each ase, from 
 primitive times till now. It would include 
 the saintly spirits of all ages, from all coun- 
 tries, men of all ranks, of every variety 
 of temper, taken from the most diverse 
 churches. Such a catena would be the 
 strongest of all external evidences. It would 
 exhibit Christianity, not so much as a system 
 of doctrines, but as a power of life, adequate 
 to subdue the strongest wills, to renew the 
 darkest hearts, to leaven the most opposite 
 characters. If an intimate study of it were 
 more common, how much would it do to heal 
 divisions, to deepen and enlarge the sympa- 
 thies of all Christians, by the exhibition of 
 their common spiritual ancestry ! 
 
142 COMBINATION OF 
 
 4. But if such an intimacy with good men 
 gone is beneficial, not less so is intercourse 
 with the living, our elders, or companions 
 more advanced than ourselves. They will 
 understand what I mean, who have ever 
 known any one in whom the power of Chris- 
 tian love has had its perfect work. As from 
 time to time they turned to these, did they 
 not find, from the irregularities of their own 
 minds, and the distractions of the world, 
 shelter and a soothing calm ? " The con- 
 stant transpiration " of their characters came 
 home with an evidence more direct, more 
 intimate, more persuasive than any other. 
 " Whatever is right, whatever is wrong, in 
 this perplexing world," one thing they felt 
 must be riglit : to live as these lived, to be 
 of the spirit they were of. Impressions of 
 this kind affect us more powerfully in youth 
 than in later years, yet they are not denied 
 us even in mature manhood. Happy are 
 those who have known some such friends. 
 They are not confined to any age or station, 
 but may be found among poor men and un- 
 learned, as readily as among the most gifted. 
 Let us cherish the society of such persons 
 while we may, and the remembrance of them 
 when that intercourse is over. For we may 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 148 
 
 be quite sure of this, that life has nothing 
 else to give more pure, more precious, than 
 such companionship. 
 
 5. But the last, and by far the most pow- 
 erful, of all outward aids to spiritual growth, 
 is to bring the heart and spirit into close con- 
 tact Avith that Life which is portrayed by the 
 four Evangelists. But before w^e can do this 
 satisfactorily, some may say, we must settle 
 a host of difficult problems, fight out our way 
 through a whole jungle of vexed and intricate 
 questions. " One knows the interminable 
 discussions of modern criticisms on the origin, 
 the authenticity, and the mutual relations of 
 the four Gospels. But for our present pur- 
 pose we can leave all these questions on one 
 side. The authenticity of the evangelistic 
 teaching will always prove itself better by its 
 own nature and self-evidencing power, than 
 by any criticism of the documents." To say 
 this is not to disparage criticism, which has 
 »ts own place and use. But that place is not 
 the central or vital one. Criticism is not re- 
 ligion, and by no process can it be substituted 
 for it. It is not the critic's eye, but the child's 
 heart, that most truly discerns the counte- 
 nance that looks out from the pages of the 
 Gospels. If we would not miss or distort 
 
144 COMBINATION OF 
 
 that image, let us come to it with an open 
 heart, feeling our need of help. Such a way 
 of studying the Gospels, simple, open-hearted, 
 ceverent, is the truest, healthiest, most pen- 
 etrating means of feeding the divine life. 
 When once by long, single-hearted, steadfast 
 contemplation the impression has graven it- 
 self within, it is the strongest, it is the most 
 indelible that we know. Dogmatic convic- 
 tions may change, criticism may shift its 
 ground, but that image will abide, rooted in 
 the deepest seats of moral life. Whatever 
 storms may shake us in a troubled time, this 
 anchor, if any, will "hold." Try before all 
 things, especially while you are young and 
 open to impressions, to bring understanding, 
 imagination, heart, conscience, under the 
 power of that master vision. That image, 
 or rather that Person, so human, yet so en- 
 tirely divine, has a power to fill the imagina- 
 tion, to arrest the affections, to deepen and 
 purify the conscience, which nothing else in 
 the world has. No end so worthy of your 
 literary and philosophic training here, as to 
 enable you to do this more firmly and intel- 
 ligently. All criticism which tends to make 
 the lineaments of that countenance shine out 
 more impressively shall be welcome. What- 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 145 
 
 ever tends to dim it, or remove it to a dis- 
 tance, we shall disregard. For we know 
 with a certainty which far transcends any 
 certainty of criticism, that He is true. 
 
 But if we would deepen and perpetuate in 
 ourselves the impressions thus made, we must 
 remember that the surest way is to act on 
 them. There is, I fear, a tendency in all of 
 us to desire clear convictions and vivid feel- 
 ings about these things, and to rest there, 
 content with convictions and feelings. And 
 so they come to naught. If they are not to 
 be merely head notions or evanescent feehngs, 
 they must be taken into the will, and pass 
 out into our actions. This is what our Lord 
 said : If any man will do His will, he shall 
 know of the doctrine whether it be of God. 
 Knowledge is to follow doing, not precede it. 
 In order to understand, we must commence 
 by putting into practice what we already 
 know. " Unfortunately all ages and parties 
 have gone to work the other way, adjourn- 
 ing the doing of the doctrine, hastening to 
 busy themselves with the theory of it." 
 And each individual man must be aware of 
 this tendency in himself, the desire for a fully 
 mapped-out system of truth, which, after he 
 has got it, he will begin to think of practic- 
 
 10 
 
146 COMBINATION OF 
 
 ing. But we shall never get it thus. To do 
 what we know to be right first, however lit- 
 tle that may be, to follow out the light we 
 have, this is the only way to get more light. 
 Whatever sood thouo-hts or feelino;s we have, 
 we must try earnestly to embody them in 
 act, if we wish to grow. But to will and do 
 is so much harder than to speak and specu- 
 late, and even feel. This is the reason we 
 turn aside from the former, and give ourselves 
 so much to the latter. But it is in vain we 
 do so. In spiritual things there is no road 
 to hio-her light without obedience to con- 
 science. This gives solidity to a man's char- 
 acter, and assurance to his faith, as nothing 
 else does. 
 
 I have dwelt on this, the spiritual side of 
 our su])ject, at what may seem disproportion- 
 ate length. But I have done so from the 
 belief that it is an aspect of truth which at 
 present is being too much disregarded by the 
 most ardent Culturists, and by some also of 
 the strono-est advocates of general education. 
 And so by losing siglit of it, or willfully re- 
 jecting it, not only is the whole economy of 
 the human spirit deranged, but even the 
 purely intellectual faculties and powers are 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 147 
 
 deprived of their highest objects. Even 
 among those who do not take the entirely 
 secular view of life, and shut out religion 
 altogether, there seems to be a tendency to 
 expect religion to come as the last result of 
 a large and laborious culture, - — that, in short, 
 we may end with it, but are not to begin 
 it, — that Ave must first learn all that science 
 can teach us of the outer world of nature, 
 then all that philosophy can teach us of the 
 the inner world of man, then all that history, 
 and the philosophy of history, can teach us 
 of the progress of the race, and then, as the 
 last consummation, as the copestone on this 
 great edifice of knowledge, theology may 
 possibly be built. And when the true theol- 
 ogy has got itself achieved, there may come 
 religion; that is, we may proceed to believe 
 and act on it. I do not say that this view is 
 put forth in so many words, but it seems to 
 be latent in many minds, and implied as a 
 first principle in much that is said in the 
 present time. Not, of course, by the multi- 
 tude, — it is not among them that such a 
 view would prevail, — but it is entertained 
 by many of those who are reputed " advanced 
 thinkers," as the phrase goes, and from them 
 it filters down to the platforms and the news- 
 
148 COMBINATION OF 
 
 papers, and helps to swell that most weari- 
 some chorus of self-laudation which is ever- 
 more rising up about this most wonderful and 
 enlightened age. Instead, however, of com- 
 ino; as the last consummation, I believe it 
 will be found that, in far the greatest num- 
 ber of men who ever become really religious, 
 the sense of God is awakened early, a germ 
 of life growing and expanding from childhood, 
 round which learning and culture gathered 
 afterwards. This I believe to be the natural, 
 Lnd by far the most frequent, history of the 
 best men. If, on the other hand, we post- 
 pone spiritual things till we have completed, 
 or even far advanced, our investigations, 
 there is great danger that they will never 
 come at all. I do not say that some men, a 
 very few, may not have awakened to the 
 practical sense of God late in life, and only 
 after long wanderings in the world of thought 
 without Him. God has many ways of bring- 
 ing men's spirits to Himself, and we dare not 
 venture to say He shall lead any man in this 
 way and not in that. Only this we can say, 
 that for men to arrive at divine truth as the 
 last stage in a long process of culture and in- 
 vestigation, is not His usual way of leading 
 men, and that when it does take place it comes 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 149 
 
 not in the way of gradual sequence, not as it 
 were the last step in a long induction. Not 
 as a natural sequence, but rather as a con- 
 vulsion, will such revelation be likely to come, 
 with a confession of failure, with a rending of 
 old habits of thought and of godless associa- 
 tions, with the acknowledgment that much 
 of life has been wasted, and that the chief 
 thing Culture has taught is that not in itself 
 is God to be found. 
 
