NOV l <t 1915 
 
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 BR 100 .S77 1915 
 Strickland, Francis Lorette 
 1871- 
 
 Foundations of Christian 
 belief 
 
FOUNDATIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS L. STRICKLAND 
 
 Professor of Philosophy in the University of 'West Virginia, 
 formerly President of Simpson College, Iowa 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
Copyright, IBIS, by 
 FRANCIS L. STRICKLAND 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
 ANTOINETTE LOUISE 
 
 HELPFUL AND INSPIRING COMRADE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 11 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Aim and Method in the Philosophy of Religion 13 
 
 The Purpose: A Rational Interpretation of the Religious Life, 
 13. The Method Both Scientific and Philosophic, 18. Justi- 
 fication of the Philosophic Treatment of Religion, 18. His- 
 torical-Critical Treatment of Sources, 22. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Christianity and Philosophy 25 
 
 Early Christianity and Philosophy, 25. Jesus No Philosopher, 
 26. The Early Christian Writings Not Philosophical, 27. 
 Christian Writings Soon Dominated by Philosophy, 28. Clem- 
 ent of Alexandria, 28. Origen and Athanasius, 29. Augustine, 
 30. Scholasticism, 32. Dante, 33. Luther, 34. Modern 
 Philosophy and Christianity — Descartes, 34. Spinoza, 35. 
 Hegel, 36. Lotze, 39. Eucken, Ward and Bowne, 40. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Philosophic World- Views 42 
 
 Philosophy and Life, 42. Religion a Great Fact in Life, 43. 
 Religion and the Philosophic World- Views, .46. 1. Material- 
 ism: Criticism of Materialism, 51. Matter Incomprehensi- 
 ble Apart from Mind, 52. Materialism and the Origin 
 of Life, 55. Materialism and the Origin of Consciousness, 58. 
 Materialism and Moral Values, 62. Materialism and Religion, 
 64. 2. Agnosticism: Meaning of Agnosticism, 65. Kant's 
 Agnosticism, 66. Spencer's Agnosticism, 67. The Sensa- 
 tional Theory of Knowledge, 68. The Agnostic's Unknow- 
 able, 70. Conclusion, 73. Agnosticism and Christian 
 Thought, 74. S. Pantheism: Meaning of Pantheism, 77. 
 Pantheism a Monism, 78. Pantheism and Deism, 78. Criti- 
 cism of Pantheism, 80. Pantheism and Theism, 82. Pan- 
 
 5 
 
6 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 theism and the Moral Life, 84. Pantheism and Religion, 86. 
 4. The Christian World-View: Theism the Only Christian World- 
 View, 87. The Aim of Religious Philosophy, 88. Christian 
 Theism Outlined, 88. No Explanation of Creation, 90. God's 
 Moral Purpose, 92. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Knowledge, Belief, and Faith 95 
 
 Religious Knowledge, 95. Authority of Religion — Its Basis, 
 95. Divine Revelation and Religious Authority, 96. Ex- 
 perience the Ground of Religion's Authority, 98. The Nature 
 of Belief, 99. Religion Claims Knowledge, 100. Analysis of 
 Knowledge, 102. The Growth of Knowledge, 106. Evolution 
 of Subject and Object, 108. Logical Demonstration and Knowl- 
 edge, 110. Assumption and Knowledge, 111. Knowledge 
 Tested by an Appeal to Values, 112. Knowledge Vindicated in 
 Experience, 115. Knowledge and Belief — Conclusions, 116. 
 Faith, 117. The Certainties of Faith, 119. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Growth of the Christian Idea of God 122 
 
 Christianity and Philosophy, 123. Human Thought about 
 God a Gradual Development, 124. Begins with Primitive 
 Conceptions, 125. Mythology, 125. Anthropomorphism, 126. 
 The Lower and the Higher, 126. Comprehension of the Divine 
 Possible Only in Terms of Human Experience, 128. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Meaning and Implications of Personality 133 
 
 The Fundamental Elements of Personality, 133. Personality 
 and Freedom, 135. Meaning of Freedom, 136. Meaning of 
 Determinism, 137. Weakness of Determinism, 138. Deter- 
 minism and Truth, 140. Determinism and Moral Responsi- 
 bility, 141. Modified Determinism, 143. Determinism and 
 Character, 144. Determinism and Repentance, 145. Our 
 Consciousness of Freedom, 146. The Abstract Problem of 
 Freedom or Determinism Insoluble, 147. Freedom and Life, 
 148. Meaning of Freedom, 149. Freedom Not Lawlessness, 150. 
 Freedom and Monism, 152. Grounds for Affirming Freedom, 
 153. Creative Thought Points to Freedom, 153. Freedom 
 Fundamental to Personality, 156. Moral Love and Personality, 
 157. Importance of the Feelings, 158. Personality Grows Out 
 of Social Relations, 160. Conclusion, 160. 
 
CONTENTS 7 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Divine Personality 162 
 
 Limitation Not an Essential Element in Personality, 162. Ob- 
 jections to Thinking of God as Personal, 163. An Abstract 
 "Absolute" Serves No Useful Purpose, 166. Moral Relation 
 Involves Obligation, 166. Speculative Conception of God Re- 
 sults in Practical Atheism, 167. God's Limitations Self-imposed, 
 169. Divine Personality the Only Basis of Religion, 170. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Conceptions op the Divine Activity 173 
 
 God's Being Manifested in His Activity, 173. 1. Transcendence: 
 Meaning of Transcendence, 174. Resulting View of Creation, 
 175. Leads to False Idea of Nature's Independence, 176. 2. Im- 
 manence: Meaning of Immanence, 179. God "In the World" Not 
 Spatially, but Dynamically, 179. Meaning of Natural Law, 182. 
 Creation is the Eternal Manifestation of Divine Energy, 182. 
 Personality Saves Immanence from Pantheism, 186. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Revelation op God in Nature 188 
 
 Meaning of Revelation in Nature, 188. Adaptations in Nature, 
 189. Evolution and the Design Argument, 190. Divine Purpose 
 and the Problems of Providence — Conclusion, 191. 
 
 CHAPTER LX 
 
 The Revelation op God in the Non-Christian Religions... . 196 
 
 Modern Knowledge of the Great Religions of the East, 196. 
 
 All Great Religions Born in Asia, 197. Great Truths Found in 
 
 the Oriental Faiths, 197. Non-Christian Religions a Phase of 
 
 the Divine Revelation, 200. Weakness of the Ethnic Religions, 
 
 201. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Revelation op God in Human Personality 203 
 
 The Revelation Through Nature Not Sufficient for a Moral 
 Religion, 204. Personal Relations Demanded, 205. Speculative 
 Objections, 206. "God is Love," 207. Moral Love Made 
 Known Only Through Personality, 209. God Revealed in 
 Particular Personalities, 210. God Revealed in Humanity, 211. 
 Most Perfectly in Jesus Christ, 212. Significant Facts Pointing 
 to This, 213. Divinity of Jesus, 215. Divinity Revealed 
 Through Humanity, 216. The Divine in the Human, 217. 
 
8 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Revelation of God in Individual Experience 219 
 
 Revelation of God Through Individual Experience, 219. The 
 Objective Reference in Sense-Experience, 220. "Subjective" 
 Objects of Thought, 221. Meaning of Subjective and Objective, 
 222. Conversion of Paul, 223. Perfectly Real to Paul, 224. 
 Objectively Real, 226. Was a Divine Call "Spoken" to Paul? 
 226. God "Spake"; the Essential Meaning, 227. Prayer: The 
 Christian View of Prayer, 230. Alwaj's According to God's 
 Will, 231. Prayer Not a Form of Physical Energy, 232. Knowl- 
 edge of God's Purposes May Limit Our Prayers, 233. An- 
 swers to Prayer a Fact of Experience, 234. Another Objection, 
 236. "Subjective" Value of Prayer, 237. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Bible as a Record of Divine Revelation 239 
 
 The Bible a Record of Human Experiences in which God Has 
 Made Himself Known, 240. The Facts About the Bible, 242. 
 The Bible Interpreted in the Light of Experience, 243. Author- 
 ity of Bible Not Grounded in Inerrancy, 244. The Bible Is 
 First a Human Record, 244. The Epistles, 247. The Gospels, 
 248. The Growth of the New Testament, 250. Meaning of 
 Inspiration, 251. The Progressive Nature of Revelation, 253. 
 The Bible and Other Sacred Writings, 254. The Supremacy of 
 the Bible, 256. Redemption the Great Purpose of the Christian 
 Revelation, 259. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Place of the Supernatural in the Christian Revelation 262 
 Origin of Belief in the Supernatural in Early Religion, 263. The 
 Problem, 264. Modern Tendency to Depreciate Importance of 
 Miracle, 264. Value of Miracle for Christian Faith, 265. 
 Meaning of "Supernatural" and "Miracle", 267. Divine 
 Purpose in a Moral World Order, 271. God as Personal Implies 
 His Moral Purposes, 273. Divine Purpose Realized in the His- 
 toric Christian Revelation Through Miracle, 275. Miracles and 
 Christian Faith, 278. Miracles and Historic Christianity, 279. 
 Belief in the Supernatural a Practical Demand of Faith, 281. 
 
CONTENTS 9 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Christian Faith in Immortality 283 
 
 Belief in Life After Death in Early Religions, 283. In Religion 
 of Assyria and Babylonia, 283. In Early Aryan Religion, 284. 
 In Religion of Ancient Egypt, 286. Hebrew Beliefs, 287. Im- 
 mortality in the New Testament, 290. Faith of the Early 
 Christians Based on the Teaching of Jesus, 290. The Christian 
 Faith in Immortality, 291. Foundation of this Faith in Immor- 
 tality, 294. The Teaching of Jesus, 294. The Resurrection of 
 Jesus from the Dead, 295. Grounds for the Christian Belief in 
 Immortality from Science, 298. Grounds of Belief in Personal 
 Immortality — from Philosophy, 306. Faith in Life Beyond 
 Death a Spiritual Achievement, 316. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These pages are addressed to all who have an inter- 
 est in the deeper problems of present-day religious 
 thinking. The purpose is to draft sound philosophy 
 into the service of religion. Thoughtful men and 
 women who love the Christian faith not infrequently 
 find their horizons of knowledge widening and some 
 of their fundamental religious conceptions undergoing 
 change. When this happens the fogs of perplexity 
 and doubt are apt to drift in. It is hoped that these 
 pages may afford some guidance to thought, so that 
 even though modifications of belief may become neces- 
 sary, the deeper convictions may not be weakened nor 
 religious faith lose its spiritual content. Religion is 
 not primarily a matter of clear or correct belief ; it is 
 an experience of the soul entered into through faith, 
 obedience, and love. But clear thinking on the great 
 fundamental issues is of prime importance. The soul 
 does not generally nurture great convictions while 
 reason is groping. And clear and strong Christian 
 thinking is very necessary if the Christian Church is 
 to make an authoritative appeal to the life of to-day. 
 
 We shall attempt to discuss some fundamental 
 matters in the philosophy of religion. The method 
 will not be that of abstract speculation. We shall con- 
 sider fundamental truths in the philosophical spirit 
 but from the standpoint of religious values. Matters 
 of doctrinal theology and literary criticism which do 
 
 not belong to a philosophical treatment of religion are 
 
 ll 
 
12 PREFACE 
 
 excluded, the purpose being broadly constructive, not 
 critical. Christianity is the most complete expression 
 of the religious consciousness and the summit of the 
 divine revelation. It is the only faith great enough 
 and pure enough and divine enough to meet the needs 
 of the soul. 
 
 My debt to my teachers is great. Foremost among 
 these was the late lamented Dr. Borden P. Bowne, of 
 Boston University. I also acknowledge guidance and 
 help from the scholars whose works are cited in 
 notes at the end of several chapters. My thanks 
 are due to my friends Professor Albert C. Knudson, 
 of Boston University School of Theology, and Pro- 
 fessor William North Rice, of Wesleyan University, 
 for valuable criticism after they read a portion of the 
 manuscript. 
 
 If these pages shall help some to see more clearly 
 that, in spite of the changes wrought in human think- 
 ing by modern science and philosophy, "the founda- 
 tions of God stand fast," they will have found a 
 justification. 
 
 Francis L. Strickland. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE AIM AND METHOD IN THE PHILOSOPHY 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 The Purpose: A Rational Interpretation of the Religious 
 Life. In the philosophy of religion we seek a system- 
 atic and rational interpretation of religious expe- 
 rience. And here we use the term "religious experi- 
 ence" in its broadest sense as including all human 
 thought and action which has to do with religion. It 
 includes all fundamental religious beliefs, and all acts 
 of worship and other practices which exist because of 
 men's belief in a world of supersensuous or spiritual 
 reality. It is the task of philosophy to interpret our 
 conscious experience — to seek those basal principles 
 or truths which give to our conscious experience in all 
 its infinite variety a fundamental unity and harmony. 
 And surely no one will deny that religion is a great 
 and exceedingly important part of human experience. 
 Religion is a fact in the life of every man. He who 
 makes no profession of having had an "experience of 
 religion" in the commonly accepted sense of a personal 
 crisis in religious thought and feeling, nevertheless 
 has on every hand an experience of religion in the 
 philosophical sense. The evidences of religion are all 
 about him, in human customs and institutions, in 
 the beliefs, habits and practices of men. Philosophy 
 of religion, then, in the broad sense, is the attempt 
 
 13 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 rationally to interpret a great and important part of 
 our experience. Leaving aside now the question of 
 the origin of religion or its ultimate ground of valid- 
 ity, the fact remains that religion exists — and that its 
 manifestations comprise a considerable portion of our 
 life experience. For this reason the justification of 
 philosophy of religion rests upon precisely the same 
 grounds as that of philosophy itself. Indeed, it is 
 implied in what has just been said that philosophy of 
 religion is but the aim and method of philosophy 
 applied to the interpretation of a definite portion of 
 experience. 
 
 It will be seen at once that the scope of religion and 
 the complexity of the problems it presents make its 
 treatment by a philosophical method far from simple, 
 for in the systematic study of the religious life we 
 are not dealing with forces which are constant and 
 invariable like those, for instance, dealt with in 
 physics. We are dealing, rather, with phases of life 
 as they manifest themselves in those variables named 
 human belief, emotion and will. In other words, we 
 deal with life on the plane of the personal. This 
 makes a philosophy of religion particularly difficult. 
 It also makes it all the more important that we 
 develop a proper method, a method which will recog- 
 nize constantly that when we deal with religion we are 
 dealing with personal life, and with a great factor in 
 human history which has always stood in the closest 
 relation to the practical concerns of life. 
 
 But any attempt to find a rational and systematic 
 interpretation of religion must take account of all 
 the essential elements of the religious life. Far too 
 many attempts at religious philosophy have been 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 partial and one-sided because there was a failure to 
 recognize that religion involves the whole personality. 
 Thus Kant wrote his "Religion within the Limits of 
 the Purely Rational." His ideal was a rational and 
 ethical religion freed from all elements of emotion 
 and mysticism. It is not strange that under this 
 treatment he makes religion to be little more than a 
 performance of our duties because of the obligation 
 laid upon us by God's will and the moral law which 
 embodies that will. And Kant's error has been fol- 
 lowed by many others, with the result that religion 
 has often been set forth as a matter of correct intel- 
 lectual conceptions under the mistaken apprehension 
 that if men can only be made to see the truth clearly, 
 they will govern their lives by it. 
 
 Schopenhauer's treatment of religion was equally 
 onesided and its outcome even worse. He revolted 
 from Kant's doctrine that we can never know things 
 as they really are. He affirmed that in the human will 
 we find a way of passing from a purely relative knowl- 
 edge of the world to a knowledge which represents 
 objective reality. But noting also how weak and 
 inadequate the human will is, and how it leads men 
 into all sorts of terrible evil, he developed a pessim- 
 istic view of the world and wrote a philosophy of reli- 
 gion in which patient resignation appears as the chief 
 human virtue. The best hopes of life, according to 
 Schopenhauer, are those of personal extinction. Thus 
 his one-sided emphasis of the will led him out into a 
 religion akin in spirit to Buddhism and far away from 
 Christian ideals. The over-emphasis of sensibility also 
 in religion has produced all manner of fanaticism and 
 extravagance. "Feeling good" has loomed up so large 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 as an element in religion that "doing good" has too 
 often found a very subordinate place. 
 
 Psychology has taught us to study the mental life 
 under three aspects, namely, thought, feeling, and will. 
 These are the inseparable elements of personality. 
 And any attempt to set forth the meaning of the reli- 
 gious life must reckon with each. From this it will 
 be seen that psychology must be looked to to afford 
 us light upon many of the problems w T hich a philo- 
 sophic interpretation of religion raises. The facts of 
 religion are of a very different nature from the facts 
 of biology or physics or chemistry. Religious facts 
 are the expression by living men of the thoughts, feel- 
 ings, and volitions which possess them, while the facts 
 of natural science are occurrences in a fixed mechan- 
 ical order. These religious acts of men are, further- 
 more, efforts to satisfy their pressing needs — the need 
 of the physical organism for food, the need for pro- 
 tection from the elements or deliverance from impend- 
 ing evil, relief from the sense of guilt, the strengthen- 
 ing of their hopes. Thus it will be seen that all we can 
 know concerning the nature and workings of the 
 human mind will stand us in good stead when we come 
 to the problems of religion. Without some knowledge 
 of psychology no one can get on in the philosophical 
 study of religion. Here is one reason why the philos- 
 ophy of religion developed late. It was necessary that 
 men should first gain a knowledge of the human mind 
 and its processes before the vast mass of material 
 secured through investigation of the life, beliefs, 
 customs, and practices of primitive peoples could be 
 interpreted, and the early chapters in the history of 
 religion written. 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 Then, again, religion claims to be based upon 
 knowledge. We often use the word "faith" and say 
 that faith is the organ of religion. But this faith can- 
 not be regarded simply as the projection of our fond 
 hopes. To think of faith as devoid of that element of 
 certainty which we assume for knowledge is to reduce 
 faith to the level of probability and to set it over in 
 sharp antithesis to knowledge. The purely subjective 
 side of religion would remain, but that would cease to 
 have authority. Let a man be convinced that religious 
 faith is simply the projection of the earnest longings 
 and fond hopes of the soul, and religious faith will 
 cease to hold him. A thoroughgoing agnosticism 
 leaves no place for religion except as beneficent con- 
 vention or custom. But religion must lay claim to 
 valid knowledge. We shall take up these matters 
 more fully in their place. 
 
 An interpretation of the religious life, therefore, 
 demands that we find and set forth some adequate 
 grounds for religious certainty. To do this is one of 
 the great purposes of these studies. If we can do this, 
 we shall see that faith is but a phase of knowledge 
 and the same foundations underlie that portion of 
 experience called religion as underlie the whole of 
 experience. 
 
 In these studies we shall first seek to expound 
 briefly that philosophic world- view upon which we 
 must rest our fundamental Christian conceptions. 
 Some criticism of the world-views wilich leave no 
 place for Christian belief must be offered. From the 
 body of Christian belief we shall endeavor to select 
 those great basal truths which are fundamental to 
 Christianity. And by Christianity we do not mean a 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 creed nor a theological system, but a great religious 
 faith. 
 
 The Method Both Scientific and Philosophic. The method 
 used by scholars in the modern study of religion is 
 scientific. This means the careful collection of facts, 
 and then the induction of the principles. This is, in 
 a general way, the method of science, and it has 
 yielded rich results in the hands of investigators in 
 the field of religion. There is need also for the method 
 of philosophy. The modern philosopher builds on the 
 results of the scientific investigator. On the basis of 
 the facts gained he seeks the underlying principles 
 in the hope of explaining the facts in their origin and 
 relation. These results are to be gained through 
 systematic, rational reflection. The modern philo- 
 sophical method demands logical consistency of 
 course. Reason is supreme, but the experience of 
 generations of philosophizing has shown that abstract 
 speculation is barren. Only as rational reflection con- 
 cerns itself with the great practical values of life is 
 it able to gain results which make it worth the while. 
 The pathway to the heights of truth does not lie 
 through abstract speculation. We therefore frankly 
 confess that, while Ave shall follow the philosophic 
 method in our discussion, we shall try not to lose 
 sight of the great moral and religious values in life. 
 Too much has been already written in the realm of 
 religious philosophy from the standpoint of abstract 
 speculation with the result that its value for life has 
 been very slight. 
 
 Justification of the Philosophic Treatment of Religion. 
 The admissibility of the method of rational reflection 
 applied to the study of religion has been called in 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 question. There are those who hold that religion is 
 not a proper subject for philosophic treatment at all. 
 The objections fall into two classes : first, from those 
 who deny that we can have any knowledge, properly 
 speaking, of realities which lie beyond the senses. 
 These objectors would assure us that knowledge is 
 confined to the realm of sense-experience and those 
 things which we may know from reasoning from the 
 data furnished in sense-experience. Herbert Spencer 
 is perhaps the most prominent thinker whose position 
 would necessitate this objection. His doctrine has 
 come to be recognized as typical of modern agnosti- 
 cism. It must suffice here to say in regard to such an 
 objection that it is superficial and fails to recognize 
 the supersensuous element in all knowledge. It is 
 really not so much an objection to philosophy as 
 applied to religion as it is an objection to sound 
 philosophy itself. In Chapter III we shall attempt 
 more fully to dispose of this objection of the agnostic. 
 The second class of objections to the application 
 of the scientific method to religion may be summa- 
 rized as follows: It is urged that religion, or reli- 
 gious experience, transcends mere knowledge. It 
 implies a supernatural element — a revelation or 
 communication of the thought and will of God 
 to the individual. Hence God has given a special 
 revelation. This we must accept, and anything 
 further is unnecessary. The use of the reason, espe- 
 cially a strict method of research such as is used for 
 the discovery of finite knowledge, is not properly to 
 be applied to the religious life, which always rests 
 upon the simple acceptance of a divine revelation. 
 Of course this objection is not generally offered 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 against historical nor archaeological studies hi reli- 
 gion, but it is sometimes urged against all attempts 
 to formulate a philosophy of religion or to seek in 
 psychology any light upon the facts of religious expe- 
 rience. 
 
 But granting that there is and always must be a 
 considerable difference between the facts dealt with 
 by natural science and those which come under our 
 observation when we take up the study of religion, 
 we may nevertheless urge that the acceptance of reli- 
 gion as resting upon the foundation of a divine revela- 
 tion in no way forbids the full use of reason in deal- 
 ing with the facts of the religious life. 
 
 For, upon what ground shall we believe the revela- 
 tion to be divine? And surely we must believe it 
 divine in order to accept it as authoritative. Only 
 two possibilities are open : first, that of an authority 
 external to ourselves which shall be absolute; or, 
 second, the recognition that there must be grounds 
 in reason for the acceptance of the revelation as 
 divine, and hence authoritative. The Eoman Church 
 takes the first position and answers every attempt 
 within her borders to give reason free play with the 
 absolute dictum of authority. The Church has de- 
 clared certain doctrines to be true, therefore they 
 are to be received by all as authoritative. The Church 
 has set her seal of approval upon certain books, there- 
 fore they are to be accepted by her adherents as divine 
 revelation. The second possibility is that even though 
 a divine revelation be accepted as authority, there 
 must be some grounds for such acceptance, and these 
 must lie in reason. The reason must furnish the 
 credentials for accepting the revelation as divine, and 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 if that is so, it means that the content of the revela- 
 tion must, on the whole, approve itself to reason. 
 Thus it appears that unless we are ready to accept the 
 voice of external authority as absolute and take our 
 place beside the Romanist, we must leave for reason 
 an important place in dealing with religion — granting 
 fully that religion rests for its foundation, not only 
 upon those truths which have emerged as the result 
 of reasoning, but also upon truths which have come as 
 revelation. There can be, then, no valid objection 
 against the critical method as offered to the study of 
 religion. It is no less reverent to study, with all the 
 help afforded by modern scientific knowledge, God's 
 work in the human spirit than it is to study his work 
 in the human body or in that larger human body we 
 call society. 
 
 We do well to remember that the broader study of 
 Christianity itself has come by way of a scientific and 
 philosophic study of primitive religion and then of 
 the non-Christian religions. We now speak freely 
 of the evolution of religion, but in doing so we only 
 state in brief and current phraseology the method in 
 which the religious consciousness and life have de- 
 veloped. And to speak of the evolution of Chris- 
 tianity does not mean that our religion is of "natural" 
 origin, but only that it stands at the summit of a 
 revelation of the Divine which has mauifested 
 itself in a gradually developing moral and spirit- 
 ual consciousness in man. When Christianity is 
 studied systematically beside the great ethnic faiths, 
 the comparisous and the contrasts which emerge 
 show Christianity's immense superiority. Just as 
 evolution applied to humanity means that the hu- 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 man species stands as the crown of an upward 
 development of organic life through countless ages, 
 so the evolution of Christianity means that our reli- 
 gion is the highest point in an age-long revelation of 
 God, beginning in the dim twilight of the remote past 
 and ending in that hour when God revealed his great 
 love as a sufferer on Calvary with and for men, in 
 order that through this supreme revelation men might 
 be won for obedience to and fellowship with him. 
 This marks the highest possible level of moral and 
 spiritual growth. 
 
 Historical-Critical Treatment of Sources. It remains to 
 add a word concerning the use of the historical-crit- 
 ical method in the study of religious literatures and 
 other sources. The method is conveniently called his- 
 torical because through historical research we gain 
 many of the facts of the religious life of mankind. 
 The sources for this historical research are monu- 
 ments, inscriptions, literary remains, etc., which have 
 come down to us from former ages. To reconstruct 
 the life and thought of a former age is the task of the 
 historical critic. The method is called critical because 
 the principles of literary criticism and interpretation 
 play an important part in a proper interpretation of 
 these various records which we have received from 
 former ages. Other important sources for the study 
 of religion are the studies of uncivilized peoples living 
 to-day in various parts of the world by scholars in 
 anthropology and ethnology, or by travelers, explor- 
 ers, and missionaries who write from first-hand knowl- 
 edge. The number of these source books has greatly 
 multiplied until now there is hardly a spot in the 
 whole world whose native tribes have not been studied 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 by trained observers and the results of the study 
 recorded in original published works which are avail- 
 able to students of ethnology and primitive religion. 1 
 We have sought in the preceding paragraphs to 
 outline the philosophic method in the study of reli- 
 gion. We have tried to set it forth as the method not 
 only for the studies attempted in this volume but as 
 the method followed by all modern students of the 
 science and philosophy of religion. The dogmatic 
 method of treating religion with its constant appeal 
 to some external authority is a thing of the past 
 among scholars. In the study of the religious life and 
 of the development of the religious consciousness the 
 method of research must be employed. This forbids 
 that we should generalize except in accordance with 
 facts furnished in experience. Through the method 
 of philosophy we seek the underlying relations and 
 the ultimate causes so far as they may be inferred. 
 This is the only method which nets certain and per- 
 manent results. In this way only can Ave come to the 
 conviction that the truths of religion are in harmony 
 with the truths of science and every other realm of 
 human thinking. 
 
 1 Among the most valuable and recent of these works are those by Tyler, Frazer F. 
 Ratzel, A. W. Howitt, and Spencer and Gillen. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 In a very true sense the relation of philosophy to 
 religion is expounded and illustrated in the entire 
 discussion to follow in these studies. The main pur- 
 pose of this work is to bring some of the results of 
 well-matured philosophy to the service of Christian 
 thinking. It will be of interest and profit, however, 
 at the outset to suggest a few things concerning the 
 relation of historic Christianity to philosophy as both 
 developed from age to age; at the same time indicat- 
 ing some of the conceptions of philosophy which are 
 fitted to serve as a rational norm for Christian teach- 
 ing and experience. 
 
 Early Christianity and Philosophy. The aim of phi- 
 losophy is primarily to satisfy the reason, enabling us 
 to find a systematic and rational interpretation of 
 experience. Religion, on the other hand, is the whole 
 expression of the human spirit in faith, beliefs, wor- 
 ship and conduct with reference to a world of unseen 
 and eternal existence. Our religious convictions come 
 from the needs of the inner life. We long to know 
 God and persist in our search after him, not because 
 we hope to understand God and find in him a means 
 of comprehending the mysteries of existence, but be- 
 cause we feel our own need of some one greater and 
 more powerful than ourselves. The Divine Being is 
 
 25 
 
26 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIxVN BELIEF 
 
 primarily an object of our worship, not a problem for 
 our intellect. When men seek only to understand 
 God, the way of thought grows dark. All attempts 
 to comprehend the Divine through rational specula- 
 tion from Origen to Hegel end in conceptions which 
 are abstract, remote, and unfitted to satisfy the needs 
 of the human spirit. Even in Christian theology 
 when we come away from a consideration of the so- 
 called "metaphysical attributes" of God, we find we 
 have greatly multiplied our perplexities at the expense 
 of assurance and comfort. While, on the other hand, 
 the soul's resolve to trust God and to love him, even 
 in those hours when it seems most nearly impossible 
 to understand him, is an act of faith and brings rest 
 to thought and moral courage. 
 
 Jesus No Philosopher. The origin of Christianity is 
 Jesus Christ. We recognize fully that our religion 
 as a great spiritual movement in history first grew in 
 the rich soil of Judaism. And yet Christianity was 
 no mere enlargement of Judaism. Jesus had, indeed, 
 been carefully trained in the faith of his fathers. The 
 words of the Old Testament came easily and accu- 
 rately from his lips. But we do not study his wonder- 
 ful teachings long before becoming convinced that we 
 have here something far beyond the spirit and pre- 
 cepts of the Jewish religion. Indeed, Jesus swept 
 away Judaism so far as it was a system of external 
 rites and legal devices to gain the divine favor. The 
 keynote of Jesus's teaching is that all the demands 
 of the moral law will be fully met by a joyous love to 
 God as the heavenly Father, and a fraternal regard 
 for others as brothers in the great Divine Family. 
 Jesus's first followers were born and bred in the Jew- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 27 
 
 ish faith and it was difficult for them to break the 
 bonds of Jewish thought and feeling. But Christian- 
 ity could not be confined within the limits of any 
 national faith, and in a few years after the death of 
 its Founder it is being proclaimed as a spiritual 
 message for all mankind. 
 
 Jesus wrote nothing. His teachings were far 
 removed in both form and spirit from philosophy or 
 theology. He never reasoned his way to the mighty 
 truths he taught. He simply took for granted the 
 great fact of God and spent his strength in teaching 
 men to put the deepest and richest content into their 
 thought of God and his relation to them. It is marvel- 
 ous how Jesus disregarded all intellectual subtleties 
 in his teaching and with a freshness and power which 
 we feel undiminished to-day he led men directly to the 
 great truths of life and destiny. 
 
 The Early Christian Writings Not Philosophical. The 
 earlier writings of the followers of Jesus were of a 
 thoroughly practical and religious nature. They were 
 a record of the words and deeds of the Master. And 
 the early Christian preaching was without doubt a 
 simple and direct appeal to accept Christ as the Son 
 of God, to receive his teaching about God and to 
 follow his simple but lofty plan of living. But as 
 soon as the apostle Paul started to set forth the Chris- 
 tian teaching with an attempt at systematic form he 
 could not escape the necessity of expounding the 
 Christian conceptions with some reference to prevail- 
 ing methods of thinking. This was especially the case 
 in those writings which were addressed to the 
 churches where the influence of Greek thought Avas 
 predominant. And while his later epistles still con- 
 
28 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 tinue to serve the great practical purpose of the in- 
 struction and exhortation of new converts to Chris- 
 tianity, yet there are distinct traces of the influence 
 of philosophy in the New Testament. For example, 
 Paul's teaching about the preexistence of Christ, and 
 Christ as the "ideal man," suggest the influence of 
 Greek idealism. In the fourth Gospel Saint John 
 has (assuming that the Gospel is from the pen of 
 John the apostle) adopted ideas from the Hellenistic 
 philosophy. 
 
 Christian Writings Soon Dominated by Philosophy. For 
 several generations after the close of the age of the 
 apostles Christian writers were engaged with the task 
 of defending Christianity. This they did for the most 
 part by attempts to expound the meaning of the 
 sacred writings. They also made attempts to system- 
 atize Christian teaching and to interpret its meaning. 
 Wishing to commend their doctrines to the educated, 
 it was natural that certain Christian apologists 
 should seek for points of contact between Christian 
 teaching and the fundamental ideas of the great 
 philosophical thinkers. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria. The first Christian writer of 
 eminence to do this was Clement of Alexandria. By 
 the middle of the second century he had attempted to 
 set forth the basic beliefs of Christianity in systematic 
 and rational form. Clement was a master of Greek 
 philosophy and the significance of his work lay in his 
 attempt to expound the distinctive conceptions of 
 Christianity in such fashion as to harmonize them 
 with some of the basal ideas of Greek idealism. 
 Under the influence of this philosophy, he taught a 
 doctrine of God very different from that of the Jewish 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 29 
 
 faith. Jewish theology held to the old Semitic con- 
 ceptions of the divine — a God who having made the 
 world is to be thought of as separate from it. This 
 Jewish conception of God, while it included moral 
 and personal elements, retained many of the features 
 of the old and crude anthropomorphism. Clement, 
 on the other hand, had asked profound questions con- 
 cerning the relation of God to finite existence and to 
 our human knowledge. The result was a Christian 
 philosophy of the Divine Existence w T hich contained 
 the germ-thoughts developed by Origen and Atha- 
 nasius into the teaching concerning God's relation to 
 the world which we name in modern philosophic 
 phrase the divine immanence. This came clearly from 
 the influence of the great Greek thinkers, especially 
 the Pythagoreans and Plato. Indeed, Clement frankly 
 calls Greek philosophy the schoolmaster (ncudayuyog) 
 of Christian thought, and expresses it as his belief 
 that God inspired those philosophers of Greece whose 
 teachings are in fundamental accord with the ideas 
 of Christianity. 1 
 
 Origen and Athanasius. In Clement's disciple Origen 
 the strong influence of Greek idealism is quite as 
 marked, in both his writings and those of Atha- 
 nasius we find teachings which indicate clearly that 
 these Christian thinkers have asked the great ques- 
 tion concerning God's relation to the world and its 
 forces, and have answered it in essentially the fashion 
 that the modern Christian philosopher does — by a 
 doctrine that God is the ever-present thought and life 
 of the world ; that its forces and processes constantly 
 express his will. Thus early in the history of Chris- 
 
 i Stromata i, 28-37. 
 
30 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 tian thinking we find this comprehensive conception 
 of the finite world as a constant expression of God's 
 creative energy — and all its ongoing forces as a mani- 
 festation of his divine will. It is wonderful, as John 
 Fiske points out, "how closely Athanasius approaches 
 the confines of modern scientific thought simply 
 through his fundamental conception of God as the 
 indwelling life of the universe." 2 
 
 Augustine. But the master mind of Western or 
 Latin Christianity was not Origen nor Athanasius, 
 but Augustine. Following the Greek theologians and 
 the philosophy of Neoplatonism, Augustine learned to 
 think of God as Spirit. But refusing to accept the 
 Greek doctrine that the true nature of God can never 
 be known, he maintained that in Jesus Christ we do 
 know the real nature of God. But now begin to 
 appear the distinctive elements of Augustine's theol- 
 ogy. He had a very profound sense of the reality of 
 sin. The material world is utterly evil and human 
 nature weak and depraved. Men are infected with 
 moral evil from their very birth. This was the doc- 
 trine of "Adamic sin," or "depravity," of later theol- 
 ogy. The God of infinite holiness was thought of as 
 having little to do with the depraved world. Thus 
 grew up the idea of "the bad world" as separated 
 from the good God, the temporal and material from 
 the spiritual and eternal. This dualism ran through 
 all Augustine's thinking. As the world was thought 
 of as an existence separate from God, but God as 
 sovereign over the world, everything which takes place 
 in the world was conceived as planned by God before 
 the world came into bein<r. Here the foundations 
 
 2 The Idea of God, p. 86. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 31 
 
 were laid for the doctrine of predestination. The 
 point to be especially noted in this development is the 
 conception of the relation of the infinite to the finite. 
 God as spirit is thought of as removed from a mate- 
 rial world which he indeed created, bnt which is so 
 evil and depraved that it cannot manifest his holiness 
 and perfection. The view here is that called tran- 
 scendence in modern phrase. 
 
 This is, indeed, a most fragmentary and imperfect 
 summary of the thought of the great Roman Chris- 
 tian, but it indicates the principal features of the 
 Christian doctrine of God which prevailed in Latin 
 Christianity for a thousand years. In fact, the con- 
 ceptions of Augustine have not ceased to have their 
 effect upon Christian thought even to the present day. 
 The dominant influence of Aristotle's logic in the 
 mediaeval ages, and the consequent exaltation of 
 formal reasoning and the growth of ecclesiastical 
 authority, tended to cast the Augustinian theology 
 in the hard and fast molds of dogmatism. These were 
 not broken until the vast scientific achievements of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gradually com- 
 pelled an entire reconstruction of Christian thinking. 
 
 As Augustine created a theology the keynote of 
 which was divine authority, so Gregory the Great 
 created a system of ecclesiastical machinery in which 
 that theology could be used to advantage. And from 
 the sixth century on the task of the Church was to 
 retain and discipline a rude people. With the final 
 dissolution of the empire the only bond of union left 
 to bind the various peoples of Europe together was 
 the Church. Probably the best method of moral and 
 religious training was that which prevailed. Men 
 
32 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 were taught that the Church was the sole mediator 
 between themselves and God, and only through her 
 authoritative teachings and rites was salvation pos- 
 sible. With such a view it is not to be wondered at 
 that religious thinking remained stationary and upon 
 the low levels of mere external authority and implicit 
 trust in the teachings and rites of the Church. 
 
 Scholasticism. But in the eleventh century began 
 Scholasticism, that twilight which preceded the dawn 
 of modern philosophy. The aim of Scholasticism was 
 to defend the fixed doctrines of the Church with rea- 
 son. By reason is meant rather formal reasoning. 
 Aristotle's works on logic had been extant in Latin 
 translation during the Middle Ages, and the authority 
 of Aristotle in regard to the form of reasoning was 
 quite as complete and final as the authority of the 
 Church with regard to content. Anselm (1050-1124) 
 is the first thinker of prominence. His method is well 
 expressed in his motto, ''Credo ut intelligam" He 
 assumed the absolute truth of the doctrines of the 
 Church and simply set forth to see what could be done 
 to buttress them with the results of rational reflec- 
 tion. In contrast with Anselm came Abelard, who 
 turned Anselm's motto about and made it read, 
 "Intelligo ut credam." This was a refreshing protest 
 against religious faith founded simply upon tradi- 
 tion and external authority. Abelard insisted that a 
 vital faith must come not from the passive acceptance 
 of truth on authority but from the best that the intel- 
 lect can do to comprehend Divine truth. This seemed 
 highly rationalistic and dangerous to Bernard of 
 Clairvaux, the mystic, who succeeded in having Abe- 
 lard condemned. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 33 
 
 In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas (1225- 
 1274) elaborated a system of theology and church 
 polity upon which the Roman Catholic Church relies 
 to this day. His aim was, first, to mediate or rather 
 combine the rationalism of Abelard and the pietism 
 of Bernard ; and, second, to attempt to establish upon 
 a basis of reason the claims of the Church to absolute 
 authority. We must note only two significant matters 
 in Thomas's teaching. First, he made a very sharp 
 distinction between faith and reason. Some truths 
 may be learned through the processes of reason, while 
 other truths are not at all capable of being known in 
 this fashion, but must be accepted on faith. And "on 
 faith" in the system of Thomas Aquinas meant upon 
 the authority of the Church. When we find that all 
 the distinctively religious truths are declared to be 
 those a knowledge of which reason has no power 
 to give, it can be seen how thoroughgoing was the 
 attempt to establish the authority of the Church over 
 the minds of men. Second, Aquinas taught that 
 while Augustine was right in affirming that all that 
 takes place in the world is strictly according to the 
 divine will, nevertheless God's will is realized through 
 human wills, and therefore God has created us morally 
 free. 
 
 Dante. In the powerful message of Dante, the poet- 
 theologian, Ave find foregleams of the new ages that 
 were yet to come. His spirit was that of the Renais- 
 sance, but his thought forms were those of the fixed 
 theology of Augustine which had served the Church 
 for so many ages as a basis of doctrine. Dante's love 
 for political freedom and his longing for society's 
 social rebirth seem strangely incongruous with the 
 
34 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 grim theology which beset his thinking. The dualism 
 of a good God and a wicked world, the sharp antith- 
 esis of reason and faith, the full acknowledgment 
 of the absolute authority of the Church in matters 
 of belief are all present in his conception of Chris- 
 tianity. And yet we find in Dante a greater emphasis 
 upon human responsibility than in his theological 
 master, Aquinas, and also the poet's revolt from the 
 doctrine of a human nature ruined through Adamic 
 corruption. 
 
 Luther. Martin Luther's tremendous affirmation of 
 the supremacy of the individual conscience, and his 
 preaching of salvation through the faith of the be- 
 liever alone, tore up the Scholastic theology by the 
 roots. Through the Reformation came the demand 
 for a thorough reexamination and reconstruction of 
 the rational grounds of religious faith. Luther was 
 not equal to this great task, nor, indeed, could any 
 one man be. The need was really for a reconstruc- 
 tion of the very foundations of knowledge. If reli- 
 gious faith is to be taken as truth, that is, as an essen- 
 tially valid interpretation of reality, then properly to 
 accredit faith would involve an establishing of the 
 validity of knowledge in general. This great task 
 was not the work of one mind, but was slowly accom- 
 plished through the efforts of the master minds of 
 modern philosophy. 
 
 Modern Philosophy and Christianity — Descartes. Des- 
 cartes is by common consent the father of modern 
 philosophy, for with him philosophy took a new start. 
 He began by discarding the large stock of old ideas 
 with which the schoolmen had done business. He 
 would admit only those which could be fully accred- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 35 
 
 ited by the strict processes of reason. Following out 
 this rigorous method, he refused to accept as knowl- 
 edge or belief anything which it is at all possible to 
 doubt. The result was that he begins with the indis- 
 putable fact of his own conscious existence, because 
 he finds himself thinking. He then proceeded to 
 build up in thought what he could justify by the 
 strictest processes of rational reflection. The signif- 
 icant fact for our present purpose is that Descartes 
 endeavored to prove the existence of an absolute "sub- 
 stance" which must correspond, he thought, to the 
 persistent conception of a universal existence which 
 we find in our consciousness. This absolute or uni- 
 versal "substance" he called God. The philosophy of 
 Descartes taught that absolute existence is in God 
 and finite existence is in mind and matter. These 
 two last stand over against each other in irreconcil- 
 able dualism. 
 
 Spinoza. It was natural that Descartes's disciple 
 Spinoza should have proceeded to merge the two inde- 
 pendent existences — mind and matter — in a funda- 
 mental unity. This he did by making these two 
 finite "substances" aspects of the universal substance 
 — God. This word "substance" stands both in the 
 writings of Descartes and Spinoza for existence. 
 Spinoza says: "By substance I mean that which is 
 in itself, and conceived by itself; that is, that whose 
 concept does not need for its formation the concept 
 of any other thing." 3 This doctrine is a thorough- 
 going pantheism conceived with the emphasis upon 
 the "matter" side, and hence materialistic. Nor did 
 Spinoza halt at its implications. He consistently 
 
 Ethics, Prop, xiv, book i. 
 
36 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 advocated the most complete mechanical determinism. 
 All the acts of men are necessitated by the Divine 
 Existence, and mechanical causation rules all with 
 invariable sequences. Freedom is a fiction. Good 
 and evil are different from the finite point of view, 
 largely as they produce consequences desirable or 
 painful to us. This doctrine cancels moral distinc- 
 tions and destroys all ground of moral accountability. 
 It needs only to be added that Spinoza conceived mind 
 as a function of bodily existence, and taught that at 
 physical death the psychical part of man ceases to 
 exist. Philosophy can hardly be conceived as more 
 utterly at variance with Christianity than in this 
 materialistic pantheism of Spinoza. 
 
 Hegel. We turn now to Hegel, because he is the 
 greatest expounder of idealistic or spiritual panthe- 
 ism. To understand Hegel is difficult. And it is 
 surely a comment on the vague and abstract char- 
 acter of his speculations that his own disciples have 
 not agreed on the point whether Hegel's thought is 
 really a foundation for Christian teaching, or whether, 
 on the whole, the Hegelian philosophy is antagonistic 
 to the fundamental conceptions of Christianity. The 
 late Professor Green, of Oxford, held the first of 
 these opinions, while writers like Strauss (in Der Alte 
 und der Neue Glaube) have used the absolute philos- 
 ophy to subvert Christian teaching. It would be 
 presumptuous to suppose that the gist of Hegel's 
 thought as it bears upon religion could be given in a 
 paragraph. We shall have occasion to refer again to 
 the idea of the Absolute in discussing "Divine Per- 
 sonality" ( Chapter VI ) . It must suffice here to sug- 
 gest that Hegel's philosophy was a most compre- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 37 
 
 hensive attempt to find the one ground of all exist- 
 ence in a basic principle — "the Absolute." This Abso- 
 lute is, to use the words of Hegel's most noted English 
 expounder, "one spiritual self-consciousness, of which 
 all that is real is the activity and expression ; that we 
 are related to this spiritual being, not merely as 
 parts of the world which is its expression, but as par- 
 takers in some inchoate measure of the self-conscious- 
 ness through which it at once constitutes and dis- 
 tinguishes itself from the world; that this participa- 
 tion is a source of morality and religion." 4 
 
 Hegel's philosophy was subtle and far removed 
 from all materialistic conceptions. For him all real- 
 ity is rational, and is to be known not as some exist- 
 ence outside of our experience but is revealed and 
 known in experience. And the Absolute Reality is 
 God. Hegel never thought of attempting to prove the 
 existence of God any more than he would attempt to 
 prove his own conscious experience. This teaching 
 that reality is revealed in experience, and God is 
 made known in life itself, is profoundly significant 
 truth. But Hegel went further than this in the uni- 
 fying of all reality. In proportion as our experi- 
 ence is real it is a part of the Absolute. Thus the 
 Hegelian synthesis knows no distinction of finite 
 and infinite. Indeed, in the Absolute the very distinc- 
 tion of subject and object, so basal to all our finite 
 knowledge, disappears. 
 
 Now, it must be admitted that while there are great 
 truths in the Hegelian philosophy, and a fascination 
 in its magnificent comprehensiveness, its main teach- 
 ings certainly do not furnish an adequate or satisfy - 
 
 * Thomas Hill Green, Works, vol. iii, p. 146. 
 
38 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ing interpretation of our human experience. The 
 philosophy itself is an all-embracing system of 
 thought. In the clear, cold light of reason all mystery 
 and apparent irrationality are supposed to have been 
 dissipated like clouds before a noontide sun. Its con- 
 ceptions are highly abstract. But life presents us 
 great, dark facts of which the Absolute philosophy 
 takes little notice and certainly offers no interpreta- 
 tion or relief. These facts are such as sin and suffer- 
 ing — the apparent fearful injustices of life, its one- 
 sidedness. So calm and serene is the indifference of 
 this great logical idealism to the aspects of life which 
 so often stare us in the face that it is small wonder 
 that the philosophy of the Absolute was soon opposed 
 by such thinkers as Schopenhauer, who proclaimed 
 as his metaphysical creed not the rationality of the 
 universe, but the absolute irrationality of all things. 
 And however little we may agree with Schopenhauer's 
 philosophy of pessimism, we must at least admit that 
 it faces the facts of experience in a way Hegel never 
 did. 
 
 Then, too, the implications of spiritual pantheism 
 are but little better than those of Spinoza. If all of 
 experience must be thought of as embraced within the 
 Absolute, no place is left for free activity of the 
 human person and we are shut up to a determinism 
 which is complete. This makes the Absolute the 
 ground not only of truth but of error. God is there- 
 fore the source not only of truth and beauty but of 
 error and ugliness. In the Divine alone we find the 
 source and ground not only of religious faith but of 
 all the fierce fanaticisms and imbecilities and sad and 
 dreadful deeds with which the pages of history are 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 39 
 
 darkened. The Hegelian answer is to deny to moral 
 evil any abiding reality and declare it to be imper- 
 fectly developed good! No wonder that Professor 
 T. H. Green remarks, speaking of the philosophy of 
 the Absolute, "It still remains to be presented in a 
 form which will command some general acceptance 
 among serious and scientific men" (Works, iii, p. 
 146). 
 
 But not only are all ordinary distinctions between 
 moral evil and good invalidated, and freedom (and, 
 therefore, the grounds of moral responsibility) can- 
 celed by absolute idealism, but the conception of God 
 which it offers is so abstract and impersonal that 
 religious worship finds no rational basis. Worship 
 means fellowship of some kind, and fellowship implies 
 personal relationships. Prayer will not long be 
 offered to an immanent principle. We shall need to 
 refer to this again in the chapter on "Divine Person- 
 ality." We sum up the matter here by pointing out 
 that the spiritual pantheism of Hegel really furnishes 
 as little basis for Christian teaching and experience 
 as does the more crudely conceived pantheism of 
 Spinoza. 
 
 We have noted the philosophy of Hegel because it 
 is supposed to be idealism in its fullest flower, and as 
 such might be expected to furnish some philosophic 
 basis for Christian teaching. That it does not do 
 this has been pointed out. There is, however, one 
 more great thinker whose philosophical teaching 
 took a direction which became very significant for 
 Christian thought. I refer to Lotze. 
 
 Lotze. Lotze asked the far-reaching question con- 
 cerning the meaning of the activity of the Infinite. 
 
40 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Can we rationally relate the Divine to human well 
 being? The answer is affirmative. This added the 
 teleological element. Moral good is the end or 
 aim of the divine activity. Lotze held that the guid- 
 ing principles for metaphysical reasoning must be 
 looked for in ethics. Moral values are the impor- 
 tant considerations. And moral good is not realized 
 mechanically. The processes of nature are the reg- 
 ular manner in which the Infinite God works to bring 
 about beneficent ends. This view lays the founda- 
 tions for a philosophy which centers about the con- 
 ception of personality. The ends which the Infinite 
 activity realizes through nature's ongoing processes 
 are, to speak in religious terms, the beneficent pur- 
 poses of God. 
 
 Eucken, Ward, and Bowne. Lotze's influence has been 
 wide. Several eminent thinkers have built upon the 
 fundamental idea of immanent purpose and have 
 elaborated a spiritual idealism with the emphasis 
 upon personality as the basic reality. Among these 
 might be mentioned Eucken in Germany, Ward in 
 England, and Bowne in America. These have de- 
 veloped — each in his own way — philosophy in which 
 personal spirit is the fundamental reality. All agree 
 in rejecting rational speculation. The ground of all 
 reality in Bowne's philosophy is the personal God. 
 He defends the conception of personality in the In- 
 finite, as Lotze does, by showing that the activity of 
 the nonself, so necessary to produce full self-con- 
 sciousness, is a characteristic limitation of our finite 
 minds which should not be predicated by the Infinite 
 Intelligence. Not only does personality appear as 
 the ultimate manifestation of reality, but the prag- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 41 
 
 matic principle of practical values for the moral life, 
 also emphasized by Lotze, appears as a sufficient 
 ground for rational belief, in the absence of con- 
 clusive logical demonstration. It can be seen that 
 philosophy of this type is vitally important for a 
 Christian philosophy of religion, since it lends sup- 
 port to the Christian conception of the universe. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 
 
 Philosophy and Life. In philosophy we seek a rational 
 interpretation of the whole of experience. Expe- 
 rience means the total effect produced in us — in our 
 thought, feeling, and will — by the world of persons 
 and things by which we are surrounded. Philosophy, 
 then, helps us to gain an adequate interpretation of 
 life. This search for the rational principles underly- 
 ing experience which is the task of philosophy comes 
 late in the history of human thought. As Aristotle 
 first pointed out, reflective thought began only after 
 men had reached that point where they did not have 
 to give constant attention to the satisfaction of their 
 physical needs. It was therefore after the earlier 
 and more primitive stages of human progress had 
 been passed that philosophy became possible. 
 
 With the opportunity for reflective thought came 
 the capacity for it. A considerable degree of mental 
 development had to precede the appearance of philos- 
 ophy, and it was only after men had acquired mental 
 power through the use of the mind for the solution of 
 problems in connection with the early development 
 of the arts that they became able to sustain the more 
 complicated thought processes needed for philosoph- 
 ical inquiry. The materials were all well at hand 
 when the reflective spirit appeared. Then the prob- 
 
 42 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 43 
 
 lem began to loom up — how to find beneath all the 
 manifold complexities of life those few principles 
 which would enable thought to rest in the assurance 
 of an underlying unity and harmony. 
 
 Thus it appears that from the first philosophy has 
 had to do with life, and life always precedes philos- 
 ophy. Philosophy must lead to practical values in 
 life or it is not worth the mental effort needed to 
 sustain it. Of course this does not mean that any 
 interpretations of experience may be regarded as 
 valid because they may be made to serve practical 
 purposes. No test of values can neglect rationality, 
 which is itself one of the greatest values. Rational 
 harmony or consistency is an indispensable require- 
 ment in all our philosophizing. But critical think- 
 ing is not an end in itself, but always the means to an 
 end, and this end must be such an interpretation of 
 life as will reveal something of its dignity and moral 
 worth. 
 
 Keligion a Great Fact in Life. Applying this truth to 
 religion, we suggest that it is not the function of 
 philosophy of religion to start in by attempting to 
 vindicate the reality of religion. Religion is one of 
 the great outstanding facts of life. Nothing that 
 philosophy can urge will make religion any more sure 
 as a part of our experience. And as life always pre- 
 cedes philosophy, so religion precedes philosophy of 
 religion. It is a great fact of life which needs no 
 philosophy to vindicate it. We are religious long- 
 before we begin to apply the methods of rational 
 reflection to the religious life. We learned to walk 
 long before we knew anything of the complicated play 
 of nerves and muscles. After we analyze the simple 
 
44 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 act of walking from the viewpoint of physiology and 
 anatomy, we may wonder for a moment how we ever 
 got under way at all. Long before we knew anything 
 of the processes of thought we were thinking, and we 
 were able to make respectable inductions before we 
 ever learned of logic. It is even so with rational 
 reflection about religion. Philosophy is not needed 
 to justify religion. Its function is, rather, to furnish 
 such interpretation of the religious life as will add 
 to our realization of its necessity and everlasting 
 worth. 
 
 It is not our purpose, then, in these studies to 
 offer a speculative discussion of the development of 
 religion. We propose to be guided continually by the 
 consideration of practical values and needs in life. 
 Speculative — that is, abstractly logical — discussions 
 of religion are not worth the while. Our purpose shall 
 be the more practical one of drafting philosophy into 
 service as we seek some adequate interpretation of 
 the facts of the religious life. And yet we must not 
 use this professed wish to present a treatment from 
 the standpoint of practical values as an excuse for 
 slighting those broad philosophical principles which 
 ought to guide in any adequate thinking on the great 
 themes of religion. The w r arning that a discussion 
 is going to be practical has not infrequently served 
 as a poor excuse for superficiality. There are those, 
 of course, who urge that the less religion has to do 
 with philosophy the better for religion. It must be 
 admitted that the introduction of metaphysics into 
 the discussion of fundamental religious ideas has 
 often led off into barren and arid speculative wastes. 
 But it must be remembered that it is not the use of 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 45 
 
 metaphysics but the use of bad metaphysics which has 
 produced this dreary result. 
 
 Any attempt at a serious treatment of religious 
 thought cannot avoid a dependence upon philosophy. 
 It is fallacious to separate in our thinking religious 
 experience from the rest of experience. The same 
 rational principles underlie both, the same laws of 
 thought and feeling govern both. The same knowl- 
 edge of the mind's workings is needed to interpret 
 both. The idea that there can be a purely Christian 
 philosophy based upon truths specially revealed is a 
 healthy protest to speculative treatment of religion, 
 and the protest is not out of order. But the attempt 
 to establish a distinctively Christian philosophy be- 
 cause Christianity, being a revealed religion, contains 
 all the truth which it is necessary to know and also 
 because Christianity is supposed to have its own set 
 of fundamental principles, is one of the surest ways 
 of belittling Christianity and subjecting it unjustly 
 to the suspicion that it cannot endure the same tests 
 of validity which apply in other realms of thought. 
 There is no more reason for a special Christian philos- 
 ophy than for a special Christian sociology and eco- 
 nomics. The claim that Christianity has its own cate- 
 gories or fundamental principles of thought and feel- 
 ing is false, and based upon a misunderstanding of 
 certain Scripture passages. The immanent laws of 
 the reason are revealed in the world about us. We 
 understand the universe because it is the product of 
 divine thought which is kindred to our thinking. 
 God's revelation must not be regarded as always some 
 special or extraordinary way in which he has com- 
 municated his truth. These extraordinary methods 
 
4G FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of making himself known are not impossible and we 
 may well believe that now and again they have taken 
 place. But the great body of the Revelation lies, 
 after all, in the perception of the Divine thought 
 and purpose in the regular ongoing forces of life. 
 "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your 
 ways my ways, saith the Lord," does not mean that 
 the Divine thought is absolutely different in nature 
 from human thinking. These words express a quanti- 
 tative rather than a qualitative difference between 
 the finite and the infinite. 
 
