_________________________________________________________________ Title: Christian View of God and the World Creator(s): Orr, James CCEL Subjects: All; Theology; LC Call no: BT75 LC Subjects: Doctrinal theology _________________________________________________________________ THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF GOD AND THE WORLD AS CENTRING IN THE INCARNATION BEING THE FIRST SERIES OF KERR LECTURES BY JAMES ORR, D.D. PROFESSOR OF APOLOGETICS AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW “For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things. To Him be the glory for ever. Amen.”—ROM. xi. 36. NINTH EDITION NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNERS’s SONS 1908 _________________________________________________________________ THE KERR LECTURESHIP. The “Kerr Lectureship” was founded by the Trustees of the late Miss Joan Kerr, of Sanquhar, under her Deed of Settlement, and formally adopted by the United Presbyterian Synod in May 1886. In the following year, May 1887, the provisions and conditions of the Lectureship, as finally adjusted, were adopted by the Synod, and embodied in a Memorandum, printed in the Appendix to the Synod Minutes, p. 489. From these the following excerpts are here given:— II. The amount to be invested shall be £3000. III. The object of the Lectureship is the promotion of the study of Scientific Theology in the United Presbyterian Church. The Lectures shall be upon some such subjects as the following, vis.:—A. Historic Theology—(1) Biblical Theology, (2) History of Doctrine, (3) Patristics, with special reference to the significance and authority of the first three centuries. B. Systematic Theology—(1) Christian Doctrine—(a) Philosophy of Religion (b) Comparative Theology, (c) Anthropology, (d) Christology, (e) Soteriology, (f) Eschatology; (2) Christian Ethics—(a) Doctrine of Sin, (b) Individual and Social Ethics, (c) The Sacraments, (d) The Place of Art in Religions Life and Worship. Farther, the Committee of Selection shall from time to time, as they think fit appoint as the subject of the Lectures any important Phases of Modern Religious Thought, or Scientific Theories in their bearing upon Evangelical Theology. The Committee may also appoint a subject connected with the practical work of the Ministry as subject of Lecture, but in no case shall this be admissible more than once in every five appointments. IV. The appointments to this Lectureship shall be made in the first instance from among the Licentiates or Ministers of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, of whom no one shall be eligible who, when the appointment falls to be made, shall have been licensed for more than twenty-five years, and who is not a graduate of a British University, preferential regard being had to those who have for some time been connected with a Continental University. V. Appointments not subject to the conditions in Section IV. may also from time to time, at the discretion of the Committee, be made from among eminent members of the Ministry of any of the Nonconformist Churches of Great Britain and Ireland, America, and the Colonies, or of the Protestant Evangelical Churches of the Continent. VI. The Lecturer shall hold the appointment for three years. VIII. The Lectures shall be published at the Lecturer’s own expense within one year after their delivery. IX. The Lectures shall be delivered to the Students of the United Presbyterian Hall. XII. The public shall be admitted to the Lectures. _________________________________________________________________ PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. This Third Edition is a reprint of the First and Second, with the exception of a few verbal corrections and alterations, and slight adjustments and curtailments in certain of the Notes. The analysis of Contents also has been abridged. The author is indebted to the Rev. Alexander Mair, D.D., for kindly assisting him in the correction of the proofs. Edinburgh, July 1897. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. These Lectures, the first on the Kerr Foundation, are published in fulfilment of the conditions of the Trust under which they were delivered. Their publication has been delayed owing to the author’s appointment to the Chair of Church History in the Theological College of the United Presbyterian Church, at the Synod of May 1891. They have now been made ready for the press under the burden of labour and anxiety connected with the preparation of a second winter’s course. This may excuse the minor oversights which, in handling so large a mass of material, must inevitably occur. The Lectures are printed substantially as delivered in the spring of 1891—the chief exception being that portions of the Lectures which had to be omitted in the spoken delivery, through the limits of time, are here restored in their proper connection. Material which could not conveniently be incorporated in the Lectures has been wrought into Appendices and Notes. The latter are designed to furnish not simply references to authorities, but illustrations, corroborations, and what may be termed generally “assonances” of thought, drawn from a wide range of literature, which it is hoped will aid the reader who is disposed to pursue his study of the subject further, by guiding him to the best sources of knowledge. Since the Lectures were delivered, important books have appeared, both in this country and on the Continent, dealing with parts or aspects of the field here traversed, such, e.g., among English works, as Mr. Gore’s valuable Bampton Lectures on The Incarnation, Principal Chapman’s Pre-organic Evolution, Mr. Kennedy’s Donnellan Lectures on Natural Theology and Modern Thought. Occasional references to these and some other works are likewise included in the Notes. The author’s best thanks are due to the Rev. Professor Johnston, D.D., of the United Presbyterian College, and to the Rev. Thomas Kennedy, D.D., Clerk of Synod, for their kind assistance in the revision of the proofs. Edinburgh, February l893. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS. GENERAL INFORMATION TITLE PAGE INTRODUCTION PREFACE INDEX TO NOTES LECTURE I The Christian View of the World in General. Introductory— The Idea of the “Weltanschauung.” Relation of Christianity to world-theories. General drift and scope of the Lectures. Objections in limine:— I. From theology of feeling. Examination of sentimental theory. Impossibility of extruding doctrine from Christianity. II. From the Ritschlian distinction of a “religious” and a “theoretic” view of the world. Relative justification of this distinction. Error of the Ritschlian view—Impossibility of sundering faith and reason. APPENDIX TO LECTURE I. Sketch of the Christian View.— LECTURE II. The Christian View and Its Alternatives.— Introductory— Central place of Christ’s Person in His religion. Method of this Lecture—appeal to history; logical movement in history. I. History a series of alternatives—the downward movement. First alternative—A Divine Christ or humanitarianism. Second alternative—A Divine Christ or Agnosticism. Third alternative—A Divine Christ or Pessimism. II. The upward movement from Pessimism to Christ. Unsatisfactoriness of Pessimism as a theory of existence—it works back to Theism. The alternative of Pantheism—its degradation to Materialism. The nobler movement—elevation to Theism. Theism impels to belief in Revelation. Recognition in modern systems of idea of Revelation. Inadequacy of modern theory of Revelation. Vocation of Israel; Christ the highest Revealer. Summary—Theism can only secure itself through belief in Christ. APPENDIX TO LECTURE II. The Pessimism of Scepticism.— LECTURE III. The Theistic Postulate of the Christian View.— Introductory— Christianity a theistic system. The strength of Christian Theism—its connection with Revelation. This first postulate of the Christian view—how related to modern thought? I. The negation of the Christian view. The Agnostic negation—why so regarded? 1. It negates the Christian view of God as self-revealing. 2. The denial of evidence of God’s existence tantamount to denial of His existence. Mr. Spencer’s admission of the Ultimate Reality or Power; criticism of his view. Development of the system by Mr. Fiske into Theism. II. Positive evidence for the Christian view. 1. Concessions of the evolutionary philosophy. The term “Personal” as applied to God. 2. This theoretic “proofs” for the existence of God—how far valid? (1) The cosmological argument. The religious experience corresponding to this proof—the consciousness of absolute dependence. (2) The teleological or design argument. Argument against design from evolution. Two views of evolution: criticism. Wider form of this argument (order, plan, law, etc.). (3) The ontological argument. The Anselmic form and Kant’s criticism. New form of this argument Rational Realism. The religious experience corresponding to the teleological and ontological argument’s—sense of the Divine in nature. III. The moral argument—contrast with theoretic proofs. God a postulate of the “practical reason.” Religious experience corresponding to the moral proof. APPENDIX TO LECTURE III. God as Religious Postulate— LECTURE IV. The Postulate of the Christian View or the World in Regard to Nature and Man.— Introductory— Second postulate of the Christian view: man made in the image of God. The doctrine of man closely linked with the doctrine of nature. I. The natural basis—the doctrine of creation. The consonance of this doctrine with reason: three oppositions— The opposition of Dualism (Martineau, Mill), etc. The opposition of Pantheism: logical derivation of the universe (Spinoza, Hegel, etc.). The opposition of Atheism: self-existence and eternity of the world. Evidences of a beginning Difficulties of the doctrine of creation in time. Proposed solutions of these difficulties. The motive and end of creation (Kant, Lotze, etc.). II. The nature of man, and his place in creation: man the final cause of the world. Man the link between the natural and the spiritual. Man as bearing the image of God. The potential infinitude of man’s nature. Materialism and consciousness— 1.Grosser form of Materialism: mind and brain identified (Moleschott, Vogt, etc.). 2.Newer form of Materialism: Monism (Strauss, Haeckel, etc.). Ambiguity of the term “matter” in Tyndall, etc. Refutation of Materialism: matter itself needs thought to explain it. III. Man as made in the image of God constituted for immortality. Modern rejection of doctrine of a future life. If man constituted for immortality, the fact must show itself in his nature and capacities. 1. Universal prevalence of belief in a future state. Spencer’s theory; its inadequacy. 2. Rational grounds for this belief : nature of evidence. Conclusion. LECTURE V. The Postulate of the Christian View in Regard to the Sin and Disorder of the World.— Introductory— Third postulate of the Christian view: the sin and disorder of the world. Christianity does not create the problem of natural and moral evil, but helps to solve it. I. The problem of moral evil: conflict of Christian and modern views. Respects in which the modern view comes to the support of the Christian view. Fundamental difference between the Christian and the modern view. Sin in the Christian view not something natural, necessary, and normal, but the result of a free act of the creature. Theories of sin opposed to the Christian view— 1. Theories which seek the ground of evil in the constitution of the world. 2. Theories which seek the explanation of evil in the nature of man. Sin in all these theories made something necessary. Weakening or destruction of idea of guilt. Differences between the Christian and the modern view depend on theory of origin. Theory of man’s original brutishness—relation to narrative of the Fall. Relation of Christian view to modern theories of the antiquity of man. Science does not negative the idea of a pure beginning of the race: the Biblical account of primeval man. II. The problem of natural evil: connection with moral evil. Natural evil in the inorganic world. Natural evil in the organic world. The question altered when we come to self-conscious, rational man. Connection of natural evil with sin: nature and admissibility of this connection. The Pauline view: what it implies. III. Culmination of this problem in the question of the relation of sin to death. Man created for immortality. Death the sundering of essential parts of his being: therefore abnormal. The true immortality is through Redemption, and embraces the resurrection of the body. APPENDIX TO LECTURE V. The Old Testament Doctrine of Immortality.— LECTURE VI. The Central Assertion of the Christian View: The Incarnation of God in Christ.— Introductory— Completion of argument in second Lecture. A priori objection to the Incarnation based on Christ’s lowliness. I. Testimony of the apostolic age as throwing light on Christ’s own claims. Modern agreement as to general teaching of New Testament—the Johannine writings. The Epistles of Paul— 1. The undisputed Epistles—the “ Heavenly Man” theory. 2. The later Epistles — Christology of Philippians, Colossians, etc. The Epistle to the Hebrews an independent witness. The doctrine of the Apocalypse as high as John’s or Paul’s (Reuss, Pfleiderer). The Petrine and Minor Epistles. Discourses in the Acts. Conclusion:—The supernatural view of Christ’s Person established in first generation of believers. II. The testimony of the Gospels—Christ in the Fourth Gospel. The Christ of the Synoptics also a supernatural Being. 1. The claims of Jesus—the titles “Son of Man,” and “Son of God”—His eschatological claims, etc. 2. Representation of the character of Christ—His sinlessness. 3. The works of Jesus in keeping with His claims. 4. The resurrection of Jesus—the Trinitarian formula, etc. The Synoptic representation of Christ in keeping with the apostolic estimate of His Person. Conclusion:—The facts of Christ’s Revelation require the supernatural view of His Person: impossibility of evading this claim. III. Doctrinal aspects of the Incarnation: proposed reconstructions. In what sense modern theories ascribe “Godhead” to Christ. 1. Are these theories tenable on their own merits? 2. Do these theories do justice to the facts of Christ’s Revelation? What is not, and what is, true Incarnation. 3. Consideration of Kenotic theories (Phil. ii. 7). Relation of preceding discussion to the early Christological decisions. Advances in modern speculation. The question of the impersonality of Christ’s humanity. The Incarnation to be studied in the light of its revealed ends. APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI. The Self-Consciousness of Jesus.— LECTURE VII. Higher Concept of God Involved in the Incarnation—The Incarnation and the Plan of the World.— Introductory— Recapitulation of defective theories. I. Higher concept of God involved in the Incarnation—God as triune. This doctrine the result of an induction from the facts of Revelation. How far this doctrine is anticipated in the Old Testament. This doctrine of the Trinity as involving distinctions in the Divine essence. Objection on this score—“One and Three.” Drawbacks of the word “Person” need of the expression. Proof that distinctions of this kind are implied. Alternative view an economical Trinity. Relations of the doctrine to rational thought. Psychological analogies in Augustine and others. Relation of the doctrine to self-consciousness, etc. 1. The deduction from knowledge. 2. The deduction from love. 3. Deduction from the Divine Fatherhood—God eternally Father. 4. Bearing of the Trinity on God’s relation to the world —safeguard against Deism and Pantheism. II. The Scripture view brings creation and Redemption into line—consequences of this. Relation of the Incarnation to the plan of the world. World there have been an Incarnation had man not sinned. History of the question. Strong point against this theory—the constant connection of Incarnation with Redemption. Difficulty arises from too abstract a view of the Divine plan. Great weight on this question to be attached to the revealed end—the gathering up of all things in Christ. Harmony of Scripture with this view— 1. The Scriptures know of only one undivided purpose of God. 2. They assert a direct relation of the Son with creation. 3. They represent Christ as the final cause of creation. 4. God’s purpose actually tends to the unification of all things in Christ. Summary and conclusion. LECTURE VIII. The Incarnation and Redemption from Sin.— Introductory— Christianity a religion of Redemption. Special question—The connection of Redemption with the sufferings and death of Christ. I. Scripture testimony on this subject—the apostolic witness. Does Christ’s teaching agree with that of the apostles? Proof that Christ attached a redemptive significance to His death. Grounds on which the apostolic Church proceeded— 1. The objective facts of Christ’s death, resurrection, etc. 2. Christ’s sayings on the meaning and necessity of His death. 3. The teaching of the Old Covenant as throwing light on Christ’s work. II. Explanation of the redemptive significance of Christ’s death—theories of Atonement. Modern desire to connect the Atonement with spiritual laws. The Atonement considered from the point of view of the Incarnation. Points taken for granted in all Christian theories of Redemption. Theories differ as they attach themselves to one or another of these points. 1. Theories of fellowship: Schleiermacher, etc. 2. Theories based on idea of sympathy: Bushnell. Points in which this theory comes short. Dr. Bushnell’s later modification of his view. 3. Theories based on idea of vocation: Ritschl. Theories which recognise an objective element in the Atonement: in what does it consist? 4. Theories based on idea of self-surrender of holy will to God: Maurice, etc. 5. Theories which recognise a relation to guilt: Campbell’s theory of vicarious repentance and confession. Deeper elements in Campbell’s view—the “Amen” in response to God’s judgment on sin. Christ’s sufferings viewed as expiatory. Objections to this view—the innocent suffering for the guilty. The real question—How should such sufferings become expiatory for others? Recapitulation and conclusion. LECTURE IX. The Incarnation and Human Destiny.— Introductory— Necessity of an eschatology. The Christian view eschatological because teleological. I. The astronomical objection to Christianity. The objection a quantitative one. The bearing of sin on this question. The issues of Redemption not confined to this planet. II. Principles of interpretation of eschatological prophecy. The nearer aim of Christianity—the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. History has its goal—transition to eschatology proper. The positive and bright side of the Christian view. 1. The aim of God is conformity to the image of the Son. 2. This includes likeness to His glorious body: the resurrection. 3. The perfecting of the Church carries with it the perfecting of nature. Pictorial and scenic elements— 1. The personal Advent—how to be interpreted? The Coming a process in which many elements flow together. Still, a personal Coming is implied. 1. The general Judgment. Its certainty. Parabolic character of descriptions. III. The dark side of this question—the destiny of the wicked. Three theories on this subject— 1. Dogmatic Universalism. 2. The doctrine of Annihilation: Conditional Immortality. 3. The doctrine of Eternal Punishment. Fundamental positions laid down— 1. The principle of certain retribution for sin. 2. Need for distinguishing between what Scripture teaches and subjects on which it is simply silent. 3. A larger calculus needed than we at present possess. Criticism of theories— 1. Scripture does not warrant dogmatic Universalism. 2. Scripture does not warrant Annihilation. Theory of “Conditional Immortality” criticised. 3. The theory of Future Probation. Facts which suggest caution— (1) Concentration of every ray of exhortation and appeal into the present. (2) The judgment invariably represented as proceeding on the data of this life. (3) The silence of Scripture on future probation: limits of the application of 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20; iv. 6. Result—We have not the elements of a complete solution. CONCLUSION OF LECTURES. APPENDIX. the Idea of the Kingdom of God. _________________________________________________________________ Index To Notes. Lecture I. The Idea of the “Weltanschauung” Classification of “Weltanschauungen” Unconscious Metaphysic Antagonism of Christian and “Modern” Views of the World—Anti-supernaturalism of the latter Internal Conflicts of the “Modern” View Uniqueness of the Old Testament View Origin of the Old Testament View—Relation to critical theories Nature and Definition of Religion Undogmatic Religion Æsthetic Theories of Religion Religious and Theoretic Knowledge Lecture II. The Central Place of Christ in His Religion The Defeat of Arianism Modern Unitarianism Concessions of Ritschlians on the Person of Christ The Weakness of Deism Weakness of Modern Liberal Protestantism Christianity and the Idea of Progress The Prevalence of Pessimism Transition from Pessimism to Theism—Hartmann and Karl Peters Materialism in Germany The Reasonableness of Revelation The Ritschlian Doctrine of Revelation Lecture III. Primitive Fetishism and Ghost-worship Old Testament Monotheism Kant on the Cosmological Argument Kant on the Teleological Argument Schools of Evolutionists Kant on the Ontological Argument Rational Realism Lecture IV. The Creation History. Evolution in Inorganic Nature—The Nebular Hypothesis The Hypothesis of Cycles “Eternal Creation” Eternity and Time Man the Head of Creation Mind and Mechanical Causation. Mind and Cerebral Activity Schleiermacher and Immortality Lecture V. Defects in Creation: an Argument against Theism Dualistic Theories of the Origin of Evil Hegel’s Doctrine of Sin Ritschl’s Doctrine of Guilt Alleged Primitive Savagery of Mankind Early Monotheistic Ideas The Antiquity of Man and Geological Time The Connection of Sin and Death Lecture VI. The Doctrine of Pre-existence. Philo and the Fourth Gospel The Resurrection of Christ and the Reality of His Divine Claim Lecture VII. Recent Theories of the Trinity Dr. Martineau as a Trinitarian Lecture VIII. The Germ Theory of Justification Lecture IX. Renan’s Eschatology The Gospel and the Vastness of Creation Alleged Pauline Universalism _________________________________________________________________ The Christian View of God and the World by James Orr “Jesus Christ is the centre of all, and the goal to which all tends.”—PASCAL. “If we carry back the antagonisms of the present to their ultimate principle, we are obliged to confess that it is of a religious kind. The way in which a man thinks of God and the world, and their relation to one another, is decisive for the whole tendency of his thought, and even in the questions of the purely natural life.”—Luthardt. “The Christian truth, with the certifying of which we have to do, is essentially only one, compact in itself, vitally interconnected, as such at the same time organic,—and it is therefore not possible one should possess and retain a portion of the same, while yet not possessing, or rejecting, the other portions. On the contrary, the member or portion of the truth, which it had been thought to appropriate or maintain alone, would by this isolating cease to be that which it was or is in itself; it would become an empty form or husk, from which the life, the Christian reality, has escaped.”—F. H. R. Frank. “In no case can true Reason and a right Faith oppose each other.”—Coleridge. LECTURE I. THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE WORLD IN GENERAL. Introductory I Might briefly define the object of the present Lectures by saying that they aim at the exhibition, and, as far as possible within the limits assigned me, at the rational vindication, of what I have called in the title, “The Christian View of the World.” This expression, however, is itself one which calls for definition and explanation, and I proceed, in the first place, to give the explanation that is needed. The Idea of the “Weltanschauung.” A reader of the higher class of works in German theology—especially those that deal with the philosophy of religion—cannot fail to be struck with the constant recurrence of a word for which he finds it difficult to get a precise equivalent in English. It is the word “Weltanschauung,” sometimes interchanged with another compound of the same signification, “Weltansicht.” Both words mean literally “view of the world,” but whereas the phrase in English is limited by associations which connect it predominatingly with physical nature, in German the word is not thus limited, but has almost the force of a technical term, denoting the widest view which the mind can take of things in the effort to grasp them together as a whole from the standpoint of some particular philosophy or theology. To speak, therefore, of a “Christian view of the world” implies that Christianity also has its highest point of view, and its view of life connected therewith, and that this, when developed, constitutes an ordered whole. [1] To some the subject which I have thus chosen may seem unduly wide and vague. I can only reply that I have deliberately chosen it for this very reason, that it enables me to deal with Christianity in its entirety or as a system, instead of dealing with particular aspects or doctrines of it. Both methods have their advantages; but no one I think, whose eyes are open to the signs of the times, can fail to perceive that if Christianity is to be effectually defended from the attacks made upon it, it is the comprehensive method which is rapidly becoming the more urgent. The opposition which Christianity has to encounter is no longer confined to special doctrines or to points of supposed conflict with the natural sciences,—for example, the relations of Genesis and geology,—but extends to the whole manner of conceiving of the world, and of man’s place in it, the manner of conceiving of the entire system of things, natural and moral, of which we form a part. It is no longer an opposition of detail, but of principle. This circumstance necessitates an equal extension of the line of the defence. It is the Christian view of things in general which is attacked, and it is by an exposition and vindication of the Christian view of things as a whole that the attack can most successfully be met. Everything here, of course, depends on the view we take of Christianity itself. The view indicated in the title is that which has its centre in the Divine and human Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It implies the true Divinity as well as the true humanity of the Christian Redeemer. This is a view of Christianity, I know, which I am not at liberty to take for granted, but must be prepared in due course to vindicate. I shall not shrink from the task which this imposes on me, but would only at present point out that, for him who does accept it, a very definite view of things emerges. He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides. He is committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of Redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny, found only in Christianity. This forms a “Weltanschauung,” or “Christian view of the world,” which stands in marked contrast within theories wrought out from a purely philosophical or scientific standpoint. The idea of the “Weltanschauung” may be said to have entered prominently into modern thought through the influence of Kant, who derives what he calls the “Weltbegriff” from the second of his Ideas of Pure Reason to which is assigned the function of the systematic connection of all our experiences into a unity of a world-whole (Weltganz). [2] But the thing itself is as old as the dawn of reflection, and is found in a cruder or more advanced form in every religion and philosophy with any pretensions to a historical character. The simplest form in which we meet with it is in the rude, tentative efforts at a general explanation of things in the cosmogonies and theogonies of most ancient religions, the mythological character of which need not blind us to the rational motive which operates in them. [3] With the growth of philosophy, a new type of world-view is developed—that which attempts to explain the universe as a system by the help of some general principle or principles (water, air, number, etc.), accompanied by the use of terms which imply the conception of an All or Whole of things (ta panta, kosmos—attributed to the Pythagoreans—mundus, universum, etc.) [4] An example from ancient thought may be given from Lucretius, who, in his famous poem, “De Rerum Natura,” proposes “to discourse of the most high system of heaven and the gods, and to open up the first-beginnings of things, out of which nature gives birth to all things and increase and nourishment, and into which nature likewise resolves them back after their destruction.” [5] The outlines of his system are well known. By the aid of certain first principles atoms and the void and of certain assumed laws of motion and development, he seeks to account for the existing universe, and constructs for himself a theory on the lines of Epicurus which he thinks satisfies his intellectual necessities. This is his Weltanschauung—the progeny of which is seen in the materialistic systems of the present day. A modern example may be taken from the philosophy of Comte, which, theoretically one of pure phenomenalism, only the more strikingly illustrates the necessity which thought is under to attempting some form a synthesis of its experience. Comte’s standpoint is that of despair of absolute knowledge. Yet he recognises the tendency in the mind which prompts it to organise its knowledge, and thinks it possible to construct a scheme of existence which shall give practical unity to life—imagination eking out the deficiencies of the intellect. In the words of a recent interpreter, “Beneath and beyond all the details in our ideas of things, there is a certain esprit d’ensemble, a general conception of the world without and the world within, in which these details gather to a head.” [6] It would not be easy to get a better description of what is meant by a “Weltanschauung” than in these words. The centre of unity in this new conception of the universe is Man. Knowledge is to be organised solely with reference to its bearings on the well-being and progress of Humanity. A religion even is provided for the satisfaction of the emotional and imaginative wants of man in the worship of the same abstraction—Humanity, which is to be viewed with affection and gratitude as a beneficent providence interposed between man and the hard pressure of his outward conditions. In a moral respect the individual is to find his all-comprehensive end in the “service of Humanity.” Thus, again, we have a “Weltanschauung” in which knowledge and action are knit up together, and organised into a single view of life. The causes which lead to the formation of “Weltanschauungen,” that is, of general theories of the universe, explanatory of what it is, how it has come to be what it is, and whither it tends, lie deep in the constitution of human nature. They are twofold—speculative and practical, corresponding to the twofold aspect of human nature as thinking and active. On the theoretical side, the mind seeks unity in its representations. It is not content with fragmentary knowledge, but tends constantly to rise from facts to laws, from laws to higher laws, from these to the highest generalisations possible. [7] Ultimately it abuts on questions of origin, purpose, and destiny, which as questions set by reason to itself, it cannot, from its very nature refuse at least to attempt to answer. [8] Even to prove that an answer to them is impossible, it is found necessary to discuss them, and it will be strange if, in the course of the discussion, the discovery is not made, that underneath the profession of nescience a positive theory of some kind after all lurks. [9] But there is likewise a practical motive urging to the consideration of these well-worn questions of the why, whence, and whither? Looking out on the universe, men cannot but desire to know their place in the system of things of which they form a part, if only that they may know how rightly to determine themselves thereto [10] Is the constitution of things good or evil? By what ultimate principles ought man to be guided in the framing and ordering of his life? What is the true end of existence? What rational justification does the nature of things afford for the higher sentiments of duty and religion? If it be the case, as the Agnostic affirms, that light absolutely fails us on questions of origin, cause, and end, what conception of life remains? Or, assuming that no higher origin for life and mind can be postulated than matter and force what revision is necessary of current conceptions of private morality and social duty? It is a singular circumstance that, with all the distaste of the age for metaphysics, the tendency to the formation of world-systems, or general theories of the universe, was never more powerful than at the present day. One cause of this, no doubt, is the feeling which modern science itself has done so much to engender, of the unity which pervades all orders of existence. The naive Polytheism of pagan times, when every hill and fountain was supposed to have its special divinity, is no longer possible with modern notions of the coherence of the universe. Everywhere the minds of men are opening to the conception that, whatever else the universe is, it is one—one set of laws holds the whole together—one order reigns through all. Everywhere, accordingly, we see a straining after a universal point of view—a grouping and grasping of things together in their unity. [11] The philosophy of Mr. Spencer, for example, is as truly an attempt at the unification of all knowledge as the philosophy of a Hegel; the evolutionist is as confident of being able to embrace all that is, or ever has been, or will be—all existing phenomena of nature, history, or mind—in the range of a few ultimate formulas, as if he had already seen how the task was to be accomplished; the Comtist urges to an imaginative in default of a real and objective synthesis, and rears on this basis at once a social theory and religion. The mind, grows bolder with the advance of knowledge, and hopes, if not to reach a final solution of the ultimate mystery of existence, at least to bring thoroughly under its dominion the sphere of the knowable.” [12] What now, it may be asked, has Christianity to do with theories, and questions, and speculations of this sort? As a doctrine of salvation, perhaps, not much, but in its logical presuppositions and consequences a great deal indeed. Christianity, it is granted, is not a scientific system, though, if its views of the world be true, it must be reconcilable with all that is certain and established in the results of science. It is not a philosophy, though, if it be valid, its fundamental assumptions will be found to be in harmony with the conclusions at which sound reason, attacking its own problems, independently arrives. It is a religion, historical in its origin, and claiming to rest on Divine Revelation. But though Christianity is neither a scientific system, nor a philosophy, it has yet a world-view of its own, to which it stands committed, alike by its fundamental postulate of a personal, holy, self-revealing God, and by its content as a religion of Redemption which, therefore, necessarily brings it into comparison with the world-views already referred to. [13] It has as every religions should and must have, its own peculiar interpretation to give of the facts of existence; its own way of look in at, and accounting for, the existing natural and moral order; its own idea of a world—aim, and of that “one far-off Divine event,” to which, through slow and painful travail, “the whole creation moves.” [14] As thus binding together the natural and moral worlds in their highest unity, through reference to their ultimate principle, God it involves a “Weltanschauung.” It need not further be denied that between this view of the world involved in Christianity, and what is sometimes termed “the modern view of the world” there exists a deep and radical antagonism. [15] This so called “modern view of the world,” indeed, and it is important to observe it, is strictly speaking, not one view, but many view, a group of views—most of them as exclusive of one another as they together are of Christianity. [16] The phrase, nevertheless, does point to a homogeneity of these, various systems to a bond of unity which runs through them all and holds them together in spite of their many differences. This common feature is their thoroughgoing opposition to the supernatural,—at least of the specifically miraculous, their refusal to recognise anything in nature, life, or history, outside the lines of natural development. Between such a view of the world and Christianity, it is perfectly correct to say that there can be no kindredship. Those who think otherwise speculative Theists, e.g., like Pfleiderer can only make good their contention by fundamentally altering the idea of Christianity it self—robbing it also of its miraculous essence and accompaniments. Whether this is tenable we shall consider afterwards. Meanwhile it is to be noted that this at least is not the Christianity of the New Testament. It may be an improved and purified form of Christianity, but it is not the Christianity of Christ and His apostles. Even if, with the newer criticism, we distinguish between the theology of Christ and that of His apostles—between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John—between the earlier form of the synoptic tradition and supposed later embellishments—it is still not to be disputed that, in the simplest view we can take of it, Jesus held and acted on a view of things totally different from the rationalistic conception; while for him who accepts the view of Christianity indicated in the title of these Lectures, it has already been pointed out that a view of things emerges with which the denial of the supernatural is wholly incompatible. The position here taken, that the question at issue between the opponents and defenders of the Christian view of the world at bottom the question of the supernatural, needs to be guarded against a not uncommon misconception. A good deal of controversy has recently taken place in regard to certain statements of Professor Max Müller, as to whether “miracles” are essential to Christianity. [17] But the issue we have to face is totally misconceived when it is turned into a question of belief in this or that particular miracle—or of miracles in general—regarded as mere external appendages to Christianity. The question is not about isolated “miracles,” but about the whole conception of Christianity—what it is, and whether the supernatural does not enter into the very essence of it? It is the general question of a supernatural or non-supernatural conception of the universe. Is there a supernatural Being—God? Is there a supernatural government of the world? Is there a supernatural relation of God and man, so that God and man may have communion with one another? Is there a supernatural Revelation? Has that Revelation culminated in a supernatural Person—Christ? Is there a supernatural work in the souls of men? Is there a supernatural Redemption? Is there a supernatural hereafter? It is these larger questions that have to be settled first, and then the question of particular miracles will fall into its proper place. Neander has given admirable expression to the conception of Christianity which is really at stake, in the following words in the commencement of his History of the Church—“Now we look upon Christianity not as a power that has sprung up out of the hidden depths of man s nature, but as one that descended from above, when heaven opened itself anew to man’s long alienated race; a power which, as both in its origin and its essence it is exalted above all that human nature can create out of its own resources, was designed to impart to that nature a new life, and to change it in its inmost principles. The prime source of this power is He whose power exhibits to us the manifestation of it—Jesus of Nazareth—the Redeemer of mankind when estranged from God by sin. In the devotion of faith in Him, and the appropriation of the truth which He revealed, consists the essence of Christianity and of that fellowship of the Divine life resulting from it, which we designate by the name of the Church.” [18] It is this conception of Christianity we have to come to an understanding with, before the question of particular miracles can profitably be discussed. While, from the nature of the case this side of opposition of the Christian view of the world to certain “modern” conceptions must necessarily receive prominence I ought, on the other hand, to remark that it is far from my intention to represent the relation of Christianity to these opposing systems as one of mere negation. This would be to overlook the fact, which cannot be too carefully borne in mind, that no theory which has obtained wide currency, and held powerful sway over the minds of men, is ever wholly false; that, on the contrary, it derives what strength it has from some side or aspect of truth which it embodies, and for which it is in Providence a witness against the suppression or denial of it in some countertheory, or in the general doctrine of the age. No duty is more imperative on the Christian teacher than that of showing that instead of Christianity being simply one theory among the rest, it is really the higher truth which is the synthesis and completion of all the other, that view which, rejecting the error, takes up the vitalising elements in all other systems and religions, and unites them into a living organism with Christ as head. [19] We are reminded of Milton’s famous figure in the “Areopagitica,” of the dismemberment of truth,—how truth was torn limb from limb, and her members were scattered to the four winds; and how the lovers of truth, imitating the careful search of Isis for the body of Osiris, have been engaged ever since in gathering together the severed parts, in order to unite them again into a perfect whole. [20] If apologetic is to be spoken of, this surely is the truest and best form of Christian apology—to show that in Christianity, as nowhere else, the severed portions of truth found in all other systems are organically united, while it completes the body of truth by discoveries peculiar to itself. The Christian doctrine of God, for example, may fairly claim to be the synthesis of all the separate elements of truth found in Agnosticism, Pantheism, and Deism, which by their very antagonisms reveal themselves as one-sidednesses, requiring to be brought into some higher harmony. If Agnosticism affirms that there is that in God—in His infinite and absolute existence—which transcends finite comprehension, Christian theology does the same. If Pantheism affirms the absolute immanence of God in the world, and Deism His absolute transcendence over it, Christianity unites the two sides of the truth in a higher concept, maintaining at the same time the Divine immanence and the Divine transcendence. [21] Even Polytheism in its nobler forms is in its own dark way a witness for a truth which a hard, abstract Monotheism, such as we have in the later (not the Biblical) Judaism, and in Mohammedanism, ignores—the truth, namely, that God is plurality as well as unity—that in Him there is a manifoldness of life, a fulness and diversity of powers and manifestations, such as is expressed by the word Elohim. This element of truth in Polytheism Christianity also takes up, and sets in its proper relation to the unity of God in its doctrine of Tri-unity—the concept of God which is distinctively the Christian one, and which furnishes the surest safeguard of a living Theism against the extremes of both Pantheism and Deism. [22] Optimism and Pessimism are an other pair of contrasts—each in abstraction an error, yet each a witness for a truth which the other overlooks, and Christianity is the reconciliation of both. To take a last example, Positivism a very direct negation of Christianity; yet in its strange “worship of Humanity” is there not that which stretches across the gulf and touches hands with a religion which meets the cravings of the heart for the human in God by the doctrine of the Incarnation? It is the province of a true and wise Christian theology to take account of all this, and to seek, with ever increasing enlargement of vision, the comprehensive view in which all factors of the truth are combined. The practical inference I would draw—the very opposite of that drawn by others from the same premises—is, that it is the unwisest way possible of dealing with Christianity to pare it down, or seek to sublimate it away, as if it had no positive content of its own; or, by lavish compromise and concession, to part with that which belongs to its essence. It is not in a blunted and toned down Christianity, but in the exhibition of the Christian view in the greatest fulness and completeness possible, that the ultimate synthesis of the conflicting elements in the clash of systems around us is to be found. Relation of Christianity to world-theories. This is perhaps the place to point out that, whatever the character of the world-view involved in Christianity, it is not one in all respects absolutely new. It rests upon, and carries forward to its completion, the richly concrete view of the world already found in the Old Testament. As an able expounder of Old Testament theology, Hermann Schultz, has justly said—“There is absolutely no New Testament view which does not approve itself as a sound and definitive formation from an Old Testament germ—no truly Old Testament view which did not inwardly press forward to its New Testament fulfilment.” [23] This is a phenomenon which, I think, has not always received the attention it deserves. What are the main characteristics of this Old Testament conception? At its root is the idea of a holy, spiritual, self-revealing God, the free Creator of the world, and its continual Preserver. As correlative to this, and springing out of it, is the idea of man as a being made in God’s image, and capable of moral relations and spiritual fellowship with his Maker; but who, through sin, has turned aside from the end of his creation, and stands in need of Redemption. In the heart of the history, we have the idea of a Divine purpose, working itself out through the calling of a special nation, for the ultimate benefit and blessing of mankind. God’s providential rule extends over all creatures and events, and embraces all peoples of the earth, near and remote. In view of the sin and corruption that have overspread the world, His government is one of combined mercy and judgment; and His dealings with Israel in particular are preparative to the introduction of a better economy, in which the grace already partially exhibited will be fully revealed. The end is the establishment of a kingdom of God under the rule of the Messiah, in which all national limitations will be removed, the Spirit be poured forth, and Jehovah will become the God of the whole earth. God will make a new covenant with His people, and will write His laws by His Spirit in their hearts. Under this happy reign the final triumph of righteousness over sin will be accomplished, and death and all other evils will be abolished. Here is a very remarkable “Weltanschauung,” the presence of which at all in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures is a fact of no ordinary significance. In the comparative history of religions, it stands quite unique. [24] Speculations on the world and its origin are seen growing up in the schools of philosophy; but on the ground of religion there is nothing to compare with this. The lower religions, Fetishism and the like, have of course nothing of the nature of a developed world-view. The rudiments of such a view in the older nature-religions are crude, confused, polytheistic—mixed up abundantly with mythological elements. Brahmanism and Buddhism rest on a metaphysical foundation; they are as truly philosophical systems as the atomistic or pantheistic theories of the Greek schools, or the systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann in our own day. And the philosophy they inculcate is a philosophy of despair; they contain no spring of hope or progress. Zoroastrianism, with its profound realisation of the conflict of good and evil in the universe, perhaps comes nearest to the religion of the Old Testament, yet is severed from it by an immense gulf. I refer only to its pervading dualism, its reverence for physical elements, its confusion of natural and moral evil—above all, to its total lack of the idea of historical Revelation. [25] The Biblical conception is separated from every other by its monotheistic basis, its unique clearness, its organic unity, its moral character, and its teleological aim. [26] It does not matter for the purposes of this argument what dates we assign to the books of the Old Testament in which these views are found whether we attribute them, with the critics to the age of the prophets, or to any other. These views are at least there many centuries before the Christian age began and they are found nowhere else than on the soil of Israel. This is the singular fact the critic has to face, and we cannot profess to wonder that, impartially studying it, voices should be heard from the midst of the advanced school itself unhesitatingly declaring, Date your books when you will, this religion is not explicable save on the hypothesis of Revelation! [27] General drift and scope of the Lectures. The general drift and object of these Lectures should now, I think, be apparent. From the conditions of this Lectureship I am precluded from directly entering the apologetic field. I feel, however, that it would be useless to discuss any important theological subject at the present day without reference to the thought and speculation of the time. No other mode of thought would enable me to do justice to the Christian position, and none, I think, would be so interesting to those for whom the Lectures are primarily intended. This, however, will be subsidiary to the main design of showing that there is a definite Christian view of things, which has a character, coherence, and unity of its own, and stands in sharp contrast with counter theories and speculations, and that this world-view has the stamp of reason and reality upon itself, and can amply justify itself at the bar both of history and of ex experience. I shall endeavour to show that the Christian view of thing forms a logical whole which cannot be infringed on, or accepted or rejected piecemeal, but stands or falls in its integrity, and can only suffer from attempts at amalgamation or compromise with theories which rest on totally distinct bases. I hope thus to make clear at least the true nature of the issues involved in a comparison of the Christian and “modern” views, and I shall be glad if I can in any way contribute to the elucidation of the former. Objections in limine Two objections may be taken in limine to the course I propose to follow, and it is proper at this stage that I should give them some attention. I. From theology of feeling. I. The first objection is taken from the standpoint of the theology of feeling, and amounts to a denial of our right to speak of a Christian “Weltanschauung” at all; indeed, to assume that Christianity has a definite doctrinal content of any kind. [28] This class of objectors would rule the cognitive element out of religion altogether. Religion, it is frequently alleged, has nothing to do with notions of the intellect, but only with states and dispositions of the heart. Theories and doctrines are no essential part of it, but, on the contrary, a bane and injury and hindrance to its free development and progress. Those who speak thus sometimes do so in the interests of a theory which would seek the essence of religion in certain instincts, or sentiments, or emotions, which are supposed to be universal and indestructible in the human race, and to constitute the imperishable and undecaying substance of all religions—the emotions, e.g., of awe or wonder, or reverence or dependence, awakened by the impression of the immensity or mystery of the universe; while the and beliefs connected with these emotions are regarded as but the accidents of a particular stage of culture, and as possessing no independent value. They are at best the variegated moulds into which this emotional life of the spirit has for the time being poured itself—the envelopes and vehicles through which it seeks for itself preservation and expression. All religions, from this impartial standpoint, Christianity included, are equally Divine and equally human. But even those who recognise a higher origin for the Christian religion sometimes speak of it as if in its original form it was devoid of all definite doctrinal content; or at least as if the doctrinal ideas found in connection with it were only external wrappage and covering, and could be stripped off—altered, manipulated, modified, or dispensed with at the pleasure of the critic—without detriment to the moral and spiritual kernel beneath. [29] Christianity is not given up, but there is the attempt to refine and sublimate it till it is reduced to a simple state of sentiment and feeling; to purge it of the theoretic element till nothing is left but the vaguest residuum of doctrinal opinion. Agreeing with this party in their aversion to doctrine, yet occupying a distinct standpoint, are the ultra-spirituals, whose naturally mystical bent of mind, and fondness for the hazy and indefinite in theological as in other thinking, predispose them to dwell in the region of cloudy and undefined conceptions. It scarcely falls within my province to inquire how far this theory holds good in its general application to religion, though even on this broad field it might easily be shown that it involves a number of untenable assumptions, and really contradicts the idea of religion. For what is meant by the assertion that religion consists only in sentiment or feeling, and has nothing to do with doctrinal conceptions? Not, surely, that religion can subsist wholly without ideas, or cognitive apprehension, of some kind. Religion, in the lowest as well as in the highest of its forms is an expression of the relation of the soul to something beyond itself it involves, therefore, not one term, but two; it points to the existence of an object, and implies belief in the reality of that object. The element of idea, therefore,—or, as the Germans would say, “Vorstellung,”—is inseparable from it. No religion has ever been found which did not involve some rudiments of an objective view. We may learn here even from the pessimist Hartmann, who, in an acute analysis of the elements of religion, says, “How true soever it may be that religious feeling forms the innermost kernel of religious life, nevertheless that only is a true religious feeling which is excited through religious representations having a character of objective (if only relative) truth. Religion cannot exist without a religious “Weltanschauung,” and this not without the conviction of its transcendental truth.” [30] Nor, again, can it be contended that, while a cognitive element of some kind must be conceded, religion is indifferent to the character of its ideas—that these have no influence upon the state of sentiment or feelings. The religion of a Thug, e.g., is a very different thing from the religion of a Christian; and will any one say that the ideas with which the two religions are associated—the ideas they respectively entertain of their deities—have nothing to do with this difference? In what do religions differ as higher and lower, if not in the greater or less purity and elevation of the ideas they entertain of the Godhead, and the greater or less purity of the sentiment to which these ideas give birth? Nor, finally, can it be held that it is a matter of unimportance whether these ideas which are connected with a religion are regarded as true—i.e. whether they are believed to have any objective counterpart. For religion can as little subsist without belief in the reality of its object, as it can dispense with the idea of an object altogether. This is the weakness of subjective religious theories like Feuerbach’s, in which religion is regarded as the projection of man s own egoistic consciousness into the infinite; or of those poetic and æsthetic theories of religion which regard the ends of religion as served if only it furnishes man with elevating and inspiring ideals, without regard to the question of how far these ideals relate to an actual object. Ideas on this hypothesis are necessary to religion, and may be ranked as higher and lower, but have only a fictitious or poetic value. They are products of historical evolution,—guesses, speculations, dreams, imaginings, of the human mind in regard to that which from the nature of the case is beyond the reach of direct knowledge, probably is unknowable. They are therefore not material out of which anything can be built of a scientific character; not anything that can be brought to an objective test; not anything verifiable. Their sole value, as said earlier, is to serve as vehicles and support of religious feeling. [31] But it is obvious that, on this view, the utility of religious ideas can only last so long as the illusion in connection with them is not dispelled. For religion is more than a mere æsthetic gratification. It implies belief in the existence of a real object other than self, and includes a desire to get into some relation with this object. The mind in religion is in too earnest, a mood to be put off with mere fancies. The moment it dawns on the thoughts of the worshipper that the object he worships has no reality, but is only an illusion or fancy of his own, the moment he is convinced that in his holiest exercises, he is but toying with the creations of his own spirit,—that moment the religious relation is at an end. Neither philosopher nor common man will long continue bowing down to an object in whose actual existence he has ceased to believe. [32] Nor is the conclusion which seems to follow from this—that the illusion of religion is one which the progress of knowledge is destined to destroy—evaded by the concession that there is some dim Unknowable, the consciousness of which lies at the basis of the religious sentiment, and which the mind can till please itself by clothing with the attributes of God. For what is there in this indefinite relation to an Unknowable, of which we can only affirm that it is not what we think it to be, to serve the purpose of a religion? And what avails it to personalise this conception of the Absolute, when we know, as before, that this clothing with personal attributes is only objective illusion? No objection, therefore, can fairly be taken from the side of the general “Science of Religions,” to the supposition that a religion may exist which can give us a better knowledge of God than is to be found in the vague and uncertain conjectures and fancies of minds left to their own groping after the Divine. If such a religion exists, furnishing clear and satisfying knowledge of God, His character, will, and ways, His relations to men, and the purposes of His grace, there is plainly great room and need in the world for it; and the consideration of its claims cannot be barred by the assumption that the only valuable elements in any religion must be those which it has in common with all religions—which is the very point in dispute. The only question that can be properly raised is, Whether Christianity is a religion of this nature? And this can only be ascertained by actual inspection. Turning next to those within the Christian pale who would rule the doctrinal element out of their religion, I confess I find it difficult to understand on what grounds they can justify their procedure. If there is a religion in the world which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say that it is the religion of Jesus Christ. It has been frequently remarked that in pagan religions the doctrinal element is at a minimum—the chief thing there is the performance of a ritual. [33] But this is precisely where Christianity distinguishes itself from other religions—it does contain doctrine. It comes to men with definite, positive teaching; it claims to be the truth; it bases religion on knowledge, though a knowledge which is only attainable under moral conditions. I do not see how any one can deal fairly with the facts as they lie before us in the Gospels and Epistles, without coming to the conclusion that the New Testament is full