 Speculation, we may believe, " reaches its 
 final rest and home in faith," but the faith 
 has generally been present in the heart before 
 the speculation began, and has accompanied 
 it more or less consciously through all its 
 travellings. Where the faith has only ap- 
 peared in the end, it will be because specula- 
 tion has acknowledged itself unable livingly 
 to lay hold on God, and has resigned the 
 searcher over to another higher than itself. 
 
 The practical upshot of all I have said is 
 this : Do not let us adjourn being reHgious 
 till we have become learned. It may be to 
 some a tempting, but it is a dangerous exper- 
 iment. If we wish really to be good, and to 
 know the good, we should begin early, begin 
 at once. 
 
 I may have dwelt too long on this. But it 
 
150 COMBINATION OF 
 
 is because I see so strong a tendency abroad 
 to begin at the wrong end, to deal first and 
 prominently with the intellectual side of 
 things, and to expect all good from that, that 
 I feel constrained to urge on all who hear 
 me, especially on the young, to avoid this, to 
 beo-in as well as to end with God revealed in 
 Christ, and communion with Him. So shall 
 they have their whole natures grounded, 
 established, braced for the stern siftings 
 which in this age assuredly await us. 
 
 It is hicrh time now to ask how Culture 
 and Religion act and react on each other. 
 Side glances have been taken at this subject 
 throughout these lectures. To give a full 
 and systematic view of all their relations I 
 have not proposed, even if I had the power. 
 A few words, however, must be said. 
 
 If, as we saw, Religion, or the impulse in 
 man to seek God, and Culture, or the im- 
 pulse in man to seek his own highest perfec- 
 tion, both come from the same Divine source, 
 it is clear that as they are in themselves — 
 that is, as God sees them — there can be no 
 opposition, there must be perfect harmony 
 between them. Both together, they must 
 be working towards that full revelation of 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 151 
 
 God and that good of man towards which we 
 beheve creation moves. But as soon as we 
 regard them not absolutely, but as man has 
 made them, that is, as they have appeared 
 in history, immediately we find that they 
 have not always conspired harmoniously 
 towards one great end, that for long periods 
 they have moved on separate lines, that 
 sometimes they have come into actual col- 
 lision. And the reason of this is obvious. 
 Few men can take in more than one point of 
 view at a time, none can habitually embrace 
 and maintain a universal and absolute view 
 of things. And so it has come to pass that 
 these two powers, as they start from differ- 
 ent centres, have continued each to work on 
 under the impulse of the leading idea which 
 gave it birth, without taking much account 
 of the idea which animated the other. Cul- 
 ture, with its eye fixed on man's perfection, 
 has been busy with the means that tend 
 towards this, that is appropriating the large 
 results which human effort, thought, and ex- 
 perience have gathered from past centuries. 
 Religion, on the other hand, starting, not 
 from the view of man's perfection, but of 
 God's existence, in the consciousness of this, 
 however dim and unenlightened, has been 
 
152 COMBINATION OF 
 
 entirely absorbed in the results that flow out 
 of this relation, — the sense of dependence, 
 the duty of obedience and self-surrender, and 
 man's total inability to meet this claim. 
 And in its absorption it has, for light, looked 
 ' — inward, to the monitions, however ob- 
 scm'e, of conscience ; outward, to whatever 
 aid nature and history supply ; upward, to 
 that light, higher than nature, which has 
 come direct from heaven. And thus each, 
 self-enwrapt, has taken little account of its 
 neighbor. 
 
 But if these two forces are to cease from 
 their isolation, and combine, as we may hope, 
 towards some better result than the world 
 has yet seen, the question arises. Are they 
 to work as two coordinate and equipollent 
 powers, or is one to be subordinate to the 
 other, and if so, which? To this question 
 the old answer is still, we feel, the true one. 
 To Religion belongs of right the sovereign 
 place, and this because it is a more direct 
 emanation from the Divine source ; it finds 
 its response in the deeper places of our be- 
 ing; it is the earlier manifestation in the 
 history of the race ; the earlier in the life of 
 the individual, and it will be the last. But 
 though its place is primary, it cannot be inde- 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 158 
 
 pendent of thought and knowledge ; nay, the 
 rehgion of each age must, in a large measure, 
 be conditioned by the state of knowledge ex- 
 isting in that age. We see this in the past 
 history of religion, and we see how fruitless, 
 I should rather say how disastrous, have 
 been the effects, when religion has tried to 
 close itself ao-ainst the risino; tide of knowl- 
 edge. And the lesson which the past 
 teaches, religious men would do well to learn, 
 and keep an open side to the influx of all the 
 new knowledije which each a<2:e achieves, to 
 appropriate this, and absorb it into their relig- 
 ious convictions. So far from being jealous 
 or suspicious of ascertained scientific truths, 
 or even indifferent to them, they should feel 
 that such prejudices are wrong, that they are 
 bound to welcome all such truths, being sure 
 that, in as far as they are truths, God means 
 them to be known, and wills them to be in- 
 corporated into our thoughts of Him and of 
 His ways. 
 
 And here I cannot better express my own 
 thought than by quoting words which Bishop 
 Temple lately spoke on this subject. " I 
 have," he said, in a public address delivered 
 in his own diocese, " a real conviction that all 
 this study of science, rightly pursued, comes 
 
154 COMBINATION OF 
 
 from the providence of God ; that it is in 
 accordance with His will that we should 
 study His works, and that as He has given 
 us a spiritual revelation in His Word, so also 
 has He given us a natural revelation in His 
 creation. I am convinced that there is noth- 
 ing to lose, but everything to gain, by a true 
 and careful study of God*s works ; that the 
 more light we can get, the more cultivation 
 of our understanding, and the more thorough 
 discipline of our intellect by the study of all 
 this which God has scattered in such wonder- 
 ful profusion around us, so much the better 
 shall we be able not only to serve Him in 
 our vocation, but to understand the meaning 
 of His spiritual revelations. I am convinced 
 that all light of whatever kind is good, and 
 comes from God ; that all knowledge comes 
 from Him, and can be used in His service ; 
 that nothing which really adds to the knowl- 
 edo-e of the world is for a moment to be de- 
 spised; that, on the contrary, it should be 
 the effort of all who undertake to instruct 
 their brethren in religious truth, to show that 
 we feel that religious truth and secular truth 
 are not only capable of being reconciled, but 
 really come from the same God who is the 
 God of all truth. Therefore, so far from de- 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 155 
 
 siring that there should be divorce between 
 these two, I should wish, on the contrary, 
 that every effort should be made by all who 
 are concerned in religious teaching, to per- 
 vade the study of science with their own re- 
 ligious feeling; to study science with the 
 constant recollection of that God whose 
 works are the subject of science ; to study 
 science with minds perpetually uplifted 
 towards Him who is the author both of or- 
 der and of beauty ; to study the laws of na- 
 ture with a perpetual recollection of Him 
 who ordained them. 1 know that it is not 
 only possible, but that both science and re- 
 ligion will gain by the union." 
 
 The truth enforced in these words is so 
 obvious that hardly any one will think of 
 directly denying it, however little many may 
 be ready to act on it. One thing, however, I 
 would have you observe, that they presup- 
 pose the thought of God taken into science, 
 and not first found there. It may be well to 
 dwell a little on this, and to illustrate these 
 general views somewhat more in detail. For, 
 stated generally, the truth above expressed 
 may sound like a truism. It is only when 
 we come to particular points that the diffi- 
 culties really begin. 
 