 Religion and the Philosophic World- Views. A philos- 
 ophy involves a rational way of looking at things as a 
 whole — a certain world-view, or Weltanschauung, as 
 the Germans say. The world of things and persons 
 presents a vast complexity, but reflective thought 
 seeks an underlying harmony. Philosophy seeks a 
 basal unity — some unitary ground of reality. The 
 fundamental assumption underlying both philosophy 
 and science is that the universe is rational — that it is 
 capable of being understood by us and interpreted in 
 accordance with the principles of our thinking. 
 Philosophy always strives for simplicity — to reduce 
 the plurality and complexity of things as they ap- 
 pear to us to a few fundamental principles. This 
 permits our thought to rest in the conviction of an 
 underlying unity and harmony. The important ques- 
 tion is, How is this to be done — how is experience to 
 be interpreted so as to afford the largest measure of 
 rational insight into its meaning and value? And 
 upon what fundamental conceptions shall the inter- 
 pretation be based? The answers to these questions 
 result in the great world-views. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 47 
 
 Now, a world-view of some sort is not only an affair 
 of philosophy but inevitably underlies religious think- 
 ing as well. This does not mean that religious be- 
 lievers consciously adopt a philosophy. Very few 
 indeed ever do this. It simply means that when the 
 implications of our fundamental religious beliefs are 
 thought out in a philosophical way, it is found that 
 they imply a certain way of looking at the world. 
 Indeed, philosophy of some kind underlies all reli- 
 gion, for some conception of the Divine is the founda- 
 tion of religion, and this necessarily means a view of 
 ultimate reality and some thought of the way this 
 ultimate reality is related to or manifests itself in 
 human life. 
 
 No matter, therefore, how much we may try to strip 
 religious thought of all philosophic ideas, no matter 
 how vehemently it may be urged that religion has no 
 dependence upon philosophy, religion does and always 
 will rest upon some kind of a fundamental world- 
 view. The all important question for us is not 
 whether we can consider religion apart from philo- 
 sophical ideas, for we cannot, but what kind of phi- 
 losophical ideas are to underlie our religious thought. 
 There are several world-views. Some of them are of 
 such a character that they leave no place for religion. 
 It is by no mans infrequent for Christian writers of 
 liberal tendencies to show hospitality to philosophic 
 doctrines, the implications of which are destructive 
 to the very foundations of Christianity. It is very 
 necessary, therefore, before we proceed in our studies 
 to attempt a consideration of these great world- views 
 sufficient to enable us to come to some decision as to 
 their validity. It will be entirely in order, in the 
 
48 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 interests of our conviction of truth, to make known 
 our intellectual hostility to certain world- views; and 
 to declare our allegiance to that way of looking at the 
 universe which makes a place for the fundamental 
 teachings of Christian faith. If we remain true to 
 the philosophic spirit, our arguments will not be 
 merely the traditional apologetics, that is, formal de- 
 fenses of Christianity as such. We shall need to 
 inquire how these world-views justify themselves from 
 the standpoint of truth. And truth, let us repeat, is 
 to be tested and verified, not only by rational reflec- 
 tion, but by a broad consideration of the deepest and 
 most abiding interests of our personal, moral life. 
 The metaphysical and practical arguments must go 
 hand in hand. We take up first that world-view 
 called materialism, or materialistic monism. 
 
 1. Materialism 
 
 There are three great questions which lie at the 
 basis of all systematic reasoning about the universe. 
 They are ( 1 ) the question, How do we gain knowledge, 
 and how may we have assurance that our Knowledge 
 when gained is valid for reality? (2) The question 
 concerning the nature of ultimate Reality. (3) The 
 question as to the fundamental standard or norm by 
 which human conduct should be governed. These are 
 the great matters of philosophy and the divisions of 
 philosophic study which corresponds to them are 
 (1) Theory of Knowledge (often called Episte- 
 mology), (2) Metaphysics, and (3) Ethics. It will be 
 noted that questions one and two overlap, for no 
 theory of knowledge can be completed without carry- 
 ing the discussion over into metaphysics. When, 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 49 
 
 therefore, we ask about the world-view known as 
 materialism, let us formulate our inquiry in accord- 
 ance with the above questions. In this way we can 
 gain a fuller conception of the meaning of material- 
 ism as a way of looking at the universe. 
 
 To the question, then, W T hat is the nature of ulti- 
 mate reality? the materialist answers, "It is matter." 
 But what is matter? Matter, we are told, is the 
 eternal substance, the fundamental ground of all be- 
 ing. Its qualities are extension in space, and it is 
 always in motion. Indeed, matter is the extended and 
 substantial medium through which the energy of the 
 universe is being constantly manifested. From the 
 materialistic point of view matter, therefore, must be 
 thought of as the ground of all the processes of life, 
 not only physical functions but states of conscious- 
 ness as well ; all find their explanation in matter and 
 motion. Here we have not only the heart of material- 
 ism, but its crux as well. Materialists hold that feel- 
 ing, thought, emotion, will — indeed, our entire con- 
 scious life — are merely a resultant or a concomitant 
 of those material processes in nerves and brain which 
 are at bottom to be explained in terms of molecular 
 motion. It will be seen at once that this really makes 
 psychology nothing but an aspect of physiology. This 
 doctrine, while it has been interwoven with much of 
 the progress in modern science, is by no means new. 
 But, of course, its modern form is different from the 
 crude ancient teaching. It is the openly avowed or 
 tacitly assumed basis of much current scientific dis- 
 cussion. Now, it is really not the business of science 
 to expound speculative theories of the universe, but, 
 rather, to make us acquainted with things as they 
 
50 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 exist. Many scientific men of the last generation have 
 insisted upon doing both. And not a few of them have 
 proclaimed a mechanical conception of life which lent 
 great aid to the materialistic view. This is only 
 natural. Reality as it appears to ns in experience is 
 in a dnalistic form. There is a material side of life — 
 onr bodies, and the world of things about us; and 
 there is a spiritual side of life — our minds with their 
 feelings, thoughts, and volitions. These two sides or 
 aspects of existence are in absolute and constant 
 parallelism, and a student who approaches reality 
 from the objective side naturally attempts to account 
 for thoughts in terms of things, while, on the other 
 hand, the student who approaches reality from the 
 subjective or mind side seeks to account for things by 
 way of thought. But while materialism seemed to 
 dominate scientific thought for a time, there is now a 
 very decided reaction among scientific men toward an 
 essentially spiritual view of human life. 
 
 At first sight it might seem to be a formidable 
 undertaking to combat such a theory. And, indeed, it 
 would be were it not for the fact that materialism con- 
 tains within itself the elements of its own destruction 
 as a philosophy. The truth is materialism cannot 
 stand rational criticism. Kant thoroughly under- 
 mined it, and since his day it has been riddled so re- 
 peatedly that materialistic theories now have no 
 standing as respectable philosophy. As a matter of 
 fact, such is the status of materialism to-day that it 
 can be the world- view only of those whose philo- 
 sophical reasoning is confused and illogical. 
 
 But materialism is not a mere vagary. It is a philo- 
 sophical world- view, since it professes to explain cer- 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 51 
 
 tain very cogent facts of experience. Among these 
 is the fact that mental processes occur only coincident 
 with physical processes. There is a close and intimate 
 parallelism between mind and body. On the one hand 
 we have an order of mental events, and on the other 
 hand an order of movements in the nervous organism. 
 The brain in its size and weight bears constant ratio 
 to intelligence. Physical fatigue diminishes the 
 power of attention ; intoxicants and narcotics produce 
 direct physical effects which are always accompanied 
 also by certain mental states. An injury to the cen- 
 tral organ of the nervous system, the brain, results in 
 corresponding disaster to the mental powers. That 
 there is some kind of close connection or interaction 
 between body and mind is indisputable. All attempts 
 to prove that the one order of events is the cause of 
 the other have thus far failed. These are the facts. 
 Materialism is an attempt to explain these facts. And 
 materialism, like all other philosophic doctrines, must 
 be judged from two points of view: first, How ade- 
 quately does it explain the facts? and, second, What 
 are the logical consequences of its underlying concep- 
 tions to the great moral interests of our life? In both 
 of these respects we shall find materialism hopelessly 
 inadequate. 
 
 Criticism of Materialism. Materialism affirms the 
 priority of matter over mind. Mind is fundamentally 
 only a higher aspect or manifestation of matter. The 
 first attack on materialism may well be to show the 
 absolute untenability of this doctrine. Material 
 things, far from having the independent existence 
 which the materialist thinks they have, have only a 
 relative existence, and, indeed, cannot be affirmed to 
 
52 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 exist at all except as they are the objects of the knowl- 
 edge of a conscious knowing subject. The material- 
 istic conception of "matter" becomes incomprehens- 
 ible as soon as we subject it to criticism. Let us look 
 into this. 
 
 Matter Incomprehensible Apart from Mind. Uncritical 
 common sense has no doubt about the existence of 
 matter. It is right there before us, and we have the 
 evidence of our senses to prove that it is there. Here 
 is an orange. That surely is matter. We have a sen- 
 sation of color. The physicist tells us that ether 
 vibrations have impinged upon the retina of the eye. 
 Molecular motion of some sort is set up in the nervous 
 tissue of retina, optic nerve, and brain. The result is 
 a sensation of color, and because we have had exactly 
 equivalent sensations so often before we immediately 
 interpret the sensation with the creation of an idea. 
 In this way we think of or perceive the object as an 
 orange. In similar fashion we receive impressions 
 through the other senses. We should notice that the 
 sensations of orange color, orange taste, orange smell 
 and softness are very different indeed from the exist- 
 ences in the external world. Those existences are 
 motion of various sorts. The ether vibrations are in- 
 conceivably rapid and upon their rapidity depends 
 the interpretation the mind will make, whether orange 
 color or blue or red. It is evident that there could be 
 no color or taste or smell or hardness or form in the 
 absence of a nervous system to receive the forms of 
 motion and transform them into other forms of 
 motion. Nor could color, taste, smell, or hardness have 
 any existence in the absence of a mind to interpret 
 these impressions coming through the nervous system 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 53 
 
 and to create the corresponding ideas. Let us now 
 think of the orange standing before us. And let us 
 imagine that one by one the sense qualities disappear. 
 There is now no sensation of color, we have no sensa- 
 tion of touch, nor is there any odor nor taste, sound, 
 or perception of heat. Shall we say that the motion 
 which caused the stimulation of our nerves has 
 ceased? At any rate, there arise no sensations in the 
 mind. Now, in the absence of sensations and, there- 
 fore, ideas, is there anything there? Is a "thing" the 
 name we give to a group of perceived sense-qualities? 
 Does "matter" remain even when no sensations arise 
 and no ideas are born? If we say matter does remain 
 as a kind of "core of reality" or "substratum of being" 
 back of sense qualities, how can we know anything at 
 all about it? Is not the materialist in affirming the 
 independent existence of matter calling upon us to 
 believe something of which we can know nothing? 
 The truth is that the existence of material things 
 apart from the sensations and ideas through which 
 we know them is groundless. Materialism, therefore, 
 in affirming the independent existence of matter 
 builds upon a conception which proves on critical 
 examination to be incomprehensible. 
 
 But now a scientist objects. He says that the above 
 argument disposes of matter only when regarded as 
 a kind of stuff. But this is the older atomistic mate- 
 rialism in which modern science does not now believe. 
 Matter, he tells us, is the permanent and sensible 
 manifestation of motion. The kinetic doctrine of 
 matter does not teach that the atoms are little lumps 
 of material substance, but that they are infinitesimal 
 centers of energy. We answer that, if the modern 
 
54 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 scientist teaches that matter is the ultimate reality, 
 but that it is to be understood not as body or substance 
 but as activity, he is teaching very good doctrine. If 
 he will consent to drop the word "matter" altogether 
 and speak of basal energy or activity, we invite him in 
 to go on with us in the criticism of materialism. And 
 we do so with the hope that he may soon learn to 
 think of the fundamental activity as intelligent. But 
 we remind him that this conception of matter as activ- 
 ity contains implications which undermine and de- 
 stroy materialism as a world-view. It will not be 
 difficult to show that it is far more rational to regard 
 this activity of which "matter" is the eternal mani- 
 festation as conscious activity. For shall we say that 
 our own conscious activity with all our thoughts, feel- 
 ings, and volitions rests upon an unconscious activity 
 as its ground? If we do, we leave consciousness unac- 
 counted for, as we shall see, and materialism, even in 
 its most modern form, breaks down as a philosophy. 
 But if we think of our own conscious life as grounded 
 in a fundamental intelligent activity, then there is 
 indeed a way of accounting for our own conscious 
 life ; but in doing so we leave materialism behind and 
 adopt a world- view which is essentially idealistic and 
 spiritual. We conclude, then, that in building upon 
 the conception of matter as an ultimate reality inde- 
 pendent of mind, materialism has built upon a 
 foundation which crumbles as soon as critical tests 
 are applied. 
 
 This argument derived from our own mental proc- 
 esses in knowing, though perfectly sound, is so foreign 
 to the ways of uncritical common sense that persons 
 who are not acquainted with philosophy generally 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD VIEWS 55 
 
 are puzzled by it, not knowing how to answer and 
 yet not thoroughly convinced. Material things do 
 indeed seem to exist in very hard-and-fast reality as 
 they stand before us. But let us not forget that stand- 
 ing before us is a very important part of the only real- 
 ity we know anything about. Of course this does not 
 mean that our minds are the ground of the reality of 
 things, but only that our minds are the ground of all 
 the reality of things we can know. Things may no 
 doubt exist independent of our finite minds. But 
 whether the material universe has any existence apart 
 from an Infinite Mind is a greater question. For our 
 present purpose we must urge that apart from mind 
 that perceives and knows it is impossible for us to 
 affirm a reality which means anything at all for our 
 rational thought. 
 
 Materialism and the Origin of Life. But let us turn 
 now to another weakness of materialism as a philos- 
 ophy. It finds no way to account for or to explain 
 the beginning of life. Let us consider this first from 
 the standpoint of the origin of organic life — leaving 
 for the present the conscious aspects of life. We 
 repeat that it is not the task of science to formulate 
 a theory of the universe. The scientist is therefore 
 under no obligation to offer any explanation of the 
 origin of life. Biology very properly starts with the 
 facts of experience — with life in its most primitive 
 forms. With this as a beginning the biologist traces 
 the manifestation of life through all the myriad organ- 
 isms from the lowest protozoan to the human species. 
 But as soon as the scientist makes professions as a 
 materialist or, as he prefers to be called, a "nionist," 
 he has entered the lists as a philosopher. It now 
 
56 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 becomes necessary that his doctrine shall stand the 
 test of all good philosophy, namely, that it furnish an 
 interpretation of the facts of experience in their 
 broader relation to the unity and harmony of truth. 
 And how does it fare with materialism when this test 
 is applied? Surely a philosophic doctrine must have 
 something worth saying in regard to so great a matter 
 as the origin and ground of life. 
 
 With all the hopes and confident predictions which 
 have been made that life will be produced from the 
 inorganic and the lifeless, no authenticated instance 
 has yet taken place. Now the scientist can well afford 
 to leave the matter of the spontaneous generation of 
 life an open question. Indeed, it is unscientific to 
 dogmatize here. But the advocate of materialistic 
 monism cannot afford to do this. His philosophy 
 demands that some explanation of the origin of life 
 should be forthcoming and some ultimate ground 
 of life be affirmed. The time-honored formula of 
 atomistic materialism, that life must have finally orig- 
 inated from the fortuitous concurrence of such com- 
 binations of atoms as were able to propagate them- 
 selves, sounds rather antiquated. But for substance 
 of doctrine the monist has nothing better to offer. He 
 says something like this: "Life may be conceived as 
 generated from a special union of inorganic corpus- 
 cles, which union may take place under favorable 
 environment." * Perhaps this sort of spontaneous 
 generation "may be conceived" and such union "may 
 take place." Certain it is, however, that no such 
 occurrence ever has happened in the range of human 
 experience. Many years ago Dr. Bastian was sure 
 
 1 Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science, p. 348. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD VIEWS 57 
 
 that biogenesis was an assured fact. But later experi- 
 menters who took more care in sterilizing culture- 
 media showed that life had not been generated from 
 non-life. Years later Mr. Burke produced his "radi- 
 obes," which look and act like bacteria. But though 
 widely reported to have done so, he did not claim that 
 he had produced spontaneous generation of life. 2 
 And we search in vain for any light from materialistic 
 monism upon the problem of life's origins. Du Bois- 
 Reymond, in his famous "seven world-enigmas" ad- 
 dress, delivered in Berlin in 1880, placed the origin 
 of life as an unsolved problem. And though confess- 
 ing its immense difficulty, he expressed the belief that 
 its solution would be accomplished. But thus far 
 his fond hopes have not been realized. Haeckel, in his 
 Riddle of the Universe, has a very short section 
 entitled "Monistic Biogeny," in which he praises 
 Lamarck and Darwin for their epoch-making work 
 in transforming modern biology to its very founda- 
 tions, but he says not a word upon the origin of life. 
 The reason is the very good one that there is nothing 
 to say from the point of view of materialistic monism. 
 Nearly a half century ago Professor Tyndall thought 
 that matter "contained the promise and potency of all 
 life." But thus far the promise has not been fulfilled 
 and the potency appears to be as far from actuality as 
 ever. It would not be at all serious for the Christian 
 view of the world if the appearance of life from non- 
 living antecedents should some day be demonstrated. 
 The mere fact of being able to establish that sequence 
 would by no means prove that we had found in matter 
 a rational ground sufficient to account for all organic 
 
 * J. Butler Burke, The Origin of Life, p. 99f. 
 
58 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 life. It would simply mean that we had discovered 
 one more chapter in the story of infinite intelligence 
 and its unfolding purposes as they are made manifest 
 in the processes of nature. But the inability to urge 
 anything better as the ground of all life than matter, 
 even though it be understood as the mechanical mani- 
 festation of energy, is a cardinal weakness of material- 
 ism and seriously discredits it as a world-view. 
 
 Materialism and the Origin of Consciousness. Material- 
 ism must consistently deny to the soul an independent 
 existence. Our conscious life, with its thought and 
 feeling, is made to depend upon the movements of 
 matter. Some sort of molecular motion in the sub- 
 stance of the nerves and brain is taken to be the 
 ground of thought. Materialism starts with the fact 
 of the parallelism between the mind and the body. 
 There is an order of mental events — thoughts, feel- 
 ings, volitions. There is also an order of physical 
 movement. Impressions received through the senses 
 induce molecular motion in the structure of the nerves 
 and brain. Coincident with these there is an order of 
 mental events, sensations, ideas, feelings. It is the 
 task of materialism to justify its assumption and 
 show how the mental events are produced by the 
 motion of matter. The tenet of materialism, there- 
 fore, is that our conscious states are functions or 
 results of our nervous processes. 
 
 It is certain that the task of showing causal con- 
 nection between events and the order of psychical 
 movement has never been accomplished. Du Bois- 
 Reymond says it never will be. 3 Other materialistic 
 monists are more hopeful. In considering this ques- 
 
 1 In his famous address, "Die Grenzen des Naturekennens." 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD VIEWS 59 
 
 tion the first thing we must do is to file a serious ob- 
 jection to the habit some materialists have of assum- 
 ing an identity between these two orders of events. 
 Often the assertion has been made that thought in its 
 ultimate nature is a form of molecular motion. 4 This 
 amounts to saying that mind is matter in motion. We 
 are simply done with all valid reasoning if a great 
 crucial question can be begged in this offhand way. 
 All the logical principles of our thought as we try 
 to build up knowledge are neglected and outraged if 
 a reasoner is to be permitted thus to disregard the law 
 of identity and difference, and to affirm with no evi- 
 dence that mind is at bottom matter. As well might 
 we allow the assertion that apes are at bottom men. 
 Only the crudest materialistic thinking continues to 
 reiterate this groundless assumption. We must also 
 object to the similar fallacy which consists in the 
 mingling of the two concepts of spirit and matter so 
 that any real distinction between them is obliterated. 
 Clifford was a pioneer offender in this regard with his 
 "mind stuff" whimsy, and Bain and others have fol- 
 lowed him. Indeed, the "higher materialism," so 
 called, lives and does business simply because of this 
 illegitimate disregarding of the law of identity. Let 
 us say at once if we are to think of matter as possess- 
 ing consciousness and certain powers which we have 
 always been in the habit of attributing to mind, let us 
 say mind, and cease to say matter, not attempting to 
 say both at once. "Two-faced substance," "conscious 
 substance," and all such question-begging phrases are 
 purely verbal and are entitled to no respect. Such 
 
 * Buchner, in Kraft und Stoff — English translation, Matter and Motion — repeatedly 
 makes this crude and uncritical assumption, and has been followed in it by some of 
 the popular materialistic writers among the Socialists. 
 
60 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 cross-breeding of concepts is illogical to the last de- 
 gree. If it produces any result at all, the resulting 
 concept is a monstrosity, like the centaur or mer- 
 maid — a fanciful notion arising from a mere mechan- 
 ical juxtaposition of two distinct ideas and to which 
 there is absolutely nothing in experience to corre- 
 spond. 
 
 The common assumption of materialism that mental 
 events are effects of which molecular movement in 
 nerve and brain is the cause, is incapable of proof. 
 And the negative of this is of course equally incapable 
 of being demonstrated. When one movement A is 
 affirmed as the cause of another movement B, we must 
 conclude either that motion is actually imparted from 
 A to B (in which case the motion of A is diminished 
 by the amount of that imparted to B) or else that 
 there is interaction of some sort between A and B, 
 whereby B moves as the effect of A. Now, the well- 
 established principle of the conservation of energy 
 would forbid the thought of any transferring of mo- 
 tion from the physical order to the psychical. For in 
 that event we would have physical energy being trans- 
 formed into thought. But thought has no physical 
 existence ; therefore such transferring of energy from 
 the physical to the mental would mean, from the 
 materialistic point of view, the destruction of energy, 
 which, of course, cannot be thought of. We are shut 
 up, then, to the affirmation of some form of interac- 
 tion between the order of mental activity and the 
 order of physical movement. 
 
 To follow the argument here with anything like 
 completeness would carry us too far into metaphysics 
 for our present purpose. We must be content to indi- 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 61 
 
 cate the direction in which the truth lies. It would 
 not be difficult to show that the problem of interac- 
 tion on the plane of the material and mechanical is 
 hopelessly insoluble. The excited nerve has never yet 
 been shown to be the cause of thought, nor will it ever 
 be. Du Bois-Reymond and others who declare the 
 problem insoluble only confess what the student of 
 metaphysics knows is the fact. Indeed, this problem 
 has been entirely given up by all thinkers who under- 
 stand themselves. In philosophy the doctrine of 
 occasionalism sprang from the extreme difficulty of 
 comprehending interaction between mind and body. 
 The modern version of this metaphysical doctrine is 
 the so-called theory of psycho-physical parallelism. 
 This view gives up all attempt to establish causal 
 relations between the soul and the body. The excita- 
 tion of nerve and brain, presumably through molec- 
 ular motion, is not to be affirmed as the cause of 
 thought, but upon excitation of the physical organism 
 thought arises. Volition does not actually cause 
 physical movements, but upon the arising of the voli- 
 tion as a mental event certain corresponding physical 
 movements take place. This is the beginning of the 
 end of materialism. 
 
 Let us bear in mind that materialism cannot allow 
 the conversion of motion into consciousness, for this 
 would mean the destruction of energy which the doc- 
 trine of its conservation cannot permit. There must, 
 therefore, be no break in the chain of physical se- 
 quence so far as the transformations of energy are 
 concerned. What, now, is the ground of the constant 
 and wonderful parallelism between the order of 
 mental events and the corresponding order of phys- 
 
62 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ical movement? Does the ultimate nature or power 
 of matter in motion explain? If it does, thought can- 
 not be excluded from a place in the order of physical 
 movement. 5 In metaphysics the doctrine of occasion- 
 alism prepared the way for Leibnitz's doctrine of a 
 preestablished harmony, and hence on to the affirma- 
 tion of mind as the underlying and harmonizing unit. 
 And this, of course, led on to idealism. In the funda- 
 mental thinking necessary to justify or invalidate 
 materialism as a world-view the doctrine of psycho- 
 physical parallelism is found to contain the same 
 implications. In truth, it is the modern statement of 
 the older metaphysical doctrine. Now, interaction 
 between independent existences is impossible, but the 
 fact of parallelism demands some ground of connec- 
 tion. All efforts to find this in causation from one to 
 the other fail. We are compelled, therefore, either 
 to abandon the problem entirely after the fashion of 
 positivism or to affirm a fundamental mind in the 
 unity of whose intelligence the parallelism finds 
 explanation, as a part of a great unitary system of 
 things. 
 
 Materialism and Moral Values. We now consider 
 materialism with reference to the third great ques- 
 tion of philosophy, namely, that of ethical values. 
 The doctrine which affirms the physical and material 
 as the ground of the mental discloses its poverty and 
 nakedness most plainly when we approach the ques- 
 tion of the great moral interests of life. Matter in 
 motion as the ground of existence means a mechan- 
 ical determination of all activity. And, therefore, 
 
 * M. Bergson presses a similar application of the conservation of energy in hi* attack 
 on determinism, Time and Free Will, p. 144f. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 63 
 
 the consistent materialistic monist either openly 
 scouts freedom as an outgrown theological supersti- 
 tion after the manner of Haeckel, or, as is generally 
 the case, denies it indirectly and diplomatically under 
 plausible phraseology. He does it in this fashion 
 because an open and blunt denial of freedom is 
 too great an affront to the moral consciousness of 
 men. 
 
 A thoroughgoing determinism cancels ethics. Any 
 doctrine which by direct teaching or implication 
 would have us believe that our mental life is the re- 
 sultant of mechanical movements in nerves and brain, 
 leaves no place whatever for human responsibility. 
 Why should men be held to any account for their 
 judgments or their beliefs if all depends upon phys- 
 ical activity, and physical activity is a closed mechan- 
 ical system? How can men be held as guilty or inno- 
 cent, virtuous or depraved, if the motions which con- 
 trol conduct are but the consequences of antecedents 
 fixed and determined according to unvarying law? 
 We shall need to revert to this important point in dis- 
 cussing the meaning of personality later on. A brief 
 reference must therefore suffice here. 
 
 The moral law is not something which is imposed 
 upon men from outside. It is, rather, written deeply 
 into the very texture of human life and experience. 
 It is an evolution in which human conduct itself has 
 played a most important part. Through the age-long 
 experience of the race men have gradually learned to 
 control and shape their conduct so as to diminish the 
 discomfort, pain and other evils, and promote hap- 
 piness. But this process has been no mere play 
 of forces in action and reaction. Without the im- 
 
64 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 perial self slowly emerging and gradually winning 
 a fuller measure of the power of self-initiative and 
 control, there is no morality to talk about. Psy- 
 chology remains but physiology — ethics a phase of 
 mechanics. 
 
 Materialism and Religion. A word must be added in 
 conclusion concerniug materialism (or materialistic 
 monism) and religion. It has become very evident 
 that no place whatever is left for religion. Belief in 
 God as a Supreme Intelligence and Creator is 
 regarded as more or less refined and beneficent super- 
 stition. Matter defined as that through which the 
 eternal energy of the universe manifests itself, is 
 itself eternal. The only soul man has is his brain. At 
 death man lies down with his more lowly brothers, 
 the beasts. Materialism has nothing to offer but the 
 gospel of life's insignificance. "As a loaf of bread is 
 covered with a coating of mildew — a world of living 
 plants — so too the earth is covered with a world of 
 living organisms; and among them man appears as 
 a variation of these forms. After a brief bloom this 
 world sinks back again into the nothingness from 
 which it came. One thing alone remains — eternal 
 matter and the laws of its motion. Between the 
 infinite past when there was no life, and the infinite 
 future in which there will be no life, the moment of 
 the present and of life emerges — a moment only, 
 though we measure it by a million years. And at this 
 moment a small portion of infinite matter reveals that 
 wonderful phenomenon of phosphorescence, as it 
 were, which we call self-consciousness or mental life 
 — a brief interlude which, however great and impor- 
 tant it may seem to us, is none the less an altogether 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 65 
 
 insignificant incident in the history of the immense 
 universe." 6 
 
 And yet Strauss, in his "Der Alte und Neue 
 Glaube," expounds the religion of materialism at con- 
 siderable length ! And Haeckel, in his Kiddle of the 
 Universe, grows quite eloquent over "Monistic Reli- 
 gion" and devotes a whole chapter to it. He would 
 even allow those of his scientific brethren who may 
 not be able to shake off their hankering for places of 
 worship to have monistic churches! The object of 
 worship in this religion is Nature — the impersonal 
 abstract conception of the totality of all things. 
 Some, like the older Positivists, propose Plumanity as 
 an object of worship. And by Humanity is meant an 
 abstract and idealized conception of the human race. 
 
 As a world-view we totally reject materialism and 
 its corollary, determinism. It fails utterly to inter- 
 pret the great facts of human experience and upon 
 this basis every philosophical doctrine must be judged. 
 The fact that it leaves no place for a religion resting 
 upon belief in superhuman power is a further evidence 
 of its weakness as a world-view. The faith of man- 
 kind in this power — a faith which has persisted in the 
 human breast in one form or another for countless 
 ages — may not be ignored as a worthless superstition. 
 And any philosophy which does ignore it is thereby 
 discounted and discredited as hopelessly inadequate. 
 
 2. Agnosticism 
 
 Meaning of Agnosticism. Agnosticism can hardly be 
 called a world-view. In fact, a world-view in the 
 
 8 The cosmologioal view of materialism is thus summed up by Paulsen in his mas- 
 terly Introduction to Philosophy, p. C6. 
 
66 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 sense of a philosophical conception of the universe is 
 the very thing the agnostic refuses to hold to. The 
 word "agnostic," like the word "socialist/' is difficult 
 to define with any degree of exactness. The meaning- 
 is best gained from the beliefs or, rather, the lack of 
 beliefs of well-known thinkers who have expounded 
 agnosticism as their position. Most prominent 
 among these are Professor Huxley and Herbert 
 Spencer. Huxley was the first to use the words 
 agnostic and agnosticism. The older words were 
 skepticism and positivism. Skepticism means the 
 general view that our rational thinking cannot grasp 
 reality, and hence that all our knowledge is relative 
 to us. It includes, of course, the view that we can 
 know nothing of God. Positivism rests upon this 
 general skeptical view, but is, properly speaking, a 
 scientific position. The positivist protests against the 
 importation into science of any metaphysical concep- 
 tions such as matter, cause, force. Positivism de- 
 mands that science work simply with what is gained 
 through sense experience. This alone is knowledge; 
 all else is idle speculation with which the well- 
 instructed scientist should have nothing to do. 
 Agnosticism has come to be applied generally to the 
 denial that we can have any knowledge of the Infinite 
 Being. It will be seen at once that such a denial puts 
 agnosticism over against religion in sharp antago- 
 nism. For the fundamental teaching of the agnostic, 
 if it were true, would shatter the foundations of reli- 
 gion. 
 
 Kant's Agnosticism. Skepticism is, of course, not 
 modern. It was a recognized standpoint among the 
 thinkers of ancient Greece. Kant and Hume were the 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 67 
 
 first great expounders of the limitations of rational 
 reflection. Hume set forth the sensational theory of 
 knowledge which was afterward so thoroughly dis- 
 credited. Kant broke new ground, and in his analysis 
 of the knowing process showed that the mind reacting 
 over against the stimulus of sense experience builds 
 up knowledge by its own activity in accordance with 
 the categories — those immanent principles which lie 
 in the very nature of reason itself. Kant's outcome 
 showed the incompetence of reason alone to give us 
 any knowledge of matters lying beyond the bound- 
 aries of experience. But Kant did not stop with this. 
 He affirmed that there are some certainties for the 
 soul which we do not gain through metaphysical rea- 
 soning. They are absolute postulates, and we accept 
 them because of the practical needs and demands of 
 the moral life. These great postulates are God, free- 
 dom, and immortality. Metaphysical reasoning has 
 never been the foundation of our assurance of these 
 beliefs, and therefore nothing has been lost when we 
 find that such reasoning has no power to yield us 
 knowledge of them. 
 
 Spencer's Agnosticism. But Spencer's agnosticism, 
 though far more pretentious, is really much cruder 
 than Kant's. Spencer professed to harmonize science 
 and religion at just the time when they seemed to be 
 in sharpest conflict. But his reconciliation was a 
 very doubtful boon to religion. He warned the theo- 
 logians that "the basis of the reconciliation must be 
 this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts — 
 that the Power which the universe manifests is in- 
 scrutable." God, therefore, is not to be thought of 
 except as a great Mystery — the Unknowable. Any- 
 
68 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 thing more than this, Mr. Spencer tells us, swamps 
 thought in a lot of contradictions. But, according 
 to Spencer, we are in the same plight in respect to 
 other fundamental ideas — matter, motion, force, con- 
 sciousness, space, time. These, he assures us, are just 
 as hopelessly contradictory as Infinite, Absolute, and 
 First Cause. It certainly looks as bad for physics and 
 psychology as for theology. And here is a most inter- 
 esting question which finds no adequate answer in 
 Mr. Spencer's writings. If we can have no knowledge 
 in religion because the fundamental notions of reli- 
 gion are inscrutable, how does it come that we can 
 have knowledge in physics and psychology even 
 though the fundamental notions matter, force, space, 
 time, and consciousness, are inscrutable? The reply 
 would be, of course, that those sciences are purely 
 empirical, using knowledge which comes to us through 
 sense-experience, but that God, not being an object 
 of our sense-experience, cannot be regarded as an 
 object of our knowledge. The superficiality of this 
 lies in the assumption that knowledge can come to us 
 from sense-experience alone. And since the central 
 weakness of agnosticism is its theory of knowledge, 
 we shall have to point out as briefly as possible the 
 untenability of the sensational doctrine of knowl- 
 edge. Ultimately we shall find that any foundation 
 in knowledge for science is also a foundation for 
 religion. 
 
 The Sensational Theory of Knowledge. Locke, Hume, 
 and Spencer all rest their speculations upon a concep- 
 tion of the knowing process which has been entirely 
 discounted by criticism. The sensational psychology 
 treated knowing as a kind of mechanical process. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 69 
 
 Somehow the mind was "impressed" with the object, 
 or an "image" of the object "passed into the mind." 
 These and other crude metaphors were made to do 
 duty in explaining perception and knowledge. But 
 how objects which are physical ever produce sensa- 
 tions in the mind which are mental has never been 
 shown. When we see an object the ether vibrations 
 strike the retina and set up a stimulus which is pre- 
 sumably some kind of molecular motion. This is 
 transmitted to the central organ of the nervous sys- 
 tem, the brain. But, as we have seen, this molecular 
 motion is no nearer being a thought in the brain than 
 it was on the retina. To all attempts to explain the 
 origin of thought from physical sensations the only 
 tenable answer is that the mind creates thoughts by 
 virtue of its own activity. On the occasion of the 
 stimulus from without, the mind reacts, and thoughts 
 arise which are the mind's interpretation of reality. 
 That the thoughts which are constantly being born in 
 our minds are parallel to and do interpret in some 
 adequate way the order of objective reality, is one of 
 the great fundamental assumptions of our rational 
 life. Why our thoughts do arise, and why those 
 thoughts grasp reality we can no more say than we 
 can tell why we are rational beings. A theory of 
 knowledge which denies the independent existence 
 and activity of the conscious self ends in a skepti- 
 cism which is not only fatal to religion, but to all 
 science as well. 
 
 The knowing process is not simply the mechanical 
 registering of sensations, but is the interpretation of 
 that which comes to us from the object. We know 
 more than simply the sense qualities of things. 
 
70 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Knowledge arises from the perception of relations 
 among our ideas. In strict conformity with that 
 which comes to us from objective reality, the mind 
 relates its objects of thought and so builds up knowl- 
 edge. That this mental product called knowledge is 
 valid for reality is the fundamental assumption upon 
 which all our rational life depends. But we have 
 transcended phenomena in this spontaneous activity 
 of the mind. Mere sensations could give us no 
 knowledge. They could not associate themselves. It 
 is our reason which associates and interprets. The 
 sensational theory of knowledge leads to absolute 
 skepticism — scientific no less than religious. 7 
 
 The Agnostic's Unknowable. But we must inquire 
 further concerning this Unknowable of Mr. Spencer. 
 He tells us we can know that the unknowable exists. 
 All other knowledge is relative — phenomenal, that is, 
 merely appearance. Spencer assures us that science 
 deals only with phenomena. But what ground of 
 existence have these phenomena? Let us see. Ac- 
 cording to the agnostic, when I perceive an object, 
 my knowledge of it is a sensation or associated sensa- 
 tions. We must not inquire concerning the ground 
 or source from w r hich those sensations come. That 
 would be to get beyond the limits of the phenomenal 
 and meddle with notions, wmich we have been warned 
 are inscrutable. But is the (phenomenal) object of 
 my knowledge simply my own affair? Does the exist- 
 ence of this phenomenon of my experience depend 
 simply and solely upon my own individual sense 
 impressions? Or is it a common affair for all finite 
 
 7 Probably the most thorough overhauling the sensational doctrine of knowledge 
 has ever received is that in The Introduction to Hume, by Thomas Hill Green. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 71 
 
 minds? It cannot be an individual affair, for that 
 would make the reality of the object to depend upon 
 individual knowledge of it, which is absurd. The 
 thing existed, of course, before I perceived it. Nor 
 can there be any basis of reality for the object in com- 
 mon knowledge, for the philosophy of agnosticism 
 does not permit us to think of things as objects of our 
 knowledge in realistic fashion, that is, in the sense of 
 being substantive realities. They are only phenom- 
 ena. Where are the phenomena then? What possible 
 basis can we assign for the reality of the things of 
 which we have phenomenal knowledge? This is the 
 inevitable embarrassment into which all doctrines of 
 the phenomenality of knowledge are soon driven. 
 Kant tried to save himself, as is well known, by the 
 notion of the "thing-in-itself." And when Fichte 
 demolished the thing-in-itself the only way that lay 
 open was toward idealism. 
 
 But Mr. Spencer did not try to save himself, for the 
 reason that he did not realize the plight his theory 
 w T as in. The weakness and inconsistency of his doc- 
 trine of relativity never dawned on him. Now, as a 
 matter of fact, the above problem as to the basis of 
 reality for the phenomenal object of our knowledge, 
 can be solved only on the plane of theistic idealism, 
 which thinks of the Infinite Mind as the ground of 
 both the finite object and the finite subject. It is 
 true, of course, that objects can exist only for the 
 mind that perceives them. Their existence, however, 
 cannot be made to depend upon that mind. We can- 
 not say that things exist only for this or that indi- 
 vidual mind. If, then, they are independent of each 
 and every finite mind, their existence must depend 
 
72 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 upon an Infinite Mind as the ground and condition of 
 their reality. 
 
 In Mr. Spencer's thinking, phenomena seem to be 
 independent of us. Their existence certainly does not 
 depend upon us. What does it depend upon? What 
 is their relation to the basal reality — the Unknow- 
 able? Mr. Spencer is obliged to make changes and 
 relations among things point to some corresponding 
 changes and relations in basal reality. lie had to 
 choose between making the phenomenal objects of 
 knowledge independent of the Unknowable (and this 
 would be to drop back into materialism) or else to 
 find no ground whatever for the phenomenal objects 
 of knowledge. He really had to make his objects to 
 depend upon the Unknowable, with the result that he 
 is gradually forced to affirm quite a good many things 
 about the Unknowable — so many, indeed, that Mr. 
 Mill complained that we were receiving "a prodigious 
 amount of knowledge respecting the Unknowable." 
 And Mr. Bradley remarks that Spencer gives us more 
 information about the Unknowable than the most dog- 
 matic theologian would dare to about God ! 
 
 Spencer tried to work out agnosticism as a philo- 
 sophical system, but he failed. Some of his followers 
 tried to tinker the synthetic philosophy so as to make 
 it philosophically respectable, but without success. 
 The weaknesses are too deep-seated. They are consti- 
 tutional. Spencer's doctrine of the relativity of 
 knowledge was derived from Kant and Hamilton. In 
 the thinking of the latter "The Absolute" was a purely 
 logical abstraction. Hamilton said that to think is to 
 condition, that is, it is to relate the thing thought 
 to all other things. But to do this with the Absolute 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 73 
 
 and the Infinite is clearly impossible without destroy- 
 ing the Absoluteness. Hence the Absolute is nnthink- 
 able, and of the Infinite and the Absolute we can 
 therefore have no knowledge. But all this is ab- 
 stractly logical — and purely verbal. To think a 
 thing is indeed to know it in its relations to other 
 things. But to set up a conception of the Absolute as 
 unrelated and therefore as impossible to our thought, 
 and then to charge our thought with hopeless limita- 
 tions because such a conception is found to be un- 
 thinkable, is entirely illegitimate. It is an artificially 
 made dualism. Yet this is the gist of Hamilton's 
 doctrine of the Unconditioned. Its fallacies are 
 understood now, and the older agnosticism of Ham- 
 ilton and Mansel is not taken very seriously. 
 
 Conclusion. And now in summing up the case 
 against agnosticism we must note a few important 
 considerations. Agnosticism's denial that there can 
 be any knowledge of God sets definite limits to human 
 knowledge. The limitation is in two forms: First, 
 the human mind is declared to have such inherent 
 limitations that knowledge of God is impossible. 
 Second, God is so constituted that he cannot make 
 himself known to the thought of men. The agnostic 
 often poses as the humblest among the thinkers. He 
 is the last to grow dogmatic ! But here is dogmatism 
 indeed ! The affirmation that knowledge must be only 
 of the phenomenal has already been considered. We 
 rest the matter by repeating that all knowledge of 
 things as real must rest upon some assurance that we 
 know also the ground of their reality. To this any 
 tenable theory of thought brings us. But how does 
 the agnostic know that the Infinite cannot make him- 
 
74 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 self known, since all knowledge, we are assured, is 
 confined to the phenomenal in our sense experience? 
 If God is inscrutable, as agnosticism urges, what 
 ground is left from which the agnostic may infer that 
 God cannot make himself known to the finite mind? 
 The truth is we meet here the same old dualism. The 
 Infinite and finite are thought of as standing over 
 each other in mutual exclusion. But surely we 
 may affirm an Infinite which does not exclude but 
 includes the finite. This is the conclusion of all sound 
 philosophy. And this disposes of the agnostic ob- 
 jection that the Infinite is the unrelated. And who 
 shall say that knowledge which must always involve 
 both the reports which come from the things and 
 the independent rationality of the mind does not 
 grasp reality? Now, we have seen how the doctrine 
 of the relativity of knowledge fails to find any basis 
 for the reality of phenomena. Our knowledge of them 
 is the basis of their reality for us, but the basis of 
 their reality as part of the world of existence can- 
 not be our mind, but must be the Infinite Mind. This 
 Infinite Mind is not ouly a part of reality, but is the 
 Eternal Ground of Reality. And who shall say that 
 if we, in knowing, grasp reality at all, we may not 
 know the Eternal Ground of Reality, God, and God 
 may not make himself known to us? 
 
 Agnosticism and Christian Thought. Agnosticism is not 
 a system of philosophy. It has no doctrine which 
 stands the test of critical examination. But it was a 
 powerful protest, and as such it has exerted a great 
 influence. It was a protest, in the name of modem 
 science, against the conceptions of God which Chris- 
 tianity had inherited from former ages. The tre- 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 75 
 
 mendous advance in scientific thinking during the 
 second half of the nineteenth century rendered the 
 older idea of God and his relation to the world wholly 
 inadequate. A reconstruction had to come if Chris- 
 tian thought was to continue to command the respect 
 of the modern mind and serve the needs of modern 
 life. Indeed, every age needs to reinterpret and re- 
 state the great fundamental verities. And the agnostic 
 movement served the purpose of a call to the Chris- 
 tian Church to bring her teachings about God and the 
 world into better harmony with the great revelations 
 which God had been making through modern science. 
 And the Church is always sluggish in this important 
 work. This is because of the mental inertia of the 
 theological conservative, and also because so many 
 erroneously suppose that to change doctrine is to 
 tamper with the truth. They do not realize that the 
 truth about God is eternal and indestructible. The 
 defenders of a traditional dogmatic orthodoxy have 
 always been temporarily blinded by rather sudden 
 bursts of truth. But some of them come slowly trail- 
 ing along in time. This has been unfortunately the 
 story of the attitude of church leaders to the truth 
 quite generally — from the days of Galileo even to the 
 present. But agnosticism has done its work, and 
 we may well be thankful to God for scientists of such 
 splendid intellectual integrity as Professor Huxley. 
 He and many like him were loyal to the truth as they 
 saw it. They would not profess allegiance to an 
 orthodoxy which did not represent their profound 
 convictions of truth. And what they did was to force 
 the issue clearly. The mighty array of facts which 
 modern science has won is, of course, a great exten- 
 
76 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 sion of the divine revelation. And Christian scholar- 
 ship has made and is still making the necessary rein- 
 terpretation. 
 
 It has been often assumed that agnosticism means 
 utter irreligion, and that the agnostic has no belief 
 in God. But while there is some ground for this 
 assumption, it is not always true. Toward the close 
 of his life Professor Huxley made the only confes- 
 sion of religious faith which we find. He quotes the 
 great statement of the meaning of religion from the 
 prophet Micah : "And what doth the Lord require of 
 thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy God?" He then added this com- 
 ment : "If any so-called religion takes away from this 
 great saying of Micah, I think it wantonly mutilates, 
 while, if it adds thereto, I think it obscures the perfect 
 ideal of religion." 8 It may be that beneath his con- 
 troversial spirit and his hostility to the orthodoxy 
 of his time, he did have some glimmering that the self- 
 disclosures of God are not cast in the set molds of dog- 
 matic orthodoxy, but are a living and growing revela- 
 tion to the human spirit. 
 
 After all, a broad view of the divine revelation as it 
 may be discerned not only in nature but also in the 
 thought-life of mankind, finds a place for the great 
 scientists as prophets of God's truth, no less than the 
 great preachers. And if we believe that the advance 
 of truth has gone on under the immanent guidance 
 of God himself, may we not even think that God has 
 in his inscrutable wisdom used even the stern and 
 earnest prophets of honest doubt to help expand 
 and purify Christian thinking, so that the spiritual 
 
 8 See Huxley's Essays, "Genesis Versus Nature." 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 77 
 
 religion might not be bound by speculative theol- 
 ogy? 
 
 3. Pantheism 
 
 Meaning of Pantheism. The name is one, but that for 
 which the name stands is many. Pantheism is a way 
 of thinking about the world, especially a way of con- 
 ceiving rationally the relation of the world of finite 
 persons and things to the Ground of all reality — the 
 Eternal Spirit. This way of thinking about the world 
 may be primitive — mythological rather than philo- 
 sophical in the modern sense. The early mystical 
 pantheism of India is of this sort. The doctrine of 
 the impersonal World-Soul of Brahmanism is poetic 
 and mythological. Salvation through union with this 
 spiritual principle is a mysticism as positive as it is 
 primitive. But pantheism may also be said to be not 
 only a way of thinking but a way of feeling about the 
 universe. And that basal unity and consistency 
 which is the profoundest assumption of all science 
 and philosophy becomes an underlying harmony and 
 beauty when we think of the soul seeking to grasp 
 something of the meaning of the universe through 
 feeling as well as through thought. A philosopher 
 like Hegel seeks to set forth the great principle of 
 cosmic unity in the conception of Absolute Mind. A 
 poet like Shelley sings of the great Spiritual Pres- 
 ence in the universe which is manifested in cosmic 
 harmony and beauty. We may recognize pantheism 
 as a perception through feeling of Eternal Reality, 
 but the feelings are fleeting and somewhat vague. 
 Though real, they defy definition and analysis. For 
 our present purpose, then, we shall consider the pan- 
 
78 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 theism which is an attempt to find by way of specu- 
 lative thinking some rational conception of the rela- 
 tion of the finite and the Infinite. 
 
 Pantheism a Monism. The pantheistic world-view is 
 not only a philosophical but also a religious doctrine. 
 It is one answer to the profound problem of the rela- 
 tion of the finite world to the Infinite — the world of 
 things and persons to God. There are three thought 
 systems or world-views which seek to answer this 
 great problem. They are deism, pantheism, and 
 theism. Materialism finds no place for God, and 
 therefore is not concerned with the relation of the 
 finite world to the Infinite Ground of the World. 
 Materialistic monism identifies the world of things 
 and persons with the Ground of all Reality. It says 
 Ultimate Reality is matter in motion. Pantheism too 
 seeks to identify the world of things and persons with 
 the Ground of all Reality. But pantheism results 
 when the metaphysical problem of the ground of 
 being has been answered in an idealistic way. Ulti- 
 mate Reality is not matter but spirit, and pantheism 
 affirms not simply the rational harmony but the unity 
 and identity of the finite world with the Infinite Spirit 
 of the universe. 
 
 Pantheism and Deism. Pantheism does indeed meet 
 the demand of reason for a unitary principle of Being 
 back of all the complexity of finite existence. We 
 have seen that such a demand appears in every philo- 
 sophic world-view. For ages this vague but great con- 
 viction has persisted in human thinking — this convic- 
 tion that beneath its diversity the world is a unity. 
 The crude doctrine named deism gave up all attempts 
 at a monistic solution of the problems of existence. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 79 
 
 Its teaching was dualistic. According to this view, 
 the world was created by God. This creation was a 
 definite act or series of acts at some period in past 
 time. The universe at its creation was endowed with 
 certain inherent forces which were supposed to be 
 sufficient to provide for all future development. But, 
 according to this view, the God who created the world 
 is to be thought of as entirely separate from it — he is 
 apart from it or above it. The philosophy of the deists 
 in no way forbade God interposing his divine power 
 in the affairs of the universe. The creation was a 
 tremendous miracle and it was conceivable that other 
 exhibitions of divine power might follow. But as a 
 matter of fact, deism considered miracles superflu- 
 ous and really irrational. The divine work was so 
 perfectly done at creation that to think of the need of 
 any later interpositions is to discount the divine wis- 
 dom. This view, it will be seen, erects nature into a 
 complete system which runs with a certain independ- 
 ence of its own after the Creator has once set it 
 in motion. That this really destroys the most char- 
 acteristic attributes of the Divine soon becomes ap- 
 parent. John Stuart Mill, in one of his essays on reli- 
 gion, says that God is a "Being of great but limited 
 power, how or by what limited we cannot even con- 
 jecture; of great and perhaps unlimited intelligence, 
 but perhaps also more narrowly limited than his 
 power ; who desires and pays some regard to the hap- 
 piness of his creatures, but who seems to have other 
 motives of action which he cares more for, and who 
 can hardly be supposed to have created the universe 
 for that purpose alone." 9 
 
 "Three Esaaya on Religion, p. 194. 
 
80 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Against all such dualisms, and present-day plural- 
 isms as well, pantheism stands as a protest. And 
 whatever its weakness (and we shall see that it is 
 gravely inadequate), pantheism rests upon the broad 
 conception that the world is at bottom a unity, and 
 that all its discord is resolved in the great funda- 
 mental harmony of the Infinite. 
 
 Criticism of Pantheism. In the case of materialism 
 we found that anything like a thoroughgoing criticism 
 was impossible because of the limits imposed by the 
 character and purpose of these studies. But we must 
 seek to do with reference to pantheism what we tried 
 to do with materialism, namely, to indicate the direc- 
 tion in which its most serious shortcomings as a 
 world-view are to be found. 
 
 Taking as our starting point the foundation tenet 
 of the idealistic metaphysics that the ultimate ground 
 of reality is Infinite Mind, the crucial question is, 
 How are we to think of the finite world — the world of 
 persons and things — as related to this Infinite Mind? 
 The answer to this question makes the difference 
 between theism and pantheism. Theism affirms a 
 dependence of the world upon God. God is thought 
 of as an Infinite Person or personal Spirit. He has 
 created human beings with the capacity for person- 
 ality. This capacity develops under the conditions of 
 our life. It involves to a greater or less degree the 
 limited independence implied in freedom. Freedom 
 is the indispensable factor of personality and, there- 
 fore, a fundamental doctrine of theism. But any 
 degree of independence of God which the finite person 
 has is, of course, the bestowal of God and the direct 
 expression of his divine will. The ground for this 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 81 
 
 relative independence in the freedom of the finite per- 
 son is found in God's greatest purposes concerning 
 men, namely, that they should receive moral and spir- 
 itual development. 
 
 Pantheism, on the other hand, affirms not only the 
 dependence but the identity of the world of persons 
 and things with the Infinite Spirit. But though 
 pantheism uses the phraseology of identity, it really 
 never means absolute or metaphysical identity. If 
 the world and God were really identical, then the 
 existence of the two concepts and the two names 
 "finite" and "infinite" would be meaningless. There 
 are, of course, fundamental differences between the 
 finite and the infinite; some essential marks of the 
 infinite as contrasted with the finite, and the finite as 
 contrasted with the infinite. Pantheism gains stand- 
 ing ground, logically at least, by blurring but not 
 obliterating these characteristic differences. Those 
 modern pantheists in India and elsewhere who speak 
 of the possibility of attaining a complete harmony 
 with the Infinite — a merging of their finite thought, 
 feeling and will with the Infinite Spirit — deny vigor- 
 ously that this means the annihilation of human per- 
 sonality. In other words, they repudiate any absolute 
 identification on the plane of the human. Generally, 
 the world is viewed as a part of God, or a mode of 
 God's existence. Pantheistic world- views are of two 
 sorts : First, those theories in which nature is lifted 
 up into the supreme place as the eternal ground of 
 existence. Of this sort is Spinoza's pantheism. In 
 his Ethics, where his views concerning the finite and 
 Infinite are expounded, the words "nature" and "sub- 
 stance" could be substituted for "God" with no loss 
 
82 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of meaning. This kind of pantheism is akin to mate- 
 rialism. It views God as a world-substance rather 
 than a First Cause. Spinoza was rightly judged an 
 atheist by his contemporaries. Second, those theories 
 in which God is thought of as existing in and through 
 the finite world. This view, which regards God as 
 Eternal Spirit and as the First Cause, involves the 
 idea of immanence. By immanence is meant that the 
 finite world ever manifests God — it is a revelation and 
 expression of his activity. 
 