of doctrine. The recently founded science of “New Testament Theology,” which has already attained to a position of such commanding importance among the theological disciplines, is an unexceptionable witness to the same fact. And this is as it should be. A religion based on mere feeling is the vaguest most unreliable, most unstable of all things. A strong, stable, religious life can be built up on no other ground than that of intelligent conviction. Christianity, therefore, addresses itself to the intelligence as well as to the heart. It sounds plausible indeed to say, Let us avoid all doctrinal subtleties; let as keep to a few plain, easy, simple pro positions, in regard to which there will be general agreement. But, unfortunately, men will think on those deep problems which lie at the root of religious belief—on the nature of God, His character, His relations to the world and men, sin, the means of deliverance from it, the end to which things are moving, and if Christianity does not give them an answer, suited to their deeper and more reflective moods, they will simply put it aside as in adequate for their needs. Everything depends here on what the Revelation of the Bible is supposed to be. If it is a few general elementary truths of religion we are in search of, it may freely be conceded that these might have been given in very simple form. But if we are to have a Revelation such as the Bible professes to convey, a Revelation high as the nature of God, deep as the nature of man, universal as the wants of the race, which is to accompany man through all the ascending stages of hi development and still be felt to be a power and inspiration to him for further progress,—it is absurd to expect that such a Revelation will not have many profound and difficult, things in it, and that it will not afford food for thought in its grandest and highest reaches “Thy judgments are a great deep.” [34] A religion divorced from earnest and lofty thought has always, down the whole history of the Church, tended to become weak, jejune, and unwholesome; while the intellect, deprived of its rights within religion, has sought its satisfaction without, and developed into godless nationalism. Christianity, it is sometimes, said by those who represent this view, is a life, not a creed; it is a spiritual system, and has nothing to do with dogmatic affirmations. But this is to confuse two things essentially different—Christianity as an inward principle of conduct, a subjective religious experience, on the one hand, and Christianity as an objective fact, or an historic magnitude, on the other. But can even the life be produced, or can it be sustained and nourished, without knowledge? Here I cannot forbear the remark that it is a strange idea of many who urge this objection in the interests of what they conceive to be a more spiritual form of Christianity, that “spirituality” in a religion is somehow synonymous with vagueness and indefiniteness; that the more perfectly they can vaporise or volatilise Christianity into a nebulous haze, in which nothing can be perceived distinctly, the nearer they bring it to the ideal of a spiritual religion. [35] This, it is safe to say, was not Paul’s idea of spirituality—he by whom the distinction of “letter” and “spirit” was most strongly emphasised. The region of the spiritual was rather with him, as it is throughout Scripture, the region of the clearest insight and most accurate perception—of full and perfect knowledge (epignōsis). His unceasing prayer for his converts was, not that their minds might remain in a state of hazy indistinctness, but that God would give them “a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of (their) heart enlightened,” that they might grow up in this knowledge, till they should “all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” [36] An objection to the recognition of doctrine in Christianity may be raised, however, from the side of Christian positivism, as well as from that of Christian mysticism. Christianity, it will be here said, is a fact-revelation—it has its centre in a living in Christ, and not a dogmatic creed. And this in a sense is true. The title of my Lectures is the acknowledgment of it. The facts of Revelation are before the doctrines built on them. The gospel is no mere proclamation of “eternal truths,” but the discovery of a saving purpose of God for mankind, executed in time. But the doctrines are the interpretation of the facts. The facts do not stand blank and dumb before us, but have a voice given to them, and a meaning put into them. They are accompanied by living speech, which makes their meaning clear. When John declares that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, and is the Son of God, [37] he is stating a fact, but he is none the less enunciating a doctrine. When Paul affirms, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,” [38] he is proclaiming a fact, but he is at the same time giving an interpretation of it. No writer has laid more stress on the fact, and less on the doctrine, in primitive Christianity than Professor Harnack, yet he cannot help saying, “So far as the God and Father of Jesus Christ is believed in as the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth, the Christian religion includes a definite knowledge of God, of the world, and of the world-aim.” [39] This concedes in principle all that I maintain. It affirms that the facts of Christianity, rightly understood and interpreted, not only yield special doctrines, but compel us to develop out of them a determinate “Weltanschauung.” This is precisely the assertion of the present Lectures. If I refer for a moment in this connection to Schleiermacher, who may be named as the most distinguished representative of the theology of feeling it is because I think that the position of this remarkable man on the question before us is frequently misunderstood. Schleiermacher’s earlier views are not unlike some of those we have already been considering, and are entangled in many difficulties and inconsistencies in consequence. I deal here only with his later and more matured thought, as represented in his work, Der christliche Glaube. In it also piety is still defined as feeling. It is, he says neither a mode of knowing nor a mode of action, but a mode of feeling, or of immediate selfconsciousness. It is the consciousness of ourselves as absolutely dependent, or, what comes to the same thing, as standing in relation with God. [40] In his earlier writings he had defined it more generally as the immediate feeling of the infinite and eternal, the immediate consciousness of the being of all that is finite in the infinite, of all that is temporal in the eternal, awakened by the contemplation of the universe. [41] But along with this must be taken into account Schleiermacher’s view of the nature of feeling. According to him, feeling is the opposite of knowledge than that pure, original state of consciousness—prior to both knowledge and action—out of which knowledge and action may subsequently be developed. [42] In Christianity this law material of the religious consciousness receives, as it were, a definite shaping and content. The peculiarity in the Christian consciousness is that everything in it is referred back upon Jesus Christ, and the Redemption accomplished through Him. [43] This moving back from the religious consciousness to the Person of the sinless Redeemer as the historical cause of it is already a transcending of the bounds of a theology of mere feeling. Theology is no longer merely a description of states of consciousness, when it leads us out for an explanation of these states into the region of historic fact. But an equally important circumstance is that, while describing the Christian consciousness mainly in terms of feeling, Schleiermacher does not deny that a dogmatic is implicitly contained in this consciousness, and is capable of development out of it. His Der christliche Glaube is, on the contrary, the unfolding of such a dogmatic. His position, therefore, is not offhand to be identified with that of the advocates of a perfectly undogmatic Christianity. These would rule the doctrinal element out of Christianity altogether. But Schleiermacher, while he lays the main stress in the production of this consciousness of Redemption in the believer on the Person of the Redeemer, and only subordinately on his teaching, yet recognises in Christian piety a positive, given content, and out of this he evolves a clearly defined and scientifically arranged system of doctrines. It is to be regretted that in the foundation of his theology—the doctrine of God—Schleiermacher never broke with his initial assumption that God cannot be known as He really is, but only as reflected in states of human consciousness, and therefore failed to lift his theology as a whole out of the region of subjectivity. A chief reason probably why many entertain a prejudice against the admission of a definite doctrinal content in Christianity, is that they think it militates against the idea of “progress” in theology. How does the matter stand in this respect? Growth and advance of some kind, of course, there is and must be in theology. It cannot be that the other departments of knowledge unceasingly progress, and theology stands still. No one familiar with the history of theology will deny that great changes have taken place in the shape which doctrines have assumed in the course of their development, or will question that these changes have been determined largely by the ruling ideas, the habits of thought, the state of knowledge and culture, of each particular time. The dogmatic moulds which were found adequate for one age have often proved insufficient for the next, to which a larger horizon of vision has been granted; and have had to be broken up that new ones might be created, more adapted to the content of a Revelation which in some sense transcends them all. I recognise therefore to the full the need of growth and progress in theology. [44] Bit by bit, as the ages go on, we see more clearly the essential lineaments of the truth as it is in Jesus; we learn to disengage the genuine truths of Christ’s gospel from human additions and corruptions; we apprehend their bearings and relations with one another, and with new truths, more distinctly; we see them in new points of view, develop and apply them in new ways. All this is true, and it is needful to remember it lest to temporary points of view, and human theories and formulations we attribute an authority and completeness which in no way belong to them. But it does not by any means follow from this that therefore, everything in Christianity is fluent, that it has no fixed startingpoints, no definite basal lines, no sure and moveless foundations, no grand determinative positions which control and govern all thought within distinctly Christian limits,—still less that, in the course of its long history, theology has achieved nothing, or has reached no results which can fairly be regarded as settled. This is the exaggeration on the other side, and so far from being helpful to progress in theology, it is in reality the denial of its possibility. Progress in theology implies that there is something to develop—that some truths at all events, relating to God and to Divine things, are ascertainable, and are capable of scientific treatment. It is easy to speak of the attempt to “limit infinite truth within definite formulæ”; but, on the other hand, unless some portion at least of this infinite, truth can be brought within range of the human faculties, theology has nothing to work on. It is a pseudo-science, and to speak of progress in it is idle. II. From the Ritschlian distinction of a “religious” and a “theoretic” view of the world. II. The recent tendency in Continental theology, however, is not so much to deny the existence of a definite “Weltanschauung” in the Bible, as rather to lay stress on the distinction between a “religious” and a “theoretic” view of the world—ascribing to Christianity the former, but not the latter. This is the position of the school of Ritschl, and truth and error are so intimately blended in it that it is necessary to give it our careful consideration. [45] That a sound distinction underlies the terms “religious” and “theoretic” is not to be disputed, and it is important that its nature should be rightly understood. But, under the plea of expelling metaphysics from theology, the tendency is at present to revive this distinction in a form which practically amounts to the resuscitation of the old doctrine of a “double truth”—the one religious, the other philosophical; and it is not held necessary that even where the two overlap they should always be found in agreement. It is not simply that the two kinds of knowledge have different spheres, move in different orbits, and have to do with a different class of objects; for this Ritschl at least denies. [46] But they set out from different starting-points, judge by different standards, and as a consequence frequently lead to different results. Religious knowledge, Ritschl holds, moves only in the sphere of what he calls worth- or value-judgments. That is to say, it judges of things, not according to their objective nature and relations, but according to their value for us—according to their fitness to meet and satisfy religious necessities. [47] This, logically, would lead to pure subjectivism, and in the hands of some of Ritschl’s followers actually does so. [48] This tendency is strengthened by the theory of knowledge to which this school generally has committed itself—a theory Kantian in its origin—which, denying to the mind any power of knowing things as they are, limits it within the sphere of phenomenal representations. Ritschl himself tries hard to ward off this reproach of subjectivity from his system, and makes more than one attempt to find a bridge from the practical to the theoretic, but with no real success. He never quits the ground that it is not the objective truth of things—which would carry us into the region of theoretic knowledge—which forms the subject—matter of our inquiry in theology, but solely their subjective aspect as related to our own states of pleasure and pain, or as helping or hindering the ends sought in religion. In his doctrines of God and Christ, of Providence and miracle, of sin and Redemption as we shall afterwards see, it is constantly this subjective aspect of things, which may be very different from our actual or scientific judgment upon them, which is brought into prominence. Religion requires, for example, that we view the universe from a teleological and not from a causal standpoint, and therefore that we postulate God and Providence. But these are only practical, not theoretic notions, and the mechanical and causal view of the universe may stand alongside of them intact. “Miracle” is the religious name for an event which awakens in us a powerful impression of the help of God, but is not to be held as interfering with the scientific doctrine of the unbroken connection of nature. [49] Not only are the two spheres of knowledge to be thus kept apart in our minds, but we are not to be allowed to trace any lines of relation between them. We are not to be allowed, e.g., to seek any theoretic proof of the existence of God; or to ask how special Providence, or the efficacy of prayer, or supernatural Revelation, or miracle, or even our own freedom is to be reconciled with the reign of unbroken natural causation. All such inquiries are tabooed as a mixing up of distinct sphere of knowledge, with the result, however, that they are not really kept apart, but that all in the ideas of Providence, miracle, prayer, etc. which conflicts with the theoretic view is explained away It should scarcely require much argument to convince us that this proposal to divide the house of the mind into two compartments, each of which is to be kept sacredly apart from the other, is a perfectly illusory and untenable one. It might have some meaning in an æsthetic theory of religion, in which the religious conceptions are avowedly treated as pure ideals, but it can have none where the speech is of religious “knowledge.” There are, indeed, different modes of cognising the same object, as well as different stages and degrees of real knowledge. If by “theoretic knowledge” is meant only knowledge gained by the methods of exact science, or by philosophical reflection, [50] then, apart from religion altogether, there are vast fields of our knowledge which will not come under this category. The knowledge, for example, which we have of one another in the common intercourse of life, or the knowledge which the ordinary man gathers from his experience of the outward world, is very different in purity of theoretical character from the kind of knowledge aimed at by the psychologist or metaphysician, or by the student of science in his investigations of nature. It is as far removed as possible from the disinterested character which Ritschl ascribes to the knowledge he calls “theoretical.” Yet there is no part of this knowledge in which theoretic activities are not present. The same processes of thought which are employed in philosophy and science are implied in the simplest act of the understanding. In like manner, we may grant that there is a distinction of character and form—not to speak of origin—between religious and what may be called theoretic knowledge; and that thus far the distinction insisted on by Ritschl and his school has a certain relative justification. Religion, assuredly, is not a theoretical product. It did not originate in reasoning, but in an immediate perception or experience of the Divine in some of the spheres of its natural or supernatural manifestation; for the reception of which again a native capacity or endowment must be presupposed in the human spirit. Even Revelation implies the possession of this capacity in man to cognise the manifestations of the Divine when they are set before him. Originating in this way, religious knowledge—at least in its first or immediate form—is distinguished by certain peculiarities. For one thing, it is distinguished from strictly theoretic knowledge by the practical motive which obtains in it. Theoretic knowledge aims at a representation of objects in their purely objective character and relations. Religion, on the other hand, seeks to set its objects before it in those lights, and under those aspects, which directly subserve religious ends. With this difference of aim is connected a difference of form. Theoretic knowledge is cool, clear, and scientifically exact. Religious knowledge is touched with emotion, and moves largely in the region of figurative conception, or what the Germans would call “Vorstellung.” In the first place, religion, as having to do with the personal relation of the soul to God, moves in a sphere in which the affections and emotions are necessarily allowed large play. Its modes of apprehension are therefore warm, lively, impassioned, intuitive. It groups its material under the influence of the dominant feeling; lays hold of those sides and relations of the object which affect itself, and lets the others drop out of view; leaps over intermediate links of causation, and seeks to grasp the object at once in its essential reality and inner significance—in its relation to its ultimate cause and final end. A second cause which leads to the same result is that the objects with which religion has to deal are largely transcendental—that is, they lie beyond the range and conditions of our present experience. A certain amount of figurative representation necessarily enters into the purest conceptions we are able to form of such objects. To the extent now indicated we may agree with Ritschl that religion moves—if he chooses to phrase it so—in the sphere of value-judgments, and not in that of scientific apprehension. But this is not to be interpreted as if religion did not affirm the objective truth of the ideas it entertains—as if its judgments of value were not at the same time judgments of truth. Still less is it to be conceded that there is any necessary divorce between the mind in its practical and the mind in its theoretical activities, so that propositions may be affirmed in the one sphere which have no relation to, can receive no corroboration from, may even be contradicted by, propositions affirmed in the other. Thus to tear asunder faith and reason is to render no service to religion, but is to pave the way for theoretical scepticism. It is in truth the same reason which works in both spheres; the results, therefore, must be such as is admit of comparison. If Ritschl would raise a bar against any such comparison of the results of religious thinking with the conclusions reached by philosophy and science—leaving each to work in its own domain—a more just view of the subject will recognise that this is impossible. We cannot have two spheres of truth lying side by side in the same mind without some effort to arrive at an adjustment between them. Still less is it possible for the mind to find itself in conflict with itself,—on the one side for instance, affirming the personality of God, on the other denying it; on the one side affirming freedom, Revelation, miracle, on the other unbroken natural causation,—and not do what it can to annul the discrepancy. Nor will reason in practice be content to remain in this state of division with itself. It will insist on its knowledge being brought to some sort of unity, or, if this cannot be done, in regarding one or other of the conflicting propositions as illusive. Finally, it is not sufficiently recognised by Ritschl and his school that religion itself, while in the first instance practical, carries in it also the impulse to raise its knowledge to theoretic form. Faith cannot but seek to advance to knowledge—that is, to the reflective and scientific comprehension of its own contents. Just because its propositions are held to be not only “judgments of value,” but to contain objective truth, they must be capable of being submitted to theoretic treatment. Ritschl himself recognises the necessity of constructing a theology which shall be adequate to the contents of the Christian Revelation. Only he would have it move solely within the region of faith-propositions, or, as he calls them, “judgments of value.” Its task is ended when it has faithfully collected, purely expressed, and internally co-ordinated these religious affirmations. [51] It is not observed how much theoretic and critical activity is already implied in this very process of collating, sifting, and co-ordinating; or how largely, in Ritschl’s own case, the results are dependent on the theoretic presuppositions with which he sets out in his (metaphysical) doctrine of knowledge, and his general theory of religion. But, waiving this, it is surely vain to ask theology to go so far, and then say it is to go no further. Christian science has many tasks beyond those which the Ritschlian limitation would prescribe for it. How, for example, can it refuse the task of investigating its own grounds of certainty? How can it help raising the question of how far these religious conceptions, now brought to expression and co-ordinated, answer to objective truth? How can it avoid asking if this content of the Christian Revelation receives no verification from the laws of man’s spiritual life, or in what this verification consists? Can it help going back on its own presuppositions, and asking what these are, and what kind of view of God and man they imply? How can it help connecting this truth given in Revelation with truth in other departments? And this investigation is not a mere matter of choice in theology; it is forced on it as a necessity. For in the very process of collation and criticism questions arise which can only be solved by going further down. Antinomies arise within theology itself: the different sides of Biblical truth have to be harmonised in a wider conception; unity of view has to be sought in a field where only parts are given, and much is left to be inferred. All this involves a large amount of theoretic treatment in theology, and may—I should rather say must—result in showing that the truths of Revelation have also a theoretic idea, and are capable of theoretic verification and corroboration. I conclude, therefore, that it is legitimate to speak of a Christian “Weltanschauung,” and that we are not debarred from investigating its relations to theoretic knowledge. _________________________________________________________________ [1] See Note A.—The Idea of the “Weltanschauung.” [2] Kritik d. r. Vernunft, pp. 302ff. (Bohn’s trans., pp. 256 ff.). The references to Kant throughout are to Erdmann’s edition (1884). [3] Cf. Zeller Pre-Socratic Philosophy, pp. 88, 89 (Eng. trans.). [4] See Note B.—Classification of “Weltanschauungen.” [5] Bk. I. L1. 54–57 (Munro’s trans.). Cf. Lucretius and the Atomic Theory, by Professor John Veitch, p. 13. [6] Caird’s Social Philosophy of Comte, p. 24. [7] Cf. Strauss—“We proceed from the isolated circles of phenomena around us, from the stable basis and the elementary forces, to vegetable and animal life, to the universal life of the earth, from this to that of our solar system, and so ever further, till at last we have grasped the entire range of existence in a single representation; and this is the representation of the universe.—Der alte und der neue Glaube, p.150. [8] “As science becomes more conscious of its problems and its goal, it struggles the more strenuously towards the region where physics melt into metaphysics.”—Fairbairn, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, p. 88. [9] See Note C—Unconscious Metaphysic. [10] “The question of questions for mankind the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other, is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature, and of his relation to the universe of things. Whence our race has come, what are the limits of our power over nature and of nature’s power over us? to what goal we are tending? are the problems which present themselves anew, and with undiminished interest, to every man born into the world. Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature. p. 57. [11] Cf. Principal Fairbairn—“The search after causes, both efficient and ultimate, is being conducted with the most daring and unwearied enthusiasm. Science has become as speculative, as prolific of physico-metaphysical theories—as the most bewitched metaphysician could desire.. . . The consequent crop of cosmic speculation has been of the most varied and extensive kind, ranging from theories of the origin of species to theories as to the origin of the universe.”—Studies, pp. 65, 66. [12] “No one can enter on a consideration of the subject of Evolution with the expectation of attending to clear ideas and relatively correct conclusions, unless he first of all thinks of it as cosmic, i.e. comprehensive, in its operation, of the entire universe of matter and mind, and throughout all time.”—Chapman, Pre-organic Evolution, etc., p. 3. [13] Cf. Dorner, Syst. of Doct.i. p. 155 (Eng. trans.). [14] Tennyson In Memoriam. [15] Note D—Antagonism of Christian and “Modern” Views of the World. [16] Note E—Internal Conflicts of the “Modern” View. [17] Cf. Max Müller, Preface to his Lectures on Anthropological Religion (Gifford Lectures), 1892. [18] History of the Church i. p. 2 (Eng. trans.). [19] Cf. Baring-Gould—“In every religion of the world is to be found, distorted or exaggerated, some great truth, otherwise it would never have obtained foothold; every religious revolution has been the struggle of thought to gain another step in the ladder that reaches to heaven. That which we ask of Revelation is that it shall take up all these varieties into itself, not that it shall supplant them; and show how that at which each of them aimed, however dimly and indistinctly has its interpretation and realisation in the objective truth brought to light by Revelation. Hence we shall be able to recognise that religion to be the true one, which is the complement and corrective of all the wanderings of the religious instinct in its efforts to provide objects for its own satisfaction.”—Origin and Development of Religious Belief, ii. Pref., p. 10. [20] Cf. Areopagitica, “English Reprints,” p. 56 Clement of Alexandria has a similar figure, Strom. i. 13. [21] Cf. Eph. iv. 6. Flint, Anti-Theistic Theories, p. 339. [22] Cf. Dorner, Syst. of Doct. i. pp. 366, 367 (Eng. trans.). Even Ed. v. Hartmann recognises the deep “metaphysical sense” of the doctrine of the Trinity, and the service done by it in reconciling the Divine immanence and transcendence.—Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums, p. 108. [23] Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 48. [24] See Note F.—Uniqueness of the Old Testament View. [25] Cf. the sketch of Zoroastrianism in Introduction to the Zendavesta in Sacred Books of the East. See also Ebrard’s Christian Apologetics, ii. pp. 186–232. Some interesting remarks will be found in Lotze’s Microcosmus, ii. p. 459. [26] Dr. Dorner says—“Israel has the idea of teleology as a kind of soul.”—Syst. of Doct. i. p. 274 (Eng. trans.). [27] See Note G.—Origin of the Old Testament View—Relation to Critical Theories. [28] See Note H.—Nature and Definition of Religion. [29] See Note I.—Undogmatic Religion. [30] Religionsphilosophie, ii. p. 32. [31] See Note J.—Æsthetic Theories of Religion. [32] Cf. Dorner—“Faith does not wish to be a mere relation to itself or to its representations and thoughts. That would simply be a monologue faith desires a dialogue.”—Syst. of Doct. i. p. 123 (Eng. trans.). Martineau—“No; if religious communion is reduced to a monologue, its essence is extinct, and its soul is gone. It is a living relation, or it is nothing—a response to the Supreme Reality.”—Ideal Substitutes for God, p.19. Strauss—“None but a book student could ever imagine that a creation of the brain, woven of poetry and philosophy, can take the place of real religion.”—In Kaiser Julian, p. 12 (quoted by Martineau). [33] Cf. Professor W. R. Smith’s Religion of the Semites—“The antique religions had for the most part no creed; they consisted entirely of institutions and practices. . . . In all the antique religions mythology takes the place of dogma, that is, the sacred lore of priests and people, so far as it does not consist of mere rules for the performance of religious acts assumes the form of stories about use gods; and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual.”—P. 18. [34] Ps. xxxvi. 6. [35] Cf. Bartlett’s The Letter and the Spirit (Bampton Lectures. 1888). [36] Eph. i. 17, 18; iv. 13. [37] 1 John iv. 2, 15. [38] 1 Cor. xv. 3. [39] Grundriss der Dogmengeschichte, i. p. 1. I have used the word “doctrine” in these discussions and kept clear of dogma which is often used with a prejudice. “Dogma” I take to be a formulation of doctrine stamped with some ecclesiastical authority. If there are doctrines no objection can reasonably be taken to the formulation of them. It is beyond my purpose to discuss the wider question of the utility and necessity of creeds for church purposes Cf. Lect. VI. in Dr. Rainy’s Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine (Cunningham Lectures). [40] Der christ. Glaube sects. 3 and 4. [41] Cf. Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, i. p. 308 (Eng. trans.). [42] Der christ. Glaube, sect. 3. 2. [43] Ibid. sect. 11. [44] Cf. Dr. Rainy’s Delivery and Development of Doctrines (Cunningham Lectures). On the position criticised see, e.g., Bartlett’s The Letter and the Spirit (Bampton Lectures, 1888). [45] See Note K.—Religious and Theoretic Knowledge. [46] Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, iii. pp. 185, 193–94 (3rd edit.). [47] See Ritschl’s discussion in Recht. und Ver. iii. pp. 192–202; and in his Theologie und Metaphysik. [48] E.g. Bender, of Bonn. [49] Cf. Ritschl’s remarks on “Miracle” in his Unterricht in der christ. Religion, pp 14, 15. [50] This seems the view taken in O. Ritschl’s Uber Werthurtheile, but would, if accepted, reduce the distinction to a truism. [51] Cf. Ritschl, Recht. und Ver. iii. pp. 14–16. _________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX TO LECTURE I. SKETCH OF THE CHRISTIAN VIEW. It may conduce to clearness if, having indicated the general scope and purport of these Lectures, I now give in this Appendix a brief statement, in propositional form, of what I consider the Christian view of the world to be, and sketch on the basis of this the course to be pursued in the succeeding Lectures. I. First, then, the Christian view affirms the existence of a Personal, Ethical, Self-Revealing God. It is thus at the out set a system of Theism, and as such is opposed to all systems of Atheism, Agnosticism, Pantheism, or mere Deism. II. The Christian view affirms the creation of the world by God, His immanent presence in it, His transcendence over it, and His holy and wise government of it for moral ends. III. The Christian view affirms the spiritual nature and dignity of man—his creation in the Divine image, and destination to bear the likeness of God in a perfected relation of sonship. IV. The Christian view affirms the fact of the sin and disorder of the world, not as something belonging to the Divine idea of it, and inhering in it by necessity, but as something which has entered it by the voluntary turning aside of man from his allegiance to his Creator, and from the path of his normal development. The Christian view of the world, in other words, involves a Fall as the presupposition of its doctrine of Redemption; whereas the “modern” view of the world affirms that the so-called Fall was in reality a rise, and denies by consequence the need of Redemption in the scriptural sense. V. The Christian view affirms the historical Self-Revelation of God to the patriarchs and in the line of Israel, and, as brought to light by this, a gracious purpose of God for the salvation of the world, centring in Jesus Christ, His Son, and the new Head of humanity. VI. The Christian view affirms that Jesus Christ was not mere man, but the eternal Son of God—a truly Divine Person—who in the fulness of time took upon Him our humanity, and who, on the ground that in Him as man there dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily, is to be honoured, worshipped, and trusted, even as God is. This is the transcendent “mystery of godliness” [52] —the central and amazing assertion of the Christian view—by reference to which our relation is determined to every thing else which it contains. Pausing for a moment on this truth of the Incarnation, we have to notice its central place in the Christian system, and through its light every other doctrine is illuminated and transformed. 1. The Incarnation sheds new light on the nature of God, and, in conjunction with the work of the Spirit, reveals Him as triune —Father, Son, and Spirit—one God. 2. The Incarnation sheds new light on the doctrine of creation—all things being now seen to be created by Christ as well as for Him. 3. The Incarnation sheds new light on the nature of man, alike as respects its capacity for union with the Divine, its possibilities of perfection, and the high destinies awaiting it in the future. 4. The Incarnation sheds new light on the purpose of God in the creation and Redemption of men—that end being, in the words of Paul, “in the dispensation of the fulness of times to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him.” [53] 5 The Incarnation sheds new light on the permission of sin by showing the possibility of Redemption from it, and how, through the Revelation of the Divine purposes of mercy, a far grander discovery is made of the Divine character, and far higher prospects are opened up for humanity. VII. The Christian view affirms the Redemption of the world through a great act of Atonement—this Atonement to be appropriated by faith, and availing for all who do not wilfully withstand and reject its grace. VIII. The Christian view affirms that the historical aim of Christ’s work was the founding of a Kingdom of God on earth, which includes not only the spiritual salvation of individuals, but a new order of society, the result of the action of the spiritual forces set in motion through Christ. IX. Finally, the Christian view affirms that history has a goal, and that the present order of things will be terminated by the appearance of the Son of Man for judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the final separation of righteous and wicked,—final, so far as the Scriptures afford any light, or entitle us to hold out any hope. Beyond this are the eternal ages, on whose depths only stray lights fall, as in that remarkable passage—“Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father: . . . then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” [54] —and on the mysterious blessedness or sorrow of which, as the case may be, it is needless to speculate. I have for clearness’ sake exhibited this outline of the Christian view in a series of propositions, but I need hardly say that it is not my intention to attempt to exhaust this out line, or anything like it, in this brief course of Lectures. In the actual treatment of my subject I shall be guided very much by the way in which the main positions of the Christian view are related to current theories and negations. 1. It is plain that the Christian view of the world is Theistic, and as such is opposed, as already said, to all the views which deny a living personal God, and also to Deism, which denies Revelation. 2. The Christian views of nature and man come into conflict with many current theories. They involve, for example, the ideas of creation, and of the spirituality, freedom, and immortal destiny of man—all of which the thoroughgoing “modern” view of the world opposes. 3. The Christian view of sin is irreconcilable with modern theories, which represent sin as a necessity of development, and nullify its true conception by starting man off at a stage but little removed from that of the brutes. At least I take this to be the case, and shall endeavour to give reasons for my opinion. The above denials, if logically carried out, involve the rejection of the Christian view as a whole. We reject the Christian view in toto if we deny the existence of God, the spiritual nature and immortality of man, or destroy the idea of sin. In what follows we are rather in the region of Christian heresy; at least the total rejection of the Christian view is not necessarily implied, though in its mutilation it is found that neither can that which is preserved be permanently maintained. 4. The assertion of the Incarnation may be met by a lower estimate of Christ’s Person than the full Christian doctrine implies; or by the complete denial of the supernatural dignity of His Person. 5. The Christian view may be met by the denial of the need or the reality of Atonement, or by inadequate or unscriptural representations of that great doctrine. 6. There may be unscriptural denials, as well as unwarrantable dogmatisms, in the matter of eschatology. My course, then, in view of the various antitheses, will shape itself as follows:— First, keeping in mind that it is the Incarnation which is the central point in the Christian view, I shall look in the second Lecture at the alternatives which are historically presented to us if this doctrine is rejected. Next, in the third, fourth, and fifth Lectures, I shall consider in order the three postulates of the Christian view—God, Nature and Man, and Sin. The sixth Lecture will be devoted to the Incarnation itself, and the seventh to the consideration of some related topics—the higher Christian concept of God, and the relation of the Incarnation to the plan of the world. The eighth Lecture will treat of the Incarnation and Redemption from sin; and the concluding Lecture will treat of the Incarnation and human destiny. [55] _________________________________________________________________ [52] 1 Tim. iii. 16. [53] Eph. i. 10. [54] Cor. xv. 24-28. [55] The original plan embraced a Lecture between Lecture VIII. and what is now IX.—on “The Incarnation and New Life of Humanity: the Kingdom of God.” The subject is touched on in Lecture IX., and dealt with more fully in an Appendix. _________________________________________________________________ “There has seldom been an age more irreligious than ours, yet it will be difficult to find one in which religious questions have been more profoundly discussed.”—Hartmann. “In the history of systems an inexorable logic rids them of their halfness and hesitancies, and drives them straight to their inevitable goal.”—Martineau. “Conjecture of the worker by the work: Is there strength there?—enough: intelligence? Ample: but goodness in a like degree? Not to the human eye in the present state, An isoscele deficient in the base. What lacks, then, of perfection fit for God But just the instance which this tale supplies Of love without a limit? So is strength, So is intelligence; let love be so, Unlimited in its self-sacrifice, Then is the tale true and God shows complete.” R. Browning LECTURE II. THE CHISTIAN VIEW AND ITS ALERNATIVES Introductory It is the fundamental assumption of these Lectures that the central point in the Christian view of God and the world is the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as a truly Divine Person—the Son of God made flesh. How is this assumption to be vindicated? I do not conceal from myself that the issues involved in such an assertion are very stupendous. The belief in Jesus as the Son of God is not one to be lightly taken up, but when it is taken up, it practically determines, as has already been said, a man’s views on everything else in Christianity. No one will dispute that, if Jesus Christ is what the creeds declare Him to be—an Incarnation of the Divine—His Person is necessarily central in His own religion, nay, in the universe. Christianity, on this assumption, is correctly described as the religion of the Incarnation. On the other hand, this is precisely the view of the Person of Christ which, we are told, the modern view of the world compels us to reject. No doctrine stumbles the modern mind so completely as this. It is flatly pronounced incredible and absurd. That Jesus was the holiest of men—the Divinest of the race, the most perfect exhibition of the god-like in humanity—may well be conceded; but of literal Incarnation it is not permitted to the modern intelligence to speak. Science has to investigate the origin of the dogma; to show how it arose from the powerful impression made by Jesus on His followers; how it was shaped by Hebrew and Hellenic modes of thought; but it cannot for a moment entertain the possibility that the idea which it represents is true. As strenuously is our right resisted to speak of this doctrine as an essential and integral part of Christianity. Short of this conception, it is said, there are many grades of belief in Christ, and we are not entitled to unchristianise any of them To identify the essence of Christianity with the Incarnation is, it is held, to make a particular dogmatic interpretation of Christianity equivalent to Christianity itself. It is not, indeed, among the extremer sceptics that we find any difficulty in getting the acknowledgment that the Incarnation is central in Christianity. “It is,” says Strauss, “certainly the central dogma in Christianity. Here the Founder is at the same time the most prominent object of worship; the system based on Him loses its support as soon as He is shown to be lacking in the qualities appropriate to an object of religious worship.” [56] “In Him alone,” says Feuerbach, “is concentrated the Christian religion.” [57] Quite logically, from his point of view, Strauss draws the conclusion that, since the Incarnation is untenable, Christianity falls to the ground with it. But others will not go thus far. They distinguish between Christianity and its accidents, and put this doctrine in the category of the accidents. Nay, it is ostensibly in the interests of what is supposed to be a purer and more primitive form of Christianity that in many quarters the demand for the surrender of this doctrine is made. The cry is, “ Back from Christianity to Christ”—back from the Christianity of the creeds, from the Christianity even of Paul and John—to the Christ of the simple Galilean gospel, who never dreamt of making himself God. As Lessing, in a famous passage, distinguishes between “ the religion of Christ” and “the Christian religion,” meaning by the former the religion which Christ Himself professed and practised, and by the latter the superstructure of dogma subsequently reared on this, [58] so an analogous distinction is drawn between the Pauline and Johannine Christ, with His halo of supernatural attributes, and the meek and lowly Jesus, so intensely human, of the Synoptic Gospels. Nevertheless, the ablest theology of the century will sustain me in the general assertion, that the central principle of Christianity is the Person of its Founder. Whatever may be thought of the great speculative movement in the beginning of the century, connected with the names of Fichte and Schelling and Hegel, it cannot be denied that at least it rendered an essential service to theology in overcoming the shallow rationalism of the preceding period, and in restoring to its place of honour in the Christian system the doctrine of Christ’s Person, which it had become customary to put in the background. Still more influential in this direction was the powerful impulse given to theology by Schleiermacher. Since that time all the best theology in Germany may be said to be Christological. That Christ sustains a different relation to His religion from that of ordinary founders of religion to the faiths they have founded; that in Him there was a peculiar union of the Divine and human; that His appearance and work were of decisive importance for the Church and for humanity—these are thoughts which may be said to be common to all the greater systems, irrespective of schools. They are found among theologians as widely separated in dogmatic standpoint tendency as Rothe and Dorner, Biedermann and Lipsius, Beyschlag and Ritschl, Luthardt and Frank. It is only outside the circles of really influential theology that we find a reversion to the loose deistic conception of Christ as simply a Prophet or moral Teacher, like Moses or Confucius or Buddha. [59] It is indeed a powerful proof of the view that the Person of Christ is of unique importance in His religion, that whenever a new breath of life passes over theology, and an attempt is made to gain a profounder apprehension of Christianity, there is a recurrence to this idea, and the necessity is felt of doing justice to it; thus testifying to the truth of Dorner’s remark, “A Christian system which is unable to make Christology an integral part of itself, has pronounced its own judgment; it has really given up the claim to the title of Christian.” [60] At the same time, this acknowledgment of the central and unique place of time Founder of Christianity in His religion does not settle the question of the precise estimate we are to take of His Person. Is He merely human, or is He Divine as well? Or if Divine, in what sense do we attach this predicate to Him? Is it, as with the Hegelians, the mere expression of a metaphysical idea—of that identity of the Divine and the human which is as true of all men as it is of Christ, only that it came first to clear consciousness in Him? Or is it, as with Ritschl, the mere expression of a value judgment of the believer—a predicate denoting the worth which Christ has for the believing soul as the supreme Revealer of God’s character and purpose? Or is it, as with others, an ethical Divinity that is ascribed to Christ—such participation in the Divine nature and life of Sonship as may be experienced also by the believer? [61] Or shall we hold, in agreement with the general faith of the Church, that Christ is more than all this—that in Him the Divine pre-existing Word truly and personally became incarnate, and made our nature His own—that therefore He is the Son of God, not simply as we are, but in a high and transcendental sense, in which we cannot compare ourselves with Him? This question, in the present state of controversy, is not so easily settled as might at first sight appear. It is vain, of course, to appeal to the great ecclesiastical creeds, for it is they which are in dispute. It is vain also, at this stage, to attempt to settle the question by the simple method of citation of proof texts. The facts of Christ’s self-revelation, and His witness to His own Person, must indeed, in the last resort, be the ground on which our faith in Him rests, and it will be necessary at a later stage to examine this self-witness of Christ, as well as the apostolic doctrine, with considerable care. [62] But at the outset this method is attended by obvious disadvantages. It is easy to say—the original documents of Christianity are before us; let us examine them. But, for one thing, some of these documents—the Fourth Gospel, e.g., and some of the Pauline epistles—are themselves in dispute among our opponents; and, even if genuine, their authority is not accepted as decisive. In the next place, there is the question, whether there are not traces of development in the doctrine of the Person of Christ even within the New Testament—whether all the sacred writers teach the same view. There are many, as I have already said, who will admit that Christ’s Divinity is taught by Paul and John, who would deny that it is taught by Christ Himself. These are difficulties which cannot be satisfactorily met by mere assertion, and the question recurs, whether—as a provisional expedient at least—any other course is open to us? There is another method which I propose to apply in this Lecture, one which appears to me to have the advantage of dealing with all these issues at once, and at the same time deals with issues of a wider character. It is the method of appeal to history. The individual judgment may err in the opinions it forms, and in the conclusions it deduces from them. It is not given to any man to see all the consequences that follow from his own thinking. He may quite conceivably hold in the scheme of his beliefs propositions that are inconsistent with each other, and, if logically carried out, would destroy each other, and not be aware of the fact. In history things get beaten out to their true issues. The strands of thought that are incompatible with each other get separated; conflicting tendencies, at first unperceived, are brought to light; opposite one-sidednesses correct each other; and the true consequences of theories reveal themselves with inexorable necessity. As Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, [63] investigating the nature of Justice, proposes to study it first as “writ large” in the collective magnitude of the State, that thereafter he may return with better knowledge to the study of it in the individual, so the movements of thought are best studied on the broad scale in which they present themselves over large periods of time. It is to this test I propose to bring the great question of Christianity—the same that was proposed by Jesus to the Pharisees eighteen hundred years ago—“What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?” [64] I shall ask what aid history affords us in determining the true estimate to be put upon the Person of Christ, and the place held in the Christian system by the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is one advantage of this method, that, as I have said, it brings all the issues into court at once. The verdict of history is at once a judgment on the answers which have been given to the theological question; on their agreement with the sum-total of the facts of Christianity; on the methods of exegesis and New Testament criticism by which they have been supported; on their power to maintain themselves against rival views; on how far the existence of Christianity is dependent on them, or bound up with them. I. History a series of alternatives—the downward movement. I. History, then, as it seems to me, presents us with a series of alternatives of a deeply interesting character, by studying which we may find our bearings on this question, “What think ye of Christ?” as we can in no other way. 1. First alternative—A Divine Christ or humanitarianism. 1. The first essential service which history has rendered us has been in the elimination of intermediate views—in making it clear as a first alternative that the real issue on this question is between a truly Divine Christ and pure humanitarianism. Intermediate views on Christ’s Person have from time to time arisen, and still go on arising, in the Church; but, like the intermediate species of plants and animals Mr. Darwin tells us of, which are invariably driven to the wall in the struggle for existence, they have never been able to survive. There is, e.g., the Arian view, which has appeared again and again in the history of the Church in times of spiritual decadence. To find a place for the high attributes ascribed to Christ in Scripture, a lofty supernatural dignity is in this view assigned to Him. He was a sort of supreme angel, God’s First-born, His instrument in the creation of the world, etc. But He was not eternal; He was not of Divine essence. It is safe to say that this view is now practically extinct. It would be a shallow reading of history to attribute the defeat of Arianism in the early Church to the anathemas of councils, the influence of court favour, or any other accidental circumstances. It perished through its own inherent weakness. [65] If the Arians admit all they profess to do about Christ—that He was pre-existent, God’s agent in the creation of the world, etc.—there need be little difficulty in admitting the rest. On the other hand, if they stop short of the higher view to which the Scriptures seem to point, they entangle themselves in difficulties and contradictions, exegetical and other, which make it impossible for them to remain where they are. In reality, these high-sounding attributes which they ascribe to Christ are an excrescence on the system; for on this theory no work remains for Christ to do which could not have been accomplished equally well by a highly endowed man. Historically, therefore, Arianism has always tended to work round to the Socinian or strictly Unitarian view of Christ, where it has not gone upwards, through semi-Arianism, to the recognition of His full Divinity. But this Socinian or Unitarian view of the Person of Christ—I refer to the older Unitarianism of the Priestley and Channing type—is another of those intermediate views which history also may now be said to have eliminated. Christ, on this view, is the greatest of inspired teachers, a true Prophet. He had a divine mission; He wrought miracles in confirmation of His doctrine; He rose from the dead on the third day; He is expected to return to judge the world. Here also there is a great deal of the halo of the supernatural about Christ. He is supernatural in history, if not in nature, and men saw again that they must either believe more or believe less. The rationalistic leaven, which was already working in the rejection of the higher aspects of Christ’s Person and work, made itself increasingly felt. As the miraculous adjuncts were retained only in deference to the representations of Scripture, they were readily abandoned when criticism professed to show how they might be stripped off without detriment to Christ’s moral image. Be the cause what it may, it is undeniable that Unitarianism of this kind has not been able to maintain itself. It has constantly tended to purge itself of the remaining supernatural features in the portrait of Christ, and to descend to the level of simple humanitarianism, i.e., to the belief in Christ as simply a great man, a religious genius of the first rank, one in whom the light which shines in all men shone in an eminent degree—but still a mere man, without anything supernatural in His origin, nature, or history. [66] A further example of the difficulty of maintaining an intermediate position on the doctrine of the Person of Christ, may be taken from the long series of intermediate views which have sprung up on the soil of Germany as the result of the great intellectual and theological movement inaugurated by Hegel and Schleiermacher in the beginning of the century. Passing by the speculative Christologies—in which, when the veil was stripped off, it was found that the idea was every thing, the historical Christ nothing—I may refer here to the Christology of Schleiermacher and his school. Schleiermacher recognises to the full “a peculiar being of God in Christ.” [67] He affirms Christ’s perfect sinlessness, and the unique significance of His Personality for the Church and for the race. He is the Head, Archetype, Representative, and Redeemer of mankind. Only through Him is redemption from sin and fellowship of life with God possible. But when we come to inquire wherein consists this “peculiar being of God” in Christ, it proves, after all, to be only an exceptionally constant and energetic form of that God-consciousness which exists germinally in all men, and indeed lies at the root of religious experience generally. The difference between Christ and other men is thus in degree, not in kind. In Him this Divine element had the ascendency, in us it has not. He is a miracle, in so far as the Divine dwelt in Him in this unique and exceptional fulness and power, constituting Him the Redeemer and second Adam of the race; but there is no entrance of God into humanity such as we associate with the idea of Incarnation. When, further, we investigate the nature of Christ’s saving activity, we find that the exalted, high-priestly functions which Schleiermacher ascribes to Christ shrink, on inspection, into very meagre dimensions. Christ’s continued saving activity in His Church is presupposed, but it is not the activity of One who still lives and reigns on high, but rather the perpetuation of a posthumous influence, through the preservation of His image in the Gospels, and the fellowship of the Christian society. [68] Ultimately, therefore, Christ’s saving activity is reduced to example and teaching; at most, to the spiritual influence of a great and unique historic Personality. [69] “When we have got this length, we are clearly back on the road to simple humanitarianism. Accordingly, none of Schleiermacher’s followers have been able to stop exactly where he did. They have felt the inexorable compulsion of the less or more; and while some have gone back to rationalism, the great majority, as Rothe acknowledges, [70] have pressed on to more positive views, and have come into substantial harmony with confessional orthodoxy. A new wave of mediating theology has recently arisen in the school of Ritschl; but the fundamental principle of this school—the denial of the right of the theoretic reason to have anything to do with religion or theology—is not one that can permanently be approved of, and would, if followed out, end in boundless subjectivity. In this school also, accordingly, the necessity of less or more is asserting itself. Already the members of the school have begun to move off on different and irreconcilable lines—some in a more negative, the greater number in a more positive direction. The attempt of Ritschl to bar off all inquiry into the nature of Christ’s Person, by resolving His “Godhead” into a mere value-judgment of the believer, is felt not to be satisfactory; and the admission is increasingly made that consistency of Christian thinking demands the acknowledgment of a transcendental basis. [71] The general verdict of history, therefore, is clearly against the permanence of these attempts at a middle view of Christ’s Person, and warns us whither they tend. The liberal school in Germany, Holland, and France are clearly right in saying that the only alternative to Christ’s true Divinity is pure humanitarianism; and that, if the former doctrine is rejected, the supernatural view of His Person must be altogether given up. This is a clear issue, and I think it is well to have matters brought to it without shrinking or disguise. I desire now to show that this first alternative soon hands us in a second. 2. Second alternative—A Divine Christ or Agnosticism. 