166 COMBINATION OF 
 
 It lies, we know, at the root of all religion, 
 to believe that this system of things is really 
 from God, that the Divine thought presided 
 at its origin, and that the same is present 
 upholding and carrying forward this beau- 
 tiful order with which we are now encom- 
 passed. Any so-called conclusions of science 
 which deny this, and suggest another origin 
 of the world than the will and thought of 
 God, religion must reject as subversive of its 
 first principle. But, this granted, religion 
 must leave it to science to discover what is 
 the method which the Divine thought has 
 followed, what have been the processes by 
 which it has evolved the order we now be- 
 hold. All facts really established by science 
 religion must receive, nay, more, ought to 
 welcome, and incorporate into its own view 
 of the universe, allowing them to modify that 
 view in as far as this may be necessary. In 
 refusing to do this, in looking with suspicion, 
 if not with positive hostility, on the fresh dis- 
 coveries of each age, religious persons, since 
 the days of Galileo downwards, have often 
 erred, and given just grounds for complaint 
 to the advocates of science. On the other 
 hand, it must be said that scientific, or rather 
 quasi-scientific, persons have sometimes been 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 157 
 
 hasty to thrust on religion for acceptance a 
 number of crude hypotheses, as if they were 
 scientific verities. For the soHd body of 
 science seems to throw out before it a pre- 
 tentious penumbra of hypotheses and pre- 
 suppositions, which often, in the name of 
 science, call on religion to surrender at dis- 
 cretion. It is not, however, the really scien- 
 tific, the original discoverers, who for the 
 most part deal in these. Such men dwell in 
 the solid body of science, and are careful not 
 to stray beyond it. The penumbra I speak 
 of is mainly tenanted by another sort, — per- 
 sons of small scientific capacity, but of busy 
 minds, greedy of novelties, and rapid to ex- 
 temporize big philosophies out of the mate- 
 rials which science furnishes. From such 
 comes the assertion, often heard nowadays, 
 that miracle is impossible. This, however, 
 though urged in the name of science, is no 
 scientific truth at all. It is only a large and 
 pretentious generalization, bred no doubt out 
 of the scientific atmosphere which more or 
 less envelops even popular thought, but 
 wholly unwarranted by genuine science. 
 When religion is called on to accept this 
 nostrum of the destructive critics, it is not 
 orejudice or narrowness, but truth, that com- 
 
158 COMBINATION OF 
 
 pels her to meet it with a direct denial. 
 Such an assertion has nothing to support it 
 but a priori assumption ; it is not warranted 
 by anything we know, and is foreign to the 
 moderation of true science. Nothing that 
 has been ascertained by physical inquiry, 
 nothing that mental philosophy has made 
 good, would justify such dogmatism. It im- 
 plies the possession of a much wider, more 
 entire knowledge of the universe than any 
 yet attained, or perhaps that will be attained 
 in our present state. Religion, therefore, is 
 at one with sound philosophy in refusing to 
 admit such an assumption. And this quite 
 apart from that other consideration, that if 
 true it would relegate to the region of myth 
 one half of the Gospel histories, and render 
 the other half of no authority if it were im- 
 bedded in such a mass of fable. The state- 
 ment, then, that miracles are in themselves 
 impossible, being a wholly groundless assump- 
 tion, the question of their actual occurrence 
 becomes one of purely historical evidence. 
 What that evidence is has been often stated, 
 and will be restated from time to time 
 according as the shifting views of each age 
 require. But perhaps men's belief in that 
 evidence can never be determined entirelv on 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 159 
 
 objective grounds. The strength of the evi- 
 dence will always be differently estimated by 
 different minds, but owing to other considera- 
 tions, and especially according as they have 
 a latent belief or disbelief in their possibility 
 and likelihood. 
 
 Again, when we are told that to the mod- 
 ern scientific sense the idea of God the 
 Father resolves itself into that of " the uni- 
 versal order," or into '' that stream of ten- 
 dency by which all things strive to fulfill the 
 law of their being," how is religion to deal 
 with this assertion ? Or again, when instead 
 of Christ we are offered as the modern equiv- 
 alent " an absent and unseen power of good- 
 ness ? " It is not resistance to modern in- 
 telligence, but defense of the very "core" 
 of spiritual life, that makes religion withstand 
 such intrusions of so-called science or criti- 
 cism into her own inmost recesses. Once 
 again we must repeat, the things of the 
 Spirit are truly apprehended only by the 
 spirit and the conscience of man. If God is 
 known then only truly when the heart com- 
 munes with Him, substitutes for religious 
 entities which would make such communion 
 impossible are by this very fact disproved. 
 Those abstractions which criticism and phi- 
 
160 COMBINATION OF 
 
 losophy, divorced from the Spirit, offer, are 
 but pale and lifeless shadows. The things 
 of revelation, the truths which St. John and 
 St. Paul lived by, and all Christian men 
 since have tried to live by, when pared down 
 by these modern processes, are extinct. No 
 doubt science and philosophy have some- 
 thing to do with shaping the intellectual 
 forms in which spiritual truths shall be ex- 
 pressed. But when criticism pretends to 
 penetrate into the inner essence of spiritual 
 truths, and to supply us with piodern equiv- 
 alents for them, it is then time to remind it 
 that it is overstepping the limits which are 
 proper to it. For it is to the spirit and con- 
 science of men that spiritual truth makes its 
 appeal, and by these in the last resort it 
 must be apprehended. It will be said, I 
 know. How are we to ascertain what really 
 are those realities to which the conscience 
 and the spirit of men witness, seeing that 
 with reo;ard to these men are so divided ? 
 I am aware of the difficulty. Yet we can- 
 not in deference to it recede from the first 
 principle, that spiritual things are to be spir- 
 itually discerned ; that the coming home of 
 a religious truth to the spirit of a man, and 
 fitting into it, is to that man the highest evi- 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 161 
 
 dence of its truth, and that this is the thing 
 we should each seek first. He who lias felt 
 the self-evidencing power of truth will know 
 this to be its best proof. Where this is not 
 present, intellectual arguments will do little, 
 as these may be adduced equally on that side 
 or on this. It may be that we have felt little 
 of this evidencing power of truth, — that there 
 are few truths which have so come home to 
 us. But all men have felt some measure of 
 it. ■ They have at least their sense of right 
 and wrong in its more obvious bearings. 
 Whoso shall try to live and act on this, so 
 using the small light he has, he shall receive 
 more. 
 
 If it still be urged. Such inward conviction 
 is at best personal to the individual who has it, 
 we wish for some test of religious truth which 
 shall be impersonal and universal ; it may be 
 replied, that while the highest evidence in 
 the thino-s of relio-ion must necessarily rest 
 on personal grounds, there are other tests 
 more creneral, thouo;h of a secondary and sub- 
 ordinate kind as far as cogency is concerned. 
 Some such outward test may be found by 
 observino; what are those reliorious truths 
 which the best, most spiritually-minded men 
 of all ages have chiefly laid to heart. As 
 11 
 
162 COMBINATION OF 
 
 Aristotle found a clew towards a moral stand- 
 ard by taking the general suffrage of the 
 morally wisest men, so may we do in some 
 measure with regard to spiritual things. Still, 
 though this may help us somewhat, in the 
 last resort we must fall back on the truth 
 that light is self-evidencing, — as light natu- 
 ral, so light spiritual. Seeing, feeling is be- 
 lieving, and the conviction thus produced 
 must be an inward and personal thing, not 
 readily nor adequately represented in the 
 language of the intellect. To adopt the 
 words of a profound thinker, whom I have 
 already quoted in these lectures, " An intel- 
 lectual form our spiritual apprehensions must 
 receive, that the demand of our intellectual 
 nature may be met. But still that which is 
 spiritual must be spiritually discerned, and I 
 would not seek to recommend the doctrine 
 of the atonement by what might be called 
 brino;ino; it down to the level of the under- 
 standing. I seek rather to raise the under- 
 standing to that which is above it, and to 
 that exercise of thought on spiritual things in 
 which we feel ourselves brought near to 
 what is divine and infinite, and made par- 
 takers in the knowledge of the love which 
 passeth knowledge." 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 163 
 
 Or in the words of another great living 
 teacher, belonging to a different school : — 
 " The inward witness to the truth lodged in 
 our hearts is a match for the most learned 
 infidel or sceptic that ever lived. In spiritual 
 things, the most acute of reasoners and 
 most profound of thinkers, the most instructed 
 in earthly knowledge, is nothing except he 
 has also within him the presence of the 
 Spirit of truth. Human knowledge, though 
 of great power when joined to a pure and 
 humble faith, is of no power when opposed 
 to it." I am aware that words like these, 
 the " inward witness," " the witness of God's 
 Spirit with man's spirit," may be used as 
 catch- words in a way that makes them mean- 
 ingless. But to this abuse they are liable 
 only in common with all words expressive 
 of high and spiritual things. When two 
 such men as Dr. M'Leod Campbell and Dr. 
 Newman, so differently trained, and with 
 views so opposed in many things, combine to 
 speak of '* the witness of the Spirit," and to 
 urge men to seek it, we may be quite sure 
 that it is not any mere hearsay they are re- 
 peating, but that they are speaking of some- 
 which they know and feel to be a reality. 
 