 Pantheism and Theism. But at this point emerges the 
 difference — and a most important difference it is— 
 between the pantheistic view and theism. Pantheism 
 conceives the Divine Spirit in the world as imper- 
 sonal, while theism affirms the personality both of the 
 Divine Spirit and of finite spirits. This conception of 
 personality is the greatest one of philosophy, and it 
 determines absolutely the character of the world-view 
 where it is present as the central dominating idea, 
 or where it is absent. Pantheism views the Divine 
 Spirit as unconscious and impersonal. Now, the con- 
 ception of unconscious impersonal spirit is extremely 
 difficult, and I believe really impossible to our reason. 
 When so qualified the word "spirit" can mean little 
 more than Being conceived as activity. And in pro- 
 portion as materialism outgrows the "stuff" theory 
 of matter and adopts an idea of matter as the seat 
 or manifestation of eternal energy, in just that pro- 
 portion do pantheism and materialism approach each" 
 other and merge. There is a good deal of materialism 
 which is essentially pantheism. Of such character 
 was Spencer's speculations so far as they touched 
 upon an Unknowable — the ground of all existence. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 83 
 
 So also are the hybrid, mystical notions of material- 
 istic monism such as the "mind stuff" of Clifford. All 
 the logical landmarks are gone and thought staggers 
 around blindly when "unconscious spirit," "conscious 
 matter," "mind stuff," and such logical monstrosities 
 are introduced into what professes to be rational 
 speculation. Where the adjective devours the noun, 
 thought is left so confused that in other matters than 
 philosophy we generally do not hesitate to pronounce 
 the result nonsense. We repeat, then, our conviction 
 that the world-view which rests upon such an idea as 
 "unconscious spirit" is incapable of being thought 
 through in any sober and rational fashion. If we are 
 content with a philosophy which can be felt rather 
 than thought, pantheism will no doubt serve us. But 
 just as soon as we begin to subject pantheism to legit- 
 imate philosophical analysis (by that we mean inquire 
 what relation its underlying conceptions have to our 
 experience and also what is their value for our expe- 
 rience), then their rational filminess and vagueness 
 appears. Pantheism always begins to approach 
 theism as soon as it is taken seriously as a practical 
 religious doctrine ; that is to say, as soon as it begins 
 properly to reckon with experience. Indeed, the way 
 some of the modern expounders of the Absolute philos- 
 ophy have had to turn their faces toward theism and 
 adopt its ideas and phraseology even while professing 
 to hold to the fundamental Absolute doctrine, is an 
 illustration in point. 10 
 
 On the other hand, the older theism has felt the 
 
 10 Professor Roy ce, in his admirable discussion of the place of the self in the universe, 
 eeems to be far more of a theist than a pantheist, though his speculative position is 
 that of the philosophy of the Absolute (see Royce, The World and the Individual, 
 vol. ii, Lecture vii). 
 
84 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 strong influence of pantheism. While holding to the 
 transcendent conception on the personal plane, 
 modern theism also expounds a doctrine of the divine 
 immanence. The world of things can have no inde- 
 pendent existence. The Divine Mind is the ground 
 of all the activity of the natural universe. And here 
 again we see that the division is on the basis of 
 whether the Divine Mind shall be thought of as per- 
 sonal or impersonal. A personal Divine Mind swings 
 our thought over to theism, while an impersonal 
 Divine Mind sends our thought back into materialism. 
 
 There are, then, after all, only two great world- 
 views. One regards a personal Eternal Spirit as the 
 source and ground of all existence. The other sees 
 the ground of existence in an impersonal Eternal 
 Energy (unconscious Spirit-Energy). The first of 
 these is theism, the second is materialism in one of 
 its several forms. 
 
 Pantheism and the Moral Life. We are now in position 
 to see what are the implications of pantheism so far 
 as our moral life is concerned. If the Eternal Spirit 
 is unconscious and impersonal, then all activities 
 which come from the Eternal Spirit as their ground 
 are mechanically determined. Purpose finds no place 
 in the activity of the impersonal World-Spirit. The 
 evolutionary processes whereby the manifold forms of 
 life are unfolded are just as thoroughly necessitated 
 in a pantheistic system as in a materialistic scheme. 
 This means that a pantheistic view has all the embar- 
 rassments under which materialism suffers. The 
 problem of error in cognition and of moral evil in 
 conduct are cases in point, for a consistent pantheism 
 must affirm that not only the ongoing forces of nature 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 85 
 
 but also all the activities of the finite self are modes 
 or manifestations of the Divine Activity. The doc- 
 trine of immanence may, indeed, be applied to nature 
 without consequences serious to reason. While dif- 
 ficult problems loom up, yet we cannot think of 
 nature's power as other than God's power. But if we 
 think of human activity as God's activity, we are soon 
 involved in consequences of the gravest nature — so 
 grave, indeed, that they threaten the destruction of 
 rational thinking. Is the divine thought really im- 
 manent in all the thoughts of men? Then their error, 
 blundering, stupidity, meanness, and malice are all 
 somehow either modes of the Eternal Spirit's activity, 
 or else they have no real existence. Some pantheists 
 do indeed say that since we cannot include error and 
 evil as a part of the activity of the Divine Mind, 
 therefore error and evil are not real. Error, we 
 are told, either does not exist at all or else is truth 
 imperfectly perceived and inadequately realized. And 
 as for evil, it too has no existence, or it is good, labor- 
 ing under the same temporary disadvantages! This 
 is the position into which thoroughgoing and consist- 
 ent pantheists have been forced from the Vedanta 
 philosophy of India to modern theosophy and Eddy- 
 ism to-day. It is difficult to call this kind of thing by 
 the name of philosophy at all, or even to be patient 
 with it. 
 
 And this is not all. A pantheism which makes 
 human thought and action a mode of the Absolute not 
 only must turn away and refuse to reckon with facts 
 of our human experience which stare us in the face, 
 but it wrecks its own doctrine. For how can the unity 
 of the Absolute itself be preserved? If my thoughts 
 
86 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 with their obvious imperfection and limitations are 
 a manifestation or mode of the Divine Thought, what 
 is the relation of the Absolute, thinking perfect 
 thoughts, to the same Absolute manifesting itself in 
 my imperfect thoughts? The essential characteristics 
 of the human — namely, moral limitation and imper- 
 fection — must be denied and the human made essen- 
 tially divine, or else an element of moral imperfection 
 must be admitted in the Absolute. 
 
 Pantheism and Religion. By teaching that the Eternal 
 Spirit of the universe is impersonal, pantheism under- 
 mines and renders irrational all religious worship 
 except the attitude of awe and reverence in the pres- 
 ence of infinite power. Some would remind us that 
 the love and appreciation of the beauty of the universe 
 is religion. It is, indeed, a part of religion when it 
 helps us to realize communion with the Eternal Spirit. 
 But if God be conceived as impersonal, as principle, 
 as eternal energy, then fellowship and communion are 
 impossible. We cannot be thankful to a principle, 
 nor can we expect response from an Absolute con- 
 ceived as the sum of all energy. In any system where 
 nature is identified with God, prayer will find but 
 slight place. The main motive which prompts the 
 human spirit to seek the Divine Spirit in thanksgiv- 
 ing and prayer is the expectation of some response. 
 And in the absence of such expectation worship, as it 
 has found expression in the religious beliefs and prac- 
 tices of men, becomes impossible. 
 
 But we have pointed out enough to show that as a 
 world-view pantheism also is very inadequate. When 
 consistent with itself the doctrine involves us in many 
 desperate embarrassments. And avoiding these, pan- 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 87 
 
 theism must approach theism. The question of per- 
 sonality is central and fundamental. In Chapter V 
 we take up its discussion. Personality is not only the 
 foundation doctrine of theism, but it is the most im- 
 portant conception of modern philosophy. Its evolu- 
 tion in our life is the most characteristic feature of 
 human existence. It is the ultimate reality in all 
 human relationships. Physics and chemistry may 
 perhaps be discussed without it, but not ethics, eco- 
 nomics, sociology, psychology, or religion. Most of 
 our discussion in the subsequent chapters of these 
 studies will center around it. It is the basis of all that 
 makes our life of abiding worth here and now, and it 
 is the only philosophical ground of a hope for the con- 
 tinuance of our life in the great unknown future. 
 
 4. The Christian World-View 
 
 Theism the Only Christian World- View. We have now 
 briefly discussed two of the three great world-views, 
 materialism and pantheism. We have found ample 
 reasons to consider both inadequate. We have noted 
 also that neither leaves any place for the basic beliefs 
 of Christianity. It remains now to ask whether there 
 is a philosophic way of looking at things, of thinking 
 about God and the world and humanity and their rela- 
 tion, which will "hold the facts together" and yet 
 afford a rational and adequate interpretation of the 
 whole of our experience. To point out that we find 
 such a world-view in Christian theism is one of the 
 purposes of these studies. We hope to show that 
 Theism is a consistent and tenable philosophical 
 framework into which it is possible to build the great 
 essential beliefs of Christian Faith. 
 
88 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 The Aim of Religious Philosophy. To bring our great 
 religious convictions and our scientific conceptions 
 into fundamental harmony is one of the principal 
 aims of religious philosophy. And the necessary con- 
 dition of finding this harmony is to obtain some sub- 
 stantial basis in philosophy for our great religious 
 beliefs. Indeed, to find a basis of unity and solidarity 
 in all our thinking is the purpose of philosophizing. 
 This does not mean that a philosophy of religion 
 demands that all our beliefs must be brought into the 
 rational or philosophic form, or even that they must 
 be capable of logical demonstration or rational 
 analysis. It only demands that there shall be such 
 adjustment of beliefs to facts and principles that no 
 irrational elements are given a place. In other words, 
 it seeks to carry out our deep conviction that truth is 
 one, and if we are to secure the fullest assurances that 
 our conceptions are in harmony with the truth, they 
 must be in rational harmony with each other. This 
 applies even to our ideas of God. They must be con- 
 sonant with the truths we have won from life. This 
 we have already urged. 
 
 We shall need to state the doctrine of Christian 
 theism only in outline here, for the remainder of these 
 studies are devoted really to the exposition of the 
 theistic view and some of the more important reli- 
 gious implications of that view. 
 
 Christian Theism Outlined. The two greatest questions 
 of religious philosophy are: (1) What is the nature 
 of reality — what is the ground of all being? (2) 
 What is the relation of this Ground of all Reality or 
 World-Ground to the human Spirit? It will be seen 
 that both of these great questions underlie religion. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 89 
 
 It depends upon the answer to the first question 
 whether any place is made for the Christian religion 
 or not. When the answer to that question is that 
 the ground of all reality is matter in motion, the reli- 
 gious standpoint which results is atheism. And what- 
 ever we may say as to the possibility of some kind of 
 feeling which might be called religious on the basis 
 of materialistic monism, religion as it is understood 
 by students of the science of religion is entirely impos- 
 sible. This we have seen. When, on the other hand, 
 the answer is that the ground of all reality is imper- 
 sonal Spirit, the religious standpoint which results is 
 pantheism. And unless pantheistic religion saves 
 itself (as it usually does) by some form of personifi- 
 cation, the outcome is practical atheism. This also 
 we have seen. 
 
 The answer of theism to this great problem of the 
 relation of the Infinite to the world is that the In- 
 finite, or Absolute, is a personal ethical Spirit, in vital 
 moral relations with finite spirits; and that the rela- 
 tion of the world of things to the Infinite is that of 
 dependence. The world of things is the manifestation 
 or revelation of the purposeful activity of the Divine 
 Spirit. 
 
 Now a word in regard to the terms we use denoting 
 the World-Ground. In philosophy God is often 
 spoken of in cosmic relations as "the Absolute" and 
 in relation to finite human existence as "the Infinite." 
 But for religion we think of God with respect to per- 
 sonal relations. God therefore for religion is not so 
 much the Absolute or the Infinite as he is a personal 
 Spirit, in vital moral relations with men. And while 
 we may use the philosophical terms for the Divine, 
 
90 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 we shall generally speak simply of God in outlining 
 the argument for theism. 
 
 No Explanation of Creation. The ground of things is 
 the purpose of God fulfilling itself constantly in his 
 divine activity. But how? We cannot tell. It is no 
 more the task of philosophy rationally to expound 
 creation than it is to attempt to explain why we are 
 rational beings. All the old mythological and theo- 
 logical theories of divine creation belong to an age 
 when picture-thinking was made to do duty for ra- 
 tional reflection. The notion that God created the 
 world out of some kind of raw material — premundane 
 "matter" — or that the world was created out of 
 "nothing," or that it "emanated" from the "divine 
 essence" — all these notions and others like them were 
 crude thought struggling to express the great truth 
 that the world is dependent upon the Divine Activity 
 for its being. And this is the gist of theism's doctrine 
 of creation. That it cannot be explained Ave hasten 
 to admit. The process by which the will and activity 
 of God result in the physical order is completely be- 
 yond us. Did the world have a definite beginning in 
 time? The affirmative answer brings with it a swarm 
 of serious difficulties. For example, was the Deity 
 inactive for a long period and then awoke, as it were, 
 to increased action? If the creation of the world was 
 good, was God content with less than the possible 
 maximum of good during all the time before creative 
 activity began? These may appear to some to be over- 
 done speculative refinements, but they express a real 
 difficulty to which there is no satisfying answer. But 
 while the matter is by no means cleared up, yet its 
 impenetrable difficulty is modified when we discard 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 91 
 
 as uncritical the notion of an empty time in which 
 things take place. Time is a thought form. It is that 
 mode in which we apprehend events in experience and 
 recognize them as related in sequence. God's activity, 
 being eternal, is unbegun in time. This is all we can 
 say. To attempt further analysis is to go off into the 
 realm of pure speculation with nothing whatever in 
 the way of experience upon which to base our conclu- 
 sions. 11 In any event creation is a mystery. All we 
 can affirm is that the divine will and activity are ever 
 causing that to exist which previously had no exist- 
 ence. 
 
 And what shall be said of the creation of finite 
 spirits? Again we confess that we certainly cannot 
 fathom either the creative purposes or the process. 
 Theologians have told us that God in the early ages 
 of cosmic existence needed men as objects of his love, 
 and that therefore their creation was in reality the 
 grand consummation of the Divine Existence. As a 
 suggestion deepening our feeling and enriching our 
 content of the meaning of the divine Personality, this 
 idea might perhaps be received in some of its forms. 
 But it must be confessed that as soon as we try to 
 relate it to the facts of science or put it into philo- 
 sophical form it becomes dark and difficult. The 
 conception that at some point in past time God com- 
 pleted his realization of himself by reproducing him- 
 self historically is a proposition which grows exceed- 
 ingly obscure when either scientific or metaphysical 
 criticism is applied to it. But we can say that lesser 
 or finite spirits as they develop under the limitations 
 of human life do indeed manifest the eternal moral 
 
 "See LoUe, Microcosmus, book ix, chap, v, Bee. 4. Bowne, Metaphysics, chap. v. 
 
92 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 purpose of God — and constitute his highest possible 
 manifestation. Now, if God is to have in finite spirits 
 any worthy fulfillment of himself, they must have 
 such possibilities and capacities that they will mani- 
 fest aspects of the divine purpose not manifested 
 by other modes of creation. Does not this mean 
 that finite spirits must have the power to develop 
 those characteristics which are the essential elements 
 in the divine nature? In other words, a worthy ful- 
 fillment of the divine plan in creation means the 
 growth of personality — self-consciousness, self-deter- 
 minism, and moral love. 12 In personal spirits even 
 under the limitations of finite conditions, we have 
 then what theism declares is a manifestation — indeed, 
 the highest manifestation we can know — of God. This 
 is the significance of the biblical teaching that "God 
 made man in his own image." 
 
 God's Moral Purpose. But now emerges the question 
 concerning the relation of the world and God in the 
 matter of causality. God is the first cause, as we have 
 seen. He is the ground of all finite existence. But 
 how are we to regard all movement and change in the 
 world of things? Science has opened the world to our 
 knowledge. We recognize the reign of law. The great 
 forces of nature are constant. We dare not say they 
 are invariable. Such an affirmation would be log- 
 ically indefensible. But we may say that, so far as 
 our experience has gone, they seem to be invariable. 
 But theism makes the world to depend upon the will 
 and energy, that is, the purposive activity of God. 
 God's purpose is, therefore the supreme matter, not 
 invariability. If God's purpose demands fixity in the 
 
 J2 The nature and implications of Personality are taken up in Chapter V. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC WORLD-VIEWS 93 
 
 operation of nature's forces (and so far as our expe- 
 rience goes it generally does) , then we know the forces 
 will be constant. But may not God's purpose demand 
 variation? W T hy? There is only one answer, namely, 
 for moral ends. And this brings us to the realm of the 
 personal again. Theism teaches not only that God 
 rules the universe of things but also governs the world 
 of finite spirits. If the divine purpose be, at some 
 point, to realize a great moral end which we may 
 believe God has willed, shall he not seek the realiza- 
 tion through the possible variation of nature's sched- 
 ule as well as through her unvarying sequences? 13 
 
 And if self-manifestation be the highest end of 
 God's moral purpose, then his creation of finite spirits 
 must be in order that a spiritual nature may be de- 
 veloped in them. Thus the winning of moral self- 
 hood through the growth of character appears as a 
 significant consequence of the divine activity. If God 
 is to have any worthy fulfillment of this purpose, men 
 must have a degree of moral freedom. However it 
 develops, through whatever media it is realized, free- 
 dom in the finite spirit is indispensable to the realiza- 
 tion of the divine jmrpose for men. 
 
 The possibilities of freedom are those of moral evil. 
 When these possibilities have become actualities, and 
 error and evil — or, to use the religious word, sin — 
 have devastated human life, then the divine purpose 
 becomes one of redemption; and the will of God and 
 the activity of God must be thought of as expending 
 themselves, not in repairing the disaster of an unfor- 
 tunate miscarrying of the divine plan, but in realizing 
 
 13 This is worked out more fully in Chapter XIII, where the natural and the super- 
 natural are discussed. 
 
94 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the eternal purpose in the best and only way possible 
 in a moral universe. 
 
 If this brief and fragmentary outline of theism has 
 emphasized the really essential matters, I think it 
 will be agreed that such view of the world is in essen- 
 tial harmony with the matchless life and profound 
 teachings of the Divine Founder of Christianity. This 
 world is not a mere assemblage of things and persons, 
 but is a great system, expressing in all its change and 
 growth the eternal purposes of God. In him who is 
 eternal and over all we live and move and have our 
 
 being. 
 
 Materialism — Reading Suggested 
 Hermann Lotze — Microcosmus, Book III, Chapter I. 
 Borden P. Bowne — Metaphysics, Part III, Chapters I, II. 
 J. Ward — Naturalism and Agnosticism, Lectures V and VI. 
 
 Pantheism — Reading Suggested 
 Borden P. Bowne, Theism, Chapter V. 
 Hermann Lotze, Microcosmus, Book IX, Chapter V. 
 George Trumbull Ladd, Philosophy of Religion, Chapter XXXV. 
 Borden P. Bowne, Metaphysics, Chapter V. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, AND FAITH 
 
 Religious Knowledge. Knowledge cannot be satis- 
 factorily defined. In any attempt to set forth its 
 meaning all we can do is to take some characteristic 
 element and make that serve as a beginning in our 
 search for a fuller thought content. Remembering 
 this, it may be suggested that we know when we have 
 rationally grounded assurance that our mental con- 
 ceptions adequately and truthfully interpret reality. 
 In the present chapter the discussion will have to do 
 with the question of the validity of our knowledge 
 chiefly from a religious point of view. Is there such 
 a thing as religious knowledge? Can we have cer- 
 tainty that the great fundamental religious ideas upon 
 which the superstructure of belief and worship rests 
 are an adequate interpretation of reality? 
 
 Authority of Religion — Its Basis. In the last analysis 
 the authority of religion depends upon the validity of 
 our fundamental religious ideas. Let a man begin to 
 think that religion is, after all, only the expression of 
 the fond hopes of humanity, and the power of religion 
 over his life may be greatly weakened, if not de- 
 stroyed. For the thinking man the question of reli- 
 gion's authority is bound up inevitably and inextric- 
 ably with that of validity. And by validity we mean 
 truth, not as an abstract or intangible ideal, but truth 
 
 95 
 
90 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 which may be realized through some firm assurances 
 that our thought agrees with an order of reality. The 
 mediaeval dictum, "Credo quia impossibile est" can 
 never be the attitude of a rational mind earnestly in 
 search of truth. No matter how far we may go in 
 search of the truth, we shall have to admit that there 
 is an element of mystery in religion. And the mystery 
 will remain. The human mind cannot attempt to 
 think of the Infinite and his relation to the world of 
 finite spirits, nor attempt to trace divine activity in 
 nature, without soon discovering its own limitations. 
 But, granting this, we urge that the authority of reli- 
 gion will depend upon the way its fundamental con- 
 ceptions can be accredited through the reason as 
 essentially truthful interpretations of reality. 
 
 It becomes evident, then, that before we attempt to 
 present a philosophical study of Christianity in its 
 broad outlines we must make sure of our ground by 
 inquiring into the validity of our fundamental reli- 
 gious ideas. We must seek the sources of religious 
 certainty. We must search for a standard, or at least 
 a method by which to determine the truth of the 
 fundamental conceptions of religion. This is a pro- 
 foundly important venture, and it is not to be denied 
 that upon the possibility of finding some satisfying 
 grounds for religious certainty, or at least upon our 
 belief in such possibility, will depend the vitality and 
 permanence of our religious conceptions. 
 
 Divine Revelation and Religious Authority. We ask, 
 then, where shall we look for the ground of the 
 authority of religion? It is often urged that author- 
 ity in religion rests upon truth, and that our guar- 
 antee of truth rests upon the fact of a divine revela- 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 97 
 
 tion. Christianity claims to possess truth which has 
 been historically revealed. We are told that all we 
 need to do is to accept the revelation and the truths 
 it contains will accredit themselves on the ground of 
 their origin. But while this appears perfectly simple 
 and almost final, yet a little careful reflection shows 
 us that it is not. We need to accept the revelation. 
 And what does "accept" mean? The common answer 
 is that it means to believe the revelation. And "be- 
 lieve" in turn means to take as true on grounds which 
 seem sufficient to the one believing. But what are 
 these grounds upon which rest the beliefs which we 
 take for true? They must be either reasons or feel- 
 ings, or both reasons and feelings. In other words, 
 they can be nothing external to us. This suggests 
 how impossible it is for us to find a standard of valid- 
 ity for our religious conceptions in anything inde- 
 pendent of our own thought processes — those of both 
 reason and feeling. The divine revelation has to 
 become divine to us and hence authoritative to us on 
 some grounds. Of course it is possible to stop think- 
 ing almost anywhere and declare that we accept our 
 beliefs on the authority of our church, and feel satis- 
 fied with them and perfectly certain of their truth. 
 But one would hardly be justified in thus setting his 
 own subjective states up as a standard by which to 
 judge the truth of the great fundamental religious 
 conceptions. Admitting fully the possibility and need 
 of a divine revelation, we see that it cannot be an 
 authority independent of the experience of the indi- 
 vidual believer. A revelation does not furnish ready- 
 made knowledge of spiritual things. Knowledge, as 
 we shall see, is always a creation of the mind. All 
 
98 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 that a revelation does is to afford us the record of the 
 spiritual experiences of other men and to impart a 
 deepening of our own spiritual consciousness. The 
 real basis for the recognition of the authority of reli- 
 gion lies within the self. 
 
 Experience the Ground of Religion's Authority. Then, 
 again, we often hear it urged that our assurance of 
 the truth of religion, and hence its authority, rests 
 upon experience. This is undoubtedly true. But 
 we must ask what is meant by experience. Whose 
 experience? And what does the experience mean? 
 As a matter of fact, experience includes about every- 
 thing. In the psychological sense, experience stands 
 for all that arises in the mind. Of course this can- 
 not be the meaning. We must mean by experience 
 in this connection all that arises in the mind — of 
 knowledge, feeling, and belief — w T hich affords assur- 
 ance and certainty. Now, when a religious man 
 says concerning the fundamental conceptions of reli- 
 gion, "O, I know these things are true; I have a 
 profound feeling of certainty in regard to them; 
 I cannot doubt these things," and so on, he 
 seems to be giving expression to some very solid cer- 
 tainty. Utterances like these are often taken as of 
 high value. They are generally called appeals to 
 experience and are commonly supposed to be a valid 
 criterion of truth. But a moment's reflection shows 
 us that the appeal is not to experience but only to one 
 element of experience, namely, to feeling. The man 
 feels that these things are true. Now, we would not 
 underestimate the religious value of feeling, but, 
 taken alone, apart from reason and from the prac- 
 tical test of moral values in the outcome, feeling is 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 99 
 
 generally worthless as a standard of validity. Indeed, 
 the feelings may be worse than worthless when ap- 
 pealed to alone, for in the absence of enlightened rea- 
 son they may lead to outcomes positively vicious. 
 Highly immoral acts, such as the burning of heretics, 
 have been performed in the name of religious devo- 
 tion. The feeling of the wretches who did such things 
 was probably that they were acting according to the 
 will of God. 
 
 Then, again, if I am to be allowed to urge the 
 strength of my feelings as a valid standard for the 
 truth of my religious beliefs, what of the man who 
 does not share in my feelings and holds different be- 
 liefs? Surely, my subjective certainty cannot be 
 urged as authority for him. But if we must admit 
 that individual feelings are no valid basis of religious 
 certainty, may we not urge that the great universal 
 feelings of the human heart certainly are? The word 
 "experience" may be used with reference to individ- 
 uals, and it may also refer to the way in which great 
 religious values have been established as the net result 
 of the experiences of countless thousands who have 
 believed and trusted and left their contributions to 
 the great common legacy of humanity's faith. In this 
 broad sense I think we may, indeed, urge experience 
 as the ground of religious authority. And the way in 
 which the great religious ideas have determined 
 moral outcomes would lead us to acknowledge expe- 
 rience in this wider sense as a valid ground of reli- 
 gious authority. But we shall return to this matter 
 of the corroboration of experience later. 
 
 The Nature of Belief. And now, having suggested a 
 preliminary meaning for knowledge, we must ask 
 
100 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 about belief. What is belief and how do knowledge 
 and belief differ? No one will deny that a religious 
 man is perfectly justified in saying, "I worship God 
 because I believe that God exists," or, "I believe that 
 when I have prayed to God responses have come." A 
 belief is the acceptance of a thing as true on grounds 
 which seem adequate to the person holding the belief. 
 It follows that the grounds of belief which may seem 
 perfectly adequate to one will seem insufficient to 
 another. The range of one's knowledge will deter- 
 mine the grounds of one's beliefs. Thus, the man who 
 is but little acquainted with the laws of nature or the 
 processes of the human mind will often assign very 
 different grounds for occurrences than the man who 
 has extensive knowledge in these fields. But the 
 grounds which the man of very limited knowledge 
 assigns he believes to be adequate. A widening 
 knowledge may cause him to feel dissatisfied and 
 abandon his earlier explanations, and search for 
 others. Our beliefs, then, are in a sense special to us. 
 We take them for true ; that is, if we are intellectually 
 honest, we feel a reasonable degree of assurance that 
 they do interpret reality. We see, then, that the 
 degree of certainty one feels concerning his beliefs 
 may be very high and still the belief may be badly 
 founded, for with larger insight he would perceive the 
 inadequacy of the grounds upon which his belief rests. 
 It appears, then, that the feeling of assurance which 
 a person may have that his beliefs are true cannot be 
 accepted as a standard for valuation in the absence 
 of other reasons for maintaining their truth. This 
 we have already seen. 
 
 Religion Claims Knowledge. But not only does the 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 101 
 
 religious man say "I believe" ; he says "I know." And 
 he will insist that, when he says he knows, he means 
 actual knowledge. He means that his religious con- 
 ceptions afford him not only satisfying assurances of 
 certainty, but that his certainty rests upon a veritable 
 apprehension of truth. He would say, "I know these 
 things because they are true." The religious believer 
 would protest against the statement that his knowl- 
 edge involves simply a relative content and would 
 urge that it has a universal validity. 
 
 We reach the heart of the matter here. And the 
 all-important question is whether this claim for the 
 validity of religious knowledge can be sustained in 
 philosophy of religion, where we are required criti- 
 cally to examine the nature and content of our funda- 
 mental religious ideas. This brings us back again to 
 a consideration of knowledge. We ask, then, whether, 
 besides religious faith and religious belief, there is, 
 indeed, religious knowledge; in other words, does cer- 
 tainty concerning the world of spiritual realities rest 
 upon the same foundations in experience as certainty 
 concerning the world of objective reality about us? 
 Or, if we admit that religious certainty does not rest 
 upon the same foundations in experience as our ordi- 
 nary knowledge, does it ground itself in such elements 
 and factors in experience as bring full assurance that 
 our religious thought interprets reality? It must be 
 carefully noted that the validity of religious knowl- 
 edge is involved in the validity of knowledge in gen- 
 eral. If our discussion is to be thorough, we must 
 take up the latter question first and show how we 
 gain certainty that the mental processes which yield 
 us our general knowledge are valid for reality. Per- 
 
102 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 haps we may then see that the differences between the 
 grounds of valid knowledge in general and of religious 
 certainty are not nearly so great as is commonly 
 supposed. 
 
 Analysis of Knowledge. We must therefore attempt 
 a brief inquiry into those processes of the mind 
 which we feel sure yield us knowledge of reality. 
 The simplest form in which knowledge emerges is in 
 the judgment. A judgment is the affirmation of 
 certain relations ( matters of agreement or difference ) 
 between two or more of our ideas. Thus we see a 
 stove and do not know that it is hot. We approach it 
 or touch it. There are now two ideas both of which 
 have arisen through sensation — that of the stove and 
 the perception of heat. The mind unites them in a 
 judgment, and the judgment is expressed in the words 
 "The stove is hot." We may go further and, without 
 being anywhere near the stove or seeing it at all, 
 know that there is a fire in it. This knowledge may 
 be based upon a simple process of reasoning, the data 
 for which w T e gained in sense-perception. Perhaps 
 as we approached the house we saw smoke issuing 
 from the single chimney, and we know that some one 
 has built a fire in the stove. Through inference, then, 
 we may affirm relations between objects of our percep- 
 tion. We gain knowledge then (1) through percep- 
 tion, (2) through an act of the reason based upon 
 data given in perception, and (3) through a kind of 
 direct perception of a simple truth of reason. This 
 last is knowing what is called the "self-evident." 
 Stating these specifications of knowledge in other 
 words, we may say that we have a degree of certainty 
 amounting to knowledge (1) of that which is imme- 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 103 
 
 diately given in experience, (2) of that which may 
 be proved through a process of logical inference from 
 data given in experience, (3) of that which is self- 
 evident. 
 
 That these are proper designations of knowledge 
 will be generally agreed to. But the question is 
 important whether this is all there is of knowledge. 
 If so, then we shall have to deny to the religious con- 
 sciousness the possession of any knowledge in a proper 
 sense. For it is very sure that the object of our wor- 
 ship and the fundamental facts of our religious con- 
 sciousness are not objects of knowledge in the sense 
 that they are known in any of the three ways speci- 
 fied. But is there good reason why we should limit 
 knowledge in this fashion? Are there not some 
 matters concerning which we have a high degree of 
 certainty which cannot be included in the three speci- 
 fications just enumerated? Let us see. Few would 
 care to deny that the degree of certainty we can feel, 
 for example, about the reliability of an old friend 
 whom we have known for years does not amount to 
 knowledge. At any rate, we act upon the feeling of 
 certainty in the case of our friend in precisely the 
 same fashion as we do upon the most solid items of 
 our sense experience. If the certainty we have con- 
 cerning our old friend were simply a matter of the 
 feelings, we might question its right to the title of 
 knowledge. But surely it involves the reason as well. 
 We might apply the threefold test of knowledge al- 
 ready suggested to many other matters concerning 
 which we feel the highest degree of certainty without 
 justifying them as knowledge. Thus for example, 
 while suffering from an acute attack of speculative 
 
104 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 logic, we might claim that we do not "really know" 
 whether spring will ever come again, for the assur- 
 ance is not given us in sense experience; nor is the 
 matter capable of proof (except indeed by analogy, 
 which, alas, fails to give full demonstration) ; nor is 
 it by any means self-evident. While in this frame of 
 mind we might say that we cannot know but can only 
 believe that spring will come. But, recovering from 
 the attack, we would probably say, as everybody else 
 does, that we do know spring will come again. 
 
 From this it would appear that we often do act upon 
 the assumption that (1) matters given in sense expe- 
 rience, (2) logically provable, or (3) self-evident in 
 the nature of reason, are, after all, not all there is to 
 knowledge. That these are three well-tested pathways 
 to the heights of certainty all will agree. But are we 
 called upon by any sound reason to conclude that 
 there are no other pathways? Of course there is 
 nothing to forbid anyone from setting up these three 
 specifications and declaring them to be the limits of 
 knowledge. But all this can mean is that notice is 
 hereby served that everything beyond will be named 
 belief and not knowledge. But, after all, what has 
 been done more than to mark off two logical classifi- 
 cations and then give directions as to which of our 
 mental furniture shall be put into the one and which 
 into the other? But we repeat that the real issue is 
 not the maintenance of certain logical boundaries 
 between knowledge and belief, but the attaining a 
 degree of certainty which emerges as the result of our 
 own ideas not only by way of formal reason but in the 
 practical experiences of our personal, that is, our 
 social life. Who has the authoritv to tell us that we 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 105 
 
 may not take as true whatever brings us a high 
 degree of practical assurance and cannot be shown to 
 be inconsistent with truths alrealy accredited? 
 
 But we must keep up the search for a standard of 
 validity in our knowledge. Concerning knowledge 
 of that which is self-evident there is little or nothing 
 to be said. The feeling of certainty emerges at once 
 as a kind of simple resultant. But when we begin 
 to talk about knowing objects because they are 
 immediately given in perception we may find that 
 the apparent simplicity of the process of knowing 
 things in this fashion turns out to be highly complex. 
 And after we have traced it, probably Ave shall not 
 have the naive feeling that we perceive reality 
 directly. We learn from psychology that when we 
 perceive an object all that comes to us from the 
 object itself is a certain form of activity which 
 serves as a stimulus or excitation to our minds. In 
 the case of vision it is various shades of light. The 
 physicist assures us that when light rays fall upon 
 the retina of our eyes it is really an impinging of an 
 intensely rapid vibration. He gives us the number in 
 trillions per second for those various degrees of exci- 
 tation which the mind interprets as different shades 
 of color. It will be noted that the vibrations which 
 reach the retina go no farther. It is some sort of 
 stimulus — molecular motion we are assured — which 
 passes along the soft threadlike nerves to the brain. 
 And on receipt of this stimulus we think. There is 
 always an exact correspondence between what we 
 think and the particular stimulus on the occasion of 
 which the thought arises. We say "always," but 
 should qualify it by the phrase "under normal condi- 
 
106 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 tions of consciousness and nerve sensitiveness." 
 Fever, color-blindness, and other pathological con- 
 ditions cause the mind to render false interpretations 
 with the result that the ideas arising in consciousness 
 are illusion and error. 
 
 But now it must be noted that the thought in the 
 mind is totally different from the object from which 
 the excitation came. All the old conceptions of "im- 
 ages" being formed in the mind, and so the knowledge 
 of the object emerging, are uncritical. So are all 
 ideas of the "impressing" of the mind by objects. 
 Knowledge could never arise in this fashion. From 
 the standpoint of psychological experience, all we can 
 say is that constant and varied stimulus comes to the 
 mind through the sense organs. This stimulus is 
 motion in various forms, without our physical organ- 
 ism, and nerve excitation of various sorts within our 
 physical organism. That certain changes in the mole- 
 cular structure of the brain take place as thoughts 
 are born we may well believe. Here, then, is a con- 
 stant stream of sensations taking place in the mind. 
 They become perceptions of objects only by virtue of 
 a considerable activity of the mind which creates 
 them such. How now is knowledge to emerge? 
 
 The Growth of Knowledge. A mere series of sensa- 
 tions can never become the knowledge of things. 
 Each sensation occurs and is ended and is followed 
 by another. Knowledge comes only when the con- 
 scious subject (which is not the series of sensations 
 but which holds them in consciousness) recognizes 
 the sensations, and interprets them with certain 
 thought values. The result is the formation of ideas. 
 These ideas are perceptions and they give that simple 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 107 
 
 rudimentary knowledge of things which we call per- 
 ceptual knowledge. But the experience merely of 
 particular things can never give us a knowledge of 
 the world. To know the order of reality about us we 
 need to build up an organized body of knowledge. 
 How is this done? On the basis of the perception of 
 its objects, the mind now establishes various relations 
 among its particular perceptions. It recognizes sim- 
 ilarities and differences, groups its ideas and creates 
 class ideas which stand for many similar objects. 
 These are the concepts of psychology, the universal 
 terms of logic. With the general or universal ideas 
 the mind interprets the constant flow of particular 
 perceptions, ever seeking to discover new relations 
 among its ideas. 1 
 
 But in all this we have only an order of thought, 
 We know now that knowledge is not something given 
 to us from without but something built up from 
 within by the constructive activity of the mind itself. 
 This activity of the mind goes on in accordance with 
 certain fundamental principles which lie in the very 
 nature of the reason. These are the so-called cate- 
 gories. It is immaterial whether we say they are 
 postulates or whether they are principles developed in 
 the evolution of rational experience in the early years 
 of consciousness. The important point is that they 
 are the forms or mental principles, in accordance with 
 which the mind in mature consciousness builds up 
 knowledge from the data furnished in perception. 
 
 Through this very brief attempt to analyze the 
 
 » But it is to be noted that in thus forming concepts or general ideas the mind goes 
 beyond what is given in experience. The process is that of abstraction and generaliza- 
 tion. For example, from our particular knowledge of individual men we form the 
 idea of "man" or "mankind" and proceed to use such ideas in the building up of knowl- 
 edge with perfect assurance that the mental processes are valid for reality. 
 
108 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 knowing process we see that there is no way of deduc- 
 ing knowledge from that which is not the product of 
 the mind's activity. Thus far all is mental, and the 
 question may well be asked, How does thought ever 
 grasp objects in the world of reality about us? From 
 mere thoughts in the mind how are we to get to objects 
 in the world; in other words, how are we to know 
 these ideas not simply as mental products but as 
 objects in the external order? 
 
 Evolution of Subject and Object. In order to answer 
 this question it will be necessary for us to note some 
 facts in the evolution of conscious experience. In full- 
 developed consciousness knowledge rests upon the 
 clear perception of the difference between the know- 
 ing subject and the object or thing known. But this 
 sharp antithesis between subject and object, while it 
 characterizes all mental activity in our fully devel- 
 oped consciousness, does not extend back into the 
 early beginnings of experience. There is good reason 
 to believe that as our conscious life begins to dawn in 
 the earliest years of childhood, its first element is that 
 of sensation, not as leading immediately to the percep- 
 tion of objects, but sensation as vague feeling. Then 
 different varieties and intensities of feeling arise — 
 differentiations, to use the current word. These are 
 the basis for the development of the conscious life. 
 And soon certain of these feelings, now fully distin- 
 guished as differing from each other, are associated 
 by the mind. Those whose content is most vivid and 
 immediately presented are grouped and in time are 
 regarded as the center of those activities which pro- 
 duce other feelings. This is the beginning of a con- 
 sciousness of self. Consciousness grows gradually; 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 109 
 
 but in time a certain set of feelings is thus referred 
 to the self and contrasted with another set not so 
 referred. In this way the fundamental distinction 
 between the self and the not-self is born in the in- 
 creasing varieties of feeling. The sensitiveness of 
 the physical organism determines the possible variety 
 of feeling and the increasing differentiation in feeling 
 marks the rise in the level of the conscious life. The 
 critical analysis of knowledge which has been current 
 since the time of Kant ordinarily begins with full- 
 fledged experience. It has been assumed that the 
 original data of experience are a lot of sensations. 
 These are analyzed and found to be the work of the 
 mind based upon certain excitation received by the 
 mind through the senses. Thus knowledge is ex- 
 pounded very properly as the product of the mind's 
 activity. There can be no things for us except as these 
 things have first given rise to thoughts in the mind. 
 Unless the thoughts are born in the mind, the things 
 of which the thoughts are assumed to be mental 
 counterparts could never become objects of our knowl- 
 edge. But when the thoughts are born in the mind, 
 how can we ever transcend our experience, which is 
 mental, and gain certainty that the thoughts ade- 
 quately and truthfully represent an order of objective 
 reality? Here, then, is the deadlock which must 
 somehow be broken if our knowledge is to be accred- 
 ited as valid for reality. 
 
 The standard attempts to solve this great problem 
 are familiar to the student of philosophy. From the 
 time of Locke, Hume, and Kant it has been wrestled 
 with from both sides. On the one hand the attempt 
 has been made to deduce the subject from the object, 
 
110 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 to ground the order of thought in the order of things. 
 On the other hand it was sought to ground the objec- 
 tive world of things in thought. And when this second 
 attempt was confined to finite thought or lost itself 
 in impersonal abstractions like "Thought" and 
 "Cosmic Thought," the outcome was the same. And 
 that outcome was either to fail to find sufficient 
 ground for the reality of the thing, on the one hand, 
 or for the validity of thought on the other. In both 
 cases a skepticism resulted. 
 
 It would take us too far into the field of meta- 
 physics to reason our way step by step to the solution 
 of this problem. And if we did, we would be brought 
 to the point where we would have to acknowledge that 
 there is absolutely no way of bringing the order of 
 thought and the order of reality together on the plane 
 of reason alone. For thought cannot transcend itself. 
 The outcome, by the pathway of reason alone, is a 
 general skepticism, or the inability to find adequate 
 grounds for the validity of knowledge. This was seen 
 in the result of Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason. 
 But there is a vindication of knowledge. We can 
 establish its validity. There is a way to satisfy our- 
 selves that our mental experiences which yield us such 
 subjective certainty are an essentially truthful repre- 
 sentation of an objective order of reality. But in 
 order to find that way we may have to give up some 
 beliefs for which we have entertained great respect — 
 considerably more respect perhaps than they were 
 ever entitled to. 
 
 Logical Demonstration and Knowledge. And the first 
 of these is the notion that real knowledge emerges 
 only as the result of demonstration or proof. This is 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 111 
 
 a superstition of the intellect, and the sooner we are 
 clear of it the better. The plan of doubting every- 
 thing which cannot be cogently inferred according to 
 the laws of logic doomed Descartes to an exceedingly 
 narrow area of certainty, and it will confine us in like 
 manner if we let it. It is practically abandoned in 
 all fruitful scientific thinking. True, it applies in 
 mathematics and wherever we deal with abstract 
 values. But as soon as we begin to build up our 
 knowledge of an order of objective reality we have to 
 abandon it. The finest triumphs iu scientific think- 
 ing have come from a use of the imagination, from 
 splendid ventures into regions where thought could 
 never go had it not forsworn loyalty to merely formal 
 logic. The hypothesis put forward at first as an act 
 of intellectual faith, under the slow revelations of 
 reality in experience begins to afford the certainty 
 which deserves the name knowledge. And if it does 
 not do this, it is erelong discarded as no longer of 
 value. Its validity or worthlessness is in time vindi- 
 cated by the practical logic of life. 
 
 Assumption and Knowledge. Then, too, we must be 
 willing not only to discard the hoary superstition 
 about knowledge and logical proof, but we must see 
 the absolute need of making some great assumptions. 
 These will furnish the only emergence from the sub- 
 ject-object dilemma. They themselves will find ample 
 justification in the fact that without them there can 
 be no accrediting of any of our knowledge as valid for 
 reality. These assumptions are such as the following : 
 First, that even though our senses do deceive us at 
 times, yet, on the whole, they are to be trusted, for 
 they do give us reliable data from a great order of 
 
112 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 objective reality, which, though known only through 
 our thought, is not the product of our thought. 
 Second, that this great order of objective reality is a 
 rational order. We assume this simply because we 
 know that we know it; and because we know it we 
 conclude that it is knowable, that is, capable of being 
 grasped, and to some degree represented and inter- 
 preted by our rational thinking. 
 
 This assumption seems natural and inevitable in 
 view of the fact that in the evolution of self -conscious- 
 ness the world of things is at first presented only in 
 feeling and then in simple sense perception. The per- 
 ception of qualities of things and the distinction be- 
 tween the knowing subject and known object emerges 
 late, after our conscious life has developed to the 
 higher levels. These are the great assumptions, postu- 
 lates — call them what you will — which we simply have 
 to accept as true before we can go on to such a discus- 
 sion of our subjective experience as will lead us any- 
 where in establishing its validity for objective reality. 
 The simple truth is that we know that we know some 
 things. Complete skepticism is irrational and absurd, 
 for the skeptic must at least know that he does not 
 know. No one urges that knowledge is complete. We 
 know full well that it is partial and fragmentary. 
 Our practical problem is to vindicate the kuowledge 
 we have. And what shall be the great principle 
 through which we vindicate it or establish some basis 
 of validity? How shall we know the truth — not 
 merely know that we feel certain? For knowing the 
 truth means that our thoughts agree in the main with 
 reality. 
 
 Knowledge Tested by an Appeal to Values. The prin- 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 113 
 
 ciple by which we may test the validity of our knowl- 
 edge is this : How does our knowledge fit in with life 
 and serve the great practical needs of life? Instead 
 of talking about our knowledge satisfying the de- 
 mands of logical completeness or revealing "ultimate 
 reality," let us, rather, ask how our knowledge enables 
 us to realize the great rational and moral values of 
 life. Life itself affords the best vindication of this 
 principle. The correction of imperfections in plans 
 and errors in hypotheses comes through the gaining 
 of better knowledge. The better knowledge corrects 
 the faults and errors. The knowledge is better pre- 
 sumably because it more nearly approximates reality. 
 The knowledge was recognized as better because it 
 more adequately met some practical need or fulfilled 
 some end, and the faulty knowledge was shown to be 
 faulty in the testings of life, and out of life's prac- 
 tical interests the improved knowledge was born. 
 Hence we may truly say that there is a revelation of 
 reality in life itself. But the manner in which this 
 revelation of reality is made will be determined, of 
 course, by the limitations of our mental life. It will be 
 in terms of our experience. Just as there is, as we shall 
 see, a necessary anthropomorphism in thinking about 
 God the Ultimate Personal Reality, so it appears to 
 be necessary that what we shall grasp of an order of 
 reality beyond our thought-world shall be fixed or 
 determined by the forms and limitations of our mental 
 experience and as such will be far from complete. We 
 cannot transcend the finiteness of our mental expe- 
 rience; and if our finite thought is to grasp reality 
 at all, it will only be within the forms of our expe- 
 rience which have become common and familiar to us, 
 
114 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 as the real is being constantly made known to us in 
 our personal life. 
 
 And this revelation of reality in life itself has often 
 been overlooked because men fancied that there is 
 only one faculty for the perception of truth, and that 
 one the reason. But man not only reasons but he feels 
 and wills. And while there is good cause, as we have 
 already urged, to regard the individual feelings and 
 volitions with suspicion, yet we must not forget that 
 there are the great representative and universal feel- 
 ings not of particular men but of all men. These have 
 to be reckoned with in any estimate of great life 
 values. 
 
 But some one may now object that if we go on after 
 this fashion we shall abandon reason as a test of 
 truth, which will never do for a discussion professing 
 to be philosophy. Is the test of practical usefulness 
 indeed a standard of validity? The answer must be 
 that it certainly is, but we do not mean that it is the 
 only standard. We must admit that reason leads us 
 toward truth and not away from it. And any belief 
 which is logically inconsistent with other great beliefs 
 whose validity has been vindicated by their value and 
 reasonableness must be pronounced without proper 
 foundation. Reason is not abandoned or neglected 
 when we urge the test of practical values as the stand- 
 ard of validity, for we shall still lean heavily upon 
 rational judgments in seeking to determine what the 
 practical values really are. And feeling also leads 
 us toward the truth and not away from it. And by 
 feeling we repeat we do not mean some particular 
 emotion of the individual, but the great common and 
 universal feelings of the human heart. 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 115 
 
 Knowledge Vindicated in Experience. The conclusion 
 toward which we have been advancing is that what- 
 ever meets the demands of our whole experience — that 
 is, the deepest needs of our entire personal life — must 
 be accepted as essentially truthful revelations of real- 
 ity. And experience is to be interpreted not by its 
 particular or individual aspects but by its universal 
 elements. Reason has this universal character, and so 
 have the great common feelings of humanity. The 
 practical needs of the moral life are also a common 
 factor in our experience. When we affirm that our 
 knowledge of reality is vindicated in experience we 
 mean, therefore, that we must accept as true those 
 convictions which (1) are felt to be true, (2) which 
 harmonize with our rational thinking, and (3) which 
 are valuable and helpful in serving the great moral 
 ends of character and the enrichment of our personal 
 life. 
 
 In view of these considerations, we repeat the ques- 
 tion propounded earlier in the discussion and ask who 
 has the authority to tell us we may not take as ade- 
 quate representations of reality, affording us the 
 highest degree of certainty, those great convictions 
 born out of life, which meet the universal needs of our 
 moral being — those convictions which are demanded 
 by the great common feelings of men, and which rea- 
 son shows are not inconsistent with other convictions 
 that vindicate themselves in like manner? 
 
 In view of these considerations, we also repeat that 
 it is possible for anyone wishing to do so to define 
 knowledge as "that which is self-evident in the nature 
 of reason, and that which may be demonstrated from 
 data given in experience," and, having so defined it, 
 
116 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 serve an injunction upon us from using the word other 
 than in harmony with this definition. But if we grant 
 this for the sake of the argument, it would only follow 
 that we have agreed to name a great deal of our 
 mental furniture belief and very little of it knowledge. 
 And yet the degree of certainty we felt would not be 
 materially impaired by this verbal performance. The 
 binomial theorem would be an item of knowledge, but 
 the conviction of the Divine Existence and the doc- 
 trine of evolution would be beliefs — but pretty well 
 grounded beliefs, by the way — and beliefs affording a 
 considerable degree of assurance of the truth. 
 
 Knowledge and Belief — Conclusions. Let us in conclu- 
 sion gather up some of the significant points which 
 our discussion has yielded. 
 
 1. We conclude that there are no hard-and-fast 
 boundaries between knowledge and belief. Little is 
 gained by seeking to maintain them. The important 
 matter is the attaining of certainty on grounds which 
 will stand the tests of our rational and moral expe- 
 rience. 
 
 2. Valid grounds for certainty cannot be found in 
 individual feeling, though the great common and uni- 
 versal feelings of men are important facts and must 
 be reckoned with. 
 
 3. Reason alone cannot vindicate our knowledge of 
 reality, but leads to a practical skepticism. 
 
 4. Our convictions are vindicated as true in propor- 
 tion as they are seen to be life values. There is a 
 revelation of reality in our experience, though it is 
 conditioned by the forms of our finite consciousness. 
 
 5. Though reason and feeling are not sufficient in 
 themselves, yet we need both these elements of our 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 117 
 
 experience to corroborate. They both must be taken 
 as leading us toward truth. 
 
 6. The higher degrees of certainty grow out of our 
 total experience. Our hopes may grow into beliefs, 
 and beliefs gain a degree of certainty w T hich, whether 
 we call it knowledge or not, brings deep assurance 
 that they are true and reveal the Infinite Reality. 
 This verification in experience comes through life. 
 We live by such assurance as we have that our deep 
 convictions of God and his relation to us are the 
 eternal truth, and in experience also the assurance 
 deepens. On the higher levels of certainty the soul 
 needs no outward or material witness for the real- 
 ity of the things of the spiritual life. None is pos- 
 sible. Thus we may come to know God by a direct 
 communion of spirit with Spirit. This certainty is 
 not reached by rational thinking, nor is it wholly 
 verified in that way. It grows and generally comes 
 along after the soul has earnestly striven to know 
 God. Concerning it but little can be said in the way 
 of philosophical explanation. It is an experience 
 of the inner life, and as an experience, its value can 
 be known only as one enters into it. It was in some 
 such sense as this that Paul, at the close of a life in 
 which the certainty of God's presence had been deep- 
 ening as the years fled on, said, "I know him whom 
 I have believed." 
 
 Faith. In a very true sense there is an element of 
 faith in all our knowledge. We feel certain that we 
 can and do know reality. We believe with confidence 
 that there is a revelation of reality in experience, and 
 that those deep convictions which prove themselves to 
 be important values in our intellectual and moral life 
 
118 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 are true. Even our scieutific knowledge rests upon a 
 substratum of faith. 
 
 But we are concerned at present with faith as a 
 means to religious knowledge. While the word 
 "faith" is often used in the sense of the content of our 
 beliefs, yet we ought to distinguish faith from belief. 
 While belief is the holding of certain convictions as 
 true on grounds which satisfy our rational and emo- 
 tional nature, faith is the whole personal relationship 
 of the soul to the object of its trust and love. "Faith 
 is an act of the spiritual and self-conscious person, 
 who affirms the religious values, and God the Supreme 
 Value, to be essential to his own soul and to the mean- 
 ing of the world. It is a movement of the self, con- 
 scious and free, which expresses the needs and states 
 the postulates of the spiritual life. Faith so con- 
 ceived is neither partial nor wavering, but speaks of 
 full assurance and an abiding ideal." 2 
 
 In its genesis faith comes from the deep needs and 
 demands of the human soul. Men seek to know God, 
 and make the supreme venture of faith, because they 
 feel their helplessness and need. It is not because 
 they feel they must comprehend God, but because of 
 the deeper demands of their inner life that men are 
 impelled to search for the Divine. There is an imper- 
 sonal quality, a disinterestedness, in scientific knowl- 
 edge. Men seek to know because of their desire to 
 understand the universe, but religion always centers 
 about personal needs and interests. 
 
 We note, further, that religious faith is claimed by 
 men only under certain conditions. It involves an 
 attitude of the soul toward God — a personal relation- 
 
 2 Galloway, Philosophy of Religion, p. 330. 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 119 
 
 ship expressing itself in trust, confidence, submission, 
 and expectation. This attitude is the necessary ante- 
 cedent, we learn, of certain experiences of the inner 
 life, which, so far as we can discern, would not have 
 taken place had it not been for the preceding act of 
 venture, surrender, and trust to which we give the 
 name faith. To this act there is response which comes 
 in the form of an experience of the inner life. The 
 form of this experience cannot be prescribed, for it 
 varies greatly according to the age, training, and 
 temperament of the person experiencing it. But its 
 essential content is much the same. The experience 
 usually results in a feeling of spiritual rest and con- 
 fidence. The person believes that he has a larger 
 insight into God's nature and will. A deep desire to 
 respond to the divine love and conform to the divine 
 will is born, and this desire serves as a motive power 
 in the attaining of higher moral ideals. Religious 
 men have confidently believed for ages that such an 
 experience of the inward life is the response of God to 
 their faith. 
 
 The Certainties of Faith. And out of such experiences 
 of the inner life certainty is born. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to point out that such certainty is not the fruit 
 of reason, and therefore is not verifiable by the proc- 
 esses of demonstration or logical proof. There is 
 no good reason why we should not call such certainty 
 knowledge, provided we remember that the data of 
 experience upon which it rests are generally those of 
 feeling and will and not those of sense perception. 
 And we find a counterpart of such knowledge on the 
 higher levels of personal living. Thus when one 
 person surrenders himself in trust to another in a 
 
120 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 close friendship a knowledge of the qualities and 
 sympathies of one's friend grows not as the result of 
 logical thinking. To justify our absolute confidence 
 in our friend by processes of reason might prove to 
 be quite impossible, and yet we would keep on affirm- 
 ing that we knew the friend as perfectly trustworthy 
 for all that. Some one will urge that again this is not 
 properly knowledge, but should be called belief. And 
 in answer we repeat that whether we use the one term 
 or the other, the degree of certainty we feel is the 
 important matter. 
 
 After all, the question is one of the recognition of 
 real values. Friendship means trustworthiness, and 
 the recognition of that value is knowledge. Such 
 knowledge comes not of single acts of the reason but 
 is a kind of moral resultant of a great deal of life- 
 experience. Of other values we may be very sure. 
 We know that certain masterpieces in literature, art, 
 or music are of deep significance. But who wishes to 
 debate the matter? If a person out of a poverty of 
 emotional as well as rational experience cannot see 
 the truth and beauty of the masterpieces, then there 
 is nothing to say except that such knowledge is not 
 his. Life itself — that is, experience — must become 
 richer and fuller in order to afford the needed discern- 
 ment. 
 
 But now some one may object when we thus seek to 
 ground religious knowledge upon personal experience 
 of the inward life, for is not such inward experience 
 a variable? How can we secure a sure and steadfast 
 foundation when we thus build upon the shifty ground 
 of individual experience? 
 
 In answer we repeat that there are inward expe- 
 
KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, FAITH 121 
 
 riences which are particular and isolated and there is 
 inward experience which is practically universal. We 
 are speaking of the great common experiences of the 
 spiritual life— those which, while they may vary 
 greatly in their form, are essentially identical in their 
 content or meaning. These guarantee the spiritual 
 community of humanity. When we study the way in 
 which Christian faith, for example, has been wrought 
 out in the lives of countless men and women, we gain 
 insight into this vast community of experience. 
 
 Jesus Christ has been for centuries the center of the 
 affections and personal loyalties of myriads. And the 
 truths revealed in historic Christianity have been 
 personally appropriated and lived by those who have 
 through their faith become a part of the mighty spir- 
 itual movement. With the infinite variety of detail 
 there is a vast community in the type of inward expe- 
 rience which has followed Christian faith. And from 
 it there has been born a degree of confidence and 
 assurance which has amounted to a high degree of 
 certainty. And in this deeper verification through 
 personal spiritual experience, the words of religious 
 faith, "I know him whom I have believed," find their 
 profoundest meaning. 
 