2. The first alternative is between a Divine Christ and a purely human one—the second is between a Divine Christ and pure Agnosticism. Many of those who take the humanitarian view of Christ’s Person are very far from wishing to deny that a great deal of what Christ taught was true. They do not wish to deny the existence of God, or the fact of a future life, or the essentials of Christian morality. In not a few cases they strongly uphold these truths—maintain them to be the true natural religion, in opposition to revealed. They account it Christ’s greatest glory that He saw so clearly, and announced so unambiguously, the Fatherhood of God, the dignity of the soul, the certainty of immortality, and the dependence of happiness here and hereafter on virtue. It is a plausible view to take, for it seems to secure to those who hold it all that they take to be essential in Christianity, while at the same time it leaves them unbounded liberty to accept or reject what they like in modern “advanced” views—to get rid of miracles, go in with progressive theories of science, accept the newest criticism of the Gospels, etc. It is a plausible view, but it is an illusive one; for if there is one thing more than another which the logic of events makes evident, it is, that with the humanitarian view of Christ we cannot stop at simple, abstract Theism, but must go on to pure Agnosticism. This is indeed what the larger number of the more logical minds which leave rejected supernatural Christianity in our own day are doing. Nor is the process which heads to this result difficult to follow. The Deism of the last century rejected Christianity, and sought to establish in its place what it called “Natural Religion,” i.e. a belief in God, in the future life, in a state of rewards and punishments, etc., based on reason alone. But however congruous with reason these doctrines may be in the place which they hold in the religion of Jesus, it was not really reason which had discovered them, or which gave assurance about them; nor did it follow that reason could successfully vindicate them, when torn from their context, and presented in the meagre, abstract form in which they appeared in the writings of the deists. What the deists did was to pick these doctrines out of the New Testament, separating them from the rest of the doctrines with which they were associated, and denuding them of everything which could make them real and vital to the minds and consciences of men; then to baptise this caput mortuum with the name of “Natural Religion.” They were doctrines that had their roots in the Christian system, and the arguments from reason with which they were sup ported wore not the real grounds of belief in them. In the present century men are not so easily satisfied. [72] They see clearly enough that all the objections which have been levelled against the God of Revelation tell just as powerfully against the God of nature; that to admit Christ’s doctrine of a Heavenly Father, of a soul made in God’s image, of a special providence, of prayer, of forgiveness of sins, of a future life of happiness and misery, is already to have crossed the line which separates a merely natural from a supernatural view of things; and that to reject Christ’s doctrines on these great questions makes it difficult to retain a Theism of any kind. [73] This is not because a theistic view of tine world is ion itself less reasonable than a non-theistic view—to admit this would be to give up the whole case on behalf of Christianity. But it is because the kind of Theism that remains after the Christian element has been removed out of it, is not one fitted to satisfy either the reason or the heart. It is a pale, emasculated conception, which, finding no support in the facts or experiences of the spiritual life, can never stand against the assaults made on it from without. It is here that Pantheism has its advantage over Deism. It is indeed more reasonable to believe in a living personal God, who created and who controls the universe, than in the “One and All” of the pantheist; but it does not follow that it is more reasonable to believe in an abstract Deity—a mere figment of the intellect—who stands in separation from the world, and yields no satisfaction to the religious life. Theism is a reasonable view of the universe, but it must be a living Theism, not a barren and notional one. If, to avoid this bankruptcy, the attempt is made to deal in earnest with the conception of a personal God, and to reclothe the Deity with the warm, gracious attributes which belong to the Father-God of Christ, then we have indeed a Being whom the soul can love, trust, and hold communion with, but the difficulty recurs of believing Him to be a God who remains self-enclosed, impassive, uncommunicative, towards creatures whom He has dowered with a share of His own rational and moral excellences, who has so shut Himself out by natural law from direct contact with the spirits that seek Him, that He can neither speak to them, answer their prayers, help them in trouble nor or even reach them by inward succours—a silent God, who can no more enter into personal relations with His creatures than if He were impersonal. Such a conception is self-contradictory, and cannot maintain itself. One feels this incongruity very powerfully in dealing with the Theism of such writers as the late Mr. Rathbone Greg, or Dr. Martineau, or the authoress of Robert Elsmere. None of these writers will admit the possibility of miracle; logically, therefore, they shut out the possibility of direct communication between God and man. Yet none of them can rest with the cold abstract God of Deism; or with the immanent impersonal spirit of Pantheism; or with the comfortless negation of Agnosticism. God is with them a personal Being; His will is ethical; communion with Him is longed after and believed in. Let Mr. Greg’s own pathetic words tell how insecure is the Theism thus cut off from positive Revelation. “My own conception,” he says, “perhaps from early mental habit, perhaps from incurable and very conscious metaphysical inaptitude, approaches far nearer to the old current image of a personal God than to any of the sublimated substitutes of modern thought. Strauss’s Universum, Comte’s Humanity, even Mr. Arnold’s Stream of Tendency that makes for Righteousness, excite in me no enthusiasm, command from me no worship. I cannot pray to the ‘Immensities’ and the ‘Eternities’ of Carlyle; they proffer me no help; they vouchsafe me no sympathy; they suggest no comfort. It may be that such a personal God is a mere anthropomorphic creation. It may be—as philosophers with far finer instruments of thought than mine affirm—that the conception of such a Being, duly analysed, is demonstrably a self-contradictory one. But, at least in resting in it, I rest in something I almost seem to realise; at least, I share the view which Jesus indisputably held of the Father whom He obeyed, communed with, and worshipped.” [74] Surely it need hardly be said that a view which, even while holding it, one doubts may be only a result of “early mental habit,” “a mere anthropomorphic creation,” a “self-contradictory” conception, cannot long stand as a basis for life; nor will the trust which Jesus had help much, when one has already rejected as delusion His doctrine of prayer, of special providence, of forgiveness of sins, and His own Messianic claims and expectations. Already we tremble on the verge of Agnosticism, if we have not actually passed its bound. I think, accordingly, I am justified in saying that when the ground of Divine Revelation is once left behind, we have no logical halting-place short of Agnosticism; not because a theistic view of the world is unreasonable, but because a living Theism requires as its complement belief in Revelation. We have these alternatives: either to revivify our Theism till it approaches in the humane and loving attributes it ascribes to God, the Christian conception of the Heavenly Father—in which case we are back to a supernatural view of the universe; or, if this is thought baseless, to dispense with the idea of God altogether, and try to explain the world without reason, without final cause, without spiritual assumptions of any kind. 3. Third alternative—A Divine Christ or Pessimism. 3. Agnosticism is, however, far from representing the end of this road along which we had begun to travel in rejecting the Divine in Christ. The final alternative—one which we may trust the world at large will never be called upon to face—is a Divine Christ or Pessimism. Agnosticism is not a state in which the mind of an intelligent being can permanently rest. It is essentially a condition of suspense—a confession of ignorance—an abdication of thought on the highest subjects. [75] It is not, in the nature of things, possible for the mind to remain persistently in this neutral, passive attitude. It will press on perforce to one or other of the views which present themselves as alternatives—either to Theism, or to Materialism and dogmatic Atheism. [76] I do not speak, of course, of the individual mind, but of the general historical development. But even Agnosticism has brought with it a train of baleful results. With the loss of certainty on the highest questions of existence there comes inevitably a lowering of the pulse of human endeavour all round—a loosening of certainty about morals, for why should these remain unaffected when every thing else is going?—and as we see to-day, in much of the speculative thought of France and Germany, a hopelessness about the future. For, obviously, when this point is reached, the rational ground is taken away even from belief in progress. [77] When the idea of God, which is equivalent to the idea of a reason at the foundation of things, is surrendered—whether in Agnosticism, or in some form of dogmatic denial, makes little difference—it becomes a wholly unwarranted assumption that things must certainly go on from better to better. The opposite may quite as well be the case, and progress, now that a given height is reached, may rather be from better to worse. The analogy of nature shows that this is the law in regard to natural life. The plant blooms, reaches its acme, and dies. So, it may be plausibly argued, it will be with humanity. The fact that some progress has been made in the past does not guarantee that this progress will go on indefinitely; rather, the spur to this progress consisted in what we are now told are illusions, and when these are exploded the motives to progress are gone. A more highly evolved society may lead to an increase of misery rather than of happiness; the growth of enlightenment, instead of adding to men’s enjoyments, may result in stripping them successively of the illusions that remain, and may leave them at last sad, weary, disappointed, with an intolerable consciousness of the burden and wretchedness of existence. [78] All this is not fancy. The despairing, pessimistic spirit I am speaking of has already taken hold of extensive sections of society, and is giving startling evidences of its presence. For the first time on European soil we see large and influential systems springing up, and gaining for themselves wide popularity and acceptance, which have for their root-idea exactly this conception of the inherent irrationality and misery of existence. There have always been individual thinkers with a tendency to take a prejudiced and hopeless view of life, but their reveries have not been much regarded. But here, strange to say, under the very shadow of this boasted progress of the nineteenth century—in the very midst of its enlightenment and civilisation and wealth—we see Pessimism raising its head as a serious, carefully thought-out philosophy of existence, and, instead of being scouted and laughed at as an idle dream, it meets with passionate acceptance from multitudes. [79] The same spirit will be found reflected by those who care to note its symptoms in much of our current literature, in the serious raising and discussion, for example, of the question already familiar to us—Is life worth living? Specially noticeable is the tone of sadness which pervades much of the nobler sceptical thinking of the present day—the tone of men who do not think lightly of parting with religion, but feel that with it has gone the hope and gladness of earlier days. This Pessimism of scepticism is to me one of the saddest and most significant phenomena of modern times. [80] And, granting the premises it starts from, what other conclusion is possible? Deprive the world of God, and everything becomes an insoluble mystery, history a scene of wrecked illusions, belief in a superstition, and life in general “A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” [81] II. The upward movement from Pessimism to Christ. II. The descent from faith in Christ has landed us in the abyss of Pessimism. But just at this lowest point, where the light of religious faith might seem utterly extinguished, a return movement is felt to be inevitable. For Pessimism, no more than Theism, can escape the necessity laid upon it of giving to itself some account of things as they are—of constructing a “Weltanschauung”; and the movement it attempts to do this, making naked the principle on which it rests, its own insufficiency as a philosophy of existence and of life stands glaring and confessed. Possibly the attempt to work out Pessimism as a system will never be made with much more thoroughness, or with better chances of success, than has already been done in the monumental works of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. But the very thoroughgoingness of the attempt is the demonstration of its futility. Of all theories, that which explains the origin of the universe by a mistake—which accounts for it by the blind rushing into existence of an irrational force, call it “Will” or what we please—is surely the most incredible. [82] How came this irrational will-force to be there? What moved it to this insensate decision? In what state was it before it committed this enormous blunder of rushing into existence? How came it to be possessed of that potential wealth of ideas which now are realised in the world? Of what use were they if they were never intended to be called into existence? What I am at present concerned with, however, is not to refute Pessimism, but rather to show how, as a first step in an upward movement back to Christ, by its own immanent dialectic it refutes itself—inverts, in fact, its own starting-point, and works itself round into a species of Theism. Schopenhauer and Hartmann both recognise that there is in the universe not only “Will,” but “Idea,” and the manner in which they deal wish this element of “Ideal” is one of the most curious examples of the inversion of an original starting-point in the history of philosophy. For, in the course of its development, Pessimism has actually adopted as its leading principle the thought of a rational teleology in the universe, and as a consequence, as above remarked, has worked itself back to Theism. How this comes about it is not difficult to show. The crucial point for all systems of Pessimism is the presence of reason in the universe. How, if the basis of the universe is irrational, does reason come to find a place in it at all? For, manifestly, account for it as we may, there is reason in the universe now. The universe itself is a law-connected whole; there is order and plan, organisation and system, utility and beauty, means and ends. Above all, in man himself, if nowhere else, there is conscious reason—the very instrument by which this irrationality of the universe is discovered. There is evidently more here than blind, purposeless will. How is its existence to be explained? Schopenhauer postulates “Idea.” In accounting for nature, he has to suppose that in this blind, purposeless will there lies potentially a whole world of ideas, representing all the stages and kingdoms through which nature advances in the course of its history. [83] Hartmann unites “Will” and “Idea” yet more closely, regarding them as co-ordinate attributes of the Absolute, though still, somehow, the will is supposed to be in itself a purely irrational force. It is only when the will has made the mistake of rushing into existence that it lays hold on the “Idea” as a means of delivering itself from the unblessedness of its new condition. To this end the universe is represented as ordered with the highest wisdom, the goal of its development being the production of the conscious agent, man, through whom the Redemption of the world-spirit is to be accomplished. I do not pursue these “metaphysics of wonderland” further. I only notice the extraordinary contradictions in which Hartmann involves himself in his conception of the Absolute—“the Unconscious,” as he prefers to term it—and the extraordinary transformation it undergoes in his hands. The absolute is unconscious, and needs to create for itself an organ of consciousness in man before it can attain deliverance from its unblessedness. Yet it knows, plans, contrives, orders everything with consummate wisdom, works out its designs with a precision that is unerring, etc. [84] The contradiction here is too patent. For, if unconscious, how can we speak of this Absolute as unblessed? Or how can we think of it as knowing and planning? Hartmann therefore changes his ground, and speaks in other places of his Absolute rather as supra-conscious; [85] elsewhere, again, in terms akin to those of Mr. Spencer, as an “Unknowable”—incapable of being represented in forms of our intelligence. [86] But if the Absolute is supra-conscious, i.e. exists in a state higher than the ordinary consciousness, why should it need the latter to help it out of its misery? The climax is reached when, in a later work—while still holding to the view that the Absolute is not a self-conscious Personality—Hartmann invests it with most of the attributes characteristic of Deity, sees in it, e.g., the ground, not only of a natural, but of a moral order, makes it the object of religious worship, attributes to it, not simply omnipotence and wisdom, but righteousness and holiness, views it as a source of Revelation and grace, expressly names it God! [87] We are here far enough from the original assumption of a primitive, irrational will—in fact, what we see is Pessimism passing over in all but the name into Theism. It remained only that this transition should be explicitly made, and this has been done by a disciple of the school, Karl Peters, whose work, Willenswelt und Weltwille is one of the acutest criticisms of previous Pessimism I know. With him we finally leave the ground of the philosophy of the “Unconscious,” and come round to a Theism in which we have the full recognition of God as a self conscious, wise, good, holy Personality, whose providence is over all, and whose ends all things subserve. [88] The theories of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, though pessimistic, might with equal propriety have been classed in the family of pantheistic systems. When dealing at an earlier stage with than downward movement from faith in Christ, through Agnosticism to Pessimism, I purposely reserved this alternative of Pantheism. This was not because the subject is in itself unimportant, but because it comes at last to the old dilemma, and can best be treated in its higher aspect as a stage in the upward advance to Theism. Pantheism shares the fate of every incomplete system, in being compelled to pass judgment on itself, and either to sink to something lower, or to pass up to something higher. I refer for proof to Germany, which has given birth to some of its noblest forms, but where also history shows how possible it is to descend at one step from the loftiest heights of overstrained Idealism to gross Materialism. Fichte and Schelling and Hegel were followed by Strauss and Feuerbach. [89] The logic of the process is again not difficult to trace. If universal reason is the all, and the finite in comparison with it nothing, in another point of view it is the finite that is all, and reason that is nothing, seeing that in the finite only it attains to actual existence. Concede the premiss, the Absolute has reality only in the universe, and it is but a short step to the conclusion, the universe only is real. [90] Interpret the universe now, in accordance with the “modern” conception, in terms of matter and motion, and Feuerbach’s dictum is reached—“Man is what he eats.” The goal of this is the old plunge into Nihilism and Pessimism, in which we have just seen that the mind cannot remain. The other alternative is, however, possible to Pantheism, by holding fast to the rational element contained in it, to correct and purify itself by a return to Theism; and this is the movement we see taking place in the latter forms of the philosophies Fichte and Schelling and in the speculative Theism of the later Hegelians, In judging of these systems, we must not be misled by too narrow a use of the word “Theism.” The Theism of the writers I refer to is in many respects imperfect, and bears throughout the marks of its speculative origin. Yet, in principle, the line between Pantheism and Theism is crossed whenever God is conceived of no longer as an impersonal Force or Idea, but as a spiritual, self-conscious principle at the basis of the universe—as a knowing, willing Being, with whom man can sustain, not only natural, but moral and spiritual relations. There may be difficulties at this stage as to whether the term “personal” is a suitable term to apply to the Divine; but it is, nevertheless, a theistic conception of God which is shaping itself, and the purgation of the system from remaining pantheistic elements is only a question of time. What for instance, but an approximation to Theism is implied in such words as Fichte’s in his fine apostrophe—“Sublime and Living Will! named by no name, compassed by no thought! I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided! Thy voice sounds within me, mine resounds in Thee; and all my thoughts, if they be but good and true, live in Thee also. . . . Thou art best known to the childlike, devoted, simple mind. To it Thou art the searcher of hearts, who seest its inmost depths; the ever-present witness of its truth, who knowest through all the world know it not. Thou art the Father whoever desirest its good, who rulest all things for the best. . . . How Thou art, I may not know. But let me be what I ought to be, and Thy relations to me—the mortal—and to all mortals, lie open before my eyes, and surround me more clearly than the consciousness of my own existence. Thou workest in me the knowledge of my duty, of my vocation in the world of reasonable beings:—how, I know not, nor need I to know. Thou knowest what I think and what I will:—how Thou canst know, through what act Thou bringest about that consciousness, I cannot understand. . . . Thou willest that my free obedience shall bring with it eternal consequences:—the act of Thy will I cannot comprehend, I only know thief it is not like mine. Thou doest, and Thy will itself is the deed: but the way of Thy working is not as my ways—I cannot trace it.” [91] If this is Pantheism, are we not all pantheists? If this is Agnosticism, is it not an Agnosticism in which we must all share? The moment in spiritual Pantheism which impels to this development is of course the recognition of the fact that the universe has its ground in reason. If this position is to be safeguarded against the lapse into Materialism, it must free itself from the internal contradiction of supposing that there can be thought without a thinker; [92] reason without a subject to which the reason belongs; rational ends posited and executed without intelligent and self-conscious purpose; moral order without amoral will. In the case of Fichte and Schelling, this revolution in their philosophies is seen taking place within their lifetime; in the case of Hegel, it is seen in the development of his philosophy, in the hands of his disciples, into a speculative Theism. In Vatke and Biedermann—two prominent representatives—the Theism is still very shadowy and incomplete; in I. H. Fichte and Pfleiderer of Berlin, it attains to full and explicit recognition. The latter writer, in particular, takes strong ground, and from his own point of view may be regarded as one of the ablest defenders of theistic positions in recent times. In our own country we have the Neo-Hegelian movement, best represented by the late Mr. Green of Oxford, and in him also the speculative spirit is seen allying itself very closely with the spirit of religion, with the result that his philosophy almost inevitably passes over into Theism. On the metaphysical side, God is already to Mr. Green an “Eternal Self-Consciousness” [93] —the author and sustainer of the system of relations which we call the universe. But, on the religious side, He is thought of much more positively as a conscious Being who is in eternal perfection all that man has it in him to come to be—“a Being of perfect understanding and perfect love “—an infinite Spirit, present to the soul, but other than itself, towards whom “the attitude of man at his highest and completest could still only be that which we have described as self-abasement before an ideal of holiness.” [94] The metaphysical contradictions which still inhere in the Neo-Hegelian theory have been well pointed out by one—formerly an ardent Hegelian—who has himself lived through the theory he criticises Prof. Seth of Edinburgh. In him, in the line of this development, we reach at length a perfectly unambiguous position. “It must not be forgotten,” he says, “that if we are to keep the name of God at all, or any equivalent term, subjectivity—an existence of God for Himself, analogous to our own personal existence, though doubtless transcending it infinitely in innumerable ways—is an essential element of the conception. . . . God may be, must be, infinitely more—we are at least certain that He cannot be less—than we know ourselves to be.” [95] The Theism we have thus gained embraces the two notions of God as self-conscious reason, and God as moral will. Once, however, this ground of Theism is reached, we are compelled, in order to secure it, to advance a step further, viz. to the thought of God as self-revealing. We have already seen that Theism can only be secured if God is thought of as standing in a living relation to mankind—that is, as interesting Himself in their welfare, and capable of entering into moral and spiritual fellowship with them. How can one earnestly believe in a living, personal God, and, on the other hand, in man as a being constituted for moral ends, and not also believe that it is the will of God that man should know Him, and be guided by Him to the fulfilment of his destiny? It is, accordingly, a most noteworthy fact, that in all the higher theology of the time— even rationalistic theology—the attempt is made to come to a right understanding with this concept of Revelation. Strange as it may sound to many, there is no proposition on which theologians of all schools at the present day are more willing to agree than this—that all knowledge of God, and consequently all religion, rests on Revelation; and that, if the true idea of God is to be maintained, He must be thought of as self-revealing. This truth is emphasised, not in the orthodox systems alone, but in the theologies, e.g., of Biedermann, of Lipsius of Pfleiderer, of Ritschl—even, as I said before, of the Pessimist irony, his chapters on Faith and Revelation. The point of difference arises when we inquire into the nature of Revelation, and specially when we pass from the sphere of natural to that of supernatural Revelation Supernatural Revelation the theologians of the liberal school—Pfleiderer, Lipsius, etc.—will not allow us to speak of; or rather, natural and supernatural are with them but different sides of the same process. That which, on the Divine side, is viewed as Revelation, is, on the human side, simply the natural development of man’s moral and religious consciousness, and vice versa. In the same way, every truly original moment in the life of a man every birth-moment of a new truth in his man, every flash of insight into some new secret or law of nature, is a Revelation. This, which is the subtlest view of Revelation at present in the field, is not to be set aside without an attempt to do justice to what is true in it. [96] I am, for my part, not concerned to deny that there is a side of truths, and a very important one, in this theory. If it sounds deistical to say, “Revelation is only through the natural activities of mind”; it may, on the other hand, be a wholesome corrective to a deistic view to say that God is immanent in these activities, and that through them He mediates His Revelation to the human spirit—that what we call the “natural “development of mind involves, when rightly understood, a factor of Revelation. Nor can the line ever be drawn so finely between natural and supernatural Revelation as to enable us to say, “Here precisely the natural ends and the supernatural begins.” Time theory in question, therefore, I would be disposed to call inadequate, rather than false; or false only as it professes to cover the whole field of Revelation. For in the latter, it must be contended that we have more than can be accounted for by mere natural development. Taken even on its own ground, this theory involves the valuable admission that it is the will of God to make Himself known to man, and that He has provided in the constitution of things for giving him the knowledge that is necessary for him. The only criticism I shall make at present upon this theory is—and I think it is one which goes to the heart of the matter—that in some sense the end of the theory is the refutation of the beginning of it. The point from which we start is, that God can be known only through the natural activities of the mind. He is present in these activities as He is present in all the other functions of our mental, moral, and even physical being; and He is present in no other way. But the peculiarity of this theory is that it ends in a view of God which affirms the possibility of that with the denial of which it set out—the possibility of direct communion between God and the soul. It is not disputed by any of the advocates of these views that the highest point in this self-revelation of God is the Revelation given to men Christ through Jesus But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a Being who communicates with man only in the indirect way which this theory supposes He is a Being who Himself draws near to man, and seeks fellowship with him; whose relations with the spirits He has made are free and personal; who is as lovingly communicative as man, on his part, is expected to be trustfully receptive; to whom man can speak, and He answers. The simply natural is here transcended, and we are in the region of direct intercourse of spirit with spirit. And this view of God is not disputed by the writers I am here referring to, who deny supernatural Revelation. Dr. Martineau says, in words of deep wisdom, “How should related spirits, joined by a common creative aim, intent on whatever things are pure and good, live in presence of each other, the one the bestower, the other the recipient of a sacred trust, and exchange no thought and give no sign of the love which subsists between them?” [97] Pfleiderer again says, “And why should it be less possible for God to enter into a loving fellowship with us, than for men to do so with each other? I should be inclined to think that He is even more capable of doing so. For as no man can altogether read the soul of another, so no man can altogether live in the soul of another; hence all our human love is and remains imperfect. But if we are shut off from one another by the limits of individuality, in relation to God it is not so; to Him our hearts are as open as each man’s own heart is to himself; He sees through and through them, and He desires to live in them, and to fill them with His own sacred energy and blessedness.” [98] True, why not? But if this is admitted, what becomes of the theory that the action of God in Revelation is necessarily bound up within the limits of strict natural law? If the gates of intercourse are thus open between the human soul and God, is it either natural or probable that God will not enter in at them, and that, instead of leaving men simply to feel after Him if haply they may find Him, He will not at some point give them what supernatural light and aid they need to bring them to the true knowledge of Himself, and fit them for the attainment of the highest ends of their, existence? Certainly, in light of the above admissions, no a priori objection can be raised to the principle of supernatural Revelation The legitimate outcome of this theory is, that in addition to general Revelation through reason, conscience, and nature, there is to be expected some special Revelation; and even this, in a certain way, is admitted, for it is conceded by nearly all the writers I have named that in the providential plan of the world a peculiar function was assigned to Israel; that, as the different nations of the world have their several providential tasks (Greece—art, culture, philosophy; Rome—law, government, etc.), to Israel was given the task of developing the idea of God to its highest perfection in ethical Monotheism. [99] And, finally, it is conceded that this self-revelation of God reaches its culmination in Jesus Christ, whose Person has world-historical significance, as bearing in it the principle of the perfect relation between God and men—of the absolute religious relation. [100] The line between natural and supernatural Revelation is here, surely, becoming very thin; and it is therefore, perhaps, not greatly to be wondered at that the latest school in German theology—that of Ritschl—should take the short remaining step, and be marked by precisely this tendency to lay stress on the need and reality of positive Revelation. The general position of this school may be fairly summed up by saying that God can only be truly known to us by personal, positive Revelation, in which He actually enters into historical relations with mankind; and that this Revelation has been given in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ. Through this Revelation alone, but in it perfectly, we have the true knowledge of God’s character, of His world-aim in the establishing of a kingdom of God on earth, and of His gracious will of forgiveness and love. [101] Whatever theory of Revelation we adopt, Jesus Christ must be pronounced to be the highest organ of it. On this point all deep and serious thinkers of our age may be held to be agreed. Thus, then, we are brought back to Christ, are led to recognise in Him the medium of a true Revelation; and it only remains to ask, What do the facts of this Revelation, and of Christ’s own self-testimony, properly construed, imply? We have already seen what the verdict of history is on this point, to what alternatives it shuts us up in our treatment of this subject. We shall afterwards see by examination of the facts themselves how this verdict is justified. To sum up, we have seen that two movements are to be discerned in history: the one a downward movement leading away from Christ, and resulting from the denial of, or tampering with, His full Divinity; the other, an upward movement, retracting the stages of the earlier descent, and bringing us back to the confession of Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” [102] The former movement ends in the gulf of Nihilism and Pessimism; the latter begins from the impossibility of the mind abiding permanently in the denial of a rational basis for the universe. But here, as in the downward movement, the logic of history asserts itself. Belief in a rational basis of the universe can only secure itself through return to Theism; a living Theism can only secure itself through belief in God as self-revealing; belief in Revelation leads historically to the recognition of Christ as the highest organ of God’s self-revelation to mankind; belief in Christ as Revealer can only secure itself through belief in His Divinity. “Ye believe in God,” said Jesus; “believe also in Me.” [103] Belief in God—theistic belief—presses on to belief in Christ, and can only secure itself through it. On the other hand, belief in Christ has for its legitimate outcome belief in God. The two beliefs, as history demonstrates, stand or fall together. _________________________________________________________________ [56] Der alte und der neue Glaube, pp. 43, 44. [57] Das Wesen des Christenthums, p. 147 (Eng. trans.). [58] Cf. Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, i. p. 141 (Eng. trans.). [59] See Note A.—The Central Place of Christ in His Religion. [60] Doct. of Person of Christ, v. p. 49 (Eng. trans.). [61] Thus, e.g., Wendt in his Inhalt der Lehre Jesu. [62] Cf. Lecture VI. [63] Book ii. [64] Matt. xxii. [65] See Note B.—The Defeat of Arianism. Dorner says “Not merely did it tend back to Ebionitism; not merely was it unable, with its Docetism and its doctrine of a created higher spirit, to allow even the possibility of an Incarnation; but, by putting a fantastical under-God between God and man, it separated the two quite as much as it appeared to unite them.”—Person of Christ, ii. p. 261 (Eng. trans.). [66] See Note C.—Modern Unitarianism. [67] Der christ. Glaube. sect. 94. [68] Thus also Ritschl. [69] On Schleiermacher’s Christology, cf. Dorner, Person of Christ, pp. 174–213. [70] He says: “Since Schleiermacher’s death, the school proceeding from him has generally gone back into the way of the Church doctrine.”—Dogmatik, ii. p. 162. [71] See Note D.—Concessions of Ritschlians on the Person of Christ. [72] See Note E.—The Weakness of Deism. [73] This is where not only Deism, but also the so-called Liberal Protestantism, fails, in rejecting supernatural Christianity, See Note F.—Weakness of Modern Liberal Protestantism. [74] Creed of Christendom, Introd., 3rd. ed., pp. 90, 91. [75] Generally, however, under the surface of professed Agnosticism, there will he found some more or less positive opinions about the origin and nature of things all of them agreeing in this, that they negate the belief in God. [76] On the continent there are fewer agnostics, but more atheists and materialists, than with us. “In Germany,” says Karl Peters, “things are come to such a pass that one is obliged. to ask a sort of absolution if one does not swim with the prevailing atheistic-monistic stream.”—Willenswelt und Weltwille, p. 350. [77] See Note G.—Christianity and the Idea of Progress. [78] Pessimism reverses Pascal’s saying that the greatness of man consists in thought. thought, according to Pessimism, is the fatal gift. “Well for those,” Schopenhauer thinks, ‘who have no consciousness of existence. The life of the animal is more to be envied than that of man; the life of the plant is better than that of the fish in the water, or even of the oyster on the rock. Non-being is better than being, and unconsciousness is the blessedness of what does exist. The best would be if all existence were annihilated. “Cf. Luthardt, Die mod. Welt. p. 150. The height of misery is not that of being man; it is, being man, to despise oneself sufficiently to regret that one is not an animal.”—CARO, Le Pessimisme, p. 135. [79] See Note H.—The Prevalence of Pessimism [80] See Appendix to Lecture.—The Pessimism of Scepticism. [81] “Macbeth,” act v. scene 5. [82] These Pessimistic theories are not without their roots in the philosophies of Fichte. Schelling, and Hegel. Cf. Fichte’s view of the Absolute as “Will” and Sehelling’s “irrational” ground of the Divine nature (after Bohme). in his Philosophie und Religion (1801), Schelling boldly describes the creation as the result of an “Abfall”—the original assertion by the Ego of its independence. “This inexplicable and timeless act is the original sin or primal fall of the spirit, which we expiate in the circles of time existence” (cf. Professor Seth’s From Kant to Hegel, p. 65). Hegel also, in his own way, speaks of creation as an “Abfall.” It is in the Son,” he says, “in the determination of distinction, that progressive determination proceeds to further distinction. . . . This transition in the moment of the Son is thus expressed by Jacob Bohme—that the first-born was Lucifer, the light-hearer the bright, the clear one; but he turned in upon himself in imagination; i.e. he made himself independent, passed over into being, and so fell.”—Phil. d. Rel. ii. p. 251 (Werke, vol. xii.). [83] Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, i. pp. 1 85. 206 (Eng. trans. pp. 203, 219 ff.). Karl Peters remarks: “If the Will alone bears in itself the stages of the World-All as eternal ideas—how can Schopenhauer call it an absolutely irrational Will? And if he conceives of it as a radically blind Will as an insane and altogether groundless ‘Drang,’ how can he vindicate for it these eternal ideas?”—Willenswelt, p. 129. [84] “The Unconscious wills in one act all the terms of a process, means and end, etc., not before, beside, or beyond, but in the result itself.”—Phil. d. Unbewussten, ii. p. 60 (Eng. trans.). [85] The Unconscious, it now appears, has after all a kind of consciousness—is “a transcendent supra-mundane consciousness any thing but blind , rather far-seeing and clairvoyant,” “superior to all consciousness, at once conscious and supra-conscious” (!), its “mode of thinking is, in truth, above consciousness.”—Phil. d. Unbewussten, pp. 246, 247, 258 etc. (Eng. trans.). [86] Phil. d. Unbewussten, pp. 49, 223, 246, etc. (Eng. trans.). Schopenhauer also declares his “Will” to be in itself, i.e. apart from its phenomenal manifestations, an Unknowable, possibly possessing ways of existing, determinations, qualities, which are absolutely unknowable and incomprehensible to us, and which remain ever as its nature when it has abrogated its phenomenal character, and for our knowledge has passed into empty nothingness.—Die Welt als Wille (Eng. trans.), ii. p. 408. [87] Religionsphilosophie: Part II., Phil. des Geistes, pp. 74–89. [88] See Note I.—Transition from Pessimism to Theism—Hartmann and Karl Peters. [89] See Note J.—Materialism in Germany. [90] “If,” says Dorner. “God be once defined as the essence of the world, it is of subject and predicate logically allowable when Feuerbach, the idea seriously, counted the essence of the world to be a part of the world, made the world the subject, and reduced God to a mere predicate of the world. The transition was thus made to Anthropologism, the forerunner of Materialism.”—Person of Christ, v. p. 160. [91] “The Vocation of Man” (Die Bestimmung des Menschen) in Fichte’s “Popular Works,” p. 365 (Eng. trans.). [92] “In spite of Fichte’s imperious tone,” says Professor Seth, “and his warning that we are merely setting the seal to our own philosophic incompetency, we must summon up all our hardihood, and openly confess that to speak of thought as self-existent, without any conscious Being whose the thought is, conveys no meaning to our minds. Thought exists only as the thought of a thinker: it must be centred somewhere.”—Hegelianism and Personality, p. 73. He had formerly expressed himself differently.—From Kant to Hegel, p. 76. [93] Prolegomena to Ethics, passim. [94] Pp. 93, 142 of “Memoir” by Nettleship, in Green’s Works, vol. iii. Prof. Green’s profound Christian feeling, with his ideological views of Christianity, are well brought out in the same “Memoir,” and accompanying works. [95] Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 222–224. Mr. Green’s theory is discussed more fully in Professor Veitch’s Knowing and Being, which touches many vital points. [96] Cf. on this theory Biedermann, Christ. Dogmatik, i. pp. 264–288; Lipsicis, Dogmatik, pp. 41–68; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, iv. pp. 46–94, specialty pp. 64–75 (Eng. translation, and Grundriss pp. 17–22. H. Schmidt has a good statement and criticism of this theory in his article on The Ethical Oppositions in the Present Conflict of the Biblical and the Modern Theological View of the World,” in the Studien und Kritiken for 1876 (3rd part). “The God whom the Scripture from beginning to end preaches,” he says, “is a God of supernational Revelation, who makes Himself known directly, in distinction from the everyday ordering of our lives; the God of rationalism is a God who, if He still as realty communicates Himself, yet always remains hidden behind the laws of nature, as behind the natural course of the development of the human spirit, who never manifestly represents Himself to the eye of man in His exaltation over the world.” [97] Study of Religion ii. p. 48. Cf. the following sentences from his Hours of Thought:—“Whatever else may be included in the truth that ‘God is a Spirit,’ this at least is implied, that He is free to modify His relations to all dependent minds in exact conformity with their changes of disposition and of need, and let the lights and shadows of His look move us swiftly as the undulating wills on which they fall.”—ii. p. 29. “Passing by this poor mockery I would be understood to speak of a direct and natural communion of spirit with spirit, between ourselves and God, in which He receives our affection and gives a responsive breathing of His inspiration. Such communion appears to me as certain of reality as the daily intercourse between man and man; resting upon evidence as positive, and declaring itself by results as marked. The disposition to throw doubt on the testimony of those who affirm that they know this, is a groundless prejudice, an illusion on the negative side as complete as the most positive dreams of enthusiasm.”—P. 224. [98] Religionsphilosophie, iii. p. 305 (Eng. trans.). See Note K.—The Reasonableness of Revelation. [99] Thus, e.g., Kuenen, Wellhausen, Pfleiderer, Martineau (Seat of Authority, pp. 116–122). [100] This is the general position of the higher class of theologians, of whatever schools. [101] See Note L.—The Ritschlian Doctrine of Revelation. [102] John xx. 28. [103] John xiv. 1. _________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX TO LECTURE II. THE PESSIMISM OF SCEPTICISM. ALL the writers on Pessimism dwell on the strangeness of the fact that a century like our own, so marked by mental and material progress, by vigour and enterprise, should witness a revival of this gospel of despair; and bear emphatic testimony to the breadth and depth of the influence which the pessimistic systems are exercising. Apart, however, from the definite acceptance of Pessimism as a creed, it is instructive to note the many indications which literature affords of the sad and hopeless spirit which seems the necessary outcome of the surrender of religious faith. A few illustrations of this Pessimism of scepticism, culled almost at random, will perhaps not be out of place. Voltaire was not happy. Dr. Cairns writes regarding him: “How little he himself was contented with his own results appears in the gloom shed over his later writings. It is not in Candide alone, but in others of them that this sadness comes to light. Thus, in his dialogue, ‘Les Louanges de Dieu,’ the doubter almost carries it over the adorer—’strike out a few sages, and the crowd of human beings is nothing but a horrible assemblage of unfortunate criminals, and the globe contains nothing but corpses. I tremble to have to complain once more of the Being of beings, in casting an attentive eye over this terrible picture. I wish I had never been born.’ . . . Thus the last utterance of Voltaire’s system is a groan.” [104] A deep pessimism lurked in the background of the genial optimism of Goethe. Thus he expresses himself in conversation with Eckermann: “I have ever been esteemed one of fortune’s chiefest favourites; nor will I complain or find fault with the course my life has taken. Yet truly there has been nothing but toil and care; and I may say that in all my seventy-five years I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone which I have always had to raise anew.” His views of the future of the race were not hopeful. “Men will become more clever and more acute, but not better, happier, and stronger in action, or at least only at epochs. I foresee the time when God will have no more joy in them, but will break up everything for a renewed creation.” [105] There are numerous such utterances. Renan writes in the preface to his recently published work, The Future of Science, originally composed in the years 1848–49—“To sum up: if, through the constant labour of the nineteenth century, the knowledge of facts has considerably increased, the destiny of mankind has, on the other hand, become more obscure than ever. The serious thing is that we fail to perceive a means of providing humanity in the future with a catechism that will be acceptable henceforth, except on the condition of returning to a state of credulity. Hence it is possible that the ruin of idealistic beliefs may be fated to follow hard upon the ruin of supernatural beliefs, and that the real abasement of the morality of humanity will date from the day it has seen the reality of things. . . . Candidly speaking, I fail to see how, without the ancient dreams, the foundations of a happy and noble life are to be relaid.” [106] The late Professor Clifford is quoted as saying: “It cannot be doubted that the theistic belief is a comfort to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least by many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or have received it in our childhood, and have parted from it since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.” [107] Professor Seeley, in the close of his work on Natural Religion, thus sums up: “When the supernatural does not come in to overwhelm the natural, and turn life upside down, when it is admitted that religion deals in the first instance with the known and natural, then we may well begin to doubt whether the known and the natural can suffice for human life. No sooner do we try to think so than Pessimism raises its head. The more our thoughts widen and deepen, as the universe grows upon us and we become accustomed to boundless space and time, the more petrifying is the contrast of our own insignificance, the more contemptible become the pettiness, shortness, and fragility of the individual life. A moral paralysis creeps over us. For a while we comfort ourselves with the notion of self-sacrifice; we say, What matter if I pass, let me think of others! But the other has become contemptible no less than the self; all human griefs alike seem little worth assuaging, hum an happiness too paltry at the best to be worth increasing. . . . The affections die away in a world where everything great and enduring is cold; they die of their own conscious feebleness and bootlessness.” [108] Of similar purport is a passage often quoted from A Candid Examination of Theism, by “Physicus.” “Forasmuch,” this writer says, “as I am far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine of ‘the new faith’ is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of ‘the old,’ I am not ashamed to confess that, with this virtual negation of God, the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept ‘to work while it is day’ will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words, ‘The night cometh when no man can work,’ yet, when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as I new find it, at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. For, whether it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be duo to the memory of those sacred associations which, to me at least, were the sweetest that life has given, l cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton,— philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept know thyself has become transformed into the terrible oracle to Œdipus, ‘Mayest thou never know the truth of what thou art.’” [109] Theodore Jouffory, the French philosopher, wrote: “Never shall I forget the December evening when the veil which hid my unbelief from mine own eyes was torn away. . . . The hours of the night glided away, and I perceived it not; I anxiously followed my thought, which descended step by step to the bottom of my consciousness, and dissipating, one after another, all the illusions which till then had hid them from my view, rendered its subterfuges more and more visible to me. In vain I clung to my last beliefs, as a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of his ship; in vain, terrified by the unknown waste in which I was about to float, I threw myself back once more upon my childhood, my family, my country, all that was dear and sacred to me; the inflexible current of my thought was the stronger; parents, family, memories, beliefs—it forced me to leave all. This examination became more obstinate and more severe as it approached the end; nor did it stop till the end was reached. I knew then that at the bottom of myself there was nothing left standing, that all I had believed about myself, about God, and about my destiny in this life and in that to come, I now believed no more. This moment was frightful; and when, towards morning, I threw myself exhausted upon my bed, it seemed to me as if I could feel my former life, so cheerful and complete, die away, and before me there opened up another life, dark and dispeopled, where henceforth I was to live alone, alone with my fatal thought which had just exiled me thither, and which I was tempted to curse.” [110] Here is Professor Huxley’s estimate of human progress: “I know,” he says, “no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes; a blind prey to impulses which as often as not lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree of physical comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life, in such favourable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, and then, for thousands and thousands of years, struggles with varying fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to maintain himself at this point against the greed and ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved on a step foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims. He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet further. And the best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders, and commit the fewest sins.” [111] The passage is in protest against the Positivist “worship of Humanity.” In further illustration of the Pessimism of scepticism, I may refer to two instructive magazine articles—one by Emile de Laveleye on “The Future of Religion,” in The Contemporary Review for July 1888; and the other by Mr. F. W. H. Myers on “The Disenchantment of France,” in The Nineteenth Century for May 1888. To quote only a sentence or two, M. Laveleye remarks: “It seems as if humanity could not exist without religion as a spiritual atmosphere, and we see that, as this decreases, despair and Pessimism take hold of minds thus deprived of solace. Madame Ackermann well expresses this in some lines addressed to Faith, in which she writes— ’Eh bien, nous l’expulsons de tes divins roysumes, Dominatrice ardente, et l’instant est venu; Tu ne vas plus savoir ou loger tes fantomes, Nous fermons l’Inconnu! Mais ton triumphateur expiera ta defaite, L’homme deja se trouble et, vainqueur eperdu, Il se sent ruine par sa propre conquete; En te despossedant nous avons tout perdu. Nous restons sans espoir, sans recours, sans asile, Tandis qu’ obstinement le desir qu’on exile Revient errer autour du gouffre defendu.’ “Incurable sadness takes hold of the man who has no hope of anything better than this life, short as it is, and overwhelmed with trials of all kinds, where iniquity triumphs if it have but force on its side, and where men risk their lives in disputes with each other for a place where there is too little space for all, and the means of subsistence are wholly insufficient. Some German colonies have been founded in America, in which all sorts of Divine worship are prescribed; those who have visited them describe the colonists, the women especially, as appearing exceedingly sad. Life with no hope in the future loses its savour.” [112] Mr. Myers’s article on the progress of disillusionment in France, “to use the phrase of commonest recurrence in modern French literature and speech,” is one fitted to open many eyes as to the inevitable drift of unbelief to Pessimism. In 1788 France possessed illusions and nothing else,—“the reign of reason, the return to nature, the social contract, liberty, equality, fraternity,—the whole air of that wild time buzzed with new-hatched chimeras”; in 1888 France possesses everything except illusions; and the end is “the vague but general sense of malaise or decadence, which permeates so much of modern French literature and life,” and of which abundant illustrations are given. Not the least striking of these is a passage from Emile Littre, the once enthusiastic Comtist, who likens his own final mood to that of the Trojan women who pontum aspectabant flentes! “Fit epigraph,” says Mr. Myers, “for a race who have fallen from hope, on whose ears the waves’ world-old message still murmurs without a meaning; while the familiar landmarks fall back into shadow, and there is nothing but the sea.” [113] These illustrations, which might be multiplied indefinitely sufficiently confirm the words of Mr. Sully in his work on Pessimism: [114] “I am keenly alive to the fact that our scheme of individual happiness, even when taken as including the good of others now living and to live, is no perfect substitute for the idea of eternal happiness presented in religon. Nobody, I imagine, would seriously contend that the aims of our limited earthly existence, even when our imagination embraces generations to follow us, are of so inspiring a character as the objects presented by religion. . . . Into the reality of these religious beliefs I do not here enter. I would only say that if men are to abandon all hope of a future life, the loss, in point of cheering and sustaining influence, will be a vast one, and one not to be made good, so far as I can see, by any new idea of services to collective humanity.” _________________________________________________________________ [104] Cairns’s Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 141. [105] Eckermann’s Conversations of Gothe, pp. 58, 345 (Eng. trans.). Cf. Lichtenberger’s German Thought in the Nineteenth Century, p. 269 (Eng. trans.); Martensen’s Christian Ethics, pp. 172, 173: and Art. “Neo-Paganism,” in Quarterly Review, April 1891. [106] L’Avenir de la Science, Preface (Eng trans.). Elsewhere Renan has said, “Were living on the perfume of an empty vase.” [107] Quoted in Harris’s Self-Revelation of God, p. 404. [108] Natural Religion, pp. 261, 262. [109] P. 114. It is now known that “Physicus” was the late Professor Romanes, whose happy return to the Christian faith before his death has since been announced. See his Thoughts on Religion, edited by Canon Gore. [110] Les Nouveaux Melanges Philosophiques, by Theodore Jouffory, pp. 112–115 (cf. Naville’s “Christ,” p. 16). [111] “Agnosticism,” by Professor Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1889, pp. 191, 192. Mr. Mallock, in his Is Life Worth Living? (pp. 128, 171, 172), quotes other striking sentences of Professor Huxley’s. “The lover of moral beauty,” he says, “struggling through a world of sorrow and sin, is surely as much the stronger for believing that sooner or later a vision of perfect peace and goodness will burst upon him, as the toiler up a mountain for the belief that beyond crag and snow lie home and rest.” And he adds that, could a faith like this be placed on a firm basis, mankind would cling to it as “tenaciously as ever drowning sailor did to a hencoop.” [112] Contemporary Review, vol. xiv. p. 6. A large number of illustrations from French poetry may be seen in Caro’s Problemes de Morale Sociale, pp. 351–380. Cf. also the article next referred to on “The Disenchantment of France.” [113] Nineteenth Century, May 1888, p. 676. [114] Pessimism, p. 317. _________________________________________________________________ “For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and Divinity, that they may be without excuse.”—Paul. “Let us begin, then, by asking whether all this which they call the universe is left to this guidance of an irrational and random chance, or. on the contrary, as our fathers declared, is ordered and governed by a marvellous intelligence and wisdom. “—Plato. “It is easy for the fool, especially the learned and scientific fool, to prove that there is no God, but, like the murmuring sea, which heeds not the scream of wandering birds, the soul of humanity murmurs for God, and confutes the erudite folly of the fool by disregarding it.”—J. Service. “It is in the moments when we are best that we believe in God.”—Renan. “Atheism is the most irrational form of theology.”—COMTE. “I leave noticed, during years of self-observation, that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that this doctrine (Material A theism) commends itself to my mind; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as affording no solution of the mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.”