 Before passing entirely from this subject 
 
164 COMBINATION OF 
 
 let me ask, Have faltli and worship to do 
 with the known or with the unknown ? It 
 is sometimes said that faith and worship only 
 begin where knowledge ends. At other 
 times we hear the exact contrary asserted, — 
 that we cannot believe any truth or worship 
 any being of which we have not complete 
 understanding, that in fact the circle of defi- 
 nite knowledge and of possible faith are 
 coextensive. These assertions seem both 
 equally wide of the truth. It is in knowl- 
 edge that faith and worship begin. We 
 believe in God, and we worship God because 
 of that which He has made known to us of 
 Himself, in conscience first, and then more 
 fully in revelation. Indeed, the very sim- 
 plest acceptance of the truths of conscience, 
 and the obeying of them, instead of choosing 
 the pleasures of sense, is essentially of the 
 nature of faith. And the knowledge thus 
 brought home to the spirit, it feels to be pos- 
 itive knowledge, — a circle of light in which 
 it dwells. True it is that what is thus 
 known reaches out on all sides to what is 
 unknown, — the light is on all sides encom- 
 passed with darkness. But the existence of 
 the surroundino; darkness does not make the 
 light, such as it is, to be less light. And 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 165 
 
 the faith and worship do not confine them- 
 selves within the region of light, but pass out 
 into the outer circle, — go on from tlie known 
 to the unknown. But in this they are doins 
 no violence to reason ; nay, they are fulfilling 
 the behest of the highest reason, which feels 
 instinctively that while there is something 
 of God which is within our ken, there must 
 be much more which stretches beyond it. 
 At the same time it feels equally assured 
 that what lies beyond our present, perhaps 
 even our future, vision, will never contradict 
 that which is within it — that the true knowl- 
 edge which the conscience and spirit now 
 have will never be put to shame. ^ 
 
 But while these two elements, the known 
 and the unknown, coexist, and we believe 
 always will coexist, in faith and worship, the 
 relation in which the two elements stand to 
 each other must undergo some change with 
 the widening of human knowledge and expe- 
 rience. The moral conceptions of the race 
 have been, in the course of ages, not radi- 
 cally changed, but" expanded, deepened, pu- 
 rified by many agencies. Our moral and 
 religious ideas are not unaffected even by 
 discoveries in regions which at first sight 
 might seem most remote from them. 
 1 Note VIII. 
 
166 COMBINATION OF 
 
 The view of the universe as science leads 
 us to conceive it must react on our thoughts 
 of God. Opening out before us tlie vast 
 scale on which He works, and acquainting 
 us with some of the methods of His working, 
 it counteracts the limitations which are apt 
 to arise from the human forms under which 
 we think of Him. These forms are neces- 
 sary and true. It is only because man has 
 in himself some image of God that he can 
 think of Him at all. But round this true 
 conception, so formed, there are apt to 
 gather accretions from man's weakness and 
 imperfection, to which the expansive views 
 of science furnish a wholesome antidote. 
 Again, do men's views of morality, as time 
 goes on, get more deep, more just and hu- 
 mane ? And to this result nothing, I be- 
 lieve, has so much contributed as eighteen 
 centuries of Christianity, notwithstanding all 
 the corruptions it has undergone. Then 
 this improved moral perception, from what- 
 ever sources derived, reacts directly on 
 relicrious belief, bv removincr obstructions 
 that hide from us true views of God, and 
 enabling us to think of Him more nearly as 
 He is. As our conception of what true 
 righteousness consists in improves, so must 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 167 
 
 our thouo-lit of Him who is the JRio-hteous 
 One. Idolatry has been said to be the pre- 
 ferring of an image of God which we feel to 
 be imperfect, but which has adapted and 
 contracted itself to our weakness, instead of 
 pressing on to the most perfect image attain- 
 able, in the light and heat of which our im- 
 perfections may be exposed and burned up. 
 In short, it is the retaining between our 
 hearts and God an imperfect image of Him, 
 when it is in our power to attain to a truer 
 and more perfect vision. Every increase of 
 knowledge, whether gathered from history, 
 or from the world without, or from the world 
 within, may be a help towards forming a 
 better conception of God's nature and of His 
 ways, and ought to be so used. If we refuse 
 either to increase our knowledo-e that we 
 may so use it, or neglect to turn it when in- 
 creased to this its highest purpose, and so 
 are content to rest in less worthy thoughts 
 of the Divine character, can we then excuse 
 ourselves from the sin of idolatry ? One who 
 really has confidence in truth — truth alike 
 of science, of philosophy, of history, and of 
 faith — will desire to see truth souo;ht and 
 advanced along all the diverse lines on which 
 't is to be found. He may not see the point 
 
168 COMBINATION OF 
 
 at which all these lines converge, but he has 
 perfect faith that they do converge, whether 
 he sees it or not. He can be satisfied with 
 seeing but a little for a time, assured that he 
 will yet see that little open on a fuller day. 
 Believe in God, and bid all knowledge speed. 
 Sooner or later the full harmony will reveal 
 itself, the discords and contradictions disap- 
 pear. 
 
 Before closing this whole subject let me 
 again repeat, what has been more than once 
 hinted already, that Culture, when it will not 
 accept its proper place as secondary, but sets 
 up to be the guiding principle of life, forfeits 
 that which mio;ht be its highest charm. In- 
 deed, even when it does not professedly turn 
 its back on faith, yet if it claims to be para- 
 mount, it will generally be found that it has 
 cultivated every other side of man's nature 
 but the devout one. There is no more for- 
 lorn sight than that of a man highly gifted, 
 elaborately cultivated, with all the other 
 capacities of his nature strong and active, but 
 those of faith and reverence dormant. And 
 this, be it said, is the pattern of man in 
 which Culture, made the chief good, would 
 most likely issue. On the other hand, when 
 it assumes its proper place, illumined by faitli, 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 169 
 
 and animated by devout aspiration, it ac- 
 quires a dignity and depth which of itself it 
 cannot attain. From faith it receives its 
 highest and most worthy objects. It is chas- 
 tened and purified from self-reference and 
 conceit. It is prized no longer merely for its 
 own sake, or because it exalts the possessoi 
 of it, but because it enables him to be of use 
 to others who have been less fortunate. In 
 a word, it ceases to be self-isolated, and 
 seeks to communicate itself as widely as it 
 may. So Culture is transmuted from an in- 
 tellectual attainment into a spiritual grace. 
 This seems the light in which all who are 
 admitted to a higher cultivation should learn 
 
 CD 
 
 to regard their endowments, whatever they 
 be. Why is a small moiety, with no peculiar 
 claim on society, so highly favored, taken for 
 a while from the dust and pressure of the 
 world, and set apart in calm retreats like 
 these, that here they may have access to the 
 best learning of the time ? Not certainly 
 that we should waste these precious hours in 
 sloth, neither that we should merely make 
 our bread by learning ; not that we should 
 seek and enjoy it as a selfish luxury, and, 
 piquing ourselves on the enlightenment and 
 refinement it brings, look down with disdain 
 
170 COMBINATION OF 
 
 on the illiterate crowd ; but that, when we 
 have been cultivated ourselves, we should go 
 into the world and do what we can to impart 
 to others whatever good thing we ourselves 
 have received. There is a temptation inci- 
 dent to the studious to seclude themselves 
 from others, and lose themselves in their 
 own thoughts and books. But we must try 
 to resist this, and remember that since we 
 have freely received, we are bound freely to 
 give. This it is which makes Culture a 
 really honorable and beneficent power. 
 
 But there is a point of view from which 
 this whole subject may be regarded, and I 
 cannot close these lectures without alluding 
 to it. There is a higher vantage-ground, 
 seen from which all these balancings between 
 Culture and Rehgion, man's <^fFort and God's 
 w^orking, would disappear, and all relations 
 would at once fall into their right place. If 
 there is reason to believe that God Himself 
 is the great educator, and that His purpose, 
 in all His dealings with men, is to educate 
 them for Himself, what a new light would be 
 thrown on all the ground over which we have 
 travelled! This is not the place to enter 
 Into an examination of the statements of 
 Scripture which may bear on this subject. 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 171 
 
 This only may be said, the belief that it is 
 God's purpose to bring man out of the dark- 
 ness of his evil and ignorance into the light 
 of His own righteousness and love, seems 
 every way consistent with what we know of 
 His character as revealed in Christ. It is in 
 harmony with the whole tenor of His life and 
 teaching who said, " I, if I be lifted up from 
 the earth, will draw all men unto myself." 
 In this purpose there is a door of hope opened 
 for all humanity. 
 
 But then comes the thought that, though 
 the door is opened, all do not enter by it. 
 Multitudes never know that such a door 
 exists ; many more know, and pass it by. 
 That this should be God's purpose and yet 
 that men should have the power to resist this 
 purpose, to close their wills against it, this, 
 next to the existence of evil at all, is the 
 greatest of all mysteries. I have no wish, 
 indeed it is of no use, to try to conceal it ; it 
 is a dark outstanding fact which must strike 
 every one. If it is the Divine purpose to 
 educate man, it is but too evident that a 
 great multitude, perhaps the majority of men, 
 leave this earth without, as far as we can 
 see, the rudiments of the Divine education 
 being even begun in them. Not to think of 
 
172 COMBINATION OF 
 
 their case is impossible for any man, and the 
 more generous and sympathetic any one is, 
 the more heavily will it weigh on him. It 
 must be owned that there are times when 
 this thought becomes to those who dwell on 
 it very overpowering. There are some in 
 whom it seems to " stagger " all their pow- 
 ers of faith. Scripture offers no solution of 
 this great perplexity, reason is helpless before 
 it, human systems, in trying to explain it, 
 only make it worse. What, then, are we to 
 do ? We can but fall back on that ancient 
 word of faith, " Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right? " We must leave it to God 
 Himself to solve, — assured that in the end 
 He will solve it perfectly, will supremely 
 justify Himself. 
 