 Recommended Reading 
 J. Ward— The Realm of Ends, Lecture XIX. 
 A. J. Balfour — The Foundations of Belief, Part IV. 
 Francis J. McConnell — Religious Certainty. 
 Borden P. Bowne — Theory of Thought and Knowledge. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF 
 
 GOD 
 
 In these studies we are attempting to set forth 
 some phases of a philosophy of Christianity. It need 
 hardly be suggested that this attempt cannot be one 
 in which we shall lay any claim to exhaustive or com- 
 plete treatment. We must content ourselves with the 
 less ambitious and probably more useful task of out- 
 lining the broad fundamental conceptions of the Chris- 
 tian revelation, so that they may be seen to be in 
 harmony with other truth. While the essential teach- 
 ings of Christianity are few and may be stated in a 
 brief compass, yet they are of the deepest significance. 
 We shall seek to offer such exposition of these teach- 
 ings that they may be seen to be in rational harmony 
 with other great truths of the universe which have 
 been won through the achievements of modern science. 
 
 The teaching of Christianity is that the Eternal 
 Reality, the ground of all being, is a Personal Spirit, 
 and that this Divine Personal Spirit, of whose infinite 
 thought and will all things are manifestations, is 
 beneficent and kind, sympathetic and loving in his 
 attitude toward men. Indeed, so tender is the In- 
 finite Spirit's affection for mankind that we can 
 express the relation in human speech only by the use 
 
 of the word "Father," which stands for one of the 
 
 122 
 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD 123 
 
 closest and dearest relationships of our human life. 
 And, further, Christianity teaches that this Infinite 
 Spirit— the Eternal God who stands thus in this rela- 
 tionship of love to men — makes himself known in 
 human experience and has been manifested in Jesus 
 Christ; that in Christ we have a supreme revelation 
 of this loving God, and that through Christ as the 
 revealer of the divine love and mercy men may enter 
 into spiritual relations with the Infinite God. 
 
 Christianity and Philosophy. The most fundamental 
 and determinative characteristic of any religion is 
 its conception of the Divine. And while we have here 
 the doctrine of God taught by Christianity — a doc- 
 trine which can be stated thus simply and practically 
 — we know that this Christian idea of God has not 
 remained unchallenged by philosophy. It must be 
 our endeavor so to set forth the meaning of this Chris- 
 tian conception of the Divine, so to expound the vari- 
 ous ways in which God has been and is revealing him- 
 self, that the essential harmony of Christian teaching, 
 when adequately interpreted, with the other truths of 
 philosophy and science may be seen. Christianity is 
 not a philosophy, but Christianity is capable of being- 
 interpreted philosophically. Truth will in the last 
 analysis satisfy the entire personality and represent 
 the whole of experience. This means that our con- 
 victions will find their accrediting as truth in the 
 great practical values of our moral life in the uni- 
 versal feelings of humanity as well as in rational 
 reflection. Philosophy is supposed to lead us to truth 
 by way only of the logical and the rational. As a 
 matter of fact, that is, strictly speaking, impossible, 
 as we have seen. Whenever the search for truth has 
 
124 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 been by way of the reason alone, the outcome has been 
 a failure to find adequate grounds for knowledge with 
 consequent skepticism. Philosophy needs the "prac- 
 tical reason," and in the "logic of life" some concep- 
 tions reveal their truth which would otherwise forever 
 remain in doubt. All this modern philosophic thought 
 has abundantly demonstrated. And if philosophy, 
 which is so predominantly rational in its method, 
 needs the other elements in experience, it is certain 
 that religion, which is a matter of feeling and moral 
 conduct, must have the sanctions of rational reflec- 
 tion. And after ages of hostility and misunderstand- 
 ing we are at last finding a better basis of concord for 
 our philosophy and our religion. Indeed, there ought 
 to be no discord. Our religious no less than our phi- 
 losophic certainty rests upon the deep, underlying 
 conviction of the unity and harmony of all truth. For 
 religion to attempt to ignore philosophy is to deprive 
 herself of a most valuable source of strength. 
 
 Human Thought about God a Gradual Development. 
 As we trace the growth of religion we must not forget 
 that we are studying the thoughts of men concerning 
 God. When, therefore, we discover that there has 
 been a progressive development of the conception of 
 God — an evolution, if you please, of that fundamental 
 religious idea — we must not fall into the fallacy 
 which has beset the thinking of many good people 
 who dread the word "evolution," especially when it is 
 used in relation to religion. These persons seem to 
 think that God is being made the subject of the evolu- 
 tion. This is a curious misunderstanding, and when 
 combined with the erroneous notion that the evolu- 
 tion of the various forms of organic life excludes the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD 125 
 
 idea of Divine creation, evolution does indeed seem 
 to be a most dangerous doctrine. But this misunder- 
 standing clears away when we remember that there 
 has been no progressive development of God, but only 
 a gradual advance in men's thinking about God. The 
 Eternal God is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever." 
 
 Begins with Primitive Conceptions. The history of reli- 
 aious thought is the record of men's efforts to grasp 
 something of the nature of the Divine Being and to 
 comprehend his relation to them. In the childhood 
 of the race men thought of their gods as greater than 
 themselves in power, yet a good deal like themselves 
 in other respects. The primitive sacrifice was gen- 
 erally a gift of food. By some early peoples the food 
 was left at a sacred spot, and when it disappeared 
 (being devoured by wild animals) it was thought 
 the god had come down and eaten it. Later the sacri- 
 fice was burned, and then it was the savor, or finer 
 essence, of the food of which the god partook. This 
 idea is reflected in Gen. 8. 21 and Ezra 6. 10. Com- 
 pare Ezek. 6. 13. 
 
 Mythology. Not only were the gods thought of as 
 having an appetite for food but also having the lusts 
 of men. The idea of divinities having sexual relations 
 with human beings appears in many primitive reli- 
 gions, notably Egyptian, Greek, and Early Semitic 1 
 (see Gen. 6. 1 and 2). Jealousy and rage were very 
 commonly attributed to gods. The mythologies of 
 Greece and Rome afford ample illustration. See also 
 
 1 Instances from Greek mythology are numerous, for example, Zeus and Leda. 
 The male god usually appeared as an animal. For a Semitic instance, Ishtar and 
 Gllgamish may be cited (see Jastrow'a Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians, 
 p. 481ff.). 
 
126 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the strange interpolation Exod. 4. 24. In Gen. 11. 5 
 Jehovah is represented as coming down to see how the 
 tower of Babel is getting along. In Exod. 10. 20 and 
 27; 11. 10, etc., he is represented as hardening the 
 heart of the Egyptian king and then sending fresh 
 plagues to compel him to free the Israelites. 
 
 Here we find the ascription of various human limita- 
 tions and imperfections to the divine. This pervades 
 all mythology, and is present to a degree in the Old 
 Testament records of the early times. The Hebrew 
 writers, it must be remembered, had no idea of cause 
 and effect similar to that in modern thought. But 
 everything which appeared unexplainable was as- 
 cribed directly to Jehovah. The obstinacy of Pharaoh 
 seemed to the Hebrew Chronicler inexplicable upon 
 any other supposition than that Jehovah had "hard- 
 ened his heart." * 
 
 Anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the name 
 given to this way of conceiving the divine in terms of 
 our human life. This word comes from the two Greek 
 words, dvdponoq, meaning "human being," and iiop<prj, 
 "form." And the word is applied to all thought of 
 God which conceives him in the form or relations of 
 human experience. It will be seen that if we are to 
 think of God at all, we must think of him somehow in 
 terms of our own life. The reason for it lies in the 
 nature of our thinking, which cannot transcend 
 human experience. We say that "God is a Spirit," 
 but the idea of "pure spirit" is vague and unreal until 
 a content of meaning is given to it. And, of course, 
 the meaning must be drawn from our human expe- 
 rience, for it can come from nowhere else. 
 
 The Lower and the Higher. In primitive peoples expe- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD 127 
 
 rience remains wholly upon the lower levels of the 
 material and physical. Hence in all primitive reli- 
 gions men think of the divine in the terms of their 
 own crude life. Naturally, this means the ascribing 
 of human imperfections to the divine beings. This is 
 the lower anthropomorphism. It is inevitable among 
 peoples Avho think of their god as localized. Along 
 with this often goes a rude conception of the divine 
 as existing in human form. And we see the gods 
 depicted as men of heroic size and of great strength. 
 Vulcan was a powerful but somewhat deformed black- 
 smith. Mercury was lithe in figure with wings on his 
 feet which lent an incredible swiftness to his move- 
 ments. Of course there is symbolic imagery here, but 
 the fact remains that in thinking of their divinities 
 early men pictured the divine in the physical forms of 
 the human. And in the Old Testament we read of 
 Jehovah's forehead, his hand, and eye, and foot. 
 Moses is not permitted to behold Jehovah's face, but 
 may look at his "back parts" (Exod. 33. 23), and so 
 on. The ancient law of the Decalogue forbade the 
 making of any images or pictures of Jehovah. And 
 this one fact is of immense significance in its relation 
 to the progress of Hebrew thought toward an ethical 
 conception of God. For while the early conception 
 of Jehovah preserved all that is valuable in the lower 
 anthropomorphism, it paved the way for a worthier 
 conception of the Divine Being. The painters of the 
 Middle Ages, and even as far down as the Renaissance, 
 were in the habit of portraying the Almighty. 
 Michael Angelo painted God as an elderly man with 
 a long flowing beard, looking down on the world from 
 the clouds. Of course these conceptions are outgrown 
 
128 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 when men learn the meaning of personal spirit. 
 Thinking of God in human form and ascribing to him 
 various limitations of our earthly life are the lower 
 aspects of anthropomorphism. 
 
 There is a higher anthropomorphism. This con- 
 sists in thinking of God not in the terms of the phys- 
 ical and material side of our life, not in ascribing to 
 him human limitations and imperfections, but, rather, 
 conceiving him in terms of all that is highest in the 
 moral life of men. When we ascribe to God in full- 
 ness and perfection all those moral virtues which 
 glorify human life, we have truly not escaped from 
 anthropomorphism, but we have left behind those 
 crudities which mark the lower levels of human think- 
 ing about God. 
 
 Without doubt the highest conception of God of 
 which the human mind is capable is that which is 
 expressed by the first words of the Lord's prayer — 
 "Our Father." What does this mean? It means that 
 the Infinite God stands in a moral, that is, a personal, 
 relation to us, and that this personal relation in- 
 cludes all those tender feelings of love and sympathy 
 which we associate with the paternal relationship. 
 The word "father" means provider and protector in 
 our human family economy. When we address God 
 with the words "Our Father," if we have a realization 
 of their meaning, we affirm our faith that the Infinite 
 One stands in the closest personal relationship to us 
 in love and helpfulness. This too is anthropomor- 
 phism, for we cannot escape the human molds of 
 thought, but it is anthropomorphism of a lofty kind. 
 
 Comprehension of the Divine Possible Only in Terms of 
 Human Experience. We certainly cannot think of the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OP GOD 129 
 
 infinite except in terms of our finite experience. 
 When we aflflrm that God is a Spirit the question fol- 
 lows, What is spirit? The answer must always be in 
 terms of our human life. The highest answer makes 
 use of the moral relationships of life, not simply the 
 physical and material existences. The biblical writers 
 speak constantly of the spiritual life. They seek to 
 make real the inner experiences of the soul, and in 
 doing so they must use the terms of the sense life. 
 This is why there is so much language in the Bible 
 which must be interpreted not literally for what it 
 says, but logically for what it means. For example, 
 the apostle John, in the book of Revelation, has 
 written a wonderful pen picture of the New Jeru- 
 salem. He tells us of streets of pure gold ! There is 
 a sea of glass mingled with fire ! The walls of the city 
 are made of jasper and beautiful jewels of all sorts. 
 The city is twelve thousand furlongs square ! What 
 does it all mean? It means that human speech is here 
 struggling to express that which lies beyond the range 
 of our human experience. And in order to do this he 
 must talk of those things within the realm of our 
 knowledge and experience which are most beautiful, 
 rare, and valuable. 
 
 The apostle must needs talk of gold and jasper and 
 opals and furlongs, but he means something infinitely 
 greater. And it is so when we seek in the words of 
 human speech to express some conception of the In- 
 finite God. We would not have our thought of God 
 lose all traces of the human molds in which it has 
 been cast. For this would be to take from us those 
 characteristics of the Divine which keep God close to 
 us. Verily, the incarnation itself is a gracious con- 
 
130 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 descension of the Eternal One to that need of the 
 human mind and heart to think of him and to love 
 him as our own. 
 
 To sum up then. The principle underlying all an- 
 thropomorphism is, as we have seen, that when the 
 human mind attempts to form some conceptions of 
 the Infinite it is found to be impossible to transcend 
 finite experience. It is necessary, therefore, that we 
 think and speak of the Divine in terms of the human. 
 On all levels of culture men attribute to God the high- 
 est ideals of which they are capable. On the lower 
 levels of civilization the highest ideals of men are 
 those of physical power. The gods, therefore, are 
 thought of as endowed with extraordinary strength. 
 Before any well-developed moral ideals had emerged, 
 men thought of their gods as living a kind of magni- 
 fied material existence. They must travel from place 
 to place, but could go like the Valkyries or Hermes, 
 with incredible swiftness. They must eat and drink 
 like men, but in Valhalla they drank from immense 
 golden flagons. Among the Greeks the gods ate am- 
 brosia and drank nectar. 
 
 The loftiest moral ideals were embodied in the 
 thinking of the Hebrew people. They were superior 
 to all other peoples of antiquity in their conception, 
 first, of the unity of the Divine Being, and, second, in 
 the moral relations which they thought of as existing 
 between God and themselves. But even on the plane 
 of moral relationships existing between God and men, 
 human thought finds its range, of course, only within 
 the realms of finite experience. And so the higher 
 anthropomorphisms are still ways of conceiving God 
 in terms of human life. But we no longer find the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OP GOD 131 
 
 crude notions of the lower levels, but the conception 
 of God's nature and relation to men is conceived in 
 terms of all that is noblest and best in human life. 
 But it will be noted that, however advanced the idea 
 of God's relation to men becomes, it never gets beyond 
 the boundaries of human experience. We who are 
 trained under the Christian idea of God learn the 
 meaning of loyalty and sacrifice and devotion on the 
 plane of finite experience, and then we enlarge the 
 range of these great virtues and learn to think of the 
 Eternal God as related to us in a fashion not essen- 
 tially different from the way in which we are related 
 to each other. Truly, "We love him because he first 
 loved us," but no man ever learned to love God who 
 had not first learned human love by looking into a 
 human face — the face of his mother in the days of 
 childhood and the faces of others in later years. 
 
 This means that we first come to know God and to 
 revere and love him not through any strange or mys- 
 terious revelations of himself as divine, but through 
 the ways in which he has made himself known in 
 human life. Our lessons of divinity come, therefore, 
 from an experience of humanity. It is always so. 
 The early disciples knew their Master first of all as 
 Jesus of Galilee, who walked and ate and slept with 
 them, who was wearied and disappointed and abused 
 and cruelly slain. They loved him as their own in the 
 dear fellowship of the human life. Later on their 
 knowledge of him as the Divine Lord began to grow, 
 but it was on the basis of what they already knew of 
 him as the Teacher of Galilee and Judaea. With the 
 fullest acknowledgment of the vast difference be- 
 tween the divine and the human, it is safe to say that 
 
132 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 the revelations of the divine which come to us, and 
 the knowledge of the divine which we gain thereby, 
 will come by way of some of the experiences of our 
 human life. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MEANING AND IMPLICATIONS OF 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 The conclusions reached in the last chapter bring 
 us face to face with the problem of how we are to 
 think of God and of his relation to the world, both the 
 world of things and the world of persons. Theism 
 teaches that God is a Person. But what is a person? 
 Where do we get our conception of what a person is? 
 The answer must be, From our experience with our- 
 selves and with other human persons in the various 
 relationships of life. In other words, in thinking of 
 the Divine Personality we must begin by asking, What 
 is the meaning of human personality? 
 
 The Fundamental Elements of Personality. We say that 
 a man is a person. The content of that idea must be 
 explored. Of course all thought of material form 
 being essential to personality is to be dismissed as 
 crude and uncritical. Personality means, in the first 
 place, conscious existence. But understanding con- 
 scious as ability to feel, this applies to all living crea- 
 tures. Conscious must therefore mean not only sensi- 
 bility but cognition — a thinking, not simply a feeling 
 intelligence. But we have not yet transcended the 
 brute creation. Why is a man a person and a dog not 
 a person? The dog surely has individuality, that 
 is, a certain set of habits, peculiarities, and traits 
 which make him the particular dog he is. All dogs 
 
 133 
 
134 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 are a good deal alike in their habits and instincts. 
 We say it is their canine, or dog, nature. But in addi- 
 tion to their dog nature there is also the individuality 
 which can be recognized on acquaintance with a 
 particular dog. But when we come to man we find 
 something more. The man too has his traits and 
 habits common to all men — his human nature. He 
 has also the traits, habits, and tastes — physical and 
 mental — which make him the particular man that he 
 is. This is his individuality. But there is something 
 else the man has which we have no good reason to 
 believe the animals have. It is a rational conscious- 
 ness, not only of the world of things and persons 
 about him, but of himself as a particular existence 
 apart from all other objects of his consciousness, botli 
 things and conscious beings. This we call selfhood, 
 and it is distinctive and unique. 
 
 But even though the self is unique, selfhood is a 
 gradual development amid the social relations of our 
 human life. And some tracing of the development is 
 possible. The mental life begins on the low plane of 
 feeling, which is at first subrational. From this low 
 consciousness the first beginnings of a consciousness 
 of self emerge. This consciousness of self develops 
 largely from the fact of differences in feeling and from 
 the recognition that some feelings are to be associated 
 more intimately with the self than others. Thus the 
 fundamental distinction between the self, or subject, 
 and the nonself, or object, emerges. 1 And if the 
 human individual exhibits in a few years the main 
 features of a mental development which required ages 
 
 1 The development of the mental life from an evolutionary point of view iB signifi- 
 cantly treated by L. T. Hobhouse in bis Mind in Evolution. 
 
PERSONALITY 135 
 
 for the race, then consciousness of selfhood is the 
 result of a long process of growth in which the 
 human mind, beginning on the low plane of instinctive 
 feelings and impulses, slowly developed a full self- 
 consciousness. The factors in this development were, 
 of course, the constantly increasing activity of the 
 mind over against a rational and social environment. 
 And this development of a consciousness of self is, so 
 far as we know, unique, and capacity for it, as well 
 as the actual attainment of it, differentiates man from 
 all the other animal creation. 
 
 Personality and Freedom. Thus far the factors essen- 
 tial to personality are fairly indisputable. We must 
 now note another element, which is self-determina- 
 tion, or freedom. This means that the activity of the 
 mind in thought and volition is not wholly determined 
 by causes outside of the mind. As a matter of fact, 
 many of our thoughts and acts are more or less 
 mechanically determined, but the power of freedom, 
 or self-determination, must be demanded as a funda- 
 mental and indispensable element of personality. 
 This brings us to the much-debated question of mental 
 and moral freedom. It is one of the greatest questions 
 of philosophy. While it is an old question, it is by 
 no means outgrown. Some problems become obsolete 
 because of the change of life conditions out of which 
 they originated. Not so with this question of free- 
 dom. It is so vital and fundamental to our moral life 
 that no thorough consideration of ethics or religious 
 philosophy can be offered without either assuming it 
 or tacitly denying it. And every age needs a restate- 
 ment of the answer to such a great problem as this. 
 Its tremendous importance in our present inquiry 
 
136 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 must be our reason for taking it up. Of course it is 
 impossible to present here any full justification of the 
 grounds upon which we believe in freedom. We must, 
 however, point out the directions in which may be 
 found those assurances or reasons which justify us in 
 rejecting all doctrines that represent our thoughts and 
 acts as mechanically determined by causes external 
 to ourselves. If we believe in freedom, we ought to 
 know the grounds in reason upon which that belief 
 rests. 
 
 Meaning of Freedom. Putting the matter in familiar 
 phraseology, freedom means just this, that you and I, 
 under normal conditions, can act without our acts 
 being necessitated by forces above, beyond, or apart 
 from us. And as our rational activity is controlled 
 by our motives, it means that we have some part in 
 the creation of our own motives. We speak of acts 
 as free, and a moment's reflection shows us that the 
 free act must have proceeded from the free thought. 
 Of course not every act we perform is preceded by an 
 act of our own mental initiative. Most of our acts 
 are more or less determined. They may be, as we say, 
 performed mechanically without particular thought. 
 They may be instinctive, or habitual, and they often 
 result immediately from all that we have become 
 through previous decisions and acts. But granting 
 all this, freedom means the power of doing some things 
 on our own initiative, without such compulsion of 
 antecedents that the act is necessitated and could not 
 be otherwise. After we have acted, a consistent de- 
 terminist must believe that we could not have done 
 otherwise than we did. The advocate of freedom must 
 believe that we could. 
 
PERSONALITY 137 
 
 Meaning of Determinism. The denial of all free initia- 
 tive in our mental and moral life is known as deter- 
 minism. This doctrine may be summed up in a few 
 words as follows : All actions which appear to be per- 
 formed from free choice are the results of motives, 
 and the strongest motives determine the action. A 
 particular act, therefore, takes place first as the result 
 of the appropriate volition ; but the volition itself has 
 been really determined by the nature or constitution 
 of the individual and his environment. Motives which 
 spring from the whole physical (and mental) situa- 
 tion thus act and react, and it is always the strongest 
 motives which result in what we may fancy is a freely 
 willed act. It cannot be denied that not a little cur- 
 rent scientific thinking is deterministic. Science aims 
 more and more at an all-inclusive system. Its great 
 generalization is the universality of causal connec- 
 tion, and this causal connection is conceived in me- 
 chanical fashion as dynamic determination. Serious 
 objections to this are not met so long as this principle 
 of mechanical determination was applied to life be- 
 low the level of the human. But with the attempt to 
 apply the biological principles of evolution, in con- 
 nection with the mechanical doctrine of the conserva- 
 tion of energy, to human life with its vast network of 
 moral relations, formidable difficulties emerged, for 
 as soon as human thought and conduct were brought 
 under the sway of the principle of mechanical causa- 
 tion, it meant that our thinking and willing, and 
 therefore all our activity, are to be interpreted in ac- 
 cordance with this principle ; in other words, that hu- 
 man activity is but one phase of the cosmic activity, 
 and all is determined in the great unbroken chain of 
 
138 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 mechanical causation. This means that a consistent 
 and thoroughgoing naturalism applies the principle of 
 the conservation of energy to all existence and no 
 exception is made of what we call the moral life. 
 And it is evident that belief in freedom does not fit 
 into a mechanical view of the universe which includes 
 human experience. Freedom must therefore be dis- 
 missed as a baseless doctrine. Haeckel does this, and 
 puts the denial plainly enough. He says : "The free- 
 dom of the will is not an object for critical scientific 
 observation at all, for it is pure dogma based on an 
 illusion and has no real existence. . . . Each act of 
 the will is as surely determined by the act of the indi- 
 vidual and as dependent upon the momentary condi- 
 tion of his environment, as every other psychic activ- 
 ity." 
 
 Weakness of Determinism. There are several very seri- 
 ous objections to this view. They may be summed up 
 in the general statement that any deterministic doc- 
 trine consistently applied to human life compels the 
 conclusion that our acts are necessitated. They are 
 not consequences of our mental activity, free within 
 certain limits, but are resultants from forces beyond 
 our control. Thus in no degree do we determine our- 
 selves, but we are determined. The inevitable out- 
 come of the consistent application of such a view as 
 this to human life is to destroy the fundamental 
 grounds of reason and to cancel the basis of moral 
 responsibility. Determinism is not often stated with 
 the consistent frankness which Haeckel exhibits. 
 Indeed, there is a good deal of half-hearted determin- 
 ism in which attempts are made to maintain the doc- 
 trine but to modify its effects by insistence that the 
 
PERSONALITY 139 
 
 determinism is "inward" and not "outward." But 
 all attempts to point out an essential difference be- 
 tween a dynamic determination "from within" and 
 such determination "from without" have ended in 
 failure. This is for the reason that unless determin- 
 ism is affirmed as absolute, some room will be left 
 for free self initiative, which means the granting of 
 an element of freedom. This a consistent scientific 
 materialism cannot allow. 
 
 Here is a statement of mechanical determinism 
 which has the virtue of being consistent. It is the 
 summary M. Bergson makes of the doctrine in the 
 terms used in expounding the kinetic theory of 
 matter: "As the principle of the conservation of en- 
 ergy has been assumed to admit of no exception, there 
 is not an atom either in the nervous system, or in the 
 whole universe, where position is not determined by 
 the sum of the mechanical actions which other atoms 
 exert upon it. And the mathematician who knew the 
 position of the molecules or atoms of a human organ- 
 ism at a given moment, as well as the position and 
 motion of all the atoms in the universe capable of 
 influencing it, could calculate with unfailing cer- 
 tainty the past, present, and future of the person to 
 whom this organism belongs just as one predicts an 
 astronomical phenomenon." 
 
 This, surely, is the mechanical doctrine of human 
 life pure and unadulterated. But on this view it must 
 be noted that the material points of which it is alleged 
 that the universe is composed are subject solely to 
 forces of attraction and repulsion, arising from these 
 points themselves and possessing intensities which 
 depend only on their distances. Hence the relative 
 
140 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 positions of the material points at a given moment — 
 whatever be their nature — would be strictly deter- 
 mined by what it was at a preceding moment. Thus 
 the energy of the universe remaining constant (ac- 
 cording to a mechanical interpretation of the con- 
 servation of energy ) , nothing can in the least degree 
 influence the movement of any body but the impact 
 upon it of another body. And, therefore, mental 
 initiative or creative thought on the plane of the 
 human is quite inconceivable, for it would surely 
 increase or diminish the existing quantity of energy. 
 In this fashion M. Bergson pushes the mechanical 
 view of life to its logical end and shows how the prin- 
 ciple of the conservation of energy applied to the 
 mental life causes the deterministic view to break 
 down. 2 
 
 Determinism and Truth. Another serious objection to 
 the belief in determinism is that it leaves us no ground 
 upon which to recognize truth from error. It is a 
 fundamental assumption of all rational thinking that 
 our senses bring us trustworthy reports from an order 
 of reality. Of course they do deceive us occasionally, 
 but we absolutely must and do assume their general 
 reliability. Without this all attempts to build up 
 knowledge are at an end. So also of our mental facul- 
 ties. The powers and processes of our mind must be 
 trustworthy. We must assume that reason leads us 
 toward truth and not away from it. But what about 
 error? There is no denying that it is a fact of our 
 mental life. Some of our supposed knowledge turns 
 out to be groundless, and we find that we made a mis- 
 
 1 See Bergson, Les DonnSes Immediates de la Conscience, translated under title of 
 Time and Free Will, pp. 144ff. 
 
PERSONALITY 141 
 
 take. Beliefs are seen to be ill-founded, and we know 
 we strayed from the truth. But now, on the hypoth- 
 esis that our mental processes are determined, what 
 are we to say to this? Is error, which certainly forms 
 a part of our experience, necessitated as well as truth? 
 When we fall into error, if our mental activity is 
 without the element of self-direction, how are we to 
 account for the error? If error is determined like 
 truth, what basis or criterion remains for us by which 
 to distinguish what we call truth from what we call 
 error? In a determined system why should not all 
 the product of our mental activity be found to agree 
 with reality? There is no answer to these embarrass- 
 ing questions except to deny that error exists, and to 
 call it an aspect of truth imperfectly realized. This 
 the absolute idealism is compelled to do. But no 
 satisfactory explanation of how anything can be im- 
 perfectly realized in an absolute system is forthcom- 
 ing. 
 
 In truth, the problem of how to account for the fact 
 of error in experience is the rock on which all deter- 
 ministic assumptions are ultimately wrecked. The 
 assumption of freedom, on the other hand, enables us 
 to understand how error can exist in experience. Our 
 senses are trustworthy in their reports of reality and 
 our mental faculties lead toward truth. But the 
 direction of our mental activity is to some degree in 
 our own power. And if we fail in the right use of 
 our mental faculties, the explanation and responsi- 
 bility for error lie with us. 
 
 Determinism and Moral Responsibility. But we are not 
 yet done with determinism. All theories of necessity 
 break down on the problem of error, as we have seen. 
 
142 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 And when we consider determinism in relation to 
 ethical ideas and moral conduct its inadequacy be- 
 comes fully apparent. We need not dwell upon the 
 argument here, for it is fairly well understood. It 
 must be admitted that if men are to be held morally 
 responsible for their acts, we thereby imply that they 
 must be free to choose. Very often the choice is that 
 of ideals, friends, surroundings, etc., which, after the 
 choice has been made, determines the kind of influ- 
 ences under which habits will be formed. Great 
 choices often determine the kind of motives which 
 later will grow inevitably out of the soil of environ- 
 ment. But that free choice is the determining factor 
 in character we must admit. A refusal to give free- 
 dom a place cancels the validity of moral responsi- 
 bility and makes character a mechanical resultant. 
 Purposes stripped of the element of freedom become 
 mere causes in the chain of mechanical causation — 
 the only difference being that the agent is a human 
 being instead of a natural force, like gravitation or 
 chemical affinity. There is no longer such distinction 
 as merit and demerit. Men commonly called crim- 
 inals are really the victims of unfortunate conditions. 
 But, admitting that many conditions in a man's life 
 seem determined by forces beyond his control, we 
 nevertheless maintain the absolute need of freedom. 
 To deny it is to cancel moral responsibility. A study 
 of the moral life and its conditions soon shows us that 
 the range of freedom varies. We find circumstances 
 where freedom seems possible only within narrow 
 limits, but this fact should not lead us to deny free- 
 dom any more than the recognition that responsibility 
 varies greatly should lead us to deny responsibility. 
 
PERSONALITY 143 
 
 Just as determinism is soon wrecked on the problem 
 of error when we examine into the validity of our 
 knowledge, in like manner determinism meets disaster 
 on the rock of moral responsibility in the field of 
 ethics. 
 
 But there is really no need to point out further the 
 weakness of this view. Any doctrine that obliterates 
 the basis of distinctions between truth and error, can- 
 cels moral standards, and thereby knocks the founda- 
 tions away from the ethical life, is by that very fact 
 outlawed. There is, however, a modification of the 
 old deterministic view which must be noted. This 
 is the doctrine generally called "modified determin- 
 ism." Professor James calls it "soft determinism," in 
 distinction from "hard determinism" just explained. 3 
 This doctrine is about as follows : 
 
 Modified Determinism. The decisions of the self do, 
 incleed, play a most important part in all rational 
 action. Volitions are formed by the mind as results of 
 the stronger motives. These motives are not to be con- 
 sidered as causes apart from the self. In this the 
 mechanical determinist is wrong. Motives are prac- 
 tically identical with the self. It follows, then, that 
 what a man has become, that is, his nature and char- 
 acter, will determine what he does in a particular sit- 
 uation. What he has become has resulted from his 
 environment. By environment is meant the sum total 
 of all the influences which have molded and impressed 
 him from the beginning of his conscious life. There- 
 fore, while a man may choose his action, what he 
 has become always determines w T hat he will choose. 
 
 • See James, The Dilemma of Determinism, for an excellent discussion of the short- 
 comings of the deterministic philosophy. 
 
144 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Freedom, therefore, means the determination of action 
 by character. Action thus determined does not, how- 
 ever, admit of alternatives or open possibilities in 
 choice. What a man has gradually become will de- 
 termine what he will choose in every case. Conse- 
 quently, knowing the man, his actions may be con- 
 fidently predicted. 
 
 Determinism and Character. Now, this view, while it 
 smooths over the harshness of mechanical determin- 
 ism, proves to be just as indefensible on critical ex- 
 amination. Indeed, it cannot be shown to be funda- 
 mentally different from mechanical determinism. It 
 is affirmed that action in any particular case is deter- 
 mined, not by mechanical forces acting from the 
 outside, but by the self. But is the self to be taken 
 here materially? Is it the physical antecedents like 
 the brain, physical constitution, etc.? If so, then this 
 doctrine does not differ at all from mechanical de- 
 terminism. Or is the self to be thought of morally, 
 that is, as character? If so, it is difficult to see how 
 anything really moral can ever emerge, for note that 
 the doctrine teaches that a man acts in each case in 
 only one way — the way he had to act as determined 
 by all that he had become. Following this back, we 
 must come ultimately to a time when in early years 
 of life conduct becomes less and less moral, and it 
 becomes quite apparent that unless we allow the pos- 
 sibility of alternatives in conduct, we cannot see how 
 the moral quality so necessary to character could ever 
 have found its way into conduct at all, for the develop- 
 ing self cannot, according to the theory, escape its 
 causal connection with the past. What a man is, 
 as seen in the character of his acts to-day, was deter- 
 
PERSONALITY 145 
 
 mined for hirn by what he had become by previous 
 acts, and in like manner those previous acts were 
 determined by what he had become antecedent to 
 them, and so on. From this it will appear that the 
 doctrine demands the belief that character, if moral, 
 must somehow have come at some time from non- 
 moral antecedents. But if character be taken as non- 
 moral, then the doctrine falls by the weight of its own 
 absurdity. 
 
 Determinism and Repentance. Another objection fatal 
 to this modified determinism is that it leaves no place 
 for regret and repentance. Life, therefore, furnishes 
 us with facts which refute it. If the theory were true, 
 why should men feel remorse? Remorse and repent- 
 ance carry the implication that the outcome might 
 have been different, and that the power to make them 
 different lay in the hands of the person who thus feels 
 the remorse. Now, it is very certain that repentance 
 and remorse are facts of human experience. If, now, 
 there is really no power in us to make outcomes any 
 different than the way they actually happen, then 
 does it not follow that remorse and repentance are 
 emotions without adequate rational ground? Should 
 we not, therefore, recognize them as unwarranted, 
 and, enlightened by the teachings of determinism, 
 seek to eliminate them from our inner experience? 
 But, of course, that means adopting essentially the 
 mental attitude of the fatalist toward all outcomes. 
 Can we endure such consequences as these? Deter- 
 minism struggles in vain to avoid this result. If one 
 is not accountable for the consequences of his action, 
 repentance or remorse is clearly not rationally 
 grounded. All we could say is we think we are ac- 
 
146 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 countable, and hence repentance remains as a kind of 
 moral convention with no justification, however, in 
 reason. The only basis upon which we may believe 
 that remorse and repentance are not groundless feel- 
 ings but deep convictions of wrongdoing which are 
 rationally justified, is the belief in freedom. 
 
 Our Consciousness of Freedom. Freedom is practically 
 assumed even by those who are most strenuous in 
 advocating its untenability on abstractly logical 
 grounds. Dr. Samuel Johnson used to end the debate 
 on free will by saying, "We know we are free, and 
 that's the end of it." This sounds fairly dogmatic, 
 but there is more to it than mere dogmatism. The 
 truth is that the debate over freedom and determin- 
 ism is a good deal like that on knowledge and skep- 
 ticism. To affirm complete skepticism is logical 
 absurdity, for the skeptic must allow himself some 
 standing ground in the domain of knowledge. He 
 professes to know that there can be no valid basis for 
 knowledge, and is not backward in telling those who 
 think we have valid knowledge why he knows we 
 have not. Indeed, considerable knowledge seems al- 
 ways to be involved in this task of proving that 
 there are no valid grounds of knowledge. And in 
 like manner to affirm complete determinism puts 
 the determinist in much the same plight. He calls 
 upon his brother thinker who is uncritical enough 
 to believe in freedom to reconsider, to think again and 
 renounce his error and accept the view of necessity 
 as the true doctrine. But, alas for the advocate 
 of freedom! how can he heed the deterministic ex- 
 hortation to think again? If determinism is true, 
 then he is not directing his mental activity, and 
 
PERSONALITY 147 
 
 how can he think again? It begins to look as 
 though we must either give up any thoroughgoing 
 determinism, such as is supposed to involve our men- 
 tal life, or decide that with regard to rational activ- 
 ity exhortations or attempts to reconsider are de- 
 cidedly out of order, because reconsideration is not 
 possible. If our intellectual life is determined, con- 
 clusions should follow from evidence automatically 
 and without hesitation or error. 
 
 But we most assuredly know that a motion to recon- 
 sider is always in order in our thought life. Even 
 our judgments of perception sometimes show poor 
 mental workmanship and have to be corrected by a 
 second and more careful observation. We know that 
 we can direct our attention at will, that on our own 
 initiative we can control our thoughts, that we can 
 return to an argument and decide to make it better. 
 Indeed, all throughout our thought life we assume, 
 and act continually upon the assumption, that we can 
 and do control our mental processes. 
 
 The Abstract Problem of Freedom or Determinism Insol- 
 uble. But we are not anxious to press the argument 
 against what we have called complete, or thorough- 
 going, determinism. For complete determinism is, 
 after all, a pure abstraction, and so is complete and 
 thoroughgoing freedom. There is no use in arguing 
 for either. Logically, the one excludes the other, and 
 we have the familiar "either — or" deadlock. This has 
 been used again and again, and the literature of this 
 time-honored debate furnishes some interesting illus- 
 trations of the perennial barrenness of abstract log- 
 ical reasoning, apart from the concrete conditions of 
 actual life. The truth is that those whose scientific 
 
148 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 training has led them to think constantly in terms of 
 mechanical causation, and who have hypostatized 
 "Science" into a vast unity, complete and all-embrac- 
 ing, governed throughout by unvarying laws, seem 
 to find very little sympathy or place for such an 
 assumption as freedom. It introduces an element 
 which seems to destroy the monism. Some will indeed 
 allow freedom as a necessary belief, but wish it con- 
 fined strictly to the will in the field of ethics. This 
 is, of course, uncritical, since motives are mental pro- 
 ducts. And, on the other hand, those whose training 
 has been in philosophy, in ethics and social science, 
 whose thought has been engaged with the problems 
 of the moral relations of men, find no sympathy or 
 place for such an assumption as determinism. It in- 
 troduces an idea which is unmanageable in ethics and 
 sociology, an idea which when consistently applied 
 cancels human responsibility for error in thought and 
 unrighteousness in conduct. Now, if we are to escape 
 the constant barrenness of formal debates on this 
 problem, we had better abjure abstract discussion and 
 see what can be done by keeping just as close to the 
 facts of concrete life as possible. If we do this, the 
 case for freedom can soon be stated. 
 
 Freedom and Life. When we turn to actual human 
 life what do we find? We find conditions which 
 look very much as if they were determined existing 
 along with powers that look very much like self-con- 
 trol. There are some conditions of human life which 
 may be called outward and some inward, though these 
 adjectives are not to be taken as spatial, nor is any 
 clear line of demarcation to be drawn between the two 
 sets of conditions. Thus ancestry and all that limits 
 
PERSONALITY 149 
 
 a man by way of heredity and environment may be 
 called outward conditions. These will determine his 
 thought and activity. On the other hand, the man's 
 action will be determined by his own nature, his 
 temperament, his attitude to his fellow men, and his 
 view of life. This may be called inward, but is, of 
 course, connected causally with the outward condi- 
 tions. A study of these limiting factors very soon 
 convinces us that whatever may be the range of free- 
 dom, it is not that unrestricted liberty of choice which 
 it has been too often represented to be. The limits 
 within which freedom seems possible are generally 
 soon reached. The conditioning factors in our lives 
 with which we have had nothing to do work out a kind 
 of natural predestination in many ways. This means 
 that important factors in life, even personal relation- 
 ships, are often determined so far as we can see by 
 forces over which we have had no control. 
 
 Meaning of Freedom. But, on the other hand, if the 
 great moral task of human life is the development of 
 character, and a man is obliged to accept these con- 
 ditions and within their limits make his life of moral 
 worth, then it is clear that some considerable power 
 of self-determination must remain his. Character is 
 growth, and what a man's character finally becomes 
 is determined by the directions in which that char- 
 acter has grown. And, surely, those important 
 matters and crucial choices which set the directions 
 of character must remain within the realm of his self- 
 determination. Motives seem to contain many factors 
 which appear determined. They must also depend to 
 no unimportant degree upon the rational judgments 
 and feelings, for the psychic activity of man is a unity 
 
150 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 and the abstraction of the will from the reason and 
 feelings is fictitious. We may separate the mental 
 activity logically for purposes of study, but no such 
 separation exists in reality. If there be freedom in 
 volition, there is also freedom in the creation of the 
 rational judgments. 
 
 Freedom Not Lawlessness. And if freedom often finds 
 its meaning within rather narrow limits, and does not 
 mean wide liberty of choosing, we must suggest that 
 freedom does not mean arbitrariness in choice. One 
 of the traditional and persistent misunderstandings 
 of the doctrine of freedom is that it means or implies 
 chance. And chance is taken to mean lawlessness — a 
 mere happening so with nothing to secure or guar- 
 antee the outcome. But this is wholly fallacious. 
 What is popularly called a "chance" result is rigidly 
 governed by law. For example, if a man flips up a 
 coin, we say it is a mere chance how it will come down. 
 But careful reflection convinces us that if we could 
 know the initial impulse given to the coin, the weight 
 of the coin, and some other data, the exact number 
 of times the coin would turn in the air could be com- 
 puted with mathematical exactness and the side upon 
 which it would fall could be predicted. The only rea- 
 son we can never know is that the data are not obtain- 
 able and the problem itself beyond our mental capac- 
 ity. So we call our inability to solve it "chance." 
 There can be no such thing as chance in the sense of 
 an unrelated or lawless event. All chance can mean 
 for reflective thought is that we are not able to predict 
 an act or an outcome in advance. And in the same 
 manner there can be no such thing as a freedom 
 which means lawlessness or haphazard outcomes. 
 
PERSONALITY 151 
 
 The supposition that freedom must mean something 
 like this has lent the deterministic view a strength to 
 which it is not entitled. The demand for fundamental 
 unity in our view of things is as important to the 
 philosopher as to the scientist. Both must admit the 
 universality of the principle of causation, but it is 
 serious fallacy to suppose that the only way the de- 
 mand for causal unity can be met is through mechan- 
 ical determination. Surely, self-directing activity 
 does not violate the principle of causality, and self- 
 directing activity certainly fits the facts of human 
 experience a great deal better than mechanical de- 
 termination. Freedom, therefore, cannot mean law- 
 less activity. Indeed, as already pointed out, the 
 limits of freedom are generally narrow and soon 
 reached. In our judgments we are conditioned by cir- 
 cumstances about us and by our own natures. If our 
 mental activity is free, it is also strictly limited by 
 these condtions and by the laws of reason. Thus 
 with the variable in the equation of experience there 
 are many constants. We find them both. Abstractly, 
 they appear quite irreconcilable. But, as Professor 
 Bowne points out in his discussion of freedom, 4 the 
 ideas of convexity and concavity are contradictory 
 from the abstract point of view. But in experience 
 we find that they harmonize so well that it turns out 
 that we cannot find the one without the other. And 
 so there is a reconciling in the reality of concrete 
 experience of ideas which when considered abstractly 
 and apart seem hopelessly antagonistic. 
 
 We may embody the essential meaning of freedom 
 in two or three concrete statements. First, moral free- 
 
 * Metaphysics, p. 41 If. 
 
152 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 dom does not mean arbitrariness in self-direction or 
 choice. Second, freedom is always limited by the 
 conditioning circumstances and by the laws of reason. 
 Freedom implies a judgment of values — a conclusion 
 that some actions are better in some way than others. 
 Third, moral freedom means that the choosing of 
 action is indeed a resultant of previous character. If 
 acts could be willed without any relation to character, 
 they would be simply nonmoral acts. But every 
 rational choice of conduct produces a moral deposit in 
 character, with the result that as character develops 
 there does indeed become less and less need for new 
 moral dcisions. "In the vast majority of cases, though 
 potentially free, we act mechanically, following out 
 the general plan of life which Ave have adopted, simply 
 obeying the motives to whose guidance we have al- 
 ready surrendered ourselves. There is an immense 
 moral advantage which thus allows our actions to be 
 virtually necessitated by our character. For w T e do 
 not have to fight over again the whole battle of life 
 in every alternative of good or evil conduct which 
 presents itself to us." 5 
 
 Freedom and Monism. To the objection that human 
 freedom destroys a monistic view of the universe we 
 reply that this is true only on a materialistic or pan- 
 theistic basis of thought. The full discussion of this 
 point would carry us too far into metaphysics for the 
 present purpose. It must be sufficient to point out 
 that if the Infinite Intelligence is personal, and this 
 is a moral universe in which the training of humanity 
 in moral and spiritual ideals is to be thought of as 
 a controlling divine purpose, then the possession of 
 
 * William North Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of Science. 
 
PERSONALITY 153 
 
 some degree of freedom by men is in no sense a de- 
 struction of a tenable monism. The ground of human 
 freedom will lie in the eternal moral purposes of God, 
 and any limitation of the divine necessitated by a 
 degree of freedom in the human must be regarded as 
 a limitation self-imposed by God in order to realize 
 his eternal will. 
 
 Grounds for Affirming Freedom. There is no logical 
 demonstration of freedom ; but this is nothing to give 
 us anxiety, for there is no demonstration of its op- 
 posite^ — determinism. And we believe with fullest 
 assurance many things which we do not attempt log- 
 ically to prove. Our great beliefs are, after all, 
 mental resultants. The grounds for holding them 
 take far wider swing than the limited radius of logical 
 proof. These beliefs come out of the great practical 
 needs of life. With respect to mental and moral free- 
 dom, the important question is not whether this belief 
 can be logically demonstrated or not. The important 
 questions are, What are the consequences of deny- 
 ing it? and, W T hat are the reasons for affirming it? 
 We have seen that a denial of freedom, if taken seri- 
 ously, deprives us of rational grounds for distinguish- 
 ing between truth and error. It invalidates moral 
 standards so that ethics become really a higher aspect 
 of mechanics — higher only by courtesy, because the 
 activities of men happen to be under investigation, 
 not the motions of material bodies. Can we endure 
 the denial of freedom when it involves such conse- 
 quences as these? 
 
 Creative Thought Points to Freedom. But there are 
 other phases of human activity which, when examined, 
 tend to reassure us that the confidence we feel in our 
 
154 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 own power of choice is not ill-founded. While they 
 are by no means demonstrations, yet they serve to 
 strengthen our confidence in our own power of self- 
 direction and to illustrate it. The initiative dis- 
 played by the human mind often amounts to creative 
 activity, and creative activity on the part of the mind 
 cannot be accounted for on the supposition that a 
 man's mind and its product are determined by phys- 
 ical causes. As Bergson has conclusively shown, the 
 application of the principle of the conservation of 
 energy to the mental life breaks down in the face of 
 obvious facts. Here, for example, is a man trained in 
 the new science of irrigation. He stands on a hill 
 overlooking a broad valley. The landscape is barren 
 of vegetation except such as will live in arid regions, 
 but the man is noting the configuration of the country 
 and is planning a w T ay to bring the waters of a neigh- 
 boring stream in upon the dry soil. Soon the plans 
 made in thought are recorded upon paper and now 
 the irrigation engineer begins to see in his imagination 
 the same valley dotted with trees loaded with fruit; 
 and five years later — lo ! all that the man thought has 
 actually come to pass. The landscape is completely 
 changed and scientific irrigation has made the desert 
 literally to blossom as the rose. The valley as it now 
 stands represents the creative thought and activity of 
 the mind. The Panama Canal existed down to the 
 minutest detail in the thought of the engineers who 
 designed it before it could ever exist in objective real- 
 ity upon the face of the earth. The great aerial of the 
 wireless station lifts its metallic threads above the 
 earth and an intangible medium becomes the bearer 
 of the messages across the seas. Yet before this could 
 
PERSONALITY 155 
 
 be accomplished in the world of objective fact the 
 mind of a man had to find the invisible medium and 
 think out and plan a wonderfully sensitive piece of 
 apparatus with which to catch the impulses which go 
 silently and invisibly through it. 
 
 Here is mind endowed with the powers of creation ; 
 that is to say, men by their mental activity discover 
 the hidden forces of nature and call into being things 
 like the blossoming desert, the great canal, the tunnel 
 through the Alps. Those masterpieces named the 
 Parthenon, the Ninth Symphony, the statue of David, 
 Hamlet, could not have come into existence without 
 that power of mental initiative which we call creative 
 thought. We do not urge that this disproves deter- 
 minism nor proves freedom. There is strictly no 
 proof or disproof of either. But it surely lends no 
 small weight to the belief in freedom. We admit that 
 the ultimate ground of finite intelligence is Infinite 
 Intelligence, but we must not conceive the relation 
 between the two in such a fashion that the human 
 thinker becomes the mere channel or instrument 
 played upon by the Divine Thought. The powers of 
 thought, feeling, and will are indeed divinely be- 
 stowed, according to Christian thought, but there 
 must remain the sphere within which men are free to 
 use these God-given gifts as they will. For if all is 
 divinely determined, then must men's sad misuse of 
 the powers be included also ! 
 
 But what a contrast between the mind of the master 
 thinker and the mind of the animal whose instinctive 
 acts seem to be mere resultants! When we classify 
 man zoologically, that is, as an animal, brain char- 
 acteristics and other anatomical resemblances are 
 
156 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 decisive, and we place him among the primates — the 
 highest order of mammals — along with the apes. But 
 what shall we say of a classification which includes 
 two beings so totally different (in all the character- 
 istics except anatomical) as man and the chimpanzee? 
 We say, of course, that such classification simply em- 
 phasizes and records those physical similarities upon 
 which it is based. But we know at the same time that 
 the differences between man and the ape are far more 
 characteristic and fundamental than the similar- 
 ities. And the most striking of these differences is 
 with respect to this power of thought initiative. Man 
 thinks and then his activities produce those existences 
 which embody his thoughts. A being who can do this 
 is a personal being as distinguished from a mere 
 being. An animal is a being ; a man is a person. The 
 most characteristic element of personality, therefore, 
 is the power of self-direction in thought. 
 
 Freedom Fundamental to Personality. We dwell upon 
 this question of freedom because it is so very impor- 
 tant in the moral relationships of life. It is therefore 
 fundamental in ethics, sociology, and religion. As 
 already pointed out, there can be no moral responsi- 
 bility for man's conduct, if that conduct is necessi- 
 tated. Responsibility, guilt, merit, virtue, character, 
 all have a real and not simply a conventional mean- 
 ing, only as human conduct is thought of as resulting 
 from the direction of the free self. Returning now to 
 our discussion of the meaning of personality, it must 
 be borne in mind that personal relationships are al- 
 ways moral relationships, for they cannot exist with- 
 out involving obligation in some form, and obligations 
 to be real must be sustained by the will. Thus it 
 
PERSONALITY 157 
 
 appears that the personal always means the moral, 
 and the moral demands the freedom of the self in 
 order to realize the obligations which inevitably grow 
 out of the personal relationships of life. 
 
 Moral Love and Personality. But we have not yet 
 fully explored the depths of personality. Self-con- 
 sciousness and self-determination are indeed funda- 
 mental. But there is another factor in human per- 
 sonality which is of supreme importance from the 
 point of view of religious philosophy, namely, the feel- 
 ings or affections. Moral love is not less basic than 
 moral freedom. In the development of human person- 
 ality the affections are the first to grow. Long before 
 the human child has any adequate conception of itself 
 as a conscious being he has learned the sweet lessons 
 of love. And in later years, long after the imperial 
 will may have retreated within the ruins of the former 
 self, the affections remain like embers still warm 
 under the gray ashes of humiliation. This has been 
 demonstrated again and again in life. Most of the 
 men who have been reclaimed from the depths of 
 moral depravity have made response, not to appeals 
 addressed to their intellects, nor to their broken wills. 
 The arousement has come first by their affections — 
 some lingering memories of the love of a mother per- 
 haps have furnished the initial impulse on the human 
 side through which the will found strength again. 
 The last power the human soul loses is the power to 
 love and respond to love. Indeed, so vital to human 
 personality is the ability to love that when we try to 
 think of a person who never had the power of affection 
 the result is not the conception of a human being but 
 that of a fiend. Personality is far from being com- 
 
158 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 plete when we have reckoned only with the mind and 
 the will. We must also reckon with that power of the 
 soul which men have centered in the heart. In the 
 language of moral life the "heart" stands for the 
 source of all those emotions, sympathies, and affec- 
 tions which give the life richness and depth. 
 
 Importance of the Feelings. The emotions rank among 
 the highest powers of the soul. Surely, they have in 
 the lives of most men a more commanding position 
 than the intellect. They inspire heroism where cool 
 reason may fail to move men to action. The warmth 
 and glow of life, its highest joys aud deepest and holi- 
 est sacrifices, flow from the springs of feeling. It is 
 a much greater factor in the formation of beliefs, with 
 most men, than intellect. No man's mind can pos- 
 sibly be the "cold, logical engine" that Huxley thought 
 so desirable. It is always true, as Pascal said, that 
 the "heart has reasons that the intellect does not 
 know." And our great beliefs are practical resultants 
 in which the cool dictates of reason are happily 
 blended with warmer feeling. 
 
 But now some one begins to object that all this is 
 getting rather inexact and loose- jointed for a discus- 
 sion that professes to be philosophical. The feelings 
 are such a mass of variables that no really exact and 
 philosophical treatment can be offered if we are going 
 to include them in a discussion of personality. We 
 shall be apt to stray from the straight and narrow 
 path of strictly rational thinking. While we have to 
 admit, of course, the element of feeling as an im- 
 portant factor in the religious life of the individ- 
 ual, still we cannot do much with it philosophically, 
 for it defies analysis. There is no philosophy of 
 
PERSONALITY 159 
 
 mysticism, and in the very nature of the case there 
 cannot be. 
 
 To all this we make a twofold reply. First, that 
 there are feelings and feelings. We have seen in 
 Chapter IV that mere particular or individual feel- 
 ing is so variable and insecure a basis upon which to 
 base belief that it cannot be reckoned with. But the 
 case is different in the matter of the great common 
 feelings of humanity. Feeling does indeed become 
 fundamentally significant in proportion as it is really 
 universal and not the result of particular environ- 
 ment. Such feelings we must recognize and reckon 
 with in any philosophy which professes to deal with 
 the whole of life. To discuss personality as self-con- 
 sciousness and self-determination with no reference 
 to that realm of feeling in which the person manifests 
 himself so directly is to fail to reckon with all there 
 is of the personal self. Second, we must remind our- 
 selves that at the very outset we confessed that our 
 discussion was to be from the viewpoint of religious 
 values and not simply from that of formal or abstract 
 logic. And the difference is simply this, that the 
 religious ideal aims at an immediate expression in 
 high moral action. Righteousness, not rational com- 
 pleteness in thinking, is its goal. And yet let us not 
 forget that the feelings taken alone afford an insuffi- 
 cient and insecure criterion of truth. This has al- 
 ready been emphasized. The reason is needed to re- 
 strain our feelings from leading us into one-sidedness 
 and extravagance. And intellectual honesty demands 
 that our beliefs result, not only from feeling but 
 from a diligent search for the truth with the best light 
 reason can bring. 
 
100 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Personality Grows Out of Social Relations. Human per- 
 sonality as it grows means the increasing power to 
 know oneself and to determine oneself. But human 
 life means social relations, and social relations de- 
 mand that the determination of the self be always 
 with reference to the other selves about. Thus it is 
 in that network of moral realtionships which we call 
 society that human personality develops. And be- 
 cause of this, one of the most characteristic features 
 of the human person is the desire for fellowship with 
 other persons. This impulse which drives us to seek 
 a community of life with our fellows may be called 
 by various names. But the most comprehensive name 
 for it is love. And none will deny that it is so univer- 
 sally found in human nature that we must not fail to 
 include it when we sum up the meaning of human 
 personality. 
 
 Conclusion. We conclude that personality means 
 mental and moral freedom. It also implies the moral 
 love through which each human being seeks the com- 
 pletion of himself in the fellowship of other persons. 
 Christian theism affirms the existence of an Infinite 
 Being who is a Person. It also affirms the purpose of 
 this Infinite Person — God — to realize himself by re- 
 producing something of his divine nature in lesser 
 spirits who live under the limitations of finite life. 
 With a perfect freedom God expresses in his divine 
 activity his great purposes for the moral development 
 of men. These purposes demand that finite beiugs 
 also should realize some measure of freedom. The 
 ultimate ground of human freedom must, therefore, 
 be found in the purpose of God to train and redeem 
 finite spirits whom he has created "in his own image." 
 