—Tyndall. LECTURE III. THE THEISTIC POSTULATE OF THE CHRISTIAN VIEW. Introductory In entering on the task of unfolding the Christian view of the world under its positive aspects, and of considering its relations to modern thought, I begin where religion itself begins, with the existence of God. Christianity is a theistic system; this is the first postulate—the personal, ethical, self-revealing God. Volkmar has remarked that of monotheistic religions there are only three in the world—the Israelitish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan; and the last-named is derived from the other two. “So,” he adds, “is the ‘Israel of God’ the one truly religious, the religiously-elect, people of antiquity; and ancient Israel remains for each worshipper of the one, therefore of the true God, who alone is worthy of the name, the classical people. . . . Christianity is the blossom and fruit of the true worship of God in Israel, which has become such for all mankind.” [115] This limitation of Monotheism in religion to the peoples who have benefited by the Biblical teaching on this subject, suggests its origin from a higher than human source; and refutes the contention of those who would persuade us that the monotheistic idea is the result of a long process of development through which the race necessarily passes, beginning with Fetishism, or perhaps Ghost-worship, mounting to Polytheism, and ultimately subsuming the multitude of Divine powers under one all-controlling will. It will be time enough to accept this theory when, outside the line of the Biblical development, a single nation can be pointed to which has gone through these stages, and reached this goal. [116] I should like further at the outset to direct attention to the fact that, in affirming the existence of God as Theism apprehends Him, we have already taken a great step into the supernatural, a step which should make many others easy. Many speak glibly of the denial of the supernatural, who never realise how much of the supernatural they have already admitted in affirming the existence of a personal, wise, holy, and beneficent Author of the universe. They may deny supernatural actions in the sense of miracles, but they have affirmed supernatural Being on a scale and in a degree which casts supernatural action quite into the shade. If God is a reality, the whole universe rests on a supernatural basis. A supernatural presence pervades it; a supernatural power sustains it; a supernatural will operates in its forces; a supernatural wisdom appoints its ends. The whole visible order of things rests on another, an unseen, spiritual, supernatural order,—and is the symbol, the manifestation, the revelation of it. It is therefore only to be expected that the feeling should grow increasingly in the minds of thoughtful men, float if this supernatural basis of the universe is to he acknowledged, a great deal more must be admitted besides. On the other hand, if the opposition to the supernatural is to be carried out to its logical issue, it must not stop with the denial of miracle, but must extend to the whole theistic conception. This is the secret of the intimate connection which I showed in last Lecture to exist between the idea of God and the idea of Revelation. A genuine Theism Can never long remain a bare Theism. At the height to which Christianity has raised our thoughts of God, it is becoming constantly more difficult for minds that reflect seriously to believe in a God who does not manifest Himself in word and deed. This is well brought out in a memorable conversation which Mr. Froude had with Mr. Carlyle in the last days of his life. “I once said to him,” says Mr. Froude, “not long before his death, that I could only believe in a God which did something. With a cry of pain, which I shall never forget, he said, ‘He does nothing.’” [117] This simply means that if we are to retain the idea of a hiving God, we must be in earnest with it. We must believe in a God who expresses Himself in hiving deeds in the history of mankind, who has a word and message for mankind, who, having the power and the will to bless man kind, does it. Theism, as I contended before, needs Revelation to complete it. Here, accordingly, it is that the Christian view of God has ifs strength against any conception of God based on mere grounds of natural theology. It hinds together, in the closest reciprocal relations, the two ideas of God and Revelation. The Christian doctrine, while including all thief the word Theism ordinarily covers, is much more than a doctrine of simple Theism. God, in the Christian view, is a Being who enters into the history of the world in the most hiving way. He is not only actively present in the material universe,—ordering, guiding, controlling it.—but He enters also in the most direct way into the course of human history, working in it in His general and special providence, and by a gradual and progressive Revelation, which is, at flue same time, practical discipline and education, giving to man that knowledge of Himself by which he is enabled to attain the highest ends of his own existence, and to co-operate freely in the carrying out of Divine ends; above all, discovering Himself as the God of Redemption, who, full of long-suffering and mercy, executes in loving deeds, and at infinite sacrifice, His gracious purpose for the salvation of mankind. The Christian view of God is thus bound up with all the remaining elements of the Christian system,—with the idea of Revelation in Christ, with a kingdom of God to be realised through Christ, with Redemption from sin in Christ,—and it is inseparable from them. It is through these elements—not in its abstract character as Theism—that it takes the held it does on the living convictions of men, and is felt by them to be something real. If I undertake to defend Theism, it is not Theism in dissociation from Revelation, but Theism as completed in the entire Christian view. It is scarcely necessary that I should prove that Christ’s teaching about God embraces all the affirmations commonly understood to be implied in a complete Theism. Christ’s doctrine of the Father is, indeed, entirely unmetaphysical. We meet with no terms such as absolute, infinite, unconditioned, first cause, etc., with which the student of philosophy is familiar. Yet all that these terms imply is undeniably recognised by Jesus in His teaching about God. He takes up into His teaching—as the apostles likewise do—all the natural truth about God; He takes up all the truth about God’s being, character, perfections, and relations to the world and man, already given in the Old Testament. God, with Jesus, is unquestionably the sole and supreme source of existence; He by whom all things were created, and on whom all things depend; the Lord of heaven and earth, whose power and rule embrace the smallest as well as the greatest events of life; the Eternal One, who sees the end from the beginning, and whose vast counsels hold in their grasp the issues of all things. The attributes of God are similarly dealt with. They are never made by Christ the subject of formal discourse, are never treated of for their own sakes, or in their metaphysical relations. They come into view solely in their religious relations. Yet no one will dispute that all the attributes involved in the highest theistic conception—eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and the like—are implied in His teaching. God, in Christ’s view, is the all-wise, all-present, all-powerful Being, at once infinitely exalted above the world, and active in every part of it, from whose eyes, seeing in secret, nothing can be hid, laying His plans in eternity, and unerringly carrying them out. It is the peculiarity of Christ’s teaching, however, that the natural attributes are always viewed in subordination to the moral. In respect of these, Christ’s view of God resembles that of the Old Testament in its union of the two ideas of God’s unapproachable majesty and elevation above the world as the infinitely Holy One; and of His condescending grace and continued action in history for the salvation and good of men. The two poles in the ethical perfection of God’s character are with Him, as with the prophets of the old covenant, righteousness and love—the former embracing His truth, faithfulness, and justice; the latter His beneficence, compassion, long suffering, and mercy. Ritschl, indeed, in his treatment of this subject, will recognise no attribute but love, and makes all the others, even the so-called physical attributes, but aspects of love. Righteousness, e.g., is but the self-consistency of God in carrying out His purposes of love, and connotes nothing judicial. [118] Righteousness, however, has its relatively independent place as an attribute of God in both Old and New Testaments, and cannot thins be set aside. It has reference to indefeasible distinctions of right and wrong—to moral norms, which even love must respect. Out of righteousness and love in the character of God, again, issues wrath—another idea which modern thought tries to weaken, but which unquestionably holds an important place in the view of God given us by Christ. By wrath is meant the intense moral displeasure with which God regards sin—His holy abhorrence of it—and the punitive energy of His nature which He puts forth against it. So regarded, it is not opposed to love, but, on the contrary, derives its chief intensity from the presence of love, and is a necessary element in the character of an ethically perfect Being. [119] While, however, Christ’s teaching about the character of God is grounded on that of the Old Testament, yet in the purity and perfection with which He apprehends this ethical perfection of God,—above all, in the new light in which He places it by His transforming conception of the Divine Fatherhood, we feel that we are carried far beyond the stage of the Old Testament. God, as ethical Personality, is viewed by Christ, first, as in Himself the absolutely Good One—“There is none good but one, that is, God”; [120] second, as the perfect Archetype of goodness for man a imitation—“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”; [121] third, as the moral Will binding the universe together, and proscribing the law of conduct—“Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”; [122] but, fourth, pre-eminently as the Father. It is in the name Father, as expressive of a special loving and gracious relation to the individual members of His kingdom, that Christ’s doctrine of God specially sums itself up. The Old Testament knew God as tire Father of the nation; Christ knew Him as tire Father of the individual soul, begotten by Him to a new life, and standing to Him in a new moral and spiritual relation, as a member of the kingdom of His Son. This, then, without further delineation in detail, is the first postulate of Christianity—a God living, personal, ethnical, self-revealing, infinite. We have new to ask—How does this postulate of the Christian view stand related to modern thought, and no the general religious consciousness of mankind? How far is it corroborated or negated by modern thought? What is the nature of the corroboration, and what the worth of the negation? I shall consider the negation first. I. The negation of the Christian view. I. Dogmatic Atheism has not so many advocates—at least in this country—as at some former times ; but, instead, we have a wide prevalence of that new form of negation which is called Agnosticism. I have already referred to this as one of the alternatives to which the mind is driven in its denial of the supernatural view of Christ’s Person; but it is new necessary to consider it on its own merits. The thought may occur that this widespread phase of present-day unbelief is not properly described as “negation,” seeing that all it affirms is, that it “does not know.” It does not say, “There is no God,” but only that it does not know that there is one. Its ground is that of ignorance, lack of evidence, suspense of judgment—not positive denial. This plea, however, is on various grounds inadmissible. It is certainly not the case that thorough-going, reasoned-out Agnosticism, as we have it, for example, in the works of Mr. Spencer, is simply the modest assertion that it does not know whether there is a God or not. It is the dogmatic affirmation, based on an examination of the nature and limits of human intelligence, that God—or, in Mr. Spencer’s phrase, the Power which manifests itself in consciousness and in the outward universe—is unknowable. [123] But in all its forms, even the mildest, Agnosticism is entitled to be regarded as a negation of the Christian view, for two reasons. First, in affirming that God is not, or cannot be, known, it directly negates, not only the truths of God’s natural Revelation, which Christianity presupposes, but the specific Christian assertion that God can be and is known through the of His historical Revelations, and supremely through His Son Jesus Christ. “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” [124] And, second, if God exists, it is impossible in the nature of things that there should not be evidence of His existence, and therefore the denial of such evidence is actually tantamount to the denial of His existence. Why do I say this? It is because the truths about God differs from every other truth in just this respect, that if it is truth it must be capable of a certain measure of rational demonstration. For God is not simply one Being among others. He is the necessary Being. He is the Being whose existence is necessarily involved in the existence of every other being. Thin whole universe, ourselves as part of it, stands in a relation of necessary dependence upon Him. God, therefore, is unlike every other being our thought can take account of. Oilier beings may exist, and we may have no evidence of their existence. But it is rationally inconceivable that such an all-comprehending Reality as we call God should exist, and that through Him the whole material and spiritual universe should come into being, arid yet no trace be found connecting this universe with its Author—so vast an effect with its cause. If even man, for however short a space of time, sets foot on an uninhabited island, we expect, if we visit his retreat, to find some traces of his occupation How much more, if this universe owes its existence to infinite wisdom and power, if God is unceasingly present and active in every part of it, must we expect to find evidence of thin fact? Therefore, I say that denial of all evidence for God’s existence is equivalent to the affirmation that there is no God. If God is, thought must be able, nay, is compelled, to take account of His existence. It must explore the relations in which He stands to us and to than world. An obligation rests on it to do so. To think of God is a duty of love, but it is also a task of science. Mr. Spencer is so far in agreement with the views just expressed, that he maintains that our thought is compelled to posit the existence of an absolute Being as the ground and cause of than universe, though of than nature of this ultimate reality he holds that we can form no conception. The reason given is, that our minds, being finite and conditioned in their thinking, cannot form a conception of an existence which lies outside these conditions. [125] The question, however, is pertinent—If the mind is thus hemmed up within the limits of its finitude, how does it get to know even that an Absolute exists? Or if we can so far transcend the limits of our thought as to know that the Absolute exists—which is a disproof of the position that thought is restricted wholly to the finite—why may we not also have some knowledge of its nature? It is not difficult to show that, in his endeavours to extricate himself from these difficulties, Mr. Spencer involves himself in a mass of self-contradictions. He tells us, e.g., in every variety of phrase, that we cannot know the Absolute, but almost in the same breath he tells us that we have an idea of the Absolute which our minds are compelled to form, [126] —that it is a positive, and not, as Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel held, a merely negative conception, [127] —nay, that we have not only a conception, but a direct and immediate consciousness of this Absolute, blending itself with all our thoughts and feelings, and recognisable by us as such. [128] Again, if we ask, What is meant by the Absolute? it is defined as that which exists out of all relations, and for this reason the possibility of a knowledge of it is denied. [129] But if we inquire further what ground we have for affirming the existence of such an Absolute, existing out of all relations, we find that the only ground alleged is the knowledge we have of it as standing in relations. [130] For this, which Mr. Spencer names the Absolute, is simply the Infinite Power which he elsewhere tells us manifests itself in all that is—in nature and in consciousness—and is a constituent element in every idea we can form. The Absolute, therefore, stands in relation to both matter and mind—has, so far as we can see, its very nature in that relation. It is not, it turns out, a Being which exists out of all relations, but rather, like the Christian God, a self-revealing Power, manifesting itself, if not directly yet indirectly, in its workings in the worlds of matter and of mind. How strange to speak of a Power thus continually manifesting itself in innumerable ways, the consciousness of which, on Mr. Spencer’s own showing, [131] constantly wells up within us, as absolutely unknown or unknowable! But, after all, as we by and by discover, this Inscrutable Power of Mr. Spencer’s is not absolutely unknowable. It soon becomes apparent that there are quite a number of affirmations we are able to make regarding it, some of them almost of a theistic character. They are made, I admit, generally under a kind of protest, [132] yet it is difficult to see why, if they are not seriously meant—if they do not convey some modicum of knowledge—they should be made at all. According to Mr. Spencer, this ultimate reality is a Power: it is a force, the nearest analogue to which is our own will: [133] it is infinite, it is eternal, it is omnipresent; [134] it is an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed; [135] it is the Cause of the universe, standing to it in a relation similar to that of the creative power of the Christian conception. [136] Numerous other statements might be quoted all more or less implying knowledge, —as, e.g., that “the Power manifested throughout the Universe distinguished as material, is the same Power which in ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness “: while the necessity we are under to think of the external energy in terms of the internal energy gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect to the Universe.” [137] This I take leave to say, so far from being Agnosticism, would more correctly be described as a qualified Gnosticism. [138] Mr. Spencer’s so-called Agnosticism is not an agnostic system at but a of non-material all, system or semi-spiritual Pantheism. If we know all that these statements imply about the Absolute, there is no bar in principle to our knowing a great deal more. A significant proof of this is the development which the system has received in the hands of one of Mr. Spencer’s disciples, Mr. Fiske, who in his Cosmic Philosophy, and still more in his book on The Idea of God, has wrought it out into a kind of Theism. He discards the term “Unknowable,” and writes: “It is enough to remind the reader that Deity is unknowable, just in so far as it is not manifested to consciousness through the phenomenal world; knowable, just in so far as it is thus manifested; unknowable, in so far as infinite and absolute; knowable, in the order of its phenomenal manifestations; knowable, in a symbolic way, as the Power which is disclosed in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the universe; knowable, as tire eternal Source of a Moral Law, which is implicated with each action of our lives, arid in obedience to which lies our only guaranty of the happiness which is incorruptible, and which neither inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy can take away. Thus, though we may not by searching find out God, though we may not compass infinitude, or attain to absolute knowledge, we may at least know all that it concerns us to know, as intelligent and responsible beings.” [139] It has riot been left for Mr. Spencer to discover that, in the depths of His absolute Being, as well as in the plenitude of the modes of His revealed Being, there is that in God which must always pass our comprehension,—that in the present state of existence it is only very dimly and distantly, and by large use of “symbolic conceptions,” that we can approximate to a right knowledge of God. This is affirmed in the Bible quite as strongly as it is by the agnostic philosophers. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” [140] “O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” [141] “Now I know in part.” [142] In this sense we cant speak of a Christian Agnosticism. [143] This incomprehensibility, however, is held in Scripture to arise, not from any inherent or incurable defect in the human faculties, but simply from the vastness of the object, in the knowledge of which, nevertheless, the mind may continually be growing. The universe itself in its immeasurable extent vastly transcends our present powers of knowledge . how much more the Author of the universe? This, accordingly, is not the point we have in dispute with Mr. Spencer. The point is not whether, in the depths of His absolute existence, there is much in God that must remain unknown to us; but whether He cannot be known by us in His revealed relations to ourselves, and to the world of which we form a part; whether these relations are not also in their measure a true expressions of His nature and character, so that through them we come to know something of Him, even of His absolute Being—though we cannot know all? When, now, the Agnostic tells us that knowledge of this kind is impossible to us, see in what contradiction he lands himself. Here is a man who says, “I know nothing of God; He is absolutely beyond my ken; I cannot form the faintest conception of what He is” And yet he knows so much about God as to be able to say beforehand that He cannot possibly enter into relations with human beings by which He might become known to them. This is a proposition of which the Agnostic, on his own showing, can never have any evidence. If God is unknowable, how can we know this much about Him—that He cannot in any mode or form enter into relations with us by which He might be known? Only on one supposition can this be maintained. If, indeed, as Mr. Spencer thinks, the nature of God and the intelligence of man are two things absolutely disparate—if, as Spinoza said, to speak of God taking on Him the nature of man is as absurd as to speak of a circle taking on it the nature of the square, [144] —then not only is God unknowable, but the whole Christian system is a priori ruled out of consideration. This, however, is a proposition which can never be proved, and we have seen that the attempt to prove and work with it only entangled Mr. Spencer in a mass of difficulties. There is really, on his own principles, no reason why he should not admit the possibility of a relative knowledge of God, as true in its way as the knowledge which we have of space, time, matter, force, or cause,—all which notions, as well as that of the Absolute, he tells us are prolific of intellectual contradictions. [145] Why, for instance, should we more hesitate to speak of God as Intelligence than to speak of Him as Power; why shrink from attributing to Him the attribute of Personality any more than that of Cause? [146] The whole objection, therefore, falls to the ground with the intellectual theory on which it is founded. For once grant that the nature of God and the intelligence of man are not thus foreign to each other, as Spencer supposes; grant that man is made in time image of God, and bears in some measure His likeness—then man’s mind is not wholly shut up within the limits of the finite—there is an absolute element in it, kindred with the absolute reason of God, and real knowledge both of God and of the nature of things without us is possible. II. Positive evidence for the Christian view. II. The a priori bar with which Agnosticism would block the way to the knowledge of God being thus removed, we may proceed to inquire how it stands with the theistic postulate of the Christian view, in respect of the positive evidence in its behalf. It has been shown that, if the Christian view be true, it must, up to a certain point, admit of verification by reason. The doctrine of God’s existence must be shown to be in accord with reason, and to be in harmony with amid corroborated by the facts of science and of the religious history of mankind. Science, indeed, has not for its object the determination of anything supernatural. Yet in its inquiries—dealing as it does with laws and forces, and with the widest generalisations of experience—it must come to a point at which the questions with which religion and philosophy deal are forced upon it, and it has to take up some attitude to them. The facts which it brings to light, the interpretations which it gives of these facts, cannot but have some bearing on the hypotheses we form as to the ultimate cause of existence. If it does not cross the borderland, it at least brings us within sight of truths which do not lie within its proper sphere, and points the way to their acceptance. 1. I may begin with certain things in regard to which it is possible to claim a large measure of agreement. And— (1) It may be assumed with little fear of contradiction, that if the idea of God is to be entertained, it can only be in the form of Monotheism. The Agnostic will grant us this much. Whatever the power is which works in the universe, it is one. “As for Polytheism,” says a writer in Lux Mundi, “it has ceased to exist in the civilised world. Every theist is, by a rational necessity, a monotheist.” [147] The Christian assumption of the unity and absoluteness of God—of the dependence of the creamed universe upon Him—is thus confirmed. It is to be remembered that this truth, preached as a last result of science and of the philosophy of evolution, is a first truth of the Biblical religion. It is the Bible, and the Bible alone, which has made Monotheism the possession of the world. The unity of God was declared on the soil of Israel long before science or philosophy had the means of declaring it. [148] Through Christianity it has been made the possession of mankind. On the soil of paganism we see reason struggling towards this idea, striking out partial glimpses of it, sometimes making wonderful approximations to it, hut never in its own strength lifting itself clear away from Polytheism to the pure conception of the one spiritual God, such as we find it in Christianity, still less making this the foundation of a religion It is through Christianity, not through philosophical speculation, that this truth has become the support of faith, a light to which the investigations of science themselves owe much, and a sustaining principle and power in the lives of men. [149] (2) This Power which the evolutionist requires us to recognise as the origin of all things is the source of a rational order. This is a second fact about which there can be no dispute. There is a rational order and connection of things in the universe. Science is not only the means by which our knowledge of this order is extended, but it is itself a standing proof of the existence of this order. Science can only exist on the assumption that the world is not chaos, hut cosmos—that there is unity, order, law, in it—that it is a coherent and consistent whole of things, construable through our intelligence, and capable of being expressed in forms of human speech. And the more carefully we examine the universe, we find that this is really its character. It is an harmonious universe. There is orderly sequence in it. There is orderly connection of part and part. There is that determinable connection we call law. There is the harmonious adjustment of means to ends, which again are embraced in higher ends, till, in the nobler systems, the teleological idea is extended to the whole system. [150] In many ways does Mr. Spencer express in his writings his trust that this Power of which he speaks—inscrutable as he proclaims it to be—may be depended on not to put him, as the authors of the “Unseen Universe” phrase it, “to intellectual confusion.” [151] To give only one instance—he bids the man who has some highest truth to speak, not to be afraid to speak it out, on the ground that “it is not for nothing that lie has in him these sympathies with some principles, and repugnance to others. . . . He, like every other man,” he says, “may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that belief. For to render in their highest sense the words of the poet— ‘Nature is made better by no mean, But Nature makes that mean; o’er that art Which roll cay adds to Nature, is an art Which Nature makes.’ Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith that is in him.” [152] Who does not see in these remarkable sentences that, notwithstanding his reiteration of the words “Unknown Cause,” “Unknowable,” Mr. Spencer’s latent faith is that this Power which works in the world and in men is a Power working according to rational laws and for rational ends—is on this account an object of trust—we might almost add, a source of inspiration? But now, if this is so, can the conclusion be avoided that the Power on which we thus depend rationally is itself rational? It is knowable at least thins far, that we know that it is the source of a rational order—of an order construable through our intelligence. If now it is asserted that the source of this rational order is not itself rational, surely the proof rests, not on him who affirms, but on him who denies. [153] If Mr. Spencer replies, as he does reply, that it is an “ erroneous assumption that the choice is between personality and something lower than personality, whereas the choice is rather between personality only something higher,” amid asks—“Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will, as these transcend mechanical motion?” [154] —the answer (not to dwell on the utterly disparate character of the things compare d) is ready—this higher mode of being cannot at least be less than conscious. It may be a higher kind of consciousness, but it cannot be higher than consciousness. Nor is there the slightest ground for the assumption that there can be anything higher than self-conscious intelligence or reason. [155] If we find in the universe an order congruous to the reason we have in ourselves, this is warranty sufficient for believing, till the contrary is proved, that the Power which gives rise to this order is not only Power, but Intelligence and Wisdom as well. (3) Again, this Power which the evolutionist compels us to recognise is the source of a moral order. Butler, in his Analogy, undertook to prove that the constitution and course of things are on the side of virtue. His argument is sometimes spoken of as obsolete, but it is not so much obsolete as simply transformed. It is a new-fashioned phrase which Matthew Arnold uses when lie speaks of a “Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness,” but it means just what Butler meant, that the make and constitution of things in the universe are for righteousness, and not for its opposite. Right eons conduct works out good results for the individual and for society; vicious conduct works out bad results. But what I wish to point out at present is the new support which this view receives from the theory of agnostic evolution, which is supposed by many to overthrow it. No philosophy, which aims at completeness, can avoid the obligation resting on it of showing that it is capable of yielding a coherent theory of human life. The construction of a system of ethics, therefore, Mr. Spencer justly regards as that part of his work to which all the other parts are subsidiary. The theological basis of ethics is rejected; utilitarianism also is set aside as inadequate; and in room of these the attempt is made to establish the rules of right conduct on a scientific basis by deducing them from the general laws of evolution. You find a Power evolving itself in the universe. Study, says Mr. Spencer, the laws of its evolution: find “the naturally revealed end towards which the Power manifested throughout evolution works”; then, “since evolution has been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that conforming to these principles by which the higher life is achieved, is furthering that end.” [156] And when a system us constructed on this basis, what is the result? Why, that we are simply back to the old morality-to what Mr. Spencer himself calls “a rationalised version of the ethical principles” of the current creed. [157] The ethical laws which are deduced from the observations of the laws of evolution are identical with those which Christian ethics and the natural conscience of man in the higher stages of its development have always recognised. [158] What is the inference? These principles were not originally gained by scientific induction. They were the expressions of the natural consciousness of mankind as to distinctions of right and wrong, or were promulgated by teachers who claimed to have received them from a higher source. In either case, they were recognised by man as principles independently affirmed by conscience to be right. And now that the process of evolution comes to be scientifically studied, we are told that the principles of conduct yielded by it, in light of the end to which evolution naturally works, absolutely coincide with those which spring from this “work of the law” written in men’s hearts. What else can we conclude, assuming that the evolutionist is right in his deduction, but that the universe is constructed in harmony with right; that the laws which we have already recognised as of binding authority in conscience are also laws of the objective world; that the principles of right discovered in conscience, and the moral order of society based on these principles, are productions of the one great evolutionary cause, which is the Force impelling and controlling the whole onward movement of humanity? There is certainly nothing lucre to conflict with, but everything to support the view that the Power which is above all, and through all, and in all things, is not only Intelligence and Wisdom, but also an Ethical Will. At least, to most persons who dispassionately study the subject, I think it will appear reasonable that a Power which has an ethical end must be an ethical Power. If, further, this ethical end embraces, as Mr. Spencer seems to believe, the highest perfection amid happiness of man, [159] it is still more difficult to conceive how it should have a place in the nature of things unless the Supreme Power were itself benevolent and good. It is not, it should be remembered, as if this ethical end were an after-thought or accident. It is, according to the theory, the final and supreme goad to which the whole process of evolution for count- less millenniums has been working up, and only when it is reached will the ripest fruit of the whole development be gathered. But how is this possible, except on a teleological view of things; and what teleology can yield a moral result which does not postulate at the other end a moral cause? Mr. Spencer may deprecate as he will the imposing of moral ideas generated in our consciousness upon the Infinite which transcends consciousness. But it is only his own arbitrary denial of consciousness to the Absolute, and his arbitrary assumption that there can be no kindredship between that absolute consciousness and our own, which prevents him from drawing the natural conclusion from his own premises. But if to Mr. Spencer’s definition of the Absolute, as “an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed,” we add, as I think we are entitled to do, the predicates of infinite Intelligence and of Wisdom, and of Ethical Will, we have all the fundamental theistic positions affirmed. If the First Cause of the universe is proved by its manifestations to be at once rational Intelligence and Ethical Will, there should be no excess of scrupulosity in applying to it the term “Personal.” I have thus far reasoned on the assumptions of Mr. Spencer, and have spoken of his Ultimate Reality as he does himself, as “Power,” “Force,” “Cause,” etc. But I cannot leave this part of the subject without remarking that Mr. Spencer is far from having the field of thought all to himself on this question of the nature of the Ultimate Existence. It was shown in last Lecture how, starting from a different point of view, the higher philosophy of the century—the Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian—reaches, with a very large degree of certainty, the conclusion that the ultimate principle of the universe must be self-conscious. It is well known that the Personality of God was a point left in very great doubt in the system of Hegel. [160] God was conceived of as the Absolute Reason, but the drift of the system seemed to point rather to an impersonal Reason which first becomes conscious of itself ill man, than to a selfconsciousness complete and perfect from the beginning. Whatever its other defects, the later Hegelianism has shaken itself clear of this ambiguity, amid affirms with emphasis that the principle at the basis of the universe is self-conscious. [161] The other line of development—the Neo-Kantian—is, in the person of its chief representative, Hermann Lotze, explicitly theistic. I only notice here, that after a careful discussion of all the arguments against ascribing Personality to time Divine Being, on the ground that personality implies the limitation of the finite, Lotze arrives at this conclusion, diametrically the opposite of Mr. Spencer’s—“Perfect personality is reconcilable only with the conception of an infinite Being; for finite beings only an approximation to this is attainable.” [162] It is interesting, further, to notice that even Neo-Spencerianism—if I may coin such a term—has come round, in tire person of Mr. Fiske, to a similar affirmation. “The final conclusion,” he says, “is, that we must not say that ‘God is Force,’ since such a phrase inevitably calls up those pantheistic notions of blind necessity, which it is my express desire to avoid; but always bearing in mind the symbolic character of the words, we may say that ‘God is Spirit.’ How my belief in the personality of God could be more strongly affirmed without entirely deserting the language of modern philosophy and taking refuge in pure mythology, I am unable to see.” [163] 2. It is now necessary to come to closer quarters, arid to ask whether the ordinary proofs for the existence of God, which have been so much assailed since the time of Kant, still retain their old cogency, arid if not, what modifications require to be made on them. The time-honoured division of these proofs—which have recently received so able a re-handling at the instance of Dr. Hutchison Stirling in his “Gifford Lectures”—is into the cosmological, the teleological, and the ontological, to which, as belonging to another category, falls to be added the moral. Besides these, Kant thinks, there are no others. [164] This, however, must be taken with qualification, if the remark is meant to apply to the old scholastic forms in which these proofs have customarily been put. Not only is there no necessity for the proofs being confined to these forms—some of which are clearly inadequate—hut they are capable of many extensions, and even transformations, as the result of advancing knowledge, and of the better insight of reason into its own nature. I may add that I do not attach much importance in this connection to objections to these proofs drawn from Kant’s peculiar theory of knowledge. [165] If it can be shown that in the exercise of our reason as directed on the world in which we live—or on its own nature—we are compelled either to cease to think, or to think in a particular way,—if we find that these necessities of thought are not peculiar to individuals here and there, but have been felt by the soundest thinkers in all ages, and among peoples widely separated from each other,—we may be justified in believing that our reason is not altogether an untrustworthy guide, but may be depended on with considerable confidence to direct us to the truth. Neither shall I waste time at this stage by discussing in what sense it is permissible to speak of “proof” of so transcendent a reality as the Divine existence. We remember here the saying of Jacobi, that a God capable of proof would be no God at all; since this would mean that there is something higher than God from which His existence can be deduced. But this applies only to the ordinary reasoning of the deductive logic. It does not apply to that higher kind of proof which may be said to consist in the mind being guided back to the clear recognition of its own ultimate pre-suppositions. Proof in Theism certainly does not consist in deducing God’s existence as a lower from a higher; but rather in showing that God’s existence is itself the last postulate of reason—the ultimate basis on which all other knowledge, all other belief rests. What we mean by proof of God’s existence is simply that there are necessary acts of thought by which we rise from the finite to the infinite, from the caused to the uncaused, from the contingent to the necessary, from the reason involved in the structure of the universe to a universal and eternal Reason, which is the ground of all, from morality in conscience to a moral Lawgiver and Judge. In this connection the three theoretical proofs constitute an inseparable unity—“constitute together,” as Dr. Stirling finely declares, “but the three undulations of a single wave, which wave is but a natural rise and ascent to God, on the part of man s own thought, with man’s own experience and consciousness as the object before him.” [166] (1) The cosmological argument. (1) Adopting the usual arrangement, I speak first of the cosmological proof, which, from the contingency and mutability of the world,—from its finite, dependent, changeful, multiple character,—concludes to an infinite and necessary Being as its ground and cause. That this movement of thought is necessary is shown by the whole history of philosophy and religion. Kant, who subjects the argument to a severe criticism, nevertheless admits—“It is something very remarkable that, on the supposition that something exists, I cannot avoid the inference that something exists necessarily.” [167] The question then arises—Is the world this necessary Being? The cosmological proof on its various sides is directed to showing that it is not,—that it is not sufficient for its own explanation,—that, therefore, it must have its ground and origin in some other being that is necessary. Whatever exists has either the reason of its existence in itself, or has it in something else. But that the world has not the reason of its existence in itself—is not, in Spinoza’s phrase, causa sui, is not a necessarily existing being—is shown in various ways. i. By the contingency of its existence.—A necessary Being as Kant himself defines it, is one the necessity of whose existence is given through its possibility, i.e. the non-existence of which cannot be thought of as possible. [168] But the world is not an existence of this character. We can think of its non-existence without contradiction—as, e.g., we cannot think of the non-existence of space and time. We think away all the contents of space and time, but we cannot think away space and time themselves. ii. By the dependency of its several parts.—It is made up of finite parts, each of which is dependent on the others, and sustains definite relations to them; its parts, therefore, have not the character of self-subsistence. But a world made up of parts, none of which is self-subsistent, cannot as a whole be self-subsistent, or the necessary Being. [169] iii. By its temporal succession of effects.—The world is in constant flux and change. Causes give birth to effects, and effects depend on causes. Each state into which it passes has determining conditions in some immediately preceding state. This fact, apart from the general proof of contingency, suggests the need of conceiving not only of a necessary ground, but likewise of a First Cause of the universe. The alternative supposition is that of an eternal series of causes and effects—a conception which is unthinkable, and affords no resting-place for reason. What can be more self-contradictory than the hypothesis of a chain of causes and effects, each link of which hangs on a preceding link, while yet the whole chain hangs on nothing? [170] Reason, therefore, itself points us to the need of a First Cause of the universe, who is at the same time a self-existing, necessary, infinite Being. It is, since Kant’s time, customarily made an objection to this argument, that it only takes us as far as some necessary being—it does not show us in the least degree what kind of a being this is—whether, e.g., in the world or out of it, whether the world soul of the Stoics, the pantheistic substance of Spinoza, the impersonal reason of Hegel, or the personal God of the theist. This may be, and therefore the cosmological argument may need the other arguments to complete it. It will be found, however, when we go more deeply (in the ontological argument) into the conception of necessary being, that there is only one kind of existence which answers to this description, and with this more perfect conception the cosmological argument will then connect itself. As thus presented, the cosmological argument is a process of thought. I cannot leave it, however, without pointing out that it stands connected with a direct fact of consciousness, which, as entering into experience, changes this proof to some extent from a merely logical into a real one. Not to speak of the immediate impression of transitoriness, finitude, contingency, vanity, which, prior to all reasoning, one receives from the world, [171] and which finds expression, more or less, in all religions, there is, at the very root of our religious consciousness, that “feeling of absolute dependence” which Schleiermacher fixes on as the very essence of religion: [172] and which reappears in Mr. Spencer’s philosophy in a changed form as the immediate consciousness of an absolute Power on which we and our universe alike depend. This feeling of dependence, so natural to man, and interweaving itself with all his religious experiences, is the counterpart in the practical sphere of the cosmological argument in the logical. Both need their explanation in something deeper than themselves, namely, in the possession by man of a rational nature, which makes him capable of rising in thought and feeling above the finite. And as, in the theoretic sphere, the cosmological argument presses forward to its completion in another and a higher, so in the religious sphere the rational nature of man forbids that this sense of dependence should remain a mere feeling of dependency on a blind Power. Religion must free, bless, inspire, strengthen men. From the first, therefore, the soul is at work, seeking in its depths, and in obedience to its own laws, to change this relation of dependence into a free and personal one. (2) The second argument for the Divine existence is the teleological,—better known simply as the design argument. Kant speaks of this oldest and most popular of the theistic arguments with great respect; and the objections which he makes to it affect more its adequacy to do all that is expected from it than its force so far as it goes. It does not, he thinks,prove a Creator, but only an Architect, of the world; it does not prove an infinite, but only a very great Intelligence, etc. [173] I may remark, however, that if it proves even this, it does a great deal; and from an intelligence so great as to hold in its ken the plan and direction of the universe, the step will not be found a great one to the Infinite Intelligence which we call God. But the argument, in the right conception of it, does more than Kant allows, and is a step of transition to the final one—the ontological. A new argument against design in nature has been found in recent times in the doctrine of evolution. The proof we are considering turns, as every one knows, on the existence of ends in nature. In Kant’s words: “In the world we find everywhere clear signs of an order which can only spring from design—an order realised with the greatest wisdom, and in a universe which is indescribably varied in content, and in extent infinite.” [174] In organisms particularly we see the most extraordinary adaptations of means to ends—structures of almost infinite complexity and wonderful perfection—contrivances in which we have precisely the same evidence of the adjustment of the parts to produce the ends as in human works of art. [175] From this the inference is drawn, that a world so full of evidences of rational purpose can only be the work of a wise and intelligent mind. But this argument is broken down if it can be shown that what look like ends in nature are not really such, but simply results—that the appearance of apparently designed arrangements to produce certain ends can be explained by the action of causes which do not imply intelligence. This is what evolution, in the hands of some of its expounders, undertakes to do. By showing how structures may have arisen through natural selection, operating to the preservation of favourable variations in the struggle for existence, it is thought that the aid of intelligence may be dispensed with, and that a deathblow is given to teleology. [176] The eye, for example, may have resulted from the gradual accumulation of small variations, each of them accidental, and arising from unknown laws in the organism, but each, as it arises giving to its possessor some slight advantage in the struggle for existence. It is a simple case of the survival of the fittest. Instead of the advantage resulting from a designed arrangement, the appearance of arrangement results from the advantage. In reality, the facts of evolution do not weaken the proof from design, but rather immensely enlarge it by showing all things to be bound together in a vaster, grander plan than had been formerly conceived. Let us see how the matter precisely stands. On the general hypothesis of evolution, as applied to the organic world, I have nothing to say, except that, within certain limits, it seems to me extremely probable, and supported by a large body of evidence. This, however, only refers to the fact of a genetic relationship of some kind between the different species of plants and animals, and does not affect the means by which this development may be supposed to be brought about. On this subject two views may be held. [177] The first is that evolution results from development from within; in which case, obviously, the argument from design stands precisely where it did, except that the sphere of its application is enormously extended. The second view is, that evolution has resulted from fortuitous variations, combined with action of natural selection, laying hold of and preserving the variations that were favourable. This is really, under a veil of words, to ask us to believe that accident and fortuity have done the work of mind. But the facts are not in agreement with the hypothesis. The variations in organisms are net absolutely indefinite. In the evolution of an eye, for example, the variations are all more or less in the line of producing the eye. When the formation of an eye has begun, the organism keeps to that line in that place. It does not begin to sprout an ear where the eye is being developed. There is a ground plan that is adhered to in the midst of the variations. Could we collect the successive forms through which the eye is supposed to have passed in the course of its development, what we would see (I speak on the hypothesis of the theory) would be a succession of small increments of structure, all tending in the direction of greater complexity and perfection of the organ—the appearance of new muscles, new lenses, new arrangements for adjusting or perfecting the sight, etc. But the mere fact that these successive appearances could be put in a line, however extended, would throw no light on how the development took place, or how this marvellously complex organ came to build itself up precisely after this pattern. [178] The cause invoked to explain this is natural selection. Now the action of natural selection is real, but its influence may be very easily overrated. It is never to be forgotten that natural selection produces nothing. It acts only on organisms already produced, weeding out the weakest, and the least fitted structurally to survive, and heaving the better adapted in possession of the field. [179] It is altogether to exaggerate the influence of natural selection, to attribute to it a power to pick out infallibly on the first appearance the infinitesimal variations in an organism which are to form the foundations of future useful organs, though, in their initial stage, they cannot be shown to confer any benefit on their possessors, and may be balanced or neutralised by fifty or sixty other variations in an opposite direction, or by differences of size, strength, speed, etc., on the part of the competitors in the struggle; and still more a power to preserve each of these slight variations till another and yet another of a favourable kind is added to it after long intervals, in a contest in which numbers alone are overwhelmingly against the chance of its survival. [180] Taking the facts of evolution as they really stand, what they seem to point to is something hike the following:— i. An inner power of development of organisms. ii. A power of adjustment in organisms adapting them to environment. iii. A weeding out of weak and unfit organisms by natural selection. iv. Great differences in the rate of production of new species. Ordinarily, species seem to have nearly all the characters of fixity which the old view ascribed to them. Variation exists, but it is confined within comparatively narrow limits. The type persists through ages practically unchanged. At other periods in the geological history of the past there seems to be a breaking down of this fixity. The history of life is marked by a great inrush of new forms. New species crowd upon the scene. Plasticity seems the order of the day. [181] We may call this evolution if we like, but it is none the less creation,—the production out of the old of something new and higher. All that we are called upon to notice here is that it in no way conflicts with design, but rather compels the acknowledgment of it. The chief criticism I would be disposed to make upon the design argument, as an argument for intelligence in the cause of the universe, is that it is too narrow. It confines the argument to final causes—that is, to the particular case of the adaptation of means to ends. But the basis for the inference that the universe has a wise and intelligent Author is far wider than this. It is not the marks of purpose alone which necessitate this inference, but everything which bespeaks order, plan, arrangement, harmony, beauty, rationality in the connection and system of things. It is the proof of the presence of thought in the world—whatever shape that may take. [182] As we saw in a former part of the Lecture, the assumption on which the whole of science proceeds—and cannot but proceed—in its investigations is, that the system it is studying is intelligible,—that there is an intelligible unity of things. It admits of being reduced to terms of thought. There is a settled and established order on which the investigator can depend. Without this he could not advance one step. Even Kant’s objection, that this argument proved only an architect of the universe, but not a creator of its materials, is seen from this point of view to be invalid. [183] The very materials of the universe—the atoms which compose it—show by their structure, their uniformity, their properties, their mathematical relations, that they must have a Creator; that the Power which originated them, which weighed, measured, and numbered them, which stamped on them their common characters, and gave them their definite laws and relations, must have been intelligent. I admit, however, that as the design argument presupposes the cosmological, to give us the idea of an infinite and necessary Being at the basis of the universe, so both of these arguments need the ontological, to show us in the clearest and most convincing manner that this Being and Cause of the universe is infinite, self conscious Reason. (3) I come, accordingly, in the third place, to the ontological argument—that which Kant, not without reason, affirms to beat the foundation of the other two, and to be the real ground on which the inference to the existence of a necessary and infinitely perfect Being rests. It is an argument which in these days, owing largely to his criticism upon it, has fallen much into disrepute, though a good deal has also been done by able thinkers to rehabilitate it, and to show its real bearings. It must further be admitted that in the form in which it was wont to be put in the schools, the strictures which Kant makes on it are in the main just.1 [184] In the earlier form, it is an argument from the idea of God as a necessary idea of the mind, to His real existence. I have, reasons Anselm, the idea of a most perfect Being. But this idea includes the attribute of existence. For if the most perfect Being did not exist, there could be conceived a greater than He,—one that did exist,—and therefore He would not be the most perfect. The most perfect Being, therefore, is one in the idea of whom existence is necessarily included. In this form the argument seems little better than a logical quibble, and so Kant has treated it. Kant grants the necessity of the idea—shows how it arises—names it The Ideal of Pure Reason—but argues with cogency that from an idea, purely as such, you cannot conclude to real existence. It would be strange, however, if an argument which has wielded such power over some of the strongest intellects were utterly baseless; and Dr. Hutchison Stirling has well shown that when we get to the kernel of Anselm’s thought, as he himself explains it, it has by no means the irrational character which might at first sight appear to belong to it. [185] Anselm’s form of the argument, however, it must now be observed, is neither the final nor the perfect one. Kant himself has given the impulse to a new development of it, which shows more clearly than ever that it is not baseless, but is really the deepest and most comprehensive of all arguments—the argument implied in both of the two preceding. The kernel of the ontological argument, as we find it put, for example, by Prof. Green, is the assertion that thought is the necessary prius of all else that is—even of all possible or conceivable existence. This assertion is not arrived at in any a priori way, but by the strict and sober analysis of what is involved in such knowledge of existence as we have. If we analyse the act of knowledge, we find that in every form of it there are implied certain necessary and universal conditions, which, from the nature of the case, must be conditions of experience also, otherwise it could never be experience for us at all. Thus, any world we are capable of knowing with our present faculties must be a world in space and time,—a world subject to conditions of number and quantity,—a world apprehended in relations of substance and accident, cause and effect, etc. A world of any other kind—supposing it to exist—would be in relation to our thought or knowledge unthinkable. These conditions of knowledge, moreover, are not arbitrary and contingent, but universal and necessary. They spring from reason itself, and express its essential and immutable nature. Thus we feel sure that there is no world in space or time to which the laws of mathematics do not apply; no world possible in which events do not follow each other according to the law of cause and effect; no world in which the fundamental laws of thought and reasoning are different from what they are in our own. Mr. J. S. Mill, indeed, thought there might be worlds in which two and two do not make four; or in which events succeed each other without any causal relation. But in this he will get few to agree with him. In like manner, there are moral principles which our reason recognises as universally and unconditionally valid. We cannot conceive of a world in which falsehood would really be a virtue, and truth-speaking a vice. We hold it, therefore, for certain that reason is the source of universal and necessary principles which spring from its essence, and which are the conditions of all