 Still, notwithstanding all that to us seems 
 like failure, the belief in this purpose of God 
 to train for Himself all who will, is, if we can 
 but apprehend it, a thought full of strength 
 and comfort. It is not only the highest hope, 
 but the only real hope for humanity that ex- 
 ists. It embraces everything that is good in 
 the Culture theory, and how much more ! 
 If Culture were what Culturists announce it 
 to be, the one hope for men, what a very 
 mpiety of the race are they to whom it is 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 17S 
 
 open ! A few prepared for it in youth, with 
 health, leisure, some resources, have access to 
 it. But what of all the others, even if the 
 brio-htest dreams of educationists and ad- 
 vanced politicians were to be fulfilled? The 
 hope that is in Christianity, far short as the 
 accomplishment has hitherto fallen of the 
 ideal, is still in its very nature a hope for all, 
 and it does actually reach multitudes whom 
 Culture must leave out. How many are the 
 occurrences of life which Culture can make 
 nothing of, which it must abandon in dis- 
 pair ? There are a thousand circumstances, 
 I might say the larger portion of the stuff 
 life is made of, out of which Culture can ex- 
 tract nothing. What has it to say to *' pov- 
 erty, destitution, and oppression, to pain and 
 suffering, diseases long and violent, all that is 
 frio-htful and revolting ? " What word can 
 it speak to the heart-weary and desponding, 
 those for whom life has been a failure, who 
 have no more hope here ? But it is just 
 where mere Culture is powerless that the 
 faith that One higher than ourselves is train- 
 ing us, comes in most consolingly. Those 
 untoward things, of which human effort can 
 make nothing, failure, disappointment, sick- 
 ness, have often ere now been felt by suf 
 
174 COMBINATION OF 
 
 ferers to be parts of the discipline by wlii'^h 
 He was training them for Himself. And this 
 faith has many a time had power to lighten, 
 sometimes it has even irradiated, things 
 which else would have been insupportable. 
 To adapt the words of Wordsworth to a 
 purpose not alien to their own, — in faith 
 a power abides which can feed 
 
 " A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire, 
 From the incumbrances of mortal life, 
 From error, disappointment, — nay, from guilt; 
 And sometimes, so relenting justice wills, 
 From palpable oppressions of despair." 
 
 It is a " many-chambered " school, that in 
 which God trains. None are excluded from 
 it, all are welcome. It has room for all gifts, 
 all circumstances, all conditions. It makes 
 allowance for defects and shortcomings which 
 are ruin in this world. Trained in this school 
 many have reached a high place, who have 
 had no "tincture of letters." Most of us 
 must have known some, especially in the 
 humbler places of society, who had not any 
 of this world's learning, had never heard even 
 the names of the greatest poets and philoso- 
 phers, yet who, without help from these, had 
 been led, by some secret way, up to the se- 
 renest, most beautiful heights of character. 
 It is indeed a many-chambered school. 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 176 
 
 These were led throucrli some of its cliambers 
 to their end, we are beino; led throuo-h others. 
 To those who, like ourselves, have large op- 
 portunities of Culture placed within their 
 reach, these are the instruments of the divine 
 discipline. It is part of that discipline to put 
 large opportunities in men's hands, and to 
 leave it to themselves whether they will use 
 or neglect them. There shall be no coercion 
 to make us turn them to account. Occasions 
 of learning and self-improvement come, stay 
 with us for a while, then pass. And the 
 wheels of time shall not be reversed to bring 
 them back, once they are gone. If we neg- 
 lect them, we shall be permanent losers for 
 this life. We cannot say how much we may 
 be losers hereafter. But if we do what we 
 can to use them while they are granted, we 
 shall have learnt one lesson of the heavenly 
 discipline, and shall be the better prepared 
 for the others, whether of action or endur- 
 ance, which are yet to come. 
 
 This view of our life as a process of edu- 
 cation, which God seeks to carry on in each 
 man, is not, it may be granted, the view of 
 God and of His dealino-s with us which sug- 
 gests itself when men first beo;in to think 
 seriously. Neither is it one which it is easy 
 
176 COMBINATION OF 
 
 to hold steadily amid all the distractions of 
 time, or to defend against all objections that 
 may be urged from the anomalies that sur- 
 round us. But I think it is one which will 
 more commend itself as people advance. It 
 will approve itself as setting forth an end 
 which seems altogether worthy of Him who 
 made us. 
 
 And now I have come round to one of the 
 leading: thoucrhts with which I set out. Those 
 who heard my first lecture may remember 
 that it was stated as the end of Culture to 
 set before the young a high and worthy aim 
 or ideal of life, and to train in them the pow- 
 ers necessary to attain it. It was further 
 stated that while each man should have in 
 view an ideal which he should strive to reach, 
 what that ideal should be is to be determined 
 for each man by the natural gifts he is en- 
 dowed with, and by the circumstances in 
 which he finds himself placed. That end of 
 Culture was then stated, and we passed on. 
 But now I think the belief in a divine edu- 
 cation open to each man and to all men, 
 takes up into itself all that is true in the end 
 proposed by Culture, supplements and per- 
 fects it. It is right that we should have an 
 aim of our own, with something peculiar in it, 
 
RELIGION AND CULTURE. 177 
 
 determined by our individuality and our sur- 
 roundings ; but this may readily degenerate 
 into exclusive narrowness, unless it has for a 
 background the great thought, that there is 
 a kingdom of God within us, around us, and 
 above us, in which we, with all our powers 
 and aims, are called to be conscious workers. 
 Towards the forwarding of this silent, ever- 
 advancing kingdom, our little work, what- 
 ever it be, if good and true, may contribute 
 something. And this thought lends to any 
 calling, however lowly, a consecration which 
 is wanting even to the loftiest self-chosen 
 ideals. But even if our aim should be frus- 
 trated and our work come to naught, yet the 
 failure of our most cherished plans may be 
 more than compensated. In the thought 
 that Ave are members of this kingdom, al- 
 ready begun, here and now, yet reaching 
 forward through all time, we shall have a 
 reserve of consolation better than any which 
 success without this could give. When we 
 are young, if we are of an aspiring nature, 
 we are apt to make much of our ideals, and 
 to fancy that in them we shall find a good 
 not open to the vulgar. And then that uni- 
 rersal kingdom, which embraces in itself all 
 true ideals, is, if not wholly disbelieved, yet 
 
 12 
 
178 RELIGION AND CULTURE. 
 
 thought of as remote. But as life goes on, 
 the ideals we set before us, even if attained, 
 dwindle in importance, and that kingdom 
 grows. We come to feel that it is indeed the 
 substance, those the shadows. Were it not 
 well, then, to begin with the substance, to learn 
 to apprehend the reality of that kingdom 
 which is all around us now, whether we 
 recognize it or not, — to take our aims and 
 endeavors into it, that they may be made 
 part of it, however small, — to surrender our- 
 selves to it, that our lives mav do some thin cj 
 towards its advancement, and that so we may 
 become fellow-workers, however humble, 
 with all the wise and good who have gone 
 before us, and with Him who made them 
 what they were ? Only they who early thus 
 begin 
 
 *' Through the world's long day of strife 
 Still chant their morning song.'* 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note I. — Page 24. 
 
 The following passages from Fichte's Lectures on 
 the Nature of a Scholar (translation) illustrate the 
 moral and religious root which underlies all true cul- 
 ture. Though these Lectures were meant to be pop- 
 ular, they are still colored by the language of the 
 author's philosophic system. By the " Divine Idea," 
 especially, Fichte seems to have meant, not, as we 
 might suppose, our ideas about God, but rather what 
 we should express by the words the Divine Nature, 
 or even God : — 
 
 " In every age, the kind of education and spiritual 
 culture, by means of which the age hopes to lead 
 mankind to the knowledge of the ascertained part of 
 the Divine Idea, is the learned culture of the age ; 
 and every man who partakes in this culture is the 
 scholar of the age. . . . The whole of the training 
 and culture, which an age calls learned education, is 
 only a means towards a knowledge of the attainable 
 portion of the Divine Idea, and is only valuable in so 
 far as it actually is such a means, and truly fulfills its 
 purpose." . . . 
 