PERSONALITY 161 
 
 The Divine Personality must also include moral love. 
 This means that God is to be thought of as establish- 
 ing personal relationships with men. And this brings 
 us to the consideration of some of the further implica- 
 tions of divine personality. 
 
 Recommended Reading 
 Borden P. Bowne — Metaphysics, Part II, Chapters III and IV. 
 William James — The Dilemma of Determinism. 
 James Seth — The Problem of Freedom in "Ethical Principles." 
 Henri Bergson — Time and Free Will. 
 J. Ward— The Realm of Ends, Lecture XIII. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DIVINE PERSONALITY 
 
 How are we to think of God as personal? What 
 thought content are we to assign to the word "per- 
 sonal" when we apply it in thinking of the Divine Be- 
 ing? We shall have to admit at once that even 
 though our conception of personality grows out of 
 our own experience, that is, from fellowship with 
 other persons in the social and ethical relationships 
 of life, nevertheless personality, viewed as expressing 
 the divine nature, must be far greater than the per- 
 sonality which sums up the nature of our finite selves. 
 For along with our consciousness of free self-hood 
 there goes abundant conviction of our limitations. 
 To this our partial insight and broken plans bear 
 ample testimony. Indeed, the very endowment of 
 personality which is the glory of our human nature, 
 is also the means through which we are made to 
 realize most keenly our weakness and imperfection. 
 
 Limitation Not an Essential Element in Personality. But 
 we can think of nothing imperfect in God's nature. 
 He could not remain an object of our worship if we 
 could. His wisdom and insight are complete, and 
 his activity always results in a perfect expressing of 
 his will. Lotze, in his Philosophy of Religion, shows 
 that human limitations, far from being necessary 
 characteristics of personality, as has often been 
 
 162 
 
DIVINE PERSONALITY 103 
 
 asserted, are really no essential part of it. 1 We must 
 now note the objections which have been filed against 
 thinking of the Divine Being as a personality. 
 
 Objections to Thinking of God as Personal. It is some- 
 times objected that thinking of God in terms of per- 
 sonality is anthropomorphism and carries with it an 
 estimate of the cosmic importance of man which is 
 not warranted by the revelations science has made of 
 the vastness of the universe. This over emphasis of 
 the importance of man detracts, it is urged, from our 
 ability to think of God properly as the One Infinite 
 and Absolute Being in the universe. The time was 
 when men believed that the earth was the center of 
 things, but modern science has shown our earth as 
 an insignificant member of an incredibly vast system ; 
 and evolution also tends greatly to stay us in think- 
 ing that man is unique and so exalted in creation — 
 for does not evolution trace the steps in a natural de- 
 velopment by which man has become what he is? 
 
 But this objection rests upon a superficial natural- 
 ism. It fails utterly to reckon with the spiritual 
 nature of man. It is this which makes man the 
 summit of creation. John Fiske was a thoroughgoing 
 evolutionist, but he writes in that most significant 
 little book, The Destiny of Man (p. 29) : "No fact in 
 nature is fraught with deeper meaning than this two- 
 sided fact of the extreme physical similarity and 
 enormous physical divergence between man and the 
 group of animals to which he traces his pedigree. It 
 shows that when humanity began, an entirely new 
 chapter in the history of the universe was opened. 
 
 1 See Philosophy of Religion, chap, iv, par. 41. Also Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 
 pp. 132-134. 
 
164 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Henceforth the life of the nascent soul came to be 
 first in importance and the bodily life became subor- 
 dinated to it. . . . He who has mastered the Dar- 
 winian theory, he who recognizes the slow and subtle 
 process of evolution as the way in which God makes 
 things come to pass, must take a far higher view. He 
 sees that in the deadly struggle for existence which 
 has raged throughout countless aeons of time the 
 whole creation has been groaning and travailing to- 
 gether in order to bring forth that last consummate 
 specimen of God's handiwork, the human soul." 
 
 To one who regards this universe as essentially 
 moral, and human life as supreme in creation because 
 of its moral worth, the objection we are considering 
 carries no weight. The implications of the objection 
 are really materialistic and therefore atheistic. As 
 John Fiske says, "Once dethrone humanity, regard 
 it as a mere local incident in an endless and aimless 
 series of cosmical changes, and you arrive at a doctrine 
 which, under whatever specious name it may be veiled, 
 is at bottom neither more nor less than atheism." 2 
 
 Again it is urged that personality gets its meaning 
 from the ethical and social relationships of our human 
 life. The human person is a person by virtue of the 
 fact that he is a member of a social organism and as 
 such is limited, conditioned, and obligated by his vari- 
 ous moral relations. But, it is urged, we cannot con- 
 ceive of God as obligated or conditioned, for to do so 
 would be to destroy his supreme position as the Abso- 
 lute. This is the substance of several particular objec- 
 tions which have been urged from time to time against 
 the idea of God as a personal Being. 
 
 2 Deatiny of Man, p. 12. 
 
DIVINE PERSONALITY 165 
 
 In answer we urge that the conception of God as 
 "the Absolute" is a product solely of abstract philo- 
 sophical speculation. This speculative idea of "the 
 Absolute" means the sum total of all reality and im- 
 plies that the Divine as "absolute" is out of or be- 
 yond all relations with finite life. To exist in rela- 
 tions is to be limited and conditioned by those rela- 
 tions. We must therefore not think of God as related, 
 for that destroys his absoluteness. It does not re- 
 quire prolonged reflection to see that an "Absolute" 
 which must not be thought of as related in some vital 
 way to finite existence cannot be grasped by finite 
 thought at all. We may well believe that God in the 
 fullness of his divine existence transcends all our finite 
 thinking about him. But personality is the highest 
 form of existence of which we have any knowledge. 
 And it surely is one thing to say that our thought 
 grasps something of the divine existence, in thinking 
 of God under the highest form of existence we know, 
 and quite another thing to set up a really unattain- 
 able notion of the Divine, and then, because the human 
 mind cannot grasp the notion, conclude that God is 
 unknowable. 
 
 Another example of this verbal and abstract objec- 
 tion to the conception of divine personality is seen in 
 the conclusions sometimes urged from the concep- 
 tion of God's unchangeability. From Spinoza and 
 other speculators we have inherited the idea of real- 
 ity as some sort of immutable "substance." Indeed, 
 the words "essence" and "substance" have haunted 
 theology for generations. But when we get clear of 
 the "stuff" theory of reality and recognize the truth 
 that, in the last analysis, being is revealed only in and 
 
166 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 through activity, we no longer try to conceive of God 
 as some rigid and unchangeable manifestation of 
 existence. There is nothing whatever to forbid the 
 thought that God does change and adjust matters in 
 answer to our newborn needs. His unchangeableness 
 is to be found in the constancy of his moral relations 
 — his love and his unvarying purpose for the best of 
 men. 
 
 An Abstract "Absolute" Serves No Useful Purpose. Reli- 
 gious thinking and the needs of the religious life have 
 never developed such an idea as "the Absolute," and 
 find very little use for it. In our discussion of the 
 foundations of knowledge (Chapter III) we have seen 
 that any valid standard for testing the truth of our 
 conceptions involves the whole experience. This 
 means not only rational thinking but the universal 
 feelings of men and the serving of great practical ends 
 in the moral life. In this connection it is well to 
 note that men have always assumed that the Divine is 
 in some way socially and morally related to them- 
 selves. From the early days when primitive peoples 
 offered a joyous sacrifice of food to their god, in the 
 simple belief that he would come down and fellowship 
 with them, to the moment when Jesus Christ taught 
 men to say "Our Father," there has never been a time 
 when religious men did not think of the Divine Being 
 as morally related to them. Moral obligations of wor- 
 shiper to divinity and, conversely, of divinity to wor- 
 shiper were a part of all early religion, and they re- 
 main fundamental to religion to-day. Indeed, with- 
 out this, religion could never have developed at all. 
 
 Moral Relation Involves Obligation. Christian teaching 
 holds that not only does the creature stand in a rela- 
 
DIVINE PERSONALITY 167 
 
 tion of moral obligation to the Creator, but that the 
 Creator also is morally obligated to the creature. The 
 great words, "Our Father," admit of no interpreta- 
 tion which does not necessitate this view. 
 
 But is not this idea of a morally obligated God un- 
 critical and indefensible philosophically? We think 
 not. Analogy is the only way in which we can think 
 at all of those realities which transcend the limits of 
 our human experience. We really have to take our 
 choice between thinking of God in the terms of our 
 finite experience and not thinking of him at all. This 
 is abundantly demonstrated by the speculative way in 
 which we are bidden to think of God by the disciples 
 of the philosophy of the Absolute. 
 
 Speculative Conception of God Results in Practical 
 Atheism. We are told that we must not conceive God 
 in terms either of the subject or the object, since the 
 Divine is the great underlying principle which unifies 
 the dualism of object and subject in all finite thought. 
 God is to be conceived as "The Unconditioned," "The 
 Absolute," etc., which practically amounts to saying 
 that we are bidden not to think of God at all in any 
 terms which allow a moral relationship between God 
 and men. The "Unconditioned," "The Absolute," etc., 
 of pantheism and the "Unknowable" of agnosticism 
 are of equal value for the practical purposes of the 
 moral and religious life. And that value is, as we 
 have seen, just about zero. We have noted how a most 
 fundamental characteristic of religion is found to be 
 the feeling of moral relationship which the wor- 
 shiper has for the Divine Being. Without this, reli- 
 gious feeling cannot long be sustained. If God is 
 thought of, in agnostic fashion, as the Unknowable, 
 
168 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 religion is not possible. Even the feeling of reverence 
 or awe which Herbert Spencer would allow is really 
 impossible, for one would have to have some knowl- 
 edge of the unknowable as the ground in reason for 
 revering him. Even a vague feeling of awe would be 
 impossible in the absence of all knowledge of the In- 
 finite. And so it has always turned out that agnosti- 
 cism soon reduces itself to practical atheism. And if 
 God is thought of in pantheistic fashion as the "Abso- 
 lute," religion is not possible. Religion always means 
 some sort of fellowship between God and the wor- 
 shiper. Now it is very evident that no fellowship is 
 possible with the "Unconditioned," even though we 
 dignify it by spelling it with a capital, and it remains 
 impossible to have any kind of feelings such as grati- 
 tude or love toward "the Absolute." If the Infinite 
 be conceived in these impersonal terms, then religion 
 becomes just as impossible as it is in the case of the 
 Divine Unknowable of agnosticism. This is why pan- 
 theism also reduces itself to practical theism. 
 
 But we are dealing with the problems of religious 
 thought from the standpoint of moral values, and no 
 criterion of truth is valid which takes account of log- 
 ical completeness only and neglects to reckon with the 
 moral feelings and the great practical values of the 
 moral life. And after all the conception of God as 
 personal is entirely rational when interpreted iu 
 terms of our highest moral ideals. For this reason we 
 choose to think of God in terms of our own life rather 
 than to allow abstract speculation to dictate such a 
 dialectic as to make thought about God practically 
 impossible. We do not demur at anthropomorphisms 
 provided they do not attribute the imperfections of 
 
DIVINE PERSONALITY 169 
 
 our humanity to the Eternal. To think of God in 
 terms of all that is purest and loftiest in our expe- 
 rience is the moral limit of finite thought concerning 
 the Infinite. Does "Father" best express the true re- 
 lationship between God and men, even as Jesus said? 
 Then the relationship must be one of mutual moral 
 obligation, for no other interpretation of "Father" is 
 possible than this. In human life we most surely 
 recognize the solemn obligation of the parent to the 
 child. But even if the idea of a morally obligated 
 God may seem speculatively uncritical to some, we 
 must remember that the human soul has been guided 
 in its search for truth far more by its deepest feelings 
 and great practical needs than by philosophical specu- 
 lation. Indeed, religion as a moral power does not 
 long survive the attempts to trim its fundamental con- 
 ceptions down to the size and form demanded by crit- 
 ical speculation. The practical needs of life are found 
 to be a far better vindication for philosophical belief 
 than the demands of speculative logic. And we boldly 
 affirm in the name of good philosophy the truth that 
 God is morally obligated. 
 
 God's Limitations Self-imposed. But the moral obliga- 
 tions of the Creator are, however, imposed upon him- 
 self by himself for moral ends. His divine will gave 
 us life. We are wholly dependent upon him ; we can- 
 not therefore think of him as without responsibility 
 toward us. "In him we live, and move, and have our 
 being." We may consistently think of God as condi- 
 tioned, provided we remember that the conditions are 
 not imposed upon him, but are from his own will. 
 Thus the unity of the Divine Nature is not destroyed 
 in our thinking, and we have a personal conception of 
 
170 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 God full of warmth and vitality instead of a cold, log- 
 ical abstraction. The principal reasons, then, why 
 Ave as Christians should think of God as personal are 
 not speculative but practical, and the best philosophy 
 of to-day recognizes that the practical demands of the 
 moral and religious life are an ample justification for 
 any belief which is not inconsistent with the great 
 body of truth already won. We demand the right, 
 therefore, in the name of all the interests of our per- 
 sonal, moral life to think of God. And when we 
 think of God, our own experience will give us the 
 forms. The noblest and best aspirations of the human 
 spirit are indeed intimations of the moral grandeur 
 of the heart of God. Robert Browning has expressed 
 this truth in the noble poem "Saul." David stands 
 beholding the unspeakable loneliness and depression 
 of the king and his heart goes out in love and noble 
 sympathy. If he could only help him now in all his 
 suffering, how gladly he would. And in what his own 
 sympathetic heart feels with all his helplessness to 
 relieve, David sees a revelation of the very heart of 
 God. 
 
 "I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive: 
 In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. 
 See the King — I would help him, but cannot; the wishes fall 
 
 through. 
 Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, 
 To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — knowing which 
 I would know that my service is perfect. 
 Oh, speak through me now! 
 Would I suffer for him that I love? 
 So would'st thou — so wilt thou!" 
 
 Divine Personality the only Basis of Religion. Chris- 
 tianity makes religion a very personal matter. At 
 
DIVINE PERSONALITY 171 
 
 the heart of the Christian revelation stands the tre- 
 mendous assurance that the Infinite Personal Spirit 
 — the Eternal God our Divine Father — enters into fel- 
 lowship with the finite spirits of men. Jesus simply 
 assumed in all his teaching about God the very high- 
 est attributes of the Divine Personality. He told 
 men that God their heavenly Father was concerned 
 about all the interests of their lives, that he loves 
 them, and that therefore they may feel that perfect 
 confidence and trust in him which will save them 
 from the friction and worry of life. The apostle Paul 
 taught that God's Spirit making himself known to 
 our spirits reveals to us the great fact that we are his 
 children. And from Jesus Christ men have learned 
 to call God by that dear word of human speech — 
 Father. From first to last the Bible tells us of a 
 God in communication and fellowship with men. 
 
 The personal conception of God is the only one 
 which makes a vital religion possible. Hours come 
 in the lives of men when, if their religion is to bring 
 them comfort and moral strength, they must feel cer- 
 tain that God is more than infinite wisdom and 
 infinite power. The deep-souled apostle summed up 
 the nature of God in the words "God is Love." The 
 highest power of human personality is the power of 
 affection. Christianity teaches that there is an In- 
 finite Heart back of the universe. Christ bade men 
 look up to the Eternal God in confidence as to one 
 who loves them with tender compassion, and call him 
 Father ! 
 
 In the last analysis the truth of the personality of 
 God is vindicated in the personal experience of men. 
 There have been multitudes in every age who have 
 
172 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 entered deeply into the life of religious thought and 
 feeling and who have abundantly testified that fellow- 
 ship with God was to them a very real experience. 
 The influence of one human spirit upon another is a 
 common experience of our daily lives. Why, then, 
 should not the great Infinite Spirit make himself 
 known in personal fellowship with the spirits of men? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 CONCEPTIONS OF THE DIVINE ACTIVITY 
 
 The Christian conception of God, then, is that of 
 the Infinite Being— the Ground of all existence. For 
 reasons which we have just considered, this Infinite 
 Being must be conceived as personal. It is only as 
 we think of God as personal that any place is found 
 for religion. For the underlying thought of God as 
 impersonal, with whom it is impossible to enter into 
 fellowship, leads inevitably to an outcome which is 
 practically atheism. 
 
 God's Being Manifested in His Activity. God being a 
 Person makes himself known through his activity. In 
 his activity we have a revelation of what God is. 
 Where, then, must we look for evidences of the divine 
 activity? We shall discover that the correct answer 
 to that question is, We must look everywhere. The old 
 formal "proofs" of the existence of God give place 
 therefore to the recognition of evidences of Divine 
 activity in the world of nature and the world of 
 human life. In subsequent chapters we are to con- 
 sider those various fields in which there is reason to 
 believe the divine activity has been and is being mani- 
 fested. In nature, in history, in the growing moral 
 consciousness of men everywhere, and in the religious 
 experience of the individual heart we find convincing 
 evidence of the universal presence of God. It remains 
 
 173 
 
174 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 for us now to consider the two ways of regarding 
 God's relation to the world. They are the two car- 
 dinal doctrines of Theism — the two fundamental ways 
 of regarding the divine activity as it has been revealed 
 in nature and human life. These are known as im- 
 manence and transcendence. 
 
 1. Transcendence 
 
 Meaning of Transcendence. In transcendence we have 
 the idea of the origin and control of a thing by an 
 activity or force the source of which lies outside the 
 thing originated or controlled. Thus, for example, 
 the inventor and maker of a complicated machine has 
 called that machine into existence through his crea- 
 tive thought and activity. It performs the work 
 planned. Its activity is in no sense independent, but 
 every part and movement represents the planning and 
 work of its builder. But the builder of the machine 
 may journey far away from it. Still that machine 
 works on. In case of disarrangement of its parts it 
 may become necessary to send for the maker and again 
 the same planning and skillfully directed activity may 
 be needed before the machine resumes its normal con- 
 dition. But it is to be noted that while the machine 
 is a constant expression of the purpose and power of 
 its builder, we think of the builder and the machine 
 as separate. The builder is not thought of as in the 
 machine. While the whole machine expresses the pur- 
 poses of the builder, still we think of the machine as 
 operating with a certain independence of its builder. 
 This is the transcendent way of regarding action. 
 The builder transcends, that is, stands above his 
 machine. 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 175 
 
 For a long time this was the prevailing form in 
 Western thought of conceiving God's relation to the 
 universe. A traditional theology taught that divine 
 creation took place at a particular point in past time. 
 God's creative activity was largely confined to the 
 "six days of creation." These "days" were long in- 
 terpreted by Christian thinkers precisely as their 
 Jewish authors had intended — days of the regular 
 length of time. When scientific thought began to cast 
 discredit upon this way of understanding the creative 
 days, a modification took place. The "days" now ap- 
 peared as geologic ages, of almost any length found 
 necessary, and vast labor was expended in showing 
 how the ancient records anticipated the conclusions 
 of modern science. 
 
 Eesulting View of Creation. Now, the point to be 
 borne in mind is this : Under the exclusive domination 
 of the idea of transcendence, God's relation to the 
 universe was conceived as similar to that of the 
 builder and the machine in our illustration. God 
 created the world. But the transcendent conception 
 regarded God's creative activity as confined to a par- 
 ticular part of past time. It makes no difference 
 whether we say a week or a million years. The tran- 
 scendent conception regarded creation as something 
 which took place rather than something which is al- 
 ways taking place. God was thought of as having 
 planned the whole universe with infinite wisdom. He 
 created it in accordance with his perfect plans. Crea- 
 tion was variously conceived. One idea was that God 
 created all the world of inorganic existences, vegeta- 
 tion and animal life, with their infinite varieties and 
 species, "out of nothing." It must be said that crude 
 
176 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 as this idea seeins, it is logical in the sense that it does 
 not attempt to explain creation or to furnish a recipe 
 for it, but frankly confesses the impenetrable mystery 
 of God's activities. Another conception, cruder than 
 the first, was that God somehow made things out of a 
 material which was already in existence. This has 
 been ridiculed as the "carpenter theory" and deserves 
 the reproach. Its hopeless weakness is that it sets 
 some sort of material existence over against God in 
 an irreconcilable dualism. This idea survived, in a 
 rehabilitated form, in the conception of "matter" as 
 eternal. This doctrine, while it seemed much more 
 respectable because of its scientific dress and associa- 
 tions, was philosophically just as uncritical as any 
 crude theology which taught that God had to have 
 stuff at hand to work with. 
 
 Leads to False Idea of Nature's Independence. But how- 
 ever creation was conceived, the important thing 
 about the transcendent view of the divine activity is 
 that God did create the universe at some period in 
 past time. He created it on an infinite plan and en- 
 dowed it with all the forces needed to keep it going 
 according to the plan. Under the influence of this 
 conception the universe soon gained a kind of inde- 
 pendence of God. He is above the universe. He is also 
 "outside" it, in the sense that after he has completed 
 it according to his perfect plan, it is thought to be 
 capable of running as a vast mechanism with a cer- 
 tain independence of its own. From time to time it is 
 conceivable that its maker might step in and readjust 
 or rearrange — giving fresh evidence of his power. 
 These are the "supernatural" events. But for the most 
 part things run along as they were originally planned. 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 177 
 
 This is the world's activity according to the "natural" 
 law. 
 
 It was, of course, inevitable that under this way of 
 regarding God's relation to the universe, men should 
 come in time to regard the universe as able to get 
 along fairly well without subsequent attention from 
 its Maker. The "mechanism of the universe" was 
 God's work, and it was perfectly done. Why then, 
 any need of supposing that it required his later atten- 
 tions? Indeed, so dominant did the idea of nature as 
 a complete mechanism become that the Maker's subse- 
 quent "attentions" came to be regarded by the mate- 
 rialistic spirit of the time as altogether superfluous 
 interferences. Comte has expressed this feeling when 
 he uttered the idea, as uncritical as it was irreverent, 
 that modern science was gaining so large an insight 
 into nature and would soon have so great a control 
 of her forces, that the time would come when we might 
 "conduct God to the frontiers of the universe and bow 
 him out with thanks for his provisional services." 
 
 Thus we have traced in brief outline what the tran- 
 scendent way of conceiving God's relation to the uni- 
 verse really is and what it involves. Emphasis upon 
 transcendence to the neglect of the conception of 
 immanence leads to a false naturalism, that is, to the 
 exalting of nature into a position of independence. 
 Thus transcendence gave great opportunity to urge 
 that, while creative activity may have been needed in 
 the past, there is not so much need for it in the present. 
 It was easy for men dominated by the materialistic 
 spirit in science to exalt nature to the position of a 
 complete and independent system. Forgetting the 
 great moral issues of life, God was identified with the 
 
178 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 forces with which (as an earlier theology had taught) 
 he had endowed the world. These forces were general- 
 ized and the abstract conception of "Force" or "En- 
 ergy" emerged. This was urged as the sufficient 
 Ground of all existence. And thus transcendence be- 
 came a fertile breeding ground for materialism. 
 
 This great gust of naturalism with its atheistic im- 
 plications which swept over the thought-world during 
 the middle of the last century was the logical conse- 
 quence of the extreme transcendent doctrine which 
 had prevailed in theology since the days of Augustine. 
 The way out was found through the modern philos- 
 ophy of personal idealism. Idealism, from Kant to 
 Hegel, had grown more and more speculative and ab- 
 stract. Its final outcome in the philosophy of the 
 Absolute was both agnostic and atheistic. Some will 
 object to the last adjective and urge that we ought, 
 rather, to say pantheistic. But, as before remarked, 
 a consistent pantheism, so far as its outcome for the 
 practical interests of morals and religion is con- 
 cerned, is the equivalent of atheism. 
 
 But under Lotze idealism found a new lease of life. 
 The significant emphasis of Lotze was teleology, that 
 is, the philosophy which recognized purpose as the 
 final ground of activity. And purpose when its impli- 
 cations were founded meant personality. In the phi- 
 losophy of the last few decades personality has been 
 recognized as the key to much which has been obscure 
 and irreconcilable. The modern philosophy of per- 
 sonality together with the wide acceptance which evo- 
 lution won has demanded a recasting of theism. And 
 in the reconstruction two great fundamental concep- 
 tions have emerged. They are personality and 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 179 
 
 immanence. We have considered some essential 
 matters touching personality. It now remains for us 
 to consider its corollary, divine immanence. We 
 turn, therefore, from that way of regarding God's 
 activity and relation to the world known as tran- 
 scendence to that way known as immanence. 
 
 2. Immanence 
 
 Meaning of Immanence. If we have found a fitting 
 analogy for transcendence in the illustration of the 
 machine and its maker, we shall find an equally fitting 
 illustration of immanence in the human body and 
 the living spirit which animates it. Speaking in a 
 rough and familiar way, we may say that the mind 
 is "in the body," but as soon as we begin to subject 
 this statement to criticism we find that any attempt 
 to locate the mind spatially involves a swarm of 
 difficulties. Where is the mind in the body? Is it 
 located equally all over the body? Is it in the foot 
 as well as in the brain? Revising the statement that 
 the mind is in the body, shall we say, rather, that the 
 mind is in the brain? Does a person think with the 
 brain? A little knowledge of physiology tells us that 
 even though the brain remained intact but communi- 
 cation were cut off from the brain to the myriad nerve 
 ends upon the surface of the body so that no stimulus 
 could find its way to the brain, there could be no 
 thought, no consciousness. Shall we revise again 
 and say that a person thinks with his nervous system, 
 of which of course the brain is an important part? 
 Where, then, is the center of thought? 
 
 God "In the World" Not Spatially but Dynamically. 
 There is only one answer, which is that the attempt to 
 
180 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 localize thinking and to find a place spatially for the 
 mind is uncritical. The mind is not "in the body" 
 in a spatial sense but in a dynamic sense. This means 
 that the mind animates the body and controls it. The 
 various voluntary movements of the body are a con- 
 stant expression of the control of the mind. We 
 promptly refer every movement of the normal body 
 (except those involuntary movements necessary to its 
 preservation) to the mind as its ground. One may 
 speak of the guilty hand of an assassin as having 
 committed a foul deed, but it is only a loose and 
 popular form of speech. For we know perfectly well 
 that every movement of the hand, and tongue, and 
 other members may be traced back through the phys- 
 ical mechanism and finds no ground or final explana- 
 tion until we reach the purpose of the person himself. 
 We used to hear it said in religious phraseology that 
 we "have eternal spirits." But, of course, the truth 
 is not that our real life is material — that we are bodies 
 and have spirits, but, rather, that we are spirits and 
 have bodies. That mysterious interaction between the 
 body and the spirit by which the body is animated 
 and controlled is our best analogy for enabling us 
 to understand the relation of God's activity to the 
 world. The very name "immanence" contains a figure 
 of speech. We must warn ourselves that the preposi- 
 tion "in" must never be understood spatially but al- 
 ways dynamically. Keeping this caution in mind, we 
 make bold to say that God is always in his world. 
 An exploration of the meaning of this statement 
 will amount to some exposition of the divine imma- 
 nence. 
 
 The older view of nature as a vast mechanism has 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 181 
 
 given place to the modern view of nature as an organ- 
 ism. And along with this, the conception of God's 
 relation to the world has undergone a corresponding 
 transformation. Christian theism no longer tries to 
 represent God as the Maker of the world standing 
 above it or apart from it, so to speak. Carlyle scorn- 
 fully repudiated this idea of "an absentee God sitting 
 idle ever since the first Sabbath at the outside of the 
 universe and seeing it go." God is in the world 
 dynamically; that is, he is the abiding ground of the 
 world, and his will and activity are the ultimate 
 source of all the world's myriad and harmonious 
 forces. The great ongoing processes of nature are not 
 blindly mechanical. The wonderful adjustments and 
 adaptations to outcomes indicate that thought lies at 
 their foundation, and not only thought but will. And 
 so we say that all nature is a constant expression of 
 the purpose and power of God. God is "in" nature 
 in this sense, just as the living spirit is "in" the body. 
 His thought and purposeful activity condition and 
 control it. 
 
 This great conception is the only tenable view for 
 modern thinking. It absolutely forbids us to set up 
 nature as in any sense independent of God. The older 
 transcendent view lent itself easily to this fallacy. 
 What need for God, after the world had once been per- 
 fectly created and endowed with all the forces needed 
 for its operation? Inevitably there crept in the false 
 idea that such a universe could run, for a while at 
 least, independently of its Creator. The forces of 
 the universe were taken as sufficient ground of the 
 natural changes, and natural law, it was fancied, 
 offered all needed explanation. But these uncritical 
 
182 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 notions no longer form a part of respectable modern 
 thinking. 
 
 Meaning of Natural Law. Natural law explains noth- 
 ing. A scientist who should refer a change to a 
 natural law, and then fancy he had given adequate 
 causal explanation, would be discredited as a thinker 
 to-day, for we know that the "law" is only an exact 
 statement of the manner in which a force or forces 
 operate under certain conditions. Nature is no inde- 
 pendent system. God is the ground of the universe. 
 His purpose alone explains its forces. The laws of 
 nature are, then, but formulations of the constant 
 and more or less familiar fashion in which divine 
 activity is manifested. 
 
 Creation is the Eternal Manifestation of Divine Energy. 
 When this view of God's relation to the world as 
 immanent takes possession of our thinking, we find 
 that our conception of the divine activity in creation 
 may have to undergo change. "In the beginning God 
 created the heavens and the earth." Most of us were 
 taught that this means that the world was created at 
 some point or period in past time. But if God is in 
 his universe to-day, then every activity in nature is a 
 present expression of the creative activity of God, 
 and every day is a day of creation. Creation is, there- 
 fore, a constant and ever ongoing manifestation of the 
 power of God and not a manifestation of that power 
 once completed in past time. We should not say, 
 therefore, "God created the world," unless we add 
 what is equally true that God is still creating the 
 world. Science teaches us that the great day of crea- 
 tion is still on. The student of the earth sciences 
 knows that the mighty changes through which the 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 183 
 
 earth has passed are not all complete. Geologic- 
 change is still taking place and will probably continue 
 to go on for ages to come. The biologist views the 
 world as a continual rebirth of life in its myriad 
 forms. God did not create a few primitive organ- 
 isms at the beginning in order to get the world of 
 organic life well started. His creative activity is 
 seen in the mysterious birth of every new organism — 
 yes, in the genesis of every new cell. The Divine 
 Creator is ever at work in a world that is never done 
 being born. 
 
 This conception of God's immanent activity in the 
 world enables Christian faith to hold to the belief that 
 the world is the result of divine creation, and at the 
 same time accept the great truth of evolution. The 
 hostility to evolution which formerly prevailed among 
 Christian people, and still remains to some extent, 
 rested upon the supposition that those things which 
 take place in the world through "natural" processes 
 are not the result of God's creative activity, his action 
 being thought as altogether supernatural. But this 
 kind of distinction between God's work as super- 
 natural and nature's work as natural is wholly erro- 
 neous. It rests upon the old fallacy that nature is an 
 independent system of things. But when our thought 
 is once dominated by the truth that nature is not and 
 never was in any sense independent of God, then we 
 begin to see that a "natural" event is quite as much an 
 expression of the divine activity as what we may call 
 a "supernatural" event. 
 
 The hopelessly uncritical question, What is there 
 for God to do, if things originate in a natural way? 
 needs no answer, for the conception of an ever-present 
 
184 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 God does not permit us to think for a moment that the 
 "natural way" in which things may originate re- 
 quires one whit less of the creative energy of God. 
 As John Fiske says, "Once really adopt the concep- 
 tion of an everpresent God, without whom no sparrow 
 falls to the ground, and it becomes self-evident that 
 the law of gravitation is but an expression of a par- 
 ticular mode of divine action. And what is thus true 
 of one law is true of all laws" (Outlines of Cosmic 
 Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 428). From the standpoint of 
 the Christian conception of God we may say, then, 
 that the law of evolution enables us to trace the 
 manner in which divine creation takes place in the 
 realm of organic life. 
 
 But there is a final scruple concerning evolution 
 which lingers. It might be freely allowed that we 
 may hold to divine creation and yet think of the origin 
 of the human body — man's physical organism — as 
 originating in what we call a natural way. But what 
 shall we say of that part of man which differentiates 
 him from the brute creation? Man is a soul. Where 
 does the soul come from? The answer must be, of 
 course, We come from God. "In him we live, and 
 move, and have our being." But the question re- 
 mains, How are we to think of the soul as coining from 
 God? It would carry us too far into the field of meta- 
 physics were we to take up this question in any 
 thoroughgoing way. And after we had said all there 
 is to say, the mystery would still be there, the same 
 mystery, by the way, which meets us when we try to 
 construe the origin of life anywhere, the mystery of 
 creation. The creation of life is an act of the Infinite, 
 and as such cannot be grasped in any complete way 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 185 
 
 by our finite intelligence. Biological science has 
 taught us how to observe the various stages in the 
 growth of the human body, and in a crude and partial 
 way we are thus permitted to trace the wonderful 
 work of the Creator. But no biological science ever 
 professes to reveal to us the ultimate origin of life. 
 And even though the tracing of stages in the growth 
 of a soul is impossible, we must believe that, however 
 the soul develops, the process is the work of the ever 
 present Creator. 
 
 This teaching of a personal God immanent in his 
 world is not new. It is voiced again and again by the 
 poets and prophets of the Old Testament. But, of 
 course, they did not express the truth in philosophical 
 phrase but always in the figurative language of devo- 
 tion. The early thought of the Hebrews localized the 
 power of Jehovah. But under the instruction of those 
 mighty religious teachers the prophets the Hebrew 
 conception of Jehovah as a national divinity expanded 
 to that of Jehovah as the Lord of all the earth — the 
 Universal Presence. In one of the later psalms we 
 find the familiar and sublime declaration of the uni- 
 versal presence of God. 
 
 Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from 
 thy presence? 
 
 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed 
 in hell, behold, thou art there: 
 
 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
 parts of the sea; 
 
 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
 hold me. 
 
 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night 
 shall be light about me. 
 
 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth 
 as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 
 
186 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 We have thus set forth the most important impli- 
 cations of the immanent way of conceiving the divine 
 activity. But while the older transcendence which 
 thinks of God as outside the world is rejected, we 
 should not forget that there must remain an impor- 
 tant element of transcendence in the theistic view. 
 The human spirit is dynamically in the body animat- 
 ing and controlling it, but there is a viewpoint from 
 which we must say that the spirit is greater than the 
 body — it transcends it. There is an analogous way 
 in which we must think of God as greater than the 
 world, and therefore transcending it. 
 
 Personality Saves Immanence from Pantheism. Panthe- 
 istic idealism expounds immanence in such a fashion 
 as really to identify God and the world. And this 
 means not only the world of nature but the world of 
 human spirits. Indeed, the pantheistic idealist con- 
 ceives the human spirit as but a part of the spirit of 
 the universe differentiated for the time by the limita- 
 tions of time and space. 
 
 But personal idealism is saved from this view, 
 which, it will be seen, implies the impossibility of any- 
 thing like individual freedom. The basic notion of 
 personality demands that we think of the impersonal 
 universe as dependent upon the personal God. While 
 God is continually conditioning the world through 
 his activity manifested in it and through it, the world 
 in no way imposes conditions upon God. His con- 
 sciousness rises above that order of things which is 
 limited by time and space. He is the Intelligent 
 Ground of the world. The only unity the world has 
 in actual existence rests upon the fact that it is con- 
 stantly dependent upon the thought and will of God. 
 
DIVINE ACTIVITY 187 
 
 It is an age-long story — the way in which mankind 
 came into possession of that greatest of all possible 
 conceptions: the idea of God. It began in the dim 
 twilight of the primeval ages, when the souls of men 
 reached out in rude worship toward the spirit of the 
 Eternal, and when we may well believe also that God 
 on his part began to lead men's thoughts toward him- 
 self. That twilight grew at last into the noontide of 
 divine revelation and that noontide is seen in the life 
 and teachings of Jesus Christ revealing as they did 
 the truth — that the Infinite and Eternal God, the 
 Maker of the heavens and earth, is the Divine Father 
 of men; that he has a heart of compassion; that he 
 loves men as his children ; that he leads, teaches, and 
 forgives them, in order to win them to himself. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN NATURE 
 
 Meaning of Revelation in Nature. To say that nature 
 reveals God must be taken to mean that a study of 
 many of the facts of nature convinces us that the only 
 way we can interpret these facts is through a belief 
 that back of them, as their ground, lie the thought aud 
 will of a personal Intelligence. And what are some of 
 these facts? They are, for the most part, those which 
 appear to indicate plan or purpose. There are a great 
 many wonderfully beautiful adjustments in organic 
 nature, before which we stand in almost speechless 
 admiration. Nature is found to be a great rational 
 order. One of the postulates or underlying assump- 
 tions of all investigation is the order and intelligi- 
 bility of the universe. We know that nature is intel- 
 ligible because we find that when we apply our reason 
 to its various activities we comprehend them to some 
 degree. The planets and other heavenly bodies swing 
 in orbits which are the curves obtained by the sections 
 of a cone. Crystals are but solid geometry done in 
 material forms. "God understands geometry," said 
 Plato. Science is, as Huxley wrote, "the discovery 
 of the rational order that pervades the universe." 
 There is a parallelism between the activity of nature 
 and our own mental activity. The laws of thought are 
 the laws of the cosmic order. 
 
 188 
 
GOD IN NATURE 189 
 
 Adaptations in Nature. But the particular aspect of 
 Nature's rationality that interests us at this point is 
 the presentation of those adaptations which certainly 
 look as though they were intended. One of the stand- 
 ard arguments of theism is founded on the fact that 
 there exist in nature those adaptations and adjust- 
 ments of one thing to another which the mind cannot 
 interpret except by affirming that the outcome result- 
 ing from such adaptations must be regarded as inten- 
 tional. This is known as the Argument from Design. 
 In this argument purpose is affirmed as the only prin- 
 ciple sufficient to explain the facts. The cause of a 
 watch includes all the agencies through which it was 
 manufactured, but the final cause or purpose of a 
 watch is to tell the time of day. And we have not 
 really explained the watch until we have found and 
 affirmed its purpose. And in like manner we may 
 trace the successive stages of development of the earth 
 or of organic forms upon it. But we have not arrived 
 at any full and satisfying explanation in which the 
 mind can rest until we have asked the question 
 "Why?" and found an answer. 
 
 We learn that there is a vast number of adaptations 
 and adjustments in the world of organic life. Taking 
 a particular case, we notice the result, for instance, 
 that the eye is the means by which animals see. W T e 
 study the structure of the eye and conclude that no 
 satisfying explanation of its structure is possible until 
 we have affirmed that such wonderful adaptation of 
 the organ to surrounding conditions indicates inten- 
 tion, and intention means purpose. Of course the pur- 
 pose is not revealed directly in things, but is a rational 
 interpretation to which the mind seems to be driven 
 
190 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 by the facts. This is the gist of the argument from 
 design. As an argument it has received the careful 
 consideration of the greatest minds. Kant regarded 
 it with respect. John Stuart Mill considered it the 
 only argument of theism which carries weight. When 
 the argument is not made to carry too heavy a load it 
 is found to be of great practical value. We cannot 
 take the time to enumerate some of the striking adap- 
 tations in nature which seem to demand purpose as 
 their only adequate explanation. They will be found 
 in the larger works which expound the theistic doc- 
 trine. 1 
 
 Evolution and the Design Argument. But it is urged 
 that the doctrine of evolution greatly weakens, if 
 indeed it does not destroy, the force of the argument 
 from design. We are admonished that the perfection 
 of the eye, for example (a favorite illustration of the 
 older writers on theism ) , came from a long process of 
 natural selection. In this process imperfections were 
 eliminated because the animals having the imperfect 
 organs failed to survive. We agree to this, but 
 still hold that the doctrine of natural selection in 
 no way forbids us to conclude that many things in 
 nature look as though they were intended to serve 
 certain purposes — the eye to see, the ear to hear, and 
 so on. It is true that the argument in the form in 
 which it used to be urged is superseded. We may no 
 longer think of the eye or ear or any other part of the 
 organism as an individual bit of creation, in which 
 intelligence wonderfully anticipated 'and made provi- 
 sion for what was coming. The conception of design 
 
 1 Janet's Final Causes is probably the most thorough exposition of the argument in 
 its more modern form. 
 
GOD IN NATURE 191 
 
 is applicable not to particular instances of creation, 
 but to the whole creative process and its outcome. 
 The argument from design can no longer be taken to 
 mean that there is special contrivance in nature. It 
 points, rather, to the truth that Divine Intelligence is 
 the immanent guiding power in the creative process. 
 Natural selection must not be thought of as furnish- 
 ing its own motive power. It only describes the proc- 
 ess by which, after a long series of developments by 
 elimination, certain perfected forms remained. And 
 we still need the conception of an underlying purpose 
 just as much as ever to enable us to explain the mar- 
 velous selections and rejections which resulted so 
 wonderfully. There can be in truth no ultimate ex- 
 planation of the evolutionary process without the 
 thought of an Infinite Intelligence. Nature reveals 
 not impersonal force, but God; not a blind uncon- 
 scious power working mechanically, but a living 
 Person whose thought and will are the ground of all 
 the marvelous processes described by science. In 
 nature, then, we find evidence of the presence of God 
 in his immanent activity directed for the realization 
 of great ends. 
 
 Divine Purpose and the Problems of Providence — Con- 
 clusion. Now, all this proves perfectly manageable to 
 our thought and clear enough so long as we continue 
 to look upon the bright side of nature. But we are 
 not infrequently brought face to face with the f act- 
 that nature has her darker aspects. The heavens 
 declare the glory of God, but what shall be said of the 
 volcano and the earthquake? Marvelous indeed is the 
 industry of nature, but what to say of her prodigality, 
 not to say profligacy, in creating and then destroying 
 
192 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 life on a scale so vast as to be beyond our conception? 
 We speak figuratively of nature, as though "she" did 
 these things, but an affirmation that all the ongoing 
 processes of nature are but manifestations of the ac- 
 tivity of the immanent Creator stands. We have said 
 that natural selection but traces the method of God's 
 creation. Is it he who thus sweeps away thousands 
 of the less favored in order that the strongest and 
 most perfect may survive? What shall we say in face 
 of what seems to us to be the terrible wastefulness of 
 the methods by which life advances? And what of the 
 many agencies of destruction which seem to show a 
 striking adaptation to the end they serve. The fang 
 of the rattlesnake is hardly as useful as the udder of 
 the cow, but it is certainly as perfectly adapted to the 
 end for which it appears to have been created. When 
 we think of the poisonous plants, the cruel talon of 
 the eagle, the fang of the poisonous insect, the tornado, 
 the pathogenic germs, we may become rather less vol- 
 uble concerning the way in which the beneficence of 
 the Creator shines forth revealed in the book of 
 nature. We begin to realize that we stand in the 
 presence of mystery. The atmosphere through which 
 we seek a revelation of God is not always clear. 
 
 Two things are worth saying, though they do not 
 dispel the mystery. The first is that the fuller and 
 more exact knowledge of nature which modern science 
 has afforded us forbids us to consider particular in- 
 stances of creative activity and make them the basis 
 for philosophical (or theological) generalization. 
 Knowledge of nature often compels us to overhaul our 
 conception of what may or may not be the divine 
 will. Here we meet the small-caliber doctrines of 
 
GOD IN NATUKE 193 
 
 Divine Providence. It is natural'for people to fancy 
 that things which turn out "to 'their favor are provi- 
 dential, while misfortunes which bring disappoint- 
 ment, suffering or grief are "inscrutable providences." 
 That all suffering is evil is a common and natural 
 view, but one to which Jesus gave no countenance and 
 one which does not remain in the presence of a deeper 
 spiritual insight. A volcano blows off and nearby 
 villages are overwhelmed. Men ask, "Why this in- 
 scrutable providence?-' That we should continue to 
 think of such an event as a terrible and unmixed evil 
 is perhaps inevitable. It consoles us to be told that all 
 these people would soon have died anyhow only when 
 we are not personally concerned in the disaster. Men 
 will continue to ask why "inscrutable providences" 
 happen when they ought to be asking other questions. 
 For example, "Why will men persist in building their 
 homes close to volcanoes?" A typhoid epidemic is 
 often not an "inscrutable 'providence," but an indica- 
 tion of lack of proper vigilance or even of criminal 
 negligence. Why are steamship companies permitted 
 to rush great steamers across the Atlantic in the 
 Northern courses in April when they know that fog 
 and icebergs are frequent in that part of 'the ocean? 
 When trains crash together because of an imperfect 
 and antiquated system of signals which a great rail- 
 road has long since outgrown, or because the road was 
 found to be overworking its men, is it an "inscrutable 
 providence"? When we realize the truth that many 
 disasters come from the carelessness or greed of men, 
 and that men are not automata whose acts are de- 
 termined from without, but possessed of some degree 
 of freedom, then we do not have to make such efforts 
 
194 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 at pious reconciliation to disasters which were erro- 
 neously taken for the sovereign will of God. 
 
 But the greed and ignorance and carelessness of 
 men do not explain everything. After all has been 
 urged, there remains an element of fearful mystery 
 in some natural events. But how often the question 
 has been asked, "But why does not God interfere and 
 prevent dreadful disasters?" We do not know. But 
 we do know that it is infinitely better that all the 
 forces of the universe should remain constant rather 
 than that they should be intercepted from time to 
 time. The constancy of nature is one of the mightiest 
 revelations of the wisdom of God. The force of gravi- 
 tation must never be suspended, nor must the atmos- 
 pheric pressure vary to any great degree. If these 
 things were to happen, all life would be brought to an 
 immediate end in unspeakable disaster. Icebergs 
 must float. If water did not expand in freezing and 
 ice were therefore heavier than water, it would not 
 be long before most of this earth would be wrapped in 
 heavy shackles of ice and thereby rendered uninhabit- 
 able. It is only as the great forces of nature are main- 
 tained constantly that life is possible. God is far too 
 wise to intercept them. The uniformity of nature is 
 an expression of the wisdom and constancy of the 
 divine purpose. We repeat, then, that the teaching 
 that nature reveals the purposes of God must be taken 
 not with reference to this or that particular instance, 
 but at long range. Then, and then only, do the fitful 
 and broken gleams of light seem continuous enough 
 to afford any real guidance to thought. 
 
 The other thing worth saying is this: that if we 
 have only science and philosophy to live by we shall 
 
GOD IN NATURE 195 
 
 sometimes find ourselves baffled and groping. Amid 
 the mystery and perplexity of the problem of suffer- 
 ing there is but little light from reason alone. Here 
 of all places we need the great truth of religion that 
 we must walk by faith and not by sight. The best that 
 reason and faith together can do is to catch gleams 
 of light that shine through clouds which are often 
 dark. And then Faith whispers that we must trust 
 God when we have failed to understand him, for he 
 is -our Father. Sometimes we may feel that there 
 are as many things in nature to indicate that God is 
 indifferent as there 'are to teach that he is love; but 
 the heart that has come to know God in fellowship of 
 the spirit will not find it impossible to cling to him 
 in trust and love, even under those conditions when 
 the candle of reason begins to flicker and give forth 
 a feeble light. This is the experience of all who have 
 known God, even though they have failed to under- 
 stand all his ways in the world about us. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE NON- 
 CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 Modern Knowledge of the Great Religions of the East. 
 It is not very long since the opinion prevailed among 
 intelligent Christian people that the non-Christian 
 religions are altogether false and unworthy of any 
 consideration. The religions of the world were con- 
 fidently divided into two classes — the true religious, 
 which included Judaism and Christianity, and the 
 false religions, which included all others. But this 
 dubious and provincial way of thinking about God's 
 relation to the greater part of the human race began 
 to undergo transformation when the great non-Chris- 
 tian religions became better known. The comparative 
 study of religion is a science of modern growth. A 
 few decades ago the labors of certain scholars began 
 to unlock for us a knowledge of the great religions 
 of the Orient. This came about through the trans- 
 lation of the sacred literatures or "Bibles" of these 
 religions, and through a thoroughgoing study of the 
 great ethnic religions themselves as they survive to- 
 day. The result has been a flood of light. A more 
 comprehensive and exact knowledge of the non-Chris- 
 tian religions is one of the blessings which have come 
 
 196 
 
THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 197 
 
 from the application of modern scholarship to the 
 study of the religious life of all men. 
 
 Of course our subject is vast, and an adequate'treat- 
 ment would require some exposition of the funda- 
 mental ideas of each of the great ethnic faiths. That 
 is manifestly impossible within the limits of these 
 studies. We can present only a few significant facts 
 and indicate the general direction in which broad 
 Christian thinking must travel. 
 
 All Great Religions Born in Asia. First, let us not for- 
 get that all the great religions of the world have been 
 born and cradled in Asia: Hinduism, Buddhism, 
 Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Judaism, Christianity, 
 and Mohammedanism. The native religions of Europe 
 and America have perished. They disappeared be- 
 cause in the onward march of civilization men out- 
 grew their crude and primitive ideas. But the great 
 faiths which began in Asia are all living to-day. And 
 they have lived for these thousands of years not be- 
 cause of the errors they contain but because besides 
 the errors they embody great truths. Their adherents 
 far outnumber the adherents of Christianity. If we 
 say that the divine revelation is not mediated through 
 these ethnic faiths, then we are forced to conclude 
 that for ages God has revealed himself to the merest 
 fraction of the human family — all the rest seeking 
 but not finding the comfort and assurance their 
 spirits needed. 
 
 Great Truths Found in the Oriental Faiths. Again, let 
 us not forget that in these ethnic religions we find 
 teachings which we recognize at once as great truths. 
 The early religion of India, especially as it is reflected 
 in some of the hymns of the Rig Veda, seems to be 
 
198 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 characterized by a primitive monotheism. There are 
 indeed the various gods of the Vedic pantheon, 
 Varuna, Indra, Agni, and the rest. But there is ex- 
 cellent reason for believing that, although these were 
 worshiped as separate personifications of divine power 
 manifested in the nature forces, yet they were 'also 
 regarded as manifestations of the one Divine Exist- 
 ence. The following extract from the Rig Veda gives 
 evidence of this : 
 
 What god shall we adore with sacrifice? 
 Him let us praise, the golden child that rose 
 In the beginning, who was born the lord — 
 The sole lord of all that is — who made 
 The earth and formed the sky, who giveth life, 
 Who giveth strength, whose bidding gods revere, 
 Whose hiding-place is immortality, 
 Whose shadow, death; who by his might is king 
 Of all the breathing, sleeping, waking world. 
 Where'er, let loose in space, the mighty waters 
 Have gone, depositing a fruitful seed. 
 And generating fire, there he arose 
 Who is the breath and life of all the gods, 
 Whose mighty glance looks round the vast expanse 
 Of watery vapor — source of energy, 
 Cause of the sacrifice — the only God 
 Above the gods. 
 ■ — 121st hymn, 10th Mandala. Translation by Professor 
 Monier Williams, of Oxford. 
 
 This hymn was written several centuries before the 
 earliest writings of the Old Testament. Note also the 
 following well-known lines from another Vedic hymn, 
 addressed to Indra: 
 
 Thou art our guardian, advocate, and friend, 
 A brother, father, mother — all combined. 
 Most fatherly of fathers, we are thine, 
 And thou art ours. Oh! let thy pitying soul 
 
THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 199 
 
 Turn to us in compassion when we praise thee, 
 And slay us not for one sin or for many. 
 Deliver us to-day, to-morrow, every day. 
 
 — From Monier Williams, "Hinduism." 
 
 That we have there the expression of noble beliefs 
 concerning God is perfectly evident. 
 
 One of the most impressive characteristics of the 
 higher Oriental thought is the emphasis laid upon the 
 unreality of the material. The world of physical 
 existences is regarded as but the varying expression 
 of the Unseen Reality behind it. The unseen is the 
 only abiding and eternal life. The Vedas and the 
 Upanishads breathe this fundamental view through- 
 out. There is too, on the part of the Oriental mind, 
 a deep longing for union with the Divine Being. 
 Absorption into the Divine, with consequent ending 
 of finite personality, is the religious belief which ex- 
 presses this longing. This is the only form that faith 
 in immortality took in the higher Eastern thinking. 
 And we have learned repeatedly from our mission- 
 aries .what earnest religious yearnings and heart- 
 hungers can exist in the midst of polytheistic forms 
 of worship. And even if the worship of the modern 
 Hindu is a degraded polytheism, the old religion of 
 India, that of the Vedas, w T as fundamentally mono- 
 theistic — the earliest monotheism recorded in the his- 
 tory of religion. 
 
 Now, truth is truth wherever we find it, and light 
 is light. The difference between the dim light of early 
 dawn and the full beams of noontide is simply a dif- 
 ference in the amount of light which is being shed 
 over the landscape. But the dim light of early dawn 
 has the same source as the bright beams of day which 
 
200 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 stream down from the glowing sun. And, surely, we 
 should rejoice to find evidences of the truth about 
 God in these faiths which are much more ancient than 
 are our own. God has indeed spoken "at sundry times 
 and in divers manners through the prophets." And 
 these prophets are not only the Hebrew prophets, as 
 we may have been taught to think, but all who have 
 given utterance to the truth of God. The view has 
 often been put forth that the origin of religion is to 
 be found in a primitive revelation to the Hebrew 
 people which was later expanded into the more com- 
 plete revelation of Christianity, and that beyond this 
 there is no real religion but only superstitions of vari- 
 ous degrees of refinement. But this view, which was 
 defended by Mr. Gladstone, 1 and other sincere Chris- 
 tian men, dissolves away before an enlarging knowl- 
 edge of the great religions of the Far East. 
 
 Non-Christian Religions a Phase of the Divine Revelation. 
 We dare not declare these great faiths, which count- 
 less millions of rational beings have professed for 
 thousands of years, to be nothing but error and delu- 
 sion, for if we do, we so discredit the human reason 
 and conscience as to make them very doubtful powers 
 by which to accredit the truth of our own faith. With 
 all their imperfections and weakness there is a 
 majesty and dignity to these old religions, and it is 
 the majesty and dignity of the eternal truths they 
 contain. The history of religion is the age-long story 
 of the quest of God by the human heart, and of the 
 responses w r hich the Eternal has made to that quest; 
 and the non-Christian religions are earlier chapters 
 in that age-long story. This view of the broader 
 
 1 In "The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture." 
 
THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 201 
 
 revelation is absolutely necessary to our Christian 
 thinking, and, happily, is becoming dominant in 
 modern missions. As our knowledge of the religious 
 consciousness of Oriental peoples grows, a new signif- 
 icance is found for the words of the apostle, "There is 
 a light which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world." 
 