possible knowledge. But this, its own essential nature, reason finds reflected back from the world around it. A world does exist, constituted through these very principles which we find within ourselves,—in space and time, through number and quantity, substance and quality, cause and effect, etc.,—and therefore knowable by us, and capable of becoming an object of our experience. We arrive, therefore, at this—that the world is constituted through a reason similar to our own; that, in Mr. Green’s words, “the understanding which presents an order of nature to us is in principle one with an understanding which constitutes that order itself.” [186] And that such a reason not only does, but must exist, I see not simply by inference from the existence of the world, which is the higher form of the cosmological argument, but by reflection on the necessary character of the principles of reason themselves. For whence these laws of thought—these universal and necessary conditions of all truth and knowledge—which I discover in myself; which my own reason neither makes nor can unmake; which I recognise to be in me and yet not of me; which I know must belong to every rational being in every part of the universe? They are necessary and eternal in their nature, yet they have not the ground of their existence in my individual mind. Can I conclude otherwise than that they have their seat and ground in an eternal and absolute Reason—the absolute Prius of all that is, at once of thought and of existence? It is but a further extension of the same argument when I proceed to show that thought is only possible in relation to an I, to a central principle of self-consciousness, which unifies and connects all thinking and experience. This argument, which has been called that of “Rational Realism,” is one which in varied forms has been accepted by the deepest thinkers, and finds widespread acknowledgment in literature. [187] It is not liable to the objection made to the Anselmic form, of involving an illicit inference from mere idea to real existence; but it has this in common with it, that the existence of an Eternal Reason is shown to be involved in the very thinking of this, or indeed of any thought. In the very act of thinking, thought affirms its own existence. But thought can perceive, not only its own existence, but the necessity of its existence—the necessity of its existence, even, as the prius of everything else. What is affirmed, therefore, is not simply my thought, but an Absolute Thought, and with this the existence of an Absolute Thinker; in the words of Dr. Harris, who has done much to give popular expression to this argument, of “an Absolute Reason energising in perfect wisdom and love” in the universe. [188] I cannot but maintain, therefore, that the onto- logical argument, in the kernel and essence of it, is a sound one, and that in it the existence of God is really seen to be the first, the most certain, and the most indisputable of all truths. We saw in connection with the cosmological argument that there was a direct fact of consciousness which turned the logical argument into a real one,—which translated, if I may so speak, the abstract proof into a living experience. It is worth our while to inquire, before leaving these theoretic proofs, whether there is anything of the same kind here; anything in actual religious consciousness which answers to that demonstration of a rational element in the world which is given in the two remaining arguments. I think there is. I refer to that very real perception which mankind have at all times manifested of a spiritual presence and power in nature, which is the effect of the total unanalysed impression which nature in its infinite variety and complexity, its wondrous grandeur, order, beauty, and fulness of life and power, makes upon the soul. The more carefully facts have been examined, the more narrowly the history of religions has been scrutinised, the clearer has it become that underlying all the particular ideas men have of their deities,—underlying their particular acts of worship to them,—there is always this sense of something mysterious, intangible, infinite—of an all-pervading supernatural Presence and Power,—which is not identified with any of the particular phenomena of nature, but is regarded rather as manifested through them. [189] It is this which Paul speaks of when he says that “the Eternal Power and Divinity” of God are manifested since the creation of the world in the things that are made. [190] It is Max Muller’s “perception of the infinite,” Schleiermacher’s “consciousness of the infinite in the finite,” the sensus numinis of the older writers, Wordsworth’s “sense of something far more deeply interfused”— “Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” [191] Such a sense or perception of the Divine is the common sub- stratum of all religions, and the theory of religion which fails to take account of it is hike the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But how is this sense of the Divine in nature—which is the stronghold of the theology of feeling—to be accounted for? It is certainly not the result of logical argument, and goes beyond anything that logical argument could yield. Yet it may easily be shown that rational elements are implicit in it, and that the rational elements involved are precisely those which the fore going arguments have sought explicitly to unfold. To understand the impression of the Divine which nature makes on man, we have to remember how much the mind of man has already to do with nature. We have to do here with nature, not primarily as an objectively existing system of laws and forces, but as it exists for man as an object of actual knowledge and experience. And how has it come to be this to him? Not without help from the thinking mind which collates and connects the separate impressions made on it through the senses, and gradually reads the riddle of the universe by the help of what it brings to it out of its own resources. We speak of the immaturity of the savage mind, but there is an intense mental activity in the simplest conception which the savage (or the child) can form of the existence of nature, or of a world around him. He sees changes, but he finds the interpretation of these changes in the idea of causality which he brings to it from his own mind. He groups attributes and forms objects, but he does this through the mental law of substance and accident. He perceives the operation of vast forces in nature, but whence does he get the idea of force? He gets it from the consciousness of power within himself, and through this puts meaning into the scene of change and movement which he finds around him. Is it wonderful, then, that man, who has put so much of himself into nature, even when constructing it as an object of thought, should again receive back the reflection of his own spiritual image from nature—receive it back on a grander, vastly enhanced scale, proportionate to the greatness and immensity of the universe on which he looks, and should be filled with awe and reverence in presence of this Other-Self, and Higher-than-Self, as that of a Reason, Power, and Will essentially akin to his own, though infinitely greater? Reason does not create this sense of the Divine; it can only follow in its train, and seek to lay bare and analyse—as is done in the theoretic proofs—the rational elements which it involves. III. The moral argument—contrast with theoretic proofs. III. There remains the moral argument, which deserves a place by itself, and which I must briefly consider before I close. The theoretic proofs, as Kant rightly said, can give us no knowledge of God as a moral Being—as a Being who sets before Him moral ends, and governs the world with reference to these ends. For this we are dependent on the Practical Reason, which shows us not what is, but what ought to be, and is the source of laws of moral conduct which we recognise as of binding force for every rational agent. The way in which Kant works out his argument from this point is one of the most interesting parts of his system. Nature in itself, he thinks, knows nothing of a highest end. This is given only in the Practical Reason, which sets before us ends of unconditioned worth, and requires us, if our view of the world is to be consistent, to regard these as supreme, i.e. to view the world as a moral system, in which natural ends are everywhere subordinated to moral. But such a moral teleology is only possible if there is one principle of the natural and of the moral order, and if nature is so arranged as to secure a final harmony of natural and moral conditions; in other words, if the world has a moral as well as an intelligent cause. God, therefore, is a postulate of the Practical Reason. [192] I quote, in further illustration of this argument, Professor Caird’s fuller statement of it, in his excellent exposition of the Critique of Judgment, in which he follows Kant. “The principle of moral determination in man,” he says, “carries with it the idea of a highest end, after which he should strive; in other words, the idea of a system in which all rational beings realise their happiness through their moral perfection, and in proportion to it. But such realisation of happiness through morality is no natural sequence of effect on cause; for there is nothing in the connection of physical causes that has any relation to such an end. We are forced, therefore, by the same moral necessity which makes us set before us such an end, to postulate outside of nature a cause that determines nature, so as finally to secure this result: and from this follows necessarily the idea of an all-wise, all-powerful, all-righteous, all-merciful God. We have a ‘pure moral need’ for the existence of such a Being; and our moral needs differ from physical needs in that they have an absolute claim to satisfaction. . . . Furthermore, we are to remember that the principle which leads us to postulate God is a practical principle, which does not give us, strictly speaking, a knowledge of God, but only of a special relation in which He stands to us and to nature: while, therefore, in order to find in God the principle which realises the highest good, we are obliged to represent Him as a rational Being, who is guided by the idea of an end, and who uses nature as means to it, we are to remember that this conception is based on an imperfect analogy. . . . ‘All that we can say is that, consistently with the nature of our intelligence, we cannot make intelligible to ourselves the possibility of such an adaptation of nature to the moral law and its object as is involved in the final end which the moral law commands us to aim at, except by assuming the existence of a Creator and Governor of the world, who is also its moral Legislator.’” [193] It is to this view of God as a postulate of the Practical Reason, and as satisfying a “pure moral need,” that the Ritschlian theology specially attaches itself; but-it must be remarked that such an origin of the idea of God, abstracted from direct experience of dependence on Him, would furnish no adequate explanation of the religious relation. We may, however, accept all that Kant says of God as a postulate of the moral consciousness, and yet carry the argument a good deal further than he does. God is not only a postulate of the moral nature in the sense that His existence is necessary to secure the final harmony of natural and moral conditions, but it may be held that His existence is implied in the very presence of a morally legislating and commanding Reason within us,—just as an eternal self-conscious Reason was seen to be implied in the universal and necessary principles of the theoretic consciousness. That moral law which appears in conscience—the “categorical imperative” of duty for which Kant himself has done so much to intensify our reverence —that ideal of unrealised goodness which hovers constantly above us, awakening in us a noble dissatisfaction with all past attainments,—these are not facts which explain themselves. Nor are they sufficiently explained as products of association and of social convention. Moral law is not comprehensible except as the expression of a will entitled to impose its commands upon us. The rules and ideals of conduct which conscience reveals to us, and which bind the will with such unconditional authority, point to a deeper source in an eternal moral Reason. The ethical ideal, if its absolute character is to be secured, points back to an eternal ground in the Absolute Being. It takes us back to the same conception of God as the ethically perfect Being, source and ground of moral truth fountain of moral law, which we found to be implied in Christianity. [194] And let me observe, finally, that here also we have more than logical argument—we have experience. The moral consciousness is one of the most powerful direct sources of man’s knowledge of God. In the earliest stages in which we know anything about man, a moral element blends with his thought. There grows up within him—he knows not how—a sense of right and wrong, of a law making its presence felt in his life, prescribing to him moral duties, and speaking to him with a “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” in his soul which he dare not disregard. His thoughts, meanwhile, accuse or else excuse each other. This law, moreover, presents itself to him as something more than a mere idea of his own mind. It is a real judging power in his soul, an arbiter invested with legislative, but also with judicial functions. It has accordingly from the first a sacred character. It is a power not himself making for righteousness within him. He instinctively connects it with the Power be worships, whose existence is borne in on him from other sources. As conscience develops, his deities come to be more invested with a moral character, and are feared, honoured, or propitiated accordingly. It is the moral consciousness particularly which safeguards the personality of God—the Divine tending to sink back into identity with nature in proportion as the ethical idea is obscured. The conclusion we reach from the various arguments and considerations advanced in this Lecture is, that the Christian view of a personal and holy God, as the Author of the universe, and its moral Legislator and Ruler, is the only one in which the reason and the heart of man can permanently rest. I do not say that reason could have reached the height of the Christian conception for itself; I do not even think it can hold to it unless it accepts the fact of Revelation and the other truths which Christianity associates with it. But I do say that, with this view as given, reason is able to bring to it abundant corroboration and verification. It is not one line of evidence only which establishes the theistic position, but the concurrent force of many,- starting from different and independent standpoints. And the voice of reason is confirmed by the soul’s direct experiences in religion . At the very least these considerations show—even if the force of demonstration is denied to them—that the Christian view of God is not unreasonable; that it is in accordance with the highest suggestions of reason applied to the facts of existence; that there is no bar in rational thought or in science to its full acceptance. And this is all that at present we need ask. _________________________________________________________________ [115] Jesus Nazarenus, p. 5. [116] See Note A.—Primitive Fetishism and Ghost-Worship. [117] See the whole passage in Froude’s Carlyle, ii. pp. 258–263. [118] Cf. his Recht. und Ver. ii. pp. 102–112. [119] Cf. on the Divine Wrath. Principal Simon. The Redemption of Men, ch. v.; Dale on The Atonement, Lecture VIII.; Lux Mundi, pp. 285 289. [120] Mark x. 18. [121] Matt. v. 48. [122] Matt. vi. 10. [123] Prof. Huxley, the inventor of the term, has given us his explanation of it. ”Agnosticism,” he says, “in fact, is not a creed but a method, tins essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. . . . Positively, the principle may be thus expressed: in matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And, negatively, in matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are ant demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the Agnostic faith, which, if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.”—“Agnosticism,” in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1889. This, however, us evidently not a “faith,” but, as he says, a “method,” which in its application may yield positive or negative results, as the ease may be. Behind it, at the same time, lies, in his ease, the conviction that real answers to the greater questions of religions are “not merely actually impossible, but theoretically inconceivable.”—Ibid. p. 182. [124] John i. 18. [125] Cf. First Principles, pp. 74, 75, 110. [126] First Principles, p. 88. [127] First Principles, pp. 87–92. “Still more manifest,” he says, “will this truth become when it is observed that our conception of the Relative itself disappears, if our conception of the Absolute is a pure negation. . . . What, then, becomes of the assertion that ‘the Absolute is conceived merely by a negation of conceivability,’ or as ‘the mere absence of the conditions under which consciousness is possible’? If the Non-relative or Absolute is present in thought only as a mere negation, then the relation between it and the Relative becomes unthinkable, because one of the terms of the relation is absent from consciousness. And if this relation is unthinkable, then is the Relative itself unthinkable, for want of its antithesis; whence results the disappearance of all thought whatever.”—P. 91. [128] First Principles, pp. 89, 91, 94–97. Cf. Nineteenth Century, July 1884, p. 24. [129] First Principles, pp. 78, 79, 81. This is qualified in other places by such phrases as “possible existence out of all relation” (Mansel), and “of which no necessary relation can be predicted,” pp. 39, 81. But this qualification seems unnecessary, for it is only as out of relation that by definition it is the Absolute. [130] Even in thus passage above quoted, we have the contradictio in adjecto of “the relation between it (i.e. the Non-Relative) and the Relative.”—P. 91. [131] Eccles. Instit. p. 839. [132] E.g. Eccles. Instit. p. 843. [133] First Principles, p. 189; cf. Eccles. Instit. p. 843. [134] First Principles, p. 99. [135] Eccles. Instit. p. 843.—“But one truth,” he says, “must grow ever clearer —the truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which he can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that he is ever in presence of one Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.” [136] “I held at the outset, and continue to hold, that this Inscrutable Existence which science, in the last resort, is compelled to recognise as unreached by its deepest analysis of matter, motion, thought, and feeling, stands towards our general conception of things in substantially the same relation as does this Creative Power asserted by Theology.”—Nineteenth Century, July 1884, p. 24. Mr. Spencer tells us that the words quoted in the last note were originally written—“one Infinite and Eternal Energy by which all things are treated and sustained.”—Ibid. p. 4. [137] Eccles. Instit. pp. 839, 841. [138] Mr. Spencer, when pressed in controversy by Mr. Harrison, takes great pains to show how positive his conception of the “Unknowable” is. He is astonished that his opponent should assert that “none of the positive attributes which have ever been predicated of God can be used of this Energy”; maintains that, instead of being an Everlasting No, Agnosticism is “an Everlasting Yea”. denies that Agnosticism is “anything more than silent with respect to personality,” seeing that “duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personality”; holds that the Unknowable is not an “All nothingness” but the “All- Being,” reiterates that this Reality “stands towards the universe and towards ourselves in the same relation as an anthropomorphic Creator was supposed to stand,” and “bears a like relation with it not only to human thought, but to human feeling,” etc.—Nineteenth Century, July 1884, pp. 5–7, 25. Mr. Harrison has no difficulty in showing in what contradictions Mr. Spencer entangles himself by the use of such language.—Ibid. Sept., pp. 358, 359. [139] Cosmic Philosophy, ii. p. 470: Idea. of God, Pref. p. 28. [140] Job xi. 7. [141] Rom. xi. 33. [142] 1 Cor. xiii. 12. [143] “God.” says Augustine. “is more truly thought than He is uttered and exists more truly than He is thought.”—De Trinitate. Book vii. ch. 4. “Not the definitely-known God, “ says Professor Veitch, “not the unknown God, is our last word, far less the unknowable God, but the ever-to-be-known God.”—Knowing and Being, p. 323. [144] Letter to Oldenburg, Epist. xxi. [145] First Principles, pp. 159–171. [146] Cf. Fiske, Idea of God, Pref. p. 15; and Chapman’s Pre-Organic Evolution, p. 254. [147] Lux Mundi, p. 59. J. S. Mill has said: “The reason, then, why Monotheism may be accepted as the representative of Theism in the abstract is not so much because it is the Theism of all the more improved portions of the human race, as because it is the only Theism which can claim for itself any footing on a scientific ground. Every other theory of the government of the universe by supernatural beings is inconsistent either with the carrying on of that government through a continual series of natural antecedents, according to fixed laws, or with the interdependence of each of these series upon all the rest, which are two of the most general results of science.”—Three Essays on Religion, p. 133. [148] See Note B.—Old Testament Monotheism. [149] Cf. Naville’s Modern Physics—“The Philosophy of the Founders of Modern Physics,” pp. 151–243 (Eng. trans.); Fairbairn’s Studies in the Phil. of Rel. and Hist—” Theism and Scientific Speculationi,” pp. 66–71; and an article by Dr. Alex. Mair, on “The Contribution of Christianity to Science,” in Presbyterian Review, Jan. 1888. [150] So Mr. Spencer speaks of “the naturally-revealed end towards which the Power manifested throughout Evolution works.”—Data of Ethics, p. 171. [151] Unseen Universe, 5th ed., p. 88. [152] First Principles, p. 123. [153] Cf. Chapman’s Pre-Organic Evolution, pp. 226, 227, 251, 282. [154] First Principles, p. 109 [155] Prof. Seth has justly said: “Nothing can be more certain than that all philosophical explanation must be explanation of the lower by the higher, and not vice versa; and if self consciousness is the highest fact we know, then we are justified in using the conception of self-consciousness as our best key to the ultimate nature of existence as a whole.”—Hegelianism and Personality, p. 89. [156] Data of Ethics, p. 171. [157] Data of Ethics, p. 257. [158] Cf. article by Professor Laidlaw on “Modern Thought in relation to Christianity and the Christian Church,” Presbyterian Review, 1885. p. 618. [159] Data of Ethics, pp. 253–257. [160] On this ambiguity in Hegel’s doctrine, see Prof. Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, Lect. V.; and the criticism in Dorner, Person of Christ, v. pp 147–162 (Eng. trans.). [161] See Lecture II. p. 59. The Neo-Hegelian theory, however, is far from satisfactory from the point of view of Theism in other respects. [162] Outlines of the Phil. of Religion, p. 69 (Eng. trans.). See the whole discussion (chap. iv.), and the fuller treatment in the Microcosmus, ii. pp. 659–688. Lotze’s closing words in the latter are: “Perfect Personality is in God only, to all finite minds there is allotted but a pale copy thereof: the finiteness of the finite is not a producing condition of this Personality, but a limit and a hindrance to its development.” Cf. Ritsclhl, Recht. und Ver. iii. pp. 220 ff. [163] Idea of God, p. 117. Cf. the instructive treatment of this subject of Personality in Professor Iverach’s Is God Knowable? pp. 7, 12–37, 223, 233. [164] Kritik d. r. Vernunft, p. 416 (Eng. trans. p. 363). [165] See an acute criticism of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge in Stahlin’s Kant, Lotze, und Ritschl, pp. 6–83 (Eng. trans.). [166] Philosophy and Theology, p. 45. On the theistic proofs generally, and Kant’s criticism of them, cf. Dr. J. Caird’s Philosophy of Religion, pp. 133–159; Prof. E. Caird’s Philosophy of Kant, ii. pp. 102–129; and Dr. Stirling’s work cited above. [167] Kritik, p. 431 (Eng. trans. p. 378). See Note C.—Kant on the Cosmological Argument. [168] Kritik, p. 102 (Eng. trans. p. 68). [169] Cf. Dr. Stirling, in Phil. and Theol. p. 126. [170] Dr. Stirling says, replying to Hume: “No multiplication of pacts will make a whole potent if each part is impotent. You will hardly reach a valid conclusion where your every step is invalid.It as-ill be vain to extract one necessity out of a whole infinitude of contingencies. Nor is it at all possible for such infinitude of contingencies to be even conceivable by reason. It each link of the chain hangs on another, the whole will hang, and only hang, even in eternity, unsupported, hike some stark serpent, unless you find a hook for it. Add weakness to weakness, in any quantity, you will never make strength.”—Phil. and Theol. p. 262. [171] Cf. Caird, Phil. of Religion, p. 135. [172] Der christ. Glaube, secs. 3 and 4. [173] See Note D.—Kant on the Teleological Argument. [174] Kritik, p. 436 (Eng. trans. 384). [175] No recent school has done more to elaborate the proof of teleology in Nature than that from which the opposite might have been expected—the pessimistic school. Cf. Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (Book ii. chap. 26, “On Teleology”), and Hartmann’s Phil. d. Unbewussten, dassim. [176] Thus, e.g., Strauss, Haeckel, Helmboltz, G. Romanes (“Physicus”). Helmboltz, as quoted by Strauss, says: “Darwin’s theory shows bony adaptation of structure in organisms can originate without any intermixture of intelligence, through the blind operation of a natural law.”—Der alte und der neue Glaube,p. 216. Mr. Romanes says: “If [plants and animals] were specially created, the evidence of supernatural design remains unrefuted and irrefutable, whereas if they were slowly evolved, that evidence has been utterly and for ever destroyed.”—Organic Evolution, p. 13. On the bearings of evolution on design, and on the design argument generally in its present relations to science see Janet’s Final Causes (Eng. trans.); Stirling’s Philosophy und Theology Kennedy’s Natural Theology and Modern Thought (1891); Row’s Christian Theism (1890); Martineau’s Study of Religion (i. pp. 270–333); Flint’s Theism; Mivart’s Lessons from Nature; Conder’s Basis of Faith; Murphy’s Habit und Intelligence; Ebrard’s Christian Apologetics, ii. pp. 1–56 (Eng. trans.); Argyll’s Reign of Law, etc. On Kant’s views on evolution and on final causes as connected therewith, cf. Caird’s Phil. of Kant, ii. 495–499. [177] See Note E.—Schools of Evolutionists. [178] Cf. Jevons, Principles of Science, ii. p. 462; J. S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion, p. 171. Mill concludes that “the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence,”—Pg. 174. [179] See passages in Note E. [180] Mr. Spencer shows that Natural Selection fails as an explanation in proportion as life grows complex. “As fast,” he says, “as the faculties are multiplied, so fast does it become possible for the several members of a species to have various kinds’ of superiority over one another. While one saves its life by higher speed, another does the like by clearer vision, another by keener scent, another by quicker bearing, another by greater strength, another by unusual power of enduring cold und hunger, another by special sagacity, another by special timidity, another by special courage, and others by other bodily and mental attributes. Now it is unquestionably true that, other things being equal, each of these attributes giving its possessor an extra chance of life, us likely to be transmitted to posterity. But there seems no reason to suppose that it will be increased in subsequent generations by natural selection. . . . If those members of the species which have but ordinary shares of it nevertheless survive by virtue of other superiorities which they severally possess, then it is not easy to see how this particular attribute can be developed by natural selection in subsequent generations,” etc.—Principles of Biology, sec. 166. Cf. Alfred W. Bennett in Martineau’s Study of Religion, i. 280–282. [181] Cf. Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, pp. 106, 107; The Chain of Life in Geol. Time, p. 229. “The progress of life,” he says, “in geological time has not been uniform or uninterrupted. . . . Evolutionists themselves, those at least who are willing to allow their theory to be at all modified by facts, now perceive this; and hence we have the doctrine advanced by Mivart, Le Conte, and others, of ‘critical periods,’ or periods of rapid evolution alternating with others of greater quiescence.”—Mod. Ideas, pp. 106, 107. See in both works the examples given of this ‘apparition of species.’ [182] Principal Shairp says: “To begin with the outward world, there is, I shall not say so much the mark of design on all outward things as an experience forced in upon the mind of the thoughtful naturalist that, penetrate unto nature wherever he may, thought has been there before him; that, to quote the words of one of the most distinguished, ‘there is really a plan, which may he read in the relations which you and I, and all his-lining beings scattered over the surface of our earth, hold to each other.’”—Studies ins Poetry and Philosophy, p. 367. Cf. also on this aspect of the subject, M’Cosh, Method of Divine Government, pp. 75–151; and on the argument from Beauty and Sublimity in Nature, Kennedy’s Natural Theology and Modern Thought, Lecture IV. (Donnellan Lectures). [183] Cf. Lecture IV. on Creation. It may be asked, besides, if it is so certain, as Kant assumes, that only a finite power is needed to create—I do not say a universe, but even an atom; whether there are not finite effects, such as creation, to which only Omnipotence is competent. The point is not that it is an atom, but that it is created. [184] Kritik, pp. 417–424 (Eng. trans. pp. 364–370). See Note F.—Kant on the Ontological Argument. [185] Phil. and Theol. pp. 182–193. [186] Prol. to Ethics, p. 23. [187] See Note G.—Rational Realism. [188] The Phil. Basis of theism, p.3; cf. pp. 82, 146, 560, etc. [189] This is true of the lowest as well as of the highest religions,—cf. Waitz on The religion of the Negroes, in Max Muller’s Hibbert Lectures, pp. 106, 107,—but is much more conspicuous in the oldest forms of natural religion, e.g. in the Vedic, Babylonian, and Egyptian religions. On the general facts, cf. Max Muller’s works, Revelle’s Hist. of Religions, Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures on The Religion of Ancient Egypt, Fairbairn’s Studies, Loring Brace’s The Unknown God, Pressense’s The Ancient World and Christianity (Eng. trans.), etc.; and see Note F. to Lecture V. [190] Rom. i. 20. [191] Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. [192] Cf. Kritik d. r. Vernunft, pp. 548–557, on “The Ideal of the Highest Good as a Determining Ground of the last end of Pure Reason” (Eng. trans. pp. 487–496); and the Kritik d. praktischen Vernunft, Part II. 5—“The Being of God as a Postulate of the Pure Practical Reason.” [193] Philosophy of Kant, ii. pp. 504, 505. [194] Cf. on the moral argument, Conder’s Basis of Faith, pp. 383–431; Martineau’s Study of Religion, ii. pp. 1–42; Kennedy’s Natural Theology and Modern Thought, Lecture VI., “Kant and the Moral Proof”; and M’Cosh’s Divine Government, Book i. chap. 3. _________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX TO LECTURE III. GOD AS RELIGIOUS POSTULATE. IF we are to speak of God as a postulate of the soul, we must speak of Him as a postulate for the whole need of the soul—for its religious and its rational, not less than for its moral need. We must speak of Him also in such a way as to show that this postulate is not an arbitrary one, but springs necessarily from the soul’s rational and moral constitution, and so as to explain the conviction of its truth by which it is accompanied. But this can only be done by showing that there are laws of man’s spiritual nature which imperatively demand such and such an object, and by making it clear what these are. In like manner I would lay it down as a first principle, as against all psychological and empirical theories of religion, which propose to account for men’s religious ideas and beliefs from natural causes (hopes and fears, animism, ghosts, etc.), without raising the question of how far they correspond with any outward reality, that no theory of religion can be adequate which does not cast light on the deepest ground of the soul’s movement towards God, and on the nature of the object which alone can adequately satisfy it. This again assumes that there are laws of the spiritual nature which determine beforehand what the character of the object must be which alone can satisfy the religious necessity, and which impel the soul unceasingly to a search after that object. This, however, is precisely what I consider the truth about religion to be,- as a survey of its manifestations in history reveals its nature to us. Religion is not an arbitrary product of the soul. Even in the lowest and poorest religions we see something struggling into consciousness,—a want, a desire, a need,—which is not measured by the extent of its actual knowledge of the Divine. Religion we might define from this point of view as the search of the soul for an adequate spiritual object to rest in, combined with the consciousness that there is such an object, and with the impulse to seek after it and when found, to surrender itself to it. Now what kind of object is it which the soul thus demands? This can only be determined by the study of its laws, as these spring from its essential nature, and are exhibited on the field of historical religion. And here, I think, we are warranted to say— 1. That the soul, as itself personal, demands for the satisfaction of its religious need, a personal object. From whatever source it derives its idea of the Divine (sense of dependence, outward impressions of nature, moral consciousness), it invariably personalises it. Over against its “I” it seeks a “Thou,” and will rest satisfied with nothing less. 2. That the soul, as thinking spirit, demands an infinite object. This is a proposition of some importance, and requires more careful consideration. We cannot err in seeking with Hegel the deepest ground of man’s capacity for religion in his possession of the power of thought. The power of thought is not the whole of religion, but it is that which gives man his capacity for religion. The lower animals are irrational, and they have no religion. Thought, in this connection, may be described as the universalising principle in human nature. It is that which heads us to negate the limits of the finite. It is that which impels man from fact to principle, from law to wider law, from the collection of facts and laws in the universe to the principle on which the whole depends. It is the element of boundlessness in imagination, of illimitableness in desire, of insatiableness in the appetite for knowledge. On the side of religion we see it constantly at work, modifying the idea of the object of religion, and bringing it more into harmony with what it is felt that an object of worship ought to be. One way in which this is done is by the choice of the grander objects of nature—the sky, sun, mountains, etc.—as the embodiments and manifestations of the Divine. Another way is by the mere multiplication of the objects of idolatry—the mind seeking in this way, as it were, to fill up the gap in its depths. Another way is physical magnitude—hugeness. “Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits and the breadth thereof six cubits; he set it up in the plain of Dura.” [195] This love of the colossal is seen in most oriental religions (e.g. Egyptian, Assyrian). Another way is by what Max Muller calls Henotheism—fixing on one special deity, and treating it for the time being as if it was alone and supreme. Another way is by creating a “system,” placing one deity at the head of the Pantheon, and making the rest subordinate. We have examples in the position held by Zeus and Jupiter in the Greek and Roman religions—a position described by Tiele as one of “Monarchism allied to Monotheism.” Another way is by tracing back the origin of the gods, as in Hesiod, to some uncreated principle; or by placing behind them a fate, necessity, or destiny, which is a higher power than they. Finally, in the philosophical schools, we have reasoned Theism, or Pantheism, or some cosmic theory in which the universe itself becomes God. Through all, the search of the soul for an infinite is clearly discernible. 3. That the soul, as itself ethical, demands an ethical object. It does this in all the higher forms of religion. It may be observed that, once the idea of an ethical God has been brought home to the mind, no lower conception of the Deity can be accepted. The agnostic himself—strongly as he protests against the knowableness of God—will yet be the first to maintain that it is impossible to entertain, even as hypothesis, any idea of God which represents Him as false, cruel, tyrannical, revengeful, unjust. He knows enough about God, at any rate, to be sure that He is not this. 4. I may add that the soul, as itself an intelligence, demands a knowable object. It has previously been shown that, for purposes of religion, an unknowable God is equivalent to no God at all. Religion seeks not only a knowledge of its object, but such a knowledge as can be made the basis of communion. Here, again, we are led by the very idea of religion, to the expectation of Revelation. The bearing of all this on the Christian view is very obvious, It gives us a test of the validity of the Christian view, and it explains to us why this view comes home to the spirit of man with the self-evidencing power that it does. It comes to the spirit as light—attests its truth by its agreement with the laws of the spirit. The worth of this attestation is not weakened by the fact that the Christian religion itself mostly creates the very capacity by which its truth can be perceived—creates the organ for its own verification. It makes larger demands upon the spirit, calls forth higher ideas than any other; but, in doing so, reveals at the same time the spirit to itself. Brought to the foregoing tests, it discovers to us a God personal, infinite, ethical, and knowable, because self-revealing, and in this way answers the demands of the religious spirit. _________________________________________________________________ [195] Dan. iii. 1. _________________________________________________________________ “By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear.”—Epistle to Hebrews. “Man is neither the master nor the slave of Nature; he is its interpreter and living word. Man consummates the universe, and gives a voice to the mute creation.”—Ed. Quinet. “He who believes in God must also believe in the continuance of man’s life after death. Without this there could be no world which would be conceivable as a purpose of God.”—Rothe. “I trust I have not wasted breath; I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death; “Not only cunning casts in clay: Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to me? I would not stay.” TENNYSON. “Does the soul survive the body? Is there God’s self, no or yes?” R. Browning. LECTURE IV. THE POSTULATE OF THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE WORLD IN REGARD TO NATURE AND MAN. Introductory The Christian doctrine of God as personal, ethical, and self-revealing, carries with it a second postulate as to the nature of man. The Christian doctrine of God and the Christian doctrine of man are in fact correlatives. For how should man know that there is a personal, ethical, self-revealing God,—how should he be able to frame the conception of such a Being, or to attach any meaning to the terms employed to express His existence,—unless he were himself rational and moral—a spiritual personality? The two views imply each other, and stand or fall together. We may express this second postulate of the Christian view in the words, Man made in the image of God. [196] This truth of a natural kinship between the human spirit and the Divine is at once the oldest declaration in the Bible about man, and is implied in every doctrine of the Christian system. It is implied, as already said, in the knowledge of God, and in the call to fellowship with Him in holiness and love. It is implied in the Christian view of sin; for sin in the Christian view derives its tragic significance from the fact that it is a revolt of the creature will against the Divine will, to which it is by nature bound, that it cuts the soul off from its true life and blessedness in union with God. It is implied in regeneration, and in the capacity of the soul to receive the Spirit of God. For the Spirit of God does not enter the soul as something foreign and extraneous to it. He enters it as the principle of its true life. What, on the one side, we call the operations of the Spirit, or the presence of the Spirit in the soul, we call, on the other, the new life itself. The Divine and human here are but one and the same thing on two different sides. It is implied also in the call of man to a Divine sonship. It is the case, no doubt,—and the fact is one to be carefully considered,—that in Christ’s teaching God is not called the Father of all men indiscriminately, nor is the title “son of God” given to all men indiscriminately. It is used only of those who are the subjects of spiritual renewal, and who bear in some measure the moral and spiritual likeness of the Father. [197] It does not denote a merely natural or physical relationships, but a moral bond as well. Deliberate and hardened transgressors are spoken of, not as children of Gods, but rather as children of the devil. [198] But this is only because these wicked persons have turned their backs on their own true destination. As made by God, and as standing in his normal relation to Him, man is without doubt a son. Hence, in the Gospel of Luke, though not by Christ Himself, Adam is called “the son of God,” [199] and Paul does not scruple to quote the saying of the heathen poet, “For we also are His offspring.” [200] The fact that the title “son of God” should belong to any, already implies a natural kinship between God and man, else the higher relationship would not be possible. If there were not already a God-related element in the human spirit, no subsequent act of grace could confer on man this spiritual dignity. [201] Not only in the Christian view in generals, but specially in the great central doctrine of the Incarnation, is this truth of man made in the image of God seen to be implied. I have already referred to certain services which the German speculative movement in the beginning of the century rendered to Christianity, in laying stress on the essential kinship which exists between the human spirit and the Divine, a thought never since lost sight of in theology. So long as the world is conceived of in deistic separation from God, it is inevitable that the Divine and human should be regarded as two opposed essences, between which true union is impossible. Once this point of view is overcome, and it is seen that the bond between God and man is inner and essential—that there is a God-related element in the human spirit which makes man capable of receiving from the Divine, and of becoming its living image—a great step is taken towards removing objections to the Incarnation. A union between the Divine and human is seen to be possible, to the intimacy of which no limits can be set,—which, indeed, only reaches its perfection when it becomes personal. The Incarnation has not only this doctrine of man as its presupposition—it is, besides, the highest proof of its truth. Christ, in His own Persons, is the demonstration of the truth of the Bible doctrine about man. To get a knowledge of the true essence of anything, we do not look at its ruder and less perfect specimens, but at what it is at its best. Christ is the best of humanity. He is not only the Revelation of God to humanity, but the Revelation of humanity to itself. In Him we see in perfect form what man in the Divine idea of him is. We see how man is made in the image of Gods, and how humanity is constituted the perfect organ for the Revelation of the Divine. It is evident that in the Christian view the doctrine of man links itself very closely with the doctrine of nature—of creation. It is not merely that man is related to nature by his body, but he is in Scripture, as in science, the highest being in nature. He is, in some sense, the final cause of nature, the revelation of its purpose, the lord and ruler of nature. Nature exists with supreme reference to him; is governed with a view to his ends; suffers in his fall; and is destined to profit by his Redemption. [202] I propose to begin with the natural basis—the doctrine of creation. I. The natural basis—the doctrine of creation. I. The Bible affirms, and perhaps it is the only book that does so, that all things, visible and invisible, have originated from God by a free act of creation. [203] The Bible doctrine of creation is something more than the Mosaic cosmogony. For my present purpose it is indifferent how we interpret the first chapter of Genesis—whether as the result of direct Revelation, or as the expression of certain great religious truths in such forms as the natural knowledge of the age admitted of. I believe myself that the narrative gives evidence of its Divine original in its total difference of character from all heathen cosmogonies, but this is a view I need not press. [204] The main point is the absolute derivation of all things from God, and on this truth the Scripture as a whole gives no uncertain sound. Discussions have been raised as to the exact force of the Hebrew word (bara) used to express the idea of creation, [205] but even this is of subordinate importance in view of the fact, which none will dispute, that the uniform teaching of Scripture is that the universe had its origin, not from the fashioning of pre-existent matter, but directly from the will and word of the Almighty. [206] “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” [207] Not only is this doctrine of creation fundamental in Scripture, but it is of great practical significance. It might be thought, of what practical importance is it to us to know how the world originated? Is not this a question of purely speculative interest? But a moment’s reflection will convince us that it is not so. The vital thing in religion is the relation of dependence. To feel that we and our world, that our human life and all that we are and have, absolutely depend on God,—this is the primary attitude of religion. For if they do not thus depend,—if there is anything in the universe which exists out of and independently of God,—then what guarantee have we for the unfailing execution of His purposes, what ground have we for that assured trust in His Providence which Christ inculcates, what security have we that all things will work together for good? But to affirm that all things depend on God is just in another way to affirm the creation of all things by God. They would not depend on Him if He were not their Creator. They do depend on Him, because they are created by Him. The doctrine of creation, therefore, is not a mere speculation.—Only this conviction that it is “the Lord that made heaven and earth” [208] —that “of Him, amid through Him, and to Him, are all things” [209] —that He has created all things, and for His pleasure they are and were created, [210] —can give us the confidence we need in a holy and wise government of the universe, and in a final triumph of good over evil. If the doctrine of creation is the only one which meets the wants of our religious nature, it may new further be affirmed that it is a doctrine consonant with reason, and consistent with all true knowledge. It is opposed, first, to all forms of dualism; secondly, to a merely logical derivation of the universe; and thirdly, to the atheistic assertion of the self-subsistence and eternity of the universe. Let us glance briefly at these various oppositions. 1. Partly on metaphysical, partly on moral grounds, some have revived the old Platonic doctrine of an eternal matter, or ether independent principle, which exists alongside the Deity, and conditions and limits Him in His working. Thus Dr. Martineau holds that, in order to afford an objective field for the Divine operations, we must assume something to have been always there, a primitive datum, eternal as God Himself; [211] while the late J. S. Mill thought the difficulties of the universe could be best explained by supposing the Creator hampered by the insufficiency and intractableness of the materials He had to work with. [212] Karl Peters, a disciple of the pessimistic school already mentioned, sets up space as a second eternal principle beside God; [213] and others have held similar views. Philosophically, these theories are condemned by the fact that they set up two absolutes in the universe, which, if they really were absolutes, could never be brought into any relation to each other, much less be embraced in a single act of knowledge. Suppose this eternal matter to exist outside of God, how could it ever get to be known by God, or how could He ever act upon it, seeing that it has its being utterly apart from Him? Or, if it is not out of relation to His intelligence, by what middle term is this relation brought about? This, which applies to two absolutes, applies, of course, much more to a theory which starts from an infinity of independent atoms— that is, from an infinite of absolutes. But these theories are weighted with difficulties of another kind. An absolutely quality less matter, or u lē, such as Plato supposes, [214] is unthinkable and impossible. Plato himself is compelled to describe it as a mē on, or nothing. It is a mere abstraction. [215] Is Dr. Martineau’s eternal matter, which has no properties of any kind till the Creator bestows them upon it, in any better case? When, again, Mr. Mill identifies this eternal element, not with naked matter, but with the matter and force which we know— with constituted matter, clothed with all its existing properties and laws—are we not in the new predicament of having to account for this matter? How came it there? Whence this definite constitution? Whence these powers and properties and laws which, in their marvellous adjustments and inter- relations, show as much evidence of design as any other parts of the universe? To suppose that “the given properties of matter and force, working together and fitting into one another” [216] —which is Mr. Mill’s own phrase—need no explanation, but only the uses subsequently made of them, is to manifest a strange blindness to the fundamental conditions of the problem. 2.If the Scripture view of creation is opposed to dualism in all its forms, it is not less opposed to every theory of a mere logical derivation of the universe—whether, with Spinoza, the universe is supposed to flow, with logical necessity, from an absolute substance; [217] or with Hegel, to be the development of an impersonal Reason; or with Green, to arise from a Reason that is self-conscious. It is this doctrine of a necessary derivation of the universe which takes the place in modern times of the old theories of emanation; but I shall only make two remarks on it. (1)It involves an amazing assumption. The assumption is that this universe, which exhibits so much evidence of wise arrangement, and of the free selection of means to attain ends, is the only universe possible, and could not, by any supposition, be other than it is. Such a theory may be the only one open to those who hold the ground of the universe to be impersonal; but it is not one which a true Theism can sanction, and it is unprovable. Why should infinite wisdom not choose its ends, and also freely choose the means by which they are to be accomplished? Which is the higher view—that which regards the Divine Being as bound down to a single system—one, too, which wisdom, love, and freedom have no share in producing, but which flows from the nature of its cause with the same necessity with which the properties of a triangle flow from the triangle; or that which supposes the universe to have originated in a free, intelligent act, based on the counsels of an infinite wisdom and goodness? [218] (2) As in this theory no place is left f or freedom in God, so logically it leaves no place for freedom in man. Freedom implies initiative, control, a choice between possible alternatives. But, on this theory we are considering, freedom can never be more than a semblance. Whether the individual recognises it or not, all that he sees around him, and all that takes place within him, is but the working out of an immanent logical necessity. [219] Things are what they are by a necessity as stringent as that which obtains in mathematics, and as little room is left for human initiative as on the most thorough-going mechanical or materialistic hypothesis. History, too, shows that the step from the one kind of determinism to the other is never difficult to take. The consciousness of (pg. 126–127 missing) freedom, however, is a fact too deeply rooted in our personality; too many interests depond on it to admit of its being this put aside at the bidding of any theory, metaphysical or other; and so long as human freedom stands, this view of the origin of the universe can never gain general acceptance. 