 " He only shall be esteemed as a scholar who, 
 through the learned culture of his age, has actually 
 
180 APPENDIX. 
 
 attained a knowledge of tlie Idea, or at least strives 
 with life and sti-ength to attain it. Through the 
 learned culture of his age, I say ; for, if a man with- 
 out the use of this means, can arrive at a knowledge 
 of the Idea by some other means, (and I am far from 
 denying that he may do so), yet such an one will be 
 unable either to communicate his knowledge theo- 
 retically, or to realize it immediately in the world 
 according to any well-defined rule, because he must 
 want that knowledge of his age, and of the means of 
 operating upon it, which can only be acquired in 
 schools of learning." 
 
 Again, " Either the scholar has actually laid hold 
 of the Divine Idea, in so far as it is attainable by 
 man, or of a particular part of it, — has actually laid 
 hold of it, and penetrated into its significance, until it 
 stands lucid and distinct before him, so that it has 
 become his own possession, an element in his person- 
 ality ; and then he is a complete and finished scholar, 
 a man who has gone through his studies : Or he as 
 yet only strives and struggles to attain a clear insight 
 into the Idea generally, or into a particular portion 
 of it, from which he, for his part, will penetrate the 
 whole : — already, one by one, sparks of light arise on 
 every side, and disclose a higher world before him ; 
 but they do not yet unite into one indivisible whole, 
 — they vanish, as they came, without his bidding, 
 and he cannot yet bring them under the dominion of 
 his will ; — and then he is a progressive, a self-form- 
 ing scholar, — a student. Tliat it be really the Idea 
 which is either possessed or struggled after is com- 
 mon to both of these ; if the striving is only after 
 the outward form, the mere letter of learned cul- 
 ture then we have; if the round is finished, the 
 
APPENDIX. 181 
 
 complete, if it is unfinished, the progressive Bun-- 
 glerr 
 
 Again, " Man is not placed in the world of sense 
 alone, but the essential root of his being is, as we 
 have seen, in God. Hurried along by sense and its 
 impulses, the consciousness of this Life in God may 
 be readily hidden from him ; and then, however 
 noble may be his nature, he lives in strife and dis- 
 union with himself; in discord and unhappiness, 
 without true dignity and enjoyment of life. But 
 when the consciousness of the true source of his ex- 
 istence first rises upon him, and he joyfully resigns 
 himself to it, till his being is steeped in the thought, 
 then peace and joy and blessedness flow in upon his 
 soul. And it lies in the Divine Idea that all men 
 must come to this gladdening consciousness, — that 
 the outward and tasteless Finite Life may be per- 
 vaded by the Infinite, and so enjoyed ; and to this 
 end, all who have been filled with the Divine Idea 
 have labored and shall still labor, that this conscious- 
 ness, in its purest possible form, may be spread through- 
 out the race." 
 
 This language is not exactly that of Christian 
 theology, but it is nearer to the kingdom of heaven 
 than most utterances of British philosophy. 
 
 Note n. — Pase 34. 
 
 This passage occurs in The Freeness of the Gospel, 
 oy the late Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. When the 
 first of these lectures was delivered, he was yet alive. 
 Before the closing one was given he had breatlied his 
 
182 APPENDIX. 
 
 last, on Sunday, the 20tli March, 1870. The Freeness 
 of the Gospel was first published nearly fifty years 
 ago. For long the author had abstained from repub- 
 lishing this or any of those other works which so 
 deeply touched the minds of many in Scotland 
 during the last generation. But in his latter days 
 he had allowed a new edition of the work, from 
 which this quotation is made, to be prepared by a 
 friend and even himself dictated some corrections. 
 This edition has appeared since the death of the 
 revered author. 
 
 Note IH. — Pane 36. 
 
 For some of the thoughts here expressed on the 
 influence of Greece, I am indebted to the first of Dr. 
 Newman's Lectures on University Subjects. Especially 
 in what I have said of Homer, I have ventured to 
 adopt not only Dr. Newman's thought, but also some 
 of his expressions. The passage in the original lec- 
 ture is so graceful, and puts an old subject in so new 
 a light, that it is here given more at length. 
 
 " In the country which has been the fountain-head 
 of intellectual gifts, in the age which f)receded or in- 
 troduced the first formations of Human Society ; in 
 an era scarcely historical, we may dimly discern an 
 almost mythical personage, who, putting out of con- 
 sideration the actors in Old Testament history, may 
 be called the first Apostle of Civilization. Like an 
 Apostle in another order of tilings, he was poor and 
 5, wanderer, and feeble in the flesh, though he waa 
 to do such great things, and to live in the mouths 
 of a hundred generations, and a thousand tribes. A 
 
APPENDIX. 183 
 
 blind old man whose wanderings were such that, 
 when he became famous, his birthplace could not bo 
 ascertained. 
 
 '* Seven famous towns contend for Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread." 
 
 Yet he had a name in his day, and, little guessing 
 in what vast measures his wish would be answered, 
 he supplicated with a tender human feeling, as he 
 wandered over the islands of the ^gean and the 
 Asian coasts, that those who had known and loved 
 him would cherish his memory when he was absent. 
 Unlike the proud boast of the Roman poet, if he 
 spoke it in earnest, ' Exegi monumentum are pcren- 
 nius,' he did but indulge the hope that one whose 
 coming had been expected with pleasure might ex- 
 cite regret when he went away, and be rewarded with 
 the sympathy and praise of his friends, even in the 
 presence of other minstrels. A set of verses remains, 
 which is ascribed to him, in which he addresses the 
 Delian women in the tone of feeling I have described. 
 * Farewell to you all,' he says, ' and remember me 
 in time to come ; and when any one of men on earth, 
 a stranger from far, shall inquire of you, maid- 
 ens, who is the sweetest of minstrels hereabout, 
 and in whom you most delight ? then make answer 
 modestly. It is a blind man, and he lives in steep 
 Chios.' 
 
 " The great poet remained unknown for some cen- 
 tm'ies, — that is, unknown to what we call fame. . . . 
 At length an Athenian prince took upon him the task 
 of gathering together the scattered fragments of a 
 genius which had not aspired to immortality, of re- 
 ducing them to writinnr, and of fitting them to be the 
 
184 APPENDIX. 
 
 text-book of ancient education. Henceforth the 
 vagrant ballad-singer, as he might be thought, was 
 submitted, to his surprise, to a sort of literary can- 
 onization, and was invested with the office of form- 
 ing the young mind of Greece to noble thoughts and 
 bold deeds. To be read in Homer soon became the 
 education of a gentleman ; and a rule, recognized in 
 her free age, remained as a tradition in the times of 
 her degradation." 
 
 Dr. Newman, it will be seen, holds by the old and 
 natural belief that Homer was a man, not a myth. 
 The great Teutonic hoax, which has so long glamoured 
 the minds of the learned, seems to be somewhat 
 losing its hold. It is a fair enough question whether 
 the Iliad and the Odyssey are the work of the same 
 author ; also, whether certain passages in these books 
 may not be interpolations, and whether the great 
 creative poet may not have incorporated into his 
 work many fragments of earlier minstrelsy. But to 
 suppose that each of two long continuous poems, the 
 greatest in their kind the world has seen, were the 
 product not of one mind, but of many minds, work- 
 ing either with design or at haphazard, is too much 
 for plain men to take in. 
 
 Note IV. —Page 58. 
 
 The best exposition which I have met with of the 
 inadequacy of Phenomenalism, as a total account 
 of the whole matter, is to be found in the late Pro- 
 fessor Grcte's Exploratio PhUosophica (published at 
 Cambridge in 1865). In that work he thinks over 
 once again the iundamental problems that lie at the 
 
APPENDIX. 185 
 
 root of all philosophy. And though the style may be 
 felt to be lengthy, tentative, and hesitating, yet aL 
 who care for the subjects he treats of will readily 
 forget this for the entire freshness, honesty, and orig- 
 inality of the thinking. Ilis book reads as though 
 you overheard a real thinker thinking aloud. And 
 much of what may be regarded as defect of style 
 may be put down to the entire candor and thor- 
 oughness of the writer, caring far more for what he 
 has to say, than for the manner in which he says it. 
 
 The following are some of the contrasts he draws 
 between the phenomenal and the philosophical point 
 of view : — 
 
 " The phenomenal verb is * Is * in tlie sense of 
 < exist,' with immediate applications of it to certain 
 objects of our thought itself, the nature of the exist- 
 ence, the grounds of our supposition of it, not enter- 
 ing into consideration. The verb of philosophy, or 
 when our point of departure is consciousness or our 
 own personality, is one which has scarcely existence 
 in popular language: we might consider it to be 
 * feel ' used neutrally, or ' feel ourselves ' (the Greek 
 Ixi^^ with an adverb. In this consciousness, in the 
 philosopher's point of view, is the root of all cer- 
 tainty or knowledge. The problem of philosophy 
 is the finding the relation between existence and 
 this. . . . 
 