 Weakness of the Ethnic Religions. But while it is 
 undoubtedly true that the non-Christian religions 
 contain great truths, we must remember that no reli- 
 gion can be known simply through a study of its 
 sacred literature. Its effects or outcomes in life must 
 be taken into account, and when we estimate religions 
 on this broad basis we begin to realize how dismally 
 the ethnic faiths of the Orient have failed in produc- 
 ing a lofty type of moral life. Socially and politically 
 the Orient is still ages behind the Western world. 
 We cannot forget that the Brahman faith enjoins bar- 
 baric austerities as the price of divine forgiveness, 
 and that it founded the system of caste which is to- 
 day the most terrible burden under which India 
 struggles. Modern Hinduism is a jungle of supersti- 
 tions, many of them of a revolting character, and has 
 fostered such terrible practices as the burning of 
 widows and the destruction of little children. Bud- 
 dhism offers no better comfort for human sorrow than 
 the promise of personal extinction at physical death ; 
 and throughout the entire Orient the development of 
 social morality has reached only a low level and the 
 position of women is still one of degradation except 
 where the influence of Christianity has made itself 
 felt. Religions are to be judged, we repeat, not by a 
 few lofty doctrines of their founders, but by the moral 
 
202 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ideals they nourish and the type of ethical and social 
 life they have brought forth. And, realizing all the 
 difference between what the ethnic faiths have done 
 for the Orient, and what Christianity has wrought in 
 the Western world, we may well be glad that "God 
 who at sundry times and diverse manners hath spoken 
 in times past through the prophets," hath in these last 
 days spoken unto us by his Son. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN HUMAN 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 There have been those who, after studying the uni- 
 form sequences in nature, have been deeply impressed, 
 and even depressed, because they did not discover in 
 nature any evidences of feeling or compassion. John 
 Stuart Mill said that "nearly all the things that men 
 are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are 
 nature's everyday performances." Ferdinand Brune- 
 tiere declares that "nature is immoral, thoroughly 
 immoral." And one of our recent theologians writes : 
 "There is no equity in nature. She knows nothing 
 of what is meant by that noble English phrase, 'Give 
 him fair play.' She will herself cripple a man with 
 all sorts of weakness and then crush him because he is 
 weak. Not only so, but sometimes these weaknesses 
 are a result, under natural law, of the action of some 
 other man for whom the cripple is in no degree re- 
 sponsible; that is, nature is so indifferent to equity 
 that she strikes the wrong man." * 
 
 We have here an impassioned outburst which surely 
 does credit to the theologian's feelings. Dr. Curtis's 
 purpose is really to point out the inadequacy of the 
 revelation contained in nature, or "natural religion," 
 
 1 The Christian Faith, by Professor Olin A. Curtis, p. 108. 
 
 203 
 
204 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 as it used to be called. But ought he in careful think- 
 ing thus to personify nature and hold "her" respon- 
 sible for a lot of things "she" does? If we are to hold 
 to the conception of God as immanent, we surely must 
 believe that the fixed sequences in organic life express 
 the wisdom of the Divine Creator. We may think it 
 unjust, perhaps, that impaired physical vitality in 
 parents should weaken the offspring. But we do well 
 to remember that, on the other hand, physical vigor 
 in parents also strengthens the offspring. Heredity 
 shows us children now and again almost damned into 
 the world. But the great majority are blessed iuto 
 the world under the same unvarying laws. The differ- 
 ence is found, not in any variation of the divine will, 
 but in the awful consequences of human sin. And 
 shall we ask that the natural sequences shall gener- 
 ally remain constant, but be varied in those cases 
 where the consequences of sin would work out pain to 
 the innocent? "Visiting the iniquities of the fathers 
 upon the children" is written not only in the Deca- 
 logue but in life. And it came to be written in the 
 ancient law because it was found to be written so 
 large in human life. There is no theodicy which clears 
 up the problem of human pain and reconciles it with 
 our abstract principles of justice. But vicarious 
 suffering is woven deeply into the very warp and woof 
 of our human existence. 
 
 The Revelation through Nature Not Sufficient for a Moral 
 Religion. Of course all this means that the moral ele- 
 ments of the divine character are not discovered by a 
 study of that vast system of constant sequences which 
 we call "the natural universe." But should we be- 
 come aroused and say for that reason that nature is 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 205 
 
 immoral? That "she" does a lot of unjust things? 
 Or should we bear in mind that nature is not an 
 independent agency at all — that she does nothing on 
 her own account? The blame we lay at the door of 
 nature we are really charging up against the God who 
 is immanent in nature and whose broad purposes 
 nature expresses. Shall we not say, that while we 
 must confess that suffering is a great mystery and 
 that the ways of the Eternal are often past our find- 
 ing out, that what all this means is really that in 
 nature we find only a partial revelation of God. 
 While men might possibly have come to some knowl- 
 edge of God's wisdom and power through nature, they 
 never could have attained a knowledge of his ethical 
 love. 
 
 Personal Relations Demanded. Let us agree, therefore, 
 that in nature we have a revelation — but that revela- 
 tion is not enough to lay the foundations of religion. 
 But men have never been satisfied with the revelation 
 in nature. And this is the reason why the human 
 heart has so long believed in a God whose nature is 
 moral, a God who not only thinks and wills, but feels 
 and loves. The justification of this deep faith of the 
 human heart in a moral God is found chiefly in the 
 feeling that the divine cannot be less than the human. 
 We do not need to be told what a large part the 
 affections of the human heart play in making our life 
 what it is. We dare not leave out the element of 
 moral love in summing up human personality. Must 
 we not think, then, that the Divine Being, who we 
 have every reason to believe is intelligent and pur- 
 poseful, is also moral? There is, indeed, no way of 
 arguing from nature to an ethical God, for the rea- 
 
206 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 son that it turns out that nature, so far as we can 
 find, does not reveal the higher ethical side of the 
 divine character. But there surely is a pathway for 
 reason from our life, made rich as it is with human 
 affections, to the heart of the Eternal. The argument 
 for the divine love is, therefore, from a moral effect 
 to a moral cause. The effect is the constitution of 
 human personality with its affections and the acts 
 of love and sacrifice which express them. The only 
 adequate cause of this effect is the Creator of the 
 human personality, himself a moral Person. Shall the 
 Creator of the human spirit which loves not himself 
 love? If we are to think of the Divine Being as per- 
 sonal at all, his personality may not be less complete 
 than the human; but, rather, must the Divine Per- 
 son include in the fullness of his being all the essen- 
 tial elements of our human personality, but without 
 the limitations and imperfections which beset the 
 finite. 
 
 Speculative Objections. But here we meet the specula- 
 tive philosopher again. We have met him before. He 
 objects to thinking of love as a necessary part of God 
 on the ground that it destroys the Divine Absolute- 
 ness, for, he will urge, the necessary condition of 
 ethical love is the finding of some object for the affec- 
 tions other than the subject who loves. But we can- 
 not think of the Absolute as having to go beyond him- 
 self to find objects for his mental activity. Therefore 
 to think that the Infinite loves finite beings, as we do 
 each other, is an anthropomorphism which clearly de- 
 stroys the absoluteness-of the Infinite. This objection 
 is cited not because we feel great respect for it, but 
 because it stands for a class of objections to the Chris- 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 207 
 
 tian conception of God where the difficulties are specu- 
 lative rather than real. We have already disavowed 
 (in Chapter VI) all philosophical allegiance to the 
 idea of God as the speculative "Absolute." This idea 
 has little practical religious value. Its religious out- 
 come is pantheism, and, as we have said before, pan- 
 theism is the practical equivalent in religion of 
 atheism. We are engaged in a discussion of funda- 
 mental religious conceptions. Atheism, or any con- 
 ception which leads to it, does not fall within the 
 range of such religious conceptions. We give over the 
 task of treating religious ideas from a merely specu- 
 lative point of view and content ourselves with the 
 more useful task of clearing our underlying Chris- 
 tian conceptions of inconsistencies. 
 
 "God Is Love." But as over against any such specu- 
 lative objection to the divine love, we urge that the 
 unique and characteristic teaching of Christianity is 
 that "God is love." These are the great words of the 
 apostle who thus sums up the divine nature. The only 
 interpretation we can possibly put upon these words 
 is that the divine nature is not complete without the 
 human. The very fact that moral love is the most 
 characteristic power of God's divine nature means 
 that an object or objects of love are in this sense eth- 
 ically necessary to God. Just as the parent cannot be 
 a parent at all without the child, so the Infinite can- 
 not be the Infinite without the finite as an object of 
 infinite love. In other words, humanity is necessary 
 to the completion of the divine nature. In this ethical 
 and Christian sense we affirm the absoluteness of God 
 and confess that the human must be included as a 
 necessary part of the divine. 
 
208 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 And as for anthropomorphism, we have already 
 shown its necessity and that there can be no objection 
 to it in principle. In accordance with the principle of 
 higher anthropomorphism already set forth, we urge 
 that in seeking to know the nature of the divine love 
 we shall have to be guided by our knowledge of love 
 on the plane of our own human experience. The 
 moral affections must be essentially the same in the 
 Divine Personality as in the human, or there is no use 
 of talking of a moral relation at all. Now, on the 
 human plane love appears as the warmest and most 
 positive of the human emotions. It ought to be re- 
 marked here that we are using the term "love" with 
 an ethical content. The word is sometimes used where 
 it stands for nothing but physical passion. Genuine 
 love prizes the object of affection so highly that there 
 can be no contentment without possession. But pos- 
 session of the object of affection is only partial. With 
 this alone we have only the selfish desire to have and 
 to enjoy, which may soon degenerate into selfishness 
 and even brutality. The other part of moral love is 
 the desire to bestow every possible benefit and gift to 
 protect and to serve the one loved. Without this 
 latter what is called love loses its ethical content and 
 becomes mere selfishness of varying degrees of coarse- 
 ness. Moral love then, we repeat, means not only fel- 
 lowship with and enjoyment of the object of the affec- 
 tion, it means also the consuming desire to serve, pro- 
 tect, and give joy to the one loved. And apart from 
 this unselfish element, there can be no genuine moral 
 love. 
 
 Another characteristic of moral love in human life 
 is a supreme valuing of the object of the affections. 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 209 
 
 This does not always mean moral approval. Many 
 times human love clings to the object of the affection 
 in the full knowledge of moral shortcomings, as, for 
 example, when a mother continues to love and stand 
 by a dissipated son. The great essential elements in 
 moral love, therefore, as we know it in human life, are 
 the desire for fellowship with the one loved and the 
 unselfish giving to the one loved of every care and 
 protection and joy irrespective of whether these be- 
 stowals are deserved or not. 
 
 Now, the love of God cannot be essentially different 
 from this, though, of course, it must be thought of as 
 complete and perfect in a way no human affection can 
 even be. God loves men. This must mean that God 
 desires the fellowship of men, and that he seeks to 
 promote their happiness in every way. The divine 
 love means, the granting of every gift which will min- 
 ister to the joy and highest well-being of men, not as 
 moral desert, but as the free outflowing of love itself. 
 It means also that there must be a deep desire in the 
 mind of God for a return of the love he feels and ex- 
 presses to men. 
 
 Moral Love Made Known Only through Personality. 
 If, then, moral love is an essential of the Divine 
 Nature, the question arises, How shall it be made 
 manifest to men? Love is impossible except between 
 persons. We may speak of loving inanimate things, 
 but the word is but an accommodated sense. We love 
 the old homestead, not because of the material things 
 of which it is made, but because of the personal asso- 
 ciations which gather about it. It is because of the 
 persons we loved who dwelt there that the house seems 
 so dear. Moral love therefore exists only on the plane 
 
210 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of the personal. Where, then, should we look for a 
 revelation of the ethical love of God? Nowhere but in 
 Personality. And since, as we have already seen, our 
 knowledge of the Infinite must be in terms of our 
 finite experience, the revelation of the ethical love of 
 God must be made through human personality. We 
 must seek the divine revelation, therefore, not only 
 in nature, but in human nature. It appears, then, 
 that the divine revelation begins in nature, but finds 
 its completion in human life. Shall God, therefore, 
 come into human life? Shall he make himself known 
 through man? Shall he manifest through human 
 personality those higher moral attributes of his 
 nature? Is the course of the Christian revelation 
 through man to God? It must be so. That God really 
 has come into human life, is the great and unique 
 message of Christianity. The incarnation, that great 
 and comprehensive Christian teaching, means that the 
 Divine is revealed supremely in the human — that the 
 deepest secrets of the divine nature are made known 
 in humanity. Through the personal finite, the per- 
 sonal Infinite may be known with a fullness not other- 
 wise possible. 
 
 God Revealed in Particular Personalities. Now, this 
 great truth of the incarnation may be understood ( 1 ) 
 in a general way as God revealed in human nature, 
 and (2) in a special or particular way as God revealed 
 in a particular human personality. These we must 
 explain. 
 
 ( 1 ) There is in a very true sense a revelation of the 
 Divine in our common humanity. One of the great 
 truths which we have noted before in our discussion 
 is the kinship of God and men. If the divine and the 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 211 
 
 human were totally unlike it would be idle to talk 
 about a revelation of the divine in .the human. But 
 from the earliest days of religion to the present the 
 great assumption underlying all worship is that re- 
 sponse is to be expected and some kind of fellowship 
 with the Divine is possible to the human; and the 
 Bible constantly teaches the truth that there is a kin- 
 ship betw r een God and men. Man is "made in the 
 image of God." This is to be understood as referring 
 not to bodily form, of course, but to mental and spir- 
 itual capacities. Even the old Testament prophets 
 taught men that the relation between them and God 
 was one of the Father to his children. 2 And in the 
 teaching of Christ the word "Father" sums up the 
 whole of the relation of God to men. Now the clear 
 implication of Fatherhood is that the child partakes 
 of the Father's nature. The child will never become 
 the father, for the two are separate personalities ; but 
 with all the great differences in knowledge and power 
 their natures are the same. The child has come from 
 the parent. 
 
 God Revealed in Humanity. This surely means that 
 we are not searching vainly when we look for evi- 
 dences of the divine in our common humanity. Most 
 of us feel a sense of reverence when we stand before 
 a great canvas portraying a Madonna. This is not 
 simply because it suggests to us the woman who gave 
 physical life to Jesus Christ of Galilee, but because 
 the picture stands for that great, universal, holy fact 
 in our life — the fact of human motherhood. We see 
 in that fact the purest affection, the giving by one per- 
 son of the whole self in sacrifice and loving service 
 
 »Jer. 31.9; lea. 63. 16; 64.8. 
 
212 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 that another may have life. To perceive in all the 
 noblest features of our human life reflections of the 
 Divine — this is to recognize the revelation of the In- 
 finite in the finite. 
 
 (2) But there has been another manifestation of 
 the Divine in the human. We are still holding in 
 mind the great truth of the kinship between the finite 
 and the Infinite. Christ taught men to think of God 
 as the Infinite Father. And again we urge that this 
 means an essential identity of nature between the 
 child and the parent. Of course the analogy must not 
 be pushed too far. But clearly Christ's teaching of 
 the Divine Fatherhood means that there is no impass- 
 able gulf of difference between the finite and the In- 
 finite — the two are akin. The finite is such by rea- 
 son of its limitations. The boundaries which mark 
 the range of finite powers and activities are definitely 
 drawn. By reason of these the finite never can tran- 
 scend itself and become the Infinite. But that does 
 not mean that the Infinite may not enter the condi- 
 tions of life which characterize the finite. And this 
 brings us to the second or specific manner in which the 
 incarnation has taken place. Christianity teaches 
 that in the human personality of Jesus we have the 
 highest possible revelation of the divine personality of 
 God. 
 
 Most Perfectly in Jesus Christ. Again let us reiterate 
 the truth that knowledge of God comes to us by way 
 of our human experiences. The ascent to the divine 
 is through the human. We recognize that our wor- 
 thiest conceptions of God are formed in terms of the 
 noblest ideals of human life. It follows, then, that the 
 most perfect personality known in human life will be 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 213 
 
 the highest and most complete manifestation of God. 
 And there is no difference of opinion as to where the 
 most perfect personality known in human life is to 
 be found. It is in Jesus Christ. A more perfect em- 
 bodiment of love, a purer spirit, or more flawless char- 
 acter we cannot conceive. The portrait of Christ as 
 it has been presented in the four Gospels of the New 
 Testament corresponds in every way to the highest 
 ideal of which the human mind is capable. Let us 
 refresh our thought in regard to a few significant 
 facts. 
 
 Significant Facts Pointing to This. Jesus was born in 
 Bethlehem, but lived in Nazareth of Galilee. Though 
 his parents were of the peasant class, they were de- 
 scended from the ancient royal stock of Israel. For 
 all who accept the New Testament records as an essen- 
 tially trustworthy account of his life, ministry, and 
 death, the following propositions will be accepted as 
 undisputed. ( 1 ) Jesus manifested as he grew up such 
 remarkable moral and religious characteristics, that 
 he made a very deep and lasting impression upon 
 those who knew him. (2) His life was brief, but dur- 
 ing its few years somehow he gave to those who be- 
 came his more intimate friends the profound convic- 
 tion that he was the "Messiah," or Anointed One of 
 Jehovah, whom the Jewish nation had been expecting 
 for many years. (3) To his intimates he also gave 
 the conviction that he was in constant spiritual fel- 
 lowship with God in a way that was absolutely new in 
 religious experience. (4) After three years spent in 
 religious teaching and ministering to the sick and 
 helpless he was crucified. Everything connected with 
 his death — his foreknowledge of it, his conduct as he 
 
214 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 approached it, the wonderful prayer for the forgive- 
 ness of his tormentors, gasped out in the most un- 
 speakable agony — all this convinced his followers 
 that he was indeed the Suffering Servant of Jehovah 
 of whom the great Prophet of the exile had spoken. 
 (5) But that which gave the greatest certainty to all 
 this growing conviction in the minds of his followers 
 was the fact that after his death had been accom- 
 plished they saw him again. He appeared to them and 
 talked to them a sufficient number of times to con- 
 vince them that he was alive. His parting message to 
 them was that they should proclaim as witnesses the 
 great facts which had now come to their knowledge. 
 After they had waited a few days they set about the 
 task. (6) And now remarkable manifestations be- 
 gin to follow the proclaiming of Jesus as the risen 
 Messiah. Marvelous moral power is given to those 
 who believe the testimony of the followers of Jesus 
 and who seek the divine forgiveness through his name. 
 Men appear among the followers of Jesus whose lives 
 have been marvelously transformed. A moral enthu- 
 siasm appeared to take possession of them and so 
 transformed them that they became changed men. 
 One of the most conclusive reasons for believing that 
 Christ did indeed appear to his followers after his 
 death is found in the otherwise unexplainable reviv- 
 ing of their prostrate faith and the powerful spiritual 
 movement which followed the efforts of those who be- 
 gan to preach in his name. Those who come to believe 
 in Christ now declare that they have an inward expe- 
 rience of cleansing from the burden and guilt of sin 
 that is new in their lives. They exhibit power 
 against sin which can be accounted for only by ac- 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 215 
 
 knowledging the fact that they now possess moral 
 energy quite beyond anything yet known in the reli- 
 gious experience of mankind. The distinct type of 
 life thus produced, with the purifying of the moral 
 nature and the enlightening of the understanding, led 
 to a larger faith in Him who had been their teacher 
 and friend. He now becomes the dominant power in 
 their lives, and loyalty to him is the great source of 
 their moral energy, and from calling him "Master" 
 and "Teacher" they begin to speak of him as their 
 Saviour, and as the "Son of God." 
 
 Now we must leave aside all discussion of the meta- 
 physical aspects of Christ's relation to God. The 
 reason for this is simply that we are seeking to form- 
 ulate a philosophy of Christian faith not from the 
 abstractly logical or speculative point of view, but 
 from the standpoint of religious values. Those con- 
 siderations which have a bearing upon the practical 
 matter of the place Christ should have in our religious 
 thinking are our affair. Everything else we leave 
 to dogmatic theology. The question arises then : Was 
 Jesus Christ divine? If so, what shall we understand 
 by his divinity? Was he divine in a sense which no 
 other human being who ever lived was divine? What 
 are the practical implications of his divinity for 
 Christian faith? 
 
 Divinity of Jesus. In seeking rational foundation in 
 our thinking for a conception of the divinity of Christ 
 we begin, where we always must begin, upon the plane 
 of the human. There is no other approach to the 
 divine. We may learn "definitions of God" and certain 
 formulations of accepted belief about divinity, after 
 the manner of the old theologies, but this is generally 
 
216 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 barren for the religious life. The one fact always 
 emerges that the gleams of the divine possible to us 
 always shine forth in some way through the human. 
 "No man cometh unto the Father but through me." 
 "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," said 
 Christ. We turn away, therefore, from all attempts to 
 grasp the meaning of divinity in Jesus Christ in any 
 other way than through those qualities of his person- 
 ality which we recognize as thoroughly human. 
 
 It was so with the early disciples of Jesus. They 
 all came to be his devoted friends and followers not 
 because of theophanies or unusual displays of divine 
 power. Jesus was walking along the beach of the Sea 
 of Galilee. Some fishermen sat there working on their 
 nets. After earnest conversation — we know not for 
 how long — they decide to give up their business and 
 become the intimate friends and followers of this 
 deep-souled Teacher. The scene is as perfectly human 
 as it is profound in its spiritual destinies. This was 
 the beginning of their personal knowledge of Jesus 
 and fellowship with him. But before many months 
 they were confessing his divinity and in the later years 
 they joyously sealed with their life's blood their faith 
 in him as the Eternal Son of God. 
 
 Divinity Revealed through Humanity. There is little 
 doubt that the followers of Jesus Christ in the twen- 
 tieth century come to know their Lord as divine much 
 as the disciples of the first century did. It is his 
 normal and perfect humanity of which we first gain 
 knowledge. We learn to admire and to love Jesus 
 Christ as a man — the most perfect man of whom we 
 have any conception. We recognize the truth that he 
 was not only extraordinary but absolutely unparal- 
 
HUMAN PERSONALITY 217 
 
 leled. No other faultless and perfect character ever 
 existed among the sons of earth. His humanity comes 
 first in the growth of our knowledge of Jesus. Then 
 the recognition of his divinity comes as a resultant — a 
 great conviction which deepens and deepens in the 
 soul as we learn more and more of that matchless 
 Teacher and Royal Sufferer, whose whole life brought 
 a new conception of God and a new valuation of 
 humanity into the world. To any who realize that 
 they fail to grasp the meaning of his divinity — the 
 fact that he was one with the Eternal God in a unique 
 sense — his own words point the way. "No man com- 
 eth unto the Father but by me." A reverent and 
 thoughtful study of the life, ministry, and teaching 
 of Jesus Christ will prove to be a revelation of the 
 mind and heart of God to any earnest seeker after the 
 truth. 
 
 The Divine in the Human. But a final word must be 
 added. The truth that the divine may be grasped 
 through the human, meaning that the divine is in the 
 human — that is, the immanence of God — is a great 
 conception quite as necessary to enable us to explain 
 human life as the life of nature. An "ascent of man" 
 through humanity to some realization of divinity 
 implies a descent of God into the realm of human 
 life. Whence comes the hunger of the human mind 
 for truth? Whence the passion for righteousness? 
 Whence that constant summons to the higher choices 
 named conscience? And has not the fire of love that 
 burns in the heart of the parent, the patriot and the 
 philanthropist been lighted from a divine source? 
 And is not sacrifice that others may live more abun- 
 dantly a divine gleam glorified through the prism of 
 
218 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 human heroism? As Jesus said, "The kingdom of God 
 is within you." The highest revelation of God in 
 human personality is possible only because God is 
 immanent in human personality. Not in any way 
 that would destroy human freedom, for the develop- 
 ment of moral character — possible only through 
 freedom — is the great underlying purpose of God's 
 revelation. Jesus Christ is, therefore, the great Medi- 
 ator between the divine and the human ; that is, him- 
 self completely human, and divine with a fullness pos- 
 sible to no other man, he stands as the great High 
 Priest of humanity. We come to God through him, 
 therefore, not only because we must come to God by 
 way of the human, but because his humanity is linked 
 with a measure of divinity which makes him the one 
 human Being who has entered perfectly into the heart 
 and mind of the Eternal God. The apostle's words, 
 therefore, express a profound truth : "In him [Christ] 
 dwelleth all the fullness of the divine nature in 
 bodily manifestation" (Col. 2. 9). 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD IN INDIVIDUAL 
 EXPERIENCE 
 
 The question now arises whether the divine revela- 
 tion is made through the particular experiences of 
 the individual. Of course in a sense all divine revela- 
 tion is to the individual. That is, the revelation is 
 comprehended by the individual. The theistic doc- 
 trine means that God, the Personal Ethical Spirit, is 
 known in human experience. We can have no knowl- 
 edge of God except as that knowledge comes to us by 
 way of the totality of our experience arising from our 
 conscious relation to the world of things and other 
 persons. Any knowledge of God must come as the 
 result of the reaction of the finite spirit over against 
 the activity of the Infinite Spirit. And the reaction 
 is not independently our own, but depends upon God. 
 God stands in very vital relations to the world and if 
 we accept the doctrine of immanence at its full value 
 we shall think of the physical, social, and spiritual 
 conditions which surround us as the sources or media 
 through which a revelation of God is being constantly 
 made. God, therefore, is the only source and ground 
 of our knowledge of himself. 
 
 Revelation of God Through Individual Experience. But 
 the question now before us is concerning the partic- 
 ular or individualistic aspects of this experience. 
 
 219 
 
220 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 There is in experience a "common to all," to use the 
 phrase of Ferrier. But is there also a "special to 
 me"? Does God make himself known directly in the 
 spiritual consciousness of the particular individual? 
 The affirmative answer to this question is believed to 
 be the truth by countless numbers of men who declare 
 that they have found forgiveness, strength, comfort, 
 and guidance through a spiritual fellowship with 
 God. That God may be known in this direct fashion 
 is not a fact which can be verified by any of the ordi- 
 nary methods of sense. It is a fact of inner expe- 
 rience. Of course all experience is in a sense "inner" 
 or inward. But in all our sense experience there is 
 always an objective reference. Perception depends 
 upon the existeuce of an object as well as a subject. 
 But when knowledge of reality has been gained in 
 consequence of sensation we may call the experience 
 "objective." But a form of experience which does 
 not depend directly upon sensation we may call "sub- 
 jective," or, in popular phrase, an experience of "the 
 inner life." True, the reality of such experiences has 
 been called into question. Let us, therefore, first of 
 all inquire into the meaning and validity of what we 
 may call an experience of the inner life. 
 
 The Objective Reference in Sense-Experience. In our 
 conscious experience there are two sorts of mental 
 activity continually going on at the same time. First, 
 there are sensations, which through the creative activ- 
 ity of the mind become perceptions, of persons and 
 things about us. On the basis of these perceptions 
 the mind builds up knowledge of the world about us. 
 These perceptions are mental events — ideas. They 
 have no objective existence in space. But we recognize 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 221 
 
 that while they themselves have no objective existence 
 they have been formed or created by the mind because 
 something came to the mind from the world outside 
 through the avenues named the senses. We cannot 
 have perceptions as we will. There is always an abso- 
 lute conditioning of our mental activity in this respect 
 by existences outside the mind. Thus in the case of 
 the perception of a red signal light we learn that it is 
 the number of the vibrations in ether per second 
 which determines the sort of stimulus that goes to 
 the mind by way of the nerves. This particular stim- 
 ulus the mind will interpret as a sensation of red. 
 Twice the number of vibrations per second (several 
 trillions, the physicist assures us) would cause the 
 mind to perceive blue instead of red. Thus the per- 
 ception of "objectively real" objects depends upon 
 the reception of suitable stimulus by the mind through 
 the physical organism. 
 
 "Subjective" Objects of Thought. But there is another 
 sort of mental event. You may walk down the street. 
 On the way you may pass a number of things. But 
 you may really see comparatively little because your 
 mind is engaged with your own thoughts. You are 
 pondering certain matters, thinking out a plan, per- 
 haps, whereby you may be able to accomplish an object 
 you greatly desire to attain. Here is a very distinct 
 and real mental activity which is not dependent upon 
 any stimulus coming into the mind from without, as 
 in the case of perception. There are, however, ob- 
 jects of thought in the mind. But these objects are 
 not recognized as the sources of sensations ; they are 
 not, therefore, objectively real existences. We may 
 employ the word "subjective" in reference to them. 
 
222 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 We recognize a difference between these "subjective" 
 objects of thought and the "objective" objects of 
 thought. And the difference lies in this, that in the 
 case of the "subjective" objects the mind makes no 
 objective reference; that is, there is no referring the 
 experience to a permanent and external source of 
 mental stimulus. But this does not mean that the one 
 kind of mental event is not as "real" as the other. 
 That you thought out a certain plan as you walked 
 downtown is just as real a fact in the universe as that 
 you walk downtown. The latter fact could be per- 
 ceived and known by anyone who happened to be there 
 at the time — it was a "common to all." The former 
 fact was known only to you and could become known 
 to others only as you will to impart it to them. It was 
 a "special to you." 
 
 Meaning of Subjective and Objective. From this it will 
 be seen that the distinction sometimes made between 
 objective experience as real and subjective experience 
 as not real is uncritical and untenable. For what is 
 an "objective" experience, as distinguished from a 
 "subjective" experience? Of course both are mental 
 events and in this sense are equally real. But the 
 subjective experience has its origin or ground within 
 our self, while the objective experience cannot be 
 accounted for without reference to an order of activ- 
 ities which lies without the self. Those mental events 
 which have their inception within ourselves are more 
 or less subject to our control. Memory and imagina- 
 tion do not proceed with a certain independence of 
 our initiative as sensation does. We can will to 
 remember and make conscious and voluntary effort 
 to imagine. But in perception we find many mental 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 223 
 
 events which arise within our consciousness from no 
 initiative of our own. Something is given to us — 
 the sun as it shines, the voice of a friend, the forcible 
 contact with something producing pain. On the basis 
 of this our mental activity proceeds. And when we 
 find something thus acting upon us without our ini- 
 tiative or control, we recognize it as something other 
 than ourselves. In other words, it belongs to an order 
 of existence external to our mental life — that is, it is 
 objective. And whether it be "real" or not is to be 
 determined by its constancy and reliability and by 
 the whole way in which it fits into the totality of our 
 rational experience. An objective experience, then, 
 is a mental event which is to be accounted for by 
 reference to some activity not our own which affects 
 us, as it were, from the outside. Our knowledge of 
 what there is there to be known is built up by the 
 mind in accordance with what is given in the way of 
 affection or stimulus. 
 
 Conversion of Paul. And now, applying this bit of 
 thought analysis to inner experience, let us take, by 
 way of concrete instance, the conversion of Saul of 
 Tarsus. It has been not infrequently affirmed with 
 an air of finality that that event was a "purely sub- 
 jective" experience and "therefore had no basis in 
 objective fact." Let us recall the events as they are 
 recorded in the New Testament. Saul of Tarsus was 
 carefully trained in the faith of Judaism. He be- 
 came a prominent and powerful defender of his an- 
 cestral religion against the inroads of the new faith 
 of the followers of Christ. He participated in and 
 even led the bitter persecution which broke out 
 against the Christians. He gave his vote for the 
 
224 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 stoning of Stephen and held the garments of those 
 who did the ghastly work. Armed with special 
 authority, he pursued the followers of Christ, deter- 
 mined to put down the heresy which was undermining 
 Judaism. On one occasion he was nearing Damascus, 
 whither he had gone with a band to arrest some 
 Christians who had fled to that ancient city. He 
 tells us that suddenly at midday he saw a dazzling 
 light, brighter than that of the sun, and heard a voice 
 calling to him. The account of what he experienced 
 is recorded in three separate places in the New Testa- 
 ment, in the book of Acts, written by his close friend 
 and companion, Luke, the physician. There are some 
 discrepancies, but the maiu points are the same in each 
 account. 
 
 This experience marked the great turning point in 
 Paul's career. Everything that came afterward in 
 his life was absolutely different from what it would 
 have been had Paul never had this experience. From 
 being the most bitter and implacable foe of the new 
 Christian faith he takes his place among the Chris- 
 tians and afterward became the most powerful 
 preacher of the gospel of Christ. To his broad vision 
 and tireless energy was due the widening of Chris- 
 tianity's sweep so that within a few years of the death 
 of Christ it begins its victorious progress as a uni- 
 versal religion for all mankind. 
 
 Perfectly Real to Paul. That this experience was per- 
 fectly real Paul himself never had the slightest doubt. 
 He refers to it again and again in his epistles. Dur- 
 ing all the years in which he devoted his life to the 
 loyal and enthusiastic service of Jesus Christ he 
 looked back to that experience on the Damascus road. 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 225 
 
 The memory of it brought him strength and new cour- 
 age in many a trying hour. He always insisted that 
 he had met Christ — that Christ had definitely spoken 
 to him, and called him to the great mission to which he 
 afterward devoted all of his strength. However that 
 experience of Paul's may be regarded, the fact re- 
 mains that it was the source or beginning of a new 
 order of things in his life, and as a direct result of it 
 he wrought a work and exerted an influence in the 
 world greater than that of any other man who ever 
 lived, with the single exception of Jesus Christ him- 
 self. 
 
 To have asked Paul whether that experience was 
 "real" would have brought from him all manner of 
 assurances that to him nothing could ever be any 
 more real. To have intimated that it rested upon no 
 basis of objective fact would have been no doubt to 
 invite his most vigorous protests. But we ask 
 the question as to its reality, and perhaps we must. 
 The word "real" is often a pitfall. We have tried to 
 set forth what we believe the words "objectively real" 
 should mean. The idea of existence as material or 
 stuff, existing in a reality which is independent of 
 thought, we pass by as hopelessly uncritical. Real- 
 ity cannot be materiality. We have seen this in our 
 study of the foundations of knowledge. Objective 
 reality means the order of existence (and existence 
 can be known only through activity) which lies out- 
 side of ourselves. When we can confidently refer a 
 mental experience for its source to some activity 
 which lies without our own mental activity, we may 
 say that such experience is objective or has a basis 
 in objective fact. 
 
226 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Objectively Real. From all that we learn of Paul's 
 great "subjective experience" are we justified in be- 
 lieving that it had its source or origin in an order of 
 activity beyond the realm of Paul's own mental life? 
 And now some one comes forward to ask whether we 
 are to believe that the light Paul said he saw was 
 actually due to vibrations in the ether. That it was 
 due to something is quite certain, and that something 
 was some kind of stimulus which produced precisely 
 the effect which vibrations in ether ordinarily do upon 
 the organism of the eye, the optic nerve, and the brain. 
 If, now, we believe in a personal God who was mak- 
 ing himself known through Jesus Christ and the great 
 spiritual movement in history which flowed from 
 Christ's life and teaching and death, and if we can 
 recognize that this great movement was an important 
 part of God's revelation, and that the man Paul was 
 an essential factor or agent in this great movement, 
 at its beginning, then it does not become difficult nor 
 does it seem irrational to believe that the effects pro- 
 duced in the consciousness of Paul on the Damascus 
 road were the reactions of his mind to certain agen- 
 cies. And these agencies resulted in effects which 
 were the same as those ordinarily produced by the 
 stimuli which give rise to our perceptions. His vision 
 of the light, his hearing of the voice — indeed, the 
 whole experience, measured not only by what it 
 seemed to be at the time but by the mighty results 
 which flowed from it later, rises to a level far higher 
 that that of mere illusion or hallucination. It was, 
 in a rational sense, objectively real. 
 
 Was a Divine Call "Spoken" to Paul ? And yet we may 
 still demur. There was a voice which he heard. Did 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 227 
 
 that mean actual vibrations in the atmosphere? Did 
 it mean vocal sound — spoken words? If so, a lan- 
 guage? In his defense of himself before Herod 
 Agrippa Luke does indeed report Paul as having said 
 that the words he heard were "in the Hebrew tongue." 
 The record also declares that the bystanders did 
 not hear the voice. Paul says he did hear it. It was 
 his experience. We are told that God was speak- 
 ing to him. The Bible frequently states that God 
 spoke to men — to Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, and 
 others. 
 
 God "Spake"; the Essential Meaning. Now, what does 
 "spake" mean in this connection? Shall we think 
 that God needed to make the sounds which with us 
 stand for ideas? What is the essential matter when 
 we speak to each other? Is it not the conveying of the 
 thought — the feeling — the inciting of the will? 
 Words are necessary for us. They are a vehicle or 
 medium of thought — more or less imperfect, to be 
 sure, as our frequent misunderstandings show. But 
 the essential matter when we speak is that we enable 
 those to whom we speak to think our thoughts after 
 us, and share our feelings with us. Language is the 
 agency through which we effect this. When God 
 "spake," is not the real meaning that he conveyed his 
 divine thought, feeling, and will to the minds of those 
 to whom he spake? If this effect could be produced 
 directly by the immediate action of spirit upon spirit, 
 would the medium of language be necessary? But 
 might not the impression produced now and again in 
 the mind of a man be so clear and strong that a man 
 might actually conclude that words had been spoken 
 to him? And there would be all the more reason for 
 
228 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 this conclusion since men who have had no critical 
 knowledge of the mind and its activity naturally 
 fancy that the meaning lies in words and that words 
 are the only possible way to "convey" thought. 
 
 May we think, then, that God "speaks" to men to- 
 day? Of course we say that in a sense God speaks to 
 men through nature. But does he speak, that is, make 
 his thought and will known directly in the inward 
 personal life of the individual? There are many men 
 and women about us to-day whose characters are lofty 
 and whose lives devoted to the service of good who say 
 that God makes himself known directly to them in 
 their consciousness. Of course there can be no logical 
 proof of this. The inductive method of scientific 
 research is not available here. But the fact remains 
 that multitudes of men have borne testimony to this 
 experience of God's presence and knowledge of his 
 will in individual consciousness. We are schooled to- 
 day in the scientific spirit. This spirit dominates 
 many of us to a considerable degree even in the esti- 
 mates we make of the validity of phases of our reli- 
 gious life. No emotional or mystical experience passes 
 unscrutinized and unchallenged to-day. When we 
 say we know we are asked to give the grounds. But 
 sound philosophy teaches us that any theory of know- 
 ing which does not end in speculative collapse, rests, 
 in the last analysis, upon the great belief that beneath 
 the rational order about us which we come to know, 
 lies the Infinite thought as its ground. And it is no 
 more unphilosophic to believe that God does make 
 known his thought and will to men, by the direct 
 action of spirit upon spirit, than it is to believe, as we 
 must, that the universe is rational and intelligible to 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 229 
 
 us because it bears the impress of the infinite thought 
 of its Creator. 
 
 We repeat, then, that this question of the reality of 
 inner spiritual experiences canot be settled by logical 
 demonstration, nor by a show of hands. No man 
 would agree to determine the validity of certain expe- 
 riences of his inward life by submitting them to the 
 vote of his more intelligent neighbors. In some realms 
 of thought and feeling, the soul may speak with an 
 authority all its own. And if a man cannot out of 
 the richness of his spiritual experience confirm the 
 testimony of those who say they have known God at 
 first hand, surely he ought not out of the poverty of 
 his spiritual experience to deny it and declare it 
 impossible. There is such a condition as spiritual 
 sensitiveness. Those who live near to God are more 
 sensitive to God's inner revelations than those who 
 do not so live. Of course by "near" to God we mean 
 closer in the personal relations of the spirit. Near- 
 ness to God is a matter of love, loyalty, and obedience 
 to him. God spoke to those who lived nearer to him. 
 They were spiritually in a closer fellowship with him 
 through their love to him and obedience to his divine 
 will. This gave them a spiritual sensitiveness far 
 beyond that of their fellows. 
 
 Prayer 
 
 It was Heinrich Heine who said that when men call 
 for help to the Unseen, "no one but a fool really ex- 
 pects an answer." As over against these sad and 
 bitter words, standing forth as they do in lonely iso- 
 lation, there are the testimonies of the countless 
 
230 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 myriads who have called to the Unseen, and have kept 
 calling in prayer all the days of their lives. And these 
 have borne testimony not only by their deeds but by 
 their words that response comes when men really 
 pray to God. 
 
 We take up the subject of prayer not with the pur- 
 pose of setting forth some purely intellectual concep- 
 tion of prayer which may satisfy us logically. Stud- 
 ied from anything else than the point of view of 
 Christian experience, prayer soon seems to be super- 
 fluous. We hope only to suggest some truths about 
 the Christian conception of prayer and to indicate 
 some reasons for thinking that the conviction that 
 God reveals himself to individual men and women in 
 that communion of spirit with spirit which we call 
 prayer is not an irrational belief, but one which finds 
 its justification in experience. 
 
 But the word "prayer" stands for such a variety of 
 ideas. The history of prayer would really be the story 
 of the development of religion itself. Prayer in prim- 
 itive religion is an accompaniment of sacrifice and 
 means (1) both asking for some benefit or blessing 
 and (2) expressing the feeling of gratitude and de- 
 pendence. Naturally, the view of prayer as petition 
 greatly predominates in all the lower levels of reli- 
 gious culture. The Divine Being is powerful and his 
 assistance for the accomplishment of desired ends is 
 constantly being invoked. 
 
 The Christian View of Prayer. But we are studying 
 the Christian Revelation of God— and the ques- 
 tion now under consideration is whether there is sub- 
 stantial foundation for the Christian belief that God 
 reveals himself in the consciousness of the individual 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 231 
 
 in response to prayer. Prayer in some form is a part 
 of all religion. But it is not prayer in general but 
 prayer from the Christian standpoint which concerns 
 us now. And what is the Christian conception of 
 prayer? We can go to no higher source than to 
 Christ himself. We shall summarize the spirit of his 
 teaching and example concerning prayer rather than 
 cite his words in defense of particular points. 
 
 Always According to God's Will. Prayer gains its 
 meaning from a consideration of the whole purpose of 
 God's revelation of himself. That is, according to 
 Christ, the spiritual development of men as "sons" of 
 the Divine Father. That means the growth in men of 
 love and trust and obedience. The main factor in 
 this spiritual development of men is that they learn 
 to do the Father's will. This doing of the will of God 
 in all its fullness means that ideal state of human 
 society which Jesus summed up in the pregnant 
 phrase "the kingdom of God." Nothing can be Chris- 
 tian prayer, therefore, which is asking contrary to the 
 Father's will. All our prayers, if we are Christians, 
 must be in the spirit of Christ's own matchless prayer 
 — "Not my will but thine be done." 
 
 We cannot believe that prayer can be offered to 
 inform God of our needs nor to change his attitude 
 toward us, reducing his reluctance to grant us the 
 best. "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of 
 these things." Nor may we tell God how we wish 
 things done; as for example, that we want him to 
 effect a cure at once without the use of the usual 
 medical agencies. Many so-called prayers seem to 
 imply that God's part is to listen to us and do what 
 we say. There is no Christian prayer in the absence 
 
232 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of a reverent willingness to leave matters in the hands 
 of the Father who loves and knows what is best. 
 
 Prayer Not a Form of Physical Energy. These great 
 conditions of prayer will help us to answer the doubts 
 concerning the utility of prayers of petition. There 
 are some things we cannot pray for after we have 
 gained the personal and immanent conception of God. 
 We will not pray for the suspension of any-of the great 
 laws of the universe — gravitation, chemical affinity, 
 etc. Nor will we imagine that prayer can in any way 
 take the place of physical energy, and enable us to 
 secure results without putting forth all necessary 
 effort to briii g them to pass. To pray for deliverance 
 from a typhoid epidemic without tireless search for 
 germ infection in food or water supply would fall far 
 below the level of Christian prayer. For a church to 
 pray for social betterment in its city and put forth 
 no strenuous efforts to make conditions more sanitary 
 and morally wholesome would be a travesty upon 
 Christian prayer. 
 
 And this brings us to the considerations commonly 
 urged against the belief that through prayer any effect 
 can be produced in "objective" reality. There is a 
 fair agreement that prayer may at times soothe, com- 
 fort, and inspire, but many cannot see that any results 
 are produced in the "objective" world from its use. 
 Thus it is objected that our modern scientific concep- 
 tions of "natural law," "uniformity of nature," "con- 
 servation of energy," etc., forbid us to believe that 
 the slightest variation may be produced in the order 
 of natural sequences by such an agency as prayer. 
 Now, it is very certain that prayer is not a form of 
 energy and therefore prayer simply itself has no 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 233 
 
 power to effect any physical change whatever. Prayer 
 must be regarded as entirely spiritual in its influ- 
 ence. Hence any changes in a physical order which 
 we may think of as the result of prayer will come be- 
 cause prayer has influenced a personal agency, human 
 or divine, and through the self-directed activity of this 
 personal agency the change has taken place. From 
 our personal Theistic standpoint, therefore, this ob- 
 jection urged in the name of science resolves itself at 
 once into one to be treated by philosophy. The ques- 
 tion whether any change in the natural order of things 
 can take place as the result of prayer means this : May 
 we reasonably believe that the immanent God, whose 
 wisdom and purpose the laws of nature constantly 
 express, will permit any variation whatever in natural 
 events under the influence of our prayers? 
 
 Knowledge of God's Purposes May Limit Our Prayers. 
 We can only say in answer that God certainly will 
 not permit any variation in the course of nature which 
 would not be for the good of the world, considered in 
 its entirety. The science of meteorology tells us how 
 perfect is the domain of law even among storms which 
 seem to us so capricious in their coming and going. 
 To fancy that a storm could be swung out of its reg- 
 ular path in order to water the crops of a community 
 that had prayed for rain, thereby leaving dry the 
 crops of sections which had not so prayed, is to believe 
 that God is ready to introduce confusion in place of 
 order in his great domain of nature. 
 
 And yet we believe that our prayers are followed 
 by results which we must recognize as answers. In 
 no case, however, can we believe that we have swerved 
 God from a previous purpose and by our prayers in- 
 
234 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 duced him to do a thing he otherwise would not have 
 done. God never abdicates in our favor even for a 
 moment. But God does work through human agencies 
 in bringing about results. And the human agent is 
 not a mere machine transmitting in a purely mechan- 
 ical way the energy exerted upon it. "We are the 
 workers together with God." Into how many out- 
 comes human agency enters we cannot say, but their 
 number is vastly greater than the number of those 
 events which come to pass uninfluenced by human will 
 and effort. To pray God to preserve the lives of all 
 on board an outgoing steamship and bring them to 
 port in safety is a perfectly natural and proper 
 prayer. Indeed, to pray God to save, deliver, guide, 
 keep, preserve from harm, restore to health, to pray 
 for anything we need and can believe is for our best 
 good is a perfectly natural and proper prayer. When 
 a human soul has cried to God out of great need let 
 us remember that there is one more fact in the moral 
 universe, and with this one more fact God has given 
 assurances that he would reckon. We know that in 
 mechanics another force added to those already oper- 
 ating will modify the direction of the resultant force. 
 We cannot tell what influence facts in the world of 
 personal Spirit may not exert upon outcomes even in 
 the world of physical existence. 
 
 Answers to Prayer a Fact of Experience. In this matter 
 of assurance that answers to prayer do come our own 
 experience is the only testimony which brings full 
 and final conviction. Religious books written by 
 pious people to prove this point, and filled with a lot 
 of anecdotes of miraculous answers to prayer, may be 
 of some interest and cause us to wonder as we read 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 235 
 
 them, but they are not convincing. At this point 
 an intelligent use of the Scriptures can bring us 
 some very valuable assurances. The Bible was 
 written by men who bear clear testimony that they 
 knew God in the experience of their inward life; 
 and we learn that they were men in whose lives prayer 
 formed an important place. They tell us of responses 
 from God to their prayers. We study the lives of 
 these men — like Moses, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah, Peter and Paul, and others. We realize 
 the tremendousness of their work and see how it was 
 performed in the face of unspeakable discouragements 
 and opposition. And we cannot understand how they 
 could do all that they accomplished had it not been 
 that they did receive from time to time those responses 
 from God which gave them insight and moral and 
 physical strength which made them sufficient for their 
 mighty tasks. And the biographies of some of the 
 great leaders of modern times who were men of prayer 
 and who accomplished great things for humanity may 
 bring us the same assurances. Could these men have 
 done all that they did had they not felt very sure that 
 they were receiving responses from God when they 
 prayed to him? Jesus Christ prayed very often and 
 taught his disciples to pray. In that supreme hour 
 of his life in the garden of Gethsemane he prayed with 
 all the intensity of his spirit that he might be spared 
 the fearful cup of suffering which he knew was com- 
 ing. But he was not spared. Was that prayer of the 
 lonely Son of man unanswered? No prayer was ever 
 more fully answered, as the succeeding hours of his 
 matchless life showed. Christ's example and teaching 
 assure us that we may pray for everything we need, 
 
236 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 in loving submission to the Father's will. The reli- 
 gious man or woman needs not to ask the scientist or 
 philosopher what to pray for. We pray for every- 
 thing. God knows what is best for us. And the peti- 
 tion is really Christian prayer only when we are will- 
 ing to leave all outcomes in his hands. 
 
 Another Objection. But another objection is often 
 urged. If God knows what is best, and God's love 
 will do the best, why do we need to pray at all? Why 
 not just trust the Divine Wisdom and Love and not 
 trouble ourselves to bring in petitions to him? Here 
 we must again remind ourselves that the great pur- 
 pose of the divine revelation is moral. It is not that 
 men should live in comfort and enjoyment, but that 
 moral character should be developed. And character 
 can be developed only as men strive in conscious effort 
 to achieve the ends set before them. The passive 
 reception of ready-made blessings cannot strengthen 
 moral fiber. God grants us the gift only when we 
 want it so intensely as to be willing to work faithfully 
 to obtain it. It is a moral impossibility for God to 
 guide men in their moral development and spiritual 
 growth as "sons" without demanding a cooperation 
 on our part. We simply have to be "workers together 
 with God." God works in us and through us, but we 
 too must "work out our salvation." And earnest and 
 intense prayer to God is a part of this working out 
 process. Not to overcome the divine reluctance, but 
 to bring ourselves to the point where the giving of the 
 blessing asked will contribute to our spiritual growth 
 — this is the deeper meaning of prayer. In the full- 
 est sense prayer involves the whole personality. All 
 our activities are to converge toward realizing great 
 
INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 237 
 
 and worthy purposes. In this way prayer may become 
 the whole spirit of a life devoted to worthy service — 
 and we may indeed "pray without ceasing." "The 
 great end of religious effort is a developed soul, a 
 soul with a deep sense of God, a soul in which faith, 
 courage, and resolution are at their highest." 
 
 ''Subjective" Value of Prayer. A final word in regard 
 to the so-called "reflex" or "subjective" value of 
 prayer. Every change in those events which depend 
 in any way upon human agency results from mental 
 activity first — perception, feeling, and an act of the 
 will. In this sense all "objective" change through 
 human activity springs from subjective origins. The 
 general of the great army lays his plans and issues 
 his orders. The outcome of the battle — an "object- 
 ive" effect — is almost wholly determined by his insight 
 and skillful planning, which are "subjective." That 
 prayer works marked changes in one's mental condi- 
 tion is undisputed. When courage, deeper insight, 
 and fixed determination come to a man as the result 
 of his earnest prayer, the results are bound to be ob- 
 jective as well as subjective. 
 
 In conclusion, we suggest that because genuine 
 prayer is not using a form of energy, but, rather, 
 entering into a spiritual experience the best justifica- 
 tion of its validity is not to reason about the expe- 
 rience but to enter into it. He who really prays will 
 not long remain in doubt as to the utility of prayer. 
 Increasing knowledge of the way God works in his 
 great world of nature may render it impossible for 
 us to ask God with confidence to do certain things. 
 But if we do not forget the great teaching of Christ 
 that God the Divine Father cares for all the concerns 
 
238 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of our lives, and desires above all else that we should 
 grow in spiritual character, we may confidently pray 
 for everything which seems to us to be best, trusting 
 that the larger wisdom of God will insure the best as 
 the answer. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE BIBLE AS A RECORD OF DIVINE 
 REVELATION 
 
 It is a fundamental and essential doctrine of Chris- 
 tianity that the Bible contains a record of divine 
 revelation. Christianity teaches that God has made 
 himself known, not only through the activities of the 
 natural universe, but in the experiences of our human 
 life. This is a part of Christian faith and is founded 
 in the last analysis upon religious experience itself. 
 Now, all experience is individual. We may use such 
 universal expressions as "race experience," but such 
 a phrase can mean only those elements of human ex- 
 perience which are common to many or all members 
 of the race. We have no objection to the use of such 
 universal terms, provided we remember that concrete 
 reality always means that an experience comes as the 
 result of the affecting of the individual mind. A 
 divine revelation which affords knowledge of God is 
 an experience of the individual; and the revelation 
 as fact must of course precede revelation as record. 
 It is evident that if we are to have any knowledge of 
 the religious experiences of the men of former ages, 
 it must be through records which come down to us 
 from those ages. The Bible contains many such 
 records. Speaking exactly, therefore, the Bible is 
 
 239 
 
240 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 a literature in which are recorded many facts of his- 
 tory and experiences of individuals in which we be- 
 lieve God has revealed himself. 
 
 The Bible a Record of Human Experiences in which God 
 Has Made Himself Known. Now as to the manner in 
 which divine revelation takes place, we can only 
 say that it is those experiences which yield knowledge 
 of God. Our study of the ground and implications of 
 knowledge has shown us how impossible is the notion 
 that ready made knowledge can be passed into the 
 mind. This idea prevailed in the theologies of former 
 days and survives to a considerable degree. It used 
 to be taught that all the important doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity were communicated in this fashion by a sort 
 of spiritual dictation to the prophets, apostles or 
 "sacred penmen." We have seen that one of the great 
 outcomes of modern philosophical inquiry into the 
 knowing process is the truth that knowledge emerges 
 only as the result of the constructive work of the 
 mind, in reaction over against the activities which 
 affect the mind from without. Now, what bearing 
 has this upon the manner of revelation? Just this, 
 that while God is the ground or source of every expe- 
 rience through which we gain knowledge of him, yet 
 he does not pass or convey ready-made truth to the 
 human mind, the mind itself remaining the passive 
 recipient of his messages. If we think of God as 
 immanent, we must not conceive him as far removed 
 from us and needing to employ various intermediary 
 agencies to make known his thought and will. God 
 is very near to the spiritually sensitive and may 
 "speak" directly. Revelation is, according to this 
 view, an experience of the inner life — or, in usual 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 241 
 
 phrase, a spiritual experience. But while very many 
 revelations of God are of this inner sort, and our con- 
 ception of immanence bids us recognize divine reve- 
 lation in the whole range of man's spiritual capacities, 
 yet there is reason to believe that God has also used 
 methods which, because they seem to us more unusual 
 and striking, we call supernatural. But even in case 
 the supernatural event merely serves as an unusual 
 stimulus to the human mind, and the real content of 
 the revelation is born in thought and feeling. In 
 other words, it is an experience of the inner life, just 
 the same as before. However we conceive of the 
 human spirit, the Spirit of God must be thought of 
 as the ground or source of all experiences in which 
 we gain knowledge of God. 
 
 We repeat then, that if the experiences of the men 
 of former ages in which they have found knowledge 
 of God are to be known to us, it can be only through 
 the fact that these experiences have been recorded 
 and the records have come down to us. In this way 
 we may learn how God led and taught and inspired 
 those who have gone before us. In this way also we 
 come to know facts of human history in which the 
 purposes of God for the training of men in spiritual 
 things may be most clearly discerned. Now, the Bible 
 contains records which are most extraordinary in 
 their religious significance. For these records alone, 
 of all the writings which have come down to us, enable 
 us to know how that nation of antiquity which was 
 the greatest in religion and morality grew in their 
 knowledge of God and their faith in Him. These 
 records also tell us of Jesus Christ the Son of God, 
 and the new spiritual energy which became mani- 
 
242 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 fested among men as the result of Ms life, teaching, 
 and death. 
 
 It is not our present purpose to offer anything like 
 a complete discussion of the Bible as containing a 
 record of divine revelation. That would require far 
 more space than the limits of these studies can allow. 
 Much excellent material has been written upon a 
 modern and tenable view of the Bible. The older 
 dogmatic view of the Bible has pretty generally lost 
 its authority and the historical view gained by 
 modern scholarship has taken its place. We shall 
 attempt to present a few important considerations 
 which will enable us more clearly to see the truth in 
 the great teaching of Christianity concerning the 
 Bible. This teaching is that through the Bible alone 
 we gain a knowledge of God and of his relation to men 
 sufficient for the moral and spiritual needs of the 
 human spirit. 
 
 The Facts About the Bible. First let us seek the facts 
 concerning the Bible. We call the Bible a book, but 
 it is not a book in the ordinary sense of a literary 
 composition by one author. The Bible is really a liter- 
 ature. It is a collection of sixty-six writings by fifty 
 or more different authors, extending over a period 
 of more than a thousand years. These writings are 
 in many literary forms — stories, poems, proverbs, 
 hymns, sermons, drama, history, apocalypses, letters. 
 The one thing which unites them is the fact that all 
 are predominantly religious. The early stories are 
 told primarily to show God's dealings with the an- 
 cestors of the Hebrew people. The history was 
 written not merely to record the events but to set 
 forth the manner in which God had led the nation 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 243 
 
 through all its days of growth and change. The dis- 
 courses of the prophets, or preachers, show a moral 
 earnestness and a lofty ethical conception of God 
 absolutely without parallel in any other literature. 
 The Gospels give us a record of the life, teachings, and 
 death of the man Jesus Christ. There is no adequate 
 explanation of him and of all that has come into the 
 world as the result of his life, except to believe that in 
 him God made a unique and supreme revelation to 
 men. The New Testament centers about Christ and 
 Christianity, finds its origin and ultimate ground in 
 him. Thus we see that the biblical records have to do 
 with two great subjects: (1) the story of the life of 
 the Hebrew people, especially the development of their 
 religion, and (2) the life, teachings, and death of 
 Jesus Christ and the growth of the mighty spiritual 
 movement which flowed directly from him. 
 