3. In the third place, the doctrine of creation is opposed to the atheistic assertion of the self-subsistence and eternity of the universe. I may here point out the indications which science itself gives that the universe is neither self-subsistent nor eternal. Science, indeed, cannot prove the creation of the world, but it may bring us to that point at which we are compelled to assume creation. (1) In the analysis of nature, science compels us to go back to primordial elements. The atomic constitution of matter seems one of the surest results of science, [220] and it is not yet suggested that these primordial elements are developed from one another by any process of evolution, or that their homogeneous structure and identical properties are to be accounted for by natural selection or any similar cause. Here, then, is one limit to evolution, and it is important that those who are disposed to regard evolution as all-embracing should take notice of it. But science not only tells us that the universe is built up of atoms, it finds that each of these atoms is a little world in itself in intricacy and complexity of structure; [221] and the fact that all atoms of the same class are exactly alike, perfect copies of each other in size, shape, weight, and proportion, irresistibly suggests the inference that they have a common cause. “When we see a real number of things,” says Sir John Herschel, “precisely alike, we do not believe this similarity to have originated except from a common principle independent of them.” Applying this to the atoms, he observes, “the discoveries alluded to effectually destroy the idea of an eternally self-existent matter, by giving to each of its atoms the essential characters at once of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent.” [222] This reasoning, I think, will command general assent, though fastidiousness may be offended with the phrase “manufactured article” as applied to a work of Deity. (2) Science compels us to go back to a beginning in time. No doctrine comes here more powerfully to our support than the doctrine of evolution which some suppose to be a denial of creation. If the universe were a stable system,—i.e. if it were not in a condition of constant development and change,—it might with some plausibility be argued that it had existed from eternity. But our knowledge of the past history of the world shows us that this is not its character; that, on the contrary, it is progressive and developing. [223] Now it lies in the very thought of a developing universe that, as we trace it back through narrower and narrower circles of development, we come at last to a beginning,—to some point from which the evolution started. [224] The alternative to this is an eternal succession of cycles of existence, a theory which has often recurred, but which brings us back to the impossible conception of a chain without a first link, of a series every term of which depends on a preceding, while yet the whole series depends on nothing. [225] Science can give no proof of an eternal succession, but so far as it has any voice on the subject points in an opposite direction, by showing that when the universe has parted with its energy, as it is in constant process of doing, it has no means of restoring it again. [226] (3) Finally, it is the view of many distinguished evolutionists, that the course of evolution itself compels us to recognise the existence of breaks in the chain of development, where, as they think, some new and creative cause must have come into operation. I may instance Mr. Wallace, a thoroughgoing evolutionist, who recognises three such “stages in the development of the organic world, when some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action,” viz. (a) at the introduction of life, (b) at the introduction of sensation or consciousness, (c) at the introduction of man. [227] With the view I hold of development as a process, determined from within, I do not feel the same need for emphasising these as “breaks.” We have, indeed, at the points named, the appearance of something entirely new, but so have we, in a lesser degree, with every advance or improvement in the organism, e.g., with the first rudiment of an eye, or of a new organ of any kind. The action of the creative cause is spread along the whole line of the advance, revealing itself in higher and higher potencies as the development proceeds. It only breaks out more manifestly at the points named, where it founds a new order or kingdom of existence. [228] While thus advocating, as part of the doctrine of creation, a beginning of the world in time, I am not insensible to the enormous difficulties involved in that conception. Prior to that beginning we have still, it may appear, to postulate a beginningless eternity, during which God existed alone. The Divine purpose to create was there, but it had not passed into act. Here arises the difficulty. How are we to fill up in thought these blank eternal ages in the Divine life? The doctrine of the Trinity, with its suggestion of an internal Divine life and love, comes in as an aid, [229] but, abstracting from the thought of the world, of the universe afterwards to be created, we know of nothing to serve as a content of the Divine mind, unless it be the so-called “eternal truths.” So that here we are in, presence of a great deep. A yet greater difficulty arises when we ask, Since God purposed to create, why was creation so long delayed? Why was a whole eternity allowed to elapse before the purpose was put into execution? [230] If it was a satisfaction to love and wisdom to produce a universe, why was creation not as eternal as the purpose of it? Why an eternity’s quiescence, and then this transient act? Or rather, since in eternity no one moment is indistinguishable from another, why this particular moment chosen for creation? The very mentioning of these difficulties suggests that somehow we are on a wrong track, and that the solution lies—since solution there must be, whether we can reach it or not—in the revisal of the notions we set out with as to the relations of eternity to time. First, some have sought to cut this knot by the doctrine of an Eternal Creation. God, it is thought, did not wait through a solitary eternity before He called the world into existence—the act of creation is coeval with His Being, and the world, though a creature and dependent, is eternal as Himself. This was the doctrine of Origen in the early Church, of Erigena in the Middle Ages, and has been revived by Rothe, Darner, Lotze, and many others in modern times. It is carefully to be distinguished from the doctrine of a pre-existent eternal matter formerly referred to. But I do not think it solves the difficulty. It is either only the doctrine of an eternal series of worlds in another form,. and is exposed to all the difficulties of that assumption; or it seeks to evade these difficulties by the hypothesis of an undeveloping spiritual world, standing, as Dorner says, in the light of eternity, antecedent to the existing one—an hypothesis which leaves the origin of the temporal and developing world precisely where it was. Besides, how is the purpose of God ever to be summed up into a unity, if there is literally no beginning and no goal in creation? [231] Secondly, another form of solution is that of the speculative philosophers, who would have us regard the distinction of time and eternity as due only to our finite standpoint, and who bid us raise ourselves to that higher point of view from which all things are beheld, in Spinoza’s phrase, sub specie aeternitatis. [232] The meaning of this is, that what exists for our consciousness as a time-development exists for the Divine consciousness as an eternally complete whole. For God, temporal succession has no existence. The universe, with all its determinations, past, present, and future, stands before the Divine mind in simultaneous reality. Language of this kind is found in Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel, Green, [233] and is to be met with sometimes in more orthodox theologians. It is, however, difficult to see what meaning can be attached to it which does not reduce all history to an illusion. [234] For, after all, time-development is a reality. There is succession in our conscious life, and in the events of nature. The things that happened yesterday are not the things that are happening to-day. The things that are happening today are not the things that will happen to-morrow. The past is past; the future is not yet come. It is plain that if time is a reality, the future is not yet present to God, except ideally. The events that will happen to-morrow are not yet existent. Else life is a dream; all, as the Indian philosophers say, is Maya,—illusion, appearance, seeming. Even if life is a dream, there is succession in the thoughts of that dream, and time is still not got rid of. I cannot see, therefore, that without reducing the process of the world to unreality, this view of it as an eternally completed fact can be upheld. In an ideal sense the world may be, doubtless is, present to the Divine mind; but as regards the parts of it yet future, it cannot be so actually. [235] What other solution, then, is possible? The solution must lie in getting a proper idea of the relation of eternity to time, and this, so far as I can see, has not yet been satisfactorily accomplished. The nearest analogy I can suggest is that of the spiritual thinking principle within ourselves, which remains a constant factor in all the flux of our thoughts and feelings. It is in the midst of them, yet it is out of the flux and above them. It is not involved in the succession of time, for it is the principle which itself relates things in the succession of time-for which, therefore, such succession exists. I would only venture to remark, further, that even if the universe were conceived of as originating in an eternal act, it would still, to a mind capable of tracing it back through the various stages of its development, present the aspect of a temporal beginning. Before this beginning, it would be possible for the mind to extend its vision indefinitely backwards through imaginary ages, which yet had no existence save as its own ideal construction. But God’s eternity is not to be identified with this thought of an indefinitely extended time. Eternity we may rather take to be an expression for the timeless necessity of God’s existence; and time, properly speaking, begins its course only with the world. [236] A few words before leaving this part of the subject on the motive and end of creation. If we reject the idea of metaphysical necessity, and think of creation as originating in a free, intelligent act, it must, like every similar act, be conceived of as proceeding from a motive, which includes in it at the -same time a rational end. And if God is free, personal Spirit, who is at the same time ethical Will, what motive is possible but goodness or love, or what end can be thought of but an ethical one? In this way it may be held that, though the universe is not the product of a logical or metaphysical necessity, it arises from the nature of God by a moral necessity which is one with the highest freedom, and thus the conception of creation may be secured from arbitrariness. It is an old thought that the motive to the creation of the world was the goodness of the Creator. Plato expresses this idea in his Timaeus, [237] and points to a yet more comprehensive view when, in the Republic, he names “the Good” as the highest principle both of knowledge and of existence. [238] Since the time of Kant, philosophy has dealt m very earnest fashion with this idea of “the Good”—now conceived of as ethical good, but likewise as including in it the highest happiness and blessedness—as at once the moving cause and end of the world. Start from the postulate of Kant, that moral ends are alone of absolute worth, and the inference is irresistible that the world as a whole is constituted for moral ends, and that it has its cause in a Supreme Original Good, which produces the natural for the sake of the moral, and is guiding the universe to a moral goal. [239] Hence, from his principles, Kant arrives at the notion of an ethical community or “Kingdom of God,” having the laws of virtue as its basis and aim, as the end to which creation tends. [240] Lotze takes up the same thought of a world ordered in conformity with the idea of “the Good,” and having its source in a Highest-Good Personal, and from him chiefly it has entered into Ritschlian theology. [241] But Christian theology from its own standpoint arrives at a similar result. We have but to ask, with Dorner, What is the relation of the ethical nature of God to the other distinctions we ascribe to Him? to see that “the non-ethical distinctions in and the nature of God are related to the ethical as means to an end; but the absolute end can only lie in morality, for it alone is of absolute worth.” [242] In the graduated system of ends of which the universe consists, the moral, in other words, must be presumed to be the highest. And this is precisely what Christianity declares when it teaches that Christ and the kingdom of God are the consummation of God’s world-purpose; that the government of the world is carried on for moral ends; and that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” [243] II. The nature of man, and his place in creation: man the final cause of the world. II. From the point now reached, the transition is easy to the Scripture doctrine of the nature of man, and of his position in creation. I may begin here with man’s place in creation, which of itself is a testimony which nature bears to the meaning and purpose of God in that creation. Assuming that final cause is to be traced in the world at all, we can get no better clue to it than by simply observing whither the process of development tends—what, as Mr. Spencer says, is “the naturally revealed end” towards which evolution works. [244] Here is a process of development, of evolution, going on for millenniums—what, as a matter of fact, do we find to be the outcome of it? At the base of the scale is inorganic matter; then we rise to organic life in the vegetable world; as a next round in the ladder of ascent we have animal and sentient life; we rise through all the gradations of that life—through insect, fish, reptile, bird, mammal—till at length, at the close of the long line of evolution, we find—What? Man, a self-conscious, personal, rational moral being; a being capable of entering not only into moral relations with his fellow-men, but, infinitely higher, into spiritual and moral relations with his invisible Creator. Man’s creation, it is true, is only the starting-point of a new line of evolution, but that evolution is one of moral life. So far as the teaching of evolution goes, then, man is the crown and masterpiece of this whole edifice of creation, and this also is the teaching of the Bible. I have been frequently struck with this in reading the works of Mr. Spencer and of other evolutionists, that none of them supposes that evolution is ever to reach a higher being than man; that whatever future development there is to be will not be development beyond humanity, but development within humanity. In this it is implied that man is the end of nature, and that the end of nature is a moral one. In man, if we may so speak, mute and unintelligent nature attains to consciousness of itself, gains the power of reading back meaning into its own blind past, and has a prophecy of the goal to which its future tends. At the summit of nature’s gradations—of her inorganic kingdom and plant kingdom and animal kingdom-there stands a being fitted for the kingdom of God. The agreement of Scripture and science up to this point is patent and incontestable. In the original picture in Genesis we have, as in nature, a gradually ascending series of creations. We have man at the top of the scale; man as the latest being of all, and distinguished from all by the fact that he alone bears his Creator’s image; man set at the head of the lower orders of creatures, as God’s rational vicegerent and representative. Science corroborates all this. It gives to man the same place in the ascending series of creations as Scripture gives him; declares him to be the last and final product of nature; links him intimately with the past through his physical organisation, in which the whole of nature, as physiology shows, recapitulates itself; and at the same time acknowledges that he stands alone, and far removed from the other creatures, in his powers of thought and language, in his capacity for a selfregulated moral life under general rules, in his religious nature, in his capability of progress, and of boundless productivity in arts, sciences, laws, and institutions. Nay, looking at creation as a whole, from the vantage-ground which our present know ledge gives us, we can feel that its plan would have remained incomplete, its pyramid would have lacked a summit, had man not appeared upon the scene. For man not only stands at the head of creation, but, in virtue of his rational nature, he occupies a position in relation to it different from every other. The animal, however high in the scale of development, is a mere creature of nature; man has a life above nature. He is a being of “large discourse, looking before and after.” [245] He is capable of reflection on himself; on the meaning and causes of things in the world around him; on the ends of his own existence. He can rise above momentary impulse and passion, and guide his life by general principles of reason, and so is capable of morality. For the same reason he is capable of religion, and shows his superiority over nature through the thoughts he cherishes of God, of infinity, of eternity. Till a mind of this kind appeared, capable of surveying the scene of its existence, of understanding the wisdom and beauty displayed in its formations, and of utilising for rational purposes the vast resources laid up in its treasuries, the very existence of such a world as this is remained an inexplicable riddle: an adequate final cause—an end-for-self—was not to be found in it. [246] It would indeed be an exaggeration to view creation solely from the standpoint here taken. The position that man is the final cause of creation must obviously be held with certain qualifications. Were we to attempt to maintain that the world exists solely for man’s use and benefit, we would be met by unanswerable objections. Because man is the supreme end of nature, it does not follow that there are not lower ends—the happiness of the sentient creatures, e.g., and many others that we do not know. This world, again, is part of a wider system, and there may be not only lower ends, but wider ends, than those prescribed by man’s existence. There is a delight which creative wisdom has in its own productions, which is an end in itself. God saw the works that He had made, and behold they were good; though not till man appeared upon the scene were they declared “very good.” [247] But this in no degree militates against the position that the main use and end of nature is to subserve the purposes of man’s existence. Is not this to a thinking mind implied in its very dispositions and arrangements, in its distribution of land and sea, in its river plains and ocean communication, in its supplies of mineral and other wealth stored up in its recesses, in the forces it puts at man’s disposal for the accomplishment of his purposes, in the very obstacles it interposes in the way of his advancement, stimulating his mental activity, summoning forth his powers to contend with difficulties, and in this way rousing him up to further conquests? There are yet higher teleological relations which nature sustains to man, on which I cannot now dwell—the part, e.g., which natural conditions play, as in Greece, in the development of the character and spirit of peoples; the food which the study of nature affords to his intellect; the beauty which delights, and the sublimity which awes him, both speaking to his spirit of things higher than them-selves; the suggestions it gives of the infinite and eternal, etc. Taking it all in all, we may rest in the view that man, as nature’s highest being, is the key to the understanding of the whole development; that nature does not exist for its own sake, but supremely for the sake of the moral; that its chief end is to furnish the means for such a development as we now see in the mental and moral history of mankind. [248] As a compound being, made up of body and of spirit, man is the link which unites the natural and the spiritual worlds. [249] The direct link between man and nature is the body, which in its erect posture, its highly evolved brain, its developed limbs, and its countenance lifted up to the heavens, bears witness, as already Ovid reminds us, [250] to the dignity of the soul within. As Materialism ignores the rights of the spirit, and would reduce thought, feeling, and will, to functions of matter; so an ultra-spirituality is too apt to ignore the rights of the body, and to regard it as a mere accident of man’s personality. Materialism quite rightly protests against this one-sidedness; and the whole tendency of modern inquiry is to draw the two sides of man’s nature—the material and the spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical, the physiological and the mental—more closely together. The Bible avoids both extremes. Materialism gets all its rights in the Bible doctrine of the body. The abstract spirituality of a Plotinus, or of a hyper-refined idealism, which regards the body as a mere envelope of the soul, dropped off at death without affecting its entirety, is quite foreign to it. I do not dwell on this now, as I shall have occasion to refer to it in the following Lectures. Enough to remark that the Bible history of man’s creation; the remarkable honour its places on the body as God’s workman ship and the temple of the Holy Ghost; its doctrines of sin, with death as the penalty; of the Incarnation—“forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same”; [251] of Redemption, which includes “the Redemption of the body”; [252] of the future life in a glorified corporeity—all warn us against an undue depreciation of the body. I go on to remark that if the Bible gives its rightful place to the body, much more does it lay stress on the possession by man of a spirit, which is the true seat of his personality, and the link which unites him with the spiritual world, and with God. Psychological questions would be here out of place, and I can only enter into a very brief examination of the Biblical terms used to express the different aspects of man’s spiritual nature, relegating the further discussion of these to their proper sphere in Biblical theology or psychology. [253] I would first remark that the Biblical usage of psychological terms can only be understood if we keep strictly to the Biblical point of view. In the Old Testament, it is the unity of the personality which is the main fact, and not the distinction of an immaterial and a material part, as in our modern usage. Nephesh or soul does not, in the Old Testament, stand opposed to body, but is rather the principle of “life,” which manifests itself on the one hand in the corporeal functions (“the life is in the blood” [254] , and on the other in the conscious activities of the mind. The real contrast in the Old Testament is between “flesh” (basar) and “spirit” (ruach), and the “soul” is the middle term between them, the unity of them. [255] This does not mean that “soul” and “spirit” are separable elements in the same way that “soul” and “body” are, but it means that the “soul,” as inbreathed by God, is the source or seat of a double life. On the one side, it is the animating principle of the body; the source of all vital functions. It is its presence in the body which constitutes the latter “flesh.” On the other side, it is the principle of self-conscious life. Various names are employed to denote the kinds of these self-conscious activities; but they may be grouped generally under the name “spirit.” More explicitly, all the activities of the “spirit” belong to the “soul”; but the converse is not true, that all the activities of the “soul” belong to the “spirit.” For the vital functions of the body, with the appetites, desires, impulses, etc., which belong to this side of our nature, likewise are traceable to it as their source. It is only the higher activities of the “soul”—those which we still denominate “spiritual”—I speak of general usage, for probably there is no distinction we can make which has not some exception—which are described by the term “spirit.” Thus we read of a spirit of wisdom, of knowledge, of understanding, of an upright spirit, a free spirit, a contrite spirit, etc. [256] That the “soul,” essentially considered, is also spiritual, is implied in its origin from the Divine Spirit. In the New Testament we have a distinction of “soul” and “body” much more akin to our own, though the influence of Old Testament usage is still very marked. “Soul” (psuchē) still includes a higher and a lower life; and the higher life is still denoted by the term “spirit” (pneuma); while the implication of a body is still always conveyed in the term “soul.” There is no “soul” which is not intended to animate a “body”; there are incorporeal spirits (angels, demons), but they are not called by the name “souls.” On the other hand, the “soul” is recognised as spiritual in its essence, and in its disembodied state is classed among “spirits,” e.g. “the spirits in prison.” [257] I need not discuss the cognate terms heart (kardia), mind (nous), understanding (dianoia), etc., but content myself with saying that, except in the sense above explained, I do not see how a trichotomous view of man’s nature can be maintained. The distinction of “soul” and “spirit” is a distinction within the one indivisible spiritual nature; and the antithesis “soul” and “body” really covers all the facts of man’s personal life. The highest functions of the “spirit” arc in the New Testament ascribed also to the “soul”; [258] and the “soul” in turn is used by Jesus as a name f or man’s highest imperishable life. “He that hateth his life (psuchē) in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” [259] From this digression I return to the fact that it is in his “soul” or “spirit” that man peculiarly bears the Divine image. In a threefold respect is man the personal image of his Maker. 1. He bears first of all the rational image of God. We have a proof of this in the fact formerly referred to, that man can understand the world God has made. How is science possible, except on the assumption that the reason we find in ourselves is the same in kind as the reason which expresses itself in the universe? The argument is the same as if we were set to translate a book written in a foreign language. The first condition of success in that attempt—the postulate with which we set out—is similarity of intelligence between the man who wrote the book, and ourselves who seek to decipher its meaning. If his reason were of a totally different kind from ours, the attempt to understand him would be hopeless. Precisely the same condition applies to the possibility of our knowledge of the world. Reason in man and the reason expressed in nature must be the same in kind, or no relation between them could be established. Christian theology expresses this by saying that the world is created by the Logos, a term which means at once reason and word. 2. Man bears God’s moral image, not now in the possession of actual righteousness, but in the possession of the indestructible elements of a moral nature. (1) He is a being with the power of moral knowledge; reason, in other words, is the source to him, not only of principles of knowledge, but of laws of duty. The idea of the good, and with it the moral “ought” or ethical imperative, is part of his constitution. His moral ideal may vary with the degree of his development and culture; but, throughout, man is a being who distinguishes good and evil, and who recognises the obligation to obey the good and to eschew the evil. In this he proclaims himself a subject of moral law, and a being with a moral destiny. (2) He is a free, spiritual cause, i.e. he has moral freedom. I speak again not of man as at present he actually is, with his freedom sadly impaired through sin, but of man in the constitutive elements of his nature. And as a free, spiritual, self-determining cause, standing at the summit of nature, man is again in a very marked sense the image of his Maker. It is this power of will and self-decision in man which most of all constitutes him a person. Through it he stands out of and above nature’s sequences, and can react on and modify them. He is, as some have chosen to regard him, a supernatural cause in the order of nature. [260] It is surely of little use to deny the possibility of miracle, when every human volition is a species of miracle—a new, hyperphysical cause interpolated in the chain of physical events, and giving them a hew direction. (3) Man is a being with moral affections. Without these he would not be a true image of the God who is love. Summing up these points, we recognise in man a conscience which reveals moral law, a will which can execute moral purposes, and affections which create a capacity for moral love. This relates only to formal attributes; but it is now to be remarked that the bearing of God’s moral image in the full sense implies not only the possession of these attributes, but an actual resemblance to God in character, in holiness and love. In the primeval state—the status integritatis of the Biblical account [261] —this possession of the image of God by man can only be viewed as potentiality, though a pure potentiality, for the perfected image could not be gained except as the result of self-decision and a long process of development, if even then without the appearance of the second Adam from heaven. [262] It is Christ, not the first Adam who is the ideal here, the model after which we are to be renewed in the image of Him who created us. Only in Christ do we see what a humanity perfectly conformed to the Divine idea of it is. 3. Man bears the image of God in his deputed sovereignty over the creatures, a sovereignty which naturally belongs to him in virtue of the attributes just enumerated, and of his place at the head of creation already adverted to. To the reality of this sovereignty, all man’s conquests over material conditions, his achievements in art and civilisation, his employment of nature’s laws and forces for his own ends, his use of the lower creatures for service and food, etc., abundantly testify. [263] I might add one other mark of the possession of the Divine image by man, likewise involved in his self-conscious personality. I refer to what may be called the potential infinitude of his nature. It has often been remarked that man could not even know himself to be finite, if he were not able in thought to transcend the finite, and frame an idea of the Infinite. It is the strange thing about him, yet not strange once we realise what is implied in the possession of a thinking nature, that though finite, hedged round on every side by the limitations of the finite, he yet shows a constant impulse to transcend these limitations, and ally himself with the Infinite. Through this peculiarity of his nature, there is none of God’s infinite attributes which does not find a shadow in his soul How else could Carlyle, e.g., fill his pages with references to the eternities, the immensities, etc., in which man’s spirit finds its awful home? Is a being who can form the idea of eternity not already in affinity with the Eternal, in a sense His image? Man is not omnipresent, but is there not a shadow of God’s omnipresence in those thoughts of his that roam through space, and find a satisfaction in the contemplation of its boundlessness? He is not omniscient, but is not his desire for knowledge insatiable? The same spurning of bounds, the same illimitableness, is seen in all his desires, aims, ideals, hopes, and aspirations. This shows the folly of the contention that because man is finite, he is cut off from the knowledge of the Infinite. The objection seems to turn on the thought that there is a physical bigness in the idea of infinity which prevents the mind from holding it. It might as well be contended that because the mind is cooped up within the limits of a cranium only a few inches in diameter, it cannot take account of the space occupied, say by the solar system, or of the distance between the earth and the sun! In thus affirming the spiritual nature and dignity of man, and a sonship to God founded thereon, it was inevitable that the Christian view should meet with keen opposition from the modern anti-supernaturalistic tendency, which regards with extreme disfavour any attempt to lift man out of the ranks of nature, and the prevailing bias of which is strongly towards Materialism. In this spirit Professor Huxley has told us that “anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.” [264] The materialistic hypothesis has wide currency at the present day, though it is difficult to see how any sober mind, reflecting on the patent difference between mental and physical phenomena, could ever suppose that it was adequate, or could imagine that by its aid it had got rid of “spirit.” As involving the denial of the existence of a spiritual principle in man, distinct from the body, this hypothesis is manifestly in contradiction with the Biblical doctrine just explained, and on this account claims a brief consideration. The great fact on which every theory of Materialism strikes is, of course, the fact of consciousness. Life, unattended by sensation, presents a great enough difficulty to the theorist who would explain everything on mechanical principles, [265] but when consciousness enters the difficulty is insuperable. [266] It is, at the same time, no easy matter to bind down the advocates of the materialistic theory to a clear and consistent view. 1. There is the crass, thorough going Materialism which literally identifies brain with mind, and the movements of the brain with the thoughts and feelings of which we are aware in consciousness. Brain action, on this hypothesis, is thought and feeling. “The brain,” says Cabanis, “secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile.” This is the crude theory of writers like Moleschott, Vogt, and Buchner, but it is too manifestly absurd—it too palpably ignores the striking differences between mental and physiological facts—to be accepted by more cautious scientists without qualification. Brain movements are but changes of place and relation on the part of material atoms, and, however caused, are never more than motions; they have nothing of the nature of thought about them. “It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable,” says the distinguished German physiologist, Du Bois-Reymond, “that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent to their own positions or motions, past, present, or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should result from their joint action.” [267] There is, accordingly, general agreement among scientific thinkers that the physical changes and the mental phenomena which accompany them are two distinct sets of facts, which require to be carefully kept apart. “The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness,” says Professor Tyndall, “is unthinkable.” [268] “I know nothing, and never hope to know anything,” says Professor Huxley, “of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is [269] “The two things are on two utterly different platforms,” says Professor Clifford; “the physical facts go along by themselves, and the mental facts go along by themselves.” [270] So far as this goes, it is clearly in favour of spiritualism, and would seem in consistency to require the abandonment of Materialism. [271] 2. An escape, however, may seem to be afforded from this dilemma, by consenting to regard matter as itself but the phenomenal manifestation of some unknown power, as therefore not the ultimate reality, but only a form or appearance of it to our senses. This is the view held by Strauss, Lange, Haeckel, Spencer, and the scientific professors whose words I have just quoted. “I have always,” says Strauss, “tacitly regarded the so loudly proclaimed contrast between Materialism and Idealism (or by whatever terms one may designate the view opposed to the former) as a mere quarrel about words. They have a common foe in the dualism which has pervaded the view of the world (Weltansicht), through the whole Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a created and perishable universe.” [272] But whatever the change in the theoretic groundwork, this view in practice comes to very much the same thing as the other. It will not be disputed that it does so with Strauss and his German allies, whose Materialism is most pronounced. [273] But our English savants also, while disclaiming the name “materialists,” while maintaining in words the distinction between the two classes of facts (mental and physical), while careful to show that a strict interpretation of the data would land us rather in a subjective Idealism than in Materialism, [274] none the less proceed constantly upon the hypothesis that mental facts admit of being translated (as they call it) into terms of matter, and that thus only are they capable of being treated by science. [275] Thus, Professor Huxley speaks of our thoughts as “the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena,” [276] of consciousness as “a function of nervous matter, when that matter has attained a certain degree of organisation.” [277] This is carried out so far as to deny the existence of any freedom in volition, or indeed of any influence exercised by consciousness at all upon the train of physical events. One advantage of this materialistic-idealistic form of the theory is, that it enables the theorist to play fast and loose with language on matter and mind, and yet, when called to account, to preserve an appearance of consistency by putting as much or as little meaning into the term “matter” as he pleases. Professor Tyndall is eloquent on the “opprobrium” which we, in our ignorance, have heaped on matter, in which he prefers to discern “the promise and potency of every form of life.” [278] But lie has to admit that, before he can do this, he has to make a change in all ordinarily received notions of matter. “Two courses and two only are possible,” he says. “Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter.” [279] To which Dr. Martineau very justly replies, “Such extremely clever matter, matter that is up to everything, even to writing Hamlet, and finding out its own evolution, and substituting a moral plebiscite for a Divine government of the world, may fairly be regarded as a little too modest in its disclaimer of the attributes of mind.” [280] My chief objection to Dr. Tyndall, however, is that practically he does not change his notion of matter, but, ignoring his own admission of the “chasm intellectually impassable” [281] between the two classes of phenomena, persists in treating mind as if it were capable of being adequately represented by molecular changes of matter, in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Instead, however, of supporting the view that molecular changes and mental functions are convertible terms, science, with its doctrine of the “conservation of energy,” has furnished, as we shall now see, a demonstration of the opposite. There are three points at which, in the light of modern science and philosophy, the argument for Materialism is seen utterly to break down. 1. The first is that which I have just alluded to, the impossibility of accounting for the phenomena of consciousness in consistency with the scientific doctrine of the “conservation of energy.” As already remarked, none but the very crassest materialists will maintain that the molecular changes in the brain are themselves the thoughts and feelings which we are aware of in consciousness. What the physicist will say is, that these changes are attended by certain conscious phenomena as their concomitants. You have the motions, and you have the conscious fact—the thought or feeling—alongside of it. This is the way in which the matter is put by writers like Huxley and Tyndall, who frankly confess, as we have seen, the unbridgeable gulf between the two classes of phenomena. But, once this is admitted, the assertion that mental phenomena are products of cerebral changes is seen to come into collision with the scientific law of conservation. If mental phenomena are produced by material causes, it can only be at the expense of some measure of energy. This, indeed, is what is affirmed. Physical energy, it is supposed, is transformed into vital energy, this again into thought and feeling. But this, it can be shown to demonstration, is precisely what does not take place. Every scientific man admits that energy in all its active forms is simply some kind of motion; and that what is called “transformation of energy” (heat into light or electricity, etc.) is merely change from one kind of motion into another. What, then, becomes of the energy which is used when some change takes place in the matter of the brain, accompanied by a fact of sensation? It is all accounted for in the physical changes. No scientific man will hold that any part of it disappears, passes over into an “unseen universe.” With keen enough senses you could track that energy through every one of its changes, and see its results in some physical effect produced. The circuit is closed within the physical. Motions have produced motions, nothing more, and every particle of energy present at the beginning is accounted for in the physical state of the brain at the end. There has been no withdrawal of any portion of it, even temporarily, to account for the conscious phenomenon. [282] This is a new outside fact, lying beyond the circle of the physical changes, a surplusage in the effect, which there is nothing in the expenditure of energy to explain. It is a fact of a new order, quite distinct from physical motions, and apprehended through a distinct faculty, self-consciousness. But, apart from the nature of the fact, there is, as I say, no energy available to account for it. What energy there is, is used up in the brain’s own motions and changes, and none is left to be carried over for the production of this new conscious phenomenon. If this is true of the simplest fact of consciousness, that of sensation, much more is it true of the higher and complex activities of self-conscious life. [283] 2. The second point on which Materialism breaks down is the impossibility of establishing any relation between the two sets of phenomena in respect of the laws of their succession. The mental facts and the physical facts, we are told, go along together. But it is not held that there is no relation between them. And the relation is, according to Professor Huxley, that the mental order is wholly determined by the physical order; while, conversely, consciousness is not allowed to exercise the slightest influence on the physical series. Consciousness he thinks, in men as in brutes, to be “related to the mechanism of the body simply as a collateral product of its working, and to be as completely without any power of modifying that working as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery.” [284] The physical changes, in other words, would go on precisely as they do, in obedience to their own laws, were there no such thing as consciousness in existence; and consciousness is simply a byeproduct or reflex of them without any counter-influence. Similarly, Mr. Spencer says, “Impossible as it is to get immediate proof that feeling and nervous action are the outer and inner faces of the same change, yet the hypothesis that they are so harmonises with all the observed facts”; [285] and again, “While the nature of that which is manifested under either form proves to be inscrutable, the order of its manifestations throughout all mental phenomena proves to be the same as the order of its manifestations throughout all material phenomena.” [286] The one point clear in these statements is that in the materialistic hypothesis the order of mental phenomena is identical with an order of physical phenomena, determined by purely mechanical conditions. [287] Is this according to fact, or is it not precisely the point where a materialistic explanation of mind must for ever break down? On the hypothesis, the one set of phenomena follow purely physical (mechanical, chemical, vital) laws; but the other set, or a large part of the other set (the mental), follow laws of rational or logical connection. Suppose a mind, for example, following out the train of reasoning in one of the propositions in Euclid—or, better still, think of this demonstration as it was first wrought out in the discoverer s own mind. What is the order of connection here? Is it not one in which every step is determined by the perception of its logical and rationally necessary connection with the step that went before? Turn now to the other series. The laws which operate in the molecular changes in the brain are purely physical—mechanical, chemical, vital. They are physical causes, operating to produce physical effects, without any reference to consciousness. What possible connection can there be between two orders so distinct, between an order determined solely by the physical laws, and the foregoing process of rational demonstration? The two orders are, on the face of them, distinct and separate; and not the least light is cast by the one on the other. To suppose that the physical laws are so adjusted as to turn out a product exactly parallel to the steps of a rational demonstration in consciousness, is an assumption of design so stupendous that it would cast all other proof of teleology into the shade. I am far, however, from admitting that, as the materialistic hypothesis supposes, every change in the brain is determined solely by mechanical, chemical, and vital laws. Granting that cerebral changes accompany thought, I believe, if we could see into the heart of the process, it would be found that the changes are determined quite as much by mental causes as by material. I do not believe, for example, that an act of will is wholly without influence on the material sequence. Our mental acts, indeed, neither add to nor take from the energy stored up in the brain, but they may have much to do with the direction and distribution of that energy. [288] 3. A third point on which the materialistic hypothesis breaks down is its irreconcilability with what is seen to be implied in self-consciousness, and with the fact of moral freedom. To constitute self-consciousness, it is not enough that there should be a stream or succession of separate impressions, feelings, or sensations; it is necessary that there should be a principle which apprehends these impressions, and relates them (as resembling, different, co-existent, successive, etc.) to one another and to itself, a principle which not only remains one and the same throughout the changes, but is conscious of its self-identity through them. It is not merely the mental changes that need to be explained, but the consciousness of a persistent self amidst these changes. And this ego or self in consciousness is no hyperphysical figment which admits of being explained away as subjective illusion. It is only through such a persistent, identical self, that knowledge or thought is possible to us; it is implied in the simplest analysis of an act of knowledge. Were we simply part of the stream, we could never know it [289] As another fact of our conscious life incompatible with subjection to mechanical conditions, I need only refer to the consciousness of moral freedom. In principle, Materialism is the denial of moral freedom, or of freedom of any kind, and with its triumph moral life would disappear. [290] These considerations are sufficient of themselves to refute Materialism, but the final refutation is that which is given by the general philosophical analysis of the relation of thought to existence, a subject on which I do not enter further than I have already done in the previous Lecture. Thought, as I tried to show there, is itself the prius of all things; and in attempting to explain thought out of matter, we are trying to account for it by that which itself requires thought for its explanation. Matter, which seems to some the simplest of all conceptions to work with, is really one of the most difficult; and the deeper its nature is probed, whether on the physical or on the metaphysical side, the more does it tend to disappear into something different from itself; the more, at any rate, is it seen to need for its explanation facts that are spiritual. It was remarked above how, even in the hands of Professors Huxley and Tyndall, matter tends to disappear in a subjective Idealism; the only escape from this is a rational theory of knowledge, which again explains the constitution of the world through rational categories. To explain thought out of matter is, from a philosophical point of view, the crowning instance of a hysteron proteron. [291] III. Man as made in the image of God constituted for immortality. III. From the distinction thus shown to exist between the spiritual and the material parts of man’s nature, there results the possibility of the soul surviving death, and the foundation is laid for the doctrine of Immortality. The consideration of the Biblical aspect of this subject will more properly be reserved for next Lecture, where I treat of the connection of sin and death. Here I will only ask how far nature and reason have a voice to utter on these two questions: Is man constituted for immortality? And is there a presumption that the soul will survive death? These questions, it ought to be observed, are not identical. The proposition that man, as a being made in God’s image, is naturally destined for immortality, is not immediately convertible with the other, that the soul will survive death; for it is no part of the Biblical view, as we shall see afterwards, that death is a natural condition of man. Now, however, that death has supervened, the question arises, Does the soul still survive? To this question also, as I hope to show, both Old and New Testaments give an affirmative answer; but the complete Scripture doctrine of immortality means a great deal more than this. It is a significant circumstance that the modern unbelieving view of the world has no hope to give us of a life beyond the grave. With the obscuration of the idea of God, and the loss of the sense of the spiritual, there has gone also faith in immortality. [292] Materialism, of course, is bound to deny a future life. The theories of Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer hold out just as little hope of it, [293] though Mr. Fiske, developing a Theism out of the principles of Mr. Spencer, has developed also a doctrine of immortality, another evidence of the connection of these two belief’s. [294] The hope proposed to us in lieu of individual immortality is that of “corporate immortality,” the privilege of joining the “choir invisible” of those who have laboured in the service of humanity, though they live now only in the grateful memory of posterity. [295] Pantheism, likewise, forbids the thought of personal immortality, exalting instead the blessedness of absorption in the Infinite. [296] We cannot, however, part with the hope of immortality without infinitely lowering the whole pulse and worth even of present existence. [297] The only scientific plea on which the possibility of immortality can be denied to us is based on the fact that mind in this life is so intimately bound up with physiological conditions. Once grant, however, that the thinking principle in man is distinct from the brain which it uses as its instrument, and no reason can be shown, as Bishop Butler demonstrated long, ago, why it should not survive the shock of the dissolution we call death. Death need not even be the suspension of its powers. “Suppose,” says Cicero, “a person to have been educated from his infancy in a chamber where he enjoyed no opportunity of seeing external objects but through a small chink in the window shutter, would he not be apt to consider this chink as essential to his vision? and would it not be difficult to persuade him that his prospects would be enlarged by demolishing the walls of his prison?” [298] It may turn out, as Butler says, that existing and bodily conditions are rather restraints on mind than laws of its essential nature. [299] Even so rigid a critic of evidence as the late J. S. Mill admits that this argument against immortality from the present dependence of thought and feeling on some action of the bodily organism, is invalid. “‘there is, therefore,” he says, “in science, no evidence against the immortality of the soul, but that negative evidence which consists in the absence of evidence in its favour. And even the negative evidence is not so strong as negative evidence often is.” [300] It may, at the same time, be questioned, as we have seen, whether there are not limits to the extent to which science has demonstrated the dependence of the higher mental operations on cerebal changes. [301] Science, therefore, cannot negative the idea of immortality, but has reason no positive utterance to give on this great and solemn question of future existence? It is not men of science only, but some believers in Revelation also, who show a disposition to minimise the indications and corroborations which nature affords of man’s immortal destiny. Mr. Edward White does this in support of his theory of conditional immortality; [302] but many others also have held the opinion that this is a question on which reason has little or nothing to say, and which must be determined solely by the light of Revelation. This position seems to me a hazardous one for a believer in Revelation to take up. Just as in speaking of Theism I ventured to say that, if God exists, it is inconceivable that nature should afford no evidence of His existence; [303] so I would say here that if human immortality be a truth, it is impossible that it should be only, or merely, a truth of Revelation. If, as he came from his Creator’s hand, it was man’s destiny to be immortal, his fitness and capacity for that destiny must reveal itself in the very make and constitution of his being, in the powers and capabilities that belong to him. If it could really be shown that in man’s nature, as we find it, no trace of anything exists pointing to a higher sphere of existence than earth affords, no powers or capabilities for which this earthly scene did not offer full employment or satisfaction, this alone, without any other argument, would be a cogent disproof of immortality. For the same reason, immortality cannot be viewed, as in Mr. White’s theory, as a mere external addition to a nature regarded as having originally no capacity or destination for it, a donum superadditum. It is impossible that a being should be capable of receiving the gift of immortality, who yet in the make and constitution of his nature gives no evidence that he was destined for immortality. Otherwise immortality loses all moral significance, and sinks to the level of a mere prolongation of existence, just as the life of the brute might be prolonged. Such evidence, if it exists, may not be sufficient to demonstrate man’s immortality, but it will show that the make and constitution of his nature points in that direction, that immortality is the natural solution of the enigmas of his being, that without immortality he would be a riddle and contradiction to himself and an anomaly in the world which be inhabits. And are there pot such proofs? 1. Our minds are arrested here, first, by the fact that nearly every tribe and people on the face of the earth, savage and civilised, has held in some form this belief in a future state of existence. This suggests that the belief is one which accords with the facts of human nature, and to which the mind is naturally led in its inquiries. Assume the doctrine to be false, there is still this fact to be accounted for—that nearly all tribes and families of mankind have gone on dreaming this strange dream of a life beyond the grave. [304] Mr. Spencer, of course, has a way of explaining this belief which would rob it of all its worth as evidence. The hypothesis is a very simple one. Belief in a future state, according to it, is simply a relic of superstition. It had its origin in the fancies of the savage, who, from the wanderings of his mind in sleep, and supposed appearances of the dead, aided by such facts as the reflection of his image on the water and the appearance of his shadow, imagined the existence of a soul, or double, separable from the body, and capable of surviving death. [305] Were I discussing this theory at length, I would like to put in a word for Mr. Spencer’s savage. I would like to ask, first, Is Mr. Spencer so sure that this is the whole explanation of that singularly persistent instinct which leads even savage minds to cling so tenaciously to the idea of a future life? May it not be, though a philosopher may not care to take account of them, “That even in savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings,” For the good they comprehend not,” and that, sometimes at least, “the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God’s right hand in that darkness, And are lifted up and strengthened!” [306] And I would like, secondly, to ask, Is the savage, after all, so illogical as Mr. Spencer would make him out to be? Allow that he has crude notions of apparitions and dreams, this is not the essential point. The essential point is that, from the activity of his mind in thinking and dreaming, he infers the working of a power within him distinct from his body. Is he so far wrong in this? I do not think we do justice always to the workings of the savage mind. [307] The savage knows, to begin with, that there is a something within him which thinks, feels, acts, and remembers. He does not need to wait on dreams to give him that knowledge. [308] The step is natural to distinguish this thinking something from his hands and head and body, which remain after its departure. [309] Going further, he peoples nature with spiritual agents after the type of the mind he finds within himself. Here, therefore, we have the clear yet not reasoned out distinction between body and spirit, and this, in connection with other hopes, instincts, and aspirations, readily gives birth to ideas of future continued existence. But, however it may be with the savage, how absurd it is for Mr. Spencer to assume that the mature and thinking portion of mankind have no better foundation for their belief than is implied in these vulgar superstitions which he names! You sit at the feet of a Plato, and see his keen intellect applied to this subject; you listen to the eloquence of a Cicero discoursing on it; [310] you are lifted up by the grand strains of the poets of immortality. You really thought that it was proof of the greater mental stature and calibre of these men that they speculated on such themes at all, and expressed themselves so nobly in regard to them. But it turns out you are mistaken. You and they have miserably deceived yourselves; and what seemed to you rational and ennobling belief is but the survival of superstitions, born of the dreams and ghost fancies of the untutored savage! 2. But let us leave the savage, and look at this subject in the light of the higher considerations which have in all ages appealed with special force to the minds of rational men. I pass by here the metaphysical arguments, which at most are better fitted to remove bars to the acceptance of the doctrine than to furnish positive proofs of it. The real proofs are those which, as already said, show that the make and constitution of man’s nature are not explicable on the hypothesis that he is destined only for a few short years of life on earth, but are such as point to a nobler and enduring state of existence. It is an interesting circumstance that Mr. J. S. Mill, who, in his treatment of this question, took evident delight in reducing the logical evidence to its minimum, yet practically brings all those arguments which he had thrust out by the door of the head back by the door of the heart, and uses them to found the duty of cherishing this hope of a future life. [311] What are these indications which point to a fitness for, and are a prophecy of, immortality in man? (1) There is the fact that the scale of man’s nature is too large for his present scene of existence. I have already spoken of that shadow of infinitude in man which manifests itself in all his thoughts, his imaginations, his desires, etc. Look, first, at his rational constitution. In the ascent of the mountain of knowledge, is man ever satisfied? Does not every new height he reaches but reveal a higher height? Does not every new attainment but whet his appetite to attain more? Is any thirst more insatiable than the thirst for knowledge? Is it not the last confession of ripened wisdom that man as yet knows nothing as he would wish to know? Or look at the ideas which man’s mind is capable of containing. His mind spans the physical universe, and ever as the telescope expands the horizon of knowledge, it reaches out in desire for a further flight. But there are greater ideas than even those of worlds and systems. His mind can take in the thought of God, of eternity, of infinity. Is this like the endowment. of a creature destined only for threescore years and ten? The same illimitableness attaches to imagination. “The use of this feigned history,” says Lord Bacon, speaking of poetry, “is to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man on those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things.” [312] Finally, there is desire. Give a man all of the world he asks for, and he is yet unsatisfied. “I cannot chain my soul; it will not rest In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere. It has strange powers, and feelings, and desires Which I cannot account for nor explain, But which I stifle not, being hound to trust All feelings equally, to hear all sides. Yet I cannot indulge them, and they live, Referring to some state of life unknown.” [313] This argument is not met by saying, as Mill does, that there are many things we desire which we never get. This may be true, but the point is that even if we did get all the satisfaction which the earth could give us, our desires would still go beyond that earthly bound. [314] “And thus I know the earth is not my sphere, For I cannot so narrow be, but that I still exceed it.” [315] The argument is further strengthened by comparing man with the other creatures that tenant the earth. Modern science justly lays stress on the constant relation subsisting between creatures and their environments. Throughout nature you find the most careful adjustment of faculty to environment. If there is a fin, there is water; if there is an eye, there is light; if there is a wing, there is air to cleave, etc. But here is a creature whose powers, whose capabilities, whose desires, stretch far beyond the terrestrial scene that would contain him! Must we not put him in a different category? (2) The same inference which follows from the scale of man’s endowments results if we consider life from the point of view of moral discipline. Everything which strengthens our view of the world as a scene of moral government, everything which leads us to put a high value on character, and to believe that the Creator’s main end in His dealings with man is to purify and develop character, strengthens also our belief in immortality. The only way we can conceive of the relation of nature to man, so as to put a rational meaning into it, is, as Kant has shown, to represent it to ourselves as a means to the end of his culture and morality. [316] Can we believe, then, that God will spend a lifetime in perfecting a character, developing and purifying it, as great souls always are developed, by sharp trial and discipline, till its very best has been evoked, only in the end to dash it again into nothingness? What would we think of an earthly artist who dealt thus with his works, spending a lifetime, e.g., on a block of marble, evolving from it a statue of faultless pro portions and classic grace, only in the end, just when his chisel was putting his last finishing touches on it, to seize his mallet and dash it again to pieces. It would stumble our faith in God—in the “Divine reasonableness” [317] —to believe that such could be His action. (3) A third consideration which points in the same direction is that frequently insisted on—the manifest incompleteness of the present scene of things, both as respects human character and work, and as respects the Divine administration. Here, again, everything that strengthens our faith in a moral government of the world, that impresses us with the infinite worth of human personality, that intensifies our sense of justice and injustice, forces on us the conviction that the present life, with its abounding anomalies, imperfections, and iniquities, is not God’s last word to us; [318] that there is another chapter to our existence than that which closes on earth. Here comes in the consideration which Kant urges of the need of prolonged existence to complete the fulfilment of our moral destiny; [319] the sense of accountability which we all carry with us, instinctively anticipating a day of final reckoning; the feeling of an unredressed balance of wrong in the arrangements of life and society; above all, the sense of incompleteness which so often oppresses us when we see the wise and good cut down in the midst of their labours, and their life-work left unfinished. These are the “enigmas of life” for which it is difficult to see how any solution is provided if there is not a future state in which life’s mysteries shall be made clear, its unredressed wrongs rectified, the righteousness of the good vindicated, and a completion granted to noble lives, broken off prematurely here. Our faith in God leads us again to trust Him, that “He that hath begun a good work” [320] in us will not leave it unfinished. (4) Finally, there is the fact which all history verifies, that only under the influence of this hope do the human faculties, even here, find their largest scope and play. This was the consideration which, more than any other, weighed with the late J. S. Mill, in inclining him to admit the hope of immortality. “The beneficial influence of such a hope,” he says, in words well worth quoting, “is far from trifling. It makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings, and gives greater strength as well as greater solemnity to all the sentiments which are awakened in us by our fellow-creatures, and by mankind at large. [321] It allays the sense of that irony of nature, which is so painfully felt when we see the exertions and sacrifices of a life culminating in the formation of a wise and noble mind, only to disappear from the world when the time has just arrived at which the world seems about to begin reaping the benefit of it. . . . But the benefit consists less in the presence of any specific hope than in the enlargement of the general scale of the feelings; the loftier aspirations being no longer kept down by a sense of the insignificance of human life—by the disastrous feeling of ‘not worth while.’” [322] The evolutionist, it seems to me, should, beyond all others, respect these voices of the soul, this natural and unforced testimony of our nature to a life beyond, which does not disappear (as it would do were Mr. Spencer’s hypothesis correct), but only grows clearer and more solemn, as the history of humanity advances. I think, then, we may conclude that reason does create a presumption, and that a very strong one, in favour of a future life. The considerations we have urged prove the possibility of immortality, and show that the soul of man is naturally fitted for immortality. We need not claim that they do more, though they have proved sufficient to inspire many of the noblest minds of our race, even apart from the gospel, with a very steady persuasion that there is a life hereafter. They cannot give absolute certainty. They may not be able, apart from the light of Revelation, to lift the mind wholly above the suspicion that the law of waste and destruction which prevails here against the body may somewhere else, and finally, prevail against the soul. But, so far as they go, they must be accepted as a powerful corroboration and confirmation, from the side of nature, of the Christian view. _________________________________________________________________ [196] Gen. i. 27. Dorner says truly: “The absolute personality of God, and the infinite value of the personality of man, stand and fall with each other.”