 " The phenomenal assumption is that the world of 
 reality exists quite independently of being known by 
 any knowing beings in it, just the same as it would 
 exist if there were no knowledge or feeling in any 
 members of it. The Berkeleian idealism is little 
 more than the easy demonstration that this view, 
 from a philosophical standing point, is untenable ] 
 
186 APPENDIX. 
 
 that tlie notion of existence, as distinguished from 
 perceivedness, is, nakedly and rudely stated, as ab- 
 horrent to the philosopher as that of perceivingness 
 and will, in any part of the matter the laws of which 
 he is seeking, is to the phenomenalist. 
 
 "I think the best way of our conceiving this phe- 
 nomenalist spirit, carefully avoiding, in our intelleC' 
 tual conception of it, any moral approbation or dis- 
 approbation of it, is to conceive what exists existing 
 without being known, — without any mind, or any- 
 thing like mind, having originated it or having been 
 concerned with its origination or arrangement, so that 
 when we find in it anything which we should describe 
 as order or form, or composition, it is not that kind 
 of order, or anything like it, which we mean when 
 we speak of putting together anything ourselves with 
 a meaning and a reason. The phenomenalist maxim 
 must be to put nothing (mentally) in the universe 
 beyond what we find there ; and what we find there 
 phenomenally is that, and nothing more, which com- 
 municates with the various natural elements, nervous 
 matter, ... of which our bodies are composed. We 
 really, phenomenally, have no right to speak of 
 order, arrangement, composition, ... in the uni- 
 verse, all which are ideas belonging to our own con- 
 sciousness of active and constructive powers. The 
 great rule of phenomenalism is to be sure that we 
 do not do that which we always naturally do do, 
 humanize the universe, recognize intelligence in it, 
 have any preliminary faith, persuasion, suppositions 
 about it, find ourselves, if I may so speak, at all at 
 home in it, think it has any concern with us." — (pp. 
 14, 15). 
 
 " The point of the difi'erence is that in the formei 
 
APPENDIX. 187 
 
 (the phenomenalist point of view) we look upon what 
 we can find out by physical research as ultimate fact, 
 as far as we are concerned, and upon conformity with 
 this as the test of truth ; so that nothing is admitted 
 as true except so far as it follows by some process of 
 inference from this. In opposition to this, the con- 
 trasted view is to the effect, that for philosophy, for 
 our entire judgment about things, we must go be- 
 yond this, or rather go further back than it. The 
 ultimate fact really for us — the basis upon which all 
 rests — being, not that things exist, but that we 
 know them, /. e., think of them as existing. The 
 order of things in this view is not existence first, and 
 then knowledge ; but knowledge (or consciousness 
 of self) first, involving or implying the existence of 
 what is known, but logically at least prior to it, and 
 conceivably more extensive than it. In the former 
 view knowledge about things is looked upon as a 
 possibly supervening accident to them or of them. 
 In the latter view, their knowableness is a part, and 
 the most important part, of their reality or essential 
 being. In the former view, mind or consciousness is 
 supposed to follow, desultorily and accidentally, after 
 matter of fact. In the latter view, mind or conscious- 
 ness begins with recognizing itself as a part of an 
 entu'e supposed matter of fact or universe, and next 
 as correspondent, in its subjective character, to the 
 whole of this besides as object, while the understand- 
 ing of this latter as known, germinates into the notion 
 of the recognition of other mind or reason in it." — 
 (p. 59.) 
 
 " We are really conscious of a non ego as of an 
 ego, we are not therefore the only existence, and from 
 
188 APPENDIX. 
 
 considering that in evolving (by thought) order and 
 character, or somethingness out of mere disorder, — 
 objects out of prae-objectal possibility — we are not 
 the only mind at work. As much as we feel our- 
 selves mind, we feel ourselves one mind, and that 
 there may be others. We know things, therefore, 
 not only because loe are, but because there are things 
 that can be known ; because there are things which 
 have in them the quality or character of knowable- 
 ness, L e., a counterpart or adaptedness to reason ; 
 which is, however we like to describe it, the same as 
 a mind or reason so far insubstantiated or embodied." 
 - (p. 58). 
 
 Note V. — Page 65. 
 
 For this view of the double aspect of all human 
 action — at least for the form in which it is here put 
 — I desire to own my obligation to a very thought- 
 fhl and searching criticism of Mr. Huxley's Lecture 
 which shortly after that Lecture was published ap- 
 peared in the Spectator. It is one of many papers 
 which from time to time appear in that periodical, 
 full of thought on the highest subjects, which is at 
 once robust and reverential. Without in any meas- 
 ure indorsing the political views of that periodical, 
 I may be allowed here to express my admiration of 
 the papers to which I allude. They are exclusively 
 on philosophical or religious subjects, or rather on 
 that border land where philosophy and religion 
 meet. One may not always agree with all that 
 they contain. But no thoughtful person, whatever 
 Ms own views may be, can read them without being 
 
APPENDIX. 189 
 
 braced in mind and spirit by their atmosphere of 
 thought. 
 
 If I had at hand the number of the Spectator which 
 contained the paper on Mr. Huxley's Lecture, I should 
 have made some extracts from it in this place. But 
 in default of this, I may be allowed, as it is pertinent 
 to the subject of my second Lecture, to make the 
 following quotation from the Spectator of July 30, 
 1870: — "The most dangerous form of unbelief at 
 the present time is what we may call the ' scientific,' 
 which says, when it contents itself with negatives, 
 * we do not find God or any of the spiritual things of 
 which you speak in the world with which we have U 
 do ; ' which goes further when it chooses to be aggres 
 sive, and says ' your theology is very much in the way 
 of the improvement and advance of the human race, 
 and we will put it out of the way.' To this, in eithei- 
 mood, all theologies are alike. ... It is with thif^ 
 that the battle must be fought out, and to any one 
 who can furnish weapons for it our deepest gratitude 
 is due." 
 
 To furnish such weapons is a task I do not now 
 venture to undertake. There are, however, certain 
 fundamental questions which may be suggested for 
 the consideration of those who are in the state of 
 scientific unbelief above described, and who yet are 
 candid men, open to conviction. It may be asked, 
 Do you really hold that the world with which science 
 deals is the whole world of existence ? If there is a 
 world of truth outside, or perhaps rather inside, of 
 that which science is cognizant of, is no part of it to 
 be believed till science has made it her own, and 
 given us scientific grounds for believing it ? You 
 (jay that you do not find God in the world with 
 
190 APPENDIX. 
 
 which you have to do. Is, however, this world of 
 yours the only world that really exists ? Is it even 
 the most important world, — important, that is, if you 
 consider all that man is, all that history proves him 
 to be and to need V 
 
 Or to put the same questions from another side. 
 Are you quite sure that, with all your science, you 
 have all the faculties necessary for apprehending all 
 truth awake and active within you ? May there not 
 be other capacities of your being, than those scientific 
 ones, which capacities you, in your entire absorption 
 in science, have hitherto allowed to lie dormant ? 
 And if so, may not these be just the very capacities 
 required to make you feel the need of God, and to 
 enable you to find Him ? 
 
 Tlie truly scientific man reverences all facts. Is 
 not this one worth his consideration V The verdict 
 of all ages has pronounced, that the exclusively 
 scientific man, he in whom the scientific side is 
 everything, and the spiritual side, that is heart, con- 
 science, spiritual aspiration, go for nothing, is but 
 half a man, developed only on one side of his nature, 
 and that not the highest side. If God is to be appre- 
 hended at all in a vital way, and not merely as an 
 intellectual abstraction, it must be first from the spir- 
 itual side of our being, by the conscience, the spirit, 
 the reverence that is in man, that he is mainly to be 
 approached. This is the centre of the whole matter. 
 From this side we must begin, however much may 
 afterwards be added by experience and acquired 
 knowledge. 
 
 I had got thus far in writing this note when I met 
 with the following passage in a paper on Dr. New- 
 man's Grammar 0/ Assent, which appeared in the 
 
APPENDIX. 191 
 
 Quarterly Review of last July, and is relevant to the 
 matter on hand. " There are two ideas of the Divine 
 Being which spring respectively from two sets of first 
 principles, — one of which gathers around conscience, 
 the other around a physical centre. Tliere is the 
 idea oi' llim as a moral governor and judge, ex- 
 pressed in the majestic language of inspiration, 
 which proclaims the ' High and lofty one that inhab- 
 iteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; keeping mercy 
 for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and 
 sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.' And 
 there is another idea of Him as the supreme mundane 
 being, the impersonation of the causes which are at 
 work in the development and completion of the vis- 
 ible world ; who looks — we cannot say from heaven 
 — with calm satisfaction upon the successful expan> 
 sion of the original seed which commenced the for- 
 mation of the vast material organism, — the universal 
 spectator of the fabric of nature, the groAvth of art, 
 and the progress of civilization. These two ideas of 
 the Deity must make all the difference in the aspect 
 in which a revelation presents itself to us ; the former 
 will recommend such a revelation as that in the Old 
 and New Testament to us; the latter will create a 
 whole foundation of thought in prehminary conflict 
 with it." 
 