 The Bible Interpreted in the Light of Experience. Now 
 just as the Bible found its origin in the spiritual expe- 
 riences of the many w T ho wrote it from age to age, so 
 the Bible brings a divine message to those in whose 
 minds some special experiences are born as the result 
 of the acceptance of the truths about God. There can 
 be no adequate perception of the divine revelation in 
 the Scriptures and no appreciation of its divine 
 authority except through the coming of spiritual 
 experiences similar in kind to those from which the 
 record first originated. Thus, for example, the Gospel 
 of John was written to convince men that Jesus 
 Christ was the divine Son of God and the Saviour of 
 the world. And it is only when a conviction of this 
 truth begins to possess the spirit of a man that he 
 perceives the real meaning of the Gospel of John. 
 
244 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 The revelation in the Bible is not a cogent array of 
 facts and arguments which must compel the mind to 
 see God. It is, rather, a record of the way men have 
 found God in spiritual experience. And when one 
 turns to the Bible with honest desire to know God's 
 will, the revelation will give evidence of its supreme 
 value. Experience, then, is the only ground of cer- 
 tainty with regard to the divine revelation. We read 
 the Bible and grasp its truths and as a result we have 
 experiences which otherwise could not be ours. This 
 is the only valid ground of biblical authority. 
 
 Authority of Bible Not Grounded in Inerrancy. In view 
 of this, we may see how futile are the attempts to 
 ground the authority of the Bible on any external 
 matters such as verbal inerrancy or moral infallibil- 
 ity. The claim that the Bible is verbally inerrant is 
 so foolish and contrary to the plainest facts that only 
 those who are ignorant of the Bible itself continue to 
 urge it. If we are to find verbal inerrancy anywhere 
 in the Scriptures, we would certainly expect to find 
 it in the reports of important utterances of Jesus. 
 But one has only to compare the record of Christ's 
 Sermon on the Mount as it appears in Matthew with 
 the record of it in Luke to see that on the basis of 
 verbal accuracy, one or the other of the evangelists 
 must be wrong. And just what the inscription on the 
 cross over the head of Jesus really was we shall never 
 know, though all four evangelists state what it was. 
 But each states it differently. These examples could 
 be multiplied indefinitely. Verbal inerrancy is wholly 
 untenable. 
 
 The Bible Is First a Human Record. But the very seri- 
 ous difficulties which arise when we try to hold to any 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 245 
 
 theories of verbal inerrancy or moral infallibility of 
 the Bible disappear when we begin to perceive two 
 important truths, (1) that the Bible, even though it 
 contains the record of divine revelation, is a very 
 human book, and (2) that the divine revelation is pro- 
 gressive, exhibiting that incompleteness which we 
 always expect in the earlier stages of a growing thing. 
 That the Bible is a human book and grew out of 
 human life is very evident from the records them- 
 selves. They bear the marks of humanity and their 
 materials were gathered in a perfectly natural and 
 human way. Thus the materials of the early nar- 
 ratives of Genesis must have been traditions handed 
 down from father to son for many generations before 
 they finally found their place in the narratives of the 
 prophetic and priestly authors of Genesis. And the 
 laws of the code cannot be regarded as formulations 
 in the desert in anticipation of the myriad moral and 
 religious requirements of generations yet to come. 
 These laws, rather, grew out of life, and are the 
 crystallization, as it were, of the moral and religious 
 needs of the nation after it had undergone a consid- 
 erable religious development. They were formulated 
 when they were needed. So of the great moral mes- 
 sages of the prophets. They are far more weighty and 
 significant, coming, as they did, out of the national 
 emergencies and moral crises than they could have 
 been as miraculous foretelling of events which were 
 to happen in a later age. The writings of Paul were 
 born of the practical and emergency needs of his mis- 
 sionary labors. They were for the most part intended 
 to serve as instruction, comfort, and establishment in 
 the faith of new converts to Christianity. And the 
 
246 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Gospels themselves were not formal historical treat- 
 ises but efforts to preserve the traditions of the eye- 
 witnesses of Jesus's teachings and life, in order that 
 those who came later might also know what Jesus had 
 done and taught while he was upon the earth. And 
 not only does the way in which the separate writings 
 of the Bible came into existence indicate a thoroughly 
 human book, but the way in which they were brought 
 together into an authoritative collection or "canon" 
 points to the same truth. 
 
 The literary composition of the Old Testament be- 
 gan in the ninth century. 1 At first some records were 
 prepared setting forth the patriarchal period and the 
 early history of the nation. There were probably 
 some earlier and simpler records, and, of course, there 
 were traditions in which stories of the earlier days 
 had been handed down for generations. These were 
 the materials used in the preparation of the first 
 histories. These records were afterward combined 
 with later histories to form the first six books of the 
 Bible as we now have them. The authors were of the 
 prophetic school, but their names we do not know and 
 never shall. Amos and Hosea were probably the first 
 of the prophets to write down some of their discourses. 
 A collection of their most notable messages was 
 finally made. Later the messages of other prophets 
 were reduced to writing. 
 
 After the Babylonian exile the priests became the 
 religious leaders of the nation. And under their influ- 
 ence other historical records were prepared. These 
 histories, with the earlier version of the law ( Deuter- 
 
 1 A few fragmentary writings now incorporated in the Old Testament probably 
 originated from an earlier age. 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 247 
 
 onoiuy) and the later or priestly interpretation of the 
 law (Leviticus), are soon found in a collection called 
 the Torah, or Law, and recognized as divinely author- 
 itative. Later on (in the third century) the dis- 
 courses of the prophets were added to the sacred col- 
 lection. But the other writings of the Old Testament 
 as we now have it were not agreed upon until about 
 a hundred years before Christ. And for generations, 
 among the religious teachers of Judaism, there re- 
 mained differences of opinion as to whether Ecclesi- 
 astes, Song of Solomon, and Esther ought to be 
 included in the canon or sacred collection. 
 
 Nor is the case at all different with the New Testa- 
 ment. The apostle Paul on his second and third mis- 
 sionary journeys wrote a number of letters to the 
 churches he had founded in different cities of Asia 
 Minor and Greece. These letters were written with- 
 out any thought whatever that they would ever be 
 included in sacred Scripture and accorded divine 
 authority like the Old Testament. Let us take a con- 
 crete example. A few months after Paul had left 
 Thesssalonica word was received and passed around 
 in the little group of Christians in that city that a 
 long letter had been received from the apostle, who is 
 now at Corinth. At the first meeting of the little 
 church the letter is read. It is probably read again 
 at the next meeting. It is talked over. The church 
 at Berea hears of it and may have borrowed it to read 
 at their meetings. Possibly it gets even to Philippi. 
 After a time the letter will have had its influence and 
 be laid aside. In time a second letter comes. 
 
 The Epistles. As the years pass on one apostle and 
 then another passed away. The little parchment rolls, 
 
248 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 which may have been placed in the care of some mem- 
 ber of the church for safe keeping, take on a new value. 
 They are now keepsakes of the beloved apostle who is 
 no more. Again they are brought out and read and 
 reread at the meetings. But it is to be distinctly 
 noted that they are not read as the Old Testament was 
 read in the service, that is, as scripture having divine 
 authority. But now and again in discussing matters 
 of Christian belief or practice the members of the 
 churches would naturally get into the habit of refer- 
 ring to what Paul or some other apostle had said in 
 one of his letters. Soon copies of the letters begin to 
 be made in order that other churches than those to 
 whom they were first sent might obtain copies. Thus 
 the church at Philippi received a beautiful letter from 
 Paul in the year G3 while he was awaiting trial at 
 Rome. After his death (probably in G6) how glad the 
 Philippian church would be to get copies of the letters 
 the apostle had sent to the Thessalonians ten or twelve 
 years before. And they in turn would prize a copy of 
 the letter the Philippians had received shortly before 
 the apostle's death. And so of the other churches. 
 Copies of the apostle's letters were made and ex- 
 changed among the churches, and read and referred 
 to when matters of Christian teaching, belief, and 
 practice came up for discussion. And here we find 
 the first beginnings of that which came later, namely, 
 attributing to the apostle's letters some degree of 
 divine authority. 
 
 The Gospels. The Gospels came to be written in a 
 somewhat different manner. Between thirty and 
 forty years after the death of Jesus the apostles and 
 other prominent Christians perceived the need of com- 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 249 
 
 mitting to writing the important facts of Jesus's life 
 and some record of bis teaching. During the first few 
 years after Jesns's death the circle of Christians 
 included so many of those who had known Jesus, and 
 all the things he had said and done seemed so vivid in 
 memory that there was no realization of the need of 
 records. But those who had known Jesus's life and 
 teaching personally and had been eyewitnesses of his 
 death and resurrection began to be removed by death. 
 The story of Jesus had been the powerful factor in 
 persuading men and women to believe on him and 
 become Christians — so the story of Jesus must be pre- 
 served and not left to the uncertain fortunes which 
 would surely befall it if it should continue to be 
 passed on by word of mouth after the original wit- 
 nesses of his life and words were gone. 
 
 And so Christians here and there began to write. 
 One may have written down a couple of parables as 
 he remembered hearing Jesus utter them. Another 
 wrote the account of one or two miracles which had 
 wonderfully impressed him and which he could never 
 forget. Another may have let his pen record the story 
 of the crucifixion as he recalled it after the lapse of 
 years. What would we not give for a few of those 
 frail and fleeting papyrus rolls ! That they existed 
 we know from the quotations from them made in the 
 writings of some of the Church Fathers or Christian 
 writers of the second and third centuries. But we 
 shall doubtless never recover any of them. 
 
 At an early date, perhaps in the early fifties, 
 Matthew the apostle wrote a larger work. It was a 
 fairly good sized collection of the sayings of Jesus — 
 a record of some of the more important teachings. He 
 
250 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 wrote this in his native Aramaic — the current lan- 
 guage of the Palestinian Jews at that time and doubt- 
 less the mother tongue of Jesus. Upon the work as a 
 basis, the present Gospel of Matthew was prepared in 
 Greek some years later. And we have not the remot- 
 est idea who it was who wrote the Gospel in the form 
 in which we now have it. 
 
 The first attempt to write a comprehensive story 
 of Jesus's deeds and words was made somewhere in 
 the sixties — perhaps 6G or 68 — by John Mark of Jeru- 
 salem, the cousin of Barnabas and the close friend of 
 both Peter and Paul. Luke's Gospel describes its 
 origin in its opening sentences. It is a careful com- 
 pilation of the memories and reminiscences of several 
 persons who had known Jesus personally. The 
 author was a physician, the friend and traveling com- 
 panion of Paul, and he enjoyed excellent opportuni- 
 ties of learning his facts from early witnesses. That 
 other Gospels were written Ave know, for several are 
 referred to by current writers whose works have come 
 down to us. But failing later to be included in the 
 canon or authorized group of writings they were 
 lost. 2 
 
 The Growth of the New Testament. For fully a hundred 
 years after the penning of the New Testament writ- 
 ings there was no New Testament as we understand 
 it, in the sense of a recognized collection of writings 
 to which divine authority was ascribed. The books 
 were current among Christians, as separate writings. 
 Around the beginning of the third century (A. D. 
 200) we learn that Christian scholars and bishops 
 
 2 1 am indebted here to the excellent work on The Canon and Text of the New Testa- 
 ment, by Professor Caspar Rene Gregory. 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 251 
 
 were in the habit of making authorized lists of the 
 writings which should be received as authentic and 
 read in the churches. One such list was prepared as 
 early as the year 170. Slowly and by the gradual 
 growth of a consensus of Christian opinion, a group 
 of authorized writings came to be agreed upon, and 
 gradually they began to be regarded as having divine 
 authority. But this formation of the canon of the 
 New Testament was not the single act of the church 
 council or of any other group of Christians, but was 
 the result of a slow process of selection which went on 
 naturally for several generations within the Christian 
 churches. And even after a New Testament canon 
 had become recognized the collections of writings 
 varied to some extent, in different parts of the ancient 
 Christian world. 
 
 We have dwelt thus upon the way the Bible came 
 into existence not only because the facts are impor- 
 tant and of great interest in themselves, but also be- 
 cause of their deeper meaning. They show that the 
 great facts of religious experience always preceded 
 the records. The religion of Israel did not rest upon 
 the Old Testament, but upon a revelation of the Most 
 High to that little nation to which they made response. 
 Christianity is not founded upon the New Testament. 
 Christian faith had existed for a century before the 
 New Testament came into being. The New Testament 
 grew out of the life of the Christian Church. The 
 facts of revelation — the experiences — have always pre- 
 ceded the records and they alone are the basis for the 
 authority of the record. 
 
 Meaning of Inspiration. Then too, the way the Bible 
 came into existence throws light upon the meaning 
 
252 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of inspiration. That the Bible is inspired, which 
 means that the Bible was written by inspired men, is 
 a part of the Christian faith. But what does inspira- 
 tion mean? We have already seen that it cannot 
 mean some sort of divine dictation which would make 
 the Bible infallible. Biblical infallibility is a doc- 
 trine which crept into the church after the Protestant 
 Reformation. The Bible itself nowhere claims to be 
 infallible. 3 What inspiration means we may learn 
 not from some theological doctrine about the Bible, 
 but from the Bible itself. As Professor Bowne says : 
 "The meaning and measure of inspiration cannot be 
 decided by abstract reflection, but only by a study of 
 the outcome. What inspiration is must be learned 
 from what it does. . . . We must not determine 
 the character of the books from the inspiration, but 
 must rather determine the nature of the inspiration 
 from the books" ( Studies in Christianity, p. 30 ) . 
 
 From the Bible itself we come to believe that its 
 authors were guided and inspired by God. Not, how- 
 ever, in any manner which would make them other 
 than their natural selves. Inspiration does not enable 
 a man to find out facts by any supernatural means. 
 Luke in preparing his Gospel no doubt had to visit 
 the original eye-witnesses from whom he obtained his 
 material. And he was under the same obligation to 
 exercise care and good judgment in arranging and 
 preparing the material for writing. Inspiration 
 might be characterized as the personal influence of 
 God through which a man receives deeper insight and 
 great enthusiasm for his work. This personal influ- 
 
 * The passage in 2 Tim. 3. 16 is a mistranslation in our Authorized Version, and both 
 this passage and Rev. 22. 18 and 19 were written generations before there was any New 
 Testament or Bible as we have it. 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 253 
 
 ence from the Divine Mind quickens the entire human 
 personality. Through the intense interest which is 
 thus produced in the task in hand thought is clarified, 
 memory strengthened, and feeling enriched. To quote 
 from the excellent exposition of Dods: "In the ac- 
 count given us of creation inspiration enabled the 
 writer, not to give a description in which thousands 
 of years afterward perfect accuracy might be found, 
 but to discover God in the work. And throughout the 
 Old Testament history it is not the material which 
 inspiration guarantees but the spirit. . . . Inspira- 
 tion enables its possessor to see and apprehend God 
 and his will and to impart to other men what he has 
 himself seen and apprehended" (Dods, The Bible, Its 
 Origin and Nature, p. 12G). 
 
 The Progressive Nature of Revelation. One lingering 
 scruple may be answered. It is often urged, if we 
 once admit that the biblical writers could err, and 
 that the sacred text contains the misconceptions of 
 inspired men as well as their permanent contributions 
 to mankind's knowledge of God, how are we to know 
 which is revelation and which not? The answer is 
 that when one remembers that the underlying purpose 
 of the Scriptures was spiritual, there will be no per- 
 plexity. The Bible was never intended to be author- 
 itative on the subject of science or history. And 
 therefore when we meet the crude notions of cen- 
 turies ago, or discover historical inaccuracies in the 
 Bible, we need not be disturbed. And so far as low 
 morals, ideals, and imperfect religious conceptions are 
 concerned, we have the standard in the teaching and 
 example of Christ, who is the highest manifestation 
 of God. If, therefore, any conception of God be found 
 
254 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 in any part of the Bible which is clearly out of har- 
 mony with Christ's teaching about God, there can be 
 no question which we should choose. And as for the 
 responsibility of choosing between that which is lower 
 and that which is highest, when were we as moral 
 beings relieved from that? Practically, there is no 
 difficulty when once we give up the false idea of a 
 divine revelation given perfect from the start and sub- 
 stitute the conception of a gradually progressing 
 knowledge of God in which because of the limitations 
 of those to whom the revelation was being made it was 
 necessary that the imperfect should find place, but in 
 which also the imperfect gradually gave place to that 
 which is higher, and finally to the complete. 
 
 The Bible and Other Sacred Writings. Before we close 
 our discussion of the revelation of God, a few words 
 must be added concerning the Bible and the sacred 
 writings of other religions. The claim has been made 
 that the Bible is only one of many sacred writings, 
 and that God has revealed himself to the Moham- 
 medan and the nations of the Far East quite as dis- 
 tinctly in the sacred books of their religions as he had 
 revealed himself to Judaism and Christianity in the 
 Bible. 
 
 We have already recognized that the revelation of 
 God is not confined entirely to Judaism and Chris- 
 tianity. Through the great ethnic faiths of the Orient 
 there have shone rays of divine truth. But the light 
 of truth as seen in the religions of the Far East is the 
 twilight of early dawn when we compare those reli- 
 gions with the full noontide of Christianity. Nothing 
 could illustrate this better than a comparison of the 
 Christian Scriptures with the sacred writings of the 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 255 
 
 Oriental religions. It is only in recent years that we 
 have come actually to know what these sacred books 
 of the East are. The Koran of Mohammedanism has 
 been translated for many generations, but the monu- 
 mental labors of a group of scholars (foremost among 
 whom was the late Professor Max Muller of Oxford) 
 have at last opened up to English readers the sacred 
 writings of the Oriental religions. 
 
 In the general preface with which the whole series 
 opens, Professor Max Muller, the editor, says, "Read- 
 ers who have been led to believe that the Vedas of the 
 ancient Brahmans, the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the 
 Tripitaka of the Buddhists, and the Kings of Con- 
 fucius, or the Koran of Mohammed, are books full of 
 primeval wisdom and religious enthusiasm, or at least 
 of sound and simple moral teaching, will be disap- 
 pointed on consulting these volumes." In another 
 place he says, "I confess it has been for many years a 
 problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, 
 how the sacred books of the East should, by the side 
 of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, 
 and true, contain so much that is not only unmean- 
 ing, artificial, and silly, but even hideous and repel- 
 lent." Again, speaking of the Brahmanas, he says: 
 "These works deserve to be studied as the physician 
 studies the twaddle of idiots or the ravings of mad- 
 men. . . . But let us only try to translate these works 
 into our own language, and we shall feel astonished 
 that human language and human thought should ever 
 have been used for such purposes." To all superficial 
 attempts to glorify the Oriental religions and place 
 their sacred writings in the same class with the Bible 
 we need no other answer than these words from the 
 
256 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 great scholar who devoted his life to opening up the 
 records of Eastern religion to Western scholarship. 
 
 The Supremacy of the Bible. But we must briefly sug- 
 gest some of those particulars in which the Bible 
 towers above all other sacred writings. Any compar- 
 ison of the Bible with the sacred books of other reli- 
 gions soon brings out the fact that these latter con- 
 tain immense amounts of dross in comparison with 
 the gold of truth. The Bible, on the other hand, is 
 singularly free from those low and impure concep- 
 tions of the Divine which can produce nothing but 
 a degraded moral life. The character of any reli- 
 gion is determined by its fundamental conception of 
 God. We do not wonder that immoral conceptions 
 of the divine characterize all primitive religions. 
 They are low in the scale of religious evolution. The 
 loftier moral ideals have not yet emerged. But the 
 great religions of the East, in spite of a certain philo- 
 sophic dignity in their conceptions, stand utterly con- 
 demned by the type of life they have produced. And 
 their most notable defect is in their conception of 
 God. This is impersonal and highly abstract, and 
 therefore fails to meet the deep religious needs of men. 
 Brahmanism in its later development is rather a reli- 
 gious philosophy than a religion. It never became the 
 religion of the masses in India. Its abstract and 
 purely speculative ideas of the divine are replaced in 
 popular religious thought by the hideous gods of the 
 Hindu pantheon with all their groveling superstition 
 and idolatry. The caste system, which is socially the 
 essence of the Brahman faith, has held India in its 
 frightful grasp for ages, and it is very certain that no 
 social and industrial progress such as has taken place 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 257 
 
 in Japan and is beginning to transform China, will 
 ever be possible in India until the religious teachings 
 upon which the caste system is founded are under- 
 mined and swept away. With all the poetic dignity 
 and spiritual depth of some of the hymns of the Vedas, 
 the fact remains that the religion of India stands con- 
 demned by the type of morality and social life which 
 has developed under the influence of its fundamental 
 teachings. 
 
 Nor is it different with Buddhism. Rising in India 
 as a popular reaction against the heartlessness and 
 austerities of the Brahman priests, Buddhism pro- 
 claimed the principle of human religion without a 
 God, until the cardinal defect was remedied by a pop- 
 ular deification and worship of Gautama, its founder. 
 But in spite of some features of abiding worth Bud- 
 dhism has taught its vast numbers of adherents no doc- 
 trine of a God in sympathy with man, no freedom 
 from the guilt of sin through the divine forgiveness, 
 no deep and abiding meaning in human life, no com- 
 fort for human pain and heartache, no hope of a 
 larger and fuller life of the spirit after the earthly 
 life is done. Indeed, the highest blessing to which 
 Buddhism can lead the aspiration of its adherents is 
 that of the extinction of one's personality — absorp- 
 tion into Infinite Being, as the river is merged in the 
 vast expanses of the ocean. The highest virtue, ac- 
 cording to Buddhism, is found in cultivating a sense 
 of the unreality and transitoriness of the world. If 
 one has this well developed, then no sorrows or disap- 
 pointments can bring deep pain, but a deliverance 
 from human woe comes by way of this attitude of 
 insensibility toward the world. 
 
258 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Now, in absolute contrast with all this we find in 
 the Bible an elevated and noble conception of the 
 Divine. God is a moral being of infinite holiness. 
 And the Bible teaches that God is full of sympathy 
 and compassion, that his relation to men is that of a 
 Father to children. 
 
 The writings of other religions abound in childish 
 stories of the creation of the world and of men. The 
 mythologies are endless and grotesque. But in the 
 Bible account of creation a great moral purpose ap- 
 pears at the outset; and while the material may be 
 that of unhistorical legend and tradition, yet the reli- 
 gious spirit and motive in the narratives stand forth 
 as their most distinctive characteristic. 
 
 Unlike all other sacred writings, the Bible lays tre- 
 mendous emphasis upon morality and righteousness. 
 The Hebrew people, in all their anthropomorphisms, 
 never conceived their Divinity in the female form. 
 Their national religion was therefore saved from that 
 practice of licentious impurity in the name of reli- 
 gion which was so characteristic of other Semitic 
 peoples. Human sacrifice also, so widely prevalent 
 among nearly all the tribes and nations of the Semitic 
 race, never existed as a part of Hebrew religion. 
 
 Nowhere else in all the realm of sacred literature do 
 we find anything which begins to approach the work 
 of the prophets of ancient Israel. They preached the 
 loftiest conceptions of God, and under their moral 
 leadership the religion of the nation advanced until 
 all the remnants of early paganism were left behind. 
 The burden of their message was the call to righteous- 
 ness of life and the pure service of Jehovah. The 
 later prophets even held up before the nation the ideal 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 259 
 
 of a deep responsibility devolving upon them to be- 
 come the spiritual leaders and teachers of other 
 nations in the ways of righteousness and the service 
 of the only true God. 
 
 The New Testament sets forth the great truth that 
 through Jesus Christ God has made himself known 
 most directly, intimately, and personally. This marks 
 the highest possible level of the divine revelation. The 
 truth that God is the Infinite Father, and that all men 
 are, therefore, bound together by the ties of a spiritual 
 brotherhood, is the unspeakably precious teaching 
 which the world owes to Jesus Christ. From the Bible 
 alone has come the truth that men may receive the 
 divine forgiveness for their sin, not through their 
 works of expiation, but as the free gift of divine 
 mercy. From the Bible alone has come the truth 
 that salvation means personal righteousness and 
 social justice. From the Bible alone has come our 
 faith in personal immortality. 
 
 We believe that a literature which records the de- 
 velopment of such a type of life as that of the Hebrew 
 people, and the unfolding of such mighty truths as 
 those found in the life and teaching of Christ, is veri- 
 tably a record of the divine revelation. We would not 
 say that the only revelation of God's nature and pur- 
 pose is to be found in the Bible. But we may confi- 
 dently affirm that the divine revelation contained in 
 the Bible, compared with that in nature and in the 
 ethnic religions, is as the noontide compared with the 
 dim light of dawn. 
 
 Redemption the Great Purpose of the Christian Revelation. 
 Before we leave our consideration of the Bible as the 
 record of the Christian revelation we must note the 
 
260 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 great underlying purpose of God in making the revela- 
 tion. In the Scriptures we read not only of God mak- 
 ing himself known but of God giving himself in sacri- 
 fice. The greatest word of Christianity is therefore 
 not revelation but salvation or redemption. The ex- 
 position of this great truth of redemption through 
 divine love belongs properly to theology. We simply 
 refer to it here. But no one can gain an adequate 
 conception of the range and purpose of the Christian 
 revelation without recognizing this truth that "God 
 was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." 
 
 To sum up: We find in the Bible the record of a 
 gradually developing revelation of God. It is pro- 
 gressive because on the divine side God necessarily 
 adapted the revelation to the mental and spiritual 
 capacities of those to whom it was made. On the 
 human side the Bible records the growth of man's 
 consciousness of God. The recognition of this truth 
 leads us to expect crude ideas of God and low stand- 
 ards of morality in the earlier stages of human cul- 
 ture. According to this view we see that divine in- 
 spiration does not necessarily mean any kind of infal- 
 libility. The men who wrote the Bible were men of 
 spiritual perceptions whom the direct influence of 
 God lifted far above the ordinary current religious 
 thought of their time. It may be noted in passing 
 that this viewpoint of modern biblical scholarship 
 takes the meaning out of the many objections which 
 used to be urged against the Bible by skepticism. To 
 condemn the imperfect morality and crude religious 
 ideas of an early age had point only as long as the 
 Bible was held up as infallible. The truth of the pro- 
 gressive nature of biblical revelation completely 
 
THE BIBLE AS A RECORD 261 
 
 vacates these old perplexities. This view also opens 
 our eyes to the greatness of the revelation. Rescuing 
 the Bible from the indefensible position in which 
 dogmatic theology had placed it, we have the chance 
 really to see the spiritual grandeur and power of this 
 wonderful Book. It is verily the "Word of God." 
 
 Through the Bible messages we see how God has 
 been in the great currents of human history and in 
 the dawn and deepening of the religious conscious- 
 ness; through the Bible messages we learn of the 
 infinite love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and 
 how deep-souled men have experienced God's forgive- 
 ness and have had conscious fellowship with him. 
 And thus the Bible is not only the source of our 
 knowledge of God and the witness to the reality of 
 spiritual experiences in former generations, but it 
 becomes the means through which men of every gen- 
 eration may know God and themselves experience the 
 facts of the inner life. To those who through faith 
 make the great spiritual truths taught in the Bible 
 their own, it becomes indeed the very "Word of God" 
 — the great source of spiritual life. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE 
 CHRISTIAN REVELATION 
 
 We have now gained some conception of the nature 
 and extent of the divine revelation. The Bible is full 
 of interest as ancient literature — as a record of the 
 thought and life of a most remarkable people of an- 
 tiquity. But when it is perceived that in the moral and 
 religious development of that people God has made 
 himself known and revealed his purposes with a clear- 
 ness nowhere else discerned, then the Bible becomes 
 profoundly significant as a record of the divine revela- 
 tion. In the Bible we find from time to time accounts 
 of marvelous events. These are the biblical miracles. 
 They are recorded as special manifestations of divine 
 power. We must face the question of miracle and 
 ask whether from the point of view of sound religious 
 philosophy supernatural events may be regarded as 
 an essential part of the divine revelation. 
 
 In beginning the discussion of this great question 
 which has been such a storm-center we cannot make 
 our start simply from the biblical miracles themselves, 
 affirming that they are in the inspired scriptural 
 records and therefore must be received for that reason 
 as authentic and authoritative. That may be the be- 
 lief of many ; and it has often been the standpoint of 
 dogmatic theology, but it is not the method of philos- 
 ophy. It must be borne in mind that the sacred liter- 
 
 262 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 263 
 
 atures of other religions also contain many accounts 
 of miracles of various sorts. Attempts have been 
 made to show that the miracles recorded in the Bible 
 are in a class by themselves and quite different from 
 the miracles of other religions, and also from those 
 marvels alleged of the saints by mediaeval superstition. 
 But the attempt is not successful. For while many 
 of the biblical miracles are full of moral dignity and 
 spring from a deep religious insight and a clear recog- 
 nition of the power and purpose of God in unusual 
 events, others are such as modern thinking would 
 explain without any supernatural reference, while 
 still others savor of crude magical ideas. 1 
 
 Origin of Belief in the Supernatural in Early Reli- 
 gion. The conception of the supernatural begins on 
 the low plane of animism and spiritism. Divination 
 is found to be a feature of all early religion and the 
 essential thing about divination is the effort to know 
 the will of the Deity from an interpretation of un- 
 usual events. From the point of view of the origin of 
 the supernatural, events fall into two classes: first, 
 the frequent and familiar, and, second, the infrequent 
 and striking events. And it is characteristic of all 
 primitive thinking to ascribe the infrequent and 
 extraordinary events (such as disastrous storm, 
 famine, sickness, etc. ) directly to the agency of super- 
 human powers. The belief in the supernatural first 
 arose, therefore, as the result of the early crude 
 attempts of primitive thought to account for extraor- 
 dinary events. 
 
 1 Such are the stories of Aaron's rod which budded and turned into a serpent, etc. 
 Such also are some of the Samson and Elisha stories, notably those of the she bears 
 which devoured the children who mocked the prophet (2 Kings 2. 23-25) and of the 
 dead man who was brought back to life by being lowered into the grave so that he 
 came into contact with the prophet's bones (2 Kings 13. 21). 
 
2te FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 The Problem. It is not our problem to seek to vindi- 
 cate as historical every marvelous tale found in those 
 ancient records which comprise the Bible. It will be, 
 rather, our attempt to point out those great truths a 
 consideration of which in their relation to each other 
 will give substantial ground for the belief that there 
 has been and is what we may call a supernatural 
 element in the Christian revelation, and that this 
 supernatural element is an essential part of the his- 
 toric revelation and has served a most important pur- 
 pose in it. 
 
 Modern Tendency to Depreciate Importance of Miracle. 
 There is no denying the fact that there is a pro- 
 nounced tendency on the part of some strong thinkers 
 to minimize the importance of miracle and even to 
 wish to eliminate it altogether from essential Chris- 
 tian belief. Long ago Matthew Arnold wrote : "There 
 is nothing one would more desire for a person or a 
 document one greatly values than to make them inde- 
 pendent of miracles." 2 Wendt (System der Christ- 
 lichen Lehre) and Harnack (Das Wesen des Christen- 
 thums) both decide that Christianity makes a 
 stronger appeal by abandoning dependence upon the 
 supernatural altogether. So also does Hastings Rash- 
 dall, who is one of the strongest exponents of theism. 
 Dr. Rashdall writes: "We may be quite confident 
 that for minds which have once appreciated the prin- 
 ciples of historical criticism, or minds affected by the 
 suffused skepticism which has sprung from historical 
 criticism, neither religious faith in general nor any 
 doctrine of primary religious importance will ever 
 depend mainly upon the evidence of abnormal events 
 
 2 Literature and Dogma, p. 137. 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 265 
 
 recorded to have happened in the remote past." 3 This 
 drift, to make the supernatural unimportant or to 
 exclude it from what is absolutely essential in Chris- 
 tian faith is fairly strong to-day among many of the 
 more liberal thinkers. And it is being advocated not 
 by the enemies of Christianity but by its avowed 
 friends. They do not deny the possibility of miracles 
 outright after the fashion of Hume and Renan. Most 
 of them say, however, that even though miracles may 
 be regarded as not impossible, yet belief in them ought 
 not to be demanded as an indispensable element in the 
 Christianity of to-day. Indeed, miracles, we are told, 
 are now to be regarded rather in the light of an embar- 
 rassment than an aid to faith. 
 
 Value of Miracle for Christian Faith. But this wish to 
 eliminate the supernatural element and to regard it 
 as an embarrassment is a grave mistake. In answer 
 to the question whether the supernatural is still de- 
 fensible by the best thinking in philosophy of reli- 
 gion, I would make an emphatic answer in the affirm- 
 ative. It is the purpose of this chapter to point out 
 those lines of reasoning along which lie the best, and, 
 indeed, the only defenses of the supernatural as an 
 essential element in the historic revelation of God in 
 Christianity. But we ought to make an important 
 distinction. Strictly speaking, belief in miracle is 
 not an end in itself. The miracle was regarded as a 
 sign that divine power was being manifested in some 
 unusual force or through a human agency. This con- 
 ception of the miracle as a token of divine presence 
 and power prevails in the New Testament. The word 
 most often used in the Gospels is "sign" (orj^lov) . The 
 
 • Contentio Veritatis, p. 58. 
 
266 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 important matter, after all, is not belief in miracles 
 in themselves, but belief in the Divine Nature and 
 authority of Him of whom they were the testimonials. 
 Belief in Christ is the essential thing, and the super- 
 natural element in the Gospels is important in pro- 
 portion as it leads to faith in him as the Divine Son of 
 God. The miracles were necessary to accredit Jesus 
 as divine to an age which believed that the extraor- 
 dinary and the supernatural were unmistakable evi- 
 dence of the Divine. This is the reason why a weak- 
 ening of belief in the reality of miracles is so generally 
 followed by a weakening of faith in Jesus Christ as 
 divine. Dr. George A. Gordon says that miracles have 
 gradually ceased to be significant for him. He is 
 "dealing with the Eternal as it shines by its own light, 
 and so outward witness of any kind for the things of 
 the soul becomes superfluous." 4 We may acknowl- 
 edge the truth of this, and yet we must recognize that 
 for most men a weakening of belief in the reality of 
 miracle as an essential element in the historic revela- 
 tion means a distinct loss "for the things of the soul." 
 That elevation of soul-vision and directness of spirit- 
 ual insight which Gordon says he has reached, and 
 which no longer needs the "outward witness of any 
 kind," would never have been possible even to him 
 without a belief in miracles as an aid to growing 
 faith in the Divine. Robert Browning, in that great 
 poem "A Death in the Desert," compares the miracles 
 to the dry twigs stuck around to protect the ground 
 in which seeds lie, but which, when the seeds have 
 sprouted and grown to be strong plants, are no longer 
 needed. The figure is suggestive and very true. 
 
 4 In Religion and Miracle, the Preface, 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 267 
 
 Surely, without belief in the supernatural power of 
 Jesus Christ no strong and enduring faith in his 
 divine nature and authority could ever have grown in 
 the life of his followers. But we must turn to the 
 argument in which we hope to show that belief in the 
 supernatural is rationally grounded and an essential 
 part of the Christian revelation. 
 
 Meaning of "Supernatural" and "Miracle." The first 
 thing to do is to seek a clear conception of what we 
 should mean by "supernatural." What is a miracle? 
 Some persons will feel like suggesting that we had 
 better begin our discussion by carefully focusing the 
 meaning of the term "supernatural" until it stands 
 out clear and well defined. But alas for this attempt 
 at exact definition of terms that it is so often merely 
 verbal performance and lends no insight! Instead 
 of carefully constructing a definition of a miracle let 
 us try to get at the thought value of the idea or con- 
 cept of which the word "supernatural" is but the 
 name or symbol. 
 
 It is plain that "supernatural" ought to mean above 
 or beyond the natural. This is merely etymology. 
 We are therefore thrown back upon the word "nat- 
 ural." What is a "natural" event? Is it "natural" to 
 talk with a person a hundred miles away with no 
 connecting wire or other visible means of commu- 
 nication? Yes, wonderful as it is, it is quite natural, 
 for the wireless telephone is a fact. But if this event 
 had happened a generation ago, would it then have 
 been classed as "natural" or "supernatural"? Is it 
 natural to alleviate and cure certain nervous and 
 functional disorders by the presence and word of a 
 commanding personality? This is being done to-day, 
 
268 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 and the therapeutic value of mental suggestion is 
 fully recognized by men of science. But how would 
 such facts as those now seen in the clinics of the psy- 
 cho-therapists have been classified a hundred years 
 ago, as natural or supernatural? Bernheiin, of 
 Nancy, and those experimenters who have followed 
 him have discovered for us some forces of which we 
 had been in ignorance and the laws of these forces 
 have been set forth. And to-day we call these wonder- 
 ful achievements "natural." And why? Simply be- 
 cause they are more or less familiar. They are events 
 similar to others which have already come within the 
 limits of our knowledge, the laws of which we may 
 partly understand. Thus it will be seen that "na- 
 tural" and "supernatural" are terms entirely relative 
 to the limits of human knowledge at a particular time, 
 and what would be classed by one age as a super- 
 natural event may come to be called natural later on. 
 Shall we say, then, that a natural event is one which 
 we are able to refer to forces and laws with which we 
 are more or less familiar? A supernatural event, on 
 the other hand, is one which we are not able to refer 
 to forces or laws which are known to us. Let us not 
 for a moment fancy that a natural event is one whose 
 causes we fully understand. Who can really under- 
 stand the growth of a blade of grass, or the beginning 
 of a human life? And yet because we can trace these 
 events in the world of nature, and because they are so 
 familiar to us, we call them natural. The common- 
 est natural events, however, constantly bring us face 
 to face with mysteries which baffle our keenest specu- 
 lations. 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 269 
 
 Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears, 
 
 To me, the meanest flower that blows, can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 — Wordsworth, "Intimations of Immortality." 
 
 Now, as our knowledge of the world and its forces 
 expands, the word "natural" will be applied to an 
 increasing number of events. It is therefore only to 
 be expected that supernatural events should be more 
 abundant in ages and among peoples who have gained 
 no systematic knowledge of nature and her laws. As 
 the realm of the known expands, the events which are 
 considered supernatural become fewer. The history 
 of belief in miracles shows this to have been the case. 
 
 The question now arises whether the time may not 
 have come when, because of immense gains in our 
 knowledge of the world and its forces, the belief in 
 the supernatural may have ceased to fit our modern 
 ways of thinking; when, in other words, the territory 
 of knowledge may not have become so large that the 
 realm which men have called the supernatural may 
 not have narrowed down to very small dimensions. 
 The present scientific conception of nature as a great 
 orderly system with its laws which express not occa- 
 sional but constant and regular sequences seems at 
 first sight to preclude the idea that miracles may 
 happen to-day. But if we think of a supernatural 
 event as an occurrence whose explanation we cannot 
 refer to any laAv of the universe with which we are 
 familiar, surely we are by no means in the position 
 to say that such an event may not occur to-day. To 
 do so would imply that we not only know many of the 
 forces of the universe, but all of them. And no one, 
 
270 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 however thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit, 
 would have the hardihood to affirm this. Things may 
 happen to-day which we are not able to refer for 
 explanation to natural sequences with which we are 
 familiar. Yet we would remain convinced that if such 
 an event does occur, it is not isolated or unrelated in 
 the universe. No event can be. We should believe 
 that the mystery and wonder of it lay only in the fact 
 that it obeyed some law which we had not yet come 
 to know. The conception of supernatural as meaning- 
 only an event the cause of which lies beyond the 
 realms of truth already known, makes it perfectly cor- 
 rect to say that such a supernatural event might 
 happen to-day. We are untrue to the scientific spirit 
 if we waste any breath setting forth what is possible 
 and impossible. Scientific men have often declared 
 things impossible which later took place. The only 
 way to find out what can happen is to find out what 
 really does happen. 
 
 But the scientist to-day has no right to deny the 
 possibility of inexplicable events, and will not do so 
 when he understands himself. He must seek to verify 
 or to disprove these events. If they are verified as 
 facts, then he seeks to find other similar facts. These 
 are compared and classified together, after which a 
 generalization is possible stating that under certain 
 conditions these facts always happen as noted. A 
 name is given to this generalization and it is hence- 
 forth called a "law." It is to be noted that the ex- 
 planation of new or unfamiliar events here consists 
 in finding other similar instances and classifying 
 them with facts already known. The mind is thus 
 saved from thinking of the new event as isolated or 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 271 
 
 unrelated to truth already known. This is all that 
 scientific explanation ordinarily means. The bearing 
 of this upon our discussion is plain. It means that 
 modern scientific thought can find no place for the 
 supernatural in the sense of an isolated event, unre- 
 lated to other events like it. And the theologian or 
 Christian philosopher should hasten to make the same 
 affirmation. A modern philosophy of Christianity 
 finds no place for miracles as events unrelated to the 
 great laws of the universe. The human reason de- 
 mands that every event which we receive as fact must 
 find some place in the rational harmony of all things. 
 Our problem, therefore, is how to find a rational place 
 for the miracle in our thinking. For an unrelated 
 thing is an irrational conception, and no irrational 
 conception can long maintain its place in enlightened 
 belief. In what way then can we relate the miracle to 
 the rest of our thinking? That is the crucial ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Divine Purpose in a Moral World Order. We have 
 agreed that a supernatural event is one which we can- 
 not refer to some known law of the universe. But we 
 must now take the next step and affirm that a mir- 
 acle is more than this. It is an event in which it is 
 possible to discern a plan or purpose of God. Some 
 biblical miracles were events which, if they had hap- 
 pened to-day, might not be classed as supernatural. 
 But a great many of them we would be almost as much 
 at loss to explain on natural grounds as when they 
 took place. We learn from theism to recognize all the 
 ongoing processes of nature as expressions of the 
 divine activity. Philosophy no less than theology for- 
 bids us to think of nature as independent of God. Its 
 
272 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 laws are his laws, for nature is the constant expres- 
 sion of the wisdom and power of the Eternal. This 
 we have seen in our study of that way of conceiving 
 of the divine activity known as immanence. Like all 
 natural events, the miracle is an act of God, but the 
 miracle must be regarded as an act of God in which 
 some particular purpose of his is made known in a 
 fashion different from the way God's wisdom and will 
 may be read in familiar events. Thus it will be seen 
 that belief in miracle is fundamentally a religious 
 matter. No one whose view of the world is essentially 
 material can find any place in his thinking for the 
 supernatural. The justification of the supernatural 
 has been modified in recent years by the emphasis 
 placed upon moral values in modern philosophical 
 thinking. The old dogmatic defenses on the ground 
 of the authority of Scripture or the theological attri- 
 bute of divine omnipotence are gone. It no longer 
 satisfies us in seeking to justify miracle to say that 
 "God can do anything." We must now seek a justi- 
 fication of the supernatural as the necessary adapta- 
 tion of God's method of revelation to those to whom 
 the revelation was being made. 
 
 Two great foundation truths must,* therefore, 
 underlie all modern philosophical justification of the 
 supernatural — first, the conception of God as per- 
 sonal, involving as that does his moral purposes for 
 the training and saving of men, and, second, the self- 
 revelation of this personal God in history. These are 
 essentially religious truths. They are not capable of 
 formal demonstration, but come as great resultants in 
 thought, after we have found that all other concep- 
 tions of the Divine give no foundation for the ethical 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 273 
 
 life and for the practical religious needs of men. 
 Without these truths a modern thinker will find the 
 acceptance of a supernatural element in Christianity 
 exceedingly difficult on any other ground than that of 
 external authority, for the great significance of the 
 miracle lies in its being a sign or manifestation of 
 Divine purpose in events of an unusual or extraor- 
 dinary character. 
 
 We repeat, then, that the great meaning to be at- 
 tached to the miracle is religious. To discuss the 
 possibility of a supernatural event on purely physical 
 or material grounds is to come speedily to the conclu- 
 sion which many scientists have held — that such an 
 event is incredible. The scientific thinker can allow 
 no "breaks" in the continuity of law, for such breaks 
 would be to allow what Huxley calls "isolated won- 
 ders" out of harmonious relation with the body of 
 truth already gained. The modern thinker who under- 
 stands himself will hasten to acknowledge that phys- 
 ical science can find no place for the supernatural. 
 This is only as it should be, for the function of phys- 
 ical science is to deal with causal connection on its 
 mechanical side. But this thinker should also hasten 
 to add the important truth that physical science is not 
 to be thought of for a moment as grasping and pre- 
 senting all there is of reality. 
 
 God as Personal Implies His Moral Purposes. It is here 
 that the modern view of personality as the ultimate 
 reality points the way to a rational justification of 
 the supernatural. The philosophy of idealism has 
 fully demonstrated the failure of all mechanical 
 theories of causation, and personalism has abun- 
 dantly justified purpose as the only conception of 
 
274 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 cause in which the mind can rest; and purpose means 
 a moral order with great ends to be served. Personal 
 relationships are the soul of a universe which is 
 thought of as having any moral meaning. Thus it 
 appears that the doctrine of divine immanence de- 
 mands that we think of God not only as working out 
 his purposes in the world of nature with its myriad 
 forces and ongoing processes, but also as realizing 
 his will in the world of moral persons. The doctrine 
 of the immanence of God is by no means complete 
 when we conceive the natural world alone as mani- 
 festing the divine will. Just as our highest plans and 
 best purposes are expressed not in what w T e do with 
 material things about us, but in our personal relation- 
 ships with friends and neighbors, so if we are true to 
 the personal conception of God, we must think of him 
 as making the most complete revelation of his pur- 
 pose in his relation not to things but to persons. 
 Hence the moral becomes the highest realm in which 
 we may look for the self-disclosures of the Divine 
 One. And if God is to be thought of as related to 
 persons, then it follows that the relationship will be 
 closer in the case of some persons than in the case of 
 others, for this personal relation is a mutual matter, 
 calling for recognition and response as well as revela- 
 tion. And it will be closer at one time than it is at 
 another even to the same person. Lotze, in his Philos- 
 ophy of Religion, has well expressed this great truth 
 of the different degrees of nearness in the personal 
 relationship between God and men. He says, "There 
 is nothing whatever that stands in opposition to the 
 further conviction that God, at particular moments 
 and in particular persons, may have stood nearer to 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 275 
 
 humanity, or may have revealed himself at such 
 moments and in such persons in a more eminent way 
 than at other moments and in other persons." 
 
 When, therefore, a strange or unfamiliar event is 
 well attested, it must be thought of, if possible, as 
 having a harmonious relation with the larger moral 
 order. In other words its acceptance as a fact may 
 rest upon the perception that it has a moral meaning 
 and expresses purpose. In the absence of such percep- 
 tion of a moral meaning the event will be sufficiently 
 accredited to find a place in enlightened belief. A 
 miracle, then, must have an adequate ethical occa- 
 sion and a moral significance. We cannot accept 
 it simply as a wonder, contenting ourselves with 
 the affirmation that an omnipotent God can "do 
 anything," and, therefore, he can perform this or 
 that particular marvel. The protest against breaks 
 or "isolated wonders," which has been so often 
 urged by the scientist as an argument against mir- 
 acle, is sustained. In philosophy of religion no 
 less than in scientific thinking we must insist upon 
 continuity, but the main matter is to be able to per- 
 ceive that it is the larger continuity of moral pur- 
 pose. A personal God must be thought of as con- 
 cerned not only with running the universe on schedule 
 time, but with those great moral aims which look to 
 the advancement of men in the things of the spirit. 
 
 Divine Purpose Realized in the Historic Christian Revela- 
 tion through Miracle. Here, then, is firm ground for the 
 belief that there have been occasions in the revelation 
 of the personal God to men when, in order that the 
 moral purposes might remain continuous, God needed 
 to manifest his power in ways that to us were un- 
 
276 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 familiar and extraordinary. Let the supreme miracle 
 of Christianity be our illustration, for in this discus- 
 sion concerning the admissibility of a supernatural 
 element in the divine revelation we shall be driven to 
 the tomb of Jesus Christ ultimately, and we might as 
 well go there at once. We may well think God's pur- 
 poses are best served by having death constitute such 
 a final end of our present existence that no return of 
 those who have gone beyond the shadows takes place. 
 But at a critical time in the historic revelation called 
 Christianity we are assured on excellent historical 
 testimony that God did permit certain men and 
 women to see their Master, Jesus Christ, after he had 
 gone beyoud the veil of death. This was indeed an 
 extraordinary event — a miracle. 
 
 Standing now on the vantage ground of the cen- 
 turies, it is not difficult for us to see how absolutely 
 necessary it was for the continuance of the revelation 
 of God through Jesus Christ that those first followers 
 should have become perfectly certain that their Lord 
 was alive and not dead. Had not the unshakable con- 
 viction been borne into the souls of those early dis- 
 ciples that Jesus Christ their Lord was alive again, 
 Christianity would not have survived its birth. The 
 "Easter Message," to use Harnack's famous phrase, 
 gave them the "Easter faith," and it has never yet 
 been shown how they could have come into the firm 
 and joyous possession of the Easter faith without the 
 empty tomb and the appearances. 
 
 From one point of view the miracle of Joseph's 
 garden was a gracious condescension of the Divine to 
 human limitations. And this is what every miracle 
 is. Those early followers of Christ were not critical 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 277 
 
 thinkers. They could not think of him separate from 
 the well-known face and form. Face, form, voice — ■ 
 the print of the nail even — were necessary accompani- 
 ments to the realization of his personal presence. The 
 meaning of the resurrection did not lie in the reviving 
 of a dead body, but in the continuation of the personal 
 life of Jesus. Of course he was far more than the 
 flesh and bone of his familiar figure. We find our- 
 selves groping as soon as we seek to establish the iden- 
 tity of his body after the resurrection with that body 
 which he had before his death. How a material thing 
 may change its attributes and characteristics and yet 
 remain the same thing is an exceedingly dark problem. 
 We can gain no assurances as long as we remain on 
 the plane of the physical and inquire about the body. 
 But we reach firmer ground and clearer insight when 
 we come to the personal traits of Jesus himself. How- 
 ever much his body was changed, he was not. His per- 
 sonal interests do not seem to have been altered. His 
 mental traits, his affections — all that made him truly 
 what he was to the disciples — were not changed by 
 death. Here is the great and significant fact of the 
 resurrection. However change may have come over 
 his body, he himself was not changed. He was "this 
 same Jesus." 
 
 And yet while we do well not to lay too much 
 emphasis upon the body in thinking of the resurrec- 
 tion, we must remember that those deep-souled men 
 of Galilee and Judsea needed the "outward witness for 
 the things of the soul." Without the sight of their 
 risen Lord their prostrate faith in him could never 
 have found its marvelous rebirth. The miracle itself 
 was a gracious condescension to their limitations — 
 
278 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 needing, as they certainly did, the sight of the empty 
 grave and the sensible presence of the familiar form 
 of him whom they loved, in order that faith in him as 
 Divine Lord might be born in their souls with unshak- 
 able certainty. Without this certainty and confidence 
 we know that Christianity could never have been. Do 
 we not see, then, that the miracle of the resurrection 
 more than any other event assured the continuity of 
 God's great purpose in the Christian revelation? 
 Thus it appears that the supernatural event known 
 as the resurrection of Jesus far from being a "break" 
 was really necessary to continuance of the purposes 
 of God. The moral continuity of the divine plan de- 
 manded such adaptation of the revelation to those to 
 whom it was being made. From the moral point of 
 view the resurrection seems inevitable and natural. 
 After all, the question is whether the resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ is credible — remembering all that he 
 was, and all that has come into the world from his 
 teaching, life, and death. 
 
 Miracles and Christian Faith. In answer to those who 
 urge that belief in miracles in these modern days is 
 an embarrassment to faith rather than a help let it 
 be said that by belief in the supernatural we do not 
 mean the acceptance of every marvelous tale recorded 
 in the Bible. We mean acceptance of those miracles 
 in which a great moral or spiritual purpose of God 
 may be discerned. There are miracles and miracles. 
 The miracles of the Bible run all the way from the 
 exploits of Samson to the record of many eyewitnesses 
 that they saw their Lord and talked with him after 
 his death. Even the most impervious advocate of 
 verbal inspiration would hardly rank these as equally 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 279 
 
 significant, because both are in the Bible. The vindi- 
 cation of a miracle on philosophical grounds lies in 
 perceiving how it serves great moral purposes of God 
 in the revelation. A miracle which does this will have 
 ethical dignity and moral meaning. The exploits of 
 Samson and the tales told of Elisha and other mate- 
 rial of the same sort fall far below the moral level of 
 the acts of Jesus and the apostles recorded in the New 
 Testament. Any modern justification of the super- 
 natural as an essential part of the Christian revela- 
 tion demands that we distinguish between the miracle 
 which is the product of an uncritical wonder-loving 
 age and the miracle of moral dignity and spiritual 
 worth. The former we make no essential part of the 
 revelation. The latter we cherish as significant adap- 
 tations of God's method in revelation to an age that 
 needed such signs. In answer, then, to the question, 
 How shall we distinguish? it may be suggested that 
 the rational acceptance of any particular miracle as 
 worthy of place in the Christian revelation may rest 
 upon three grounds — historical attestation, moral 
 dignity or ethical appropriateness, and spiritual sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 Miracles and Historic Christianity. In answer to those 
 Christian thinkers to-day who urge they do not need 
 supernatural events as an outward witness for the 
 things of the soul it is sufficient to say that the apos- 
 tles and early Christians did, and the great majority 
 of the followers of Jesus to-day do. It is a fact of reli- 
 gious experience that for the great mass of men posi- 
 tive Christian faith has not been able long to survive 
 when confidence in the supernatural element in the 
 Gospels has been weakened. And certain it is that 
 
280 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 without that great and victorious faith in Christ, 
 born in the early Christians through belief in the 
 supernatural, there would have been no Christianity. 
 Without doubt the testimony of personal experience 
 ranks above the acceptance of historical evidence for 
 making the things of the spirit real. Ultimately we 
 know Christ as Saviour of the world because we have 
 come to know him as our own Saviour. It was so 
 with Paul, and it is so with every one who really finds 
 Christ. But how shall a soul find that strong personal 
 assurance in experience that gives the eternal cer- 
 tainty? Is it not something we must grow into? 
 Does it not come with loving and serving? And where 
 do we begin? Always with the Christ of Galilee and 
 Calvary. Always with the historic revelation — with 
 the gospel story. We cannot come to possess the 
 Christian ideals by which our lives are to be shaped 
 and dominated unless we begin with the historic 
 Christ. Let this gospel story be stripped of its mirac- 
 ulous features, and it loses its power to grip men and 
 hold them. There can be no going on in personal expe- 
 rience to the certainties of faith until faith has grown 
 up to it, from the preceding certainties of faith in the 
 historic revelation. 
 
 To a Christian who says he has outgrown the need 
 of the supernatural because he says he sees God in 
 everything the answer is : "You say belief in the super- 
 natural does not now aid your faith. But it did aid 
 your faith. Indeed, without your belief in the super- 
 natural your faith would probably not have been born. 
 And as for the long line of spiritual ancestors from 
 whom you have inherited your rich spiritual heritage, 
 they believed in the miraculous element in the his- 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPERNATURAL 281 
 
 toric gospel. And could you ever have gotten to the 
 realms where spiritual truths seem so clear and direct 
 to you, unless you had traveled the long way up from 
 a belief in the supernatural, and unless you had en- 
 tered upon the possession of the spiritual riches of 
 those who have gone before you!" 
 
 Belief in the Supernatural a Practical Demand of Faith. 
 In the last analysis, belief in the supernatural, like 
 all the rest of our convictions, comes from the prac- 
 tical needs of the moral life far more than from a log- 
 ical process. The demands of religious faith afford 
 the best justification. Belief, as Professor Bowne so 
 constantly urged, is practical in its nature. It is not 
 an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is valuable 
 for what it helps us to, and its grounds lie quite as 
 much in practical necessity as in logical inference. 
 The great and essential thing in the Christian life is 
 not belief in the supernatural but faith in God show- 
 ing itself in love and obedience and in the Spirit of 
 Christ in our relations with fellow men. But the 
 dynamic of Christianity, its moral motive power for 
 the life of faith and service, is to be found in loyalty 
 to Jesus Christ. And experience undoubtedly shows 
 that when belief in the supernatural character of 
 Jesus Christ is weakened or given up, the moral 
 dynamic which results from a sense of personal loy- 
 alty to him is greatly diminished. Without the attes- 
 tation of his divinity, which the supernatural events 
 of his life gave, the martyrs could not have gone cheer- 
 fully to death trusting steadfastly in him. Nor could 
 the countless thousands of his followers have acknowl- 
 edged him joyously as Lord and Master, living by his 
 teachings and dying in the hope of eternal fellowship 
 
282 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 with him. Belief in the supernatural is, after all, not 
 so much a deduction from evidence as it is a reli- 
 gious demand of the soul. For the great mass of men 
 the things of the spirit do not remain sure and stead- 
 fast without this outward witness, which God in his 
 wise condescension has graciously granted. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 Belief in Life After Death in Early Religions. Belief in 
 the human soul and its survival of physical death is 
 as old as religion itself. And while it may not be as 
 universal as the belief in and worship of superhuman 
 spirits, nevertheless it is a very important element in 
 primitive culture. On the human side, this belief un- 
 doubtedly arose in the thought of early men as they 
 faced the fact of death. They could not understand 
 it. They were unable to think of their fellow, who 
 had so recently been among them, vigorous and active, 
 as suddenly ceasing to exist. He had gone away. 
 Sleep furnished the basis for the early conception that 
 the soul or spirit could leave the body for a little 
 while, as it was supposed, and then return. Then too, 
 dreams seemed to furnish corroboration for this early 
 belief in the soul and its survival. In the dream the 
 dead warrior is seen back again fighting with his fel- 
 lows of the tribe; the dead father is with his family, 
 the mother seems to hold again the little child who 
 has gone. 
 