— Person of Christ, v. p 155. [197] Matt. v. 9, 45; John i. 12-13. Cf Schmid’s Theol. of the New Testament, p. 101 (Eng. trans.). [198] Matt. xxiii. 15; John viii. 44. [199] Luke iii. 38. Yet only through the context—Adam, tou Theou. [200] Acts xvii. 28. [201] On the nature of man’s sonship cf. Candlish’s Fatherhood of God, and Dr. Crawford’s work in reply (same title); Bruce’s Kingdom of God, chaps. iv. and v.; Wendt’s Die Lehre Jesu, ii. pp. 145–151, 453–464. [202] See pp. 193–196. [203] Gen. i. 1; John i. 2; Col. i. 16; Heb. xi. 3. etc. [204] Note A.—The Creation History. [205] Cf. Delitzsch’s Genesis, ch. i. 1, and Schultz’s Alt. Theol. pp. 570, 571. [206] “Creation out of nothing,” says Rothe, “is not found in express words in Holy Scripture. . . . The fact itself, however, is expressed in Scripture quite definitely, since it teaches throughout, with all emphasis, that, through His word and almighty will alone, God has called into being the world, which before did not exist, and this not merely in respect of its form, but also of its matter.”—Dogmatik, i. 133. [207] Ps. xxxiii. 9. [208] Ps. cxxi. 2. [209] Rom. xi. 36. [210] Rev. iv. 11. Revised Version reads: “For Thou didst create all things; and because of Thy will they are and were created.” [211] Study of Religion, pp. 405–408; Seat of Authority, pp. 32, 33. [212] Three Essays on Religion, pp. 178, 186. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, p. 51 (Marg. Jowett’s Plato, iii.). [213] Willenswelt, pp. 335–344. [214] Cf. his Timaeus, pp. 27, 35, 50, 51. [215] Dr. Stirling says: “A substance without quality were a non-ens, and a quality without a substance were but a fiction in the air. Matter, if to be, must be permeated by form; and equally form, if to be, must be realised by matter. Substance takes being from quality; quality, actuality from substance. That is metaphysic; but it is seen to be as well physic,—it is seen to have a physical existence; it is seen to be in rerum natura.“—Phil. and Theol. p. 43. [216] Three Essays, p. 178. I may refer for further development of this argument to two articles by myself in The Theological Monthly (July and August, 1891), on “John Stuart Mill and Christianity.” [217] Cf. Spinoza’s Ethics, Part I. Prop. 29.—” Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the Divine nature.” Prop. 33.—“Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.” [218] Cf. Veitch’s Knowing and Being, pp. 290, 291. [219] Lotze discusses “the conception of the world” as “a necessary, involuntary, and inevitable development of the nature of God,” and says regarding it: “It is wholly useless from the religions point of view, because it leads consistently to nothing but a thorough-going determinism, according to which not only is everything that must happen, in case certain conditions occur, appointed in pursuance of general laws; but according to which even the successive occurrence of these conditions, and consequently the whole of history with all its details, is predetermined.”—Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 71, 72 (Eng. trans.). [220] Professor Clifford said: “What I wish to impress upon you is this, that what is called ‘the atomic theory’—that is just what I have been explaining—is not longer in the position of a theory, but that such of the facts as I have just explained to you are really things which are definitely know, and which are no longer suppositions.”—Manchester Science Lectures on “Atoms,” Nov. 1872. Cf. art. “Atom” in Ency. Brit., and Stallo’s Concepts of Modern Physics, pp. 28, 29. [221] The authors of The Unseen Universe say: “To our minds it appears no less false to pronounce eternal that aggregation we call the atom, than it would be to pronounce eternal that aggregation we call the sun.“—P. 213. Cf. p.139. Professor Jevons believes that “even chemical atoms are very complicated structures; that an atom of pure iron is probably a vastly more complicated system than that of the planets and their satellites.”—Principles of Science, ii. p.452. [222] Quoted in Hitchcock’s Religion of Geology, p.105, and endorsed by Professor Clerk-Maxwell—art. “Atom,” Ency. Brit.; and by the authors of The Unseen Universe. The latter say: “Now, this production was as far as we can judge, a sporadic or abrupt act, and the substance produced, that is to say, the atoms which form the substratum of the present universe, bear (as Herschel and Clerk-Maxwell have well said), from their uniformity of constitution, all the marks of being manufactured articles.”—P. 214. [223] This does not necessarily mean acceptance of the nebular theory of development. See Note B.—Evolution in Inorganic Nature—The Nebular Hypothesis. [224] Professor Clerk-Maxwell says: “This idea of a beginning is one which the physical researches of recent times have brought home to us, more than any observer of the course of scientific thought in former times would have had reason to expect.”—Address to Math. and Phys. Sect. of Brit. Assoc., 1870. [225] See Note C.—The Hypothesis of Cycles. [226] See passages quoted in Note C. [227] Darwinism, pp. 474–476. [228] Mr. Gore has said: “The term supernatural is purely relative to what at any particular stage of thought we mean by nature. Nature is a progressive development of life, and each new stage of life appears supernatural from the point of view of what lies below it.”—The Incarnation (Bampton Lectures), p. 85. Lange has expanded the same thought. “Each stage of nature,” he says, “prepares for a higher; which in turn maybe regarded as above nature, as contrary to nature, and yet as only higher nature, since it introduces a new and higher principle of life into the existent and natural order of things. . . . Thus the chemical principle appeared as a miracle in the elementary world, as introducing a new and higher life; similarly the principle of crystallisation is a miracle with reference to the lower principle of chemical affinity; the plant, a miracle above the crystal; the animal, a miracle in reference to the plant; and man, over all the animal world. Lastly, Christ, as the Second Man, the God-Man, is a miracle above all the world of the first man, who is of the earth earthy.”—Com. on Matt. p. 152 (Eng. trans.). [229] Cf. Professor Flint, in Anti-Theistic Theories, pp. 438, 439. He remarks: “Although Omnipotence cannot express itself fully in the finite world to which we belong, the Divine nature may be in itself an infinite universe, where this and all other attributes can find complete expression. . . . The Divine nature must have in itself a plenitude of power and glory, to which the production of numberless worlds can add nothing.” [230] This objection was early urged against the doctrine of creation. Cf. Origen, De Principiis, Book iii. 5; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book xi. 5. [231] See Note D.—“Eternal Creation.” [232] Spinoza’s Ethics, Part II. Prop. 44, Cor. ii.—“It is the nature of reason to perceive things sub quadam aeternitatis specie.” [233] A good illustration is afforded by Mr. Green in a fragment on Immortality. “As a determination of thought,” he says, “everything is eternal. What are we to say, then, to the extinct races of animals, the past formations of the earth? How can that which is extinct and past be eternal? . . . The process is eternal, and they as stages in it are so too. That which has passed away is only their false appearance of being independent entities, related only to themselves, as opposed to being stages, essentially related to a before and after. In other words, relatively to our temporal consciousness, which can only present one thing to itself at a time, and therefore supposes that when A follows B, B ceases to exist, they have perished; relatively to the thought which, as eternal, holds past, present, and future together, they are permanent; their very transitoriness is eternal.”—Works, iii. p. 159. [234] Hegel, indeed, says: “Within the range of the finite we can never see that the end or aim has really been secured. The consummation of the infinite aim, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. . . . It is this illusion under which we live. . . . In the course of its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created.”—Wallace’s Logic of Hegel, p. 304. [235] Cf. Veitch’s Knowing and Being, chap. vii.; Seth’s Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 180–184; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, iii. pp. 293–295 (Eng. trans.); Lotze, Microcosmus, ii. p. 711 (Eng. trans.); and see Note D. to Lect. III. [236] See Note E.—Eternity and Time. [237] Timaeus, p.29—“Let me tell you, then, why the Creator created and made the universe. He was good, and no goodness can ever have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, He desired that all things should be as like Himself as possible.”—Jowett’s Plato, iii. p. 613. [238] Republic, Bk. vi. [239] See last Lecture, pp. 108–109. [240] In his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Bk. iii. Cf. Seth’s From Kant to Hegel, pp. 123, 124; Caird’s Philosophy of Kant, pp. 611–613. [241] Cf. Microcosmus, ii. p. 728 (Eng. trans.); Outlines of Metaphysic, pp. 151, 152 (Eng. trans.). [242] Christian Ethics, p. 65 (Eng. trans.). [243] Rom. viii. 28. [244] Data of Ethics, p. 171. [245] Hamlet, act iv. scene 4 [246] See Note F.—Man the Head of Creation. [247] Gen. i. 31. [248] On the teleological relations of nature to man, see Kant, Kritik d. Urtheilkraft, sect. 83—“Of the last end of nature as a teleological system,” and sect. 84—” Of the final end of the existence of a world, i.e. of the creation itself”; and cf. Caird, Philosophy of Kant, ii. pp. 545–557. [249] See this thought worked out in Herder’s Ideen zur Phil. d. Gesch. der Menschheit (cf. Book v. 6, quoted in Note F.). [250] Metamorphoses, i. 2: “Pronaque quum spectent animalia cetera terram, Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.” [251] Heb. ii. 14. [252] Rom. viii. 23. [253] Cf. on this subject the works of Delitzsch and Beckon Biblical Psychology; Oehler and Schultz on Old Testament Theology; Wendt’s Inhalt der Lehre Jesu; Heard on the Tripartite Nature of Man; Laidlaw’s Bible Doctrine of Man; Dickson’s Flesh and Spirit (Baird Lectures), etc. [254] Lev. xvii. 11. [255] Another word for spirit is Neshamah—used twice in the Old Testament, once in a noteworthy passage for the principle of self-consciousness (Prov. xx. 27), as in 1 Cor. ii. 11. [256] Isa. xi. 2; Ps. li. 10-12. Some of the references are to the Divine Spirit, but as the source of spiritual powers in man. [257] I Pet. iii. 19. [258] E.g. Matt. xxii. 27; Luke i. 46. [259] John xii. 25. [260] Cf. Bushnell, Nature and Supernatural, pp. 23–25. [261] See next Lecture. [262] This is a view already enunciated with great clearness by Irenaeus. Cf. Dorner, Person of Christ, i. pp. 314–316; Art. “Irenaeus” in Dict. of Christ. Biog. vol. iii.; and Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, i. p. 499. [263] On the whole subject of the image of God in man, cf. Laidlaw’s Bible Doctrine of Man, Lect. III. (Cunningham Lectures). [264] Lay Sermons, “On the Physical Basis of Life,” p. 156. [265] Kant has said that the attempt to explain the world on mechanical principles is wrecked on a caterpillar. [266] Du Bois-Reymond, who himself favours Materialism, specifies, in his Die Sieben Weltrathsel (The Seven Enigmas of the World), seven limits to the materialistic explanation of Nature. These are: The Existence of Matter and Form. The Origin of Motion. The Origin of Life. The Appearance of Design in Nature. The Existence of Consciousness. Intelligent Thought and the Origin of Speech. The Question of Free-Will. See the account of this work in Kennedy’s Natural Theology and Modern Thought, from which I take the list (p. 52). Enigmas 1, 2, and 5 Du Bois-Reymond regards as insoluble. [267] Lecture on Die Grenzen des Naturerkennens. Leipsic, 1872. [268] Fragments of Science, “Scientific Materialism,” p. 121. In the sixth edition the words are—” is inconceivable as a result of mechanics” (vol. ii. p. 87). He goes on to say that, could we “see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, . . . the chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.” [269] Article on “Mr. Darwin’s Critics,” in Contemporary Review, Nov. 1871, p. 464. Mr. Spencer expresses himself similarly: “Can the oscillation of a molecule,” he says, “be represented in consciousness side by side with a nervous shock, and the two he recognised as one? No effort enables us to assimilate them.”—Principles of Psychology, i. sec. 62. [270] “Body and Mind,” in Fortnightly Review, December 1874. [271] Cf. Herbert’s Modern Realism Examined, pp. 89–94; Kennedy’s Natural Theology and Modern Thought, pp. 64–66. [272] Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 212. [273] Strauss declares his thorough agreement with Carl Vogt in his denial of any special spiritual principle, p. 210. [274] Thus, e.g., Huxley: “For, after all, what do we know of this terrible ‘matter,’ except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?” (“On the Physical Basis of Life “) . . . it follows that what I term legitimate Materialism . . . is neither more nor less than a shorthand Idealism.”—” On Descartes,” Lay Sermons, pp. 157, 374. On the relation of extreme Materialism to Idealism, cf. Kennedy’s Natural Theology, pp. 64–66. [275] At least this terminology is held to be preferable. Prof. Huxley says: “In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomenon of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomenon of spirit in terms of matter. . . . But, with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to he preferred.”—Lay Sermons, “On the Physical Basis of Life,” p. 160. [276] Lay Sermons, “On the Physical Basis of Life,” p. 152. In the same essay he tells us: “As surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future extend the realm of matter and law, till it is coextensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with actions.”—P. 156. [277] Article on “Mr. Darwin’s Critics,” in Contemporary Review, Nov. 1871, p. 464. In his Lecture on “Descartes,” he says: “Thought is as much a function of matter as motion is.”—Lay Sermons, p. 371. [278] “Belfast Address,” Fragments of Science, ii. p. 193. [279] Ibid. ii. p. 191. [280] Religion as Affected by Modern Materialism, pp. 14, 15. [281] Fragments of Science ii p 87. [282] “Motion,” says Du Bois-Reymond, “can only produce motion, or transform itself into potential energy. Potential energy can only produce motion, maintain statical equilibrium, push, or pull. The sum-total of energy remains constantly the same. More or less than is determined by the law cannot happen in the material universe; the mechanical cause expends itself entirely in mechanical operations. Thus the intellectual occurrences which accompany the material occurrences in the brain are without an adequate cause as contemplated by our understanding. They stand outside the law of causality, and therefore are as incomprehensible as a mobile perpetuum would be. “—Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, p. 28 (in Kennedy’s Natural Theology, p. 48). [283] On this argument, see Herbert’s Modern Realism Examined, pp. 43, 57; Kennedy’s Natural Theology and Modern Thought, pp. 48, 49, 79, 80; Harris’s Philosophical Basis of Theism, pp. 439–442. [284] “The Hypothesis. that Animals are Automata,” in Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1874, pp. 575, 576. This steam-whistle illustration fails, as his critics all point out, in the essential respect that a steam-whistle does subtract a portion of the energy available for working the machinery, while the production if a conscious. phenomenon does not. Cf. Herbert, pp. 46, 47; Kennedy, 79, etc. [285] Principles of Psychology, i. sec. 51. [286] Ibid. i. sec. 273. [287] See Note G.—Mind and Mechanical Causation. [288] See Note H.—Mind and Cerebral Activity. [289] Cf. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics, Book i.; Lotze’s Microcosmus, pp. 157, 163; Seth’s. Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 3–5. Lotze puts the point thus.: “Our belief in the soul’s unity rests not on our appearing to ourselves such a unity, hut on our being able to appear to ourselves at all. . . . What a being appears to itself to be is not the important point; if it can appear anyhow to itself, or other things to it, it must be capable of unifying manifold phenomena in an absolute indivisibility of its. nature.”—Microcosmus, p. 157. [290] Cf. Ebrard’s Christian Apologetics, ii. pp. 77–98; Dorner’s Christian Ethics, pp. 105, 106; Kennedy’s Natural Theology, Lecture V. [291] Cf. Caird’s Philosophy of Religion, pp. 94–101. [292] Renan has said: “No one in business would risk a hundred francs with the prospect of gaining a million, on such a probability as. that of the future life.”—Dialogues, p. 31. Cf. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, pp. 123–134. “In fact,” he says, “this. supposition is the most gigantic assumption that can be thought of; and if we ask after its foundation, we meet with nothing hut a wish. Man would fain not perish when he dies; therefore he believes he will not perish.”—Pp. 126, 127. [293] The contrast is again marked with the attitude of the last century “Natural Religion,” which regarded the “immortality of the soul” as one of its most certain articles. How little assurance even Theism, apart from Revelation, can give on this subject, is seen in Mr. Greg’s. statements in The Creed of Christendom, chap. xvii.; and Preface to his Enigmas of Life. [294] Fiske’s Man’s Destiny. Dr. Martineau tells the story that on a report of the arguments of this. book being read to an English friend, a Positivist, on its first appearance, his exclamation was: “What? John Fiske say that? Well; it only proves, what I have always maintained, that you cannot make the slightest concession to metaphysics, without ending in a theology!”—Preface to A Study of Religion. [295] “O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence. . . . This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us to strive to follow” George Eliot, Jubal, and other Poems, pp. 301–303. [296] Thus in the Indian systems, but also in modern times. Spinoza’s Pantheism has no room in it for personal immortality. In Hegel’s system the question was left in the same ambiguity as the question of the Divine personality (cf. Stirling’s Secret of Hegel, ii. pp. 578–580; Seth’s Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 149, 150). On Schleiermacher’s views, see Note I.—Schleiermacher and Immortality. [297] Cf. p. 160. [298] Quoted by Dugald Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, i. p. 72 (Collected Works). Cf. Tusculan Disputations, Book i. 20. [299] Analogy, i. chap. 1. [300] Three Essays, p. 201. [301] See Professor Calderwood’s views in Note H. [302] In his Life in Christ. [303] Lect. III. p. 81. [304] Cicero urges the argument in The Tusculan Disputations, Book i. 13. For modern illustrations, cf. Max Muller’s Anthropological Religion, Lecture V.; Dawson’s Fossil Men and their Modern Representatives, chap. x., etc. [305] Eccles. Institutions, chaps. i., xiv.; Strauss has a similar theory, Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 124. [306] Longfellow’s Hiawatha, Introduction. [307] Max Muller says: “We cannot protest too strongly against what used to be a very general habit among anthropologists, namely, to charge primitive man with all kinds of stupidities in his early views about the soul, whether in this life or the next.”—Anthropological Religion, p. 218. [308] Cf. Max Muller’s discussion of the “shadow” and “dream” theory in Anthropological Religion, pp. 218–226. “Before primitive man could bring himself to imagine that his soul was like a dream, or like an apparition, it is clear that he must already have framed to himself some name or concept of soul.”—P. 221. [309] Cf. Max Muller, Anthropological Religion, pp. 195, 281, 337, 338. “It was a perfectly simple process: what may almost be called a mere process of subtraction. There was man, a living body, acting, feeling, perceiving, thinking, and speaking. Suddenly, after receiving one blow with a club, that living body collapses, dies, putrefies, falls to dust. The body, therefore, is seen to he destroyed. But there is nothing to prove that the agent within that body, who felt, who perceived, who thought and spoke, had likewise been destroyed, had died, putrefied, and fallen to dust. Hence the very natural conclusion that, though that agent had separated, it continued to exist somewhere, even though there was no evidence to show how it existed and where it existed”—P. 281. See also Mr. Greg, Preface to Enigmas of Life, p. 7; and Fairbairn’s Studies in Philosophy of Religion, pp. 115ff. [310] Plato’s Phaedo, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and Dream of Scipio, etc. Cf. Max Muller on Anthropological Religion, Lecture XI. [311] In the Essay on “Theism,” in Three Essays on Religion. See below. [312] Adv. of Learning, Book ii. 13. [313] It. Browning, Pauline. [The text is somewhat altered in 1889 edition. Works, i. p. 27.] [314] “Man,” says Kant, “is not so constituted as to rest and be satisfied in any possession or enjoyment whatsoever.”—Kritik d. Urtheilskraft, p. 281 (Erdmann’s ed.). [315] Browning, Pauline. As revised:— “How should this earth’s life prove my only sphere? Can I so narrow sense but that in life Soul still exceeds it?” Works, i. p. 29. [316] Cf. Kant on “The Last End of Nature as a teleological System,” Kritik d. Urtheilskraft, pp. 280—285; and Caird, Philosophy of Kant, ii. P. 501. [317] “For my part,” says Mr. Fiske, “I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness. of God’s work.”—Man’s Destiny p. 116. [318] There is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught, Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim, If—(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)— If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil’s place, And life, time,—with all their chances, changes,—just probation-space, Mine, for me?” BROWNING, La Saisiaz, Works, xiv. p. 178. [319] It should be noticed that, as Kant grants a “doctrinal faith” in the existence of God, as distinguished from theoretical demonstration on the one hand, and the moral proof on the other (see note D. to Lecture III.), so he admits also a “doctrinal faith” in immortality. “In view of the Divine wisdom,” he says, “and having respect to the splendid endowment of human nature, and to the shortness of life, so inadequate for its development, we can find an equally satisfactory ground for a doctrinal faith in the future life of the human soul. —Kritik d. r. Vernunft, p. 561 (Eng. trans. pp. 590, 591). [320] Phil. i. 6. [321] Cf. Uhlhorn in his Christian Charity in the Ancient Church. “There is an idea,” he says, “which has been again met with in our own day, that men, when they first clearly come to believe that human life finds its life in this life alone, would be on that account the more ready to help one another, so that at least life here below might be made as pleasant to all as possible, and kept free from evil. But, in truth, the opposite is the case. If the individual man is only a passing shadow, without any everlasting significance, then reflection quickly makes us decide: Since it is of no importance whether he exists or not, why should I deprive myself of anything to give it to him? . . . It was only when through Christianity it was for the first time made known that every human soul possessed an infinite value, that each individual existence is of much more worth than the whole world,—it was only then that room was found for the growth of a genuine charity.”—Pp. 33, 34 (Eng. trans.). [322] Three Essays, p. 249. _________________________________________________________________ “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all have sinned.”—Paul. “This is a wonder to which the worshippers of reason have not yet given a name—the story of the fall of the first man. Is it allegory? history? fable? And yet there it stands, following the account of the creation, one of the pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is nothing—the point from which all succeeding history starts. . . . And yet, ye dear, most ancient, and undying traditions. of my race—ye are the very kernel and germ of its most hidden history. Without you, mankind would be what so many other things are—a hook without a title, without the first cover and introduction.” Herder. “The existence of two selves in a man, a better self which takes pleasure in the good, and a worse self which makes for the bad, is a fact too plain to he denied.”—F. H. Bradley. “When we speak of primitive man, we do not mean man while he was emerging from brutality to humanity, ‘while he was losing his fur and gaining his intellect.’ We leave that to the few biologists who, undeterred by the absence of facts, still profess a belief in descent of man from some known or unknown animal species.”—Max Muller. “Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; . . . ‘so careful of the type?’ but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, all shall go.’” Tennyson. LECTURE V. THE POSTULATE OF THE CHRISTIAN VIEW IN REGARD TO THE SIN AND DISORDER OF THE WORLD. Christianity is the religion of Redemption. As such, it has for its third postulate the sin and disorder of the world. The existence of natural and moral evil is one of the darkest, deepest, and most difficult problems that can occupy human thought. It is one which has exercised the hearts of men in all ages, one which is often raised in Scripture, and which should warn us off from light and superficial views of the Divine character and purposes. Its presence is the great difficulty in the way of a belief on natural grounds in the perfect justice and goodness of God, the obstacle we immediately encounter when we try to persuade ourselves that the universe is created and ordered by a supremely good Being. So grave is this difficulty, even in respect to natural evil, that Mr. J. S. Mill declares “the problem of reconciling infinite benevolence and justice in the Creator of such a world as this” to be “impossible”; and adds, “The attempt to do so not only involves absolute contradiction in an intellectual point of view, but exhibits in excess the revolting spectacle of a jesuitical defence of moral enormities.” [323] From the natural point of view, the assurance of God’s perfect goodness must always be, to some extent, an act of faith, based on the postulate of our own moral consciousness; and even this will often find it difficult to sustain itself, since Christianity alone imparts the moral consciousness in sufficient strength to uphold the faith required. It is important to observe that, though this problem meets us in connection with the Christian view of the world, it is not Christianity that makes this problem. Natural and moral evil is there as a fact in the universe, and would be there though Christianity had never been heard of. Christianity intensifies the problem by the stronger light it casts on the character of God, and the higher view it gives of man, but it does not create the problem. What it professes to do is to help us to Solve it. But the problem is there all the while, and has to be taken account of by every system, whether Christian or not. It is a difficulty of philosophy, not less than of theology. While, however, in naturalistic systems moral evil is apt to fall behind natural evil, in Christianity it is the other way —the moral evil is throughout placed in the forefront, and natural evil is looked at mainly in the light of it. This is as it should be; for while, as we shall see, natural evil presents an independent problem, there can be no doubt that its existence is deeply implicated with the existence of moral evil. [324] If we subtract from the sum of suffering in the world all that is directly or indirectly caused by sin—by the play and action of forces that are morally evil—we shall reduce the problem to very manageable dimensions indeed. It is the existence moral evil which is the tremendous difficulty from a theistic point of view. I might go further, and say that it is only for a theistic system that the problem of moral evil properly exists. [325] Materialism and Pantheism may acknowledge natural evil—misfortune, pain, sorrow, misery—but it is only by an inconsistency they can speak of sin. Both are systems of determinism, and leave no place for moral action. There is, besides, in either system, no question of a theodicy, for there is to them no God. Things are as they are by a necessity of nature, which we can neither account for nor get behind. If we could, indeed, really get rid of the problem of sin by adopting either of these systems, there would be some reason for accepting them. But unfortunately the problem of moral evil is one which refuses to be thus summarily got rid of. Sin is there; the feeling of responsibility and of guilt is there; and neither the heart nor the reason of humanity will allow us to treat them as nonentities. Nor does the denial of God’s existence really mitigate the difficulty. Dark as the problem of evil is, it would be immeasurably darker if we were compelled to believe that there is no infinite righteousness and love behind, through which a solution of the problem may ultimately be hoped for. I proceed to consider more narrowly what the Christian view of sin is, and how it stands related to modern theories and speculations. I. The problem of moral evil: conflict of Christian and modern views. I. It is in their respective relations to the sin and disorder of the world, perhaps more than at any other point, that the Christian and “modern” views of the world come to a direct issue. On the one hand, there are certain respects in which the Christian view finds unexpected support from the modern view of the world; on the other, there are certain respects in which it is fundamentally at variance with it. Let us briefly consider both. There are three respects, in particular, in which the modern view of the world comes to the support of the Christian view of sin. 1. The modern view of things is marked by a stronger sense than in former times of the reality and universal presence of evil—both of natural evil and of moral evil, though moral evil, as was to be expected, is regarded more from its side of error, misery, and bondage, than from its side of guilt. The modern view has disposed of the superficial optimism of earlier times. The days of a flimsy optimism, when men demonstrated to their own satisfaction that this was the best of all possible worlds, and made light of the facts which contradicted their pleasing hypothesis, are over, and everywhere there is an oppressive sense of the weight of the evils which burden humanity, and of the unsatisfactoriness of natural existence generally. The strain of modern thought is pessimistic rather than optimistic. Its high-water mark is not optimism, but what George Eliot prefers to call “meliorism.” [326] Herbert Spencer, indeed, still looks for an “evanescence of evil,” as the result of the working of natural and necessary laws of evolution, [327] but I do not find that this represents the general temper of the age. Schopenhauer and Hartmann have at least this merit, that they raise the question of the good or evil of existence in a form which makes it impossible ever again to ignore it, or bury it out of sight. Pessimism, as Professor Flint has said, “like Macbeth, has murdered sleep.” [328] All this is a gain to the Christian view. Hartmann even goes so far as to find the merit of Christianity in the fact that it is a system of Pessimism. [329] Both systems take for granted the facts of existence, and both look them boldly in the face. But there is this difference—Christianity looks on the world in a spirit of hope; Pessimism looks on it in a spirit of despair. 2. It is an extension of the same remark to say that the modern view of the world has disposed effectually of the shallow Rousseau view of the inherent goodness of human nature, and of the eighteenth-century illumination dreams of a perfectibility of man based on education, and on altered social and political conditions. [330] The optimistic and Pelagian views of human nature are as completely discredited as the optimistic view of the world generally. Kant struck this deeper keynote when, in opposition to the preceding Rationalism, he acknowledged the presence of a “radical evil” in human nature, which he could only account for by an act of the will above time. [331] The modern evolutionary philosophy goes even beyond Christianity in its affirmation of the dominance of the brute element in man’s being—of the ascendency of the egoistic over the social impulses in the natural man; [332] while the moralisation of humanity which it anticipates, in the sense of a gradual subordination of the former to the latter, is admitted to be yet very imperfect. From the side of modern thought, therefore, there is no hesitation in admitting, what Christianity also affirms, that the animal in man has an undue preponderance over the intellectual and spiritual; that the will, even in the best of men, is hampered and fettered by impulses of the lower nature to a degree which often evokes the liveliest expressions of shame and self-reproach; that society is largely ruled by egoistic passions and aims. The law in the members warring against the law in the mind [333] —in a sense, a natural depravity and “original sin “—has its recognition in modern science and philosophy. 3. In the modern view of the world we have the fullest recognition of the organic principle in human life, and of the corollary of this in heredity. This, which is the correction of the individualistic view of human nature which prevailed in last century, I take to be one of the greatest gains of modern thought for the right understanding of the Christian doctrines both of sin and of Redemption. The Christian view is one which gives its rightful place alike to the individual, and to the organic connection of the individual with the race; and it is the latter side of the truth which modern thought has done so much to further. Rather, perhaps, I should say that both sides are being brought into strong prominence; for if there never was so much stress laid on the connection of the individual with society, neither was there ever so much said about individual rights. The former idea, at all events, is now thoroughly incorporated into modern habits of under the name of the “solidarity” of the race. [334] There is an individual life, and there is a social life in which we all share. The race is an organism, and the individual, if we may so speak, is a cell in the tissue of that organism, indissolubly connected for good or evil with the other cells in the unity of a common life. [335] From this follows the conception of heredity, which plays so important a part in modern theories. Man is not simply bound up with his fellows through the external usages and institutions of society. “He has been produced by, and has become a part of them, . . . he is organically related to all the members of the race, not only bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but mind of their mind.” [336] He is a bundle of inherited. tendencies, and will in turn transmit his nature with its new marks of good an evil, to those who come after him. [337] It is easy to see that this conception of heredity, and of the organic unity of the race, is but the scientific expression of a doctrine which is fundamental to the Scriptures, and which underlies all its tea in about sin and salvation. In respect of the points just named, therefore, it may be affirmed that the modem view of the world is largely in agreement with Christianity. We may not agree with Schopenhauer and Hartmann that Christianity is a system of Pessimism; but we may admit that Pessimism, in so far as it recognises that the world is in an evil state, is far truer to facts and to Christianity than the superficial Optimism, the shallow perfectionism, and the Pelagian denial of original and inherited sin, which it helped to displace. In the respect last named, indeed, modern thought is nearer to Christianity than some Christian systems themselves. Ritschl, for example, teaches that sin consists only in acts, and not in states and dispositions of the heart; that there is no such thing as original or inherited sin; that sin is not transmissible by nature, but only through education, influence, the reciprocal action of individuals in society, etc. [338] But in maintaining this, he comes into conflict, not merely with texts of Scripture, but with the whole modern conception of the organic union of the race. Universal sin—sin which does not consist merely in acts but seated causes in the heart the effects of which both bodily and mental, are hereditarily transmitted—these I take to he conceptions which neither Ritschl nor any other will now be able to overthrow. [339] When all this is said, however, it must still be granted that the most fundamental difference exists between the two views—the Christian and the modern. The difference is partly one as to the nature of sin, and it runs up into a difference as to its origin. The Christian view of sin is not only infinitely deeper and more earnest than in any current conception apart from Christianity; but it is, as I formerly remarked, profoundly modified by the difference in the views of God and of man. The first thing we have to do here is to secure clearly the Christian idea of sin: then when we have done this, and asked whether it is verified in conscience and experience we are prepared to judge of theories of origin. I lay it down as a first principle that, in the Christian view, sin is that which absolutely ought not to be. [340] How that which absolutely ought not to be is yet permitted to exist under the government of a wise and holy God, is a problem we may not be able to solve; but the first thing to do is to hold firmly to the conception of sin itself. Sin, as such, is that which unconditionally ought not to be, which contradicts or infringes upon an unconditional law of right, and therefore can only be understood in the light of that which ought to be—of the moral good. [341] The Christian view of sin, accordingly, has for its presupposition the doctrine of God as ethical Personality, previously explained. It is God’s perfect nature and holy will which form the norm of character and duty for man. The law of holiness requires, not only that the human will subsist in perfect harmony with the Divine, being surrendered to it in love, trust, and obedience, but, as involved in this, that there should be a right state of the affections, a pure and harmonious inner life. The external sphere for obedience is prescribed by our position in the world, and by our relation to it, to our neighbours, and to God. As the negation of this, sin, in the Biblical view, consists in the revolt of the creature will from its rightful allegiance to the sovereign will of God, and the setting up of a false independence, the substitution of a life-for-self for life-for-God. [342] How such an act should ever originate may again be a problem we cannot solve; but it is evidently included in the possibilities of human freedom. The possibility of sin arises from the fact that the creature has necessarily a relative independence and that in man, particularly, together with the impulse towards God, there exists an impulse towards the world, which the will may be tempted to make an object on its own account. [343] The false choice made. the spiritual bond between God and the soul is cut or at least infinitely weakened: the soul enters into subjection to the world to which it has surrendered itself, and an abnormal development begins, in which the baneful and God-negating character of the egoistic principle taken into the will gradually reveals itself. [344] While thus spiritual in its origin, as arising from the free act of a will up to that time pure, sin is anything but spiritual in its effects. Its immediate result is the subversion of the true relation of the natural and the spiritual in man’s constitution, making that supreme which ought to be subordinate, and that subordinate which ought to be supreme. The relation of the spiritual and psychical in human nature is inverted. The spiritual is reduced to subjection, can at best make only feeble and ineffectual protests; the natural or psychical is elevated to authority and rule. Further, the spiritual bond being broken which kept the nature in harmony—reason, conscience, the God-ward affections ruling, while the lower passions and desires observed the bounds which higher law prescribed for them—not only is the psychical nature exalted to undue ascendency, but its own actings are now turbulent and irregular. It refuses to obey law; its desires clamour importunately each for its own special gratification; discord and division take the place of the normal unity. There is introduced into the soul a state of anomia—lawlessness. [345] Reason and conscience are still there as indestructible elements of human nature, nor can the sense of its dependence on God, or obligation to Him, ever be entirely lost. Hence arise, even in the natural man, conflict, struggle, self-condemnation, painful and ineffectual attempts to break the dominion of sin, never truly successful. [346] For this reason, that carnality preponderates in the nature of man as a whole, and that the most spiritual acts of the natural man betray the signs of its controlling influence, the whole man is spoken of as “in the flesh,” though elsewhere Paul distinguishes the flesh from that better self—the nous, or inner man—which protests against its rule. [347] All this finds its verification in conscience and experience, if not in its totality in every man’s consciousness, yet in the general consciousness of the race. What a man’s judgment of himself will be depends upon his standpoint, but in proportion to the depth of his self-knowledge he will confess that his heart is not naturally possessed by love to God, and by spiritual affections; that his inner life is not perfectly pure and harmonious; that there are principles in his heart at war with what duty and the law of God require; that he often transgresses the commandment which he recognises as “holy, and just, and good,” [348] in thought and word and deed; and that, in all this, he lies under his own self-condemnation. He is conscious that the sin of his heart is such that he would not willingly lay bare its secrets to his closest intimate, and he would probably confess also that this state in which he finds himself did not spring wholly, or de novo, from his individual will, but that it developed from a nature in which the principle of disorder was already implanted. Gathering these observations to an issue, I conclude that the cardinal point in the Christian view of sin is, that it is not something natural, normal, and necessary, but, both as actual and as hereditary, something which must find its explanation in a free act of the creature, annulling the original relation of the creature to God. The Christian view, in other words, cannot be maintained on the hypothesis that man’s existing state is his original one,—still less on the assumption that, in a moral respect, it is an advance and improvement on his original one, but only on the supposition that man has wilfully defaced the Divine image in which he was originally made and has voluntarily turned aside to evil. Apart from express statements on the subject, the underlying presupposition of the Christian view is that sin has a volitional cause, which, as the sin itself is universal, must be carried back to the beginning of the race—that, in other words, the development of the race has not been a natural and normal, but an abnormal and perverted one. And here it is, I admit, that the modern view of the world, with its doctrine of man’s original brutishness, and his ascent by his own efforts to civilisation and moral life, comes into the most direct and absolute contradiction with it. Many attempts—some of them well meant—have been made to gloze over, or get rid of, this contradiction; but these would-be solutions all break on the fact that they make sin, or what passes for sin, a natural necessity; whereas, on the Biblical view, it is clearly not man’s misfortune only, but his fault—a deep and terrible evil for which he is responsible. We shall best appreciate the force of this contradiction by looking at some of the theories to which the Christian view is opposed. 1. First, we have a class of theories which seek the ground of evil in creation, or in the original constitution of the world; but these I do not dwell upon. Such is the theory of Buddhism, and of all the pessimistic systems. “The existence of the world,” Schopenhauer holds, “is itself the greatest evil of all, and underlies all other evil, and similarly the root evil of each individual is his having come into the world”; [349] and Hartmann speaks of the “inexpiable crime” of creation. [350] Such, again, is the hypothesis of two original principles in creation, e.g., the Persian dualism, of which we see some faint attempts at a revival in modern times. [351] Such were the Platonic and Gnostic theories, that evil had its origin in matter. This doctrine also has its modern revivals. Even Rothe has adopted the view which seeks the origin of evil in matter, though why matter should be supposed inimical to goodness it is not easy to see. With him, it is the non-divine, the contradictory counterpart to God, opposed in its essence to the Divine, a conception not Biblical, and one which cannot be maintained. [352] 2. We come, second, to a class of theories which seek the explanation of evil in the nature of man. It is the characteristic of all these theories that they regard sin as necessarily resulting from the constitution of human nature, in contrast with the Biblical view that it entered the world voluntarily. Of this class of theories, again, we have several kinds. (1) We have the metaphysical theories of sin—that, e.g., of Hegel. Sin is here regarded as a necessary stage in the development of spirit. Hegel is fond of explicating the story of Eden in the interests of his philosophy, and this is how he does it. “Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of nature,” he says, “is the ‘Fall,’ which is no casual conception, but the eternal history of spirit. For the state of innocence, the paradisaical condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park, where only brutes, not men, can remain. . . . The fall is, therefore, the eternal mythus of man, in fact the very transition by which he becomes man.” [353] Sin, in brief, is the first step of man out of his naturalness, and the only way in which he could take that step. It is the negation of the immediate unity of man with nature, and of the innocence of that pristine state, but only that the negation may be in turn negated, and the true destination of spirit realised. [354] (2) We have the ethical and would-be Christian forms of these theories, in which the subject is looked at from the religious point of view. Such, e.g., is the theory of Schleiermacher, who derives sin from a relative weakness of the spirit as compared with sense. [355] Such, again, is the theory of Lipsius, who explains it from the fact that man is at first a naturally conditioned and self-seeking being, while his moral will is only gradually developed. [356] Such is the theory of Ritschl, who connects it with man’s ignorance. With him also man starts as a purely natural being, the subject of self-seeking desires, while his will for good is a “growing” quantity. [357] Sin, therefore, is an inevitable stage in his development. (3) We have the evolutionary theories, in which man begins only a shade removed from the brutes, and his subsequent moralisation is the result of slow development. This theory may be held in a more naturalistic or in a more philosophical form. In the former, the genesis of our moral ideas, from which the sense of sin arises, is sought in causes outside of the moral altogether—in the possession by man of social as well as egoistic impulses, in the perception of the advantage that would accrue from the subordination of the latter to the former, in the gradual accumulation of the results of experience in the organism through heredity, in the strengthening of the bonds of society through custom, law, etc. [358] What this theory fails to show is how this idea of the advantageous becomes converted into the perfectly distinct conception of the morally obligatory. A clearly perceived duty lays an obligation on the will quite distinct from a perceived advantage; and even supposing the discovery made that a larger good would accrue through every individual devoting himself to the common weal, a distinct notion is involved when it is perceived that duty requires us to adopt this for our end. [359] The higher form of the evolutionary theory, accordingly, makes a more promising beginning, in that it grants to man from the first his rational nature, and recognises that his ideas of moral truth and obligation spring directly from a rational source. It is held, however, as in the theories already considered, that at first it is the instinctive impulses, in which the self-regarding desires are necessarily preponderant, which hold the field, and that man comes to the knowledge of his true nature only gradually. Man, indeed, only begins to be a moral being when, through the awakening of his moral consciousness, he makes the discovery that he is not what, in the true idea of his personality, he ought to be—when he forms an ideal. It is this impulse to realise his true nature, to attain to moral freedom, and bring the self-seeking impulses into harmony with moral law, which, on this theory, constitutes the mainspring of all development and progress. [360] Taking this class of theories together, I contend that it is impossible to derive out of them conceptions of sin and guilt adequate to the Christian view. In the first place, it is evident that, in all these theories, sin is made something necessary—not simply something that might be, or could be, but an absolute necessity. In every one of them, the original condition of man is supposed to be such that sin could not but result from it. This, it seems to me, is practically to empty the idea of sin of its real significance, and to throw the responsibility of it directly back on the Creator. It is probably a feeling of this kind which leads many who favour the view we are considering to disclaim the word “necessity.” Hegel, even, tells us that sin is not necessary; that man can- will evil, but is not under compulsion to will it. But this is a mere evasion, arising from an- ambiguous use of terms. In a multitude of other places Hegel tells us that sin arises from the highest logical and speculative necessity. [361] Schleiermacher, in like manner, disclaims the view that sin is a necessary law of human development. [362] He could not do otherwise, and hold, as he does the sinlessness of Christ. But he holds at the same time that the development through sin—or what we subjectively regard as sin—is the form of growth ordained for us by God, with a view to the ultimate Redemption, or perfecting, of the race in Christ. [363] Lipsius will have it that sin is at once necessary and free and avoidable. [364] Ritschl holds, in the same way, that a necessity of sinning can be derived neither from the outfit of human nature, nor from the ends of moral life, nor from a design of God. [365] Yet he grants, and starting off with man as he does as a merely natural being, he could not do otherwise, that sin is an apparently unavoidable product of the human will under the given conditions of its development. [366] All these theories in fact, therefore, however they may evade the use of the name, do make sin a necessity. In the evolutionary theories this is very obvious. There is here no pretence that a sinless development is possible. How is it conceivable that a being beginning at the stage of lowest savagery should avoid sin; and what responsibility can be supposed to attach to the acts of such a being, in whom brute passions and desires have full ascendency, while reason and conscience are yet a glimmer—a bare potentiality? One immediate effect of these theories, accordingly, is to weaken, if not entirely to destroy, the idea of guilt. How can man be held responsible for acts which the constitution of his nature and his environment—without the intervention of moral causes of any kind, such as is involved in the idea of a “Fall”—make inevitable? In all these theories I have named, accordingly, it will be found that there is a great weakening down of the idea of guilt. That man attributes his acts to him- self, and feels guilty on account of them, is, of course, admitted; but instead of guilt being regarded as something objectively real, which God as well as man is bound to take account of, it comes to be viewed as something clinging only to the subjective consciousness,—a subjective judgment which the sinner passes on himself, to which nothing actual corresponds. Redemption thus becomes, in theories that admit Redemption, not the removal of guilt, but of the consciousness of guilt; and this, not by any real Divine pardon, but by the sinner being brought to see that his guilty fears misrepresented the actual state of God’s mind towards him. Thus it is in the theories of Schleiermacher, of Lipsius, and of Ritschl—in that of Ritschl most conspicuously. According to Schleiermacher, this subjective consciousness of guilt is a Divinely ordained thing to serve as a spur to make men seek Redemption, i.e. to be taken up into the perfect life of Christ. [367] Ritschl regards all sins as arising so much from ignorance as to be without real guilt in the eyes of God. God does not impute guilt on account of the ignorance in which we now live. The reason, therefore, why sins are pardonable is, that though the sinner imputes them to himself as offences, they are not properly sins at all, but acts done in ignorance. The guilt attaching to these acts is but a feeling in the sinner’s own consciousness, separating him from God, which the revelation of God’s Fatherly love in the Gospel enables him to overcome. [368] But I ask, Does this harmonise with the moral experience of the race—not to say with the statements of the Bible? Is it not the universal feeling of mankind that guilt is a terrible and stern reality, carrying with it objective and lasting effects, that it is as real as the “ought” is real, and that conscience, in passing judgment on our state, is but reflecting the judgment of God, to whom, ultimately, we are accountable? This weakening down and subjectivising of the idea of guilt is to me a strong condemnation of any theory from which it springs. These theories contradict the Christian view of sin, not simply in respect of its nature and of the degree of guilt attaching to it, but in the accounts they give of its origin. They regard that as a normal state for man in the beginning of his history, which the Christian view can only regard as an abnormal one. This is, indeed, the primary difference on which all the others depend. With minor differences, these theories all agree in regarding man’s original condition as one but little removed from the brute; the animal impulses are powerful and ungoverned. Is this a state which, from the Christian point of view, can ever be regarded as normal? It may be a normal state for the animal—can it be a normal state for a moral personality? In such a being, even from the first, the moral law asks for a subordination of the animal impulses to reason and conscience, for unity, and not for disorganisation and lawlessness. It asks for this, not as something to be attained through ages of development, but as something which ought to exist now, and counts the being in a wrong moral state who does not possess it. What, according to these theories themselves, is the judgment which the individual, when moral consciousness awakes, passes on himself? Is it not that he is in a wrong moral state, a state in which he condemns himself, and feels shame at the thought of being in it? Else whence this sense of moral dissatisfaction, which it is acknowledged that he feels, and feels the more keenly in proportion as his moral perceptions become more acute? It is not simply that he has an ideal which he has not reached: this is an experience to be found in every stage of development, even when the conscience implies no blame. But the contrast is between the idea of the “is” and of the “ought to be,” even in his present state, and this awakens the feeling of blame. [369] On what ground, further, must it be held that man must have commenced his career from this low and non-moral, if not positively immoral point? Is it a necessary part of a law of development, that a man can only reach that which he ought to be by passing through that which he ought not to be? Then evil has a relative justification, and the judgment which the immediate consciousness passes on it must be retracted or modified from a higher point of view. [370] We have only to compare the Christian estimate of sin with that to which this theory heads us, to see how profound is the difference between them. On this theory of development, when a man has reached the higher moral standpoint, he judges of his former state more leniently than he did at first; he ceases to pass condemnatory judgments on himself on account of it. In the Christian view, on the other hand, the higher the stage which a Christian man has reached, the evil and guilt of his former state will appear in a deeper dye; the more emphatically will he condemn it as one of lostness and shame. Which estimate is the more just? I do not think there is any difficulty, at least, in seeing which is most in accord with the idea of the moral. I cannot, therefore, think that the picture sometimes given us of man’s primeval state—that of a miserable, half-starved, naked wretch, just emerged from the bestial condition, torn with fierce passions, and fighting his way among his compeers with low-browed cunning—is one in harmony with the Christian view. And the adversaries of the Christian faith not only admit the discrepancy between their view and ours, but glory in it. Christianity, they say, requires you to accept one view of man’s origin, and science gives quite another. As it is sometimes put, the doctrine of Redemption rests on the doctrine of the Fall; and the doctrine of the Fall rests on the third chapter of Genesis. But science has exploded the third chapter of Genesis, so the whole structure falls to the ground. I acknowledge the issue, but it is not rightly put to say that the doctrine of the Fall rests on the third chapter of Genesis. The Christian doctrine of Redemption certainly does not rest on the narrative in Gen. iii., but it rests on the reality of the sin and guilt of the world, which would remain acts though the third chapter of Genesis never had been written. It would be truer to say that I believe in the third chapter of Genesis, or in the essential truth which it contains, because I believe in sin and Redemption, than to say that I believe in sin and Redemption because of the story of the Fall. [371] Put the third chapter of Genesis out of view, and you have the facts of the sin and disorder of the world to be accounted for, and dealt with, all the same. The question, however, arises, and it is a perfectly fair one to raise, Whatever we may say of the relation to the Christian view, is not this doctrine of man’s origin, which implies a pure point of beginning in the history of the race, expressly contradicted by the facts of anthropology? Do not the facts of modern science compel us to adopt a different view? Must we not conclude, if regard is had to the evidence, that man did begin as a