 This passage seems to represent truly the two fun- 
 damental tendencies of thought on this subject, which 
 are seen abundantly exempUfied in the present time. 
 The scientific unbeUef to which the Spectator alludes 
 does not perhaps get so far as to assert a " Supremo 
 Mundane Being," but it is along this line of thought 
 that it travels, and this is what it would assert if it 
 cared or ventured to assert anything. The contest 
 
192 APPENDIX. 
 
 between these two tendencies is a radical and irrec- 
 oncilable one, — no compromise is possible. And I 
 cannot imagine how any one who has once got into 
 the purely physical way of conceiving the first origin 
 of things can pass out of it into the moral and spir- 
 itual conception, except by a radical change in his 
 whole mode of thought, an inward awakening which 
 shall make him know and feel experimentally the 
 need of a spiritual and moral Being on whom his own 
 being can repose, as it never can on any physical 
 centre. 
 
 Once more the old truth must be asserted that if 
 we are to reach God at all, in any vital way, we must 
 begin from the centre of conscience and the truths it 
 contains, — from that in us which is highest and best, 
 which highest and best, feeble though it be, is, we 
 believe, the truest image we have of His real nature. 
 This, in the religious region, is the centre of all light 
 and heat. The moral and spiritual is primary and 
 supreme. But it has always been felt that, start- 
 ing from this centre, it is the function and duty of 
 thought to radiate out, till it embraces and vitalizes 
 all that is known and that exists. And now, more 
 than ever, there is an urgent demand that thought 
 should do this, — that the bearing of the moral on 
 the physical order should be more closely pondered, 
 — that, if it might be, the point should be described, 
 at which the Supreme will touches and moves the 
 fundamental forces which make up tlie physical uni- 
 verse. In this direction there lie whole worlds of 
 undiscovered country, more important and interesting 
 than any which philosophy and science have yet re- 
 claimed. But this conquest will not be achieved by 
 any movement of thought which begins by denying 
 
APPENDIX. 193 
 
 or throwing into the background those spiritual prin 
 ciples which are the most deeply rooted, and the most 
 enduring, of any that are in man. 
 
 Note yi. — Page 122. 
 
 This thought, which has been often urged, and 
 in many forms, is put very forcibly by the Rev. J. 
 Llewelyn Davies in the preface to his book of ser- 
 mons entitled The Gospel and Modern Life. 
 
 It has since the publication of these sermons been 
 elaborately drawn out by Dr. Newman with his pe- 
 culiar power, and forms a leading portion of the argu- 
 ment in his Grammar of Assent. 
 
 The following quotation is from Mr. Davies's pref- 
 ace : — 
 
 " The arguments by which Christians of the firm- 
 est faith are and have been always most powerfully 
 moved, are not such as it is easy to lay out in contro- 
 versy, or such as can be conveniently weighed and 
 measured by logical instruments. . . . Christians are 
 continually tempted to do what all controversy solic- 
 its them to do, namely, to argue as if their business 
 was to establish, in the light of the understanding, 
 certain conclusions to which every rational person 
 must assent. But this is to put the main point, the 
 attractive action of God Himself, out of the question. 
 If the end of God be what we hold it to be, to bring 
 human souls to Himself, then the means He actually 
 employs must be living and spiritual. They are likely 
 to be infinitely various and subtle, but they will deal 
 principally with the conscience and the affections. 
 
 '^jrod is likely — nay, is certain — to manifest Him 
 13 
 
194 APPENDIX, 
 
 self more and more in proportion to faith and love. 
 Christian appeals belong naturally to a region tliat 
 may be called mystical, or may be otherwise described 
 as personal and spiritual. The experience of the 
 inner life, rightly understood and tested, is the best 
 evidence that can be adduced. Words which one 
 man can say out of his heart may strongly move an- 
 other man. If we will not acknowledge evidence of 
 this kind, the evidence does not perish or lose its 
 power, but we are simply remaining on the outside of 
 the question. 
 
 " No Christian need be ashamed of trying to rise 
 into the sphere of those motives, and to submit to the 
 government of those influences which have produced 
 all that is best in Christendom. But the truth is 
 that no one, Christian or non-Christian, can become 
 serious and think of what he himself lives by and for, 
 without appealing to considerations which may incur 
 the taunt of being personal and mystical." 
 
 Note Vn. — Page 139. 
 
 " Whex, then, even an unlearned person thus 
 trained, — from his own heart, from the action of 
 his mind upon itself, from struggles with self, from 
 an attempt to follow those impulses of his own 
 nature which he feels to be highest and noblest, 
 fi-om a vivid natural perception (natural, though 
 cherished and strengthened by prayer ; natural, 
 though unfolded and diversified by practice ; nat- 
 ural, though of that new and second natm'e which 
 God the Holy Ghost gives), from an innate, though 
 pupernatural perception of the great vision of truth 
 
APPENDIX. 195 
 
 which is external to him (a perception of it, not in- 
 deed in its fullness, but in glimpses, and by fits and 
 seasons, and in its persuasive influences, and through 
 a courageous following on after it, as a man in the 
 dark might follow after some dim and distant light), 
 — I say, when a person thus trained from his own 
 heart, reads the declarations and promises of the 
 Gospel, are we to be told that he believes in them 
 merely because he has been bid believe in them? 
 Do we not see that he has something in his own 
 breast which bears a confirming testimony to their 
 truth ? He reads that the heart is * deceitful above 
 all things and desperately wicked,' and that he in- 
 herits an evil nature from Adam, and that he is still 
 under its power, except so far as he has been re- 
 newed. Here is a mystery; but his own actual 
 and too bitter experience bears witness to the truth 
 of the declaration ; he feels the mystery of iniquity 
 within him. He reads that ' without holiness no 
 man shall see the Lord ; ' and his own love of what 
 is true and lovely and pure approves and embraces 
 the doctrine as coming from God. He reads that 
 God is angry at sin, and will punish the sinner, and 
 that it is a hard matter, nay, an impossibility, for us 
 to appease His wrath. Here, again, is a mystery; 
 but here, too, his conscience anticipates the mystery, 
 and convicts him ; his mouth is stopped. And when 
 he goes on to read that the Son of God has Himself 
 ?ome into the world in our flesh, and died upon the 
 Cross for us, does he not, amid the awful mysterious- 
 ness of the doctrine, find those words fulfilled in him 
 which that gracious Saviour uttered : ' And I, if I be 
 lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me ? ' 
 He cannot choose but believe in Him. He says, ' C 
 
196 APPENDIX. 
 
 Lord, Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed.* ** 
 — Dr. Newman's ParocJiial and Plain Sermons (Ed. 
 1868), vol. viii. pp. 117-119. 
 
 Note Vm. — Page 165. 
 
 " We are not to be impatient of mystery — which 
 encompasses us on all sides. Our God gives us light, 
 and we are to walk in it and rejoice in it ; but this 
 light seems to have ever beyond it a region of dark- 
 ness. The light is not on that account less truly 
 light, and to be trusted in as light. To permit dark- 
 ness to bring light into question — to feel sure of 
 nothing because we cannot know all things — is in 
 truth to do violence to the constitution of our being, 
 to which if we are faithful, we shall know light to 
 be really light, whatever outer circle of darkness 
 may make itself felt by us. Let us thankfully rejoice 
 in the light and reverently submit to the darkness. 
 And let us welcome that gradual widening of the 
 region of light, of which we have experience, the 
 retiring of the circle of encompassing darkness. 
 How far remaining darkness may yet give place to 
 light now or hereafter in the endless eternity before 
 us we know not. In the mean time we honor the 
 light by obeying it, and in so doing honor God, 
 while we honor Him also by a right aspect of our 
 minds towards the darkness, accepting our limits in 
 the faith of the wise love which appoints them. For 
 if we are giving God glory in what He gives us to 
 know, it will not be difficult to give Him the further 
 glory of being peaceful and at rest concerning the 
 
APPENDIX. 197 
 
 darkness which remains ; not doubting that what we 
 know not must be in harmony with what we know ; 
 and would be seen by us to be so, if God saw it 
 good that the remaining darkness sliould altogether 
 pass away : if indeed it is possible in the nature of 
 things that it should pass away. For we can believe 
 that much is embraced in the divine consciousness 
 and in the relation of the creature to God, which it 
 may be incompatible with creature limits that we 
 should know. Yet on the other hand that is a large 
 word, ' Then shall we know even as we also are 
 known.' " — Christ the Bread of Life, by John M'Leod 
 Campbell, D. D. (Second Edition), pp. 157, 158. 
 
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