 In Religion of Assyria and Babylonia. Out of primitive 
 religion grew the great historic religions, and in none 
 of these is the belief in the soul and its survival of 
 death lacking. In the religion of ancient Babylonia 
 and Assyria there is no trace of a belief that death 
 
 283 
 
284 FOUNDATIONS OP CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ends the life of the individual. The spirits of the dead 
 all go to an immense underground cavern called 
 Aralu. The entrance to this vast place was near a 
 great mountain where the sun goes down. All who 
 enter have to cross a river. Here their life is a 
 shadowy and joyless counterpart of the earthly exist- 
 ence. To what extent the souls of the departed are 
 conscious of their sad state does not appear. No ideas 
 of reward or retribution are found in these early con- 
 ceptions. 1 
 
 In Early Aryan Religion. Among Aryan peoples the 
 same general view of life after death prevailed with 
 some significant additions. Thus besides the cheer- 
 less underworld there now appears a happier land, 
 above ground, far away toward the setting sun. At 
 first this better abode was for the chiefs, who had had 
 the best of everything in this life, and for the bravest 
 warriors who had fought in defense of the tribe. 
 Little by little it became the belief that the valiant 
 and the good at death went to the happier land to be 
 with the chiefs and the heroes, while the cowardly and 
 the bad went to the old dreary abode underground. 
 And here is the beginning of the idea of retribution 
 in the after life. With the growth of ethical ideals 
 and the increasing emphasis upon each as a moral 
 individual, standards were formed for the judging of 
 conduct, and a doctrine of reward and punishment 
 came into religious thinking. When the Indo-Iraniau 
 tribes separated to form the Persian and the Hindu 
 peoples, the former developed a well-defined set of be- 
 liefs in regard to life after death. These included 
 a judgment, a resurrection, a blessed abode, or heaven, 
 
 1 See Jastrow, Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians, chap. xxv. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 285 
 
 and a dark and cheerless abode, or hell. But it must 
 be remembered that so long as religion remained 
 tribal or national it was a man's relation to the tribe 
 which determined where his soul went. The ancient 
 Persian belief was that their own people went to 
 heaven and other peoples to hell. The Aryan invaders 
 of India seem not to have developed the conception 
 of rewards and retribution in the after life, for it is 
 not found in the Vedas. As the early Vedic faith 
 stiffened into Brahmanism the conception of trans- 
 migration of souls took the place of the primitive 
 heaven and hell beliefs. And in time with the growth 
 of moral standards by which to judge the conduct of 
 the individual, transmigration took on the character 
 of retribution, if not reward. Thus the hell of Brah- 
 manism became an undesirable rebirth. 2 
 
 The early Greeks shared with other primitive peo- 
 ples the belief that the soul is immortal and that at 
 death it leaves the body to continue existence in a far- 
 away subterranean abode. This place they called 
 Hades. But it must be remembered that in early 
 Greek thought Hades does not correspond to the later 
 ideas either of heaven or hell. It was believed in 
 simply because the idea of annihilation seemed im- 
 possible to the early mind. In the Odyssey (Book 
 XI) we have the Homeric thought concerning the 
 existence of those who have gone beyond death. Men 
 did not hope for it as we do for heaven, nor were there 
 associated with it the horrors of the mediaeval hell. It 
 had no ethical meaning. Immortality, or "immortal 
 souls" in the modern sense, would have had no mean- 
 ing of hope or joy to the men of the Homeric age. 
 
 2 See Rhys David's Hibbert Lectures on Buddhism, p. 81. 
 
286 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 The survival of primitive ancestor worship among the 
 Greeks no doubt delayed the development of any 
 moralizing of the view of the after life. 
 
 But in the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. Greek 
 religion underwent a remarkable development. The 
 mythological conceptions of the earlier days were 
 transformed into a religious philosophy by the Orphic 
 thinkers — poets and philosophers of the age of the 
 Greek awakening. The soul, not the body, is now 
 thought of as the reality. It lives in the prison house 
 of the body, but is divine in origin, and when duly 
 purified will be fit for fellowship with the Divine 
 Spirit in the abodes of the blessed. The religion of 
 the Mysteries takes the place of the older popular 
 worship of polytheism. A monotheism begins to grow 
 up in the thinking of the most enlightened. But it 
 was speculative, and for the practical purposes of 
 religious worship the older pantheon of gods w T as 
 retained. The object of the Orphic doctrines and cere- 
 monials was the discipline and purification of the soul. 
 To the initiated the future held no terrors. Immor- 
 tality was the essential attribute of the Divine, and 
 he who came into harmony with the Divine became 
 immortal. 
 
 In Keligion of Ancient Egypt. No religion of antiquity 
 worked out doctrines of the future life in such detail 
 as that of Egypt. The "Book of the Dead" is a very 
 remarkable record and is one of the oldest documents 
 of remote antiquity dating from a period between 
 2500 and 3000 B. C. 3 The journey of the soul into the 
 realms beyond death was thought to be full of dangers. 
 Evil beings in many terrible forms infested the path- 
 
 » A translation by E. A. Wallis Budge is now published in three small volumes. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 287 
 
 way before the lonely traveler could reach the judg- 
 ment hall of Osiris, and thence, if acquitted, pass to 
 the abodes of the blessed. And so the custom grew up 
 of securing from the priests the potent magical for- 
 mulae which would drive away the terrors or render 
 them powerless to harm the soul. At first these were 
 written on the inside of the mummy case or coffin. 
 But when they became very extensive they had to be 
 inscribed upon papyrus rolls and put into the coffin. 
 From these grew that vast collection of instructions 
 and incantation formulae — the work of the priests — 
 of which the Book of the Dead is a record. We can- 
 not go into the Egyptian beliefs concerning the life 
 after death. It would include almost the whole of 
 Egyptian religion. It must suffice to note that here in 
 this land of the Nile conceptions of moral merit and 
 demerit and a system of rewards and retribution in 
 the after life grew up two or three thousand years in 
 advance of the Greeks or the Hebrews. Egyptian reli- 
 gion is not yet fully systematized and adequate 
 history of its development is not yet possible. Look- 
 ing at the mass of material we now have, it appears as 
 a wonderful and pathetic mingling of well developed 
 religious ideas and high moral conceptions with sur- 
 viving superstitions of the lowest grade, the whole 
 permeated with a contemptible priestcraft. But the 
 important point for our present discussion is that 
 Egypt's religion was dominated through and through 
 with the belief in the immortality of the soul, and, 
 unlike contemporary peoples, the thought of the 
 Egyptians looked constantly to the future. 
 
 Hebrew Beliefs. Among the Hebrews the current 
 beliefs with regard to life beyond death were not dif- 
 
288 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 ferent from those of the Greeks of the Homeric age. 
 The vast underground world they called Sheol. 4 It 
 seems practically to have been equivalent to the Greek 
 Hades — a great subterranean region where the souls 
 of the dead went and where they lived a shadowy life 
 in a cheerless condition. Comparatively little is said 
 of Sheol, and there is every indication that the con- 
 dition of the souls after death occupied an unimpor- 
 tant place in early Hebrew thinking. The practical 
 character of the Hebrews and their lack of imagina- 
 tion is seen in the contrast between the fullness of 
 detail concerning Hades which we find in Greek liter- 
 ature and the bare suggestions as to the character of 
 Sheol in the Old Testament. 
 
 The belief in the immortality of the individual 
 rests upon two great truths which did not come into 
 the religious thinking of Israel until the teachings of 
 the prophets had begun to bear fruit. The first is the 
 moral relation of the individual to God. This great 
 idea was not realized until ethical monotheism had 
 become firmly established. But after the exile the 
 supreme values in religion became those of the per- 
 sonal life, and then and not until then was any doc- 
 trine of personal immortality possible. It might have 
 followed almost immediately after the teachings of 
 the great prophet of the exile, but for the fact that 
 the Puritan revival under Ezra was given up to the 
 
 * This home of the departed is deep and dark (Job 11; 8. 21, 22); it is in the bowels 
 of the earth and has many depths (Num. 16. 30; Deut. 32. 22; Prov. 9. 18). It is 
 fastened with gates and bars (Isa. 38. 10; Job 17. 16). This means that the souls once 
 in cannot get out. In Sheol are the souls of the dead (the Rephaim) , and evil spirits 
 (Psa 84. 13; 89. 48; Prov. 23. 14; Ezek. 31. 17; 32. 21). It is all-devouring, cruel, and 
 implacable (Isa. 5. 14; Cant. 8. 6; Prov. 1. 12; 27. 20; 30. 16; Hab. 2. 5). There is no 
 return or resurrection from the dead (Job 7. 9f.). In Sheol there is no mental activity, 
 or memory of the past (Job 14. 13; Psa. 6. 5; 31. 17; 49. 14; 88. 3-6; Isa 38. 18). From 
 Sheol the shades of the departed might be recalled by necromancy (see 1 Sam. J.&. 
 7-20). 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 289 
 
 establishment of the external features of religion — 
 the formation of the canon of sacred writings and the 
 establishment of the ritual of the priestly law. The 
 development of religious thought which had gone on 
 so rapidly under the prophets was almost wholly 
 stalled. Then, too, the delay of the promised king- 
 dom of the Messiah occasioned the skeptical reaction 
 of the third century. It was not until the persecu- 
 tions broke forth in the second century under Anti- 
 ochus Epiphanes that the religious faith of Judaism 
 burned again with a clear and steady flame. Then 
 it was that the nation began to take seriously and at 
 full face value the teachings of their great prophets 
 concerning the experience of fellowship with Jeho- 
 vah. The book of Daniel was written during these 
 fearful days when the pagan king was seeking to 
 root out the faith of Judaism. The story of the 
 bloody conflict between Antiochus and the faithful 
 Jews under Judas Maccabaeus is familiar. It was 
 a life and death struggle for Judaism. Many had 
 fallen and many must yet fall. The book of Daniel 5 
 proclaimed that those who had fallen in the Lord's 
 battles would not lose the joy of the final victory. 
 God will raise them up again. They have laid down 
 their lives for God, therefore God will raise them 
 up to a life of blessedness in the Messianic kingdom. 
 And thus the faith in a resurrection and a personal 
 immortality first grew strong amid the fires of perse- 
 cution. It was taught by the Pharisees in connection 
 with a strict doctrine of future rewards and punish- 
 ments during the generations immediately preceding 
 the coming of Christ. 
 
 * Dan. 12. 1-3. Compare Enoch 90. 20-26. 
 
290 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Immortality in the New Testament. By this time it 
 appears that the word "immortality" should stand for 
 the belief in the continuation of the personal life of 
 the individual after death. The miserable and 
 shadowy existence in Hades or Sheol, with no life of 
 thought or feeling and little or no memory of the past, 
 cannot be termed immortality in the sense in which 
 we use the word in Christian thought. A search of 
 the Old Testament soon convinces us that immortality 
 with the richer content which Christ gave the belief 
 is practically absent. True, later teachers of Judaism 
 developed a doctrine of personal rewards aud pun- 
 ishment. And Sheol was transformed into the more 
 awful "Gehenna," the name being applied to the 
 ravine of Hiunom, into which the offal from the 
 temple and other refuse was thrown. Here a fire 
 burned constantly. This dread spot, according to the 
 orthodox teachers of Judaism, was a fitting illustra- 
 tion of the place to which the souls of the wicked 
 would be consigned at death. It was a fearful teach- 
 ing, the Jewish antecedent of the later mediaeval doc- 
 trine of a hell of fire and torments. The heaven of 
 Judaism was thought of as the glorious consumma- 
 tion of the Messianic kingdom. It would take place 
 on earth and the righteous dead would be raised at 
 the sound of a mighty trumpet to meet the Lord and 
 his Anointed. 6 
 
 Faith of the Early Christians Based on the Teaching of 
 Jesus. But what a contrast as we turn from the Old 
 Testament to the New ! If the Old Testament is prac- 
 
 • See Isa 26 19 and Dan. 12. 2. Compare also Enoch 51. 5; Baruch 30. 1-5; IV 
 Esdras 6. 23; 7. 32; Orac. Syb.4, 173, and many other places ia the Jewish apocalypses 
 (compare 1 Thess. 4. 15). 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 291 
 
 tically without a doctrine of immortality, the New 
 Testament is full of it. The solemn cadences of the 
 thirty-seventh and ninetieth psalms, which mourn- 
 fully recite the brevity and weakness of our pilgrim 
 life, give place to joyous expressions of victory. The 
 faith in personal immortality dominates everything 
 in the New Testament. It gives meaning to the word 
 "hope" when used in the Christian sense. In the faith 
 of the early Christian Church, based, as it was, upon 
 the teaching of Christ and upon a sense of personal 
 fellowship with him, we find the belief in immortality 
 with the highest ethical implications and the richest 
 spiritual content. 
 
 The Christian Faith in Immortality. Prom Jesus's 
 teaching and life came the Christian belief in the 
 future. This belief is, in a word, that through faith 
 in Christ the believer receives the gift of eternal life. 
 Physical death has no power to end the life of the 
 spirit. The life beyond death has its beginnings in 
 the present, and there are common elements enough 
 to make our spiritual existence one. But the life 
 beyond death will transcend the present life. All 
 those factors which make the present unhappy and 
 sorrowful will be eliminated. Death will be past, 
 physical weakness, pain, and disease will be no more. 
 Disaster, disappointment, and everything which 
 makes life painful will be no part of the life beyond 
 death. In the beautiful words of the apostle John, 
 "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." The 
 physical body with its susceptibility to disease and 
 decay will be a thing of the past. But the body serves 
 such important uses in the personal life that the 
 apostle Paul, when he tried to think out the conditions 
 
292 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 of the glorified life, could not conceive the spirit with- 
 out some embodiment, and so he teaches that the soul 
 will have a "spiritual body" suited to the conditions 
 of the life beyond death (1 Cor. 15). Paul could not 
 conceive of "pure spirit" — that is, spirit apart from 
 all kinds of bodily manifestation — without a sacrifice 
 of personal reality and identity. Nor can we. Per- 
 sonal recognition seems inconceivable without a body 
 of some kind. And so, because of the fact that we 
 cannot possibly transcend our finite experience in 
 trying to think what the life beyond death may be, we 
 need the concept the apostle has given, as a help to 
 faith. The dogma that the material body of our pres- 
 ent life will be reanimated is no part of the Christian 
 faith in immortality, even though it has found its way 
 into theology. It is essentially a materialistic and 
 pagan creed. The Christian faith in immortality 
 means the continuation of all the higher and finer 
 personal relationships which enrich our human life. 
 Those who are near and dear to each other in the 
 home circle, or in the bonds of friendship are not to 
 be separated in the life beyond death. 
 
 All our thinking must be under the thought forms 
 known as time and space. These we cannot escape; 
 and if we are to think at all, it must be in these rela- 
 tions which condition all our experience. The life 
 beyond death is everlasting. We may dimly adum- 
 brate the meaning here, but we really cannot compre- 
 hend it. To do so would be to pass beyond the condi- 
 tions and limitations of our finite thinking. Is the 
 immortal life timeless? Are the conditions under 
 which those live who have gone beyond the veil totally 
 different from those which govern all our present 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 293 
 
 thought and activity? We cannot tell. Is heaven a 
 place? It is not easy to think of existence without 
 definite space relations. But the more permanent and 
 profound matter, after all, is not space relations but 
 personal relations. Where is the home? In the house 
 where all the things are gathered which minister to 
 the comfort of those in the home circle? Yes. But 
 some day the devouring flame may turn the house and 
 all in it to ashes. But the father and mother with the 
 children safe may gather and offer a prayer of grati- 
 tude that the home was not broken into. The real 
 home is not so much a place, but exists, rather, in the 
 sacred relationships of those who make the home 
 circle. Love makes the home in the most enduring 
 sense. Space relations are always relative to us. 
 "Here" is where we are — the point of departure from 
 our vision, our activity. "Where is heaven?" it may 
 be asked. We do not know. But Jesus taught men 
 that the kingdom of heaven begins here and now. It 
 is a condition of the soul growing into something 
 nobler and diviner as time goes on. Heaven is fellow- 
 ship with God — the love and service of fellow men — 
 and it begins in this life if it begins at all. In speak- 
 ing of the perfected heavenly life after death the New 
 Testament uses the language not of space location but 
 of personal relations. Paul speaks of the life after 
 death as being a condition when he will be "at home 
 with the Lord." Jesus promised his disciples that 
 they should be with him in the "Father's house of 
 many mansions." This is the faith of the follower of 
 Jesus Christ in the life beyond death. 
 
 Foundation of this Faith in Immortality. This Chris- 
 tian faith in the life beyond death is founded upon the 
 
294 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 teaching of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Jesus 
 from the dead. Let us briefly consider them. 
 
 The Teaching of Jesus. Christian faith in the life 
 after death — whether in the first century or in the 
 twentieth — rests upon what Jesus Christ taught and 
 all that he is. Two great aspects of his teaching are 
 most significant. First, he taught the supreme value 
 of human personality. Men are of infinite worth. 
 What mean those matchless parables of the lost coin, 
 the lost sheep, and the lost son? Just this, that the 
 human soul has a permanent and undiminished value. 
 This love for men as of infinite worth is one of the 
 great dominant motives in Jesus's wonderful devo- 
 tion to humanity. He saw in the most debased the 
 image of the eternal. No matter how dimmed with 
 sin and degradation, it was there, an intrinsic and 
 unalterable value. It was this sense of the incompar- 
 able worth of human personality as compared with 
 all mere material values, which lies at the basis of the 
 conviction of immortality which Jesus taught. For 
 him personality was the only reality. And with God 
 as the Supreme Personality the universe, so far as it 
 is significant and permanent, is a universe consisting 
 in personal relations and moral values. "This is 
 eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true 
 God, and him whom thou didst send." 
 
 Second, the ground of this lofty valuation of men 
 is found in the fact that Jesus always thought of men 
 as "sons" of God. They are divine in their origin — 
 children of the Eternal Father. The "kingdom of 
 God" meant the coming into a full realization of this 
 great relation of divine sonship and attaining the 
 actual experience of fellowship with God. In Jesus's 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 295 
 
 thought religion means the fellowship of man, whom 
 God has made with spiritual capacities, with God 
 himself. And fellowship with God means entering 
 into participation with the life of God; and this in 
 turn implies that such a spiritual and divine fellow- 
 ship endures beyond the physical change called death. 
 Thus the immortality of the finite spirit follows as a 
 consequence when men enter the spiritual life — the 
 life of God. Jesus never argued for immortality. He 
 simply assumed it in all that he said concerning the 
 relation of men to God. 
 
 The Resurrection of Jesus from the Dead. Not only does 
 the Christian faith in life beyond death rest upon 
 Christ's teaching, but it has also the foundation of 
 historic occurrence. The resurrection of Jesus raises 
 inevitable questions as to the credibility of such an 
 event. These may be reduced to two considerations ; 
 first, Is the event philosophically credible? and, 
 second, Is it historically credible? We have sought 
 to answer the first of these questions in the preced- 
 ing chapter. Belief in God as a Personal Being mani- 
 festing himself in an historic revelation answers all 
 scruples as to the possibility of such an extraordinary 
 event. For God must be thought of as supreme over 
 nature, and his purposes may be expressed in the un- 
 usual and (to us) unfamiliar events quite as easily 
 as in the ordinary and regular processes of nature. 
 
 Second, Is the resurrection of Jesus historically 
 credible? Testimony that Jesus was seen after his 
 death by many competent witnesses is repeatedly 
 recorded in ancient documents which are universally 
 considered perfectly genuine. There are only three 
 possibilities: (1) That Jesus never really died, but 
 
296 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 revived after a prolonged swoon. (2) That he died 
 and never rose again. (3) That he died and did rise, 
 even as his followers testified. Now, we certainly can- 
 not repeat the convincing arguments which show the 
 utter untenability of the first and second of these 
 possibilities. They are to be found in many excellent 
 works 7 on evidences of Christianity. It is very cer- 
 tain that fewer difficulties are encountered when we 
 accept the Gospel records of Jesus's resurrection as 
 essentially trustworthy accounts of actual historical 
 occurrences. Undoubtedly the greatest single argu- 
 ment for the fact of Jesus's resurrection is the revival 
 of the prostrate faith of his disciples. There is, in- 
 deed, no adequate way of accounting for this except 
 to receive at face value the statements of the dis- 
 ciples that they saw their Lord. The fact that Chris- 
 tianity was founded upon the resurrection of Jesus 
 and would have been impossible without that event 
 sufficiently indicates the reason why such an event 
 was necessary, if the historic revelation of God 
 through Christ was to go on. 
 
 We have now traced in brief outline the belief in 
 immortality as it has developed in the growth of reli- 
 gion, especially in Christianity. We see that this 
 belief has played no small part in the history of reli- 
 gion. In Christianity it has become a deep spiritual 
 conviction with an ethical content far higher than in 
 any other religion. We come now to the question 
 whether all the knowledge of the nature of man and 
 of the world about us, which has been gained through 
 modern science, adds to or detracts from the credi- 
 
 7 See Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 166f.; also A. B. Bruce, 
 Apologetics, chap. IV. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 297 
 
 bility of this belief. And what truths can we gather 
 from the best thinking in recent philosophy which will 
 strengthen our faith in the continuance of personal 
 life beyond death? We shall not seek logical proof or 
 conclusive demonstration, for there is none. No liv- 
 ing man has ever had the experience of immortality. 
 If it is a real experience, it is a future event for each 
 of us. And in the very nature of the case the proof 
 of a future event is logically impossible. All we can 
 hope to do is to elevate belief from the level of a fond 
 hope to that of a conviction resting upon rational con- 
 siderations which seem to imply an overwhelming 
 degree of probability. 
 
 Belief, as we have seen (Chapter III), consists 
 essentially in accepting a thing as true on adequate 
 rational grounds. It remains now to ask, "Upon 
 what rational grounds may we base the belief in im- 
 mortality?" For the man who thinks, faith must be 
 preceded by accredited belief. Faith is the personal 
 relationship expressing itself in loyalty, confidence, 
 and trust. This necessary relation of belief to faith 
 is well expressed by the apostle James : "He who Com- 
 eth to God [in faith] must believe that he is, and that 
 he is the rewarder of them who diligently seek him." 
 Putting this truth in other phrase, it would be, Reli- 
 gious faith through which we experience the presence 
 of God must rest not only upon the belief in God's 
 existence but also upon the conviction that God re- 
 veals himself to those who seek to know him. Belief 
 in the continuation of the personal life is necessary 
 to that deeper trust and confidence in God which is 
 the soul of Christian living. What, then, we repeat, 
 are the foundations of belief in the life bevond death ? 
 
298 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Grounds for the Christian Belief in Immortality from 
 Science. Let us ask, first, what science may offer in 
 the way of considerations for the belief in immortal- 
 ity. There is no direct proof from evidence. The 
 data of science are phenomena, and thus far nothing 
 has been won which gives evidence of the continuance 
 of life after death. It is true that during the past 
 few years a good deal of attention has been devoted 
 by some reputable investigators to what is called 
 psychical research. But the consensus of opinion 
 among scholars to-day is undoubtedly that, in spite of 
 a vast amount of dredging in the turbid waters of 
 "psychic phenomena," little, if anything, has come up 
 which throws light on the problem of the continuance 
 of personal consciousness after death, while consid- 
 erable material may have been gained which will aid 
 in the further study of that borderland in psychology 
 — the realm of the subconscious. 
 
 But even if science can offer no direct affirmation, 
 she is equally impotent to urge any direct negative. 
 While there is no proof in the ordinary sense, there 
 is certainly no disproof of immortality. If, therefore, 
 we are to gain something of value from science in 
 building a rational foundation for belief, it would 
 not be by the way of direct demonstrations but, 
 rather, by broad inferences from the great facts 
 and doctrines which form our scientific faith to- 
 day. We must endeavor to relate the belief in 
 immortality to our other beliefs and find a rational 
 place for it in the whole of our thinking. Only thus 
 is it a real belief, resting upon a solid foundation, 
 and only thus can it lead to broad and intelligent 
 faith. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 299 
 
 Let ns note one or two objections which are offered 
 to the belief in immortality. 
 
 It is sometimes urged that the pedigree of this be- 
 lief is against it. Are we to accept as profoundly sig- 
 nificant and true a belief which originated, as an- 
 thropology assures us, in the crude thinking of prim- 
 itive peoples when they came face to face with the 
 familiar yet mysterious fact of death? But this ob- 
 jection loses what force it seems to have when it is 
 remembered that all our great beliefs started in very 
 lowly beginnings. The value of a belief or a whole 
 science is not diminished by the humbleness of its 
 human origin. Is medicine the less scientific and 
 valuable because it has its origins in magic, or chem- 
 istry because it began in alchemy, or astronomy be- 
 because it began in astrology? The fact is that the 
 value and truth in a belief or institution or science is 
 not to be determined by its origin, but by its develop- 
 ment, not by the manner of its beginning, but by what 
 it leads to. 
 
 Another objection to immortality has been found 
 in our inability to conceive or even to imagine what 
 a life apart from bodily conditions could be. It is 
 true that our thought cannot transcend the forms 
 imposed upon it by our conscious experience. We are 
 not able to conceive what a spirit would be like abso- 
 lutely without these bodily means of expression and 
 communication with other personal spirits which are 
 so fundamental to our human life. The apostle Paul 
 could not conceive of personal spirits as disembodied 
 (2 Cor. 5. 3), and for this reason he conceived of a 
 "spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15). The adjective seems at 
 first to cancel the noun. But not so. On the plane of 
 
300 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 our finite experience we must think of a body as the 
 vehicle or means of recognition, communication, and 
 expression. But does our finite experience exhaust 
 reality? It is one of the cardinal fallacies of which 
 the materialist stands convicted that he assumes that 
 it does. Is there any direct evidence in experience for 
 the reality of the atom and the electron? 8 We may 
 believe in their existence quite as firmly as the mate- 
 rialist, but insist that the ground of our certainty is 
 rational inference, not direct evidence in sense expe- 
 rience. The ether is inconceivable in the sense that 
 we cannot imagine how it can have the properties as- 
 signed to it, But we believe in it. We are perfectly 
 free to admit, then, that some things may be admitted 
 as rationally possible which we are not able to imagine 
 or conceive. Men do this in science with no logical 
 qualms. But they stop at the belief in immortality 
 because they cannot conceive it, and therefore falsely 
 conclude that there is no rational ground for the 
 belief. 
 
 It is at this point that grave difficulties meet every 
 attempt to think out with any detail the conditions 
 of personal existence after death. Staggering ques- 
 tions and unmanageable difficulties soon appear. Do 
 little children grow into mature intelligence in the 
 life beyond? Does the man whose powers of thought 
 and feeling fail as he advances into old age and whose 
 life at last flickers out as does the flame of the candle 
 in the socket — does he undergo a mental rejuvena- 
 tion? There are no answers. Thinkers of maturity 
 now tacitly agree to leave such matters. Many try 
 
 8 I am aware that some experimenters in the realm of molecular physics, while they 
 do not profess to have seen electrons with the microscope, think they have seen the 
 flash of light made by the impact of electrons upon a metallic plate in a vacuum tube. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 301 
 
 not even to think of them, well knowing how hopeless 
 is the prospect for an adequate and satisfying answer. 9 
 Here the traditional and obsolete conceptions of 
 the condition of the personal spirit beyond death come 
 in to confuse the argument. Theological imagination, 
 not always spiritual but often grossly materialistic, 
 has been rife. Jonathan Edwards was no insignifi- 
 cant thinker, but his conceptions in eschatology were 
 unspeakably crude, as his ferocious sermon on "Sin- 
 ners in the Hands of an Angry God" well testifies. 
 Matters are not mended by the suggestion that this 
 may have been lurid rhetoric intended for moral 
 effect. The effect could not be moral, but, on the 
 other hand, was highly immoral in that it taught a 
 conception of God which is very far below the level of 
 Christian thinking. John Wesley's sermon on the 
 "Worm that Dieth Not, and the Fire that Is Not 
 Quenched," while not odious, produces a revulsion of 
 feeling in the mind of everyone whose conception of 
 God has been set by the teachings of Jesus. W T hy is 
 it that the old-fashioned popular conceptions of 
 heaven are now treated so lightly — often burlesqued 
 and made the source of jests? Because it is seen how 
 thoroughly outgrown and useless to our thought they 
 really are. Dr. Jowett, speaking of the popular idea 
 of heaven as a place where the glorified saints fill in 
 their time in cultivating celestial music, both vocal 
 and instrumental, says : "To beings constituted as we 
 are, the monotony of singing psalms would be as great 
 an affliction as the pains of hell, and might even be 
 
 * Any attempt to think out the conditions of life after death with any detail in- 
 evitably leads to a confusing jumble of the spiritual and the palpably material such as 
 we find in the writings of Swedenborg and others who have tried to follow this obscure 
 pathway. 
 
302 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 pleasantly interrupted by them." Some years ago a 
 popular pamphlet entitled Intra Muros had wide cir- 
 culation. It was an account of a wonderful dream 
 which the author, a woman, professes to have had. 
 The book was a highly imaginative conception of what 
 heaven must be, set forth with much detail in pictorial 
 description. Its popularity was a pathetic evidence 
 of the hunger of the human heart to know that which 
 lies beyond the confines of our experience. Saint 
 John has written a beautiful description of the "New 
 Jerusalem." It is a city with streets of gold, walls 
 built of precious jewels, and so on. But it is very evi- 
 dent that these material concepts taken out of our 
 finite experience are made to do duty for glories that 
 are really inexpressible. The most helpful and richly 
 suggestive references to the life beyond contained in 
 the New Testament are those of Paul and Christ. 
 Paul says that God has in store for those who love 
 him "what eye hath not seen, what ear hath not heard, 
 and what hath not entered into the heart of man." 
 In another place he refers to the life to come in the 
 most beautiful phrase, "to be at home with the Lord," 
 while Jesus, in the last tender interview with those he 
 loved, said, "Let not your hearts be troubled; I am 
 going to the Father's house of many mansions, and 
 you will be with me there." 
 
 No one need reject a great truth because it has 
 been imperfectly grasped and inadequately expressed. 
 The diamond's value does not depend upon the poor 
 work which may have been done in settling it. It is 
 always possible to reset the gem and throw the old 
 setting away. But the diamond must not be thrown 
 away with the old setting. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 303 
 
 But there is still another objection more weighty 
 than these we have just noted. We are reminded that 
 nowhere in our experience do we see conscious life 
 without a nervous system. The story of the evolu- 
 tion of our rational consciousness as it is now written 
 in the science of psychology would lead us to conclude 
 that there can be no rational consciousness without 
 the physical organism with its highly complex nerv- 
 ous system. For we are assured that our conscious 
 life began in simple feeling which resulted from the 
 stimulus of nerves with the resulting reaction, due 
 to some form of motion in the molecular structure of 
 nerve tissue. This reaction of nerve to stimulus pro- 
 duces in the newborn infant, for example, effects 
 which are mere feelings — a resultant at first subra- 
 tional. But there is a variety in the stimulus and 
 consequently differentiation in the resulting feelings. 
 This is the beginning of that development of the life 
 of mere feeling and sensation into the life of emotion 
 and rational thought. Now, this account of the evolu- 
 tion of our rational consciousness, no less than what 
 we know of the physical conditions which appear to 
 be necessary for all our thinking, leads to the crucial 
 question whether our conscious life does not depend 
 absolutely upon the existence of a nervous system. 
 So far as our knowledge goes there is no sensation 
 without nerves to react and produce the feeling which 
 seems so basic and indispensable to all our mental 
 life. The conscious life of the individual, therefore, 
 depends upon the nervous system, and with the 
 destruction of the latter we seem compelled to infer 
 the extinction of the former. So runs the standing 
 argument of a materialistic science and philosophy 
 
304 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 against the belief in immortality. What shall we say 
 to this? 
 
 That there is a constant parallelism between mental 
 events on the one hand and some form of motion or 
 change in the nervous system on the other, all must 
 admit. The oft-quoted "No psychosis without neu- 
 rosis" holds so far as our finite experience goes. And 
 if we are not to substitute mere speculation for ra- 
 tional thinking in this matter, we certainly must con- 
 fine ourselves within the limits of our finite expe- 
 rience. The really important question here concerns 
 not the coexistence of these two sets of facts but their 
 relation. The materialistic denial of immortality 
 rests upon the very large assumption that the nervous 
 system is the cause of thought — in other words, that 
 brain produces consciousness. Of course if this be the 
 truth, then it is useless to hope for the continuance 
 of any conscious life after the dissolution of the gray 
 matter of the brain. But there are strong reasons for 
 thinking that this is not the truth. This position of 
 materialism is a wholly unproved assumption and, 
 furthermore, is found to be inadequate in its power to 
 explain the facts. Very often a vivid putting of the 
 facts of the psycho-physical parallelism obscures the 
 immense fallacy concealed in the denial of immortal- 
 ity from this point of view. We are dramatically re- 
 minded that if the heart stops beating even for a frac- 
 tion of a minute and the stream of arterial blood 
 ceases to surge through the blood vessels of the brain, 
 consciousness begins at once to disappear. And when 
 once the heart has ceased to beat the body fails to 
 respond to every sort of stimulus. Therefore, argues 
 materialism, the conscious life of the person ceases 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 305 
 
 with the functioning of the brain, and we are bidden 
 to conclude that our brains are the source of our con- 
 scious existence. 
 
 But we repeat that the fallacy here lies in the 
 assumption that the brain is the prior fact and that 
 consciousness is caused by the functioning of the 
 brain. Now, this is not only an unproved assumption, 
 but, as already remarked, it proves very inadequate 
 in the explanation of the facts. All attempts to ex- 
 plain thought in terms of physical energy have been 
 absolutely futile, and experienced thinkers have prac- 
 tically abandoned the problem. 10 To convert mo- 
 lecular motion (physical energy) into feeling or 
 thought would be quite contrary to the principle of 
 conservation of energy. This has been considered 
 (p. 61). If consciousness has been caused by 
 molecular motion in the brain, then it must cease 
 with the destruction of that organ; but if motion in 
 the brain only accompanies consciousness (so far 
 as our experience extends), then there is absolutely 
 nothing in the facts of the psycho-physical parallelism 
 to forbid the conclusion that consciousness may con- 
 tinue after the destruction of the brain, under condi- 
 tions different from those of our physical life. John 
 Fiske puts the case against materialism strongly 
 enough when he says : "The materialistic assumption 
 that thought cannot exist in the absence of a cerebrum, 
 and that the life of the soul, accordingly, ends with 
 the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal in- 
 stance of baseless assumption that is known in the his- 
 
 l0 Herbert Spencer in earlier editions of his First Principles tried to show how physical 
 energy might be transformed into feeling. But in the last edition (1900) he withdraws 
 from this position and calls attention to the change as one of the most important in 
 the book (see Fiske, Life Everlasting, p. 74). 
 
306 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 tory of philosophy. No evidence for it can be alleged 
 beyond the familiar fact that during the present life 
 we know the soul onty in its association with the body, 
 and therefore cannot discover disembodied soul with- 
 out dying ourselves. This fact must always prevent 
 us from obtaining direct evidence for the belief in 
 the soul's survival. But a negative presumption is 
 not created by the absence of proof in cases where, in 
 the nature of things, proof is inaccessible. With his 
 illegitimate hypothesis of annihilation the material- 
 ist goes beyond the bounds of experience quite as 
 widely as the poet who sings of the New Jerusalem 
 with its river of life and its streets of gold. Scien- 
 tifically speaking, there is not a particle of evidence 
 for either view" (Destiny of Man, p. 110). We may 
 conclude, then, that the position that the brain creates 
 the mind is untenable. It is far more reasonable — 
 more in harmony with the facts — to believe that we as 
 personal beings have a ground of conscious existence 
 other than that physical organism, upon which we do 
 indeed seem so entirely dependent under the condi- 
 tions of our present life. This means that there is 
 nothing in the results of modern science to forbid a 
 belief in immortality. Indeed, the somewhat negative 
 argument from science amounts practically to a vindi- 
 cation of the belief in immortality as wholly reason- 
 able and not out of harmony with the fundamental 
 faith of science. It prepares the way for the positive 
 argument which must always be on broad, moral 
 grounds. We turn therefore to 
 
 Grounds of Belief in Personal Immortality — from Philos- 
 ophy. But if, now, the brain cannot be regarded as 
 the ground or ultimate cause of our conscious exist- 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 307 
 
 ence, the question remains, What is the relation, 
 then, between the brain and the conscious personal 
 life? One well-known answer is that the brain is not 
 to be regarded as the producer but the transmitter of 
 consciousness. This means that through the brain as 
 the medium we receive that consciousness which 
 makes us sentient, rational beings. But from whence 
 does this consciousness come to us through the brain 
 as transmitter? The answer given is from the "Con- 
 sciousness of the Universe," that is to say, from God. 
 Professor James, in his Ingersoll Lecture on "Human 
 Immortality" (1898), expounds this "transmission 
 theory" with his usual brilliancy of style. Material 
 things, as he holds, and the whole natural order mask 
 the Infinite Reality, which is the sole ground of those 
 finite streams of consciousness we call our private 
 selves. Through the brain as a transmitter, he sug- 
 gests, come gleams of the eternal light from the great 
 "mother sea" of reality beyond. 
 
 But any form of transmission theory clearly implies 
 the antecedent existence of the transmitter. The 
 brain must precede that particular stream of con- 
 sciousness which it transmits. Thus the brain be- 
 comes the absolute prerequisite for our finite con- 
 scious life, and the question remains, What becomes 
 of the conscious life of the individual when the trans- 
 mitter is broken? And if this is all, are we really any 
 better off so far as assurances of our personal immor- 
 tality are concerned than we were under the material- 
 istic doctrine which assumed that the brain produces 
 consciousness? 
 
 But this is not all. The parallelism between brain 
 and conscious life is the same whatever our interpre- 
 
308 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 tation. That is, there are two orders of related facts. 
 On the one hand we have the physical facts — mo- 
 lecular motion in the brain; on the other hand the 
 mental facts — a stream of thought and feeling in the 
 mind. What, now, is the explanation of the exact and 
 constant parallelism? The mind does not create the 
 brain; nor does the brain create the mind. In an- 
 swer we must say that both find their ground and 
 harmony in the personal self. We, as persons, as 
 personal selves, are the only adequate explanation 
 of the correlation of brain and mind. Unless we seek 
 an interpretation of the functional relation between 
 brain and consciousness in some factor higher than 
 both we cannot reach any rational grounds for the 
 faith in our own personal existence after death. But 
 this is not all. We are finite selves, that is, persons, 
 having wills relatively free, and thus we are inde- 
 pendent sources of activity. But we certainly cannot 
 think of ourselves as the only ground of the parallel- 
 ism between brain and consciousness. We may have 
 the power, within limits, to direct the stream of our 
 mental activity which makes us what we are; we 
 may use the brain as an instrument of our conscious 
 activity much as the violinist uses his violin; but it 
 is very certain that we did not create the instrument, 
 nor are we responsible for its structural excellencies 
 or defects. Now the ultimate ground of this finite 
 personal life which consists in the constant use by the 
 immaterial self of a material instrument must be the 
 Infinite. God is the only explanation of the constant 
 parallelism between physical function and our con- 
 scious personal life. There is absolutely no rational 
 basis for a belief in personal immortality except in 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 309 
 
 God. And the only ground for our assurances of 
 immortality is the eternal will of God who created 
 the finite spirit not as temporary and fleeting mani- 
 festation of his eternal consciousness, but as a part 
 of a moral order of existence. Here we strike the bed- 
 rock. And it will be noted at once that the funda- 
 mental position is that of Christian theism. No other 
 world-view finds any place for a belief in personal 
 immortality. 
 
 And personality itself must be regarded not as a 
 merely temporal attribute of the finite spirit, but as 
 eternal. Here is where theism parts company with 
 all forms of pantheism. According to pantheism, the 
 end of our human life marks the end of our individual 
 existence. Any immortality of which the pantheist 
 may speak means, not the continuance of a particular 
 personal life, but the survival of the finite in the In- 
 finite. If this means the end of that particular stream 
 of consciousness called myself, it is very difficult to 
 see in what respect the immortality of pantheism 
 really differs from annihilation. And, in fact, it does 
 not. 
 
 If, now, physical death destroys the transmitter 
 through which comes that particular stream of con- 
 sciousness which I know as myself, how is that par- 
 ticular stream of consciousness to continue? Does 
 not the destruction of the brain deprive the Infinite 
 Mind of the condition through which any particular 
 finite consciousness may be expressed? There is only 
 one answer to this difficulty, which will save our 
 belief in the continuance of personal existence. The 
 alternative is the pantheistic conception of our im- 
 mortality through absorption in the Infinite. There- 
 
310 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 fore we turn at once to this answer. It is this: The 
 brain as the instrument of our conscious personal life 
 is not the product of our activity, but is a creation 
 of God, the Personal Infinite. Upon this instrument 
 our conscious life under the present conditions of our 
 human existence does indeed depend. And with the 
 destruction of the instrument which seems so essen- 
 tial to the conditions of our personal life here, we arc 
 not able to conceive how that personal life can go on 
 at all except as we believe that the Infinite Creator, 
 who has given the finite personal spirit so wonder- 
 ful an instrument of expression in the brain, can also 
 give that spirit another instrument when the brain is 
 destroyed. It is essentially this which Saint Paul 
 expounds in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthi- 
 ans. The difficulty of the Greek Christians at Corinth 
 was not as to the possibility of a continuance of spir- 
 itual life, but how such continuance could be con- 
 ceived after death. "With what sort of a body do they 
 come?" w r as the real difficulty (verse 35). Paul rests 
 the whole argument upon the power and purpose of 
 God. He says, in substance, that as w T e recognize God 
 as the Creator of the bodies of the various orders of 
 animal existence, and that these bodies are suited to 
 the conditions under which these various animals 
 live, so we may believe with confidence that the same 
 divine power and purpose will create for us bodies 
 suited to the conditions of the life of the spirit, beyond 
 death. 
 
 It has been urged that the difficulty of conceiving 
 how identity could be continued when the soul's 
 medium of expression has been destroyed militates 
 against this view. But this is not true w r hen the basis 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 311 
 
 of identity (and therefore recognition) is seen to be 
 personal and spiritual and not material. You may 
 not have seen your old friend for years. Materially, 
 he is greatly changed — his hair white, his features 
 altered, etc. Your first exclamation may be, "I would 
 hardly have known you!" But as you sit before the 
 fire in personal fellowship, the identity seems com- 
 plete, and in spite of the changed material aspects you 
 recognize again and again the marks and character- 
 istics of your friend of years ago. But is not the 
 basis of these recognitions personal and spiritual 
 rather than physical? A most important way in 
 which the physical body serves the personal life is in 
 this matter of personal recognitions. And we may 
 well believe that whatever the nature of the instru- 
 ment or medium of the soul which God will grant us 
 in the life beyond death, it will be not only perfectly 
 adapted to the conditions of that life, whatever they 
 may be, but will also preserve such elements of con- 
 tinuity and identity that the power of personal recog- 
 nition (such an indispensable matter in our earthly 
 fellowships) will be fully and perfectly conserved. 
 
 But memory is absolutely necessary to the contin- 
 uation of personal identity. This is the one power of 
 the mind which enables us to aflQrm the continuance 
 of our self as the permanent and abiding factor in the 
 midst of constantly changing mental experience. 
 What, now, shall be said to the objection that mem- 
 ory, since it depends upon certain cerebral function- 
 ings which are now clearly recognized, cannot be con- 
 ceived as continuing after the brain is destroyed? It 
 is undisputed that an injury to a certain portion of 
 the brain will produce lapse of memory. And when 
 
312 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 through disease or advanced age incipient degenera- 
 tion of the cerebral cortex begins, the powers of asso- 
 ciation are greatly weakened and the mental ability to 
 recall past events is seriously diminished. But if the 
 essential thing about memory were a mechanical 
 "registration" through some supposed rearrangement 
 of the particles in the tissue of the cortex, as we some- 
 times hear, then it would follow that the oftener a 
 thing were repeated the firmer it would be impressed 
 in memory. But this is very far from being the case. 
 A sentence consisting of nonsense may be repeated 
 many times and not remembered, while a sentence 
 whose meaning is clear may often be recalled with a 
 single reading. Thought which arouses interest may 
 be carried in the memory and reproduced with ease, 
 while thought which does not arouse interest will not 
 be long retained. This means that the cerebral func- 
 tion is by no means the only, nor even the most im- 
 portant element in memory. Cerebral functions are 
 very important, to be sure, but they do not originate 
 memory, nor does memory necessarily depend upon 
 them. The mind's activity is the essential matter in 
 memory. The material of the cerebral cortex is en- 
 tirely replaced in a few years, or even a few months, 
 depending upon mental conditions. And in spite of 
 this changing of the material medium in which im- 
 pressions are supposed to be "registered," the mind is 
 able to recall events after the lapse of seven, fourteen, 
 forty years. And if ideas and feelings may be thus 
 recalled in vivid memory after the passage of a human 
 lifetime — when the material of the brain has been 
 replaced again and again — it is perfectly reasonable 
 to believe that the personal spirit will be able to re- 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 313 
 
 tain in memory a content of meaning from human 
 experiences sufficient to guarantee the personal con- 
 tinuity of the life beyond death with the life of the 
 present. 
 
 The so called metaphysical argument for immortal- 
 ity need not long detain us, for it has but little bear- 
 ing upon Christian faith. Here come the formal 
 attempts to demonstrate the immortality of the soul 
 like that of some of the mediaeval schoolmen and Des- 
 cartes. The argument is really an empty form of 
 proof, and consists in starting with a definition of the 
 soul which contains by implication the conception of 
 immortality and unfolding this implication with due 
 logical formality. The purely verbal character of 
 the performance will be evident to anyone who care- 
 fully scrutinizes Descartes' so-called proof of immor- 
 tality. The more modern form of the argument gen- 
 erally consists in viewing the soul as an emanation of 
 the Infinite and therefore partaking of the nature of 
 the Infinite. On such a view the human soul is neces- 
 sarily immortal. But on such a view the human soul 
 is also preexistent, since it is viewed as a part of the 
 Infinite and hence does not have either its end or its 
 beginning in time. This argument rests upon the 
 conception of the Infinite as impersonal, and there- 
 fore, of course, does not concern itself with such 
 matters as moral purpose in divine creation. But we 
 have already set forth the reasons why we reject the 
 metaphysics of the Absolute with its impersonal view 
 of existence. It is sufficient to point out that the 
 above view is not only pantheism but implies, when 
 thought out, both preexistence and some form of 
 transmigration. We are saved from this abyss by the 
 
314 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 Christian emphasis upon personality as the ultimate 
 reality, both on the plane of the divine and the human, 
 and by the recognition of the moral as that which is 
 of supreme and eternal worth. 
 
 This brings us to the ethical argument for immor- 
 tality, which is much more significant and convinc- 
 ing. The great fundamental assumption of our per- 
 sonal view of life is that the universe is not only ra- 
 tional but ethical. Moral purpose no less than 
 rational consistency is necessary to the comprehen- 
 sion of this cosmic order as it is presented to us in 
 experience. And at bottom the ethical and the ra- 
 tional will be found to be not two aspects of existence, 
 but essentially one. Our human life cannot long 
 appear as rational without those great ethical ideals 
 and motives which alone give it meaning. This is 
 what is implied in the statement, often made, that 
 without the saving conception of moral values ( which 
 are eternal) being slowly realized in human society, 
 existence itself is a fearful and incomprehensible 
 riddle. Some of the pessimistic thinkers have said 
 this and are saying it to-day with varying degrees of 
 emphasis. 
 
 But the pertinent question here is whether the few 
 years of our human life are a sufficient time for the 
 soul to realize to any extent the eternal moral values. 
 That a good beginning is made in the lives of those 
 who strive for the "things of the spirit" is undoubt- 
 edly true. But shall we say that physical death ends 
 it all? That just as the soul begins to attain some of 
 the heights and to come within sight of others as yet 
 unattained, a final end comes of all the upward 
 strivings of the spirit? Surely, this does not com- 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 315 
 
 mend itself to our thought as the law of a rational uni- 
 verse where moral values are alone sufficient to solve 
 the deeper problems even of our human life. Here, 
 then, is the gist of the ethical argument. However 
 it may be expounded or illustrated, the argument for 
 immortality from the supreme value of personality 
 and, therefore, of moral values, lies in this fact, that 
 the upward progress of the human spirit away from 
 the animal and material toward the higher realms of 
 the eternal and the spiritual seems only well begun in 
 the fleeting years of our present life. If there is a 
 great principle of the conservation of moral energy in 
 the realm of spirit, as there is such a principle for the 
 physical realm, then it is difficult and even irrational 
 to believe that physical death can end the evolution 
 of an eternal life in the human soul. In that beautiful 
 biography of the rare woman who for many years 
 was his wife, Professor Palmer, of Harvard, says with 
 fine restraint, "Though no regrets are proper for the 
 manner of her death, who can contemplate the fact 
 of it and not call the world irrational, if out of defer- 
 ence to a few particles of disordered matter it excludes 
 so fair a spirit?" n 
 
 But, in the last analysis, our only reason for belief 
 in the conservation of moral values lies in the per- 
 sonal and, therefore, ethical character of God himself. 
 The universe is the manifestation, not of the play of 
 blind and impersonal forces, but of the moral pur- 
 pose of the personal Infinite. Holding to this great 
 truth as the basis of all our thinking about human 
 life, we dare to affirm as the only rational conclusion 
 that moral values are indeed supreme — that character 
 
 11 Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, by George Herbert Palmer, p. 327. 
 
316 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 abides. There is no scrap-heap in the universe of God. 
 Lotze has a noble utterance in the Microcosmus. He 
 says : "That will last forever which on account of its 
 excellence and its spirit must be an abiding part of the 
 order of the universe; what lacks that preserving 
 worth will perish. We can discover no other supernal 
 law of our destiny than this, but this is itself inappli- 
 cable in our human hands. We dare not presume to 
 judge and determine which mental development wins 
 immortality by the eternal significance to which it has 
 raised itself, and to which development immortality 
 is denied. We must not seek to decide whether all 
 animals perish or whether all human souls are imper- 
 ishable, but must take refuge in the belief that to 
 each being right will be done." 12 
 
 3. Faith in the Life beyond Death, a Spiritual 
 Achievement. We have now traced the early develop- 
 ment of the belief in immortality and have found 
 that it came to its finest flower in the faith of the 
 followers of Jesus. We have also noted some of the 
 weightier considerations from science and philosophy 
 which lend support to the belief in personal immortal- 
 ity. But there is one important truth which ought to 
 be emphasized before the discussion is brought to a 
 close. It is this : A study of the matter w T ill convince 
 us that the men who have grasped this truth of per- 
 sonal immortality with the clearest insight and the 
 greatest intensity of conviction are those into whose 
 life has come the fullest realization of fellowship 
 with God in sacrifice and service of their fellow men. 
 This means that the conviction of life after death is 
 not only a matter of belief well grounded in rational 
 
 11 Microcosmus, English translation, vol. i, p. 389. 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 317 
 
 thinking, but is also a matter of faith. And the essen- 
 tial thing about faith is that it means personal rela- 
 tionship in confidence, trust, and love. In the last 
 analysis, this great conviction of eternal life is a spir- 
 itual achievement. It is wrought out not in argument 
 but in experience. No man, however well he may 
 learn to reason, can long enjoy here a conviction 
 amounting to certainty, if in his life there is not a 
 profound faith in God and a sense of fellowship with 
 God. Immortality thus becomes not only an item of 
 our creed but a fact of our experience. Conviction 
 of life eternal flows from character far more than 
 from cogent reasoning. The man who is living a life 
 in which love finds little place — a life of selfish disre- 
 gard for his fellow men — a life devoted to the super- 
 ficial pursuit of pleasure, a life in which greed for 
 gain is the dominant motive, may say, "I cannot be- 
 lieve in immortality ; I see no evidence for it." And 
 the answer is, "Why should you? What have you ever 
 done to entitle you to the high spiritual privilege of 
 really grasping as your own the great truth of the 
 immortal life?" 
 
 And do we not here find the secret of the fact that 
 faith in immortality does not thrive and grow strong 
 on mere reasoning? After the weightiest arguments 
 have been restated the heart is really not satisfied. A 
 vague feeling of uncertainty and dread will come 
 stealing over the spirit of the earnest inquirer from 
 time to time. We may shake it off only to find it com- 
 ing back as we are called now and again to stand 
 near the grave of one we knew. Is there no way to 
 banish doubt and misgivings and to establish in the 
 heart that quiet but deep certainty in which the soul 
 
318 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 can rest? There is but one way. And that is through 
 faith in Christ. And faith in Christ will enable us to 
 realize in personal experience the great spiritual fact 
 of a fellowship with the Eternal Himself. The Old 
 Testament, as we have seen, has very little of a doc- 
 trine of immortality. But in some of the psalms there 
 is such a positive and glorious expression of the soul's 
 realization of spiritual union with God, that the tide 
 of faith in eternal life comes in strong and full when 
 the soul attains such an experience : 
 
 Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me 
 by my right hand. 
 
 Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, and afterward receive me 
 to glory. 
 
 Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth 
 that I desire beside thee. 
 
 . . . God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. 
 (Psa. 73. 23-26.) 
 
 The New Testament, especially the letters of Paul, 
 abound in those expressions which indicate a per- 
 sonal realization in experience of a union in loyalty 
 and affection with Christ. The title of our present 
 chapter is Justified. It is, indeed, the Christian faith 
 in immortality. For this great conviction grows 
 strong in the life not as the cogent conclusion from 
 plausible premises, but as the spiritual resultant of 
 Christian living. The historic fact of Jesus's resur- 
 rection cannot be overestimated in its importance to 
 the beginnings of faith in Christ among his followers. 
 But our faith in him rests far more upon all that we 
 know him to be than it does upon that occurrence in 
 the garden long ago. Indeed, were it not for all we 
 know Christ to be through the spiritual triumphs of 
 the intervening ages and through the testimony of our 
 
CHRISTIAN FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 319 
 
 own heart, we could not probably accept the record of 
 that event in the garden long ago as Ave do. We do 
 not accept Jesus as divine simply because he rose 
 from the dead. Rather do we accept the record of his 
 resurrection as reasonable and fitting, now that we 
 know him to be divine. And so in a very true sense 
 Christ himself is the strength of our faith in the 
 eternal life. He is "in us the hope of glory." 
 
 And, finally, experience teaches us also that it is 
 much easier to believe in immortality when we are 
 living the kind of life that is worthy of being im- 
 mortal. Trivial living, selfish living, invariably 
 cause the fires of the immortal hope to burn low in 
 the heart. Living under the domination of great 
 motives brings to the soul the conviction that eternal 
 life may indeed begin here and now, even as Jesus 
 said. No life was so pure, so lofty as his, and he lived 
 in the very atmosphere of eternity. 
 
 I walked one autumn day in the pine woods with 
 my friend who was battling with the white plague. 
 He was a noble spirit. He had just entered full man- 
 hood. Life lay all before him and hope had been high. 
 But the fight was now on and he knew he could not 
 win. We sat down to rest under a venerable tree 
 which had stood there in the forest many times the 
 span of our earthly years. "Why is it thus?" he 
 whispered. My only answer, "Dear fellow, life is 
 larger than we now see. We know Him. Let us be- 
 lieve firmly that the seeds of disease cannot end the 
 life He gives. We know Him, we love Him, we must 
 trust Him." 
 

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