savage, but a few degrees removed from the brutes, and has only gradually worked his way upwards to his present condition? In answer I would say, I certainly do not believe that this theory has been proved, and, expressing my own opinion, I do not think it is likely to be proved. If it were proved, I admit that it would profoundly modify our whole conception of the Christian system. Negatively, evolutionists have not proved that this was the original state of man. The missing link between man and brute has long been sought for, but as yet has been sought in vain. The oldest specimens of men known to science are just as truly men as any of their successors. [372] At the same time, we need not reject the hypothesis of evolution within the limits in which science has really rendered it probable. The only theory of evolution which necessarily conflicts with the Biblical view is that which supposes evolution to proceed by slow and gradual modifications—“insensible gradations,” as Mr. Spencer puts it—and this is a view to which many of the facts of science are themselves opposed. Evolution is not opposed to the appearance, at certain points in the chain of development, of something absolutely new, and it has already been mentioned that distinguished evolutionists, like Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, freely recognise this fact. [373] The “insensible gradation” theory, as respects the transition from ape to man, has not a single fact to support it. With man, from the point of view of the Bible, we have the rise of a new kingdom, just as truly as when life first entered,—the entrance on the stage of nature of a being self-conscious, rational, and moral, a being made in the image of God, and it is arbitrary to assume that this new beginning will not be marked by differences which distinguish it from the introduction of purely animal races. The evidence which is adduced from other quarters of the originally savage state of man is equally inconclusive. There is no reason to believe that existing savage races represent the earliest condition of mankind; rather there is evidence to show that they represent a degradation from a higher state. The traces of early man which geology has disinterred show, indeed, the existence in various parts of the world of races in a comparatively rude and uncivilised state; but they are found mostly in outlying regions, far from the original centres of distribution, and afford no good evidence of what man was when he first appeared upon the earth. [374] On the other hand, when we turn to the regions which tradition points to as the cradle of the race, we find great empires and civilisations which show no traces of those gradual advances from savagery which the modern theory requires, but which represent man as from the earliest period as in possession of faculties of thought and action of a high order. [375] The theory, again, that man began with the lowest Fetishism in religion, and only gradually raised himself through Polytheism to Monotheism, finds no support from the history of religions. [376] There is not the slightest proof, e.g., that the Vedic religion was developed out of fetish worship, or ghost worship, but many indications that it was preceded by a purer faith, in which the sense of the unity of God was not yet lost. The same may be said of the religions of the most ancient civilised peoples,—that while all, or nearly all, in the form in which we know them, are polytheistic and idolatrous, there is not any which does not show a substratum of monotheistic truth, and from which we cannot adduce many proofs of an earlier purer faith. [377] Another side from which the Christian view is contested, and the hypothesis of an originally savage condition of man is supposed to be supported, is the evidence that has been accumulated of an extreme antiquity of the human race. I am not aware that the Bible is committed to any definite date for the appearance of man upon the earth; but it will be generally felt that if the extreme views which some advocate on this subject, carrying back marks appearance some hundred thousand or two hundred thousand years, were accepted, it would, taken in connection with the comparatively recent origin of civilisation, militate against the view which we defended. I am free further to admit that, did no religious interest enter, and were the facts of science the only ones to be regarded, we would probably have been found yielding a ready assent to the hypothesis of a great antiquity. The religious interests at stake lead us, while of course acknowledging that whatever science really proves must be accepted as true, to be a little more careful in our examination of the proofs. And it is well we have been thus cautious; for, if we take the latest testimony of science as to what has been really proved, we find that the recent tendency is rather to retrench than to extend the enormous periods which were at first demanded; and that, while some geologists tell us that one or two hundred thousand years are needed, others, equally well informed, declare that ten thousand years would cover all the facts at present in evidence. [378] Professor Boyd Dawkins has said in a recent Address:—“The question of the antiquity of man is inseparably connected with the further question, Is it possible to measure the lapse of geological time in years? Various attempts have been made, and all, as it seems to me, have ended in failure. Till we know the rate of causation in the past, and until we can be sure that it is invariable and uninterrupted, I cannot see anything but failure in the future. Neither the rate of the erosion of the land by sub-aerial agencies, nor its destruction by oceanic currents, nor the rate of the deposit of stalagmite, or of the movement of the glaciers, have as yet given us anything at all approaching to a satisfactory date. We have only a sequence of events recorded in the rocks, with intervals the length of which we cannot measure. It is surely impossible to fix a date in term of years, either for the first appearance of man, or for any event outside the written record.” [379] I claim, then, that so far as the evidence of science goes, the Bible doctrine of a pure beginning of the race is not overturned. I do not enter into the question of how we are to interpret the third chapter of Genesis,—whether as history or allegory or myth, or, most probably of all, as old tradition clothed in oriental allegorical dress,—but the truth embodied in that narrative, viz. the fall of man from an original state of purity, I take to be vital to the Christian view. On the other hand, we must beware, even while holding to the Biblical account, of putting into the original state of man more that the narrative warrants. The picture given us of the first man in the Bible is primitive in every way. The Adam of the book of Genesis is not a being of advanced intellectual attainments, or endowed with an intuitive knowledge of the various arts and sciences. If his state is far removed from that of the savage, it is equally far removed from that of the civilised man. [380] The earliest steps in what we call civilisation are of later date, and are duly recorded, though they belong, not to the race of Seth, but to that of Cain. [381] It is presumed that man had high and noble faculties, a pure and harmonious nature, rectitude of will, capability of understanding his Creator’s instructions, and power to obey them. Beyond that we need not go. The essence of the Biblical view is summed up in the words of the Preacher: “God made man upright; but they sought out many inventions.” [382] II. The problem of natural evil: connection with moral evil. II. I pass to the consideration of the connection of moral with natural evil, reserving for discussion in a succeeding section a special aspect of that connection—the relation of sin to death. I begin by a brief consideration of the problem of natural evil, as such. It is not sin only, but natural evil—the existence of pain and suffering in the world—which is made the ground of an impeachment of God’s justice and goodness. Everyone will remember Mr. J. S. Mill’s terrible indictment of nature on this score; [383] and Pessimism has given new voice to the plaints which have always been heard of the misery and suffering bound up with life, On the general question, I would only like again to emphasise what I said at the outset of the extent to which this problem of natural evil is bound up with that of sin. Apart from all theological prepossessions, we have only to cast our eyes abroad to see how large a part of the total difficulty this connection with moral evil covers. Take away from the history of humanity all the evils which have come on man through his own folly, sin, and vice; through the follies and vices of society; through tyranny, misgovernment, and oppression; through the cruelty and inhumanity of man to man; and how vast a portion of the problem of evil would already be solved! What myriads of lives have been sacrificed at the shrines of Bacchus and of lust; what untold misery has been inflicted on the race, to gratify the unscrupulous ambitions of ruthless conquerors; what tears and groans have sprung from the institution of slavery; what wretchedness is hourly inflicted on human hearts by domestic tyranny, private selfishness, the preying of the strong upon the weak, dishonesty and chicanery in society! If great civilisations have fallen, to what has the result been commonly due, if not to their own vices and corruptions, which sapped and destroyed their vigour, and made them an easy prey to ruder and stronger races? [384] If society witnesses great volcanic eruptions like the French Revolution, is it not when evil has reached such a height through the long-accumulating iniquities of centuries that it can no longer be borne, and the explosion effects a remedy which could not otherwise be achieved? If all the suffering and sorrow which follow directly or indirectly from human sin could be abstracted, what a happy world, after all, this would be! Yet there seem to be natural evils which are independent of sin, and we must endeavour to look the problem suggested by them fairly in the face. First of all, I would say that this problem of natural evil can hardly be said to meet us in the inorganic world at all, i.e. regarding it merely as such. [385] We see there what may appear to us like disharmony and disorder; convulsion, upheaval, the letting loose of titanic forces which work havoc and destruction; but except in relation to sentient existences, we cannot properly speak of these as evil. We may wonder why they should be, but when we see what ends are served in the economy of nature by this apparently lawless clash and conflict of forces, we may reconcile ourselves to it as part of a system, which, on the whole, is very good. [386] Neither does this problem properly meet us in connection with the organic world, so far as it is not sentient, e.g., in connection with the law of decay and death in the vegetable world. When it is said that, according to the Bible, there was no death before Adam, it is to be remembered that the Bible speaks of a vegetable creation, which was evidently intended to be perishable, [387] —which, in fact, was given for food to animals and men. We feel no difficulty in this. The plants are part of nature. They flower, seed, decay. They fall under the law of all finite, merely natural existences, in being subject to corruptibility and death. When we rise to animal life, the problem does appear, for here we have sentiency and suffering. Yet abstracting for a moment from this sentiency, the same thing applies to animals as to plants. They are finite, merely natural creatures, not ends in themselves, but subserving some general use in the economy of nature, and, by the law of their creation, exposed to corruption and death. flow is this modified by the fact of sentiency! I think we have only to look at the matter fairly to see that it is not modified in any way which is incompatible with the justice and goodness of the Creator. Leaving out of reckoning the pain of human life, and the sufferings inflicted on the animal world by man, we might fairly ask the pessimist to face the question, Is the world of sentient beings an unhappy one? Look at the fish in the stream, the bird in the air, the insect on the wing, the creatures of the forest,—is their lot one of greater pleasure or pain? I do not think it is unhappy. We speak of “the struggle for existence,” but is this necessarily pain? The capacity or pleasure, indeed, implies as its counterpart the susceptibility of pain, but whereas the avenues for pleasure are many, the experience of pain is minimised by the suddenness with which death comes, the absence of the power of reflection, the paralysis of feeling through fascination or excitement, etc. [388] I have been struck with observing the predominatingly optimistic way in which the Bible, and especially Jesus, all through regard the natural and sentient world, dwelling on its brightness, its beauty, its rejoicing, the care of Providence over the creatures, their happy freedom, [389] —in striking contrast with the morbid brooding over the aspects of struggle in nature which fill our modern treatises. [390] The thing which strikes us most as a difficulty, perhaps, is the universal preying of species on species —“nature red in tooth and claw” [391] —which seems so strange a feature in a government assumed to have for its motive beneficence. But the difficulty is modified by the consideration that food in some way must be provided for the creatures; and if sentiency is better than insentiency, greater beneficence is shown in giving the bird or insect its brief span of life than in with holding existence from it altogether. The present plan provides for the multiplication of sentient creatures. to an extent which would not be possible on any other system; it provides, too, since death must rule over such organisms, for their removal from nature in the way which least pollutes nature with. corruption. [392] The real question which underlies the problem in relation to the natural world is,—Is there to be room in the universe for any grades of existence short of the highest? In nature, as the evolutionist is fond of showing, we find every blank space filled—every corner and niche that would be otherwise empty occupied by some form of life. Why should it not be so? If, in addition to the higher orders of being, lower grades of sentient existence are possible, enhancing the total sum of life and happiness, why should they not also be created? Why—to give our thoughts for a moment the widest possible range—if there is in the universe, as Dorner supposes, “a world standing in the light of eternity, a world of pure spirits, withdrawn from all relation to succession” [393] (the angelic world), should there not be also a material and time-developing world? Why, in this temporal world, should there be only the highest creature, man, and not also an infinity of creatures under him, stocking the seas, rivers, plains, forests, and taking possession of every vacant opening and nook which present themselves? Or, in a developing world, could the highest be reached except through the lower—the spiritual except through the natural? Is not this the law of Scripture, as well as of nature—“that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual”? [394] The mere fact that in a world of this kind the denizens would be finite and perishable—exposed to incidental pains, as well as constituted for pleasures—would not be a reason for not creating it, unless the pains were a predominant feature, and constituted a surplusage over the pleasures. But this we do not acknowledge to be the case. The pleasures of the animal world we take to be the rule; the pains are the exception. [395] It is when we rise from the animal world to the consideration of natural evil in relation to man, that we first meet with the problem in a form which constitutes it a formidable difficulty. For man, unlike the animals, is an end to himself; pain means more to him than it does to them; death, in particular, seems a contradiction of his destiny; and it is not easy to understand why he should be placed in a world in which he is naturally, nay necessarily, exposed to these evils. The natural disturbances which we formerly noticed—floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and the like—now assume a new aspect as elements in a world of which man is to be the inhabitant, and where he may be called upon to suffer through their agency. [396] This is really a serious problem, and we have to ask whether the Biblical view affords any clue to the solution of it, and whether that solution will sustain the test of reason and of fact? It is scarcely an adequate solution of this problem of natural evil and death as it affects man, though, no doubt, a profound element in the solution, to point to the disciplinary and other wholesome uses which misfortune and suffering are fitted to subserve in the moral education of man. This is the line followed by most earnest thinkers in trying to explain the mystery of suffering in the world, and it rests on the true thought that there is a Divinely ordained connection between the pains we are called upon to suffer and the ends of our highest life. [397] Without trials and difficulties, it is urged, where were progress? without checks to self-will, where were the lessons of submission to a higher will? without experience of resistance, where were the stimulus to effort? without danger and misfortune, where were courage, manhood, and endurance? without pain, where were sympathy? [398] without sorrow and distress, where would the opportunity for self-sacrifice be? This is quite true, but does it go to the root of the matter? Does it explain all? Because suffering and death, as existing in the world, have an educating and purifying effect; because, as may be freely granted, they have a power of developing a type of character greater and nobler than could have been developed without them (a glimpse of theodicy in the permission of evil at all); because they serve for purposes of test and trial where character is already formed, and aid its yet ampler growth [399] —does it follow that a world such as this, with its manifold disorders, would have been a suitable abode for an unfallen race; or that it would have been righteous to expose such a race to these calamities; or that, in the case of pure beings, less violent and painful methods of education would not have sufficed? [400] Of course, if this method of arguing were admitted, the existence of moral evils would have to be justified on the same ground, for in conflict with these, even more than with outward misfortune, is the highest type of character developed. It will be observed, also, that the argument rests largely, though not wholly, on the assumption of fault in human nature to be corrected (self-will, selfishness, etc.), and thus already presupposes sin; it does not, for instance, tell what a world would have been into which no sin had entered. But do even the advocates of this explanation of natural evil abide by their own thesis? Pain, it is said, begets tenderness and sympathy; suffering engenders philanthropy; the presence of evils in the world awakens noble self-sacrificing efforts for their removal—summons man, as Pfleiderer puts it, to fellowship with “the aim of God Himself, viz. to advance goodness, and to overcome evil in the world.” [401] Then these are evils, and, notwithstanding their advantages, we are to treat them as things which would be better absent, and do our utmost to remove them. A concrete case in this connection is worth a good deal of argument, and I take it from Naville. He tells of a letter he received, written from Zurich, at a time when the cholera was ravaging the city. “My correspondent,” he says, “told me that he had seen sad things—the results of selfishness and fear; but he also told me that so much courage, devotedness, and regard for the good of others had been brought out under the pressure of the malady, that different ranks of society had been so drawn together by the inspiration of generous sentiments, that he would not for the world have been absent from his native place, and so have missed witnessing such a spectacle.” [402] Shall we then, because of these salutary effects, wish for the prevalence of cholera? Or because wars bring out noble examples of heroism, shall we desire to see wars prevail? The question has only to be asked to be answered, and it shows that this mode of justifying natural evil leaves much yet to be accounted for. It has just been seen that even this mode of explaining the existence of natural evil, and the use made of it in the moral government of God, presupposes, to some extent, the existence of sin. This yields a point of transition to the Biblical view, in which this solidarity of man with his outward world, and the consequent connection of natural with moral evil, is a central and undeniable feature. We are not, indeed, at liberty to trace a strict relation between the sins of individuals and the outward calamities that befall them; but Christ’s warning on this subject by no means contradicts the view that there is an intimate connection between natural and moral evils, and that the former are often used by God as the punishment of the latter. It is one of the most deeply ingrained ideas in the Bible, that physical evils are often used by God for the punishment of individual and national wickedness, and Christ Himself expressly endorses this view in His own predictions of the approaching judgments on Jerusalem. [403] He warns us only that the proposition,—Sin is often punished with physical evils—is by no means convertible with the other,—All physical evils are the punishment of individual sins. Nor is this teaching of Scripture to be explained away, as it is by Lipsius, Pfleiderer, and Ritschl, as meaning merely that the evil conscience subjectively regards these visitations as retributive, though objectively they have no such character, but simply flow from the natural course of events. [404] Similarly, the expression, “All things work together for good to them that love God,” [405] is explained as meaning that things work together for good to the believer, because, whatever the course of events, he is sure to profit by them. This is not the Biblical view, and it is not a reasonable one for those to take, who, like the above-named writers, admit a government of the world for moral ends. Once allow a relation between the natural and the moral in the government of God, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the course of outward events is directed with a regard to the good and evil conduct of the subjects of that government. A deeper question, however, which lies behind this immediate one, of the place of natural evils in the moral government of God is, Is nature itself in a normal condition? The Bible, again, undeniably answers this question in the negative, and it is important for us to ascertain in what sense precisely it does so. The most explicit passage in the New Testament is perhaps that in Rom. viii. 19-23, where the Apostle Paul expressly declares, “For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” The plain implication of this passage is that nature is a sufferer with man on account of sin; that,, as I expressed it above, there is a solidarity between man and the outward world, both in his Fall and his Redemption. So far the passage is an echo of the statement of Genesis, that the earth lies under a curse on account of human sin. Is this view scientifically tenable, or is it not a baseless dream, directly contradicted by the facts already conceded of physical disturbance, decay, and death in the world, long ere man appeared in it? I do not think it is. This implication of creation in the effects of human sin, though science certainly cannot prove it, is an idea by no means inadmissible, or in contradiction with known facts. 1. The view has often been suggested—is maintained, e.g., by Dorner and Delitzsch [406] —that the constitution of nature had from the first a teleological relation to sin; that sin did not enter the world as an unforeseen accident, but, as foreseen, was provided for in the arrangements of the world; that creation, in other words, had from the beginning an anticipative reference to sin. This view would explain maw, things that seem mysterious inn the earlier stages of creation, and falls in with other truths of Scripture, to which attention will subsequently be directed. [407] 2. I do not feel, however, that I need to avail myself of this hypothesis. All that is essential in the Apostle’s statement can be conserved without going back to pre-Adamic ages, or to vegetable decay, and animal suffering and death. We gain the best key to the passage if we keep to the meaning of his own word “vanity” (mataio tēs)—profitlessness— as expressive of that to which creation was subjected. “It is not said,” remarks Bishop Ellicott, “that the creation was subject to death or corruption, though both lie involved in the expression, but to something more frightfully generic, to something almost worse than non-existence,—to purposelessness, to an inability to realise its natural tendencies, and the ends for which it was called into being, to baffled endeavour and mocked expectations, to a blossoming and not bearing fruit, a pursuing and not attaining, yea, and as the analogies of the language of the original significantly imply, to a searching and never finding.” [408] Thus interpreted, the apostle¹s words convey the idea that nature is in a state of arrested development through sin, is frustrated of its true end, and has a destiny before it which sin does not permit it to attain. There is an arrest, delay, or back-putting through sin, which begets in the creature a sense of bondage, and an earnest longing for deliverance. [409] This certainly harmonises sufficiently well with the general impression nature makes upon us, which has found expression in the poetry and literature of all ages. 3. The earth is under “bondage to corruption” in another way,—in the very presence of man and his sin upon it; in being the abode of a sinful race; in being compelled, through its laws and agencies, to subserve the purposes of man¹s sin; in being perverted from its true uses in the service of his lusts and vices; in the suffering of the animal creation through his cruelty; in the blight, famine, earthquake, etc., to which it is subjected in consequence of his sin, and as the means of punishment of it. For it by not means follows that because these things were found in the world in the making, they were intended to be, or continue, in the world as made, or would have been found had sin not entered it. Science may affirm, it can certainly never prove, that the world is in a normal state in these respects, or that even under existing laws a better balance of harmony could not be maintained, had the Creator so willed it. III. Culmination of this problem in the question of the relation of sin to death. III. This whole discussion of the connection of natural with moral evil sums itself up in the consideration of one special problem, in which the contending views may be said to be brought to a distinct and decisive issue—I mean the relation of sin to death. Is human death—that crowning evil, which carries so many other sorrows in its train—the result of sin. or is it not? Here, again, it is hardly necessary for me to say, there is a direct contradiction between the Biblical and the “modern” view, and it is for us very carefully to inquire whether the Pauline statement, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all have sinned,” [410] enters into the essence of the Christian view, or whether, as some seem to think, it is an excrescence which may be stripped off. Now, so far from regarding this relation of human death to sin as a mere accident of the Christian view, which may be dropped without detriment to its substance, I am disposed to look on it as a truth most fundamental and vital—organically connected with the entire Christian system. Its importance comes out most clearly when we consider it in the light of the Christian doctrine of Redemption. The Bible, as we shall immediately see, knows nothing of an abstract immortality of the soul, as the schools speak of it; nor is its Redemption a Redemption of the soul only, but of the body as well. It is a Redemption of man in his whole complex personality—body and soul together. It was in the body that Christ rose from the dead; in the body that He has ascended to heaven; in the body that He lives and reigns there for evermore. It is His promise that, if He lives, we shall live also; [411] and this promise includes a pledge of the resurrection of the body. The truth which underlies this is, that death for man is an effect of sin. It did not lie in the Creator’s original design for man that he should die,—that these two component parts of his nature, body and soul, should ever be violently disrupted and severed, as death now severs them. Death is an abnormal fact in the history of the race; and Redemption is, among other things, the undoing of this evil, and the restoration of man to his normal completeness as a personal being. That man was originally a mortal being neither follows from the fact of death as a law of the animal creation, nor from its present universality. It is, no doubt, an essential part of the modern anti-Christian view, that man is a dying creature, and always has been. This goes with the view that man is simply an evolution from the animal, and falls under the same law of death as the rest of the animal creation. But I have shown some reasons for not admitting the premiss, [412] and therefore I cannot assent to the conclusion. There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that in its view death entered the animal world as a consequence of the sin of man. But, with the advent of man upon the scene, there was, as remarked in an earlier part of the Lecture, the introduction of something new. There now appeared at the head of creation a moral and spiritual being—a being made in God’s image—a rational and accountable being—a being for the first time capable of moral life, and bearing within him infinite possibilities of progress and happiness; and it does not follow that because mere animals are subject to a law of death, a being of this kind must be. More than this, it is the distinction of man from the animals that he is immortal, and they are not. He bears in his nature the various evidences that he has a destiny stretching out far into the future—into eternity; and many even, who hold that death is not a consequence of sin, do not dispute that his soul is immortal. But here is the difficulty in which such a view is involved. The soul is not the whole of the man. It is a false view of the constitution of human nature to regard the body as a mere appendage to the soul, or to suppose that the human being can be equally complete whether he has his body, or is deprived of it. This is not the Biblical view, nor, I venture to say, is it the view to which the facts of modern psychology and physiology point. If anything is evident, it is that soul and body are made for each other, that the perfect life for man is a corporeal one; that he is not pure spirit, but incorporated spirit. The soul is capable of separation from the body; but in that state it is in an imperfect and mutilated condition. Thus it is always represented in the Bible, and heathen feeling coincides with this view in its representations of the cheerless, sunless, joyless, ghost-like state of Hades. If, then, it is held that man was naturally constituted for immortality, how can it be maintained, with any show of consistency, that he stood originally under a law of death? That the animal should die is natural. But for the rational, moral agent, death is something unnatural—abnormal; the violent rupture, or separation, or tearing apart, so to speak, of two parts of his nature which, in the Creator’s design, were never intended to be sundered. There is, therefore, profound truth in the Biblical representation, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”—“Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” [413] Some other way of leaving the world, no doubt, there would have been—some Enoch or Elijah-like translation, or gradual transformation of a lower corporeity into a higher, but not death as we know it. [414] The true Biblical doctrine of immortality, then, I think, includes the following points:— 1. It rests on the Biblical doctrine of human nature. According to the Bible, and according to fact, man is a compound being—not, like God and the angels, a pure spirit, but an embodied spirit, a being made up of body and of soul. The soul, it is true, is the higher part of human nature, the seat of personality, and of mental, moral, and spiritual life. Yet it is intended and adapted for life in the body, and body and soul together make the man—the complete human being. 2. It was no part of the Creator’s design for man in his ideal constitution that body and soul should ever be separated. The immortality man was to enjoy was an immortality in which the body was to have its share. This is the profound truth in the teaching of the Bible when it says that, as respects man, death is the result of sin. Had sin not entered we must suppose that man—the complete man—would have enjoyed immortality; even his body, its energies replenished from vital forces from within, being exempt from decay, or at least not decaying till a new and more spiritual tenement for the soul had been prepared. With the entrance of sin, and departure of holiness from the soul, this condition ceased, and the body sank, as part of general nature, under the law of death. 3. The soul in separation from the body is in a state of imperfection and mutilation. When a human being loses one of his limbs, we regard him as a mutilated being. Were he to lose all his limbs, we would regard him as worse mutilated still. So, when the soul is entirely denuded of its body, though consciousness and memory yet remain, it must still be regarded—and in the Bible is regarded—as subsisting in an imperfect condition, a condition of enfeebled life, diminished powers, restricted capacities of action—a state, in short, of deprivation. The man whose life is hid with Christ in God will no doubt with that life retain the blessedness that belongs to it even in the state of separation from the body—he will “be with Christ, which is far better”; [415] but it is still true that so long as he remains in that disembodied state, he wants part of himself, and cannot be perfectly blessed, as he will be after his body, in renewed and glorified form, is restored to him. 4. The last point, therefore, in the Biblical doctrine is, that true immortality is through Redemption, and that this Redemption embraces the Resurrection of the body. [416] It is a complete Redemption, a Redemption of man in his whole personality, and not simply of a part of man. This is a subject which will be considered afterwards. It is enough for the present to have shown that the Biblical doctrines of man’s nature, of the connection of sin and death, of Redemption, and of the true immortality, cohere together and form a unity—are of a piece. _________________________________________________________________ [323] Three Essays on Religion, pp. 186, 187. Cf. pp. 24–41, 112, etc. See Note A.—Defects in Creation: an Argument against Theism. [324] This is a point which Mr. Mill overlooks. [325] Cf. Ott’s Le Probleme du Mal, pp. 1–5, 98, 99. [326] Cf. Sully’s Pessimism, p. 399. He adopts the term. [327] Social Statics, p. 79. [328] Anti-Theistic Theories, p. 294. [329] Selbstzersetzung des Christenthusms, p. 51. Its characteristic mark, he thinks, is “the pessimistic conviction of the unworthiness of this world to exist.” Schopenhauer’s language is similar. “Let no one think,” he says, “that Christianity is favourable to optimism; for in the Gospels world and evil are used as almost synonymous.” “The inmost kernel of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism.”—Die Welt als Wille, etc., i. p. 420; iii. p. 420 (Eng. trans.). [330] Schopenhauer says: “Indeed, the fundamental characteristic and the prōton pseudos of Rousseau’s whole philosophy is this, that in the place of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the original depravity of the human race, he puts an original goodness and unlimited perfectibility of it, which has only been led astray by civilisation and its consequences, and then founds upon this his optimism and humanism.”—Die Welt als Wille, etc., iii. p. 398. [331] Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Book i.—“On the Indwelling of the Evil Principle along with the Good, or on the Radical Evil in Human Nature.” Cf. Caird’s Philosophy of Kant, ii. pp. 566–568. [332] Mr. Flairs says:—“Thus we see what human progress means. It means throwing off the brute-inheritance—gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that are by and by to make struggle needless. . . . The ape and the tiger in human nature will become extinct. Theology has had much to say about original sin. This original sin is neither more nor less than the brute-inheritance which every man carries with him, and the process of evolution is an advance towards true salvation.”—Man’s Destiny, p. 103. “Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the seminal feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.” TENNYSON, In Memoriam. [333] Rom. vii. 23. [334] This word, I believe, has come from Comte. [335] Cf. Stephen’s Science of Ethics, chap. iii. sec. 4, “Social Tissue.” [336] Sorley’s Ethics of Naturalism, pp. 123, 135. [337] Perhaps the moat forcible illustrations of heredity are to be found in Maudsley’s works.” Most certain is it,” he says, “that men are not bred well or ill by accident, little as they reck of it in practice, any more than are the animals, the select breeding of which they make such a careful study; that there are laws of hereditary action, working definitely in direct transmission of qualities, or indirectly through combinations and repulsions, neutralisations and modifications of qualities; and that it is by virtue of these laws determining the moral and physical constitution of every individual that a good result ensues in one case, a had result in another.”—Body and Will, p. 248. [338] Recht. und Ver. iii. pp. 317–332 (3rd ed.).”As a personal propensity in the life of each individual,” he says, “it originates, so far as our observation reaches, out of the sinful desire and action which as such finds its adequate ground in the self-determination of the individual will”—P. 331. [339] Mr. J. J. Murphy says of Original Sin: “It is not a revealed doctrine, but an observed fact; a fact of all human experience, and witnessed to as strongly by classical as by Biblical writers, as strongly by heathens and atheists as by Christians.”—Scientific Basis of Faith, p. 262. Pfleiderer speaks of “the undeniable fact of experience, that, from the very dawn of moral life, we find evil present in us as a power, the origin of which accordingly must be beyond the conscious exercise of our freedom,” as “a fact on which indeterminism, Pelagian or rationalistic, must ever suffer shipwreck.”—Religionsphilosophie, iv. p. 28 (Eng. trans.). [340] Hegel also uses this formula, but ambiguously. “What ought not to be,” means with Hegel, “what ought to be done away.”Cf. Julius Muller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, i. p. 322 (Eng. trans.). See on Hegel’s views later. [341] “For how can anything be called evil, unless it deviate from an obligatory good, and be therefore a violation of what ought to be (seinsollendes)—of the holy law.”—Dorner, System of Doctrine, ii. p. 308 (Eng. trans.). [342] Exemplified in the Parable of the Prodigal (Luke xv. 11ff.). [343] Cf. Martensen’s Christian Ethics, i. secs. 26–28 (Eng. trans. pp. 94–102). [344] On the development and forms of sin, see Muller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, i. pp. 147–182; Dorner, System of Doctrine, ii. pp. 393–397; Martensen, Christian Ethics, i. pp. 102–108, etc. (Eng. trans.) [345] 1 John iii. 4. [346] Rom. vii. 13-25. [347] Rom. vii. 22, 23. On the various views of the Pauline use of the term sarx with criticism of these, see Dr. Dickson’s St. Paul’s Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit (Baird Lectures, 1883).Cf. Dorner, System of Doctrine, ii. p. 319 (Eng. trans.). [348] Rom. vii. 12. [349] Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, ii. p. 233 (Eng. trans.) Cf. Welt als Wille, etc., i. pp. 452–461; iii. pp. 420–454. [350] That is, on the supposition that the Creator knew what He was about. [351] See Note B.—Dualistic Theories of the Origin of Evil. [352] See his theory in Theologische Ethik, 2nd ed., i. secs. 40, 104–130. Cf. his Still Hours (Eng. trans.), pp. 185, 186. He says: “The development of man passes through stages of sin. . . . If sin is a necessary point in human development, it is not on that account merely negative. . . . Evil in the course of development, or sin, is not in itself a condition of the development of the good; but it belongs to the idea of creation, as a creation out of nothing, that the created personality cannot detach itself from material nature otherwise than by being clothed upon with matter, and being in this way altered, rendered impure or sinful. This is the necessary commencement of the creation of man, but only its mere commencement, which comes to a close in the Second Adam. . . . The necessity of a transition through sin is not directly an ethical, but rather a physical necessity.”The theory is criticised by Muller, i. pp. 146, 147 (Eng. trans.); and Dorner, System of Doctrine, ii. pp. 375–380 (Eng. trans.). [353] Philosophy of History (Eng. trans.), p. 333.Cf. Religionsphilosophie, ii. pp. 264–266. [354] See Note C.—Hegel’s Doctrine of Sin. [355] Der christ. Glaube, secs. 66–69.Cf. Muller, i. pp. 341–359, on “Schleiermacher’s View of the Essence and Origin of Sin”; and Dorner, System of Doctrine, iii. pp. 34–38 (Eng. trans.). [356] Dogmatik, pp 374, 375. [357] Cf. his Unterricht, 3rd ed. p. 26. This, according to him, creates only “a possibility and probability” of sin; but it is a possibility which, as shown below, in the early stages of man’s history, cannot fail to be realised. [358] Cf. for different forms of the evolution theory, Darwin’s Descent of Man, Stephen’s Science of Ethics, Spencer’s Data of Ethics; and see criticism in Sorley’s Ethics of Naturalism, chaps. v. to viii. [359] Mr. Stephen substitutes the “health” for the “happiness” of society as the moral end (p. 366).But the health is in order to the happiness, and it is presumed that the two tend to coincide (pp. 82, 83). “Morality is a statement of the conditions of social welfare,” “the sum of the preservative instincts of society,” “virtue is a condition of social welfare,” etc. (p. 217). Strong in his criticism of the ordinary utilitarianism, Mr. Stephen is weak in his attempt to provide a substitute, or show how the moral can possibly arise out of the non-moral.See Mr. Sorley’s criticism, Ethics of Naturalism, chap. viii. [360] Cf. with this general sketch Bradley’s Ethical Studies (see pp. 261–265 on “The Origin of the Bad Self”: and Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics, Book iii., on “the Moral Ideal and Moral Progress.” Green finds the moral end in rational ‘’self-satisfaction,”—a conception into which it is difficult to avoid importing a subtle kind of hedonism; Bradley less objectionably finds it in “self-realisation” [361] Cf. the references to Phil. des Rechts, sec. 139, in Muller, p. 392, and see Note C. [362] Der christ. Glaube, sec. 68, 3. [363] Der christ. Glaube, secs. 80, 81. [364] Dogmatik, pp. 376, 377, secs. 475–477. [365] Unterricht, p. 26; and Recht. und Ver. iii. p. 358. [366] Recht. und Ver. iii. 3rd ed. p. 360. [367] Der christ. Glaube, secs. 80, 81.Cf. Muller, pp. 355, 356.The views of Lipsius may be seen in his Dogmatik, secs. 768–771. “Justification,” he says, “in respect of human sin, is the removal of the consciousness of guilt as a power separating from God, . . . the certainty awakened in him by the Spirit of God present in man of his fellowship in life and love with God, as something graciously restored in him by God Himself.”—P. 690. [368] Recht. und Ver. iii. pp. 46, 52, 56, 83; 306, 307; 356–363, etc.See Note D.—Ritschl’s Doctrine of Guilt. [369] Dorner truly says: “Evil does not consist in man’s not yet being initially what he will one day become; for then evil must be called normal, and can only be esteemed exceptionable by an error. Evil is something different from mere development. . . . Evil is the discord of man with his idea, as, and so far as, that idea should be realised at the given moment. . . . Sin is not being imperfect at all, hut the contravention of what ought to be at a given moment, and of what can lay claim to unconditioned worth”—System of Doctrine, iii. pp. 36, 37. [370] Dorner says: “If evil is supposed to consist only in development, which God has willed in His character as Creator, then its absolute wrongfulness must come to an end The non-realisation of the idea cannot be blameworthy in itself, if the innate law of life itself prescribes progressiveness of development.”—System of Doctrine, p. 264. [371] Cf. the suggestive remarks in Auberlen’s The Divine Revelation, pp. 175–185 (Eng. trans.). [372] Professor Dana said, in 1875: “No remains of fossil man bear evidence to less perfect erectness of structure than in civilised man, or to any nearer approach to the man ape in essential characteristics. . . . This is the more extraordinary, in view of the fact that from the lowest limits in existing man there are all possible gradations up to the highest; while below that limit there is an abrupt fall to the ape level, in which the cubic capacity of the brain is one-half less. If the links ever existed, their annihilation, without trace, is so extremely improbable that it may be pronounced impossible. Until some are found, science cannot assert that they ever existed.”—Geology, p. 603. Virchow said, in 1879: “ On the whole, we must readily acknowledge that all fossil type of a lower human development is absolutely wanting.Indeed, if we take the total of all fossil men that have been found hitherto and compare them with what the present offers, then we can maintain with certainty that among the present generation there is a much larger number of relatively low-type individuals than among the fossils hitherto known. . . . We cannot designate it as a revelation of science that man descended from the ape or any other animal.”—Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft, pp. 29, 31. No new facts have been discovered since, requiring a modification of these statements. [373] Not only in respect of his mind, hut in respect also of his body, Mr. Wallace has contended that the appearance of man cannot he explained on Darwinian principles. He argues from the brain of primitive man as having a development beyond his actual attainments, suggesting the idea of “a surplusage of power; of an instrument beyond the wants of its possessor”; from his hairless back, “thus reversing the characteristics of all other mammalia”; from the peculiar construction of the foot and hand, the latter “containing latent capacities and powers which are unused by savages ”; from the “wonderful power, range, flexibility, and sweetness of the musical sounds producible by the human larynx,” etc.—Natural Selection, pp. 332, 330. [374] See Note E.—Alleged Primitive Savagery of Mankind. [375] Cf. Canon Rawlinson’s Origin of Nations, Part I., “On Early Civilisations”; and the same author’s “Antiquity of Man Historically Considered,” in Present Day Tracts, No. 9. [376] Cf. Note A to Lecture III. [377] See Note F—Early Monotheistic Ideas. [378] See Note G.—The Antiquity of Man and Geological Time. [379] Report of Address to British Association, Sept. 6, 1888. Professor Dawkins is himself an advocate of man’s great antiquity. [380] Cf. Dawson, Modern Science in Bible Lands, iv., “Early Man in Genesis.” [381] Gen. iv. 16-22. [382] Eccl. vii. 29. Cf. Delitzsch, in loc. [383] Three Essays, pp. 29–31: “In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature’s everyday performances,” etc. [384] Cf. Martineau, Study of Religion, ii. pp. 131–135 (Book ii. chap. iii.). [385] Cf. Ott, Le Probleme du Mal, p. 18; Naville, do., p. 50 (Eng. trans.). [386] These disturbances, however, present a very different aspect when viewed in relation to man. See below. [387] Gen. i. 11, 12 (seed producing). [388] We may exaggerate, too, the power of sensibility in the lower species of animals.See on this, Mivart, Lessons from Nature, pp. 368, 369. “Though, of course, animals feel, they do not know that they feel, nor reflect upon the sufferings they have had, or will have to endure. . . . If a wasp, while enjoying a meal of honey, has its slender waist suddenly snipped through and its whole abdomen cut away, it does not allow such a trifle for a moment to interrupt its pleasurable repast, but it continues to rapidly devour the savoury food, which escapes as rapidly from its mutilated thorax.”—P. 369. [389] E.g. the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. vi. 26.Another note as respects creation as a whole is struck by Paul in Rom., viii. 19-22. [390] Cf. for an example of this a passage quoted from De Maistre by Naville, p. 54: “In the vast domain of living Nature open violence reigns, a kind of fury which arms all creatures in mutua funera,“ etc. [391] Tennyson, In Memoriam, lv. [392] Martineau says: “I will be content with a single question, How would you dispose of the dead animals . . . . If no creature would touch muscular fibre, or adipose tissue, or blood, and all animated nature had to he provided with cemeteries like ours, we should be baffled by an unmanageable problem; the streams would be poisoned, and the forests and the plains would be as noisome as the recent battlefield. Nature, in her predatory tribes, has appointed a sanitary commission, and in her carrion-feeders a burial board, far more effective than those which watch over our villages and cities.”—Study of Religion, ii. p. 95. See his whole treatment of this problem. [393] System of Doctrine, ii. pp. 33–99 (Eng. trans.).Dorner mentions the idea of Aquinas of “a complete world, exhibiting without a break all possible forms of life.”—P. 99. [394] 1 Cor. xv. 46. [395] The difficulty is “modified,” as said, but not altogether removed, by these considerations, especially when the world is viewed in its teleological relations to man, and when stress is laid, not only on the mere fact of the preying of one creature on another, but on some of the kinds of creatures with which the earth is stocked, and on the manner of their warfare; on their hideousness, repulsiveness, fierceness, unnecessary cruelty, etc. See a powerful statement in Martensen’s Jacob Bohme, pp. 217–222 (Eng. trans.). [396] To a certain extent these disturbances affect animals also, hut in these cases. the question is subordinate. [397] Thus Rothe, Pfleiderer, Martineau, Ott, etc. [398] Cf. Browning, Ferishtah’s Fancies—“Mihrab Shah.” [399] The theodicy in Job takes this form. [400] Cf. Lotze, Outlines of Philosophy of Religion (Eng. trans.), pp. 124, 125; end Browning, La Saisiaz, Works, xiv. p. 181:— “What, no way but this that man may learn and lay to heart how rife? Life were with delights would only death allow their taste to life? Must the rose sigh ‘Pluck—I perish!’ must the eve weep ‘Gaze—I fade!’ —Every sweet warn ‘Ware my bitter!’ every shine hid ‘Wait my shade’? Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die? Needs there groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy— Multitudinously wretched that we, wretched too, may guess What a preferable state were universal happiness?” [401] Religionsphilosophie, iv. p. 63 (Eng. trans.). [402] Problem of Evil, p. 65 (Eng. trans.). [403] Matt. xxiii. 35; cf. John v. 14: “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” [404] Cf., e.g., Ritschl Recht. und Ver. iii. p. 334; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, iv. pp. 42–44. [405] Rom. viii. 28. [406] Dorner, System of Doctrine, ii. p. 67 (Eng. trans.); Delitzsch, New Commentary on Genesis, i. e. 103 (Eng. trans.).”The whole of the six days’ creation,” says the latter, “is, so to speak, supralapsarian, he. so constituted that the consequences of this foreseen fall of man were taken into account.” [407] This theory is ingeniously argued out in an interesting chapter in Bushnell’s Nature and the Supernatural, chap. vii., “Anticipative Consequences.” Cf. also Hugh Miller’s Footprints of the Creator, pp. 268ff.; “Final Causes; their Bearing on Geologic History “; and Hitchcock, Religion of Geology, Lecture III. I have not touched on another theory, beginning with Bohme, which connects the present state of creation with yet earlier, i.e. daemonic evil. The most striking statement of this theory is perhaps in Martensen, Jacob Bohme (Eng. trans.), pp. 217–222—a passage already referred to. See the theory criticised in Reusch’s Nature and the Bible, Book i. chap. xvii. (Eng. trans.). [408] Destiny of the Creature, p. 7. [409] Thus also Dorner: “So far, then, as sin retards this perfection, it may certainly be said that Nature is detained by sin in a state of corruption against its will, as well as that it has been placed in a long-enduring state of corruptibleness, which, apart from sin, was unnecessary, if the assimilation of Nature by spirit could have been accomplished forthwith.”—Syst. of Doct. 22. p. 66. [410] Rom. v. 12 (R.V.) [411] John xiv. 19. [412] Cf. last Lecture. [413] Gen. ii. 16, ii. 19. [414] See further Note H.—The Connection of Sin and Death. [415] 2 Cor. v. 8; Phil. i. 23; Rev. xiv. 13, etc. [416] Rom. v. 11, viii. 23. _________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX TO LECTURE V. THE OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY. The views advanced in the Lecture have an important bearing on the much discussed question of the Old Testament doctrine of immortality. The statement is often made that the Old Testament, especially in the older books, has no distinct doctrine of Immortality. Many explanations have been offered of this difficulty, but I would humbly suggest that the real explanation may be that we have been looking for evidence of that doctrine in a wrong direction. We have been looking for a doctrine of “the immortality of the soul” in the sense of the schools, whereas the real hope of patriarchs and saints, so far as they had one, was, in accordance with the Biblical doctrine already explained, that of restored life in the body. [417] The early Hebrews had no manner of doubt, any more than we have, that the soul, or spiritual part of man, survived the body. [418] It would be strange if they had, for every other ancient people is known to have had this belief. The Egyptians, e.g., taught that the dead descended to an under-world, where they were judged by Osiris and his forty-two assessors. [419] The Babylonians and Assyrians conceived of the abode of the dead as a great city having seven encircling walls, and a river flowing round or through it. [420] A name they gave to this city is believed by some to have been “Sheol,” [421] the same word as the Hebrew Sheol, which is the name in the Old Testament for the place of departed spirits. It is one of the merits of the Revised Version that it has in many places (why not in all?) printed this word in the text, and tells the reader in the preface that “Sheol,” sometimes in the Old Version translated “grave,” sometimes “pit,” sometimes “hell,” means definitely “the abode of departed spirits, and corresponds to the Greek ‘Hades,’ or the under-world,” and does not signify “the place of burial.” But the thought of going to “Sheol” was no comfort to the good man. The gloomy associations of death hung over this abode; it was figured as a land of silence and forgetfulness; the warm and rich light of the upper-world was excluded from it; [422] no ray of gospel light had as yet been given to chase away its gloom. The idea of “Sheol” was thus not one which attracted, but one which repelled, the mind. Men shrank from it as we do from the breath and cool shades of the charnel-house. The saint, strong in his hope in God, might believe that God would not desert him even in “Sheol”; that His presence and fellowship would be given him even there; but it would only be in moments of strong faith he could thus triumph, and in hours of despondency the gloomiest thoughts were apt to come back on him. His real trust, so far as he was able to cherish one, was that God would not leave his soul in “Sheol,” but would redeem him from that state, and restore him to life in the body. [423] His hope was for resurrection. To illustrate this state of feeling and belief, in regard to the state of the separate existence of the soul, it may be well to cite one or two passages bearing on the subject. An indication of a belief in a future state of the soul is found in an expression several times met with in Genesis—“gathered to his people”—where, in every instance, the gathering to the people (in “Sheol”) is definitely distinguished from the act of burial. [424] Other evidences are afforded by the belief in necromancy, the narratives of resurrection, etc. What kind of place “Sheol” was to the popular imagination is well represented in the words of Job— “I go whence I shall not return, Even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death, A land of thick darkness, as darkness itself, A land of the shadow of death, without any order, And where light is as darkness.” [425] There was not much cheer in looking forward to an abode like this, and it is therefore not surprising that even good men, in moments of despondency, when it seemed as if God’s presence and favour were taken from them, should moan, as David did— “Return, O Lord, deliver my soul; Save me for Thy loving kindness’ sake For in death there is no remembrance of Thee, In Sheol who shall give Thee thanks?” [426] or with Hezekiah— “Sheol cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate Thee: They that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day.” [427] It is not, therefore, in this direction that we are to look for the positive and cheering side of the Old Testament hope of immortality, but in quite another. It is said we have no doctrine of Immortality in the Old Testament. But I reply, we have immortality at the very commencement—for man, as he came from the hands of his Creator, was made for immortal life. Man in Eden was immortal. He was intended to live, not to die. Then came sin, and with it death. Adam called his son Seth, and Seth called his son Enoch, which means “frail, mortal man.” Seth himself died, his son died, his son’s son died, and so the line of death goes on. Then comes an interruption, the intervention, as it were, of a higher law, a new inbreaking of immortality into a line of death. “Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him.” [428] Enoch did not die. Every other life in that record ends with the statement, “and he died”; but Enoch’s is given as an exception. He did not die, but God “took” him, i.e. without death. He simply “was not” on earth, but he “was” with God in another and invisible state of existence. [429] His case is thus in some respects the true type of all immortality, for it is an immortality of the true personality, in which the body has as real a share as the soul. It agrees with what I have advanced in the Lecture, that it is not an immortality of the soul only that the Bible speaks of that is left for the philosophers but an immortality of the whole person, body and soul together. Such is the Christian hope, and such, as I shall now try to show, was the Hebrew hope also. It is a current view that the doctrine of the Resurrection of the dead was a very late doctrine among the Hebrews, borrowed, as many think, from the Persians, during, or subsequent to, the Babylonian exile. Dr. Cheyne sees in it an effect of Zoroastrian influence on the religion of Israel. [430] My opinion, on the contrary, is that it is one of the very oldest doctrines in the Bible, the form, in fact, in which the hope of immortality was held, so far as it was held, from the days of the patriarchs downward. [431] In any case, it was a doctrine of very remote antiquity. We find traces of it in many ancient religions outside the Hebrew, an instructive testimony to the truth of the idea on which it rested. The Egyptians believed, e.g., that the reanimation of the body was essential to perfected existence; and this, according to some, was the thought that underlay the practice